Ask HN: What to do when a company shuts out its shareholders? - <AUTHOR> Background: A few years back, I left a small, privately owned company that I had worked at for 7 years.  A few times during those 7 years, I was given small amounts of shares in the company, partially in appreciation for my hard work and partially in lieu of increased salary.  Two other long-time employees were also given shares.
Due to personality conflicts with the CEO and other department heads that were later brought on, I was forced out of the company.  The other two share-holding employees also left shortly after.  At that time, there were about 10 shareholders, with the CEO owning the majority stake.
Since our departure, the three of us have asked the owners to buy our shares back, but they have ignored us.  They do not have shareholder meetings, do not produce annual reports, and will not share any financials with us.  The three of us would rather cash out our shares now than wait for the company to go bankrupt.
What are we legally entitled to being shareholders?  Can they get in legal trouble with the state for not disclosing information to us?  Can we sell our shares to a competitor if the owners are ignoring us? <comment><USER2> As a minority shareholder in a closely held corporation, your rights will be defined by the governing corporate law (in your case, that of Illinois) and by any charter documents or agreements that may create contractual rights of some kind.

Above all, see a lawyer in your local jurisdiction to get advice on this. I am a lawyer but obviously can't give legal advice in this type of forum.

In the abstract, however, the following principles tend to apply:

1\. Shareholders in a closely held corporation generally cannot force the company to back back their shares. Exceptions exist - for example, if you have a shareholder agreement in place that gives you such a right or, in some states, you might have what is called a "statutory close corporation," which can have intricate contractual provisions defining its corporate structure. Check with an Illinois lawyer on this.

2\. Minority shareholders generally do not have a right to inspect board minutes (again, your local laws may vary) but do have a right to get annual financial information and to inspect certain other corporate records.

3\. When you received your shares, you may have signed documents giving the company or other shareholders a right of first refusal in the event you attempted to sell or transfer your shares to a third party. If you did, then you will need to first obtain an offer and then first offer the shares to whoever holds such a right on the same terms before you can sell them to the third party.

4\. Securities laws generally also forbid any immediate resale of the stock. If you have held the shares long enough, however, you will normally be allowed to resell them absent any specific restriction such as a right of first refusal. However, the market for illiquid shares of this type is usually nil.

5\. It is usually very difficult and expensive to enforce legal rights as minority shareholders. Many states prevent you from filing suit directly against an incompetent management. Even if they are doing things wrong, your remedy usually is to file what is known as a shareholder derivative action, which means suing in the name of the corporation to try to recover monies for the benefit of the corporation. A derivative action tends to be a clumsy and expensive vehicle for most minority shareholders unless it is an unusual situation where the stakes are high. On the flip side, some minority shareholders will use this as a way of harassing the company until it is motivated to get rid of them - it sounds like you have grounds to file such a suit, but you will need to be able to fund it.

6\. You can insist that the company hold annual shareholder meetings and give you whatever information your state law requires in such a meeting format (usually, it is a basic financial report). If they refuse to hold an annual meeting, you can sometimes complain to your state's corporate division, which often has an enforcement arm having special powers to compel such meetings.

7\. If you hold a specified minimum percentage of the corporation's stock, you can file an action for involuntary dissolution of the corporation. In California, this number is one-third or more of the outstanding stock. Check with a local lawyer to see what you need in Illinois. In an action for involuntary dissolution, provided you can show grounds, you can get a court to force the sale of the company's business or otherwise to force a distribution of its net assets (or the value thereof) to shareholders.

Having said the above, if you and the others hold at most a few percent of the company, you are likely stuck as far as what you might be able to do practically through formal legal remedies. Before concluding this, though, do the record inspections and consult with a lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Disclaimer: IANAL

Since it is still a private company, you're not entitled to much, really.

They are supposed to be holding some sort of board or corporate meetings, if for no other reason than to maintain themselves as a corporation for the legal benefits. You are supposed to get, or have access to, copies of the board meeting minutes.

To cut to the chase, you're not going to get anything out of those shares. The company has no enforceable obligation to buy them from you, and unless they got their legal contracts out of a pop-up book, there will also be a clause in there that would prevent you from selling the shares to a competitor. Besides, what would you sell the shares FOR, money-wise? You don't even know what the company is worth, or (I'm assuming here) what yours shares represent in proportion to the total. And, why would a competitor want semi-worthless shares in another company anyway?

For the most part, I would suggest you let it go and chalk it up to a learning lesson.

<comment><AUTHOR> _For the most part, I would suggest you let it go and chalk it up to a learning lesson._

And what is the lesson?

<comment><USER3> _And what is the lesson?_

Get better documentation of total shares in the company next time

Understand that shares granted by a private corporation will tend to have little, if any, real value until such time as the corporation goes public or gets sold. If neither seems probably, you basically just own "paper"

Don't be swayed by shares of stock

Don't take stock in lieu of pay (granted, you might not have had much other choice here).

Make sure there is a clear, documented, signed understand of what exactly you can DO with those shares.

<comment><USER4> Every corporation has articles of incorporation, bylaws and there may even be a shareholder agreement. Any or all of the things you say may or may not be applicable depending on the existence and contents of those documents.

OP may have more rights and possibilities to recourse than he thinks, being a shareholder is not 'all bad', there are plenty of laws that govern your rights as a shareholder too.

At a minimum there has to be an annual report and a once per annum general shareholders meeting, if the percentage the three hold is large enough they may even be able to convene such a meeting.

Seriously, get a lawyer if the stakes are high enough.

If it's a couple of grand your talking about let it go and hope that some day they get bought out, then you will be in the drivers seat (they won't be able to sell without your consent).

<comment><USER5> Minority stockholders are pretty much at the mercy of the majority holder, except for out and out fraud. They dont need the OP's consent. They may ask for his vote, but that is all it is, a per share vote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Get a copy of the corporate bylaws and go to a lawyer, this is much too complicated without further background to be answered here.

I take it that you can prove that those shares were transferred to you.

You can offer the shares to a 3rd party but the bylaws probably state explicitly that you have to offer the other shareholders first right of refusal.

</comment><comment><USER6> Which state is this company incorporated in? That's the key question.

As a shareholder, you have fewer rights than you'd think. On the other hand, you can be a major nuisance to the owner if you want to.

I dont quite see a win-win here. What are you trying to achieve?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is an Illinois Corporation.

The business has been tanking in recent years, mostly due to the shady practices of the owners. At this point I'd simply like to cash out my shares for a fair price, whether it's selling them back to the company, to another shareholder, or to a competitor.

<comment><USER7> As you hold shares of a small closely held corporation, you'll probably have a tough time selling your shares to anyone other than the principal shareholder or the corporation (and they may not be willing to buy). In addition, your right to sell your shares to a third party may be restricted, as has been noted above. If the business folds, you may be able to claim a capital loss to the extent of your basis in the shares. I'm not certain of this, however. Best to consult an accountant. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Closely held corporations ought to have buy-sell agreements, which are legally enforceable contracts, at the beginning. But if in fact the company is tanking (= a share of ownership in the company isn't worth much), this may not be worth suing over.</comment>


Rogue Academic Downloader Busted by MIT Webcam Stakeout, Arrest Report Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/mit-webcam-swartz/

<comment><USER2> "For its part, JSTOR says it worked with Swartz's lawyers to get the data back[...]"

Interesting way of putting it. I would have said "removing the data from his possession"

<comment><USER3> _Interesting way of putting it. I would have said "removing the data from his possession"_

This is part of a standard narrative to treat copyright infringement as theft analogous to theft of "tangible" traditional property. You will also notice terms like _"documents were stolen"_ in the original indictment. Although to be fair to JSTOR, their official statement did not use such (imho) misleading language.

<comment><USER4> To really increase the realism of the metaphor, in the future when such content is stolen, they should refuse to serve it to library users. They could explain that, regrettably, the journal issue I seek is currently missing due to a recent theft, and assure me that they are working as fast as possible to recover the stolen documents.

<comment><USER5> My local library is like that. I've had to wait on checking out a PDF because all available copies were taken.

Yay, future!

<comment><USER6> Pleas please please tell me this is a joke? Set numbers of PDF checkouts? I don't know if I should weep or vomit.

<comment><USER7> Physical books impose a natural limit on the number of simultaneous checkouts. If a book is very popular, the library will buy more copies to accommodate demand. If a PDF is popular, the publisher expects the library to buy more copies.

It's artificial scarcity, but this is hardly new. The number of books in a library was never limited by the cost of paper.

<comment><USER8> Artificial scarcity is possibly one of the most perverse things to come out capitalism.

<comment><USER9> The particular 1 bits he took were of unusually high quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _manhunt for a slender guy with a backpack riding a bike on MIT's campus_

Well _that_ must've narrowed it right down.

<comment><USER11> OMG he's still here!

<comment><USER9> Authorities still on the lookout for a possible accomplice, described as "Asian, approx. 20 yrs. old, wearing a T-Shirt."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >The two MIT officers and Special Agent Pickett then tried to stop Swartz, who jumped off his bike and ran away, only to be caught and handcuffed by the Secret Service Agent, according to the report.

RUN FASTER. I really can't stress this enough. The reason he got caught is because he didn't run fast enough. If you're going to do stuff like this, LEARN TO RUN FAST. Cops are fat and slow. You can usually get away from them, especially in a place like MIT.

<http://i.imgur.com/2pMx2.jpg>

Look at that kid! That is not a fast-looking person. Run faster, guys.

<comment><USER13> Ha, I was just thinking the same thing. Also, if we're talking pure logistics, don't jump off the BIKE either.

Perhaps we should consider the fact that the secret service was involved.. I bet that guy is pretty fast. I don't know why I think that though, just seems more "tough".

Another thing: Aaron is a really important person to have writing/researching/hacking outside of prison. Surely it's a net win to just pay a faster/sneakier kid to do this for him? Do you think he thought for one second he might get caught?

35 YEARS IN PRISON? Avon Barksdale is only serving seven! :)

<comment><USER14> You ruined The Wire for me. I just started watching season 1.

<comment><USER15> He ruined 1% of it. Keep going :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sentencing a criminal to jail is theoretically supposed to be for the good of society. So in a case like this, they'd better ask themselves if society would ultimately benefit from having him behind bars.

The actual damage done here was negligible, especially considering the questionable locking-down of the content in the first place (i.e. maybe it should always have been free, and it was still valued at only $50,000 by the school, not $1 million). Swartz maybe did something stupid, but his ability to contribute to society is still far greater out of jail than in. There is also every bit of evidence to suggest that his _intent_ is to contribute positively to society.

In other words, if he serves more than a few months in jail for this, or is actually asked to pay a million dollars, I will be incredibly disheartened by the "legal" system.

<comment><USER17> He could argue that he created $50,000 of value since now there's 2 copies.

(and maybe pay the fine with 20 copies of the database)

<comment><USER18> I smell a way to solve the debt crisis here...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I feel safe knowing the Secret Service was on the case. Wouldn't want any of that published scientific knowledge falling into the hands of the public, after all.

</comment><comment><USER20> Totally blowing things out of proportion. 35 years? Secret Service? Just for JSTOR data...it's unusual punishment

Everything Aaron does is out of good intentions. I know, I've worked with him before.

His crime isn't "borrowing" the data...it's getting caught.

<comment><USER21> His crime is also having those good intentions relate to opposing the current political establishment.

<comment><USER22> There's no proof whatsoever that this arrest was politically motivated. aaronsw's furtive behavior really muddies the waters here - if my sysadmin found a similar laptop in a server closet I would also have called the cops.

<comment><USER21> I agree, his arrest was probably not politically motivated. However, I believe the way the authorities proceed with prosecution and punishment will be influenced by Aaron's other activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 35 Years seems a little over the top.

Gilbert Bland Jr traveled to university libraries around the country for years, stealing maps from irreplaceable antique books, by physically removing them with a razor blade. The total value of the maps that the FBI was eventually able to recover was over $500,000. In the end he paid $70,000 and served 17 months in prison.

<comment><USER24> 35 years is the maximum possible sentence according to the law assuming he were found guilty on all counts and given the maximum sentence for each.

For comparison, Bland was facing a maximum sentence of 120 years. (Six charges of up to twenty years each.)

<http://dukechronicle.com/node/107961>

<comment><USER9> Spy magazine once did an article, where the reporter documented himself committing dozens of innocuous looking acts in public, all designed to accrue ridiculous amounts of jail time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Swartz is a genius. His writings are brilliant. This is just stupidity.

JSTOR didn't get those documents through magic or witchcraft. However they collected them, a motivated, brilliant millionaire genius might be able to collect them as well. If they are in the public domain, then he could distribute them for free. Or, he could run around hiding laptops at MIT, and get arrested. I guess the latter is probably more exciting and more likely to get you laid.

To be clear, I think it's obscene that they are prosecuting him for this, and I think it will get thrown out in the end. Maybe he just wanted to make a political statement to get the discussion rolling. Maybe he just doesn't give a fuck.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Rogue Academic Downloader..." Strong title for someone who you claim "He is also a general friend of Wired.com" I guess you know your real friends when you get in trouble.

<comment><USER27> It seems like a pretty unbiased and accurate description to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Someone should make a small, remote controlled rover with an IR light and an IR sensitive video camera, and a robotic arm. The arm is not tipped with a manipulator, but with a Cat5 plug. This rover will be paired with a quad- copter with enough power to deliver and retrieve the rover.

</comment><comment><USER28> Anyone have access to <https://floorplans.mit.edu/>, or otherwise know anything about room 004T in building 16? I'm curious about signage or locks.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is the last guy I want to see behind the bars (except of course myself).

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not interested in the soap opera, but I hope this serves a lesson to MIT: Always shutdown unused switch ports, and protect them with 802.1X.

<comment><USER30> Really, downvoted for this? Seriously, I'm tired of the soap opera crap.

802.1X is infinitely more interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Something is missing..

Why was a Secret Service Agent on campus in the first place?

Something is just not adding up as FBI has jurisdiction not Secret Service..

Plus, what is the other 2% that was downloaded that was not JSTROR stuff?

Or ie ah do some journalism before writing the article?

<comment><USER27> That is not unusual. The Secret Service has a very long history of investigating computer crimes.

<comment><USER32> Indeed. They're almost solely responsible for protecting us from the hacker scourge of role playing and card game vendors: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._Un...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._United_States_Secret_Service)

<comment><USER33> That, and (in the same raid) a bunch of people who had owned up and were reconfiguring telco switches as pranks.

<comment><USER32> Not sure about the details there, and wikipedia is silent. Certainly SJG employees were active in the phreaking community. But AFAIK none were ever charged with anything. And I know with certainty no charges resulted from this raid in particular.

The whole thing was a terribly botched job, the "facts" in the warrant were a mash of giant whoppers of technobabble. It was a mess.

Did the SS have the best interests of society at heart, and might they have reasonably been fooled into thinking something was up at SJG? Yeah, probably. Did they _actually_ do the right thing? No way.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Everyone Can Program - <AUTHOR> http://everyonecanprogram.com/

<comment><USER2> Hmmmmm... I have a knee-jerk reaction to initiatives with names like "Everyone can <fill in the blank>." Everyone may benefit from being exposed to the rudiments of whatever activity you're promoting, but it is clearly, objectively, undeniably the case that no, not everyone can program, or dance, or sing, or build a curio cabinet for any personally or professionally meaningful definition of the term.

Now, it is certainly true that any fool can use a computer... Many do! But _using_ one--or even learning by rote how to craft a Hello World program--is a far cry from being able to look at a problem and mentally break it down into computational steps, then build the program up from those steps. Until you get to the point where you're thinking computationally, I'm not convinced you can really call whatever it is your doing "programming."

Maybe I just need to adjust the onion on my belt and go yell at a cloud or two.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can everyone write tests instead? We have enough people blindly writing implementation code without adequate testing. I fear for what the world will be like in 20 years if kids are being told to write as much code as they can without spending the time to verify their logic and assumptions.

</comment><comment><USER4> To paraphrase the film Ratatouille: "Anyone can program. But not everyone should."

<comment><USER5> "Everyone can read and write but not everyone should"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everyone Can Create a Campaign to Teach Children to Code.

<comment><USER5> Yep, including the public school system of Britain, which these folks are trying to support

[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25857276](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25857276)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> everyone can be a shoemaker</comment>


Designing Plan 9 (1990) - <AUTHOR> http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/designing_plan_9

<comment><USER2> Plan 9 did give us one thing that is used almost everywhere: UTF-8.

[https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/utf-8-history.txt](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/utf-8-history.txt)

<comment><USER3> And Go by means of Limbo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I haven't understood about Plan 9 is if it does process migration. If you run a multi-threaded, computation-intensive process will Plan 9 automatically distribute the computation to all CPU servers and gather up the results?

EDIT: It turns out the article does talk about process migration, but still doesn't answer the distributed computation question.

"Process migration is also deliberately absent from Plan 9. Although Plan 9 makes it easy to instantiate processes where they can most effectively run, it does nothing explicit to make this happen. The compiler, for instance, does not arrange that it run on the CPU server. We prefer to do coarse-grained allocation of computing resources simply by running each new command interpreter on a lightly-loaded CPU server. Reasonable management of computing resources renders process migration unnecessary."

EDIT2: Ah, there's no automatic thread distribution. But you can fake it but forking multiple processes on multiple CPU servers and sharing their address spaces. Does this mean you have to write your own CPU server allocator?

"Plan 9 does not implement lightweight processes explicitly. We are uneasy about deciding where on the continuum from fine-grained hardware-supported parallelism to the usual timesharing notion of a process we should provide support for user multiprocessing. Existing definitions of threads and lightweight processes seem arbitrary and raise more questions than they resolve. We prefer to have a single kind of process and to permit multiple processes to share their address space. With the ability to share local memory and with efficient process creation and switching, both of which are in Plan 9, we can match the functionality of threads without taking a stand on how users should multiprocess."

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately for plan-9 the world has moved on. Plan 9 will (and already has) influence many follow-ons but it is now behind the times in some aspects and still ahead in others.

Vmware and other virtualization vendors as well as the various cluster computing solutions are capable of live process migration, checkpointing and a ton of other nice features that Plan-9 simply doesn't have because at the time it was to be an improvement on Unix and 'Beowulf' was still just the name of a character in a story, Amazon was a figment of Jeff Bezos' imagination and the Google guys were still playing with their Lego.

To really revive Plan-9 would imply diverting resource from a lot of projects that have progressed _far_ beyond where Plan-9 has been stuck for well over a decade. So as much as I love the whole idea behind Plan-9 and the way they've made a better unix I fear that they will never be able to get the kind of push they need to gain parity. Pity, really.

Plan-9 _could_ have been where Linux is now if they had caught the wind at the right time. Community is _the_ single most important factor in whether or not a technology will succeed in the longer term or not. Linus Torvalds beat all of the incumbents by doing one simple thing: opening up the source right from day #1 when the barrier to entry was sufficiently low that he got buy-in from a lot of capable people.

<comment><USER4> > Community is the single most important factor in whether or not a technology > will succeed in the longer term or not.

I'm not so sure. I wouldn't make that statement about Java for example. Technologies that succeed in the longer term have some merit to them. If it was just about community, Lisp would have ceased to exist, and yet you typed your comment in a web app written in a Lisp.

Plan 9 is the Lisp of operating systems. Why does my gut say Plan9-as-a- service is an undervalued startup idea?

<comment><USER5> The community around Java is mindbogglingly large. That community was bought- and-paid for rather than grown organically but there are more ways than one to skin a cat.

The lisp eco-system is more like a collection of communities of very small (individuals?) sub-communities.

What technology underpins the web-app here has very little to do with the success of the community interacting here, though for sure there are many more lisp capable programmers here than on most other programmer hang-outs (lambda the ultimate excepted).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The deluxe, and generally just unusual, hardware probably did a lot to kill Plan 9 adoption, or would have if the license hadn't got there first. Unix seems to have been successful partly because it ran on the hardware that people already owned, or hardware they would have been likely to buy anyway.

<comment><USER5> It wasn't even that deluxe at the time (especially not the display hardware). The hardware didn't help, the license didn't help, keeping it behind closed doors is what killed it.

The first 'ok to use commercially' release was in 2000, by the Linux had eaten up any market that Plan-9 could have conceivably had.

<comment><USER7> I think even then the weird mix of pro-windowing and anti-graphics app orientations were doomed to sink it. The fact that it was difficult to see how even a modern web browser would work (there were attempts, but half-hearted at best) really made breaking out of its limited niche very hard.

<comment><USER6> But if it had become sufficiently popular then someone would probably have just bodged X onto it (as unpleasant as that is to contemplate).

<comment><USER8> there was an x11 port to plan9. it's still there:

        $ cl -addr sources.cs.bell-labs.com:564
        9p> ls -l extra/X11.iso.bz2
        -rw-rw-r-- rsc sys 24878378		X11.iso.bz2
        9p>

that didn't sink plan9. what sank plan9 was that linux was there and was "good enough", and that it took a full decade to realize that the concepts of plan9 can't be backported to unix/linux piecemeal. that they fit much better together in a coherent system that didn't carry the baggage of unix (the root user, for example). this is what the original plan9 papers were trying to say: it's a rethinking, you have to cut the cord to eliminate the baggage. the baggage has proven sufficiently heavy that more than 20 years later you're not seeing private namespaces in linux. instead you see fully virtualized instances of the operating system -- with all the baggage that they carry -- and most efforts are focused on making them work efficiently, rather than on inventing something truly original.

that said, if plan9 was open sourced in 1995 and had taken over, we wouldn't be talking now about a linux behemoth bolting systemd onto itself, but a plan9 one. successful software grows itself into morbidity. plan9 would've been no different.

<comment><USER9> what's this `cl` program ?

<comment><USER10> Apparently that port is used for the "plan 9 file service", so it's probably some kind of ftp-like client for 9p.

<comment><USER9> probably cl[ient] then</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


7 Key Points from the C.I.A. Torture Report - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/09/world/cia-torture-report-key-points.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I just want to point out that Jeremy Ashkenas, author of backbone.js, underscore.js and probably lots of other things I'm not aware of, got a byline on this. That's cool. Shame it is about something so... horrible...

edit: Here is a list of articles with Jeremy as an author: [http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/?action=click&con...](http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/?action=click&contentCollection=World&region=TopBar&WT.nav=searchWidget&module=SearchSubmit&pgtype=Multimedia#/JEREMY%20ASHKENAS)

Good to see a fellow programmer finally "make it" ;)</comment>


Show HN: Neko, run your browser in the cloud and access concurrently - Sean-Der https://github.com/nurdism/neko <comment> Sean-Der Neko seriously feels like magic the first time you run it. With just one Docker command you can run FireFox on a VM, and then access it via your browser. The technology to do this is really cool, but I think the possibilities it opens up are even more amazing!

* You can share a browser instance with friends to do things together (shop, watch videos)

* You can have a really weak local machine, and then keep things like Slack open an a powerful machine remotely.

* You can put this on a Bastion host and use it to access services inside your LAN.

Especially since this is Open Source I can see people doing lots of cool things :) I had no involvement in the development, but it uses a library I work on Pion WebRTC [0]

[0] [https://github.com/pion/webrtc](https://github.com/pion/webrtc)</comment>


Ask HN: Getting into Remote Work as a Junior? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'd like to get a remote programming job but I don't have much professional experience. (A few months here and there for small companies.) Is this a viable path or do I need to get more experience first?
I've been checking out remote job ads and seems almost everyone is looking for people with years of work experience (so they don't have to hand-hold them -- understandable!).
I have a hunch I can bypass the years-of-experience hurdle by having a really cool portfolio, is that accurate? I'm not sure exactly what that would look like. (I have hundreds of really small side-projects, I feel like I need more "substantial" projects. Mostly code for my own amusement, I have bots, crawlers, youtube audio extractor... no typical CRUD apps)
I've had major impostor syndrome, spent years self-learning web dev and put off applying for jobs, and today my friend told me that he had less experience than me when he got his first job: "The first few days they just paid me to do Angular tutorials." That really blew my mind. But they hired him out of uni (I dropped out) and it wasn't a remote position.
I'm super introverted, would really prefer not to work in an office so remote work really sounds ideal. (I'm considering freelance but it might be too extroverted with all the sales, negotiation etc).
For some context, social interaction for me is like pulling teeth (I had some office jobs and it was not for me), and I've just run out of savings. So I'm working my ass thru Udemy courses and hoping it'll be enough!
Please advise? :) Thank you!
PS. I am in the EU, if that makes any difference. <comment><USER2> I think it is important to highlight what process works best for you and emphasize that to employers. Personally, I am more productive working remotely, in control of my environment and surroundings, and I frame that as a positive aspect of my contribution for the organization. Sure, some people want to see numbers or hear about previous experiences within a certain context, but I think it's all about communicating how you align with, and contribute to, that context. I've worked remotely as both a junior and more experienced engineer - mentoring junior engineers remotely; there's capacity for remote work at all levels. I think some employers are more curious about your remote processes than actual experience (e.g. how do you handle working with people in different time zones, what sort of productivity and communication tools do you use to work asynchronously). I highly suggest contributing to an open-source project that you use or are interested in - even if it's something small like committing documentation or fixing a minor issue. That is some of the most meaningful and fulfilling asynchronous remote work experience to tout. Don't get discouraged. The world is massive. You will find people that value your skills and talents, and you will obtain what you are seeking if you stick to it. I hope this helps. Cheers!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the advice and encouragement!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Working for any company means working with people. That's easier to do in person. If you're remote, that doesn't mean that you no longer have to communicate. It means you have to work _even harder_ to communicate to overcome the limitations of the medium.

Minimum years of experience has nothing to do with code output, and everything to do with _ability to work in a professional context_. Your cool projects won't help you here.

If you're proposing remote work to escape social situations, this means that you will not be a very capable employee (sorry). Your long term career prospects are likely to be limited. No matter how awesome your side projects are, I believe you will have a better return-on-effort long term if you seek counseling and improve your ability to interact socially.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's kind of what I was afraid of, it's not my tech skills holding me back, it's my social skills. But those can be learned too, it just takes more courage. Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it is a trust factor... people just don't know what they are going to get with a Jr.

I took my first coding job where it was understood that I would eventually be able to work from home 1 to 2 days a week.

After establishing myself it became 3 days a week... often 4 or 5.

You might want to look into local places that allow work from home a little and see if you can work your way into a bit more.

</comment><comment><USER5> email me email@example.com i liked what you said about your ai bots im interested

</comment><comment><USER5> email me firstname.lastname@example.com i seen you say something about AI bots that i liked</comment>


phpCE Conference Cancelled - <AUTHOR> https://2019.phpce.eu <comment><USER2> Reason: Only white male speakers.

I once organized a conference in theoretical physics and we put a female from a publisher just as a female on the list for the quote. It is really bad. There were basically no females in this field and/or we couldn't get confirmation by the few ones (roughly 20% female professors in physics in Germany).</comment>


Gravity: Upstream Kubernetes packaging tools - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gravitational/gravity <comment><USER2> I find each new development in the field of deploying Kubernetes to be grimly humorous. We had lots of techniques to package and deploy things before Kubernetes, but they were complex and inadequate in some ways, and Kubernetes fixes some of those issues. But it turns out Kubernetes itself is substantially more complicated to package and deploy than the old solutions, if you're deploying it yourself rather than using some proprietary cloud. Oops!

What I just can't decide is whether we'll successfully put another layer of container-container-containers on top of Kubernetes, or whether the whole effort will eventually collapse and we'll extract the good parts out into something simpler.

<comment><USER3> > But it turns out Kubernetes itself is substantially more complicated to > package and deploy than the old solutions

Not really. It's pretty much the same level of complication if you used the same components. You could use all the same tools: chef, puppet, ansible, etc. Once you have it available though other applications are easier to deploy.

At any rate, this tool provides something entirely different. It lets you image the entire data center and reproduce it somewhere else. Not sure how you would've done that before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey all, I'm part of the team at Gravitational - a company behind this effort. Will be happy to answer any questions about this project.

<comment><USER5> I wonder if you've considered building a complete VM image instead of a tarball. A minimal, immutable VM image could be more finely tuned and hardened than a tarball installed on top of a general-purpose distro. You could take inspiration from CoreOS or LinuxKit here. Or do you find that the sysadmins in the kind of organization that install these on-prem packages really want to install on top of their favorite distro?

<comment><USER6> A minimal immutable VM image which is finely tuned and hardened is the exact approach we're taking with [https://on-premises.com](https://on-premises.com) \- except we haven't focused on k8s workloads. We've found that customers would much rather import a VM than "install" something, however there are valid use-cases which require special monitoring tools and other customizations which are not possible on an immutable system. Gravity is interesting and seems to meet that demand.

<comment><USER7> This look interesting, is there a way to try out meta without being funneled into the sales pipeline?

What is the workflow for baking a machine? Are you using packer under the covers or some other tooling? What on-prem machine image formats are supported?

<comment><USER6> There's still a bit of "manual" work to get someone up and running on our Meta appliance, so unfortunately you would have to go through our sales process. However if you just want a video or screen recording of how it works then I can put something online in the next hour or two.

For baking the machine, we use Ansible under the covers and have a set of Lisp scripts to manage everything. As for image formats: qcow2, raw, vhd (and vmdk in the .ova file).

Not trying to hijack Gravitational's thread, please contact me (email in profile, or 'aw-' on FreeNode) if you want to discuss more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Requiring a dedicated volume with at least 50 GB of space and 1500 privisioned IOPS just for etcd [1] seems excessive to me. How big a cluster, e.g. how many nodes and pods, is this for?

[1]: [https://gravitational.com/gravity/docs/ver/6.x/requirements/...](https://gravitational.com/gravity/docs/ver/6.x/requirements/#etcd- disk)

<comment><USER4> We are staying on the safe side here on our recommendations. We have seen many scenarios when high latency on volumes on AWS creates a lot of problems even for small 3 node clusters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I played with this briefly last year but couldn't get it going in the time frame so I gave up. I wanted to like it but it was a bit unwieldy getting started, and I was not a fan of needing helm to bootstrap an installation. There also was a quirky installation workflow, could not set a key/password successfully for the life of me and it was unclear on if the cli needed a browser?

May have to check this out again, hopefully the quck-start experience has improved.

<comment><USER8> Sorry to hear about your experience, the getting started experience is an ongoing challenge, there have been improvements in the last year, but we still have a long way to go as well.

Sorry if this wasn't clear, but helm actually isn't required at all, it's just a majority of our examples are written to use helm due helms popularity. The installation hooks really just boil down to kubernetes jobs, so anything that can be represented as a kubernetes job can be used for any of the hooks. This can be a simple script, a helm command, or a complicated custom built application.

The only feature really tied specifically to helm is the catalog feature, which is for building additional applications to be installed on top of an existing gravity cluster. That feature was built around a helm chart as a building block.

The cli should only need to invoke a browser when doing third party authentication flows, ie to use github for login. Using the gravity users invite will also generate a link to send to the enrolling user, so they can set their own password, setup 2fa, etc through the web interface.

We've also been trying to use our community site [https://community.gravitational.com/](https://community.gravitational.com/) as a resource for being able to search and ask questions.

Disclaimer: I'm a developer on gravity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hard not to wonder if k8s is the new hadoop. "If you build it they will come" platform team thinking.

<comment><USER10> Hadoop did not event reach 1/10 of Kubernetes popularity.

<comment><USER11> That's very hard to eyeball in my opinion. Hadoop and its ecosystem fascinated a big chunk of the dev (and ops) world. Everybody and their dog wanted to be "into" Big Data. Data Lake. Realtime feeds, just add nodes (Cassandra), CQRS, and of course when Facebook said they are using HBase for Messenger, it meant that HBase is the new MySQL/Mongo/sliced-bread.

Then there was YARN, then Tez, Spark, Flink, and Drill, and various other projects that added to the hype (Aerospike, RamSQL, Kafka + Storm).

And ever new system had to be built like it'll be web scale from day one. Instagram was acquired in 2012, just 18 months after launch, and everyone knew that meant every new even barely "social" thing will blow up even faster than that. So you absolutely need to plan ahead, scale scale scale.

Compared to that people seem to be a bit more wary of k8s, especially because it's targeted at ops folks, and they are naturally predisposed to oppose changes they don't understand.

But that's just my - probably ridiculously non-representative - take on this :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Boston or Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR>

So I'm graduating in May and have a couple of great offers from places in both Boston and the Valley.  I've interned in SV twice and love it.  This is both a pro and a con in that I know the place well, but at the same time I'd love to try some place different and diversify a little.  I intend to start a business at some point in the future, and as such imagine I'll eventually move to SV.  Here's my pro-con list:

  SV Pros:
  - Gorgeous weather
  - Amazing networking opportunities

  Boston Pros:
  - Closer to home (I'm from NY)
  - <USER2>
  - More diverse (less disjoint with reality)
 Before I start a flame war over my last Boston pro: while I love the valley, I sometimes feel like it's disjoint with reality in terms of how people act towards technology.  It's a nerd's haven and often awesome, but mildly unnerving at times and lacks some diversity.
Anyway, I'd appreciate some advice as to where to go given equal offers (factoring in cost of living to a reasonable extent).  Additionally I'd like some clarification on a few things to help make a more informed decision:
- Is Boston significantly cheaper than SV (I'd probably be in the Mountain View area)?  It's hard to find comparable areas for cost of apartments and such.
- What's the startup scene like in Boston?  I hear it's a great place for a software startup, but how does it compare to the Valley in terms of opportunities and networking?
- Any advice on which of two hypothetical is better: big fish little pond or little fish big pond?  Alternatively, would you rather be at an important team in a lesser-known company, or a less-important team in a well-known company?
- Any other factors I should be taking into account?  I'm looking closely at what I'd be doing, what my potential employers' non-competes look like, and how open the companies are.  One company is a private open-source company, and the other is a company of about the same size owned by a public company.
This is a really tough decision, and any advice would be really appreciated.
Thanks! <comment><USER3> After living and working in Boston since June, here's my take, in the form of completely random thoughts:

\- It's generally hot as balls in summer and has already gotten quite cold. Neither of these particularly bother me, assuming A/Cs and heaters are available.

\- It's cheap as hell to live here, as long as you live slightly off the beaten path. We're currently living in Medford, a 15 minute walk from Davis square and we pay about $1,400 (or was it $1,200?) a month for an apartment with 3 bedrooms (only two people, but we are gluttons for open space), an "office" (no idea the technical term of this room), living room, kitchen, etc. The building is old as shit and it would cost a small fortune to heat conventionally (hello 1920s oil heating!), but... _it's damn cheap_.

\- The start-up scene is a bit lacking, but there are lots of people here if you look. I probably can't walk into any random Starbucks and run into an entrepreneur, but we're here. We even have a poker night!

\- I don't think the pond analogy has any relevance here. With the proliferation of the Internet and a global economy, I'm not convinced it matters where you're located for the most part, especially if you're doing a web start-up. Yes, there are lots more investors in SV, but there are investors here, too -- ones who _don't_ see 900 pitches a day. The investors here all talk about how they want to make Boston investing relevant again.

\- And they're proactive about it. They regularly host firm-sponsored events and invite a bunch of interesting companies. We've been to a small dinner party and have a cocktail party coming up. We were even taken out Paintballing by Battery Ventures (Adam Marcus is a great guy, btw) -- that was a profitable day; we got to keep the Battery-stamped masks they provided and ended up taking home 3 cases of beer. We met some interesting companies too, but I was mostly busy shooting VCs.

\- Boston as a city is fun and there is certainly a lot to do on the rare occasions we go out. I sure as hell miss all my entrepreneur friends who moved to SF (traitors!), but Dan and I are kept busy enough by the business that I might notice the lessened night-life/culture more if I had more free time.

All that being said, the Pros you supplied for SV are definitely true. We plan to move to SF (Mountain View is pretty dull in my experience, but SF is a great time) when we have more revenue (we did the math; it's a _lot_ cheaper here), but for now I don't really feel like we're handicapped by our location and we're definitely better off than we'd be somewhere like the black hole I come from (Ohio; just threw up in my mouth a little).

I can't speak for your company, but as a business with very low costs and the advantage of not having to immediately and aggressively seek out investment, Boston is the perfect place for us right now. The low cost of living allowed us to become profitable the first month we operated and this type of city allows us to take part in a very diverse (though comparatively sparse) start- up community while supplying plenty of entertainment and cheap/convenient transportation to get to it.

Edit: I should point out that personal preference / taste matters here, too. You might be able to live for a comparable price in SV/SF if, unlike Dan and I, you do not become instantly claustrophobic when supplied with less than twice the amount of space most people seem OK with.

Finally, unless you already have an excessive number of possessions (like a family), moving isn't that serious of a deal and you might find in either location that after 6 months you want to try the other.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't have anything new to say about Boston vs. SV, but about this:

 _would you rather be at an important team in a lesser-known company, or a less-important team in a well-known company_

... that's a no-brainer for me. I'd much rather be on an important team in a lesser-known company. By "important" I mean strategic to the business. Such projects tend to be a lot more satisfying, as well as more rational (assuming a basically functional environment). And the lessons they teach are better lessons.

I've noticed two things about less important projects in larger companies. One is that they often get killed before they have a chance to release or gain traction - and it doesn't much matter how successful they are. This is because they're starved for executive support. The other is that they tend to end up in technical ghettos, working on something that seems cool at the time but is divorced from users and the business, and so doesn't have much value.

</comment><comment><USER5> I kinda hated Cambridge. It was dirty and expensive, and the weather was brutal in the summer and I hear even worse in winter. Weather has a much bigger effect on our moods than most of us realize, and SV ranks up there with San Diego and Hawaii on that score.

Food was decent though, especially for a college town. I liked Boston proper much better, but I didn't live there, and as with most cities I'm guessing your enjoyment will depend a lot on exactly which parts you live and work in.In fairness, I may have liked Cambridge better if I lived in Harvard square. I may have gotten sick of it really fast too, idk.

SV is also expensive, though it's probably not much more nowadays. The exception being that you may well need a car there (which is a hell of a lot less painful than having a car in SF or Boston, since parking is free and ample, but still an expense to factor in) whereas Boston has really good public transportation and you can likely do without if you don't mind walking a bit. Your best bet is to just check around on Apartments.com and Craigslist and compare rent for similarly sized units in similar areas if you're concerned about price.

If you're looking for investment for a software startup, or networking that might lead to that in the future, go directly to Silicon Valley. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Our startup was either the first or second YC company to get a single Boston investor as of this past August. The ratio of SV investors to Boston in YC startups has to be at least 20:1. I hear Boston is pretty awesome for biomed though. I imagine you can find great cofounders in either location, though in Boston you'd have to snag them before they left for SV.

As for your hypothetical, I'd take big fish little pond any day. The pond can grow much faster and larger than the fish. And even if it doesn't, it will almost certainly be more fun and rewarding. Assuming you're normal college grad age, you've got your whole life to be another cog in the wheel. Give yourself a shot of avoiding it permanently.

<comment><USER6> I've lived in SV for a year without a car. As long as you're moderately close to each bay area hub (like castro in mountain view, or university in palo alto), you'd have access to Caltrain and can go just about anywhere. SV is a very bicycle friendly place to live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Is Boston significantly cheaper than SV (I'd probably be in the Mountain View area)? It's hard to find comparable areas for cost of apartments and such."

Mountain View is very nearly the same price as San Francisco. Because of Google it is among the most expensive places in the valley. I've lived here since we did YC last year, and I've enjoyed it. It's a lovely, quiet, and highly technology focused area, with good restaurants (as long as you like Asian and Mediterranean food), cool little groceries and produce markets (mostly Asian and Mediterranean, but also the Milk Pail which is close to heaven for fans of fresh food), a fantastic library, and even a decent cultural scene (though it is very much white bread small town culture...the performing arts center is excellent for such a tiny town; the massive tax base of the city insures most city services are excellent).

I don't know anything about Boston, but I've heard it's also quite expensive.

I'm paying $2145/mo for a two bedroom rental house a few blocks from downtown Mountain View (with a garage). It's pretty big compared to where most of the folks I know out here are living, but I moved from an even bigger place in Austin, so it was definitely downsizing for me. I've been shopping for a place in SF, and have found that prices are pretty similar for smaller places--$1600-$2000 for a one bedroom (sometimes plus small office) apartment in a decent location.

Salaries in California are enough to make up for most of the higher cost of living, as long as you don't have a strong desire to own your own home anytime soon.

"- Any advice on which of two hypothetical is better: big fish little pond or little fish big pond? Alternatively, would you rather be at an important team in a lesser-known company, or a less-important team in a well-known company?"

How long is a piece of string? We can't tell you what the best work environment is for you. You'll need to try it and see.

<comment><USER8> _$1600-$2000 for a one bedroom_

Okay, I take back what I said elsewhere on this thread: Boston is considerably cheaper than this. My wife and I had a 2BR, an entire floor of a house with off-street parking, in East Arlington for $1400 a month. A mile walk from the Red Line, on a major bus route. For a cute second-floor walkup 1BR in Davis Square, Somerville -- literally thirty seconds from the Red Line if you run -- I paid $1150.

<comment><USER7> As I mentioned, Mountain View is very nearly as expensive as San Francisco. San Jose and Sunnyvale and Santa Clara and Redwood City are two or three hundred less, in general, for the same space.

The funny thing is how living out here in the valley warps your mind about real estate rental (and purchase) prices. When I moved out here I was stunned that I'd be paying twice as much as my mortgage in Austin for less than two thirds the space. Now that I'm out here, I see a place in SF going for $1675, and I think, "Wow, I need to jump at that one! Nah, probably already gone, at that price...why get myself worked up over nothing?"

I'm also probably shopping in somewhat nicer areas than is strictly necessary (in addition to shopping for a bigger place than someone right out of college is probably going to want). I have a dog, and I tend to walk at all hours of the night...it's just a habit I've had for ten to fifteen years, and I think altering it would negatively impact my life, so I'm shopping only in pretty safe areas. And, because my reason for moving to the city is to be nearer to live music, I'm shopping pretty centrally, as well.

You can get a small 1 bedroom place in the $1300 range in both SF and Mountain View. But, that's probably the lower bound, without living in a really sketchy or far out location. I guess that's a big part of the reason most YC founders live with roommates. Splitting a $2700 place three ways works out to a pretty good deal.

<comment><USER8> +1, roommates. I did that when I was out there.

And +1 to your strategy of biting the bullet and paying what it costs to be happy, provided you can afford it of course. I'd prioritize keeping the commute short, because that wears on you every day. On the other hand, I used to work in Fremont and live in Fremont, and the commute was nice and short, and rents are decent, but... Fremont? Not such a happening place. At least a 20 minute drive away from all my friends except the one who was my roommate at the time.

So the ideal is probably to live in SF and work in SF, or live in Mountain View/Palo Alto (but not _East_ Palo Alto, unless things have really changed since I left) and work there as well. Or live in Mountain View and work in your spare room. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'll repeat something I said here a while ago: the startups I've encountered in Boston (including my own employer, MetaCarta) tend to do B2B or government- contracting work, often bootstrapped with consulting or SBIR money. The Valley startups I've read about seem more focused on consumer-facing applications. So if you have a preference for what kind of product you want to be contributing to, that may affect which city you should live in.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've lived in Boston my whole life. Don't have much experience with the Bay Area (beyond knowing a couple friends there and visiting once), so I'll stick mostly to the Boston side of the equation.

Boston is cheaper, but I'm not sure I'd say _significantly_ cheaper. 1BRs start at about $1200/month here - I've heard that the minimum in Mountain View is about $1500/month. With roommates, you can get a room for $700ish/month in the Davis Square area, which is about on par or a little less than Mountain View. Gas prices are a little lower (talking pennies, though), restaurant prices seemed a little higher in Boston (though maybe my friends just took me to inexpensive restaurants in Mountain View), and I didn't get a chance to check out stores in California.

You can save a _ton_ of money here by living away from the major subway lines. A friend of mine has $400/month rent (3 roommates) in Brighton because he's at the end of the Green Line, which is frigging slow. Another friend had $450/month (1 roommate) in a gigantic 2BR on the Newton/Watertown border. I looked at rents in the Teele/Inman square areas in Somerville; they're about $200-300/month less than equivalent apartments in nearby Davis/Harvard squares, because they aren't directly on the subway line. If you need a car anyway, definitely consider living in one of the areas that's not well served by public transportation - you'll make up for it in rent.

The suburbs also have lots of greenery, particularly once you get outside the 128 belt. It's not like suburbs elsewhere in the country, all strip malls and parking lots laid out on a grid. Typical towns in the Boston area have one or two major roads running through them, residential roads branching off them, and lots of unused space because none of the roads are straight. We're on an acre of land, extending about 500 feet back from the road, and when one of my dad's friends from Cupertino visited, his son said "Wow, you live on a park."

Driving in Boston sucks. Whenever possible, I drive into Alewife and take the subway in.

The diversity in the Boston area is a major plus. It's likely that you'll have _normal_ friends here, the kind that think that yet another social network is just a burden and not an opportunity. There's a significant tech population, but it's not like everyone lives and breathes technology.

As for the startup scene: there's an important cultural difference between Boston and the Bay Area. In Boston, the expectation is that you'll work for an established company for 10-20 years, pay your dues, and _then_ start a company. When I talk about startup founders I know, West-coasters seem to assume they're my age - no, most of them are parents of friends or older coworkers I've worked with.

This has been changing a bit recently, because of the general trend of younger people starting companies and the large college population in Boston. But it still seems to be the expectation among investors. Maybe someone who's sought funding more recently could comment, but when my cofounder was testing out investors, many of them seemed very skeptical. Encouraging, but not willing to part with cash for a couple guys 2 years out of school.

Lastly, I'd encourage you to go far from home. I didn't; actually, I moved back home after college, since there were no shortage of jobs in my field close to where I lived, and I could save up cash and use it to fund my own startup. Which is good, it gave me options and let me do stuff I wouldn't otherwise be able to - but now I'm looking to move out to Silicon Valley, precisely because it's on the other side of the country.

</comment><comment><USER11> So, my wife and I lived in Providence, RI for 3 years.

My wife worked as an admin in a startup for 2-3 weeks in Cambridge, and hated the job, hated the commute, hated the culture so much, she quit her job and went back to school to finish her video production degree. She had hoped it was like her job working at US Robotics/3Com, but it was very, very different.

The thing that we really struggled with in New England was the "Townies" and the culture. There really are two different classes of people in New England:

       *"Townies" (people born and raised in the towns of New England)
       * "Gownies" (People who move to New England to go to good schools and then settle in and work white collar jobs or get their grad degree and leave).

We never found to many Gownies like us to hang out with, and spent most of our time hanging out at work/school with the townies. And, while they're really nice people, hardworking, fun accents. They tend to be rather insular against outsiders. We were there for 3 years, and I don't have any friends I'd consider going back and visiting.

So, where you live in Boston-land is important. I think that if you're living in the East Side of Providence, or Harvard Square in Cambridge, it can make all the difference in your social life. It's really hard to get a vibe about that until you've lived there. Each town has a distinct flavor, and a distinct attitude towards outsiders. Choose wisely.

Silicon Valley: I've almost lived here longer than anywhere else I've ever lived: 3 years. And, I'm not planning on moving anywhere in the near future. I really like it here, and I'm not moving away unless I have to. That's never happened to me ever before. (I've moved over 25 times in 35 years.)

The people are great. The chance to meet other people and make friends with others that are doing the same things is astounding. I started <http://hackersandfounders.com> as a meetup group, and it's doubled in size every month but the last. There's just a ton of hackers interested in founding businesses here.

That means a ton of emotional/cultural support that you really can't put a price tag on. Services are also really easy to come by: like it's really easy to get groceries delivered, getting a maid is rather inexpensive and very much worth it. Prepared foods can be outsourced pretty easily using something like Dream Dinners or Dinner A'Fare. You're never very far from really cool things if you need to take a day trip and get away to recharge the batteries.

And finally, housing. If you're considering moving to SV, you really should take a look at renting a house with someone. We live in San Jose, and we split rent on a 4 bedroom, 2 bath house for $2k. Not only do we have a ton of space and a back yard, we turned the formal living room into the startup office. Not bad, when my friends are paying $1700 for a nice one-two bedrooms in an apartment complex. And, you're away from the fun cultural stuff of San Francisco, but it's only a 75 minute drive without traffic, Mountain View is 30 minutes away, and a bunch of restaurants, coffee shops, movie theaters and a FedEx/Kinko's are 3-4 minutes away. Pretty ideal for a startup if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've lived in Boston, then moved to SV, then moved back to Boston, where I live now (modulo a few miles).

IMHO, you're right on all counts about the pros and cons. I don't have recent data, but my impression is that Boston rents are not significantly cheaper (as they would be in, say, Alabama); savings will come from transportation costs. You can live without a car in Boston. Living without a car in Silicon Valley will make you feel like a second-class citizen. Obviously, Boston is closer to your folks if you're from NY.

If I were going to do a startup, and was able to honestly utter the phrase "I lived in SV for a while and loved it"... it's _very_ hard to argue with Silicon Valley. Yeah, it's a monoculture, but it's a monoculture designed around what you're trying to do. Aspiring screenwriters move to L.A.; aspiring musicians move to Nashville; aspiring software wizards move to Silicon Valley.

But the most important thing is: you can change your mind. More than once. Pick the job that seems the best and don't sweat it. Sample Boston for a year or two if you want and make the move to SV later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately the offer in Boston is actually about 10mi outside of Boston, so I'd still need a car.

<comment><USER12> I'd recommend double-checking mbta.com and seeing if the commuter rail or something would get you to work. Public transportation thins out outside the more urban parts of metro Boston, but in some cases it reaches much further than 10 miles outside the city proper.

<comment><USER10> I believe it's actually possible to get from Boston to Washington D.C. via public transportation (with a little bit on Amtrak between Providence and western Connecticut), so yeah, it reaches much further than 10 miles. ;-)

The problem is time. I live in Bedford, and while it's technically possible to get a bus+subway from here to the financial district, it takes about an hour and a half. That's compared to 35 minutes driving (no traffic), ~55 minutes driving (with traffic), an hour driving to Alewife then taking the red line in, and an hour and a half for biking to Alewife and taking the subway in. Not much point.

Commuter rail is similar - it's like 1.5-2 hours to take the commuter rail from Concord to Porter and then transfer to the red line. Might be a bit better closer in to the city, but commuter rail coverage is a bit spotty - it's faster to drive to Alewife from Bedford than it is to get to the nearest commuter rail stations in Concord or Lincoln.

<comment><USER13> I recently moved from Arlington ($1200 a month for a huge two-bedroom, off- street parking, back yard, etc.) to a place in NH for $300 a month. In Arlington, I was 15 min walk from Alewife and then 10 min subway ride to my office in Central Square (or a 15 minutes total if I drove).

I had planned on taking the Lowell train to Boston after I moved to NH, but that was when gas was $3.50+ a gal and it would have cost me $25 for gas round-trip. Commuting on the train would have added about 2 hours a day to my commute vs driving in.

My work allows me to be very flexible with my schedule, so I've been driving in later to avoid rush hour and leaving work after 8pm. With gas less than $2, it costs me less to drive in than it does to take public transportation, plus saves me 2 hours a day.

Time = Money (or sanity, at least).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had offers in both SV and Boston and it was a tough choice. I'm still not sure I made the right one.

While Boston is cheaper, it's not that much cheaper. I think you'll probably do slightly better off depending on the offer you get. (I currently live and work in Mountain View)

Startup-wise Boston seemed pretty sparse compared to the Silicon Valley. That was definitely part of my decision (not just where to work, but as you say, networking, conferences to go to, etc).

I still think little fish, big pond is the better way to go. It gets frustrating otherwise and limits your growth. Important team in a less known company also is much better for career and personal satisfaction.

I'll be honest, weather also greatly influenced my decision. Also what's your move going to be like? Getting all my stuff across the country was yet another reason for me to stay in the SV.

I personally actually much prefer Boston city and the general vibe of Boston, but career-wise I decided SV was better.

</comment><comment><USER15> In terms of locations:

I lived in Boston for quite awhile and experienced a bit of the startup scene there. Bay Area beats it hands down. Boston/Cambridge isn't a bad place to be, but my experience has been that the diversity doesn't give you any benefit. Most of the time I was there and doing startups, I felt removed from where the action was really taking place. There's not a lot of momentum there. I'm a strong believer that the people you surround yourself with and who you let influence you have a big impact on your mentality/success.

The price difference in terms of rent/everything else is negligible if you want it to be. As long as you don't need to be in a certain location to make you happy, you can live quite cheaply.

In terms of your job offers: You need to consider what you actually want out of the job. Most likely the real difference is not so great, so the actual consequences of your decision don't really matter. If you are just out of school, you should be focused on opening doors and making connections. But don't put so much emphasis on this one decision -- it's not like you are going to be there 20 years. For all you know, you could be there 6 months and realize that you want to do something else or move.

</comment><comment><USER16> I know the post is whether to choose from Boston or SV, but I see your from NY. I been around the NYC startup scene for while and there a bunch of activity here and it only has increased since Wall St. decided to die. Brooklyn and Manhattan have a bunch of startup opportunities, even some startups from Ycombinator are located here like Buglabs and Frogmetrics. Not to mention organizations/meetups like Jelly ( coworking started in nyc), Meetup.com's ( located in nyc as well)NYC tech meetup, and <http://www.nextny.org/>. Obviously if you feel the need to move to Boston or SV I understand completely given there status in tech world but don't overlook your backyard as well.

</comment><comment><USER17> You'll find good jobs in either place. Do consider also the cultures of the two locations. I know granola west coasters that would not be able to hang with the east coast hustle, and I know east coasters that would be driven bananas by the happy go lucky California lifestyle. Which stereotype do you dislike less? You'll be interacting with these people when you're not at work and if one of these grates on your nerves it can easily build resentment and unhappiness toward your living arrangement.

Whichever you choose, make a concerted effort to try to learn from and appreciate the different social norms of your new home. I didn't do all that I could/should have once, and I regret it.

</comment><comment><USER18> With regards to Boston Pros, pt # 3 vs. Silicon Valley, you can always live in San Francisco even if you work in Mountain View. You can commute via Caltrain.

<comment><USER19> I'm thinking about this too. I'm moving from Boston to go work at a startup in Palo Alto. Their offices are right by the Caltrain, but it seems even then, living in SF (which would otherwise appeal to me) makes the commute kinda suck.

<comment><USER4> I commuted between SF and Stanford by motorcycle for a few years and loved it. Cheap and fast. Caltrain was not in my vocabulary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Re: ponds. I would most definitely want to experience both scenarios. So I would pick the one I hadnt experienced before.</comment>


I Made a Deal in a Bike Race - <AUTHOR> https://www.bicycling.com/racing/a22551004/i-made-a-deal-in-a-bike-race/ <comment><USER2> Trying to understand the subculture here, and failing. If I understand correctly, during a very important bike race the author made a verbal deal with his competitor near the end of the race, and the competitor broke that verbal deal.

Let me hasten to say that had I made such a deal, I wouldn't have broken it.

But shouldn't the author have assumed that his competitor was playing mind games? If I understand correctly there are no rules against deals like this. And I imagine there are no rules against lying to your competitor.

I would feel if I were in the author's place that I had allowed myself to be taken advantage of, that I had trusted a competitor, which is generally speaking not a good idea in a race like that.

It seems to me this is the author saying he trained physically for the race but got hoodwinked by someone he by nature should not trust.

Or is there something about the subculture I'm missing?

<comment><USER3> There is a pretty strong culture in bike racing of making deals like this and sticking to them, because in a break like this, if two people work together, they have almost literally twice as good a chance of winning.

For example, Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani on the famous Alpe d'Huez in the Tour de France: Lance offered him the stage win if he would work with him so he could make time on his rivals for the overall 23 day race general classification:

[http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/armstrong-if-i-was- the-c...](http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/armstrong-if-i-was-the- carpenter-pantani-was-the-artist/)

In top level professional riding, if you renege on a deal like this, you will have a seriously hard time making another deal like this in the future and that will seriously impair your professional prospects, because these deals are everywhere because of the multi-goaled nature (stage vs. overall vs. mountain points vs. sprint points) of the sport.

<comment><USER4> That's a stage race, that happens a lot. Help me win my war and I'll let you reap the spoils of the battle.

But in a 1 day like the national championship I really do not think that such verbal agreements are valid at all. Ok, I've never raced, but I've watched a lot of racing and have literally seen this scenario happen multiple times to just one rider alone (Peter Sagan). He was/is often the strongest rider but was on a bad team and was prone to tactical mistakes when he was younger, so he would do a lot of the pulling and get screwed at the end. Nobody wanted to see Sagan lose, but nobody called the winners cheaters either.

<comment><USER5> > But in a 1 day like the national championship I really do not think that > such verbal agreements are valid at all.

That would be the case if each rider would have the same chance of winning and each rider would be there to win. However, for many riders, the national championship are not their main focus. They might be exhausted from a long program of races in the previous weeks and are not at their best. Or they might be preparing for other more important races in the coming weeks and are not yet on their best, for example when coming from a training camp at height, or are unwilling to take extra risks to prevent injury. And, of course, some races are better suited to certain riders than others.

All these factors mean that there are a lot of riders that know they aren't there to win, but would be willing to help another rider. For example, one who has helped him before, or a team mate, or one would could beat a rival, or one who is an underdog, and so on.

<comment><USER4> You have said a lot of things that are kind of true and not relevant to this. First of all, I think most of the people at the U-23 USA race in 2001 were not there to be domestiques. For an U-23 rider in a non-European country I think national championship is your big break. We can safely assume that at some point towards the end of the race they were both in it to win it. Then Mike kind of played Ian, but Ian LET HIMSELF get played. This scenario is very common in 1-day races. Like 10-50% of (pro, 1-day) races I would say end up with a breakaway getting away without enough of a cushion to have the luxury of cat and mouse, and in many of these cases 1 rider is stronger than the other. It's 'unfair' to the stronger rider, but this story proves that you can only trust yourself and teammates. So either drop the weak guy or make him help. If he doesn't help, well, actions speak louder than 'verbal agreements.' I still think it is a fascinating story and mad respect for both guys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This same race was a topic in a recent episode of the This American Life podcast

[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/668/the-long-fuse/act- three...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/668/the-long-fuse/act-three-5)

<comment><USER7> Thanks! That episode's description in my podcast app sounded pretty uninteresting so I had originally skipped it.

Have it queued up now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This kind of side deal in bike racing (especially when money is involved) is very common. And accepted by most who race at that level.

It has always bothered me as a fan.

I know one of the riders, and I know of the other. They both seem like good people.

Well-written story about aftereffects, and a reconciliation of sorts.

<comment><USER9> Having done a lot of bike races you're even making deals with your teammates realistically.

It's an odd artifact of the sport awarding prizes to individuals when it is impossible most of the time to win without teamwork, and only one person on the team that works together can actually win.

I don't fault the racer in this story who reneged on his deal to win.

<comment><USER10> If making deals is acceptable to begin with, then breaking them is wrong. I can't see any interpretation where Mike didn't do _something_ wrong.

<comment><USER11> It's also arguably not acceptable. There have been allegations of fairly large amounts of money changing hand for in some of the deals, promoters and sponsors tend to frown upon that stuff, as do sports books and it might be against the law (sporting fraud) in a few European countries. The rules and the codes regarding this sort of thing are fuzzy. There is also a class system of sorts in play. When Lance Armstrong went to the media and claimed he let Marco Pantani win on Ventoux in the 2000 Tour, that's against the code too but because Lance was so dominant nobody said much about it. The fact was, nobody could make Lance pay for that on the road. In the romantic ideal world, a bunch of Italian teams would have worked together to prevent Lance's teammates from winning some monuments (maybe Hincapie at Paris Roubaix, but he was never really in it) that they were targeting but the fact was the team was built for one purpose and that never was an option. The ability to enforce the deal is part of it. Likewise, in retrospect, Lance going public with it was a scorched earth psychological tactic that made his image even bigger.

I would say, at least at some levels (u-23 national championship might not be that) that if you can get someone to gift you a win for an unenforceable deal, then you beat them and you did it mentally. It's like all the secret rules of baseball.

<comment><USER12> I don't think it is that unacceptable. I remember Jalabert giving the stage victory to the other rider at least once in the Spanish la Vuelta the year that he won it (they had been part of a 2-men escape) and more recently Contador did the same thing at least once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought the author was far too harsh on Mike and the whole article comes off as extremely self-serving.

<comment><USER14> Mike was harsh on himself. Neither you nor I get to define Mike's personal standards.

As for the author, I think (speculation) he would have gotten over it if his racing career had not been cut short due to injury.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it probably haunted Mike more than Ian judging by his actions.

I'm glad the story ended in forgiveness. People make mistakes, especially in critical moments when the stakes are high and emotions are surging.

<comment><USER16> If you read to the end he admitted it was cheating - it wasn't a mistake.

<comment><USER17> If you read to the end, you realize that it's more complicated than that. It truly and legitimately felt like cheating, and yet under the _written_ rules, it was not _clearly_ cheating.

That's part of what makes this such a great story. _He_ knew it was _cheating_ , even if it wasn't cheating from a _these are the rules_ perspective. That is, cheating exists within a cultural context, not just a written context. I feel like this is a weird place in American law: the law is an interpretive endeavor, and yet it is treated as a "rule" where loopholes are "ok" even if it's not in line with the spirit of the law.

<comment><USER18> I tried reading the article, but the paragraphs of npr style fluff got to me.

But from the comments it's less cheating (breaking the rules) as it was craven betrayal and fraud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This happens all the time. Julian Alaphilippe basically did that in one of the classics and at Amstel Gold, the rider he tricked the last time around (J. Fuglsang) didn't give in and neither won (although Fuglsang got 3rd). Cycling is filled with ways to get others to work more than others.

<comment><USER20> Amstel Gold was pretty amazing, but unless you heard differently, that was just tactics rather than any kind of 'deal'. Fuglsang played that one right - to win you have to risk losing.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, it's tactics but in the same vein where he says his legs are 'fu&ked' and wants someone else to pull more and then outsprints them in the end. This is a quote from Fuglsang: "From when he attacked, I was still the one who was putting in the most effort because he always said that he was fucked. But he did the same at Strade Bianche, and there he still got me, so that's the game – that's the tactic."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just got done racing the La Crosse Omnium and my favorite stage by far was the uphill time trial. No drafting, just going straight up the bluff for 2.3 miles climbing 530 ft.

</comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me a bit of the old advice on "Playing to Win" [http://www.sirlin.net/ptw](http://www.sirlin.net/ptw)

</comment><comment><USER23> I am flummoxed as to how anyone would consider any kind of verbal communications during a cycling race to be "cheating". There are no rules governing informal collusion agreements made during a race, as far as I know.

If there is any kind of problem here, it's that two or more colluding racers that take turns drafting each other can race faster together than each of the individual racers cycling alone, and that cycling features many different competitions including some of the same competitors. This creates a trust- dependent metagame.

So the correct game theory play against someone reneging on a false promise would be for someone to seek out and draft the renegade racer in the next national championship competition, without ever giving them the opportunity to draft, thus punishing the betrayal in a tit-for-tat fashion. Seems like an inconvenient and bloody-minded thing to do, though.

The business with handing over the winner's trophies to the runner-up just seemed bizarre and awkward to me.

<comment><USER24> > So the correct game theory play against someone reneging on a false promise > would be ...

To be public about the false promis removing the ability of the rider to make future deals thus removing their ability to compete on equal terms with other competitors and seriously damaging their carriers. If you want to model the real world using game theory, then you have to include the fact that players can communicate outside of active competition, and that players have reputations, tarnished by their bad faith actions.

<comment><USER23> Players can also lie in out-of-competition communications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Deals happen in lots of bike races, both in pro and amateur/youth categories. But word gets around fast in the peloton if you make a deal and do not honor it. If you pull a stunt like this especially in a big race like a national championship you can be sure that practically no one will ever make another deal with you and often riders won't even enter a breakaway with you. They might even ask you to drop out of the breakaway or they stop pulling.

</comment><comment><USER26> Paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre here: We are condemned to have a free will. Everything we do, we own and are entirely responsible for the cause and the effect. But more importantly, what we do shows other people how they should act.

Ipso facto, despite whatever culture exists in the cycling world, making deals is cheating. Then again that sport has a long sordid history with that subject.

</comment><comment><USER27> I can't help to see similarities between this article and the recent phenomena of competitive battle royale games. Currently, Fortnite is in the midst of perhaps the largest open-entry tournaments in history[1], and seems to be establishing these sorts of norms very quickly. Although "teaming" (direct collusion, such as the event featured in this article) is explicitly prohibited with serious consequences, most players implicitly acknowledge that the competition isn't truly "winner takes all," at least at the individual match level, since there are incentives for placing in the top 5, top 25, etc.

As someone who does not play Fortnite but is interested in the social aspects of the game, one term I noticed being thrown around a lot in the competitive subreddit was "w-keying" and its impact on the competitive aspects of the game. "W-key" is a reference to the "W" on a QWERTY keyboard, or "forward" based on WASD movement, and refers to (overly-)aggressive players in Fortnite's competitive scene[2]. This term is derogatory; being called a "W-Keyer" implies a lack of tactical awareness and immaturity as well as a degree of unsportsmanlike behavior.

At first I thought this was sort of weird. "Aggression" in competitive games generally refers to a tactics-level decision, and is thus is generally accepted as part of the game, keeps other tactics in check and makes a better spectator sport by encouraging proactivity. Think zerg-rushing in Starcraft, Mono-red Aggro in Magic The Gathering or Serve-and-Volley in tennis. But most competitive games are zero-sum at the match level (one wins, one loses, or both tie), whereas Fortnite is not. In Fortnite's competitive mode, certain types of aggression is akin to "defecting" in the Prisoner's Dilemma, reducing the overall likelihood of both parties placing (due to one party being eliminated, both parties using up a significant amount of resources, and a reasonable likelihood that a third party swoops in).

I'm not going to go any deeper into the game theory aspects since I would quickly go beyond my comfort area. However, that it's essential that such phenomena are explored more deeply. E-Sports figures are the newest celebrity class, and "people famous for playing video games" has gone from a Wikipedia stub to an ecosystem that mirrors "traditional" star athlete culture. If W-Keying becomes an unwritten taboo, how will punishment for breaking this taboo be meted out? Will those who play the game The Right Way seek to ostracize these players or seek retribution inside/outside the game? Will exceptions be made for star players or would said players face even more scrutiny? What degree of governorship do the companies that put on these competitions have over this type of behavior?

[1][https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/22/18235132/fortnite- world-c...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/22/18235132/fortnite-world-cup- final-date-prize-money-new-york-esports) [2] I am not 100% sure if this term is specific to Fortnite, Battle Royale-style games or WASD-controlled games in general, I've just only encountered it in this context.

<comment><USER28> Very interesting example! Another might be in Formula 1 racing.

Certain driver's (Senna [1]) have been known to force passes by putting the other driver into a no-win situation. The passing driver might dive to the inside of a turn with no hope of slowing enough to avoid hitting the car they are passing. Their only hope is that the other driver will decide to avoid an accident, allowing the pass.

If they don't make way then both drivers are out of the race. Maybe the aggressive driver receives a penalty for reckless behavior. If they do make way though, the aggressive driver now knows that they can do this again and again to this same competitor without being punished for it. Some of the greatest drivers in history (Senna, Schumacher, Earnhardt in NASCAR) had reputations for this.

Another example could be unspoken collusion between poker players in a tournament. When one player is all in with their tournament life on the line they may be called by multiple other players who have more chips than them. These other players can still bet against each other in a side pot, but often won't and may consider doing so bad form. If one does continue to bet it may force the other to fold. This improves the betters chance of winning this hand, but it also improves the all in player's chance of winning and staying in the tournament. By not betting the two callers increase the chance of knocking this player out increasing their expected winnings for the tournament.

[1] [https://youtu.be/9U_K76vPGYo?t=371](https://youtu.be/9U_K76vPGYo?t=371)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I saw a listing a while back of the number of winners of the Tour De France that had been disqualified for drug releated cheating - I think it was fully half since 1990.

This is not one bad apple. This is an entire orchard.

At some point, where the proven drug users are merely fractions of percents ahead of the others, (The Tour is usually won by dozens of seconds over hundreds of hours of racing) should we not think that no-one can compete at that level without drug use. And just try a reboot. Or stop the whole thing.

I am totally in favour of encouraging fitness - but most olympic level athletes are frankly ignoring their bodies screaming at them to stop. cf the biographies of any marathon runner.

That seems unhealthy

This is the closest article I can find to my memory : [https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cycling/tour-de-france-the- hall...](https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cycling/tour-de-france-the-hall-of- shame-20121019-27wsd.html)

<comment><USER30> Cyclists have been using drugs for a long time -- Tom Simpson was doped to the gills when he died on Mont Ventoux in 1967. EPO, HGH, blood doping, etc. may only be worth a few percent, but at the elite level a few percent matter. For cycling, you can look at the power output on Tour de France climbs before and after they developed an effective test for EPO.

Elite level _anything_ is unhealthy, because you're pushing the limits of what humans can accomplish, at the expense of everything else.

<comment><USER31> I don't believe there is even a single person competing at the top percentile of professional sports (household names) that is doing so without one or more forms of artificial assistance such as EPO, HGH, blood doping, etc.

I wonder, is this a controversial statement?

<comment><USER30> Controversial? Yes.

Wrong? I can't speak for all sports, but I know an ex-professional cyclist. Doping is less prevalent in the States than in Europe, but even in the States you see amateurs doing it occasionally. Plenty of Euros dope, but more ride the fine line of "therapeutic use" exemptions for drugs that _just happen_ to improve their performance by a percent or two.

They're not all doping, but at least in endurance sports, many are.

<comment><USER12> > Doping is less prevalent in the States than in Europe,

That is certainly a strong statement, seeing that Armstrong, Landis or Tyler Hamilton are all from the States. Yes, most of the European riders are also not clean, but there are huge exceptions, like France.

<comment><USER30> I was a bit hesitant to write it, but that was just my friend's experience on the MTB circuit over the last 15-20 years. US Postal and Armstrong were awful and shameless, but I think they were an outlier among American pro teams. Also, there's less money in mountain biking, and it's not really a team sport, so the kind of organized team doping Armstrong created is much less likely to happen.

Anyways, I don't follow cycling as closely as I used to, in part because the pervasive doping was just so discouraging. Hopefully some combination of out- of-competition testing and biological passport will finally make the sport relatively clean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> <Spoiler alert>

No witty comment here. That story is a great read.

</comment><comment><USER33> Its kind of gross how cut and dry this is painted from the perspective of the guy who feels he was cheated. I have to imagine this happens all day every day- at least I know similar situations happen in the professional world and are common. Raises, promotions, projects, etc. You can make hallway deals sure, but someone's gonna sprint and get that prize.

<comment><USER17> And here I thought it was interesting from the opposite side. Mike made a choice that was within the rules of the game but not the spirit of the game, which already existed within morally dubious territory, and was punished with a lifetime of regret, even though he won the prize. I don't even remember the name of the other character.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am 100% in favor of people lying about their deals in these cases, just as I am 100% in favor of a future class of ransomware attackers who collect the ransom and then destroy the key without ever decrypting the victim's data.

In both cases it improves the bottom line of the endeavor. For cycling you get more dynamic races and race endings. For computers it means hospitals and power grids actually go ahead and get rid of their Windows XP machines.

</comment><comment><USER35> Well that was a huge waste of words.

> Mike looked back. He saw the pack getting closer to catching us. He > panicked. He offered a deal.

> A rider who is weaker or at a tactical disadvantage will sometimes offer a > promise not to sprint for the win if the stronger rider will promise to stop > trying to get away.

> Near a sign that said there was one kilometer to go, we rounded a left hand > turn. I looked back at Mike. I said to him, "You remember our deal?"

> But Mike can't remember if he acknowledged the other racer. He can't > remember if he nodded yes, the way I remember it, or if he didn't do > anything at all. He remembers only that when he saw the finish line, a > banner across the road at the top of a short abrupt hill, he suddenly was > sprinting.

> And as Mike drove, he made a call he'd long wanted to make. Long needed to > make. He said into the phone that he had that jersey with him. He said, I > cheated. I'm sorry.

<comment><USER15> Some people enjoy the details. It lets you immerse yourself momentarily in bike racing culture which is incredibly interesting.

After reading Lord of the Rings:

"Well, that was a huge waste of words."

> Bilbo gives long lost evil ring to son Frodo

> Frodo goes on a long journey with friends to destroy the ring

> A few friends die; a lot of enemies die

> Frodo can't destroy the ring in the moment of truth because it has corrupted > him

> It gets destroyed anyway

There, saved you from reading 1000+ pages of literature

<comment><USER35> And some people don't so I provided the key parts. Surely someone else will appreciate it, but if not it doesn't in any way prevent you from reading each and every sentence.

I would also very much appreciate a summary if someone posted a 1000+ page piece to HN.

<comment><USER36> No one is faulting you for posting a summary, but for calling the article a huge waste of words.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Gives Chrome OS Apps a Shutdown Date - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/google-gives-chrome-os-apps-a-shutdown-date/ <comment><USER2> Makes total sense here. Will take this a step further and probably all the Android SDKs and ChromeOS SDKs will eventually be replaced with Dart and Flutter for Web and Mobile. Kotlin will be kept for Java compatibility.

Then Google will soon give a date for deprecating ChromeOS and Android for it inevitability being all replaced by Fuchsia. Just incase the result of the Oracle v Google lawsuit goes either way, Google will have Dart/Flutter and Fuchsia to fall back on once they're ready.

This lawsuit is the reason why Dart, Flutter, Fuchsia all exist in the first place.</comment>


Apple a decade behind Japan on mobile payment curve - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-decade-behind-japan-mobile-payment-curve-070251549.html

<comment><USER2> How is that surprising? USA have been decades behind France and Europe with respect to intelligent credit cards (you know, this French patented invention the USA credit companies never were interested in, until the patent was over).

And of course, given that my credit cards have electronic chips in them, they also have NFC. (But for security reasons, NFC payments are only possible for small change; for costly charges, we still type in PIN or sign).

[https://www.secure.bnpparibas.net/banque/portail/particulier...](https://www.secure.bnpparibas.net/banque/portail/particulier/Fiche?type=folder&identifiant=KIX_20111007104731)</comment>


CTO vs. VP/Engineering - <AUTHOR> http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/20361

<comment><USER2> depends on the size & structure of the company.

VP/Engg are responsible for shipping software/products.

CTO's are technical visionaries or glorified sales people with a big title depending on the company. Here's a link to the various types of CTO's [pdf article]: [http://www.brixtonspa.com/Career/The_Role_of_the_CTO_4Models...](http://www.brixtonspa.com/Career/The_Role_of_the_CTO_4Models.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the difference between the two roles? The article assumes you already know.

<comment><USER4> My impression of his definitions:

CTO = High level leader of technical side of the company. Tech idea guy and salesmen. Big broad decisions. Not involved in the day to day.

VP/Eng = IT Director/Head of development/operations down in the trenches implementing the CTO's vision.</comment></comment>


The Surprising Relativism of the Brain's GPS - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/58/self/the-surprising-relativism-of-the-brains-gps <comment> your-nanny Botbinick et al's paper is a step forward in the right direction, but their ideas still need evidence from carefully planned experimental studies</comment>