How Valve hires, how it fires, and how much it pays  - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/187296/How_Valve_hires_how_it_fires_and_how_much_it_pays.php#.USwvx6WSJ8F <comment><USER2> FTA's comments:

 _> all is good when the money is flowing._

That really struck me. Everything is all good when the money is flowing. It doesn't matter whether you work at a bank, a law firm, a defence contractor or a sales agency - no matter what the structure, or how people are organized, everything works when the money is flowing.

Now, what I'm really interested in is catastrophic failure.

What goes wrong when the money stops flowing? From what I've seen historically - the same things go wrong no matter what the place (see GFC effect at various companies back in '08).

How is Valve going to deal with the "always losing money" proposition?

<comment><USER3> I've said elsewhere, whenever Valve comes up, that we really have no idea how well it works. It's so fantastically swamped with money that they can pretty much run it any old how and still be "successful".

There's a mixup in correlation and causation here. Similar mixed up conclusions are reached by people looking at other fantastically profitable companies.

Do you like scenario planning? Shell "proves" it works.

Stalinist management? Apple "proves" it works.

Velvet sweatshop? Microsoft "proves" it works.

Data über alles? Google "proves" it works.

Self-directed workplace? Valve "proves" it works.

<comment><USER4> I agree with your point, and the parent's, that Valve's success is most directly caused by Steam runoff and their own sales dollars, and not necessarily their dynamic organization style.

...do many people think or claim that their success is due to their management style? More importantly, is that why we're talking about it? Certainly that isn't the focus of this Gamasutra summary of the EconTalk podcast by Valve's economist.

Valve does talk a lot about their org-style in general, and they do talk a lot about their success. But I'm pretty sure they have a sound, mundane reason for those things: talent sourcing.

Standing out in the tech industry as an employer is tough, and the traditional offerings: "smart people working on interesting problems", "we're growing fast", "we're the market leader" are, excuse the expression, tantamount to banal rape. Valve has a further difficulty though, as expressed by Varoufakis:

"In many occasions people simply don't fit in not because they're not productive or good people, but because they just can't function very well in a boss-less environment."

They need to find talent like everyone else, but beyond that, they need to find talent that won't fail without someone taller telling them what to work on. Valve's sane solution to both problems (lack of talent, lack of talent- preparedness for their org-style) is to get loud about their org-style.

Valve's org-style is so wild and different that it means we could all talk about it until the cows return -- and we do. They routinely make (tech website) headlines just by repeating themselves, which draws crowds. It also causes candidates to self-select, lessening the fit-problem. Don't think you'd like to work at a Place Like Valve? You won't apply. Never thought about this org-style before? You will now.

Why do we love to hear about their org-structure so much? Is it just because it's different, or perhaps because of apparent claims it's more profitable? I think it's because it addresses a real problem. It would appear that silly directives-from-on-high don't exist at Valve, because they internally removed the notion of "on-high". They also claim to have given each employee the autonomy to figure out how and where to do their best work, while being paid enough. It sounds like they struck the creative-work motivators of autonomy, mastery, and purpose[1] on the noggin. Good marketing at the least.

[1] RSA Animate's adaptation of Dan Pink's talk <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc>

<comment><USER5> I actually disagree that the Valve-style bossless organization "works" as a matter of universal assertion. It probably works for some companies and not others. However, the alternative is ludicrous and only "works" because, with 99% of large corporate organizations taking that form (legacy) there is no competition.

The more common corporate arrangement is the extortionist command economy in which one serves one's immediate superior or gets fired from a whole company. That is ridiculous and pathological. It might have worked in 1870, but it's starting to fail badly. Billions of dollars of value are being lost due to this outmoded way of doing things.

Valve is clearly not perfect-- they had a layoff earlier this month-- but it appears that they're still doing a better job, on a cultural front, than almost anyone else.

<comment><USER4> If I've somehow represented that I think their organization would work universally, I didn't intend to.

I do think it's important that Valve operate as they have (in being loud about their structure), to point the water out to us fish. It's commonplace to think that work is just the way work is, with managers and workers and you get a job then stay in it until you are promoted or fired or quit.

Valve _is_ doing something different -- and of course it won't be perfect. But it's different, and they're shouting at the top of their corporate lungs about it. Hopefully it will help lead to the development of a spectrum of organizational styles. Even if it just brings some common willingness to mess about with the water and see where we go, that would be great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Linked Gamasutra article just copy/pastes selected content from the Econtalk podcast, adding no additional content or commentary. Nice reporting Frank Cifaldi!

Original content: [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/02/varoufakis_on_v.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/02/varoufakis_on_v.html)

<comment><USER7> Thanks, that link is way more interesting.

Yanis Varoufakis is the economist valve hired to study the economy of steam and valve itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every time I read about how Valve is composed of only the finest minds in the industry, I wonder how Steam can be a a) slow, kludgy desktop app with inconsistent and at times amateurish UI and visual design, and b) a slow, unreliable, glitchy network service.

<comment><USER9> I've always been amazed at how they managed to cultivate such zealotry in the gaming community despite being one of the first developers to push (what was at the time, onerous and nearly unprecedented) DRM on their current user-base. Not to mention both the Steam client and network were significantly worse than they are now.

<comment><USER10> From what I remember, people originally got on Steam because that's how you got Half-Life 2, which the world was clamoring for. They put up with the problems until it got better because Steam was how you played CS and HL.

As for the DRM... has it ever really been onerous? The only case I think of is if you don't always have access to an internet connection, and they have workarounds for that, though they admittedly are imperfect.

True, the hypothetical/potential failure modes suck - being locked out of your account and losing your games; Valve goes out of business and you lose your games; you're offline and can't switch to offline mode and thus can't play your games until you find an internet connection. That said, I've always been of the impression that most people don't mind Steam's DRM that much because doesn't stop them from doing what they generally expect to be able to do and want to do with their PC games, which is sit down at any PC where they can log in on Steam and play them. This is unlike DRMed music and movie files: sure, DRM prevents you from making unlimited free copies for your friends, which I think most anyone would agree is reasonable, but it also can prevent you from doing things like changing formats or resolutions or storing/viewing from certain devices.

<comment><USER9> I'd say it was onerous at the time. Steam brought an "always-online" component (offline mode was utterly broken for years) to games you may have bought years prior, and this was in 2002/2003. In 2013, it's basically the status quo and other publishers have adopted similar schemes.

I think the interesting part is that in spite of that past behavior and almost no PR, the gaming community just rallies around Valve and will vilify most other publishers that attempt to follow Valve's footsteps with Steam.

<comment><USER11> I agree there's a bit of double-standard, but you don't need to be incredulous. It's simple; the double-standard was earned! Most gamers seem to have found that every time they trust Valve, they're happy with the result (so far!), and it's a much iffier gamble with most other publishers.

No one I know found the always-online aspects of Steam particularly onerous. Especially because when it was introduced, it was mostly used for games that were only interesting online anyway. HL mods, HL2 and mods. That "no one I know" is just anecdata, I admit it. And it integrates features that are actually features. E.g. Steam friends-chat is actually useful, unlike all other inter-game chat I've seen (on the PC).

And the Steam store is such a boon. It makes me want to give game-devs money. As my disposable income has grown (massively), Steam was in the right place at the right time. Brick and mortar game stores don't exactly inspire loyalty. And I like the fact that digital distribution lowers intermediate costs, and I like the fact that I get a share of that savings with the crazy-deep-discount steam store sales.

On the other hand, I can't remember the last time I interacted with DRM from another publisher without being afraid, and without paying a burden that actually was onerous. It messes with my router, or it turns out to be an exploitable rootkit, or it pops up inexplicable warnings, or it eats RAM, or I have to create an online account for one stupid game that I don't even know if I'll like yet, or...

I agree with nlawalker.... getting us acclimatized as a precondition of playing Must Play games (online HL mods after 2003, HL2, Portal) was brilliant.

Of course, if Valve in their wisdom were to decide my account was violating TOS, I'd be pretty boned.

<comment><USER12> A few people I know actually still had dialup when Steam first started becoming popular (in 2004, U.S. broadband penetration was only around 35-40%), and they found it pretty onerous to have to dial up every time they wanted to start a single-player, offline game. Less of an issue nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So ... are there actual pay numbers? I don't see anything specific in the article. I also can't find Valve on glassdoor.com, although that might be a failure on my part. I've heard that the gaming industry underpays compared with other software industries, but the Valve handbook seems to claim that the pay is better than Google, Microsoft, etc. Anyone have information either way?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Valve-Corporation- Salaries-E...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Valve-Corporation- Salaries-E24849.htm)

<comment><USER14> 'Bi-Lingual Customer Support Rep' makes more than 'Commercial/Industrial Designer'.

Doubt this link is remotely accurate.

<comment><USER15> These are unverified self-reported listings.

In general, if there are only 1 or 2 reported salaries on Glassdoor, you want to take them with a significant pinch of salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> OK, this is slightly off topic, but I'd be really interested in knowing how employees of totally orthogonal skills coordinate in this kind of hierarchy. For example, I had wondered if much of the great humor and wit was just a side projector some supremely talented employee whose main job was to write 3d renderers.

But they do have chief writers, as I guess should be obvious [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132539/valves_writers_...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132539/valves_writers_and_the_creative_.php?print=1)

</comment><comment><USER17> Doesn't explain what was up with the random mini-layoff they had recently. Very curious about that.

<comment><USER18> Did not hear anything about that... can you share more info?

<comment><USER19> I think they fired the whole 'steam box' team..

<comment><USER20> Didn't Newell explicitly deny that?

<comment><USER19> It seems the HW-lead was fired according to this:

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/13/3983348/valve-fires- jeri-e...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/13/3983348/valve-fires-jeri- ellsworth-who-was-developing-steam-box-game)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm curious now in light of the article as to how a whole round of lay-offs occur in an environment like that (particularly across the board, to people of varying tenure like the recent one). Awkwardly, I assume.

<comment><USER22> That was one of the things I was hoping was addressed in the podcast. But I imagine it's something that's not really going to get talked about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Gabe Newell pushed the vision of steam onto the gaming market with brute force. You couldnt play the highly acclaimed HalfLife2 without Steam. Many people hated it back in the day and were complaining aloud on internet forums. 10 years later it proves to be the right decision and shows that not always is listening to your customers need the best way to build a successfull business. The people back then didnt know they want it, just like Dropbox or the iPhone.

<comment><USER24> I think what you're saying is a little misleading. The complaints weren't that we didn't want something like what Steam is now, it's that we didn't want something like what Steam was then. It was a small Valve-only HL/mod manager with a server finder and a friend list. It broke all the time, had major features that didn't work for years, and required you to be online because offline mode was one of those features. It was a broken pile of garbage that needed to be thrown away and completely re-built from the ground up.

The Steam you use today is to that version of Steam as IE10 is to IE3, approximately. It was lacking major features -- working chat, overlay, store, non-steam game support, offline mode, authentication that didn't fail 70% of the time forcing you to restart Steam then try to play your game again, etc.

It's useful and a value add these days, it was just a gigantic nightmare before.

But I'm still very disappointed that the best (only? I don't count Origin) tool like Steam is Steam. By that I mean that we're locked into what Valve wants to do, which is sell us limited licenses that are tied to Valve maintaining their service, significant amounts of DRM, and other anti-consumer policies like no refunds. Some of these are deal breakers that leave significant room for a competitor to eat all of Valve's lunch, so I suspect if Valve doesn't buck up and play nice with its customers that eventually someone will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> When I went to valve campus, I saw a man with a briefcase, and conservative black dressing. He looked like a boss to me, someone from the Government I think!

<comment><USER26> Did he suddenly appear in a window? Because I saw him too..

<comment><USER25> He freaks me out!!!! And they say they are.. erm Boss free???

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've only ever heard how the boss-less, collaborative environment over at Valve is good.

But I simply can't trust anything until I start hearing about the negative aspects too, which nobody ever seems to report.

I mean, not everything can be all roses over there. I'm tremendously interested in the way their workplace actually runs, but you can't really learn any lessons or apply it anywhere else without having a fuller picture of what _really_ goes on, warts and all. I mean, _no_ system is perfect, or even close to it.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm curious how they fired the most recent group; was it decided collectively?

<comment><USER29> I assume the same ranking system used for determining compensation (collective) is used to decide who is fired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The article didn't actually go into the detail of how much Valve pays.

<comment><USER31> From the leaked Valve handbook:

"Valve pays people very well compared to industry norms. Our profitability per employee is higher than that of Google or Amazon or Microsoft, and we believe strongly that the right thing to do in that case is to put a maximum amount of money back into each employee's pocket."

Considering that a ten year veteran at Google can make $200k/year, in salary + bonus + stocks, I'm curious if Valve compensation can reach the same level. The Glassdoor page doesn't suggest it can, but people may not be reporting their bonuses or profit sharing.

<comment><USER32> $200K? a 10-year veteran at google had $80 IPO shares, $200 share grants, $400 share grants, $600 share grants...

<comment><USER33> You shouldn't use the appreciated price of stock grants when valuing compensation; you use the price at the time they are granted. (Still, 200k is very low; base salary would be in the ballpark of that figure, but stock/cash bonuses can push well past it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Suppose I'm working at Valve, and I decided that I want to work on building a robot arm for the rest of the week. Can I do that?

What if I keep doing these kinds of projects? Will I eventually lose the popularity contest and be ousted?

The amount of money to be made in personal robotics or space robotics probably dwarfs what Valve makes now, but research is risky.

The combination of employee selection and social pressure means that it's probably not really true that you can work on whatever innovative ideas you want to.

This is what irritates me about companies co-opting hobby time and free time. It's not really free time if it's a popularity contest. You don't have to justify your hobbies to anyone (family, maybe).

I work at a company where I have tremendous freedom to organize my own work, and to work on research projects, but there are still areas that are clearly out of scope. I imagine Valve is no different.

<comment><USER35> Does this bother you? I think they are just trying to eliminate management overhead by using peer evaluation to set the company's direction by consensus. This could maybe be chaotic, but I see it as a trade-off. A traditional structure is chaotic in its own way. Like, who gets promoted to upper management? The most deserving people, or lucky people?

Arbitrary decisions from an executive may or may not be better than popularity contests. I guess it depends on the executives and the culture.

<comment><USER34> No, it doesn't bother me. Well, no more than the fact that I don't yet have FU money bothers me.

I'm just a bit cynical of all the "you can work on whatever you want (that's good for the company -- that others around you agree is good for the company -- that's meant to capture innovation -- but that can't really capture long- term or unpopular innovation)."

So yeah, the way I work at my current job, and the way that people supposedly work at Valve seems great. That said, what I really want is to not _have_ to work, but to work anyway. Woe is me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Looks like Valve brings in about 1.5 Billion...interesting. (35 min)

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder what the "basic wage" is. Salaries being 5, 6, 10 times the basic wage means something totally different if the basic wage were $5k vs $50k.

</comment><comment><USER38> >In many occasions people simply don't fit in not because they're not productive or good people, but because they just can't function very well in a boss-less environment.

Oh, so you recently realized 25 people didn't function very well in a boss- less environment?

</comment><comment><USER39> >In many occasions people simply don't fit in not because they're not productive or good people, but because they just can't function very well in a boss-less environment.

In order to function well in a boss-less environment, it helps to have grown up being educated in one. If your education is authority directed, it's natural to expect your adult work be authority directed. It seems to me that Valve's culture is particularly well matched to people who came from democratic schools. You can probably train yourself to be that kind of self- motivated person as an adult but it isn't easy.

</comment><comment><USER40> I work for a company that has a pretty great culture, even if it isn't quite as self-managed as Valve is, and what seems to be the common thing between the two is that both have a very strong sense of what their company culture is about, and both attempt to hire not just the best talent, but as much the best culture fits.

To make something like this work, you can't just hire anybody. It won't work for many organizations simply because they have the wrong people with the wrong ideas of how to run a business or organization.

It's also a lot of work to maintain such a system and the wrong hires can ruin it fast.

</comment><comment><USER41> Meanwhile, no half life 3. :P

<comment><USER42> The employees work on the projects they want to work on. Portal 2 happened because Portal 1 came out, and a lot of people in Valve wanted to do a Portal game. I would've be surprised if there is a small number of people working on the early stages of Half Life 3, or if there is a lot of people working on it without any announcement. It doesn't seem like Dota 2 would take all of Valve's development resources. Granted they're doing steam box stuff, but I imagine that a large portion of the studio is working on something we haven't heard about yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It is tempting, with articles about company models, to go away with a "this is how to be successful" mentality, but I think that is wrong.

The design of a company appeals to a certain kind of people, regardless of the model. Do you put a premium on autonomy? Work at Valve! Like structured environments? Try Microsoft. Prefer strong leadership? What about Apple?

Or whatever.

Success is not the take-away. Employee-model fit is.

</comment><comment><USER44> I know this is slightly off-topic, but I've asked this before in comments and at the following submission, but I never get any replies:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5182145>

Is there any other companies like Valve and Github that are bossless?

</comment><comment><USER45> Some Valve wages according to their Q2 2012 H1-B filings. Salary only, no indication of bonus/stock.

Sr Software Engineer - 97,000 (2 listed at this rate)

Principal Digital Media Engineer - 62,608

Multi-media artist - 77,000

And for fun, some Google employees:

Research Engineer - 206,900

Software Engineer - 105,000

Software Engineer - 214,800

Site Reliability Engineer - 111,600

Site Reliability Engineer - 170,000

Program Manager - 152,000

Information Security Engineer - 150,000

<comment><USER46> Well from the article:

> The payment mechanism is to a very large extent bonus-based ... Bonuses can > end up being 5, 6, 10 times the level of the basic wage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Valve's management is an experiment. May be its just me, but this article and few others make it seems like a successful experiment. I look at Valve as a test of certain kind of corporate structure. The test is in progress. The results are still due.

</comment><comment><USER48> No offense to him (or anyone at Valve), but this sounds like a load of bullshit. There is circular logic and self-contradictory information even within the span of a few sentences. To me, this article is the equivalent of asking a general in the United States Army whether or not a job in the United States Army is great.</comment>


How I set up my small business website - <AUTHOR> http://skyflavour.com/blog/behind-the-scenes/

<comment><USER2> What are we supposed to take away from this? I'm having a hard time identifying it as anything more than self-promotion. Do you plan to open source your Sky Framework? When can we get our hands on it?

<comment><AUTHOR> My intention, mainly, was to show that PHP is not only Apache + modphp.

Yes, I will open source the framework shortly. I need to write some documentation and perhaps a getting started tutorial.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Outro – Retrospectives, Re-Imagined - <AUTHOR> https://outro.co <comment><USER2> Scrolling the page takes up 100% CPU, and has like 1 FPS.

You should do something about that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, what browser/OS are you on? I definitely don't have this experience. Sounds concerning though.</comment></comment>


Orca: an esolang for audio-visual live coding - <AUTHOR> https://git.sr.ht/~rabbits/orca <comment><USER2> It's also worth taking a look at the author's website: [https://100r.co/](https://100r.co/) \- ORCA is just one of many projects and explorations that they do while living on a boat.

<comment><USER3> Man that's so cool. I feel like that beats tiny homes

<comment><USER4> The two happiest days in a boat owner's life are the day he buys the boat and the day he sells the boat.

<comment><USER5> I bet that doesn't apply to that couple or this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk83N2u1ZmY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk83N2u1ZmY) (Living on a Self-Sufficient Sailboat for 10 Years)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great to see Orca on here! Really really fun to play with for generative music; I made a song with it last year that I posted: [https://www.instagram.com/p/BzVjW7LBv1K/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BzVjW7LBv1K/)

I also learned a lot from watching Allieway Audio's Orca series on Youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeo2Fo1OidWpT83BT5xmCZw/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeo2Fo1OidWpT83BT5xmCZw/videos)

Orca is fascinating because it is so limited compared to most "programming languages", and trying to figure out how to express ideas 1) compactly, 2) without abstraction or recursion, and 3) flexible enough for real-time editing, is a great, rewarding challenge.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's a two part podcast on futureofcoding.org with the creator of Orca, Devine Lu Linvega:

[https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/044](https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/044)

[https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/045](https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/045)

<comment><USER8> Hey, I know the host of that podcast! He has some weird opinions about visual programming. Makes sense he'd be interested in Orca.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a cool project I've been watching for a while.

But off topic from this, what is with all the sourcehut links on HN lately? Where did this suddenly come out of? Looks like a lot of cool projects are starting to host their code here. Wondering how it got the traction.

<comment><USER10> Aside from the "proprietary bad" arguments (which is enough to get traction on HN), there are a bunch of practical reasons:

1\. It's faster. Mr. Devault, Sourcehut's author, runs a benchmark site that demonstrates this: [https://forgeperf.org/](https://forgeperf.org/)

2\. The e-mail based workflow is (in my opinion) superior; I don't have to use some clunky web interface.

3\. I can run it myself, on-premise, for free.

<comment><USER11> > 2\. The e-mail based workflow is (in my opinion) superior; I don't have to > use some clunky web interface.

Yeah but my email client can't show me nice diffs and let me comment on line numbers like GitLab/Hub can... Plus I

I don't really understand SH's decision not to support PRs, which seem fundamental to most workflows.

I think PRs are far superior than spamming up my inbox and using esoteric git email commands

To be fair, I've never actually tried an email-based workflow, but in my mind it involves a lot of emails and reply-alls and just general clutter and an absence of syntax highlighting, pinpoint line commenting, side-by-side diff and all the other nice things the GitLab/Hub provide with PRs.

<comment><USER12> >Yeah but my email client can't show me nice diffs

[https://l.sr.ht/QlVR.png](https://l.sr.ht/QlVR.png)

>let me comment on line numbers like GitLab/Hub can

[https://l.sr.ht/cz3L.png](https://l.sr.ht/cz3L.png)

These are also being added to the web UI:

[https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht- dev/patches/10253](https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-dev/patches/10253)

But at the end of the day, if this workflow is not for you, there are a half- dozen other platforms you could be using.

<comment><USER11> > But at the end of the day, if this workflow is not for you, there are a > half-dozen other platforms you could be using.

I've never actually _used_ an email-based workflow, but I'm trying to understand why people might prefer it over PRs.

SourceHut gets a lot of love on this site and I feel like I am missing out. But every time I look into it, I feel like there is something I'm not quite grasping.

<comment><USER12> Try this, it'll walk you through the contribution process:

[https://git-send-email.io](https://git-send-email.io)

I like email because it's very efficient, both as a contributor and a maintainer. It can fire off a patch with a single command, and reviewing lots of patches is easy, too. It's also distributed and federated by its very nature, which makes it fault tolerant and keeps your data from being locked up in a centralized/proprietary database.

<comment><USER13> As a former pine user, now trapped behind o365 web client, top posting and all - what email client are you currently using?

I've toyed with going over to mutt, looked at alpine, and mulled over trying notmuch, lumail or even plain nmh.

Ed: for the mail curious, as some of these can be tricky to search for:

[http://www.nongnu.org/nmh/](http://www.nongnu.org/nmh/)

[https://repo.or.cz/alpine.git](https://repo.or.cz/alpine.git)

[https://notmuchmail.org/#index4h2](https://notmuchmail.org/#index4h2)

[https://lumail.org/](https://lumail.org/)

<comment><USER12> I wrote my own mail client:

[https://aerc-mail.org](https://aerc-mail.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is an excellent overview of how to use the interface by a YouTube channel called Allieway Audio[0]. It was the explanation that made this software make sense for me personally.

[0] [https://youtu.be/RaI_TuISSJE](https://youtu.be/RaI_TuISSJE)

</comment><comment><USER15> You can use Orca online here: [https://hundredrabbits.github.io/Orca/](https://hundredrabbits.github.io/Orca/)

<comment><USER16> Esoteric language indeed!

Is there a way to load an example? I can't figure out how to get anything to work.

<comment><USER17> My browser doesn't have a MIDI out, so I don't understand how that's meant to work.

<comment><USER18> It might, actually: [https://www.w3.org/TR/webmidi/](https://www.w3.org/TR/webmidi/)

Chromium-based browsers only at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been playing around with orca for a few months: its really exciting and fun to use.

Here are some videos of patches I think are cool:

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH5GaVU0ed8&t=72s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH5GaVU0ed8&t=72s)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ig84_4RF5E&t=50s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ig84_4RF5E&t=50s)

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

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

</comment><comment><USER20> This looks like it could be described as a cross between Dwarf Fortress and Sonic Pi?

</comment><comment><USER21> There's a nice demo of this here [https://youtu.be/RaI_TuISSJE](https://youtu.be/RaI_TuISSJE) (with the explanation starting 3 mins in)

</comment><comment><USER22> I remember seeing this on GitHub [1] when it was a JavaScript implementation. It'll be interesting to see how it's been ported over to C!

[1] [https://github.com/hundredrabbits/Orca](https://github.com/hundredrabbits/Orca)

</comment><comment><USER23> > (Also, #pragma once must be supported.)

It's really interesting to me how this isn't standard C — ergonomically, it's so much nicer than the `ifndef` header guards.

</comment><comment><USER24> Thanks for reposting(?) this, I was trying to remember what this project was the last time it was mentioned on HN.

</comment><comment><USER25> What is an esolang?

<comment><USER26> esoteric [programming] language.

<comment><USER27> Argh. These sorts of coined puzzle words need to die. (And don't even get me started on the "rona".)

<comment><USER28> Why? It's not like it's hard to Google it or even guess the meaning (at least in this particular case).

<comment><USER25> Making up a phrase to give a language a label based a vague notion of popularity is pretty nonsensical. If people start using it, is it no longer an 'esolang'?

<comment><USER26> I don't think popularity is the relevant metric here.

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

[https://esolangs.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://esolangs.org/wiki/Main_Page)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This seems to be heavily influenced by Max? Sort of like a slimmed down esoteric text version of Max with a few extra quirks.

<comment><USER30> I'd say closer to csound with a UI inspired by old school midi trackers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> How does this compare to SonicPi?

<comment><USER32> Different beast. Orca sends midi so you could control SonicPi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> See #ORCΛ on twitter for examples

<comment><USER34> Link for the lazy/efficient: [https://nitter.net/search?q=%23ORC%CE%9B](https://nitter.net/search?q=%23ORC%CE%9B)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "on bang"?

<comment><USER36> A "bang" is a trigger signal. This is common in audio programming languages and I think the term originated from Max/MSP:

[https://docs.cycling74.com/max8/tutorials/basicchapter02](https://docs.cycling74.com/max8/tutorials/basicchapter02)

Edit: removed incorrect assumption about audio processing, thanks vertex-four

<comment> vertex-four No, there's no audio at any point within the system, it's less an audio programming language and more of a language whose output primitive is a MIDI note generator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> nice to see hosted on source hut</comment>


Real World Haskell – Cassandra Part 1 – Connecting to Cassandra - <AUTHOR> http://codygman.github.io/posts/2016-07-30-real-world-haskell-cassandra-pt-1-connecting.html <comment><USER2> In the section "After some reflection, figured out that this issue is caused by these libraries being in our Cabal file:", both cabal files are the exact same (I diffed them). What changed?

<comment><AUTHOR> The actual solution isn't modifying the cabal file here at all, it is adding "extra-dep: true" to stack.yaml when we start using the cassandra-cql dependency from GitHub.

I'll be updating the post again soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> This too was wrong and the real problem was me putting "monads-tf" in my build dependencies instead of "mtl". I got bit by using a macro on that list of "try adding X dependency".

In any case, the original post is now updated and everything working.</comment></comment></comment>


Objective-C in 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-traveled-ios-developers-guide/objective-c-in-2015-3cb7dab3690c <comment><USER2> > Now with Swift quickly winning over my ever affectionate engineer heart, I > still find myself enjoying my time in Objective-C.

I feel similar when it comes to Objective-C programming. Although the language is quite ugly and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone (of course nowadays you should use Swift instead!), I still enjoy programming in Objective-C because I'm fluent with it and I'm familiar with the gotchas.

Surprisingly this is also the case with JavaScript and PHP. Both popular languages (actually industry standard for webdevs) I know by heart and enjoy using, but at the same time ugly and infamous for their design flaws.

Swift seems to be a well designed language and I'm really curious if and how it will be adopted outside the Apple ecosystem now that it has been announced open source. Maybe in a few years, I'll be using Swift not only for Apple development but also for web development and shell scripting. Although I guess Swift programming would feel quite different in other environments because you may have to use other frameworks. But why use several languages if you have one that works for everything.

<comment><USER3> I agree completely. I know my way around Objective-C so well, I feel absolutely comfortable with it. I am starting to get there with Swift, but it will be very cool to see how it's used outside of Apple's ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bizarre that this fellow grimaces at "type erasure". That's the correct way to polymorphism!</comment>


Mine Kafon — Low-Cost, Wind-powered Land Mine Detonator - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/massoudhassani/mine-kafon/

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion of the project, from another source:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4808061>

(1 month ago, 180 comments)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Still, I noticed the Kickstarter campaign has started, so this is likely worth a heads up…</comment></comment>


What not to do as a technical recruiter - <AUTHOR> http://baglady.dreamhosters.com/2008/08/11/what-not-to-do-as-a-technical-recruiter/

<comment><USER2> Reposting my comment on the site for the lols:

We constantly get this crap at work. Normally they get hold of one name of linked in or something and then call the main switchboard.

The worst we had was recruiting firms calling the switchboard to be transferred through. Then they would claim to be Fedex and try to phish for names. "Oh this package has to be signed for by a member of the engineering team, is there anyone who might cover if you are at lunch when it's delivered" Riiiiight!

<comment><USER3> The other dead giveaway is when you are working at an unusual hour. You hear a phone ring down the hall, no answer. Then a phone closer to you. Then one right next door, then your phone rings. The whole sequence is like something out of a cheap horror flick.

You eye it with disgust, but pick it up, and sure enough it's a recruiter sequentially dialling through the extensions. And they have the nerve to pretend they are calling just for you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once upon a time I was VP of Engineering at a start up in Mountain View and I'd get called by recruiters all the time. One time a woman called me and asked about the company and I was particularly looking for people who had written debuggers. So I told her that.

She repeated back to me: "Knowledge of debugglers".

</comment><comment><USER5> I have two piece of advice about what technical recruiters should not do, based on my own experience:

1\. Announce that someone is applying for a job _without first asking them if they're interested_. (Yes, this happened to me: I was invited to go somewhere and speak about my research; I agreed; and when I turned up, I was introduced as "Colin Percival, who wants to work for us". To this day I still don't know exactly what job I was "applying" for -- I talked about my research and got out of there as quickly as I could.)

2\. Announce that someone is applying for a job _other than the one they told you they were applying for_. (In fact, there were three different positions involved, and in the end I was offered the position I originally applied for -- but not before having a list of on-site interviewers selected on the basis of a different position and then partially reworked on the spot.)

</comment><comment><USER6> _"... Apparently these recruiters just call random numbers and hope to be directed to some hiring manager. ..."_

Poor phone screening technique.

All calls should be routed through one person where they can shield internal people from _"unknown"_ callers. This simple hack works surprisingly well in large companies and is a 101 social engineering technique. Kevin Mitnick now makes a living writing books on this subject ~ [http://www.amazon.com/Art- Deception-Controlling-Element-Secu...](http://www.amazon.com/Art-Deception- Controlling-Element-Security/dp/0471237124)

</comment><comment><USER7> The core problem here is that recruiters are adding so little. It's fairly simple to get a great job without involving a recruiter. Why not cut out the middleman?

</comment><comment><USER8> I dunno about the rest of you but I've been called once by my boss when he was at home.

I just pickup and immediately hang up.

</comment><comment><USER9> The person should spend 10 bucks and buy a domain name. Actually dreamhost gives you a free domain name with the account, so I don't see why this person doesn't use one.

<comment><USER3> Help me understand: How would this improve the content of the post?

<comment><USER10> Perhaps dreamhosters.com is blocked where he works for some reason.</comment></comment></comment>


Questions For Startups Killing Free Membership And Going Pay Only - <AUTHOR> http://marketingstartups.com/2009/01/22/questions-for-startups-killing-free-membership-and-going-pay-only/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've noticed some startups that are killing their free versions and going pay- only (notably jott and sprout builder lately). I had a couple of questions about that, and for anyone that would rather talk here than on my post itself, here are the q's:

1\. What percentage of free users convert to paid users? Looking at a TechCrunch article that covered Jott, they say:

In August voice-to-text service Jott moved out of beta and added a premium feature for $4/month. Since then, the company says, about 30% of Jott's active users have opted for the premium, no-ads version of the service.

30% seems really, really high to me, but I could be way off. But even if 30% of the free users upgraded, that leaves 70% that are gone completely. That's 70% of the people that have heard about you, come to your site, and actually signed up to use your service.

2\. What is the cost of keeping free members? Like I mentioned above, most startups would kill to keep their users, especially when they have a premium version to offer. With such a captive audience already using the product, there are great opportunities to plug the full version in every communication.

3\. Are there competitors ready to take your free users? When you get rid of your free users (especially if they are frequent users of your service), they're likely to look for another service to replace you. What if there are other services that would welcome your subscribers?

4\. How will startups attract new users without a free version? Without a free version to hook new users, how do you sell users on paying for the service? A 30 or 60 day trial? If that's the case, what's the point of getting rid of the free users? Is it solely the ability to charge them after 30 or 60 days? Is it the simple shift from a) users that are freely using the service without offering up their credit cards

to

b) users that are using the service, but have their credit card on file, so if they forget to cancel, or think the service is ok, you can charge them

I'm not knocking the strategy. It certainly has a higher probability of making some cash, but free trial vs. freemium upgrade certainly feel like very different animals. One motivates me to check it out and bail immediately, looking for flaws and reasons to stop payment. The other makes me actually try something out at no cost, and if I feel that the service is useful, I'll pay for it by making the choice myself.

5\. Will the cost of your service be enough to be profitable? Finally, the big question: even with a high conversion rate, is the subscription charge enough to make sufficient profit without some ad component?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm debating some of these questions myself. I'm getting ready to launch a software as a service product to add language checking tools to CMSs (i.e. Wordpress). I'd like to offer some sort of free version but the processing I do is very CPU intensive not to mention the R&D effort to create this product. Writing improvement isn't a trivial problem :) <http://www.hick.org/~raffi/afterthedeadline.jpg> is my SS.

Some days I think of charging for usage (similar to other SaaS models), having a monthly per user flat rate, or just making the whole thing free initially until I have enough users and figure out how to monetize then (with more features, ability to add new rules, etc.)

<comment><USER4> Very interesting screenshot. How is this application run? Is it a browser add- on?

<comment><USER3> Its a TinyMCE plugin that talks to a web service I wrote. It does require a proxy script on the server side. My wordpress plugin comes with one of those. Getting ready to go beta with the whole thing soon.

<comment><USER4> Not to burst your bubble, but a lot of people write their blogs in a word processor.. then just c+p it into WordPress.

<comment><USER3> One of my challenges is educating my market on the differences.

1) A word processor provides spellcheck, grammar check, and some text enrichment aka style checking. My software provides spellcheck, minor grammar things, and very heavy text enrichment. Desktop software comparable to my text enrichment technology retails for $130. My spellchecker also detects homophones (where, were, etc.) which the Firefox spellchecker and the Wordpress spellchecker do not do.

END USER BENEFIT: checks you don't get in a word processor, improvement over the default spellcheck.

2) c+p from a word processor back into Wordpress is cumbersome. Claiming that all people follow this practice is misguided. I agree some people do this and others use standalone blog editors. However I see CMSs bringing in more and more word processor functionality as time goes on. After all, you are editing and producing content in the CMS, these tools should should be available.

END USER BENEFIT: convenience, safety net built into the CMS for those times when writers are too lazy to open a word processor

3) my engine makes it easy to add rules to enforce organizational style guidelines in writing. Imagine you have a corporate blog where many employees are producing content that the public sees. Most organizations worth their salt have a style guide. My software makes it easy to enforce style guidelines. I don't have a rule editor in place for everyone yet but my engine can support this.

END USER BENEFIT: centralized control of style guidelines, ability to enforce style guidelines

Think beyond Wordpress. Any web app with TinyMCE can use my service to embed language checking capabilities as shown in that screenshot.

(note--even though I'm building writing tools, its 6am, I've been up all night, please forgive my sloppy writing style right now)

<comment><USER4> It sounds really great. I didn't say _all_ users use a word processor.. just that a lot of them do. Besides that, writing content for the web has been around for a very long time, and people have seemed to managed to write pretty good content.

I like how you've realized the challenge of "education your market," very strong words there, and it sounds like you have some plan put together.

I think 2) is the greatest draw, the convenience factor.

Best of luck.

<comment><USER3> This thread will go on forever with our tit for tat responses. But thanks for the encouragement!

People have written quality content for awhile now, agreed. They did so before the word processor too. My claim is that I will speed up the polishing process for writers using my product.

My tool is a billy club, bopping writers over the head with their bad habits. We all have them. How many engineers write "utilize" over "use". You may think, "who cares?" but read a paper where everything is said with complex words, passive voice, etc.--it gets dense.

One of my favorite books is Write to the Point by Bill Stott. He advocates concise writing to communicate ideas quickly. I breezed through his book like it was a Neil Stephenson novel. This is a testimony to the difference clear writing makes.

Sure, I'm hocking a product, but I also believe in what it does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's amazing to see how quickly the transformation from free only to paid membership is taking place. In this economy, with the chances of buyouts being close to nil at the moment (let alone IPOs), it just makes sense. And for very small startups, founders should ask themselves why they would dedicate so much energy to something they can't expect to get paid for until they've built up a huge audience.

Conversely, and this is especially true for small startups, if you can build something for which a thousand or two people are willing to pay $20-40 / month, then that's a pretty attractive income. This could easily help you ride out the economy and be around when potential acquirers have more budget to spend, if that's your goal.

One other nice thing about this trend is it pushes focus away from marketing to the new-app-crack-babies that love to try every new thing for 5 minutes. They will give you some nice early feedback but don't really represent your target market, either in terms of demographics or loyalty.

</comment><comment> jim-greer I used to work at Pogo, EA's web games site. When I started it was all free, but we added a subscription tier with more features, more games, etc. When I left two years ago Pogo had about 15 million monthly uniques and 1.5 million paid subscribers (at $40/year, a great business). So our ratio was 10% - <USER2> was way above our expectations. Pogo has a very die-hard community - I'd plan on getting more like 5% if you execute it well.

If at all possible I would not charge for the existing free product, but instead think of new features that will be worth a premium to your top users.

<comment><USER6> That's exactly what we did at ww.com / camarades.com when the collapse of bubble 1.0 forced us to change strategies. Fortunately we had our plan ready to roll when the crunch came, we added a whole slew of (paid) features to the existing service, which remained free (and still is today). This allowed us to offset the drop in advertising revenue.</comment></comment>


China Builds 30-Story Hotel In Just 15 Days - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2012/01/11/china-builds-30-story-hotel-in-just-15-days-video/

<comment><USER2> Over the last year or two here on Hacker News I've seen several credulous, gee-whiz stories about China submitted from Singularity Hub.

<http://singularityhub.com/tag/china/>

I don't think that Singularity Hub, insofar as it curates stories at all, does a good job of curating stories about China. A lot of stories about China today, written by correspondents who don't know the Chinese language (as I do) and have contact with everyday people in China (as I do to a limited extent), read like stories about the United States housing market before the housing bubble collapsed in 2008. A minority of journalists knew from the beginning that the United States housing bubble was a bubble (I recall a Business Week story saying that way back in 2005), but lots of people kept saying that NOT investing in real estate was a chump move right up until the day before the market collapse in the United States.

Similarly, China's "progress" in building high-speed rail lines looked like an example to the world until a deadly crash

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/07/23/china-train- co...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/07/23/china-train- collision.html)

[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43865656/ns/world_news- asia_paci...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43865656/ns/world_news- asia_pacific/t/die-china-high-speed-train-crash/)

<http://www.economist.com/node/21525419>

that has now prompted doubts about the program among Chinese government officials.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-28/china- punishes-54-o...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-28/china- punishes-54-officials-over-fatal-high-speed-rail-crash.html)

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-16345592>

Much of China's new construction in recent years is not affordable to most Chinese citizens, and the government there is wary of a housing market collapse.

[http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-10/china-may- ease-p...](http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-10/china-may-ease- property-curbs-to-prevent-collapse-ubs-says.html)

The P.R.C. government is also wary of popular discontent with regard to other issues,

[http://www.npr.org/2012/01/11/144994861/china-targets- entert...](http://www.npr.org/2012/01/11/144994861/china-targets- entertainment-tv-in-cultural-purge)

[http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-12-28/china- me...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-12-28/china-mental- hospitals/52260592/1)

and censors all mass media

<http://www.cfr.org/china/media-censorship-china/p11515>

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15615952>

to such a degree that I wouldn't bet on current press reports based on Chinese media sources giving the full story of conditions there.

<comment><USER3> China has these "ghost cities," which are built all over the place but nobody wants to live in. Whole, fully equipped cities built and then left empty for years and years because nobody wants to live there.

<http://www.businessinsider.com/china-ghost-cities-2011-11>

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/06/why- chin...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/06/why-chinas-ghost- towns-matter-for-our-economy/240629/)

[http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1975397,00.htm...](http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1975397,00.html)

Can someone knowledgable in such matters explain to me why this does not indicate the chinese economy is headed inexorably towards a massive crash, especially considering the huge amount of fraud which we all know occurs there? Is it just to do with the amount of central planning and control they have?

(Also, which of the many and varied financial gambling instruments available in this modern world should I use to best profit from this contingency?)

<comment><USER4> "but nobody wants to live in"

Not true, people want to live there, most just can't afford it. In fact in some of these towns most of the units have been sold -- just not sold to people who live there.

"Can someone explain why this does not indicate the Chinese economy is headed inexorably towards a massive crash"

Probably in the same way that no one going to see Adventures of Pluto Nash didn't cause a massive crash in the US economy or even in the film industry here. I'll elaborate...

What percent of the Chinese economy is real estate? 6%?

What % of Chinese real estate do these ghost towns represent? 1%? 5%? 10%?

Are there 20 success stories (boom towns) for every ghost town? 5? 10? 100? None?

Ghost towns maybe a real and dangerous symptom of a coming Chinese crash. Or not. It's really hard to jump from "giant examples of waste" to "the economy is going to crash".

There are certainly other indicators that housing is a huge bubble in parts of China. There's also the inexorable and unbelievable growth that China has experienced over the last few decades. Growth like that has a tendency to make lots of things look like bubbles that aren't.

<comment><USER5> Lets not forget China's economy is overwhelmingly export driven; so the fact that they might decide to build towns and not use them- whilst seeming really odd- doesn't seem to me to be predictive of any kind of an economic crash.

The difficulties that western economies are having would seem a much greater threat to China's economy than this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While an impressive engineering feat, this probably isn't equal to a similar sized hotel in the US.

Having lived in a new and quite upscale (rent was 8K RMB/mo, apartment sold for $500k USD) Chinese apartment in Beijing for a couple years and visited many others I can attest that the build quality is absolutely awful. The stuff they're building will not last. Buildings in China are built for instant gratification using the lowest skilled labour available with fit and finishings that only look good from a distance.

This is why PPP GDP adjustment is such BS. The argument goes that you have a skyscraper in Shanghai and one in New York you have a skyscraper's unit of wealth in both places, though the one in Shanghai costs half as much to build. Therefore you double the GDP gor China (figures for illustration) in order to account for this purchasing parity issue. Problem is, that the skyscraper in Shanghai will last a fraction of time that the one in New York does. China is the land of McMansion skyscrapers.

<comment><USER7> Web Urbanist just covered a dangerous and common Chinese demolition method. The article mentions an apartment building that was demolished the same year it was built (2011) due to poor planning. [http://weburbanist.com/2012/01/08/high-anxiety-rooftop- excav...](http://weburbanist.com/2012/01/08/high-anxiety-rooftop-excavators- tear-down-from-up-top/)

<comment><USER8> That article specifically says "Believe it or not, in China at least, demolition via rooftop excavator is the safer, cleaner, and above all cheaper option."

But yeah, that looks _crazy_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am involved with a construction Company that operates in the Gulf area. The average hotel we have been involved with is about 50 stories high.

On a multinational Team from design to construction it can take a minimum of 36-50 months. Yes time can be cut -- certainly not to 15 days -- but not with the way large developments are currently build. The average rate of floor construction (with a prestressed slab) is 4-7 days, so the absolute minimum time required to get just the structure going will be >57 weeks. The average rate to get a single bath tub approved by the Consultant, Engineer, Client, Finance etc., is normally 3 months. To get a Hotel room approved down to the last fitting, carpets, access systems, IPTV, media hub, lighting, air conditioning and everything co-ordinated is anybody's guess, but again not less than six months.

On the current Project we are just finishing (5 luxury hotels), we have over 100 km of steel piping just for fire protection and chilled water for the air conditioning systems. There are over 50 systems involved, such as data, IPTV, WI-Fi etc. At peak we had over 5000 people working on the Project.

No chance in hell that an up to standard hotel can be finished in 15 days.

<comment><USER10> There was an old news article talking about how this Chinese guy started a factory. He had a plot of land, and went out with a contractor, paper pad in hand, roughly drawing the outline of the factory, as well as where the offices were going to be.

Construction started two days later.

No approvals, no drafting, every decision was made on the fly. That's what I call agile.

<comment><USER11> Agile indeed. It works with software b/c you can change it on the fly. Once you pour concrete and realize you made a mistake you're in for real problems.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure they'd have change in requirements, but that happens in any project. However, the obvious distinction here is there is no development application, or approvals from government. This is the wild west.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> China assembles a 30 story hotel in just 15 days. China builds a 30 story hotel in an unspecified length of time.

edit: Sorry this warranted downvotes. If I were trying to build a prefab home for myself, I wouldn't count the "build" time as time from parts arriving on site. I feel it to be disingenuous. There's a lot more to the process than just assembly of parts. Its definitely interesting that they can assemble things this quickly, but the fact that they can do this is not new. Example: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1911060>

<comment><USER13> Regardless of how much work was done offsite, it's still a unique feat to see an empty lot turn into a 30-floor skyscraper in such a ridiculously short amount of time; there's no doubt it's mentionworthy. However, as others have mentioned here, it doesn't look like anything to cheer about in terms of real quality or durability. There's a reason our methods take longer.

<comment><USER12> I suppose my point is that it isn't unique, either. They've been doing this for years and there are videos galore including past submissions on HN as I linked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good summary by everyone above...China does many impressive things but examples like this are also possible due to lack of oversight, lack of regulation, and corruption (obviously the 'correct' level of oversight and regulation is a struggle in many countries, USA included).

My most recent stay in Beijing (20th floor of a hotel/condo building) seemed wonderful (all things considered) until I discovered an oddity one day. My door had no way to disable the door lock from the inside except by key. It took a minute for the implications of this to dawn on me (hint: there is a fire, you can't find your keys, and you like to keep your door locked). Took about 5 weeks before I even noticed the issue (one day I went to leave the apartment and couldn't find my keys and I went to talk to the front desk and realized I couldn't leave the suite).

<comment><USER15> THIS SCARES THE SHIT out of me. And it is NOT just in China, Lots of European countries have this. We went to Italy and Greece and the doors were like that.

Huge multiple dead bolts, heavy metal doors, and you need a key to get OUT as well as in. It was at that time that I was thankful for the rules we have here in the US. At the end of our stay in Athens Greece we actually got locked IN the apartment building at 5am because the owner of the building instructed us to simply leave the keys on the table and close the door behind you. When we got down to the door to the hall of the apartments we couldn't get OUT.

So in Europe you better have a key on each of your family members or else you might get locked IN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You might also want to check out an article the BBC is running today which says that sky scrapers are linked with impending financial crashes. Specifically mentions China.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16494013>

Apparently, whole cities are being built in anticipation of people wanting to live there (ie, filling demand which doesn't exist).

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/11...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/11/china_boom_or_bust_1.html)

<comment><USER17> Filling demand which doesn't exist? China has an impoverished farmer/rural class to the tune of 600,000,000 - 700,000,000 people, and it is incredibly difficult to transition from a rural pass to a city pass, from what I've read. Difficulty in transition, to me, implies that their is a much greater demand to move into cities than the government is willing to allow currently. Why make it hard if you're begging people to move in?

EDIT: I know little of China, I'm posing this question in earnest to learn more!

<comment><USER18> The demand doesn't exist because those people can't pay to live in a brand new sky scraper. From what I have seen those units are in the 10's to 100's of thousands of dollars. Way outside the budget of a rural Chinese person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Skyscraper construction is actually quite fast, even if you don't do it modularly. A floor should only take a day or two for initial construction, with other trades following behind and adding cladding, electrical, etc. Steel beams are modular, after all.

The slow parts are preparing the foundation, which seems to be skipped over here in the timeline, and pouring and drying concrete bits, which this building doesn't have.

</comment><comment><USER20> It would be more accurate to say the hotel was _assembled_ in 15 days. Most of the pieces were already built off-site.

</comment><comment><USER21> It took 15 days for the final construction. Most of the building was prefabricated off site. Any ideas how long this stage took?

<comment><USER22> Yeah, it's a bit deceptive to say "15 days to build". The modules surely took less than time than building from scratch, but still a significant amount of time.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, kind of like saying you have to count all the time spent on ruby, rails, and all the gems you're using when you do Rails Rumble.

Making construction modular and plug and play is a hugely important innovation.

<comment><USER22> True but nothing new. We've had it in the US for decades for all types of construction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not having to care about health & safety is certainly one factor in the speed of Chinese builders, I've seen some crazy stuff in the preperation for consumer events.

</comment><comment><USER25> How do they get the crane off the roof of the building when its finished?

<comment><USER26> The cranes are designed to be easy to dismantle. For bigger cranes, they'll actually bring up a smaller crane which will be used to lower the parts of the bigger crane.

This has a few more details and links:

[http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5787150_cranes-removed-sky- scra...](http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5787150_cranes-removed-sky- scrapers_.html)

<comment><USER27> But how do they get THAT crane down?

<comment><USER28> With a series of progressively smaller cranes until finally:

[http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2610/3699889213_30575a56d0_m.j...](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2610/3699889213_30575a56d0_m.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In reading the comments it looks like I'm in the complete minority here, but I think this was impressive.

People are mentioning that there will possibly be problems with the hotel, or a story of how a similarly constructed hotel failed in one way or another.

However, once the company constructs 30 of these hotels all of these bugs will soon be worked out. It is the fast iteration and refining of the process that will eventually enable this company to create a building that is close in quality to what takes much longer to build in the US.

tldr; Construction companies in China are able to act web startups in the US. This will give them an advantage in the long term.

<comment><USER30> Building construction is one of the few industries that I do NOT want to ever act like a US web startup. Along with airplane construction and medical devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> To contrast:

It's been almost 4 months of construction here in London, ON (Canada), building a new residence. They haven't even laid the foundation yet, and all I see every day when I walk by, is about 9 people smoking for every 2 people working.

<comment><USER32> Even more of a contrast is the New York City Subway extensions that are proposed to take 10 years!

<comment><USER33> Apples and oranges. At least until recently, NY was known for having some of the fastest building construction teams in the world, and some of the only ones able to put up a story every two days. by having them pouring on one side of the floor and drying on the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This didn't seem to make much sense in desert (or wherever they were building it) but it makes sense in populated areas. You reduce noise and pollution from one year to one week and that's great. Also workforce has probably better conditions under the roof than on the roof.

Also, similar video from 2 years ago:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPSxt5A23MI>

</comment><comment><USER35> Hopefully it's more solidly constructed than the Shanghai bridge that was made out of trash: [http://www.weirdasianews.com/2010/02/05/shanghai- wonderbridg...](http://www.weirdasianews.com/2010/02/05/shanghai-wonderbridge- trash-collapses/)

<comment><USER36> The first thing I thought of was this: [http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire- new-13+story-building-tips...](http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13+story- building-tips-over-in-shanghai/gallery/1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "Tofu Hotel"... despite the marketing propaganda.

I really hope these projects are publicized enough so that when I am in China, I can avoid these buildings and the buildings next to them, in case they collapse and cause a domino effect or sympathy collapse.

</comment><comment><USER38> I like to look at this article as a response to the linked one.

[http://weburbanist.com/2012/01/08/high-anxiety-rooftop- excav...](http://weburbanist.com/2012/01/08/high-anxiety-rooftop-excavators- tear-down-from-up-top/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Although the preconstructed aspects of this make the figure less impressive anyways, I am also deeply unimpressed with any large projects like this that China does fast or cheap, due to the low quality and safety standards typical there.

</comment><comment><USER40> So what about security ? As i can see (from the video), they didn't covered the steel structure with any fireproofing material ?

</comment><comment><USER41> Now let's do the same thing without human intervention !

</comment><comment><USER42> but how fast will the fully-plaster structure come crashing down?

</comment><comment><USER43> Yes, but which would you rather be in when an earthquake hits?

</comment><comment><USER44> And they tear them down just as quickly: [http://weburbanist.com/2012/01/08/high-anxiety-rooftop- excav...](http://weburbanist.com/2012/01/08/high-anxiety-rooftop-excavators- tear-down-from-up-top/)</comment>


'Hedgehog' Robots Hop, Tumble in Microgravity - <AUTHOR> http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4712&again

<comment><USER2> Who knew it was so easy to hack the duplicate algorithm on Hacker News? Just toss in any query parameter, such as "&again" to a previously submitted link. Brings new life to something that was previously submitted less than a day ago.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178641](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178641)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very clever. Besides the name (which is clearly well chosen) the idea of putting the moving parts on the inside where they can be sealed and protected from dust, evaporation of lubricants, etc seems like a really good idea.

<comment><USER4> I wonder how much energy rotating a flywheel to move compares to something like a snake or fish? I'd've thought wiggling around would be less energetic... but maybe a cube covered with solar panels would work better.

<comment><USER5> Part of it could be regenerated, though these ones are using mechanical brakes. Though, is energy use really a serious limitation in a lander/rover? These things hang around for months or more, so they can recharge from the sun just by waiting a bit.

<comment><USER6> The longer they wait, the more dust settles, and the less energy they produce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A nice video on the cubli: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_6p-1J551Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_6p-1J551Y)

</comment><comment><USER8> Swarmbots (eg multiple robots that act as a swarm) are really cool [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJOubyiITsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJOubyiITsE)

</comment><comment><USER9> While not a perfect simulation, anyone who's played Kerbal Space Program has probably learned the benefits of this method of locomotion.

</comment><comment><USER10> For some entertaining sci-fi applications of this sort of tech, you should check out Seveneves by Neal Stephenson.</comment>


IAB Calls on ICANN to Withdraw Top-Level Domain Plan - <AUTHOR> http://letschatbusiness.net/2011/08/15/iab-calls-on-icann-to-withdraw-plan-for-new-top-level-domains-tc/

<comment><USER2> Appealing to the non-existent support for the poor downtrodden "media brand owners" might not be the best way to push your agenda.

Also, domain squatters aren't really happy about this, if multiple TLDs become popular then the already dying business of domain squatting generic terms (squatting trademarked terms is already a dead business thanks to the UDRP process) just becomes even less profitable.

I'm not even sure what "black hat domain traders" refers to, I'm assuming they mean domain squatters and don't know what "black hat" means.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since some might exploit or squat on these, no one should get them?

Following that logic, we wouldn't have any domain names at all.

The prima facie argument seems 'pro' - it's a technical restriction that didn't turn out to be necessary or as informative as originally thought. Why hang on to limitations that are essentially historical accidents?

<comment><USER4> From their perspective, multiple TLDs are probably a historical accident — they'd probably prefer if everything was under .com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> ISPs could supply their customers with optional DNS servers that ignore these new domains, couldn't they?

<comment><USER6> What would be the advantage?</comment></comment>


Show HN: NPM package workerproxy (proxy calls to Web Workers made easy) - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/workerproxy

<comment><USER2> Nice work! Something like this which matches up requests and responses (e.g., with an incrementing integer) is absolutely required for using web workers for repeated tasks. Everybody has to solve this problem. I wish it were built in.

One suggestion: add a priority queue in the main thread to allow high priority requests to be processed before low priority.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Example of the package being used to proxy calls to a Web Worker running Lua: [http://blixt.nyc/js-luaworker/](http://blixt.nyc/js-luaworker/)</comment>


Generate millions of graphic design images for training - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/imagetranslate/overworked-graphic-designer <comment><AUTHOR> We are interested to solve the reverse problem of finding the mask of text given an image with text on it. Any ideas? Machine-learnt or otherwise.</comment>


Some comments on the New York Times story about Donald Trump's tax returns - <AUTHOR> http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2016/10/some-comments-on-new-york-times-story.html <comment><AUTHOR> If anyone is a CPA, or has experience in American tax policy, I'm curious as to the validity of John's claims.'

I figured this was a topic that: gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is a pretty big deal and story. Why has the nytimes story kept being voted down at HN?</comment>


Marissa Mayer Wants Three More Years to Turn Around Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-DGB-45097 <comment><USER2> Maybe instead of beating up on MM, we could look at Yahoo the way we look at Twitter: Yahoo could be great if the world would let Yahoo be Yahoo.

But Yahoo being Yahoo would be a smaller company, with smaller, focused business, and happy customers. But it would have a smaller market cap, and today's investors would take a massive haircut. So they keep plowing ahead trying to be a tech giant.

Because they bought tech giant shares, and it's tech giant, or collapse until it's sold for scrap. And MM has to parrot the "this is the road back to being a tech giant" line to keep the illusion alive.

I'm not sure that anyone can do any better given the "tech giant or nothing" circumstances.

<comment><USER3> I actually thought MM had the right idea at first re: Yahoo! being a low-brow web entertainment portal. At one time Gweneth Paltrow was going to have her own lifestyle blog/website on Yahoo!. Even though anybody reading this comment or anyone we're close with probably wouldn't be interested in that there's a large number of US consumers who would be.

Either because of a personal bias or something else (we'll probably never know) she pulled a 180 and did things like buying the rights to every season of SNL (which was a favorite of her's growing up) and poached Katie Couric to run their news desk.

Having said all that, I don't know if I would anything different myself: If I'm bringing a tech giant back from the grave, I want to make it "sexy" again. I want the glory that comes with that. I don't want _my_ company to be a mouthpiece for celebrities' personal brands

<comment><USER3> Here are some trending Yahoo! searches I texted to friends in July '15:

Buffalo Wild Wings| Janet Jackson | Mega Millions | Type 2 Diabetes |

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My first question would be, as it has been for 12 years: "what is Yahoo supposed to be good at?".

The failure to answer that has been Yahoo's biggest problem for the entire last decade, and probably for most of the one before that.

In fact, this was the first question I asked when the company I worked for was acquired by Yahoo and their management team came over to talk to us. The answer I got was a completely delusional "we take what others have invented and we do it better". I didn't score any brownie-points for pointing out that while the copying bit was true enough, the "improving" part was pure wishful thinking unconnected with any observable reality.

I kept insisting on an answer, I never got one and eventually I quit and joined a competitor.

I think the key question is not whether or not Marissa believes she can save the company. She might be delusional as well. The question is whether or not Marissa can articulate what Yahoo is supposed to be good at.

<comment><USER5> A number of us here agreed it was a nice one-stop shop for a little bit of everything with Directories' curated info being a particular gem. Thing is, the former has been 100% surpassed (esp by Facebook/Google) with the later sold off long time ago.

So, the question must be asked. I supported Marissa's first attempt to save it. Looking at current situation, I'd reject the second one. She could apply this attitude to less hopeless companies with a lot better results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Marissa Mayer ... has a "three-year strategic plan" ... that entails > building and improving the services people use on their mobile phones every > day, such as search.

It's a good thing they killed their own search engine and tossed the majority of their mobile apps, then. And that it all happened under Mayer's leadership. Considering they've lost a lot of experience and market share in search and mobile, I'm sure they'll be well prepared for this.

To be fair, streamlining the app portfolio isn't a bad thing, as they had a bit of cruft. But she's had years to make these changes into a reality without success. It's hard to tell if she's asking for three more years in order to continue the same ineffective moves or to undo them.

Who knows? Maybe if she runs the ship far enough aground it'll grow legs.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish I could tell my customers, I just need 3 more years to solve these bugs.

<comment><USER8> I wish too that fixing those bugs last week had the same impact as turning around a struggling multi billion dollar business.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, because she hasn't had enough time already. Or made decisions that have made things worse at Yahoo.

<comment><USER8> That's quite the non-sequitur

<comment><USER9> Could you explain why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Her answers were very trump like "some things have gone well, some things haven't gone well, some things have grown faster than expected, some have gone slower" "Have we made big bets? Yes we've made some big bets"

No real insight into changes that are coming up, just really empty answers.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is she willing to take $1 pay and get rest of her compensation in stock options that expire 5 years from now?

How much is she willing to invest in Yahoo stock or stock futures by herself?

If I were in the Yahoo board, those would be my first questions. Best way to test her commitment and trust for her own strategy is to see how much she is willing to bet her own money on it.

<comment><USER12> I had a lot of faith in Mayer's turn around. Do I think she needs more time? Yes. Do I think she can do it in more time? I'm skeptical now. Will the board, that she created, try to keep her accountable like you're saying? I hope so.

I'm skeptical. It seems AOL/Armstrong really wanted to merge to become a new Yahoo. I'm curious on how Yahoo will pivot, with the time. FB, SnapChat, Instagram, Twitter, and Google are fighting for mobile ad revenue. It's my understanding that's how Yahoo is trying to reinvent itself. Might be too little, too late.

<comment><USER13> I had no faith at all in Mayer. Not because she isn't a good product manager.

Mainly because for a turnaround situation I would hire someone who was there before with a successful turnaround under h-- belt. Not someone without any turnaround knowledge (what to cut, high investor pressure, ...)

<comment><USER14> Mayer is a prime example of what happens when someone whose career should have peaked at COO becomes CEO. You see it all the time in sports when guys who are brilliant technical coordinators get moved to head coach and subsequently flounder.

There's more to being CEO (and head coach, to continue my analogy) than technical proficiency and strategic capability. There's a mix of requirements that are hard to quantify: human understanding, charm, charisma, empathy...character traits that are as much innate as learned.

I look at Mayer...she has very few of the "head coach" traits. Brilliant operator, excellent technician, all of the things you want in a coordinator. But not someone you want as head coach.

[EDIT] Typos/clarity.

<comment><USER15> > There's more to being CEO (and head coach, to continue my analogy) than > technical proficiency and strategic capability.

Eh, not that I totally disagree with you, but I dunno that that's really true. There are plenty of head coaches (and CEOs) who are just so technically proficient and/or excellent strategists that their lack of charm/empathy/charisma is a non-issue.

Belichick and Jim Harbaugh (say what you want, but he's successful by any sense of the word) are two examples of very successful head coaches who aren't well-known for being particularly charming or empathetic (one is an emotional brick wall and the other is a screaming psychopath).

There are CEOs who aren't particularly well-known for their people skills, but they're so good at strategy and execution that it really doesn't matter much. Anecdotally (from my tenure there), Bezos never gave/gives the impression of being particularly charismatic or charming. He's just really good at building the juggernaut that is Amazon.

I'm not saying those skills are unimportant and certainly people like Belichick are the exception, but it's entirely possible to just be so good at strategy that the rest doesn't really matter. Mayer just doesn't seem to be quite at that level.

<comment><USER16> I encourage you to read the book 'First Rate Madness' to get an understanding of the link between crisis leaders and mental illness.

Meyer appears to be a peacetime leader, not a crisis leader. Yahoo honestly needs a nutjob the likes of Steve Ballmer to survive.

<comment><USER17> I would really enjoy seeing Steve Ballmer take a break from his basketball career to be the CEO of Yahoo! Great idea! A part of me thinks he could actually turn the place around, and a part of me just thinks it would be hilarious.

<comment><USER16> I agree that there would be something deeply funny about seeing Steve Ballmer being his glorious and insane self, to then revive a company with so much potential.

It would be a fantastic and endearing final act for a truly larger-than-life character.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of their most valuable assets is Android Yahoo Mail app, that they are methodically killing: my mom (a loyal Yahoo user of 18+ years) says it has become too complicated (grouping conversations), with an unpredictable spam filter. Until recently it suffered from a serious memory leak (which was not fixed for years).

They already successfully killed the Android Yahoo Messenger app (remember when Yahoo Messenger was huge on desktop?). Ironically, WhatsApp founders are from Yahoo...

<comment><USER19> who needs functional email.. Y! really needs more katie couric, to retain loyal users like your mom

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Need 3 more years to really sink this ship.

</comment><comment><USER21> Yahoo mail has got much worse under her leadership. Flickr has become unreliable and buggy under her leadership. Personally I wouldn't pay her another dime.

<comment><USER22> Did Pipes go away on her watch? That was a sad day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yahoo has already transitioned into being a niche advertising and media company. That's not necessarily a problem, but Yahoo still fancies itself as big tech player and that hasn't been the case for over a decade. It may make sense for Yahoo to try and become a better media and advertising company, but Marissa Mayer is surely not the best choice of CEO for that kind of company. I'm not even saying she's a bad CEO, just that she is not an appropriate choice for the kind of company that Yahoo has become. I don't see how 3 more years with her at the helm can result anything other than an extension of Yahoo's long skid into mediocrity.

<comment><USER24> I don't think Yahoo could ever make that transition without losing billions in market cap. I know that's what is happening right now but it is a tough call - make a last ditch try to be "genuine" tech company or kill everything to make business of whatever is possible. Considering that Yahoo still has tech talent and a tech executive as it's CEO, I can guess it will try to gamble on the former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't think she can turn it around in ANY amount of time.

<comment><USER26> Do you think anyone can?

<comment><USER25> No.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The management, the talent may have infinite problems and might have contributed to Yahoo's demise but I don't think solving any of them would give it a magical upswing. There is no way it can get turnaround without nailing down a product that everyone wants. Frankly, I don't see that happening in near future, considering that all the previous efforts including acquisition of Tumblr haven't really contributed much.

</comment><comment><USER27> I am sorry to say that Yahoo management doesn't have a clue about what its doing. Case in point : I used to be a avid fan of the show Community and was elated when Yahoo picked it up. However for Canadian viewers I learnt it was only available only certain days of the week. WTF? And don't event get me started on the streaming issue. They couldn't even get the basics of online video right.

<comment> irq-1 > only available only certain days of the week. WTF?

Hilarious. Conways law in action. "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law)

<comment><USER28> I recently learned that Mel Conway (the same Conway) did some of the earliest work on recursive descent parsers.

[http://www.melconway.com/Home/Inventor.html](http://www.melconway.com/Home/Inventor.html)

Appel's compiler book credits him with the invention, but Cooper and Torczon cite one earlier reference.

Edit: poking around that site reveals an article which seems like it deserves a thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273710).

<comment><USER29> Slightly related, I learned today that the 4-color theorem Appel is Compiler Appel's father.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem#Proof_by_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem#Proof_by_computer)

[https://twitter.com/agumonkey/status/708681730278989824](https://twitter.com/agumonkey/status/708681730278989824)

(all this after reading that prolog primer [http://www.cpp.edu/~jrfisher/www/prolog_tutorial/pt_framer.h...](http://www.cpp.edu/~jrfisher/www/prolog_tutorial/pt_framer.html))

<comment><USER28> Fascinating!

<comment><USER29> I don't know if you've seen this tweet too: [https://twitter.com/igstan/status/708684782016798721](https://twitter.com/igstan/status/708684782016798721)

found it pretty funny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Personally? I'd give her three months to come up with a plan and tell everyone about it.

For some reason I don't run the world.

</comment><comment><USER31> Anyone else feel like a rebranding of the company should be considered?

<comment><USER32> They did that. She even "helped" with the design of the new logo, remember?

<comment><USER33> Ah, but what if they did another in the next three years? Perhaps that will work?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yahoo!'s identity crisis has been going on for _at least_ 6 years, here[1] is then Yahoo! CEO trying to describe "what is Yahoo!" in 2010 . It may have started earlier, but this was the first time I noticed it.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/28/ok-seriously-what-is- yahoo/](http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/28/ok-seriously-what-is-yahoo/)

</comment><comment><USER35> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)

</comment><comment><USER36> Yahoo could have been the dominant messenger. But then they killed the browser based messenger... forced you to use their terrible email based messenger. And then forced you to use their atrocious mobile app which forces you to verify phone number. They expelled at anon/safe communication before that but then everyone went to kik/snapchat/what's app/etc

</comment><comment><USER37> Yahoo! was great fifteen years ago, now it's just irrelevant. The world moved on to niche content sites and they were left behind. I can't think of a single sector where I'd choose them over competition. I've heard that their web mail service is stellar but so is Gmail and I'm staying with it. It's not like they came up with a service that was x10 times better than anything out there, far from it. They have been around since the dawn of the web and haven't manage to build anything innovative in the last ten years. Where is Yahoo! in the whole social media thing? I mean Google tried their luck with Google+. What did Yahoo! did? They bought Tumblr and didn't even bother to integrate it with their services.

Yahoo! has to focus on doing one thing and doing it very well. They can't be both a services and a content shop. It doesn't work like that. When it comes to content they have to compete with traditional news organizations that have decades of experience on the field. When was the last time you read something interesting and original on Yahoo!? For me, it's like never. The problem though is that if they had to choose one sector that would mean massive layoffs and that in turn would send the stock way down. So that's never going to happen, at least not unless reality hits them hard.

I feel kind of sad for them though because for me there was a time that I visited Yahoo! on a daily basis, before Google came-up with a better search algorithm and stormed the web. As with every company that was there from the beginning they hold a special place in my heart. But the reality of the web is that unless you innovate you become obsolete sooner or later.

<comment><USER38> Flickr is still the go to site for photographers, there are other sites, but Flickr is the most popular.

However, Adverts on login page suck though and for those that don't pay they have adverts inserted that look exactly like photos. I don't see the later normally, but it's a pretty awful way to make money (though Google search and Facebook advertising are equally bad).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> You can watch the full interview at [http://charlierose.com/](http://charlierose.com/)

(I'm on mobile and don't see a way to link to a permanent URL, but the video is currently on the front page.)

</comment><comment><USER40> The best thing yahoo has done is create a robust fantasy football platform. If they could innovate half as well as they built that platform, they would be ok.

</comment><comment><USER41> A lot of commentors are writing things like "if Yahoo wants to succeed...", but the thing is, a large part of yahoo doesn't want to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER42> Under her tenure, yahoo product quality went downhill. I think the course is set to go out of business. 1

</comment><comment><USER43> Is she selling Yahoo in pounds?

Milligrams?

</comment><comment><USER44> Marissa Myspace

</comment><comment><USER45> ummm....

</comment><comment><USER46> No. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER47> Yahoo has still some good assets. But they are killing them left and right. If Yahoo wants to survive as company, not just as Alibaba stock asset, they need a CEO who understands the entertainment, portal, advertisement and search business - after all that's Yahoo. The dumbest decision was to kill their search engine in 2009. It had the second largest market share back then. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search) ) At least the open sourced Hadoop and Traffic server survived.

</comment><comment><USER48> I hope the double taxation on sales can be fixed in the three years.

</comment><comment><USER49> June

</comment><comment><USER50> Why is HN obsessed with Yahoo ? See for example :

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11013507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11013507)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11121796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11121796)

<comment><USER51> Nothing to do with yahoo. Mayer failing makes hn happy.

Wonder why?

<comment><USER52> HN likes it when overpaid, over-hyped leaders fail in general, especially after doing massively unpopular and short-sighted things like killing work from home policies. If Mayer had actually done a good job at Yahoo and turned things around, HN would be propping her up as a hero. Instead, she proved her inexperience, inflexibility, and narrow focus make her a poor CEO for a company like Yahoo, and the board and media should never have propped her up as the harbinger of amazing female CEOs.

<comment><USER53> Yes - I think this comment sums it up well.

Remember how the media celebrated her appointment, focussing on her gender, as if the silver bullet of "gender diversity" will resolve the many problems we have in tech management. The media did this before she'd demonstrated any leadership or success.

For some who hold more interest in identity politics than technology, the mere appointment of a female CEO was success enough.

Yet, ironically, it is this politically-fueled attention to her gender that now resonates as we observe her failure. Let's hope it doesn't create damaging prejudices against other female leaders. If it does, I hope the real culprits are as obvious to other readers as they are to me.

We need to rein in the social justice warriors and stop tech being used as a vehicle for gender identity politics and virtue-signalling.

<comment><USER54> The media has hyped up Mayer and Elizabeth Holmes too much, so much so now that their companies are embroiled in difficulties they're still the first female CEO's I can think of, when there are better examples where the female CEO's track record has already been proven.

In my mind, to think of the corresponding female CEO to Steve Jobs, Holmes immediately comes to my mind, who leads a company with smoke and mirrors...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Not sure why all the hate. When she joined Yahoo in 2012, stock was ~$18 for a good 6 years. Since then, it's doubled

<comment><USER56> The stock increase is due entirely to appreciation in the value of Yahoo's Alibaba holdings.</comment></comment>