Notch gives his $3,000,000 Minecraft dividend to his employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/422-notch-gives-3-million-to-mojang-employees/ <comment><USER3> I'm extremely interested to see how this plays out. Giving large cash bonuses seems like it could wreck morale just as easily as it could boost it. And now when they're hiring in the future, they have to wonder whether the candidate is more motivated by the money or the love. And will the employees expect a similar bonus next year?

I'm not saying he shouldn't've done it. I am, however, extremely curious. This is the sort of thing that I have wondered why more companies don't do.

<comment><USER4> When people are applying for a job you can be 99% sure they're motivated by the money.

I love developing software, and I even spend some of my free time doing it. But if I didn't need the money, I'd spend most of my days skiing.

<comment><USER5> Totally untrue.

I used to manage a team within the Visual Studio team, and we regularly had people come in looking at a 2x-4x pay cut (because they were going from "CTO" or "Chief Architect" titles to "Software Development Engineer" positions). I never had any experienced developers fail to accept a position based on the lower salaries I could offer at MSFT vs. what they were making in other fields or higher organizational positions. Further, I made it clear at the time they were applying that we couldn't come close to their current salaries, and while it's been a long time, I can't remember anyone turned off by that.

Many people, particularly those at the top of their field, seem to be motivated by the opportunity to work on hard problems with people smarter than they are, so long as the pay is sufficient to maintain their family's lifestyle.

<comment><USER6> They were just trading money for something else they valued greatly.

<comment><USER7> That's a bit of a platitude, though, isn't it? You could say the same about anyone -- nearly all of us _could_ be making more money, if only we'd give up family time, relationships, hobbies, whatever. But we don't judge those things in pure dollar terms, they're intangibles.

That's what makes stories like larsberg's interesting -- if we really were "just trading money for something else they valued greatly." then we'd see these types of stories more often -- but we don't.

<comment><USER8> Well how much of "just trading money for something else they valued greatly" works in real life is worth pondering.

After a while most people will realize that your spouse/kids would rather need money not time from you. Its far better to have a rich dad/husband than poor one who spends more time.

Over time even the guy who made this choices will know that, every time he sees someone buying a new car, going on a costly vacation, sending kids to a Ivy league and all the big money luxuries. Inevitable peer comparisons happen, and things get out of hand pretty quickly.

You generally get to hear 'How I learned to be happy with little' kind of stories from such people.

<comment><USER9> Time and time again, surveys show that once basic needs are met, people get no happier as they make more money.

Reality just does not support the idea that most people are better off with a lot more money.

<comment><USER8> Even if that is the case its far more comfortable to be sad inside a Ferrari than a Bus.

<comment><USER10> You may imagine that to be true, but more likely than not, you don't know what you are talking about. For one thing, Ferarri's aren't known for comfort...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dividend is generally taxed at 30% in Sweden so a fair bit of that will be paid in taxes. Depending on how Notch decides to pay out the money to the employees they may have to pay even more.

If it is paid out evenly and as wages it will be about 66k SEK/month per employee, that puts them well into the top tax bracket. Assuming the tax authority counts it as normal income they will be force to pat ~56% income tax a fair bit of social securities and employer tax. Assuming this they might get about (as a guesstimate) 20-25k SEK/m or 240-300k SEK total, after taxes. Not shabby at all, that is close to what an average worker in Sweden earns per year. And that is bonus alone.

None the less; Cheers Notch for thinking about your employees! : )

Edit: Gifts are no longer taxed in Sweden, luckily! but it is likely that the tax authority will regard it as income or bonus rather than a gift.

<comment><USER12> 56% income tax? That. is. insane.

<comment><USER13> 56% is a sane top tax rate if you feel that you make enough money and you feel that you want to contribute to the infrastructure and services that the government provides.

56% is a low top marginal tax rate. The United States had a top marginal income tax rate that was higher than 56% between 1932 and 1980. It was 90% between 1950 and 1963.

[http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...](http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213)

<comment><USER11> My personal opinion is that anything over 50% is too much. If I work hard and earn a lot of money I should at least be allowed to keep half.

That said, to reach the top income bracket and get a tax between 52-59.9% (Depending on where in Sweden you live) you have to earn somewhere around $80k/yr. Not entire sure about the number but it is in that region. I wouldn't consider that very wealthy, especially not if you live in Stockholm, expensive city to live in.

<comment><USER14> Why no tax on making money from money. These high tax rates are on money not an people with a lot of money making money...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't play minecraft. I'm not a fan. I wouldn't know Notch if I tripped on him.

I gotta say hats off to the man. Doing something good for others at your own ( great ) expense when not compelled to do so is unusual. Most people would have spent it on themselves somehow. wtg man.

<comment><USER16> iirc, Steve Wozniak did something similar: when Apple went public without giving anything to the early employees, Woz basically gave/sold (cheaply) them stock from his own holdings.

<comment><USER17> Before or after they went public? If before, that strikes me as the kind of thing the SEC would frown upon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Didn't he pretty much develop Minecraft single-handedly? If so, I don't think it's necessarily "right" to share the profits with employees who joined after the work was done.

It's his money of course, he's free to do what he wants and generosity is always nice to see. To my mind though, it would have made just as much sense to give it to charity or anyone else.

I'd be much more interested to hear that he's giving meaningful _equity_ to new employees. That way they could actually make life-altering money if they help create another big hit like Minecraft.

I doubt his employees will appreciate getting another $3 million split across dozens of employees if they help create a new $100M game.

<comment><AUTHOR> He developed it alone originally yes, but he retired in November 2011 and since late 2010 it's been developed (in part) by Jens Bergensten (<http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Jeb>)

Edit: also Mojang has revenue from the pocket edition of the game (for iOS and Android) that Notch has no involvement in, so it's beyond _him_ being the only bread winner for the company.

<comment><USER19> He didn't retire. He handed the lead of the Minecraft project to Jens, but he is still very much working at Mojang.

<comment><AUTHOR> Retired from Minecraft and any revenue producing projects for Mojang, as far as I know.

<comment><USER20> I thought he transitioned to working entirely on Scrolls.

<comment><USER21> Nope entirely new unannounced game. Scrolls is being worked on by other Mojang employees other than Notch and Jens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For the lazy, that works out to $120,000 per employee if split equally. Anyone know what kind of taxes this is subject to?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweden has high taxes, depends on how he does it. If the money is first given to him and then he redistributes it then he'll most likely lose $1.5m on tax (50%). Otherwise, no idea.

<comment><USER23> I think that like share dividends in the UK, it attracts a lower tax rate. I think Sweden is 30%?

However, "gifting" monies to people is a strange area, with various odd rules.

You can only give away a certain amount of money a year in the UK, and that depends on who it is you are giving to or even the circumstance. (EG, you can gift £5,000 as a wedding gift.)

<comment><USER24> If I had to guess, I imagine he refused a dividend and instead had the company issue the equivalent sum in bonuses to the employees. Tax wise it'd make no sense for him to take a dividend and then create havoc by gifting it. (At least, under UK style tax law.)

<comment><USER11> Gifts are no longer taxes in Sweden but it is likely that the tax authority will regard it as income (Or bonus) and they will pay 50-56% taxes on the lot. Quite tricky but I assume Mojang has good accountants that will work it out!

<comment><USER24> Yeah, it should get caught somehow otherwise companies would just gift their employees every month ;-)

So I suspect gifting would still be tax inefficient, since he'd have paid taxes on the dividend and then employees would pay tax on the gift.. whereas skipping the dividend and just getting bonuses could cut out one whole layer of tax.

<comment><USER25> There's no tax on gifts in Sweden, and the dividend tax is 30%, compared to 50% or so on salaries. So if the IRS doesn't consider it a compensation for work (which they will, of course) gifting the dividends would mean less tax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Now if only more American bosses would take the money they earned with help from their employees and redistribute it to those employees, then maybe the economy (in America) wouldn't be as crazy as it is.

<comment><USER27> Isn't this something like investments bank do?

Not even trying to troll, just asking.

<comment><USER28> Yes, that's one of the bigger draws - that your opportunities and compensation are _fairly_ closely correlated with your achievements.

There's still wonkery like facetime and being one of the guys, but compared to many other areas it's pretty good.

How the money is earned is a separate issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Amazing how the sales keep going on... Last 24H 8845sales=176500€... <http://www.minecraft.net/stats>

<comment><USER30> There are alot of people with computers on this planet. It's a testament to not only being a great game/experience out of the box, but also the constant updates _and_ the lack of costly add-on content plaguing other games.

<comment><USER31> I think an important point is also that Minecraft can run on very low spec hardware, no need for fancy GPUs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think actions speak louder than words. Despite Notch getting a some flack among the community for being out-of-touch with Minecraft and some of it also going to his staff, I think this shows that Notch cares about his studio, his work, and staff more than anything else. And certainly unprecedented in among gaming studios and companies.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have so much respect for Notch and Minecraft. It's the dream that pretty much everyone who wanted to build games has had--turning your game into a massive success both financially and artistically. All without the help of publishers or really the entire professional game industry. Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER34> Notice how at the bottom of the article it says this move is very surprising 'in this day in age.' Is that just a cliche or was it that people really were more generous in these situations in years gone by?

I mean bankers are giving up their bonuses left right and centre these days ;)

<comment><USER35> An alternative reading: 'in this day and age' might refer to some future of extravagant wealth only surpassed by the generosity and grace with which the inhabitants thereof adorn themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Assuming that the money is deserved by the employees, this is a very shrewd, selfish^ move on his part. Giving people their just deserts is in everyone's interest, and Notch's long-term reward will be a robust, growing business.

^I use the term to mean what it should mean - "what's good for Notch, long term" - and disavow any connotation about harming others. It's not truly selfish to hurt others.

<comment><USER17> >It's not truly selfish to hurt others.

A minor quibble, but I'd say that depends entirely on the action and the circumstances surrounding it. "Pure" selfishness is simply the maximizing of one's own gain _without regard_ for others. It does not imply helping or hurting, although it allows for both.

To draw from a geeky example, Shane shooting Otis in the leg so the zombies would attack the latter, not the former, on the Walking Dead was selfish. So, too, would a Google donation to the EFF be selfish. One action hurts others, the other helps, but both help the actor.

<comment><USER37> It's partly a definition debate, but I think it's a mistake to try to label selfishness as everyone _but_ selflessness.

If something is win-win, it's not selfish. Attempting to label mutually beneficial actions "selfish" is Ayn-Rand era propaganda. If an action is good for you, and bad for others, it's selfish. If an action is good for others and bad for you, it's selfless (though it might turn out to be a good thing for you - that's karma). If good for everyone (including you), or something that benefits you and doen't really effect anyone else, it's neither selfish nor selfless, it's just a smart move.

Ultimately, selfishness describes motivations, not actions. If you think Google's action was selfishly motivated (and they had no concern for the positive or negative externalities of their action) then it's fair to call their action selfish. But unless you're a mind reader, it's hard to make that call.

<comment><USER36> But aren't we told by nearly everyone that it's better, morally, to be selfless? You're saying that it's better not to be selfless, but to make "smart moves"?

From what I've read, it doesn't appear that you think that selflessness is a good thing. Is this correct?

<comment><USER37> I think it's good to be selfless if there's a big net gain in doing so. I wouldn't inconvenience myself to give a tiny benefit to someone else - <USER2> "karma" would have to be worth the cost.

<comment><USER36> So, to be good according to your standard, there must be a big net gain for the beneficiary, and that beneficiary must not be or include you, correct?

How do you decide what constitutes a benefit that's great enough? Where do you actually draw the line? Is it moral to go out to the movies, when that same money could change the life of an impoverished child (for a month or two) in some faraway land? Is it moral to selfishly pursue a college education (college benefits the student first and foremost), when the money spent on tuition could be spent on charity, and the student's time could be given to service?

Also, why do you think that doing something morally good (though we obviously disagree about what constitutes the good) is any different from doing something that's practical (a "smart move")? I hold that the purpose of morality is to enable a flourishing life in the here and now, as opposed to something that's "tacked on," only theoretical, or somehow optional.

<comment><USER37> Nope, good for me is also good, as long as it doesn't cause much harm.

Once you start talking opportunity cost, it gets a bit more complicated. But I implement my standard using reasonable heuristics, not some platonic maximization.

Just because I believe in some underlying standard doesn't mean I act on it. I could cook up some underlying standard that's easy to meet (do what's good for number 1, do what "feel'), but that's kind of silly.

<comment><USER36> Going one level below the discussion about the correct definition of selfishness vs. selflessness (the answer here might help us understand what the definition should be):

What do you use as the standard for what "good" is? I.e., if you were to say that "healthy food is good," the question I'm asking is, "good for what?" Put another way, when you evaluate something as good or bad (or neutral) _in a specific context_ , by what means do you decide which of these categories to place the thing in?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I might be being naive since he seems to be rather bravado about splitting the money with everyone, but I like to think Notch is doing the absolute best thing for Mojang and probably for himself in the end. I personally would love to work at a company like Mojang for a boss like Notch who disperses the hard work of the company with the company.

It seems to me that executives like Gates, Page, Brin, or Jobs who take $1 salaries (discounting their travel subsidies and Jobs's Gulfstream) are better for their companies in a number of ways than someone taking a lavish salary. I'm not saying the latter is wrong, but it seems like the "selfless" executive at the very least demonstrates the need for the company to do well--a real connection between vision, company, and leadership.

I hope good things come for both Notch and Mojang as a result of his sharing the wealth, their focus on satisfying their customers, and their general attitudes of honesty and openness.

</comment><comment><USER39> I applaud these guys. It's more about the money per se - it's about having a share of company profits. This, I find, is what a lot of companies get wrong. We go by the same old mentality that an "employee" should simply be compensated with a fixed amount. But why? People who work on the product should have a significant share of the profits as well. Allegedly a regular employee is "taking less risk" by having a fixed salary as opposed to the "risk takers" at the top - but in this day and age where there is no more guaranteed long-term job stability, that is not true anymore. And the continuing success of the company's products depends directly on the good work of its employees.

</comment><comment><USER40> It'd be more awesome and effective (in terms of morale and team) to pay those in shares. Nothing boost productivity and care like owning a bit of a company. Even if it's just a tiny bit.

Now _that_ would be interesting to see.

<comment><USER41> Speak for yourself. Other things being equal, I'd much rather get cash than shares in the company I work for. If the company goes bust, then I'm out of a job _and_ my shares are worth nothing. If I want to invest in equity, then I will buy stocks in other companies and have a more diversified portfolio.

Of course, the situation would be different if I were a co-founder or a key employee with significant influence on the company's direction.

<comment><USER40> The company is question is Mojang and being a gamer myself, I know they have a very dedicated following and very open compared to other traditional companies. Short of a massive screw up, I'd doubt they'd go 'bust' easily.

If you had shares in the company, wouldn't you care more and push even harder? That's the point I'm getting across.

<comment><USER42> Push harder for what, exactly?

In my experience, the best game developers are primarily motivated by their desire to create awesome games and their motivation level is already maxed out. Some see shares and other bonuses more as a sign of distrust than as a motivator, as if their dedication to awesomositude is being questioned.

Besides, awesomest isn't necessarily most profitable, so if you encourage your team to optimise for profit, there's a pretty big risk that the awesomeosity output rate will drop. With time you might even end up with a team churning out click-grinding Skinner boxes, which is not very awesome at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Stay humble my friend.

</comment><comment><USER44> Top-Notch!

</comment><comment><USER45> Giving $3M to employees is cool. But maybe next time, let _them_ tweet it.

</comment><comment><USER46> Huge respect. I hope this will encourage more founders to follow.

</comment><comment><USER47> That guy just totally rocks. I wish I could work with him.

</comment><comment><USER48> Who are the other shareholders of Mojang?

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as I know it is Carl Manneh (serving as CEO) Jahkob Porser (developing Scrolls) + Notch.

Source: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/09/16/mojang- foun...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/09/16/mojang-founders- notch-and-jakob-on-minecraft-scrolls-and-the-business-of-indie-games/) (paragraph #3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> That's leadership. He just solidified a good team into a better one.

<comment><USER50> You can't really be sure about that, after all, his employees could promptly retire now that they're rich. (Though, this seems very unlikely)

<comment><USER51> $125,000 is a decent bit of cash, but it's not enough to retire on, especially after taxes.

<comment><USER52> In Argentina you could buy a house near the capital for about half of that, and the rest would pay frugal-ish expenses for several years. Not enough to retire on, but plenty of runway for the next project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> He already got millions of $$ in his pocket. From his point of view $3M is not that much, I think. Nice move, but nothing impressive.

</comment><comment><USER54> Forgive me, but... why should we care?

It's his money, he can do whatever he wants with it. It's not humble and awe- inspiring. He announced it to the world on twitter. I mean, it's nice of him, or whatever, but.. I don't care? Why should anyone care about this?

I could write a long tyrade about how this could be useful if more companies did this, because yes, the employees would have an invested interest in this company; and la la la; but really, this is just Notch tooting his own horn about giving his money away. Congratulations.

Yes, what you've done with Minecraft is absolutely amazing, and I love the game, but... very nice of you. Moving on.

 _awaits the downvotes_

[edit: in seriousness, could someone tell me why the public, even the programming public, should care that Notch gave away his dividends? We're not told why he did it. He's not encouraging others to follow his example, he just did it and told everyone.]

<comment><USER55> Fine I'll bite,

it is INTERESTING it is different it sparks debate and it gives life to a conversation about bonuses and compensation in our industry. Lots of people here are also founders (or plan to be) so form that perspective it is interesting to contemplate the effects of such a move on early employees, it isn't so different from talking about vesting for early employees in that regard, something which is also a common topic here. I'm not sure why you would choose to make this a personal thing about notch, HN (for me at least when it is at its "best") is a place to come for NEW and INTERESTING perspectives, this absolutely falls into that category - for a number of reasons.

Your response seems to be "wow look at notch trying to draw attention to himself" the impression I have from the rest of the comments here isn't "wow look how generous notch is; he's so awesome" it seems to be more like "wow this is cool/different/unexpected I wonder how this will play out".

<comment><USER54> And that makes the HN comments interesting, which I will agree with. It's the initial creation of the article I'm questioning, is all.

I am absolutely not questioning that the resultant dialog isn't interesting; as I have read it, and that is interesting. I'm questioning the original article, which does not look like this dialog was the intended result.

[edit: addendum] I also have nothing against Notch. If this were about where Page's, or Zuckerberg's, or any of the All Stars of our time's money was going, I imagine I'd have a similar response

<comment><USER55> So you're not actually questioning the act of giving away the money either? Your point of contention is "Why is he posting this?" ?

That's actually quite an interesting line of inquiry. I'd suggest it probably helps raise his company's profile, it helps draw potential employees to his company, and, admittedly, it also probably makes him feel good about himself - and it should - he's doing a Good Thing (TM) he should be able to highlight that. It cost him $3MM why shouldn't it buy him some goodwill?

<comment><USER54> Flaunting charity seems to negate the effects of the charitable giving some. Perhaps that's a pet-peeve of mine; however, it has effectively:

* raised his company profile;

* draw potential employees to his company, though I fear that might be for the wrong reasons: "bonuses here are ~amazing~" as opposed to "I love the work I do here" (money vs love-of-the-art)

Also, did he do a good thing? I know this sounds silly; but, why couldn't he have just had it in the employee contract that all employees will be getting X% of the dividends, based on some criteria; or, just given everyone stock so they could reep the rewards of dividends directly. The latter seems less effective in the spirit of the giving than the former.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Garment device convertible to one or more facemasks - <AUTHOR> https://patents.google.com/patent/US7255627?oq=7255627 <comment><USER2> This is a brassiere!</comment>


Espresso: A Fast End-to-End Neural Speech Recognition Toolkit - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.08723 <comment><USER2> Everyone race to build an ASR toolkit these days, this one is a good candidate actually compared to others. A good modern technology with subword pieces, parallel training, fast decoding. Very competitive decoding accuracy.

Disadvantages are:

1) A bit disorgranized codebase with directly imported fairseq

2) No online decoding in design which is a must for real-world applications.

Other toolkits:

1) ESPnet - crazy dual chainer/pytorch backend, pretty slow from beginning, otherwise good.

2) Mozilla DeepSpeech - very lightweight technology, no real accuracy and speed.

3) nvidia/NEMO - potentially good performance from GPU experts, but not clear how it will develop in the future

4) speechbrain - just announced, no real code

5) facebook/wav2letter - C++ codebase, not within general NN community

6) tensoflow/lingvo - a playground for Google guys, who uses tensorflow these days?

7) kaldi - good old one (if 7 years is old for you), still has very important features others do not have (semi-supervised learning, long alignment). But no Pytorch again, not very attractive for general NN community.

8) didi/delta - did anyone try it at all?

9) PaddlePaddle/DeepSpeech - very old technology too, but Baidu releases very good models trained on their proprietary data

<comment><USER3> > who uses tensorflow these days?

I'm working on a speech model in tensorflow. What should I be using?

<comment><USER2> It more depends on features you already implemented. Check the arxiv file, if you do not have all those features already (lookahead lm, proper sentencepiece, label smoothing), consider this espresso.

<comment><USER4> I think the question was more on what framework should be preferred to tensorflow now?

Or at least that's my question - as someone who has taken an interest in this area since the deepdream days, but is only now considering diving in fully, what platforms should I be looking at, if not tensorflow?

<comment><USER2> There is no single framework as you see, to dive fully you need to explore all of them. Each has some useful features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Entirely OT, but I'm getting a bit tired of the coffee-based naming. Some other software named Espresso:

ESPResSo is a highly versatile software package for performing and analyzing scientific Molecular Dynamics many-particle simulations of coarse-grained atomistic or bead-spring models as they are used in soft matter research in physics, chemistry and molecular biology.

Espresso, for people who make delightful, innovative and fast websites — in an app to match. Espresso helps you write, code, design, build and publish with flair and efficiency.

Quantum ESPRESSO is an integrated suite of Open-Source computer code for electronic structure calculations and materials modeling at the nanoscale.

And the list goes on and on ...

<comment><USER6> Tech company names in general have completely lost the plot.

Looking ANYTHING up in search engines these days is completely and utterly derailed by tech companies (/programming languages/frameworks/etc) who insist on naming themselves after common words used in everyday language.

Go, Espresso, Vanilla, Box, Square, Stripe, Express, Next, Angular, Feather, Mint, it goes on forever.

Each one insists on branding themselves just with that word, using it on its own and poisoning search results and online content the world over.

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure that is affected by the search engine (google?) knowing enough about you that you're probably interested in programming languages/frameworks.

But having said that I am suddenly hit with the urge to make something popular and useful that I will name something like God, Sex, or Pizza.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Github link -

[https://github.com/freewym/espresso](https://github.com/freewym/espresso)

<comment><USER9> Thank you. I was looking for this</comment></comment>


Looking for a Tech Co-Founder? You don't find one, you EARN one. - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalwoman.com/blog/looking-for-a-technical-co-founder-you-dont-find-a-technical-co-founder-you-earn-one/

<comment><USER2> I think "looking for technical co-founder" and "looking for seed funding" are very similar. They're about the can'ts, not the cans. "I can't do this without someone to code it", "I can't do this without money to build it".

Non-technical founders need to do what they _can_ do, without a technical co- founder and without money. There's a bottomless well of such stuff for any startup. The more you get done, the easier it will be to find a co-founder or seed money later.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your most impressive hackathon project? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER3> I won a NASA world competition by building a Heads Up Display (AR) and motion tracking software in ~36h with a classmate. Around 1 year before the Hololens and similar solutions existed.

As my classmate and I were talking through Skype the night before the competition started, I looked through my window and could see the stars. However, I could also see my face dimly lit from my laptop screen overlapping. So it came to me that it was a great way of making a HUD for a prototype.

We got to it and built the prototype from scratch. It took a lot of work and resourcefulness, rushing to get a webcam from friends that would work a Sunday morning (in Spain that year shops were closed on Sundays). Then we used several languages I already knew, if I remember correctly: HTML, CSS, PHP as the HUD display was actually a webpage, Processing for hand tracking and C++ for Arduino. I made the whole software part and my classmate the hardware+electronics. There were some more things like sensors and stuff that we made.

For the local phase we made it theatrical starting with the moon landing audio and the lights off, with me entering wearing the helmet and barely able to breathe and my classmate with the laptop and cables. Connect the projector and a screen appears. I'm sweating, but I point with my finger at a part of the screen and it correctly reads where and displays the info real-time. The same for the other 4 points and I can feel truly happy inside that it is working.

After winning the local one we rushed to get votes since we got into the People's Choice category and we had a strong battle against Macedonia's team. They were Trending Topic for most of the week the contest was happening in their whole country while in Spain it was all about football and celebs and we just made it into regional newspapers at that point. Another team also used bots but of course NASA people detected it. We won in the end, visited Cape Canaveral and saw a rocket launch.

One of the best moments (of my life) was when I came to class after winning the whole thing and everyone stood up and started clapping.

Here is the project, [https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/project/space- helmet/](https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/project/space-helmet/) (yes, for the video we used a fishtank and printed GoPros as props)

Many edits: added extra info and details, sorry for the long post.

<comment><USER4> For such an impressive project the Github page is surprisingly sparse!

<comment><USER3> "space" is the Processing files for detecting the hand, "web" is for showing and reading the data on screen and the .ino for Arduino. If I remember correctly I struggled quite a bit with the hand detection system and then we had to adapt it to the light conditions of the place, finding a good way to do it, etc.

Also of course I was just a couple of years in with learning programming while studying an unrelated degree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://swarmation.com/](https://swarmation.com/)

Our team of 3 won the first Node Knockout by a slim margin with this realtime, multiplayer, pixel formation game.

Edit: Thank you for your positive feedback! Send me suggestions and ideas if you have any.

Tip: press spacebar.

<comment><USER6> Most of the time nobody gets the shape right. Could it be lag or server issues?

<comment><USER5> Sometimes people move around at the last second and that can confuse things. But, ya, I've noticed some bugginess with the formations too. I'll look into it.

I didn't engineer the back-end, that was all @steadicat, but the way I think it works is if 3 or more clients confirm a formation they're a part of as correct, it's marked as correct. That way the server doesn't have to check every pixel on the board. But it can cause some issues if some of the clients are laggy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd spent an intense week coding so was feeling a bit burnt out with a hangover. So decided to create a tube map of Bath Cycle Routes with the help of one other on the day.

Many iterations later the map and the process through which the map is created is being used nationally and internationally. I've done workshops. Spoken at national conferences. The local tourist office hands it out. It's going to be in next months local authority magazine. Even had enquiries from local authorities to make these for them.

It's up for a local award in innovation (will find out in June if I've won). [https://cyclebath.org.uk/2017/05/11/finalist-creative- bath-a...](https://cyclebath.org.uk/2017/05/11/finalist-creative-bath-awards- innovation/)

Something that was a "meh _really_ do not want to code today" hack has turned into a bit of a monster.

I think it would be good to automate how these maps are created, but there really is an artform to making them work well and require an immense amount of local knowledge and public consultation.

<comment><USER8> There was a thesis I read on automated metro map drawing which beautifully proved it's equivalence to another NP-Complete problem, and then proceeded to use a constraint solver to create locally optimal solution. Was quite a complex set of constraints. But it ended up with some good results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I drank beers and chilled for a week while people were burning out coding for free. That's the most impressive thing I've done at an hackaton. I code 24/7 from Monday to Friday for the same company, sometimes on the weekends too. They said hackatons are optional so I took a break and was fresh the next Monday at the office ;)

<comment><USER10> > 24/7 Monday to Friday

That's 24/5.

<comment><USER11> Also, I would be very skeptical of anyone who claims to be coding 24 hours a day. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "How can mirrors be real if eyes aren't real?" \- Jaden Smith

I made a Chrome Extension that blocks eyes: [https://vimeo.com/90351144](https://vimeo.com/90351144)

If someone runs a dumb ideas hackathon in London, my next plans are either:

\- Song lyrics to nineties powerpoint presentation converter, with lots of bullets and stock photos, and timed transitions

\- A computer vision and Mortal Kombat-style announcer for pissing the shit off toilet seats

</comment><comment><USER13> I built a digital bank for refugees that would allow them to set up a bank account, move their funds for safe keeping and also store documents securely. Authentication happened entirely through a 6 digit code and facial and voice recognition through use of video. The idea was that refugees or other displaced persons would be able to access their documents and funds through any device, so that they could easily establish their identity and life in a new country.

The other aspect was location verification. Working with NGOs, you could use this authentication method to let displaced persons login at certified locations. This solves two big issues:

1\. Family member tracking. Red Cross and other organisations spend millions of dollars each year tracing where family members ended up. It is quite common for families to be split - reuniting them is a multi-year, labour intensive job. Solving that would do the world a whole lot of good.

2\. Journey verification. When assessing refugee visa status, governments spend a lot of time trying to verify what journey a particular person took to get there to prove that they are legitimately a refugee. If a refugee could irrefutably prove their journey, then it would dramatically cut down on visa processing times.

We won that hackathon - I just wish I had time to develop it more. Tried to find who to talk to but the idea of using technology to solve the refugee crisis seems a little outlandish to traditional NGOs who (rightly so) place a lot of emphasis on food and shelter over apps.

<comment><USER14> We tackled this as well in [https://devpost.com/software/the- invisibles](https://devpost.com/software/the-invisibles) and an NGO is working in Greece with this as well as the other needs you mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My team (5 others) and I built an application that would help you revise or learn a subject by testing you about it, where that subject could be anything, from mathematics to Shakespeare.

It worked by scraping the top 1000 Bing results and then scraping several levels deep from each of the results to generate a "map" of knowledge. This in turn could be used to ask the user questions, generated fill-in-the-blanks, matchups & whatever else you could think up.

It worked after the five-day hackathon, which was truly surprising, but unfortunately, it used too much computing power so we never released it to the world.

<comment><USER16> I'm interested to know more about the tools/techniques you used to scrap the sites and clean the results. I am working on scraping contents from a couple of sites and it seems to be a pain, probably because i don't have lot of experience around it.

<comment><USER17> If you are familiar with python then try scrapy[1]. You can also scrape websites using beautifulsoup4[2]

[1] [https://scrapy.org/](https://scrapy.org/) [2] [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/beautifulsoup4](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/beautifulsoup4)

<comment><USER15> We actually used Node.JS' request module, combined with some NLP (using natural) in order to pick out the main content. This worked pretty well, but for our purposes we didn't need it to be perfect because anything like headers would be removed when we processed the content (not being full sentences).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have been to couple of hackathons. My second favorite is

WikiNomad: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wikinomad](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wikinomad) , [https://www.wikinomad.com](https://www.wikinomad.com)

I improved on this after the hackathon too.

My personal favorite was predicting depression before it occurs in a person using just his cellphone. We worked on Stanford thesis that was able to predict depression based on the number of wifi points a user connected to variances to the wifi points.

We increased the data points to GPS, wake times, bluetooth connections, text sentiment analysis and amount of facebook + instagram apps usage and using neural networks trained to classify a user as depressed with a probability value.

</comment><comment><USER19> I created "SideProjectors" \- a marketplace for developers and entrepreneurs to buy and sell their side projects (and also you can show your side projects off too!).

[https://www.sideprojectors.com](https://www.sideprojectors.com)

It won second prize sponsored by Freelancer at a local hackathon. That was almost 4 or 5 years ago now. I've improved the site a few times since then and it's still going quite strong! :)

</comment><comment><USER20> A Harry Potter style "Maruauder's Map" which tracks people in a business/location in real-time. [1]

[1] [https://github.com/schollz/find- maraudersmap](https://github.com/schollz/find-maraudersmap)

<comment><USER21> I do solemnly swear that I am up to no good. Do the footsteps gradually fade in and out like the movie FX?

<comment><USER22> Damn, I remember another Marauder's Map that was just genius!

Long story short, Facebook's Messenger automatically geotagged users by default. People reported it to their security program, Facebook said it was intended. Then someone made a browser extension that looked up location of active Messenger friends and showed their location on a map. It got increasingly popular. Facebook decided to switch the location from opt-out to opt-in.

Some sources:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/28/marauders...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/28/marauders- map-chrome-app-tracks-facebook-messenger)

[https://www.quora.com/Can-I-still-download-the-Marauders- Map...](https://www.quora.com/Can-I-still-download-the-Marauders-Map-Chrome- extension-Does-it-still-work)

[https://github.com/arank/marauders-map](https://github.com/arank/marauders- map)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Screamy Bird — A clone of Flappy Bird but instead of tapping on the screen to make the bird flap you scream at your phone. [http://glench.com/ScreamyBird](http://glench.com/ScreamyBird) (Works best in Firefox for larger devices) I made this for the SF Stupid Shit No One Needs & Terrible Ideas Hackathon: [https://stupidhackathon.github.io/](https://stupidhackathon.github.io/)

</comment><comment> bjelkeman-again Not mine, but my now colleagues attended a World Bank supported hackathon [1] and created the prototype for a water quality testing kit for smartphones, Caddisfly [2]. It ended up becoming a product which essentially gives you very close to lab results from an inexpensive and easy to operate field kit.

I normally consider hackathons a questionable way to engage the tech community. In my opinion they seldom lead to anything sustainable and set the wrong expectations. [3]

Disclosure: I helped finance the continued product development through our organisational work.

[1] [http://www.techsangam.com/2011/11/08/my-thoughts-on- bangalor...](http://www.techsangam.com/2011/11/08/my-thoughts-on-bangalore- first-water-hackathon/)

[2] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716301553)

[3] [https://www.citylab.com/life/2013/07/are-hackathons- stupid/6...](https://www.citylab.com/life/2013/07/are-hackathons-stupid/6111/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Emoji Domain registration: [https://xn--i-7iq.ws](https://xn--i-7iq.ws)

Not particularly popular on HackerNews for whatever reason, it was the type of thing where I finished my project at 2:00 AM and when I woke up at 6:00 am to get it together to do my demo, it was already getting tons of traffic.

It got writeups in Fortune, CNET, Lifehacker, and DailyMail over the course of the next week.

</comment><comment><USER25> My devpost profile: [https://devpost.com/yeldarb](https://devpost.com/yeldarb)

I tend to work solo at Hackathons.

My favorite project was a presentation remote for Google Glass[1]. You could control your presentation with the touch bar on the side of the glasses, see your current slide in the HUD, and it also included a timer so you could make sure you didn't run over your talk's time limit.

Second favorite was Cardwolla[2]. A system where you could register your credit card and your dwolla account and a corresponding API for websites. If user and site had both opted in to taking dwolla it would route around the credit card system using the dwolla api to avoid to avoid the 2.7% credit card processing fees.

[1] [https://devpost.com/software/presentation-remote-for- google-...](https://devpost.com/software/presentation-remote-for-google-glass)

[2] [https://devpost.com/software/cardwolla](https://devpost.com/software/cardwolla)

</comment><comment><USER26> Attended my first hackathon last month. We built "Spitter". It speaks twitter! You subscribe to someone's twitter account through it and whenever they tweet, you'll get a phone call and an automated voice will read out the tweet to you. Was really cool/creepy the next morning when we started getting calls with a robot reading Trump tweets about Obamacare to us!

<comment><USER27> Oh tell me it does voices, according to who's tweeting!

<comment><USER28> Sounds like a job for Lyrebird! [https://lyrebird.ai/demo](https://lyrebird.ai/demo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A real-time voice-based lyrics suggester, in a web browser. Similar to a karaoke machine, but the rhyming words are generated based on your most recent word.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3aOPo5ofPU&t=47m](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3aOPo5ofPU&t=47m)

<comment><USER30> Can you elaborate on some of the tech you used to make this? Pretty cool to be able to hear a word and provide another word which rhymes.

<comment><USER29> Sure!

We generated the rhyming words using the CMU Pronunciation Dictionary [1]. These were saved in a map, which mapped a word to its list of rhyming words. Initially, the rhyming words produced were short and uninteresting. So we repeated this process, but this time sorted the rhyming words by "coolness", which at its simplest, was a measure of the word's length and the number of phonemes. To save time, the map contained only 20k of the most popular English words. The map was encoded as JSON and served to the browser.

In the browser, the Web Speech API performed speech recognition. Each time we detected the end of a sentence, we used the last word to look up a list of rhyming words from the map. The rhyming words were then displayed in a randomized order. This continued in a loop.

There's also a tiny Q&A section in the video [2].

[1] [http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi- bin/cmudict](http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict)

[2] [https://youtu.be/M3aOPo5ofPU?t=47m50s](https://youtu.be/M3aOPo5ofPU?t=47m50s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I made a thing that turns my Instagram posts into ambient soundscapes by understanding the content of the images, searching for relevant sounds, and mixing them into looped audio scenes.

It was made for the Monthly Music Hackathon in NYC held at Spotify, but it ended up being not terribly musical and more about just fun with audio and convnets :)

[https://zopf.github.io/ambiance](https://zopf.github.io/ambiance)

Oh yeah! And for another instance of the same meetup, I teamed up with a guy who was great with audio synthesis, and I hooked up an Arduino and a gyroscope and microphone to my drumstick, and we made a wireless throat-singing, spatially-aware percussion instrument:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-g1GBaTevk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-g1GBaTevk)

</comment><comment><USER32> The company I worked at did a 2 week long hackathon. Another developer and I built a Ruby gem that creates service objects which integrate nicely into the Rail ecosystem. It was a bunch of fun and over time it ended up becoming a big part of our codebase. We open sourced it and it's done pretty well ([https://github.com/orgsync/active_interaction](https://github.com/orgsync/active_interaction)). In fact, I was at a conference and met a guy who's company was using it. It was really cool to run into someone benefiting from my work.

</comment><comment><USER33> Well, I'm not sure a technically impressive hackathon project is a plus past a certain point.

Not everyone follows the rules of the hackathon and works only during the time period. I was on a team that was a finalist at one of the startup festivals and won a few thousand dollars. Talking with the prize sponsor afterwards, they said something along the lines of "you don't have to pretend you did this all at the hackathon, I know how these things work". When they realized that we did, I think they were disappointed!

It worked out for us that time, but in most hackathons they don't have time to vet all the projects thoroughly, and if you do too much there will be a strong suspicion that you are cheating and just using it as a pseudo startup pitch and that can be held against you.

If you want to win, I think the best strategy for productive teams is to do more than one project since it's hard to know what any particular judge will like.

Anyway, to answer the question, the most impressive was probably a UI layout app (Mac) that synced the layout in real time with native iOS and Android apps using native widgets (this was before react native was popular). Where it was only a 24 hour hackathon and I ended up doing all 3 apps from scratch. I'm still pleased about getting horizontal and vertical snap alignment in! I'm sure the judges (reasonably) thought it was not from scratch but it can be fun to push once in a while, and people you hack with will know you did it.

It's best not to take it too seriously though. Rather than be impressive, it's probably better to be creative and do lots of stuff (and have fun too!).

</comment><comment><USER34> We built a bunch of stuff at this non-profit, which would host us every Monday evening and let us hack away using their data and code. I call this 'recurring hackathons' and it was the best thing ever, because we got to plan longer term, we could, but didn't have to, attend regularly, there was collaboration with an in-house expert, a lot of knowledge sharing, ...

As for regular hackathons... a lot has been said in this thread already.

<comment><USER35> Can you share some examples? I'm also curious about hacking for non-profits

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> [http://fart.watch](http://fart.watch)

</comment><comment><USER37> My team won a bank-sponsored hackathon and a $15,000 prize because 4 days before it started, I came across this Reddit thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Lightbulb/comments/43ljd4/a_virtual...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Lightbulb/comments/43ljd4/a_virtual_pet_that_requires_the_same_level_of/)

We built a tamagotchi-like app called Piggly that would let you feed and take care of it using money from your bank account. However, instead of treating it like an in-app purchase, the money goes from your chequing account into savings or investments (you decide).

The server is still up if anyone would like to try it: [http://18.104.22.168/](http://126.96.36.199/)

You can Register with any 6 digit number.

<comment><USER38> Heh, you managed to swing my opinion a 180 in a single sentence.

 _> We built a tamagotchi-like app called Piggly that would let you feed and take care of it using money from your bank account._

"Wow, that's exploitative as hell. You won't get many players but there are a few who'd get addicted and basically drain their accounts. Immoral - <USER2> profitable!"

 _> However, instead of treating it like an in-app purchase, the money goes from your chequing account into savings or investments (you decide)._

"Well, that's just awesome. It encourages people to save by turning it into a game. If they _really_ end up needing that money they can always move it back."

Neat idea. I wonder how a bank would react to someone constantly pushing money between checkings and savings to care for their Piggly without _actually saving_ as if they had a pet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> While at Mattermark, I made their Google Chrome extension in a two day Hackathon. That code was shipped and is right now their current chrome extension (it looks like there were minor changes since then). In all fairness, the designer had already done mockups so there wasn't a lot of back and forth on how it should work.

You can see an animated image of it here:

[https://mattermark.com/browser/](https://mattermark.com/browser/)

I was a bit disappointed we shipped Hackathon code instead of doing it as part of normal product development. There were issues in the product development cycle and in reality, the end result was good so such is life.

</comment><comment><USER40> [https://github.com/mofarrell/p2pvc](https://github.com/mofarrell/p2pvc)

We made a video chat app that ran in the terminal. Didn't win but went kinda viral. We later polished it up

</comment><comment><USER41> We won first place at an IoT hackathon with a "Smart Locker" project. You could unlock the locker (via bluetooth) with your phone to check out a piece of equipment, and the app would show you who had which piece of equipment checked out.

I wrote up how I built the React Native app part in under 24 hours: [https://nanohop.com/2017/04/25/how-we-built-a-react- native-a...](https://nanohop.com/2017/04/25/how-we-built-a-react-native-app- in-24-hours-and-won-a-hackathon/)

It was really neat seeing the hardware and software come together in only a day!

</comment><comment><USER42> An augemented reality app for google glass to learn writing Chinese characters.

[https://youtu.be/abWyiEY7P-A](https://youtu.be/abWyiEY7P-A)

This won us the first prize for a google glass hackathon.

</comment><comment><USER43> Either Tron, a small one-off hacky script I made to automate the annoying process of cleaning up an infected Windows computer and which unexpectedly spiraled into a major open-source project:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript](https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript)

or...this bad boy:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/24e5xq/my_proudes...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/24e5xq/my_proudest_hack_so_far_multiple_verizon/)

Hideous but it worked.

</comment><comment><USER44> I attended a machine learning hackathon and built a food-recognition model in caffe that eventually became a mobile food logging app. Discussed here over a year ago : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11712751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11712751)

Now that we're in the post SeeFood hotdog/nothotdog era, things have changed ;) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJsOA4Zl6Io](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJsOA4Zl6Io)

</comment><comment><USER45> My friend and I built a safety bracelet for women which had a GPS, GPRS chip and an inbuilt pepperspray which when sprayed triggered an alarm to volunteers nearby through the app.

</comment><comment><USER46> I never built anything crazy tech-focused at a hackathon, rather focus on a problem or product idea and flesh it out. This has worked well.

On that note, I would say that using Gimbal beacons to power a walking tour app was something that people responded really well to. From a tech side, I had to write some adapters for ionic that I had never done before. It worked surprisingly well

</comment><comment><USER47> Two projects I can name with. 1\. Whatsapp , facebook group finder. [http://groupsone.com/](http://groupsone.com/) 2\. Chrome extension for Indian railways tatkal booking website. [http://www.spotjourney.com/](http://www.spotjourney.com/)

Just love them.

</comment><comment><USER48> I made a compiler for IBM's Quantum Computer:[https://github.com/vtomole/aubree](https://github.com/vtomole/aubree). It's my most impressive hackathon project because it's the only one that I still work on post-hackathon.

</comment><comment><USER49> Tinder for Farm Animals

The pitch: [https://www.facebook.com/brandoncorbin/posts/101552909699924...](https://www.facebook.com/brandoncorbin/posts/10155290969992417)

<comment><USER50> Swipe right with your hoof.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I built a simple code search engine at a Solr conference - [https://github.com/garysieling/solr-git](https://github.com/garysieling/solr- git)

</comment><comment><USER52> I organized in Azerbaijan CTF [http://ctf.hackathonazerbaijan.org](http://ctf.hackathonazerbaijan.org)

</comment><comment><USER53> In general hackathons are based on the idea of programming as producing objects/products/services (which all decay over time), rather than seeing programming as the act of codifying understanding of a formal (or informal) system into an executable representation (which its users continue updating to match their mental model for as long as they find it useful). The purpose of many hackathons being "build apps/widgets on top of our service for us!" presupposes the former view.

Looking at programming this way is harmful to all of us (because it encourages us to spend time building things designed to decay out from under their users, or that could be built as contributions to open-source libraries, but which wouldn't be a "startup idea", "product" or "mvp" anymore), and it would be nice if folks in this thread took a moment to step back from the things they've built (which _are_ fun and useful, most of the time!) to think about working on ideas as contributions to open-source infrastructure libraries rather than standalone programs or services.

Programming toys is fun; programming universally accessible, near-permanent extensions to human capability is _exhilarating_.

I'd like to pre-empt the response of "people should be able to write apps and toys and services if they want!". Of course they can. I just want to make sure people have considered an alternative point of view, since it's easy to never step outside apps culture.

<comment><USER54> I really disagree. I've participated in a few hackathons and they are among the best ways to quickly accomplish and learn new things while feeling some of the joy we all ultimately want from programming. Being able in one day or weekend to go from scratch to a working prototype is just a great way to kick yourself into gear and remember what is possible in programming. I've participated in hackathons for embedded devices and other interesting projects that I'd not normally pursue, and to show to your friends after only a couple days some really cool gizmo you built from scratch that does something fun, well, that's awesome.

Beyond this, hackathons are also great at surrounding yourself by a ton of knowledge and talent to learn something very very quickly that you might struggle to learn on your own as quickly.

And finally -- a lot of devs work remotely or alone, and hackathons are excellent at developing skills of working in a team. And also just getting the in-person enjoyment of interacting with others who are interested in the same thing.

A single hackathon is only a day or two. What you get out of it compared to the time you spent is huge.

<comment><USER55> I disagree in that most hackathons aren't "hackathons". They're events where companies want you to use their product to "advertise" how awesome their product is to the community. Sure you learn things, but most of the shorter hackathons, you're learning very very shallow things that you didn't need to go to a hackathon to know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> [http://picturap.com/](http://picturap.com/)</comment>


The Haskell Pyramid - <AUTHOR> https://patrickmn.com/software/the-haskell-pyramid/ <comment><USER2> Shameless plug, but this is what I'm trying to address with [https://Haskell.fun](https://Haskell.fun).

I am slightly below the productive line, so I might be better position to explain things than the super experienced people who could have blind spots as they know too much.</comment>


Google Groups Data To Be Destroyed - <AUTHOR> http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=308700 <comment><USER2> It's October, right? And Google is notifying anyone who creates a Page or File that the feature is going to go away in February? (And it looks like they started doing so in September?)

Seems like plenty of notice to me. One would assume that as the deadline gets closer, more prominent notices will be given. How many months do you need to move your data?

Google should be held to high standards, both because they are an important part of internet infrastructure and because they've stated they aspire to high standards. Five months' notice meets those high standards as far as I'm concerned.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. I have a friend whose mom died when she was in College. In the year following, she kept all her journals and poems in emails in her Yahoo mail account. That's a safe place for them, right?

The years went on and she got a Gmail account, but she would log in to Yahoo every year or so to read through her old journals to help process what was going on in her life.

Only one year she tried to log in and her account was gone. Yahoo, she learned, simply deletes your email if you don't log in for a year. And she had gone 14 months.

Personally, I think deleting data like this--especially when the storage requirements are so tiny--is unforgivable. I can think of many, many reasons why someone would put something important on Google Groups and then not log in for six months. There are people away for Peace Corps right now. There are people deployed in Afghanistan. There are people hiking the Appalachian Trail (well maybe it's a little late for that).

Many thousands of people will feel completely violated if Google does this. Google can count on that. For those people, Google will have simply destroyed their most precious data without warning.

I used to think that one of the selling points of Google Apps was that I could leave my data there and trust them to protect it. No more worrying about crashed hard drives. But it's become clear that's not the case.

<comment><USER4> > That's a safe place for them, right?

Fuck no! Double fuck no!

Do people actually think that? That's beyond ignorant/naive. Data in the hands of a for profit corporation, safe? Did you read the terms of service / limitation of warranty? The short version is "fuck you and your data". It's not safe from loss at the whims of market/share holder needs/etc. It's also not safe from being compromised either by internal employees or external hackers. It's also not protected by most of the Bill of Rights (those mostly apply to government vs people not business vs people). It's easily supeoned, if the business doesn't just turn over the data on request.

Safe is encrypted on multiple devices geographically (and preferably jurisdictionally) separated.

The lowest acceptable level that can still be considered safe (a very loose definition of safe) is; a copy in plain/open formats on a device I physically control/hold(my desktop harddrive), and a copy somewhere else. Mom's house, Dropbox, yahoo mail, etc.

<comment><USER5> I'm looking forward to the day when we have a widely used p2p archiving network like OceanStore or Free Haven. Then we can stop worrying about this stuff.

<comment><USER6> My Master's Thesis covered exactly that. I'm currently working on commercialising the idea, so you can expect a "HN - Review my startup" within a year :)

<comment><USER5> If you don't mind linking to your thesis I'd love to read it!

<comment><USER6> Sure, but it's in Swedish. If you still want it I can e-mail it you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Author tried a cheap trick of attracting audience by using a title of a big "shock-value". But the truth is not as bad as that title suggest: the most important thing about Google Groups, discussions that is, are not going anywhere, it's only "Files" and "Pages" features that are going to be trashed.

<comment><USER8> Can we turn down this 'author-is-using-a-cheap-trick-to-attract-audience' volume around here. I don't think Bruce Eckel needs to attract audience so badly that he will do it purposefully. Granted, title is not reflective of the content but give the authors some benefit of the doubt. Let's do a quick Google search on authors before we write stuff like this.

<comment><USER9> You mean evaluate people based on who they are versus what they say? No thanks.

I interpreted the title to mean Google Groups was going away. I was not aware that there was a separate "data" concept.

<comment><USER10> That sounds like your lack of familarity with the software and not the author's showmanship.

If the title read: "Google Groups Shutting Down!" and they meant shutting down the pages and files part, then sure I'd see your argument. But literally all data in Google Groups will be destroyed. I actually thought the tittle meant his data was destroyed on his Google Group, much less all of them were being wiped. I think it is pretty big news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am wondering why they don't just integrate groups features into Google Apps (where you could use Sites and Docs to do this same thing). It leads me to believe (knowing nothing about the reality) that Groups was built on some different underlying technology stack that makes it more difficult to integrate... I had a JotSpot account that eventually became a Google Sites site, and the main thing that didn't migrate over neatly was the discussion forums.

Also noticed this message on there: "Google Groups will no longer be supporting the Welcome Message feature. Starting January 13, you won't be able to edit your welcome messages, but you will still be able to view and download the existing content." Would it kill them to tell us why?

<comment><USER12> I'm guessing that the removal of Files, Pages, and Welcome Messages are all for a single reason: spam. Spammers love Google Groups, because it'll host their landing pages (complete with graphics!) on a trusted domain. I'd be willing to bet that someone at Google got fed up playing whack-a-mole with Viagra ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember when google groups was still called 'dejanews' and I used it just about every day.

Whatever I wanted to know, dejanews seemed to have the answer buried in its pages somewhere.

The google took over and promised all kinds of great things would happen to the content. Only it never did. Google groups was the ugly stepchild in the google family, first dropped from the google homepage links, then completely neglected and left to rot.

In a way it is surprising that it took this long for Google to make a decision on this, but it is a total waste of all the content in there.

Are there any attempts to archive this stuff ? Is there a way to get the data in bulk ?

I've seen first hand how important old data can be to people and I suspect this to be no different, the reocities.com project has been running for a bit under a year now and not a day goes by that I don't get notes from people that are insanely happy that their content was not lost.

</comment><comment><USER14> A bigger point Bruce makes is the issue of confidence in Google. Groups is consumer oriented, but as developers we've seen Google turn on a dime, change its mind, and leave developers who've bought in to their technology, out in the cold. Bruce mentions Wave... no follow through from Google. Anyone who pitched a Wave based service in their own companies or business plan is fired, but the Goog keeps rolling on unperturbed. Microsoft, whatever else you might say, never hung developers out to dry like that.

Who's ready to build a full HTML 5 site now, and ask IE users to install Google Chrome Frame? Ready to bet your company on it? Six months from now, Google could get bored with it. Yawn. Not working out, fellas. But hey, it's open source, so you guys keep working on it, ok?

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this the start of the cloud computing dystopia that Stallman warned us about?

<comment><USER3> This is a perfect example of one of the Freedoms we don't have with web applications. Even with Microsoft Office you have the freedom to keep using the software today in the way you did yesterday.

Even open source web applications don't have this freedom... If wordpress.org were to do this, those users would be in the same boat.

I've been working on an open source infrastructure project to fix these issue for a while, but it's still pretty nascent. My "manifesto" on that is here: <http://bit.ly/forkolator>

<comment><USER16> And for anyone who actually cares about proper linking: [https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AcmB_WI1jRkCZG41c2d4cl80O...](https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AcmB_WI1jRkCZG41c2d4cl80OTJmOGpjNmNocw&hl=en)

<comment><USER17> Hahaha, I'm dying from the irony! bit.ly etc. are pure evil, and are going to have a much more negative impact when they're gone than Google groups files.

<comment><USER18> Personally it's more of a "I want to see what website I'm about to open in my browser" ideology than pithy moral meanings. But sure!

<comment><USER19> it's not really about morality. When bitly decide the ad revenue and premium plans don't cover the hosting any more, massive chunks of web infrastructure will fail. When was the last time you followed a link to a running website and it failed? A few network issues here and there yes, but refresh and you're fine. When bitly bite the dust, that link is gone forever and you'll never know where it went. In thirty years I can look at a direct link and know where it goes, and if the endpoint is still live I can go there. Not so with bitly links (and don't even start on the smaller shorteners. They'll probably fold within the next 2 years)

<comment><USER17> I think the consequences are going to be more severe for dead links. Today I deal with permanently dead links pretty much every day. With the canonical URI, there is some hope there's a mirror in archive.org or the Google cache. If not, I can search for [parts of] the URI and hope someone mirrored the page, or has quotations from it. bit.ly URIs are a black hole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does this mean the end of the DejaNews Usenet archive as well? The transformation of that unbelievably helpful resource into "Google Groups" was a crime.

Geez, but I miss Usenet. Having _one_ forum on which everything related to a topic was posted was unbelievably helpful.

<comment><USER21> They intend to remove only files and pages, which is something like a primitive wiki for your group. This feature was never widely used anyway and there are much better tools for the job (like Google Sites).

BTW the Usenet still exists, even if it's not that active anymore.

<comment><USER22> > BTW the Usenet still exists, even if it's not that active anymore.

GGroups has been the cause of most spam on Usenet for years. It's also sad because some of the people who aren't regular spammers think that when they post to a newsgroup via GGroups, they're only posting to that _one_ server, and not on hundreds (if not thousands) of servers. Others think that GGroups and Usenet are the same, but not as many as the "un-spammers".

It's too bad that this is going to happen, but... I guess that's Google for you. I wish that Google would instead try to prevent some of the spam on the Usenet, and not mess about with GGroups. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hum I see Google not making a big fuzz about it now, but saying that Google is obfuscating the announcement and the it destroys trust and all that is a false assumption until it actually happens.

I'd expect email notifications and notifications inside the app to let me know the feature is being removed and how to move my data some time before the actual feature removal happens. I can't say Google has burned me until they do actually not inform me and 'destroy' my data. I think it's too early to say "Geez Google you're evil now!", and for the most part, this could be a small "Hey FYI, we're removing those features... we might not even be sure about it so we're not doing a big deal out of it yet."

If this article was written 2 weeks before data was removed I'd understand, but as it is it comes out somewhat sensationalistic.

</comment><comment><USER24> I had moved several student org's at my university to private Google Groups because of the pages and files feature. Now that this is feature is being killed they will be screwed since they were using it as the repository for their meeting minutes and other important documents.

<comment><USER25> They can just download the data and stick it somewhere else. It's inconvenient, but nobody is "screwed."

<comment><USER26> The author of the article was disappointed that the service was being discontinued, but his main reason for writing seemed to be calling attention to how quietly Google announced that it was destroying data. People won't download the data if they don't know it's going away.

<comment><USER25> That is clearly not the case for the commenter whom I was addressing. He knows, so if the files he is worried about are deleted, it's due to his inaction. I don't want to see anyone just throw up their hands and accept victim status when there's a better option.

As for other people, I thought Google added a notice to the Groups files page along the lines of "Hey, dude, you might want to download this stuff before it goes bye-bye". I don't use the service, but that's what I heard. Was I misinformed?

EDIT: Yup, it's there. The notice, in bright red at the very top of the page, reads: "Google Groups will no longer be supporting the Pages and Files features. Starting January 13, you won't be able to upload new content, but you will still be able to view and download existing content. See this announcement for more information and other options for storing your content."

<comment><USER24> I mean not so much my inaction as I am no longer running those groups :-p

Actually what I was concerned about wasn't the disappearance of the data, but the disappearance of the feature. I chose groups because those features made it really easy to manage the entire group. I worked hard to set up a process around how the google groups worked. So the sense that the organization is "screwed" is that they will have to completely change the way the function internally and find a new centralized portal for managing there stuff.

As far as the warning goes they gave plenty of warning. I am just disappointed the feature disappeared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That happened to me with my blog when they removed the ftp feature. I didn't want to convert automatically to a blogspot blog because I didn't have to time to deal with the privacy issues. Fortunately, I was able to download the data and I still have a web page for it that I could parse to convert it to another format but in the meantime I'm without blog.

I still haven't decided to which format to convert my blog but I'm very tempted to convert it to an emacs org-mode format and then decide later.

</comment><comment><USER28> On that notice page, Google suggests using "Google Sites" for pages and attach files to pages on the site. If it is straightforward for someone to do it, I find it strange that they don't do it automatically and tell the people "we'll be migrating your data to Google Sites" instead of taking it down.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. I don't think society is ready yet for the consequences of an internet that never forgets. I wish more websites would periodically delete content (with adequate warning).

</comment><comment><USER30> I actually find a lot of good content for debugging purposes in google groups

</comment><comment><USER31> There's a big red warning at the top the welcome page (web version). Impossible to miss, although I know many people only use Google Groups via email.

</comment><comment><USER32> Google Groups is one of the worst Google web apps (from a programming stand point). You cannot add code snippets easily, the search is horrible and you cannot even format code/text easily like in <http://code.google.com>.

Have they seen stackoverflow.com?</comment>


Create a fake fb girlfriend - that desperate? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/01/16/fake-facebook-girlfriend/

<comment><USER2> There's probably a service for people to fake it for each other - you have a site like okcupid but the intent is not dating, but posting "cute" messages for each other on facebook and twitter.</comment>


The God Who Peter Molyneux Forgot - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-11-the-god-who-peter-molyneux-forgot <comment><USER2> It's interesting, I started following development of Godus and [https://wftogame.com/](https://wftogame.com/) at the same time, both spiritual successors to early Bullfrog games. None of them are out of beta/alpha/early-access/whatever yet, both having been delayed for YEARS.

It's such a strange thing to witness; this developer passion and designer dream just slowly withering away. Play Godus for 2 minutes and you will _feel_ why people ache for that experience. It's beautiful. Like The Witness. Calm. And WFTO, watch the trailer. The speaker is the same guy who did dungeon keeper in 1998. These games are pulling your heartstrings, no wonder they get their money. In some way, I would _still_ throw money at another one of these games, if only because a slim chance of a new Bullfrog title is better than none.

At least Blizzard is still going strong; if anyone want a truly unique and _delightful_ experience I can recommend Hearthstone.

Maybe the indie game world need an incubator, like YC.

<comment><USER3> A tangent - don't know if it's intentional on the part of the developers, but I can't stop reading [http://wtfogame.com](http://wtfogame.com) as "WTF ogame". I honestly expected to see a browser MMO under that link.

<comment><USER2> The name "War for the Overworld" was the first sign that this game was going to lack in aesthetics, which was such a big part of the old Bullfrog games (sound design, graphics, general feel, humor etc). To be fair though, Dungeon Keeper III was going to be named something along those lines, and actually, despite the delays, WFTO seems to be doing pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Godus is really an extended performance art piece. Molyneux is showing us that real gods appear, make big promises, and then leave their followers -- even the most sainted among them -- to wonder their whole lives if the promises are true.

</comment><comment><USER5> Peter Molyneux. He was a great game designer in the 1990s at Bullfrog. I mean Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper (to a lesser extend also Black & White and Fable) were great games.

He is really good at PR, he always promises a lot and he almost never delivers (game functionality, not about the article). He has a bad reputation IMHO at least since Black & White 1 in 2001, his earlier games were great! Though he is a charming guy and get away with it. The article is rubbish, just like Molyneux latest 22Cans's "Godus" god game.

<comment><USER6> Was Syndicate (an all time favorite of mine) designed by Molyneux? According to Wikipedia, it was designed by someone named Sean Cooper. I have to wonder... is it a coincidence that it's not a God game?

(To give Molyneux his well-earned credit, I also loved Populous and Dungeon Keeper!)

<comment><USER7> Yes, but Molyneux's design was called _Higher Functions_ \- all you controlled was the "mood" bars (adrenaline, blue funk, don't remember), no direct control over the agents. Used to have some assembly source from it, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's worth noting that it's highly likely that Curiosity itself was rigged; infinite layers of the cube, until the marketing died down. ([http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/1/4287428/curiosity- ending-22c...](http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/1/4287428/curiosity- ending-22cans-peter-molyneux-interview) )

It's also worth noting that startups do exactly similar tactics with waitlists. (what, you really think 100,000 people would be willing to join a wait list for a random startup with no publicity?)

<comment><USER9> > what, you really think 100,000 people would be willing to join a wait list > for a random startup with no publicity?

Anything specific you're referring to?

<comment><USER8> It mostly started happening after Mailbox's waitlist of hundreds of thousands and subsequent buyout from Dropbox _during the wait list period_.

I saw this article this morning and it made me raise my eyebrows: [http://www.businessinsider.com/the-league-app- has-a-75000-pe...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-league-app- has-a-75000-person-waitlist-2015-2)

A waitlist isn't inherently impossible for startups; I'd expect a few hundred at most, but 75,000?

EDIT: All email clients have the same name. :p

<comment><USER10> You meant Mailbox, though Google's Inbox followed with that waiting line model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Peter Molyneux breaks promise about how awesome something he's making will be. Film at 11."

<comment><USER12> Unfulfilled promises since 2001.

<comment><USER11> Because he's not satisfied...

...until you're not satisfied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ...A tiny message appeared on the screen of his smartphone. It contained an email address for someone at 22Cans, the Guildford studio Molyneux had founded after leaving Microsoft and traditional game development behind.

Bryan, confused but intrigued, followed the instructions. Have I really won, he asked? An email appeared with a the message "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."

</comment><comment><USER14> I have a happier experience of winning a Molyneux competition. Back in the day, I entered a Theme Hospital competion on the Bullfrog website, and received a copy of Syndicate and a Bullfrog leather jacket in the post. I was maybe 12, so the XL jacket was far too big for me, but I was still thrilled.

</comment><comment><USER15> Crowfunding not delivering seems to be a fairly standard thing. What are the advantages of overdelivering?

<comment><USER16> Molyneux has a personal brand that he has damaged through this kickstarter. If you don't consider your reputation to be valuable, it soon won't be.

<comment><USER8> The issue is that Molyneux has had his personal brand tarnished for awhile (Fable + Project Milo), but he still received reputation and respect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's poor that the developers didn't keep in contact with Bryan but that's not Molyneux's fault - I'm sure he's not the company's PA.

It's a bugger the game isn't released yet - but he explained in the article the external unforeseen issues that caused the delay. Software often gets delayed. Why is this illegal for PM?

PM's only fault was getting excited about features he wanted for Fable which they weren't able to implement. That's a communication style issue which I think he has learned from. Other than that he has an enviable backlog of titles which prove his ability to deliver. I don't believe he deserves the BS he gets from gamers who seem to think PM owes them something.

</comment><comment><USER18> So this is a non-story. The royalty was based around a feature the company hasn't been able to deliver and was not contractually obligated to by any time. The kid doesn't seem particularly upset, and while it's not heartwarming, there doesn't seem to be any wrongdoing anywhere (other than etiquette-wise for the studio staying in touch more frequently... and perhaps they didn't want to spill dirty laundry about execution/financial issues to a contest winning teenager).

edit: Surprised by the negative reaction to this post. At least 5 downvotes altogether. I'm not endorsing Monyneux's actions in any way. I'm just saying that it's obvious what happened. They promised royalties on a product they failed to deliver for business and technical reasons. Now they are pivoting to a new game to try to stay in business.

They should have owned up to it, and given the kid an apology, a check for 1000 GBP, and modelled a character in "The Trail" as damage control.

<comment><USER19> I think it's a story because of Molyneux. Peter Molyneux has failed to deliver completely for a long time.

With Godus, with Curiosity, it increasingly seems as though he failed to deliver even a finished game and in addition it seems as though he failed to even try.

For many gamers, it's the end of the final shred of Molyneux's respectability. People may snark about it, "Oh, what a surprise", but this was his last chance.

The royalty (or at least some prize) formed part of a concept that was at the heart of _Curiosity_ \- some grand, real, reward that justified all the cow- clicking nonsense. As such, it was an essential part of the game that people played. Meanwhile, _Godus_ continues to languish without the promised features.

Comparing him with Shyamalan, this would be his _Last Airbender_. Not earth- shattering news that he messed it up completely, but final confirmation that his talent - if he ever had it - seems to have deserted him.

<comment><USER20> That's harsh. Molyneux has done incredible work in the past. He played a part in Populous, Syndicate, Dungeon Keeper, and Black & White. All of those games were ground breaking.

Peter Molyneux's greatest strength is also his greatest weakness: he's incredibly creative and ambitious. He aims very high, often a little beyond his reach. Frankly, that's what we should all be doing. I don't quite remember the quote, or the person who said it, but it went something like, "If you're not failing the majority of the time, you're not aiming high enough."

I'd rather play a game that was trying to be incredible but fell just short, rather than a game that aimed to be passable and hit the mark. Maybe that's what bugs me about Curiosity and Godus; these aren't the big, ambitious games I've grown accustomed to from Molyneux.

<comment><USER21> _He aims very high, often a little beyond his reach._

The problem is that you used the word 'often' instead of 'consistently', which has been the case for the past 15 years. Black & White was the beginning of the end and the pattern for 21st Century Molyneux: promise the world, get bored, fail to deliver. At a shallow level, B&W looked great, but it was terrible as a game and an experience; both tedious and failing to deliver on promised complexity. That trend continues all the way to Godus.

It's not like he's hit-and-miss, and a few failures are okay as long as you have some hits mixed in. It's that the first half of his career was consistently hit, and the second half consistently miss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Molyneux insists 22Cans is in rude health"

<comment><USER23> I had to look up "rude health". It counterintuitively means "excellent health".

<comment><USER22> oh! I assumed it was a typo for "good health" because there was, what I assume, another typo earlier in the article: _Does Bryan feel duped, I wonder? "I should do. You would think. … "_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Surprise of the century, Peter Molyneux doesn't deliver on his promises. Still waiting for that acorn to grow into a mighty oak Molyneux, you silly bastard.

</comment><comment><USER25> I chatted Peter Molyneux up after he hyped up his cube clicker at his keynote address at the Unity conference in Amsterdam a few years ago. He didn't appreciate it when I ventured a guess that the secret thing he was hiding inside the cube was a cow. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker)

I fondly recall the exciting demos and wild claims that Peter Molyneux gave of Black and White at CGDC during the late 90's, which reminds me of Joe Spark's exciting demos and wild claims about Total Distortion that he was showing at practically every computer conference for several years during the early 90's.

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

I think they were both interesting games, over-demoed before their time then under-shipped after their time. They had a lot of unique original ideas, but both would have been much better received were it not for all the hype that set such unrealistic expectations.

The idea behind Total Distortion was that you went out into a virtual world, explored, fought guitar battles, took pictures, and shot video. Behind the scenes, the pictures and videos were annotated with metadata about the subjects.

Then you went back to your multimedia production studio and used a miniature kid-friendly version of Adobe Premier to produce music videos using the raw content you gathered from the game. Implementing a music video editor in Director was an amazing technical achievement in and of itself.

But then (and here's the hard part) you had to sell you music videos to simulated hollywood agents, who evaluated your videos based on their (very diverse and whacky) personal preferences. The metadata in the pictures and video you used would entertain or disgust the various agents in different ways, and they'd give you feedback along the lines of "I'm a people person, and I want to see more people in it!" or "I'll be honest fellas, it was sounding great, but I could have used a little more cowbell."

But Joe Sparks demoed it at so many conferences that it was a running joke that it would never be released, because he keep adding new cool features to make each demo more awesome than the last. When it finally was released, it was a big disappointment, after seeing all those fantastic demos.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20090516110053/http://www.gamespo...](http://web.archive.org/web/20090516110053/http://www.gamespot.com/features/vaporware/html/number3.html)

It was a brilliant idea that was way before its time, and pushed the limits of the technology, incorporating machinima and video editing into a game, but the execution was mediocre compared to all the great hype. It was terribly difficult to implement that kind of stuff in Director in the early 90's. It would be great to see somebody try the same idea again, but with modern technology.

</comment><comment><USER26> Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell. ~Karl Popper

</comment><comment><USER27> Should HN listings correct bad grammar in article titles? ;-)

<comment><USER28> At this point in time, I believe using who or whom is a stylistic choice. It has long been accepted to use "who" in this context.

<comment><USER27> So, if actual correct grammar doesn't matter any more, then I suppose everything is a "stylistic choice"?

<comment><USER29> Don't spread grammatical urban legends. "Who" and "whom" are both perfectly correct here, and I dare you to find a reliable source that says "who" isn't allowed.

Reader's Digest, your grade-school teacher, and anything written before lingustics was a science do not count as reliable sources for this purpose.

<comment><USER30> I'm not much of a stickler for grammar, and I don't particularly care. I'd be happy if "whom" died off.

However, it's still taught in school, in college, and in any modern grammar book. It's clearly coming up on the cusp of disappearing, but it certainly hasn't been written out of the books just yet, and I'm not sure why you're pretending that it has been. This sort of mistake would have been corrected in basically every English class I ever took in the last five years. It would have been corrected not just by the professor, but also by a majority of peers if peer grading was utilized.

My rule of thumb is to basically never use "whom" in speech and to conditionally use it in writing, depending on the context and how formal it is. I'll generally use it correctly when writing posts like this on the internet as well, but anything less formal and I won't care. I feel like the threshold of minimum formality to justify using it is always rising, and perhaps in the next decade we'll see that threshold rise up above the level of formality of, say, a paper for a literature class. But that definitely hasn't happened yet.

This reflects my general belief that grammar is a spectrum. It's less about the mindless application of rules and more about pattern recognition. Rules of grammar are best understood as being part of a context, and that context is not just the rest of the sentence or paragraph; it includes the social context as well, the mode of communication (written, verbal, etc.), and basically everything else you could think of. My description above is an example of how one rule -- that rule pertaining to the usage of "whom" \-- morphs according to context.

To summarize, grammar is the art of satisfying two constraints simultaneously: (1) making sure nobody else thinks you've made a mistake; (2) making sure your efforts at (1) aren't going to distract people.

(1) could be seen as maximizing acceptance of your grammatical decisions, and (2) could be seen as minimizing social offense. "whom" is a great example, because in certain contexts people might recognize it as correct but they'll think you're only using it because you're trying to show off how smart you are. You've unnecessarily distracted them by using it, which violates (2).

<comment><USER29> I'm not pretending anything. I'm not saying you shouldn't use "whom". You have a reasonable view of different registers, except for the part where you believe that "whom" has to "die off" before "who" can be fully correct in this usage, or that "who" is any kind of mistake.

The words are just both correct. Some people like to argue from authority that there's some rule against using "who" there, except -- as is the case for many prescriptive bogeymen -- the supposed authority _actually doesn 't exist at all_.

Ask anyone who scientifically studies the actual English language for a living -- fenomas's comment links to a good source at Cambridge, which is very well reputed in linguistics -- and they will not cast a single bit of doubt on using "who" to introduce a relative clause. Everyone uses it, including very good writers.

It's easy to caricature linguists as always saying "as long as you can be understood, anything goes". And that's unfortunate -- nobody here would put up with misunderstanding and making fun of the work biologists do, for example, but for some reason everyone thinks that being literate makes them qualified to disagree with linguists.

There are linguists who make recommendations about not just how to be understood but how to write _well_ , based on lots of study and observation on how people use language in all registers, and if you're looking for an authority you should be looking to them. If you do look -- I'll point at fenomas's comment again, because he's the only one who actually linked a source -- you'll find they don't support your position.

It's too bad you took a lot of English classes that wasted time on correcting this word. (Editing out a harsh and hasty conclusion I came to about your English professors here.) If I assume the best of them, I'll say it was a pedagogical exercise. Sometimes it's important to distinguish different cases. This _isn 't_ a situation where you have to distinguish cases in English, but you _can_.

So maybe your classes told you to use "whom" there kind of like a class in object-oriented programming might tell you to create a "class Rabbit" that inherits from "class Animal" \-- as a way of showing that you understand the concept, not as something that you'd actually have to do in the real world.

<comment><USER30> My apologies, I learned something about relative clauses today. I still like my general theory that I posted but I accept that I was simply wrong about this particular case.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Making HTTP Pipelining Usable on the Open Web - <AUTHOR> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-http-pipeline-00

<comment><USER2> Summary:

People who wrote broken proxies and the administrators who deploy them have poisoned the use of pipelining for everyone and the internet cries a salty tear on every page load as a result. There appears to be no way to hold these entities accountable, so the best we can do is work around them from the end points…

1) Browsers should come with pipelining functional tests built in and run these at any network change to try to determine if they have faulty proxies in their path to the internet.

2) Servers should add an _Assoc-Req:_ header to responses that identifies the request, e.g. "Assoc-Req: GET <http://www.example.com/somereq?bar> so clients can detect when the proxies or servers have misordered the responses coming back up the pipeline.

3) Servers should use the _Content-MD5:_ header to detect corruption from defective proxies and network admins. (There is a trailer version for large dynamic content.)

4) There should be some HTML META and REL additions to suggest to the user agents which resources are low latency and are good candidates for pipelining. (You don't want to get your big dynamic query stuck in front of your flurry of IMG and SCRIPT loads.) Edit: This one would be nice even in the absence of broken proxies.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm wondering what google would like to say about this... Apparently their SPDY is intended to do more and "better" than what http pipelining can offer. But if these modifications of pipelining do get into the standard and got large adoption (although that may take forever...), then SPDY would have fewer advantages over pipelining, and thus much less convincing.</comment>