Http://(Type any keyword here).jpg.to/random - <AUTHOR> http://jpg.to/ <comment><AUTHOR> You can join the options using a "+" character. e.g. <http://cat.jpg.to/r+l+gif> is a random large cat gif image. options available:

"jpg" "gif" "png"

"face" "photo" "clipart" "lineart"

"black" "blue" "brown" "gray" "green" "orange" "pink" "purple" "red" "teal" "white" "yellow"

"huge" "xxl" "xxlarge" "xl" "xlarge" "l" "large" "m" "medium" "s" "small" "xs" "i" "icon"

"r" "random"

</comment><comment><USER2> Made three requests following links in this thread, all three times request policy indicated off-site content.

Looks like a hot-link generator to me :(

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://lorempixel.com/> \- does something very similar, but you can tell it the size of picture you're looking for and all the images are creative commons.

<http://lorempixel.com/400/200/sports/2/>

<comment><USER4> Interesting... the size option could be useful. lorempixel seems to be limited in terms of keywords to a certain pre-fixed set though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        http://www.placenoun.com/<keyword>/<width>/<height>/

<http://www.placenoun.com/unicorn/600/700/>

Actually usable for placeholder images since it returns an actual picture, not an html page with an image tag.

</comment><comment><USER6> Also discussed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3256385>

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://lolcat.jpg.to/random>

Awesome. Now I can browse cheezburger without all of the popup spam.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there a documented list of all the parameters somewhere? How did you know about /random+large+gray?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I am the creator. :p Thanks for reminding me, I am adding the list to the about page now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's the license for these images?

<comment><USER9> Looks like it's a front end to Google Image Search, so use at your own risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why is <http://man.jpg.to> creepy/NSFW?

<comment><USER11> As a note, the "safe" filter is __completely off __for these searches. Results may not be as intended. Consult a doctor for details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12>
        function jpgto(){
          local jptkeyword=$1;
          local jptpath=$2;
          curl -silent -F keyword=$jptkeyword -F file="@$jptpath" jpg.to/finish.php >> /dev/null;
          echo "http://jpg.to/$jptkeyword";
        }

        [you@home]$ jpgto kittay /path/to/cat.jpg

jpgto bash function! Now with no error checking for _worry free_ performance!! :p <https://gist.github.com/1878588>

EDIT: it outputs the vote link because we don't know if you have the top img for that tag.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think it just gets the first image from google images with your given keyword. You can also get the second, third, etc by doing <http://kittens2.jpg.to>, <http://kittens3.jpg.to>

You can also do <http://kittensgif.jpg.to>. Queue <http://headexplodegif.jpg.to>

</comment><comment><USER14> Potentially very useful. It would be even more useful if you could add width and height parameters. Assuming you are the creator of course.

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://natalieportman.jpg.to/> Doesn't work!

<comment><USER16> IMDB is blocking image hotlinking, opening the img source works fine.

<comment><USER17> Well, if it's possible to upload own picture, perhaps it might make sense to cache images in the cloud, at least when hotlinking is disabled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there an advantage to having the keyword in the subdomain rather than the query string?

Also - <http://dinosaur.jpg.to/> doesn't work unfortunately. :(

<comment><USER19> That one works for me, but <http://puppy.jpg.to/> doesn't work for me (brings up a broken image that is a link to [http://www.myfreewallpapers.net/nature/pages/beagle- puppy.sh...](http://www.myfreewallpapers.net/nature/pages/beagle- puppy.shtml)). So it looks like the "proxy" nature of this service will lead to failure at times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think using the same technique as <http://motyar.info/love/cats> Which web API you are using? I am using Google Image search.

<comment><AUTHOR> Google Image search too :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pretty fun!

For writing murder notes : <http://jsfiddle.net/c8B5G/embedded/result/>

<comment><USER4> Very cool! :) Can you filter the punctuation marks? It shows broken images for things like question marks and periods.

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately, escaped characters aren't allowed as subdomains so you'll have to hardcode them as a switch/ifelse chain which returns appropriate searches (eg . => "fullstop.jpg.to")..

Feel free to fork and do so though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just curious: why are you importing so many fonts?

<comment><AUTHOR> They would be useful when I further develop the site. Now I think I should just "comment" them away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is so awesome. Super simple idea but I'm already grinning like a maniac coming up with ideas of what to use it for

</comment><comment><USER24> Well, I am impressed.

<http://monkeyonapig.jpg.to/>

<comment><USER25> Hah, me too. Made me laugh... thx

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> ROFL this is awesome! Not sure why my buddy comes up when I type in my name though...

</comment><comment><USER27> Click 'Go' w/o typing a keyword and you get an application error :(

</comment><comment><USER28> This is cool, but I'd much prefer something with free-use licenses.

Obligatory try:

<http://tonydanza.jpg.to>

[x]

:(

<comment><AUTHOR> If a broken image is found, you can upload your own image to replace it :) <http://jpg.to/upload.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> <http://josh.jpg.to/> lol this is my friend

</comment><comment><USER30> My face when reading the title: :|

My face when I tried <http://kittens.jpg.to/> :D

My face when the next random stab yielded a <http://bucketofkittens.jpg.to/> :O \o/ :O INTERNETS WOO :D

<comment><USER31> Sounds like you'd prefer {placekitten}: <http://placekitten.com/>

<http://placekitten.com/300/300>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> <http://shits.jpg.to>

(NSFW)</comment>


Anyone have experience getting software patents? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to hear from people here who've had first-hand experiences in applying for software patents or otherwise dealing with them or who have thoughts on the matter.  I read PG's article on the subject(2).
I've always been a bit suspicious of software patents - perhaps not all, but the silly ones(1) are what everyone talks about - but now I find a situation where patenting a technique (method?  what's the right word?) that I first implemented a few years ago might be a good idea in a specific current situation.
Also, it seems like everyone is getting them so I may some day get a bill from someone whose patent I've accidentally infringed, so there is a defensive angle to the thing.
I've read various articles(3)(4) about how to do this and I've printed out some software patents and read through them, trying to figure out how to state my application.  I've got an appointment with an attorney/patent agent Monday afternoon (I picked her out of a list because she majored in math) but I'm wondering:
- Really, how much should I expect this to cost?

- How can I do it for less?

- How long does it take until patent is awarded?

- Can I license the method to someone before the patent is awarded?

- How do you choose a patent agent/attorney or do you even need to?  (I know you don't HAVE to, but is it a good idea?)

- What am I not aware of that I'll later wish I had known about?
Thanks in advance for suggestions.

  1) http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/amazonpatent.html

  2) http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html

  3) http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/howtopat.htm
  4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent
 <comment><USER2> I have been through the process of successfully filing and completing a patent (more than one actually) as a very small company and even a single person at the start. I would agree with the comment about how useful they are for small companies. I could drone on about stats, but the short of it is that 1 out of 100 patents will ever be picked to go to court on contingency (where you do not have to pay the fees). Otherwise it is, on average, 2 million to get to court against a foe. The flip side is it costs the opponent hundreds of thousands to fight even going to court. I would not do it unless your plan is to simply license it out and that is the primary business plan as opposed to bringing it to market. You will not be able to fight a company with deep pockets with a patent unless you have a firm that is essentially your partner. In other words, while I think it is worth having patent protection, it is not something you should think provides much unless you succeed in the market.

Second, if you do it - ignore anyone that states you should do it yourself. The short of it is this - you will write a worthless patent. The claims will be malformed and even something as simple as the description can be destroyed by choosing one word over the other. With technology, I would make an attempt and then take it to a lawyer to proof to save money. The Nolo book is okay and there are others, by Aspen publishing that will help. I would expect to spend up to 20k... keeping in mind every rejection will cost you more money (you will likely get rejected at least once). Every step has fees in addition to the lawyer fee. I would highly recommend Software Patents and Drafting Patent Licensing Agreements from Aspen publishing as a start. The Nolo book is okay, but even if you ask the author (which I have) about the specifics with tech, it is only cursory. Even if you think you can pick up things such as the wording, it is highly unlikely unless you want to put in a lot of time... there is a very specific language to it.

Per licensing, I would recommend the book above. Specifically regarding your question - sure you can license your tech before it is patented (granted), but if they are infringing you cannot compel anyone to until it is granted. In other words, it is good to file the patent before you are seeking people to license your product, but you cannot have any teeth until you do.

Choosing a patent lawyer is somewhat tough. I would start looking at the patent list of firms. I do not have the link handy, but Google it. Every year there is a list of the top 100 or 500 firms listed by patents granted. __*One thing to keep in mind though before you go into detail, if you have any for certain competitors, I would ask them up front if they have a conflict of interest with any of them.

One thing that REALLY concerned me is this. You stated that you implemented something a few years ago. If this is true you may no longer be able to get a patent on it... or file it. You MUST file either a patent application - provisional or otherwise - within a year of anyone knowing about it. Thus, if you created something and people knew about it more than a year (people outside of the inventors), you are not able to get patent protection. That is a hard line law. As the post above stated, filing a provisional gives you an extra year BUT you have to file something within a year of it being public otherwise it is over.

As of type, yes, always choose methods if possibe and if you have code, it is recommended to file with that. Anything that strengthens your case.

Finally, while you may think it is easy to just get a patent, it is not. The average time it takes to get through the process is years.... It takes over 2 years just to have the intial viewing of it and then it goes from there. Many average ones take 5 years to go through. In that same vein, while many like to point out how there are many silly ones, it is not entirely true in this sense. What seems obvious as an overall concept may not be when you get down to the nitty gritty with the actual method of how it is done. Further, if you do end up sneeking one through that is silly, it will be worthless and you will have done nothing but waste your time and money. Unless you are the 1 person that gets a company to back you, likely for other reasons.

I would be happy to answer anything more. Sadly, for small businesses or micro sized startups, there seems to be very little real info that leads to a lot of wasted time and money.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that small startups should ignore patents altogether. They cost a lot, detract from your mission (coding) and provide very little.

You will not have the resources to prosecute should someone use the patent to steal your idea.

The patent will provide no defense for someone else claiming that you infringed on theirs. You won't have the $ to mount a defense anyway.

Worse still, the fact that you considered patents may give an aversary the ability to claim triple damages by implying that because you were "patent aware" you must have willfully infringed.

Just file copyrights on your code as proof you were there first and leave patents to the MS's and Google's of the world. Use your time and effort to build your product.

I'm not an expert of any kind, just my 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am a former patent lawyer (EE), and more recently an entrepreneur who has founded and sold s/w businesses for large sums. If I were you I would forget about patenting your idea and focus on building something people want. Getting a s/w patent will take you about 4 years and probably cost you $20K-$60k to prepare, file, and argue to issuance. I'd forget about it, and focus on solving big problems that real people have.

<comment><USER5> I also tend to think of patents as a necessary evil...a defensive measure in a world gone crazy. I've secured a few BUSINESS METHOD patents where software is a large part of the mechanism, but I've never tried to secure a patent solely based on software.

TIME: The USPTO has an expedited examination service if you qualify. Otherwise, you may be looking at 4-6 years. If your claim is very complicated or is disputed it can take much longer. I just read an article about a company that got their patent approved after 18 years! The USPTO is supposedly changing some of their processes, which will theoretically speed up the ordeal a bit.

COSTS: wayt's cost estimate is more accurate than most. Most patents cost much more than people initially budget. I've spent as much as $225K getting a patent...and I've fortunately never had to defend one from a major company, which could skyrocket your costs into the millions.

Eusman's suggestion about getting a provisional patent is a good one if you think your startup will be on firmer financial footing within the year. You should note that you have to have not only implemented your software etc., but you have to have overcome any objections from the USPTO or disputes/counterclaims from others before the year is up. A surprisingly small number of people successfully do that. Most people are just giving their competitors a cheat sheet.

PPAs are cheap, though, so I would almost view them as using options to protect a portfolio. Most expire worthless, but if you need it you'll be thankful you paid for the insurance. The words "Patent Pending" on your business plan and press releases can also go a long way in some circles. Just a PPA can secure that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - everyone commenting so far has added something useful. One thing I didn't mention in the initial question - can you recommend/not recommend any specific patent agent/attorney? ratsbane at gmail

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The main thing you are paying the lawyer for is to write the patent for you. If you're willing to write it yourself, mostly, and just consult with a lawyer, it's a lot cheaper. Look into the Nolo books on the subject. You can buy them or download them free on eMule.

<comment><USER5> Nolo books are great.

But your suggestion that he download copyrighted LEGAL ADVICE books from eMule? That's ALMOST funny.

You should check out their Criminal Law Handbook, rms...the ebook is only $29.99 ;-)

<comment><USER6> :) Hey, I'm just saying it's possible. Hopefully.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> \- Really, how much should I expect this to cost? >> A few thousands.

\- How can I do it for less? >> Agents are a cheaper alternative to lawyers.

\- How long does it take until patent is awarded? >> At least 2 years, as far as I know.

\- Can I license the method to someone before the patent is awarded? >> Yes.

\- How do you choose a patent agent/attorney or do you even need to? (I know you don't HAVE to, but is it a good idea?) >> They should supply you with links to patents they have written (or at least applications). Try to figure out if they are any good. It's a crap shoot..

Do you need one in the first place? I read all the books, then wrote the patent myself including claims. I thought the claims looked fine but when I took it to a lawyer he had to rewrite them. We had a lot of back and forth and now they look dramatically different. The point is if you decide to do it, do it right.

\- What am I not aware of that I'll later wish I had known about? >> You don't know the future, so you may never use the patent...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I had looked into using an agent; a friend who has a few medical device patents suggested his agent but I've left several messages over the last week and the agent hasn't called back yet. I'm thinking I should interview two or three attorneys/agents before settling on one?

What sort of rates/amount should I be prepared to pay the agent/attorney?

<comment><USER7> I didn't actually interview anyone in person (good idea, of course); I had to do everything over the internet. So I looked at what they had online. The one that picked had extensive contributions to forums, etc. Another reason was that the price was on the lower end of the range (4K or so).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> something very important is to be careful to describe your software as a mechanism or a method and not as algorithm (mathematical formulae cannot be patented), that functions as a mechanism.

You can either give source code or flowcharts. I am not sure if it's ok with object code.

Have a look at the ICQ patent and other known patented software, to see how claims should be written.

Applying on your own online at uspto.gov or epo.org could really cost you not much.

Or try legalzoom.com.

A lawyer will be helpful if you don't know how to write your own claims.

*update

If the software is an early version you should consider filling a provisional patent, which costs less. This would give you 1 year to perfect it. Though you should be careful because if your description in the provisional is out of scope and doesn't match with the patent application it would not server any purpose.

</comment><comment><USER9> "live by the sword, die by the sword." although they also say "don't hate the player, hate the game".

So I don't know. I'd be very uncomfortable even patenting an actual mechanical device let alone an algorithm.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. I've benefited enormously from unpatented open-source software and methods, as has everyone reading this. However, as I said initially, there are specific compelling circumstances in this instance. Would it be non-evil if I pledged to license the patent(s) for free or for a nominal amount, say a dollar, to anyone else who offers his patent collection under the same terms or who otherwise contributes to OSS?

<comment><USER9> At least you realize the ethical issues. That's a start. I think making a pledge like that would certainly lessen the damage. Or perhaps just donate some of your profits to the EFF or other org.

And whenever you talk about having patents as part of your business model, perhaps mention the ethical dilemnas involved lest you inadvertantly inspire a future Microsoft or SCO.</comment></comment></comment>


The SoCraTes 2015 Germany Unconference - <AUTHOR> https://croc.space/a/SoCraTes-2015 <comment><AUTHOR> This is the first blog post that I've written on the blog that I coded from scratch.

Any received feedback is welcomed!</comment>


Google-styled Bootstrap - <AUTHOR> http://todc.github.com/google-bootstrap/

<comment><USER2> I think it is too unclear what exactly this is. I thought it was actually a joke at first, as if it were facetiously claiming that many of Google's projects are following in the footsteps of others.

Once I realized it's essentially a different theme for Bootstrap, I decided it's actually pretty cool, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's really cool! I especially like the Google bar component.

</comment><comment><USER4> And what are the main differences with Twitter Bootstrap?

<comment><USER5> Check the components

<comment><USER6> no differences functionally. it looks to be a theme, similar to the ones available at bootswatch.

from the projects readme.md:

Overview Because I'm a fan of the new Google UI seen in Gmail, Docs, Calendar, etc, I decided to reproduce the look of these new UI elements for my own personal use.

<comment><USER7> Seriously, it should be called "Google-Style Bootstrap Theme". The title makes you think it is some new project.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best sites and blogs for sysadmins? - <AUTHOR> Hacker News sysadmins? What great sites or blogs are you reading? <comment><USER2> It's a mailing list not a site, but I've been enjoying Cron Weekly recently: [https://www.cronweekly.com/](https://www.cronweekly.com/)

Also, Devops Weekly is where I get a lot of my news: [http://www.devopsweekly.com/](http://www.devopsweekly.com/)</comment>


Focus on college affordability obscures real problem: we're overeducated - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/focus-on-college-affordability-obscures-real-problem-were-overeducated-51101 <comment><USER2> The term "overeducated" sickens me.

Rather than limit the number of people who can explore the boundaries of human knowledge, shouldn't we work to change the world so we can accept all of those that want to learn?

</comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't say this 'overeducated' thing is the real issue. More like that too many jobs require a college degree that really shouldn't and there's too much of a cultural push to send everyone to college when not everyone is interested in it.

We shouldn't limit admissions like this, but we should definitely try and discourage people who don't want to learn or hear contradicting opinions and who treat degrees as purely a checkbox to tick on a job application. College is learning; if you don't want to learn, then don't go to colege.

</comment><comment><USER4> We are overcredentialed, I agree. Educated, I don't know.</comment>


Meet Yahoo's strange new live video and texting app - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/07/29/meet-yahoos-strange-new-live-video-and-texting-app/

<comment><USER2> It's an interesting concept, but I don't think enough people use mobile video clients yet for this to take off. I do wonder though, if the video quality is superior to competitors like snapchat because there's no need to transfer the audio.</comment>


Show HN: Instagram API console - <AUTHOR> https://any-api.com/consoles/instagram.com/1.0.0/

<comment><USER2> It's kind of ridiculous how there's not one iota of information at the AnyAPI web site about wtf AnyAPI even _is_. Am I supposed to _just know_ what this web site/service is all about? Because I don't.</comment>


Ask HN: What's Your Favorite Command Line Tip/Trick? - <AUTHOR>

Can be any CL Editor - bash, ksh, tcsh, zsh<p>For me it's Ctrl-T because I'm forever typing characters backwards. I use Bourne compatible shells so I'm not sure if that'd even work in tcsh??? <comment><USER2> While navigating source code, I often need to use either "cd dir; ls -la ." or "less filename". So I wrote a little script called see which checks whether its a folder or a file and does the appropriate command, easy but useful.</comment>


Time Warner offers free wifi to Austin customers in response to Google - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/04/25/time-warner-cable-sees-the-google-fiber-threat-and-offers-austin-free-wi-fi/

<comment><AUTHOR> The money quote is this:

"Google's recent announcement encouraged us to deploy our network more aggressively now. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we're ready to compete."

Which sounds nice except, if you were ready to compete, why weren't you competing the whole time? It sounds rather more like you were sitting on good profit margins and now you're being _forced_ to compete.

It's becoming clearer what Google's strategy is with Google Fiber: they don't care if it makes a ton of money, what they really care is that it makes Internet access speeds in the US better, whether by providing the service directly, or pushing other providers to compete harder than they have been.

Faster Internet access means more Google services consumed, more time spent, more ads clicked. _That's_ what Google wants.</comment>


Does anyone else think Snowden is full of it? - <AUTHOR> I'm not sure why, but I don't find Snowden to be very credible. I've been following his story for years, and I don't doubt the the authenticity of the documents that he released, but I what I doubt is his ability. I don't feel like based on the way he describes his experience that he has the technical skills / ability to do what he claims he did. I feel like he exaggerates his contribution. After all he has was basically a sharepoint admin. <comment><USER2> First I don't think Snowden was celebrated by many because he was a good hacker and "hacked" the documents. He was celebrated because he released it. You don't have to be a hacker to contribute to and even be important in digital rights movement.

Also what exactly made you think he was exaggerating?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe not celebrated, but it's certainly how he's depicted in media / popular culture and he's done nothing to dispel that myth. I submitted this question after I listened to him on the Rogan podcast. Someone in the comments below posted a quote about Snowden's so called "heartbeat" project, so read that to get some idea of why I think he's exaggerating. And on at least two occasions in podcast he described himself as a spy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think he ever claimed any sort of technical prowess. He was a storage admin, and when he found a treasure trove of documents under his responsibility, he bravely decided to reveal that the US spying agency conducts spying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Go listen to the Rogan podcast where he describes his experience and he makes it sound like he was more than just a storage admin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _I feel like he exaggerates his contribution. After all he has was basically > a sharepoint admin._

I have the same feeling. I have not read his book but watched his interview with Joe Rogan and honestly he sounds borderline delusional. Just jump to 1:05:20. I just find it hard to believe that a low-level contractor can do this.

"so now I come in and now I'm the sole employee of the office of information sharing but I'm not close enough to retirement that I'm ok with just doing nothing at all so I get in business and I come up with this idea for a new system called the heartbeat and what the heartbeat is gonna do is connect to basically every information repository in the intelligence community both at the NSA and across Network boundaries which you normally can't cross but because I've worked at both the CIA and the NSA I knew the network well enough both sides of it sides that normal workers at the NSA would never have seen because you have to be in one or the other I could actually connect these together I could build bridges across this kind of network space and then draw all of these or records into a new kind of system that was supposed to look at your digital ID"

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL, I submitted this question as soon as I finished the Rogan podcast. He sounds ridiculous in more than one area when he described what he did. I feel like he starting to believe what the media has made him out to be.

This quote that you posted got my attention as well when I was listening to the rogan podcast. He's basically described building an inter-org (cia-nsa) middleware as a storage admin. Snowden isn't a developer / programmer, so I'd love to understand how he built his so called "heart beat".</comment></comment>


Apple Kills the Best MacBook Pro in the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/10/27/apple-kills-best-macbook-pro/#58f2206b39bf <comment><USER2> I like all the bad press. I hope it impacts sales; that is the point, after all. We vote with our wallets, and since the new Mac Pros don't have what I wanted, it's in my interest to support as many 'counter votes' as possible. I was told by Apple implicitly, and by some defenders on places like HN explicitly, that my needs are irrelevant and an edge condition (card reader, magsafe, even [ and they almost never had these ] ethernet ports paint me as a Luddite). It doesn't help that they're not exactly being sold for bargain prices.

If the sales go down, then Apple's strategy will be revised internally.

If the sales go up, then Apple's strategy will be viewed as a success.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's time for Tim Cook to go along with the people responsible for the Mac computers and iPhones.

Apple thinks they are helping by cutting out ports and pushing technology forward, but all they are doing is pissing people off. My iPhone 7 is a joke. I can't charge and talk at the same time or swipe credit cards anymore.

Their whole pro line is a joke. My friend bought a $4000 Mac Pro with 256GB of storage, that's a joke. It also has old hardware and its priced about $1000 more than it should be. Apple could still make a healthy profit at $3000 for the same machine since its even overpriced at $3000. How is this a pro machine?

Now with the macbook pro. Pros want ports. They are the ones that use them. Some pros even want more than 16GB of RAM which I feel is standard for non pros. I really hope things change because this is ridiculous.

<comment><USER4> Why would they change what they're doing if you're both still willing to buy their products?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some numbers to consider: according to Apple's Q4 2016 financial report, Macs represent less than 10% of the company's revenues. Notebook revenues are also declining significantly (14% down from last year).

I did not see the numbers by category, but suppose the Pro line represents (optimistically) 5% of company's revenues and declining.

In this light, the company's decision not to dedicate significant resources to a declining segment of its lineup makes sense.

<comment><USER2> Also their share of the laptop market, contrary to what the in-placement ads in TV shows and movies where everyone has a Mac laptop would have you believe, is far behind their competitors (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.) who collectively also run Windows, which is far ahead of OSX in terms of adoption. So both in the OS space and in the HW space they have a niche market share.

So, the question isn't whether it makes sense to continue the product lines, but whether their decisions will increase or hurt their market share and margins.

I have a hard time believing they stopped caring about laptop sales. Those ads cost money, as does the R&D and all the rest of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Considering in 4-5 years time, the current MacBook Pro design will get an 8 Core 7nm Icelake, double or triple the speed of current GPU, 32-64GB Maxed memory, Over Gigabit 802.11ax wireless speed. And Even Faster SSD. Are every Pro's need for computational power inline with Moore's Law? It may not fit every Pro's need today. But it will in a year or two later. Those who uses VM are especially vocal about lack of 32GB memory, but how many % of Pro are in this camp?

I see Macbook and the Macbook Pro very forward thinking. It was similar to MacBook Air when it first released. It was slow, expensive ultrabook. Everyone were wondering why would you WANT a ultrabook.

</comment><comment><USER7> Censorship is at full speed. All the articles by this author about Apple have been removed and link redirect us to.

[http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/](http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/)

Does anyone know the story behind it?

<comment><USER8> For me, that's a splash screen. Wait a few seconds and I have the opportunity to continue to the article by Ewan Spence. And here's a list of his articles:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/#b23e8d74ad9d](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/#b23e8d74ad9d)

That lists articles from Nov 3, Nov 2, and Nov 1, among others. Are there other articles you're aware of that are missing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > New MacBook Pros so popular orders are backed up for weeks

I really, really hope this "Apple is the devil" theme ends in the next few weeks. It's nauseating to see the same headlines multiple times a day on HN, all making the same ridiculous arguments.

The reality is, this time next year, people (pros and causal users) are going to love the Touch Bar, and nobody is going to care about the Surface Dial. I just hope it happens sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER10> I wrote in an earlier comment, "Apple released new stuff, quick, write a contrarian blog post!" I'd almost swear an entire industry has built up around this very sentiment.

Seems to me that if Apple suffers from anything, it's the ol' Microsoft conundrum: "our competition is the previous version of Windows". My 2012 rMBP is chugging along just fine, running VMs and IDEs, and just being a general workhorse. Though I imagine I'll go against the grain and find the Touch Bar actually useful, I'm not dropping $2500 to find out. I'm not of the opinion that Apple is losing it, gone off the rails, or whatever the cool kids on Medium are saying. I just don't see enough of a jump to warrant spending more money. Which I imagine is a problem a lot of computer manufacturers are coming to grips with.

And perhaps that's the source of the angst. Many, like me, were probably looking for a reason, _any_ reason to go drop $2500 to replace their 3-4 year old laptop. The big announcement came, and no such reasons were given. Doesn't bother me, it's a tool not a toy. But I can understand some disappointment.

<comment><USER11> > I'd almost swear an entire industry has built up around this very sentiment.

It certainly scores bloggers some ad revenue....</comment></comment></comment>


Aaron Swartz on "living in the world" [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUt5gjqNI1w&feature=youtu.be&t=1m51s

<comment><AUTHOR> My best attempt attempt a partial transcription of the linked starting point follows:

I feel very strongly it's not enough to just live in the world as it is, to just take what your given and ya'know follow the things that adults told you to do and that your parents told you to do and that society tells you to do. I think you should always be questioning. I take this very scientific attitude, that everything you've learned is just provisional. That it's always open to recantation or refutation or questioning. I think the same applies to society. And I felt growing up, ya'know I slowly had this process of realizing that all the things around me that people had told me were just the natural way things were, the way things always would be. They weren't natural at all. They were things that could be changed, and more importantly they were things that were wrong and should change. And once I realized that there was really kinda no going back. I couldn't fool myself into saying "Oh I'm just gonna go work for a business" and ignore all that. Once I realized that there were real serious problems, fundamental problems, that I could do something to address. I didn't see a way to forget that. I didn't see a way not to.</comment>


Why Showing Your Face at Work Matters - <AUTHOR> http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2012-summer/53407/why-showing-your-face-at-work-matters <comment><USER4> Working from home is a popular topic for us engineers. Generally speaking there are two broad camps in this argument:

1\. Those who want to work from home and argue largely from that position. They say they'll be just as productive, you can write code from anywhere, having a more flexible schedule will make them happier and more productive and so on; and

2\. Those that think there is more to your job than the lines of code you write. In even small companies (maybe even especially small companies?) culture is important. Culture transmits largely by physical proximity. Osmosis if you will. There is value in team camaraderie, whiteboard sessions, going to lunch with colleagues, sometimes just sitting around and shooting the breeze about whatever.

I fall very firmly into camp (2). This also applies to splitting teams geographically (common within Google) and, all other things being equal, you're better off having your organization in N locations versus N+1 locations.

Raises and promotions are more a function of relationships than anything else. Not being there decreases visibility and diminishes relationships. Or perhaps it's just that those who basically just want to write code see no value in and/or spend no time on building relationships?

So I think if you found a group of likeminded people that just wanted to put their heads down and write code then they could probably work together as an effective distributed team but as soon as you're in the minority in that situation you're losing out and (IMHO) it's not what's best for a colocated team anyway.

<comment><USER5> "Those that think there is more to your job than the lines of code you write. In even small companies (maybe even especially small companies?) culture is important. Culture transmits largely by physical proximity. Osmosis if you will. There is value in team camaraderie, whiteboard sessions, going to lunch with colleagues, sometimes just sitting around and shooting the breeze about whatever."

You're waiving your hands here; flailing, even. None of this is quantifiable, it's all your based on your gut feeling. There are plenty of ways culture can transmit online, but I'm afraid my examples would involve just as much conjecture as yours do.

I telecommute, but also make a trip to be on location every couple of months. I agree that face to face contact is important to some degree, but not in any way I could accurately measure. I'm _FAR_ more productive when I'm telecommuting because I don't have colleagues interrupting me with questions ever 10 minutes, I don't feel the temptation to "shoot the shit", I can work through lunch, and I waste no time commuting. As a result I'm more productive than the average non-telecommuting worker.

Raises and promotions may be a function of relationships, but perhaps they shouldn't be? Perhaps they should be based on performance.

<comment><USER6> _As a result I'm more productive than the average non-telecommuting worker._

Although sometimes optimising somebody's individual productivity gets in the way of optimising the productivity of the company as a whole.

You need to figure out where the bottlenecks are before you know the right place to optimise :-)

<comment><USER7> _Although sometimes optimising somebody's individual productivity gets in the way of optimising the productivity of the company as a whole._

That's the real rub. It's entirely possible that the Right Thing To Do - <USER2> the perspective of the firm - is the do something other than what is most optimal for the individual. Sp, as a lot of us geeks tend to be fairly individualistic, and because it can be hard to isolate the variables when you're talking about team productivity, a lot of us fall on the side of "optimize for the individual."

As somebody who's _radically_ individualistic, and who is also a startup founder, I find myself torn on the idea of whether or not it even makes sense to _have_ an office, or whether it makes sense to push for a completely distributed team.

I'm getting a bit of a real-world experiment with these issues now, as my $DAYJOB has me in Chicago for a 6 month consulting gig and my co-founders are back in the RTP area. We use email and IM heavily now... but we had an in- person "hack day" last weekend when I was home, and there was definitely value in all 3 of us being in the same room, huddled up together.

I'm leaning towards thinking firms probably should have offices, and that most people should be in the office at least part of the time. But I would take a pretty laissez-faire approach towards it, I think. Provide offices, but give people fairly unlimited freedom to work remotely or come into the office as they see fit.

<comment><USER6> _I'm leaning towards thinking firms probably should have offices, and that most people should be in the office at least part of the time. But I would take a pretty laissez-faire approach towards it, I think. Provide offices, but give people fairly unlimited freedom to work remotely or come into the office as they see fit._

That sounds like a good idea.

I'd maybe consider running some experiments too. See what happens when you have everybody work in the office for a month. See what happens if you have everybody working remotely for a month. I've had clients try things like that and be surprised by the results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Working from home reduces visibility, you don't work from home to make more and get promoted, you work from home to avoid the retardation of a commute, busy work, excessive meetings, etc.

You work from home so you can put in 2 hours work, accomplish as much as anyone else did and spend the remaining 6 enjoying your life.

I'm pretty sure that everyone who decides to work from home did so for quality of life reasons rather than climbing the corporate ladder reasons.

<comment><USER9> Thank you, I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees the benefits.

It's true, some jobs are soul-crushing enough that you'd rather not be there. You might have family and/or financial responsibilities that make you have to keep such a job. You may be bootstrapping a business on the side so you can escape from such a job, but in the meantime, you still need your regular paycheck.

Not every job has you working with self-motivated co-workers and great bosses. Some jobs put you in a cube farm in a room where everyone fights over the thermostat. Sometimes you have to head a weekly meeting where you have to explain to other programmers why you get NullPointerExceptions on line 5 when line 4 initializes the variable to null. Some jobs still make you use CVS. The office talk at some jobs is never about learning anything, but it sure is loud and distracting.

If you were offered a chance to work from home and avoid a lot of that, I'm sure you'd also jump at the opportunity. Getting a promotion in such a job isn't worth it.

<comment><USER10> That can actually turn into a good thing. When you're not facing the other person, you should become better and better at communicating what exactly is the issue. At the very worse this leaves a paper trail that can indicate "see I worked on this"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article does a good job of going over a few (seemingly obvious) biases, but I also expected an honest discussion of job duties (implicit or explicit) that get missed when one works from home. I'm disappointed that part of the topic was skipped.

I know the HN crowd is fairly pro- working from home, and I am too, but I was wondering if some of the more experienced (than myself) people here could chime in with examples of implicit/explicit things that are "missed" when team members work from home.

The only major one I can think of is mentoring, of new hires and interns, which seems to be done much better in person than over email. I would think that mentoring these two groups is an implicit duty in most companies, but it would seemingly always fall on the backs of those who are not working from home.

I would also think that actually being there in person for new hires and interns also helps shape company culture for those people, or otherwise make them feel like more of a team. I suppose that all of this could be mitigated by not working from home for the first month+ of interns/new hires starting.

<comment><USER12> Personally, I overwhelmingly dislike working from home, although it is nice to have the option to do so occasionally when I'm sick, waiting for something to be delivered to my house, the weather is poor, etc..

The main ways I think it is harder for you to contribute remotely are:

1) Whiteboard sessions

I've spent a lot of time sitting around a whiteboard, talking out a (software) design for something and collaboratively working it out on the board. I've yet to see software that can come close to this, and even those that sort of do involve a bit of overhead vs just walking into an empty conference room.

2) Debugging/working through things on someone else's machine

Sometimes you can solve a problem or work through some design much more quickly by just sitting down at a computer with someone and walking through the code. This is certainly possible to do remotely, but it always feels a lot more clunky, and I tend to avoid it.

3) Office talk

Not office gossip, but simply overhearing co-workers talking about something and either learning something or offering them a better way to do it. This adds happens fairly frequently in my experience, and it is hard to duplicate remotely.

Sure, if you have everyone working remotely, you can invest time to figure out ways to mitigate these losses, but if it is just one or two people working from home full-time, I think either way you are adding less net value than if you were there in person, all else being equal.

<comment><USER13> Agreed so far.

What's wrong with working from home?

When the CEO brings guests to the office so that they can "meet the team", you're never there. When the guests ask about your project, someone else on your team will represent you.

When your manager is muttering jokes to the team during the design meeting, you won't hear those jokes. Some of the jokes may involve the projects that are already being discussed in other parts of the company but which haven't yet officially arrived on your team's radar: You will tend to be the last to find out about those projects.

When one of your direct reports is fighting back tears, you won't see those tears.

When the VIP, whose schedule is booked so tightly that you can't get a meeting, is hanging out in the kitchen at the end of the day, you're not there to talk to her for five minutes.

Every time you present something, you'll be unable to see your audience's reactions in real-time, you won't see their raised hands, the remote slideshow software will take five minutes to launch, and the high-latency phone connection will drop at least once.

Now, I've worked at a company with a lot of remote employees, and a good company and a good manager who are conscious of these difficulties can compensate for a lot of this. But you're still playing at a higher difficulty level than everyone else.

<comment><USER14> The two parent comments from suresk and mechanical_fish are exactly right about the real, though unquantifiable benefits of being in close proximity to peers and bosses.

I work for a large organization with a big head office and dozens of smaller offices around the world.

I've received more than my fair share of promotions. However, of twenty two years in the same organization I've worked in eight different cities in three countries, eighteen years out of and four years in head office. Despite being consistently ambitious, every single one of my promotions was from my two stints in head office. And my organization prides itself in believing it has an uncompromisingly objective and merit based promotion process.

At best, rigorous reward systems will dampen the natural human bias toward the people you see every day. Humans are wired to be tribal and to coalese into groups. Plus, as the parent comments illustrate, there are actual benefits to being in close proximity that can't be replicated remotely. Were it not so, urban real estate would be no more expensive than rural and there would be no cities.

This is not necessarily a bug that needs to be fixed. Rather, it is a feature of the system to understand and use.

If ambition/money is high on your list of priorities, then work in close physical proximity to your peers and bosses.

If other things in life are higher on your list of priorities, accept that you are making a trade-off that is right for you. Work remotely and don't be surprised that the physical rewards fall disproportionately on those who work in court around the king. You have chosen different rewards.

<comment><USER15> > If other things in life are higher on your list of priorities, accept that > you are making a trade-off that is right for you. [...] You have chosen > different rewards.

Yes! I used to work with someone who, when someone suggested, "That's a career-limiting move", would say, "I don't want a career, I want a job." (He is a brilliant engineer, by the way.) His point was that he had other goals than promotions. Having that job was simply his way of having enough money to fund the toys that made his life fun.

Years ago I made a choice to move to a rural area; there are no decent tech jobs within a 1 hour commute. On occasion I've had to work away from home for extended periods, but for the most part I've been a full-time telecommuter. I drive a couple of hours to an office to spend a day every other week, or once a month, depending on the organization. I'm "missing out" on advancing my career, but the money is still decent, I get to put my kids to bed every night, I can water the garden at lunchtime -- and pick a fresh salad, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Let me explain this to you in simple terms.

If your manager appreciates 'blow your trumpet' culture where 'making noise' is more important than work, then Working from home might be disastrous to you. But if your manager understands the wastage of time during travel/commute. The troubles faced by programmers due to frequent meetings and interruptions, the need for solitary isolation to think and work on tough problems. He won't have problems, and will rather appreciate you for taking more time to be productive and get work done.

People who stay late are thought to be productive, and doing more work. Unfortunately this is the problem with our Industry. And unless your manager has done some real work himself he won't understand most of this. And trust me expecting a technically sound manager is asking for too much.

Your ordinary corporate middle level manager, is totally incapable of understanding this. Because he despises any form of extreme nerd/tech/geek culture. He perceives that as a threat to his own kingdom, he is afraid that your success will overshadow his noise making. He will do everything in his power to keep people mediocre, to make himself look good to his bosses. In all of this a ferevrishly hacking geek churning features, coding by the minute, his way of work, culture and cult is a threat/disease that can destroy the managers career.

Working from home, will not work with those kind of managers.

<comment><USER6> Where do the managers (and team members for that matter) fit in who have tried telecommuting experiments, seen productivity drop, moved back to co-located teams, and seen productivity rise back to previous levels again?

<comment><USER17> Well, it works for some, so either the team of this theoretical person or manager was a unique snowflake or there were people problems causing this distinction (e.g. people who abuse it, crappy manager who was using stupid metrics that prove their biases).

<comment><USER6> Wasn't trying to say that "telecommuting doesn't work". It obviously can - <USER3> there are often good reasons for it (hell - I do it myself most of the time).

I was just pointing out that people choosing not to telecommute isn't necessarily caused by management idiocy. There is, indeed, a lot of evidence (see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4207309>) that the optimum for productivity is a radically co-located team.

Of course there are other issues. Telecommuting is a great option to have and solves some problems. Sometimes the best folk cannot co-locate. Sometimes quality of life issues are more important. Sometimes the on-site work environment can't be made effective due to issues outside the relevant people's control.

However, a lot of geek folk seem to automatically assume that telecommuting == always more productive, and management that prefer co-location == always idiots. This isn't backed up by the facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Many of the comments are focused on how workers _should_ be evaluated. The article is discussing how workers _are_ evaluated. In fact, the authors emphasize:

 _"Managers may not be aware they are making evaluations based on face time."_

You can argue that managers should be aware of a bias in this area and strive to minimize its effect. However, workers need to simply be realistic about the effect of working remotely - regardless of whether it seems fair to them. Personally, I prefer to work remotely - but I have always been wary about not spending enough time in the office because of the tendencies described in the article. Physical presence is a powerful thing, and difficult to ignore. Email, IM, Skype, and phone calls are much easier to ignore.

</comment><comment><USER19> We have been experimenting in work-from-home recently, switching from a work- in-office only setup.

Work from home has a lot of ambiguity unless you are doing support (which you can do from anywhere). When you are working on long term projects its important for everyone to know what you are up-to, else people might thing you are goofing off.

To fix this, we sync up once a month where everyone demos what they have been doing for the month. So short term activity is evaluated by responses to customer, commits, chatrooms and long term activity is evaluated on "demo day".

We just had our first "demo day": <http://erpnext.com/demo-day---june.html>

(disclaimer: we are a really small team of 3 devs + 1 support + 1 admin)

</comment><comment><USER20> That seems like it only applies to WidgetFactories and not FilmCrews.

Read more here; <http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/45814>

I wouldn't make my career in a WidgetFactory anyway.

<comment><USER6> _That seems like it only applies to WidgetFactories and not FilmCrews._

Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is the advice I recieved from an old supervisor who was known around the world for the quality and depth of her research.

1\. It doesn't matter how hard you work but how hard people think you're working. If the door is shut and you're working all night you're only hurting yourself as people will fail to give you the recognition you deserve. Work hard, but make your hard work known.

2\. You don't have to be intelligent to create great research. You can buy intelligence (and equipment etc) etc. What you need is imagination, organisation, motivation and an ability to network.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think it all depends on the overall setup of the company/team. If you are the odd one out telecommuting, then yes, issues arise.

But, anecdotal evidence to the rescue, here is my personal experience:

I work for a US-headquartered software company. I live in Austria. I lead a product team. My team members live in France and Germany. We _all_ telecommute. We see each other in front of clients or at organized internal events. The rest is done through various online solutions.

Everyone is on equal footing. I, as a manager, am a telecommuter myself. I can relate, understand how to measure performance as I am measured this way myself.

Do _I_ have a disadvantage against the colleagues in the US HQ? Absolutely, but they cannot do my job as I cover Europe. Which is fine. My team has no drawback.

And yes, by now, I am a strong advocate of tele-work for knowledge workers. A lot of reasons, but often overlooked is the ecological one. I actually use my home more. I don't have a separate office that sits around empty (still heated/ac'ed) for non-working hours. I don't waste energy hauling my physical presence back and forth to work. And yes, my company saves a metric ton of money on office space savings.

</comment><comment><USER23> This reminds me of an incident I had with a former employer. It was xmas break and I was at home the final week (xmas to new years). I spent about 75% of my time working.

When I got back I was accused of taking "10 days off." He counted the Saturday I left to the Sunday before I got back. By that logic, I often took 2 days off a week.

Anyway, even after I told him I was working during that time he still said "this wasn't the end of it." When I told him he was overly sensitive to face time he seemed to want to just deny reality.

<comment><USER24> Sounds like your boss is just an asshole, really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's not an either / or situation - it can be 'and'. I work from home 2-3 days a week, and I'm in the office the other days (and that includes days I do for 'credibility', i.e. I go in, say hi to everyone, work all day in my office, then say bye again when I leave - might as well be at home those days, but I realise sometimes it's necessary just to turn up for the sake of it). If there is 'pure' technical work to be done, it's more efficient working from home. For one, you save time on the commute. My manager gets check-in updates (via Assembla), and we can talk via the phone or via email. I can provide updated staging builds for him to download and test too, if necessary. If you have a reasonable manager, a reasonable employee, good tools, and can balance in / out of office days, then the situation can be a big 'win' for everybody. More work gets done, there's enough 'face time', and it's far less stressful.

</comment><comment><USER26> I believe this article is missing the point. When you're physically present at the office, you get plenty of opportunities to have conversations with different people and voice your opinion, revealing your thought patterns, values and abilities. These often complement and boost people's observations of you during actual assigned work.

This effect is not about "passive face time" or merely people seeing that you're there from a distance. It is about plugging into the whole environment in the office - which is what you need your leaders to be good at.

Taking it further, a bunch of great happenstance opportunities really come up by being in the right place at the right time talking to the right people hitting the right chords. You will never stumble upon these opportunities if you're constantly away, chucking away at your "assigned" duties.

</comment><comment><USER27> There's nothing magical about proximity. It's all just a question of sufficiently high-bandwidth, low-friction communication.

There's no getting around our monkey brains' desire to see other people's faces and bond with them. But that's just a technical problem: high quality video that starts instantly, or that is always on, provides the same stimulus. The fact that most remote workers don't have that kind of setup just shows why we're not quite there yet.

So the problems with remote work that people discuss endless are not problems with remote work per se. They're problems with our nascent, not-quite-good- enough-yet tools for remote work. But the tools are getting better really fast.

</comment><comment><USER28> I guess it depends what sort of track you're trying to get promoted in. If you're trying to get a raise and continue to be an individual contributor (i.e. not manage anyone) then I don't think WFH should really be an issue.

However, if you do want to become a lead and have reports then I think it makes perfect sense to promote those that go into the office. I personally would never want to report to someone who consistently works from home if I'm going into the office.

There's a difference between kissing ass and having a good relationship with your boss. A human relationship flourishes with actual proximity.

</comment><comment><USER29> I work remotely, but make it into the office every couple of weeks. I had already worked with this team for two years prior to making this arrangement, so the managers and I know each other well. However, it does seem the new folks on the team (and one or two of the old ones) treat me with some suspicion. I'm the sole developer on this project, so the "12 engineers in front of a whiteboard" thing does not apply.

Anyway, I'm happier for not having to spend three hours commuting each day, and if Lines of Code is any judge (I know, I know), I'm an order of magnitude more productive.

</comment><comment><USER30> I guess it depends on the company.

If you telework only part of the week, I think you have a clear advantage since the telework days are when you actually get stuff done!

If you telework full-time but you still have colleagues that show-up then there may be some bias as the article shows and people need to be aware of it.

Another solution to this problem is to have the entire company work remotely. Not sure how well this scales, but for a small company such as ours it seems to be the best solution.

</comment><comment><USER31> Working from home limits your opportunities to kiss ass

</comment><comment><USER32> So this applies if your manager/team is in another city/timezone? Ironically, I got my first promotion and biggest bonus as the only NY member of a London- based team. However, I certainly wondered whether being the lone wolf in my region was good for my career in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER33> I can't speak of other jobs, but developers shouldn't care about raises and promotions, because if they are in an organization where those matter, there are going to be non-technical ladder climbers who will promote each other and take all the money allocated for raises. The only real choices for developers are a) start a business b) job hop c) work at valve. 360-degree evaluations are a farce because these evaluations just go directly to one or more non- technical manager to 'help' with their decisions on advancement and raises. It's lip service. If you don't have a budget and hiring authority, all you really have is the ability to quit, and the wealthiest developers hop often. In instances where developers become too powerful and high up on the tech ladder they are going to be given fancy titles and isolated anyways, so why not work from home?

<comment><USER34> This has to be one of the more ridiculous things I've read on HN recently. I (or any other developer) shouldn't be care about getting raises? Why exactly? There are lots of plenty of good places to work not called Valve that don't suffer over-politicalization

<comment><USER33> I think I made it very clear why you shouldn't care. If developers don't have any power in deciding who gets raises, developers are not likely to get raises. Are you going to work 80 hour a week in the office hoping for a promotion like an idiot year after year so you can get 3% instead of 1%? No, you're going to go across town and get 15%. If you disagree that's fine, but by and large this is my experience.

<comment><USER35> Some companies give real raises (15% or more) to their developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> All this assuming the majority of other employees or managers don't work remotely too.

<comment><USER37> I was going to go on this tangent as well, but the article and the comments are focusing on teams that do mostly work in offices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Signal is signal and noise is noise. A bias towards passive face time is embracing noise and will reduce the ability to execute.

</comment><comment><USER39> Forget this. I'm not reading this hogwash.

Look, make working outside a practical consideration. I need the sun, not shoddy impressionist artwork, not another goddamn water cooler. I want to pull my drink from a nearby stream and then commit my bug.

Get out of my face with your goddamn ugly buildings and their ugly interiors. My code is ugly enough without having to deal with in-building noise and 'in- office' politics.

</comment><comment><USER39> I just do not understand. We're at the point now where all of our commit messages are on display. How could anyone seriously argue:

"Our findings suggest that remote workers might be further handicapped by perceptions that they are not as responsible or committed as other employees. To avoid such unfair perceptions, managers who implement telecommuting and flexible hours should revise their performance appraisals to measure mostly objective outputs, such as number and type of projects completed or expert evaluations of project quality."

Rather, we're _already_ doing this. Check the commit logs. Obviously one can make trait-inferences based on commit logs. If one can infer a "life story model" from a Facebook profile, one can infer a "worker commitment model" from a github profile.

And "... remote workers might be ..."? Seriously? This is the kind of argument coming from MIT? Look, I'm not going to argue the difference between a theory- might-be-true and a theory-is-probably-true. Nor will I argue that they're _just_ working with theories, the just-theory argument. I don't want to bore you to death, but you obviously don't need _evidence_ to corroborate a claim that _might_ be true. I mean, c'mon... A lot of "findings" might be true. That said, who's to say their explanation establishes any causal connection at all. All sorts of things lead to the perception of lack of commitment, but most notably, that someone fails to perform unit tests, or doesn't document, etc. -- but "hallway conversations"? This presupposes that the content of the conversation is even contextualized by the work itself that is to be done. I mean, with such a "finding" there are an infinite number of provisional assumptions which can be thrown in, when there's already a perfect focal point for determining commitment, etc. -- again, the commit(ment) logs.

Is this just bad writing, or am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER40> Gotta love how the comments here have datapoints than the whole study the article mentions</comment>


AOL is Buying The Huffington Post - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/business/media/07aol.html?src=busln

<comment><AUTHOR> The most interesting thought I've had since seeing this isn't the reasons behind the buy, but the timing behind the annoucement. Is it dulled because of the Super Bowl? Or has the three-four hour elapse of time post-event the perfect duration to make an announcement like this?

It seems like, if anything, it would be dulled when occuring in unison with the Super Bowl - but I can't imagine why a news network, one that thrives on page views - would ever choose a situation where they would get less attention.

But it is also possible that _overall_ news page views skyrocket post-Super Bowl, so even if the mindshare is split, that half mindshare is much greater than the full mindshare at some other throwaway date ever was.

<comment><USER2> I think it's probably the latter. It's getting in right before the week's newscycle starts tomorrow morning.

The superbowl's huge, but I suspect people start "fresh" tomorrow since football season's over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2187738>

</comment><comment><USER4> _doyenne_

That's actually the first time I've ever used the NY Times's dictionary function. Pretty neat.</comment>


UCLA study shows high-fructose diet sabotages learning, memory  - <AUTHOR> http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/this-is-your-brain-on-sugar-ucla-233992.aspx <comment><USER2> Note that this is a study on a high-fructose diet, not a high-fructose corn syrup diet. A major source of fructose is sucrose, which when cooked with is often already broken down into glucose and fructose before consumption.

Note also that this was a study on rats, not humans.

If we cut through the press release (which was already amended to be less sensationalist), this was actually a study showing that omega-3 fatty acids improved the rats' memories of a maze after six weeks. That a high-fructose diet would "sabotage learning, memory" is merely supposition on the part of the researcher (and he says so, explicitly). There is no evidence from this study that that is the case. Why they wouldn't have a control group not receiving the high-fructose diet is not apparent.

<comment><USER3> > this was actually a study showing that omega-3 fatty acids improved the > rats' memories of a maze after six weeks

So therefore Monsanto is Hitler-level evil and corn subsidies are killing us. Gotcha.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> .. in rats.

Metabolism results in rats are _notoriously_ bad at generalizing to humans. You can get rats to live much longer by restricting their calories; live 30% shorter lives by giving them small doses of caffeine; we can cure obesity, spinal injuries, get them to regenerate nerves.. and none of it has been shown to generalize to humans.

Here's a Slate article about problems with mouse research: [http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_mouse_t...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_mouse_trap/2011/11/lab_mice_are_they_limiting_our_understanding_of_human_disease_.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992599></comment>


Perl 6 -- Too Bloated to Survive? (Core Devs Discuss) - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/397968/

<comment><USER2> I've never been a real Perl hacker, more of an admirer from afar. I mention that because I'm pretty close to the ideal "objective observer" that chromatic mentions.

dskoll certainly has valid concerns, but he turns into a real asshole as the thread continues:

 _I believe the improvements in speed and memory required to make Perl 6 competitive with Perl 5 are unprecedented in the history of computer science._

This is a ridiculous statement, of course things have been optimized by 95% before. Given the specific explanations given by the devs about the wholly unoptimized state of the project along with planned optimizations, it seems well within the realm of possibility.

I'm not sure what the chip on this guys shoulder is, but it sounds like he just wants perl5. He gives no consideration for the innovation and creativity behind perl6. If he doesn't give a shit about all the advanced features then stick with perl5 for god's sake, it's well proven and it's not going _anywhere_. But to argue ad nauseam about the impossibility of an "adequate" optimization from a totally ignorant position is pretty offensive.

<comment><USER3> The one thing I've learned in the years I've worked with Perl is to never underestimate the ability of the Perl community to achieve the incredible.

To compare the performance of the mature, optimized Perl 5 core to the freshly baked, feature rich Perl 6 is shortsighted in the extreme.

The Perl 5 runtime is hard to extend, meaning that using the modern additions to the language (notably Moose), comes with a significant start up penalty. This can not be easily overcome.

Perl 6 has a Grammar, Perl 5 only has an implementation (only perl5 can parse Perl5). There is a lot of opportunity for making Perl 6 nice and fast, certainly fast enough for the larger complex applications it is designed to support.

Perl 6 is not trying to compete with Perl 5 on one line throw away scripts. Not yet anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is also thoroughly debunked in another article posted here an hour ago or so:

[http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2010/07/an-accurate- compar...](http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2010/07/an-accurate-comparison- of-perl-5-and-rakudo-star.html)

Comes across to me like chicken-little syndrome.

<comment><USER5> Here's the HN post referred to: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1563618>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rather, premature optimization is the root of _nearly_ all evil. Without it, you apparently get trolled.

</comment><comment><USER7> The time is ripe for the next "big" language + framework to come on the scene. I predict it will be a compiled language with rapid compilation and advanced debugging/runtime monkeypatching, such that most of the advantages of dynamic languages will be subsumed. It will also support some advanced way to handle concurrency.

<comment><USER8> Why do you think "compiled" is the opposite of "dynamic"?

<comment><USER7> I don't, but much of the rest of the world does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> the comments are the most interesting part of this. original poster makes lots of assumptions, many of which are challenged by people who know the raduko code.

<comment><USER5> Yes the OP comments throughout contain a lot of historical inaccuracies about Parrot & Rakudo.

The ParrotVM team did publish a precise roadmap a few years back and I believe the optimization wasn't due to circa version 3 or 4? (ParrotVM is currently at 2.6).

NB. Unfortunately I can't find the original roadmap I'm referring to at moment because it may not have made the Rakudo move from svn to git?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of a lot of the "discussion" surrounding the Mozilla project back in the pre 1.0 days.

Non Project Member makes a decent point about performance, but does so in an incredibly presumptuous, entitled, non-helpful way.

Project Members make a lot noise and had waves about pre-production, non- optimized versions, etc., but never come out and say "Yes, version n+1 of our project will most likely use more ram and run slower on the same hardware as version N of our project"

<comment><USER2> chromatic says a factor of 2.0 is a worthwhile target (<http://lwn.net/Articles/398051/>). I think that's the best you'll get since good developers—especially perl6 developers—generally are copiously optimistic.

<comment><USER11> We haven't reached the point of dramatic optimizations yet. We're making some architectural changes in Parrot (the Lorito project) to allow for tracing JIT, bytecode optimizations, and slimmer deployment of dependency-traced applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Bloated? No.

Needs some optimizations? Sure.</comment>


A Startup With a Way to Filter Botnet Traffic Gets Funding - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/a-start-up-with-a-way-to-filter-botnet-traffic-gets-funding/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=technology&_r=0 <comment><USER2> > "Our discovery is that both Javascript and Flash will also tell you if > there's a real user behind that inferface," Mr. Kaminsky said."

That isn't how that works. That isn't how any of it works.

Selenium + [https://code.google.com/p/flash- selenium/](https://code.google.com/p/flash-selenium/) == Has both.

People who block flash & javascript for security reasons? Also blocks both.

The sheer ease of bypass and the rate of false positives for any sophisticated operator is going to be huge.

Maybe I'm overly skeptical but I don't see this filtering any bot operation that is sophisticated enough to run something like selenium.

EDIT: Folks, I'm aware Selenium is a terrible example but it was the first thing that came to mind.

There are plenty of other headless toolkits that are easier to weaponize. Maybe I didn't want to point that out by linking to them/mentioning them? :|

<comment><USER3> Is there any research on how many botnets use Selenium? I would guess that most of them use something more basic just because it's a lot easier to put together.

<comment><USER4> My personal experience with comment/forum spam bot networks is that at least 90% do not understand javascript. The ones that do tend to have _extremely_ realistic traffic patterns and the ability to solve captchas. I suspect those are actually real people with incredibly crappy jobs, not super-intelligent Selenium-powered bots.

<comment><USER5> Comment/forum spam is different game than botnet ad fraud. The latter executes JavaScript by design since it's often necessary to load the ads.

<comment><USER6> see the charts from Incapsula in this article which show a third of the bots are not executing javascript [https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140623200557-8...](https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140623200557-84444-five- separate-vendors-confirm-bot-traffic-in-60-range)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/White-Ops- Secures-7...](http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/White-Ops- Secures-7-Million-in-Series-A-Funding-1923780.htm)

This is a more descriptive article on this funding round and what White Ops does. The company uses side channel analysis across an array of variables to detect behavioral differences between humans and bots.

<comment><USER8> Side-channel analysis generally refers to analyzing emitted signals like RF emissions and power consumption patterns to defeat crypto systems. So it's an interesting turn of phrase considering it's referring to analysis of 'variables', implying in-channel data, rather than signals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems pretty much exactly like [http://spider.io](http://spider.io), now acquired by Google.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't usually complain about titles (and I know it's the original one from the article), but I came here with the fascinated (though admittedly skeptical) hope that someone had improved radically on botnet DDoS mitigation techniques. It would be better if the title contained words like perhaps "ad" and "fraud".

<comment><USER11> Happy to change it if you or anyone can suggest a more accurate title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > White Ops sells customers one line of code that allows them to differentiate > between bot traffic and the real thing... White Ops tells website operators > how much of their traffic is coming from humans and how much of it is coming > from bots.

Looks like they only report on the percentage of bot users. While that can be useful in the long-run (especially if you're implementing ways to mitigate it), but it seems like it'd be much more useful if you could tell on a per- user or per-session level whether the user was a bot, so you could turn off features like ad-serving or message-sending or whatever.

<comment> ryan-c We have more detailed information about our detection decisions beyond bot percentage available to clients who want it, including statistics on a number of properties such as the type of bot and what bot markers are present.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Trying to derive technical details from a business press release or an article in NY Times is silly. Unless you know about the tech and know how to read between the lines it will not make much sense.

</comment><comment><USER13> So this is a piece of JavaScript. What happens when a bot blocks that JavaScript from running and/or emulates it but returns a result that indicates the user is human?

<comment> ryan-c Posted this elsewhere in the thread already, but bots that don't run our code can be detected by comparing our traffic numbers with the client's traffic numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is the startup's secret sauce simply: \- Scrape all IP's of server hosts from Arin.net \- if IP in that list, it's a bot. \- if not, it's human

<comment> ryan-c That's a fairly noisy data source with lots of both false positives and false negatives.

I've actually been burned by use of that data as a user - the last time I was in Germany for a CCC camp, I needed to log into my bank account. Not trusting the WiFi, I bounced through my VPS to do so. It seemed to work fine, but a few days later the bank froze my account. When I called them they insisted that this activity meant my computer and email had been hacked and I needed to change my email password, virus scan my computer, change my username with the bank and change my password. There was no way for them to mark the use as 'legitimate'.

On the other side of the coin, there are _lots_ of ad fraud bots running through residential ISPs.</comment></comment>


OKCupid seeks to block Mozilla Firefox over gay rights - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26830383

<comment><USER3> I'm actually really offended by this... as a programmer, simply because it's imposing so much on me when I already support their conclusion. I just think okcupid is taking this too far.

The Firefox browser is not inherently evil because one man in their organization has less than agreeable political views, especially when it comes down to the work of everyone who has helped with their mission! It's a damned good browser, and shouldn't be dismissed on the grounds of one man's political views alone.

I'd sooner boycott okcupid for this suicidal mission of clawing at and destroying everything in the world that's related in the slightest to something that offends them.

I will not support _them_ in their gallant wrecklessness!

Put simply: You have your own life. Same-sex partners can get married, adopt kids, and live your life the way you want to. But now you want to tell me what to do with mine, and what browser I should use? I don't understand how that makes any sense -- because it sounds like they're just twisting the practical problem in their favor, which doesn't relay the underlying message of _letting people live their lives, without being oppressed or told what to do_.

<comment><USER4> This recent trend toward intermingling technology with social activism really scares me. Whether it be slapping a code of conduct on every project under the sun or refusing to support a browser because of some loose affiliation with an disagreeable individual, this has really reached an unhealthy level of coupling as of late. Most fields of study or work at least embrace the need to keep the commons apolitical since progress ( as in human progress ) depends on our ability to cooperate, interact, and share work regardless of the issues that divide us.

I particularly agree with your choice of words, this mentality is just plain reckless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am a big supporter of gay rights (and am myself bisexual), but I oppose this sort of thing, for reasons explained very well by the venerable Scott Alexander:

"Constitutional freedom-of-speech is a necessary but not sufficient condition to have a "marketplace of ideas" and avoid de facto censorship. But people also have to understand that the correct response to "idea I disagree with" is "counterargument", not "find some way to punish or financially ruin the person who expresses it." If you respond with counterargument, then there's a debate and eventually the people with better ideas win (as is very clearly happening right now with gay marriage). If there's a norm of trying to punish the people with opposing views, then it doesn't really matter whether you're doing it with threats of political oppression, of financial ruin, or of social ostracism, the end result is the same – the group with the most money and popularity wins, any disagreeing ideas never get expressed.

Atheists may one day be the group with the most money and popularity, but that day isn't today and right now it's neither moral nor in our self-interest to encourage using greater resources to steamroll opponents. It's certainly not in gay people's self-interest either. Why shouldn't companies owned by Christians fire all gay people on the grounds that they are promoting sin? Right now it's because we have a mutual truce in which we agree businesses should employ people based on their skills and merit rather than to reward their political allies and punish their political opponents. Once you undermine that, gay people are in a pretty precarious position.

So I would turn your own hypothetical scenario in Part 2 of your post back on you. Suppose Robertson had indeed, been a gay rights supporter – or a gay person! – who said on national news he thought everyone should stand up for gay rights. But his company was going for the fundie demographic and decided to fire him for his statement. Would you be so quick to attack everyone who was disappointed in this action, so eager to stand up for the right of companies to fire anyone they disagree with?"

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/28/a-comment-i-posted- on-w...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/28/a-comment-i-posted-on-what- would-jt-do/)

<comment><USER6> There are two problems with this:

\- Everyone's voice (when it comes to money) is not equal. CEOs and corporations defacto have a greater voice in the public sphere than other people. The primary way for average people to counteract this is through controlling where, what, and who they spend their money on. By painting this as unethical you remove the voice of everyone who can't spend $1000 on a political campaign, which is usually a group that aligns with groups that are disproportionately harmed by policies like Prop8. It is not my responsibility to support a bigot with my money (or eyes that turn into money) in the name of some higher ideal of clean discourse the other side doesn't even play by.

\- No argument of moral equivalence can survive that rests on one side having real and practical harm done to it and the other none at all. No one's rights are infringed by gay marriage existing and many many people's rights are infringed by prop8. It's inherently oppressive to say that those people harmed by it should sit idly by and wait for the people picking up their hand, smacking it into their face, and saying "why are you hitting yourself?" to have a change of heart when there are no consequences for their public effort to harm them. One side gets to hit, the other side has no right to hit back? That's wrong.

And on a somewhat tangent, I have not seen anyone call for him to be fired. Him being an employee of Mozilla is not a problem. Even being a founder or the creator of javascript. Being a CEO is not the same as being an employee, though, and carries with it a connection to the ethical core of a business. This has far more to do with him being appointed than with his political views directly.

<comment><USER5> Right now, the United States is about evenly divided between people who support and oppose gay marriage. If everyone on the gay-marriage side "refuses to support bigots", and everyone on the anti-gay-marriage side "refuses to support sinners", then we wind up with two totally separate economies and social groups that don't talk to each other at all. _This is very bad._

You really, _really_ don't want to live in a country where Blues can only eat in Blue restaurants and live in Blue apartments and wear Blue clothing, and Greens can only eat in Green restaurants and live in Green apartments and wear Green clothing. See: Northern Ireland, Iraq, Syria...

"I am a pro-choice atheist. When I lived in Ireland, one of my friends was a pro-life Christian. I thought she was responsible for the unnecessary suffering of millions of women. She thought I was responsible for killing millions of babies. And yet she invited me over to her house for dinner without poisoning the food. And I ate it, and thanked her, and sent her a nice card, without smashing all her china.

Please try not to be insufficiently surprised by this. Every time a Republican and a Democrat break bread together with good will, it is a miracle. It is an equilibrium as beneficial as civilization or liberalism, which developed in the total absence of any central enforcing authority."

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness- co...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community- and-civilization/)

<comment><USER6> And welcome to reductio ad absurdum. If we boycott this one thing we will boycott all the things and then we will live in a 70s dystopic film where the people who wear KFC shirts can't talk to the people who wear McDonalds shirts!

Somehow we've gotten along just fine so far with the existence of boycotts without turning into a world where half the people are boycotting half the other people.

Again, no one is saying boycott Mozilla because they hired a bigot. They're boycotting Mozilla because they chose a bigot as their chief executive knowing full well this blowback might happen (since it happened on a smaller scale with the CTO appointment in 2012). That means it doesn't matter to them, and for people to whom this issue matters a great deal that is unacceptable.

Nor, incidentally, is anyone saying you should poison the guy's food.

It is not "mean" to choose what you spend your money on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> grey-area People and the things they make are quite different entities. The opinions of the creators of a web browser are unimportant if that web browser has no opinions on gay marriage.

This is an interesting debate (should you boycott a thing, because you disagree with the person who made it?), but it is asking the wrong question. It reminds me of Lenin's feelings about Beethoven - how could a bourgeois create such wonderful music! Instead of questioning the framework of thinking which led him there, he claimed to avoid listening to the music in case it made him bourgeois.

Many human creations which we value as a culture were by outspoken and sometimes abusive people - Gill Sans, Francis Bacon, Picasso, Lewis Carroll, Wagner, Caravaggio etc. I think their work should stand alone, separate from any other views they might have had, and be judged on its own merits and the messages _it contains_ , not on other messages their authors promulgated or actions they took.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think it would be more suitable to not allow any Javascript to be used on the website. As an avid NoScript user that is how I like my sites anyway ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> Are they also planning to ban use of JavaScript on their website because you know, Brendan Eich created the language.

<comment><USER9> Presumably that was before he actively donated to a campaign hoping to deny people basic human rights?

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Presumably that was before he actively donated to a campaign hoping to deny people basic human rights?"

I'm 100% for equality but what basic human rights are being denied to homosexuals in America? They are being denied some rights that heterosexuals have but if they are being denied 'basic human rights' I'd really like to know (seriously) as I can't come up with any.

<comment><USER9> Do you not think it's a basic human right to marry who you want? To get the legal protections of that institution? To be allowed to visit your lifelong partner in hospital, for example?

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Do you not think it's a basic human right to marry who you want?"

Not a basic human right, no. Food, water, shelter, those are basic human rights. Marriage is a made up concept.

>> "To get the legal protections of that institution? To be allowed to visit your lifelong partner in hospital, for example?"

Again I wouldn't classify these as 'basic human rights'. It's disgraceful that people can't avail of these benefits because of their sexuality and that should change. Like I said, I'm 100% against discrimination based on sexuality I'm just objecting to your use of the term 'basic human right'.

I think the real issue here isn't that gay people can't get married in some places - it's that anyone who does get married gets benefits that non-married people don't get. For example if a heterosexual couple who had been in a lifelong relationship never got married they would also face the dilemma you presented of not being allowed to visit each other in hospital.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Huh? Does the BBC do April fools? I can't make this fit in my head as a joke...so I am left pondering how OK Cupid gets by while boycotting JavaScript, if they are so wound up about Mr Eich

<comment><USER11> Not a joke: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7504296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7504296)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> IDGAF. Tools are tools.

Should I throw up messages to users on Chrome that Google's CEO feels x or supports y (given any x or y I can find on the first page of search results)?

Or maybe I should warn iOS users about Foxconn's treatment of factory laborers.

I've written code for the benefit of Reddit and seen its use pop up in a white supremacy subreddit. Do I care? Should I censor or ban its use? No.

Congrats okcupid, you've won the prize for worst proselytization attempt.

</comment><comment><USER13> The most galling thing is they directed people to use an alternate browser, such as Internet Explorer. I'm sorry - whatever sins Brendan Eich may have committed pale in comparison to the evil Microsoft - THE CORPORATION - <USER2> wrought on the world over the course of the past 25 years.

</comment><comment><USER14> OKCupid decides to help the competition. I hope match.com sends them a cake.

<comment><USER15> It's all the same company anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> No. JUST NO. This is getting out of hand. You want to change the way people think, you do it through public discourse. You want to change the laws, you do it through votes. You lost a vote. Try again next time when you have more support. Don't hate a person and try to ruin their life because you think the world needs to function how you see it. I don't care anymore if I get downvoted. This HAS TO STOP. We HAVE TO STOP THIS. These people are hypocrites and I'm sick of it. I may vote against gay rights laws because they think they can manipulate the system. Sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it. Well, it's the same goddamn thing!

</comment><comment><USER17> OKCupid should stop use JS instead.

</comment><comment><USER18> Even some gay people are against gay marriage. I can think of rational reasons to oppose it without being opposed to homosexuality in general. For example you could view marriage as having the main point of supporting children.

I'm not saying I agree with that view, just that perhaps this is an issue where there is no absolute truth, just different priorities. And then the democratic process decides the outcome, but people on the losing side should be respected.

I don't know anything about Brendan Eich, it just seems to me that labeling him homophobic is probably rather thoughtless and might be unwarranted.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think it's brilliant. None of my single gay friends out of tech knew about this guy before OKC made the announcement, but now? Now they know. Now they are informed.

<comment><USER12> What will really happen? I'm looking forward to the conversations over coffee.

Janette: So Bob, I asked you for coffee because I need to talk to you about something serious.

Me: ... Ok?!

Janette: What browser do you use? Is it Firefox?

Me: Uh, yeah. Why?

Janette: Well, the CEO ... ... ...

Me: Fack off.

<comment><USER19> Food for thought: [http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/dissent-unheard- of](http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/dissent-unheard-of)</comment></comment></comment>