A critique of trends in tech - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@freddiedeboer/the-three-hot-trends-in-silicon-valley-horseshit-95cc5a85e8a4 <comment> nommm-nommm This post may only be tangentially related to TFA but these were my thoughts that came to my mind when reading this article and I'd like to get some alternative perspective as someone who "doesn't get it."

Dollar Shave Club, apparently, delivers Dorco razor blades once a month. The exact same ones you can buy straight from Dorco for a fraction of the price, or if you prefer, Amazon. Razor blades are so small that several months worth can easily fit in even a dorm room. The CEO apparently believes that he's adding value from the subscription model.

>[Dollar Shave CEO Michael] Dubin said his service offers greater "convenience." "Are there similar razors out there? Sure. But our goal is to create value." I pointed out that I can get the Dorco razors delivered conveniently to my front door, too. "Not once a month," he said... Bottom line, if people want to buy in bulk, there's a bazillion other places on the web to do that. Dollar Shave Club offers value beyond just the price of blades & convenience.(1)

What does HN think about this? Would you pay a markup for the "convenience" of a subscription? Is this a real thing people find value in?

(Personally I find 'create value' to be a suspect phrase in this context. I also, personally, find subscriptions to be inconvenient 99% of the time)

(1) [http://lifehacker.com/5903771/forget-dollar-shave-clubbuy- th...](http://lifehacker.com/5903771/forget-dollar-shave-clubbuy-the-same- high-quality-razors-for-a-third-of-the-price)

<comment><USER2> A service like DSC that I thought was brilliant is that one that does air conditioning filters. I forgot its name, but I _always_ forget to change my filter, and you're only supposed to do it every 6 months. Then because it's been so long, I invariably forget what size I need, buy the wrong one, have to go back... Ship me a filter every 6 months? Awesome! THAT'S a company I see as "adding value".

No affiliation, not even a subscriber -- just had a "duh" moment when I saw their ad.

<comment><USER3> I just let my thermostat alert me, based on run time. It worked with my old programmable, it works with my Nest (yeah, I know). And since I buy 3-packs of the filters, when I get down to the last one, I just add "16x20x1 filters" to my shopping list. When I'm at Wallyworld or Home Despot/Blowes, I'm there for a reason, open my shopping list, and see the filters listed...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My favorite part of this article is the hypocrisy. It's a huge rant about how stupid an unattractive people are if they buy into the new hot thing from Silicon Valley that doesn't do anything new; and then there it is, on line 2 of the page: "This is an automated feed of the blog posts at [http://fredrikdeboer.com"](http://fredrikdeboer.com").

It seems like he forgot one line item in his list:

2012, Medium: At last, a way to post text on the internet!

<comment><USER5> Well in response to someone saying they worry about him he says, "Don't. My life has never been better. Remember it's a persona."

So take that salt into consideration. Besides he never said every bit of tech is bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rents aren't high because fat cats are charging more money. Rents are high because of supply and demand. That's literally all there is to it. Someone is going to get the house and someone isn't, and the one who gets it will be the one offering more money. The only thing the fat cats change is what proportion of the money goes to which people. The _amount_ of money comes from supply and demand.

<comment><USER7> > Rents are high because of supply and demand. That's literally all there is > to it.

Except that's _literally not_ all there is to it, that's just one component of the problem. It turns out housing is just a tiny bit more complicated than your first day of Econ 101. The half dozen empty skyscrapers lots of us pass by each day seem to indicate that.

"High Rent is just supply and demand" is the new "I could rebuild that whole app in one weekend".

<comment><USER8> _> that's just one component of the problem._

Which components influence the problem here without ending up only being an influencer on the supply or the demand?

 _> It turns out housing is just a tiny bit more complicated than your first day of Econ 101. The half dozen empty skyscrapers lots of us pass by each day seem to indicate that._

I do not see where your example indicates that. In this case, an owner is not required to make his property, even if vacant, available on the market. That affects the supply in the market. That still comes down to basic supply and demand.

<comment><USER9> > Which components influence the problem here without ending up only being an > influencer on the supply or the demand?

If all the relevant components "just" affect supply and demand then it's useless to analyze supply and demand. Take a step back and analyze those components.

<comment><USER8> The only analysis I see in the original comment is what determines price, and the answer truly is supply and demand. I may be interesting to look at why the supply and the demand are what they are, but that seems to be outside of the scope of this discussion.

From a practical perspective, I'm not sure further analysis is necessary either. Price, as determined by basic supply and demand principles, is a useful signalling mechanism even without understanding the underlying reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Back in the 90s there were real utopian dreams that the Internet could free us and form a world "more humane and fair than the world your governments made before" (Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, 1996).

Instead, over the past 20 years, Silicon Valley went from being a land of dreams to an accelerator of the conditions that make middle class life so precarious in the developed world.

Nobody in the valley seems to care. Many, including those on this thread, seem to be ignorant of the fact that over the last 10 years, Silicon Valley has transformed, in people's minds, from a place that makes the future better to a place that makes the future worse, yet slightly more entertaining.

<comment><USER10> I am aware, but even if silicon valley was how it used to be described it was never an option. Maybe its because I am younger, but in my age group everyone went to college and got massive student loans because that's what every adult in your life told you to do.

How were you supposed to travel to the valley and work on something that didn't make you a lot of money when you had large, non dis chargeable loans tied to you for decades? The only people who had that option were rich kids, or the few who took the "bad" choice of not going to college and ended up lucking out.

Seeing people reminisce about how silicon valley used to be always reminds me of older people complaining that the youth are no longer treating college as a place to learn. Well no shit. We are, on average, much poorer than we used to be and everyone has to eat. All those old ideals are nice, but they matter much less when you end up having to work yourself to death or decide between medicine or making rent that month

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the most hilarious (and sadly true) thing I've read in the last few months.

<comment><USER12> > "add a touch screen manufactured by Chinese tweens, call it "Smart," and > sell it to schlubby dads too indebted to buy a midlife crisis car and too > unattractive to have an affair."

As someone who spends hours pondering the same NYC subway ads, this captures what I'm seeing better than I could ever put it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I appreciate the righteous anger in this piece but I enjoyed this medium take down a bit more:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13400562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13400562)

</comment><comment><USER14> > and sell it to schlubby dads too indebted to buy a midlife crisis car and > too unattractive to have an affair.

Whilst that was amusing in a bitchy kind of way, it rather meant I stopped listening to anything said after that point.

We're not dealing with a someone capable of great insight - or at least we're not dealing with someone who values insight over snark.

EDIT - I read it to the end and I'm slightly more forgiving. I came to understand the intent a bit more. I initially came to it expecting something less literary/stand up comedy and took it in the wrong context.

<comment><USER15> Some alternative writings (for all HN readers) with the same sentiment but in different tones than snark:

Melancholic wistfulness [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370776)

Kafka by way of Mike Judge [https://www.metafilter.com/122529/Welcome-to-San- Francisco-N...](https://www.metafilter.com/122529/Welcome-to-San-Francisco- Now-what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here#4716703)

<comment><USER16> >Kafka by way of Mike Judge [https://www.metafilter.com/122529/Welcome-to-San- Francisco-N...](https://www.metafilter.com/122529/Welcome-to-San- Francisco-N..).

This was written by someone who doesn't know how human interaction works. I have been in this situation twice.

2 years ago, I have lived in the same building as 20 other colleagues for 4 months. Now I am living in another city, but where most of the people I know and interact with in my free time are from work.

Both of the time, me and my coworkers played football/basketball together, barbecued in the woods, went to the lake/beach, met for pizza-and-movie, partied almost every week and even planned trips out of the country together. We almost never talk about work, and surely not more than I talk about work with other friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pretty good! That ad about "doers" is particularly ghoulish. And just generally I feel like I see the ideology of overworking as right and good all the time now. Things are not great.

<comment><USER18> Yea, I loathe those fiverr ads. When I end up in a subway car filled with them it really sours my mood. I used to have no feelings about fiverr but now I absolutely would never use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> tl;dr; marketing adds a glossy veneer so people will overspend on useless crap, companies will screw you if it means margins are greater. So much of what society produces is meaningless nonsense.

SV doesn't have that world cornered by any means.

counterpoint: Capitalism sucks, but it seems to work better than most things we've tried thus far.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Are you the kind of person who is so worn down by the numbing drudgery of > late capitalism that you can't summon the energy to drag a 2 ounce > toothbrush across your gums for 90 seconds a day? Well, the electric > toothbrush has been a thing for a long time.

OK. OK. Not defending other practices in the article, but as someone who long thought electric toothbrushes were a silly gimmick but finally got (a fairly cheap) one a couple months back: they are. not. a. gimmick. Oh man. Life changing. First time I used it it felt like I'd had a professional cleaning. No amount of brushing with an ordinary one had ever done that. I could never go back. Even when I'm lazy and only do half the cycle it gets my teeth _much_ cleaner than a manual brush could. The difference is dramatic and they're not really that expensive as long as you don't go for a bunch of stupid features.

<comment><USER21> Which model did you get?

<comment><USER20> Some oral b Braun. One without the Bluetooth connectivity(!!!) that even mid- range models seem to have now. I think it's just whatever sweethome recommended at the time. Might just be the 1000. Only feature it has is that it vibrates when you should switch quarters and vibrates differently when you should stop, in case you can't count.

[edit] yeah, confirmed, it's the "pro 1000"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Free trade is voluntary, we choose to participate in trade because it benefits both parties. I'm interested in seeing arguments that attack SV/society but start from this principle?

<comment><USER23> I'm not an economist, but I'll give it a shot: the vast influx of VC money allows for the creation of unsustainable businesses designed to "disrupt" (read: eliminate) traditional players. Buyers are happy to participate because they are getting a "deal" in the short term. Those who have been "disrupted" out of a job are often left to work for those same companies.

Meanwhile, the startup is trying to capture enough market share so that it can then raise rates and lower wages with less competition down the road. In other words, the traditional free trade model can be distorted by the effects of VCs who can operate with extraordinary scale of time and geography.

<comment><USER24> This is interesting. Anti-trust laws prevent dominant market players from tanking prices until competitors fold and are aquired. However these SV funding models allow new players to perform the same role on behalf of the owners of capital. My question: "is it the same owners, or different ones?"

I'll posit: the answer tells us whether we live in a competetive marketplace or monopolistic hell-zone.

<comment><USER25> Well the government mostly hasn't been _enforcing_ competition laws for a few decades now, so yeah, VCs can fund startup companies to play loss-leader for a monopoly position. Hell, Peter Thiel put that strategy in his book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why am I hearing so much about "late capitalism" suddenly? I'm sure I'd never heard the term five years ago. Now it's in all sorts of articles.

<comment><USER27> The idea is that we're entering the late stage capitalism phase of our civilization. Like, we went though antiquity and modernity and post modernity. There was a colonial period and a reconstruction. Pre and post ww2.

They're all hard to define and poorly scoped, but there is something to each of the ideas, or people wouldn't talk about them.

Anything I could say to define 'late capitalism' would detract from the point though, because any tech person can find a million nits to pick on any point made about even relatively precise subjects, and late capitalism refers to trends in something as diverse as global society.

Just try and think for yourself, "If we are living through such a thing as late era capitalism, what characteristics of our world are relevant to that label?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> For those who are being pushed off their land by the rent-seekers, I offer a ray of light to brighten your day: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9WWzbzevTA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9WWzbzevTA)

The most desirable, and most physically constrained cities, are mostly coastal. Could something like this work in a place like Vancouver, Seattle, or SF? There is always the threat of bureaucracy or regulations getting in the way, but the incredible pressure of the housing crisis might be enough to encourage open-mindedness on the part of the relevant local leaders.

For the endangered artist community, I could see this working better than it does for someone who works in a specific building. Certainly not a small undertaking, though.

For those who don't like YT links, this is a short professional documentary/interview about a couple who built their home from scratch, on the ocean. Most materials are salvaged, and everything was built by hand. It is beautiful. For a Canadian bureaucrat, the whole thing probably doesn't even compute.

</comment><comment><USER29> "the three hot trends in Silicon Valley horseshit... An industry that never stops lauding itself for its creativity and innovation has built its own success mythology by endlessly repackaging the same banal functions that have existed for about as long as the Web"

Pretty funny coming from an academic who would gladly make a living pushing standardized testing at the undergraduate level.

<comment><USER30> In what world do you think academics _like_ standardized testing? Every teacher or professor I've ever met loathes the idea of having to "teach to the test". They didn't set the standards, but they're forced to follow them.

<comment><USER29> [https://static.newamerica.org/attachments/12843-standardized...](https://static.newamerica.org/attachments/12843-standardized- assessments-of-college-learning/Assessment-White- Paper.72b9bbb2cf0447b4aacaabe6e6ea1824.pdf)

<comment><USER31> You should have put that in your original post. I made the same mistake as my sibling and thought you were just swiping at academics in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> While rising rents in SF/Bay Area are due to more & richer tech people, overall costs are declining thanks to tech companies. The cost and reliability of taxis is much much better with Uber than it was previously. The cost of many goods that one has access to is lower via Amazon for so many people. A lot of local businesses are probably more profitable working with Google than they were previously with the Yellow Pages.

Yes, there will be spectacular failures, but right now 3 of the 5 most valuable companies in the U.S. did not exist ~21 years ago (Google, Facebook, Amazon), and 1 of the 5 was a tech company which many had written off (Apple).

It's easy to laugh at the failures, but the real entrepreneurs just don't care. I don't think Larry Page or Jeff Bezos minds if you want to laugh at them over Google Knol or the Amazon Fire phone. For their 100 failures, their one big win was with no doubt worth it e.g. AWS or Android.

<comment><USER33> Android makes almost no profit for google and isn't a 'win'. All it does is protect the search monopoly from competition from Microsoft and Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The irony is that the overwhelming majority of marketers who come up with those nonsense "Doer" posters and the like have never had to stay up all night and "eat coffee" in order to meet deadlines.

<comment><USER35> I'm reasonably certain that advertising has a pretty big reputation as a stress-driven hellscape, at least in the classic Madison avenue format. Lots of deadlines and all-nighters

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The article is a swipe at evil silicon valley corporations who hide their products' lack of value behind fancy advertisements; but are consumers with freedom to choose not responsible for their choices?

<comment><USER37> The morality of the consumer vs. the morality of the supplier an interesting problem. On one extreme, we have the drug dealer relationship. The supplier is obviously more morally duplicitous, and the consumer is often pitied (at least in liberal, anti-drug war circles). At the opposite side of the spectrum, you have suppliers making entirely ok or even ok things selling them to bad people. Are fertilizer providers to blame for consumers turning their products into bombs? Obviously not (actually, I'm not sure legally, but common sense says no).

In the middle, you have a wide array of relationships. Is Coca-Cola to blame for the obesity epidemic? Are gun companies to blame for suicides or mass shootings? Is Juicero to blame for customers being dumb shits?

I think when you answer different examples, you get a pattern: when a supplier is selling a negative/zero value product but induces demand by playing off human weakness, then they're doing something wrong.

Juicero is playing off human weakness (the wealthy tech nerds' desire to be "hip" and "fit") just like a a fashion company plays off human weakness (by creating unrealistic representations that it goads its customers into trying to reach).

<comment><USER36> I wouldn't go so far as to call desire to fit in or display wealth/success a weakness, considering it is a sexual strategy which is basic human nature and continues to be generally successful today. In this sense juicero arguably provides a service, although an obviously subpar one given alternatives.

I'm not sure I follow your fashion industry example. Assuming youre referring to weight, the so called unrealistic representations manufactured by the fashion industry do not cause customers to spend extra money on clothing, since customers simply won't fit into unreasonable sizes. And here, similarly, fashion companies provide a service of status signalling.

In any case, these are both examples of consumers failing to personally choose not to follow the herd. Additionally, corporations do not set standards in a vacuum, consumers create demand and vote with their wallets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I understand the point the author is trying to make, but I do want to point out, that if you lived in another country unlike USA, it would be hard to even come up with a product like the quip or the juicer (however useless you may think it is). You would have funding barriers, you may find it hard to find people who have the engineering skill set to come up with a product that works the way it does etc, or worse you may not even have a local market for your product initially.

<comment><USER39> Oh no, what a pity.

It's harder to make pointless, bullshit companies that add literally nothing and instead contribute to degrading conditions and pay.

I have zero sympathy for someone not being able to spin up a useless, zero- effort company. Put some effort in and come up with something worthwhile that contributes instead.

<comment><USER38> If people had a choice to live in a country where it is hard to start "meaningful" companies vs living in a country where it is so easy to start companies that you can even start stupid companies, I would think most people here will choose #2.

Now regarding degrading conditions and pay, that was not what I was commenting about....

Also, one thing to remember is small 'stupid' companies (like juicer) will be "taken care off" by free market economics. Over a period of years, if it does well, then it is fair game. Else it might go bust. It is unlikely that is not the outcome here.

<comment><USER39> > Also, one thing to remember is small 'stupid' companies (like juicer) will > be "taken care off" by free market economics.

If I think there's one thing we've learnt from the last several years, it's that the magical free market, doesn't do even half the things it's supposed to do, and really isn't a good solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'd like to add that the MTA allows the most manipulative, screaming-at-you ads (depicted in this post). It's the least pleasant part of using the subway in my opinion.

<comment><USER30> I would say my least favorite part is seeing that empty car and not realizing the reason why it's empty is because of the smell inside until the train's already left the stop.

<comment><USER41> Yeah, there's way worse things that can happen in the subway than staring at a picture with text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Concerning RentBerry, it's the first I've heard of it and I know nothing about California bylaws, but isn't it illegal to just put the price of rent up in an unrestricted auction?

<comment><USER43> I sure hope not.

<comment><USER42> Why? It is in many places, it's very common which is why I asked. Leads to frustration for property owners sure, but it helps balance the market, gives some power to tenants, to enable a decent cost of living.

Ok I looked it up for SF: [https://www.sftu.org/rentcontrol/](https://www.sftu.org/rentcontrol/)

Indeed, there is a control of only a few percent per year. So how is RentBerry legal?

"If the owner re-rents before the 5-year period is up, the residential property must be offered at the same rent that the former tenant was paying (plus annual allowable increases.)" [https://www.sftu.org/are-you-paying-too- much-rent/](https://www.sftu.org/are-you-paying-too-much-rent/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> 2014, Medium: At last, a way to post blogs on the internet!

</comment><comment><USER45> God bless you Fredrik deBoer!

</comment><comment><USER46> My next startup will be RentColosseum. Screw this bidding with money thing, renting an apartment really should be survival of the fittest.

We won't need a cut of the winner's rent (but can probably take it anyway), because we'll televise it and profit on the ads.

Did I miss anything? Opaque, exploitive finance on proprietary weapons for contestants, maybe?

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Pivot idea: pay for admittance to a unit or building, and if you can throw the existing tenants out the window, the place is yours.

Then you pay the landlord each month for the right to keep your door locked. If a prospective tenant can outbid your month's rent, man the battle stations.

<comment><USER47> I can't wait until I hear about a Young Adult novel with this as a primary plot device. I will know where the idea came from.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash If I make the protagonist a vampire I'll probably get a movie deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm normally not critical of mod behavior, so I don't make this point lightly:

1\. The title was changed from something admittedly sensationalist, to something that is _clearly_ antithetical to the point of the original title. "Trends in tech" completely lacks the tone of the original title. If you don't want to use a title with "horseshit" in it, fine, but change it to something that matches the intention of the author at least. "Trends in tech" could be anything from a VC thinkpiece, to technical language choices in startups, to what the author actually wrote. How do I know if it's worth my time or aligns with my interests if I'm a passing reader?

This title manages to completely neutralize the author's point by robbing it of _any_ interesting lead-in. If a mod did this, it's what I would call disingenuous curation of front page content. It's insidious because while clickbait titles get more attention than they should, and unfairly so, uninteresting titles receive proportionally less attention than they should.

2\. This post has 92 points in less than an hour and is _just barely_ on the front page (as of this writing). It will probably slip off imminently. The top post has less than 80 points and is over an hour old. Why? I understand there are algorithm nuances, but that utterly lacks transparency.

I make these points because it raises an interesting juxtaposition between what the community wants and what is beneficial to Y Combinator. Some of the article could be interpreted as attacking Y Combinator's business model which provides a potential incentive for what I noted above. But that does not make it illegitimate given that it satisfies "intellectual curiosity" according to HN guidelines and is very well-upvoted. It appears suspicious to me that it is not higher up, and this is from someone who doesn't normally engage in this sort of criticism.

<comment><USER49> I can't find much to disagree with here, so have updated the title to add "A critique", removed the moderation penalty from it, and rolled back the clock on the story so it has more time on the front page.

If I have time, I'll come back and add a fuller explanation of what happened, but the bottom line is: HN moderation is driven by trying to keep the community happy while staying within the mandate of the site (which is intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive discussion). That's the problem we're trying to solve, not anything directly to do with YC's business. A happy HN is worth more to YC than any other kind of HN, so it would be dumb to optimize for anything else.

I'm marking this subthread offtopic now, which makes it fall to the bottom of the thread, because otherwise the meta conversation will dominate the discussion rather than the points raised by the article.

<comment><USER48> I appreciate the transparency, dang. Thanks for coming out to respond. What's more, I find that title agreeable without veering off in either direction.

Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> > And yes. It probably is like libertarianism. I am a libertarian, and I don't > take that as an insult.

Yes, that explains the economic illiteracy. What you describe as individuals interacting with each other is really organizations interacting with individuals, or 2 entities interacting with each other with big power differentials in a market with low elasticity.

If you ever decide to learn economics past 101, look into what those terms mean and what might happen in those markets.

<comment><USER49> Personal swipes are not welcome in comments here. We've warned you before, so if you want to continue commenting here, it's time to fix this.

That includes avoiding snark tropes like "you do realize, right?" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14213226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14213226))

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14212866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14212866) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Swindling shouldn't be a crime? Doing a con shouldn't be a crime?

Society is a mirage? It clearly isn't as you are living in one and benefitting from it. You may not want it to exist but clearly societies do exist. It's obvious that libertarianism doesn't work at scale. Especially in a world with so mmany people. Societies can be a failure too but there are plenty of examples of success. There no examples of libertarian success at scale. Once density reaches a critical mass libertarianism fails.

Clearly you don't care or haven't thought about society's role in moderating exploitation and inequality in power.

<comment><USER49> > _Clearly you don 't care or haven't thought_

That's unduly personal. Users here aren't allowed to address each other that way, first because it's uncivil, and second because arguments get stronger when such bits are edited out.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14212866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14212866) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER51> I don't think it was personal. I don't have a history of making personal attacks. It's clear that society in the form of government has a role in moderating exploitation. Someone who doesn't believe society should exist either doesn't care about moderating exploitation or hasn't thought about it.

Do you know jstanley personally? Given sonne other comments that I've seen that have not been flagged I begin to suspect that perhaps some bias is at play with regard to your decision.

I'm not suggesting that my comment should be restored. Overall it doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Don't you wake up in the morning, feeling dead inside, and look in the mirror, wondering whether you ever were attractive in any way, whether you ever had something unique and interesting to contribute to society, whether you really are valued by your boss, whether your SO is attracted to you or to your bank account, whether the point of life is at all related to what you've done with your life so far?

This article isn't for you. It's for people who answer my questions with "I have always been ugly, I have nothing of value to offer society, I don't understand why I'm still employed, she left two years ago and took my heart, and maybe nothing I've ever done in life is good."

<comment><USER53> You forgot the big guns: Google and Facebook, who literally exploit small publishers and individual content creators. They are killing journalism and content creation, and all for the ever escalating profit.

(I run a med tech website that reports on medical technologies for doctors and med professionals. I am an MD. We are publishing every day since 2004. News, interviews and exclusive reports. We have a half a million page views a month from professional readership, and Google pays us pennies for Adsense. $60/day? WTF!)

<comment><USER54> Once upon a time, an executive said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." It turns out that once you can measure very closely, it's often much more than half.

<comment><USER53> In the space of a decade the share of the UK advertising market going to UK regional and national newspapers has declined from nearly a half to little more than 10 per cent. Money which had been spent on journalists holding those in power to account, particularly at a local level, has been transferred to two US-owned digital platforms which exist purely to exploit content rather than create it.

<comment><USER54> Yup. When you can measure how useful marketing spend is, it gets redirected in more optimal ways for the goals of those with the marketing budgets.

It's of course completely possible that I'm totally wrong in every way, but I'm under the impression that the primary goals of those with marketing budgets do not generally include supporting journalists holding those in power to account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I stopped reading at "late capitalism".

</comment><comment><USER56> > Our society is a hellish wasteland and I am dying inside.

Settle down there, pampered white guy living in new york city.

</comment><comment><USER57> We need to push the reset button on Capitalism. The government of each country should repossess all the assets and money within that country and redistribute them to everyone within that country based purely on each person's age (so older people would get more and it won't affect their ability to retire).

<comment><USER58> in my book, people like you are very dangerous. I fear people of your ideals far more than I fear terrorism or anything of that sort.

Let that sink in for a while!

<comment><USER57> I think it would shake things up and it would be fun for everyone.

Capitalism as it is today is like a Monopoly game where all the properties have already been bought up and new players are forced to 'play' anyway (purely for the gratification of those who are already winning); it hasn't been fun for a very long time. We need to start a fresh game to make things interesting.

I think that things would be better if everyone saw life as a game rather than a race to the finish line.

<comment><USER59> > I think that things would be better if everyone saw life as a game rather > than a race to the finish line.

Does it matter what history thinks?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'm too late to save most of you (or myself), but for the rest: this is a contentless rant. Don't waste your time.

</comment><comment><USER61> So, let me get it right: this attack focuses on two vanity products that people buy from their free will to spend money on bullshit and two 'marketplaces' that nobody is forcing you to use?

The author makes a boring mistake of taking people for irresponsible, stupid children that should be protected from making bad choices. Thanks, no. I've bought a lot of bullshit products in my lifetime, paid for a lot of bullshit subscriptions, and I'm happy to have the freedom to have made all this stupid mistakes, and a lot more too, that taken not just my money.

<comment><USER30> I don't think that's what the author is saying. If anything, I think the point is that the "revolutionary" nature of most hip companies (not necessarily from SV) is really not revolutionary at all. Cutting edge progress in tech doesn't happen nearly as much as the general public perceives, but they believe it is because the slick marketing, subscription service for mundane products, adding an LCD touch screen to an existing product _feels_ like technological progress, but really isn't. The few real leaps in technology that actually are unique and applicable outside of selling some product or service aren't visible to the end user.

When Netflix caught on everyone thought "wow, technology!" Only some of us in the tech world realize that the _idea_ of streaming movies and TV to your house isn't the amazing breakthrough they made -- it's the infrastructure behind making it work, and the layperson doesn't give a shit about that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Small A/B tests impractical? - <AUTHOR>

I was playing around with numbers to see how many experiments I need to get a statistically significant A/B test result. I used to think that I can solve any small issue in my app by just A/B testing which way is better (patio11 influence), but now it seems that I can't do any tests in a realistic timeframe unless they have more than 2.5 percentage points of effect.
If you have a landing page with 10% conversion rate and want to see if your change improved it to 11%, it seems that you need 8000 people in group A and 8000 people in group B. I'm getting about 400 new people daily to try it with, so it becomes impractical to do small tests like these. If I can improve conversion from 10% to 12.5%, then I only need 2600 people, which would mean I could run one test per week.
Am I kidding myself if I run tests that aren't statistically significant? Of two options, even if the difference isn't significant, it would still seem the odds are in your favor to pick the one that performed better.
I didn't do the math, just used a random calculator I found: http://www.prconline.com/education/tools/statsignificance/index.asp <comment><USER2> Ooh, I think you gave me a good idea for a blog topic.

1) You can run multiple A/B tests at the same time without compromising results, if you assume they are independent. Your stats teachers at college will be mad at me for this, but "That is a safe assumption 99% of the time." (Shh!)

2) In terms of prioritizing your time, I wouldn't worry about things you think are likely to be marginal _unless_ they're at key areas in your application where a 1% marginal lift would matter to the business. For example: 1% improvement in observed results of the font selection dialog box: worthless to the business. 1% improvement in the shopping cart: heck yes worth it to the business.

3) We often underestimate how effective certain changes are going to be. If you throw up a test and get statistically insignificant results, that doesn't cost you anything and you still learn something: oh well, learned that users do not empirically think the difference between A and B is supremely compelling. If on the other hand you say "Eh, this is likely to only be a 1% factor" and it turns out to be a 10% factor ("BUTTON TEXT?! WHO CARES ABOUT FREAKING BUTTON TEXT?! TEN FREAKING PERCENT?!"), you'll get statistically significant results _and_ learn very valuable things.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll be honored if I actually managed to inspire the great patio11 to write a new post :) And yes, I did learn that the thing I was testing doesn't have a very large effect, which was valuable to know.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How long was your web app beta period? - <AUTHOR>

For those of you that launched a web app, how long did it spend in private beta before official launch? It seems that the general consensus is to just put the product out there to test and iterate. What's your take? <comment><USER2> 15 minutes :)

We really jumped the gun and it is something I probably shouldn't have done but I never ever anticipated the kind of response it got.

By morning the server was a molten slag heap, I didn't even know because I was sleeping.

We mailed about 1,000 people that we were trying something new after building it, what we didn't anticipate was that they in turn mailed all their friends and so on.

A bit of performance testing before launch would have definitely helped.

The odd thing is, every time you do a lot of performance testing you end up with a dud :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Private betas should only be used for products/businesses that really require private betas. I'm thinking that most startups don't really require private periods. We just go public and promote and see what happens.

<comment><AUTHOR> But isn't a focused private beta better than just a public launch?

<comment><USER3> Depends on your type of product and buzz you can generate imo. I mean, if your doing something new, and its practical that you have a limited amount of users, then a beta is great and make sense.

But most startups can't even generate the kind of buzz needed for a private beta, where it becomes worthwhile to build an invite/beta key system. If your product were to go public tomorrow, would your servers be killed in a traffic frenzy? If the answer is no, then you probably don't need a private beta.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> None. We had a few close friends provide valuable feedback, and then we launched publicly.</comment>


VMware Disables Inter VM Transparent Page Sharing (TPS) for Security Reasons - <AUTHOR> http://www.vcloudnine.de/vmware-disables-inter-vm-transparent-page-sharing-tps-for-security-reasons/

<comment><AUTHOR> Academic research mentioned in the VMware KB:

[https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/248.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/248.pdf) [https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/435.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/435.pdf)</comment>


BigOmaha - May 11-13 - Thats right, you should attend. - <AUTHOR> http://www.bigomaha.com/

<comment><USER2> Design is very attractive -- a little hard to read, though.

Having never heard of this before, I was really expecting it to be a computer science conference, based on the name. "Big O"maha.

<comment><USER3> It's even bigger for Indians :) "maha" means great/big.

Big-O-great or Big-O-Big. take your pick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Has anyone from HN been? I'd love to hear some experiences!

</comment><comment><USER5> The design is interesting if you didn't have to read it. It is very hard to read. It also hung my browser (Opera 11.10 beta), which is Opera's bug, not theirs, but if it is repeatable (I didn't check) worth noting.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, kudos to Oxide Design Co. What a fabulous design!</comment>


Rare Javascript Operators in 20 Slides - <AUTHOR> http://www.timmywillison.com/pres/operators/

<comment><USER2> There is another trick with double tilde:

      ~~(3.14) => 3

Seems to be damn fast compared to other methods according to <http://jsperf.com/floor-timing/2></comment>


Tech Companies Manipulate Our Personal Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/books/review/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism.html <comment><USER2> "Data is the new oil" is such a concise phrase to provide context regarding the recent controversies of big tech.

If anything, I'd say data is more valuable than oil. For one it's "renewable", but also the insight that can be gathered from data gives it a level of reach that even surpasses oil (which is very versatile in its own right).

Data breeches are the new oil spills, the destabilizing by-product of burning fossil fuels has a lot of similarity to how the largest data brokers can disrupt entire industries, political systems, and neighborhoods.

Data is a target for geo-political actors, whether it be slipping spyware into network infrastructure or tracking your own citizens.

When we look back 100 years from now, I won't be surprised if the events that occurred during the mass commercialization of oil (anti-trust, regulation, military action, productivity gains, facilitation of developing economies) also occur due to data.

<comment><USER3> > I'd say data is more valuable than oil.

None of the social network companies sell user data. They sell ad placement, and use user data to target the ad audience. Selling ads is not selling data. When I think of selling data I think of companies that actually sell data. Equifax or MaxMind, for example.

Oil and gas drilling alone are 2-3% of world GDP, which comes to about $2 trillion dollars. Facebook and Google make about $100 billion in combined ad revenue. I think it's safe to say oil is probably 10x more valuable than social network advertising.

> Data breeches are the new oil spills

Comparing credit card fraud with ecological pollution and death?

<comment><USER4> > Comparing credit card fraud with ecological pollution and death?

It's an analogy, precisely because the general populace still doesn't understand how drastic the impact a data breach is, but they sure do understand what a duck looks like full of tar. Depending on what type of data breach it is (credit card, social, healthcare, etc) then yes the implications can be potentially dire.

Extreme, but plausible examples of "yes this means death and polluted environments too":

\- Ransomware in a healthcare IT system that doesn't allow doctors to view patients data if they don't pay the crypto ransom

\- Credit availability to someone paying for healthcare or some other life altering purchase but can't because their identity was stolen or credit score was impacted. Not to mention the emotional distress caused by bankruptcy (undue).

\- Civil unrest resulting from data breaches used for manipulation/propaganda targeting reasons (see -> Brexit and 2016 presidential election)

<comment><USER3> An election is not civil unrest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And media outlets like the NYT manipulate our opinions. An endless parade of articles written by non-experts with no incentives to get anything right, but plenty to keep the story going and traffic coming in.

<comment><USER6> I can't remember who said it, but someone once compared the outrage over how tech companies use data to Yellowpages. There used to be this free book that had everyone's name, address, and phone number and the only way to opt out was to pay. This is _much_ more egregious act than Google and Facebook; the only difference is the scale.

At least Google and Facebook only take what you give them.

<comment><USER7> Horrendous analogy. Yellowpages never tracked your real-time location, served hyper-targeted political ads, or tested emotion-manipulation on its readers.

<comment><USER6> All that stuff is private and is never disclosed to anyone without a court order; or at least that is supposed to be how it works.

Yellowpages told the public. _That_ is the point.

<comment><USER7> Step away from the bong for a sec and reread what I just wrote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Surveillance capitalism is an interesting term to give the centralization of intelligence for the financial benefit of a few a name.

Historically it was the government that was pushing for surveillance for security reasons, now companies push surveillance (although not obvious to them and their employees?) for financial gain.

</comment><comment><USER9> Actually, we're in a pretty good spot. Most the of the data is centralized, which makes the problem feasible to solve. I don't believe we've entered some Orwellian dystopia just yet; this is simply a growing pain. A bump in the road towards a society that is fully connected. These companies also have unlimited amounts of money to actually solve these problems, and the user base seems to be pushing them towards fixing the issues and stopping growth to retool.

All and all, I have a very positive outlook on the whole situation.

<comment><USER10> Good point! Now turn off all your privacy addons, Google up info on a disease or a new baby or engagement rings, and check out the ads you start getting

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My personal opinion based on what I know.

Grouping these companies together as big tech and these brushing broad strokes isn't helpful. It just seems like we're picking the next bogeyman, sort of like how all the oil companies were grouped together, even though there were specific bad actors.

It distorts the real issues and almost emboldens the other side who now work collectively to dismiss you as a tin foil conspiracy peddler.

In my opinion, Facebook has some real issues with privacy and how they are able to legally provide a service that has taken the worst aspects of society and amplified them 1000x. Politics are more cancerous than ever. People have been murdered because of the misinformation and hate speech propaganda. Meanwhile, one of my best friends who works at FB as a senior engineer is convinced they're changing the world for the better.

Amazon, for instance, has fueled massive inequality in the Seattle area. As far as I know, they're not selling customer data, although from what I've learned, they combined technology with great ideas on how to skirt regulation.

My point being, a company like Amazon vs. Facebook - there are different issues. Grouping Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft together - its like the right wing conspiracy theories on how the Mueller investigation is a conspiracy funded by Soros, Obama, the Clintons, the Muslim brotherhood, and gays.

This isn't helpful and it distracts from the real issues.

<comment><USER2> I think it's reasonable to group these companies together if you're talking about wide trends and are careful to be specific when talking about certain instances. It's not wrong to say that "big tech" has contributed to rising inequality, data privacy issues, disruption of labor, monopoly effects, etc.

The specific companies are not contributing to each effect but on aggregate its a valid method of analyzing the societal impacts of the industry.

<comment><USER12> I don't know man? That's a little high level.

In my neck of the woods, if I tell people, "Amazon treats their employees like crap." They get it.

If I say, "Google can track your location with android phones so don't bring your phone to see your weed man." They get it.

I can even say, "Facebook is full of Ruskies trying to influence the election." They'll get it. They'll know what I mean and everything that entails.

But if I come at the people in my small town with, "Big Tech is what drives wealth inequity by disrupting traditional labor markets and causing data privacy issues. Which, of course, concert to cause knock on effects in the larger economy." Yeah, that's the kind of post-graduate parrot-speak that makes them look at my mother disapprovingly for raising such a pretentious ass-hat.

I gotta agree with the guy using the throwaway account on this one.

<comment><USER13> One factor is the defense that "XYZ is doing it worse!". Microsoft justifies telemetry by pointing at Google. Amazon justifies 3rd-party sellers by pointing at Alibaba, and sponsored product ads by pointing at Google. Google says they are better at security than other adtech vendors. Each enables the other group members on a collective downward spiral. Where are the incentives for competing in a positive direction?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The title of the NYT review is "How Tech Companies Manipulate Our Private Data" but the title of this thread omits the word "How", reducing the title to "Tech Companies Manipulate Our Personal Data".

</comment><comment><USER15> I didn't get much from the submitted NYT piece, even though I'm interested in this book. I think the _Guardian 's_ piece [1] on the book is better. It includes responses from the author to 10 posed questions.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana- zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook)

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't this exactly the business model of news organizations like the NYT? People do stuff, they write it down for free and sell it to people. Nothing new under the sun.

"According to Zuboff, surveillance capitalism distinguishes itself from its industrial forebear as "a new economic order that claims human experience as a free source of raw material." "

<comment><USER17> Network TV might be a better analogy, since it is free to watch as long as you are willing to sit through the ads.

The business model is the same as Facebook's: advertisers paying for the right to attempt to modify viewers' behavior.

The difference is that Facebook has much more information about the viewers, and much more control over what is shown to individual viewers, than TV networks ever did.

Everyone who has looked up "what Facebook knows about me" can tell stories about how wildly wrong some of Facebook's guesses are. However, unlike the TV networks or the NY Times, Facebook will get better with time. Will we get better at resisting its manipulations?

<comment><USER18> Good points - you could boil down the difference to the pre-existing networks was there were many different networks competing. Today there are only two that do most online advertising, facebook and google. For multiple reasons, facebook is the one that seems to be used to manipulate people, perhaps because it's not searches plus ads, it's more used to put people together and reinforce their opinions in small groups.

It's the ability to manipulate (reinforce, push horrible narratives) that causes the problem. Back in the usenet days of the 90s, it was exciting to meet people like me (programmer, geeky, interested in science, liberal, or whatever). There must have been people pushing racism, nationalism, everything is a conspiracy, but why didn't that cause the trouble we have today? Probably because it wasn't so ubiquitous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yet more anti-tech hysteria from the New York Times.

<comment><USER20> C'mon, this ain't Kaczynski, you're reading the damn article through a browser and computer and they are actively selling the data you make on their site. If anything, the new york times is pathetically and dogmatically pro tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> God, I get sick of these articles on hacker news. The same regurgitated horse _bleep_.

This has become a meme around here to laud articles like this that use not so subtle words like "surveillance" and "manipulate" to suggest that something much more nefarious is going on here than actually is.

There are already adequate protections in place to deal with these issues. If you don't want to be tracked don't use Facebook or Google or use them and opt out of tracking. It's that simple.

We don't need these hyperbolic articles exaggerating the nature of this problem.

People have been collecting data on us before the digital age.

Credit Card Companies, Banks, and Credit Bureau's have long maintained profiles on us and sold them to partners.

<comment><USER22> I differ with you. Assuming, for sake of argument, data is not being scraped for nefarious purpose today then the time when it will be is not too far away. There are no protections in place as proved by multiple data leeks stories. There are no settings provided by tech companies that let use use there services in total anonymous way or without being a research subject. Do you think gmail will ever implement end-to-end encrypted email service ever?

We need such articles to remind people of what they are getting them-self into and encourage communities to build alternative solutions. Remember those few privacy settings provided by tech companies are result of such stories.

Data that was collected before on an average citizen is puny as compared to what they collect now.

<comment><USER21> > There are no protections in place as proved by multiple data leeks stories.

Are you referring to data breaches? Not sure what protections you think will prevent them.

> There are no settings provided by tech companies that let use use there > services in total anonymous way.

Again, these aren't essential services that you have to use. You can use Google via Duck Duck Go if you like.

You can't use Facebook but you can use What's App if you want end to end encryption.

> Do you think gmail will ever implement end-to-end encrypted email service > ever?

I believe they already provide a browser plugin for pgp encryption.

Full end to end encryption would probably require changes to existing email protocols.

> We need such articles to remind people of what they are getting them-self > into.

This is a valid point, however the hyperbolic tone of these articles is off putting to me.

I think these companies are handling data in a responsible way.

A more rational conversation around the real risks of these data collection practices, the value of the data,and the exchange of this data for services would be more enlightening, IMO.

Too often these articles and the comments degenerate into X is bad and this bad without any nuance.

Also, as I have stated, it is very easy to not use these services.

> encourage communities to build alternative solutions

I'm all for this. What I am not in favor is asking the government to force these private companies to make these.

> Data that was collected before on an average citizen is puny as compared to > what they collect now.

I worked at Credit Card companies a long time ago, and I wouldn't call the data they collected on people puny. In many cases these companies had access to every purchase a person made, every place they lived, their income, etc.

To me that is very sensitive information.

Again, I would like a rational conversation around how is the information that is being collective sensitive.

That might actually be more useful to people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This title is rather click-baity, and so is the term "surveillance capitalism." There are plenty of alternatives to social media - email, SMS, phone calls, and even decentralized options. However, people continue to embrace "big tech" because it is convenient. Whether you want to admit it or not, these companies do plenty of good for people around the world.

I think the momentum of deleting our presence on these sites will continue to increase, but I also believe that it should be allowed to happen organically. Regulating this space without allowing people to realize its harmful effects and make the decision for themselves will only further polarize our society.

Edit: Since I'm being down-voted, I should clarify that I definitely support some level of intervention. I would prefer that to take the form of educating people on the importance of preserving their privacy.

<comment><USER24> > _There are plenty of alternatives to social media - email, SMS, phone calls, > and even decentralized options._

I suggest watching Moxie Marlinspike's keynote for Defcon 18: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk)

<comment><USER25> What's the TL;DW?

<comment><USER24> If I had to pick TL;DW relevant to this topic, it's that the choice of platform is aggregate, not individual. If the vast majority of people stop communicating or interacting in one way and start doing it in another, it's not really a feasible choice to opt out anymore.

This is my own very clumsy summary. I strongly recommend watching the video, because Moxie is much better at explaining this than I am.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The real problem is that people are selling this bullshit that the only alternatives are someone spying on you through your metaphorical bedroom window or you blindfold every company that interacts with you.

I don't want a world where I pay for everything. When I was a child, I used a whole bunch of ad supported websites that only existed because they were ad supported.

Everyone wants to coddle people and ensconce them in layers of paternalistic nonsense. FYI I would happily sell the private data I did then in exchange for the service I received a hundred times over.

Those forums and websites were the ones that led to me being what I am today. Even a ten cent fee would have crippled my ability to grow into what I'm today because I had no means to pay it online.

Enough with your bullshit. Let me be a goddamn person and give people things voluntarily so they can give me things voluntarily. Just stop inserting yourselves into every interaction I have with other people that's between the two of us.

Instead now everyone wants to create this environment where I can't sell my private data because it's a bloody adventure to try to invalidate my right to then delete myself immediately.

It's okay now because I make a half million a year and my kids will be fine. But the next me won't be so lucky.

<comment><USER17> > The real problem is that people are selling this bullshit that the only > alternatives are someone spying on you through your metaphorical bedroom > window or you blindfold every company that interacts with you.

There's a middle ground, called "regulation".

For many decades now there have been rules regulating advertisements ("commercial speech"), sources of addictive behavior (gambling, alcohol, cigarettes), and monopolies. It seems reasonable to propose that these rules should apply to Facebook and other "new media", to the extent that they are ad-supported, may promote addictive behavior, and may be monopolies.

Applying these regulations to the internet does not mean shutting down ad- supported websites, any more than they prevented ad-supported newspapers and TV stations from thriving back in the day.

<comment><USER27> Yes, but the dialogue has become unhinged. So many of the critics don't want reasonable middle-ground regulation. They want to destroy these companies, or have the state take them over and operate them as a public utility. There is no measure of reasonable regulations that doesn't strip Zuckerberg and Bezos of their wealth and prestige that will satisfy many critics.

There was a story yesterday about how Twitter had a bug on Android that toggled a setting by mistake and people were clamoring for heavy penalties, that this should be illegal, that these companies need to die in a fire. Over a simple bug that's probably of a class that literally every developer on this site has made many times.

Reddit is even worse. Anything critical of these companies, no matter how minor or untrue, garners tens of thousands of upvotes and a pitchfork-wielding mob in the comments. Good luck trying to explain that we need reasonable regulation but that Mark will still be a billionaire running one of the world's most valuable companies and getting richer off ads.

<comment><USER17> Sure, you can find extremists on both sides: the "nationalize Facebook" people, and the "nothing on the internet should ever be regulated" folks. Not having read the book under review ("Surveillance Capitalism"), I can't say whether the author is all the way over in the "nationalize" camp.

But currently, we need more regulation, not less, on internet companies whose business model is based on selling your attention to persuaders at a time when you are most vulnerable to persuasion. So although I don't favor nationalization, and I don't begrudge Zuckerberg his vast wealth, I want to see things move in the direction of more regulation, not less.

There is a slippery slope no matter where you stand, but yet, you have to stand somewhere.

<comment><USER27> I like that last sentence. Well said.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How can we break the Brexit deadlock? Ask ancient Athens (sortition) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/25/break-brexit-deadlock-ancient-athens-sortition <comment><USER2> Look at the big lottery winners for the past few years, the ones who got pictures in the paper.

Ask yourself will they really be better than the current Governor/ President/ prime minster?

At the very least The process of getting elected does have some selection in it - for all its faults, a 2 year presidential campaign does at least weed out those who could not stand the pressure of the job itself.</comment>


Ask HN: Personal and Side Business Finance Software - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for something to use to manage both my personal finances and my (very small) side business. A few things that I think it would help immensely:
- support for CSV, QIF and QLX files - both accounting and budgeting capabilites (YNAB has a good idea on budget) - Be able to separate different types of accounts (Checking, Saving, Investments, etc) by bank - Easy to use (double-entry might be overkill) - Linux and MacOS (Windows and web self hosting optional)
So far I tried:
- YNAB 4: works, simple, no web self hosting (Dropbox only for version 4), Wine on Linux - GnuCASH: kinda complicated, no web, no budget - Mint is not available for the banks I use and in my country - Homebank: works, no web, no budget - Excel files: high maintenance, no web - Google Sheets: high maintenance
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I think ledger[0] or hledger[1] might work for you. The latter is a Haskell port of the former that provides an additional web-based interface.

[0] [http://www.ledger-cli.org/](http://www.ledger-cli.org/) [1] [http://hledger.org](http://hledger.org)</comment>


Real-time customizable news feed for advertising/marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.thalamus.co/news <comment><USER2> Loving the comprehensive news sources to select from</comment>


My list of JavaScript interview questions - <AUTHOR> https://performancejs.com/post/hde6d32/The-Best-List-of-Frontend-JavaScript-Interview-Questions-(written-by-a-Frontend-Engineer) <comment><USER2> To be honest none of these questions really give any insight into the skills/experience of the applicant as most of them come down to just reciting Wikipedia entries. If you want to get a better understanding of the applicant, try asking them to solve simple problems relevant to the position instead of performing a pop quiz.

In case of Javascript such a question could be:

        Users are reporting that page X takes a long time to load. How would you go
        about finding out why this page takes long to load and where time is being
        spent? What are the benefits and drawbacks of your approach, and what are
        the alternatives?"

The phrasing is just an example, but the idea is to:

1\. Propose a problem that one can solve in e.g. 5-10 minutes

2\. Ask them to think about the problem, their approach, benefits, drawbacks, etc

3\. Have them deal with a problem that's actually relevant to the position, giving the applicant a better taste of what it's like to work at the organisation

<comment><AUTHOR> You may have missed it, but that's question #10 under "Concepts":

        My website is slow. Walk me through diagnosing and
        fixing it. What are some performance optimizations
        people use, and when should they be used?

<comment><USER3> Probably because the initial questions emphasise memorising or creating algorithms, which is a very small part of JS development.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Concepts" is the 1st section..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lol, I've been doing this for 11 years and doing Fibonacci off the top of my head would make me sweat.

To me it seems a fairly unimportant exercise that proves little other than that you know the formula for the Fibonacci sequence of the top of your head under duress.

<comment><USER5> 16 years here and I failed a fibo question a few years ago. I don't do live coding well and it's rare to do that kind of "classic" recursion in a JS app. I've since added it to a list of practice questions I go over before I start interviewing, just in case somebody asks it.

<comment><USER6> what I missed was that these are supposed to be practice questions, so while they are sucky questions, they are question worth practice as opposed to good questions to ask

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am a frontend engineer as well and would probably only be able to answer half of those questions reasonably without studying. Sigh.

<comment><USER8> Which questions specifically would you have trouble with?

While technically these aren't things someone absolutely has to know in order to be useful on frontend work, I think they are all very useful and practical things to know, so maybe you should learn about them!

<comment><USER7> The following is intentionally a little snarky.

I know what IP and DNS are but I couldn't tell you how they work.

I almost never use `this` and therefore don't remember all of its nuances. My team specifically avoids using it because it is harder for junior devs to grasp and makes things harder to read. I tend to agree.

Writing a reduce function? That's what I use lodash for.

What is REST? I use it every day but would have to look up a proper definition for you.

The event loop? I know what it is but I have never needed to know what it is.

I should learn these things because they are practical? Most of them aren't at my current job, but that's just my experience. And I probably get paid enough and have enough day to day freedom that I wouldn't want to work for you. However I would gladly answer all of these questions as a part of take home "homework".

Sorry if I'm being a curmudgeon. Shrug.

P.s. your website is down!

<comment><USER9> > What is REST? I use it every day but would have to look up a proper > definition for you.

REpresentation State Transfer

...

That's about all I can do to define REST. I can't really tell you what it really means beyond describing CRUD, but I can identify a REST interface when I see one.

<comment><USER10> REST isn't exactly aligned with CRUD, though it's often used for CRUD APIs.

REST generally describes (roughly in order of most common in implementation to least):

\- HTTP requests operate on resources \- HTTP verbs describe the specific operations to perform (most typically HEAD, GET, POST, PUT, DELETE; some systems also implement OPTIONS, PATCH, custom verbs; some less-RESTful systems use POST for everything besides GET) \- Resources have a single identifier (URL); some systems get this wrong \- Query string parameters provide filtering and conditional behavior on requests for resources \- HTTP status codes indicate the condition of the response \- HTTP headers provide mechanisms for authorization/authentication, content type negotiation, pagination, error condition mitigation (redirects, rate limiting, etc) \- Responses provide URLs to related resources where appropriate

I'm probably forgetting a ton. The fundamental idea behind REST is to use the semantics of HTTP, as they were designed, to implement and interact with an API.

<comment><USER9> Well damn I just got told what's up.

<comment><USER10> I wish I'd noticed how bad the formatting was on that. I don't see a way I can edit it to fix it now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've worked as a JavaScript developer for several years, and not once have I had need to write functions checking for palindromes, asserting prime-ness or other such efforts in rewriting lodash.

I guess I must just be missing the job adverts for all those businesses writing JavaScript utility libraries.

<comment><AUTHOR> The specific functions you're implementing aren't important. What's important is that you can reason through a question, suggest possible algorithms, reason about their tradeoffs, write some code, and communicate all of that to the interviewer.

What sort of questions do you ask instead?

<comment><USER11> "What happens when I point my browser at $CANDIDATE'S_LAST_PROJECT?"

"What's your strategy for avoiding bugs?"

"How do you choose technologies?"

These three questions will prove

\- that the developer understands the technology they work with (they know about networking, infrastructure, the server tech and are curious enough to learn about the runtimes their apps actually live on);

\- that the developer has a mature opinion on testing (she knows what is and isn't worth automating, and that E2E automation often has a poor ROI)

\- that the developer uses due dilligence and smart heuristics to choose technologies ('write a prototype!', 'eyeball the open source community!') rather than trends and groupthink ('everyone uses React!', 'someone on Medium said it was "curated"!')

These are the real competencies to filter by. The actual programming part, in most jobs, is easy. 80% of the roles I've interviewed candidates for have just been extravagant excuses to move around strings and shuffle integers between databases and browsers. I see no reason to believe this will soon change.

The last time I did anything vaguely 'algorithmic' was when I needed to sort a few thousand items without killing IE8's UI thread, and I solved it fairly trivially by writing a quicksort that used the recursion calls as an opportunity to yield the event loop. That's it. That is as far as most JS jobs go. I think anyone insisting otherwise is just being self-important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I ask some of these questions for assessing JavaScript:

\- what is the challenge of asynch programming in JavaScript?

\- what is your personal approach to solving the challenge of async programming in JavaScript?

\- do you know what promises are? if yes, can you explain how promises work?

\- what is the key problem with scope and this in ES5? how do you address it?

\- have you used ES2015/ES6?

\- if candidate has ES2015 knowledge: what are the features of ES2015 that you find most valuable?

\- if candidate has ES2015 knowledge: what is the key value of arrow functions?

\- if you have used asynch and await, can you explain how to use them?

\- which JavaScript build tools do you use? what purpose does each of them serve?

\- which JavaScript frameworks or libraries are you most familiar with?

\- do you use the browser developer tools? which do you use? explain the process of using them.

\- how do you use 'inspect element' as part of your development process?

I'm not interested in questions of syntax because doesn't every programmer spend all their time looking up syntax?

</comment><comment><USER13> What kind of work would this new applicant be doing? What product does your company make?

> What is Big O notation, and why is it useful?

Curious why you lead with this question? The rest of the top 11 questions are very Web dev and Javascript specific so that question sticks out. If people don't know the answer to it do you fault them for that?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a basic programming and communication skill. If someone doesn't know what it's called or what the syntax is that's fine. What's more important is the intuition:

If I have program A:

        for (let i = 0; i < m; i++) {...}

And program B:

        for (let i = 0; i < m; i++) {
          for (let j = 0; j < m; j++) {...}
        }

Then A is more optimal than B, because A runs the loop m times, but B runs the loop m*m times. That's it - if an engineer can reason through that, it's enough to explain to an interviewer tradeoffs between a few possible algorithms that solve some question.

<comment><USER13> Have you found that these questions have definitely helped you build a strong team? Has anyone ever passed your interview questions but failed as an actual employee? Just curious

<comment><AUTHOR> The "Concepts" and "Debugging" sections are very strong signals in my experience. "Coding" is much less useful IMO, but this blog post is to help you practice the sorts of questions that are asked in practice, rather than what I ask specifically.

<comment><USER13> yeah i figured it was a pick and choose what fits best. Thanks for sharing your list! These kind of interview questions get posted on HN a lot and there's always the same reaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm fjnorked. I wonder if McDonalds needs a whopper-flopper or cashier with 40 years of s/w development experience.

<comment><USER15> If you want a job at McDonald's, you should be aware that they don't serve whoppers :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> These remind me of code challenge questions that really seem to require an emphasis on algorithmic ingenuity for tight looped code...

I often work with concurrency, data structures, and integrating with existing code. It never seems like these challenges map to the work I do.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have some good questions, I'd love to add them to the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Given this is a means to an end, I'd like to see the overall team hired and the output they're responsible for creating, maintaining and extending. (I'm assuming that's something they do.) And then, of course, the code repositories.

</comment><comment><USER18> > missing - Takes an unsorted array of unique numbers (ie. no repeats), and > returns the missing number in the sequence (there are either no missing > numbers, or exactly one missing number). Can you do it in O(N) time? Hint: > There's a clever formula you can use.

      missing([1, 4, 3])                  // 2
      missing([5, 1, 4, 2])               // 3
      missing([1, 2, 3, 4])               // undefined

I see some ambiguities there. Are they intentional to test the candidate? In particular:

Is the correct result for

      missing([2,3,4])

undefined or 1?

What is the correct result for

      missing([])

    ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Updated, good catch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the DOM?

Now that I've asked that pesky question, I will not ask anything more about the essential thing you need to manipulate as a front end engineer, what I want to ask about is algorithms implemented in many libraries because for some reason everyone else asks these questions in interviews.

There's a lot better questions you could potentially ask that are algorithmic but more relevant and more approachable than mathematical functions, like text manipulation, json manipulation.

<comment><AUTHOR> What are some examples? I'd be happy to add them.

<comment><USER6> well I often start with simple things like reversing the words in a string so "The cat sat on the mat" becomes "ehT tac no eht tam". Parse CSV into json. Various things to show how people manage state ( write a mini game of some sort )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > What is the DOM?

There is about a 50% chance I would answer "It is what values of β will give rise to", and hope the interviewer is an old Unix hand and gets a chuckle out of it [1].

[1] [https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/odd.html](https://www.bell- labs.com/usr/dmr/www/odd.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't mean to sound arrogant in any way but just to let you know these questions are way too easy. It's usually better to ask more open ended questions instead of it sounding like a quiz on JavaScript fundamentals

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what the "Concepts" section is for. Those questions are designed so that you can keep going deeper for people that know the concept. At some point everyone bottoms out, but it's a different point for everyone. Eg.

        "What is the event loop?"
        "It's how JS does async"
        "How does it work?"
        "There's a stack and a queue managed by the platform"
        "How else could you design that?"
        "Other languages have threads"
        "What are the tradeoffs between evented I/O and threads?"
        "Memory safety and programmer error, CPU/memory utilization"
        ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> All those questions seem perfectly reasonable to me.</comment>


Why #4? - <AUTHOR> http://graph.facebook.com/4

<comment><USER2> Happens to me all the time. Assume the ids are drawn straight from a database that has been set up to use integers for ids. Facebook was originally built with PHP and MySql. This happens to me: I start a project, create a few user accounts, and then delete them all. Then I create my real account. So I end up with an id of 5 or 6.

The earlier accounts look like they were deleted:

[http://graph.facebook.com/3](http://graph.facebook.com/3)</comment>


Ask HN: Combine slack, discord and gitter in one tool? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone know of any such tool to do this task, I have searched a bit and didn't find anything. If you know please reply here. <comment><USER2> Ferdi [1], which is a community fork of Franz [2], might suit your use cases.

[1] [https://getferdi.com/](https://getferdi.com/) [2] [https://meetfranz.com/](https://meetfranz.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey! I am currently working on something like this. Would it be possible to connect? I would love to get your feedback.</comment>


The Trunk Club For Men: Never Shop For Clothes Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/the-trunk-club-for-men-never-shop-for-clothes-again/

<comment><USER2> This is a great idea. I've asked attractive female friends who I think have a _good_ sense of style to spend a couple hours shopping with me and pick out clothes. They're usually flattered and it's fun. Note: I only ask when I know their boyfriend as well - so its clear that they're helping me as a charity case (most girls _love_ to "fix up" a guy's fashion)/not trying to date them. I don't do this as much now since I've learned what fits and what looks good on me.

Fashion tip for skinny, nerdy guys: Dark sport coat, dark jeans, button down shirt with a splash of color/texture

<http://yoox.com> for fashionable close-outs

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You talk to a real woman about your taste and needs in clothing. She picks out a selection and sends it to you. You keep what you like and send the rest back.

This is interesting from a couple of points. First, I live 1 hour from the nearest clothing stores and 2 hours from the likes of Macy's, plus I dont like shopping for clothes. I have a live-in SO who probably wouldnt like another woman shopping for me, or maybe she would be OK with it. I'm sure she wouldn't like my paying full retail.

The second point is that this is an interesting business model, the customer service of interacting with a sales person and the ease of shopping on the internet. I could see the working with high end products like cameras and electronics, maybe even furniture. Probably not with dog food.

</comment><comment><USER3> For men who enjoy this service, they may also enjoy:

<http://blacksocks.com/>

Basically, it's a socks subscription service so you don't need to worry about purchasing new ones.

Since they are all black, it also eliminates any matching problems.

</comment><comment><USER4> Everything they picked seems really expensive, tshirts for $40+

For $40 I can get an "EL Lit Glowing Equalizer [that] animates to ambient noise or music" on thinkgeek.com

I thought it rather amusing though that half the comments were about spelling errors :)

<comment><USER5> _"For $40 I can get an "EL Lit Glowing Equalizer [that] animates to ambient noise or music" on thinkgeek.com"_

Precisely the reason you'd want someone else to shop for you. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was invented long ago. Its called a wife ;)

<comment><USER7> My wife:

\- Rarely buys clothes for me without my presence

\- Rarely gets something that fits, of the things she gets for me

\- Won't return it if I think it sucks.

\- Has a meh sense of style for men.

<comment><USER8> Maybe you should upgrade ;) Mine does all of those things, and extremely well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe (ha!) I'm weird, but I really enjoy shopping for clothes. No-one'd call me handsome or dapper, but there's something really satisfying about putting a look together.

I never have enough time, though!

<comment><USER10> I like the shopping but figuring out how to piece together a look that fits my style is hard on me. I'm curious to see what options I get from them so I can learn to do the same for myself some day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is pretty neat. It's like Amazons Mechanical Turk except for clothes shopping. Maybe I missed it, but how do they make money? Do they just take a cut off the top of the clothes they send?

<comment><AUTHOR> They sell it to you at full retail. They order just-in-time, so they dont have any inventory. The article didnt mention how they handle returns. The cynic in me says that the returned items go at the top of the recommendations.

<comment><USER12> hack: buy from them, return your stuff and get it on Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Although it sounds kind of cool, I'd be a little nervous trusting people working on commission for advice on whether a shirt looks good on me or not.

It seems like it wouldn't be hard to have some sort of follow-up survey to unlock the commission (things like "did you feel comfortable wearing the clothes recommended" / "did you feel pressured" etc.), but as is, I'd feel a bit nervous about the advice.

That, and my girlfriend loves shopping. I think she'd kill me if I ever used this service.

<comment><USER14> > I'd be a little nervous trusting people working on commission for advice on > whether a shirt looks good on me or not.

I figure if they're misleading you, you won't be buying from them again later when people make fun of your outfit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I thought it was a great idea, until I washed their intro video. Highlights:

        - A lime green tie with an ill fitting shirt on generic
          businessman.
        - Striped shirt on a man over 19.

When creating a business based on style and taste, it helps to have some. The advice to take a girlfriend shopping is good. or just try to develop taste yourself.

</comment><comment><USER16> A good idea for a rich bachelor. Not much more.

</comment><comment><USER17> Looking at the picture, it looks like pretty blase men's clothing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Apparently the story is fairly popular, the site is down for me.</comment>