Steve Jobs's thoughts on the Internet in 1996 - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs.html?pg=1

<comment><USER2> > Jobs's obsession with his old rival took the form of an unusual proposal for > all parties to voluntarily keep the Web simple and avoid increasingly > popular client-side enhancements like HotJava.

So Jobs didn't like the idea of Flash back in 1996. He didn't just make that up recently as an excuse.

</comment><comment><USER3> On how the web would evolve, Jobs was profoundly wrong

 _The new Steve Jobs scoffs at the naïve idealism of Web partisans who believe the new medium will turn every person into a publisher. The heart of the Web, he said, will be commerce, and the heart of commerce will be corporate America serving custom products to individual consumer._

On how soon the web (and software development) would go from custom development to "lego blocks", Jobs was premature.

 _The number of applications that need to be written is growing exponentially. Unless we can find a way to write them in a tenth of the time, we're toast. The end result of objects - this repackaging of software - is that we can develop applications with only about 10 to 20 percent of the software development required any other way._

Even today, while frameworks like Django are finally providing the basic building blocks, a lot of web development is still 'custom'.

But in the end, this is one of the most profound interviews I have seen of jobs.

 _But you seem very optimistic about the potential for change.

<snip> I believe that people with an engineering point of view as a basic foundation are in a pretty good position to jump in and solve some of these problems. But in society, it's not working. Those people are not attracted to the political process. And why would somebody be? </snip>

Could technology help by improving education?

I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent. <snip>

It's a political problem. The problems are sociopolitical. The problems are unions. You plot the growth of the NEA [National Education Association] and the dropping of SAT scores, and they're inversely proportional. The problems are unions in the schools. The problem is bureaucracy. I'm one of these people who believes the best thing we could ever do is go to the full voucher system.

<snip>

These are the solutions to our problems in education. Unfortunately, technology isn't it.

<snip>

It's not as simple as you think when you're in your 20s - that technology's going to change the world. In some ways it will, in some ways it won't._

<comment><USER4> On the contrary, his only mistake was that he didn't see that the naive idealistic pseudo-democratization which co-opts the people's creativity to become conduits for advertising is one and the same as corporate capitalism.

<comment><USER3> Interesting viewpoint.

I think Wikipedia, Wikileaks, the use of Blogs, Twitter and even the epitome- of-corporate-antiprivacy that is Facebook by political movements: all present very strong counterevidence to your claim that the web has not been democratized.

The heart of any information medium has to be commerce, in that there has to be way to economically support the infrastructure costs of the medium but what makes the web more democratic is:

1) The infrastructure costs are very low and falling (The cost of a web server that you can run two hundred blogs off is not more than $200 / year)

2) Quite contrary to what Jobs claimed, everyone on the web is already a publisher.

<comment><USER4> Wikipedia is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, because it's controlled by a very small number of elites with no accountability. This is true of Britannica, but the difference is that Wikipedia editors have perversely managed to co-opt populist democratic rhetoric in order to justify what is effectively an oligarchy. The presence of the edit button on each page functions as an ideological mystification to conceal the where the real power lies. What's happening is that we are provided with the illusion of power, on condition that we never actually use it. As soon as you actually try to become a wikipedia editor, you are immediately confronted with a co-ordinated power bloc that is virtually impossible to penetrate. So far, these elites have been benevolent, but the case of one poweful Wikipedia editor who was a member of a cult and deleted any criticism of the cult leader on his page illustrates that abuse of power is possible.

Another example of this is restaurant reviews. The basic argument is familiar: a single restaurant reviewer in a newspaper is an elite, and this creates the potential for abuse of power. He could demand kickbacks from restaurants to ensure positive reviews or promote his friends' restaurants at the expense of competitors, and so on. Decentralization is proposed as the solution: instead of a single restaurant review, individual patrons review restaurants on a web site and it averages the reviews, and even if a few of them are corrupt, it's much harder to subvert the system. So problem solved, it's a much more trustworthy system. Except for one minor problem: Yelp implements this idea, and restaurant owners have complained that Yelp has abused their power by trying to extort advertising dollars from them by threatening to delete positive reviews and post negative reviews.

The pattern should be clear: moving from a centralized system to a decentralized network doesn't eliminate power, it just moves it to a different place where it can be potentially abused by a different group of elites. That position of power comes from controlling the protocol which aggregates each individual node on the network. The nodes can be decentralized and distributed, but the cost for this is that they must all speak the same language to connect to each other, which is a centralization at a different level.

That's why further decentralization doesn't solve the Yelp problem. We could imagine a federated system of restaurant reviews where individual reviews are stored on servers controlled by individuals, so they can't be deleted. But this just moves the power to a different level - the system for aggregating the peers on the node becomes the position of power, which could potentially be exploited for power and money to an elite. A similar relationship exists between Facebook and Diaspora. This is why Google promotes decentralization, because it is the centralized place you have to pass through in order to get to all that decentralized content, and there's lots of money to be had in owning that position. The handful of multinational corporations that control the internet backbones are also in a similar position of power, control and profit. This is ideal position to hold power, because the average person is completely clueless that these are positions of power. Think of how few people are aware of the importance of network neutrality, for example. Evgeny Morozov makes similar points in his TED talk entitled "How the Net aids dictatorships."

Really, the people promoting decentralization as a moral imperative are the ones who are profiting from it, from VC backed startups who stand to make millions or even billions of dollars to global multinationals who already are. Here again, the idealistic hacker ethos and ruthless corporate capitalism turn out to be one and the same, a nice example of the Hegelian coincidence of opposites.

<comment><USER5> That's a really superficial critique of Wikipedia, and it doesn't appear to be supported by the facts.

The fact is, if you go use the "edit" button right now and make a good-faith improvement, your edit is overwhelmingly likely to stand.

The "oligarchy" you refer to consists of many hundreds of people, freely nominated from among all the site's users, elected by the votes of every Wikipedia user. If you've made just a few edits, you can OK or neg new members of the "oligarchy".

What you're of course ignoring is the fact that Wikipedia's overwhelming success at their original mission has resulted in a ridiculously valuable position in everyone's search results and a huge influx of random users. I'm not a fan of the bureaucracy at all, but I at least respect the abuse, misuse, and obnoxiousness they're up against.

It's amazing to me that they're as good as they are. They certainly aren't some weird mindfuck or exploitation scheme, as you seem to be implying.

<comment><USER4> This reminds me of a story in Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams illustrating psychological denial. It's about a man who returns a borrowed kettle that had been broken to his neighbor. To explain the damage he says "It's not broken; when I borrowed it, it was already broken; I never borrowed it!" In other words, three mutually incompatible explanations for what happened to try to avoid the facts. Here, you say that Wikipedia is not an oligarchy; and also, it is an oligarchy, but it's justified. The claim against my argument is that it's both too superficial and also an elaborate conspiracy theory, a complicated mindfuck that defies logic. Are these arbitrary outbursts not evidence in themselves of a refusal to consider the facts?

This logic of "Democracy is great! But of course we have to have _some_ standards..." has been used to conceal elite power for centuries. In the US, political participation was originally reserved for white, male property owners, because it was thought that the standard for voting is rationality, which women and lesser races don't have. The elites permit democracy, but they reserve the right to decide what the standards for participation should be. Who decides what "good-faith" means? This isn't conspiracy, it is ideological delusion: elites become corrupt because they're convinced of their own benevolence, that because they stand for Democracy and Decentralization (today's empty signifiers, replacing God, Nation), preserving their elite position is justified. It is definitely not because they cynically manipulate, pulling the strings behind the scenes while laughing at the deluded masses. It's a natural human tendency to see yourself as acting only for the greater good, and to adopt an ideology that explains why what's good for you is good for all.

As I mentioned before, my preferred solution to elite power is not some fantasy of "true democracy", which only ends up concealing real power. Nor do I think that elite control is necessarily a bad thing, only concealing elite power behind mask of democracy. Scientific knowledge is an obvious arena where we are best served by having an elite. But if they abuse their power, we should be ready with the (metaphorical) guillotine. In the case of Facebook, the real response is not a different, more decentralized system, but the guillotine of strong privacy regulations. Or government enforcement of net neutrality, and so on. The libertarian & anti-government leanings of the tech community is more evidence in favor of my argument. Is this not just another way to defend an oligarchy? I think many sincerely believe that this is the best arrangement, but avoiding the facts might cast some doubt on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It annoys me that every 40 year old thinks that the world is getting worse. I used to think it was just the less intelligent people who's minds couldn't keep up with the rate of change. But to hear Jobs say it was disheartening. Death rates from war are the lowest per capita that they have perhaps ever been. People continue to live longer lives. I think that the world allows more upward mobility now than perhaps any time I can think of. Billions of people in India and China are moving towards first world status. Unreadable amounts of information is available at a moments notice. People at the poverty line have things that the richest map 100 years ago couldn't even dream of. When was this heyday where every person was an educated scholar and only the intelligent became leaders. Every complaint like this I hear, I can find 10 examples from history where things were worse. I just don't get it. Maybe I'll understand when I'm 40. I hope I can keep my optimism.

<comment><USER7> The 20th century is considered the most violent century in terms of sheer number. Death rates are a weird thing to think about in per capita terms. If you look at it that way, then an individual life is worth less now than it used to be. Whether your death is a 1 millionth or 1 billionth of the population makes no difference to your family and friends.

There still 90 years left in this century. Judging by previous ones, a lot of awesome and terrible things are going to happen. Technology amplifies man's capacity for creation and destruction. Speaking as a 25 year old, I'm optimistic that life will continue to be an interesting ride.

<comment><USER8> Death rates due to war absolutely should be thought about per capita, because put another way, it's the chance that you yourself, or those you care about, or those you know will meet a violent end, assuming even distribution.

I would rather live in a society where one thousand out of a one million total population die from war compared to a society where one hundred out a thousand do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In some ways, his thoughts are some of the most profound things I've read. A very clear articulation of the place of creativity:

 _Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things._

and design:

 _Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it._

The missing part for me is that he doesn't see that they're like yin and yang with each other. Grokking leads to creativity, and creativity leads to grokking. Most people who aren't engineers don't quite understand the profoundness of that feedback loop. I feel like he mostly does -- but there's still this small little missing link. It could even be his Achilles' heel. But yeah, in everything else he is quite clairvoyant.

<comment><USER10> How do you infer he sees no connection between the two?

<comment><USER9> He says, 'When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.'

As an engineer, that's not quite how I think (maybe everyone's different though). What I think about is all the time I spent grokking the subject so that I could see and appreciate the simple connections later.

Diversity in one's approach is really important. And that's underrated -- and powerful that he appreciates that. But perhaps equally important is using the actual design that you've developed to help you find the creative connections. There's just so much focused overlap there. So much quiet feedback that can become powerful -- with a few (somewhat metacircular) iterations, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _The implicit message of the Macintosh, as unforgettably expressed in the > great "1984" commercial, was Power to the People. Jobs's vision of Web > objects serves a different mandate: Give the People What They Want._

This seems to echo a number of the current criticisms of Jobs and the App Store / iPhone OS. Numerous commentators – too many to count – have compared the current approach of Apple to that "garden of pure ideology" that the Big Brother character in the _1984_ commercial proclaims. The iPhone OS and App Store seem to take freedom away from developers/tinkerers in order to give ordinary folks the easiest, most hassle free computing experience.

It's interesting to think that the roots of the current crop of Apple offerings may have been planted long ago when Jobs was ousted from his own company by the Pepsi CEO he hired and forced to wander and reinvent himself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty profound interview. Jobs always seems to put thought into his answers, rather than using "canned speak" which most CEOs resort to. At least his older interviews are like that.

I went looking for a page with a collection of all of his interviews but couldn't find one. I have started a subreddit to collect his interviews. Please submit your favorite ones.

<http://www.reddit.com/r/SteveJobs/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone remember that WebObjects used to cost $50K? It failed because no one could afford it and there was little to no documentation. By the time Apple woke up and reduced the price it was too late. Other web languages were already off and running.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting he was big on school vouchers. I've always thought those were a great idea too and that they'd spark some incredible innovation in education, but I've never really heard many high profile people speak out in favor of them.

</comment><comment><USER14> Jobs: "But it's a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light - that it's going to change everything. Things don't have to change the world to be important."

What would that Jobs think of Apple's new commercials that pitch the iPad as "revolutionary" and "magical"?

Interesting, that was (is?) a Jobs who trusts individuals, but has "a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups." I wonder if this shaped his leadership style (his "control freakishness" as some call it), so that he makes many of the calls and doesn't rely on committees.

</comment><comment><USER15> Any idea what he means by "web objects"? I read the whole thing but couldn't get a clear idea.

<comment><USER16> Why, they're the future of the web, or haven't you heard? ;-)

<comment><USER16> Was I voted down because y'all lack a sense of humor, or was it because you didn't read the article?

<comment><USER17> You can't get by on HN with little quips that don't really add to the conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The link is broken on my mobile phone. It sends me to a mobile portal instead of the content.

<comment><USER18> I suspect that Wired detects that you're on a phone and thus serves you content formatted for a phone. However, many times I have seen sites do what you describe: redirecting you to the mobile version of the _homepage_ rather than of the article you wanted to see in the first place.

This is very lazy (and frustrating) programming.

So, the link is not broken. Wired is broken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "The Web is not going to change the world, certainly not in the next 10 years."

<comment><USER20> I think one could argue both sides effectively, depending on your definition of 'change the world'. There is still a huge unequal distribution of wealth, war still wages, people go hungry, and education still isn't what it should be. The internet has affected these things in a limited way, but it has not radically altered them. Not that the effect of the web hasn't been massive in other ways, but I think this is the scale he was talking about.

<comment><USER21> I tend to agree that the recent focus on web technology has retarded the pace of actual innovation in the last decade. The smart people who should be building the jetpacks and curing cancer are making pets.com, or, no offense, founding YC startups to make a webapp to market your new webapp to other people's webapps on the web.

Cf. Warren Ellis: "a nice robot phone is not an acceptable substitute for a future." [http://www.wired.co.uk/wired- magazine/archive/2010/05/start/...](http://www.wired.co.uk/wired- magazine/archive/2010/05/start/warren-ellis?page=all)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The section under "Shooting the Web in the foot" might guide some of what's been done with WebKit and HTML5.

</comment><comment><USER23> Very very good interview.

So, Steve Jobs were, in 1996, 100% certain the Web Objects will be the future of web development. It didn't happen, and he failed.

Do anybody care to think why he failed?

I have a very "simpleton" theory. Just throw it out here:

Steve Jobs can almost make anything work. He's smart, and he has resources. He can make a good washing machine if he want to. But I think that "anything" will have to be something that he can use, touch, play with, i.e. Mp3, phone, laptop ... But Web Object is an enterprise server software. I can't imagine Steve Jobs playing with it. So, he picked something that he cannot love or even touch. Based on the interview, he picked WO because he believe enterprise will need it and it's gonna make a lot of money.

My belief is that an entrepreneur works best when working on a product that he personally use.

<comment><USER24> While his enterprise software product may have failed, what he seems to mean by "web objects" is web service APIs, which have indeed become vastly more important since this interview took place. In fact, that was probably the most prescient thing he said.

<comment><USER23> I agree with you. I said he failed but his vision isn't wrong. He is as convinced about his vision as when he saw the GUI. In fact, what he saw in 1996 remains the same - web dev is still in the everything-custom age (stone age). Every new app is a reinvention of lots of wheels already made ...

What I am curious is that why he failed. My hunch is that he just isn't a fit for this project.

It sounds like you and I and Steve Jobs agree on this fundamental thing. Care to get together offline? I live in Sunnyvale Bay Area.</comment></comment></comment>


Less than 256MB RAM Ubuntu 18.04 with i3 - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/richardjuan/33db032a0dc4ae66f216436dd4ec3e5f <comment><USER2> Looks like someone has posted this to Reddit, and people have questions for the maintainer.</comment>


Reddit Is Being Manipulated by Big Financial Services Companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2017/02/20/reddit-is-being-manipulated-by-big-financial-services-companies/2/#6a0796d824b5 <comment><USER3> Despite my love for reddit, I can't go on it anymore due to the recent changes they made. I never log into reddit, so I automatically see /r/popular when going to the site. /r/popular was added about a week ago to filter out certain subreddits that would reach the front page.

Some filters include, "Subreddits that are large and dedicated to specific games are heavily filtered, as well as specific sports, and narrowly focused politically related subreddits, etc."

Yet, this past week, all I see on the front page are political posts & subreddits that are left leaning. Not to start a political argument, but, reddit makes it clear that they are filtering out posts that include conservative views. All I see are posts making fun of POTUS through memes, or how he caused a problem.

Politics aside, I just don't see how reddit will last if their political agenda outweighs their ability to provide a site which allows for sharing of information and discussion. I don't want the front page to consist of highly opinionated political posts, since their reasoning behind /r/popular was to "filter out" focused political groups.

If you want evidence, look at the internet archive time machine for reddit starting this past week, around the 17th of February.

<comment><USER4> Also, r/politics is just basically an anti-Trump subreddit now. Long also, it was a neutral political news reporting sub with a policy for not editorializing the titles of submissions.

Bias, no matter which side of the aisle it strays to, is just a turn off.

<comment><USER5> You don't need to editorialize the headlines, the administration has been a complete shitshow.

They don't even spell check, in an age where that just happens for you.

That's a special flavor of sloppy.

Given the number of grammar nazi's on reddit, what did you think would happen?

<comment><USER6> the spelling errors are deliberate, it adds authenticity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Astroturfing like this, shilling and manipulating discussion, has gotten so advanced that it's almost impossible to tell real opinions from fake anymore. On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog[0]. I don't see any way to sort authentic comments from in-authentic ones. My conclusion has been to assume that any major conversation about companies/brands/products/governments on Reddit is probably astroturfed to some extent. HN "growth hackers" probably do the same thing.

This is a real problem, how to sort real users from the fake ones, and I'm not sure there is even a solution. But the integrity of our discourse, politics, and direction as a society is dependent upon finding a solution.

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog)

<comment><USER8> This is actually something I've been quite curious about. For example, I know that stormfront regularly organizes brigades and disseminates talking points to disrupt conversation on Reddit - same with FSB/corporation/ etc.

I was wondering if I could mine all users on stormfront and then perform a stylometric analysis on Reddit posts to ferret out those same users.

Same with other astroturfing groups, instead maybe running some type of classification technique to find aockpuppet accounts.

I'll probably make this an ask hn at some point to get some input.

<comment><USER9> I don't know what stormfont is but I'd focus on /r/politics. I managed to bump randomly there in what looked liked bots or some organized trolling. In one case I disagreed with some topic regarding Clinton during elections and got this general (vague) insulting comment back. Looking through posters' history noticed they/it? just copy-pasted same thing into their other responses.

FSB ones might be fun too. There is a certain class of grammar mistakes Russians make when writing in English. You could filter by that in addition to other stuff.

<comment><USER10> > FSB ones might be fun too. There is a certain class of grammar mistakes > Russians make when writing in English. You could filter by that in addition > to other stuff.

Cool, you would filter me out too. Or would you not? If my English is good enough to confuse your bot, then what stops FSB from hiring somebody like me?

Also, what stops FSB from hiring native speakers of English?

There are plenty of people on the Earth who speak Russian, but don't live in Russia and don't support the Russian government. Bear that in mind too, please.

<comment><USER9> Heh, I meant it would be an additional filter not the primary. If you copy and paste the same response to multiple posts back to back you might be a robot, as Jeff Foxworthy would say :-)

FSB probably doesn't pay as many non-Russians on average. It would be expensive, risky and harder to control.

The point about grammar is interesting. Last time I heard of it was when there was discussion if Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian hacker or not. Some were saying he wasn't because his grammar mistakes were not characteristic of Russian speakers and most likely it was a native English speaker trying to talk in broken English trying to sound like a Russian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can hardly stand Reddit any more -- so many people seem to have agendas that drown out most authentic conversation. Which reminds me of a quote from the book "Schitt Happened":

> So, social media is less and less about "an authentic conversation with real > people" and more "prospect-powered advertising." And in an environment where > anyone can be a shill, and their financial motives aren't known, credibility > disappears.

> Which leads me to my bold prediction: that in the next decade we're going to > see paid, conventional advertising in big-name venues become the most > credible source of information, and word-of-mouth the least credible.

</comment><comment><USER12> Reddit is the wild wild west. Bots are everywhere, power mods sell their services to companies, admins editing comments without anyone kn0wing, it's just a big shit show.

I would be very skeptical of anything I read on there.

<comment><USER9> Remember seeing in subreddit drama section a situation where the CEO went into the database and apparently changed one of the comments from Trump's subreddit. It was probably something insulting or taunting as usual. What was interesting to me is one of the admins then leaked internal Slack chat logs talking about the fallout of it and such. In there one of admins boasted getting paid by Correct The Record which I understand Democrats contacted with to control the narrative online. And I thought that's pretty brilliant - <USER2> on admins and moderators of a popular site or subreddit is more effective than just picking any old Joe from the street.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, that's what I was referring to. Reddit is just a very strange place where they sort of let users and mods do what they want, then step in randomly when they get too much bad press or the admins (like the CEO) disagree with the content.

It really does feel like Lord of the Flies

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Say anything even remotely negative about HFT and these guys pull out the claws. They don't hesitate to downvote either. It's really quite blatant once you know what to look for.

<comment><USER14> Wait, why would high-frequency traders care what people on reddit think? It's not like they're trying to sell their services to the public.

Are you sure you're not just seeing the usual flame wars over controversial subjects?

<comment><USER13> They appear to have been hired (or had their funding greatly increased) around the time Flashboys came out. It's not just Reddit either, you see them all across the web.

<comment><USER14> Serious question, though. How do you distinguish between the situation you're describing, and a situation where the release of Flash Boys resulted in a lot of zeitgeisty discussion about HFT, where people hashed out their differing opinions about it.

I ask because I don't think that the case against HFT is airtight, or that either side is obviously right. A lot of smart people have defended HFT to some extent (including HN's favorite finance writer, Matt Levine[0]).

I get the sense that there are a lot of people out there who read Flash Boys and assumed that HFTs are _obviously_ the bad guys. I'm something of a contrarian, and pointing out the arguments in favor of HFT to those people is the kind of thing I would have done. (I don't remember a particular instance, but I probably did at one point.) In that situation, I wouldn't be surprised if some people assumed that I was a paid Wall Street shill (because _obviously_ that's the only kind of person who would defend HFT under any circumstances, right?)

So while I'm not denying that manipulation does happen, I'm worried that it will give people license to discount anyone that disagrees with their personal received wisdom as nothing more than corporate puppets.

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-03-31/michael-l...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-03-31/michael- lewis-doesn-t-like-high-frequency-traders)

<comment><USER15> I really doubt wall street is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on equipment because they care about market liquidity. These people/services add absolutely nothing of value to society yet they suck up billions of dollars.

Very relevant:

[https://youtu.be/TFPugioX7uk?t=22](https://youtu.be/TFPugioX7uk?t=22)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reddit still has value in niche subreddits. Do you play bass? r/bass will have conversations about techniques, beginner questions, pointers to bassists on youtube doing interesting things, etc. Think software defined radio is interesting? r/rtlsdr is the place for you. Etc.

There is a sweet spot where the subreddit has gained critical mass to sustain conversations, but haven't gotten big enough to draw in spammers and incite political arguments. There are thousands of such subreddits.

<comment><USER17> I regularly visit /r/rust and am happy with how it's stayed away from politics. At one point, it almost brushed on it with Trump's travel ban affecting an event, but overall it's a nice "oasis" from the sea of politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I don't get is isn't this simply wrong?

Did we not learn from our parents what is right and wrong? Lying? Making up stuff? Exaggeration?

Just because you are anonymous doesn't make it right.

<comment><USER19> _What I don 't get is isn't this simply wrong?_

Well, yeah, of course.

Do you normally expect propriety from for-profit organizations?

<comment><USER20> There is a theory that organizations which are concerned with right and wrong will simply be out-competed by those with no such qualms.

There's an interesting essay on the subject: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on- moloch/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _English06 - who compares the moderator role to being a forum janitor - > explained that to properly solve the problem, the volunteer moderators need > more tools, or admins (Reddit staff) need to step in more._

> _" There's always something to be done on the politics subreddit. And it's > just, there's just a lot of volume. As far as stopping everything, there's > nothing the moderators will ever be able to do. We can only see the user > history. That's going to have to come from the admin side of things. There's > just nothing we can do."_

When I read this, I get really enthusiastic about seeing what sorts of big- data analysis is technically possible.

And then...

> _I presented Reddit with my findings and asked it if it's doing enough to > combat fake comments, threads and upvotes. But in a bizarre response, the > company's representative - Anna Soellner - didn't bother to address any of > these questions, instead providing a statement that seemed to be a response > to my previous story._

> _"In order to write your story, you and your co-author engaged in multiple > levels of impersonation, violating the terms of service of Reddit. Our users > recognized the stories you posted as fake and community moderators removed > the links in a very short time frame. We are continuously working with our > users and moderators to ensure the integrity of our site to promote genuine > conversation." Soellner said._

When I read stuff like this I get simultaneously really angry and incredibly sad at how vacuous and maliciously agenderized this incredibly popular website is.

This response is clearly a massive dodge, but from what? Why do they need to run and hide? I don't get it.

I can't help but think that Reddit (Inc.) itself is a massive, massive ivory tower, with only just enough of a connection to (and interest in) its userbase to know how to monetize it so the company can keep surviving. It's like the worst possible cyberpunk scene.

And obviously I don't want to help the admins!

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder, why the Reddit's owner Conde Nast does not step in into this mess. These advertising agencies completely sidestep Reddit's official ad channels, thereby robbing the company of profit. Logically Conde Nast would be pretty upset with it, unless they are using the same channels and means to manipulate collective opinion themselves. Given their notorious left-leaning position and more recent anti-trump campaign that seems pretty likely.

</comment><comment><USER23> Anytime a substantial amount of attention aggregates in one place, there is an inherent bounty on said eyeballs.

</comment><comment><USER24> So was the election! It was manipulated by Robert Mercer's quantitative investment powerhouse.

</comment><comment><USER25> Are there any clear examples "in the wild"? That were successful?</comment>


Microsoft Bug Testers Unionized, Then They Were Dismissed - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-23/microsoft-bug-testers-unionized-then-they-were-dismissed <comment><USER3> I realize that it's the article's title, but this seems misleading. The bug testers were contractors working under the temp agency Lionbridge Technologies Inc.

After they won their right to unionize, they were eventually laid off because Microsoft required fewer bug testers for their dwindling Windows Mobile app store and their agency, Lionbridge, couldn't find additional work for them.

<comment><USER4> That is the political line from Lionbridge and Microsoft.

Do you think there's something special about QA for Windows Mobile that makes them unhireable for other QA jobs?

<comment><USER5> They worked under a contract. The contract ended. They could have gotten another contract with Microsoft. But they could have gotten a contract with any other software company, too. Why didn't Lionbridge find another contract?

<comment><USER6> Not familiar with Lionbridge, but lots of contract companies pretty much serve one large, local company. It's often hard to drum up work for a large number of contractors on demand.

<comment><USER5> It's probably similarly hard for Microsoft, though, isn't it? It's not like their ending of the Windows Phone project opened up a bunch of vacancies in their other QA projects.

<comment><USER6> I agree. I was responding to your question, "Why didn't LionBridge find them more work?". If LionBridge principally works with Microsoft (as is common among contractors) and Microsoft cut QA work, then LionBridge likely couldn't find work for those contractors.

This may be _especially_ true if those contractors were demanding a certain salary that is infeasible in LionBridge's market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, I think we should just unionize everyone in the tech field. A single Union that handles and accepts all software developers, IT operations folks, software testers, etc and we protect our own and lobby for the laws to benefit us and our profession. The things these companies do to get around basic worker rights is deplorable and we need to organize and fight back, and befor you say you make a ton of money and love what you do so why unionize, ask yourself how many hours you worked overtime and didn't get paid for it. Ask yourself how many times you've seen a colleague let go because they had some medical troubles. Ask yourself how many times a colleague on a visa told you they felt trapped. Ask yourself how many times you've heard of a colleague get fucked out of their vacation due to a critical issue. Ask yourself how much power you have to effect change when it comes to just general process and how we go about our day to day. Ask yourself how many times you've felt you've been asked to do something that was unethical and didn't want to risk the financial implications and consequences of saying "No". We need a union. Call it whatever you want, a guild, a bar, a union. Whatever. The point is, it's time to organize and it's time to start fighting back.

<comment><USER8> I've never been in a union but know people who have. From this small and biased sample of unions:

\- Pay is based on seniority, not skill

\- You have to please your boss from the company and also the union

I don't want either of these things. If there is a union where this doesn't happen then I could consider it.

<comment><USER9> That is a small and biased sample, and ignores a union representing the most visible people in society: the screen actors' guild.

Think Tom Cruise is paid based on seniority and not skill?

<comment><USER10> Isn't selecting the SAG an even smaller and biased sample?

<comment><USER9> I'm showing one very easily understood counterexample to "unions pay based on seniority" to expand on the parent poster's "small and biased" sample and show that unions are what their members make of them.

<comment><USER10> Are the majority of people in unions in a union that bases pay mostly on seniority?

<comment><USER9> I dunno, and it doesn't really matter for this conversation.

After all, why would tech workers choose that pay scale when putting together the rules for their union?

(And, if they did choose that, whose place is it for anyone outside the union to tell them that's wrong?)

<comment><USER10> >I dunno, and it doesn't really matter for this conversation.

travis stated pay is based on seniority (implied most, not all). You claimed his sample was too small, then gave a small sample as counter-evidence. So now that I ask you if the majority of people in unions are paid based mostly on seniority you admit you don't even know? And thus claim it's irrelevant?

That's an odd way to demonstrate that your objection has merit.

You can look up the biggest unions in the US, and you will in fact see that a significant component of pay is seniority based for the majority of people in US unions.

If you're going to complain that someone is wrong, at least put in some legwork.

<comment><USER9> It is irrelevant. How unions structure their pay rules is entirely up to them.

If tech workers unionize, they can decide whatever pay scale they want. Why do you think that is not so?

And if they choose a pay scale based on seniority, lines of code delivered, or the weather, what difference does it make to _you_ , someone presumably not a member of their union?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another example of how Medicare for All would help business. Just remove healthcare as an employee benefit entirely.

<comment><USER12> > Another example of how Medicare for All would help business. Just remove > healthcare as an employee benefit entirely.

The problem there is that the existing Medicare system is predicated on paying less for the same things than private insurance and then letting high private insurance premiums subsidize the Medicare system. Which obviously doesn't work when everyone is on Medicare, so the cost per Medicare patient would go up at the same time as you're adding hundreds of millions of people to it.

So the Medicare tax would have to increase dramatically, but the Medicare tax is pretty regressive. Meanwhile a lot of companies would then get away with discontinuing their private insurance coverage without increasing employee compensation by the same amount. So you're basically talking about a huge transfer of wealth from the middle class to corporations.

We should probably look into some other method of dismantling the employer- provided healthcare system. Maybe something that involves primarily catastrophic coverage as a baseline.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure that's how Medicare is 'predicated' \- the fundamental assumption is that you get to a) reduce administrative overhead due to a centralized system, and b) using the power of a single-payer system to negotiate lower fees - it's reducing the profit margin of private insurers, not relying on them to subsidize Medicare.

<comment><USER14> > I'm not sure that's how Medicare is 'predicated' \- the fundamental > assumption is that you get to a) reduce administrative overhead due to a > centralized system, and b) using the power of a single-payer system to > negotiate lower fees

This fundamental assumption is wrong, because Medicare _doesn 't_ negotiate. Medicare sets rates by fiat, and providers don't have the ability to negotiate rates with Medicare the way they negotiate with private payers. Medicare reimburses rates that are below COGS, which means that providers actually lose money on Medicare patients and have to cover their losses with the margins they make on privately-insured patients. (Medicare acknowledges this, and in fact will pay separate stipends to providers who don't see enough privately- insured patients to cover the losses on Medicare patients).

OP is correct - Medicare's funding model is _not_ sustainable without private insurers to provide the difference.

> it's reducing the profit margin of private insurers, not relying on them to > subsidize Medicare

Uh, where do you think that extra money _goes_?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I used to work for LionBridge. They did have quite a few full time positions when Nokia was flourishing, but when things started to go south with Nokia, they put pressure on LionBridge to cut their costs, else lose their business contract. When Microsoft took over Nokia, nothing changed for the better. People who were forced out of their full-time jobs didn't get them back, and the people who had permanent zero hour contracts kept the same deal. This is when I left (because I was only getting a couple of days work a month).

I feel bad for LB because it was Nokia and MS that turned the screws, even though I think they had the funds to support LB's employees. I also have no idea why LB couldn't then get the reason Nokia and MS lost their product support, ie. the Android vendors' business contracts.

<comment><USER16> I had to look up what a zero-hour contract is [1]. Seriously sounds like a setup ripe for worker abuse - I mean, yes, according to the standard zero hour contract, both employer and employee can decline work offered/accepted, but who do you think has power in this relationship?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero- hour_contract](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-hour_contract)

<comment><USER15> > according to the standard zero hour contract, both employer and employee can > decline work offered/accepted, but who do you think has power in this > relationship?

In my particular case, I was still eligible to unemployment subsidy, if my monthly earnings were lower than that of unemployment benefit, but it came with a condition. Even though I was allowed to decline offered work, I would forfeit my unemployment subsidy for three months each time I declined it. This of course was a condition of the unemployment office, not the company, but the company knew about it, so yes, the company indeed had power over those who needed at least the minimum living allowance.

We actually had a homeless guy working there for a while, until they found out he was homeless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Big company A wants to pay less for a general service, Large company A outsources the service to smaller company B. Smaller company B in order to make the service cheaper than Company A could do it themselves, company B cuts on things like pay, vacation and social benefits. There is no work safety in company B and everything is by demand "contract" work. In fact employees of company B is often self employees.

This is usually how it goes around and in globalization it is there is often someone willing to the work cheaper but with no health care, pensions etc.

</comment><comment><USER18> Just as an fyi, there are countries where companies like lionsbridge are not even allowed to exist. e.g. France.

<comment><USER19> Check on the number of companies that exist in France with 49 employees.

<comment><USER20> Thought experiment: what if the US government limited companies to a maximum number of employees, say 5000?

There would be new inefficiencies, but it might decrease the possibility or impact of monopolies and encourage competition. There would be a lot more specialized contractor companies. How much of, say, Google's search service or Microsoft Windows could be maintained or developed with just 5000 people?

<comment><USER21> We would end up with massive conglomerates who owned 500+ companies of 4999 people, and if that didn't work you'd just get simple collusion where everyone knows company A and B are owned by the same person so they try to cooperate even without being explicitly ordered to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If these people can form a union, what's to stop them from forming their own agency and finding clients? Software testing isn't exactly a capital-intensive business.

</comment><comment><USER23> A similar thing happened to SWEs at Lanetix. I was coworkers with several of them at my previous job. [https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF- tech-company...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-tech-company- fired-software-engineers-seeking-12541301.php)

Fortunately I've never worked anywhere that had conditions so bad that organizing was worth thinking about, but I won't rule it out as a possibility in the future.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is a general lack of empathy for these workers and even for those who get laid off due to globalization and now under a opioid/meth epidemic.

Free market proponents always talk about 'retraining' and other up in the air initiatives but there is no follow up or details about how these will actually work in the real world with some base accountability, processes and studies about how well they worked in the past. And yet all these trade deals without exception have claw backs and multiple processes protecting their investments and profits. In this case all the details are covered carefully and it is not left 'up in the air'.

There are no easy answers here as opinions will shift depending on which side of the equation you or someone you care about finds themselves in. This is really about the kind of society and community you want to build and how you see yourself as a country.

</comment><comment><USER25> Could we at least agree that tech workers in the video game industry should be unionized? The anti-union detractors always talk about how cushy engineers have it and that unions are unnecessary. Well how about the notoriously horrendous working conditions in games?

</comment><comment><USER26> As a lesson for people who want to unionize, this is why larger is better when it comes to unions.

<comment><USER27> Unless you live in MN, where they push tthrough legislation so they can take medicare money from disabled people.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattpatterson/2017/10/02/in- min...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattpatterson/2017/10/02/in-minnesota- historic-revolt-against-the-seiu/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Should tech workers unionize?

<comment><USER29> Tech workers are a global force! Instead of unionizing you would do better by getting security clearance and become a fed contract worker.

That is the closest thing to building a worker moat, I know of.

<comment><USER30> The purpose of a union is to pool the power of all the workers together and use that combined power to achieve things which the individuals themselves never could alone. Really big things. Like, we have weekends, maternity leave, and OSHA thanks to unions big.

Tech workers are indeed a global force and in a world that increasingly requires global solutions - think climate change, migration crises, etc. - <USER2> union that leverages the power of all tech workers would be really useful right about now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "... gave up on what had been, for people in the software world, an almost unheard of unionization victory" The 'software world' is not just America, thank you. Almost every other civilized country thinks this is normal.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" \-- attributed to Mao.

The union expected to be dealt with fairly and according to the law; the law failed them, because the mechanisms of the law were controlled by politics and Microsoft has political power; the union did not.

<comment><USER32> I'm not sure why this is being down voted, it's true.

<comment><USER33> People are not quite at the point of revolt.

If the path we are currently on continues, though, it will happen. It's only a matter of when.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Were the bug testers working in conditions where said testers were in physical or psychiatric danger from job hazards? If not, I don't really see an issue with this.

</comment><comment><USER35> what's the difference between a union and a bunch of small 1 person companies all deciding to price fix?

<comment><USER14> > what's the difference between a union and a bunch of small 1 person > companies all deciding to price fix?

Is this a riddle?

The answer: Both were outlawed by antitrust laws, but labor unions later lobbied to except one (but not the other).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Article can't be found now?

</comment><comment><USER36> Huh. Article cant be found now?

</comment><comment><USER37> I guess this would explain the low quality of Windows updates recently. Almost every patch Tuesday we patch, and then something that should have been caught by Microsoft QA breaks.

The increasingly low quality of Microsoft products makes it hard to use in the enterprise.

</comment><comment><USER38> wow! Can't they sue Microsoft and get reinstated? Perhaps using courts?

<comment><USER39> > Can't they sue Microsoft and get reinstated?

Please stop with this. The last time temp workers sued (and won) [1] the rippling effect it has had on 100s and 1000s of contractors since then, is that companies (in Silicon Valley and Bay area atleast) no longer employ contractors for more than 18 months at a time.

And due to this a lot of contractors since 1998 have had to leave lucrative contracts at software companies, because the companies that hired them specifically put this max limit after this lawsuit to shield themselves from such a law suit.

Personally, I've had to leave 3 separate contracts since 2006 in San Francisco, solely because the clients had this policy of not hiring temp workers/ contractors for more than 18 months, so as to avoid any lawsuit from temp workers suing for employee benefits.

[1] Source: [2000] Microsoft to Pay $97 Million to End Temp Worker Suit [http://articles.latimes.com/2000/dec/13/business/fi-64817](http://articles.latimes.com/2000/dec/13/business/fi-64817)

<comment><USER40> The best fix for this is to eliminate the "benefits" corporations see by hiring temps/part time over just hiring for a full time job.

If a job is really a partial job require pro-rated benefits (and favor the worker slightly so that it encourages just having full-time jobs).

That might also encourage businesses/the rich to put their political pressure towards socializing those costs instead of outsourcing them to individual (temp/part time) employees.

<comment><USER41> > The best fix for this is to eliminate the "benefits" corporations see by > hiring temps/part time over just hiring for a full time job.

Having worked at a big tech co, our budget for contractors and vendors was different than our budget for full time employees.

It wasn't that vendors were even cheaper, the average was close to $100 / hour, and vendors got paid for every hour they worked! But vendors were easier to let go if they turned out to not be good, or if (when) the department budget was cut.

Getting approval for head count could take forever, but if I wanted to hire 3 vendors next week, it was only an issue of "is the money there right now?", not "will the money be there for years and years to come".

(As an aside, at one point in time the 3rd or 4th highest earning person in the building was one of my vendors, he was earning over 250K per year for awhile, all cash!)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Focus on the Job, Not the Customer. A different way to look at your  app - <AUTHOR> http://blog.intercom.io/when-personas-fail-you/

<comment><USER2> There is a name for this approach to design. It's called Activity-Centered Design , and Don Norman has written a bunch about it here:

[http://jnd.org/dn.mss/human- centered_design_considered_harmf...](http://jnd.org/dn.mss/human- centered_design_considered_harmful.html) and here:

<http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/hcd_harmful_a_clari.html>

Highly recommended reading. I feel like it's a good sign that the community keeps re-inventing this. It means that it has some real legs. Another great example of our best practices slowly strangling good process.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for this perspective. I would have loved to see this earlier, it could have saved me a lot of wheel-spinning with personas (which are valuable in limited cases)

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't much care for "personas" but I did enjoy filling in the blanks of the template at the end.

And as subtle as it seems, I think there's a difference between "why do people use your product?" and "why do people hire your product?". "Hiring" seems to imply selection from multiple candidates, payment for (and an ongoing involvement with) the product etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers Jamie

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very similar to (and perhaps taken from) the book "The Innovator's Solution": [http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating- Sustainin...](http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustaining- Successful/dp/1578518520)

<comment><AUTHOR> The video I linked up and the author I referenced twice in the post is Clay Christenson, author of that book. I certainly didn't "take" it, I made the inspiration very clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Those guys are the smartest people I know.</comment>