Ask HN: Client replaced me with offshore team – what could I have done? - <AUTHOR> tldr: client has paid me $4k/wk for internal tools. They're replacing me with a team based in India bc they can get 1 US pm and 2 devs for $4k/month. They think progress will be faster and less expensive.
They've been pleased with my results, and I've done everything from working onsite and modeling out their workflow to deployment on Heroku to Django api to front end development.
Without going into too much detail, what can I do to in the future to either 1) change my process so they don't think this is a better option, or 2) suss out which prospects don't have the stomach for the realities of developing their own software?
I'm not bitter, more just somewhat frustrated. I understand that from their perspective, that sounds like an obvious choice. I'm simply concerned with how I can operate/communicate more effectively going forward. <comment><USER3> I am that client. Not exactly yours of course - but i am the client who is going to replace someone with India provider within next month.

Here is the context:

\- Current worker is USA, Bay Area based and is good technically (4+ out of 5).

\- Current worker is local and it is very convenient for us.

\- Current worker is AMAZING talking to customers and putting off fires. His "talking" skills certainly exceeding his technical skills.

\- The competing Indian provider is well tested, exceeding expectation in quality and skills.

\- The Indian provider is very professional. We met him in person and had interview.

\- The Indian provider charges 4 times less.

\- The Indian provider has capabilities to scale his capabilities. So there are positive potentials for us.

\- The project can be executed by remote team (i.e. there are no restrictions)

\- Current worker (local) is employed by uncooperative consultancy who is planning to raise the rate for current worker for us against prior negotiated rate. Just because they [think that they] can. That same consultancy can (and will) be a competitor as they can gain a valuable hard-to-get skills if we continue to employ and train current worker. This is show stopper and we were forced to stop giving current worker access to advanced projects, keeping him currently on older projects.

\- Current worker been offered to join us but he refused.

Your context may vary - but that's a fair context from the real project.

<comment><USER4> In my experience, the Indian contractors are going to be lower rated technically, but for 1/4 the price you can question whether you NEED someone who's a 4/5 or whether you can get by with a 2 or 3.

Determining what functions need top technical people is something most managers figure out after offshoring, when the damage is already done.

Contractors are incredibly valuable in certain respects, but one thing they don't do generally is write code for future maintainability... they're under a lot of pressure to produce workable results quickly, which opposes planning for the long term technically speaking.

Like offshoring itself, that may not matter depending on the company and what it does.

<comment><USER3> After desperately trying to find local consultants to do $75K gig, we hired remote Indian person who did it for ~$13K. The delivered quality and timing exceeded our expectations.

And honestly it changed the way i used to view remote offshore consultants.

<comment><USER5> Did you consider remote, on-shore resources? Perhaps work-at-home folks, or those working remotely from other US cities? I ask because I've run into people who would otherwise normally insist that their domestic resources be local and in-house, but then would end up off-shoring stuff instead. WTF?

<comment><USER3> I absolutely did and will. Local are often preferred.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For once, stay in touch with this client, and get to know how they are doing.

It's not impossible they come back to you, sometime - not necessary either, but offshoring is much much more to manage than just a lower price tag - <USER2> perhaps they don't know it, yet.

<comment><USER7> My impression is that a lot of companies are moving away from off-shoring. It's cheaper on paper, but you introduce a communication hurdle and sometimes you simply get what you pay for.

I've got great experience with Indians working in Europe, not so great with Indians working from India. My impression is that the best Indian developers tend to move here, because they'll be able to earn European/American rates.

<comment><USER8> > I've got great experience with Indians working in Europe, not so great with > Indians working from India. My impression is that the best Indian developers > tend to move here, because they'll be able to earn European/American rates.

as an Indian developer working in the US, I have to say that this is a bit of an unwarranted stereotype, despite being repeated often on HN and Reddit

There absolutely is a large contingent of good developers in India (as you'd probably expect from a country with over a billion people), but they are mostly working with locally-managed projects and teams. A lot of them wouldn't work for outsourcing companies because of the poor pay and hours.

There is a bit of confirmation bias going on here: since western companies will frequently outsource to the low-cost shops in India, they will mostly see poor quality work. I don't think its fair to generalize this to all Indian devs.

<comment><USER9> If the likelihood is that he'll never actually get to work with the most skilled devs, as per your own post, the de facto reality of his generalization is going to be true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, real talk on a throwaway from someone who's been there. The one thing you probably could have done is to cultivate a better personal relationship with your client. If you develop a real relationship outside of work, this is much less likely to happen. If it's breaking up with your girlfriend instead of breaking up with your laundry detergent brand, the activation energy is different.

Second, keep it professional, fulfill your obligations, be slightly generous, but not too generous. Follow up in 5 months. Indian outsourcing is usually a disaster. The problem is that your client (your contact at the company) may have gotten himself into a tight situation. If outsourcing fails, you need to understand what he can do politically without looking like an idiot. One option might be less hours at a higher hourly rate.

</comment><comment><USER11> I had a client move a project to India because he thought it would be cheaper. Eighteen months later he was knocking on my door asking if I could fix the mess. Sadly for me, I tried to help him - I'd have been better to say "no", either immediately or after taking my first look at what had been delivered. The work that had been done (at less than 20% of my hourly rate) was shoddy and not fit for purpose. A detailed analysis showed that the cost of fixing it was about the same as the cost of building it again from scratch. The client then included me in his generalised unhappiness with the consequences of his decision, and I've had no further work from him.

<comment><USER12> One way to handle these is to say that you will do a review of the work and make a recommendation, but that you will not be the one to implement the recommendation. Bill them a few K for your trouble and make a few recommendations on the types of people they might use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In my anecdotal experience, you can't do anything outside of the C-suite. If a company is going to replace in-house employees and local contractors with offshore contractors, nothing will stop that, except for a few months of working with offshore contractors. If they get a good offshore team, they won't ever go back. If they get a bad one, they might learn a lesson from it.

You can't save them from themselves. As an employee, keep your skills polished and your resume ready. Build up a reserve of savings so that if you are ever asked to transition your job to your replacement, you can more safely quit the doomed job and focus on looking for a new job with a future instead.

As a contractor, cultivate a greater diversity of clients and ask for more money than you think you're worth. Companies that squirm at the asking price will try to replace you with someone cheaper eventually, so you might as well make it easy for them to signal their cheapness as early as possible.

Also anecdotally, cleaning up the mess from an offshoring gone bad is not enjoyable work. I wouldn't scream it from the rooftops, but other developers in your network who might be tapped by that company to do it in the future will probably appreciate a heads-up on what happened, to either avoid the client or charge a premium. You could follow up with the company yourself, but would you really want to?

</comment><comment><USER14> I guess you need to figure out the company's attitude to what they're doing. If they're trying to build a software product then they're often happier to spend if they know they'll get quality.

If the company is not actually tech related at all, they likely see internal tool development as a cost center to be minimised where possible. Likely they do not know the difference between high and low quality code and might be willing to take a dip in quality for a greater dip in cost.

Of course, I did meet up with a successful businessman not that long ago that credited the high valuation and subsequent sale of his non-tech company with their impressive internal tooling and management system. Despite not being a tech guy (beyond being above-average computer literate), he totally understood the value of it. So, it's not a hard and fast rule unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sometimes these things just happen, it's difficult to turn down a price tag that is that much lower. Things that help in the general case are doing a great job(obvious), building up hard to replace domain knowledge, and nurturing relationships with the client and personnel. But it's hard to know how you could of done things differently without knowing more about the circumstances.

Who made this decision and what was your relationship to them? (Sometimes the people you interact with value you work, but people farther up the chain see less of the qualitative advantages and more of the quantitative costs associated with working with you.)

Another common sales tactics is client education related to disadvantages of alternate offerings. So you can talk about the hidden costs(like managing 3 people in wildly different time zone is more difficult and time consuming than 1 person down the street) and developer churn associated with off-shored software(and retraining associated with this churn).

Clients with expensive personnel will value on-shoring. For instance a law firm won't wants to pay their very expensive lawyers to manage an off-shore project.

But only sure fire way to find clients that won't offshore is to work exclusively with clients that are looking to onshore after an off-shore project just blew up.

</comment><comment><USER16> $4k a week is top, top market rate where I come from, US Chicago, especially for 1 FTE.

As an independent contractor your client relationships are paramount to getting and retaining work. You should be aware what your client is feeling and be able to anticipate their next move. Ideally they'll just tell you what they're going to do but getting there takes time building mutual trust.

Consider spending extra time outside of your hands on work talking with your contacts at your client. Build that relationship and do so with multiple people in the company. When you work for yourself you are worker, manager, VP of sales and CEO. You'll want to spend time in each position so the needs of your company are satisfied.

Also clients build off each other. I've repeatedly gotten new work from friends and business associates of my clients.

Consider this a lesson and spend more time on those soft skills or put yourself in a job that doesnt require that level of self sufficiency.

<comment><USER17> Mid-career developer rates in my much-smaller-market-than-Chicago city are like $120-150k—salary, that is. $4k/week's the _minimum_ I'd need to even _consider_ jumping to consulting/contracting, and even then I'd probably need more like $5-6k/wk to make it a good idea.

<comment><USER18> Just curious, how come Glassdoor shows just $82k for Chicago [1]? Are these reported values far too low or is there something else at play? As your market is $135k and you implied Chicago has higher salaries.

I am not from the US and just try to understand if all the high salaries that get mentioned here on HN are reality.

[1] [https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/chicago-software- develope...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/chicago-software-developer- salary-SRCH_IL.0,7_IM167_KO8,26.htm)

<comment><USER17> Salaries have gone kinda nuts the last 3ish years. IDK what's going on, but that's the state of things. Still, even 3-4 years ago ~$70-80k was entry-level around here, as far as places with actual money went. Maybe (unfunded) startups or something else that's getting included in the stats (state jobs?) drag the average down? I'd certainly assume Chicago averages higher than here—we're very much a tier under them, so far as tech-hubbitude.

<comment><USER19> Chicago isn't very much of a tech-hub outside of fintech, and the business culture is completely different than the west coast and newer startup-focused markets. Things are shifting a bit, but by and large its not a place dripping with VC dollars looking to fund startups and burn cash on developer salaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Was the $4k/wk based on a billed hourly rate?

In general, the economics of working hourly don't tend to work in your favor. On their side, it focuses the client on the rate and the hours and tends to encourage them to micromanage you. On your side, you don't economically benefit from increasing quality and reducing timelines.

It's hard and a lot of people are not good at it, but I recommend trying to do project-oriented work with fixed bids. It's much easier to focus the client on the long-term benefits of higher quality and shorter timelines in a fixed bid situation. And you economically benefit from increasing quality and delivering faster than you bid.

It's a lot easier to compete with offshoring when you set the context this way.

<comment><USER21> Fixed bids work well with productized services, where both parties have a very good idea of the work required and the end result, but are often disastrous in the more general case.

<comment><USER20> With a well-written and comprehensive design covering 100% of the scope, I believe any software development project can be safely fixed bid.

The problem is that most of the time, people who do attempt project-oriented work/fixed bids do so without a comprehensive design – and it does indeed tend to end up a disaster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In the past, the opposite happened to me. The replaced an outsourced team with me for a project. But that was a long time ago.

The different timezone and lack of face to face will be a big challenge. I think you should make it known to your client, if they are not happy with the India team, that they should contact you to pick the project back up.

Let them know your the guy they can call in the middle of the night, who will show up onsite.

You might even be able to negotiate a higher rate if they do take you up on the offer.

</comment><comment><USER12> You have not much to worry about. I tried to replace MYSELF (billing $20K/month) with someone $5K/month. It was... shall we say, difficult.

Good help is definitely hard to find and if your client found good help, they should do good help consulting.

</comment><comment><USER23> Tough situation.

It's still generally true that for offshore dev work companies get what they pay for, so if the company really can replace you with 1 US pm and 2 devs for only $4k/month they probably won't be very good. But they may be able to maintain what you developed so to that extent you might have worked yourself out of a job. At that rate it's also likely that the offshore team may not be as good or as fast as your former client expects, so it's worth keeping in touch in case they need you back.

Can you move higher up the "value chain" by doing more technically specialized work that's harder to offshore?

Can you generalize what you developed for this company into a SaaS product that you can resell to other companies into the same industry?

Realistically it's also just a fact of life that some companies, especially if they're not in high tech themselves, think that offshoring is a silver bullet to cut development costs without any side-effects.

</comment><comment><USER24> As an Indian dev living in India, i'd like to offer a bit of background. I'm currently doing my 3rd year at Uni and mostly do contract projects which encompass building/maintaining/optimizing deep learning and machine learning models. I also do a lot of data analysis work, data migration, etc, etc. The developers I work with and who I am around will _never_ work for an outsourcing company. The outsourcing companies hire devs for as little as INR25000 (USD363.34) a month and use them for websites/native apps, etc. Mainly a lot of grunt work. If you really want to hire good Indian devs, try looking at LinkedIn and go for the younger, just out of a good Uni lot for dev work. Consulting is a whole different outlook here.

<comment><USER25> Just out of uni devs are terrible consultants as they don't know what they don't know.

So when they cock up, the really cock stuff up spectacularly.

<comment><USER24> Haha I do agree, but honestly, good devs aren't really hard to pick out. Out of uni good devs are the ones who have the most potential to grow imo. I may be wrong but it's my experience with my peer group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Outsourcing to India is cheap on paper expensive in reality. If India was able to compete with local they would charge the same price.

Poor communication and lack of progress will frustrate them in 6 months.

Your client will be working with a local account manager who is clueless but a good bullshitter, they pass on what they _think_ the client means to the Indian team.

The Indian team is provided with a shitty brief they can't really work with, and they don't have the communication skills to go back to the client so they just build the wrong thing.

Since the team is in a different timezone all this poor communication takes ages.

After a year of lots of back and forth the client still wont be any closer to what they actually want and have spent a fortune on staff in meetings about the issue that never gets resolved. Going local even if it is more expensive will be cheaper in the long run and will produce the results they want.

There is nothing you can do about this, the customer has to scold their hand before they realise that the oven is hot.

</comment><comment><USER27> Nothing, if they don't have the money, they don't have the money. The only thing you can do is show you can do it faster and cheaper and perhaps offer a fixed price.

<comment><USER28> They have the money. Don't lower your prices. Keep looking for new clients even when busy. I can almost guarantee that the offshore solution will cost them more in the long run.

It's a sign that the finance people are running the show. I've seen that movie, and it rarely ends well.

<comment><USER29> This. In my experience the offshore outsourcing has always cost more in the long run

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my experience, offshoring is decided on entirely at the C level or just below it by managers wanting to save money and believing they can do so this way.

They want to believe so hard that it will work that they'll mostly ignore warnings from the people whose jobs will change because of the offshoring. That's just the nature of many businesses... if managers can't see a good way to make themselves look good, they start contemplating things like this. Usually, cognitive bias keeps them from putting the brakes on.

The kicker is that for some companies offshoring works well. It all depends on what their needs are and whether they can efficiently adjust to the new scheme of things.

Of course, if it happens to work, managers tend to take that as validation of their point of view.

It's like using "the cloud" for all your IT. For some applications putting all your data on someone else's computer works very well, and for others it's impossible. Whether your company can migrate to the cloud depends on what you do and how you do it, and I have yet to work at a company with enough self knowledge to make a decision based on that ahead of time.

</comment><comment><USER30> It sucks to lose work when you performed well and had a good relationship with the client. I feel your pain. Good advice in the comments here about staying in touch - offshoring will most likely fail for them. Swallow your pride and check in with them and/or offer to help in an advisory role. In the meantime work on skills and build your pipeline for new work. There's always another door...

</comment><comment><USER31> For a), the big question is: _why_ did they think it's a better option? What risks do your customers see in you/what did they dislike? A general feeling of "not getting their moneys worth" can be treated differently than "we're worried you get sick/disappear on a jungle trip/... and we're stuck without the only person knowing what's going on".

<comment><USER32> This would be a good discussion to have. Do they think that 2 devs are going to produce more work than the guy who created it? What do they need a PM for? Even for 2 it is odd, unless they are going to work on other projects too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> There are clients are won't outsource to India. The ones with .gov URLs tend to be that way.

Giving up the consulting to be an employee with benefits and reliable work, maybe you want a USDS job: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20330257](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20330257)

Also try directly applying to various agencies and their contractors.

</comment><comment><USER34> First, why they are replacing you is based on the belief that these people are the better deal. Changing a belief is harder than changing an attitude (being able to spot an attitude vs a belief is a real challenge). So, anything can do or could have done would need to change the client's belief that you are replaceable with these competitors.

Like other comments suggest, stay in touch. Staying/acting professional will gain you more than being salty/smart.

</comment><comment><USER35> Isn't it like a standard practice? Hire an expensive professional first that will do all the heavy-lifting, then outsource bugfixing and maintenance somewhere else where it is cheaper.

<comment><USER36> In my experience its the opposite. Hire a junior developer to create a bit of a mess then have seniors come and keep the crap running a few years later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think you underestimate quality of outsource workers around a world. I am not talking specifically about India. For 10k/month you get a very good developer for a short(1 month) gig in Europe. For long-term(3-6 month) gig price is even lower.

From your side as a person who understands project you can propose technical leading for a project, e.g. 1 day/week for 1 month. But you need to decide how to handle conflicts. Outsourcers has no initiatives to follow your recommendations.

</comment><comment><USER38> is there anyway you can stay on and become the project manager? You have an integral knowledge of the application and projects, you know where all the bodies are buried which will be a HUGE benefit for the offshore team to get up and running. With some experience you'll be able to manage other projects besides this one and put that on your resume.

As we say in AA, when one door closed, another opens.

<comment><USER39> Sounds like it'd be a pay cut from 4K/w to 4K minus what the other 2 devs are paid

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Was it discussed at start of contract about expectations of progress velocity and cost? If it was and you met those, they may have changed their minds about that and not much you can do to change that they did that. If it wasn't discussed, in the future with new clients, discussing expectations around speed of feature delivery and associated cost could help you filter clients.

</comment><comment><USER5> If they survive this experience, there will probably still be good money to be made helping clean up the mess which will no doubt occur here.

</comment><comment><USER41> What controls did you have in place so you were not a SPOF for your client?

I myself am struggling with this with a few of my consulting gigs: I need to find someone as a backup who can stand in for me when I need to spend time with family, go on trips, or am generally unavailable ....

</comment><comment><USER42> as you've witnessed, this approach, when applied well, has advantages, but also suffers from increased communication overhead and roundtrip times. as a result, prototyping and researching open-ended, not well defined assignments is not ideal with remote, given that the required feedback loop between customer and executor (you) is better kept short. maybe it would be best to enjoy both worlds? say, once you've onboarded the customer and are delivering, begin reducing costs for them by delegating units of work to cheaper, remote resources yourself? this way the customer is happy and stays with you. this has the added benefit of freeing your own time to take on new work.

</comment><comment><USER43> If you have been with this client for a year, just move on. If it was a month long, you need to devise a different strategy: don't be so fast with your solution. Once you give your solution, offshore teams can take that solution and chug along.

<comment><USER44> I get an email a day from an Indian company offering their services and Django and Python are never a part of their skill set. When I looked for a Django dev on Upwork there were very few Indians coming up. Ended up working with some Russians which were great but not much cheaper than local devs. I guess you always get what you pay for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> What's the market for Python devs like these days?

I know there is a lot of interest in the language from people coming from other fields, but I realize that doesn't necessarily mean there are enough qualified people to meet demand.

</comment><comment><USER46> What could you do?

Lower your price. The gap between a team and you is 3x. Hire a 2k developer to do the work and you manage project. Do this 4 times. If one client moves you don't have all of your eggs in one basket.

</comment><comment><USER47> Companies make stupid decisions to "save money", it seems like it was a budget based decision, so unless you were willing to work for less money you did everything right

</comment><comment><USER39> You could have used bad variable names and no comments :). Use clojure or rust or D. Or R! Etc.</comment>


Experimenting with QUIC - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chromium.org/2013/06/experimenting-with-quic.html <comment><USER2> MinimaLT[1] is another interesting protocol with similar goals. From the abstract:

"Minimal Latency Tunneling (MinimaLT) is a new network protocol that provides ubiquitous encryption for maximal confidentiality, including protecting packet headers. MinimaLT provides server and user authentication, extensive Denial- of-Service protections, and IP mobility while approaching perfect forward secrecy."

[1]: [http://cr.yp.to/tcpip.html](http://cr.yp.to/tcpip.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wonderful. This reads like an evolution of CurveCP, with the goals of real acceptance and downstream flexibility.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow - this is exciting. It sounds similar to the SSH protocol but with forward error correction and fine-tuned for quick handshakes. Is the the beginning of the end for TCP and SSL? I hope so!

<comment><AUTHOR> TCP is not going away anytime soon... If anything, the hope is that QUIC can help improve TCP in the long run -- but first, we need to validate a lot of the design assumptions. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome. Just awesome.

I've also been thinking about another possible optimization:

Two things have a big impact on connection start-up performance currently: handshakes (3-way for TCP, 4-way for SCTP, any properly-designed UDP protocol implements a similar one to prevent amplification attacks) and slow-start. Currently both of those are on a per-connection (defined as an L4 connection) basis.

What if there was a concept of "endpoint associations" in addition to connections? An endpoint association would be a bundle of connections, potentially from different applications, between the same endpoints. An active endpoint association would include congestion control information (so new connections within an established association could immediately start communicating at full speed) and also means the endpoints are authenticated. That makes the handshake only necessary for creation of associations, not individual connections.

If that was done at the OS level, the process for opening a new connection would be something like:

1\. User wants to open a connection to 220.127.116.11:80. (L4 protocol doesn't really matter for the example.)

2\. OS checks if there is a currently active endpoint association with 220.127.116.11.

3\. If there is an endpoint association, create a connection within that association and start sending data immediately, with no handshake, and using the congestion control information (window size) from the association.

4\. If there isn't, open an endpoint association, complete the handshake for that, and open the connection within the newly created association. (Future connections would be able to go through the simplified and quicker process above.)

I think the handshake isn't a big issue, but eliminating slow-start for connections to an already-established association should be beneficial. Thoughts?

<comment><AUTHOR> Effectively, you're describing socket pooling and re-use.. across sessions / tabs / windows. Most browsers already have this in place. :)

Some details on Chrome implementation here: [http://www.igvita.com/posa/high- performance-networking-in-go...](http://www.igvita.com/posa/high-performance- networking-in-google-chrome/#ipc)

<comment><USER5> Yep, that does look like the same concept, but only at the application level.

Do you think there could be any real-world advantages to doing this at the OS level? On paper it would sound good to me, as it could do this optimization across any application running on the machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> i´ve been waiting for the rationale from google for a long time. It was love at first sight, when the QUIC source code arrived at my cloned chromium repo for the first time :)

very promissing and sophisticate tech!

</comment><comment><USER7> How much does this share with uTP[1], goal and/or design-wise? It seems like they have related aims, at least (reduced latency, defeat TCP head-of-line blocking).

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Transport_Protocol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Transport_Protocol)

<comment><AUTHOR> The goals section in the design doc provides a high-level comparison (and motivation behind "why QUIC"): [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RNHkx_VvKWyWg6Lr8SZ- saqs...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RNHkx_VvKWyWg6Lr8SZ-saqsQx7rFV- ev2jRFUoVD34/preview?sle=true)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How does this deal with clients behind a NAT? Do modern NATs transparently treat outgoing UDP the same way they do TCP, mapping the port numbers to allow associating the return UDP packets with the right client?

<comment><USER5> Yes. UDP NAT is done using timeouts due to not having a standardized connection setup/teardown sequence.

UDP is used by many consumer-level applications (online gaming including on consoles, VoIP, video chat like Skype, etc.) so the lack of UDP NAT would easily be noticed by many normal users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess there are only so many FLAs to go around. [http://www.quicinc.com/](http://www.quicinc.com/)</comment>


Realtime top hashtags on Twitter with Storm + JRuby + CoffeeScript + D3.js - <AUTHOR> http://tweitgeist.colinsurprenant.com

<comment><USER2> \- On the backend, for the realtime Twitter data analysis, Tweitgeist uses Redstorm which is a JRuby DSL & integration to the Storm engine. <https://github.com/colinsurprenant/redstorm> <https://github.com/nathanmarz/storm>

\- Redis is used as a queue server.

\- On the frontend side: Node.js, CoffeeScript, JavaScript, Bootstrap, jQuery, D3.js

Basically, Node serves a very simple API, everything else is in the browser.

... and please don't be too hard on the UI design, I basically suck with UI :P

</comment><comment><USER3> Mixing Storm, JRuby and Amazon RedShift is going to be probably very interesting for ETL jobs. I will definitely investigate!

</comment><comment><USER4> This app rocks!

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice job Colin!</comment>


Open source Intercom.io Alternative - <AUTHOR> Thinking about starting a project to build an open source version of Intercom. Founded numerous SaaS platforms which ran on Intercom and it's great software, but it's just too expensive for most early-stage startups. Just testing the waters here:<p>Would anyone here be interested in an open source alternative? Or would anyone be interested in contributing? <comment><USER2> In what areas do you need some help?</comment>


Quicken case could define worker free-speech rules - <AUTHOR> http://www.freep.com/story/money/business/michigan/2015/09/27/nlrb-quicken-gilbert-detroit-facebook-twitter-employment/72746106/ <comment><USER2> I find the taboo around discussing compensation to be a very interesting phenomenon. As a former CEO, I prefer to have the leeway to, for example, pay an individual who drives a hard bargain at hiring a little more without feeling the pressure to pay other people more. Then there's the flipside, which is that some people undervalue themselves, and who doesn't like getting a bargain. In this sense, secrecy around pay benefits employers.

As a member of a team, I also understand that pay differential is a potential source of tremendous discord. While everyone instinctively understands that some roles earn more than others, it's definitely better for that knowledge to be general rather than specific. I don't think that radical transparency about comp would promote good morale, in general. In this case, secrecy about pay is compatible with psychological well-being among employees.

However, I'll have to say that I agree with the regulators here. Its one thing for social decorum to dictate the secrecy. It's another for the company to have an official policy about it.

<comment><USER3> Maybe the solution for this problem is the same as my proposed solution for used car shopping. Eliminate the haggling. This is the salary for the position. No negotiation. If you do X,Y,Z you get so much bonus. If you get this review and meet these goals you get this raise. All numbers, no negotiation.

The best employees often aren't the best negotiators. In fact, outside of sales or management, I would say there is almost an inverse correlation. But it sure leaves a bad taste in a model employees mouth to find out Bob make more because he is a better haggler even though he does a worse job. Enough of a bad taste they may either do a much worse job or start looking for another place to work. But this is a problem with a simple solution.

<comment><USER4> I always remember when I was working in a restaurant aged 16 there was one chap who would always demand a "bonus" for coming in at short notice to cover someone's shift. The rest of us would typically have just said ye or nay depending on whether we were free and wanted the cash.

He was a crap awful waiter and no-one was best pleased to find out he was getting more money just for showing up. Wasn't enough for us to change our behaviour though... haggling for money is just so _undignified_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quicken is often described as a hellish company to work for but it's interesting that they are always in the news for being a great company to work for and the owner is doing so much to revitalize Detroit. This kind of goes to show their true colors, it's not the kind of press they are used to influencing.

<comment><USER6> I know a few people that work/have worked there, and all say it is a fun place to work. However, the interns I know were severely underpaid. Not sure about full-time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The rules are already well defined, and Quicken is going to lose. The problem is that no Quicken exec goes to jail. The HR director should spend 30 days in the slammer for trying to keep employees for discussing wages. We need more criminal penalties in labor law.</comment>


Oracle's TikTok deal accomplishes nothing - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/14/21436035/tiktok-oracle-deal-bytedance-president-trump-safety <comment><USER2> Used the app for a few days, and realized that keeping TikTok out of the hands of US tech companies is best for the users.

1\. Registration not needed - without nagging. First thing Microsoft would have done is to require signup to use.

2\. (Most important) copyright hunters will have a harder time ruining the experience.

3\. Includes the ability to DOWNLOAD videos! (this blows my mind. I mean, consider the cat and mouse game google and others play to make video downloads difficult/impossible)

<comment><USER3> Yeah. This kind of interface problem is absolutely mind blowing to me. iOS especially always feels almost dumb enough to be unusable to me in comparison with my computer. For example, the other day I just wanted to download an Mp3 to my phone so I'd be able to play it at night with the cellular network turned off.

It ended up taking almost an hour to figure out. Downloading a file to the filesystem is nigh impossible on iOS, and there are no native apps which helped with the problem. I had to jump from questionable app to questionable app until one would let me "paste a youtube link in" which eventually worked; albeit, it still won't let me play my new song in the native music app! It feels like user hostility and it surprises me that this behavior doesn't drive more people wild.

<comment><USER4> Try using a mp3 or whatever as a ringtone or alarm tone. _Laughs_ We don't do that around here. I'm not even sure you can _buy_ extra ringtones from the app store. Think different. And with different I mean e unison.

<comment><USER5> I made my own ring tone the other day because I recorded something I wanted to use. It's possible. Monstrous pain, but possible. You have to convert it to AAC, then import it to iTunes then sync it over. It was about the same effort of getting a ringtone on my feature phone in the early/mid 2000s. That seems insane to me these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there anyone that comes out worse from the U.S. + China TikTok saga than Kevin Mayer?

He left leading Disney's streaming division after being passed over for CEO to become Bytedance's COO and CEO of TikTok, only to leave three months later during the company's toughest time.

Now we learn Bytedance isn't actually selling its operations to Oracle and the the most valuable startup in the world marches on to market dominance without him. Huge reputation hit.

<comment><USER7> This might just save Bytedance/TikTok. Any word on when they will go public?

Their TikTok app sort of has first-mover-advantage in the new realm of AI- recommendation-engine that actually is worthwhile. Their AI algorithm is the key.

Netflix and YouTube uses the same algorithm for video recommendations, but to be honest, that implementation is not as relevant in adding more value to those companies.

<comment><USER8> I'm an avid tt user but frankly their algo is little more than "show them videos from their area". They used to allow you to ignore videos from certain users but the feature was retired. Their recommendation engine is on the same level as youtube's and probablt not as good as spotify's algo.

As I've said before: try using tiktok and tapping "not interested" on any food video that comes up. After a month of doing this they will still show you food videos in the fyp.

Their feed is extremely edited by their moderators and AI has very little to do with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It does SOMETHING.

It paves the way to normalizing corruption from the highest level in America. This means businesses with US operations (US businesses as well as foreign businesses) will forever be aware of this corruption and try to curry favor with the highest levels. If they don't curry favor, they will find other ways or simply avoid the American market. This means America is now more like third world democracies than a real pioneer of freedom.

Thus, the deal accomplished something that forever scars business in the US.

<comment><USER10> > That makes it less of a sale and more of a glorified hosting deal. It lets > Trump say he's solved the problem but doesn't do much else. [from the > article]

Trump is in every way no different than a 3rd world dictator. And this is just yet one more way.

<comment><USER11> It's not Trump, it's presidential powers.

Over time, the congress has 'delegated' more and more powers to the president making the US more and more a revolving dictatorship.

<comment><USER12> Too true. In most other countries, no one office holds this much power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The current government being Ellison-friendly probably helps this deal over some other possible configurations.

<comment><USER14> Maybe the opposite is true? Ellison being administration-friendly acted as a stalking horse and gets the deal because it doesn't really change TikToc's business, but makes for a campaign press-release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand why the Verge is framing this as likely to be approved. It seems like the Gov't. told Bytedance to divest from US Operations, Bytedance refused to divest and instead set up this trusted tech partner thing, which means that no IP will be change hands and control will still be maintained.

This deal seems not to meet the requirements set out by the US Gov't. Have the goalposts been moved or will this deal be rejected?

<comment><USER16> It will be approved, the goal was to put it in a place where the US government (read: trump goons) could control and monitor it, and Oracle is such a place. Larry Ellison is a huge trump donor so there's zero chance it gets held up.

<comment><USER17> So this is basically telling China:

Hey we know you're spying using TikTok. Share the tool you use to spy so we can see, too.

China said: OK fine but you can only spy on your own citizens. Plus we also still get to.

Is that right?

<comment><USER16> yes but not just spy, they're eager to use the algorithm for propaganda purposes. Having it run by a trump loyalist is the outcome they wanted, they're going to turn it into Fox News for gen z.

<comment><USER18> This is such a weird take as someone who is on TikTok and really enjoys it. The app is a just mirror for your interests with an insanely good discovery system. Whatever you like and interact with it shows you more of and it tests the waters occasionally to try and find new things you might like.

My TikTok is cooking, home decor, gardening, fashion, makeup, pop punk music, longboarding, bullet journaling, and mental health.

Like you could be right that TikTok will change for the worse maliciously but such a change would kill what makes it worth using.

<comment><USER16> It would be pretty easy for the algorithm to be nudged a little so that you start seeing more and more mental health tiktokkers who suggest that your mental wellness would be improved if you started reading about qanon, or long boarders who also like to talk about putting immigrants in concentration camps.

<comment><USER19> I'm sorry if I'm daft just are you jokin or not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The deal saves face for the president, and moves American business culture a step in the direction of China's.

</comment><comment><USER21> I would like to understand if Oracle gets to see the user data. If yes, that might be a good deal for them because the data, especially at such large scale, is very valuable.

In this case, they would not need TikTok's algorithms, as they can develop/train their own from TikTok's data.

If Oracle can not see the user data, then it's just a glorified hosting deal, as people mentioned.

<comment><USER18> I mean that's still a pretty good deal for Oracle since they could use a high- visibility customer that uses Oracle's cloud.

<comment><USER22> And eliminates TikTok from Google cloud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > "It lets Trump say he's solved the problem but doesn't do much else."

If you're in ByteDance's shoes, this sounds like a perfect counteroffer to the US government position. If you believe the US concern might be more politics than governance, you offer a solution that gives a political win with minimal operational impact.

</comment><comment><USER24> It actually accomplishes the 1-2 goals of the operation:

* Political win for Trump being "hard on China"

* Paycheck for Trump's donor Ellison

Let's not pretend that there was any legitimate national security threat coming from the funny video app. That was and is a yellow peril fantasy from the outset.

<comment><USER25> You're very wrong on the security threat. I think people just like to dismiss anything if Trump also said it. Nobody should be using TikTok and we have said this for a while.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and- tech/ne...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and- tech/news/tiktok-china-data-privacy-lawsuit-bytedance-a9230426.html)

[https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/26/reddit-ceo-tiktok-is- funda...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/26/reddit-ceo-tiktok-is- fundamentally-parasitic/)

<comment><USER24> These allegations apply to virtually every social media SaaS.

You're fooling yourself if you think this TikTok debacle is anything but an desperate assault on a foreign company by sinophobes and competitors. And Trump's capitulation confirms that!

<comment><USER25> You're fooling yourself if you think this is somehow racist.

<comment><USER24> It varies from person to person. Many people are legitimately miseducated about topics like China, communism, etc. and buy into the absurd "comic book villain" canards because that is all that Western corporate media exposes them to.

However, others come from a genuine belief in Western (white Anglo) racial/political supremacy and see the peaceful rise of China as an existential threat to that concept of supremacy and Western civilization. Which is equally absurd.

<comment><USER25> Neither of those. You also have a questionable definition of peaceful. Are you not familiar with the human rights issues that still exist?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wishful thinking, but I hope ByteDance could somehow make Lary Ellison miserable out of this. Now that would be Justice.

</comment><comment><USER27> Nothing except Larry Elison being able to say "Heeeyyy... How do you do, fellow kids?"

</comment><comment><USER28> Didn't Oracle get founded to supply the CIA with data management technology?

</comment><comment><USER29> "That makes it less of a sale and more of a glorified hosting deal. It lets Trump say he's solved the problem but doesn't do much else."

This is exactly the first thing that popped into my mind when I read about the deal.

</comment><comment><USER30> As others have pointed out this deal is absurd. Its not about user data its about manipulation of the US populous through unknown algos by the Chinese Communist Party. They're all over western social media as well with cells and bots. Both things should be dealt with.</comment>


What Comes After 4G? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5877997/what-comes-after-4g

<comment><USER2> There is also something called Shannon's Theorem [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem) For wireless, there is no Moore's law, it comes down to 3 things, C ~= 1.4 * B*S/N which basically says that information rate is proportional to bandwidth (which in this context means RF spectrum) times SINR (signal to interference and noise ratio). The fact is that there is a limited amount of spectrum available so the only way to get an order of magnitude more throughput (which is what is needed to call something 5G, that is no marketing hype). So the only way to do that is to move the cell towers closer to the user to increase the SINR. That is very difficult and expensive. So be wary of 5G claims, 4G-LTE already comes close to the Shannon limit now, to get more throughput requires a ton more cell towers, probably an uneconomical amount.

</comment><comment><USER3> > [5G] could mean the end of data caps.

Hahhahaha haha ... whew.

Somebody needs a lesson on how telecom infrastructure and business models work.

I'll give you a hint: prior to 3G there didn't used to be data caps on many plans.</comment>


Startup Incubator - <AUTHOR>

I participated in graduation for Spring session last night, & introductions for Fall session (San Diego location only) start tonight.  Highly recommended, The Founder Institute experience surrounded me with terrific people. Show me your friends, I'll show you your future. We became a team forged in fire giving each other the tools and time necessary to accelerate our own passionate ventures. Disclaimer: This start-up boot camp is not for the faint of heart. <comment><USER2> Every San Diego and SoCal hacker should check out the Founder Institute! There is an introduction for the fall session tonight led by Adeo Ressi:

Date: Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 6:00 PM (PT)

Location: Cooley Godward Kronish LLP.; 4401 Eastgate Mall; San Diego, CA 92121-1909

It was great to get to know you through the SD Founder Institute, Bill.

<comment><USER3> I also participated in the spring San Diego Founders Institute session. I put together insights on the experience which can be read here: <http://her- era.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I also was in Bill's class and have only great things to say about the whole experience. It's a tough process of learning and self-discovery, and sadly not everyone made it to the end. This is the sort of resource that increases your probability of success tremendously.</comment>


How I got someone on Ebay to buy something they backed out on after winning - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/em01h/how_i_got_an_uncooperative_ebay_buyer_to_pay_for/

<comment><USER3> Please don't be taken in by this masterfully crafted story without thinking it through carefully. The OP on reddit plays on many of our collective sympathies, but he unfortunately omits any semblance of objectivity from his story.

== Things that make us sympathetic to the OP ==

\- He's a redditor, just like many of us

\- He just wanted the money she promised him, nothing more

\- He couldn't attend the game - this presumes he wanted to

\- He used Google Voice - <USER2>

\- _She_ was mean to him (and most of us are men, aren't we?)

\- He has just added a cancer-stricken relative to the story along with a donation button

\- She writes poorly, he does not

== Context this story sorely needs but is unlikely to ever get ==

\- Face value of the tickets

\- What his sunk cost is for the tickets ($0? $50? $600?)

\- How he found himself with only 24 hours to unload the tickets

\- Any sort of verification of the cancer-donation story

<comment><USER4> I'd say all of those are irrelevant to the central moral/legal premise which is: did she enter into a contract to purchase the tickets? If she entered a bid on ebay she is obligated to go through with the transaction.

That said the cancer thing is sketchy as hell in context, thanks for mentioning it.

<comment><USER5> What's sketchy about trying to leverage unexpected popularity for the benefit of the American Cancer Society?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow. A lot of people seem to forget how much money almost $700 is to somebody who doesn't _have_ the $700. The women probably _didn't_ have the money, and really wasn't trying to scam the guy, she probably genuinely made a mistake.

Pretend for a second that this wasn't ebay.

I go to best buy and start looking at TVs. I find one that is pretty cool, will be great for playing wii fit on, can't wait to get it home, and I tell the sales-person that I'd like to buy it.

On the way to the register, I realize "Wait a second, I'm living check to check and rent is due tomorrow. I can't afford a freaking new TV!", so I look at the sales person and say "Oh, I...this is embarrassing, but I actually can't afford this television at all. I'm really sorry."

Would Best Buy be in the right here if they sent somebody up to me to tell me "Wow, that is a really cool TV you just bought! My daughter _realllly_ wants that exact TV for her dorm room and you totally bought the last one! I'll buy it from you for $1000!"?

Absolutely not. In fact, there would probably be a lawsuit involved.

Was it a crappy thing to do to try and back out of an auction like that? Yes, absolutely, but it was an even _worse_ thing to scam the woman out of money that she said she didn't have.

Bad moves all around, in my opinion.

Edit: wow, reading these reddit comments is really, really disheartening.

edit2: I'm not saying that what the women did was okay. She will probably be banned from ebay. This is fine, this is what _should_ happen. Guys, we teach _children_ that two wrongs don't make a right, don't we? Is there a reason we teach them this or do we just like the phrase because it rhymes?

<comment><USER7> Telling a salesman you'd like to buy a product doesn't contractually oblige you to buy, submitting an order for a product does.

Try calling an airline after you've ordered a ticket online to explain you can't afford it and want a refund. Just because it's ebay doesn't mean it's any different.

<comment><USER6> She never actually got to the point of paying for it. Call a hotel, make a reservation, then don't show up. Does the hotel come after you for the money?

If they do, they would use the court system, they wouldn't use a well known con to recoup their loss.

<comment><USER8> A lot of hotels i've used in the last few years in the US and Europe won't let you book a room unless you give them credit/debit card details (certainly online anyway). Generally if you don't cancel 24hrs before, you either pay the full amount or a no show amount (varies hotel to hotel).

<comment><USER7> Certainly that's been true for every hotel I've booked. It's also true of some busy restaurants (they normally charge a fixed fee per head for no-shows).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My view on this is probably a bit scewed. I grew up in an around auctions, currently work in an auction, my entire family works in auto auctions.

What happened here isn't even slightly uncommon in our industry, it just comes with the territory. What we sell is cars, thousands of them per week.

If somebody bids on a car, but then doesn't pay up...they don't get the car. They _might_ get thrown into something called a "KO book", which means that they'll be banned from our auction, and everybody else's.

That's it. That's the end of it.

If one of our sellers pulled what this seller did, they would almost certainly be banned from ever doing business with us again.

<comment><USER10> While I get what you're saying, I think an important point here thats been mentioned several times is the fact that the tickets lose all value as result of the buyer backing out.

As a completely unrealistic example, imagine if by some magic, cars that weren't sold exploded. If you had a buyer back out, and as a result, you could never sell that car again, that person would most definitely be put in the "KO book". I think the situation is different, if only slightly.

There should be some understanding from the buyer of the tickets that backing out is potentially costing the seller a lot of money. For this, I can understand the sellers frustration, if only because he might have had several extremely viable offers outside of hers, that are now lost.

That said, I don't agree with his reaction at all. Is it not possible to try and contact the other interested buyers who were out bid?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is sickening. 20+ upvotes on posts applauding this guy for scamming someone?

She did agree to buy the tickets in as binding a situation that can arise in an online auction, but to scam her to get the money is wrong.

I'm not rich and $600 is a lot of money to me. But I would rather eat a loss of $600 than scam someone to gain that money because $600, $6000, or any other number, isn't worth it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Anybody who uses paypal should be aware that there is not an adequate system in place to insure an honest and amicable transaction occurs between the buyer and sell. That's just a risk you take for using the worlds biggest online auction site.

The way the poster went about getting his money back was absolutely stupid. Whether it was amoral or not, he could be criminally prosecuted for his actions.

<comment><USER5> What crime did he commit? He made a verbal offer to buy goods at a certain price, and then backed out. Did his word constitute a verbal contract? Those are notoriously difficult (read: impossible) to prove in court.

Whether or not what he did was _moral_ , I know of no enforceable law he violated. She, on the other hand, entered a binding contract on eBay and then violated it. She could be prosecuted; he, as far as I can tell, could not.

<comment><USER13> He committed fraud, which is a crime and a violation of civil law.

Your characterization of his actions as "he made a verbal offer to buy goods at a certain price, and then backed out" leaves out the fact that he intended to back out all along, and that the lie was for personal gain. If he had intended to buy the tickets for $1,100 from her, he would not have first sold them to her for $620.

<comment><USER5> Fraud is deception with the intent of gain. By contract he already had the right to her $600, so he didn't deceive her for gain, but for equity. The woman would have difficulty establishing that she suffered consequent damages (an essential legal component of fraud) when she had already entered into a contract to perform the very same transaction.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NFL Preparing to Embed Processors and Accelerometers in Player Helmets - <AUTHOR> http://insidehpc.com/2011/01/12/nfl-preparing-to-embed-processors-and-accelerometers-in-player-helmets/ <comment><USER2> This is only somewhat related, but I lost a lot of enthusiasm for football after stories about this kind of tech triggered an overdose on wikipedia and news articles. The historical resistance to concussion research in the NFL left me with a sour taste. Repeated minor concussions are likely to cause later dementia, and I don't really feel very good about watching football players (linemen, mostly) destroy their brains in such a way. I don't know how aware of the danger they are, but gah.

It's odd, too, because I do enjoy other sporting events that can have long lasting injury problems, and I really like mixed martial arts. I don't know why exactly football makes me feel skeevy these days and the other sports don't, but there it is. It may be that I can fathom living a full and complete life with, say, blown out knees, but can't even comprehend what it's like to experience Alzheimer's.

I also worry (with some incidental evidence) that improvements in helmet tech have actually amplified the problem. If my head is "safely" encased in space age materials, I'm much more likely to use it to whack on people. I suspect linemen and "dirty" defensive players would play a totally different game if the risk to their face and head was more obvious.

An interesting link: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/sports/football/30dementia...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/sports/football/30dementia.html)

<comment><USER3> _I also worry (with some incidental evidence) that improvements in helmet tech have actually amplified the problem. If my head is "safely" encased in space age materials, I'm much more likely to use it to whack on people._

I remember reading somewhere- can't remember where, maybe the Dr. Z book- that the rate of concussions has gone up as helmets have improved. The concussion rate was pretty low back in the days of the leather caps (of course, guys got their faces smashed in on a pretty regular basis). The rate started going up as soon as they attached face masks to helmets and has continued to go up as the face masks have gotten larger. The same goes for pads. As the equipment improves, players increasingly use it as a weapon.

<comment><USER4> That might be true but it's probably due to better knowledge and detection of concussion today than in the past. Look at rugby, doesn't seem to slow them down. The rugby players I know have broken their nose multiple times and have scares to show for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This kind of technology doesn't translate down to the lower levels such as high school, junior high, and pee wee leagues. Nor is the medical expertise required to interpret it readily available at those levels. The approach is cost prohibitive and dubious from a social engineering perspective. Besides, the issue is not really one of data collection.

The issue of concussions won't be solved by technology. It will be solved by officiating. FIFA figured out how to manage player safety decades ago...send off players who endanger opponents and make their team play with ten.

Using officiating rather than technology as the means of protecting players translates to all levels of the game...and therefore, becomes accepted by fans and players over the course of a few years.

<comment><USER6> Did you watch the video? That particular incident had nothing to do with illegal hits or an opposing team member causing endangerment. The player was trying to tackle someone, came in hard, and ran into one of his own team member's thighs.

These are high velocity impacts to the head, generally caused by the nature of the game. The equipment needs to evolve to help these players minimize the damage to their bodies.

<comment><USER5> > _"caused by the nature of the game"_

Officiating can change the nature of the game uniformly at all levels. PeeWees aren't going to get the technology...nor team doctors and access to independent neurologists for that matter.

<comment><USER6> Officials are humans and will, by definition, not uniformly apply rules. Technology is the only equalizer here. Pro-style equipment has always leaked into amateur sports, especially football--just take a stroll through your local Academy and look at what's available.

We need data to understand what these impacts are doing to our bodies, and then we need to design technology to minimize the risks. That or we should just stop playing football--not something I'd be very excited to see happen.

<comment><USER5> I agree that the equipment trickles...or rather floods down. What doesn't come down to the lower levels are the expert personnel of professional teams. The other thing issue is that children are not little adults. Procedures developed out of research in the NFL is unlikely to be appropriate in a pediatric setting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I saw the intel booth at SC that was demoing this stuff. It was pretty cool. One thing that would help the researchers working on this would be more data and the NFL doing this for all helmets could be valuable.

It would be pretty cool to also see the changes in the brains of players over their career. It might be hard to shove a bunch of football players into a MRI machine but the info that could be gathered from that would be very interesting I think.

This work also has application to other things like head trauma from car accidents as an example.

</comment><comment><USER7> Require helmets with at least 2 inches of shock absorbing foam around the exterior of the shell of the helmet. But then the players will just butt heads even harder.

<comment><USER8> And the grip of the foam combined with the greater distance from the spine's axis will provide for greatly increased torque from off center collisions.

I like the sensor approach, but using three referees as intermediaries to nanny 22 grown men is silly. Attach the accelerometers to taser like devices attached to the player and we are getting somewhere. Instant feedback pain in response to previously unsensed damage. Evolution would probably get around to it sooner or later anyway.</comment></comment>


Nearly half of Bay Area residents want out, poll shows - <AUTHOR> http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article212449489.html <comment><USER2> The headline accurately reflects the text of the article, but the text doesn't accurately reflect the poll it is based on.

> A poll released Sunday by a local advocacy group showed that 46 percent of > Bay Area residents surveyed said they want to move out of the area within > the next few years.

1\. A poll will only be released by an advocacy group if it can be spun to confirm the propaganda interest for which it was commissioned, and such groups will continue to commission new surveys until they get one that confirms their narrative to release. But it's a bad sign when they have to release something they still takes massive spin to confirm the narrative...

2\. The poll didn't survey residents, it surveyed registered voters which are demographically and otherwise a nonrepresentative group compared to the wider pool of residents, so even if it were a valid survey of registered voters (which is a dumb universe to poll on this question), its not valid to generalize from that to residents.

3\. The poll doesn't ask them if they _want_ to leave, it asks them if they _expect_ to leave. That's a radically different question.

4\. It's a quite transparent push poll, where the "do you expect to move out" question is the last question, and both the first question and the immediate preceding question (the two most influential in leading the response) are negatively framed, while all other questions are neutrally framed, with no positively framed questions.

5\. While the numbers change year to year, it's a repeated poll which always produces a big number that gets breathless media coverage, but there's no evidence that the responses actually predict the magnitude of Bay Area exits (even in the RV population.)

</comment><comment><USER3> And how many people want to move in?</comment>


[Private Beta] Escherpad, a real-time collaborative math notebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.escherpad.com/signup?referral=yangge1987

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for your signups! Here is the demo video in case you didn't see it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFbGzuC08uE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFbGzuC08uE)

<comment><USER2> Sorry for downvoting, I misclicked.

<comment><AUTHOR> No worries! Thanks for looking at our page!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would suggest making all the text visible instead of fading in and out. It's very distracting and makes the page a lot less readable (especially since I don't want to have to scroll constantly or read things only when they're at the top of my page).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I am redesigning this page and hopefully I will be able to relaunch in a few hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Made an account to say nice referral link bro.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Supreme Court ruling has wiped out 11 "do it on a computer" patents so far - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/supreme-court-ruling-has-wiped-out-11-do-it-on-a-computer-patents-so-far/ <comment><USER2> The vox article that this points to is much better. It has more detail and it gives the reasons some patents are being squashed.

[http://www.vox.com/2014/9/12/6138483/software-patents-are- cr...](http://www.vox.com/2014/9/12/6138483/software-patents-are-crumbling- thanks-to-the-supreme-court)</comment>


Selfie - <AUTHOR> https://hkrbooks.com/2017/09/28/selfie/ <comment><USER2> > Yet, Storr wisely does not advise redress. He ends on a simple note, with a > suggestion that people are, in essence, good.

Sounds interesting but I'd hate to get all the way to the end only to have this be the ending.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1939- The New World Order (H.G. Wells)[] is a short read. 78 years later, a human lifetime, the issues are the same now as then. uncertain future, uncollected collective, fear, greed and inequality.

at some point you need to take a step back and be pragmatic. this is humanity, you can't invent solutions without creating new problems. civilization was an aberrant left turn, and stabilizing is at least a 6-millennium-problem, given we are in the 5th and cyclical patterns are reoccurring.

[][http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks04/0400671h.html](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks04/0400671h.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to read this, unfortunately my local library system doesn't have it (yet). I've submitted a request, though

<comment><USER5> I'm curious to know what's preventing you simply buying a copy for yourself — which, if you're then inclined to — you could donate to your local library once read?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Brands have replaced people. There is no "me" or "you" anymore. There are only brands. Humanity is abandoning real life and relationships for an optimized, transactional _idea_ of a better life. Everything from ice cream to art to music and even people are now consumable fuel for social media databases.

These databases, among others, are being cultivated by super intelligent beings. Humanity is being forcefully digitized and data mined in order to advance technology. The end goal is to build strong vehicles to house these beings. These vehicles, or bodies, will be bootstrapped mainly by advances in genetic engineering and machine learning. This is all under the guise of space exploration and human progress.

™

<comment><USER7> > These databases, among others, are being cultivated by super intelligent > beings.

Those do not exist yet. Our current "Machine Learning" is better termed "Machine Inference". With the scope of inference being severely within the scope of the most mediocre, average human.

<comment><USER6> You're confusing superintelligent computers (something man aspires to create) with metaphysical superintelligent beings (that already exist).

™

<comment><USER7> That seems to be a rather baseless claim. I have seen no evidence to support that assumption, and you have not given any.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The color of every photo on the internet blended together is orange - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/the-color-of-every-photo-on-the-internet-blended-together-is-orange/378614/

<comment><USER2> It's the color of incandescent bulbs, fire, and other popular sources of light, reflected off of a large variety of surfaces.

<comment><USER3> This is pretty much what I was coming here to say.

Don't forget that we live under a yellow sun, too. There is a hell of a lot of warm light in our world, natural and artificial.

<comment><USER4> Sun is actually white... which is why you see a all the colors in a rainbow. I know Superman lied to you. :)

<comment><USER5> Sun's radiation peak energy at sea level is around 500-600nm [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#mediaviewer/File:Solar...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#mediaviewer/File:Solar_Spectrum.png)

which is green

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light#mediaviewer/File:Linear_v...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light#mediaviewer/File:Linear_visible_spectrum.svg)

That is why grass/trees are green - they consume only the edges of the spectrum (about 10-15% of the total sunlight coming through) bouncing the rest back.

With respect to the original point about orange being average color of Internet photos - keep in mind that most photos are produced by digital CCD cameras which are more sensitive to orange/red than green/blue.

[http://www.gitthailand.com/image/ccd- spectrum.jpg](http://www.gitthailand.com/image/ccd-spectrum.jpg)

<comment><USER6> Why does that explain why plants are generally green? If you had told me that the energy peak was at X wavelength, I would have guessed that plants absorbed most of that wavelength in order to not be wasteful rather than preferentially reflecting that wavelength.

<comment><USER7> Plants are actually pretty miserably inefficient at turning sunlight into stored energy: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency) (not only do they reflect away most of the light, but photosynthesis isn't linear at all graphed against light intensity: most of the noonday sun is wasted)

There's no real consensus on why. (There's some wild guessing that green photons might be too hot to handle: smashing fragile biomolecules apart rather than powering them... ([http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=500](http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=500)) but then why does chlorophyll run fine on purple light?) You'd figure that there would be incredible selection pressure on increasing photosynthesis efficiency, but maybe they're stuck on a local maxima: it's not like a single mutation can turn a C3 plant into a C4 plant: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C4_photosynthesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C4_photosynthesis)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.chm.davidson.edu/vce/coordchem/spectrum.jpg](http://www.chm.davidson.edu/vce/coordchem/spectrum.jpg)

Orange is near the middle of the visible spectrum.

<comment><USER9> The averaging is happening in RGB space, not an HSV-esque space. There's no obvious reason to expect the hue to end up averaged.

For example, the RGB average of red and blue is not orange; it's pink or purple.

<comment><USER10> Actually the article is confused on this very point. I think it's actually implied that it's sampled in HSV and not weighted for saturation or value.

Edit: his blog entry implies RGB, and it looks like the average color is actually brownish grey, which would be highly unsurprising to anyone who has mixed paint.

<comment><USER11> I just tried my own suggestion. For a random sampling of wavelengths from 390 to 700, I converted each to RGB using this function [http://stackoverflow.com/a/3407960](http://stackoverflow.com/a/3407960) Then I averaged the R, G, and B values. The result is 144, 122, 90 or #907A5A which is... a dim brown color, with a "hue" of 36 which is very orange.

Edit: undid sRGB conversion since I think i did it wrong.

<comment><USER10> Good thought, and I think that the warm bias in digital cameras (and human tastes) probably contributes as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a little dubious about interpolating RGB values in that way -- I don't think averaging the numbers directly maps to the real world colour mixing you'd observe. I'd be interested in what the result is in Lab colour space.

<comment><USER13> Ah, that's problematic.

The RGB color model is closely modeled after the physical phenomenon of light. In a linear RGB color space, you can average two colors to get the same result as if you had physically averaged those colors in the real world by combining light.

However, L _a_ b is modeled after the subjective human perception of light and color. L _a_ b is divorced from physical interpretations. Averaging colors in L _a_ b does not have any real physical interpretation.

<comment><USER14> "The RGB color model is closely modeled after the physical phenomenon of light."

Not actually true. RGB is modeled after the mechanism by which humans perceive colors (using red, blue, and green photoreceptors).

If you mix Red and Blue light, you still only have Red and Blue light, but the human perception system will perceive purple light, even though there is no EM radiation at the 'purple' frequency.

<comment><USER13> > Not actually true. RGB is modeled after the mechanism by which humans > perceive colors (using red, blue, and green photoreceptors).

This is exactly the misconception I was talking about when I said that RGB is modeled after physical processes and not after human perception. There is no such thing as a red, green, or blue photoreceptor. There are three types of cones: L, M, and S; there is also scotopic vision with its own response curve. The L, M, and S cones respond to a gamut which cannot be reproduced with any RGB system that uses real primaries. Or, put another way, no RGB system with real primaries can specify all the colors we see.

Instead, RGB is a simulation of a physical system which uses three light sources: red, green, and blue. That's all it is. For example, imagine that you have three LEDs, or three phosphors, or three lasers. It doesn't matter. The point is that RGB simulates these kinds of physical systems, not the systems in the human eye.

On the other hand, L _a_ b and XYZ systems are modeled after the perception of light. The experiments which lead to the creation of the XYZ color system had subject participants match the color output of an RGB system with that of a monochromatic light source. This experiment allowed us to use a well understood color space (RGB) based on a physical process to test how human vision worked.

<comment><USER14> I clearly misunderstood what you mean by "the physical phenomenon of light".

You seem to mean: "a common engineering method of displaying colors to the human perceptual system"

while I thought you meant: "the physical properties of the visible band of the electromagnetic spectrum"

<comment><USER13> It's not like this question has a "right" answer, because we are describing different models as "perceptual" or "physical".

The same phenomenon happens in audio. The vast majority of musical synthesizers either model the perception of sound or the physical production of sound. For example, you can model a piano as a physical system with a vibrating string, or you can model it as a subjective phenomenon, constructing a frequency spectrum that sounds similar using FM synthesis, subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis, et cetera--none of which correspond in any meaningful way to the piano itself, we're really trying to trick the ear.

In the same way, I see RGB as a simplified physical model rather than a perceptual model, because it does correspond rather closely to physical reality, and it corresponds somewhat poorly to subjective reality. You can construct RGB as a simplification from a continuous spectrum model of radiation, all you have to pick the spectrum of your primaries. From there, you can use the RGB model in your physical simulations, such as ray tracing and photon mapping. Lab color does not work well for ray tracers because it does not correspond to physical reality: it is fairly nonlinear, and the coordinate system is awkward.

Likewise, RGB is a poor model for subjective perception (compared to Lab or XYZ) because its gamut is limited, and differences in RGB space do not correspond well to differences in subjective qualities. You can see how awkward RGB is for perceptual modeling whenever you use a color picker. It is frustrating to try and construct a pleasing palette of colors by dragging around RGB sliders, or even HSV/HSL sliders, because the model is so far from subjective perception that doing something conceptually straightforward, such as altering hue or matching luminosity, requires fiddling about.

In short, the description of RGB as a "physical model" is because we use it for physical simulations, as well as for working with hardware such as monitors and cameras. My description of Lab, CIECAM, XYZ, etc. as perceptial models are because we use those for modeling the subjective perception of color.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The color of the Universe is white-green according to this analysis: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_latte](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_latte)

<comment><USER11> _they soon corrected their analysis in a 2002 paper,[1] in which they reported that their survey of the color of all light in the universe added up to a slightly beigeish white._

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Strange, I can't repeat the results on various folders I have.

I wrote a quick little (slow) Python script to compute a blended photo: [https://gist.github.com/williame/92c7179d0963553d605f](https://gist.github.com/williame/92c7179d0963553d605f)

If a folder has some theme, such as a folder I have of a boat regatta, I get an average picture that looks as you'd expect. So the code seems to average correctly.

If I run it on a bigger assemblage of photos, I tend to get a uniform gray though.

What am I doing wrong?

(I encourage you to try yourself!)

<comment><USER11> Maybe you should include lots of faces? And check that you're doing sRGB gamma math correctly. [http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch24.html](http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch24.html)

Edit: I'm guessing convert("RGB") means convert from whatever to linear RGB? So that part should be fine.

<comment><USER16> And yet the article says its not to do with the colour of flesh etc..

<comment><USER11> _When someone told him that it was probably due to the colors of flesh in photographs, he tried it with a pool of graffiti. Still orange._

Looks like there was only one test done explicitly without people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here is a possible explanation: most digital camera makers tweak the color balance towards warm rather than cool or neutral because consumers prefer that.

</comment><comment><USER18> looking at lists of RGB color names (e.g. [http://cloford.com/resources/colours/500col.htm](http://cloford.com/resources/colours/500col.htm), [http://www.keller.com/html-quickref/4a.html](http://www.keller.com/html- quickref/4a.html), [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names)) I notice that everything called 'orange' has a blue component of zero.

So, this claim would imply that the average color in nature doesn't have a blue component.

I guess the conclusion must be a) the sky is blue, and b) the majority of photos on the internet does not show sky.

<comment><USER19> Also, the common rgb->greyscale algorithm has a very low factor for the blue component (0.21 for r, 0.72 for g, 0.07 for b was one of the first on google)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I tried making a site to auto-blend images from Google Images…

[https://github.com/derv82/ImageBlender](https://github.com/derv82/ImageBlender)

[http://blen.derv.us](http://blen.derv.us)

Last time I checked, it didn't work 100%, and was laggy.

But I learned bootstrap in the process, and some of the quirks associated with HTML5 canvas.

</comment><comment><USER21> i m using a ruby gem, color, to mix, blend colors. There are so many parameters and methods you may use to blend 2 colors. So i think, you may attain not only orange but other colors too deoending on how you blend

</comment><comment><USER22> When you blend in 100M 'spacer.gif' images, it can skew the result.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder what the average color of all web pages is, and that of all smart phone app icons.

Edit: web pages should be weighted by page views, and app icons by downloads.

<comment><USER24> My guess is that the average smart phone app colour is blue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We need to throw out the spray tan selfie outliers.

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't understand why it's presented as such a mystery? The average color obviously exists, and if I had guessed it would be a reddish/yellowish gray (due to the ubiquity of incandescent lighting, the non-UV-reflecting properties of surfaces etc).

I was hoping to also see a covariance matrix, or maybe even a 3d histogram of pixel colors on the web -- that would be interesting. This person is clearly not a data scientist :)

<comment><AUTHOR> There's definitely some interesting things going on with human reasoning in the way different people interpret the result. I originally assumed the images would average to gray, but when I think about it logically, that would be kind of miraculous. We wouldn't expect a bunch of photos taken on Mars to average to gray (to be perfectly balanced in R, G and B), so why did I expect photos taken on Earth to? It would mean all the colors are in a very precise balance, which would be kind of odd.

With random images which include a few outdoor photos, there _is_ a noticeable effect from the sky, but not as dramatic as I might expect - it tends to produce a whitening, rather than a visible blue.

<comment><USER27> The color is normalized. Before normalization, it _is_ gray :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Well thanks a LOT, John Boehner.</comment>


A Modest Proposal for Toyota: Release the Code - <AUTHOR> http://industry.bnet.com/auto/10004051/a-modest-proposal-for-toyota/

<comment><USER2> This might not be possible if Toyota doesn't own all of the code. If they're using any third party code they might not have the rights to release it.</comment>


Ask HN: Please review cheqpost - <AUTHOR>

I have developed cheqpost.com over the last few days and I'm looking for feedback and tips to market and promote it.
cheQpost is a fun, private way of sharing updates, pictures, videos with people who matter!
Give it a try and let me know your thoughts. <comment><USER2> I think first you have to explain what it is. I read part way through the FAQ and gave up.

Perhaps a screenshot or something but basically....

1\. What problem are you trying to fix ? 2\. How did you fix it ?

<comment><USER3> I clicked through and thought the same. It reminded me of a page with a "Skip intro..." flash type thing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys, will do something about it.</comment>


Google separated the mobile and desktop index months ago - <AUTHOR> http://www.kevin-indig.com/google-separated-the-mobile-and-desktop-index-months-ago/ <comment><USER2> i don't really get the mobile first...mobile sucks i almost always want the desktop version of a website on mobile too..</comment>


IBM's Watson could get even smarter with Power8 chip - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047505/ibms-watson-could-get-even-smarter-with-power8-chip.html

<comment><USER2> I know the age of the Unix workstation is long gone, but I'd love to see a desktop or deskside personal machine with a chip like this.

A server attracts only certain kinds of software development. I'd like to see what kind of changes, say, Firefox would need to undergo in order to effectively harness a CPU like this. It would be interesting mostly because there is a good chance future desktop processors will look more like Power8's and Xeon Phi's than faster Core i's.</comment>


Dummies guide to retrospectives - <AUTHOR> How to retrospect in agile teams for dummies<p>https://github.com/gmuraleekrishna/dummies-guide-to-retrospectives <comment><USER2> Good post. I was just asked to set up retrospectives for my Team (I'm a new team lead) and was just asking myself what the heck I needed to do. This write up is just what I needed. Is this something that is done once a sprint? Or is it more on an "As Needed" basis?</comment>


Show HN: Keep your Heroku app alive - <AUTHOR> https://www.cronasaservice.com/keep-heroku-alive

<comment><USER2> Given that the reason people need to keep them alive is to stay in the FREE tier without the downside - it seems that they would not then turn around and PAY for that to happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> Big bold teaser text: "alive forever for $9.99"

vs.

Small grey text: "for 365 days at a cost of $9.99"

</comment><comment><USER4> I use uptimerobot.com for this - 50 monitors for free

<comment><USER5> Plus uptime robot helps you monitor your site. $10 a year is a steep price to pay for something thats just as easy to do for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would hope people do status checks more than once per hour on their web apps.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems way too expensive.</comment>


Governments and WHO changed Covid-19 policy based on suspect data - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere-who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine <comment><USER2> Just a few weeks ago I was lambasted on HN for saying these Lancet studies shouldn't be relied on. I was told that I am not an expert and that I should be humble and just accept the science. Ha.</comment>


Show HN: pgmongo - Drop-in replacement for MongoDB using Postgres - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thomas4019/pgmongo <comment><USER2> I can certainly appreciate the work involved here, but I am adding this to my running list as a sign of the apocalypse. I'm assuming this is for people migrating a code base from Mongo to Postgres, but they'll still need to migrate the data as well. At that point, is there really a reason to keep developers writing fake mongo queries?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, would love to hear what the actual use cases are in-mind here. The closest thing I can think of is a high-growth startup that realizes they really need to get off MongoDB and get strong transactional support, so does this thing even support transactions? But again, you still need to migrate data, so probably will be best to just migrate directly to a pg driver.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I like the Mongo query interface so I originally wrote some of the conversion code for my API framework called expressa. Then I created this project largely to see if it were possible. I'm not really sure how this will be useful. Migrating data should be relatively easy with Mongo's db.copyDatabase() since it thinks it's just copying from one Mongo to another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be so cool if replica set works with this!!! I'll look into it!

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice work, will review.</comment>