The free and open CA Let's Encrypt is hiring another sysadmin - coffee-- https://letsencrypt.org/jobs/#systems-administrator <comment><AUTHOR> This is a cool job, but the rules of the site say job posts go on the monthly hiring thread. There are lots of cool public-interest jobs opening every month, and if we had them all on the front page, the site would be little more than job ads.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

 _Please do not post job ads as story submissions to HN._

<comment><USER2> Public good infrastructure orgs should get a pass IMHO.

<comment><USER3> There are non-profit startups that really do geniune work. Do we let them pass? So many like DDG should we let them pass? What about Tor they do hire people to manage the project. Should we let that pass? What about research on cancer? Not saying LE is not important to get a little notice (it's probably hard for anyone to notice their career page or whatnot to be honest), but we should be fair.

<comment><USER2> Yes, happy to let the org types you mentioned pass. Their benefit outweighs the hassle of someone hiding or skipping a post.

<comment><USER3> Then we should now start fetching them begin to post them on HN. There is a reason we don't do that because we can have maybe a hundred to post here as independent submissions. It is lucky enough there is whoishiring submission every month. This is not a job posting website. If people really believe in this pass. I will start posting a dozen of them, you cool? Let's not make an exception from an exception.

<comment><USER2> But this is a job postings website: [https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs)

And when you ask if it's cool if you post a dozen, that's up for readers and mods to decide, not myself and my opinion.

I'm even happy to champion the cause of connecting more readers with jobs available; a rising tide lifts all boats.

Edit: perhaps HN could add a "showjobs" flag similar to "showdead" for those who don't want to see a slew of job postings? It seems silly that we're quibbiling over a bit of data and it's visibility.

<comment><USER3> HN is funded by a venture and they have the right to promote startups they have funded. That is something we cannot change. I don't agree with certain rules on HN but what can I do?

I am arguing we can't turn this site into a job website simply because we make exception for the so-called "public benefits".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The first line on the page peaked my interest:

> All of our positions are remote and we can only hire in the United States > and Canada.

I assume there is a fair amount of security involved in the day-to-day sysadmin work of a CA. I wonder what kind of work environment their sysadmins have, in terms of secure computing, VPN (or something BeyondCorp-like), etc..

<comment><USER5> *piqued

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's mind blowing to me how much LE gets done with such a tiny team. Hats off to them, they've done a ton of good for the PKI world.

<comment><USER7> And yet they can't do something as simple as year long certs

<comment><USER3> Because they didn't want to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> my god a sysadmin job post I can't remember the last time I saw one of these

<comment><USER9> It's just been renamed. You can see the job description has all the tick boxes for "devops".</comment></comment>


Big Pharma's Manufactured Epidemic: The Misdiagnosis of ADHD - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/big-pharma-s-manufactured-epidemic-the-misdiagnosis-of-adhd/?WT.mc_id=SA_FB_MB_NEWS <comment><USER2> More on this subject from the NY Times --

 _No blood test or CT scan can tell you if you have the condition — the diagnosis is made by subjective clinical evaluation and screening questionnaires. This lack of any bright line between pathology and eccentricity, Schwarz argues, has allowed Big Pharma to get away with relentless expansion of the franchise._ > [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/books/review/adhd- nation-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/books/review/adhd-nation-alan- schwarz.html)</comment>


How to Get Your SaaS Company to the Top of the Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.kunocreative.com/saas-marketing-for-ceos

<comment><AUTHOR> eBook on how companies like Shopify went to market, grew rapidly and dominated their space using a variety of growth hacking strategies.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you reconcile private repos and having a good GitHub portfolio? - <AUTHOR> This is something weird I've run into.
Most of my personal projects are big full stack things that I put onto the App Stores and they handle loads of user data, and usually I like to keep those locked in private repositories because, well, that's what I do with all my projects. (Feel free to point out how that's bad, but I think it feels weird to throw commits at a public repository for a side project, and it actually makes me not continue with them for some reason)
Most places ask to see your GitHub, and with the exception of one really simple fork and issue fix, mine's just "empty" looking.
In reality there's like ten trillion lines of code everywhere, and fully complete projects there, some of which usage.
Shouldn't there be some way to open your repositories temporarily to employers or something? How do you reconcile this? <comment><USER2> I don't think there's a huge amount of benefit to OSS from open sourcing apps (vs libraries). That being said, it doesn't sound like you have any particularly good reason to keep your stuff closed. You may want to think about what the gain is exactly and open your repos up for your own self interest.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) Change your profile settings to also count commits to private repos

2) Invite said companies to your repos temporarily while you show them your work. Consider the code open sourced after that point since you can't guarantee how it will be used (have a license in place before doing so).</comment>


Why do webpages direct me to localised pages based on my IP address? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> It annoys me to no end - I already switched back to Yahoo as my primary search engine because Google sends me to the German page all the time. But Yahoo does the same with their mail service (luckily I hardly ever do it).

Why? It seems like the worst idea ever! Are programmers just sitting around thinking "let's do something really cool" and add this anti-feature? For the record: if I wanted the german Google, I would be clever enough to type google.DE instead of google.COM.

P.S.: I know there are ways to make Google show me the english page, but they either involve enabling permanent cookies or typing a longer URL.

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't like it either. I've talked clients out of doing that and doing something instead with some of the content in the page. Just a portion though, not the entire thing. In my view Google should be Google.</comment>


Vice Ventures is investing in taboo industries that other funds won't touch - <AUTHOR> https://marker.medium.com/the-companies-venture-capital-isnt-allowed-to-invest-in-a59c4cdd5ae <comment><USER2> I've mentioned this before, but the firearms industry has a similar issue, caused by the same clauses. Local gun stores often pay very high fees for credit card processing relative to other retail stores - and unlike gambling and pornography, this doesn't seem to be supported by a higher chargeback rate as best I can tell. They've just been "lumped in" because of the regulated nature of some of their products.

I say "some of", because things like magazines and accessories are usually included in the "prohibited goods and services" clauses, even though they are typical subject to no specific regulation at either the state or federal level. It's honestly kind of weird to me.

<comment><USER3> What I find so interesting about Vice Ventures is how she has drawn a hard line on the weapons industry.

<comment><USER4> If it's sex or drugs or any sort of addiction, the user is victim. With weapons, other people are the victim.

<comment><USER5> >If it's sex or drugs or any sort of addiction, the user is victim. With weapons, other people are the victim.

At least in the US, a majority of deaths by firearm are suicides. And as for potentially addictive drugs (e.g., alcohol), the user can cause great harm to other people, as in drunk driving.

<comment><USER6> No. A plurality of the gun deaths are suicide (%33). Accidents and homicide add up to more.

<comment><USER7> I think you have your stats reversed.

Fivethirtyeight says about 2/3 of gun deaths are suicides. Around 1/3 are homicides. A surprisingly small percentage (to me) are classified as accidents.[0]

[0]: [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun- deaths/](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/)

<comment><USER8> Im not entirely surprised accidents are low, the places with the most guns have strong gun culture who have learned and put into practice gun safety from a young age. Many of the older folks have taken shooting classes or done shooting sport while in school, many of the younger generation have taken hunter safety courses, and of course military service people throughout the entire time, and all would teach basic gun safety. You will be kicked off any range for not being safe and most anyone who owns guns will very quickly correct anybody not being safe.

The amount of people who know nothing about guns and never shot one under proper supervision and then go out and purchase a firearm without researching anything are extremely low, so accidents remain pretty low.

<comment><USER9> Basic firearm safety instruction is part of it, and the other part is the general mechanical reliability of firearms. Modern firearms, as a general rule, will not fire themselves unless somebody or something interacts with them. Basic firearm safety instruction is often a short dogmatic set of rules[0] primarily focused on making sure people don't interact with the gun in a way that makes it likely to go off unintended. These two factors work together to keep people relatively safe from accidents around firearms most of the time.

There are some guns for which the basic dogmatic instruction is probably insufficient. Notably glocks; in some circles "glock" has become a verb, wherein to "glock yourself" means to accidentally shoot yourself in the leg with your glock while holstering or upholstering it. More specialized training can reduce the chances of this happening, but for this specific scenario and some others like it, the standard basic safety instructions fall a bit short in my opinion.

[0] One example: [http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/safe_sur/acts-tpto- eng.ht...](http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/safe_sur/acts-tpto-eng.htm) Other rulesets often have the same ideas worded in slightly different ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the biggest win here is the marketing for Vice after putting together this $25M fund. This is totally on-brand for them, regardless of how business- viable these investments are. Plus, it's not Vice's own money they are playing with (which is good for them given their profitability struggles as a parent company).

My inclination is that VCs don't particularly not-invest in successful "vice- driven companies" due to their moral compass, but rather due to the financial friction and PR risk-reward involved in doing so.

I feel like the article understates the point that, given the nature of vices, if the business turns out to be doing substantial harm and a media shitstorm hits, the VCs will absolutely be dragged into the mix and publicly shamed for contributing to the problem. When Juul was going through it's recent implosion all the cigarette giants who were investors got name-dropped. When WeWork was in the news, SoftBank's name was being dragged right next to it. And the media was sure to tie Uber articles to Saudi money.

Sure, some investments are bound to not work out for VC firms, but nobody wants to trash their firm's legacy and reputation over blowback from the fickle beast that is public opinion on the internet and word of mouth.

There is still value in these vice industries and proper federal regulations still need to be figured out for things like Cannabis companies to operate like 'real' businesses.

Not all "vice" companies are equal and I think it will still take time to figure out to what level different types are socially acceptable and what restrictions to put in place to keep the good/bad balance in check.

<comment><USER11> I don't think this is related to Vice media?

<comment><USER12> Don't think so, but it won't stop some people using it as an opportunity to claim Vice Media has a conflict of interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are well-established benefits of CBD use in some patients covering a wide variety of symptoms, but pushing skin care pseudoscience is wrong. Isolated evidence like that of anti-inflammatory effects is not the same as an extensive clinical trial. This is why we need an actual healthcare system: to allow people to see doctors rather than falling victim to the junk CBD products that this person is excited to fund.

<comment><USER14> Recess's CBD sparkling water sounds kind of cool, but its $5 a can! Yikes, that's one hell of a markup. I'd try it at half the price, and might be a customer at 1/3 the price, but $30/6pk is pretty wild.

Each can contains 10mg of broad spectrum hemp extract: high quality broad spectrum CBD oils are $0.80 for 10mg CBD (10mg of broad spectrum oil means the CBD content probably 5mg+/-3). Price compare with TonicVibes's 1500mg CBD (from whole plant extract) for $120 - best quality CBD oils I've found so far.

Even if the other herbs are extremely high quality as well, the margins on this product are insane.

<comment><USER15> CBD products in general are quite expensive, for example CBD extracts are similarly priced to their THC counterparts. I assume this is in large part due to marijuana prohibition laws. Prices will hopefully come down as those laws are relaxed around the country and more players enter the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> the numbers tossed around in these articles always amuse me. I have worked extensively in the adult industry and can guarantee its no where near $97B. Print is dead, the internet and PPV in hotels and satellites bring in the bacon and it's not much.

<comment><USER17> > guarantee its no where near $97B

Worldwide? What if you include brothels, strip clubs, "used" items (ie panties, gamer girl bathwater,) etc.?

Here's the source for $97B, puts US at $10-12B - [https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/things-are- lo...](https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/things-are-looking- americas-porn-industry-n289431)

<comment><USER16> Yea, see I wouldn't include strip clubs, lingerie, etc. as porn, personally. But if you add that back in, plus prostitution and all sex work, $97b is attainable. I guess my view is slightly less encompassing then others'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why is esports listed as a vice-venture?

<comment><USER19> It's the equivalent of sports gambling.

<comment><USER20> Are you also thinking of Fantasy Sports (virtual teams of real players) ?

I don't see how E-Sports is different from Chess.

<comment><USER19> People bet on chess as well, I have old colleagues who do it actively. That'd fall under this VC's purview as well.

I have hold no stigma against gambling, I used to gamble professionally. I just think it's important to acknowledge what is and isn't gambling and to acknowledge society and legislation generally have a stigma against it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This idea is about 20 years old already: VICEX

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

<comment><USER22> VICEX is based on "sin" stocks. Casinos, tobacco, etc. already on the public market.

This is venture funding for edgy products that traditional VCs might not touch.

<comment><USER21> It's called VICE Ventures. Not EDGY Ventures. Anyway, she has 4 investments and 3 are in beverages, 1 is in video games. Pretty far from "taboo" that the parent article states in the headline. This is simply astroturf produced by a PR firm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can someone paste the article here? There's a paywall for me.

</comment><comment><USER24> After closing the huge sign-up popup, dismissing the Medium-App-suggestion and closing the cookie-banner I lost all interest in reading the article, which is a shame.

I sometimes hate the internet.

At least the HN comments were insightful, unlike my rambling. Sorry about that.

<comment><USER25> Related to an HN article from earlier this week: you might consider trying the Brave browser. With it, I didn't experience any of that.

<comment><USER26> it auto-closes sign-up popups and cookie prompts ?

<comment><USER25> I just checked again (on mobile). It does show the sign-in prompt (was just less obtrusive on desktop). It doesn't show app prompts or cookie prompts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I find Unknown Fund more interesting: [https://www.unknown.fund/](https://www.unknown.fund/)

<comment><USER28> A thread about this is currently on the front page as well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21538748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21538748)

<comment><USER27> It wasn't at the time of me posting, I feared it to drown.</comment></comment></comment>


The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://fs.blog/2012/04/learn-anything-faster-with-the-feynman-technique/ <comment><USER2> > When you write out an idea from start to finish in simple language that a > child can understand (tip: use only the most common words), you force > yourself to understand the concept at a deeper level and simplify > relationships and connections between ideas. If you struggle, you have a > clear understanding of where you have some gaps. That tension is good –it > heralds an opportunity to learn.

I have lived with my grandparents for the majority of my life. My grandpa isn't the most intellectual person on this planet. Yet, since I've grown up I've always seen him as my intellectual equal and because of that he always listened to when I had understood a new concept.

I am sure that because of this 'in-built mechanism' in my family structure I got set up to be 'naturally talented' at explaining things since I was always used to put things into simple terms subconsciously.

What I am learning from this is that when I have a kid, I have to act like an 8 year old so that he/she will experience the same blessing as I did.

I still thank my grandpa for listening to my (most of the times) very long- winded and convoluted explanations, forcing me to simplify until I had a feeling he understood me well enough.

<comment><USER3> Good observation. But apply it to everyone not just your kid, and observe the results.

Apply it to people who you disagree with politically. Apply it to your relationships at home and work. It's basically what Fred Rodgers, Dale Carnegie, Marshall Rosenberg (and hundreds of others) all talk about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Although I think Shane's article serves as a good introduction to the Feynman Technique, I feel it could go further when it comes to _how_ to actually implement it. Notably, I'd argue the Feyman Technique - and Feynman was especially good at this - revolves around _asking good questions_. Here's a related excerpt from my blog post on the topic[1]:

\--

This is not a novel concept, and it's just a bit of fortuitous branding that Richard Feynman's name got attached to it, but the Feynman technique is a framework for learning new things. It's very simple:

1\. Pick a concept you want to learn, such as "what is company stock?"

2\. Ask some very practical questions, like:

\- "What is it?" \- "Why do we need it?" \- "What alternatives are there?" \- "When did it come about?" \- "Who uses it?" \- "What are its various forms?" \- "Where is it commonly used?"

3\. All of these questions will invariably branch out into even more jargon and concepts, such as "equity," "preferred stock," "voting rights," "limited liability" and so on.

4\. Repeat #2 for each of those branches. By the end, you should know the first principles so well you could teach the concept to a college freshman.

Three things about this framework immediately jump out at me:

(1) Learning something deeply is necessarily _a lot of work_. It's not like you're just answering "what is X." You're asking ten questions about it, each trying to get at it from a different angle, and then asking ten questions about each of those underlying concepts. The bottleneck to knowledge then is not so much ability, but effort.

(2) Learning something deeply is largely a function of the questions you ask. The greater "coverage" your questions span on the concept surface area, the better you will understand it. In this framework, asking good questions is a necessity.

(3) Questions are also where new insights come from. Once you understand all the factors which compose "company stock," you're able to toggle individual factors on and off, and ask questions such as: "can you have stock with unlimited liability?" or "what would stock in people look like?"

.

[1] [https://alexpetralia.github.io/2017/12/25/NL-2017-12-25.html](https://alexpetralia.github.io/2017/12/25/NL-2017-12-25.html)

<comment><USER5> > (1) Learning something deeply is necessarily a lot of work. It's not like > you're just answering "what is X." You're asking ten questions about it, > each trying to get at it from a different angle, and then asking ten > questions about each of those underlying concepts. The bottleneck to > knowledge then is not so much ability, but effort.

This is the truth and it makes me struggle when I want to learn something but not so deeply. When learning a new concept, I often find myself dfs the tree and end up somewhere very far in a single branch without gaining the comprehensive understanding of the concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a youtuber junior md called Ali Abdaal. He has very good scientific videos about learning. Talks about subjects such as "active recall" and "spaced repetition". Worth a look imho.

Here is the youtube channel link: [https://m.youtube.com/user/Sepharoth64](https://m.youtube.com/user/Sepharoth64)

Video on a.recall and s.repetition: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ukLnPbIffxE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ukLnPbIffxE)

<comment><USER7> Should you be interested in the science and research behind it, I warmly recommend reading the book "Make It Stick" where the concepts are discussed in length. [1]

[1]: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18770267-make-it- stick](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18770267-make-it-stick)

<comment><USER6> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my town we have something called The Science Cafe. The presenter has describe an interesting topic in 20 minutes without [computer] slides, followed by Q&A. This is not easy now that conference talks and course lectures heavily use powerpoint. TED science talks are similar.

<comment><USER9> Mine also. In our case it's called "Science by the Pint". [http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/science-by-the- pint/](http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/science-by-the-pint/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's usually how you can identify good people: when they can explain complicated things using simple words, in a way that their audience can understand it. People that need lots of expensive words and leave you feeling dizzy at the end of their presentation often don't know very well what they are talking about either.

<comment><USER11> An alternative explanation is that some people are just good explainers.

I've had profs in college who were brilliant but couldn't teach, and profs who could teach but weren't brilliant (didn't produce much original research).

I wouldn't say the former group "didn't know their material well", but they didn't build up the material systematically. Pedagogy was neglected. Explaining things is an art that not every has the inclination to master (but they should).

<comment><USER12> Professors can massively improve their pedagogy if motivated to do so.

I once had a professor who was new to teaching. It was a very painful experience and the entire CS class spent every lecture murmuring among themselves how terrible the lecture was. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and waited to 2 weeks to see if the lectures would improve. They didn't. At the end of one lecture I went and spoke to him and told him directly he was by far the worst teacher I had encountered at University and that as students we expected higher quality instruction.

From the next week on he was a good lecturer. It was a total transformation. I was seriously impressed. I guess he just never really thought about the pedagogical side of things before but to get such a rude wake up call really jolted him into action and he actually had a pretty good capacity to teach after that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My friend's dad is an inventor and discovered that the best way to retain knowledge is to teach it, which is why most students forget 90% of the source material. Most teaching is based on students inputting knowledge not outputting it.

<comment><USER14> Yes and I think programming can be seen as a kind of teaching (where you teach a computer instead of a person).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "If you're not learning you're standing still"

This is a large understatement. In our industry, if you're not learning you are drifting backwards rapidly.

I aim for twenty hours a week of (unpaid) reinvestment and learning. Some weeks I still feel like that's not enough to stay current.

Does anyone else feel the same way?

<comment><USER16> I've had that feeling, and I started making an effort to improve myself. I started time-tracking my side projects ("you can't improve what you don't measure"), scheduling time for learning, and set up an automatic summary sent on email every week.

It didn't work for me at all, and ended up basically killing every joy in my side projects. If I missed a scheduled hour (because I was doing something else fun) I felt like a failure. I could only focus on "I should be working on x" instead of actually thinking about x.

These days I try to not worry too much about what I should learn/produce, and rather work on what interests me at the time. I'm probably not learning at the most effective rate, but at least I'm having fun.

<comment><USER5> I share similar experience, I find I can only achieve learning at a high effective rate with strong short-term motivation, and it can become tiring very quickly. On the other hand, I can always enjoy having fun and learn without worrying about effectiveness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I thought the Feynman technique was:

1) Write down the problem

2) Think real hard

3) Write down the solution

In other words, the "draw the rest of the fucking owl" of general learning/problem solving.

<comment><USER18> No, it's

      1) Write down the problem
      2) Frame it in such a way as to pique Feynman's curiosity
      3) Wait for Feynman to tell you how he solved it

<comment><USER19> These days we call this approach 'lazyweb'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A variant is to 'explain it to your spouse'. (Ignoring these days your partner might be better educated than you.)

<comment><USER12> I've started just explaining it to myself. You don't need to actually teach it to someone.

In fact this is kind of a subtle point. There are two functions that teaching it to a third party is performing. The first is that of burning the material into your memory and the second is getting to an exposition that the third party understands.

Well... the second part is not necessarily necessary. It depends on your goals, but let's say you are only trying to further your own understanding then perhaps all that is really required is getting the material into your memory in a robust way. Just explaining it out yourself enough times to actually wire all the nuerons up in a complete graph is massively beneficial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The real problem is not the way to learn, it depends on each individuals. The real problem is knowing which concepts need to learn. It's not easy.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Step 1: Teach it to a child..."

Key. Teaching is a learning process for both teacher (who must condense and reduce to essentials, and so integrate) and student.

If the child is old enough to ask good questions (and is encouraged to), so much the better. The feedback is valuable, and the teacher can continue to reduce/integrate at a somewhat higher level.

<comment><USER19> I'm always surprised how rarely anyone makes the obvious point here, and sure enough in this thread it looks like no-one has: no, you can't explain complex things to a two year old. Not without dumbing it down to the point that you've discarded everything of value.

Is this some odd kind of hyperbole about teaching techniques? I don't see that it's helpful.

If I'm struggling with it, the odds of a toddler being able to comprehend it are slim to none.

The kernel trick? Quantum computing? Even good old eigenvectors? (Or, heaven forbid, genuinely advanced mathematics?)

The best professors in the world couldn't convey these things to a 2 year old, and not for lack of understanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Some people used to say the same about programming. If you can ~teach it to a computer (<2yo innate abstraction capabilities), you know it all.</comment>


Fujifilm to take over Xerox in $6.1B Deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-xeroxcorp-m-a-fujifilm/japans-fujifilm-to-take-over-xerox-in-6-1-billion-deal-create-jv-idUSKBN1FK025 <comment><USER3> I used to work at Xerox as a software developer, about 15 or so years ago, as a fresh young graduate. It was interesting, but also at the same time kind of weird.

You noticed that there were lots of young graduates, but also lots of old staff. With very few people in-between that age range. You'd then realise they'd get graduates and utilised them until they left. While the older staff generally got to a certain salary band, were satisfied and then stuck around until their generous pension could mature.

It was like working in a Dilbert strip with a huge amount of bureaucracy and process, with cargo culting thrown in. All the processes were internal to Xerox too and had acronyms prefixed with X as it was stuff like "Xerox Process Improvement Process".

At the other end of the scale the amount of research I heard about was amazing. They had numerous patients on e-ink displays way before ebooks like the Kindle came to market. But they never seemed to actually make something marketable apart from printers.

I remember being told about a room they had in the R&D labs (again 15 years ago) and it was all white boards. On the ceiling of the room was a camera that scanned all the whiteboards. You could write on the white boards a p in a square [P] and it would send the contents of that wall to the printer, or an e in a square then an e-mail address and it would then send it off as an e-mail instead.

<comment><USER4> This is pretty accurate. I mean, I'm sure you remember the xww intranet prefix. Such odd quirks there

<comment><USER3> Oh, yeah. I forgot about all the xww prefix for the intranet.

I remember having a debate with another developer. He thought that an IP address started with 13 (13.X.X.X) was a generic internal IP address like 192.168.X.X.

At the time Xerox owned the whole 13. Address block.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At the risk of being naive - Xerox hasn't been doing much with their IP and branding so they were to my mind on the way to being the next Novell - <USER2> former tech powerhouse bought out and reduced to irrelevance. This merger gives them a chance at continuing relevance by expanding their worldwide presence and perhaps finally trying to leverage the Xerox IP and branding to do more than cheap printers.

I'm glad that Fujifilm bought them rather than a completely unrelated business like, say, a patent troll or Oracle.

<comment><USER6> They have a relationship that spans decades, with a very successful joint venture in FujiZerox, so they seem like a natural acquirer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting how big companies like Xerox and Bell invested a lot into the future (PARC, Bell Labs) and even created new inventions that we use every day. How do such forward-thinking companies grow irrelevant?

<comment><USER8> I'm going to make the controversial claim that such research centres could only be so groundbreaking because they were, by conventional standards, extremely badly managed. Only by getting the right group of people together and letting them play with whatever they want, with a loose budget, do you get results like that. This lassitude is of course completely incompatible with hitting quarterly targets, or the painstaking work of taking a prototype to a product.

Neither was really subject to any kind of market pressure too.

<comment><USER9> Interestingly this pattern doesn't work with pure research: the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton hosted Einstein, Hermann Weyl, John von Neumann and Kurt Gödel, but there is little important work done in there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used to work at the Wilsonville, Oregon campus testing printers. At the time, years and years ago, it was the best paying job for a teen. Something like 15/hr. Anyways, the engineers there are really smart. The problem is that the printers just weren't nearly as robust or as good as the HP ones. And except for some paper heavy industries like the Law I think they're suffering from the same fate as the postal service when e-mail took off.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe the horrendous bug in the Xerox copiers that replaces letters and numbers with perfect looking different ones gave that brand the rest.

<comment><USER12> That was very bad, yep. Also the trouble they've run into in Asia Pacific which caused huge losses - they were counting revenue before it was earned and also signing government/school clients up on long term high cost leases. They're now banned from NZ government contracts [https://www.crn.com.au/news/false-accounting-and- fictitious-...](https://www.crn.com.au/news/false-accounting-and-fictitious- sales-at-fuji-xerox-australia-nz-470035)

<comment><USER4> NZ was the Fuji Xerox partnership. Fuji ran that from all accounts. I worked in the Developing Markets Org at Xerox (proper), Asia Pacific was its own silo and they did their own thing. It's one of the areas I didn't work with, others were Western Europe, Russia, and Canada. Pretty much everything else, I knew all the marketing people for the countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As long as they keep making film (instant and regular) I'm happy. :-)

<comment><USER14> And the X100!

<comment><USER13> I hear good things about them, but between my Canon APS-C DSLR and 8-10 analog cameras, I have more stuff than I can shake a stick at. Should probably sell of a few.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> End of an era.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's disappointing that the company with the Xerox PARC legacy, that spawned many of the innovations people take for granted in modern computers, couldn't figure out a way to carry on. One day I'd love to read a rise-and-fall story about that place.

<comment><USER17> _Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age_ \- Hiltzik

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the recommendation!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Perhaps that means we'll be seeing an AI-powered Xerox instant camera in the future…

I know this is just the writer and not Fuji Xerox, but how would that even work? Instant cameras use an analog medium, so it seems like anything you could do with AI would be limited.

<comment><USER5> Maybe the camera would do an advanced version of that peace-sign detection that some Japanese phones do where you can program it to snap the photo when exposure, etc. is good and everyone is smiling, eyes open, and looking at the sensor?

Yeah...that's a reach, you're right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are they innovating less in terms of enterprise printing? We had a fleet of corporate Xerox printers a few years back and they were touting the more expensive solid ink.

</comment><comment><USER20> There has been a lot of consolidation in the printer industry, go back a couple of decades and there were probably a hundred manufacturers of printers or more.

</comment><comment><USER21> Url changed from [https://petapixel.com/2018/01/31/fujifilm-takes- xerox-6-1b-d...](https://petapixel.com/2018/01/31/fujifilm-takes- xerox-6-1b-deal/), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was a bit confused at first as Fuji Xerox is already the name of the joint venture between the 2 companies.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuji_Xerox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuji_Xerox)</comment>


Exploring Programming Language Architecture in Perl (Scheme-Like Interpreter) - <AUTHOR> http://billhails.net/Book/ <comment><USER2> That was pleasantly surprising. Very thorough and highly recommended.

Don't miss the PDF link for later perusal.

<http://billhails.net/Book/EPLAiP.pdf>

Nice find draegtun, thanks!

<comment><USER3> I wonder why I haven't seen this book before?

It felt like seeing pictures from my childhood, since when I studied long ago Lisp was the first language taught. I've written partial implementation of lisps a couple of times, it isn't hard -- and quite beautiful.

(It's a pity it isn't using the new Perl 6/Rakudo parsing stuff, which is probably too new.)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> On CPAN there is a small Perl Lisp interpreter: <http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-lisp/>

It seems to have be written for the express purpose of parsing Gnu newsreader 'eld' files! (example here: [http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/GAAS/perl- lisp-0.06/newsrc.el...](http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/GAAS/perl- lisp-0.06/newsrc.eld)).

Here is a more general Lisp example in the distribution:

        (defun sum (a b &optional c)
          (write a b c)
          (+ a b))

        (setq a 100)
        (setq b (sum 4 5))
        (write (print (list a b)))

        (write (ord "a"))
        (write (chr ?a))

        (write "Yesterday was:" (localtime (- (time) (* 24 60 60))))
        (setq pid (perl-eval "$$"))

        (setq a 10)
        (while (not (zerop a))
          (write a)
          (setq a (1- a)))

        (list "Good bye")</comment>


Why Most People Will Never Be Good At Recording. - <AUTHOR> http://therecordingrevolution.com/2013/01/14/why-most-people-will-never-be-good-at-recording/ <comment><AUTHOR> Posted because it applies to far more than just home recording.</comment>


What types of documents are needed for software testing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.jayphilips.com/2010/03/12/what-types-of-documents-are-needed-for-software-testing

<comment><USER2> I'm biased, <http://testplanmanagement.com>, but I think you need to document your test cases and the results of every pass through those testcases.</comment>


Decoupled from IP, TCP is at last able to support multihomed hosts - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2591369 <comment><USER3> Wow, I didn't think this could be done this transparently. This has the potential to be huge, if it's adopted. Crossing my fingers.

Specifically, I can't wait till I can actually use my phone as I'm walking away from a Wi-Fi hotspot (which is _very common_ ).

Edit: As noted in another comment, Apple apparently adopted MPTCP for Siri in iOS7! [http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5977](http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5977) Now we just have to wait for every server on the internet to support it. :-/

<comment><USER4> Well, I'm not sure if I mis-configured something, but I was not able to trigger MPTCP traffic from iOS 7. I was using a MPTCP enabled Linux box, serving video files over HTTP. But all I saw from iOS was traditional single- path TCP. If my tests were conducted correctly, Apple might have disabled MPTCP for third-party services.

<comment><USER5> Our understanding is that Apple have currently only enabled MPTCP for Siri. This probably makes sense - Siri isn't mission critical, but is very delay sensitive. Using both LTE and WiFi for a Siri connection should allow them to get low delay in the case either has a problem. They're using Citrix Netscaler at the server end, which does have MPTCP support.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the authors of MPTCP.

<comment><USER6> > Our understanding is that Apple have currently only enabled MPTCP for Siri. > This probably makes sense - Siri isn't mission critical, but is very delay > sensitive.

I have to disagree that it makes sense to cripple APIs and give preferential treatment to certain software. If the support is there, give developers an API to use it!

Also, good job on MPTCP - it's awesome :)

EDIT: I'm being downvoted, but I'd really love to hear a justification for why it makes sense for apple to restrict features to use in apple-developed software only.

<comment><USER5> Not sure why you're being downvoted, and I've no direct insight into Apple's deployment decisions.

But I'd guess they're concerned that deploying MPTCP could cause problems with middleboxes in some environments. Siri is a good way to test the water. First, they own the servers, so they can ensure there's no problem on their end. Second, Siri isn't mission-critical in the way IMAP or HTTP would be, so if there is a problem, it's less of a PR disaster for them.

Personally, I'd also prefer to see an API that developers can use to enable it, but I'm OK with them taking it slow at first. Every cellular and WiFi network on the planet got to see how their middleboxes handle MPTCP, so having them test the water like this makes life so much easier for anyone else later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was actually working on server-client software in Go to allow multihoming IP connections.[0] The original use case was to load-balance packets across wi-fi + 3G or other connections. It's not quite user-friendly yet, but with a little work it could use new connections as they come up (maybe poll ifconfig?).

You'd of course need to install the software on your outside server that will forward packets for you, but a DO droplet would be great for that. It'd also work for the case where your router is your server and you shift between wired and wireless.

[0] [https://github.com/erjiang/tuntuntun](https://github.com/erjiang/tuntuntun)

</comment><comment><USER8> Offtopic warning: the following has nothing to do with MPTCP.

I was wondering why SCTP [1] never took off. It sounds like a shoe-in for HTTP and other web-based protocols. All the application level protocols that must come up with a mechanism for communicating the length of the payload... Why not have that built into the transport protocol? Of course you do have streaming to deal with, but streaming can still be solved with SCTP same as what we do now in HTTP: say this is a stream, so the client keeps reading.

Then I saw it: NAT. Fucking NAT strikes again. Once IPv6 takes over [2], I hope to never speak those three letters in that sequence again.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_Control_Transmission_Pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_Control_Transmission_Protocol)

[2] [https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html](https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> UCL and others have done (and are actively doing) really cool work on MPTCP.

[https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi11/design- implementati...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi11/design- implementation-and-evaluation-congestion-control-multipath-tcp)

[https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi12/technical- sessions/...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi12/technical- sessions/presentation/raiciu)

Others: [http://multipath- tcp.org/pmwiki.php/Researchers/References](http://multipath- tcp.org/pmwiki.php/Researchers/References)

</comment><comment><USER10> An interesting feature here is that in theory you could have a host with two 20M connections and a host with a 10M connection and a 30M connection and by using more than two subflows they could communicate at 40M.

I wonder if they've considered what happens with this for hosts that are _very_ multihomed. If you have two hosts that each have 25 addresses, do you actually want 625 subflows? Or do you want to countenance the possibility that only one address on each host is fast and you didn't create a subflow between them because you didn't try every possibility?

<comment><USER11> What is this M unit you are throwing around?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why don't people just use a stateless VPN like SigmaVPN[0]? Also, since android is linux, why not use one of the many bonding options?

[0] [http://frozenriver.net/SigmaVPN](http://frozenriver.net/SigmaVPN)

<comment><USER13> How does one set bonding for SigmaVPN? Is it as simple as creating multiple tun devices and then bonding them together with ifenslave? Or is it more involved then that?

<comment><USER12> I'm picturing more using SigmaVPN to auto-roam to the next Internet connection but still have the same IP for continuous IP connectivity. The desctiption[0] says: \- Seamless handover between WiFi and GSM/3G.

Bonding wouldn't require SigmaVPN, just the regular Linux tooling and driver/kernel support.

[0] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.frozenrive...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.frozenriver.sigmavpn)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What has Apple been using for their multipath connections in iOS?

<comment><AUTHOR> > What has Apple been using for their multipath connections in iOS?

iOS7, released on September 18, 2013 is the first large scale commercial deployment of Multipath TCP - [http://perso.uclouvain.be/olivier.bonaventure/blog/html/2013...](http://perso.uclouvain.be/olivier.bonaventure/blog/html/2013/09/18/mptcp.html)

</comment></comment><comment> loup-vaillant > _The measurements revealed that protocol designers can no longer assume that > the Internet is transparent when designing a TCP extension; and no TCP > extension can assume that a single field of the TCP header will reach the > destination without any modification._

The Net Neutrality situation is worse than I thought.

<comment><USER5> We were really surprised by what we found - especially just how prevalent middleboxes that are aware of and modify TCP packets actually are. The results are a couple of years old now, so things have probably got even worse. But that's mostly separate from the network neutrality debate. You don't need to modify packets to shape them - our methodology would not have revealed shaping.

<comment><USER6> I think the network neutrality debate is a lot wider than just "Don't shape traffic". It's about keeping the internet a dumb transport, and "smart" (what a misnomer) middleboxes very much go against that goal.

Of course, as part of my job, I manage several of these boxes. I flagged these concerns when they were bought, but was overruled. So I guess we're relying on the good graces of the vendor to update their software to support MPTCP and any future modifications, otherwise these boxes become expensive doorstops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Could this be applied within a NATed network without cooperation of the server outside the NAT? That way you could at least move your laptop back and forth between wired and wireless connections inside the office or home without breaking all your sessions.

<comment><USER4> Yes! The design of MPTCP specifically takes that into considerations since most of hosts are behind a NAT. It basically initiates may normal TCP connections as subflows. All the middle-boxes would see normal TCP connections while the two MPTCP-aware endpoints split/aggregate traffic using multiple subflows.

[0] [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6824#page-51](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6824#page-51)

<comment><USER15> So you need an MPTCP-aware endpoint at the other end of the connection? I was imagining something that could be implemented unilaterally by a savvy home/office user just to ease the disruptions of switching between wired and wifi connections inside a NAT.

<comment><USER4> hmm.. well I think you can always use some sort of proxy, like VPN or an application proxy.

edit: typo

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sometimes I regret all the time and effort I put into network protocols. Particularly when I look at some new advance and it just makes me sad.

Sure, you could design some new protocol. Except that it could never actually work in practice---the infrastructure will see to that. Instead, it's better to treat a TCP connection with a fixed port of 80 (or 443, if you're so inclined) as precious and slather on some more bandaids until it stops not working at all.

</comment><comment><USER17> Multipath TCP becomes really useful when coupled with source-sensitive routing. Some on-going work on this topic (based on the Babel routing protocol for mesh networks):

[http://www.pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr/~boutier/source- specifi...](http://www.pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr/~boutier/source-specific- routing.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> For the server side, why not just use SCTP which not only has multi-homing, but also reliable datagram messaging? Are there issues using it intra- datacenter?

<comment><USER19> There are lots of protocols in current use that _aren 't_ SCTP.

TCP multihoming would work for most protocols/apps out there.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > "Multihoming is becoming the norm instead of the exception"

Well - at least Multipath TCP spared us from solving that use-case with generalized BPG usage on mobile devices. Too bad, it could have been fun - <USER2> a way...

<comment><USER20> You likely don't understand "BGP" at a fundamental level. Considering you need a well known and agreed peering agreement - BGP is not designed for use on end-points in any dynamic peering fashion. It is an external "routing" protocol. Hosts leverage "routed" protocols (e.g. IP). But, say, in our fantasy world your iPhone could take a full Internet routing table (it can't). BGP is not designed to deal with very long prefixes (/32 host routes) and in fact most peering agreements will flat out block prefixes longer than a /24 based on policy.

BGP on mobile devices would never have been fun and never worked. If each mobile host that came online required BGP around the world to update it's FIB we'd be in a world of hurt (partially because you can't aggregate host routes as you don't know where they're originating transit from). The more routes you add to BGP the worse BGP becomes from a maintainability perspective.

TL;DR Don't mention BGP on mobile devices as fun to any network engineer unless you're using the reference as a bad joke.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it was sarcastic - I wouldn't let everyone carry a small nuclear device either.

<comment><USER21> Why not? Muggings and such would become virtually nonexistent!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Overcomplicated pointless workaround to cope with crappy mobile networks.</comment>


The world through rose-colored blinders - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.stanford.edu/news/world-through-rose-colored-blinders-new-mathematical-model-how-society-becomes-polarized

<comment><USER2> "THE WORLD THROUGH ROSE-COLORED BLINDERS: A NEW MATHEMATICAL MODEL FOR HOW SOCIETY BECOMES POLARIZED"

I have a problem with the mixed metaphor in the title. You do not look through blinders, they are opaque. They are meant to block the line of sight, their color is immaterial but it is usually black.

Glasses on, the other hand are translucent and may be tinted. The idiom of 'rose-colored glasses' is supposed to suggest that if someone looks at --or [another idiom] thinks about, that is to say looks at with the mind's eye-- something with rose-colored glasses then they think that it is more pleasant than it really is.

Normally I wouldn't be as picky as this, but the linked reference is supposed to be a scholarly work from a leading educational institution. I mean we might have to tolerate something like this from a proprietary "University" like The University of Phoenix or Capella University or ITT Technical Institute, but from Stanford? Come on, give me a break, OK? Get your ducks in a row --that's an idiom, too.

<comment><USER3> (I am a co-author on the paper).

Your criticism of the title is valid.

But re: your line "the linked reference is supposed to be a scholarly work from a leading educational institution"

Note that the bad title belongs to an article written for the popular media (and written by non-experts). It is not the title of the "scholarly work" that the article describes. The scholarly work (<http://stanford.edu/~ppd/papers/pnas-polarization.pdf>) has a pretty dry title that no one in the popular media would use.

I am not condoning the mistake, just pointing that it is less egregious than what you seem to be implying.

<comment><USER2> I guess I was a little confused about the title of your work, Pranav, as opposed to the title of the article about your work. I still think the the author of the news article should hang his head in shame. (Actually, think that your title has a rather nice ring to it)</comment></comment></comment>


Yosemite bans drones - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/drones-banned-at-u-s-yosemite-national-park/

<comment><USER2> Makes sense. National Parks try hard to reduce man-made stuff that can bother other visitors. An R/C plane makes noise and is unnecessary.</comment>


Raspberry Pi – One Slice At A Time - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/pi4minds/home/one-slice-at-the-time

<comment><USER2> Whist we're talking how-tos, here's a guide that turns your Raspberry Pi into a Ninja Block: [http://ninjablocks.com/blogs/how-to/7195040-using-a- raspberr...](http://ninjablocks.com/blogs/how-to/7195040-using-a-raspberry-pi- as-a-ninja-block)

</comment><comment><USER3> sudo apt-get update doesn't actually update raspbian. It just downloads new package lists. A sudo apt-get upgrade is needed to update the packages. Additionally, you can use rpi-update <https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update> to download the latest firmware and kernel.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks jhenkens, I'll correct the tutorial.</comment>


Startup Idea: Legally sell copies of your mp3s to your friends - <AUTHOR> http://startup-ideas.posterous.com/legally-sell-copies-of-your-mp3s-to-your-frie

<comment><USER2> While this idea seems similar to Ping for iTunes, I think it has merit as another channel for music discovery. From what is described in the post, however, it seems like it would be more difficult to build and manage than it needs to be. Why resell from the site and go through headaches of profit splitting, when you can just redirect to iTunes, Amazon, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear that artists only receive like 15-20% of the itunes price. That a market inefficiency that I want to fix.</comment></comment>


126.96.36.199 BGP Hijacked by US ISP - <AUTHOR> http://188.8.131.52/ <comment><USER2> 1.3/16 is assigned to APNIC and seems to be (at least partially) routed via Phoenix.

This is also where requests to 22.214.171.124 stop. They are not routed further either by 18.104.22.168 or the subsequent 184.108.40.206.

Cogent should be able to answer why.</comment>


Ask HN: gifts for geeks? - <AUTHOR>

What are the best ideas you've seen for gifts for geeks this holiday season?
I thought I had a couple of brilliant ideas (space flight simulator and TED tickets) before realising they cost about $1,000 and $5,000 respectively.
I'd love to hear creative ideas at all price ranges and I imagine there are others here who would as well.
My favourite recent idea was a flying trapeze lesson I bought for my brother. I'm not sure why this appeals to the geek in us - probably something to do with pendulums - but it's a great fun present for active geeks. <comment><USER2> The Arduino is pretty awesome and relatively cheap. The board itself is around $30, but you can get bundles for $50+.

I asked for the Arduino Uno and an ethernet shield for Christmas because I couldn't think of anything else. And let's face it, the idea of programming your plants to tweet when they need water is pretty awesome.

Here's a link for your reference: [http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&...](http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=193&zenid=ffecc1d1b5a7599131b7a604a9ef7f82)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wanting to shoot small? If they don't already have them, Dropbox Pro or Evernote Pro subscriptions sound like a good idea. Or a Kindle/iTunes gift card; you can never have too many books/apps/albums/movies. Also, O'Reilly books can make a great gift.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://kevinrose.com/blogg/2010/11/27/2010-geek-holiday- gift...](http://kevinrose.com/blogg/2010/11/27/2010-geek-holiday-gift- guide.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> A solid state drive (SSD), if they don't have one already. Prices have become more reasonable and performance gains over traditional drives have become more worthwhile. For example, I recently bought one of the better performing 120GB drives for $220, though they've been available for less with rebates.

</comment><comment><USER6> Dominion is an amazing board game. The best mechanic is the re playability- you only use 10 action cards out of a possible 25 in each game. Which gives you 25choose10 = 3,268,760 possible combinations. <http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36218/dominion>

<comment><USER7> well to be fair, some combinations won't really work since they depend on others being in use. e.g. curse cards

<comment><USER6> The gold,silver,copper,victorypoints and curses are all part of the cards that are automatically added in every game, regardless of the 10 kingdom cards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Olympic curling lessons - strategy, minimal athleticism, and fun.</comment>


Why Open Offices Are Terrible - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/work-education/why-open-offices-are-terrible/index.php <comment><USER2> I found I was the most productive when I was in a small office with 2-3 other developers, with a door we could close. Everyone was setup this way, and people ended up decorating each of their rooms and every room had a "theme" (ours was called the lounge). This degree of personalization brought me closer to my co-workers whom I shared the office with, and as a result we worked better together.

In the afternoons, we'd have our "coding sessions" where we could close the door and just sink into whatever project/problem we were working on. The result (without constant distractions of people walking by/around us) was extremely productive.

This was back in Ohio years ago. Since then, I've moved to the bay area where I've unfortunately been forced to work in open offices. I find them depersonalizing and my ADD kicks in with people constantly walking by/around me. I isolate myself with good noise canceling headphones, but I find myself longing for the days when I shared an office with some really cool dudes. Or, maybe I still haven't found a team I like.

Anyway, I find it odd that companies in the bay area, with how innovative everything is out here, think open offices are good and/or work. You pay people 6 figures to use their mind and then make them sit in a room all day with constant distractions. It makes no sense.

<comment><USER3> Product idea: if you work at a startup of just 4-5 people and it's pretty quiet in your little space, we'll rent out temporary fake co-workers, who will talk loudly about their weekends next to you, shoot nerf guns, and get on the phone with AT&T to dispute a charge. The premium plan will include a manager who walks the floor and asks you how things are going. You can rent the co- workers on a weekly basis, or even just for one day when an investor is stopping by.

<comment><USER4> Dude, your jonesing my idea. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9978487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9978487)

<comment><USER3> I've got second-mover advantage now!

Wanna split the three commas?

<comment><USER4> I'l take new york, you can have SF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Someone needs to write an article "why no one office plan will make everyone happy". Discussions around office layouts always devolve into different groups vehemently defending how everyone should love their preferred choice, and very few people recognizing that _different people work differently_.

Some people thrive in an open office, while others can't function due to distraction, interruption, and an expectation of constant interaction. Some people thrive with private offices and doors, while others go stir-crazy and feel like they can't collaborate. And cubicles with proper separation end up as a satisficing solution that doesn't make anyone completely happy but doesn't drive people completely crazy.

Ideally some kind of hybrid could work, with doors available for people who want them, and common work areas available for people who want them. But perceptions matter too, and "private office" rightfully looks like a perk; many who might function better in a common area might resent not getting an office.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. I personally work well in an open office. Half way through the article, or really it was just citing other peoples research with no other analysis, I got mad.

It just comes back to -- if you want to prove a point there will be data out there to help you justify it. This article is trying to pretend to be objective, but really is just citing a slew of studies that, presumably, had really small sample sizes. /rant

There is no one answer. IMO an ideal office would have both options.

<comment><USER7> Is your open office very loud?

To me, the real problem is noise, not the lack of an office. I work very well in libraries, which are generally very quiet. I don't work at all well in open offices where people are constantly having phone conversations[1]. The "quiet room" that was provided at Sun Micro that I described in a post below also worked very well for me. Interestingly, I also work well in coffee shops, provided that there are no audible cell phone conversations (again, person to person conversations just aren't that distracting to me).

Overall, while I agree with you that it's not a one-size-fits-all situation, I think it's fair to say that loud noisy offices where developers are put next to a manager or marketing worker who is on the phone all day are generally harmful to a developer's productivity.

[1] These seem to be a worse distraction than person-to-person conversations. I've read that this is a common reaction, probably because people try to "fill in" the unspoken words, causing a greater cognitive impairment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That really doesn't say anything about why they're terrible. They're just posting a bunch of random factoids without any kind of explanation for why those numbers might be. Seems like everything was cherry-picked pretty well.

<comment><USER9> Not only that, at least one fact, how much AT&T saved, seems to imply open office spaces are not terrible. That is because the click-bait headline doesn't specify for whom.

<comment><USER10> Well, if the other metrics are as bad as they sound then saving $3K USD per employee might not be a net win for AT&T.

<comment><USER11> Office space has a direct line item on somebody's balance sheet. Productivity doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every now and then, it's time to stop concluding that you're right, and start to ask why nothing has changed. The data at this point seems overwhelming that open offices are bad for health, stress, productivity, and personal happiness, and they don't save a whole lot of money. So why are they still around, and how can this be changed?

That's the article I'd love to read, though the issues go very deep. PG was certainly right in an essay from years ago where he concludes that private offices are really used to denote rank in a company, rather than to provide people with a quiet space for productive work.

My own experience at Sun Microsystems a long time back was a good one. They had drop in centers with quiet rooms and loud rooms. Loud rooms had phones, quiet rooms didn't. None of it wouldn't have mattered without enforcement - every now and then, someone who did a lot of work on the phone (never a developer, they _always_ took phone calls outside) would try to use the cell at a desk, figuring it was "ok" as long as they kept it short and used mildly hushed tones. Nope. The office manager, who didn't care who they were or if they liked her, enforced the rules.

That could work, while preserving the rank/status qualities to offices that are important to other elements of an organization.

<comment><USER12> The reason is simple, it's cheaper than giving people offices.

<comment><USER7> You may be right, though I'd say more in perception than actuality. I'm not sure it actually is cheaper, since the amount saved is minimal and the lost productivity may be very high.

However, in the land of externalized costs, that could be the reason. It's easier to point to the cost savings for cubicles or open offices and say "hey we saved that" than it is to point to the amount of software not written (or even harder to prove, written but lower in quality) and say "hey, we lost that".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That infographic is really bad. 100% of what? A 100% increase? Then why is it a pie chart?

<comment><USER14> > Happiness rank of private-office occupants, according to research at the > University of Sydney on work environments.

with a "1" above it.. Is that 1 person? 1 rank (out of how many ranks)? Rank #1? 1% happiness?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've worked in a cube. I've shared an office with one other person with a variety of different desk arrangements. I've had my own office. I currently share an office with three other people (almost an open office).

I vastly prefer sharing an office with one other person where both of us have our backs to the wall over any of the others. Having my own office is too isolating for my tastes, but I don't like wide open spaces, and I don't like people being able to sneak up behind me.

<comment><USER3> > I don't like people being able to sneak up behind me

This doesn't get discussed enough, compared to noise.

There's something very primal about wanting to defend our backs. At work, in a restaurant, at the library... I want to have my back against the wall. My lizard brain thinks it's protecting me from predators, but my modern brain really doesn't want a pair of eyes behind me when I'm on email, or reddit, or whatever. And I don't want people to make their inevitable comments whenever I bury my face in my hands to just THINK for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here are some other HN posts about the open office problem "Google got it wrong" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065) and "Headphones are the new walls" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9797606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9797606)

<comment><USER17> Anecdotally, I think I see a new post about this topic every week or two on HN. When it comes to software culture, this has to rank pretty highly in terms of how much discussion gets generated.

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash There seems to be little discussion of the benefits to open offices. I would like to know how much money is saved to startups without significant funding. A big company like AT&T has no excuse but "shareholder value" for lowering the quality of work life - because let's be honest, private offices are obviously best - but a startup doesn't really have that choice.

Personally, I'm fine with some kind of mix. Some people have cubicles where I work, others have offices, others are a bit more open. As long as I'm listening to good music, it's never really bothered me.

<comment><USER18> I've always thought that much of the bitching is about individual productivity without taking into the considerations of group productivity. Teams of 4-8 being in a single room probably gain more in collaboration in sum total by being together than the loss in personal productivity; however open spaces in the hundreds now introduct distractions for non-group associated work.

<comment><USER5> > Teams of 4-8 being in a single room probably gain more in collaboration in > sum total by being together than the loss in personal productivity; however > open spaces in the hundreds now introduct distractions for non-group > associated work.

Depends heavily on the work you're doing in that team. Sometimes you're all working on the same problem; sometimes you need to divide and conquer, or otherwise work on mostly unrelated matters.

I've read about Valve's "moveable desks" and how they improve collaboration, but that's still a big open-plan office. I wonder if some sensible structure could make it easy to sometimes work in a shared office and sometimes work in groups?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can relate to the open office space fiasco. I have spend many years working in them.

However, it isn't always an easy problem to solve for companies either, office space can be quite expensive and to give every developer (let alone every person) a private office is in most scenarios just not going to be financially viable.

Having said, it should be doable for most companies to have at least a "loud" and a "quiet" space, i.e. two open spaces in stead of one. This gives workers at least some choice in which environment they prefer to work and it should be feasible for most companies out there.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think this really depends on the type of work you do, what kind of personality you have and how exactly your open office is set up.

Sometimes, I just need quiet to get a lot of work done. For these days, I might work at home so people don't stop by my office. Even with an office, people stop by all the time to tell me little things. That can make concentrating on programming, design or other stuff really difficult. Each interruption can knock me out of focus for 15 minutes. There is also the non- stop ringing of my office phone.

On the other hand, when we are close to shipping something or in the earlier conceptual stages, it's nice to have a bunch of product people together without any walls. We might sit around a table with laptops and punch list and QA the rest of the product before we get ready to ship it.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've worked all over the place: home, office, small offices, and now I just started working at this startup factory which is essentially a huge open space with dozen of startups sharing the same space: [http://luissenlabs.com/](http://luissenlabs.com/)

I love it. You get to know people from different places and it's like we're all a small community caring for one another. Also I think from a psychological point of view it helps having a large space and looking at different people all day.

As humans we're definitely not wired to look at a computer all day. We've evolved to be in open spaces and not closed in caves.

<comment><USER22> I agree. I moved from having an office for 8 years to an open office in March, and for the most part I love it. I'm pretty introverted, and I thought it would be difficult, but it actually helps with team interaction because before it wouldn't be unusual for weeks to pass without talking with anyone. The open plan "forces" interaction, and it has been a good thing for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The trick to making an open office plan work is to use the lack of walls to _increase_ the square footage per employee. On top of that, it really helps to have "break-out" spaces or quiet rooms, where you can go to get some work done away from the bustle.

The problem is that it's easy to fall into the trap of cutting costs as part of transitioning to an open plan. You really can't have it both ways -- either you increase productivity and pay _more_ in square-footage, or you cram everyone into a much smaller space at the cost of productivity and happiness.

</comment><comment><USER24> I toured Sun Microsytems a long time ago, and at the time, they said they gave all employees private offices. They had copious open areas for team collaboration, but everyone appeared to have their own (small) private office.

I think they eventually moved to floating offices with Sun-Rays everywhere, plug in your employee ID at any workstation and your desktop (and phone) magically appeared in that office.

Seemed like it would have been a good place to work at the time (mid 90's, just as they were starting to skyrocket along with the dotcom boom).

</comment><comment><USER25> If anyone would like a brief tour through Hell, I suggest visiting an open office call center.

I'd just like to interview whichever genius thought it would help _anyone_ to have your reps struggling to hear their own call over the sounds of everyone around them and their calls.

</comment><comment><USER26> Here's an idea for a hybrid. Have a robotic X Y conveyor in the ceiling that will drop a soundproof box on top of a cubicle when the occupant needs silence, privacy, etc. The box will seal off air, so you only get about 10 minutes of the virtual private office.

<comment><USER27> And when you want to allow two people to have a conversation without disturbing the people around them, you use this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Silence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Silence)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nothing beats a home office. Or a Starbucks office, or working wherever you want.

<comment><USER29> I don't like permanently working in my home office. I need other folks around me most times to really keep me productive.

My current pattern is to WFH 1-2 days a week, good for days with kids appointments or if I have back-to-back calls (e.g. from 6AM-2PM).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> it is terrible

some stuff to survive in open offices: [https://www.quora.com/What-drugs-do- you-put-into-your-bug-ou...](https://www.quora.com/What-drugs-do-you-put-into- your-bug-out-bag/answer/Dmitry-Bryliuk)

it is mostly about sport supplements for mental performance and stress resilience. quite long to repost.

warning! the use is somehow violating original instructions, but it is working.

also applicable for software developers work and outdoor activities.

</comment><comment><USER31> Working in an open office is horrible. I would rather try to work in a noisy, overpriced, obnoxious, coffee chain, than spend another minute in an open office plan...

</comment><comment><USER32> I guess if I used Google the way this author did, I could write an article called, "Why Open Offices Are Great."

</comment><comment><USER33> > 100 Percent increase in loss of productivity due to noise distraction in > open-plan offices compared with private offices, as cited in a 2013 paper > published by the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

And yet, employment statistics show Americans are more productive than they've ever been. Something doesn't smell right with this data.

[http://www.bls.gov/lpc/](http://www.bls.gov/lpc/)

<comment><USER34> In economic terms _productivity_ usually means GDP per capita or per work hour. The article implies the everyday meaning of the word.

Besides: As the common job of IT is _automation_ , e.g. reducing the need for labor, increased (everyday meaning) productivity of IT could actually result in lower (economic) productivity, as GDP gets smaller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> the more i work in an open-space office, the more i want to work remotely.

</comment><comment><USER12> I hate the fishbowl environment, every movement and facial expression is subject to the scrutiny and interpretation of others. My stomach makes funny noises sometimes, I can't control it. And so forth.

One time I took a drink of a glass of water on my desk and my coworker made a remark about how I made some strange movement when I took the drink. To me this is hell, to have every single moment potentially under observation. I mentioned how uncomfortable that dynamic makes me and he apologized for his remark, but the point remains.

It's not even about privacy, it's about please just fucking let me exist as an entity unto myself. People often think that when Sartre said "L'enfer c'est les autres", he was saying "other people suck and are annoying". But what he was saying is that hell is the constant presence of the Other.

<comment><USER36> This! I used to have a coworker that said I scratched my back too much. I wanted to tell her she breathed too much.

I think the worst part was they said I used the bathroom too much. It was like being back in high school. I drink a lot of water. Geesh!</comment></comment>


Intel to Acquire 15 Percent Ownership of Here - <AUTHOR> https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-acquire-15-percent-ownership-of-here/ <comment><USER2> I feel like Nokia sold HERE too early. I know they needed the money to engorge Alcatel-Lucent... And I do think it was a good plan to divest of HERE on top of the self-driving car hype wave.

But I think they executed that a bit ahead of time. Peak hype is still a few years away, and the mapping property is unique in the world (nobody else would sell theirs). Meanwhile Nokia was selling from a position of weakness following their near-death experience in the mobile phone market.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand the hype with here. Google has the better mapping service by far an every other service are far behind, including here map.

The only contender is Osm with is already better than Google in some country and evolving fast.

Some good example is the maps.me application on Android and iOS which is an open source offline map application with everything needed. And you can even contribute to osm from the app.

So why do they buy something which is worse than a free one?

Maybe I'm just missing something.

<comment><USER4> HERE is what used to be Navteq. They were in the digital mapping/navigation market for cars long before Google was a PhD thesis.

<comment><USER5> The whole business may have changed quite much over there years. Back in the days you had your own people driving around, know you can crowd source quite much of the data collection. When you have the location data for millions of people, you can for example figure out where the roads go, make good guesses about speed limits and figure out one way streets. Points of interest can be mined from web. From search logs you can probably see if you are missing some addresses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aside from the name, I love HERE on iOS. It's easily my favorite navigation/maps app.

The UI is simple, quick, and looks much better than either Google or Apple's offerings.

</comment><comment><USER7> HERE has some great maps and geo tech. It's sad to see them get passed around between various companies that don't know what to do with them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ah here

<comment><USER9> Where?</comment></comment>


Watson Crashed Often During Jeopardy Taping - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20032244-71.html

<comment><AUTHOR> _Nova_ producer Michael Bicks, who attended the taping while working on a program related to the contest, said:

"He [Watson] crashed a bunch of times," he said. "It took over four hours to tape the show--most of the delays were due to crashes."

</comment><comment><USER2> I wonder what impact that had on the contestants, themselves subject to human emotions like frustration (which doesn't help me when playing _Trivial Pursuit_ , that's for sure)?</comment>


Respiratory virus pathogens on frequently touched surfaces at airports - <AUTHOR> https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-018-3150-5 <comment><USER2> Steel is one of the worst surfaces when it comes to harboring pathogens. AFAIU silver and copper are the best. Brass and bronze come in a distant 2nd (in absolute terms) but still significantly better than steel, where pathogens linger subject only to the external environment. See, e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_copper) and [http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1380626432_Va...](http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1380626432_Varkey.pdf)

I wish hospitals, airports, and other shared spaces would use brass hardware or other alternatives rather than steel, particularly on door knobs and other highly trafficked surfaces. I always wondered if there'd be a market for selling such biocidal and viricidal hardware, either passive hardware using special alloys or surfaces (e.g. untreated wood performs well by locking pathogens in pores so they don't transfer readily); or active hardware that, e.g., ran a small current across the surface.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately this feels like situation where the free market will fail to incentivize the best solution. The airport itself does not feel the economic pain from its travelers getting sick from touching its steel surfaces. The passengers likely aren't even aware this choice might have caused their sickness. So airports will always choose steel over copper/silver/brass so long as steel is cheaper.

This seems like a reasonable place for regulators to step in.

<comment><USER4> There is no free market, airports are owned and operated by the government. Regulations are not necessary. If the government wants copper fittings, they simply need to order them.

<comment><USER5> Although the vast majority of major airports are state owned, some aren't. Notably, most major airports in the UK (including Heathrow and Gatwick) are privately owned and operated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I might have missed it, but I do not know if they tested for significant quantities instead of just presence. A presence of all sorts of pathogens is pretty common everywhere (you can find all sorts of stuff under kids nails), it is the concentration above certain thresholds that significantly increases disease risk.

I would be interested in how _concentrations_ of different pathogens compare between, say an airport, supermarket and hospital ER reception. My 2c.

</comment><comment><USER7> Those plastic bins at security were apparently the worst. I go through airports quite a bit, but never really thought about that particular vector. It's especially bad because the very first thing a lot of people do after security is find some food. Instead, it would be a good idea to find a restroom and wash your hands, _then_ find food.

<comment><USER8> From an epidemiological standpoint, you should _always_ find a washroom and wash your hands before eating, pretty much regardless of setting.

<comment><USER7> True, and I'm sure you'll say you do that, but the fact is that most people are more selective. It's useful to know when it's particularly critical.

<comment><USER8> I'm just saying - the phrase "fecal patina" gets used a _lot_ in my field...

<comment><USER7> I'm going to start using that phrase to describe some of the software I work with. Maybe it'll catch on.

Having recently been through a real live measles-containment exercise (don't ask) I've gained a much greater appreciation of what epidemiologists and other public-health professionals do. People just don't realize how they're being protected every day. I hope some of your colleagues are talking to TSA and airport management about these findings.

<comment><USER8> Some of us are distracted by the quarantined Emirates flight, but yeah, this has been met with considerable interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One interesting thing I've read, is that frequent disinfection (like in hospitals) actually increases the prevalence of highly resistant strains.

One reason is obvious - those better adapted survive and pass on resistence genes.

But the second reason is more interesting - the disinfection will kill the lesser resistant bacterias, so the resistent ones have less competition to worry about, thus they can concentrate their evolution efforts towards resisting the disinfection. Each extra gene a bacteria carries has big costs on it's fitness, so removing the competition increases the available budget for resistance genes.

I know the article is about viruses, I don't know if viruses compete between themselves in the environment.

<comment><USER10> What about just cleaning? i.e. wiping down with non-antibacterial soap.

I know viruses are not bacteria, so I'm a bit off topic, but still interested.

<comment><USER8> Cleaning removes things pretty uniformly, but also doesn't result in a sterile (or even really quasi-sterile) surface. Disinfection is a pretty important next step after cleaning.

<comment><USER11> There are ways to clean that are so effective that even endospores will be removed, though strong oxidative disinfectants seem to generally be more effective. Something like strong UV-C irradiation or a wash with ethylene oxide should result in the destruction of all life remaining on a washed surface.

<comment><USER8> UV-C irradiation generally falls under "disinfection" because if you haven't cleaned the surface of gross contaminants first, it doesn't work very well.

<comment><USER11> But it should be sufficient to have it be visually non-dirty. UV-C get's through a thin oily film or such non-thick coverage...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There should be more hand sanitizer dispenses in these places

<comment><USER13> I've kinda suspected this for a while so I generally make a point of going to the nearest bathroom and washing my hands after getting through security, especially if I'm eating something before boarding.

<comment><USER14> Yup, and I've developed some pretty effective habits of unwrapping other food in the style of a banana, so my hands touch only the wrapper, and advance/expose the food so it's touched only with my mouth.

Treat everything like a push-pop, basically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A good reason to wash your hands frequently.

<comment><USER16> I wonder if there were UV hand "washers" all over the place if that would help.

If they had the UV hand driers in the restrooms as well as UV baths around the entrances to the xray scanners, such that everyones plastic tub that entered the xray machine was also UV'd as it went through... (Although I dont know how long it would have to be under UV to impact....)

<comment><USER11> You should be able to cut the UV time down to a second or two, before you get problems with the stuff starting to melt from the radiative heat, even if you use a strong fan to cool the surface. This is worst-case, and I do think you can get away without a fan, but there might be edge cases.</comment></comment></comment>


Papers We Love - <AUTHOR> http://paperswelove.org <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this!

The paper repository is the core of Papers We Love, but the meetups are where many people connect. All the chapters rely on sponsorships to operate. If your company or organization is interested in sponsoring a chapter, please contact the chapter lead. Whether it's space, food, or AV, sponsorship is much appreciated and helps keep the meetups going. Thank you!

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

But I have a question about scientific papers in general, that perhaps somebody here can answer. Why don't papers have a big timestamp on the first page? I always have to do a small investigation to find out when a paper was published/accepted approximately.

Also, I'm wondering why there is no _public_ online discussion forum for scientific papers in general. I would have expected that google-scholar would have filled this gap by now.

<comment><USER4> > Why don't papers have a big timestamp on the first page?

Something like:

      (Received 2 September 2014; revised manuscript received 7 January 2015; published 23 January 2015)

(from the most recent PRB)? arXiv is a bit worse with their non-selectable timestamp on the RHS of the first page, but they have month and year in the ID and a submission history on the paper's page, so I don't see much of an issue there.

> Also, I'm wondering why there is no public online discussion forum for > scientific papers in general. I would have expected that google-scholar > would have filled this gap by now.

The scientific community is sufficiently diverse that it would be difficult to establish _one_ discussion forum. Plus the people whose comments are most valuable would likely be hesitant to comment publicly in writing on their competitors' papers.

<comment><USER3> > The scientific community is sufficiently diverse that it would be difficult > to establish one discussion forum.

Have a look at stack-exchange. It is a discussion forum for a diverse group of people.

> Plus the people whose comments are most valuable would likely be hesitant to > comment publicly in writing on their competitors' papers.

Well, a forum at least could help people to actually _understand_ the papers.

Also, but this is for the more distant future, the scientific rating system could be extended with a score for the most insightful comments (besides just a score for the number of citations).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been attending the Papers We Love SF for a few months and it has been consistently awesome.

If you are in the Bay Area consider stopping by the next meetup.

[http://www.meetup.com/papers-we-love-too/](http://www.meetup.com/papers-we- love-too/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Rad! Reading CS/engineering papers with friends is such a rewarding activity. You get to learn about cutting edge research, work with others to understand what can sometimes be extremely confusing academic speak, and it is a surprising amount of fun

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for posting!

I'm an organizer of PWL NYC.

PWL started as a CS paper reading group at our old company. In about a year it became a GitHub repo with 11k+ stars and a global group of high quality Meetups. It's been an inspiring journey so far and we have our great community and speakers to thank.

As Jeremy already mentioned, if you're interested in sponsoring (or speaking!), please get in touch.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thank you for posting this. This is the kind of thing I come to HN for.

</comment><comment><USER9> One of the more interesting papers I've read (which you/they don't have) is 'A simple algebraic representation of Rijndael.' [1] The paper contains equations which if solved would reveal a major weakness in Rijndael/AES, the current standard for actual TOP SECRET Classified information. [2]

[1] [http://taz.newffr.com/TAZ/Cryptologie/hash-lib- algo/aes/rdal...](http://taz.newffr.com/TAZ/Cryptologie/hash-lib- algo/aes/rdalgeq.pdf)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard#Se...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard#Security)

<comment><USER10> Feel free to add the paper to the repo

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If happen to be in Singapore, you can join the Singapore Chapter of Papers We Love here : [https://www.facebook.com/groups/paperswelovesg/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/paperswelovesg/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Incidentally, what is that distinctive font that seems to be used by every academic paper (and this website)? And is there a story behind its ubiquity?

<comment><USER5> Computer Modern, designed by Knuth, is the default font in Tex.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Modern](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Modern)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The NYC Chapter meets monthly - [http://www.meetup.com/papers-we- love/](http://www.meetup.com/papers-we-love/)

Our next meetup is Feb 5th w/ Sam Tobin-Hochstadt discussing Composable and Compilable Macros.

If you're in the metro area please stop by!

</comment><comment><USER13> Papers We Love is excellent, some great papers. I forked the repo a while ago, was considering hosting one in Dublin. I think here at least the community seems to have a lot of non-CS people who I'd love to hear from too.</comment>