Why Do We Have Dev Rels Now? - <AUTHOR> https://zwischenzugs.com/2020/07/13/why-do-we-have-dev-rels-now/ <comment><USER4> Devrel here, (by the way it's typically called a Developer Advocate or a Developer Evangelist, don't get me started on how many questions I've gotten about the relation to religion lol)

I think the article does a good job describing what devrel looks like at companies that are smart about selling to the new "tech business world" which is desperate for a way to measure the technical credibility of potential vendors.

But what's more interesting from someone who knows devrel because I've worked in it for 7 years, is that at a more general level it's just a communication layer that a business can have with an audience or a persona(in this case developers), that is growing ever more important. Whether you're a platform (google Apple) and need more devs making stuff within your ecosystem, or you're not selling to developers but you need technical integrations by third parties to enhance The value prop of your product, or you're ACTUALLY selling directly to developers and trying to expand their mental model of what is possible with the low code tooling available today and why they can and should trust it.

It's a wide and interesting world in which almost every company is becoming a software company, and almost none of these companies have any idea how to communicate with developers or what they care about.

You're right that devrel is like a pre-sales role somewhat, but we all know developers are the hardest group to sell to in history, who else could more easily go find a free open source solution or just make it themselves?? You have to be able to communicate about the pros and cons of technology in an honest and coherent way, and that is what Devrel is all about to me.

<comment><USER5> > it's typically called a Developer Advocate or a Developer Evangelist

And a lot of the dev advocates I see on social media (most seem to have a strong presence there) also have an image of an avocado, since apparently a lot of people confuse "developer advocate" with "developer avocado". Just noting that in case you notice a number of people with avocados in their about text and wonder what that's about.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't say it's about confusion, it's just a very online joke.

<comment><USER7> It's not a joke, it's based on this article by Mary Thengvall. [[https://www.marythengvall.com/blog/2018/1/31/developer- avoca...](https://www.marythengvall.com/blog/2018/1/31/developer-avocados-the- good-kind-of-fat)]

It resonated with a lot of the people in that role, specifically with Microsoft Developer Advocates who I've seen share that article quite a bit.

<comment><USER6> A humorous analogy based on something funny that a co-worker did seems like a joke to me. I'm not claiming I invented it, just saying that it doesn't stem from confusion.

<comment><USER7> Again this is not a joke. More information written by other Developer Advocates.

[https://blog.usejournal.com/the-birth-of-developer- avocados-...](https://blog.usejournal.com/the-birth-of-developer- avocados-61e4ac235033)

<comment><USER6> From that article, it shows an entire thread of people talking about how a typo lead to a stupid joke

[https://twitter.com/NikkitaFTW/status/1009862568129781760](https://twitter.com/NikkitaFTW/status/1009862568129781760)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Developer Advocate here (who works in _Developer Relations_ ). I think "DevRel" is a big bucket, but what the author is calling "Developer Relations" is just the most visible subset of the bucket.

The impression is that a "DevRel" spends all their time writing talks, traveling to conferences, pitching products and speaking. This makes sense, because the "DevRels" you probably see the most are the ones that are doing these things, and you don't see them doing anything else. A lot of people are surprised to discover that traveling and speaking is actually a very small part of my job, given the number of talks I give, and how often they see me at events.

I think part of this perception comes from the conflation between an advocate and an evangelist. There is endless debate about what these terms mean in the context of developer relations, but for me, the difference is this:

* Evangelists want users to know that a product exists: They're speaking to developers, about the product. They probably report to & work with Sales/Marketing.

* Advocates want products to know that their users exist. They're speaking to product owners, about the developers. They probably report to & work with Engineering/Product.

Both roles are equally important (and sometimes done by the same person), and the "publicly-validated credibility" the author talks about is just as valuable to the product team as it is to the sales team.

<comment><USER9> I'd add that there's often a community management aspect to the role as well and sometimes that's the title. In general, I find a lot of different titles used which may or may not reflect what the person does day to day.

I even know people who are also product managers who do a fair bit of outward- facing DevRel/Evangelism type of work.

And skill sets vary quite a bit too. I know folks who do a ton of coding, creating demos, etc. And I know others who, while typically at least somewhat technical, are much more on the relationship and community-building side of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those unfamiliar with the term, it's in the article about two-thirds of the way down.

> Commonly it's just known as a 'developer relations' role (so 'DevRel' for > short)

No, it's not a typo for Dev Reels, which would be an interesting alternative to open source repositories, but I guess you'd have to get good at video editing first!

<comment><USER11> Thanks, I put a link in to help people on the first mention.

In my bubble DevRels are more of a thing than most people's.

I have never heard of 'Dev Reels' either!

<comment><USER10> Ah thank you! It's a made up term to play off Demo Reel which actors use to condense their best work into a quick video full of highlights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have worked as a developer advocate at AWS for almost 4 years now. I think this article gets one half of the equation, the public facing part, but what they are missing is the second half, which is that developer advocates also serve as a bridge back from the end customers to the engineers inside your organization.

My job is to be a credible technical voice to customers, but it is also to be an accurate representation of customer needs and wants to the engineers who are building the products. I go out and do customer facing talks and live streams on Twitch, and use social media to talk about my company's products, but then I listen to these customers when they come up to talk to me after my conference talks, or when they send me messages on social media.

I take those learnings and go into product management meetings and tell the PM's about customer problems, and I write proposals for things to build to solve customer problems. I influence the customers to use my company's products and use them better, but then I also influence the product roadmap to have the right things being built for the customers, based on what they want.

So dev rel / dev advocates work in both directions. At its best it is a bidirectional channel that translates internal knowledge into external awareness, and external complaints and issues into internal awareness and solutions.

<comment><USER7> This sounds like you sit closer to product. But what about those who sit in Marketing or Engineering

Where do you think DevRel should sit ?

<comment><USER13> I think DevRel should sit in a separate org neither marketing or product but be a peer to both.

When DevRel sits in product it is easy to get carried away with whatever narrative the product managers are pushing. Part of being a good advocate for developers is being able to step back and look at something in the existing ecosystem. Does it actually solve problems that users have? Is it usable? Does it integrate well with existing workflows and tools?

When DevRel sits in marketing or sales it often feels like you are a prize hog being pulled into sales conversations to add credibility to something that probably shouldn't have credibility to begin with.

In my opinion, the primary role of DevRel is story telling and narrative. I use narratives to explain to product teams how users currently work and how their product fits into a larger ecosystem. I use stories to help them understand bugs and design issues in context. And I use story/narrative to help external developers see how a given product can solve problems or pain points they have.

Sometimes I tell that story with words but I'm just as likely to tell that story with code. It is much harder to dismiss a bug when you can see the horrible contortions it requires you to go through in the code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the two DevReal roles I've had, there is some aspect of marketing and customer support, but not really "sales". For me, it's been a hybrid engineering and product role, where talking to the users helps surface bugs as well as ideas for new features.

So much less "technical sales" than "developer whose role includes public interaction"

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been a dev advocate since 2008ish and before that worked in pre-sales (mostly crafting custom demos and prototypes for prospects and existing customers). In my early days as a dev advocate, I was hired into marketing and most of the work was public facing (blogs and conference talks). But then that role soon moved into an official Dev Rel org where we did mostly 5 things:

1\. Build and maintain a plugin SDK and integration framework

2\. Help write docs and guides (we had a dedicated tech writer in our dev rel org)

3\. Do public facing stuff: blogs, conference talks, participate in hackathons, etc.

4\. Plan and host events: company developer conference, hackathons, meetups, etc.

5\. Write code... could be anything... sample code, tech blogs, integrations, bug fixes to product, new features in product, etc.

It was a hard job in the early days -- lots of context switching. Those who were well suited for it were devs who communicated well, knew how to tell a story, and loved the hustle.

In the past several years, I've seen this role evolve a bit more to be what the author of the article describes: basically dev advos with a social status who speak at conferences a lot. While I think that's an important aspect of a Dev Rel org, I think a Dev Rel org should have a healthy balance of people who are good at the public facing stuff and those who are highly technical and can get in the weeds with other developers. A Dev Rel org with that combo can deliver high-level and visionary stories to the public and also dive deep into the tech with any developer/architect in the industry.

With the pandemic, we're having to reinvent ourselves yet again and trying to figure out how to get the best signal-to-noise ratio with our audience. A lot of people are trying new things out. For us, we're diving into video a bit more as a medium. I'm not entirely sure how good virtual confs are going to fair in the next year, but from what I've seen recently, I'm not optimistic about the platform.

Other roles we've seen ourselves optimizing in lately... being a more useful resource internally especially for our sales organization -- helping them craft a better story, providing better demos that are reusable, writing long form guides on the stuff you probably wouldn't have thought to write about in the past.

</comment><comment><USER15> i'll echo the other devrel people in this thread and note that this blogpost actually does not do a very good job of explaining what devrels do and therefore why companies have them.

there are very successful devrels with no twitter following. the blogpost also conveniently omits the importance of content marketing to draw inbound interest which works even without the devrel having a strong personal brand or rolodex.

</comment><comment><USER16> So a sales like role, but with someone with a bit deeper technical knowledge who can speak to not just the nuts and bolts of features, but talk to the customer about what they do with tech, maybe how, and etc?

Seems like a role that I've seen done by sales, sales engineers, product managers, etc.

<comment><USER17> They used to call it Technical Sales in the circles I travel.

<comment><USER18> Tech Sales is focused on closing accounts, whereas Dev Rels do things like teaching developers how to use a company's APIs at hackathons. It's like the difference between conversion marketing and brand advertising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Like others, I wasn't familiar with the term, but once you'd explained, I know exactly the type you're talking about. Having worked in consultancy for several years, these people are fairly common. They attend meetings with new clients, hobknob at events, and form the bulk of the companies social output.

In my mind, they exist to win business, and provide confidence when clients need it.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Hello fellow developers! I myself am a developer, just like you! I was just developing something the other day in fact, when I came across this amazing product..."

As long as they keep handing out the swag people will put up with them, but noone _likes_ being evangelized at. They are the modern day snake oil salesmen, err, people.

</comment><comment><USER21> In my (somewhat cynical) opinion, formed from my experience as a business owner who has been targeted by countless "developer relations" types, the greatest value that they provide to their organizations is getting free/cheap developer labor for testing and implementing various API's/SDK's

<comment><USER21> Or worse, they want you on their marketplace!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Check out DevRelCon online conference taking place right now: 2020.devrel.net

</comment><comment><USER23> I think it legitimizes a company and shows that they have a great developer team that can communicate with the outside world

</comment><comment><USER24> One thing that prevents people from working remotely in other countries is the differences between laws, regulations, and certification/licensing practices.

A doctor that can work in India might not carry a US medical license. A lawyer that practices in India might not have passed the California Bar.

These protectionist regulations cover a wide variety of jobs and industries, and remain a blocker even when robots could be on site, and controlled by remote workers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Let me kick off the discussion by sharing the Twitter thread I had with the author: [https://twitter.com/shahdeys/status/1285545733425442819](https://twitter.com/shahdeys/status/1285545733425442819)

Edit: fixed spelling and grammar

</comment><comment><USER25> DevRel here - my formal designation is Developer Relations Engineer. Much of my job comprises of what di's comment [1] speculates as an Evangelist and Advocate combined. I am a part of the hiring panel and describe the work opportunity as follows:

1\. a third of the time, you'd be speaking to users (of course, typically developers) to help them understand and integrate with our technology, find solutions and debug issues for them, and make the most out of our stack - <USER2> could be thought of as a hybrid between a developer support and a customer success role, where to be able to manage customer success you need to understand a developers problems / persona / psyche.

2\. another third of the time, you'll build internal as well as external tooling, and documentation etc around our core offerings - be it SDKs / packages for our APIs, sample / demo apps, quick hacks to use the API from a Google sheet plugin, or dirty dashboards to dig in a particular user metric that is in focus for the month from somewhere across 4 table joins.

3\. and the last third would be dedicated to providing proper product and engineering feedback - I feel this to be the most important part of my work, which is to pass on, debate on and participate in well-structured feedback as a consequence of being in direct touch with the customers. This feedback is: a) highly relevant coming directly from the user's pain points but via the value add of a filter from someone who understands the product's proposition and ideology, and b) actionable, as it simply is not "could we provide feature X" or "there is something wrong in module Y" but more like "could we decouple this process from that API call so that users could use feature X in so and so way" and "module Y at step bla is looking for a non-existent entry in the db - most likely cos this certain flow might have triggered it, how quickly can we fix this".

(we also want to expand on community building, events & talks and such, but don't find the right time or motivation to do so, being an early stage startup, although this should not really be an excuse for maybe not putting in the right effort)

I have been in this role formally for only 4 months out of my 6+ working years, but have always felt this coming. Main reasons I attribute to this:

1\. I have discovered a wide variety of fickle interests - this area of work covers understanding business(es), being up-to-date on technology (at least the internal frameworks and architecture), relationship building, regulatory knowledge (since I work in a heavily regulated domain), product thinking, and a lot of other things.

2\. I suffer from short attention span - not ADHD but it is super simple to distract me, so I haven't been able to find my deep work vibe yet and this job allows for that.

3\. I have worked as a developer and didn't feel I was "cut for it" \- yes, I said it. Deep tech does not interest me, I've never worked with a front-end JS framework like React or Angular or anything of that sort, and no, I do not aspire to be a data scientist or principal architect someday. All of those are very valuable works and there are a lot more people out there other than me who love it more than I do and certainly do it better than me. So why not leave them to it and I do what I do best - which is to talk to people about - "why" should you use this offering, "what" to do to make it work with your system and not to figure out "how" exactly. Nonetheless, it excites me and I keep reading up on advancements and certain concepts of languages / technologies. Just like I do for a hobby - like board games for example - <USER3> play, can teach and sometimes think about them but I'm not a designer or researcher. (Boy, if only we had board-gamer relations as a job, which also paid as well as a tech job...)

Particular disadvantages I feel:

1\. I am not a multi tasker - it is not easy at all for me to run parallel threads, which is very much required: partly as a "job hazard" and partly because I'm also not good at time management (refer point 2 above).

To add to this, I have very minimal and unrelated to job Twitter following. I generally write very less on the internet and not even at work (although I want to increase this particular output from myself). And I haven't had a speaking engagement either. So these are not a part of or prerequisite to the job, but definitely make for a good addition.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23908042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23908042)

</comment><comment><USER26> if I want to be a DevRel, what should I do?

<comment><USER27> If you have available time, start doing the job. Write, teach, talk, stream, etc. about technology that you like. Grow your communication skills and audiences. Then when a company you feel passionate opens up a DevRel role, you'll have your 'resume' ready to go.

<comment><USER26> This is pretty much what I was thinking about doing...

BUT. After almost 10 years without social media or putting out content, I do feel a very relevant impostor syndrome.

Clickbait and Medium ruined blogging for me (as a reader).

But I should start my own personal blog anyways i guess..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> You know how they took operations, re-christened it "DevOps", and made it the responsibility of the dev team without commensurate increase in hiring or pay or education?

That, but for account management.

<comment><USER29> > That, but for account management.

account management seems different. the developer relations folks have more purple hair and technical skills.

account managers are suits who come in at the start to sign the contract, and again later when everyone involved has fucked up to try and salvage the business relationship.

<comment><USER30> > the developer relations folks have more purple hair and technical skills.

I've never heard the term "purple hair" before. Is that literally meaning like... more alternative?

<comment><USER31> Not OP, but I think it's a general observation that a lot of the high visibility devrel folks tend to have fairly colorful personalities. This often extends to hair color. Charity Majors would be a good example of this kind of person (though she's not in devrel).

So yes, alternative. Colorful hair, lots of visible tattoos, etc. A contrast to the sales folks, who are typically the opposite.

<comment><USER15> she's not "in" devrel but certainly every time she speaks she is performing that function (very well i might add)

devrel isnt really limited to people who formally hold that title. anyone in the company speaking to customers and potential users is doing devrel.

<comment><USER31> That's a good point. She doesn't have that title but it's definitely what she does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think this article is incomplete without mentioning oppressive IP laws that enable copyright to basically support multi-generational legacies. Patents: I'm not sure how patents are extended past their 17 year limit but if they are, it's the same thing.

"Intangible assets" are more or less propped up by these laws. Would Microsoft be a $250bn company if copyright on Windows and Office only lasted 10 years?

You can't count on most physical assets outlasting the typical copyright term. So this is where all the value and power is moving to because it's literally protected by law and never decays.</comment>


Twitter 2FA - <AUTHOR>

Maybe this has been addressed here before but I couldn't find anything on it, so here it goes. With all the stories of hacked Twitter accounts, why does anybody know why they don't have a better implementation of 2FA? For example, I have two Twitter accounts I manage (one personal and one business). I can only implement 2FA on one of those accounts because Twitter only allows one account to be associated to a phone number. I thought I was going crazy but a Google search turned up numerous people complaining of this very issue. So does anybody know why they don't have a better implementation of this? <comment><USER2> My guess: They want to "force" people to use the Twitter client app which can also do 2fa</comment>


FBI Needs to Hire More Cybercrime Experts, Applicant Pool Is a Bunch of Potheads - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/20/fbi_rules_prohibit_hiring_marijuana_users_but_many_desirable_cybercrime.html

<comment><USER2> Don't smoke pot, kids, or you'll end up as a cybercrime expert that the FBI will desperately want to hire.</comment>


Secrets to a Perfect Design - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scoutzie.com/post/46873717933/4-secrets-to-a-perfect-design

<comment><USER2> Joke went over my head and I was getting visibly upset until I saw the oatmeal and realized the whole thing was a joke.

<comment><USER3> Heh. Yeah, one of our twitter followers was worried that clients would take this seriously. The comic seems to have helped. Hope you enjoyed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Get free work done from interviewing! What a great idea! Even cheaper than 99designs haha

</comment><comment><USER5> please make my logo bigger.

<comment><USER6> Needs more Comic Sans MS!</comment></comment>


Opposites Don't Attract (And That's Bad News)  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/opposites-dont-attract-and-thats-bad-news/

<comment><USER2> _For one thing, the friendships were actually closer and longer lasting at the small colleges, suggesting that there is nothing intrinsically beneficial about seeking out similar people. (Opposites don't attract, but they should.)_

This is worth noting for anyone networking or doing hiring. You have to make a conscious effort to find people who _balance you out_ instead of finding people who are just like you. Many of the most rewarding relationships I've had have been with people who think in ways that are diametrically opposed to mine.

The above noted, you have to make sure that this interaction goes both ways. Some people just can't handle relationships with people who are different from them, and possibly for good reason. They're usually high-challenge, high- reward affairs.

<comment><USER3> I thought the the claim that people seek out similarity was very well supported in the article.

The claim that different people make better friends was interesting, but in my opinion not nearly as well supported. I would genuinely love to see more hard data behind that claim.

<comment><USER4> I agree, there was no data presented to suggest that the students in the smaller colleges were not very similar. Moreover it is more likely that the students in the small colleges are very similar, typically people won't travel to another state to attend a small community college.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Those entrepreneurs with more 'entropic' and 'diverse' social networks scored three times higher on a metric of innovation, suggesting that the ability to access 'non-redundant information from peers' is a crucial source of new ideas_

Correlation <> causation alert. Perhaps entrepreneurs who are open-minded and not narrowly focused in a small handful of disciplines are more innovative, and this generality shows in their social circle.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't agree with their conclusion at all.

What they found is that it's easier to make a relationship with people who are similar. But that is NOT the same thing as saying opposites don't attract.

Since it's easier, you will naturally have more relationships that are similar, but that tells you nothing whatsoever about the strength of relationships that are "opposite".

To actually do this study properly they need to quantify the "strength" of a relationship (somehow), then correlate that with how different the people are.

They averaged the data and in the process lost the most important part. If I have 10 friends who are similar to me, and one close friend who is different, the data will appear to say that similarity attracts, but that's an incorrect conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Facebook Data Team just released a study that draws a different conclusion to this article (disclaimer: I'm an employee of Facebook).

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data- team/rethinking...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data- team/rethinking-information-diversity-in-networks/10150503499618859)

<comment><USER8> Did they really draw a different conclusion?

Facebook found the same effect as described in this article. People are friends with those who are similar to them.

Information is widely shared between friends. It is only because people have so many acquaintances that information is spread into clusters of close friends. However, that information flow from acquaintances isn't increasing the diversity of beliefs within a cluster of friends. If it was, then you would see clusters of friends with diverse beliefs which has previously been demonstrated to not be the case.

<comment><USER7> I think so. The Wired article completely dismisses any benefit from our lose associations by saying that we are only shaped by the opinions of our close friends. The Facebook article says that we are actually exposed to the diverse opinions offered by our associates more than those of our close friends.

The example given in the Wired article about the two universities in Kansas implies that the students at the larger university, who are surrounded by a more diverse students but who have close friends similar to themselves, are exposed to less diverse opinions. That is never actually proven in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It really doesn't matter who you seek out; it matters who you encounter and that you are open-minded enough to accept or welcome their differences.

Anecdote: my wife and I are about as different as people can be and still stay together. Like j_baker said, it's a "high-challenge, high-reward" situation. Life would be _much_ easier if we were alike, but also much more boring.

</comment><comment><USER10> >>This is sad on a number of levels. For one thing, the friendships were actually closer and longer lasting at the small colleges, suggesting that there is nothing intrinsically beneficial about seeking out similar people. (Opposites don't attract, but they should.)

This parallels closely my experiences at a certain UC in the bay area.

It was ironic because for a school that preaches diversity, for a student body that is self-proclaimed ultra liberal and progressive, it was socially very conservative. The better off white kids hang out pretty much with only other better off white kids in their frats..the asians have their own frats..so do the blacks and hispanics. What's more, there is not too much interaction between these groups to the point where you can really feel uncomfortable if you find yourself in a group where you don't belong.

I don't really know where I was going with this, other than people definitely tend to form cluster of like-minded people.

<comment><USER11> Heh, this was not my experience at all. I knew several very diverse groups, basically made up of random people that met in the dorms.

Of course, I have to admit that _my_ friends are actually fairly alike: almost all are EECS with some other engineers thrown in. But this does not reflect most of the groups I knew in the dorms. (Also, ignoring the EECS/engineering bent, my best friends are also a fairly diverse group.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A fun thing about cliches is there's often one for both sides of an argument. e.g.

      birds of a feather flock together

Humans tend to treat people as in an "in-group" or "out-group". The troop bands together against another troop. So we have all finds of discrimination, from racism to trivial religious wars over text-editors, languages, and smart- phones. If we don't have a way to define our "in-group", we invent one, like cliques in high school.

I think a great invention of modern society is mass-audience sports. This gives us a simulated war to take sides in, but with negligible practical effect on our lives and relationships.

IMHO, it's hard to fix bugs in human nature, better to find a workaround.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not a surprise if you've been keeping up with NLP trends, which suggest that you mimick and emulate the person you're speaking with (down to body language and breathing rates), in order to get a favorable reaction.

No surprise in the work place either. When you're interviewing with a company, what seems to make a big impression is that you're a close match to the 'corporate culture', or the corporate average. Sure, you really should be going out of your way to work with people who are different to gain an alternate perspective on things, but that's a risk. Unless you possess a rare skillset and are in short supply, chances are you will be hired not because of your ability, but how close you resemble the team.

</comment><comment><USER14> I experienced similar behavior when I moved from a smaller city in US to Bay area. The small city at a macro level was far more homogenous when compared to Bay area. However, I made friends with folks from a diverse group. I found them to be open to meeting new people.

But, when I moved to Bay area, I realized that people are already part of some clusters (based on their home country, state or school) and are less inclined to create new friendships; particularly with someone not fitting into their cluster criteria.</comment>


This Year, Amazon Has Better Ideas than Apple - <AUTHOR> http://artymiak.com/this-year-amazon-has-better-ideas-than-apple/

<comment><USER2> Good riddance, Amazon. Amazon Hold my seller account: amtopsellers about $11552.78 dollar forever and refuse to release to us. Amazon have all the power of a bank and yet none of the responsibility.

From my experience and that of others who've suffered the same, it's clear that Amazon are interested in buyers, not

sellers. Amazon hold money amounting to thousands — literally thousands and thousands and thousands — from sellers without

any valid reason, when not even your bank is legally allowed do that? (I've expanded on this point in this comment.) AMAZON, you are the scourge of the internet.

Please see :

<http://joeyuen.posterous.com/good-riddance-amazon>

<comment><AUTHOR> I can relate to your problems. They have not held my money (yet), but they did totally screw up my publishing plans by blocking the sales of my own book, <http://thevimbook.com> It's appalling. They do have good ideas on how to sell stuff, but their seller-facing department is really bad.</comment></comment>


What happens when politician doesn't pay his bill? This. - <AUTHOR> http://timgobble.com/GobbleForCongress/Gobble_Congress_2010.html <comment><USER2> I find it odd that I can't find anything about BornDigital on Google. A web design firm without a website? Also, they spell their name differently on the page ("BornDigital" and "Born.Digital")- something seems off to me.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=====

Here's the official response, by the way (via <http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_181227.asp>)

"This former volunteer did, during the early stages of the campaign, assist with website construction and maintenance on a strictly voluntary basis as no contracts or agreements were ever entered into. This is not uncommon, and FEC guidelines do not require payment for these types of services.

"For a variety of reasons, this volunteer is no longer with the campaign. Several months after this volunteer departed the campaign, he sent a bill for more than $30,000 for his previous volunteer work.

"We do not owe this volunteer any money, and we are currently hosting our full website at votetimgobble.com.

<comment><USER3> With out a contract the effort he put in is his. Therefore he owns the copyrights, sites, etc, for all the work he created. Therefore a bill is quite appropriate if the campaign wishes to continue using his creation.

<comment><USER2> That's wrong. He volunteered. It's not like you can bill the Salvation Army for the clothes you donated.

<comment><USER4> Congress dreamed up some weird criteria to determine copyright ownership, and no matter how wrong it is, it still the law. Unless it was a work for hire, which it probably isn't under 17 U.S.C. §101 as there was neither employment nor anything in writing, the copyright belongs to the author.

There are probably implied licenses, but that is definitely a question for a lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd redirect the page to his opponent. Admittedly, it's unprofessional, but a lot more fun.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think this tells you all you need to know about BornDigital:

<meta name="Generator" content="iWeb 3.0.1" />

</comment><comment><USER7> Lesson: take control of your domain. When someone leaves the team, change the auth keys / passwords to servers / facebook / twitter accounts, etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> While this strategy might put pressure on this client to pay this bill, the long-term damage to this firm could be quite high. I would never hire a vendor who airs grievances in public like this, and although they may need the cash now and not have the luxury of thinking long-term, this doesn't seem like a good way of brand-building.

<comment><USER9> Considering the widespread disdain for dishones politicians, it may actually do the brand more good than bad.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/HSProcessContributorList...](http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/HSProcessContributorList.do)

Appears that Tim Gobble paid some cash to BornDigital o.O

</comment><comment><USER10> The candidate placed third in his primary - so it's not looking so good for the firm.

<comment><USER11> I would have asked for at least some of the money up front - especially if the candidate is not an incumbent and not a front-runner. I guess politicians feel that if they didn't place first in the primary they probably don't have to pay any of their bills... their campaigns can just claim bankruptcy and let the creditors get nothing. This says something about the moral bankruptcy of politicians in general and our political system in particular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice to know that is the first result when they google his name.

edit: Why was I down voted? If someone screws you, you wouldn't want other people to hear your side of the story?

edit2: Seems like gkoberger might have dug up details that make it seem like a shakedown.

</comment><comment><USER13> BornDigital clearly doesn't understand basic SEO.

<comment><USER14> ? why the downvotes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Striking a blow against jerk customers who don't pay their bill, I like it.

Also, obligatory "lol, Gobble"</comment>


Thomson Reuters Gives Elite Traders Early Advantage - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/100809395

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if there should be any outrage over this.

It was already known that they released the data 5 minutes early to subscribers who wished to pay more. It's not really a stretch to think they'd offer tiers for people who wished to pay more.

The data is, after all, legally theirs to release, and Michigan University knew and approved it.

If this is something people don't like then they can vote with their feet and move to a different news source.

Once again Nanex is all over this.

<comment><USER3> What if companies did this with earnings reports? Released it early to people willing to pay.

<comment><USER4> If they were publicly traded companies that would be against the law.

<comment> brown9-2 With the idea being that those who bought access had an unfair advantage in trading with the general public.

However, if "everyone" knows that some companies can buy these reports minutes ahead of time, then when people lose out on trades in the minutes afterwards, isn't it the fault of the people taking the trade?

It's not wise to trade with people who might have more knowledge than you. It seems like there's a reasonable expectation that the people on the other sides of these trades should know about the paid access.

<comment><USER4> There is nothing illegal, immoral, or unethical about collecting information or paying someone to collect information to give you an advantage in a trade. Nearly every trade that happens has some information assymetry associated with it. It is not a secret in any way that there are tiers of access to reuters data. We could enact some sort of law that makes this illegal, but that seems heavy handed and unlikely to have a positive impact on the market.

We have decided that it should be illegal for public companies to give information selectively for the purposes of trading. We could easily change this law, but history has shown us that it isn't heavy handed and does have a positive impact on the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> '[Reuters] explained that this disclosure can be found on the "Machine Readable News" product page of its Website, under a drop-down menu for "suite components." ' \- CNBC

(It's actually worse - it's six clicks from the home page to the document.)

' "...I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find [the plans]."

"That's the display department."

"With a torch."

"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of The Leopard'." ' \- Douglas Adams

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not just put it on a sliding scale? One dollar per nanosecond or something.

I'm not sure if I'm joking or not.

<comment><USER7> That actually would be really interesting, because you're essentially creating an auction on the value of information. It does you no good to get the news a nanosecond after your competitor, because in these markets (with large amounts of leverage available) they've already bought up all the affected securities and arbitraged out the difference. So it behooves you to bid up to your expected profit from having that information, in an attempt to get the information first. The transaction price gives you the dollar value of the information to the highest bidder.

<comment><USER8> Of course, if your systems can execute trades a nanosecond faster than your competitor, you can afford to get the news a nanosecond after them.

<comment><USER7> Right, which is why major hedge funds heavily optimize their code, use C instead of Java to avoid GC delays, and colocate their boxes on the exchange to minimize speed-of-light delays. We already know the premium for executing trades faster via solid IT: it's a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nothing to see here, its kinda funny to see the 1% be outraged by the fact that there is a 1% of the 1% that 99% of them aren't part of.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, this gives "elite" traders an advantage over the only-somewhat-elite traders, but I would suspect that most sane traders who aren't doing hyper- HFT-type trading will be unaffected. So it's a meh for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> The way they're monetizing their role in the release of this widely-followed signal is morally equivalent to insider trading on their own.

That said, serious traders who object to this tax can predict the signal from more-primary sources.

</comment><comment><USER12> Couldn't someone collect the same data that University of Michigan does and beat all these guys?

<comment><USER13> In principle, yes. In practice, probably not.

There is a certain amount of overhead involved in the creation of the dataset. Hiring people to call and collect answers, filtering the data, formatting it, fielding questions about it, etc. The University of Michigan seems to partially pay for this by the fees they charge Reuters. I am not sure if they make a profit on it or, if so, how much. But you could probably found some company to collect and provide the same amount and quality of data for cheaper.

However, even if you were able to beat them on cost, you wouldn't be able to charge nearly the same amount that UofM does for it. The reason is that the UofM data goes back for over three decades, so traders can do all sorts of backtesting with it. They are also a recognized "brand" in this field and over time sources of trading information like the UofM report become ingrained in traders' minds as "indicators" of one type or another. So, for various practical and psychological reasons, your hypothetical startup would have to charge a much lower price for the same data and spend many years earning the confidence of traders.

Ironically, you might be able to make more money by selling the data as an early predictor of the UofM report. Since traders know that the UofM report can be a market moving event, any early predictor of it (even one with ~90% accuracy) would be valuable. This would probably just force UofM to collect and release the data earlier and with less polish though, negating much of your advantage.

<comment><USER12> Your last point is kind of what I had in mind with my question. Not to try to compete with UofM but to gather data to predict their results and use it for your own trades. You could hold the results private and play the market to beat even the high-frequency guys. You could even do a shoddy job of collecting the data to keep costs down but maintain, say, a 90% confidence in your prediction of UofM's numbers, that's enough to beat the market 9 out of 10 times.

<comment><USER14> You don't factor in the number of times UofM 'gets it wrong'. Even given their influence you wouldn't be winning 9 out of 10 times. But it could still be an edge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why don't we just have turn based trading with turns of 1 or 24 hours and then have a blackout period near turn ends when relevant information should not be divulged?

<comment><USER16> Is it possible to enforce such a system? Wouldn't people naturally create and gravitate towards markets where they can trade in real-time?

<comment><USER17> Nah, it makes no sense. You could just artificially create transactions and finalize trades every hour anyway.

<comment><USER15> I don't understand. So you can make side bets in real time with others who choose to do so. The point is that those who choose not to do so don't have to compete on millisecond scale response times to news postings.

<comment><USER16> Maybe, but I suspect you'd end up with worse prices.

It would be hard to enforce a true "blackout period". Traders trade on all kinds of information, not just controlled data. Wouldn't liquidity tend to be lower on a non-realtime exchange, because everyone is essentially trading on outdated information, resulting in worse prices than the realtime exchange?

But I know very little about this stuff, so maybe I'm completely wrong.

<comment><USER15> The blackout scheme is a very secondary thing. If you make interval 1 hour, then the rapid response advantage only applies to data made available in the seconds before the trading event. Rather than having a millisecond advantage on every trade, the fat pipe guys have a millisecond advantage on every 3.6 millionth trade.

I think prices would be better for people not playing the low latency response game. Liquidity within an hour would probably cost a premium as you'd have to get the money from someone on the real time market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I fail to see the problem. If you don't want to have any 'tiers' in third party analysis info, logically it follows that all reports should be published free of charge.

That would make no sense at all.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why not sell this information directly?

Someone at Michigan should make a startup that builds a system to sell this information at market value, which most certainly is way more than $1 million per year.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't see the issue here. Now that this is common knowledge, if you don't subscribe to the Thomson Reuters feed, DO NOT TRADE until 10am and the price has settled. Why would you ever participate in a transaction with someone who you know has more information than you, and you know this information asymmetry will be equalized within 5 minutes?

</comment><comment><USER21> There is something seriously wrong with an economic system where 2 seconds makes that much of a difference.

<comment><USER22> 2 seconds can be a lifetime in this business. At least in Sweden one of the stock exchange offers server space in the same machine hall as the exchange. To minimize the physical distance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why doesn't something like this affect the University of Michigan's tax exempt status? [http://compliance.umich.edu/tax/tax.html](http://compliance.umich.edu/tax/tax.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Technically, it should be insider trading? Acting on information that has not reached the market?

<comment><USER21> The information isn't coming from insiders though. It's statistical data collected by third parties.

<comment><USER22> So true. On the other hand it would be insider if the company hired third party to collect information. It's s thin line but I think your'e right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> You've got to pay to play.</comment>


RustCrypto AES/GCM and ChaCha20+Poly1305 Implementation Review - <AUTHOR> https://research.nccgroup.com/2020/02/26/public-report-rustcrypto-aes-gcm-and-chacha20poly1305-implementation-review/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's nice to know there are a few "safe" Rust crypto primitives (especially the `ChaCha20+Poly1305` which is also found in `libsodium`):

* AES/GCM: [https://github.com/RustCrypto/AEADs/tree/master/aes-gcm](https://github.com/RustCrypto/AEADs/tree/master/aes-gcm)

* ChaCha20+Poly1305: [https://github.com/RustCrypto/AEADs/tree/master/chacha20poly...](https://github.com/RustCrypto/AEADs/tree/master/chacha20poly1305)

Quoting from the "key findings" of that report:

> NCC Group did not find any vulnerability in the audited crates. > > The > RustCrypto implementations use all the recommended techniques to achieve > constant-time implementations; in particular, the fallback AES > implementation (to be used when there are no usable hardware AES opcodes) > uses bitslicing to avoid any table lookups at secret-dependent addresses. > Similarly, received authentication tags are compared with constant-time > comparison functions. > > A few cosmetic remarks, mostly related to > potential performance improvements, have been assembled into RustCrypto.

\----

It seems that the audited code includes also:

* `aes-gcm` and `chacha20poly1305`: [https://github.com/RustCrypto/AEADs/tree/a15698fdba23ffb17b8...](https://github.com/RustCrypto/AEADs/tree/a15698fdba23ffb17b84d9ecaa2c9c80706ecf03)

* `aes` from RustCrypto/block-ciphers: [https://github.com/RustCrypto/block-ciphers/tree/e385f1ebb2e...](https://github.com/RustCrypto/block-ciphers/tree/e385f1ebb2ec48547194e51c5193309ee328d93b)

* `chacha20` and `salsa20-core`: [https://github.com/RustCrypto/stream-ciphers/tree/1235638004...](https://github.com/RustCrypto/stream-ciphers/tree/1235638004c21dee4e76af4cc932cf1cd815e8f9)

* `aead`, `stream-cipher` and `universal-hash`: [https://github.com/RustCrypto/traits/tree/4569d256f02ac0ecef...](https://github.com/RustCrypto/traits/tree/4569d256f02ac0ecefa393baf225fb4a6df35875)

* `ghash`, `poly1305` and `polyval`: [https://github.com/RustCrypto/universal-hashes/tree/1ab06bd7...](https://github.com/RustCrypto/universal-hashes/tree/1ab06bd79542e75490468b227dd3c2cbe42d3d92)</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite articles/blog posts of all time? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> When I'm feeling down or burned out I used to read "Good and Bad Procrastination"[0].

When I need inspiration I go read "How to Make Wealth"[1].

During my day job where I'm required to study specifications, I found "The Feynman Technique"[2] to be useful in understanding the subject quickly.

From time to time I also read "The Best of edw519: A Hacker News Top Contributor"[3].

I just repeatedly read articles and posts that I like:

[0] - [http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html](http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html)

[1] - [http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

[2] - [http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/10/26/mastering-linear- algeb...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/10/26/mastering-linear-algebra- in-10-days-astounding-experiments-in-ultra-learning/)

[3] - [https://web.archive.org/web/20160304034949/http://v25media.s...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160304034949/http://v25media.s3.amazonaws.com/edw519_mod.pdf)

<comment><USER3> In regards to [1] on wealth, what are your (and everyone else's) thoughts on the following:

> But a very able person who does care about money will ordinarily do better > to go off and work with a small group of peers.

That's saying that you'll make more money if you go work (or start) a startup, whereas I've seen some opposite sentiment on HN (don't have specific links, sorry) where people say your expected monetary returns will be higher at GOOG/FB or other big companies because of the high failure chance of startups.

<comment><USER4> I think Gates, even if he had to give an exclusive license to IBM for DOS, would have come up with an operating system for the other computer companies demanding one. Paul Graham is wrong on how this would have played out.

Gates already had the business model in place for licensing basic to computer manufacturers. It's easy to see he would have extended that to some DOS-like operating system.

Indeed he went onto do precisely that with Windows, leaving OS/2 to IBM and failure.

PG called this one wrong. Gates would still have come to own the industry as he did, whether or not the DOS deal with IBM was exclusive. The computer industry was always set to expand and Gates was always the guy to meet the demand. Gary Kildall had shown by this stage he didn't have what it took to pick up every commercial opportunity offered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a well known open ended interview question - "what happens when you type a url in a browser and hit enter?". I have many a times imagined (I have never been asked this exact question) overwhelming the interviewer with details, that comes in waves, by going deeper and deeper, by asking rhetorical questions like "but what happens there" loudly and not caring what he answers, almost channeling Sheldon Cooper. In this fun scenario , I restricted myself to network stack of the OS and routing mechanism. However, I recently found this article [http://danluu.com/navigate-url/](http://danluu.com/navigate- url/) that is much more hardcore. It is now one of my favorite, if not all time.

<comment><USER6> This is probably the best version of this that I know of: [https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe](https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe)

A few months/years ago there was a Github repo that tried to crowdsource this in excruciating detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

1964 - John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured programming language for non-computer scientists.

1965 - Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964.

[http://james-iry.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/brief-incomplete- and...](http://james-iry.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly- wrong.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Steve Yegge's "Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns".

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in- kingdom...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of- nouns.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> 57 startup lessons from Slava Akhmechet:

[http://www.defmacro.org/2013/07/23/startup- lessons.html](http://www.defmacro.org/2013/07/23/startup-lessons.html)

I don't think I've ever seen such an accurate, shrewd, and insightful collection of startup wisdom in one place before. Every bullet point in this list could be a book.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm reading this one from time to time. Easier said than done, but so true !

"If You Don't Design Your Career, Someone Else Will"

[http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4524232](http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4524232)

</comment><comment><USER11> Eight Years Today: [http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2012/03/eight-years- today.h...](http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2012/03/eight-years-today.html)

I don't want to do it the injustice of trying to summarize it. I've been reading this blog post for years, here and there.

</comment><comment><USER12> The problem is "Write a C program of 512 characters or less that returns as large a number as possible." This fantastic reddit comment[0] led me down a rabbit hole that I still haven't dug my way out of.

[0] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/csuey/write_a_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/csuey/write_a_c_program_of_512_characters_or_less_that/c0v08pw)

<comment><USER13> Woah, you don't read something like that every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Two great articles from TDWTF:

* Programming Sucks! Or at least, it ought to! [0]

* The Oracle Effect [1]

EDIT - formatting again

[0] [http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Programming-Sucks!-Or-At- Lea...](http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Programming-Sucks!-Or-At-Least,-It- Ought-To-)

[1] [http://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-oracle- effect](http://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-oracle-effect)

<comment><USER15> "Programming Sucks! Or at least, it ought to!" is one of the best ever written. I make sure to read it every 6 months or so to keep myself grounded

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Managing Nerds - [http://randsinrepose.com/archives/managing- nerds/](http://randsinrepose.com/archives/managing-nerds/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Clay Shirky "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable"

William Deresiewicz "Solitude and Leadership"

The Last Psychiatrist: "How to Create: Motivation for 2010"

[http://mlb.nbcsports.com/2014/10/08/sick-of-the-giants- and-t...](http://mlb.nbcsports.com/2014/10/08/sick-of-the-giants-and-the- cardinals-in-the-nlcs-tough-they-deserve-to-be-there-and-wed-better-get-used- to-it/)

Alex Smith Gives Commencement Speech at Utah

</comment><comment><USER18> It was just reposted a few weeks ago, but I really like Andrej Karpathy's "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Recurrent Neural Networks": [http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn- effectiveness/](http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/)

</comment><comment><USER19> [http://www.economist.com/node/16479286](http://www.economist.com/node/16479286)

This article describes how variations in intelligence has to do with parasite load and nutrition. May explain a lot of the lack of intellectuals and educated individuals in some countries.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think this one is very insightful and is one of my favorites: [http://mindingourway.com/what-sort-of-thing-a-brain- is/](http://mindingourway.com/what-sort-of-thing-a-brain-is/)

</comment><comment><USER4> The most insightful post on recruiting ever written:

[http://carlos.bueno.org/2014/06/mirrortocracy.html](http://carlos.bueno.org/2014/06/mirrortocracy.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> [http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?joel.3.219431.12](http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?joel.3.219431.12) easily.

</comment><comment><USER22> "The Right to Privacy" by Warren and Brandeis.

[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/priva...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/privacy/Privacy_brand_warr2.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> This article made me carry a bottle of water with me: [http://lifehacker.com/how-to-trick-yourself-into-drinking- mo...](http://lifehacker.com/how-to-trick-yourself-into-drinking-more-water- every-da-1678956552)

</comment><comment><USER24> And this is a pretty damn good classic. [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/you- matter.h...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/you-matter.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> Watch a VC use my name to sell a con. [https://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch- a-vc-use-my-name-to-s...](https://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my- name-to-sell-a-con/)

Getting Rich: from Zero to Hero in One Blog Post [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich- from-...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-zero-to- hero-in-one-blog-post/)

<comment><USER25> Another favorite is so minimalist it fits in a tweet!

Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but you can't invert a binary tree on a whiteboard so fuck off. [https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en](https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Fred Brook's "No Silver Bullet". I've found it very useful to reason in terms of accidental vs essential complexity and constantly asking myself: is this truly hard or am I just making it hard by using the wrong tool/design/abstraction/architecture etc for the job.

[http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~pszcah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBu...](http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~pszcah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBullet.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> Awesome blog for people interested in data analytics. [http://fivethirtyeight.com/](http://fivethirtyeight.com/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Clay Shirkey's "Situated Software" [http://shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/situated_softw...](http://shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/situated_software.html)

It goes on a bit too much so it's not always on point, but at the time I read it I really appreciated it bringing to focus that not every piece of software has to be about millions of users.

</comment><comment><USER15> "The Duct tape Programmer" By Joel Spolsky is a good one.

It always reminds me that we are here to build software, not design the perfect system. The quote from Zawinski is great

"It was decisions like not using C++ and not using threads that made us ship the product on time."

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's one I read recently that I thought was very good in it's simple wisdom. [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2016/09/make- somethi...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2016/09/make-something- great.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> The verses and the wit from the Irish-Princetonian poet Paul Muldoon on YouTube never fail to bring a broad smile to my face. [https://m.youtube.com/results?q=paul%20muldoon](https://m.youtube.com/results?q=paul%20muldoon)

</comment><comment><USER30> It's this one: [http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)! It should be required reading for everyone I think.

</comment><comment><USER31> "How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly and Expertly" by Stephen Downes: [http://www.downes.ca/post/38526](http://www.downes.ca/post/38526)</comment>


Don't Break the Build: A Developer's Guide to Care-Free Commits - <AUTHOR> http://tasktop.com/blog/mylyn/change-set

<comment><USER2> How not to break the build: make commits transactions.

If they break the build, back them out, just like any other failing database transaction.

(Of course, to do this, you have to have a build process that doesn't take all day, combined with tests that will catch breaking commits.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea, but isn't it possible to monitor files for changes by _any_ program, so that this isn't tied to Eclipse or one of finite other environments?

<comment><USER4> Well, it's called a DVCS. There you commit locally and _test_ your commit before pushing it upstream.

I must say I'm a bit baffled to see such an elaborate (yet horrible) workaround for a minor problem that has been solved 5 years ago.

But I guess the photo gives it away...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How do you know the changes you do check in actually work without the changes you don't check in? "git stash" or "hg shelve" seem much less sketchy.</comment>


Some (Linux) Bugs Have All the Fun – Linux Journal - <AUTHOR> https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/some-linux-bugs-have-all-fun <comment><USER2> Pretty content free, even for Lunduke. I don't see much value to this at all.</comment>


All Intel chips vulnerable to new Spoiler (non Spectre) attack - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/all-intel-chips-open-to-new-spoiler-non-spectre-attack-dont-expect-a-quick-fix/ <comment><AUTHOR> It was amusing (but sad) to see Google admit last week that Spectre and Meltdown hardware vulnerabilities cannot be escaped with software. Duh! And here's another. These problems are part of the chips' designs and aren't going away unless you trash the hardware itself.

<comment><USER2> Couldn't speculative execution be selectively shut off?

<comment><USER3> Sure, as long as you like 1990s performance.</comment></comment></comment>


Pijul 0.3 (VCS): first public release - <AUTHOR> https://pijul.org/2017/03/16/pijul-0.3.html <comment><USER2> Basic things almost work, just a hang when I try to checkout to the original branch again after changing a fork branch. Also 'pijul changes' is a bit strange as it does not take the current branch you are on but the master.

<comment><USER3> Fixed on nest.pijul.com/pijul_org/pijul, thanks for the report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can't seem to successfully register on [https://nest.pijul.com](https://nest.pijul.com). Not receiving the confirmation mail.</comment>


Ten Reasons You're Not a Billionaire - <AUTHOR> http://a2-blog.com/articles/ten-reasons-why-youre-not-a-billionaire/ <comment><USER2> Mimicking a billionaire's personal lifestyle won't make you a billionaire. You'll be a billionaire when you do or create things collectively valued at a billion dollars.</comment>


The Company That Paid $300K To Not Make Millions on Guitar Hero - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/5443725/the-company-that-paid-300k-to-not-make-millions-on-guitar-hero <comment><USER2> Goes to show... you never really know. The decision taken out of the context of the lawsuit looks poor but maybe weighed by the lawsuit (could it have taken down the company?) may not look so poor.

<comment><USER3> There were a number of people at the time who thought Red Octane were out of their fucking minds because of Konami's patents. What's worse than having to pay damages after the fact is the risk of an injunction at the moment after you've gone to manufacturing but before you can sell-through at retail.

<comment><USER4> Injunctions take time or to put it in a more Pythonic version:

"It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"Everyone else made hundreds of millions and we paid money to not be a part of it," Richardson said. "It was brilliant. I come up with these strokes of genius from time to time. That was my best."_

I love that quote. It makes me think I'd get along really well with him.</comment>


Ask HN: How to go about the goal of democratising data at our organisation - <AUTHOR>
 Hi Everyone! Hope you all are doing great.
We(@ squadvoice.co) wanted to take your help/suggestion in something we're trying and figuring out if to build or not. Below is the problem statement that we're focusing on majorly. Become a data-driven organization where anyone can make decisions & leverage data in a self-service model without spending too much time on data retrieval or data query formation.
Why we're thinking we should build a solution for the same?
1) Ad-hoc analysis requires engineering bandwidth at a lot of time. And due to that product features get delayed.
2) New queries require engineering support at a lot of times.
3) Operational queries become stale (inconsistent) with changing business logic.
4) Queries timeout, run slow, etc.
5) We take lots of decision basis the data, and if data fetching and gathering is slow and time taking it is gonna slow whole org down.
We do have SQL dashboarding and things in place, but new requirements keep coming up(I guess we're trying to find new data points every day to see what we can improve which is great honestly) and application+business logic change so often that it is hard to keep it updated.
Now, we wanted to understand:-
1) How people in other organizations like yours are solving the same?
2) What are the things you tried what works and what does not?
3) How do you validate whether it is something that you should solve for or not?
4) What're technologies and gotchas that you think should we be aware of and consider for this kind of things?
5) How do you make sure, whatever you build is scalable and alterable such that if you change your application logic in future things still remains sane.
6) How do you make sure, people are able to get data they need as fast as they can.
I am already sorry if this post looks long and some redundant elements, but I wanted to communicate problem and what we're looking for help in as clear as possible. <comment><USER2> First step is providing simple self-service access to data with minimal time/money efforts. Typical approach is:

* data sources (database tables & columns) are isolated from end users with some kind of 'model'; end-users operate in terms of this model. This model is created & maintained by 'publishers' \- this is user(s) with some technical background that know database structure & SQL good enough. In large organizations this is IT specialists, in small businesses this role is covered by founders/managers with tech skills. If organization database(s) cannot handle OLAP queries directly some kind of data lake is organized to deal with slow queries.

* end users use BI tool to perform ad-hoc analysis, save & share their reports.

Also it is good idea to start from something very simple that can be configured very fast; in this way you can collect feedback from end-users (BI consumers) as early as possible, and then decide if you need to invest more in more complex / enterprise oriented BI solutions. In this context, I may recommend to check our BI tool: [https://www.seektable.com](https://www.seektable.com) (both cloud service and on-premise installations are possible).</comment>


Inside Stripe(2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/1813087/inside-stripe-paypal-competitor-backed-paypal-founders-peter-thiel-elon-musk <comment><AUTHOR> This quote by Patrick stood out to me-

"Our target audience is the people making things on the web...And ultimately, there are no websites that are not built by developers."</comment>


The Space Doctor's Big Idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-space-doctors-big-idea-einstein-general-relativity?intcid=mod-latest <comment><USER2> Still not as good as "Einstein's Theory of Relativity in Words of Four Letters or Less". Excerpt follows:

A few more of us got it, then. But most of us just said, "What are you two on? Put down the bong and get real! This is way too wild to be true." But they just said, "Just try and see if it isn't true."

So we came up with ways to test old Al's idea, and each time Al hit the gold. His idea had the sun's rays a tiny bit more red than what Izzy said. They were. His idea put Mars a tiny bit off from how Izzy had Mars. It was.

The big one, the one that got told over and over, was the one with the dark- at-day time. You know, when the moon gets in the way of the sun. At that time you can get a real good look at a star when it's up next to the sun. (Next to it in the sky, that is. Not next to it for real. You know what I mean.) They went off and got a good look at a star that was very near the sun, and then they used a book to see just what spot that star was in. You see, the rays from the star pass so near the sun that they get bent, on the way to us. Old Al, his idea said just how much the rays get bent. With Izzy, the rays get bent, too, but only by half as much. So they took a look at the star, and they took at look at the big book, and ... well, I'll bet you can tell me as well as I can tell you just how far off that star was.

A-yup.

And then all of us, we all just sat back and said: "Whoa."

[http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html](http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html)

<comment><USER3> > With Izzy, the rays get bent, too, but only by half as much.

What does this refer to?

<comment><USER4> Newtonian gravitational lensing (not sure if that is an actual term). Newton's gravity could be applied to photons to get some lensing, but this predicted was half of that predicted with general relativity

<comment><USER5> Exactly half, as it happens.

> A naive application of Newtonian gravity can yield exactly half this value, > where the light ray is assumed as a massed particle and scattered by the > gravitational potential well.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think you absolutely need mathematics to understand the theory of relativity.

Freeman Dyson writes when he was a child "I had read some of the popular literature about Einstein and relativity, and had found it very unsatisfying. Always when I thought I was getting close to the heart of the matter, the author would say, 'But if you really want to understand Einstein you have to understand differential equations,' or words to that effect." Later on, he goes on to say how he ordered Differential Equations by H. T. Piaggio with over seven hundred problems, most of which he solved over Christmas vacation. Then when he attempted Peter Eddington's Mathematical Theory of Relativity, it came very easily after the differential equations practice.

<comment><USER7> If I'm not mistaken Dyson also learned Russian one summer as a kid, because he wanted to be able to read certain book. What a guy.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, "just" reading Russian isn't that hard. A grammar textbook and a dictionary gets me through polyphonic greek lit and modern german lit. Try it! You might be surprised at how easy your brain will pick it up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess this comment probably comes up every time Munroe's common-word pieces come up, but I can't help but feeling like you only really understand (or care) about the article if you already know enough about relativity.

> The first idea is called the special idea

No, it's not. Relaxing the rules to use key words (especially proper nouns) would go a long way. You can call it Special Relativity and still "explain relativity using only common words", can't you?

The result is that instead of an article explaining relativity, you end up with an article about relativity translated into a common-word subset of English.

Of course, I do enjoy decoding into normal English in my head as I read!

<comment><USER10> I find I really like the labels "the special idea", and "the big idea." I like it because it introduces the nature of the theory quite approachably, where a theory is at it's heart an idea or a concept. Then, by labeling one "special" and on "big", the relationship between the two is immediately obvious; we see that one idea is covering a smaller but more particular area, while the other idea covers a larger but potentially less-special and more general area.

The piece isn't as "strictly accurate" as it could be, but that's the point. By making something approachable you'll hook into many more minds than otherwise, and the knowledge of the reader that "this is not all, there is more to learn" is powerful bait for the curious.

<comment><USER11> Bill Gates recently reviewed Munroe's "Thing Explainer" (a book consisting entirely of explanations written in this style), and in his closing paragraphs states the following:

"If I have a criticism of Thing Explainer, it's that the clever concept sometimes gets in the way of clarity. Occasionally I found myself wishing that Munroe had allowed himself a few more terms—"Mars" instead of "red world," or "helium" instead of "funny voice air."

Of course, that would defeat the purpose of the book. And Munroe himself is aware of the tension. In "Page Before the Book Starts"—a.k.a. the introduction—he acknowledges that some terminology is inescapable. "To really learn about things, you need help from other people, and if you want to understand those people, you need to know what they mean by the words they use. You also need to know what things are called so you can ask questions about them. But there are lots of other books that explain what things are called. This book explains what they do."

And it does that beautifully. Thing Explainer is filled with cool basic knowledge about how the world works. If one of Munroe's drawings inspires you to go learn more about a subject—including a few extra terms—then he will have done his job. He has written a wonderful guide for curious minds."

[http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing- Explainer](http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer)

I completely agree. Things written in this style occasionally start to feel a bit clumsy, but the fact that my curiosity has been piqued to delve deeper into a given topic is more than worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> See also 'Uncleftish Beholding', a text about atomic theory using English as it might be without borrowing so much from Latin and friends: [https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language...](https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language.artificial/ZL4e3fD7eW0/_7p8bKwLJWkJ)

<comment><USER13> That was fun. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A fun exercise in 'constrained' writing about a complex topic. However making that claim that it 'explained' Relativity is not valid in any reasonable sense.

I found the reliance on keeping to the 1000 most commonly used words to be actually fairly painful to read thru to the end and even harder to understand.

Perhaps "Relativity as explained to a 6 year old" might make it more accessible. A 6 year old has a vocabulary of ~5000 to 10000 words (for reference) and being able to take these "verbal shortcuts" aka words would make for better understanding.

<comment><USER15> I disagree.

I have never before seen a popularized attempt to explain things like light bending that managed to get things right. He even took time to mention that the popularized image of a sheet of rubber with a ball in it is an incomplete way to think about things.

If it does not match your previous understanding of the topic, I'd suggest reading it again. The only better explanations that I've seen involve tensor calculus.

<comment><USER16> I read the previous comment not as saying that this explanation was _wrong_ , but that it's just unlikely to be truly enlightening to someone who didn't already know the subject reasonably well. I'm on the fence about whether I agree: the cognitive load of interpreting the odd phrasing certainly does compound the cognitive load of understanding the deeply non-intuitive physics.

This is quite a good presentation of the topic (or, parts of it), but if clarity of understanding were the primary goal you could probably do substantially better by translating it at least partway back into ordinary language. (But then, fewer people might be intrigued or entertained enough to read that version. So I'm not really complaining.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is worth pointing out that only about 10% of Mercury's parahelion shift is due to the effects of general relativity. The other 90% are due to gravitational influence of the other planets. It is really quite remarkable that astronomers of the 1800s made precise enough observations to be able to tell that the parahelion shift was not entirely explained by known objects in the solar system (since the effect is on the order of 10%, you have to know the mass and position of every other major object in the solar system to about that accuracy to be able to tell).

<comment><USER18> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(hypothetical_planet)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_\(hypothetical_planet\))

I believe this was posted recently, or linked like I'm doing now in a comment. Scientists in the 1800s tried to explain that 10% with a hypothetical 10th planet within Mercury's orbit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I ran the entire text of this article through XKCD's simple writer tool ([http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/](http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/)) and it pointed out that "movement" is not among the 1000 most common English words. The word "movement" is used exactly once in this article.

So I guess this should be Theory of relativity explained using the 1000 most common English words and one additional word :)

<comment><USER20> True, though Munroe has been quite liberal about word derivations, and '-ment' is a somewhat salient morpheme in English, despite not being very productive.

But still I'm surprised the article didn't pass the updated validator. Perhaps an editor actually made the change?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> He wrote a book called Thing Explainer that is going to be published in a week, which uses 1000 words to explain lots of things.

It was reviewed by Bill Gates recently: [http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing- Explainer](http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer)

This article is likely an excerpt from that book.

<comment><USER22> Discussion of book and Gates' review: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546194](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546194)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I for one hope that Thing Explainer is converted into Spanish[0]; it'd be a quick win to learn the 1000 most used words in Spanish in context!

[0] May also apply to other languages.

</comment><comment><USER24> By Randall Munroe. If the pictures didn't already make it obvious.

<comment><USER25> ...and the byline?

<comment><USER26> Personally I wouldn't always check the byline of an article, so were it not for the pictures I'd have appreciated it being pointed out to me :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This was really hard to read. I feel like I'm reading a redacted science text book, with all the important bits removed.

<comment><USER28> I found it very easy to read (as in understand), but very hard to read (as in finish), because I'm a bit sleep deprived at the moment and it was putting me to sleep.

It would be interesting to compare explanations like this[1] to mostly equivalent explanations as they would traditionally be presented for learning on a few topics I'm not familiar with to see if the concepts conveyed came across better.

1: With footnotes for specific terms so the jargon can be linked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Inspired by [http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html](http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html) ?

<comment><USER30> Didn't Guy Steele's "growing a language" also start with the 1000 most common words?

<comment><USER31> IIRC he started with one-syllable words, but same idea.

<comment><USER32> If I am right, I think he did but just with words with just one sound.

FTFY ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So this is why what-if hasn't been updated.

</comment><comment><USER34> Excellent. I also enjoyed Brian Greene's visuals on the Late Show recently: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jjFjC30-4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jjFjC30-4A)

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm tempted to read this story to my 4 year old daughter and see what her opinion is of this "space doctor".

<comment><USER36> I just did. Her question was: "what does a space doctor checkup"

<comment><USER35> Which shows part of the problem of this approach: The word doctor is in the top 1000 words in its usage for "medical doctors" but it's not in the top 1000 words in its usage as a reference to PhD graduates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Note: Munroe did the same thing in an xkcd for explaining the Apollo rockets (I think that's what it is):

[https://xkcd.com/1133/](https://xkcd.com/1133/)

<comment><USER38> Close! The Apollo programme used the Saturn V rocket [1].

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

<comment><USER39> But his comic _is_ about Saturn V.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is this a typo, or just a misunderstanding on my part? These two quotes seem to be diametrically opposed in their explanation of Special Relativity in two parts of the article.

> When you go fast, he said, the world around you changes shape, and time > outside starts moving slower.

> Since the boats are going fast, the space doctor's special idea says that > their watches will run a little slower than the ones on Earth.

Shouldn't time outside start moving _faster_ in the first quote?

<comment><USER41> It's not a typo. When two ships are moving fast relative to each other, they _both_ determine the other's clocks to be ticking slower.

[http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/sr/paradox.html](http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/sr/paradox.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> That was funny, but it would be easier to digest if he used a few extra words.

<comment><USER35> If you improve on it with a modified approach, buzzdenver, I'm sure many of us on HN would be happy to give you feedback.

<comment><USER25> Idea: pull requests, but for essays.

<comment><USER43> Wasn't that sort of what medium was pushing originally?

<comment><USER25> Was it? Not sure. It's too new-agey and commercialized for me, so I never checked. Blogger and Jekyll-github all the way! Perhaps if someone leveraged those technologies well, you actually would have source control for essays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Thank you, Mr Munroe, but I still can't wrap my feeble mind around it. It's still just too weird.

<comment><USER45> Ah, so you understand it perfectly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> He's also done a similar piece explaining how rockets work using only the thousand most common words in English. The one detail that I remember is that apparently "thousand" is not one of the thousand most common words, as it was rendered as "ten hundred".

</comment><comment><USER47> For a layman's mathematical understanding of relativity I recommend "Why does E=mc^2" by brian cox and jeff forshaw, which explains both the theory and why the equations used to describe the theory, well, describe the theory. It does it all with a nice just-so narrative that builds on physics from galileo all the way through to einstein and ends up at particle physics. It's just a very good book.

</comment><comment><USER48> There's an XKCD-inspired writing tool that only lets you use the most 1,000 most-common words in English:

[http://splasho.com/upgoer5](http://splasho.com/upgoer5)

<comment><USER32> Also, the official one:

[http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/](http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The prose remind me of the writings of Kurt Vonnegut, particularly of Breakfast of Champions.

<comment><USER50> And so it goes.

* * * _

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Title should be "Theory of relativity explained by xkcd author Randall Munroe".

<comment><USER52> The original title has its charm. Not everything should be fully explained, and on HN it's better if readers occasionally have to work a little.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Brilliant, as always.

</comment><comment><USER54> tl;dr: Numbers.

</comment><comment><USER55> "If you're in a car, you see watches outside the car go slower. They only go a little slower, so you wouldn't notice it in your normal life; it takes the best watches in the world to even tell that it's happening. But it really does happen."

He said it backwards...

<comment><USER16> The crazy thing about special relativity is that from the perspective of the observer in the car, they're sitting still and everyone _else_ is moving. That means that the observer in the car will see the watches of people on the sidewalk ticking slowly, at the same time that the people on the sidewalk will see the car's clock ticking slowly.

Everyone sees everybody else's watch ticking slowly (unless they appear to be at rest). And yet it all hangs together in a beautifully consistent way. The catch is that moving observers don't just disagree on whose watch is running slow, they _also_ tend to disagree on whether distant clocks are correctly synchronized or not. The disagreements about which clock is ticking too slow always perfectly balance out the disagreements about which clock chimed noon earlier.

<comment><USER15> In the path from special to general you have to give this point of view up.

More exactly, special relativity starts with the assumption that there are special inertial frames of reference, here is what they look like, and here is what they look like relative to each other.

General relativity starts with arbitrary coordinate systems, and ways of expressing physics such that whatever was measured in one coordinate system can be translated into what should have been measured in another. These coordinate systems can have any mixture of weird effects.

The physics involves something called a metric. General relativity is what falls out if you insist on the following statements:

1\. "Locally" things behave like special relativity.

2\. Given only low velocity and low mass, things behave like Newtonian gravity.

3\. The terms of the metric satisfy a first order differential equation whose definition is independent of the chosen coordinate system.

This gives you general relativity up to an arbitrary constant of integration (the cosmological constant). And in the presence of mass it gives you the prediction that no truly inertial frame of reference exists over any region with matter in it. (The effects of gravity are all due to stuff being non- inertial.)

From that prediction we find that the point of view and understanding from special relativity is only a local approximation. You can't really describe any interesting system that way.</comment></comment></comment>


Apache OpenOffice is insecure - <AUTHOR> http://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/128873352708/urgent-get-the-hell-off-apache-openoffice-its <comment><USER2> > the security hole: HWP files can be exploited and pwn your PC. obscure minor > format, no problem … except that if you get a HWP file with a .DOC extension > - say, what appears to be a MS Word file emailed you by anyone - you can get > pwned by that.

> they've known about this since april 2015 and haven't fixed it. they have > distributed over 8 million known-vulnerable copies of AOO since 27 april. > (and the 143 million vulnerable before that.)

> the fix is, literally, remove one file from the installer. they haven't got > it together to do this in five months.

\---

If the state of OpenOffice is really as bad as this person says, it would probably be a good time to try to roll LibreOffice back under the banner as the mainline (ala iojs -> node). IMHO one reason Libre never took off on Windows as much as Linux is the strange brand name, at least to non- participants in the great free software nomenclature war.

<comment><USER3> I don't get what the word "libre" has with the " _great free software nomenclature war_ " or why that would make people avoid LibreOffice.

It's also a very common word coming from the romance languages, with English being the strange one that doesn't make a distinction between free as in beer or as in speech. And in spite of what you may think, free as in beer on Windows means freeware and that kind of software has really bad connotations, hence the distinction is kind of necessary even from a branding perspective.

And btw, Occam's Razor applies: if LibreOffice has less success than OpenOffice on Windows, that's probably because there's no Sun anymore to promote it.

<comment><USER4> A lot of end-users still mispronounce Firefox as "Foxfire". They don't understand what an operating system is and they don't know the URL bar exists so they Google everything.

If your friendly neighborhood computer nerd, like me, tells them to check out "Lee Bray Office", first they think that's a dumb name, and then they fail to find it online.

In the geek niche, yeah, LibreOffice is fine. Outside of that, it's a disadvantage.

(Doesn't help that the product was slow and buggy for a long time either, so for a lot of users, it became, "oh, it was that crappy Microsoft Office knockoff".)

<comment><USER5> I pronounce it more like "leeb-RAW-fiss"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.openoffice.org/security/cves/CVE-2015-1774.html](https://www.openoffice.org/security/cves/CVE-2015-1774.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm glad this got voted up. I've been tossing up on whether to use and recommend OpenOffice or LibreOffice, and now I know which one to choose.

Its too bad there's so much FUD and arguments going back and forth between the LibreOffice and OpenOffice communities. I wish the OpenOffice devs would just support LibreOffice and make it a much better product and really competing with MS Office.

</comment><comment><USER8> My it is dismal to encounter an article about OpenOffice. I wish those involved would mend whatever feelings and contracts are involved and get to redirecting openoffice.org to libreoffice.org. I skim comments and don't notice any path toward that happening (please point out if I've missed!) and close tab. But I just realized I have some old blog posts linking to openoffice.org. I've changed those to point to libreoffice.org. A tiny thing...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Original title:

URGENT: get the hell off Apache OpenOffice, it's insecure and not worked on any more. LibreOffice is better in literally every way.

</comment><comment><USER9> isn't the raison d'etre of foundations such as Apache to see to it that this sort of thing doesn't happen to its products?

<comment><USER10> The amount of half-finished and unmaintained projects hosted by Apache is remarkable.

<comment><USER11> Yep and they refuse to accept issues at GitHub and their GitHub repos are all just mirrors, so they make it really hard to contribute.</comment></comment></comment>