This Is Why You Can't Have Nice Things, Yahoos - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/27/mayers-means/ <comment><USER2> You know who I like?

Marissa Mayer. She's doing this right. It's the velvet glove on the iron fist. She starts with food and modern cell phones. She tosses out the bad execs. She eliminates the dumb trademark symbols on all the physical signage. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief – these changes are good news.

The message is clear: your boss knows what you need and wants to take care of you.

But she's not all cupcakes and kisses.

With the tone set properly, she identifies the dead wood. From what I hear, _shitloads_ of people are checked out at Yahoo. That's a cultural problem that's tough to lift. Imagine being checked out _and_ outside of the day-to- day social nudges that keep you feeling a little bit like your job expectations have consequence.

Mayer's an optimizer. Years at Google taught her all about getting the best ROI from the simplest operation. With one stroke, she can identify who really cares about Yahoo's mission and who is just along for the free gravy train. Yahoo isn't going to get out of trouble by casually, lazily sidling to the promised land.

It's going to take work. And now the boss wants a sign of commitment to that work.

The hysteria about this move is misplaced. She nailed it. Great call.

<comment><USER3> What happened to leading by example?

 _"Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer built a nursery in her office so she could bring her baby to work, which has angered some stay-at-home employees following her demand that all remote workers report back to the office.

'I wonder what would happen if my wife brought our kids and nanny to work and set em up in the cube next door?' the husband of one remote-working Yahoo employee asked in an interview with AllThingsD's Kara Swisher.

Many employees are upset because they don't have the money or clout to build their own nurseries at work. And many assume Mayer has a whole team of people, from nannies to cooks and cleaners, helping her raise her son - after all, she does have a $5 million penthouse atop the Four Seasons hotel in San Francisco in addition to her $5.2 million 5-bedroom home in Palo Alto."_

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2284828/Yahoo- boss-M...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2284828/Yahoo-boss-Marissa- Mayer-angers-employees-building-nursery-baby-office.html)

<comment><USER2> When you, alone, have the power to turn a company around, you get more or less anything necessary to ensure your success.

Let's be real.

This isn't CEO camp. Not everyone gets a turn.

Mayer is special. She's got a kid on the way. I'm sure the shareholders would prefer she not have to choose between saving Yahoo and raising her kid. If employees were able to deliver similar levels of value, I'm sure they'd be first in line for their own special accommodations.

<comment><USER4> How is it related to being a CEO, though? Fact is, Mayer had a child. She realised that in order to be effective in the office, she needed a nursery, so that she could be close to her child while also working.

Why does the same not apply to Yahoo employees with young children? Mayer may be CEO, but the logic she used to install a nursery would apply to all employees.

<comment><USER2> There is a cost associated with the accommodation (which Mayer was uniquely able to pay for). There's limited physical space. There are practical considerations.

Other employees don't deliver enough value to tip the equation in favor of the accommodation. If tier-4 person has a nursery, you get a marginally better contribution four tiers down. If Mayer has a nursery, she potentially turns Yahoo into a fiercely competitive organization.

Is it fair? No. It's business.

Hell, why not give everyone a corner office? Give everyone a private jet? Y'know?

<comment><USER4> You know, there's a cost effective alternative to giving every employee a nursery. It's letting them work from home.

That's kind of the whole point of why people are picking up on this.

<comment><USER2> And one day, when Yahoo is very successful and has a trusted, properly incentivized workforce, I am certain they will explore such accommodation. In the meantime, homegirl is running a turnaround; the French Resistance didn't have featherbeds.

<comment><USER4> It's hardly as if Yahoo employees don't have other places they could go. At a time when tech companies are falling over each other to persuade people to work for them, turning off prospective employees seems like a turnaround all right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why does pulling people into the office finally give Yahoo the ability to fire under-performers? You don't need to see butts in seats in order to identify people who are not pulling their weight.

If people are coasting at home OR at the office you can tell that by their work output. _Where_ they do their work doesn't enter into it.

Adopting a Results Only Work Environment (<http://gorowe.com>) would allow them to have folks who work from anywhere _and_ give management the tools to fire under-performers.

If this were only a temporary measure, a "reset" so to speak, then I still don't agree with it (I think you can do that without the disruption), but it would be understandable. As they have not said that this is temporary, I have no reason to think it'll come back in the future, which is the tragedy.

It doesn't have to be like this.

<comment><USER6> I like the point someone raised that part of the point is to avoid firing people as that gets very costly. Instead they'll hopefully quit.

<comment><USER7> Who's going to quit though? The people who care, the people who know they have better options elsewhere. The talentless hacks who still don't give a shit about the company but are willing to go through the motions for a paycheck? They're like barnacles you'll have to get rid of by scraping them off and using a blow torch. The way to get rid of underperformers is by firing them, period, there's no other hack or workaround that makes things easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "We've checked and some people who work from home haven't even logged into the VPN…"

Wow. The WFH ban is starting to sound like the beginning of a bigger shake-up. I suspect Yahoo will want get rid of a ton of its unproductive employees and rebuild around a small core of talent, some of which will presumably be poached from Google.

<comment><USER9> > "We've checked and some people who work from home haven't even logged into > the VPN…"

So why were they still employees? No Yahoo, that is why you can't have nice things.

<comment><USER10> I haven't been a Yahoo! employee for 7 years, but back in my days (dusts off his old cane to tell the kids to stay off the lawn) the product was run by product management, while engineering was responsible for development and maintenance.

With top management shakeups every week or so I'd imagine the product management part of Yahoo! being in a state of disarray, with some people leaving on their own, some getting the boot, random new people showing up, but nobody sticking long enough to make any product decisions.

Reliability is the only remaining thing on the engineering plate, and with good infrastructure a lot of smaller projects from here <http://everything.yahoo.com/> just run themselves most of the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _There was and is rampant abuse of the Yahoo work-from-home policy — it was a joke. "Working at [Yahoo] HQ was like paying taxes in Greece," said Twitter's Patrick Ewing, who also had friends who cheated the system. The fact that the Yahoo parking lot is relatively empty (compared to, oh, Facebook's) at 5pm is why you can't have nice things._

if this is indeed the problem, then how is bringing in non productive engineers under the same incompetent and uninspired managers going to improve the situation at all? is this going to at least indirectly aid in culling the unwanted, laggard staff?

you can still slack off even when reporting to the office, especially if you commute by car.

if they have VPN logs, can't they just fire engineers using this evidence? it's not like we:re in Italy or France where firing workers is next to impossible.

<comment><USER12> I think Marissa is trying to get rid of these managers too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The WFH ban is just a band-aid. The fact that it was necessary is a symptom of the fact that many yahoo employees had simply given up. They'd stopped putting in effort, they'd started staying at home and pretending to work. Now with Mayer's ban they will simply come into the office to not work. It's a classic "the beatings will continue until morale improves" measure. It won't work, it'll just remind unsatisfied yahoo employees how much they hate their jobs and lead to an even more dysfunctional workplace and evaporate away all of the talent that was ever at the company.

<comment><AUTHOR> yea, I can see that. But I think MM is sending a message here, and the WFH crowd were among those that cared the least.

<comment><USER7> What is the message? "Stop goofing around, get to work"? She's sending the wrong message to the wrong people, it'll have exactly the opposite effect she imagines.

The value of a software company is in its developers. The best developers are almost always intrinsically motivated. And the best developers are the ones who typically end up being the heart of the company, they're the ones who keep the whole system working through the thousands upon thousands of little things they do that aren't mandatory but are necessary in order to ship any quality software.

Mayer's efforts here are to treat the developers as spoiled children, and it will serve only to further alienate and demoralize the best developers who have just been too lazy to leave and find better work elsewhere. It doesn't even matter if the developers actually are acting like petulant children, if you drive them away they still go away. And then once they evaporate you're left with the dregs, and then shockingly somehow it becomes orders of magnitude to ship anything of any quality on time. The worst part of this is that I'm sure this cycle has already played out multiple times at yahoo.

You can't treat creative knowledge workers like factory drones, even when they're misbehaving.

The only thing that will actually help Yahoo is tackling projects and creating a work environment that encourages intrinsically motivated devs to work, everything else will follow naturally. If they want to continue on their long slide into the dust bin of history then by all means they should create a workplace that is optimized for mediocre devs and mediocre projects.

<comment><USER13> > The best developers are almost always intrinsically motivated.

Have you managed a large team before? The single best way I know to demotivate a highly motivated developer is to let them see a coworker at the same pay grade do significantly less work without any good reason. (footnote: individuals going through cancer treatment are the tricky complication here, due to privacy issues)

And I should emphasize that for most of the developers I've managed, it wasn't a fear thing like, "oh, he'll fire me if I don't work" but rather a removal of the sentiment that, "why should I keep working so hard when others here don't pull their weight and are being rewarded for it?"

That's a large part of the reason I like semi-enforced distributions in curve- oriented review systems. Many managers, particularly first-level leads, tend to pull their rewards towards the mean (barely rewarding high performers and still rewarding low performers) instead of focusing on doing the right thing at the tails. Though that's certainly no guarantee of success; I got a decently sized development and test organization (~60 of each) merged into our organization and it took nearly a month of full-time work for myself (and one of my peers) to sort out the years of misrewarded individuals to get neglected high performers promoted and HR action started on people who'd been resting and vesting.

<comment><USER7> These aren't comparable situations necessarily. How you fix a mostly functional organization with problems is different from how you fix a fundamentally dysfunctional organization. If you have a functional organization then it makes sense to get rid of all the low performers, regardless of how much "effort" they're putting in. And if you end up with someone who is able to work fewer hours and still be as productive as other team members you would be silly to get rid of them even if other team members were upset.

<comment><USER14> and, I think, Engineers have their own hierarchy; we understand that an hour of the new kid's time is worth maybe 5 minutes of the really expert person's time.

Generally speaking, if one person isn't working all that hard but is contributing a lot (due to greater skill) the other Engineers can recognize and appreciate this. We all understand the tradeoff between ability and effort; The better you are, the less effort is required (but, there are minimum levels for both effort and ability; no matter how awesome you are, you need some minimum level of effort; even if you dedicate your life to the job, you need some level of ability. - but, to some extent, ability can make up for a lack of effort, and effort can make up for a lack of ability.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When I was at Yahoo in 2008, some staff were always "working from home" but never responded to IM or email. They'd surface for a day or two, squeeze out an artefact, then vanish again for a week.

I somewhat blame their direct managers. It's always tempting for lower-level employees to game the system, especially if they are having personal issues (young kids, bad marriage, low workplace morale). Managers should provide guidance to bring their reports back into line.

Then again, the managers in question were busy fighting org politics and seemed happy just to have an extra "soldier" on their roster.

So maybe Marissa's stalinist purge of remote workers will prove to be a blunt but effective instrument for flushing out the bludgers.

<comment><USER16> That's what confused me. I'm wary of armchair-CEOing, given that I have no experience at that level whatsoever. However, it seems like there would be an easier solution to "people who WFH and don't do anything": deal with people who _don't do anything_ (whether at home or in the office). Try as I might, I can't see the benefit to this blunter approach that would justify the cost to recruitment and legitimate remote workers.

<comment><USER15> Yahoo is a big company. It's not like a startup or even an small enterprise, where everyone knows Johnny is on facebook all day and Terry takes a 3 hour liquid lunch. There's too many places to hide in a big org.

So to identify unproductive people using a top-down approach, you'd need a metric to measure staff productivity and force the managers to implement it.

Which do you think would be less popular, a) curtailing remote work or b) implementing and enforcing an org-wide productivity metric?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is silly, just silly.

The problem is and always will be unproductive people. It comes down to leaders and leadership. If someone isn't working out, cut bait. That includes managers, execs and programmers.

Any exec worth their salt would attack the problem, not a symptom of the problem. This shows me that Yahoo still doesn't get it.

And if this IS about unproductive people, this is essentially a ban hammer on something b/c of some bad apples. Again, awful leadership. Fix the problem.

I work from home. Everyone on my team works from home. The entire company I work for works from home. We are a big company. It does take good leadership and strong management to make that work. It also takes good developers and, frankly, strong guidance if something isn't working out.

It sounds like Yahoo has none of the above, or, perhaps more tellingly, maybe Mayer knows that (giving her the benefit of the doubt, after all) and that is really an indication of a much bigger problem.

</comment><comment><USER18> So instead of implementing a proper way to measure employee performance they are banning remote work. I think people who were unproductive at home will remain unproductive in the office unless they actually find a way to measure productivity, this is why I feel that this effort is not only futile, it also does harm.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, all this article says is that broad measures are being taken which affect the productive and unproductive alike.

I've seen that road, and it leads to utter and complete disaster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> While the WFH ban is getting some criticism here for being a tactical response and not fixing the problem, I can see how it fits into a larger house cleaning. It sounds like Yahoo is in a serious spot both economically and culturally, and I can imagine Mayer saying that Yahoo needs to be rebuilt, right here (on campus), by people who really want to make it work. The ban addresses both parts. It gets people back together, in person, and it weeds out those aren't going to make that sacrifice for the company.

And to those who claim that they are as effective working at home, let me challenge you in this way: how do you really teach, inspire, and build morale if not in person? Someone may be a great coder, but they might also be an incredibly motivating person who lifts up those around them to much higher levels. I've never seen that occur remotely. Yahoo needs help badly, and they need their best people on site, walking the halls, building a culture that means making Yahoo great again. I don't see how said people can do that over VPN.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Agree with this wholeheartedly, as it jibes with a lot of what I've heard of the Yahoo WFH experience. Don't think it's fair for outsiders to judge, and I think that this was a courageous choice by MM. She had to know she'd come under fire for this

</comment><comment><USER21> I hate this perception that working from home = slacking off.

Think about why that perception exists. It implies that unless you have someone looking over your shoulder you wont do any work. Like a child in a classroom.

Most people are not children. Most people want to do a good job and support their team members.

If you behave like a child then you should never have been hired in the first place. If you are hired then your lack of delivering results will be very visible.

If a slack employee can get away with slacking off, the company has a much more serious problem about the way it works. Putting people in an office will not solve this problem.

I'm happy to argue about the pros and cons of local vs remote teams. Effectively communicating, mentoring,team bonding etc are all debates worth having.

The slacking off argument is not worth having. Its rubbish. This initiative sounds like busy work.

</comment><comment><USER22> What MM is doing at Yahoo seems eerily reminiscent of what happened at Apple when Steve Jobs first came back in 1997.

John Lilly (of Mozilla fame and former Apple employee) recounts the atmosphere at the time:

 _"[Steve] said 'You know what, we're going to build a great company. We're going to reinvent the world. And anybody who believes me, let's get moving. If you don't believe that will happen then get the hell out.' And this was an amazing act of leadership because it was so clear who was in and who was out. And I'll tell you, people in the room would have followed Steve everywhere and anywhere, just about anywhere. Now it turns out me and my friends left and we're happy with that decision although economically it probably would have been better to stick around. We've all done okay. But what an act of leadership by a guy who nobody believed in at the time, nobody believed it."_

<http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3067> (Listen from 13:50 to 16:40 for the story containing the above quote)

</comment><comment><USER11> if there is one thing I miss about print journalism, it's actual descriptive, concise headlines. why can't we be treated with "yahoo crippled by delinquent, unresponsive engineers and managers"?

</comment><comment><USER23> If someone has been not-working from home and has never logged into the VPN, why do you even want them to come into the office now? Just fire them.

</comment><comment><USER24> To me, this sends the signal out that the CEO has lost confidence in her middle managements ability to evaluate who is delivering and who is not, and has forced them to get more involved.

In my opinion, the problem with remote workers is it is FAR too easy for superstars to sandbag and still perform in the upper quartile. They look at it as a value proposition: if I can turn out a weeks worth of productivity for an above average programmer in just 2-3 days of effort, I can slack for the remainder of the work week or not even check in.

Contrast that to a place that enforces the face-to-face time. It's much harder to slack and sandbag when you have people there. That super-star who is now in the office, will churn out super-star material 5 days a week, instead of 3.

I think it's brilliant, and wish them well. I would love to see Yahoo rise up from the ashes.

* apologize for the term superstars, but you know what I mean. Some people just have ability that far exceeds their peers, and they use that ability to shift their work/life balance. I think it's entirely fair, but I can see how an employer would want to optimize in their favor.

</comment><comment><USER25> The fact that it was Yahoo that had to explain that the decision was not an indictment of remote working in general is pathetic.

The decision was obviously exclusively related to Yahoo and only pertinent to this current point in time.

</comment><comment><USER26> > It's that the bunch of slackers that claimed to be working from home without > actually doing any work ruined it for everyone.

How about just figuring out what people goals are and, if they can't meet them, they're let go. Wouldn't that work just as well without causing everyone to come into the office because some people can't manage to work from home?

</comment><comment><USER27> Does anyone else find it strange that the author of the article interjected one of her own tweets in the middle of the article?

<comment><USER28> It's not her tweet. It's a tweet from a parody account. Her actual account is @alexia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What keeps the valuable, skilled, and productive employees from switching to a more accommodating firm while the useless workers who couldn't find employment elsewhere scramble to hang on? Seems like this could easily backfire.

</comment><comment><USER30> Fire their managers, too.

</comment><comment><USER31> It seems to me like Yahoo has several years of undesirable cultural legacy. The company needs to reinvent itself. Redefining WFH is a part of that, but the problem is that there are a large number of things that Yahoo needs to do and getting the order right is important. Cracking down on WFH before dealing with the other problems is a bad call.

The real question is: why are there so many unmotivated, unproductive people? Is it bad hiring or bad project management? I don't think there are a large number of intrinsic underperformers, so much as people demotivated by contexts that leave no real opportunities for achievement. Perhaps there are a lot of pointless projects that have no career upside, but that people can't escape from, so they use the bog as an excuse to retire on-the-job. I'm not saying that that's right-- it's not-- but, if this is the case, then it's important to deal with the underlying problem instead of the symptom only.

One of the things that executives get wrong on this is that, if you want to preserve morale, you've got to put a "shit sandwich" (good-bad-good pattern) around your crackdown. First, you do something related and good for the employees (like give them more opportunities to pick what they work on). Then, you deliver the crackdown (reduced WFH). Finally, once you've achieved what you're looking for, you scale the crackdown back or add a perk that makes it more acceptable.

<comment><USER7> There are two big questions that yahoo faces. What the fuck do they want to be as a company? And what do they intend to do with the engineers they have right now?

They haven't come up with an answer to the first question so far as I can tell, which is a bigger problem than anything else.

For the second question they are faced with a lot of problems. If they want to try to retain as much talent as possible they're going about it the wrong way. If they want to instill discipline and transition down to a smaller more mediocre more "enterprisey" company that pumps out crappy line-of-business apps then they're doing a damned fine job so far.

If I were forced to try to turn yahoo around I'd start by identifying the major projects that yahoo should execute on and then I'd either fire almost everyone and start from scratch or I'd work by replacing the company from the inside out by growing a "bubble" that was a new division built with new rules with new management that hired both from outside the company and from within yahoo and was highly results oriented and, at least initially, worked on fast iteration projects that are easier to judge success on.

A couple good candidates for projects that could serve to help re-energize the company are flickr, yahoo stores, and yahoo hosting services. Revolutionize those, iteratively, make them competitive, and you could go a long way toward revitilizing the company and providing projects that people actually want to work on.

<comment><USER24> I think you are right on this point: they need to figure out the strategy and direction of the company, and then blast it out everywhere (isn't this the CEO's job)? Define the vision, communicate it, then arrange your resources to aggressively pursue it.</comment></comment></comment>


Where Was Modern Flight Invented? Connecticut Believes It Holds the Answer - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/18/nyregion/where-was-modern-flight-invented-connecticut-believes-it-holds-the-answer.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&assetType=nyt_now

<comment><USER2> This is the first I've heard of the claim, so I went to read the wikipedia article on Gustave Whitehead. Most of the information about the claim lead me to believe it is possible/plausible, but the evidence is far from solid.

Then I came to the line:

"Whitehead also built gliders until about 1906 and was photographed flying them."

And indeed, the photos are in the article. So, if he did indeed make powered flights, where are the photos of that? It would be one thing if he was super secretive and only ever claimed one powered flight. However, several flights are claimed, and there are no photos of any. My suspicion is that he tried, but was never very successful.

</comment><comment><USER3> The first manned flights were likely in 1783. No, that isn't a typo.

The debate between 1901 and 1903 (Whitehead Vs. Wright) is really uninteresting in the grand scheme of overall aviation history, and long before 1901 even members of the public could take a hot air balloon ride (and they were already being used in wars).

All that really happened in the early 1900s is that the weight-power ratio of engines got such that it was just waiting for someone to exploit that advancement. That's the reason why people didn't do it before 1901, not because nobody had invented the concept of a fixed wing aircraft (they had, with gliders) but because engines were simply too heavy for their power output to carry both themselves and a passenger.

PS - Yes, Whitehead/Wright deserve credit, they often had to tweak engines, optimise the design, optimise the propeller, and so on. Just saying that broader technology advancements played a large role which is often ignored.

<comment><USER4> The Wrights didn't "tweak engines", they hired a machinist to build their own engine from scratch, being unable to find an existing one with the requisite power to weight ratio.

The Wrights also had a propeller design that was 90% efficient, compared with the flat design (used on the Langley machine) that was 50% efficient. This was also crucial, because it had the effect of nearly halving the required power.

Power, weight, and efficiency are all critical. There's no way to tell if Whitehead's design would have flown from a replica based on a photo, because those 3 factors cannot be derived from a photo.

<comment><USER5> The Wrights also did considerable wind tunnel research on air foils until they got the right shape of wing. The exhibit at the Smithsonian taught me a lot, of which I remember only vague bits. It went something like this.

In the 19th C, some airflow work led to a constant, having a value of N; the Wrights used that constant for years, and their craft would not fly.

Eventually, having made every adjustment they could think to make, they began to question some of the expert work upon which they relied.

In the end, they built their own wind tunnel, ran many of the classic 19th C. experiments, and discovered that errors had been made, and that the constant in question had an actual value of 2N (might even have been 10N, it's late, I'm lazy and on my way to bed).

Important work. They were extremely methodical....

<comment><USER4> Quite right. Consider also the design of the wings of the Wright Flyer. This was a design deduced from principles. The Whitehead design is copied from birds, indicating a lack of understanding how wings worked. Look at the size of Whitehead's wings. They're just too small, compared with that of the Flyer. The Wrights calculated the necessary wing size, and it was barely enough.

Do you believe those small and inefficiently shaped Whitehead wings would fly with the likely engine power he had? I don't. The replicas probably had far more powerful engines - you can make anything fly given enough power.

Maybe Whitehead's machine did fly - down a sufficiently steep hillside. I don't think that counts as flying under its own power, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The bit about making flying replicas is not solid evidence. There's very little evidence for the control system, the propeller design, and the engine, all of which are crucial. The replicas guessed at a lot with the help of aviation engineers who know all about how to make it work.

On the other hand, the Wright Flyer still exists, and exacting replicas have been made and flown, and their flight characteristics match the descriptions of the Wright's flights.

The rest of the evidence for Whitehead requires a lot of generous giving of benefit of the doubt as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> The fact that this remained controversial due to a lack of evidence for over a century speaks to how limited the world's communication networks were at the time. It took a century to uncover evidence in the form of first page reports, a form of communication that we'd all believe would spread the message far and wide, yet Whitehead's accomplishments were relegated to obscurity almost as soon as they were reported.

I remember reading about these claims a few years ago and the only evidence at that time was the back page report in a newspaper that most Wright supporters denigrated as a satirical source akin to today's "The Onion". I was ready to hop in the comments section ready to decry the article only to find that the digitization of archives had completely changed the body of evidence supporting Whitehead's claim.

To be fair, the Wright brothers have their place as the first successful aviators as they were able to iterate and expand on their Wright Flyer's design to produce an unbroken lineage of aircraft leading to the modern day. Whitehead's design flew first but it was ultimately a dead end aside from his powerplant. I think there's an equal place in history for creators of the first practical, foundational, or modern design in a given category. Invention doesn't happen in a vacuum and researching the best combination of fundamental concepts and applying them as the Wright brothers did is equally revolutionary in my opinion

<comment><USER4> > The fact that this remained controversial

It's still controversial. For example, the photograph. If I was Whitehead, I'd take care to preserve the photo, making copies of it, etc. But that photo is the only one not preserved. The only evidence is that massively blurred smudge, which has to be very charitably interpreted as being a flying airplane.

Even if it is, I would suspect Whitehead would have flown it as he flew gliders - launching off the top of a hill and gliding down. That isn't really powered flight.

Nobody can prove Whitehead didn't fly, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and that is simply lacking for Whitehead's flight. I also find it odd that he did not challenge the Wright's patents for wing warping, etc., if he did it first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a fact that part of the world doesn't believe the Wright Brothers invented it in the first place.

In Brazil, Santos Dumont holds this title. French people also seem to give credit to him. Other countries also have their preferences and their own history.

To me, it seems there were so many people trying it that none of them really did it alone. If the title should go to the closest we have to an airplane today, Santos Dumont beats the Wright Brothers. But I'm Brazilian, so I'm biased. Not that I really care about the title...</comment>


I/O multiplexing using epoll and kqueue system calls - <AUTHOR> http://austingwalters.com/io-multiplexing/
<comment><USER2> Ignoring POSIX has its own pains.

The only way to maintain sanity is to use an abstraction like libev (or libevent) - when you find a bug, report it upstream and roll your own builds till it gets into CentOS.

Like the memcached proxy (Moxi) used a patched libevent to work fast (though the main server was rewritten in Golang - zBase).

<comment><USER3> Then again, when there is an ambiguity in POSIX, it gets even worse. For example, file locking is just messed up. Also, the only way to get something standardized seems to be to create it and make it popular first.</comment></comment>


A Tour of Apple's Newly Opened Shanghai Store - <AUTHOR> http://shanghaiist.com/2010/07/08/preview_shanghais_first_apple_store.php?gallery0Pic=8#gallery <comment><USER2> If you don't want to click through all 28 images paste this in your URL bar so you can see them all at once:

EDIT: Ugh, markup broke it so I converted it to charcodes (It's not bad I swear):

        javascript:eval(String.fromCharCode(100,111,99,117,109,101,110,116,46,100,111,99,117,109,101,110,116,69,108,101,109,101,110,116,46,105,110,110,101,114,72,84,77,76,61,34,34,59,102,117,110,99,116,105,111,110,32,110,101,119,73,109,97,103,101,40,115,116,101,109,41,123,118,97,114,32,105,109,103,61,100,111,99,117,109,101,110,116,46,99,114,101,97,116,101,69,108,101,109,101,110,116,40,39,105,109,103,39,41,59,105,109,103,46,115,101,116,65,116,116,114,105,98,117,116,101,40,39,115,114,99,39,44,39,104,116,116,112,58,47,47,115,104,97,110,103,104,97,105,105,115,116,46,99,111,109,47,117,112,108,111,97,100,47,50,48,49,48,47,48,55,47,97,112,112,108,101,115,116,111,114,101,95,83,72,39,43,115,116,101,109,43,39,46,74,80,71,39,41,59,100,111,99,117,109,101,110,116,46,100,111,99,117,109,101,110,116,69,108,101,109,101,110,116,46,97,112,112,101,110,100,67,104,105,108,100,40,105,109,103,41,59,125,118,97,114,32,115,116,101,109,115,61,91,39,48,49,39,44,39,48,50,39,44,39,48,51,39,44,39,48,52,39,44,39,48,53,39,44,39,48,54,39,44,39,48,55,39,44,39,48,56,39,44,39,48,57,39,44,39,49,48,39,44,39,49,49,39,44,39,49,50,39,44,39,49,51,39,44,39,49,52,39,44,39,49,53,39,44,39,49,54,39,44,39,49,55,39,44,39,49,56,39,44,39,49,57,39,44,39,50,48,39,44,39,50,49,39,44,39,50,50,39,44,39,50,51,39,44,39,50,52,39,44,39,50,53,39,44,39,50,54,39,44,39,50,55,39,44,39,50,56,39,93,59,102,111,114,40,118,97,114,32,105,61,48,59,105,60,50,56,59,105,43,43,41,123,110,101,119,73,109,97,103,101,40,115,116,101,109,115,91,105,93,41,125,59,118,111,105,100,32,48,59));</comment>


CFO needed for social network startup company - <AUTHOR> http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/acc/2298477637.html

<comment><USER2> I applied. Lets see how this works out.

PG, you better have my back on this one. Ill give you 6% of my 10%.</comment>


Ask HN: Review our app, Muspy (new album notification service) - <AUTHOR> http://www.muspy.com/

<comment><USER2> Cool startup, I like the logo. The video is a nice touch, people are just too lazy to read these days (myself included).

Suggestions: \- Lose some of the fluff. For example, in your "what?" section, you could've written it as simply "We notify you when artists release new albums". There is no reason to have more words than you need to describe your product. \- I would have preferred voice in the video. Don't be shy, having a voice over helps a lot. \- Maybe add a way to import information from existing sources like Last.fm or Facebook's music interests?

I'm intrigued by how you guys plan to monetize this, but maybe I'm just greedy and should be thankful for a web app that helps alleviate some of my headaches.

<comment><USER3> I agree with the voice over suggestion.

Try to humanize the site as much as possible.

Based on QA, I wonder what feedback you would get if you placed the video above the fold....

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Overall, I think it is a nice and useful service. I could definitely see myself using it.

My first thought once I grasped its function was "where do they get the data? Can I be sure that my favourite, obscure indie band will show up there?". Perhaps you should add this info somewhere?

Disclaimer: I did not sign up for an account, so there is a possibility that I missed a members' faq somewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's in the FAQ, we are using the MusicBrainz database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty good idea and easy to monetize if people actually purchase through your site. I see this being less than 5% tho.

The logo concept is ok I suppose, but the overall presentation of your brand (logo+site) will significantly impact adoption of a product like this. I recommend you put some energy ($) into it... the logo reads like there's a 'T' in it btw.

I think you should enable some public features, for example a user can easily see any new releases within the last week. This will also boost your saturation on search engines.

<comment> A-Merchant yes re: the "t" in the logo, when I was on the site I kept reading it as "Musty"

<comment><USER6> Totally agreed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a pain to add artists one-by-one, and the service isn't valuable until I do.

I (and a lot of my friends) already have a list of artists in my Facebook profile. You should let me paste that in and parse it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call, I'm going to add import from last.fm, facebook and probably iTunes.

<comment><USER8> A widget/plug-in thingy that scans your music library and adds the artists to your list would be nice.

<comment><USER9> Only if it included a caveat "only add artists with X number of tracks." God knows what kind of esoteric stuff is lurking in my music drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it would make sense to allow people to use your app (start building a list of artists) before registering. Just store their list to a cookie and show a little notification that tells them to enter their email and a password to save their artist list and start receiving notifications.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestion, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> this is cool, but the real reason I'd want this? honestly?

When the albums get leaked to what.cd.

I like the layout, I really like the sign up form (nice and simple) one thing, when searching for something with multiple results there is no way to go "back" once you've clicked "n more artists"

its a bit weird that the album links dont go direct to amazon/iTMS -- i assumed that was your revenue stream?

<comment><AUTHOR> _this is cool, but the real reason I'd want this? honestly?_

I guess it depends on how many artists you want to follow. And also how obscure they are. I personally have about 80 artists I absolutely want to know when they have a new release (to sample it or at least to read a review). And 80% of them are not even on Amazon.

 _its a bit weird that the album links dont go direct to amazon/iTMS -- i assumed that was your revenue stream?_

They will, we are working on this.

<comment><USER9> If you're able to get referral revenue from amazon there's no reason your service couldn't be extended to authors/books as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, and directors/actors ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've actually googled around (in vain) to find such a service (after searching everywhere on last.fm for this feature - I was convinced that they'd have it - but no...)

So, excellent idea, I needed it yesterday!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is an interesting idea. I definitely agree with other comments here. Open it up to let users import data from Last.fm or other apps that are recording their listening trends. Then let them know what albums are being released from artists they frequently listen to.

Pulling in info then making a recommendation system would be great. Maybe work on an iTunes plugin to read star ratings and phone back to the app? Just thinking out loud here, I have no idea if something like that would be possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Recommendations are available through Last.fm API, we are working on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great idea--solves a practical problem (albeit not one that I have).

On a different note: do you care how people pronounce your name?

My first thought was "Muspy", almost rhymes with "Musky".

My second thought (upon seeing the logo) was "Oh! Mus- is from music. And -py is from ... Python?" So now I'm thinking about pronouncing it "Muse-py"--as in how you'd pronounce a Python module.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have to admit we need to re-work the logo. Others suggested that it reads "Musty"

The name comes from MUsic and SPY.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The concept is fine but I find the design a little drab. In my opinion this is an "entertainment" based site and you mentioned possibly selling music... you need to jazz it up, give it some pop - create a vibrant color scheme - then I think people will feel more in-tune with your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> We like it plain and simple, but we may review the design in the future. Thanks for your suggestion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would it be possible to have a RSS feed with the latest album releases rather than email notifications?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's already there. We should probably make more visible, but if your browser has the RSS detection built-in - you can already subscribe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> LOVE The idea. Allow me to import from Last.fm and I'll use your service.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are definitely going to add Last.fm import.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> include concert listings for followed artists. link to ticket sellers for revenue. explore other ticket related ideas.

</comment><comment><USER18> when i read the name, the first association i made was "mumps"</comment>


AppLog: insidious spyware rolled out in Japan by Milog, Inc. - <AUTHOR> http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ2011100513334

<comment><USER2> finally something thats not about steve jobs.</comment>


E-Fun v0.1-beta is released - <AUTHOR> https://contrast-zone.github.io/e-fun/ <comment><AUTHOR> E-Fun is a fractal inspired experimental content management system. It follows a minimalist slack design, implementing only necessary parts needed to publish arbitrary static site.

Using E-Fun, content pages are arranged in a manner of zoomable fractal of ovals orbiting around each other in parent-children relation system. Operations of navigating sites is implemented only by dragging ovals, thus navigating horizontally or vertically through the tree. As a special curiosity, E-Fun implements optional real time curved magnifier effect to show its contents.

If you look for distinctive, progressive, and adventurous way to publish smaller static sites, make sure to check out E-Fun at least to satisfy your curiosity.</comment>


Mozilla labs sudoSocial - <AUTHOR> http://mozillalabs.com/conceptseries/2010/06/01/introducing-sudosocial-me/

<comment><USER2> You can hear the whirring sound of the Macbook fan :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Due to my inattention, I misread "sudoSocial" as "Suicidal". I briefly assumed it was a social network self-destruct site.

Viewing the demo that page linked to, really slowed my browser down (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:126.96.36.199) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3).</comment>


Pampy: Pattern Matching for Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/santinic/pampy <comment><USER2> > _Currently it works only in Python > 3.6 Because dict matching can work only > in the latest Pythons._

Should just work with collections.OrderedDict in older version though?

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right! I'm thinking to backport it with some minor syntax change for python2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great! Love the lisp calculator</comment>


Ad Innovation Conference, September 14 at YC - <AUTHOR> http://adinnovationconference.com/

<comment><USER2> I'd like remind everyone that, as it says on the site, this conference is for "anyone working at an ad agency, advertiser, or publisher," because we seem to have a lot of people trying to register who don't fall into one of those 3 categories.

<comment><USER3> We're working on ML algos we license to DSPs... I'd love to meet startups working on different parts of the ecosystem.

Are we not welcome?

<comment><USER4> They want to "sell", not to be sold to.

<comment><USER3> It's not sales as much as collaboration. Lots of us only have point solutions. Unless we have exits very soon, the most viable approach is to partner to offer more complete solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Will videos of the talks be published?

<comment><USER6> I hope so....

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just a note, you can't seem to choose "0" as the number of guests that you'll bring along.

<comment><USER8> Seems to work for me. Wish I was eligible :( I'd pay a flight down for this... anyone want to bring me as a guest?

<comment><USER7> They fixed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A free 3-hour conference at YC headquarters? How many microseconds after this was announced did it take to fill up?

<comment><USER8> Not even that - the conference material itself sounds pretty awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool, guys. Great way to create leads and get feedback for the startups involved.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great idea. Would love to a version of this on the east coast.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is there a list of advertising industry YC companies?

</comment><comment><USER12> Advertisements are lame.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is pg going to be there?

</comment><comment><USER14> If this was in NYC I would sign up in a flash.</comment>


How to correctly ask a customer how much they are willing to pay - <AUTHOR> https://theunconventional.blog/how-to-survey-product-pricing/ <comment><AUTHOR> Pricing can make or break your startup. You either price too low and limit your runway, or price too high and limit your growth. I recently wrote an article on a technique that has worked for several startups I have coached throughout the years, with a downloadable survey and worksheet.

Let me know your thoughts!

</comment><comment><USER2> Eating lunch in San Francisco (SoMa) has really warped my brain. My answers to those four questions were way off the chart.</comment>


Ask HN: any beautiful website generation service? - <AUTHOR>

(inspired by earlier HN post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4131847)
I am looking for a way to generate ready-made websites for small businesses.
The demand is there. I have dozens of businesses contacting me every week for building websites.
I am looking for a way to automate the creation of the sites based on basic infos (company name, some presentation text) and produce a nicely designed (such as those themes) website.
Does anybody know of a service that could help? <comment> simba-hiiipower not sure if this is the type of thing you're looking for, but i recently came across this:

IM-Creator <http://imcreator.com/>

i've just begun messing around with it (building a simple personal site) and I'm generally very pleased. the templates they have up are really quite nice and are very easy to customize. though it does feel a bit limited (may not be quite suitable for you), it is free and they seem to be pretty active in addressing any issues and taking feedback into consideration for improvements.</comment>


Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.humbledmba.com/beware-of-mbas-the-business-school-curriculum

<comment><USER2> I like to think of this topic using an automotive racing analogy: Fortune 500 companies are the formula 1 cars. They need a great big team to perform efficiently, and minor tweaks applied correctly can yield significant results. The MBAs are the specialists who work the electronics and the advanced controls for the race cars. A team working on a formula 1 car could find a way to increase down force by 5%, or they could install a GPS system to analyze turns and scrape 1/100s of seconds off of lap times, and that edge could help them win.

Startups are cars with a very different purpose. They are project cars, and they have 1 purpose: to go. Forget GPS systems and down force. These cars need tires and a working steering wheel. It would be a mistake to think about installing spoilers on a car that doesn't have all 4 tires, just as it would be a mistake to worry about ideal liquidity ratios in a startup. Entrepreneurs are the mechanics who decide to take on these 'project cars'. Eventually, as the car project develops and grows, specialists (MBAs) can be brought on to find the minor, yet precise changes that will improve the car's results.

<comment><USER3> I question to value of MBA even for large companies. I see value in structured, methodical, analytical thinking for many classes of business problems (not all, many crucial business decisions involve creative guesswork!), but an MBA is way overkill, and whatever it is supposed to teach can be learned on the job. If a person cannot learn that on those skills on the job, I seriously would question his/her ability to be an effective manager.

Here is my real world evidence: German and Japanese large companies are as good or as bad as American ones (depending on your point of view). The MBA is relatively rare in Germany and Japan. Japanese large companies, in particular, tend to recruit fresh undergrads without much attention paid to their major, train them internally, and promote from within. The fact that their companies hold their own in global competition, indicates that the MBA doesn't add any superior competitiveness to American companies. In fact, I would argue the MBA actually subtracts from American competitiveness, but that argument would be more subtle, and would require industry-by-industry analysis of competitiveness. I will note in passing that software and internet industry is probably where the MBA influence is the weakest in America (primarily because of the extraordinary rate of start-up creation), and that sector is the one where America is the most globally competitive.

<comment><USER4> Based on my own experience of MBAs I tend to agree with you. My company brought in a US name-brand management consulting firm to assist with a large M&A. One of the MBAs was assigned to help me write a transition plan for the integration of the IT systems my company would inherit. She correctly recognized that helping me was useless to her real purpose (inserting herself into my company at a high enough level that she could scout out new consulting opportunities) so she spent two months with us and delivered nothing. I wrote the transition plan on my own.

<comment><USER5> Isn't the fact she had an MBA incidental to her behaviour? Her job could have been filled by someone without an MBA who might have acted in exactly the same way. I've met many self-serving, selfishly ambitious people who don't have MBAs!

<comment><USER6> Exactly. A lot of people have taken to using 'MBA' as a heuristic for 'lazy self promoting asshole'. While I agree there is probably some overlap, it's extremely unfair to go around painting with this wide brush.

The fact that the consultant wsa trying to get more work out of the company had nothing to do with her qualifications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Research shows that business schools do not contribute to business success: <http://www.aomonline.org/Publications/Articles/BSchools.asp>

From "The End of Business Schools?: Less Success Than Meets the Eye" by Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford University) and Christina T. Fong (University of Washington):

 _"Although business school enrollments have soared and business education has become big business, surprisingly little evaluation of the impact of business schools on either their graduates or the profession of management exists. What data there are suggest that business schools are not very effective: Neither possessing an MBA degree nor grades earned in courses correlate with career success, results that question the effectiveness of schools in preparing their students. And, there is little evidence that business school research is influential on management practice, calling into question the professional relevance of management scholarship."_

Far better to skip the MBA and teach yourself. Better results, and far less debt.

<comment><USER8> I wonder how the biz started by Stanford Engr students compare with those started by Stanford Biz students? (Yes, Stanford's CS department is part of its Engineering school.)

<comment><USER9> I can't speak to the success rate of the engineering students, but I graduated from the business school in '07.

In my class about 10 of us started companies. There have been two successful exits and one is probably doing over $100MM revenue.

All in all, about 8 of the companies will be considered successful and 2 flops. Of the 10, the vast majority raised less than $500K in capital.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the point missed in here is that if you go into your MBA with a consulting, banking, etc direction, then you'll get all the lessons that go with that.

If you did an MBA with the express purpose of concentrating on making startups work, you'd concentrate on taking away the parts of that education that focus on entrepreneurship.

It's fashionable to diss the MBA but they contain a non-trivial amount of learning about finance, capital markets, legal and other aspects of business that would take a long time to pick up just by going through a startup.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. An MBA is a strange animal. Two people coming out of the same school can have vastly different career goals, and have taken much different coursework. While the core courses may be the same, the real meat is often in the elective courses that allow you to focus on a specific area of business. A brand management person is going to exit business school with a much different skill-set than somebody who wants to do investment banking. The same goes for entrepreneurship.

Its not enough to point to an MBA and make generalizations about how it prepares you for X or Y. The devil is in the coursework, the professors, and most importantly, the student.

<comment><USER6> I would just add to that - most MBA courses (well, mine, anyway, a sample size of 1) involve a lot of case studies. In many cases, you can choose the topic of the case study, just be getting approval from the assessor for suitability. Thus, you can decide to study GE, Digg or Microsoft, whether it's for marketing, industrial relations or strategy.

When I went through I had a fellow student who was preparing to take over the family cleaning business with several hundred staff. A friend was a career airline pilot getting ready to step out of the cockpit and into administration. I also had career public servants learning on the public dime to get to the next pay grade. There was also aimless students who weren't ready to leave university because they had no direction in life. The things that these different groups studied vary a lot.

The one thing that did come through, unfortunately, was a heavy reliance on Powerpoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At some point, and it is happening already to a small degree, this problem will no longer exist. Top universities are catching onto the success of YC and will begin to offer programs of lesser magnitude, but similar intent. Once one of the big schools (Harvard, Stanford, etc) will declare victory then the rest of them will begin copying the model as well. I think places like the Stanford d school have some overtures in this direction, but they are not the final word. The bottom line is, the whole intention of an MBA is to credentialize businesspeople the way other professional degrees do (J.D.) etc. The conflict here is that startups are about near the exact opposite. Entrepreneurship is a recursive credential. You can only earn the title by doing the act itself, not some abstraction.

</comment><comment><USER12> I notice the author mentioned "leave-behind Powerpoint decks." I had a short stint in consulting after getting my MBA, working with enterprise software clients. Within that job I've never once seen a Powerpoint deck that was useful after the fact unless you were in the room when the talk was given.

All it took for me to forget nearly everything I learned in business school communication classes was a seminar led by Edward Tufte, where it dawned on me that Powerpoint is no substitute for an appropriate executive summary of your content that can be passed around and referred to long after your talk is over.

<comment><AUTHOR> Leave-behind decks are for when the deliverable is the deck. It can be a useful tool for the company because the content is conveying information that they need for whatever project their working on. While working for a consulting firm, I did a marketing analysis for a grocery chain--it was a 150 slide deck packed with data about each of their geographies. It's something they'll refer to hundreds of times in the future.

As entrepreneurs, we're rarely delivering data in this way. it's usually our job to distill all the potential data points down to the 1 or 2 most important.

It comes down to whether you're persuading or informing. For persuasion, Tufte>MBA every time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am an entrepreneur, a hacker, and an MBA. I am intelligent enough not to apply big-company processes to a start-up and vice versa.

An MBA is an education in business. That can't be a bad thing if you operate a business, large or small.

<comment><USER14> "An MBA is an education in business."

So some people claim. Other people think it isn't that clear cut. On another discussion (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1330878>), someone asked

"I presume you get an MBA to give you a better understanding about business. And startups are in essence businesses. Then how come having a better understanding not impact your startup?"

pg replied,

"The cause of the apparent paradox is that "business" spans a huge range. MBAs train you to be junior officers in the armies of managerial capitalism. But there is almost zero overlap between that sort of work and what startups do."

and later

"Actually I would say it's a slight net minus to have an MBA when doing a startup. You learn nothing of use to you, but investors discriminate against you slightly.

Almost all investors are looking for founders who match past stars. So what they're looking for at this point is hackers.

I have to say I agree with them. I can't imagine Bill Gates or Larry & Sergey enduring B School."

So there are intelligent people with differing viewpoints on whether "An MBA is an education in business." is a valid premise.

<comment><USER13> I have upvoted you for a very insightful and resourcful reply. The term "business" is big, kind of like the term "engineering" is big. Would you also say that studying engineering is harmful to a startup?

It is one thing to say that an MBA won't help you much with your start-up, but it is another to say it is detrimental. Other than the prejudice of investors, I just don't understand why education of any kind is harmful as long as it isn't filling your head with lies.

So suffice it to say that I disagree with my hero, pg, about the value of an MBA. I can tell you that I personally have gained greatly from the experience, and that I'm better at all facets of business (even startups) because of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "MBAs will generally know how to read WalMart's annual report but will be lost in the complexities of a cap table."

I didn't go to a very good B school, but clearly it was a better one than Tuck.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm so sick of these Ivy League MBA's lumping all MBA programs together in their inability to teach entrepreneurship. At Babson we were learning about the Timmon's model and how to be 'lean' on day one. Long before anyone had heard the name Eric Reis. And in case you're unaware, Babson has been ranked the number 1 business school for Entrepreneurship by US News for the last 17 years, when they started ranking.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'll take umbrage with one statement:

 _It's about selling a vision, not presenting analysis._

From my experience that's a sure way to receive a polite "no thank you" from VC's or angels. Good venture capitalists demand meaningful analysis in your pitch. Every single pitch I've been a part of has inevitably zeroed in on market, financial, and performance analysis within 5 minutes of starting. Those slides about vision and big ideas just don't play well in those rooms (again, from my experience).

More than anything, money-folks seem to want entrepreneurs who have an eagle eye on the performance metrics of their business.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hey, I'm in the middle of an MBA program and think I'm doing just fine with my little start ups. Cute blanket statement though.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am surprized. Where did the author get that MBA's are good at teaching entrepreneurship? Where does that expectation come from? I am have an MBA too and I was never told that MBAs are good at teaching entrepreneurship. Pick any blog and articles from real entrepreneurs and they'll confirm that you become one on the field, not in the books. I also disagree that MBAs make people suck up at startups. You may be talking about your personal experience, but it does not fit with mine. I am very happy to know what would have taken me 20 years to learn by myself. You don't need an MBA to become an entrepreneur, but it definitely helps...

</comment><comment><USER20> This is only true if you go to a shitty school or don't apply yourself. There are some really good schools out there with exceptional programs in entrepreneurship.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really enjoyed reading this. I've considered an MBA on and off for the past few years and I'm still leaning away from it. An MBA seems to serve a very specific function and I'm not sure if I want to be that person.

I wonder how this is at more entrepreneurial programs like Sloan.

<comment><AUTHOR> At most schools, the majority of your class will be pushing in one direction, and that's generally towards consulting, banking, bigCo rotation programs, etc. It's what they're explicitly selling--preparation and access to these types of positions. If you don't want that, you should think very carefully about spending that much time and money. If you want to be an entrepreneur, do everything you can to get into YC or any of the other incubators. As many have noted, it's a far better startup prep course.

I don't regret my MBA for a second. The best two years of my life. I intend on using my skills from my MBA throughout my life. Someday I want to run a large non-profit and the tools I developed at Tuck will be invaluable. The painful lesson of the last few years was that all of that education is near-worthless as a startup founder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This book relates to this post:

[http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Not-MBAs-Management- Developme...](http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Not-MBAs-Management- Development/dp/1576752755)

</comment><comment><USER22> I guess a similar situation happens to programmers who learn a new design pattern or programming paradigm and apply it to every situation, including when it's overkill.

</comment><comment><USER23> You don't need MBA, if you're rich & connected. <http://netmba.com>

</comment><comment><USER24> Maybe the takeaway should be MBAs are better suited to startups that are post product-market fit.</comment>


Protecting Microsoft Edge against binary injection - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/11/17/microsoft-edge-module-code-integrity/ <comment><USER2> A much better idea would be to have proper separation between processes unless the a user specifically gives permission. Having your whole computer open like the wild west to any software running on it has to end sooner rather than later.

I've said before that smalltalk having an entire OS embedded in every binary was comically ahead of it's time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Edge is weird, I found out you can't launch the executable directly when I was trying to make a shortcut to it, you have to launch explorer.exe with special parameters that launch it as a child process.

I'm guessing that's one of their security measures but would love to know more about what's going on there.

<comment><USER4> That's probably so MS can tell the DoJ that their browser can not be separated from the OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if that will prevent McAfee (and other AV) from injecting their monitoring dlls into the browser process as well.</comment>


Data found in Dropbox's public folders (bottom in english) - <AUTHOR> http://forwardfeed.pl/index.php/2010/02/01/dropbox-public-folder/

<comment><USER2> Help me to understand: how is this different than publishing scans of documents found in a public dumpster? If you don't want your credit card bills published on the internet, shred all your mail before throwing it away. If you don't want me to republish the contents of your semi-private URL's, encrypt everything.

Yes, in theory the public could have accessed this information on their own, but why would it be polite or desirable to republish it? At a first glance, this looks like an immature stunt of the sort I'd hope would be scorned. I'm not arguing that it's illegal -- just rude.

Are people voting this up to encourage more such stunts? To call attention to the risks? Why?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I submitted the post as an attention call. Actually, one of the published CVs was mine and the author of the post contacted me about the issue.

From my point of view any sensitive personal data (CVs) has been erased from the post. My hope is that nobody commits the same error I did (put my cv in the public folder with a obvious name, and then forget it was there).

I hope this makes enough noise so the people from Dropbox change the public URLs to use randomized names. Meanwhile I'll use unique, random names if I want to share a file with personal data and keep it published the smallest amount of time possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> He notified my by mail that he published my CV. As you can imagine, I was not very happy - and he removed it onto my request.

Even though I think this is a nice idea, publishing the data and even providing a .zip containing all files seems reckless to me.

<comment><USER4> It's also copyright infringement. If the server is in the US, anyone who created one of those documents could send a DMCA takedown request.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> He didn't look for "Top Secret.txt"? Maybe that's the safest place to keep stuff on Dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, it's probably not smart to put anything you want to keep private on Dropbox, unless you encrypt it first.

<comment><USER7> Well, this was just scanning the public/ folders, the files in which are accessible to anyone that has (or, in this case, can guess) the link.

Now, if it's something you absolutely must keep private, you shouldn't even store it in the private parts of your dropbox folder, but for things where it's not a huge deal if it ends up public, Dropbox is reasonably safe assuming you're not stupid about it (strong password, etc).

<comment><USER6> As far as I can tell, private folders are also subject to this URL leaking problem, but in a somewhat limited way.

If someone can grab the URL to your "recent changes" RSS feed (events.xml), they can watch every file change you make, and view any image you upload, without being logged in to your account.

If anyone from Dropbox wants to correct me on this, or wants more details, my contact info is in my profile.

<comment><USER8> Thumbnails, but yes. Just tested it. Wasn't aware of that, but doesn't matter too much for me. I don't use it for images, am not ashamed of my images, and you only see _what file_ was changed, not the changes made. An unlikely security problem, but probably a bad idea anyway.

With a little complaining, I'd bet they'd put up an opt-out option, take out image thumbnails, and hopefully a layer of security over the feed.

<comment><USER6> You can get full sized images if you play with the URL (change /i/s/ to /i/o/).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> i suppose a lot of sites don't think too much about it, but putting a user/account id in a url gives away quite a bit of information. putting aside the recommendations for not putting an internal id in a url just because it may change and break existing links, there are some privacy concerns as well.

in a cms-type application, it may let a recently-subscribed customer (or competitor) know how many other customers are stored in the system, even if they can't view the other records. it may also be used to determine a signup date if that is at all useful.

in file-hosting type scenarios like dropbox, it allows for brute force scanning like this. instead of using /u/1, /u/2, use the user's username, or a randomly-generated key/guid associated that maps to the user's account.</comment>


Ask HN: Setting Goals - <AUTHOR>

So after hearing how 37 Signals recommends against setting goals, I've been trying to figure out if I should set goals for myself personally.
I've tried a variety of methods (like Setting SMART Goals, using software, reflecting and setting one simple goal), but I wanted to hear what you've found to work personally. And if you even think goal setting works (in your opinion).
I'd also be interested in hearing any innovative goal-setting practices you've heard of. Or if you could share some interesting methods that others used in setting goals. <comment><USER2> An oldie but goodie is from Think and Grow Rich:

[http://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Napoleon- Hill/dp/04492...](http://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Napoleon- Hill/dp/0449214923)

Develop one Definitive Chief Aim. It's a very specific medium to long-term goal (1 - 20 years or so) with a specific deadline. Repeat it to yourself every day. Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

Don't bother with intermediate goals that you aren't fully passionate about. Spend the time to determine what is truly important to you and focus on that. It worked for Bruce Lee:

 _My Chief Personal Aim In Life:

I, Bruce Lee, will be the highest paid Oriental superstar in the United States. In return I will give the most exciting performances and render the best of quality in the capacity of an actor. Starting in 1970, I will achieve world fame and from then onward till the end of 1980 I will have in my possession the sum of $10,000,000—then I will live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness.

Bruce Lee 1969_

[http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/think-grow-rich-or- di...](http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/think-grow-rich-or-die-trying- the-bruce-lee-story/)

I just read the book last fall so I obviously haven't achieved my goal yet, but I have until December 31st, 2014 to get there.

Also, for another method, Randy Pausch in his Time Management lecture (a really good lecture) said that he always knew what needed to get done that day, that week, and that semester. So that might be a good way to set incremental goals.

<comment><AUTHOR> imp -- Thanks for the insight. I really need to re-read Think and Grow Rich. Awesome link. Had no idea Bruce Lee did that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Rules I live by to get things done (that work for everyone): 1\. Figure out what you have done. 2\. Decide what task demands your immediate attention NOW _. 3\. Stop debating and devote yourself fully to doing #2_ * and disregard time __* completely while doing so. 4\. Repeat __ __.

#'s 2-3 constitute a task or procedure but can scale to either smaller or larger scales.

 _This could be anywhere from taking your next breath to factoring a complex polynomial.

_ _Always live within the lowest common denominator (subroutine) within any given procedure.

_ __Use your internal clock. Work accumulators (internal clocks) are better measures of elapsed work whereas clocks just measure elapsed time. (How many times have you stopped to look at the clock and say, "Wow, I've been working for 2 hours! Better take a quick break." This is how you lose your mojo juice and start looking for crap like SMART goals or self-reflections as a cure for laziness. Work is the only known cure for laziness--and goal-setting is a symptom.)

 __ __Never waste energy thinking beyond the next task. This is because the distant future is uncertain whereas reevaluating the past per iteration of a task provides a clearer picture of where you're heading. However, this model works best in an environment where your work is predetermined like in school or a day job. In a startup you would have to devote a small fraction, say no more than 10% of your time, to developing a mental "big picture" and the rest to the model presented here. As we all know, while ideas change, work stays constant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn good insight, Cianestro. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

I like how you've made it so simple and action oriented.

You're speaking of flow when you mentioned "Wow, I've been working for 2 hours! Better take a quick break." I definitely think that's a good gauge of setting the right goal, or at least doing what you were meant to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I assume you are referring to this post [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1689-link-ready-aimfail- why-s...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1689-link-ready-aimfail-why-setting- goals-can-backfire) ??

As I understand it, it does not recommending you don't set goals, it is just recommending that goals be something more than a to-do list or group of numbers.

Let's take a goal such as 'fix a bug within two days'. What 37 Signals is saying is that that isn't a good goal if by fixing that bug, you introduce two others.

Or 'add two new paying customers a day', doesn't help if you lose 3 per day. So you'd be better off with a goal like 'grow revenue 3% each month'.

How you word your goals is very important, and makes sure you are focusing on the right things.

That's my take on it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't think that goals themselves are a bad idea, they give you something to aim for and a sense of completion once you get there. Personally I've found that setting short term goals ( < 1 week away ) has helped keep me on course.

That being said, the company I work for requires us to set SMART goals every quarter and account for >= 70% tied to individual bugs. This is a complete nightmare for me because the goals that are defined for us don't conform to SMART at all and everyone ends up fudging their hours to meet the 70% requirement.</comment>


Ask HN: Analytics package - <AUTHOR>

I couldn't find a honest comparison of some of the bigger web analytics softwares (Google Analytics is the main example) compared to the newer ones (I believe there are at least 2 company on HN doing this).<p>We have a lot of small (1-50k of monthly pageviews) websites, given the small websites size is there really something cool we can do with web analytics? Needless to say we're currently using Google Analytics and just looking at how many users/pageviews we make each month, no more analysis. <comment><USER3> The purpose of analytics is to give you insight as to how your web site (or app) performs with visitors (or users). This insight is really only valuable if you DO something with that collected insight. ie: Optimize your site/process on an ongoing basis.

An important aspect that you left out from your question is: What is your goal for your website? \- Convert visitors to subcribers of your product?

\- get visitors to spend more time on your site, thus allowing you to deliver more ads/impressions?

\- get more returning visitors

\- Sell more of your products in an ecommerce/shopping cart scenario

In each of these scenarios - there may be better software that Google Analytics, but you will want to establish what your primary goal is for using analytics software.

Webtrends, Omniture, and others allow you to monitor social media, video views and other multimedia aspects of a site - and also allow you to integrate them with other platforms (such as email. For example Omniture + an email provider can allow you to send an email to visitors who put 2 or more items into a shopping cart, but then leave without checking out...)

If you just want to see pageviews, and use that as a measuring stick for now - Google Analytics should be fine. You can also use its "goals" features to track when someone fills in a form, or acts in a certain way on your site to determine new measurable metrics to help guide you as you design/redesign your site to benefit your business.

Let us know what sort of scenarios you are dealing with - and what you want your visitors to do more of....the community can then give you a better answer.

Some analytics comparisons i found here: [http://webanalytics.globalthoughtz.com/index.php/web- analyti...](http://webanalytics.globalthoughtz.com/index.php/web-analytics- comparison/)

One final plug: Marketing Automation (ie: Eloqua, Marketo, Pardot...) software blurs the line between web analytics software and email marketing vendors - <USER2> is very useful for creating automated welcome programs, maintaining subscriber status, and capturing form submissions - as well as "closing the loop" on marketing ROI. These are especially useful if your product is anything that has a considered purchase cycle (ie: not an impulse buy)

</comment><comment><USER4> Analytics is basically a statistical analysis of your log files.

I believe there are two aspects of what you can do with analytics:

1\. You can actually get the log files for yourself and use a log analysis from a security and performance point of view. You can check which pages are being asked, what are the queries passed etc. This way you can check whether there are any loopholes in your code, vulnerabilities, scripts that are being accessed a lot, resources that need to be cached etc. Google Analytics gives you some of that data (top queries, etc.) but not from a security perspective.

2\. You can plot data over time for each website and use them for marketing purposes i.e. growth over time

I hope the above helps.</comment>


Yes, Determinists, There Is Free Will - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/72/quandary/yes-determinists-there-is-free-will <comment><USER2> He accepts determinism at an atomic level, but not at a person level. But where does determinism stop? If atoms are deterministic, are biochemicals? Neurons? And if neurons are, and our minds are just neurons, then... aren't we determined?

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't he conflating predeterminism and predictability?</comment>


San Francisco's Newest Fast Food: Healthy, Cheap and Served by Robots - <AUTHOR> http://ww2.kqed.org/futureofyou/2015/08/18/san-franciscos-newest-fast-food-healthy-cheap-and-served-by-robots/ <comment><USER2> _" After you place an order at a kiosk, you pick it up a few minutes later behind a glass door or "cubby." The only humans in sight are the concierges, who can answer questions that you may have about the software, and the dozen or so staff in the kitchen._"

They've re-invented the Automat, little glass doors and all.[1] The first Automat opened in 1887, and the last one closed in 1991.

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

<comment><USER3> They still exist in the Netherlands: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBO)

<comment><USER4> They were universally reviled when I visited Amsterdam years ago. I don't think I even tried.

<comment><USER5> As a tourist from the US, I thought that some of the selections were quite good, and I went back several times. There were always other people there. This was circa 2005.

Whee anecdotes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since service workers can no longer afford to live in SF, this seems necessary at some point.

I say that fully tongue in cheek, but it is an interesting reality to consider. If the labor market you are dependent on dries up because of housing and cost of living, and you can't afford to pay more to be competitive, you either go out of business or automate. This seems like a logical step for an industry with notoriously thin margins.

The sarcastic side of me wonders if they'll still prompt for a tip...

<comment><USER7> There are many places that are inexpensive along the BART line that can get downtown SF in 15-20min. This is the true for many expensive cities. SF is not the first major city to have an extremely expensive core area which the service workers commute to from surrounding burroughs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Eatsa's team, led by Scott Drummond and Tim Young, are hoping to attract > health-conscious types with its hearty salads and quinoa bowls stuffed with > green beans, avocado, and root vegetables. The average meal will set you > back about 500 calories, which is far lower than most fast food > alternatives.

That's just about the number of calories in a big mac. Or a bojangles canjun biscuit. Or a chik-fil-a fried chicken sandwich.

<comment><USER9> I don't think the general populace realizes that fast food burgers, in general, are not really all that bad. I mean, maybe the fat vs other stuff is not quite as balanced as some would like, though I'd like to point out the French paradox here. [0]

The fries and carbonated sugar water and other accoutrement are where things _really_ go bad.

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

<comment><USER10> Don't forget the very large portions offered at many of these fast food outlets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like they're pointlessly limiting their market. No people, fine, but why make it vegetarian? They already have to overcome one barrier to get people in the door.

<comment><USER12> Vegetarian food is easier, logistically. There's a lot of food handling precautions you take with raw meat and fish that doesn't apply to raw vegetables... Cook times are also shorter, and as everything can be served raw or cooked, food safety is more or less a non-issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _"...in fact, the price of a burrito bowl and quinoa bowl are roughly equitable at just under $7, although the latter contains about half the calories"_

They demonstrate the same oversimplification of food health included in every fast food chain's marketing. It's literally ironic that a lower calorie count is considered 'healthy'.

Low calorie food will help you lose weight. If you are not overweight, you should not be limiting your caloric intake.

Healthy food is rich with a variety of nutrients, low in harmful components and _high in calories_.

<comment><USER14> Many reasons why the marketing is like this: * The public is confused with low calorie vs healthy * The public hasn't caught on to cheap sources of healthy calories (ie, healthy fats and whole grains) [1] * The other types of healthy calories cost more * This enables businesses to charge more for smaller portions!

Hilarious example: There are tons of fake healthy 'wheat' breads. Multigrain, Farmers, Rustic, Subway wheat. None of them are anywhere near whole grain. These fake-healthy foods have been tricking people for years.

[1] [http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy- eating-p...](http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating- plate/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Zero mention of robots in the article... disappointed.

<comment><USER16> There are no robots here.

<comment><USER17> Here is a robot:

[http://donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Servitude.mpg](http://donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Servitude.mpg)

And another one:

[http://donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Empathy.mpg](http://donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Empathy.mpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > But what's unique about Eatsa is the focus on health and taste.

What's so unique about that? Restaurants have focused on taste since there have been restaurants and have focused on health since there's been demand for it (last few decades). I had an avocado-kale-lemon smoothie this morning from a new place that just opened up in my neighborhood...

</comment><comment><USER19> This has a brilliant scaling strategy. If McDonalds decides to one day replace half it's workers with terminals, people will almost certainly see it, and it may impact sales. However here, with the food out of sight they can incrementally swap people for machines, and it'll only affect business if quality dips below acceptable limits.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Healthy" if you're still using 1990s health guidelines. I've got no need for carbohydrate-filled root vegetables, couscous, or quinoa in my diet.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is seems inevitable, we have seem something similar with bank tellers being partially replaced by ATM's and grocery clerks partially replaced by self serve, we are probably going to see something similar for fast food first but eventually in more and more restaurants. You know the old adage, if your job could be done by a robot eventually it will be.

<comment><USER22> "At the dawn of the self-service banking age in 1985, for example, the United States had 60,000 automated teller machines and 485,000 bank tellers. In 2002, the United States had 352,000 ATMs—and 527,000 bank tellers."

\- [http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/06/te...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/06/technology- and-unemployment)

It hasn't kept track of population growth, so the % has gone down, but only by about 10%.

So bank tellers don't seem like a particularly good example.

<comment><USER21> Interesting, I was not aware of that, but it just seems like there would be a lot more bank tellers if not for ATM's. It may not be a good example, although, on the other hand, it might be prescient in that food service workers will probably not ever be completely replaced perhaps for the same reason bank tellers haven't, there is a segment of the population who wants to be served by a human whether at a restaurant or at a bank. It might end up being a similar percent mix in the end ?

<comment><USER22> > it just seems like there would be a lot more bank tellers if not for ATM's

Depends on how you look at it. If you believe that ATMs were instrumental to the growing of retail banking to the otherwise underbanked (lower cost of providing a service), then without it you wouldn't really have more bank tellers, you'd just have more unbanked people.

The full article has some more details. But these machines are still making very simple foods and most people (ignoring soylent fans) enjoy variety in their food, so it seems like it will be quite a while before robots will take over large parts of the restaurant/take-out market.

<comment><USER21> I agree, it seems like the better fit for this type of technology would be McDonalds type fast food, not health food. It probably works in downtown SF, but in mainstreet USA, not so much. ATM's are used for simple transactions like getting cash, maybe the parallel in fast food is getting a big mac, fine to get it from a machine if it keeps the price down, but for a sit down meal I would like to see a wait person serve me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _a meal is slightly cheaper than Chipotle, which may appeal to cash-strapped people who work in the area (in fact_

Little known fact: You can get a great meal for under $6 at Chipotle. You just have to know how to order. I often wish I knew how to make money off information of this sort. Alas, that escapes me. :-/

</comment><comment><USER24> I came hoping to see robots making food; I left disappointed seeing no robots at all.

</comment><comment><USER25> The flip side of demanding $15/hr -> robots become the cheaper option

</comment><comment><USER26> > _and the dozen or so staff in the kitchen._

That's already way more than an average McDonalds.

</comment><comment><USER27> If it means the money which went to servers goes to cooks and ingredients it makes sense

</comment><comment><USER28> Wow Monsanto opened a whole restaurant just to advertise quinoa.</comment>