Show HN: A Hacker News Reader App with Tabs - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.aswinmohan.hacknews <comment><AUTHOR> Since Ads are universally hated, I have made a decision.

The free version will not have ads no more and the Premium version will have a beautiful dark theme.

What do you guys think ?

<comment><USER2> I disagree. You should get paid for your work - either through ads or an in app purchase to remove the ads. If someone is not willing to pay you money or look at ads, they aren't your customer.

Developers - especially mobile developers - have to stop devaluing themselves.

<comment><USER3> Honestly this idea that you can still pump out fairly simple add- supported/paid apps as a path to paying your bills is crazy unless you are making the next flappy bird.

By making it open source you could have a much easier time getting interviews at companies that will gladly pay a salary that far exceeds what you could make on one non-unicorn app.

<comment><USER2> I would have a private Git repo on VSTS (free), put a link to the app on my resume and let them know that I would be more than willing to go through both my code and my project plan.

It doesn't have to pay all of your bills but if at least made some beer money, it's better than nothing. Part of being a developer should be learning how to monetize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This isn't a bad start but I'm not a fan of the UI. I use [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn) which you can sort of demo at [http://hn.premii.com](http://hn.premii.com) and it has a few bugs/quirks because it isn't super actively maintained but the design is just really solid. Gestures work well (Swype left from an article to go back), colors are great (and user choosable), dark mode included, fonts customizable...

I think you have some steep competition, that's all. It's a great start to get something out there though!

<comment><USER5> Also what I use. Definitely isn't ideal, but checks the most boxes right now.

<comment><USER6> I echo your comment. I use it and I like it just barely more than the other HN readers out there. It's the only website based APP I actually have installed, for the most part I hate dedicated apps for existing website. But, the swiftness and usability of this one make it worth using; for now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As I said on the other thread here, I like the desktop interface, using pinch and zoom on my mobile device. Reddit is forcing me into the mobile app, and mobile interface, I constantly have to request desktop site, and it's starting to irritate me, pushing me away!

<comment><USER8> [https://ud.reddit.com](https://ud.reddit.com)

Its the only way I can stand to use reddit now. Wrote an extension for my desktop that changed any links into reddit to the ud form for me as well

<comment><USER6> Care to share the extension? Ever since the 'redesign' I have had non stop "Sorry something went wrong! Try refreshing!" issues. It really is driving me away from Reddit (which in itself may be a good thing), and I'm constantly rewriting URLs to the 'old.reddit.com' format.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately its a catch all extension that doesn't just do that; all you need to do is grab an example extension and make the script do a search for all href and conditionally replace content. I've got a mutation observer on as well but I don't know if it was ever useful

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is a very poor design:

\- Nested tabs are a poor use of space, scrolling tabs would be better

\- The spacing around posts is too large

\- The spacing within posts is too large

\- The notch extends beyond the status bar

\- The captions on screenshots are cringey

\- The screenshots don't show the comments page

\- The icon looks weird with both a border and bounds with different corner radius

\- The '.' separator is sometimes bold

\- Capitalization is inconsistent ("3 Comments", "3 minutes")

\- The title bar of the comments page is empty

\- The navigation architecture with each tab having its own stack is weird

\- Padding is different in every type of page (posts, post, about)

\- Line breaks in comments are ignored

</comment><comment><USER10> Even though there are ads, respect to you for putting this out there. The grind is real.

Unfortunately, I don't think mobile development is such a good way for independents to generate revenue, unless you happen to make a wildly viral game.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks

I don't want to generate revenue to live on(yet).

I just want to show that I'm not wasting time. And social media followers don't count. So this was like the only way

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The UI needs some work as I find it barren of essential features. You have no settings screen and no ability to change the font size or the font used.

I currently use Materialistic and it's probably the best HN client I've used on either platform. It has a tablet mode, a variety of themes, including several dark themes, adjustable font sizes, offline mode, readability mode when visiting websites, blocks ads in websites, does not contain ads and best of all it's open source and free.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.github.hidr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.github.hidroh.materialistic)

Here's the GitHub repo:

[https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic](https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For all who are disgusted by Ads, there is an Ad Free Premium version.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.aswinmohan....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.aswinmohan.hacknewspro)

</comment><comment><USER12> Why do you need access to the phone's id, phone number, and files?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not me, Ask AdMob Native Wrapper

<comment><USER2> I replied earlier that you should have ads because you should monetize, but that's not a good answer. If you are forced to use a binary blob that needs those permissions, it's not a good choice.

But then again, Androids permission is system is still crap...

<comment><USER13> Yes, it is far from perfect but unless you go for a Purism phone there isn't anything better. On Android you can at least get very close to some privacy unlike in iOS.

<comment><USER2> Really? iOS's permission system is a lot better thought out when it comes to privacy.

Third party keyboards don't by default have any network permission and the keyboard automatically changes to the default keyboard for passwords.

The content blocking framework doesn't allow the content blocking app to know your web browsing habits.

You don't need phone access to stop audio from playing within your app like you do on Android.

Google's next generation messaging app doesn't even have end to end encryption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why would I need a separate (+fremium) app for a free website that works pretty well on my mobile browser?

<comment><USER15> Personally I really like the Reddit Apps like baconreader on mobile more. I also like how I am always signed in and getting notifications when someone replies to my comment.

All HakerNews apps fail on several ways for me.

1) COMMENTING - I really don't need to sign in or do anything if all I get are links to websites and other comments I can respond to

2) Reading links - Normally it is a rough transition. Once again baconreader is my favorite app for reading sites like HackerNews and Reddit. It has it's own simple reader built in. he official Reddit app also has great tabs and opens links inside the app

3) Notifications - No notifications on direct replies always seems weird to me

<comment><USER14> Bacon Reader is hands down the best Reddit client out there. This is one of the few exceptions when you would prefer an app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why ads?

<comment><USER17> I don't want to touch it if it had ads. Hacker News is a community I like because its users generally promote the "Hacker Ethic" [1]. As far as I can tell this app has no infrastructure costs because it just uses the HN API. In putting ads on it, the app author is monetizing a free service they like to use. That is the opposite of the Hacker Ethic.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a student from India. Here parents are really strict about Computer time. The only way I can convince them isnto show them that this thing can generate some money.

That's why I put ads, you know how hard I felt to put ads on something that you spend hours perfecting.

My previous App was tet, it has no ads, but I really need to make some revenue to show them.

You want to know what those Ads are, ther'e justification that I won't go broke if I pursue code.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps offering a one-time IAP to remove ads would satisfy all parties?

<comment><USER19> The latest trend is subscriptions; pay X a year to remove ads. And, while I hate them (cause who needs more monthly expenses?) they're fair for the developer because one-time IAP isn't sustainable on the long term compared to sustainable income. That is of course assuming there is constant improvement on the app/data. Another trend is disabling ads via sub but still having tracking. At least GDPR attempts to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Proprietary or free?

<comment><AUTHOR> Free with Ads

<comment><USER21> I believe when asking for " _proprietary or_ free?" it's usually about end- user freedoms, not monetary cost. "Free" as in "free speech", not as in "free beer".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm sold for anything that has a "mark all read and hide them" option like the HNMarkAllRead chrome extention (which I actually use on FF, even on mobile).

</comment><comment><USER23> Been playing with this on a Pixel C. Can't see a way to collapse threads?

Really like the tabbed interface though.

</comment><comment><USER24> Related: how do you consume hacker news? Using a dedicated Android or iOS app or directly opening the website in your mobile browser?

<comment><USER25> I've tried a number of apps, but I always end up coming back to the site itself.

<comment><USER26> It's also so nice how quickly the site loads — that and the simplicity of HN's mobile site makes for a very pleasant experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A read marker is missing. Just show the title a bit opaque

</comment><comment><USER28> Looks very nice. I wish there were an iOS version.

</comment><comment><USER29> Hopefully you have an iOS one out soon!

</comment><comment><USER30> This is un-material designed

<comment><AUTHOR> I Know,and I'm proud of It :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Doesn't work on iOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm currently working on it</comment></comment>


Marc Fleury: My view on why "Microsoft is Dead" - <AUTHOR> http://marcf.blogspot.com/2007/05/microsofts-long-demise.html <comment><USER2> Innovations may come out of MSFT, but they come out in the form of papers and research, not in the form of products. MSFT does not produce innovative products. It produces innovative research, and because of organizational dysfunction never the two shall meet.</comment>


Snap install openstackclients - <AUTHOR> https://javacruft.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/snap-install-openstackclients/ <comment><USER2> I belive doing typical oci-standard docker image suites portability and servers and sysadmin more than canonical's non-standard vendor lockins

<comment><USER3> What kind of image format does snap use? Is packaging complicated? I've noted that flatpak is a nightmare to package for.

I created subuser <subuser.org> which runs on top of Docker, and of course, packaging is as simple as it is with Docker... The big problem is that when you want to update something, it is hard to do so without making everyone have to download a huge image all over again. Of course, you can try to prevent this with layers, but usually updates don't just touch the top layer :( ... So what I really want in the future is to be able to use IPFS or some kind of bittorrent-like download interface for images, so that when you update an image, you only have to download the parts that changed. There is a GREAT demo by a guy named Mathias Buus on this very topic here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sc6_XgNXyk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sc6_XgNXyk) which really gives you a feel for the awsome that would be deduplicated content addressed Docker.

Flatpak has something sorta similar, they use OSTree under the hood. [https://github.com/ostreedev/ostree](https://github.com/ostreedev/ostree) which is basically git annex for people who like incompatible redhat/freedesktop specific implementations of generic algorithms. It also does dedup, but at the file level not the block level, and so flatpak should be better at handling updates than subuser/Docker. Then again, who wants to repackage everything with their weird "standard" overcomplicated image format when you can just use Docker and throw anything you like into the image, however you like to throw it....

<comment><USER4> You can just use a base Ubuntu 16.04 image or greater. Creating a snap is very simple. Here's the source for snap-openstackclients: [https://github.com/openstack/snap- openstackclients](https://github.com/openstack/snap-openstackclients)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link. I'm not going to provide an opinion in a HN/while-on-the- front-page timescale, because I'd like to actually study the system that you use and come to an educated conclusion.

<comment><USER4> No problem. If you have questions/comments later #openstack-snaps on freenode is a good place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> James, it would be great you could provide some feedback on _why_ this snap is better than using a docker image.

Ie, Why is it better than:

      alias openstackclient='docker run --rm -ti -v ~/.config/openstack:/etc/openstack gbraad/openstack-client:ubuntu openstack "$@"'

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not James, but I have opinions! :D

A docker image runs a full operating system. There are some light OSs for docker, but that's still heavier than a snap.

The snap runs directly on your host, with a different kind of isolation to make it secure. So it also makes easy other kinds of communication between apps, like unix sockets or dbus.

Then there's the great feature of autoupdates. If the openstack developers push a new version, it will reach all the users within 4 hours. On a docker container you can have the same problems you have in classic distros. You'll get an old version by default, and you have to apply hacks or accept other risks if you want to get a newer.

What would be awesome is to be able to run snaps inside docker containers. That will be a mix of both worlds, docker for replication and adding or removing new machines as the load changes; snaps for getting the software into those machines. We can currently do that with linux containers, maybe at some point docker will support them too.

And we have snaps for docker and lxd, make sure to give them a try:

$ sudo snap install docker $ sudo snap install lxd

<comment><USER3> To what extent is snap a new package manager and to what extent is it a security mechanism? Does it actually prevent the application from getting full access to the user's home directory?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a new package manager that implements existing linux security mechanisms. It will use apparmor to confine the snap to the directories that it is allowed to read and write. By default, $HOME/snap/snap-name/

Then the snap can use interfaces to go out of its confinement and access things that the user has agreed to allow: [https://github.com/snapcore/snapd/wiki/Interfaces](https://github.com/snapcore/snapd/wiki/Interfaces)

<comment><USER3> Cool, though it seems to be "insecure by defualt". I presume that there will be some clear way to say "I don't trust this snap, dissable everything like gsettings, pulseaudio microphone support, ect. that I wouldn't want some random untrusted code to access..."

I didn't know that DBUS supported selectively allowing access to selected services. I thought that was a new feature in the non-accepted kdbus. That was certainly what the redhat folks wrote. They wrote that it isn't possible to secure dbus without kdbus...

<comment><USER6> This works:

> snap disconnect <snap>:<plug>

Then you can reconnect with:

> snap connect <snap>:<plug>

dbus mediation is something that Canonical developers added, IIRC.

<comment><USER3> I saw it in the docs, but my question was how did they do it when this is a missing feature in DBus... So Canonical added this feature to dbus but it hasn't made its way upstream or redhat chooses to ignore the new feature so that they have a reason to promote kdbus. OK.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is this the world's first Christian country? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170330-the-worlds-first-christian-country <comment><USER2> Been thinking about a trip here for a while. I was in Eastern Turkey a few years back and a taxi driver that was taking me to a ruined city called Ani stopped at a small memorial at the side of the road on the way. 'This is where the Armenians slaughtered a whole village including pregnant women..' etc. etc. Sorry to say it, but what a load of crap the Turkish are taught/speak about their history.

I feel like I owe it to Armenia to visit. Seems like they have suffered a lot of hardship over the years.

edit: bollocks to the visit, I could already retire there! [http://www.escapeartist.com/blog/live- armenia/](http://www.escapeartist.com/blog/live-armenia/)

<comment><USER3> My wife is Armenian and I have visited 5 times. It is a beautiful country with a rich and friendly culture. They love visitors. I highly recommend visiting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Armenia. This is common knowledge for those of us who live in los angeles, which has a sizable population of Armenians.

<comment><USER3> Yes. I don't know why this article is phrased as a question - it is an established fact. Also, what is going on with the location debate Europe vs Asia? Armenia is in the squarely between the caucuses and the middle east.

<comment><USER4> When I first met my friend who had the last name "Arabian", as a naive 23 yr old I asked him if he was arab. and he said "no way man, I'm armenian, we're the first christians."

I was properly rebuked, we became life long friends, and that fact has become a fundamental part of how i view all armenians. I went on to learn about their incredible history of survival including the still unrecognized genocide at the hands of the turks. an ultimately triumphant struggle to remain independent and preserve their culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >>> We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee.

Well, I wasn't expecting that.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand that - I get why licence-fee funded stuff wouldn't get broadcast to those who wouldn't ever pay it, but why not allow people who do pay the license fee to access the same stuff on the same terms as people who don't?

<comment><USER7> The Beeb is forbidden by law from showing ads in the UK.

<comment><USER3> Sure, so hide the ads instead?!

<comment><USER8> Then you are showing content to people who are not paying for it any any way(neither TV Licence nor ads). I mean, I think it wouldn't make any difference whatsoever, but I can see the logic why it's done that way.

<comment><USER3> I meant hide the ads for the UK, show them elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but then you have content funded by ads, and then you hide the ads for the whole country - that's gotta cost something.

<comment><USER6> I'm surprised the economics are so vastly different from hiding the content and displaying this message instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I want to Armenia for fun lat year because nobody else I know has ever been. It was so fun! I regret not trying harder to get out of Yerevan. If you want to see a part of the world that doesn't make the press a lot, but has charm, old-world flair, beautiful and unique scenery, worth the trip!

The co-working spot Aeon is pretty cool.

Just keep an eye on the politics before going.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why is Javascript required to render the text of the article? Pretty annoying.</comment>


If We All Ate Enough Fruits and Vegetables, There'd Be Big Shortages - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/07/17/742670701/if-we-all-ate-enough-fruits-and-vegetables-thered-be-big-shortages <comment><USER2> No, because production would then shift towards fruit and vegetables to meet the demand. We dont live in a static zero sum universe.

<comment><USER3> Just playing devil's advocate here. Are you sure there is enough arable land and healthy topsoil to meet demand? Is it feasible or practical to create arable land and topsoil? If the answer to either of these questions is "I don't know" then I maybe the economics here aren't favorable to your argument. Again, just devil's advocacy here.

<comment><USER2> We might start farming on protected land, replace the crops who are now getting included less into people's diets as a result of increased fruit and veg consumption (e.g. less grain intake could result), we have fertilizer, and the more that demand spikes and the more the prices increase, hydroponic solutions and greenhouses become more and more viable, as does increased genetic engineering research.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How reliable are Glassdoor reviews? - <AUTHOR> Do the expectations the site give match up with what you have experienced? <comment><USER2> A personal anecdote:

I was working at a small (~30 person) company that had 9 developers leave within the span of a few months due to the same set of fundamental complaints.

Several people posted reviews on Glassdoor. The reviews were negative but did not violate Glassdoor's content policy as far as any of us could tell (no naming individuals or making personal accusations, etc). Company had a 1.x star rating for a time.

After a bit, the company becomes "actively engaged" on Glassdoor and responds to several of the complaints. Even posts a couple of 5-star reviews from managers praising the company. Whatever.

Anyway, shortly after that one of us noticed that several of the negative reviews had disappeared. Someone logged in and saw that their review had been rejected for "violating the content policy." Their best guess was that someone from the company had flagged it and Glassdoor took it down, and that's where I have two issues with Glassdoor that inform my perspective on the quality of their reviews:

1\. They did not notify the people whose reviews were taken down that their review had been removed. If they hadn't been closely following the company's profile they never would have noticed.

2\. Glassdoor didn't provide any specific feedback on why the review was taken down.

So, because of this experience I don't have much faith in Glassdoor reviews to be accurate: I believe that Glassdoor makes it possible for companies who want to "manage" their profile to do so. I don't think they do it explicitly, but it certainly looks to me like their process is designed to enable it. Also, this lines up with their incentives: they make their money from the employers, no?

<comment><USER3> I left a negative review on Glassdoor once that was entirely merited and it didn't even make it past moderation

<comment><USER2> Our experience was somewhat different. Most of the reviews were initially posted. One was rejected for a reason that did actually make sense, but was approved with changes. It wasn't until later that they were rejected and quietly removed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I generally operate on the heuristic that negative reviews (if well written) are accurate while positive reviews are never accurate.

Modern companies cannot "be good" in any ways other than high compensation, consistently high end benefits, and retraining people instead of firing them.

Any other description of a good attribute must be ignored. Even if it's accurate, the company has no obligation to keep it that way, you don't know the deep political story about it, these are rarely promises anyone can enforce.

Most companies are wildly horrible places to work, in ways that have been studied and documented since Moral Mazes.

This is why it's imperative to negotiate very uncompromisingly on things like salary, bonuses, and severance agreements, no matter how much people pressure you to believe you can't negotiate them.

To win a job negotiation you simply have to not want what the other person is offering, and the reason is simple: every job that anyone ever tries to sell you on, for all time, is a total lemon, and ought to require exactly what you want to be paid to do that job. Any time you walk away from a job, you're making the right choice, because avoidance of the cognitive and behavoral dysfunction that any organization will beat you with (emphatically not hyperbole) is better for you in the long run.

The only reasonable exception is when you're truly desperate because of some resource depletion, like you've been unemployed and have no choice but to compromise. Obviously you can compromise on other dimensions if you just happen to want to, but from the point of view of the business transaction that is a job, the only practically enforceable parts are stated compensation and benefits you can get in writing.

The earlier you realize you must look at all forms of employment this way, the better off you'll be.

<comment><USER5> I've worked at three companies and enjoyed them all. Your negativity can be true, but I don't think it's always true. It could be that it's impossible for any one company to be all things to all people. Individuals have different tastes and compatibilities.

<comment><USER4> Whether you've enjoyed working at some place is not relevant. The point is that if you base a decision on aspects of a job you can't enforce, then what you enjoy about it can change on the whim of some other people, no matter what they verbally promise or reassure you about. It is much harder to do the same thing with stated compensation or certain other benefits.

I've had jobs I really enjoyed, then a manager quit unexpectedly and the replacement made the job horrible. I've enjoyed perks like working from home, then the CTO changed and disallowed all remote work. I've enjoyed a quiet and private office, then HR decided to rebrand us as a hip cargo-cult startup and suddenly I had to do my job embedded in a never ending stream of audio disruptions that headphones can't mitigate.

If you've only had generally pleasant job experiences, then from everyone else's point of view, your approach is so clouded by insane selection bias due to the absurd rarity of that experience that effectively your perspective has to be ignored for practical decision making.

I also strongly dispute the idea that any part of what I wrote is negativity, not at all. It's not cynical, not hyperbolic, not an over-generalization. It is a perfectly neutral perspective that accounts for the necessary degree of caution and skepticism you have to have when dealing with an entity (a corporation) that is essentially a legalized sociopath.

<comment><USER6> "Whether you've enjoyed working at some place is not relevant."

It's very relevant.

"The point is that if you base a decision on aspects of a job you can't enforce, then what you enjoy about it can change on the whim of some other people, "

This is called life; you don't control the Universe.

I suggest this has nothing to do with employment, or GlassDoor reviews, and more of a borderline nihilist take on life in general.

About 90% of Americans enjoy their work on some level [1], and about 50% are 'very satisfied' (58% for folks with Uni), and though most of us would probably quit and sunbathe or golf all day, we don't have that option and so we work together to make a better future for ourselves, our children and our communities.

We all like to gripe, and even in the most perfect circumstances we'll have a tendency to externalize most of our unhappiness and attribute it to other things.

'The system' is pretty good, better than it's ever been, even massively better than it was maybe only three generations ago when most of us were on farms, mines or factories.

It's always healthy to be skeptical and realistic about companies goals.

"If you've only had generally pleasant job experiences, then from everyone else's point of view, your approach is so clouded by insane selection bias"

Given that the vast majority of folks are generally satisfied with their jobs, you might be the one with the 'perspective bias' due to perhaps a bad experience or two, because again - 90% of people are generally satisfied with their jobs, I'll gather you might personally have been somewhere in that 10%, and that the commenter's experience is more normative.

[1] [https://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays/figures- table...](https://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays/figures-tables/job- satisfaction-education-level-2008)

<comment><USER4> > "It's very relevant."

No, it is not relevant.

> "This is called life; you don't control the Universe."

This too is not relevant.

> "About 90% of Americans enjoy their work on some level [1], and about 50% > are 'very satisfied' (58% for folks with Uni)"

This is not compatible with either common sense observation nor other hard data such as [1] - [5] below. I utterly do not believe 90% of Americans enjoy their work on some level, even after reading the citation you gave and reflecting on it. That just doesn't comport with vast other data on the topic.

> "'The system' is pretty good, better than it's ever been, even massively > better than it was maybe only three generations ago when most of us were on > farms, mines or factories."

This also seems irrelevant. Just because a very bad thing is perhaps better than it used to be doesn't make it good, neutral or undeserving of focused skepticism.

> "Given that the vast majority of folks are generally satisfied with their > jobs"

They aren't, and this point invalidates your perspective in your reply as far as I can tell.

[1]: [https://news.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employees- enga...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employees-engaged- work.aspx)

[2]: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-21/people- st...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-21/people-start-hating- their-jobs-at-age-35)

[3]: [https://www.fool.com/careers/2017/06/12/hate-your-job- clearl...](https://www.fool.com/careers/2017/06/12/hate-your-job-clearly- youre-not-alone.aspx)

[4]: [https://qz.com/375353/half-of-us-workers-have-left-a-job- bec...](https://qz.com/375353/half-of-us-workers-have-left-a-job-because-they- hated-their-boss/)

[5]: [http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/04/19/americans-...](http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/04/19/americans- hate-their-jobs-more/)

The summary among all these is that somewhere between 50% and 85% of Americans "hate their jobs" and only around 13% of employees are engaged in their work (not mentally checked out).

Given the breadth and consistently large effect sizes seen in the numbers reporting they hate their jobs, I simply do not believe the lone YouGov survey with contradictory results has an appropriate methodology.

<comment><USER6> Your literally arguing that 'Whether you've enjoyed working at some place is not relevant' ... and then you provide a bunch of data points to try to prove 'job happiness' one way or the other, as though it's relevant?

You arguing the sky is blue, and then not blue in the next sentence? Which is it?

...

"The summary among all these is that somewhere between 50% and 85% of Americans "hate their jobs" and only around 13% of employees are engaged in their work (not mentally checked out)."

This is absolutely false and there is no reading of those five references (3 of which are irrelevant) which indicates this. The data I provided is more nuanced and reveals that even among the 50% that are 'not satisfied' when given an either or choice, most even those are still at least 'somewhat satisfied'. 'Perfect job satisfaction' was never the objective. Less than 10% 'hate their jobs'.

...

(People happy at work) "This is not compatible with either common sense observation nor other hard data such as"

It is common sense to anyone who's paying attention. Most people are ok with their jobs, and most of the rest are somewhat satisfied - as the data shows.

If you need a house, either you work->get money->pay to have it built - or you build it yourself. Clearly, most of us would prefer to be on the beach than do 'work' ... but if you want a house, you have to do 'work' one way or another, most people understand that reality and are fine with it.

...

"I also strongly dispute the idea that any part of what I wrote is negativity, not at all. It's not cynical, not hyperbolic, not an over-generalization. It is a perfectly neutral"

Because your position is based on bad facts it is effectively hyperbolic and nihilist.

<comment><USER4> > "Your [sic] literally arguing that 'Whether you've enjoyed working at some > place is not relevant' ... and then you provide a bunch of data points to > try to prove 'job happiness' one way or the other, as though it's relevant?"

I have not argued that.

I have said that you should consider other reports of someone being happy at a job for reasons other than compensation, benefits or job security as irrelevant because if you infer you'll be happy based in other factors, which are more easily changed on a whim (thus leading to widespread reported unhappiness at jobs), you set yourself up to make a choice that makes you unhappy.

> "You [sic] arguing the sky is blue, and then not blue in the next sentence? > Which is it?"

It seems you're in a rush to argue, so I'm going to disengage here. I've read and reflected on your comment, re-read your source, my five sources, and the polls they link to, and I am just going to agree to disagree with you. You're invested in "being right" about this but the data don't support what you're saying. The interpretation is not "more nuanced" in this case, and it is only one single study claiming that fewer than 10% hate their jobs, with a methodology that conflicts with the surveys historically used to guage that.

I believe you're wrong, you are responding in a purely reactionary way, and I'm not taking the bait.

<comment><USER7> > I've read and reflected on your comment, re-read your source, my five > sources, and the polls they link to, and I am just going to agree to > disagree with you. You're invested in "being right" about this but the data > don't support what you're saying.

Actually I agree with the other poster that your sources are claiming something else or something much weaker than you do. Your claims of "being neutral" and appeals to "common sense" confirm you have extremely negative bias on this matter. And, considering the quote above, completely blind to it.

Btw if anyone can actually get some proper data on the topic I would be interested in seeing them. My anecdata are not really decisive in either way.

<comment><USER4> The good thing is that it doesn't matter if you agree or not, nor if I do. The linked sources are listed above, with direct links to the engagement polls from Gallup.

Even in light of your comment, I still don't see any evidence that my view is a negatively biased interpretation.

Your comment does read like an ad hominem though, which makes me question your participation in this comment thread. You're not seeking data, except a throw- away comment at the end that is a bad attempt to undermine the quality of the data already linked in the Gallup polls. You're seemingly only here to criticize subjective aspects of my reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My old company's reviews are full of lies (through omission). Basically, the company fights vigorously with anyone who posts a negative review (and they somehow manage getting them removed). Anyone who posts a positive review remains :)

Alternative to Glassdoor: Ask an insider. Find old (former) employees on Linked to discuss. Check attrition--- __the best measure __(how many folks joined the firm recently - how many left). If it 's a revolving door, don't go there.

<comment><USER9> the alternative is 1000x harder than just opening Glassdoor's website. We should make an open alternative to Glassdoor that has no financial incentive to please the employers. I feel like this is real important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I personally don't give Glassdoor reviews any credence, and I've never checked the site during the process of engaging with a potential employer. I think there is too much potential for bias in both directions: people who are leaving often have emotional laundry to air, and people who are staying often have a corresponding need to defend that choice. It just seems to me like any actually useful information is likely to be overwhelmed by these factors. Instead of using a site like Glassdoor that attracts people with these sort of motivations I would rather gather my information on the side band from other sources: who works there, github repos, articles employees have posted, offhand comments on hacker news, etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have worked at one company that paid employees for fake positive reviews.

I've worked at another company that ran witch hunts on a regular basis in order to flush out the authors of negative reviews. Management spent time reading between the lines in order to figure out who the authors were based on their writing style.

I had a lot of fun with them by posting truthful negative reviews written in a variety of styles that matched no particular person's style in full, yet left management believing that they were on the cusp of identifying the author. It was a lot of fun until I realized that these asshats were spending valuable time on stupidity instead of righting the ship, but by then it was already too late.

<comment><USER12> My hat to you, sir. Sometimes, the best incentive for honesty is the punishment of dishonesty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anecdotally and just from my own experience they've been accurate _but_ often lack context for an outsider to correctly interpret them.

I have seen cases where the reviews are mixed and they're generally accurate. The problem is that they're describing different departments and a candidate on the outside would not know that, so they'd not understand that one department is a lot more pleasant than another.

<comment><USER14> This is a very good point.

The description of my company is accurate, both in the positive and the negatives.

While the interpretation of the positive is usually straightforward, the negative should be taken in context.

An example is "outdated technology". We have both outdated and bleeding edge tech. The outdated part is for some critical legacy software which cannot be refractored for good and bad reasons.

The complaint should rather be "when I was hired or was not made clear that I would be working on X". Those who were told that and accepted the job are happy with the tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> From my experience the people writing the most glowing positive reviews are doing it to get you to work there as they are somehow involved in hiring and do so to counter any of the genuine negative reviews. I have seen this happen first hand as a push by a recruitment team once a few honest negative reviews appeared.

There are enough people within a company with a vested interest in having a good image on glassdoor to create a strong inventive to make it look better than it is.

</comment><comment><USER16> In my experience they used to be extremely accurate until 1-2 years ago. I believe that in the last two yers companies are beginning to pay more attention and try to do the possible to overcome bad reviews. I agree on the complete lack of context. In general they are still a good tool but as already said they must be taken with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have some friends with knowledge of companies that are rated as a "best place to work" by Glassdoor. The companies heavily promote their achievement on social media and during recruiting. My friends tell me about the shocking number of employment lawsuits these companies have settled, incredible employee turnover, and general egregious things happening within the company. Unfortunately, non-disclosure agreements prevent those stories from ever really surfacing.

I've heard enough to take all Glassdoor reviews and ratings with a huge grain of salt. At this point, companies actively advertising their Glassdoor status is more a red flag for me, in the same way the I never stay at a hotel that advertises it has clean rooms. If you have to explicitly tell me you're a good place to work, then you probably aren't.

<comment><USER18> I have a friend who I often chat about job searching with (we're both on the market). They recently had a shockingly bad experiece with a company that prides itself by it's glassdoor rating.

They told me they don't plan on writing a review, because they're worried said company may intuit who wrote they review and blacklist them from future hiring. They insist they must have had an outlier experience.

I can see how this attitude in aggregate, coupled with NDAs laden hush money leads to an inaccurate picture...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In my experience, it's best to look at companies with Glassdoor reviews collectively along a single axis: Are they _really_ bad? Or are they potentially not _really_ bad? I usually try to find a shortcut along a path less traveled, and so I take to LinkedIn or Github (or IRC!) to find people working the job I'm looking for at the company I'm interested in, and then talk to those people. Glassdoor can sometimes reveal when companies have recently been a _really_ terrible deal for employees, but I've had more than one negative review not even make it past moderation (for no reason I could discern). They're clearly scrubbing the stains from company images, one way or the other.

<comment><USER20> From personal experience, you can scrub bad reviews by writing to their support and claiming that something fishy is going on.

They will investigate and will not tell you the exact results, but if some reviews look like they were posted from the same browser and IP address, they will be deleted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There are a suspicious number with things like "advice to management: none, they are great!" that can be immediately discounted

Also remember that Glassdoor's business model is such that their customers are the companies being "reviewed" (who post jobs on there)

</comment><comment><USER22> I previously worked for company X, employing some technology workers but X was primarily not a technology company.

Somehow there existed in Glass Glassdoor a "Company X" company as well as a "Company X _Technology_ " company, which was serving as a magnet to attract some exceedingly low reviews, even as compared to the primary "Company X" company. Company X had an average rating of about 3.5 from thousands of employees, whereas Company X Technology had an average review of < 2.0 from a few dozen employees.

There was no organizational ambiguity whatsoever which should have resulted in there being 2 separate company records, any more than there should have been separate "companies" for HR, Accounting, etc.

I contacted Glassdoor, and after some back and forth they said they would do nothing to fix the nonsensical company split without the approval of Company X, because Company X was a paying customer of Glassdoor.

Although I do not have any reason to suspect the integrity of value of the actually reviews themselves, the profit-based dishonesty that Glassdoor itself demonstrated, created some doubt in what I see on their site. I doubt most prospective job seekers happen to notice two separate companies, either (or both) of which it might behoove them to peruse.

<comment><USER22> ... and I also worked at one place which paid various informal bonuses to departing employees, asking that "we don't say anything negative about each other," an effective strategy which led to them being selected as a top software company to work at in a very software focused city, although believe me when I say that it was not a top company to work at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Very reliable.

As far as I've seen, it's the closest thing to being able to buy an ex- employee a beer and listen.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is a substantial amount of astroturfing on Glassdoor. Best to read the neutral and negative reviews, and ignore the positive ones and overall rating.

<comment><USER6> I buy that there is a lot of astroturfing, but there's a lot of griping as well. Leaving an employment situation is always an odd time, it's hard for us to be objective. Franky I always look at the experience very differently two years out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Some companies intentionally build a glassdoor reputation. I take it with a grain of salt. It has a similar business model to BBB, but not as bad yet.

</comment><comment><USER26> As always with reviews: The more negative the experience, the higher the chance someone will post a review. So I usually ignore the 1 star reviews and go more for the 3 star reviews etc.

But really, just read the review rather than looking at the rating. Even then keep in mind that most happy people don't post reviews online (unless it's really good).

</comment><comment><USER27> Depends. From what I've seen, they don't verify the user actually worked at the company in question. Or at least, it doesn't work too well, since I've seen people accidentally leaving their reviews on companies with similar names to their own rather than the actual one(there had never been someone with said name at the company in question, and they were from the other side of the world). I've also heard a few cases of ex employees each leaving multiple negative reviews under the same job title, and employers getting the site to remove reviews that made them look bad.

Some company pages probably have more accurate reviews than others though. Depends how hard the company fights to get negative ones taken down, or how many disgruntled users/non employees leave reviews on it.

So yeah, it depends.

<comment><USER21> _From what I 've seen, they don't verify the user actually worked at the company in question_

How would they do that? The person may not still have access to their company email address, or even want that kind of email in their corporate inbox

<comment><USER27> Hmm, you're right. That is an issue, especially when there's bad blood between the employer and employee, and the latter doesn't want it on their CV or LinkedIn.

But that also means everything from Glassdoor needs to be treated with a pinch of salt. A non employee can write lies, a competitor can write lies with fake accounts, a boss can make fake accounts for non existent employees, employees can be coerced by those in power... you can never really be sure of anything there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not really, it's very easy to game glassdoor reviews. My previous employer had 90 or so fake 5 star reviews to have an outstanding profile.

One good thing about glassdoor reviews is the Helpful button, this gives us some authenticity for negative or positive reviews.

<comment><USER9> if reviews can be faked why couldn't Helpful clicks also be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Since you asked "Do the expectations the site give match up with what you have experienced?" I'll say no, at least where I'm working now,the reviews do not match my experience here at all. The reviews are rather negative, written by people who quit because they didn't like it, or were fired for various reasons. So most of the people motivated to write reviews had reason to write only negative reviews. I'm super happy here and haven't written a review.

<comment><USER30> Maybe write a review?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Glassdoor is a useful tool but remember:

1\. You're likely to get true negatives

2\. You may get false positives

Ie, genuine negative statements are hard to fake (you can tell if someone has an axe to grind, vs a detailed report about practices that are believable but bad). However companies that had bad reviews one they get wind of them often ask staff to write good ones, and a lot of them have a culture where not doing a favour will hurt you.

</comment><comment><USER32> There is little middle ground. Reviews are either disgruntled [often ex-] employees, or prompted or just bought.

That is not to say reviews are useless. 100 individual complaints about late payment are probably worth noting.

I'd ignore positive, and the bottom 25% of negative. What you're left with might indicate real problems an average employee might face.

</comment><comment><USER33> I knew an investment advisory firm's record. I wanted to see what employees would say about the firm on Glassdoor. Employees that had left gave me a good indication of the firm's prowess. The review's were accurate from employees. Employees gave negative reviews. (Former management gave glowing reviews.)

</comment><comment><USER34> Many years ago, I read reviews about Google before joining. None of what I experienced matched what was stated or only did so "technically." Even now, the reviews still sound the same. Either I had an unusual (ly poor) experience, or the reviews are questionable.

</comment><comment><USER35> Honesty only comes from someone angry at 2am with a MacBook Pro. I feel many negative reviews are revealing - but take it with a grain of salt because the good reviews just DON'T have the same amount of passion.

<comment><USER36> Honesty comes from two types of people:

1\. Those who have carefully positioned themselves to be able to speak their own mind without cutting their throat.

2\. People willing to take the consequences of speaking their mind.

Sometimes, enough anger creates a person of the second sort. But anger per se is not actually evidence of veracity. It can introduce bias of its own. It can also be evidence that the person who is angry is a problem person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> How reliable are any online reviews?

One problem with Glassdoor ratings is that companies can vary wildly by department, location, and even team, and that's not reflected in the reviews.

</comment><comment><USER38> Great question!

Reading a company's Glassdoor reviews takes practice, similar to how judging wheather you will like a movie based on the Imdb reviews, or whether ou should buy a product on Amazon based on the reviews. You get better at it by working at a lot of companies and seeing various failure/success cases [and matching them to how it looks on Glassdoor]. Your NN needs a few training cycles to make good predictions :)

Assuming we're talking about tech/startup companies, keep in mind that in some sense, almost all companies (with the exception of a couple/year) eventually become "failures". What I mean is that all these companies raise money by making big promises, but then very few hit their goals: almost nobody becomes the next FB/G/Uber/Dropbox/Spotify. Somewhere between year 5-10 these companies "fail", and by fail I mean their YoY growth goes below ~25%. At this point all companies start trashing: old talent will leave, and a cycle starts, where different things are tried ("we need microservices!", "we need an experiences product guy to tell us what to do!", "our engineers are not good enough!", "we need to hire more people in the US!", "we need to push hard on sales!"), almost always by hiring new managers, who then hire new people with this focus, etc. Again, this almost always doesn't work out, we know this simply because there are only so many G/FB/etc. During this cycle, as people come and go, focus is changed, pivots are made, it leads to churn. Most companies also experience layoffs, or at least partial layoffs [in some teams].

What I wrote above, almost all companies have that, even the ones where otherwise the culture is okay/good, people are honest, the co-founders are well meaning, etc. So in the "best case", you should expect to find an imprint of the above on Glassdoor. If additionally there are "stupid"/people/culture problems, like "the Head of Product is never in the office" or "the CTO thinks we should write webapps in x86 Assembly" or "the VP of Sales and the VP of Marketing refuse to talk to each other", "the COO is an asshole" you should be able to pick that up from the reviews. (Btw. read `Bad Blood` about Theranos for some good stories...)

For a company that's super-young, like <5 yrs, I would want there to be good growth, no culture problems, so I would expect the company to have excellent Glassdoor reviews. Later stage companies, I would expect a good mix of bad and good reviews, and I would keep an eye out for culture/people comments, esp. if there are many saying the same thing. For BigCos like FB/G, it doesn't make sense to read Glassdoor, it generally makes sense to work there, and your experience will depend on what role/team you end up in.

Another thing, I generally disregard reviews that are written by people who still work there. I think reviews by people who left are more valuable. I think the principal component I look at it, of the people who are no longer there, what % leave a mostly negative review, and what % leave a very negative review (and are these highly correlated). Based on the last 2, with calibration, you should be able to get a reasonable picture.

</comment><comment><USER39> Some companies make employees sign a non-disparagement agreement when people leave. If you write a negative review on glassdoor and they figure out you wrote it, you'd be violating that agreement. I don't think you have to sign this agreement though.

<comment><USER3> The premise that you'd have to sign anything to leave any job in the US is ridiculous. I certainly never do. One employer tried to get me to sign a non- compete after I gave notice and only did so because it was laughably unenforcable in Oregon for my position

<comment><USER40> Some companies offer a severance on condition of signing such a non- disparagement agreement.</comment></comment></comment>


Build a system, not a product - <AUTHOR> http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2009/12/05/build-a-system-not-a-product/

<comment><USER2> I don't think I've discovered anything as profound or fundamental to the way I think about business than when I (not so long ago) started trying to build systems instead of products.

Your business is a money making machine. There are many components. _Absolutely all_ of the components are hot swappable. Make each component work until the entire machine does. If one component fails, swap it out with something entirely different if you have to. As long as it keeps the machine working, it doesn't really matter what it looks like.

Become attached only to the machine as a whole, not the individual components it's made of.

<comment><USER3> That sort of implies that all companies should gradually "become" whatever is the most profitable kind of company, though. If it turns out that, say, spam is the most profitable thing a company can do, then your todo-list app, or even your brick-and-mortar home-and-garden store, would gradually swap out parts (including employees and even founders) until it has become an online spamming service!

<comment><USER4> No. Don't fix it if it works. On the other side if your brick-and-mortar company doesn't work then you better try something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very, very true. Just as no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, no product idea survives contact with the customers. From the ground up you need to plan for change, keeping your development cycle flexible so that you can adapt and adjust to feedback from the customer.

It is like the difference between writing code with configuration variables embedded in hundreds of places in the code or building it with a user interface to allow the customer to adjust the settings.

</comment><comment><USER6> Good words;

As an serial entrepreneur I would say that startups are not but organisms, but organism that need bootstrapping (no not the "business bootstrapping" – shoestring budget model – but… ) the original sense of the word, a system need to initial criticai mass and parameters to start working like an organism…

That is what the entrepreneur does, force the catch-22's into a critical mass that starts growing like an organism.

Cheers, NIcolai

</comment><comment><USER7> My largest problem with the "release early, release often" cycle, as well as being adaptable, is that it's hard to release a product that I _feel_ isn't complete. I have to fight the compulsion to cram features in that I feel are killer features (despite whether they really are or not).

It seems like big products have huge releases. How can we prevent people from quitting our application if they don't like the big first release?

</comment><comment><USER8> Pithy and true. Easier said than done of course.

</comment><comment><USER9> Building products that function within an adaptable system seems to be the gist of this parable. People don't really buy systems; they buy products. When the seamlessness between product and system becomes transparent enough, the product is essentially a system of interchangeable parts.

</comment><comment><USER10> maybe learning isn't equivalent to getting rich, and maybe people are motivated by the latter.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point of the blog post is not that _you_ should be learning, it is that your _startup_ should be learning.

A startup is almost by definition in an exploring phase. Key to success (and infinite richness of course) is to acknowledge this fact and build your startup as a learning entity.

The consequence of this insight is that it's counter-productive to keep things secret or wait too long until launch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This should be added to the Tao of programming.

<comment><USER12> Programming?</comment></comment>


Bootstrap 3 Free Themes and Templates - <AUTHOR> http://www.prepbootstrap.com/ <comment><USER2> At the risk of sounding like an asshole. The themes on prebootstrap is pretty average at best. Alternatives like bootswatch.com offers far better themes.

<comment><USER3> I took this as a quick intro to snippets of Bootstrap features. Ex: Logins and stuff. It does say "pre" bootstrap so I'm sure that was the intended purpose for this.

<comment><USER4> I don't see 'pre' \- I see 'prep'. ??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great resource! This is also worth attention: [http://bootswatch.com/](http://bootswatch.com/). I have zero-to-none design skills and using these themes makes my chrome extensions design look acceptable (well, almost)

<comment><USER6> shameless plug or astroturfing? either way that's ok ,the free themes are not "Great resource!" anyway.

<comment><USER7> it saved me some work recently as I got to the 'ok, time to dress this up a bit' phase of a project. still recognizable as Bootstrap, but also an easy way to inject a bit of design and good taste in a prototype.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't want to sound mean, but most of them look very amateurish at best.

<comment><USER9> I believe they intend for you to use them as building blocks. You can use their layouts to get your idea on the screen, then add additional CSS in order to 'make it your own'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another good source to get some bootstrap snippets [http://bootsnipp.com/](http://bootsnipp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Don't waste your time and just head to wrapbootstrap.com.

Even for a side project it's worth paying $15 to get an actually good looking template.

<comment><USER12> There's a lot of value in free templates.

They're the only resource available if you have to do coursework, or you live in a country where access to international credit cards is not trivial for example.

I now have an international credit card, but for a long time my barrier was not money, but money transmission :) , I would have gladly paid U$ 5 or 10 or even 15. Most of the credit cards issued here in Uruguay are local-only, and the requirements are pretty hefty (more than half the population is not eligible for an international credit card).

I purchased a template for my side project, on ThemeForest (they have some Bootstrap-based templates over there too).

[http://themeforest.net/](http://themeforest.net/)

<comment><USER13> not when the 'templates' are just cut and pasted form elements from the docs.

if you're doing any kind of course work in web design, you need to be able to compose the majority of this stuff yourself from just the docs.

<comment><USER12> I was thinking more along the lines of classes which I took in the past, for example a course in Java, where one of the items was a JSF-based web site, which I plugged to a free bootstrap template, where web design wasn't the focus and I was busy trying to understand other things.

I agree that if you work in web design, you should know to do this stuff from the docs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Might as well plug my free(mium) themes: [http://www.portnine.com/bootstrap- themes](http://www.portnine.com/bootstrap-themes)

</comment><comment><USER15> Not sure about this. It seems kind of wierd for the 'login' templates to have a confirm password box. In my book startbootstrap has an advantage.

</comment><comment><USER16> None of these Bootstrap 3 themes seem to just replace /bootstrap/css/bootstrap-theme.css which makes them pretty daft.

<comment><USER17> What do you mean?

<comment><USER18> He doesn't understand that "cascading" part of CSS. Replacing core bootstrap files wouldn't make any sense, and it's better to add them downstream so that they can be changed or removed or whatever.

<comment><USER19> This is not true.

I downloaded at the dark blue admin theme, it uses a separate file to apply the theme (local.css).

It would be nice to have Less files, instead of css though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks like the folks behind this are doing real estate tech. Can I ask y'all what the product is?

<comment><USER19> Um.. where are you from?

<comment><USER20> Tennessee...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting how there are dozens of sites for bootstrap but so few for Foundation.

</comment><comment><USER22> I see some different layouts you can make with boostrap but no actual themes?</comment>


Tor Browser User Manual - <AUTHOR> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/announcing-tor-browser-user-manual <comment><USER2> Lol, it's a trap. I get an untrusted certificate.

<comment><USER3> It's because they're using a stricter form of https, which fails if your company messes with the certs (I'm guessing proxy problems).

This is what it looks like for me:

> Certificate Error There are issues with the site's certificate chain > (net::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID).

        Issued To

        Common Name (CN)	blog.torproject.org
        Organisation (O)	<Not Part Of Certificate>
        Organisational Unit (OU)	<Not Part Of Certificate>

        Issued By

        Common Name (CN)	$my_company Web Gateway
        Organisation (O)	$my_company
        Organisational Unit (OU)	$my_company_infrastructure_unit

<comment><USER4> How do you generate a stricter cert like this?

<comment><USER5> Using HSTS ([https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/St...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Strict-Transport-Security)) From the RFC 6797 : ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6797#page-27](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6797#page-27))

11.3. Using HSTS in Conjunction with Self-Signed Public-Key Certificates

       If all four of the following conditions are true...

       o  a web site/organization/enterprise is generating its own secure
          transport public-key certificates for web sites, and

       o  that organization's root certification authority (CA) certificate
          is not typically embedded by default in browser and/or operating
          system CA certificate stores, and

       o  HSTS Policy is enabled on a host identifying itself using a
          certificate signed by the organization's CA (i.e., a "self-signed
          certificate"), and

       o  this certificate does not match a usable TLS certificate
          association (as defined by Section 4 of the TLSA protocol
          specification [RFC6698]),

       ...then secure connections to that site will fail, per the HSTS
       design.  This is to protect against various active attacks, as
       discussed above.

       However, if said organization wishes to employ its own CA, and self-
       signed certificates, in concert with HSTS, it can do so by deploying
       its root CA certificate to its users' browsers or operating system CA
       root certificate stores.  It can also, in addition or instead,
       distribute to its users' browsers the end-entity certificate(s) for
       specific hosts.  There are various ways in which this can be
       accomplished (details are out of scope for this specification).  Once
       its root CA certificate is installed in the browsers, it may employ
       HSTS Policy on its site(s).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> ___Blatant Plug_ __

For loads more digital and physical security manuals and advice (from using TOR to dealing with physical surveillance) that work offline on your phone, we launched an open source app called Umbrella to make it a bit easier.

-[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.umbrella)

-[https://www.amazon.com/Security-First-Umbrella-made-easy/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Security-First-Umbrella-made-easy/dp/B01AKN9M1Y)

-[https://secfirst.org/fdroid/repo](https://secfirst.org/fdroid/repo)

-Code and Content - [https://github.com/securityfirst/](https://github.com/securityfirst/)

-Code audit - [https://secfirst.org/blog.html](https://secfirst.org/blog.html)

-More info - [https://secfirst.org](https://secfirst.org)

 __ _Ends blatant plug_ __:)

<comment><USER7> How many more posts are you going to plug this app on? How about you make this the last one...

<comment><USER6> Point taken!

<comment><USER8> And please fix your main page.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the heads up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [UK-Edition] Install Instructions: Click the Executable. Wait for the Police to arrive.</comment>


U.S. Students Above Average in Problem Solving Test Led by Asia - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-04-01/u-dot-s-dot-students-above-average-in-problem-solving-test-led-by-asia

<comment><USER2> Hah, shows how good that test was.

High school education in the US is a sad joke. Light years behind Asia and Eastern Europe. The levels can't even be compared, that's how far apart they are. Apples and oranges.</comment>


Americans Cross Border into Mexico to Buy Insulin - <AUTHOR> https://khn.org/news/americans-cross-border-into-mexico-to-buy-insulin-at-a-fraction-of-u-s-cost/ <comment><USER3> If you ever find yourself near Yuma, AZ, and have a sense for "weird travel" like I do, I'd recommend taking a jaunt into Los Algodones (AKA Molar City) immediately across the border. You can park at the border station and walk in. The tiny city is pretty much entirely dedicated to discount medical sales and is packed to the brim with dentists, pharmacists, opticians, and cosmetologists. When I was there, salesmen would literally call out "cavity? cavity?" to the passersby on the street. It's like some eerie alien recreation of Las Vegas where gambling is replaced with curbside botox and root canals.

We only spent about 20 minutes walking around (probably spent more time in the border office), but it was a super memorable pit stop for me.

<comment><USER4> The Wynns went there about 5 years ago. To sum it up: It's a dental free-for- all, and there's no accreditation process or licensing, and everyone there is trying to sell you something on commission. But if you find a good dentist, you'll pay about 30-40% of what it'd cost in the US.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAECrmAOqy4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAECrmAOqy4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is not just insulin. Prices of all drugs have been rising in the US, from 2x to 3x at a minimum, to 1000x in some cases.

The reason is insurance. When individuals are paying for drugs, drug companies can only charge what individuals can afford. When insurance is paying for drugs, drug companies charge what insurance companies can afford, and insurance companies are able to pay much higher prices (and they recover their costs by raising premiums.) You can't blame pharmaceutical companies for not leaving money on the table.

The fact that Medicare is legally not allowed to negotiate drug prices (a big handout by Bush administration to Big Pharma) isn't helping either.

<comment><USER6> If that'd be the case then any country with a single-payer healthcare system would suffer from similarly inflated drug prices as the US, but that's simply not the case [0].

What's stopping US insurers from pressuring drug companies into price agreements? Shouldn't that be also in their best interest, instead of just passing the costs along to the patients? If that's all they are doing, what do you actually need them for?

In Germany, price agreements between drug manufacturers and insurers happen plenty of times, and it usually works out because drug companies take reduced profits over no profits, any time of the day. Patients still have the option to buy the "fancy version", paying out of their own pocket, but the vast majority of patients are completely fine with whatever their insurance covers.

[0] [https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue- briefs/2...](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue- briefs/2017/oct/paying-prescription-drugs-around-world-why-us-outlier)

<comment><USER7> Insurance companies in the US have to pay out a certain percentage of the premiums they take in (80% last I checked) [0]. So they're also incentivized to let prices climb; their 20% for "administration and profit" is inflated when prices are inflated.

[0] [https://www.healthcare.gov/health-care-law- protections/rate-...](https://www.healthcare.gov/health-care-law- protections/rate-review/)

<comment><USER8> That makes sense if it's a monopoly, but presence of many insurance carriers and variety of plans introduces some price checks.

Insurers routinely exclude drugs that they think are overpriced, they also switch to generics the day a drug goes off patent, sometimes forcibly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not sure about some of the numbers there. They say that a 3 month supply is $3700.

Humalog without insurance costs $95 per 3 ml cartridge, let's say it's a $100. This would mean that this child needs 37 cartridges for 3 months, or 12 cartridges per month, 3 per week.

That's a pretty crazy amount of insulin. I'm a T1 diabetic, that doesn't eat particularly healthy, and I need 2-3 cartridges a month, almost an order of magnitude less than the person in the article.

I don't think those numbers are right.

<comment><USER10> They say _her_ 3 month supply was $3700. Branding and "format" will affect the numbers. Pen? Vile? Pump? Humalog? Novalog? did the somewhat vague "3 month supply" include both short and long acting versions in the price tag?

I don't doubt the numbers, but I do detect some omission/simplification to make it seem extra stark.

<comment><USER11> Key phrase from the article is "modern generation of insulin". A good overview of the design and effects of the new insulins are here : [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dme.13692](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dme.13692) ( "Lessons for modern insulin development" ).

<comment><USER9> Still even with prices of modern insulins I'm not sure it makes much sense.

Fiasp is an example of one of the most modern ones and still I can't find a price higher than $125 per 3ml: [https://www.goodrx.com/fiasp?dosage=3ml- of-100-units-ml&form...](https://www.goodrx.com/fiasp?dosage=3ml-of-100-units- ml&form=flextouch-pen&label_override=Fiasp&quantity=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I didn't know this was news. My mother, a US resident who's lived in the US for ~30 years, in a border town, goes across every time she needs any sort of medical care.

The Red Cross only takes cash, but it's so much cheaper (actually affordable).

<comment><USER13> Huh, who woulda thought paying cash would be cheaper than filing a bunch of forms with an insurance company, giveing them a hefty discount, then waiting a few months to get paid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Insulin has been manufactured for decades, and is made by more than one company. Why are the prices rising?

<comment><USER15> My understanding is that there are insulin analogs that are vastly better treatments, due to being faster acting. These analogs are still patented.

However, even considering the patents, insulin prices for the same product are much higher in the USA than in Mexico or Canada. American prices have increased by an order of magnitude. [1]

IMO this rampant price gouging can only be explained by the pharmaceutical lobby, and a political apparatus addicted to their money.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/31/why-i...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/31/why- insulin-prices-have-kept-rising- for-95-years/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.318cf26db23b)

<comment><USER14> It sounds like the solution should be that patients can opt for cheaper, worse treatments, if they do not like that the more recent treatments are also more expensive.

<comment><USER15> Why? Why should people have to pay inflated prices for treatments that have been standard since the 90s?

Edit: just to be clear, the price of Humalog, a patented analog, has increased in price by 700% in the last 20 years. This is not simply a case of newer treatments being more expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There seem to be services that mail insulin from Canada already, which is significantly cheaper.

Is it really cheaper, or necessary to fly to Mexico to pick it up yourself?

[https://www.canadianinsulin.com/](https://www.canadianinsulin.com/)

<comment><USER17> Since this is technically not legal, i wonder what percent get taken by customs

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Same with tech actually. Busy flying a family member halfway across the world because the price diff on a single (!) laptop and cellphone covers the long haul flight costs.

Literally fly over, crash on my couch and spend a week exploring a different country for zero additional cost.

<comment><USER19> What country and tech? I haven't heard of this before and I wonder if it's a recent phenomenon due to the strength of the US dollar.

<comment><USER18> South Africa. Just a laptop & cellphone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What if this whole time the wall is really to keep US residents inside the country to make sure those hard working pharma execs get their rightful money? The slats are like those parking garage spikes that go one way -- US residents stay in, and everyone else can come in but never leave, keeping the easily exploited workforce from drying up.

Nah, that'd never happen.

</comment><comment><USER21> There are five beneficiaries of these prices (or the broken system): Insurance, Doctors, Hospitals, Suppliers (Drug companies) and Politicians. It is easy to fix - fix the government (Politicians) - and everything fixes itself. And once the government is fixed, incentivize them to punish monopolies.

</comment><comment><USER22> because it was haphazardly stitched together we ended up with healthcare that

1\. does not cover everyone 2\. it is rationed by for-profit companies 3\. is is expensive and can bankrupt you 4\. tied to employment which means you can lose it easily 5\. confusing since you often have to deal with paperwork and multiple providers

If you are rich and can afford it the american system is great but it is awful for everyone else.

<comment><USER23> 4a. Because US health coverage tied to employment, it serves as golden handcuffs.

But hey, got to have those profits...

<comment><USER24> The reason health insurance became an employment perk was because of a tax loophole created during World War II. From _A History of Employee Benefits and Taxation_ [1]:

> At the same time, the federal controls on wages was leading to significant > angst and frustration among the labor market, and the threat of widespread > strikes and other forms of labor protest became a serious threat to the > economy and war effort. In response, the War Labor Board implemented a new > income tax exemption to employers sponsoring employee health plans. This > made employer contributions deductible on federal returns, while the > benefits were entirely tax-free, to the employees [3].

> What started as a measure to avert crisis and labor strikes ended up > becoming an expectation. As more and more employers leveraged these tax- > benefitted health plans, American workers grew accustomed to getting their > health insurance through work, rather than as individuals. The end of the > war and the return home of American GIs exposed more workers to the new > system, reinforcing its popularity and utilization [3]. By the 1960s, > employer-sponsored health insurance plans had overwhelmingly displaced the > formal individual market, a status that has persisted right into the start > of the 21st century and provided a central tenant of the Affordable Care Act > of 2008 [4].

In my opinion, this is yet another example of how even the most well- intentioned legislation can have disastrous consequences if it fails to account for incentives and second-order effects.

1\. [https://taxandbusinessonline.villanova.edu/resources- taxatio...](https://taxandbusinessonline.villanova.edu/resources- taxation/article-taxation/a-history-of-employee-benefits-and-taxation.html)

<comment><USER25> This quotation carefully skirts around the actual reason why health insurance became an employment perk _and_ why a tax loophole was created during WWII. In an intentionally deceptive way (not by the poster, but by the original author.)

People were getting their insurance through their unions. Before the unions started doing this, nobody associated health insurance with employment. This made people grateful and happy with their unions. The government, in order to weaken the unions, paid employers to give their employees insurance with a tax break.

Not understanding this makes the first sentence completely unconnected to the rest of the text. Health insurance was not a raise, heath insurance was an intentionally union-breaking subsidy to businesses to give bosses more leverage on wages.

i.e. this was not well-intentioned.

<comment><USER24> > People were getting their insurance through their unions. Before the unions > started doing this, nobody associated health insurance with employment. This > made people grateful and happy with their unions. The government, in order > to weaken the unions, paid employers to give their employees insurance with > a tax break.

Do you have a source for this? Nothing I've read has made such a claim. Even the NYT says that the root cause of employer-based health care was wage freezes during WWII followed by the tax-exemption of employer-provided health insurance.[1][2]

1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/upshot/the-real-reason- th...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/upshot/the-real-reason-the-us-has- employer-sponsored-health-insurance.html)

2\. [https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/the- question-o...](https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/the-question-of- taxing-employer-provided-health-insurance/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17778040](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17778040) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19053389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19053389)

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if drugs are cheaper due to more relaxed regulations? the American FDA has many strict requirements around manufacturing and distributing drugs, but Mexico and Cananda do not need to follow the same standards, resulting in lower operating costs.

Lower operating costs = lower price.

<comment><USER28> Nah.. Does the UK have lower standards or more relaxed regulations? What you're seeing here is the free market without government price control, at it's 'best'. Things in general are priced at what consumers are willing to pay. That's basically it.

<comment><USER29> "what consumers are willing to pay" is intermediated through health insurance companies, whose policy premiums have skyrocketed in the US in the last few decades.

Before relatively recently, most US medication consumers didn't understand that rising drug prices were a factor in the rise of their health insurance premiums. Now they are catching on to that, which is why it is becoming a politically important issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This doesn't happen with socialised healthcare that's free at the point of service.

A government can negotiate lower prices than a commercial entity. They also can legislate to force bad actors to be reasonable.

Sadly the UK's NHS is being slowly converted to the USAs fundamentally broken system of "what the market can bear".

Rampant capitalism didn't work for the banks either. They needed a social bailout when their markets crashed.

</comment><comment><USER31> American healthcare is frankly - and I say this as an American - <USER2> and infuriating. It needs to be re-structured from the ground up.

<comment><USER32> Part of this is because the US prices of drugs, subsidize the development of drugs around the world. Pharmaceutical companies rely on the US market to offset the R&D of the drugs, while then providing other countries with drugs above the marginal costs (which is still profitable). In this scheme, the pharma company benefits (they increase their profits) as do the other countries (they get cheap drugs). The loser in this arrangement is the US consumer who gets to pay high costs so everyone else can have ground-breaking drugs at low cost.

<comment><USER33> Those companies spend far more money on marketing than R&D an they're heavily reliant on US funded research — almost every erything they do starts with NIH funding.

<comment><USER34> Source?

<comment><USER33> See e.g. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big- pharmaceutical-companies-are-spending-far-more-on-marketing-than-research/) \- it's improved a little since then but it's still nowhere near an explanation, especially since it's not like drugs produced by non-US companies are massively cheaper in the US.

<comment><USER34> Not quite the proof I'd like to see. Johnson&Johnson sells a lot of things, the more purely pharmaceutical companies are closer to 1:1 in the graphic.

Then we have, _Most of this marketing money is directed at the physicians who do the prescribing, rather than consumers. As Oliver pointed out, drug companies spent more than $3 billion a year marketing to consumers in the U.S. in 2012, but an estimated $24 billion marketing directly to health care professionals._

$27B in marketing but the graphic shows over $65B in R&D?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> this story cites one estimate that, for a certain list of drugs, the savings from buying in Mexico was 40-60%

that's huge. but -- how can US consumers possibly save any money by going to another country to buy a product? i thought globalization had brought US consumers free trade.

<comment><USER36> there is no free trade in drugs,

<comment><USER35> US trade laws and agreements appear to protect certain sectors. has the US ever really had "free trade"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How unpatriotic. I hope the border wall will also keep Americans inside to contribute to the economy instead of spending their money abroad. The health care industry needs money to survive! Pharma companies need money to do R&D! Build that wall, Mr. Trump! /s

<comment><USER36> Don't give them any ideas. They may also start not only searching your laptop and at the border but also for antibiotics.</comment></comment>