Alphabet shareholders reject diversity proposal backed by employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-inc-agm/alphabet-shareholders-reject-diversity-proposal-backed-by-employees-idUSKCN1J22BS <comment><USER2> Previous discussion yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17251371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17251371)

</comment><comment><USER3> To what extent should diversity be the responsibility of companies? I would argue the responsibility is in proportion to added-discrimination, so to speak (kind of like your profit should be in proportion to your added value).

So, as an example, if 90% of your applicants are male and 10% are female, presuming quality is randomly distributed, the default assumption is that the company ends up with 90% male employees and 10% female employees. You might make some adjustments arguing that diversity is better for work environment / productivity / decision-making but that's a post-hoc adjustment.

If that is the case at Google (and I have no way of knowing), then I would argue the burden falls on society for having 90% of applicants be male and 10% of the applicants be female in the first place. That sharp of a gender gap is not the case in Eastern Europe.

The solution is obviously best targeted toward the problem and not the symptom. If you have a fever because of a bacterial pneumonia, antibiotics are much better than Tylenol.

<comment><USER4> I had this misconception too & Google has not had 50/50 parity as a goal (unsure about specifically what this proposal is but I don't think it establishes quotas either). The discussion has been centered about reaching parity with the available talent pool as you describe. It's even in the article:

> Eileen Naughton, who leads Google's HR operations, said the company remains > committed to an internal goal to reach "market supply" representation of > women and minorities by 2020, which could help bring hiring in line with the > diversity of the candidate pool.

<comment><USER5> It is interesting though that if are far from market supply parity now but they want to reach it by 2020 then between now and 2020 they need to apply really strong positive discrimination (over market supply parity) when hiring/firing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why do companies hire all these diversity administration in the first place? It burns epic amounts of money, and sows discontent, when there message and answer to everything is we need more diversity for all leadership and tech positions,(aka quotas of people with subpar skillsets). Instead of merely hiring on skill.

<comment><USER7> The thing is that people aren't hired based solely on skill. There is some degree of bias that needs to be addressed.

<comment><USER8> This bias goes well beyond racial and gender diversity. Why are these the only types of diversity that are ever discussed.

And pls don't misunderstand this argument, but could the same argument not be used for say diversity of skill? Like how come a company can reject me due to lack of skill?

<comment><USER9> > And pls don't misunderstand this argument, but could the same argument not > be used for say diversity of skill? Like how come a company can reject me > due to lack of skill?

The argument is that it's unfair and harmful to the individual, your company, and society to not hire someone because their skin is too dark. Do you think that's true of not hiring someone who isn't qualified?

<comment><USER8> > society to not hire someone because their skin is too dark.

In SV, I can't imagine this being that common. However let's take an example. There's an interview for a position and the interviewer is a white American. Two applicants of equal skill apply. One of them is African American who's attended the same high school as the interviewer. The other one is a recent emigrant from Russia who is skilled technically however his "cultural awareness" might be lacking. Who is more likely to get hired? This is a rhetorical question. I actually don't know.

<comment><USER9> You're changing the subject. Let's stick to your first question for now. You were asking whether the arguments for diversity of race and gender could be applied to diversity of skill.

Does the argument I gave for diversity of race apply to diversity of skill? If not, do you think I gave a non-standard argument for diversity of race?

<comment><USER8> I'm not actually, I'm pointing out a type of diversity that the commonly accepted notion of diversity doesn't quite capture.

<comment><USER9> Yet when I press you on your concrete example of diversity of skill, you immediately move on to a different example without responding to what I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an honest question to people who side with the proposal. At what point would these measures become unnecessary? What are the conditions?

Btw what is the name of the ideology that one would use to justify this?

<comment><USER10> This is a hard question to answer. But I'd consider something like racial bussing in the 60s. This was a positive step and was enacted without explicit exit conditions. Such exit conditions are not necessarily a requirement for these sorts of initiatives.

<comment><USER8> The two are very different tho. One is in some sense removing a rule, one is adding it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If we aren't going to mark this as dupe, I'll repeat my comment from the thread yesterday: Per the article, backed by "several hundred employees" out of a 2017 Alphabet headcount of 80,110.

<comment><USER12> Popularity is not a measure of validity.

<comment><USER13> Sure it is, when the rulemaking procedure is by majority vote.

<comment><USER14> The rule making procedure, if I'm not mistaken, is majority vote of shares. That's why the article says that the proposals did not pass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For interest here's where you can find the relevant motions being referred to in the article: [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000130817918...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000130817918000222/lgoog2018-def14a.htm)

The ones being referred to are:

Proposal Number 6 Stockholder Proposal Regarding a Report on Gender Pay

Proposal Number 9 Stockholder Proposal Regarding Board Diversity and Qualifications

Proposal Number 10 Stockholder Proposal Regarding a Report on Content Governance

I'm not that familiar with corporate motions so I might be misinterpreting what I'm reading but it looks like the motions are for Alphabet to produce a report about gender pay discrimination, to disclose the qualifications of the board (including ideological leanings and biographical data), and to produce a report on the efficacy of Alphabet's terms of service enforcement (in particular around user uploaded content).

Alphabet's disagreeing statements on the first one is largely of the form "we think gender pay is an important issue (see existing published reports) but we don't think this is motion is a good idea". The second one they actually support saying "sure, a diverse board is a good idea". For the third one their response is along the lines of "We take this seriously to the tune of hiring thousands of people to enforce our terms of service".

My biggest surprise after seeing the article and reading the materials myself was that the second proposal (board diversity) claims that Alphabet is known to "operate in ideological hegemony that eschews conservative people" which is not the impression I took away from the article.

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems like there's a lot of internal conflict in Google at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER17> If Google continues to advertise a strong stance on diversity the problem may solve itself, for them. I say this because I've noticed that my clients with a strong LGBT pride message tend to further attract people from that community. Resulting in an amplification. In one such company this was very pronounced.

The reverse (people not from that community self selecting out) might also be true but I don't have anything to back that up with.

</comment><comment><USER18> diversity promotion is just another system not based on merit but a system based on discrimination and "affirmative" action

</comment><comment><USER19> I believe these are the proposals in question:

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000130817918...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000130817918000222/lgoog2018-def14a.htm#lgoog2018def14aa065)

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000130817918...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000130817918000222/lgoog2018-def14a.htm#lgoog2018def14aa068)

</comment><comment><USER20> I wish the article had more details on why the propositions were rejected. It makes sense though, Alphabet is there to make money not foster an ultra political working environment. After the Damore incident, I wouldn't consider working there, but this does offer some hope to those who aren't far-left leaning.

<comment><USER21> I wonder how you came to the determination that those who support equality are _far_ left, rather than just left?

<comment><USER22> He didn't come to that determination. People pushing these _don't_ support equality or anything close to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like what we are doing at our company, an unofficial 1:5, where for every over represented candidate, we aggressively pursue five underrepresented candidates. It is a lot easier to train people for tech than it is to "train" someone to come from a oppressed community.</comment>


Bitcoin intellectual property crowdfunding - <AUTHOR> http://invent.yanninstitute.com/?p=1165

<comment><AUTHOR> Driving global innovation with Bitcoin crowdfunding</comment>


Deep Photo Style Transfer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/luanfujun/deep-photo-styletransfer <comment><USER2> This is super impressive and something that I didn't think would be possible without someone very skilled in photoshop going over the images.

As a photo enthusiast, I am very excited about this, but also a little worried that soon very simple apps are capable of doing the craziest of edits through the power of neural nets. Imagine the next 'deep beauty transfer', able to copy perfect skin from a model onto everyone, making everything a little more fake and less genuine.

The engineer in me now wants to understand how to build something like this from scratch but I think I'm probably lacking the math skills necessary.

<comment><USER3> Here is an (in progress) article I am working on that might help you: [https://harishnarayanan.org/writing/artistic-style- transfer/](https://harishnarayanan.org/writing/artistic-style-transfer/)

Repository of explanatory notebooks: [https://github.com/hnarayanan/artistic- style-transfer](https://github.com/hnarayanan/artistic-style-transfer)

<comment><USER4> You need to make a correction. The map isnt linear with the addition of the b vector. Its an offset linear map.

<comment><USER5> a.k.a., [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affine_transformation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affine_transformation)

<comment><USER4> Yes thank you for the proper name!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One interesting thing that may help the final output quality is preserving the detail layer of the original image, and then applying that to the output image. Here's my quick attempt at it: [http://dev.jjcm.org/tonetransfer/](http://dev.jjcm.org/tonetransfer/)

I basically just used a technique called frequency separation - it's extremely quick with the most computational part being a gaussian blur, and it allows you to separate detail from tone into two separate layers. From there I just took the detail layer of the original image and applied it to the tone layer of the output image.

<comment><USER7> Their implementation appears to lose a lot of detail in many examples. This is especially true on human faces or pictures that include human faces. Can you reproduce an improvement there?

<comment><USER6> I didn't see any examples of human faces, can you link me to one? Happy to try it out and see the results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am a professional photo editor for a major magazine. Despite what the title sounds like, I spend much of my day sending photographers on assignment and sourcing images rather than manipulating files. I often wonder how my career will evolve in ten years; the writing is on the wall for my job, given the state of the media market.

Looking at this, I now see a future as a forensic imaging specialist. At some point, the algorithm will get pretty damn good, and it will be my job to look for tells -- cracks in the generated image where reality doesn't quite line up. The question will be whether I am seeking out these abnormalities to cover them up or to call them out.

<comment><USER9> you may need to train some powerful discriminator networks to do that job instead of relying on the one in your head soon..

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It almost causes me goosebumps to think about how if someone asked me "imagine this clear sky, but with this red sunset over here" I could very plausibly come up with a similar result as shown in these examples.

The transfer of the flame to the blue perfume bottle looks like a very practical way to prototype marketing images.

<comment><USER11> Yes! I imagine being like, "Damn, I always wanted to see Venice when it was snowing, but alas it was sunny during my short visit."

<comment><USER12> Or even better, snow in a tropical country, which can never happen in real life.

<comment><USER13> You are wrong it happened this year, [http://www.italymagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/940x...](http://www.italymagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/940xauto/public/neve_sardegna_alghero.jpg?itok=NqGQKioM)

<comment><USER14> Sardinia isn't a tropical locale by a long shot

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is really cool, but the only thing I can think right now, the question that's eating away at my soul, is: why did it color-cycle the apples?

<comment><USER16> There are also semantic masks applied (can be found in the github repo), I think that's how the Colorado swapping is done.

<comment><USER15> Ah, I see. They're right here:

Input mask: [https://github.com/luanfujun/deep-photo- styletransfer/blob/m...](https://github.com/luanfujun/deep-photo- styletransfer/blob/master/examples/segmentation/in23.png) Output mask: [https://github.com/luanfujun/deep-photo- styletransfer/blob/m...](https://github.com/luanfujun/deep-photo- styletransfer/blob/master/examples/segmentation/tar23.png)

So, presumably these masks were drawn manually. The three different colors in the input mask tell it to train 3 different models from the masked regions, and then the same three colors in the output mask tell it where to apply each trained model. So it trains a model for each apple and then applies that model to the next apple over. It's not just randomly swapping colors on the apples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow. Our kids may be able to walk around with glasses and see the world styled in real-time as they please - perpetual sunshine, gloom, night, whatever..

<comment><USER18> I actually really hope this will turn out to be true.

I'm unfamiliar with the processing power required to run this on a single image, let alone a video feed. Does anyone have any back of the napkin estimations that might show just how far away AR glasses are from this?

<comment><USER19> > _I actually really hope this will turn out to be true._

Yeah, screw reality.

<comment><USER18> Reality is nice. Being able to augment it in various ways would also be nice, and has a ton of applications across a ton of fields.

AR games and hollywood filters are the obvious go-tos, but I wouldn't be surprised to see seemingly random industries like therapy see benefits (a few applications that come to mind are brightening up the world to combat SAD, tinting views to ease aggression, or even Black Mirror-esque "blocking" of people who upset or anger you IRL if you want to trend towards dystopian tropes).

Personally, I just want to up the world's saturation to max and chill with rainbows and bright colors while I'm otherwise productive. Seems like having fun filters would (or could) make life mildly better for many people going about their usual day.

<comment><USER19> > _Personally, I just want to up the world 's saturation to max and chill with > rainbows and bright colors while I'm otherwise productive_

That would mostly lead to overstimulation and desensitization. People get bored with everything they have immediate and easy access to.

<comment><USER18> Of course, doing anything in moderation is obviously important.

As long as it were an optional thing (i.e. not forced on people like the traditional dystopian take), I don't see how letting people choose to change how they see the world would be a guaranteed negative outcome. Especially since that's pretty much literally the advice in every self-help book: look at things from a new perspective, get a new perspective on life, surround yourself with positive things, go where the scenery makes you most happy, be more cheerful, fake it 'til you make it, etc.

Obviously it could be abused by some (overstimulation/desensitization don't sound so bad compared to alternatives), but I imagine overall it'd be a net positive on the lives of more.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it would be amazing if Adobe incorporated some of these projects (Neural Style, etc.) as part of their "Creative Cloud" offerings...actually compute it in the cloud and return the result back to Photoshop.

<comment><USER21> I don't know whether you noticed it, but the paper reveals it is co-authored by people from Adobe. There very well might be intentions towards that later on.

<comment><USER22> That might take years

<comment><USER22> @dagwTrue @coldtea True However the technology is not ready yet. Takes too long to render* and needs too much VRAM (=> limited resolution, varying on the current GPU).

But a consumer-grade plugin with an online renderer might be feasible for now.

* Fast solutions include a pre-training step that can take days. Would be weird to ask the user to do this

<comment><USER23> > Would be weird to ask the user to do this

Alternatives to training include downloading the trained model. It could be a big download but an overnight download is not that weird to ask users to do.

<comment><USER24> > Alternatives to training include downloading the trained model. It could be > a big download but an overnight download is not that weird to ask users to > do. Or keep the pretrained network on superpowerful cloud machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> notice how the lighting in the style-transferred images isn't physically plausible according to the target images. For example, in the 5th example the house is still lit as in the original, as if by sunlight not by spotlights. Maybe that's why they've chosen to showcase examples with flat or ambiguous lighting (like the nighttime scenes or the autumn scene). The DNN doesn't model the physical reality of the scene, it doesn't get that it's a 3d world, it simply transports a high-dimensional vector (the 2d image) from one space to another. What our imaginations do is map that 2d image back into 3d before transforming it.

<comment><USER26> And the city images that are styled into night were originally taken near dusk so the lights inside the buildings were already on but not very pronounced. It will not take a full daylight scene and decide where to turn the lights on at night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I feel overwhelmed by the domain; as an ex photoshop addict, it's already above "complex job" level. I wonder if people feel bad about AI "stealing their hobs" (not a joke).

<comment><USER28> I feel Photoshop/Illustrator and 2D design in general is one of the only industries that has been pretty much stagnant for 15 years or so due to monopolies.

Compare it to 3D where artists are drowning in new tools and techniques every year, any movement in this space is a good thing.

Worth remembering there was a time when the heal brush didn't exist, a time when the clone brush didn't exist and even a time where the physical airbrush didn't exist.

<comment><USER27> Illustration doesn't need much tech. It has more to do with human emotions and symbols.

<comment><USER28> FYI although it's called Illustrator it's used for everything from actual illustration to iconography, to web/app design to even basic type layout.

<comment><USER27> I kinda know that, spent extreme amounts of time on everything graphical be it 2D, 3D, animated, synthesis, procedural generation. And 2D work is not really tech related; it's closer to an old art. Kinda like logos, it's hard to express a logical relationship in a composition. A few details away you go from amazing to lame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What was up with the "apple" photo?

<comment><USER30> All 3 looked the same to me, but I guessed it was because I'm colour blind. It's not just that then?

<comment><USER31> The colors are shifted in the output. red, yellow, green => yellow, green, red.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Someone should create an entire film using this technique. Shoot two films in parallel with similar scenes, then see what happens when they're blended.

Give it a creepy and/or surrealist plot so the ethereal-looking output suits the film. Perhaps the visuals could be the result of viewing the world through a robot or AI with imperfect cognition. Would be an interesting twist on the old unreliable narrator trope.

</comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone know how long it takes per image? The only piece of information I could find was that the run script uses 8 GPUs, which suggests that it takes a while.

<comment><USER6> Probably a significantly long time. That said, I do wonder if you need to actually run this at the resolution of the output image. Since really this is just changing the tones in the image and not altering the details, you could probably optimize the algorithm heavily such that it works for high resolution images quickly.

As an example, I used frequency separation to split the detail layer from the tone layer in the original, high resolution stock photo of SF. From there I took the lower res (25% size) output from this script and used it as my tone layer. The results are OK: [http://i.imgur.com/oakLUiE.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/oakLUiE.jpg)

It has the same overall tones, and some of the sharpness is preserved at a high resolution. My 30 second approach suffers from some edge glow, but I'm sure it could be greatly improved in an efficient, automated way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Wow, this is ridiculously impressive. I wonder what the audio equivalent of this would be.

Anyone know how long this takes per image?

<comment><USER35> > I wonder what the audio equivalent of this would be.

Voice transfer. Imagine your words in the voice of any celeb.

<comment><USER36> or timbre transfer in general. Drum recording on a cheap beginner drumset -> high end Tama kit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Some impressive results! I would like to see some heavily stylized examples like achieving Sin City and Scanner Darkly visuals.

Was it really necessary to involve Matlab, Python and Lua?

</comment><comment><USER38> I wondered what was new about this particular implementation (since I've seen several others, notably the one this code is partially based on, from Justin Johnson). From the paper:

"Our contribution is to constrain the transformation from the input to the output to be locally affine in colorspace, and to express this constraint as a custom CNN layer through which we can backpropagate. We show that this approach successfully suppresses distortion and yields satisfying photorealistic style transfers in a broad variety of scenarios, including transfer of the time of day, weather, season, and artistic edits"

I was skeptical at first (even posted then deleted a sort of negative comment), but now that I read this, I see the value. The images _are_ much more crisp and distortion free.

</comment><comment><USER39> Premium Instagram filters as-a-service?

</comment><comment><USER40> Really cool! This could prove useful for interior designing.

</comment><comment><USER41> now if you implemented this as a web app, i'd be sharing it with everybody

really cool samples, would be cool to upload my own photos and run it through this

<comment><USER42> There's [http://neuralstyle.com/](http://neuralstyle.com/) , based on different code that does a similar thing . It's quite GPU intensive so it takes a while and I think the free options are limited.

<comment><USER43> I can donate free time on a GeForce 1060 6GB and a 12core XEON. If anyone wants to make a web frontend for the code in the linked repo.

<comment><USER44> I'd like to spend a bit of time on this and try it out! Write me. Would need a MatLab license to use on the server.

<comment><USER9> Ugh Matlab. Someone needs to rewrite it in Julia

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Jeez, how many style transfer papers have there been in the last year? It's awesome, but what an odd thing to become its own subfield.

</comment><comment><USER46> For anyone interested in a sci-fi book about how a society filled with this kind of technology might work, I recommend reading Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge.

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

</comment><comment><USER47> That's funny, i was just going over OS X makefile with somebody yesterday and i came here to look for the thunderbolt external GPU adapter.

The repo author is super responsive if you're RAM constrained:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CUDA/comments/61gpzd/make_error_whe...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CUDA/comments/61gpzd/make_error_when_trying_to_compile_cu_file_on_osx/)

and [https://github.com/luanfujun/deep-photo- styletransfer/issues...](https://github.com/luanfujun/deep-photo- styletransfer/issues/5)

________________

similar project [https://github.com/jcjohnson/neural- style](https://github.com/jcjohnson/neural-style)

<comment><USER47> oh, that similar project repo seems to be the inspiration/genesis of this thread's repo.

Also that repo's author did the Stanford lecture comparing theano, tensorflow, torch which is very worth digging out of the various archives

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow -- lua, Python, matlab and CUDA.

I see now that the image segmentation is probably the key element to getting these stunning results. Other style transfers I've seen took abstract elements from the donor picture, but this really captures the donor and transforms the recipient significantly.

</comment><comment><USER48> awesome, wish there's no matlab requirement; can the matlab code be converted to python?

<comment><USER33> Python is Turing Complete, so yes.

<comment><USER49> While correct, I think GP is more interested in knowing if there're sufficient libraries available in Python so porting MATLAB code to Python is easy.

Looking at the source, almost everything in MATLAB can be ported though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Funny I saw a very similar attempt at Fitchburg Art Museum (MA) over the week- end. I seem to recall this was an MIT-project: is this related in some way ? It was coming with a rather complex (at least at first sight) interface allowing quite a bit of operations/transformations, which does not appear here, so this might be a separate attempt.

Looks like this thing is "in the air".

</comment><comment><USER51> This is where neural network-generated images might start feeding into other neural networks. Imagine a limited dataset of tagged pictures and a vast number of styles. We could on-demand generate permutations and train network that recognize them much more accurately than they would be able to do with original limited dataset

</comment><comment><USER52> This is super fun and impressive, I'm going to get it going on my machine and start playing immediately.

<comment><USER53> A write-up on how to get it going would be appreciated.

<comment><USER54> +1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Those results look amazing! I'm curious how well it holds up at higher resolutions and closer inspection.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any mention of the distribution license for the project. Would any of the maintainers be able to add a license to the repository? Thanks!

<comment><USER56> there is an issue discussing that; the problem is that the work was done at adobe labs, so they will determine the license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Holy cow, this is amazing. The results are way better than I would ever expect as possible.

</comment><comment><USER58> It seems this could have application in conceptual interior design. Think room makeovers.

</comment><comment><USER59> Anyone's got a link to a good write-up on how such a style transfer works on a high level?

</comment><comment><USER60> Now imagine what we could do if it were computed in real time, 60FPS, 100x resolution/detail, embeded in AR or contact lenses.

Yep, sci-fi. But I often imagine that sometime soon I'll have a server farm in my pocket (I know I already has via the cloud, but it's a whole new game if you can do the computation on-site, low latency)

</comment><comment><USER61> A ball

</comment><comment><USER62> So cool :)

</comment><comment><USER63> This is so cool, such an interesting and great idea. Really impressive and well-done.</comment>


Do you have any questions for us? - <AUTHOR> http://techjobsspace.blogspot.com/

<comment><USER2> I never would have thought of "Find out where they recruit talent". At first I thought that might be a good question. But your interviewers could namedrop contracting agencies or say they go to the UG meetings and other meetups, and the place could still suck. Useless question imo.

Something of critical importance is to do your best to judge morale. In fact, a simple question of "How is your morale?" is easy enough. If those that you ask that can't answer that _immediately_ , or you they just can't convince you they are telling the truth, something is definitely wrong.</comment>


Microsoft to charge customers $99 to remove OEM 'crapware' - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/microsoft-to-charge-customers-99-to-remove-oem-crapware/20446

<comment><USER2> Let's not forget how we got here. In the mid-1990s the OEMs were up in arms about how Microsoft was trying to control the Windows user experience; the OEMs said it was their customer and they would install any damn thing they wanted before delivery, thankyouverymuch.

The DOJ's 1994 consent decree with Microsoft [1] said _"Microsoft shall not enter into any License Agreement in which the terms of that agreement are expressly or impliedly conditioned upon ... the OEM not licensing, purchasing, using or distributing any non-Microsoft product."_ It reinforced that Microsoft could sell Windows to OEMs but not dictate what else went into the box.

And thus began the crapware nightmare. It was all well intentioned, but it prevented Microsoft from taking an Apple-like role of "benevolent dictator" to keep the OS coherent. So instead, Microsoft is relegated to the role of curmudgeonly custodian, only able to arrive and do something after the mess is made. A Groundskeeper Willie if you will.

[1] <http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f0000/0047.htm>

</comment><comment><USER3> More inflammatory misinformation from cnet designed to bait readers to their blogs and traffic eyeballs to their ads.

MS is not charging to remove 'crapware' is some conspiracy with the OEMs.

MS is charging for a in-store service and product where they'll sit down and install a new OS and get someone to optimize everything for you while trying to keep all your data and whichever apps.

<comment><USER4> Huh? I'm not sure where you're getting the conspiracy thing from. It's no conspiracy, it's just stupid. The "follow the money chain" part of the article is completely factual and straight forward. It's not like he's alleging that MS _wants_ the crapware on machines. Quite the opposite, MS tried this at one point, but parts of the DOJ anti-trust ruling prevent them from controlling what OEMs do with their OS installs.

If you can't see the ridiculousness of the scenario, then I'm not sure what to tell you. OEMs install all this crap to the detriment of their customers, who then have to go back to the company who originally sold the OEM the operating system, just to get a decent experience. If that's not ridiculous, then I don't know what is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Microsoft is offering a service to their customers which improves the performance of Windows machines. Although the article insinuates that Microsoft is somehow responsible for crapware, they're not, and never have been. That money goes into the hardware manufacturer's pocket.

Instead, Microsoft has invested in creating a variety of useful, free services via Live as an alternative - particularly Microsoft Security Essentials as consumer anti-malware packages have become primarily a means for tracking consumer behavior. Skydrive also comes to mind.

Blaming Microsoft for crapware is nonsense. Anti-trust regulators across the globe would be foaming at the mouth were Microsoft's licensing agreements with hardware manufacturer's to preclude the installation of third party software in lieu of their own offerings - they've been there and got the tee shirt.

Is $99 too much? Well, it's the same price as Apple's "One to One" and serves much of the same purpose - preserving your data during an OS install (though Microsoft offers the service any time and doesn't bundle it with a hardware purchase).

<comment><USER6> I wonder why manufacturers all over the world would rather use FreeDos on some laptops than install Ubuntu or some other linux distro.

Do you think it has anything to do with Microsoft coercing them into not giving customers a real OS choice, or is it because manufacturers don't want to be bothered to do the least amount of effort to support Linux (even though most drivers should work by default)?

<comment><USER5> Linux is a PITA for the average computer user. Keeping a distro current sucks compared to patch Tuesday and technical support blows...problem with Firefox? you will get linked to some page unrelated to your issue on Ubuntu's website.

It's not a conspiracy. Linux is going to require more manufacturer resources to support consumers while producing less revenue - i.e. most people aren't going to choose Linux unless it is cheaper than Windows.

On the other hand, FreeDos is so simple and limited that hardware vendors don't need significant resources to support it, so it is more profitable than Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As mentioned in the article, the PCDecrapifier is a really nice bit of (free) software -- I run it on all new Windows PCs (if I don't just format and rebuild from scratch). And the name is brilliant :)

<comment><USER8> I'll second the recommendation, but remember if you are using it in a corporate environment you should buy a license. I think it is only $25. Support the developer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gee, thanks MS

But I think I'll just run Linux

Or just go to the Apple Store

"With great power comes great responsibility" and it's a pity MS doesn't OWN the user experience. Lock up the ability of OEM to preinstall stuff (like, only drivers and specific software)

(yes, several parts of Windows have worsened over time, like the Control Panel. Still, MS products UX is usually better than most UX out there)

<comment><USER5> > _"Lock up the ability of OEM to preinstall stuff"_

Doing so would probably be illegal in the US, Europe and several other markets.

<comment><USER10> You mean the US and Europe are using the law to put MS at a disadvantage compared to Apple?

Ah, sounds familiar.

<comment><USER11> How is this a disadvantage? MS can ship cleanly installed hardware.

In fact, they do: [http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/cat/categoryID.4...](http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/cat/categoryID.44066900)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How much is a Windows license these days? It seems to me it would be cheaper, or at least equal in price, to install a clean copy of Windows rather than go to the trouble of "decrapifying" your computer. I realize a lot of Windows users don't have this ability, but I don't see why MS couldn't do it themselves and save time.

Also, what's the legal status of using a clean install disk with my crapified computer's registration key? If I want to reinstall Windows, am I obliged to reinstall the crapware too?

If I could reinstall a clean OS for free, $99 is a racket. Someone with a Windows disk could make a pretty penny undercutting MS here. Of course, one of the reasons I use Linux is because dealing with Windows like this is a legal minefield.

</comment><comment><USER13> Presumably the "crapware" is subsidising the price. Using the term "crapware" is a bit loaded and borderline swearing, it just doesn't seem like a good technical term to use - even though I don't like the stuff myself.

<comment><USER14> It's a term coined out of frustration. Having unboxed new PC's that were slower in operation than PC's from a previous generation I've felt and understand the emotional aspects of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not taking sides, but is the article suggesting that there's only a $99 price difference between Macs and MS PCs running comparable hardware? I can assure you it's not remotely close to the case...

<comment><USER6> Maybe for the same quality, it is. Ultrabooks comparable to MacBook Air are only $100 cheaper, maybe $200 at most at the higher end, but I think they achieve that also by skimping on some stuff (display quality, SSD, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand the sense of anger in this article. What do they expect Microsoft to do, restrict the freedom of customers to install software on PCs? OEMs are customers just like the people who actually buy PCs; you can't trivially restrict one without restricting the other.

If you ask me, the fact that Microsoft offers this service is a risky move on their part because it risks upsetting the OEMs. Charging $99 for the cost of labor is pretty reasonable since you get phone support with it - I can easily imagine troublesome customers racking up hours of support costs in those 90 days after paying for this service.

<comment><USER17> > OEMs are customers just like the people who actually buy PCs; you can't > trivially restrict one without restricting the other.

This is plain wrong. Microsoft dictates licensing with its customers and it certainly has the right to license on different terms to different customers.

And in fact they do exactly this with OEM's already.

MSFT is certainly within its rights and capabilities to include in their licensing dealings with OEM partners terms that prohibit pre-installing what they deem "crapware". And asking them to enforce this restriction (whether a good idea or not) is nonetheless reasonable.

<comment><USER16> I can go out and buy the OEM edition of windows, as an individual, without signing any license agreement with Microsoft. And I can go install it on a PC and sell that PC to a customer of mine if I happen to operate a PC shop.

<comment><USER17> > without signing any license agreement with Microsoft

Clickwrap is a blurry legal line, but you more or less are "signing" a license agreement by installing Windows.

And nonetheless the "OEM edition" that you get is potentially very different (license-wise) from the custom-negotiated contract that Dell is bound to when they order two hundred thousand licenses from Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why not reinstall windows? Won't that have the same effect?

<comment><USER19> The installation media you receive with the OEM PC is not an authentic, original, pure unadulterated Windows installation - it's an OEM installation that, if you haven't guessed by now, comes with all the crapware.

Yes, you can buy a brand new Windows license for installing on your PC. But that'll cost you more than $99 this service costs.

<comment><USER18> That hasn't been the case in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you have a brain that is properly functioning, you can do this yourself. It will at most take a day. Is it worthwhile for me to spend a day on this to save $99 dollars? Yes, it is.

<comment> DanI-S Only if you earn less than (52*495) $25,740 per year, and that's not considering vacation.

<comment><USER20> It seems my assumption of a day was more extreme than I thought! Regardless, let's take two extreme cases and compare costs/benefits: 1\. You don't know anything. 2\. You are a power user who knows everything.

Case 1: Let's say you take the ENTIRE day. You have not only fixed your problem but you have learned a lot of things which will help you with a similar problem the next time. You save costs for your entire life on the expense of that one day.

Case 2: You get it done in an hour or so which isn't a big financial hit.

<comment> DanI-S In a way, this demonstrates quite well how the premium of buying a Mac makes sense for a lot of people. The extra few hundred dollars aren't too significant if it genuinely saves them time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> n-gauge So Microsoft are charging $99 just to tell you enter at the command prompt:

format c:

:)</comment>


Malaria No More - <AUTHOR> http://malarianomore.org <comment><USER2> For what it's worth, GiveWell recommends the Against Malaria Foundation:

[https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf](https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf)

<comment><USER3> People who donate to domestic charities when AMF and the malaria consortium are saving lives for $5 a net are immoral or naive.

<comment><USER4> I'm a big fan of the Effective Altruism (EA) movement. If you also are interested in making the world a better place, it's worth spending time learning how to communicate better.

Even when you say something that is true, the way you say it matters. As sympathetic as I am to the view that people ought to do the most good, I find your phrasing of this sentiment hard to endorse.

Your goal is probably to encourage more people to give to AMF. You may have better success at expressing how much good AMF does with the money given, and that you would love to see more people considering donating to AMF.

Example: "Donating to AMF and the Malaria Consortium is a very effective way to help people. For $5 you provide a net that protects people from malaria for 3-4 years. This is a very cost-effective way to help others!"

<comment><USER3> EA is a shrinking movement because it is not effective at utilizing the strongest card philanthropy has. Shame. Donating to domestic charities is shameful, just like hoarding billions of dollars is shameful. Telling people AMF is effective isn't enough, we need everyone to know that other charities are not, otherwise they'll go on immorally donating to causes they care about or people that look like them.

<comment><USER4> I wholeheartedly disagree.

You can shame someone into giving $10 in front of you. Good luck shaming someone to part with >10% of their income through such a negative feeling.

EA has a forum which welcomes (contrarian) opinions. Perhaps you should write up your reasons for thinking that shame is a good motivator with some research backing it up. EAs are very open minded. I'm also willing to change my mind.

<comment><USER3> The hard part is shaming people without them realizing that's what's happening. Red cross is great at this, but some organizations like PETA have gone to far. Once the shame has sunk in it's important to quickly capitalize by saying stuff about how great AMF is as you said and not double down like PETA does. Singer inadvertently figured this out with the drowning child thought experiment. People don't want to look into a bottomless pit.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like you're not describing what most people would imagine when they hear "shaming a person". You're aiming for some dark-arts psychological jujitsu.

Even if possible, even if maneuvers like this might work on some people, it is likely harder to pull off something like this consistently (thus creating damage along the way), than to just be up-front-and-honest about the good.

People in general want to come to their own conclusions, and not be told what to do. Telling them "do this" can back fire. Having a discussion, where you inquire about their point of view, and structure a conversation as a collaborative exploration, I think, is better.

Peter Singer's drowning child example is a brilliant argument, and I think one everyone ought to hear about. But I'm unsure if "shame" is what it evokes. It raises an incongruity that people then have to reconcile. And if you're kind and encouraging, providing opportunities for them to become better people (by their own light), they will more-likely do it. If they are shamed, they might end up doing mental gymnastics to conclude that "any argument that makes good people I see around me into bad people is a mistaken argument".

I'm happy to discuss this more. As you can guess it's one of my favorite topics.

<comment><USER3> Let's take the drowning child. Suppose you save the child and walk by the pond again the next day. There's another child drowning. Do you save it? Suppose you walk by the pond everyday and everyday there's another child drowning. Is there a point where you would not save the child? I think the vast majority of people would eventually stop saving the kid. I think that's because shame is what motivates the decision.Eventually they no longer feel shame pushing them to save the children. If they knew there would be a new child drowning everyday on the very first day would they save the child? I think it's likely that many people would not. Saving the child is admitting you have some responsibility for what happens to it. If you know that you will eventually stop it feels a lot better to never admit you're responsible for the child. Shame is a powerful emotion but once people start meta-thinking about it it's easy for them to get around it with mental gymnastics.

EA is effectively a utility monster, so it's not surprising to me that people mental-gymnastics their way out of it. EA needs to focus more on tractability of these problems and less on the bottomless pit if they want mass buy in. Because in the end donating to AMF doesn't actually feel that great when you it makes you realize hundreds of thousands of children are dying from preventable disease every year. It feels a lot better to pretend the problem doesn't exist so you can ignore the shame and focus on less important issues instead.

<comment><USER4> Good to read on this topic:

 _You want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip_ [0]

HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24277190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24277190)

[0] [https://psyche.co/ideas/you-want-people-to-do-the-right- thin...](https://psyche.co/ideas/you-want-people-to-do-the-right-thing-save- them-the-guilt-trip)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do you have a source on this 3000 kids a day? That's over 1M children a year. Assuming most of those are in Africa, you're claiming something like a 2% childhood mortality from malaria alone. The all-cause childhood mortality in Africa is considered astronomical at 7.8%. The WHO (UNICEF) says the death rate of malaria in Africa is more like 1 every 2 minutes, which comes out to 720 a day.

One dead child is too many and I worry that number inflation only makes the fight harder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got that stat from UNICEF: [https://www.unicef.org/media/files/MALARIAFACTSHEETAFRICA.pd...](https://www.unicef.org/media/files/MALARIAFACTSHEETAFRICA.pdf)

<comment><USER6> The numbers are a bit weird:

> Malaria kills one child every 30 seconds, about 3000 children every day. > > Over one million people die from malaria each year

3000 deaths per day * 365 days in a year = 1 095 000 deaths per year

So basically no adults die from malaria?

<comment><USER7> Most malaria victims are children, 57% of deaths are children under 5 years old [https://ourworldindata.org/malaria](https://ourworldindata.org/malaria)

<comment><USER8> Malaria is just as deadly to adults who have never been exposed to it as it is to children under 5 years old. However the more times you catch it, the more immunity you build to it. An adult who has caught malaria multiples times is not likely to die from it. An adult tourist catching it for the first time can be in trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The discussion around malaria is always really strange to me, because it's so close to home and yet so far away at the same time.

At this point I've frankly lost count of the number of times I've contracted malaria, but I'm willing to bet it's well over fifty. I _understand_ , theoretically, that it kills an obscene amount of people a year, but it doesn't really sink in that it's actually a deadly disease. I've never felt fear for my life while sick with it.

I wonder how much simply having access to the bare minimum of standard healthcare would reduce the number of fatalities per year.

<comment><USER10> About for how long do you stay ill each time? How does it feel? I'd suppose you're away from work the?

I you compare with having the flu? (usually takes one or two weeks before I'm ok again)

50 times sounds like _a lot_ to me. The illness seems to come back again and again more often than what I could have guessed.

<comment><USER9> 50 times does sound like a lot, but if you're in your mid twenties that only comes out to twice a year. Considering the frequency in my childhood, I think it's honestly closer to seventy or eighty. To be clear, I'm counting cases where I developed symptoms and had to be treated - you do build a tolerance to it over time, to the point that many people get infected with the malarial parasite but don't notice any symptoms (it's not really understood how or why that acquired immunity works, but it does seem to pass from mother to child and persist until the child is about four or so months old).

It starts out with a persistent headache, sometimes a cough (but with no congestion - this is critical for figuring out early enough that it's not just a cold). The most obvious tell though is that some of my muscles start feeling sore and I start feeling inexplicably tired. At this point I would start preparing for a possible full-on case; basically making sure that I have a proper stock of NSAIDs, easy-to-eat foods, multivitamin and mineral syrup, and oral rehydration solution (I measure and make mine with regular sugar and salt) - malaria tends to completely suppress your appetite, and it's vital to keep your blood sugar and iron up even if you can't eat at all.

Sometimes the illness just subsides, but if I find myself developing a fever (usually a day or so after the headache starts) then I immediately make time to go and get tested. The whole process including getting results takes about an hour or two (mostly spent getting to a health care centre). If I'm malaria positive then I get prescribed an artemisinin-based combination therapy and sent home - the test and the full course of therapy are free under most health insurance plans, and cost about $6 to $15 out-of-pocket depending on the brand and hospital (an afterthought for someone in my position, but prohibitively expensive for millions of people who live on $2 a day or less).

The medication course is three days long, and _very_ strict about the dosage - two doses taken eight hours apart, and then four taken every twelve hours afterwards. It's fast-acting enough that most people feel a lot better after the first day of treatment, but you have to complete the course and make sure you're getting excess nutrition even though you feel "fine". If I pick up on things and start the ACT early enough, the fever doesn't have time to develop; sometimes it hits hard/seemingly out of the blue, though, in which case I'd get increasing muscle aches and shivering chills even though the body temperature is climbing and climbing (the chills are extremely deceptive - I've seen people beg for sweaters and blankets while running a fever of over a hundred degrees). I take NSAIDs (usually ibuprofen) to manage the fever, along with warm green or ginger tea to help with the shivering. Once I start sweating, the worst of it is over - it's a sign of the fever breaking.

I usually take time off for the length of the ACT, and I'm generally okay to work by the time I'm done with it. It might take up to a week afterwards for the fatigue and lowered appetite to completely lift though. All in all, it's rather like the flu in that the vast majority of otherwise healthy people just manage it at home, but different in that there's a known, effective treatment for malaria so you can avoid most of the suffering altogether if you can afford to be responsible with your health.

<comment><USER10> Interesting to read, thanks for writing. I'm getting the impression you know okay much about health care -- for example I had to lookup NSAIDs to know it means "Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs". I wonder if that makes the illness less dangerous to you, and (like you wrote elsewhere) indeed indicates how important a generally good health care system is, to handle malaria. I actually didn't know there's a treatment nowadays.

Interesting to hear about how it feels, physically / health-wise, with chills and muscle aches.

Looking at statistics, apparently most people who die, are children, whilst for the flu, it's old people. That's a pretty big difference I think -- imagine one is 40 years old, and one of one's say, 70 years old parents, or one's 10 years old child, dies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Malaria is probably going to be one of the hardest maladies to overcome. There was some promise with a vaccine, but it looks like that was fairly disappointing. The selective pressure is so high with malaria that sickle cell anaemia is a fairly common congenital disease that if one is homozygous for can be lethal in early age; conventional medicine has significantly increased life expectancy, but it's still fairly poor. Hopefully, it will be to the point where it can be controlled because the African continent has had its economies ravaged by it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria#Economic_impact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria#Economic_impact)

<comment><USER12> But I wonder how much effort is being put into it though. Take the Sars outbreak. They tried developing a vaccine, and failed. Everybody just assumed it was impossible to create a vaccine for a coronavirus, as we never had one anyway.

Now with Covid-19, we have multiple vaccines in the third, and final, stage of testing. And we also have a controversial vaccine that has been approved in Russia. All within a couple of months. Why that hasn't been achieved with Sars?

<comment><USER13> SARS fizzled out, so we lost interest and funding was cut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Serious question - Why can't we put our minds to it and kill them all?

Why can't we banish this mass killer and cause of immense suffering to humans and animals alike.

I haven't seen any compelling evidence that they form any vital component of ecosystems apart from obviously spreading disease and applying some adapation pressure - which we could eliminate like we have done with lots of other killers.

<comment><USER15> >I haven't seen any compelling evidence that they form any vital component of ecosystems

[https://mosquitoreviews.com/learn/mosquitoes- purpose](https://mosquitoreviews.com/learn/mosquitoes-purpose)

>As part of their useful role, the larvae of mosquitoes live in water and provide food for fish and other wildlife, including larger larvae of other species such as dragonflies. The larvae themselves eat microscopic organic matter in the water, helping to recycle it. Adult mosquitoes make up part of the diet of some insect-eating animals, such as birds, bats, adult dragonflies and spiders. They also help pollinate some flowers, when they consume nectar.

<comment><USER16> AFAICT, the more serious proposals to eliminate mosquitoes target the individual mosquito species that spread disease in areas where there are several other mosquito species that would quickly expand to fill the ecological gap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Being peaceful by nature, but also highly allergic to mosquitos, I'm cool with completely eradicating these little flying vampires and the ecological collapse that would ensue. Or not as the case may be [https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html](https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html)

<comment><USER18> Only 200 out of 5,000 known species of mosquitoes feed on mammalian blood. If we could only target those 200, we could remove a great source of misery from the planet.

In fact, only 8 species carry disease, e.g. zika, malaria.

That said, mosquitoes have been around for 100 million years and it seems unlikely we can wipe them out without some scary technology.

Probably for the foreseeable future we're going to have to settle for managing the problem, draining malarial swamps and encouraging predator species like dragonflies for example.

<comment><USER19> > draining swamps

How does that work? I moved to a civilised place in Italy, where the swamps have been drained centuries ago etc etc; there is no malaria anymore.

Yet, nowadays there are tons of mosquitos, I have nets on all my windows and doors and yet I have to occasionally kill them either mechanically (I'm getting good at it but still) or using poisons.

My <1y child has huge reactions when bit; I tend to stay inside because it's so annoying to get bit all the time; sprays work but not 100%, as if those mosquitos are adapting against the poisons we throw at them.

Are these non malaria-carrying mosquites more adapted to breed with less water? Did we stop doing a good job draining the swamps?

<comment><USER18> Different species have different attributes. The tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) from SE Asia is invasive in the Americas and carries nasty diseases -- yellow fever, dengue, zika, chikungunya. It's a highly aggressive biter, highly adapted to marginal environments, and can breed in a tiny pool of water the size of a bottle cap. It tends to be active in human-settled areas. If ever a mosquito deserved to be wiped out, it's this one.

I'm not sure about Italy; I imagine you have plenty of species migrating up from Africa. If you have a lot of mosquitoes, probably there is a water source they're breeding in -- a pool, an old tire, a nearby pond? If you can find a breeding source, dump a mosquito puck in it -- a safe algae that kills mosquito larvae.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We already have a surefire low tech mosquito killer - mosquito bats or zappers. They work well, no chemicals just electricity and batteries.

We however don't have sharp eyes to track the movement of the stealth suckers. Nor the reflexes to position the bat at the right time while pressing the buzzer.

Blow up the size of the mosquito bat to foldable 6ft x 4ft mosquito killer and let probability do its work.

The humans in the room are all the attractant this mosquito killer from hell would need.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's not widely known but Bill Gates is heavily invested in the fight against Malaria for a long time now. Billions of investment.

He's responsible for saving millions of lives.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Funds_for_grants_in_developing_countries)

<comment><USER22> It's pretty widely known, tbh.

Perhaps not as widely as his involvement in 5G and vaccinations, however (jk)

<comment><USER21> Perhaps in the tech bubble it might by common knowledge. Out of it most people don't know.

I wonder if Jobs was nearly as charitable... edit, google says nope:

> He bought an Alfa Romeo car for one of his girlfriends, Tina, and paid off > Laurene's student loans. He also kept two cars- a Porsche and a large silver > Mercedes-- for himself.

Which is just sad. What a waste.</comment></comment></comment>


Co-Founders: They're A Wonderful Thing. Indulge at Your Own Risk. - <AUTHOR> http://mattmireles.com/co-founders/

<comment><USER2> I am surprised that I'm the first person in an hour to say this: I clicked on the link to SpeakerText and it sure looks like a functioning company to me.

I remember when you started posting a lot, and I've always enjoyed your words. I'm just confused, because reading this feels like someone tore about three chapters from my copy of the book.

TL;DR: if SpeakerText is dead, then why is the site open for business?

<comment><USER3> Seriously, SpeakerText's core technology was one of the best ideas I've seen for improving journalism on the web. I had product ideas for them, they were totally on my list of places to try to work at, what happened?

And if they're dead, are there patents? And if not, does anybody want to start a company? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words. SpeakerText was acquired over the summer.

Unfortunately, having awesome technology and improving journalism on the web are not the same as being able to make truckloads if money.

<comment><USER3> Who acquired it?

<comment><USER4> According to a recent GigaOM Pro Sector RoadMap article on crowd labor platforms in 2012 ([http://go.gigaom.com/rs/gigaom/images/RoadMap2012_GigaOM%20P...](http://go.gigaom.com/rs/gigaom/images/RoadMap2012_GigaOM%20Pro_free_report.pdf)), CloudFactory (<http://cloudfactory.com>) acquired Speakertext/Humanoid. I haven't seen any other news to confirm that acquisition or the terms, but I don't doubt that it happened.

Full Disclosure: I was interviewed for this GigaOM Sector Roadmap article. I believe the SpeakerText guys were also interviewed for the article.

Cheers, \- Isaac

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hell yes. I think the ideal founders are siblings or _very_ old friends; The kinds of people who could never cut each other out of their lives no matter how mad they were at each other. I've come to the conclusion that you're asking for a lot of trouble in accepting anything less than that.

<comment><USER6> I've been thinking this as well.

However, if you don't have any siblings and none of your very old friends know anything about technology/startups, you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. (me)

My old friends are really smart and I'd love to work with them, but when I try to talk to them about doing a startup, they look at my like I'm nuts.

<comment><USER7> Make new friends. Great friendships are not base on how long or how well you've known a person, but how well you connect with another. That can bloom amongst new friendship with a little bit of time as well.

I speak from experience. I was in a similar boat. All my closest friends growing up were the wrong fit for doing anything entrepreneurial much less a startup. A friend I met through another mutual friend but rarely talked to turned out to be one of my closest friend and became my previous cofounder. It worked out great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When you work long and hard with anyone you will come to have truly justified and serious issues with them.

The question to ask yourself is, would you have looked passed those issues if you had been successful? If you would have, then you should be just as quick to look passed them in failure.

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember visiting you guys when you were all living and working together in that small apartment with the pool. You were awesome.

Give it some time, you will regain trust in a new cofounder you will run into, and you will drink beer again with your old cofounders.

</comment><comment><USER10> One of the most interesting questions in the whole single founder v.s. co- founder debate, is how having a co-founder profoundly impacts your personal net gain from a given start-up venture.

The way I see it, taking on a co-founder is a form of start-up insurance. You increase your overall chance of success by giving up a huge portion of the upside in that eventuality.

It makes sense that a VC would prefer companies that have more than one founder if they believe it increases their statistical chance of success. Just understand that this may come at the expense of your personal gain, which is of minimal concern to an outside investor.

<comment><USER11> Your math/point-of-view is intuitive and quite common. However, startups are a game of large multipliers. At any given stage, you're always pushing to be 10X of where you are now. Your long term goal is probably to be 1000X more valuable than where you start out.

Dividing stock amongst 2 or 3 co-founders is a small order multiplier. You lose half or two thirds of the company. Hitting (or missing) the 1000X goal will determine your personal outcome - the amount of stock given to other co- founders, as an input variable, has virtually no comparative effect on the outcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You can restore the friendship. In time you should and will.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm sorry for your experience and loss. I'm sitting here working with my co- founder right now and I couldn't imagine going at it alone. I know people that have lost friends because things have gone bad, but I think the potential to do something great is worth the risk more often than not.

</comment><comment><USER14> I met one of you guys on the Muni, going down Market, my first day in San Francisco. Can't remember what your name was. Hope you're able to patch things up and keep going, because it sounded like such a bad ass idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> Don't think I would like to have a startup with a friend... It could end up losing our friendship. It can't be good to mix business and friends.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just like long-term relationships, when breakups happen then people never speak again in most of the cases. But are differences that extreme?

</comment><comment><USER17> "We fought over the scraps" - What was there to fight over?</comment>


Recycling in the United States is in serious trouble. How does it work? - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/2018/08/18/how-recycling-works/ <comment><USER2> Automated recycling is coming along well. Here's a typical modern plant in the UK.[1] Sorting is mechanized, with tumble drums, vibratory sorters, and magnets doing most of the work. Permanent magnets pull ferrous metal out. AC magnets pull aluminum out. Vision systems, often multispectral, look at the presorted materials as they go by on a fast belt and use air jets to kick out certain types of items. This is standard technology.

There's still some manual picking involved in most plants. Robots are taking that over at a few plants.[2]

Aluminum is the moneymaker. Plastic bottles can go to a plant that turns them back into pellets for making new bottles.[3] A huge plant now serves southern California. Not clear this makes money.

Waste paper isn't that valuable. "Peak paper" was a while back, and US paper mills have been closing for years. It's not that sorting is hard, it's that the product is so low-value.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVKmwzWSuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVKmwzWSuc) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gjUpDnJrZA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gjUpDnJrZA) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAr4BZM_Tzk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAr4BZM_Tzk)

<comment><USER3> > Waste paper isn't that valuable.

Plain white office paper might not be so valuable, but cardboard remains valuable enough that in Eastern Europe you can see marginalized communities like the Roma collecting it daily. I have seen recycling centers advertise payments like 0.50€/kg in exchange for cardboard, which seems pretty high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When my kids were young, they went on a field trip to a recycling plant. As a parent, the most interesting discovery was the sorting facility we visited didn't sort plastic by type because you can't expect people earning minimum wage to sort LDPE from HDPE from etc. So what did the big commercial recycling facility do? They sorted plastic by shape. Things shaped like cups and bowls were sorted as trash, things not shaped like cups and bowls were sorted as recyclable. It was pretty clear at that point recycling plastic was just a for show activity.

<comment><USER5> But plastic is effectively recycled in lots of places in the world. Just because that plant sucked it doesn't mean all do. Add to that the commercial plastic waste, pallet wrap for instance is already separated when it is sold to the recyclers.

Better than all that of course is re-use. When I was a child, in the UK, large glass bottles of lemonade had a 20p deposit, refundable on return. I believe I believe it is still common in Germany. This went away in the UK because large super-markets didn't want the hassle of dealing with returns, IIRC

<comment><USER6> I'd like to see fewer plastic items all around. There's no reason a store must sell me a container in addition to the goods I buy.

<comment><USER7> It complicates transportation to sell all goods in bulk. I'm glad that stores don't charge an extra 1.5 cents for the plastic bag around every gallon of milk and pound of rice.

You, yourself, might have enough responsibility and self-control to prioritize cleaning your containers, but this is not true for all humans. The store would lose business if their competitor sold milk already in bags or boxes, but you had to bring your own milk bag to their store. And someone's bags might have bacterial or other contaminants and get them sick, then they blame the store and get the health department to shut them down. (Tangent: Why is most milk still sold in boxes, and not in plastic?)

Glass is fragile, metals cause unexpected chemical reactions, wood is permeable & requires additional materials (wax, glue) to seal properly, and cardboard has poor durability.

<comment><USER8> I think he might be referencing things like shrink wrapped banannas, or plastic boxes around Tupperware containers, or when you buy a bag of something and every single individual piece has it's own wrapping inside the bag.

There is a lot of completely unnecessary packaging that companies use because it gets them a 0.02% increase in profit and they don't have to pay the actual costs of the plastic pollution they are creating

<comment><USER6> There's not going to be one solution to all things. That's a strawman argument.

I'm for allowing for ways to not use so much plastic. The technology exists - for instance, the oatmeal cubes I buy at Trader Joe's could be charged to me one at a time and at the time they leave their container. It'd take take some doing, but it's doable. For people not willing or able to provide a container then sell them the old plastic covered cubes of oatmeal in boxes two at a time. And charge them more.

<comment><USER7> > _the oatmeal cubes I buy at Trader Joe's could be charged to me one at a > time and at the time they leave their container._

The Internet of Things can help this to become a reality, with sensors on the box lid and an internet connection. Why charge a customer only once when you can charge them twice?

<comment><USER6> I'll rephrase:

could be charged to me one at a time when they leave their container

<comment><USER7> When you buy the box of oatmeal cubes, you're buying the right to buy oatmeal cubes. When you remove them from the container is when you actually purchase the cubes.

Similar to a Costco card, or buying a phone to access apps in the app store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's worth remembering Recycling is the _least_ good thing we should be doing.

1\. Reduce

2\. Reuse

3\. Recycle

I always find it interesting in developing countries to see tons and tons of stuff being reused, _way_ more than in Developed countries. i.e. A 1 liter beer bottle in Ecuador is $0.75 for the beer, and $1 deposit on the glass. The bottles are cleaned and reused hundreds of times.

<comment><USER10> Yes, by far! Everyone fixated on recycling because it was the only option that didn't require people to make real changes in their lives (and it's amazing how much resistance there is/was to simply putting things in a few different bins). Now that China has decided to no longer be the world's garbage dump, those chickens are going to come home to roost real quick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why not push the burden back onto the companies providing the goods in packages? If Walmart (or it's suppliers) had to prepay for the handling of the waste the products they sell come in you'd probably see a significant reduction in packaging.

<comment><USER12> In The Netherlands we had a Packaging Tax for supermarkets for a while (it has been repealed after a short time, because of resistance and lobbying).

I liked the idea, except there was a problem (IMHO) in how it was implemented, because there was no requirement to show the tax amount that was charged to the consumer on their receipt.

If your receipt would say e.g. 'Groceries $30.00, Plastic tax: $2.05' then a consumer would have a real incentive to lower the amount of tax by choosing better packaging with less plastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For anyone wondering why China doesn't want our plastics any more, here's a nice documentary:

[https://youtu.be/ooRVhRt1p54](https://youtu.be/ooRVhRt1p54)

<comment><USER14> Shit Son, that was real.

I have always thought that recycling is a scam. That it really only makes sense for things like glass and some metals. But everyone is caught up in the feel goodness and if you don't you're some kind of animal.

I say put everything in the landfill, we will one day harvest it and all that resource will be in one place!

<comment><USER15> > That it really only makes sense for things like glass and some metals.

Only metal (all metals). Recycled Glass is worthless, and is crushed and used as landfill cover.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just wondering why burning it to produce energy isn't considered in US. Many countries like Sweden have managed to completely get rid of garbage this way [0].

[0] [https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/Sweden-runs- out-...](https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/Sweden-runs-out-of- garbage-imports-from-other-countries/article16795374.ece)

</comment><comment><USER17> I really don't see the point of recycling.

These are the steps I've taken to reduce my impact on the planet: eating a plant-based diet, never traveling by plane and only rarely by car (I never learned to drive and the vast majority of my travel during the year is by bicycle, public transit or foot), never having kids, and living in a small apartment.

Does separating my glass and plastic jars really make that much of an additional difference?

<comment><USER18> There really hasn't been any point to recycling paper, plastic, and glass for quite some time now. Recycling glass hasn't made sense ever since local bottling plants ceased to exist in most cities, removing the system by which they were able to re-use recycled bottles. Recycling paper is obviously no longer a sensible activity given the issues of contamination and lack of economic incentives given just how cheap sustainably harvested wood has become. Plastic, well plastic would make sense if we could ever figure out how to sort all the different types automatically. The re-use of recycled plastic is basically limited to a handful of common product types (plastic bottles that are either HDPE or PET and easily identifiable as such).

That said, one should always make an effort to recycle aluminum properly. There's a reason aluminum is often referred to as "solidified electricity" and it's because it takes enormous amounts of energy to extract aluminum from raw ore. Recycling finished aluminum goods cuts out that entire step of the production chain and has an enormous impact on large-scale energy consumption.

<comment><USER19> Recycling is a way to profit off of virtue signaling. Why should I separate my trash to make some recycling company more profitable? If they pay me enough, I might do it. Otherwise, it's all going into the landfill.

Even aluminum.

If some aluminum company wants it bad enough -- and if it's worth enough -- they can go dig it up.

I dislike companies making profits on forced labor. Too many virtue-signaling municipalities mandate recycling (and sometimes even charges you for pickup) just so some recycling company can increase its bottom line. Nonsense. Bury everything. It's cheap.

<comment><USER3> > If some aluminum company wants it bad enough -- and if it's worth enough -- > they can go dig it up.

The point of recycling aluminium is that is avoids the enormous energy expenditures and carbon of processing raw ore. So, recycling is a sensible step towards environmental protection. It might "make a company some money", but your failing to do it still has environmental consequences. And if a company had to go "dig it up", there would probably still be more carbon generated than if you just sorted your rubbish.

<comment><USER20> I'm reading the parent post's argument as less against recycling as such but rather against trash sorting by the general population.

I.e. if recycling aluminium saves more resources than it cost in labor/effort, then it should be economically profitable to do so with _the recycling company_ doing the sorting of that aluminium out of trash or even digging it up from the landfill instead of processing raw ore.

If recycling something is profitable only if subsidized by free sorting labor from the general population, then it seems like a signal that it's not actually worth it to spend that labor on it, if reusing that material is so worthless compared to the effort it takes to sort it; so (depending on local economics) it may be that it's good to recycle scrap metal and aluminium and worthless to recycle paper or some types of plastic.

<comment><USER21> The effort it takes to sort it out from the rest of your trash once it's mixed in with your diapers and whatever else probably isn't equivalent to the effort of you sorting it in the first place, though

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What is holding back plasma gasification? [https://waste-management- world.com/a/plasma-gasification-cle...](https://waste-management- world.com/a/plasma-gasification-clean-renewable-fuel-through-vaporization-of- waste)

</comment><comment> Iwan-Zotow Wrong title. Should be "Recycling in the United States is in serious trouble. How it doesn't work"

<comment><USER23> Wrong title. Should be "Pretending to Recycle while shipping garbage to China wont work any longer"

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> That trash smells like opportunity [https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/06/an-uber- for-garbage-picks-...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/06/an-uber-for-garbage- picks-up-steam-and-11-7-million-in-series-a-funding/)

</comment><comment><USER25> China's just not a reliable trading partner. They use trade as a weapon. It's got countries such as Malaysia reconsidering their interactions.

[http://www.atimes.com/article/mahathir-resets-the-terms- for-...](http://www.atimes.com/article/mahathir-resets-the-terms-for-dealing- with-china/)

That's too bad, as the Chinese people are industrious and creative, and together we stand a better chance of making the best use of waste.

<comment> 08-15 Might be China is just tired of buying waste. Yes, waste, not "recyclables". Even if plastic and paper were clean and perfectly sorted by type, you still couldn't really recycle them like you can recycle metals and glass. It's always downcycling.

<comment><USER26> Another reason is that China wants its domestic recycling (meaning curbside collection) industry to develop. While the processing industry can get cheaper input through importing, it lessens the interest in collecting domestic sources, generating more pollution or waste for the landfills.</comment></comment></comment>


Mac sales surge as PC sales drop 20% in UK, 12% in France - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/07/mac_sales_surge_as_pc_sales_drop_20_in_uk_12_in_france.html <comment><USER2> And actually, non-Apple PC sales dropped 22%, if you take the Apple numbers out of the totals.</comment>


How do you, personally, receive notifications when people blog? - <AUTHOR> RSS, subscribe via email, IFTTT, just check the blog regularly, something else? <comment><USER2> Absolutely RSS, my whole news consumption process depends on it, I hate polling for stuff. Thankfully, the vast majority of blogs still provide RSS, even if a bit hidden sometimes.

I even consume HN via RSS: I have separate RSS feeds for items that reach 50, 250 and 1000 points, respectively.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting setup, which reader do you use?

<comment><USER2> Feedly, works pretty well for my use case (I heavily rely on the iOS app since I tend to read news while on the go).

<comment><AUTHOR> I've not really looked at Feedly before - do you use a paid plan?

<comment><USER2> I use the free one but I've been using it for a long time so I'm grandfathered in the original free plan with unlimited sources. As of today I have ~500 feeds which I subscribe to, I think for new accounts the free limit is much lower.

<comment><AUTHOR> ~500 feeds! That must keep you busy!

I'm working on increasing subscriptions on my blog - do you frequently see the "Subscribe on Feedly" buttons, and if so do you use them? Or are they not useful?

<comment><USER2> Haha luckily most of those feeds are pretty inactive, maybe a post a month or so, which is exactly why RSS feeds are so essential, I can keep the pulse on a massive source of good content.

I don't think I'd use a "subscribe on feedly" button, typically I just copy and paste the URL into feedly and it automatically scrapes the RSS feed, if it exists. Sometimes I manually copy the RSS link directly from the website, when exposed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you expect the RSS feed to contain the entire article so that you can read it all entirely within Feedly? Or does RSS only need to have a summary and then a link to the full article?

I know that some blogs put their full articles in the RSS feed, so you can just read it directly in your RSS viewer, email notification, etc. I've tried doing this too but since my blog is 100% bespoke PHP (i.e. it's not WordPress or some other big platform), it's not easy to do. When I write an article, I'm literally writing raw HTML with some included PHP functions to stick the navbar and footer on. It's not easy to get this into an RSS feed as you can imagine...

<comment><USER2> A brief summary is enough, I always jump from feedly into Chrome for the articles I'll read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your help with this. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sadly on most cases there isn't much else to do than to check back every now and again.

<comment><USER4> Here's a product idea. A service that would automatically screen-scrape any URL of a blog (using heuristics and/or machine learning to figure out the layout and where the posts are) and then outputs an RSS feed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reeder.app on macOS and iOS.</comment>


Zoom revenue more than quadrupled from last year - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/31/zoom-zm-earnings-q2-2021.html <comment><USER2> Zoom is an household name and by far the easiest to set up despite all the controversies.</comment>


Ask HN: Developers above 35 – what are you doing? - <AUTHOR> On my last internship in San Francisco, almost every single person that I saw at the companies I visited, etc seemed to be under the age of 40. So developers that are close to or above that age, where are you now? What is your job title? <comment><USER2> 37, leaving previous startup (sold 2 years ago) on Friday, starting next on on Monday. This'll be #6. I code.

</comment><comment><USER3> They don't give out equity in LA for most of my career and the equity I did get got destroyed by dot bomb so I seem to be damned to work 20 hours a day until I drop dead at 45.

</comment><comment><USER4> 52 independent contractor/consultant. Currently developing machine vision software for determining golf ball direction and spin immediately after the ball is struck. Fun stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's a good thread on this on Quora:

[http://www.quora.com/What-do-people-in-Silicon-Valley- plan-t...](http://www.quora.com/What-do-people-in-Silicon-Valley-plan-to-do- once-they-are-over-35)

Founder of Wikipedia, Whatsapp, Craigslist, Pandora, Zipcar, etc. responded

</comment><comment><USER6> 38\. Senior Software Engineer in Seattle. Writing Scala code to do realtime analysis of voice calls (we also analyze voice recordings). Team is probably all over 30 (I've never asked).

Previously a developer at zulily building their supply chain software. When I first started the SC team was all around 30, it was only right before I left that the first under 30 was hired. There are a couple now.

</comment><comment><USER7> 42 happily being a grunt dev (front/back in web) ... after being consultant, project manager, my own boss, sysadmin and failing quite some times.

I sometimes wish to do something real for improving humanity well being, but all my attempts failed so far :)

I am telling people that if you want to make money, you should avoid competitive fields and since crisis is there, and devs are still excessively well paid, it gives an incentive for all kind of people tied by whatever pressure (social, debts, financial) to become a coder to make money fast, and for bosses to put more pressure.

If things worsen, I think I am gonna try to propose the funding of my own sect on kickstarter (rael is my model), or coin the term factorer instead of developer which purpose would be to decrease the costs of having stupidly non reliable/deterministic technologies (mongoDB, hadoop, cloud, systemd, USB, oauth2) and excessive costs (big data that are useless for making money, the costs of cloud that are non linear thus non predictable...) to bring back some sanity to this world and more money to the workers really add values to our existence. Or maybe, just stay what I am : a troll :)

</comment><comment><USER8> 41, Software Engineer at a start-up. Most of our team are above 35 (8 of us) and they're all seriously A-team. I'm the weakest link in the bunch (though I make up for it in other ways).

</comment><comment><USER9> I am 52. I bill out consulting doing data science (stats, data wrangling, algorithms for weighted fusion of data into a single source of truth). On my own projects I combine my customer and market research background with web development (self-taught in the past 3 years). I have also maintained an interest in and developed techniques for automating text analysis in the last 15 years. Technical life doesn't have to be over at 30 or 40. Just keep experimenting and learning.

</comment><comment><USER10> Speaking for my mom, she's switched a few jobs in the past few months, after a stretch of about 10 years at the same government contracting company. She's a ColdFusion developer by training, and even though there seems to be constant demand for CF developers, she feels frustrated that she can't pivot out and work on new things as much as she wants. She's been asking me recently things like, "What's node.js?" and "What's angular?" She takes notes on what I say, does her research, and tries to pull it off in job interviews.

I think what she views as optimal now is finding a job that will let her explore any new technology. She got excited about an opportunity with the .NET stack, until they lowballed her with an offer about half of what she's currently making (developing a same-old jQuery website).

She's getting calls from recruiters every day, so it's surprising to me she's having such a hard time finding the right job for her. Also she doesn't think she's competitive with the younger crowd, so she's not even looking at certain jobs on the West Coast.

</comment><comment><USER11> 37, Sr. Manager. Still write code but mainly to POC stuff the team will be working on 3+ months down the road. Currently in fraud analytics. Still hack on my own side projects and solo startups in the evenings after the kids gone to bed.

</comment><comment><USER12> 41\. Job title at day job is "Senior Consultant". Job title at startup is "Founder / CEO". These days I focus on "big data" at the day job - stuff like Hadoop, Storm, MongoDB, etc. At the startup I kinda do everything, but from a development standpoint I work with a lot of Semantic Web tech - Apache Jena, Apache Stanbol, etc., and write a lot of Groovy / Grails code. Live and work in the Raleigh/Durham area of North Carolina.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm 40. I create zero-day exploits at a government contractor. People like me have tame lives and families, so we don't live anywhere near San Francisco. We live in places like Texas, Florida, Utah, and Nevada. In some of these places you can get a suburban house for 5 digits.

P.S. you're pwned.

</comment><comment><USER14> 44, CTO of my own little IT company. Mostly managing. Some coding - backend - in Java and Lua. Missing Turbo Pascal days.

</comment><comment><USER15> Almost 41. Just started a new (gaming) company in SF and code the MVP myself. Will transition in a CTO role once we secured funding. I know a lot of developers 35+ and I enjoy working with them.

</comment><comment><USER16> 44, Department head. Still write some code, but mostly work on budget issues, staffing, project planning, vision, target architectures, etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> 40, CEO of a startup in SV. Since we're small I'm still writing code, mostly Python, JS, and lots of other stuff. We've only got one dev who is in his 20s and the rest of us are 35+.

One thing about doing development at this age is that since you've stuck with it, if you didn't get stuck in a rut in your career, you should have some pretty serious technical chops.

</comment><comment><USER18> 40, Freelancer, Developing web applications

</comment><comment><USER19> 36, running my first company as CEO. First time not 100% tech focused. I only code dashboards.

</comment><comment><USER20> 35, enterprise consulting, I write code every day

</comment><comment><USER21> 67, still developing, still inside game console audio DSP engines.

<comment><USER22> How is that? Is it interesting work? Is it in demand?

<comment><USER21> How is that: a bit different, possibly the closest is a music synthesizer for signal, and for controller response time.

Is it interesting work?: Games _are_ different, so the past 6 years have been quite interesting. What I do relates to the games as does, say, CoreAudio relate to music Apps on iOS. And then, one is working inside a company that makes game consoles. Playing them is in the job description. As is breaking them.

Is it in demand? I honestly have no answer for that. But - there are not many game console manufacturers any more. There's the behemoth surrounding us, but I believe they recently downsized a bit, no idea about PSP at all, and us - Nintendo. Specifically, Nintendo Technology Development. We're small.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 37\. Write code everyday and loving it. I run my own consultancy - www.heptaxel.com.

</comment><comment><USER24> 42 and working on a Clojure web framework:

[https://github.com/zubairq/coils](https://github.com/zubairq/coils)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your work in this area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm 34.

As an entrepreneur, there's no expiration on my work life that I don't set myself.

The last six years of my life have been the most productive, by far, in terms of churning out value and being good at what I do. I can't work as long of hours any more without feeling it, but I'm vastly better and smarter now; I know a lot more of what not to do and where not to waste my time.

</comment><comment><USER26> More than 35. Actually more than 35 years in the business. Work in Software Security day, a startup in the evenings/weekends. There is not a day that goes by that I don't program. Job title is Chief Head Prod, owner.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm 36, doing Python, JavaScript, and DevOps consulting for start-ups, Fortune 500's, NGOs, and Federal Agencies in 4 countries.

A couple tips to ensure your ongoing success in the market:

1) Continuously invest in your skills 2) Constantly improve your storytelling and communication skills 3) Network relentlessly. Make it habitual. Follow up. Care. 4) Be fanatical about taking care of your clients 5) Nourish your sense of curiosity about technology. Eliminate toxic projects or jobs which feel like they are burning you out. 6) Have a value proposition beyond "I can write code". Develop some domain/industry-specific expertise.

For each of the above, apply the 10X Rule. Execute at a level of 10 times the effort that you originally think you'll need.

</comment><comment><USER28> 40\. Still developing. Freelancer.</comment>