Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2176-diversity-and-inclusion-at-github <comment><USER2> This blog post reads to me like the Pokemon motto "Gotta Catch 'Em All".

Being non-american (I'm from a South American country) it is hard for me to understand the importance giving to these things associated to racism and sexism. The United States is the only place I have seen where people invest a considerable amount of time and resources just to put people from minor groups or specific genders in pedestals just to please other people. You will (probably) never see such thing in Latin American because no one cares why color your skin is or what gender you identify with in order to get a specific job.

Why do they care if there are no "Black/African-American" in their company? Or that 10% are black women? Or that 35% of women are in a leadership role? Like who cares? Are their roles assigned based on their gender and/or skin color?

Jesus, even my European co-workers make fun of Americans for these things. Let people build their career based on how they work and not their ethnicity nor gender, otherwise you will be incentivizing more racism and more sexism.

<comment><USER3> Europe doesn't have the sort of ingrained racism that exists in the United States. For example:

> Despite similar rates of drug use, black people are nearly four times as > likely to be arrested for marijuana use,⁴ and black males are often given > longer sentences for crimes than their white peers.⁵

[ from [https://medium.com/@dan_nott/what-is-mass-incarceration- ff73...](https://medium.com/@dan_nott/what-is-mass-incarceration-ff737196580) ]

Likewise, women tend to make significantly less money for doing the same work, in the same positions, at the same company, because of (largely) subconscious biases.

So called 'affirmative action' movements and diversity pledges are a direct response to the acknowledgement of our unconscious biases. If you know that you're 20% more likely to judge a candidate as unfit just because of the colour of their skin or the sound of their name, then that means that, over time, you're losing out on a lot of talented candidates.

Likewise, if you're less likely to fairly evaluate a woman's performance or contributions, then you're going to promote talent to positions of leadership or management less often, meaning you're not going to put your best people in those positions.

Lastly, diversity is important. You don't get anywhere by looking at only one viewpoint. Look at the state of American media right now: you have tons of content on Fox News that repeats the same few lines as facts, and they've all convinced themselves that it's true because they hear it everywhere. With that environment, why would anyone consider a different fact? When you're surrounded by people who have the same experiences with you, the same viewpoints as you, the same background as you, the same friends as you, you're never going to learn _anything_.

It's when we surround ourselves with people different to us that we grow and learn. We start to see things from other points of view, we learn about new experiences that we didn't have growing up. We create new collaborations that build on our different backgrounds to produce something that feels new, and not just a retreading of existing works.

In other words, the reason for forcing diversity is to both counter our own (and others') conscious and subconscious biases, as well as to ensure that you're exposing people to as many new and differing viewpoints as possible (and, in turn, taking those viewpoints seriously), so that you have more resources to build from, which makes for a more robust environment.

<comment><USER4> > Likewise, women tend to make significantly less money for doing the same > work, in the same positions, at the same company, because of (largely) > subconscious biases.

I see this everywhere, and yet no citations (and when asked, I usually get referred to someones blog - not from a respected scientist completely unaffiliated with the feminist movement). Either that or I get linked to 4 or 5 default papers which have little reference to the claim.

People need to accept that bold statements like this are absolutely not excluded from burden of proof - and what's more if you live in the UK (I expect much of Europe) it's time to speak up, it's illegal to pay less based on gender.

The usual problem with this is, that the actual fact is that women earn less than men on average. That's kind of a crazy comparison - software developers earn less on average to CEOs, on average sewage workers earn less than those in hedge funds and so on.

It assumes fairly boldly that women and men operate in equal proportions in every industry (which is false).

In another note, just by writing this I'm opening myself to someone telling me to check my privilege, which is a codified way to tell me as a white male there's some secret sauce I can't possibly know about (so should be quiet on the issue). The deepest irony is that this behaviour is exactly what the movement was designed to disassemble.

<comment><USER5> I'm going to tell you to check your privilege, which is a codified way of telling you that if you were really concerned about whether there was a gender pay gap, you'd look for the research yourself instead of waiting for somebody to hand it to you. If you were either familiar with the existing research and saw flaws in it, or were familiar with better evidence that contradicted the accepted wisdom, your statements about the burden of proof would be a lot more interesting and sound a lot less like whining.

It's not the world's duty to convince you of anything. I'm not even going to refer you to a blog - go to scholar.google.com and search for "gender pay gap." Follow the citations. You should also do that if you're not sure if racism exists, or if other planets exist. Then instead of trying to one-up people on message boards when they won't do your research for you, you can lead in whatever direction your research takes you.

Also, nobody knows you're a white male on the internet until you broadcast it.

<comment><USER6> >if you were really concerned about whether there was a gender pay gap, you'd look for the research yourself instead of waiting for somebody to hand it to you.

Are you seriously expecting people to fact-check every single broad statement they come across and then come to the exact same conclusions you did?

>It's not the world's duty to convince you of anything.

It's not my duty to find arguments supporting your cause. The gender pay gap is a myth anyway. I'm not going to tell you why - go to scholar.google.com and search for "gender pay gap myth debunked." Follow the citations. You should also do that if you're not sure if racism exists, or if other planets exist. Then instead of trying to one-up people on message boards when they won't do your research for you, you can lead in whatever direction your research takes you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "There are no Black/African-American GitHubbers in management positions, which is unacceptable."

It is only unacceptable if people with the skills to be in management positions didn't get a promotion because of a non-relevant personal attribute.

Otherwise, it is acceptable and in the best long term interests of the company.

I acknowledge that America has equality of opportunity problems. There are strong and just historical reasons why the government has carried the torch on this issue. However, I think its time to let the market work. Companies that place talent above non-relevant personal attributes are at a competitive advantage as they are drawing from a larger talent pool. Letting that market run on a long enough time line means that companies who discriminate will grow weaker, as well they should.

Github has come out and said "we're going to make sure that we meet target quotas for people of X, Y and Z non-relevant personal attributes." I think that's bad business and not the equality we need to be going for.

If you have the skill set, drive and integrity to be a strong contributor to a team, I want to work with you and make wealth with you. If you don't, I don't want to work with you - go get educated, build skills and try again or if I'm wrong about you, prove it by out competing me. This is equality of opportunity and of ideas. What Github is doing isn't, nor does it get us closer to what the idea of America promises us all.

I think that providing the resources to build skills to those whose parents didn't or couldn't provide them is a great idea.

I think shaking up our education system (because the numbers show that investing doesn't produce better results) is a great idea.

I want to be fellow citizens with educated, driven people who are so in part because society ensured it'd happen.

Lets not go too far or go in the wrong direction.

<comment><USER8> I think GH is starting from the point of "the distribution of our employees doesn't line up with the larger population of the country we operate in". If you think each of those groups of people has the potential to be as talented as any other, then why is there a discrepancy? I think they're saying, "We don't think the market is working." There are hidden biases at work.

For example, people with "non-white sounding" names don't get hired at the same rate as those with "white sounding" names when they have the same skillset. [http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html](http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html)

I think these biases operate at a low level, below most of our understanding. I like that GH is having this conversation in the open and working to rid themselves of these biases as much as possible.

To me, this is all relevant socioeconomic data. Why not look at the distribution of gender, race, sexuality, religion, etc, in your workplace? If there's a discrepancy, why not figure out what the root cause is? Given the starting point of "all these groups of people have the same capacity for talent and skill", why is the distribution skewed? What does it hurt to ask?

<comment><USER9> GitHub is focusing on the very bottom of the funnel. They are noticing the distribution of their employees doesn't match that of the larger population, then attempting to make it match. But what if the reason their company distribution doesn't match up is that the distribution of people with the requisite skills doesn't match up? They are trying to treat the symptoms of a supposed problem rather than the ailment itself, and putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage by doing so.

Affirmative action doesn't work, except for the short-term career prospects of those individuals lucky enough to profit from it, and the virtue-signalers who propose it.

<comment><USER10> This is just the pipeline argument. And while there are very real aspects to the pipeline -- yes, women and minorities drop out of the tech industry in early education, late education, and on the job -- the problem with the argument is that it attempts to absolve blame.

GitHub is not at the "bottom of the funnel". They're in the middle: people who work there today may go on to wildly successful careers elsewhere. And people who have bad experiences there may _not._

So please don't make the pipeline argument. Just because other earlier stages have failed to be welcoming to minorities doesn't mean GitHub shouldn't try, and just because GitHub is a corporate employer doesn't mean their employees aren't still living developing human beings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "There are no Black/African-American GitHubbers in management positions, which is unacceptable."

Why is it unacceptable? Just by virtue of the number of different kinds of people -- race, gender, etc there's no way to have 'one of each' for every position for maximum diversity. This sort of thing is so creepy because it treats people like collectible figures ("Oh yeah? Well I added a black transgendered person to our team today! I have way more diversity points than you!") instead of actual people you judge on their merits. How is a white person supposed to feel about applying to Github management position after reading "Its unacceptable we don't have a black manager"?

I'm not white and I don't want to be treated as some statistic you can show off on your diversity report card. Thats really demeaning and insulting.

<comment><USER12> Because the percentage of black GitHubbers in management positions is far below e.g. the percentage of e.g. black people with CS degrees in the US, indicating a probable bias in their hiring, retention or promotion pipelines that they're announcing they find concerning.

You're making it about individuals, not GitHub. They're comparing statistics.

<comment><USER13> > Because the percentage of black GitHubbers in management positions is far > below e.g. the percentage of e.g. black people with CS degrees in the US

Where's the data for this? Often people talk about these things as assumptions, but I've never seen credible data. Can you share a source?

Furthermore, even the comparison that you mentioned is not accurate. It should start from a funnel like: "the number of qualified black applicants to GitHub with CS degrees", or something along those lines. GitHub can't hire people that don't apply.

<comment><USER14> Starting from only the people who apply gives a free pass to biased recruitment.

<comment><USER15> What, you want them to go kidnap black people and force them to apply?

<comment><USER16> So you don't think it's a problem if their ads say "whites only"? Or if they only advertise to white people? Or are you thinking "nobody would say whites only" and just totally unaware of the many ways that language and targeting can affect who applies to a job, sometimes skewing the pool of applicants in unintended ways? A nice, nobody-meant-it way to bias your candidate pool: only hire people who know an existing employee. White Americans mostly know white Americans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ever since Zach Holman "left", it appears as though GitHub has been eaten away from the inside by intersectional feminism. There appear to be subversive efforts to turn tech companies into platforms for social justice. I can only imagine it must be really uncomfortable to work in this sort of environment.

<comment><USER18> Slightly less comfortable for the most-privileged people on earth; probably more comfortable for everyone else.

cf. Every other American industry's initial foray into diversity.

<comment><USER19> Oh, it's fine that it's racist, because I as a white male have it so good?

Seems odd to me mate, there are things that being white certainly doesn't buy, it's not a ticket to middle-class.

Being cis doesn't make me any more worse at my job than being gay would, don't judge me on that merit it's bullshit.

FWIW I grew up incredibly poor and my "advantage" in IT was that people don't care about your background. If I had wanted to be a lawyer or doctor I would bet my life that I would have failed. Tech is definitely inclusive as hell by default and making it less so is rather stupid.

If there are people who are actively stopping women in tech or downplaying them then those people are at fault, I would argue _as_ at fault as a company that wont interview me based on my skin colour or gender.

<comment><USER20> > Seems odd to me mate, there are things that being white certainly doesn't > buy, it's not a ticket to middle-class.

Perhaps not.

But there are things that being white does grant you:

1\. Police won't hassle you for driving a nice car.

2\. Police won't hassle you for walking in a nice neighborhood.

3\. People won't report you as "suspicious looking" for wearing a hoodie and walking in a neighborhood.

4\. Police won't be as likely to use force to resolve a situation.

5\. People will be less likely to have negative assumptions about your career, your intelligence, and your capabilities.

//

Being white is not a ticket to success, but it's not a hindrance either. That's the difference.

<comment><USER21> Exactly. This is a frequently misunderstood set of points. Having non-economic privileges does not automatically make you wealthy or even non-poor, and it doesn't automatically give you the best jobs or even any job. Some non-econ privileges are also relative not just to each other, but to each other in a geographic sense (skin color privilege helps you a lot more in Atlanta than in a town in Appalachia, for example.)

What it can do, for example, is help keep you from getting shot by the police on the way to your interview.

<comment><USER20> > Having non-economic privileges

I can't stand referring to my comment as "white privilege." It's just another way to discount a person simply because of their race.

Being white is like starting a race at the starting line. Being black can be like starting that same race 10 feet back.

Starting at the starting line, _isn 't_ a privilege--it's just how a race should be, in order to be fair for everyone participating.

What it also means is that being black means you just have to run faster to win.

> What it can do, for example, is help keep you from getting shot by the > police on the way to your interview.

Which we should solve the problem, not badger whites to feel guilty by calling it a privilege.

<comment><USER22> Saying that someone is suffering from "black hinderance" sounds even more terrible.

<comment><USER23> Maybe it sounds more terrible but it accurately describes the problem. You shouldn't be guilt tripping white people, you should be encouraging black people to perform better. "White privilege" falls into a mentality that I call victimization, where instead of people looking at things through the lens of "how can I change myself and be better", they look at it through the lens of "how can others change themselves to help me be better". You need both mentalities for things to work out but there's a heavy focus on the second one, because it's a lot easier and more convenient.

<comment><USER24> > You shouldn't be guilt tripping white people, you should be encouraging > black people to perform better.

White people are the ones in power in this country. You can't just expect people to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, because it'll never happen unless the people in power put in effort to change the status quo, which is exactly what some tech companies are trying to do.

<comment><USER23> Like I said, I think both mentalities are necessary but there's a heavy focus on the wrong thing. The message it sends to people is wrong. The signal is that there are systemic problems that can't be changed because people in power are guilty of having power. This is a hopeless signal that doesn't help anyone. What we should be saying to people is that they should strive to be better because that's the only sure way they can hope to improve their situations. Waiting for other people to help you isn't going to do anything. The only thing you have control over is your own life. If the public discourse around these issues focuses solely on how other people have control and how you have no control, then the situation only becomes worse because then people have an excuse to not try, and they don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I expect this is a well intentioned mission. But to what extent do you take this? Does not making sure other (less in the zeitgeist) groups are involved mean they are failing at this?

Hasidic Jews, Inuits, Wheelchair users, Men named Reginald, A person with a southern drawl, a person with one hand, a person with no hands, a 45 year old.

Quick googling suggests Jews make up 1.4% of the US population. You can't really pull out the privilege card on them before anyone tries it. This is far higher than the estimates of transexual people. Are GitHub anti-semitic? Why do they hate Jews so much that they refuse to include them in diversity reports? Do they not care for their struggle? Why is it important to stress the number of transexual people they hire over the number of Jews they hire?

It is a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER26> You're making a false equivocation between arbitrary demographic "groups" and demographic groups that have faced well documented systemic discrimination in America, both historically and continuing in the present.

And to preempt a counterargument via your chosen example, yes, you could argue Jews have and do face discrimination in America - but garden variety American anti-semitism is not of the systemic, historical nature that makes a random Jewish American more likely to be passed over for a job because of their name, or treated drastically differently by the average police officer, or less likely to have become engaged in tech earlier in life, etc.

<comment><USER25> > but garden variety American anti-semitism is not of the systemic, historical > nature that makes a random Jewish American more likely to be passed over for > a job because of their name, or treated drastically differently by the > average police officer, or less likely to have become engaged in tech > earlier in life.

Many people would find that highly offensive and ignorant. Why are you trying to diminish the struggles faced by the Jewish people in America? Why are you trying to defend a now well known anti-semitic organisation Github?? Your hateful statements are dangerous and violent. (Oh, away from my posturing as an online hate-mob, you are completely incorrect in that statement)

This game is very, very easy to play, but unfortunately, everyone loses.

Lets go on. You are saying wheelchair users, disabled people have not faced a large amount of societal discrimination that can affect their job chances? Don't you know how many public buildings and spaces aren't accessible? I cannot believe how ableist you are. Does your employer know of your hateful, bigoted views? Do your colleagues?

The problem with presenting the argument that the workplace and other groups need to be representative of wider culture, is that it will always run into this issue. If you say, discriminated groups need to be represented, and present it as a tautology, then you cannot decide which trendy group of the moment is more important.

<comment><USER26> But you're still making the same false equivocation. A "large amount of societal discrimination" ≠ institutional racism. It's a subtle distinction, but once you grasp it you can see the need for affirmative action and understand that it's not just about helping certain groups deemed "trendy".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> every time I hear about "inclusive" practices at github it makes me grimace, not because it's not a good idea. Diversity is good. But because it's rather racist, partially sexist and it's increasingly the norm to be this way.

Equal opportunity, not outcome, if 4% of your applicants are British, but do not pass because of technical reasons. (I'm using British because I am one, replace with $minority), then why should I hire them? Ideally we'd interview blind and whoever is the best tech, is the best. I'm not sure why this isn't possible in our technology culture, do you really need to be face to face with a person to assess their technical merits and ensure they are the right fit for a company.

But, anyway, to me this stuff is exclusionary, I am apparently cursed to be a white male in tech, and as a majority I now have to work much harder for SV to acknowledge me for my merits, I am of the firm belief that if I were a black lady I would have enough support to prop me up above my current experienced position in no time. I'd love to test this theory honestly.

And anyway, who cares who delivers github/facebook/$website at the end of the day, hire who you think will do the job, nobody is going to feel excluded from the services you provide because you didn't meet your quota of transgender people.. and if they were, you could very easily mislead them.

 __edit: __I know it 's against etiquette to mention downvotes, but if you must downvote me please reply stating why. That is also against etiquette.

</comment><comment><USER27> Previously I thought hiring diversity for diversity's sake didn't make sense, and hiring should be based solely on "merit". After all, as a company, you want to hire the best people.

However, since then, I have found there is research that indicates diverse groups can be more advantageous than homogenous groups of highly talented people [1], [2]. So from this perspective, striving for diversity makes economic sense.

[1] [http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16385.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16385.full)

[2] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity- make...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us- smarter/)

<comment><USER28> I'm glad someone is making this point. Here is a concise summary pdf from NCWIT.

[https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/impactge...](https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/impactgenderdiversitytechbusinessperformance_print.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In NBA, 74% players are Blacks while Asians are at 0.2%. Maybe some SJWs should lobby to get NBA "reflect more the demographics of the society"???

If you haven't figured out already, I was being sarcastic. This just shows how ridiculous and superficial this whole trend is.

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

<comment><USER30> You jest, but discrimination in the NBA is a real issue: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvaM0pMj-8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvaM0pMj-8o)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Amidst the forest of diversity demographics, I found this little tidbit:

"We have a flexible paid time-off policy and our maternity/paternity leave policies exceed the tech industry's norm. In addition, our policies do not differentiate between maternity or paternity leave."

Now THAT is cool. I really wish more companies did that. When my wife had a c-section with our son, she got 6 weeks off of work. I got nothing.

<comment><USER19> Come to Sweden, Paternity leave and Maternity leave are basically tied up into a shared "Parental" leave, a couple of new parents get upwards of 400+ paid days between themselves to divvy up as they see fit.

Source: my colleague just had a child and I have to do all his work as well as my own now :( (not salty, glad we have this!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> How many republicans work at GitHub? How many evangelical christians? How do these numbers compare to the distribution in the larger population of the country?

<comment><USER33> I'm outraged that github has not reported these numbers. What are they hiding?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wish so much that I could be picky about my hiring like GitHub. I wish I could have so many qualified candidates applying that I am able to create a diverse team. But I put out job ads and get like 2 qualified responses.

How the hell are they able to find all these candidates such that they can start being picky about who they hire???

Maybe Toronto just sucks for tech talent... Argh...

<comment><USER35> >But I put out job ads and get like 2 qualified responses.

And 200 completely unqualified ones. It is crazy how many people apply for jobs they have absolutely no qualifications for.

<comment><USER36> Anyone can apply to a programming job—it's not like you need formal education like lawyers or doctors.

<comment><USER35> Yes, but I would have hoped people would have the common sense to only apply if they know how to program. I don't even mean this in the sense of "you aren't good enough", I mean people who literally have no idea what programming is. People who rate their winzip using skills on their resume as part of their "computer experience".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> To me every example of diversity basically has been the concept that "there are too many white people in the room." And to a smaller degree that "there are too many straight men...".

I've never seen this applied to non-whites, at least not to this degree. In fact, 100% black-demographic teams (or businesses or organisations) are oftentimes praised for being "authentically black".

IMO, the way I see it is once a productive homogeneous group (which by definition is composed of members that are able to agree with each other and engage in actual progress rather than in-fighting) puts in the effort and spends the time building the infrastructure/business/etc and makes it successful - then other groups see this as an opportunity to get something out of it... "Diversity for the sake of diversity" only comes in at the end, never at the beginning.

It is also odd that when someone says diversity is our strength, they never really share the actual details of that strength.

To me this is a turning point for a company that goes from being work oriented to becoming a race/gender oriented cesspool where everything is about your color, genitalia, and gender.

<comment><USER18> So you would bet there is no bias in extant hiring practices? How do you know?

<comment><USER38> You're answering literally every comment on this thread, with this "passive aggressive" tone that will do nothing but derail the conservation. That's the definition of a troll. Why don't you make a point of your own instead?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > At a high level, GitHub is 64% male worldwide and 64% white in the U.S. That > said, the company has improved since the end of 2014, when it was 79% male > and 21% female worldwide.

I wonder what their male/female split is in daily active users.

<comment><USER40> 93% male / 4% female / 3% undisclosed.

source: [https://medium.com/@tenaciouscb/github-com-demographics-a- st...](https://medium.com/@tenaciouscb/github-com-demographics-a-story-of- researching-uncovering-blind-spots-21d7f1f90204)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Weird, it seems like some of their team has been decidedly anti-white.

[http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/githubs-diversity-is- just-a...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/githubs-diversity-is-just-as-bad- as-the-rest-of-silicon-valleys/)

Edit: Removed Breitbart link

<comment><USER42> really? breitbart.com?

<comment><USER41> Sorry, I grabbed the first link. Are they a poor source (honestly don't know)?

I also found [http://www.techinsider.io/github-the-full-inside- story-2016-...](http://www.techinsider.io/github-the-full-inside-story-2016-2) and [http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/githubs-diversity-is- just-a...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/githubs-diversity-is-just-as-bad- as-the-rest-of-silicon-valleys/)

The tweets and images came from Githubbers themselves.

<comment><USER43> > Are they a poor source (honestly don't know)?

Extremely. Breitbart regularly publicizes stories that are misleading at best or just flat out wrong: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News_Network#Notable...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News_Network#Notable_stories)

<comment><USER41> Thanks. Wow, TIL!

I feel like an idiot now, but I've edited the original post with the TechCrunch link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's like a law of nature... your organisation grows, its culture becomes braindead.

There should be more Basecamps around. I don't know what their equality policy is, but they sure have very little tolerance to bullshit - and don't mind letting you know!

</comment><comment><USER45> My questions:

* Do you run the same diversity program in every country you have an office, so that, say, in Japan you try to hire Chinese and Brazilians?

* Do you actually give points to someone over other candidates for filling a minority slot, or do you just focus your recruiting towards the target groups?

* If you hire remote workers from anywhere in the world, do you even bother with diversity for them, since the definition of diversity would have to depend on their country?

* Do you look for diversity in communication styles, personalities, philosophies, etc. (read Quiet), or do you only look for diversity in the trends you mentioned (sex, "race", etc.)?

* What about fighting ageism?

* Will you please write a post giving basic information on the advantages/goals you hope to achieve through American-style diversity? As it is I think everyone will just argue about what your agenda is.

</comment><comment><USER46> The last time this topic came up was around the same time that that open letter of from maintainers of GitHub repositories was making its rounds.

If I recall correctly, GitHub responded to that open letter by implementing the lowest hanging fruit - bug templates and +1s - and then went radio silent. Have there been meaningful product updates since?

Now we know what happened: they minimally addressed the PR needs of their business, and then went back to doing nothing interesting to advance their products.

I was on the fence before, but now I'm certain: GitLab is the superior experience.

</comment><comment><USER47> Diversity for the sake of diversity. So dumb. Promote for qualifications not junk like this

</comment><comment><USER48> Looks like the link to the actual data[1] was posted and subsequently removed, making it unable to be submitted. Why?

[1]: [https://diversity.github.com](https://diversity.github.com)

</comment><comment><USER49> How about adding other parts of the company like HR/Sales/Marketing/etc etc to their data?

</comment><comment><USER50> Previous discussion of GitHub's diversity culture: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067)

</comment><comment><USER51> Anybody besides me impressed that they released data about employee age ranges?

<comment><USER52> I like how the graph is carefully crafted to make it like there is good age distribution when it does NOT. There is twice a subdivision in ages 20-40 than in ages 40+.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Explains why they haven't delivered a notable imporovement in the last year and a half. They've been focusing on social justice instead of making a great product that we all want to use.

</comment><comment><USER54> As a Hispanic, I would never work at Github because I find this quest for "diversity" to be extremely patronizing and objectifying. As a male, I'd never work at Github because their policies are sexist.

</comment><comment><USER55> Jesus Christ, I never want to work on the Left Coast.

</comment><comment><USER20> It chaffes me when I see companies talk about diversity and inclusion (ignore that the blog post is written by a young white guy).

You want to use data to make Github more diverse--great. Just shut up about it and make it happen. Posting your diversity data like this, like it's some badge of honor, is ridiculous.

Someone wants to know how diverse you are? Great, show them the data, and tell them you're working on it.

Just please stop it with the public discourse.

You know what I _don 't_ see--companies like MSFT, and Google, and Facebook, and Github who talk about their inclusion showing up to the poorer parts of my neighborhood trying to address diversity issues there.

</comment><comment><USER56> I am now a #GitLabMissile

<comment><USER55> I moved all my code over to BitBucket when this nonsense started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The goal of hiring diversity is to reach Proportional Representation; you want your workforce to resemble the demographics of the nation as a whole. If you accept that anyone, regardless of their genetic heritage, gender identity, sexual identity, skin color, etc. can do the job just as well as anyone else can, then you should be supportive of, or at least not oppose, efforts like these. If you don't think so (with regards to genetic heritage especially), there's really no discussion to be had, as that's a likely irreconcilable conflicting understanding of the science, especially at the individual level (intra-haplogroup potential ability swamps any supposed inter-haplogroup potential ability) or just plain, old-fashioned prejudice.

What are the benefits to PR? Two major ones:

\- Countering structural biases in society. There has not historically been anything like a level playing field with regards to inherent attributes in this country. Many of those attributes cause people to get discriminated against, and this gets perpetuated across time. It's a "market" solution to a societal problem, which means that it can't magically counter much larger structural forces all by itself, but it can help.

\- Producing better results. Many studies claim that diverse teams operate better, and potentially produce superior products and services. A major part of the reason is the introduction of diversity in _perspectives_ , which can allow a company to understand different potential markets better and can make a company potentially more welcoming, which can improve hiring (i.e., a great candidate who might feel out of place in an environment with non-diverse demographics might decide to join if the demographics were more diverse. This can become a virtuous cycle.) Whether this is true or not, or how much it's true, is not that relevant. It certainly can't _hurt_.

There are valid criticisms of hiring diversity _methods_ , but I'm not seeing many of them in the comments here:

\- Can PR be achieved? Getting PR at a place with 10 employees is going to be very tough, so coming down on companies this small who can't do so should not be done, IMO. 100? Easier. 1000. Much easier. The larger the organization is, the more possible it becomes. So no, it's not always possible, and some perhaps well-intentioned activists beat up on companies they shouldn't, but that does not mean it should not be a goal that is pursued as a general principle for hiring.

\- Do the people who get hired necessarily represent who those hiring them _think_ they represent? Not always, no. If you're hiring a perfect rainbow coalition of identities, but all of them come from wealthy backgrounds or elite schools, for example, you may be getting less diversity than you think. It's not tokenism, but it's definitely not PR. Many Left criticisms of our current version elite liberal meritocratic culture center around this. The antidote is to include things like educational background, economic class/upbringing circumstances, etc. when considering a candidate vis a vis diverse hiring; that's what intersectionality is all about. You do not consider advantaging/disadvantaging attributes in isolation. Many companies have do a very poor job of the latter, but in this case, GH has explicitly said they are more open to non-traditionally educated candidates.

PR and hiring diversity is not going to fix all society's problems; for that, we need major reforms like free higher ed, federal, rather than local, funding of K-12 education, GBI, UHC, ending the drug war and a dozen other things. Can it help, especially by helping push American _culture_ towards greater acceptance of diversity and pluralism? Yes, so companies should strive for it.

<comment><USER57> >The goal of hiring diversity is to reach Proportional Representation; you want your workforce to resemble the demographics of the nation as a whole.

What about when that is reached, or is nearly reached? What's the medium term end goal? Long term end goal? I think here is where people disagree even more than the means to get there.

>Whether this is true or not, or how much it's true, is not that relevant. It certainly can't hurt.

It can lead to distrust, skepticism, disrespect, worse communication. All sorts of negative things.

If we include ideology in the general diversity conversation, and class, rather than primarily gender and race, I'd respect the intention much more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I have been thinking of the problems anti-discrimination laws. Not all kinds of discrimination leave evidence. I have a feeling that they should be restricted to certain job categories. Similarly, sexual harassment leave evidence more often, but this don't mean they are worth the costs. I have been thinking of this Ask HN for example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857)

</comment><comment><USER59> I dont want to live or work in a society where employees at every company reflect the demographics of that society, where everyone gets equal pay, feels less and less like diversity and more and more about conformity. Its the road to socialism, if all of this diversity was valuable the market will reward companies accordingly.

<comment><USER28> And it does. More diverse companies perform better financially.

[https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/impactge...](https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/impactgenderdiversitytechbusinessperformance_print.pdf)

<comment><USER59> After reading the sources I would say there is evidence that employees in the survey they conducted self reported better financial performance from the following options:

"how would you compare your organization's performance over the past two years in terms of market share? .|.|. Would you say that it was (1) much worse, (2) somewhat worse, (3) about the same, (4) somewhat better, or (5) much better?"

Surely we can be more factual than this?

<comment><USER28> You are truly grasping at straws. There are 15 citations there, many of which show direct data of market cap and share price performance for these companies and you hunt down a single survey you have an issue with. Please.

<comment><USER59> I dont have time to review all 15 citations, it was the first one I picked based on the claim made in your document. It was also the most closely related claim that you linked to the document in question:

>"An investigation of 500 U.S. businesses found that companies with more race and gender diverse teams had higher sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater profits than did less diverse companies.4"

You are being very uncharitable to suggest I am "grasping at straws" by reviewing the very document you are using as evidence.

Lets review page 3, each paragraph is a claim.

1\. executive boards

2\. executive boards

3\. top management level

4\. top management teams

5\. greater profit and market share

6\. student study make believe

Now you can see why I Chose 5 to investigate as 1-4,6 are pretty much unrelated to what we are talking about which is diversity of the work force, not high level management.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Our First $37,800 in Annual Recurring Revenue - <AUTHOR> http://churnbuster.io/blog/our-first-37800-in-annual-recurring-revenue

<comment><USER3> There's no pricing information, and no link to pricing information available on the home page. I had to click "Free Trial" before there was a nav bar at the top I could click on.

With that being said, I love the idea of the product as it's a pain point for me. Unfortunately, I only have a handful of customers, so even the $20/m doesn't really make sense. It would be great to see a free plan for "up to" X customers, once you pass that threshold send me an email to upgrade my account.

As of right now I see it, I like it, I want it, but I can't justify it so it will be long forgotten by the time I'm ready to sign up. If I was able to sign up for a free plan today I would in a heartbeat, and would be happy to upgrade if I got an email remainder once I passed 25 customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback and sorry about the missing pricing link on the homepage. Definitely overdue to revamp the navigation and put a pricing link right up top there. I'll definitely chew on that free plan idea a bit.

<comment><USER4> I am sure this is what you are already thinking, but I wouldn't spend to much worrying about a free plan.

We made this mistake on our last startup, we got a ton of feedback saying, oh it's too expensive, I'd never use it.. make something cheaper/free.

The truth is... until those businesses are making more money that justifies $20 a month, you probably don't want them as customers... they will take up a TON of time, with adding little to no value and will have no problem jumping ship when you say, hey, you reached the size you said you were interested in paying $20 and we would like you to upgrade.

People want the world... focus on customers that find $20/month to be a huge value to them.

<comment><USER5> In my case, I just want a free tier that is incredibly low (10 customers is fine) that won't cannibalize his main products, because I want to test his services. Yes, there's a free trial, but I don't plan on rolling out major client work for 4-6 months. In that timeframe, he can have me as a subscribed customer (paying nothing) but I've already gone through all the hurdles, and he can send me monthly "Hey, you ready?" emails.

Right now I have to trust myself that I'll remember this service in six months with all the other stuff that goes on in running a startup. If I DO remember, I will pay $20-100/month easily and will save thousands. But I also have to remember that about 300 other things, too.

EDIT: Maybe a mailing list would be helpful, too.

<comment><USER4> Agreed to mailing list... but "oh well" is what I say to that. If it's easy to implement then great, but there is a cost to him for even 1 of your customers.

I would focus on the businesses that can pay $20/month (even for 1 month) to test something to see if it's for them than worry about someone who may need it in 4-6 months down the road, if there product doesn't go under before they "roll out major client work".

I am not trying to sound harsh but my guess is his money and time is better spent acquiring users who can pay $20 from the start. It's just basic marketing: How much would this cost to acquire a customer from. If he pays the girl $30 an hour to call delinquent accounts and she can call 10 an hour then that's a cost of $3 per delinquent customer of yours that it costs him and you are asking for a free tier that is incredibly low of ONLY 10 customers which actually = $30 of free value he is giving away. My guess is a Google Adwords campaign could get him paying users for less than that easily.

It's just not worth it to go after customers like you... yet..is my guess and I have been in his shoes... the people wanting free shit scream the loudest but bring in the least value.

<comment><USER5> >It's just not worth it to go after customers like you... yet..is my guess and I have been in his shoes... the people wanting free shit scream the loudest but bring in the least value.

I agree. And yet, that is not who I am. If you knew the first thing about my business and my yearly revenue, you wouldn't say that. Your assumptions are baseless, rude, and truthfully told, idiotic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good to see an honest journey of a SaaS product.

Building a SaaS company that pays the bills normally takes much longer than you think[1]. Well done Andrew and keep going!

[1] Watch the slow ramp of death: [http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail- goodman-constant-...](http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman- constant-contact-how-to-negotiate-the-long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death/)

<comment><USER7> > The product grew, but at a slower pace than I had envisioned

This is the single biggest piece of advice I wish I'd known before I made my failed attempts at products. It takes a _long_ time. When you build your product, make sure you have an income or savings plan for the next 12 - <USER2> months.

<comment><USER8> My own rule is 3 years so at 12 to 18 months you're amazingly fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey Andrew, this is a super nice product and you're doing an awesome job in the perseverance department. Unfortunately for you I'm not a stripe customer or I would have happily signed up. That $4K per month is definitely happening and after that who knows how far you can push this.

Have you considered teaming up with Stripe? They're nice guys and it looks as if you contribute considerable value to their product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Jacques. Thanks for the kind words! Stripe does include us on their integrations page and have been great about reaching out to Stripe Connect service operators like myself and asking what they can do to better support us. (It's been such a great platform to build on.) Now that I'm focusing on marketing more, I'll definitely reach out to them to share some ideas I've got. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great and the pricing seems reasonable (and not too low, like tarsnap). I will be signing up once we launch our full online training courses. Our monthly revenues are around ~$150/month per user, so definitely worth it for us.

As someone else said, though, a free plan that is limited to a very small number of people might be helpful. I'd sign up for that with our small group of clients right now just to test and trust the service. 10-20 users or something would be enough for testing purposes but obviously not nearly enough that you are cannibalizing your product. Something to think about - since now I have to bookmark your site, remember that I need it in six months, and come back and sign up. Even though I KNOW it's something that will save me thousands of dollars per year.

</comment><comment><USER9> A bit tangential: If you have a problem with losing customers to expired credit cards and already have a good dunning process, talk to the guys at Spreedly about their "Card on File Updater". They're a payment gateway agnostic credit card vault, but one of the services they're trialing (you have to ask to join the beta right now) is automatic updating of expired credit card numbers. They have access to the bank systems that do this automatically, so your charges continue going through without your customers having to update their numbers themselves.

[https://spreedly.com/](https://spreedly.com/)

Spreedly works with Stripe and 70+ other payment providers.

<comment><USER8> This has been in the works for a number of years now, but keep in mind that you are breaking an 'unwritten contract' with your customer that assumes that they get the option to renew the agreement when their card expires.

People in general do not like to be charged for a service after the card expires and they have not explicitly authorized further payment. So better make sure this is written into your terms and conditions and that your merchant agreement actually allows you to do this.

Most businesses don't know about this possibility and very very few end users do. Technically you can basically fantasize any expiry date as long as it is in the future the charge will (likely) go through but to do this unauthorized is not smart. (Adding 3 or 5 years to the previous expiry is likely going to be on the money.)

In dispute situations you will possibly also have less recourse.

<comment><USER10> I think this is a really interesting topic where merchants and card users see it quite differently. For example, you usually sign up for an agreement to use a service. No where in there does it say that "you can cancel at anytime by just letting your card expire or having it stolen and replaced" The merchants really don't see any correlation between your need to pay and the current state of your card. And often they want you to actively cancel a service so as to remove any confusion around responsibilities owed.

Then you have some services where you can go either month to month or commit to a year long agreement and get a different price. Lastly, who enjoys losing a card and having to restart auto billing at their 10 favorite/required services?

I agree a lot of people by default think that if their card expires they're off to hook for paying for services and would be surprised that their service provider got an updated card from networks vs you. I'm just not sure it holds up though under closer thought/examination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey all, this is me. :-) Really nice to have a "new" product on the front page of HN again. Happy to answer any questions you may have.

<comment><USER11> How did you find subscribers with no spending on marketing?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure I'll write about this more later, but the earliest customers were friends and consulting clients who ran subscription services. They were onboard before it was even built.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's really impressive that you built that much revenue even without even notifying people who specifically told you they wanted this product. That's a very good sign that you're headed for a lot of growth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your kind words. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well done and thanks for sharing your story! You said you did almost no marketing and haven't blasted an email to the wait list. I'm curious where and how people are finding your product?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! So, we've benefited a lot from word-of-mouth thus far. For example, we've received referrals from friends running Baremetrics ([http://baremetrics.io](http://baremetrics.io)), HookFeed ([http://hookfeed.io](http://hookfeed.io)), and FirstOfficer ([https://www.firstofficer.io](https://www.firstofficer.io)) because Churn Buster is a logical progression for customers of those products who are now more aware of how much they're losing to failed payments. Our customers themselves also talk about the results they're getting in the subscription product circles they travel in.

<comment><USER14> Small suggestion - people who have done payments before know this process is called dunning, which you don't mention at all on your site - that's going to affect your SEO potential when I'm looking for a solution to this (which almost always takes me straight to your competitor: bestunning).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this feedback. I'll make a point to do _something_ about it. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, if the customer with the expired payment information is still using and valuing the service, he will soon realize that he needs to update his payment information without any outside intervention or he will lose access to the service. If the user no longer cares about the service and just forgot to cancel or was to lazy to do so, why not just let him go instead of continuing to sell him something he does no longer need?

UPDATE: I probably got the wrong first impression - I thought the service was kind of last resort if the user did not respond to the normal notifications that he will lose his service; I missed that you can completely outsource this.

<comment><USER16> Because that is not how people work. We forget things. Today I got a reminder that one of my hosting accounts expired. I happily put down the $90 for the account and even sent an email to my contact there, because loosing that account would be a major headache for me. I need that account, I just didn't remember to update my CC

<comment><USER17> Same here.. Once let our DNS provider subscription lapse (yearly renewal). Luckily discovered it about a week before the grace period ended.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just a heads up. I went to [https://manage.churnbuster.io/pricing](https://manage.churnbuster.io/pricing) to check out pricing. I hacked the URL to hit [https://churnbuster.io/](https://churnbuster.io/) to go to the homepage, and I get an SSL error: [http://i.imgur.com/Dwoa2Hn.png](http://i.imgur.com/Dwoa2Hn.png)

</comment><comment><USER19> A bit OT: Why is the churn graph so wave-like?</comment>


Ask HN: Sharing a shared hosting account with non-technical clients - <AUTHOR> I have a few clients who run a separate "marketing" site on shared hosting like Go Daddy or Hostgator. For the "product" site there are great tools for tracking changes and deploying, e.g. git, pull requests, CI servers, capistrano, chef, war files, etc. But what about the shared hosting account? Mostly this is managed by the client themselves via an FTP GUI and Wordpress, but sometimes I'm asked to change something. I'm curious how people deal with this? How do you "scale down"? I can't force these people to use git. My goals are:<p>- get the whole thing backed up periodically<p>- track changes<p>- easily pull/push between my own development copy and production<p>How are other people handling this? <comment><USER2> What about a share hosting account?

> get the whole thing backed up periodically

Rsync if you have SSH access. If you have FTP access mirror the remote server X-times per day using the amazing 'lftp'.

> track changes

If you have SSH access, use .git on the shared hosting. If you don't use .git on the mirror (via lftp).

> easily pull/push between my own development copy and production

The mirroring can work both ways, so you just push the changes to the server via lftp when they are ready.

ps. Most people, rely on FTP GUI clients. Some of them (e.g. Transmit on MacOSX) are really, really well made and worth every penny, but the things you can do with lftp[1] are amazing.

[1] [http://lftp.yar.ru/lftp-man.html](http://lftp.yar.ru/lftp-man.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I've been using ncftp but I'm not really happy with it. I will give lftp a try. Naturally if you have ssh access everything is a lot easier. :-)

<comment><USER2> No prob, if you need any help, drop a mail.</comment></comment></comment>


Jessica Alba 'I don't know how to code, but I know how to put in a JIRA ticket' - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud5O_LJRC7k <comment><USER2> Lame.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice on an Idea - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to create a web framework which assembles, configures and links independent components to create complex web applications.
Basically I find that if I have a meta data definition of a context, what components to load in that context and what properties to set on the components and the links between the components i can assemble any application.
The framework reads the above meta data and constructs the application.
Why is there no such framework to compose applications at component level instead of object level.
I have see vertical constrained applications like Popfly, Webbly or Wuffo implement similiar concept, only those are not generic component assembly framework.
Has any one come across such a framework?
Will not a Assembly oriented product development where there is a clean separation of Assembly from coding will make us do complex application.
Any advice would be much appreciated. <comment><USER2> Such frameworks do exist. Spring, amongst others, allows you to do that in the Java world (<http://springframework.org/>).

Edit: because a simple link to the website won't tell you a whole lot about the idea behind it, here's a shot at explaining the basic premise of the core of the Spring framework.

Instead of hard wiring objects, you let Spring handle it for you through dependency injection. You simply specify that you want an "authentication" object and the framework will go ahead and look it up. Whether it's an LDAP authentication object or something for a different backend is determined by the context, which you can specify in XML or annotations.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that one of the major objections to such a framework would be that it would be difficult to create a reliable system when the components are hosted in so many different places with each of them being a point of failure.

I had an idea very similar to yours a while ago (I called it 'softbricks'), but I never could find a way around the reliability issues.

You're basically constructing applications from widgets that can be hosted by any number of parties, if you figure out a way to make it reliable I'm fairly sure you have a winner here.

There are 'object brokering architectures' that come close but none give you the kind of functionality that I think you are going for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry may be I did not explain it clearly. I am not try to do SOA, but more as an enhancement to MVC.

What I want to build is a normal application, like suppose I want to build a authentication system, I will have a display component, validation component and a securit provider component, data store component. Each of these components will be independent but the framework will load these components and will connect them together to implement final functionality.

What will be the benefit for developing using this component approach will be reusability and changeability.

Another advantage will be that I can change the Metadata and rewire the components to implement different functionality for certain user groups.

Since the framework language of assembly is very simple, namely, Define a Context, Add Components into that Context Configure Components in that Context Link Components in that Context

I believe this will cleanly separate assembly from coding of the component but increase the productivity and relibility of the final application feature.

What you have suggested is the components are distributed, which creats a reliability and connectivity problem. What I am trying to do is developing instead of a single monolithic application, why we cannot split the application into individual components and only the framework will stitch this together to give the final functionality.

Do you think such a framework will be useful?</comment></comment>


In a Major Departure, Google Shows Banner Ads in Search Results - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/in-a-major-departure-google-shows-banner-ads-in-search-results/ <comment><USER2> > _But banner advertising is one area that Google had vowed never to > experiment with._

Marisa M wrote the blog post in 05 and she's no longer there (if that was the obstacle). It's time to make more money on the results page.</comment>


Show HN: PinView - Your Facebook Feed as a Pinterest View - <AUTHOR> https://apps.facebook.com/pinviewer/

<comment><AUTHOR> Click anywhere on that page to start your own feed.

A friend of mine and me have been playing around with some ideas about how to show the Facebook feed differently.

Our first experiment is called PinView and basically takes the Pinterest GUI an apply it to your Facebook feed.

We don't track any personal info. The permissions you are asked to grant are purely to be able to represent your own feed in the app.

Wo do of course monitor traffic.

The entire app is done in JavaScript so everything runs on your own machine. It's no secret that we had to make a lot of hacks to get this working fairly well. FB is definitely not an easy animal to tame.

If you have any kind of data blocker activated that should be deactivated to play with it.

Let us know your thoughts.

You can also give feedback (or like) here: [https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pin-View- Community/3301634270...](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pin-View- Community/330163427034730)

<comment> why-el Hey do you guys plan on sharing how you did this? I'm particulary interested in those tweaks you mentioned about to make the stream work. I have some ideas for my news feed but could get off the ground.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. We will write a post about it soon.

<comment> why-el Perfect. Which blog? You have quiet a few. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> hehe yes. 000fff.org it will get a long awaited revival with lots of stuff there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I like the idea but I don't think it works well as an alternative to the current Facebook display. For me my timeline is very much based on time, so when someone has a status "going to dinner at x" it matters that it's displayed _before_ "dinner was great", if it's displayed along side it doesn't make much sense. It works great for photos (and friends) though, it's definitely a cool way to display content just maybe not text.

I think pinterest type displays work for photos etc because it's a way of presenting a lot of content at once that specific items can catch the users eye and they can look at further, that can't happen with text, you have to read it all.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are totally right. That was our finding too.

We wanted to try it anyway and just put it out there.

The cool thing is that now we have a pretty good idea how the FB feed works and can now experiment with our little js engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As someone who is pretty much totally checked out of Facebook and logs in _maybe_ once a month, this might actually get me to check out my timeline more. I love browsing it visually, awesome job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thnx m8.

It has potential for sure but as others say. Text is a challenge which we have tried to deal with a little bit.

<comment><USER4> Let me know if you need help securing the domain pinview.com for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi ThomPete, I write for 10,000 Words and would love to talk to you a bit more about Pin View for a post. Could you email me at email@example.com?

</comment><comment><USER6> Get ready for volume. This will blow up fast. I'm willing to bet you get a call from FB shortly to either shut it down, or buy it outright.

Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool concept and execution, but my Facebook timeline is very text driven— which makes the PinView render not very readable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it's def best if you have lots of pictures.

We have tried to make it as visual as possible. But all feeds are different :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well done. One more way to realize everyone in my social circle is boring, but well done.

</comment><comment><USER9> This isn't working for me in Safari. It does work in Chrome, however, and it looks good!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok looking into it. Safari is not as FB friendly :)

<comment><USER10> On chrome, if there is a post with a bunch of comments at the bottom of the screen, I click on it and the post appears in the lightbox, but the comments get cut off (I can't scroll down).

Just FYI. Looks great, by the way!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thnx. We are looking into solving this.

There are many little quirks that are quite hard to catch until they happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> no infinite scroll! hard to make this view look good with things other than photos, but looks pretty good

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://friendsheet.com>

<comment><USER13> Hahaha sign in with Facebook details and no preview or description what so ever - no thanks.

<comment><USER11> mark zuckerberg signed in and liked it with no preview, why wouldn't you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'll put the name of the activity on top of the image. e.g, "Jane shared this picture" before the picture. Make it more 'readable'in my opinion.

Perfect as a tablet app. not sure it will fly on the desktop or mobile phone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that might work better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one who thinks PinFace is a better name?

<comment><AUTHOR> Believe me we tried other combinations but Face and Book are not accessible so we can't call an app anything like PinBook og Faceterest :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: got to 33 in the App Store. Now what? - <AUTHOR> It seemed to me like my iPhone card game was making a suspiciously high amount of money per day. Over 100 bucks, four days in a row. So I checked the top paid apps list for my category, and I'm number 33.
Erm. This is thrilling, and terrifying. What should I do? My game is currently $2.99 -- should I make it lower, in hopes of getting higher up the chart? Should I make it higher, to take advantage of my sudden popularity?
Anybody with experience in this topic, please speak up. <comment><USER2> The algo used by Apple to calculate the rankings take counts (most probably) of the past 4 days of sales. My suggestion is now that you are up there to push sales as much as possible. A sale would definitely help, maybe $1.99 ($0.99 is synonymous of low quality) and see if you can get any friends or people you know to download the app right now. See if you get at least in the top 25, so that your app will show up in the first page of apps on the iPhone.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's probably the right thing to do. i'm thinking about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can't comment on the pricing, but IMHO both the description and the support website have room for improvement.

Half of the short description I see in iTunes describes what the app can't do (no multiplayer over Internet). Only when I click on "more", I see the wealth of features. You could write "play with your friends on a local Wifi" and move the disclaimer to the extended description. Put a feature on top instead, like "robot players are pretty good".

On the website, there is a lot of text, which is good because it shows you care. But make sure the features don't get lost in the details. Make them stand out and list the most exciting feature first. Strong robots and easy multiplayer game setup are probably more interesting than a Default.png graphic. Mentioning Default.png will only confuse them anyway, unless most of your potential customers are iPhone developers.

Also, put the iTunes Store links on the bottom as well, so your visitor does not have to scroll all the way back up.

Just my 2c, I hope you find some of it useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> All good points. Working on the text now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You're not stable yet, since volume goes WAY up once you're in the Top 25 of a category. It then goes through the roof when you're in the Top 5. Even though you're seeing great sales now, you need to push into the Top 25 to see phenomenal sales. To be safe, get into the Top 15, that way you have more margin to work with in the day to day rank fluctuation.

Drop to $1.99 for two days and see if you continue gaining in rank. We were able to blast past tons of 99 cent apps with Free Audiobooks at $1.99 and get to #2 in Books within three days, so it's not a big deal. Games is way different from books, though, so try $1.99 for 2-3 days, then give 99 cents a shot.

Also, grab Applyzer (applyzer.com) for this, it's awesome- hourly rank tracking for $3/month. If you stall out or otherwise see your rank starting to slide, drop to 99 to give a boost. That recovers your momentum and, after 24 hours or so, you can put your price back to $1.99. There's a LOT more to rank management, but this is how we're able to maintain the #1 and #2 paid positions in Books for weeks on end, barring when Apple features a competitor.

Good luck :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, consensus seems to be that I should drop it to $1.99 and see how that goes. So I did. fingers crossed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your application seems slightly more niche for your category, I'm not sure that a lower price is going to necessarily drive up sales but I absolutely encourage you to test - I dont see how lowering the price could send you backwards.

I have experience with two completely opposite end of the spectrum apps in the store – one puzzle game that is doing 7 – 10 sales a day on average for ~1yr and one free app that's been downloaded over 1 million times (after making it free) and makes respectable money on advertising.

<comment><AUTHOR> Before I crippled it, my free game was getting downloaded between 50 and 120 times per day. Do you think I could get any kind of decent ad money on that? What ad network do you recommend?

<comment><USER5> Has much more to do with use and display.

Ad rate CPMs are good for mobile, use <http://admob.com/> (I spent months testing) and integrate it right on top of the user experience.

EG - FORCE your users to see it.

If you have high application engagement (Eg lots of play) you'll earn some decent money.

Average is $3 - 5 CPM (thousands of views) and if you have a sticky game that can boil down to $3+ per uer lifetime value, which is better than app store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> just clicked through to your blog - the more interesting story is how you crippled the free version that had 30k downloads and the subsequent fallout. really interesting! don't back down now!

<comment><USER7> Yes I enjoyed that as well. Nice hack!

<comment><AUTHOR> Dang. It's nice to hear you guys say stuff like this. I've gotten a hundred emails per day calling me a crook, a money-grubber, a cheat, and worse. I was starting to doubt myself.

But it did indeed work. I forced a whole lot of those 30,000 Hearts Solo players to upgrade. But at this point, that can't account for all of it. The number of Hearts Solo downloads has peaked, and is trending down. But the number of people buying Hearts Net is still going up.

<comment><USER8> If your app just randomly stops working, and enough people tell Apple about it, they'll pull the app. It's a violation of the app store terms.

<comment><AUTHOR> huh. didn't know that. can you show me the relevant sections in the agreement? maybe i can slightly un-cripple it in a way that would comply with their terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I were in your position, I'd do a few things simultaneously:

\- Cut the price to $1.99.

\- Contact as many app review sites and forums as possible and tell them that, thanks to support from the community, you've decided to reduce the price for a few days, and give away a few copies of the game.

\- Give the sites promo codes that they can give away/promote for you.

Generally speaking, I've found that total revenue remains about the same regardless of your price. But what you have is a relatively interesting talking point (spike in sales) that you may be able to use to get other people to promote the game for you.

(I've previously had a game in the top 10 paid games.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Number 33 in the App Store is only making $100/day?

<comment><USER11> And, of course, some categories do more volume than others. I hit the top 10 in a category and was making < $100/day

<comment><AUTHOR> what category is that? seems like it would be a good optimization to try to hit parts of the store that don't have much competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Honestly? Make a sequel with more features/games ASAP and drop the price of the first to $1.99. You'll have your very own cash cow.

Assuming of course that it didn't take you a year to create the first.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've read through your blog posts, and while I agree with your "crippling" of the free version, I don't agree with how it was done.

With Hearts Solo, are there not better ways to make a trial version of a game than to randomly interrupt a match? Most trial software makes the user aware of how they will be limited - e.g. disabled features, time limits, and limitations on the number of usages.

Wouldn't having a maximum of X hours of playtime (or a similar strategy) on Solo have been more user friendly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I'm a total marketing n00b, twiddling knobs here.

I knew there was a great deal of demand for the game. For example, when I briefly made Hearts Net free, it was being downloaded 3500 times per day. Then I put it back to non-free, and it was barely ticking along at 5 bucks in sales a day.

I looked at things like in-app purchasing and ad networks, but that seemed like a lot of work. I was very frustrated with the experience at that point, and was just about to quit altogether. Doing even more development didn't seem like a good use of my time. So this seemed like the easiest way to stop competing with myself, with the least amount of effort.

Now that I'm getting some encouraging signs, I'll probably reevaluate the situation and see if I can come up with something better.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable link to my game:

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hearts-net/id353101111?mt=8>

<comment><USER14> Bought a copy.. good luck =)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is probably what you were going to do anyway, but here goes:

1\. Reduce the price by a dollar. Track for a week, see if profits increase. If they don't jack the price back up.

2\. If they do, reduce the price even more, track the profits. If this causes profit to decrease, jack the price back up.

The idea is to figure out where the ideal market price is. It might be lower than you expect.

</comment><comment><USER16> Buy some fancy clothes before the IRS takes half. haha

Congratulations. Breaking into any top ranks of the app store is always exciting. I would ask yourself if there is a long-term, after-work, or short- term play here and act accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think the "words with friends" model works very well. There's a free version, it's identical except that it shows a small banner add on the main menu, and shows you a full-screen ad after every move. It's not very intrusive but you can't really ignore it either.

It was enough to make me upgrade to the full ($2.99) version after playing for a week. And if users don't upgrade, you still get the ad revenue.

Take a look if you haven't tried it yet.

</comment><comment><USER18> Please let us know the results of your experiment in a future HN post. There is not much info out there on the results of these kind of experiments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Man, you're telling me! I'm just shooting in the dark here. This sudden bit of success took me totally by surprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Have a feature like "buy one get one free", so someone can buy a copy for himself and gift a copy to a friend. Its better than lowering the price.

<comment><USER20> Interesting idea - how can this be accomplished? Require the purchaser to send an iTunes receipt and the email address of the friend (to whom a promo code is sent)? I can't think of an automated technique, so perhaps that's the only way.

Is there a smarter solution I am unaware of?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Toss out a new version with a "tell people about me" feature where they can email a link or twitter about it.

</comment><comment><USER22> raise the price.

<comment><AUTHOR> is that based on actual experience? have you had a program in one of the top 100 lists?

you know what, i just looked, and my game is in fact in the top one hundred list in every single country on the app store. my highest ranking is 17, in lebanon. whew!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I completely agree with davidedicillo.</comment>


GoPro camera gets eaten by Grizzly bear, gives you idea what it's like - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/see-what-its-be-eaten-grizzly-bear-video.html

<comment><USER2> I was hoping for the camera to go down the bear's throat. Disappointing that it didn't.</comment>


Evictions changing face of San Francisco as landlords court affluent tech crowd - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/ellis-act-evictions-changing-landscape-of-san-francisco-housing/Content?oid=2585077

<comment><AUTHOR> This is today's front page story in the SF Examiner. More commentary here:

 _" As of earlier this year, evictions of all kinds across the city hit a 12-year high.

Last year, Randy Shaw of Beyond Chron pointed to a real estate outfit called Urban Green Investments who were targeting buildings in Chinatown, North Beach, and the Mission and forcing similar evictions."_

[http://sfist.com/2013/09/23/chinatown_is_the_next_frontier_f...](http://sfist.com/2013/09/23/chinatown_is_the_next_frontier_for.php)

...and here:

 _" On April 15, the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee again considers legislation to overturn San Francisco's thirty year old condo conversion law. On April 8, 97 year old Mary Phillips became the latest victim of this proposal, receiving an Ellis Act eviction notice for her apartment at 55 Dolores where she has lived since 1976. The building is owned by Urban Green Investments, which has used evictions and tenant buyouts under pressure to vacate rental units and replace them with TIC's (it is also harassing longtime tenants of a nearby building at 49-53 Guerrero). If Mayor Lee and the Supervisors needed further evidence before acting to deter tenant displacement for future condo conversions, the targeting of Mary Phillips is it."_

[http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Ellis_Eviction_Notice_Se...](http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Ellis_Eviction_Notice_Served_on_97_Year_Old_Tenant_As_Speculators_Seek_Weaker_Condo_Law_11208.html)</comment>


Viktor Frankl on How Music, Nature, and Love Give Meaning to Our Lives - <AUTHOR> https://www.brainpickings.org/2020/07/17/viktor-frankl-yes-to-life-love-music/ <comment><USER2> When I was a teenager, my mom (a psychiatrist) gave me her copy of Frankl's treatise on _Logotherapy_ titlled _The Will to Meaning_. That book was so over my head, but something that's always stuck with from it is: life is _unconditionally meaningful_ , and we can discover that meaning through creative actions and experiences, as well as how we come to accept unnavoidable sufferring.</comment>


Colour 0.3.11 is available - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/colour-science/colour/releases/tag/v0.3.11 <comment><USER2> Glad to see this. Python needs better color tools. There is the colormath module, but it is missing a lot of essential functionality, especially for anyone trying to use it for printing. It's useless for CMYK work.

Nothing out there can do true color management in pure python. I just wrote a library to handle basic single-color conversion through arbitrary ICC profiles using the lcms ctypes wrapper around littlecms. That was my first foray into ctypes in Python. He no idea what a PITA it would be.

<comment><USER3> I've used colormath package to convert RGB to LAB and do some DeltaE calculations. What is your use case? You mention print and color profiles? I've been running into those lately and am having trouble understanding the whole 'printing' application I'm not familiar with at all.

<comment><USER4> > I've used colormath package to convert RGB to LAB and do some DeltaE > calculations.

Reading this makes my stomach sore.

Remember that _RGB is not a colour space_. Neither is CMYK. Colour encoding models do not necessarily imply a colour space as outlined by the definition of an RGB colour space via ISO 22028-1.

Even Lab encodings will vary based upon the assumed white point.

<comment><USER3> Care to propose a solution or to elaborate on that? I am quite opened to anything you propose.

<comment><USER4> RGB, much like CMYK, are merely colour encoding models. In the case of RGB, it represents three lights at arbitrary intensities. In the case of CMYK, it more commonly references a series of four inks subject to some arbitrary density scaling. That is, both RGB / CMYK are to cups as resulting colour is to fluids.

What _is not_ expressed in saying "RGB" or "CMYK" are the other critical facets that define what they are referencing. In RGB, what are the colours of the three lights and what is the combined white point? In CMYK, what are the colours of the inks, the paper colour / type, and the illuminant in question? The mixture of the unsaid contexts are what define how colours result to a standard observer.

In the case of Lab, one must take care to assert that the same formulation has taken place before comparing values. For example, it isn't enough to just say "RGB" because of the facets above. What are the colours of primary lights in the source RGB space? The destination you are comparing? What are the white points? What is the white point assumed in the formulation for the Lab conversion?

Only when all of the contexts are identical do the values take on meaning, and a valid comparison within the limits of the encoding model is possible.

TL;DR:

* Make sure you are aware of the primaries of the RGB spaces being compared with Lab.

* Make sure your white points are aligned on the RGB spaces being compared with Lab.

* Make sure your RGB spaces are aligned to the white point of the Lab formulation in question.

* Make sure you are linearising your RGB spaces correctly before converting to Lab; every RGB space typically has a unique transfer function.

* Be well aware of the limitations of Lab, such as red turns yellow and blue turns purple hue nonlinearity etc.

* Be using an appropriate model for the intensities of light being compared. Lab, for example, is not well suited for anything beyond diffuse white reflectance values.

Colour should be able to handle all of the above points, and deliver great looking plots as well!

<comment><USER3> Most the terms you used to explain this go wwwaaayy over my head, but I understand there are many concepts missing in my mind. What is good reading for this? Basically I'm working with industrial cameras and trying to compare the color of an item in an image for verification against stored item attributes (color, shape...)

<comment><USER4> The reading for most of this stuff is ridiculously dense, as well as being more reference.

You sound like a perfect candidate to dig into Colour. There are a great many extremely knowledgeable people around that project that can help.

Mark Fairchild's Color Appearance Models is probably about the most canonical tome one can recommend, with the caveat above.

To do what you are seeking, you would need an accurate profile of your camera in question, as well as likely a spectrophotometer for the objects in question. It is a pretty tricky field.

I would encourage you to contact the Colour Science Twitter feed to get in on the Slack channel for help and guidance.

See you there!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is cool. Something I can't imagine having a use for personally, but clearly something that a lot of research has gone into that fulfills a specific niche particularly well, and python is definitely the right place for it.

Hope your road to stable goes well.</comment>


How did you get into machine learning? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Ho hum, 30-ish years ago AI seemed like a good idea (and it still does). Having arrived at Edinburgh Uni to start an electronics engineering degree, and having heard that they'd created a new AI+CS degree rather late and had no students IIRC, I found I was able to switch to it on the spot.

I still use elements of AI/ML all the time, indeed it's a central feature of my company's product and R&D. But I also say that as soon as it works reliably no one calls it AI any more, so I have lots of not-quite-AI-now tools in my usual toolbox!

</comment><comment><USER3> The reason is that machine learning algorithms are data driven, and are able to examine large amounts of data. On the other hand, a human expert is likely to be guided by imprecise impressions</comment>


Sauron (for emacs): keeping an eye on what's going on - <AUTHOR> http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/2011/12/sauron-keeping-eye-on-whats-going-on.html?_utm=twitter_affiliate <comment><USER2> I have been meaning to play with this project since I saw it a few weeks ago. It looks really useful.</comment>