AT&T is phasing out the U-verse TV service - <AUTHOR> http://adage.com/article/digital/t-takes-u-turn-u-verse-pushes-users-directv/302689/ <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure AT&T has spent more money over the last year trying to get me to sign up for Uverse then I would've sent them to pay for a year of the service. I got a mailer every three or four days, and had salespeople knock on the door every few weeks. Plus a random scattering of inserts, stuff hung on the door etc.

I can't think of another marketing campaign that's been quite so aggressive.

<comment><USER3> AT&T kept trying to get me to sign up for years, and I would have done so, except every time they kept finding out they had not built the service into my zone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All that money which they spent on buying Direct TV ($48.5 billion, and with debt estimated as $67.1 billion!) they could spend on building out fiber optic networks and upgrading their inferior DSL and U-verse to proper fiber to the house technology. But no, it's AT&T for you. They have money to buy obsolete TV technology, but they don't have any money to actually upgrade their network to something up to date.

<comment><USER5> Went into an ATT store to upgrade an iPhone and they were pushing directtv pretty hard. CenturyLink Prism fiber just became available here as well.

It was amusing as I didn't know att bought directtv and I keep up on tech events. I probably filed it under "dinosaurs mating" and ignored it.

I can't imagine directtv internet access being that fast and it probably suffers from a lot of latency.

<comment><USER6> Yeah. My parents went to deal with a phone at an AT&T location a couple weeks ago. They walked in with U-verse and apparently walked out with DirectTV.

I wasn't there but I'm going to assume they're pushing it hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think anyone in power really recognizes the day of reckoning that's on the horizon w/r/t the copper in America's soil.

The telcos are in a managed descent on all of the wiring that could easily deliver Internet. It is too fucking expensive to maintain. So the telcos are instead focusing on acquiring spectrum and hoping to deliver broadband over wireless.

But companies like Google, MSFT & others are interfering with all of the spectrum moves of the carriers because they are (reasonably) concerned about WIFI interference that affects their product strategies.

So how will this play out? Carriers will need the spectrum to deliver the Internet people want, but non-carriers are going to fight to prevent them from acquiring that spectrum.

I think we have a problem where the conflict over spectrum peaks specifically because of the rotting copper plant. It is a very slowly percolating crisis.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand this issue of "rotting copper plant". My home has original Illinois Bell wiring. It is 40 years old. My phones (and DSL, when I had it) work fine. One of the things my ever-increasing phone bill is supposed to go to is maintenance on the plant in the ground. The fact that AT&T or Verizon would rather spend this maintenance money on new wireless hardware doesn't automatically make it "too fucking expensive to maintain". This is the line of b.s. used to justify _letting_ the copper plant decay.

<comment><AUTHOR> To really rub it in, after Hurricane Sandy hit the north east 3 or 4 years ago, ATT said it wasn't realistic to replace the damaged copper[1].

They instead handed out wireless gsm devices that could be plugged into your household phone lines and supply "land line" service. This of course (since GSM is lossy), meant fax machines and many other land line data devices stopped working. ATT didn't care.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/22/technology/verizon- wireless-...](http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/22/technology/verizon-wireless- sandy/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How strange. My parents just signed a 2-year agreement with U-Verse about a week ago. It's can't be that dead if they're still signing up customers.

<comment><USER10> Is it installed yet? Either they got on last minute or as typical AT&T didn't mention that they are getting DSL and DirectTV. Trust me I have U-verse. Was told we were getting 1 Gig fiber. It's a 17 mb/s DSL line which routes internet and 3 cable boxes through one DSL.

<comment><USER9> It's installed. They even got a new cable box with it. Really odd strategy at AT&T.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > U-verse subscribers fell 4%, the worst loss ever, as 240,000 customers > canceled service

I was one of them. I cancelled my U-verse TV service a few months ago. They did all they could to lose my business. I had a price quote _in writing_ and they refused to honor it. I've dealt with some bad companies in the past, including several pre-reform credit card companies, but I've never encountered one that was so in-your-face about it. Even when I called to cancel, when they tried to keep me as a customer, they weren't willing to say "Yeah, we quoted you a price in writing, so we'll refund the overcharge."

</comment><comment><USER12> Having already built the infrastructure, it's odd that they would just abandon all of those users who cannot use DirecTV either because they're in a multi- unit dwelling or otherwise lack clear view to their satellite slots.

<comment><USER13> Its not clear from the article what they're doing for internet access going forward. It sounds like the may actually be increasing the bandwidth, since they no longer have to deliver TV channels on the same line as the internet.

What really surprised me, though, was that DirecTV was actually growing. I thought there was a trend towards watching TV shows via the internet and away from traditional cable/satellite.

<comment><USER14> > What really surprised me, though, was that DirecTV was actually growing. I > thought there was a trend towards watching TV shows via the internet and > away from traditional cable/satellite.

DirecTV is probably largely cannibalizing other traditional cable/satellite (AT&T has been _very_ heavily promoting it and offering big incentives since they purchased it); there's nothing inconsistent between DirecTV growing while the overall cable/satellite market is shrinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> With the DirecTV acquisition, AT&T's greater leverage over the networks and studios would allow them to better negotiate for true, Internet-based IPTV distribution, ala Dish's SlingTV. They've got the infrastructure in U-Verse video, already an IPTV product. Not much would prevent them from opening the firewalls and allowing subscribers from outside the AT&T network. Who needs STBs? Just have subscribers purchase a Roku-type device.

They're throwing away a ton of potential here. Satellite TV, in its current form, is not the answer.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow.

We pay for U-Verse TV, but solely as an account login for online streaming services. I haven't turned on the DVR in over 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER17> Will Verizon stick with FIOS?

Verizon installs FIOS (fiber to the house) and rips out your copper network. ATT runs fiber to the pole and leaves your copper network.

If ATT can't make it with the copper as the last step, I wonder if Verizon will continue to invest in fiber?

<comment><USER18> Verizon has stopped building out FiOS to new areas beyond those it already has commitments to. They may never make their money back on it.

<comment><USER19> _Verizon has stopped building out FiOS to new areas beyond those it already has commitments to. They may never make their money back on it._

Given some of the deals they're offering, I see why. I live in a FiOS area and was eager to get it... until I realized that RCN offered 330 Mbs down for substantially less: [http://www.rcn.com/330](http://www.rcn.com/330). FiOS is symmetrical, which is nice, but RCN is about $50 per month cheaper compared to FiOS, and upload speeds are not of critical importance to me. FiOS also has lower latency, but, again, the price delta is large.

My impression is also that Verizon makes money off FiOS, just not as much as it would like, but some searching hasn't brought up any good data on it.

<comment><USER20> I had the opposite - FIOS is cheaper than Time Warner for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Central Dogma of Genetics May Not Apply to Cephalopods - <AUTHOR> https://ascienceenthusiast.com/central-dogma-cephalopods/ <comment><USER2> Nice article, but the title is a small exaggeration. There are many known of the DNA -> RNA -> Protein rule.

One of the most famous is the alteration of the Proline in the collagen. A big part of collagen is made of Proline, and another big part is made of Hydroxyproline (that is like proline, but one -H is replaced by a -OH). There is no code in the DNA for Hydroxyproline, you use the code for Proline and after the molecule is formed then you use a special enzyme to transform Proline into Hydroxyproline. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collagen#Amino_acids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collagen#Amino_acids)

Also, tRNA sometimes use weird bases, that are also not encoded directly in the DNA.

</comment><comment><USER3> the central dogma (of molecular biology, not genetics) is more what you call a guideline, not a rule. It was also kind of meant humorously (Crick meant for it to be taken semi-seriously). And of course we've found many exceptions to the dogma over time. So, this is much less exciting an observation as you might think.</comment>


Skype group video calling becomes free - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.skype.com/2014/04/28/skype-loves-bringing-groups-together-with-free-group-video-calling/ <comment><USER2> I don't understand why Microsoft took so long to do this. If they had been faster after Google Hangouts, it never would have gained a beachhead. Xbox One could easily find a secondary market as a conference room device; a Microsoft version of Airplay and Chromecast (ideally open to Mac and general web as well) would take more engineering, but would have been awesome too.

<comment><USER3> "I don't understand why Microsoft took so long to do this."

Skype had free video group calls long before Google Hangouts even existed. If I remember correctly, they forced their users to pay for it a few months or a year after Google Hangouts launched, which was a really stupid move which surely helped Google's product a lot.

<comment><USER4> Group video was only free for a very limited time on the beta only on the Windows application. It became a paid product over a year before Google Hangouts launched.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope open protocols will catch up already. XMPP/Jingle has user side multiplexing for a while (MUJI), but it requires decent bandwidth. It's a deferred XEP for some reason though. Also, most clients lack support for it. Server side multiplexing wasn't standardized for some reason, so XMPP servers didn't come up with anything common so far.

Skype remains just another proprietary walled garden communication network which in addition can't be trusted. It should be avoided.

<comment><USER6> I think it is amazing how little strategy and disruption there seems to be in the industry.

My dad is mostly retired, he rents out his office, but his secretary still comes into the office one afternoon a week. I didn't want to stress her out by asking her to learn new technology, but the phone was used only an hour or two a month. I ported the same number he'd had for a few decades to Google Voice, and attached an ObiHai box so that she can use a regular phone, rather than needing to understand why messages are in Google Voice but outgoing calls are placed using Google Chat, or use a special earpiece plugged into the computer.

Anyway, over the two years that it worked it saved a couple thousand dollars that would have been spent to use the phone for about 30 hours. Since Google Voice will no longer be compatible with ObiHai devices this month (moving away from XMPP), I ported the number to Anveo, which is no longer free, but still only $40/year.

Both Microsoft and Google should offer small businesses packaged services where you bring your own internet service, then buy telephone plus email using your own domain name from them for a flat fee. Something like $200-400/year for 1-3 users would find an enormous market. Afterwards, they could sell office suites, billing/accounting software, scheduling software as add-ons.

Right now it is needlessly complicated for people who have minimal communication needs, and don't care about technology, to avoid huge costs. It's kind of absurd to consider how little service someone like a barber or a shop owner gets after paying fees that make up a significant part of their operating costs.

<comment><USER7> > _Both Microsoft and Google should offer small businesses packaged services > where you bring your own internet service, then buy telephone plus email > using your own domain name from them for a flat fee._

Microsoft is focusing on the enterprise, because that's where the money is. For example, CERN is using Microsoft Lync as an IP PBX, using the Polycom CX300. It looks like a desk telephone and works like a desk telephone. It can even retrieve voicemail. But it plugs in to a USB port and uses Lync for calling. [https://espace.cern.ch/mmmservices- help/UnifiedCommunication...](https://espace.cern.ch/mmmservices- help/UnifiedCommunication/Lync/Pages/Overview.aspx)

It's a lot simpler to sell to CERN and pick up 2500 users, than to sell to 2500 different barbershops. For one thing, CERN has competent IT staff who won't be costing Microsoft a lot of money in support calls.

As for Google, they seem to actively be avoiding telephony. For example, Gizmo5 used to offer SIP connectivity, and then Google got rid of Google Voice forwarding to Gizmo5. And now the elimination of XMPP and the option to use Obihai. Even Google Fiber was set up as a double-play instead of a triple- play: they'll sell you Internet and television, but not phone.

I get the feeling that Google wants to make absolutely sure that it is not regulated as a telephony provider, with all the hassles around 911, service availability, being able to call high-cost rural exchanges, etc.

<comment><USER8> _won 't be costing Microsoft a lot of money in support calls_

I think you've got it backwards, there's nothing Microsoft loves more then support calls because that's where their real cash cow is: charging enterprise monstrous yearly support fees.

<comment><USER7> In other words, enterprise support contracts are making Microsoft money -- not _costing_ it money.

Consumers and small businesses aren't nearly as willing to open their wallets for support. The best customer is one who pays the annual fee and never calls in for support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope TextSecure/Whisper will get to have video-calling, too, soon. People need to stop using insecure platforms like Skype that make mass spying so easy.

<comment><USER10> Video calling in Jitsi works fantastically right now. There's little excuse for people still using proprietary video conferencing platforms.

<comment><USER11> The fact that you think people are making excuses to use proprietary video conferencing platforms (or other communication platforms) is why things like TextSecure and Jitsi will likely never take off. You're really just making excuses for the TextSecure and Jitsi teams.

For the most part, no one cares whether they're using something that is open source or proprietary. Most people don't event care much about abstract concepts like "security" or "encryption" when it comes at the cost of their real goal -- communicating with family and friends. Once some secure platform is as easy to use[0] and as prevalent[1] as Skype or Google Hangouts, maybe people will start using them.

[0] A sibling post suggests setting up Jitsi with IPv6 and starting the program with the -6 parameter to fix some connection issues. I would hope it's clear why needing to use certain command line parameters and understanding "the implications of having a public address" to use a chat program makes it a non-starter for a vast amount of people.

[1] As it turns out, advertising and marketing matter! You can't have a popular chat platform if no one knows you exist!

<comment><USER12> > For the most part, no one cares whether they're using something that is open > source or proprietary. Most people don't event care much about abstract > concepts like "security" or "encryption"

You say it as if it's universal and intractable. Awareness has jumped since Snowden's revelations began, AFAICT, and I've read several places that security-oriented services have seen a very large jump in demand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel like this was the only thing on the premium feature list that even mattered. Does skype even generate revenue?

<comment><USER14> Maybe group screen sharing is still limited to just premium subscribers?

<comment><USER15> Nope, they removed the premium option altogether.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Finally! I don't know anyone who likes G+ over Skype, but we all use it for the group video features.

<comment><USER17> I'm the CEO of a small remote-working startup with 5 employees. I pay $20/mo for Skype since some of people I meet with only use that and I need the group screen sharing feature. Whenever I have a Skype meeting, I'm nervous, because 50% of the time video or screen sharing won't work. Once I get them to switch to Hangouts there's no problems, ever.

Are you telling me that you experience the opposite? If so, that's very odd.

<comment><USER18> We've been using hangouts more or less exclusively for at least a year. Hangouts are very stable. When doing training we have hangout sessions that last for two days (minus the nights of course). The problem with hangouts are with access control. Most people are not signed in with an ID that matches their email address and I still don't know how to schedule a hangout that is protected only by it's URL.

<comment><USER19> I've been able to create URL-based "unlisted" hangouts with:

[http://plus.google.com/hangouts/_](http://plus.google.com/hangouts/_)

That will redirect you to a new hangout URL, and (in my experience) you can just copy/paste the new URL to other folks. To use it, they'll need to be logged into _a_ G+ account, but it doesn't matter which one.

<comment><USER20> Oh upvote the shit out of this! The only hassle we've had with Hangouts is how to start one by yourself and then get a link that's easily pastable into IM so everyone else can join, and this works like a charm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It used to be free a few years ago too until it became 'premium' in early 2011. [1] Difference is that now Skype features more ads than in 2011, even if you have multiple monthly subscriptions (A no-ad version is now a considerable perk of the premium version).

[1] - [http://www.macworld.com/article/1157435/skype5.html](http://www.macworld.com/article/1157435/skype5.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> But will they update Skype for Linux to have group video at all?

<comment><USER23> It's only been 4 years, give them time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I use Skype everyday to communicate with family abroad. I have a camera mounted on my television. The quality of Skype is abysmal. Most of the time, you do not have HD video.

When I switch over to using facetime, the video quality is amazing. I don't know what happened to Skype, but its quality is by far the worst available on the market.

<comment><USER25> > The quality of Skype is abysmal. Most of the time, you do not have HD video.

That comment reminded me of what Louis CK says about wifi on the plane — or attitude towards technology in general. I won't link because the swear ratio is… well he uses all the possible syntactical options of the f-bomb.

The quality difference is striking, and Skype pales in comparison. But live video feed between common computers is something that, no matter the quality of the feed, should still be seen as the miracle that it is, and somehow only seem so to too few users. Doing that with limited central server is even more impressive. It might not be enough to gather facial expression, and that _is_ a real problem for their offer. But what they do remains the result of ten years of high level engineering, with broad room for progress in many circumstances.

<comment><USER26> I appreciate the Louis CK argument, but when it comes to communication it doesn't fully apply. Have you ever had a terrible cell phone connection in which you can make out the words but conversation isn't really free and easy? Then you switch to Skype or another medium where you can hear each other with radically improved quality and less latency and then the conversation progresses more smoothly and rapidly?

The same can happen with video. A low quality video connection is a mere novelty, doing little to improve the conversation. A high quality video connection, though, can dramatically improve the conversation. For example, you can watch the expression in your partner's face to see when they are confused, or disagree, or you need to slow down or go faster, and if your points are resonating and connecting.

The Louis CK principle does apply, yes, its amazing. But just as video opens doors not available to audio calls, high quality video calls open many doors that low quality video calls do not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd written Skype off as malware after it continued to put a browser extension on my computer that parsed every single page I visited without my permission. Even after removing the plugin it would regularly disappear. This behavior is not okay.

<comment><USER28> If it is the plugin that I remember disabling, it reads the page looking for phone numbers and creates buttons to make skype calls. Wasn't anything I wanted so I disabled the plugin. no biggie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Finally!

I've used many video conferencing solutions but I have the impression that Skype is going to be the most convenient (largely because we're already using Skype as a team). Sqwiggle[0] is pretty neat as well ( _Edit: I had to mention that, AFAIK Sqwiggle doesn 't support group video conferencing_).

 _[0][https://www.sqwiggle.com/](https://www.sqwiggle.com/) _

<comment><USER30> I like Sococo for teams (I work at Sococo). No scheduling conferences (talk/view any time they're available); integrated video/chat/doc sharing; can tell who's talking to whom/who's not busy/who has their door shut.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for the reference. I'll definitely check it out.

That's what I like with Sqwiggle (or similar tools). It's the ease of connecting with a team member using video. (I'm just noticing something: I forgot to mention that AFAIK Sqwiggle doesn't support group conferencing.). Your connection/team member is a click away and you know if they're at their desk thanks to the snapshots.

<comment><USER31> With sqwiggle you can group conference a bunch of people by clicking everyone. You all get joined. Pretty neat.

Unfortunately the way it reacts to changes in bandwidth isn't up to hangouts or skype. We've got one team member working out in the sticks and it just drops out when his bandwidth gets choked. Hangouts on the other hand just falls back gracefully to audio only.

If we all had better connections sqwiggle would be more of a contender.

<comment><USER32> Thanks guys! We're working hard on improving Sqwiggle's quality on low bandwidth / multiparty calls :-D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone else refuse to use Skype because Microsoft was complicit with PRISM?

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft- nsa-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa- collaboration-user-data)

<comment><USER34> Of course. They should suffer the loss of ALL their users if you ask me. If anyone here is still using Skype, I wonder what kind of community this is and what kind of future we are building..

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Skype, awesome communication tool, turned most expensive honeypot ever.

</comment><comment><USER36> Nice! Paying a premium for this was a bummer, but it does still work better than all of Skype's competitors, in my opinion. The primary problem of Hangouts and whatever else is out there is audio echo. I don't know if that problem is simply unsolvable in Flash or what, but Skype has handled it much better. All you need is one person on your Hangout call who doesn't mute their mic and the experience is a disaster, unfortunately.

<comment><USER37> >audio echo

That's a difference in the audio algorithms used. Skype uses SILK while I believe that Google Hangouts uses Opus. SILK and Opus are closely related however. I would assume that Skype didn't allow all their fancy echo- cancellation tweaks to be open-sourced so it's a little better in the Skype implementation. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SILK#Opus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SILK#Opus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I see another player that Skype is going after - WebEx. Most uses for WebEx are simple video chatting. Most times no one need the dozens of other features that WebEx offers in their bloated product. In true innovators dilemma fashion, I can see Skype now truly eating into WebEx's market from the bottom up.

</comment><comment><USER39> Funny - because just last week I setup new dummy google plus accounts for various family members in Europe and India so we could use hangouts without polluting our regular gmail accounts with Google+ nonsense.

We won't need that anymore - We were perfectly happy with Skype, but missed group video.

<comment><USER40> I work for Google, so I'm obviously biased here, though I don't always like everything we do around our sites and integration.

But, I'm genuinely curious, what nonsense does Google+ pollute your regular Google account with? I believe that you get a profile page, but you can leave it entirely blank.

<comment><USER41> If you're seriously asking, I'm happy to answer my two cents, but i'm very concerned that you don't have a sense for the reasons people would want to use G+ gated products without being part of G+.

As someone who has a personal G+ account and doesn't mind, and who runs a company that pays Google for apps for my domain on which we manage our email, I still had to register for G+ to be able to use the hangouts product in invitations and threads I'm having with my work email. Now that I've done so (without adding a profile photo or anything else), i'm getting tons of people adding me to circles, etc., which I don't want. It's essentially forcing a social-connection construct on a relationship with an empty profile that I don't want to create or have to maintain.

<comment><USER42> I agree completely. I am _astonished_ that Google people genuinely don't understand the things that are off-putting about Google+.

I've never even tried Hangouts because of the G+ requirement. I suppose if I had to, I'd create a one-off account for the purpose.

<comment><USER43> well to be fair, plenty of google employees are/have-been fully aware of (and vocal about) the various problems with forced G+ integrations on users. It's just that those employees haven't had any power to change those decisions. With the recent changes in leadership, things _may_ change.

<comment><USER41> This may be true, but it is not the POV implied in OP's question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Just happy that screensharing is free again ... I was forced to go create a Google+ hangout account just to get access to this functionality. Glad I can just go ahead and delete that now.

</comment><comment><USER45> I wonder if this includes group screen share That and the group video are the only two reasons any of the people I know have Skype premium.

<comment><USER46> It does, according to the replies here by Skype [http://blogs.skype.com/2014/04/28/skype-loves-bringing- group...](http://blogs.skype.com/2014/04/28/skype-loves-bringing-groups- together-with-free-group-video-calling/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Skype group video calling becomes free (again)

</comment><comment><USER48> cool. anybody using conference call equipment for skype? We have tried some logitech quipment to connect 2 offices ([http://www.logitech.com/de- de/product/tvcam-hd](http://www.logitech.com/de-de/product/tvcam-hd)) which didn´t work out very well. any recommendations?

<comment><USER49> Why not have everyone call in from their own machine? This way, it normalizes the communication bandwidth between everyone, no one feels like it's harder to be heard. A big failing of many remote teams I've seen is when they try to "strap on" a remote team. But if you can minimize the feeling of "real office vs virtual office" it works a lot better.

<comment><USER48> generally a good idea but we need some kind of conference system, if there is a meeting at office #1 with e.g. four people, to connect the one or another colleague form office #2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Another neat fact - announced in a Youtube video! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4C1DGzHiis&list=PLaLRbjVhH6...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4C1DGzHiis&list=PLaLRbjVhH6kJOvE3V28UbfkuF_4xaA2MR)

<comment><USER51> Strange, on their website, they "recommend" group talking with 5 people. On above YouTube video, they said, you "can" talk with 10 people.

<comment><USER52> I imagine 5 is the upper bounds in their testing for users on the low/mid- level speed tiers from ISPs (ie. what most consumers buy) for "acceptable" video quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Too little. Too late. My team and me moved from Skype to Hangouts and then to Fuze already. We're very happy with Fuze. More here: [https://www.fuze.com/](https://www.fuze.com/)

</comment><comment><USER54> In New Zealand I always come back to Skype. It just works, always seem to have issues with Google Hangouts and FaceTime.

</comment><comment> good-citizen This is awesome! Been wanting this for years but never wanted to pay for it because there are so many free options.

</comment><comment><USER55> Good timing microsoft, specially now that we have this for free for an year already using google hangouts

</comment><comment><USER56> That title/URL is bugging me, I was thinking in a more cynical world it may read something like:

"skype-is-concerned-of-competition-and-matches-features"

About the spying, I feel sorry for any poor sucker watching my life! :¬D All that effort for such little excitement.

<comment><USER57> I am pretty sure, if I had access to your skype chat/camera I would find enough information to extort you. There is one moment, or one line of text or one picture that you don't want to escape your mind.

<comment><USER56> Edit: Meh, pointless reply is pointless, I'll just agree, it's easier.

My attempts at humouring others escapes me once again... a well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> What's the best open source alternative to Skype?

<comment><USER59> Skype is a service, not just a desktop client. It's like asking what the best open source alternative to Google search or Google maps might be.

<comment><USER60> Can you point me to Skype's API? I always thought that Skype was a closed protocol and that they don't want any other client applications using their service...

<comment><USER61> Messenger probably didn't want any other clients using their service, but that didn't stop the Pidgins and Trillians of the world... :)

<comment><USER60> Very true but Skype appears to present a much bigger problem for reverse engineering (I have only seen someone reverse engineer the texting part of Skype and not the video)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Finally! Google Hangouts had it since,like forever

</comment><comment><USER63> I like the smell of competition by the morning.

</comment><comment><USER64> this made my Monday

</comment><comment><USER65> Oh, now the NSA wants your group sex tapes too?</comment>


Roadmap to becoming a React developer in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adam-golab/react-developer-roadmap <comment><USER3> I understand this is opinionated and "personal", but on the off chance that this might make React less intimidating, let me chime in and say that you can do professional work (and build pretty much any reasonable application) without:

\- really understanding "semantic HTML" (if you know what div's and span's are, you're ready to get to work),

\- understanding flexbox (you can, and many pro developers do, just use a CSS framework, and they're especially nice in React because they're delivered as components, so all you really _need_ is the documentation for the layout components of the framework you pick),

\- design patterns --- in fact, I might argue that you're better off _not_ reading about design patterns, which are kind of an architectural blind alley,

\- CSS preprocessors, which are neat but inessential,

\- CSS architecture,

\- Redux --- more nascent React developers have been derailed by the suggestion that they need to grok Redux than by anything else in the ecosystem; you don't even need to know _what Redux is_ to build perfectly good React applications,

\- async actions, which are another aspect of Flux, which again you don't need to grok,

\- react-router, which is a disaster of an API that abstracts something you can build in just a hundred lines of code or so, and can in fact do without altogether,

\- lodash and moment (this is nitpicking, since neither of these demand more than a couple of minutes to pick up, but just to be clear: you don't need them, especially in ES6).

<comment><USER4> I have no idea what "professional work" could possibly mean in that sentence. The things that you have deemed superfluous are the tools of the trade. We don't use every tool on every job, but when we do use them, its because they make our work easier!

Someone who doesn't know that lodash exists will reinvent lodash, and do it poorly because JS has crazy edge cases.

Someone who hasn't experienced Bootstrap's crazy, nested selector hierarchies and pseudo-selectors will end up creating their own CSS hell.

Someone who doesn't know about flexbox will end up writing who knows what instead of 'justify-content: flex-end' (or even vertical align).

react-router has been a disaster, but that doesn't mean that rewriting it yourself will be great.

Someone who doesn't know the purpose of Redux will eventually end up with spaghetti callbacks or a building a much worse clone.

Every single project I've seen that uses Redux without Immutable ends up creating a worse Immutable.

Could someone build something without any of this knowledge/experience and throw it on the Internet? Sure! Would I be happy inheriting (or even using) that "reasonable application"? No!

<comment><USER3> I used to feel like underscore was an absolute requirement to do anything serious in Javascript, but I'm not sure I've used it even once since switching to ES6. If you want to say lodash is ultra-important, fine; like I said, it was a nitpick, since "learning lodash" basically means "reading the documentation for a utility library".

I don't know what you mean about Bootstrap, since Bootstrap (or something like it) is one of the things I _do_ think new React developers should learn.

If you're using a CSS framework like Bootstrap or Foundation, I'm not convinced that an intuition for flexbox is at all important.

I think you'd do a better job than react-router just implementing it yourself. It's a couple of functions worth of browser glue to handle navigation events, and then a loop; there's even a utility library (path-to-regexp) that does the only "interesting" thing that react-router does. My point in calling out react-router is that it is a nightmare to work with and is an actual obstacle people have to working in React, and that obstacle is pointless; just skip it.

I strongly disagree with you about Redux, and someone else who disagrees with you is Dan Abramov.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've noticed this spirit of "learn everything" all over the React and JavaScript community, and I don't think it's a good thing.

Learning happens contextually as you figure things out. I see no use to learning half of the things on here that you'll never use. You do risk, however, in the confusing and complex JavaScript landscape, getting paralyzed by choice and never getting off the ground. I shutter thinking about how large some peoples' `package.json` files are.

There will always be a better way to build and some better technology. Build based on what you know and know how to pick tools when you run into a wall. When you need to refactor, you'll have a much stronger appreciation for /why/ you need some tool anyway.

<comment><USER6> This exact ideology hindered me when I first started learning to program. If I had decided to learn Just Enough To Get Crap Done I would've fared much better and joined the industry much sooner.

Thankfully I found a good mentor who helped steer me away from all the terrible specifics and trying to learn the full stack and only learning what I needed

<comment><USER7> Any advice on finding a mentor?

<comment><USER8> This might sound bullshit but I found one via "LinkedIn Career suggestion" and he's given me some great perspectives.

Not "perfect" but sure its good

<comment><USER7> Appreciate the reply. No need for perfect :^)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I only have time for a quick brain dump, but I hope my observations are useful to someone:

\- It needs a "happy path" with the very minimum you need to learn to get started. Something like create-react-app and what you'd need to learn after that. This diagram is too scary for beginners. Bury the full diagram further down in the README.

\- Each of the tools listed relieves a real pain point in large applications. You need to know what that pain point is and if you even need that relief. Understanding when you need each of those tools is important but missing info from the roadmap.

\- It does represent most the _types_ of tools you would be using for a very big app on a large team. Frontend is just as complex as backend these days, and complex in a good way not a bad way. The tools aren't there to look cool. You need them in a huge app.

\- It is super helpful to understand which tools solve the same problem. But this should be explained better for beginners looking to use the road map. "Oh, I don't need to learn Jest, Mocha, Sinon, Enzyme, and Chai, they all scratch the same itch" (mostly, let's not get pedantic).

\- The other comments that say none of this is necessary, just use React, are great comments. It's true of a one person team for a small app. More of this kind of thinking should go into the minimal "happy path" roadmap.

<comment><USER10> Im building my first(or maybe technically second) full stack app.

6 months later, back end is done, front end is RN and is almost done.

This roadmap gave me a shot of excitement because I'm at APIs.

I finally can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm torn. I don't think the aim should be "become a ${framework} developer" but just become a solid programmer with specialization in front-end technologies. If I needed to bounce out of front-end and into another tech role, I wouldn't have too hard of a time because I'm familiar with more than Javascript (I started learning programming with Ruby and Rails, but got my first professional gig doing analytics/seo).

I feel like this is a more compelling tech tree (not mine): [https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer- roadmap](https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap)

<comment><USER10> Heck, I feel like once you are a programmer, you are a programmer.

Even after a decade of programming, it still takes me a few days to learn new concepts/libraries.

My thing is, if you already know it, copy paste and edit. If you dont know it, build the code for the first time. I feel like this is the difference between a 10 year programmer and 2 year programmer.

I have the foundation for sql databases, so it would take me mere moments to write a new full stack if I already had the code.

<comment><USER12> This is true to some extent, but sometimes you really do need a specialist. Some fields, such as databases and machine learning, are deep enough that there _is_ a huge difference between someone learning it on the job and someone who has been doing it for 10 years.

<comment><USER13> I think it also might be easier to get interviews and job offers for specialist positions where there's less demand. I'm not prepared to make a strong case for that, but I did feel like selling myself as a Ruby on Rails developer made certain portions of technical interviewing a lot more straight forward than when I was interviewing for "I'm a software engineer" roles. Just a feeling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am a professional developer who primarily uses React and I actively avoid most of this. I keep up with the community so know (or at least know about) almost all of this, but choose not to use it all.

The direction I have seen react go is exactly the opposite of the reason I liked it in the first place. It was simple and JUST A VIEW LAYER. How it became all of this is just typical software devs over complicating things for themselves IMO.

<comment><USER12> This is too dismissive of the reasons the ecosystem is the way it is. Sure, there is definitely some amount of over-engineering and NIH going on in the community, but every solution exists for a reason, and if a lot of people are using something (e.g. Redux), chances are that it solves a very real problem for those people.

There are times this backfires (AngularJS, react-router), but to say that all these tools popping up "is just typical software devs over complicating things" is a bit short-sighted. If they didn't solve problems, they wouldn't be as popular as they are.

<comment><USER15> I think the problem many developers see is the expectation that a "react developer" needs to know most of these things to call themselves such. It's a very similar issue to what many have with the term "full stack developer".

It's a big leap between "I can get the job done if you want me to write some react code" and "I can write you an enterprise app in react", but both of those can be inferred as react development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not a react dev per se, I've used it some, not a 'master', I prefer Vue, but I wanted to chime in for newbie devs, take this roadmap with a grain of salt, you don't need to be an expert at using all the tooling and all topics mentioned in this diagram to get started and build stuff.

A topical understanding of each thing will suffice, then dive in deeper as you need it for whatever project you're working on.

If you're between projects on your job, or between clients if freelancing - <USER2> all means pick a weak subject and level up on, but don't let the complexity get you discouraged from learning in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER17> Crazy to me how far we've come from HTML and some script tags. Part of me is really sad that the web is big and complicated and ugly now. I just don't have the patience to read some new framework author's long winded and grandiose tutorial and ode to themselves. Why is it so hard to do seemingly simple things? I can remember 10 years ago training up someone with no programming experience at all to competency in a few weeks, on the job. They had to learn HTML, some CSS, Perl, and JavaScript was left for extra credit.

Something is very, very wrong if you now need to master dozens of technologies to add the same value to the world you used to be able to 10 years ago without so much effort. And before someone says it the applications were of similar complexity and scope to today's SPA behomths.

Too many cooks in the kitchen!

<comment><USER3> Modern programming languages are a lot more featureful and sophisticated than assembly language, and they change a lot more than instruction set architectures do. How is your lament different than that of an assembly language programmer, who might complain "crazy how far we've come from conditional jumps and some stack manipulation"?

I'm 41 and got started in the 1990s, and those assembly advocates really did exist. What makes you think that 20 years from now people won't have a hard time believing that anyone could have advocated "just HTML and some script tags" over modern development practices?

<comment><USER18> There was a time when compiled languages compiled into a somewhat predictable finite sequence of machine instruction, and thus one might use them but still understand everything happening. I think that is less true of modern web frameworks.

<comment><USER19> You probably didn't reach for disassembly dumps of some half-assed mid-90s C++ compiler to figure out why it's spewing 37 screens of error messages on some innocent-looking STL thing. Or maybe you did! But I'm not convinced 'rate of encounter with annoyingly incomprehensible magic' has really changed all that much since then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This chart is over complicated and I feel like it's meant to throw you off and make you feel like React programming is over complicated, which it isn't.

Don't let this scare you away from React. React is simple.

Remember, React is just the view layer. You can do whatever you want outside of React. You don't have to buy into anything else. And if you want to, you can buy into them piecemeal. You're not locked into anything, don't worry!

Here's a short cheat sheet:

\- Use create-react-app. It does every single boilerplate thing perfectly for you. You don't need to worry about gulp or weback for a single second.

\- Don't worry about yarn. Don't even worry about npx. Just use npm. There are binaries inside ./node-modules/.bin/ if you need them.

\- You absolutely do NOT need a CSS preprocessor with React. When you make reusable components, you can just add style={...} to them and you have good old fashion encapsulation.

\- Want Types? Just add TypeScript, you have nothing to lose, it's battle tested and very easy to integrate lately. It won out over Flow. Don't want types? Skip this! You don't need them! Skip PropTypes, it's falling out of use and if you're using TypeScript then it's not even a little helpful.

\- Want Routing? Use React-Router 4. They ditched the old imperative API. Now <Route> is honestly just shorthand for "if location.href matches this pattern, then render this given thing in my place" and if you think of it like that then you never have trouble with it again.

\- Want to react to events imperatively, maybe from Socket.io? Use Kefir. At the mouth of the stream you create a function that takes events in, and pass it to a component that gives it a handler that takes incoming events and handles them. Think of it like Unix pipes except you get to create both ends and pass them around your app. Still too complicated? Just write your own function that does exactly this for you, BAM suddenly it's demystified and you can delete it and install Kefir now.

\- Want to manage your state? Just pass things as props and use setState! You really don't need to learn Redux or Mobx, they are overkill for 90% of apps. People only seem to adopt them because they think they need them, because of pages like OP's.

\- Don't worry about GraphQL! fetch works great, there is a built in polyfill in create-react-app, and Express.js makes it really easy to pass JSON around.

\- Worried about testing frameworks? Don't even worry about testing if you don't want to! Test driven development is great if your manager or client wants it, but it's absolutely not necessary to writing a good product. Anyone who says otherwise either belongs to or leads a cult. Software development is a job, not a religion! There is more than one way to skin a cat ;) If you still want tests, create-react-app has some stuff built in for that. I've never used it but I hear it's good.

I strongly believe React is the future. We do have some problems with bundle sizes but if the community pulls together and React gets enough love and attention, we'll keep fixing these things like we consistently have been. And don't worry about all the extras, none of them are necessary to learn and get productive!

<comment><USER21> Now convert that into a blog and post it to HN. The fight vs. bloatelitists has just begun!

<comment><USER20> Good idea! What's a good free easy to use blogging platform for software devs?

<comment><USER22> Jekyll + github pages OR jekyll + gitlab pages should do. I would love to read that post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'll take Rails + turbolinks over this tangled mess any day.

<comment><USER24> A thousand times yes!

I am amazed that nobody seems to look at that chart and say, "holy shit, how much of this is necessary? how much of this is good?"

<comment><USER23> I'd love to see a contest between a bunch of devs using Rails + turbolinks pitted against a team using React + Redux + Express measuring how many working apps they could produce in a weekend. I know which team I'd be betting on.

Server-side rendering has to be the biggest joke. I mean you spend half a lifetime mastering the art of pushing everything onto the client and then realise it borks your SEO because it breaks what the WWW is based on - hypertext. So you now have to go back and duplicate everything on the server. That's progress?

<comment><USER25> It's a complicated issue because it of course depends on how reliant a product is on SEO. Maybe certain pages that bring in views from search engines shouldn't be part of the same client-side application in the first place, but if it must be then the developers have to decide if they're building a SPA to actually hand off workload to the client or because they want to use React. :)

But to the point of the person you were replying to, we definitely overcomplicate web development these days. There are some good reasons for this, like the fact that there's so much competition to contend with(so we all feel like we have to be rockstars), but it's good to remind ourselves that the end goal shouldn't be focused around the tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm always fascinated by these -- it puts hard earned skills (that I would otherwise take for granted) in perspective. Thanks!

A few suggestions: I would argue that Redux isn't required (but suggested), and instead a Flux implementation is required.

I would also argue that SASS (or LESS) preprocessor experience isn't required but also just suggested.

<comment><USER27> I've been using plain css for my React stuff so far but I do miss a lot of the syntactic sugar Sass allows, like nested selectors, BEM extrapolation, colour utilities etc. What is the norm for people these days when it comes to CSS and React? is css-in-js very popular at all?

<comment><USER28> Styled-components has been a godsend, especially in apps that I'm working on with others.

You really don't need nested selectors in most cases, since you're rarely thinking about the page context when dealing with a single react component.

Styled components does namespacing for you and it's easy to share styles, colors, etc. across components for reusability (a la mix-ins) and portability via the props abstraction.

<comment><USER29> styled-components is what got me to switch from LESS to css-in-js, and I'm so grateful. Anyone interested learning about css-in-js for the first time would benefit from understanding the styled-components model, but there's already churn in that category, and new libraries inspired by styled-components that take it further. Here's an interesting perspective on the history of CSS-in- JS:

[https://github.com/streamich/freestyler/blob/master/docs/en/...](https://github.com/streamich/freestyler/blob/master/docs/en/generations.md)

Currently i'm working with Emotion ([https://github.com/emotion- js/emotion](https://github.com/emotion-js/emotion)) and enjoying it

<comment><USER30> 5 generations to make something that is less efficient (slow build times, caching not always possible) that straight up css processors. Its kinda sad really (but hey my css is in my js file now, so useful).

<comment><USER23> Yes, notice the trend: web develeoper > Javascript developer > React developer. Soon we'll have CSS developer as a career in itself.

<comment><USER31> Given that I, as a n00b, find JS – hell, even React – _way_ simpler to master than CSS, that wouldn't surprise me at all.

I don't mean the syntax, of course. The syntax is trivially simple. Translating that to something that looks good and is laid out just as you want, oh boy.

CSS is by far the element of front-end development that I'm enjoying the least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I feel like this does a disservice to a prospective React developer in that, the hard part isn't finding what all the options are for each of these areas, its finding the one to start with. I'd love to see an _opinionated_ roadmap that tells you what to learn and in what order, and then informs you of other options at your disposal.

</comment><comment><USER33> Couple of nits & questions:

1) I'm surprised CSS preprocessors made it as a must, and CSS in JS as only recommended. I figured that would be switched, isn't the current golden path CSS in JS?

2) Is webpack a must these days? Can we not just throw everything in typescript? Maybe that's only personal preferences!

3) No one ever needs to know jQuery anymore ;)

Glad to see lodash made it though

<comment><USER34> Don't throw away jQuery just yet.

<comment><USER35> Especially with the way Safari is being developed, I'm guessing we're going to go back to needing a jQuery library to handle all the browser inconsistencies.

<comment><USER20> jQuery does a whole lot more than just handle browser inconsistencies. I feel like a shim to the standard DOM API would be better suited for solving that problem. The DOM API has grown a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't know if this roadmap really is useful - most developers only work with a subset of the things listed there. This seems especially aimed at more junior developers in general, but looks like it would just overwhelm/confuse them.

<comment><USER37> Perhaps it's less useful as a roadmap, and more as a React centered map of the frontend tech landscape. Some crossover with Thoughworks Tech Radar perhaps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't really understand the point of these sort of posts. They're very popular but they basically boil down to knowing basic web development (html css js), adding the productivity tools as applicable (scss, typescript) and understanding the react documentation.

The reason it's always going to be this way is that it's a library for web developers. So all you need are basics.

Also this is wrong in the sense that one usually learns a single style of css naming. Even though you need to be aware of say BEM vs the rest, highlighting it is wrong.

As far as npm et all goes, if people stopped using web IDE rubbish to learn the basics they will set it up out of necessity.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'll probably get down-voted to oblivion for suggesting this, but is there a C#/.Net developer roadmap? I can only find quite generic front/back end developer roadmaps online.

<comment><USER40> You might find Pluralsight's "Paths" of value - [https://www.pluralsight.com/product/paths](https://www.pluralsight.com/product/paths)

They have a few C# & .Net related paths. They offer free trials as well. Here's a 10 day affiliate link one. Not sure if there are better ones out there. [https://pluralsight.pxf.io/c/1197267/424552/7490](https://pluralsight.pxf.io/c/1197267/424552/7490)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Surprised that redux-thunk is still alive in 2018, the cause of much of the most complicated and "ugly" code in Redux.

Time to move to custom middleware(s)

<comment><USER42> Why do you say that thunks are "the cause of complicated and ugly code" ?

I'm a Redux maintainer, and I recommend thunks as the default choice for async logic. Most people just need to make some AJAX calls and dispatch an action when it returns, or maybe grab a value from the store state and work with it. Thunks are perfect for that kind of use case - complex synchronous logic, and simple async. In fact, with `async/await` syntax, I would be a bit more comfortable doing somewhat more complicated async logic in a thunk as well.

I wrote a post a while back discussing some common objections to using thunks (and sagas), and why I feel thunks and sagas are still good choices for handling logic in Redux apps: [https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/01/idiomatic-redux- th...](https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/01/idiomatic-redux-thoughts-on- thunks-sagas-abstraction-and-reusability/)

That said, yes, you should always feel free to write custom middleware to solve your own use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I wonder why "General Development Skills" comes after basic HTML/CSS/JS. I guess the barrier-to-entry _feels_ lower if you dive right in, but it feels odd that extremely basic things like "Learn to search for solutions" would proceed HTML. Wouldn't you need to be good at that in order to help you learn even basic HTML when you get stuck?

<comment><USER44> If you look at the career trajectory of frontend developers, I'd bet that more of them learned HTML, CSS or JS before they learned many (if not all) of the things listed under "General Development Skills". Not that those skills aren't important, but they're not entry points for learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Or use a proper programming language, that gives you all that React/Redux/Webpack/Typescript/Immutable.js has, in a more consistent and bug- free package.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEitFAY7Gc8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEitFAY7Gc8) ( yes, it's Elm )

</comment><comment><USER46> There is missing just one point: prepare that in 2019 most of the things will be different, the rest will be obsolete.

<comment><USER47> Actually, no. I started working in React about two years ago and if anything, I think the ecosystem in the OP map has stabilised somewhat. I think that SASS use is starting to fade and grid layout is now a thing but not like the whole gulp to grunt to webpack thing. Plus create-react-app makes starting easier.

What frustrated me is that management had no idea of all the bases you needed to cover and expected me to be a backend dev and performant in Java, Spring, Elasticsearch and a whole variety of other things in Java land.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've never learned any programming language / framework with a step-by-step component learning. I usually grab a simple task ( make a todo app, make a hello world, etc. ) and do it.

Funny enough I've worked with and know almost all of the yellow circles on this diagram only because I needed them at some point.

<comment><USER49> _Therein lies the best [ /s/career/life] advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things. Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy. Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don't. No one does. You shouldn't be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren't real and they were created by other people, not you. There is no explicit path I'm following, and I'm not walking in anyone else's footsteps. I'm making it up as I go._ \- Charlie Hoehn

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> It would be cool to see the same thing for VueJS just to get a sense of how much work one is versus the other.

</comment><comment><USER51> I like the way this is structured. I get it.

</comment><comment><USER52> working with react makes me feel like working with PHP. mix everything on the same page/component

</comment><comment><USER53> what's used to generate a png of this kind, pretty impressive and better than freemind

<comment><USER54> [https://www.draw.io/](https://www.draw.io/) Source was at the bottom of link.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Custom search engine you wish existed? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently experimenting with a couple of text and spatial search technologies, by implementing them on some datasets of interest to myself - arXiv, PubMed, PubChem, OpenStreetMaps are on my radar.<p>I was wondering what niche search engines you wish existed. If it feels challenging and useful to multiple people, I'll think about implementing it and making it available to everybody. Any other ideas for the datasets mentioned above are also welcome. <comment><USER2> Here's a somewhat search-related idea I've thought would be useful (almost wanted to build it myself): searching for political news with different viewpoints.

For example, if I search "Trump ate a banana", then I get articles on that event from Democratic, Republican, and other points of view - possibly tagged as such. I've always felt that it's tough nowadays to get a clear view on things because it's easy to fall into an echo chamber and only see articles that a certain group supports.

<comment><USER3> This sounds somewhat like AllSides:

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

<comment><USER2> That's pretty much exactly what I had in mind! Thanks for sharing :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ash HN: Please rate my free job search iPad app - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.com/apps/jobsearchxl

<comment><AUTHOR> I know the screenshots in the store are lopsided, and yes we have an Android app already (<http://linkup.com/android>). We're working on a HTML5-enhanced version for the site, but until then I hope people find this useful.

There are 2 other iPad-exclusive job apps, and I'm hoping ours is the best - but figured that there is no community more brutally honest than my fellow HNers:)

(Also, if you don't have iTunes installed, you can view it at <http://linkup.com/ipad> or at [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/job-search- xl/id372602126?mt=...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/job-search- xl/id372602126?mt=8))</comment>


Did the Manhattan Transfer Use Auto-Tune? - mr-howdy http://www.cardinalpeak.com/blog/?p=639 <comment><AUTHOR> Pitch is complicated…

 _As you can see, the plot shows that Siegel didn't hit a perfect "A"—that would have been at 220 Hz. Instead, she's at 216 Hz, which would be noticeably flat._

I think that song is in F (175 Hz)[1], the first note is an A, the 3rd of the scale. The A on an equal tempered piano would indeed be 220Hz, but in a perfect third is 5/4 times the frequency of the F, 217 Hz. I'd say she nailed a perfect third.

… insanely complicated.

[1] Sorry, on my way out the door, don't own a copy, can't listen to more than the first 8 notes.

<comment><USER2> Wow - that's fascinating.. sounds like you are saying that 'sometimes even a perfectly tuned piano is not hitting the 'right' pitch for a song' is that right? From a music theory perspective I'd love to know more.. Can you provide any links for an interested amateur to learn more?

<comment><USER3> Pianos are tuned to an equal-tempered scale-- essentially (and, of course, over-simply) you "spread out" the "out-of-tuneness" that results from the fact that the Western 12-tone chromatic scale doesn't fit inside a perfect system of frequency ratios. See here for lots of math that I don't understand at all:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament>

As a side (historical) note, one of the earliest champions of Equal Temperament (or Well-Temperament) was Bach, who wrote _The Well Tempered Clavier_ as a kind of advertisement for this tuning system. Prior to systematized equal temperament, it was impossible for an instrument to play in all 24 keys without being re-tuned. On a Well-Tempered instrument, you can play straight through all 24-keys without stopping to be retuned.

Singers (and brass players, and any other instrument that allows for fine, sinlge-cent level tuning) often use a different system called Just Intonation:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_intonation>

Just Intonation is "more in tune" than Equal-temperament, but it is not noticeable by most people. I teach music for a living and have a degree in music theory and I have a very difficult time telling the difference.

EDIT: Yes, I did oversimplify by conflating equal temperament and well- temperament, but in the modern debate, they do tend to get lumped together.

<comment><USER4> As I understand it, "well temperament" is something of a blanket term for many systems that attempted to find a universal tuning. We don't really know how Bach's clavier was tuned for his notion of well temperament.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool analysis here. I think it's a bit too superficial to serve as the last word, though.

If I were the sound engineer on this type of album, I definitely wouldn't worry about autotuning parts where only one vocalist is singing. With enough takes, professional singers can be pretty dead on.

More important are sections where you're trying to perfect harmonies, where tweaking a note that's a few cent sharp can make a big difference to the end effect. Unfortunately I don't have the skills to separate the vocal parts during harmony to check for this sort of thing.

edit: To my ears, that intro doesn't sound autotuned, although the reverb effect does feel artificial. [http://www.amazon.com/Chick-Corea-Songbook- Manhattan-Transfe...](http://www.amazon.com/Chick-Corea-Songbook-Manhattan- Transfer/dp/B002IVLWG0/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1283465895&sr=1-4)

</comment><comment><USER6> The author of this article makes some naïve assumptions about modern auto-tune systems, including but not limited to Antares Auto-Tune. His primary mistaken assumption is that an auto-tune system will snap a note perfectly into alignment with an ideal pitch. This is not true. A sophisticated automated system (like Antares Auto-Tune, in typical usage, not for the Cher effect) uses heuristics to find a more natural, imperfect pitch to use as an alignment.

And this is just for "fire and forget" auto-tune. If you work an auto-tune by hand – and most skilled engineers will do this, when it's called for – you can use your own judgment as a musician to figure out what to do. Antares Auto- Tune lets you do this by presenting a sort of X-Y plot of pitch over time which you can manipulate. Melodyne does something similar, with a little more sophistication (it actually pioneered this technique.)

Another one of his incorrect assumptions is that auto-tune still behaves like that patent from 1998. While some of the algorithms involved are the same, the systems of today [1] use lookahead on the audio source, so that the pitch correction isn't constantly playing 'catchup' (it takes at least a coupe of cycles of an oscillating wave to determine its pitch with reasonable accuracy.) So you would not see something start wrong and then deviate towards its ideal pitch – in fact, you might see it start _too_ accurately.

The primary destruction auto-tune wreaks on vocal performances isn't just too- perfect pitch: it destroys the subtly and intonation that good performers can impart. A real vocalist doesn't hit the ideal pitch at the start of each note, because it's hard to make the human voice do that. They use the imperfection to their advantage. There's a lot of subtle complexity that auto-tune can just wipe out when you use it.

Of course, if the vocalist isn't that good, then there's not any real loss.

As for his article, even assuming the methods he used to analyze the songs were not based on a misconception, the resolution is too low. Perhaps surprisingly, the human ear is capable of distinguishing pitch much more finely than the graphs he plotted.

Edited addendum: here are a couple of screenshots of the actual Antares Auto- Tune software that will illustrate what I'm talking about.

Here is a picture of the Auto-Tune software set in fire-and-forget 'auto' mode. <http://www.antarestech.com/images/ATEvo_Auto_mode.jpg>

Notice the prominent 'Retune Speed' adjustment knob. This is how you used it in the late 90s and early 00s, or today when you want the robot or Cher effect.

Now here is a picture of Auto-Tune in use in Graphical mode, where you adjust the pitches directly. This is how most engineers today will use Auto-Tune when it's not for a deliberate, noticeable effect. <http://www.antarestech.com/images/ATEvo_Graphic_full.jpg>

Notice there is no retune speed adjustment knob. Instead, you edit the pitches directly in a graph.

[1] In a non-live-performance setting, anyway. It introduces latency, so if you used this live, it would add 'lag' to the performer's input. Bad.

<comment><USER7> The Paul McCartney live release last year _Good Evening New York City_ was the first use of auto tune that really made feel like things were getting bad. I think it got a lot of press because it was Paul McCartney of course. I assume for live auto-tune to work like that, there must have been someone playing keyboards or something in unison with his vocal lines. I don't think auto-tune was post production (though that could have been the case).

It's probably most noticeable when you are so familiar with someone's voice.

<comment><USER8> Autotune doesn't have to know the sheet music behind what the singer is singing, it's just trying to snap the pitch to _any_ in-tune note - it's the audio equivalent to "Snap to Grid".

<comment><USER9> Some older pitch correction devices, like the Lexicon PCM-81, aren't that great at snapping the pitch on their own (or can't do it at all), and need a keyboard playing the correct notes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone got a clip? I'm kind of doubting auto tune is being used but wouldn't be surprised if they were using something like a flange or a phase shift effect.

Both kind of get looped in with the "auto-tune" sound.

<comment><USER11> try the sample of "500 miles high" here: [http://www.amazon.com/Chick-Corea- Songbook-Manhattan-Transfe...](http://www.amazon.com/Chick-Corea-Songbook- Manhattan-Transfer/dp/B002IVLWG0)

specifically the first two notes of the female lead (some-day) in the audio clip - some suspicious processing going on there.

<comment><USER12> I'm pretty sure that the "weird sound" we hear are the reverberation early reflections. Reverb processor introduces a slightly delayed and damped set of reflections (10 to 250 ms late), so what we hear is the first note attack, slightly lower than the sustained note (the singer starts a bit low and corrects herself along), that gives that effect.

I've been a sound engineer until 1996, and I know that auto-tune definitely use some formant-aware phase shifting, so that a slight pitch correction (up to a couple of commas) must be essentially inaudible if properly used. Heck, back in the 1980s when we only had Eventide H3000 to save a poor performance, we could make a convincing approximation of the auto-tune effect in post- production, and when the digitech vocalist MV-5 became available, it made a really decent job at real-time pitch-correction, and it was back in 1995. Do you really think that a state-of-the-art fx module used by a competent sound engineer in 2010 would be audible? No way, sir.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a whole bunch of interesting comments on this story, but nobody seems to address the central issue: is it probable that the use of auto-tune on an album of 'vocal jazz icons' would be detectable by an acute, skilled, educated-in-the-subject listener? (assuming it was intended to be used in a subtle way?)

</comment><comment><USER14> I know on my amateur jazz band's album, we used Auto Tune. We're not ashamed of it either. Do we have time to practice the tunes 100 times or try a dozen takes? No way!

It does feel sloppy if professionals are using Auto Tune, especially in the genre of jazz, where talent is still very much front and center.

</comment><comment><USER15> More grist from a review on Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/review/R15OHRG7XHGJK7/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R15OHRG7XHGJK7/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B002IVLWG0&nodeID=5174)

Caveat emptor, YMMV, etc.</comment>


Kennethreitz: A Letter to /r/python - <AUTHOR> http://journal.kennethreitz.org/entry/r-python <comment><USER2> For anyone new to Pipenv, this is Kenneth's presentation at PyCon last week:

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

I've been using conda which has been incredibly helpful, but starting to learn pipenv and there's no question the Python community needs it or something very like it.

<comment><USER3> Conda dev lead here. Agreed that python has needed the pipenv concepts for a long time, even though they're not really all that novel in the world of software engineering. Bundler, npm, yarn, cargo, etc. have all cemented the two-file idea of environment descriptions. One file that is a minimal description of the environment, designed to maximize portability, and one file that is a maximal description of the environment, designed to maximized reproducibility. It's also long overdue for conda, and we'll be implementing the pattern soon. See [https://github.com/conda/conda/issues/7248](https://github.com/conda/conda/issues/7248).

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the work on conda! For scientific / data science work it is a life saver.

The ideal is something like the practicality of npm/yarn but without the need for the endless tooling/config overhead of the nodejs ecosystem that makes everyone scared to eject create-react-app :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The unfortunate truism about the internet, and I think this applies particularly strongly on Reddit, is "People are _d!cks_ on The Internet". I maintain a few hobby projects and get feedback occasionally -- the only time I've had my work utterly crapped on was on Reddit[0]. I had forgotten about it until reading this, and really -- it upset me for about 15 minutes (I didn't even reply to the thread which had the unfortunate side effect of me not being able to find it now, a few years later) -- but I was _surprised_ at how irritated it made me.

I recall a post on rachelbythebay.com about "The One"[1] that made me chuckle. These crap-raining commentators are akin to political pundits/talk radio hosts -- they complain, yell, excoriate and offer nothing else. Here's the thing, you may hate the library, that library may have a massive community who you feel is now writing bad code _because of that library_ , it may be the library equivalent of The Antichrist, but don't crap on the developer. Most of the time it was a case of "He/she had a problem, solved that problem and shared his/her work". If you hate it or think any one of those prior things, _write something better_ , offer up a patch, or at a bare minimum, advocate for a better alternative and do so in a respectful (and, preferably, thankful) tone[2] -- or don't, because you don't like it and your contribution of 'foo is garbage' isn't going to move anybody away from the product. Being a dick to a developer, especially attacking them personally, only serves the narcissist who's self-worth is strengthened by knocking someone else down.

There's a certain kind of entitlement mentality required by a person to think that a developer who release some _thing_ , for _free_ , with _code_ and (often quite good) _documentation_ on a platform that makes it easy for you to collaborate and evolve that product to somehow land on the idea that this developer now _owes_ you something as a result of that kindness. I used to roll my eyes when I'd run into a very public mailing-list "I-quit" message, but I understand how that happens. At some point you just say "Who the f __* do you think you are? " and, more importantly, why am I continuing to give away my time/work/effort only to get grief?

[0] It was on a post I didn't author that got under 10 votes and 5 or so comments, one of which was aggressively negative.

[1] [https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/04/28/meta/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/04/28/meta/)

[2] "This 'foo' tool looks interesting -- I'd check it out but I'm really happy with how 'bar' solves the baz problem. I wonder, what is foo's approach for handling the painful zyzzx issue? My concern is that it may exacerbate that, or, minimally that it'll still be a problem that I have to solve in my code, as opposed to baz which abstracts that problem away for me. Am I misunderstanding that?" There's no need to stroke egos (or anything else); you can offer dissent, point out a concern, and not be a dick about it.</comment>


Docker SSL Cert Expired Today - <AUTHOR>

index.docker.io is currently failing SSL validation <comment><USER2> Looks like all discussion is happening on this other thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9241802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9241802)</comment>


Ask HN: Help with Very Old HDD/Laptop - <AUTHOR> I have been lurking for 7+ years and this could very well be one of those HN changed my life posts but I'll spare you!
I have a really old (circa early 90s) Amstrad 286 based laptop that was gifted to me as I was "intereted in computing" a long time ago. The original owner of the laptop died early in his life and I was always curious if there was anything on it.
Fast forward a few years and I have watched BBS the documentary, and at some point afterwards I fire up the laptop again and find a file called 'friends.txt' which was an ASCII advert for Rusty n Edie's BBS[0]. I spent a bit more time exploring on the laptop and there are lots of personal files written in Word Star etc. that would be of significance to the family if I can read them.
Anyway, there is a whopping 40MB HDD (a Sony SRD3040C-50) inside which I removed from the computer and tried to read using a modern Linux distro and a PCI IDE card (based on IT8212F) but had problems retrieving the data. It would copy files at an extremely slow rate and then freeze completely. USB to IDE chipsets are a waste of time because 99% of the market are implementations of the JM20337 and they cannot read this disk properly (detect it incorrectly as 2TB in size etc.)
It has Prince of Persia, Golden Axe, Tetris etc on it and I was able to get a file listing using tree (39 directories, 2006 files) and I also attempted to create an image via dd but that also froze. I was able to get ~280KB of the disk before it froze which tells me that it is IBMMS4.0 and a FAT16 partition.
Essentially what I am asking if anyone knows any specialised old computing forums that would be better able to assist, or if anyone can recommend a feature full IDE chipset that would allow me to read the data, or to tell me if it is likely to even be possible to read the disk on a modern computer.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_n_Edie%27s_BBS
tl;dr how do I retrieve data from an ancient IDE HDD with modern hardware? <comment><USER2> Does it have a 1.44MB floppy drive? Could you attach one somehow? That and 40 newly-manufactured floppy disks might be just the trick.

<comment><USER2> Or I guess just 1 floppy would be enough, not sure why I said 40. Not like you're going to keep the files on floppy disk long-term. But you definitely don't want to wait to get a full backup. Who knows if powering up the drive after all these years started some degradation process.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, it had crossed my mind!

It's such an old disk I think it's expected to configure cylinders etc.

Reluctantly I have ordered a set of 10 floppies and armed with my directory listing I'll aim to fit the disk back into the laptop and copy only the most important data.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter lays off around 20, shuts down engineering office in Bangalore, India - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/20/twitter-lays-off-around-20-shuts-down-engineering-office-in-bangalore-india/ <comment><USER2> I feel like "lays off" is the wrong term here. If you're closing an office of 20 people at a company of 3,800, that feels more like firing a team for not producing, not making bottom-of-the-stack-rank cuts because you need to free up budget.

<comment><USER3> Each of those 20 people have lives and families. Not producing by whose measurement? Who defines that ,they were obviously hired for a particular job and have been doing it for a while and pretty well if they weren't fired before.

I wonder how much help Twitter is giving them in looking for their next jobs.

<comment><USER4> > _Each of those 20 people have lives and families. Not producing by whose > measurement? Who defines that ,they were obviously hired for a particular > job and have been doing it for a while and pretty well if they weren 't > fired before._

Don't necessarily disagree on the human impact, but this is a strange reasoning.

> _Not producing by whose measurement?_

Obviously by the one who hired them?

> _Who defines that, they were obviously hired for a particular job and have > been doing it for a while and pretty well if they weren 't fired before._

Nobody is fired until they are fired. So by the same logic, everybody who wasn't fired immediately did their job "pretty well". Alternatives not considered:

(a) they did their a bad or mediocre job for a longish time, but company only ever cared to fire when money got tight, cuts needed to be made, performance review was completed and they came up empty.

(b) they did their job bad for a short time, and they're fired as soon as it was discovered.

Of course firing is can be also because they were hired for a specific project that they completed and now they no longer needed, or because the project went south or went out of favour with Twitter management and Twitter wants to kill it, etc.

Or they do their job perfectly well, but it doesn't bring Twitter the money it expected, so they are canned.

> _I wonder how much help Twitter is giving them in looking for their next > jobs_

None? Like most employees? Besides maybe a good recommendation letter?

<comment><USER3> And you're okay with an employer not offering any help beyond a recommendation letter and you're okay with not knowing whether or not Twitter is a supportive employer? I'm not, that's why I brought up. Perhaps the beginning of my comment isn't so great but it is damned important that we know what kind of support employees and former employees will get when they're fired and something that needs to change in industry.

<comment><USER5> What sort of help would you want or expect? A severance package or help by having the employer pay a recruiter to pimp the former employee? Or something else? In any case I'm totally fine with the idea of no help being offered provided such an exit clause is not part of the contract of employment the employee signed. If you want some specific sort of help from your old company in the event they fire you for cause, require that to be in the contract before you accept employment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems weird that they would choose to do this. From what I understand, they're a company in need of something big happening for them. Laying off 20 people, who are probably some of the lowest paid on their staff, doesn't really seem to do anything for them as I can understand it. It's basically $0 in Twitter dollars. Why not just turn it into an R&D department and see if they churn out anything interesting? Otherwise, just don't replace them as they leave.

Having worked in the semiconductor industry (oh boy, annual layoff time!), once you start firing people, rumors start and morale tanks. Sometimes you have to do it, but I just don't see how 20 people in India helps at all, but will get rumors churning internally.

I guess it just seems to me like saying: "I've realized I'm going to have a hard time ahead of me financially. To that end, I"m going to start buying generic dish soap. I'm now saving about $0.3 / month!" You haven't fixed your financial problem, and now your dish soap doesn't bubble up like it's supposed to.

Please enjoy that labored analogy :)

<comment><USER7> Firing a offshore team usually improves morale for the onshore teams.

<comment><USER8> This is the saddest thing I've read in a while.

<comment><USER6> It might be sad, but I have a hard time thinking it's true. It certainly runs counter to my own experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 2015 R&D: $806,648,000 2015 Sales, General and Admin $1,132,164,000

I can't imagine a justification for these numbers. Twitter seems like a small company idea.

<comment><USER10> Well, $200K/employee, 4K employees (roughly), and you're at $800M pretty fast.

Still an astounding number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lot of people seem to be commenting that a 20-person office would hardly move the needle at Twitter. They're right, in general - the total numbers are too small to be layoffs and it covered an entire office so is unlikely to be performance related (in an individual sense). The logical inference then is that this team was hired for a specific project, and that project isn't working out.

If they were sales, then they were likely hired to try to break into a specific market (probably something geographically close to their office), and when they failed to make the numbers the project was axed. If they were engineering, it was a side project that has now lost its budget.

Something like that.

</comment><comment><USER12> The real question is why does Twitter need 3 offices in India

It seems the whole company is freewheeling

<comment><USER13> Lots of Indians in tech work their way into management and then try to bring home the bacon back to India. They continue identifying as Indian nationals even after going through grad school, green card, etc. You may not have noticed but there was/is a large wave of placing Indians in executive positions at tech companies, so I don't see why this is so mysterious. Did people think they were going to open offices in Omaha?

<comment><USER14> Until they get US citizenship they do remain Indian nationals. And for Indian origin people it can easily take 10-15 years after graduation to get US citizenship.

Also identifying with India and actually going back and living in India are two vastly different things. Most of them will talk and plan but never leave for India as facilities, money and comfort of the first world will be just too much leave. Of course some of them may go for CEO/very senior position to establish office in India and then come back after some time.

<comment><USER13> Green card holders and those seeking permanent resident status have presumably announced their intent to become Americans. If they are trying to use their position in America to send jobs and offices back to India then that's their power that corporations have given them. But, they should lose their green card and/or visa as a result because their loyalties are obviously not to the US. They just want a green card to exploit American businesses, not to become a citizen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15>
      We thank the impacted individuals, less than 20 persons, for
      their valuable contributions and are doing as much as we can to
      provide them a respectful exit from our company.

Epic.

<comment><USER16> It's the "less than 20 people" that rubs me the wrong way. I think something along the lines of feeling bad at having to do this would go over much better and sound sincere. Writing "less than 20 people" makes them seem insincere. The last part of the sentence is nice. I wish they had reworded the first part.

<comment><USER17> "less than 20 people" also implicitly assigns a value to 20 people. Should read "fewer than 20 people."

(ok im sorry for nitpicking)

<comment><USER4> As with a lot of such corrections, the fewer/less dichotomy is wrong:

[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/myl/languagelog/archives/003775.ht...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/myl/languagelog/archives/003775.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If Twitter has other offshore employees that were underperforming, now that they've shown a willingness to let people go even though they probably cost less - it'll make the rest of the offshore employees work harder to keep there jobs.

</comment><comment><USER4> And Twitter needed an "engineering office in Bangalore, India" because?

<comment><USER19> Same reason it needs 3,800 employees to run what is essentially an internet forum/messaging client.

We will never find out what that reason is though....

<comment><USER20> > Same reason it needs 3,800 employees to run what is essentially an internet > forum/messaging client.

That's a very cynical way of looking at it.

The part of Twitter that you use "is essentially an internet forum/messaging client". True, but what about the analytics, targeting ads, moderation, logs etc.

Twitter most likely builds custom software,libraries for internal use. What about their development and maintenance?

TL;DR : There is a whole lot more than the seemingly simplistic product that you use.

<comment><USER4> > _That 's a very cynical way of looking at it._

Considering WhatsApp, with 50 employees, was sold for perhaps more than Twitter will, it's also a valid way to look at it.

> _Twitter most likely builds custom software,libraries for internal use. What > about their development and maintenance?_

Development of what? Compared to something like the first UNIX, which was built by 3-5 people at AT&T, Twitter is an order of magnitude less challenging, including the whole server infrastructure and the mobile app. Unless they built all those from scratch.

<comment><USER21> Sincere question: have you ever worked at a larger company?

When I was at Etsy, people always asked why we had "so many employees" for what seemed to them like a simple e-commerce website. These people were always from smaller companies.

I don't know a ton about the technology behind WhatsApp, but if I had to guess:

1\. WhatsApp does not have an advertising platform.

2\. WhatsApp does not provide you with analytics for anything.

3\. WhatsApp doesn't need a team (or at least as big of one) dedicated to anything related to big data or machine learning. Think of Twitter's "Trends" and "Who to Follow" features.

4\. Searching Twitter is a much more difficult problem to solve than searching through just your own personal chats.

5\. I may be wrong about this, but doesn't WhatsApp _not_ store anything/much on its servers, and instead relies on your phone? I'd imagine that reduces a lot of overhead.

6\. I'd be willing to bet that Twitter has (and needs) way more admin features for dealing with things like harassment, illegal content being posted, etc.

I could probably go on, but this should give you an idea. All of these things require people to make happen. Designers, developers (front-end, back-end, mobile, dev ops, and more), PMs, you name it. Also, given that Twitter is just a bigger site/app in general, it takes more work to handle things like internationalization, for example. It's no sweat getting "Send," "Chats," and "Settings" translated, but think about translating your entire advertising and analytics platforms.

It's a lot of work.

<comment><USER4> > _Sincere question: have you ever worked at a larger company?_

The largest tech company I've worked for was around 100 people, but I've also worked for a (no tech) organisation of about 20000, and have done projects for businesses with IT departments in the 1000 people range.

That said, not sure what unique insight it would give me. As a programmer I can kinda evaluate the work behind Twitter. And I've seen companies that have done equally or much more impressive stuff, technology wise, with 1/10 or 1/50 the resources. Nothing about Twitter, including the scaling, is rocket science.

That's why I brought up WhatsApp -- itself is an example of this very thing.

I've read this (1), (2), (3). Fail to see why you'd need > 500 people total for all of those, plus sales and support.

<comment><USER22> > As a programmer I can kinda evaluate the work behind Twitter.

That's just the Twitter you _see._ There is plenty you don't see: back-office systems, their strategic decisions and product roadmap. All of which have a material impact on staffing.

> That's why I brought up WhatsApp -- itself is an example of this very thing.

While the core functionality of WhatsApp and Twitter might seem technologically similar, businesswise they aren't (weren't?). Twitter, for better it for worse requires analytics and ads, which WhatsApp did not have. Additionally, even the technological similarities are superficial as WhatsApp is mostly 1:1 messaging whereas Twitter is M:N

<comment><USER4> > _That 's just the Twitter you see. There is plenty you don't see: back- > office systems, their strategic decisions and product roadmap. All of which > have a material impact on staffing._

Well, knowing HN rules on profanity, I better not evaluate their "strategic decisions and product roadmap" thus far.

> _Additionally, even the technological similarities are superficial as > WhatsApp is mostly 1:1 messaging whereas Twitter is M:N_

True. But I'm pretty sure being M:N is not some unique challenge compared to being 1:1 for hundreds of millions -- especially since WhatsApp had 1/60 the people and, from what I know, 1/100 the funding to make that 1:1.

It's not that it's the same challenge, but is it that much of a challenge?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well, there goes Twitter. It was a nice experiment. Pack it up.

Seriously, why is this news...

</comment><comment><USER24> They need to figure out a way to start monetizing Bootstrap.

</comment><comment><USER25> 20 down, 2000 to go?

</comment><comment><USER26> Sorry. Wrong thread.</comment>


Linux Developers Still Reject Nvidia  Using DMA-BUF - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIwNDI <comment><USER2> Why doesn't nVidia simply open source their Linux drivers?

As a hardware company, nVidia is in a very different position from a software company in terms of licensing strategy.

A software company usually can't license its core products as open-source, for the good and simple reason that it would destroy their primary revenue.

If you're a hardware company, on the other hand, your drivers are utterly useless to a customer unless they buy your physical product. Hardware drivers _should_ be open-sourced, since they don't provide any revenue. The open- source community will do maintenance and create features, which you don't have to pay for. As the driver improves through their efforts, you will be able to sell more hardware.

<comment><AUTHOR> The most common reason I have heard is that NVidia doesn't own all the software in the driver. Second most common is fear of patent trolls.</comment></comment>