Dalton Caldwell, you should move to New York and re-rethink app.net - <AUTHOR> http://waxman.me/dalton-caldwell-you-should-move-to-new-york-and-rethink-appnet

<comment><USER2> Here is how I responded to Michael via Twitter:

"I don't want to move to New York because my wife and son live here with me, and we have a whole life outside of tech that matters.

The thing about imeem and picplz is they seemed really stupid and insignificant at first too. But the issues they tackled ended up being about something very important and fundamental. At least in my opinion.

imho everything worth doing looks stupid and insignificant at first: <http://daltoncaldwell.com/the-makings-of-history-are-banal> "

Source tweets:

<https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/224947883009515521>

<https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/224948252141830145>

<https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/224948783891496960>

<comment><USER3> Thanks for responding, Dalton. I really appreciate it.

Responses to the responses below :)

"can't argue with that :) meant Valley v. New York more as ideas than places, but you should at least come visit for inspiration

I actually agree with that :) I like the Paul Graham line that many huge startups start off as "toys"

seriously best of luck with <http://app.net> , I don't want to come off as a dick

I just find the idea of crusading against ad-supported models with an awesome team inspiring, but not necessarily the api idea"

Source tweets:

<https://twitter.com/wxmn/status/224958061226360832>

<https://twitter.com/wxmn/status/224958718230544387>

<https://twitter.com/wxmn/status/224958289140658176>

<https://twitter.com/wxmn/status/224958976733888512>

<comment><USER4> waxman,

Have you actually lived in the Valley?

The "bubble" indeed exists but there are so many things about the Valley that outweighs that negative.

What are the chances in NYC that I go into a cafe and meet a startup founder?

For me, being in the Valley means I'm surrounded by people who understands what I'm going through. It keeps me motivated.

I haven't been to NYC for years but I'm pretty sure that when I walk in a cafe there, I won't think that the people there are probably building the next great web startup.

<comment><USER5> > _"What are the chances in NYC that I go into a cafe and meet a startup > founder?"_

As someone who lives in SF and is moving to NYC, your odds are pretty low. But I think there's a better question here:

What are the chances in SF that I go into a cafe and meet a startup founder _working on something big and impactful_?

I don't know about you, but my time in SF has netted me a lot of opportunities to talk to founders who are working on [insert social/mobile/local thing here] which IMO simply aren't big enough (or original enough) for me to care. For every Square there are dozens of Square copycats who aren't really executing anything substantially different. For every Zynga there are dozens of startups in SF egging their exact formula and not really mutating it in a meaningful way.

Certainly _very, very_ few are working on anything that has relevance outside of the tech community, with impact IRL - I'm talking about the AirBnbs and the Squares. Stuff that will change the lives of people who _aren't_ plugged into the pulse of the California tech scene.

SF is full of startups, sure, but the vast majority aren't doing anything interesting. I'll trade quantity for quality, though I'm not asserting where one might find higher quality between SF and NYC.

<comment><USER6> _[...] though I'm not asserting where one might find higher quality between SF and NYC._

Thank you for including this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Eek, Valley vs Alley flamewar approaching!

The downside here is that the article doesn't really do a great job of explaining the "move to New York" comment. I live in NYC and I agree that the tech scene is far less of a bubble than the Valley, simply because we are surrounded by so many different industries. Everyone in the Valley is in tech, but I have friends here in NYC in fashion, banking, media... you name it. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of NYC startups touch on these industries.

But when you say:

 _They talk about real problems. Like loneliness or stress or sickness or unemployment or high prices or lack of education._

It sounds _bad_. Like, "typical arrogant New Yorker" bad. There is a valid point being made here, but I fear that it's going to get lost.

<comment><USER8> I think its funny that New Yorkers always tell me how they're surrounded by a variety of industries whereas all us San Franciscans know is tech. My office in SF is in the Financial district, with probably 50 banks within a 10 block radius. 3 blocks over is Union Square, which has a Niemann Marcus, Macys, Nordstrom's, Tiffany's, Louis Vuitton, (essentially you name the high fashion company, its there), 2 blocks the other way is Chinatown, one of the biggest concentrations of Chinese culture. To imply that those of us out here are living in a bubble where all we can experience is tech makes me think one just needed to grasp at straws for why NY is better...

<comment><USER9> I'm with you here, I think San Francisco is an awesome and diverse city. But I think that people who talk about Silicon Valley being insular are talking about the actual valley: Sunnyvale to Menlo Park. And they have a point; if you're in the valley, you're definitely missing out on the many advantages of being in a real city surrounded by real people (whether it's NY or SF).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Off-topic: Anyone else noticing the proliferation of Svbtle[1] blogs on the front page of Hacker News today? I counted three in the top ten links just now.

[1] - <http://svbtle.com>

<comment><USER11> I don't think it's completely off topic. I'm not trying to be snarky, but he says "The world doesn't need a slightly better Twitter, just as the world doesn't need a slightly better ad model." as he writes on his slightly better blogging platform. I think there's always room for new and improved versions of existing services, but they just have to stand out and have the community behind them to succeed.

<comment><USER12> Especially since most innovation is "slightly better x". Facebook was just a slightly better social network, google a slightly better search engine. That's how great things start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is a direct email to Dustin Caldwell not a better medium for this content? Aside from beating the "wasting smart people on advertising" horse to death, what value does this provide as a blog post and why is HN upvoting it?

<comment><USER14> This is straight spam and phallus-waving. It's like this is a gaming forum or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There aren't many new York startups that are aimed at solving the so called serious problems you mention. A large number of them are focused on online fashion sales, with a mixed bag of other things. Foursquare is in NY, but it's mindset in terms of revenue appears to be no different than any company in the Valley. Tumblr hasn't really figured it out yet either. Hopefully this will change but as of now the various industries you are exposed to in NYC hasn't resulted in startups serving all of them. Otherwise you'd see a whole slew of financial startups but that hasn't been the case. The one that comes to mind at first is banksimple (or simple) which was trying to tackle a behemoth of an industry that needs change, but even they took off for Portland. Sometimes a revolution comes from the outside.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm a big cheerleader for NY tech (hence why I live there now), but you see a different flavor of "goofy problems." Instead of social apps, you get advertising or fashion startups. Companies on the west coast (SpaceX, Tesla) are tackling big problems just like companies on the east coast (Foursquare, Tumblr) are tackling "goofy problems."

Ultimately, tackling serious problems involves understanding your own values. Some "non-serious" startups handle incredible architectural issues and produce amazing technology (memcached, Cassandra, Solr) that improves our lives in subtle ways. Similarly, serious startups produce can have high-risk, pie-in- the-sky goals (SpaceX) that may not materialize.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think NYC (or any location) offers real advantage towards thinking bigger. May I humbly, and with good humor, present Michael's own endeavor-- Grouper: "a social club that arranges drinks between two groups of friends who don't know each other."

I do like that the tech community worldwide seems to have a new concern with tackling larger and more important issues. I'm excited to see what emerges.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm native NY/NJ, but have been in the SF area the past month for conferences and hackathons. I have to say that tech is much more mainstream here. Whereas hackathons in NYC are largely white guys, here you see a lot more women and other cultures involved. One group of Mexican participants put together a cool 5 player tank game running on a bunch of devices in many modes and all demo'ed it on stage.

An iPhone using business major friend here I was hanging out with picked up my Nexus 7 from a pile of devices at the side of my room and fell in love with it. Back in NYC there'd be much less interest and willingness to try something other than a fashionable, everyday-person-celebrated-and-marketed iPad.

So yes, there are blind spots in that people think the world in general is much more interested in esoteric tech (like APIs), but there are also much more real world things and histories getting dragged in and overlapping as well - much like how colleges and universities are always arguing that diversity is a strength worth biasing admissions toward.

</comment><comment><USER19> Are there any forums like HN but more focused on areas that are, as the author put it, more "steeped in reality"? I love having the ability to follow some of the best minds in SV's tech scene, but ultimately I would be much more interested in things like (off the top of my head) cancer research, sustainable energy, or education than the latest social network.

I understand, as other posters have mentioned, that work in HN-friendly areas can potentially have important effects, such as the democratic empowerment enabled by social media for example, but I'm sure there are amazing technical things being done in all sorts of interesting fields that don't get much traction here.

Also, I think the author is misunderstanding the business model Dalton is proposing. The platform will be paid for via subscriptions; the crowdsourcing aspect is just there initially to ensure a critical mass of participants, something crucial for venues with network effects.

</comment><comment><USER20> I fear michael may be misunderstanding the depth / underlying intent / happy follow-on effects from the app.net proposal. I don't see it as a 'better Twitter' so much as I see it as an app-friendly social network touchpoint, basically OpenFeint with less of a gaming bias. This is a separate consideration than how 'real-world' the product is, but one that nonetheless merits mention.

</comment><comment><USER21> I almost missed this post (meaning I scanned the title and didn't read it). I'm glad I didn't. It's a good post. I like it for a number of reasons:

1\. Speaking as someone who lives in NYC, I too think it's got a lot going for it. Housing (at least compared to SF; I'm less familiar with how horrible the housing market is further as you go towards San Jose), infrastructure, a more balanced mix of people (the Valley is more dominated than NYC by 20 and 30 something male engineers), etc;

2\. This post in some ways echoes my own feelings about Twitter {eg [1]). Twitter seems to suffer this dichotomy between being a service and being infrastructure. One of my arguments is that the messaging infrastructure that ultimately dethrones SMS is too valuable to be proprietary.

Of course to be clear Dalton seems to be talking about a "real-time notification API", which is a little different to messaging but it shares a lot of the same problem domain.

I think this is important infrastructure but it's going to be a thankful (and probably fruitless) task, particularly in building an open, well, whatever.

3\. It echoes my own view that something like a "better Twitter" is really a "small problem" [2].

I see Dalton has responded and there he has roots in his current community. You can't argue with that. But I'm all for promoting NYC as an alternate tech hub and the idea of tackling big problems.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4186157>

[2]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4244709>

</comment><comment><USER22> Can you please let the man at least launch first before you start tearing down the project?

</comment><comment><USER23> A better Twitter is insignificant, but a dating service with a gimmick isn't?</comment>


My first attempt at hacking on Linux: a story - <AUTHOR> http://jmtd.net/log/dm9601/ <comment><USER2> I think that it is interesting that despite the relative anarchy of the Linux development process (I think that at most companies, the fact that the author had already started working on this driver would dissuade any of his more talented co-workers from writing their own driver), it still works, mainly due to the intelligence of the dedicated kernel hackers.

I submitted my first bug to the kernel bug tracker this weekend, and was frankly surprised at the lack of formality surrounding the process. I am still not sure whether it would have been better to email the maintainer of the source file where I think the bug is located, or to email the main mailing list and hope for a response.</comment>


American Tech Giants Face Fight in Europe Over Encrypted Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/technology/american-tech-giants-face-fight-in-europe-over-encrypted-data.html?src=busln&_r=0 <comment><USER2> The article says, "The recent attacks have pushed many Europeans to favor greater powers for law enforcement over privacy," but the only direct evidence for this claim is quotes from high-level government employees.

I don't know how it is in Europe, but in the US, there are a number of issues about which surveying congress would give you very different results from surveying the actual residents.

Furthermore, no evidence is presented that the recent terror attacks changed the minds of the politicians quoted in this article; before the recent terror attacks, there were already high-level government employees who thought there should be encryption backdoors, I presume. Are those politicians just getting more press now?

<comment><USER3> There may be an increase in numbers for those that would now be okay with more surveillance, but probably not very significant. I bet there are a lot more politicians who are now ok with it, though, and they will try to sell it to the population as the "solution" to stopping terrorism - even though, once again, they _knew_ who the guy was, and they could've used a regular warrant to wiretap him.

What pisses me off the most is that after all of these events, it seems nobody from the intelligence community ever resigns or gets fired. Because, of course they must've done their job "flawlessly", and you can't blame them. It's everyone else's fault _but theirs_.

I hope they won't push for too much besides more public surveillance, though. Because I think the EU could become more of a "safe haven" for US tech companies that want to flee a US government wanting to backdoor encryption or demand that they don't use end-to-end encryption for their services. That could really pay off for the EU economically, in the long term.

<comment><USER4> What pisses me off more is that law enforcement are debating encryption issues while the terrorists are using low-tech devices and attacks to cause the damage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Britain .. where expanded powers for the country's intelligence services are > likely to come into force by the end of the year. The legislation is the > brainchild of the ruling Conservative Party, which has a sufficient > parliamentary majority to enact the regulatory changes.

I wonder how they plan to stop terrorists from using encryption that is available through free and open source software. Censor the entire internet? Scan every memory chip coming into the country and delete any unreadable data? This plan becomes impractical very quickly.

<comment><USER6> Using RIPA 2000 they can still put you in prison for up to 2 years for refusing to give up your encryption key.

You make an interesting point though. If the terrorists know it is dangerous for them to use the internet using accounts linked to them, then they will just find a way around it. Hack the neighbours WiFi, use public WiFi in Starbucks, go into the public library etc. Good forbid that might just talk face to face or use burner phones (which they are).

The desire for a complete surveillance society is based on a ridiculous political supposition that Big Brother makes our world safer. No more terrorists and paedophiles. It is easier than trying to make the big changes necessary in order to really tackle these problems.

I have no idea how we tackle paedophiles, but with Islamic fundamental terrorism, it would be a monometallic step if we, in the West, could do our meddling and remove or troops from "their lands", which has been a bone of contention since Bin Laden's first attempt on New York.

We aren't the world police force and we also need to stop dealing with countries like Saudi Arabia who prop up our defence industries and military industrial complex.

<comment><USER7> > Using RIPA 2000 they can still put you in prison for up to 2 years for > refusing to give up your encryption key.

2 years for non terrorism related cases. 5 years for anything "national security" related.

e.g. model plane enthusiast with mental health issues? [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl/) worth reading the whole thing as it does a lot of analysis and gives lots of detail.

<comment><USER6> Oh God. That's worse than I thought!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So in a bad scenario every country gets its own backdoor. Hundreds of backdoors, each accessible by hunderds of employees. And all those people can access every single aspects of my life at any time.

O yes, I feel very safe now...

</comment><comment><USER9> For fuck sake, how can you have such a blatantly anti-European headline and pad the article with anti-European propaganda phrasings like "Europe's attempts to get access to encrypted data" when the same fucking article itself states that major sovereign nations that are both on the European continent _and_ founding members of the EU support encryption as a fundamental right?

The straw man evil "Europe" portrayed in this article quite obviously doesn't exist.</comment>


Palo Alto Hacker House - Now Seeking Replacements - <AUTHOR> http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/roo/1373016113.html As a YC co-founder, I was interested in the Hacker House because other people shared an interest in start-ups, programming, design, and technology.  I personally had a great experience in the house--the place was empty during the day, so it wasn't too distracting.  I would certainly recommend living here if you're trying to live lean, we'd love to keep the Hacker House going. <comment><USER2> Is there a site dedicated to hacker house like hackerspaces.org for hacker space?

Unrelated ideas: A steampunk style home that double as a lab and a shop for cool electronics projects, as well as a place to conduct research into cybernetic technologies. Buy a big hunking commercial place that is run down, etc, and slowly transform it into something cool. Probably requires the capitals of several hackers if one is not a millionaire.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> had a fun time living in the hacker house this summer, the house was pretty quiet during the day since most people worked at funded start-ups with offices. that allowed us to concentrate during the day, and throughout much of the night.

</comment><comment><USER3> The original link is dead, but here's their site: <http://hackerhouse.bluwiki.com/>

It looks like they're also starting a place up in SF: <http://hackerhouse.bluwiki.com/go/HH/San_Francisco>

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, if I had a job, and wasn't relatively firmly tied to the east bay I'd totally go for that place... I'd probably be the least productive hacker there by a long shot, but if being in a house full of productive coders can't motivate me I might as well off myself haha.</comment>


Google Acquires Speech Synthesis Company Phonetic Arts - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/can-we-talk-better-speech-technology.html

<comment><USER2> What's really interesting is that the very early builds of Android (I got to see some while I was working for an OHA company) had the Nuance API in there.

Wonder what happened there.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it realistic to go from zero to freelance rails dev in 3 months? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Could experienced developers please tell me whether it's realistic to become a productive freelance developer in 3 months of full time study and practice?
The goal would be to good enough to bill $25/30 hour on odesk.com for building a site from scratch to finish (architecture + code + design).
Other than conceptual knowledge from interacting with freelance developers (OO, MVC, ...) I know nothing wrt developing (coding) applications.
Please find below what I plan to learn over the next 3 months:
1. Ruby - Pragprog.com: Learn to program - RubyLearning.com: Core Ruby - Pragprog.com: PickAxe - RubyLearning.com: Ruby Metaprogramming
2. Rails - Railstutorial.org - Pragprog.com: Agile Web Development with Rails - Rails documentation
3. Design - W3Schools: CSS & HTML intro - Pragprog.com: Web design for developers - Pragprog.com: CSS3 & HTML5
4. Credibility - Build own application - Ruby Silver certification
5. On the (freelance) job - Railsmentors.org if I need feedback - Find freelance developer at same rate to subcontract things I can't do efficiently (and learn from the code and the process).
Should this suffice? As you can see I will try to learn the same stuff from different sources - in my experience that's when things stick the most in my mind.
I am also wondering whether I should finish more advanced books (Rails way, Rails recipes, Ruby Quiz, TextMate, Rake, ...) before becoming a freelancer?
Thanks for the feedback! <comment><USER2> Starting from zero is too much for all of that. However, just the fact that you know what you need to start with isn't starting from zero.

You don't need to know everything. I have been a freelance back-end developer for something like four years and I always get the CSS / HTML / designs handed to me. Sure, I need to do some light HTML / CSS work when I need to tweak something or just to know what I'm looking at, but that's pretty easy to pick up. The same goes for the other side of the coin. If you are a good at design / CSS / HTML then you could be the guy handing that stuff off to the back-end developers.

Part of being a freelancer is the technical side, the rest is the business side. A sleazy salesman can sell anything. If you are good at BS'ing people then you could sell jobs for higher rates than you mentioned on day one and outsource that work.

So, going from zero to freelancer is very doable in three months. Going from noob to proficient developer in three months isn't so easy and depends on you. If you work full days at it every day and focus on the back-end then I imagine you could be proficient in Rails in that time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to be a strategy consultant, so maybe I should go the BS route :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not realistic. Even if you plow through all of that and obtain a meaningless certification you won't have any experience. You will be wasting your client's time if you get one. You will be competing with people with years of real experience and expertise. Ask yourself if someone would pay you a low rate to do their accounting or fill a cavity if you spent three months reading books and web sites on accounting or dentistry.

What is it about programming that people think it can be learned so fast and cheap?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point.

The context of my question: \- I want to build my own websites, 3 months to learn (not unheard of, right?) \- I need cash quite fast and if I can build my own website, why not somebody else's too...

<comment><USER3> Good luck. Why programming? Why not learn bookkeeping in three months? Or get a real estate license? Plumbers make good money. I can snake my own drain and hook up a sprinkler -- why not do it for other people and charge them?

Three months to learn to do a dynamic, secure, database-backed website _is_ unheard of. I have 30+ years experience programming, 10+ on the web, and I specialize in fixing/replacing sites put together by developers who got in over their head and didn't know what they were doing. I have worked on hundreds of web sites and I've never seen a customer happy with their $25/hr site their nephew or power-user business partner or overseas oDesk consultant cobbled together.

By all means learn web development -- it's a good job with lots of work. But don't expect to be making $30/hr in three months. No client is going to hire you without a portfolio and a track record. When I was eager to learn programming I got a job at a place where I could learn from professional programmers. I'd advise you to look for a tech support job somewhere you can conceivably move into programming and web development with someone mentoring you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why programming: A basic trend is that everything becomes digital. Hence I want to be in web startups. If I'll be doing web stuff for the next couple of decades I might as well learn how to program.

It's possible to run a cab company without a driver's license, but it's not very convenient.

<comment><USER3> Nothing wrong with learning to program. You might get farther asking for help and advice if you didn't assume it's so easy that you can learn how to do it from books and web sites in a few months. You're insulting people who have put lots of time and effort into programming and web development. You will get a similar reaction from any skilled professional or tradesperson if you suggest you can go from zero to employed in a few months by reading books.

It probably is possible to learn how to drive a car and the rules of collecting cab fares in three months. It's probably not possible to learn how to efficiently navigate a medium-sized or larger city in that time. London cab drivers study for nearly three years and average 12 exams to get their hack license.

Good luck with your career change. I think your expectations are unrealistic, and I've worked with a lot of programmers, but I'm prepared to be surprised. Post again in three months to tell about your first contract job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I didn't intent to insult anyone but you're right my post implies that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Read this. It's shorter than the stuff already on your list: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

<http://norvig.com/21-days.html>

You probably don't know who Peter Norvig is, or why his opinions matter more than anything on W3schools, but believe me that they do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Accidently I've read this yesterday (was it on HN?).

He's right - but I need to buy food between now and 10 years.</comment></comment>


Things I Learned from Adventure Games - <AUTHOR> http://www.mlsite.net/blog/?p=300

<comment><USER2> That's funny, I've learned something more like:

1\. If you see something you can put in your pocket, do so.

2\. Whenever you're in a new place, look at everything and try to use it. Even better, put it in your pocket.

3\. When you're done with that, use everything you've put in your pockets with everything else in the room.

I admit my lessons are less practical for real life, but they have helped me finish a lot of adventure games.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with most of this. I think the post demonstrates what a chore some adventure games can be when you get stuck on a puzzle: waste hours trying to get past it (before wasting hours on the next puzzle) or cheat and lose the satisfaction of having figured it out yourself.

<comment><USER4> Or maybe you tire of the "find the non-abvious joke reference thing to apply to gadget" routine and just want to get the story of the game, in which case hint books (web pages, these days) are the perfect solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not bad, but I'd re-write the first point as: You can solve the problem in front of you with the tools you have more often than you think.

</comment><comment><USER6> I agree. I did the original colossal cave on 8.5 floppies on ISIS In Circuit Emulators at AES back in 77 or so, when I was first exposed to UNIX, I had to examine the sectors to see the solution - the program was written in FORTRAN, by the way...

</comment><comment><USER7> point 1 is completely not true. most adventure games I've played require things from many screens to be solved before moving on to the next puzzle. monkey island springs to mind as the most obvious example of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. I agree with you (and roundsquare) that the first point has problems. To give you some idea of what I was getting at:

The way I, and I suspect most gamers, play adventure games is to:

a.) Run through the room graph as far as possible, do everything obvious, and take everything that isn't nailed down b.) Look at the list of "roadblocks" encountered, and figure out how to get past them c.) On passing a "roadblock", go to (a.)

To my way of thinking, anything you can grab without solving a puzzle is as good as in your inventory, even if it's in a different part of the room graph.

The post was inspired by Saturday's playthrough of "Leather Goddesses of Phobos" - one of the few Infocom games I hadn't spoiled for myself in my youth, due to Activision's decision to omit it from the "Lost Treasures" collections. Anyway, at one point I was faced with this set of puzzles:

1.) How to get past Thorbast in space 2.) How to get past the ion beam 3.) How to get into the orphanage 4.) How to turn the enchanted frog into a princess 5.) How to capture the mouse 6.) How to get the headlight in Cleveland

I was stuck - it seemed that I needed something "extra" to solve any one of these puzzles. In fact __20-YEAR-OLD-SPOILER-ALERT __every puzzle on that list can be solved as soon as you encounter it (assuming that you've previously grabbed everything that was lying around in plain sight) with the very possible and partial exception of (4.).

(BTW, how could that list of puzzles not make anyone want to play that game?)

Anyway, thanks again.</comment></comment>


Streaming / Batch Data Microserices on Cloud Foundry with Spring - <AUTHOR> https://spring.io/blog/2016/08/25/spring-cloud-data-flow-for-cloud-foundry-goes-1-0-ga <comment><USER2> scdf provides some serious power oob</comment>


G Suite Happy Ending - <AUTHOR> http://lawgimenez.me/2018/08/07/g-suite-happy-ending/ <comment><USER2> A happy ending would have been calling their support number and getting it fixed through a normal process. Needing to get to the front page of HN first is just ridiculous.

<comment><USER3> An Internet company, one of the top 3 in the world, that needs to feel threatened that customers are going to rant on Twitter or other internet websites.

Just, wow.

<comment><USER4> Ranting doesn't help, unless you get extraordinarily lucky and your rant makes it to the front page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Without any other information outside of reading this article, this contradicts basically every other google support story I've ever read on HN. Similar to what the few other comments are saying at the time of me writing this, it seems like this guy made a fuss somewhere that caught the attention of someone who didn't want the bad PR. Google will remain the contact-less customer non-service entity it always has. This guy might have gotten lucky to get a response, but don't expect it to become the norm.

<comment><USER6> The difference this time is that Google's mistake here didn't just hit one person, or a few people spuriously over a few years, but rather hit a whole class of users all at once. Once a corporation finds out that they've made that kind of mistake, they usually work quickly to fix it before it can become a media shitstorm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If only Google published a post or a support article about this so that anyone searching for this issue could have a way to get it sorted out — if not for all users, at least for the ones who happened to have this recently where Google has data backups.

Having to resort to social media and shame companies into doing what they ought to be doing in the normal course of business and having proper escalation channels (more so for paid products) is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER8> Happy ending for one person. If anything this has scared me away from G Suite. Every once in a while we see an article on how to get away from Google and it sounds like a bunch of kooks, then things like this happen.

<comment><USER9> If you read the article, you will see they're working to fix it so it doesn't happen again to anybody else. So it's more than a happy ending for just one guy.

<comment><USER10> >> Happy ending for one person. If anything this has scared me away from G Suite. Every once in a while we see an article on how to get away from Google and it sounds like a bunch of kooks, then things like this happen.

> If you read the article, you will see they're working to fix it so it > doesn't happen again to anybody else. So it's more than a happy ending for > just one guy.

They're _just now_ working on fixing this particular issue, which appears to have been a problem for at least a year. For many of those people, this fix will be too little, too late.

The fact that he had to write up a horror story in the first place to get any kind of support is what scares me away from G Suite, it's too much of a gamble. I'll continue to be scared away until you can get good support from Google with a phone call or email.

<comment><USER9> Google doesn't fix the problem -> They don't care about their users. They suck.

Google fixes the problem -> Yes, but how many users suffered the problem before? They suck.

<comment><USER10> > Google doesn't fix the problem -> They don't care about their users. They > suck.

> Google fixes the problem -> Yes, but how many users suffered the problem > before? They suck.

You're missing the point. It's _not_ about whether they fixed the problem or not, but but _what has to happen_ to get them to even take a look when someone has a problem.

<comment><USER9> Well, for me, having a company as big as Google providing a solution and commiting to fix the problem a few days after the guy reported the issue on his blog, is quite a good response. It could be better, but we're not talking about the startup with 10 employees and 300 customers.

<comment><USER11> This attitude is utterly baffling to me.

You are actually _happy_ that Google only provided support _because someone got media attention_ after ranting about it on a blog. Had this guy never been able to post and get traction, this would still be a problem today.

If anyone reads this story and says "huh, I think that was great customer service by Google!" I can only hope they are my competitor and hope they move all services to Google as quickly as possible.

Where Google would have _actually_ had good customer service? By resolving this without need exceedingly extraordinary means to enact _any_ action whatsoever. Most will never get such attention to their case, and will be told to pound sand.

All I can say is I never want to live in your world. This reminds me of the hosting shops of yesteryear that would post "marketing videos" of their staff taking support tickets while on the road with their Sidekicks. Sorry man - that's horrible level support - if you don't have the staff and processes in place for me to call 24x7 I don't want to do business with you. Pulling to the side of the road and typing on 3G is _not_ heroic support - it's a sign of a horribly managed company. Same exact deal here with Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Context: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689404)

</comment><comment><USER13> Boy do I feel sorry for the less technically-minded, small business owners, who don't know how to leverage HN.

Having to fight tooth and nail to kick up a widespread fuss is not a viable solution to a technical support line — nor should it warrant gratitude from the community.

</comment><comment><USER14> Every month, I drop all of my Google files into my OneDrive using "Google takeout". I don't have to use my own bandwidth, just select all of the data I want (everything), choose to have it sent into my OneDrive, then once it's done (takes a few hours) I delete older backups if I need space (with 1TB of OneDrive space, I can hold about 20 of these Google data backups). That way I ensure I always have an almost-up-to-date backup of all of my Google data that I can use to re-start all of my accounts on another provider, if needed.

<comment><USER15> It would be nice to do this via ITTT or similar service.

<comment><USER16> Or, when it's out: [https://datatransferproject.dev/](https://datatransferproject.dev/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "they will make sure this will never happen again to me or anyone"

The bit about the account data being lost? Or the bit about not being able to contact a human at google if you're not popular enough on the internet?

</comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone have a recommendation for a NAS that can do a nightly backup your Google account/OneDrive account etc. etc.?

I found [1], but that's a lot of fiddling at command-lines. I just want a button in a web interface that OAuths to my account and off it goes.

[1]: [https://lavaux.lv/2018/02/24/email-backup-gmvault- synology-n...](https://lavaux.lv/2018/02/24/email-backup-gmvault-synology- nas.html)

<comment><USER19> Sounds like you are looking at more automated solutions anyways, but if you end up making a backup from a Drive that is synced to your computer, realize you are only backing up links to google sheets, docs, and slides, not the actual files. In the case that those files disappear from the web your "files" will no longer open.

As far as I can tell, your only option is to export them in their native format (e.g. .docx) if you actually want the data. Learned this the hard way!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> While it's good to hear that landing on HackerNews typically results in a resolution, it's unfortunate it has to always reach that level of publicity for large companies to take personal action. I understand that has to be levels of support you have to go through, but there should be a clear path of escalations to resolve the issues privately. Thank goodness none the less for the power of HN (and social shaming) when all other options are exhausted.

</comment><comment><USER21> Search, Android, Youtube, Gmail, Chrome and Gdrive are all rife for disruption but either Google will preemptively buy the companies, play monopolistic games like they do with Android [1], or the time and resources required to gain users and traction will bankrupt most alternatives. Without competition you get inferior products, service and markets.

It's difficult to argue otherwise as you have no frame of comparison for things that haven't happened and you can't make any claims of quality without competition. Worse the ad economy has incentivized very poor quality content. This is where free markets and market theory fails as this can't be fixed without regulatory intervention or someone with extremely deep pockets willing to lose large sums of money.

The ad economy has tremendous negative externalities, surveillance, creating incentives for low quality content, click bait, personalized political advertising and people incentivized to produce more and more extremist and divisive content. All this so Google and others can make more money. This seems like a bad deal for the rest of us, akin to polluting the environment for personal benefit.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip- on...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android- controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is more an example of the human influence of HN than the benevolence of the corporation.

Yes, I am absolutely delighted this guy got lucky.

No, I have zero confidence that I or any other poor schmuck could duplicate it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Last year I temporarily enhanced my ancient GApps account by trialling G Suite. I wanted to be able to switch the primary domain from one I'd be retiring. It turned out that the guide I'd been following to do this was outdated and the functionality was no longer available during trials. So, I ended my trial and seemed to get logged out.

Couldn't log back in. This domain isn't using G Suite, or some such message.

I looked around for how to contact G Suite support. There didn't seem to be a way to do so without being logged into G Suite. I tried going through Google Domains, hoping I'd get forwarded. Didn't really get anywhere, all they could say was that there was no G Suite associated with the domain. The only option seemed to be to start another trial, then ask what happened to the GApps account.

I deliberated for a bit before doing so—would creating the account screw up any possible account recovery? And, in the meantime, signed up with, and got my email handled by someone else.

When I did speak to support, they were friendly but I got no clear idea if it was a bug, or if I'd just absentmindedly clicked through the deletion of my account. I don't really know if the account is gone or exists in some weird state. Luckily, I'd recently pruned the data and backed up. I asked if the account could be recreated but it seems like they can't do that.

I'm about to start a new little thing, and I'd like to use Google products, but what if I have another issue like this and I've got to sleuth out a way to get some help?

If you have a GApps account, just live with your goofy domain name and keep registering it.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is a problem that is not unique to this specific instance or Google product. Understand that by relying on Google products you are exposing yourself to massive risk that one day something will happen that - unless you get to the front page of HN - may never be fixed. This can leave you or your business essentially paralyzed.

You have been warned.

</comment><comment><USER25> I am fascinated that after the fact that he needed to get to the front page of Hacker News in order to have that issue resolved he keeps using this shitty service.

Like one modern Russian anecdote says - mice were getting pricked, cried, but keep eating cactus.

Yeah... Keep chewing on this cactus, good luck

</comment><comment><USER26> Classic phishing scam reads exactly like this all the way till the last but one line! Wonder how he verified if it was real google calling him and asking all these questions and giving instructions or not.

</comment><comment><USER27> Google is big, free, and UNRELIABLE !!!

That's what these horror stories teach us, time after time (mail account closed without notice or appeal anybody?). Not because of technology (Google seem to have this quite good) but because it DOESN'T WANT to understand that customer services is about process, people and problems that need to be handled by humans.

As long as Google wont be able to REALLY commit to customer services, I wont use it for any business critical mission.

</comment><comment><USER28> Glad this was sorted out. Even gladder that someone posted the link to download all my emails. I thought I had to log in via a client like Thunderbird and manually download everything, but the mbox archive was awesome, and I could import that in minutes into Thunderbird.

</comment><comment><USER29> So the moral of the story is, If you are to use the google products, make sure you have a high influential Web site or SNS account and in case of emergency, start ranting, draw attention and be on top of HN for a few days.

That's called bad ending I would say.

</comment><comment><USER10> Let me guess: his previous "G Suite Horror Story" post blew up on twitter, which made him eligible for the _Google Support Grand Prize Jackpot_ : the attention of a real human being empowered to fix the issue.

Second prize is a an email to an inbox no one ever reads.

<comment><USER30> I have good experience with Google Support Staff using online Chat. Chat button is available on Gsuit Admin interface and on GCloud Console.

Google Support staff is well trained and usually quick to resolve the issue.

<comment><USER31> I also believe Google is experimenting with taking its customer support up a few levels, which for years was figure it out for yourself. With both Chromebooks and YouTube subscription, I've gotten very good support through chat including call backs. Isn't that what Google One, is supposed to be about?? , real customer support if you are a paying Google Drive, G-Suite, YouTube monthly payer, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> yay mazal tov

</comment><comment><USER33> I had a crush in high school. Ended up going to the same college and were semi-close friends during that time.

One day I heard she had broken up with her boyfriend, and lo and behold I get a text from her that she wants me to come over urgently. It's almost midnight. She says she needs help with her Google account from a tech pro.

The thing is, this woman has a very unique name. Such a beautiful name. Not one I have ever heard before or since. So for all of her online accounts, her username is just her first name. @firstname on Twitter, firstname.lastname@example.com, etc.

When I got there she told me she'd decided to finally take my advice. I'd been telling her for years to switch from Yahoo to Gmail. But there was a problem: when we tried to register it, Google told us "this account name is taken".

"This will be simple," I thought. She must have registered it and forgotten about it, we'll just send the password reset to her Yahoo email. But when we went to the password reset page Google told us "this account does not exist".

Seemingly contradictory. It must be a bug!

I told her I would need to do some research and hurried out. I remember the confused look on her face, I don't think she wanted me to leave. Surely a bit of Googling and emailing and I could get her the coveted email address and be the hero! Stupid me.

After digging for hours I did find some mysterious @google.com email addresses and I tried those. I think I found a Google employee via my extended Facebook network and reached out. A week went by, I never heard back.

One day I decided to try to get into the Google campus in Cambridge. Unsurprisingly, I was not granted entry. The doorman was amused by my attempt at a romantic gesture so he said maybe he'd tell my story to somebody inside.

I even applied for a job at Google so that I could hopefully speak to a recruiter. Someone, anyone at Google. My time was running out. But at the time I had no experience and was a sophomore in college. No calls.

I'm still friends with that woman but nothing ever happened. She's now engaged.

I know it wasn't Google's fault that I lost my college crush. If I hadn't been so socially inept at the time it may have gone differently.

But if anyone from Google ever sees this, please get in touch[1]. The bug still exists. I just know she'd be really happy to have that email address.

[1] [https://apeace.github.io/contact.html](https://apeace.github.io/contact.html)

<comment><USER34> Was the name five characters or less? I don't know what the UI was like at the time you tried. There are Gmail accounts that short, but they have been created by hand, usually for other Google colleagues, by someone on the Gmail team. E.g. email@example.com is, obviously, Paul Buchheit.

<comment><USER33> No, it is more than five.

<comment><USER34> Then perhaps the likeliest explanation is that the account was created, then deleted. Google accounts do not get recycled. It should be straightforward to verify that theory, although it might take a month for it to enter a hard- deleted state (I've never done that).

The people who could figure what happened are those that work on GAIA ([https://developers.google.com/issue- tracker/concepts/access-...](https://developers.google.com/issue- tracker/concepts/access-control#users)). Account information and history are a touchy issue, so I doubt anyone would get involved, unless they had reason to (abuse, legal action, proper law enforcement request, etc.). Looking up user information on a hunch is a sure way for an employee to get in trouble, since access to the directory is heavily tracked. Even acknowledging the existence of an account at some point in the past carries risk...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Git Reference - <AUTHOR> http://gitref.org/ <comment><USER2> This is a pretty good overall introduction to Git, but I find myself always turning to this as a reference:

<http://ndpsoftware.com/git-cheatsheet.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Not to be too much of a curmudgeon, but does no one read man pages anymore? It seems like the world is drowning in "git references" that are really just tutorials. You guys know there's a reference delivered with the software, right? It's actually pretty good.

<comment><USER4> I knew I'd see this comment here. Not all man pages are easy to read. The git man pages seem to be more focused on consistency and preciseness than readability, which is a great thing! However, newcomers may not be able to interpret the information into practical terms. If I were to describe 'git push' to a novice developer, I wouldn't say "Updates remote refs using local refs, while sending objects necessary to complete the given refs. ", even if that's exactly what's happening.

<comment><USER3> Maybe my standards are higher for what users should be expected to be able to read. No, that sentence isn't a good introduction for someone who is new to git's data model (and I'm sure they would be happy to accept patches to fix it). But on the whole I think git's included documentation is extraordinarily good.

But the real problem is the number of people out there who rely on sites like this one (and there are _many_ sites like this one!) as a complete replacement for the actual software documentation. And so they fail to understand or be exposed to some of the more subtle bits. So to extend your example they get a better introduction to "git push", but they never get a good understanding of "push -f" (and thus use it as voodoo), or the "-u" argument (and thus never learn how to manage remote tracking branches).

I've got nothing against tutorials. But this site (and all the others) look like's it's trying to replace the actual documentation for aesthetic reasons (because web geeks can't handle troff output), and IMHO it's doing it badly.

<comment><USER5> _"and thus never learn how to manage remote tracking branches"_

You assume that the user will use that site as only reference to git ever. Many people (including me) are very thankful to sites like this for providing a overview of the most-used commands, so they can start using it as soon as possible for actual projects.

Diving further into it and learning all the powerful capabilities can always be done later by reading the man pages (either on the web or as "troff output").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty old isn't it? Good and short overview, though.

<comment><USER6> This GitHub Series is also pretty awesome for starters: <http://learn.github.com/p/intro.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really like the layout and presentation of this site. The information is easy to read and very clear.

<comment><USER8> It's just a bit too wide to comfortably read when I have a full-screen browser window. Otherwise, it's very good, and simple to follow.</comment></comment>


Learn the NATO phonetic alphabet - <AUTHOR> http://learnthephoneticalphabet.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet to help me spell words during support calls. I whipped up this quick app to help me learn. I figured if anyone would find it useful, the folks at HN would.

<comment><USER2> Great work :)

One minor point though - can we have more wizzbang explosions when you complete it rather than the basic "well done" message? I wanted a bit more recognition ;)</comment></comment>


I'M Not MARRIED TO THE IDEA - <AUTHOR> http://thedailywtf.com/articles/i-m-not-married-to-the-idea

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of the Monty Python sketch: "This is a _dog_ license, with the word "dog" crossed out and "cat" written in in crayon. "</comment>


Mozilla Cliqz experiment in GER, 1% of installs, collects surf data amd URLs - <AUTHOR> http://np.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/74n0b2/mozilla_ships_cliqz_experiment_in_germany_for_1/ <comment><USER2> Posted this yesterday in another thread about CLIQZ that did not get much attention:

I looked into the CLIQZ browser (standalone, not the Firefox feature/extension) about a half a year ago because someone at my company suggested to use it as our standard browser. CLIQZ is heavily marketed as privacy respecting browser. Just the quotes from their homepage[1]: "Cliqz gives you relevant search results and does not leak your private data.", "Does not save any private data, has all the privacy features."

Knowing the company behind CLIQZ is one of the largest German media groups (Hubert Burda Media) I was suspicious. A quick check with Wireshark revealed that every keystroke in the URL-bar is sent in realtime to some Amazon servers.

Given that CLIQZ does come with ad blocking and anti tracking features I assume that when they talk about privacy they really mean private between Hubert Burda Media and you, cutting out Google, Facebook, etc.

EDIT: Here is another quote from their website[2]:

> "Privacy by Design" means that no personal data is stored on our servers. We > do not only promise that. Using the Cliqz transparency dashboard you are > able to check that anytime."

The mentioned Transparency Cockpit explicitly says: "Telemetry data do not contain any information about queries, search results or visited URLs."

[1] [https://cliqz.com](https://cliqz.com)

[2] [https://cliqz.com/en/desktop](https://cliqz.com/en/desktop)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Facebook does this everyday to 100% of its visitors. You can login right now to FB ads and buy __insanely __targeted ads based on their er ' 100% legal click-data. ha</comment>