Working at Netflix 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-05-16/working-at-netflix-2017.html <comment><USER3> > We don't do anything shady, and we're proud of that. We're an honest > company.

Maybe not shady, but surely controversial.

[0]: [https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/](https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted- media/)

[1]: [https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/18/drm-for-the-web-is-a- bad...](https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/18/drm-for-the-web-is-a-bad-idea/)

[2]: [https://www.defectivebydesign.org/drm-in-web- standards](https://www.defectivebydesign.org/drm-in-web-standards)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, being limited to 720p because you run a free software operating system is not my idea of 'not shady' (Netflix is keeping their streams on Firefox and Chrome on 720p as a matter of policy, 1080p requires IE11, Edge, or Safari on a non-free operating system, or their proprietary app on an approved operating system).

The only way this makes sense is if the purpose of this blockade is to push people towards devices and operating systems that are completely locked down with DRM, from the software to the hardware. I can't think of any other reason — if Netflix does serve me 1080p and 4K streams, would that cause a sudden increase in the amount of pirated releases available?

I can _already_ get everything on Netflix, in 1080p, if I really want just by visiting the usual pirate haunts! So what exactly is gained by degrading my viewing experience by only allowing me 720p as long as I choose to run a free operating system instead of a fully locked down platform?

I wish Netflix would give an honest answer on their DRM strategy, because it is driving me away.

I could understand if this was done because of licensing issues, but Netflix has decided on a blanket ban of 1080p and higher for their customers on free operating systems and anyone else who wants to use Chrome or Firefox.

<comment><USER5> If it was licensing issues, it'd at least be nice if Netflix only lowered quality where required instead of across the board. For crying out loud, why can't I get 1080p streams of Netflix originals on Linux - I've got the stupid Widevine CDM installed, what's the problem?

<comment><USER6> Would be nice, but at the same time it's a lot simpler to just do it once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This might be a bit off-topic but I heard that Netflix pays pretty well, even compared to other SV tech firms.

Why does the author only have a pretty small desk directly at a (what I assume) small recreational area? Is this considered a normal desk at a top SV tech firm? I'd probably go nuts after a few days because people are constantly passing by and are talking while I want to concentrate on work.

I'm from Germany where more and more companies try to implement the same open- office plans. Everybody I know that works in such an environment considers them as hostile to productivity. Somebody is constantly talking about useless stuff and disturbs others by that and using headphones is deemed as rude and anti-social.

<comment><USER8> The norm in SV (from visits to other companies) seems to be open office layout -- desks everywhere without walls or dividers. Ours is more private, I think it's called "semi-open", and out of shot behind me is a carpet-wall-thing that's about 5.5 feet high. So I'd say Netflix is a bit more private than the norm.

I don't know what happened to private offices in SV. Sun Microsystems had a private office for every engineer, but Facebook tore them down when they took over. (I gave a talk at Facebook and included a floor plan from the Sun days: [https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/linux-bpf- superpower...](https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/linux-bpf- superpowers/2) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cached: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:srnZUa...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:srnZUaFAExwJ:www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-05-16/working- at-netflix-2017.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER10> Are they still proud of high turn-over rate and the "culture of fear"?

<comment><USER11> What makes you think the Netflix turnover rate is high?

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that I have not personally experienced it. I've been at Netflix for a little less than 2 years. We've had zero turnover in my immediate group (the team that runs the OS used on the OpenConnect Appliance), and very little turnover in adjacent teams. I experienced far more turnover at Google.

<comment><USER12> Our TPM worked at Netflix for 2 years and she said that she personally saw about 20 people let go during her time.

<comment><USER10> I could understand this if interviews were broken (in a different way) at Netflix - is this the case? i.e. is it ridiculously easy to get a job there?

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't say it's easy to get a job here. I've been working here for nearly 2 years now.

The interview process is as challenging as it needs to be to find the right people for the job. This varies from team to team. We don't follow a corporate set of rules to hire engineers.

This company is more adamant about letting folks go whom don't get the work done or aren't able to perform.

They want good engineers to solve challenging problems. The teams are fairly lean so you can't really float by doing the bare minimum.

<comment><USER14> > They want good engineers to solve challenging problems.

Serve bits. Suggest movies based on coarse signals. Is there much left?

Netflix is not SpaceX nor Tesla; its an online Blockbuster Video. Serving video in 2017 is not complicated.

<comment><USER15> Supplying sufficient video to be responsible for 25% of consumer internet bandwidth is a different story.

<comment><USER14> Can you be more specific? Do you mean producing their original content? Or rendering renditions for each bitrate, and then pushing those renditions out to their custom CDN appliances? (OpenConnect)

I can most definitely get behind original content production being hard. But pushing a couple hundred TB (or even low double digit PB) of data out to CDNs doesn't require a fleet of devs.

<comment><USER15> Total content is likely closer to 100 PB. The "25% of consumer bandwidth" is a proxy for how heavily Netflix is used.

Take a look at some of their open source projects and their tech blog to get a feel for the problems they solve at their scale.

[https://netflix.github.io/](https://netflix.github.io/) [https://medium.com/netflix-techblog](https://medium.com/netflix-techblog)

Some things I find personally interesting:

They run a 5000 node Cassandra cluster.

They can failover an entire datacenter in 27 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm pretty sure I've had few recruiters tell me, poaching from Netflix is almost impossible because of their ridiculously high salaries.

<comment><USER10> When you factor in stocks, bonuses, healthcare and benefits the pay is same as in any other big N companies. Add family-friendliness, job stability to the list and you have much more than Netflix offers.

<comment><USER13> I would venture to say that our family-friendliness, stability, and benefits are on par (if not better) than other large companies.

Everyone takes whatever time off they need. There's no guilt associated - <USER2> always shun folks that check email and chat channels when they take vacation.

I personally appreciate cash directly in my pocket versus a gym, yoga rooms, and toys scattered about in the office.

I come to the office to work, not play. I don't need nor want the company buying things that don't help me get my work done effectively.

I also appreciate the sense of mobility in my career. I don't have to wait four+ years for stock options to vest. Four years is a very long time in any tech company. I also don't want my compensation tied to stock performance.

<comment><USER17> > I also appreciate the sense of mobility in my career. I don't have to wait > four+ years for stock options to vest. Four years is a very long time in any > tech company.

On the flip side, you also don't want to be faced with a massive drop in your take-home pay after the 4th year (once salary+RSU becomes just salary), forcing you to jump ship. I've been to a few "vesting parties" for co-workers where they quit after exactly 4 years to the day. I'm told some companies are known to do "evergreen grants" to help mitigate this effect.

<comment><USER18> I am surprised to hear there is any company that just quits you on stock cold turkey.

The expectation everywhere I have been is that you will get refresher grants not just at the end of year four but earlier than that. Anywhere from 6 months to 2 years.

Either way I don't care what they do. If my compensation changes for the worse for the worse (knock on wood has never happened) or my stock isn't performing then I deal with it then.

I value options from every company that gave me them at zero and 2/2 I was right. Hell they had negative value at one since I exercised and I really think I will be lucky if I even get that money back. Getting crammed at every financing event sucks. Live and learn I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Am I crazy or does it look like you're not sitting in a open-plan office/farm? And you have your own lounge chair by the window?

<comment><USER20> That called my attention as well, but I figured they would be in semi-open- space: some privacy provided by the shell to the left of the chair and maybe one behind the chair, but open to the front and to the right of the chair.

As in, maybe there's another workstation to the right of the chair positioned in symmetry (open to the left and shelf to the right).

The chair by the window looks like belonging to the hallway in front of the pictured workstation.

Just speculating though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've always wondered why they don't hire remote.

</comment><comment><USER22> @brendangregg

You mentioned FreeBSD; what are your thoughts on the state of DTrace on Linux vs FreeBSD?

ps: I love your DTrace book! It's sitting on my desk now.

<comment><USER8> Linux caught up last year: [http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for- linux...](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for- linux-2016.html)

Thanks for getting the book! DTrace is invaluable for solving a set of needs, and we're using it on our FreeBSD CDN. Over time, Linux has been adding capabilities that can solve the same set of needs, although using different technologies.

Right now, the Linux kernel (4.9+) can do the same things as DTrace, but the interface we're using (bcc/BPF) is currently 10+ times more verbose and much more difficult to use. Who does that hurt the most? At Netflix, me, as it's my job to add advanced observability to our analysis GUIs, and actually write the bcc/BPF.

So far I've given conference talks on bcc/BPF at Performance@Scale, USENIX LISA, linux.conf.au, BSidesSF, and SCALE. Next is Velocity Conf.

<comment><USER23> Brendan

Love your work on DTrace.

Have you seen / configured a system that keep the FTRACE/DTRACE log data in memory during a crash/ reboot cycle for postmortem kernel crash type analysis?

If so, love the see any reference to how to setup something like that for typical x86 Linux.

Did that long time (10+years) ago on MIPS+vxwork/Linux with someother trace log type system. Miss that capability.....

Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Question to OP: How many people were fired or let go during your 3 years? And did they let go of people that you felt was a mistake?

</comment><comment><USER24> I somehow picked up "Australian vibes" from this article, without any proof in the article that Brendan is Aussie.

The cricket ball on the desk then helped, with the "G'day" on the front page of his site proving it. :)

</comment><comment><USER25> The Netflix iOS app is terrible though. Multiple crashes a day. What's up with that?

</comment><comment><USER26> Is that a C64 boot screen mousemat? Cool.

</comment><comment><USER27> link isn't working..

<comment><USER28> Still down. Probably zapped his monthly bandwidth in an hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Netflix's culture deck is one of the most horrific things in the tech industry I've ever seen. It's so ruthlessly mercenary, I have a hard time understanding how why people put up with them.

<comment><USER30> Netflix recruiter forced me to read all 200 pages of it and asked me pop quiz on it during the subsequent call. No Joke. During the interview interviewer constantly referred to "Netflix culture" as if they were in some sort of cult.

Why does a corporate company need to invent some ridiculous "culture" is beyond me. You pay me I do work, thats all the culture I need.

>>Then while working here, staff cite the culture deck in meetings for decision making advice.

These meetings sound like fun.

<comment><USER31> I don't know how close the thing you read is to what's on slideshare, but the public version has a slide which explicitly addresses the "this is not for everyone" issue, and says they're trying to filter out the people who won't like it. I suspect questions about the culture deck are more about making sure you're coming in with open eyes than about ensuring you've memorised every last phrase.

<comment><USER30> Thats nice. Play nasty games with people trying to find a job and put food on the table.

What is wrong with these people.

<comment><USER31> I don't get this at all.

Wouldn't the "nasty game" be to hire them then fire them after a few weeks because they don't bring the level of intrinsic motivation that the environment requires?

Or are you saying that no employer should be able to demand this level of motivation, even if they're totally up-front about it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Netflix has a 3.4 rating on Glassdoor. Yikes. I wouldn't consider working at a company unless it had 4 or more.

<comment><USER33> I would never use Glassdoor for evaluating a company. It skews towards people who are upset, they don't verify that you actually worked there, and they combine hourly workers with salary workers, which could be two _very_ different experiences.

<comment><USER34> Not to mention that most of the experiences are team-based. In any medium/large size company, you can end up in a terrible team and your view of the company is very negative. You can end up with a brilliant manager and great team, and you love the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Answer me this: Why does the interface suck so bad? How are pissing off 100 million subscribers good business?

I apologize for not expanding my view with a detailed analysis, but damn.

The update you guys promoted like half a year in advance made it even worse.

<comment><USER33> The interface is the result of tens of thousands of A/B tests. Every change is tested and produces greater general happiness.

There is a probably a bimodal distribution on happiness, but they only optimize for the bigger curve instead of both, to reduce complexity. So while you, and an advanced user, might want a lot of advanced features, those same features scare away the majority of casual users. So it's a business decision to cater to the majority at the expense of the minority to reduce overall development cost.

<comment><USER35> I'm not talking about advanced features here, but stuff like that annoying zoom on hover and not remembering my sort preference and such. Just bad design!

The most annoying thing maybe is that I can't hide stuff from the lists. Like when I watch 2 minutes of something and decides that I will never ever watch that crap again - that piece of crap will forever haunt my interface.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some successful 1 person sites that have a very plain design? - <AUTHOR> I'm thinking of sites like:
https://pinboard.in/ http://www.tarsnap.com/
any others? <comment><USER2> Check out Pieter Levels' projects, most notably NomadList and RemoteOK.

NomadList especially only started out as a shared spreadsheet. There's a good writeup here:

[https://levels.io/product-hunt-hacker-news-number- one/](https://levels.io/product-hunt-hacker-news-number-one/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have found this one on the other HN thread yesterday: [https://www.cyclinganalytics.com/](https://www.cyclinganalytics.com/) No fluff just stuff. Unfortunately screenshots are low-res, but you can check _Try_ link to at least see reporting with author's real rides. Blog also has some screenshots.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know about "successful" but my solo weekend project is pretty plain only because I'm not much of a designer: [https://www.nominal.net](https://www.nominal.net)

</comment><comment><USER6> Define successful website?

I have thousands of users, a few websites pay for themselves:

[https://easy-a.net/](https://easy-a.net/)

[https://projectpiglet.com/](https://projectpiglet.com/)</comment>


Images Now Showing in Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/images-now-showing.html <comment><USER4> [Update 2: I just tested with a newly-created Gmail account and the feature did not seem to have been rolled out to the new account yet.]

[Update: I'm not sure when this feature will actually be rolled out. I think my test below automatically displayed the image because my own email address appears to be implicitly a whitelisted sender (even though "images from this sender are always displayed" doesn't appear for it). Whether Google will alter the behavior when they actually deploy this feature, I don't know.]

[Original message:]

I just tested and, yes, Gmail only loaded the referenced image when I clicked on the message to open it within Gmail. I can't be sure, because perhaps if I had waited an hour without opening the message, Gmail would have automatically loaded the image anyway. But in reply to mherdeg below, the evidence suggests that, yes, Gmail plans to opt everybody in to sending "read receipts" by default for HTML messages that reference images.

I'm surprised by Google's statement that the previous behavior of prompting was "to protect you from unknown senders who might try to use images to compromise the security of your computer or mobile device."

I realize this was _a_ benefit, but I always thought the main purpose was for privacy --- not to betray to the email sender when I opened the email. My guess is that Google did not view this as a privacy setting, or they probably would not have forcibly changed everybody's setting.

It's doubly strange that they did so without a notice inside Gmail that they did so -- just a blog post.

<comment><USER5> I just ran the same test and can confirm the results. Google will only load your image if you open the email, which means Google has just opted-in all users to mail receipts.

I don't use any Google services outside of small tests like this, but it still makes me concerned for how this will affect the privacy of people I know.

<comment><USER6> "Email open" tracking just got a lot more reliable for all mass email & marketing automation vendors.

On the flip side, those same solutions can no longer set a persistent cookie with the image, so persistent tracking based on the initial email open will stop working.

<comment><USER7> > "Email open" tracking just got a lot more reliable for all mass email & > marketing automation vendors.

Has it? If Google's proxy is caching images, then "email open" tracking might have broken entirely. All the sender would see is that their email has been opened once by the proxy -- for all gmail addresses put together.

<comment><USER8> Mass-email senders probably would put a unique identifier in the image url (different for all users), so Google will open each image, because it can't know before loading them that it's the same image.

<comment><USER9> Or they could retrieve every image sent to a gmail address immediately, regardless of whether you viewed it or not.

That would essentially render open statistics meaningless and would let Google cripple another industry after the promotions tab and 'not provided.'

I really hope they don't because it's such valuable information when creating email copy...

<comment><USER8> I agree they could do it, but people upthread are suggesting that Google doesn't do that, and only loads the image when you open the message.

<comment><USER10> they could track if an email was opened twice

first one = Google

second one = user

<comment><USER11> I would imagine that google caches the images so there would be one request instead of two.

<comment><USER10> you are right, I didn't think on that

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This proxying actually rolled out on December 3rd to most gmail.com users. We, Streak, happenned to launch an email tracking feature on the same day ([http://www.streak.com/email-tracking-in-gmail](http://www.streak.com/email- tracking-in-gmail)).

Here's what we've learned:

\- the proxying of requests only happens when a user is viewing the mail inside Gmail (i.e. gmail does not actually affect the message body, its just proxying at render time)

\- gmail only caches in the image for a few minutes. So for email marketers, if your recipient views the email then views it again a few hours later, the marketer will see two requests for the image

\- there is basically no personally identifiable information in the request that Google's proxy sends to the server hosting the image. So from that perspective this is actually a boost in privacy than the previous state of the world. None of the headers, cache controls, cookies, ip addresses, referrers or user agents are passed to the original image server

\- obviously you can encode some ID into the image URL itself but all that lets you do is identify the email address of the user that opened the email. But you already had their email address because you sent them an email - <USER3> again, no PII gets disclosed

\- it is true that marketers will see a more accurate count of opens (because displaying images is on by default)

\- there seems to be several ways to get gmail's proxy to NOT cache the image and simply proxy the request every time the user opens the emails

<comment><USER13> > obviously you can encode some ID into the image URL itself but all that lets > you do is identify the email address of the user that opened the email. But > you already had their email address because you sent them an email - <USER3> > again, no PII gets disclosed

All that lets you do is...confirm that the email address exists. Until this change, that was a very difficult thing to do; now, its equivalent to getting a message through a spam filter. This is going to help spammers _a lot_.

<comment><USER12> It wasn't very difficult to do - in our testing, approx 60% of emails we sent out had images requested for them meaning users clicked on the display images link. May be us nerds dont do it but regular users seem more likely to.

<comment><USER13> That's assuming that people are just as likely to allow images from a message that kinda looks like spam as they are from a message that's from a person/service they know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is Google loading these images when a user opens mail? (Have they just automatically opted users in to "read receipts"?)

Or are these images pre-cached when mail is delivered (so that the fact that an image was loaded is just proof of delivery, which you should be able to get anyway?)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a step in the right direction. However, please understand that it doesn't really make a difference in forms of real privacy Googlers!

The e-mail spam/list creators are a different kind of adversary than, for example, web trackers.

They will do something like this: http www theirimageserver firstname.lastname@example.com (Obviously they will obfuscate and use some kind of hash instead of cleartext e-mail to disguise their tracking ways).

Regardless of whether some.google.ip loads it, or your.home.ip loads it, it won't change the fact that firstname.lastname@example.com loaded it and your email is very active, not just active in that it didn't bounce, but active in that you actually read it.

Once again, it's a step in the right direction though, and I'm looking forward to seeing greater innovations from Google in the privacy space, because I'm confident that there are Googlers who understand that privacy is not a feature nor a PR thing... it's the difference between the preservation of humanity and society versus not.

<comment><USER16> They can mitigate that by downloading all images that come to any address @gmail.com. That way spammers won't know if email@example.com is real or not, and still be at step 0 (and hopefully taking some bandwidth/processing time/log space from the spammer at the same time!).

<comment><USER17> This is probably obvious to people who do email marketing, but I just tested whether gmail bounces bad addresses. They do bounce addresses that have never been registered and addresses that have been deleted. This means that even before this change, spammers could find out if an address is active.

<comment><USER16> Bouncing badly typed addresses is more useful for users than stymieing spammers. However, a spammer doesn't need to know if an existing gmail address is being actively used or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hate to be "that guy", but does this mean Google is storing every one of our pics on their proxy servers? For how long do they store them, and what is their data retention policy?

Also, remembering that Google has no obligation to protect non-American users, does that give the NSA access to them, to run things like facial recognition, etc?

<comment><USER19> Honest question: Does this differ from them storing the email which already contains the pictures?

<comment><USER20> Yes. Whilst you can embed images as MIME attachments (or data:// uri trickery and the like), the vast majority are <img> tags referencing external [http://](http://) uris. A message with remote image references is not a complete document, and won't render correctly unless those references can be followed. Google are instead fetching and caching those remote references, then serving them indirectly to you.

As comparison, Firefox has a 'save page' function which distinguishes between 'html only' (akin to the mail message), and 'complete', which would include all images, stylesheets, external js files, etc.

<comment><USER19> Fair point, I wasn't considering external links, only embedded images. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm curious if this will help spammers. AFAIK, loading a tracking pixel helps validate an email address as active (since, by design, bounce messages probably wouldn't make it back to the spammer), even if the recipient didn't otherwise respond to the message. AFAIK, "Validated" email address lists are worth more than unchecked lists and if Google is preloading images for valid accounts, then that seems to make validation even easier for spammers.

<comment><USER22> However, if they make requests (that they don't necessarily have to keep) for images for _all_ accounts (preloading on receive and not read), it does the opposite, which is a good thing.

<comment><USER21> The problem is, if the filename/URL is unique to the user like "spammersite.tld/images/50093825343.jpg" and 50093825343" is tied to my unique email, then on Gmail's download and caching of the image, they've validated my email. If another email has 023503850485.jpg, gmail wouldn't know that the underlying file is the same unless it loads it. I don't even have to have checked my mail for this to happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I kinda like this. More often than not, I never click the "Display Images" link because I know doing so will essentially feed information back to the people who sent the email (the fact that I opened it, my geoIP location, browser, etc). I've been fine with a slightly degraded and less pretty email experience in order to give me some extra privacy and keep my information out of marketer's systems.

With this I guess I can see emails with all the images and other goodies without that worry. Works for me.

On the other hand... There's a good chance Google is caching all this now. But seeing as they're running the mail system I don't feel like it's too major of an intrusion beyond what they already have.

<comment><USER24> This just means they'll be paying Google for that info instead of being able to gather it themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Since images usually contain tracking information, I wonder how this helps? Maybe the proxy automatically gets and stores the image as soon as the email is received? So in this manner, they will not be able to tell if/when a user actually clicks on a link?

</comment><comment><USER26> How does this affect invisible pixels (for analytics)?

<comment><USER27> Badly: [http://blog.movableink.com/gmails-recent-image-handling- chan...](http://blog.movableink.com/gmails-recent-image-handling-changes-the- impact-and-resolution)

<comment><USER28> To clarify, it's bad for marketing people, but good for users desiring privacy.

<comment><USER29> To an extent - it seems that google indirectly confirms that emails are received (even though additional data is lost).

<comment><USER28> I believe they still have an "Ask before displaying external images" setting.

<comment><USER29> Yes, but it is unclear whether their servers will load them regardless of whether or not they're sent to my browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Protect me from images? That is _not_ why I used this feature.

I used it so that images like /verifyRealEmail.php?email=$myaddress wouldn't work.

<comment><USER31> If the gmail proxy caches _every_ image that is sent to a gmail address, then this bad for spammers, and good for everyone else. That's one less mechanism to verify valid (or active) email address.

<comment><USER30> I wonder if Google will access an image URL in an email sent to a nonexistent address

<comment><USER31> They almost have to, otherwise it would be much too easy to scrape gmail addresses (from Google itself!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Just tried this out with [https://emailprivacytester.com/](https://emailprivacytester.com/) \- The proxy request only happened when I viewed the email. It came from 184.108.40.206 (google-proxy-66-249-88-50.google.com) and had the User-Agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:220.127.116.11) Gecko/2009021910 Firefox/3.0.7 (via ggpht.com)

I viewed the email using Firefox 26 on Debian.

</comment><comment><USER32>
        "Google's own secure proxy servers"

will that mean that people who track me opening their email with 1px images won't be able to track that? I hope this is the case...

<comment><USER33> Sure looks like it. I wonder how analytics companies feel about this. It's important to know how many people are opening your emails.

<comment><USER32> I guess the compromise is giving the user the option to choose: (i) I would like to be tracked, (ii) I don't want to be tracked. I genuinly dislike people who send me personal/work emails with tracking mechanisms...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So if you send a different picture to each recipient, you can track if they open your message? Or does Google pull all images, whether you view the message or not?

</comment><comment><USER35> Yea, it's hard to not think this is ultimately not a great move. It seems rather shortsighted from a Gmail user's perspective if Google can't address concerns over spammers being able to verify email addresses, or even just analytic trackers. It is also vastly less appealing to hear that Google plans to cache all images, which we know Big Brother is grabbing as well. And in the case where someone may want to actually see images for a marketing email (albeit, extremely rare for me), it actually hamstrings the source of the email from possibly providing customized images/content based on geolocation/browser/etc. that I could be interested in seeing.

So, what's the upside vs. just having the option to display images as desired and NOT have Google cache them?

<comment><USER36> Aren't verified email addresses a relic of the past? Does anybody actually get anything other than nonsense spam anymore?

<comment><USER35> That feels a bit like the "I have nothing to hide argument." Should we just accept that probably spammers no longer send address verifying emails, and tacitly approve this change helping them out if they do? Ultimately, the default should be to let people decide for themselves to opt in to something like this. Forcing this with some pretty big head scratching holes in the benefits seems rather evil.

<comment><USER36> Looking at the preference, it isn't auto loading images in 'suspicious' messages (the help text more or less says this).

So trusted messages are now leaking read receipts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is relevant for email marketers:

      In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened
      a message with unique image links. As always, Gmail scans every message for
      suspicious content and if Gmail considers a sender or message potentially
      suspicious, images won't be displayed and you'll be asked whether you want
      to see the images.

[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919)

</comment><comment><USER38> Seems like a privacy hole.

Mailer can setup url that is composed of random words and is unique per email.

Ex: www.tracker.com/weather-dog-city-nice.jpg could identify you + timestamp of request and bam, you have record of: valid email, address isn't blocked and that user reads emails from recipient. No proxy in a world would be able to make this request anonymous.

No idea what advantage of this is apart from google eventually offering an alternative to gmail (think of comment system being replaced on youtube)

</comment><comment><USER39> Is there a way to turn it off? I'm on a limited data plan on my iPhone and I don't want images to load by default.

<comment><USER19> It's in the article.

> Of course, those who prefer to authorize image display on a per message > basis can choose the option "Ask before displaying external images" under > the General tab in Settings. That option will also be the default for users > who previously selected "Ask before displaying external content".

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think that's a great feature. Loading images manually is always annoying and isn't a great user experience. Novice user's don't always understand why it's risky and they probably opt to display the images anyways.

However, one interesting question is how can third-party analytics will workaround this? Is there a way? Given that gmail holds a large market share of email users, this is really going to negatively affect the usefulness of such services.

</comment><comment><USER41> Seems it's being rolled out in a sloppy fashion. In my Gmail account, images in email have suddenly stopped working. There is still a "display images" button, and when I click it, the images do not load. When I attempt to open an image link from the email message in another tab, I get a 404 error on Google's proxy server, with a super long URL.

</comment><comment><USER42> _In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened a message with unique image links._

From [https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?p=display_imag...](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?p=display_images&rd=1)

</comment><comment><USER43> Does this mean that every image will be saved onto Google's proxy server at the time that Google receives it, or at the time that the user opens it?

I don't want to lose the ability to track email opens to gmail users through Mandrill/SendGrid/whatever...

<comment><USER44> Many ESPs already have a workaround in place for ensuring that open % stats are not affected. Here's Campaign Monitor's take on the issue: [http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/4118/how-gmails- ima...](http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/4118/how-gmails-image- display-changes-will-affect-your-reports)

Also, a postmaster's version: [http://emailexpert.org/gmail-tracking-changes- the-fix-what-y...](http://emailexpert.org/gmail-tracking-changes-the-fix-what- you-need-to-know/)

Disclosure that I'm from Campaign Monitor and wrote that first post. As you can imagine, we've been getting a fair few enquiries about image tracking and opens today...!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Just because it's through a proxy doesn't mean identifying information can't be embedded in the URL.... This is used as a "customer read email" callback.

</comment><comment> Pirate-of-SV So it's going to break [https://emailprivacytester.com/](https://emailprivacytester.com/) by default?

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder if Google will eventually PageSpeed the images and advertise it as a feature. "Mails load faster with Google Mail!".

</comment><comment><USER47> And since images are now no longer proxied, that's the end to this "email DRM" sillyness. Good riddance.</comment>


The case for drinking whole milk - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/405498/the-case-for-drinking-whole-milk

<comment><USER2> Extensive discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9559721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9559721)</comment>


How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@magicsilicon/how-the-soc-is-displacing-the-cpu-49bc7503edab <comment><USER2> This seems like a silly title. I interpret it as 'How the CPU, when packaged with a bunch of other stuff, is displacing the CPU.'

Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> You're not missing anything -- the article is dumb. Of course we're eventually going to integrate everything, for the same reason that no one uses separate interrupt controllers or separate Northbridges. We have too many transistors we don't know what to do with.

Edit: I think the interesting question is what _won 't_ be integrated? RAM and Flash because they use different processes. GPU? Intel and ARM integrate it, but there is a large company selling GPUs.

<comment><USER4> Also I would like to know how much die space is wasted on IBM PC backwards compatibility crap in Intel systems (think A20, cascading interrupt controllers, 8086 support, legacy boot, etc)

<comment><USER5> An intel 8088 processor had a 22mm^2 die size at a 3000nm process node size. A modern x86 processor has a ~200mm^2 die size at a 14nm node size, a die size that is 10x larger with features 200x smaller.

Even if a modern x86 chip had to put an entire 8088 on die for legacy compatability (which it definitely would not need to) we are talking less than 0.1% of the die space being taken up by legacy features.

The idea that x86 is somehow doomed to be inefficent because of legacy baggage is quite simply massively overblown.

<comment><USER3> While you're right that it's not a huge deal, architectural issues are not solved by putting "an entire 8088 on die for legacy compatability" unless you'd want to run the old software at very low speed. Intel solved it with lots of R&D. Their solution involves a layer that translates x86 instructions to native ops[1], plus many little hacks and improvements.

[1] [http://www.realworldtech.com/nehalem/5/](http://www.realworldtech.com/nehalem/5/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Apple A9X SoC offers 64 bit desktop-class computing enabling a handheld tablet to go toe-to-toe with a state-of-the-art laptop CPU from Intel"

Yes and no. Most of the innovation in top-end x86 CPUs goes towards multicore and multi-socket scalability. My desktop is almost 10x faster than an A9X -- and nobody manufactures an ARM SoC that has 100 W thermal envelope but delivers the same speed as a Xeon v3.

Intel manufactures different state-of-the-art laptop CPUs. Apple SoCs can compete with the ultra-low voltage Intels, but not with high-end i7 HQ/MQ series.

<comment><USER3> _nobody manufactures an ARM SoC that has 100 W thermal envelope but delivers the same speed as a Xeon v3_

Look at Cavium ThunderX: 48 ARMv8 cores, very high performance, 95W.

<comment><USER7> The key question is which workloads will actually benefit from many low single-thread performance cores. While there are some where such a node coupled with a GPU compute cluster will probably be the useful but it seems like a vast majority of server deployments just want good single-thread perf with 2 or more hardware threads.

<comment><USER3> Don't necessarily assume that all ARM cores will have low single-thread performance. Especially with 64 bit server-class ARM SoCs, the performance can be rather good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For anyone else wondering what "SoC" means, here you go: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip)

</comment><comment><USER9> One should also note that the x86 platform has taken on some SoC like structures over the years, with AMD as a driving force.

For example they lumped the memory controller onto the CPU die with the Athlon 64, and then a GPU on their A series.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, and the integrated GPUs, at least the entry level ones, do suck. My Acer netbook is barely able to play 360p videos, 720p if you're lucky and 1080p - no hope. My cheap smartphone can play 1080p without a single dropped frame.

<comment><USER11> On neither of those platforms is the GPU doing the video decode. On your phone there's a dedicated DSP. On your netbook the CPU is pulling up the slack. There's a lot of serial work in decoding videos (like huffman decoding) that doesn't translate to standard GPUs without a little extra silicon.

<comment><USER12> An entry level AMD apu will give you a dedicated video decoding unit.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobcat_%28microarchitecture%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobcat_%28microarchitecture%29)

I've never had an APU but on paper they sound really nice. Intel probably has similar but you may have to be more careful picking your CPU because of market feature segregation.

<comment><USER13> AMD tends to dominate the GPU half of the APU battle. Intel has made great strides, and I'm interested in their newest pieces, but from what I've seen so far, AMD still wins this niche.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm really, really longing for one of these "modular" phones where I can exchange and upgrade components at will...

<comment><USER9> Fairphone 2 is shipping now, iirc.

<comment><USER14> The site says "Designed for use and service in Europe only.", but regardless of what it was _designed_ for does it work with any North American carriers?

<comment><USER9> [http://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone2.html#technical- specific...](http://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone2.html#technical- specifications)

That lists the various bands for the mobile radios.

<comment><USER14> I saw that, but it's strange that they'd make it w/ a capable quad-band radio and -still- declare it's only designed for Europe. I'm not a cellular expert -- are there other considerations outside the frequencies that it supports ? If not, it seems like a good global phone, no ?

<comment><USER9> GSM quad band, UMTS and LTE seem Europe only. So getting anything more than EDGE in USA seem out of the question.

In this day and age i suspect finding GSM radios that are not quad band are rare to say the least.

Never mind that this phone is unlikely to ever be sold with a carrier subsidy, as it will be damn hard to lock in something that can have its SoC assembly replaced by removing a few screws (and ship with the required screwdriver).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a bit silly. A9X and other mobile SoC are in absolutely no way comparable in performance, on any metric, with desktop CPUs. You do not get 150W performance from a 10W chip, particularly not when you are lagging in process node.

<comment><USER16> I don't think there is much lagging in the node size with the A9 family in comparison to Intel's mobile chips. A9 is a 14-16 nm FinFET design. Not much different than Intel's 14 nm FinFET for core-M. The A9X is clocked at 2.26 GHz compared with a Skylake core-m7 clocked at 1.2-3.1 GHz.

<comment><USER17> Despite what you said, you in no way addressed or contradicted his point. Clockrate and nm don't tell you performance. Intel's internal architecture has tons of tricks to get more bang for buck out of their cycles. Plus lots of accelerators with extra instructions. Plus modifiable with microcode update. So, a proper comparison would be a number of workloads on each that people use for desktops.

Note: I still haven't seen a mobile that outperforms my old Core Duo 2 laptop. Always slower in both delay and throughput.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Intel biggest inroads in SoC market happened when it was giving away Atoms below cost ($5, Mediatek/Rockchip price point) while losing $3-4 Billion. Year after year since 2013.

Their plan for 2016 is selling LTE modems below cost to Apple.

<comment><USER19> How is it even legal ?

<comment><USER18> Its totally cool. Learning from Qualcomm experience (milking Chinese companies for IP resulted in $1B penalty hehe) Intel "partnered" with Rockchip and Spreadtrum (read: was forced by Chinese regulators to give away its Atom IP to Rockchip) and "invested" in a bunch of companies, not to mention will spend almost $6B building a fab there.</comment></comment></comment>


Jellyvision: Interactive Conversation (click the blue button under nav bar) - <AUTHOR> http://www.jellyvision.com/interactive_conversation.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Jellyvision, makers of the phenomenal You Don't Know Jack games, have apparently been doing the "enterprise" thing for a while. Check out their home page's interactive conversation; I've never heard a more enjoyable sales pitch! The humor, analytics potential, iterative design, and other features are fantastic.</comment>


Ask HN: Time dilation and streaming data - <AUTHOR>

Let's say a spacecraft is traveling away from earth @ close to the speed of light. There is computer on the spacecraft, that is streaming data from earth. How would this data feed look as the space craft travels further and further away from earth?<p>If this was a video stream(that did not buffer), how would the video play? Would the video start playing faster and faster? <comment><USER2> I will take a stab at this, maybe a proper physicist will correct me.

If you are on the ship moving away from earth at nearly the speed of light but, we'll say, with a constant relative velocity, your time would slow down as observed by earth.

Also assuming that the streaming video signal is coming from earth at the speed of light, relative to earth, and as observed by someone on earth, it would take the stream quite a long time to get to the ship (though it would only take the normal amount of time to leave earth). This is because if you are moving at 99.9% c and the video is streaming at c then relative to the ship the video is streaming at .1% c. Thus, it takes a long time to get there.

However, since it's not buffering and just playing as it streams in, and because time has slowed for those on the ship, I will posit that the video would play at relatively the normal speed to the observers on the ship as both their time and the stream itself have slowed significantly.

<comment><USER3> What if the ship is motionless and the Earth is moving at 99.9% c?

<comment><USER2> Again, I am not a physicist, hopefully one will come and confirm or deny. Because I would say at first blush, it would act the same. But upon further thought I came up with the following.

If the ship were not moving relative to the earth which was moving as a constant velocity away from the ship at near the speed of light, the inhabitants of Earth would seem to age more slowly compared to those on the ship (or the ships passengers would be aging very quickly when observed by those on earth).

With that if earth streamed the video it would seem to leave earth as a constant c and yet it would have to overcome the relative speed of the earth moving away from the ship. Thus, it would still come to the ship at 0.1% the speed of light but because time would seem faster to the ship passengers I posit that the video would play relatively slowly.

<comment><USER3> > If the ship were not moving relative to the earth which was moving as a > constant velocity away from the ship at near the speed of light

If the ship is not moving relative to the Earth, then the earth is not moving relative to the ship. The trouble I have with your first explanation is that the ship and Earth are moving away from each other -- it's not like one is the stationary one -- it can't be true that one experiences time more slowly, in some absolute sense, than the other. Whatever phenomenom happens to video streaming should happen in either direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Distance shouldn't matter. Assuming you can pick up the (extremely) redshifted signal. Also assuming it's headed directly away from Earth.

What'll happen is that it'll be slowed down by a constant factor dependent on speed. How? Depends on the video player.

The factor should be, if I remember my relativity right, sqrt((1 + v/c) / (1 - v/c)). The formula for relativistic doppler shift of wavelength.

Note that "what factor does the video slow down by" is equivalent to saying "if you have two points a certain time apart in the video, what factor is it stretched out by on reception". Which is equivalent to redshift in wavelength terms where the time is just wavelength / c.

There's also a gravitational effect, but it should be relatively negligible.

</comment><comment><USER3> If anybody posts a link to Wikipedia or some other outside reference, that's cheating.</comment>


The Ongoing Battle: NY vs. SF Tech Scene - <AUTHOR> http://www.techendo.co/posts/the-ongoing-battle-ny-vs-sf-tech-scene <comment><USER2> Is there a "battle"? I mean, a battle to me means there is a likely winner, and people are pushed into making decisions and taking sides. In 15+ years working at tech companies, I've never had to "pick" \- I choose to live in SF - thats it.

Further, I've literally never, ever, heard a person who is actually running or employed at a startup consider it a battle.

But it does seem like a good headline for getting lots of clicks...

<comment><USER3> I heard it referred to as a "debate". When I got there, people were asking me left and right about what I thought was different, so it seems like the comparison is already being made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hate to say anything good about SF, but frankly only people in the NYC tech scene think they're in competition with SF. I doubt people in SF think much about the tech scene in NYC.

<comment><USER5> I work at a large tech co. in NYC, and we don't really talk about being in competition with SF at all. Besides, many of the really _big_ SF-based cos. have offices here anyway.

<comment><USER6> Google spent a few billion dollars to buy an office building: [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/nyregion/03building.html?_...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/nyregion/03building.html?_r=0) (they later expanded it for even more).

eBay's 6th Ave office costs $2-3 million _per month_ (what's a million dollars between friends?).

(This isn't really relevant though. I just like reminding people huge sums of money are in play. Your little "$50k to $200k angel round" isn't as big a deal as you think.)

<comment><USER7> Damn, what if the 200k angel round leads to a billion or two dollars? I feel like your last line is totally irrelevant.

<comment><USER6> Meta irrelevancy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Too bad it's going to be destroyed now that DeBlasio was elected. He has no idea what to do with the tech sector. Bloomberg spent millions to basically stump for the tech scene in NY. DeBlasio plans on doing no such thing, he has no clue and no plan. When all the other candidates visited numerous startups during the campaign, DeBlasio showed almost no interest.

</comment><comment><USER9> "[NYC] is home to fashion, art, film, literature, theater, banking, and more."

Maybe its just closer to Europe?

More seriously, agree with the article. SF's strength is also its weakness: a huge concentration of bright like-minded people focused on similar objectives.

<comment><USER10> Interesting that you fail to mention the other side of SF, the people who have lived here from before we started coming in. The New York Times had an article on them today [1].

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/us/backlash-by-the-bay- tec...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/us/backlash-by-the-bay-tech-riches- alter-a-city.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish the tech scene on Long Island, NY was a tenth of what it is in NYC. It's amazing how the culture dies within a few miles of NYC. Is this the same on the west coast?

<comment><USER6> You can picture west coast internet tech as a heat map. SF has a big solid color blob. About 20 miles south, Palo Alto is smaller and half as dark. About 10 miles south, Mountain View is a little larger and darker than Palo Alto.

There are little blobs of heat map down by San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo. There's a little dollop of color up at Portland. There's a half-SF color sized blob in Seattle for Amazon. There's a small, but solid color around Bellevue and a faint twinkle over at Redmond for the fading empire.

<comment><USER11> This was very helpful. I plan on visiting SF sometime very soon. I want to be sure to hit Palo Alto, and Mountain View while I'm there!

<comment><USER12> Unless you are visiting companies or Stanford, it may not be terribly exciting ;-)

<comment><USER6> It's exciting to walk around Stanford slack jawed, staring at the giant stone architecture, landscaping, never-ending expanse of learning, research, and sleaze-trepreneur while constantly exclaiming internally, "How much money do these fuckers have?! Haven't they heard of _normal_ sized buildings? Every lecture hall here is a goddamn castle!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> David Karp agrees with you

"you'd have to be out of your mind to live in Palo Alto."

[http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/david-karp- is-...](http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/david-karp-is-tumblrs- reluctant-technologist/)

<comment><USER14> As someone who lived in Palo Alto, yep. But if you're well-off and looking to start a family, Palo Alto is perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How are salaries/living expenses in tech different in SF and NYC? Assuming you are living in SF or NYC, of course. Are they higher in NYC or lower or vice versa?

<comment><USER15> I would say both are lower in NYC. Salary is definitely lower, and rent is as well because the infinitely better public transit in NYC gives you more living options that have a short commute.

<comment><USER16> I'm making comparable salary in NYC, and rent is pretty much in line with San Francisco area standards: $2300/mo studios in desirable areas... the difference in the housing market are these. First, there are more medium- awesome areas to choose from close to town (head to Astoria or East Williamsburg and you might shave $500-1000 off that studio, but you can still catch the N train to get to work and the neighborhood's reasonably cool). And second, if you want the apartment, there's a good chance you can get the apartment (whereas last time I went apartment-shopping in San Francisco, there would be 20+ people in line for the open house, including many couples who were new-hires at technology companies. it was insane.)

<comment><USER10> > First, there are more medium-awesome areas to choose from close to town > (head to Astoria or East Williamsburg and you might shave $500-1000 off that > studio, but you can still catch the N train to get to work and the > neighborhood's reasonably cool).

Would this be like living across the bay in Oakland or something? The flipside of such a situation would be that you get back home from SF at midnight before the last BART or you would have to be stuck when BART decides to strike.

<comment><USER16> This would be like living across the bay in Oakland, but much better. Compared to NYC's subway as a general-purpose transport system, BART's more like a commuter rail line that happens to be underground in downtown San Francisco.

Heck, when the MTA decides to strike (which is occasionally, but less frequently than BART) you can _walk_ to Manhattan from Astoria. Try _that_ from Oakland-to-SOMA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Meanwhile Silicon Beach soldiers on and the weather is looking mighty fine this time of year . . .

<comment><USER18> What's the tech scene out there like? It's 30 degrees here in NY :(

<comment><USER19> Lots of media/content space companies from what I've gathered in the few months living here.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. Santa Monica is is a solid spot for media startups or a handful of mobile apps. Some good work being done in the recommendation / metasearch space, and a handful of crowdfunding startups. Safe to assume everyone funding you has ties to Hollywood, since that's the majority of the VC money down there.

<comment><USER19> And that's a perfect way to differentiate themselves from SF/SV, much like how many of the most prominent fashion startups have been born from NYC. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > First, there was far less elitism. This was surprising to me given that the > East Coast is home to finance giants and "old money".

Immediately reminded of "Money talks, wealth whispers."

</comment><comment><USER22> I really like the idea behind the takeaways and can imagine some truth to these observations... but it's hard for me to know how true it really is based on the OP's one week trip. Maybe the OP was lucky and just walked into a welcoming and diverse co-working space.

<comment><USER3> Hi Mike, I'm the writer. I totally agree-- one week is not enough time to make sweeping generalizations. Though I did spend a ton of time talking to everyone I met in tech about what they thought of the "scene" and our differences-- people from Stack Exchange, Skillshare, and a few other startups I admire. I just found the atmosphere so incredibly different from the get-go.

Also, yes, I was lucky to be in a great co-working space (New Work City). I'm sure they're not ALL like that. Just as in SF, there are "bright spots" and "meh spots".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not to shock or surprise anyone here, but there's a lot of the tech scene outside BOTH NY and SF. Where's the largest private software company? Cary, NC [1]. Microsoft and Amazon? Based in Seattle. IBM? The non-NYC parts of NY (White Plains and Armonk, NY). And what's happening in different regions like Chicago? Lots going on. DC and Baltimore? Tons of activity -- including a $2.7B acquisition [2] and an IPO or two [3]. Raleigh? Philadelphia? Las Vegas? Indianapolis? Kansas City? Miami? Atlanta? Austin? Estonia? Berlin? ...

And let's not forget Boston / New England ... which is STILL #2 in total Venture Capital investment. [4]

See where I'm heading? This idea of an ongoing battle between two locations as being the core of the IT / Startup ecosystem belies the fact that a considerable amount of activity is happening outside these two regions.

I love NY and I love SF. And I think good entrepreneurs should do their best to network in both of those scenes. And YES there's a ton of VC in SF / Silicon Valley and a huge amount of activity in NY. But entrepreneurs outside of NY and SF can do just fine too. Ask Tony Hsieh from Zappos (Las Vegas) or Jeff Bezos (Seattle). I say, let these two cities battle it on while everyone else focuses on making their company and their local entrepreneurial scenes better.

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

[2] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-23/cisco-agrees-to- buy...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-23/cisco-agrees-to-buy- sourcefire-in-2-7-billion-deal.html)

[3] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/03/29/millennial...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/03/29/millennial- media-shares-more-than-double-from-ipo-price/)

[4] [https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTPublic/ns/nav.jsp?page=region](https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTPublic/ns/nav.jsp?page=region)

</comment><comment><USER24> When all you have is a slightly upgraded monkey brain, everything looks like a status play.

Edit: Apparently humour needs to come with captions now.

This is a play on the "hammer/nail" truism, observing that folk love to frame things as X vs Y zero-sum games. Possibly because of the human fondness for associating the status value of markers (places, brands) with the status value of our own selves. Thus arguments over NYC vs SF or iOS vs Android or Facebook vs Google or Node.js vs Go are not really about X vs Y at all. They are about establishing status in a troupe of great apes.

Indeed, this edited text is about status.

<comment><USER3> Ha, I thought it was kind of funny and I wrote the darn thing.

For the record, I did hear someone refer to it as "the ongoing New York/SF debate". This isn't something I just invented. I had personally never thought there was any comparison to be made until I heard that people out there make it all the time.

<comment><USER24> I only knew it was "a thing" from HN, actually. I recently took a holiday to visit both NYC and the Bay Area and I liked both of them a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It is TriBeCa. Triangle Beneath Canal.

edit : Below not beneath (as the below comment points out )

<comment><USER26> Below. Beneath Canal is the subway.</comment></comment>


Where can I find a good designer? - <AUTHOR>

Heya Guys, I am planning to re-do my site, as I am looking to upgrade from my free template look. Any suggestions,
Thanks much

<comment><USER2> One idea: Look at sites you like and find out who designed them. You can use Google to connect the dots if it's not obvious. Oftentimes designers will list them in their portfolios.

<comment><USER3> Or once you find them, just do it yourself and borrow from their design elements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.programmermeetdesigner.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> you can also shop around for creative commons work at: <http://www.oswd.org/>

These creative commons templates often have their designer's contact info, so it's a good way to find a designer based on your personal tastes

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man, gonna take this approach

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the comments, im trying to source out the designer from a site that I liked.

But if anyone has a good designer, can you please email me : red rory ( a t ) gmail ( dot ) com

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://sidebarcreative.com> but they're more along the lines of what a funded startup might hire, not a single person.

</comment><comment><USER7> This chap is a good designer: <http://chrisgarrettmedia.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Let me recommend a friend of mine: <http://phillipridlen.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> you can check for a lot of good designs at templatemonster, and do it by yourself or buy the template for 60-70$.

</comment><comment><USER10> tangentstudio.com/quotes

They offer a demand based clientel service.</comment>


Show HN: iPad Cases tested with accelerometers and strain gauges - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/fullstop/x/1386050

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks,

We've been working on this for the last 12 months. It all started by repairing a few too many dropped iPads and thought we could make a better protection system for iPad.

We followed a engineering design process which started by dropping iPads thousands of times and measuring the results with accelerometers, strain gauges and load cells before proceeding to design our protective product.

Any feedback is appreciated!</comment>


Ask HN: To git or not to git - <AUTHOR>

Hello world. I'm at kind of a crossroads: I want to make a site that will feature a web based editor for text files in some markup languages aimed for non-developer users, but I want to offer them the ability to track changes to those files and maybe even "fork" and "merge" other documents/document-clusters; again, all via a web interface. Basically, you could say that it's like a web-based github for non-devs.
I could use a key-value store like couchdb or cassandra to store diffs between times when something is saved to show histories and do merges with one of the strategies git uses; and maybe in the future let users use a desktop app and thus clone/push/pull changes like a regular git hosting site. Again, in a skimmed non-dev approach to git.
For the record, this talk has practically convinced me of using git http://www.techscreencast.com/language/ruby/using-git-in-ruby-applications---scott-chacon-/1431 because I realize that it might seem overkill at first but I don't want to end up reinventing git. But a little n00b voice in my head still screams overkill.
So, hackerworld, what's your take on this? I mean, I could just do something with the [ruby](http://github.com/mojombo/grit)/(python)[http://gitorious.org/git-python] interfaces to git and something like gitosis, or create my own subset of file history management like said above; what would be the wisest choice? <comment><USER2> _some markup language aimed for non-technical users_

Stop here, test assumptions before proceeding.

<comment><USER3> Agree with patio11, it's a pretty strong assumption to think non technical users will use some sort of markup language. Why make the markup language visible to users? I think that you should hide it behind a user friendly WYSIWYG interface, like google docs (bold, italic, lists, etc.).

You can then use git or git-like processes behind the scenes and reprocess the result not to show markup to the user. I think that markup for non tech users is a bad experience and diffs with markup in them are even worse.

<comment><USER4> "it's a pretty strong assumption to think non technical users will use some sort of markup language"

Yeah!

Well, except all those who use some variety of bulletin board/forum with the random markup they entail.

Probably not more than a couple hundred million of those people though.

<comment><USER3> One thing is having markup in a place where usually you don't write more than a few lines, another is having it in a big document.

One thing is having it a free forum, another is having it in a product you pay for. One thing is having to use it, another is to actually like it.

And, as far as my experience goes, most of the posts in forums and the like are plain text. Not to mention that a lot of these forums are targeted at already somewhat technical people.

EDIT: And, on a personal note, markup even annoys me, even if I'm a developer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I made a mistake in my statement: it's not some random markup like textile or markdown, but the idea is more akin to a LaTeX-y interface, a WYSIWYM web-based editor. You have a good point, however, 'cause, coming to think of it, I wouldn't be targeting very non-tech people after all and they might very well expect stuff that's already done in git.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>