Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nohello.com/ <comment><USER3> Sure, let's squeeze another drop of humanity out of conversing. Maybe it's because I'm a remote worker, but I don't mind the "hello" and "hey, are you available for a quick question?" stuff at all. I prefer it, I find it polite and collegial. I'm honestly surprised this bugs so many people. Maybe it's an indication that our working environments are asking too much out of us.

<comment><USER4> I'm glad this is the top-rated comment--it teaches me that there are people who are totally different from me! I'm a remote worker who is sharply annoyed by "Hi" [send] "QQ" [send] [wait 30 seconds] "[question]". I find it impolite, and I am honestly (honestly, honestly!) surprised anyone feels otherwise. It's nice to be able to express this here; there's no way I could say it at work!

<comment><USER3> Honestly it taught me something too. Before I commented, there were a lot of comments, all practically unanimously expressing as you believe. So I'm as surprised as anyone that it's (currently) the top-rated comment. It's easy to forget that lurkers can believe quite differently than active commenters!

<comment><USER5> Honestly, what kind of person _comments_ on articles instead of looking at the page, scoffing, and going about their day. I do consider myself a bit out of the ordinary for doing that.

Then there's also the topic of the discussion here. Topic: "don't say hello". Replies can be whole anecdotes of superstar developers who lost 10 seconds of their precious time, or something more mild, but there's no anecdote in "I am okay with people spending a line in Slack/Teams to say hello."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another rule: Don't ask to ask, just ask. For example, don't do:

      u1: Hi, can I ask a question?
      u2: Yes.
      u1: <asks question>
      u2: <provides answer>

Instead, do:

      u1: <asks question>
      u2: <provides answer>

<comment><USER7> thats BS. It is common courtesy to ask if its ok to ask a question.

<comment><USER8> That's fine, but then you must follow through on that courtesy by having the actual question ready to paste and send when the person says "yes". By taking more of their time, you're being rude, not courteous.

<comment><USER9> In my darker moments I think people don't want to take the time to type a good question and only commit to it when they believe I'll be faster than grep/google. Not sure if they realize that now _I_ have to sit through that typing time in addition to providing help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I couldn't agree more with this. It's long been a pet peeve of mine, and I get irrationally infuriated when it happens. It makes me passive-aggressive, too; I tend to completely ignore messages that are a simple "Hello", or "Can I ask you a question?" You've now interrupted me and wasted my time, so I'm going to waste yours by not replying. If it's important, the person will eventually just ask.

There's a cultural component to this as well. I've worked with people from a few cultures where their norms dictate that smalltalk and pleasantries be exchanged before getting down to business, so sometimes it's even worse than simply "Hello" or "Can I ask a question?" Sometimes they want to go through the whole rigmarole of "How are you?" as well. Sorry, but in my culture, we get to the damn point, because the most polite thing to do is to interrupt me only if necessary and consume as little of my time as is required.

We're not friends, we're coworkers. You're sending me a message because we're interacting to some business end. The most polite thing to do is to optimize the transaction and move on. If you want to chit-chat, I'd be happy to join you for lunch.

<comment><USER11> I see you're adding a fair amount of your own cultural bias, which you do recognize. You also recognize that there are other cultures where poeple value small talk. The best solution might be to be inclusive and meet in the middle:

\- Hi

\- Hi, how are you? How can I help?

\- <here they can quickly reply how they are and ask the question>

WDYT?

<comment><USER12> Firstly, the first "Hi" is a distraction, and pressure to respond without know the urgency, or anything else about what the issue is.

Secondly, and assuming this is a random co-worker rather than a friend, why is "how are you?" in the response when you don't actually care, and possibly don't even know the person?

<comment><USER11> Again, you interpret everything through your prism. Sometimes it's worth to be more empathetic and just go with it.

This book taught me to value my cultural norms less and be more accepting of others: "The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business"

<comment><USER10> Why is it that Americans are supposed to bend their cultural norms to accept others in the workplace, and at the same time, while working abroad, are supposed to fully adopt the culture norms of someone else's workplace? This is never a clear-cut, all-or-nothing scenario, but I don't think I should have to accept all the baggage that someone brings with them. If I'm living or working overseas (which I've done), I'm happy to adopt local rituals and norms (or go through the motions when I disagree). I expect others to do the same when they come to my country.

<comment><USER11> I think all parties should be working towards better understanding of each other. It's a fallacy to expect others (no matter what side) to behave completely within the norms of another culture, we will be always tone deaf to some nuances. E.g. in the chapter on feedback the author writes that it's very dangerous to try to simulate German or Dutch directness during criticism, so even when working with Dutch or German it's best to keep within the limits of your own upbrigning.

This is why I suggested to adapt response depending on the signal, if you see someone pinging you with "Hi" the most productive thing is to be accepting. After helping them, you can always educate the other person to ask the question directly.

P.S. I'm not american, don't leave in US, don't work in US. This is a universal problem of any multi-cultural or even single-culture multi- background environment.

<comment><USER12> > After helping them, you can always educate the other person to ask the > question directly

For some reason, I've never actually considered that. I guess it might be tricky to word without seeming rude, but is totally doable. Only issue (for me personally) is that I work for a faceless megacorp that employs > 250k people, so I'd need to do rather a lot of educating :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think we may want to consider if our hatred of meetings, and now just saying "hello", has more to do with dealing with unrealistic deadlines and pressure for what should be a white collar job.

In the example given, there is 1 minute between the "Hi" and the question. If 1 minute makes or breaks getting things done in time, you do not have a white collar job, you have a fast paced labor job similar to that of a worker on a factory room floor.

Food for thought.

<comment><USER14> It's not so much that it breaks productivity, it's annoying on a simpler level.

You are doing productive thing x. Person A sends you a hello message and your chat app pings you. You go to look at chat and now you are staring at an empty chat window for the minute or more it takes for person A to actually ask what they could have sent already.

I honestly think you can treat "conversations" in a chat program as more like email. Sure, some of the time you can get a conversation going, but if you don't already have a continuous conversation going then create a fully self contained message

<comment><USER15> I honestly do not understand why anyone would just stare at a blank chat window for a minute (or more) instead of switching back to what they were doing (or, in most(?) cases, just looking at a different screen).

It's similar one of your sibling comments which compares a chat message to a person walking up and saying "hello"... They are absolutely not equivalent; it's perfectly alright to not immediately respond to every message you get (or even only giving it a bit of your attention), even if they are not emails.

I wonder if this is a generational thing...

<comment><USER16> Well, because the second you look back to the other window and remember what you were doing, it's just going to ding _again_ with whatever their actual question was.

<comment><USER15> I must just be better at multitasking than most... It doesn't really take a lot of my focus to respond to an arbitrary greeting with an equally arbitrary greeting... Certainly not to the point where it's going to take minutes for me to get back to what I was doing.

<comment><USER17> That's great if your work doesn't require concentration.

<comment><USER15> I certainly don't think devaluing someone's work (especially when you have no idea what it is) is a useful direction to take this conversation.

I was essentially conceding that clearly others are not as able to switch contexts easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I get so many random messages on Slack that I usually just ignore the DM if it says 'hello' typically because the actual request/question will appear sooner or later (as they grow impatient)

Hasn't burned me yet but YMMV

<comment><USER19> I'll occasionally end up with people creating tickets or making noise with managers if they're ignored. The only reason I stopped doing this, really.

<comment><USER17> Tickets are good. They give you tangible credit for your time spent helping someone. If they are interrupting your manager the same way they interrupted you, instead of sending a request in an efficient manner, they saved you the trouble of you going to your manager to ask for help dealing with the person being a nuisance.

<comment><USER19> In what world do tickets go to managers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My pet peeve is when you get the message "Hey, have you got a minute?"

You type back "Yeh, sure". And then wait... and wait....

Whenever they do actually ask the question almost an hour later, I'm always tempted to reply "Sorry, the minute is long gone".

</comment><comment><USER21> The site homepage is not optimized for mobile and is 90% google ads with a small link to the blog post.

I'd rather not share this.

Too bad because I agree with it.

Edit: it's also stolen from a Google wiki [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14870907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14870907)

<comment><USER22> maybe that's a business model. go find high ranked content on HN from a couple years ago, make a site about it, put some ads, and pretend it's something new.

<comment><USER17> The site is 6 years old.

<comment><USER22> oh phew, that means my proposed content mill of an offshore team doing shameless reposts is still an untapped market.

Just think, by this time next year I could be losing thousands each month. Finally I'll put those Reid Hoffman books to practice.

<comment><USER21> There's about a million marginally skilled SEO guys working from home you'll be competing with. I know you're joking but it's an interesting thing to think about. The countless people scrapping the bottom of the pool of where internet money is made with endless grey hat trickery.

<comment><USER22> Fooling Google is a different game than catering to arrow clickers.

This is really more of a data problem.

I think the strategy is to take the most popular things around this time of day, day of week, and month of year from say a pool of 5-10 year old data.

Then you filter it looking for evergreen content. This would be an incremental heuristic model.

You take the candidate content, use some trivial grammar model to rewrite it so it's not completely identical and then automatically put it on different styled templated sites.

Register a few domains that suggest they are tech information sites

Make sure your Twitter cards and url naming system is reasonable, then have a bot to post it from a handful of puppet accounts

Have a much larger pool of about 250 or so puppet accounts and use a different 5% subset to seed them with upvotes over Tor in order to confuse any clustering algorithm and then keep the profits.

Affiliated ad revenue is total complete shit though. Even if this all worked beautifully you're looking at what? $20/day? I mean who cares...

The truly dishonest and devious thing you could do is freemium it and have a generous paywall like NYT.

That's an incredibly dishonest way to make money though. It'd probably work great.

<comment><USER21> 1) You'd need 100k+ visitors to make _any_ money off Google (1+ thousand a month).

2) Just having visitors is not enough, they have to be "niche" to an ad category and ideally looking for something to buy (not just information). The only thing that pays out is high-quality PPC traffiic or even better lead-gen for high-value products (health, debt, education, etc) with conversion-based pricing.

3) Google ads on content sites with CPM (impressions) pays pennies out.

4) Targeted blogspam sounds like it involves lots of humans beyond just mechanical turk, with some text parsing and rewriting which is a big overhead

5) This is basically the business model of Buzzfeed and other cancerous sites plus countless "niche" sites you've never heard of with high quality domains + foreign content mills + partner networks+cross domain advertising systems to convert in bulk.

If you want my personal opinion there's almost no low hanging fruit left in the content + high volume + conversion game unless you get lucky with a few niches (but the advertisers find those niches for you).

There are communities like [http://www.leadscon.com](http://www.leadscon.com) and similar who do this stuff. It's really unstable business with constantly changing market + technology trends, unless you have a unique product and are developing marketing channels. Otherwise you're constantly fishing for got lead buyers and new traffic sources. Which is a constant grind and probably not a great business to get into, unless you have the heart for that stuff - then you could easily become middle class off of it. At least temporarily.

<comment><USER22> I don't really make dishonest dollars so this is unfamiliar to me but I was under the impression content mills made easily detectable formulaic clickbait "What happened next will surprise you" "a local housemom discovered something" "7 worst celebrity hairstyles" etc...

This is decidedly different. Here's some examples:

[http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1941206](http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1941206)

[http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete- and-m...](http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly- wrong.html)

[https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2198700&cid=3629362...](https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2198700&cid=36293622)

These are all at least 6 years old ... the key here is to make it look like it's legit and above board all the while you're just content farming from archives.

I've had people repackage articles I've written on their own site and presented them as conference papers as just one-offs (I don't really care, whatever). This is a proposal for an automated plagerization engine, shamelessly lifting old content and repackaging it in a way suggesting it's exclusive.

I've had top articles and projects on reddit, slashdot, and hn ... I tried amassing a portfolio recently and it's really hard to find the old references, blogs, and articles talking about it. The web is more of a moving river than a library. That's why I think this would work.

It's incredibly dishonest but I don't think I've seen it done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I understand the point of this is efficiency, though I feel it's necessary to give voice to the other persuasion: are we really going to pursue maximum efficiency in trivial matters to the point that it no longer sounds like it's human beings communicating?

There are such things as rudeness, crudity, boorishness--and in my opinion, those don't go out the window in the workplace. Keeping your interactions civil and pleasant is important, just like getting to the point can be important too. Saying "hello" before asking someone a question is polite because you're treating them like a human being, not some question-answer bot. Being too aggressive in eliminating these "pointless" social signals can have a cumulative effect of making you look like a real jerk that only values people for their utility in a given situation, in other terms, treats others like objects.

I shall remain a staunch defender of manners and etiquette and pepper all of my conversations with so-called needless pleasantries.

All that said, I of course don't promote saying _only_ hello and then waiting for a reply before proceeding. That's just silly.

<comment><USER24> Not sure what you're disagreeing with here. The article doesn't advocate being rude, boorish, or robotic, and explicitly points out that if you want to keep up with social niceties, to prefix your question (in the same message), with something like "hi, if you have time for a question, i was wondering, [question]?"

That's perfectly polite and friendly, and also respects your colleague's time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If I receive a message that says "Hi", I'll respond with something like "Hello", but I'm not going to sit there staring at the chat window watching them type a message... I'll swap back to what I was doing until I see whatever their next message is... I also probably won't make a website to try to change an otherwise ubiquitous social practice because it slightly hurts my productivity...

<comment><USER24> I guess it just doesn't bother you as much as it does others. I absolutely hate needless interruption, and every time I get a "hello" without anything else substantive, it means an extra interruption that wastes my time.

I often _won 't_ switch back to what I was doing after replying to the "hello", because my brain is doing a little wager, hoping that the question is short and quick to type out, because doing two mini context switches back and forth is tiring. And if my brain loses that wager, I end up sitting there idle for longer than I'd like.

It's funny how there's so much attention being paid to social niceties in this thread when a simple social nicety is learning how to best communicate with people on an individual basis. And I think that's even more important when the purpose of sending a message to someone is to ask for their help with something. If you're asking someone to take time out of their day to help you, doesn't it make sense to do your best to respect their time, on _their_ terms?

<comment><USER15> It certainly is important to respect others time, but I wonder if at a certain point people will stop asking the person who is annoyed by "hello" questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> When time isn't of the essence, I prefer to use email for the same reason. With email it isn't expected to follow the face to face round trip greeting convention, but to greet and then get to the meat. And compared to any kind of chat there's a much lower expectation of immediate response so it's more conducive to a considered rather than an off-the-cuff response. But mostly, becaause it's a more considerate way to address people who depend on being in a flow state and how I prefer to be treated.

I prefer to keep chat questions to occasions when there is actual time sensitivity, or I already know that the recipient is not heads down or is currently chatty.

</comment><comment><USER26> Another non-obvious, but good reason for doing this;

Often I get as far as typing out my actual question and I work out what the answer is before hitting send. Sometimes forcing yourself to layout the problem in a structured way helps you understand it and solve it - <USER2> ducking. If you've not hit send, you can save yourself the embarrassment of

"Hi!", "Hello", "... Oh - never mind, sorry to bother you!"

</comment><comment><USER27> It's not about efficiency or anything for me. It's about courtesy. For instance, if you're moving and you want to ask a friend to help you out, the right way to do so is "Hey, man, I'm moving this Saturday to the Mission. Can you help me out?"

The wrong way is "Hey, can you do me a favour?" or "Hey, what are you doing this weekend? Oh you're free?" And then going with things.

It's the same way with everything else. If you have a question, give them a chance to not answer it. "Can I ask you a question?" is a trap on question complexity because the answer is always "depends".

It's okay if they can't answer the question you have. You can just copy-paste it. Also, always ask in public channels unless it's sensitive. That way everyone learns.

If you priorize your conversation partners this behaviour is easy and natural. If you're prioritizing yourself (don't want to repeat the question, don't want to be seen as not knowing the answer, etc.) this behaviour doesn't seem obvious.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you are making a request of someone with whom you are not in regular contact, it is good etiquette to start with a salutation. Therefore, "no hello" is bad advice. "Inline hello," as the article suggests, is better advice.

But even there, the mechanics of whether the request comes in one long message or broken up is just not that important in the grand scheme of things...

<comment><USER24> > the mechanics of whether the request comes in one long message or broken up > is just not that important

Yes, it is. If you put "hello" in one message, and then follow up with a question some time later, you've possibly interrupted someone twice. If you put both in the same message, you've interrupted them once.

This may not bother you if you're on the receiving end of it, and that's fine. But it _does_ bother _me_ , and I wish people -- especially people who are asking for a bit of my time -- would get this and do me the courtesy of being respectful of my time.

Because that's what we're talking about, right? Being respectful and socially- aware when initiating communication with someone? There is no one-size-fits- all approach to communicating with different people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This works for me! Far too many IMs seem to go like this:

Them: Hey Jeff ... Them: Can I ask you a quick question ...... Them: I am sure that you are really really busy with re:Invent ......... Them: And I could look this up, but you have been here forever and I figured you would know .................. Them: Where can I find X?

I am happy to help, but would prefer:

Them: Hey Jeff, hope all is well. Where can I find X?

</comment><comment><USER30> Also, don't pollute your advice by surrounding it with giant adverts :)

</comment><comment><USER31> I've always heard it as "don't ask to ask, just ask."

</comment><comment><USER32> One way to split the difference on this issue is to type out your question in a separate text editor ahead of time and store it on your clipboard. That way, when your coworker responds to your "hello", you can immediately reply with your question, saving them the time of waiting for you to type.

</comment><comment><USER33> After reading _Deep Work_ by Cal Newport, I realize that this "hi" message is just yet another way we are distracted in the modern workplace. (I heartily recommend that book.)

What I've adopted is a structured "offline" timeframe, where I answer _no_ communication over the period of about 1-2 hours. When I come "online", I take the time to really answer questions very completely.

I've noticed a few things:

1\. This has reduced stress a _lot_ 2\. Nobody cares I don't answer immediately 3\. People do appreciate that when I do answer them, I've taken the time to really research the response

(Now, "offline" isn't really offline, it's more "no distractions or notifications".)

The funny thing I've noticed, is that the people that just want you to be online when they say "Hi" are often very distracted people themselves.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm confused by people admitting they're "irrationally emotional" about this, as though those two things aren't flaws.

Maybe that 1 minute efficiency is something you're irrationally emotional about. But you have the privilege of working with hundreds of other people who have their own, sometimes contradictory, emotional irrationalities.

I think our industry's greatest weakness is the too-accurate perception of petty emotional battles and tribalism (e.g. Tabs vs Spaces, vim/emacs, mac/windows, front-end/backend, iphone/droid, sql/nosql, php/python). Why don't we do ourselves the favor of not leaning in to finding more silly hills to die on?

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a reasonable thing to say, but does it really need its very own domain?

<comment> crooked-v The part that I find weird is less the domain and more that it's a full Blogger setup and not using Netlify or Neocities or whatever.

<comment><USER35> That's not so surprising. Blogger makes it easy to point a domain to a blog. But what _else_ would you ever do with this particular domain other than have it contain this one post?

(Once upon a time back in the pre-cambrian era of the internet I once got myself into a situation where I had to register a new domain with Network Solutions in order to re-activate an account (or something like that, I don't really recall the details). So I registered networksolutionssucksbigfathonkingweenies.com. Got myself into a wee bit of trouble with that one.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Another similar one, even in person, is someone shouting an (often negative) exclamation and making everyone wait a minute before explaining themselves.

"Oh crap!" <long pause as everyone around is panicking, waiting on what actually went wrong>

Sometimes something really wrong happened and the person is trying to process it. That's cool. But more often than not, it's like "Oh shit!" <2 minute pause as people ask what happened> "I forgot about my cat's birthday!". Thanks for the dose of anxiety.

<comment><USER37> I think you just have a really weird work culture if this is considered acceptable.

<comment><USER36> Work culture? Im not talking about work, and just in general. And people don't do it as a joke, thats how they talk. Annoying as hell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The only way to win is not to play.

I had to stop letting Slack interrupt me. Too many of my colleagues had started using it as an email replacement. So I keep it on a secondary monitor or desktop and only glance at it when I'm done with a task. I don't let its icon bounce/beep/bloop/be badged.

I still try to be respectful on my end and go as far as composing everything I want to say in an editor before pasting it into Slack, gathering links to screen shots and logs in advance, etc. We can still model good behavior, right?

<comment><USER39> I agree, there should be no expectation to respond to IM immediately. If it is super house is on fire urgent, people can call me (phone or chat app calls).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> In general, if I have to do consecutive message in a Slack channel (not just direct messages), I try to use Shift+Enter to do a single multiline message so it only does one ping.

</comment><comment><USER41> And, if you're sick of your coworkers saying, "Hi"\--tell them directly. Don't create a domain name and get it front-paged on a site you know they frequent. ;)

</comment><comment><USER42> The history of business communications since 1800 (and before) has been toward both increasingly abbreviated and structured communications, largely doing away with the prolux formalities of earlier ages.

JoAnne Yates and James Beniger have both explored this in what I've found to be a surprisingly fascinating literature.

For the brief intro:

JoAnne Yates, "The Emergence of the Memo as a Managerial Genre", May 1, 1989.

[http://www.ismlab.usf.edu/dcom/Ch6_YatesMemoMgtCommQtly1989....](http://www.ismlab.usf.edu/dcom/Ch6_YatesMemoMgtCommQtly1989.pdf)

[https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318989002004003](https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318989002004003)

[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0893318989002004003](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0893318989002004003)

[https://sci-hub.tw/10.1177/0893318989002004003](https://sci- hub.tw/10.1177/0893318989002004003)

James R Beniger, _The control revolution : technological and economic origins of the information society_

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/control-revolution- technologi...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/control-revolution- technological-and-economic-origins-of-the-information-society/oclc/611061815)

JoAnne Yates, _Control through communication : the rise of system in American management_

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/control-through- communication...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/control-through- communication-the-rise-of-system-in-american-management/oclc/278033068)

JoAnne Yates, _Information technology and organizational transformation : history, rhetoric, and preface_

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/information-technology-and- or...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/information-technology-and- organizational-transformation-history-rhetoric-and-preface/oclc/1042854432)

</comment><comment><USER43> We have an intercom widget on our SaaS website. A lot of people just say "hi" and wait for an ACK. Or go with "I have a question". Then they wait. I guess they think it is turn based.

Just go ahead and ask your question. We'll have the appropriate person for you. We'll take a look at the issue before responding you. Or we'll get back yo you if nobody is available right now. It bugs me a lot.

</comment><comment><USER44> Moi? I'd rather say "Hi", get an acknowledgement and then continue. Rather than Hi + type something out; wait; still nothing; move on; find answer elsewhere; and have to remember to go back and say "NVM".

I find NVM semi-offensive. It so often seems to come across as "I'm done with you."

Also, there's the chance the colleague replies for naught, as I've already sorted myself out.

<comment><USER24> > I'd rather say "Hi", get an acknowledgement and then continue. Rather than > Hi + type something out; wait; still nothing; move on; find answer > elsewhere; and have to remember to go back and say "NVM".

Basically you're just telling us that you are optimizing for your own time and don't respect your colleague's time, which I think is a nice thing to do, especially when you're asking someone to take time out of their day to help you.

> I find NVM semi-offensive. It so often seems to come across as "I'm done > with you."

Then don't say that. A more-friendly, "hey, i managed to answer my own question, no need to reply" works equally well.

<comment><USER44> "Basically you're just telling us that you are optimizing for your own time and don't respect your colleague's time, "

Huh? How did you draw that conclusion?

As for NVM, your suggestion feels longer than necessary / optimal. That makes it a waste of my time to type and someone else to read. For someone who is time sensitive, can you give me something else I can use?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> There is an anecdote, but I just cannot remember which major US bank it was. The anecdote is that they have eliminated the "Hi <name>" on the email. No greetings are accepted. People were asked to proceed to the task/question and wrap it up fast. Also no "kind regards" etc. in the end of the message.

I will continue googling and I may update if/when I find more info on this.

</comment><comment><USER46> As others here have said, ignoring the 'hello' is the best bet. For those on the asking end, my advice is to ask your question and if it goes beyond a simple answer, follow up with 'do you have time to talk about this now?' Most people assume I have time or desire to answer a flood of questions because I responded to the first simple one, which isn't usually the case.

</comment><comment><USER47> I agree with this, but mostly because 'hello' is a demand for synchronous communication, whereas just dropping your question off means you can walk away and the recipient can handle it at their convenience. Of course, chat has mostly supplanted email at companies I've worked at and as a result it is used for both sync'd and async communication.

</comment><comment><USER48> I hate this as well. There also seems to be a correlation between people who do this and people who type slow.

</comment><comment><USER49> If you need an answer quickly, you'd end up asking the same question to multiple people. Then, multiple people will take the time to read and respond. This takes up a lot more time than just probing for 'Hi'. And, since when does anyone wait for a response in a chat channel!?

</comment><comment><USER50> This reminds me of a little anecdote. My colleagues in the office all used Skype, which was particularly handy for me as I was the only person who worked remotely (about half the time).

However, I always had the habit, when in the office, to eschew Skype and go see a person directly. It had the advantage of higher fidelity communication, and about half the time I'd figure out the answer to my own question before I got there.

After a while, I started turning Skype off when I was in the office (remember there were no other remotes at this time). This actually became an annoyance to one of my colleagues as they would have to, get this, walk across the hall if they wanted to talk to me. My ill concealed amusement at their ire did not go over well.

In person, face to face: the original instant messaging.

</comment><comment><USER51> Yes this makes perfect sense and its something developers for the most part have adopted minus needing to say hi in the first place as slack is a different animal and mode of communication.

We've already gotten to the place where "What's up." means "I acknowledge you exist." and nothing more when in person when it used to be an actual question of genuine interest. How often have you passed persons in the hallway or on the street and they act as if you don't exist or don't respond to you if you give a nod or say "good morning". It's more common these days to be impersonal which I don't like but it may be due to the greater number of humans existing, the less interesting and annoying they become.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is stupid. There's a lot of reasons why one might want to establish that a person is there without providing more detail.

I deal with reasonably sensitive material all of the time. Spewing information without context to my laptop when I'm presenting something, for instance is a bad idea.

<comment><USER8> Why are you letting your chat program interrupt you in the middle of a presentation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I start chats with a separate "Hey" message solely just for the chance that the recipient is sharing their screen in a meeting. That way others in the meeting will only see the "Hey" popup and not any details of the rest of my message.

<comment><USER17> Anyone who shares their whole screen deserves what they get until they learn to properly share a window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> slack (and any chat app) should "absorb " hellos and consolidate them with the subsequent message, maybe with a 2 min timeout .

</comment><comment><USER55> aka "Don't ask to ask, just ask" the mantra of IRC for at least 25 years.

</comment><comment><USER56> There's no way the "hello" should make a difference.

If you're getting so many questions that the removed "hellos" add up to an appreciable amount of time, the real problem is that you're getting too many questions.

<comment><USER24> It's a "death by a thousand cuts" sort of thing. As a maker, every little interruption hurts. And an interruption that's entirely unnecessary and wastes my time makes me annoyed. Not "I'm going to go throw something out a window" annoyed, but annoyed nonetheless. These things add up.

If this sort of thing doesn't bother you on the receiving end of it, that's great for you. But please recognize that other people have different communication styles and respond to things differently. If you're going to ask someone for help with something, it's a nice thing to do to try to be aware of their communication style and work with it if possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> At my workplace we use Skype for Business. I often get "IM?" or "OK to IM?"

Starting the conversation that way requires me to greet them and request that they continue.

Why ask if it's OK to IM, if you're using an IM to do it? Ostensibly it's to prevent, like, notification sounds going off from my laptop if I'm in a meeting, or to avoid disrupting me while I work... but sending the "Permission to communicate?" message is already a disruption.

Also, S4B has available/away/busy/meeting/call status indicators. Why not use those if you can't decide if it's OK to IM?

<comment><USER58> I know there are exceptions, but I think the idea of the IM status is generally dead these days. It's hard to micromanage it, and the only general status for a work day is "busy". People leave it by default on available and that's a new normal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> First off, this is a fairly confrontational and antisocial way to make a point about social graces. Also I'm puzzled that someone made an entire website based on one assumption.

If someone says hello to me and doesn't continue immediately, or even if they do… I've already switched to another window. The initial "hello" is perfectly fine for getting attention and informing someone that you wish to speak with them in the near future. There's no reason to assume they are staring at the chat window, immobilized, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for you to continue.

</comment><comment><USER60> I feel this deeply from building online games that have chat communities. Often random people I don't know will message me, or more frustratingly, write a message in a group chat directed at me, along the lines of "hey rococo can I ask you a question" or "hey i have a suggestion". I see these messages so frequently that I just don't have the energy to respond to every one of them with "yeah what's up". People who directly post their ideas or feedback are much more likely to get a response from me.

</comment><comment><USER61> Aren't single word or short messages like "Hi", "Sure" simple ACKs in our human protocol? I've observed (at work) that people feel more comfortable and respected when I use these words while writing.

<comment><USER42> Yes, but they're distracting, unnecessary, and grating in an async memorialised medium such as IRC or Slack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The first example given seems incorrect. The author says that if you combine your greeting/request then you can get your answer sooner, but that's not calculated right. In the first interaction, the time user1 spends on writing out the problem is accounted for, but in the second interaction it's not. The "time savings" the author is referring to assumes that user1 can combine greeting/request without needing to combine the time it takes to write the request. That's ridiculous.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I noticed that too and was a bit disappointed.

But I think the point still holds, even if the math is wrong. If I get a context-free "hello", and it wastes my time, I'm going to be less inclined to immediately switch back to the chat when the next message comes in.

<comment><USER62> That's where you and I differ. I wouldn't consider the ~1s of time used to read "hello" as time wasted any more than I'd consider a person saying "hello" in person as time wasted. On the contrary, I'd be happy for the greeting.

<comment><USER24> Perhaps you're not a programmer, but the context switch often wastes a _lot_ more than 1 second.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> This doesn't worry me, I don't sit there waiting I just carry on until something more substantial turns up. Or I completely ignore it if I'm in the middle of something.

</comment><comment><USER64> Haha I remember at Google, we had an escalating series of go/ links for people's chat preferences: nohello, yeshello, notonlyhello, etc etc.

This always just seemed like common sense to me, and I say that as someone whose in-person manner of speech is substantially more polite and flowery than most people. There doesn't seem to me to be a big difference in politeness or friendliness between "hello <new IM> [content]" and "hello, [content]".

<comment><USER39> This is from 2013, I wonder if this came first?

<comment><USER64> That's roughly in the middle of my time at Google, so it's possible. I'm inclined to say that I first came across it at Google around '12 but I could easily be off by a year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Discussion from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868294)

</comment><comment><USER66> co-worker: @here

co-worker is typing...

co-worker is typing...

co-worker is typing...

co-worker: Could you help me with $x?

Nothing more annoying than grabbing everyone's attention with the first message and _then_ spending time to compose the question.

</comment><comment><USER67> At a previous employer received a ton of "Hello" and I would respond immediately....and they would not say anything. I don't understand that.

</comment><comment><USER68> Not a bad point. It's like how talk show callers often ask how the host is doing instead of cranking right up. It hurts the flow.

</comment><comment><USER69> Funny how this resonates with so many of us that it is #1 post on HN within minutes. We have been telling our team members to not just say "hi" or "hello" and instead ask the question straight away. Imagine the amount of hi and hello texts that are stored on tools like skype/slack :)

</comment><comment><USER70> That's the issue with Slack and other hype trends that will eventually go away as fads.

Slack doesn't you make you more productive, it makes you spend more time on smalltalks and constant distractions.

I almost never had a constructive discussion on Slack. In contrast, I used to have them way more over email.

</comment><comment><USER71> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This BUGS the s __ __out of me and I have to tell all my remote developers to do that. The worst is when they are in a different time zone and say "I have a question" and wait for me to respond before they ask it. VERY FRUSTRATING.

</comment><comment><USER72> The title as it currently stands, "No Hello", does a poor job conveying the (imho correct) idea.

It should be "No Hello Without The Actual Message in an IM Conversation". (That would also obviate the need to read the article for like 90% of people who actually use IMs.)

</comment><comment><USER73> As someone who used to get directly pinged by hundreds of teams for questions, if all I got was "hey", I used to simply reply with [https://nohello.com](https://nohello.com). People appreciated the feedback. :)

</comment><comment><USER74> If you like this you might want to investiage email as a method of communication.

</comment><comment><USER75> Oh god, yes. At my previous job this would happen constantly. Super annoying.

</comment><comment><USER76> If I am talking to a person, I will say hello first.

(and if someone was to send me a link to a website telling me not to say hello, then I would think that person might have some issues)

</comment><comment><USER77> I regularly have people sending me "hellos" \- and then nothing until I answer.

If you want a synchronous conversation, call me or catch me in person. Messages are asynchronous.

</comment><comment><USER78> At my old work we used to call this PWP: Ping with Payload.

</comment><comment><USER79> While I agree with the sentiment of the site, the form they suggest "Hi -- ...." looks ungrammatical. Disclaimer: I am not a native English speaker.

</comment><comment><USER80> I just pretend I haven't seen the "hi".

</comment><comment><USER81> This is ridiculous.

You say "hi" or "hello" to _check if the person is there_.

And if they are, it's worth spending 2 minutes typing out the question. If they're not, you're not going to waste those 2 minutes.

It's just simple efficiency.

If they're not there, you might walk over to someone else's desk and ask them... why would you bother wasting the time to type something out if they're not there? And waste _their_ time because by the time they see it and answer it, you already got an answer from someone else?

</comment><comment><USER82> And its sister site, emailhasasubjectforareason.org

<comment><USER83> To prevent spam (very successfully, so far), I have users fill in _their_ email address instead of displaying mine on my website. They get an email like this:

        From: firstname.lastname@example.com
        Subject: Email address for lucb1e
        Content: To contact me, just reply to this email!

People use this, but _not a single person_ changed the subject from "Email address for $me" to the actual subject of the message. Not one.

<comment><USER42> You could programmatically vary the subject. Either by time/sender, or by lifting the first (or first statistically improbable) phrase from the message.

<comment><USER83> I don't mind that much that I'd bother writing a script to take content from their email or something, I'm just surprised nobody uses subject lines.

<comment><USER42> People are _very_ lazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> A Slack bot could reply to solitary "Hello" messages with a link to this URL. Although that might come abrasive to some people.

</comment><comment><USER85> I also like following chat style. Especially when I try to concentrate on something else.

colleague: Hello

5 seconds later

colleague: I have a question

5 seconds later

colleague: I work on problem X

5 seconds later

colleague: .. and can't do Y

5 seconds later

colleague: are you there?

</comment><comment><USER86> Also, tech support folks.. please don't say "Hello, how are you today?"

Instead say "Hello, how may I help you?"

</comment><comment><USER87> I use brief "Hi" message when I want to voice talk.

If person on another end is not available - I may send a brief email.

</comment><comment><USER88> I love this. When I worked at Qualcomm we had a page just like this on an internal wiki.

</comment><comment><USER89> Ahhh, reminds me of the early 2000s IRC. Which is pretty much the same right now.

<comment><USER42> Slack is IRC's corporate successor, FBOW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Can I open with SYN?

</comment><comment><USER91> tldr: use udp rather than three-way handshake tcp when you want to ask a question.

</comment><comment><USER92> Fuck this gatekeeping

</comment><comment><USER93> This needed a domain.

</comment><comment><USER94> While we're telling people how to talk: please don't tell people how to talk.

</comment><comment><USER95> No. Close the chat app if you don't want to be interrupted.

Don't impose your personal communication preferences to others.

There are far to many languages, cultures and personalities to think that you know better how to chat than someone else. Be nice and take time to communicate with your colleagues.</comment>


Show HN: Revelatte.com – Validate my MVP - <AUTHOR> Hello! A month ago I had an idea and went to reddit to validate it. I had positive feedback so I decided to go for it.
Today I deployed my first MVP: REVELATTE.COM
Revelatte lets you create a rich message (Text, Images, Videos and Links) and set a revelation date. A link is generated and you can share it around the internet. The message is displayed only after the date set has passed, otherwise it will show a countdown.
Pitch: "A revelation is te best way to tell people you are expecting a new family member, getting out of the closet or revealing stuff people don't know about you. How about the secret location of your next underground rave? Revelatte helps business owners to reveal new products, special offers and keep their customers thrilled with new features."
The site is under development and will look better as soon as I finish coding the main functionalities. I'm trying to re-validate the idea now that the MVP is up and running. If it has traction, I'll develop more features and post it in Product Hunt. What do you guys think? Go ahead, try it and send me some feedback in this post or via mail: revelatte [at] gmail.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I think some solid visualizations of use-cases would be nice to see on the homepage. In my quick glance, I didn't see any.

<comment><AUTHOR> How abou: "A revelation is the best way to tell people you are expecting a new family member, getting out of the closet or revealing stuff people don't know about you. It's easy and fun to use. You should give it a try!". Should I add more? Birthday salutations maybe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why take the content down after only five days? Five months or five years would seem more reasonable.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you register is "foverver", but yes, maybe 5 days is not enoguh. How about 1 year?</comment></comment>


Why you should use TypeForms.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.typeforms.com/WhyUseTypeForms.aspx

<comment><USER2> I would not want to be competing with Wufoo. Those guys are fierce.

It seems like this company has a technology they find interesting and exciting (some sort of search engine), and are just sort of randomly throwing things at the wall to see what idea sticks. This _is_ a perfectly valid way to iterate, if you can deliver working products rapidly and without losing momentum on your core strengths. But, this page is pretty weak; I'm doubtful you'll get many signups from the available ad copy. Actually, I can't make much sense of what any of your (I guess this is your company?) products do. It might be the right time to spend more time on ad copy and less on product development, since you have four products, and I can't really figure out what any of them are for or why I would want to use them. I could just be dumb, though. I find Apple products really hard to use, for a concrete example of my dumbnicity.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess when your product has its own Wikipedia page (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualmin>) it must be something pretty cool and let me say easier than apple products.

<comment><USER2> It's a pretty weak Wikipedia page, though, isn't it? Virtualmin as a page has come and gone several times, as the Wikipedians argue over whether it is notable in its own right...it redirected to Webmin last time I looked and for at least a couple of years, but it's good to see we're now a little more notable in someones estimation. I'll have to see about getting that updated with more information, hopefully without angering the Wikigods.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: git clone, git pull with no central repository - <AUTHOR> http://pagekite.net/wiki/Howto/EasilyShareGitRepos/

<comment><USER2> There's also Bananajour if you want to share on the local network: <https://github.com/toolmantim/bananajour>

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks pretty neat. Is it just a bonjour enabled web interface, or does it do other stuff? If it's mostly a web UI, you may be able to expose that using PageKite too, for sharing over the Internets:

pagekite.py localhost:9331 bananajour-youraccount.pagekite.me

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> isn't it the very nature of a distributed vcs to be able to work without a central repository? I like the post, but I think the title is misleading ( sorry to be that guy ).

<comment><AUTHOR> That is exactly the point! :-)

Dvcs systems have that potential, but people still generally fall back to using a central repo for sharing, because the network gets in the way of direct push/pull. The point of the article is to show one way of working around that.

If you follow it to its logical conclusion, then every member of a team can expose their working repo and any member can pull from any other member at any time.

<comment><USER4> But once you go that path... good luck figuring out what feature got merged when, what are the dependencies, what's the correct versioning, etc.

Why would you keep it that way instead of defining some central repository which contains the current dev branch?

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends on the project really, centralization has many advantages. I just thought being able to go fully distributed was a neat hack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This may be obvious but you can pull with ssh directly from workstation to another.

<comment><AUTHOR> Only if you create accounts and your workstations can reach each-other somehow. That is more effort and won't work at all if the workstation is behind a firewall on some remote network.

<comment><USER6> True enough, but for work within your company these conditions are likely already met. And while your company could easily have an internal central repository server (we use RhodeCode in our lab), not everyone might want to (or have permission to) push into the central repo.

I know a company that essentially only commits changes to their subversion server once they're ready to be shipped to the client. Their developers just work on (unrevisioned) private copies and distribute changes to one another manually. Makes me cringe. I've been introducing some of them to DVCS as I interact with them (they send me a zip file full of code to look at, I send them back a link to a repo containing their zip file contents and my patches), but I don't think they're quite getting it yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is very cool. But the problem is many of us are behind restrictive firewalls, nats, and proxy. If you could find a fix for that I personally would be really cheering for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is exactly what PageKite does, you should try it. :-)

<comment><USER7> I am hooked :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Essentially, one could simply copy the .git folder to a web visible place:

      cp -r .git ~/public_html/foo.git

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd rather symlink it. :-)

Of course, I'd wager not very many of us work all the time on web-visible machines, which is why adding PageKite changes things - I'm sharing repos off my laptop now.

<comment><USER9> Apart from a couple of short consulting jobs, it's been 17 years since I last worked on a machine that wasn't web visible...

I couldn't imagine not being able to ssh in to screen session with my exact current state of work and/or access work in progress websites directly...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just discovered this trick yesterday, and thought it was so awesome I had to write about it. Truly decentralized code sharing! :-)</comment>


Ask HN: Remote IDE? - <AUTHOR> I recently got a Chromebook as my daily driver and was curious about remote IDEs that are available. So far, all I've really found is c9.io. I'm also willing to supplement functionality with a cheap ec2 instance. <comment><USER2> If you're willing to put your Chromebook in dev-mode, it doesn't necessairily have to be a remote IDE. You could also use a Linux distro from within a chroot [1][2].

[1] [https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton](https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton) [2] [https://github.com/drinkcat/chroagh](https://github.com/drinkcat/chroagh)

</comment><comment><USER3> > I'm also willing to supplement functionality with a cheap ec2 instance.

vim inside this instance</comment>


This is my last story about Travis Kalanick - <AUTHOR> https://pando.com/2017/06/21/my-last-story-about-travis-kalanick/cc176839797ae23c2b36d79e863d70c392056e9b/ <comment><USER3> On the one hand, Sarah Lacy's reporting on Uber has been the gold standard in terms of her paying attention to specific events and their significance, and explaining it all to readers -- especially with regard to ongoing litigation.

On the other, it seems like she has developed a persecution complex with regard to Uber; since Nov 2014, every article I've read of hers that covers Uber (I'm a Pando subscriber) has at least partially been about her and her relationship with the company. Yes, the fact that Emil Michael casually floated the idea of doing oppo research on her / her family _to her face_ is really fucked up. However, to say she's taken that ball and run with it would be an understatement. I do hope that this is actually her last Kalanick- related story (doubt that will turn out to be the case), because she's a great journalist who is tremendously good at sniffing out what's really going on, and she should be training her sights on a more diverse target set.

<comment><USER4> Just to be clear. Emil Michael never floated the idea about doing oppo research to her face. This was done during a gathering with some journalists where Ben Smith from Buzzfeed was present and reported on it:

"Michael at no point suggested that Uber has actually hired opposition researchers, or that it plans to. He cast it as something that would make sense, that the company would be justified in doing."

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/uber-executive-suggests- di...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/uber-executive-suggests-digging-up- dirt-on-journalists)

<comment><USER5> Saying something "would make sense" could easily be construed as a threat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "By my math, Uber's true value puts it as number four in the global market, behind Didi Chuxing, Waymo, and Tesla, who will become a future competitor should Uber make it to the autonomous future."

Somehow I lost my interest to read further after this phrase. To me the comparison mostly doesn't make sense. I've been Uber customer for couple of years now, and I have to say for some parts Uber, as a service, has tremendously improved my life. These other companies seem to offer quite different products/services or are in whole different markets (Didi is only China AFAIK, while Uber works globally).

<comment><USER7> It depends on the market you look at.

At the moment uber is very useful (heck in the past fortnight I have used it in Bangalore, Helsinki and Vienna) but it does have a serious weakness - <USER2> competes on price but there is no evidence that it is profitable nor (far more worryingly) that it knows how it can make itself profitable.

Hence it's issue is very much similar to twitter - uber in many countries owns the sector, it just hasn't been able to find a means to make a profit from the sector.

<comment><USER8> > there is no evidence that it is profitable nor (far more worryingly) that it > knows how it can make itself profitable.

I'm sorry what? I keep reading these sorts of sentiments, but they sound, and I know this is insulting, they sound like people who don't understand business in even the 101 sense.

As long as the margin per sale is greater than the cost of that sale, it is possible for a business to be profitable one day. Given Uber charge a percent per ride, they definitely have a workable margin (which not all startups do BTW, e.g. many of the food startups like Bento [https://gimletmedia.com/episode/kitchen-confidential- season-...](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/kitchen-confidential- season-3-episode-6/)).

The question, for a growing business with money in the bank, is are we growing revenue FASTER than we are growing costs. As long as you are, then inevitably, the two lines will intersect at some point. [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Yv7OoVt_q0I/UHcx99N5I5I/AAAAAAAAAZ...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Yv7OoVt_q0I/UHcx99N5I5I/AAAAAAAAAZ0/B1b7NGVczDM/s1600/Curve.png) is the sort of graph Uber needs.

So the questions right now for Uber are: at what scale (aka total revenue) does Uber BECOME profitable with its current cost structure? How soon can Uber reach that date? And is Uber's runway long enough to get there?

I have no idea of any of these numbers, but [http://uk.businessinsider.com/uber-leaked-finances- accounts-...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/uber-leaked-finances-accounts- revenues-profits-2017-2?r=US&IR=T) has some "leaked" numbers. Seems in Q3 2016 they spent $2.5B and made $1.7B, so they would need to either grow by about 50% with zero cost growth, or cut about 32% of the costs to be profitable. Is that doable? How the F would I know? But I doubt that $2.5B includes many must have costs, like servers, developers and offices, and includes a F-ton of advertising and other incentives all of which are easy-ish to cut.

Lets use these numbers as examples:

* Costs: $2.5B * Margin: $1.7B * Monthly Costs Growth: 2% * Monthly Revenue Growth: 5%

If that is the case, Uber are 15 months from profitable.

That's the insane maths of startups: Revenue growth % > Costs Growth % = success.

And what about costs? If I were a betting man, I'd wager most of Uber's costs are things they could cut - advertising, non-essential staff, Given their revenue seems to growing rather well, I see no reason why there isn't a time horizon where Uber is inevitably profitable. Whether Uber has enough runway, and whether they can raise more cash, I have no idea.

Lastly, I find the idea that is floating about that Uber are subsidizing fares a really odd one. I think Uber are subsidizing things. Uber subsidize. development. Uber are also subsidizing the legal battle in certain markets, by paying for cases that will inevitably help competitors. Heck, Uber is even be subsidizing some drivers in some markets (my NYC driver told me they have some finance scheme in place to help new drivers purchase/lease cars). But subsidizing fares? They take a 20% cut, that is no subsidy!

Whether 20% is enough of a cut, and visa versa whether the fees are high enough that a 20% cut is enough raw revenue I don't know. Ditto I don't know whether Uber's runway is long enough, or if they can extend it with more funding. What I do know is all this writing Uber off doesn't seem to track with what seems to me a very sensible "build a moat by being the biggest while growing revenue faster than costs" strategy.

<comment><USER7> So a business that requires bulk advertising to recruit both drivers and riders (in the U.K. Driver recruitment is one of the most common radio adverts on commercial stations) could survive without advertising..

Given that I saw my first tv advert for uber last weekend (focused on rider recruitment) I suspect that instead of cutting advertising costs uber will have no choice but to continually increase them over the years

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _> If I were Uber's new CEO, I would embrace this reality. I would do a round that recaps the company immediately. Issue new stock to employees. Start at a clean and reasonable slate. Reset expectations and redefine what a successful IPO would be. Take the hit now, rather than having it continue to hang over this company until the end of time._

The new CEO presumably won't be a co-founder with significant voting power like Garrett Camp. He/she will more likely be a "hired gun." Therefore, the next chief won't have the power to issue new stock and force every investor to suffer an early haircut. Even if the board of directors (Kalinick, Camp, TPG, Huffington, etc) agree to award some equity (1%?) as incentive to attract a new CEO, he/she still won't control enough of the company to make those decisions.

If we argue that a good CEO would convince those investors/BofD to take the financial hit, then we're still back to the decision the next CEO doesn't control: why would the BofD hire a CEO that tells them to immediately reduce their financial stake instead of concentrating on cleaning up Uber and growing the value so they never had to consider haircuts in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER10> The article is somewhat long-winded and covers a number of issues, but I couldn't agree more in its conclusion as to what kind of CEO Uber now needs, and what kind of hurdle he is facing:

 _A boring, operations wizard. Uber is a logistics company that needs an operational wizard, not a product visionary. The bad news for Uber investors is that losing Kalanick creates a massive vacuum of power and resetting this toxic culture will be all but impossible for anyone. [...]_

 _Uber does not need a product visionary. (Guarantee no other Valley insider will have that hot take…) It needs an operational, logistical genius. It needs a brand person. It needs a showman._

</comment><comment><USER11> I generally agree with the sentiment - except where it calls Arianna Huffington 'Travis-lite' -[https://github.com/henrikhodne/travis- lite](https://github.com/henrikhodne/travis-lite)

</comment><comment><USER12> That wasn't a story, it was a ton of words on who won't be the new CEO of Uber and complaints about their board.

<comment><USER13> Almost nobody has been paying as close attention to Uber and Travis Kalanick's goings-on as Sarah Lacy. This makes her "ton of words" a valuable addition to the national dialogue discussing the ramifications of his ouster.

<comment><USER7> I have joked to Sarah in the past that she has to be careful that pando didn't become "what the fuck has uber done today".

Mind you that isn't surprising given the continual behavior issues within uber and it's status as the biggest unicorn

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Uber is dead in 5 years, maybe 10 if they (and they will) complete a few more rounds of funding.

</comment><comment><USER15> More nonsense for clicks and fame

<comment><USER16> I have not followed this story one bit, but that's exactly what I thought from just the first paragraph. Its like TMZ for the tech world.</comment></comment>


On Karma: Top-line Lessons on User Reputation Design - <AUTHOR> http://buildingreputation.com/writings/2010/02/on_karma.html <comment> nick-dap I am currently trying to develop a karma system in our community and can attest to the "leaderboards are bad" observation from personal experience.

"The typical thought-process goes something like this: there's an activity on your site that you'd like to promote; a number of people engaged in that activity who should be recognized; and a whole buncha other people who need a kick in the pants to jump in. Leaderboards seem like the perfect solution."

...were my thoughts exactly. However, virtually the same day that I introduced a leaderboard into the mix, contributions plummeted and have stayed low since. This was a couple of weeks ago. I suspect that the top contributors got their recognition and now have little incentive to continue contributing, while people who found it confusing or did not want to contribute continue staying still. In other words, I got exactly the opposite effect of what I wanted.

"Do not display negative karma." I can attest to that as well. One user is quite controversial in the community and was voted down badly for contributing. Controversial or not, having negative points for trying is really discouraging.

I suppose I should now go and undo those mistakes. A hundred nights more and we'll have our overnight success.

<comment><USER2> Take a look at "Game dynamics" interview won Mixergy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The simple public karma system used by Reddit/HN is pretty bad. HN even lump comment and submit karma contexts.

I think an algorithm like PageRank would be better. Each user has an authority rank and voting up or down content produced by another user confers authority to the other user.

Of course you also need to detect people gaming the system through things like link farms, but there are years of experience on how to do that from search engines. The incentive to have top karma is also worth much less money, so users wouldn't spend too much time gaming it.

<comment><USER4> Bad maybe, but there is something powerful about the inconsistent reward when posting then waiting to see how much karma the comment gathered. It's addictive in the same sense that checking e-mail is addictive.</comment></comment>


ICANN Approves Historic Change to Internet's Domain Name System - <AUTHOR> http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-20jun11-en.htm <comment><USER2> This is after the other historic change of letting US seize domain names when they please.</comment>


Ask HN: Free CRM? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a free, basic, easy to use CRM software for a non-developper (zero knowledge with PHP/DB) marketing guy.<p>Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> <http://www.zoho.com/crm/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you</comment></comment>


Elevator-as-a-Service - <AUTHOR> https://mender.io/blog/elevator-as-a-service <comment><USER2> Really makes me think of all the examples of things that CAN'T clearly be *-as-a-service, like farming or charity work, but who knows! I imagine if you can find a way to measure and/or control some aspect of an operation, you can operate it as-a-service.

</comment><comment><USER2> Would be wild to be inside an elevator during a remote "alarm button" test! :O</comment>


FROM useless compsci undergrad TO web app developer: how do I get started? - <AUTHOR>

A few years ago, I could do basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript but didn't really get into web design. Fast forward to now and I'm in my second year of uni doing computer science and can handle, C, C++, Java, Standard ML (yes...). I've also done quite a lot on the algorithms/data structure side.
I want to make web apps that are clean, fast and fun. I want to do this by myself. I'm not ready for anything more yet (obviously) but I have a view to making some serious stuff one day, so I don't want to learn some toy language.
I'm struggling with analysis paralysis. What should I immerse myself in? What are the guides I need? I'm happy to use multiple guides and real-world examples to learn Python, JavaScript, Ruby, whatever - I just need a starting point and a plan.
Otherwise I'll waste time.
Can anyone help? <comment><USER2> I'd highly recommend to _not_ "immerse yourself in learning a language" (highly paraphrased). What makes you think the language-du-jour will be relevant in 2 years? 5 years? 10 years?

In my opinion, the point of a CompSci degree is to understand computer _science_. I love CompSci because I get to solve problems that are only possible via a computer or 1,000 computers; knowing a language doesn't solve the problem all by itself.

As to where to start, I suggest that you dabble in everything -- find a couple different types of simple web apps (blog, to-do list, game); try to create them with whatever tool (i.e., language) is best for the job; and think critically about why that tool is the best for that particular job.

</comment><comment><USER3> _I don't want to learn some toy language._

My advice is to learn a toy language.

This is where your analysis paralysis is coming from. You need to come to grips with the terrible realization that _nobody_ cares whether your web app is built out of a "serious" language or a "toy" language. People care what the app does. The ratio of the number of visitors to the number of people who will ever see your code is going to be a thousand to one, and that's if your app is a _failure_.

Web publishing is about the content. Deliver the goods. Use whatever is handy. There are about a thousand ways to build a web app, and most of them work. As a rule of thumb, the stupidest thing that could possibly work is the best approach to a new problem. If static HTML works, use static HTML.

The other thing to realize is that you need to learn many approaches. You will attack problems of many different complexities. You will solve problems that will take you years, and you will solve problems that should take you minutes. You will be programming for years and years, so you have plenty of time to learn some "toy" languages _and_ some "serious" languages and everything in between.

Here are some exercises. Do them in any order. Do them fast. These are toys, so don't forget to smile while you're playing with them.

Build the best web page you can using _nothing_ but HTML, CSS, and static assets. Practice thinking and working like a designer.

Build the best web page you can using only Javascript, HTML, and CSS. Client- side Javascript for starters. Then look into server-side Javascript.

Build a website the old-school way. Use PHP and MySQL. Bonus points for skipping the PHP and working directly in C. No frameworks, no Django or Rails, no OOP.

Write a web _server_ in C. You say you can handle C? Now's your chance! It doesn't have to be a fancy web server: Write the dumbest web server you can, serving up HTTP GETs. Once it works, aim some tool like Siege at it and make it cry bitter tears. Compare its performance to, say, nginx. See if you can figure out why your web server sucks compared to nginx. See if you can at least double the throughput of your web server.

Build a site in Drupal. (Shameless plug: www.drupalgardens.com. But don't forget to export your code, put it on your own server, and install a module or two just to prove you know how. You're a CS student, after all.)

Build a web app using Rails. Google _Michael Hartl Rails_ for help. Tell him he owes me a dollar for the plug. ;)

Build a web app using one of the many Lisps. Arc, Racket, Clojure, Common Lisp, take your pick.

Build a web app in Erlang, Haskell, or Factor.

Meanwhile, and now I'm being totally serious: Learn Emacs, VI, or Textmate. Learn Git, Bazaar, or Mercurial. Learn to install Linux on a VPN. Learn regular expressions. These things are _not_ toys; these are going to be your bread and butter.

</comment><comment><USER4> From one student to another:

The best advice I can give you is to just build _something_.

Pick some small annoyance you have and give yourself a strict timeframe and then _build_. You'll learn best by coding not reading.

Just pick a language, anyone the ones you mentioned are great. Don't worry about which is easiest or has the best guides. Just start and when you get stuck do a Google search for your problem then move on.

Some small ideas to get you started in case you have none: A personal todo list or a comment system for a website

I hope that helps and good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, thanks. Yeah, to some extent this is all procrastination, isn't it? I'll start off with the two you suggested and then move on!

<comment><USER4> Cool, feel free to let me know if you need help or get stuck. I'd be glad to help you out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The best way is to complete as many projects as you can and read as much code as you can. You'll want to take a deliberate learning approach.

Check out out "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning" by Andy Hunt. It will show you how to build a skill investment portfolio.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thanks - "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning" looks very interesting, is it a well-known thing?

Any ideas for a first project that'll get the wheels turning?

<comment><USER6> best way to start is to scratch your own itches, if you pick some arbitrary problem it's much more difficult to maintain steam and actually complete the project (ie learn the skills you want to)</comment></comment></comment>


The Internet Must Go - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinternetmustgo.com/

<comment><USER2> Going to flag this every time it's submitted. Must be some university "media studies" kids who think deceptive viral campaigns work. Well, they're right, but this one is just too obvious.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a media studies kid, and I think it's a good video.

Didn't realise it had been submitted before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> ermm Spoof, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes :)

<comment><USER3> Cool, I really was stumped by this. Thanks for your reply :)</comment></comment></comment>


Anagrams in array of strings - <AUTHOR> http://www.mytechinterviews.com/anagrams-in-array-of-strings <comment><USER2> This vaguely reminds me of FFTs (Fast Fourier Transformations). I wonder if there is any insight that can be brought in from that algorithm to speed things up a bit.</comment>


Maybe Capital? - <AUTHOR> http://maybecapital.com/

<comment><USER2> Is that it? Anyone care to explain what this site is all about?

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it either?</comment>


In Silicon Valley Now, It's Almost Always Winner Takes All - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/in-silicon-valley-now-its-almost-always-winner-takes-all?intcid=mod-latest <comment><USER2> The article is not convincing that these are natural monopolies. What happened to AOL and AIM? What happened to MySpace? There is also this recent article about Chinese innovation: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10806386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10806386)

Natural monopoly in the Information Age may turn out to have been natural, but it feels unnatural. There are explanations, but I, personally, do not find them to be convincing.

<comment><USER3> Agree. "Natural monopoly" is a very lazy term. It's mostly about looking around at a moment and declaring that it must be so.

Utilities don't need to be monopolies, necessarily. It's just that they were designed that way at a point in time. It's a path of history, but not a natural law.

Wintel too. Which _was_ a monopoly, until it wasn't. It's not that their position in the market changed, but the definition of the market itself (i.e., computing became mobile).

Google (a monopoly) is (or was) terrified by both Facebook and Amazon. Neither of which is a search engine, but each of which is a path toward determining what product to buy. The market itself changes.

<comment><USER4> The threat of possible disruption from an uncertain direction 10 years down the line is of a very different nature than the threat posed by direct, immediate competition. Why do you think it's "lazy" to find one type of competition less desirable and then notice and complain when certain markets seem to consistently gravitate towards it?

<comment><USER3> I don't think what you're describing is wrong. But a belief that something is a natural monopoly causes us to make policy choices based on a flawed assumption. Flawed choices about the inevitability of a monopoly tend to entrench same.

E.g. our municipal broadband monopolies trace back to a belief that wireline phone and TV can only be monopolies. And maybe it's true! But we might have chosen differently, had we not assumed it a natural outcome.

We might have assumed that wireless is a natural monopoly. Gladly, we didn't. (Though spectrum policy can be more competitive.)

<comment><USER5> This is not about inevitability and immortality of monopolies, but their likelihood and the detrimental effects they bring on while they exists. Both can be pretty high in some domains, so it is worthwhile to think about it, to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A decentralized ride solicitation tool with a reputation system, maybe blockchain-based, could kill off Uber and Lyft almost overnight. Especially if existing taxi companies embraced it. I want to know if a driver is licensed, insured, etc. Uber doesn't provide that, and I don't like the rent-seeking aspect of their service.

If it's winner-takes-all, it's only a matter of time until another winner takes all. I don't think we've seen the end of this market yet...

EDIT: Wow, two down votes in 10 minutes. Care to say why? There are a lot of incumbent players losing market share to Uber - how do they compete? It seems like the perfect opportunity for more of a SaaS business model built around selling integration with an open network. There are already reputation-based blockchain implementations. Why would a decentralized model not work?

<comment><USER7> I'm not the one who downvoted, but I would imagine this is why.

* Overnight is a bit too quick. Uber's service has grown so quickly partly because they have an organization behind it to fight against regulations which is part of what made their rapid growth possible.

* Implementing a standardized "blockchain" protocol to guarantee all of those things is a non trivial task

* Go outside of SF Bay, whip out your phone with a group and tell them that you're about to order a "distributed reputation system cab" and they're just going to look at you like "wat" then open the Uber app and get an Uber that already works with their credit cards and lets them split the fare. They _maybe_ have heard of Lyft, and most likely have Uber, not the blockchain app.

* Uber has hordes of information available that lets them tell drivers where to be and when, it also prices the rides based on demand. The block chain app has none of that.

* Traditional cab drivers are terrible, the cars smell, they don't show up on time, they drive you in circles to up the fare, sometimes they take off when they hear where you want to go. An app is not going to change this overnight, though eventually the reputation system might change it.

* Rent seeking is annoying but they are still much cheaper than traditional cabs, at least everywhere I have used them.

Maybe it's winner takes all, maybe not. It remains to be seen whether the legal system has just been slow to react to Uber and its ilk or if it will not react at all. I think the end of this in the short run is that Uber takes > 90% of the market, Lyft takes the majority of the rest, and the cab companies continue to operate at a smaller scale with less profits. This is after local and state governments wake up and impose more modern, but less restrictive taxi-style regulations on these companies to enforce some level of accountability for when the shit hits the fan or whatever.

The end of this market in the much longer term seems to be self driving cars and some form of shared ownership. I could see premium ride sharing clubs where you pay more to ride in an Audi or something with common ride sharing clubs where you ride in a van. It is this much longer term that I see Uber having more potential competition.

<comment><USER6> Good points. I meant "overnight" loosely, but I have a few other comments.

* Any software may be branded - no one needs to know the word "blockchain" when they use a well-designed app. If a driver may have more take-home pay from an open network, there is no reason they wouldn't list themselves there in the same way many drivers are on both Uber and Lyft.

* The blockchain would record all transactions in a manner that any software could get something similar to Uber's intelligence, with some allowances for the privacy of the rider.

* I've taken Uber rides that reek of cigarette smoke. If anything, many cab companies have standards that you can't guarantee with the closest Uber. But like you say, reputation systems could address those issues.

I agree, though, that the technical challenges are real and not trivial. In particular, the privacy concerns seem very real. I just find it difficult to believe that a multi-billion dollar industry will allow a middleman to take all their customers away when really the only thing that Uber sells is UX.

<comment><USER8> >* I've taken Uber rides that reek of cigarette smoke. If anything, many cab companies have standards that you can't guarantee with the closest Uber. But like you say, reputation systems could address those issues.

Did you downrate the driver and complain? If not, the reputation system isn't going to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't see much network effect with Uber. I see a liquidity effect, to a degree, but the barriers of entry are low on both supply and demand side.

To the extent Uber has a network effect it's O(n) at best. I don't have a connection to other Uber users. I like that there are enough users to make it worth the drivers' while – again, liquidity, not network.

On Facebook, network effect is probably O(n^2). The connections exist and themselves have value.

<comment><USER9> Uber Pool and Lyft Line are now the majority of rides in SF, not sure about other cities - but there is definitely a network affect there

<comment><USER10> SF is not the rest of the world.

<comment><USER9> you don't say. I'm sure this is the way it will go in any location with high enough density to get the network effects

<comment><USER10> Network effects for ridesharing are overstated. Its a commodity that'll race to the bottom. It already occurs in markets where both Uber and Lyft are present.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this gets down to the network effect (aka Metcalfe's Law).

Like the author notes, Coke isn't going to drive Pepsi out of business. Because fundamentally if either gets an additional point in market share, that doesn't compound into larger and larger gains.

But in marketplaces (Uber, Lyft, Ebay) or pure network plays (Skype, Facebook), having one additional user creates N new potential connections. Out of those potential connections, a handful are made which encourages more and more.

A 1% gain can compound over time to huge advantages that the next group _can 't_ overcome.

<comment><USER12> If people are interested in the economics behind these things, I can't recommend this book highly enough:

[http://amzn.to/1Vqy2J2](http://amzn.to/1Vqy2J2)

Hal Varian has gone on to be the chief economist at Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not sure SideCar is a good example. Investors are pouring billions of dollars into Uber and Lyft in an attempt to get the monopoly position. That doesn't sound much like a natural "winner take all".

Google got lucky because AltaVista was run by Digital Equipment Corporation, whose marketing was legendarily bad (slogan: "DEC has it now, but you can't have it.")

<comment><USER14> Source for that slogan? Can't find it anywhere

<comment><USER15> "DEC has it now" was from the late '80s; I can't find the original source, but tech media referenced it occasionally in the following years. [1][2] The "you can't have it" part was Bader's joke, of course.

[1] [https://books.google.com/books?id=nBwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA19&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=nBwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22DEC+has+it+now%22&source=bl&ots=YlwpU0C1LU&sig=dXoGka- BGbhHpJnQko46CJn5MfQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwib5pbBnIXKAhWBeT4KHdIxBpYQ6AEIIjAC#v=onepage&q=%22DEC%20has%20it%20now%22&f=false)

[2] [https://books.google.com/books?id=gx0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA17&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=gx0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=%22DEC+has+it+now%22&source=bl&ots=USZMYXtc3i&sig=Z_T3WfjmPDBluyNu0HeYINf0Uao&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwib5pbBnIXKAhWBeT4KHdIxBpYQ6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=%22DEC%20has%20it%20now%22&f=false)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Read the article and try to replace every description of computer technology with mechanization. You'll find that in many instances you'll see the same thing. I don't disagree with the piece, but I think its chief error is failing to identify what's coming from network effects vs. pure economies of scale.

I would argue that Uber's dominance is the intentional strategic choice to seek monopoly in their space. We saw the same things during the growth of mechanization.

<comment><USER17> I think most of it is coming from capitalization. go find a venture company that will fund you to be the 10th player in a market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Lyft has already lost the battle. The one to watch is Uber vs Didi Kuaidi, which owns China's market (80%+, vs <15% for Uber) and is tightly integrated into Wechat/Weixin, which is rapidly expanding outside China.

<comment><USER19> Didi Kuaidi is only competitive in china because of homefield advantage. They have used bribes and other tactics to hinder uber. Uber has had to fight with the government to even allow them to operate while didi kuaidi was granted a license to operate from day one because they are invested with big names who have government connections. Outside of china didi kuaidi can not compete with uber. It is the same reason why amazon does so bad in china. China is a strange market where corruption and physical social networks play a large role in business the foreign companies just cant compete with

<comment><USER20> Even if we stipulate to all of these claims, so what? Do you expect China to change any of that soon? Maybe a better question is whether other populous nations like India, Nigeria, Brazil, etc. will decide to follow China's example.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't matter if China changes it or not. The point is that some Chinese company has a huge advantage _in China_. That doesn't extend to Brazil or India; it isn't going to do any better there than Uber, and probably much worse. Now, some other Brazilian or Indian company might have a huge advantage (again, thanks to corruption) in their respective country, but the Chinese company isn't likely to do well at all there because their usual tactics won't work since they don't have any insider connections in those countries the way they do in China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would argue that with perfect unregulated competition, having more than one firm with a stable market share is a sign of INefficiency. Small differences will get magnified, and whoever has the small edge will completely dominate, assuming rational behavior.

<comment><USER22> Not in the magic world of VC funding! There will always be at least one dominant firm and a few others setting tens of millions of dollars on fire by offering five dollar Lyft Lines in Manhattan hoping to get traction.

It's a bit like restaurants - you have to compete both with established, profitable competitors and upstarts willing to take a temporary operating loss.

It may be unsustainable, but I've gotten hundreds of dollars of discounted stuff from companies operating at a loss looking for traction... thanks, pension fund VC investors!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Don't get it. There are still different businesses doing more or less the same thing. Just the media tells the story about the big players. Small profitable companies are still surviving in the current market.

As an example: Amazon is everything in retail. Well, there is a thriving company in Belgium called coolblue.be There is also a Dutch company called bol.com. For every of those great news stories there are profitable small businesses making money. You just don't see them. To be honest that's ok.

Most of those companies didn't need to shut down if they used money sensibly and were not only dedicated to growth. But off course that's what VC money makes you do.

</comment><comment><USER24> Uber isn't profitable. At some point, they have to raise prices and make a profit. At that point, the competition will swarm in to undercut them. The barrier for a consumer to use a different app is almost nothing.

</comment><comment><USER25> I didn't expect SideCar to shut down just hours before the most difficult night of the year to get a ride. I hope their users install an alternative and get it working before they go out for NYE.

<comment><USER26> End of tax year

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> like the time of the robber barons and telecom monopolies

</comment><comment><USER28> No matter what business we do, "can do" sprite is the most important element. Look at Uber, Sidecar and Gogovan. I think everyone can generate similar ideas but no one do it. The one who did it succeed. Start up business is a gamble. Being a pioneer of the industry takes the highest risk but also get higher opportunity to gain market share.</comment>


Who is using coding assessment for technical interviews? - <AUTHOR> Anyone using a real code repository for assessing candidates' ability to code, run tests etc as part of a technical assessment ? I would like to know what kind of problems are you using. Any success ? <comment><USER2> We used to ask candidates to code the [http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Fibonacci_sequence](http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Fibonacci_sequence) in a module, plus tests for the first 10 numbers.</comment>


Andrew Hargadon: 7 Questions to Ask a Potential Parnter (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://andrewhargadon.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/06/7-things-to-ask.html <comment><AUTHOR> 1\. How well do you know your partner? Ask tough questions up front.

2\. What strengths and weaknesses do you both bring to the partnership? A good partner will complement your skills and assets.

3\. Do you have a shared vision?

4\. What type of partnership will you form? Begin by writing down expectations (and agreements) about profit-sharing, ownership, and how decisions will be made. control going to be determined?

5\. Do you like this person? Make sure this is someone you like enough to want to weather through adversity when the going gets tough.

6\. If your partner is a friend, how strong is your friendship? Decide ahead of time if your friendship can withstand the inevitable disagreements, downturns, and even dissolution of the business.

7\. What is the exit strategy?</comment>


An IPv6 tunnel as a free VPN alternative to unblock YouTube in your country - <AUTHOR> http://realpath.org/blog/2013/02/10/youtube-ipv6-tunnel/

<comment><USER2> So tomorrow everyone signs up for the free Hurricane IPv6 tunnel which is meant to be used by developers and administrators for system testing, HE can't respond to the huge traffic and closes a free and extremely useful service?

Thumbs down. If you want to watch youtube, get out and fight GEMA, don't go and abuse free services.

<comment><USER3> _"Hurricane Electric cant respond to the spike in traffic generated from somebody's blog post about their tunnelbroker service."_

Thats a riot, thanks for the laughs.

<comment><USER2> A high definition youtube video, transfers over 40MiB of data per minute.

If 100.000 teenagers decide to test it (obviously not all of them concurrently), then yes, it will possibly come to the point where it isn't justified for HE to keep the service up.

It doesn't need to bring their network down, it is enough to cost them more than what they get in return.

Since the youtube pages mentioned are permanently banned from Germany, this could be a pretty sustainable spike.

<comment><USER3> Are you familiar with HE's network? Take a look at Google/Youtube's biggest peer:

<http://bgp.he.net/AS15169#_peers6>

<comment><USER4> Biggest _IPv6_ peer, as I understand it, right?

I'm not sure how much traffic that represents in total?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is fine for accessing YouTube from Germany, but it should be noted that IPv6 tunnels offer no encryption or authentication so don't trust them for tunneling out of truly oppressive regimes any more than you'd trust your native Internet connection.

<comment><USER6> This. It depends if the blocking is at the content owners end, or somewhere in between. This method didn't work in China last time I tried.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article mentions one drawback of VPNs: if you're using one to access the wider internet (rather than a specific LAN), then it's likely that all of your traffic goes through it.

One effective way around this, at least for those using VPNs in China, is to create a set of static routes forcing your in-country connections to go directly. This python program gets a list of China IP ranges from APNIC, and creates a shell script with a list of route commands: <https://github.com/jimmyxu/chnroute>

</comment><comment><USER7> One researcher at Peking University once told me that he uses IPv6 to access YouTube. As far as I could tell, it was available to all students and staff. Just a simple matter of selecting the right Wi-Fi network. :)

<comment><USER6> This is interesting. Do you know whether he has native IPv6 connectivity or is using a tunnel? A few months ago, I tried using HE's IPv6 tunnel from China. It connected, but did not enable me to access blocked sites.

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure it was native. I think they had hotspots for IPv4 and IPv6.

This was 6-12 months ago by the way. I imagine they might have tightened security since, with the party congress and all that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Whenever I see someone describing the steps they go through for port forwarding I always ask "Why dont you just use IPv6?"</comment>


Ask HN: Safe places to buy a house in the US - <AUTHOR> If you want to buy a house within continental US, what would be the top safest places for the next say 50-100 years if we ignore anthropogenic (social, economic) factors and focus only on geological, climatic changes, natural disasters, etc.
It's seems logical to assume that coastal states wouldn't be safe - some parts of the East coast most likely will be flooded, and there's too much seismic activity, drought and wildfires in the West.
So where do you think it would be safe? <comment><USER2> Observations from a neighbouring country: In Toronto where I live, I never expected to see things like winds from actual hurricanes, earth quakes, total electrical blackouts, deadly flu virus epidemics, debilitating ice storms, terrorist attacks, severe flooding... But I've experienced all the above within recent years. Some very mild. Some very destructive. But all are things I never expected to see here. And with those we still deal with killer heat waves and cold snaps, fuel production plant explosions, and tick borne diseases. Right here in the city called "Toronto The Good."

Avoid the obvious disaster-prone or expecting places (you've listed a few of your own) and even still, do not expect Nirvana. There is no American Garden of Eden to discover. It's just not there. Or anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's some possibility of disasters pretty much everywhere. The midwest has tornadoes, floods, blizzards, etc. places that rely on aquifers for water are going to have problems, if they aren't already. Places that depend on rivers are already fighting over them. Global warming will make these things worse.</comment>


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