Brendan Eich, We've Failed You. I'm Sorry. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/3c613ea188d7 <comment><USER2> We haven't failed him. While the old "may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" trope gets used here, it doesn't mean you need to protect people from the consequences of their speech.

Brendan Eich can donate to whatever causes he wishes, and rightfully so, but there is rightly no protection from the public opinion based consequences arising from those donations. Equally, justifications such as "meritocracy" imply that being a CEO is a very narrow thing - it isn't, it's a position of authority and leadership, and if you can't (near universally) inspire confidence in the people you're intended to lead, that is a problem with your ability to function as CEO.

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism)

i'm sure if he was anti-gay, all those gays working for him for 6 years as a cto would have noticed a little earlier, everyone was surprised when they heard about this in 2012. and it didn't stop people from using mozilla products then. if you don't think that the cto of a large tech research company has at least a little say in who gets hired, you need a reality check.

let's not kid ourselves. someone wanted him out of the way, and we all played our role. congratulations for being the toys at hand of the powers that be.

i'm really curious who the next cto/ceo of mozilla is going to be. IN FACT I'm worried on who it might be.

here's a crosspost from recode:

> I am in full support of gay marriage, I'm against prop 8. But I'm also > utterly opposed to railroading people out of work because of personal > opinions they hold.

> Today the bullies won. Today tyranny gained a toehold. The next time some > religious group throws out an employee or leader because he donated money to > planned parenthood or gay rights group, remember this day for you laid the > foundation.

<comment><USER4> > McCarthyism

Bring that up if it turns out that he is blacklisted across the valley, and unable to land a new job. Given the number of millionaire VC's alone that have come out supporting him on Twitter, I kind of doubt he'll face anything resembling McCarthy level persecution.

If you don't see the difference between people being upset about having a known supporter of discrimination in a role where he is shaping public opinion about an organisation like Mozilla, _and_ the person ultimately responsible for a workplace vs. someone being blacklisted across an entire industry, or worse, and paraded in front of congressional committees to confess their "sins", then that shows a scary lack of understanding of just how nasty McCarthyism was.

<comment><USER5> > _Bring that up if it turns out that he is blacklisted across the valley, and > unable to land a new job._

Well, McCarthy era victims were also able to find the odd job here and there. McCarthyism is about the practice, not about if the effects are in full force or not.

I wouldn't be surprised if no major company would want to hire him for a public position now, lest they suffer the same public backslash.

> _If you don 't see the difference between people being upset about having a > known supporter of discrimination in a role where he is shaping public > opinion about an organisation like Mozilla, and the person ultimately > responsible for a workplace vs. someone being blacklisted across an entire > industry, or worse, and paraded in front of congressional committees to > confess their "sins", then that shows a scary lack of understanding of just > how nasty McCarthyism was._

Actually, it's the above that shows lack of understanding of what was wrong about McCarthyism. It wasn't that the blacklisting was total ("throughout the industry"), it was that the blacklisting existed at all. Even if people would only got fired from one job and left alone after that, McCarthyism would have been as bad.

It also shows a lack of understanding of the ramifications against Eich. Take the top players that could hire a well known Javascript/TCO guy like Eich. Would Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Opera, Abobe, etc hire him now? Their PR persons will tell them not to touch him with a ten-foot pole.

As for being "paraded to confess their "sins"" that has already been done -- Eich was forced to confess his sins in public posts and promise he'll be good (as if he gave any indication that he was bad in the workplace all these years in this regard). Well, in his case the commitee wasn't "congressional", it was a tech media one. I'll give you that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Meh.

There is a selectively low bar on persecution these days. He wasn't being denied the right to marry, they right to make medical decisions for or visit a loved one in the hospital, the right to adopt. He wasn't even being denied the right to a decent living.

He was denied access to a particular leadership position. While there is a slippery slope to be found in denying leadership positions based on belief, there are also two sets of rights to consider. The rights of the (potential) leader, and the rights of the workers he leads. Given that the belief he expressed through his donation concerned the civil rights of other people and not himself, why should I expect that he will respect the rights of any LTBG workers in his employee?

<comment><USER7> > He was being denied access to a particular leadership position.

He wasn't denied access to the position, he had it. Others made it clear they were not interested in being lead by him. A decision had to be made to either let those people leave or he had to choose to leave.

<comment><USER8> I did not see a single post from someone who would be led by Brendan saying they did not want to be lead by him. In fact, the opposite.

Please do look up the difference between the Mozilla Corporation and the Mozilla Foundation. He was picked as CEO of the _Corporation_ but the Mozilla employees who called for his resignation were employees of the _Foundation_, and hence wouldn't be led by him at all. The Corporation employees who spoke out in public were saying things like [https://twitter.com/Jason_Duell/status/449265719474008064](https://twitter.com/Jason_Duell/status/449265719474008064) and [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZFsNqrZ...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZFsNqrZZqhcJ:www.twobraids.com/2014/03/the- mozilla-ceo.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-nightly) (since deleted, apparently) and [http://subfictional.com/2014/03/24/on-brendan-eich- as-ceo-of...](http://subfictional.com/2014/03/24/on-brendan-eich-as-ceo-of- mozilla/)

It's hard to tell from the outside, of course, since everyone involved just claimed to be working from "Mozilla", so it's easy to make the mistake you made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is sickening.

Denying gays the right to marriage is not a free speech issue, it's a human rights issue. Replace gay marriage with interracial marriage and see if the idea of "we failed you because we didn't support your right to believe that interracial marriage is wrong" still stands up.

Trying to equate this to a free speech issue is just another way of discriminating against gays. Eich actively supported the discrimination against gays and there's no way that he has the moral right to lead a company like Mozilla. I for one am glad that he was put through the wringer and hope anyone else that believes in any form of discrimination and wants to lead a company gets the same treatment or worse.

EDIT: someone rightfully pointed out I overstepped my description. I changed "Eich discriminated against gays" to "Eich actively supported the discrimination of gays"

<comment><USER10> I have to ask, do you realize how hypocritical some of your statements sound?

I'm talking about ones like, "I for one am glad that he was put through the wringer and hope anyone else that believes in any form of discrimination and wants to lead a company gets the same treatment or worse."

On one hand you decry discrimination, but then on the other you encourage discrimination against people who you've deemed to have engaged in discrimination. It's very contradictory, and suggests that you in turn should then be subjected to some very negative treatment, "or worse".

<comment><USER9> There is no hypocrisy. Being punished and being discriminated against are two absolutely separate things.

<comment><USER10> Sure, I can see them being different things. But that doesn't meant that they both can't be involved at the same time.

Maybe what Eich is facing is seen as "punishment" by some, but it is indisputably discrimination, too. Losing one's job solely because of one's beliefs is a form of discrimination, regardless of what those beliefs may be.

I don't see how you can seriously say that you're against discrimination and those who discriminate, yet you'll resort to that exact same discriminatory behavior while supposedly trying to stop discrimination!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If he'd been funding a campaign for a constitutional ban on interracial marriage, he'd never even have been considered for the role in the first place (and rightly so).

Certainly, he has the right to say, think and fund what he likes, but if you're funding an effort to remove peoples' rights, you shouldn't be too surprised if people are disinclined to let you have a job which places you in authority over a company full of people.

</comment><comment><USER12> He just didn't have the right culture fit for Mozilla.

(Shamelessly stolen from elsewhere.)

Essentially, it's really hard to lead people who don't respect you.

We can all have a civil disagreement about whether vi or emacs is superior, or if Political Party X is better than Y. But when you specifically attack the fundamental rights of your employees and their friends / family, then refuse to apologise for it, you're simply not going to be a credible leader.

Here's the other thing - in capitalism, you have to listen to your customers. If the "Moral Majority" wants to boycott your shop/browser/TV show because your CEO isn't sufficiently deferential to their god - they can go for it.

If the business wants to succeed, it has decide whether it will be more profitable to capitulate or not.

In Mozilla's case, they have (belatedly) seen the way the world is turning. Good for them.

<comment><USER13> > He just didn't have the right culture fit for Mozilla.

I find that hard to believe, his Wikipedia page says he started working for Netscape in 1995, founded mozilla.org in 1998, and helped found the Mozilla Foundation in 2003. If it was a culture fit problem, it took a long time for them to find that out. Seems more like a lynching after he became too publicly known.

<comment><USER12> You appear to have your irony filters set too high...

The point I'm trying to make is that we see countless example of "Culture Fit" being used as a poor excuse to get rid of an employee for having the temerity to be female, gay, disabled, an ethnic minority - or anything other than the narrowly defined "bro" culture which sadly seems to infect some high-tech companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For goodness sake, when are people going to understand that freedom of expression doesn't (and shouldn't) mean freedom from criticism. This is not a difficult concept people.

<comment><USER15> What happened with Eich was not criticism any more, rather a full blown witch hunt, complete with forks and fire.

The internet has become too much of 4chan the last few years.

<comment><USER2> I haven't been paying overly close attention, but all of the reaction I have seen has generally been blog/twitter based expressions of sadness/disappointment/betrayal. Has it really escalated far beyond that? (Genuine question).

<comment><USER15> OKCupid blocked all Firefox users with a warning message saying that their users should not use a browser whose development CEO dislikes gay marriage.

Borders to extortion or unfair competition, in my eyes.

<comment><USER16> They didn't block them; they showed them a message, invited them to use an alternative browser, and allowed them to continue if they so wished.

<comment><USER17> They also continued to use JavaScript on their site, regardless of browser. Since Eich invented JavaScript, shouldn't they stop using it?

<comment><USER18> That's more of an accident of history, really. In his own words, Netscape told him to come up with something, anything, quick, and lo JavaScript was born. Had Netscape known that he was a closet homophobe, would they have hired him in the first place?

It's also much easier being an homophobe engineer rather than a homophobe CEO, because of the nature of the role. His technical achievements can be as impressive as you want and have no relation to his homophobia; being CEO is a role built on public relationships inside and outside the company, relationships that would be severely influenced by his (perceived) homophobia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I agree with Sullivan's take[1] posted yesterday. If this is the gay-rights movement today, a bunch of extremist Social Justice Warriors, I want no part of it.

Not only that, but Catlin's reaction to it[2] is also shameful: 'oops, we thought he would evolve like President Obama did, our bad. but hey, we're putting our apps back on the marketplace!'

[1] [http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/04/03/the-hounding-of- br...](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/04/03/the-hounding-of-brendan- eich/)

[2] [http://www.teamrarebit.com/blog/2014/04/03/a-sad- victory/](http://www.teamrarebit.com/blog/2014/04/03/a-sad-victory/)

<comment><USER20> > _If this is the gay-rights movement today, a bunch of extremist Social > Justice Warriors, I want no part of it._

Partially true. This episode has been disturbing, yes, but at the same time, it has held strong by the community and the public. And it'll only get stronger till there is equality. It is the frustration of people, friends and family which makes episodes like these escalate. Only a strong movement can bring an impact.

So are they a bunch of "extremists"? No. Are they moderators then? No, again. Its somewhere in the middle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very very intolerant and hypocritical of everybody that basically bullied him away. There's finally a self made rock star in a position of power and somehow people have played in such a way that he's the boogie man. Over a fricking PERSONAL point of view.

I can make many many analogies to other businesses and some religious institutions, but this would have happened _nowhere_ but Mozilla.

Stop using #mozilla for your anti-gay/pro-gay/liberal/conservative/libertarian platforms. Read the manifesto: [http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto/](http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto/)

</comment><comment><USER22> When you find somebody holds an opinion you disagree with you have a choice of either ignoring them, pushing them away or engaging them in discussion (which requires a reciprocal action on their part).

It seems the latter option wasn't even considered, everybody just wanted rid.

That's:

a) Not very mature b) Worse, a missed opportunity to convince somebody of an alternative view

Well done everybody, you've turned somebody you disagree with into an entrenched and victimised somebody you disagree with who hates you. _clap clap clap_

<comment><USER16> So The Guardian offered him an opportunity for dialogue [1], to have that debate. He had a chance to explain why he held the views that he did. He refused.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/01/mozilla- ce...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/01/mozilla-ceo-brendan- eich-refuses-to-quit)

<comment><USER23> Sshh! It's easier to ignore things like that and cast him as a victim of those mean gays!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> CEOs, like any other employee, are representatives of the company they're employed by.

Just as if I were to post racist comments on my [Generic Social Media], my employer is going to need to do something to protect the company, because as the article points out: people (clients, customers) are judgemental, critics of gay marriage and critics of Brendan Eich included.

<comment><USER25> I think the concern centers more around the perceived double standard on seemingly arbitrary issues. For instance, if Eich was a strong supporter of gay marriage, I have a hard time seeing him forced to step down.

I get that gay marriage is not an "arbitrary issue" for many people, but I think the definition of what is arbitrary and what are violations of fundamental civil rights can get tricky.

<comment><USER11> Look at it this way. If he'd been funding a campaign to make a constitutional amendment to ban interracial marriage, do you think he'd have been able to keep the job?

Like it or not, in the West, gay people are increasingly in the category of people who most people assume should have equal rights.

<comment><USER25> Of course not, but that's exactly the point. We should be able to have unpopular opinions and still be accepted in a community that emphasizes being a meritocracy, etc.

Whether being forced to resign as Mozilla's CEO counts as the community rejecting him is an interesting argument.

<comment><USER26> He was accepted - at the CTO level - with his unpopular opinions - even after they became public in 2012 - for _years_.

But there's a big difference (to me, at least) between being the CTO and the CEO. It's that step people are unhappy with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Jesus, this is the epitome of naive techie blabbering. Does OP really think that the CEO position is based on "merit" alone? That football teams are all coached by former Heisman Winners? That all generals have Medals of Honor? It's not even worth debating Eich specifically with the OP; his view of the world is astonishingly naive.

</comment><comment><USER28> Will we ever stop conflating _opinions_ with _competency_ , in general? A person can just as well be a full-blown racist or xenophobe and at the same time a very competent leader. The only thing you show when pushing someone down from a leadership position because of some of his opinions is that "that was not a real leadership position, we just needed a puppet good for PR".

Human beings are not things you can take "as whole". A person can be total asshole in one aspect and a great guy in another aspect. You need to see people as "bags of ideas that happen to coexist in a mind and body" and the concept of "individual" as mostly an illusion, and look for the bags with the most good pieces, even if they can have some poisoned beans in them. And it's the same thing for leaders. If you look for an "overall great human being with no great flaws in any aspects" you can only get: (a) a mediocre person that is not "too bad" in any way but also not exceptionally good in any way or (b) a highly skilled liar and manipulator, most likely a very advanced psychopath, that can perfectly hide all his flaws and appear "overall an awesome guy". Oh wait, I've just described 99% of the world's leaders...

Another thing you get by going this way is that you end up with the people really "calling the shots" staying in the shadows, leading through puppets they manipulate and being completely unaccountable.

</comment><comment><USER29> We're tolerant as long as we share the same views. The irony in tolerance in this case is unreal.

<comment><USER16> But what's the point of tolerance if you just blindly accept any view, no matter how controversial or offensive, without challenging it? I see nothing wrong with the position of "everyone is entitled to air any opinion whatsoever, so long as anyone else is entitled to challenge them". No-one, as far as I know, has attacked Eich, threatened him, etc. they've just expressed concern about his views, which everyone is perfectly entitled to do.

<comment><USER30> "But what's the point of tolerance if you just blindly accept any view"

 _khm_ acceptance is acceptance, and tolerance is tolerance. You do not accept it, you tolerate it. Not the same thing.

<comment><USER16> I agree entirely - concur and accept or disagree, tolerate, and challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Some CEOs have donated to a political campaign of questionable merit on one occasion in the past.

Some CEOs kill elephants for fun.

And there are many shades of gray in between.

I'm not sure exactly where the threshold for "This guy needs to get lost" is, but I'm pretty sure the cutoff is somewhere _between_ the two cases I just alluded to, rather than to one side of both.

Sure, Mr. Eich could try to fire gay employees (if that's legal, which I doubt), but he could just as well help make Mozilla an even brighter beacon of free speech than it already is, indirectly helping the LGBT community and thereby atoning for whatever sins he might have once committed against it. What matters is that the "community" (or some subset of it) didn't even give him a chance to demonstrate, through actual decisions, which path he will choose and how he will try to strike a balance between his personal beliefs and the needs of the community. I guess we were too impatient -- or more likely, too lazy -- to wait for some actually relevant evidence upon which to base a solid opinion.

What's next? Boycott FOSS products whose authors are found to be religious? DDoS attacks on companies that donated to Romney's campaign? By the way, is anyone still using ReiserFS?

<comment><USER32> > Sure, he could try to fire gay employees (if that's legal, which I doubt)

It is legal in 29 states to fire someone for their sexual preference.*

*Source [http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/news/2012/10/18/...](http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/news/2012/10/18/41907/infographic-gay-and-transgender-workers-lack-comprehensive-workplace-protections/)

<comment><USER31> AFAIK Mozilla is based in Mountain View, California, where (according to your infographic) it is indeed illegal to fire someone for their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Not sure if that also applies to remote workers who live in other states, though.

<comment><USER32> Too true, that.

However, I live in the midwest (Indiana) where we do not have similar protections over things as basic as sexual identity. It really is that backwards here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is bullshit. I am not discriminating him. I am punishing him with the power I have (my freedom to not use the products of his company) to punish his discriminating point of view. The same way he has the right to use his money to help a discriminating law go ahead, I have the right not to use his products and criticize his opinions.

</comment><comment><USER34> The blog posts, comments, and tweets aren't really what provided the direct pressure for him to resign.

Far more likely that corporate partners, donors, etc. called the remaining board members or anyone else of any influence and told them that the money would dry up if this problem didn't go away.

I find it interesting that the fact of his donation came up in 2012 when he was CTO of Mozilla (the organization he co-founded). This didn't become an issue in 2014 organically -- again I think it's far more likely that someone had it out for Eich, and saw their best opportunity to revive a two year old issue and get rid of him when he became CEO.

<comment><USER26> Or it's just that people are ok with CTOs having unpopular dodgy opinions (because the power and influence of that position is limited) but that becomes a -much- bigger problem when they move to being the CEO (figurehead of the company, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm not sorry. He can disagree with other people and make decisions about his own life, but once he gives money to a cause that is working to restrict the basic rights and freedoms of others he's crossed the line.

I'm not sorry one bit.

<comment><USER36> All CEOs that [don't|] support abortion should be fired then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> We do not need to be tolerant of intolerance.

<comment><USER38> To not be tolerant of intolerance is to be more intolerant than any religious fundamentalist or extremist.

<comment><USER37> Oh right, I forgot how religious fundamentalists and extremists are universally praised for their ability to accept contradictory views and lifestyles! What a powerful argument!

<comment><USER38> I wasn't implying that they were tolerant. Only that intolerance of intolerance, as it were, is one of the most extreme form on intolerance around. Taken to its extreme, it is intolerant of a very large swath of human thought. Religious fundies are mostly just intolerant of things contradicting their own religion, not stuff that's irrelevant to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Please don't include me in that "we".

<comment><USER40> o/

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> We failed him? How overwrought can you get?

He wasn't incarcerated, executed, sued, or tried for a crime. He lost his job. As we're all fond of implying here, there's no right to employment, let alone the right to be a CEO.

Don't hide behind "meritocracy" and "tolerance" to defend morally repugnant ideals. You demean those words and yourself. You reveal your lack of understanding of what an open and free society means when it comes to the more vulnerable, less privileged members of same.

<comment><USER42> > He lost his job.

He quit his job. It may be that he was forced to quit to avoid being fired, but that's not at all clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Sigh. You are talking about the guy who created JavaSCript. Show no mercy.

</comment><comment><USER44> In a way we did..

If we carry it to its logical conclusion that the Marriage License is free from religion than by that concept a Muslim living in the US should be able to Marry multiple wives and so should Mormons..

<comment><USER45> There are people fighting for those rights as well. And I don't think they're insane (as you seem to imply). As long as it's clearly agreed upon between consenting adults, it's not so ridiculous. Perhaps the logistics of that are more complicated, but should they be denied that if they really want it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> We should not be tolerant of intolerance.

<comment><USER47> Building a moral framework atop a paradox seems like poor logic to build upon.

Here's a related point: All governments rely on the persecution of groups (almost always minorities) for their continued power. Government would cease to exist were it not persecuting people.

You're simply quibbling with Eich over who gets persecuted (and more basically about who's morals are superior).

Keep in mind that his "intolerant action" was only intolerant if the state dictating personal morality is good (I would note that things like murder are uni-directional intra-personal actions and thus quite different).

I think a better answer is to abolish government-dictated marriage and allow people free reign in their private lives as this satisfies both the gay community and the anti-gay community while also solving the issues of less- vocal groups (eg. polygamists). In fact the general principle of government staying out of citizen's private lives solves a whole host of issues.

<comment><USER46> Maybe I didn't say this in the right way. What I'm really saying is that I will 'tolerate' or accept any view point as being fine, and entirely a persons right to hold, unless they are holding one that is actively intolerant to others. I don't think part of being tolerant is to sit back while others are abused by those who don't share our views.

It's his personal right to hold his belief, but once he put that into action by making the donation, or if he had voiced his views publicly, that now means we have a duty to hold him accountable, rather than sit back and let him do what he wants. In this case, I think demanding Eich not lead Mozilla because of his views is an appropriate way to hold him accountable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Prop 8 pass? I mean, didn't the majority of California voters vote in favor of Prop 8? It was only struck down after by the courts.

Seems like there's a lot of people who should be forced to resign from their jobs over this. Not just one.

</comment><comment><USER49> It's a sad day when homophobia is not a valid reason for so much people to fire a representative of your company.

<comment><USER50> A majority voted the same way as him. The president held the same views. But you're singling him out as homophobic??

<comment><USER51> This line of thinking is juvenile. He was being singled out as the CEO of Mozilla.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This article hits my two pet peeves.

Anyone who believes a person's rights should extend beyond the point at which they infringe on the rights of others is not worth listening to.

Also, please don't use the term 'meritocracy'. Ever. Are you referring to the idea of rubber stamping people for positions of power based on their parents ability to pay for for the most expensive university courses and degrees? No, I didn't think so.

<comment><USER36> > _Anyone who believes a person 's rights should extend beyond the point at > which they infringe on the rights of others is not worth listening to._ //

Lets suppose I believe the exact opposite. Doesn't your claim then extend beyond you and infringe on my rights.

Or better yet let us suppose that a society has a right _en masse_ , for example for taxes to be used to aid child-rearing. That could infringe on your conception of personal rights too.

As to meritocracy - you appear to confuse the term with plutocracy. Now it's true that those from privileged families may be better able to perform certain tasks, but to refuse to allow them to perform those tasks simply because their families are rich, isn't that rather ridiculous? Meritocracy is quite the opposite, if you can perform the task to a sufficient degree is the only measure; whether you have been to an expensive university or not is irrelevant to the meritocrat.

<comment><USER52> No I am not confusing the word at all. A meritocracy is a society built on the idea that one must (quite literally) gain a 'merit' before being considered for some role. This is open to obvious abuse - the ones that get into power can decide how one can gain the merit. In the US, it has been decided that one must pay for it.

I repeat: you have _completely_ misunderstood the definition of the word 'meritocracy'. The condition is not 'can you perform the task' but 'do you have the requisite (and very literal) merit (passed an exam, for example.)

Don't worry though - a lot of people make this mistake.

<comment><USER36> Couple of dictionary definitions for you [the first 2 on dictionary.com]:

"mer·i·toc·ra·cy [mer-i-tok-ruh-see] Show IPA noun, plural mer·i·toc·ra·cies. 1\. an elite group of people whose progress is based on ability and talent rather than on class privilege or wealth."

"meritocracy (ˌmɛrɪˈtɒkrəsɪ) — n , pl -cies 1\. rule by persons chosen not because of birth or wealth, but for their superior talents or intellect"

You appear to be trolling me.

<comment><USER52> I am not trolling you. The word has been misused so much that it has now been incorrectly incorporated into dictionaries.

See this article written by the man who coined the common usage of the term, bemoaning its now misuse:

[http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment)

"With an amazing battery of certificates and degrees at its disposal, education has put its seal of approval on a minority, and its seal of disapproval on the many who fail to shine from the time they are relegated to the bottom streams at the age of seven or before."

So on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Basic humanity, that's what we do.

</comment><comment> Jean-Philipe I accidentally upvoted this post. Can I undo my vote?</comment>


DDoS attack on GitHub has stopped? Status is green again. - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com/?v=1

<comment><USER2> [https://github.com/greatfire](https://github.com/greatfire) and [https://github.com/cn-nytimes](https://github.com/cn-nytimes) have both returned to normal as well.

<comment><USER3> Yea I can't seem to get to those pages either.

Update: its working now, but it was definitely not working earlier.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's working from my end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm also unable to access the two repos that were apparently the target of the PRC's ire: [https://github.com/cn-nytimes](https://github.com/cn-nytimes) and [https://github.com/greatfire](https://github.com/greatfire)

Is this simply a temporary precautionary measure because of the initial JS DDOS, or has GitHub permanently taken those two repos down?

If it's the latter, then I'm really disappointed and it would seem the PRC was able to get what it wanted.

<comment><USER5> Interestingly, GitHub seem's to be allowing logged-in users to access those pages, but using a incongnito tab shows unicorns. I'm guessing they've just disabled access for unauthenticated requests.

<comment><USER6> Aha, you're right! Same behavior for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://twitter.com/githubstatus/status/582862783827591168](https://twitter.com/githubstatus/status/582862783827591168)

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe...but it was green a couple of times on March 27 as well. Time will tell.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think it's more they're no longer worried about it evolving any more.

<comment><USER10> They're still hiding behind Prolexic/Akamai. I suspect the attacker is waiting for them to drop that protection.

From a state sponsored attacker I would have expected to see a BGP attack..

<comment><USER11> A BGP attack would be a whole new level of "This is war", probably with a bit more consequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anybody have any wider context regarding this attack? Is it the first time a massive DDoS like that was mitigated, with just minor disruptions to the victim?

<comment><USER13> Not by a long-shot; this was reported as a big deal (and I'd love to have more insight and data available), but this kind of thing has been going on for many years.

Ask your local DNS admin for some war stories. :-)

<comment><USER14> It also gained notoriety because it seemed like an attempt by a Chinese actor (possibly the PRC) to force Github to take down two repositories that helped to circumvent the Great Firewall.

Github itself has weathered DDoS attacks before, but I'm not sure how different this attack was in scale.

<comment><USER15> [https://github.com/blog/1981-large-scale-ddos-attack-on- gith...](https://github.com/blog/1981-large-scale-ddos-attack-on-github-com) explicitly states that "We are currently experiencing the largest DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack in github.com's history".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Welcome to NICA OS, My Personal Web Operating System - <AUTHOR> http://nicolacastellani.devplaygrounds.org <comment><USER2> Blog post: "I'm creating an entire web OS as my personal website for 2021"

[https://dev.to/nicolalc/i-m-creating-an-entire-web-os-as- my-...](https://dev.to/nicolalc/i-m-creating-an-entire-web-os-as-my-personal- website-for-2021-hc4)</comment>


Ruby on Rails Tutorial Chapter 9 (Updating, showing, and deleting users) is out - <AUTHOR> http://www.railstutorial.org/chapters/updating-showing-and-deleting-users#top

<comment><USER2> Great job! I like the chapter 2 very much.The explanation to git/github and deploying it to Heroku is great. What I would like to see are: 1\. Explanation to the main concepts of dynamic web application. Something like this:<http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/basics> 2\. Make the example to a considerable complexity. And show it at the very beginning.

I consider it a tutorial on how to develop a web app more than a rails tutorial.

<comment><AUTHOR> A new chapter consisting of a high-level overview of webapp development is in the works.

 _I consider it a tutorial on how to develop a web app more than a rails tutorial._

I consider this a compliment. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Woops.. I read this as "Updating, showing, and deleting users is out." I was thinking, "what the heck did they replace them with?

<comment><AUTHOR> Originally the chapter title was in quotes, but the link title was 81 characters long, and HN has an 80-character maximum. I axed the quote marks; maybe I should have axed "is out" instead. :-)

<comment><USER3> I think my brain connected the wrong dots because I saw a blurb about the Rails 3.0 2nd beta being released today :)</comment></comment></comment>


IPv4 Address Run Out: Are You Ready For The Big Crunch? Of Drama Queens? - <AUTHOR> http://adamman71.blogspot.com/2010/05/ipv4-address-run-out-are-you-ready-for.html

<comment><USER2> > _Remember the Y2K bug? All computers would have to be reprogrammed to make > them 'year 2000' compliant? We would run out of time?_

Yes. I remember that not much happened to the standard customer. I also remember the crazy sums spent on upgrades of both software and hardware. Illegal number of overtime hours taken. Key people spending the night on site just in case. Some errors were corrected later, even though customers never heard of them. Many problems were avoided exactly because of that preparation.

Now, for a change look at predictions based on current usage patterns: <http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html> \- just above a year left unless reserved ranges are given away. Sure - a typical user has 0 or 1 address. But IT companies deal in at least /24s. I'm using at least 20 or so addresses (16 at home) for own devices. And there are some people who will keep their x.y/16 just in case they need to expand and request more for current needs. Noone's going to tidy up now. It's better for companies to over-allocate and request even more now, so that in a year there's some space for scaling down.

</comment><comment><USER3> JVestry,

1\. You can't count IPs and internet users, and conclude 2 IPs per user. That betrays a vast misunderstanding of the nature of the internet.

2\. Unless you have a very odd ISP, you and all of your neighbors are using public IP addresses. There are serious technical and performance challenges involved when ISPs use NAT to hide their customers from the internet. It breaks a great number of services that users expect to just work. In short, NAT is not a magical de-multiplier.

3\. The authority that gives out IP addresses already forces companies to justify their use. There is waste, but not so much that this is a problem we can simply "manage" away.

4\. There are rules against selling IP address allocations. So your "free market will fix it" argument is dead in the water.

5\. Most routers can "publish" an IPv4 and IPv6 address? What the hell does that even mean? That's garbage nonsense talk.

In conclusion, your blog post is way off the reservation. Factually incorrect, complete conjecture, and just plain made-up gobbledeygook. It's obvious that absolutely no research was done before publishing this. For being so offensively wrong and poorly written, I'm flagging this submission.</comment>


Amazon's Next-Day Delivery System Has Brought Chaos to America's Streets - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/amazon-next-day-delivery-deaths <comment><USER2> The efficiency and environmental impact from delivering a single $5 item in a large cardboard box, possibly multiple times a day, several days a week via gig economy couriers is disgusting. I literally cannot leave my apartment complex without driving around Amazon vans parked in the middle of the street every single day.

At a minimum, without even shipping more items, the result of gig couriers vs. fedex/ups is 2.7x the number of vehicles on the road (due to size difference).

It also gets around legal liability costs, since you can just create and destroy hundreds of gig courier corporations around the country when issues arise from "pushing the envelope" in terms of safety and policy.

Can you imagine the world we would live in if 90% of current retailers went to the Amazon ecommerce + gig courier model? Our infrastructure (primarily roads) would immediately fail.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't it make it better? It seems far more efficient to have 1 car drive an optimal route to 500 houses delivering items than have 500 cars all drive to 1 store to pick up their items.

<comment><USER4> The right answer is to do what many other cities across the world do, have stores close to where people live so they don't have to drive those 500 cars.

<comment><USER5> Even in Europe with public transport to the stores, I would bet delivery is many times more efficient.

The only question is whether people buy so much more due to convenience that the maybe 50x efficiency gain gets offset by 50x more items ordered. But I don't think that's the case.

<comment><USER6> Would be interesting to know the numbers. It's a bit like IKEA, their furniture requires less energy to produce and ship but does the resulting cheapness cause people to buy significantly more?

I don't _think_ I buy significantly more stuff than I otherwise would just because it's convenient from Amazon, but perhaps I do.

<comment><USER7> Furniture is large; you can't buy significantly more sofas and closets. It may be cheap but still not throwaway cheap.

Small items easily available via Amazon are much easier to hoard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >…[Amazon] dictates almost every aspect of that operation, down to what drivers wear, what vans they use, what routes they follow, and how many packages they must deliver each day.

>Amazon says its role is to lend entrepreneurs a hand as they build small businesses and not to control their companies, equipment, or labor force. It said it does not make personnel decisions for them, and while it offers them the opportunity to lease vans, purchase insurance, and manage payroll through its preferred programs, they are free to use whichever vendors they choose.

That sounds alot to me like the relationship that Uber/Lyft/Instacart/etc. have with their drivers, but at the business level.

That being said, I don't think it's too unique. For example, if you take a close look at a FedEx Ground delivery van (not FedEx Express, FedEx Ground), there'll be a note that the vehicle is actually being operated by a separate company, under contract to FedEx. Comcast, AT&T, et al also use contractors for end-user work; you'll see their vehicles have some sort of company logo, but also some text like "under contract" or "installers for".

So I'm genuinely curious, especially when thinking about FedEx Ground, how is Amazon different here?

<comment><USER9> >So I'm genuinely curious, especially when thinking about FedEx Ground, how is Amazon different here?

They're an entire step down market, they run cheaper crappier trucks with cheaper and crappier drivers. This means they can offer cheaper prices but the downside is they make mistakes more and are generally less professional.

It's like the difference between the low class landscaper who shows up in a 30yo truck and lets loose half a dozen felons with week whackers in the industrial park and the high class landscaper who shows up in the kind of truck that won't make the secretary clutch her pearls with a crew who've only been arrested for misdemeanors to cut the grass outside your office.

They both do the same job. One of them does it cheaply. The other looks professional doing it and is probably more consistent and actually has something you can sue them for if they really F up. Everyone says they prefer the latter one but the former isn't lacking for business.

(Yes, I'm stereotyping here but you get the picture.)

<comment><USER10> [Citation Required]

<comment><USER9> Source: Been a landscaper. I'm exaggerating about the ubiquity of criminal records but not by as much as most people here want to think I am.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Workers without protection get squeezed by big corporate giants because of a race to the bottom, what a surprise ...

</comment><comment><USER12> I was an amazon fresh subscriber but switched to Safeway delivery. Prices are lower, better quality, way more choice. Amazon simply didn't have what I wanted. Also, if I order in a 4 hour block, delivery is free, (1 hour is 15 bux). so I picked 5-9pm, after work, free delivery, and I don't have to go out.

And for groceries in general, walmart delivery on items like cangoods can be a big difference. Soups can be a dollar more on amazon. Jet.com (now owned by walmart) is free shipping of you fill out a box, i find spices cheaper on jet, but can goods can be hit or miss.

Amazon is handy, but its far from cheapest on many things.

<comment><USER8> Same here, although delivery in a 4-hour block costs around $2 or so for me (I think the cost goes to zero if I order like $150 or more of stuff). But it is worth it.

I (intentionally) don't have a car, and I like buying certain staples (like toilet paper and detergent) in bulk, so having Safeway do the delivery is great. They use their recyclable plastic bags, which I can either reuse, or return to the driver (though that doesn't refund the ~¢2 bag feee); those bags are put into plastic bins (the kind you see when doing a corporate move), which are then put on a cart (my building has an elevator).

So yeah, for scheduled stuff, Safeway delivery is vastly preferable to Amazon (or even Instacart).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the physical world version of internet companies wiping their hands clean of any negative externalities they create by hiding behind Section 230.

</comment><comment><USER14> How long can Amazon maintain the charade? If you look at their Net Operating Profits, they are not doing so hot, and without AWS, they are a really big startup.

The competition is catching up; especially Walmart, and Target is the gold standard in omnichannel retail now. How long can Amazon's cloud business subsidize their retail ambitions?

<comment><USER15> This comes up often. Amazon profits are "small" because they reinvest into growth. It's a trillion-dollar corporation operating in multiple sectors with massive free cash flow. They're doing just fine and AWS only adds to their margin.

I suggest you read this for more details: [https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/21/20826405/amazons- profit...](https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/21/20826405/amazons-profits- revenue-free-cash-flow-explained-charts)

<comment><USER14> I was referring to net operating profits based only on their ecommerce operations. Amazon has been selling the 'reinvest' argument for decades, but it would not be solvent without AWS. In fact your link kinda agrees:

>All these investments have led to lines of businesses like AWS cloud computing and advertising that are relatively much more profitable than its e-commerce segment.

I do not claim that Amazon has negative cash flow, and I do not know why you would assume I claimed that.

The growth argument is going to get very weak eventually, because Amazon face resurgent competition at home, and regulatory hurdles & Alibaba abroad. Amazon is riding high on investor confidence, they have very little actually space for growth.

<comment><USER15> Amazon is perfectly profitable. AWS being more profitable does not make the ecommerce unprofitable. Also profit is a financial formula derived from actual operating costs and margins.

Free cash flow has nothing to do with positive or negative cash flow, it is the payment cycle of AR vs AP that gives them a very big buffer to work with. Also you can't claim that they have very little space for growth and then discount the very subsidiary that's growing fastest.

Reinvestment isn't some made up argument, the company has been taking gross profits and reinvesting into expansion for decades. It's what they do best and it's crystal clear in the financial performance. Claiming that Amazon is insolvent (do you know what that means?) except for a single subsidiary is ridiculous and seems to indicate a failure in understanding the business or accounting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't live in the US so I have a few questions about this. As far as I know there exists some labour laws in the US? And if so, how is it enforced? Here in Norway we have something called "Arbeidstilsynet", a labour inspection office, that travel around to companies and go through routines, salaries and HMS to make sure it's ok and all there are no severe breaches of the labour law.

Being forced to not take a bathroom break seems like it would break a lot of laws, not just labour laws.

<comment><USER17> > As far as I know there exists some labour laws in the US?

There are very few. Research how few protections a US "at will employee" has and then know that workers considered to be "contractors" have even fewer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's a link to the same submission 3 days ago. Looks like it was flagged / killed.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20845763](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20845763)

</comment><comment><USER19> Too many delivery trucks up and down my street every day, mainly from amazon, is the reason I canceled prime, and order much less frequently from amazon. I cannot overstate how annoying, this has become and absolute epidemic!

<comment><USER18> Is this an argument against Amazon Prime specifically? Or by delivery trucks, do you mean regular Fedex / UPS trucks delivering for other ecommerce companies too?

<comment><USER19> Well Amazon deliveries are particularly inconsiderate -- loud music, driving too fast, and the sheer amount. But it really is the totality of all the trucks (and cars now too). I think it is actually very inefficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not going to say Amazon in the UK are some paragon of virtue, but this article does seem to make it sound much, much worse in the US. While I do see plenty of delivery vans (for the likes of DPD, UPS as well), they certainly don't clog up the streets. Is it a lot worse in places like London?

<comment><USER20> I live in London (Northern Line, Zone 2) and anecdotally I don't think it's that much worse. I'm sure they're under some pressure, but Amazon or Hermes couriers never seem to drive or park unusually recklessly, at least in my area. They'll usually always pull into a side road to make deliveries if they can.

Yesterday, I saw one Amazon delivery courier walk around my neighbourhood housing estate for a whole 20 minutes looking to drop off one package. He didn't _look_ panicked, if that says anything. Maybe it helps that London is a bit denser than the average American suburb?

<comment><USER6> That sounds very much how things are here in Bath. Amazon people don't seem excessively busy, and manage to park without killing anyone, which is relatively impressive as parking round here is a nightmate at the best of times.

I'm increasingly convinced that there's an effect of how US stories are reported and then spread that amplifies negativities, possibly to do with the size of population with a common language, it's easy to come up with enough anedotes to make something seem like a big problem. The spate of vaping related issues is a good example. The number of cases is tiny as a proportion of vapers, but sounds big when talked about in absolute numbes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Amazon should offer a discount if you pool your purchases over a week or so.

<comment><USER22> They offer $1 digital credits if you say "no rush shipping", which is equivalent to a $1 discount/item that you are willing to have shipped together with other items that they'll ship to you anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Part of the problem is also "Christmas" and the deadline that imposes on people who observe and celebrate it.

<comment><USER24> I absolutely despise the planet-destroying, finance-wrecking consumerism one of my faith's most important holy days has become an excuse for in my home country (USA), and increasingly my adopted country (Germany). Celebration is one thing; wretched material excess is quite another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Anything I order on Amazon is super saver shipping. I don't waste my money on Prime, and packages come whenever they do. Sometimes it's nearly next day, sometimes it takes a week. Whenever it happens to be convenient and efficient for them to show up with it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Well at least drones will be an improvement. I hope.

<comment><USER25> Things that fly, almost by definition, are inherently less energy efficient than things that roll on the ground.

<comment><USER27> That's true but they can take (nearly) straight paths to their destination without stopping and idling, and are smaller and lighter.

<comment><USER25> Smaller and lighter, yes, but with _drastically_ less carrying capacity. Your delivery van can pack over a hundred packages on a trip. Your delivery drone will probably carry one or two. So it's going to make a hundred more trips to replicate the same workload. Van might stop twenty times on the same block, drone has to return to the warehouse between each dropoff.

And engine idling is not a huge deal compared to the amount of thrust that must be expended constantly to keep a drone in the air (along with it's payload).

You'll gain a little on pathing straighter and then lose everything on upward thrust and repeat trips.

Bear in mind, the most efficient way to freight things: Trains. Trains are bigger and heavier, but they are the most efficient at moving things from one place to another.

The benefit you get from a drone potentially is package delivery in the time it takes to order a pizza, because it's automated direct shipping of one item at a time. But drones do not, in any way, offer the promise of fuel efficiency.

<comment><USER28> > Bear in mind, the most efficient way to freight things: Trains.

I think you just described the potential usefulness of drones in terms of energy used for a delivery. A drone only has to carry itself and it's package - compared to a car that has to carry it's weight, the driver's weight, the packages in the vehicle, etc.

I think it boils down to this: How many/weight of items being delivered to energy efficiency is on a curve. Sure trains are the most efficient method of transporting goods, but there's a reason a train doesn't deliver our packages to our doors. Building such an infrastructure would be insane.

That's why current delivery is tiered to the quantity/weight of the goods you're shipping.

I have a feeling drones will be more efficient for small packages, but larger ones will still be best by car.

<comment><USER25> A drone only has to carry itself and it's package, but it has to carry it in a vertical direction, and maintain that (because things in the air without thrust tend to fall back down to the ground, and that's bad). Meanwhile, a car only has to push itself in a horizontal direction around the ground.

As you say, the problem with trains isn't efficiency, it's infrastructure for last mile to our doors. However, we already have that for vans: Roads and driveways to our door are already built.

If I need a cell phone delivered to my front door, which is going to be more efficient: The van that already is delivering a larger box two doors down dropping it off, or a separate trip from the warehouse to my house from effectively, a small aircraft?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What are the authors or the publications' connections to the Teamsters union to write this UPS puff-piece/AMZN hitpiece?

All logistics companies have accidents.

Edit: Oh right. [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/business/media/buzzfeed-n...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/business/media/buzzfeed- news-union-walkout.html)

<comment><USER30> First, your argument is an ad hominem attack. Do you have specific issues with the details cited? If so, then make an argument against those.

Second, even if the reporters are unionized, the managers, _who are the ones who greenlight stories, especially ones that involve a yearlong investigation_ , certainly are not.

Third, of course all logistics companies have accidents. Maybe you failed to read the article because it spent plenty of time detailing the differences between UPS and these 3PL companies.

<comment><USER29> I think UPS does a much better job than the competition. I hate most 3PL logistics companies. LaserShip comes to mind.

That said, the Teamsters Union specifically has been putting a ton of money into bad PR for Amazon.

They've directly funded staged protests at AWS Summits in NY the last few years. They are a powerful union with deep pockets and connections.

Also with the economic realities of journalism in this era, many news articles are literally PR pieces written and provided to journalists for publication. Most of this is undisclosed.

I think it's perfectly valid to call out what this article looks like and at least ask questions, as there are folks out there with more resources than I have to follow up on this. It isn't an attack, because I didn't make a statement -- I asked a question.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: List Your ICO/STO/IEO. Fast and Efficient - <AUTHOR> https://www.icogazelle.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Get your ICO/STO/IEO listed on the most popular ICO/STO/IEO Listing Sites. We can add significant value to your ICO/STO/IEO marketing efforts, saving you both time and money. With completion of a single online form, ICO Gazelle allows companies to simultaneously list their ICO/STO/IEO on up to 200 of the most-visited listing websites. We have special partnerships with the sites such as CryptoCompare, Coingecko, ICOrating, ICOmarks and many more industry leaders. On average you will save 20 - 30% on the listing fees these sites normally charge for regular and premium advertising services. By deciding to buy one of our packages you can thus save your company time, and thousands of dollars on listing fees alone.</comment>


Open Source android game using LigGDX Framework – made within a week - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/harshit211997/Hitball <comment><USER2> I started playing it a few moments ago, hard to get along but super addictive ! :-D

<comment><USER3> I agree!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Loved it !</comment>


9 compelling reasons not to raise VC money for your startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/agorapulse-stories/9-compelling-reasons-not-to-raise-vc-money-for-your-startup-63b006188a92 <comment><USER2> All excellent interesting points and I would like to add:

Regarding #2: You can always get advice from accelerators and IT hubs. Here in Toronto I am part of MarsDD and the free advisors I get are par excellence.

#4 is the most important quote: Build a good business that will generate revenue. VCs should not be the end game and unfortunately most of the startups give up as soon as they fail to convince VCs. Reminds me of the Bill Gates quote that he is not worried about stock price but is focused on building a good business.

Also interesting the VC he is mentioning about , Point Nine Capital, cancelled our meeting because they "do not invest in India" although their website ([http://www.pointninecap.com/](http://www.pointninecap.com/)) tag line is "We're based in Berlin, but we invest all over the world. ". Besides I am neither an Indian citizen nor is my company in India

These are the kind of startups I would like to see. Not "Disrupting AI Blockchain VR Occulus global logistics"</comment>


Google Cloud CEO says that he's borrowing from the Oracle playbook - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.de/google-cloud-ceo-thomas-kurian-oracle-strategies-2019-4 <comment><USER3> It sounds like he's mostly taking the "good bits" – scaling the sales teams to be closer to those of competitors, and making the product offering more compelling for enterprise customers.

As a Google Cloud customer, I really hope that he doesn't take the "bad bits" – raising prices, unnecessary lock-in, slow moving technology, litigation. As an engineer in a team where engineers lead decisions like which cloud provider to use, rather than some exec on the golf course, I hope they keep their appeal to those customers who don't want to play the enterprise sales game.

<comment><USER4> Can you elaborate on what it takes to "make the product offering more compelling for enterprise customers"? Is it a marketing exercise?

<comment><USER5> No. Their enterprise support is not great, they happily leave bugs in production unless you complain loud enough, their user management and security policies don't really scale to large orgs. It's really not a great experience as an enterprise compared to other clouds, they don't seem to really care about you

<comment><USER3> > their user management and security policies don't really scale to large orgs

Really? This is interesting. I am not working in a large org, but all of the issues we've had with their user management have essentially come down to it being designed for companies much larger than we are, with much more complex security requirements.

Can you elaborate on what doesn't scale? What sort of requirements are they not meeting? Is it _targeting_ large orgs and getting it wrong, or is it targeting too-small orgs in your opinion?

<comment><USER5> just a couple examples:

the default service account is a project editor, which is insanely over- privileged, yet everything tries to use it, and all the demos. Appengine only supports one service account for all apps, even if you have multiple apps, also Editor. similar things in gke.

Their pre-defined roles are a mess, and not consistent across services. Theres a role called 'dataflow admin' defined as the 'minimal permissions to run a job' which isn't what id call admin.

So if you try to use custom roles instead, cause the predefined roles are crazy, they will make breaking changes to permissions(literally did this last week with no notice).

Support access doesnt use IAM and only supports users, not groups, and no api - you have to go to a web form and add each user individually. good luck if you have more than a couple users, and have fun trying to keep that in sync.

The fact that its tied to gsuite is a problem as well, a gsuite admin is also a gcp admin, which is generally owned by different orgs(IT vs dev).

it seems like every month we have a new breaking change, or price change(maps is biting us constantly for some reason)

ultimately what it comes down to is weve been burned enough that we dont trust google

<comment><USER3> Thanks, lots of good details, this does make sense.

We have hit a few of these. I hadn't even thought about the GSuite/GCP crossover – that's kind of good for us, but yeah in a larger company I guess they would be totally different orgs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was very surprised Diane Greene was pushed out and then Google brought in an exec from Oracle of all places. No CIO wants to hear a vendor is following the Oracle playbook which is basically: hire really aggressive sales people who overpromise and win deals at any cost, and then, when customers are locked in, make them pay through the nose for it.

<comment><USER7> She was pushed out for her support of the DOD deal. Once she made this "mistake in judgement" the writing was on the wall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Kurian estimated to the Journal that Google Cloud's sales team is only between one-tenth and one-fifteenth the size of the sales teams at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. But he's planning to ramp up this tiny fraction, with goals of making Google Cloud's sales teams half the size of its peers"

That's a small sales force. You can build solid products, but you've got to have a sales force to go with it. Amazon had advantages as the first big mover in the cloud market. If you're coming in later, you've _got_ to be able to sell.

<comment><USER9> I can say that Google is never even at the table for large-scale cloud migration strategies (though, to be fair, neither is Oracle). But their offerings also lack Amazon's powerful first-mover advantage or Microsoft's ecosystem and developer reach. Beyond that it's not evident that Google knows how to /support/ enterprise customers, let alone sell to them. It's going to take more than adding a bunch of enterprise sales teams for them to make GCP a serious contender.

<comment><USER10> To make matters worse, Larry Page has no demonstrated skill (expertise, history, success, et al) when it comes to competing in enterprise. He has no idea what to do. If he did, they wouldn't be where they are now in cloud. People widely dislike Ellison for understandable reasons, and yet he's an animal at doing all the things you have to to win in enterprise. From sales to the conferences to the non-stop public touting and everything in-between. Page isn't even in the same galaxy as Ellison when it comes to understanding how to fight it out in enterprise. Further to that point, he simply has no personal interest in it, clearly. There's nobody at the top in Google that knows how to compete in that arena. Amazon and Microsoft will continue to perpetually eat their lunch accordingly. Bezos personally promoted AWS in the early days, he knew the opportunity and was willing to work to capture it. Even Ballmer for all his faults as a tech CEO, coming from a sales background - <USER2> understanding enterprise well - he understood and was fine with Microsoft having to roll up its sleeves to compete in pursuit of the cloud opportunity. The rolling Google Cloud disaster starts at the very top.

<comment><USER9> That's an excellent point — I can name multiple cases when Ellison personally sold $x00mm deals to CEOs at (quite literally) baseball games, and Nadella has made personal pitches for Azure for major opportunities, but are Page/Brin/Pichai going to do c-suite grip and grins? Doesn't seem like their strong suit, and it would require a strategic-level bet on enterprise that I just don't think they're willing to make, given the fact that adtech is their major cash cow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can think of no worse way to entice technologists to flock to your cloud platform than to announce that you're "borrowing from the Oracle playbook"...

<comment><USER12> This is sensationalist. Reading the article, it seems like he's going to invest much more in an aggressive sales team, which they desperately need.

Google Cloud sucks at enterprise sales. By all objective measures, Oracle absolutely owns this part. It's not as black and white as they need to _become_ Oracle in order to learn some things from them.

As someone who consults with a lot of enterprises and helps them with their cloud architecture, I can see first hand that the market share of Google Cloud there is about 0. It's only internal, toy projects and nothing critical, because they already have AWS and Azure and that's that.

Even with all their technological excellence, it doesn't matter. That strategy failed, and they're losing.

I'm willing to wait and see how a sales-centric strategy works out.

<comment><USER13> I agree with you. Google needs to learn the good parts from Oracle.

Enterprise adoption != developer adoption.

That's why Google desperately needs a strong sales team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Kurian plans to have Google Cloud ... develop new technology that allows > programmers to develop applications that run on all three clouds_

As a heavy AWS user, this part actually excites me. Avoiding vendor-lock-in is something I value highly. I would also be a lot more willing to try GCP if I didn't have to invest effort into building a GCP-specific stack. This would also be a huge win for all cloud customers by making the marketplace more competitive.

<comment><USER12> The biggest AWS lock-in for enterprises is IAM, though. Will be interesting to see how they are planning to pull that off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't help myself being sarcastic - to me it looks like Google doesn't really want others to use their great cloud/ML tech, keeping that advantage to themselves, but are pressured by stock market/board etc. so they have to offer it somehow. So the best strategy would be to hire people with deeply dysfunctional mindset acting as repellents of decision makers to keep that unit perpetually underwhelming.

</comment><comment><USER16> Google and Google Cloud culture is ingrained and very specific. Was in a meeting to move >$10 mill/year in spend over and the account director literally walked out for an hour. The entire process was just insane and ultimately GCP changed negotiated terms at the last minute and lost the business. I would be very careful about trusting them as a sole cloud provider.

</comment><comment><USER17> I work for a FTSE 100 company and we recently completed a POC on GCP.

The sales guy was/is pushy but tbh the tech is very prescriptive on how things are done, it's the Google way or it doesn't work. That is not how enterprise works, you need to adapt to each customer.

We have lots of AWS and plan on using it more, we might be doing it sub optimally but it works.

<comment><USER18> To me that sounds like a great way to ensure the least amount of gnashing of teeth for your engineers, your sales team, and your customers.

 _Either do it right, or don 't use us_ sounds very good.

And if their "doing it right" really is right they'll end up with better outcomes for customers who stick with them, which will drive them ending up with more customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm using Google Maps platform for various tasks such as geocoding. This article sounds very hostile for indie developers like me. I also hope he doesn't get his hands on Tensorflow - a bit like Oracle got their hands on Java/MySQL and started suing people for various usage of Java.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think its worth reading the original WSJ article if you can. I can only see the first few lines which are:

> Weeks into his new job as head of Google's cloud business, Thomas Kurian > identified a chief complaint from big business customers: They often didn't > have account managers to call.

Oracle is famous for getting customers to pay, but they were also very good at helping customers with services, advice and customizations. Expensive Consultants worked closely with dev teams. Yes they were expensive, but clients knew they could rely on someone from Oracle fix bugs or give guidance.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-been-lacking-at- googles-c...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-been-lacking-at-googles- cloud-enough-humans-11554724802)

<comment><USER21> > Yes they were expensive, but clients knew they could rely on someone from > Oracle fix bugs or give guidance.

Not sure how true that is. Plenty of horror stories around of Oracle bugs not being fixed.

<comment><USER22> Oracle's enterprise support is absolutely fantastic. They will not hesitate to put someone on literally the next plane, fly them to your site, and sit them there until your problem is resolved. Yes, that is expensive, but you're buying peace of mind.

The above does not necessarily apply to bugs and feature requests, just operational support.

<comment><USER21> > They will not hesitate to put someone on literally the next plane...

Definitely have heard cases of that happening, with large enough accounts.

But also plenty of stories of problems being ignored, same as Google Cloud has a reputation for. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Careful copying from Oracle, they are famously litigious even when no one in their right mind thinks that they've got a genuine case...

<comment><USER24> Google may already be familiar with Oracle's litigiousness.

<comment><USER23> I suspect so too.

(for those wondering: we are being a tad facetious as everyone who has been in the industry a while is familiar with stories of Oracle being litigious, one case specifically being a large and long-running one against Google over Java and Android: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc.))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So will Google start to pay bribes to big wigs and government people ( start.. lol ) in order to gain contracts?

They are investing greatly in Kubernetes but it seems still a long way to go before the lock-in is achieved, so they can use more Oracle tricks.

</comment><comment><USER26> Careful they probably patented it :D

</comment><comment><USER27> That's great, but Google seeks to compete with and destroy many users of GCP. I spoke with a pharma CEO who, having no background in cloud, said straightforwardly that he would never even consider letting workloads onto GCP. Google as a business can't be trusted. It's like FedEx deciding to make widgets after seeing how many widgets get shipped. Oracle never did that. Google does it all the time.

<comment><USER28> It's hard to imagine G moving into big pharma, but do tell.

<comment><USER29> Look at their "Other Bets".</comment></comment></comment>


The Difficulty of Hiring Women - <AUTHOR> http://codemonkeyism.com/women-tech-responsible/ <comment><USER2> I remember a few days before the start of my freshman year of high school, I was at the college library making copies of math competition tests so I could start practicing for the upcoming season of competition. While I was there, I saw a girl who was on the math team the year before in junior high, so I told her what I was doing and asked her if she wanted some practice tests. She said, "No," and just walked away, but there was a world in that "No." She was offended. She was _insulted_. She had been pretty good at the math competitions in junior high, but she quickly fell behind in high school and then quit the math team/club. She did drama and speech instead. She still took honors math classes and aced them, and I even heard she did engineering in college, but she would never admit to actually liking it enough to go beyond what was required by classwork.

Similarly, the girls I met in college who were getting degrees in math and engineering never admitted to having an interest in those subjects beyond doing well in their classes and getting degrees. The two girls in the math program were keen to express their interest in the money they would make as actuaries or what-not. They had to like math, or they never would have chosen to be math majors, but they never showed any sign of it, and (stung by my previous experience) I was scared to even imply that they might.

So yeah, there is a huge fear of nerdiness among women, and I don't think the "nerd chic" thing helps at all. There's no celebration in "nerd chic" culture of honestly frumpy people (there can't be in any "___ chic" culture, "___ chic" will never help anyone who isn't chic) so of all the girls I've known who I suspected of secretly liking math, _maybe_ one of them would have felt at home there.

I went to high school in a small city (large town, really) in a rural area, and I went to college at a non-elite public school (went there for the honors program) so you guys who went the elite route may have seen vastly different things. In terms of numbers, though, I suspect my experience was more representative.

<comment><USER3> _So yeah, there is a huge fear of nerdiness among women_

I suppose my only problem with your story (or the conclusions you draw from it, really) is that you could substitute "men" or "boys" or "people" or "high school students" or "college students" for "women" without any real problem. _Lots of people_ are afraid to appear smart in public.

<comment><USER4> The difference here is probably the degree to which this affects each gender. While no man wants to limit his options in women, being in a relationship probably doesn't define his sense of self-worth the way it does with women. Of course, not all women are this way, but women often sacrifice bits of themselves in the name of love. We are more likely to:

1\. Give up time with our friends/hobbies to be completely there for a boyfriend, all the time.

2\. Move to a new city to be with a guy (who sometimes isn't even planning to marry us), giving up any career progress made to date.

And that's even before adding a layer of geekiness that I've found acts as man repellent to most "mainstream" male populations. I cannot just go to a party and start talking about how happy I am that Mass Effect 2 is coming to PS3 now that I sold my 360, nor can I go any deeper than "I like computers" with most guys. It's just not all that hot. But the chick who has a fantasy football team (and doesn't know it's filled with D-list players) gets the welcome mat (eta: because sports is accepted in the mainstream).

<comment><USER2> _While no man wants to limit his options in women, being in a relationship probably doesn't define his sense of self-worth the way it does with women._

I don't know if that's true, or if that's an incorrect assumption based on how often we do things that sabotage our chances of being in relationships. I'm thinking of high school, when I obsessed over girls and pretty much did consider myself a worthless failure for not being able to talk to girls and get them to like me, yet behaved in such a way that you would think I was bent on keeping them away from me. A big part of the reason I worked so hard on math and science was that I had a vague but deep-seated conviction that being really good at something would eventually impress some girl and help me get with her. Perhaps that notion is what girls need to be programmed with the way boys are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is obviously true that the applicant pool for tech jobs is dominated by male candidates.

It is less obvious but equally true that women are mistreated in interviews more often then men are. I did not believe this even a little bit up to 2004. I had, after all, hired women; once, I even hired one as my boss. Then I watched a woman go through a series of tech interviews with other people. Oops.

This person has the same broken mental model that I had: "I'm fair to both women and men, and I get very few women applicants, so the problem must be lower in the stack." There clearly are problems lower in the stack, but that's not all that's wrong.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps you could expand on how women are mistreated in interviews?

Are you saying that even though you thought you were treating men and women fairly, you were actually mistreating the women you were interviewing? Or are you saying that "other people" mistreat women in interviews - which begs the question how you know that those other people are actually treating women differently than men (they could just be assholes to everyone, I mean).

<comment><USER5> I don't think I've mistreated anyone in an interview (except that when I started interviewing in the '90s, I treated them as excuses to demonstrate how smart I was, which was a waste of everyone's time).

But, no, when you ask someone whether they're _really_ going to be able to take care of their kids and handle the demands of the job you're interviewing them for, you're clearly not being an equal-opportunity douchebag.

I have many more examples than that, some of them worse, but I'm not going to give you a bulleted list; I expect most people who've known women who've interviewed widely have similar examples.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious how an interviewer would even know if the woman _has_ kids. I'm a female dev and have never been asked about kids while interviewing, and if I had kids, I certainly wouldn't talk about them on an interview.

Making the assumption that all women will have kids and are mostly likely going to put raising them over their career is incredibly sexist - that goes beyond "not being an equal-opportunity douchebag".. that's like "doesn't understand women and probably has never had a meaningful relationship with one." The woman is best off not working with such an ass imo.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, funny that. You could infer one of a couple very bad interview tactics from what I wrote. I feel no need to correct whichever assumption you make.

You clearly have the presence of mind to laugh this off, but my thoughts trend more towards torches and pitchforks.

<comment><USER8> > I treated them as excuses to demonstrate how smart I was

you just did that again ;)

<comment><USER5> Huh?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Im male. When i first got interested in computers(back when my age was a single digit), i didn't follow role models, i just got drawn to these machines, almost instinctively, and not just computers, cars, electronics, any kind of machines. I had my technical influence of course, my dad knew a lot about machines and electronics, but i think its something a bit deeper. Men have been making tools for hundreds of thousands of years, in my complete lack of experience in genetics, i think its foolish to dismiss genetic factors. Which is not to say that role models and culture have no effect, i just think that it has less of an effect than genes.

Bottom line is that my politically correct(i hope) opinion is that while women positively have the ability do be good developers(physicists, mathematicians, engineers), and even though some of them DO become good, most lack this internal drive(almost an obsession) I've had since before i can remember.

<comment><USER10> When I got into computers, I didn't realize there COULD be role models for that. I had never heard of any successful programmers. I couldn't name anyone famous for anything related to computers.

That certainly didn't stop me from being interested.

<comment><USER11> But the lack of role models is the reason I didn't get that job - it was nothing to do with me not working in school.

It was all somebody else's fault - those damn role models.

Oh, that and 'da-man' keeping me down.

Actually the lack of women in tech is probably because they realize earlier than guys that if they do a psychology degree they only have to study 6hours/week and get to be a manager over all the engineer types.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why are there so few male nurses?

Why are there so few male daycare providers?

Why are there so few male teachers?

Why are the so few female pest control techs?

Why do so few women work on a fishing boat?

Why do so few women work on an oil rig?

Why do so few men work at a bank branch?

Why are there so few male domestic violence shelters?

Boys and Girls are different. They have different goals, risks and pressures. If a certain career path lines up with gender based goals/pressures then people self select into that path.

Bias does exist, but overall the pendulum has swung in favor of women. I'd argue that a woman has a much easier time becoming a programmer, than a man becoming a daycare provider.

</comment><comment><USER13> IMO, a large part of underrepresentation of women in software is due to the following self-reinforcing stereotype.

1\. For historical reasons, men got a head-start in the software sector.

2\. Software sector came to be seen as a male-dominated field.

3\. Both the recruiters and candidates adjust their behavior based on the "knowledge" that software-jobs are more suited for men than women.

I think such accidental clustering happens in many other fields. For e.g., here is a situation where men are the victims: <http://www.nurseweek.com/news/features/01-05/men.html>

<comment><USER14> The really curious thing is that the _first_ programmers were women. This was back in the ENIAC days, before anyone appreciated how difficult it would be to "program" a general purpose computer, before the word "software" existed, or even before "program" was a verb. The ENIAC designers figured the programming part would be easy.

See Section II, starting on page 8: <http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nathanen/files/cbi-gender.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "I would like to hire more women, but the number of job applications from women were well below 5 percent."

Wait, WHY do you want more women? Are they more skilled somehow? Because if not, that's sexist. You should be hiring the best person for the job, not looking for people that fit a certain concept in your mind.

<comment><USER15> A good mix of genders can lead to a healthier office life and better work.

All male and all female offices are not ideal for various(and sometimes different) reasons.

<comment><USER16> Could you perhaps state those reasons?

[edit: sorry for asking. Didn't realize asking a poster to explain their reasoning was frowned upon here. ]

<comment><USER7> I'm a female dev who has mostly worked in male-dominated teams. I'm currently working in a female-dominated team. The differences are extreme, with the largest being that the mostly-female team has a really difficult time taking criticism and giving criticism (saying 'no' to bad ideas). They're too optimistic and not realistic enough IMO. But what do I know, I'm just the dev! :\

<comment><USER2> I'm not surprised that giving criticism is harder, since women are socialized to give feedback indirectly, through body language and other social signs, and even when speaking about a problem not to do so plainly. Simply saying what you think is treated as a "masculine" trait. I imagine the ways of communicating that are treated as appropriately "feminine" are much less effective in a technical context.

Do you consciously model ways to give criticism that your female coworkers will feel comfortable with? Does it help them open up and criticize each other? What works? (This is a subject I have an interest in in a personal context as well, since I sometimes get baffled and frustrated by indirect communication and would like to be better at coaxing women to be more direct, which is hard if the relationship isn't already close.)

Also, I'm surprised that women have a hard time taking criticism. I didn't expect that at all. Can you say more?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


TalkTalkTalk: an easy to deploy straight-to-the-point web chat - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/josephernest/talktalktalk <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'd like to delete this post, and make a Show HN instead. How to do this?

At least it was well received on [https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/5bsjle/talktalktalk...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/5bsjle/talktalktalk_an_easy_to_deploy_web_chat_in_python/)

<comment><USER2> Probably best to just resubmit it as one. The alternative is to email the mods at the contact link on the bottom of the page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Live demo here: [http://184.108.40.206:7311/](http://188.8.131.52:7311/)

</comment><comment><USER3> nice... do you plan to add other features such as file sending? or another "styling"?</comment>


Deadline today to apply for a local news grant. $5 million for 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.newschallenge.org/

<comment><USER2> just done that, keeping my fingers crossed and being hopeful.</comment>


How a hacker's typo helped stop a billion dollar bank heist - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-bangladesh-typo-insight-idUSKCN0WC0TC <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11262177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11262177)

</comment><comment><USER3> I worked at a very large company that had a email virus move quickly through the ranks...

The subject of the email was "Please see attached documens" in which a PDF was attached that upon opening would hijack your email account and send the same. Over the first day, I had about 100 emails from coworkers in my inbox. After our "IT Security" team sent out an email claiming they stopped the threat, the following day more emails came from coworkers that was a slight variant but had more typos.

I still wonder what sort of breach occurred and whether our internal teams performed a true investigation... obviously a foreign intrusion and they managed to at least gain control of quite a few internal machines.

I still get a laugh out of using the same subject in an occasional email to coworkers...

<comment><USER4> As someone totally ignorant in this space, how does opening a .PDF document allow for email hijacking (assuming it was actually a PDF)?

I think I'm stuck at how code is able to execute when opening a document inside a PDF viewer or something of the sort. Thanks for sharing your story!

<comment><USER5> Usually some variant of: The PDF file contains binary data somewhere within it that will cause a particular PDF reader to misallocate memory. Because data and code are jammed next to each other when you run a program, a clever memory misallocation can be used to rewrite the program (the PDF reader) as it executes in order to execute whatever malicious commands the author of said PDF file intends.

The typical defenses against these attacks include:

* Exploit mitigation tools, such as EMET

* Writing applications to be more memory-safe

* Various other tactics, many of them disingenuous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why can't we escrow these say 10 million plus wire transfers for long enough to seek some form of two factor authentication? Fax a random code to the head office or something? Seems like a pretty weak system.

<comment><USER7> SWIFT and NY Fed are making many $10M+ transactions every hour, maybe every minute.

I am sure that the Bangladesh Central Bank could have requested daily or transaction limits for their accounts. But they most likely did not have that in place. Being a government bank they might make $20M transactions on a daily basis. They probably also could have 2-factor authentication, but that won't help you if its an inside job.

The most telling part of the story is that you can transfer $80M into Manila casinos (a city I didn't even know had casinos before today) and get that in chips without any trouble. I can't even imagine the volume of money flowing in Vegas or Macau casinos.

<comment><USER8> Still, their margins on 20M should be high enough to pay someone to manually check every transaction, within the amount of time it takes to become irreversible.

Reminds me of [http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/20/deutsche- ban...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/20/deutsche-bank- accidentally-transfers-6bn-to-a-single-customer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does the misspelling of "foundation" as "fandation" suggest the first language of an attacker(s)?

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the real moral of the story is why is the Fed even part of these transactions without any actual security.

</comment><comment><USER11> What's the point of transferring to a bank account? Wouldn't a bank account have an address associated with it? and some kind of ID proof of the account holder?

<comment><USER12> The article mentions that the money was further laundered through casinos in the Philippines. At that point, it's pretty much gone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "They then bombarded the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with nearly three dozen requests to move money"

</comment><comment><USER14> Crime pays. They still got away with $80m.

<comment><USER15> They can't just anonymously withdraw $80m from an ATM...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Moral of the story for techies: learn to spell! It could cost you dearly! /smirk

<comment><USER17> I was going to make a joke about @#$% autocorrect, but fandation?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Your thoughts on Lisp, and how stable is Arc? - <AUTHOR>

I was inspired by some of Paul Graham's essays to start exploring Lisp, and I'm so glad I have. Even after just walking through one tutorial, it seems clear to me that Lisp (and functional programming in general?) has big advantages over Python, Perl, C++ and Java - the languages I've been using. The most surprising thing so far: after getting used to the idea of S-expressions, I feel more at home with Lisp than with traditional-syntax languages.
I want to start using Lisp in my own projects whenever I can. I've started with Common Lisp because it seems like the incumbent dialect for all-purpose programming. Though really attracted to Arc, I've gathered it's still relatively unstable, is this accurate? (If yes, I may still get involved with the community development.) Any other comments for a new Lisp programmer or about Lisp in general? <comment><USER2> Have you checked out Clojure, the current Lisp de Jour? It brings with it bags of advanced from all over the place and a healthy dollop of pragmatism.

The language is very young (2 years) but has a very active community.

<comment><USER3> Here's an annotated list of Clojure introductory material and tutorials: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1033503>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you both.</comment></comment></comment>


Dutch Students Break Electric Vehicle 0-100km/h acceleration in 2.15 seconds - <AUTHOR> http://inhabitat.com/students-break-electric-vehicle-acceleration-world-record/

<comment><USER2> I would love to experience that.</comment>


Photoshop scripting with Python - <AUTHOR> http://techarttiki.blogspot.com/2008/08/photoshop-scripting-with-python.html <comment><USER2> On a Mac, going through AppScript [<http://appscript.sourceforge.net/>] is another alternative for using Python to access AppleScriptable programs. One advantage is that it is the same approach for any application, it shouldn't require special support from that application.</comment>