You don't have to feel guilty for oversleeping - <AUTHOR> http://42floors.com/blog/you-dont-have-to-feel-guilty-for-over-sleeping/ <comment><USER2> People's sleep cycles are just different, even if it's not fashionable to acknowledge that. They differ with the person and they differ with the personal situation at the time. This notion that there is _The One True Sleep Pattern_ and that everybody should adhere to it is not tenable in my opinion. It's a strategy that sells books on how to become "normal", nothing else.

I'm a night person, I viscerally hate mornings, and when I can I "oversleep" until 10 or even 11 in the morning. I go to bed when I'm tired, I usually sleep well and wake up rested in the morning. Sometimes I get tired during the day and when I can I respond to that by napping for a little while. In the absence of outside disruption, this works fine. I feel great and productive. On average I sleep 7-8 hours total, sometimes more, sometimes less. It's still possible to do a standard 7-to-5 workday, but after a while of doing that I simply become less productive and I start hating my day.

I've been told, directly and indirectly through "sleep experts" in the media, that my natural pattern is unhealthy and I _must_ take steps to align myself with the same standardized day that is working so well for everybody else. Waking up feeling like you just got steamrolled, traffic jams, morning grumpiness, and being in the office before the boss arrives. Fuck that.

<comment><USER3> I agree with all of this.

Right now, my normal work day starts with my waking up 5am and I feel like shit most of the day regardless of how long I've been doing it and how disciplined I am about getting to bed.

My natural cycle has me waking up at around 10am and falling asleep at around 2am.

Guess how many days it takes for me to readjust back to my natural cycle when I have some time off and turn off the alarm clock?

 _The next day._ I'll crash early like normal the night before and sleep through an _extra 5 hours_ to wake up almost on the nose at 10am then fall asleep the next night at around 2am.

This happens when traveling overseas too. Within one or two days I'm back on the 2-10 sleep schedule.

And I feel _awesome_ when I'm on that schedule. Even better, I avoid most traffic on those days.

<comment><USER4> Same. I've been working three years at a job I have to be in at 7am for and it has really only gotten worse in terms of how I feel each day. I accidentally slept in a few times the first few months I'd started, and even though it doesn't happen anymore, that doesn't detract from the fact that my body is still not okay with it and all the coffee in the world doesn't change that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I started working at a small startup in January. With the team as small as it is, the working hours are very flexible -- if I make it into the office at 10:00, I'm usually the first one there.

Since I had the luxury, I did something that I want to wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who can: I stopped using an alarm clock.

I'm a "night owl". I tend to have trouble sleeping before midnight, and often stay up later than that. Unfortunately, for most of my life (from school, to university, to a 9-5 job at a "real" company) I've had to wake up earlier than I would otherwise, normally around 7:00 or 7:30. It was always a struggle, and I would usually hit snooze a few times before I actually managed to struggle out of bed. Even if I happened to go to bed early enough to get 8 hours' sleep, I'd have trouble getting up.

It took me about a month at to sleep off my debt. Now I go to bed when I want, and wake up in the morning around 8:00 or 8:30, no alarm needed. I went from 3-4 cups of coffee per day to 1. I'm almost always in a good mood, even first thing in the morning. I used to be convinced that sleeping for 10 hours if I wasn't interrupted was just a fact of my existence; now I wake up after 7 and a half hours, all by myself.

This is not an endorsement for setting your schedule to 10-6. It's an endorsement for not setting your schedule. If you treat yourself right, body will know when it's time to get some work done, no clock needed.

<comment><USER6> > _It took me about a month at to sleep off my debt._

I am pretty sure you didn't "sleep off your debt". Sleep debt is something you easily recover right away, just by sleeping until you wake naturally.

What you did was to shift your circadian phase. The circadian phase is usually measured by the nadir point of the core body temperature rhythm [1] (apparently the better measurement is of the "endogenous melatonin rhythm", but it's easier to talk about core body temperature).

Apparently you can force the nadir point forward, but it's relatively hard to move it backwards. You move it forward by delaying sleep, thus accumulating sleep debt that causes you to get up increasignly later. To move it backwards you have to curtail your sleep, thus accumulating sleep debt which needs to be paid at some point.

About your solution: As a fellow night owl, if I just set my sleep cycle free, at it were, then my wakeup time quickly shifts to around 16-17:00, and I sleep 9-10 hours per night. So while your recipe works for you, it's not for everyone.

[1] [http://www.cmse.ch/pdf/colloque_14_octobre/6_approche%20trou...](http://www.cmse.ch/pdf/colloque_14_octobre/6_approche%20troubles%20circadiens.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Actually, studies from multiple sources prove that sleep debt is a real thing:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03real.html?_r=0>

[http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/26/nyregion/the-high-cost- of-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/26/nyregion/the-high-cost-of-paying- off-a-sleep-debt.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The thing about morning people is you just can't trust them, because a part of them will always believe that night people are lazy; they just can't get over it, no matter how rationally you explain your situation. And you can't trust people like that, because they'll never understand the difference between something they just happen to like or believe and something that is universally Right, Good, and True. To them there's no difference. Every Dystopia was a morning person's idea, I guarantee it.

<comment><USER9> Heh, people look at me sideways for leaving at 430 when I'm in at 7. You might time people can't be trusted because we never know when you've gone home :). (Said in complete jest, of course)

<comment><USER10> Of course the same can be said for morning people, we never know when you arrived !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome."

This is where you lost me. If you're arguing that it's normal, _don't call it a freaking syndrome._ Don't give it an ADHD-like name, don't make it a diagnosis. Say it's nature, say what you mean, stop with the excuses. You are making exactly the opposite of your case.

No reasonable person will listen to the deluge of "treat your Shift Work Disorder with this pill" and "solve your Erectile Disfunction" with this pill and somehow hear "Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome" and not think "yeah... bullshit."

If you want to alter people's idea of normal, don't frame your existence the way people frame diseases and disorders. You are not changing perspectives, you are reinforcing them, and you are making yourself look _even more abnormal._

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems as though this comments section is filled with self-proclaimed "night owls." I'm curious, have any of you read the linked articles about variables that influence people to remain awake later than they should and have these types of erratic sleep patterns / modified circadian rhythms (heavy computer use / blue light exposure)? And, have any of you tested your own reaction to curtailing these late-night activities while introducing natural sunlight stimulant in the morning?

I'm not asking in a derogatory way; I'm genuinely curious since I experimented with this myself and found positive results. My guess is that most haven't, and that it's easier just to accept a "night owl" classification in lieu of hundreds of thousands of years of human dependence on the sun and fire for light. Based on my limited research it seems that those without significant mental illness sleep well with habit and controlled stimuli (including natural light). Has anyone, through any amount of reasonable testing, found this NOT to be true?

<comment><USER13> I have always been a night owl. With or without computers. Even when I spend time camping out doors. I like to stay up, I don't like waking up.

Once as an experiment I began waking up an hour later every day. I went around the clock, felt great, couldn't stop my body from doing it again, had to work hard to avoid it happening a third time.

If days had 25 hours, I'd be all set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The annoying thing when it comes to this kind of sleep problem is that it never gets completely better. Over time I've come up with ways to ensure I actually get up early enough for important events and don't sleep through alarms - not even 'i hit the snooze button' problems but just alarms literally not waking me up - whether it's by making alarms louder, setting 6 alarms spaced out 15 minutes apart (yes, really), or going without sleep if I have to wake up too soon (in practice I found that getting 3-4 hours of sleep consistently is impossible; I always sleep through the alarms).

Even with all that though, nothing really changed. If I go a week or so without setting alarms and just let my body wake up naturally after a night's sleep, I will naturally drift from waking up at say 6am to waking up at 11am. Sometimes I drift backwards, and find myself waking up in the dead of night at 4am and being completely awake. It's extremely valuable to be in a work environment where you can at least mitigate this by going in to work early some days and late others.

I also find that forcing yourself to adhere to a sleep schedule that doesn't feel natural can result in more fatigue, and I wonder if other people have the same experience. I tried doing an 'early' schedule at work a few times, waking up at about 6am and heading in to work early, and always found that I was completely exhausted by 5pm. Moving my waking time forward a few hours almost always alleviated the problem. Maybe it's something you get used to only after doing it for months at a time?

<comment><USER15> _find myself waking up in the dead of night at 4am and being completely awake_

Search for recent threads on sleep referencing "first sleep". Seems the electric light has made us forget most sane humans through most of history would sleep at sunset, then wake a few hours later in a relaxed blissful state, then sleep again. Methinks what you experience (not uncommon) is natural behavior, subverted by not realizing you're supposed to go back to sleep after about an hour of some nocturnal activity.

<comment><USER16> This sounds like 2-phase sleep caused by sleeping too early.

<comment><USER15> Not sure I'd call it "too early" when it was the norm for most of human existence. Sleep at sunset, wake at dawn, enjoy some nocturnal activity mid night. Artificial lighting hasn't been around all that long, yet we have forgotten what natural lighting means for sleep cycles.

<comment><USER16> In Seattle, the amount of time the sun is in the sky varies from 8.5 hours to 16 hours across the year. Do you believe we really need 15 hours of sleep in the winter, but can get by on barely 8 in the summer? I don't think our sleep schedules need to vary THAT much for seasonal disaffectance.

<comment><USER17> > Do you believe we really need 15 hours of sleep in the winter, but can get > by on barely 8 in the summer?

Yes, inasmuch as we "need" sleep at all. There are many species that dramatically shift their sleeping patterns over the course of the year--such as never sleeping during months-long migrations--and come out with no "sleep debt" accrued at all. This lends to a conclusion that the brain really just requests a certain amount of sleep, and is unhappy if it doesn't get it--but it can request less sleep in the first place with no physiological effect.

<comment><USER16> How do you account for people dying when kept awake for too long?

<comment><USER17> I didn't say we don't need sleep. I meant more that putting in some sort of effort that then requires sleep to compensate it is a _decision_ our brain makes (or an adaptation it executes), more like putting debt on a credit card than putting fuel in a gas tank. Build up enough debt and you can go bankrupt (i.e. die), but never build up any debt at all and you'll be fine; you just won't have any of the things you could have that required that extra temporary liquidity/leverage to accomplish.

We could probably figure out a drug that would put us into a state where we don't need to sleep, ever--the resulting state just might not be something very much resembling "sentient human consciousness." It might not allow for memory-formation or System 2 analysis, for example, thus making you go through life only relying on the sort of "thinking" you do while dreaming. Animals that don't sleep, or that sleep very little (e.g. horses, at two hours per day) are also likely "stuck" in this state by design.

The real question is whether we could get anything _productive_ done in this state, and that might be possible--it seems somewhat to resemble "flow."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Melatonin works for me. Unless you have DSPS, I cannot tell you how amazing it is for the alarm to go off at 7:30, once, and to be able to get out of bed. It has changed my life.

I take my girls to school. I check email before 8. At the weekends I can lie in till 10 and its a real lie in, not a normal weekday.

<comment><USER19> +1. Exact same situation here - started taking melatonin on the advice of my doctor, and it completely changed my morning routine (so long as I actually take it and go to bed about 7-8 hours before I wake up - it's not magic, and doesn't let me go to bed at 1am and wake up at 5am, but does let me go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 5am).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You don't have to feel guilty, but you still might get fired.

Jason Freedman answers only to shareholders, not a boss, which is why he can decide whether he feels guilty or not.

<comment><USER21> Not sure where you work, but I negotiate my hours just the same as the rest of my compensation package.

8-9am start time? That'll be an extra $10K-20K/year. Same for dress code, etc.

<comment><USER10> dress code ? do you have a farting and ball scratching package too ?

<comment><USER22> How _you_ feel about it is irrelevant; what matters are the desires of the employer and employee, and what they're willing to trade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wasn't aware I had Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome until I read this. However, this was the main reason I became an entrepreneur. After suffering every morning during high school, I swore to myself that I would never use an alarm clock when I was an adult. I'm happy to say that I've achieved this goal, thanks to DSPS.

</comment><comment><USER24> Many of you may use flux to help with this. I also built an app for late night work sessions that adjusts for warmer light while also reducing the monitor's brightness. For OS X. Here's a few promo codes if interested:

<http://tokn.co/0fgu5wvx> <http://tokn.co/k6r3ggcw> <http://tokn.co/qgqrsvy2> <http://tokn.co/4zmmdt89> <http://tokn.co/3pdx3jtv>

<comment><USER25> Note: they're all redeemed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have this problem too. Are you sure we aren't lazy? I'm fairly sure if I busted my ass (by that I mean a constant work stream all the way through with absolute minimum interruption) 9-5 every day and then did a hard workout I wouldn't have my 'delayed sleep' problem.

Easier said than done, though.

</comment><comment><USER27> Here's an ongoing frustration... I'm currently working on a startup while maintaining a day job, which means LOTS of hours. I'm often (usually) working until I go to bed. Now, I'm at my best productivity code-wise when I first start working in the morning (no, not a morning person). So I'd like to get up earlier and put in a couple of hours on the startup in the morning, before I have to go do the dayjob - give my best couple of hours to MY work rather than someone else's work. Working two hours from 6am-8am would be more productive for me than working two hours from 10pm-12am. But when I'm working late at night, it's really hard to let it go and tell myself to pick it up in the morning. Knowing logically that this is true isn't enough. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER28> My work used to start at 10 and it was hard to be there in the morning meeting by 10AM. I always used to be late.. people are getting changed in our team, so rules. I was asked to come by 9-9:15 and there is new meeting scheduled at 9:30 and I was being constantly mocked for being late.

I came across this <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=359041> and seems this guy is similar to me, but a more severe problem. I am a consultant and not worried about getting a new job when fired and team looks for the work I have done unlike fulltime. But I hate the feeling of subtle mocking for being late by my lead in my current job :(

</comment><comment><USER29> So pleased I saw this. I overslept this morning and felt shit about it. Luckily the startup I work for doesn't care when I come in, but I know it will just mean it will be even later before I feel tired tonight.

I've had identical problems for as long as I can remember. It's been so hard to track down the cause. I think it's partly stress/anxiety, but it also definitely correlates with being alone, on my computer, late at night.

I installed f.lux but I haven't noticed any difference. I'll try some of these other suggestions and see if the combination makes any difference.

</comment><comment><USER30> A couple of times a week, I wake up at 3 or 4a & can't go back to sleep for a couple of hours.

Does anyone else run into this? What approaches did you take to counteract?

<comment><USER31> Yep. I used to call it "waking insomnia" before I learned about segmented sleep. It's likely a remnant of our ancestor's approach to sleep, which was in two parts--first and second sleep.

I'll wake 4-5 hours after first falling asleep with a period of 2-3 hours of wakefulness before I feel sleepy again. Unfortunately I'll begin to feel sleepy again within an hour or about the time I need to wake up for work. Sometimes I can catch an hour or two of sleep, but it's the hardest sleep to wake from and I feel like I'm dragging the rest of the day.

I personally just tough the day out, though sometimes I take a sleep aid (usually one 25mg dose of Benadryl) before going to bed as a preventative.

New York Times about First and Second Sleep: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/rethinking-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/rethinking- sleep.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

Wikpedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 3 years ago I could no longer fall asleep before 5am and it was severely affecting my ability to concentrate, which as a software engineer is a death knell. Like most, I internalize my problems, exacerbating my frustration, worsening sleep, and creating a negative feedback loop.

Today, I sleep like a baby, and it's INCREDIBLY EASY to fix. Follow these steps, and you'll never have difficulty falling asleep again:

1\. Melatonin [1]

Melatonin is how your body knows when it's time to go to sleep. It's produced naturally, but with DSPD (Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder), by definition it occurs later than it should. Taking melatonin an hour before you go to sleep is like a hard reset. I can't overstate this enough. It doesn't matter how much blue light or caffeine you've taken (for the most part) during the day, or how stressed you are, if you take 9mg of melatonin, you'll fall asleep in an hour. Period. Eventually, with some of the below, you can achieve the same affect with 1mg, and once you establish a regular schedule you'll no longer require it at all.

2\. Wake Light [2]

A natural sun alarm clock. If you get enough sleep (easy once the melatonin ensures you fall asleep on time), waking up to one of these is a breeze (and a joy).

3\. Avoid Blue Light

Same thing as the article states, avoid it. Computers, iPhone, etc...

4\. Cold shower [3]

It drops your body temperature and moves your blood away from your prefrontal cortex to your core alleviating your mind from racing.

5\. Earplugs [4,5]

My dogs feat clitter clatter across our hard wood floors. My wife wakes up before me. Our house creeks. etc.... Occasionally I also use an eye cover, but it's less impactful.

6\. Socks & t-shirt [6]

They help regulate body temperature.

7\. Obey Your Sleep Cycles [7]

Our bodies have natural sleep cycles (90m for the first, ~110m for the 2-3rd). When my alarm clock goes off, and I still feel sleepy, I roll over with my eyes facing my wake light and effectively snooze until I feel awake. Eventually the combination of white light and the conclusion of my sleep cycle, leave me feeling awake and alert.

8\. Sleep alarm

In my experience, it's been more important for me to set an alarm at night (9:45) to start getting ready for bed, than to set one in the morning. Having a regular sleep schedule allows you to work _with_ your body instead of against it. If you're having trouble sleeping, or you anticipate having trouble, take melatonin until your body starts to adapt to your new schedule and it's no longer necessary.

9\. Relax

1 hour before your sleep alarm you should be doing something relaxing. It won't matter if when your sleep alarm goes off, you're running around busily doing things. I make sure I'm doing something relaxing like watching TV or reading a book in bed for at least an hour before my sleep alarm goes off.

10\. iPhone Wakeup

One thing that helps wake me up on those difficult mornings is to crank the brightness on my iPhone and sit and read a few articles. The white light naturally tells my body it's time to start the day, and eventually I don't mind waking up.

Life is so much better now that I can count on fantastic sleep every night!

[1] <http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/tc/melatonin-overview>

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Philips-Hf3470-Wake-up-Light- White/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Philips-Hf3470-Wake-up-Light- White/dp/B003XN4RIC/)

[3] <https://www.google.com/search?q=cold+shower+before+sleeping>

[4] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0068HC0X4/ref=oh_details_o...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0068HC0X4/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00)

[5] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000H7MMP2/ref=oh_details_o...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000H7MMP2/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00)

[6] [http://lifehacker.com/wear-socks-to-fall-asleep- easily-47655...](http://lifehacker.com/wear-socks-to-fall-asleep- easily-476550620)

[7] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#cite_ref-17>

<comment><USER33> Thanks. This is one of the occasional comments I find on HN that is so helpful that I put it in my notes so that I can refer to it again in the future.

While the parent article itself is really great and somewhat similar, (a) you have a better explanation of melatonin, and (b) the morning wake-up light you recommend appears (from quickly scanning comments) to be much higher quality than the one the parent article links to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think this is just a matter of training and motivation. I am waking up each morning at 5:30am. I love the silence in the morning and the fact that i can do whatever i want, with no interruptions, at top concentration power.

I could be at work at 7 am if i wanted to, but i am a programmer and most of my colleagues get there between 9 and 12, so 8am is just good.

</comment><comment><USER35> Honor your commitments, yet be true to yourself. Not all of us are 8 to 5 people, and the world would not quite work as well if we all were (Who is going to be monitoring your network while you're asleep?).

My belief is: Be a person of your word; If you commit to being somewhere at a certain time, honor that commitment.

</comment><comment><USER36> False. Guilt is not shame, because it is rooted in fact. The fact of the matter is that if I fail to feel guilty for oversleeping, I will eventually be fired. If I am fired, I will no longer be able to support myself. (You can see where this is going, logically.)

So yes, I _do_ have to feel guilty for oversleeping.

<comment><USER37> Would you still get fired if you honored your commitments? What makes you think you'd be fired at all?

Seems to me like your situation isn't applicable to everyone. I, for one, fit the OP's description to a tee, and I'm pretty sure there are a handful of people I work with who assume I'm lazy etc. In practice it doesn't end up mattering because I still ship and honor my commitments, and I haven't been fired.

I only feel guilty for "oversleeping" if I promised to be somewhere in the morning and I break that promise. Otherwise it's not oversleeping, it's just sleeping.

<comment><USER36> Did you consider that one of my commitments might be "Come into the office on time and spend eight hours at work?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Fuck I wish I had this problem. I have insomnia and I only get 3-4 hours of sleep a day.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't feel a damn bit guilty, especially when it comes to blowing off work.

</comment><comment><USER40> "Be the first to share this on Hacker News"

I'm not sure how this is news worthy- I guess some people feel every entry in their diary of personal accomplishments must grace the pages of Hacker News. I'm glad the author overcame his disorder, but asking people to post it to HN...

I also imagine this will be a great way for a lot more people than the 0.15 to 0.17% of the population that actually has Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder [1] to rationalize their lack of willpower.

1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder#Pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder#Prevalence)

<comment><USER41> > I also imagine this will be a great way for a lot more people than the 0.15 > to 0.17% of the population that actually has Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder to > rationalize their lack of willpower.

Yep. Unless you've been professionally diagnosed, just pointing to a Wikipedia page and saying "I have that!" as an excuse for your behaviour is not the right thing to do. The same thing happened with Asperger Syndrome; it became the excuse du jour for dickish behaviour. "Oh, I'm not anti-social, I have Aspergers." No, actually, you're just a dick.

Using "I have this-or-that disorder" as an excuse (unless you have been professionally diagnosed) is just that: an excuse. It also belittles those who actually do have the disorder, which could be an even worse side effect.

<comment><USER42> What is the difference between a disorder and being a dick? What if I have Assholegers? Is that less acceptable than Autism? Why?

(Aspergers is no longer a disorder, it got rolled into autism.)

<comment><USER43> Autistic people aren't always particularly annoying.

#

Anyway, one's based on a deficit of ability and the other's based on a deficit of will.

Oh, I'll grant that strictly speaking the dick can't really be anything else - free will doesn't exactly show up as a major correlate.

But when you change the social pressure's in the dick's case you get different behaviours out at the other end - whereas when you change the social pressures in the autistic person's case they don't stop being autistic for all you can train some of them to fake it somewhat when they get older.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the Google+ stack? - <AUTHOR>

Is it GWT as with Wave? The back-end for video chat would most probably be Java or C++. And chat backend was already there.<p>What about the rest? <comment><USER2> It is not GWT. It is very similar to the other JS-heavy Google Apps (GMail, Docs, Buzz, etc.) I'm not sure how many details of those are public, so I'll leave it at that.

Edit: Actually, apparently parts of the stack have been open-sourced:

<http://code.google.com/closure/>

<http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/>

<http://code.google.com/p/google-guice/>

<comment><USER3> How do you know?

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure nostrademons works for google...

<comment><USER5> At least for Google Closure they show where it is used:

<http://code.google.com/closure/library/>

Not sure about the other libs...

<comment><USER6> For a list of the Google products that use GWT, there is this recent discussion in the GWT Google Group:

[http://groups.google.com/group/google-web- toolkit/browse_thr...](http://groups.google.com/group/google-web- toolkit/browse_thread/thread/3238e4e72f5141bc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well they seem to have borrowed something from Orkut: …notifiert-hangingget- js.js var bf = "orkutFrame";

</comment><comment><USER7> I assume since no-one has mentioned Google+ in connection with Google App Engine, that is not built on top of it.

Sure Google+ probably shares infrastructure with GAE, but you would think that if Google were really serious about GAE they would use it for their own external products. It sends a mixed message to the market when they tell app developers to use a technology for mission critical apps that they are not using themselves.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would be curious to know how much (and which parts) are Go powered as well.

<comment><USER9> Nothing public-facing. Next?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> See <http://gigaom.com/video/google-hangouts-technology/> for details on Hangouts (video chat).

</comment><comment><USER11> Oh Cmon, we all know it's PHP and MySQL :P

</comment><comment><USER12> Unfortunately, no one can be /told/ what The Google Stack is. You have to see it for yourself.

<comment><USER13> "Look, maybe you just suck at explaining." <http://xkcd.com/566/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would be thoroughly impressed if any of it is supported by Go.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anybody if and how developers can interact with G+? Is OpenSocial going to be included?

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm going to guess that it is largely written in Java and uses google's typical stack of technologies (BigTable, GWT, etc), but I'm not sure if any google engineers have let anyone know yet.</comment>


Ask HN: How to buy stocks at IPO price? - <AUTHOR> Is there a way for an average person to buy stocks at IPO price? <comment><USER2> Loyal3([https://www.loyal3.com/](https://www.loyal3.com/)) periodically gets some shares allocated during an IPO, that the general public can buy via their platform. GoPro and Square are a couple of their notable offerings.

Another option is the pre-IPO market. EquityZen([https://equityzen.com/](https://equityzen.com/)) is one of the secondary market where you can buy shares pre-IPO from other shareholders. (Disclosure: I am an engineer at EquityZen)</comment>


Starbucks picked an odd time to force WiFi customers to cough up personal data - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2018/starbucks-picked-odd-time-force-wifi-customers-cough-personal-data/ <comment><USER2> c'mon who really puts in personal data. literally you can put it gibberish and it it's you through and doesn't ask you again on the same machine. they're giving you free bandwidth - can't fault them for trying to recoup a little of the cost

<comment><USER3> Yeah at a local college I used to work at I was there a month ago and it has guest registration and as long as your number is valid the email is irrelevant. I didn't put my real email I got a bit creative, hoping someone looks at that log and chuckles.</comment></comment>


Keurig Will Be Acquired by JAB-Led Group for $13.9B - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-07/keurig-to-be-bought-by-jab-led-investor-group-for-13-9-billion <comment><USER2> What's interesting to note is that JAB Holdings now owns quite the coffee stable:

\- Caribou

\- Peet's

\- Intelligentsia (via Peet's)

\- Stumptown (via Peet's)

\- Keurig</comment>


Django Security Releases Issued - <AUTHOR> http://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2011/feb/08/security/

<comment><USER2> These guys are not the only ones to make this mistake. Check the first line of Tornado's XSRF check:

        def check_xsrf_cookie(self):
            """Verifies that the '_xsrf' cookie matches the '_xsrf' argument.

            To prevent cross-site request forgery, we set an '_xsrf' cookie
            and include the same '_xsrf' value as an argument with all POST
            requests. If the two do not match, we reject the form submission
            as a potential forgery.

            See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_request_forgery
            """
            if self.request.headers.get("X-Requested-With") == "XMLHttpRequest":
                return
            token = self.get_argument("_xsrf", None)
            if not token:
                raise HTTPError(403, "'_xsrf' argument missing from POST")
            if self.xsrf_token != token:
                raise HTTPError(403, "XSRF cookie does not match POST argument")

<comment><USER3> Tipfy looks to be as well:

[http://code.google.com/p/tipfy/source/browse/tipfyext/wtform...](http://code.google.com/p/tipfy/source/browse/tipfyext/wtforms/form.py#60)

<comment><USER4> A new release fixed this issue. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since this also affected Rails, a minor clarification:

We spoke with Ben Bangert of Pylons/Pyramid, and did some checking of source code there and in other projects, and as far as we knew last week, Django was the only Python framework affected by the CSRF issue. If you find another project which is affected, please notify them ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER6> Cross-posting the recent discussion about the new Ruby on Rails release, which included a fix for the same CSRF issue:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2195283>

</comment><comment><USER7> A bothersome change, especially for all those employing jQuery plugins that don't have a quick method to add the CSRF token to AJAX requests.

I think I might just add @csrf_exempt, as long as we aren't changing vital info via the request...

<comment><USER6> Out of curiosity, why doesn't hooking beforeSend (as suggested in the blog post) work?

<comment><USER7> I haven't had a chance to try it, but if it gracefully handles every jQuery plug-ins' use of the .ajax() method, I don't see why it wouldn't work.

<comment><USER8> This is correct. So long as the plugins themselves are using jQuery's own $.ajax() method (or one of its derivatives that in turn call it), then anything in ajaxSetup will be reflected in those requests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "This is technically backwards-incompatible, but the security risks have been judged to outweigh the compatibility concerns in this case."

Good choice. I wonder when weak password hashing in Django will be given the same exception.

<comment><USER10> As discussed on another thread, shipping bcrypt by default isn't technically feasible yet due to the Python binding for it failing to compile cleanly on Windows: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2177989>

<comment><USER11> Something like PBKDF2 is trivially implementable in pure python with the provided primitives. There's no excuse not to do it.</comment></comment></comment>


Judge puts hammer down on Hurt Locker P2P subpoenas - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/judge-puts-hammer-down-on-hurt-locker-p2p-subpoenas.ars <comment><USER2> > US Copyright Group lawyers never replied to the court, and now they'll never > know the identities of several dozen accused file-sharers with Midcontinent > IP addresses.

Never? Couldn't they just resubmit the correct way? This just delayed the process, right?

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow I just looked at US Copyright Group's website:

www.copyrightsettlement.info

"All Major Credit Cards Accepted". I think that says it all right there.</comment>


A Low Risk Monolith to Microservice Evolution - <AUTHOR> http://blog.christianposta.com/microservices/low-risk-monolith-to-microservice-evolution/ <comment><USER2> What's with the tendency to make one service per entity? Typically "outside" requesters needs joins so they don't have to. Filters (WHERE clauses) are also nice. Otherwise the data user ends up reinventing a perfectly good database, and wasting resources by bringing over more bytes than they need.</comment>


Export Hacker News Thread to an Excel - <AUTHOR> http://www.propeller.in/HackerNews/

<comment><AUTHOR> We created this utility because many startups ask HN community to review their startups and they get lot of excellent responses. I also did the same but after that managing the replied were little pain as I had to manually create an excel sheet for that. Now this will help people like me to get all the replies properly in an excel file which can be manipulated as and when needed. Let me know what HN thinks of this.

<comment><USER2> I think you might as well make it a .csv, since Excel can read those but other products can't necessarily read Excel spreadsheets (Google Docs/OpenOffice/Zoho probably all handle .csv well).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup true. Will add that option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like it. Not sure what I'd use it for, but I'm trying it out to see.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you want data from threads starting from "Ask HN:" you can use this.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The utility is <http://propeller.in/HackerNews>

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm guessing this is to fool the pointy-haired bosses?</comment>


Jake Gyllenhaal Movie 'The Source Code' Markets Itself To Techies - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/12/the-source-code/

<comment><USER2> If they wanted to market to techies then they might want to mention that Duncan Jones also directed Sam Rockwell in "Moon"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_%28film%29></comment>


VIM is the perfect IDE (at least for me) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@allanmacgregor/vim-is-the-perfect-ide-c226d7ed6d88 <comment><USER2> About your 'vimrc'…

* 'set nocompatible' is useless.

* 'syntax on' also does 'filetype on'. Why enable something if you are going to disable it a few lines below? You should move that line to your "Theme and Styling" section.

* Why is 'set nowrap' not in the "Configuration Section"?

* 'set encoding=utf-8' is generally useless on Mac OS X. Your whole config is broken if you need it.

* 'set backspace=indent,eol,start' is not an "OSX stupid backspace fix"; it's needed _everywhere_. And… why is this setting not in the "Configuration Section"?

* 'set ruler' is overridden by your "fancyline" plugin so it's useless.

* 'set t_Co=256' is useless, Vim can determine that on its own.

* 'set background=dark' is also useless; your colorscheme already does that.

* Your whole "Enable omni completion." section is useless; Vim already does all of that.

* 'get(g:, 'elite_mode')' will always return '1' so you should simply keep your four mappings and scrap all that unnecessary configuration.

* 'mapleader' and 'maplocalleader' are not set anywhere, not sure what's the point of a '<localeader>' mapping.

* Your PHP and Elixir autocommands should be in dedicated groups or, ideally, in proper ftplugins.

About your writeup…

* Vim's built-in file explorer already does everything NERDTree does so why did you decide to add a second file explorer? Maybe you should explain that to your readers, don't you think?

* Vim doesn't do autocompletion to begin with so any kind of autocompletion is like steroids.

* Like with NERDTree, why Syntastic instead of the built-in ':help :make'?

* Vim is not your IDE; it's the editor of your IDE.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

> Vim's built-in file explorer already does everything NERDTree does so why > did you decide to add a second file explorer? Maybe you should explain that > to your readers, don't you think?

Chalk this one to personal preference but I really like NerdTree and find it easier to use.

> Vim doesn't do autocompletion to begin with so any kind of autocompletion is > like steroids.

I was making reference to Omnicomplete

> Like with NERDTree, why Syntastic instead of the built-in ':help :make'?

Syntastic, again comes down to usability I love having the inline display of errors, have the syntax checks on file save and have the ability on languages like elixir to run 3 different tools automatically.

> Vim is not your IDE; it's the editor of your IDE.

Fair enough, but it doesn't make for a great title doesn't it ;P

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Emacs not even mentioned as an alternative tried?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I missed it from the list, I have more than a couple of times; latest try was spacemacs when I was starting into Elixir.

It has never clicked for me</comment></comment>


How to Easily Install Kubernetes on AWS - <AUTHOR> https://blog.baasil.io/how-to-install-kubernetes-on-aws-d9fbbc04e816 <comment><USER2> Kubeadm makes it super easy too. The k8s team has made awesome progress recently in regards to cluster turnup</comment>


My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2013/12/10/sisters-quilter-google-mugged/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sisters-quilter-google-mugged <comment><USER2> _Eric Schmidt said he was sorry but he couldn't help.

Now I'm angry._

Wow. I think I respect Google _more_ now. I don't like the "take it to the people" approach needed to get action out of Google, but I like "I know people who know people" approach even less. The chairman of the company should not be dicking about with search results because a friend asked.

<comment><USER3> Except he could have given some helpful hint...

<comment><USER4> In reality, he couldn't. There are likely several million sites that are wondering about their Google page ranking as well. Figure several thousand of them know someone who knows someone who knows Eric Schmidt. From a practical standpoint, how many hours are in the day and how many do you think he should devote to such activities? From a fairness perspective, is it fair that you give inside Google information to someone because they're an acquaintance of an acquaintance?

 _Eric Schmidt said he was sorry but he couldn't help. Now I'm angry._

This line strikes me as very similar to the person who makes a scene in a restaurant when they can't get a table right away. "Don't you know who I am?! My sister has the former #1 Photo Quilting business online!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And apparently Mr Cringely doesn't know anything about Webmaster Tools, which would probably be the first stop of anyone wanting to know about a sudden change in rank.

Sudden changes are usually the function of 'action' rather than 'inaction' so I'm guessing that somewhere there was an action. Did she succumb to some black hat SEO marketing pitch? Did Cringely piss off some black hat SEO person? Did her site get compromised and have malware installed? Did she not actually update the content for the last 5 years (including Copyright notice) so it doesn't appear to be a dead site.

The 'OMG I don't show up in results' is a good starting point but hardly the ending point of these stories.

<comment><USER6> You're talking out of your ass and it's really infuriating to hear people disregard real, tangible problems you are facing.

Google makes software, and no software is perfect. I've been bitten by shitty google services before. My most recent sting was Google Webmaster Tools not showing any Googlebot crawls to me website. My website is very niche and literally 1 of 4 competitors in the same arena.

5 month. 5 MONTHS. and google has yet to crawl my website, even though google analytics shows me stats day in day out.

Why? Google breaks sometimes, and it's incredibly crappy that you can't even reach out to someone to ask what's up.

<comment><USER7> I'd contend you're the one talking out of their ass.

Relying on another company for all your business isn't a sound business strategy. The person in the article put all their eggs in one basket and this is the result.

<comment><USER8> This is trivializing to the point of absurdity. When it comes to doing business on the Internet in the English-speaking world, Google _is_ the basket. It's the only basket. I wish it weren't, but it is.

And so, yes, pretty much everyone is reliant on them to be good stewards of the power they possess. (Whether they are or not is orthogonal to that the quilter in question has a pretty good reason to feel like they aren't.)

<comment><USER9> I really can't agree with that. We've built businesses in the pre-Google days when search engines were a hit or miss affair.

<comment><USER8> Except that now everyone _goes_ to Google. It's not just a search engine, it's literally the starting point for the overwhelming majority of web traffic.

If Google is against you, you're done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I see a lot of these articles; someone feeling cheated because Google takes them off some or all search results. Google did not "mug" anyone - it is the reason for your traffic to begin with. The fact that you even ever had discoverability among a billion or so websites is a beautiful thing. Additionally, have some perspective, the search is a free tool that is very tough to get right. This might sound harsh, but I believe the effort in complaining could be better allocated into promoting the authors' sister's business. To emphasize, Google search is a FREE tool - use it to get business but don't make it your bread and butter because it is optimized for users, advertisers - not the content creators. To accept this is not optional, it is simply reality.

<comment><USER11> In one sense you are correct that Google is "free" because one does not pay cash directly to Google to be listed in its results or to preform a search.

But in another sense, Google is not free at all. The fact is, Google lives and thrives off of the data generated by the public. Yes, Google employees smart people. But its real value is derived from the underlying public data that Google gets- for free.

Google search works because the world allows Google's bots to traverse their websites freely and index their content. Google translate works because the EU and other governments translated their documents into many languages and then gave them away to the world. Google Maps works because of GIS information gathered on the public's dime. Gmail is able to operate because users allow it to mine their personal messages to better tailor advertisements.

Google is built on top of and depends on the public- both to be its customers and to be the source of its products. It has taken the market in search, email, browser, and mobile. And, for the most part, it has created some great tools for people to use. But there is a minority of people whose lives are affected by Google for the worse. Its important not to marginalize these people.

This is a non-democratically elected institution whose policies and actions have more effect on people's lives than the governments of many nations. Those policies and actions ought to be looked upon critically by the people.

<comment><USER12> Google does not get its data for free - what do you think the 50,000 people employed there are doing? The vast number of servers, the ridiculous power bill, the research efforts - all these are so they can not only gather the same data that any of us can also gather with a simple bash script, but also present it in such a way that is significantly "better" than the competition that some people are actually willing to pay them money.

<comment><USER11> The vast majority of Google employees are not downloading public data or working on Googlebot. They are working on either converting public data into better advertising algorithms or creating a product that will capture peoples' attention.

Yes, it is true that Google pays a lot for infrastructure to download the data. But it is a drop in the well compared to the price of actually generating the data. Otherwise they would just do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Spent a few minutes looking at the site. Looks to me like it was hit by Google's Penguin 2.0 update [1] that targeted sites that had low quality links pointing in to their domain (in particular inner pages).

Probably not the sisters fault, but the site has done a lot of reciprocal linking in the past which Google really frowns upon nowadays. There's prominent page on her site featuring some of those links: [http://www.portraitquilts.com/info/links](http://www.portraitquilts.com/info/links)

She also has some links from pages that are selling or exchange links to spam/escort sites:

[http://www.iwr.com/gifts/crafts.html](http://www.iwr.com/gifts/crafts.html) [http://www.livebusinessradio.com/trade/recip.cgi](http://www.livebusinessradio.com/trade/recip.cgi)

Again, probably not her fault. Google is doing their job but with so much misinformation about SEO and link building out there it is easy for people to accidentally get themselves in trouble.

If anybody is curious, I used ahrefs to pull in the backlinks to the site: [https://ahrefs.com/site- explorer/refdomains/subdomains/www.p...](https://ahrefs.com/site- explorer/refdomains/subdomains/www.portraitquilts.com)

There are some other examples of link spam in there. Penguin would be my guess after a quick check.

[1][http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2279845/Googles- Penguin...](http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2279845/Googles- Penguin-2.0-Algorithm-The-Definitive-Guide)

<comment><USER14> Another site that was intended to raise her page rank, but in the end got her site blacklisted:

[http://www.linkstrategy.com/links/home-furniture- specialty-u...](http://www.linkstrategy.com/links/home-furniture-specialty- unique.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For the curious:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=portrait+quilts](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=portrait+quilts) [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=photo+quilts](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=photo+quilts)

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=portrait+quilts](http://www.bing.com/search?q=portrait+quilts) [http://www.bing.com/search?q=photo+quilts](http://www.bing.com/search?q=photo+quilts)

[http://www.yandex.com/yandsearch?text=portrait+quilts](http://www.yandex.com/yandsearch?text=portrait+quilts) [http://www.yandex.com/yandsearch?text=photo+quilts](http://www.yandex.com/yandsearch?text=photo+quilts)

[http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=portrait+quilts](http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=portrait+quilts) [http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=photo+quilts](http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=photo+quilts)

[http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=portrait+quilts](http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=portrait+quilts) [http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=photo+quilts](http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=photo+quilts)

<comment><USER16> Too many, didn't click: (the result order for me; yours may vary)

        DDG:    1 2
        Bing:   1 2 (but ads before)
        Yandex: 1 3
        Baidu:  1 2
        Yahoo:  1 2 (but so much ads/images/cruft before)
        Blekko: 3 x

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Eric Schmidt said he was sorry but he couldn't help.

This is a good thing. It's incredibly frustrating that Google has no way for people to get help with the search engine. Allowing the few people who happen to know someone who knows someone to get help doesn't make Google any less frustrating in this situation - although it does help that one person.

It would be interesting to learn why the site got delisted (if it did). Often someone complains vociferously, then a Googler points out all the weird SEO links that exist for that domain, and a bunch of odd things happening on the site.

</comment><comment><USER18> Has this sister _ever_ engaged in any dubious SEO practices, such as hiring "backlink providers" on fiverr, spamming her link on unrelated websites, or too much prolific use of using the anchor text of "portrait quilt"? Any of those will signal to Google that they are unnatural links and as a result, the site can be penalized and show up less in results, sometimes being removed altogether.

I apologize if this comment is too obvious -- I have worked as an SEO consultant for a while. The first thing she should do is check her Google Webmaster Tools, as this is where she will receive any unnatural link warnings. If it is there, she can start taking steps to remedy the situation by undoing any of the questionable SEO tactics she may have used, and request reconsideration from Google.

<comment><USER19> This is pretty interesting. So I can theoretically bring down a competitor's rank by creating spammy websites and providing unnatural backlinks ? Even if the competitors figure it out from the webmaster tools, they will have no way to remove the backlinks. Right ?

<comment><USER20> Backlinks can be disavowed via Webmaster Tools.

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487)

Related:

[http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2309486/Matt-Cutts- Use-...](http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2309486/Matt-Cutts-Use-the-Link- Disavow-Tool-Even-if-Your-Site-Hasnt-Been-Penalized)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Eric Schmidt said he was sorry but he couldn't help.

> Now I'm angry.

I would be more angry if Eric Schmid had helped. Because not everyone whose website gets de-indexed knows someone who knows a buddy of Eric Schmidt.

So at least it stays equally shit for everyone and there's no two-tier society of website owners divided by Silicon Valley real life contacts.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is more of a story about the danger of relying on search ranking than it is about Google abusing anyone.

Presumably Cringely knows this, but he also knows that carping loudly about it will increase portraitquilts.com's Google rankings.

Unfortunately, this is a zero-sum game. If portraitquilts.com deserves to win, then that's also saying that the other businesses, how-to sites, Pinterest boards, and so on deserve to lose. Is that obviously true?

</comment><comment><USER23> I think it is quite terrifying, that one company can singlehandedly shut down business, even if you have never used a Google service in your entire life; because all your customers only discover you through Google. And what is to be done about it? you aren't a Google customer in the direct sense, so they feel no obligation to assist, and it seems as if even actual customers get negligible support. The only way out of this seems to be either Google collapsing, or a MS-esque antitrust/monopoly court.

<comment><USER24> Let's say I own a single store and it happens to be in a space in a mall. Also, the mall is letting me do business there for free. I get exposure, electricity, easy access, all kinds of good stuff, for free. (The mall is Google)

Suddenly the mall wants to _extort_ me by charging me money to use their space, electricity, water, etc. Those jerks!

<comment><USER23> Completely missing the problem.

The problem i'm talking about is more in the case of some company distributing a large phonebook for the city, which includes all stores and people, information they gathered by downloading public city records.

So people start using this phonebook all the time, and for most citizens, it's the only way they can find your business.

But on day the phonebook company, decides for an uknown reason to delist a business.

When the store then contacts the phone company, they are reached with a voicemail, every time they try to contact. The store knows some friends who know the owner of the phonebook company, but the guy they know refuse to comment on it.

What the hell is the store supposed to do? The entire city is so hooked on the phonebook company, because they give them free phone lines, and all sorts of seemingly free stuff, which is really just feeding drugs to the addict.

How does this not stink far away of antitrust? The phonebook is actively working to keep its users with free stuff, so that they keep using them, and enables them to extort the phone store to have to pay the phonebook company for getting them listed again.

<comment><USER25> That's not accurate at all. The phonebook doesn't provide any useful ranking - it's an alphabetical sort usually. It's closer to a factual database than anything. Google could solve all criticism of its results simply by returning all URLs in alphabetical order -- but they'd lose all their users, too.

The situation is much more akin to a hotline to call up and ask what a good place is for Q. And usually the hotline refers people to your business for Q, but now they don't. And since the hotline is part of a massive organization and answers are generated by a massive, complicated, AI, it's hard to find out why the hotline decided to not refer people to your business anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Dude, that site is riddled with out-dated and now black-hat seo tricks. It was just asking to be blacklisted.

Get that cheater off my SERPs, I wanna go with the honest portrait quilt providers.

<comment><USER27> any examples?

<comment><USER28> First off I know nothing about SEO as will likely be apparent from my comment, that said.

As someone who knows nothing about SEO it looks to me like it could of triggered duplicate content detection portion of a google algorithm.

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en)

Looking briefly at the source she has the entirety of the following in the title of every page other than the main page I looked at _Portrait Quilts - Memory Photo Quilts with up to 96 Photos! Personalized Memory Quilts, Picture Quilts and Photo Blankets

info - Portrait Quilts - Memory Photo Quilts with up to 96 Photos! Personalized Memory Quilts, Picture Quilts and Photo Blankets_

and half of it in the title of the main page

It seems like some maintenance could be order for the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Really, "mugged"? Google walked up to her on the street and threatened her with a weapon?

<comment><USER30> The sad part is that I was expecting that maybe there was a snafu with Google's NFC payments, or the Wallet, or maybe Google Shopping algorithm or something.

Google used to give her a bunch of web traffic, arguably for free, and now they apparently have stopped, possibly with good reason, possibly without. And that is somehow stealing?

I'm sympathetic to the plight of having lost revenue, but that revenue was never guaranteed, nor was it owed, nor should she have allowed Google to be her sole source of traffic.

<comment><USER31> "Allowed Google to have been her sole source of traffic?"

It's one of the realities of the world we live in that Google - if you're popular on it at all - will likely dwarf any other traffic you're pulling in, despite any other efforts you may make.

Further, it's important to note that effort spent on optimizing your Google ranking is usually an order of magnitude more effective than time spent optimizing for any other search engine. For people with very limited time outside of their primary activity, you've got to prioritize.

(That said, the rest of your comment was spot-on. I just felt the last part of the last sentence didn't really reflect a few key realities, is all.)

<comment><USER30> Compared to free traffic, I'd agree. What I was trying to say was that, if traffic is so important to one's business, one should try securing it... but even that isn't really valid since, why would you spend money on something that you're getting so much of already, but for free, especially in a business that doesn't scale.

Either way, Google's organic traffic results are probably replaceable through purchased clicks, and I'm guessing the proprietor appreciates the value of it more than what they otherwise might have, so who knows? Maybe all the free traffic is just Google's upsell.

"You remember all that traffic you __used to get __? You can have it all again, for just $149 a month. "

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Reminds me a bit of the recent article on the rise and fall of the content farm Demand Media: [http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/epic-fail-the-rise-and- fall...](http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/epic-fail-the-rise-and-fall-of- demand-media-1200914646/) (worth a read).

Someone was recently telling me that "diversity of traffic sources" is a key metric they use to evaluate digital media properties. There's a real risk in basing your whole business on organic Google traffic.

</comment><comment><USER33> Sorry for the author's sister, but it's kinda reassuring to know that even Google's CEO won't tamper with the results algorithm. Which might or might not be fair, but still...

</comment><comment><USER34> It's the unfortunate reality, I honestly feel like Google's algorithm has gotten really arbitrary lately (just had a huge drop off of almost all traffic for a month which was completely unexplained, only to come right back a few weeks later). The fact that they hide keywords now will make it seem all the more arbitrary.

The real world comparison is not a mugging, it's as if your small business was on Main St one day, and the next there are literally no roads to get to you.

</comment><comment><USER35> Comes up first for me - [https://www.google.com/#q=portrait+quilts](https://www.google.com/#q=portrait+quilts)

Edit: HA! Sorry, it's an ad! I thought it was the first organic result but it was actually the second ad!

I can barely perceive that shade of yellow indicating that it's an ad. Took two or three takes.

<comment><USER16> It's an ad for me. Of course, Google's been doing all it can to make ads look like organic results. Looks like she bought into the protection racket.

<comment><USER36> Maybe you're being funny, but it's scary to think that google has a quiet policy of letting businesses develop revenues through organic search and then intentionally changing the algos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If this site used to rank well for things like "photo pillows", it's not because it was the best site to show users, but rather, it was because the site was being propped up by self made backlinks. Here are some of the links that are all anchored with the word "photo pillows":

[http://www.bobmarketing.com/links/page_Business_Marketing_17...](http://www.bobmarketing.com/links/page_Business_Marketing_17.html)

[http://stardir.info/stardir/subcategory.asp?IDsubcate=494&of...](http://stardir.info/stardir/subcategory.asp?IDsubcate=494&offset=15)

[http://www.cyberpathway.com/cgi- bin/recip/internet/recip.cgi](http://www.cyberpathway.com/cgi- bin/recip/internet/recip.cgi)

The majority of the backlink profile is made up of self made low quality directory links.

It's possible that the Penguin algorithm has realized this and as a result is not trusting links to the site. But, it's also possible that Google has just gotten better at not counting this type of link when it comes to ranking. It's also possible that the site is under a manual penalty (which would be evident by looking at the Webmaster Tools manual spam action tool.)

When I look at the site's keyword positions on semrush.com, it appears that the rankings started a gradual decline as of May 2013. There was a Penguin refresh on May 23, so this is certainly a possibility. If the site is affected by Penguin, then in order to make the algorithm trust the site again, she's going to have to disavow each of the links that are self made. If there are good, truly natural links in the profile then she stands a chance of ranking well again. But, the likelihood is that the site won't get back to the previous rankings by just clearing up the backlinks because those rankings were not deserved in the first place.

It's not Google's fault that this site is not ranking well now. But, one could argue that it was Google's heavy reliance on links and on a system that could be scammed that allowed this site to reign for the time that it did.

</comment><comment><USER38> Maintaining rank and attracting organic traffic from Google requires constant, continuous work, and there are plenty of ways to shoot yourself in the foot. We all compete for this traffic; getting angry at Google and writing a pissed- off blog post won't change her ranking - stepping up to the plate and competing for the traffic using white-hat SEO, semantic markup, webmaster tools, syndication through social media, etc. is the only way forward. SEO has changed - adapt or die.

</comment><comment><USER39> Let's make people rank, so they could build businesses from traffic we drive, and then cut the traffic. That would be a good business plan for Adwords, no?

Now, seriously, I don't think this is Google plan. I think Google just got many billions websites and pages to rank. Google aim is not to be fair for every website, but instead to give the best results.

Given a huge number of websites (and people running them), these occurrences would obviously happen.

<comment> grey-area Yes, there is a serious conflict of interest at the heart of Google's business - they are in the business of selling links to advertisers, and of curating links for readers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is what I see on Google: [https://i.cloudup.com/7ymLpPBmma-3000x3000.png](https://i.cloudup.com/7ymLpPBmma-3000x3000.png)

The first organic results don't even show up with the size of my window.

The whole situation these days on the SERP for any purchasable item is pretty sad. Luckily, I don't use Google that much when pricing or shopping. Results for data are much more helpful and useful for me.

<comment><USER27> And the shading is so much more hidden now. I had to tilt my screen properly to even see that it was ads.

<comment><USER41> I found out that this varies quite a bit based on your monitor. For example, on my newer Thinkpad, the yellow background really stands out. But on my desktop monitor (a 5 - 6 year old Samsung), it isn't noticeable at all, even with tilting the monitor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've had this sort of thing happen myself, client's who's websites lose out on <company name> to some spammy site for no obvious reason. People seem to assume that google operates as some sort of public service which provides free services to website owners.

Now I just tell people to factor adwords spend into the development costs for a site.

</comment><comment><USER43> Most misleading title of the day!

</comment><comment><USER44> Google just plain hates exact match now in my experience. You have to build up solid reputation to get out of the exact match sort of penalty. I think they think exact match is generally spammy and elevates the spam filter. Some other factors in an algo update probably got more weight that the site was affected by and pushed the site over the edge. I tend not to change anything right away when this happens. Wait a bit and see if it corrects. Then make small iterative SEO changes and throw some youtube videos on your site that you produced. Another good strategy, and I've seen a bunch, is to change the domain name. Only do that in last resort. Watch how often googlebot accesses your site and try to increase frequency too.

</comment><comment><USER45> Just don't trust your business to a "site". If it is your business, then your "site" should include a blog that should have regular articles about all sorts of related things, including about other related sites who hopefully have their own blogs and will write about your site. There needs to be a buzz of activity around your business or people will stop coming in the door.

Dirty windows? Spider webs in the doorframe? Trash on the sidewalk? Paint fading? Lightbulb burned out? Sign peeling? These are signs that the business is dying and the passersby will gladly help you out by not shopping there and by telling their friends to avoid the place.

Life is like that in the real world; why should the Internet be any different?

</comment><comment><USER7> Mr. Cringely might start helping his sister by removing the completely unrelated link to his sister's site from his own, or at least mark it "nofollow".

It's really interesting reading the rantings of the grossly misinformed, especially when they are able to dismiss the entire industry of search engine optimization as "bullshit". I bet if the tone of his article was different, he would have dozens of SEOs willing to diagnose the problem and giving tips on how to fix the issues. Oh well, maybe he should get in tighter with Eric Schmidt, so he can personally take a look at the writer's wife's photo pillow website.

The entitlement is so rich.

</comment><comment><USER46> Since work's got me locked into IE/Bing, I might as well point out that Ms. Cringely's site is #2 on Bing (#6 if you count the 4 ads on what looks like a 15% blue-gray background that come before #1).

</comment><comment><USER47> If you're going to write an article criticizing how Google lowered your spot in the SERP, then at least try to make a substantive argument for why it deserves to be higher. Otherwise it's just whining.

</comment><comment><USER48> "This is how she makes her living, selling on the web and through photo stores."

"She founded PC Data, the largest PC market research firm, now part of the NPD Group."

She founded the largest PC market research firm and now she has to make a living making quilts? How did that happen? Wouldn't the bigger story be how she lost all her money (which I'm assuming) running a PC market research firm?

<comment><USER49> She has to make her living != She makes her living. Maybe she just likes making photo quilts and found a niche market that allowed for a sustainable business that was now ruined. Isn't that what we'd all like to do: Earn enough money so that we can work in a job we like, even if that doesn't pay as much as we'd need to live?

<comment><USER48> Yes, but again, this would have made a interesting story. It's just confusing and strange to note such a thing and then not elaborate at least a bit on it. Also, someone who can found such a firm usually understands how not to "get mugged" by a changing search engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> She has very few links and the ones she did have that were propping her up are dying out. She needs to work on the site more and reach out to other people more.

</comment><comment><USER51> If I were running a business providing free advertising for such companies, I'd wait until a company relied on me and then make them pay for it. Given that google is a business, doesn't seem that odd that this happens. In fact, seems surprising if it doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER52> The problem is your sister is in direct competition with Google. Searching Portrait Quilts brings up your sisters site then a large box that says "Shop for portrait quilts on Google"

Google is a competitive enterprise. They have to report to stock holders every quarter that income is more then the previous quarter.</comment>


What bitcoin needs: A walled garden - <AUTHOR> http://classfy.com

<comment><AUTHOR> An outline of the plan [http://classfy.tumblr.com/post/20711443868/outline- for-class...](http://classfy.tumblr.com/post/20711443868/outline-for-classfys- bitcoin-integration)

<comment><USER2> You should've submitted that instead...</comment></comment>


Terry Gross and the Art of Opening Up (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/magazine/terry-gross-and-the-art-of-opening-up.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> If you haven't listened to her interview by Marc Maron on Wtfpod, you really should. I always love hearing master interviewers being competently interviewed, themselves. She goes from monolith to human being over the course of about an hour. Very fun listening.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always loved Terry Gross. Her interview with Gene Simmons is pretty funny by the way. It was a bit of a train wreck.

</comment><comment><USER4> _real moment. Leave it in_</comment>


The Worlds Very First Webserver - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.org/2008/09/16/the-worlds-very-first-webserver/ They (Herb Brody) say that telling the future by looking at the past assumes that conditions remain constant. This is like driving a car by looking in the rearview mirror. But I still think it is good to look back on how things got started and where they ended up since then. The first website was put online in August 1991. Just think about how much has happened since then and try to imagine how much we can expect from the following 17 years… <comment><USER2> From the page: "They (Herb Brody) say that telling the future by looking at the past assumes that conditions remain constant. This is like driving a car by looking in the rearview mirror. But I still think it is good to look back on how things got started and where they ended up since then. The first website was put online in August 1991. Just think about how much has happened since then and try to imagine how much we can expect from the next 17 years…"

Nice...</comment>


The Injustice of Young People's Pay - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dialogue-and-discourse/the-injustice-of-young-peoples-pay-378dd66988de <comment><USER2> According to this blog entry ([https://minimumwage.blog.gov.uk/2016/09/30/new- minimum-wage-...](https://minimumwage.blog.gov.uk/2016/09/30/new-minimum-wage- rates-for-under-25s-why-are-they-different/)), the lower minimum wage is for youths is to prevent youth unemployment. This was based on some data the government has (not specified in the blog) that indicates that that younger workers were being passed over in favor of older workers. That implies that youth workers are less valuable (or perceived as less valuable) and thus not worth paying a greater wage.

As an American, I find this pretty strange as most minimum wage jobs are low skill. Since the skill threshold is low, there's not much to be gained by experience, so an older worker isn't much more valuable. I'd expect this lower minimum wage to tilt the market in favor of hiring youths since you get roughly the same work for less. I'm curious to see what the governement's data actually is that justifies the lower youth minimum wage.</comment>


How to edit, build and install iOS Apps without being near a Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.escortmissions.com/blog/2011/5/18/how-can-you-edit-build-and-install-iphone-and-ipad-apps-with.html <comment><USER2> Oh, they literally mean without being in close proximity to a mac. I'm so used to non-literal blog titles I thought they meant "without being near" to mean you didn't need a mac.</comment>


So very sad to hear about the passing of Ruby legend Jim Weirich - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dhh/status/436410949919313920 <comment><USER2> Jim was an amazing guy, and I wish I had spent more time talking with him.

There was a time several years ago when the Ruby community was very vibrant and energetic, and in all that energy, just a little hostile to newcomers. There was a lot of hype about the best new testing methods with RSpec and this new thing called Cucumber, 100% paired programming all the time, 100% TDD, and 110% test coverage, fat-model, skinny-controller, decorators and service-based architectures, and on and on. These were all good things on the path to quality software as a community goal, but to a newcomer, it was overwhelming. It was the fanatical attitude and the all-too-common phrase, "you're doing it wrong."

I had already been doing Ruby for a couple years when all of this hype came to a peak. I remember pushing back over dinner table discussions with various speakers at conferences that this attitude was hurting the community. It was erecting a barrier to beginners. We were telling people they couldn't just build something that did something. They had to do it this way, using all these tools and methodologies. Unless you know and fully understand the purpose and constraints and context for what someone is building, how can you tell them they're doing it wrong? Where was the support for learning progressively? What happened to the joy of just building something? After all, this is where Ruby, as a language, shines!

I bring all this up, because I met Jim at one of the first Ruby conferences I had ever gone to around this time. Though I had been doing Ruby for a couple years, I was relatively new to the conference-going community, and so not part of the "in-crowd". I remember the highlight of that conference for me was talking with Jim.

He seemed not to care for the existence of any sort of clique while simultaneously being its unknowing leader. He was very approachable and friendly. But more importantly, he was a great listener and thinker. I remember talking with him about my views on TDD and pair-programming (at the time, the view that "it depends" was controversial), and how the hype was hurting the community. He was one of the few who gave it considerable thought, and after discussing it, even encouraged me to give a talk. As someone new to the conference and public developer community, and outside the speaker in- crowd, this was very encouraging.

I had been asking what happened to the joy of just building something in the community at that time, but I can honestly say, Jim never lost it.

Jim, you'll be missed.

<comment><USER3> I think once you started programming in "Ruby", you've given up your right to talk about how to program in the right way. Just saying.

<comment><USER4> I've seen a lot of snide, dickhead comments on HN, but dropping one like that on a memorial thread for someone like Jim Weirich takes the cake.

<comment><USER3> He's dead. Nothing I can say here will affect him in the slightest.

<comment><USER5> No, it won't affect him. But his family will be reading these later and it will affect them.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. Like the family of a programmer reads HN.

<comment><USER5> As a matter of fact they do. I'm very close with his family, and when I spoke with them yesterday they were looking forward to reading the many threads and posts about him on this and other websites. I can only hope they'll be strong enough to ignore the cruel remarks made by heartless people like you.

<comment><USER6> I don't know his family, but with Jim as their relative, I would pray they are wise enough to ignore a troll. Jim was a wonderful man and this little person doesn't matter, neither do his opinions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That is really sad news.

Jim Weirich was a real gem. Friendly, approachable and chatty, he didn't have that aloofness so unfortunately common to some "personalities" in the ruby commmunity. In the last couple of years he had been interested in controlling drones with ruby, regularly posting articles on the Neo blog and speaking about it at conferences. It was my great pleasure to spend an hour or so with him in Singapore last year just chatting about drones, his _argus_ control library, and applications present and future - he was a genuinely interested, interesting, friendly man with a fantastic, giving spirit.

He was one of the founding fathers of what I like to think of as the "real" ruby community and will be sorely missed.

</comment><comment><USER8> As the author of Capistrano, we leant on Rake a great deal in the new version, Jim was amazing in helping us through some of the weirder parts of the integration, and always happy to discuss the pros and cons of our planned approaches. I hope that the community can select someone to replace him. He's done great work for the community.

<comment><USER9> Good old SwitchTower. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Jim was a silent star of the Ruby community. Some newer Rubyists might not see how important his work on Rake was on Rubys road from a toy language to a serious development environment. Also, Rake was (to my knowledge) one of the first libraries that aggressively leaned on Rubys block syntax for writing DSLs.

On top of that, he was well known for his talks and ability to explain things.

A recommended read: an early statement on Ruby on the C2 Wiki (scroll down to "User stories")

[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RubyLanguage](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RubyLanguage)

</comment><comment><USER11> Just realised how often when working on some code I will try to contact the original author based on git blame... but in the future, a lot of those people won't be around anymore. I think we usually take for granted that people working on the same project will be here - but in a couple of years "anyone who worked on this module still alive?" may be depressingly more common. Not even from the development perspective, but working on the same thing as someone who's not alive anymore. Apart from long-term or famous construction projects, I can't think of many non-art places where the author is preserved in the history so permanently as in a source version control.

<comment><USER12> Not to detract from the work that this man (or anyone else) has done, but it's very rare for code to survive for very long without an active maintainer before it succumbs to code rot.

Either someone else steps up to the plate and actively maintains the software, or something else will replace it. Source control makes it easier to revisit the past, but it doesn't ensure that the past will continue to stay current.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FITJMJjASUs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FITJMJjASUs)

This talk is a must-see, really shows off Jim Weirich's craft and overall ability to be a great pedagogue.

<comment><USER14> Yes it is! This talk is absolutely awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very sad to hear. his last commit was only a day ago: [https://github.com/jimweirich](https://github.com/jimweirich)

<comment><USER16> Someone spoke to him just yesterday [http://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/1yfeb7/jim_weirich_cre...](http://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/1yfeb7/jim_weirich_creator_of_rake_passed_away_today/cfk1njr)

he was hacking as usual

<comment><USER17> He seemed to really get into drones and copters whole heartedly over the past year and appeared to be having a lot of fun with it :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I met Jim at Rocky Mountain Ruby a couple years ago. He was friendly, easily approachable, and had that hacker humor that is so fun. You could just tell he loved everything about Ruby, hacking, and teaching and learning from others.

He sang Ruby Coding High at that conference:

[http://www.confreaks.com/videos/740-rockymtnruby2011-ruby- co...](http://www.confreaks.com/videos/740-rockymtnruby2011-ruby-coding-high)

Thanks for helping us all get on a Ruby Coding High Jim, we'll miss you.

<comment><USER19> Wow, cool to see you post this. I had the pleasure of playing with him in that video! Many others have said it, but he was a joy to be around and always kind and generous.

<comment><USER18> Awesome! You guys were great. I thoroughly enjoyed that, so thanks to you too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fitting that his last publicly visible github commit is adjusting a Rakefile:

[https://github.com/jimweirich/wyriki/commit/d28fac7f18aeacb0...](https://github.com/jimweirich/wyriki/commit/d28fac7f18aeacb00d8ad3460a0a5a901617c2d4)

<comment><USER21> There's something deeply moving about his last commit becoming a memorial to him. I actually shed a tear when I saw this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sad news indeed.

I would say it is appropriate for any of you who have had the pleasure of knowing Jim to add some information to his Wikipedia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Weirich](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Weirich) for those of us who didn't meet him.

</comment><comment><USER23> I met him at BigRuby in Dallas, he was kind, knowledgeable, and incredibly intelligent. He was interested in a very wide range of things, and I really enjoyed discussing metallurgy, blacksmithing, controlling drones, ruby, amongst other things. He was always willing to help, even if the problem was beneath him. Rest In Peace Jim, you will be sorely missed.

</comment><comment><USER24> Jim Weirich linked warmly on his blog to something I wrote back in 2005. I was 17 at the time and found it very encouraging. That was possibly a reason I kept on practicing my writing. Thanks Jim!

</comment><comment><USER25> I met Jim through a friend, and I've seen him at numerous conferences. He was inspiring to be around. His energy and enthusiasm for programming was contagious. Just hanging around the guy was great. I played my first D&D game at a conference with him, and a great board game called Cosmic Encounters. I always looked forward to seeing him. It is a testament to how great he was, that people could have such little interaction with him and he could have such a big impact on their lives.

</comment><comment><USER26> Haven't met him... just from watching some of his talks via videos I'll got the impression that we'll need more of these people. He had a great talent to explain things.

A Hacker left us.

R.I.P.

</comment><comment><USER27> A great person and developer who will be dearly missed. He was too young, but sadly is a prime example for the risks factors of heart disease. With overweight like that over a long period of time, he most likely had blood pressure and cholesterol issues, along with not much physical exercise. Of course there are a ton of people in similar condition who get to be much older, but still, risk factors are risk factors.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm very sad to hear this. When I was more active in the Ruby community I'd bump into Jim regularly at conferences. He was such a charismatic, smart and above all - a very nice guy.

</comment><comment><USER29> Wow. This is astounding. I happened to meet him and Dave Thomas a year or so ago, and had lunch with them at a Ruby conference. Incredibly nice and funny guy, who was _really_ smart.

</comment><comment><USER30> My first opensource creation was a port of Jim's wonderful Builder gem. Many thanks Jim for the inspiration you'll be sorely missed.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is sad. I'm not much of a Rubyist, but I leant on Rake quite a bit to automate builds and whatnot.

</comment><comment><USER32> Jim, rest in peace brother ! you will be cherished forever along with all the greats. You have joined the ranks of the fallen heros of both our craft and otherwise. A life well lived, full of joy, full of love.... we will miss you.

</comment><comment><USER33> I can never forget the discussion I had with Jim during Rubyconf India last year. He was so devoted to coding… I envied him. Very friendly and energetic. Very sad to hear the news.

</comment><comment><USER34> Jim Weirich was a legend, and deservedly so. Rake was (and is) a masterpiece. I'm sad to see Jim go and I want to pay respect to his contributions and his life.

</comment><comment><USER35> Sad day, just read his last tweet few hours ago.....

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm devestated to hear this. I met Jim at Scot Ruby 2012. A sweet, bright, kind and funny man. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER37> Jim was a great man and an awesome contributor to the Ruby community. He will be missed indeed. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER38> Jim was a great guy and an awesome contributor to the Ruby community. He will be missed indeed. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER37> Jim was a great guy and an awesome contributor to the Ruby community. He will be missed indeed. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER38> Jim was a great guy and an awesome contributor to the Ruby community. He will be missed indeed. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER38> Jim was a great guy and an awesome contributor to the Ruby community. He will be missed indeed. RIP

</comment><comment><USER38> Jim was a best guy and an awesome contributor to the Ruby community. He will be missed RIP.

</comment><comment><USER37> Jim was an actual guy, and I wish I had spent more and more time talking with him.

</comment><comment><USER39> Jim contributed a great deal to the Ruby community and will be deeply missed.

</comment><comment><USER38> Jim was a great guy and an awesome contributor to the Ruby community.

</comment><comment><USER37> Jim was best guy, and I wish I had spent more time talking with him.

</comment><comment><USER38> I wish I had spent more time talking with him.

</comment><comment><USER37> Your post is Great read, thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is sad.

</comment><comment><USER41> what was the cause of death?

<comment><USER42> From the other thread (Jim's last Github commit) it states he passed away due to a heart attack at age 57.

[1] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7271909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7271909)</comment></comment>