Slack Platform Launch - <AUTHOR> http://slackhq.com/post/134878632730/launch-platform <comment><USER2> Facebook F8 all over again in the sense of startups throwing the success or failure of their company onto a proprietary centralized system that can block or cut them off for any reason.

Or rather, another incarnation of IRC chat bots, email listservs, and stuff that's been around forever as commodity autoresponders, only now it's worth millions in investments to write the equivalent of a weekend hack IRC bot because of artificial scarcity imposed by a non-open platform.

<comment><USER3> While you are right that it's very similar to IRC etc you are completely missing the fundamental reason Slack et al are popular: user experience, especially for non-technical people.

Not everyone grew up on IRC with bouncers, irssi on a remote server, and their own server where they could upload attachments to in a single keystroke.

Now it's true that there are new alternatives for non-technical people such as IRCCloud, but (a) it costs money for individuals (b) it's frankly not as good, UX-wise. Hence not as popular.

<comment> wh-uws THANK YOU. This is why slack is winning. They took many of the concepts of what makes irc great abd put a much better user experience on top.

Why is that so hard for people to understand?

This happens over and over again.

\- Google wasn't the first search engine. \- Facebook wasn't the first social network. \- Microsoft didn't build the first operating system.

They all just did it in a way that appealed to mass amounts of users.

<comment><USER4> I have no idea why you were down-voted. It's the truth.

Now, to answer why is it so hard to understand? Many people here are programmers/engineers and fail to understand how marketing and nice packaging can sell. Especially if they are old enough to know how IRC works.

To extend what you wrote, I'd compare Slack with iPhone. All the tech. to build the iPhone was there, but Apple managed to put it all together in beautiful, easy to use package. Slack is the iPhone in its area.

<comment><USER2> Think of it this way. Did the Web Browser need to be a proprietary closed protocol in order for the massive improvement over Gopher/WAIS or other end user hypertext information systems back then?

No, Netscape/Mozilla didn't need to "own" HTTP and HTML completely, and turn the Web into a giant App Store in order to innovate in the Browser client, neither did Google, Apple, or MS. At various points, proprietary extensions were tried, and either failed, or got standardized when they became popular or proven their need.

All Praise to Slack's UI, I love all the flourishes, like auto-detection of paste of code bits and offering to create snippets. I get it, I really do.

I just don't think we need another messaging platform owned by a single company.

<comment><USER5> Actually, many features of the modern web (DOM, XmlHttpRequest, box-sizing: border-box) were implemented by IE first.

Unfortunately it's not in the best interest of anyone capable of engineering open/distributed platforms to actually do so. Why would they? It's way easier and more profitable to create something on your own terms, something you can control. I would risk that it's better for the customer.

People are flocking from WordPress to SquareSpace, from self hosted SMTP servers to Google, from private hosting to cloud hosting.

Is this a good thing in the long term? I don't think so either, but doing it any other way would be heroism and we are short on heroes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every program attempts to expand until it has an app store. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

<comment><USER7> Abrkn's law was born.

<comment><USER8> Brekken's Law (assuming that's his surname from the email in his profile). It's a snowclone of Zawinski's law of software development[1]:

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

It really is true. My previous employer had a dream of turning their extremely specific web app into a platform, with an app store and everything. I assume that being a platform means big bucks, idk.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Zawinski.27s_la...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Zawinski.27s_law_of_software_envelopment)

<comment><USER9> It's a snarky observation that hides an important insight: email is the most important thing that the internet does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel like the world has lost it's mind slightly. When a 2 year old startup launches an $80m fund. I mean I understand they want to be a platform and can see the strength in funding projects that will empower a platform model but still. This is the point at which I think we're really in a boom heading in that bubble direction, and I was never one to fall in to the trap of calling it a bubble before. Love slack, love the platform play, but my God this is getting crazy.

<comment><USER11> Slack makes a ton of money and it is unimaginable to me (and many others) that it's not going to be a massive force. It has been a revelation to literally every entrepreneur I know - and I'm from Virginia not SV (although I recently moved to NYC - same deal).

Now that it has established itself beyond almost any doubt, its INVESTORS have established an $80M bet around those who make the company a core component of their strategy. Slack, which has very low burn, seems to have contributed to this fund but we can safely assume it was a small amount (if at all).

This is a sign of strength. We're still creating transformational companies with real revenue models, and these companies often facilitate other great companies. Tech is strong - valuations may be wrong one way or another, but tech is a great place to deploy capital.

<comment><USER12> Genuine question -- how how is it been a revelation? It seems to be very similar to HipChat, which was just an iteration on previous chat systems.

<comment><USER13> For me, by far the biggest difference is the notifications. In HipChat, notifications are both buggy and almost completely unconfigurable[0]. If I sent a message to a colleague while they were offline, they would never get notified of it[1]. Slack notifications always work how I expect and are configurable to the degree I desire.

Slack also has a nicer UI and better integrations for us, and generally just always works how I want. I don't know if I'd call it a "revelation", but it's way better than any comparable product I've used.

[0] - I think HipChat recently added support for more granular notification settings, but I don't use it anymore. Also, it took over 3 years of this being their 1st or 2nd most requested feature before they addressed it, so I don't give them any credit for having it now.

[1] - They might get an email depending on their settings, but the HipChat app would never give a notification.

<comment><USER14> Slack is one of my most annoying and least-effective tools because every single message has a pop up that blocks off a corner of my screen.

Slack's notifications lack customization which makes them annoying. Either you get the whole package, intrusive desktop pop up and all, or you get no notification. Where's the option to have sounds but no pop ups? Where's the option to lump notifications so you don't get spammed?

<comment><USER15> Agreed. I wrote a blog post outlining a way to get around this. ([https://medium.com/building-things-people-want/slack-is- too-...](https://medium.com/building-things-people-want/slack-is-too- noisy-1b318a2a6c02)) The gist: turn off all notifications then flip them back on by channel. Still doesn't address de-coupling of pop-ups and sound, though.

<comment><USER16> Loved the article. check out www.spacechatapp.com would love to pick your brains on how to filter through the noise. we're building it.

<comment><USER17> Your site shows cloudflare errors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think it's reasonable to say we're in a bubble because of a $80M fund around developing for a new platform. Few companies truly become platforms, and it's a misnomer to call it a bubble if this only happens to one company. It takes a lot of money or momentum to develop one. Facebook had by far the most compelling one in the last ten years, and the obvious incentive there was it's >300M users at the time. The case is less compelling for a B2B platform like Slack, but it makes sense as many of these investors also invest in B2B startups that can gain huge visibility through the Slack platform.

By having six investors in the fund, each fund can mitigate risk of Slack's platform not getting traction while lowering the barrier for developers to enter. This slideshow by A16Z outlines why the venture capitalists (including some on the list of Slack fund contributors) are tightening their belts around investing and telling companies like Slack to generate reliable business models rather than IPO prematurely.

This premature IPO behavior was the reason for the last bubble, and I think this investment fund is proof that we are NOT in a bubble. The new strategy for these investment funds is to allow their startups to generate revenue on a much more stable basis without the need to go public (and get cash for equity) for this to happen. Most B2B companies would eventually benefit from a recurring-fees model built around the Slack platform, and this enables smaller, fledging companies to scale much more quickly towards long-term cashflow positivity.

In all, the kings of tech companies are those that find some sort of platform or natural monopoly. Slack may be next in line to follow Airbnb, Uber, Twitter, Facebook, and Google respectively. Overall, by allowing a method to build these platforms while not going public, investors increase returns for their companies in the short AND LONG term while maintaining a course of innovation!

<comment><USER19> A good comparison that hasn't been mentioned much in this thread is Salesforce's Salesforce1 Fund, which launched with $100M in 2014 to encourage people to build around the B2B app-creation platform it had launched a year earlier [0]. As the parent post mentions, it's important to make the case "compelling" for building best-in-class integrations with a relatively- recently-launched platform (whether or not that platform is sponsored by a historically huge corporation or not).

It's an interesting point that bringing multiple sources of external capital to bear on an ecosystem via a multi-sponsor fund, rather than into the business itself via an IPO, allows the business to grow at a natural rate, and avoids Slack contributing to a "bubble" in which companies race to go public to launch their own platforms. I think we've learned from the last time around that the public markets aren't the best place to manage expectations in technology.

As for why the sponsors made this investment, there's a very good case to be made that (a) efficient free-form communication within agile teams at small and large companies is a pattern as crucial to developing modern businesses as a CRM, and (b) Slack is perfectly poised to capture and _hold_ this new market in the same way that Salesforce was. Certainly worth a $13mm commitment that's diversified amongst companies whose teams could still pivot should Slack not work out.

[0] [https://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press- releases...](https://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press- releases/2014/09/140908.jsp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Please guys, no. Don't build your startup on top of another platform. Remember Facebook? Remember Twitter? That 80M is a farce by the VCs that actually re- contributes back into Slack, not so much for you.

<comment><USER21> It depends, if having a slack integration will benefit your business and theirs and they are willing to help fund it, seems like a win win.

Of course you are correct that you would never want to bet your business on their platform.

<comment><USER22> Until they are in your business also...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> No need to build your entire startup on Slack but a solid integration can drive serious initial revenue for your startup especially if you do not get a lot of direct traffic. "One click install" is what helped Woocommerce and others get massive growth on the back of Wordpress through top exposure in the plugin directory.

Slack is still very much at the bottom of the growth curve. I have seen electrical contractors who need a way to chat with onsite workers at various projects switch from using WhatsApp/SMS to Slack. If one click job scheduling apps start appearing in the Slack App Store they will be quickly adopted by these businesses. I would be surprised if Slack or something like it has not completely wiped out internal email in 5 years.

<comment><USER24> I too am bullish on Slack and am with you right until "wiped out email." I've heard this said about Slack before and don't get it. Asana is a real email killer in that it's both realtime (instant) and structured (i.e. it wholly replaces email _threads_ ). On a meta level, why is it that it's so important for Slack's marketing that they "replace email"? Why isn't it enough for them to "go beyond email" (which is totally realistic and _honest_ and still a potentially huge business)?

<comment><USER25> I don't know whether it's important for Slack's marketing to claim they are replacing email.

What I can tell you is that it factually has wiped out internal email for our team at Charge.

And I think that's pretty common for most teams that have used it. Why write a slow clunky old email when a Slack message will do?

<comment><USER26> > Why write a slow clunky old email when a Slack message will do?

Because email is threaded conversations, while slack is not. I can write 5 different emails and respond to each thread individually, but I can't do that in slack: I can write 5 messages, but my peer(s) can't answer each one individually - they can just write 5 messages and I have to figure out what they respond to.

Email has the added benefit of working nicely when you're on a connection that's not always available (mobile, traveling, etc.) I can write the message and have it sent later, download all messages and read (and answer) them without a connection. Slack (and other chat applications) just falls flat on it's face when the connection drops from time to time.

Now, all of that might be properties that you don't need because you're never traveling and always on the same schedule, so that you're able to answer questions in real time - but don't assume that's true for everyone.

<comment><USER27> We have a prototype threading implementation for Slack. Drop a line to <hn username> @gmail.com if interested to test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Kind of funny for people to say that a new startup launching a fund means there's a bubble. That's exactly what Twilio have been doing even since 2010: [https://gigaom.com/2010/09/23/got-a-twilio-based-app-get- som...](https://gigaom.com/2010/09/23/got-a-twilio-based-app-get-some- investment-dollars/)

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/01/twilio-and-500-startups- lau...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/01/twilio-and-500-startups-launch-a- micro-fund-fund-for-european-startups/) [http://recode.net/2015/05/20/twilio- launches-50-million-deve...](http://recode.net/2015/05/20/twilio- launches-50-million-development-fund/)

</comment><comment> martin-adams So if I build something on top of this that actually turns out to be popular and turns a good profit, what is to protect me from Slack then building it in the core product that cutting me out or shutting me down?

Not much I guess. Twitpic anyone? [1].

1\. [https://blog.twitpic.com/2014/09/twitpic-is-shutting- down/](https://blog.twitpic.com/2014/09/twitpic-is-shutting-down/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know how you can apply for a Slack Fund grant?

I'd love to create a Browserling integration. Browserling (www.browserling.com) is a live interactive cross-browser testing service and this integration would let you embed a live browser directly in Slack.

Use case: Let's say a user reports a bug in IE10 on Windows 7 in your webapp. You just use `/browserling windows7 ie10 URL` command in Slack and that will embed a real interactive IE 10 on Win7 that runs your webapp at `URL` directly in Slack.

<comment><USER30> You can email them firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER31> Have you or anyone you know gotten a response? Do you know what exactly you should send them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Slack is great and all, but I personally don't feel like it's revolutionary. It's just an iterative improvement over a chat client, nothing groundbreaking there.

<comment><USER33> As in most other popular things, there's little actual substance undergirding Slack. Slack lives off hot air. Lucky for them, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> 2 points:

1\. Remember when Dropbox was dumb, because rsync? (Bunch of naysayers here citing fee alternatives).

From what I'm seeing, bots and integrations are great and here to stay.

Businesses will gladly pay money in exchange for time and complexity not spent rolling your own.

2\. This seems like a boon for us happy slack users!

<comment><USER35> Will somebody please explain the use cases for slack bots to me? If they are basically glorified command line scripts, the I get it. But are there genuine and important use cases that require/can benefit from a richer dialogue?

<comment><USER36> There's a pretty good talk on "chatops" by the guys at GitHub[0]. Basically, it provides a dialog around a "shared command-line" where developers from learn from each other by simply watching chat. I think it's more beneficial to distributed companies.

However, my question for those using chatops is basically how do you keep the repository for the bot "tame"? It needs access to _everything_ if you want it to be useful, which means having lots of secrets exposed to the bot.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NST3u-GjjFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NST3u-GjjFw)

<comment><USER37> Give the bot runtime (not in the repository, environment variable or something) credentials for a secret storage tool of some kind, where it can then fetch credentials for whatever it's allowed to do.

<comment><USER38> Securing the bot itseld is definitely a larger challenge, but a heavily shielded box and tools like Vault can go a long way. It's actually not much different to securing other solutions to the problem like Capistrano or Chef, and definitely still better than giving root SSH access to your developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> That's 80M against the commoditization of hosted chat. Smart way to put up barriers to entry.

</comment><comment><USER40> Their dev blog post [0] mentions an AWS Lambda Blueprint to go along with a chatbot framework (BotKit) and an "Add to Slack" workflow. This (AWS Lambda) is a smart move; it reduces the friction of writing a quick integration with Slack considerably, making it almost a commodity-level feature. This bet on AWS Lambda will likely be a big deal for general AWS Lambda adoption, given how insanely popular Slack integrations are.

[0]: [https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/launch- platform-1147...](https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/launch- platform-114754258b91#.jp25qhvsl)

</comment><comment><USER41> Really like the announcement of botkit[1], I was just looking at adding a vote bot to our slack and only found a really old example that ended up not working.

1\. [https://github.com/howdyai/botkit/](https://github.com/howdyai/botkit/)

<comment><USER42> I hope that the official blessings of botkit doesn't negatively impact other bot frameworks that user the Slack APIs. Lita ([https://www.lita.io/](https://www.lita.io/)) is an _excellent_ way to write Slack bots in Ruby. It supports other chat services and protocols too, so your bots don't lock you in to Slack.

<comment><USER43> Author of Lita here. Lita's Slack adapter isn't going anywhere. :}

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It is yammer all over again [http://i.imgur.com/DKODqy3.png](http://i.imgur.com/DKODqy3.png)

I can't help but post this based on my experience pitching to vendors to join an app store.

Slack CEO: Yammer made $1.2B. We need to make $12B. For that I need to make a hit song with 10,000 background dancers with me on the stage.

Board: How much can you pay each dancer?.

CEO: $10/hr

Board: Ok. Announce an App Store.

You are already a hero and there are hundreds of them to jump on stage to dance with you in that 5 minute song.

CEO: Now you are talking!

<comment><USER45> We were looking at a company communication channel to replace Yammer and Google Chat a while back, and briefly played with Slack. In the end trading in one cloud service for another seemed unwise.

Because we already used self-hosted GitLab when they announced the inclusion of MatterMost (FOSS self-hosted alternative to Slack) we simply activated that and have been quite satisfied with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I summarize Slack this way generally:

\- If you've never used Hipchat, Slack is completely revolutionary. \- If you've used Hipchat, Slack is still cool...and then you see the price comparison and ponder...WHY?

<comment><USER47> My company has both! Why buy one when you have two for twice the price!

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Interesting, could this be the beginning of something like WeChat for businesses, where every business function you think of can just be completed on Slack? I doubt there's anything about the U.S. market that makes these non- open / corporation controlled platforms undesirable (as some other comments suggest); after all, Windows dominates the business landscape. Its just a question of whether Slack can go from convincing start ups x,y and z to use these apps, to convincing Fortune 500 companies to take the plunge.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've never used slack and don't know what types of apps they want to integrate but it seems like a disruption of a nice chunk of a market that ERP vendors have ventured into (the job productivity/project management etc. branch). That sounds good because quite frankly often the stuff ERP vendors offer in that space is somewhat lackluster "well we have to be in this area" material.

I think the slack platform could eventually branch out into more traditional ERP areas (accounting, production etc.) and it could be an interesting potential shift from "everything from one hand" to "let's configure our ERP from different services"

Building a platform like this is nontrivial and there's tons of problems ahead but I like the general idea.

</comment><comment><USER50> I feel an App ecosystem definitely helps to expand the functions. However I also feel it is opposite of a nimble app which does one thing clean. In general we have always had this conflict and it is difficult to choose to stay lean and simple especially when you decide to grow and scale to engulf everything. Its almost like 'Let me grab as much as I can before some one comes' sort of thinking. Only the market can prove if this is the right thinking in the long run. But when you see it in the short span, you do not have much choice.

</comment><comment><USER51> How does BotKit compare to slack-client[1]?

[1] [https://github.com/slackhq/node-slack- client](https://github.com/slackhq/node-slack-client)

</comment><comment><USER52> Can someone who uses slack comment on the value over skype for example?

It seems like text chat is hard to get wrong, and with so many options, I wonder why (real) people choose slack specifically.

<comment><USER53> In the 90s Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was extremely popular, you connect to a public server, and join a #channel and chat with people, send files, share links etc. There were thousands of ways to extend IRC, through custom clients, bots, scripts.

Slack builds upon a lot of core concepts that IRC had but differs in a few ways. 1) Simplicity, you can get up and running in a few minutes and have your whole team connected. 2) Managed hosting, maintenance and client updates 3) Excellent UX, features are intuitive and new features are introduced with guidance 4) Cross platform support and fast mobile clients 5) Integrations, being able to push and pull data across you apps from the place your entire team can communicate is incredibly powerful. The discoverability and ease of deployment (some can be deployed in a few minutes).

I think they have a great position in the SMB market. Surprisingly some enterprise organizations still use IRC internally due to the control they have over server/data etc. There is probably an opportunity for Slack to develop an on-premise solution for enterprise.

<comment><USER54> I was a bit hesitant first when our company first started using Flowdock (a Slack competitor), but it turned out to be just great. For example: flows (or chat rooms) with inbox for integrations to e-mail, GitHub, CI and so on -- discussion can be directly related to a certain item, such as a failed build!

And of course, discussion threads. This is something Slack still doesn't have, and is a one of the reasons to stay with Flowdock instead. Everyone knows what happens with IRC channels when there's hundreds of people and multiple simultaneous discussions. Good luck trying to follow the conversation if you weren't following it realtime.

That said, it sadly seems that Slack will eat the whole pie, and it is probably the most future-proof choice at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Does anyone know if this comes with an initiative to fill in the gaps in Slack's administrative API so addons can be created around that, too? I'm working with SlimerJS to audit message retention and a few other settings.

Slack has a great core experience and I understand why it's doing so well. But it's weird to see an $80m fund to invest particularly in Slack addons when a lot of existing features don't yet have API support.

</comment><comment><USER56> I used Slack for a few months this year. A customer didn't use email, preferring Slack. Slack is an awesome platform, but I missed the asynchrony of email. When I code I like to have 30 to 40 minute uninterrupted work periods and I found an always on Slack took me out of the flow. Using Slack with specified "turn it off" quiet times would solve that issue however.

<comment><USER24> Just keep it open in a tab of the same browser window where you check HN ;) (and don't enable the desktop notifications, of course)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The fund is a great play for Slack to become the next enterprise app store. A welcome alternate to the Salesforce AppExchange IMO.

<comment><USER58> Interesting idea. I love the thought of integrating everything over to a text chat interface as opposed to salesforce's godawful web UI.

I really like! I'm imagining, say accounting integrations which are cryptographically signed by the accounting software and go into a channel.

I bet I'll be paying for an enterprise inside-the-firewall version of slack in the next few years, or wrestling with some competitor that's not quite as good, one way or the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Slack team did a great job with this.

Here's a fresh integration with Slack Button in Ruby, [https://github.com/dblock/slack-bot-server](https://github.com/dblock/slack- bot-server) serving a "Hello World" bot. Hope it helps someone.

</comment><comment><USER60> Nice move by Slack and great opportunity for slackbot developers. We discover zero interfaces and just launched analytics bot – [http://www.brobot.io](http://www.brobot.io) You can use it with Google Analytics, Mixpanel, New Relic.

</comment><comment><USER61> Wonder if their stack is still PHP/MySQL etc?[0]

[0] [https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/426469205005705217](https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/426469205005705217)

<comment><USER62> Indeed they do [https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/677237274770341888](https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/677237274770341888)

</comment></comment><comment> jim-greer In this thread: a lot of people who haven't used Slack attacking it...

</comment><comment><USER63> Evernote had a developer conference. They wanted an ecosystem, and kind of had a platform. They bought sucessful apps.

Past tense! Much better/realistic parallel, than Facebook F8.

</comment><comment><USER64> I've never used Slack, but people keep saying that it's good because of the apps. What sort of apps are those?

<comment><USER65> They are pretty much integrations. Access APIs of different platforms and manipulate / gather data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I definitely witter a new IT bubble

</comment><comment><USER67> Looks like SHOW HN will be crowded more than often after this weekend.

</comment><comment><USER68> Christ, they just don't get it... What we need isn't "apps for Slack" what we need is onprem Slack. Because sending confidential information to "the cloud" is all kinds of stupid and potentially violates a bunch of laws

<comment><USER69> folks at atlassian (hipchat) are already doing this...it depends which markets one pursuing...slack and hipchat are totally on different scale. Atlassian even didn't make hipchat user numbers public during IPO proceedings

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I'm sorry, I've scoffed at other valuations and investments, but I'm just completely beside myself. Why does a chat room need "apps"?

It's kind of weird actually. There's two sorts of people that defend these announcements, I've found:

The first thinks that they are going to build an "amazing" platform some day and that they'll follow this model for "growing revenue". So of course they defend it.

And then there's the second group that has some "great idea" who plans to build on Slack's platform. Personally, I look forward to 2 years of stories about how Slack was unfair to them, or changed the rules on them, or broke an API. Or didn't review fast enough, or any of the other complaints that pop up monthly about other closed platforms.

<comment><USER11> Have you ever even USED Slack? The apps are amazing, it's 50% of why people use Slack. There have been apps since I've known about it which has been almost since it launched.

<comment><USER71> 50% that's a stretch.

Useful, yes, 1/2 of interactions, questionable.

<comment><USER72> Parent didn't say 50% of interactions were integrations, just that the integrations are 50% of the reason people _use_ Slack and I agree. There are other somewhat comparable products that are a lot cheaper, yet don't deliver the same value with regards to integrations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Why not fix all the bugs that are there before lunching new products/features?

<comment><USER74> Something that's in the middle between a bug and a missing feature (imho) is that Slack's failure to support Github-style markdown.

GitHub does a great job with markdown, especially with programming-language- specific highlighting. And even things like strike-though text and URL's, which aren't specific to software development.

It's one of the few aspects of Slack that has me open to alternative services.</comment></comment>


Show HN: My weekend Project - Almost Flat UI Theme - <AUTHOR> http://websymphony.net/almost-flat-ui/

<comment><USER2> Really nice. I'd remove the hover effect from the disabled button style though. You want to communicate with the user that the item is not activated and having a hover just makes it a light colored button.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice work! I like it.

One small bug: on the iPhone Google Chrome view of the green button group, there is a strange difference in appearance when compared to the rendering in desktop Google Chrome. <http://i.imgur.com/KBCepbX.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, yea that does look odd. Will fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow looks great! One little piece of advice: the "disabled" button doesn't look quite inactive enough to me; if I saw it on a webpage I might try to click on it. Maybe make it a bit lighter/more transparent?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Good suggestion, will do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know you can't control the colors used by whoever uses your theme, but please consider offering _fewer_ / _more distinct_ colors. R/g colorblindness affects around 5-10% of males depending on region, which depending on your market, can be a huge subset. The default colors you're offering, if used together, are not distinct enough to be told apart. [1] This is not an easy problem to "fix", however, but generally limiting the number of colors and trying to make sure they are outside of the most common color blindness ranges [2].

Of course, the onus is on the designer using your templates; not you, but I always feel this information is relevant when discussing design themes.

[1] <http://imgur.com/a/CuDiw>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness#Epidemiology>

</comment><comment><USER6> It wasn't immediately clear, but this is for the Foundation framework. It looks great, nice work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Added that in the header now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amit you are very talented. Thank you for this!

Check out an app I'm working on. I think you'll like it.

<http://kokonautlabs.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/my-app/>

<comment><USER7> Also check out his app HipCV. It literally took me 20 seconds to turn my linkedin resume into a really really good resume lol.

Check it out:

[https://hipcv.com/antonchan/r/linkedin-imported-resume- march...](https://hipcv.com/antonchan/r/linkedin-imported-resume- march-25-2013)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am glad HipCV was useful for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks great! Just a small typo: "You can also you <em> to italicize your words."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apart from the logo, it's not doing it for me. That's not very helpful though so here's my one suggestion: the button hover state isn't very well distinguished form the regular button.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice! A couple of comments though

1) The separators in the top bar are a bit too 3d to fit with the rest 2) The button borders are not dark enough in the button groups

</comment><comment><USER11> The buttons would be great with a separate :active style which reinforces that they are bona fide functioning buttons with some extra 3D on the mousedown.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't see any design here, it's just change a few colors that don't go together. My opinion, you should have gone surfing.

</comment><comment><USER13> So now we have trivial UI themes floating in the top half of the Hacker News front page. Lovely, just lovely.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is anyone else sick of fedoras?

<comment><USER15> Nope, Fedoras are timeless.

<http://meninfedoras.tumblr.com/>

<comment><USER16> Sorry, thought you said <http://fedorasofokc.tumblr.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Foundation is already as flat as it gets... Is the red supposed to be orange and the green a teal color :S ?

The list bullets/numbers are too far left, out of alignment with the header. I really don't think the colors go together well, I hate to make such a subjective comment but I can't get over it...

Check out the Foundation docs, I don't really get what all is modified here beyond the colors: <http://foundation.zurb.com/docs/components/alert- boxes.html> I suppose there are a _few_ places that there is an extra contrast color that adds a bit of dimension to the buttom/form elements that could go to match "Flat" better, but otherwise...

<comment><USER18> Regarding the list bullets and numbers: this style is known as hanging punctuation [1] and is "classically correct".

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_punctuation>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's nice but the dropdown selection suffers from the common issue that Amazon solved using "fuzzier" mouse tracking. Trying to get to the last dropdown box on this "Almost Flat UI" is hard: as soon as you're one or two pixels off everything disappears.</comment>


Pittsburgh paper launches online charging scheme - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/02/pittsburgh-post-gazette-charging-scheme <comment><USER2> "The Post-Gazette, known locally simply as the PG..."

My family owns a small convenience store in the Pittsburgh area. Over 10 years of selling that paper I've heard Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh Post, Post- Gazette, and "the Post," but I can't point to a single time someone called it the PG.

<comment><USER3> They've been trying to brand it that way lately. I thought it was strange, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The thing is that newspapers back-in-their-day, didn't make the bulk of their money from selling their content but from advertising.

A small town (or even small-city) Newspaper, twenty years ago was: 1) An assortment of major stories culled from the New York Times, AP and what other newswire they subscribed to. 2) A couple custom national articles and/or editorials. 3) Some local news pulled from the police blotter 4) Classified adds plus banner ads declaring the usefulness of hypnosis for weight loss and such.

The money came from ads. Aside from the small number of major newspapers in the country, the product was completely derivative, completely ad-driven and generally strongly tied with local political interests. I can't see the death of this phenomena as a great loss. Moreover, I can't see websites with newsfeeds as what killed it. Rather, Craigslist killed it with free classified ads _and_ it killed itself by not improving anything, not reducing prices and increasing volume, not innovating and so-forth. It's an industry which previously consisted of a lot of local monopolies and the problem with any monopoly is that it's profits are _so_ good that it will hold to it's position till it dies rather than competing, since competition would result in a profit drop of an order of magnitude - if you have an investment opportunity that makes a solid 10% profit each year, you'd probably keep putting money into it, even if the money that you could invest dropped each year. Why innovate to make 3%?

Someone pointed-out the craigslist might make $100 million/year but has wiped- out an industry that made multi-billions. Now the billions previously spent on classifieds are available to buy entirely different kind of products but its still more logical for newspapers to gnaw on the bones of their previous business model.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've always considered HN links to Paul Graham's essays to be PG+.</comment>


Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://www.snazz.xyz/programming/2019/08/30/firefox.html <comment><USER2> > For comparison, here's the Chrome install process:

0\. They update their freeware software and Chrome comes along.</comment>


Going up? Space elevator could zoom astronauts into Earth's stratosphere - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/17/space-elevator-thothx-tower <comment><AUTHOR> This is from 2015, but I was wondering if there's been any news about it - I've not been able to find any.

Here is the Wikipedia page:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThothX_Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThothX_Tower)</comment>


Ask HN: Best SaaS for handling billing (subscription)? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying stripe, but I'd love to have a service which has their own checkout, and can provide an API where I can detract credit-like usage from a users account etc. <comment><USER2> [https://www.diffur.com/what-are-the-best-payment- apis](https://www.diffur.com/what-are-the-best-payment-apis)

<comment><USER3> Does anybody have any experience with WorldPay? I'd love to use Stripe but they don't offer services to my territory.

And, PayPal... I'd rather not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I plan to use [https://www.chargebee.com/](https://www.chargebee.com/) with stripe.

<comment><USER5> Chargebee is something I will look at once my MVP is out the door. Their product is compelling, and even more so by the fact that you can easily transition from Stripe (plans, customers etc.) However, it's not cheap! Hence it's a case of 'see how far I get with Stripe on my own'

<comment><USER6> Chargebee doesn't charge you money until you make your first $50k in revenue.

[https://www.chargebee.com/pricing/](https://www.chargebee.com/pricing/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also check out Recurly, Aria, Zuora</comment>


Optimizing Real World Go - <AUTHOR> http://bpowers.github.com/weblog/2013/01/05/optimizing-real-world-go/

<comment><USER4> I have just tried cross-compiling this with GOARCH=arm and the resulting statically linked executable works nicely on Android. I am sure ps_mem can be made to work too but this is easier and handy.

(Android has some other ways to get this sort of data too but the more tools the better)

<comment><USER5> I really wish Google released an SDK for writing fully fledged Android apps in Go.

<comment><USER6> I've been wishing for this for quite a while. Though if they didn't ditch Dalvik as well, it would be more like syntactic sugar than anything. Native code performance on Android is probably wishful thinking for now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Completely off-topic to optimizing Go, but you may want to look at smem - <USER2> does what you implemented (including looking through a subset of processes) but includes a few more useful measures of memory usage that help in the presence of multiple processes from the same binary - <http://www.selenic.com/smem/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice post, I have a question on one piece of it though.

In your final version of splitSpaces() you are calculating the length of b - <USER3> in the condition of the for loop.

Is Go calculating len(b) - 1 in every iteration or is it smart enough to move it out of the condition at compile time?

<comment><USER9> Go slices (and strings) know their length: <http://research.swtch.com/godata> So it's not a computation, just a struct member access. And len() is a builtin, not a real function call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't bytes.Fields what you were looking for with splitSpaces?

<comment><USER10> <http://golang.org/src/pkg/bytes/bytes.go?s=6894:6924#L282>

It uses `unicode.IsSpace` which might be slower than necessary for this use case (after all, how likely is the proc filesystem to use \u2000?). If this were the bottleneck and the program wasn't IO bound anyway, I bet someone could hand-code something clever that skipped multiple space and/or tab characters at a time.

<comment><AUTHOR> bytes.IndexByte is clever in that way, using SSE instructions: <http://golang.org/src/pkg/bytes/asm_amd64.s>

I tried using it ([https://github.com/bpowers/psm/commit/55bdd3f51c9c61a9247fec...](https://github.com/bpowers/psm/commit/55bdd3f51c9c61a9247fec14601ea776aa547259)), but it wasn't very helpful, I think because the lines in /proc/$PID/smaps are relatively short.

<comment><USER10> IndexByte is overkill. I meant something like reading four bytes into a register, comparing the value of the register to 0x20202020 and skipping four bytes.

I see that you're using ReadLine(), this has to read the input and look for "\n". As the person who wrote gnu grep said, avoid splitting the input into lines.

After looking at: <http://lxr.free- electrons.com/source/fs/proc/task_mmu.c#L549>

I suggest the following: For future proofing, first read the lines of the first mapping, and verify that: 1\. The "Pss", "Private_clean" and "Swap" lines come in this same order. 2\. The numeric values do not begin earlier than byte 17 in each line (i.e. "KernelPageSize: " is still there).

If these assumptions hold, go to the fast-path code. If not, use your existing code as the safe code path (and output a warning that says that since /proc/*/smaps format changed you program's code needs maintenance for performance but probably not correctness).

In the fast-path, do not split into lines. Instead, use Boyer–Moore to look for "\nPss:", "\nPrivate_Clean:" and "\nSwap:" in the input (after pss, lookup private_clean, after private_clean lookup swap, after swap lookup pss). In each of those, skip to byte 17, and fast-skip spaces. Then read digits until "\n" and perform the next string search.

If you verify that not only did the order of the lines not change but no new lines were added between them, you can hard-code the offsets of "\nPrivate_Clean:" and "\nSwap:" from "\nPss:" and not lookup those. Then you only need to lookup the next "\nPss:" (because the file path is variable length).

<comment><AUTHOR> excellent suggestion, I will definitely try something like that soon.

There are in fact only 2 variable sized lines - the first VMA info line and the last VmFlags line. In the fast path the middle hunk of map info can be accessed as a single []byte of 392 bytes, with constant offsets for the Pss, Private_* and Swap values.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lovely! Thank you for sharing. I hope this gets into the standard packaging so it doesn't die unknown.

</comment><comment><USER12> The viewport is set incorrectly in my iPhone. I can't seem to zoom out either.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry to hear that. I believe I've fixed it, but don't have any iDevices to test with.

<comment><USER12> It works perfectly now, thanks. Great article.</comment></comment></comment>


The Case Against the Universal Basic Income - <AUTHOR> http://intergalacticproletarian.blogspot.com/2015/11/more-welfare-or-more-weekend.html <comment><USER3> This is a fine piece of writing but I have a problem with the following statement:

 _With the introduction of a UBI, employers would have a powerful weapon to force wages down, as they good argue that they needn't pay as much any more, because they already had enough to maintain their standard of living._

If this was true, the employers would already be forcing the minimum wage down on everyone.

The UBI would give the lowest paid workers a powerful leverage they currently lack: the ability to choose not to work instead of accepting whatever wage the market offers. For other workers, the minimum wage or any viable UBI is small compared to their earnings, so it is hard to see how it could be used by the employer in salary negotiations.

<comment><USER4> You hit on exactly one of the biggest problems with the piece. It is the inability of anyone to say no to shitty paying jobs that requires the existence of minimum wage laws in the first place. As long as people can't say no, because they need the income to survive, they will say yes to shitty wages, hours, benefits, etc.

This author should ask himself, if he earned $1k/money for breathing, would he accept a shitty job for $7/hr? If not, how much would it need to pay before he would accept?

Then the next question is what the effective wage of automation would be. If because people have basic income, no one will work that job for less than $15/hr and a machine can do it for $10/hr, then it now makes more sense to automate that job out of existence.

And that is the direction we should aim for as a civilization - <USER2> unemployment, not full employment. Humans should hand as many jobs to machines as we can, to free us up to do the work we each feel is most valuable, paid or unpaid.

Enough with this pro-toil mentality that sees value in everyone being employed, even if for only 4 hrs a week in order to employ 100% of the population. As if that is even possible anyway. Like what, we're going to have 10 doctors share the work load of one doctor so that everyone can be employed? And what of all the work that goes unpaid? We should just keep not recognizing that? And what of all the jobs that don't need to exist? We should keep those around so that people can fill them to prove their right to live?

Full employment in the 21st century is a bullshit goal. We as a species are better than that. Our goal should be to free ourselves to pursue what we each wish to pursue.

And anyone who thinks people's ability to organize will be in any way diminished instead of monumentally expanded with basic income, isn't giving their fellow man enough credit.

People will use basic income to give themselves greater voice. I guarantee it.

<comment><USER5> I like the way you see the future. What is your response to the argument that UBI will need to be paid for by inordinate taxes on the few actually productive firms/individuals, in which case those firms/individuals will be incentivised to leave, leading to a deadened, unproductive country subsidising laziness?

<comment><USER6> The whole point is that a UBI is a realization of the wealth that is being automatically generated. Calculate it from the GDP. It doesn't require a tax. Prices continue adjusting accordingly.

<comment><USER7> You mean just printing new money to pay a UBI?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> IMHO the basic fallacy of this essay is that ideology is not reality. It sets the goal to be communism as classically envisioned(worker's paradise), and only some people are absolutely convinced that that's the culture they want. We still largely have a strong belief in private property, for example.

In making this case, the author raises a bunch of bogeyman images of everything else being sacrificed on the altar of UBI. This is a paranoia tactic. The real exchanges made are done at the level of individual politicians horse-trading against rivals and various interest groups. It's possible for something to be popular enough that capital is told to go get dunked, despite all its other advantages, because the alternative is political suicide. It doesn't happen often, but this is one of those issues that captures people's imagination in a big way.

<comment><USER9> Not only that, but its primary objection is buried towards the end, receives a tiny fraction of the essay's length, and so thoroughly lacks originality that it has literally driven people in the opposite direction (I originally went searching for other schools of economic thought _because_ I didn't believe the "jobs will appear" mantra, not the other way around).

It feels like a student essay where the author has a word quota but no actual point so instead they just aimlessly wander along tangents until they pass the "finish line."

<comment><USER10> Most of this thing reads more like an argument for than against.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I'm a bit enamoured of UBI myself, a thought came to me while reading this:

If we are going to be dismantling the welfare system at the same time we implement UBI, we will have absolutely no margin for error; if UBI turns out to be the wrong policy, then rebuilding the welfare system will be very difficult after having fired all the people who make it function.

Living in Oakland, I also think his point about housing is particularly salient. The ideal of basic income is that employers should hold less power over employees, but that won't be the case if you need the wage to afford rent.

<comment><USER12> A big bang approach would be very disruptive. I think it would be better to start at a modest level, and increase it after people get used to the idea and can see some of the effects.

There's no minimum to get started. Something like $100 a month might be hardly noticeable to most people, but it will make a difference to anyone living on the edge.

Also consider that having a guaranteed income makes it that much more feasible to either move somewhere with a low cost of living (since it doesn't depend on a job), or alternatively, afford to move somewhere a bit more expensive. Hard to say how it would shake out.

<comment><USER11> Personally I'm all for taxing the shit out of rich people (higher rates, treating capital gains as income, high inheritance taxes, abolishing loopholes that let companies stash profits overseas where they're not effectively reinvested, etc), but I feel like the argument around UBI is more likely to involve cuts, because if we gave every person in the US $100/month, it would cost the US $385 billion dollars, which is 10% of the entire federal tax budget.

<comment><USER13> IT doesn't change your point, but it would cost $319 billion, not $385. There are 319 million people in the US.

<comment><USER14> There are 12 months in our non-metric years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is more of a historical survey of the idea UBI than a mediation on why it's good/bad thing.

I get the arguments he makes from the perspective of the revolutionary Left. They are, however, not interesting or really acknowledging the role that robotics/computer vision/etc will play in the future. It's not really his fault though. Rather, I think many people are just ignorant of the profound impact that this kind of technology is going to have, simply because their direct exposure to it is so minimal.

As someone that has had experience in the rev. Left for some years and saw developments with robotics in research at a well-regarded school as a grad student, I feel like I have some perspective on this article. What I saw in school really made me change my mind and re-evaluate how the future will play out. Things are going to change and the genie, so to speak is out of the bottle and there's no putting it back in. But as pretty much all most socio- enviro-economic problems, the impediments we collectively face generally aren't technological as much as they are political, and that's where the activist focus needs to be. But I digress.

Mr. Phillips, doesn't seem to get that the technology isn't ready to displace humans from all work. The real threat (which is a threat until further notice) is that robotic technology is now "good enough" to do the kind of work that was just out of reach of automation in the past. It is not inconceivable to think robots will be able to perform the tasks of human garment workers soon. The gap between robots and semi-skilled labor are disappearing every year.

The idea for calling for a stronger labor movement as a solution is frankly laughable. It isn't going to happen any time soon and the economic conditions (what Marxists would colloquially refer to as "super-profitability") that created things like a labor aristocracy (another term) and social democracy no longer exist. How does one recreate a strong labor movement when the industries that were unionized are structurally hollowed out by no-pay robotic "labor" (which isn't labor in the Marxist sense either)? I'd love to hear a non hand wavy answer (seriously!).

UBI is actually a strong step on the road to the Marxist idea of communism (ironically enough) in that it does something special: it decouples the idea of compensation from labor, which is one of the long term goals of a society transforming from capitalism to a stateless, classless society. Lenin had a term for this too, which was "bourgeois right".

Anyway, my 2 cents.

<comment><USER16> > How does one recreate a strong labor movement when the industries that were > unionized are structurally hollowed out by no-pay robotic "labor" (which > isn't labor in the Marxist sense either)? I'd love to hear a non hand wavy > answer (seriously!).

Seems like a labour movement is a means, not an end. So I wouldn't be too sad, if you need other means.

Perhaps the left should pick up Georgism (again)? See [http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land- val...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-value-tax) for an introduction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As long as human requires another human for providing services, universal basic income would only translate to inflation. In essence, money is simply an unit for purchasing slice of another human's life time. It is however possible to have a world where all mining, manufacturing, farming, construction and most form of services is provided by self-maintaining robots and then humans are truely free to pursue their interests as they see fit. In that form of society, price of basic food, clothing, housing etc would be near zero and value of humans would be accounted by their ability to entertain, explore and educate as opposed to their wealth. So universal basic income is absolutely possible as long as humans are not part of the supply chain all the way until final consumption.

<comment><USER18> That would be true only if wealth were equally distributed to start with. So basic income should bring some inflation, but it also brings some wealth redistribution.

<comment><USER19> Inflation is not caused by price increases. It is caused by an increase in the money supply relative to the value it represents.

<comment><USER20> > Inflation is not caused by price increases.

No, inflation is _defined as_ the rate of increase of general prices in a particular market, however that market is bounded.

> It is caused by an increase in the money supply relative to the value it > represents.

Because the markets for different goods and services are to a certain extent distinct, and because populations of different levels of wealth demand different goods and services, redistribution always causes increase in the supply of money chasing goods and services demanded by the group benefiting from the redistribution (and a decrease on the other side), at least in the short run (in the longer run, its effects on overall productivity, which depend on other details, will determine the effects.) As a result, you'd expect redistribution to cause some inflation in the market for goods and services demanded by the beneficiaries of the redistribution.

<comment><USER21> Could you please expand a bit more on the long term effects of expanding the money supply?

<comment><USER22> The Fed expands and contracts the money supply to keep inflation around 2%. They use it as a tool to smooth out financial expansions and contractions by affecting interest rates which affect the demand for money vs interest bearing holdings.

Currently, they expanded the money supply past demand to accommodate the 2008 crisis and now we are caught in a liquidity trap. If the Fed now wants to stimulate the economy by lowering the interest rate though expanding the money supply they can't, because the interest rate is at the lower bound of 0%. They need to now use less effective and unconventional methods to affect the economy.

<comment><USER20> As you note, monetary policy is largely a tool to "smooth out financial expansions and contractions"; that is, its a tool to tweak around the edges of fairly short-term normal cyclical fluctuations. It may be sufficient to adequately mitigate harmful disruptions from those kinds of normal cyclical fluctuations in the economy, but its not adequate for dealing with all economic issues.

The more powerful tool for dealing with economic issues is fiscal policy, which is the domain of Congress, not the Fed. But Congress has largely failed to act, or acted counterproductively, for many years, and left the Fed and monetary policy to handle things that need Congress and fiscal policy to address. So, yes, the Fed's pretty much exhausted its tools, because its been forced to deal with a problem exclusively through monetary policy that should have been addressed through fiscal policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting argued. I say: let's try it somewhere that is game, and see what happens. As Bob Reich says, we've been running an experiment in trickle down economics for the past 30 years and it hasn't done most of us much good. I'm not going to buy much in theory either way until I see some attempts in practice.

<comment><USER24> Sure it has, although trickle down is a completely inaccurate way to describe it.

Real adjusted income per capita is skyrocketing. The only reason it looks like it is going down is because Liberals always quote the household income. Of course household income is going down, households are getting smaller and smaller.

A mere 5 percent of those in the bottom quintile in '75 were still there by '91.

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZTj_GfalJo8/UCGLgI8nDII/AAAAAAAAFt...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZTj_GfalJo8/UCGLgI8nDII/AAAAAAAAFts/LGj6GB3JIB0/s1600/average- real-income-in-us-by-sex-1947-2010.png)

<comment><USER25> That's average income. Look at the median income for men and things look less exciting. Then add the increase in tuition fees and housing cost in urban areas.

[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aTB7SNmJgkY/UCPmRNHaUxI/AAAAAAAAFw...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aTB7SNmJgkY/UCPmRNHaUxI/AAAAAAAAFwc/aA5SesGKpGs/s1600/median- real-income-in-us-by-sex-1947-2010.PNG)

<comment><USER14> Why just men? Aren't we glad they have to complete with women in the labor market now?

<comment><USER25> Because the primary increase in median salary for women are their increased participation in the workforce and not actually higher salary? If you look at median real income per hour you find a similar results as men.

<comment><USER14> Yes: As supply doubles, prices go down. Again, what's wrong with that?

<comment><USER24> Exactly.

There's so much stuff like that going on it's hard to know where to begin with these people.

For example, demographics. If you have a large young population and a large elderly population you will have a median income pushed lower than when your demographics skew middle aged.

Also, when you have large immigration influx, that forces down your median income as a percentage for the whole population, even if the people who were there before the influx are doing considerably better in real dollar terms.

Or if retirees are doing part-time "fun" work for small amounts of pay, when they wouldn't have been 50 years ago, that'll force down median income since they're not competing for higher wages.

It goes on and on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> TL/DR: technology will have no impact on employment, never trust a libertarian rat, let's just keep the programs we have.

References (trying to enumerate his arguments against UBI):

\- "the supposed looming robot apocalypse...It's just not going to happen"

\- "Taking even modest initial steps toward a guaranteed income is likely to further starve critically needed targeted cash transfers and diverse in-kind benefits"

\- "libertarian right ... has basically the motivation that this will undermine existing social welfare institutions"

\- "the money goes into one pocket and out the other—a taxpayer transfer to landlords." (???)

\- "The UBI is not only a subsidy to employers; it is a union-buster." (???)

\- "With the introduction of a UBI, employers would have a powerful weapon to force wages down" (???)

I was hoping he'd propose an alternative to UBI, but he didn't. I did enjoy his extensive history of UBI.

<comment><USER27> >"The UBI is not only a subsidy to employers; it is a union-buster." (???)

This is true. This is also the main reason why I support UBI in Finland.

Here unions are based on negotiating minimum wages for different jobs and paying unemployment money to laid of workers. (something like 9 months after lay off, then it's government responsibility.) The membership payments are tax exempt. Both of these things would be unnecessary with UBI.

Why I don't like the unions? Because cleaning lady at paper factory gets 1,6 times the wage of cleaning lady at a hospital. They are practically fueling outsourcing more than anything else, because they penalize success.

Also because whatever I vote in the general election, is not going to affect the job market in any way. Unions hold the power. They have cartel on labor and it's not illegal like other cartels.

They have that cartel because they lobby shit more than anything else. It makes economic sense to belong to union. Your payments cost you nothing because government is basically paying them through tax exemption. If you have slightest possibility to be ever laid off, unions guarantee relatively high standard of living for that "in between jobs".

Finnish social democrats are most against UBI in Finland. They have been accused of being the political wing of Unions.

<comment><USER7> You've established that you (and perhaps some others) believe that UBI hurts unions (and that you think that's desirable), but you've not really explained the mechanism by which they would be hurt.

<comment><USER27> Simply not needed as much anymore. Minimum wage loses it's ethical argument with UBI. Job security is lot less needed because your safety net actually works.

Unions would surely still exist. But they should not be able to hold as much power as currently. Which is exactly what I want. I'm not against unions, I'm against unions having a choke hold of my country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> While I found many of the author's assertions to be ideological predictions, this sentence made me happy: "So much depends on the balance of forces between capital and labour at the moment of its implementation." Historically speaking, economic change in favor of the massive people is only successful (even if fleeting) if it is demanded by millions of working people.

UBI only plays with the ratios of capitalism; a UBI implementation would result in a different distribution of equality, so surely there would be historic social consequences. Those consequences are clearly up for endless debate by concerned reformists (a.k.a. fortune tellers; see the article's citations).

So, the details are all up in the air.

What a brief Marxian analysis would tell you regarding UBI and any other reform programs: since the control of the means of production and the subsequent control of the surplus labor remains in the hands of the capitalists, the capitalists will maintain their power and quickly destroy any of the proletarian benefits that the program seemed to promise.

The best example in recent US history of this happening: the New Deal.

<comment><USER29> Both Marxist and Austrians agree: intermediate socialist policies are doomed to fail. Marxists would say because they weren't Marxist enough, and Austrians would say because all socialist systems must fail because they lack a means to calculate relative value sufficient for anything other than robbery, and certainly not sufficient for directing activity fit for an industrial society.

<comment><USER16> Fabians (and other social democrats) disagree. So far, the Fabians seem to be on a roll---social democracy hasn't collapsed yet, and brought much stronger legal position for workers. (Health-and-safety laws, 40h work week, etc.)

<comment><USER29> Every system collapses eventually. I'm not the kind of person who thinks society can be engineered, so I don't have to posit a counter system that won't collapse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The actual case against basic income: it reduces work effort drastically (13%) in the experiment where this was measured. For comparison, the great recession reduced work effort by about 5% (near as I can tell, based on looking at the delta in unemployment rate).

[http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget- cea%20(2).pdf](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20\(2\).pdf)

We'd like to pretend everyone is a self-motivated software engineer who will create value for the world for personal fulfillment. The data shows this belief is false.

<comment><USER31> Part of the reason basic income is bandied about more and more is that the amount of people who is starting to believe that capitalism is eventually becoming efficient enough to drive up unemployment is rising (though most of these people are probably unaware that this is a central part of Marx' thesis of how he believed capitalism will eventually give rise to its own demise).

There is a growing fear amongst some that automation will finally overtake job creation, and that the resulting unemployment will be sufficient to throw masses of people back into poverty.

If that actually happens, then a 13% reduction in work effort might very well be less than desirable if one wishes to prevent social unrest.

There are two key benefits of basic income in that respect: Firstly, to ensure that if people are unable to find a job, they can still live a decent life. Secondly, to reduce the amount of people forced into unemployment by making more people _choose_ to not work or work less, whether because they choose education or choose to stay home with their young children, or choose to retire earlier, or simply choose to make do with less.

Of course, the pre-requisite for that to be viable is that society can make do with 13% less work effort (or whatever it ends up being, whether more or less).

<comment><USER32> Self-driving vehicles will permanently eliminate several of the most common occupations in the world – truck drivers, delivery drivers, bus drivers, and taxi drivers – and that's coming in just a few years.

<comment><USER16> Globally we are still in the process of eliminating the most common occupation of all: subsistence farmer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Someone who describes, among other things, the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the world-historic defeat of the working class in the 70s-80s" is operating within a much different framework than the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER34> "There is no capitalist road to communism. There is only, as ever, the calibre of the confidence of labour."

Actually Marx himself thought that capitalism was a natural historic necessity proceeding communism. This issue was widely debated at the founding of USSR --whether they could skip this phase. Obviously they choose wrong.

<comment><USER35> "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."

\- Source unclear, attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville and Elmer T. Peterson

<comment><USER16> Democracies have been remarkably stable so far compared to other forms of government we've tried.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Do yourself a favor and change the font to not be a typewriter font. It may be bourgeois of me, but reading fixed-width font for prose to be sub-optimal.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: UBI has a whole host of problems, instead, we should be strengthening the unions to increase wages to force the capitalists to invest in technology that makes us more productive

<comment><USER37> I don't think the author adequately makes the case that a UBI has problems as a form of welfare.

His argument seems to boil down to the following:

1) Labour being replaced by automation isn't going to happen because it is going to create more jobs than it displaces..... Not sure if I agree with this point.

2) That a basic income necessarily needs be IN PLACE OF existing welfare and labour protections... While some other forms of welfare may evaporate and some labour protections loosened, it doesn't have to. It provides flexibility for labourers and employers to negotiate without the looming threat of not having a basic living wage. It increases the labourers negotiating position more than the employers IMO.

3) Technology makes us more productivity, which means we can work less hours which means we can have more leisure time. The problem with this argument is that it assumes those "less hours" are equally distributed across the entire pool of laborers. What it just means is there are less hours for a limited pool of skilled labourers to fight over. Which means more unemployment. It does not mean that the taxi driver who has his 12 hour days eliminated by driverless ubers now gets to work 3 hours a day driving an uber or gets to work 3 hours a day programming those cars.

4) Instead of having a UBI, we should have a militant (violent) revolution against the rich where we demand increased welfare and labour protections. Increased welfare like a UBI? I'm not sure why the author feels like positive social institutions can't be a voluntary concession of the rich to satisfy discontent of the masses. Why do we have to get out our pitchforks to get bread if they are offering to hand out a livelihood to every citizen?

This sounds like the sort of leftist rhetoric that comes from someone in a very comfortable position. Try telling someone in real need that they shouldn't accept a basic income because "it's just a bribe from the rich so we don't start some vague revolution!".

<comment><AUTHOR> Caveat: I don't agree with the author, I'm just trying to understand both sides here. But,

It seems to be a just an Economists (albeit a lefty one) looking for solutions in previous data.

1) That is the only conclusion that can be gleaned from the past century of data. Projections as to the effect of an "exponential explosion in AI/ML" have no data to support it.

2) I don't think he advocates for either. Though as a lefty he definitely doesn't advocate for busting of social programs (esp Healthcare)

3) Very True.

4) Labour doesn't necessarily ask for increased welfare, they ask for perfect employment. Which the author implies is a larger force for productivity boosts than something like UBI. It also gives the masses some control (therefore keeping the pitchforks away).

Historically, weakening labour has led to slumps in productivity for a myriad of reasons (that he could've done a better job at laying out). And we have no evidence that a UBI would increase productivity, but we do know it will destroy labour unions. Without productivity increases (towards zero marginal cost), UBI may not be able to deliver on its lofty promisies.

On the flip side: Increasing power to labour would mean another concentration of power that can (and has) be corrupted easily.

<comment><USER38> >1) That is the only conclusion that can be gleaned from the past century of data. Projections as to the effect of an "exponential explosion in AI/ML" have no data to support it.

I think a more useful way to think about the problem of automation isn't that it replaces jobs directly, it's that it devalues human capital. New jobs will involve more skill, which means each person will need more education and training. It might get to the point where training everyone so they can work for a living is _less efficient_ than just taxing and paying for some people's sustenance directly.

<comment><USER16> Wasn't deskilling the thing people complained about with new technologies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've always thought that with automation, increasing population, and globalozation we would need something akin to the universal basic income.

The question becomes, does that just exist for Western societies or for the entire world?

I didn't read the entire article but it struck me to point out that "The Captive Mind" by Czeslaw Milosz is extremely relevant here.

While the USSR was no wonderful place to be, artists tended to be happy there, because even if they were forced to "art" in a particular sense, the USSR recognized art as a fundamental human right and dignity. Compared to capitalism where people were starving just to make it.

I've had a few drinks, but I absolutely recommend "The Captive Mind" to anyone interested in this sort of sociatal interaction. The part where society collapses (the USSR) and all of the "secret" papers are spilling on to the street will open your mind.

At least it did mine. When it comes to gold, silver, or secrets, if they can't feed you, clothe you, or shelther you, when things break down, they're not worth _shit_.

This is my spurious comment of the night. Check that novel out. "A Captive Mind".

I'm for a universal basic income. I'm a socialist for essentials, a libertarian for personal liberties, and a capitalist for the rest. I couldn't make it through that entire article. All downvotes are deserved.

Cheers.

<comment><USER16> European countries pay large amount of subsidies for art..

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If we can't have a UBI how about creating work at home jobs for the disabled and people on welfare to do with a computer and an Internet connection? Most can't afford transportation to get to a job, and need more that welfare or social security needs.

I'm sure some startup can handle the issue of providing work at home jobs for the poor, disabled, and people on welfare and the software for them to work the job where it has a GUI interface and they fill out forms and push buttons. Stuff like data entry, video captions, video transcripts, or even running something like a Bitcoin miner that attaches to a USB device that earns money and pays them some of it.

There should be a way to create jobs using technology that don't require a lot of skill and training and that basically anyone can do.

Even an app where they fill out surveys and get paid, or do small things like write a 500 word essay for money. Stuff that people can do that an AI can't do yet.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is a nicely thought out essay but I largely don't agree with it.

The author's basic premise that improvements in technology always bring an increase of employment will, I believe, not be true at all in the next few decades.

I think the rich will look at something like universal basic income as something to keep society civil, avoiding large scale civil unrest.

</comment><comment><USER42> You can see from this argument who the real losers in a system of universal basic income would be: not the poor; not the rich; not the productive middle classes; but the bureaucrats, both public (welfare workers) and private (labour organisers).

<comment><USER43> With Basic Income enabled, why would we need welfare workers? Just put the welfare workers and labour organizers on basic income!

<comment><USER42> Yes, but right now they make more than that, which is why they're so opposed to the idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> There were a lot of references that I couldn't understand.

<comment><USER44> It seemed intentionally obtuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Very interesting read about the history of UBI, even if you don't agree with the author's conclusions.

One point that he doesn't mention, though, is where would the UBI money come from: taxes of course, but taxes on what? I think that is a very important point.

</comment><comment><USER46> That font is unreadable dude.

</comment><comment><USER47> because it will the super rich's cut

</comment><comment><USER48> More like "the case against state-guaranteed survival by someone who never experienced poverty". UBI is not about leisure, ideology and long disproved communist utopias. UBI is about asking from the state - that forcefully extracts work from us in the form of taxes - the guarantee of our survival.

Our welfare systems will never solve the kind of poverty that pushes people to sleep under bridges. Our unions will never give the work force 100% occupation. It's easy to dream about revolutions and class warfare when you don't have to worry about next month's rent, but we're not talking about left vs. right here. We're talking about a paradigm shift in the human society: no longer having to worry about food and shelter on the sole basis of being human. That's the kind of society I want to experience in my life time and I don't care who wins ideological points over it.

<comment><USER49> No one really has to worry about food in our society with the plethora of welfare programs, churches, food banks, etc, as well as the many people such as myself who will routinely give the needy food or money. Shelter is tricky, however the majority of people have shelter security by proxy of family or friends. It is only recently that the proxy has been weakened because of the crumbling relationships and social structures. We are trying so hard to solve problems we have created. Sad we are trending toward valuing benevolent strangers than the network of those you know. What is so wrong with our society that we cannot stick together in tough times? We must be a very sick society to do all these mental gymnastics to treat our symptoms of deep cultural flaws.

<comment><USER50> You're mistaken in your assertions about our reality. Go watch the documentary "A Place At The Table"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Partisan pieces like this are incredibly lame. He doesn't even address the issue properly. $10k is not a living wage in the US and I doubt it is on in Canada. Make it $30k and let's see if job wages get depressed (they won't). The funny part is that there is unfortunately a very good argument against UBI, the only good argument against UBI IMO, and that is that most countries cannot afford it. Let's take the US:

$30 000 * 230 000 000 adults = $6 900 000 000 000 a year

Now obviously, 100% of the adult workforce will not be on UBI, but even with 10% of adults on UBI, you're still looking at close to $700 billion a year. Even currently, I'd bet that way more than 10% of people would quit their bullshit jobs if they could get UBI (also causing a shortage of employees in certain industries and wages to go up) and that percentage will rise much higher in the future.

I'm no economy expert, but somehow, I just don't think we're there yet with the numbers, though I think we possibly will get there at some point. Or maybe it's just wishful thinking because I'd like this to work, even in theory only. Maybe someone has better math than mine ... :)

<comment><USER52> > _Now obviously, 100% of the adult workforce will not be on UBI, but even > with 10% of adults on UBI, you 're still looking at close to $700 billion a > year_

Isn't the whole point of "Universal" Basic Income that everyone gets it without exception? A system for the poorest 10% is just another pricey welfare system similar to those in many countries.

<comment><USER51> Yeah, you're absolutely right. In which case, the numbers simply do not work out. Makes the article's argument seem even less thought out as the author didn't even do some basic calculations.

But this slightly different system I'm describing isn't the same as what we currently have. What I'm thinking is UBI (or whatever it might be called in this system) vs. wages. Pick one. This would automatically make the minimum wage > $30k, probably at least around $40-50k and wouldn't require paying every adult in the US, including ones who already have jobs. The key difference is that people would have a choice of going to this new Semi-UBI system anytime they wanted, no questions asked, with guaranteed income. I think that's one differentiator. Another differentiator would be removing the countless barriers that exist in today's systems. The many idiotic rules around welfare and Medicaid for example are so complicated and require so much time and paperwork, it's ridiculous. It would keep the state from trying to force people to look for jobs they don't want and waste time doing it. It would allow people to go to school full time while still receiving aid (not possible in many cases today). It'd be a real, living wage, albeit low, that could remove the stress and uncertainty of today's welfare systems. And finally, it would hopefully not carry the stigma it has today as artists and thinkers and all types of people might choose not to work at all, rather than have this be only a program for the poor.

So yeah, it's not really UBI, but it could still be a lot better than current systems.

<comment><USER52> > _What I 'm thinking is UBI (or whatever it might be called in this system) > vs. wages. Pick one. This would automatically make the minimum wage > $30k_

The problems with such a system would be:

* even higher threshold for actually seeking a job because you lose BI (yes, the other side of higher minimum wages)

* either the BI is sufficient for a decent life or it isn't: if it is, it's probably too expensive because a large part of the population will receive it. If it isn't, it will be a program for the poor/disabled only and enough people will be seeking jobs to drive the effective minimum wages down to the current level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> TL;DR

        How is it possible that the proposal of a couple of
        Marxian professors from the Benelux—riffing off some of
        the more utopian musings of Enlightenment dreamers in a
        brief outline of an idea that they themselves concluded
        was only "sketchy and tentative"—has been able to
        capture the imagination of politicos of every hue in
        recent years?

Also

        to get productivity growing again, labour has to become
        more expensive. And the only way for labour to become
        more expensive is for there to be a genuinely global and
        militant labour movement

I don't even know what that means. Want to know a surefire way to make labour more expensive? Minimum income for everyone.

<comment><USER37> Thank you. A basic income increases the negotiating power of the laborer because he now has an implicit price floor from where he can start his negotiations.

<comment><USER54> Not so much a price floor as a better BATNA - the ability to walk away without having to go and live on the streets.

<comment><USER37> Yep, that's a much more apt description.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> In the long run it is like shifting zero on a scale. The market will react in exactly this way.

The paid housing would be better idea, BTW.

</comment><comment><USER56> I have a proposition. How about anyone who wants to live in a society with a UBI can organise one privately between themselves, and the rest of us can avoid it?

Start an organisation which takes from each member according to his means and shares it out equally, and see who wants to join. I wish you well.

</comment><comment><USER57> Universal income? Sure why not. With your own money.

My money stays in my pocket.

<comment><USER58> You can keep your money. What you owe in tax is by definition not yours.

<comment><USER56> In practice yes, but not in moral terms.

<comment><USER59> Maybe you should print your own money, then?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Catcalling data from around the world - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/its-impossible-to-prevent-someone-from-eyefucking-you-a1cd688392b2

<comment><USER2> This seems... of marginal topicality.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yet more social justice clickbait flooding HN.

From the guidelines:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Go back to Tumblr.</comment>


Fail-slow at scale: Evidence of hardware performance degradation in prod systems - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/02/26/fail-slow-at-scale-evidence-of-hardware-performance-faults-in-large-production-systems/ <comment><USER2> I had a large scale issue caused by a bug in the fan control system reading a temp that was deadlocked. This caused cpu performance to tank, since the cpu was thermal throttled.

To make matters worse the environmental sensors reported no issues, because they were all frozen at a single reading as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> > There was a case where a fan in a compute node stopped working, and to > compensate this failing fan, fans in other compute nodes started to operate > at their maximal speed, which then generated heavy noise and vibration that > degraded the disk performance.

I've never heard of such thing, can vibrations from a fan really influence disk performance?

<comment><USER4> Yes. Loud noises and even yelling degrade disk performance as well.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4)

<comment><USER5> This is one of the classics! I love it. Screaming at a HDD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Blue screen errors are most often caused by RAM issues. I remember very well that I was facing blue screen error at my work once, & upon searching I found that all I need to do is remove the RAM, clean and dust it, and put it back into the same or another RAM socket.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a HN gem! Wonder how it didn't make it to first page.

I once had a mobile app perform very poorly only for large downloads on a particular SSID. No other applications had such issue. It turned out to be due to a firmware bug which scrapped TCP SACK field, but the problem manifested only for large data transfers over unreliable, high latency connections. Got us all chasing our tails for a while though...

</comment><comment><USER7> The authors are still collecting more stories for their longer journal version of the paper. If your institution has 10+ stories to contribute and are interested to be part of the journal paper, please go ahead contact the first two authors of the original paper.</comment>


Jammit: Industrial Strength Asset Packaging for Rails - <AUTHOR> http://documentcloud.github.com/jammit/ Quick Summary: We just open-sourced the asset packager that powers the DocumentCloud prototype. It does the asset concatenation and (YUI) compression that you'd expect, as well as ahead-of-time gzipping, built-in support for JavaScript templates, and automatic Data-URI/MHTML image embedding.
Quick Links: Project Page: http://documentcloud.github.com/jammit/ Source Code: http://github.com/documentcloud/jammit Image Embedding Example: http://jashkenas.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/jammit_example/normal.html
We'd love to expand the gem beyond just Rails, although it's a bit out of scope for us. Patches to add Sinatra support, for example, will be warmly welcomed. <comment><AUTHOR> _Quick Summary_ : We just open-sourced the asset packager that powers the DocumentCloud prototype. It does the asset concatenation and (YUI) compression that you'd expect, as well as ahead-of-time gzipping, built-in support for JavaScript templates, and automatic Data-URI/MHTML image embedding.

Project Page: <http://documentcloud.github.com/jammit/>

Source Code: <http://github.com/documentcloud/jammit>

Image Embedding Example: [http://jashkenas.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/jammit_example/normal...](http://jashkenas.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/jammit_example/normal.html)

We'd love to expand the gem beyond just Rails, although it's a bit out of scope for us. Patches to add Sinatra support, for example, will be warmly welcomed.

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks like a very convenient, cheap way of accelerating page loads in Rails. Now if I can hack this to work with nanoc or webgen, it would make my day.</comment>


Ewww, You Use PHP? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mailchimp.com/ewww-you-use-php/ <comment><USER2> Yeah, I'm over the sentiment. Everyone knows PHP is a poorly designed language. There are many pitfalls and gotchas to watch out for. Still, it absolutely shouldn't be discredited. There are ways (albeit unnecessary for other languages) around avoiding the pitfalls. Plenty of companies have found ways for PHP to work for them, no need to constantly be elitist and judgmental about it.</comment>


Hominins lived in China 2.1M years ago - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/hominins-lived-in-china-2-1-million-years-ago/ <comment><USER2> How tall were the Himalayas two million years ago? Google isn't cooperating.</comment>


Method Size Limit in Java - <AUTHOR> http://eblog.chrononsystems.com/method-size-limit-in-java

<comment><USER2> This is a terrible limit. Code generation is necessary for all sorts of things e.g. parsers. Having to hack in code to the code generation just to split methods to get around this limit is ridiculous.

I had to literally abandon months of work on one project which was generating simulation code to Java. I was generating millions of lines of code, so splitting up the method would require a main method which would call all those split methods, and then that method would get too long, etc. It all just wasn't feasible, so now I just generate C.

<http://www.databasesandlife.com/java-method-64k-limit/>

<comment><USER3> Why not just have a binary tree of method calls with the leaf nodes containing your actual code ? - that way you could easily have as many methods as you wanted, and if it's auto-generated anyway it wouldn't be much extra work.

<comment><USER2> 1) It's difficult to know how long a method will be when it's compiled. Basically you have to compile it to find out. The 64k limit is on the generated byte-code, not on the source.

2) Why bother? I mean generating C (in my case) was so much easier, a simpler solution (not using a tree) is bound to have less bugs, be easier to maintain etc.

I mean this is a fundamentally ridiculous limitation. One can work around it with a large amount of effort, but it shouldn't be necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We had this problem some years ago with JSP which compiles all code into one service() method.

<comment><USER5> Yes, us too.

Often it is because of tag libraries that generate big try..catch..finally blocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is especially irritating considering the numerous other languages that the JVM supports now. Oracle needs to fix this limitation along with bringing in correct Generics support - not the way it is today.</comment>


DevOps Dave Comic: Declaring Success in Enterprise DevOps - <AUTHOR> https://www.scriptrock.com/blog/devops-dave-declaring-success/

<comment><USER2> DevOps Dave hits close to home. A few years ago I had this conversation nearly word for word [0].

Looking through the strip, it's consistently on the money.

Particularly Gartner as a deity, managers raving about concepts and acronyms they don't comprehend and laughing off obvious/established tools and trends.

0: <https://www.scriptrock.com/blog/devops-dave-buried-in-logs/>

<comment><USER3> Jesus, Gartner as a deity. That brings back some memories.

It never ceases to amaze me how much money folks are willing to pay analysts. A Gartner seat is over $50k now per annum (assuming non-volume pricing) and the number of organizations that can actually benefit from their expertise SHOULD be limited to the Fortune 1000 (I personally think you're wasting your money on analysts).

KPIs are management speak for: How do you measure things without being persecuted by the people above you to explain your numbers?

I'm so glad to be at a small firm and not at a giant corporate megaship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll just leave this link here. [http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair- le...](http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair-lessons- fundamentals-of.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> 20 repetitions of the same panel of mspaint circle tool heads with some word balloons doesn't make it a comic except in some very trivial, uninteresting sense.

<comment><USER6> I used Photoshop douchebag.

<comment><USER7> Baha ..</comment></comment></comment>