Ask HN: What strategies do you use to protec yourself from online harassment? - <AUTHOR>

Online harassment, trolling and doxxing are serious issues online. As a community, many people choose to look at being targeted as a social problem, but it really isn't. The threat model here is that with very little information a malicious attacker can:
1. Find pictures of you
2. Find your address and that of your family
3. Connect your social graph
4. Get contact information
5. Many more bad things
How do you limit the surface area of an attack like this?
Some of the things I do:
Detecting potential threats or current exposure
1. Run reverse image searches on public pictures.
2. Search my phone number & identity online.
3. Check meta-data, ex-if data on images.
Limiting Exposure
1. Not having facebook, twitter or instagram, or making privacy settings maximum.
2. Getting a new phone number after +10 years as it is associated with your identity all over the internet.
3. Creating social networking profiles with some correct information and some incorrect information.
4. Having strong passwords and different user names for every message board you post on.
5. Either register websites with fake/incomplete info or get whoisgaurd.
Doxxing
One of the biggest ways that an attacker can find your real identity is via payments. Paypal, google, venmo etc. These by necessity are tied to your real identity and can be associated with you. If you have a site with donations people will donate $0.01 and get the data associated with purchase.
Public Profiles
1. If you have a youtube channel turning comments off will limit low hanging fruit.
2. Making it difficult to associate your public profile with a real way to contact you. Difficulty to get a phone number, address or email.
3. Never respond directly to people accosting you.
These aren't really that great but just some ideas I've had/employed for myself. How do you protect yourselves and what are some good strategies? <comment><USER2> I guess one of the first thing you should do is google your name, nicknames and emails and see whatever you can find about yourself. If it could be used against you: try to get rid of it. Sometimes sending a mail to the admin do work (I've done it myself).

Also use different nicknames.

</comment><comment><USER3> Always speak kindly of others. If you are blameless, what do you have to worry about :)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't tell if this is sarcasm, but this is objectively not the case.</comment></comment>


Haskell for Mac IDE - <AUTHOR> http://haskellformac.com/ <comment><USER3> The IDE has great potential, and I've used it extensively for sandboxed and mini projects, but it's still not mature enough to replace any of the editors I'm already using (and I think they know that over at HfM).

I'm definitely keeping an eye on it, and once they come up with better pre- existing project support, and possibly git integration, it will most definitely be a candidate for replacing atom or Emacs for me. The feel of it is just fantastic.

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, did you use the Intero package with Emacs? ([https://commercialhaskell.github.io/intero/](https://commercialhaskell.github.io/intero/)).

<comment><USER5> Also consider Dante [https://github.com/jyp/dante](https://github.com/jyp/dante) instead of Intero. Similar (not identical, see the README for a quick overview) feature set, doesn't require stack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny that this would pop up, I just found it and bought it last week! I've been playing with Haskell recently and this app is perfect for playing with example code that you'll read in articles and books while learning.

Another awesome resource is Hoogle [https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/](https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/) It's super handy if you already have programming experience and are looking for a function that does a particular thing but you don't know what it's called. You can just put the type signature of what you want in the search box and it gives you back functions that'll do it!

<comment><USER7> > Another awesome resource is Hoogle > [https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/](https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/) It's > super handy if you already have programming experience and are looking for a > function that does a particular thing but you don't know what it's called.

Agreed. There's also Stackage's Hoogle, which will search through a ton of libraries as well (e.g. _aeson_ , for JSON parsing): [https://www.stackage.org/lts-7.24/hoogle](https://www.stackage.org/lts-7.24/hoogle)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The code examples in the five screenshots on the homepage are some of the first real-world use cases I've seen of "real" Haskell. It gives the impression of Haskell as a practical language other than an idealized clean- room experiment, so kudos to whoever wrote those!

<comment><USER9> IIRC Haskell for Mac was created by @tacticalgrace who's an Australian CS professor: [http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/](http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/)

No idea if he created the demos though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks awesome. On Friday I started going through "learn you a Haskell" and absolutely love the languages expressiveness and syntax.

One thing that ticked me off a bit was that the package manager and build system (cabal and stack) were a bit incomprehensible to me, hopefully this packages everything up nicely.

Indentation is a bit confusing in Haskell too, but this IDE has built in support for linting indentation.

<comment><USER11> Yeah I always get stuck on cabal and stack.

<comment><USER12> I tried out Yesod and Snap a while back and while the frameworks themselves were pleasant to work with from what I could tell, I spent whole days messing with package management issues that would render my projects unrunnable after new installs. I couldn't see myself working with Haskell in production for a web project until that situation improves.

<comment><USER13> Aren't some Haskell developers also using Nix for dependency management?

<comment><USER14> I use Nix and it's awesome, but still in early adopter territory. It works wonderfully if you really value reproducible builds and are willing to put some effort in the initial setup, but it's still a bit fiddly and documentation is nearly non-existent. If you have the time and motivation to learn about it up-front and get it set up it pays off, but I wouldn't recommend it to beginners just trying to learn Haskell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like that it has SpriteKit integration but there are more practical, work-a-day framework bindings that would have sold me. The ideal world a Haskell IDE _for Mac_ inspires is one in which I can build native macOS applications in Haskell. I hope it's on the radar.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Haskell for Mac integrates Apple's SpriteKit game engine including > animations & physics.

Interesting. How is this done? Is there a Haskell-style interface provided, or is it a thin veneer over the Objective-C API?

<comment><USER17> [http://support.hfm.io/1.5/api/spritekit-0.9.0.2/Graphics- Spr...](http://support.hfm.io/1.5/api/spritekit-0.9.0.2/Graphics- SpriteKit.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use IntelliJ IDEA with the intellij-haskell plugin, which works to some extent, but is fairly slow -- not the least at startup, which can easily take five minutes.

I'm afraid I won't be trying out this IDE, however, unless they offer a trial period (which I can't spot anywhere on the page). $30 isn't too much for a good IDE, but I'd like to try it out before paying in full, particularly since it seems to reinvent the IDE from the ground up, which makes me suspect a lot of the extra functionality, that more mature IDEs have, is missing.

<comment><USER18> At the very bottom they have a link for the trial version ([http://store.haskellformac.com/](http://store.haskellformac.com/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anybody knows some nice IDE on Windows? Or is programming on Windows even worthwhile?

<comment><USER20> I got Haskell + Emacs + Intero working on Windows [0]

[0]: [https://ianchanning.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/installing- hask...](https://ianchanning.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/installing-haskell- emacs-on-windows/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I finally updated to OS X Yosemite (10.10) and went to buy this app as I had been intending to once I updated, but unfortunately since I made those plans, Haskell for Mac now requires an even newer version of OS X :( Unfortunate... I'll have to stick with IntelliJ IDEA for now -- no plans to ever "upgrade" beyond Yosemite unless absolutely necessary.

<comment><USER22> Why don't you want to upgrade beyond Yosemite ? I just bought a new Macbook Air and its been nagging me to update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is just what I needed. I love Vim and Emacs for daily work, but a good IDE is a fantastic learning tool. Looking forward to trying it!

</comment><comment><USER24> I bought this last year. Nice product. I usually use Emaces but the IDE works nicely for small bits of code and live programming.

</comment><comment><USER25> HfM is great to play with and learn Haskell. For a real project, I use Haskell Vim IDE.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Learn Functional Programming with Haskell

Why would I pay $30? I can learn and use Haskell for $0.

This feels like a typical mac os thing, pay for everything.

<comment><USER27> You pay for good software, and a lot of Mac OS software is not just good, but great.

I didn't bat an eyelid when I bought Little Snitch, Alfred, Parallels, et al. and from the screenshots this looks like a nicely polished piece of software.

<comment><USER26> > You pay for good software

Hmmm, I don't like that statement.

"Great software" is very subjective. I think linux is a great piece of software. I use a macbook for the great hardware but certainly not for the software! Apart from Sublime text all apps I use are free, including hundreds of CLI apps.

<comment><USER28> Sounds more like a religious belief than something which could be argued on merit. I use both Linux and macOS on a daily basis and there is just no question about which OS has the highest quality software eco system.

I like Unix, which is why I use Linux and macOS. Linux because macOS is not an option and work, and I dislike non Unix systems like Windows. I like to have access to a powerful CLI.

But lets face it. Once you step outside the CLI on Linux, it compares very poorly to macOS. Not only do you have far more choices for every type of app but most of those choices tend to be higher quality as well.

Now let me qualify what I mean by quality. Many Linux apps does in fact have a significant amount of functionality. You got quite extensive packages such as Gimp and Inkwell. However these frequently have poorly designed UIs or UIs which are completely different from other applications, and frequently integrate poorly with the rest of the OS.

You mentioned Sublime. Well guess what that came directly as a reaction to TextMate on macOS. There are dozens of these types of modern incarnations of vim and emacs on Mac. Fortunately now we have started getting some selection on Linux with sublime and atom. But it was kind of slow, and while both have quite good core functionality, they are a bit lacking in UI. You notice how a lot of successful apps on Linux have to rely on HTML based interfaces. Which means you kind of notice the UI is kind of slim. Last time I checked neither Sublime and Atom had any real UI for creating and modifying bundles/plugins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> i know this is a haskell thread but after trying to grok haskell for years (yes i understand monads) i've discovered F# and jesus christ what a dramatic difference in functional language ergonomics and tooling and ecosystem. it has everything that haskell does (ADTs, type inference, immutability [when you want it], lazy [or eager] eval, pattern matching/destructuring, expression based, and partial application/curried functions) but it doesn't handcuff you to pure (side-effect free) code. say what you want but often writing code in haskell is monad acrobatics because you can't write a simple for loop or do i/o. the tooling is fantastic and cross platform (visual studio/xamarin) with a real debugger, real breakpoints, lightyears better docs, readable compiler errors, enormous ecosystem by way of interop with c# libraries. it's an eminently practical functional language. the `F# for fun and profit` series of blogposts is fantastic for not only introducing the language but explaining the value proposition of functional patterns. of course i wish ocaml had the same advantages (and it does have many) since it compiles to native binary but i'll accept the CLI in exchange for all the tooling benefits.

<comment><USER30> On Hacker News I've noticed people read titles, then go to the comments section to dump whatever thought is on their minds, triggered by certain keywords like some game I used to play as a child, as an excuse to get something off their chest.

It's very rude to pimp on other people's projects and articles to get something off your chest though.

This article is not primarily about Haskell, but about a commercial IDE made by a guy named Manuel M T Chakravarty — which for me it's interesting, because it's an example of somebody that apparently makes something that he likes, helping an ecosystem and people give him money for it. So it's perfectly on topic for Hacker News and visitors of the comments section like myself, would like to see opinions related to this project.

As for the comment, F# is a fine language, but reading the comparison I'm fairly certain that you haven't learned Haskell and I say this in order to help you — learning Haskell is the easiest path to practicing FP, which given your comment I'm fairly certain you don't grok yet, which keeps you back from being a good F# developer as well.

That you haven't learned Haskell is more of a failure of Haskell's community — but there have been recent projects trying to address that. One is the Haskell for Mac project here in TFA, others are the Stack build tool and [http://haskellbook.com](http://haskellbook.com), a really good book meant for beginners.

<comment><USER29> >It's very rude to pimp on other people's projects and articles to get something off your chest though.

this isn't a refereed journal - you can't prescribe how people engage with the material. i was prompted to post what i did on the back of having experimented with every ide-ish thing for haskell out there about 6 months ago (this one included).

>As for the comment, F# is a fine language, but reading the comparison I'm fairly certain that you haven't learned Haskell and I say this in order to help you

not only is this patronizing but it commits the fallacy of begging the question - i did learn haskell while working on a fairly sizable codebase at my last job. i won't reiterate all of my complaints here (i've posted several times to r/haskell) but the tooling sucks and pure code is a set of handcuffs - golden handcuffs maybe but handcuffs nonetheless. that we disagree on whether pure code is the one true god does not mean i don't understand fp - <USER2> means just that, that i disagree! to conclude from my disagreement with you that i don't understand fp begs the question (petitio principii) of whether pure code is the one true god.

>That you haven't learned Haskell is more of a failure of Haskell's community — but there have been recent projects trying to address that. One is the Haskell for Mac project here in TFA, others are the Stack build tool and [http://haskellbook.com](http://haskellbook.com), a really good book meant for beginners.

i read the haskell book and learnyouahaskell and real world haskell and many many tutorials and wrestled with stack and cabal. certainly they're better than the tools/resources available for e.g. cobol but they do not compare to the ecosystem around other, much more welcoming languages.

<comment><USER31> I think part of the issue that the parent comment was trying to get at here, is that haskell does things the way it does for a reason, and that the type system is much more of an aid to thinking about the problem you're solving than some restrictive handcuff, once you understand what it's doing and why it's doing it. I say this as someone who worked in F# for years, and eventually _switched to_ haskell because it had better support for these concepts via it's built-in typeclasses.

As for what you say about haskell being "monad acrobatics", it can be equally true of F#, or any other typed functional language, because all monads/applicatives/functors/etc are, are just helpful functional design patterns. It would be like calling Factories in Java handcuffs. If you don't want to code using Factories or Monads in Java/Haskell, that's still your choice, but if a lot of libraries in that language are using that pattern, it's probably for a reason that makes it useful in that language's paradigm. Haskell just makes it easier to use these patterns than F#/OCaml/Elm/etc because of its typeclasses, so a lot more people use them. That's all there is to it. I'll grant you that F#'s tooling is a little bit better in places though, but I was never a huge fan of it's project/module system. OCaml probably has both F# and Haskell beat there.

That being said, F# is still a fine language, and I think it's probably a better stepping stone towards learning haskell (and typed functional programming in general) than haskell itself, just because it gives you the option of gradually easing your way into the ML style of programming if you've already had some imperative programming experience before. And that's key, because the issue here is one of shifting the way you think about your programming problems, and there's simply no quick/easy way to do that. In fact, I find that a lot a complete newcomers to programming have an easier time learning how to do things the haskell way, because they don't really have these issues of feeling restricted by the type system, since it's the only way they've been taught to do things.

So overall I would say just keep at it with F#, and check out the F# way of doing things like monads (or "computation expressions" [0] as they're called in F#) , monoids [1], "Railway Oriented Programming" [2], and other such patterns [3], then maybe try checking out Haskell again later and see if it seems a little easier. But there's really no reason to be bashing it regardless.

[0] [https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/series/computation- express...](https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/series/computation- expressions.html)

[1] [https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/monoids-without- tear...](https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/monoids-without-tears/)

[2] [https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/rop/](https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/rop/)

[3] [https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/series/map-and-bind-and- ap...](https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/series/map-and-bind-and-apply-oh- my.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 Creative Ways to Protect Your Bike from Theft - <AUTHOR> http://www.welovecycling.com/blog/131948/5-creative-ways-to-protect-your-bike-from-theft/ <comment><USER2> Step 0: Get a folding bike.

Step 1: Be an adult and carry it around with you. Might feel strange at first, but eventually people will get used to it and will stop asking questions.

Step 2: Live happily.</comment>


A study of the Zen aesthetic - <AUTHOR> http://aentan.com/design/wabi-sabi-and-japanese-aesthetics/

<comment><USER2> I really like the mnemonic value of the examples in this post. Having a concrete example and a picture for each aesthetic principle makes them easy to recall later. As a designer, having the words to describe a form or situation in a specific way is really useful!</comment>


Ask HN: I am delivering mediocre work and feel awful about it. Should I commit seppuku? - <AUTHOR> When I started working for my company, I was ploughing through code at a good rate. A few months in, I was given a project that I never liked.
I don't know what an acceptable level of programming productivity is; I just feel as if I am 5-6 times slower than when I started.
Should I commit seppuku (this feels like the most honorable thing)? Should I renegotiate to take long unpaid breaks (this should revitalize me)? Am I panicking too much (I always panic too much)? <comment><USER2> This happens to everybody. I think I've commented on it here before: a lot of nascent entrepreneurs here appear to be working under the delusion that they'll redline at their peak productivity levels throughout the lifetime of their startup.

Here's what you need to remember: the difference between a professional and an amateur is that a professional comes and in and delivers work they'll stand behind all the time, whether it's fun or not. You are _always_ going to work harder and faster when things are fun. Things are not always going to be fun. If you're a pro, you're going to keep going regardless.

Obligatory essay (not that they've set the world on fire either, but the sentiment is good): <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html> (Fire and Motion).

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fantastic essay.

Somehow I always thought that no-one else had this problem. Seriously.

I hope I can finally give up my youthful arrogance. I always believed that when people spoke about getting experience they meant learning more about writing software (and how I scoffed at that). But it's just as much, if not more, about learning how not to turn around and run away.

<comment><USER3> I have this problem every so often; you're not alone. A few weeks ago I don't think I did any meaningful work for an entire week straight. I just screwed around each day, telling myself that the _next_ day would be "super hardcore work day" and every following day would _have_ to follow suit.

I eventually snapped out of it, but it took that whole week of just recharging my batteries to get back into it. I even managed to start working a few times during that drought and I always stopped almost immediately afterwards, never getting into the zone.

Maybe it's the nature of the work, maybe it's a common character flaw of people who do our work, I don't know. All I know is you're certainly not alone.

<comment><USER4> _I have this problem every so often; you're not alone. A few weeks ago I don't think I did any meaningful work for an entire week straight. I just screwed around each day, telling myself that the next day would be "super hardcore work day" and every following day would have to follow suit._

I also have this problem. It seems like every once in a while, I get stuck in this weird anti-productivity loop. I know I should be doing things, and I'll tell myself that I'll start in just a little bit or the next day, but end up not.

I've noticed that I can put a halt to this process quickly (hopefully this works for other people as well) by forcing myself to stop thinking about whatever it is I'm doing for a while, and do something creative or intellectually stimulating that is entirely unrelated to the problem at hand.

In my case, the "recharge" activity tends to be one of:

\- playing musical instruments

\- reading

\- drawing / painting

\- going outside and doing one of the above, or thinking about nature, physics, etc.

\- studying (as in going through a book that I need a pencil and paper to make sure that I am understanding what's being shown in it).

In the case of studying, the subject matter doesn't have to be entirely unrelated to what I'm doing. I've been using Concrete Mathematics for this purpose lately. Studying, however, doesn't help if I'm stuck in anti- productivity mode _and_ feeling like my brain's a bit burnt out though.

If I don't force myself to do one of my "recharge" activities, I remain in the "anti-productivity loop" for a while, at most a week or so.

It should be noted that the "anti-productivity loop" is a powerful force. It's easy to fall into, and it takes a bit of a force of will to break out of.

Perhaps it would be more appropriately labeled "state of negative-flow".

<comment><USER5> Sounds exactly like "intensity cycling". You work hard, progressively improving, til you stop getting gains. Then you take a week off where you do virtually no work, to recover. Then, you start again at 70% of your previous peak, and work up again.

It's from weight training. I just heard of it a couple of days ago, but it's eerily similar. Also, plain common sense (but I needed to hear it). [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/79fu6/7_ways_to...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/79fu6/7_ways_to_be_a_healthier_programmer/c061o7z)

<comment><USER3> I've had to do that with regard to weight training before, I didn't think it was something that could be generally applied though!

Thanks for the tips, kaens. I will certainly keep them in mind in the future.

<comment><USER6> I think that's what Wufoo does - vaca every 2 months. Granted I doubt they did it their first year out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seriously, calm down. What's up with the assumption these days that everything done in our work is supposed to be fun? It's work. Sometimes it sucks, it's un-interesting, it's laborious, sometimes maddeningly menial. You're not always going to be learning at a fast pace. You could just quit and go somewhere else, get assigned a crappy project and find that the grass isn't any greener. Or you can suck it up and take the good with the bad. Put your head down and get through it and you'll learn how to deal with work that's not fun.

<comment><USER8> I agree that the original poster needs to calm down, but I get the impression you should calm down, too. I've been avoiding getting involved in the generational battle that seems to have been sparked here over the past week, since I didn't want to add fuel to the fire. But this comment struck an unhappy chord with me; it just seems a bit too indignant.

I think the problem I have is that the assumption it is based on is wrong. I can only speak as a representative of the millenials, but the motivational power you have identified is incorrect. I am not working off of the assumption that everything I do ought to be fun. Given the discussion I've observed here so far, this seems like a gross exaggeration of what has been said.

The primary motivation for me is to be productive and build things people find useful. It seems that this is the same primary motivation of the original poster, too. If things are uninteresting, if they are laborious, if they are maddeningly menial, but they need to get done, then I have no problem getting them done. If, above all of that, they are pointless or otherwise seem like a counter-productive waste of time, then I will get demotivated, and my productivity will slow. As a result of my productivity slowing down, I will become unhappy and start asking questions similar to that of the original poster. I like getting things done, and when I feel like I'm running in place, it begins to make me ask why I'm not just standing still. Your position on this seems to be that I should shut the hell up and just keep running, if I know what is good for me. Can you be so kind as to explain why it is good for me, or those who have ordered me to keep running?

Obviously, if fed with an endless stream of menial work, my motivation will suffer as well, but I suspect that is not where the original poster is at right now. If it was, would you still be yelling at him to suck it up and get back to work? At what point do you decide that there really _is_ a field somewhere else with greener grass? I hope you are not so cynical as to say the grass everywhere is indistinguishably parched.

<comment><USER9> I'm a Millenial and didn't find the original comment all that indignant or upset. It was another side-comment that tossed in the "Millenials, eh? ;-)" and I just figured that was a humorous attempt to tie this to another discussion.

<comment><USER8> The side-comment didn't bother me. I'd guessed the target audience of the original comment before that was posted. I might be reading too much into it, but it came off as "you lazy kids and your damned expectations" kind of rant from someone who wanted to make sure no one was having too much fun, and that we all understood exactly where our place was in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Welcome to the morass of professional life.

Is your career progressing? Have you accomplished anything in the last year that you'll put on your resume? Yes? Good, continue. No? Consider other options.

Is the project proceeding? How does your manager feel about your work? Good? Maybe it's a perception problem on your part. Anxious? Perhaps you're not being applied well and should be moved to a different project within or without the company.

Things checked out OK so far, but you're still not happy? Perhaps you should consider trying to flip your role in the company to something that would be more beneficial to both you and the company.

My productivity plummets during certain phases of projects. If you're feeling that way perhaps you just need to get past a milestone onto a better or more interesting task.

Don't panic about it! Some corporate structures can withstand an almost malicious amount of unproductive behavior; in fact, managing the spectrum of productivity is in large part what corporate management is about. That said, don't abuse it -- long term it will definitely hurt you more than them -- but think of it as productivity insurance while you figure out how you can succeed.

</comment><comment><USER11> One sure-fire way to keep getting projects you don't like is to accept them, let them wear you down, and do nothing to improve your situation.

<comment><USER12> and the alternative?

<comment><USER4> Be picky about what projects you accept, and don't let your clients walk all over you. There's definitely a balance that has to be found there though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'll be a contrarian: if you really don't like what you're doing, find a way to transition to something else.

That doesn't mean quitting immediately (and potentially jumping into another bad situation).

Rather, start making inquiries (either internally, at other companies, or start your own) and see what else you could be working on.

Just don't accept the idea that " _work/life sucks, get used to it_ " as that's the surest way towards becoming a drone.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would venture to say that committing Seppuku is generally a bad idea, unless you have dishonored your family on the battlefield or something.

</comment><comment><USER15> _Am I panicking too much (I always panic too much)?_

If you are asking this all seriously, then yes, you are panicking too much. Calm down.

Talk with a superior candidly about the situation. Taking breaks is not going to solve things if it is the project you don't like. Something about what you are working on/with is what needs to change.

</comment><comment><USER16> It is important to get yourself out of this situation as soon as possible. It's depressing, you're not learning as much as you could, you're (probably) learning bad habits. Seppuku is not the right answer.

How about a new project, a new job or find a way to make this project interesting (i.e. use a new approach, a new language, switch tasks with someone else working on the same project). Anything!

</comment><comment><USER17> You have to get on a project that you do like. If you don't have enough "political pull" to make that happen right now, try to make it clear to your boss or other people in the organization that you'd really like to be doing something else. Taking long breaks is only a temporary solution.

</comment><comment><USER18> Get enough sleep and exercise. Starting to do these things have made a noticeable (to me) difference in my productivity level and outlook.

<comment><USER19> I think that's good advice in any circumstances.

Well, unless the question is "I spend all my time sleeping and working out and I don't have time for a job and a life, what should I do?"

But that's not the question, so I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was in a similar situation with my last employer - I absolutely loved my first project there, felt really productive, did a bang up job with it, and delivered something pretty slick. And then I got put on another project with a different toolset and absolutely hated it. I felt terribly unproductive, like I was wasting my time, and didn't believe I was learning anything professionally useful.

If I were you, I'd look around for other jobs and see what else is out there. If there's another job that you really want to do, or you see a viable startup opportunity, jump ship. If not, buckle down and finish up the project. In my case, a friend from college IM'd me a couple months after I'd started feeling discontent, and said "We're starting a startup, and need a technical person. Wanna join?" I stayed long enough to get my current project into a sellable state, and then quit.

Some reflections in hindsight:

1.) My feeling of lower productivity was mostly a mirage. In LOC/day, I was almost as productive as I was in the previous project, it's just that more of those lines were boilerplate, and so I guess my productivity in function points/day was lower. Boss was relatively happy with my productivity, he just didn't like my complaining.

2.) In terms of it being a dead-end professionally, I was absolutely right. Actually, both technology stacks (Swing/Netbeans for first project and JSF/Facelets/A4J/Hibernate for the second) were dead-ends; overall job markets for both seem to be declining, and anything new that I'd start now would need a modern web framework (Django or Rails) and/or C++ WinAPI experience.

3.) 90% of products fail, _whether they're done by a startup, a small company, or a big company_. The only variable seems to be in how fast they fail, and how much resources they consume. So you should expect that your project is doomed and do it anyway; that's the only way to find out if it's one of the failures.

4.) There was just as much grunt-work for my startup as for my job, but it didn't feel nearly as onerous. I think this was because I knew that even if the product didn't pan out, I was building skills that I'd want to use in the future. For me, it's okay to work on a project that'll fail as long as it leads to one that'll eventually be a success. At the last project at my employer, I felt that not only was the product doomed, _all future projects using that skillset would also be doomed_. (This feeling was not helped when we e-mailed some mailing lists on how to do simple things like integrate other AJAX libraries, and the response was "It's not possible. In fact, the engineers here have recommended to management that use of JSF be banned for all future projects.")

<comment><USER20> i feel that way about my current contract job, but i have a few other notes coming from the perspective of someone who has lead teams.

'risky code sucks up tons of time'

i don't think i have ever been on a project when expectations could realistically have been meet if i did not already do something just like that.

the current project i am on, i was hired to work on a flash widget, and i ended up working on a java applet that had to communicate with JS, and the struts backend. there was a ton to learn, and most of the time i spent looking stuff up on google.

on other programing jobs i always feel more productive when i am not spending my days on google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had some really smart kids working for me over the summers at Canoe U. Marshall scholars, Rhodes scholars smart. I saved up miserable work for them all year and, come June, I'd give them one project each. I told they didn't have to come in, nothing. Just log their hours and send them to me every week. I'd make an estimate of how long each project should take, with a guess at what a standard dev might be. Invariably they went insane with boredom and frustration and asked for more projects.

I'm not saying my management style was exceptional, but their insight into the nature of work was: if the project bores the crap out of you, ask for two or three more. By working on the more interesting projects, you can save up willpower to tackle the dull-as-rocks first project. You might actually get through the first one faster.

</comment><comment><USER22> Ignore all the people giving advice along the lines of 'suck it up, work is not supposed to be fun'. That is the talk of people who hate the idea of anyone having a better life than them.

You need to map your way out of this situation - demotivation (regardless of the cause) is bad for you and your employer. Persisting with it is unprofessional. If you try and 'suck it up' you will travel the path to burnout and damage to your health and career.

Try and identify the cause before you take the appropriate action - it could be boring/unsuitable work, a medical problem like depression or even something like anemia, burnout, poor diet/exercise, or a lack of fulfilment from other areas of your life.

</comment><comment><USER23> Heh. Nice user name.

Don't commit seppuku. That's an overreaction. Suicide should never be an option until you have exhausted literally everything else, and "everything else" is such an immense field that really, suicide never makes sense.

You have a choice. Either you keep what you're doing any try to find meaning in it, or you change your life and do something else. If you're not satisfied and have something better to move on to, then do that.

<comment><USER24> I think he was joking? At least, I sincerely hope he was joking... I'd suggest doing it for a few more months, and if nothing improves after that, maybe start looking for a new job. Living for a long period of time with a job you hate might not be good for you. :D

<comment><USER25> The key to a successful seppuku is to have your trusted friend practice beforehand to make sure he really can behead you in _one_ swing.

This is one situation where being a hacker is not recommended.

<comment><USER26> Sorry for being naive and offtopic. What does successful seppuku mean?

I had to do a search for this word when I read the post and didnt quite get what a moral suicide means.

<comment><USER27> I would assume it means not just leaving yourself wounded and slowly bleeding to death.

<comment><USER25> In a traditional seppuku you plunge the ritual dagger into your abdomen and cut from left to right. This is an incredibly painful procedure, and to finish the ceremony successfully you can't visibly admit to your pain. To accomplish this you have a trusted lieutenant decapitate you swiftly after the act is accomplished.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku> will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about this ritual >.>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> At my last job, I found out that an intern was being paid more than me and my productivity plummeted. Any request I made about a raise was rejected and eventually I left the company.

That being said, that was due to my not feeling appreciated and feeling that I was being taken advantage of.

We all go through slumps. We're writers. Neil Gaiman just blogged about how he had to slog through parts of books and he would regularly call his agent and try to cancel the book so he could work on something else. He's not alone. We all do it.

You think Gaiman would blaze through a novel about the mating cycle of the South American Gazebo? Hell no! Well maybe he would, I can't really say.

Anyways... In the first example, I tried to make it right. I spoke with my boss and my boss' boss to try and fix the situation. While mine did not end well, you first need to communicate with your boss. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

The second thing is to keep on plugging. So long as you're making progress it'll get done. It may suck and may not be your best code but it has to get done, it is your job.

Be strong my friend, you're not alone as this thread has shown you.

</comment><comment><USER29> Here's something from Aaron Swartz about the same topic

<http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity>

I remember pg saying that if he had uninteresting programming work, he would try to make it interesting by making a language design problem.

My dad's brother told him once that "Everything's interesting when you look hard enough." I've found that to be true so far.

But even if you find your work interesting at large, I think everyone has their cycles. It helps to notice how you got out of the last one, and what you did to get out of it. Even the coolest job and most interesting work has its lame parts that you have to slosh through.

</comment><comment><USER30> Sounds like a terrible case of humanity. There is no cure. I'm sorry.

<comment><USER25> Even worse, the mortality rate for this ailment is 100%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Take comfort in the fact that you are still being 10x as productive as everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER32> _chanting_

Seppuku!

Seppuku!

Seppuku!

Get it on video and sell it for $9.95</comment>


More Than Just a Schema Store - <AUTHOR> http://engineeringblog.yelp.com/2016/08/more-than-just-a-schema-store.html <comment><USER2> Great read, thanks for sharing! If readers are interested in open source schema registries, check out:

* [https://github.com/confluentinc/schema-registry](https://github.com/confluentinc/schema-registry)

* [https://github.com/snowplow/iglu](https://github.com/snowplow/iglu)

Disclosure, I work on Iglu.</comment>


From pecan pralines to 'dots' as currency: how a prison's internal economy works - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/30/prison-economy-informal-markets-alternative-currencies <comment><USER2> This video by the onion, about the prison economy, is a favorite of mine: [https://youtu.be/K2IYIJc1f00](https://youtu.be/K2IYIJc1f00)

In all seriousness, complementary currencies are a huge topic of interest for me. Value exchange takes many forms when money is unavailable. Cash is distilled power, but other forms of power and exchange will always exist.

</comment><comment><USER3> Related reading: The Economic Organization of a P.O.W. Camp by R.A. Radford.

<comment><USER4> Another one: "Games Prisoners Play: The Tragicomic Worlds of Polish Prison" by Marek Kamiński. Well worth reading – Kamiński is a sociologist who was imprisoned in Poland by the communist regime, and formulated many behaviours of inmates in terms of game theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The US baffles me sometimes.

> He explained his case isn't the worst: Timothy Jackson, a man caught > stealing a jacket from a shop more than 20 years ago, is set to spend the > rest of his life in Angola. The average sentence in Angola is almost 90 > years.

How can a civilised country allow this to be?

<comment><USER6> Looks like a "three strikes" law, which imposes a mandatory heavy (in this case, ridiculously heavy given the offenses) sentence after a certain number of felony convictions:

"After this conviction under La.R.S. 14:67, Mr. Jackson was sentenced in accordance with R.S. 15:529.1 A(1)(c)(ii), which states in pertinent part:

If the fourth or subsequent felony or any of the prior felonies is a felony defined as a crime of violence under R.S. 14:2(13) ․ the person shall be imprisoned for the remainder of his natural life, without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence.

After a sentencing hearing at which the State proved Mr. Jackson's multiple offender status, the trial court simply stated that "because of the specific provisions of the law ․ the sentence must be ․ life imprisonment without benefit of parole, probation or suspension." Mr. Jackson has prior convictions for simple burglary in 1991 and in 1986 and for simple robbery in 1979. Simple robbery is listed as a crime of violence under La.R.S. 14:2(13)."

[https://caselaw.findlaw.com/la-court-of- appeal/1042986.html](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/la-court-of- appeal/1042986.html)

<comment><USER7> This is heartbreakingly cruel. It's hard to believe that an otherwise civilized country can do this to its citizens.

<comment><USER8> How about having some sympathy for this man's many victims and the people he would have preyed on in the future? While a life sentence without parole sounds excessive, he will never again rob or burgle or otherwise prey on the citizens of that otherwise civilized country. The only reason to permit the state monopoly on violence is because the state in turn keeps the peace. That includes protecting its citizens from robbery and burglary.

<comment><USER9> Most criminals don't commit crimes as they get older. The idea of lifelong criminality is a myth. The certainty of a sentence is more important then its duration, so these harsh sentences aren't deterring crime as effectively as having more cops would.

<comment><USER10> The purpose of the harsh sentence in three strikes laws isn't to deter crime, it's to lock people up who are apparently undeterrable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Crazy, isn't it. If deterrence appears not to work, let's pick the most expensive, wasteful alternative we can find! Taxpayers get a bad deal, society gets a bad deal, everyone involved gets a bad deal. I suppose that's what we get if the point isn't to make a better society but rather to indulge people's revenge fantasies and messed up sense of satisfaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Money is too risky to hold – making US prisons one of the few places on > earth where the dollar is not accepted.

Yeah no. You can't buy in USD in tons of places around the world. Maybe the most part. You can find an exchange, but that does not qualify to make a whole country a place where the dollar is accepted.

<comment><USER12> Not my experince. Even where the dollar is not usually accepted in practice, it is known it can be converted into nearly any local currency. There is often a delay and very poorly calculted exchange rate however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Money is like language. It's impossible to deprive a group of humans of it, because it's in our nature to immediately invent it if we don't have it. What else is like this?

<comment><USER14> Food, sex, and drugs are very ancient human commodities. Money is often thrown in the mix to simplify things.</comment></comment>


Paul Buchheit: Did anyone else notice that TechStars and Y-Combinator have the same application? - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/anyone-else-notice-that-techstars-and-y.html <comment><USER2> Techstars is a clear second to Y Combinator. But there's nothing wrong it. They have a solid program lined up. Yes, the application is completely plagiarized. PG, did they ask permission or did they just do it?

Regardless, the YC application is pretty much perfect for this type of program, so I can understand that they didn't want to mess with something that worked. Plagiarism is a high form of flattery. The three or four changed or new questions make the TS application worse than the YC one, they shouldn't have bothered.

A venture capitalist is one of the founders of TS -- PG sees that as a negative but it could make it easier to get money from a friendly venture capitalist or provide insight into the notoriously obtuse mind of a VC.

TS also has more than one session a week. I see that additional structure as a good thing but I'm sure PG would argue that it's taking time away from hacking.

The website of each company certainly shows a difference in mentality -- YC is stylized minimalism, TS is over the top web design you get when you pay someone too much to design you a site.

So what should you do? Apply to both. Don't sell yourself short. Boulder's a nice city. So is Boston (even though the trains don't run past midnight).

<comment><USER3> No, of course they didn't ask permission to copy the application form. And it's not just the application form. Reading their site is a freaky experience, because I keep coming across bits and pieces of my own thoughts, and even idioms.

I'm a bit indignant about the whole operation, actually. I feel like J. K. Rowling would feel if she came across a book that was set at a boarding school for kids with magical powers, with a hero called Henry Potter, who lived with his disagreeable non-magical ("moggle") step-parents, his own parents having been killed by the evil Valdemort...

<comment><USER4> Even as someone that rejects intellectual property as invalid, I suppose I can understand why you are displeased.

However, as for your example, why would anyone buy such a book unless it explored new stories or otherwise filled a void in the market?

<comment><USER5> The book analogy falls apart here, because only a limited number of people are accepted to YC or TS, while a (practically) unlimited number of people can read Harry Potter. The existence of two YC-like programs doesn't significantly decrease the amount of interest per program, especially since you can apply to both. It does, however, significantly increase (approx double) the number of entrepreneurs funded, and the competition may encourage YC to improve its program further.

As for your book example comment, if somebody wrote Henry Potter, I imagine lots of people would read it. The story in each new Harry Potter book isn't new and exciting either... it's the same story, new details. Also, just because Harry Potter was the most popular series with that story line doesn't mean there's no demand for other similar books.

<comment><USER3> We don't accept a fixed number of applicants. We'll fund anyone who seems good enough. If we suddenly got 30 great applications, we''d accept them all, and worry later about how to cram them all into our space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think TechStars made three mistakes:

1\. Low publicity.

2\. Asked too many questions (i.e. what does it mean to be an entrepreneur?)

3\. Deadline too soon.

They should've kept the deadline for applications at April 12th since by that time, all YC applicants will know if they have been accepted/rejected. The rejected ones could then apply at TechStars. This is not necessarily a bad thing since YC only picks 15 teams, while leaving a big pool of other great startup ideas and founders behind.

I have had phone conversations with numerous entrepreneurs on news.yc, and almost all of them plan on applying to TechStars while keeping YC as their first option.

TechStars could have, for marketing purposes, used aikido strategy and turn Y-Combinator's strength into weakness: since TechStars is new, they could've claimed that they place greater focus on the startups they fund as a way to prove their model superior to YC. A lot of people would've bought into that argument.

Having competition actually validates Y-Combinator's business model. While two similar programs may not be good for either parties, it is definitely good for the prospective founders.

<comment><USER7> It's great that support for young entrepreneurs is expanding. The entrepreneurial world is a brutal one and you want as many people on your side as possible.

Because I live in Colorado (but go to college in Austin), I'm surprised I hadn't heard about this before -- despite it launching about 4 months ago. Boulder is an awesome town, and you have the Rocky Mountains all around.

Regardless of the detrimental effect the attraction of nearby ski resorts could have on a startup (which also makes it a great place to live), I feel that Denver's/Boulder's weakness is that there aren't universities with better computer science programs. All the major startup hubs have excellent universities nearby whose talent they can feed off of:

Cambridge: MIT, Harvard Silicon Valley: Stanford, Berkeley Seattle: University of Washington Austin: University of Texas

(Darn -- After visiting PG's website, I realize I am re-iterating what he says this in his essay, "How To Be Silicon Valley.")

I can see this first-hand, attending the University of Texas. I've interviewed with many startups, and you can see how they're student quality is evident in the company's work.

I would imagine this is true even moreso in the better CS programs like MIT and Stanford, and double that with towns that have two great programs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have been following Brad Feld's blog longer than any other blog. For sure TechStar has a solid lineup and I am sure the entrepreneur pool is larger than what YCombinator and TechStar can support together meaning there shouldn't be any lunch stealing between the two.

My biggest problem at the moment with TechStar is their 5% non-negotiable valuation. I understand they want to keep it simple and totally respect that. But that does not take away the unfairness of things when you give the same valuation to a start-up that is already operating and a start-up that is only an idea. I am sure going forward they will adjust that.

-Zaid

<comment><USER9> Is there something you like particularly about his web log or other reason you have been following it?

For reference here is where he introduces TechStars: <http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/002136.html>

Does anyone know what programs besides YC he is talking about?

<comment><USER8> There was this traditional VC firm that started something modled after YCombinator. But even then, they required a business plan and fund minimum 250,000 so they must be targeting another audience than YCombinator. They were featured in Wall St Journal along with quotes from Paul Graham too if I remember right.

I came across Brad's blog while reading a post where he stresses good UI. Since then I have found to enjoy his insights though at the moment I would say Brad's askthevc.com is a more useful read than feld.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think YC was bound to attract clones, although I don't think it was bound to attract clones quite this clonelike. YC has created a new investment stage, and a new niche for investment companies (which is to say, the seed-funding- plus-advice niche), and I don't think it's particularly surprising that there are more companies entering that market. I would bet that YC is going to be a bit like the Sequoia of seed/advice firms, and that most other such firms will enter the market because they see YC's success, fail to make money, but continue to operate, much like most VCs don't make money.

</comment><comment><USER11> From their app: "What does entrepreneurship mean to you?"

Seriously? Does TechStars come with a free team building retreat?

<comment><USER3> That was one of the three questions they didn't copy from ours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess times are tough. What did Hunter S Thomson used to say... "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

Brad Feld, the all knowing VC prophet, left Mobius Capital after Mobius cratered and now he's trolling for scraps with "borrowed" equipment. He used to do deals for millions and now he's throwing $10Ks around. Sad.

<http://valleywag.com/tech/brad-feld/feld-folds-vc-blogger-brad-feld-goes- silent-199802.php>

<comment><USER8> May be you should do your homework. Brad's pretty heavily invested in potential hits such as FeedBurner and TechStar is led by David Cohen and is more of a side thing(it appears) for Brad.

I am personally biased in favor of people who take time to reply to strangers seeking advice. Paul Graham, Brad Feld, Seth Godin and few others are great examples of folks you can write to and expect some valuable words of wisdom in return.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Having to listen to all those speakers would be extremely annoying. If you aren't intellectually curious enough to read through all the books and blogs written on these subjects on your own, then you're probably the kind of person who should be working for someone else. There is a reason why so many entrepreneurs drop out of school...

Plus, their website makes them look really creepy.

</comment><comment><USER14> A group of people who copied someone else's funding idea verbatim are supposed to be good at picking original ideas?

</comment><comment><USER15> Despite Techstars' copying of YC's approach, it definitely is an appreciation of YC as a viable business model. And it is a great thing for student entrepreneurs unless, as people may suggest, a VC-run YC copycat do entrepreneurs more harm than good.

</comment><comment><USER16> ok here is a problem:

Say you have a great idea (don't we all :))

But we don't know if either TechStars or Y-Combinator will actually accept our idea so to hedge our bets we apply to both. (of course YC is first option).

Now TechStars will send their results on Apr 5 and the deadline to accept, I think is Apr14 . This is before the Apr22 date when YC decides which companies it will fund.

So on Apr14: if you are one of the really good ideas that both TechStars and YC like - because of the timeline - you get into a dilema: if u say no to TechStars there is no guarantee that YC will accept u but if u say yes to TechStars - then u give up on your first choice without even getting a chance to hear the YC results.

Seems like a cunning way for TechStars to get all the best ideas this summer before YC can get them. (I bet they try to pull this off every six months to try and steal all the best ideas...)

So, YC needs think about how to solve this potential issue - (maybe bringin the dates of their decisions??)

<comment><USER17> I think this is going to backfire. Some of the start-ups they want will say no just because they are waiting on YC, then when YC turns them down, TS will have missed out on one of their top choices who now will have to seek a THIRD source of funding.

Smart money is for that third VC to pick up YC's 9th through 16th choices, and any of TS's top 8 that turned them down waiting on a YC acceptance that never came through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> TechStars almost sounds too good to be true. What's the catch?

There's no catch. You can do this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Is that a quote from their site?

<comment><USER9> Yes. I didn't want to just dismiss these guys, it looks like they are new, going through some growing pains, and trying something interesting. However, the mix of Y Combinator hacker talk with bright flashy graphics is just disconcerting. That quote was the most over the top part of the site.

I look forward to seeing in the future to see if they can evolve into a niche besides YC or decide to directly compete.

<comment><USER5> I agree the site is way over the top and disconcerting. When I loaded the main page it just felt like they were trying way too hard to sell me something. It looks more like an ad for the 4th of July sale at Macy's than a startup funder. Either that or an ad for Citizen's bank, I cant' decide. It's a stark contrast with the YC site, where you have to read a bit to figure out what's going on. I don't think they need to be worried about getting people to apply, they're giving out free money after all...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Over 30 of the best entrepreneurial minds in Colorado" seems like a lot (especially for Colorado). Is this an educational experience or capitalist enterprise for the founders?

</comment><comment><USER19> Yes which was odd. Their video was also rather scary. They do have a few interesting people involved in the project.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder what the odds are of a TechStar startup competing with a YC startup? That could be interesting.</comment>


They say "nothing will change" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/5c546662abc0 <comment><USER3> Those who are defending this as a reasonable and commonplace policy are dissembling at best. This is another example of the emerging electronic class system. Those who are members of the Silicon Valley clique are privileged to take what they want from those who are not. Recall the Googler who was able to have a web page he didn't like shut down, just by calling his connection at Digital Ocean.

One might argue that a thing such as an Instagram account is just a service provided by a business and the business can do as it likes, but this isn't the case. A social media account is a vehicle for the user to interact with the entire world, and it shouldn't be able to be unilaterally revoked, especially if the only reason is to give it to a"more deserving" insider. We need a system of due process for situations like this.

<comment><USER4> The Terms of Service of every social media platform you've ever signed up for contain language that allows the service provider to "unilaterally revoke" your account at any time, for (nearly) any reason. There is no system of due process, because your rights are not being infringed in any way. You have no _right_ to use a private service.

If you think this status quo is unacceptable, then don't use these proprietary web services. Take control of your web presence and your "interactions with the entire world." Support projects like Diaspora and Pump.io, and run your own instance of their federated platforms. Your username cannot be taken away when _you_ are the service provider.

<comment><USER5> > Take control of your web presence and your "interactions with the entire > world."

That's all fine and good but there's no way to interoperate with the predominant (centralized) microblogging platform (Twitter) if one does this. It leaves you out of the conversation and puts you at a disadvantage - a non- starter.

Idealism like this is nice in theory, but fails hard in practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Before we all seemingly jump on the "she should have updated her account" bandwagon, it would help to see actual evidence of her inactivity, or at least evidence/statements in Instagram's TOS that state what "inactive" really means.

This doesn't cut it: "We encourage people to actively log in and use Instagram once they create an account."

How long can I go idle before Instagram takes my account back?

Also, as someone else stated in this thread the very _least_ Instagram could have done was to email her and inform her that she was about to lose her account due to inactivity.

Lastly, it's important to note that Instagram didn't just "prune" her account, they renamed it and _gave_ her original account name to an employee. If they were concerned with squatters or dormant accounts they would have actually nixed the account, not renamed it to something else.

<comment><USER7> I wonder if she could claim the @InstagramHelp twitter account. It seems dormant to me...

<comment><USER6> I can't upvote this comment/joke more. Reminds me of that guy who bought a bank building and forced out the band who foreclosed on him.

Found it: [http://business.time.com/2011/06/06/homeowner-forecloses- on-...](http://business.time.com/2011/06/06/homeowner-forecloses-on-bank-of- america-yes-you-heard-that-right/)

On a more serious note, what is the procedure to get one of these dormant accounts? Is at all automatic and on the day I sign up simply makes it available to me? or is there some kind of internal system, or "drop" (as with domains) where these newly renamed accounts are made available? Transparency from Instagram on this issue would be best.

<comment><USER8> That story is the best thing I've read all day, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Taken straight from Instagram's policy:

> "We encourage people to actively log in and use Instagram once they create > an account. To keep your account active, be sure to log in and share photos, > as well as like and comment on photos. Accounts may be permanently removed > due to prolonged inactivity, so please use your account once you sign up!"

Source: [https://www.facebook.com/help/instagram/294919817276863](https://www.facebook.com/help/instagram/294919817276863)

The wording is terribly obtuse and seems targeted more for username squatters.

Would be helpful if Instagram defined what a period of prolonged inactivity is. Shady nonetheless, considering they didn't even notify her informing her that her username was revoked due to inactivity.

<comment><USER9> You would think a warning email would be worthwhile.

If someone was really name squatting they would write a script to log in once a week. So if you genuinely want to release unused names an email to the person informing them would be the least you could do.

As it is, it looks like someone at facebook just took the name for their own.

<comment><USER10> This would be a much more interesting story if it sounded like the authors wife used Instagram more than once a year. I can't help but not care without more context. If someone is sitting on a name on an account that rarely gets used and rarely gets tagged, what's the problem? Now if his wife was using Instagram every day and this happened... Well that would be an interesting story.

<comment><USER11> Dude.

If someone took my handle on instagram and thus I can no longer access any of my photos I would LOSE MY SHIT. It's totally unacceptable, especially for non techies who don't back up their stuff, to jut shut off access to your memories.

<comment><USER10> First of all, they didn't disable access - everything is there under a different handle. Secondly, you might lose your shit because you actually use Instagram. The author's wife doesn't use Instragram by the sounds of it - <USER2> does she get to sit on the name? She didn't buy it, it was never hers to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's clear that Facebook etc employees are higher on the virtual caste system than the rest of us peons. The more and more they make this evident, the less interested regular people will be in participating in their virtual world.

</comment><comment><USER13> As others have mentioned, this was probably due to inactivity. I stopped using Instagram years ago, but still had 'instagram.com/derek', and just checked to see if that was still my username. Nope, it is now 'derek______________', just like '_____kathleen'. The fact that a FB employee now owns the 'kathleen' user means they probably have an internal reservation system for expired accounts, which is a nice perk.

<comment><USER14> The Derek Yang that owns @derek is also a Facebook employee (I believe).

[1] www.linkedin.com/in/dereklyang

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This isn't actually an uncommon policy. For example, Twitter lets (or used to let?) you take a username that's inactive for 9 months.

Source: [http://sarahwallace.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/how-to- request-...](http://sarahwallace.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/how-to-request-a- username-on-twitter/)

The Facebook stuff is probably a red herring here. If there was activity on the account, I bet this would never have happened.

<comment><USER16> That outdated info and impossible to get inactive username anymore since 2011.

<comment><USER17> I personally know someone who acquired an inactive username within the last year. You might need connections: this individual used to work at Twitter.

<comment><USER18> You definitely need connections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Whoever you think is in the wrong here, the real takeaway is a reminder that when you use a VC-funded for-profit service, you don't "own" anything.

<comment><USER20> What is the importance of "VC-funded" here? What you are saying is true for _any_ for-profit service (specifically those that we use for free), isn't it?

<comment><USER21> The importance is that the VC funding allows the service to offer its service free of charge to users until it can scale enough to either land a cushy acquisition based on connections the VC firm has or (much more rarely) monetize via a method that isn't viable until they've already scaled up.

In either case, you are not the customer, since you are not paying them. In the absence of VC funding, however, companies are much more likely to be forced to charge their users, meaning they have a more vested interest in customer service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think it's in extremely bad taste to remove an account that's ever had content uploaded to it. Person registered two years ago and hasn't uploaded anything? Sure, prune the account. User creates an Instagram account and uploads some nice family photos and doesn't sign in for a year? Leave it alone!

</comment><comment><USER23> Oh guffaw. Even our beloved Github has a means to let you unseat inactive account names.

[https://help.github.com/articles/name-squatting- policy](https://help.github.com/articles/name-squatting-policy)

(And they should, I think.)

Since at least 2012 Instagram has had this in their terms:

> 4\. We reserve the right to force forfeiture of any username that becomes > inactive, violates trademark, or may mislead other users.

So whine about the _policy_ if you don't like it, but don't whine that Instagram has _materially changed._

<comment><USER24> The idea of renaming an account on Github concerns me because an account's repos may be referenced by others' git submodules. I'd hate to find one of my repos inadvertently referencing a repo I did not intend to reference.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, that's totally understandable. Fortunately almost all of these cases are for accounts with no repositories.

In cases where an account does have repositories (user initiated renames) the old URLs/repos will redirect as long as another user doesn't take the old name and create repos with the same name[1].

[1] [https://help.github.com/articles/what-happens-when-i- change-...](https://help.github.com/articles/what-happens-when-i-change-my- username)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What does this have to do with Facebook and the acquisition? Anyone working at Instagram pre-acquisition would also have been able to reclaim inactive handles.

Twitter does this as well and that's how I got my current username. There are a couple of things that are required before you could reclaim a handle (I forget the exact timespans, but it was close to this):

        * Has not logged in for one year
        * Has not tweeted in a year and half
        * Does not any have applications linked to Twitter

If Instagram has a similar policy, I really don't have any sympathy that the username was taken.

<comment><USER27> How exactly did you do this? I want my name on Twitter but it's being squatted on by someone who has zero tweets, zero followers and following one person.

I put in a request back in 2009 to free up the name and they told me the same thing that's still in their support document five years later: they're working to free up names but don't have a timeline. [https://support.twitter.com/articles/15362-inactive- account-...](https://support.twitter.com/articles/15362-inactive-account- policy)

<comment><USER26> I used to work at Twitter, so I was able to request it internally. As I mentioned, you were only able to request a handle that met some strict 'inactive' policies.

I left in 2012, so I don't have much context since then. The root problem is that you want to give handles to people who will genuinely use them. But if you open up any system for reclaiming handles, it's just going to be abused by people trying to snag and sell handles (just like domains). Since there was no obviously correct way to ensure only people who would use the handles got them, it was just done internally for people who requested it (and their friends).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What I think is interesting about this is more the general case than this specific example. I'd say that people's social media handles are becoming more and more important to them, so loss of them becomes increasingly bad.

A lot of people in the tech world are probably more known by things like their twitter handle than their real name.

With free services (and indeed perhaps with paid for) there's not a lot to stop a company changing the ToS to allow for usernames to be transferred as they like(assuming it's not already in the ToS).

Now if your chosen handle is pretty niche (no one who's not a fan of 90's ADnD settings is likely to want mine), it's probably not a big risk, but for other ones it seems plausible to suggest that a company might start seeing them as a valuable asset, to be monetized..

</comment><comment><USER29> Worried about having someone steal your invaluable Twitter or Instagram username?

The solution is obviously to immediately litter all your social media accounts with such foul loathsome toxic content that no one else would want to touch them again for at least the next 1000 years.

<comment><USER30> If you think that they will keep your "content" for 1000 years, you might be dreaming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "A few months ago while tagging my wife"

"This morning I told her I Instagrammed a photo of our kids that she should see."

Instagram names are not domain names, and it sounds like she doesn't use the account. Most services have a clause that lets them reclaim inactive accounts after a set period of time.

</comment><comment><USER32> Update Apr 16, 2014 @2:34pm: I'm very pleased to announce that Facebook / Instagram did the right thing and delivered my wife's Instagram handle back to it's rightful place: [http://instagram.com/kathleen](http://instagram.com/kathleen)

</comment><comment><USER33> This looks like an employee acting on her own, thinking (wrongly) that the account was not active and nobody would notice if she took over the username. Still, it's a disturbing issue that shouldn't have been allowed to happen, so if this is the case I hope the employee gets some penalty. And the fact that this was possible, or maybe even legal (I don't know Instagram's terms of service), doesn't make it less of a dick move.

I was an employee for a local social network with about ~10mil registered users (~5mil daily users). It was much smaller than Instagram, but despite that (or precisely because of that) things like this were completely forbidden.

</comment><comment><USER34> I feel as though this would be a good opportunity to remind people that choosing an Internet handle that has any connection to your public identity name is not necessarily a good idea. The potential name space for memorable, usable, easily-typed handles is much larger than the list in the baby names book, and there is value in avoiding collisions.

As my own public name is two of the most common first names and one of the most common last names in the Anglophone world, I am not altogether unfamiliar with the disutility in using a common name.

Aside from that, in the real world, we have a host of disambiguators available to tell the difference between two individuals with similar names. There is no particular reason why a site's user handle would need to be unique. The data store should probably be keying everything on a serial ID number anyway. Just as the DNS exists to associate names with IP numbers, a handle resolver could use disambiguators as needed to minimize disruption of the user experience due to non-uniqueness.

If you log in from a new device with a new IP address, you might be asked "Which 'kathleen' are you?" once, and get a small "I'm a different 'kathleen'" link thereafter. If you're a giant like Facebook, there is probably more utility in allowing people to have short, non-unique user handles with an on- demand disambiguation system than in a system required to enforce user handle uniqueness.

</comment><comment><USER35> This happened to me (employee of the company took my username) with a different service, and a quick tweet to the founder had my account restored.

I'm not going to identify the website because the person that made it is a nice guy in general and he restored my account right after I asked.

</comment><comment><USER36> I read "..she opened up Instagram on her phone (she's not a regular on the service anymore)", and wondered, does he mean that @kathleen has not been using it for a while (months)? There is no justification for stealing a handle, but I was just wondering. I recall once I wanted to have a specific handle on twitter for an idea I had, so I contacted the owner via a private message. He/she has no tweets and to this day, I have not heard from him/her yet. Would anyone be open to perhaps having an "expiration" date on our accounts? Sometimes I feel like there are robots out there claiming every possible handle, so that, idk, they can sell it later?

</comment><comment><USER37> This is the new norm now that these web services are no longer a niche product. Some kind of set standard for inactivity would be nice so users are aware of when they are in danger of losing their username.

I know many who set out to register popular Twitter and Soundcloud names when those services launched just so they could sit on them and possibly make a buck. Those username policies are out there to combat this kind of behavior but it's crummy to see when those policies actually affect legitimate users.

</comment><comment><USER4> You have no ownership over a username in a private service. Your access can (and will) be terminated at any time in accordance to their Terms of Service. If you want to maintain control over your identity and presence online, you ought to use self-hosted services like Pump.io or Diaspora.

<comment><USER38> Better in practice, but still the same in theory - it's just that it's server admin and domain registrar who are in power. One can be the former, but not the latter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> There are two interesting groups at play here - the tech companies that own all data, usernames, etc. on their platform and the user that needs to be on their platform for the company to exist and be successful. Our private information becomes public information when we share it with some of these companies, and they are given permission to own and use the information to a certain extent. They promise us security and stability at first because they need us, but when they don't depend on us anymore they can get away with sacrificing those users who don't contribute enough in order to serve their own interests. Because what does losing one person do to them? Are we all going to boycott Instagram now? Probably not. There definitely needs to be some regulation on how internet-based businesses can use and change a user's information because our public/internet identity has become so integrated into our lives that an incident like a sudden change in username can feel like a violation of privacy (even when it's not really one).

</comment><comment><USER40> Why don't new services default to using a random string as an identifier, along with an alias for display, instead of a requiring a unique username?

Managing overlapping names among friends is something most people know how to do well enough already.

<comment><USER41> Follow me on Instagram: @f9ab8ed9dacd8724bc

<comment><USER42> here's a link to my instagram: [http://instagram.com/f9ab8ed9dacd8724bc/#](http://instagram.com/f9ab8ed9dacd8724bc/#)

<comment><USER43> That's fine for email, but services like Instagram thrive on literal word of mouth with people saying it over the phone or over TV or radio. Watch some TV and see how many adverts include the Facebook logo or a hashtag (implying Twitter, although a competitor could steal that market overnight). It's not just about clickability, it's also about having an identity easy enough for people to remember to check out. 'I haven't looked at Joe_Blow's Instagram in a while' is an easy thought to form, having to perform a search to find the random string of the actual account name, which is unrecognizable for most people if the search returns more than one result - that's a pain.

<comment><USER40> There's nothing wrong with vanity tags. Similar to 'verified' accounts.

And if you're referencing me from your phone, you could alias me as @knowsnothing and change my icon to a koala if you wanted to. That offends me less than me having to come up with @awesome_sauce314 to use some photo sharing service, which I'd need to share among friends, coworkers, family, strangers, etc.

<comment><USER43> I don't disagree, I just think that most service providers find the 'first come first served' model easier to implement. Having said that I'm struck by how this seems to matter less and less on Twitter, eg many celebrities have somewhat random-seeming handles.

<comment><USER40> Agreed on both points. Maybe starting with ICQ back in the 90's has overly biased me; things certainly seem to work well enough as they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is just unbelievable.. Have you tried to _email_ their support? It's hard to believe that that could be an acceptable practice at any company, I would assume it's just some employee being a jackass.

</comment><comment><USER45> When can we start taking accounts of deceased persons?

</comment><comment><USER46> So what's next? Facebook employees breaking into houses and stealing Occulus Rift DevKits that haven't been used for a while? SCNR

</comment><comment><USER47> Instagram has done this in the past as well, and IIRC; before the merger. But by all means - jump on the Facebook hatewagon and take a ride.

</comment><comment><USER48> I hate Facebook and, by association, I hate every Facebook subsidiary. They are monetizing your privacy.

</comment><comment><USER49> Is not there some 'anti hacking' law in US? Aaron S. got like 30 years for downloading a few documents.

Call FBI and see what happens.

</comment><comment><USER50> glad I have deleted my Instagram account back when the policy change scandal; this incident confirms Instagram is a BS site

</comment><comment><USER51> Welcome to the nightmare

</comment><comment><USER52> I wonder if this is just really, really clever PR to get people to use their accounts more.</comment>


Plant-based burgers are "ultra-processed" like dog food, meat-backed ads say - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/plant-based-burgers-are-ultra-processed-like-dog-food-meat-backed-ads-say/ <comment><USER2> It's a FUD marketing campaign by the meat industry because of declining sales.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are they ultra-processed like dog food (as the meat industry ads say) or are they ultra-processed like sausages (as the meat industry ads don't say)?

Dogs can live off of nothing but dog food and water without their kidneys giving out and without getting obese. Imagine what would happen if we only fed them water and sausages.

Does anyone actually believe that a _burger_ or _sausage_ substitute is replacement health food? Could it be that Beyond Meat et al simply replace _burgers_ and _sausages_?

These ads are propaganda at its best.</comment>


To Predict Turbulence, Just Count the Puffs (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/25/water/to-predict-turbulence-just-count-the-puffs-rp

<comment><USER3> Turbulence seems to be very weird. This article talks about the birth and death rate of puffs. In a modified version of the Navier-Stokes equation Terrence Tao was able to construct logic gates and use those to create a self replicating eddy.

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140224-a-fluid-new-path- in-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140224-a-fluid-new-path-in-grand- math-challenge/)

<comment><USER4> > Turbulence seems to be very weird.

Right up there with "the Riemann hypothesis is quite difficult." (Of course, probably nothing beats the irony in naming of the Fundamental Lemma ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_lemma_%28Langlands...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_lemma_%28Langlands_program%29)).)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love nautilus because it can make the most seemingly inane things incredibly interesting. I've never thought about turbulence at all; or even guessed it would be difficult to figure out the cause but this, for lack of a better term, opened my eyes.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Feynman described turbulence as "the most important unsolved problem of classical physics."

Another quote, attributed both to Heisenberg and to Horace Lamb: "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first."

And the very related problem of the existence and smoothness of solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations is one of the famous millennium problems.

<comment><USER6> Unless you have access to a DOE-grade supercomputer :) good interview here w/ one of the pioneers of Large Eddy Simulation for turbulence physics:

[http://www.cascadetechnologies.com/pioneering-large-eddy- sim...](http://www.cascadetechnologies.com/pioneering-large-eddy-simulation- an-afternoon-with-prof-parviz-moin-part-i/)

<comment> semi-extrinsic LES is an approximation, and there are cruder (RANS) and finer (DNS) ones available. And while these are very cool and useful e.g. for studying how turbulence affects other things (structures, particle in suspension etc.) they don't tell us much about turbulence itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am always intrigued by the topic of turbulence and its implications in weather prediction. One of the key challenges of weather prediction is our inability to understand / predict atmospheric turbulence...most importantly 'chaotic turbulences'.

Details (European Research Council): [http://erc.europa.eu/succes- stories/understanding-turbulence...](http://erc.europa.eu/succes- stories/understanding-turbulence-key-weather-prediction)

</comment><comment><USER8> I love the examples of turbulence and laminar flow in Fantastic Mr Fox - <USER2> to find on youtube but this clip[0] has about 3 seconds of what I'm talking about

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vjMc_HlNic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vjMc_HlNic) @ 1:22-1:24</comment>


Fillum Fallam, a film short printed by hand - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cixa/fillum-fallam-fi-allu-am-0 Three months ago I made some photos in my toilette, exposing photographic paper to the screen of my IBM R51.
I called them 'laptopograms'.
Two weeks ago I launched a Kickstarter project called 'Fillum Fallam'. This is a film short to-be.
I intend to shoot it on 16mm and print each frame by hand. The short itself revolves around themes of food and film.
These ~3 minutes of film / ~3000 frames will take up the next ~8 months of my life.
I am trying to crowdsource the budget via Kickstarter. Do take a look: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cixa/fillum-fallam-fi-allu-am-0 <comment><AUTHOR> Three months ago I made some photos in my toilette, exposing photographic paper to the screen of my IBM R51.

I called them 'laptopograms'.

Two weeks ago I launched a Kickstarter project called 'Fillum Fallam'. This is a film short to-be.

I intend to shoot it on 16mm and print each frame by hand. The short itself revolves around themes of food and film.

These ~3 minutes of film / ~3000 frames will take up the next ~8 months of my life.

I am trying to crowdsource the budget via Kickstarter. Do take a look: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cixa/fillum-fallam-fi- al...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cixa/fillum-fallam-fi-allu-am-0)</comment>


Any cellphone can be traced by its digital fingerprint - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23973-any-cellphone-can-be-traced-by-its-digital-fingerprint.html#.UfpzeGRgblN <comment><USER2> > Their research, funded by the EU and the German government, was performed on > 2G phones. But "defects are present in every radio device, so it should also > be possible to do this with 3G and 4G phones," Hasse says

Stuck researching on 2G handsets? Let's get this guy some more grant money, please.

</comment><comment><USER3> Being able to tell the difference between 13 different handsets and being able to 'trace any cellphone' are two very different things.

Pick 13 random people from the planet and you can tell the difference between them if you know their birthday (just day and month) that doesn't mean you can trace anyone if that's the only information you know.

Good research, dumb article.

</comment><comment><USER4> If my understanding is correct, they're using the tiny variations in phones' signals to identify them. Could such evidence be used in court? Couldn't they just argue that it was merely a coincidence that the signal fingerprint is the same, since it's just based on randomness in the phone?

<comment><USER5> I suppose real fingerprint differences (on your fingers) are tiny variations that are merely a coincidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I assume, as it is unstated, that this requires quite accurate information about the radio signals of the device - probably at a level only accessible at the radio of the mast. It's possible that these irregularities are encoded in the raw bit stream from the base station (e.g. to the Radio Network Controller), but they'd be lost here...

So to put this in place, you'd probably need to add some additional hardware/processing capacity into the RNC or the base station (though, that's not too far fetched, seeing as most existing base stations are now over- spec'ed on space and power).

</comment><comment><USER7> Related is work by T. Kohno, A. Broido, and K. Claffy [2] where, too, small deviations in device hardware is exploited for device identification, in this case clock skew.

[1] [http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~yoshi/papers/PDF](http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~yoshi/papers/PDF)

<comment><USER8> This is very interesting. It makes me wonder how it could be countered.

If I understood the points of the article correctly (but, to my shame, I haven't read it very thoroughly -- I'm posting this more under the excitement of the moment), one could get _some_ basic success by inserting small, random jitter into the timestamp it sticks on the packets. However, this isn't exactly stellar because, if the attacker can collect enough data, averaging out the random jitter to isolate a constant (or constantly-changing, which is a good approximation for most hardware clocks over the period of time we're considering) skew.

So perhaps a better option would be to add a _biased_ jitter that gets changed at some more or less random, but short enough interval?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Article also mentions about identifying the camera by analyzing the produced image:

 _From underlying imperfections in the lens, which are detectable in the image, the source camera can be identified_

Is this really possible or he was just giving an example to explain how the phone tracking method works?

<comment><USER10> Perhaps. It is certainly possible to identify the camera model (and possibly the individual camera) using noise and demosaicing artifacts!

[http://isis.poly.edu/memon/pdf/2008_classification.pdf](http://isis.poly.edu/memon/pdf/2008_classification.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Police tracked down the Boston Bombers SUV they stole almost immediately by using the drivers cell phone.

I'm curious why is this never used in property theft retrieval for phones and only for cases police deem necessary?

<comment><USER12> IIRC, police don't have a direct line to that sort of information. They have to submit requests to the cell carriers, which are rate-limited and capped such that the police have to be very discerning about which cases they would like to use the resource for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always wondered how well you could fingerprint individual wifi devices. I.e. how effective is changing your MAC and various IP and above stuff.

</comment><comment><USER14> Would this work with a burnerphone? [https://www.burnerphone.us/](https://www.burnerphone.us/)

<comment><USER15> Excellent. I can order a "burner phone" with a credit card. And have it shipped to me.

And the selling point is "because the NSA records everything", followed by a starry-eyed "don't worry, we'll delete your info after we processed your order".

I think some people need to take paranoia lessons there :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why wouldn't it just be easier to track IMEI values? That doesn't change when you change the SIM card.

<comment><USER17> Because (first sentence in article): "Tech-savvy criminals try to evade being tracked by changing their cellphone's built-in ID code and by regularly dumping SIM cards."

<comment><USER18> I own a phone powered by a Mediatek SoC, where the IMEI is easily changed on the "engineer mode" \- and from what I remember, you don't even need to have root rights to do it, only access to a hidden Android activity.

Not entirely related but I also have worked with WiFi equipment (including that phone) that allows for changing the MAC address, which is something more common I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This was done during the late 90's to combat cellphone cloning

</comment><comment><USER20> Yeah! And then you just go and interrogate the theft that stole the cellphone... in Haiti.</comment>


When to Sell Your Employee Stock? (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wealthfront.com/sell-employee-stock/ <comment><USER2> I've only ever sold stock options and RSUs ASAP, never regretted it, even tho stock is up 40% compared to when I first started getting these incentives.

The extra cash has helped me (1) buy a house which has appreciated way way more than the stock would have in the past three years (2) substantially reduce risk of my wife stopping working for a few years to raise our children (3) fund our retirement investments better.

</comment><comment><USER3> Selling right away makes the most sense but I worry about the social aspect of everyone holding and getting rich.</comment>