New Horizons' first hi-res imagery of Ultima Thule - <AUTHOR> http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20190102 <comment><AUTHOR> I find it truly amazing that New Horizons was able to take photos of a 20 mile object whilst flying past at ~8 miles/sec - that's an incredibly small space and time window within which to capture the images. Does anyone know how NASA manages to pilot spacecraft with this level of precision? What kind of engineering processes do you need to enable this?

<comment><USER2> > photos of a 20 mile object whilst flying past at ~8 miles/sec

Not to detract at all from the astonishing technical achievement, but that's the wrong comparison. You can see the ISS with your naked eye, and it's a <1 mile object flying past at 4.8 miles/sec. The right comparison is with the distance at which this photo was taken: 18,000 miles, or about half an hour from closest approach.

Actually, the right comparison is of the closest approach distance (~2000 miles) with the distance from earth (4,000,000,000 miles). That's like launching a missile from Los Angeles to New York and hitting your target to within a meter.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, while that's an accurate representation of the distances, it's not accurate of the difficulty. They don't have to deal with unpredictable atmosphere. There's reasons laser-guided missiles are about 1-2 meters-ish of accuracy with constant guidance, while we can basically fire-and-forget spacecraft to 4 billion miles away.

<comment><USER2> No, that's actually not true. Hitting Ultima-Thule is much harder. For starters, just figuring out where U-T actually _is_ is very difficult. The observations we have only constrain two of its three degrees of orbital freedom. The third has to be inferred via orbital mechanics. Likewise, figuring out where the spacecraft is is also non-trivial. By way of contrast, figuring out where you are relative to New York to within a meter of accuracy is, nowadays, a simple matter of switching on your GPS receiver. (Even without GPS, all you need is inertial guidance that is stable for half an hour or so. That's much easier to achieve.)

Finally, there are unpredictable orbital disturbances. N-H uses thrusters for attitude control, whose effect on the trajectory is not entirely predictable. (c.f. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly), which was only detectable because, although Pioneer had thrusters, they were turned off for long periods of time).

I know these things because I used to work at JPL. There are entire teams dedicated to spacecraft navigation. The stuff they do will blow your mind.

<comment><USER4> I wonder how much would it cost to build a GPS-like network for the whole solar-system...

The good thing is that, for such a thing to be really useful, we'd have to invent better propulsion systems which would, in turn, make the network much cheaper to build.

<comment><USER5> Pulsars can be used to arrive at celestial positioning accurate to ±5 km. There is a test rig on the ISS that has validated this. No need to build human made beacons when the universe has so graciously provided us with them.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_pulsar- based_navigatio...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_pulsar- based_navigation)

<comment><USER4> They plan to get within 1km, which is quite impressive for one system alone. Thanks for the pointer (after reading it, I remember having read about NICER, but didn't remember the precision they got)

<comment><USER2> > quite impressive

Especially when you consider how far away the "beacons" are.

<comment><USER6> The far away beacons make the math easier. Also those beacons are awfully bright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kind of sucks that this is the big first picture that is being published. The LORRI, while an impressive piece of hardware in and of itself, is not built for high detail, close-in shots (although it was used some for the Pluto flyby closeups). That's the job of the Ralph telescope on-board the spacecraft.

It's a neat picture, but I fear that any subsequent pictures will have less impact on the public, as many laymen will say "Meh, saw that the other day on <insert_news_site>. Old news".

I'm really looking forward to the spectacular shots we will get from the close-in imager. New Horizons will be MUCH closer to this object than it was Pluto, so it should really get some fantastic shots of the surface features.

For comparison, just check out the wikipedia pages. They show a pretty solid contrast of the capabilities/uses of the two devices:

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_(New_Horizons)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_\(New_Horizons\))

</comment><comment><USER8> "The team says that the two spheres likely joined as early as 99 percent of the way back to the formation of the solar system, colliding no faster than two cars in a fender-bender."

Welded together by gravity, i'm really in awe seeing the, by far, weakest power so lovely at work.

<comment><USER9> So, two masses were close enough in relative velocity and vector, that one of them didn't careen off the other one, and instead, allowed the weakest of all known forces to bond them together as they hurtled at high velocity through space.

This object(s) seem statistically unlikely to me. I'm not saying it's artificial. That would be even more unlikely, by orders of magnitude. Just saying "Wow!".

<comment><USER10> As this is the first Kuiper Belt Object we've visited, it's hard to draw much about the statistics of the thing.

<comment><USER11> What's exciting to me is, both the first interstellar object we've observed visiting our solar system (Oumuamua) and the first Kuiper Belt Object we've visited have been "unusual". That strongly suggests to me that the unusual is more usual than we would have suspected, which means there's probably a great deal of opportunity to increase our understanding of the universe!

<comment><USER12> They deliberately picked targets that seemed unusual from initial readings.

<comment><USER13> Oumuamua was literally the _only_ extra-solar object known. There was nothing to be picked.

Similarly for Ultima Thule. They _may_ have been able to find a different target, but it was very difficult to find any target at all in the first place (lots of Kuiper belt objects are known; the difficulty was finding one that could be reached by New Horizons). See this Twitter thread that was linked elsewhere: [https://twitter.com/Alex_Parker/status/1077986070128668674](https://twitter.com/Alex_Parker/status/1077986070128668674)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "hi-res" is relative - this is still about 5 times the feature size that was actually captured by the LORRI camera. Going to have to wait at least a few days for the glorious 30m/pixel version.

<comment><USER15> Some page wrote that it takes more than a year to get every piece of information about the fly-by.

<comment><USER16> Pluto's flyby generated about 8GB of data and it took about 16 months to get all of it downloaded [1], and this data includes more than just the images, and i read somewhere that the Ultima Thule flyby will generate about 6GB of data.

I think the images are the first thing that get downloaded, so it should not take more than a week to get all high res images.

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Telecommunication...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Telecommunications_and_data_handling)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Absolutely amazing that they nailed the shape so well based on the occlusion data. That is super impressive.

<comment><USER18> From /r/space:

Image of the occultation profile vs actual shape: [https://i.imgur.com/PNh4nmX.png](https://i.imgur.com/PNh4nmX.png)

Each line is the same star viewed from a different point on Earth. They arranged for telescopes in a long line North to South to all observe UT at the same time, just as it was predicted to pass in front of the star. Then they precisely timed the apparent blinks of the star. The North-South offset meant the star bisected UT across different sections for each telescope. Then they just worked out the parallax difference and mapped out the blink times on a chart to see the silhouette.

<comment><USER19> From that pic it looks like they were able to measure accurately to within meters of the actual shape at this distance! That is incredible

<comment><USER20> Those streaks in that pic are the path of a star that UT passed. Given they know the velocity, if they time the period where the light from the star is occluded, they get a measure of how wide the object is at that elevation.

This is what an occultation looks like: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y_qc8Ifhso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y_qc8Ifhso)

Crazy they are able to map a few of those together so precisely to get this data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is why I love HN: because I can count to have updated links to content I care for.

<comment><USER22> I've been getting most of my updates for this from /r/space personally, but I think that's the main attraction of HN for me. I don't need to curate my own list of subreddits to get links to content that interests me, because it's all (mostly) likeminded people on here that are on average interested by the same kind of stuff as me. I find more new interests on here than I ever could on reddit looking through my preconceived list of interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here's a link to the press conference slides: [http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News- Center/Press-Conferences/index....](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/Press- Conferences/index.php?page=2019-01-02)

</comment><comment><USER24> Whenever I see these updates, I am reminded of the three body problem trilogy and its contemplations on space exploration (the parts I enjoyed the most).

Then I get sad because things just take so incredibly long on a stellar scale, and a human life is so short.

</comment><comment><USER25> Fantastic.

Just one thing: it would be great if NASA dropped imperial units as main units in such articles.

<comment><USER26> I agree. However, the people that are paying for this mission still use imperial units. Those of them that are paying _the most attention_ would probably agree with us though.

<comment><USER27> US customary units are not imperial units. Many people don't realize, for instance, that MPG is not comparable between the US and the UK because gallons are substantially different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That is amazing. It reminds me of a snowman or two snowballs frozen together, except it's red not white.

As seen in the combined image. [http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured- Images/pics800wid...](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured- Images/pics800wide/MU69_image_v1%20copy.png)

<comment><USER29> Comet 67P has a similar shape. I have to wonder if there's something inherent in these flying rocks that causes them to take a dumbbell shape.

<comment><USER30> The inherent factor is collision, which is what forms most objects like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I personally find it amusing and interesting that the physical object, Ultima Thule, looks similar to the Virtual Game logo "Ultima"

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6a/Ultima_Online...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6a/Ultima_Online_- _The_Second_Age_Coverart.png)

<comment><USER32> The nostalgia and innocence and discovry of childhood hit me so hard when I saw that logo

<comment><USER33> Quite interested as to by whom/why this was downvoted

<comment><USER34> Forget it, Jake, it's HN

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> We only have 2 examples, but both this and the Rosetta mission object were rubber-duck-shaped. Is this very common?

<comment><USER36> It's pretty common. Based on radar data about 10-15% of Near Earth asteroids (larger than 200 meters) are contact binaries (or contact-binary shaped at least). We don't have enough data on main belt asteroids, trojan asteroids, and especially TNOs/KBOs to say what the percentages look like for those populations but it's a fair likelihood that the proportions are at least as high if not higher among KBOs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> _The new images — taken from as close as 17,000 miles (27,000 kilometers) on approach — revealed Ultima Thule as a "contact binary," consisting of two connected spheres._

Are these common in the asteroid belt or as smaller moons of the outer planets?

<comment><USER36> As far as we can tell, they are pretty common. But we haven't visited enough objects to have firm statistics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I highly recommend reading the book Chasing New Horizons by Alan Stern[0]. It is a great insight into years of work it takes to get a mission like New Horizons going. It is a very well written book and I could not put it down until finished.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-New-Horizons-Inside- Mission/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-New-Horizons-Inside- Mission/dp/1250098963/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546475775&sr=8-1&keywords=alan+stern+-+chasing+new+horizons)

<comment><USER39> Thanks for the recommendation, I was happy to find it available on audible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Pretty decent resolution of a object 27000 km distant. Has anybody seen the specs on what type of lens NH uses for images like this?

<comment><USER14> This is still nowhere near full resolution - it's at 140 meters per pixel, whereas the camera got 30 meters per pixel. It's going to take a few days to download the full images at 1kbps though.

<comment><USER15> Isn't it 1000baud than 1kbps?

<comment><USER41> No, "baud" counts number of signal changes per second, which would equal number of bits per second in the old past (one bit encoded by one signal change). Ever since modems changed to e.g. quadrature encoding the number of bits per second would be higher than the baudrate. When somebody talks about bitrate these days then bps (bits per second) is what they should be using, not baud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Can't help to mention that several round stones stacked in balance is so artificial that is an 'universal' sign to mark the path in wild remote areas. A typical I was here sign.

</comment><comment><USER43> Um, is that BB-8?

Mimas (and Iaepetus too) really looks like the Death Star and now this thing looks like BB-8.

Ultima Thule-BB-8 comparison: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dv7psG3VYAA8jqa.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dv7psG3VYAA8jqa.jpg)

Mimas-Death Star comparison: [https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/575/1*nUxm5MD_2xO5Y9Lorr...](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/575/1*nUxm5MD_2xO5Y9LorrV8FQ.jpeg)

Iaepetus-Death Star comparison: [https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/80/750x445/8290...](https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/80/750x445/829007.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER44> Nomenclature: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule)

</comment><comment><USER45> What an astounding feat!

I remember reading they were going to aim for 2000 miles from Ultima Thule, was the closest approach revised to 18,000 miles?

<comment><USER46> No, this photo was taken before the closest approach (note the very high sun angle, there's basically no shadows, so the probe was still inside the orbit of UT when the photo was taken). It's going to be another month before we see the closest/highest resolution photos (and years before all the data is downloaded)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's a snowman with a snowman for a face! (recursive / fractal structures of the early world) space fern!

</comment><comment><USER48> Can a human jump off of Ultima Thule?

[https://xkcd.com/681_large/](https://xkcd.com/681_large/)

<comment><USER49> Modeling it as two spheres, one 16 km across the other 12 km, with a density the same as water, its total mass would be about 3*10^15 kg. At a distance of 8 km from the center of mass, the escape velocity [0] would be about 7 meters/second or 16 miles/hour.

But the asymmetry of Ultima Thule means that its gravitational field would be weird. Not like a sphere at all. So the acceleration of gravity and escape velocity would vary a lot from place to place.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The lack of craters is interesting.</comment>


Update on Soylent Bar - <AUTHOR> http://blog.soylent.com/post/151720602057/update-on-soylent-bar <comment><USER2> I'm probably going to get downvoted for this ... but honestly why do people want to eat Soylent? One of the great joys of life is food, Soylent taste like shit, eating it every day is boring, and no one knows the long term affects of eating it for long periods of time.

I'm a big fan-boy of a lot of stuff SV produces, Soylent does not impress me.

<comment><USER3> As with most Soylent detractors, you're assuming people are eating this every day, or for every meal. In reality, it's great as a once-in-a-while thing. I bought some from a friend, and it was perfect for when I was hungry but running late for something. I had maybe 3 meals a week like this. Any time I told a friend I had some soylent, I got the exact same response you just gave.

<comment><USER4> But why not go for a protein bar then? Quest bars for instance are delicious (I'd even prefer them to a candy bar), and pack a far more interesting macro profile than the Soylent ones.

<comment><USER5> As much as I too love Quest bars(the cookie dough one is insanely good), I'm not so sure I agree on the nutrient content:

[http://files.soylent.com/pdf/bar-nutrition-facts- en.pdf](http://files.soylent.com/pdf/bar-nutrition-facts-en.pdf) [http://www.questnutrition.com/protein-bars/choc-chip- cookie-...](http://www.questnutrition.com/protein-bars/choc-chip-cookie-dough- box-of-12/)

Granted, they are trying to do different things; Soylent tastes like crap but has a lot of nutrients(supposedly a "complete" meal), whereas Quest is higher in protein and lower in sugar while tasting terrific.

Personally, I would still choose Quest over Soylent because I suspect that the idea that we need a constant intake of a wide variety of nutrients isn't really true. I'm not denying that we definitely need vitamins and minerals, but experience of going months eating very few vegetables(and almost entirely meat and cheese) has caused no noticeable health effects in me besides weight loss. We're made to think that we've got to eat a ton of vegetables and even take supplements, which I think might be more clever marketing than anything else.

<comment><USER4> But the micronutrient selection is only relevant if you only consume Soylent, and most people here seem to be saying that they only consume some Soylent products in replacement of a couple of meals/when they don't have time. So if the rest of your meals are normal meals you will have filled your micronutrients requirements already. Soylent is only beneficial then over a protein bar if you plan to eat garbage the rest of the day too, but then if you do the macronutrient profile of Soylent becomes pointless, because the garbage you are going to eat later on is probably going to be carbs and fat bombs (as garbage food usually is).

Therefore I don't really see the place that Soylent is trying to occupy and I can't help but dismiss it as another nutritional fad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's tangential to the contents of the post, but as a _lover_ of good food (I consider it my one real vice), I've always liked the idea of Soylent. A vast majority of the time I just need something to fill me up. And it's a neat idea to know you're getting everything you need from a single foodstuff (a la the Matrix's gruel). I feel like, if anything, it may make the times you sit down to a nice meal that much more enjoyable.

<comment><USER7> As someone who has, in the past, lived on Soylent for months at a time when it was most convenient, I can vouch for your feeling.

Every "normal" meal I had while living off Soylent tasted amazing and in between great tasting meals I didn't have to stress about food if I didn't want to.

To me, Soylent is gaining control over a thing that gives me great anxiety, that thing being food. And having that control allows me to put even more effort into cooking great meals when I want to.

<comment><USER6> Man, you nailed what I was trying to say. I never would have described it as anxiety - because off the cuff it actually sounds pretty silly to be anxious about food - but that is absolutely what it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ever since its first very first release, anytime I've read about Soylent, there is always some type of gastrointestinal response associated with it. What's the deal with their formulas?

I've used other Soylent type products, and researched a ton more, and I never get the impression that they have similar issues.

<comment><USER9> The honest answer is probably that most people are not used to having substantial amounts of fiber in their diet, and being in the form of a liquid makes it much more noticeable if you do have any issues.

The basic issue is that, while you may have gas as a result of eating a burrito, it's spread out over a day. With Soylent or any liquid nutrition really, it hits you over 1-4 hours. Ditto any other sort of gastrointestinal upset - what would be subclinical with solid food and a day or two long timeframe becomes an immediate crisis where you'd better find a restroom in the next 10 minutes.

<comment><USER8> So why aren't the competing products I've tried / researched, not filled with so many of the common complaints that Soylent has? For example the one I use is entirely flax/hemp/sesame/rice, that's about as fibrous as they get.

<comment><USER10> This sounds very anecdotal -- can you direct me to some of the products you've researched? Maybe we can do a side by side comparison of ingredients

<comment><USER8> The one I'm currently using. [http://www.spacenutrientsstation.com](http://www.spacenutrientsstation.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks like they've been having additional issues with QC recently. [http://blog.soylent.com/post/149763512312/update-on- coffiest...](http://blog.soylent.com/post/149763512312/update-on-coffiest-and- powder)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is the response I have been waiting for - this kind of decisive action is a step in the right direction.

The timing however is not. This is not a preventative measure, it's reactive. Would Soylent have taken the same action if they had not been put on blast on Reddit and other sites? If not for the bad publicity I don't think they would have done anything at all.

Until they are ensuring the quality of their product from batch to batch I'm out. That means properly mixed bars, testing each batch to ensure the 100% nutritional values they claim.

</comment><comment><USER13> Guess they recycled this from the emails they sent out about Soylent causing intestinal problems. Can't believe I backed them originally.

</comment><comment><USER14> Solid response much like the one with Tynenol:

[http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall02/susi/tylenol.htm](http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall02/susi/tylenol.htm)

<comment><USER15> Interesting read, you learn something new every day...

I like the part about $2.50 off.

 _Gee this product killed people but its on sale now with $2.50 off... oh well I 'll take a chance!_

<comment><USER16> It was not Tylenol that killed people. Someone put cyanide capsules inside Tylenol bottles. I am saying "someone" because as far as I know they never found the person who did this.

<comment><USER15> They did.

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

<comment><USER17> From the article introduction:

> No suspect was ever charged or convicted of the poisonings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been a soylent customer for 2 years or so, and have always found the flavor to be alright.

The latest formulation, 1.6,changes this. It's far and away the best flavor yet. Very different, and very good. The only formulation so far for which my mouth waters when I'm hungry.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't like spending time on cooking and I hate when my house smells like food from cooking. I also don't like spending money on eating out that doesn't taste extremely good. Soylent tastes good enough, healthy enough, and cheap enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER20> The Platonic form of "too little, too late."

</comment><comment><USER21> The title "Update on Soylent Bar" is pretty vague, so here's the gist:

> It has recently come to our attention that a small number of our customers > have experienced gastrointestinal issues after consuming Soylent Bars. As a > precautionary measure, we are _halting all Soylent Bar purchases and > shipments_ and are advising our customers to discard any remaining bars in > their possession.

> After hearing from our customers, we immediately began investigating the > cause of the issue and whether it was linked to a problem with the Bars. _So > far we have not yet identified one..._

> We will be reaching out via e-mail to all Bar customers to offer a full > refund.

Wow.

I have a box of Soylent Bars from a few weeks ago I've been eating on occasion. I haven't had any issues, and they seem fine to me.

Kudos to the Soylent team for covering the issue so quickly, especially after the incident last month [1] where Coffiest wasn't meeting its prescribed nutritional content. It seems like they're struggling with production quality and consistency at scale.

(That said, I am a happy Soylent customer.)

[1]: [http://blog.soylent.com/post/149763512312/update-on- coffiest...](http://blog.soylent.com/post/149763512312/update-on-coffiest-and- powder)

<comment><USER22> Maybe they are fine. I saw people online raving about Quest bars, so I bought five different flavors to try. Result: Gastrointestinal issues I haven't experienced with other protein bars. And I didn't even like the taste.

Even with that experience in mind, I'd probably try a Soylent Bar. Everybody's different.

<comment><USER23> It's probably one of the sugar alcohols, which tend to draw water into the bowels.

As for anecdotes: Quest bars usually don't upset my system, but other protein bars (MetRX protein bar, that was a memorable time…) and a lot of "diet" foods, like Weight Watchers desserts, cause, well, lower GI upset.

<comment><USER24> A lot of "diet" bars and sugar-free protein mixes are sweetened with sugar alcohols like Xylitol or Sorbitol. Your upper GI tract can't actually digest these sugars, but there's plenty of bacteria in your lower GI tract which digest them readily and produce a large quantity of gas.

Sugar free gum has the same effect for the same reason, at least if you chew enough of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sorry - I'm going to say it. These guys need to change their name already. It's just too much. (their name is derived from a dystopian film called Soylent Green, which I won't give away and other replies shouldn't either. It's really really famous.) I thought it was bad enough when everything was going dandy but when we read about this kind of PR / damage control, it's just too much.

They have a choice about it. This is a conscious joke on their part. They need to take the next step, please.

I got downvoted but I'm going to keep this (it's quickly heading to -4). Go watch the film, in the canon of filmmaking, and then come back and tell me I'm wrong.

<comment><USER26> You're wrong because we all get the joke, and are over it. It's a very conscious branding choice to label themselves as counterculture and edgy. It won't appeal to everyone, but it clearly is a conscious marketing choice, and you'd have a hard time saying their marketing isn't going well.

I think your time would be better spent telling MetRx or Ensure to change their names, considering they are brands which are not very successful at capturing the market Soylent is dominating (the bottled-nutrition-by-choice market).

As far as I can tell their only issue is quality control and customer communication, changing their name wouldn't fix either.

<comment><USER25> I guess you would have the same opinion about "Schiit audio" (a brand to fleece audiophiles, and which does very well.) their site[1] reads "Yes, that is our name. Shih-tah. It's a proud German name, host to a long line of audio engineers who slaved away in crumbling Teutonic fortresses as lightning lashed the dark lands outside, working to perfect the best amplification devices in the world...

Or, well, no. Yep, Schiit is our name, and it's pronounced, well, like "hey man, that's some really good Schiit!" And now that we have your attention..."

Sorry. I believe "nomen est omen" and I personally believe that until they update their name they have it baked into their DNA to lie to, to mislead, and to create an awful dystopia. It is quite literally on the label.

Compare the origin of the term Ycombinator: [2]

We might disagree on this but I am going to maintain that when your name clearly embodies some ideal, however vaguely, it affects things.

Why are there no restaurants called Makesyapuke Diner? (or anything like it.)

They need to align their name with their positive vision. They've outgrown the joke.

[1] [http://schiit.com](http://schiit.com)

[2] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/93526/what-is-a-y- combina...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/93526/what-is-a-y-combinator)

<comment><USER27> If their mission is to fleece audiophiles they should shoot higher. I mostly know of them for their rather inexpensive headphone amps and DACs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Firing People - <AUTHOR> https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-people <comment><USER2> > _" I was informed 28 hours before my 90 day window closed that the agreement > I had thought I had didn't exist; it was then that I realized I had 28 hours > to either come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars that I didn't have > to save half of my stock, or I could sign the agreement as-is and avoid > losing half of my already-diminished stake. I opted to sign."_

This egregiously unethical and it's saddening to hear Github's leadership keep sinking lower. What a way to treat literally the #1 contributor to github/github, who gave half a decade of his life to the company.

Takeaway: don't join a startup as one of the first ten employees if you value your financial future. Zach is living proof that even if you're a top performer, you fully vest and the company becomes a unicorn, you still might be broke afterwards.

<comment><USER3> > Takeaway: don't join a startup as one of the first ten employees if you > value your financial future.

It is the dirty little startup secret. Top performers who care about the company/vision/product frequently get shafted.

The problem is they typically have significant leadership roles and have a lot of emotional investment but they haven't negotiated leadership style exit packages or any official power.

For example I was a top performer at company X ~10 years ago and I really cared about the product and our customers. So when new senior management started pushing a complete re-write of our systems into another language stack I pushed back.

I argued it would cost $8-$10 million and give us minimal benefit. It wasn't helping our product or our customers. I argued we should upgrade one part of our system and measure the benefits etc.

And then... I was let go for poor performance (way to really stick it to me!). They still haven't finished the rewrite but are still around and doing "ok" in the market.

If I was a bit wiser and more mature I would have simply said "Great lets re- write it" and used it as an opportunity to learn the new language and ecosystem and then jump ship.

Now this happens in large corporations as well as startups... But the really toxic part about startups is they go out of their way to hire and advertise to top performers who buy into the product vision etc and then they shaft them.

<comment><USER4> Great, let's rewrite it. We'll start with this piece here and get immediate benefit without having to complete the entire rewrite first, and then we'll decide which piece to do next!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was a fine read, and somewhat brave, because posting something like this just invites a bunch of people to play the 'let me judge this person and decide whether their firing was legitimate / their reaction to it was appropriate' game, as if it was remotely any of their business.

The only part I disagreed with was the section on being truthful in internal corporate communications. When it comes to firings, being discreet beats being truthful. The only thing the vast majority of people at the company need to know is that the fired person is no longer a coworker. Those who truly need to know more than that probably already do - and if not, they can quietly be told verbally.

Impenetrable corporate BS like "we had a very honest and productive conversation with Zach this morning and decided it was best to part ways" makes me think "oh good, the company is inclined to keep its mouth shut, and I don't need to worry quite as much about defending my reputation." If I'm not Zach but Zach's coworker, I think "whatever happened there (and if I really want to know I can ask around), it's nice that the company's not shit-talking him in public."

On the other hand, an honest internal email like "Greg was fired because he had a fundamental disagreement with our engineering team about the interaction between engineering and product management, and this lingering conflict led to him phoning it in" (to use, like Zack, a complete hypothetical) makes me think "great, I wonder who this is going to be forwarded to, and if the company will be just as mouthy later on to outsiders."

You might disagree, but I'd take the corporate BS version every time.

<comment><USER6> The problem with this is that /someone/ knows why. And they'll mention half the story to someone else. Then that person will mention mostly the same half story and interject 10% more. And then the person who heard that will completely mangle the whole thing. It's a game of telephone. Eventually the rumor mill is super excited and has the completely wrong story which ends up getting people all worked up about their place in the organization. The only thing to do then is for the company to "come clean"...but then half the people think they are just covering things up.

It's a tough balancing act, but you have to give your employees something or they'll just go and make everything up themselves. It's really hard to put that genie back in the bottle.

<comment><USER7> In my experience, remaining employees talk for about a day, then forget the fired person ever existed. And life goes on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > If an employer has decided to fire you, then you've not only failed at your > job, you've failed as a human being.

That was me, being a hateful little shitbird. Reading that is like seeing myself in a photo of a lynching, gleefully pointing at the victim.

There's no excuse for posting like that, and I am ashamed for hurting you and kicking you when you were down.

I hope the next time I'm tempted to post like that, someone serves me up a knuckle sandwich before I hit the 'add comment' button.

I'm sorry.

<comment><USER9> All is forgiven. :) Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > I hadn't been involved with the company at all for two months through my > sabbatical, and I hadn't even talked to my manager in four months, ever > since she had decided that 1:1s weren't really valuable between her and me.

> I'm still not fully certain why I got the axe ... My best guess is that it's > Tall Poppy Syndrome

Probably some signs here... I wouldn't say he was fired "fast" by any stretch of the imagination.

I will explain what firing fast means to me. I get a lot of work done through foreign devs I find on Upwork. I have to manage them closely, but overall, as they become acclimated and trained, they become pretty self-reliant in about 2-3 months.

However, I have also invested plenty of time into bad apples hoping to train their dev skills, teach them about our product, and all sorts of things only to get random "hey I'm going away for couple weeks tomorrow" kind of messages or a waning commitment to the project and quality of work.

Admittedly, I used to feel bad about firing people. I didn't care if they were "just" some Upwork guys, I try to get everyone involved in my team and feel like they're part of something. These days, I'm experienced enough to see the warning signs and rather than mull over "should I do it?" I just fire them and get onto hiring the next. I've never seen anyone turn around after warning signs, and I've gone through enough "oh come on they're human too, let me try to just understand their situation" moments to know it's a flawed manner of thinking. This is why you "fire fast" and "hire slowly".

Business is business. It sucks to get fired, but it's worse for your business to run on rusty cogs that can break at any moment.

<comment><USER11> > Probably some signs here... I wouldn't say he was fired "fast" by any > stretch of the imagination.

He didn't mention it, but there was political/PR situation that happened at Github shortly before that and it's entirely conceivable that his firing was Github distancing itself from him for that reason. It was his former partner that was the center of the very public allegations of sexism at the company and she had some none-too-flattering things to say, again publicly, about his role in the matter.

As a manager, it wouldn't even cross my mind to fire someone that was underperforming when they had previously been such a strong contributor without at least first trying to figure out why the performance suffered. Where I have been involved in such abrupt terminations, it's _always_ been because of something unrelated to performance (sexual harassment, abusing the corporate card, etc). The fact that he was never given an explanation from the company only makes this explanation seem more likely.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure the lack of an explanation from the company really means anything here. Most companies, especially the more risk-averse, will not tell you why you were let go unless there are clearly-documented performance milestones that were missed (i.e. not meeting your PIP goals). It's a potential liability, up to and including a lawsuit for wrongful termination, to justify a firing in any recordable way unless they've been exceptionally judicious in documenting cause.

<comment><USER13> Yup. This is why you will rarely, if ever, get a detailed explanation for your firing if you happen to be fired from somewhere. You might not get _any_ explanation.

Similarly, don't expect to get feedback from a potential hiring manager as to why you didn't get a job you were interviewing for. Here, again, the company faces liability risk, and usually prefers to offer no comment on the matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "I have fired people. It is brutal. I have been fired. It's worse. So > managers, please: Never solicit sympathy for the pain of firing people."

I left a college I worked at because of this they fired 12 people in the morning and called a all hands meeting at 3PM and said they were feeling horrible and please pray for them. A) It was a complete surprise to anyone that didn't know the actual numbers for incoming freshmen like I did. B) They acted like they were the ones who were equal harmed by the firings.

So you fired 12 people "fast" and you then ask for sympathy? That was September and I got the new job in May.

<comment><USER15> More people than we care to admit, in our culture, have a huge empathy gap. It's really quite troubling. Just look at the political landscape. Quite scary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a bit of perspective: I'm from germany and worker protection laws here are really strong.

It is common in many companies for there to be a two-way 6 month firing/quitting limititation, meaning: At the point the worker turns in their quitting notification, they can make an agreement with the company to be let go earlier, or the company can insist on them staying the full term. Similarly when letting a worker go, the company has to let them know 6 months before that, though the worker can agree to leave earlier.

Of course faster firings are possible as well, with "immediately" usually reserved for "breaking a law". Additionally workers can be let go early for performance reasons, but only after three separate, paper-trailed notifications of such issues. Additionally, those are unlikely to be trivial, since a worker can sue their company for the remaining wage, if fired unfairly, and if successful the company will have to pay all legal bills of both sides.

This means that both sides here tend to make a lot of effort to avoid firings. The company because it's just easier to help an employee improve, and the worker because they'll see it coming.

I've been in the situation myself where a company expected certain things of me, that just didn't fit my nature and health. We tried to improve things informally for a while and i kept failing. Then we had a serious talk and agreed that things wouldn't work like that, and now i contract for them, with both sides being very happy.

\--

An important contrast between that, and the american system, is that i knew at every single point exactly how far away i was from being fired. Due to the wording of my contract, i was at all times, right up to the end, exactly 3 months away from being fired, at least. My livelihood was never in danger, and i was given plenty motivation to help both myself and my company, instead of being put into an adversarial situation.

<comment><USER17> > the company can insist on them staying the full term

What happens if they quit showing up for work?

<comment><USER16> I honestly do not know, and find it hard to research on what actually happens in that case. I presume the employer would be able to successfully sue for damages of some kind, which would be dangerous for the worker if at fault, due to the duty to pay legal fees.

It is rather rare a case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > More than once I had been confusingly introduced as a founder or CEO of the > company. That, in part, was how I ultimately was able to sneak into the > Andreessen Horowitz corporate apartments and stayed there rent-free for > sixteen months. I currently have twelve monogrammed a16z robes in my > collection, and possibly was involved in mistakenly giving the greenlight to > a Zenefits employee who came by asking if they could get an additional key > to the stairwell for a… meeting.

This seems unethical.

<comment><USER19> I think the bit about the Zenefits employee is a reference to the "no more sex in the stairwell" memo sent by their former CEO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _If an employer has decided to fire you, then you've not only failed at your job, you've failed as a human being._

Damn, that's a downright toxic attitude. I've never been fired, but nobody should consider their job a measure of their worth as a human being.

<comment><USER21> Why not? My job isn't my _only_ worth as a human being, but it's certainly a pretty big portion of it. I spend approximately 25% of my time working. If I'm not accomplishing something meaningful in those hours, then something is definitely wrong.

<comment><USER22> Because firing decisions get made all the time absent details about the human behind it. I was there when a team that was better at their job than another one at every measure was let go because of their lease terms.

<comment><USER21> Oh I agree with you about firing. It's a fuzzy measure of your job performance for sure. I've been fired before. Had something to do with me, something to do with them. Was what it was.

My point was more responding to imgabe saying "nobody should consider their job a measure of their worth as a human being." I think work matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Look, I'm all for Zach writing about his experience, but I never see him mention the whole incident with Julie Ann Horvath which is what I understand to be the reason he was fired.

Is there a reason he can't talk about what happened there?

<comment><USER24> Can you expand on this at all?

<comment><USER25> Zach mentions his being fired as one of the top stories on Hacker News; Julie Ann Horvath is probably somewhere on that list too.

[http://www.inc.com/abigail-tracy/github-julie-ann-horvath- hr...](http://www.inc.com/abigail-tracy/github-julie-ann-horvath-hr.html)

<comment><USER24> Interesting read. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The two most striking points to me were a company where the employer can call the employee an asshole in front of HR. And a company where one employee hugs other employees, including those who just fired him. It sounds like a very difficult place to set or maintain boundaries.

<comment><USER27> To be honest, it feels like Github is a big social experiment (or game) masquerading as a company. I feel like going to work there would be to implicitly agree to be part of those experiments, and that -- exactly as you mention -- it would be hard to discover the rules of the game and even harder to continually abide by them while maintaining any sort of sense of individuality. I interview for fun in my spare time, and every once in a while I am invited to interview at a company that breeds a Borg-like hivemind which seems to consume all traces of individuality for whatever reason (usually I think this boils down to a volatile management environment). Google is one of those companies. Whisper (the "anonymous" social network) is another. And Github feels like it would easily reign supreme in that respect. I would not feel comfortable being myself in that environment for fear of breaking these unknowable boundaries, and it would affect my work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A great overview on everything that happened, with the exception of the reasoning behind "Fire fast."

It isn't about churning and burning through people. This isn't about "move fast and break people." As a CEO that has had to fire employees, there is literally nothing more difficult. I'm not asking for sympathy, just communicating that nothing is more important in terms of a company's health and success than the people. I agree that managers don't deserve sympathy. They asked for or accepted the responsibility to manage people and now it's time to put up or shut up.

Firing quickly is partly about the company, but it is also respectful to the employee. If you know it isn't going to work out, don't waste their time. How many people do you know how have been in romantic relationships that dragged out for too long? Where they knew it wouldn't work out but kept the hope alive?

Everyone loses. It sucks. People are both immensely rewarding and Really Fucking Hard.

The reason people say Fire Fast is that new managers (in my experience and that of close mentors to me) _almost never_ fire too quickly. Very often, they either make excuses for the employee or are afraid that firing is their fault. A lot of times it is.

Look, if you hire someone for a role and have to fire them, that is your fault. 100%. And it is gut-wrenching to think you built someone up, got them to quit another job, had them tell their friends and family how excited they were, then forcing them to go back and say "oh yeah, I got fired and now you think I'm a failure."

But if you are the manager and you know it isn't going to work, you owe it to the employee, to yourself, and (especially) to everyone at the company to not drag things out.

## On Zach

Github is changing and he didn't fit in with its future. They took a tone of investment and needed to be a different company. Whether that is the right or wrong strategy isn't the point (and I have no idea.) They needed people who were on board with that and believed (probably correctly) that he wouldn't be. It's not an easy decision, and everyone involved knows it could have gone down better, but it also could have been much worse.

<comment><USER29> > Firing quickly is partly about the company, but it is also respectful to the > employee.

This a thousand times. Under Microsoft's brutal stack rank system, I chatted with a peer who saw me as a good source of career advice. This fellow was not performing very well in his current team. His management had given up on him and IMO his peers didn't see him as a leader. Whether it was his skills or his environment that led to this situation, the environment was definitely no longer there for him to improve or gain responsibility.

His read of the situation was totally different. He was seeking increased responsibility in the team and had a promotion goal he was targeting. This was lunacy. His past 3 annual reviews had been the lowest score possible. If his manager was following policy, he would have been fired a long time ago, not kept on as a sacrificial lamb for the stack rank gods.

There's a lot of gray area, obviously, but I shared your feeling that "fire fast" was misrepresented here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm in a situation now where I was one of the first five (#5, to be precise) employees at a startup. I told them what I needed to get as a salary, and I didn't cut it down for the sake of hoping to cash out later. I got less stock than I could've, but that money (if it ever exists), is more of a bonus to me than anything.

I can't afford to go out on a limb for a startup or to hope for some big pay day. I'm a single earner in a family of five and I can't just make my kids stop eating and growing because I want to get some stock options.

I would suggest anyone thinking of working at a startup keeps their regular salary in mind as what you need/want, and think of stock as a bonus later that probably will NOT ever come.

Stock is a nice carrot to dangle if you're a stingy employer (or one who refuses to pay folks' worth), but it shouldn't be considered as part of your compensation if you're a lowly employee like myself.

<comment><USER31> Very well written. Stock options don't pay for the groceries. My landlord doesn't take a potential bonus as a reason for not paying rent.

You need to be able to find a way to make ends meet with just base salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> _I was in Colorado at the time, but agreed to meet up and have a video chat about things. When I jumped on the call, I noticed that — surprise! — someone from HR was on the call as well._

It's always an onerous sign when HR "joins you" for a call or an in-person meeting.

But when the person inviting you doesn't _tell you in advance_ that they'd like to have their pal from HR join in? That's a pretty solid indication that not only is the chat not going the be particularly fun. They've pretty much reached a certain "disconnect" stage with you already, and are already in the mindset of going over your head -- and beyond caring how disconcerting this may be for you, or how you might react.

As a prerequisite to excreting you out of their system more formally and definitively, shortly thereafter.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Fire fast

It's been my experience that people who are on the path to getting fired turn hostile either to their direct management or to the company, and keeping them around after that is a net-negative for the team. Once you've decided to fire someone, you should do it as fast as you legally can.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is an excellent multi-faceted view of getting fired.

>Don't talk to HR.

This is so true in the firing case. But do remember, as a regular employee, HR can be extremely helpful. When I took a Leave of Absence for a health issue, HR was so incredibly helpful and empathetic to help me get back on my feet and return with a smooth transition on both ends.

On the other side, having mentored a lot of people at my previous job who were on PiPs/cusp of getting fired...they are definitely not your friend and their first order of business is to protect the company.

Get everything in writing, emails etc should be printed out.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think the author is taking firing too personally. His rant about "Fire fast" seems to indicate that people who fire employees are somehow devoid of empathy for the person. Fire fast does not mean you fire at the first instance that someone didn't agree with your opinion or some trivial reason like that. Fire fast means if you notice a general trend with the person that is harmful to the company or the team then stop giving the person chances and fire them. I think the sentiment is expressed very well by the culture doc by Netflix. [1]

It's not personal!! Don't take it personally! Unless of course it was personal.

[1][http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/23-Were_a...](http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/23-Were_a_team_not_a)

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the big positions of this article is that despite employers' insistence that "firing isn't personal", employees will take firing personally and it negatively impacts them and can negatively impact the company's culture. Saying "no it doesn't, don't take it personally" isn't really a counterargument.

<comment><USER34> It doesn't affect the company's culture if the employee chooses to take the firing personally. In the end if there is a valid reason for firing someone then from a company's perspective it doesn't matter to the company how it affects the employee fired.

Additionally this article just talks from the author's viewpoint so we really don't know exactly why he was fired. If you read the post it would seem like the CEO told him he can take a sabbatical and his manager told him don't come back. There is a huge disconnect somewhere that we are not being told about. If the author's behavior prior to leaving for sabbatical was toxic to the team the company shouldn't be responsible for taking care of his feelings and emotional state on being fired.

I'm not saying being fired doesn't suck as an employee but expecting the company to take care of you as you are being fired or afterwards is kind of naive and a little self-centric in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> > It doesn't affect the company's culture if the employee chooses to take the > firing personally

When you fire a highly productive team member it will almost certainly mess with the companies culture. If that team member was "fired incorrectly" and talks to the rest of the team about it productivity and culture will take a beating.

As soon as I see a good team mate fired I start looking for a new job.

<comment><USER34> Without finding out "why" he/she was fired? A highly productive team member can also be a toxic team member if they make members of the team uncomfortable or is a bully or condescending or.... or....

However your point is well taken in the sense that if the employee does take it personally and then spins a tale, in front of the team, that makes them look innocent and paint the company as vindictive or unreasonable, then yes it would affect team morale but that is easily remedied by managers being candid. We are actually going through a similar situation right now where I work so this topic is very timely.

<comment><USER3> > Without finding out "why" he/she was fired?

If management give a good reason and they have put in place measures to reduce fallout then I'll consider staying.

One question I always ask is what work are we dropping out of scope?

I'm currently working in a team of 5. We have two high performers and three average performers (I'm one of the average performers). The top performers do ~60% of the work.

If management doesn't plan on descoping 30%+ of the work for the next 3-6 months then it means an extra 10+ hours of work each week for me.

Realistically it's an extra 120-240 hours all up. I freelance at ~$100/hr so that's a cost of $12-24k.

So yeah if they have punched or sexually assaulted a colleague etc then I'll just put up with the cost.

If they make someone feel uncomfortable or are a bit condescending and you fire fast then I'm going to be looking for a new job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> _> What the shit does that even mean, fire fast? Should I fire people four minutes after I hire them? That'll show 'em!_

My suggestion is to remove all sentences like the above from the essay. The "four minutes" sounds juvenile or coy (or combination of both).

Are there reasonable adults out there who have _no idea_ what the " _fast_ " in " _fire fast_ " actually means? If not, don't insult your audience with a caricature. Demonstrate that you have some perspective so readers can focus on the stronger parts of your commentary.

The essay is almost 10,000 words long and stumbling across that sentence doesn't entice me to commit the time and read the rest of it.

<comment><USER36> Well I'll take a reasonable attempt. Have done a firing like this in the real world as well.

Fire fast when a few things happen, such as when energy belief and overall personality inertia has lowered of an employee where their fire has diminished for one reason or another then you should get them fired and replaced as soon as possible to not allow that to affect others on the team. This can be for a number of reasons and the signs will be clear and instead of saying "oh gee he'll turn around" just fire fast stoicly and move on. The fire fast is a very unemotional philosophy where as a leader you view the team as a chain and weakest links must be cut out and a new one placed.

Fire fast is not at all indicative of what the term entails and you can't really deduce anything from that as the right deduction is what you said, fire right after hiring! But what I think the rational interpretation is; is to fire as soon as there are negative connotations being exhibited by a team member and instead of wondering if it'll change execute an order to fix it asap. I would also say fast can mean set guidelines and expecations and transparent ways to reinstill vigor into an individual. I think fire fast has an unquantified blowback where someone who could be good( even "10X" ) is fired prematurely and they could have been someone worth multiples of their salary in output for a company but were fired for internal reasons (Your policies and docs suck).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Maybe one reason the author is depressed and seems a bit aimless is that when you put the kind of energy into a company, which I'm sure he did at GitHub, then the relationship grows beyond something simple like employee/employer and closer to family.

When the relationship falls apart, for whatever reason, it is like getting a divorce. I spent most of my career at one company, and when I decided to leave, dealing with that separation was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

</comment><comment><USER38> Can someone please summarize this? I can't get past his rambling style.

<comment><USER13> Zach was fired from GitHub last year, after which he published a few tweets and a blog post that got a great deal of attention here. Now he is revisiting the situation, both to mine lessons from it and to make peace with it.

There is some room for agreement or disagreement with Zach's characterization of the circumstances, as indicated by many of the comments on this thread. Regardless, I think it's a worthwhile and interesting read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Denial is a hell of a drug.

</comment><comment><USER39> Great article Zach, really resonated with me. I too was fired from a company I helped build. I was employee number 4, and the only non-cofounder to have equity. You're damn right on the phrase "If you don't own the company, the company owns you"

</comment><comment><USER40> When every company in web dev is yelling "we are firing" on each corner, I don't understand such extreme feelings about being fired. Couple of weeks and you are hired again, calm down.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why didn't he sign an 83b when he joined? That's a must when you join an early stage startup!

<comment><USER42> Because he got ISO style options, and not restricted stock (which is what an 83b affects). Those options have an exercise price (that he could not afford).

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> "Even though I helped move a company's valuation almost two billion dollars, I haven't made a dime from the company outside of making a pretty below-to- average salary. That's after six years."

Pretty much sums up most startup experiences in the area.

</comment><comment><USER44> I have been thinking about Yishan-style CEOs for a while now, and I would like to fix the problems with firing this way.

</comment><comment><USER45> Isn't Zach Holman the guy about whom was written "He ... even admitted to plotting with Theresa Preston-Werner to get women at the company fired."

<comment><USER46> Where was this quote pulled from? Can't find it via Google search.

<comment><USER47> In an interview of Julie Ann Horvath by a Valleywag reporter: "@Holman is my ex-partner. He was complicit in the actions of both Tom and Theresa Preston- Werner and even admitted to plotting with Theresa Preston-Werner to get women at the company fired. He should be let go from GitHub and I regret being kind to him in previous interviews." [1]

[1] [http://valleywag.gawker.com/ims-and-email-support- allegation...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/ims-and-email-support-allegations- about-the-toxic-cultu-1567175545)

<comment><USER47> (By the way, I don't have an informed perspective on this - I just remember the source. Holman says elsewhere in this thread "It didn't have anything to do with my departure, nor is it my story to tell.")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is getting prematurely buried

</comment><comment><USER49> _That, in part, was how I ultimately was able to sneak into the Andreessen Horowitz corporate apartments and stayed there rent-free for sixteen months. I currently have twelve monogrammed a16z robes in my collection_

At which point what little sympathy I might had for the author vanished, unless I missed the part that explains why this isn't just outright thievery. And then to publicly admit that if it's not nailed down, you'll steal it. Yeah, "tall poppy syndrome", that must be it. You were just too good for this world.

Besides, do I want to take advice from someone with such large blinders on? Yes, HR joins video conferences because they want to personally thank you for your outstanding work. Be careful at train crossings, Zach, because if you didn't see this metapohorical train coming with it's lights and horn ablazin', you might not see a real one.

<comment><USER9> I'm really not even sure a16z _has_ corporate apartments. It's just poking a little fun in the middle of a dreary subject. I don't even own a single robe, much less twelve, although I'd be into it.

<comment><USER49> Fair enough. I don't really get the joke, but that's on me for not reading the article word-for-word.</comment></comment></comment>


Confirmed: The $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Will Be Unveiled in March 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a12983/35000-tesla-model-iii-coming-in-2017/ <comment><USER2> Note: article is 4 months old.</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for writing compelling web copy. - <AUTHOR> I'm in the planning phase for the redesign of my SaaS application as it launches out of private beta and into the wild.  Part of that is writing the sales and marketing copy including explaining what the product is, it's benefits, calls to action etc.
Writing decent web copy isn't a strong suit of mine but I would like to get a better grounding in some of the basic principles.  Do any of you have any tips or pointers to good source material I can read up on?  I don't expect to turn into Don Draper overnight, but I'd like to be able to avoid common pitfalls.
Failing that, do any of you have any experience with decent copywriters and, given that I'm a bootstrapped single founder who has finite runway (i.e. I don't have tons of cash to throw at this problem), any personal recommendations for individuals you've worked with?
EDIT: Spelling, grammar and, er, general copy :/ <comment><USER2> Read Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins, the granddaddy of all copywriting books. Do it now. It's very short, it's available online for free, and it has no fluff and all useful information.

It was written a few years ago, so it doesn't have the latest techniques for maximizing conversions for SaaS products.

However, it's written for direct response advertisers and not brand advertisers, so it covers the basics of getting sales, tracking, split testing, etc very well.

You can take the techniques Hopkins presents for writing short, effective classified ads and apply them very effectively, with minimal modification, to your AdWords ads and landing pages.

These techniques have been tested by dozens of advertisers since, and they work VERY well.

A good copywriter will usually charge $10-$15K plus a percentage of sales. I would strongly recommend bringing your copy skills to "Good enough" and doing it yourself.

<comment><USER3> Ok, I've got to ask. $15K for one text? Percentage? It's THREE orders of magnitude more other than other general text writing. How can this be justified? (Kind of looks like daylight robbery to me)

<comment><USER2> If good copy can result in even a 10% increase in sales for a mass market product, that could be worth millions of dollars, much more than $15K. This isn't for a blurb, it's for several thousand words of copy(think something like a 10 page salesletter, or all pages on a website).

Keep in mind that writing the actual text is a very small portion of the work. 90% of a good copywriter's time is spent researching your competitors, customers, and target market...understanding your product in great detail to fully highlight its benefits...finding which psychological hot buttons exist in the specific segment of the market you want to target, and how to push them in just the right way to create a red-hot burning desire in your prospect's minds to buy your product NOW.

To write good copy, you need an absolute understanding or a market, basically all of the steps of a comprehensive market research project. This takes time and money.

You can definitely find someone to write you an article for a few bucks. It won't convert, and it won't represent your product/startup in the best way.

That's why I recommend startup founders learn the basics and write good copy themselves, You already know your product and customers best- you can skip the through research a copywriter would have to engage in.

<comment><USER4> If it's a skill people can learn with reasonable effort, though, why would it be that expensive to purchase? In a market without artificial moats, the cost of services should approach the cost of providing them, not approach some measure of their "value". Even if a service is really valuable, in a competitive market with low barriers to entry, many people will compete to provide it, driving down the prevailing price.

<comment><USER5> Simple version: you can learn it in the same way you can learn to paint. Sure, you might be able to knock out a decent picture, but you're not going to get something that looks like it was painted by one of the masters of the craft.

Knowing the theory and being able to produce great work are two different things. The price is what it is because, despite it being learn-able, the experience of writing thousands of pages of sales copy, refining them and getting the craft so down to a fine art just comes from experience and practise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sadly I haven't got the time to give as detailed an answer as this deserves but.. even if you do the lion's share of the writing yourself, at least hire a professional writer to give it the once over once you're done in order to catch any particularly bad syntax or constructions (and to get another set of eyes over it, too). This should only take a couple hours of their time if it's a typical SaaS site and would be worth the $50-$200 peace of mind. I give this advice as someone who's written for a living for > 10 years and who still benefits significantly from third parties looking over his work.

</comment><comment><USER7> Copyblogger (<http://www.copyblogger.com/>) is a pretty good resource.

<comment><USER8> I second that. It is a great resource for not just bloggers, for web copy related tips in general.

Take a look at their series of 'Magnetic Headlines' posts: <http://www.copyblogger.com/magnetic-headlines/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think I have mentioned this before, but an excellent guide to advertising copy can be found in: David Ogilvy's Confessions of an Advertising Man (ISBN 1-904915-01-9).

It's considered a seminal text among copy writers. I found it very helpful, for exactly this purpose.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip, amazon has my order. Does he delve much into online copy writing techniques? I'd imagine it's quite a different beast to traditional print/display advertising.

<comment><USER9> He doesn't per se discuss online copy writing... it was written in the 60s :-)

But he talks about direct response ads, which can be seen in light of A/B testing, on web pages. For example, by changing one word, the response rate was increased 20-30%.

I earnestly don't think it's that different a beast. The techniques always remain the same, so why not learn from the master?

For more recently written stuff, I think groupon do a really good job, and you can find their stuff online: <https://docs.google.com/View?id=dmv9rbh_11gtqx983t>

<comment><AUTHOR> I've ordered the book, even if it's not current it might help put me in the frame of mind I need to approach this. Thanks for the Groupon link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The opening words of Strunk & White were never more applicable: vigorous writing is concise.

Keep it short and to the point. Test it on readers. Do they understand? Great writing is produced by great editing. An iterative process.

The $10-15k comment sounds wacky to me. You can hire a decent editor off your local craigslist for 25-50 an hour. But you probably need to bring it in- house; you'll need to pivot your prose points pretty phrequently.

PS:

"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."

[http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=the+element...](http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=the+elements+of+style+strunk+white&sourceid=mozilla- search)

</comment><comment><USER11> I useful trick I learned is to try and avoid a "Features" link (unless you have a very deep app). The user should be able to tell if the app has the features he wants from the front page.

Also, sell. I learned the hard way that under-promising in order to over- deliver may work for the users that do sign up, but it's not worth it for the actual drop in users that do.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's a lot of good advice here. If you can find a good marketer, it might make sense to use them in the short term while you study up on the reference materials here. There's no reason why you can't attempt to come up with some copy at the same time as the marketing agency and see how you do.

</comment><comment><USER13> Go to amazon and search for the book called 'Cashvertising".

<comment> 1-2-3 Cashvertising

Cheesy name, excellent book.

An ad execuetive split tests common copywriting techniques. Very helpful <http://www.cashvertising.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been writing web copy for 7 years, and, although the advertising guys referenced so far (e.g., Hopkins, Ogilvy) are great, their tricks focus largely on direct response (i.e., long form letters). Use those tricks for writing PPC ad headlines, etc -- but be careful on your website.

On your site, your copy should set a tone for your service; get your value proposition right; be scannable; and err on the side of clear rather than clever.

Tone can be tricky because it's easy to get carried away... but check out Mint.com for examples of how to stay light & friendly but also professional & credible. As for your value proposition, check out MarketingExperiments for their tips on writing a value prop that resonates --- and that goes beyond "save time and money" (which every company seems to default to, making that phrase totally meaningless).

Regarding scannability, that one's pretty straightforward. Short, snappy headlines. Bullet lists with 3-4 bullets; concise copy in your bullets. No paragraphs over 3 _lines_ long. Bolding used only for things that will be important to users (not just things you wish they would care about). Great typography to help users see the words they're supposed to. Not too much dedication to the rules of grammar (keep the reading level at about grade 5 or 6; Word can help you run tests to see what level your copy's at).

As for clear over clever, that means writing "88% of our users saved 6 hours on payroll last month" rather than "Payroll, meet your match".

(SEO, persuasion, emotion, etc. can always follow after you launch.)

If all else fails, I'm happy to read over your copy and offer recommendations. I'm at joanna AT page99test DOT com. Good luck!

<comment><USER15> I remember the page99 video submission here, I was impressed and the name stuck. How did you go about making those videos, and which one did you end up picking? I loved the second one, by the way :)

I'm going to drop you a line via e-mail, because I'm going to do an overhaul of <http://www.dashler.com/toolbar> , and could certainly use some advice if you have a few minutes to spare. At the moment, I'm almost embarrassed by it.

Best of luck with page99, I have a couple of writer friends that might like to check it out if there's a private beta available.</comment></comment>


Reader redesign: Terrible decision, or worst decision? - <AUTHOR> http://brianshih.com/78073742 <comment><USER2> <http://brianshih.com/old-vs-new>

Oh, GReader, I miss you so much..

</comment><comment><USER3> This guy makes excelent points. That bright yellow background, on the other hand...</comment>


The AdaOS Operating System (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20070118074522/http://adaos.net/home-2004-12-23/doc/overview.html <comment><USER2> The biggest issue with all of these "write a new operating system in my favorite language X" (where X is Ada, C, C++, D, Rust, etc) is that in almost all cases the operating system design slowly morphs into a buggy, half-baked version of an existing operating system. Rarely are there compelling new designs that are sufficiently better than what currently exists or was previously created in a different programming language.

While a different programming language can enable different levels of expressiveness, elegance, or nuance of control when interacting with hardware, ultimately it is the higher-level design concepts and design maturity that come into focus over time. (Does the design work in the real world? Is it "battle tested" and can address / overcome various failure modes?)

These forces have shaped the operating systems that we have today into what they are through years of heat and pressure. If you are contemplating writing a new operating system in your favorite language X, take a few years to study and understand how current operating systems solve real world problems and ask yourself how your ideas / designs will be as good as or better than what currently exists.

<comment><USER3> _> The biggest issue with all of these "write a new operating system in my favorite language X" (where X is Ada, C, C++, D, Rust, etc) is that in almost all cases the operating system design slowly morphs into a buggy, half-baked version of an existing operating system._

The whole point of writing a new OS in a language that prioritizes memory safety and provable correctness, like Ada or Rust, is specifically to explore the possibility that by using a better language, the OS won't morph into a buggy spaghetti code thing.

Safe languages impose fundamental constraints on the complexity of the system, that C/C++ and others do not, and eliminate entire classes of bugs and vulnerabilities at the compiler level.

People wonder why all our systems these days are insecure and getting hacked left and right. Provably correct software and compiler-enforced memory safety are two tools that will be part of the solution (maybe not sufficient, but absolutely necessary).

<comment><USER2> I agree that using a safe language is a necessity, especially for safety critical environments and to ensure better security. But a safe language alone does not ensure a good design. Ada is a great language (although strings are a bit of a pain), but that alone will not ensure a good operating system design.

POSIX is a great standard, but it is too tightly coupled with C. If a similarly mature and open Ada-based standard could be designed and created, that would be great. If such a design were created, what would it look like? How would files be represented and stored? How would you start, stop, or communicate with tasks? (POSIX-style signals? Rendezvous? Something else?)

There needs to be an open design that is as well thought out as the Ada programming language to really take advantage of everything that it offers.

<comment><USER4> There's an official Ada binding for POSIX.

<comment><USER2> Do you have a link to the documentation?

I am aware of Interfaces.C and the non-standard but highly-useful GNAT.OS_Lib. Any others would be nice to know about.

POSIX is a mature set of APIs and designs, but it is C-centric. It is an impedance mismatch discards many of the advantages of using Ada in the first place.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~baker/florist.html](http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~baker/florist.html) / [http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnat- florist/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnat-florist/)

It's a standard.

<comment><USER5> (Was a standard, now withdrawn)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was just looking at this recently, funnily enough, while looking for other examples of x86 Operating-System development in Ada.

Here are a few other examples of Operating-System development in Ada, in various levels of completion.

\- [https://github.com/ajxs/cxos](https://github.com/ajxs/cxos)

\- [https://github.com/Lucretia/bare_bones](https://github.com/Lucretia/bare_bones)

\- [https://marte.unican.es/todo.htm](https://marte.unican.es/todo.htm)

\- [https://sourceforge.net/projects/lovelaceos/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/lovelaceos/)

\- [https://sourceforge.net/projects/sx-ada- kalinda/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/sx-ada-kalinda/)

<comment><USER7> Do not forget AuroraUX.

Back when it was based on OpenSolaris:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20090314042407/http://auroraux.b...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090314042407/http://auroraux.blastwave.org/index.php/Main_Page) (Main Page)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20090415214139/http://auroraux.b...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090415214139/http://auroraux.blastwave.org/index.php/AuroraUX:About) (About)

Then DragonFlyBSD:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20110824053558/http://www.aurora...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110824053558/http://www.auroraux.org/index.php/Main_Page) (Main Page)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20110824053558/http://www.aurora...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110824053558/http://www.auroraux.org/index.php/Main_Page#Why_Ada.3F) (Why Ada?)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20110904173302/http://www.aurora...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110904173302/http://www.auroraux.org/index.php/System_Overview) (System Overview)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20110904171806/http://www.aurora...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110904171806/http://www.auroraux.org/index.php/Project_Goals) (Project Goals)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20091127065848/http://www.aurora...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091127065848/http://www.auroraux.org/index.php/Hydra_Package_Manager) (Hydra Package Manager)

<comment><USER6> Thanks so much for the link! I'm having a little trouble finding the source on those pages. Is there a link to it that's still active?

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately not that I know of. :( I think I still have my hard drive somewhere back from 2009, I might be able to get some data off from it. It is an old Maxtor, 30 GB I think. The pins are broken so I will definitely have to fix that, but I will have to find it first.

I believe I can get in touch with someone who was really enthusiastic about the project! He was like 14 years old at the time, really really zealous so I would like to think that he made backups. I got the links above from him a couple of weeks (or months?) ago when we were going down the nostalgia lane. :) For what it is worth, I met him on IRC (freenode), in #ada.

<comment><USER6> I'm still lurking in there from time to time! If you can get it without too much trouble I'm sure there are a few people out there who will appreciate it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Symbolics Lisp Machine could run Ada, of course.

And then there was the Rational/R1000s400, the first only and last "Ada-only" Computer.

[http://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Rational/R1000s400](http://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Rational/R1000s400)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_R1000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_R1000)

The R1000 was a workstation released in 1985 by Rational Software for the design, documentation, implementation, and maintenance of large software systems written using the Ada programming language. The R1000 featured an extensive tool set, including:

\- an Ada-83-compatible program design language

\- an integrated development environment that doubled as an operating system shell

\- automatic generation of design documentation

\- source-language debugging

\- interactive design-rule checking and semantic analysis

\- incremental compilation

\- configuration management and version control.

Excerpts from Articles Filed Under: Rational 1000

[http://www.somethinkodd.com/oddthinking/category/rat1000/](http://www.somethinkodd.com/oddthinking/category/rat1000/)

Rational 1000: A Time-Travelling Debugger with No Future

[http://www.somethinkodd.com/oddthinking/2006/03/25/rational-...](http://www.somethinkodd.com/oddthinking/2006/03/25/rational-1000-a-time- travelling-debugger-with-no-future/)

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://sourceforge.net/projects/adaos/files/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/adaos/files/)

<comment><USER10> Why is sourceforge's ui so bad? Why not display the files instead of expecting me to download some random zip file?

<comment><USER11> Sourceforge isn't a reputable website anymore. They have been known for bundling spyware/crapware with their installers of open source software.

<comment><USER12> That was under previous owners. They've since been bought out by a company that actually gives a damn. Unfortunately there's a good argument for too little, too late. The damage to the brand's reputation is immense.

<comment><USER13> SF still has tons of ads and other really obnoxious UI choices. Take for example:

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/pkgconfiglite/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/pkgconfiglite/)

There's so much crap on that page I couldn't even begin to care about. On the top half of the page: downloads this week, share this, open source software, business software, services, resources, sourceforge's twitter account, sourceforge's facebook account, sourceforge's linkedin, sourceforge newsletters, and of course a gigantic sourceforge banner.

If you go further: user reviews, recommended projects, top searches, other useful business software, similar business software, more twitter links unrelated to the project, related business categories.

SourceForge is a freaking dumpster fire even if they're no longer bundling malware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any list of operating systems written in Ada should include Intel's first 32 bit OS iMAX:

[https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~Brecht/courses/702/Possible- Reading...](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~Brecht/courses/702/Possible- Readings/oses/imax-multiprocessor-os-sosp-1981.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know if the author completed other projects in Ada (or another language)? I'd be interested in reading some code as well as the specs.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is Ada still around?

<comment><USER17> It never went anywhere, still used for what it was used...

<comment><USER18> What? I just left a job in defense software that used Ada and it was a fairly new program.

<comment><USER17> So we agree.

It never went anywhere => ie. it never left.

Still used for what it was used => ie. the same kind of software (defense, etc).

<comment><USER19> The expression is "never went away" then, as "never went anywhere" usually means it dudded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was hoping they'd call it AdiOS.</comment>


The Supreme Court Just Torpedoed the Hopes of Every Gig Economy Worker - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/the-supreme-court-just-torpedoed-the-hopes-of-every-gig-1826205907 <comment><USER2> This is a dumb headline. The intersection to the gig economy is what? "The effect of today's decision will be to end misclassification class actions, for Gig Economy workers and for everyone else." If you are in the "gig economy" or working a side hustle, there should be no ambiguity about your employment classification. If you willingly take a "gig" and then try to claim that you were actually an employee, something's very wrong in your service agreement. The opinion states, basically, you can debate the sensibility of the policy but this is what the law says. If you don't like the policy, clarify the law. It basically kicks the issue back to Congress.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> tldr;

> The Supreme Court, gave its opinion today on Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis > and, in a 5-4 split, decided to uphold forced arbitration agreements that > preclude employees from pursuing class-action lawsuits against their bosses > in court</comment>