China's prosperity will be induced by the state; India's may be despite the state. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02das.html <comment><USER2> India's government, judiciary and bureaucracy are pretty good by comparison with other countries in the same income range or region.

The government also put money into education (more than was needed according to assorted "experts") which has enabled the boom in service exports.

I would also question how efficient China's government is given the high level of corruption, and its inability to enforce important regulations (like not putting melamine in milk...). Maybe the Chinese government is just good at convincing people it is efficient because it suppresses all reporting that suggests other wise.

<comment><USER3> "I would also question how efficient China's government is given the high level of corruption"

That's an important point. I think India's greater press freedom and thus greater transparency is to its long-term advantage. Free and fair elections that can turn out the ruling party keep politicians somewhat more honest.

Here's a question for readers of HN who live in China or have recently traveled there: when you are out at night looking at new high-rise buildings, how occupied do they look? Do most windows show lights, or are most units in the buildings presumably unoccupied? I ask this to check a statement I read from a recent visitor to one city in China.

<comment><USER4> In Shanghai I thought the Pudong area was surprisingly empty, considering the tall buildings coming up everywhere. It is almost deserted compared to Manhattan, or even the other side of the river in Shanghai.

Did not notice this phenomenon in Beijing, however. I used to live there until recently, and know first hand that affordable office space is a huge headache.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> good read. never been to china so wont be commenting on it.

India has more young people, and they believe in changing their destiny in their own ways.

newer generation is coming out of old moulds of poverty, and socialism.

satyajit ray and international media were interested only promoting the image of poverty in India. 20 years back there were many monopolies and license raj, starting any business was very tough if dont have deep pockets and influence with bureacrats.

we dont want the government to help or support us, if they dont create trouble and provide a security, rest the people will take care

</comment><comment><USER6> FP had a great article months ago about India and China. If I remember correctly, the money was on India out-growing China, mainly due to corruption in China.

I put my money on systems that iterate and have the ability to be wrong often. As a rough example, in the U.S., we just elected a new guy and we'll be heading in a new direction. For about half the country, we were wrong and now we've changed course. We never stick with the same guys and the same policy: we're always mixing it up.

I don't see that kind of radical change-up of leadership and policy in China, but I do see some of it in India. So my money's on India as having a brighter future.

<comment><USER7> Corruption is as big a problem in India as it is in China. Deregulation however means that the Indian media is much more open and competitive. This, while resulting in tabloid sensationalism, also means that government scandals are highlighted and often magnified which help keep them in check. As far as choosing a direction goes, anti-incumbency always triumphs because the disgruntled are always in sizable numbers. That, however, does not affect corporate policies much more that changing the governmental cogs that need to be greased. In a nutshell, this is India's formula for growth: A patchwork democracy that moves slowly and clumsily, and sustainable corruption that allows enough breathing space for far more nimble corporate entities. This reminds me of what is said of Italy: the economy grows at night while the government sleeps.</comment></comment>


Stirling engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyPxNNJQo9M

<comment><USER2> The nerds go on and on about the Stirling engine as a huge lost opportunity for heat engines. Roughly the Stirling engine is a heat engine with an extra heat exchanger (a fairly clever idea)- but by 1884 the steam world was moving on to turbines which themselves approach the thermodynamic ideal. The steam turbine may not be a cute tabletop demonstration- but it pushed a lot of ships across the Atlantic.

<comment><USER3> The Stirling Engine has the highest theoretical efficiency compared to other heat engine cycles (it is equivalent to that of the Carnot Cycle). Simply it depends on the temperature difference between the hot and cold side. If you drive it it becomes a refrigeration machine. The problem was and is materials for practical applications. It needs highly efficient and compact heat exchangers and also the porous nature of the re-generator is a problem. Helium is a better gas to use, but being so light at high pressures you get leakages.

I spent more than 5 years of my life (PhD) designing, building and simulating one (with only one moving part) and that got me in a major way into computing:) in the late 80's-90's. I did not touch the field for many years, but lately it has been at the back of my mind, if there are any applications for it in nano-machines.</comment></comment>


The Power Users Are Revolting - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/20/they-certainly-are/

<comment><USER2> You said it, they stink on ice.</comment>


How to Size Text in CSS - <AUTHOR> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/howtosizetextincss <comment><USER2> YUI CSS. I added it into one of my side-project web apps last night (counting the time to actually read the docs).

Dead simple, and doesn't require using any of the YUI javascript if you don't want to.

</comment><comment><USER3> ctrl++

<comment><USER4> Is there a firefox and/or IE javascript hook that simulates control- and control+? I mean a way to have a user click a button to resize all fonts, not just switching between predefined font sizes in style sheets.</comment></comment>


A rMB PRO or a MBPRO? advice - <AUTHOR>

Right now I am split between getting a retina MacBook pro or a MacBook pro. The reason is because the retina MacBook is not upgradable and since I am not a designer I am not to crazy about the retina display. Which would make more sense for me to get? I am tilting towards the ordinary MacBook pro as I can upgrade it to an SSD and also up the ram and do other modding. What would you advice i do? <comment><USER2> > What would u advice i do?

Use better spelling?

> Right now I am split between getting a retina MacBook pro or a MacBook pro.

I'll say it: Get a Lenovo Thinkpad. Do you have a reason for Apple other than some facetious argument involving somehow superior build quality? Also, you'll get both Windows and Linux natively and they don't feel like second-class citizens.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do lenovos last as long as macs?

<comment><USER2> There's a hundred Thinkpads on the ISS right now, and zero MacBooks. There's a data point.

And if you're concerned about useful life, then I can tell you right now that you'll get major OS updates for about three years. Windows 8 requires basically a good graphics card, 2 GB of RAM, a dozen GB of space and a 1 GHz CPU. It'll run on your 2005 Celeron as well as Vista did. May not have been well, but a 2006 PC will, on average, run Windows 7 well enough.

Meanwhile, in Appleland, the Mac you bought in February '09 won't run the next version of OS X that's just about to come out. Seriously.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not really concerned about the OS as I am a Linux person. I am just really concerned about build quality and performance.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google blasts Brussels after record €4.3bn Android fine - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/a163bb7e-8aa1-11e8-bf9e-8771d5404543 <comment><USER2> did they blast them with a lazer?</comment>


Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/yahoo-redundancies-idUSKCN0VA33R <comment><USER2> So I guess she _did_ mean something when she said, "No layoffs...this week" [1]

Brutal.

[1] [http://nypost.com/2016/01/18/marissa-mayers-job-safety- joke-...](http://nypost.com/2016/01/18/marissa-mayers-job-safety-joke-doesnt- sit-well-with-workers/)

<comment><USER3> It's incredibly sad when something like this happens. And I sure hope anyone who's found themselves out of a job, success in finding another. Even the "lower performers" still need to work. What I do hope for Yahoo, is that they're taking a solid look at who they consider expendable. Are self- important big shots also losing their jobs? Or are they too important to fire? When I see any company start to get rid of their engineering workforce, and keep all their managers, I get very concerned. It's a testament to how important these people think they are.

As for Marissa, I wonder how easy it'll be for her to find a job. "I bought Tumblr, I threw lavish parties when we really couldn't afford it... my company was about to go under until someone purchased it... BUT, I did get people to stop working from home!". "Hire me?"

Edit - Marissa, not Melissa.

<comment><USER4> Seriously, if you've ever worked at a large company in SV, you should know that the "lavish parties" thing was a completely envy-driven red herring.

If you do the math you realize that the holiday party cost a few hundred bucks per attending employee.

Compared to other large SV companies - that are not under fire in the press - this was a _cheap_ holiday party.

<comment><USER5> Lavish parties send the wrong message to employees. If I were CEO I'd say:

"No more parties. We're going to use the to retrain employees (instead of firing them) and avoid layoffs."

Mayer is turing out to be a terrible CEO.

This article describes the various multi-million dollar parties.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer- blows...](http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-blows- millions-on-parties-and-sponsorships-says-eric-jackson-2015-12)

<comment><USER4> That's not how it works. That's a terrible suggestion.

If you cut perks, your best and brightest will leave much quicker, the elves leave middle earth. And then your company is essentially screwed, because you'll lose all of your key personnel. And you won't save very much money. This is the way of the bean-counters who know nothing of human motivation and morale. $1000 per employee is less than a percentage of their yearly salary.

If you instead decimate the company, many who survive the culling will be _thankful_ to the company that they are keeping their job, and you'll actually save ~10% in salary costs and future obligations.

(The clever employees who see this coming will leave way before either scenario anyway)

<comment><USER5> I don't believe that the "best and brightest" consider lavish parties as a deciding factor in where they work.

Notice how I phrased it. It's not cost cutting. It's about investing in employees. That is something the "best and the brightest" love.

<comment><USER4> No, the "best and brightest" at a company are interested in the company investing in _them_ at the expense of the dead weight.

They are also not very interested in training, because they don't need it. They want to work on cutting-edge projects.

"Training" is something that the poor performers are going to flock to, because it benefits them. Which is the polar opposite of what the top performers want.

<comment><USER5> I believe your distorting my original point, pouring your own prejudices into what I said, or I didn't explain myself very well. (Probably the last one)

Instead, I'll just point you to Deming's work on management. He transformed Japan's post war economy into the powerhouse it is today. He's also responsible for the much of the transformation here in the USA during the 1980'ss & 90's.

Long story short: it's the goal of management to make workers successful. Re- training is the absolute best way of advancing the company.

[https://www.deming.org/theman/theories/fourteenpoints](https://www.deming.org/theman/theories/fourteenpoints)

<comment><USER4> I think you explained yourself very well, you said that the company should cut perks and put the money into re-training employees to avoid layoffs.

Cutting perks will gut the company morale.

Re-training on the job is already available at most SV companies of this size. You want it, you get it.

The original article that called out the lavish party was explicitly doing so to paint Marissa as a CEO that spends frivolously, and the author wanted her to move that money from employees to the investors instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel bad for the 15%, but this was necessary. They are severely over-hired. I've gone over there a few times to talk to folks and it's clear that they have a lot of people that are basically making work for themselves because no one has any work for them that actually helps the business.

<comment><USER7> This is one of those things that folks learn over time. I've met masters of the "busy people" who, with no direction whatsoever from above have full meeting schedules, generating reports and presentations and white papers and generally "working hard" but it is all just running on a treadmill as far as I can tell. They are exercising their "execution" habits while waiting for something to actually do. It sort of amazed me when I recognized it for what it was.

Interestingly they seem to hold there jobs while people who just stop doing anything with no direction often don't hold their jobs. So it is presumably a suvival trait.

One of the more interesting things my manager at Sun told me was that the difference between a leader and a worker, was that a leader was a going somewhere and a worker was helping them get there. So if you want to be a leader you need to have some place you are trying to go. It gets you into trouble though, when there is only enough energy to follow one or two paths, it puts you on the short list for removal if your path isn't one of them.

<comment><USER8> >all just running on a treadmill as far as I can tell.

Unfortunately, people lose their minds when some company announces layoffs, like some purposeful social harm is being done, yet somehow when a company is having massive hiring no one really questions how much of that is valid or sustainable. People become like you describe; they master the do nothing job via office cult cargoism. It must be exhausting to have a 'fake' job like this and knowing damn well that if you lose this job you may have nowhere to go.

I think 100 years from now our great grandkids will be living in an automation utopia and look at our daily work lives as something just a harrowing as any story from Kafka. There's a lot of craziness we let slide because we've convinced ourselves total employment is one of the main moral goals of a capitalistic society. Its probably not sustainable in later stages capitalism.

In my lifetime I expect to see GMI deployments in various nations as automation keeps eating the world. I have yet to be convinced that the status quo can be maintained and the cracks on the facade are already showing. Later stages capitalism is a totally different beast than early stages. This is all new ground.

Not too long ago this sounded like crazy sci-fi talk to me, but now that I'm in a partial management position I've been involved with hirings/firings and all sorts of staffing and productivity issues, this has shown me that employment in general is something of an illusion. I'd say 80% of the work/value done here is by 30 or 40% of the staff, maybe 20% if we're being really tough. A lot of hiring, if not most, is vanity hiring by VP's who want more people under them for status and budget reasons. This isn't some rational engine at work here. Its its own kind of bubble and as we saw in the 2008 mortgage crisis, it gets deflated pretty easily when money stops coming in. (5% to 10% unemployment in 12 months 2008-2009).

<comment><USER9> Hi, throwaway with a "fake" job (with quotations because usually 25% of the time I am busy).

It is incredibly frustrating to me, because I consider myself a creative and capable individual, who is just fresh off graduation. However, I have a micromanaging, closed-minded rude boss (company lingo: "Leader"), who I prefer to avoid at all costs. At the same time, he seems completely aloof and uninterested in my career goals, which explains why I have nothing to do most of the time.

This is further led to absurdity because I'm in a Trainee position, someone who is paid a better than everyone else at their level of responsibility and gone through extra training with hopes they will ascend to management. I get no training either.

I've been looking for another job for over a year and cannot get anything else because of lack of experience and a nation-wide political+economical crisis.

<comment><USER10> If you are smart enough to enjoy reading Hacker News, you might be smart enough to learn programming.

Decent programmers are still very much in demand, no matter what nation-wide crisis you are talking about.

<comment><USER11> I hope you're right, I want you to be right. But honestly, I can't see it. A lot of what we do essentially lives on credit. We're like real estate. We're in demand as long as there is a buyer. Essentially, buyers will cease.

We're not doctors, cops nor lawyers, the world won't cease without us. Hell, even civil workers in governments although less salary, have better safety than we do. I can't shake the feeling that essentially we'll realise that all these companies we work for don't really "exist" as they're just the imagination of someones account balance. At some point its gotta run dry.

<comment><USER10> My employer has just made `most valuable company'. I am not too concerned. They make a pretty dime, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yahoo still has a bunch of really smart people doing important open source contributions - I wish all of them all the best and I really hope that the tighter belt will allow them to continue their work.

</comment><comment><USER13> In the past 10 years with Yahoo I - deleted Yahoo Weather after they put huge ads and briefly used Flickr.

In the past 10 years with Google I - use Gmail, Google Drive, Google docs, Google sheets, Search, Google Maps, Chrome, Waze and YouTube on a daily basis. I've also bought Chromecast and occasionally use Hangouts & Wallet. I'm excited about a lot of their Google X projects.

The 15% job cut is because Marissa Mayer failed to suck me and millions of others into the Yahoo ecosystem.

I think part of that is shifting Yahoo from a media company to something more like Google.

<comment><USER14> All the mentioned Google services are being paid for by Google Search, a luxury that Yahoo never had.

<comment><USER13> Why didn't they innovate more?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really don't understand why she continues to hold the job - I haven't seen anything that she's done that has worked at either expanding revenue or at least stemming the bleeding. She also seems does not seem to be an effective manager given the turn over at the senior level.

</comment><comment><USER16> My only hope wrt Yahoo is that Yahoo Finance gets sold to someone before the company implodes. It's basically the only top notch, useful site they run.

<comment><USER17> Why is that? I haven't visited it in years and use Google Finance instead.

<comment><USER16> Because Google Finance is obviously abandonware, and Yahoo Finance has a great iOS (and I assume Android) mobile app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Article primarily references information from the WSJ article, but WSJ now has a super-paywall and the "web" trick no longer works.

<comment><USER19> Maybe it just changed, but there is an article and not a link to the WSJ. You can also use this to read the WSJ article:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Yahoo%27s+Marissa+Mayer+to+U...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Yahoo%27s+Marissa+Mayer+to+Unveil+Cost- Cutting+Plan)

<comment><USER18> Nope. They closed that workaround.

The article was indeed changed; edited OP.

<comment><USER19> Interesting, it still works for me but I have an extension that automatically sends a Google referrer to all WSJ.com request. Not sure why that would behave differently, but it does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> At the dawn of the Internet Yahoo held the Internet's home page, there were so few sites and Search Engines were so primitive that I remember using Yahoo Directory to find websites and for many years `ping yahoo.com` was my magic command to tell whether my modem had an Internet connection. My first Internet account and online alias was at Yahoo, I used mail and their personalized home page every day...

But then started their decades long decay, whilst the Internet boomed the Yahoo directory became old and static, I moved to searching on Google pretty quickly and jumped when gmail was released with it's unprecedented 1GB of free space. Around the same time my Yahoo mail became my junk account, my personalized Yahoo home page started bit rotting, my Internet connectivity command became `ping google.com` and I never went back to searching on Yahoo. They also jacked up prices of Yahoo domains by 300-400%, violating existing customers trust and prompted me to go shopping for a new service provider pretty quickly.

Although I've been disconnected from all things Yahoo, I imagine it's been operating in its own niche corner of the Internet, I'm told Yahoo mail has hundreds of million users (my Junk account likely counted), I'd be interested in the number of active accounts and their demographics, my guess goes to an aging population. It's now been years since I heard anything positive coming out of Yahoo, they've hit the news with MS's failed acquisition, switching search engines and CEO churn - but otherwise I can't recall anything new coming from Yahoo that wasn't M&A.

They seem like a draconian company holding onto legacy labor-intensive degrading assets which happens to be sitting on a gold mine with their Alibaba investment. I don't see how the current structure is capable of re-inventing itself so stream-lining their existing operations and trimming off dead-weight and losses seems like the only way forward. If they ever have a chance to becoming a tech force again they need new blood and talent pretty quickly. Fortunately they have the resources to make something but I only see it coming from outside of Yahoo, if I was them I would look at using their resources funding young, talented and innovative startups that aligns with their growth and business interests, e.g. they could mandate all ad-supported startups must use Yahoo Ads. Even with all the Talent Google has, many of their most valuable assets like Android and YouTube came from acquisitions. With Yahoo's brain drain I suspect that's going to be the only way we're going to see a resurgence from them.

<comment><USER21> > `ping yahoo.com`

Haha, I still do this out of habit too.

<comment><USER22> Me too. Literally the only thing I've used Yahoo for in years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What about Tumblr ? Is that thing still on? was it worth the bazillion dollars they spent on the aquisition.

Also a long time ago, Yahoo made Mark Cuban a billionaire. What happened to the technology they acquired from his company?

<comment><USER24> Tumblr remains a top 50 US site, so yeah it's still on.

Was it worth it? I don't see any meaningful competitors to them. Nobody has come along to knock them off. The $1.1 billion price was obviously steep for a blog service. So long as the traffic remains, they have some shot at turning it into a sustainable business. It's realistically worth 10% to 20% of what they paid for it though.

<comment><USER25> Tumblr has a problem of demographics which makes it difficult for Yahoo to make money off of it. A very large segment of their users are teenagers, and another large segment do little other than post pornography.

<comment><USER26> Teens are great to market to because they can get money out of their parents.

<comment><USER25> Much easier to get money out of people who can get money from themselves.

Ad impressions from adults are worth more than ad impressions from teenagers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> At this point, I feel bad for the other 85% who still work there...

</comment><comment><USER28> > Ms. Mayer is expected to announce greater focus on Project Index, an > internal project to build a better search engine tailored to mobile phones, > said a person familiar with the matter. The company has posted listings for > at least 190 jobs on its website this month, the vast majority of which are > for engineers.

1\. I am eager to find out why it is tailored to mobile phone and what capacity the engine would give to a mobile phone. A search engine should work on both desktop and on the go.

2\. Did job research with Yahoo a couple years ago, so I am not sure how much it is true today and whether my observation is correct or not from their hiring standpoint. But I know in the past, half of the Yahoo hiring post dates were at least 6-12 months ago, which indicated either the company was struggling to find and acquire talents, or someone simply never bothered to cancel the request and the team responsible for managing the hiring posts never bothered to check with the requester regularly. Either way, it was bad for a job seeker to see a company fail to remove job posting from months ago.

IMO, if you are still hiring the same title for multiple job filling, submit a new one and put a new date.

<comment><USER29> There are still plenty of sites that are unusable on a mobile phone, so that's one consideration.

<comment><USER28> Did you mean going over to another site? Because major search engines like google, yahoo and bing have their own app for major mobile OSes. Unless you want to render other sites within your app, that's a whole different story. I am under the impression they want to incorporate Yahoo News Digest (pretty much an update from the expensive Summly acquisition) into the search experience.

<comment><USER30> I guess he meant that search results that don't render well/fast on mobile could be demoted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I guess this proves that banning work-from-home didn't solve their problems.

Yahoo was _the_ internet destination back in the 90s and into the 2000s until Google started to eat their lunch in search and email.

In my opinion, Yahoo's strength was its diversity; it was a one-stop shop for everything internet. You could register domain names, set up web pages, sell items, conduct email, instant messaging, etc. all within the yahoo.com domain. Gradually, it seems that other, nimbler competitors have gradually chipped away at Yahoo's lead until it seems they don't do anything particularly well compared to the competition. Too bad.

They still do have 400 million email users, and email users are loathe to change, so that business is probably safe for a while. But with nothing new to offer, and many good offerings sinking or gone, Yahoo is becoming a low price acquisition target. Sad to watch; at one time it was the iconic Internet business, in the Fortune 500, that could seemingly do nothing wrong.

<comment><USER32> > I guess this proves that banning work-from-home didn't solve their problems.

I don't know what's the big deal about that. It affected ~200 people max. Yahoo was just tightening the restrictions, bringing them in line with the rest of the Valley companies. And yet people still think that it was a big deal; it wasn't.

(Source: I was there.)

<comment><USER33> Maybe it wasn't a big deal for you but it was perceived negatively overall and it hurt Yahoo's reputation (or whatever remnants of that remained at that point in time). If only 200 people were affected then it wasn't worth the backlash it created and wasn't a smart move. Anyone who was impacted by it, e.g. wasn't able to go pick up his kids or stay home for a plumber to come fix his sink, wouldn't be happy and his unhappiness would impact people working with him. These sort of moves can hurt the "spirit" of a company irrevocably.

<comment><USER4> The reason was to get rid of dead weight that was "working from home", but effectively just lifting a paycheck for doing nothing.

It did in no way impact productive employees who needed an occasional flexible schedule.

But that's not something you can tell the press, so it was spun as it was spun, and that's what people remember.

<comment><USER34> In actuality it just tightened the existing restrictions on remote workers to the very upper echelon of ICs. It didn't really impact occasional work-from- home people much as long as they flew under the radar, but it did impact the sort of people who lived in the middle of Idaho. Everyone was required to relocate to within 100 miles of a Yahoo office and commute in most days, unless they were truly irreplaceable and their VP went to bat. Oh and imagine relocating to be near an office that was subsequently closed.

It was a stupid policy decision, it damaged the Yahoo's public reputation due to their incompetent PR (nothing new there) and it has cost Yahoo a considerable number of excellent (but not truly irreplaceable) employees.

In conjunction with the drive to re-centralize teams back in Sunnyvale (after other drives to de-centralize to less competitive markets to hire better people), this cost Yahoo a lot of their network engineering team, among other groups. LinkedIn, Apple, and other companies have reaped the benefits of Yahoo's short-sightedness.

Whenever a company has to resort to cleaning house to rid itself of dead weight -- either by "banning" remote workers, mass layoffs, or whatever else -- the real story is that they simply don't know who is doing good work and who is not. If they knew, that, then the non-workers would already have been separated from the company.

Either the managers are not suited for their roles or not empowered to perform the duties of their roles or terrified of political nonsense like losing headcount and reqs and being demoted. Yahoo has consistently failed to properly measure employee performance, either taking a lackadaisical approach to performance or using pseudo-scientific nonsense like bell curves. As a result, there has always been a lot of dead weight -- inside the offices is no exception. They're currently being sued for their firing practices, and the suit suggests that the performance measuring system is wielded punitively for political purposes. I don't find this at all hard to believe.

There is no easy fix to a poor work culture, and I don't think Yahoo really has ever had the stomach for the hard fixes. The culture is too poisonous and it has persisted too long. It doesn't matter now though, Yahoo won't be around in its current form for too much longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Maybe they should spin off every area they operate in, into a separate company? Like Sports, Finance, Mail, etc.?

</comment><comment><USER5> CEO Training 101

Multiple rounds of layoffs destroy company morale. Better to do one big one, and then hire back if necessary.

<comment><USER36> Don't go after workers just because they're highly paid, and force them to pick between paycut or package.

This is how you lose all the good people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There is a movie dialogue where a man from the future tells his friend in the past:"I want you to remember this word, okay? It's kind of like a code word: Yahoo. Can you remember that?" It ends up making his friend rich in the future. The movie is Frequency(2000)

</comment><comment><USER38> If you are one of the 15% who were let go, ping me at firstname.lastname@example.com and I'll personally try to help you find a new job. We are working with many companies from YC and other VCs!

</comment><comment><USER39> As a post mortem of sorts, could someone with an understanding of yahoo from the inside explain why they have failed to innovate for 10+ years?

<comment><USER13> I don't work at Yahoo but I believe the answer is management.

<comment><USER39> How so? As in they just never hired the best people/created processes that resulted in innovation?

<comment><USER13> Hiring is part of it but it's also about systematically launching products to create your own ecosystem.

Yahoo's never really built an ecosystem like Google and when you couple that with low performing acquisitions you get job cuts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > Yahoo had about 11,000 employees as of June 30

That's still a pretty big company in tech terms. A bit less than Facebook.

<comment><USER24> A _lot less_ than Facebook at this point. There's no longer a good comparison to be made there, as Facebook's business is five times larger.

Their Q315 was just about larger than all of Yahoo, and Facebook's sales are growing at 50%.

Facebook earned $1.56 billion in net income last quarter (and they'll do $5+ billion annually going forward). Yahoo is struggling to stay near $50-$100 million per quarter. And that's net income, skewed by various b.s., Yahoo is producing lots of red ink on operating income (FB has ~30% operating income margins).

Facebook is going to hit near $22-$24+ billion in sales over the coming four quarters. Yahoo is stuck around $4.6 billion.

Facebook is a cash generating machine, while Yahoo is becoming AOL: trying to extract dwindling amounts of cash from legacy businesses.

It's a really bad contrast these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> this is sad , same with IBM last week , i guess we employees should think more about what kind how loyal can we be to companies that can do this to us i a blink of an eye. All the best for the ex-yahoo and ex-IBM

</comment><comment><USER42> What's the cumulative total of layoffs so far?

</comment><comment><USER43> I feel bad. First Mayer had the no work from home thing just to save money and now she's doing this. I feel soon Yahoo will be spun off in to a few different entities if they keep going this way

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't really get what these abbreviations and commas in the titles are all about.

It saves 3 characters over "Yahoo to cut 15% of jobs and close several units". Maybe allow for more Twitter hashtags?

<comment><USER28> I did a quick search just to see what other media is using.

CNBC> Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units: WSJ

reuters seems to have updated the title.

Even though it said WSJ, WSJ has a different headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Split it and sell it off

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder how many high level engineers quit during the telecommuting ban?

</comment><comment><USER47> Doesn't Yahoo go on hiring sprees all the time?

<comment><USER28> Almost every major tech company is always hiring. But the process of ACTUALLY HIRING is a different story. Some company does it quick, even if there's a layoff. Some company takes forever to complete interview and paper work even if there is no layoff. And then there are companies doing layoff and new hiring goes through strict budget reviews. It depends. Furthermore, you can close a whole useless business project and you decide to invest in another project so you need to hire people. It's quite interesting that in the latter case some company prefers to fire everyone and hire back some of them. I have seen that before.

<comment><USER48> > It's quite interesting that in the latter case some company prefers to fire > everyone and hire back some of them. I have seen that before.

I wonder why they'd do it, instead of an internal transfer. Any idea why?

<comment><USER49> When I've seen this happen, it's been pure mismanagement. An order goes out to do layoffs, so people get laid off. Within days, people realize that they've laid off critical employees who can't be replaced and they get hired back as contractors. The employees who got laid off aren't happy about it, so the ones that do come back demand huge raises and some don't come back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> who is even using yahoo and why?

<comment><USER51> It's the default search engine for Firefox.

But mostly, Yahoo has a bunch of successful properties (finance, sports, tumblr) that still have users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> 15%? That's all? (Yahoo stockholder here.)

<comment><USER53> I hope you have puts

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder how many high level employees she lost during the ban on telecommuting, and how much of an impact that had on getting product to market?

<comment><USER54> Zero. Exceptions were granted for pretty much every "high level" employee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Elop'd. Think Google would buy them for the front page visitors, news, and sports assets?

</comment><comment><USER56> I mean..it's Yahoo, who cares.

</comment><comment><USER57> They're going to kill Yahoo because some rich assholes don't want to pay their taxes.

<comment><USER58> No, they're going to kill Yahoo because it deserves to die; a company not making money doesn't really have a reason for existence, does it? (Or it should become a charity instead.)

<comment><USER59> I think there is some value in providing jobs to 10,000 people (currently more, soon a little less) even if there's no extra profit for shareholders on top of that. Maybe these kinds of companies should just be given to employees for free and run as a co-op instead of getting shut down.

<comment><USER58> > I think there is some value in providing jobs to 10,000 people

Sure there is, but it's not the purpose of companies to provide that, but should be done by the society (government) if the society decides there's value in that.

<comment><USER59> > Sure there is, but it's not the purpose of companies to provide that, but > should be done by the society (government) if the society decides there's > value in that.

I like how this contrasts really nicely with a different view, where the ideal state of society is small government that leaves everything to the market, often mentioned in the same breath with keeping taxes as low as possible.

I think the whole basic income thing is interesting, but unless/until that's implemented, a society that mainly relies on companies to power and own the country should also demand from companies to ensure that people are doing well.

Anyway that's going off-topic, my initial point was only that the default move for companies without sizeable profits or losses doesn't have to be to wind them down. I care less whether you call the result a charity, a non-profit or something done by the government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Yahoo is #5 web site: [http://www.alexa.com/topsites](http://www.alexa.com/topsites)

Yahoo netted $7B : [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=YHOO+Income+Statement&annual](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=YHOO+Income+Statement&annual)

Big, mature companies have to go through layoffs now and then; get rid of the dead wood.

What's the problem?

<comment><USER61> My thoughts are similar - they dont have one united vision about who they are, but they do have several successful internet properties - finance, sport, tumblr, flickr and more. It seems clear now that marissa is not capable to completely transform the company, but by doing incremental optimalization they can do just fine over time.

<comment><USER62> Flickr was incredibly successful at one point, but it has been slowly dying for years. I used to pay for Pro features there but one day they emailed saying that free accounts were now good enough. So revenue must be reduced since then. And what replaced it is a bunch of porn collectors. Ten years ago there was a community of photographers there. Now the only "likes" I get are on a couple pictures that happen to have nudity or a girl in handcuffs (actual police handcuffs, now reimagined as kink). Most of the people who try to follow me there don't even share a single photo themselves...they use Flickr to catalogue their fetishes.

<comment><USER63> This thread has hundreds of comments and only two people mentioned Flickr. I guess that tells you how much currency it has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> The problem is when yahoo does parties that cost some millions when they announce the layoffs... I'm wondering if yahoo has any earnings since her majesty became ceo.

<comment><USER65> > I'm wondering if yahoo has any earnings since her majesty became ceo.

Why wonder when you can find out for yourself?

[https://investor.yahoo.net/results.cfm](https://investor.yahoo.net/results.cfm)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I know if my home router is secure? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Security is relative. No matter how your router is configured, a burgler can walk off with your hardware and the data it contains. Sure you can put bars on the windows, but it's not cost effective to protect against shaped charge wall breaching. For a bit of security, I'd look at upgrading any consumer grade router firmware to dd-wrt or openWRT to get rid of factory default service accounts and obtain finer grained control of the device than typically ships in the box.

From there it then just comes down to how much effort you enjoy putting into security. For some people UPnP is a feature, for others it's a horror. And of course if you really are concerned with security, don't use Wifi because it doesn't just leak information, it broadcasts it. Of course, wiring up the house with Cat-x is a big job compared to typing in a WPA pass-phrase.

Secure against what? is what you need to decide. The neighbor's dog is one thing, the NSA another.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Turn it off. It's now secure. Turn it back on. It's now insecure (to some level).

</comment><comment><USER4> You don't.

Lock it down as best you can: [http://www.tomsguide.com/us/home-router- security,news-19245....](http://www.tomsguide.com/us/home-router- security,news-19245.html)

But as for the software being immune to vulnerabilities - no chance. Read [http://www.devttys0.com/2015/04/hacking-the-d-link- dir-890l/](http://www.devttys0.com/2015/04/hacking-the-d-link-dir-890l/) which lists huge security issues and then D-LINK putting out a patch which doesn't even fix what they said it did.

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess for "router" you meant your "internet modem", and how to be sure that no one is accessing it from outside.

Well it's a risk, so you can spend a lot of money to minimize the risk, but you can't get rid of it.

You can try to minimize the attack vectors at WAN side:

\- drop incoming connections from WAN, firewall

\- no ICMP answers

\- no admin interface, being it html, telnet, ssh (some routers bypass the firewall on these services)

\- no default password!

\- no uPNP, so malware at LAN cannot bypass your firewall (but they can still phone home)

what else?

</comment><comment><USER6> Direct outbound traffic through a mitmproxy instance you control, and watch what goes over the wire.

</comment><comment><USER7> How do i know that the compiler that compiled my software was/is secure ? Will I ever find out ?

</comment><comment><USER8> It isn't.</comment>


How Clemson manipulates their US News ranking - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/03/rankings

<comment><USER2> I once suggested to an alumni association official that the university host free parties for recent graduates and have a concerned donor hand out $20's at the door with the request that a donation be made inside. The bump in rankings would lead to more cash coming into the university and have a multiplier effect on the cash dispensed. I wonder what the definition of "donation" is -- Could a rich alumnus send $20 bills in late December, each in a separate envelope with the names of an alumnus who had not yet given that year? I suppose the binary nature of this statistic was chosen to avoid bias toward schools that pump out investment bankers over those who produce <insert lowly paid profession here>.

Obviously, all these numbers can be gamed, and we know this from reading Joel's articles on measuring programmers. However, I wonder if universities might be rational in gaming the system, even to an extent much greater than Clemson. Five years from now, few will recall the talk featured in the article, but the positive feedback loop initiated by such a strong bump in the rankings might continue for decades. Why not take the short term ethical hit?

Years ago, my alma mater gave up on application fees, supposedly for socioeconomic justice. The reality, I suspect, is that they wanted to encourage more applicants so that they could lower their acceptance rates. The trick is to make sure that the additional applicants are complete losers that are easy to turn down and not Stanford applicants adding a safety school to the list. Why not go a step further and offer free iPods for applying? A couple of years ago one university offered cash (bookstore gift cards) to already accepted students if they retook their SATs and obtained higher scores, so there's a precedent here.

<comment><USER3> > Why not take the short term ethical hit?

Because it's unethical?

[Edit: add a little more of my thinking.

Ethics should count towards your reputation. A reputation for honesty or dishonesty should be important professionally and publically. I think that honouring and rewarding those who get results unethically is corrosive to public expectations, leading people to expect less of others. When this percolates into public life and people have low expectations of the ethics of, say, politicians and police officers, systemic abuse of power is more possible/encouraged - since the main counterweight to such abuse is public opinion, which has had it's expecations neutered. End repetitive rant.

<comment><USER4> Most collage ranking systems start with a list of top schools and work from there to the ranking system. It's often more a question of how close you are to Harvard than anything else. (Or MIT / Cal Tech for tech schools etc.)

PS: It's not that Harvard needs to be in the top spot, but if Harvard and Yale don't make the top 10 buisness schools they are going to start over.

<comment><USER2> Good point. Any ranking system that doesn't pass a "laugh test" when viewed won't be influential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised at the university representatives who were disturbed by Clemson's gaming of the system. Shouldn't this make those people (and US News) question the validity of the ranking? Instead of making a display of outrage, why not find a better methodology?

The most troubling aspect of this is that good schools feel the need to become arbitrarily more selective in order to boost their ranking.

<comment><USER6> As if they're not using the same techniques... The 'outrage' is probably just a façade. You can bet that they took notes and will be using some of the same strategies when they get back and start having meetings.

<comment><USER7> speaking as a clemson alumni, the outrage is either for show, or because someone outed secrets in public.

none of the things that clemson did are secrets or new. the only thing that _could_ be considered to possibly be unethical, imo, would be the class size shifting. but, again, this isn't new. my high school actually did this as well, in order to improve its appearance from outside metrics. and it isn't a secret. students received somewhat regular updates on what the president was doing/implementing, and i distinctly remember this being mentioned. maybe not worded the same way, but the concept was communicated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I transferred from UCLA to NYU between my sophomore and junior year of undergrad. UCLA counts me in its matriculated stats because I graduated from _a_ university, despite leaving.

I already thought at that point that any rankings were bullshit. That kind of manipulation makes anything +/- 10 or maybe 20 positions to be irrelevant. The problem for US News is that everyone already knows a rough ranking, and doesn't need to be told that UCLA & NYU are somewhere in the top 50 but not top 10.

<comment><USER9> You know, I submit that lateral transfers are probably one of the highest possible signals there could be. Now, if that was a part of the formula, they schools would game it. So you'd probably have to sit out a year, like players in Div. I sports (all sports, or just revenue generating sports?) have to. Ah, progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if there are highly-paid "educational supplement optimization" consultants who get low-ranking learning institutions higher in the annual results...</comment>


The Insane Guide to Running a Website in Germany - <AUTHOR> http://allaboutberlin.com/guides/website-compliance-germany <comment><AUTHOR> Submission statement: I compiled this guide over the last two months, covering all the little laws I needed to follow to make my website compliant. Since the GDPR regulation is full of little holes, I tried to refer as much as possible to other sources.

I am aware that some things are missing. Online merchants have to follow quite a few more rules, but I'm not qualified to explain these.</comment>


Shoes.com shuts down - <AUTHOR> https://www.biv.com/article/2017/1/shoescom-shutting-down-today/ <comment><USER2> It's kind of amazing that very few of what you would naively expect to be the "best" domain names, especially for selling things, are actually home to successful business. Things like shoes.com, pizza.com, clothes.com, beer.com, programming.com, they're all failed or nothing. Others (books.com, computers.com) just redirect to websites that are closely or tangentially related.

<comment><USER3> One theory I'll toss out about these failures is that it's a people problem. They probably have marketing people leading them, hence why they bought such a "great brand". Turning revenue doesn't mean making a profit and without enough focus on tech automating as much as possible the businesses don't survive.

<comment><USER4> Generic words are not brands. I have no feelings about shoes.com nor can I ever other than I like shoes. I care about certain brand of shoes because they look nice and last a while, i.e. quality. That's why companies fight to keep their brands from becoming generic names.

<comment><USER5> Surely this is less common now, but I can remember at one point it was a pretty common behavior to say, "hm, I want some information at shoes" and just try navigating to shoes.com. Probably this became less common because porn advertisers caught on and started redirecting to porn.

<comment><USER6> Certainly it was expected that that style of navigation would be extremely lucrative. It never turned out that way of course. In large aggregate domain squatters have made some real money over the last 20 years by owning various direct type domains (like weddingshoes.com).

I remember in the mid & late 1990s, during the insane dotcom landgrab, people really believed having that special domain name was everything. At the time, it coincided with people thinking they could build a business overnight and IPO the next week, so having something like Shoes.com to sell to naive investors was crucial. I remember one guy pitching the premise, on CNBC and elsewhere, that he had acquired all the buything.com domains, like buysocks.com, and he was going to build a retailing juggernaut on the back of that.

<comment><USER5> Easy-to-remember domain names are still good. People make a lot of money parking domains and you would expect that to be impossible if they were worthless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Its approximately 200 employees were made aware of the decision early on > January 27, and the company said that it will compensate the employees > through to the end of the month.

So they notified their employees that same day as they shutdown. To make it right they offered them a severance of two whole days.

<comment><USER8> Given this could lead to all sort of lawsuits, it's most likely they were looking for a "plan A" that didn't work and had to quickly unravel into a "plan B". Because they are shutting down, it's entirely possible the plan A left them without money in the bank and they had to announce it within the week (being Friday the _best_ day for layoffs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have insight into why this happened?

The guy who took Costal Contacts public buys Shoes.com and two existing shoe businesses. The business experiences revenue growth and raises $45M.

[https://www.internetretailer.com/2015/05/21/shoescom- raises-...](https://www.internetretailer.com/2015/05/21/shoescom- raises-45-million)

Suppliers start having trouble getting paid. The business announces a hiring spree. Four months later, they shut down.

This is manic. If you can build a company and take it public, make what looks like a solid set of moves to get into a nice position and grow that position in revenue terms - what went wrong? What is the lesson? I'm assuming the CEO knew the ropes, perhaps not? Seems unlikely.

I suspect their top line was good but their margins were negative. That, something out of left field or foul play of some kind. Its noted they had lawsuits pending, which I suspect relate to collections.

I know that walmart recently purchased shoebuy. So shoes.com's competition, already stiff, may have been overwhelming.

Even so, wouldn't you wind it down then?

<comment><USER10> I help operate an online shoe retailer so I have watched ShoeME.ca (the Canadian e-retailer established in 2012 that merged with Shoes.com and OnlineShoes.com) over the last few years. Here is what I've noticed:

\- Their prices were not competitive. Some brands sold for at least $60 more than the MSRP found on other sites. I don't think even Zappos could've gotten away with similar premiums – despite their renowned customer service – which according to reviews and articles, ShoeME did not have.

\- They were a drop-shipper so every item had to first travel from the supplier, to ShoeME's warehouse, THEN express shipped to the customer. Shipping from their Vancouver warehouse to Eastern provinces may have cost up to $40. Drop-shipping can add over a week to delivery time depending on how responsive your supplier is. Frustratingly, ShoeME did not make this their drop-shipping transparent and would instead send you an email about the delay AFTER you had ordered.

\- Fakes sales. There was never a day without a sale banner, popup, or email blast claiming 30-40% off. The moment a "last chance" sale ended, another one was put on the next day. In reality many brands were permanently excluded from the promotions. Consumers catch on quickly, especially in the online world.

\- In the past year and a half, ShoeME started buying their own inventory for some brands so they clearly thought they were getting somewhere. However, anyone who has run a shoe store knows how hard it is to keep size runs full. Some styles may sell well one day, and you may not sell another pair for a few weeks. I wonder if they had enough data to anticipate customer demand without stocking too much.

\- They also started work on a supplier portal which never got off the ground. While working to integrate with them starting in mid-2015 them, we constantly received incorrectly setup credentials, changing representatives, and no updates whatsoever.

\- Returns. It's no secret the return rate in the shoe industry can exceed 25%. I can imagine how sprawling ShoeME's warehouse must've been considering the hundreds of brands they sold. How do you even organize all the one-off returns from different styles and manufacturers?

This announcement pretty much caught us off-guard this afternoon, although retrospectively you can see some customer service issues regarding lack of transparent drop-shipping and dishonest pricing and sales. Personally, I thought they were too big to fail and always questioned the sustainability of their constant sales and pricing.

I feel sorry for the customers who still have outstanding orders with them. Websites are all down. They're social media pages have posts from just a few hours ago so I guess many were blindsided. This is like FutureShop's sudden closure all over again.

<comment><USER9> I keep coming back to HN for insights like this. Thanks for taking the time lawkwok.

<comment><USER10> Thanks! It's not every day I see an article on Hacker News that's not over my head :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remember showing my father the www, probably 20 years ago, and he was incredulous that certain .coms would exist for any reason. "You're telling me I could type 'shoes.com' and there would be a page about shoes? No way." I don't remember shoes actually being on the page anywhere, prompting the response "see? I told you it wouldn't work."

From the article: "Its approximately 200 employees were made aware of the decision early on January 27, and the company said that it will compensate the employees through to the end of the month." Gosh, how generous of them. A whole 5/7th week severance. I wonder if they were in talks with Walmart for a buyout but they acquired shoebuy instead in early January. Either way shoes.com should have shut the doors earlier and given employees more notice.

</comment><comment><USER12> For what it's worth I'm not surprised. I had a very poor experience with them. The actual shipping time was significantly longer than promised (pretty sure their model was to act as a dropshipper), and then I was unable to get a response to return the shoes I no longer needed.

</comment><comment><USER13> My guess is the Omnibox is decreasing the value of websites like this.

Before the browser (or ISP) would suggest things like shoes etc if you typed it into the address bar.

Now you simply get Google (or bing) results.

RIP expensive domain names with no specialized business model behind them.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is sad to here. Roger is the man. I remember visiting him when he ran Coastal.

<comment><USER15> Given that he gave his 200 employees a 4 days of severance, he is clearly not "the man".

<comment><USER16> well if there's no money in the bank, how do you propose he give more?

<comment><USER17> I've been involved in a failing business and we knew more than 4 days out that there was no money in the bank.

Hoping the problem will go away rarely makes the problem go away.

<comment><USER14> I just got laid off from a large public tech company, and there was zero severance in the email.

<comment><USER18> Well in that case I guess it's ok?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I'm buying things, I usually associate what I'm buying with the brand I'm buying from, not the generic article I'm buying. For that reason, I would respond to `allenedmunds.com`, but not to `shoes.com`.

Having a generic domain name in this case makes me think the shoes are counterfeit or otherwise not quality. Since the site is currently down, I unfortunately can't verify my own perceptions.

<comment><USER20> I associate generic domain names with "comparator" sites. If I go to shoes.com, I want to access all and every shoe on Earth. A search engine for shoes. It works well for hotels.</comment></comment>


Neoliberalism and the commodification of opinions - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world?CMP= <comment><USER2> If you're looking for a deeper analysis than this article offers, I have some recommendations for the interested reader in considering our modern way of life within capitalism and its relation to our wellbeing and our concepts of 'freedom', mainly from a Left perspective though not necessarily so. I hope these are useful:

* The Frankfurt School on the "culture indutsry"[0], which is the effect of capitalist mode of production on our culture (specifically art and within that, most focus is on the literary arts though it easily applies to music too).

* Guy Debord's _Society of the Spectacle_ [1], describing the world at a deeper level to as Marx put it, or rather, a deeper analysis of our society from a situationist point of view.

* Marx's concepts of _commodity fetishism_ [2] and _alienation_ [3], describing the effects which the capitalist mode of production has on the psychological well being of the working class.

* The extensions from this, again I must refer to the Frankfurt School, I'm in the middle of a book called _Escape from Freedom_ [4] by Erich Fromm. He wrote a foreword to the second edition 25 years after its first publication, in which he claims that the conditions he describes of the freedom of man in capitalist society have become even more important to analyse for our wellbeing overall. It is a psycho-sociological work, and I haven't read it in full, I'm slowly making my way through it, however from what I've read I would recommend it for its interesting point of view.

* For a critique of the notions of tolerance in society and pluralistic democracy (which is supportive of "true" democracy, of power of the people as individuals rather than religious, ethnic or social interest groups), I recommend in particular the first and third essays (the third by Marcuse, the first by Richard Wolff) from _A Critique of Pure Tolerance_ [5]

[0] [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/cultu...](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture- industry.htm)

[1] [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.ht...](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm)

[2] I must first note that "commodity fetishism" is absolutely _not_ about how people are materialistic and value material wealth over spiritual or moral action. It is about how through the market, the interactions between people themselves are hidden and proxied such that the commodity itself is fetishised, to use that term in the sense of meaning "of unnatural excessive focus" [https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/e.htm#fetishism](https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/e.htm#fetishism)

[3] Alienation is a concept that Marx borrowed from 18th century philosopher G.W.F Hegel, it's one which is generally deeper than how Marx uses it, and there are others who interpret it differently to Marx. Here is the Marxian view, though there are others you can find. [https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/l.htm#alienation](https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/l.htm#alienation)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Freedom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Freedom) and there are links to download mobile-friendly versions of the work here: [https://libcom.org/library/escape-freedom](https://libcom.org/library/escape- freedom)

[5] PDF version here: [https://monoskop.org/images/5/55/Wolff_Moore_Marcuse_A_Criti...](https://monoskop.org/images/5/55/Wolff_Moore_Marcuse_A_Critique_of_Pure_Tolerance.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Is it possible that neoliberal policy is one means by which the modern day Marxist and their watered down derivates seek to emanticize the eschaton? What's the end game?

<comment><USER2> I have no idea. However I will say that neoliberalism or even social democracy is very different from the views espoused by Communists pre and post Marx; as Marx said, the theory of Communism can be condensed to one statement: the abolition of private property. However as Badiou notes, there is the _Communist Hypothesis_ [0], that is, the idea of these subversive movements which aim for liberation and the removal of our class structures - these may not necessarily involve the full abolition of private property.

I do not consider neoliberalism to be a modern Marxist invention, though I can't claim to know about its history, and of course hitsory is extremely important to reveal a movement's origin and aims. My reasoning is from the idea that neoliberalism supports private property and what Marxists see as a class society. It does not aim for the abolition of these classes, but rather its stated goal is to acheive development _within_ the capitalist system.

In this way, neoliberalism is identical to social democracy in its overall aim - it works within a class society to try and bring better conditions, though people frequently criticise neoliberalism as being uncaring of the poor, the Marxist would say a similar thing about social democracy.

For a read by a thinker inspired by Marx, I've heard good things about David Harvey's _A Brief History of Neoliberalism_. I have not read it, so I don't know if I should recommend it, but since you mentioned modern Marxists, and he is one, it may be of some use to you.

[0] [https://newleftreview.org/II/49/alain-badiou-the- communist-h...](https://newleftreview.org/II/49/alain-badiou-the-communist- hypothesis)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Duplicate [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15048024](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15048024)

</comment><comment><USER5> This reads like an undergrad has just binged on Adam Curtis and thinks they've reached some meaningful conclusions.

I'm not saying much is wrong, just that it's neither new or insightful

<comment><USER6> I'd be curious to know which conclusions you think the author has reached.

And you're probably being downvoted because your criticism is neither specific nor substantiated, and fairly snide besides.

<comment><USER3> It's rather selective in what it doesn't consider, namely nations and culture. To oppose neo-liberal policies with Keynesian economics doesn't get you very far in explaining the state of things. Was Bill Clinton a Hayekian who rejected the "dashing and socially connected" Keynes? Slight of hand.

But I liked the article overall and think it's a good starting point for discussion.</comment></comment></comment>


One Small Step for the Web… - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@timberners_lee/one-small-step-for-the-web-87f92217d085 <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/solid/solid](https://github.com/solid/solid) \- Solid (derived from "social linked data") is a proposed set of conventions and tools for building decentralized Web applications based on Linked Data principles.

</comment><comment><USER3> If even the inventor can't be bothered to post the announcement of the thing on a platform that's compatible it doesn't bode well. Or at least link to an example.

<comment><USER4> Announcing a project to "re-decentralize the web" on Medium takes a bit of oomph out of the message.</comment></comment>


Google To Launch Health Service 'Google Fit' At Developers Conference - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/06/12/exclusive-google-to-launch-health-service-google-fit-at-developers-conference/

<comment><USER2> I'm very excited about wearables in the near future, but they are currently a curious case of public attention outpacing the technology. "Sleep trackers" are a joke, current pedometers aren't very accurate, and basic things like heart rate and blood pressure monitors are still a ways off from solid implementation.

At least this will have open APIs. I had a fitbit until I found out they don't let you easily get YOUR OWN DATA off the thing. The healthcare insights derived from better wearables, at scale, are going to be huge.

<comment><USER3> I would absolutely love to have an open, accurate sleep tracker. I've had a total of 7 sleep studies and multiple sleep latency tests (narcolepsy, cataplexy and mild apnea solved via a tonsillectomy), and I am constantly dismayed by how poor the space for optimizing sleep is. So much so, that I may seriously consider exploring the space in a year or two to find startup opportunities. Everybody sleeps and everybody would benefit from better quality sleep.

<comment><USER2> Likewise. That was my primary reason for buying the FitBit originally; I was disappointed at how inaccurate it was, even with the tempered expectation of knowing it was just a 3-axis accelerometer. That being said, FitBit et al. do seem to be making headway on getting people to buy into a device that is always on you, touching your skin. That is a prerequisite for any sleep tracker that didn't seem palatable only a few years ago (e.g. Zeo).</comment></comment></comment>


12 paradoxes of graphic design - <AUTHOR> http://www.tobiasbergdahl.com/2011/02/12-paradoxes/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure about paradox as it's used here. Maybe Alanis Morissette had a hand in writing the title, although that would be ironic.

Maybe more accurate would be, "12 Aphorisms of graphic design", even then I had to use google.</comment>


Exercises to craft an employer brand that makes engineers want to work for you - <AUTHOR> http://blog.interviewing.io/3-exercises-to-create-the-kind-of-employer-brand-that-actually-makes-engineers-want-to-work-for-you/ <comment><USER3> Seeing a pattern here on Engineers just calling it as it is, and wanting employers to do so too.

It ain't gonna happen - its the same thing as in PR-speak where a company will deny wrongdoing, speak in platitudes, etc, even when everyone and their dog knows what the real story is.

Engineers will just need to do their own due dilligence and find out through other avenues what the culture and working conditions are really like - <USER2> think this is just the reality of corporate culture. There are very real and tangible benefits of being employed and having a stable month-to-month paycheck, instead of striking out on your own, and the sooner everyone just accepts these annoyances and moves on with life, the sooner they can concentrate on the things that really matter.

Basically, don't hate the players, hate the game.

<comment><USER4> From an employer's perspective:

We already understand our own value. We probably overlook our faults. We don't trust potential employees to be as good as we want. We'll make it hard for you to work for us, and try not to pay you more than the value you provide. You need a job - try to prove your worth to us, and we'll consider letting you work for us.

From an employee's perspective:

We know we're one of the worthwhile employees. (We probably overlook our faults.) We don't trust potential employers to be a place we'll actually enjoy working. We don't want to work hard to prove ourselves - we expect you to win us over. We expect you to pay us a little above market value (since we're above average.) You need employees to exist and get work done - try to prove we'll enjoy working for you, and we'll consider giving you our expertise and time.

Both parties will withhold information in an attempt to appear better than the other so that initial negotiations go in their favor. The interview process will fail to disclose all relevant and interesting information about how well the two parties are suited to each other.

Beyond the general negotiation/trust problem, what are problems unique to engineers and their prospective employers, and how do we improve upon them in mutually beneficial ways?

<comment><USER5> > Both parties will withhold information in an attempt to appear better than > the other so that initial negotiations go in their favor.

I try very hard not to do this. When I'm interviewing for a position, I'm trying to determine honestly whether or not I'm a good fit for that employer, and that employer's assessment of how good a fit I may be is an important part of that.

Fit is important to me because when I'm on board, I'm on board 100%. It's a large commitment for me, and I want to minimize error.

So I try to be honest about my weaknesses as well as my strengths, to allow the employer to make a better assessment about fit. That greatly benefits me in the end.

No employee (or employer) is perfect, and a large part of what makes a good fit is if the imperfections are things that are tolerable by the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honestly, I just want to work for a company that is honest, it does not have to be the most exciting work, as long as hours are flexible and at least some remote work is offered.

I'm tired of recruiters try to hype up the company. If employer said, "Our product is not exciting but we offer great benefits, you just have to put in 30-35 hours a week, come to few meetings and meet reasonable deadlines that we agreed upon" I'm sold. I don't need ping pong table. I want decent salary, decent benefits and kind/honest coworkers.

<comment><USER7> Im sorry but 30 to 35 hours a week, especially at a startup is just not tenable for any company except a small lifestyle company

Also i have to laugh at the fact that you "just" want to work at a company thats honest and then you throw in the 30 to 35 hour work week requirement

<comment><USER8> I work at an enterprise less than 40 hours a week. I hear from recruiters 3-4 times a week. I don't care about your mission or your culture, just pay me, I do the work, and then go home.

If someone is of the opinion these sorts of orgs don't exist, I put forth that they might not have looked hard enough, and would encourage further exploration to better understand the employment landscape. If you're a startup and expecting workaholics for under market rate with a trivial amount of equity, I can imagine you would be upset your hiring pipeline isn't as robust as you would hope.

<comment><USER7> No not under market rate, if your goal is to work 30 to 35 hours a week under market rate all power to you but if you expect to be getting paid $400k total compensation or more you better be giving me at least 40 hours of work that i expect from a senior engineer. 5 to 10 hours is a full day of work.

<comment><USER9> You realize that _a vanishingly tiny slice of developers_ make $400K a year, yes? Yeah, sure, a few companies pay that kind of money to a subset of their people. Nobody else does.

And that's fine. I'd have a hard time not sawing off a hand before working at three and maybe four of the "FAANG" group. And I like having a life, so I'll leave money on the table all day long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > we found that brand strength didn't matter at all when it came to either > whether the candidate wanted to move forward or how excited the candidate > was to work at the company

This quote came as a surprise.

<comment><USER11> I think their follow-up thesis this is accurate:

 _Maybe the most realistic thing we can say is that while brand likely matters a lot for getting candidates in the door, once they're in, no matter how well- branded you are, they're yours to lose._

When I was interviewing, that was entirely true. Visibility and branding matters for initial contact. After that, I turned down interviews for all sorts of reasons. Interviewers that lacked social skills, interviews that asked for too much work, interviews where once I met the team I decided it wasn't a good product, and in one particularly egregious case a recruiter who initially asked for a resume then didn't respond until a month later with a two sentence message that the position got filled but was there another one I wanted to apply for?*

Based on my experiences job searching, if it weren't for all sorts of perverse incentives and bad actors who would mess up a name-and-shame blacklist, I'd wholly support such a list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want to hire and retain good engineering talent, try communicating (honestly) that you provide them private or semi-private work space, state of the art tools, their choice of editor/OS where applicable, and don't railroad them constantly with rigid adherence to this or that process methodology nor expect them to work crunch hours (except maybe in very rare circumstances). That'll get you more payoff per unit effort than tailoring your marketing pitch.

</comment><comment><USER5> A company that worries about "how to craft a brand" that appeals to engineers automatically falls a few notches in my estimation.

I want to work for a company that does interesting things, provides good support for engineers, behaves in a responsible fashion, and treats their employees well. Branding is irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER13> Alright come on. If you want your engineers to pour their souls into your dumb startup, you need to align their incentives with yours.

There's a very simple way to do that: give them ownership

Otherwise, why should I care? I don't get paid a single cent more for coming in and kicking ass everyday vs. just showing up and phoning it in.

</comment><comment><USER14> Aline says good things here - as always - but I want to note that an overly groomed company or one where many of the employees are pushing the company's job openings starts to feel really bogus.

In other words, if you take this too far, it becomes obviously painted on and, to use an old word, the recruiters become "posers".

But if you earnestly take her advice, I think that it's a good write up. Honestly talk about your unique point as a company. Who you are. Why you are. What you uniquely do. No BS. I maximize my corporate BS sensor when I'm job hunting.

</comment><comment><USER15> Pay good money. Moreover, provide meaningful raises as experience and expertise increases, and in line with the external job market. Don't hire in new hires above the salaries of your experienced employees that have to then train and babysit the new folks for six months to a year and clean up their messes.

Provide a private workspace (ideally private offices) where your knowledge workers can do their job without distraction. Don't cheap out on equipment and tooling and learning materials - it's moronic to quibble about buying an SSD or a monitor or a piece of software or a book that costs a couple of hours of your employee's hourly rate.

Provide clear direction, without micromanagement or silly infantile circle- time processes. Don't engage in ad-hoc walking-around status checks, don't demand immediate responses to asynchronous communications. Don't waste time in superfluous meetings.

Don't vacillate or chase after every customer request. When one of your employees says that something is unwise, and provides solid reasons, listen, and don't go around them to find a stooge who will obey your whims and slag in a big pile of technical debt.

Don't try to push any culty workplace culture stuff. Treat your employees like the highly paid professionals they are. Respect their time and other obligations.

</comment><comment><USER16> If somebody wants to work for me and really, honestly, cares if our tech stack is new and fancy (as opposed to practical/easy to maintain/easy to hire for), that is a HUGE red flag that they are going to leave after a few years or suggest major technology changes that are not in the best interest of the company.

</comment><comment><USER17> 1) Remote.

2) Money.

3) Demonstrate that you have half a clue how to run a project.

4) BONUS ROUND: No hours-long puzzle-question-memorization interview bullshit if you're not paying FAANG money and providing FAANG levels of résumé prestige.

<comment><USER18> Does F still have resume prestige? I predicted more than 10 years ago that someday having worked at Facebook would be the resume stain that you wear for life. Has it not yet come to pass that having worked at Facebook is a red flag? Sure, you are probably smart. But _anybody_ that lists Facebook on their resume is going to find a lot of their interview time with me going to probing their ethics.

<comment><USER19> I would agree the resume prestige has diminished from what it once was, but I think it's a little far to suggest that any rank and file ENGINEER would have compromised ethics just from choosing to work there. Facebook uses cutting edge tech and pays really well, I would never hold it against an engineer young or old for accepting a position that very likely offered more compensation than they've ever had before.

If you are interviewing Facebook execs or management it would seem reasonable to question their ethics.

<comment><USER20> In fact we can tell from Googlers commenting here on HN that individual engineers often disagree with some of the practices of their (huge) employer.

<comment><USER21> Then they should quit. Stand up for what's right.

If the engineers quit, the company can't do it anymore.

They are all accomplices. For whatever reason they don't stop and thus their ethics are compromised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One thing that needs to be added:

Job descriptions need to state where the job is, and/or if they allow telecommuting.

That's the first thing I look for. Now that I have a two-income family, I will not move under any circumstances.

</comment><comment> Jackson-Solway I can add a few things here. (I'm a cofounder at Job Portraits[1], an employer branding studio in SF.)

In our experience, successful employer brands turn on a startup's willingness to be transparent. Everyone in the Bay Area (not just engineers) has a bloodhound's nose for bullshit. I can't overemphasize this—the norm is vicious, laugh-in-your-face skepticism.

Our best projects are with startups who get this, and the solution isn't rocket science: you have to address your struggles.

Marketing teams are most likely to balk at revealing their company's flaws, but what's surprised us is how often technical leaders also refuse to address their team's shortcomings. In part this is because technical folks are deeply skeptical of anything their recruiting teams want (that's another story), but it's also a function of embarrassment...or even outright shame.

The classic case is the eng leader at a small startup who was previously at a FAANG company. They've spent the last few years as part of a well-oiled machine—but now everything is broken! Processes aren't just inefficient—they don't exist! The mobile app doesn't just suck—nobody knows how to fix it because that one guy who built it ditched for a FAANG job! (Oops.)

A huge part of our job, as an agency, is coaching leaders to see transparency as a competitive advantage. We say something like, "This isn't about confessing your sins. It's about revealing challenges that the right engineers will be THRILLED to solve." It's not that [thing] is broken; instead tell candidates that "this is an opportunity to implement [thing] the way you've always wanted." It's not that your failure to build [blah] is hurting the business; instead tell candidates to "come build mission-critical infrastructure." And the more specific you are, the better.

This is a mindset shift more than anything, and when we're able to pull it off it opens the door to an employer brand that candidates will trust.

Oh, and a quick note for any product marketing people who are reading this: Jobs are not products. You can't return them to the store or ask for a refund. Every person your company hires is taking a huge gamble on you. If you only 'put your best face forward' with an employer branding project, you risk emotional apocalypse if, during the person's first 30 days, they realize they were misled by a rosy employer brand. Tread carefully!

As we like to say, assume your audience (candidates) is as smart, or smarter, than you are. Even if they don't trust you, you need to trust them to self- select in—or self-select out—and the only way they can do that is with the truth.

[1] [https://www.jobportraits.com/](https://www.jobportraits.com/)</comment>


A Sneak Peak At Google Offers (Courtesy Of Google Search)  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/25/sneak-peak-google-offers/ <comment><USER2> And here I thought Google accidentally indexed their own internal HR websites. What a gyp.</comment>


Learn Python By Watching Video Lectures - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/learning-python-programming-language-through-video-lectures/

<comment><USER2> not sure its possible to learn anything that way...

<comment><USER3> There is a Turkish proverb, "if one could learn by watching, the cats would all be butchers" :-)

<comment><USER4> cats are very efficient butchers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> ...if you are already conversant in several other programming languages</comment>


YC, please mentor your companies on recruitment - <AUTHOR>

This recruitment post is currently on HN:
<comment>~~
Growth Hacker for Fast-Growing YC Startup
Our mission is to create the world's local commerce API and we need your help. You'll have real ownership, learn an incredible amount and have a ton of fun doing it.
Email us at xxxxx
<comment>~~
What is a growth hacker?  What language/skills are needed for this role?  Is it onsite/offsite?  Where are they located?
Hiring great people is integral to the success of a company, I don't think you could put any less effort into your recruitment message than this.
I hope YC makes more effort to mentor their companies on recruitment, it would no doubt increase their chances of success. </comment></comment><comment><USER2> "Growth hacker" is a term of art, and for the kind of people who they want to receive email from, it is adequately specific.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Growth hacker" aside, would you put up a recruitment post like this?</comment></comment>


Which Messaging Technologies Are Truly Safe and Secure? - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/which-messaging-technologies-are-truly-safe-and-secure <comment><USER2> Link to the actual scorecard:

[https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard](https://www.eff.org/secure- messaging-scorecard)

I'm surprised to see CryptoCat get such a high score. My impression from reading previous coverage of it was that browser-based JS encryption was inherently flawed.</comment>


Show HN: A photo sharing app that you can finally trust - <AUTHOR> http://pixter.in/

<comment><USER2> I love the idea! I wish there were more paid equivalents of "free" webservices/apps so that users knew the exact transaction cost of signing on. As your data on these websites/apps grows over the years and lock-in sets in, it becomes all the more important to have complete control over your data and trust in the service provider.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not an instagram or facebook photos or flickr power user by any standards, so take this with a grain of salt: I didn't know I couldn't trust photo sharing apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please visit the website. There I explain what the problem is.

In summary, since the user does not pay them and they need to be profitable there only option is to sell the resource they have. That is the users content. But selling really personal things like photos will be a huge deal and the users will get really upset. So instead they term it as 'sub liscence your photos / personal information' to third parties. Which basically means that advertisers can use your photos / personal information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love it when a web page is done right!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great… Would love an up vote

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another __iOS __only app.

<comment><AUTHOR> We started building this app / service in feb 2013. The whole app and service has been built by one programmer and one designer in about 3 months. This includes building the complete back end and the app.

We want to release an android / other OS versions but we have limited time and we will try to do so ASAP.</comment></comment>


DoD Encryption Wizard - <AUTHOR> https://spi.dod.mil/ewizard.htm <comment><USER2> I got curious and opened this project in JD-GUI. The namespace is afrlew, which I presume is some sort of acronym.

EDIT: Of course it is! AFRLEW = Air Force Research Laboratory Encryption Wizard

The lion's share of the crypto appears to be in called Hut8.class, which JD- GUI didn't fully decode successfully.

This looks odd:

        private void incrementSaltIndex(byte[] paramArrayOfByte, int paramInt)
        {
          int tmp5_4 = (paramInt + 3);
          paramArrayOfByte;
          if (0 == (tmp5_1[tmp5_4] = (byte)(tmp5_1[tmp5_4] + 1)))
          {
            int tmp20_19 = (paramInt + 2);
            paramArrayOfByte;
            if (0 == (tmp20_16[tmp20_19] = (byte)(tmp20_16[tmp20_19] + 1)))
            {
              int tmp35_34 = (paramInt + 1);
              paramArrayOfByte;
              if (0 == (tmp35_31[tmp35_34] = (byte)(tmp35_31[tmp35_34] + 1)))
              {
                int tmp50_49 = (paramInt + 0);
                paramArrayOfByte;
                if (0 == (tmp50_46[tmp50_49] = (byte)(tmp50_46[tmp50_49] + 1))) {
                  throw new ArithmeticException("Value overflow");
                }
              }
            }
          }
        }

Their PasswordGenerator class is also interesting. Has a loop that runs for an arbitrary 80000 iterations, etc.

Overall, no obvious vulnerabilities, but definitely in the "written by a bored undergrad student in their spare time" realm from what I saw. Obviously, I wouldn't recommend using it.

<comment><USER3> Hi! Current software maintainer here. (I meant to reply earlier, and then a storm knocked out power to my house.)

The weird routine you posted is for backwards compat reasons only. It's used solely when decrypting our very first file format, which we care about only because some people never throw _anything_ away. Obviously the password stretching has to match exactly, so the code that originally stretched it (PBKDF 1.5) is still there. It's not been used for new files in the last... five years? Since before my predecessor, anyway.

Encrypting/decrypting with a password these days uses standard PBKDF 2.0, with a configurable-as-long-as-its-larger iteration count. Been poking at other stretching schemes too, but none of them are included in released versions yet.

At some point we'll drop support for decrypting the early versions and get rid of all that cruft. Anybody still needing their ancient files can use an earlier release.

> Their PasswordGenerator class is also interesting. Has > a loop that runs > for an arbitrary 80000 iterations, etc.

The _generator_ doesn't need to loop at all. The first implementation did, because hysterical raisins. The current random generator just does its work in a single pass. Cleaning up the surrounding code (including that needless loop structure) is on the todo list, but not a priority for the end customer.

Cheers!

<comment><USER2> Interesting! I never imagined someone from DoD would respond to my quick analysis.

In all fairness, JD-GUI wasn't exactly great at reversing the class file to Java code and missed quite a bit. I haven't had a chance to analyze it further.

Is there any chance the DoD could open source this application (e.g. on Github, or some other site)?

<comment><USER3> FWIW, a few bits of the Java source are generated from other languages. So if JD-GUI produces something that looks just freaky bizarre, the answer might well be that the actual Java source really does look like that, but that's not what "the original" file is written in, if that makes sense. Like 95% of the project is maintained in straight up Java, but things dealing with different crypto implementations, or features not available in the public release, are sometimes maintained "one level up".

Full disclosure: I'm a contractor, not a DoD employee; as the maintainer I can safely speak for what the project _was_ and _is_. But as to what the project _will do_ in the future, all I can do is give you my best Magic Eight Ball guess. Namely: if it happens, it probably won't be soon. Most of us on the project are big believers in open source but convincing the higher-ups that it would be worth doing that for EW is a looooooooong undertaking.

Going open source -- or making any other change to policy, or management, or whatever -- has to help the DoD solve the problems which this software was created to solve. It's not that the entire organization is against the idea of libre software -- AFRL is a research group, they get how good software development works -- it's just that their default position is "make no change" and any other approach has to show a demonstrable, concrete benefit over what they're already getting.

In the meantime... well, the EW-Public license specifically allows decompiling, which everybody was going to do anyhow. :-) It's not the same, but it makes looking for vulnerabilities way easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >The owner of spi.dod.mil has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website.

oh, yeah, totally clicking on that.

<comment><USER5> It's signed by the DoD CA.

<comment><USER6> For those who are interested (probably not necessary on a Mac as they may be preinstalled), the DOD CA certs can be freely downloaded from DISA:

[http://iase.disa.mil/pki-pke/Documents/unclass- installroot_v...](http://iase.disa.mil/pki-pke/Documents/unclass- installroot_v3-16-1a.zip)

There are (impressively thorough, including recommendations on out-of-band fingerprint authentication) installation instructions included, and they provide PEM, PKCS7, and some weirdo Windows format.

<comment><USER7> However, _that_ website is not served over HTTPS, which would seem to make it a prime target of MITM. Do you happen to have an HTTPS link to obtain these certs?

<comment><USER8> I haven't found one, but I suspect the IASE page is only over HTTP for legacy reasons, as there are lots of things that download stuff automatically from DISA. I could be wrong though, and I agree that it should be served over HTTPS. The main DISA page is served over HTTPS: [https://www.disa.mil](https://www.disa.mil)

<comment><USER3> > I haven't found one, but I suspect the IASE page is only over HTTP for > legacy reasons

Well, also because an HTTPS page would create a chicken-and-egg situation. How do you download the root certs if you can't see the page because you don't have the root certs? etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wouldn't use this if you're not dealing with the DoD. However, if you're in the DoD trying to work with an external collaborator, services like this provide at least some way to show, for example, an IRB, that you're moving PHI with due diligence.

The DoD maintains a PKI system that is essentially independent of the rest of the world's crypto: [http://iase.disa.mil/pki- pke/interoperability/Pages/index.as...](http://iase.disa.mil/pki- pke/interoperability/Pages/index.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER10> > EW-Govt is accredited by the Army and Air Force for NIPRNet and SIPRNet. EW > is free to users.

Not that it means anything, but NIPRNet is the unclassified network, SIPRNET is secret level.

So this is not accredited to run on Top Secret and above.

<comment><USER3> That's because it uses AES, and AES is accredited for Secret (but nothing more).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the bottom of the page:

Unendorsed polyseme: Encryption Wizard for Oracle [[http://www.relationalwizards.com/](http://www.relationalwizards.com/)]

uh... How can I say this... :)

wut?

<comment><USER12> Something else with the same name, in case you came here by mistake, and wanted that instead.

<comment><USER11> Oh, I see!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm wondering if EW-Public has a backdoor/weak encryption that EW-Govt doesn't.

<comment><USER3> Well, you can look at the reversed bytecode and see that it's using AES-128 or AES-256.

If you're willing to click past the website (DoD root certificates explained elsewhere), you could read more on the FAQ: [https://www.spi.dod.mil/ewizardFAQ.htm#FAQkp.3](https://www.spi.dod.mil/ewizardFAQ.htm#FAQkp.3)

The difference between the two is that one has FIPS 140-2 paperwork and the other does not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> can we stop being lame and complaining about https certs of something you're not downloading binaries or submitting information? just consider it http and move on. sigh.

<comment><USER15> > can we stop being lame and complaining about https certs of something you're > not downloading binaries or submitting information

This is a post about encryption, a site and program for encryption.

It also has file hashes and downloads (zips) on it; so, that meets some of your qualifications.

<comment><USER14> if _you_ are dowloading those binaries than you are worse than the admins of that site.</comment></comment></comment>