What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You - <AUTHOR> https://www.sigarch.org/what-happens-to-us-does-not-happen-to-most-of-you/ <comment><USER2> These stories upset me deeply. But as much as they upset me, they surprise me. And that's because until it was just recently, after 20+ years in the computer industry, that I discovered how pervasive such behavior is.

I'm not happy that such stories take place. But I am happy that a growing number of women are telling their stories, shocking those of us who were able to be blissfully ignorant of what was going on, and forcing us to realize just how poorly our female colleagues are sometimes being treated.

Let's even assume that 90% of the time, things are great for women in high tech. How many women are willing to put up with even 10% (or even 1%) of their time dealing with such behavior? I'm not sure if I would. And then we wonder why so many women aren't interested in technology careers, or leave after a short period of time.

I hope that these stories eventually end. But in order for them to end, we need to hear more of them, to realize just how bad things are, and to make it completely unacceptable, in every way, for things to continue as they currently are.

<comment><USER3> > _... things are great for women in high tech._

Why do so many people keep insisting on believing that the problem is specific to the technology fields? Women face these kind of problems _everywhere_ that they have to interact with men.

<comment><USER4> Because tech is new and likes to think of itself as better than that.

"Look, we were harassed and discriminated against all through high school! We would never treat anyone like that."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> During my PhD work I often accompanied my advisor in presenting her lab's research (not only or even mainly mine) to interested companies and governments. She was an incredibly accomplished, tenured faculty member who had pulled together a massive research team (and budget) at a top research University. I was a 22 year old white guy with a BS. But many many times, I found government and industry types addressing comments, questions, and even follow-up requests almost exclusively to me.

I tried to imagine what it was like to tough out that culture back when she was a grad student or junior faculty, long before this was a even a major topic of discussion. I wussed out of the grind I would have faced as a junior faculty, even sporting all the right aesthetics. To those who have stuck it out against major challenges: you are tough as nails, you are improving the system, and it is noticed by and impacts more people than you think.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't like how they buried what I consider the lede.

"For the authors of this article, each negative story is overshadowed by dozens of positive experiences, where someone went out of their way to offer support, provide opportunities, and encourage us."

I think this matters to encouraging both women and men. Yes, jerks exist. Sometimes its good people having bad days, some people are monsters hiding under a veneer (ex Hollywood's Weinstein).

We need to stop dehumanizing each other, and understand all humans have the full expanse of positive and negative emotions.

Most people in technology are not bros, sjws, ceos, and whatever.

They are just people trying to get by.

<comment><USER7> Does it matter to a woman whether their harasser is a "real" bad guy or they're just accidentally doing a good job at playing one? The idea that us 'good' men can have a bad day, misstep, or misinterpret things is definitely true, but the following idea that it some how disqualifies the action as harassment is very much not. If you don't want to be put in a bucket with Harvey Weinstein, then you need to realize that everyone has the capability to be the villain sometimes, and if you've found yourself toeing that line, you need to strongly consider what brought you there and you need to make amends in the right way.

<comment><USER8> I believe parent comment's point was that there's a difference between "Every man in comparch (or insert field here) is Harvey Weinstein" and "x% of men in comparch are y% of Harvey Weinstein" realities.

With substantially different suggestions on how to make things better for each. (Respectively, 'murder all the men' and 'be aware of and active against misogyny and sexism around you')

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just wish that when people talk about these stories, they would highlight the country where they are writing them from.

As someone living in Europe (who lived and worked in one of more country), some of these "cultural" aspects against a certain gender feel so much out of place. In particular, expecting someone who is pregnant to quit the job is just unthinkable. Most engineering work places in Europe expect the person to take paternity/maternity leave and take care of the children but the job will be secured.

I'm not saying that gender descrimination doesn't happen in Europe but I feel that the US have a lot of more of these extreme and ridiculous scenarios.

<comment><USER10> Speaking as a Swede, that is not entirely true in my experience. It's still expensive for employers and they don't like hiring women who will soon be pregnant.Or their men for that matter, but those are harder to spot :) I have female friends who changed jobs just before getting pregnant or visibly pregnant, and those employers were not happy.

<comment><USER11> Well I'm going to play the devil's advocate: How would you feel about looking for an employee for months, spending tremendous amounts of money on recruiting them, training them afterwards, only to find out that they're not going to work for you for several years and didn't even mention that, possibly messing up your financial situation, screwing up any long term planning, etc? How do you feel when someone takes an unplanned vacation (and that's just for a few weeks)?

The other cases of harassment are terrible. But I can sympathize with the managers/business owners on this one - not that I support them. I see their point.

<comment><USER12> How do you feel doesn't go into it. You probably feel like shit, granted. But we as a society have decided that it's more important that women can feel at least a little bit safer having a family as well as a career and we've regulated this so that they can be protected from losing their job.

In some more advanced countries than the US or Papua New Guinea there is even mandatory paid leave, go figure.

As an exercise you can take the pregnant woman in your example and replace with a cyclist in a bike accident or someone who was just diagnosed with cancer.

<comment><USER11> Reaction to your edit with a cyclist, I have no idea how that relates to this case. That's an accident, something that no one knew will happen, and everyone understands that. On the other hand it doesn't seem nice to purposefully not tell someone information that might be extremely important to them and might even mean if they do or do not lose their business.

<comment><USER12> Pregnancies are not all exactly planned…

<comment><USER13> And pregnancies don't happen out of the blue either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are a lot of disturbing things in these stories, but I also see a lot of remarks about situations that have a number of alternative explanations besides sexism.

For instance:

> Noting how if two women are talking to each other at a conference, it > becomes highly unlikely any guys will walk up and join us. If three women > are talking, forget about it.

Yes, indeed, and there are a number of reasons for this. From my point of view, I would avoid approaching a group of women talking by themselves since I'd be the odd one out.

> My "mentor" told me he had never worked with a woman before and wasn't sure > how to talk to me. I suggested he try talking to me like a person.

Depending on the tone, it may mean something completely different than what you are trying to say.

In fact, to me, it looks to me like he was talking about an insecurity he has, and it's not directly related to you... and you are tagging this as sexism.

Long story short, there is a clear line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, and that is respect. It's clear that this line was crossed in a number of times in these stories, but just because you are in a position where you didn't like something doesn't mean the line was automatically crossed.

<comment><USER15> > From my point of view, I would avoid approaching a group of women talking by > themselves since I'd be the odd one out.

That _is_ exactly sexism – the subtle, insidious kind that us men tend not to even notice. You _aren 't_ the odd one out; you and them are all professionals at a conference.

That many men – the majority of attendees at most tech conferences – make decisions like yours is a major reason why it is more difficult for women to advance in tech fields than men. Behavior like this is exactly what people mean when they talk about "patriarchy". That it's subtle and "innocent" – "I'd be the odd one out" – is what makes us not recognize it in ourselves.

<comment><USER16> > That is exactly sexism – the subtle, insidious kind that us men tend not to > even notice

Suppose there is a group of girls at a high school is approached by a single guy that doesn't know them. What is the odds of being welcomed into the conversation without any questioning looks? At least at the high school I went to, it'd pretty low odds. As a consequence, guys learned not to do that.

That stuff carries forward, even if the situation has changed somewhat. You have a population of men trying to be polite. They're not going to approach groups that have given them negative feedback before, because they don't want to be a jerk.

<comment><USER17> Once again: "you and them are all professionals at a conference."

You aren't in high school.

You aren't facing a clique of girls who happen to all live in the same neighborhood and have radically different interests likes and dislikes from you.

You're facing a group of top industry professionals self-selected from around the region/country/world (depending on how large/prestigious of a conference it is).

And the fact that you don't understand this distinction, the fact that you think it's legitimate for a man to categories "groups of women" as "cliques of mean girls" from high school onwards without reflecting or reevaluating the changing circumstances is why society (and more specifically YOU) still have a long way to go to understand what sexism is and is not.

<comment><USER16> Kindly think a little deeper into what you're reading instead of leaping to insult people.

There is a difference between explaining why people do things and approving of it? I was literally explaining why the "insidious" sexism existed. I even quoted what I wanted to elaborate on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a man, I'm clueless on how to help. I certainly don't make any comments of similar nature or perform actions described in the stories.

However, if I were to observe such an event happening, I'd be frozen. One half of me thinks, the woman is an individual and can stand up for herself. If she's uncomfortable, she'll say or do something. She's of equal standing.

The other half of me, I feel like I should say something. But by doing so, that asserts my male patriarchy views, protecting women from the danger. Women wouldn't be considered an equal in this scenario.

<comment><USER19> _As a man, I 'm clueless on how to help._

The single most powerful thing you can do is engage women as serious professionals.

My biggest frustration is not with the guys who want to talk to me to hit on me. It is with the countless others who will not engage me in a substantive manner for fear of it being misconstrued. They de facto leave me alone with the creeps, trolls and assholes and are, on some level, equally guilty of treating me as nothing but a vagina. It gives far too much weight to my gender and far too little to my education, skills, competence, interests and character.

Whether a man is talking to me solely in hopes of a hookup or avoiding me for fear of offending or something, he is equally guilty of treating me like the single most important thing about me, the thing that drives all social decisions, is what bits are between my legs. This is the essence of sexism.

<comment><USER20> _Whether a man is talking to me solely in hopes of a hookup or avoiding me for fear of offending or something, he is equally guilty_

I have a problem with that statement.

<comment><USER21> Agreed, there is no way the guilt there is equal.

<comment><USER19> Your statement and the one above are part of the problem, not part of the solution. My mind boggles that you are fine with arguing that your guilt is lesser, thus somehow apparently okay in your mind.

This is exactly why progress is so painfully slow. For every one man pushing a woman into the river to intentionally drown her, a thousand more stand idly by and say "Not my problem" and then worry vastly more about defending their right to do nothing than about the injustice they witness daily.

<comment><USER21> If a woman wants to come talk to me as a professional, I'm all for it. I love it when women take initiative to come talk to me, and not in some creep way like people may think, but rather because it instantly makes me a lot less anxious. I can't be readily accused of hitting on her if she came to me first.

However, I can probably count on one hand the number of times a woman has come up to me in my professional career to talk to me about anything of professional significance.

Every time I approach a woman first however, there's always an anxiety that I'll be perceived as a creep, trying to play a really long game of hooking up with her. I know women must think this, because I constantly hear their stories about the various ways men hit on them in nearly any situation, and there always seems to be a bit of an awkwardness that isn't there when they approach me first.

And if the woman I approach happens to be attractive and younger than me? It looks real bad. Indeed, if someone could have any reasonable doubt that my professional conversation with a woman is anything more than platonic, I would be uncomfortable in that conversation. Men would look at this and think "Yea he's probably trying to get with her".

I do not get the same anxiety when talking to a woman with her husband or boyfriend, or a woman who is much older than me, or homosexual women.

The thing about standing by and saying this is "not my problem" is that it really isn't my problem. My problem is completely different from yours, even though it's in the same domain, and nobody helps me with it either. As a basic straight white male, I'm a dime a dozen and if I voice any kind of problem the response is to go fuck myself.

This has nothing to do with you being a woman, there are also men with problems that I do nothing for. It's nothing personal, it's just business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a man I have no equivalent experience, so it's very difficult to judge. However, being in a mostly male environment the probabilities of encountering a 'dick' are very good. Should all 'dicks' be sent to the gulags? How can we stop them becoming/acting like 'dicks'? Enact tougher 'dick' laws?

I really don't understand how this could ever be resolved. Talking about it seems like a start, but it really makes me feel like I am part of the problem as a man, and I don't feel this is positive tone to this conversation.

Help?

<comment><USER23> Being a man does not make you a part of the problem any more than being a woman makes you a victim. The behavior is what's bad, not being a male. This thought process is actually what we are trying to battle: being of one sex or race does not make you inherently better or worse than anyone else.

I hope that there is a positive to find: that socially we can empower those who would otherwise be victims through our support. I'm not sure what exactly that looks like yet, but we're figuring that out. We're talking about it. That's positive :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's depressing that I remember exactly this shit from my time in US academia. Not about me, being a man, but what I saw, and what my woman friends shared with me. I recall a woman who didn't get tenure, because she was the only woman in the department, and had no friends to support her. I recall female grad students who were sexually assaulted by their advisers. Some of whom were on my thesis committee, and were great mentors. It's just so fucking sad that it's still so common, decades later :(

</comment><comment><USER25> I think there are two broad camps of thinking processes, one that fits people into stereotypes and does system 1 type of thinking. This camp believes in built in traits _always_ lead to certain biases. They perpetuate those biases as well. While its true that exposure in young adulthood to certain things leads to bias to a certain extent, the main driver is _YOU_ , your camp, which created those biases. Remember all those women that dropped out of the Software workforce in the 70's? Someone _MADE_ those conditions happen.

The lack of understanding that those biases _can_ be reversed is what needs to be corrected. This is the other camp, the camp that understands this and proactively fixes things, that needs to be made bigger.

I think, such things start very young. They starts in pre-schools where girls are given a doll and boys are given the lego blocks or children are not sensitized to color of the skin issues.

<comment><USER26> > Remember all those women that dropped out of the Software workforce in the > 70's?

What's this?

<comment><USER27> A lot of the early CS-related workforce was actually made of women, because dealing with mainframes was originally seen as an extension of typing and shorthand (secretarial work traditionally reserved to women) with some math on top. Sometime around the early '70s / early '80s, the field morphed into the male-dominated world we see today.

This has been discussed on HN in the past, usually in threads about female CS pioneers working at NASA and so on. I believe the consensus is that there wasn't a single individual cause for the change, but rather a number of conditions changed around the same time, discouraging women from CS-related jobs.

<comment><USER28> The field morphing in to being male dominated and the existing women dropping out are two different things. Sure, what you're saying has been discussed plenty on HN. As far as I know the other posters statement hasn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Many of these experiences are definitely ranging from unfortunate to terrible for women trying to simply have a productive career in a made dominated workplace.

I just wanted to make a simple mathematical point, which the article kind of alludes to: the more X-dominated a field is, the more you would have run-ins with X, and thus more stories of inappropriate behavior by X.

I wonder what stories guys have of joining female-dominated fields. Are they called the token guy? Do women make sexual remarks about them? The degree to which the answer is "yes" will be greatly affected by the imbalance in the first place. The bigger it is, the more likely they are to bump up against something bad in everyday life.

Not saying we just have to accept this. Just saying we have to understand that no matter how much we all personally make an effort to act better, these stories will continue. So don't beat _yourself_ up over it and continue to treat everyone as a fellow human being. And don't take it as a criticism of all men.

The same phenomenon happens if you turn on the news and see crimes and murders all the time. That doesn't mean the city is overrun by crime but rather that the stories merited special attention. It doesn't mean YOU necessarily have to constantly keep in mind not to rob or murder someone.

</comment><comment><USER4> Kathryn McKinley: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_S._McKinley?wprov=sfla...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_S._McKinley?wprov=sfla1)

</comment><comment><USER30> Sounds like excluding people who get offended at every little comment is a better way of dealing with things.

</comment><comment><USER31> _A man I thought was a trusted colleague thought my first conference was the right place to make an agressive pass._

Who tf are these people?

<comment><USER32> It's a fair question, but if #MeToo has done anything it's been to highlight that a reasonably high percentage of men will misuse positions of authority for sexual reasons.

The answer is: some of our colleagues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The comment section on this one is both depressing, and utterly predictable. The brigading, the "but's" and the use of the article as a flimsy ideological springboard to make really asinine points. It's good to see people expressing their dismay and surprise too, and hopefully over time those voices will become louder.

We're still a ways from an article like this being met with something more constructive than the usual deflections, excuses, and ideological fights. We're still stuck with arguments that wouldn't have been out of place during various civil rights and suffragette movements.

It's coming though, and I for one can't wait. It's just sad that we're missing out on the talents of many women who make a rational choice to avoid STEM and it's frequn toxic culture of asocial/antisocial asses. It's sad that a site full of bright, educated poeple can still so frequtmly come off as a pack of deflecting, equivocating, terrified boys. Everyone involved deserves better than this.

So speak up, take a risk, and most of all act like and be someone that other people know would stand up for them. Be the kind of person who an absuive prick would never think of saying or doing what's described in this article, around. Talk to and listen to your coworkers, and try to have some ideals beyond personal advancement.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't think the tech industry can really change unless it makes gender balance a priority.

How many tech CEOs will stand up and say: "I have an 80% (or 90% or a 100%) male tech team because there are not enough qualified women to achieve gender balance."

No CEO will be caught dead saying that explicitly but they are saying it implicitly every single day with how they are staffing their companies.

From reading HN it seems like a large percentage of people here _believe_ that the gender gap is due to a qualifications gap and they might dump on people like James Damore for being dumb enough to say it in public but most of them believe it and the way they act shows it.

The bottom line is that if you are not achieving gender balance on your teams what you are telling women and what you are telling the world is that you believe men are superior to women and that women are not qualified for these jobs.

Actions speak louder than words and as long as the actions of companies and individuals reflect this attitude no amount of words is going to change anything.

Achieving gender balance in tech is possible and is only a matter of choice.

There are more than enough qualified women to fill tech jobs in roughly equal proportion with men.

It doesn't happen because (among other reasons):

1) The people doing the hiring are overwhelmingly men and set rules and standards for hiring that discriminate against women

2) Companies believe that young men are more profitable employees and so they do nothing to seriously discourage discrimination

Unless this changes the experience of women in tech will be a negative one.

All a woman has to do to know that she is undervalued and seen as an inferior is walk into a company that has a overwhelmingly male tech team and that is most of them.

<comment><USER23> While I can't speak for others, I'm not sure that most people here think there is a gender gap because of inability on the part of women, but instead maybe a difference in general interests between the sexes.

I'm also not so sure about your claim that "there are more than enough qualified women to fill tech jobs in roughly equal proportion with men." I rarely have the chance to talk to women who are similarly interested in computers, and at my university there are very few women who are in any of my CS classes, despite that I feel that those who are there feel welcome (hopefully. I am not all-knowing, this is my best guess).

I think a better solution to the problem than pressuring people into hiring women simply for the virtue of being female and aiming for 50% would be to call sexism what it is. Call out when people who do the bad of hiring a less qualified man instead of a woman (this is a contrived example, hopefully you're understanding my point).

Solving sexism with more sexism probably won't work.

These are my honest thoughts, hope that's ok.

<comment><USER34> > I rarely have the chance to talk to women who are similarly interested in > computers

This is probably true, but the idea that you have to be "passionate about computers" to do the job is one of those things that men have made up to exclude women.

In order to have gender equality you have to identify these areas of gender difference and eliminate them from hiring criteria.

> pressuring people into hiring women simply for the virtue of being female

That is the mischaracterization that everyone falls back on. They assume that if you have a gender balanced team it is because you hired people "because they are women."

That logic implies that those women are not qualified for the job and that you could never build a gender balanced team with qualified women.

Until we make gender balanced teams the norm people are going to keep thinking like that, which is why it is so important to take corrective action.

<comment><USER23> > the idea that you have to be "passionate about computers" to do the job is > one of those things that men have made up to exclude women.

I didn't say that they need passion. I am saying, however, that I am less likely to go into medicine because I am not interested in it. Maybe the same could be the case for women? (meaning, if there is a general trend that less women are interested, then less will join said field of work, because it is their choice not to).

> That logic implies that those women are not qualified for the job and that > you could never build a gender balanced team with qualified women.

You have a good point. This sentence does have a negative connotation as you say, but it is not exclusively said. Could it also be possible that a push to hire more females (explicitly because of needed gender balance, something that is, in my opinion, contrived) has happened enough recently that people's minds go there first?

> Until we make gender balanced teams the norm people are going to keep > thinking like that, which is why it is so important to take corrective > action.

Interesting point. I'm not willing to say you're wrong, because you might be right. I'll admit, I thought that less women graduate with CS degrees than men though. Am I wrong? If not, how do we get more women to enter that major? And what if they don't want to simply because they're not interested?

edit: I appreciate that we can talk about this btw, and that you seem to respect my opinion. I think this is a valuable part of this discussion. Thanks.

<comment><USER34> > thought that less women graduate with CS degrees than men though

This is absolutely true but it is also true that there are many successful people working in the tech industry at all levels with very little formal comp sci education.

If men can get software engineering jobs with no formal comp sci education, which they certainly can, then the fact that there is an imbalance in degrees does not mean that we have to have an imbalance in employment.

The low representation of women in CS at university level needs to be addressed as well but the best way to do that is by making software development a job that women want and believe that they can succeed in.

People go to college to get training for a career and so if women feel like software development is a profession that excludes women they aren't going to waste their time and money training for it.

"the percentage of CS-degree holders who were women peaked in the 1980s at 34% and has been on a downward trend ever since, even though women currently earn 57% of all undergraduate degrees."

[http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/cracking-the-code:-why- aren...](http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/cracking-the-code:-why-aren-t-more- women-majoring-in-computer-science)

The fact that there has been a sharp decline in female participation in CS in just the past few decades demonstrates that this is a temporary anomaly and not some "fundamental difference between genders" and further demonstrates that large changes are possible with the correct policies.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Postmates is quietly misleading customers about the price of its service - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/722230/postmates-has-failed-to-make-uber-for-anything-cheap/ <comment><USER2> I use it frequently, and it's painfully clear that they're drinking the "growth hacking" kool-aid. Their 20-40 minute ETAs are almost always way off. Pricing is intentionally deceptive; it's usually surging, but they don't tell you that until checkout. To top it off, their customer support is among the worst of any business that I've been a customer of, both in terms of service and infrastructure.

<comment><USER3> Why do you still use it? If a company ever did what was described in the article to me, I would not only never use it again, I'd actively go out of my way to tell people not to use it. Have your experiences been much milder?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> millennials will recall these services the way I recall kozmo.com and urbanfetch, but without the rosy glow of nostalgia.</comment>


Apple Bans App That Allowed Hong Kong Protestors to Track Police Movements - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2019/10/03/apple-bans-app-used-by-hong-kong-protestors/ <comment><USER2> They're happy to stand up to the FBI but not the CCP?</comment>


Faraday Future unveils its FFZero 1 supercar of the future - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/04/faraday-future-zero-1/ <comment><USER2> Meh, Rimac has been doing 1088hp electric cars since 2013.</comment>


Wagtail - <AUTHOR> https://wagtail.io/ <comment><USER2> I'm from Torchbox, the UK agency who created this CMS. We launched Wagtail here on HN just over a year ago, and are currently preparing to release version 1.0, whose headline feature is 'StreamField', our attempt to handle the old CMS dilemma of editor flexibility versus structured data:

[https://torchbox.com/blog/rich-text-fields-and-faster- horses...](https://torchbox.com/blog/rich-text-fields-and-faster-horses/)

It's been an exciting year for us, but we've seen a significant increase in interest in the last couple of months, with a handful of household names adopting Wagtail, including one particularly high profile site which we hope to be able to talk about soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have done R&D to find Django CMS and e-commerce like OpenCart and I spotted Wagtail but I felt it's still growing and didn't reach the level Wordpress. PHP web apps are mature than Django Apps and we need to support this.

Please give me guideline on who to contribute or even how to use it and I'll do my best to help.

<comment><USER2> Contributing - there's a big list of Github issues you can help with:

[https://github.com/torchbox/wagtail/issues](https://github.com/torchbox/wagtail/issues)

How to use it - the docs are pretty comprehensive:

[http://docs.wagtail.io/en/v0.8.6/](http://docs.wagtail.io/en/v0.8.6/)

Getting help - join the user group:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/wagtail](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/wagtail)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We've been looking at several CMS's to use for our upcoming website rewrites. Since our content is quite broad and unique in the way that it links together, we've found that existing solutions doesn't really fit into the usual CMS solutions. Therefore we've been looking at using something which is focused on providing an API to the content.

Examples of these:

\- [https://prismic.io/](https://prismic.io/)

\- [https://www.contentful.com/](https://www.contentful.com/)

\- [https://github.com/aheinze/cockpit](https://github.com/aheinze/cockpit)

Personally, I believe more CMS solutions needs to provide a powerful API for dealing with storing and retrieving content.

What does Wagtail have to offer in this respect?

<comment><USER5> My agency spent a while planning a Node.js API CMS build of our own, as well as evaluating Prismic and Contentful. We needed something we could confidently sell to clients, that was open source, user friendly and easy to extend. It also had to run on our clients' own stacks and meet their audit criteria. Wagtail suits those requirements well.

It's worth noting that the Wagtail API module is for GETting content at this point – though I hear a more fully featured read/write API is in the works. Wagtail "is just Django" so it's easy enough to plug in the REST framework and build endpoints on that.

I implemented Prismic for a startup recently, and the API is also read-only. It's got some very powerful semantic content markup and versioning stuff, but I found it quite a chore to get more than single nodes out of it. In the end, our content editors didn't like the git-centric "content releases" metaphor, so they moved off to something else.

Contentful has the read/write API thing down, good support, very actively developed. Unfortunately it doesn't support tree-based content, preferring flat collections with relations, though trees are something many users are asking for. As we're migrating lots of sites (off a PHP CMS) that have well- tested trees, we couldn't quite go that far just yet.

tl;dr? No solution is perfect, but Wagtail is making us happy devs, and the community is very friendly. Good luck with your CMS hunt!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The developers did a SHOW HN launching wagtail.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7231164](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7231164)

</comment><comment><USER7> Wagtail looks nice, although I haven't used it much.

(shameless plug:) I made a Docker image for the Wagtail Demo to make it easier to test out:

[https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/oyvindsk/wagtail- demo/](https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/oyvindsk/wagtail-demo/) [https://github.com/oyvindsk/docker- playground/tree/master/do...](https://github.com/oyvindsk/docker- playground/tree/master/dockerfiles/wagtaildemo)

        docker run -p 8000:8000 -d oyvindsk/wagtail-demo

Haven't tried it in a while, but hopefully it still works :)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is actually pretty neat. As someone who has worked on many wordpress sites for a long time, having faster everything would be amazing.

The product looks very polished and I hope to see it grow and develop a large community. That would make it a real WP competitor since the main reason WP is so powerful now is because of all the themes, documentation, and plugins.

<comment><USER9> A very major reason on why Wordpress is so widely used, is how easy it is to install on just about anything above a toaster.

Meanwhile, this is how you install Wagtail: [http://spapas.github.io/2014/02/13/wagtail- tutorial/](http://spapas.github.io/2014/02/13/wagtail-tutorial/)

<comment><USER2> That was a very helpful introduction in Wagtail's early days, but setup and installation has become much simpler since then. For Python developers it's as simple as

      pip install wagtail
      wagtail start mysite

Or you can deploy the demo to Heroku in one click:

[https://heroku.com/deploy?template=https://github.com/torchb...](https://heroku.com/deploy?template=https://github.com/torchbox/wagtaildemo)

<comment><USER10> That works really nicely, I like the use of vagrant but it does give a hint that there might be rather complex requirements.

On a different note, I saw your Bristol Media post about Django freelancers the other week and have been meaning to get in touch (my current contract ends in a month and a half). Does much of this dev work happen in the Bristol office or is it primarily London-lead?

<comment><USER2> We're always looking for good Django freelancers, wherever they're based, but particularly in Oxford and Bristol. Email my first name at torchbox.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Django should have some simple plugin install system built-in, auto update capability like in WordPress. It's not friendly to test different modules as one must always dig the settings.py and hunt the docs of relevant modules.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is the backend coupled to the front end? Or can I render the resulting data with whatever I want?

<comment><USER2> No, it's a clear tenet of Wagtail's design that it should place no restrictions on how you render content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's an extra ">" in the "Wagtail in action" section.

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh no! Not another scrolling CMS... whitespace seems to be trendy.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Free

> We use a BSD license.

I see in no way how a BSD License is free. I think the word Open-source is better suited here.

Maybe it's nitpicking. I wish English had more words that describe "free"-ness (gratis vs frei) etc.

EDIT: Okay a few words later they're also saying freedom. So I guess it's not nitpicking as I don't see how BSD gives you 'freedom'.

<comment><USER16> > EDIT: Okay a few words later they're also saying freedom. So I guess it's > not nitpicking as I don't see how BSD gives you 'freedom'.

Perhaps I'm really misunderstanding this but with a BSD license I thought I could:

* Take the code and use it for free

* Take the code and use it for free to make money

* Take the code and add to it and re-release it open-source (as long as I include the same license)

* Take the code and add to it and re-release it closed-source (as long as I include the same license)

Sounds like I've got quite a lot of freedom in what I do with it. The only things that I can't do (as far as I can tell) are:

* Redistribute the code without that license

* Say the the creators endorse my work without permission</comment></comment>


Invest in Startups - <AUTHOR> https://wefunder.com/?titleii <comment><USER2> The website looks very well put together!

In case you guys missed it, the SEC in Title II of the JOBS Act rolled out TODAY. That means startups can now raise funds from accredited investors on Wefunder site itself. This is HUGE but that's not all.

Next summer SEC will roll out Title III which means EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN can now invest in startups for as little as $100. This will be a massive boost for all startups everywhere, especially for non-traditional startups that couldn't get funding before. I'm very excited to see all the new startups coming out of this.

Great job Wefunder! The website looks amazing!

<comment><USER3> This is the beginning of Bubble 2.0. I'm a libertarian, but this decision is fucking scary.

I invest a lot of money for people in my life (for free), so I fairly regularly get emails effectively saying: "Oh look at this stock my friend forwarded to me (pump and dump scam)" which I then have to explain why it isn't going anywhere. So it is already pretty bad (especially on venture exchanges), BUT when thirty thousand startups start taking investments from mom and pop investors the consequences are going to be massive. We're talking tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from MILLIONS of people. Right into the lap of startups that don't even have a merchant account.

So the lesson here is get in on this early, profit harvest, and get the fuck out before it crashes due to irrational exuberance.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can understand your viewpoint, and I'm usually pessimistic about human nature... But in this one thing, I'm an optimist.

I think it's a problem that the rich and well-networked effectively had a government-protected oligarchy to investing in the best private companies. Much of the capital appreciation in this country over the last couple decades went to private companies before they IPO, of which mom and pop investors had no access too... because the government 'protected' them by not allowing them to invest their money where they see fit.

The JOBS Act has a good balance. No one making $90k will be able to invest more than 5% of their income in startups. That makes sense.

<comment><USER4> I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about the JOBS Act although I do think it will be interesting to see how everything develops.

But let me play devil's advocate for a moment.

From the standpoint of a founder, I know that raising small chunks of money from lots of investors is more likely to be problematic than it is likely to be beneficial. There are numerous logistical and legal downsides to this.

From the standpoint of an investor, I know that spray and pray investing rarely produces great wealth. And I would have to assume that general solicitation and the willingness to raise money from lots of investors are signals, and not necessarily good ones.

Taking both of these things into consideration, I would have to conclude that companies taking advantage of the JOBS Act to raise money are, in theory, probably going to be less attractive as investments than companies that don't have to. In other words, the JOBS Act might create more opportunities for me, but it would be foolish of me to assume that these are the same opportunities the rich and well-networked have access to.

<comment><AUTHOR> In order to attract the type of high-quality companies currently fundraising on Wefunder, we've were forced to figure out how to take away all of the downsides.

The most important thing we do is manage a fund that aggregates all of the smaller investors. These investors are actually Wefunder's investors. Wefunder then makes one investment into the startup.

So the startup doesn't have to deal with dozens of investors on their cap table.

Or, put in other words, all the logistical and legal hurdles are placed on Wefunder, not the startup.

<comment><USER5> So wefunder is actually a new type of fund? Maybe an "on-demand fund?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A quick warning for everyone. Investing without having a complete access to the books of the company you invest in is extremely stupid. No serious investor would do that. Don't be stupid.

You must make sure the valuation is fair, this means - check the valuation report, check the reputation of the company who did the valuation report, sanity check it, look for signs of bullshit.

Keep in mind, even if the founders have solid reputation there may be some unethical MBA behind the scenes who can act without founders understanding exactly what he is doing.

<comment><USER7> Most early stage deals, like the ones you'll find on WeFunder or AngelList, typically do not have valuations or financials to share simply because it's too early on for a company to seriously offer that. Why waste time putting together financial and valuation models, when you could be working on the product and trying to grow?

<comment><USER6> These guys are asking for very specific prices on their website. They must have some kind of valuation behind it. I just need to know how they came up with this number. Also, both IRS and SEC have rules and guidelines on how to do valuation on startups - they use things like committed potential customers, founder reputation, CVs and things like this. Every startup has to do valuation before issuing stock options for example.

<comment><USER8> When I did the "valuation" on my startup for crowd-funding (Seedrs), when it was nothing more than a wire-frame and an idea in my head (and an MBA research project, but you almost make me feel like I should be ashamed to admit that or something), I just did it based approximately on the valuations that various accelerator-type programmes (including YC) were giving. I came up with 14% for £30k, giving a valuation of £214k. Low enough to get investment fairly quickly - nobody complained. How on earth are you meant to do a books-based valuation of an early-stage pre-revenue company? You have to give a specific valuation so people know what they are getting.

<comment><USER6> Just google it. There are many methods to do valuation of startups. And again, you can not issue stock options without IRS-supervised valuation. Most startups on the website are post-seed with more than 3 people on the team already BTW. So it's pointless to discuss pre-seed valuation at all.

Whatever numbers you have in your valuation I need to know how you got them to decide if it makes sense.

(Edit: You may be from the UK, so it's a little different than US. I was speaking for the US case here.)

<comment><USER7> You're mistaken, almost all of them are seed-stage, minus one. You can issue stock whenever you want.

But I realize that your point is that you'd prefer due diligence and transparency on terms before using a site like WeFunder. The thing is, most investments at that stage don't have that much due diligence beyond market size, team, and traction. I think this is where you're misunderstanding.

<comment><USER6> You're mistaken. Most of these companies are raising >500K, this is not seed money. Seed is typically less than 100K. There are at least 10 companies that come from YC, which means they already got their seed round. You can't do seed twice by definition.

<comment><USER7> There is no definition of 'seed', so I'm not sure where you're getting these ideas. Seed is just pre-Series A.

I am a YC W13 founder and I just raised a 'seed' round. Our investors signed the paperwork as a 'seed' round. We raised >$500k.

<comment><USER6> That would be highly unusual. But it doesn't matter that much to me if it's true. We were simply talking about different thing when saying "seed". No harm done.

[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/seedcapital.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/seedcapital.asp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reading on YC about investing through a YC company into YC companies.

<comment><USER10> ...sell?

I kid, but the flavor is indeed a bit bubbly.

<comment><USER11> It worries me too, although an acquaintance of mine has a bumper sticker that reads "just one more bubble, this time I'll sell."

My concern is that non-qualified investors will once again be participating in a complex equities market with technology companies that are pushing the edge of the envelope. That will fund companies that should not be funded, lose money for people who cannot afford to lose it, and create another period of ill will for "tech" investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks great. I'm just curious, what is the difference between wefunder and FundersClub.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> The main similarity, besides both being YC alumni: FundersClub and Wefunder both form single-purpose LLC's that aggregate small investors, and then make one investment into the startup. So the startup only has one investor on their cap table.

The main difference is one of long-term vision. FundersClub is invite-only and exclusive. Wefunder is designed for everyone to be able to invest in startups. We're most excited by Title III JOBS Act, which will let unaccredited investors invest as little as $100.

We believe that the true value of crowdfunding comes from having your most passionate users and customers invest, not just C-level execs in an invite- only club who you've never met. The people who love your product can invest small amounts on the same terms as professional investors.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the reply. That's interesting, I wonder what Fundersclub aims to gain from excluding smaller investors.

I have another question for you. What prevents your investment from getting squished in future rounds?

I've been wanting to use a platform like this for a while, and that's one of my main concerns.

<comment><AUTHOR> Investors on Wefunder are investing on the same terms as the professional investors. It's possible that investments could get squished, but that would lead to a lot of pissed off people, not just the smaller investors in the fund.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious - does anyone know if someone who doesn't qualify to be an accredited investor can use power of attorney for someone who does qualify to be an accredited investor to make 50/50 investments?

</comment><comment><USER14> The ASCII art in the javascript console is a very nice touch: [http://cl.ly/image/3B1d1k1H1902](http://cl.ly/image/3B1d1k1H1902)

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think I'd invest in a privately owned company unless they opened their books up to me in a completely transparent manner (I'd expect the same information that I'd have access to when buying stock in a company traded on a stock exchange). My guess is that this level of information will not be provided, which means that any "investment" in a company like this would be more like betting at a casino.

</comment><comment><USER16> 1\. Why does this website feel slimy? 2\. Maybe, I just I got used to the status quo? 3\. I do think this website is a disaster waiting to happen? I hope not, but I see nothing but lawsuits down the line. 4\. Taking money from people who understand the risks involved in start ups is fine, but taking the money from the average dude who was inspired by Steve Job's movie is Wrong. 5\. To anyone who's rushing over to this site expecting to make money one your investment; Guy's like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerburg had a lot of luck on their sides too. Mark would have probably never started Facebook, without stealing the idea from the rich twins. And the god Steve; he got fired from his own company. 6\. I wish start ups well, but be honest. Or, at least take money from the people who can afford to lose it. It's not cool to lose money from the middle class and poor. There might not be a God, but personal integrity is the one thing that money can't buy.

</comment><comment><USER17> I noticed a number of startups are listed (and publicly raising) both on wefunder and angellist. How does it work if they raise >50% on each platform?

Also showing the % raised the way it is now is a bit misleading, it gives off the impression that that was the amount that went through the wefunder.

Try maybe different colours so we can see easily what has been raised via the platform.

</comment><comment><USER18> So, I put the money, they tell me that:

1\. I am gambling

2\. They decide when to cash in. Usually it takes up to 10 years...

3\. I would be a "bother" for the founders (true, but no nicer way of saying this?)

To me, and I am happy to waste HN points on this comment, this feels snarky and offending. They seem to say "we are the cool guys", come join us, maybe you ll be cool too, just gives us the money.

</comment><comment><USER19> I received a promo email from WeFunder this morning. To mark the occasion of the change in the law, this was the messaging:

 _To celebrate, we are featuring great 25 startups from Y Combinator, Techstars, and MIT!_

Clicking through to the "Raise Funding" page, which includes the pricing, this message appears at the bottom:

 _We offer a 100% discount to select high-tech startups that recieved funding from Y Combinator, SV Angel, or Andreessen Horowitz._

Not to dump on the accomplishments of the featured startups and those who have received funding from SV Angel or Andreessen Horowitz, but the message to everyone else seems to be: It doesn't matter how great your team is or how well you execute, if you are not part of the incubator/angel A-list, don't expect any breaks from us when it comes to promotions or pricing.

<comment><USER20> They needed a seed pool of already vetted companies. This is extremely rational on their part, and probably helps their early funders make reasonable decisions.

The biggest concern I think one should have about this is that dumb companies will be paired up with dumb money at a much greater rate than great companies being paired up with lucky (or smart) money, making the whole concept look bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It still doesn't really strike me as crowd-funding so much when the minimum investment is still $1000. Is that some legal limitation in the US?

In the UK we can do equity-crowd investments as small as £10 - as I did when I raised money on Seedrs: [http://www.seedrs.com/startups/satago?promo_code=V5EKZUV4](http://www.seedrs.com/startups/satago?promo_code=V5EKZUV4)

Disclosure: That is a referral link - Seedrs give me 5% to invest myself if anyone invests an amount through that link, which I think is astonishing in itself and worthy of comment.

<comment><USER21> You still need to be an accredited investor until next year anyway. I'm not sure where the $1000 minimum comes from but it sounds like they intend on lowering it to $100 eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What is the reasoning behind limiting non-accredited investing anyway? Why is it a crime for me to give somebody else money if I am happy with the terms of the contract?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thankfully, this will be legal in mid-2014, when the SEC finishes implementing the JOBS Act.

In the 1930's - pre-Internet - people were more easily scammed by traveling salesmen selling oil wells and such.

We have a lot more information at our fingertips these days.

<comment><USER23> We have a lot more information at our fingertips these days, and 25% of the country is convinced that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

I feel like we're just running the cycle on this one, someone should put up a countdown to the next Enron and these investments being made illegal again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I love this idea. I think this is a fantastic opportunity for us plebs to start speculating.

It would be very nice to see if the crowd has a different kind of investment trend from the accredited investors.

Edit: Mostly, I'm curious if there will be enough numbers to see a "wisdom of the crowd" effect or if it will actually just amplify whatever the big money tends to be attracted to.

</comment><comment><USER25> Do non-US investors need certification?

</comment><comment><USER26> Website looks great. I'm sure the crowdfunding niche will explode even more in the next couple of years.

That said, does anyone else think this will just feed into existing/new bubble?

Title III in particularly will bring in a flood of dumb money. What a beacon for #startupbros everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you guys are using heroku, you might want to scale up your dynos right now. I am getting the application error page when I try to sign up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We're on Heroku, and we're cranking those babies up right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Your progress bar active areas have two percent signs in the width property, which breaks them (at least for me) to all show 50%.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll get this fixed. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Can anybody tell me anything about the possibility of non-Americans investing in startups in the US any time soon?</comment>


MIT Media Lab founder: I would still take Jeffrey Epstein's money today - sahin-boydas https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614264/mit-media-lab-jeffrey-epstein-joi-ito-nicholas-negroponte-funding-sex-abuse/ <comment><AUTHOR> My question to the group here is, are you individually willing to research the background of the people and funds you, as founders take as investors, and to what extent? Said more bluntly, would you shut your company down if you couldn't find other sources of financing?

I think the obvious answer is yes, but that's too obvious in some sense because these things lie on a spectrum.

Epstein post revelations should be outcast, that much is obvious. What of less egregious actors or associations? There are more than a few lecherous investors with less public exposure of their acts and equally deep pockets, wandering Sand Hill road.

Examples like the massive amount of Saudi national money [1] that is fueling funds like Softbank and Sequoia, and directly to companies like Uber, call into question where exactly the line is. You could replace Saudi with your particular questionable investor de jure.

In fact, when I've had conversations like this in the past, most recipients look at the question as pragmatic: "All money is dirty, and this was our best option." Point noted, but that just means founders and CEO are drawing their own arbitrary lines in the sand.

I don't have some kind of magic formula, but I think it's worth being introspective about this.

<comment><USER2> That spectrum would involve how much control over yourself and your work you're giving to your funders, and how much you stand to lose by saying no to them after you've accepted their money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm trying to understand the ideology and thinking behind saying his money should not be taken. This is what I came up with.

"The world consists of Good and Bad people. Everything that bad people do is intrinsically bad, because it was done by a Bad person. Moreover the Bad can rub off on anyone getting too close.

Even an act that is normally Good, such as funding science becomes Bad if done by a Bad person. The scientists becomes tainted. The institute becomes tained. Even the knowledge itself is suspect.

This is why it's important to keep convicts isolated, untouchable pariah even after they have served their time. Their Bad needs to be quarantined."

It's probably a bit unfair but I can't think of anything else.

<comment><USER4> I think the argument against taking money from him centers around influence.

Taking money from someone is perceived as them gaining influence over the opinions and actions of the person receiving it. When the person donating is a "bad person" then they are a bad influence and taint the receivers actions also.

<comment><USER3> I can see how this is sometimes true, like if big tobacco donated to research on the safety of tobacco. Or if they took money from Epstein and used it to research sexuality in children that would be a problem.

But I don't see how that concern applies in this case.

<comment><USER5> Epstein showed a lot of interest in all kinds of scientifically and ethically dubious ideas like eugenics, and he actively prodded people in favor of these ideas at the dinners, parties, and jet rides he hosted.

This was not a case of a guy just writing a check and receding back into the woodwork. (Even if it was, I'd still say "trafficking children to be raped" is a bridge too far on the path of "ethical violations which are sufficient to refuse donations.")

<comment><USER6> I wonder how many pro-eugenecists realize that if their dream became a reality, they might not make the cut...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In another quote from the article:

"Negroponte pressed on: in the fundraising world, he said, these types of occurrences were not out of the ordinary, and it shouldn't be reason enough to cut off business relationships."

Welcome to today.

<comment><USER5> "Look, man, do you know how hard it would be to raise money of any significance if I just followed a blanket 'no taking money from pedophile sex traffickers' rule?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Negroponte's quote, in light of the allegations and former conviction of Epstein, is callous and unconscionable. Furthermore, it paints MIT in a poor light, which as a former employee he should not have lightly done.

</comment><comment><USER9> So, honest question: what's the intended outcome of scientists refusing the money? Is the hope that the money would somehow go toward making restitution to his victims? In our legal system, is that a realistic hope?

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with anyone here, just trying to understand the situation.

<comment><USER5> I think the hope is that the money could not be used to help Epstein rebuild his reputation and prestige via association with respected scientists, and also that they might have avoided any taint to their research from Epstein's interest in junk science like eugenics.

<comment><USER2> The most important reason to refuse the money is to refuse the possibility of being influenced by such an awful person - Epstein wanted to hang around with the scientists he supported.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Doesn't look like this story is getting better for MIT.

[https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-an-elite- univer...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-an-elite-university- research-center-concealed-its-relationship-with-jeffrey-epstein)

</comment><comment><USER10> What I hate about articles and reporting like this is the emphasis (in the lead) on that fact that some people were 'shocked'. You can always find 'some people' that will force their point of view and unfortunately do it in way that says 'there really isn't anything else to discuss about this issue it's open and shut'.

Also important to realize that there were most likely people at that meeting that agreed with what Negroponte said but were to afraid (for fear of backlash) to say that.

Finally this: "It wasn't until another woman yelled "Shut up!" twice that Negroponte mumbled "Good grief," and sat down."" I am guessing that took Negroponte by surprised and he might be kicking himself now for not pushing back.

<comment><USER11> > You can always find 'some people' that will force their point of view and > unfortunately do it in way that says 'there really isn't anything else to > discuss about this issue it's open and shut'.

> Also important to realize that there were most likely people at that meeting > that agreed with what Negroponte said but were to afraid (for fear of > backlash) to say that.

While I agree with you that at times a small minority can shut down discussion, in this particular case I think an overwhelming majority of that audience believed that taking Epstein's money was unconscionable. So while there probably at least a few audience members who agreed with Negroponte, and while those who agreed were probably afraid to publicly voice their support, I'm doubtful there were actually that many of them.

But perhaps I'm wrong. Do you have a way of estimating what percentage of people believe that accepting money from a convicted sex offender (and accused pedophile) is ethically appropriate?

<comment><USER12> Well the article only mentions one person yelling at him to shut up. Out of the entire audience.

The article also doesn't say that him being told to shut up was net with applause, or anything like that.

And considering that slant in the article, if there was any hint more people agreed, you know it would be in there.

<comment><USER13> As a Media Lab alum, I know there are plenty of people who agreed. It takes courage to interrupt the venerated founder, especially when your livelihood depends on the person he's defending, and the people with whom they've built relationships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great for him! I think it's quite ridiculous how we as a society structurally deny progress in the name of social justice instead of letting justice be dolled out by the government.</comment>


Show HN: Blast – a simple tool for API load testing and batch jobs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dave/blast <comment><AUTHOR> I originally created blast to send ~6m API requests, and I couldn't find anything that was flexible enough for the job. Since then I've added lots of features for load-testing scenarios. It's simple to configure but surprisingly versatile. I'm happy to answer any questions...</comment>


Emoticon Keyboard - How about a Programmer's keyboard :P - <AUTHOR> http://www.ispyce.com/2011/01/express-your-right-feelings-using.html

<comment><USER2> Yeah that is silly, but there are pleanty of good programmer's keyboards:

* Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

* IBM Model M

* Mac keyboards

* Logitech G15

* Das Keyboard

(the top picks for this stack overflow thread: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/687/keyboard-for- programm...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/687/keyboard-for-programmers) )</comment>


Ask HN: What are web design/development companies doing wrong? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the web design/development business and I'm almost embarrassed to admit that. Why? Well it seems that nowadays everyone and their pet had a "web design firm". There are all these idiots running around calling themselves web designers/developers after reading the first few chapters of "Build a website for Dummies". They're all out there flooding the market with ridiculously low prices and low quality work. This in and of itself isn't as big a problem. The really big problem is that they end up pissing off their clients and those of us who are competent get a bad name as we are all lumped in together.
I'm not claiming to be great. I'm okay. Decent enough to charge what I do and nothing more (for now). But here's my big problem - I've been researching and brainstorming for months and months on how to differentiate myself from the competition and I cannot figure it out.
It seems everyone is operating in very much the same way. So I research the common the problems with these companies and there's a lot of talk about processes and problems with the tools we use but nothing really speaks to what problems our clients have that we are either not solving or could do a much better job of solving. The closest thing I've come up with as a differentiator is business strategy help for clients. Being in this business puts you in a unique position to spot flaws with the client's business strategy as we need to know their customer and their business, etc.
So after months of racking my brain I'm coming here to ask all you people I respect, what are web design companies doing wrong? What problems are we not solving and how can we solve current problems better? <comment><AUTHOR> Damn. No one cares enough to even downvote this. I sure feel retarded for asking now.</comment>


How to install debian in the Ben NanoNote (the ultraportable Linux clamshell) - <AUTHOR> http://pyneo.org/howto/debian/nano.html

<comment><USER2> I really hate sites that make it impossible to follow a link if you are using Windows. Yes, I know Windows can suck. Same with IE. I know all of this, but sometimes in the real world you can't help but have to use one and when you are, it shouldn't prevent you from reading things on the web.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had the same problem with Mac OS for this site, but was able to get to the destination at last... Tricky, but for me (I own a Nano) it is worth the hassle)</comment></comment>


Why are scripting languages not suitable as shell languages? (One Answer) - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3637668/why-are-scripting-languages-e-g-perl-python-ruby-not-suitable-as-shell-langu/3640403#3640403

<comment><USER2> I've found Python to be an excellent language for automating systems administration, data processing and other tasks.

I never write shell scripts longer than maybe 10 lines or so. Anything larger is better done in a true programming language. Part of the reason is the better defined syntax. For example quoting in shell scripts can be very difficult to get right.

Also Python scripts can be made cross-platform without depending on having a full set of Unix tools available. They also support multi-threading and network communications - try doing that with a shell script.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember when I first started using Linux in 1996, there were several oddball shells that came with the distro in optional directories, I read their READMEs but didn't even try to use them. The ones I remember most clearly were a clutch of them based on slightly different versions of BASIC (I don't remember what any of them were actually called) and Guile which was based on Scheme.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The full Stack Overflow thread is at [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3637668/why-are- scripting...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3637668/why-are-scripting- languages-e-g-perl-python-ruby-not-suitable-as-shell-langu). I particularly liked this guys exposition on Microsoft's PowerShell (about the last three quarters of the answer).</comment>


Ask HN: Do you get paid an annual salary? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if any tech companies or startups pay annual salaries as opposed to monthly and which would employees rather prefer? I'm under the impression that annual salaries would make one less reliant on credit and loans especially for 'big purchases'.<p>What are your thoughts on this? <comment><USER2> With an annual salary the employment of new employees would be difficult. Either the salary has to come in pre, or post the work is done. I don't think there are employees that will pay you a years salary in advance. Nor I think there are employees who will work a year before the first salary.

That is the main problem I can think of with an annual salary. And my own opinion is that I like to get paid a monthly salary, which means I do not have to manage a whole bunch of monies to last all year.

Apart from that

</comment><comment><USER3> I am paid monthly in arrears. If I was paid annually in arrears, I would have cashflow issues, would have a greater need of short term loans, and would want a larger salary to compensate me for this.

Most of my expenses (credit card, utility bills, mortgage, ...) are monthly; annual and ad hoc expenses combined are less than this. So it makes sense for my salary to come in monthly as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is no company that pays salaries annually. You could always come to a special agreement I guess, but with interest rates where they are right now it makes little sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you elaborate further on the interest rate argument please? I was thinking that in a country which high inflation rates,employees would welcome the bulk sum so they can spend/invest as they see fit.

The reason I ask is because I was thinking of implementing it at my next startup.

<comment><USER4> It's cheap to borrow at the moment, so it doesn't hurt employees who are paid monthly but want to borrow more.

It would really mess up your cashflow to pay yearly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> are you referring to start of the financial year or towards the end.....coz if its start ...i am in !

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't really thought much about implementation specifics but does it make much of a difference ?

<comment><USER3> Of course it makes a difference.

If I am paid annually in arrears, I must live off savings or credit for the first year. I pay off the loans and rebuild my savings at the end of the first year, but must dip into them again to get me through the second year. And so on.

And I run the risk that my employer goes bust just before paying my salary and I lose out on a year's wages (if paid monthly, I only risk a month's wages).

Meanwhile, if I'm paid annually in advance, this will surely cause my employer cashflow issues, leading them to only be able to afford paying a lower salary; but I can't effectively use a paid-annually income, because most of my expenses are monthly. And if/when I move jobs, I will probably have to repay salary.</comment></comment></comment>


University of Maryland Data Breach - <AUTHOR> http://www.umd.edu/datasecurity/ <comment><USER2> As an alum of UMD I'm really annoyed by this whole situation.

While I was an undergrad there, there was an incident with social security numbers being revealed on parking mailers that were sent out ([http://marylandrha.blogspot.com/2008/07/social-security- numb...](http://marylandrha.blogspot.com/2008/07/social-security-number-on- parking.html))

At the time I was wondering why the heck do people sending out parking mailers have access to my SSN?

After seeing this article I'm again wondering why the heck does the university retain SSN for alumni?

edit: the reason I mention this is because I think having reasonable data policies in place can help mitigate the severity of such events

<comment><USER3> Oh that's nothing. At Penn State, Social Security Numbers were your student ID numbers. I think this has been changed. I hope, anyway.

<comment><USER4> Same goes for my alma mater. They changed it in 2007 or so and it was a GIGANTIC pain in the ass. Of course it's worth it to not have your photo, full name, and SSN on your student ID card.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having worked in higher ed for a number of years, I'm frankly surprised that this doesn't happen more often. At least, to the level of being reported like this.

Faculties regularly operate independently and have their own ideas about the proper way to secure the information they have access to (which, in some cases, is not at all). As a security representative in the central IT department, I was often tasked with finding, reporting and attempting to work with the various faculties that did not follow posted data access and privacy policies but, almost every time my efforts were superseded by "academic freedom".

Incredibly frustrating experience.

<comment><USER6> I call this the "PhD from MIT Syndrome". A few of them actually ___think_ __that they know everything about everything no matter their field of study. The are polymaths (in their own minds at least).

Years ago, a physics professor scoffed at me when I cautioned him about storing 64-bit ints in 64-bit doubles. He said, "who is this that speaks to me as though I needed advice?" He could not understand why his program failed sporadically. Must be a bug in the compiler. It certainly wasn't ___his_ __code.

<comment><USER7> You know, I once sat in on a discussion between one of the sysadmins on my team and a researcher; that went something like (barely paraphrased, only insofar as my memory is bad) "Did your code run in test? What is test? Do you deploy your code to the test environment before steamrolling a running production instance. No no, why would I ever do that." (after literally cursing out one of our sysadmins for not fixing why his code was no longer running for him.)

Things like this are why I left academia back to industry, unfortunately for how many fantastic opportunities academia has to offer :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like a strategic place to breach for identity theft purposes. Lots of military and other folks get degrees from there.

</comment><comment><USER9> The scary thing about this is that it's happening when network security is no longer a secondary thing to physical security but rather network security is most crucial security out there.

And networks still have an inherent weakness compared to physical sites. Physical sites don't have the problem that once one site is breached, another thousands of miles away can fall almost instantly.

Interlocking networks, id's, passwords, credentials and so-forth create a situation where there isn't really an inside or outside for the enterprising criminal. I can't see any way that this isn't going to get worse and worse for a while.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm a student at UMD right now, and pretty frustrated to find out about this. IMO, the university should do a lot more than just providing a year's worth of credit monitoring, because once that year is up and people forget/choose not/can't afford to renew, chances are 90% of those records are going to be easy pickings for identity thieves.

300,000 SSN's, names, and DoB's is one helluva haul though. At least no academic records were compromised, god forbid anybody takes a look at my grades before making off with my identity! \s

</comment><comment><USER11> The blind leading the blind:

 _NSA designated the University of Maryland as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Research. The University of Maryland was also named an Intelligence Community "Center of Academic Excellence" by the Department of Homeland Security. ... MC2 takes a unique approach in educating the future cybersecurity workforce to serve industry and government needs in Maryland and the Washington, DC metropolitan area._

[http://cyber.umd.edu/about](http://cyber.umd.edu/about)

<comment><USER12> The university IT is a separate entity from the comp sci dept at umd

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how they discovered they were hacked, and how they arrived at the 309,079 records number.

What logs are typically 'left behind' for forensics to analyze after the fact? It's not like they have packet captures of all network communications they can analyze, or a list of every SQL query that was run after the attacker found a way to inject...

<comment><USER14> Something like they found a SQL dump file that shouldn't exist, looked at its creation date, inspected the log files (e.g., web server logs) and found network activity indicating it had been sent somewhere bad. Or they saw some unusual activity when doing a monthly analysis of web log activity, dug into it, and realized the whole DB had been sucked out through a SQL injection exploit. Or...the possibilities are endless.

Since web servers are most reliably logged even on poorly maintained systems, I'm guessing at least part of the attack hinged on that. It's really common to have servers that end up with no disk space because web logs aren't being rotated and archived/pruned properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > our sophisticated, multi-layered security defenses

Is there anyone that has worked in higher ed IT who believes this?

<comment><USER16> As someone who works for a vendor to higher education, I can say that it _highly_ varies from institution to institution. I've noticed that size and prestige do not seem to be correlated to the level of security they actually have (or pretend to have).

<comment><USER17> I concur, as someone who also works for a vendor to higher ed.

I know of small universities that demand an independent audit of all vendor code, to the large universities that are ok with having a four-character password for database access.

It also seems that Canadian universities are far more serious about security than American counteparts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You'd think the operators of one of the root DNS servers[1] would also have the security to prevent this sort of breach.

[1] [http://d.root-servers.org/](http://d.root-servers.org/)

<comment><USER19> Having gone to UMD for computer science I can say that the DNS servers are not on the main campus. And certainly a completely separate group of people managing them than basic infrastructure of the Registrar. That said, collaboration would probably be a good thing if it does not already happen. But who's to say any system is infallible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My alma mater. Fortunately, since I dropped out in 1982, I don't have to worry about this breach :-)</comment>


Kashiwa Mystery Cafe - <AUTHOR> http://www.cabel.name/2009/09/kashiwa-mystery-cafe.html

<comment><USER2> See here if you're interested. It was part of a two day exhibition, so I wouldn't buy a ticket to Chiba with the hope of finding it.

[http://www.mitsuifudosan.co.jp/corporate/news/2008/0418/inde...](http://www.mitsuifudosan.co.jp/corporate/news/2008/0418/index.html)

「EAT&ART TARO(イート・アンド・アート タロー) 1979年神奈川県生まれ。食をテーマにしたワークショップ、美術館のカフェプロデュース・メニュー開発など、食とアートに関わる様々な場面での活動を行う。 当マルシェコロールでは、おごりcafeをプロデュース。」

Brief translation:

(The artist) Eat & Art Taro was born in 1979 in Kanagawa Prefecture. He leads food-themed workshops, produces menus for museum cafes, and is engaged in various activities relating to the intersection of food and art. Ogori Cafe is his creation.

[n.b. Ogori Cafe is the official name of the cafe. Ogori is a form of the word "To treat someone to".]

</comment><comment><USER3> A delightful mystery for the undecided or the adventurous, but alas not designed for the everyday 'I need a coffee / feel like a ham & cheese sandwich' crowd.

Having worked with restaurants in tourist areas, I know that it's the locals that provide revenue stability - tourists can be the cream on top, but if you can't service the locals you won't survive long.

I would extrapolate from that experience that many cafes, especially those in business-precinct areas, rely on the regulars to provide revenue stability. Most regulars won't the same coffee at 9am, the same time sandwich at noon, and the same coffee at 3pm. Hard to survive long if you're not designed for that group, delightful and mysterious as you may be.

</comment><comment><USER4> If someone can figure how to implement this concept into some real/virtual gift-game-concept for a startup they would do marvelous.

<comment><USER5> Here's Ogori Google I made in 5 mins: <http://fi.bemmu.com/ogori/>

<comment><USER6> Predictably, the person before me searched for "horse porn".

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can't have nice things.

<comment><USER7> I got "Paul Graham nude". Wunderbar.

What's missing from this is the accountability in the real world cafe. If you ordered something disgusting, there is a significant chance the next person is not too far behind you and will take it out on you.

Also, the cafe has a finite menu of predefined positive choices, whereas Google has an infinite menu including potential negative choices.

I just ruined the joke, didn't I?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like rule 3:

"Please enjoy what you get, even if you hate it."

<comment><USER8> Rule #5 is what made me immediately think, "yes, this is Japan". "It can't be done" is the Japanese customer service motto.

<comment><USER9> "Next time: The Best Fast Food Receipt In The World" - from the end of the post (and i suspect it would still be about Japan)</comment></comment></comment>