Cycling commissioners say painted bike lanes don't make cyclists feel safer - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/17/painted-bike-lanes-waste-money-cycling-commissioners <comment><USER2> Painted bicycle lanes are actually dangerous in my opinion. I cycle almost every day in London for now about 6 years. I avoid streets with painted cycle paths if I can (and take parallel side roads instead).

The way I see it, painted cycle lanes makes cyclists feel secure, but does not create much awareness by motorists. They are mainly used on roads with a lot of traffic. Because they are painted they have sometimes hazardous layouts crisscrossing mainlanes (to turn right). The blue ones can be very slippery when wet. I really don't trust them when it is wet.

Having a curb between the road and the cycle lanes, or elevating the cycle lanes on the level of the sidewalks is much saver for cyclists, because motorists can literally not cross over them. It also forces the planners to do a good job when designing junctions. For elevated cycle lanes though, paint can help rasing the awareness of pedestrians who often got in the habit of crossing anything without looking.

What TfL needs is having their planners cycle to work, and to generally rethink their approach to pedestrians and cyclists. The fact that most pedestrian traffic light are often showing red even if no traffic is routed through them and the fact that many junctions with traffic lights for cars (even big ones) do not have pedestrian traffic lights, reeducates everyone not to care about the lights and just walk into the traffic. This is almost as much a hazard to everyone as cars (on smaller roads.with speed bumps anyway), as pedestrians can cross without warning. If this happens this obviously creates the risk of a cyclist (cycling on the far outside of the road to avoid cars) either swerving into traffic or taking a pedestrian out.

<comment><USER3> > _painted cycle lanes makes cyclists feel secure, but does not create much > awareness by motorists_

> _It also forces the planners to do a good job when designing junctions._

Living in Dublin, I have the opposite perspective on this.

I much prefer roads with painted lanes (or better, no cycle lanes), as having cyclists on the road necessarily makes motorists more aware of their existence (particularly when you have a lot of cyclists, so this effect increases with usage). I agree that painted lanes give more of a false sense of security to cyclists than anything (motorists will still ignore you if they can), but with segregated lanes they always ignore you.

This seems fine until you realise that well-planned segregated lanes are much more difficult to achieve (and where I live, an absolutel rarity—we have some of the most dangerously haphazard segregated lanes), and even very well- planned segregated lanes are still quite limiting in terms of cyclist movement. They lead to cycle congestion, cyclists become more of a danger to eachother, and you will _always_ have entry/exit points which are far far more dangerous than if the cyclists had been on the road and visible all along.

On a more political level, they also reinforce the idea that roads belong to cars, and that cyclists, by using them, are invading them and should not be there.

<comment><USER2> On a political level, I think a lot is lost already - at least in London. I am seeing daily both "fundamentalist" behavior from both cyclists and motorists (rarely from pedestrians interestingly). I am catching myself sometimes not paying attention at zebras and junctions to pedestrians who did behave predictively. This usually happens because I am busy watching back and forth watching out for a speeding car (or a driver who clearly saw me but decides to pull out anyway), scooter, or cyclist.

My hope would be that segregating traffic would simplify what I need to pay attention to and I can focus more on pedestrians and other cyclists. The road sharing idea is a nice one. And TfL tried it in places, but realistically speaking it does not work out in a busy place which does not have a culture of watching out for each other.

I do agree though, that cycle lanes on street level separated by a curb from the street can be a pain. I wonder sometimes of they are made intentionally narrow and winding to slow down cyclists or if they are badly planned. Of course there are places where there is not a lot of space to give to a cycling lane. But often there is a lot of space, and it is not used.

In continental Europe cycle lanes are often on the same level as the pedestrian side walk. But I have never cycled in a large city where this is the case (except in Amsterdam for a few days). I wonder if that is a better solution or if it endangers pedestrians more.

<comment><USER3> Having cycled briefly in a few cities in the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Hague), and also in Copenhagen, I found the former cities excellent and the latter stressful.

Copenhagen tends strongly towards segregated lanes: you have to be extremely familiar with the city layout to be able to pre-empt where to enter & exit, and local cyclists come across quite aggressive if you're not constantly perfectly aware of where you're supposed to be going (and going fast enough for them). The lanes are claustrophic and hurried.

Turning at junctions works quite well (cyclists cross with traffic and loop backwards to wait to turn, rather than crossing lanes), but only with very large junctions; this doesn't scale downwards.

In the Netherlands on the other hand, road-sharing is very much the norm. The sheer number of cyclists means bad behaviour just does't seem to be an option for motorists: safety in numbers.

I think this is the real answer. I've seen "fundamentalist" behaviour from fellow cyclists, and it bothers me, but I think it's reactionary when the relationship with other road-users is strained. With growing numbers of cyclists, and shared road-space, I think this wanes. This has been my experience in Dublin anyway: nowhere near the numbers of Amsterdam, etc, but still, the numbers have significantly increased in recent years and the relationship has noticably improved (anecdotally).

<comment><USER4> If I compare cyclists in London (and, there are a lot) to pretty much anywhere in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, the cyclists are far better behaved.

I don't have to worry for my life walking on a pavement that in the next moment a cyclist may decide to go on the pavement because there is a red light on the road at full speed, or almost knock me over, going across a zebra crossing when the light is green for pedestrians. Cyclists in London seem to think they can go regardless and no rule applies to them.

It wouldn't be too surprising in such a circumstance that they don't particularly feel safer with bike lanes.

I don't think this is a numbers issue.

<comment><USER3> To clarify: I don't think having as many cyclists in London as in a Dutch city will bring about the kind of culture and benefits cyclists enjoy in Netherlands; there are so many other factors there.

All I'm saying is that having _more_ cyclists brings about marked improvement for cyclists.

For your particular example (cyclists jumping onto the pavement), this is often down to bad planning. Signals and road layouts are designed exclusively for motorists in most cities, with the question of whether it's _efficient_ to use (not just safe) for cyclists very unlikely to even be mentioned during planning. How fast you can get from A to B in a car is a question enormouse resources are poured into, with complex models developed. The same process is rarely applied to cyclists. If cyclists could get from A to B relatively efficiently without meeting unnecessary barries along their journey, you'd find a smaller minority would be feeling the need to hop on pavements and run reds* through crowds of pedestrians.

* Though on the subject of running reds in general, there's quite a few studies advocating things like the Idaho Stop and the Parisien laws on red lights. In my experience, pedestrian outrage at this behaviour is usually exaggerated and comes down to nothing more than anger at rule-breaking for the sake of it. Accidents whereby pedestrians are injured due to cyclists running reds don't factor highly in statistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are segregated lanes any better? It seems to me that the vast bulk of the danger for cyclists is at intersections (the dreaded right hook, mostly). A segregated lane can make it harder for a car to see you and prevents you from taking the lane to make yourself obvious.

What we need are protected intersections; the rest of the road can be painted or segregated, I don't really care.

[https://peopleforbikes.org/blog/four-u-s-cities-are- racing-t...](https://peopleforbikes.org/blog/four-u-s-cities-are-racing-to- open-the-countrys-first-protected-intersection/)

It really doesn't have to be much, just bollards in the middle of intersections forcing cars to make a wide right turn would be enough.

<comment><USER6> Intersections are dangerous for sure, but I think it mostly depends on the city and driving culture each has.

One thing that segregated lanes help immensely with is double-parking in painted bike lanes, and bus routes that weave in and out of bike lanes to make their stops.

Ideally we'd have both segregated lanes and protected intersections.

<comment><USER7> _bus routes that weave in and out of bike lanes_

Have you really found this to be a problem? Everywhere I've lived and cycled, buses are the most predictable vehicles on the road. When they approach from behind, they leave plenty of space. They rarely go very fast. They stop often enough that you'd never get stuck behind them. Unlike a lot of other "professionally driven" vehicles, they know where they're going and don't make last-second turns. They _signal_ their turns. Any cyclist unaware enough to be endangered by a city bus is also threatened by every other vehicle on the street.

<comment><USER8> > Everywhere I've lived and cycled, buses are the most predictable vehicles on > the road.

living in a midsize US east coast city, this does not match my experience at all. city bus drivers have the same mentality as truck drivers on the interstate: I'm bigger than you so you better get out of my way. it's a common occurrence to see a city bus pull all the way over to the right for a stop, then cut across four lanes of traffic to turn left at the next light.

<comment><USER7> That sounds like a complaint to address to whomever designed that bus route, not to the drivers on the route? I'm sure the drivers don't enjoy that maneuver. (and sure, sometimes that's going to be unavoidable for any particular route...) Frankly, you sound a bit like an _automobile_ driver, complaining about interstates and cutting across four lanes. On a bicycle it's easy to observe, plan ahead, and avoid the maneuver you've mentioned. For one thing, it always occurs in the same place! Also, it's great to be cycling behind a big vehicle as it vacates a lane: you've got first dibs on the free space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If not about painted or not-painted. It's about is the bike lane 4m wide or 1m.

Painting 1m wide bike lanes is just because cities don't want to take away from cars.

Painting 1m wide bike lanes is trying to eat the cake and have it. There is no free lunch.

In Berlin most bike lanes are very narrow [1] while in Copenhagen most bike lanes are wide enough to feel safe and have two bikes next to each other. No one cares about paint.

[1] ... and winding, and blocked all the time by delivery trucks, parking cars and construction sites, and taking 90 degree turns around obstacles, and full of overgrown bushes ...

<comment><USER10> I can think of several states in which bike lanes are basically nonexistent that are better for cycling than my state which goes somewhat out of its way to put in bike lanes simply because the former require an approximately lane- wide shoulder on all but the smallest roads and it is the de-facto bike lane when bikes are present.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The title of the article is a bit inaccurate, the main criticism is that badly marked bike lanes are a waste of money that could better be spend on more adequate infrastructure (so bike lanes that adhere to minimum safety standards etc.)

</comment><comment><USER12> Is any money getting spent on painted bicycle lanes in the UK? I'm surprised to hear that, because the very few I've seen there were a joke. The similar joke examples shown in this article don't seem far-fetched based on my (limited) experience in the UK.

<comment><USER13> Oh yes.

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2009/nov/05/...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2009/nov/05/readers- worst-cycle-lanes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is BS title. Painted cycling lanes are an important part of the cycling environment. No, in themselves, they don't make me - as a cyclist - feel safe. But _without_ them, I will never feel safe. They need to be _added_ to by education from a young age and during driver training, as well as through cultural products such as TV programming, films, books, social media etc. And by "education" I mean the education to never swerve into bike lanes, watching out for bikers, never walking onto bike lanes as a pedestrian etc.

Of course, a hard separation of a bike lane from the other lanes increases safety; but that cannot be expected to exist everywhere, or in most streets even.

<comment><USER15> I don't feel safe on some of the marked cycling lanes I use regularly, but you're right that it's still a good step toward education and acceptance.

There's a marked lane on my commute that I now ride much more carefully than the roads I use, because pedestrians are more likely to step out, and cars open doors without looking, because the lane seems to give them a false sense of safety. But with time they can learn that it should be the opposite.

I'm mostly grateful for clearly marked lanes when there's an incident and I can simply point out that yes, I do actually have a right to be riding there and they should have been looking where they're going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who has recently started to use cycle lanes to move around London I disagree with the view expressed in the article. Many of the cycle lanes I use everyday in West / Central London are only painted.

I personally feel much safer in a cycle lane, even if only a painted one, simply because I don't have to worry as much about getting side-swiped by a bus. Seeing the end of a painted cycle lane is a good indication that the road ahead requires more complex navigation and will often cause me to slow down and be more cautious.

<comment><USER17> As some one who used to cycle a lot in London - the problem is the use of the reserved space at stop lines for cyclists as it teaches cyclist to aggressively undertake cars to get to the front.

An before you down vote me - undertaking and getting hit causes 90% (aprox) of the fatal casualties in London.

<comment><USER7> Could you define that term? All I'm getting are "a formal pledge or promise" and "the occupation of an undertaker".

<comment><USER18> Undertaking = passing on the left, in a system where traffic is meant to drive on the left and pass on the right. By analogy with overtaking, for passing on the right.

Cyclists (in a bike lane or not) undertaking heavier vehicles certainly are involved in a lot of serious accidents. However it's a very twisted view of reality to say that this causes accidents. The proximate cause is the heavy vehicles turning left or pulling to the left without regard for the cyclist in their blind spot.

<comment><USER7> Oh that's a nice word! Being alive is better than being right, so blind spots are a bad place to be. Actually it's fine to be right behind a big vehicle, but I never want to be _beside_ them for more than a couple of seconds...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When there's no dedicated line, just use the sidewalk.

I go really slow near pedestrians / densely populated areas, and I try to minimize danger (think a child getting out of a building suddenly). Before it gets inconvenient or dangerous, I dismount.

I know this can mean a fine, and I am aware that this can put some pedestrians at risk of bruising (again, I am careful, respectful and slow when I go on the sidewalk). But between that and risking death-by-car, well, the choice is simple.

<comment><USER20> No. Don't. You may "try to minimise danger", but one day you will hit someone and injure them. You also make it difficult for nervous or timid pedestrians. I absolutely _will_ walk in your way and give you a mouthful.

<comment><USER21> Sorry, but no amount of verbal chewing out is going to change behavior on this one. It's far safer for me on the sidewalk — and it's far more likely both people walk away from an accident with a pedestrian than a vehicle.

Edit: also, where I live (northeastern US) the roads have craters like Beirut in the 80s. Cars have problems on them, so cyclists ride on the sidewalk rather than swerve all over the road to find a path that won't shred your rims / tires.

<comment><USER22> In most places riding on sidewalks is illegal. I always get pissed when I see bikes hogging my sidewalk and almost hitting me.

<comment><USER21> Yup, it's illegal. So is driving / parking in the bike lane, but the cops in my city enforce neither. Doesn't change a thing — I refuse not to be selfish when it comes to protecting my life.

<comment><USER20> > I refuse not to be selfish when it comes to...

... endangering pedestrians.

<comment><USER23> Something being assumed here is that in the US, we have pedestrians on sidewalks.

In truth, you only see this in large urban core areas, but in most places, even the suburbs, people don't walk anywhere - mainly because in many cases, there's nothing nearby to walk to.

Everybody drives.

That isn't to say nobody walks, but such people are few and far between. Usually, when you see someone on the sidewalk, it's either a skateboarder, a bicyclist, or someone in a powered mobility chair.

This does, of course, vary based on the population and geographical makeup of the area (and weather), but usually, again, the only time you see more than a few people walking on the sidewalk, it's within an urban core area.

Also - speaking on the weather topic - here in Phoenix, Arizona, we don't typically have many walkers on sidewalks in the downtown area, in the summertime, because the heat is extremely brutal (even with shade). At one time, it was also a year-round thing, because there wasn't much to do downtown (and shops closed early), but things have changed in recent years (mainly due to the install of light rail).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This waist could be "understandable" if UK was a pioneer in this field. There are countries with excellent biking infrastructure already. Learn from them.

</comment><comment><USER25> Here's the letter from Chris Boardman and the other commissioners, which doesn't seem to be linked from the Guardian story: [https://www.greatermanchester- ca.gov.uk/media/2145/19-1309-s...](https://www.greatermanchester- ca.gov.uk/media/2145/19-1309-secretary-of-state-policy-ask-letter-for-cycling- and-walking.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER26> As a dutchman i beg to differ.

<comment><USER24> The point of the article is not that the bike lanes are useless. Rather that the way they are implemented is woefully inadequate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just like crosswalks. More accidents on crosswalks than somewhere else.

<comment><USER28> But what about accidents per crossing?

<comment><USER27> Hard to measure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Really depends on implementation. The best and the worst bike lanes are painted on the road.

</comment><comment><USER30> The point of many of these cycle lanes is not to be useful to cyclists but to be useful to the council's PR.

</comment><comment><USER31> Bike lanes exist to get bicycles "out of the way," which is why we have a decades-long alliance between the car-insurance lobby and the sell-bicycles lobby to get bikes off the road and on to facilities.

This is a losing strategy for people who actually ride bikes, the correct one is to lower speed limits.

<comment><USER32> > This is a losing strategy for people who actually ride bikes, the correct > one is to lower speed limits.

I do not think that this is going to cut it. On a good day I easily do 30kph on a good road (that's why I prefer the painted lanes, btw., they tend to give you access to paved roads). With wind, or exhaustion, or any number of reasons, that speed can drop downwards to 20kph. Now I am definitely not the most well-trained person on the streets, but I am among the faster cyclists. So there are many that can only go about 15kph or even slower.

So what speed limit would you actually pick? 20 would slow me down on my bike (I presume you do not belong to that minority that believes traffic rules do not apply to bikes), 30 would leave lots of slower cyclists behind.

In an ideal world, city roads with two lanes would be converted as follows: Speed limit of 60 on the broader left lane, with a minimum speed of 40 or a strict "no bikes" policy. A 2m cycle priority lane on the right, cars may use it but at most 30kph and have to leave it when overtaking. Lanes separated by engravings in the pavement that make noise. Maybe even by some kerbs. Parking on that right lane, in particular deliveries, should be a _serious_ offence.

This way, in the case of serious congestion, cars can also take the right lane (I do not see any reason to demand a free road for any party in traffic), but will naturally use the left lane in better conditions.

This should be seconded by clear paths and traffic lights to turn left from that right lane and to turn right from that left lane.

<comment><USER33> > I presume you do not belong to that minority that believes traffic rules do > not apply to bikes

Personally, I don't see much reason for speed limits to apply to bikes, or at least, for a speed limit intended for cars to apply to bikes. The two classes of vehicles have different concerns.

<comment><USER34> doesn't look like they applies to cars either.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk Sides with Putin, Says AI Will Likely Be the 'Cause of World War III' - <AUTHOR> http://gadgets.ndtv.com/science/news/elon-musk-ai-cause-of-world-war-iii-vladimir-putin-1745869 <comment><USER2> "Last month, Elon Musk snapped at Mark Zuckerberg after the Facebook CEO rejected fears of a super-intelligence running amok as "far-fetched". Musk said he had spoken to Zuckerberg about AI and come to the conclusion that the Facebook founder's "understanding of the subject is limited."

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_2:_Judgment_Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_2:_Judgment_Day)</comment>


H.G. Wells vs. George Orwell: Their Debate Continues Today - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/h-g-wells-vs-george-orwell-their-debate-whether-science-is-humanitys-best-hope-continues-today-88366 <comment><USER2> They were both correct. Example: The internet is a wonderful "fountain of knowledge" and it also opened up a "can of bats!"

With great advantage comes equal disadvantages. Fossil fuels is another example.

</comment><comment><USER3> _What is possible?

What is likely to happen?

What is desirable to have happen?

In a sense the first is Science — what is possible.

The second is Engineering — what are the human factors which chose the one future that does happen from the ensemble of all possible futures.

The third, is ethics, morals, or what ever other word you wish to apply to value judgments.

It is important to examine all three questions, and in so far as the second differs from the third, you will probably have an idea of how to alter things to make the more desirable future occur, rather than let the inevitable happen and suffer the consequences._

"The Art of Doing Science and Engineering" \- Richard W.Hamming</comment>


A Startup Founder's Secret Confession: I'm Not So Busy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/keep-learning-keep-growing/a-startup-founder-s-secret-confession-i-m-not-so-busy-51e6aa45a82a#.jdwi7lwya <comment><USER2> I've been convinced for quite some time that the 60-80 hour work week thing is mostly fictitious bragging and a culture of workaholic bravado. I think people actually lie about how much they work to appear more important or more 'serious'.

In any case if you are doing knowledge or creative work and are working more than 40-50 hours a week (for longer than a short crunch time), you are burning a lot of hours but are probably not working efficiently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another very good post on the topic: [https://m.signalvnoise.com/manufacturing-quality-time- fe043f...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/manufacturing-quality-time- fe043fa7b7a1#.w3hx3i1hr)</comment></comment>


The Most Important Word in Project Management - <AUTHOR> http://bogdans.blogging101.ro/the-most-important-word-in-project-management/ <comment><USER2> I agree with this post wholeheartedly.

At my company I've seen many projects fail, and a few succeed. Our most successful projects have also been the narrowest in scope. Once the project is successful, it's much easier to add on things one by one because you already have something successful. On the other hand, our most epic failure of all time was a project that was supposed to only take a couple of months but went on for many, many months. In my opinion, the project's biggest problem was a lack of naysayers. Said project was going to have every feature ever. It was going to be Facebook, but prettier and with more features. That project was evetually killed of course, but the man hours and resources wasted on it were quite astronomical for something that, in hindsight, should have been pretty obvious that it would fail.

I will add that one skill I've learned is the art of saying 'later' instead of 'no'. If an idea is good but too time intensive or too low priority relative to everything else, 'later' acknowledges that and reserves the right to revisit later but still ultimately is a no, albeit less injurious to the ego of the person asking.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your comment and for reading my post. I totally relate with your story regarding that online project aiming at too many things things... having a too scattered scope is as deadly as a vague scope.

And, as you say, "later" is a help in letting everyone prioritize what's important and urgent: the vital elements for the project's success.

Thanks again for the insights!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _So here it is, the most plain, powerful, single word you have to know, and use when managing a project: NO_

If you aspire to mediocracy in an enterprise, then this _may_ help you survive. Otherwise, it's horrible advice.

If you have serious competitors, then you have to find YES.

If you are attempting to do something extraordinary or for the first time ever, then you have to find YES.

If you are building a startup, then you most certainly have to find YES.

I am _not_ saying that all things are possible. I am saying that you need to find YES. Once you get into the habit of saying NO, you forget how to find YES.

A simple (and timeless) example. Your customer wants Deliverable X in Time Y using Resource Z. You know it's too much and will disappoint. So instead of saying NO as OP recommends, you find a way to do what can be done. It may have a few less features, may need an extra resource, or may take a little more time.

Or better yet, you analyze the constraints long enough to find methods or tools you hadn't considered to say YES to all of it. (We never would have found Framework ABC if the customer hadn't forced us.)

I have often been to only person finding YES when I was surrounded by others preprogrammed to saying NO. That's how they survived. Usually in an enterprise or institution. That same thinking is a disaster in an achievement oriented environment.

Finding YES forces you to stretch beyond your previously perceived limits. Settling for NO dooms you to mediocracy forever.

Some may call this a semantic argument. I call it state of mind. How badly do you want it? Find YES.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for reading my post and for sharing your perspective on this. I totally agree with you on this one. Finding YES is definitely the best mindset to have, as a project manager - I guess this is what I mentioned as well: being a solution seeker.

However, in order to protect "the Definite YES" (in getting things done, in securing resources, in clarifying the scope of the project before starting the work) from its less helping cousin ("the May Be YES"), I prefer to use "NO" to set up clear boundaries, especially when expectations of different stakeholders start to go wild.

Thanks again for sharing your views - great comments, much appreciated. Next week I will have a post dedicated to those areas of project management to which I pay careful attention when saying NO, in order to protect and encourage Finding YES.</comment></comment>


Apple's Jonathan Ive and Craig Federighi: The Complete Interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/155086-apples-jonathan-ive-and-craig-federighi-the-complete-interview

<comment><USER2> Interesting point: no mention of Steve Jobs or his legacy

$ curl -s [http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/155086-apples-j...](http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/155086-apples- jonathan-ive-and-craig-federighi-the-complete-interview) | egrep -i '(steve|jobs)' | wc

           0       0       0</comment>


Mortal Kombat 3 source code leaked - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/download/MortalKombat3SourceCodeDump <comment><USER2> For anyone interested, MK3_source_windows_RC2.tar has the source code for the arcade version of MK3, which contains commented assembly from Ed Boon</comment>


Disney acquires Maker Studios  - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/03/24/disney-buys-maker-studios-and-youtube-investors-cheer/ <comment><USER2> So we come full circle!

In 2006, we were talking about how Youtube was going to change how the news was reported, how all the media we were exposed to would no longer trace back to the same half-dozen companies. That started to happen a little bit, but it started to make more sense for content producers to band together and form networks, partially because of cross-promotion, but also because networks can sidestep Youtube's content ID system (which actually allows IP-holders to take down videos without confirming that they contain infringing content). Networks start to turn into ventures in their own right, established media companies like Time Warner start putting money into them, and now Disney has acquired the most comprehensive and successful network. The decentralized media dream dies again!

I wonder what Maker's future as part of an established company will look like. I hope the acquisition doesn't reduce the level of creative freedom Maker's talent has had in the past, because that seems to be what got them ahead of the other networks.

<comment><USER3> > but also because networks can sidestep Youtube's content ID system

Not since December, the content ID rules are the same for MCN claimed channels now.

<comment><USER4> Misleading, or at minimum not the full picture.

First: The December changes did make the majority of partners ("Affiliates") have no copyright protection. However there are a few huge mitigating factors: The newly established "Managed" partner status is exactly like the old partnership, full content-ID protection, and how the networks have reacted/changed.

Second: Many networks are now offering "Managed" status to many partners, if not all. There are indeed some networks who offer managed status to all partners.

Third: Google has yet to take (public) action against any networks for copyright violations under the new managed system. Until they do networks will continue to treat copyright as a joke and partnerships will remain a cash cow and little partners will remain unsupported.

Source: I'm a YouTube content creator (90k subs, 12m views). Feel free to drop by reddit.com/r/PartneredYoutube if you have any in depth questions, or ask here.

<comment><USER3> Huh, so basically it is the same but now opt-in on a channel level. I stand corrected.

<comment><USER4> Yeah basically. However if Google _does_ enforce copyright violations against networks, we will actually see partnerships start to mean something again... which would be a good change. Currently the majority of networks are little more than scams: promising the world and not following though. Yes, even the big guys.

There are many problems with this business: Copyright and Content-ID, network recruiters (aka highschool kids paid for referrals), lack of visibility into advertising revenue, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This just makes me angry at google. I was wondering when the big boys would become interested in web video, and it looks like it finally happened. It doesn't matter that monetization is difficult, that costs are unreasonably low right now, that production values are often lacking, etc. The fact is that web video has a huge future, and the potential has barely been scratched.

Google/youtube themselves don't even realize the potential, so they've been fucking around with minor feature changes and bullshit like google-plus comment integration instead of treating youtube like a serious endeavor and making big changes (like turning content creators into customers instead of plebian users that get treated like shit at every turn).

</comment><comment><USER6> This marks one of the first sizable exits for a company built almost wholly on top of YouTube as a platform. A lot of people said that Google content partnerships didn't leave enough air in the room to allow for this sort of value creation. I hope this emboldens other firms to support companies working in this space, a lot of wonderful things could still happen.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wrote this [1] comment when Disney acquired LucasFilm:

This means that Disney now controls Marvel, Pixar, LucasArts, ABC, ESPN, A+E, Disney Channel plus all their own original content and of course the parks and merchandising rights for everything stated above.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4719277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4719277)

</comment><comment><USER8> I found this writeup by Mark Suster, one of the investors, a good read: [http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/03/24/how-i-got- the-...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/03/24/how-i-got-the-monkey- off-my-back-today-was-a-good-day/)

</comment><comment><USER9> In related news, Warner Bros. is putting money into Machinima. They had funded the Mortal Combat series on Machinima before, but it looks like they're buying in big now.

[http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/warner-bros-is- buying-a...](http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/warner-bros-is-buying-a- stake-in-struggling-youtube-net-machinima-heres-why-1201127883/)

</comment><comment><USER10> > We also won't know for a while how Disney really intends to use Maker: Will > they get hands on and start directly managing a company that by all accounts > could use some more management help? Or keep the property at arm's length? > Somewhere in between?

The standard story I've heard about Disney is that projects will proceed, maybe even speed up and seem to be on cruise control and then one day you hear the project is done - everyone has been laid-off. A couple years later, a new exec in the same division calls you up and wants you to come in and work on the same exact project you were working on...

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's an example of some of their content: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsS4uCRrN_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsS4uCRrN_Y)

</comment><comment><USER12> Maker recently acquired Blip which likely attracted Disney's attention. It seems a lot of their partners in RPM networks(owned by Maker) have high turnover; many smaller channels with new talent. Blip seems like the desired goal here. $500 million seems absurdly high, but I guess they must be worth it.

Most of their channels seem really, really, insanely low-quality. They had a few larger partners like Ray William Johnson, NicePeter, ShayCarl, etc. But what are the long-term value of partnership with these channels? I know Ray William Johnson bailed on Maker pretty publicly recently. Are these artists going to make youtube videos indefinitely? Are they under contract to churn out a specific number of videos per week?

I'm curious how it all works legally given the loose relationship most people have with youtube.

<comment><USER13> If Disney wanted Blip and that's the reason for this price then not buying it seems like an insane strategic mistake. I found this article [0] which says Maker paid less than $10M for Blip.. and that Blip had funding of at least $24M. Seems like Disney could have made that acquisition an order of magnitude cheaper than this one - and Blip's investors would probably force the higher offer.

[0] [http://allthingsd.com/20130906/maker-studios-finishes- buying...](http://allthingsd.com/20130906/maker-studios-finishes-buying-blip- and-looks-for-new-pile-of-money/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I dont know why I was so naive to think that all these youtube stars just repped themselves and it was all very... home grown if you will.

<comment><USER15> The vast majority do rep themselves. Only the top talent are catered to by the MCNs like Maker.

Then why would a small YouTube star want to join an MCN? The studios do still tend to provide a support structure and tech stack to help you grow your channel. Generally speaking, of course -- there are a lot of MCNs out there and each one operates differently.

<comment><USER3> It's weird seeing comments from anyone who knows the YouTube world on HN.

Did you reverse engineer annotations?

<comment><USER15> Yes, I worked on a reverse-engineered annotations project at some point in time, among other things. The YT space is definitely under-represented here, though I can't say I'm surprised. All the related startups are hybrid tech and media companies who tend to do (public) business more like media companies than tech companies.

I also attended Playlist Live last year (or the year before? I forget). Nice to talk to you Kevin :)

<comment><USER3> That's cool, I was peeking through your company's portfolio and saw the Fullscreen stuff. When George showed me that I was pretty impressed, couldn't figure out how it was done.

Awesome, same!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, I take it all outstanding legal issues with the erstwhile ceo Danny Zappin and other cofounders were resolved then.

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting development. Blip might be part of the reason. I can't see how Disney would pay such a large amount for a company that sits on top of YouTube. Margins are small, zero control, and they provide no real value.

If I were Disney or anyone else, I'd be looking at Rumble.com or Storyful. They are managing similar volumes and content like Maker, but on their own platforms (they distribute outside of the YouTube eco-system). That's where the future is. Like Centigonal mentioned, these companies are actually changing how news is reported.

</comment><comment><USER18> So sad. The stranglehold continues.</comment>


Skin Deep Usability (Microsoft Surface) - <AUTHOR> http://kinesismomentum.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/skin-deep-usability/ <comment><USER2> _The whole experience was probably best summed up by Amanda who, when asked why it was taking us so long to get the machine up and running, and why we all looked so unhappy, replied "Oh, it's just so…Microsofty."_

This is exactly the problem with this device. My memories of my five minutes with one:

1) From a distance: It looks like a giant iPod touch under glass. They are better replicas of iPods than the giant LCD/Plasma screens with an iPod-alike shell at the front of the Apple store.

2) Up close: You can tell it's DLP projected. The image quality was a sizable step down from the gorgeous LCD of the iPod. I think it would have been better to work with a plasma vendor to make a plasma with a thick glass surface.

3) First touch: The top, maybe 1mm or less, of the glass top is soft. You _really_ get the feeling that you could damage it with your fingernail or a tile cup coaster, or other things you could reasonably expect to do to a table top. To their credit, the one I looked at was absolutely pristine, so perhaps it's a perception thing.

4) Other: The stupid white Windows mouse pointer was always on and dead center on the screen. The whole time. It didn't follow the touches, which would have felt unpolished but understandable, it just stuck out like a scab. This kind of thing has to make Steve Jobs cackle with glee.

Overall it looks like a solution in search of a problem, and I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would pay that kind of money for something so superficially polished but so lacking in technical engineering.

<comment><USER3> 2) It has to be DLP projected - there's an infrared camera below the screen that captures your touches - which means that there can be no obstruction between the camera and the table top (like, oh, say, a plasma screen).

3) This is a pliant silicon surface and necessary with the sort of tech that Microsoft is implementing. This is somewhat sad, since hobbyists (look up NUIGroup if you are interested) have gotten better results with a pure glass surface (which obviously takes a lot more punishment).

This is the difference between Apple and Microsoft - attention to detail. MS will get the core bullet point features working, but when using it there are so many rough edges and little things that irk you that ultimately you have a negative experience, despite the fact that the machine is perfectly functional.

<comment><USER2> _This is somewhat sad, since hobbyists (look up NUIGroup if you are interested) have gotten better results with a pure glass surface_

I think this is what bothers me most about it. There are probably at least a dozen different ways to achieve a display of this type and it seems like this one is compromised in each dimension. This would be entirely reasonable for a hobby project or a Google 20% time style corporate internal project, but it's way short for something with a nearly $20k price tag and tons of very self- flagellating promotion.

<comment><USER3> In MS's defense these new methods for multi-touch were not known (or even invented) when the Surface was in the initial design stages - the multitouch field is evolving radically month-to-month, it's impossible for a commercial product to keep up.

The most interesting sensing method IMHO right now is the combined emitter- receiver package, where light reflected from touches induce back voltages on the LEDs serving as backlights themselves. This is pretty elegant, and would allow us to use _far_ superior display technology like plasmas and LCDs, not to mention allow the whole thing to finally approach flat screen TV thickness.

It's pretty expensive though - imagine an array of pure-white LEDs big enough to cover your 65" plasma TV... and the electronics to process all of this data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think it took them half an hour to plug it in and if it did maybe they should stay away from new technology... seriously.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I have no doubt that the device is somewhat unintuitive to setup, but given the size of the machine it wouldn't take them half an hour to physically search it for a place to plug it in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, just by curiosity, I would like to know (it didn't get mentioned in the article) what is the use case for a device like that?

<comment><USER5> Microsoft Surface Demo @ CES 2008: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxk_WywMTzc>

Every time I see a Surface demo I'm struck at the whole "display photos as a jumbled mess, just like real photos!" thing. It just seems so... idiotic.

Anyway, there does seem to be some potential with Surface but it does seem like a bit of a waste in the hands of Microsoft.</comment></comment>


Americans Greatly Overestimate U.S. Gay Population - <AUTHOR> https://news.gallup.com/poll/259571/americans-greatly-overestimate-gay-population.aspx <comment><USER2> Is it possible that what you're seeing in this data is less about inaccuracy and more about how comfortably out people are?

It says the estimates skew greater for younger people and women responding. Well are younger people and women more likely to know which of their friends are LGBT, because of a host of societal reasons that tend to influence men or older folks to wall off their feelings and communicate less about such things?

I'm just saying, having lived in more than a dozen locations in five states and a Canadian province for the past several decades, the 4.5% number feels low to me (as in, impossibly so).

<comment><USER3> 4.5% self-report as LGBT. That's an important distinction to make, and I too would be surprised if it's accurate.

<comment><USER4> It's risen by 1 percentage point since 2012 when they started tracking this, and for millennials, the number is around 8.2%. They don't seem to have data for zoomers yet. [1] This would suggest (imo) that 4.5% is in fact a significant underestimate, but I don't know necessarily that it's as far off as 20%

[1]: [https://news.gallup.com/poll/234863/estimate-lgbt- population...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/234863/estimate-lgbt-population- rises.aspx?g_source=link_newsv9&g_campaign=item_259571&g_medium=copy)

<comment><USER5> Its also important to remember that as humans we tend to vastly over-estimate the incidence of relatively rare things. We tend to think that something happens based on how often we encounter it, without considering the total number of encounters.

4.5% is about 1 in 22. 8.2% is 1 in 12. Even accounting for the fact that most LGBT people are as private about their sexuality as straight people are, its often enough that you're likely to encounter LGBT people on a frequent basis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These people were asked to choose between 6 options. _Every_ number in every option was higher than the true value. Is it any wonder people overestimate when primed this way? I wonder how many other poll results people rely on are this obviously biased.

Edit: I now believe this is incorrect, see below.

<comment><USER7> Eh, it's clear priming didn't have too much of an effect here. The single most selected answer in every year was >25%. Respondents thought the number was too low to begin with.

<comment><USER8> There are a _lot_ of sources of sloppiness here, though.

The question is sloppy relative to the definitions. They _asked_ "Just your best guess, what percent of Americans today would you say are gay or lesbian?", but the measuring stick is what portion of people _identify_ as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. I would be a little surprised if people use exactly the same framework to decide if someone _else_ is gay as they use to decide if they want to _personally identify_ as gay.

There's no I-have-no-clue choice.

If you assume some fraction of all respondents are just guessing, and they know they're guessing based on a 100% scale, it would make some sense for the results to skew towards a choice given 75% of the scale.

Young people give estimates that are significantly higher, but a cursory search (not sure about the veracity) suggests that LGBT self-reports _also_ sort very strongly by age ([https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/visualization/lgbt- st...](https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/visualization/lgbt- stats/?topic=LGBT#demographic)). As far as I can tell, the survey Gallup is using (on identification) doesn't provide an age breakout. I don't want to be _too_ hyperbolic, but the change in the acceptability of _identifying_ as LGBT over the last 70 years is pretty profound, and it seems at least plausible from the data that much of the difference in age groups (and, for that matter, partisan affiliation) could disappear if controlled for different identification rates among people's actual peer groups.

If so, the headline is more like, "Most Americans assume everyone in America is a bit more like their peers than they are."

This feels a little bit like asking one set of people "How many Americans have ever cheated on a test?" and asking another set "Have you ever cheated on a test?" and then publishing an article about how "Americans Greatly Overestimate How Many Americans Have Cheated on a Test"

<comment><USER7> > it seems at least plausible from the data that much of the difference in age > groups (and, for that matter, partisan affiliation) could disappear if > controlled for different identification rates among people's actual peer > groups

This assumes that homosexuality is evenly distributed across age groups, something that is directly contradicted by the data. Your bias makes you think that this is caused by unacceptability of identification, but you would need to show that the change in acceptability has only affected younger generations.

As a counter-example, people who have worn LA lights sneakers are disproportionately under 30. It has become culturally acceptable to wear LA Lights sneakers over the last 15 years, perhaps older people are under- reporting their wearing of the sneakers?

> "How many Americans have ever cheated on a test?" and asking another set > "Have you ever cheated on a test?" and then publishing an article about how > "Americans Greatly Overestimate How Many Americans Have Cheated on a Test"

This metaphor seems directly contradicted by: > the change in the acceptability of identifying as LGBT over the last 70 years is pretty profound,

The change in ever cheating on a test over the last 70 years does not seem pretty profound to me.

It's clear that your personal bias is that there is an iceberg of non- identifying homosexuals who still feel oppressed. Even in SF, the number barely reaches 15% [1]

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States#By_locality)

<comment><USER8> Sigh. I probably didn't phrase something clearly enough. Or perhaps we're not occupying the same universe. Since I was feeling free to impute sloppiness to Gallup last night, I'll do my best to take your imputation of bias in stride.

> This assumes that homosexuality is evenly distributed across age groups, > something that is directly contradicted by the data. Your bias makes you > think that this is caused by unacceptability of identification, but you > would need to show that the change in acceptability has only affected > younger generations.

Exactly the opposite. It is possible that a significant fraction of the age correlation the poll observed might disappear if they controlled for different identification rates at different ages. They don't try to use the data to investigate the possibility that the rates young people guess and the rates old people guess are actually pretty similar (even if over-estimated!) relative to identification rates in their peer group. It directly assumes the rate (at least of identification) can differ.

> This metaphor seems directly contradicted by... The change in ever cheating > on a test over the last 70 years does not seem pretty profound to me.

The point of the metaphor isn't a time-correlated rate change. It's that the narrative of the release (Americans don't know Americans) is trying to compare quantities that might be expected to differ (because they measure different things) and then making news out of the fact that they aren't the same.

> It's clear that your personal bias is that there is an iceberg of non- > identifying homosexuals who still feel oppressed. Even in SF, the number > barely reaches 15% [1]

I have no strong opinion on or suspicion about what portion of the population does or doesn't identify as gay. If anything, I think the entire project of ontologizing our sexuality is fraught.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The LGBTQ community seems to be especially visible online. If you spend a lot of time online, it's possible to have your perception skewed for that reason.

You also have to consider that different people define these things differently. Some people will self identify as _bisexual_ based solely on feeling attracted to other people, having no actual experience. Meanwhile, there are people who feel that you have to actually have (substantial) sexual experience with both genders to qualify for the label.

I've seen advocates say things like "You don't have to give your sexual history to prove you are bi." and I've seen people talk about feeling attracted to members of their own sex and realizing they are actually bi, but don't yet have experience with members of their own sex because of taboos.

So you can potentially have two different people look at the exact same data and draw different conclusions concerning who qualifies for what label.

Different cultures also have different baseline concepts concerning sexuality. Some cultural differences will not be readily captured by the questions used in a survey, especially if they don't take the time to clearly delineate their terms.

</comment><comment><USER10> Okay, now have them estimate the proportion of, say: Muslims, people who can't walk, two-parent households, and retired military. Are these any more accurate?

</comment><comment><USER11> People also overestimate the amount of crime in America, the divorce rate, and how much money YouTube "celebrities" make.

Perception is driven by exposure. Both are driven by media.

<comment><USER12> The old adage: "TV will rot your brain" seems more true the older I get. Probably needs to be updated to include spending too much time on the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The media skews everything. Almost every TV show has a homosexual character, a black computer programmer, and an ass-kicking female martial arts expert. Hollywood has to parade its ideals, after all.

And to some extent, it's showing you how urban sophisticates view their own world, amplifying the same skew.

I remember some really old poll from a NYC high school (decades ago) in which the students estimated the Jewish population of the US at 50 percent, and the black population of the US at 50 percent. Because that was very close to the surrounding neighborhood's actual demographics. Even math like to stay local.

<comment><USER14> I would actually be interested in seeing a crude analysis of this, because I don't know if there is a skew or if we just tend to notice the things that break our expectations.

There are a few recent shows where a gay character is a part of the core ensemble, but I'm not sure gay characters are _overall_ more than 1 out of every 30.

<comment><USER15> Few shows have casts in the 30s. It's almost unheard of.

What modern show doesn't have a gay character within its main cast?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this just not classic recency bias? Many TV shows feature a gay couple/character, and gay marriage was in the national news for years. People are shown examples through media constantly, and therefore think it's more prevalent than it really is.

This applies to almost all issues too, plane accidents being one of the more obvious ones (plane travel is many times safer than car travel, and yet many people don't see it that way).

Thinking Fast and Slow is a great book that covers at length recency bias and its affects [1]. Quite eye opening to me was one study where people were asked to spin a wheel with 1-100, and then asked how many African nations are in the UN. The number on the wheel had a profound affect on the number people picked [2], despite the fact that the number on the wheel should clearly has no meaning.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel- Kahneman/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel- Kahneman/dp/0374533555)

[2] [https://www.realclearscience.com/lists/10_problems_with_how_...](https://www.realclearscience.com/lists/10_problems_with_how_humans_think/anchoring.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> > Americans' estimate of the proportion of gay people in the U.S. is more than > five times Gallup's more encompassing 2017 estimate that 4.5% of Americans > are LGBT, based on respondents' self-identification as being lesbian, gay, > bisexual or transgender.

I would have guess it was around 10%, because I've read that number from several sources before, so 4.5% is a surprise. Today I also learned that the 10% number I'd read has been pretty controversial in the past. [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/05/10-per- cent-...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/05/10-per-cent- population-gay-alfred-kinsey-statistics)

Looking at Wikipedia's article, higher numbers among youth globally seem to be a common trend. I would expect it's not the population changing, but the stigma being shed. I wonder if it will take a few more decades before the numbers stabilize enough to be trustworthy...

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orien...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation)

<comment><USER18> Or that youth is experimenting before they decide one way or another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This can also be explained by the fact that humans are terrible at estimating percentages. I would assume we'd see similar result for other questions. "3% of the population" sounds ridiculously low, but if you interact with 30 people each day you're likely to meet someone in that small category.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you look at pride month and the level of marketing and news associated with it, one would estimate that the gay population is huge. Nearly every major corporation on linkedin has a rainbow logo, my uber the other day showed their ride path as a rainbow. The level of influence that LGBTQ currently has in the American mind share far outsizes their population, even now I am worried my account will be banned for mentioning this.

I have actually had many people from different walks of life mention this in the last month, people are taking note.

<comment><USER20> I would be jaw-on-the-floor shocked if you were banned for your comment, and I think the suggestion otherwise gives your ideas a "too hot for HN" cachet that they haven't earned. There is no evil empire hunting down the renegade free- thinkers who dare to say that LGBT activism is disproportionately influential. If anything, that's the whole point.

"We're here, we're queer" isn't just a catchy rhyme, it's a statement of purpose: the problem isn't just discrimination and violence, but marginalisation. If you can treat a person as an outlier and the group they represent as a rounding error, it's easy to justify mistreating them. I mean, there are always a few angry weirdos who show up at the town hall, right? Just ignore them and they'll go away.

So why throw huge flamboyant parades? Why make flags and shirts and bumper stickers? Why force us to think about them? Well, I can probably name a bunch of groups that you aren't forced to think about, and are doing far worse because of it. That's activism. Being aware of something is a prerequisite to caring about it.

<comment><USER21> Marginalisation is the big problem. An other community comes in mind that is currently only allowed to congregate in small designated reservation where the general public is warned of their presence. The size of that demographic is estimated to be bigger than the LGBT community and yet holds no political influence and I doubt there has been a single US presidential candidate in history that given them positive focus on the political agenda. Most seems happy to regard them as a few weirdos that can be kept out of sight and mind from the rest of society. LGBT activism and in particular the pride parade are good examples of how to break out of such public perception.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That must be because of the over promotion of LGBT then.

Also look at this: [https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/06/24/lgbtq-a...](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/06/24/lgbtq- acceptance-millennials-decline-glaad-survey/1503758001/)

"Young people are growing less tolerant of LGBTQ individuals, ... , a survey released Monday shows."

Because the promotion and attention seeking is everywhere, people think it's everywhere. That's why we're starting to see it backfiring now. And, lots of parents just don't want that message broadcasted to their kids all the time, at least not until they're a certain age. Parents realize the whole 'having a weewee doesn't make you a boy' story can be extremely harmful to young children. And so they teach their children to ignore those influences when they encounter them. That starts to reflect now in polls and attitudes.

I bet on the LGBT community to start fighting even harder for tolerance again though, because the activists (who do all the speaking) seem to be quite incapable of self reflection and self examination.

<comment><USER23> As a gay person I don't see that at all. My sexuality has always been a major hot button such that as a boring, tech-obsessed geek who mostly keeps to himself my presence has been a major source of gossip in my home town, at school, at the places I have worked, and in the urban neighborhoods where I have lived.

As far as I can tell this is mostly related to the psychological mechanism of Altruistic Punishment. Calling someone out on their perceived flaws generates an immediate boost in social status and provides opportunities for bonding. Whether this is the mechanism or not, it is an undeniable fact that my being gay has been a major issue for me in essentially every social context.

When I march in Pride Parades or insist on equal insurance coverage at work this is not me promoting myself or my homosexuality at all. This is me attempting defend myself from the crushing an inescapable force of homophobia in this culture. If people would stop promoting their issues with homosexuality then none of this would be necessary. I am just a person with the same issues and needs as everyone else. It is rampant homophobia that does the most to promote homosexuality as an issue and subject for discussion.

<comment><USER24> > Calling someone out on their perceived flaws generates an immediate boost in > social status and provides opportunities for bonding.

The important part here is ' _perceived_ flaws'. The whole dynamic you're pointing at is one where people will virtue-signal and _pretend_ to be "altruistic punishers", in order to abuse/bully someone that they hate for _other_ , concealed reasons - often, this is an inflated sense of self-worth or status that the targeted person is threatening in some way. The abuse is just as likely to involve allegations of, e.g. homophobia as homosexuality! These things are simply immaterial to the deeper facts of what's going on. Most often, others will go along with the thinly-veiled bullying simply out of habit, or as a ploy to engage in their own signaling and raise their status in the surrounding community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How can we be certain the "actual" U.S. Gay population is 4.5% of the population? We know not everyone who is LGBT is out or identifies on these surveys.

Sure, there's undeniably a large cap between ~20% and 4.5%. But it's kind of meaningless to say what the absolute difference is, if we can't be certain how many remain closeted.

<comment><USER26> It's not meaningless as it's important to plan for populations based on size. From a health perspective, there are programs targeting helping gay populations and allocating funds accurately is important so the most people are helped.

There are many practical reasons for know demographics. There are limitations and it's probably difficult to know the exact percentage, but we still need to know as accurately as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The cynical part of me says this is done intentionally for politically posturing.

</comment><comment><USER28> This... Makes perfect sense. And it's really odd that the population would increase instead of decreasing, for obvious reasons.

Whatever the case, there must be something wrong with millennials and younger, but I'd bet it's more likely to be _over_ reporting instead of underreporting.

</comment><comment><USER29> 8.55% of males on OkCupid indicated they weren't straight. 28.95% of ESFJ males said they weren't straight. If normed to the general population (given personality type frequency), 15.7% of males are not straight.

</comment><comment><USER30> Alternative headline: Gallup greatly underestimates US Gay Population.

<comment><USER15> Sure, but you better have research to back it up. Gallup has theirs.

Honestly I don't know why 5% is controversial. It's one in twenty. 25% would be one in four. Do you really know one in four homosexuals unless you live in, say, San Fran?

<comment><USER30> Well, sexuality is a spectrum. The exact number of gay people depends on what is defined as a cut-off. It seems reasonable to me that at least 1 in 4 people wouldn't be 100% straight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How did they come up with the selection of these bins? Looks like one of these studies that are designed with a result in mind.

</comment><comment><USER32> Something is weird about this poll. They are talking about the average person thinking it's 20%, which is already crazy, but the most picked answer was 25% or more. What would the average have been if Gallup had allowed people to pick higher values?

</comment><comment><USER33> the most useful thing that article points out is that there isnt a clear way to count LGBT populations, as these are all different things.

There are also other groups of people wishing to be included in non-cisgender and non-hetero movements.

It means the cisgender and heterosexual population is greatly overestimated but simply easy to conform to.</comment>


Firefox vs. IE in O'Reilly Network Logs - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/07/update_firefox.html <comment><AUTHOR> The interesting point here is that the new IE release had no effect on Firefox adoption - it only affected the IE6 numbers. Personally, I find this somewhat surprising, but also more interesting than the fact that firefox now has a narrow lead (for a site with a tech audience).

Once users go to Firefox, they don't go back to IE. It's a one way street.

<comment><USER2> This might just be me, but I often am unable to use the back button on firefox - its an annoying problem. I have to use the history or some other hack to go back when this happens, about 20% of the time.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Advantages of Using ZFS on Ubuntu? - <AUTHOR> So the new Ubuntu is out (version 20) and I was wondering if I should experiment with ZFS[0]. I read about ZFS online and I'm impressed by its ability to be resilient and survive power outages and still keep your files intact.
But what's the main unique selling point of ZFS and why would this USP compel someone to use it over say, ext3/4?
Also, how does one go about encrypting files with ZFS? I thought LUKS works just fine. Is the crypto in ZFS even vetted and peer reviewed and audited and can I trust it?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS <comment><USER2> ZFS differs from ext3/4 in the sense that ZFS correspond roughly to ext3/4 + lvm + luks + snapper.

This is because ZFS is a volume-managing filesystem.

IMHO the best feature is snapshotting: you can take a snapshot of a filesystem, change anything and then decide if you want to go back or continue.

This is invaluable for backup: you can take a snapshot, perform an update (change kernel, update some service, alter a database table or whatever) and then try and validate the update. If anything goes wrong you can restore the whole state of the filesystem to the snapshot time.

This has saved me when a nextcloud update went wrong and basically trashed my installation. No worries: I shut down everything, unmounted the filesystem ("dataset", in zfs parlance) and roll-back the filesystem.</comment>


Ask HN: Safe ways to recieve small amounts of money in India (no paypal)? - <AUTHOR>

This may be a stupid questions, but I have already accepted in my most famous blog post that I have made asking stupid questions a habit.
I received a small gig after I posted a comment on HN (I just love you all). The payments will be small, around 12-15$/ payment (menial work I suppose) . The problem is I have never done an international transaction before. I have a bank account which does support internet banking, but a cousin of mine has informed me that there can be some problems if I receive payments in Dollars (or any other bank currency) directly to my bank account. I don't want to you paypal because a) I do not have my PAN card ready yet, and b) I have heard too many horror stories about it.
So my question is, is there a safe way (tax department safe, if you know what I mean) to get such small payments in India? <comment><USER2> Hmm. It's almost impossible to get money in India without Govt. knowing about it - RBI is way to smart for you.

Try Western Union? It's for personal payments thought - so make sure they have no problem sending it that way.

Call up your bank and ask if there is a problem in you receiving money in dollars, I don't think there should be any.

$12-15 are just 500-600 bucks. Don't bother much, if there is too much hassle, just skip the money.

<comment><AUTHOR> I too am planning to do this one just for karma (the real one, not the HN one :) ) if it becomes too much a hassle.

<comment><USER2> Sounds cool! Or ask them to buy you a domain name and get a website going :P

<comment><AUTHOR> My thoughts exactly

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you are getting money for some website or some service and your customers are general users, I guess it is best to stick to paypal (please get a PAN card ASAP). General users might be uncomfortable to use other lesser known methods to make payments. "So my question is, is there a safe way (tax department safe, if you know what I mean) to get such small payments in India?" Please do not evade taxes. Do follow legal means to save them but do not do anything illegal (i.e if you mean this way).

</comment><comment><USER4> I am thrilled by something new emerging - <http://bitcoin.org>

If you like emerging technologies - check it out!

<comment><USER5> I put like 3 months of cpu time into generating coins, while the difficulty raised an order of magnitude and the value has gone up a couple orders of magnitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> BTW, you always can accept PayPal and never deposit it to your bank account. Instead spend it for purchases on ebay, hosting or domain name.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hawala?

<comment><USER7> Unless you want to send him to tihar

<comment><USER8> What? Why?

Hawala is perfectly acceptable. I use it to transfer money throughout the U.S. because it's cheaper than Western Union, and faster than bank transfer. 5 mins, $6 to send $200.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Xoom.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I checked out the site, seems really nice. I think the payer would have to register yes? Another question, I do have a PNB account (their trusted local partner) but do not have netbanking activated for it. Do they allow transfer to other banks say SBI. Also have you personally used this?

<comment><USER9> I've used it a bunch over the past 5+ years.

Payer does not have to register. The money is just deposited into their accounts, though it could take upto a week especially if you pay using your bank acct and not credit card.

There should be a list of banks they accept. It's pretty comprehensive I think.</comment></comment></comment>


A Flask module pushing exceptions to Datadog - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mindflayer/flask-breathalyzer <comment><AUTHOR> It's derived from the Flask plugin of the 'raven' module (aka Sentry), still missing some tests and a good refactor after them, but already something meaningful, imho.</comment>


Readings in Database Systems, 5th Edition - <AUTHOR> http://www.redbook.io/ <comment><USER2> For an interesting overview of the current landscape in database development, checkout this awesome interview[0] featuring Michael Stonebraker (one of the co-authors of this book). Hands down my favorite podcast episode!

[0] - [http://www.se-radio.net/2013/12/episode-199-michael- stonebra...](http://www.se-radio.net/2013/12/episode-199-michael-stonebraker/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Stonebraker recently gave a talk at my school on where he thinks databases are headed in the future[0]. Definitely worth a watch.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRcecxdGxvQ&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRcecxdGxvQ&feature=youtu.be)

<comment><USER4> I just watched the whole video and this made me giggle a bit:

NoSQL Means: \- No SQL (2012) \- Not only SQL(2014) \- Not yet SQL (2015)

I think it's gonna be "No more NoSQL" in 2016.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps. Meanwhile, I'm waiting for the NoHTML, NoCSS and NoJS equivalents :)

<comment><USER6>
        > I'm waiting for the NoHTML, NoCSS and NoJS equivalents

Jade, SASS, and CoffeeScript? :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.dbms2.com/2008/02/16/stonebraker-database- taxonom...](http://www.dbms2.com/2008/02/16/stonebraker-database-taxonomy/), from 2008, may provide some historical context.

Anyhow, I saw this only after hitting my alcohol tolerance for the night, so I haven't made it all the way through on a first read. That said:

1\. Mike writes confusingly about MapReduce. In one place he calls it a "data model". That's wildly incorrect. In another he says that Hadoop was introduced as a MapReduce clone. That's a more minor error, mainly in product naming.

2\. Mike also oversells the success to date of columnar analytic RDBMS. That said, he's at least directionally correct. But Oracle and Teradata (specifically in its classical row-based mode) aren't dead yet.

3\. I think Mike slightly misinterprets what's going on with SparkSQL. It's not directly in the analytic RDBMS category, and those who try to use it as such often give up. Rather, there are data processing pipelines, and SQL is used in certain necessary and high-volume steps.

</comment><comment><USER8> Awesome, this is also a good read on databases: [http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/fntdb07-architecture.pdf](http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/fntdb07-architecture.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the link, its the second link of the first chapter in the red book. I wonder if it would be possible to find links to all the cited papers. Will look around and post back.

Edit: I downloaded all the papers and added them to a single folder - [http://nindalf.com/redbook](http://nindalf.com/redbook)

If I should replace or remove any of the pdfs there, please let me know.

<comment><USER10> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I went through Sciore's book [0] while learning about relational database internals. As part of his book, the author also developed a minimal database system named SimpleDB [1] in Java. I can safely say that its source code is very easy to understand. Though the book is not free, SimpleDB is.

[0]: [http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd- EHEP000711...](http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd- EHEP000711.html)

[1]: [http://www.cs.bc.edu/~sciore/simpledb/intro.html](http://www.cs.bc.edu/~sciore/simpledb/intro.html)

<comment><USER12> Sadly, the book has a ridiculous price.

<comment><USER12> Gladly, the course notes from the author is freely available. The book closely follows it:

[http://goggle-db.googlecode.com/files/DATABASE_in_Java.pdf](http://goggle- db.googlecode.com/files/DATABASE_in_Java.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> OT

My father introduced me to Jung's Red Book [1] many years ago; it is a truly fascinating psychology book.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Book_(Jung)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Book_\(Jung\))

</comment><comment><USER14> Now in EPUB and kindle, too. [https://unglue.it/work/153041/](https://unglue.it/work/153041/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I love people who provide free scientific material for college student (or overall everybody). I am in religious country and I am ex-Muslim . In my perspective , if I were to choose prophet for humanity , I would choose people who educate people (or provide education material -books , papers, etc- for people) freely .

p.s. no offence . I am not saying people who selling their books are bad guys, not at all . I am just saying people who provide free material in my opinion are doing something incredible to humanity .

 _update_ : When I am saying "educate people* , I absolutely mean science.

<comment><USER16> Isn't science and things like the invention of the scientific method and Arab numerals deeply rooted in the history of Islam?

<comment><USER17> Not at all.

<comment><USER18> Cite? Cause Al-Hassan Ibn Al-Haytham (Arab muslim), Al-Biruni (Persian muslim) and Ibn Sina (Persian muslim) among others played a big role in the development of the scientific method.[0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#Emergence_of_inductive_experimental_method)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Angular vs. React: What to Choose for Your App? - <AUTHOR> https://keenethics.com/blog/angular-vs-react-what-to-choose-for-your-app <comment><USER2> From the conclusion:

> Eventually, React vs Angular is all a matter of personal preference, a > matter of skills and habits.

Basically, this. You can build a great Single Page Application in either. Angular has a larger learning curve, with its wider API surface, but if you wanted to replicate everything Angular had on a React stack, you'd need a generous number of open-source packages that can be used in conjunction with React, thereby reaching a somewhat similar API Surface.

Personally, I prefer React's un-opinionated nature. I tend to distrust frameworks that claim to solve all of my problems, because at some point, they won't. Case in point: Meteor failed to scale with its reliance on Mongo Oplog tailing. (The community response was the Meteor redis-oplog package). Also, since Meteor was so opinionated, a large community failed to grow around it (since certain requirements, like using MongoDB, made it immediately dead on arrival to some Enterprise usage), and it simply lost relevance to competing solutions.

By picking-and-choosing with React, for example, you can choose the best forms implementation out there. With this competition among forms libraries, the community will self-select the best ones. With Angular, you're expected to use the proscribed '@angular/forms' package.</comment>


Feedback on my startup job aggregator - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupshiring.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Today I launched Startups Hiring. The idea is simple; eliminate recruiter posts, noise and the need for startups to maintain and manage job postings on third party job boards. I ended up building a curated list of companies that are crawled for open positions directly from their career pages. Links are fresh and updated daily. Clicking a link takes you directly to the job description on the company website. The service is free and we are adding new companies every day.

I would love to hear feedback from the HN community and suggestions on possible ways to generate revenue outside of featured links (which I have).

<comment><USER2> First of all, let me say I think your site is exceptionally attractive. I am immediately presented with the logos of scores of exciting startups. This engages me right away. Although, at the moment the front page is a bunch of Airbnb listings. I think the variety of logos does a lot for the site's first impression, so you might want to make sure there aren't too many listings of a single company on the front page. Also remember to add a favicon.

Featured links seems like a good way to go. Do you actually have companies paying for featured links at the moment?

Edit: Oh, and your Adap.tv logo is broken.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Currently when you add a new company it does the initial crawl and brings in all of their listings. Future crawls only bring in the new listings, keeping the cmpany variety good and mixed. I haven't come up with a good way to get around the initial crawel yet, short of randomizing the dates for launch.

All the logos are from crunchbase. I will shoot them a message.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Grats! A few suggestions from the guy who ran WorkZoo.com - also a job scraper, one of Time Mag's top 50 sites of 2005 - sold to Jobster in the same year:

-Republish the jobs in a directory by location on your own domain. Big SEO win.

-Scrape the big boards but link to them (as you already are linking to the source). They won't mind and when we stopped scraping Careerbuilder they called us and asked why.

-Try solving the location problem by getting a list of the 5000 biggest cities in the US and parsing the content for those cities. Filter out common english words from the list of 5000 cities though. Make sure you store lat/lon once you've tagged a job with a city so you can do radius search.

-Forget categories for the UI. Users can just use search to find what they want. If you need categories for your directory then come up with a list of 100 search queries and use that to generate 100 "categories".

-This really needs to be a search engine so shove it into sphinx or a similar fulltext engine. I used to use swish-e which sucked so badly - I envy the options you have for fulltext these days.

-Not really sure why you're limiting yourself to startups, but if this is just a fun project or a way to contribute to the community then that's the way to go. If you want to earn $$ then I'd index everything or perhaps the most lucrative sectors.

If you're serious about this be sure to chat to Dave McClure who used to run marketing for SimplyHired and take a look at simplyhired.com and indeed.com for biz model and implementation ideas. I'm also happy to be an advisor if this turns into a business.

Best of luck!!

<comment><USER4> I think the whole point is that some people want to go work for only startups. By creating a site where you know those are the only jobs, you attract that niche. The market for general developer job boards seems very saturated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> \- can't search by location (searching for "new york" has many false positives and missing results)

\- need an option to flag a listing for incorrect information (e.g. <http://www.dailymotion.com/us/about/jobs#ref05> comes up as being in Paris), job no longer available, etc

\- would be nice to see some indication of _when_ a job was posted-- stale listings have less value.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't actually added location search yet. Thats next. Its also really difficult to determine the location because I'm working with limited data. The idea was to use the headquarter data, especially since most startups don't have multiple locations.

I will add the "discovery" date to give a bit better idea of when things were found. But my crawler removes jobs that are no longer listed, so the results should always be fresh within a day.

Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER6> "Discovery" date is very useful for filtering out generic job postings that HR sometimes keeps up just to collect the resumes. Not sure if this is at all legal in the US, but in Canada this is a very common practice.

With regards to the location uncertainty - better not show anything in this case. Until you said "headquarters" I didn't even bother to look at the name of the column and assumed it was the location of the actual position.

Also the information on your site is not meant for pleasure reading, it is meant for scanning. As such the list needs to be _much_ more compact. I'd take the logotypes out, reduce the line-height as well as the width of the table.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Allow me to play devil's advocate. There are _plenty_ of job listings for all kinds of companies including startups. Why do I want to use yours?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. The best startup job site in my opinion is startuply. The problem is it's not every startup. They only have what a company willingly goes and posts. Startups Hiring is in its infancy, so theres not a lot of companies yet. But the end goal is the be the largest list of startup jobs. I think the only way to attain this is be eliminating the requirement of a company physically going and making a post.

<comment><USER8> Coincidentally , startuply's main page is throwing this lovely error: <http://pastebin.com/7pCDmJBS> .

In any case, location search should exist. It is one of the most important requirements that a job seeker uses to filter desirable listings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a great idea. I am graduating soon and would love these kinds of sites.

I wish there was an advanced search where I could at least search if the company was looking for fresh graduates or senior engineers.

If you really want me to sign up, create a "favorite" button so that I can look at the job later.

I also wish there was a time of the post or some indication of how old the job posting is.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER10> Some sort of categorization might be worthwhile (and do-able, since you're sticking in the startup vertical). Maybe tags/labels, given that your audience is pretty geeky? i.e. "engineering, design, mobile, marketing, management", etc. Browsing 600+ jobs is not just about good pagination controls.

+1 on the searchability issues. Should be able to search by city/region.

</comment><comment><USER11> Location search (or at least sort) would be good. I'd love to see a set of icons that give extended info for each job (i.e. willing to hire remote workers, maybe funding stage or approximate company size)

<comment><USER12> Seconded on this, plus the ability to sort/filter on these criteria. For me, the ability to search for "only telecommute jobs" is the make or break factor on whether or not a job board is worth my while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is Great. I was going to ask what direction you were going to take this in.. but it's interesting that you only have jobs listed for/at really startup companies that most geeks want to work at. I'd say you should drive that point home a little more if that is what your focusing on.

Otherwise, yeah dude take it to the next level. Keep reaching out to add more of them.. I'm sure you can be well known for offering jobs in this space.. great quick clean idea!

</comment><comment><USER14> Very cool Adam! Ive always wanted a site like this. Definitely keep it focused exclusively on start-ups and never touch the Monsters of the world.

</comment><comment><USER15> -I would build this on top of an existing job board platform. There are plenty out there, no need to reinvent the wheel.

-Include job description summaries on your site - use some kind of onmouseover div if you don't want to clutter the page.

-Have you considered scraping from other startup job boards out there?

-How are you planning on monetizing the site?

</comment><comment><USER16> It seems your search might not be working properly, <http://www.startupshiring.com/search/PHP> brings back nothing, yet you have at least one(the collegehumor PHP developer position).

<comment><AUTHOR> I think my fulltext search might be killing off words that are 3 letters or under. Will have to look into that. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This might seem crazy, but I keep reading the url as "startup shiring". Too much LOTR, maybe.

<comment><USER18> That's how I read it too. I couldn't imagine the exact metaphor he was going for (companies start in the shire before adventuring out into the world?), but it's not off-putting, at least. It's no expertsexchange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> thoughts:

it would be very useful to have the ability to filter/sort the listings based on things like job types (developer, dba, sales, etc), posted time (if you can), or location.

you've eliminated the recruiter posts/noise/etc., but in doing this, you've become the new middleman. you might be able to contact the companies and find out if you could negotiate any referral bonus if someone gets hired through the use of your site. worth a shot, at least.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm planning to add a tags system that will organize jobs and companies by their type. Thats up next!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> May be you should tie-up with <http://www.linkup.com/>

</comment><comment><USER21> It would nice to able to sort by those headings your have (Company and location especially)

</comment><comment><USER4> Your search feature filters out #, so searching for "C#" yielded search results for C.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like theres a few problems with my fulltext search. Going to update it sometime today to be more accurate. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For startups, a categorization by stage of company would be usefull.

</comment><comment><USER23> first rxn "wonderful!!!"

I like the idea and the simple design. hope you'll resolve the little problems in search - eg: search on company name not returning any results

</comment><comment><USER24> Agotterer,

I LOVE the simplicity of your design. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER25> looks good, though it's a bit strange that the "n results found" copy reflects the results only on the current page, not all search results.

</comment><comment><USER26> how about putting the salary range as well if possible, something similar to indeed.com.

</comment><comment><USER27> Internships Support?

</comment><comment><USER28> great job1

</comment><comment><USER29> I love how simple it is. In fact, this couldn't have taken more than 30 minutes to make. Not always a bad thing though.

Giving users the ability to find jobs where they live might be a good idea right? Maybe. Who knows, maybe you prefer scrolling through 50 pages instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha. The design took a few hours. Coding the site took a bit longer :)

<comment><USER30> The simple and clean design is actually what I like best about the site. I'm sure you've seen www.startuply.com (which is amazingly down right now because of an asp.net web.config error, wow!) That might be a good source of job leads for your crawler.

I also really like how you link to the companies website and not to some 3rd party job posting. Have you thought about adding more info to the start-up profile page on your site?

<comment><AUTHOR> Startuply has been down since last night :\

I'm pulling a lot of my company data from crunchbase. I plan on adding a full profile in the next few weeks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The infrastructural humiliation of America - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/03/the-infrastructural-humiliation-of-america/ <comment><AUTHOR> Why did we end up like this? I returned last week from Dubai to San Francisco, and have been trying to mentally rationalize why this place can't be a tenth as good (in terms of infrastructure).</comment>


Any advice on donating programming skills? - <AUTHOR> How did you find organizations/businesses/non-profits/just regular ol' people that needed help?
If you're employed did you have any issues balancing your time?
How was your experience? <comment><USER2> There are numerous issues that need to be considered.

If you are employed, what disclosures do you need to provide to your employer? What disclosures do you need to provide to the folks you are helping? Check your contractual relationships for possible conflicts. Get written riders to contracts as needed.

Will you treat your programming as an "in-kind donation" for tax purposes? If so, you should check with your tax professional to find out exactly what is needed.

What will be the intellectual property status of what you create? If you are creating code or compiling data, who owns the results of your effort? If you are working as part of a large multi-participant project there needs to be a work-for-hire agreement for all concerned.

As with any project, you need to have a plan and execute to the plan but provide a way to adapt the plan as situations change. It is usually smart to define how decisions get made and who is responsible.

Finally, you need to consider what happens when the project is in production. How do bugs get fixed? Who is responsible for maintenance? Will you be supporting your creation forever?

<comment><AUTHOR> The goal here is to do something constructive with my free time, hone my skills, network, give back to my community, etc.

Good points about disclosures, intellectual property, and never ending support. Makes me a bit weary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm doing Random Hacks of Kindness this June. [http://www.rhokaustralia.org/](http://www.rhokaustralia.org/)

There are tons of ways to donate time to charities. But yeah, time can be a factor if you're busy with work projects.

I used to balance military with donating time to an SPCA rescue unit. We did high-angle technical rescue of trapped animals. I did struggle balancing the two time-wise, but ended up being more of a do their website, help with exercises, photography, general dog's body... Great people and I loved helping out.

I'd totally recommend doing whatever you can...

</comment><comment><USER4> >How did you find organizations/businesses/non-profits/just regular ol' people that needed help?

One rarely-discussed issue is that most organizations, even the ones that say they want volunteers, don't actually: [https://jakeseliger.com/2014/06/19/most-volunteering-is-a- wa...](https://jakeseliger.com/2014/06/19/most-volunteering-is-a-waste-of- time-for-anyone-except-the-volunteer/) and the volunteering infrastructure is actually more expensive and difficult to maintain than actually hiring employees.

I like the advice someone else proffered: teach coding instead. There does seem to be a lot of demand for that, and the people trying to learn are likely to be motivated.

</comment><comment><USER5> One alternative to donating programming skills to other people's problems is to donate your time to teaching programming through organizations like Girl Develop It.

</comment><comment><USER6> See also: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14375014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14375014)

</comment><comment><USER7> Haven't used it but some folks find it helpful: [https://www.freecodecamp.com](https://www.freecodecamp.com)

</comment><comment><USER8> I am a junior python/ django dev in need of mentorship. I am an avid learner. If you are interested in mentoring me, Please reach out.

</comment><comment><USER9> There have to be some limits on the utility of "drive-by" coding. I suspect it's much more useful to (encourage your organization to) offer free/discounted products to nonprofits that are maintained over the long term for other reasons, or to directly give money.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have not tried to donate programming skills outside of younger family members and junior programmers I work with.

I was at a NY Tech meetup a few weeks ago, and there was an intro about TEALS where they were looking for people to teach high school students in the NYC high schools.

</comment><comment><USER11> just join kde, its a huge umbrella organisation. kmail and akonadi need some serious code love :)</comment>