When "clever" goes wrong: how Etsy overcame poor architectural choices - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/10/when-clever-goes-wrong-how-etsy-overcame-poor-architectural-choices.ars <comment><USER2> I've learned to _never_ _ever_ badmouth a weird architecture in a working and profitable company.

Simply - the people that threw it together probably had significant restraints: Lack of money, lack of knowledge, lake of time. To then come in and poo-poo their work (that is paying the bills) is bad form.

...

We all can sit back as say it sucks, but I don't necessarily think that sticking business logic in DB stored procedures is always the wrong thing: If you think of the DB storage system as separate from the DB procedure system then there's the split right there - it just happens to be running in the same process and you just have to be extra careful.

<comment><USER3> "I've learned to never ever badmouth a weird architecture in a working and profitable company."

I learned that lesson myself earlier this year. A client had a system that was just so ... wrong, I found myself thinking I'd made a terrible choice of project, and initially marvelled at the fact that the company simply survived.

I stuck it out because it was a short-term engagement and eventually learned that they'd solved an "unsolvable" problem, one that I'd tried myself and seen dozens of other attempts at, all eventual and apparently inevitiable failures. But this place, by ignorance or genius, seemed to make the wrong decision at every step, and did it.

Not to say that I agree with "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" all the time, but when you see something done wrong in a new way, make sure that you extract what you can from it and you might be surprised at what you'll learn.

<comment><USER4> > they'd solved an "unsolvable" problem

Without giving away any proprietary information, could you elaborate on that? It sounds very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of this makes sense (DBAs gating features! _shudder_ ).

But I'm not totally clear on why a switch from Postgres to MySQL was warranted.

Just because Postgres can do stored procedures well doesn't mean that it's effectively a stored procedure server. It also happens to handle SQL pretty well too. :)

<comment><USER6> They say they use master-master replication with mysql so they have no single points of failures. Back then, I think the only option with postgres was to use slony.

<comment><USER7> This is correct, master-master is necessary to shard as we have implemented it.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like the <http://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, but do we have enough information? To quote Spolsky...

 _A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it's in your lab where you're endlessly polishing the damn thing. Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it._

(<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html>)

This article doesn't go into details about the history of _why_ Etsy's architecture is the way it is. It's entirely possible that this architecture enabled them to launch and iterate faster at a critical point in their history, without which they'd be nowhere.

Do what you need to _now_ that will work. If your project is successful enough to experience a few orders of magnitude growth it'll need rearchitecting in some way anyway; build the heavy engineering when you know what you need, not think you know what might be the pain point.

<comment><USER10> It doesn't feel like this applies here. 6-7 years ago a decision was made to go with stored procedures over using an orm or at least implementing db logic in the application code.

Along with this, they also chose to split the responsibility for code and sql across two teams.

6-7 years ago, plenty of other options were available. In fact, the sharded MySQL solution that they use now was already possible back then.

It sounds more like they made some architectural decisions based on the companies org chart and it came back to bite them in the ass hard.

edit:typos

<comment><USER11> The constraint may have been knowledge. They may have made a very reasonable tradeoff to forego learning "best practices" and "proper architecture" to just get something out the door. The original developer may have just graduated with his philosophy degree and never have written more than a bash script. Hard to say.

Given the size of the company, the architecture didn't grow along org charts (that is a very real phenomenon in large companies!). Rather, the org chart grew along architectural lines. Regardless of cause, it is a pretty significant smell and can tell you something is (or will be) wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good case of avoiding early optimization but hard to believe in 2005 someone thought it was a good idea to build your business rules in your database layer.

<comment><USER13> I don't find it to be all that surprising. I remember when Ruby on Rails was just starting to gain in popularity around the same timeframe. One of the big arguments against it was that it pushed you to put all of your business logic in the application. "How will you write another application to use the same database?" they would cry.

The answer turned out to be write one application tier that provides a web API to the database for all other applications to use. Interestingly, that turned out to be a pretty popular solution and is now probably the most prevailing method to get data to your user-facing applications. Looking back, it seems pretty obvious especially with the rise of mobile apps using that technology. It wasn't clear to most people in 2005, however.

<comment><USER14> This seems like an ongoing debate, I remember similar discussions between Java developers and DBAs before the rise of RoR. The answer back then was to migrate business logic into business logic servers, with application servers talking to the business logic serves over a queue. Architectures like that allow organizations to have heterogenous application architectures: One company had .NET for internal apps and Java for customer-facing web systems.

Everything talked happily to a business logic server written in Java, and that server talked to a couple of different databases and some legacy systems, one of which was written in MUMPs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I suspect the real problem was social or political. To do anything that involved the database, the developers had to request the DBA's to write the SP's. This kind of bureaucracy invariably leads to developers advocating NoSql/schemaless databases, storing data structures as XML in a blob field or whatever else they can come up with to route around the obstacle to development.

They chose a new architecture and platform which made the broken process impossible for technical reasons, but I wonder if they would have gotten the same benefit cheaper if they just had fixed the process in the first place?

But I guess it is easier politically to shift platform than changing a process which reflects turfs and hierarchies in the organization.

</comment><comment><USER16> I honestly don't understand all the hate on stored procedures. Tracking changes is trivial, since they're a part of the schema -- use version control. It's quite possible to use them with a properly sharded DB architecture, and still enjoy their performance and security benefits.

As a quick example, how else would you do an upsert (update or create) with a single trip to the database server?

<comment><USER17> > Tracking changes is trivial, since they're a part of the schema -- use > version control.

It's not quite that simple. You can't just "install" the new schema onto an existing database with data like you can by just copying files. You have to write your own set of alter statements to keep things synchronized (sometimes with complicated data migrations to new tables).

It works ok for 1 or 2 databases since you just do it manually - but then you lose many of the benefits of automatic source control.

And if you have a large number of database servers - or many unrelated (client) installations - you need a much more complicated system, and it's far from trivial.

Putting the SQL commands in the code is a lot simpler. There are no security benefits to stored procedures vs bound SQL statements. Perhaps it's a bit faster, but I'm not so convinced, you are trading parsing time for execution time since the stored procedure is now a program instead of a data update command.

<comment><USER18> Stored procedures have different security semantics than bound sql statements. See the security definer attributes.

Briefly, a stored procedure can run with the calling user's permissions, or the definer's permissions. If you set up a function as a security definer, you can do things with data that protect it from disclosure in a way that you can't in a sql statement. You can do it similarly with views, but they're more of a read only case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What are the institutional reasons that "frequent, small" software releases are never the first thing companies turn to? I mean, iterative development and TDD have been around since the 50s, but it seems that every single company has to rediscover it before they try it.

<comment> brown9-2 I think it is because more "control" and "testing" over changes sounds better, and safer, at first glance than speed-to-deploy does. It's easier to choose the option that sounds stable.

But then over time, companies realize that their tendency to add bureaucratic gate on top of gate to the process has begun to harm them because they can't release simple updates in anything less than a few months.

Frequent and small deployments sound riskier, and tougher, at first.

<comment><USER19> Hmmm...that last sentence doesn't jive totally with me. As a business-guy, I'd rather diversify my risk over many deployments than over one deployment every six months.

The word "control" probably has more to do with it. The option that makes management more important (big requirements documents, for example) is probably the one management will choose.

<comment><USER20> I can tell you what the problem is: overzealous postmortems.

The head of engineering wants to be able to say what went wrong and how to fix it next time. That's probably fine, if the solution is better automation and failure detection. But once you go into postmorteming a situation where you dropped a few requests to a minor service, the whole process turns into a pile of shit where the engineers and operations team are scared, management feels in control, and the product managers are left screwed because engineering and operations no longer take risks and everything takes forever.

Engineering management doesn't stop and look at the cost of what they're doing and when software takes forever to release, they don't look in the mirror for the blame. I received a weekly technical email once containing info that 10 requests were "throttled" during a deployment. That's great! We don't need any "next steps", our failover worked fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _Sproter also 'created substantial developer friction,' Snyder added, because it required DBAs to write stored procedures for nearly every piece of site functionality—and created a bureaucracy developers had to go through to get functionality made._

Sounds like a horror story.

And to reiterate the last statement of the article: _if you're doing something "clever" you're probably doing it wrong._ Or in other words, if you don't know what the hell you are doing, then copy someone who probably knows what they are doing.

<comment><USER22> The insane part is that a startup has bureaucracy, not that code is in a RDBMS.

<comment><USER23> Bureaucracy is just process that you don't like, isn't it?

<comment><USER24> It goes beyond that. Process is rules that stop people from being able to do things they shouldn't; bureaucracy is process that stops people from being able to do their jobs.

<comment><USER23> _Process is rules that stop people from being able to do things they shouldn't_

People tend to disagree on what should or shouldn't be able to do. Should a developer be able to release code to production servers? Should a developer be able to change the database schema? Should a developer be able to access the database tables through an ORM or ad-hoc SQL or must everything go through stored procedures?

A healthier way to look at process is that it's about facilitation, not control.

<comment><USER25> Bureaucracy is a kind of process group think. It involves adherence to fixed, externally defined, rules. Each contributor is doing things in a way they think are cumbersome and difficult to change.

The alternative to fixed rules, is to discuss issues and tradeoffs, and trust developers to make good decisions based on knowledge.

<comment><USER23> _and trust developers to make good decisions based on knowledge_

I would add to that, "give individuals enough room to make mistakes that everyone, especially themselves, can learn from"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 I'm a little surprised this sentence hasn't gotten more attention or turned more heads:

 _The presentation side was driven mostly by PHP on Lighttpd web servers, chosen at the time because the Etsy team felt Lighttpd was less common and less likely to be hacked._

<comment><USER26> Me too. Security through obscurity reasoning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yeah, I'm going to assume the technology change was not what improved things, but the engineers who were working on the problem.

At the end of the day, People solve problems, not technology. Someone with sufficient skill could probably rewrite the lions share of the environment in Perl, had they been given the task and enough resources.

It's all about your engineers, and the resources you give them!

<comment><USER28> >Yeah, I'm going to assume the technology change was not what improved things, but the engineers who were working on the problem.

I agree, this sounded like a technical solution to a social problem. The real issue sounded like the disconnect between the application folks and the db folks. If trashing one decent architecture for another was the catalyst they needed to bring around development culture change, it was a good move, but it hardly sounds like they had a technology problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There is so, so much more to this story that isn't here that it is practically not worth considering stuff like "mysql vs postgres" etc.

Really.

</comment><comment><USER30> To sum up, how Etsy fixed their technical problems: they hired a bunch of people from flickr.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder why the developers couldn't write the stored procedures.

I'm hoping that the postgresql projects for easier master-master replication get done soon!

<comment><USER31> In my experience it's usually because the DBAs end up "owning" all database development, both because the DBAs consider it their domain, and developers don't feel comfortable with PL/pgSQL _and_ they don't want to anger the DBAs. It shouldn't have to be this way, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> While I agree that MySQL is great and probably is most anyone really needs, it does become harder to shard when your dealing with large scale. I feel you can further extend your agile team with the benefits of NoSQL (speed, ease of use like quickly adding/dropping columns). Some big data sites I know use both.

<comment><USER19> My background is business-first, hacker-second, and I mainly read everything on HN to pick up little places not to fuck up when architecting a software business.

The benefit of NoSQL's ease of dropping/adding schema...that's going to be one of the better ones.

<comment><USER22> I hope your code is compatible with mixed schemas. Otherwise your NoSQL is just moving the problem somewhere harder to test.

<comment><USER33> Can't vote this up enough.

The use of NoSQL is for very specific scenarios, don't make the mistake of thinking it's a good object store replacement. As a business guy this is definitely not a decision you should be making, let your team use what they're happy with, they'll get a lot more done that way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google's NSynth Super is an AI-backed touchscreen synth - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/13/17114760/google-nsynth-super-ai-touchscreen-synth <comment><USER2> As a researcher and developer in the audio field, it's disheartening that the only things to get crossover attention is stuff from google with some buzzwords attached. There is so much amazing stuff being done, but it's hard to summarize for the mainstream audience I guess.

Meanwhile, this thing sounds horrible (sorry), and as I understand it, it's more like a fancy lookup table than anything resembling AI. (I think they needed to precompute parts of the model to make it run in realtime). Looking at the source code, there's nothing particularly impressive in there. But the part about open source hardware is a nice touch though.

<comment><USER3> Could you share some projects that you like?

<comment><USER2> Well, in the same spirit as NSynth, but miles ahead, we have:

[https://heartofnoise.com/products/galaxynth](https://heartofnoise.com/products/galaxynth) \- morph all types of sounds, laid out on a 2d canvas (made by me)

[https://soniccharge.com/synplant](https://soniccharge.com/synplant) \- treating synth parameters as genomes, allows for combination and mutation of sounds

These are commercial projects, but there is also a lot of interesting academic stuff going on, from IRCAM, CCRMA and MTG among others. Unfortunately there's not a strong tradition of open source in audio, although that is starting to change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Creating new synth sounds does not excite me much...

Some things I'd like AI audio researchers to work on:

\- High quality isolation of vocals and other instruments in recordings

\- Convert audio recordings into multitrack midi/vst recordings - so a recording of a jazz quartet could be converted into the notes and appropriate patches/sample banks

\- Convert between styles of music

\- Convincing "vocal synthesis" \- think text to speech but with singing allowing emulation of famous singers

</comment><comment><USER5> I watched both videos, one hyping it, dropping all your favorite words like "neural net" and "AI", and I saw the performance video, and even though homeboy said in the first video that its not just 'combining the two sounds' its taking them and using machine learning 'to draw a new one' but isn't that the same thing? well if it isn't, it sounds like it is, and in the demo-play video it sounds like they are just mixing the two voices, and it didn't sound at all groundbreaking or anything.. I rather just use some old electribes than some Google Synth that looks like it was was painted with faery entrails. I could see some burning man people using this or like rich noise musicians in the mission or something. You can change the ADSL on all the synths since forever, I would take a rompler like the roland JV series or the Korg M1 and those just combine two weird waveforms, add some reverb and tweak the ADSL and you don't need any machine learning or freaky LED's</comment>


Ask HN:  First I found a client, then I build a Product, now.. - <AUTHOR>

To make a short story even shorter; I was traveling and basically not working.  A tiny bit of lingering consulting but mostly just spending money slowly and having a nice time.
It came up in a conversation with someone I met that I was a programmer, and that they were looking to get something built.  Predictably the upper end of their budget is about a fifth of the bottom end of my estimate.  They were going the elance route.  I gave him some pointers on getting what he wanted and nt getting burnt and went on my way.
It occured to me later that this guy is in a similar position to lots (maybe.. ~1-2k identical small businesses in the world) and maybe there was something to this.  I have never built a 'product' up to this point.
So, I asked him if he would be interested in instead of owning the software, if he would be fine with being a customer of a SaaS implementation.  We had really good rapport and I offered to just build it and as soon as it was doing what he needed he would pay me.  a few months of part-time work (and learning haskell) later, the 'minimum product' is built; and he pays me the agreed upon 1k and is actively using it, its solving his problem, and eveyone is happy.
Its a webapp; and for the 1k he gets it "forever".  We have no contract or anything.
So, now what?  After traveling so long cash is pretty low, like.. I need a gig or I can't pay July's rent low.  I am pretty sure I just closed a deal today that will get me through the summer (my monthly nut is ~= 20 billable hours).
Where do I put my energy, how much more of this should I build out?  This thing has zero chance of ever becoming an instagram or something.  I think it could potentially grow into a high-dollar (10-20k a license) situation with a lot more features but in the same space; but for now, if I could get 20-50 paying customers at 100/bucks a month it would really change my life.
100/month sounds sort of a like a lot for what it is.  But it is providing that much value for them easily; so I think that's fine.  It's not polished is the main thing; and I am not a designer.  I am using bootstrap which gets me pretty far.
It feels to me like the right thing to do is just try and get customers.  It's a slow process because its 100% brick and mortar situation; and there isn't really too much interconnectivity between the customers.
I am sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place; I need a designer; but I can't pay for a good one.  And I am scared that I won't be able to get the money to pay for a good one (at least from this project) until I have a designer.
For the record, I contacted one potential customer; they agreed to check out the software but never used the account I set up for them.  However I am 95% sure the person I spoke to was not a decision maker.  Also I am not a sales man; but I do know the business reasonably well.
I apologize for the rambling nature of this post.. it's admittedly something of a process of mental masturbation, but I am hoping nonetheless for some tidbit of wisdom. <comment><USER2> You can design and improve and test the software forever, but if it is working right now, go out and try to sell it again. A top design is not neccessary for product success, neither is a lot of features. Plenty of "boring" business products are simple, and ugly as hell but sells by the boatload.

As for pricing: 100 USD a months is peanuts for most businesses, if they get a real problem solved. Don't be discouraged by the low-ball pricing of many current SaaS offerings. They might be what you see most on sites like HN, but in other parts of the world, ugly, non-shiny, feature-poor SaaS software is sold for thousands of dollars a month. It's all in the value that the product solves for the customer.

My advice is don't invest any more time into it, before you have the next guy that says "sure I'll pay 100$ a month to rent, or 1000$ for a license". Since you've already proven that the software is valuable, there is no point in investing more effort _right now_ , gold-plating your software.

What you need is sales, but you already have a valuable product. While it surely won't be easy, it's doable. You've already proved that yourself. Good luck!

<comment><USER3> What he said. Seriously. It's great advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats on getting the product built. The key now, before you perform any additional work on it, is to determine if there is a need/want for your product outside of your current user and potential user, that warrants additional time spent, and can subsequently provide you with the ability to earn some cash.

I'd suggest looking at some of the writing around the Lean methodology, especially Customer Development. For example, you can create simple surveys and send them out to potential customers (find customers on forums, FB, wherever), during which you can gauge interest and if they'd be willing to pay.</comment>


Regulations That Mandate Sepsis Care Appear to Have Worked in New York - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/07/16/741840484/regulations-that-mandate-sepsis-care-appear-to-have-worked-in-new-york <comment><USER2> A lost a second degree uncle to Russian state medical system. He died from typhus after a week of terrible agony after similar "just a common flu" dismissals.

It happened in first years after the dissolution of the Union, when medicine distribution was still in hands of the state. His family went as far as to send a person on the plane to Vladivostok to buy antibiotics from the one and only private pharmacy in the region at the time, but it had no injectable antibiotics that were needed at his condition.

The most disappointing about all of that was that the doctor probably knew what his condition was, and knowingly left him to die.

Was it due to doctor being unwilling to send him to ICU due to ICUs being constantly overloaded? Was he reluctant to dispense a rare and expensive antibiotic? Or he wanted to solicit a bribe, or was simply lazy, we don't know.

I always thought of this problem as a legacy left from the Union until I came to know just how monstrously big is the amount of iatrogenic deaths in USA. In fact, iatrogenic deaths make the fourth, or fifth biggest non natural cause of death in the US.

When I first heard that, it struck me. I still cannot comprehend how a country with "No. 1 healthcare in the world" can have that.</comment>


Batch Tasking: How To Create Incredible Amounts of Content Like Clockwork - <AUTHOR> http://impossiblehq.com/batch-tasking

<comment><USER2> This is actually a pretty interesting methodology.</comment>


Tethr: Getting online in a crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120413-communicating-in-a-crisis

<comment><USER2> Awesome!! This sounds great!

</comment><comment><USER3> would love to see this technology go mainstream

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


Show HN: Local Sheriff – Browser extension to show PII leaks to third-parties - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cliqz-oss/local-sheriff <comment><USER2> Very nice, and scary at the same time... I feel that too often we consider that by using some content-blocking extensions (e.g.: uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc.) we are 100% safe and privacy leakages are a thing of the past. But from what I understand this is not the case and some PII leakages still happen. As long as we are not aware of them it's hard or impossible to close the gap and I guess the first step to improve those tools is bringing more transparency. Local Sheriff seems to go in the right direction. Thank you for this work.

From your perspective, how well do the most popular privacy-protection extensions protect us from the kind of PII leakage identified by Local Sheriff. And how could we improve those tools to increase the protection?

<comment><AUTHOR> afaik, extensions will not provide you with 100% protection in this case.

It could be for multiple reasons: 1\. The 3rd party domain is not on the list: a. Could be because the presence is not huge. b. The domain is too new, and not available on any lists right now. 2\. The user might have whitelisted a 3rd party domain because it breaks some component on the web.

They always need to catch-up, so it's a whack-a-mole game.

Along the same lines, a user can also control the referrer. for example in Firefox based browser you can control(globally) what info should be sent in the browsers itself. - [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer) . But this will also come with some breakage.

Similarly, blocking third-party cookies also does not help, as the leaks the telltale URLs will still pass on.

The legit use cases of these third-parties actually do not require the first- party to share these sensitive details. 1\. Google analytics actually states that in their privacy policy - [https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6366371?hl=en](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6366371?hl=en) 2\. To load a font from CDN, I don't see why a company needs to send my booking ID and/or token to them. In some cases, domain might be needed but definitely not booking ID.

So, imo, the websites should take onus when implementing 3rd parties or atleast be transparent about what information is being shared and with whom.

<comment><USER3> Given that this analyses network traffic on the client side, Local Sheriff is probably playing the same catch-up game that a blocker targeting that same PII is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> More details on what kind of issues it tries to detect: [https://threatpost.com/def-con-2018-telltale-urls-leak- pii-t...](https://threatpost.com/def-con-2018-telltale-urls-leak-pii-to- dozens-of-third-parties/134960/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Will be interesting to run this my own app, just to see what various third parties show up.

<comment><USER5> Uh... shouldn't you already know?

<comment><USER6> Yes, but ___every_ __dev should run this regardless - and should have a badge system to certify compliance against 3rd party revelatory leakage...

Maybe we should for them PPP: Protectorate of Personal Privacy -- like the BBB, but rating systems/orgs/apps on their ability to protect PII

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> not "Chrome extension" but a "WebExtension"

<comment><USER8> Agreed, can we have the title changed to maybe "a browser extension"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, updated the title.</comment></comment></comment>


HipHop PHP - Nifty Trick?  - <AUTHOR> http://toys.lerdorf.com/archives/53-HipHop-PHP-Nifty-Trick.html <comment><AUTHOR> Rasmus writes:

> The "nifty trick" part of that seems to have become the story, and them > injecting a "just" in front it of it makes it sound more derogatory. Anyone > who knows me knows that I am a big fan of nifty tricks that solve the > problem. When I first heard about the Facebook effort I was assuming they > were writing a JIT based on LLVM V8 or something along those lines. Writing > a good JIT is hard. Doing static code analysis and generating compilable C++ > from it is indeed a nifty trick. It's not "just" a nifty trick, it is a cool > trick that takes advantage of a number of characteristics of PHP. The main > one being that you can't overload PHP functions. strlen() is always strlen, > for example. In Python, this would be harder because you can overload > everything.

> I also noted that most sites on the Web have a lot of lower hanging fruit > that would provide a much bigger performance improvement, if fixed, than > doubling the speed of the PHP execution phase. The ReadWriteWeb site, for > example, needs 160 separate HTTP requests and 41 distinct DNS lookups to > load the front page. And once you get beyond the frontend inefficiencies you > usually find Database issues, inefficient system call issues and general > architecture problems that again aren't solved by speeding up PHP execution.</comment>


How to split a three-way RAID1 array (SoYouStart) - <AUTHOR> https://tech.poniverse.net/how-to-split-three-way-raid1-array <comment><USER2> Lol, poniverse? Like my little pony?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, exactly like My Little Pony. We currently manage the largest collection of MLP fan sites in the world, utilising dedicated server infrastructure to run our enterprise-level Proxmox cluster. We do have some experience with IT :P

<comment><USER2> What, do you type with your hooves?

<comment><AUTHOR> ...I'm not sure whether you meant this as a joke or an insult.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Buy Your Organization Devices - <AUTHOR> Bring Your Own Device is an appealing concept for many users.
But when companies require installing software such as VMWare's Air Watch [1] which restrict usage and allow for monitoring and remote wipe, short of leaving your job and taking it with you, to what extent is it really your own device anymore?
Market survey types are predicting continued rises in BYOD rollouts[2] but is it ethical to have employees paying for company controlled devices?
[1] https://www.air-watch.com/solutions/bring-your-own-device-byod/ [2] https://www.enterprisemobilityexchange.com/news/fast-facts-we-haven't-reached-byod's-potential-yet
Personally, I'm somewhat insulated from this as a contractor, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth working in environments with this happening. Interested in views of others though. <comment><USER2> I used to work at VMware. I never installed AirWatch. It was optional at the time. If they had tried to force it on me, I would have told them they can buy me a phone to run it on.

I don't work there anymore.</comment>


P99: Preprocessor Macros and Functions for C99 and C11 (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://p99.gforge.inria.fr/p99-html/index.html <comment><USER2> I have the experience that to be truly compatible with everything that potential users of your code would like to use (embedded systems, ...) one still needs to write C90, what's your experience with this and where are C99 and C11 used the most?

<comment><USER3> (not the author) I'm writing my C headers in the "common subset of C99 that compiles both in C and C++ mode on clang, gcc and MSVC".

This subset is basically a post-C90, pre-C99 version of C which has most convenience-extensions which existed before C99, like declaring variables in the middle of a scope block, allowing to declare the loop variable inside for(), etc...

I tried to port my header libraries to "pure" C90, but I didn't enjoy programming at all in this. The mid-90's pre-C99 C is almost like a new language compared to ISO C90.

I'm using C for very small cross-platform programs targeting WebAssembly, e.g.:

[https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/](https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/)

[https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/](https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/)

<comment><USER4> MSVC was a pain until the 2015 version. Now writing C99 is safe if you target it. Microsoft did immense harm to the industry though, by not supporting C99 until recently. Many Windows-only programmers I saw not even aware of C99 and C11 features, sigh... Anyway, there is no reason to use MSVC at all. Both Google and Mozilla switched[1][2] to use clang-cl[3], which is a drop-in replacement for MSVC cl. Moreover, it supports various sanitizers - ASAN, UBSAN, etc for Windows platform. MSVC didn't even have support for inline assembly! A piece of crap, not a compiler. Just use clang-cl instead.

[1] [http://blog.llvm.org/2018/03/clang-is-now-used-to-build- chro...](http://blog.llvm.org/2018/03/clang-is-now-used-to-build-chrome- for.html)

[2] [https://blog.mozilla.org/nfroyd/2019/04/25/an-unexpected- ben...](https://blog.mozilla.org/nfroyd/2019/04/25/an-unexpected-benefit-of- standardizing-on-clang-cl/)

[3] [https://clang.llvm.org/docs/MSVCCompatibility.html](https://clang.llvm.org/docs/MSVCCompatibility.html)

<comment><USER5> > _Microsoft did immense harm to the industry though, by not supporting C99 > until recently._

That's overblown. I don't use C99 myself, other than the odd library function. I don't like most of the C99 and C11 features.

I was following ISO C very closely in the time frame surrounding C99; but I lost interest in ISO C as such after that disappointment.

<comment><USER6> Designated initializers are very important. As a maintainer of a codebase that has to support older Windows OSes and MSVC releases, I still suffer from not being able to use them.

Really, GP is correct, MSFT did immense harm by not implementing more/all of C99 sooner. I'm still quite annoyed by that even now, even now that MSFT has finally started doing amazing things.

<comment><USER5> > _Designated initializers are very important._

I use macros or functions to initialize structures. When a new member is added that must be initialized to a non-default value, I can add a parameter to the intializer, and then the compiler finds all the places where an argument must be added.

I could easily work this gradually into an old code base that I have to maintain.

Such an initializer macro can be implemented itself using designated initializers, but that is of low value; it's in one place, next to where the struct is declared.

The designated initializer clearly wins if we have to declare a large, sparse array without executing code, and initialize just a few entries to nonzero which are not close to the beginning.

<comment><USER6> If you're using cscope/etags/an IDE then you want the field name to be visible where the assignment is made, otherwise finding your way around a codebase with many function dispatch tables can get painful.

<comment><USER5> I have a macro or function name that occurs wherever the struct is initialized.

      struct point p = point_init(x, y);

ctags will find the definition of point_init, and cscope all the occurrences.

Random code throughout the program that is not related to the data type's module shouldn't be performing explicit low-level member-for-member initializations of the data type, even with a safer mechanism like designated initializers.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but if you have a struct with many functions then you still have a problem. With designated initializers I can traverse all the paths through cscope alone.

<comment><USER5> I can't even begin to imagine a foggy gist of what you might be talking about, but it seems very real to you.

<comment><USER6> I should do an asciicinema thing, I guess. Point is, I can search for assignments to any one function-typed fieldname of a struct and find all the functions that are reachable through instances of that struct.

<comment><USER5> Are we (still) talking about C here? Initialization isn't assignment in C; structure elements are called "members" and they cannot be functions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't it need a (2012) tag? Also where's the code I can download?

<comment><USER8> Source is available here: [http://p99.gforge.inria.fr/](http://p99.gforge.inria.fr/)</comment></comment>


Why Your Children's Television Program Sucks: Mickey Mouse Clubhouse - <AUTHOR> http://adequateman.deadspin.com/why-your-childrens-television-program-sucks-mickey-mou-1751547492 <comment><USER2> The shows are designed for young children, not adults. You won't get the humor in them like choosing the hotdog to chew chew chew to summon a train. I suppose a 3 year old would find that funny but an adult would not.

I felt the same for Barney and Teletubbies, it just felt stupid, but young children loved it.</comment>


DO BANKERS inevitably go to hell? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21541810?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/ar/goldgodandforgiveness <comment><USER2> No, mainly because there is no such a place.</comment>


Facebook Beefs Up Security With Social Captchas and All HTTPS, All The Time - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/26/facebook-security-https-social-captchas/

<comment><USER2> This is already on the front page with a link to the actual Facebook blog: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2143415>

<comment><AUTHOR> Opps, good catch :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Finally! I've been waiting for a "force HTTPS" option for a long time.

Now, how do you enable it? I looked around the settings and didn't find anything.

<comment><USER4> It's under "Account Security" on [https://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?ref=mb&drop](https://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?ref=mb&drop).

<comment><USER3> Hmm, does anyone else not see it there? Perhaps they're still rolling it out.

<comment><USER5> Not there for me. Looks like a slow roll out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Regarding the social CAPTCHA: I hope they use some heuristics to gather who is really my friend and who is a "friend-me-once-and-never-talked-to-me" connection. There are a number of faces they could show that I wouldn't be able to put a name to.

I _also_ hope they change the default privacy settings so that a person's friend list is hidden from unrelated viewers, otherwise a determined attacker could presumably browse your friends until they find the person in the CAPTCHA.

</comment><comment><USER7> ...and yet someone is still able to post random Turkish phrases on my Facebook profile as if they are coming from me. I guess now they'll be secure Turkish phrases at least.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2105378></comment>


CX.com Offering 25GB of Cloud Storage for 99 cents - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetechscoop.net/2012/01/25/cx-com-offering-25gb-of-cloud-storage-for-99-cents/ <comment><USER2> nice domain. Can you buy a 2 letter .com for $5m?

</comment><comment><USER3> Or you could get 25GB of MS Sky Drive for free.</comment>


HTML5 IRC client built with Mojolicious, ExtJS and WebSockets - <AUTHOR> http://dev.xantus.org

<comment><USER2> Does it really need to have a window manager?

</comment><comment><USER3> There's been a slew of blog posts on Mojolicious::Lite & Websockets recently:

* [http://vti.showmetheco.de/articles/2010/04/mojolicious-and-w...](http://vti.showmetheco.de/articles/2010/04/mojolicious-and-websockets.html)

* <http://d.hatena.ne.jp/yukikimoto/20100415/1271340273>

* <http://d.hatena.ne.jp/yukikimoto/20100418/1271601822>

</comment><comment><USER4> Very cool, quick and responsive.

I'm curious if you could use websockets to connect directly to an irc server rather than going through your perl backend?

<comment> a-priori No, you need a server that speaks HTTP, at least minimally. This is by design so an XSS attack can't connect to arbitrary servers.

However, you could very easily create a simple adapter that accepts Websocket connections and relays the data to a TCP server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The load avg on that machine hasn't gone above .01 :)

</comment><comment><USER6> can we read the server side code?

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course. [http://github.com/xantus/mojo-websocket- examples/blob/master...](http://github.com/xantus/mojo-websocket- examples/blob/master/script/websocket-irc-example-1)

<comment><USER5> Actually, its [http://github.com/xantus/mojo-websocket- examples/blob/master...](http://github.com/xantus/mojo-websocket- examples/blob/master/script/websocket-irc-example-2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It was almost awesome until I noticed none of the / commands work.

<comment><USER5> It has /join /part /nick /quit /msg /quote

Thats a lot more than none. It's also an example.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Ledger – Know whose turn it is to pay - <AUTHOR> http://www.useledger.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I am the creator of Ledger. We are part of YC Startup School - Founder Track.

I built Ledger because I wanted an easy way to track and split all of my shared expenses with friends.

A lot of my spending is shared between one or more people, and I hate the awkwardness around splitting a bill or asking for repayment. Other times, I know that there will be many shared expenses and I just wanted a quick way to track the expenses over time and settle up at the end or when the difference is owed is meaningful.

With Ledger, you create a shared "Ledger" between you and your friends, each person can contribute expenses to the Ledger and we automatically calculate the difference owed. Ledger is designed to be super light weight allowing you to quickly track and split an expense so you can get back to what you were doing. We automatically pull in your transactions from your credit card and bank accounts, so you never miss an expense and never have to type in a transaction manually. Lastly, if you have close friends that you see frequently, you can just have a running Ledger between each other, use it as a quick way to determine whose getting this round of drinks or paying for dinner, you may never have to actually settle up.

Would love for you to play with the app and please reach out with any feedback!</comment>


Tesla drops cheapest Model X, S variants, cuts prices to simplify lineup - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-prices/tesla-drops-cheapest-model-x-s-variants-cuts-prices-to-simplify-lineup-idUSKCN1UB055 <comment><USER2> For the model 3, the SR+ dropped ~$1k (now starting at $38,990) partially offsetting the $1875 decrease in tax credit which began July 1st. The AWD dropped ~$2k (now starting at $47,990) and the Performance dropped ~$5k (now starting at $54,990).

Tesla Pricing history: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F5IQOynIawoXiJPVarLD...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F5IQOynIawoXiJPVarLDgPQDJAdzY8b5Vamw- Vf3eSY/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER2> The pricing for the higher margin trims offers amazing value for those focused on performance. Is there much competition for that kind of performance at this pricing?

Model 3 Performance at $54,990: 0-60 in 3.2s

Model S Performance now includes Ludicrous at $99,990: 0-60 in 2.4s

Model X Performance now includes Ludicrous at $104,990: 0-60 in 2.7s

<comment><USER3> But don't use it to often in a row, because the battery will be getting hot and will limit the power output to level, which is way below any term related to performance.

<comment><USER4> You have to be going ~160 mph for several minutes to induce the overheat power reduction mode. In the US it would take driving on an oval racetrack. I enjoy watching YouTube videos of people running these on German highways to get them to overheat. Those are quite fun videos to watch. I highly recommend.

<comment><USER5> I would appreciate American tourists not to abuse the Autobahn as their racetrack.

And remember, even when there is no speed limit, Richtgeschwindigkeit is 80 mph, and if you're going faster, the judge will apportion more liability to you in case of an accident, even if you've driven perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Those two cars have been out long enough for them to know what sells and what doesn't

2\. If they need to flash a lower price in marketing materials, they have the Model 3 now

Seems like a sensible move.

<comment><USER7> What marketing materials? Tesla doesn't buy ads

<comment><USER8> Their website? Their brochures at their showrooms? Their embedded articles like this one?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "To streamline our offerings" means "to streamline and simplify our production"

The past was always about "prices can be lowered (or the margin becomes better) when the production scales". Now production is back-scaled. It seems they hit some production peak were more doesn't mean better margin.

Or in other words: "we need more margin on the higher priced versions to be able to lower the price on the cheap version without hurting our overall margin that much."

<comment><USER9> I haven't seen any evidence that their production has scaled. They brute- forced production with that outdoor tent and lots of manual labor and cut corners to attain numbers, but that's not scaling, that's hacking the numbers. They're still trying to figure out how to get the production line working.

<comment><USER10> They way the build cars with manual labor is pretty much how cars are built. The automated to much and now they went back to something that is more industry standard.

They are defently not the best in production of the actual car assembly, but its not like they are on all that inferior.

And I don't know what you mean with 'cut corners'. What corners?

<comment><USER9> > _What corners?_

Another article currently on the front page: [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/15/tesla-workers-in-ga4-tent- de...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/15/tesla-workers-in-ga4-tent-describe- pressure-to-make-model-3-goals.html)

> _Employees in the open-air GA4 "tent," which is not fully automated, tell > CNBC they were pressured to take shortcuts to hit goals — reducing vehicle > testing for water leaks and using electrical tape on plastic housings to > make quick fixes during Model 3 assembly._

<comment><USER10> They use tape to make fixes to plastic covers. What a horrible thing. Slighty reduced testing? Wow, certainlty has never been done by any automaker ever. Clearly Tesla are death traps.

Tesla cars have been getting great reviews from virtually every single tester. The rate as some of the safest cars ever built. But of course they are horrible because they fixed up some plastic covers with tape. You got to be kidding me.

Tesla invest way as much into the software and electronic in the car compared to every other automaker. Go listen to Monroe (who does car breakdown and costing for other car company) he describes how Tesla software and electronic is far superior anything in any other car. How they massivly innovated on battery technology, cooling loop, electirc motors and and much more. He describes in detail how they are ahead of the competition on those things. Those things are about 100x more relevant to me then plastic covers.

And I don't own a Tesla or even care much for Tesla overall. But the constant articles about Tesla being horrible because of every little issue with their production line is just insane. If that level of detailed analysis was applied to every new car company trying to bring a car to market, its virtually certain you could make articles about that as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Also, multi-coated white is now the default paint (previously one of the most expensive options). Which is nice and possibly saves some energy in "normal" climates (white cars are cooler).

<comment><USER12> Should save energy in all climates. White is generally highest reflectance and lowest emissivity (depends on material obviously) compared to say black, so in hot climates it won't absorb as much heat, and in cold climates it won't radiate as much out.

edit: neat table here: [https://www.thermoworks.com/emissivity_table](https://www.thermoworks.com/emissivity_table)

A polished aluminum car would be the best, but would probably blind all other drivers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mass market car is 40,000 dollars.

That is luxury pricing to the rest of automotive industry.

It shows Tesla is held to a different standard.

<comment><USER14> The average new car in the US sells for about $37,500. Slightly above average doesn't seem too absurd for "mass market."

<comment><USER15> Talking sedans? Damn, I can't imagine spending that much on... well, any car, really, but certainly not a normal commuter sedan. Or does that include minivans or trucks or SUVs or "crossovers"?

<comment><USER14> That includes all of those. You can find a detailed breakdown here if you want to see: [https://mediaroom.kbb.com/2019-02-01-Average-New-Car- Prices-...](https://mediaroom.kbb.com/2019-02-01-Average-New-Car-Prices-Up- More-Than-4-Percent-Year-Over-Year-for-January-2019-on-Tesla-Full-Size-Trucks- According-to-Kelley-Blue-Book)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone with some info on how the European prices changed?

</comment><comment><USER17> if one was in the market for the entry model this is the opposite of a price cut.

<comment><USER18> True, but it sounds like the base Model 3 also got a price cut.

So, if you're in the market for a "cheap" electric car, you have a price cut. If you're looking for a high end one, you have a price cut. It's only if you're looking for a "cheap, high end" electric car that your cost goes up.

That seems like a reasonable trade off for Tesla. Let the value buyers go for a Model 3, and push the premium buyers to the higher end. Plus, with the Model 3 released there may not be too many people getting the entry level Model S and X anyway.

<comment><USER17> > got a price cut.

from the full price, matching the reduction in incentives.

<comment><USER18> Good point

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> smart move now they can get more people into Tesla's

</comment><comment><USER20> How is this relevant tech news? The tesla adverts can stop now.

<comment><USER21> > _The tesla adverts can stop now._

Sam Altman has openly condemned critics for being "in it for the money", while those who own the stock long are just good people fighting climate change. This is seen as a battle ground, so it's not a surprise. You cannot criticize Tesla in certain circles:

 _" It's gross seeing so many root against Tesla. Be the person on the side of the climate and innovation, not the person hoping to make money on puts."_

[https://twitter.com/sama/status/1130913917864034304?lang=en](https://twitter.com/sama/status/1130913917864034304?lang=en)

There's some irony in that the same people who boast about Teslas being the best selling cars ever also say there are so many "enemies". How can both be true?

Unfortunately for some, sentiment is shifting away from our Tech Overlords. Anti-trust here, a fraud or two there and the hero worship will all be over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Pushing Tesla more toward the "low end" was probably a strategic mistake. I think the "3" in general hurt their brand, and the "X" is an oddball in their lineup.

A better strategy would have been to have just the model "S" and a $200,000 roadster.

A friend of mine got his Los Altos High son a model "3" for graduation. The other kids make fun of him. "Couldn't you afford a "real" Tesla?" they say! Like it or not, the "3" is perceived as a compromise--not the real thing.

<comment><USER23> That may say more about Los Altos than Tesla. :)</comment></comment>


Rands In Repose: A Story Culture - <AUTHOR> http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2010/02/08/a_story_culture.html

<comment><USER2> Culture is becoming nothing but advertising. The anthropologist Steve Barnett saw in this the phenomenon of pattern exhaustion, in which a culture runs out of variations of traditional designs in their pottery and become less creative.

</comment><comment><USER3> The trick is that wisdom can often be expressed by the wise in 140 characters, and the non-wise can recognize it as wisdom, but to truly understand requires far more subtly than 140 characters.

even a good discussion is only so useful for exploring nuance, subtly and balance. at some point experience is all there is, and communication is more about mentoring and guiding.

can two people even truly communicate? can we even share?

<comment><USER4> Given the relationship I have with one of my closest friends I think it's possible for two people to truly communicate. We don't complete each other's sentences just yet. Give us 20 years together and we probably will. My grandparents can do that.

I don't think it's worthwhile to look for meaning in twitter messages. A mere 140 characters isn't enough to have a deep discussion but it might have some insight. I get more from discussing my insight with friends than I do looking for it on twitter. Wisdom takes time.

Edit: removed a paragraph that wasn't needed

<comment><USER5> I don't doubt that close friends are an invaluable source of meaning but I think you may have missed the point of Rand's post.

I'm pretty sure he is not arguing that there is deep wisdom to be found in 140 characters. Rather, through your interaction with many tweets from many people you can distil meaning.

 _The point of Twitter isn't knowledge or understanding, it's merely connective information tissue. It's small bits of information carefully selected by those you've chosen to follow and its value isn't in what they send, it's how it fits into the story in your head. There are great stories to be found on Twitter, but you have to do the work._

You're not precluded from discussing tweets with your friend.

<comment><USER4> I think I may be using a different definition for meaning. I equate meaning to wisdom rather than information or knowledge.

I don't think twitter has much wisdom to offer. It has starting points for valuable thoughts from time to time. Which I see as the the point of the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The value of the idea is one part that it is yours and one part that you gave it to someone else. It's you and something new."

I loved this..</comment>


China Declares Skype Illegal - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374898,00.asp

<comment><USER2> The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

<comment><USER3> As captain obvious as this sounds, but Star Wars is a very pro American film espousing a very American point of view.

I hope this is true, but there are plenty of examples in history where it isn't.

For instance, pre-WWII Japan also blended rapid development with nationalism very effectively, and was very unlikely to internally liberalize.

Also look at Iraq (under Hussein) and Saudi Arabia, countries with incredibly harsh and restrictive laws, and by our standards terrible and evil governments... Yet they have little internal opposition, and their people like their governments, for some reason.

<comment><USER4> That seems like a very broad generalization. The Kurds and Shiites (especially in the southern marshes) did not like Hussein or his government. The Iraqi government under Hussein was certainly harsh in many ways but the society was relatively liberal and open (for the Middle East).

Saudi Arabia also has a large and restive Shia minority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of chinese outsourcing companies rely on skype.

<comment><USER6> Luckily for them, they might benefit from having a "business" Internet link as opposed to a "home" one.

Before going to China, I decided to set up a server I could securely tunnel my browsing through. There are many commercial VPN solutions, but I didn't want to pay, and the free options are the first to be blocked. (Though it is an arms-race, and those services are still often usable.)

While in China, the SSH tunnel worked well to provide access to blocked sites such as Facebook, Wikipedia, and (for some unfathomable reason at that time) Python.org. However, I began to notice that while in my apartment, the connection would periodically close. I thought it was due to high latency or some automatic timeout, but it happened consistently enough to be noteworthy.

I took my laptop into work (a building with offices, a private school, and a bank) and tried the same SSH command, and to my surprise, I couldn't reproduce the problem. Later, back at home, I re-ran the same SSH command and browsing habits and I was disconnected within 10 minutes or so.

While China wants to control people's access to information, the government also understands the need for businesses to function well. This is why I suspect that residential connections are more heavily monitored and filtered - even if it's all automatic.

After all, why would a model citizen require a persistent encrypted connection to a server in the US?

[Reminder: this is only one out of a possible billion-or-so anecdotes, so it might not be best to draw conclusions about ALL of China from it.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If China "creates" its own skype and flogs it in the US, should the US block it? I know this would a very protectionist move but what is the way forward for foreign companies to be competitive in China when China's blocking of foreign services is accompanied by worries of "disrupting harmonious societies"?</comment>


Facebook rolls out job posts to become the blue-collar LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/28/facebook-job-posts/ <comment><USER2> I read a story recently about a guy who, through sheer happenstance, managed to fix his entire life. He had gotten laid off of his job and was getting desperate. He usually picked up the New York Post and applied to the jobs he saw there.

This time they were out of the Post, so he grabbed the Times. He saw an ad for a job fair. He went to the fair. The fair was practically empty, but the employers were desperate, the first recruiter he meets basically just takes his info down, tells him where to report to and when he starts.

The job fair folks didn't realize that blue collar workers didn't read the Times, so that's the reason why the fair was empty.

Blue collar job matching still appears to be a blue ocean and Facebook seems to be uniquely positioned to serve that market. If they can get this right, this could end blue-collar unemployment overnight.

<comment><USER3> I'll piggyback on your comment as my sentiment is the same. This is far from the worst thing Facebook has done. It seems to address an unmet need. Maybe it will end up creepy and full of unforeseen consequences (like everything else FB) if nearly all non-office job seeking moves to FB, but for now it's helping people.

(And also, Striper Sniper Tackle is a fabulous name for a fishing store.)

<comment><USER4> > Maybe it will end up creepy and full of unforeseen consequences

The first thing I thought of when reading this article was "I wonder how many Herbalife 'jobs' in disguise will end up on here..."

<comment><USER5> Well... One thing job sites are very hesitant to do is qa. Jobs that aren't jobs. Listings without salary brackets. Where I live (Dublin) most jobs on job boards don't even mention the company name. This is because they're posted by recruiters that way, to avoid being routed around or tipping off the competition. Often the job doesn't exist, they're just resume fishing.

LinkedIn has similar issues.

I think there's hay to be made just on requiring a minimum amount of (ideally structured) information.

<comment><USER6> I've been on the hunt for a while and I'll echo these sentiments. Indeed, Zip, Monster, LinkedIn, most of them are just 'ghost' jobs. Maybe they already have an internal candidate, maybe they have had the posting up for 2 years, maybe they are recruiters that are just fishing idly. There's a million reasons, but they all end up being just a time suck and resume black-hole.

Look, I know: network. That's the way to get work. _But I suck at networking_. I don't feel that it's because I'm unsociable, it's that I don't know anyone that that is working at a place that is hiring. All my contacts are in my same boat of shitty jobs in a shitty area (biotech-denver)

Does anyone know how to break out into another region where you don't know anyone? How to do remote-networking?

<comment><USER7> I'm not even lying when I say this: 2 out of my last 3 jobs as a remote site reliability engineer have come from Reddit. They were contract gigs, and you have to do a bit more work vetting folks, but every now and then you'll find a recruiter who actually knows wtf they're doing with tech people.

So yeah, 2/3 in 5 years getting quality remote jobs via reddit of all places.

/r/forhire, /r/devopsjobs, /r/sysadminjobs

<comment><USER6> I'll try this out for bio-tech, thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having redesigned a hospital's recruitment process to use Facebook advertising for the more "blue collar" type jobs (porters, support workers, estates type jobs as well as nurses) I can really see this working.

We got ridiculous traction in the local area. We were reaching people who had never really thought of a career at their local hospital. But a hospital isn't just doctors.

Often with Facebook we didn't actually directly hit the candidate either. People's mum, uncle, brother or friend would find the advert and pass it on.

Facebook is already successful in recruitment. Only makes sense they really target this market and provide the business tools to do it

<comment><USER9> I come from a blue collar background, and have a large blue collar network on Facebook. I regularly see people posting about jobs, sharing that they are looking for jobs, etc. It will often be in just a generic post along the lines of "x construction is looking for laborers, $20 an hour call #" then reshared a hundred times.

I think a formalized and well designed way of doing this could work and a have a large benefit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's some who argue that having all of your life in one place, recorded, won't be a problem because society will be forced to shift in a more liberal direction and stop judging people. The alternative outcome is that this forces a hard crystallization around various very specific cultures, where for every community there's a list of "weird stuff that everyone does," and "stuff that gets you ostracized." So for example going to furry conventions might end up assigned to Googlers, and going to church assigned to machinists. That seems a lot more likely, given human nature.

<comment><USER11> "There's some who argue"

Let's be clear about who.

Who is arguing that people need separate identities for work, family, and friends? Sociologists

Who is arguing that having a single identity will make society more open? Mark Zuckerberg.

Source: [https://boingboing.net/2018/01/22/facebook-is- sad.html](https://boingboing.net/2018/01/22/facebook-is-sad.html)

<comment><USER12> Sociologists and marginalized people.

As a young man I had a few friends and acquaintances who intimated that they had been stalked. My ex wife shared a story of being stalked by a deputy sheriff. And I can't recall now but she may have been underage at the time to boot.

Pretty quickly I saw a pattern. People who don't want privacy have never cared about someone who really needed it. Or needed it themselves.

If you think you might be queer, molested, or your neighbor might be in a hate group but you're not sure, if you think your kid is doing drugs, you can't just voice these opinions without putting someone in literal mortal peril. And there are a host of other things that might get you stigmatized. If you are in a bizg city that's not a big deal. Find new people. But if you're in a small town...

<comment><USER10> It's really everyone, if they know what's good for them - no matter how "normal" you are, there is always somewhere on earth where you would end up marginalized if you found yourself there for some reason. Nobody's traits are centered in _every_ culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> No... Just no! Facebook crawls into every portion of our lives. I killed my account because of its insidious feature creep.

You don't put up photos of yourself in a swimsuit at work and would sue any workplace that demanded that you show them those pictures.

You shouldn't bring your political beliefs into work, and would be uncomfortable if your boss cornered you and demanded to know how you felt about the president or some tax policy.

But, this is content that is often on your Facebook page. By moving employeer/applicant relationships onto Facebook, it's associating applicants personal lives into the sphere of employer consideration.

It's wrong and I hope that nobody takes this seriously.

<comment><USER14> Facebook is chock full of information that is illegal to ask about in job applications like marital and family status, sexual orientation, age, religion, etc. If this feature saw much adoption it seems like it would only result in greater discrimination.

Beyond that, this move is surprising to me because we've been seeing a lot of stories lately about Facebook struggling to get people to post original content after letting the platform go wild with politicized third-party content and advertisements. I can't imagine a better way to make Facebook less comfortable and fun than to turn it into a resume site.

<comment><USER15> While I generally agree with the sentiment that facebook and job sites are like oil and water, how would discrimination with this tool work differently than just searching for an applicant on facebook today? I wouldn't imagine this information would be surfaced alongside the resume, so it would still require an employer to actively take steps to discriminate.

<comment><USER16> Wouldn't Facebook be the single best equipped company to stop potential discrimination?

E.g. You submit an application for a job posting - once that application is opened, Facebook could block anyone who has used that IP in the past 30 days from accessing your profile.

I imagine Facebook is where most publicly accessible personal data is, if they could be compelled to, by PR or law, they could dramatically curb discrimination.

<comment><USER17> That would be trivial to circumvent (pick up your phone and browse their profile from that) and would have false negatives (large company with many users behind NAT).

<comment><USER16> Yes sorry, that was just a trivial example to try to explain my thoughts.

How do you see Facebook stifling discrimination?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A few months ago I turned off Facebook notifications on my phone. Then I turned off Messenger notifications. I recently deleted the Facebook app. A month ago, the Messenger app moved to page two. Two weeks ago I deleted both from my phone (still have WhatsApp) and force myself to log out when I visit on my laptop.

I'm not sure this is the level of disconnection I'll remain at. (Maybe only in election years.) I do think it's a gentle enough curve that everyone should try it.

When I ask friends whom, among Facebook, Apple, Google, Netflix and Amazon, they trust most, the results are heterogenous. When I ask whom they trust least, it's universally Facebook. If you don't trust someone, they may not have your best interests at heart; keeping them close is like holding on to a toxic friend.

<comment><USER19> Facebook seems to have adopted the dark pattern of messenger notifications of "1" even after I have deleted all chats.

Every time I open the facebook app I am alerted of a new message. I've gone so far as to file a report with facebook, but have not heard back. I assume this behavior is intentional at this point.

<comment><USER20> They do the same for me in the FB app on the Marketplace section. They'll put a red icon down there that makes me visit that section to make it go away.

Unfortunately the only things I see on there are cars where the list price is $1 but when you open the ad it's actually $20k. I've reported those to Facebook as scams but the response was "these are legitimate ads" so there's no reason to go back. Other than that damn red icon.

<comment><USER19> I have had that happen at times with Marketplace also, which is pretty much another garbage feature on FB. My usage has personally declined drastically as they continue to introduce more features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Meanwhile, job seekers can discover openings, auto-fill applications with > their Facebook profile information

And soon we will need discussion on how a job seeker is being shunned at a workplace for his/her personal views which came bundled with these auto-fill forms.

I can be wrong but whenever I read stuff like these it seems to me companies, specially social networking, are running out of ideas and just scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas.

<comment><USER22> Hopefully this doesn't stick 2 years from now.

"Must apply via our Facebook listing - please have the show all photos checkbox selected" \- Granted, that probably won't affect white collar workers as heavily

<comment><USER23> Do do believe Facebook is on it's way out, but I created a fake real-name profile to guard against a future where it's more ubiquitous and I'm expected to give others access to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands This is so wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to start. I was told for years and years to keep my business life separate from my personal life.

It's actually quite scary people are going to fall for it and use this and in the process, hand over a myriad of information that should be protected, solely for the purposes of screening people based on their personal life and their choices therein.

Scary, very, very scary.

<comment><USER24> I share your concern.

It may not happen, though. Social networks tend toward natural monopolies. Facebook may have better features and uptime than the next best alternative (or not), but either way, social networks gain most of their utility from all the people on then.

So it's notable that linkedin survived this consolidation. I think this is because people want to keep their business and professional lives distinct. It's actually more than that. There's a comment lower about how Facebook is creepy, and linkedin is pushy. There's a very good reason those are the notable faults identified.

Think of this scenario: a programmer goes to a business meeting with some people form ops and marketing after a conference, and they have lunch or coffee afterwards. Some linkedin invites follow. It might seem a little pushy to some, not to others, but most people (from my observation) wouldn't consider it inappropriate. It's "ok" to be a bit more direct and immediate with business contacts. The same thing with Facebook might seem creepy.

I suspect linkedin or something like it will hang on precisely because it _isn 't_ a "social" network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I find it a bit uncomfortable with the repetitive use of "low-skill" in the article. You can actually be skillful in areas outside of STEM, finance and business.

<comment><USER18> "Skill," in economics, is a function of training time. "Occupations that require less than 12 months of training and" have a high incidence of employees "with a high school diploma or less" were defined as "low-skill" going back to the 60s [1].

High-skill workers are expensive to make, expensive to hire and expensive to replace. The tolerable level of turnover amongst high-skill staff, to the average company, is low. (At least in comparison with low-skill staff, who can be more-easily replaced.)

[1] [http://web.mit.edu/osterman/www/LowWage- LowSkill.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/osterman/www/LowWage-LowSkill.pdf)

<comment><USER26> And a full proper apprenticeship can take longer than a degree to earn in most cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In the short run, this may be a great revenue-growth opportunity for Facebook.

That said, prospective employees will want to look their best for prospective employers, and vice versa, so I have a nagging feeling that the job-posting initiative will further accelerate Facebook's ongoing transition from a network of genuine profiles and social connections to a network of _puffed-up, cleaned-up social resumes and necessarily superficial connections_.

I say "ongoing" because many Facebook profiles have already become puffed-up, cleaned-up social resumes, and many Facebook connections have become superficial links between people who may not necessarily like or even want to spend time with each other.

</comment><comment><USER28> Great, now it's just a matter of time until recruiters start trying to contact me via FB. In which case... that will be the end of my FB usage.

In less snarky terms, spam is the bane of nearly every "jobs" site I've ever seen. Since FB attracts such a wide net, i.e., not very technical and skilled folks, it will be a significant challenge to make any kind of jobs/careers feature not turn into a noise-fest as they grow it. I wish them luck.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm fairly anti-Facebook but this is actually a great idea. A big reason for unemployment is the inefficiencies it takes to take all the steps from motivating yourself in finding a job to getting hired. A lot of unemployed sometimes need a kick in the butt because it's hard to constantly be on the lookout for opportunities (been there), so this partly eliminates the first step of making the decision to get you stuff together and look for jobs by making it come directly to you. Good job Facebook!

</comment><comment><USER30> I actually like this. Linkedin is very annoying sometimes, but it gives nice exposure to the job market if you're looking for opportunities. Facebook did a great job with buying/selling stuff that matches and complements craigslist for example. This gave a lot of power to communities which don't use craigslist much outside the US. I think they can do a nice job to have people get more exposure in the job market when they need to and become a better job market than linkedin.

I think we should be more pragmatic in the tools we use and just encourage the usage of better tools in the right way. Facebook is horrible as a content or social network because of our behaviour in using it as so. But they do great tools and we should fix our usage of these tools.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm curious how this Facebook VP knows what he knows:

"One in four people in the US have searched for or found a job using Facebook" writes Facebook's VP of Local Alex Himel.

</comment><comment><USER32> I recently got some plastering/tiling done.

I asked on Facebook, people recommended a tiler who had a Facebook page, I looked at the reviews there, and the photos they had posted, and then I sent them a message over Facebook Chat, we agreed a price/time, and they came and carried it out.

This was all incredibly easy, and much less stressful than most times I've needed someone to do this kind of work.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is soo wrong. This will consolidate a 2 class work world. One that deserves to be on LinkedIn and one that is only present on Facebook.

Even worse, those in the "lower" class even have to deal with their job life creeping into their private lives.

Really stupid, everybody should have both a LinkedIn and a Facebook account.

<comment><USER34> I don't understand this complaint. Facebook should avoid offering job advertisements because... some people won't use it out of their own choice, therefore classism? Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but I can't follow the logic.

Both LinkedIn and Facebook accounts are free for anyone to create and use to their full extent. How is this service not a net positive if it gets people legitimate jobs? Is that not competition? Isn't more options a good thing?

<comment><USER33> I mean looking at so called Temp Work companies: in some sense they arbitrate jobs. Most of those happen to be quite low end. Speaking of Germany, when these are "hands-on positions" in big companies they compete with non-temp people. The difference is that they have worse pay, less insurance coverage and generally less say.

Others already made statistics and articles about this topics. It seems the workers loose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> LinkedIn is trying to be the blue-collar LinkedIn (plumbers, florists, machinists etc) but I don't know how effective they have been. FB seems like they have the reach

</comment><comment><USER36> I sure hope when applying for a job via FB, companies do not have access to your sensitive FB information.

FB needs to make clear what information they will never share with job posters.

<comment><USER23> > I sure hope when applying for a job via FB, companies do not have access to > your sensitive FB information.

Oh, they won't...unless they pay for the premium package.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Job application via Facebook? No way I'm going down that route.

By the way... It seems to me that "youngsters" are slowly realizing that heavy social media (a-la Facebook, that wants to know everything about you and wants to follow every aspect of your life, intruding wherever possible) is higly toxic, and it's trying to expand to other "market areas".

</comment><comment><USER38> "Nobody forces you to use Facebook."

"Please provide your Facebook profile to continue with your employment application."

#WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong?

</comment><comment><USER39> The problem I have with this is that job applications are one of the only instances where I use real data for my personal information (besides when dealing with heavily regulated industries like banks). So now Facebook is collecting treasure troves of data on people via this job application tool.

</comment><comment><USER40> Older blue-collar workers are pretty much the only demographic left on Facebook, so I suppose this makes sense. Personally, I don't think I've logged in this year yet -- all my social circles have moved on to other networks.

</comment><comment><USER41> So if you don't have a nice facebook profile, you dont get a job ?

</comment><comment><USER42> This could turn out really well for them. I've got several friends, from real estate agents to concert promoters to plumbers who already use Facebook in this manner.

</comment><comment><USER43> I have to admit I've found at least 3 jobs through facebook. I still hate this though. I don't want employers to see my facebook.

</comment><comment><USER44> FB is getting pretty desperate these days.

</comment><comment><USER45> "One in four people in the US have searched for or found a job using Facebook"

[citation needed]

<comment><USER46> Citation needed? That doesn't make any sense in this context.

It's a primary source. They know what people search for in their own site. That's like me saying I found my job using a newspaper and you saying citation needed. I just told you what I know to be true.

Do you go around snapping 'citation needed' at anyone who tells you anything about their business? Madness.

<comment><USER45> Respectfully no, but it would be relevant to understand the methodology of how they were able to discern a 1-in-4 statistic which seems, on its face at least, questionable at best. Maybe they're right and the methodology might be sound, but it doesn't change my perspective without that backing information to contextualize it.

A "primary source" also isn't in any way immune to rational inquiry. I don't mean for this parallel in any way to imply a relationship, but just look at our administration or any one of innumerable other examples to this end. Taking something at face value, to me at least, requires more than a decontextualized statement of fact when my immediate impulse is to question it (in this particular case).

For instance, define "job". Are we talking about a recommendation leading to a project for a contractor, or are we talking a full-time position? I mean, that's just the start. In what ways are they determining what constitutes "finding a job"? Talking to friends and friends of friends? Or directly messaging a corporation's page on Facebook?

There's a lot of squish here and I wish they were more forthcoming about what that statistic actually means.

<comment><USER46> It sounds like you just want more information on how they determined this. That's not what 'citation' means.

A citation is a reference to a document where information came from in the first place. What document are you expecting to be cited here? A citation for some internal Facebook email where a manager asked for a stat and the data guys responded with a number? How's that going to help you if it's just the same number as in here?

If I tell you I saw a cat in my garden, and you demand 'citation needed', what do you want me to cough up? There's no document to cite. That's just me telling you what I saw.

<comment><USER45> It's as simple as citing a document that lays out how they arrived at this statistic. With all due respect, perhaps it's pleading for an ideal here, but it still remains a questionable statistic in my opinion.

I don't understand why questioning a statistic, or especially my use of the word "citation", is controversial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> What was that line about feature creep and email again?

</comment><comment><USER48> This is going to kill snagajob.com

</comment><comment><USER49> And suddenly LinkedIn is dead.

</comment><comment><USER19> LinkedIn uselessness with Facebook creepiness™

<comment><USER50> I actually like LinkedIn because hey know they are the internet's Rolodex and (more importantly) people on the site mostly use it that way. If I were pressured by society/peers to be "active" on LinkedIn in the same way we are pressured in an abstract sense to be on Facebook, it would lose all utility for me.

<comment><USER19> To be fair they became the internet's rolodex by outright stealing your address book and sending fake invites to people on your behalf.

<comment><USER51> And now they have put a join-wall that is hard to circumvent (erasing cookies does not seem to suffice). It is one of the reasons why I hope to never join Linkedin.

<comment><USER19> After deleting my account, I've had to look up a couple people recently and encountered that. My only thought is: "thanks LinkedIn for making yourself increasingly irrelevant"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Facebook is pivoting into becoming Craigslist.

<comment><USER53> Craigslist+ads, with a healthy dose of meme garbage to keep the plebs opening the tab.

<comment><USER38> Um. Craigslist _is_ ads.

(There are, yes, parts of it which aren't. But ads are the prime motive.)

<comment><USER53> Ads in this context meaning private companies paying for placement of their brand in front of specific demographics.

<comment><USER38> As is Craigslist.

Though payment is only required for limited categories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> There is absolutely nothing blue-collar about Facebook.

<comment><USER55> Their users sure are.</comment></comment>


Privacy preserving contact tracing: the comic - <AUTHOR> https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/ <comment><USER2> The only problem is that it requires everyone to actively participate, which means every participant must be all of: knowledgeable, willing, personally able (authorized to install app), technologically able (app works with their devices), and vigilant. This is currently logistically impractical.

<comment><USER3> From the comic, you only need ~60% of contacts for it to be effective [1].

[1] [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/09/scie...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/09/science.abb6936)

<comment><USER2> > _only_

So... 200 million americans?

<comment><USER3> You can't just compute 60% multiplied by US population, 20% of Americans are children.

You also probably only need contact tracing in certain high risk geographies, urban centers, and a few suburban centers.

60% of the remaining can definitely fall under the "knowledgeable, willing, personally able (authorized to install app), technologically able (app works with their devices), and vigilant". Even if you don't hit 60%, you're still reducing R0 by enough that you can carefully start to re-open certain parts of the economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great! Slowing the spread of the virus shouldn't have to mean sacrificing our privacy. And if it becomes widespread enough, we may be able to go in public a bit more, knowing that we'll be alerted if we've come in contact with a sick person.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm for it, but... how long until law enforcement uses/misuses this data?

Only concerned because of (not personal) past experiences.</comment>


Perl Is Back and Ready to Roll with the Big Data Crowd - <AUTHOR> http://thenewstack.io/perl-back-ready-roll-big-data/ <comment><USER2> Too late.

<comment><USER3> Hardly. Perl gets far more use than you might imagine and in some very interesting places. Anyone who thinks that Perl is dead or dying is a bandwagon fan of the language(s) du jour.

I've been in IT across three decades. Perl is just as useful to me today as it was whilst in college. Just because it isn't in use by all the sock-headed millennial hipsters doesn't mean a thing. I can do more with Perl in fewer lines and with less thought than with Python or Ruby. I like Perl's syntax and I like that it allows me to work with it in a way that works for me. Other languages are not so forgiving in this regard.

Look at the usefulness of CPAN. Perl 6 is analagous to Python 3. It's a different language more or less, but given a bit of time, Perl 6 will be used more and more. I already know people using it. I plan to use it more and more. There are huge swaths of the Internet still built on Perl.

<comment><USER2> Similarly, I've two decades of Perl under my belt and it remains my go-to to quick-and-dirties. But in my field, Python has the mind-share these days and ease of collaboration beats language puritanism, so Perl's on a one-way trip. The reality is that when people leave Perl, they don't come back.

<comment><USER3> I hear you, but do you really think the people who spent the last decade+ working on Perl 6 would have done so because of love of the language alone? That would be a terrible waste of time and talent. I think we will see something of a Perl revival when people see just what they can do with Perl 6. I'm hopeful, but at the same time, you yourself know how useful Perl can be for things like one-liner quick, clever hacks and even better yet, I don't think anything beats Perl for rapid prototyping, even if it means the final product is written in C/C++.</comment></comment></comment></comment>