France-based Mailjet raises $3.3 million for its cloud-based emailing platform - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/29/mailjet-raises-3-3m-from-alven-and-others-for-its-cloud-based-emailing-platform

<comment><USER2> I've been using them for the last 2/3 months and their platform is actually better than Sendgrid: Good deliverability in Europe, and most importantly the Web interface doesn't suck.

Great service!

<comment><USER3> since you have experience with Mailjet: Do they also offer an option the receive emails and parse them? Sendgrid seems to have an API for this.

<comment><USER4> Last time I looked at Mailjet they didn't offer this. Sendgrid does do that, as does Mailgun. I've tried both of them for BunkerApp and decided on Mailgun for various reasions. One reason was that Mailgun offered a simple way for a catch-all-receive (* @*.bunkerapp.com) while with Sendgrid I had to jump through houps. Mailgun also offers a (for my needs) simpler parsing API.

If you need Inbound mails I'd definitely recommend looking at both Sendgrid and Mailgun (and Mailjet if they offer this now), then decide on what suits your particular needs more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm impressed about the amount. While my impression is that these days, a Silicon Valley startup can "easily" raise multiple millions over little more than a few launching customers, getting large investments in Europe has repeatedly been proven difficult. Is this a sign that things are changing? Or was my assumption wrong from the start?

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this here partly because I see fairly large amounts raised in Europe on a regular basis, but this seems to happen in completely different "spheres" than HN, and results in people thinking nothing is raised (which appears not true from what I came across).

I will try to write those down for the future and share back.

<comment><USER5> Right! I'm European but HN really is my only news source for things like this. Care to point out some main places in these completely different "spheres"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Please note I didn't want to be pedantic with "spheres", first :-) Just trying to pick a word reflecting that HN has a focus on only a part of what exists.

It's mostly via twitter that I see those, but here are examples this week:

\- [http://www.rudebaguette.com/2012/11/26/teleportd- nitrogram-i...](http://www.rudebaguette.com/2012/11/26/teleportd-nitrogram- instagram-analytic/) ($1M)

\- <http://www.pehub.com/174632/youscribe-raises-e2-million/> (€2M)

\- [http://frenchweb.fr/la-ruche-qui-dit-oui-leve-15-million- eur...](http://frenchweb.fr/la-ruche-qui-dit-oui-leve-15-million-euros/88483) (€1.5M)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'l add:

\- <http://www.rudebaguette.com/2012/10/11/iadvize/> (€1M)

\- <http://www.rudebaguette.com/2012/10/17/clever-cloud-launch/> (amount not disclosed)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You know, I'm a developer and not a business type, so when I see a headline like this, my immediate first thought is "isn't email a solved problem? Aren't there already a ton of providers for this type of service?"

So imagine my surprise that someone is raising _millions_ of dollars to have another whack at it.

It's always good to be reminded that solving _big, new_ problems isn't necessarily more important to people than solving _small, existing_ problems _better_.

<comment><USER7> _> "Aren't there already a ton of providers for this type of service?"_

So many. However, it's a very large market that is still seeing plenty of growth, and being able to reach your captive audience reliably and consistently is still a problem, especially when your customers may be in different parts of the world.

Deliverability is a different case in other parts of the world, funny enough. Different gatekeepers and even processes sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congratulations to everyone involved on the investment.

My mailjet wish list: \- fully implemented transactional email reporting (currently campaign only) \- email receipt and delivery acknowledgement on their event api (currently only reporting bounces, opens, and clicks ) \- better helpdesk/support interface ( no way to read closed tickets, no defined process for escalating or closing tickets) \- more responsive support ( e.g. same day response for 'critical' tickets would be nice )

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link to the product (which I'm trying out):

<http://www.mailjet.com>

</comment><comment><USER9> Had another one of our accounts mysteriously locked by Google (yes, we still use them as a relay) so tried Mailjet out today.

Does what it says on the tin! Was setup in minutes, the helpful page on DKIM and SPF was a nice touch, now we're working through the email backlog.

</comment><comment><USER10> This has certainly upped the competition for newletters services like mailchimp, campaign monitor, aweber, etc. The price is going to sink them.</comment>


OpenBSD 6.0, to be released September 1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.openbsd.org/60.html <comment><USER2> Among the "security improvements" that they have listed we have:

\- Remove systrace. \- Remove Linux emulation support. \- Remove support for the usermount option.

<comment><USER3> As a non-"OS geek", I only have a cursory understanding of the implications of the changelog.

What impact will this have on OpenBSD users?

<comment><USER4> As someone who's used OpenBSD daily as a primary desktop OS, usermount will force me to use doas(1) (the replacement for sudo) to mount external media on my desktops/laptops. No big deal. Honestly, I usually do that anyway, just force of habit. Checking my systems, I only set kern.usermount on my daily- driver laptop, and none of my other OpenBSD boxes.

None of the other changes impact anything I do on a daily basis. I haven't used Linux emulation since 2006 or so, and even then, it was a gigantic pain in the ass. The devs have a native virtual machine hypervisor in the works that I was hoping would be ready for prime-time in OpenBSD 6.0. I doubt it'll be ready that soon. This will provide a better option than the old Linux emulation layer.

<comment><USER5> Would toad be of any use?

[http://ports.su/sysutils/toad](http://ports.su/sysutils/toad)

<comment><USER4> Hotplugd is crazysauce. So much you can do with it. Toad claims to need kern.usermount so it won't work with a default install, and will be toadally broken once this option is removed in OpenBSD 6.0. I can't speak for all OpenBSD users, but I just end up putting my sd-card reader (which sees most FAT formatted cards at sd1i) and the first available USB external drive (again, usually sd2i for FAT) in my /etc/fstab and call the mount with doas.

doas mount /sdcard

Not that big of a deal.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for reply.

'toadally broken' indeed, I'm hoping that Antoine Jacoutot will come up with a clever work around. That or xfce4-mount-plugin I suppose with doas and a limited permission to run mount without a password.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just curious if OpenBSD plans to continue to use the old gcc 4.2.1 or migrate to LLVM or even GCC 5.1. I can imagine the later is not compatible due to the license.

<comment><USER7> It's difficult because GCC is pretty buggy, which makes it hard to follow recent stable releases. In addition, OpenBSD has a lot of exploit mitigations in their branch of the compiler which will take considerable effort to port to LLVM.

<comment><USER6> Still i can imagine they require recent compilers (w/ support for C++11) to build for example some ports like Chromium.

This means they rely on "old" compilers to compile "old" C code from the base.

<comment><USER8> The "old" compiler is for compiling the base system and xenocara. There are gcc4 and clang packages available. Some packages are build using those more modern compilers.

I.e. Chromium is build with clang (3.8) if I'm not mistaken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Curious to see what the release song(s)/theme will be!

</comment><comment><USER10> The end of the vax platform !

</comment><comment><USER11> anybody knows why so earlier?

<comment><USER12> Also, is the next release going to be in March 2017, or still be in May?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> gcc 4.9.3 is more than a year old at this point; I would love to use OpenBSD but it's hard to give up the creature comforts of the 5.x branch. Anyone know why, even in a release in which gcc gets upgraded, it gets upgraded to an old version?

<comment><USER14> It's not being updated at all. You are looking at the version in ports. This can be updated to a GPLv3 version (as 4.9.3 is a GPLv3 version) just fine. I don't know why it isn't; perhaps there's some porting problem and no or little demand. The version 4.9.3 is the same version that was present in OpenBSD 5.9 and probably several releases back. The system GCC is 4.2.1 plus OpenBSD patches. It has been for some time. This will not be updated to a GPLv3 compiler.

<comment><USER15> I believe there are some C++ ABI issues related to GCC 5x that make it challenging, supposedly other systems stuck with GCC 4.9 for awhile because of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why sept 1st ? Why not november ?</comment>


SaaS Pricing Models and Strategies Demystified - <AUTHOR> https://baremetrics.com/blog/saas-pricing-models <comment><USER2> I wasn't happy with what was out there to recommend to others so I decided to create something myself.

The goal of this article is to walk you through, step-by-step, everything you need to know to optimize your pricing and clear your head of all the anxiety and stress that goes into it. Most of the articles/ebooks I've read are either super brief or extremely scattered. I want to create something that's actually actionable to help you with pricing and packaging your products.</comment>


Show HN: mixtape. An unintrusive collaborative playlist webapp - <AUTHOR> http://mixtape.meteor.com Made it in Meteor over the last semester and winter break. I use YouTube to listen to music, and found native YouTube playlists to be nearly unuseable - so I made mixtape. A simple, no-bs webapp that does exactly what you want.<p>You also have the ability to collaborate on your playlist, by sharing it using the link generated for you below! <comment><AUTHOR> Author here! I listen to a lot of music on YouTube, and found the native YouTube playlists next to useless, so I wound up making this clean and collaborative playlist webapp to solve this problem, and of course to get my hands dirty with Meteor!</comment>


Ask HN: From where do you hire remote developers? - <AUTHOR>

I am curious, to know from what all sources you find remote developers for your company/start ups.<p>I know about monthly 'Who is hiring' thread, so I am looking for other sources, if any. So where do you post? <comment><USER2> If you're willing/able to chop the work into tiny digestable chunks then Odesk.com or Elance.com might be a good fit. The downside is that sometimes it takes longer to explain what you need done than it would be to just do it yourself.

I've outsourced to a number of agencies, but typically they find you, not the other way around (just check your LinkedIn inbox).

Angellist (angel.co) and Careers.stackoverflow.com are two places worth sifting through. Typically pretty high-caliber devs.

And of course there is the Craigslist gigs section...sigh... which is actually a good place to list a hiring ad if you're looking for outsource teams, because 95% of the responses you receive will be from overseas.

</comment><comment><USER3> We've interviewed a number of quality candidates that replied to our post on WeWorkRemotely.

<comment><USER4> Hi, I'm working on a jobs board website project. Do you have any pain point to share?

edit: better question.

<comment><USER5> Regarding remote job postings - make it clear if this is US-only remote or world-wide.

Also - please make sure that it is easy to search for terms like "C++" and "Go".

Regarding locations, it should be easy to search for "Remote" AND "C++" AND "Europe".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hire freelancers on a monthly retainer, or look for agencies who work for hire

</comment><comment><USER7> We've found great developers on oDesk.

</comment><comment><USER8> we use hasgeeks for most of the req.

</comment><comment><USER9> I find work on gun.io

</comment><comment><USER10> oDesk

Freelancer.com

Elance.com

</comment><comment><USER11> odesk.com</comment>


Announcing GitHub Sponsors: a new way to contribute to open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.blog/2019-05-23-announcing-github-sponsors-a-new-way-to-contribute-to-open-source/ <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19989684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19989684)</comment>


Venice votes 89% to secede from Italy - <AUTHOR> http://bastiat.mises.org/2014/03/venice-votes-to-secede-from-italy-2/ <comment> alex-g This was not a referendum, nor even a proper opinion poll - just a partisan petition. The figure of 89% is completely meaningless. Both the Daily Mail, and this article, prefer to make their own political point (we hate government and taxes) rather than engage in real news reporting or analysis.

<comment><USER3> Is someone from Italy here, who can give his views on this?

Tried to understand what's going on and this looks more like some scammy online lottery cashing in on some diffuse dissenting and secessionist moods, getting overexposed by Russian foreign news channels than anything resembling a proper referendum.

It's nearly impossible to find some independent non-italian news-sources that not just reproduce the PR of the secessionists or RT "news".

[All following sources are Italian so google translate is your friend]

Found this video which seems to make fun of the foreign press thinking that good-who-knows-what happened in Italy (Like that guy who tries to sell the Trevi Fountain to some gullible American-Italian Tourist). [1]

This one is quite sceptic and seems to paint the picture of this just an embellished online poll, pompously relabeled as "referendum", run by a local businessmen, Gianluca Busato, with connections to some fringe secessionist parties. [2]

Even if this article written after the referendum ended strikes a different tone, the pictures and the crowd look quite orchestrated [3]

After all this whole issue says more about the sorry state of journalism than about the actual likelihood of the Veneto region seceding from Italy any time soon.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptfhV3J3b1c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptfhV3J3b1c)

[2] [http://www.vice.com/it/read/indipendenza-veneto- referendum-m...](http://www.vice.com/it/read/indipendenza-veneto-referendum- marzo-2014)

[2 in proper english translation, worth a read] [http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/veneto-would-like-to-be- italy...](http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/veneto-would-like-to-be-italys- crimea)

[3] [http://www.vice.com/it/read/referendum-indipendenza- veneto-t...](http://www.vice.com/it/read/referendum-indipendenza-veneto- treviso-marzo-2014)

<comment><USER4> It's just some fringe movement organizing an online petition. Almost nobody in Italy had even heard of it until the foreign press (apparently the Telegraph from the UK) started spreading the "news".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By the way, as the article mentions, Italy was almost never unified as a country in History. It's a VERY recent creation (just before WW1) and during more than 1000 years it was actually a jigsaw puzzle of small states. Germany has a longer History of federation, though.

EDIT: You can actually see this very clearly in the video showing the evolution of borders in Europe (that was shared last week on HN).

<comment><USER6> I think one of the lessons we'll take away from the 19th and 20th centuries is that just smashing some things together and calling it a "country" by fiat from people hundreds or thousands of miles away doesn't do anybody any good.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure there's any workable alternative.

Self-determination breaks down just as easily. You get regions seceding from countries, but nothing stops cities from seceding from that region, or blocks seceding from that city, creating an ungovernable patchwork where everyone is a king trying to extort taxes from neighbors.

Permanently fixing borders based on a population's will at one moment assumes demographics are held constant for all time. (And how do you pick how large of a population gets to vote?) Re-voting every time anyone calls for a referendum destroys any certainty that the state will exist for more than ten years, and creates little wars of demography, where populations try to pack supporters into a territory for political control.

As you noted, borders drawn according to pure whimsy aren't much of a prize either.

All of these systems are basically terrible for different reasons.

<comment><USER6> "I'm not sure there's any workable alternative."

Me neither, but this tends to lead into some very politically incorrect territory when you start analyzing why.

However, I'd be willing to try letting the artificially created countries break themselves back down into some smaller units, then letting themselves voluntarily reassemble at a later date if they see the advantages. While it's easy to forget, since it hasn't happened in my lifetime, and our Federal government keeps getting larger and getting more of the attention, but the United States really _are_ the United States; there are procedures for voluntarily joining it. The EU is a larger organization that provides another model for voluntarily joining a larger union. I agree the initial states might break down quite small, but if there are sufficient advantages to reforming into larger units there are models for this. This has been a _relatively_ peaceful process. (Though history suggests that some procedures for voluntarily and legally disassociating _may_ be a good idea. That's certainly debatable at length, but I'm not sure the one-way door model is entirely the best idea, though I'd suggest it also ought to take a supermajority of some sort.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article doesn't mention that it was an Internet vote with no legal value.

> It will be interesting to see what Rome does. Will they send an army to take > their tax money?

They'll still have to pay there taxes, this is either misinformed or following some agenda.

This is more factual: [http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=n&prev=...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rtl.fr%2Factualites%2Finfo%2Finternational%2Farticle%2Fitalie- les-habitants-de-venise-votent-a-89-pour-leur-independance-7770649879&act=url)

<comment><USER5> > The article doesn't mention that it was an Internet vote with no legal > value.

Even if it were NOT on Internet, it would not have any legal value as long as the Italian State does not recognize its validity. Which they would surely never agree to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The effect of the EU being on a federal trajectory, albeit increasingly contested, is interesting here. The independence movement in Scotland, and I expect this applies to Catalonia and Venice, paints a picture of independence within the EU. Scottish nationalists regularly talk about moving away from the UK model and towards a Scandinavian model, which is probably not what the average reader of mises.org has in mind when they think about secession.

Of course it's very complex as it seems the weight of legal opinion is that Scotland will have to leave the EU if they leave the UK. There are a few legal academics that dispute that legal point but their case doesn't sound very convincing to me and the EU institutions have more or less said they will have to reapply. However Scotland does have the advantage of having a fairly good faith partner in the rest of the UK if they do leave. If the current disputes over the pound and the debt don't turn vicious then a huge stack of treaties being signed all in one day to make it all legal becomes imaginable. I think Barcelona-Madrid and Venice-Rome relations might take a somewhat different path.

<comment><USER10> "Of course it's very complex as it seems the weight of legal opinion is that Scotland will have to leave the EU if they leave the UK"

Citation please. Please stop recycling UK Mainstream Media "fag packet legal opinion" about whether Scotland would or would not have to leave the EU before being re-admitted via a lengthy application process.

And before you cite Barossa, that was one man's incorrect personal opinion. Thus far the EU has not ruled in any sort of legal way as to whether Article 48 (method of treaty amendment) or Article 49 (applications to join the EU) of the Treaty of Union would apply to Scotland.

Thus far the Scottish Government would like to use Article 48 rather than Article 49. Because there as never been a precedent of a new state seceding from an existing member state within the EU the whole position is untried.

edit: Disclosure, I am campaigning for Scottish Independence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Campaigners say that the Rome government receives around 71 billion euros each year in tax from Venice - some 21 billion euros less than it gets back in investment and services." [0]

There does appear to be significant economical imbalance, however it would take blood being spilled before powers that be would let any kind of secession stand.

[0] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2586531/Venice- votes...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2586531/Venice-votes-split- Italy-89-citys-residents-opt-form-new-independent-state.html#ixzz2wvv3Ls20)

<comment><USER12> Given California gets about $0.80 per $1 of taxes sent to the Federal government back in terms of Federal spending, I can understand the Venetians in this desire.

<comment><USER13> I mean this in the most generous possible way: good luck and please go. One of the best possible outcomes for all Americans and humans would be the the breakup of the USA as it currently exists. California could probably get that party started in the best possible way.

<comment><USER12> As a native Californian, I'd love to break from the union more than the idiotic "6 Californias" currently scheduled for the next election. Yes there are differences in the state, but as a whole it is way more suited to be self sustaining than a lot of states sucking on the Federal largess.

<comment><USER14> "Six Californias" isn't scheduled for any election, its approved to begin gathering signatures for a petition to put it on the ballot -- and it would be on the ballot the election after next if it gets enough signatures.

<comment><USER12> Sorry, I meant the ballot initiative. Given the money behind it, I suspect it will qualify and basically figured it is a given to be on the ballot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Given that Obama recently declared all secession movements illegitimate > (except those supported by the US Government, of course) it's unknown how > much support Venice can expect from the international community.

What? Obama is clearly off track here. The right to secede is in the American constitution from its very beginning. Any State in the US can decide to become independent if their population really wants to. Whether it makes sense is another story, but it certainly would not regarded as illegitimate.

<comment><USER15> There is nothing in the US constitution that actually allows secession. Some people try to imply a right to secede from the declaration of independence or from the history of the US (i.e., the revolutionary war) but there is not actual text in the US constitution that gives anyone the right to secede.

If you disagree, please provide a quote.

<comment><USER5> > There is nothing in the US constitution that actually allows secession

True, but there is nothing that forbids it either explicitly. And I could argue that from the History of the US, of how they were formed, and the Declaration of Independence, Secession is very much considered to be a cultural Right.

Even Lincoln said that:

> Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to > rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits > them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we > hope and believe is to liberate the world.

This is further observed by foreign observers such as Tocqueville after the US were established:

> The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and in > uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they > been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the > States choose to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to > disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no > means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right.

<comment><USER16> The actual written Constitution has far more text about handling the cases of treason, rebellion, and domestic violence than it does about individual states seceding.

And if you would read the Declaration of Independence you'd see that the "tyranny test" (such as one was ever conceived in American jurisprudence) is very strict indeed. Even from the first days of the American Revolutionary War we were claiming that the government deserved a great deal of "benefit of the doubt" and that it would take a very severe set of circumstances to cast off a government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a little confused by this part of the quote:

> 'Although _history never repeats itself,_ we are now experiencing a strong > return of little nations...`

I've never heard the phrase "history never repeats itself", I've only ever heard "history repeats itself."

Is this a saying that comes out of Italy, or am I just grossly uninformed?

<comment><USER18> Some of the common quotes:

"History never repeats itself, but it rhymes"

-Mark Twain

Split enz also has a popular song with "History never repeats. I tell myself before I go to sleep".

The other quote you're your probably thinking of

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

-George Santayana

So all in all I'd say you're right on the thrust of the generally popular quotes but not necessarily on their wording.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I assume it will be adopting Dogecoin as its currency.

</comment><comment><USER20> A klaxon goes off in my head whenever I see phrases like "Italy is a made-up country." All countries are made-up. How else would they exist?

What's objectionable is when an outside empire comes in and says "You guys are all one country now." But that's not the case with Italy, or Europe in general, who are the ones who generally did that to others.

<comment><USER21> >What's objectionable is when an outside empire comes in and says "You guys are all one country now."

Didn't the Roman Empire do something like this to Europe?

<comment><USER22> Nations / Nationalism didn't really exist back then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> " Italy is a made-up country," uhm, aren't they all just made up? Granted Venice used to be its own country, but still all countries are made up.

<comment><USER24> Some countries are more made up than others. Most of the countries in Africa and the Middle East were not formed by popular movements for self determination, but rather the result of foreign (mostly West European) political considerations, the people living in many of those countries - <USER2> aggregate - have no common ground, they associate with some ethnic group that does not identify with the state and are often seriously opposed to their union with other ethnic groups (Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda are one extreme example of this; Sunnis, Shias and Christians in most Arab states are another).

Most European states are less made up than almost all non-European states, but Italy is much less a result of a group of people who chose to unite (or secede) than, say, the Balkan states in their current form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why don't more cities secede from their surrounding areas? For example, New York State takes so much more from New York City (in the form of taxes, mostly) than it gives back, and it prevents the city from things that are in its own interest (e.g., congestion pricing or a commuter tax).

So why didn't the city break away a long time ago?

<comment><USER26> If they tried to break away from the USA they would have the military knocking on their door. If they somehow managed to operate as an independent city like DC, they would lose the right to vote for senators and president.

<comment><USER25> Actually, I was thinking about why they don't become their own state. It seems to be completely in their own interest, except I think the US constitution forbids them from doing it without their parent state's permission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I guess having free trade and free movement of people within the EU makes this kind of thing practical. I'm not sure Venice will happen but Scotland may.</comment>


The wearable device that allows you to log your mood - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/e2829a66-be77-11e9-9381-78bab8a70848 <comment><USER2> behind paywall :(

<comment><USER3> Google the article header, and you can click through from Google to see the article. Seems the paywall kicks in for HN referrals.</comment></comment>


Quora goes permanently remote-first - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/adamdangelo/status/1276210618786168833 <comment><USER2> There's an insightful series of comments from Sid, CEO of Gitlab about why this is not likely to work over the long term:

[https://twitter.com/sytses/status/1264341436138270720](https://twitter.com/sytses/status/1264341436138270720)

It might be different for Quora given that their CEO and SLT will be remote.

But I still believe that whenever you have an office you are creating a community of employees who will have a different relationship to those who are working remotely.

<comment><USER3> Sid explicitly says he expects we (Quora) avoided the pitfalls of hybrid companies in this comment: [https://www.quora.com/q/quora/Remote-First-at- Quora/comment/...](https://www.quora.com/q/quora/Remote-First-at- Quora/comment/2841193)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for linking. I missed the 6 hour 'coordination time' when I made that comment. I think that async as the default is very important to be remote first [https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all- remote/asynchro...](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all- remote/asynchronous/)

<comment><USER4> Based on this I mentioned Quora as an example on [https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all- remote/stages/#...](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all- remote/stages/#remote-first)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One interesting aspect of this is that they still explicitly expect "synchronous" work, timezones be damned:

> We have initially designated 9am to 3pm Pacific Time as "coordination hours" > where most employees will be expected to be available for meetings and > impromptu communication, regardless of where they are located. This maps to > 6am to 12pm in Hawaii, 12pm to 6pm Eastern Time, 5pm to 11pm in the UK, and > 6pm to 12am across most of Europe

I know that I wouldn't work for them from Europe if those were the conditions.

<comment><USER6> > _5pm to 11pm in the UK, and 6pm to 12am across most of Europe_

This is completely ridiculous and means abandoning any kind of family or social life. It also means they probably only hire young, single people with no kids. Based on this, they sound like a seriously insensitive and diversity- hostile company.

<comment><USER7> The parents I know who could do flex-time liked to spend the morning/afternoon with their kids and then work in the evenings. For younger kids that allows you to split-shift with your partner while for older kids you get to be there when they get ready/get home from school.

<comment><USER6> In France kids from 6 years old onward, get home from school between 5 and 6 pm and usually have extracurricular activities after that. Then they are supposed to go to bed at around 10 pm.

So if you're working 5-11 pm you're only going to see your kids at breakfast at best (if they don't skip it because they're late). You're also not going to have dinner together as a family, which, to me, would be unacceptable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I expect there to be a momentary burst in attempts to go remote-first, or at least hybrid. Senior executives will want to level the playing field between expensive areas and cheaper ones, and use that to drive down salaries overall.

But then, there are plenty of managers who really see a lot of value in spontaneous face-to-face interactions, or even planned ones, because so much communication happens just in body language alone. So I expect to see a rebound as the next generation of ambitious managers decide there is a competitive edge in an all-local team.

<comment><USER9> Im still waiting for the rebound back to a cubicle.

Fuck open plan.

I really wish people would get it through their damned thick skulls that their heads are not the same as my head. And my head is not the same as her head. And her head is not the same as their head.

We all need our own accomidations. Some people like open plan, some people hate it. Some people thrive in an office environment, some people thrive at home.

These things arent mutually exlcusive. Someone isnt wrong. You can have both things be true.

Yes, in the real world you cant cater to everything everyone demands, but that also doesnt follow that you should just give up and cater only to the lowest common denominator - what some schlep in middle management thinks they know about productivity and psychology.

<comment><USER10> How about actual offices? You know, rooms with walls and doors.

My yearly salary could build a comfortable home for a family of 4 every single year in some of the cheaper places in this country, I'm pretty sure my company laptop at several of my employers has retailed > $4000, yet 4 feet of desk space and a chair that seemed to have lived a hard life on the streets has been my most common accommodation. Surely an office and a parking space for every employee isn't an impossibility. And if it _is_ then you can't afford to be in the market you're trying to operate in.

I can guarantee that I would have been a happier more productive employee if I were given a private space, near colleagues but by default separated from them away from home.

Growing up on hundreds of acres where the nearest human was often more than a mile away, having the experience of daily being obligated to board public transit for 90 minutes and then spend 8 hours in an open office in the middle of a downtown area was subtly but deeply unsettling. Being constantly so far away from the ability to have any private space or space which was _mine_ in any way, and worse the only way to get to a space which was was by being jostled on a packed train for up to two hours was simply bad for my mental health.

<comment> saiya-jin Because you attract talent by high salaries, so try to save elsewhere (especially when office rental prices are astronomical).

You yourself are yet another proof of this - you changed whatever rural environment you had to go into cramped office with very high salary. Clearly, the money was more important to you than vast open plains and remoteness. Most folks work this way.

You ask for private space near colleagues - that's a premium anywhere. I presume you don't mean tiny cubicle but actual quiet room. Almost nobody has these in corporate environment for various reasons, certainly not regular employees.

<comment> blaser-waffle Aye, this. I need to fit 250 people in a single floor in a big city. One floor is already expensive as hell, and I'm not going to pick up 2-3 more. Hell, even my managers don't get offices.

<comment><USER11> Ah, a fellow sardine fan!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really hope we see some specialized remote worker residential communities in the future. Actually, I'm sure there'll be money in building them.

Imagine a small town with no cars or roads. The community has lots of events to socialize you with your neighbors. Lots of traditions and festivals. Some communities may look like Brooklyn—row houses, except just grass and trees lining the blocks. Maybe another community would have a quirkier layout, with maze-like walking paths between apartment buildings.

<comment><USER13> And perhaps when enough of these like-minded remote workers are living near each other, some of them will find that they enjoy working in the same physical location at the same time. Then some of the space in the community can be turned into hubs for in-person collaboration, or offices!

<comment><USER14> Not sure if you're being dismissive, but that still sounds great. It would lead to many small, livable communities with opportunity dotting the country. As opposed to everyone living in suburbs and and making long commutes to a small number of massive urban centers.

<comment><USER15> That's basically the model IBM was actively pursuing in the 90s-00s (no idea whether they still do). They ran a bunch of studies in the previous decades, showing the various trade-offs involved into office locations; eventually they decided the best overall policy was to prefer mid-size offices in suburban settings, away from business districts and other high-density areas. At one point I think they had an outright ban on new city-centre offices.

(Or at least this is what I was told when I was a contractor for them in the mid-00s in Europe, wondering why they avoided getting a single building in Manchester city centre and spread over two separate locations in the surrounding suburbs instead.)

<comment><USER16> HQ is in Armonk which is Westchester County. Somers (since sold) and Poughkeepsie are there as well as is IBM Research at Yoktown Heights. Raleigh is in an industrial park (RTP). I'm by no means familiar with all of IBM's locations but, yes, many of them are suburban. IBM also sold their building in Manhattan in the 90s though they may still have some space there; they did when I last visited but that was quite a while ago. Most of the IBM people I work with work remotely.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure RTP qualifies as "an industrial park" but suburban, sure

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> (Ex-Quora here) This is great to see. I left Quora over a year and a half ago, and at the time, the company believed pretty strongly in an in-person culture (in particular, having one office)—even though a bunch of employees and managers were pushing for more flexible work/location policies. I know the company had started experimenting with a little remote work pre-Covid, but it really took a forcing function to demonstrate to everyone that remote can work.

</comment><comment><USER19> Their careers web page is already updated to reflect this. They also state remote employees need to be available 9am to 3pm PST and they will be keeping their SV office open:

[https://www.quora.com/careers](https://www.quora.com/careers)

They are also hiring a Head of Remote role to manage all of this:

[https://boards.greenhouse.io/quora/jobs/4774947002](https://boards.greenhouse.io/quora/jobs/4774947002)

<comment><USER20> Blows my mind becuase I do not understand how Quora is still around or even generating revenue at all.

My first thought when I saw the headline was this is really just about self- preservation and runway extension. Most companies who pivot to a remote first approach are not going to be doing it for altruistic reasons - like being good for their employee health - they're gonna do it merely because it saves money.

<comment><USER21> Advertising.

Maybe 1 in 3 of the answers you see are just paid ads. They read like utterly normal answers, but work in a reference for why X is the best product to item #4 on their top 5 travel hacks list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I predict many companies will have to follow the trend.

Remote companies have a significant hiring advantage. As long as the number of remote options was small, competing on talent with remote companies wasn't an issue. But things are clearly changing and non-remote companies will soon feel the pressure and unless they can pay significantly above market (like FAANG companies) they will have no choice but to allow fully remote work so they can compete.

Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft will probably not move to fully remote anytime soon (they all have amazing and very expensive campuses and some business lines that cannot move remote). However, they can pay above market rate and have offices in so many places so in a way they are already hybrid. Not to mention, like all of tech, they are much more flexible about WFH than used to be and I know a few people there who have been fully remote even before covid.

<comment><USER23> At DrSmile we are switching to hybrid model now with German employees still being able to visit the office, but shifting hiring focus to remote work on engineering positions and designing special benefit and retention package for them. It worked so well during corona, that it doesn't make sense to pay office expenses for the growing team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Has anyone tried using VR for work? What, if anything did you discover that worked, and what didn't?

I know of some VR companies that do all their meetings in VR, whether its their own, or in a game.

<comment><USER25> No experience using it for work.

But I bought a Quest when it first came out, and used it for about a week before shelving it.

Wearing it for longer than 10-15 minutes is physically difficult. Dizziness, nausea, headache.

This is a common issue people have with VR. Also unsure if it's a fixable problem. Until then, I cant imagine it seriously used to facilitate remote work.

<comment><USER26> From what I've heard, having a consistent high framerate helps with this a lot. I've seen people who report feeling sick with older generation of headsets, but feeling comfortable with the Valve Index.

<comment><USER27> The quest is ~72Hz. We (the VR community) moved on from 75 Hz many years ago through 90Hz, and my Index currently does 120, with an experimental 144Hz mode.

Research (mostly by Valve I think) has shown that the higher the framerate the less the incidence of sickness. 72Hz just isn't enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What an awful idea; people go to work for the social connection. This feels like another episode of 'Silicon Valley reinvents management,' and will likely end in the same way.

<comment><USER29> I have ~5-6 years of remote work experience, started off as the only remote employee of a company, then was partially remote at my next company, then worked from an office for a local startup, and have been working for a fully distributed company for the past 4 years.

While my 2 years working at a startup in my mid-20s where we would sleep at the office and worked 24/7 did end up producing some of my closest friendships and a relationship with the company and the CEO that is strong to this day, my last few years working at a fully distributed company has also been really social.

We build friendships, we gossip, we argue, we share interesting tidbits about our lives - I don't feel like the social component is lost. It is usually not as strong as when you have to see the other person every day but it is more than enough for most purposes.

Our company also does meetups 3-4 times a year where we all fly to locations like Bali, Mexico, Iceland, US..etc. and spend a week socializing and working together. Remote work does not mean that you are basically a freelancer contracting for a company, there are ways to build strong enough social connections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> An interesting sea change in knowledge work is happening.

Does anyone know if any other companies have made a permanent switch to remote like this during the pandemic?

<comment><USER31> Quora is a pretty small company, and the sum total of all startups (not including FAANGs) all going remote will be a small fraction of the population of workers. I guess that's why you specified knowledge workers.

I dunno. Here's why I think it will and will not happen.

My company has been up to 50% remote in the past six years (way earlier when we were smaller) and have gone fully remote since shelter-in-place.

We have a really well established remote culture, so it was pretty easy. We've had people join in remote roles who found that they were not able to work well in that way.

I think it takes a confluence of the company culture, the individual, and the management's willingness to do new and different work to accommodate a remote work culture.

This will not be broad, and some who try it will fail miserably, others will discover new inefficiencies and problems they'll sink a lot of time into trying to solve.

A bulk of the population will go back to their normal day-to-day, and as long as the rest of the world isn't adjusting, I think it's unlikely for such a dramatically different work style to take hold outside of a few niche areas.

I would love to be proven wrong though, as I really dislike living in the Bay Area, and I've become a lot more comfortable working and managing fully remotely over the past four months.

Related: My company is fully remote until 2021 - and we're actively considering what to do after that. I am pretty convinced I will be moving forward with assuming my own team will be fully remote (support and services) if they want to, and I plan to only visit the office for important company/management meetings, but we'll see what happens after the economy crashes completely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Even the Indian software service companies are going remote which suggests remote work is going to be future [https://www.news18.com/news/business/tcs- says-75-of-its-3-5-...](https://www.news18.com/news/business/tcs-says-75-of- its-3-5-lakh-employees-will-work-from-home-even-post-coronavirus-2592291.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> Tracker for all companies remote work policies: remote.lifeshack.io

</comment><comment><USER34> With so many companies going WFH permanently even after COVID, how will this impact Uber/Lyft revenue?

<comment><USER35> Positively, perhaps. If you don't need a car to commute, you're more likely not to own one and use ridesharing when you do need to go somewhere by car.

Most people don't use Uber/Lyft for their daily commute (yes, no doubt some on HN do). It can't make economic sense compared to driving yourself.

<comment><USER34> a ton of people I know who live in metro cities (sf, nyc, chicago, etc) used rideshare daily for commute, it's slightly more expensive than public transit and many employers either pay for or subsidize for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is it just me or does Quora straight up not work on Firefox? Whenever I click the Continue Reading button, it fails to load more and gives me a generic "Something Went Wrong" error. Do people just not test on Firefox anymore?

<comment><USER37> I had this and solved it by clearing the cache and cookies for Quora (and maybe facebook) several times. If it works in private browser mode it's definitely corrupt data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Did you know that Quora PAYS for most of the questions people ask on Quora?

Like, there are people making a full time living asking questions on Quora.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/alc5hy/i_am_a_quora_pa...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/alc5hy/i_am_a_quora_partner_program_member_i_make_4000/)

<comment><USER39> Is that bad?

<comment><USER40> Yeah, it's pretty bad. Questions that they pay for are generally of poor quality. When you pay for something, people rush in to produce as much quantity as they can. Even if they are also attracting good ones, they can be hard to find in the onslaught.

<comment><USER41> My intuitive understanding of Quora, formed about five years ago, is that it's a WikiHow with VC mojo.

<comment><USER42> It's most accurately described as a yahoo answers with generally higher quality answers and SEO.

<comment><USER41> "Higher quality than Yahoo answers" is an extremely low bar.

<comment><USER40> There is a lot of genuinely good content on Quora. They went out of their way early to attract some high-level Silicon Valley talent, and that brought in a fair number of good writers. It was really cool, for example, to have physics professors explaining the Higgs Boson at the time of the CERN announcement.

It degrades over time, partly from simple reversion to the mean, partly because a number of topics have simply been talked to death. That's why they started paying people to ask questions. There's still good new content in a lot of areas, such as history and language, that are very broad and deep. But topics like physics and mathematics are largely moribund, because there's only so much that can be talked about at the roughly high-school level that most people can follow.

So it does look increasingly like Yahoo Answers, but there's still good content if you know where to look. It earned a very good reputation early and that high rep still has some carryover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> How many employees are left at Quora?

</comment><comment><USER44> Silicon Valley real estate crash when?

<comment><USER45> As soon as protesters start to create an Autonomous Zone in the middle of each city and town.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> On somewhat related note, I've always wondered how come links from the Quora digest email just have the URL "quara.com" with no direct link to the question/answer?

I get that it links to a SPA. But this seems intentional.

</comment><comment><USER47> Is this that site that's always wanting my PI to sell off? Whenever I mistakenly click a link to it to see the whole answer? Maybe this will be the death knell.

</comment><comment><USER48> > All existing employees can immediately relocate to anywhere we can legally > employ them

Even to India? What about time zone differences, and will you pay the same amount as in USD?

<comment><USER49> They'd pay the local salary of course - this move to remote is a hr/accountings wet dream to reduce to amount spent on pay.

<comment><USER50> I wonder if there is a way of projecting this as discrimination (e.g. accusing the company to be a racist, because you pay less to your Indian/Non U.S. employees) and get activists attention.

<comment><USER49> Its paid by location.

Having said that if you audited any of the FANGS US employees you would find discrimination on grounds of Sex, Disability and Race (and I suspect Caste )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Well, good for them. I hope they'll hire more moderators now. Their auto- moderation sucks. It lets spam run free and punished people who give actual answers.

</comment><comment><USER52> Would it be harder or easier to unionise or make employee actions if the workforce is all online, compared to meeting in the same place?

<comment><USER53> That rather depends on which country one is in. In most European countries it will make no difference at all as far as the law is concerned (everyone has the right to belong to a union), in the US I imagine it will be complicated and vary from state to state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Reminder that quora was part of a huge data breach, yet they still, to this day, employ dark patterns that force you to make an account.

</comment><comment><USER55> Angelo says "I will not work out of the office and I will visit the office no more than once a month.", isn't the opposiite of each other?

</comment><comment><USER56> It really is amazing that Quora still exists. In the very early days it was interesting, now it just seems like Yahoo Answers 2.0.

<comment><USER57> I'm not particularly prophetic when it comes to how businesses play out, but I remember thinking that quora was a cool idea on a small scale but knew that it would turn to garbage as soon as it got popular.

For the entrepreneurs out there: Everything doesn't have to be social. Sometimes you can build a business around great, curated content and it can be beautiful.

<comment><USER58> > _For the entrepreneurs out there: Everything doesn 't have to be social. > Sometimes you can build a business around great, curated content and it can > be beautiful._

Examples? I can't actually think of a curated content business that has no social features. Social is textual gold. People love interacting with other people.

Certainly not an information content business. Perhaps curated physical products.

<comment><USER57> Quartz.com, Wired.com, NYTimes.com, (although it seems that nytimes does allow comments on some articles).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I can't believe this site still exists, who goes there?

<comment><USER60> I actually have enjoyed a lot of the content there - it's like Q&A with an emphasis on the personal experience of the person answering. Tons of stuff that would not be appropriate for Stack Overflow, but interesting nonetheless.

<comment><USER61> To me Q&A is not the interesting part; discussion, rhetoric, and bigger context behind questions are. That's why I always found niche subreddits or niche StackExchange websites _a lot_ more interesting than Quora. I don't remember finding interesting content on Quora on something that's not already on reddit or stackExchange. The only time Quora shines is when some celebrity makes an interesting, historical comment. Like when Alan Kay himself defines OOP, it's clearly some interesting shit. But reddit AMAs and StackExchange celebrity accounts do scratch that itch as well. So, Quora is pretty meh imho. I still read it (without an account) but I don't find it irreplaceable unlike the other two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> The following is slightly off topic and very subjective. I remember Quora when it first launched. So many interesting answers from people that "have been there, done that". Like first hand experience from working on IE5 in the browser wars or working at Nasa.

Quality was very high in general. Today it has become a shadow of itself with generic questions and answer that are just marketing plugs.

It makes me a bit sad because it was unique and there still is nothing like it in my opinion.

<comment><USER63> Reddit (so long as you subscribe to good quality sub reddits) is my go to for long form information. Quora is garbage now unfortunately - I don't know how but they completely lost their way.

<comment><USER62> Agreed, really like Reddit. Only issue is their obnoxious push to use the app all the time. I wish Reddit and Wikipedia had a child.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Awesome place to work for!

<comment><USER45> Actually it is a miracle they still exist, their revenue is not so good.

<comment><AUTHOR> citation needed?

<comment><USER45> It is almost impossible to find clear data, but in 2017 they were still raising funding and in 2018 they closed the Top Write program, the one that was giving minor benefits. Since then, there is no reason to believe their revenue grew significantly, while the quality of new content is horrible. I followed the situation for the past ~ 4 years, this is what it looks like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I hate when Quora pops up from searching for something. I loathe Quora and wish they never existed. They make searching for things a lot more annoying.

<comment><USER66> Many have made this observation, but I wish there was a way to blacklist sites from my search results.

I literally never want to see results from Quora, ExpertsExchange and a bunch of other grotty spam dens with low quality user generated content.

I don't get why Google is not doing this. If I could block these sites, I'd get much more value out of Google, and it would be sticky value - because over the years I would have added hundreds of sites to that list, and I wouldn't want to transfer that over to some other search engine.

Some nice extras would include:

\- blocking sites for e.g. 12 months only

\- sharing black lists

\- being able to search without the blacklist applying

<comment><USER67> Same deal with pintrest too, it spammed Google Image results so badly and there was no way to actually get to the source of the image without signing up for an account at one point.

Think they might have taken action because it's not been as bad lately and the results haven't been as spammed but it rendered image search close to unusable for almost a year.

Really think Google should invest more in being able to trace data back to it's source. Pintrest is all just data scraped from elsewhere, point me to where it's scraping from now the 400px wide image from Pintrests cache.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Reminder to those who aren't aware: Quora is a rich man's hobby business. You aren't going to get practical knowledge from their decisions.

<comment><USER69> Why has it become such an SEO driven BS filled website if the owner doesn't care about the financials? Why can't he pay people to curate the answers and generally drive up the quality?

<comment><USER56> They have to at least pretend it is a real business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I made an honest effort to read that and I just couldn't.

I actually can't imagine any kind of reading medium that's worse. There's chunks of text interlaced with a bunch of visual noise, random images, links to separate threads which are huge images and bigger than the surrounding text.

<comment><USER71> I really, truly wish HN would moderate and remove comments about a link's medium. Every single post here has at least one person complaining about the layout of the source. Every time. It's exhausting. I hate it. It contributes absolutely nothing, and I don't know if anyone's noticed, but people keep using Twitter! Gasp! If you hate Twitter so much, reach out to the tweet author and ask them to publish elsewhere. If you hate Medium, e-mail the author and ask them to switch platforms. But dear God, can we please stop complaining about it in HN comments? Either read it or don't.

Please just stop.

<comment><USER72> How on earth can this individual's speech vex you to such an extent that you need it silenced?

<comment><USER73> It adds 0 to the conversation. It is very weird, almost borderline autistic behaviour...

90% of links, have some kind of: "doesn't work on my mobile... format sucks, i don't like the colors, etc... etc.." comment.

It is pure infantile/juvenile bikesheding and distracting from the point of the conversation/link that has nothing to do with formatting.

<comment><USER74> We could consider adding a guideline asking people not to post such things. The problem is that sometimes such comments are helpful for the owner of a site, who either shared their own work or happened to be on here when someone else did.

<comment><USER75> My guess is that's pretty unusual, and that if you looked at a sample of, like, 20 of them, in at least 19 cases whatever was being complained about would remain the case on the website in question, indicating that the site owner did not get value from them. Meanwhile: those comments really are a pox on the threads; it'd be better if users were in the habit of downvoting them to keep the top of the thread clear, which a guideline would accomplish.

<comment><USER74> Care to suggest a wording for it?

<comment><USER75> Discuss substance, not presentation, unless presentation is the topic of the story. Comments about web design and readability are off-topic. Advice for authors is best delivered through a polite private email.

<comment><USER74> Just to calibrate: would you say "this site breaks the back button fuck I fucking hate that" should be under this umbrella?

<comment><USER75> Extremely yes. Sites that break the back button aren't going to stop doing that because HN complains about it, right?

<comment><USER74> Ok, I added it. A brand new guideline is a rarity. We should have a ceremony.

I worded it more concretely: " _Please don 't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances [etc]_" I find that giving concrete examples and inviting the mind to generalize them works better than giving an abstract rule and inviting the mind to instantiate it. I learned this trick from spreadsheet development.

I was about to complain bitterly that the guidelines are now too long and there isn't a single one that can be taken out...but then I saw one that could be taken out, and I took it out. That was " _Please submit the canonical URL. Avoid link shorteners._ " It's covered by " _Please submit the original source._ " We added it a few years ago to try to convey that link shorteners are banned on HN, but it can be pushed out of the constitution and down into case law. It's the ones that aren't derivable from other guidelines that are hard to remove.

The list still feels too long to me. The longer it gets, the less people will take in, and I really want to avoid the mistake of accruing a big list of rules over time. They've grown like tree rings (and about as slowly) as we've learned about what feedback helps regulate the system. But the longer the list becomes, the more it starts to feel like a bureaucratic artifact rather than, let's say, a philosophical one, and that is out of sync with the intended spirit. [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20spirit%20letter%20law&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Mmm Quora was a promising platform, now is just Yahoo Answers 2.0 with ML

</comment><comment><USER77> they layoff people, it's a nature way for them to stay afloat.

</comment><comment><USER78> I hope they go permanently offline soon.

<comment><USER74> Please don't post snarky dismissals here. Maybe you don't owe Quora better, but you owe this community better if you're posting to it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> This makes it easy for companies to outsource by stealth.

<comment><USER52> and hire cheaper overseas developers. We Europeans finally get more of a chance and we don't have to relocate to the valley!</comment></comment>


A Famous Harvard Professor Became a Target over His Tweets - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/us/steven-pinker-harvard.html <comment><USER2> I'm not sure how we got to the Cancel Culture in America, but it's pretty far from Chomsky.

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." Noam Chomsky

<comment><USER3> People are welcome to express themselves, and other people are welcome to express themselves as well as a reaction.

If you don't believe in freedom of expression for those participating in what you call Cancel Culture, you don't believe in it at all.

<comment><USER4> That's a miscategorization. Cancel culture isn't about being free to criticize others (that's fair), but that's not what they want. They want to control other people by means of intimidation (force people out for having a difference in opinion) via economic peer pressure.

It's not about being able to say "eating meat is cruel, so since you don't denounce eating meat you are cruel" it's you don't denounce meat eating therefore you are evil and your peers and employers should ostracize you else the are complicit in your cruel behavior too, we demand they see it fit to remove your means of perpetuating that cruelty".

<comment><USER5> >you don't denounce meat eating therefore you are evil and your peers and employers should ostracize you (...)

This seems like a valid position to me. It's extreme, I don't agree with it, and I think people with such positions should be encouraged to be more tolerant, but it's a valid position to hold in the public space nonetheless.

I don't think the problem is people holding these positions - outrage will always exist if you allow crowds to converse freely, which is easy on the internet - but that institutions like universities instead see the outrage as an excuse to fire people. The institutions ultimately make the choices that alter people's careers, not the crowd. Universities and companies should do more to stand up for tolerance of opinions. If the crowds themselves are viewed as the problem, then I fear for the future of free communication on the internet.

<comment><USER6> > This seems like a valid position to me.

I don't. It makes no sense to intimidate and threaten anyone just because that person happens to not agree with you on a position you singled out as being relevant.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't make sense and is wrong. Kind of like the Westboro Baptist church protesting funerals is wrong.

Not sure there's anything to really do about it in a free society though. All the talk about cancel culture doesn't seem to propose any solution.

<comment><USER6> There's a world of difference between expressing an opinion on how you feel something is wrong, and demanding that anyone who doesn't show enough enthusiasm for your personal cause should be punished and persecuted out of existence or relevance.

<comment><USER7> You don't propose a solution but you seem to imply, given the context of what I said, that you want to prevent people from being able to say things, and maybe given the context of this case prevent people sending letters asking for honorary titles to be withdrawn from members of their society as in this case. Is that right?

<comment><USER6> > but you seem to imply, given the context of what I said, that you want to > prevent people from being able to say things,

Please don't put your words on anyone else's mouth. If you didn't understood what someone said then try do get information instead of trying to attribute to others the absurd and entirely baseless statements that you're fabricating.

<comment><USER7> Let me adjust it: You don't propose a solution but I infer, given the context of what I said, that you want to prevent people from being able to say things, and maybe given the context of this case prevent people sending letters asking for honorary titles to be withdrawn from members of their society as in this case. Is that right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a fever which may kill or cripple the organism, but will probably pass eventually.

Meanwhile, the tweets being criticized are such small potatoes that the lot of signatories seem ridiculous to me. Removing the police is definitely dangerous. I grew up in a high-crime area, mugged 4 times before out of high school, and I definitely needed the police around. Berkeley is considering eliminating real traffic law enforcement. I do not look forward to the deaths that will occur when people speed through streets and stoplights just because they can. We have more than enough people in the Bay Area who will push any envelope that presents itself.

I'll explore the article with the idea that the disproportionate death rate is caused by disproportionate engagement rate. Intuitively and from personal experience it's not the entire story but it may have explanatory power. Actual statistics (as opposed to regular lies and damn lies) are really useful and yet are going to anger someone whose worldview becomes endangered, whoever that is. A real scientist follows the data, not the fashion.

Getting police that pay attention to the right things and avoid the wrong things is what we need.

<comment><USER9> You could always hand traffic enforcement over to the meter maids. No real reason you need armed police for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Having seen first hand how HN cast judgement on anyone speaking out against Elizabeth Holmes, and really any 1) woman or 2) minority, and seeing people going so far to feign outrage with comments like "What the fuck? I can't believe this is tolerated on Hacker News", I'm partial to this whole thing.

On one hand, we should be standing up and saying "Hold on, regardless of what trifle thing triggered you today, that person might have a point"; on the other hand, if an institution, community, or website cannot defend themselves against this pithy nonsense, then I don't see a reason to bother with it at all. On HN in particular, the voting system is dumb and allows for imbecile mobbing, but never mind that.

>Reached at his home on Cape Cod, Professor Pinker, 65, noted that as a tenured faculty member and established author, he could weather the campaign against him. But he said it could chill junior faculty who hold views counter to prevailing intellectual currents.

I guess a third option exists which is the one that Mr. Pinker has chosen to pursue, which is to simply not give a fuck.

I quite like that.

</comment><comment><USER7> Media sure seems to spend a lot of time navel gazing lately. Any random group of five people or random bunch of twitter users criticizing an "intellectual" or pointing out the hypocrisy of an opinion columnist now seems to rise to the most important moral issue of our time.

In the past it was great because nobody really had a means to criticize or point out problems with "the paper of record" or our "intellectuals". So we didn't have to hear this constantly. Now they don't know what to do with themselves that people do and that criticism is everywhere.

<comment><USER11> By 'criticizing' you of course mean trying to get them fired, and claiming their presence makes them feel 'unsafe'? Lets not pretend 'cancel culture' refers to pointing out flaws in arguments.

<comment><USER7> Did you read the letter? If not go read it. They're essentially making a complaint to the manager of their society. Their criticisms are there and public. They're within their right to do so. The society considered and rejected the merits of the complaint or decided it didn't rise to the level of warranting removing Pinker's honorary title.

The letter may have been entirely fabricated since its not even verified. Which even leaves open the possibility this is a very small group of "cranks" who wrote it and forged people's names which then gets turned into "OMG CANCEL CULTURE" level story.

What are the "get them fired" and "makes them feel unsafe" ones? Is that where Bari Weiss tried to get the professors fired and suggest she was harassed at work because she misrepresented things that went on inside NYT and a whole bunch of other NYTers were like "uh, no that didn't happen", then she made a big splash this week about the end of "centrism" leading to the past few days of endless media navel gazing about cancel culture?

There are real cases of people trying to get others fired and plenty of real cases of reporters being "cancelled" for having contrary opinions (such as on Israel-Palestine) over the decades. But strangely those aren't the cases the media are talking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link to the actual petition:

[https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/17ZqWl5grm_F5Kn_0OarY...](https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/17ZqWl5grm_F5Kn_0OarY9Q2jlOnk200PvhM5e3isPvY/mobilebasic?urp=gmail_link)

<comment><USER12> Tldnr: Pinker can publicly say whatever he wishes and participate in any linguist society activities, but his public discourse is at odds with the LSA's officially stated goals. Therefore he should not be given representative powers for the society, which being a distinguished fellow grants him.

Agree with this sentiment or not, but TFA does not do a good job summarising the issue.

<comment><USER6> > but his public discourse is at odds with the LSA's officially stated goals.

It should be noted that the complain singles out LSA's stated goals of "listening to and respecting [the experience of students of color] is crucial", but their criticism of Pinker is that they feel he doesn't support their pet cause enthusiastically enough.

And to substantiate their accusation, the persecuters cherry-pick a hand-full of tweets dating way back from 2015, where he cited the New York Times showing real-world statistics on police shootings.

So, I feel the article summarizes the problem pretty well. This is a good example of how this Cancel Culture systematically resorts to persecutions and chilling effects as weapons to punish and censor away anyone who doesn't enthusiastically endorse their pet political cause.

<comment><USER12> I didn't find their case to be well made either. But what they are asking is for Pinker to not appear to speak in their name. They state explicitly that they don't request that any of his public discourse to be removed or censored.

This doesn't seem to be an example of cancel culture to me, because it is not an issue of freedom of speech or of opinion vs audience sensibilities. It is an issue of representativity.

If the letter states explicitly that they don't question Pinker's right to free speech, then in my view the article misrepresents the argument by talking about an "outcry over free speech".

For what it's worth, I don't personally believe that the right solution is to remove Pinker from that position, but rather to aim to increase diversity among the fellows of that society. But then I'm not a member of the linguists' society, nor even a linguist so I also believe that my personal opinion shouldn't matter here.

<comment><USER6> > But what they are asking is for Pinker to not appear to speak in their name.

No, they don't. The petitioners demand that Pinker should be taken out of the distinguished lecturers list regardless of his academic merit, which no one has any doubt it is well deserved.

The reason? Because the petitioners feel he doesn't show enough enthusiasm supporting their own pet political views. The evidence? A pair of tweets posted in 2014 and 2015. Therefore, he must be punished for his crimes and made an example to everyone who dares not support their political pressure group.

Make no mistake: this sort of fascist stunt to silence each and every "reactionary", whether they oppose their political views or simply doesn't further their agenda, poses a very dangerous threat to any democracy. They might not color-coordinate their shirts yet, but they're running plays from Italy's and Germany's inter-war period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Matt Taibbi, in his last email to subscribers, has a great write up on this.

Going after people like Steven Pinker is, I think, bat shit crazy.

It seems like here in the US that we have 5% of the far right who are crazy and 5% of the far left who are crazy. I wish they would leave the other 90% of us alone.

The Steven Pinker thing is evidence of the craziness on the far left. Evidence for the craziness on the far right is self evident.

</comment><comment><USER14> Paywalled. What were the tweets?

<comment><USER15> [https://archive.is/qhaMK](https://archive.is/qhaMK)</comment></comment>


Introducing Uber Freight: We're in for the Long Haul - <AUTHOR> https://freight.uber.com/ <comment><USER2> Is this playing in the same sandbox as uship ([http://is](http://is) hip.com)?

<comment><USER2> Sorry -- just saw this. [http://uship.com](http://uship.com) \-- I was on mobile and got auto-corrected

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Note that there is zero useful information on the site, other than the mere fact of it's existence.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is that OTTO?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you recognize a great programmer to hire? - <AUTHOR> I'm planning on hiring a good programmer but I'm getting trouble choosing the best from my applicants. I'm a software developer myself but I can't recognize a great programmer from a bad one. Any ideas? <comment><USER2> One things for sure: don't waste their time with long puzzles and month long evaluation cycles. Having just gone through the "find a new job" experience, I can say that the most decisive companies were the biggest. I know they say you should hire slowly, but I think that rule doesn't work well for finding really good talent. When very talented people are looking they will be off the market in 2 seconds. So instead of "hire slow", hire fast and have the backbone to fire fast.

<comment><USER3> I've always interpreted "hire slow" as grow the team slowly and only when you really really need to bring on a new person as opposed to having a slow hiring process. Macro vs micro. I think you can certainly hire slow and have someone through the cycle in 1–2 weeks or less (for an early startup).

<comment><USER4> That is my take of hire slow as well.

Although in most cases if the second guy you talk to is perfect, you may still need to look a bit more to be sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In our most recent hiring activity, We asked that the candidates solve an adapted simple Kata from codewars.com and asked them to choose the language that they were most comfortable.

By seeing the quality of the work that they did and the test cases that they wrote up we had a much better idea as to how they work and what they would produce.

This common Kata experience between the candates gave us much more specific questions that we could ask about the problem, the solutions, their challenges, and their triumphs.

Also agree with asking what they do in their spare time... if they tinker... good, side projects... good.

</comment><comment><USER6> Do what most of the Software companies do. In order to filter the top %1, look if:

\- the applicant worked for one of the big four (Google, Apple, FB, Microsoft). If these companies gave the applicant a GO at some point, maybe you should too.

\- the applicant is self-driven and develop non-work related software. Side projects, etc.

\- the applicant brings new skills on top of your requirements (e.g. design, other industries, mobile, etc.)

\- last but not least, you should value the experience a lot. Someone who worked 5-10 years on a bunch of different projects will save you a lot of time and money. You could have a genius/fresh out of college, if something goes wrong or requires certain skills they don't teach you at school, the lack of experience will drag you down. Don't hesitate to pay a premium up front and save money in a long run.

Good luck!

<comment><USER7> > _\- the applicant worked for one of the big four (Google, Apple, FB, > Microsoft). If these companies gave the applicant a GO at some point, maybe > you should too._

Be careful about that; said people are no longer at those companies for a reason. Often that reason is innocuous but there are people who slip through their hiring process and get washed out later.

The other thing to know is there's a lot more process at those giant companies, with good reason; "move fast and break things" doesn't work when you're making OSes or globally used search engines. Some people with long tenure there wind up more adept at managing process than the technical stuff.

<comment><USER6> Engineers at the big 4 get exposed to a lot more opportunities... In today's world if you stayed at the same spot (title/employer) for more than 2 years I'd be asking myself:

\- Why you didn't get promoted?

\- Are you not landing any job interviews? Because I know you get tones of emails from recruiters

\- Are you still learning new things? Do you want to learn new things?

In terms of processes at the big companies, you're looking for smart people... Processes don't tell me if you're smart or not. It's just you dealing with rules like any other human being.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find the following matrix extremely useful for that purpose : [http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency- matrix/](http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/)

It is not specific to any language and it gives a grade on many many relevant aspects of everyday programming (IDE, automatic build, framework, data structure...)

</comment><comment><USER9> Pick the top X programmers and pay them to perform a small but real job that's characteristic of your company in a serial fashion. If the first programmer does a good job, there's no need to bother with the rest. Sometimes the best programmer on paper isn't the best programmer for your company.

</comment><comment><USER10> The important question to ask is: What does he or she do with their free time? Do they work on side projects? Do they do freelance work? Are they always interested in learning new things? That will let you know everything you need to know.

<comment><USER11> A fellow programmer(CEO of a startup firm) used the same tricks and got a great programmer.Some programmers don't want to work and that leads to trouble for them and the firm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently had a discussion with a very senior developer about a project he'd been asked to do. It's a 6+ month effort and he's just getting started. The project is to be delivered to a customer, but the customer has not been engaged and does not know we are working on it.

I asked the dev how he'd feel if he completed the project and the customer said, 'Nah, not interested, thanks anyway.'

His response: 'As long as I get a paycheck, who cares.'

Not sure exactly why, but that just doesn't sit well with me.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't sit well with me either.

<comment><USER13> My idea of a great programmer (non-founder) is one who can execute and deliver the product that his employer wants, which is what the employer thinks is what the customer wants. Let me provide the reverse perspective as a programmer. If I'm a great programmer and you've paid me for my skills as a programmer, the I'm going to trust that you know what you want me to build. Programmers don't have time nor should care to talk to customers unless I'm a founder. In my opinion, it's the employers job to mitigate the risk of the customer not buying the final product. Sure, the 'who cares' attitude doesn't feel right but If you ask all our applicants that question you're just separating them between those who know to lie to get the paycheck and those who are just honest about wanting the same paycheck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the hardest part is getting some kind of hiring flow anyway. Knowing who to contact is the biggest obstacle. But once you've got someone...

First: actually read the resume and letter. Learn about the experience this person has. Unless you're hiring out of a bootcamp, the candidate has worked on something and you should not be walking in blind. (If he or she hasn't articulated it in the resume and letter, then I wouldn't expect to have initiated an meeting.)

I don't use challenges, homework, riddles, quizzes, etc. anymore. Again, we're not starting from scratch. I hear it and wonder, "Do you really think I haven't yet figured out the difference between fifo and lifo?" (Or, "Here's a little, 5-minute challenge. Just a little date math." Oops. Forgot the leap second.)

I focus on problem decomposition. I ask about problems that the person has worked on. I talk about my own systems and have him or her opine on it. We brainstorm. These discussions get into things like:

* What was the situation? Why was it a problem? Was the solution obvious? Was is tricky to intuit, or was it a lot of work to implement?

* What were your constraints? Were they natural or derived? (Perhaps it was a very-low-resource environment, or there was real-time requirement, or it needed resistance to a type of attack, or it required strict regulatory compliance.)

* What was the mental model and how did the individual arrive at it? Did it change during implementation?

This structure has worked for me at most levels of hiring. I can ask a very junior person who, say, writes SQL to generate reports to talk about a particularly challenging report, or one that is particularly elegant. If he says, "I changed the order of operations to get the rows down from 4 quadrillion to 400,000" then I know that, conceptually, he knows about cardinality.

I can ask a director to talk about a project that he ran with a remote team in the same way. If the drop has to happen in sync and you have people in 4 time zones spanning 10 hours, did he wake people up or did he use some kind of technological orchestration?

Also, I think it's worth noting that quite a few very good programmers do not keep very public profiles, so I really don't trust the greenness of a github profile.

<comment><USER15> >First: actually read the resume and letter. Learn about the experience this person has.

>I don't use challenges, homework, riddles, quizzes, etc. anymore.

Unless you don't get many resumes, I find it hard to believe that this is a good hiring flow for you at all. A lot of people who agree with me will often say that nobody has time to be reading hundreds or thousands of resumes, but I'll take it one step further: unless you are rigorously verifying the information on resumes, resumes are basically useless.

It is way too easy to lie on a resume. I don't mean mere embellishment or exaggeration. I mean straight-up lying. I looked at your profile. You have an impressive resume. What would stop me from copying your resume and submitting it as mine? Your impressive positions would be harder to fake, so I'd just lower all the CTO, head, VP, and chief titles to lower level titles.

Let's take this even further. Let's pretend that you actually call the references for the positions on all the resumes that you read. What's stopping an applicant from giving you a friend's number and having them pretend to be their former manager/employer? One could argue that the same sort of deceit works for challenges, quizzes, etc., but there's the additional barrier of at least knowing a decent enough programmer who can take the challenge or quiz for you.

<comment><USER16> I have to respectfully disagree. The poster above you is not saying that they don't verify, they say they verify through different means.

They are saying, in my opinion, that it is important to step away from the S.O.P. because by doing so we gain the clarity of insight from treating them not as cogs to fill a gear ratio, but as human beings that bring an enormous range of abilities that, for various reasons, may not communicate unless one allows them to, hence the example of a root reduction in the db search space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Examples of past work. Passion. Can they build things themselves or did they ride the coattails of a large team.

Regardless, hold your developers accountable to results. Manage by output not man hours.

If within 6 months you don't feel they're a good fit, move on.

</comment><comment><USER18> Look for a super-nerd, the guy who tinkers with code for fun. I have recently been through a good hire and a bad hire, looking back the difference is now clear. What the person does on their time off is a good indicator.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ask them for a solution to a problem. Tell them you want the solution using best practices and with all of the bells and whistles. They should be able to do this. Then tell them the optimize the solution for:

\- development time

\- execution time

\- memory constraints

A good programmer should be able to respond to changing needs. They should be able to see the best solution for the current situation. They know what technical debt they are incurring and should identify it in their solution.

Also, if this is a small team then personality should play a large part in your decision. One person can really ruin a productive team. Does the person respond to your feedback well? Where do they show cracks in their facade? Do they explain themselves clearly? Can they think in the abstract or do they always speak in terms of their domain? Will you be able to give them high level directives or will you have to talk them through line level code? Can they do things the way you do things or do they have to change the world when they are out of their comfort zone? Do they feel a desire to throw code out when they don't understand it or can they work with existing code? Do they use phrases like "it's broken" or other catch all phrases that indicate they don't understand something and are unwilling to learn it? Do they ask for clarification or do they make assumptions and quietly go down the wrong path? When they do ask for clarification, is it at a level consistent with their title and experience? I can go on, but I might save it for a blog post. I have learned a lot from having to staff and lead a team and the above have been some of the points that have distinguished the producers from the consumers.

Cheers and choose wisely.

</comment><comment><USER20> My process:

* Make them do a task that is both relevant and realistic with respect to what you do.

* Leave 'natural' traps in the task - code problems that have tripped you up in the past and see if the candidate falls into the same trap or spots it.

* Ask the candidate to clean up their code near the end and watch what they do.

</comment><comment><USER21> Look at the code, nothing else matters

</comment><comment><USER22> view code on github profile

</comment><comment><USER23> Great programmers have: 1.) Positive Attitude 2.) Great communication skills. 3.) Good time management skills. 4.) Quick learning ability 5.) Broad technical experience 6.) High end user forecast 7.) Team playing skills

</comment><comment><USER11> Hiring great programmers is hard. I have been advised that great programmers have great ideas. You can also ask questions (open ended) about coding during the interview.

<comment><USER24> Even telling the programmer to create a prototype to solve a certain problem helps a lot. You get to understand the programmer's approach in solving problems

<comment><USER25> We've put together several take-home mini projects as Github repos that have instructions and sample data or a starter template. Candidate clones the repo, commits frequently, and builds something demonstratable that works or doesn't. It's structured to be similar to the kind of early real task they would get. Key is it's open book, they can google and stackoverflow as much as they want. We can see evolution of thought process in the commits and have a good discussion in followup conversation. We do this after they have passed a phone screen or onsite interview and we are interested. So far, we like the results.</comment></comment></comment>


How playing "The Way Home" earns us revenue by mining Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mowowstudios.com/2014/04/playing-way-home-earns-us-revenue-mining-bitcoin/

<comment><USER2> I think this is pretty unethical, mostly because there is no mention in the app description or the app itself that you are doing this. Something about it feels very greasy and shady. I'd almost, _almost_ , call it a trojan.

Now if you put a disclaimer up front, or if it was an opt-in thing, then sure. But right now you don't have any of that in the app, so I'm not sure how it differentiates itself from something like this: [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/8/bitcoin- trojan](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/8/bitcoin-trojan)

I'm sure apple approved it because they didn't catch it.

Gross.

<comment><USER3> The post is dated April 1st.

<comment><USER2> I understand, but people should stop and consider the virality and potential impact of their april fool's day joke. What if Apple didn't find this funny and yanked their app? Boom goes the dynamite and for no purpose but posting a dumb joke that isn't even funny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whether real or not, it does raise a question I've been wondering about for a while now - what about a f2p game that _did_ state upfront that while playing, you are mining; so the more you play, the more it costs you. No IAP, no upfront costs, etc.

Obviously it would not be suitable for some game types (anything 3d heavy, basically), and has obvious battery/temperature implications on mobile, but it does seem to provide a plausible additional option for monetization.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hi everyone, Bleau here from moWOW. We made a follow-up post to clarify both the nature of the post and our thoughts on having players mine Bitcoin - [http://blog.mowowstudios.com/2014/04/bitcoin-mining-way- home...](http://blog.mowowstudios.com/2014/04/bitcoin-mining-way-home-just- april-fools/)

Yes, it was just April Fools. It would take 30k days to mine one block with an iPad 2, not to mention how sleazy it would be to do it behind our players' backs.

</comment><comment><USER6> Y'all know what day it is, right?

<comment><USER2> I hope it is a joke. Though, if it was, it's a pretty bad one that going to reap them nothing but negative attention for no good reason at all.

It's astounding when smart people do dumb shit.

<comment><USER6> Today is nothing but smart people doing dumb shit, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wonder how this affects battery usage and temperature on the devices, I'd love to see reports based on app usage with/without mining enabled.

<comment><USER8> Did you check to see if the phone/ipad heats up while playing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As first I thought this was another botnet operation mining Bitcoins.

There's actually an altcoin experiment at the moment, [http://huntercoin.org](http://huntercoin.org). Basically an MMOG that runs on Blockchain technology. Users play and "mine" coins.

</comment><comment><USER10> A pretty poor April Fools stunt (I'm hoping that's what it is) IMHO, given that some people probably have/would do this...

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow, I hope it's a joke. If not, then this is terrible. No mention upfront, and it'll kill your battery.</comment>


Dont tell me you want to change the world. Show me. - <AUTHOR> http://excid3.com/blog/dont-tell-me-you-want-to-change-the-world-show-me/

<comment><USER2> Same idea, visual form: <http://joeyroth.com/poster/>. Be a hustler.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> :( Sorry, I stopped reading and started doing half way through... so I didn't actually finish the article.

<comment><USER4> :)</comment></comment>