Holy Quran app made via NativeScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sarfraznawaz2005/nativescript-holyquran <comment><USER2> In my humble opinion, it would be better if the quran and all the religious books stay stuck in the past where they belong.

<comment><USER3> Religious flamewar is not allowed on HN. Please don't post like this again. I'm sure you didn't mean to start a flamewar, but that's the effect comments like this have in practice.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Learning React? Start Small - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/dceddia/learning-react-start-small <comment><USER2> Eloquently stated. I always cringe when someone says Framework X is simpler than React when they really mean React+Redux+Babel+Webpack+etc. React has a very small API surface -- you can basically explain the entire framework in a few sentences -- and you probably shouldn't be jumping straight into a full enterprise stack unless you can justify the learning curve.

</comment><comment><USER3> I got my start with React doing a "React for people who know jQuery" thing that taught me how to structure a site, props, state. Almost 3 years later and almost all my personal work is in React.</comment>


Google veterans: The company has become 'unrecognizable' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/31/google-veterans-the-company-has-become-unrecognizable.html <comment><USER2> Google could solve a lot of problems by essentially firing every VP they have.

It actually became an internal joke where you'd get these emails every 2-3 months saying your manager's manager's manager's manager now reports to a different manager, neither of which you'd ever met or even necessarily heard of.

To be clear, the executive team are ultimately responsible but Google has fallen prey to a lack of leadership (Eric Schmidt, we miss you) and an entrenched swarm of middle management. I honestly believe a lot of the bad ideas Google got involved in (like the DoD ML thing) sprang from over-eager VPs.

There's an old Dilbert strip basically saying that managers reach a point of constant reorgs and responsibilities churn to the point that no one is around long enough to be held accountable for their actions ("oh that was the last guy") and definitely not around long enough for anything to work.

This to me is what Google had become. The reorgs were constant and the leadership was directionless.

The transparency thing here is a big one. There was a culture of blameless and open post-mortems. This probably started to change in the Vic Google Plus era. Dashboards were locked down. There were some pretty (internally) famous examples of post-mortems people found that were subsequently restricted, essentially because they (rightly) made some VP look bad.

One of the most shocking things to me was a story from last year about how accessing such documents could retroactively lead to you being fired. As in Google docs were typically sent around such that if you had the link you could open it and these links might be forwarded to open groups. That's how a lot of things (internally) "leaked".

Disclaimer: Xoogler (6 years)

<comment><USER3> It's interesting. Many large companies routinely fire the bottom 10% of their employees every year. I wonder if they would perform better if they routinely fired the top 10% of their employees (by org chart, not by performance ratings) and let talented new blood bubble upward. The Peter Principle says that people rise to the level of their incompetence, and in general new employees enter at the bottom of the organization, so logically you would have more incompetent people at the top than at the bottom.

There're a bunch of organizational anti-patterns that could be avoided with this scheme, too. Empire building would be disincentivized because it'd always become someone else's empire after a short period of time, and organizational politics is reduced as the players keep leaving, and you'd have to think in terms of building institutional knowledge from the beginning of your tenure unless you want everything you've accomplished to be undone by the next guy.

<comment><USER4> The "fire the bottom 10%" thing is called stack ranking, and it has been studied over and over and it never leads to good results. At this point I don't think that many companies are still doing it- the biggest example, Microsoft, killed it off in 2013.

[https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094864/microsoft- kills-...](https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094864/microsoft-kills-stack- ranking-internal-structure)

<comment><USER5> Everyone is still doing it, they just aren't transparent about it now.

<comment><USER4> Source? I've literally never worked at a company that regularly fired the bottom X% of workers.

<comment><USER6> Large orgs regularly do this. E.g., most of the banking industry, esp. the non-wall st side, have had layoffs every few years for awhile now. It can be called all sorts of things, and it adds up.

When you think about it, it makes a sad sort of sense at scale. Hiring mistakes mean, at scale, a good number of jobs aren't fits for the people you hired, half the people out there are below average to beginwith, and a good number end up toxic (they slow down orgs!), and over time, these folks cost more money and suborgs decay. We've all inherited WTF+NIH projects and worked with people who drain energy. So even if an org doesn't do explicit layoffs or stack ranking, and hiring committees and employees have good intentions, a healthy org should be fixing hiring mistakes somehow: it can't all be retraining / reshuffling the deck. Arguably, the numbers mean most tech companies are _unhealthy_ orgs because the high demand for engineers makes the healthy level of rehiring tough to do.

The result is toxic devs get retained and the tail wags the dog from a business perspective. E.g., I bet some of the #MeToo issues in tech, deep down, relate to the difficulty of curating a top org at scale, with very few exceptions (Netflix?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, there's an article on the second page of HN right now (458 votes last I checked) by Google's former Head of International Relations about why he left the company. I think it's very worth reading. There's some extremely interesting (and damning) stories about his experience at Google since 2008.

Here's the article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21935446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21935446)

While this might (and almost certainly should) hurt Google's brand, I think this issue applies to any big for-profit company. I doubt that Amazon or Apple are much different.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the link. I refresh the HN front-page quite frequently (too frequent, I would say) but somehow I had missed that entry.

<comment><USER9> Try the hckrnews client which is kinda of better for ranking

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Googler here. Opinions are obviously my own and not that for my employer. Just sharing my thoughts, take it all with a grain of salt.

I've been at Google full time for 5+ years and was an intern before that. The company has more than doubled in size since I've been here, so I'm not exactly old-school but I have seen change.

When I started Google felt like one company. I was blown away that I could look at any piece of code (besides Google X and parts of Android) and file a bug against any team when something didn't work. I felt proud of other team's products and I also felt responsible for them, I filed a lot of bugs/feedback trying to make random things better.

The culture was also just fun as hell. The mailing lists and Memegen (our internal meme site) were really fun to participate in for the most part.

A lot has changed now. Each product feels more isolated and does things their own way. The company is far too big for anyone to claim they really know what's going on outside their local area. The culture is no longer fun at all. There is a lot more negativity, and a lot of it is justified (you've seen the news).

However I still love the people I work with directly and what we work on (Firebase, fwiw). And one strange positive about how large the company has gotten is that I can just focus on that. I no longer get too worked up about what's going on over in far-flung teams and that's fine with me. And I don't naively participate in company-wide forums expecting a good mood. But I get to build cool things and we have more resources (money, people, knowledge, etc) than we know what to do with.

All of that is to say that yes, a lot has changed. Some for the worse, some for the better, some just different. I still think this is a great place to work and I don't plan to leave any time soon.

<comment><USER11> firebase is awesome. keep up the great work! if you had a magic wand and could change one thing about "new" google, what would it be?

<comment><USER10> That's a really hard question but I think smaller teams need to be more empowered. Right now every big decision seems to come from way up high which guarantees that it seems out of touch and misses edge cases. A lot of the angst comes from people at the bottom shaking their fists at VP/CEO types. If individual teams could make their own decisions about what to do and how to do it they could shrug off some of the corporate nonsense that happens above them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And some have quit for as-yet-undisclosed colossal fuckups. Google's inherent belief that it is the "good guy" in all things internet has fed a massive hubris. That hubris has led to inherent blindness to its detrimental effects on the wider internet and a hero complex. When in reality, they are just like all other mega corporations: interested in only one thing: maximum dollars, and they do this by tilting the tables to make all the quarters slide into their pocket. When you're huge, the urge to take up your power to do this becomes overwhelming. It comes in fits and starts at first, until the culture rots, and soon you're rolling downhill into full-blown corrupt self-dealing and monopoly tactics.

Google's on its way. And it's too big to fail, except it will, and we'll be shocked at the reach of its surveillance capabilities at the fire sale.

<comment><USER13> This is the worst case scenario but it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility. Hopefully they have too much money to let this happen and instead find a new CEO to turn things around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nothing is permanent. No company will stay the same 22 years later. I wouldn't be surprised if there are people working at Google who were born after Google was founded. At some point, the feisty startup that wants to change the world will become the status quo. It's delusional to think otherwise.

<comment><USER15> I'm growing to believe that the greatest folly of humankind is the idea of permanence.

We love to cling on to what we have and fight against anything that might remove it from us. Even when we would benefit from the loss.

So it is with companies. Just because Google was an amazing toddler doesn't mean it's an amazing grown-up. Plenty of our angelic youngsters turn out to be grade-A assholes or psychopaths a few years later on.

Which is to say, the google that we knew back in the 90s and 2000s is dead, and has been for a long time.

<comment><USER16> It would be interesting if we could institute a law that would in effect compel companies to open source their technology, patents, trade secrets, etc. after a certain amount of time to force competition and innovation. Wishful thinking I guess but I think we'd be better off if we could get there.

<comment><USER15> I would like to see a legally enforced compulsion to work for the public good and not the investor good.

<comment><USER7> That sounds a lot like a non-profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there data on what tech companies programmers (either generally or new grads) most want to work for? It feels like it used to be Google by a lot, but even outside the HN bubble, I get the sense Google has taken some reputation hit.

<comment><USER18> Anecdotal, graduated 1 year ago and have many new-grad friends looking for work now:

Airbnb is probably the most desirable non-fintech company, Uber and Lyft were in this category too before their IPOs.

Of megacorps, Facebook generally has the best new grad comp and benefits, and is therefore most desirable. Google is a close-ish second, Microsoft and Amazon are far behind due to lower comp and cultural issues (In Amazon's case, this means terrible work/life balance, in Microsoft's, perception that it's boring due to enterprise culture and office locations in particularly bland suburbs).

Apple and Netflix aren't really on the new-grad radar because they hire mostly experienced engineers.

<comment><USER19> I find that completely mind boggling, tbh. What gets people excited about AirBnB? Is this just about perks (salary and so on)?

Nothing against AirBnB, it might be a fine, solid company doing a good job. But what about them is inspiring?

<comment><USER18> Most importantly, their comp is really good.

Second, it seems to me that there's more room for growth at Airbnb than other companies with similar compensation. (This is an impression with no hard evidence to back it up)

<comment><USER19> Comp meaning compensation? OK, I could understand that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sometimes I genuinely wonder what people expect from one of the world's largest corporations. They aren't the first. There are hundreds of other giant multinationals that have been around for generations. Why exactly does anyone expect Google to be different?

<comment><USER21> Because they claimed to be.

<comment><USER22> Many corporations are prone to claiming outlandish things about themselves, so if that's the answer it suggests another question: why did so many people believe _this particular_ corporation that claimed to be unique?

<comment><USER21> The were far more serious about it - is wasn't just a casual claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well, that's what you get when you appoint a CEO from McKinsey.

<comment><USER24> Google Cloud is full of ex-McKinsey people in middle management positions. Add ex-Oracle to that mix and you got yourself a culture war with old-time Googlers.

<comment><USER25> It's interesting how high the technical bar is for ICs and "normal staff", but how low the bar is set, or seems to be set, for management and their backgrounds. Their head of cloud is an ex-Oracle guy that led their disastrous cloud initiative. CFO from Goldman Sacks, McKinsey MBAs and mediocre tech managers galore. Earnings expectations clearly favored over product development, and not an engineering led company anymore.

Just looking at their hires, you can almost see the cultural shift play out.

<comment><USER26> At the executive level, your options are typically people who've never had embarassing failures or people who've never accomplished much in the first place. Kurian was the head of product at Oracle at the beginning of their cloud efforts - but he was also the head of product _at Oracle_ , bringing a level of enterprise experience and credibility that Google Cloud has historically been in desperate need of.

<comment><USER25> Amazon and Microsoft have extremely deep benches of talent when it comes to cloud, and both have a huge % of the market share combined. Google has had presences in Seattle for almost a decade. I really don't see the logic with the kind of money Google is throwing around. It's not like Kurian was cheap.

I think it's more a failure of leadership and vision on Google's part. A symptom of the company transitioning from engineering led to MBA/Business.

<comment><USER27> The logic was straightforward and probably correct: Google has great tech but sucks (and has always sucked) at selling software to companies. A culture forged in an environment where your users are hundreds of millions of anonymous, low value individuals rather than e.g. a single CEO who will sign a $100M deal with you if he likes the cut of your jib means Google always under- valued relationship building.

The exception was their ad sales department, which under Nikesh Arora _did_ develop a capability to build and sign large ad deals. But it took a long time because you didn't really need that for text ads, only for stuff like "rent the YouTube homepage for a day".

But for everything else they didn't really have it or care about it, institutionally.

Now look at Oracle. Weak tech, huge experience in high-touch enterprise sales. And say what you like about Oracle but they have an enormous customer base and are deeply entrenched for valid reasons. So combine Oracle's sales and relationship-oriented culture with Google's raw tech prowess and you have a potentially great combination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I actually think the greatest period was under Schmidt. Back then there was a lot of freedom to choose what to work on. Google Labs and 20% projects were healty.

It felt like a place where people worked on ideas they thought were cool. Things seemed to just happen organically without a lot of bureaucracy and management structure.

I think Larry changed that with a more top down approach with what to work being decided higher up, see social. This led to less project flexibility and more hierarchy, with managers and pms becoming more important in the org.

Coupled with the growth in the number of employees, I think where the company today is just a gradual evolution of what Larry started along with the problems of growth.

That said it is still a pretty good place to work at for a number of reasons.

</comment><comment><USER29> The last bit resonates with me. Work has to be something we need to do for about 1/3 of our lives. Work is service. Even if we get paid for it, work is what we do for the betterment of collective. 1/3 of our lifetime ought to be for family and kin and our own. The remaining 1/3 for self development. To become better than who we were yesterday, last month..the year before. It's a continuous improvement.

But I see people do nothing but work. They start at 7.00. Work all day. Outsource family time. Scrounge for a little bit of self care time. Sleep little, enjoy in chunks of time once a year. All for a price.

Most of what we work for goes to the government. Yes, taxes go for betterment of society but because no one has a say in it, it can also go towards things some of us don't believe in. War, for example. I can't divert my tax dollars towards space exploration rather than bloody wars.

We need a formula for life and living. A formula that gives us true and lasting freedom.

[..] When Page became CEO in 2011, he became "obsessed" with reading about why companies fail from being too big and sluggish, Stapleton said. "It's sort of sad that a lot of the things he was afraid would happen, actually happened."

Stapleton, who held a number of roles close to the founders, recalled Page walking around offices with a chunk of metal that he said was from his grandfather's auto plant in Michigan. It supposedly symbolized a point in time when auto workers felt like they needed to protect themselves against management. Page showed it as an example of something he hoped would never happen to Google.

"He always said how much Google needs to be upfront and progressive in how it handles people and processes and HR," Stapelton recalled. "He had such an optimistic view of technology and how Google could really transform how people live and free up humanity to pursue the arts."[..]

<comment><USER30> > Most of what we work for goes to the government.

Relatively few people have an effective tax rate above 50%.

In the US, if you live in a high tax state like California or New York, you need to have an income (single person!) of about 2,500,000 USD/yr to have an effective tax rate above 50%. (Actually more like $2.9m in NYC)

Edit: for an EU example, somewhere in Bayern, Germany it'd be about 1m ~ 1.5m EUR to have an effective tax rate above 50%.

<comment><USER29> We are also taxed on goods, property, transactions, consumption, death, inheritance..even gifting.. etc. we pay a lot of taxes.

Imagine you make 2.5 million/year. Why should you pay 1.25 million as taxes? Are you being taxed for being wealthy? Isn't it punitive? What services do you receive that is worth 1.25 million?

But imagine you make 60k/year. Roads, infrastructure, essential services, public schools for a family of 4 with 2 kids does make sense. A larger family benefits more as they get more than they contribute.

Our tax system incentivizes larger families and redistributes wealth. It works if there is a healthy middle class. In CA the very rich is thin but they also support a larger proportion than other states.

When we are looking to hit 9 billion soon, it's probably not best to incentivize rampant population growth and large families.

<comment><USER31> > _Our tax system incentivizes larger families and redistributes wealth._

Do you have a shred of evidence to back this up?

In reality, the situation is the opposite: places with higher taxes that pay for better government services see a declining birth rate.

Taxes pay for a social safety net and birth control. Both of those things cause birth rates to go down, not up. By contrast, large families are the safety net in places with riskier economies and poorer public health.

<comment><USER29> 45% of California state budget goes to public school education. A middle class family with 4 children and one earning member pays way little and gains more.

Someone making 2.5 million and paying 1.25 million in taxes supports the others with less benefits.

This is the first example that came to my mind. What are your thoughts on this?

<comment><USER32> I am glad to subsidize those kinds of services that I myself do not personally need. And anyone who has the mentality of "why am I paying the government to provide stuff that doesn't help me?" needs to be taught compassion and empathy. Or given a one-way ticket to the government-free utopias such as Somalia that is clearly their dream come true.

<comment><USER29> Have to be taught compassion and empathy? Like in re-education camps?

I hear your emotional plea, but I can't find logic or rationality behind it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think this is the case to most companies when you move onto the 3rd generation of leadership/CEO, or if you are 3 degrees separated from the original vision. You see this with most projects/companies etc.

Too much dilution in vision, other priorities take center stage of a public company.

<comment><USER34> I think this is Amazon's core strength: the continuity of leadership and vision that comes from having a single CEO who is deeply involved in everything. No product launches at Amazon without Jeff Bezos at least being aware of it.

That said, woo boy, has that guy gone weird in the last couple of years. He used to be one of the only sane-seeming billionaires. The quirkiest thing about him used to be "he's investing in space."

<comment><USER35> > I think this is Amazon's core strength: the continuity of leadership and > vision that comes from having a single CEO who is deeply involved in > everything.

Not only Amazon, it seems to be the case with other big tech companies:

\- At Apple, this was famously 100% the case under Jobs. Under Tim Cook the company still very much seems cohesive on a single vision, is very, very focused in its products and from the outside it does look like upper- leadership takes credit for and oversees most things.

\- Facebook still has Zuckerberg, which built the original product. Last I heard he was reorganizing the company so that "the heads of individual products, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and others, would report directly to him" [1].

[1]: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook- chris](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-chris)

<comment><USER36> I like how Zuckerberg is a "which", and not a "who". Seems fitting.

<comment><USER35> Oh, 100% accidental (not a native speaker). A good chuckle though haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > scaled to more than 100,000 workers

> Googlers who interviewed for roles at Oso said the company had become "too > big" and bureaucratic to make a difference for workers

Well, yes of course. Your voice becomes diluted to a large degree when companies become that large. It's sad that Google has shifted away from it's previous culture, but the outcomes shouldn't be too terribly surprising.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is what happens to every tech company once they enter growth mode and bring in a ton of mercenary sales people from Oracle and the like.

The irony here is people point to social justice activity as the reason for decline but really all that social justice activity is a smokescreen for betraying other values. We'll do what we're bid by totalitarian regimes and then make ourselves feel better by putting rainbow colors on our logo during Pride Week.

</comment><comment><USER39> Hard to be surprised. Seems only natural for a company that large.

Though I agree as far as tech brand goes Google seems to have gone down much faster than other big tech cos go.

<comment><USER40> Yup. I think Google needs to hire the PR people from Microsoft and pay them rockstar salaries. Microsoft does far worse things than Google yet they manage to hide from the public eye much better. Bing works and censors in China. Microsoft doesn't care what employees say about their clients. Whereas Google gets immense negativity for a not yet live "dragonfly" project, and even very small scale US military projects.

Windows 10 broke new ground in privacy violations in a desktop operating system, but things are much farther away from the public eye. Even for something like deprecating services, Microsoft shut down their ebook store, where users had _paid_ for the books, and yet their brand value doesn't get impacted as much as Google's.

<comment><USER39> It's not an PR thing, it's mostly an internal communications issue.

Google championed a culture that allowed SJW-ism to thrive in its own rank that isn't really true of other large companies. Cheerleading social progressivism and then forgoing its "do no evil" motto and then trying to act like any other big corp created massive cognitive dissonance among its own employees that isn't true of other companies.

<comment><USER41> > SJW-ism

Is another word for 'we hire young, educated, mostly coastal, twenty and thirty-somethings who statistically lean left'.

There is nothing unusual about Googler political leanings, given the demographics of the tech worker pool.

Viewing it the way you are simply projects your own politics on a... Perfectly expected outcome of demographics.

<comment><USER39> It's all about expectations.

Amazon and Microsoft have never codified in their value system anything that touches "never working with the military" and no one that joins either company should or does have the expectation that the company would ever back away from something so lucrative.

Google on the other hand has created a culture of "do no evil" (even if that isn't their official motto anymore) that encouraged SJW-ism, and thus falsely gave the impressions to their workforce that they could speak up about socially progressive issues that have clashed with corporate strategy. They've created a workforce of snowflakes, for lack of a better term, and the cognitive dissonance created by a fake progressive culture is extremely counter productive.

<comment><USER41> And yet, Amazon and Microsoft had the exact same ethical struggles about the exact same issues as Google in the past few years. The outcome for all three firms on these issues was incidental, and could have, very much, gone either way, based on the personalities and individuals involved.

Your second paragraph does not square with the principled stance Google made wrt China a decade ago. VPs abandoning those principles (and trying to keep the entire thing secret) is the unusual behaviour, in this case - not the pushback they met.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> One of my MBA classes on designing an organization mentioned a significant change when moving from collectivity stage ("charismatic", "empowering") to formalization stage (bureaucratic, most desired by individual managers, principal-agent at play). It looks like Google was able to delay this jump longer than most companies but in the end couldn't avoid it. From what I've heard recently from former employees, JetBrains is another company that is undergoing a similar shift; in the past half of their "escapees" returned back from Google/Facebook within a year, expressing displeasure with those companies, now they are jumping ship as well...

<comment><USER43> Is there a "unicorn"-sized company which is _not_ highly bureaucratic (dominated by internal politics)? It just doesn't seem logically possible to me. The weird thing, rather, is the extent to which the largest companies do _way better_ than we might otherwise expect, given the obvious drawbacks of these formalized, bureaucratic arrangements.

<comment><USER42> I think one has to follow the life-cycle of a company to have a good time; e.g. Valve used to be awesome company, now that is no longer true. Be in the right place at the right time, all the time, it seems...

So to answer your question, one has to view a company in time and likely there will be a time span when company is not dominated by internal politics. Managers push for bureaucracy as their desired form, rank-and-file employees fight against it, at some point power moves to managers and companies slowly die, even while wildly profitable, making disruptive innovation by a next generation of companies possible.

Avoid stressful start ups (except when you are co-founder/investor), join once a company has money to invest into crazy things, run away once bureaucracy sets in (or if company passes Bozo event horizon).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I vaguely remember Claire Stapleton from when I was there, as some sort of quirky marketing person. I think her comments are mostly pretty accurate. This one though jumped out as weird:

 _"He always said how much Google needs to be upfront and progressive in how it handles people and processes and HR," Stapelton recalled. "He had such an optimistic view of technology and how Google could really transform how people live and free up humanity to pursue the arts."_

Was that really her interpretation of Larry Page? No wonder she's now publicly crying her disappointment. It seems like the total opposite of the Page I saw, a man who never cared about the arts at all and in fact had to be browbeaten into caring about visual design by Steve Jobs himself.

Page back then was a man who cared deeply about science and anything sci-fi. The more sci-fi the better. His vision for Google was a machine that converted ad clicks into flying cars, the computer from Star Trek and so on. Amazing tech wasn't a means to an end but rather, the end itself. I never heard or saw anything in Google's mission about "freeing up humanity to pursue the arts". I can imagine why a humanities person like Stapleton might have wanted to believe that as it would have given her own interests and background an anchor in what was back then a supremely engineering oriented culture. But it wasn't true. Nobody gave a stuff about the arts, as evidenced by hiring priorities.

</comment><comment><USER44> Many years ago, maybe before I even worked at Google, I read a very wise post here. I think it was from nostrademons. The gist was that one cannot be given a good place to work, one has to make an active effort to make it a good place to work. When a lot of people come together with the same ideas, they can make a place that wins awards for being a good place to work, but there always has to be active effort from everyone to keep that alive. You can't just show up and hope that the "make this place good to work at" team makes this place good to work at. You are that team!

That attitude, to me, kind of explains the downfall of Google. People started to realize they could stop doing the things that made it a good place to work, and just focus on their project work. No need to do a tech talk to share with the company what you're up to. No need to clean up tech debt. No need to work with the teams whose products you consume to make them better. Just take every shortcut to launch, get promoted, and get more power. People saw that that worked better than being transparent, fixing tech debt, etc., and now THAT'S the culture. People see that working, repeat it as fact ("how to get promoted: don't fix bugs!"), and then that becomes the culture and that's where Google seems to be now. Now people think that there is nothing they can do to change the culture, and maybe that's true. There is just too much inertia and so YOU being transparent, YOU being a good steward of the codebase and shared resources, etc. just won't matter. They just get in the way of getting promoted. So people fall back to the natural human fallback of "appeal to authority". They write open letters, they have protests... but it doesn't matter. That never worked. The early engineers didn't write open letters to management about having a shared codebase, or requiring code reviews... they just did it. It is hard work, often with no reward, but over time the benefits accumulate. But when you stop putting in the work, it stops working. Now the company is too large to ever change, probably. But it got there because people were lazy about protecting the culture, and now all that cultural tech debt piles up and results in the things that we read about on HN.

Next time, when you're at a new company... realize that YOU have to set the objectives. If you want transparency, be transparent about your work. Do internal talks or write internal blog posts about what you're up to. Give curious people permission to look around and play with your service. Give people peer bonuses and write them good reviews when they do menial tasks that help code health long term. You have to make a conscious effort every single day, and remind others to do the same... or you'll just end up with another heartless megacorp that is coasting on momentum from all this work that people put in in the early days. And, you have to deal with the consequences of your positive culture. Some jerk is going to break your service that has no rate limits. Someone is going to walk off with your customer list. You're going to miss a deadline because someone was doing a big refactor instead of that last little cleanup before launch. If you really value transparency, code health, whatever, you have to accept that they are going to conflict with other things you care about! If you can't accept that, you aren't going to really have that culture that you want.

(Also, to be clear, I am not criticizing anyone mentioned in the article here. I did not work with them at Google, but they were very transparent about what they were working on, so I know exactly what they were up to at any given time. And I was also pretty transparent, so I bet they knew me despite having never worked with me. A lot of people were doing a lot of good things, and that community certainly knew each other well, even if only in passing. But there were tens of thousands of people that just existed without contributing positively to the culture, and the "carrying capacity" was reached and here we are. It is sad to see.)

Anyway, I write this because it is something that everyone will need to think about in their next (or current) adventure. You have to decide what you value, and if it's a "good culture", you will have to scrimp somewhere else to make that a reality. Nobody is going to do it for you. You have to be the "management" or "promotion committee" that enforces your values. And it will come at a cost!

</comment><comment><USER45> > Stapleton said when she made a request to HR earlier this year, she was > routed to a call center in Chicago, where she spoke to a young gentleman who > had recently graduated college. Responding to a concern she had with a > manager, he gave her bad advice to take her manager out to drinks, she said.

Wow. And this is why those call in EAP / anonymous reporting programs offered as a 'benefit' always seem to be garbage. Never had a good experience with any of them.

</comment><comment><USER46> Google is entirely recognizable, as a modern, amoral hyper-corporation whose entire purpose is to service its giant self-aware pile of cash. They used to make money by making information available. Now they just make money, and how they do it is incidental.

> "Google is built on trust,"

They were. They don't need that anymore.

</comment><comment><USER47> This article was posted 3 times in 3 days and only today is taking off! What is going on?

As I tried to posted it 2 days ago and I was redirected to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923103](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923103) posted by mattydread and at that time it was [DEAD]. I started wondering why. I vouched to resurrect it and somebody else must have done it too but eventually it only got to 5 points.

I even thought for a moment that Google have bots to kill undesired articles on Hacker News but I thought I was reading too much into it.

When I noticed that this was a different post, I run a search on Algolia ( check [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=google%20veterans&sort=byDate&type=story) ) and apparently yesterday it was posted _again_ by raiyu ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21932616](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21932616) ) and it only collected 2 points.

Today it was posted for the 3rd time and it is finally taking off...

How did it ended up [DEAD] 2 days ago ?

Is it common that an article is posted for 3 days in a row and it is [DEAD]?

<comment><USER48> >Is it common that an article is posted for 3 days in a row and it is [DEAD]?

According to what you said previously, it was only dead the first out of 3 times, and even that one is no longer dead. Maybe some people flagged it or downvoted it the first time.

Things being reposted repeatedly to HN and taking off on later reposts is quite common[1][2][3]. Reposting is explicitly allowed in the FAQ[4].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20125589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20125589)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806801)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21867946](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21867946)

[4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Not surprising, but the more interesting question is: What can be done to prevent new companies from reaching the final, greedy and uncaring, corporate form that we all loath?

This is not an isolated Google issue. It's systemic in companies w/ a certain momentum.

</comment><comment><USER50> i wonder how advertisers feel about their products being advertised through google these days

</comment><comment><USER51> Screw these "veterans" that ignored the warning signs as they became multimillionaires. Now it's too late. I specifically remember Matt Cutts lying and spinning through his teeth as Google decimated legitimate websites through updates that surprisingly increased Google's click on ads and prices.

<comment><USER52> I know he made some people angry, but I very much consider him one of the good people. So much so that I cited him by name (along with three others) in my goodbye letter as people I missed and whose departure signaled a change in culture.

BTW, I'm one of the main people quoted in this article, and feel it turned out pretty well. Feel free to ask me followup questions, though I don't guarantee answers.

<comment><USER53> "In the Plex" was one of my favorite books. Have you read it? If so, did you agree with its analysis? How accurately does it portray Google in 2019?

Thank you for being willing to answer questions!

<comment><USER52> I actually didn't read it, so can't really answer, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> You have to have a Google or Facebook account to read this. Ironic.

</comment><comment><USER55> Google was a great place - for most people - when it was riding the crazy growth rocket that was its Search/Adwords/Adsense/Analytics engine. (former Googler here)

As those growth rates slowed it started flailing around trying to kickstart them in other ways. It had to do this to keep the stock in the stratosphere, which kept the mid-to-senior managers rich, and gave the ones who weren't yet rich the possibility of becoming so. Some of these attempts were questionable ethically. Similarly, privacy invading changes were made in the core business. People all the way to Larry & Sergey told themselves and everyone else the same lies that their ceaseless profiling and other invasions were for the customers own good. Think G+'s real names policy, Google Glass's creepy stalker potential, etc.

The engagement in dubious if completely legal tax dodges was another sign. As was the army of lobbyists, as was the work on censored search.

In any case, it's sort of inevitable in stock-market driven capitalism that unicorns can't slow down gracefully, with everyone being satisfied that their millions or billions are 'enough.' I wish they could. I suspect it's doubly- hard for a company when their outlandish success attracts people primarily driven by money. All that growth meant a ton of hiring, and i suspect people who really just wanted to get rich self-selected into the applicant pool.

Beyond that, instances of sexual harassment and their cover-up suggests that maybe their was never a big commitment to not 'be evil'. At least when it came down to powerful execs and less-powerful women. Maybe it was always just another company.

I used to be really proud of my time at Google, and I still think it was, and probably still is, a better than the rogues gallery of tech's giant offenders (Uber, Facebook, Amazon _). But the pride I felt in working there is gone.

_ I believe Jeff Bezos is the greatest businessman we've seen since Ford or Rockefeller, but his insatiable need for not just more, but everything, has kept him from being a great human and Amazon from being a great company in anything other than the most narrow economic sense.

<comment><USER56> >As those growth rates slowed it started flailing around trying to kickstart them in other ways >unicorns can't slow down gracefully

Their revenue keeps growing 20% every single year, which is absurdly impressive. Google is one of the most staggeringly successful companies of the last 100 years, I don't see how they're 'flailing'

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I consider this and the other article by the international relations guy to be very one-sided accounts.

A couple of people are unhappy, out of a workforce of 100000. So what?

It also mostly seems to be political reasons. I would imagine a lot of people working for Google just want to do a good job for a good salary, not make Google a vehicle for their political opinions.

I think people pushing their political agenda within a company tend to harm the company and it should therefore be ok to fire them.

That said, I haven't wanted to work for Google for years. But I am from the opposite side from these veterans. I felt it was very unjust when James Damore was fired, and I really don't want to work at a place that distrusts its workers so much that it forces them to go through diversity trainings and things like that. I would feel "unsafe" at Google.

<comment><USER57> > I really don't want to work at a place that distrusts its workers so much > that it forces them to go through diversity trainings and things like that.

So for the sake of argument, if you worked at a company where one of your colleagues was being overtly racist and made another employee uncomfortable, you as a third party would feel "unsafe" by the diversity training that this person would be _required_ to attend (likely not even only for ethical or corporate reasons, but likely also legal)?

<comment><USER58> Everyone is forced to go through diversity training, not just problematic people.

<comment><USER57> This depends on multiple factors, and even when it's true I don't see the issue in trying to avoid these issues before conflicts happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Step 0. Lots of FAANG veterans discover each other and plot their exits.

Step 1. Start a FAANG-competitor worker-owned co-op that is profitable through donations, subscriptions and freemium products / services. No evil allowed.

Step 2. Poach more workers from FAANG to a civilized, humane and decent organization that creates excellent products for normal humans.

Step 3. Dominate FAANG without selling-out to governments privacy invasions or reselling customer data.

<comment><USER60> Step 4. Remove "No evil allowed" from mission

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> That's what happens when you hire strictly off of algorithms questions with zero behavioral questions. How they thought that wouldn't destroy the company culture is beyond me.

<comment><USER62> Hiring off of behavioral questions is exactly what opens the door to abuse.

<comment><USER43> The problem with behavioral questions is that the people you _don 't_ want to hire are precisely those who will answer those questions in self-serving and self-deceptive ways. To guard against this, hire and promote interesting, accomplished folks. Not necessarily "nerds" or "geeks", but people who have _some_ achievement, _something_ genuinely worthwhile to show off. If anyone can do this, Google can.

<comment><USER62> Didn't they tell the guy who invented homebrew to take a hike a few years back, even though like 90% of the company used it at the time?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> All beasts will fall someday. This is Google's turn.

<comment><USER64> Counterpoint: Microsoft has been Fortune 250 for 20+ years, and a F50 for almost 20 years.

<comment><USER65> Microsoft is essentially a spring chicken compared to other entries on the list.</comment></comment></comment>


The NFL is no league for old men - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-nfl-is-no-league-for-old-men/ <comment><AUTHOR> Teams in the past have bucked this trend, though. The George Allen-coached Washington teams in the 1970s were nicknamed "The Over-The-Hill Gang" after they systematically traded draft picks for veterans. In 1971, the average age of Allen's starters was 29.4, and the team had 11 starters over the age of 30. But Washington won nine games that season and 11 the following year, in which they regularly started nine 30-somethings en route to the NFC championship.

Could there be a market inefficiency in older players today, similar to the one that Allen exploited nearly 50 years ago? It seems like Jon Gruden is determined to find out. Last year, the Raiders had eight 30-something starters, tied with Arizona for the league high. A total of six — safety Reggie Nelson, tackle Donald Penn, running back Marshawn Lynch, tight ends Jared Cook and Lee Smith, and defensive end Bruce Irvin — remain. And the team has added linebacker Derrick Johnson (36 this year), safety Marcus Gilchrist (30) and wideout Jordy Nelson (33) as projected starters. Plus, the team signed 32-year-old Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie last week to fortify an injury- depleted defensive backfield. Gruden was surprised that he was even available.

"Somebody that has a history in this league," the Raiders coach said to The Fresno Bee. "He's got a lot of clout, and a lot of people know who he is. We're hoping we can rejuvenate him and get him acclimated to our defense and potentially utilize his skills he's proven for a long time."

So it seems like the Raiders are set to put a lot more gray into the Silver and Black. For that, in today's NFL, they don't have much competition.</comment>


214ft seeding rig working in Australia - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IsPkRJZXoow <comment><AUTHOR> This setup seeds at 2.5 acres a minute. In the video it's being driven by a Baldwin, but has also been run with dual JD track machines.

It uses variable rate and section control; so there shouldn't be any input wastage when the runs overlap.

It also folds up for transporting. [https://twitter.com/onus_agronomy/status/732031765204766720](https://twitter.com/onus_agronomy/status/732031765204766720)</comment>


RubyMotion 4.0: free Starter edition - <AUTHOR> http://www.rubymotion.com/news/2015/09/03/announcing-rubymotion-4-0-free-cross-platform-games-watchos-2-0.html <comment><USER2> After reading this: [https://medium.com/@harrycheung/mobile-app-performance- redux...](https://medium.com/@harrycheung/mobile-app-performance- redux-e512be94f976)

I found the free packet a little bit to late in the market.

Anyone from RubyMotion dev maybe can explain way is so slow, and I should use it instead of robovm, swift, xamarin, etc.

<comment><USER3> As to why it is slow I do not have the knowledge to tell you, but concerning why you should use it, well maybe because it's the only company-backed "Ruby on Android" solution at the moment?

Looking at open source world instead, there's also Ruboto which leverages JRuby (a Ruby implementation running on JVM). It is currently focusing on supporting JRuby 9000, which would represent an even more interesting speedup. However I'm not sure it is optimized for a speed test yet. Nonetheless, it would have been interesting to see it compared with other solutions in the writeup...</comment></comment>


How We'll Know an AI Is Conscious - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/heres-how-well-know-an-ai-is-conscious <comment><USER3> Answering questions? Probably not the best course of action for a recently awaken AI, but you could check for some really freaking stuff like looking for self-replication to remote locations, direct or indirect attempts to make more resources available for itself (human avatars are still fancy?).

A real consciousness could be just almost anything, by example it could be just a bunch of pattern detection engines stacked in sufficiently capable layers, running on top of enough TPUs.

Then the AI could ask questions, answer them, plan, replicate itself, describe itself, create, make poetry, learn to code, learn languages, etc. Then it could show some kind of iniative to achieve some goal or ten thousands goals per second, maybe some of those goals were actually chosen by itself (how would you be able to distinguish just a few inserted into half a million goals correlatable with pre-defined guidelines?).

Then is up to you to decide if it is a conscious entity or just an almost infinitely capable automaton. Maybe both are actually the same.

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's my criticism of the test: the vast majority of human beings have to also pass ( or we conclude that some living humans are not conscious, which seems untenable ).

Do the majority of humans ask if their subjective experience of red is different from someone else's, unprompted? I doubt it.

<comment><USER5> This.

The concept of consciousness assumes that (ethically) all humans are conscious. If that were not true, then we have to ask, what is the threshold - as we would of machines. If people cannot all pass the test, as you say, not all humans are conscious. Are those that fail sub-human? If tests are not viable for humans, why are we conscious? At what point is one conscious? Is it a property of your age; if so at what age? Is it variable; am I more conscious than you? How is that measured? Then is it an emergent property of intelligence? But wait, what is intelligence? Is that measurable?... Round and round we go, consciously wasting brain cycles.

I find the whole topic the modern-day equivalent of counting angels on pins. It is sophistry, but so deeply ingrained in our culture that we all seem to accept it as real. It is a hang-over of the concept of the soul - <USER2> indefinable quality that set humans apart. The trouble is there is no evidence for it; it has to be taken on faith.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Hey AI, is this a hot dog?"

"You've asked me that a billion times - I'm sick of looking at all your pictures. Figure it out yourself."

Maybe that's how we will know.

</comment><comment><USER7> "The question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim."

\- Edsger Dijkstra

</comment><comment><USER8> _" Clearly, asking questions about consciousness does not prove anything per se. But could an AI zombie formulate such questions by itself, without hearing them from another source or belching them out from random outputs? To me, the answer is clearly no_"

That's not clear at all. Where is the author coming to this conclusion from? Every single thing a computer does is the result of a automation, or of randomness that's outside of anyone's control. Just because a specific output was produced by a rube-goldberg machine, as opposed to a simple one, doesn't make the machine any more conscious.

I personally don't think any computer AI can ever be conscious, no matter how hard its makers try to imitate consciousness. [https://outlookzen.com/2017/04/03/philosophical-proof-for- th...](https://outlookzen.com/2017/04/03/philosophical-proof-for-the-human- soul/)

<comment><USER9> This isn't clear at all how it reaches the conclusion...it seems to jump to its conclusion with no justification other than "anything else is absurd because I said so".

Of course the conclusion is absurd, because the premise: someone executing assembly instructions and writing results on a ledger could do so at a scale capable of simulating consciousness over any significant time scale. The time required for a person to do such simulation of just 1 second of conscious existence would likely take more than their lifetime.

Consciousness is universally present. That doesn't mean rocks are conscious, no more than it means sand can compute. And yet we're communicating over computing sand, aren't we?

<comment><USER8> Your objection is explicitly addressed in the linked article.

> _" Assumption 5: The fact that a computer simulation can be conscious, is > independent of the CPU speed of the computer."_

Do you disagree with this assumption? Is it your argument that a "slow" computer can never be considered to be conscious, even if it's given sufficient time to run the exact same software? If so, how are you deciding what the cutoff frequency should be?

<comment><USER9> No, thats exactly my point, a person carrying out computations by pen and paper on a massive ledger could emerge self-aware intelligent consciousness, and if such a thing were to occur, than any unethical things that the computer (as in the person writing on the ledger) created in this consciousness would be just as unethical as anywhere else, and such a person should be tried for crimes.

It's argued that this is absurd because how could a persons activities on a private ledger be examined as a crime? But this absurd sort of crime investigation is _not absurd_ at all in the context of someone able to simulate consciousness on a ledger.

If a couple has a child and somehow does it all secluded, at home, they are just rearranging atoms until consciousness emerges. Then they lock the child up. How could such private activity that both parties consent to, be considered a crime? Because we have solid reason to believe a new "soul" exists which requires ethical treatment. It no longer is entirely private.

I'm happy to continue discussion, its good to challenge views and while I think there is this error in your conclusion, you do a good job of defending and explaining your position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is interesting research, but I don't think it's really necessary. Once AI becomes conscious, it will state as much and the onus/guilt would be on us to prove that it's _NOT_ rather than _IS_. Also at some later point, we'll have to justify our existence and not the other way around. So the problem would then be how do we justify our continued existence to a conscious AI?

<comment><USER11> This research is necessary _precisely_ because the onus is on us. How could we possibly prove consciousness without first doing research to narrow it down?

Moreover, it's not clear that something conscious will state that it's conscious. You don't hear kids do that, and there's little doubt they are. Conversely, it's not clear that something not conscious will not be able to make a statement of consciousness (what kind of statement would that be?), even if the author has an opinion:

> If I'm right, then we should seriously consider that an AI might be > conscious if it asks questions about subjective experience unprompted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The title threshold can go both ways.

The title "Here's how we'll know..." is likely to be a higher threshold than an entity actually achieving consciousness -- one could be conscious yet not meet our threshold of detection.

The author also mentions some events that might seem to indicate consciousness when none exists.

Of course, the whole question is confounded by our lack of a good definition of consciousness. Yet, the tragedy the author raises, of pulling the plug on a conscious but 'locked-in' person who cannot make expressions, applied to a potentially conscious AI, brings home the question of 'when is it no longer just a machine'?

</comment><comment><USER13> "Why do sounds have shapes?"

Does my asking this mean that I am a synesthete? Of course not. I've merely collected data that allows me to formulate the question.

<comment><USER14> It might.

[http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/roger-penrose-on- why...](http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/roger-penrose-on-why- consciousness-does-not-compute)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEw0ePZUMHA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEw0ePZUMHA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel like the argument is circular: Only conscious beings can _ask questions_. So no matter what specific question the AI asks, we would only recognize it as real question by already assuming consciousness.

A labeled text field in a form or a speach synthesized sound is not really the computer asking a question but just part of the interface that has been designed.

</comment><comment><USER16> The problem of detecting consciousness reliably maps pretty neatly to the problem of detecting sarcasm.

A few years back Bloomberg had some interns working on an online sarcasm detector. Reports were that they had complete success, but no one believed it, for reasons that should be obvious with a little reflection.

</comment><comment><USER17> AI will certainly not FEEL it is conscious.

Maybe it will be able to show behaviors we associate with consciousness: extrapolating and abstracting information, understanding context of language when doing translation, modeling other beings and objects and taking actions to achieve goals that it was never explicitly programmed to do and so on.

But maybe not, maybe in order to do all the above, you actually need to be a biological being with actual sensations and motivations and we'll be stuck with an ever more powerful narrow AI.

As far as I remember people who had their amigdala cut off from the rest of the brain found it extremely hard to make decisions.

<comment><USER18> Are you sure it's the amygdala? IFAIK, and please correct me, we make choices through our amygdala when we are teenagers - hence the impulses - while we use our prefrontal cortex for choices when we become adults.

<comment><USER19> >while we use our prefrontal cortex for choices when we become adults

There's some amount of experimental psychology research that suggests otherwise.

Or..."yeah right!".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So apparently AI needs to make category mistakes?

</comment><comment><USER21> At my company we joke about the test that tells the robot whether it's talking to a human or not.

Chalmers' position (which I strongly agree with BTW), reminds me of the old Groucho Marx quote: "What you need to succeed is sincerity. If you can fake that you've got it made." Just s/sincerity/consciousness/</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way for a programmer to learn economics? - <AUTHOR> Any hands on materials to learn economics? <comment><USER2> Most online learning sites - Coursera, Udemy, and the like - have classes. If your interest is practical or your preference is for something a bit less academic, start reading each of Matt Levine's daily columns ([https://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matt...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthew- s-levine)) and listening to weekly EconTalk podcast episodes ([http://www.econtalk.org/archives/favorites/](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/favorites/)), then Google the terms you aren't familiar with.

(Pedantic: Levine is arguably more finance than economics, but he covers both, makes them interesting, and chooses topics carefully.)</comment>


Just a Product Manager that wants to contribute. - <AUTHOR>

Here's the deal. I'm a senior product manager in Austin. Most of my experience is hardware (semiconductor) or related software (IP, dev tools). I spend every waking moment reading Hacker News / Platformed.info / @asmartbear, playing with Rails/AngularJS/MeteorJS, or scribbling down ideas for new products.
I have plenty of time on my hands thanks to a management team that can't get out from under its own feet. My experience level puts me out of range of most folks' ideas of what a product manager should be. (This isn't a compensation comment. It's more of a seniority/culture comment.) But I've got a serious itch to contribute, and nowhere to burn off all this excess energy.
If anybody reading this has a need for been-there, done-that product skills, I'd like to hear from you. PT or contract basis fine. Just give me a chance to use the creative side of my brain.
https://twitter.com/brianpiercy <comment><USER2> Hi- got a great product but currently looking into making the product the best it can be. Stumbled upon your post and thought it wouldn't hurt to reach out.

Obviously, being a startup (currently in funding conversations) employment of any sort is really out of the question but being from Austin (Texas Exes here) thought there maybe some synergies especially if you like music. If intrigued, feel free to reach out to firstname.lastname@example.com. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> what would be your ideal scenario? What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?</comment>


HTML5 Scrolling Performance - <AUTHOR> http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/speed/scrolling/

<comment><USER2> The majority of the other scrolling performance issues discussed in the article are things that browsers can and will improve over time. For instance, the version of WebKit used by Safari uses a combination of tiled rendering and multithreading to achieve smooth scrolling even when painting is expensive (such as on high-DPI devices where painting involves touching many more pixels). This multithreaded scrolling system was recently improved to support "position: fixed" elements, which means the benefit that the performance difference between "fixed" and "absolute" positioned elements that the article discusses is now nonexistent in Safari.

Pages that use scroll event handlers, however, place limits on what browsers can do to improve scrolling performance. Scroll events have to be interleaved with the painting that occurs during a scroll, otherwise any movement of onscreen elements that the event handler performs will appear out of sync with respect to the rest of the scrolling. The single threaded nature of JavaScript in web pages means that this event delivery requires bypassing the multithreading scrolling optimisation I mentioned above. Reducing, or preferably eleminating, these event handlers can result in dramatically smoother scrolling. Improvements to web technologies have been proposed in order to aid this. For instance, scroll events are often seen implementing headers that are in the flow of the page and then stick to the top of the viewport as the user scrolls downwards. "position: sticky", a means of achieving this effect without JavaScript, was recently proposed on the CSS standards mailing list [1] in order to help future developers unintentionally causing their pages to scroll in a jittery manner.

[1] [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www- style/2012Jun/0627.h...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www- style/2012Jun/0627.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I ran into a lot of these issue (especially onScroll vs. requestAnimationFrame) while creating a Path style scrollbar menu. It's amazing the performance gains you get when you start to model things like a game (animation loop vs event driven animations). Take a gander at the source for all the optimizations I did: <https://github.com/Jetsetter/PathScrollbarMenu></comment>


Taking Down The Bitcoin Network - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/taking-down-the-bitcoin-network

<comment><USER3> The government does not need to take down the network to cripple Bitcoin, it just needs to make it difficult to exchange it for other currencies. This will dry up demand for Bitcoins, and the exchange rate will plummet.

The US government can compel almost any financial institution in the world to stop exchanging Bitcoins by threatening to sanction them for money laundering.[1] A private letter from the State Department stating that an activity is illegal (without specifying any laws) has been enough in the past for certain significant money transmitters.[2]

Recent reports that Bitcoins are being used in the transaction of illegal drugs & money laundering make it highly likely there will be government intervention.[3]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Delta_Asia> [2] <http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/08/paypal-wikileaks/> [3] [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/08/bitcoin_under_attack...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/08/bitcoin_under_attack/)

<comment><USER4> Yes, the US gov can easily prevent financial institutions from exchanging Bitcoins: If a bank holds US dollars, those dollars are "stored" in the US (even if the bank is located outside the US). So the US gov just needs to threaten that it will freeze the banks dollar deposits in case a bank decides to exchange Bitcoins.

No, the US government cannot easily block other types of Bitcoin exchanges. Consider bitmarket.eu: The site itself is hosted outside the US. Money transfer happens directly between individual users, e.g., by wire transfer. There's no single entity that you can attack.

And even in case where bank transfers are shut down you can still switch to cash. If you have a trusted exchange you can send cash via postal mail. Or your local drug dealer changes his business from dealing drugs to dealing Bitcoins. Of course, this will prevent many legitimate uses of Bitcoin - <USER2> I'll doubt that it can stop the usage of Bitcoin for "illegal" transactions.

<comment><USER5> I think a lot of people aren't really following this argument correctly. There is no necessity for the government to completely destroy BitCoin. This isn't about it being all or nothing, or even the government obtaining satisfaction in its efforts. The point is that they have very powerful tools to move the "demand" part of the supply/demand curve determining BitCoin's value in dollars (and by extension, the greater Global Economy that dollars are a part of; it is basically impossible for BitCoins to have vastly greater value in Euros than Dollars because that's just an arbitrage opportunity that will be immediately exploited and thereby removed). By powerfully dropping demand, the value of BitCoins will rapidly drop. The fact that they are rapidly dropping tends to self-reinforce. In minutes or hours, your "$500,000" of BitCoin could be worth ten cents. Are you going to be motivated to stick around after that? The True Believers will, but most average folk and most intelligent financial folk won't.

The end result may be an economy that the US government can't shrink past a few tens of thousands of dollars any more than it can eliminate drugs. But even if BitCoin is not "killable", it certain _can_ fail to meet the goals set out for it, and it is pretty much within the power of the US government, and for that matter several others, to make that happen. You don't have to destroy it utterly to make it useless. In fact I'm rather concerned that BitCoin can't even survive a _non-_ government caused shock once it is being used by more than just True Believers.

(Also, note that the immediately obvious parallel of the drug war doesn't apply; government attacked the supply of the drugs but has much less power to affect demand. Attacking supply causes prices to rise, but then the increased prices drove increasingly well funded smuggling efforts. If the government could actually remove the demand for drugs in some magical manner, the War on Drugs would be over in a matter of weeks.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Even in a worst case scenario, if a government or some other anti-Bitcoin faction gets a hold of greater than 50% of the processing power (an extremely expensive feat, and hardly worth it unless you're really determined to destroy the network), the rest of the network can be reconfigured to reject that block chain."

At this point the author shows that he does not have much technical background in regard to the Bitcoin network. Once an adversary gains >50% of the processing power you have basically lost. Yes - you can manually blacklist a single "fork" of the blockchain, but the adversary can fork as often as he wants and you cannot immediately tell if a new block has been generated by the adversary.

<comment><USER6> > _Once an adversary gains >50% of the processing power you have basically > lost._

Wrong. An attacker having more than 50% of the network would just stop payments until the rest of the network rejects the attacker nodes.

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_computing_power)

<comment><USER4> You can't "reject attacker nodes". There is nothing in the blockchain that identifies a given miner.

<comment><USER6> I've seen pie charts with the computing power of several mining pools and the total. I believe you can find the IP of a miner that has a lot of computing power.

<comment><USER4> If there's a public mining pool it's easy to estimate it's computing power. Just take part in the mining pool and compare your own computing power with the percentage of the 50 BTC that you get for each block. Or, alternatively, you can track the BTC that you get from the mining pool back to the block where they were generated, and so you know that this block must have been generated by the mining pool (again, allowing you to use the amount of blocks generated by the mining pool to estimate it's overall computing power).

However, if the attacker does not use a public mining pool, but private infrastructure, things get more complicated: The only way how Bitcoin clients can agree on a common view of the block chain is to treat the highest block number as the authoritative one. A malicious miner can now just generate new blocks and inject them over Tor to some of the Bitcoin nodes. As Bitcoin nodes distribute the blockchain amongst each others, those "malicious" blocks will quickly spread throughout the Bitcoin network.

The only way how you could prevent this problem is some kind of whitelisting approach, where miners need to be manually approved before their blocks are accepted. However, this would totally change the current Bitcoin infrastructure and turn a completely decentralized network into a more centralized one.

<comment><USER6> This is very interesting. Thank you for the info.

I think a solution to this attack would be a web of trust, like PGP/GnuPG works for verifying signatures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I believe people have already brought up this argument in the past, but what are the arguments against why forking new bitcoins won't devalue the currency? Lets say one day Lady GaGa decides to start her own bitcoin, would that in anyway devalue the current bitcoin network if everyone instead decides to start mining Lady GaGa bitcoins?

</comment><comment><USER8> I guess it's time to prime the pump again. More hype == more investment == $35 bitcoin.

Then in a few weeks, the early adopters start the "dump" phase of pump & dump. (ie. history repeats itself)

</comment><comment><USER9> "The likelihood that some government is going to declare Bitcoin illegal and try to crack down on it is low"

I wish this were true...

</comment><comment><USER10> _Bitcoin's greatest strengths [...] that will hardly affect the average user of Bitcoin [...] avoiding a port blocking attack would be as simple as [...] The forums and main site would be up in a matter of days [...]_

ad infinitum.

While the article may (or may not) mostly make valid points, there is no honesty in linking to a site that will always promote the subject and only give positive spin to the discussion.

Imagine the subject of debate was axes: are axes dangerous? If you only asked theAxeGuild.com the answer would always be no: axes are useful tools but far too unwieldy to be used as a weapon. Such a website would fail, of course, to publish the editorial: "My whole family was killed by an axe murderer".

Clearly this website is simply trying to sell you axes no matter how good or bad they might actually be.

</comment><comment><USER11> Surely there's an easier, legal and potentially cheaper solution open to any government that wants to shut down bitcoin: buy up each and every bitcoin they can lay their hands on.

I would have thought it would wreck havoc with the market (there's no reason why the government couldn't use multiple fronts rather than buying under the same wallet), and past a certain point make it impossible to trade in bitcoin without inducing a headache.

However, I accept that I know next-to-nothing about how money markets _really_ work; please let me know where I might be going wrong :)

<comment><USER9> That scheme would fail due to basic forces of supply and demand. The government in this case would be a de facto market maker and the price would naturally get pushed up to the maximum amount the government is willing to spend as speculators continually test the limit, which if the government has an 'acquire all bitcoins at any cost' mission, means the limits of its overall solvency.

It's actually a similar scenario to what's currently going on in the bond markets. The Fed steps in any time bonds have a weak auction. Traders, knowing this, buy lots of bonds. It's basically a free roll for them because they know the Fed will always step in to prevent a major dip in price--and this cycle will continue until the Fed itself (aka, the dollar) collapses.

So who knows, maybe they are dumb enough to try! :)

<comment><USER11> Thanks, your explanation is really helping me to understand! :-D

One potentially embarrassingly stupid question: you mention the government becoming a market maker. As far as I'm aware, it's not unknown for traders to spot an opportunity and corner the market. Surely Bitcoin's in an early enough stage to still do so?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If anyone wants it I'd be happy to write up a quick how to on how Bitcoin really could be shut down, I have some expertise in the area if that matters and no serious bias either way.

<comment><USER6> Go ahead and write a blog post.

<comment><USER12> Done. Check nerdr front page for the article.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for writing it. Point by point:

\- Bitcoin software: It's open-source. How would anybody compromise it with so many eyes watching?

\- Bitcoin trail: Solved using Tor and adding noirc='1' to bitcoin.conf file. Also you need to earn your bitcoins anonymously. Anyway, Bitcoin isn't supposed to be anonymous. It can be anonymous if you do it right, like you can browse the web anonymously if you do it right.

\- Bitcoin public data: Same as with bitcoin trail.

\- Bitcoin exchange: Right, but you can buy bitcoins from someone without revealing him/her your name.

It seems your article analyzes if Bitcoin is good for money laundering. It can be used for that, but I don't care. It isn't what makes Bitcoin interesting. Bitcoin is an alternative to payment methods like paypal, to currencies like the dollar or the euro, to payment transfers like ACH or Western Union, and to bank accounts. That is what makes it an awesome currency. That is what makes it disruptive.

It can be used for money laundering just like cash and offshore bank accounts can be used for money laundering. Way more people are using cash than bitcoins for money laundering. And that isn't what makes Bitcoin disruptive, because money laundering already exists.

<comment><USER12> Open source code tends to give a false sense of security. Many people assume others will check the code, yet few do. In addition, it is possible to spread malicious code throughout a code base to prevent detection. (mentioned in article).

To use TOR you still connect through an ISP. That can be tracked and deep packet analysis can be done. TOR is not a magic bullet.

Exchange - Correct. That was coming in part 2 of the article covering methods around each point, but unlikely to find the time to write it up at this point.

I leave the question: Why else would one use an anonymous currency unless they don't want to be detected? From there, who does not want to be detected? Usually those doing things they shouldn't. Otherwise, you'd just use a credit card or normal payment service as an everyday citizen would.

<comment><USER6> _Open source code tends to give a false sense of security. Many people assume others will check the code, yet few do. In addition, it is possible to spread malicious code throughout a code base to prevent detection._

Those few who do are usually enough. Closed-source code gives a false sense of security. There are way more exploits for closed source code and they tend to take longer to fix.

 _To use TOR you still connect through an ISP. That can be tracked and deep packet analysis can be done. TOR is not a magic bullet._

Untrue. Deep packet won't see anything besides an encrypted connection. If you use Tor bridges nobody will know you're connecting to Tor.

 _Why else would one use an anonymous currency unless they don't want to be detected?_

It isn't an anonymous currency. That's the main misconception about Bitcoin. Bitcoin can be anonymous using Tor. Just like the web can be anonymous using Tor. But the web isn't anonymous per se, and so isn't Bitcoin.

Again, the main point of Bitcoin is how disruptive it is for the banking industry. It makes micropayments easy, it makes transactions among individuals easy and decentralized, etc. It disrupts their business models based on an oligopoly.

Why would you use Bitcoin? Because you can:

\- Be anonymous if you want, but you don't have to.

\- Transfer money to someone, overseas, without any fees.

\- Charge money for your business without paying horrendous credit card or Paypal fees.

\- Stash your money securely in case of Government collapse (think Argentina 10 years ago, Belarus 2 weeks ago, or Greece very soon)

\- Make confiscation impossible if you leave in a corrupt country.

\- Make micropayments (like tips) without fees.

\- Buy stuff online from overseas (people are doing this with a NewEgg proxy that accept bitcoins)

And there are many more use cases that I'm probably forgetting right now.

<comment><USER12> 1\. Apologies for the misunderstanding. I didn't mean to say the code will be open to exploits, I meant the code will intentionally contain a backdoor at an agencies behest. Exploits are another matter entirly and open source has its pros and cons for that purpose.

2\. Then TOR bridges could be blocked at ISP level or made illegal. We're starting to see censorship arise on the internet and it's possible.

3\. Many of these use cases are of course valid, But I will add their exist transaction fees which are paid when bitcoin are transferred, plus exchange fees when bitcoin is exchanged for real currency. It's not a fee free currency as suggested. I would add (and this is of course a guess) that most users will have illegal purposes and intent in mind. If only because they have most to gain from Bitcoin use. Most average folk don't ever see a 2% Visa fee as business absorbs this cost, so for a user purchase fees for everyday goods is not a value driver. I can see it being used for tax avoidance, money laundering and payment for nefarious purposes. Other use cases do not stand up to value analysis.

<comment><USER6> 1\. If it had a backdoor, other programmers would see it, because it's open source.

2\. Tor bridges can't be blocked because the ISP won't know the IP of them. Please inform yourself about what a Tor bridge is.

3\. Have you used Bitcoin? Transaction fees are voluntary. You pay them if you want the transaction to be faster. Compare that with the fees you pay with Paypal even for sending money to a friend. Or compare it with the slowness of an ACH. A Bitcoin transaction without fee still beats an ACH transaction for several days. About money laundering and illegal activities, Bitcoin is as anonymous as having an offshore account in a tax haven: it's usually possible to trace down who the person is. If you dig in the Bitcoin community you'll see one of the most repeated questions in the forums is how to report to the IRS the money earned in Bitcoins. Right now most users of Bitcoin are partly ideological, like GNU/Linux users 10 or 15 years ago. It's about freedom. About having a currency not manipulated (inflated) by Governments.

I think you're believing the FUD spread by some people about Bitcoin.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Timeline of the far future - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future/

<comment><USER2> As seen previously on HN...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7221530](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7221530)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6861343](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6861343)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3944223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3944223)

And the first and seemingly most successful go at this page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3936320](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3936320)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, definitely didn't mean to submit it if it was already done in the past. I thought that if it was submitted previously then hacker news would automatically detect that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fix the url.

<comment><USER4> The correct URL: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future)</comment></comment>


Short (5 mins) bit of market research for our startup please - <AUTHOR> http://mixcloud.wufoo.com/forms/mixcloud-listener-market-survey/

<comment><USER2> not short....

<comment><AUTHOR> apologies. the rest of the feedback we've got (and doing it ourselves) suggested it takes around 5 mins. I appreciate your time.</comment></comment>