Asgardia – The Space Nation - <AUTHOR> https://asgardia.space/en/ <comment><USER2> Why, when watching any of the pompous Asgardia videos, am I unable to think of anything other than this? (Rufus T. Firefly of Freedonia) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSsUoxlSADk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSsUoxlSADk)

</comment><comment><USER3> A step backward. Their democratic and governance system is horseshit.

Elon Musk mentioned having a direct democracy on Mars. Maybe they should take a page out of his book and go look at what the Kurds are doing with democratic confederalism.

FYI: Democratic confederalism is a "system of popularly elected administrative councils, allowing local communities to exercise autonomous control over their assets, while linking to other communities via a network of confederal councils." Decisions are made by communes in each neighborhood, village, or city.

People vote in their own judges and military commanders, and so on, just like in the Athenian Polis (although the Athenians _did_ use slaves for their police force tho).

Either way, at the very least, one would hope a nation of the future would have some kind of system of direct democracy. It would be a great testbed, especially at this early stage, of testing different modes of bureaucracy (automated, AI based, career bureaucratic admin, or as in the Athenians, a required service to be fulfilled by all, much like the jury system).</comment>


The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html

<comment><USER2> Quite possibly the most important paragraph in this essay for a product at the customer dev stage (and probably easy to underestimate... it's a very subtle point):

"There are two things you have to do to make people pause. The most important is to explain, as concisely as possible, what the hell your site is about. How often have you visited a site that seemed to assume you already knew what they did?"

It's hard to attain the perspective of a completely fresh user when you've been in the trenches hacking away for so long. And as I've discovered, if you can't explain it, you can't sell it, cos no one landing on your site's gonna pore over the genius invisibly possessing it like a ghost in the machine.</comment>


Block ads on home devices using a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@robleathern/block-ads-on-all-home-devices-for-53-18-a5f1ec139693 <comment><USER2> This is just DNS-level blocking; I'm pretty sure you can do this already if you have a Linux-based router that has a DNS server+resolver built in (i.e. most of them), but if you have an RPi lying around doing nothing, might as well put it to use.

Note that this doesn't block ads which are inlined and/or otherwise combined with content; for that, you can use a MITM proxy like Privoxy.

</comment><comment><USER3> I set this up earlier this month after seeing someone recommend it here on HN in a comment, and after a very good start I decided to stop using it.

The performance was very good, and switching default DNS from Google to OpenNIC was easy enough, but the default blocklists included too many domains I needed to use (e.g. mailchimp.com) which were not explicitly ad domains. Whitelisting domains is possible but you have to drop what you are doing and SSH into the Pi, whitelist it and reload the config, then resume what you were doing.

But the real dealbreaker for me was that this is largely incompatible with NoScript and its 'Application Boundaries Enforcer' which gave me constant warnings due to some content being served from my LAN. The way pi-hole works is to intercept your DNS query for 'bad' domains, re-route it to its own server, and return an empty page. It is the return of an empty page over the LAN that was problematic.

Maybe someone more savvy could have made it all work together but at some point you have to evaluate the usability of this versus just toggling an ad- blocker with your browser. The browser ad blocker is just faster and easier when you need to override anything.

</comment><comment><USER4> I tried this some time ago, but it ended up far inferior to Adblock, both in the amount of extra stuff it let thru, and the amount of actually useful domains which end up on the blacklist. For example, the HiFi system I use to watch Netflix requires some Sony domain which is on most DNS blocklists. I ended up going back to Adblock.

<comment><USER5> Actually you can both systems at the same time. DNS blocking is one efficient solution for devices which doesn't have access to Adblock, but it doesn't block you from using Adblock on your computers and your compatible phones / tablets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been thinking a bit about home router/squid solutions - with three kids now, I want to allow the free exploration of the sum of all human knowledge, but boy there is a lot of crap out there.

So, DNS based blocking is both slow to react and needs constant vigilance. I think there are some open sourced DNS blacklists

Secondly, I'm confused by YouTube - I value the idea of interview with rosa parks, but it's then three clicks to any amount of violent over-sexualised rubbish.

I am interested in Adblock on a router - but mostly I am trying to prevent the "rubbish" getting through.

So I think there are few solutions beyond "turn off internet access unless I am sitting with you"

<comment><USER7> I have been working on a solution for this over a year and will release a beta product around March 2016.

<comment><USER6> Sign me up/ send me details !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I prefer to have a completely untouched internet connection and have a control of what to block on the end device. For example, it would drive me mad if the ISP/VPN decided to be so nice that they would block "malware", "rubbish" etc for me.

<comment><USER9> What do you use for email?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use something similar.

1\. get hosts file from [http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm](http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm)

2\. install pdnsd (by default it reads and uses the hosts file)

<comment><USER11> Can you elaborate on what pdnsd does? I understand how editing the hosts file work, but this pdnsd thing is new to me. Thank you!

<comment><USER10> It's a simple DNS proxy server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems kinda half-assed.

If he's setting up dnsmasq to serve as a caching local DNS, why not configure it to serve as DHCP server as well (after disabling DHCP on the router) and avoid the manual setting of the DNS server on clients?

</comment><comment><USER13> For the record this works perfectly on an ubuntu 14.04 instance I tried it out on.

I had previously been playing around with bind configs to achieve the same thing but this is a much better solution.

I had a poke around on the website though and how to you get updates for the list?

</comment><comment><USER14> This is worthless for hardware such as Google's Chromecast and Android TV, because the DNS is hardcoded to 188.8.131.52 and 22.214.171.124.

<comment><USER15> You can redirect all dns requests to your dns server form your router.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why not just use a hosts file?

<comment><USER17> 1) This is centralized so you wouldn't have to edit on every PC/device 2) It's a bit tricky to edit the hosts file on an iPhone..

<comment><USER18> re #2: it's only two steps to install a proxy-based adblocker and then set a proxy for your internet connection. Same goes on Android.

<comment><USER16> A hosts file on a router would be much faster than anything else. Nullrouting packets before they even enter your LAN is possible the best thing you can do.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Employees' Poor Password Practices Put Businesses at Risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.ckd3.com/blog/lastpassreport <comment> use-net only a forgotten password is a good one</comment>


What Working at Stripe Has Been Like - <AUTHOR> https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/3/18/two-years-at-stripe/ <comment><USER2> I left Stripe a little over 6 months ago to join an exciting startup with a number of my friends. What I miss most about working there is the culture of shipping. There are a number of 'shipped' email lists at Stripe where people can tout their accomplishments large and small. These lists are widely read and commented on, and folks put in a fair amount of effort making their "shipped" emails informative and entertaining.

That feeling you get when you finish a challenging project, write a great shipped email, and get a bunch of feedback from folks throughout the company is pretty amazing. Once I was invited to convert one of my shipped emails into a presentation for a company all-hands meeting. I had a less than a week to get it done, which was pretty hectic, but in the end it turned out great and it was perhaps my favorite memory of my time at Stripe.

I enjoy my current job, and those little dopamine hits I get from checking things off my list as well as the bigger ones from finishing projects, but now only my boss and some teammates notice when I finish something. One thing I learned about myself, is that I really do care about what other people think about my work.

<comment><USER3> If Stripe's HR department is reading this thread, I think they can pinpoint one crucial interview question that will determine culture fit in their organisation for future hiring - and that is "do you like talking about your accomplishments with the rest of your team?".

Seems to be a very polarising thing to be asked to do, judging by the replies on this particular comment.

EDIT: Curious about the downvotes? This is a real thing. I am sure they don't want to hire people that would hate to write shipped emails and publish them to the list if they actively hated writing them. It is simply not good culture fit, and I am sure they would want to identify that early on in the recruitment process.

<comment><USER4> Possibly that such a recruitment filter would exclude a lot of people with depression or anxiety-related mental illness.

To clarify, I _hate_ talking about my accomplishments, it makes me feel deeply anxious and uncomfortable, and will say as much if asked. But I'll also do it if that's what's required of me.

<comment><USER5> And there are many companies that value humbleness.

I love sharing my accomplishments. I know what's socially expected from me, but not sharing feels really bad to me. It feels as all the work I've done and that cool accomplishment don't matter at all. Therefore I mostly share with friends, though most of them lack the necessary tech-knowledge to really understand it.

I also love hearing about others accomplishments in an easy to digest way. These shipped emails seem like great way to spread knowledge and a positive attitude of getting stuff done.

What I, and the comment you replied to want to say, everyone is different. Let me work at a company that encourages sharing accomplishments and go work for one that values humbleness. But at least please don't take it away from me, just because you don't like it, especially if it's optional.

<comment><USER4> To clarify, I'm not criticising the idea of sharing accomplishments. I'm referring to having to _like_ doing it being a criteria for recruitment.

I was proposing a possible reason as to why the comment I was replying to was receiving downvotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reading this post made me think that while many companies advertise an entrepreneurial environment and the ability to do impactful work, the true test of this culture is 1) the ability to hire former founders and 2) those former founders loving their work.

Plenty of blue-chip startups have future founders working for them...yet it seems to me that having past founders is much more rare. An incredibly strong company endorsement.

<comment><USER7> As a former founder who now works at Stripe...

I am glad to see we are now explicitly mentioning the aspects of Stripe culture that make it founder friendly.

\- Huge transparency \- Management optimizes for autonomy & distributed decision-making \- Upwards review processes > downwards decision-making \- Level obfuscation \- Shipping culture \- People who are of the quality you'd normally only find by hiring them yourself (and frequently better)

My 3rd week at Stripe (around 7 months ago) Patrick just sat down next to me at lunch, knew my name, and started talking about what my team was working on in great detail. Asked me many direct, important questions and really listened.

As a former CEO of a VC-backed company, I knew he was 100% on his game -- and around you at work you can see that pretty much everyone trusts the execs to be insanely competent, because they are. My only wish is that they don't take as many solo plane rides, haha. :)

<comment><USER8> Can you expand on level obfuscation?

<comment><USER9> I think he means role titles don't include seniority level

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but what does that have to do with being founder friendly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The most fascinating part of this article is the idea that Stripe is spending time thinking about unlocking potential in Internet businesses in Japan. A tough nut to crack. The revolution is happening in all these countries, but if Stripe can move the needle in Brazil and Japan and other places where entrepreneurship currently requires more grease/graft, that'll really be interesting.

<comment><USER11> I'm in Tokyo right now for work (my startup NumberBoost won an innovation competition with NTT Japan) and it's so wild how simultaneously forward and backward things are here.

On the one hand, there are so many things they do here that make me feel like they're in the future. On the other hand, every fifth person has a flip phone, the WiFi sucks, you can't buy a travel SIM card at the mall, and there are CD/DVD stores everywhere.

I can't help but feel part of their problem is how unwilling most local Japanese people I've met here are to break the rules.

<comment><USER11> For example good luck getting mayonnaise with your fries at any of the fast food chains here. They have mayonnaise and they put it on burgers but they "CANNOT" give (or sell) it to you in a separate container for your fries.

<comment><USER12> mayonnaise has special properties regarding food spoilage, it can be legitimately poisonous when it turns bad.. which in food services, is a constant.

<comment><USER13> This isn't the reason you can't get mayo with fries in Japan, though. It's a cultural barrier against deviating from the "rules," no matter how small. Mayo isn't on the menu as a condiment; sorry!

Example: I once had to fill out a form (as a designated corporate representative) authorizing myself to access our racks in an NTT data center and then fax it to the DC manager (who I knew personally) before he would let me in. _During this entire process we were standing in the same room._

It used to annoy me when I first moved to Tokyo, but you eventually learn to live with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Patrick, I love Stripe's offering, but I have to pull teeth within my startup to justify _why we use Stripe_ to non-technical people. In fact, when I put on my Product person's hat, I can see everything they tell me clearly.

Stripe just does not look or function like a credit card processor. It is nearly impossible for non-engineer folk to grasp - to the point of it not being a viable platform. The almost hermit-like reporting interfaces (the best that can be done is a bunch of paginated tables??), the lack of visibility into how charges break down at an aggregate level (how much do we pay Stripe in fees has to be pulled from a _shudder_ export of all transactions), handling of disputes, no ability to generate monthly statements (for Connect accounts), no direct line access to an account manager etc etc - the list goes on unfortunately.

I love the simplicity, but I can tell you that Stripe is lagging far behind in functionality and ease of platform use for SMB and enterprise SaaS companies (specifically, in our case, a platform/service provider that runs payments for a bunch of small businesses). We're small, but not tiny, and growing - so the noise around the problems we face just keeps amplifying by the day. The moment we crossed a dozen customers and 100-200K in monthly processing, it's as if Stripe just stopped working for us.

Stripe's clearly an extraordinary engineering-driven company, but solving for real business use-cases is key. From the outside, it feels like Stripe is solving all the back-end problems and optimizing it, but doing nothing about the _front-end_ , metaphorically speaking.

I'm now having to get on calls with old-school card processing providers since Stripe just doesn't "scale" for us from a business use-case perspective. It's too catered to the devs.

Hope this falls on the right ear. I'm happy to chat more and provide my 2c of feedback if someone wants to listen.

<comment><USER15> I 100% agree with this. Stripe is fun for startups with <100'000 / year revenue, but then it gets ugly. The reporting can't be configured at all and is highly cumbersome, especially if you need something slightly different than they offer for comparability (e.g. last 7 days, last 28 vs last 30 days), and Stripe is not transparent about their fees at all in the back-end.

<comment><USER16> I'll add my 2c and say I disagree entirely. We ship mid-seven figures through Stripe yearly and I enjoy the back-end still to this day - have been using it right after it was /dev/payments and still kicking all these years on my main small business and small projects alike.

I don't see the need for "reporting" from the Stripe website as I think most businesses should be doing it on their own in their own tooling, but in the cases I want to quickly look things up, Stripe's back-end has been just fine as well.

<comment><USER17> And what is the business case and cost for "we should develop software to fill in the missing features of payment provider x instead of simply going with y"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > One of the things I enjoy most about Stripe's work culture is the notion > that "nothing is Not My Job." I'm very eager to know: If you want to be > successful in such a culture, what mental habits/skills can you develop > which let you know with confidence where to direct your attention?

How did patio11 develop these?

———

EDIT: How do you know that what you are working on is not a distraction?

<comment><USER19> If everything is your job, how can you be measured by what _is_ your job fairly?

<comment><USER20> I don't think that's the point of the statement.

Facebook culture makes a similar statement: "Nothing at Facebook is someone else's problem." I don't take it to mean that you are supposed to be the Atlas of the organization, but rather that when you see problems and issues that might arise, you don't ignore them because it's "not my job" or "not my problem" \- you embrace it, escalate or forward it to the correct people, and then go back to what else you have to do.

This type of thinking stops issues from being buried when they're noticed by someone, even if it's something outside of what they _are_ judged on in their responsibilities (and performance reviews). A good hypothetical example of this is a crash condition you may trigger as an engineer. You might not quite know what is going on but you have a reproducible testcase of a crash condition in someone else's stack, and saying it's not your job means the bug doesn't get fixed or reported. Had you submitted that crash condition and made it temporarily your problem, you could have indirectly helped patch a deserialization bug that could've led to code execution on that tier with a more malicious testcase (i.e. exploit).

In smaller companies, I think everything technical kind of ends up being your job, so your job becomes what you make of it at that moment. Do what needs to be done to ship the thing.

<comment><USER21> >I don't take it to mean that you are supposed to be the Atlas of the organization, but rather that when you see problems and issues that might arise, you don't ignore them because it's "not my job" or "not my problem" \- you embrace it, escalate or forward it to the correct people, and then go back to what else you have to do.

Trying to really educate around this at my workplace.

I call it "throwing your hands up." If you run into a problem, or notice that something isn't working, what-have-you, if you throw your hands up instead of working to fix it, or find the person who should fix it, you are on my shit list.

It's hard to explain this part of ownership. But it's very obvious when you see someone doing it. Their first response is often to say something like "not my job," and they often think that Extreme Ownership or Question Behind the Question mentality covers it, but after it all shakes out in the wash, it's actually the opposite.

Maybe people need to do a better job of explaining ownership up front, or choose different words. IDK

<comment><USER18> > on my shit list

What would you tell a junior engineer who feels so overwhelmed with the tasks he is supposed to be focused on that he decides not to switch task to solving this other thing that may-or-may-not be a real problem?

Also, are the phrases "Extreme Ownership" and "Question Behind the Question" from a US Navy SEAL book by Willink and Babin? Would you generally recommend that book?

<comment><USER22> I'll second the Jocko book recommendation. His podcast is also good. Pick out the QA episodes if you want mostly leadership questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > I also wrote a non-trivial amount of code because, fun fact, stripe.com > spells CMS e-r-b, which didn't optimize for writers' ability to ship new > words

Could someone explain the "CMS e-r-b" joke to me?

<comment><USER24> Their CMS ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system)) is a set of flat ERB ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERuby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERuby)) files, no WordPress etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _The parts of the job which I enjoyed the most were not my actual job > (writing and selling software, filing taxes in a timely fashion, etc) but > helping other software entrepreneurs optimize their businesses or engineers > navigate career challenges._

This bit in the post about the author having previously been a founder of a business intrigued me.

As a founder myself, I know that there are bits of the business that don't fit into my natural skillset but _have_ to be done. That is accepted as part and parcel of running a business.

The second point intrigues me though. In my decades of running my own software business, I have had a _lot_ of staff come through as employees, get skilled up, then leave to start their own businesses using the skills they learned while at my company.

This actually gives me a great deal of pleasure and pride. I LOVE seeing people's career pathways take off, and I love it more if I had contributed in some way.

</comment><comment><USER25> I was in a small company working on payments team as fullstack engineer. Given the big volume, stripe would be too expensive for us. So we built our own credit card processing service. We integrated with FirstData directly. While I was working on payments, I kept following news about stripe. I love their design and appreciate the deep care they put in their product, even the documentation. I like Patrick and John's inspiring stories and love watching their interviews. After 3 years, I was looking for a new opportunity. Stripe is my dream company. I was lucky to get a phone interview. The conversation went fine. The coding problem was easy. But I could tell the interviewer was not impressed. I couldn't figure out what and why. I was depressed when I got the rejection email. I'll definitely want to try again. Anyone advice or suggestions Stripe folks could offer would be greatly appreciated!

<comment><USER26> Did they give a plausible reason for their rejection? I am just interested if the trend for job rejection reasons is moving towards a more transparent model. In the past and present, it is extremely difficult/frustrating to get the real answers for being rejected.

<comment><USER25> They didn't give me any specific reasons. The recruiter called me one day after my video interview. She only told me they didn't think I was a good fit. In the interview, I finished the coding questions in 30 mins. Then I just had a chat with the interviewer. The conversation went fine. He told me he was full-stack eng and worked on frontend. I asked him whether he worked with Benjamin De Cock, a stripe designer I admire and if he could share some stories. He said yes but didn't want to share stories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I like the remote coffee at the end. I'm remote and I want it to feel more like I'm having coffee when I'm talking to people I work with. Any suggestions on how to make remote conversations more like getting a cup of coffee?

<comment><USER28> At Twilio we use Donut. The TLDR is with our configuration every third Monday members of a slack channel (#soc-donut in our case) get randomly paired via DM. I've met people from offices around the world which I wouldn't have done otherwise, which has definitely been of personal and professional benefit to me

[0] [https://www.donut.com/](https://www.donut.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> @patio11 could you elaborate on the internal communications structure at Stripe? I'm curious how employees these days balance the use of different communication tools, especially as Stripe has grown and begun embracing distributed work.

I heard [0] for a long time it was all about long form posts to a massive number of Google Groups mailing lists with custom tooling to manage subscriptions (bc the Groups UI is poor). I understand these lists range from general to hyper specific.

But then I've also heard much of the communication has shifted to Slack or other tools. Slack tends to degrade into chaos at a certain size, and at Stripe's scale I'm curious if this is a big pain point or how you mitigate it.

[https://stripe.com/blog/scaling-email- transparency](https://stripe.com/blog/scaling-email-transparency)

<comment><USER30> I am not patio11, but I do work at Stripe. Both are true; we use a lot of email, typically with lists, and a lot of Slack.

Other tools, like a wiki, an issue tracker, Home[0], and a culture of "run" rotations (like on-call but for helping folks on other teams) help keep chaos manageable.

It might be interesting for us to write up another update on this, since many folks are curious...

[0] [https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-home](https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-home)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> As a Stripe customer processing about USD600K a year through them, I have to say they're an excellent outfit.

Their documentation is very clear. Their email and irc support is smart and responsive, with nary a "I can help you with that today" script recited by an agent to waste my time.

They set and meet expectations about the financial stuff, like how long it takes for transactions to hit the bank, and what happens with disputes and chargebacks and other parts of the world of serving real paying people.

It's not hard to guess that the things in this article are all true.

<comment><USER16> I like a lot of things about Stripe but this is by far the best part:

> Their documentation is very clear.

In a world where no one gives a shit about cleanly documenting processes - especially ones that are versioned or change - I really appreciate Stripe's dedication to this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > (An example which is just a boggling fact about the world: what's your > finger-to-a-wind guesstimate about what percentage of credit card payments > fail with error code I Don't Know Sometimes Things Fail In Credit Card Land? > Hint: it's higher than you think. Those failed payments cost conversions at > the margin. When Stripe fights that number down by a basis point, that > creates value across our entire portfolio, forever.)

I have no idea what the percentage is but I recently had a decline I think may have been from Stripe itself.

A few months back I'd dropped my car off at the shop and tried to Lyft home. I'm a very infrequent Lyft/Uber user. Lyft refused to accept my payment. Tried with two different cards (Chase, AmEx) both directly, via Apple Pay and via PayPal. Couldn't hail a car.

So then I try with Uber. Same thing! Payment rejected, no car for you.

I wrote to both Lyft and Uber customer support. Never heard back from Uber. Lyft claimed my card was denied ("It appears that the card is not working due to a decline from your bank. Because the information we receive about bank declines is very limited, you'll need to reach out to your bank directly for more information as to why the transaction was denied.") I contact both my card companies - they tell me there are no blocks on my card nor anything that would cause the payment to be rejected.

The only thing I could find Lyft/Uber had in common was they both used Stripe.

(But that doesn't explain not being able to pay via Apple Pay/PayPal unless those somehow route through Stripe.)

Never did figure out what it was ("Jay, I had checked and verified that the last four of the card that you have provided is already added on this account. There shouldn't be any issues in requesting for a ride. If you had any issues with your Lyft request. Please kindly send a screen shot so that we will be able to see and rectify the issue.") and haven't had cause to use Lyft/Uber since.

This incident is the only time I can recall payments being rejected like that. I think Chase once temporarily blocked an Internet payment, sent me a notification immediately, I indicated the charge was legitimate, tried again and it went through.

Oh well. (I ended up getting a ride home in the shop's customer service van.)

<comment><USER33> I'd guess half a percent? Can't imagine it being much higher?

<comment><USER34> Bank declines are 10-20% of total card volume, depending on industry.

<comment><USER33> Most of those are going to be straightforward insufficient funds or fraud though, I'd assume?

<comment><USER35> Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with these specific numbers.

Anecdotally I've had my own cards denied because I've reported my card missing and had to get new numbers. This is fairly common from what I've seen, many people I know have had issues because of this (late fees, etc.). Just another case I thought I'd add, as we sufficient funds and it wasn't fraud.

<comment><USER33> If you report your card missing then it's no longer a valid number.

<comment><USER32> Except for recurring payments, at least with AmEx.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is a great post. I already thought highly of Stripe, but knowing a little more about the way people work there makes me all the more impressed.

</comment><comment><USER37> For more insight re. Stripe, [https://fs.blog/2018/05/patrick- collison/](https://fs.blog/2018/05/patrick-collison/) was an excellent Knowledge Project episode talking to CEO & co-founder Patrick Collison.

<comment><USER38> i just discovered the knowledge project this weekend, seems pretty awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > It also felt like it was constraining the absolute amount of impact I had > for the world.

It's refreshing to see people thinking like this. Maximizing impact is undervalued. For instance a lot of companies restrict themselves to one country thus dramatically reducing the maximum impact.

<comment><USER40> Due to differences in regulation I would expect there to be instances where focusing on one country would have more of an impact than spreading your resources over multiple jurisdictions. I would even guess that this is true for most companies below a certain scale. Reduction/standardisation of regulation should reduce the value of scale for which this is true, though other factors such as geography would still play a role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This was such a good read. I am going to try that Remote Coffee tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER42> After reading all of that and thinking "Stripe sounds like a really cool place to work", I'm a bit disappointed that they don't have an office in my country and "remote" means "remote in North America".

Oh well, I'll keep working with them to build cool stuff for my clients :-)

<comment><USER43> They probably have laws restricting access to their credit card says. Possibly hiring or contractual with Enterprise

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> For anyone else wondering what Stripe Atlas is,

> Stripe Atlas, a seamless way to start your company in the U.S.

Apparently it's a filing-paperwork-etc-as-a-service

</comment><comment><USER45> File this blog post under "Humble Brag"

</comment><comment><USER46> Are there a lot of remote workers at Stripe or is Patrick an exception to the rule?

<comment><USER47> There are many (tens of percent of engineering, etc); we are taking steps to materially increase the number.

<comment><USER48> I checked out the list of remote engineering jobs after reading your (fascinating) article but unfortunately they all seem to be restricted to North America. Is this a time zone issue or a legal issue? Are there plans to expand remote jobs to other regions (like Europe)?

<comment><USER47> As time goes to infinity we plan on having Stripes building products very close to as many of our customers as possible, which is (much) more widely distributed than the status quo, which is (much) more widely distributed than open recs on any given Monday. There will be more on this subject coming later.

<comment><USER39> I'm not sure what open recs means in this context:

\- open requirements

\- open recommendations

\- open requisites

\- open offers

I'm not really expecting an answer so I asked on stackexchange: [https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/490404/what- does...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/490404/what-does-open- recs-means)

<comment><USER47> It's industry jargon for "each allocation for a single person which appears on a planned set of hires."

<comment><USER39> Thanks a lot!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> So, are you ever going to open source stockfighter?

</comment><comment><USER50> Definitely not my favorite credit card processor. For starters, I will not earn any money if I refer my customers to stripe. It's already a non-starter at that point.

<comment><USER7> I'm a Stripe employee & would like to know more about your POV here.

What other processors pay you for referring your customers, and whom are your customers?

Very curious. Since processing is a low-margin business, it's really rare to see referral bonuses, especially the type you're describing. If we do have room to open up a program like this, I could mention it internally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This may seem petty but as a former designer, Stripes logo not really having a stripe in it has always really bothered me.

Like... how could they not try harder to make that a focus of their branding?

<comment><USER52> Amazon doesn't have a river in their logo.

<comment><USER53> Well actually... [https://www.freelogodesign.org/blog/2018/09/10/the-amazon- lo...](https://www.freelogodesign.org/blog/2018/09/10/the-amazon-logo-story)

<comment><USER27> That has an interesting error in it:

"This is a good example of why it is import to have a logo that is versatile."

I wonder if the author was considering using the phrase "of import" [1] and decided to be less clever.

1: [https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/import](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/import) third definition, _import noun (IMPORTANCE)_</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why the tech press is ignoring Zulily's huge IPO - <AUTHOR> http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/11/14/why-the-tech-press-is-ignoring-zulily-ipo?f <comment><USER2> I'm a tech writer, with a child, and wouldn't write about this. It's a really cool story and a neat company, but it's got a few things working against it:

\+ Small Audience — Most tech writers get paid by the pageview. The realistic market of readers for this kind of story is probably in the hundreds, maybe low thousands. My wife loves the site, but wouldn't give a fig about the financials. There's a market for investors or competitive intelligence, but it's a very different kind of business.

\+ Bad Timing — If this happened in the midst of the Groupon craze you'd be reading all about it. Now that "Daily Deals" have become an elephant's graveyard of broken dreams and wasted billions it's not that interesting in a meta context.

\+ What's the Hook? — It's a big number, but a "boring" business. A company called Wayfair in Boston is in a similar spot. They're a massive ecommerce company dealing in home goods, but you've probably never heard of them. They have nice offices, but not crazy ones. They use a logical, but unexciting tech stack. Which would you rather read:

\- Seasoned entrepreneurs utilize proven business fundamentals to build niche ecommerce website with steadily growing, but modest profits?

or:

\- 6 Unbelievable Tech Tricks these College Students Used to Get a $4B Buyout Offer from Facebook in 18 months!

<comment><USER3> I met Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian at a book signing recently. Alexis mentioned that Digg was all the rage in the press when Reddit was on the rise. I understand you saying that this company has a small audience, bad timing, and an insufficient hook. However, it seems that experts often make the same mistake over and over again. As Nassim Taleb would say, tech journalists appear to be Fooled by Randomness. They latch on to the Snapchats of the world and refuse to explore the hidden gems because they don't fit into the trendy, flashy mold.

<comment><USER4> There is more US IPO activity going on right now than makes the headlines. You really have to subscribe to an IPO specific news source or blog.

Take this with a grain of salt, I haven't read the S-1 and I don't know much about Zulily.

However, they have shown up as a top US display advertisers going back a year or more. Groupon was in the same spot, buying up massive quantities of inventory to fuel their growth. Before buying in take a close look at how much of their growth is purchased, along with the retention of those purchased users.

Other recent IPOs, like Retailmenot, have even deeper issues (almost complete dependency on free traffic from Google for trademark company names.)

<comment><USER5> Yep, Chegg is Valley-based tech-driven non-parent company, but coverage of the IPO was pretty much amiss from the tech blogs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm shocked this even made it on hacker news.

Here's a market selection tip: find a problem not experienced by mid 20s single men in urban centers and your competition drops by about two orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER7> Competition may drop among tech startups, but you quickly enter the world of heavyweight long-standing businesses who have the capital and marketshare to stomp you out.

Not many startup 20-something CEO's are worried about competition when launching a new mobile app hatched in a weekend bender but sell something more traditional and essential like kids clothing and you'll spend sleepless nights worrying about Wal-Mart and other established providers who could and (prob) will squash you.

<comment><USER6> I'll take Walmart as a competitor over 20 20 something CEOs hacking on Ramen. Walmart might have scale and cost advantages, but their advantages are bounded by physical reality. 20 somehing ramen fueled work for zero, or possibly less than zero if mom and dad are still helping out.

Against Walmart I can use judo business strategy. 20 something's use judo against each other.

<comment><USER8> Judo business strategy...what? You're telling me that you that motivation is a bigger asset to a few 20 year olds than all of the scale, capital and business experience of Walmart, and therefore you'd rather compete against Walmart? Do you think Walmart became the dominant business it is today by just sitting around and not competing (and winning)?

Sorry, but I have to disagree. Capital, economies of scale, strong management, etc. -- these things are very real advantages and matter to the viability of a business. I'm not saying it's impossible to compete with entrenched businesses, but don't think for a second they're not able to compete right back because they don't have "judo business strategy."

<comment><USER6> [http://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/judo-business- strategy.a...](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/judo-business-strategy.asp)

[http://judoinfo.com/pdf/business.pdf](http://judoinfo.com/pdf/business.pdf)

Judo strategy is when you go up against a larger opponent and use their size to your advantage. It's an easy term to google.

Judo strategy is employed most famously when you price to capture a fraction of the market such that their cost to win those customers back by lowering their prices would have a higher cannibalization cost to existing customers than the benefit of getting the lost customers back. Price is just one of the ways to use a judo strategy, but it is the easiest to understand.

I'm telling you that 20 year olds often have zero opportunity cost, zero holding cost, and zero living cost. Because they exist in a "pre-adult" state, they are scary to compete against because they often can act irrationally for long periods of time with no repercussions.

If there is an opportunity, I'd rather go up against a large multinational company who will almost always act rationally but inefficiently than a field of likely to be irrational opponents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Simplistic answer, "They aren't hackers, they are business people."

I've noticed a strong inverse correlation between people building businesses with expected business practice, and the "tech" press. What Zulily is doing is not a disruptive technology, it is (potentially a disruptive business practice).

It is easy to forget when reading inside the tech 'sphere' that there are lots of things that have to get done everyday by businesses, and those processes can be improved or made more efficient with technology. The closest one I've seen here was 42floors which is trying to disrupt the commercial real estate market, but it isn't a "tech" play, it is a business practices play.

Creating a way to share a moment in time, an instant, right now while preserving that feeling of "instantness" _that_ is a tech play. Eventually, perhaps after this second burst of activity, tech will be just as boring and all the cool kids will be doing bio stuff or space or something.

<comment><USER10> > What Zulily is doing is not a disruptive technology, it is (potentially a > disruptive business practice).

You can say the same for Uber, but they get the standard tech coverage, unlike Zulily.

<comment><USER9> The key to Uber though was technology, a smart phone app that replaced both the hailing of a cab and the paying of the cab. It wasn't "just another hire car service".

As an example; If Zulily was using a web cam to snap pictures of your kid and send the clothes back pre-fit? That would be a technology angle.

<comment><USER11> No, its because people in SV use Uber.

<comment><USER12> Uber's go-to-market product incorporated a distributed brute-force attack against one of the Traveling Salesman's cousin problems – they're a tech for that reason alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes, the narrative around Zulily is a lot less theatrical, so it makes worse news. A true story about the Blue Nile team capturing another retail niche is great, but two 24 year olds turning down $3 billion for a thing that takes temporary pictures? Better.

Do market fundamentals make good stories? Maybe. A lot of things grow and make a profit. If growth, profit and speed qualified you for coverage, we'd be reading about hedge funds, not retail firms (let alone social media software firms).

The Blue Nile team isn't ignored because they're in Seattle or they're old though. Valve is in Seattle and has plenty of old people, and they do exciting things people write about all the time. The difference is maternity clothes versus video games. Flash sales versus sexting.

Surely the fundamentals of what the company does can affect its coverage. So forgive people for not finding clothing flash sales terribly exciting.

I still want to hear more about the Blue Nile founders' stories. Gilt (which has a similar concept to Zulily) got tons of coverage as much for brand name clothes as for being run by two brilliant women. Maybe they just need to get out there. Or do nothing, because they got their IPO anyway.

<comment><USER14> It's not the Zulily team who are missing out for lack of coverage, it's the rest of us who are still trying to build profitable businesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What do these have in common: Criteo, Cvent, Benefitfocus, and Veeva Systems

They're all recent tech IPOs (last few weeks). They don't get a lot of coverage in Techcrunch, etc. because that's not what they cover. If you want more comprehensive coverage try something like VentureWire.

<comment><USER16> > What do these have in common: Criteo, Cvent, Benefitfocus, and Veeva Systems

You didn't give us enough time to answer! I was gonna guess it's that they all look like typos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> While I wouldn't call mainstream reporting a whole lot _better_ than the tech press, their biases are certainly _different._ Unfortunately, the goals are the same.

CNN wants to pull in as many visitors/viewers as possible by reporting skewed and sensationalist versions of all of the horrible, embarrassing, and disastrous things that happen to everyone, everywhere. That this means filtering out a whole lot of interesting but non-controversial things and regurgitating news, lies, and exaggerations constantly really doesn't matter.

The tech press wants to pull in as many visitors/viewers as possible by reporting skewed and sensationalist versions of all the hype, rumors, and scandals that happen to anyone under 25 in stereotypical tech hubs. That this means filtering out a whole lot of interesting but non-controversial things and regurgitating news, lies, and exaggerations constantly really doesn't matter.

It's easy to make fun of the other guy when you're doing exactly the same thing in a different field. Personally, I find it efficient to largely ignore both of them.

</comment><comment><USER18> Veeva Systems is another that flew under the radar. B2B Life Sciences software company that raised $4M five years ago from Emergence Capital - a stake which was worth $1.2B at the time of their IPO in October.(1)

Good on Dan Primack to shed some light on the "boring" side of VC.

(1) [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-16/veeva-ipo- generates...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-16/veeva-ipo- generates-300-fold-return-for-emergence-capital-1-.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> As a parent and old man, I still have no idea what value SnapChat or Twitter have. Zulily is something I use regularly.

<comment><USER20> I'm 30, and was explaining what SnapChat is to my 33 year old co-worker while our 22 year old co-worker was listening and chuckling.

It was then I realized we were old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My theory on this has been for a while. Not just for coverage, but for the lack of "Older people problems" startups. It's not just they don't get coverage, it is a miracle they are being founded in the first place.

I think it's because young people try to solve (most of the times) young people's problems (music, dating, photos, food delivery, code and technology tools, movies, social activity, even taxi riding, most people with kids buy a van and move to the suburbs). Young people also tend to have a slightly bit more free time, and are more likely to share things they use and like. And I don't mean only teens, I also include professional, smart, rich, educated 25 years old who work in a startup, or own a company, or sold one, or had stocks in one and now are millionaires, and even become VCs, mentoring and helping other startups.

There are billions of dollars on the table that "Old people" companies are taking. Look at all the boring enterprise Java jobs out there, these people are selling stuff. to other companies you haven't heard of, solving business problems you haven't encountered and perhaps never will if you are a 25 years old hacker, because you will never want to go work for these companies.

Older people work there, and even if they have a great idea for a startup they are much less likely to do it.

1) health insurance - prime reason. older people tend to have kids, or in the making. Unless they have some savings, they can't risk losing their health insurance.

2) family, yes, there are successful founders with kids, but it is much easier to start a company when you don't have any. how many people with families move to SF for 3 months for YC and leave their kids and spouse at hime?

3) age bias. VCs look at older people like this - if you had what it takes, why did you get a boring Java job for 10 years till you decided to jump into the water?

4) Enterprise sales is hard. it takes sometimes 2 years of a sales cycle to close a deal. but when you do it can be a 7 figure deal easily.

5) What the article said about young tech writers, I agree

<comment><USER22> Exactly - Enterprise Software is still a largely untapped area of significant opportunity precisely because it gets little attention from VC, startup folks, and the tech press. That's where the opportunity is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Being based in Seattle shouldn't particularly hurt it, as Amazon is nearby. But yes, I'll be one of the first to admit that I had never heard of it until this morning when the NYT homepage had a very, very brief item on it. I hope it really is the "old people" thing...those with experience and failures in their past can still continue to reap up money while the young'uns try to fake out the world.

It's probably a two-way-street kind of thing, though...perhaps it's not just the press who ignores them because of the lack of Stanford-dropout-angle, but the older entrepreneurs don't seek the press out as much, especially when already making profits.

</comment><comment><USER24> Amusingly, searching for "zulily" on Google Finance gets no results. Even when I go directly to "ZU" I can't seem to get a chart.

[https://www.google.ca/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AZU&ei=RWmGUrC8OqKCs...](https://www.google.ca/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AZU&ei=RWmGUrC8OqKCsgeY6QE)

<comment><USER25> Even more interesting, because Twitter (TWTR) was on Google Finance the night BEFORE the IPO!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The more practical a startup, the less 'sexy' it is; and vice versa.

<comment><USER27> Maybe it's that this is really hardly a startup -- it's a solid company that just happens to have a web presence as its main outlet to customers?

<comment><USER28> Launched with a Series A in 2009, has taken 3 up rounds of funding in the years since, now files for an IPO in 2013, exactly 4 years later. Not only is this a textbook VC-funded startup, it's pretty much a perfect illustration of the ideal trajectory and timeline for a VC-funded startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The Seattle dig is just plain lazy. Aside from the obvious established tech names, there are a ton of smaller tech firms, startups, etc.. and even some immensely successful recent IPOs with solid tech-rag coverage. :-P

<comment><USER30> To be fair, the dig was on the tech press not focusing on Seattle and being Silicon Valley-focused, not on a lack of tech in Seattle, which is certainly not true :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting, never heard of zulily before.

Found their register-to-view website off-putting. Removed the overlay and discovered they have a UK site (no IP/geolocation sniffing?) .. UK site was broken (none of the akamai resources loaded) and appears to be hosted on tumblr (zulilyuk.tumblr.com)??

</comment><comment><USER30> It's a daily deals / affiliate marketing / e-commerce site... why _would_ that be tech news? Twitter's IPO was newsworthy for being the "second largest in history for a US internet company."[1]

[1] [http://qz.com/145227/final-tally-twitters-ipo-was-bigger- tha...](http://qz.com/145227/final-tally-twitters-ipo-was-bigger-than-googles- raising-2-1-billion/)

<comment><USER32> its not tech news. Its a link bait for techies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I personally had never heard of zulily (not that it means anything) but i just decided to view their website and Horrors!! .They have this pop-up that wants my email _before_ it will let me view the site. No sir, you cannot kill that pop-up (at least as a everyday non-tech user) WTF. seriously ? Rant aside though, I would consider zulily for my kid because we are always shopping for kids as parents.

</comment><comment><USER34> This makes me think about my own hard time attracting coverage.

My startup make educational games and applications for kids, that are actually fun (instead of just educational and terribly boring, or entertaining but teaches lots of bad stuff).

Yet... even when I want to tell a journalist to cover us, I don't find a reason to do so... I mean, what we are doing is not sexy, also we don't have famous VC with us, also we did not went to YC (and won't go, the CEO has wife and very little kids and cannot move away for 3 months), we don't know in person anyone famous, we had no crazy or surprising funding, our product despite being novelty in the sense that everyone else go pure entertainment or pure educational is still not much "disrupting", it is just something we found a demand and no offer and decided to offer.

I even met recently the editor of the largest brazillian tech magazine... And I had some small talk with her, but I found no reason whatsoever to give to her to cover us, and it is not that we are unknown, because she uses our products and love them, it is just that... :/

<comment><USER35> If your product is for kids, you may decide there's no point in trying to get "tech press" coverage anyway.

If you want users, go after mom bloggers. They are the ones that will buy your product if it's good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Snapchat: I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself.

Look what I did to the tech media with a few snaps and a Colbert Report appearance? Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan."

Even if the plan is shareholder rewarding! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a maternity clothing e-commerce site goes public, or IBM buys a Blue Bell, PA based mobile device management company, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan".

But when I say that a two-year old, non-profitable messaging company run by 23 year-olds is going to refuse a $3 billion offer from Facebook, well then everyone loses their minds! [Snapchat hands HackerNews an upvote and points it at himself]

Snapchat: Introduce a little disruption. Disrupt the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about disruption? It's fair!

[http://vimeo.com/69674685](http://vimeo.com/69674685)

</comment><comment><USER37> So...people got scooped by CNN? _CNN_?

Wow, goddamn folks.

<comment><USER38> A hastily thrown together blog post really doesn't count as a scoop. As much as the author is patting his back over this story that the ESTABLISHMENT TECH PRESS doesn't want you to know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does "e-commerce" even qualify as "tech" anymore? Seems to me in 2013 there's nothing special about most e-commerce technology; it's more commerce/retail, and I'd opine that's why the tech press ignores it for the most part.

<comment><USER26> In that case, does Snapchat qualify in any way whatsoever? There are at least some technologically-interesting challenges in building large scale e-commerce, but there's nothing special about limited-functionality mobile app technology, in 2013 everyone knows how to do that and it's just more about socialization habits than technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Well, maybe they haven't heard of it. I read HN daily and this is the first time I've heard of it. Even if they have, its not exactly in the same league as Twitter and Facebook (speaking solely in terms of popularity and brand recognition.)

<comment><USER41> Asking 'why doesn't the press cover x' is not really satisfactorily answered by 'maybe they haven't heard of it'. It's their _job_ to hear of things.

<comment><USER40> Well if we're talking about what journalism's job is, there is a near-infinite number of things that they could be covering that are way more important than anyone's IPO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's worth noting that the tech press posted about the _filing_ of the IPO, but not the IPO itself.

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/08/flash-sales-site-for- moms-z...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/08/flash-sales-site-for-moms-zulily- files-for-100m-ipo/)

[http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/08/flash-sales-for-moms- site-...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/08/flash-sales-for-moms-site-zulily- files-for-100m-ipo/)

<comment><USER43> TechCrunch now has a mention of the IPO: [http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/15/zulily-shares- pop-82-above-...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/15/zulily-shares-pop-82-above- ipo-price/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The tech press is a circus. In Hollywood, there are two films that ever matter. The one that had the lowest budget made by kids. And the one that had the largest budget. Anything else is not a story. Same with Silicon Valley. You have to be a 2.0 change the world company by 20-somethings. It also helps if you have no business plan, lots of eyeballs, and a massive valuation. Slow growth, solving an actual need of a market, with rational actors all around? Boring.

</comment><comment><USER45> "Why the tech press is ignoring Zulily's huge IPO"

Separate issue is that one way to get pageviews after (or in this case before) a story is by doing a story on why the press is doing the wrong thing.

The story about the story in other words.

Happens more often after some big event gets all played out in the media, the milking is done, no more for the talking head on tv, then the media starts to question the coverage of the big event and what was done wrong and why so much attention was paid to it.

</comment><comment><USER32> Isn't this just an another Groupon for kid stuff?

Tech reporters may not have kids, but they certainly have their fingers burnt after salivating about the Groupon IPO

<comment><USER46> No, these aren't coupons you use somewhere else. Zulily sells the goods and focuses on stuff for kids and mothers. Also, they seem to pick quality stuff, not just anyone trying offload crap like some other flash sites. My wife uses Zulily all the time and really likes it.

Hopefully this IPO will enable them to ship stuff quicker though, that's the only major complaint about Zulily from everyone I know who uses it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's nice to see fellow Seattleites growing a real business here. The more success stories happen in Seattle, the more confident the new founders and investors will be. Giving up is too easy when you think everyone else already did.

On that note, I encourage everyone with startup aspirations to hang out in one of the coworking spaces or incubators, like HUB or SURF (which I'm posting from).

</comment><comment><USER47> Maybe writers are staying away because the efficacy of the business model at scale is in question. I think some observers are still (justifiably or not) self-aware of how they think the story ends with these kinds of companies.

On Twitter, Primack brought up Fab as an example of this kind of company generating news. But the only news I've heard about Fab lately is bad news.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have seen a few articles about the announcement of the IPO, but no mention of it today. For what it's worth, I think Zulily is a great site and very useful if you have kids. Maybe flash sale sites are just old news and this one isn't breaking any new ground in that respect, so the company isn't as big of a tech news story.

</comment><comment><USER49> This is the moment where "ecommerce" stopped being "tech". Just like using electricity, or the telephone is no longer tech. Remember those fancy companies that use the new running-water system? Me neither. That was once tech, but not any more.

</comment><comment><USER50> Ecommerce is not tech, it's retail. So ya, boring.

Amazon is a huge retailer who just happens to have very innovative tech offerings. They also compete directly with big tech companies. That's the difference.

</comment><comment><USER51> Daily deals were really hot in 2009 and 2010.

By late 2011, the business model was considered "dying" and the tech press moved on.

</comment><comment><USER38> how is this better "tech press"?

only one intrepid reporter was brave enough to create a barely 6 paragraph article long on opinion but short on facts.

yes, everyone who didn't throw up a blog post within an hour must believe amazon is in palo alto, have never gone to seattle, and the seattle area does not have a tech scene worth mentioning.

</comment><comment><USER52> "because news are entertainment, not news" news^H^H^H^H entertainment at 11.

Thought everyone knew that by now.

</comment><comment><USER53> It's classic, but boring, PR spin.

</comment><comment><USER54> Is not terribly exciting,or innovative.... It's another incarnation of groupon typed on a niche market. Sorry for being negative, but another shopping site, yeehaa, just what the world needs.... :-(

<comment><USER55> As opposed to another photo app?!

<comment><USER54> As opposed to something that advances humanity. Not another McMarketing engine. How about innovative in a new way that transcends the current freeze,that solves some serious issues that really need solved. Not willingly signing up to be spammed, not overtly consumerist. Think Eudaimonia!

You did ask!

<comment><USER55> I'm all for that, it's just that the tech press doesn't really cover companies that fit that description.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Xenophobia and Elitism in the SysAdmin Community - <AUTHOR> http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2010/08/xenophobia-and-elitism-in-the-community/

<comment><USER3> You'll find that a _professional_ sysadmin (or DBA, or network engineer) is technologically conservative for the simple reason that he or she is personally responsible for uptime, and gets paged at 3am when there's a problem, and more than likely uptime is a metric that feeds into their bonus calculation.

That's not fear of change. It's the experience to step beyond the technnology and see the bigger picture. The company's systems aren't a playground, they are the machinery of production. Proven technology, even if it's "obsolete" according to the blogosphere, rules in this world. Calling such people names just betrays inexperience.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand why you think the article is against conservatism or even advocating using the latest fad. I read it as saying that Solaris sysadmins tend to disregard the tools and methods of Linux sysadmins (as a possible concrete example; I'm making it up on the spot, because the article doesn't give any concrete examples of the sort)

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Additionally, most sysadmin work in first-world countries these days is infrastructure programming - first and second line support is inevitably handled offshore.

Writing a 20 line Perl script to do 'date -I' or not wishing to learn a new language to simplify sharing of code because it's been 15 years since you last learnt a new language isn't conservatism, it's fear of the unknown.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> xenophobia |ˌzēnəˈfōbēə; ˌzenə-| noun intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries : racism and xenophobia are steadily growing in Europe. DERIVATIVES xenophobe |ˈzēnəˌfōb; ˈzenə-| |ˈzinəˈfoʊb| |ˈzɛnəˈfoʊb| noun xenophobic |-ˈfōbik| |ˈzinəˈfoʊbɪk| |ˈzɛnəˈfoʊbɪk| adjective

The subject of the article was not what I expected.

<comment><USER4> You should have looked in some more dictionaries. That definition is too strict.

Merrian-Webster:

      fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything
      that is strange or foreign

Dictionary.com:

      an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers
      or of that which is foreign or strange.

Yourdictionary.com:

      fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything
      foreign or strange

Cambridge Advanced Learners dictionary:

      extreme dislike or fear of foreigners, their customs,
      their religions, etc.

<comment><USER7> No, it's just descriptivist trash and proper use of the language.

More like, should've looked it up in the dictionary and found _neophobia_.

Intellectual laziness is not just cause for using words improperly.

<comment><USER4> _Neophobia_ is not the correct word to use, because it's not necessarily about _new_ things. Not even about things new to a specific person. Some BSD admin may irrationally and violently dislike Linux variants of his tools.

It's always nice to have a proper word available, but sometimes it just doesn't exist. If you can think of a clear, succinct description to replace 'a xenophobic attitude' when you want to say someone is irrationally negative about something and you think it's because of the unfamiliarity of the thing, then I'm listening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I get these might lead to bad things, but it is also a very useful tool - <USER2> can discard a lot of ideas this way without having to examine them in detail (which takes far too much time) and you loose very little.

As for elitism, I never had much issue with that - who would you rather get advice from - Kissinger or Sara Palin?</comment>


Nordic Power Whale Booted Off Exchange After $117M Loss - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-13/trader-gets-expelled-from-nasdaq-power-market-after-defaulting <comment><USER2> Nordic Power Whale is also an awesome name for a metal band.</comment>


Bootstrapping trust in compilers - <AUTHOR> https://www.owlfolio.org/research/bootstrapping-trust-in-compilers/ <comment><USER2> Trust is certainly one of the issues when languages migrate to requiring themselves to bootstrap.

However, by far the most infuriating (and one I run into frequently in my line of work, hence the anger) is when you are trying to get the language running on a platform for which binary bootstraps do not yet exist.

Portability matters. If you want your language to be useful and available to as many people as possible, why would you seek to artificially limit the number of platforms it can be built on, just so you can avoid writing the bootstrap in C? I'm sure there is some amount of pride on the part of the language author when their language can bootstrap itself, but it certainly isn't a pragmatic decision.

It's especially frustrating when the bootstrap requirement itself changes so that only very recent versions of the language are sufficient (e.g. GHC), leaving the porter to have to reach back into the archives and carefully plot a path through building multiple versions from the original C-based bootstrap until they finally get to master.

This is painful, painful work, and then has to be done all over again for e.g. 32-bit vs 64-bit. It doesn't have to be like this.

<comment><USER3> Pardon my ignorance, but why is cross-compilation not an option in this case?

<comment><USER4> It is and that's how it's done. The rant you replied to was just uninformed.

<comment><USER5> Typically, yes. My method is for high trustworthiness but people merely concerned with reliability can do this. Got a tool that you've used to successfully make your other tools? Use it on the next tool. Crazy idea, eh?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I described how to handle this and trustworthy compilers in general here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182282)

My replies to "jeffreyrogers" have details and links to examples. You do it bottom-up. I disagree with using Forth as it's a weird language & that reduces number of people that will verify it. One would be better off with P-code given it was successfully used to get Pascal on 70 or so architectures. Wirth and Jurg later used the same approach in Lilith workstation with M-code and Modula-2. They were able to put together a CPU, high-level assembler (M-code), high-level language, compiler, OS, editor, and so on in around 2 years by keeping it simple and consistent. Something like that which maps to what people already know and do.

So, again, here's your model:

1\. Portable stack or register VM that's ultra-simple plus similar to language targeting it.

2\. Implementations of that diversified by authors, OS's, and HW.

3\. Subset of language (or simple HLL like Modula-2) coded in whatever you need to get initial compiler working.

4\. That same compiler re-coded in language of trusted VM and run on all targets to ensure same results (equivalence checks).

5\. Use that binary to produce an executable from compiler's HLL source and equivalence check again.

Note: Did I word 5 less confusing than most people do at this point? I put effort into avoiding "compile the compiler with compiler etc." ;)

6\. Use the binary from No 5 to compile future versions of the compiler written in a subset of its own language. Should continue using a subset for easier understanding and correctness. Check language features with testing suite and sample applications instead of with overly complicated compiler.

So, there you go. Easy stuff already proven by Wirth et al. Not worth another 100 write-ups. Just use what we know. The real problem worth lots of discussion and investigation is certified, secure/robust compilation. _That_ is a difficult problem open to investigation with new, interesting results each year. Bootstrapping compilers for masses? That's so 1971. ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> I highly recommend this writeup of someone bootstrapping half a language from raw hexadecimal upwards:

[http://homepage.ntlworld.com/edmund.grimley- evans/bcompiler....](http://homepage.ntlworld.com/edmund.grimley- evans/bcompiler.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is one of the discussions we had at the Reproducible Builds Summit last week: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix- devel/2015-12/msg001...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix- devel/2015-12/msg00107.html) .

In GNU Guix, we don't go as far as the author suggests (starting from a FORTH- like VM, then building a small Lisp, etc.), but we've been thinking about going in that direction: We already have Guile Scheme at the bottom, with which we can implement a range of tools, ranging from HTTP/FTP clients to ELF parsers, and more. We could imagine having (possibly feature-limited) variants of some of the bootstrap tools, written in Scheme, for the purpose of building the "real" tools.

Our current bootstrap looks like this: [https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Bootstrap...](https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Bootstrapping.html) .

</comment><comment><USER8> Obligatory reference to previous HN discussion of Reflections on Trusting Trust by Ken Thompson [1].

I'd be interested in any war stories or links to compilers verified with things like: Cryptol [2], Coq [3] or Idris [4].

I've seen Cryptol prove equivalence for cryptographic algorithms written in C and Java. Would love to learn more about how this approach can or can't be applied to compilers.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2642486](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2642486)

2\. [http://www.cryptol.net/](http://www.cryptol.net/)

3\. [https://coq.inria.fr/](https://coq.inria.fr/)

4\. [http://www.idris-lang.org/](http://www.idris-lang.org/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I enjoyed this slightly snarky response to this general issue on Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2tdsev/compilers_with...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2tdsev/compilers_with_backdoors/cp91cep)

Regardless, this is one of the reasons that I'd really like to have a second Rust implementation exist.

</comment><comment><USER10> The trouble with KTH is that somebody could go through all of this song and dance, and it still wouldn't mean a thing because how do you trust them?

<comment><USER11> You don't trust them. The result of this endeavor is not a trustworthy compiler, the result is a procedure to generate one. Every step in the procedure can and should be verified independently. What this buys you is a procedure that produces a trustworthy compiler given your initial environment is trustworthy. The latter still being an issue of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here is also a very interesting talk about reproducible builds and trusting compilers given at the Chaos Communication Congress: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pAen7beYNc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pAen7beYNc)

They also talk about using multiple and very old compilers to bootstrap trust.

</comment><comment><USER13> A point made at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6360232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6360232) is that it suffices to use an older compiler and system, assuming that the newer one was developed independently.

</comment><comment><USER14> Given that today hardware is cheap and fast, why are we still using compiled languages?

Plus using languages that requires source code at runtime help lower the barrier for newcomers.

<comment><USER15> By all means use Python if that's what you prefer! But it doesn't solve the problem discussed in the article: what if the Python binary has been compromised?

<comment><USER14> Yep I agree. I was talking about compiled _high-level_ languages.</comment></comment></comment>


"…encourage your users to enter stronger passwords." - <AUTHOR> http://www.nakedpassword.com/

<comment><USER2> Personally I love it, however I will never ever be able to employ it on our company website.

However, the concept of incentivizing the password entry field has inspired me. Instead of something risqué like nudity, how about offering a coupon off your first order (works for a commerce or service based site). Ie, as they type, gradually increase a % from 1 to 5 (or higher, what ever you're willing to offer).

IE, a progression like:

      |asdf      |
      |asdf12    | %1 off first order coupon
      |asdf12KL  | %2 off first order coupon
      |asdf12KL.!| %5 off first order coupon

<comment><USER3> And when your database is out in the wild, it'll let crackers know exactly which passwords to go after first, and which ones not to bother with!

<comment><USER2> What now?

You're statement is a little confusing. All our passwords are munged with encryption, they all look like hash garbage. How could they differentiate?

My only guess is that perhaps you've interpreted my comment as a database entry, rather than a UI progression--and you think that "%1 off coupon" is stored with the login table. That clearly wasn't what I was saying--thats a poor design. I'm saying simply offer a coupon code to users if their password validates certain levels of difficulty. It doesn't need to be tied to the account in anyway.

Also, I think that at the point of my database being in the wild, I'd think hackers will be less focusing on cracking a stored password and more interested in trying to restore the encrypted payment details?

<comment><USER4> If your database is in the wild and you give a discount based on password strength they could look at the first order for each account and start working on the hashes associated with the smallest discounts first knowing those would be the weakest passwords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> clothed to naked with just "1!aAA" :|

What is with HN recently? I just do not understand why the uber-creep factor is out in force.

Even if the image set is replaceable and you dont' have to use a naked lady, that is the default demo, and the stated objective of the site is Strong Password == Naked Lady.

Aside from the blatant sexist targeting, this is trying to take advantage of entirely the wrong impulse. Associating a strong password with the human drive for porn doesn't actually encourage any better understanding of strong passwords or why they should be used.

If this were to be something like 'pwnyourpassword', and demonstrate how easy it'd be to crack your password w/ a dictionary attack, then this wouldn't be either as exploitative or crass.

Instead, the mechanism is, lets distribute pixel art of naked ladies to incentivize instead of teaching/demonstrating.

Yeah, that's the society i want to live in. :|

<comment><USER6> _What is with HN recently? I just do not understand why the uber-creep factor is out in force._

and yet:

 _clothed to naked with just "1!aAA" :|_

so you clearly spent some time trying to get it to display the naked lady even after you knew what it was. creep.

<comment><USER5> /me laughs

Oh yes, there's a lovely false equivalency.

Figuring out what the mechanism for identifying strong passwords is != coding and posting the tool above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A sense of humour bypass alert applies to these comments:

I'm afraid I found this a bit confusing -- my initial thought was that more nakedness might be associated with vulnerability/exposure, and therefore indicate password _weakness_.

And aside from any sexism, making strong passwords NSFW might not have the desired effect.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is cute, but personally, I've never been a fan of password character requirements. Laissez-faire, and all that...the Internet has no business telling me how to secure my profiles!

<comment><USER9> I agree, and I really hate it when sites require specific formats for passwords. However this is just a password strength meter (even if it's a poor one) and not forcing anything on the user.

<comment><USER10> Yes... I object to password strength meters that do not accurately gauge a password's strength but prevent you from entering the password of your choice. For example, isn't "I agree, and I really hate it when sites require specific formats for passwords." an amazingly strong password? Instant failure at many places for not having a single digit in it. Ridiculous. If I made sure it was completely lowercase, it would fail at a lot of other places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Handling of special characters could use some improvement. For instance, "Hello" (no quotes) has her in her underwear, but with "<H;>/", she still has pants on. That said, this site is more about the presentation than the algorithmic implementation; I'm sure someone will fork her on GitHub and teach her to keep her clothes on longer.

</comment><comment><USER12> Strength algorithm could use a bit of work, considering pixelbabe took her shirt off for the password "password".

<comment><USER13> Why write all that when you can get the shirt off with just "1", or any single digit ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It assumes all your users want to see naked ladies.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I'd much rather it revealed progressively more of an interesting algorithm implemented in C.

<comment><USER16> Thomas runs into George at the coffee shop. "Wow!" George says, "Wait 'til you hear what happened to me this morning. I was sitting here managing my adword spend when I noticed a babe giving me the eye. Webmistress type, you know, Macbook Air, deerstalker cap, and an 'I lost friends on the Death Star' tee shirt stretched over an impressive pair of melons."

Thomas nods.

"She gets up, grabs the bathroom key, and heads into the disabled/family bathroom. The one where you can get a lot of privacy. I use it to check on my Ashley Madison afilliate income. Anyhow, she stops at the door and gives me an unmistakable look. So I slip my laptop into my bag and follow her in."

Thomas licks his lips. George continues.

"The door closes. She pulls her shirt up over her head and I can see her breasts are bursting out of a lacy bra. She looks me straight in the eye and says the magic words: 'Take what you want.' So I did."

Thomas whistles in appreciation. "Good choice, the tee shirt was probably too small. So, have you got Parallels running on it yet?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While it seems like there could be some issues with this in a (particularly conservative) workplace, I think the concept is great: give users some incentive to practice safe passwording.

</comment><comment><USER18> Aa2,; appears to be the shortest that gets the full monty.

<comment><USER19> That's probably one of the best comments to demonstrate the "engineer spirit": no quabble about the sexism claims, the quality of the pixel art, or if it's a good way to make people pick good passwords... Mere _optimization_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is what I see: <http://i.imgur.com/UV9ca.jpg>

Can someone please explain what this is supposed to be...?

</comment><comment><USER21> Will the password nazis please go home?

Sure, your shell account, bank website, ebay/amazon password should be very secure, secure to the point of not needing to be prompted, but does every site on the net, ie your blog, twitter, etc, need to have a min of 8 characters w/at least one number and one capital?

Oh, agree with everyone here on the creepiness factor here...

<comment><USER22> I've seen many of users typing their birth year, their first name or just "123qwe" as their password. Way too many I'd ever expected.

I really doubt they understood the possible consequences. Restricting is inacceptable, but warning against using seemingly-insecure password should be perfectly fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> GPL licensing would scare away many users, because "linking" gets really weird on the web.

<comment><USER23> The source files say they are dual licensed under MIT and GPLv2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This site illustrates one of my pet peeves with "password strength" meters: punctuation doesn't increase your score. Mixed case does, numbers do, but punctuation doesn't.

Correction: some punctuation does, but most don't.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Oh yes, I always use at least third base passwords"

</comment><comment><USER26> An option to select your gender should def. be included :)

</comment><comment><USER27> Her lips look like a mustache</comment>