Yahoo CEO Mayer Now Requiring Employees to Not Be Remote - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130222/yahoo-ceo-mayer-now-requiring-all-remote-employees-to-not-be-remote/ <comment><USER4> I think remote works best when everyone on a team is remote. At my current employer, we have 6 people on our tech team. All except 2 of us are in different places. This _forces_ us to figure out how to work effectively using chat, wiki, project management tools, etc.

When only a few people on a team are remote I've found that it just doesn't work as well. I imagine it _could_ work but it would take very strong discipline from the people in the office.

<comment><USER5> I've been telecommuting for 10 years. When I'm the only remote employee, and there isn't a culture of remoteness, I believe it's _my job_ to have the discipline and do the extra work to stay connected, not the rest of the team's. It's a challenging dynamic, but it's not impossible, and I just don't think it's reasonable to expect the entire team to adapt to the exceptional case, instead of the other way around.

<comment><USER6> +1 to that. I have been working 100% remotely, full time for a client based in Europe for 4 years now - I've never met the people on my team in person & we only have a 3 hour overlap in terms of working hours. I expect myself to be at least as productive as when I was in the office and then some - to eliminate any doubts people might have. Its very easy for my boss to tell how I'm doing....just take a look at my git log.

Not sure I could ever commute 5 days to work & sit in a cubicle or open plan office (those places remind me of a Chinese factory floor)....they would have to pay me a LOT of money to endure that again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This isn't particularly surprising, the policy at Google was (possibly still is) much the same. The theory is that you don't interact enough with your peers if you're not face to face.

I wonder if secret calibration scores are next.

<comment><USER8> What are those secret calibration scores? It sounds very Orwellian...

<comment><USER9> Sounds like something that turns companies into Microsoft.

<comment><USER10> Shipping mountains of high quality popular software at regular intervals? Sounds just what Yahoo! needs.

<comment><USER11> Have you ever worked at or with MS? If so, you'd know that stack ranking is the reason MS has flopped in just about every field it's entered for the last decade.

<comment><USER12> Would you mind expanding on this a bit? How exactly does it contribute to Microsoft's performance in new fields? This is a completely genuine question. I'm not an apologist just trying to defend MS in a roundabout way.

<comment><USER9> People become obsessed with their scores and their peers' scores. They're wrapped up in internal competition and compete poorly with external players or when assessed honestly with most reality-based metrics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I certainly understand not hiring remote workers, but the transition will probably destroy value, especially if exceptions aren't allowed. A previous company of mine instituted a similar policy, and it was somewhat painful for my small team because we lost an experienced member who by all measures was amazing at her job. Fully replacing her probably cost a man year in value between the extra work for the rest of us and training someone new. And of course it was painful for her, as she had to find a new job after being promised her position was secure.

</comment><comment><USER14> It didn't seem possible but I now like Yahoo even less.

A 38 y/o CEO of a company that sells the "connected" world won't use the same connectedness within the business?

This is why you don't leverage yourself to the hilt and live paycheck to paycheck - so you can quit a job if it sucks.

<comment><USER11> As someone who has worked full-time remote since 2006, I agree completely. There are plenty of ways to be a part of the team and be remote - in fact, I doubt 30 minutes goes by in my day when I'm not either on the phone or IM'ing with someone about some issue. It's the equivalent of stopping by my desk to talk about something.

<comment><USER15> As someone who lives in a small remote city, and is broke and really cant consider moving right now, the thought of less job opportunities out there in other states at good companies that would allow me to work remotely really discourages me. This was one of the biggest promises of the internet. The only way I would be able to climb out of this place is if I could start by working remotely somewhere. There are no tech jobs where I am.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And turning down that job offer to work remote was a great idea. I was worried that they would suddenly require me to work from their HQ all of a sudden, and that was my only reason for turning down the job.

I feel sorry for the current employees that got sucker punched... but honestly, a majority of the good ones are long gone.

<comment><USER17> > I was worried that they would suddenly require me to work from their HQ

Out of curiosity, were you given any indication this would happen? Or were you drawing from Google's similar policy?

<comment><USER16> It was just the feel of the conversation. This was 2 years in the past though.

Me: "I'd like to work remotely from Japan" Them: "We can't allow remote positions now" Me: "I can't move to the US for family reasons" Them: "Let me check with HR"

 _One week later_

Them: "We will let you work remotely, when can you start?"

Just something was off it felt like. There was more talk than that of course, and a meeting when I was actually at HQ in CA for other reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In the midst of cultural upheaval in a large company, this doesn't seem like an unreasonable move, at least in the short term. I can see how the inherent disconnectedness of remote employees might make a general sense of disconnectedness worse for the onsite employees. If Yahoo! can redefine itself clearly, this "disconnectedness infection" would find a far less vulnerable host. (People that were hired under the assumption that they'd be allowed to WFH indefinitely have my profound sympathies!)

</comment><comment><USER19> I work at a Fortune50, and I have to admit that if Mayer manages to turn Yahoo around that this will set a dangerous precedent for other large companies.

The ability to work remotely is a huge perk to having a tech job, and if other corporations see Yahoo killing WFH and then managing to save such a large sinking ship, they might infer causality.

Until Yahoo actually becomes successful as a whole again, this is just them thrashing about desperately. I'll be worried if we start to see success in Mayer's methods.

<comment><USER20> What if there is actually causality there?

<comment><USER21> How would it be possible to determine that it wasn't just correlation? It's not like we have 5 yahoos we can run a controlled study on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Best comment:

"Yahoo continues its impressive drive down the fast lane of the information superhighway.

In your father's Oldsmobile. With the left blinker on. At 45kph."

</comment><comment><USER23> As an engineer, this makes me have less desire to be with Yahoo. This move is like something a parent would do to a group of kids they couldn't trust to do their job without supervision. How about they just bring in, or fire the bad remote employees? Why risk punishing quiet, smart guys (who might be slightly introverted) who serve important purposes? Our company has remote employees, and most of them are brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER24> Maybe this tells you more about Mayer's lack of trust of Yahoo's (maybe former) managers that she wouldn't trust their recruiting decisions.

Personally, I do believe that remote employees can work well but it is a very selective decision.

</comment><comment><USER25> Remote is how the future of work looks.

Pulling remote workers in is a sign you cannot measure the value of the output of remote workers - and it is not going to get any easier when they are filling up your corridors

<comment><USER26> That was, at least for me, the promise of all this communication technology, and one of the reasons for me to go into software: to work from home or any other place, spend more time with people I care about, no more commuting, no need to sit in a boring fluorescent lighted room for 8+ hours a day.

It really feels like business is taking a wrong turn lately. Back to reduced independence of workers and patriarchal policies. They decide what's good for you, and the office is a nice cosy place to be with your fellow workers, sit in this chair and you'll be sooo productive! Instead of deciding someones merit on the quality and timeliness of their work.

I suppose it's a sign of the times, to not take even small risks anymore, even if people end up better for it. Not to look at individual merit but take rash decisions. It's all about squishing the last bits of productivity using "proven" methods (dating from the industrial revolution?), which may just as well be self-defeating in the end. After all, remote working does allow picking the person with exactly the right experience to do a certain job from all over the world.

<comment><USER25> Same here - I now actually spend time with my children (which has its own set of challenges but ...)

I want my company to succeed - and I want to to succeed as a distributed remote company - mainly because I think that giving people back the time spent on commuting will benefit the communities they live in disproportionately

It's also why I resent subsidising railways :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Remote work can work well, but it unfortunately puts more pressure on management. Basically, it requires a disciplined, thorough, and consistent style of management. (Notice that these are all good things, no matter where your team is.) Many organizations, unwilling or unable to achieve this, resort to a more informal style that includes dropping by, looking over shoulders, and generally using visual confirmation that employees are doing what you think they should be.

It's a shame, because there's an increasing amount of research that shows that people are happier, more productive, and even healthier when they can work from home.

Successful incorporation of remote work boils down to a few things that sound simple but are difficult in practice: 1\. Evaluate performance and progress as much as possible by results that are objective and measurable in some way (this goes for company goals as well, not just personal). 2\. Communicate the same way with everyone, whether they are remote or local. If people in the office chat in person, but only email with their remote colleagues, they will definitely end up being marginalized. 3\. Avoid any discussion that could, indirectly or directly, stigmatize people for being remote.

If you have full organizational support for the above, remote work can be very productive.

<comment><USER28> > It's a shame, because there's an increasing amount of research that shows > that people are happier, more productive, and even healthier when they can > work from home.

Can you please link this research from here? All the research I read said that collocated teams kick remote teams asses.

<comment><USER29> The Ctirp study last year showed that remote CSRs at a Chinese travel agency were more productive than the ones in the office. Of course that might not be applicable to other jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yahoo! proving it still does not get it?

Or perhaps finding ways of shedding employees without actual layoffs?

<comment><USER31> Does not get _what_? Remote employees are a commitment, a company cannot just have remote employees without making compromises and committing to doing it right. Mayer is trying to rescue Yahoo, if the remote employees are not providing enough value to justify that investment in remote workers then it makes no sense for Yahoo to retain remote workers.

<comment><USER32> _Remote employees are a commitment_

So are on-site employees, who can screw off just as much as an off-site one.

 _if the remote employees are not providing enough value to justify that investment in remote workers_

Then fire them. This kind of draconian move won't get Yahoo anything but an even bigger talent hemorrhage than it already has.

<comment><USER33> > Then fire them.

That's exactly what will probably happen if they don't comply. I think giving people an opportunity to comply before firing is a good move.

<comment><USER34> No, it's a terrible idea.

The ones that don't have any other options will stay ( you retain a higher percentage of people who are _not_ top performers ), the rest that you _would_ want to keep leave ( the best employees can just get another remote job right away )

This is the classic problem with voluntary buyouts and other discretionary layoffs - you only keep the people without other options.

<comment><USER35> It happens on its own over time as well.

See [http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis- the-d...](http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea- effect/) for a fuller description.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have mixed feelings on the subject of remote teams, but I have very very strong feelings about this sort of bait and switch.

Having a "no _new_ remote workers" policy would feel a lot better to me than this.

<comment><USER37> The article doesn't say that people were hired and promised 100% remote work. More likely, they have an office with their name on it already and they just have the ability to work from home whenever they want and so they never come in.

I don't see this as a bait-and-switch unless there's something to back that up.

<comment><USER38> When I worked there, I took the job because of the flexible work-from-home- when-you want policy, which I hadn't encountered for.

I'd certainly be feeling baited-and-switched right now if I hadn't already left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This article is as much a statement about Yahoo as much as it is about remote vs. on-site work. Personally, I question Yahoo's long-term relevance anyway. As each year goes by, it seems they lag further and further behind, and are not part of the real momentum anymore. I'm curious if others agree. The most news I have heard about Yahoo in the last year or so was really all about the celebrity status of Mayer, being pregnant on the job, etc. Does anyone here foresee something relevant coming from that shop?

(edited to fix typo)

<comment><USER40> I remember working at Yahoo in the late 90's as a barista and watching all the people walking around with HTML for Dummies books under their arms while enjoying their free espresso and chai thinking nah, these guys won't make it.

I remember my friends working at Yahoo in the 2000's being all excited about the cult worship, good perks, then getting cynical about being stifled because they copied everything AOL was doing with project matrix management thinking nah, these guys won't make it.

I remember being at Google watching Marissa Mayer's user profile being delete right after the announcement got out that morning thinking nah, these guys won't make it.

But then I keep remembering, my mom still reads Yahoo Taiwan, uses Yahoo Mail, and sends me Yahoo News links. Then I keep remembering about the hundreds of products with plenty of inertia keeping the overall organization going.

Yahoo's in a great position. They still have good talent, have good traffic, and most importantly they can position themselves to be Apple's best friend by simply being Google's enemy.

Flickr, IntoNow, legacy stuff like Mail, Sports, Trave are still pretty diamonds that needs polish and TLC. They just gotta shore up profit to stay alive while out Google Google.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, and someone else's mom uses AOL for email. Yahoo: the new AOL.

<comment><USER40> Now that the internet is mainstreamed why is this a bad thing? No, really, think it through. Why would having a good hold on the demographics that would actually pay attention to ads be a bad thing?

Yahoo's corporate DNA being a media company should make help, not detract, when new media is just media.

<comment><USER32> It isn't necessarily bad. But being about as good as AOL is not why Ms. Marissa was hired.

<comment><USER40> Both media companies, not tech companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Kara Swisher has "issues" with M. Mayer. The typical ~snarky undertone oozes from this article (and everything else she writes for All Things D on the subject). She was a great reporter for the WSJ 10 years ago, though.

<comment><USER42> I've noticed people taking note of and commenting on Kara Swisher's take- charge, arrogant, brusque nature far more often than with many male tech journalists. Unexamined bias, or an expectation that female correspondents be softer and nicer?

<comment><USER43> In this case I don't believe it's sexism for one minute. Allthingsd (and specifically this author, I believe) are very well-known for aggressively publishing and criticizing leaks from Yahoo. Any motivations behind such a tactic would certainly bleed through into the aforementioned writing style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> There's a shortage of people who still want to work at Yahoo. I used to be one of them but they pulled a similar stunt with me and decided to change the terms of my hiring long after I had accepted an offer. Obviously we don't have all the details, but I don't think this was a smart move to attract new talent.

</comment><comment><USER44> Yahoo has 11,500 employees. This affects "several hundred".

So... Yahoo was not big on remote employees.

<comment><USER45> Being a news article, I am assuming they did their best to make it sound dramatic. In other words, "several hundred" probably translates to 307 remote workers. Still technically accurate, but a much less impressive headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> That company is dying and it needs drastic changes to get it back to what it once was. Those changes are bound to piss off a lot of people, but the alternative is to continue on the same downhill route. Mayer is trying to change the cultural problems she perceives. I have a different opinion about that particular change she is making, but that doesn't matter... Good for her. I hope it works.

</comment><comment><USER47> Ok. I actually do understand why a company might feel that having lots of talented people concentrated in the same area is better than having them all scattered in different work places. I'm not saying that I necessarily share this point of view, just that I wouldn't reject it as an idea.

Here's the thing - Google and the various other top high tech companies that are known for this go out of their way to make the workplace a mini paradise. Shuttles with wifi from noe valley, free and great food, extensive gyms and sports facilities, haircuts, dry cleaning, sabbaticals, tuition reimbursement, "take all you like" vacation policies... yeah, it's all designed to get you to stay at work 24/7, but at least they're trying to make it so nice that you'll want to.

I worked for a small company that eliminated telecommuting and pulled out the "google doesn't do this" line, but with none of the perks. Uh...

If yahoo wants to become a developer paradise, maybe they'll pull this off. If they want everyone to show up and work in a depressing cubicle all day, they'll be losing a lot of talent very soon.

<comment><USER48> I worked at a 'this is not Google!' company for while. I kept hearing that the place wasn't Google over and over. It got to be where you couldn't say the G word. They had a messed up telecommute policy where the privileged group could telecommute while the serfs had to work the cubes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Thank God companies never hire consultants, use suppliers, open branch offices or collaborate with other people that aren't located IN THIS VERY BUILDING or they would never be able to get anything done.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm not too surprised by the move, I worked 6 years at yahoo and have always been amazed at how naive the company was with WFH. It may seem hilarious, but I strongly believe the company actually thought those employees would a) work and b) be at home! It was not uncommon to see people getting 2 or 3 days per week at home. I personally rolled with 2 per week for several years and it was great. I'd do a few emails in the morning, and that was about it for the day. I'd generally go play a full round of golf or spend the day biking.

<comment><USER51> And look where Yahoo is now...

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> My startup sells database software to other coders. I think for this kind of startup, remote people are essential. They can get a perspective on your product and the perception of it in the marketplace, that you just can't get when you set in a room with the makers all day. That is, they see the world more like our users do, so it's often the remote folks who come up with big innovations.

</comment><comment><USER25> Remote work often means out of the daily bustle work - thats one of the reasons folk say "let me work from home for two days, I have to get this _done_ "

If you can translate that into a continuous cycle of working on the most valuable not the most urgent problem, and a cycle of picking the valuable problem that turns you on, productivity should go through the roof

All the crap that _must_ get done - I am much more willing to do crap when I have hit a home run the day before

Edit: this sounds like one expects to do productive work day in day out - <USER2> don't think that's true - one should aim for a home run every two-four weeks and be prepared to learn and measure during that period.

<comment><USER53> This is exactly how I work. You've hit the nail on the head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> So how many work-days per year is Mayer in her office at Yahoo?

Oh. I see. That's different.

<comment><USER55> I probably shouldn't feed a troll, but I'll try to reason.

A CEO's job is just flat out different from an engineers job. The CEO's job is often to be the public face of the company, to go out and make deals, to talk to key investors, to raise money in some cases.

Or put another way, a CEO of a publicly traded company wouldn't be doing their job properly if they were in the office every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> As much as i hate to say it, probably the right thing to do to get a fresh grip on allocation & performance. I work at a place that frowns upon WFH and really wish it wasn't the case, my team would be 50% more productive if WFH few days a week. From my experience, lazy/bad managers find it much harder manage remote team, and often advocate no WFH policies.

</comment><comment><USER57> I wonder how many of them would have moved voluntarily if Yahoo offered to give them a bonus + pay for relocation expenses.

</comment><comment><USER58> > employees... must either comply without exception or presumably quit

Why quit? More likely they would be terminated with benefits.

<comment><USER37> More likely they will have to quit if they don't want to drive into the office every day... They all have an office they belong to presumably. It's not a big stretch to ask them to go there Monday to Friday.

<comment><USER58> Let's suppose they decide to continue working from home despite the policy change, so the company fires them. Is it for cause?

<comment><USER59> Almost certainly. It is a rare employee employment letter that will have such a thing immutably set in stone.

The most likely scenario though is a layoff package. Even at a few weeks pay, it's still less than the legal costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> It's not been a month since the last time I posted my list of research articles on the productivity drop you get from not having teams co-located so I won't post it again in full... but for those who are interested you may find these old discussions of interest:

* <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145358>

* <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5071701>

* <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4800412>

I'm always on the look out for new non-anecdotal research on the topic if anybody finds any!

</comment><comment><USER61> Uh, Mozilla is happy to hire remote folks worldwide :-)

Just sayin'

</comment><comment><USER62> Am I the only one who thinks we should know more before we get our panties in a bunch?

</comment><comment><USER63> Let's assume for the sake of argument that it is proven that onsite employees _are_ more productive then remotes.

So what?

Some employers will do what Yahoo just did. Others may say: look, I want you to be productive, but more than that I want you to be happy. I prefer having great developers working at 90% of their capacity to squeezing every last bit of productivity from the mediocre ones I'm still able to retain.

I hope the second group wins over time.

</comment><comment><USER64> I suspect this will do a great deal to give ammunition to 37 Signals for writing their book about remote work.

I'm a huge fan of remote working, and I think that the current corporate mindset against it... and company arguments against it... are mostly just complete bullshit.

Of course, working remotely doesn't work in every case, but I'm certain that it would work very well in far more situations than people are willing to admit, or try.

</comment><comment><USER65> This is a very sneaky way of performing mass layoffs.

</comment><comment><USER66> Is it just me or do people seem to take a special pleasure in criticizing Marissa Mayer above and beyond what most CEOs receive?

</comment><comment><USER67> I've seen this happening with other companies recently. There may be a small trend away from remote working. I agree its unfair to the employee who was hired on flexibility, but I don't think it is a bad move for Yahoo. It takes a very specific type of individual to work at home with the same efficiency as in an office.

<comment><USER68> > It takes a very specific type of individual to work at home with the same > efficiency as in an office.

Does it? If I want to slack off I find it just as easy in the office as I do at home. Heck I can even have music on at work or stream a video.

Frankly for me I find home working far less distracting than work. Work is noisy, people are coming and going, there are calls all around me, at home it is just me in a dark office only interrupted by things aimed specifically at me (Skype, e-mail, etc).

But this all boils down to the same old 1900s time mythos. You take intellectual workers and hold them to standards created for factory workers.

The theory goes that if I work longer I am more efficient. If they restrict access to distractions then I am more efficient. If they can look over my shoulder I am more efficient.

Personally I think this is all nonsense. The only way to track my efficiency is with milestones. The nice thing about milestones is that they are metrics which are flexible. If you fail to meet them you have a two way discussion about /why/.

<comment><USER69> There's a lot of research suggesting that people overestimate their productivity in remote working environments and that in general, max productivity comes from small, in-person working environments.

<comment><USER34> Which one makes people happier with their lives?

<comment><USER70> Happiness is not a concern in this.

In America, the pursuit is for money and profits for your employer - <USER3> employee's emotional wellbeing is irrelevant.

Now be a good serf and pop your head back down into your cubicle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I can certainly understand why current employees hired under the assumption that they could work from home are upset. But the fact of the matter is that if working from home isn't in your employment contract, then you shouldn't really count on it being acceptable forever. A company has a right to change its mind, in the same way that an employee might.

If an employee of Company X demanded to work from home two days a week for some reason otherwise he'd quit, Company X managers would weigh the cost of losing the employee against the cost of having him absent two days a week. And then they would make a decision.

I don't see how this is any different. Yahoo! has decided that being on site is a priority. Current employees may feel differently. These employees should weigh the cost of moving or commuting against the cost of finding new employment and make a decision.

<comment><USER72> All of that makes sense, but imagine you were hired away from a job at a great company within the last year. You probably can't go back, you haven't vested and you're essentially being pushed out after you were lured there with the promise of being able to work remotely. I understand that these people are free to quit, but that doesn't mean Yahoo! hasn't put them in a bad situation.

<comment><USER71> I agree it's worse when a company does it to an employee. Being forced into changing a job can have major negative effects on an individual's life, whereas Yahoo! will probably be just fine if any single person decides to quit.

It doesn't change the fact that it can happen, and this is a good reminder to the rest of us who have things promised verbally in an employment offer to have that stuff in writing. I am writing this as a warning to others and my future self.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> The article specifically mentions customer service reps. Don't know what percentage is csr, and what are stereotypical "I can work anywhere I want" devs.

But for those remote csrs, besides the upheaval, it's going to be tough working in SV on csr pay.

And how much team building do you need to read troubleshooting prompts out of a binder anyway?

</comment><comment><USER74> Yahoo has given ~50% returns since August last year.

<comment><USER75> Let's not assume that public equities indicate good decision-making! :)

<comment><USER76> "In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine."

<comment><USER59> Combined with "In the long run, we are all dead", the implications are stark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> The one part I do not understand about all of this comes when you have a company with multiple locations and work that crosses locations.

Say you have east coast and west coast facilities. If people only worked within their local facility, I can see the reasoning and advantages. What I don't understand is where the value is when the work crosses facilities.

What you would need to do to bridge the gap between the workers in the different facilities is the same thing you should do to bridge the gap between remote workers.

How is having people that need to work together in separate facilities any better than the people working remotely?

<comment><USER24> Funny thing is, the different facilities are probably more problematic than remote workers. It can be more prone to politics and the organisation as a whole pulling in different directions.

The exception is where the remote does have some well defined autonomous reason for existing, for example a sales office.

In comparison remote workers obviously are usually tied to a particular office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Can people please chime in with the names of any companies they know to be actively looking to hire remotely so we job seekers that don't want this yahoo move to become a trend know where to apply?

</comment><comment><USER79> Making the assumption that Mayer slash Yahoo wouldn't implement a policy like this on a whim, I bet this comes out of a bigger plan. If one had a mandate to do X, studied how to do that, and found X would be more likely to succeed with a team working purely onsite, then you just do a cost benefit analysis and make a decision. You'll find out later if you're decision was a good one, so hopefully on the front end you've got good data, judgement, and moxie to effectively make bold decisions!

</comment><comment><USER80> I completely agree with Mayer. As a student that took the Babson MBA program, it was a about building the team foundation, understanding that collaboration was key. My whole team was made up of mom, dads, parents of all sorts. The key goal was to assign a task and get it done in a timely manner while achieving our best result. It taught me to push myself, push global collaboration... beginning the foundation, allows for future growth.

</comment><comment><USER81> Any chance this is a way to trim fat without actually laying people off? Easier to get rid of the slackers if they quit.

<comment><USER82> Sounds like you hit the nail on the head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> If that's true, it's just plain stupid.

</comment><comment><USER84> You'd think they're doing this for security. I'm taking a security class right now and pretty much I've realized that remote computer systems are super insecure relative to anything on site. With the recent events of security fails like what happened at the nytimes it seems that the risk is becoming extremely high. I think it's a smart move by Mayer.

</comment><comment><USER85> Lame ...a great way to cut off your talent pool. Yah-who???

</comment><comment><USER86> People change, policies change. What is the big deal?

</comment><comment><USER87> I had a talk with my supervisor a few days ago about working from home vs being in the office. We're "open office", which sucks in its current form, but I've come to realize has some definite advantages.

The problem is when you have these black-n-white policies. When we're in bug- fixing, hardening iteration I estimate that I'm almost 2x productive working at home, than I am commuting in and dealing with the chit-chat and distractions of being in open office.

The bottom line is that it's completely retarded for a CEO to make that kind of decision on a company-wide basis. Middle managers should be making that kind of decision.

</comment><comment><USER88> can someone explain to me why yahoo is still relevant?

<comment><USER89> Here are about a billion reasons: [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=YHOO+Income+Statement&an...](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=YHOO+Income+Statement&annual)</comment></comment>


Self Adjusting DOM - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.janestreet.com/self-adjusting-dom/ <comment><AUTHOR> The discussion on the prior post is discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11004808](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11004808)</comment>


Facebook Wins $711M Anti-Spam Lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=58219622130

<comment><USER2> Sanford Wallace already owes hundreds of millions of dollars in judgements to other service providers, so this number is largely meaningless.

<comment><AUTHOR> The best part is that they're pursuing criminal charges against him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _We continue to work on collecting as much as possible from Guerbuez and > Atlantis Blue (likely far less than the full amount) and have hired a firm > to help with this._

I wonder how much they have collected and how money from these lawsuits factors into their profitability. Not that I don't think these spammers deserve the judgments... That line just made me wonder if this has some bearing on Facebook's profitability.

<comment><AUTHOR> Facebook is cash flow positive (<http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=136782277130>), so the accounting related to the judgments probably has little or no impact on their profitability.

<comment><USER3> Yea, but they were talking about a previous ruling in another case. Off-hand, I'm not sure how many such rulings they have. It was just a thought that I figured might generate a bit of interesting discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's been more than 6 months since I've deleted my FB account. But I have deleted mine not because of those spams, but because of the ads, overloaded video and applet features and the like which deteriorated the main point: Staying in contact with the friends. So I don't care if FB has achieved anything that will ease the life of facebookers or charged a billion dollars or more.

</comment><comment><USER5> How much spam do you have to send to be sued for $800 million??

</comment><comment><USER6> Good luck getting that money.</comment>


I ♥ wireframes - <AUTHOR> http://wireframes.tumblr.com/

<comment><USER2> What a great happening :)

I am just reading Bill Buxton's book called Sketching the User Experience again and I am on the Sketching chapter!

Great post.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love it -- thanks for sharing</comment>


Our 2016 Open Source Donations - <AUTHOR> https://duck.co/blog/post/303/2016-foss-donations-announcement <comment><USER2> Donating to open-source seems like such a good use of charity money. I never give to charity because it always seems so abstract, or there might be better ways to solve the problem; with open source people are usually laboring over it with no recognition, and even a little seems like it has such high marginal benefit.

I'm in-between jobs right now(occupied with a side project), but at some point I'd really like to fund feature development on some open source projects:

* GNUCash has a solid heart, but has some usability issues that make it a pain to use in practice.

* Freenet last I checked had only 1 fulltime developer. And he's probably taking a serious cut to market salary to work on it.

* GHC could stand to have some performance optimization done on the compiler.

* Inkscape or GIMP are handy to have around. Inkscape even has a page describing how you can host a fundraiser for targeted feature development, which is very rare for open-source.

* I don't know that TOR needs much software help, but I wouldn't mind funding some exit nodes. It'd be nice if you could buy a locked-down black-box exit node that you could plug into your wall or something, that was guaranteed not to incriminate you. Maybe outside the scope of this, though.

* Everyone has a little app or site they use where a few people are working without much benefit to maintain something you use all the time.

Is there a good list of needy open-source software?

<comment><USER3> > I never give to charity because it always seems so abstract, or there might > be better ways to solve the problem

It can be difficult to know whether or not you are making an impact with a donation. Fortunately there are sites like Charity Navigator [0] that audit aggregate and audit charities to make things easier. Some sites (like Giving What We Can [1] and GiveWell [2]) make it even simpler by suggesting a few charities that they deem most effective.

For example, one of these top charities is the Against Malaria Foundation [3]. They're a fairly straightforward charity: they receive and review requests for mosquito nets and fulfill orders with donations. When you donate they tell you exactly how many nets were bought with your donation and where they were sent. In this way your dollars (approximately) directly help prevent the spread of malaria. Now, could this problem be better solved with donations to a malaria vaccine research group? Perhaps. For the time being, mitigating the issue with nets seems like a decent interim solution.

My point is that there are many, many charities out there doing great work. It's worth looking into.

(Another note: I don't mean to imply that you _shouldn 't_ give to open source projects. I am just trying to say that you could _also_ consider giving to traditional charities.)

[0] - [http://www.charitynavigator.org/](http://www.charitynavigator.org/)

[1] - [https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/top- charities/](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/top-charities/)

[2] - [http://www.givewell.org/charities/top- charities](http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities)

[3] - [https://www.againstmalaria.com/](https://www.againstmalaria.com/)

<comment><USER4> My problem with that is that they mitigate the issue, they don't end it. As great as against malaria is, there will always be another family that needs nets, no matter how much you donate it will never be enough. One a feature has been added to an open source software, it is available to all those who need it.

<comment><USER5> I get your point but that comes across as very callous to me, valuing a feature in software that benefits a small fraction of the most prosperous people in already-prosperous countries over the health of a family.

Consider reframing it: With a small donation you solve the problem for a family (where the problem is the risk that their children will die!), and you can solve it over and over just by repeating the action - it's the definition of scalability. You won't have to keep adding different colors of net to make that family safe.

But there's always another software feature to be added, the job is never done - and when you add a feature it's only for the one package! If you want to do it again you have to start from scratch.

Also, when you consider improvements in your projects, you no doubt consider both cost and impact. Compare the impact of the feature-add your donation might make in an open-source project, to the impact saving one or more family's lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The donations are great for open source projects.

I just wonder if DDG is investing in their own crawler? With Yahoo BOSSS API bite the dust therefor loosing access to Bing search result. DDG nowadays has to rely on Yandex (Russian search engine) for their search result. The search results of DDG have gone from okay to a bit worse, so what's their long term strategy? Stay a meta-search-engine, or invest major resources to crawl the web themselves? What many people hate is high latency and to lower latency you cannot rely on third party APIs for the main search.

<comment><USER7> There is an official Bing API coming out soon (a Bing developer recently mentioned this in an HN thread a couple days ago, although I can't find it atm), so they won't have to rely on Yandex for much longer. I have no idea if the pricing will be comparable to Yahoo BOSS though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised DDG can donate so much money to open source. They must be doing well? Or is this money they've helped raise from their users? $225,000! That's a lot of money.

<comment><USER9> DDG has done excellent work building their traffic[0] and have been getting a solid 10-12 million or so searches per day for a while. Even if you halve that due to !bang redirects and ad blocking and put a fairly low CPM on the ads they have quite a few millions or or low tens of millions coming in. I haven't been following too closely but my impression is Gabriel has been increasing staffing and other costs at a rate far lower than the increasing revenue.

Additionally the donation itself got a vast amount of coverage in the relevant communities, including HN, so the expenditure is offset against advertising for user acquisition they didn't need to do. It probably also strengthened their core community, making their users more sticky. The donation also went to some of the infrastructure they use anyway.

[0][https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html](https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html)

<comment><USER10> Not to pour water on things, but after 8 years or so I'm not sure it's growing _that_ well...

After 6 years, Google was doing 200m searches a day.

Google now does something like 4 billion a day. So duckduckgo, after 8 years of growth, has captured about 0.3% of the search market. At that sort of rate, it'll take decades to get any meaningful share, and that's assuming Google stand still, which they won't.

<comment><USER11> That's assuming you have to own the market. You don't, you just need more income than outcome. It would appear DDG is achieving that. Good for them I say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised to learn that Freenet is still a thing. What do people use it for?

<comment><USER13> Decentralized microblogging using Sone, the twitter-like system on Freenet. Freemail, the encrypted email system. FMS, the forums. I also use the distributed data store for storing data. Basically anything you'd use IPFS for but more anonymity.

Here's an example of using it for the backing store for my blog: [https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2015/09/14/using-freenet-for- stati...](https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2015/09/14/using-freenet-for-static- websites.html)

Here's a series of articles on writing dynamic apps for Freenet - in this case chat-like things [http://www.draketo.de/light/english/freenet/communication- pr...](http://www.draketo.de/light/english/freenet/communication- primitives-1-files-and-sites)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems like a pretty great list at first glance. Lots of free speech and/or crypto related projects. Good job DDG, once again doing it right. I hope this generates some good PR for you :)

[Now hurry and make DDG better for non-English languages, I want to use it for everything and more importantly want to make it the default for my parents, friends etc...well I guess strategically it doesn't make much sense if the target niche is developers but one can hope :D]

<comment><USER15> Message received and understood! Although we're currently trying to improve Instant Answers for developers, we're also continuing to work on better search results for mainstream users as awareness of privacy issues increases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish somebody would just give KiCad a few million dollars and we could be free of OrCad/Altium/Etc

<comment><USER17> I couldn't agree more.

<comment><USER16> The trouble is KiCad just won't cut it for complex boards. Eventually it could get there, but I ended up buying Pulsonix. Maybe starting a nonprofit to throw KiCad fundraisers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very nice. More companies should come up with posts like this to a) spread awareness b) encourage more people to work on open source projects(when there's money on the table). That would also clear up the question of how open source software can be sustainable and where do funds come from.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow, DDG has come a long way since I was last there a few years ago. It's great to have a serious player in the search space dedicated to privacy. After spending some time using it just now their ranking algorithm still feels somewhat inferior to Google though. This is not surprising given the resources Google devotes to machine learning and the like I guess. Does anyone know roughly how DDG arrive at their results?

On topic, I think their donation is a great move.

<comment><USER15> We use several sources[1], in particular Yahoo, Bing and Yandex, and then try to improve relevancy in the results as much as possible.

[1] [https://duck.co/help/results/sources](https://duck.co/help/results/sources)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Now... this is certainly great, especially given the particular selection of projects receiving the donations. I've upvoted the article and hopefully more companies (aka open source consumers) will do the same.

But then I wonder, what is that the community would benefit most from? Money or actual code contributions?

I develop open source software and I get paid for doing it, which is a great luxury. Go DDG, raise the bar even further, employ people working on these projects if you don't have any already and even release more software!

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd love to bring really important open source projects to baqqer and support them with monthly pledges. I'd like them to be transparent and open with their direction and progress, while simultaneously letting the community there help guide and support their efforts. Does anyone know any great open source projects that would be open to this?

<comment><USER22> What benefits does baqqer provide over Patreon (for single Makers) and Bountysource Salt (for OSS projects)?

How much does baqqer charge on the donations that a maker gets through it? I can see very little to no information without signing up.

<comment><USER21> We help people, products, companies also grow through our community and forums. You can also perform micro-campaigns to raise smaller amounts of money for one-off required items. IMHO the experience is wholly different, because I wanted the crowdfunding experience to be much more intimate and supportive.

Right now we charge 7% but only because we're trying to reach our server costs quickly since we're bootstrapped. Once we're at a break-even point we'll be dropping it down to 5% and remain competitive.

Most information is (probably erroneously) here: [https://baqqer.com/tos](https://baqqer.com/tos)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I know duck is all about the trust but couldn't they have picked some non encryption/security OSS projects. It sort of reminds of the brief period where all these sustainability/eco startups where picked for awards or help.

<comment><USER15> We did have some non-encryption/security nominations from the community, but we decided in advance that this year's theme would be "raising the standard of trust online", hence this final list of recipients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Where are they getting money

<comment><USER25> [https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and- affiliates](https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-affiliates)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Respect!</comment>


We don't do Wordpress anymore - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/14islands/why-wordpress-is-not-our-cms-of-choice-anymore-fd6986381e7c <comment><USER2> It takes learning the hard way to realize why WordPress is the best publishing tool in the world. Just wait until they have to deal with media, and a lot of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why do it the hard way?</comment></comment>


Show HN: gcf.cr – use the crystal language in Google Cloud Functions - <AUTHOR> http://gcf.blockvue.com <comment><AUTHOR> Let me know if anyone has any questions. OP and main developer here.</comment>


Out of hours working banned by German labour ministry - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/10276815/Out-of-hours-working-banned-by-German-labour-ministry.html <comment><USER2> [2013] should be added to the title.

I don't mind receiving mails after work, at the weekend or during holidays as long as nobody expects me to read and/or answer them.

Are there companies that expect you to do so?</comment>


Ask HN: Why is my directory with 300KB of files 60MB large? - <AUTHOR>

Well, actually I know how the directory (on my ext4 partiton) got to be this way but I was interested in the technical details behind it. I was running many network simulations, each one generating a packet trace file. I was going to parse these offline but the simulations ended up making 163GB of small trace files before I ran out of disk space! [I have since changed my scripts to pipe the traces to the analyzer, eliminating the problem.] After deleting the traces, which took about 20 minutes, a `ls -la .` shows that the directory is 60MB large while containing just 300kB of files. I suspect that some remnants of the links to the trace files remain in the directory inode. Why weren't they removed? Will they get "garbage collected" in the future?
Thanks for your insights,
Jevin <comment><AUTHOR> After more research I have determined that this is specified behavior. The directory inode doesn't support online shrinking [1] but you can do it offline in one of two ways:

1\. e2fsck -D /your/partition

The -D option directs fsck to optimize the directories. Basically, it rebuilds the directory inode.

2\. mkdir tmp && mv big_folder/* tmp/ && rmdir big_folder && mv tmp big_folder

This actually moves the files to a new, small directory, and deletes the old, big one before renaming back to the original name.

[1] This thread discusses the problem and some potential online solutions <http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/5/14/362>

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm not an expert on this, but each file occupies a minimum area on the disk, called a block. Now depending on the block size and the number of files, it's easy for 300KB of data to occupy 60MB space on the disk.

eg. 100,000 files of 1 byte each taking 1 block of size 4KB would occupy ~390 MB on disk (instead of 100KB as one would assume).

</comment><comment><USER3> Two possibilities:

1) `ls -la .` to show "hidden" files.

2) Some process is still running, and it has an open handle on some deleted file(s). Deleted file space is not reclaimed until all open handles are released.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I forgot to mention the -a flag. This is what it shows for the directory: 'drwxr-xr-x 2 jevin jevin 56M 2011-03-07 12:12 .'

All of the involved processes have long since terminated. I'm fairly sure the files are gone for good, I actually have free space on my drive! :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to - Looking for work? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently a high school student with a few years programming experience and even some work experience, so I was wondering:
How would someone in my position go about looking for work?
Work meaning part time, probably remote programming job.
What are the various methods to try? What's successful? Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Do you want to look for a job? I mean to say do you seriously need a job? I would suggest spending sometime looking into open source world and improve your skills and online profile. This would automatically get you a good job couple of years down the line.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, it's true, I don't actively need a job.

You're probably right - putting a lot of effort into some open source software would generate equivalent experience, and would help later on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I were in your position, I would start by building a portfolio that you can share. Either some throwaway app that people can download if you're trying to do client-server work, or a simple webapp you can show people.

After that, I'd start checking Craigslist for people looking for small jobs that they need to get done. If you're in an area that has enough work, I think there's an advantage to being local (until you've built up a body of work that stands on its own).

I hope that helps!</comment>


Semantic Segmentation Using Fully Convolutional Networks Over the Years - <AUTHOR> https://meetshah1995.github.io/semantic-segmentation/deep-learning/pytorch/visdom/2017/06/01/semantic-segmentation-over-the-years.html <comment><USER2> I've had better results with strided CNNs vs (max) pooled CNNs. Has anyone else noticed similar results?

<comment><USER3> Interesting, could you say a little more about that?

</comment></comment><comment> bra-ket also see [http://blog.qure.ai/notes/semantic-segmentation-deep- learnin...](http://blog.qure.ai/notes/semantic-segmentation-deep-learning- review)</comment>


Tesla Model Y Road Trip Review: a no-compromise electric SUV - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2020/07/22/tesla-model-y-road-trip-review-no-comprise-electric-suv/ <comment><USER2> >In the meantime, I took a Model Y on a road trip from Oakland, California to Sonoma and Napa over the last week to get a first impression and road trip test.

That is not a road trip. I had to look it up: 40-50 miles.

I'm considering a drive from south Texas to northern Colorado next month. That's a road trip.

I'm gatekeeping because I saw the title and thought it would be covering charge duration, long term comfort, etc. This is a day trip, and it isn't a bad review to do - let's just label it properly.

<comment><USER3> Engineering Explained did a good video on what it's like to road trip in a Tesla. It was a nearly 2,000 mile trip from Boise, ID to Detroit, MI.

[https://youtu.be/uC95WACQhCY](https://youtu.be/uC95WACQhCY)

<comment><USER4> That was expensive, I definitely don't recommend the tiny sidewalls the model 3 performance comes with. Fortunately there's Tesla and 3rd party 19" wheels that come with much more reasonable sidewalls.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I'm on the factory 20" wheels. If I ever break them, I'll likely replace them with 19".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Compared to the Model 3, this has:

\- _one extra inch_ of ground clearance \- hatchback instead of trunk \- a few more inches of head/leg room

And because of that, it's an "SUV".

This positioning is not at all exclusive to Tesla, but it's still annoying. Call them "CUVs", "crossovers", "lifted, less-practical wagons", whatever.

Ultimately the problem is that Americans all want "SUVs", but most (rightfully so) don't want the downsides of an actual body-on-frame SUV (poor mileage, ride, packaging), or have any need for off-road capability. As a result, our most competitive auto segments are "lifted, less-practical wagon/minivan". Sigh.

<comment><USER6> To give an example, the Subaru Crosstrek is a lifted Subaru Impreza hatchback. They share nearly all parts, and have the same interior and cargo space. The differences are:

1\. Crosstrek costs more ($22,145 vs $18,695)

2\. Crosstrek is less efficient (33/27 mpg vs 36/28 mpg)

3\. Crosstrek is taller (64" vs 59")

4\. Crosstrek outsells the Impreza in the US (131k vs 66k)

Americans love feeling tall and are willing to pay for the extra few inches.

<comment><USER7> Do you have any data that shows Americans are buying the Crosstrek because they "love to feel tall" and not because of all the differentiating factors between it and the Impreza?

<comment><USER8> It may be more that that's what the dealerships stock and push, but there really are very few other differentiators.

The Crosstrek comes stock with a 6-speed manual instead of the Impreza's 5-speed (though 90% of them are sold with the execrable CVT instead); the Crosstrek only comes as a hatchback while the base Impreza is a sedan; the Crosstrek has intermittently been available with a hybrid system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For a great picture at the Model Y, I recommend Sandy Munro's complete teardown: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br9luPS5VsE&list=PLkiDlGyJnp...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br9luPS5VsE&list=PLkiDlGyJnprdFftxAZ85a5Rp1LlET4Wbr)

Overall the Model Y seems like a far better car from Tesla's perspective - much simpler design, cheaper to build, tons of under-the-hood improvements to make it more efficient.

From a consumer perspective, you really do get larger Model 3 - you pay a bit more, get a lot more volume, higher seating position and worse driving performance. Most of the improvements would probably only show up in comparison with similar cars ie longer range, cheaper price etc.

<comment><USER10> > worse driving performance

So, why to buy it then ?

<comment><USER11> It's very slightly worse since it sits higher up and is heavier. But it's not like it's bad. And most people aren't buying the car to take it on a track. The larger size and higher seating position likely greatly outweigh any hit to performance for most people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love my tesla as much as the next guy but take electrek articles with a grain of salt. He's pretty biased.

<comment> blinding-streak Electrek authors own stock in TSLA, so they are about the most biased source there is on the topic. Certainly nothing here should be confused with journalism.

[https://electrek.co/about/](https://electrek.co/about/)

<comment><USER13> They also don't call out that their links to amazon are referral codes, meaning they take a little slice of whatever you purchase if you follow that link.

<comment><USER14> They do, it's just an abbreviated disclosure and in small text, at the very end of the article:

 _FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More[1]._

Also fun fact: Amazon's affiliate program pays out for _any[2] purchase made within 24 hours of clicking the link_. So even if you don't immediately purchase anything during that visit, if you purchase anything within the day after clicking it, the affiliate still gets a cut of the transaction.

[1] With More linking to [https://electrek.co/about/#affiliate](https://electrek.co/about/#affiliate)

[2] "any" purchase that's not for a product in an excluded category for the affiliate program, such as digital downloads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What are some good, unbiased reviews of the Model Y? Other than Doug DeMuro([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAXDcTH6hPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAXDcTH6hPw)), every other YouTube reviewer I've found has some stake in Tesla or is a Tesla/EV fanboy.

<comment><USER16> I recently came across [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DaZxZDYh8Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DaZxZDYh8Q). I thought it was pretty neutral and discusses the major issues extensively.

And if you want an insight into Model Y build issues: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhvT6OIq7XE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhvT6OIq7XE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Since when drive from Oakland to Napa is road trip?

How about something like Seattle to San Diego and back via 2 different routes, like I did on my forester . Or longer?

<comment><USER18> There are tons of reviews out there for such trips. They are typically a blast! Planning to go cross country as soon as we get past the plague again ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is it _really_ an SUV?

Regardless of whether most people use an SUV for offroading or not, it doesn't matter. Most SUVs conform to some basic features, especially around wheel clearance being higher than a typical car.

This is just a roomier Model-3 or a Smaller minivan.

<comment><USER18> It has more wheel clearance than a car (compare to model 3 specially).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_classification#SUVs_/_off-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_classification#SUVs_/_off- road_vehicles)

Wikipedia hints you can pretty much call anything a SUV, it has no black and white definition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Lol, I love the title: "no-compromise" and "SUV". All SUVs are monuments to compromise.

<comment><USER21> RAV4 Prime

\- hybrid motor + battery

\- 500 mile range on gas hybrid, 40 mile range on battery

\- AWD

Commute to work during the week without touching gas, then on the weekend take roadtrips to the mountains at 50 mpg. And get cheap Toyota repairs/maintenance for everything. It's the quiver of one.

<comment><USER18> Except:

* Still need oil / change spark plugs / timing belts / all the ICE junk

* But have a degrading battery like an EV

* Have weight of both ICE and EV at the same time

* Deal with legacy dealer network (slimey sales, have to pay a big cut to dealers)

* There are an entire 5k being made for the entire US (vs 400k? Model Ys), so you can't even get one if you want one (source: [https://electrek.co/2020/06/30/toyota-cuts-output-of-rav4-pr...](https://electrek.co/2020/06/30/toyota-cuts-output-of-rav4-prime-plug-in-hybrid-for-us/)) . IF you can find one, expect to pay 5-10k over sticker price.

So a little bit of worse of both worlds.

I will gladly take my model Y, thanks ;)

<comment><USER3> > ICE junk

Significantly less often. If 90% of your driving is on the battery, then you might be able to go the life of the car without replacing belts and plugs. You'd still need to change the oil, but could probably get away with only doing it once a year.

> But have a degrading battery like an EV

Depends on the battery. Also, even if it degrades a whopping 50% (Which would probably take 20+ years), you still have the ICE to keep you going.

> Have weight of both ICE and EV at the same time

With only a 40 mile battery, not a big deal.

> Deal with legacy dealer network

Yeah, that's pretty stupid. Dealers just get in the way, and I really wish haggling wasn't a thing at all.

> There are an entire 5k being made for the entire US

I'm guessing that they don't profit much if any on each car sold.

I'm a Model 3 owner, but I don't expect everyone to be able (or want) to drive a BEV. Honestly I wish more plug-in hybrids were being made. They can be electric for most people's commute, yet have the ICE to prevent range anxiety.

<comment><USER21> The 5k units is due to COVID affecting battery manufacturing, there's no question this is circumstantial and nothing inherent to the vehicle itself. They say 20k vehicles for the next year. With the current crazy dealer markup, that's supply & demand.

<comment><USER18> So 20k Rav4 primes vs 800k? Teslas made in 2021 (not sure exact date Texas will start producing)?

If the car is any good, 20k should mean you can't really get your hands on it without paying over MSRP. If the car is a dud.. well, you won't want it anyway

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 50 miles. Hmmm. Now, that's a test I can pass on a bicycle.

Joking aside, we were ready to go all-in this year with electrics. I even installed an oversize solar array in order to be able to solar-charge at least two vehicles.

And then the fires happened here in California. This changed my mind.

What became brutally apparent during the fires was that the fuel/energy infrastructure comparison between liquid and electric energy isn't even a comparison. People had all kinds of problems when their standard 30 to 50 mile commutes turned into 300 mile commutes. The charging network simply wasn't ready and, if I remember correctly, power outages caused additional issues.

The fact that gas stations exist pretty much at every freeway exit is a massive strategic advantage during an emergency.

One mental tool that came to mind was to imagine that we had to evacuate and we had two vehicles in front of the house: An electric Suburban-like SUV and the electic powered version of exactly the same vehicle. Which keys would I take?

The answer was simple; I would leave the electric behind.

Another interesting data point is that, due to the pandemic, we've had a couple of cars almost parked 100% of the time for since, say, March. Let's put it this way, last time I went to drive my little sports car it had spider webs between the tires and the ground. I've never seen that before.

Without constant charging this would be a massive problem for electrics. It hasn't been an issue with our IG cars, although, yes, there's a practical limit to how long gasoline can be stored without consequences.

Frankly, I don't know what it will take to spin my head back around. I absolutely do want electric vehicles in the future, and that future was going to be 2021 or 2022. Now that timeline is pushed to until such time as the infrastructure and practical realities of running electric cars become equivalent.

This is also why I believe the future of electrics has to lie in some kind of a liquid-based battery charge technology rather than conventional charging. In other words, you would pump a liquid into your battery pack in 5 minutes rather than electrons.

There's a question about whether or not the electrical grid could handle having tens of millions of electric vehicles charging at one time. I haven't done any math on this, which means it is hard to have a valid opinion. Gut feeling? I am not sure we can support mass adoption of electrics.

<comment><USER23> > 50 miles. Hmmm. Now, that's a test I can pass on a bicycle.

Hell, I've done it on foot multiple times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tis a great car. Take a test drive if you are on the fence.</comment>


The company behind Silicon Valley's dirty little secret - <AUTHOR> https://mixergy.com/interviews/cloudfactory-with-mark-sears/ <comment><USER2> Can't even read the article because of some shitty huge overlay about some Facebook experiment bullshit</comment>


Fishermen, Explorers and Trading Ships. Not all entrepreneurs are the same. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/c2edfc55b2d9

<comment><AUTHOR> This analogy started as a way to explain the scene to friends and stretches further to include company builders, patents, bootstrapping and pirates. But keeping this post under five minutes to read.</comment>


Your Developer Can Sleep When He/She is Dead   - <AUTHOR> http://www.domain.me/blog/your-developer-will-sleep-when-he-she-is-dead-3370

<comment><USER2> Wrote comment there, but for the sake of discussion I'll post it here also:

Great points. The best way to find cofounder developer is to give him possibility to test new technology in the project he is passionate about (with clear perspective and tangible goals).

For example, are you looking to create [something] real time - it's great way for developer to try NodeJs (he was thinking to experiment with it anyway, just didn't find a reason to do so, and your project should be good reason)</comment>


Racket Is an Acceptable Python - <AUTHOR> https://dustycloud.org/blog/racket-is-an-acceptable-python/ <comment><USER2> I've been making a language called TXR for ... oh, ten years this coming August now. It combines a Lisp dialect ("TXR Lisp") with a whole-document pattern-based extraction language ("TXR Pattern Language"). It takes the form of a simple executable with a few satellite files in your /usr/share.

Lots of "batteries" are included in TXR Lisp: object system with static and instance slots, single inheritance, GC finalization and a form of RAII, exception handling, delimited continuations, byte code compiler for virtual machine, file compilation, macros (of course), regexes, built-in lazy lists, a fantastic set of macros for partial application, a comprehensive declarative FFI, good amount of POSIX wrapage built-in, a decent REPL with history, completion, multi-line editing, visual copy-paste, ...

TXR Lisp has a concept similar to CL's "generalized places" implemented differently. It supports Lisp-1-style evaluation (higher order functions used without a _funcall_ operator), in the middle of a Lisp-2 substrate. Traditional list operations are generalized so they work on other sequences; you can _mapcar_ over a string and such.

Link: [https://nongnu.org/txr](https://nongnu.org/txr)

<comment><USER3> First of all, thanks for doing this and making it free.

I do a lot of shell based work (Linux commands, Awk, Python, Perl, and Powershell) and Lisp has always interested me, so this may scratch an itch.

How easy is this to get setup? Just a few binaries?

Also, one barrier to me has always been learning lisp as it is very different from most traditional scripting languages. I took a look at your examples and it looks neat, but a little complex. Is there a tutorial document that goes over the main functionality and commands. Like with Linux, knowing grep,cut, sort, uniq, cat, and a few others can take you a long way. I should add that although I haven't coded enough lisp to get competent, I've read two books on Common Lisp and have played with Chez Scheme, Racket, and Clojure...so I get the concepts with CONS/CAR/CDR...macros...etc.

<comment><USER2> > _How easy is this to get setup? Just a few binaries?_

From sources, just unpack, ./configure (with --prefix=/your/dest/dir if you don't want it in /usr/local/bin), make, make tests, make install if you're going from source. The dependencies are very low. But one of them is libffi; ./configure doesn't complain about it missing, but you get a build with reduced functionality (which doesn't pass certain tests).

For every release I make tarball packages for for older Debian 5.x (64 bit), Ubuntu 12 (32 bit), Mac OS 10.7.4 (64) and Solaris 10 (x86, 32 bit) as well as Cygwin (32 and 64).

For native Windows, I make a installer. It registers TXR into your PATH environment variable and associates .txr and .tl file associations.

TXR installations are relocatable: TXR discovers its own path and then finds the satellite files relative to its own location; if you keep the relative locations of the pieces as they are, you can move it anywhere in your filesystem. That's also useful for deployment. In the TXR executable there is a 128 byte space where you can embed command-line arguments to the executable. There is a helper function for this called _save-exe_. [https://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-02850687](https://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-02850687)

If you've read books on Common Lisp, you're in pretty good stead. My own Lisp background is heavily Common Lisp, and the CL influences in TXR Lisp are clear; yet it's not CL and will probably mess with your head if you know a bit of CL in ways that it wouldn't if you didn't know CL. The reference manual has some dialect notes in relation to CL, far and few between though.

I don't have a newbie tutorial, unfortunately; I'm hoping someone else will write that. Keeping the documentation complete and at a good level of quality has been a big effort; it's pushing close to 700 pages now if PDF-ed.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the lengthy reply. I'll have to give it a try at some point.

Even as a current non user I'm always super stoked by the large effort put into these projects and wish you the best!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Racket is great if you are looking for a high quality general purpose language, but if you want to use important python libraries for pythons's popular use cases: numerical/scientific computing, data science/ai, etc., then Hylang is a drop-in replacement with the added benefit of Metaprogramming facilities (Lisp-2 macros) and Clojure-like semantics.

Python and Hy have 100% interoperability. Python can call Hy out of the box, and Hy can call Python out of the box.

Any Python programmer can pick up Hy basics in minutes, and will be productive in a matter of hours. If you are an intermediate level Python programmer and have experience with Lisp macros, you will be writing macros in no time as well. Writing macro wrappers for numerical/scientific applications can increase your code's signal to noise ratio by quite a lot.

docs: [http://docs.hylang.org/en/stable/](http://docs.hylang.org/en/stable/)

github: [https://github.com/hylang/hy](https://github.com/hylang/hy)

get it:

      pip install hy

<comment><USER5> Actually Hy is mentioned in the article, though the author found it didn't fit his usecase.

> Alas, Hy didn't really reach my dream. That macro expansion made debugging a > nightmare as Hy would lose track of where the line numbers are; it wasn't > until that when I really realized that without line numbers, you're just > lost in terms of debugging in Python-land. That and Python didn't really > have the right primitives; immutable datastructures for whatever reason > never became first class, meaning that functional programming was hard, > "cons" didn't really exist (actually this doesn't matter as much as people > might think), recursive programming isn't really as possible without tail > call elimination, etc

<comment><USER4> Debugging macro expanded code is definitely the number one pain with Hy, although a somewhat workable solution is to view the output of hy2py (comes with hy).

As far as the lack of functional programming semantics go (no tail call elimination is very sad indeed), there is no denying that either, but considering the applications I am recommending (c/c++ inter-op with python wrappers), you are hardly working in a functional domain in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A big use case for python is glue for high performance c/c++ code. How is racket at this? Also, is there a cython alternative for racket? I would also argue that, though racket may have more batteries included, there are definitely not as many externally developed libraries. Especially important are numpy/scipy/pandas/pysam, the list could go on... That's not to say that I'm against racket, I really like the language and its level of design and documentation.

<comment><USER7> I've used the Racket FFI for some important tasks, and it's very easy to use. However, it's not as fully baked as the Python one (I've found bugs due to GC interactions) and it's weirdly slow (a few too many levels of wrapping). That said, I still use Racket extensively and enjoy it.

<comment><USER8> This is the write up I was looking for as this is the use case I've had in mind for Racket of late after reading Felleisen's LOP paper.

Would love to know more about your experiences with doing Racket FFI. How hard were the bugs around GC to discover and workaround? What were you building in Racket?

<comment><USER7> See my responses to a sibling comment for Github bug reports. I had a great experience with them: very fast triage and fixes, plus a lot of help developing a workaround so we could target a range of Racket versions. (Distros still ship some old versions!)

These bugs were found while working on Herbie <[http://herbie.uwplse.org/>](http://herbie.uwplse.org/>). We use the FFI to bind to your machine's math libraries so we can properly evaluate how accurate a floating-point expression is on your machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Since we're talking about Racket, don't forget that it's RacketCon this weekend: [https://con.racket-lang.org/](https://con.racket-lang.org/)

<comment><USER10> I hope this year it's videoed well. In past years except the last it's been fine, but last year I'm guessing whoever normally does it wasn't available for 2018.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's one person doing the recordings and has been the same the last few years iiuc. They were just under-resourced I believe, and last year especially. They're doing a damn good job given the constraints they've been putting things together under I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I'm impressed with racket on the whole, I can't quite agree to be impressed by the GUI bits. They're extremely limited, and once I got away from "how do I put a button on the screen" I didn't find the underlying implementation lent itself to being extended. In particular the drag and drop system only goes as far as file drops, and I quite quickly hit a brick wall trying to add anything more interesting.

<comment><USER12> Being inexperienced with modern Python, that leads me to ask, what's the story with GUI work on Python? Are there any good libraries?

<comment><USER10> Tk from python is pretty damn convenient, being as it's always there. Not the most modern toolkit for sure, but always being there is a pretty compelling feature for some GUI projects.

<comment><USER13> FWIW, ubuntu python3 does not install Tk by default.

<comment><USER14> Don't use system python. Use a virtualenv and install your own python. I would expect system python to only install what is needed.

<comment><USER15> I think aidenn0 was just replying to the claim that "it's always there".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am always confused when people talk about the language itself.

In my experience, python is used for Tensorflow, or Pandas, or Django, or Flask, or pytorch or something else that runs on top of it. Sometimes it is even more specialized and I need a wrapper for an API to let me talk to some web data. Maybe I need a crawler/scraper and a parser. There is a specialized language on top of the language.

So when someone says, oh this language is better with objects, or has some syntax thing or the other, or I can reason about it I am left confused.

Its like if I were talking to a professional shoe designer and I ask for hiking boots and they tell me that they're really into having at least two tones to offset the lace and the heels or something.

What am I missing? I want to reason about the language too, but doesn't that pale in comparison to being able to run a specialized library?

<comment><USER2> You're missing that people write mountains of code in Python and similar languages; they are not always just for a small amount of glue to gain access to some specialized libraries.

<comment><USER16> Well, I assume people write mountains of code in the library. If you're making a machine learning product, that is still a lot of work.

However, writing your own Tensorflow interface would take several human lifetimes to get it right, and Google already has provided it. So it seems that is not the part you would re-write no matter how good the language is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While I prefer my languages statically typed, if you're going to use a dynamically typed language, Racket is far superior to Python.

<comment><AUTHOR> Racket also supports several statically typed languages... look up Turnstile, Typed Racket, and Hackett

<comment><USER7> I've found that Typed Racket is still fairly hard to use. For example, type classes aren't there, and type polymorphism interacts poorly with general- purpose functions like "equal?". I would guess that ML or Haskell code translates fairly naturally, but there aren't the guide-rails those languages have to keep you in the subset of the language that type-checks well.

<comment><USER18> Typed Racket has type classes: [https://docs.racket-lang.org/ts- reference/Typed_Classes.html](https://docs.racket-lang.org/ts- reference/Typed_Classes.html)

<comment><USER7> Uhh, sorry, I meant type classes in the Haskell sense (similar to interfaces), not typed classes (like in Java).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> F-0X An _acceptable_ python!? More like Python is an unacceptable Racket.

Racket is an absolute joy to use.

</comment><comment><USER19> > "Lisp is too hard to learn" is a lie; if middle schoolers can learn it, so > can more seasoned programmers.

Please, some famous, authoritative figure, say this out loud. I'm running out of ideas to convince people of this.

<comment><USER20> good luck talking "seasoned programmers" into or out of anything. that's the real problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What are the best library's for data science in Racket? -Finding it hard to step away from Julia when operate on a amazing large data file and not kill the CPU.

How about packages to convert Racket to WASM?

<comment><USER22> I'm a data engineer and avid Racketeer. Racket is not at all a satisfactory replacement for Julia if you are doing data science. Specifically if you use Flux, you should know deep learning tools are basically non-existent on Racket. Someone once made a paper called DeepRacket and a Github repo, but it hasn't been touched since.

If someone out there knows more than I do please let me know because I'd love to be wrong. There is some decent linear algebra stuff, at least: [https://docs.racket-lang.org/math/matrices.html](https://docs.racket- lang.org/math/matrices.html)

Racket is both helped and harmed by it's popularity in certain academic circles. Harmed, in that a lot of graduate students make a thesis of creating some badass library in Racket only to completely abandon it. But I'm still really rooting for Racket, it deserves more hype.

<comment><USER23> > _Racket is both helped and harmed by it 's popularity in certain academic > circles._

Exactly, in a few ways. One way is that a number of Felleisen's original grad students got professorships and kept doing systems research (and development) with Racket. But most contributors who don't get professorships, nor the handful of researcher jobs, end up working on other systems where the jobs are, academic or industry. Industry use tends to be one-person projects, often because you have a smart person doing something that can't be done with off- the-shelf (e.g., Naughty Dog's video game narrative DSL, a think tank researcher's work, some complicated data science server stuff that I worked on, and various indie moonlighting projects), and so one-person efforts aren't posting jobs. Bigger industry use would mean more contributors, but top programmers are generally ill-equipped for enterprise sales, so I'd bet on startup success stories to jumpstart greater popularity (even if you use Racket to beta, and then whatever you figured out gets rewritten in a popular commodity-worker platform).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For my money, to be an acceptable Python, you have to be able to use the Python numeric, scientific and machine learning libraries -- or have other libraries that are just as good or better. That is the number one reason I would use Python in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER25> > But I missed parentheses. I longed for parentheses. I dreamed in parentheses

I'm honestly kind of scared to ever learn a Lisp because it seems it permanently alters your brain to the point where it damages your ability to program in other languages (aka ones that you can responsibly use in an organisation can't rely on niche skill sets).

<comment><USER10> My friend offered to grill me a hamburger last Saturday when we were hanging out in his backyard, but I politely declined. His burgers look desirable, but I explained my concern that tasting one of his burgers might permanently diminish my appreciation of Big Macs. And besides, I can buy a big mac anywhere in the world except north korea, so really that's a more pragmatic preference.

Well I thought I was being diplomatic, but my friend just shook his head and called me a moron. Can you believe the nerve of some people?

(I don't think Lisp damages your _ability_ to program in other languages. But I do think it puts those other languages into context and that context often makes other languages worse than they did before.)

<comment><USER26> If I were forced to live in Plato's cave, I would rather have no knowledge of anything outside of it.

Many people are locked into an ecosystem by, for example, employment. Why make yourself less happy with the tools you need to use if doing so is for no other benefit? Ignorance can be bliss.

<comment><USER27> > Why make yourself less happy with the tools you need to use if doing so is > for no other benefit? Ignorance can be bliss.

It teaches you how to think about problems in your specific domain more critically, and perhaps more effectively, even if you can't directly translate idioms into another language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It would be remiss not to mention that it's (somewhat) possible to write python in racket as a "hashlang"

[https://pkgs.racket-lang.org/package/python](https://pkgs.racket- lang.org/package/python)

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm quite glad my freshman material was in Racket and not Python. I'm sad to hear some educational programs like MITs are moving the wrong direction here.

<comment><USER23> I think MIT people had their reasons for "rethinking" and trying out Java, and then Python. One of the factors I recall was a perceived changing nature of CS practice (moving to assembling from components, rather than understanding&building from the ground up), but I can't properly represent all of the rationales here.

Fortunately, the MIT SICP authors made the book freely available, so anyone can continue to work through it, as a complement to our other learning opportunities.

And Racket's `#lang` support is helping to keep the particular Scheme dialect and library used by MIT SICP running on all the currently popular desktops (Unixes, Macs, and Windows): [https://pkgs.racket- lang.org/package/sicp](https://pkgs.racket-lang.org/package/sicp)

<comment><USER20> > I think MIT people had their reasons for "rethinking" and trying out Java, > and then Python. One of the factors I recall was a perceived changing nature > of CS practice (moving to assembling from components, rather than > understanding&building from the ground up), but I can't properly represent > all of the rationales here.

i really don't fully understand their rationale. as i understand it, just at the time that abelson and sussman grew tired of teaching the course, mit felt the need to restructure their curriculum to meet modern demands and changes in software engineering. of course, things have transitioned from building things up to "poking", but i feel many of the principles of sicp remain unchanged. but even ignoring that, i feel mit made a crucial mistake, in my opinion.

mit is a research and education institute. as a programming language, python is not uniquely suitable for computer science research other than its machine learning and data science library support. i feel it is also not suitable for education either, especially not in the same way a lisp or scheme is. python is what is given to you and thus makes it difficult to explore and implement other paradigms of programming and other ideas in the same language like lisp and scheme can do, and certainly not in the way racket can. now, right next door to mit is northeastern, one of the major racket hubs. racket is a re- envisioned scheme and programming language. it is very much suited to computer science research, building languages for teaching and education (for example, pyret was originally implemented as a racket language), and comes with plenty of library support for general purpose programming. so other than having a lack of libraries for machine learning, data science, and scientific computing, it beats python in every category of comparison. and mit's own language, julia, takes care of those missing components. there's no reason why mit couldn't have developed libraries and teaching packages in racket for their courses.

so imagine if mit had chosen racket as their language. that would bolster racket development and popularity. it could have created a bridge between northeastern and mit and would have taught racket to the thousands of mit students and online students. it could have been a huge leap for racket in terms of popularity and use. and mit could have grown to be an additional hub for racket research and development right next door. and also, racket is an evolution of the scheme language, which would have been a perfect segue from the old curriculum.

but no, mit chose a language that was invented over a period of a couple weeks by a stubborn guy who wanted to replace perl. i strongly suspect that there were political and monetary reasons to choose python. and mit probably has a chip on its shoulder, like it does with everything. mit has also become a university driven by the need to raise money, and i think it has gone all in on taking all the machine learning and "ai" money it can. that later point is probably the real reason.

<comment><USER23> I agree that SICP is valuable, and years ago, I tried to help make it accessible to people on low-powered computers [1], and to help preserve software support for it [2].

I don't know all the rationale for MIT's moves to other things, but the decision we can see seems plausible to me. (Python is a lingua franca at the moment, popular in ML and data science, still somewhat popular in Web, and very easy to pick up. Even language-nerd me wrote some production Python code that moves large amounts of important data around.)

I agree that modern Scheme (perhaps starting with Racket) seems like a great platform for much of CS-ish education, and for a lot of research and development. I also agree that putting substantial MIT resources behind building out Scheme/Racket seems like it would've been huge. Maybe that will happen.

A lot of MIT behavior emerges from that of individual faculty members and senior research staff, who have some degrees of autonomy. MIT has also prided itself on being big on "experiments", and not having rules that might get in the way of someone exploring ideas. If you have the opportunity, you can try to use that to help make things happen.

[1] [https://www.neilvandyke.org/sicp-texi/](https://www.neilvandyke.org/sicp- texi/)

[2] [https://pkgs.racket-lang.org/package/sicp](https://pkgs.racket- lang.org/package/sicp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Pyret is an even more acceptable Python: [https://www.pyret.org/](https://www.pyret.org/)

<comment><USER31> It's designed for teaching, but I don't think it runs anywhere other than in a browser?

<comment><USER32> it doesn't :( it would have been my instant new favourite scripting language if it ran on the command line.

<comment><USER33> Actually it does, you can run it from Node.js [https://github.com/brownplt/pyret-lang](https://github.com/brownplt/pyret- lang) and use it as a scripting language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It might be off-topic. I see there's racket in techempower framework benchmarks [1] but I can't find racket from round 18 results [2], is it too slow?

[1] [https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/tree/mast...](https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/tree/master/frameworks/Racket) [2] [https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r18](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r18)

</comment><comment><USER35> What is the purpose of Racket? Is there any use for web development?

<comment><USER36> I'd say Racket is a general purpose multi-paradigm language that is well designed.

Good for use cases where you otherwise might find code written in JavaScript, Python, Clojure or Ruby.

You can do web development with Racket [https://docs.racket- lang.org/continue/](https://docs.racket-lang.org/continue/)

One thing that makes Racket somewhat special is that it can be used to build your own languages (e.g. domain specific languages) with it as it comes with the tools and a community that has experience in it.

[https://beautifulracket.com/](https://beautifulracket.com/)

There also is a great introduction to programming online course with Racket by Gregor Kiczales [https://www.edx.org/course/how-code-simple-data-ubcx- htc1x](https://www.edx.org/course/how-code-simple-data-ubcx-htc1x)

<comment><USER15> > There also is a great introduction to programming online course with Racket > by Gregor Kiczales [https://www.edx.org/course/how-code-simple-data-ubcx- > htc1x](https://www.edx.org/course/how-code-simple-data-ubcx-htc1x)

Probably anyone who would be interested knows it without its needing to be pointed out, but I mention in case it entices anyone that Gregor Kiczales is one of the authors of "The Art of the Meta-Object Protocol" ([https://www.amazon.com/Art-Metaobject-Protocol-Gregor- Kiczal...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Metaobject-Protocol-Gregor- Kiczales/dp/0262610744) ; edited to remove abbreviation).

<comment><USER37> > The art of the MOP

Please, what does that mean? I program in Racket, and have enjoyed the vidoes but googling this phrase suggests either Prof Kiczales likes to clean floors in an innovative way, or else he is a member of Hip-Hop group. I'm not finding either terribly credible.

<comment><USER38> The MOP is the Meta Object Protocol, which is the meta-language for controlling how CLOS operates internally. How exactly are classes, inheritance, instances, slots, method dispatch, method combination, etc implemented? In most object-oriented languages, you have very little insight into these issues and certainly no control over them. In CLOS you have both, thanks to the MOP. Just one more reason why CLOS is the most powerful OO system ever devised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If racket is an acceptable python and python is an acceptable lisp, then racket must be an acceptable lisp?

<comment><USER40> python's not an acceptable lisp - no metaprogramming; no macros

<comment><USER41> He's making reference to Steve Yegge's riff on Eric Kidd's post, which kicked off the whole "Are Xs acceptable Ys" blogpost template.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I find Nim to be much closer to a statically typed Python - with the speed of C.

<comment><USER43> Not really sure how this is relevant here, judging by your post history and username you seem to have a one track mind...

Maybe if you provided some examples of how Nim compares to Python or Racket, weighing the pros and cons, etc, I wouldn't assume you're only here to shill Nim.

Edit: Anyone care to explain why my post is flagged and the parent comment isn't? I would like to keep the discussion on topic...I didn't think I was being too harsh.

<comment><USER44> Your comment broke several of the site guidelines. That's why comments get flagged here. Would you mind reviewing them and sticking to the rules when posting to HN?

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Say your task was to read metadata about rest api endpoints and generate an sdk in c#.

Would racket's LOP features make it compelling? Or would you be more inclined to build it in c# since that is the target language?

</comment><comment><USER46> How is the scientific computing/machine learning ecosystem for Racket? Looking for suggestion from people who are experienced.

</comment><comment><USER47> Python runs on iOS, Racket does not. The need for a JIT to make Racket performant also makes it unlikely that it ever will.

<comment><USER10> If you want a _lisp on mobile_ kick, I've heard good things about lambdanative. It would still be cool to have racket mobile apps though.

<comment><USER48> I have only looked at the code and built the demos for lambdanative, but from what I have seen if I had to write mobile apps then I would seriously consider it. It is built in the excellent Gambit Scheme.</comment></comment></comment>