Student Is Sanctioned for Creating Class-Registration Web Site - <AUTHOR> http://ucouldfinish.com/ <comment><USER5> I especially enjoy the University's ludicrous overreaction (seriously, read the letters they sent this guy; specifically the one where they demand he do the job of the "myUCF" team and come up with how he would update the application -- wherein he is specifically forbidden from saying he'd write something like the app that people obviously found useful since, you know, they were using it.)

I also enjoy that he has to attend a 'coaching session' where they teach him that University policy is sacrosanct -- and _he has to pay for it_ as well as write a "spelled-checked [sic]" research paper about his coaching session (WTF is there to 'research' about an hourlong chat?)

What's even more bizarre is why this app exists at all. PeopleSoft's "SA" module that UCF is using for registration _includes a waitlist feature_ that already does all of this -- actually, it's better, because it just pops people off the stack when a spot becomes available.

So, let's be clear:

\- UCF willfully refuses to enable the waitlist option in PS

\- Student uses a public interface to replicate the functionality

\- Star chamber declares the student broke a nebulous IT policy and that he has to write humiliating 'research papers' as contrition.

And people wonder why higher ed is less and less valued...

<comment><USER6> Was it a public interface? My read is that his app was logging in to the university system with his personal credentials.

It's not clear why there couldn't be a public read-only interface for that data, and it's a shame the U wasn't willing to work with him on it rather than slap him down reflexively. But it is reasonable for them to object to his use of his personal account to enable a for-profit project.

<comment><USER7> There was a guest access system for looking at class listings that his service used. It's mentioned in the slides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is embarrassing to see basic grammatical mistakes in a letter from a university:

 _Type a 5-6 research paper..._

What is a "5-6" research paper? Even sadder is the officious and petty tone:

 _The paper must be in 12 point font, Times New Roman, double-spaced with one- inch margins..._

I know what my response would be: two words, one page, 150 pt font.

<comment><USER5> In the spirit of assignment, since they don't specify the kerning, you could just s u b m i t y o u r .. you get the idea. (HTML is going to eat them, but pretend like there's a ton of space between each character.)

<comment><USER9> Heck, they don't specify the page size, merely the margins.

<comment><USER10> Feeding post-it notes through a printer might be difficult though.

<comment><USER11> They said 'type' not 'print.' He could use a manual typewriter.

<comment><USER12> Altough it's rather hard to find one that is writes in Times New.

<comment><USER10> You can probably find times new roman typeballs out there for IBM selectrics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've got a better idea. Transfer. Nobody should tolerate this level of self- aggrandizement (in the form of "punishment" from anybody, even if they broke some rules.

The student made the administration of the school look bad/made them uncomfortable and they're making him pay the price. You don't have to play their games. Just leave.

<comment><USER5> He can't. The veiled mentions of "holds" on his records prevent him from transferring, because the University will not release a transcript until he submits to their punishment. No transcript, no transfer.

<comment><USER14> If I were him I wouldn't bother with transferring my transcript. College education isn't worth a flip if you already know how to code and can demonstrate it by making a decent app like he did.

I dropped out of college because I made my own app and started getting two job offers a month from decent startups looking for developers. I'm sure this kid will be getting job offers from the press coverage of this.

If I were him I wouldn't waste time with school, especially from such a dated and ignorant institution when he could be getting better real life experience.

Long story short I'd hire him, and if I were him I'd leave that school without a single backward glance.

<comment><USER15> It looks like he outsourced the coding: <http://ucouldfinish.com/conduct/>

Regardless, this is a kid that can get things done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The guy who made this app set up a timeline here: <http://ucouldfinish.com/conduct/>

Reading his side of the story it seems that the University IT blocked it first out of fear of being overwhelmed and then the University looked for some way to make it stick. I understand that charging for the service is the reason they have officially decided to keep it blocked.

Unless he has misrepresented the facts about how much data his service pulls it is trivial compared to daily use of the university service. He has invested significant time and money into creating a much more user-friendly interface to the course catalog. That is worth the amount he was charging. The problem, of course, is that he does not own the course listing, and the university has every right to offer it on their terms.

Better to ask forgiveness than permission the saying goes, but in this case it seems forgiveness is not forthcoming. Based on the free garage spot counting app he mentions in the presentation it looks like permission would not have been granted either. So while the university is within their rights, they do seem to be contradicting their own value statements.

<comment><USER17> His problem was that he kept on contacting the university forcing their hand. Once he was blocked, he should have backed off. Probably would have blown over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's always bothered me how (even state-funded) universities tend to act as autonomous legal bodies. It's especially disheartening to see them trample on the bill of rights (e.g. most universities will have a "policy" that you basically can't say anything bad about them). If you do break some arbitrary rule, you can expect an arbitrary punishment for it. When it comes down to it, they can make you do whatever they want you to until you are no longer a student.

<comment><USER19> Your comment hits close.

Some years ago I reported a domestic battery in progress to the Brown University police. They turned up and refused to arrest the perp even though state law obliges them to do so. As witness I made a statement to the police and dean's office. I was then intimidated by a dean for my "black and white thinking" and he demanded that I mind my own business.

About a year or two later he failed upward to Dartmouth where he is still employed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I used to work for a student information system company. These systems are all ancient, designed around a time when a dozen people would connect to the server using their green screen terminals or, in a spate of massive innovation, Oracle Forms.

As a result, all of the web access must be done through a single db server. Any app (including the portal) tends to directly access the db, causing all sorts of stored procedures to run. Nothing is cached. The server is only busy twice a year, fall and spring semester registration, so there is a limited desire to spend more than they _absolutely_ have to on it.

Over all, IT in higher education in an interesting mix. There is a decent percentage of really good people there, who love the environment and are willing to give up the salary as a result. Unfortunately, there are also at least as many people who are earning what they are worth. The less prestigious the school, the higher the percentage of the latter.

</comment><comment><USER21> It glosses over it pretty quickly, but it sounds like he was charging a fee for frequency of checks for the classes. Part of the slide presentation shows that the school's policy surrounding their electronic services forbids commercial use or personal gain. Maybe that's part of the problem.

Edit: The conduct timeline makes this pretty cut and dried: <http://ucouldfinish.com/conduct/> In the written statement of hearing determination (July 24, 2pm) they say specifically that he's in violation of their code by making unauthorized commercial use of their service. They then go on to talk about server loads, but the primary violation is the commercialization of their service.

<comment><USER22> He's also effectively selling preferred access to classes, which is something of an ethical issue.

And many universities handle waitlisting on a department or class level so they have leeway to deal with various factors as appropriate. Ever tried to implement university, departmental, program, and class policies simultaneously, while keeping them up-to-date, while handling who can override the computer under what amalgam of policies? No? Well, that's what you'd need to do in order to get automated waitlisting working at most universities.

The fact that there's not a university-level waitlisting feature isn't an excuse to hack around policy, especially not while violating ToS and misappropriating resources for commercial resale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm just wondering how such an obviously intelligent and enterprising young man ends up studying at an institution with only marginally more academic credibility than Hamburger University.

<comment><USER24> It's not that uncommon for people this intelligent and enterprising to be completely bored out of their mind in high school and get mediocre grades. Prestigious schools, in general, don't accept "the best" but instead accept a certain type of student/personality.

<comment><USER25> That's one thing I think is good about the California state system. I know some very intelligent people who went to community college first and then transferred to a UC to finish, because they didn't have the high-school grades to get into a "good" school directly, but the public university system is designed for that kind of transfer to be possible (there is a specific transfer process, and in addition the 4-year college degree programs must be designed so that transferring in is possible, with prereqs fulfillable via community college courses).

<comment><USER26> I'm pretty sure it's like that most places, being a community college -> state university transfer myself (in Illinois), and knowing plenty of other people who went from community college to Northwestern and a few other nice private colleges. Anything out of your degree's core reqs. seems to usually be easy to transfer from community college, and that's usually what the first 2 years are. CC is also a good place for knocking out your math requirements, and a lot of the people in my math classes were traditional university students doing it to save money, or to get it done during a summer semester at home.

Problems might be more from not having a decent community college to go to, families that think community college is unacceptable, or just slacker inertia. I had an excellent community college, and went back to school as an adult over 10 years after dropping out of high school, so none of that stuff applied to me.

edit: better explanation at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4338579>

<comment><USER27> I agree. I went to a community college before transferring to the University of California, San Diego. I had an excellent experience at my CC; smaller class sizes, dedicated teachers,ect..I felt I got more value out of it than the big classes at UCSD. Where, like most big universities, the teachers there were there mostly for research. I did get a lot of shit for it though. A lot of condescending people who jump to the conclusion that I was unmotivated and stupid because I went to a CC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There has always been something wrong with these usage policies. Its a technical problem, no? If you don't want me to make more than X requests, tell your webserver to stop answering them. If you can't do that, then what the hell are you doing operating a webserver on the internet?

<comment><USER29> They did successfully block his requests. The issue is that he was charging for the service, and that was against their policy. That's why he was disciplined (though I find their response laughable and misguided).

<comment><USER30> Actually, it doesn't appear to have been against any policy, or it would have been cited as such.

This is basically what happens when bad administrators are made to look bad after they over-react to someone providing the community a service that the university chose not to. They find some flimsy excuse to punish the party they irrationally blame for their own actions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Where's the information on this? Was he querying the myUCF dozens of times every second? Is he accused of bring the networking infrastructure to its knees?

Or is this simply the faculty attempting to make a student conform? "Watch this presentation to see our side of the story." What story?

Edit: so we have to click more links on the linked page to get any more context. My apologies for being lazy.

"University officials, however, said Arnold's software was tying up the campus computer network, claiming it accessed UCF's scheduling website 220,000 times, as often as every 60 seconds."

I want to know if the reporter bungled the information or if these officials are this clueless. If this thing accessed the server "as often as every 60 seconds," where's the problem? Was the student really that clueless that he wrote his service to query _constantly_?

<comment><USER32> There appears to be a more extensive PDF archive of hearing docs here: [http://www.centralfloridafuture.com/polopoly_fs/7.52307!/Hea...](http://www.centralfloridafuture.com/polopoly_fs/7.52307!/Hearing_Documents_2.pdf)

On the last page, an IT administrator testified that the application logged on every 15 minutes and checked the availability of every UCF course at each logon, which (according to the administrator) caused a total of around 14 minutes of query processing time.

That seems excessive, but if there are hundreds of courses and each course takes 15 seconds to check (presumably due to inefficient queries being run on legacy computer systems) then I could see real lag.

The hearing docs also say that the "YouCanFinish" service was a paid service and the on-campus IT agreement forbids building paid services on top of campus resources (in this case, the class registration service, not just the campus WiFi network). I can think of good arguments to object to a private service charging students for access to classes; it puts students who can't afford "YouCanFinish" at a disadvantage in class registration and (if competition emerges) there's a huge incentive to intentionally lag the registration servers so that students effectively have to use the private service to get classes.

Seems like the sort of service where the right path is to work with the school, not try to privately monetize class selection.

<comment><USER33> According to the student's slide deck, the service checked only courses users had signed up for, cached the information, and averaged 814 requests per day.

<comment><USER31> The monetization angle sounds like the only real problem with the entire situation.

<comment><USER34> However, the University themselves "monetize" every little thing. Lab fees for English classes, library fees, $20 transcript fees to print a document on a $0.25 piece of paper. Fees for registration, fees for athletics (even if you don't participate,) fees for the Student Health Center (even if you have private insurance) fees for everything.

This kid making some coin isn't a problem for me. He built a service, he should get paid. He accessed public data (apparently) and didn't crack into anything.

The real question is why are universities so bad with their money -- they can pay head football coaches million dollar contracts, yet most universities are chronically unable to offer enough sections of popular classes. I get it, football brings in revenue, but so does licensing technology innovations and alumni that strike it rich.

Higher education is important, but the industry of higher ed is a giant scam.

<comment><USER35> One parties shit behavior does not justify anothers.

Education is meant to be about more than free-market principles of making as much money as you can and screw who you hurt on the way. A system where people who pay more get a better shot at classes is unfair.

Tho I agree the uni's response is an over-reaction and wrong. The real problem here is the situation the uni set up and not the student's actions. But for me, I couldn't 100% support this student unless it was free.

<comment><USER36> A dollar isn't exactly a lot to ask in compensation for what seems like some significant effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I love the part in the slide deck where he digs up a quote from the university's VP of IT talking up PeopleSoft's reliability.

"According to Joel Hartman, Vice Provost for Information Technologies and Resources at UCF, Sun really delivers in all regards. The Sun infrastructure for Oracle's PeopleSoft applications at UCF provides outstanding reliability, investment protection, and performance"

\- Joel, the initiator of this conduct case, stating how powerful the myUCF server network is in a technical brief for universities published by Sun Microsystems."

</comment><comment><USER38> University policy like this isn't uncommon. Last semester, the campus police called me in and told me I was to receive a letter of warning for "bad behavior". When I asked what I did, they told me "we can't tell you because we need to protect privacy".

On an IT related incident, my school's IT department claimed that doubling the email inbox for every student (25mb to 50mb) would cost 4 million dollars.

Schools are terrible, and there's no solution in sight. Every university campus is like a mini dictatorship.

<comment><USER39> I know an undergrad the recently wrote a forkbomb on a programming Web server. The student thought he was a big time hacker and quickly sent out emails to faculty telling them how great he was and how nice it was for him to let them know about this problem.

Well, no one was very pleased with this, in fact, the issue was well known and the policy was for students to just not be jerks. The student was disciplined, but nothing even remotely close to how ridiculous this student at UCF was treated and this student here did nothing malicious, in fact, tried to provide a productive service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if some of the fear here is caused by the fact that this kind of tool would tend to get its users into classes first, before users that manually checked the original website on a regular basis... which seems unfair, especially since it has a (nominal) fee, and it removes the vague link between enthusiasm and ability to get in that manual checking entails.

But perhaps that's better stated as that the tool exposes the fundamental brokenness and unfairness of a system that allocates limited space based on who presses the refresh button at the right time.

<comment><USER34> A nominal fee unfair? The "lab" fee for an ENGLISH class could pay that fee 20 times over. Colleges and university costs have risen faster than nearly every other "industry" -- including healthcare. I wouldn't say a nominal fee was unfair, not when a textbook can cost $150. What's unfair is a state university paying jackass administrators 6 figure salaries, yet it takes a kid to create a notification system that actually works. What the heck are all those IT administrators actually doing with their day? One would think class registration would be single most important IT task of a university. After all, if students aren't in classes, what's the point?

<comment><USER35> One unfair situation does not justify another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The administration's reaction is clearly politically motivated. They're basically trying to hide their own incompetence in having a crap system.

It's incredibly stupid and frustrating for anyone who has an ounce of common sense, or cares about technology.

Hopefully this generates enough negative publicity to change the administration's point of view, because frankly, political pressure is the only kind of argument that toxic bureaucracies understand.

<comment><USER42> I doubt anyone is trying to cover up making a poor choice of SIS vendor. It is astonishing how absolutely terrible higher ed software offerings are.

That being said, the punishments are stupid. Cut off his app's access if charging money is a policy violation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It's a shame that the University punished him for helping out students, though it certainly may have hammered the class registration servers as a side effect. Either way though, this is going to get a lot of publicity for a guy who's undoubtedly talented and motivated. Considering the effort he put in to both this and the parking app, it looks like the guy would have little difficulty getting a job in the Bay Area or other startup havens, even sans- degree. At this point, I'd probably leave the university if I were him. Employers will accept him with open arms.

</comment><comment><USER44> I built an iOS app for my school (Simon Fraser University) that allowed students to view/share their schedule with their friends. One of the most frequent questions I get is if the school has tried to shut me down and it is exactly for reasons like this that other students don't build more apps like this.

We have the same student system that UCF uses. It's horrible and slow. Tools like this make it a little bit more manageable.

I am surprised more schools dont have simple API's that allow students to build services on top of them.

<comment><USER45> You shouldn't be surprised at all. The schools don't build these things - <USER2> buy generally large-scale systems that claim to do X things, but mainly perform a smaller percentage of X things competently, leaving other features slow/broken. But with only a relatively small handful of customers out there, and a generally long sales cycle, its primarily larger vendors who can engage with customers like universities, and smaller companies which are able to provide innovative functionality often don't get to market.

I've built a registration system for a moderately large school district - <USER3> handles about 20,000 students per semester, and while it's certainly not _simple_ to handle everything that's needed, it's not that hard to make something perform decently enough. At peak, we have hundreds of people checking or making enrollments concurrently, which always involves doing waitlist checking (and, IIRC, different waitlist policies apply to different student types and courses). All of this is standard HTML interface - if we were to build an API to serve up just raw JSON, the load would likely be a bit less.

Back to the surprise - schools are mostly just businesses - they generally outsource their foodservice too - it'd be great if there was a lot more home cooking on most campuses, but they're often overrun with processed foods. Same thing with a lot of software infrastructure - it's outsourced/off-the-shelf stuff vs stuff built with on-campus skills. Faculty/staff/students developing more campus/school-related stuff could be a game changer, no? Is the idea that most of those students won't be there in 2-4 years a big hindrance to this approach?

<comment><USER46> "Is the idea that most of those students won't be there in 2-4 years a big hindrance to this approach?"

Yes. That's always the excuse in my experience, even when it doesn't make any sense. At my previous university job, my department used an ancient—and I really mean _ancient_ —shopping cart system. This thing had been written in ColdFusion during the mid-90s and they were still running it in 2009. It required all kinds of hand-holding and manual labor that should've otherwise been automated. Even though the original (outsourced) developer had long since disappeared, management refused to consider a new shopping cart. Why?

"Because we can't risk losing the person who sets it up."

There are no words. I chalk up the attitude to extreme, unhealthy risk- aversion.

<comment><USER45> I wish more people were required to take a logic course before getting to work at a university.

They've _already lost_ the person who set it up - there's zero "risk" involved - it already happened. The world didn't end. But life is painful for many people because of the current system.

"Unhealthy" is an understatement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I actually wrote a tool to do this very same thing at my own university. Worked great and got me the classes I wanted as soon as they became available. I only shared the service with a few people though because I knew the administration would do something like this if I made it public. It's wrong, but it wouldn't have been worth my time to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER48> I was actually just talking with a buddy about how even schools that promote entrepreneurship (with possibly the exception of Stanford) so constantly stifle and work against entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER49> At Berkeley, couple of students built a web app for generating schedules automatically (Ninja Courses[1]). Now, this isn't entirely analogous to this app: they didn't charge students for using the program and it only plans your schedule; you have to actually register yourself. However, it does access very similar information like how full classes and sections are.

Instead of shutting them down, the university licensed the technology and now provide a Berkeley-branded version [2].

[1]: <http://ninjacourses.com> [2]: <http://schedulebuilder.berkeley.edu>

<comment><USER50> A similar thing was done at Iowa State when I was there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> _6 page research paper on why maintaining a system like myUCF is difficult_

"Maintaining a system like myUCF is difficult because caching is hard, so let's go shopping. Furthermore, lorem ipsum dolor sit amit. (6 more pages) In conclusion, I'm very sorry your publicly-available program runs so slowly. Although I don't have a degree, I would happily repair it for $500,000."

They never said it had to be good.

(Incidentally, University IT policies tend to be quite silly. I stopped attending school after they wanted me to sign something giving the administrators the right to search my off-campus apartment for any reason. Ended up saving me quite a bit of money...)

</comment><comment><USER52> Is there a contact number or email address where we can speak to the people in charge at the university? Even if it doesn't change the punishment, they should be aware of how they are portraying their institution.

<comment><USER53> <http://president.ucf.edu/ContactUs.asp> <http://provost.ucf.edu/contact-us/>

A little more work to track these guys down, but doable with some searches: <http://bot.ucf.edu/>

Since its a state university, for those that are Florida residents: <http://www.flgov.com/contact-gov-scott/> [http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Representatives/detai...](http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Representatives/details.aspx?memberid=4357) [http://myfloridahouse.com/Sections/Representatives/details.a...](http://myfloridahouse.com/Sections/Representatives/details.aspx?MemberId=3041&SessionId=64) <http://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/s26>

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I'll be starting my Freshman year at UCF in the Fall. I would have loved to use this as compared to myUCF when waiting for my preferred Calc I class to open up. It was a hassle even to just check it every time, and I was never given a clear answer half the time.

</comment><comment><USER55> For those unfamiliar with the University of Central Florida, the site's name "You Could Finish" is not accidental.

"UCF" has long been said to stand for "You Can't Finish" since at least the early 1980's (i.e. shortly after the name change from FTU).

<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22you+can%27t+finish%22+UCF>

</comment><comment><USER56> This is a complete joke. Ok, so it's legit that they are mad that he was monetizing it. That's fine. Why do they have to humiliate and sanction him? Block access to the service and tell him not to do it again. Are we really still in the dark ages where we decide to make examples of people for infractions like this?

</comment><comment><USER57> I think the guy needs to contact F.I.R.E. <http://thefire.org/>

</comment><comment><USER41> I suppose you could say that this sort of thing serves as a nice "education" in how the real world works sometimes.

I personally like to keep all my online work disconnected from my real-life identity.

If he'd written this app anonymously, since it only uses guest logins, the university would have no idea who wrote it. They might disable the guest access, but they couldn't have punished him personally.

Unless they were willing to commit to a lawsuit and managed to convince a judge to allow a subpoena of the app's financial records...

<comment><USER58> > _I suppose you could say that this sort of thing serves as a nice > "education" in how the real world works sometimes._

Yep. You can't make the University look incompetent and drag them through the mud and expect to win in the process. These institutions wield to tremendous power, and if you are dead set on exposing their flaws they will fight you to the death and you will lose.

Now, as a poor student, you can definitely do asymmetric damage. You could blitz them by dropping out of school with an open letter, going to startup school, and hiring the shit out of their brightest students.

That would be a calculated move though. It shouldn't be done out of emotion. If you actually want your college degree, it's better to make peace sooner than later. It sounds like this would have been possible well before the sanctions if the OA had swallowed his pride. You really don't need to prove anything to these bureaucrats, just look out for yourself, that's the larger lesson.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> You deserve a scholarship.

Plus, you are obviously smart and capable enough to be fine if you didn't finish your degree. Better yet, as cantankerous mentioned, transfer.

</comment><comment><USER60> I like it that according to <https://my.ucf.edu/> their motto is "Stands for Opportunity".

</comment><comment><USER61> Meanwhile at UNSW: <http://mahler.cse.unsw.edu.au/rectangles/>

</comment><comment><USER62> This is ironic, as IIRC the computer science department at my alma mater (SJSU) had the creation of a class schedule finder as a requirement for all students in one of their core classes.

To think that another school would discipline one of their students for something that another school requires of some of their students is quite interesting.

</comment><comment><USER63> I built one of these a couple years back as well. (I was going to be abroad and wasn't going to have internet.) I knew it had marketability. Glad to see someone come through with this! Bummer the school was so anal about it though.

</comment><comment><USER64> The University idiot that sanctioned him should have to write a 12 page research paper on why it would have been better to buy this guy out and fold his product into the University website, so it could serve it's STUDENTS better!

<comment><USER15> That would be impossible; their software is leased from PeopleSoft - <USER4> monolithic company that charges the university an outrageous annual fee for the license to run it on University servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I wrote one of these for the course catalog at UH (Hawaii). Nobody cared.

</comment><comment><USER66> What's the story?

</comment><comment><USER67> I wrote a similar thing for Virginia Tech for private use. I definitely considered monetizing it but in the end I didn't.

Good luck.

But I think you're going about this all wrong. If you actually wanted to resolve this situation, you should have requested a meeting with the university provost or president and explained your service one-on-one -- with humility. I doubt they were trying to screw you over 'just because'.

It's probably already to late to do this though since you've gone to the media and have made it a big public issue. There's almost no chance that the administration is going to make any concession. The terms of service are written so vaguely they can do whatever they want.

</comment><comment><USER68> The hacker rage is misplaced. _The student is in the wrong_. This is not a story of a bureaucracy run amok; this is a story of a student exploiting a university computer system and causing technical problems with their back end.

TL;DR: student creates a for-profit registration system that abusively scrapes the university's registration system, causing system slowdowns and preventing students who are not using the app from registering for classes. University policy bars any _for profit_ applications from using the University's computer systems.</comment>


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I want it to be the Hacker News of fiction writing - awesome community sharing high quality stories, discussing cool things, and helping each other to get better at writing. <comment><USER5> I'd love a place to find great writers/writing.

Are you talking about fiction/short stories or other kinds of writing (e.g. politics, business, economics, etc.?)

Why would I go to /this/ site as opposed to the many other sites that have great (professional, paid) writers? If I want a great bit of fiction, I'll go to a bookshop. If I want a great bit of political analysis, I'll go to (e.g.) the New York Times. How would you convince people like me that /this/ is the place to find great writing?

Most people don't make for great authors: will you allow just anyone to publish work on your site? If so, how will you make sure the really good stuff gets to the top?

Good luck with everything with this!

</comment><comment><USER6> Hello rayalez. I posted my idea for something similar moments ago! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443376](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443376)

I would love to chat about how you plan to monetise fictionhub. Any ideas yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Monetization is pretty straightforward - allow authors to sell their stories.

Also I'm thinking about experimenting with the kind of monetization blendle.com is using - people automatically pay a small fee for reading a story(automatically refundable if they didn't like it).

Edit:

fixed the link to blendle.

<comment><USER6> I'll check out bende.com Thanks for the tip.

edit:hrmm.. bende.com sells a lot of meat. I think I got trolled.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, sorry, I meant [https://blendle.com/](https://blendle.com/) =)

<comment><USER6> haha thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hello Rayalez!

I appreciate your initiative and drive to building a great platform for fiction. I would love to know how you would differentiate fictionhub.io from other services such as [http://wattpad.com](http://wattpad.com). Any writer would love to reach more audiences and i feel this is what made medium.com a hit among bloggers. Taking this into consideration wattpad.com has 50,000,000 to 100,000,000 android app installs.( taken from their android app page). This means that there are more people who might read my stories. So why would i share my stories in fictionhub than in wattpad?

</comment><comment><USER8> Product Hunt currently does books and podcasts, but that part of that community is considerably smaller than the rest of the site.

How will you attract the first readers and authors to your platform?

How will you ensure a high standard of quality, both in submissions and in discussion?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment I am personally looking for great authors, and asking them if they would like to join(or allow me to add their stories).

We already have some pretty amazing authors and stories(check out [http://fictionhub.io/story/the-metropolitan- man](http://fictionhub.io/story/the-metropolitan-man) for example). Great fiction attracts readers, and as we grow our audience of readers - <USER2> authors have more incentives to join.

To maintain the high quality of content, we will have an invite system - <USER3> authors post their stories to the "sandbox"(a list of unapproved posts), and existing members of the community can send invites to the authors of stories they like. So we start with a few great writers, and organically grow from there.

<comment><USER8> What else could you do to attract readers? How are they hearing about the site now? Is there a particular kind of reader/author you're trying to appeal to first?

I would love to see an alternative to 1.) Fiction publishers as middle man and 2.) Awful self-published fiction in the kindle store.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to grow organically, through the content quality and word of mouth. Right now most of the people come from social networks(reddit, medium, tumblr). I am an aspiring writer myself, so as I promote my own work, and works of other writers, people discover the platform.

Also I've been thinking about creating fiction writing competitions - <USER4> would attract more writers, create original content, and give us some publicity.

And, many of the writers have their own audience, so if they choose to use fictionhub as their main platform - they will bring their readers with them.

Ideally, I would like to first attract readers and writers of rational fiction(basically hard SciFi, you can read more about it here: [http://fictionhub.io/story/rational- fiction](http://fictionhub.io/story/rational-fiction)), that is people from HN and /r/rational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What specifically do you have over ArchiveOfOurOwn?</comment>


Cheating at a Flash game by reverse-engineering. - <AUTHOR> http://www.stavros.io/posts/winning-puzzle-adventures/

<comment><USER2> would've been good to see some more detail on the source of the game (like how it worked, and what other "cheats" you can hack in). Interesteing read nevertheless.</comment>


Tiny clothing fibers could be the biggest source of plastic in oceans - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/oct/27/toxic-plastic-synthetic-microscopic-oceans-microbeads-microfibers-food-chain

<comment><USER2> Some details from the paper (from 2011):

* "Eighteen shores across six continents were contaminated with microplastic"

* 56% polyester, 23% acrylic, 7% polypropylene, 6% polyethylene, 3% polyamid

* More microplastic in densely populated areas (statistically significant)

* At sewage disposal sites, which weren't used for 10 years at the time, the concentration of fibers in the ocean was >2.5 times higher than at control sites. Polyester (78%) and acrylic (22%) made most of the difference.

* Effluent from sewage treatment plants was tested, and contained similar proportions of polyester (67%), acrylic (17%) and polyamide (16%). They state that this suggests fibers at shores and disposal sites are mainly derived from sewer through washing clothes.

* Proportions of fibers used in textiles are: 78% polyester, 9% polyamide, 7% polypropylene, 5% acrylic. Again, these proportions are similar.

* Because people wear more clothes in winter, and wash 7 times as often, they expect more fibers in sewage in winter than in summer, but did so far not test it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very interesting.

1) makes me think our upcoming Laundry-to-Landscape project will probably use our sandy front yard soil as a giant lint filter. 2) makes me think twice before using dryer lint as camp fire tinder. 3) from what I understand, the fabric industry is running low on ideas for product differentiation at the high end of the market. Garment lifecycle could be a lucrative differentiator.</comment>


Airbnb, My $1B Lesson - <AUTHOR> https://arenavc.com/2015/07/airbnb-my-1-billion-lesson/ <comment><USER3> It is interesting and a bit ironic that AirBnb accepted funding from YC - <USER2> did not believe in their idea [1], and rejected the only investor that not only believed in their crazy idea, but actively sought them out and tried to woo them. Did they go with YC because of its brand, name recognition, or because it offered them better terms?

Of course, it is all counterfactual, but could Airbnb have been as successful had they _not_ joined YC? Recall that PG told them to do things that do not scale - by taking professional photos of rentals in NY - which may have been critical to their early success.

And although PG was initially skeptical of their idea, he quickly changed his thinking about how big Airbnb could become. Revealed in another interesting trail of emails exchanged between PG and Fred Wilson (who also passed on Airbnb). [2]

[1] _" In fact, when we funded Airbnb, we thought it was too crazy. We couldn't believe large numbers of people would want to stay in other people's places"_

[http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html)

[2] [http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html)

[http://avc.com/2011/03/airbnb/](http://avc.com/2011/03/airbnb/)

Edit: spelling

<comment><USER4> > _" but could Airbnb have been as successful had they not joined YC?"_

These guys had a good idea, some luck, and were able to execute. I doubt that the "brand" of their money or broad aphorisms from VCs had much to do with any of it.

For all intents and purposes, money is money. There's an element of "tech celebrity" in the Valley, and big-name VCs are part of that. In reality, successful businesses around the country are built, every day, by hard-working entrepreneurs who bootstrap it (because their business is making money) or get funding my more traditional means. I don't think VCs have any "secret sauce" for success.

<comment><USER5> frbo.com had been up and operating for many years before airbnb came around. "good idea" in this case wasn't original, so that would leave luck or connections. maybe it wasnt the YC money that helped as much as YC's connections.

in the end we will never really know, but it wasnt the "good idea" part that made them successful.

<comment><USER6> It's not the idea. It's the execution.

The world is more than just about idea, luck, and connections.

Just by looking at the websites of airbnb and frbo will tell you a ton.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If it's bad form for a VC to break a handshake deal, it's equally-bad for a startup too... no? Doesn't that reflect poorly upon the founders?

It's so important that YC went through the effort to codify the process: [http://www.ycombinator.com/handshake/](http://www.ycombinator.com/handshake/)

<comment><USER8> You guys are missing the point. AirBnB didn't screw me over - this wa any first deal and I screwed around debating stupid points. I was disappointed they didn't do the deal but this whole post is about lessons learned. And one of the biggest ones was move fast once you have conviction. At the time of this Airbnb event I was just learning. I thought an investor had to worry about all these little details, negotiate tons of clauses, etc. but post Airbnb I realized all that detail was stupid. After that event I learned to move fast.

Example: When I met Peter (Contextlogic now known as Wish) I wrote him a physical check within a day (pretty sure it was his first) as I planned to take whatever terms he ended up negotiating. And then I immediately started brining in other investors, introductions to engineers, etc

So don't take this post as a "Brian screwed me" / the screwing was all self inflicted and a very important lesson

<comment><USER9> Well, if it did fall apart at the literal last hour and you were going to sign the formal paper work (which only reiterates the terms already negotiated and agreed to at dinner) the next day, but didn't because YC came in overnight and took the entire round...then it does sound like you got screwed.

<comment><USER10> His general approach does indicate that belief in the product is paramount, his trust in the team second. The takeaway is not to yank the chain too hard negotiating when these two criteria are met. He could have closed a week before.

<comment><USER11> Those who aren't willing to walk away make bad deals.

<comment><USER12> This is generally true. "Today and today only" is usually a red flag.

But those who aren't willing to pull the trigger quick enough miss the great deals.

<comment><USER13> It seems to boil down to "How fast can you be mostly right?"

<comment><USER9> Pretty close to what was found here: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.3798](http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.3798)

It also sounds fairly intuitive when you verbalize it: the faster you can update your (presumably sound) strategy to new information, the "better" you are likely to do compared to someone who responds to changing information at a slower rate.

<comment><USER13> Even if your initial strategy is less sound, if you can (and are willing to) update it faster, you can still win (so long as your initial strategy wasn't too horrible).

<comment><USER11> Thats why comments on Hacker News are editable :)

<comment><USER9> Happened to my OP :) Pushed down to -1 early, made some edits and now +10

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let me get this straight: in June 2008, Airbnb got intro'd to a bunch of investors, who all said no [1]. In September of 2008, Airbnb had a $250k round on the table that valued them at 2.5M[2]. And then, also in September 2008 (before YC usually does interviews) they rejected that offer for YC, who ended up giving them $20k[3], with a valuation presumably around $250k?? (Although Brian Chesky says that didn't happen until November, it sounds like they got some kind of verbal confirmation earlier?)

The timeline is weird.

1\. [https://medium.com/@bchesky/7-rejections-7d894cbaa084](https://medium.com/@bchesky/7-rejections-7d894cbaa084)

2\. [https://arenavc.com/2015/07/airbnb-my-1-billion- lesson/](https://arenavc.com/2015/07/airbnb-my-1-billion-lesson/)

3\. [http://www.quora.com/How-much-money-did-Airbnb-raise-What- is...](http://www.quora.com/How-much-money-did-Airbnb-raise-What-is-the- companys-financing-history)

<comment><USER8> It's not weird at all. Brian talked to a ton of people over many months. He was raising many months before I met him. And then I came in. I then spent too long negotiating but then we finally worked out a deal end of Sep and then my lawyers and their lawyers negotiated the agreement Sep 26th and then we did our dinner. But then YC smartly moved in after this closing dinner and booted me out. Funny enough Justin Kan and I ended up in Vegas a few years later at a tech party at Caesars hotel and had a good laugh about it. He remembered me as the crazy Marine who was writing a huge check into Airbnb before they elbowed me out. This isn't unusual - they probably googled me at the time (back then all of the results would have been stories about iraq, Syria, afghanistan, Pakistan operations; black operations and crazy shit). They probably thought they were protecting Airbnb and keeping dumb money out of the cap table. It's quite common for good investors to strongly advise you not to take dumb money and I agree with the practice.

And that goes back to one of the lessons from my post. I realized that for founders and investors to take me seriously and not lose deals I had to prove myself, build a positive brand by helping founders and getting smarter about this new world I was operating in.

<comment><USER15> _> ..YC smartly moved in after this closing dinner and booted me out._

Do you think YC told AirBnB "We won't accept you on our programme if you take investment from Paige", or do you reckon it was AirBnB's decision to join the YC programme instead of taking your investment?

<comment><USER8> Pure speculation here: But objectively I think my money was perceived as "dumb money" and YC had a great rep even back then. When you compare the offers the YC money is clearly the best deal and smarter move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Deck: $2.1B in revenue by 2011

Reality: $500M in revenue in 2014

Moral: Even the most successful startups don't hit their seed-stage revenue projections :)

</comment><comment><USER17> What bugs me is that the founders went back on the deal that was agreed upon in person.

<comment><USER18> Docs were finished, a "closing dinner" was had, a handshake was made on the deal, and then AirBnb backed out. If an investor pulled that on a YC company I'm sure they would be blackballed rather quickly.

<comment><USER19> AirBnB has never been one to follow the rules, from the earliest days of Craigslist spamming and flouting lease agreements and hotel regulations.

You don't do handshake deals with people whose fundamental business model is "cutting corners wherever you can sneak away with it"

<comment><USER20> One thing we can all learn from AirBnB: if any group of people you hire for any reason, even on a contract basis, do one bad thing on the Internet one time, haters on the Internet will never let you live it down. Hire carefully.

<comment><USER21> Yes, because no one ever passes the buck entirely. I believe this accountability is a good thing; see for example this discussion:

 _This is how Visa works_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396414) _(900+ points 3 years ago)_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's very interesting hearing a story from the VC's side. One always reads about the trials and tribulations of startups trying to raise capital, but I've never considered that there might be similar issues and competition on the investors' side.

<comment><USER23> Sequoia arguably strongarming its way to owning 100% of the Whatsapp series A instead of allowing other funds to join would be a prime example of this is recent history.

<comment><USER24> How on Earth did they strongarm anybody? Whatsapp didn't want to meet with any investors. Sequoia put in a lot of effort to be allowed to invest at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The most interesting takeaway for me is the spreadsheet of stats. I find it highly motivating to see how meager their start was. You hear all the time from startups, "We weren't an overnight success. We worked hard for years...", but seeing stats like these in hindsight really sends that message.

</comment><comment><USER26> If there's one thing I've learned since working at startups and rounds of funding it's definitely:

The deal isn't done until the money is in the bank

</comment><comment><USER27> Does it strike anyone else as unseemly to share the pitch deck? I get that it's 7 years ago, but still seems like something a little out of bounds to me.

<comment><USER28> [http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-a-13-billion-dollar- st...](http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-a-13-billion-dollar-startups- first-ever-pitch-deck-2011-9?op=1)

edit: actually arenavc posted the deck [https://arenavc.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/07/airbnb-origin...](https://arenavc.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/07/airbnb-original-deck-2008.pdf) and much more [https://arenavc.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/07/AirbnbEventSc...](https://arenavc.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/07/AirbnbEventScheduleFinal.doc.pdf) [https://arenavc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Airbnb- Events...](https://arenavc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Airbnb-Events-and- Growth-Projections.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Over the last seven years, I've discovered and invested very early in a handful of highly valuable companies (Wish, Lyft, Zenpayroll, Postmates, AngelList, Plated, Styleseat, Klout, etc.) as well as plenty of disasters."

Any middle ground between "highly valuable" and "disaster"?

<comment><USER30> I think in most VCs minds, there is no middle ground (ie everything not highly valuable is effectively written off as a disaster).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Its an interesting read to hear about other investors who have missed out on deals. I actually tried investing into a startup this year and completely failed due to governmental regulations. Even though i worked my ass off saving for 2 years to have discretionary income in order to invest as i wanted to I did not meet the requirements of being an "accredited investor" and so i missed out on the funding round. I spent at least a month getting everything ready and going back and forth with the founders meeting with them emailing them back and forth to find out from a newsletter that they had closed without me. I guess until the SEC opens it up i'm shit out of luck and am better off going to a roulette table at a casino...

<comment><USER32> Why would you want to invest in a startup ?, VCs can pull it off because they are playing with a lot of money and can eat the (completely inevitable) losses. It sounds like you only have enough to invest into one startup, thats an incredible amount of risk to take.

<comment><USER33> People also start companies, which is even riskier. Angeling into one startup may be better than never trying anything at all.

<comment><USER32> Yes but picking between investment opportunities is a bit different than starting a company. If you have enough money to buy a significant chunk in an angel round then you also have enough money to open yourself up to other less risky investment opportunities.

<comment><USER33> Some people like living on the edge. Angels are a certain kind of crazy.

Also high risk -> high reward, right? 10x in 7 years can be game changing.

<comment><USER34> That's lottery style thinking, and will get you the predictable results - almost certainly.

Maybe turning this around will help you see how ineffectual this is:

If you are a naive investor desperate to put all of your small stake into one company and I am an early stage startup, why would I want your money if I can have smart money with a good network instead?

And if I can't have that, if I'm desperate for the investment, well your odds just got much, much worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm not sure what the big fuss is over this.

Here's the story in one sentence: an angel recognized Airbnb's potential but never got the deal in writing so they used it as leverage for a better offer.

Paige invested in Lyft, Twitter and Postmates. He's doing fine and learned from this.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think the fundamental lesson here is speed. What took Paige 3 weeks or more to accomplish took YC 10 minutes, and then they said yes and signed the paperwork. Remember, this was unheard of before YC came along (granted, there's more money involved in Paige's side of things, but even that doesn't matter). Founders recognize this and respect it, and it's going to be what distinguishes the good future dealmakers from the bad ones.

Thanks for sharing this Paige. Excellent write up and valuable lessons learned.

</comment><comment><USER37> Thanks so much for writing this, I love learning about cases where seemingly concrete rules can be bent. Take a look at Uber who is constantly being told that what they're doing is illegal and their response is essentially "but it's better so the laws need to be fixed". I think that's the same attitude you want when doing everything you can to get back in the deal. Always be optimistic and don't give up to soon.

</comment><comment><USER38> If I remember correctly, Airbnb struggled to raise after YC as well. Sequoia came in and gave them $600k quietly after Greg McAdoo synthesized and reframed the Airbnb vision (See Nathan's Startup school speech from 2013). Why didn't Paige participate in funding after demo day?

</comment><comment><USER39> Why are those metrics considered to be bad? I am obviously judging with hindsight and without daily deal noise here but if i look at them:

* Within the first weeks first revenue

* Within 4 months numbers that by themselves each look promising (40-60% response rate although crap product, good revenue per night, good nights booked, etc)

Personally i dont expect any of those metrics nowadays to be further away than 1.5-2x better

The "only" big q's left is:

* is the market big enough it's worth scaling the quantity

* is that team capable of doing it

I feel like i am missing something here (obviously i judge from hindsight) but what about this numbers is "bad metrics"?

</comment><comment><USER40> This happens the other way around as well for founders. Cheers to Paige for the insight and thoughtful conversations we've had. He's most likely got a nice investment in a few future unicorns.

</comment><comment><USER41> > After 6 weeks of work, I didn't get to invest.

That's supposed to be considered a bummer :).

Hey, at least you still have your money !

In fact, who knows, maybe with your investment, Airbnb wouldn't have turned out that great after all.

Maybe you would have lost your money, which would have reduced your reputation and you would have ruminated over it, got depressed, separated, started using drugs and drinking, get arrested for a drunk mishap, resisting arrest and attacking an officer with a tennis ball, then jail time... the wheel of misfortune once set in motion is hard to stop :).

</comment><comment><USER42> Some grist for Silicon Valley (Mike Judge's show):

> On a tactical level, I repeat this creative destruction almost weekly as I > analyze an individual deal; on an operational level I do it every few months > (re-evaluating my deal flow, co-investor network, deal structures, etc.); at > a strategic level I sit down almost every year and question my overall > philosophy on founders, theses, markets, etc.

[shorter: I don't only regret my mistakes but also try to learn from them.]

Otherwise a well-told story. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER43> Hey Paige - If I negotiate a potential financing with Arena, and it doesn't work out, will you take all of my emails and publish them as well?

<comment><USER8> If your emails had anything hurtful, embarrassing, proprietary or damaging to yourself or your company I wouldn't publish them.

In this case these emails and documents make ME look like a novice investor and speak highly of the Airbnb founders. I have no problem exposing my own failures and mistakes but I'd never expose yours unless you were cool with it.

This event was a very important lesson for me and made me a better investor. Most people commenting here are thinking short-term; but the consequence of this Airbnb deal was critical to my development. I learned to move fast and invested a great deal of time and energy into becoming a better investor.

<comment><USER44> I think it's actually makes you look secure in your self, maybe even a bit gutsy. I'm not sure what the right word would be here, but it I like it.

Someday, I hope to join the ranks of VCs but I figure I need to figure things out first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> If YC hadn't invested, nobody would have ever heard of AirBnb. This is a case where the investor added a great deal of value to the business.

YC is at the center of a large network of investors, startups and bloggers and somehow its investment decisions ultimately influence the habits of technology consumers in general.

I think it was a lose-lose situation for the author.

<comment><USER9> Is every successful company from YC?

Is every YC company successful?

You must answer yes to both to believe:

>If YC hadn't invested, nobody would have ever heard of AirBnb.

<comment><USER45> I'm exaggerating of course. But I'm sure it did make a massive difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Time kills all deals.

</comment><comment><USER47> Interesting to know you look for startups to invest in. I've always wounded how start ups find investors and approach them. I'm working on a personal project that I would love to do full time but with no savings and living in Singapore so have to have a job to stay here. Also scared to look for investors because I don't want them to try change my ideas since I believe in what I'm building.

</comment><comment><USER48> Jesus. I didn't know any VC/Angels worked that hard to get into a deal. Hell, in my experience it's like they actively try NOT to fund companies.</comment>


Paxos derived - <AUTHOR> http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2018/01/paxos-derived.html <comment><USER2> Wow, that's amazing. On the topic of fault tolerance and consensus, here's a short but well done article on it:

[https://ug93tad.github.io/consensus/](https://ug93tad.github.io/consensus/)

And on the topic of Paxos, some recent HN discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16003662](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16003662) \- WPaxos: a wide area network Paxos protocol

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13923949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13923949) \- Paxos in 25 Lines

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13950493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13950493) \- Gryadka is not Paxos, so it's probably wrong [RETRACTED]

<comment><USER3> Some update on Gryadka - Tobias Schottdorf and Greg Rogers independently explored it with TLA+ and didn't find any issues: \- [https://tschottdorf.github.io/single-decree-paxos-tla- compar...](https://tschottdorf.github.io/single-decree-paxos-tla-compare-and- swap) \- [https://medium.com/@grogepodge/tla-specification-for- gryadka...](https://medium.com/@grogepodge/tla-specification-for- gryadka-c80cd625944e)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Murat's blog is underappreciated. One of the most approachable writers on distributed systems. Check out his full archives.

</comment><comment><USER5> "In sum, something "fundamental" changes when you want to go fault-tolerant and tolerate node failure in an asynchronous system. When you combine faults and full-asynchrony, you get the FLP impossibility result. That means you lose progress! That is why Paxos does not guarantee making progress under a full asynchronous model with a crash failure."

This is unclear to me. Egalitarian Paxos guarantees progress under a full asynchronous model and doesn't have the dueling leaders problem. So this looks like a weakness of standard Paxos itself, not a fundamental problem.

<comment><USER6> Though it might not be explicitly stated in the paper, EPaxos has the same liveness guarantee as all other consensus protocols: commands will eventually commit if a long enough period of synchrony occurs. As the author of this post notes, this is a fundamental limitation of the specification of the consensus problem - no protocol can get around the limitation while solving consensus by definition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I took Murat's distributed system course at UB, awesome professor and really enjoyed his lectures.

</comment><comment><USER8> Similarly, Max Zorn used to ask people whether they recalled what Zorn's Lemma was introduced as a lemma to. (I haven't a clue, and I doubt most of them did either.)

<comment><USER9> Page 82 of [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0315086078...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0315086078901362) has some information.

Zorn introduced a "maximal principle" as an axiom. It appears Tukey called a generalization of it Zorn's Lemma for unknown reasons, though there is some version of the statement that really is proved, but apparently by Chevalley (a fact Zorn knew).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have no idea what this is all about. Anyone care to give a simple explanation?

<comment><USER11> One of the most popular problems to be solved in modern IT systems is that of keeping the state of your application distributed across a number of machines.

Paxos is one of the algorithms that solves this problem by giving you a protocol that allows the sets of machines to agree upon a set of operations that would all be applied to their states thus giving you a set of machines in the same state.

A simple example, is if you had a set of 3 machines starting with state of "0" and wanted to add "1" to their state. Paxos would define how they should communicate so that in the end, even if one of the machines failed during execution, would all end up with a state of "1".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Blogspot? Now there's a TLD I haven't seen in years...

<comment><USER13> And you haven't seen it as a TLD now, either.

(The TLD is "com", which you probably see fairly often in that role.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are we there yet? Do we need paxos-like consensus protocols? Hardware is becoming cheaper and commoditised and with all the hype around blockchain, it looks like people are ready to pay extra for the redundant hardware needed for 100% fault tolerance. Still, it feels to me to in almost all cases, including financial transactions, it's good enough to be right 99.999% of the time and just amortise the costs of the very rare bit flip...

<comment><USER6> You bring up a good point, although I'm not sure if I agree with (or understand) the premises. I can't imagine a world where hardware and the protocols running on top will be immune to physical sources of faults, such as natural disasters, human intervention, or cosmic radiation(!). As a result, dealing with failures will always be a consideration in building distributed software systems, and Paxos or protocols that solve the same problem as Paxos will always be relevant.

I do think you make a good point that we don't always need Paxos-like protocols. Paxos is a very strong tool, so it solves a difficult problem, but is heavy-handed in many scenarios. There is a lot of space to explore lighter- weight alternatives to Paxos while still providing similarly strong properties.</comment></comment>


Careful, there's an app which will delete all your tweets - <AUTHOR> http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/27/9737518-careful-theres-an-app-which-will-delete-all-your-tweets

<comment><USER2> The point of the application is to delete all your tweets, it explains that it's not undo-able, and it requires confirmation before it does it. Relax.</comment>


Julia for Matlab users - <AUTHOR> http://sveme.org/julia-for-matlab-users-i.html <comment><USER2> I've been trying out Julia for a couple weeks. I love the language, it's simple, powerful, and fast. My problem is that I've run into a lot of cases where I have an error, but no indication of where the error is. Sometimes it's a syntax error somewhere in the file, other times it's a stack trace that gives me my top-level function call and a line somewhere in the standard library, but nothing in between.

So I'm finding I can write the code very quickly, but if I get an error like this I lose all the time I gained and more. I'm sure this is a matter of it being such a young language, and also that someone more experienced would avoid many of the pitfalls catching me. But for noobs like me it's difficult. I hope they improve this soon.

<comment><USER3> Which version of Julia are you using and on what platform? Windows backtraces are pretty bad, but other platforms decent. The situation on Windows is likely to improve soon, fortunately. If you have specific problems that are reproducible, it would be great to have bug reports so we can improve things: [https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues).

<comment><USER2> Version 0.2.0 on Ubuntu.

I should have kept better notes. Going forward, I'll try and reproduce in small amounts of code and file reports.

One was pretty silly, I used "end" as a variable name. It blew up with a syntax error on a line where I was assigning to it, but didn't tell me what line or what variable name. (But it did say something about an unexpected assignment, so it knew where the problem was, it just didn't tell me.)

I've got the stacktrace issue right now with an error regarding an incorrect byte index into a unicode string. I get why that happens, just can't find what's causing it in my code.

Edit: changed to an ascii string after seeing someone mention it here, now I'm getting a BoundsError in copy! at array.jl:49, and again the stacktrace tells me nothing else besides the top-level function call.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Matlab's strength does not only lie in the simplicity of it's code or in not having to load libraries explicitly. It also lies in the fairly good IDE. Built for scientists who want to prototype code quickly, there is an interpreter and an editor right there for you. Not to mention that you never have to configure anything, it just works.

I love Julia, but for wider adoption, it will definitely need integration with a good IDE that "hides complexity from it's users".

<comment><USER5> There is Julia Studio[0], but I'm not sure it is competitive as of yet.

[0]: [http://forio.com/products/julia- studio/](http://forio.com/products/julia-studio/)

<comment><USER6> I've been looking at this, but it doesn't yet have watch windows and package import is somewhat broken. That said I do like the interface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Julia intrigues me and I'm on their mailing list but daily perusal of activity on that list has shown me clearly that Julia is still a long way from deciding what it will be when it grows up.

I quite like it and look forward to all the conceptual issues being settled and a stable version delivered. Lotsa' smart people providing input on that but that's both a blessing and a curse.

To much variety of intrinsic data aggregates for me but they justify that on it being compiled and very performance sensitive. Thus a lot of "you can do x on an A but not y. But if you must y, a B is provided instead.'

<comment><USER8> I'm not very familiar with Julia, could you provide an example of what you're taking about in the last paragraph?

<comment><USER7> [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/julia- users/7DXD7Qbk...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/julia- users/7DXD7QbkXy4)

Starting with Stefan Karpinski's first comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So I want to plot a few lines and label my axes. First step? Install 2 of the 3, ... er, 4 available plotting packages, named "Winston" and "Gertrude," or "Jenkins" and "Marsalis," or something else equally meaningless. Once I've done this, I can issue a bunch of low-level commands to produce my simple plot.

Matlab may be an ugly language, but offering this kind of amateur software as a replacement is just pathetic. Octave, R, and various python packages have been viable for years.

<comment><USER10> It is open-source software, not a walled garden - there are going to be multiple options, and they are not going to all be named ["PLOTTINGISHERE$i" for i in 1:4].

If you like MATLAB/pyplot/matplotlib style, PyPlot.jl is for you.

If you like ggplot2, Gadfly.jl is for you.

If you like gnuplot, Gaston.jl is for you.

Finally, but not least, is Winston.jl, which is its own thing altogether.

I think in many cases its good for packages that overlap to come together/one to become dominant, but I don't think that applies here.

[https://github.com/stevengj/PyPlot.jl](https://github.com/stevengj/PyPlot.jl)

[https://github.com/dcjones/Gadfly.jl](https://github.com/dcjones/Gadfly.jl)

[https://github.com/mbaz/Gaston.jl](https://github.com/mbaz/Gaston.jl)

[https://github.com/nolta/Winston.jl](https://github.com/nolta/Winston.jl)

<comment><USER9> I guess Gaston would be my choice, since I'm most familiar with Gnuplot syntax for tweaking plots. Still, it's a shame Julia inherited the Ruby/Rails convention of making up nonsense names for packages. While they don't need to be named PLOTTING$i, it wouldn't hurt for them to be named Plot::Gnuplot, etc. (or whatever the syntax is for nested names). Doing otherwise is just putting branding ahead of actually trying to help people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those new to Julia, you can also try it out here: [http://forio.com/julia/repl/](http://forio.com/julia/repl/)

(Full disclosure, I'm affiliated)

</comment><comment><USER12> CSV is rarely used with Matlab. Can Julia read HDF, H5, or CDF formats?

<comment><USER13> Yes, there are packages that can read and write HDF5 (including specific support for .mat) [0] and NetCDF [1] formats.

[0]: [https://github.com/timholy/HDF5.jl](https://github.com/timholy/HDF5.jl) [1]: [https://github.com/meggart/NetCDF.jl](https://github.com/meggart/NetCDF.jl)</comment></comment>


Is bitcoin protocol future proof - <AUTHOR> http://www.cryptocurrencyanswers.com/questions/675/is-bitcoin-protocol-future-proof

<comment><USER2> From [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/the_doghouse_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/the_doghouse_cr.html)

On brute forcing cryptographic keys using an ideal computer that uses the absolute minimum energy possible:

 _A typical supernova releases something like 1051 ergs. (About a hundred times as much energy would be released in the form of neutrinos, but let them go for now.) If all of this energy could be channeled into a single orgy of computation, a 219-bit counter could be cycled through all of its states._

Quantum computers won't help break cryptography because they must still consume energy to work, and even a supernova's worth of energy won't even let you _count_ to 2^256, let alone actually do that many hashes.

The only real problem that could occur is if some weakness is found in current cryptographic standards... which while possible, seems unlikely given the massive amount of attention they've already received from incredibly smart people.

But, even if something like that did happen, all bitcoin would have to do is roll out a new client that fixes the problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> No one can guarantee it. There can always be a major breakthrough that breaks the fundamental assumptions on that bitcoin is build. For example: Quantum computers getting a main stream thing and growing exponentially in power.</comment>


MacOS Sierra 10.12.2 removes battery life remaining indicator - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/13/macos-sierra-10-12-2-battery-life-indicator/ <comment><USER2> Apple releases laptop with mysteriously hit-and-miss battery reviews, then with the next OS X update, removes this. Interesting timing.

<comment><USER3> Yea, the next update will remove the 16GB RAM limitation - it just won't report how much memory you have. :( This is truly disappointing and not something that I would expect from Apple. It's not as if the remaining battery life was every 100% accurate; most people realized that it was an estimate and just used it as a guideline. But when Apple comes out and says that battery life is X and people are measuring battery life at X-n, that is a problem.

It's as if Apple is blaming the user for using applications that dare to use energy. It reminds me of how Windows NT 4.01 was C2 secure, as long as you didn't plug in the network cable. :face+palm:

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is ridiculous, rather than fixing a broken algorithm calculating that time they removed the feature completely. There are lot of situations when I would need time remaining value.</comment>


Losing My Perfect Job - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@iamzackwebb/losing-my-perfect-job-d9b618e934b4 <comment><USER2> I've heard tell that there was a time when it made sense to expect to be in the same job next year that you're in today.

The author seems to have slipped naturally into that mindset. I don't think we live in that time anymore.

While HN repeatedly warns (employee) devs to maintain a mercenary mindset the instinct toward company loyalty seems to have far outlived the loyalty of companies toward their employees.

</comment><comment><USER3> > I feel sorry for him. I'm not sure he's ever been in this position before, > and I think I'm the first person today he has to give this news to. He looks > a bit overwhelmed, grey-faced, perhaps a bit nervous. He is speaking slowly > and carefully. It's got to be tough to be the one who has to deliver this > news to people. It must really suck for him to tell somebody they're > suddenly unemployed.

Long ago, I was let go, with others, by the VP of a company I worked for as the company was faltering. He was a nice guy and I wasn't aware how much it had affected him to do this. I stopped by to visit, some months later, and found out he was in a mental health facility and had to be restrained from trying to climb out a window to get out. Worse--there was no window.

When I started my business, I found it difficult to let people go who were just not capable of doing the job. Those with attitude problems and "cancers" within the company were easier but not really easy. As time passed, I was able to steel myself up against these things. I wouldn't tell them they were fired but, instead, being "let go" cause they couldn't get the job.

I admit to having some pleasure in cutting out the cancererous ones, though.

<comment><USER4> In my (thankfully small set-size) experience even with attitude problems it's not easy to fire people.

It's really seldom that you have to fire someone who is just a right asshole with no redeeming qualities - quite often they are toxic because they have some mental health issues, or have really bad social skills, or are just for one reason or another really frustrated and taking it out in the wrong way (none of these are excuses to keep them employed mind you).

You can be relieved after the fact that they are gone while still not enjoying having to actually fire them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Sales and marketing might be at risk, maybe. But firing developers would be > completely illogical.

LOL. Sales and marketing bring in the money. Everyone else is just an expense.

<comment><USER6> This is a naive way of looking at things. Your product isn't a thing that robotic ATMs spit out cash for, because they've been told to buy it. Though this perspective is true at some places, it creates a race to the bottom, and will put you out of business. For example, you can sign up contracts for vaporware and then deliver. This may make some money in up-front contract payments, but how long is this business going to last?

<comment><USER7> It's a short term way of looking at things, but if you're firing 25% of your staff you probably can't afford to think long-term.

Also sales people are much cheaper than developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Locking people out of company chat and other documents during the talk is weird. Wouldn't it make more sense to use the next two weeks or month (whatever the standard period is) to wrap things up and hand them over to other people? This looks like a needless destruction of knowledge.

<comment><USER9> It seems to be a standard practice: people are afraid of sabotage.

<comment><USER10> I think a company should be afraid of sabotage if it's actively sabotaging it's employees.

If you're holding monthly all-hands meetings and telling everyone that things are going swimmingly, and all your employees are asking their managers -- is it really? Should I be looking for other jobs just in case? And the script you give to your managers is -- oh, no, you don't need a back up. Everything is fine.

If you know you're about to go out of business in a month unless you secure another round of funding, and you know talks are going terribly, and you're constantly lying to your employees about everything -- yeah, I think it'd be crazy not to expect some retaliation.

<comment><USER11> > \-- oh, no, you don't need a back up

:wink, wink:

If you care about your team, you'll let them know what's really going on, no matter what your exec said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > That just didn't seem like the kind of thing the company I imagined I was > working for would do.

In case anyone was wondering why you need a union _even_ when you like your job and your boss, this piece is a pretty good example. Let's organize, y'all!

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure I follow your statement. If the company had a choice between laying people off and failing, a union coming in and preventing them from laying people off doesn't sound like it would help the situation.

<comment><USER12> It is usually a false choice. Unions don't stop layoffs but they can help to negotiate the terms of the layoffs and ensure that everyone is respected during the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article was actually better than I expected.

In my short career experience, there is no dream or perfect job. As one gains experience, you can find better and better opportunities, but instead of a single dream job, you end up moving along a pareto optimal border of tradeoffs.

<comment><USER15> The issue I see is : How do you pay for a mortgage? How do you stay in the same school district without a 2 hour commute?

Job hopping is fine when you're young and can apartment hop every year. But when you get hitched, have a family, want a dog and a yard for the kiddos to play in, job hopping gets a LOT harder. Trying to pay off that mortgage between the two of you ain't easy when your schedule is changing so often (commuting really gets in the way of picking the kids up) and you may be out of work for 6 months or more. Sure, maybe the Bay is job-rich, but then the houses are $3k/mo. for the next 30 years.

Yeah, maybe the job ain't peaches then, you take the stability for the joy. But there ain't any stability either now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Posted by an hour old throwaway account referring to a pseudonymous Medium writer discussing an anonymous company's two year old laying off procedure.

I wonder how this made it to the front page, and what we are supposed to take from it other than "company lays people off after assuring them it wouldn't, employee wasn't given much notice and online accounts were locked out during the dismissal call" all of which, in my experience on both sides of the table is completely normal.

It is standard corporate hedging and damage control, and it doesn't make it right, but it is pervasive.

<comment><USER17> The point of the article was if the person didn't lose their "perfect job" they would never have forced themselves to look for other, better, and more enjoyable opportunities.

<comment><USER18> I think that happens to a large number of people who have lost a job and found something else. Specifically, if you are laid off, and assuming the entire company / division didn't fold (i.e., they cut 15% from all departments), then chances are that you and the company weren't a good fit for each other. And it is during the job search process that you start to re-evaluate your skill set, what you can do, and what you want to do. Often that will then lead to a better opportunity in which you have improved (if from nothing else than a change of scenery).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm so glad I'm in a country where you can't be laid off at a moment's notice like that, and I very much hope this is not going to change, despite our disruptive leader™'s wishes.

<comment><USER20> On the flip side, imagine being a business owner, and having absolutely no options left but to make this decision and salvage what you can left of your business. Should the business risk bankruptcy and cause 100% of the workforce to be jobless, or is it better if just 25% lose it? The company could rebound, and hire an additional 50% on top of the original 100%. It's the circle of business life.

<comment><USER21> As a person running a business it is your job to ensure that such a thing doesn't happen. If you have to do sudden immediate layoffs or face bankruptcy that means somebody (probably you) massively messed up.

<comment><USER22> OK, and _when_ that happens should 100% of the company be reduced to ashes or take a shot at 75% of the company surviving and reviving?

Given enough businesses and enough trials, it's a certainty that some leaders will drive them off a cliff.

<comment><USER23> The way this works in Germany is that if the company is in trouble and goes into insolvency the employment agency pays insolvency money to cover parts of the salary for some time (financed by a fund into which all (with exceptions) employers pay) Thus in the extremely critical situation employees aren't the one immediately suffering from management failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> TLDR: a few screens of rumblings about how a person was informed that he/she was laid off as part of big (25%) company laid off

<comment><USER25> You got distracted by the emphasis on details in recollection of this poignant experience.

> We've spent the last few months tweaking the product I work on, running > tests and trying to come up with ways of increasing engagement, because not > enough customers are renewing their subscriptions.

So serious problems were visible to everyone, but somehow the possibility of job loss was not made clear. This is partly management, but to some extent a full blown sector wide social problem where we distract each other with stories and beliefs that are false until it is too late to react with a realistic assessment of the potential down sides.

> That was nearly two years ago now, back in the middle of 2017. It had been > the perfect job for me. ... I spent the next couple of months job hunting. > ... world had become a lot bigger and more complicated while I was working > in that company, and we hadn't kept up

And moving on was difficult, involved a lot of rejection, and didn't even properly start until after a major career course correction.

> Looking back now, my old job wasn't nearly as perfect as I thought it was at > the time. ... I had stopped growing.

There is the lesson, and it is a pretty robust one that applies to many readers here.

"If...you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." \--Catherine Aird

<comment><USER26> I read the whole thing. It seemed like an article with zero content. That all sounded perfectly normal, and happens to lots of people. I'm not sure it really needed an entire article.

<comment><USER27> I think you just described all of John Updike's novels. Maybe it seemed normal to you as you've gone through it but what about the person that hasn't? They are probably experiencing the same fears and self doubt that the author was. I'm not sure what you mean by zero content. What were you looking for? The name of the company? That it failed 2 years down the road after they didn't develop a product as this developer was laid off?

<comment><USER26> None of that, but to some extent you can't fill a blog with stories like this. It's not really original content. It's happened to so many people, and they eventually find a job, just like this person did.

By zero content I mean a reader will come away from it with no new knowledge, and it will be forgotten soon after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > I was working for a well-established startup with a mission I really > believed in, and which felt like it had the potential to be a massive > success and shake up the industries it was doing business in.

There is your problem. You naively fell for the BS coming out of some many startups these days..

> I didn't accept it straight away. To be honest, I was still holding out, > hoping that some trendier startup would come along and offer me a job

Seriously? Get real.. If you want to exclusively work for startups that have bean bags in their offices and tell everybody that they are changing the world with whatever silly laundry/food-delivery/ironing-on-demand app they have then thats fine but don't put out a sob story when you realise that these startups are no different than any other business and don't give a damn about changing the world or helping their employees they are just there to make money.</comment>