Someone wants to buy my site, how can I value it? - <AUTHOR>

In the interest of anonymity I would prefer not to reveal my real username.
I have a site that does about a 150,000 pageviews and 5,000 uniques a day. It is profitable, making about $50,000 a year, not from adverts. The average pageviews per visit is over 30.
At the current growth trend I would expect it to be making over $150,000 in a couple years. It is also an influential site for its niche, market leader in its own right.
It comes top of google for any keywords pertaining to the market it targets.
What do you think is a good price? <comment><USER3> First and foremost 30 pageviews per visit is amazing. That's a bounce rate of about 3% which is nearly unheard of (porn site? :)).

Asking for 2 years of income is a good general rule.

Also factor in growth rates over the next 2 years. Estimate growth based on past growth, not on "well I have this new feature that should double traffic.

Factor in any assets you may have, this includes but is not limited to: \- Newsletter subscribers \- RSS Subscribers \- High search engine rankings \- Good domain name \- Industry leader

Think about the sentimental attachment. This is worth something, figure out your price.

Finally forget about the lump sum of money. Its sexy to think about a big pile of cash, but you have something in your hands that is making a consistent profit. Think in 2 years if you'll still be happy with this decision.

Take this advice from someone whose sold a website that has seen enormous growth since I sold it. Its amazing to see something you've made become huge, but also a little sad thinking it could still be yours.

Good luck, you're in a good position. A buyer approaching you means you have something they really want. Don't forget that!

<comment><AUTHOR> No it's not a porn site :)

These are the google analytics stats:

33.80 Pages/Visit

12.81% Bounce Rate

00:14:12 Avg. Time on Site

22.26% % New Visits

77% Returning visits

From your asset list, the last three (High search engine rankings - <USER2> domain name - Industry leader) are true, the first two (RSS/newsletter) don't really apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should probably try to get some competitive bids. If you have trustworthy contacts with any of your potential acquirer's competitors, call them and say "hey, I got this offer from FooCorp and I haven't really thought much about selling the site, but it's not a bad offer and I'm wondering if you guys might be interested" and see what they say. Don't expect a binding offer right away, but see if you can get some idea of what a few other potential acquirers might be able to pay, or if they make jokes like "I couldn't acquire a pair of shoes right now."

Consider seriously that this is not a great time for acquisitions. Companies want to reassure investors and lenders that they have a safe amount of operating cash on hand, and any significant expenditures will be scrutinized today in a way that they would not have been a year ago. One guy I know who sold a moderately sized website a year ago at a price that made him quite happy thinks he'd only be able to get one sixth of that price today, if he could find a buyer at all. If you are happy continuing to work on the site for a few years, and your revenue projections are reasonable, you might want to hold on to it and see if things improve.

</comment><comment><USER5> Do you _want_ to sell it? If you're passionate about it, which I imagine you are, to get that successful, then perhaps not...

If you don't _want_ to sell it, I would do one of two things:

a) Start with a very high estimate and work your way down from there. Who knows, maybe they'll bite, in which case you can take a long holiday in the middle of this recession.

b) Let them come up with a figure, then ask them for double that. After all, they approached you, so you can apply a bit of pressure.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't give you a figure, but I do encourage you to consider not only your current traffic figures, but also potential traffic figures that will result from your site being introduced to the acquirer's user base, if that makes sense in your scenario. If they get 10x more pageviews and uniques a day and they give you a prominent position on their site, your traffic could instantly double.

I guess what I'm saying is that the synergy that comes from an acquisition (or any strategic relationship) can sometimes have a value all its own.

And there's almost always an emotional component to consider that supersedes spreadsheet models. If you enjoy running the site, then it might be worth more to you than if you don't.

Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> That emotional attachment exists, I made this from scratch, and watched it grow over time.

<comment><USER7> Irrelevant.

The site is worth whatever it is worth to the acquirer.

Once you figure out that number, you decide if you want to sell it at that price or not.

Until you get to that point, don't bother thinking about the emotional attachment.

Also, if you get a pile of money, you'll go on and do something fun with it (a whole new project?). You'll establish an emotional attachment to that project too.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. It's worth only what someone is willing to pay.

It might be worth more _to you_ , but if it is, you simply don't sell it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am in a similar situation right now, and one of the things that we came up with is an upfront payment with additional dollars down the road pegged to revenue growth.

To clarify, I am not suggesting lowering your sell price but rather getting the buyer to commit to _more_ dollars on top of your discounted cash flow figure.

One more minor advice is to negotiate a consulting fee for yourself. Clearly, you've been doing something right and the buyer will want that. I've heard of people getting significant ongoing $$ that way.

Best of luck and congrats.

<comment><USER10> Be careful with this method. I've heard a story of a German entrepreneur who built a valuable business around a web service and was bought. He wanted more money than the buyer could give so they agree that he would get a significant amount of the value as shares. There was much more share value than money because the seller was confident in the business model. Then the bubble 2000 exploded and the shares lost all their value. But wait, the worst is yet to come.

The next year the IRS claimed the taxes on the transaction and refused to take in account the loss of share value. SOo the seller had to borrow to pay the IRS and pays it back by working for the buyer !

The lesson I learned is to think twice in getting payed with shares or revenue promise.

Today the economy is really uncertain, so watch out for this kind of accident.

It also depends on the business and the expected long term stability of your business. Today I would prefer a sound business instead of a big pack of money. I wouldn't know how to secure it.

<comment><USER9> Dude, have you read my comment _at all_ before posting your random story of the day? I made sure to stress I mean dollars. I made sure to stress I mean dollars on top of a firm sale price. Seriously, which part of my post said shares to you?

<comment><USER10> It is not a random comment and I did read your comment. You wrote "additional dollars down the road pegged to revenue growth" and I referred to revenue promises. If it doesn't correspond to the plan you exposed, it is along the line, just a bit further away with the same logic.

Ok, I shouldn't have post it as a reply to your comment. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I sold a blog with about 1 million pageviews per month and a monthly income of about $1100/month. I valued it at two years income + 1/2 of projected growth income over the same two year period.

<comment><USER12> wow that seems pretty cheap actually. As an example, unnamed friend got a $40k offer on his blog that had 100k pviews/month and very little monthly income. He just had a passionate following and a decent pagerank.

<comment><USER13> A passionate following is much more important than a high unique visitor count. I mean look at yahoo, it has (had?) the highest unique visitor count on the entire internet, didn't stop them sacking 1500 workers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You could try to look at some of the often cited terms from public companies and try to see how you compare.

For instance, a publicly traded company in your sector might be valued at a p/e ratio of 10 ( p= price, e = earnings). If your yearly earnings are $50.000 then your company would have a valuation of $500.000.

<comment><USER15> Remember that earnings is income minus expenses. So this includes the cost of maintaining the site. If it is a full time job then the buyer would be purchasing a 50K job.

Also generally smaller companies go for lesser multiples than larger companies. It really depends on how much time and attention the owner has to put into it. In the case of a publicly traded company that is close to zero for shareholders (unless you own Yahoo). But for a small business you'll have to keep an eye on things even if you do hire a general manager.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a one man show at the moment, and I only need 10 minutes a day for administration. There is programming involved, but the app has a lot of features and is bug free, just sometimes I will add an extra feature or two when I'm bored.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "What do you think is a good price?"

How much is the buyer willing to pay? To rephrase, what value is the site to them? Will your site solve a real problem for them or not?

And once you find out their valuation, what value is the site to you? Is your personal valuation higher than theirs? Don't sell. If your valuation is lower, then sell.

</comment><comment><USER17> With any situation, it depends, but great article here:

<http://www.wrevenue.com/2007/10/24/selling-a-web-business/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, thats a good resource, though it seems more set on how to do the transaction rather than offering advice on a valuation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Since you do have money coming in and an expectation of what your growth will be, you can run a discounted cash flow model to get a price.

<comment><USER19> This is as much for my knowledge as the original poster, but what discount rate would you use? He doesn't exactly have a beta to do Weighted Average Cost of Capital with, or am I totally missing something?

<comment><USER20> I've always estimated the discount rate based on the expectations for growth from the buyer. At the end of the day, the valuation on a site or business is simply whatever you can get for it. A site might be worth more to a buyer who sells a similar product whereas it might have less value to someone in another industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So, there are a few things to consider.

First, how much work will the new owner need to put into it? $15,000 worth of work per year? Remember $10k only pays for about 5-6 hours of work per week.

Second, how likely is it that someone can de-seat your site? That makes it much less likely that the site is worth so much.

Third, would a competitor, given a decade, be able to build what you have built with relative ease? This is key to how long you would run a regression.

So, if you assume that the site is good for 12 years, a simple regression would give you about $200k as a valuation. BUT, that assumes they won't need more than 5 or 6 hours a week of work on the site. AND it assumes that it can't be easily built by a competitor. AND it assumes your site will stay that profitable (which is usually true in something like real estate, but not in technology which is constantly changing).

Even if you think the site will stay relative for the next 25 years, it's value wouldn't top $300k simply because future dollars aren't worth as much as present dollars in a net present value calculation since there is an opportunity cost to tieing up your money.

However, your site may be growing. In that case, it might be worth more.

So, if your site needs a full-time programmer, it's worthless. I mean, it's worth something to you because it can be your income. However, it's not worth anything to an owner since they'd be paying all of the income to a programmer (yes, even if that's themselves since they aren't getting the site for free).

So, it's really dependent on how much work goes into keeping it alive/competitive. This might be your job/income. That's good for you, but worthless to an owner purchasing it. If it requires about an hour of work a week to keep it competitive and it will be that way for a decade, it's probably worth north of $200k.

<comment><USER22> _So, if your site needs a full-time programmer, it's worthless. I mean, it's worth something to you because it can be your income. However, it's not worth anything to an owner since they'd be paying all of the income to a programmer (yes, even if that's themselves since they aren't getting the site for free)._

I think this is false. If the buyer is able to run the site without hiring a programmer then the site provides a valuable income for the buyer. That income is a reward that could make the buy price worth it for the buyer, since the buyer will save the salary of the employee, no?

I think when selling a web site or web application, it's important to choose a buyer that will know how to draw value from it, instead of squander its profits on employees that will do the work that the owner should be doing.

<comment><USER21> Nope. Let's say that it does need a full-time programmer. You pau $200,000 for this site assuming it will pay for itself in 4 years. But, since it requires a full-time programmer, you have to quit your job. Now you're just in debt. So, for the first 4 years, you have no income as you pay off $50,000 of that $200,000 each year. Well, that won't work. In fact, the government is going to want some of that in taxes, so it will probably be 6 years where your income is $0.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that a decade is a long time for a site to stay relevant and in a good position. As such, if 80% of the money from the site goes to paying off the site, it isn't worth much. If it requires you to work on the site full-time, it's worth nothing since you'd be loosing the income you could get at another job.

Whether you're doing the work or someone else is doing the work, if you have to quit your job, then the site must be able to satisfy your income PLUS profits that make the investment worthwhile. You've said that the income is a reward. So, would you pay me $200,000 and work for me full-time for 10 years for me to give you $50,000 per year for those 10 years? No! You could get a job paying $50,000 without paying someone $200,000. Now, let's say that you only had to work 3-4 hours a week. That's a VERY different story.

Do you see where I'm going there? A site like the one described is a good investment if it can be a little site project that doesn't take much time. If it requires you to work full-time on it, $50,000 will cut it IF you don't have to buy it in the first place. If you have to pay $200,000, you might as well just get a traditional job paying $50,000 and not have to pay the $200,000.

<comment><USER22> I hear what you're saying. There's just a key point that I would like your opinion on:

 _So, for the first 4 years, you have no income as you pay off $50,000 of that $200,000 each year._

The assumption though is that it's a healthy company and will continue to grow, if not hold its revenue, otherwise the annual multiplier shouldn't be 4 and you shouldn't be buying it. However, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the above is true. Yes, you're not making an obvious income, but you are earning 50,000$ worth of a company at the end of each year with 0 investment from your pocket. Isn't that a good reward for your efforts? PLUS if the company grows, you keep the surplus in profits.

What I'm saying is it's subjective/relative. If you're a person who's making 30,000$ per year and you want to make 50,000$ per year, then it's worth it to buy this company at 200,000$ since you will increase your yearly earnings, even if the first 4 years you're paying off the worth of the company. It's an investment, like a house. At the end of 4 years, you own a company that's worth 200,000$ or more, if you run it well, PLUS you have a salary of 50,000. That's not bad, and I think you could find someone who'd be interested in that, no?

That's why I say pick your buyers. If you try to sell to someone who wants to buy the company and then sit on their couch while the company rakes in 50,000$ per year, then no, you won't be able to sell it for 200,000$. If you have someone who's looking for a new job and sees future growth potential in your company, then yes, 200,000$ is a good price.

Does that make sense?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I sold a site doing 4,500 uniques a day, but a much lower page views and incoming profit for about 2.25 X yearly revenue. It was a good call on selling as the sites growth was starting to stall.

</comment><comment><USER24> Be careful - sometimes people make offers to find out how viable your niche is as a business, get some inside numbers as part of their competition analysis.

</comment><comment><USER25> Your website is a business.

While most business brokers are focused in physical assets you should be able to find ones which can evaluate your business and give you a value for it.

If you want to, they can even handle the sale, to protect you and help the sale along. The negative is of course that they take a share of the transaction, and the other buyer may hire his own broker.

</comment><comment><USER15> Take a look at the sitepoint marketplace - <http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/>

There should some comparable sites that have sold there. Remember also that the people who want to buy your site approached you so they obviously have a plan that should make it worth more to them than the typical marketplace buyer. The probably believe they could triple your earnings easily.

If in the course of negotiations you find things aren't going well you can suggest that it might be better for you to put the site on the open marketplace. If they baulk at that then they are obviously pretty keen.

</comment><comment><USER26> Don't sell it.

If you have income coming in with little work, and it's growing, WHY would you ever want to sell it?

If you do have a good reason to sell, figure out you minimum (say, 250,000$), and ask for triple that.

Also remember you'll be paying lots of taxes on whatever you get.

So again, if it's really that easy to run, and it makes that money, just keep it. You can retire then, not even 1,000,000$ can compete with that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you sure? A 5% bank interest on a million dollars would be the same as the 50k it's making right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's next to impossible to be anywhere near accurate without knowing the topic of the site, its niche in the topic, etc.

But.. based on the profit alone (assuming that profit takes into account the costs of continual content development - if required) $150k would be a bare minimum IMHO. Since the "growth trend" probably relies on you and your plan somewhat, a purchaser is not going to be so interested in those speculative numbers.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've heard two independent VCs mention 3-5 times current revenue as a reasonable figure for start-ups, but with this bleak economic outlook, who knows.

<comment><AUTHOR> Although this was a start up, I think it has past that stage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I googled, and found this site. <http://www.websiteoutlook.com/> It has pretty interesting information about any site that you want to check. It gives information such as daily page views, and avg daily revenue. Should be atleast helpful.

<comment><USER30> I ran it for our two primary sites - one returned $5.5m, the other $500k - only ~$800m short!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> just wondering, how old is the site? Is the income from membership sales?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, and it's about 2 years old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Net present value.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value>

</comment><comment><USER33> Don't sell it. Move to Thailand and manage it from there. You'll save money and have a better life. Seriously.

</comment><comment><USER26> Oh, and also: do NOT give them a price. Ask them: what are you willing to pay (after you figure out your price in your own head). NEVER give them a price.

Once they say: "We'll pay 100,000" (let's say your minimum is 200,000), just play it hard and say no. And then argue your case.

</comment><comment><USER34> How much are they willing to pay? That's what you need to find out.

<comment><USER35> And what is their motivation--their theory of value? Is there synergy that they can exploit with other products or web properties?

You can set a price you want because you can manage the property as is from your description of the situation. So you can be patient.

If there isn't synergy and you have determined you want to sell I would pro- actively approach other firms that might be willing to pay more than a pure discounted cash flow model valuation based on synergy. For example, if you have a community of chocolate lovers, Hersheys or Mars might be willing to pay more than a media company that would just see incremental revenue.</comment></comment>


YouTube's fake views economy - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/3804/inside-youtube-s-fake-views-economy <comment><USER2> Discovery on youtube is pretty poor, imo.

I suppose it's a lot better than FB (we decide what you see), and the navigation model (search & browse a database) is what I want. But overall, it's worse than most porn sites.

These things have feedback loops and 3rd order effects. If discovery worked differently, it's not just what people see that gets affected. Pretty soon, what gets created is affected as the market reacts.

This problem is kind of reminiscent of Google SEO/spam problems, but youtube seems a lot worse than search ever was. SEO-spam, clickbait & stuff that hovers just over the spam threshold.. these are pretty dominant.

"Monetization" was another example of market poorly handled. It just did not reward the kind of thing youtube should want to reward.

<comment><USER3> Discovery was ruined on purpose. I will always rant about this. Youtube wants to control what you see, that has always been the case since Google took over. Right now it's nearly impossible to research something specific on youtube. You searches are automatically "corrected": I search terms in one language and get results in another, google tries to semanticaly interpret what I search (and typically wrongly, ie "temperature differential" \--> car differntial videos because they're more popular and profitable). Results aren't complete (they probably create a short search table/cache every few hours based on a finite, semantically-defined number of categories), you can't properly filter by dates, views or any other criterion. Also the "related" videos are often non-related extremely effective clickbait, based on what they know you'll to binge on, even if you don't want to.

I hate youtube wholeheartedly and Google by extension. I don't know if I'm lucky or unlucky to be aware of the vast amounts of data they hide from public view.

Every day hundreds of people create new channels making interesting, thought- provoking and informative videos, and youtube decides to hide them in favour of clickbait garbage and shitty ads, and take away all means you have to discover them.

<comment><USER4> > Discovery was ruined on purpose.

Bingo. And it has gotten worse in recent months as they had to censor and cater to the mainstream media.

> Results aren't complete (they probably create a short search table/cache > every few hours based on a finite, semantically-defined number of > categories)

Also, heavily weighted towards paying customers and their own pet projects. Some days, youtube is just filled with SNL, late night show, movie trailers, logan paul, youtube drama, etc.

> Every day hundreds of people create new channels making interesting, > thought-provoking and informative videos, and youtube decides to hide them > in favour of clickbait garbage and shitty ads, and take away all means you > have to discover them.

I remember just a few years ago, one of the fun things to do was go down youtube's rabbit hole. Now, youtube is just another managed and curated platform to funnel you to certain corporate interests.

Even when stephen hawking pass away, the only thing on youtube was CNN's video of it. What a marked difference from a few years ago when steve jobs passed away.

Sadly, youtube is just becoming a "tv platform" now. Which is a shame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That site's ads were . . . surprisingly tasteful. Got around my adblocker because they were hosted by the advertisers, not an ad company, and, while I wasn't a fan of the Samsung auto-playing video, the Mailchip ad was novel. It felt like reading a classier newspaper, which I can't say I dislike, personally. Plain-CSS ads are the way to go.

<comment><USER6> The perpetually animated squiggle at the top of the article, though, was super annoying. I felt an odd sense of relief when I scrolled down to get that thing off my screen.

Then each link I hovered over squiggled, too.

<comment><USER7> Squiggle is the new blink, only more annoying, which I didn't think was possible. It should be sent straight to hell, no cigarette.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The far bigger problem from my POV which is not described in the article is manipulation of YouTube trends. This is to some extent related to buying views but needs a special kind of attention.

A few weeks back I noticed weird videos in the German YouTube trends, things like "cheap iPhone cases buy now" with channels that had zero subs. A day later there were 3 of these videos in the trends, the next day 6, then 50% of the trends were full of this. A guy with 0 subs even made a video explaining that he does this kind of manipulation for a living...and unsurprisingly the video made it into the trends the same day.

Simply buying views has very little effect (except on maybe advertisers that pay you) but gaining massive exposure through being featured in the trending videos is big.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious about how the viewbotting is actually carried out and whether this impacts inline video ads on Youtube. I experimented with these video ads and did some very narrow targeting for our audience (searches related to dyslexia or ADHD). I know that a sizable percentage of people with dyslexia or ADHD love our tools (and our video ad contained a demo), but the click-through rate was next to nothing.

I wondered at the time if this was an issue with how Youtube does their targeting, or if it was something else. Seeing how popular viewbotting is, I now wonder if the bots end up getting categorized as relevant to different types of ads and are subsequently shown them. Of course, this would depress the click-through rate and the overall efficacy of Youtube video advertising.

Would be interested in others' thoughts.

<comment><USER10> I used to do viewbotting back in the day but it isn't as lucrative as you would think. Basically, the creme de la creme is views from residential IP addresses, especially from the United States. Most proxy and VPN IPs are allocated to datacenter IPs so those IPs are easy to detect by youtube.

When you run the viewbotting app all it does is scroll though various youtube videos. Sometimes it likes the video and other times it will add a fake comment. Occasionally it will subscribe to the channel. The software is designed to mimic real user behavior. In exchange for running the bot you get credits which allows other bots to view your video. Since it is residential IP addresses, you do get paid for the views.

The big downside is that there isn't that many people using it so you don't really make much money from it at all. In fact, you are better off just spending your time making quality content.

From what I understand, the services mentioned in the article are not quality views. Youtube will most likely delete those views eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm honestly not sure I can trust anything this author says.

In this article he links to another he's written [0] which posits that Professor Jordan Peterson is recruiting depressed men for the alt-right. It's full of nothing but false emotionally-driven insinuations, and is especially ridiculous considering Peterson's very explicit stance against extremist ideologies on either side, including the alt-right.

[0]: [https://theoutline.com/post/3537/alt-right-recruiters- have-i...](https://theoutline.com/post/3537/alt-right-recruiters-have- infiltrated-the-online-depression-community)

</comment><comment><USER12> Social proof is so important, even as I am aware of it I still fall for it, for example Github stars and contributors. I kinda feel special when I am watching a youtube video of less then 100 views though.

</comment><comment><USER13> Past youtubers were able to buy views in order to generate social proof. Any new youtuber won't be able to take this same shortcut. Maybe youtube should consider hiding the viewcount of videos under a certain amount, say <5000, in order to give people a shot again.

<comment><USER14> The view count itself isn't why they are buying views, it is the ranking in search and related videos.

I find youtube/twitch have the same problems as the CPM industry. If you punish the provider of content for negative viewer action you provide a means for competition to cheaply force the content creator out of the market.

This is why twitch doesn't punish view botting, as any viewer could spend $5 to shut down a $50k/day stream.

If youtube really does use a guilty until proven innocent method then they are just punishing honest content creators that don't understand the dynamics of online media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article starts with putting Jordan Peterson in the same cohort as Alex Jones and crisis actors conspiracy peddlers. I'm not a Peterson fan, but those kind of comparisons strike me as extremely misinformed and dishonest, and undermines the whole credibility of the article by a lot

<comment><USER16> A lot of links are just other stories written by the same author, as well. Pretty clearly has an agenda.

I'll say it. Jordan Peterson has been a positive influence in my life. I've watched hundreds of hours of his lectures on YouTube. I started a book club to read his recommended books such as Gulag Archipelago, Brave New World, 1984, and The Rape of Nanking. It has been a difficult and important experience for me.

Reading Dostoyevsky was eye opening, if just for the fact that as much as people change, we stay the same, and the Communists were using some of the same idealistic arguments for changing the world in 1860s Russia that they are now. The idea that we are simply products of social conditioning, the tabula rasa and nothing more, the victims of our upbringing, were all central tenants in the severity of punishments for people being sent to Gulag in the Soviet Union. Prostitution was 3 years and being a nun was 10 Years. It technically wasn't illegal to be a Christian, but teaching your children Christian values was! Families were purposely torn apart.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that learning more history, and just how badly things can go wrong, is very important and anyone who encourages people to seek out that history on their own is good in my book.

<comment><USER17> The downvotes of your comment once again confirm how tolerant HN is of different opinions. The people downvoting you are the same people who call themselves progressive and open-minded. As long as they agree with it of course.</comment></comment></comment>


Parltrack and ACTA - <AUTHOR> http://zine.openrightsgroup.org/features/2013/parltrack

<comment><USER2> I like this, this is an Open Government project that doesn't demand transparency, but urges for action. You know, instead of watching, doing. We need more of these.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree! It's a scandal and it's a shame, that this is not pushed to the front page, we should get this out to the wider public!

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I seem to be unable to upvote story this despite having registered.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you guys, your support is very much appreciated! I think there might be some karma limit on this site that prohibits you from voting on stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I try to click on the arrow, but nothing happens.</comment>


RIP Good Times? A Different Perspective from Altos Ventures - <AUTHOR> http://altos.typepad.com/vc/2008/10/rip-good-times-a-different-perspective-1.html

<comment><USER2> heh, while not bad times, it's certainly not GOOD times.

a "hedgehog" company will fare well in a downturn market and an upturn one. it's okay if the people being laid off from "fox" companies are the lazy employees, but it's kind of sad if they were brought on to help grow and are now being laid off for survival.</comment>


When Twitter Meet Facebook, Zuck has no sense of humour.   - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/technology/when-twitter-met-facebook-every-joke-landed-like-a-dead-fish-on-the-ground/story-e6frfro0-1226096550654

<comment><USER2> "We had to wait on this huge line for lunch," he recalled. "Evan was like 'Aren't you the boss? Can't you like kind of cut the line a little bit here?' And he's like 'That's not how we do things here'."

Well I respect the fact that Mark respected his employees.

<comment><USER3> Honestly I would have no idea whether that was a joke or not, about cutting the line. I would probably laugh if he said that to me because it's a safer response, Mark went the other direction. I'd like to hear a better example of these solid gold jokes they were throwing at him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like Mark is damned if does and damned if he doesn't. He even gets bashed for _not_ cutting in line?! lol. Give the man a break, jeez. He's human just like the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Do you want me to close the door or leave it open?", to which Zuckerberg replied, "Yes".

I would guess this is how it happened:

        Stone:  "Do you want me to close the door..."

        Zuck, thinking the question is complete, starts to say:  "Yes."

        Stone adds the unnecessary:  "...or leave it open?"

So maybe Zuck was just thinking too fast. :)

<comment><USER6> open | closed -> true

:-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Zuckerberg's response of "Yes" to "Do you want the door open or closed?" seemed humorous enough to me. Stone just didn't get it.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's even arguably a programming joke!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a link to the original interview audio and transcript: [http://www.npr.org/2011/07/16/138160765/twitter-co- founder-b...](http://www.npr.org/2011/07/16/138160765/twitter-co-founder-biz- stone-plays-not-my-job)

</comment><comment><USER9> No need to call Zuck out on that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Love the star trek references... :)</comment>


Doom as a System Administration tool (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also relevant:

Doom as an Interface for Process Management: [http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html](http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html)

Doom SysAdmin Tool: [http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_SysAdmin_Tool](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_SysAdmin_Tool)

More: [https://www.google.com/search?q=doom+system+administration](https://www.google.com/search?q=doom+system+administration)</comment>


Generate callgraphs for Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD kernel function calls - <AUTHOR> This is a useful tool for understanding linux/Unix kernel code.<p>https://github.com/vonnyfly/kernel_visualization <comment><AUTHOR> Link: [https://github.com/vonnyfly/kernel_visualization](https://github.com/vonnyfly/kernel_visualization)</comment>


Norway's new passport – already a design classic? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2014/nov/17/norway-new-passport-design <comment><USER2> Along the same lines as this new passport here are some cool design proposals from Metric[1] and Snohetta[2] for Norway's new banknotes.

And a couple of concepts from US based designers[3][4] for US currency designs.

[1][http://www.metricdesign.no/work/norges- bank](http://www.metricdesign.no/work/norges-bank)

[2][http://snohetta.com/projects/200-design-proposal-for- norway3...](http://snohetta.com/projects/200-design-proposal-for- norway39s-new-banknotes)

[3][http://www.travispurrington.com/2014-usd- proposal](http://www.travispurrington.com/2014-usd-proposal)

[4][http://tyznik.com/currency/](http://tyznik.com/currency/)

Edit: I thought Travis Purrington was US based but he is actually Zurich based.

<comment><USER3> The metric designs look A LOT like the Euro notes.

<comment><USER4> And the new Swiss Francs, which I find the most beautifully designed notes I have ever seen. Some of the following notes are not out yet, Switzerland has been replacing the old notes slowly for the last couple of years.

I wasn't able to find an image of all the notes, here is the new 50 franc note:

[http://www.snb.ch/n/mmr/picture/3a29e64cf82f471d00257f8d0021...](http://www.snb.ch/n/mmr/picture/3a29e64cf82f471d00257f8d0021f136/source/SNB_9S_BN50_pack_017_web.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not as cool as Finland, though. Their passport design features a moose on each page, which doubles as a flip-book animation of it walking! See [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym4v2TBJwuI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym4v2TBJwuI)

<comment><USER5> I also like the new Canadian passport pages, which have clever highlighting under UV light [0] and this Hungarian EUR 20 note is inspired, with UV light showing the skeletal structure of the pictured bird [1] but sadly its just a mock-up from a final-year project by a design student...

[0] [http://imgur.com/gallery/3u8xP](http://imgur.com/gallery/3u8xP) [1] [http://www.designboom.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/barbara...](http://www.designboom.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/barbara-bernat-hungarian-paper-money- designboom-14.jpg)

<comment><USER6> > I also like the new Canadian passport pages, which have clever highlighting > under UV light

The article notes that under UV light the pages of the new/future norwegian passport switch from day view to "northern lights" night view. The first two pictures in TFA are the same page viewed under normal light and UV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting that the pass just has Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk) and English -- no French. Is French no longer the Lingua Franka? My kid's German passport still has German / English / French and my Australian one is still English / French.

I've used French in some weird remote corners of the world where English didn't work.

<comment><USER8> French hasn't been the been the modern lingua franca for some time, it's obviously English (well, actually many variants of English) now.

The ICAO still recommends to issue passports in English and French _or_ in the national language plus English or French although using the national language(s) plus English and French is still common in Europe.

European Union passports even use all official EU languages as far as I know (I cannot check right now).

<comment><USER9> EU passports use all the languages, but only via a page with translations for each field.

My British one has English and French on the data page, and a number to look up the translation.

[http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48863000/jpg/_48863568...](http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48863000/jpg/_48863568_passportbiographicpage.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The new passports will not be issued until April 2018.

I just realised I'll end up with one of the first ones - my current spare passport expires on March 31st, 2018.

<comment><USER11> More likely you'll end up with one of the last ones. Generally it is good to keep at least 6 months of validity on your passport if you plan on using it.

Depending on the country, it might be more difficult to renew it after it has expired than shortly before.

<comment><USER12> It really depends on the country. The US is perfectly fine with your passport up until the date of expiry, so is Canada, so is many EU countries.

<comment><USER13> Be sure to check before traveling.

All of the 26 European countries comprising the Schengen area require that U.S. passports are valid for at least 90 days beyond the traveler's intended date of departure and many assume travellers will stay 3 months, thus requiring 6 month validity.

[https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/09/231319.htm](https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/09/231319.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This story is from 2014. And also the ID card is just a proposal, I've been living here for over thirty years and I have never heard of a Norwegian having an ID card.

</comment><comment><USER15> All cred to Norway for doing their part to make a passport something usable and something a citizen can show with pride. However not a patch on current New Zealand passport design. Everywhere i take mine out for use i get comments about how cool and yet elegant it looks - inside and out.

<comment><USER16> Your comment made me curious about the design of New Zealand passports, which eventually led me to this atlas of passport covers:

[https://www.passportindex.org/](https://www.passportindex.org/)

Here's New Zealand's distinctive design:

[https://www.passportindex.org/countries/nz.png](https://www.passportindex.org/countries/nz.png)

But I prefer the elegant minimalism from Switzerland:

[https://www.passportindex.org/countries/ch.png](https://www.passportindex.org/countries/ch.png)

De gustibus non est disputandum. :-)

<comment><USER17> Beautiful passports make me wish I could collect citizenships.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What is the difference between an "immigrant passport" and a "standard passport" ? Are naturalized citizens of Norway not equal to natural citizens of Norway?

<comment><USER19> They are for legal residents without the ability to get proper documents from their home countries. My guess is primarily "refugees" that haven't gone through the full citizenship process.

[https://www.udi.no/en/want-to-apply/immigrants-passport- and-...](https://www.udi.no/en/want-to-apply/immigrants-passport-and-travel- document/)

<comment><USER18> Got it, thanks, in hindsight, I should have googled it myself. I've never seen a refugee travel document / refugee passport be called an "immigrant passport" before, but that's cool, and more importantly, it's great to see Norway hasn't created a "second class citizen" category, and that all citizens are truly equal, at least from a Passport/Documentation perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> These are so cool! How do I get one?

American passports are so drab in comparison. Another nice passport design is Swiss, but that shouldn't be surprising.

<comment><USER21> In my case? I accidentally fell in love with a Norwegian some years back. If I have my date and time stuff correct, I should be able to apply to get one in late summer/early autumn.

Of course, the path to that stuff also includes language learning and civics and all that stuff too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> (2014)

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been thinking that the security function served by a passport is very rapidly becoming obsolete (or at least redundant) for travel to most countries in the world. It could be replaced by a plastic photo ID card -- which you could then call a "passport" I suppose. And with strong biometrics, it could be replaced by nothing.

Let me explain this with typical cases where a passport is used:

(1) You're entering your home country with your passport. Pretty much at every secure border crossing, they're going to use your passport number to pull up absolutely every bit of info that appears in your passport, including your photo, plus a lot more info from the home country's computers. The passport serves at most as a "something you have" security token. They already have your photo, so the only case where the physical passport helps is avoiding impersonation by someone closely resembling you.

(2) You're traveling to a foreign country that needs a visa. In that case, you will have submitted a ton of information, including your photo, to the foreign country in advance to get the visa. When you arrive at the foreign country, it's just like case (1) above.

(3) You're traveling to a foreign country that doesn't need a visa from citizens of your home country. In this case, the proof you need is that you are a citizen of that country. It is likely that the two countries have exchanged a mass of information to make the visa-free travel possible, or they can share the info about visitors in real time as they arrive.

It's really the edge cases that the physical passport helps. Like obscure border crossings where they don't have an electronic feed, or very third-world countries, or as a recognizable document to show to hotels/banks/airlines within a foreign country.

By the way, I'm not saying that this is a good development. In fact, it's a terrible loss of privacy and furthering of worldwide surveillance. But it seems to be the trend, like the elimination of cash.

<comment><USER24> You're totally right, the paper passport could be considered a strange object in a very electronic world.

However, in my experience, truly electronically equipped borders are the edge case. The countries that take e-passports without any agent interaction are fee and far between, and typically only service citizens of that country.

Perhaps you're fortunate enough to travel in a selection of bleeding edge countries, via plane. Many, many people use land borders, and most land borders don't have electronic systems.

For an electronic system to work, you'd need 100% coverage of every border, or the system breaks - and that's hard to pull off.

The flip side is that there are security flaws with partial electronic systems. My country passed a law against travel to Iraq / Afghanistan for citizens, and yet, because they have 100% electronic border control for citizens, (and Iraq / Afghanistan don't..) - my passport has never been checked, despite having 'illegal' visas plain to see.

<comment><USER25> > _For an electronic system to work, you 'd need 100% coverage of every > border, or the system breaks - and that's hard to pull off._

And therein lies the true absurdity of it. All travel stops if the internet goes down?

<comment><USER26> If we truely have high-level terrorists crossing borders, then yes, every person's identity should be checked against national police files and thus, when Internet is down, every decision should be suspended, if we want to be consistent.

Obviously I say "if" because those who actually want to deceive the system walk through borders by foot (taking advantage of the terrain), and register as migrants (under no less than 14 identities for one person - that's what happened for the last terrorist in Europe). Heightened passport security rules are great, but they mostly catch citizen who thought they were law-abiding, while it's much, much harder to deal with real criminality.

<comment><USER25> I'm not talking about a momentary outage. I'm talking about, e.g., citizens trying to return home after a crippling cyber attack that leaves America offline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's a distinctive, minimalist design, for sure. Hopefully it's still as usable as before. Though ICAO passport specifications mean designers probably aren't given enough rope to hang themselves.

</comment><comment><USER28> I find it hilarious that the related articles includes this: [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture- design...](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design- blog/2015/nov/05/design-blunders-of-the-new-uk-passport-a-very-british-mess) , which basically details how the UK government has managed to make an utter mess of the same exact design space.

<comment><USER29> We seem to have a knack for including portrait drawings that look like a bad DeviantArt fan-art. That Shakespeare picture is pretty goofy, and the Clydesdale Bank 20 GBP note has a particularly awful depiction of Robert The Bruce, for example: [http://www.britishnotes.co.uk/news_and_info/scottishlatestne...](http://www.britishnotes.co.uk/news_and_info/scottishlatestnews/20front.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> That is truly wonderful design, I'm genuinely drawn to it and quite envious, until now I thought the current New Zealand passport was quite pleasant - [http://i.stuff.co.nz/travel/kiwi-traveller/84012074/the- migh...](http://i.stuff.co.nz/travel/kiwi-traveller/84012074/the-mighty-new- zealand-passport-everything-you-need-to-know)

</comment><comment><USER31> If I am not wrong, Chinese passports are also similar beautiful design and different pages show different things under UV light.

<comment><USER6> The canadian passport has apparently used UV-reactive ink since at least 2003: [http://imgur.com/gallery/3u8xP](http://imgur.com/gallery/3u8xP) contrasts the "old" canadian passport's UV pages to the "new" one's, the new one (biometric/ePassport) was introduced in 2013, the previous one was introduced in 2003.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> A thread relevant to this discussion - why do we require passports?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12621909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12621909)

</comment><comment><USER33> I have to say, when I got my U.S. passport I found it striking. My Canadian passport is pretty bland even though it has the same format (backdrop image and a quote).

</comment><comment><USER34> I like the design, although they do remind me a bit of the little Kate Spade notebooks and accessories you find at upmarket department stores..

</comment><comment><USER35> I seriously love the design of this passport. Well done to the company that designed those.

</comment><comment><USER6> Needs a [2014] tag:

> Monday 17 November 2014 15.29 GMT

> Last modified on Monday 17 November 2014 18.40 GMT

</comment><comment><USER36> What does it take to become a citizen of Norway? Asking for a friend.</comment>


What is Gauss's Law? - <AUTHOR> http://www.eeweb.com/electronics-quiz/what-is-gausss-law

<comment><USER2> I suppose you want an answer ... a quick Wikipedia search and voila:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gausss_law>

you can find many more articles with a Google search.</comment>


The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe - <AUTHOR> http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain-space-to-be-considered-unsafe/ <comment><USER2> While I'm as against Sharia law as the next privileged westerner/godless heathen, I found the complaint that the rules weren't in English really amusing.

Why should a country's national ccTLD rules be in English? It's a domain space for that country, not for making convenient short URLs for Americans to use on Twitter.

Why would a country run under Sharia law want to allow services like bit.ly and others to use their ccTLD to link to porn and other things they find offensive? Why is there an automatic assumption that ccTLD rules should conform to Western expectations?

The only explanation I can think of is that in the back of people's heads is the idea 'it's our internet and we're just letting you weird foreigners use it'. Apart from not being true any more, I wonder how deeply that sort of thinking affects other interactions online?

Or maybe I'm overthinking it all and this guy's just pissed off and ranting because he lost his domain.

<comment><USER3> I will only comment on your use of the term Sharia law. The term's widely misunderstood, especially after the events in NYC this summer.

Just so that you know, Sharia "law" is just six principles:

1\. The right to the protection of life. 2\. The right to the protection of family. 3\. The right to the protection of education. 4\. The right to the protection of religion. 5\. The right to the protection of property (access to resources). 6\. The right to the protection of human dignity.

That's it. At its base, eerily similar to the bill of rights. The term "shariah law" is a misnomer, because shariah is not law, but a set of principles.

Controversial laws like stoning people or requiring women to be totally covered aren't in the Sharia. Those are custom interpretations by certain sects. That's why say Islamic-based laws in Saudi Arabia are radically different from those in Egypt.

Just thought I'd share that. It really irked me this summer when everyone was throwing around arguments against "infecting the constitution with Sharia" even though no one actually knows what Sharia is.

<comment><USER4> Is this at all representative of the way sharia exists in practice? Can you provide, say, 5 examples of Islamic countries practicing sharia according to this strict interpretation that aren't overwhelmed by the influence of religous and ethnic traditionalism? If not then aren't you just arguing semantics? If the way sharia is practiced conforms to a certain well delineated set of patterns and that differs from some ideal definition of sharia which is the correct definition?

<comment><USER5> I think you're misunderstanding what is meant by Sharia. It is _not_ a strict set of rules. Because of this, it is necessarily influenced by ethnic traditionalism. Now if you're looking for western countries which have Sharia courts, the United Kingdom and India are two which come to mind which allow certain civil disputes to be resolved in Sharia courts.

<comment><USER6> For a Sharia court in the UK to have the power of law though the participants in the case all first have to agree to that though, otherwise they don't have a legal leg to stand on.

So it is only after you've voluntarily agreed to be bound that the court can proceed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And to add to all of that: If you register a local version of any domain, be it .ly or anything else make sure that you understand that domains registered as such are subject to both local laws and the whims of the TLD authority.

This is one of the reasons I've always stuck to .com, .net and .org, just registering a .nl domain for example requires me to jump through all kinds of hoops, and is more expensive to boot.

If you're registering a cutesy domain name because it worked for del.icio.us please note that they eventually switched to the whole word. If you're doing it because 'there are no good names available' then you need to get a bit more inspiration somewhere, I've found it very easy to come up with domain names up to last week, I can't imagine the situation has changed much since then.

<comment><USER7> _> registering a .nl domain for example requires me to jump through all kinds of hoops, and is more expensive to boot_

This is quite interesting, because in Germany we have the exact opposite. Here, .de domains are preferable to .com/.net/.org, because .de domains are cheaper, registered more quickly with less bureaucracy and provide better data privacy for the domain holder.

<comment><USER6> In nl the TLD admin is called SIDN, which officially stands for Stichting Internet Domeinregistratie Nederland, but the situation was/is so bad that they got the nickname Stichting Internet Dominatie Nederland which stands for something entirely different.

How it can be 'more quickly' then typing in a name in a form and clicking a mouse is a mystery to me, what do you mean by that?

<comment><USER8> 'more quickly' probably means that german domain registrators can directly register .de domain (and send you an invoice for it, not bill your credit card), while they use some middle-man for generic TLDs. This can cause various unexpected problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think what really happened here is that someone at the Libyan domain authority decided they wanted the name and made up a story in order to seize it. I've heard of other cases of .ly names being confiscated, and for this reason we advise YC startups not to depend on them.

<comment><USER10> Alternative explanation:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1765420>

"Violet Blue is an adult site".

<comment><USER11> Yes, and that's the reason given for this domain name being reclaimed. Drinking alcohol and women showing bare arms are both illegal under Sharia law, and the front page showed Violet Blue drinking beer and showing bare arms. It's difficult for many foreigners to know exactly what is and isn't legal under Sharia law, so it's difficult to know if a domain would be ok or not.

However nic.ly are now also warning they don't allow ownership of short .ly domains by foreigners, only Libyan nationals. This sounds to me like they want more money or an excuse to take down domains they simply don't like, but is a real problem if they ever decided they want in on the bit.ly action.

The vb.ly site owners keep claiming that the content may be adult but that the domain name isn't. This is a weak argument in my mind, and I believe there's a precedent of domain names registered exclusively for the act of malware propagation being taken down.

<comment><USER12> Sharia law doesn't necessarily enter into it.

You can't sell dildos and vibrators in Texas, and it's not because of Sharia law.

Hindu activists in India made death threats and stormed theaters because of a film about a lesbian relationship.

Sharia law is not the only reason for repressive attitudes toward sex.

I mean, really. They're, what, 30-40 years behind the cultural norms of the US, in this case? You don't really need to pin that on Sharia, when it's far more likely that it's just cultural.

It wasn't that long ago in the US that nothing was open on Sundays.

<comment><USER13> > You don't really need to pin that on Sharia, when it's far more likely that > it's _just cultural._ (emph. added)

Because cultural reasons are completely separate from religion? Religion is the only reason people like to tell others what they can and can't do in private, _especially_ in a democracy like Texas, where it shouldn't be considered Constitutional to outlaw "dildos and vibrators."

<comment><USER12> A agree, but there's a tendency among some these days to tout the boogeyman of sharia law. And there's an implication that there's something alien about Libya, that being restrictive of sexual matter is somehow unique to sharia law, that without sharia law Libya would be just like the US, and that Christians wouldn't do anything similar.

Which is just nonsense. Conservatives are conservative. Libya did this thing, and John Ashcroft covered up a statue's tit.

Bringing sharia into it is just buying into the latest thing pants-wetting wingnuts are using to scare themselves.

<comment><USER13> Maybe I'm foolish, but I think that denying the involvement of sharia law buys us nothing, but recognizing similarities with other conservative censorship tendencies (e.g. in Christendom) — as you have — can be a enlightening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dont-kill-me So if someone posts a cartoon picture of muhammad, and shortens it through bit.ly, will Libya pull the domain, and in the process break millions of other shortened URLs?

<http://bit.ly/cartoon-muhammad>

<comment><USER6> The point here is not if they will, the point is that they can, and that that's why it is silly to even start using a domain like that.

You don't put your business' fate in the hands of some third world countries legislation/semi governments whims.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Culture clash... looking at the sites screenshot here: [http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/10/official- vb-...](http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/10/official-vb-ly-link- shortener-seized-by-libyan-government.html) (NSFW) I can see how under strict Islamic law that pic would be construed as "obscene, offensive and illegal".

I have... minimal sympathy with these people - a lot of the fault lies with themselves for not understanding the rules, morals and society of the country they were buying from.

I don't think that this generally makes .ly domains any more "unsafe".

(on the other hand; if this is an example of Libya deliberately creating rules to seize domains that is another matter, but at least in this case the complaint seems "legitimate" so we may have to wait and see)

<comment><USER6> That link is NSFW.

<comment><USER15> Just to add some more amusement: Why the hell would that be not safe for work?

It's hard to state my question without ending up being dismissed as a troll, but I'm deeply amused by different viewpoints related to sex between western cultures. If I take a karma hit for that, so be it.

Anecdote: During the football (yeah, or soccer..) worldcup in Germany images were all over the internet that showed a brochure, which was rumored to be issued by the USA's department of foreign affairs for tourists joining the event. One interesting "fact" about the german culture mentioned in there was ,that violence (on tv, online, etc) might be far less accepted over here and might be felt offensive, while nudity/references to sex might offend the traveller.

I never found out if these things were real, but comments like these remind me of some interesting differences in cultures between states that otherwise often end up being regarded similar in morale and grouped as "western countries".

<comment><USER6> It's not safe for work because plenty of people reading HN do so from their work during breaks and if they happened to be showing a page which has full- frontal nudity on it, even by accident during work hours they could get fired for that.

Your - or mine - morals don't enter in to it, it's just a fact of life. So it's common courtesy to label links that are not safe for work as such.

It's no trouble at all and if it helps keep the Hacker News crowd employed then I think that's a good thing to strive for.

<comment><USER15> Oh well - sure. I didn't want to criticize (sp?) the habit at all. Nor did I want to mock anyone's morale or ask for the removal of NSFW tags.

What you just described is just - in my little world - a tiny, little version of the original problem discussed in the thread.

For a part of the world the service vb.ly was not safe for X (work, family, whatever).

For a part of the world (as explained by you) the blog entry and its sexual references/ads/etc are not safe for work.

I wanted to point out the parallels, which seem (mildly) funny to me.

I visited the link at work and I'm sure nobody would ever complain, let alone _think_ about bad consequences for me. Not that I imply that it should be that way or that this is in any way superior to different positions or morale standpoints. It is just - different.

NSFW is in that regard a kind of a lowest common denominator (sp?), tagged on links with good intentions for sure. But using the lowest common point means also that we put a label on something that might be excessive/overly protective to others. I guess I cannot explain my feeling about these similarities in judgement, inparticular around sex/nudity/pornography, any better, sorry.

Short version: I don't question the "NSFW". I want to remind the readers that the reasons why this is necessary in the first place are an interesting thought in light of this discussion.

<comment><USER14> There is, I think, an important distinction, now that you have raised the point.

In that the application of Sharia law makes a moral judgement on the content - censoring it for the promotion of, in their eyes, illegal content.

In a work environment many things are not appropriate; even in the most liberal of societies pornography is much more of a private thing, enjoyed by smaller groups of people rather than being shared with the world at large. There are also other issues; like, for example, that pornography is connected with sexual excitement and sexual acts - all of which are also socially inappropriate in most workplaces (and public). So rather than a moral judgement it is a practical limitation designed to avoid awkwardness, or offence or distraction.

That link, in particular, is a marginal case, where the pornography is incidental to the reason for being on the page. But within a corporate structure that doesn't matter.

For what it's worth, no one will blink an eyelid where I work either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only person hoping that a high profile URL shortener liky bit.ly get taken offline so people learn quickly that redirecting their content's URLs through a 3rd party is a bad idea?

<comment><USER17> Redirecting your content through a third party like Amazon Web Services? Or Akamai CDN? Or Rackspace?

All small- to medium-size websites are the result of dozens of third party companies -- server farms, network backbones, DNS providers -- working together. Even the really gigantic sites like Google and Yahoo, who really do own their whole networks and all their hardware, use third party services extensively.

In the case of a third-party URL shortener, the other party's presence is more visible but no more intrinsically unreliable. And in fact, in this instance, the redirector itself didn't go down -- what "broke" was the DNS provider, namely NIC.ly.

<comment><USER18> You're correct that traditional content is routed through a ton of different companies, and that anyone of them can fail, but using bit.ly is essentially pointless, as it just tacts on another service that must be relied on.

In 10 years when bit.ly is completely dead, 2/3rds of the tweets or other comments on the web will be rendered useless.

<comment><USER17> People complain about this a lot, but the rate of link-rot of ordinary URLs is much, much greater than people believe. I run a URL shortener, and I can assure you that while all of our links still work, huge numbers of the pages they point to no longer exist.

The problem is also overstated because nearly all URL shorteners (bit.ly included) are sending HTTP 301 responses. This means that the short link is _never_ indexed; only the original link is. So shorteners have no effect on pagerank/search results, which is where the longevity of pages is important (since anything not published in the very recent past is mostly discovered by search).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is what your firewall is for. If the IP is from Libya, send the packets to the web server that hosts the "Libya is excellent!" page. If it's from the country that your users are in, show them the real content.

Technical solutions to social problems sometimes work :)

<comment><USER20> of course Libya is a mythical country behind mountains higher than Himalayas and has no diplomatic missions anywhere in the world nor are it's officials able to travel let alone Google "violet blue".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I still don't get the recent trend of startups branding their businesses around .ly and .io. I suppose it's similar to any "hip" trend, such as gradients and rounded corners, but it always seemed legally risky to me.

<comment><USER22> Why does .io seem legally risky to you? The British Indian Ocean Territory is currently a British protectorate, and the two countries that otherwise claim the islands are Mauritius and the Seychelles, both of which are peaceful and democratic.

<comment><USER23> <http://www.nic.io/rules.html> states that you may not host content under a .io domain if it is against the statutory laws of _any_ nation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _It should be noted that all vb.ly links still exist but do not function at this time. We have the database intact, and will restore your shortened URLs momentarily with a suitable domain._

It's nice that they're doing that but it's essentially worthless. The url's in the database have no value, it's the ones spread all over other people's servers, and the work that went into doing it that have value.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you hand a government complete power over a critical resource, and you or your peers don't vote for that government, you will regret it.

The historical parallel to oil is not lost on Libya. Before 1850 or so, oil was just a nuisance mineral. When the West developed applications for it, Libya's territory, formerly a desert, was now worth trillions. Oil is now 95% of Libya's exports, and probably 95% of their international power too.

Libya's government evolved to defend and exploit natural resources, and they've historically done very un-democratic things to further that goal. So please, don't hand them the keys to your startup.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm not sure if this is a real change to the nic.ly policy or not. It's tricky. They say it was adult content. While vb.ly might not have had any, it was co-owned by Violet Blue, who while she is many wonderful things, she is not islamic.

Violet Blue's Website: <http://www.tinynibbles.com/>

It's not just Libya, the US govt which has ultimate control over .com, .org, .net, .us, .gov, etc... also has some crazy ideas. Just look at how the senate last week wanted to start revoking domain names willy nilly.

<comment><USER27> Whether or not adult content was physically hosted by vb.ly or not is really a technicality. If the link results in porn in your browser window...

<comment><USER19> I guess they block Google, then?

<comment><USER28> They would probably block google.ly, or at least filter it.

<comment><USER29> You mean <http://www.google.com.ly/> ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Cutesy domain names considered harmful.

As somebody pointed out earlier in the thread, del.icio.us was really a terrible name. When you try to say it out loud (or even think it in your head) it comes out as "dell dot icky-o dot us"; the whole "oh, that's cute, it spells delicious" is pretty shortlived. delicious.com is way easier to say and looks better.

The same thing goes for your personal sites. bob.jon.es sounds pretty stupid when you try to tell somebody "Just go to bob dot jon dot es" or "bob dot j-o-n dot e-s".

Just say no to cutesy domain names. bobjones.net, not bob.jon.es; delicious.com, not del.icio.us.

</comment><comment><USER31> This reminds me of the current Dubai commercial property crisis. During the boom, everyone bought property without asking if there was a legal framework for resolving disputes. Now that there's a bust, investors are finding Dubai's opaque property laws make it very difficult to resolve disputes and get your money out.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/global/07dubaibui...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/global/07dubaibuild.html?_r=1)

You bought virtual commercial real-estate in Libya and now you're finding you are subject to local law and bureaucracy.

Google's bet on the Greenland TDL with goo.gl is less risky but I'd be interested to see what their lawyers had the local government and ccTLD admins agree to.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm reasonably sure I predicted this: <http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on- url-shorteners.html>

</comment><comment><USER33> > it sets a precedent that all websites running on a .ly domain must comply > with Libyan Islamic/Sharia

Given that Libya is a sovereign nation __and __.ly is their TLD, not a playground for you to create cute domains that seems 110% reasonable.

<comment><USER34> Reasonableness is orthogonal to dangerousness. It's reasonable that playing with a wild grizzly bear might end in serious injury.

<comment><USER33> Fair enough, and true.

I was more responding to the entitled and shocked tone that someone(entity) would act in their self interests even when they, OMG!, conflicted with petty interests of "your" own.

I also have a serious twist in my nickers over abusing TLDs to get cutesy domain names.

I also have a very serious twist about people who go out of their way to violate custom / abuse a system and then whine about when it doesn't work just they way they want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's slightly funny how lots of Americans are complaining about Libya's rules for .ly, but have obviously never read the rules for .us which are in many aspects worse.

</comment><comment><USER36> When I was suggesting domain names for the NYTimes short URL this was a major concern. I'm sorry to see it actually happen.

</comment><comment><USER37> I would like to draw attention to the fact that US had economic embargo on Libya till 2004(?) and even today there are many items that cannot be exported to Libya.

So, when your government (assuming the entrepreneur in question is American) classifies Libya as a dangerous state, it might be prudent to avoid building your identity over the domain names provided by Libya... don't you think.

I remember this only because Oracle made me click a check box agreeing not to export any of their software to these "axis of evil" countries.

</comment><comment><USER38> I have two 3-letter .ly domains. Do you think it's a bad idea to use them for anything serious now?

<comment><USER39> Everything in business has a risk associated with it. Domain names are not excluded from that analysis.

The risk with .ly domains has been discussed before. This is just evidence that the risk exists and this evidence should be used to recalculate that risk.

As mentioned in a similar reply in this thread a Plan B should be considered. Any sufficiently large website or business should have some disaster recovery plans, regardless and this is just another page that needs to be created for that plan

What a Plan B for a domain name is? I'm not quite sure but, del.icio.us delicious.com is an example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wouldn't panic yet as a .ly domain owner:

"While letters 'vb' are quite generic and bear no offensive meaning in themselves, they're being used as a domain name for an openly admitted 'adult friendly URL shortener'. Now, had your domain merely been a URL shortener for general uses similar to bit.ly (as you claim) there would have been no problem with it. It is when you promote your site being solely for adult uses, or even state that you are 'adult friendly' to promote it that we as a Libyan Registry have an issue."

There is definitely some risk, so mitigate it and buy the ly.com variant of a .ly domain to protect against this - much like ad.ly owns adly.com, embed.ly owns embedly.com.

Watch what bit.ly does - likely nothing right now. If they get warning like vb.ly says they did, we will hear about it, and then every .ly owner has a problem.

</comment><comment><USER41> 'You may also not know that since June 2010 .ly domains less than 4 characters long may no longer be registered by anyone who isn't in Libya which suggests there is tension around foreign owned, high-value, short .ly domains.'

What about bit.ly?

Registrant: bit.ly Jessica McVea 416 West 13th Street New York NY United States Zip/Postal code: 10014 Phone: 6468398575

Domain Name: BIT.LY

Created: 2008-05-18 14:50:12 Updated: 2010-03-09 18:25:33 Expired: 2011-05-18 14:50:12

Domain servers in listed order: ns4.p26.dynect.net ns3.p26.dynect.net ns2.p26.dynect.net ns1.p26.dynect.net

Domain Status: ACTIVE

</comment><comment><USER42> Why do we even have all these stupid country specific domain extensions? Countries are not permanent entries; they come and go. What happens when a country ceases to exist, gets invaded, has a civil war...? What on earth is the benefit of having dozens and dozens of domain extensions, except to confuse people and force them to pay endless amounts for every possible misspelling of your domain? (Seriously, who the hell thought that a .cm domain extension was a good idea?!)

</comment><comment><USER43> Finally. I was wondering when somebody was going to crack down on all those .ly domain names. Web 2.0 startups with their cute domain names tend to forget that those TLDs are actually controlled by someone. I remember a while back when Italy started restricting .it domain names because so many Americans were registering .it domain names.

Funny how many on here complain about Libya and their sharia requirement instead.

</comment><comment><USER44> Site is down, you can read the article with Bing's cache: [http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fbenmetcalfe.co...](http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fbenmetcalfe.com%2fblog%2f2010%2f10%2fthe- ly-domain-space-to-be-considered-unsafe%2f&d=879317483757&mkt=fr- FR&setlang=fr-FR&w=38a5245,e3cc4722)

</comment><comment><USER45> I made an adult themed URL shortener pr0n.ly and they ended up canceling the registration b/c it violated islamic law. They said that the problem was the domain name, though, not the content, and issued me age.ly instead (which I still haven't re-branded)

</comment><comment><USER46> bit.ly is not gonna like that!

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't understand why he is so upset about the rule that three letter domain names are blocked. He should move to Switzerland, here you can't register domain names shorter than 3 letters.

<comment><USER6> You can, actually. Just not in the .ch TLD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> [http://www.oshane.com/wp/2010/10/libya-imposing-sharia- law-o...](http://www.oshane.com/wp/2010/10/libya-imposing-sharia-law-on-ly/)

</comment><comment><USER49> Ask HN: Do you think bit.ly should be worried? Do you think they could feasibly switch to a backup url (like j.mp) without totally killing their service?

<comment><USER17> I don't know if this is common knowledge, but all bit.ly-powered domains are actually mirrors of each other, so <http://bit.ly/bdMwyV> and <http://j.mp/bdMwyV> automatically go to the same place. This would make such a switch technically simple, but obviously you'd still break all the old bit.ly-domain links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> You can shove your URL shorteners <http://ana.ly/>

<comment><USER51> Thanks, reporting that one too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> qoiob.com uses shorter (1 char) and more stylish (symbols) domain names (and also works fine with Tweetdeck and other auto-shortening tools) <http://✰.ws/>

</comment><comment><USER53> What would happen to Twitter if Bit.ly got disrupted?

<comment><USER54>
      REPLACE 'bit.ly' with 'tw.it' WHERE tweet CONTAINS 'bit.ly'

or something like that

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I've reported bit.ly to Libya, hopefully it'll be taken offline soon.

</comment><comment><USER55> HN should register under the .hn domain

</comment><comment><USER56> _In Short:_

This made me chuckle.

</comment><comment><USER57> Slightly offtopic, I know, but the use of "contest" in the post confused me.

For instance-

"Again, while we contest that there was NO pornography or adult material on vb.ly," ...

(It is used in that manner several times)

That statement is essentially saying that they disagree that there was no pornography, or in essence that they agree that there was.

To contest something means to disagree with it.

</comment><comment><USER20> surprise surprise

<comment><USER20> no seriously, what part of Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya you didn't get?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> All the Lybians did now was scare American and other Western entrepreneurs from getting anywhere near their domain. I was about to have my new startup set up with .ly domain, but now I will move to a much friendlier .it domain (in fact, I would stay away from any Muslim country domain, just in case, including .io).

Those who say "oh, we don't own the Internet, how arrogant of us to even think we do..." I want to tell you one thing - yes, you can shove those Sharia countries domains to <http://ana.ly>. We do OWN the internet, because it is us who create the Internet. This Lybian Alshariff, or whatever his name is, thinks that because his government thinks that those domains are valuable THATS a reason good enough to confiscate and block them from our use. Ok, fine, do it, moron. The only problem is – once you do something as stupid as this you scare all the people AWAY from your domains, making them literally worthless. When they will realize it it will be too late – once scared people of business do not come back.

<comment><USER6> What a terribly shortsighted comment.

> We do OWN the internet, because it is us who create the Internet.

That's a pretty serious mis-statement of fact right there. You don't OWN the internet because it was 'you' (whoever that is) that created it.

The internet is a connection of networks, each of those networks could operate by itself, the fact that we've partitioned the address space in a way that allows us to route packets from 'sharia' ruled countries to the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America and all of the EU is to our mutual benefit.

To suggest that you 'can shove those Sharia countries domains...' is to add insult to injury, nobody there asked for American and EU entrepreneurial types to buy these domains and use them, they are primarily intended for use by those countries nations. To muddy the intentions of TLDs is a questionable practice, how would you feel if Wallmart started to sell stuff under a .edu domain?

Those domains are not worthless, they just are what they are, regional TLDs, specifically with the intent to enable each country to govern their own TLD as they see fit.

Please _also_ notice that .us is the regional domain for the United States, and not .com , and that it too has its own set of rules.

<comment><USER59> Any country that opens up its national TLD is in fact explicitly asking outsiders to "buy these domains and use them". Indeed, many national TLDs are marketed mostly to non-nationals. The government of Tuvalu apparently makes 10 percent of its revenue from the .tv domain (and wishes it had a better deal with Verisign so that was even larger). It is surely important to the countries who make this choice to maintain good relations with the "American and EU entrepreneurial types". Otherwise why did they bother?

<comment><USER6> For the most part it is the registrars that enable this, the domain authorities are not actively stopping foreigners from buying these domains but you can't take that as an encouragement from their end. The simple fact that the terms of service are not available in English is quite a hint imo.

And they bothered because they like money, but if the downsides are too much for their sensibilities (with which you are free to disagree, as do I) they can make your life miserable. Just like you're not going to be mooning anybody in downtown Singapore it probably isn't smart to host an adult site on a predominantly Muslim country TLD.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Firefighters watch as home burns to the ground - <AUTHOR> http://www.wpsdlocal6.com/news/local/Firefighters-watch-as-home-burns-to-the-ground-104052668.html

<comment><USER2> > "I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75"

Sympathy suitably tempered. I don't want to see anyone's house burned to the ground... but if it's going to happen to someone, I'd rather it be the guy who was knowingly freeloading than someone who was paying their way.

</comment><comment><USER3> that is screwed up.

<comment><USER4> I'm guessing that if the fire department put out the fire then only people who's houses catch fire will pay. This probably won't generate enough revenue.</comment></comment>


Dunbar's Number - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number <comment><USER2> If you want a more hilarious take on explaining Dunbar's number, I present to you this old article from cracked on "The Monkeysphere": [https://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what- monkeysphere.html](https://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what- monkeysphere.html)</comment>


So You've Been Paged: A Guide to Incident Response - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scalyr.com/2016/09/so-youve-been-paged/ <comment><USER3> > Pager duty is essentially wage theft. I disagree—it's a part of the job; I > dare say it's an important part of the job ... equally important if you are > a developer. You write software and you get paged when it breaks ... how is > that wage theft? I find no feedback more effective.

What I _do_ consider frustrating, however, is when I'm responsible for alarms/incidents that I can take no corrective action; this is how friction grows between teams: dev and ops.

<comment><USER4> On a company level in the market there are Service Level Agreements (with requisite adjustments in price) for this sort of thing. It's clear that the market assigns a value to different response times. Further, if there isn't an value to having an employee on pager duty then the company would not do it. _If_ that value is not reflected when compensating the employee then from an economic perspective, yes, the employee is losing out.

<comment><USER5> > If that value is not reflected when compensating the employee then from an > economic perspective, yes, the employee is losing out.

I agree, but it is worth noting that the compensation might not be monetary: To some people getting more time-off for being on-call might be a better "value" than extra pay. There's many other additional avenues for compensation to consider.

<comment><USER6> Yep.

I am, for all intents and purposes, "on call" 24/7\. I really don't mind, though.

In return, I go to bed when I feel like it, I get up when I feel like it, and I work when I feel like it. I work from home, too. I think it was around 7:00 a.m. this morning when I fell asleep and I woke up just before 3:00 p.m. I can't remember the last time I set an alarm. There's times that I'll go for two weeks without talking to my boss. On a nice, beautiful, summer day, I often say "f--k work" and go for a nice ride on the Harley instead. In the evening, after I get home, then I'll "go to work".

From the company's standpoint (we're an ISP), they're glad to have someone available in the middle of the night that can fix any problems that may arise (a.k.a. SHTF). Certainly, there are times when my boss might prefer that my ass was in a chair in our office every day from 8-5. In that case, though, something that broke at 5:05 p.m. wouldn't get fixed until I came in at 8 a.m. the next day.

It's not perfect and it definitely isn't for everybody but it seems to work out for us and, really, that's all that matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My quick guide to pager duty.

Step 1: Find a new job.

There are way too many opportunities out there to subject yourself to this nonsense. Pager duty is essentially wage theft.

<comment><USER8> I think this is because most companies do pager duty wrong. I highly recommend the google SRE book[0] (notes here[1], chapter 11 covers oncall/pager). One thing mentioned in this book is compensation for being oncall. At Google we get fairly decent pay compensation for holding the pager, enough where it can incentivize people to be on the rotation.

(I'm a software engineer at google who is oncall at this moment)

[0] [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920041528.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920041528.do)

[1] [http://danluu.com/google-sre-book/](http://danluu.com/google-sre-book/)

<comment><USER9> > At Google we get fairly decent pay compensation for holding the pager, > enough where it can incentivize people to be on the rotation.

Google is a big company. I expect them to 1) Have people in all timezone so that there is no night shift 2) Have many people on rotation so each individual is rarely on shift.

That's not comparable to smaller companies.

<comment><USER8> Just some anecdotal about my team at Google. I definitely do night shifts (we do 1 week long rotations), but with a 30-minute SLA on responding to pages. I've had bad nights where my first page happens at 11pm, then they keep going until 4am. The better part is that we are oncall once a quarter or so (12 people on the rotation).

The thing is, there is basically a waiting list to join the rotation. Compensation is nice for those that are motivated by it. But it also exposes you to a lot of the infrastructure that you normally don't deal with (so it's a great way to learn).

We have a higher-up-the-stack SRE team that does 12-hour shifts so it's not as bad for them. They handle the larger scale issues that are beyond job specific issues (ex: datacenter issues).

I can understand this sucking if you are on a small engineering team where you can't do things like this (I've got friends at companies that employ < 10 developers, I've heard the stories). I guess I wasn't thinking about it for smaller eng teams where the number of people available to support the product isn't there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I work remotely on retainer for a company I worked for when I lived back in Oakland. I work 24/7 pager duty effectively. A lot of times I'll be summoned after working 8-10 hours to just look things up for an important client or confirm sales numbers (which always are correct). I work ~9AM-6PM EST hours but folks at the company generally work 12PM-8PM PST so there's really no good way to plan around those sort of support calls.

It wasn't always this way though. The company used to have other developers but they never replaced them when they left. The business unit I work under switched to a maintenance mode effectively where we're just upgrading existing systems for CVEs, supporting the AWS setup, and dealing with important client requests when they rarely come in.

I'd push for more money but there just isn't the budget for it and they've made it clear to me. I even had to fight to stay full time as they wanted me to work less days but be on call still, "we need to figure out the best way to utilize our resources" (paraphrased).

I will say it's detrimental to my health. I wake up most mornings and immediately grab my phone out of fear I missed an alert in the night. That whole bit about utilizing their resources hasn't been sitting well with me though so I'll probably move on after I finish the extra documentation of our systems they're now pushing for.

Just putting a counter point to the people saying, "You signed up for this, you should know what you were doing." It's not always that simple. I have a family now and can't just pick up and change everything at a whim.

I'll also say I get nervous going into movie theaters, etc. where I'll be disconnected for a few hours. It's just not a healthy situation at all.

</comment><comment><USER11> > The good news is this: All issues eventually get resolved (unless you just > give up and quit. Please don't do that.)

Well, that isn't exactly true. The issue might continue based on the way work is scheduled in your project. Its amazing how the business and managers often don't schedule the "stop problem for happening" work when it becomes apparent that the support / devops staff can fix production issues themselves. I've been there and watching the business and your managers reject the time needed to fix the problem during the next iteration / release / sprint is soul killing. It really doesn't bring as much business value as these new features after all.

</comment><comment><USER12> Please increase the contrast!

</comment><comment><USER13> After a few years in management, when it comes to paging there are two groups:

1) People that want to fix their own code. They usually don't have to be told "you have pager duty" \-- they just care. They even become upset if they don't know about the page and will even install their own paging systems without your knowledge.

2) People that can't be bothered. They dont' answer the phone, don't answer slack - instead they just watch a re-run of the mindy project and eat ice cream while your production system is crashing.

Generally people in 1) fix things for 2). Wage theft is really from group 2) - because they steal from 1). Each time I have fixed something for group 2) - <USER2> either fire them personally monday or start an all out campaign to get them fired. Firing is hard. But letting the entire team down just makes it easy. Ironically, if you want less pages just fire more of 2).

<comment><USER14> There is a third group -- which I would place myself in. I feel a strong responsibility to an environment I work in; but I also have a need for a disconnect and work/life balance. I absolutely am not ok with people in group #2, but I think group #1 is similarly unhealthy -- being constantly aware of issues can lead rapidly to burnout.

This is why you have to have an on-call rotation, with an SLA (i.e. all pages are ack'd within ten minutes) with enforcement for people who regularly miss pages, and keep the life-disruption to one or two team members. Obviously, anyone who's worked on a large software product knows you might get an escalation even if not on-call, but that's a hugely different workload than being attached to a pager and having to respond to them.</comment></comment>


Mashable buys blippr - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/03/09/mashable-acquires-blippr/

<comment><USER2> Is this a "real" acquisition or is it some sort of "join our team and I'll pay you" swap? I always wonder about these things...

</comment><comment><USER3> It is a _real_ acquisition.

Sincerely, CEO of blippr</comment>