URL shortening services: not secure at all - <AUTHOR> http://www.stopthehacker.com/2010/02/19/analyzing-url-shorteners/

<comment><USER2> I built (and sold) cli.gs, one of the 13 final complaint services. The system that evolved was effectively strict border controls along with frequent police checks:

1\. When a new URL shortening request is received, the requester is checked and the destination is also checked. If both pass, the new short URL is returned.

2\. When a short URL forwarding request was received (i.e. the bulk of the traffic), the destination is checked again at a configurable probability. If the destination is now deemed malicious, it is disabled on the spot and a message is shown. In times of spam attacks, the checking probability would be set to 100%.

I blogged about this when it launched and started evolving:

[http://blog.cli.gs/news/new-anti-spam-and-anti-malware- featu...](http://blog.cli.gs/news/new-anti-spam-and-anti-malware-features)

[http://blog.cli.gs/news/more-anti-spam-and-anti-malware- prot...](http://blog.cli.gs/news/more-anti-spam-and-anti-malware-protection)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article, but I find the author's use of statistics to be quite bizarre...

[quote] Approximately 68% of URL shortening services were Stage 1 Compliant.

Approximately 56% of URL shortening services were exclusively Stage 2 Compliant. [/quote]

It seems from his numbers that he just meant to not include the word "exclusively", even though it was italicized. Also, I'm not sure what prompted the venn diagram with three sections "A", "B", and "A and B". Most of the regions (such as "A"-and-"A and B"-not-"B") are empty, for good reason.

</comment><comment><USER4> Were they supposed to be safe? How can they be classified as "safe" or "unsafe?" It's like calling tar or zip utilities insecure because the archives produced might contain malware.

<comment><USER5> <http://safe.mn/>, for example, is doing checks on both the URL and the content. If the content cannot be scanned (too big, server too slow, local URL), visitors are warned that the link was not checked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I missing something or is the Venn Diagram horrible. There are "Stage 1 Compliant" and "Stage 2 Compliant" areas, the overlap of which would logically be "Stage 1 and Stage 2 Compliant" Instead there is a third area for "Stage 1 and Stage 2 Compliant" with the count in the label instead of the area.

That whole chart is either ridiculous or I am a moron and can't parse it with my brain.

<comment><USER7> You aren't missing anything. It's a nonsensical diagram.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmmm. I'm not sure URL shorteners should be "secure". The service I want from them is very well defined: take this long URL and make it very short.

I am certainly not asking them to make a judgment on whether my request was well conceived.

What's next? Blocking NSFW URLs? Pornographic URLs? Politically offensive articles?

<comment><USER9> The issue is that by making your long URLs short, they also obscure them, making it harder for you to determine whether it is a good idea to visit.

In my ideal world, the URL shortener would not block you from visiting the site, but would display an interstitial page warning you of the possible problems if you did - much like Google Safe Browsing.

<comment><USER5> That is exactly the path I took with <http://safe.mn/> If the destination is deemed unsafe, you get a warning explaining what is possible wrong (malware, virus, adult content., etc.) + a screen shot (hidden by default) + a link to continue to the site anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems dumb. The site's function, as defined, is to do a redirect. Not redirect plus a bunch of mysterious stuff.</comment>


Gödel Prize 2012: Foundation of Growth in Algorithmic Game Theory - <AUTHOR> http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/2012/goedel-prize-2012 <comment><USER2> [the non-mendeley links look like personal copies - i tried extending the domain for coral cache, but it didn't work. any other free caches?]

worst case equilibria - [http://www.cs.ust.hk/mjg_lib/Classes/COMP670O/Papers/y37e5ne...](http://www.cs.ust.hk/mjg_lib/Classes/COMP670O/Papers/y37e5ne8bbafjb5r.pdf)

how bad is selfish routing - [http://www.mendeley.com/research/how-bad-is- selfish-routing-...](http://www.mendeley.com/research/how-bad-is-selfish- routing-1/) [sorry that horrible mendeley thing]

algorithmic mechanism design - <http://jmvidal.cse.sc.edu/library/nisan01a.pdf>

<comment><USER3> Coral cache seems to work for me. [http://www.cs.ust.hk.nyud.net/mjg_lib/Classes/COMP670O/Paper...](http://www.cs.ust.hk.nyud.net/mjg_lib/Classes/COMP670O/Papers/y37e5ne8bbafjb5r.pdf) and <http://jmvidal.cse.sc.edu.nyud.net/library/nisan01a.pdf></comment></comment>


In need of a serious hacker - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone.
I have been working on a web app with media over the last 7 months, and have been trying to launch the public beta for a few months now.
However, the team that I have coding it has missed deadlines time and time again, and this is just going way too far.
I already have a growing list of opt-in users waiting for the completion of it, and they are growing impatient by the day. I get emails almost everyday from people who are waiting and wondering when it will be done.
There are just a few more tasks left to complete to make the app at least functional. I'm not trying to get it all the way perfect, just good enough to work so I can start getting live users.
I am looking for someone who would be willing to take a look at what I have, in confidential confidence, as well as look at the tasks that are left.
If you feel that you possess the skills to help bring it to completion, then we can discuss compensation, and possibly future involvement with the company.
I have had my fair share of problems dealing with programming 'companies' and 'outsourced hires' and if I can find and build a team of more knowledgeable and reliable experts, then that would be great.
To answer up front, I have taken no VC or Angel Funding as of yet.
Currently I've been funding the entire project myself, and will continue to do whatever it takes to complete this project.
If and when VC's or Angels come, then fine. But if they don't, it doesn't matter because I am still going to follow this project out to completion whether it ends in success or failure.
I am 23yrs old, music producer, internet marketing specialist, and I have a strong background in sales and presenting. I've been an entrepreneur for most of my entire life, and am looking to build and share long-term success with like minded individuals.
If you are interested in seeing what I'm working on and need your help with, then contact me at: email@example.com
(no, that is not the site we will discuss, the new project is much bigger)
or on skype: AaronBeats
-Thanks a lot for reading me out ;) -Aaron B. <comment><AUTHOR> The current prototype is built with php. It is possible that it could be rebuilt with ruby in a later version.

For now I am really looking to complete the beta and start testing with users as soon as possible.

To summarize without giving too much away, the site is a music app built for music fans as well as music artists.

I am ultimately looking at trying to create a new model for the music industry, as I believe the current one is broken. Eventually I would like to think of us as the 'Apple' of the Internet Music Technology Industry ;)

We can explore the opportunity of equity distribution on a 'vested' basis. I am willing to talk about it with those who are interested after exploring the opportunity further.

You can visit the public site for now and watch a video presentation that I put together at: <http://www.jambuzzer.com>

</comment><comment><USER2> a hacker in what language? Ruby? Python? PHP?

explain the idea in a sentence, and does the hacker get equity?</comment>


We Have to Fix the News. But How? - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/we-have-to-fix-the-news-527eb2401f3a#.p8z5sc3q6 <comment><USER2> The news articles are written by people who are increasingly detached from reality, more and more biased and more and more paid and monitored by the government. There is no easy fix to this, obviously the education has to be increased but more realistically you simply have to start following alternative media and stop relying so much on your single source(s) of truth that you implictly trust. If there is an international event regarding Russia, read both rt, cnn, drudgereport and follow and participate in discussions about it on your favorite forums. When there is a refugee crisis you can nowadays get livestreams, you dont need to read an article much later which will distort the truth for you. I remember reading about how the evil hungarian police were mistreating the refugees and then when watching the recorded livestream and reading up on some fringe websites, I saw with my own eyes how these refugees ran down barricades and threw rocks at police. There simply is no substitute to this and frankly there never was, we are fortunate to live in a time where you _can_ do all this yourself. You used to have no other choice than to trust your newspaper when it told you about events overseas.</comment>


OpenAI Microscope - <AUTHOR> https://openai.com/blog/microscope/ <comment><USER2> How is this substantially different from a 3 year old post here: [https://distill.pub/2017/feature- visualization/](https://distill.pub/2017/feature-visualization/) ?

I mean they added some web interface widgets, some cool java script and stuff, but is that what Microsoft payed 1B? Reposting 3 year old stuff from Google brain?</comment>


Ask HN: If (procrastinating) then read else next in HN - <AUTHOR> A lot of people including myself suffer from procrastination. So I saw this https://liquidti.me today and I was thinking that is nicely designed and all that, and it might work for some but I know it won't work for me. I really, really know that because I know how my brain works. Well sort of. But let me talk about something that I finally noticed in myself in recent months. I always loved learning and getting courses on Udemy, Coursera, you name it. It's so much fun if you can work on something that has structure and someone else is pushing you to focus on. So even though I often procrastinate, I found myself always committing 100% of my time and effort on courses and learning material. That could be me but made me think that maybe other people work like that too. I really enjoy the process and can't wait to build the projects or complete the assignments. I just manage to go through the courses and don't see them as side projects.
To cut a long story short I had this idea that maybe if we had our projects broken down by someone else and developed a detailed roadmap almost like a course it would potentially be easier for us to just get busy doing rather than busy procrastinating. A simple example would be to develop a chat bot. There was a very detailed article just yesterday on that which covered every single step necessary to build your own. One would only have to follow this blog post and then add on it the service it offers to have a successful bot. What if we took this approach a bit further and created a course around it with finer steps, timelines, achievements, etc. What if we had categories of different projects where we go and look for something that is similar to what we want to do? Even if we can achieve 70%, 60% of our side project build by following something else its still a lot better than 0% or my usual 20%.
Some initial thoughts here so don't bash. <comment><USER2> I'll jump in to emphasize the notion. I've recently decided to try and pick up 3D modeling using FreeCAD, and I thought I'd try my hand at watching some tutorials on YouTube. Well I lucked into a great beginners series:

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_9HwDkwxllq5lFGkYBIH9g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_9HwDkwxllq5lFGkYBIH9g)

...and it was like a ritual, where every night I followed along with a 30-60 minute tutorial. I got a lot further and faster than if I had just been fumbling around by myself semi-aimlessly trying to learn the program (and 3D modeling at the same time). And I think a lot of it had to do with the structure of doing a small dose of rote learning on a regular basis. No planning, or thinking about what to learn, just doing the lesson at a nice slow pace. I now find myself wanting to see the rest of his tutorials translated into English:

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1ajADhkNhcffhuQ9sZp9bg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1ajADhkNhcffhuQ9sZp9bg)</comment>


Genomics, genetics, and biology news (made using brett of News.YC's slinkset software) - <AUTHOR> http://news.thinkgene.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is hosted using <http://www.slinkset.com>, made by news.ycombinator.com users brett and johnb.

Right now we're using the auto-import RSS feature to get it so there are always a bunch of stories on the recent page. Add some wisdom of the crowds and we should get a great popular page, right?</comment>


Show HN: My first android game. MongoDB/Tornado backend - <AUTHOR>

After graduation, my friend and I decided to build mobile games instead of finding jobs. Today we released our first game called Monster Rivals. It is a fighting game with simple RPG elements such as stats and items with unique powers. We have a lot more planned for it in the future, but wanted to get the game out as soon as possible. The game also allows you to fight your friends through Facebook.
The game data including the user/character profile is all on my servers hosted on linode. We have 3 servers- [primary mongo], [secondary mongo],  [mongo arbiter, redis(for leaderboards), nginx forward proxying to 4 tornado processes]. I chose to use mongodb because it seemed to fit our needs very well for a database. Our user/char data is always queried together, and therefore we don't need to do many joins. The data is sent and parsed on the phone as a json, therefore it is extremely convenient to keep the data in a collection instead of constructing it every time.
Link to the game: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pixelmaji.monsterrivals <comment><USER2> Looks awesome, graphics are terrific.

I'm curious to know how your animations work, specifically the animating of the attacks/weapons. What engine did you build with?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks! The game is built on the AndEngine framework. The framework has an animation library that lets your move, rotate, scale sprites. However that by itself was not robust enough for us to build decent animations on. So I built a little xml framework on it that let my partner build animations, and storyboards from sets of these animations. Then I take those animations and apply them to the characters.</comment></comment>


Open-source 3D city platform ViziCities released on GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://viziciti.es/MX5Gs6

<comment><USER2> This seemed like such a fascinating project when you first unveiled it. I'm really glad you've decided to make it open source. I look forward to diving in and seeing how it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It's a good feeling to have something released and for it to be open. We've still a long way to go. Let me know how you get on!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome. Just when I was finishing my D3 visualizations. Trying not to get too distracted... ;)

Any chance you could publish the heat map you had in the first demo? I'd love to get a head start in integrating 2D layers to this. Even if it were some less than functional code.

I presume OpenStreetMap sends map data as vectors, so it should not be too difficult to replace that with other geo sources. I immediately see a dozen use cases even with relatively static data.

Thank you :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it. I'll be working on getting the data vis stuff back into ViziCities soon (heatmaps, etc). The data processing classes should give you a little more insight into how to get new layers into ViziCites. Admittedly, it's not as easy as it could be yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is nice! I recently came across another similar project: [http://cesiumjs.org/](http://cesiumjs.org/)

How does this compare with it? Is ViziCities more focused on political / city data, while Cesium is focused on geographic data?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, ViziCities is focussed on the low-level detail (building and vechicle- level) while Cesium and others are focussed at a higher level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks great. Where does the building height data in the demo come from (or is that made up?)

<comment><USER6> You can infer building height from OSM through either an explicit height tag (usually in meters), or from a "levels" tag, that you can convert with some kind of estimate of standard floor height. Here's a demo that lets you see where that data exists: [http://osmbuildings.org/?lat=52.52111&lon=13.40988&zoom=16](http://osmbuildings.org/?lat=52.52111&lon=13.40988&zoom=16)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's actually exactly how we do it right now, based on the techniques in OSM Buildings actually. Ideally I want to infer height from area and building type if no height-based tags exist. I have a proof-of-concept working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great work :), I wanted to do something like that since long time...I will try to participate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I hope you do participate :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it!</comment></comment>


Official Objective-C Literals Docs - <AUTHOR> http://clang.llvm.org/docs/ObjectiveCLiterals.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Three new features were introduced into clang at the same time: NSNumber Literals provide a syntax for creating NSNumber from scalar literal expressions; Collection Literals provide a short-hand for creating arrays and dictionaries; Object Subscripting provides a way to use subscripting with Objective-C objects. Users of Apple compiler releases can use these features starting with the Apple LLVM Compiler 4.0. Users of open-source LLVM.org compiler releases can use these features starting with clang v3.1. These language additions simplify common Objective-C programming patterns, make programs more concise, and improve the safety of container creation.

This document describes how the features are implemented in clang, and how to use them in your own programs.</comment>


Sergey Brin On Google's Wifi Data Collection: We Screwed Up - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/sergey-brin-we-screwed-up-42386 <comment><USER2> We apologize for the fault in the Wifi Data Collection. Those responsible have been sacked.</comment>


Why OKRs might not work at your company - <AUTHOR> https://svpg.com/team-objectives-overview/ <comment><USER3> This is the key of the article:

" Those successful companies aren't successful because they use OKR's. They use OKR's because it is designed to leverage the empowered product team model. And as I have tried to make clear with years of articles and talks, the empowered product team model is a fundamentally different approach to building and running a tech-product organization."

Amen to this. Google is an example company that claims to have had great success with OKRs. But let's not forget that before OKRs, they had empowered teams, a growing market which they disrupted and grew, and a unique culture.

My bet is they would have done spectacularly well without OKRs, using some other method as well. You can't say that OKRs caused Google to succeed, and they certainly won't be enough to turn a company or org around, like the author argues.

<comment><USER4> Is Google success because it's a well run company in the first place? It's obviously not terrible (I'd personally love to work there) but life is a lot easier when you have the biggest cash cow ever plus a few smaller ones.

In general I'm skeptical whenever anyone wants to copy Google as their advantages and disadvantages are so far removed from a typical company and always were. I don't think they're a particularly good company to model for most companies.

<comment><USER5> Back when it was popular to have a flat structure or no managers or whatever I started suggesting "Every type of management works until money gets tight." I think the principle still applies, but a more useful/general version is pick your structures and processes around resource availability (good vs bad times):

Good Times: pick something that can amplify abundant resources. There is going to be less bureaucracy around decisions and spending so move quickly and place lots of bets while you can.

Bad Times: pick something that works with meagre resources. You're going to spend more time justifying spending.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've worked with OKR's at large e-commerce companies, small tech incubators, consultancy firms and "Unicorn" stage startups. At each stop OKR's were absolutely worthless.

What I really appreciate in reading this article is that they were absolutely worthless for the reasons this author has stated: there was no real empowerment behind them. Most often they were used for personal development since I had no meaningful say in my actual work. It's always a stretch to put personal development in terms of OKR's: "I'll write two blog posts this quarter." "I'll run one lunch and learn"\-- ok those are fine activities but we hardly need OKR's to grow as engineers-- and just imagine how annoying it is to be at quarter's end struggling to write a blog post when you find out midway that you're enjoying learning in an entirely different manner.

<comment><USER7> This is totally my experience with OKRs as well. At my last company they were a feeble attempt by micromanagers to manage a bunch of teams into being self- managing. But at the end of the day they were giving us solutions not problems to solve, which obviously didn't work out well. Most of the software we wrote missed the mark and didn't get used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Biggest complain I have with Marty Cagan is he always describes the perfect product organization and says anything else is shit.

Well you can't choose your execs, you can't choose your culture,.. so thank you for describing what is the ideal world, but almost no company will be able to apply your advice.

Again in this article he doesn't explain how to replace OKR, but just says, if OKR doesn't work then your culture is the issue

<comment><USER9> It's like the Martin Fowler of business organization

<comment><USER10> I had the same thought. What good is the nicest theory when all the practical implementations you can find basically abuse the name for something that is quite the opposite?

[https://martinfowler.com/articles/agile- aus-2018.html](https://martinfowler.com/articles/agile-aus-2018.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My company is adopting this. They just gave a big company wide meeting/sales presentation on this. I ended up tuning it out after a few minutes. Maybe that was a mistake but I am just so sick of the corporate gobbledygook dog-and-pony show. At the risky of sounding ignorant, these corporate productivity systems feel like cottage industries invented by consultants to sell to management looking for a reason to justify their salaries to investors.

<comment><USER12> The core concepts behind OKRs (and others like it) are pretty good. The problem is that almost all of these methods require managers to cede power and control over to the developers. And that rarely seems to happen. So as a developer it just becomes another layer of bullshit to deal with.

It pretty much boils down to: Set well defined, well reasoned, and slightly ambitious goals...communicate them to your developers...and then leave them the hell alone to try and accomplish them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've always found it shocking (well not that shocking honestly after years at 10 person startups to 5,000+ people companies) that you get these folks who read "measure what matters" or some cherry picked Andy Grove stuff & decide "this will fix our velocity and other problems".

Like no, hard no. OKRs are great, I personally love them but if your company has deeper issues a set of OKRs won't help and likely hurt as it obfuscates the underlying issues that exist.

<comment><USER14> Most times they don't even read the books. They just stop at "what doesn't get measured doesn't happen." Great, that leads people to measure all sorts of stupid stuff like lines of code to production. Who cares if it isn't something that contributes to a thing that someone's going to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > ... still continue to tell them the solutions they are supposed to deliver – > nearly always in the form of a roadmap of features and projects with > expected release dates.

This has always been my experience with OKRs. They were implemented by directionless companies with weak management as an attempt to bring structure, but the real reason there was no structure or coherence is that nobody in leadership agreed about what the company should do.

They ended up being such vague, arbitrary, and ambiguous goals, like "dominate this sector" or "become a leader in that vertical", or "hire x engineers by y time" that they were effectively meaningless. What does dominate mean? What are these new engineers going to do once they're here? Nobody had answers to these questions, yet achieving the OKRs was paramount.

I'm sure there are examples where they work well, but I suspect this author is onto something and the companies that use them successfully would be well managed with or without them.

</comment><comment><USER15> Most of the teams I've been on at Google don't even bother with OKRs. The ones that did, it was a bit of a dog and pony show, a poor substitute for just doing some regular iteration task planning.

</comment><comment><USER16> It _feels_ like OP has made a bit of a straw man out of OKRs. More charitably, perhaps we did not get our information from the same place - all I know about OKRs is from reading "Measure What Matters" and implementing it in my own company. Reading this article makes me feel like someone took an incredibly simple idea and decided that what it needs is more complication.

From TFA: "most companies are not set up to effectively apply this technique". Yes. And if you read the above book, you'll learn that this is sort of the point. You WILL fail at your first few OKR cycles, but you're supposed to use those experiences to change your company into one that CAN set and achieve objectives.

If you think your company is one where OKRs won't work, all the more reason to do them.

OKRs are about creating and communicating strategic short-term objectives across the company, so they remain top of mind. And that's 80% of what you need to know! The objections to OKRs mentioned in the article don't make sense to me, because it seems to follow a different definition of what OKRs are.

<comment><USER17> > all I know about OKRs is from reading "Measure What Matters" and > implementing it in my own company. Reading this article makes me feel like > someone took an incredibly simple idea and decided that what it needs is > more complication.

I know this is HN and you could totally be Drew Houston; but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your company has fewer than 500 employees.

The problems the OP is describing are, in my opinion, usually present at a large, bureaucratic company. There is no strict size definition for this (I've seen incredibly bureaucratic 50-person startups), but Dunbar's number [1] is a good rule of thumb.

> You WILL fail at your first few OKR cycles, but you're supposed to use those > experiences to change your company into one that CAN set and achieve > objectives.

Once you get into a bureaucratic company, it's largely about _avoiding_ failure or the perception thereof. Since you own your company, it's easy for you to take this overall view of "if it failed, it failed". Any mid-level manager or individual contributor is going to be incentivized to avoid the perception of failure since it's super-bad in a large organization. Google is often used as a counterexample, but I'm not entirely sure that Google is a company that's good at making products. Also, Google uses the approach of "Hire extremely smart people and throw a truckload of money at them" approach which most companies under discussion (including yours) likely don't; which (IMO) is a far better predictor of success than OKRs.

> The objections to OKRs mentioned in the article don't make sense to me, > because it seems to follow a different definition of what OKRs are.

This is the No True Scotsman fallacy. The reality is that the "cascading" nature of OKRs often gets lost in translation and doesn't take into account macro-level changes in your specific vertical. Yes, the company's goal is to become a leader in the field of underwater baskets; how does this translate to me rewriting that terrible frontend code that the cofounder's buddy wrote in 2007 and has never been touched since? Doing that translation will become more difficult year by year due to how technology evolves; and most people in "leadership" suck at doing that translation well. That's what the article is talking about.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)

<comment><USER16> Nowhere in the book is it pitched as a tool you roll out to a bunch of MBAs and hope that good things happen - it's never about out-of-touch managers demanding results. If someone cascades objectives without also cascading planning and estimation, are they not simply a bad manager?

What the book DOES say is that you should not create such a fear of failure that no-one will set stretch goals, and that OKR results should not replace individual performance evaluations. In short, OKRs are what you seem to think they are, plus the culture that makes it possible. If an organisation doesn't get that right, are they doing OKRs?

If your organisation does not allow developers to push back against impossible objectives, do you not perhaps have bigger problems that OKRs (or any other system) can't fix for you? Why would you blame OKRs - would any other system not also be painful when a company has become so dysfunctional? Also, did you know that all objectives don't need to cascade - some can be set bottom-up?

You're going to call No True Scotsman fallacy, and I'm going to call Straw Man, so I'm done with this thread. Perhaps I just fell for John Doerr's elaborately constructed fantasy that he uses to sell books. But right now it seems like a useful tool to keep a company on track, and I'll keep adapting it as the company grows.

<comment><USER18> I'll add to this thread that I was largely against OKRs, having seen them implemented in the style of "we need a quantitative measurement for success so let's make something up hastily", only to fall prey to Goodhart's Law[1].

But John Doerr's book introduced me to the bridge of concepts that I was not seeing: in a healthy setup, we are first and foremost focused on a _qualitative_ objectives and THEN we attempt to model that fuzzy feeling with a _quantitative_ measure (the "key result") that should reflect success. It takes several iterations in order to come up with a matching measurement, and even then we need to constantly re-evaluate whether the measurement is appropriate or if is devolving into a numbers game devoid of true objective.

In other words the full acronym is OAMBKY, or "Objectives, AS MEASURED BY Key Results". But that doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well.

So in that light, OKRs are a useful tool IF AND ONLY IF leadership—as well as the whole team—are focused on the philosophical, qualitative goal and are all aware that the measurement is only an imperfect proxy that is contantly re- evaluated to help us better assess the goal; not a goal unto itself. But that takes real leadership to drive that message (as well as avoiding setting up misguided incentives).

[1] When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The summary is "your company may not yet be worthy of OKRs". This kind of has the whiff of other religious movements in tech like REST and Agile: if it's not working for you, you just aren't doing it right. Try harder and hope to one day be worthy.

<comment><USER20> I'm trying to grasp what's wrong with that. That statement is true for every set of system/values.

A set of systems won't work for 100% of the cases because that system was designed around a particular team. And there are times it won't work well.

Whether the system is good/effective has nothing to do with "you aren't doing it right" part.

The "you aren't doing it right" can be applied to literally everything.

<comment><USER19> The common thread is that they're frameworks which promise to be very general and be applicable everywhere, but which in practice "everyone does wrong".

If no one can actually successfully use your framework the right way, maybe the framework isn't as generally useful as it purports to be.

<comment><USER20> Ah got it.

Having gone through scrum and OKRs I agree with the idea that people tend to sell them to be 'generally' useful at least on the surface.

But once we started doing training/testing towards scrum, it's very clear we needed change as an organization. Some people ended up leaving as a result because it's not everyone's cup of tea.

I can't say the same for OKRs because I joined and it was already in place pretty effectively, but I imagine it to be similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> crooked-v My only experience with OKRs has been having to do more OKR-management homework separate from the actual work I do, which is the same 'coding stuff off the product roadmap supplied by a different department' as always.

<comment><USER21> That's why as a manager I always set my teams okrs to be aligned with whatever crap business is going to place in the scrum stories.

I've seen tech OKRs that are things like "reduce tech debt" or "decrease loading time" or "reduce downtime" but without hard tangible stories in sprints, it's just wishful thinking.

<comment><USER22> > That's why as a manager I always set my teams okrs to be aligned with > whatever crap business is going to place in the scrum stories

How could it be any other way (and work)?

<comment><USER21> It doesn't, but it is still done. A friend of mine who worked at IBM told me that they had "quarterly goals" that were stuff like "learn a new language" or "improve testing" or any other utopian idea, but their week-to-week sprint stories were completely perpendicular, so at the end of the quarter during the performance review the only people that achieved some of their goals were the ones that stayed to work on evenings and weekends (extra time) to do something related to their goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My CEO tried to explain to me that the "key result" part of OKRs didn't need to be measurable and then cited my colleague's as better examples despite none of them having written anything that could be used to hold them accountable. When I ask him if he's read High Output Management he just says "It's on my reading list". I'm leaving soon.

<comment><USER24> I've definitely seen it where objectives don't need to be measurable, but the results are what you measure to let you know if you're going in the right direction. Sometimes you might have objectives that look like results (like a top-line revenue target), but yeah... Good luck :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We just started using them.

We're a small org that's mostly experienced consultants and contractors. They're energetic, proactive and independent people.

We've adopted OKRs to basically get everyone pulling in the same direction, but without being prescriptive about how the work gets done.

I'll report back at the end of the quarter on how it's working out, if anyone's interested :)

<comment><USER26> I am totally interested! But how will you report back?

<comment><USER25> I'll reply here!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> One of our senior leadership people read the book, got in his mind that we need this at the company, got together the managers of all departments, they figured out some OKRs and now everyone's off working on implementing them.

Some of them are rather impossible, like teaching all devs on how to do devops within 2 months, so they can be self sufficient.

<comment><USER28> "teaching all devs on how to do devops within 2 months, so they can be self sufficient"

There's so much wrong with this key result it's incredible :( One big reason that OKRs can fail is just flat out bad OKRs. Teaching all devs to do "devops" within two months ignores the actual issue that they seem to be trying to solve (which I'm guessing is that not having sufficient ops is hurting the company and velocity). It's far too easy to fail and puts pressure on individuals rather than letting the team find the right solution.

<comment><USER22> This has flicked a lightbulb on for me.

If your teams are fairly self-organising, if you are small-a agile and building your process as you discover more, you can plan in things like "dev A will spend 50% of this sprint learning dev-ops, without doing feature work or tech debt; and 10% shadowing dev B who already does Ops".

That seems actionable, and measurable. Over two or three sprints/iterations/retrospectives, you'll probably be able to measure the impact of the training (more successful releases, higher uptime, or more story points covered because ops is less a bottleneck etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> OKRs seem a brilliant way to silo your teams and shut down any cross team collaboration.

OKRs become a shield to deflect any external request that doesn't precisely align with a measure.

Not a fan.

<comment><USER30> I'm certain you've got experience to back up this view of them, but you should consider that it's not a failure of OKRs, but of management setting OKRs, that what your teams OKRs weren't aligned with other teams. I've had similar experiences, but I've also had explicitly cross-team OKRs and OKRS that were broadly set on "Respond to needs of customer teams X, Y, and Z" that were among the most successful that I or others on my team picked up.

Collaboration should be a goal. A management structure that doesn't explicitly make it one is at fault, and they would have failed regardless of the organizational methodology they chose.

<comment><USER29> In my experience that still just pushes off the problem one layer. Now you've defined who the team can and can't interact with to an even greater degree than not having anything and it totally kills 'spontaneous' collaboration.

I am absolutely no rejecting the notion that maybe my company is very bad at doing OKRs but for me they have always resulted in "working to the metric" and have totally inhibit team autonomy - you become ruler by the KRs.

EDIT: the first time my company tried OKRs a company culture of collaboration and experimentation was brought to a shuddering halt as everyone stopped trying to do what was best for the business and started trying to hit their OKRs instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> OKRs are just a tool, but having been the founder of many startups, comes a moment when you need a tool to align your team towards a clear goal.

I understand most of the comments but as you grow your startup will come a time when it becomes useful when you have 70+ and even more thousands of employees. The bigger the company the harder it is to manage, google famously hated management and ended up with OKRs. My understanding from a couple of ex- googlers is that now most people are just gaming the system and aiming at a 0.7 score so I'm not sure if they are still as useful as they were at google.

OKRs / KPI etc are not magic, at the end of the day the article is right, the team is what matters, how teams align and communicate with each other is what OKRs can help with (I find them better than the old top down KPIs personally) I was asked by a startup to explain OKRs and I kept getting the CEO to ask me questions related to them not making sense (e.g some teams argued that goal X did not make sense to them etc...) For me this was not an issue with the OKRs per se, but OKRs helped to show very clearly that the organization was not well structured for the general goals, so worst case if OKRs don't work you should be able to tweak things and measure the impact (that's the all idea : measuring to improve)

</comment><comment><USER32> Tell people what's important and what isn't. How innovative. OKRs are for managers who are incapable of telling their staff what's important.

<comment><USER14> Easy enough in a small org, much more difficult in a big org. Part of the point of OKRs, when done right, are that it shows how the thing you're working on today ladders up to the big thing that drives the entire company forward. That said, in reality it's rarely executed well or with any precision whatsoever. I worked at a 1000 person place whose top level OKRs were so vague they were garbage. You could have created any feature whatsoever and shoed it into those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The downside of OKRs is that it incentivizes everyone to sandbag their efforts and then stick to that effort. Also no one is going to stick their neck out on goals which are ambiguous or lack clarity. There is just no incentive - <USER2> fact there's a massive dis-incentive.

If you have a startup with less than 300 people and you have good communication and goal setting, don't use OKRs. Use KPIs and then nehlp your teams to keep iterating.

Input management is so much more effective than output management but it needs visionary leadership. Read: High Output Management - Andrew S Grove (ex Intel CEO).

<comment><USER34> Considering High Output Management literally advertises Management By Objectives, I'm confused how that is a citation for your point about KPIs vs OKRs, they should not look that different.

If you're doing OKRs without some type of indicator, kpi or otherwise, I don't see how you're achieving key results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > The Role of Leadership > And finally, and really the root of the problem, is > that in the vast majority of companies I see that are struggling to get any > value out of OKR's, the role of leadership is largely missing in action.

Here, here!

OKRs are being rolled out at work, and there's a pretty clear managerial vacuum. You could call it the KRO: leadership makes a request that trickles down to line staff for projects and goals, then each layer of management tries to glue them into a coherent Objective.

</comment><comment><USER36> > The main idea is to give product teams real problems to solve, and then to > give the teams the space to solve them.

First, there's a dearth of high quality engineers in the industry. They've been gobbled up by SV companies with large paychecks and promises of "fuck-you money" paydays. Everyone else gets developers in the range from above average to bad.

Product teams only work with high quality engineers across the entire product. Why? Because if they're shitty, there's no bound to creep of shit code, call it "shit creep" (see footnote 1)

How do you fix a shitty product team, other than replacing the entire team, or product with hopefully a better team?

Sure, feature teams are more limited in scope and their abilities, but they at least constrain the shittyness to a feature. If the feature needs to be replaced, the team can just be replaced, not the entire product.

(1) We've all had to deliver shit code from time to time. The thing is the good engineers know it's shit and refactor it as soon as they can.

<comment><USER37> You will enjoy your career much more if you quit it with this inverse Lake Woebegone philosophy.

The idea that all engineers outside of a few Silicon Valley companies are mediocre is laughable if you've ever worked at a FAANG. People pick all sorts of jobs for all sorts of reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I personally like OKRs, as I find them a valuable counterbalance to 1) daily standup, which can promote short term thinking, and 2) yearly "goals" in performance reviews, which, when evaluated in a binary way as completed/not completed, can deter people from taking on more ambitious and ambiguous tasks.

My big worry about OKRs is that they will descend into the same shitstorm that ruined SCRUM. Daily standups were never intended to turn into a daily opportunity for micromanagement and application of deadline pressure, but this is exactly what they became. And I can't say it was an external corruption of the process - the dangers are inherent to the technique. I always felt that saying standup and scrum are good, you just have to be careful someone external to the process doesn't corrupt it don't turn into micromanagement is like saying nitroglycerine is good, you just have to be careful some chemical reaction external to the process doesn't cause it to suddenly and unpredictably combust. The instability is inherent to the substance.

There was also a mini (or not so mini) industry of industry consultants helping people "do agile", that elevated "processes and tools" over "individuals and interactions", kind of how the 10 animal commandments in animal farm ended amended to mean the opposite of how they were written down.

I see a danger in point in OKRs, in that they're a great way for a manager to turn a casual projection into a committed estimate. I see the inversion of "Customer collaboration over contract negotiation" all over again here. The developer (or employee) is lulled into a belief that we're all friends and can trust each other, the "customer" (or client or boss) is lawyering up with a contract, and when time comes, the developer's feet will be held to the fire with firm commitments, and subjected to daily deadline pressure and micromanagement (because agile).

All I'm sayin' is, this could go sideways. But then again, so can any job.

</comment><comment><USER39> Not very sure if OKR should replace the KPI in most of IT companies since OKR mostly aims at developers. I've experienced one company that request their employees to do OKR weekly and monthly. It actually helped a lot at the beginning coz everyone is curious and energized.

But after a few weeks, indolence came out because someone forgot to submit the OKR. And other members also do the same thing. Pretty much of a "broken window effect". The workload was very high, so OKR wasn't attached any importance. Or maybe we did it in a wrong way.

It doesn't mean that we might not have to align with OKR, but the method of implementing the OKR insistently and continuously should come first before it takes places.

<comment><USER35> > OKR mostly aims at developers

Ops can totally have OKRs. Fewer incidents, faster resolution, faster deploy times, longer log retention, decreased AWS spend, the list of objectives I can think of off the top of my head is quite long.

Same for project managers: on time projects and reporting, better estimates, faster issue triage, more a/b experiments, more features launched.

OKRs done well are effectively a method of improving KPIs by recursively breaking work up into subtasks.

<comment><USER39> > OKRs done well are effectively a method of improving KPIs by recursively > breaking work up into subtasks I strongly agree. (thumb up)

Well, of course Ops can have OKRs as an HR evaluation method. KPI's shortcoming is obvious, most of the results need to have a quantified indicator which is not very appropriate for engineers' situations.

But it still can be used as a complementary of OKR to provide clear numbers or date time as a target.

I just guess that iterating the OKR every week and month is quite challenging. And most of the OKR stays unchanged even after months of iterations. HR and managers need to figure out the way to keep everyone update their OKR effectively.

<comment><USER35> IMO, OKRs should be quarterly targets. Enough time to meaningfully make and measure changes repeatedly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Good piece

I worked at a company that used OKRs but the teams weren't set up in a way that people had responsibility for the things that their OKRs wanted them to do, and it produced very little (thankfully the teams were generally good and it wasn't a disaster, but it was a waste of effort).

If the OKRs aren't embedded into the sales teams as well (which basically means you can't have separate sales teams) then it likely fails.

</comment><comment><USER41> OKRs?

Quote: "OKR's are first and foremost an empowerment technique."

Don't empower anyone. Instead work on getting rid of / minimizing / improve on anything that dis-empowers. This is usually easier, cheaper and far more straightforward. Not always easy to get rid of disempowerment but you can at least put things in place to minimize it. Empowerment is barely measurable in real terms. All the metrics are indirect. Even turnover doesn't accurately measure it. Dis-empowerment on the other hand is a stinking mess. Follow your nose. Or your heart.

Quote: "Manager's Objectives vs. Product Team Objectives"

One of these needs to be fired / removed / re-evaluated. If the manager is fighting the team then who's more in alignment with the overall vision? Why would you tolerate a manager that is fighting their team? Or vice versa? If the team members are across leaders and there's issues then there's some misalignment that needs to be fixed. Now. Iceberg! Change direction or sink!

Pointless drama and deliberate friction created in large organizations is why they squash innovation. Its why they do mindbogglingly stupid things. Its also why a manager or executive can benefit when a team fails, even their own. Incentives can be so screwed up that if a division fails, a number of people in the division cheer because their individual incentives are all green. This is too common.

Another quote: "The main idea is to give product teams real problems to solve"

You're doing WHAT?! How can you possibly tolerate non-real problems? Why would this be even necessary? That's like saying, "it gives them a way to generate profit". Really? That's a thing you're going to add?! As if its some new thing? What?!

Quote: "Passive manager"

What is this creature? How can you passively manage anything? Not even drunk people are passive. Only when they become unconscious do you start to have passivity. I've met managers who's teams zip along with the manager gone for a month. This isn't rare and its still not passive if adult supervision is in place. Why? Because an active manager puts processes in place to monitor and optimise what is going on. This is active management.

Quote: "Stop doing manager objectives and individual objectives"

Correct. Any mismatch means pointless friction. Why was this tolerated? Perhaps because drama at the bottom and middle keeps people too busy to notice the silliness at the top? Maybe. Regardless, it sounds expensive: How's that productivity going?

Quote: "Leaders need to step up"

Sure, and they should be allowed to lead. Which is often NOT the case. Plenty of managers leave team leaders in the dark about key aspects about what is going on and what is planned. Leading means choosing a direction. How can you know the direction to choose if you don't know the destination? This applies generally as well. Instead of expecting leaders to step up, why is there a step in the first place? Shouldn't there be a level playing field? Sort out organisational mess so its as level as possible - remember the bit about removing disempowerment? I wasn't kidding. Here's a symptom: the need to step up when no step should exist.

Ugh!

Go for enabling and self-directed team members that can tolerate and operate successfully with adult supervision. This kind of supervision requires managers, directors and team leaders as well.

One last thing: Get rid of deadlines and use due-dates instead. Not just wordplay. We need to be using project X on date Y. Make it happen and don't drop dead doing so. Change the mindset to fit this approach. Those deadline crunches? Not good. Dropping dead after a due-date means something went very wrong. Everything must be re-examined to avoid it in future. The mess has to be cleaned up. Supports put in place. Additional followups scheduled and kept. This works for projects as well as childbirth.

Ok. I feel decaffeinated and that is dis-empowering. Time for coffee. See? Fixable.

</comment><comment><USER42> Agree that the method is not guaranteed to be a success-maker. Our experience adopting in a small healthcare thinktank was difficult -- the pattern didn't really fit our present and future workflows very well.

</comment><comment><USER43> > _Please upgrade to a supported browser to get a reCAPTCHA challenge.

Why is this happening to me?_

I see this at the bottom of the page, and I've been seeing it more and more. I'm using the Duck Duck Go browser on iOS.

<comment><USER44> An educated guess: reCAPTCHA has become (partly) passive, using whatever tracking data Google has about your behaviour. So, if your browser blocks the tracking, it causes issues. I assume that's what the DDG browser is about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I really ought to read an OKR book, because the telephone-game version I hear about seems problematic.

For example, Austin's _Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations_ [0] gives a helpful 3-party model for understanding how simplistic measurement-by-numbers goes awry. He starts with a Principal-Agent and then adds a Customer as the 3rd party; the net effect is that as a Principal becomes more and more energetic in enforcing a numerical management scheme, the Customer is at first better served and then served much worse.

As a side effect he recreates or overlaps with the "Equal Compensation Principle" (described in Milgrom & Roberts' _Economics, Organization and Management_ ). Put briefly: give a rational agent more than one thing to do, and they will _only_ do the _most_ profitable thing for them to do. To avoid this problem you need perfectly equal compensation of their alternatives, but that's flawed too, because you rarely want an agent to divide their time exactly into equal shares.

Then there's the annoyance that most goals set are just made the hell up. Just yanked out from an unwilling fundament. Which means you're not planning, you're not objective, you're not creating comparative measurement. It's a lottery ticket with delusions of grandeur. In Wheeler & Chambers' _Understanding Statistical Process Control_ , the authors emphasise that you cannot improve a process that you have not first _measured_ and then _stablised_. If you don't have a baseline, you can't measure changes. If it's not a stable process, you can't tell if changes are meaningful or just noise. As they put it, more pithily:

> _This is why it is futile to try and set a goal on an unstable process -- > one cannot know what it can do. Likewise it is futile to set a goal for a > stable process -- it is already doing all that it can do! The setting of > goals by managers is usually a way of passing the buck when they don 't know > how to change things._

That last sentence summarises pretty much how I feel about my strawperson impressions of OKRs.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Measuring-Managing-Performance- Organi...](https://www.amazon.com/Measuring-Managing-Performance- Organizations-Robert/dp/0932633366)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Organization-Management- Pau...](https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Organization-Management-Paul- Milgrom/dp/0132246503)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Statistical-Process- Con...](https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Statistical-Process-Control- Wheeler/dp/0945320698), though I prefer Montgomery's _Introduction to Statistical Quality Control_ as a much broader introduction with less of an old-man-yells-at-cloud vibe -- [https://www.amazon.com/Introduction- Statistical-Quality-Cont...](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Statistical- Quality-Control-Montgomery/dp/1119657113/)

<comment><USER35> > Put briefly: give a rational agent more than one thing to do, and they will > only do the most profitable thing for them to do. To avoid this problem you > need perfectly equal compensation of their alternatives, but that's flawed > too, because you rarely want an agent to divide their time exactly into > equal shares.

I would argue the system is working as intended. Contrary to your assertions, you don't want employees spreading effort like peanut butter, you want to focus them on executing one or two things quickly and getting value out of that quickly. Instead of launching 12 features a year from now, I'd rather launch 1 feature a month.

> you cannot improve a process that you have not first measured and then > stablised.

There is of course, a certain amount of reasoning under uncertainty involved. One of the lessons many folks learn from a/b testing and OKRs is just how hard it is to actually make a difference, and folks need practice calibrating.

<comment><USER45> > _Contrary to your assertions, you don 't want employees spreading effort > like peanut butter, you want to focus them on executing one or two things > quickly and getting value out of that quickly._

That's not quite what I was driving at. Optimisation is made on the _measurement_. Measurement is only necessary because the Agent is not perfectly observable, there is an information asymmetry between Principal and Agent.

That's why Austin's model is so helpful. There are many things that must be done in order to best satisfy the Customer. Some of those are measurable, some are less measurable. But a rational Agent looks at any basket of measurements and will optimise for _one_ of them: the one that pays best.

It's not enough to say "just this _one_ feature and no peanut butter please". You have to define what the one feature is. You have to provide an exact measure for it. Agents can then either optimise honestly, or they can go further and optimise fraudulently. If honestly, the Principal realises that they actually need a basket of values to be optimised. But then they need to apply equal compensation, because the Agent will simply ignore any measurement that doesn't maximise their results.

I believe measurement is useful. But I also believe that connecting it to even the whiff of reward or punishment is beyond merely futile and well into being destructive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Objectives and Key Results for those who are confused.

</comment><comment><USER47> BD needs to generate enough sales to keep the engineers stressed out. When you don't have that, you end up with politics. OR the company is pre PMF, and everyone needs to operate in that mode.

<comment><USER48> What is BD, OR and PMF?

<comment><USER49> BD = Business Development, aka sales

PMF = Product Market Fit

Unsure on the OR.

<comment><USER50> It think that's just a regular old Or gate.

<comment><USER47> (BD -> Eng Stress) ^ pre PMF

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I didn't read the article. Is it because OKRs don't work anywhere at all, and are only successful when they are ignored? At Google that's certainly the case; the better a group is at paying lip service to OKR planning, the more work they actually get done.

<comment><USER9> Its a 2 minute read, go see for yourself</comment></comment>


PepsiCo to launch drink to aid sleep as consumers struggle with stress - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/14/pepsico-to-launch-drink-to-aid-sleep-as-consumers-struggle-with-stress.html <comment><USER2> This is why I love the US. If you ever have a problem, you just need to find the correct medication. Do not blow the snow, yo!</comment>


The Accelerator That Brought You BangWithFriends - <AUTHOR> http://adamdraper.com/post/51077324998/boost-vc-the-accelerator-that-brought-you

<comment><USER2> It's no surprise that BangWithFriends got popular. A product that helps people hook up is pretty much guaranteed to be successful. Case in point: Okcupid, Facebook, Snapchat (kind of)

<comment><USER3> Why is it no surprise? How is it guaranteed!!?

Further ... to the OP Did they really get 1m users? The traction surprises me. Any idea on how they went about marketing their app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, BWF has acquired over 1m users. There was a very large internet buzz a few months back (and continued to date, but not as much coverage as the initial launch shock) where at least half of the users were acquired, featured on Colbert Report, TC, Mashable, etc.

A lot of the press came from the unconventional/edgy nature of the website. There was also marketing efforts at SXSW this year: <http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/08/bang-with-sxsw/></comment></comment></comment>


Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet for mankind - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/wire-news/72536602/reinventing-the-toilet-for-safe-and-affordable-sanitation.html <comment><USER2> Blogspam, as usual from physorg.

Original: [http://home.tudelft.nl/en/current/latest- news/article/detail...](http://home.tudelft.nl/en/current/latest- news/article/detail/tu-delft-vindt-toilet-opnieuw-uit-voor-veilig-en- betaalbaar-sanitair/) which, unlike the physorg blogspam, includes links to sources with more information.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _In the first step of Delft University's new technical approach, the human > waste will be dried. Then the waste will be gasified using plasma, which is > created by microwaves in tailor-made equipment._ (etc)

Really?

The brother of my grandfather lived on a farm for all of his life; there was never any kind of toilets on the farm. While there always was access to clean water from a well (which may not be the case in the poorer parts of the world), running water was installed inside the "house" only in the early sixties. "House" is between quotes because it looked more like "the part of the stable to be used by humans".

We used to go there often during the summer. We did our business behind the house, like everyone. We loved everything there.

And what about health? My grandfather's brother died past 80; when he died his wife moved to the "city" where she lived to see her 94th birthday.

They would've had a hard time believing people would ever want to gasify their poo with "plasma created by microwaves".

In fact, so do I.

<comment><USER4> I think you completely missed the point.

The article is talking about developing countries with poor sanitation. Banupur, for instance, has a population of 58,000 per square mile.

What the the population density on your grandfather's farm? Do you think doing your business behind a house scales to 58,000 per square mile?

<comment><USER3> > _Do you think doing your business behind a house scales to 58,000 per square > mile?_

I don't know, but I wouldn't answer "of course not" right away, as you seem to assume. How do these people currently cope?

My point was not that everyone should do as my grandfather's brother, twenty years ago. I'm just wondering why we suddenly need so much technology to solve a problem that's always been with us and that didn't use to be so terrifying.

I'm wondering if we're afraid of "human waste" a little more than we should? I'm wondering if maybe there are simpler solutions that would scale a lot more, be a lot cheaper and a lot less disruptive than getting everyone to defecate in a microwave oven. (How do you build the devices? How do you get them to the people who will be using them? How do you make people use them? How to you maintain them? How do you replace them when they're broken? What do you do with the broken ones...?)

I read a story some time ago (on HN maybe?) about how very simple advice had tremendous effects on people's health. Telling people to wash both hands after going to the bathroom, for instance, instead of just the one they use to clean themselves, yielded incredible results.

I may be wrong, but this project, as described in the original article, doesn't sound right.

<comment><USER5> It sounds like you are basically saying there is not really a problem as long as you wash your hands?

Have a look at some of the health problems that come up due to the fact that around 6-700 million people in india defecate openly. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_India)

"In India there are 700 million people who do not have access to safe and hygienic toilets. The waterborne diseases this causes kill 500,000 children every year, mostly from diarrhea,"

[http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20071102/toilet_summit_0711...](http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20071102/toilet_summit_071102/)

While yes the proposed solution does sound complex, it's better to try and make it work than just let the spread of disease continue

<comment><USER3> _Effect of Intensive Handwashing Promotion on Childhood Diarrhea in High-Risk Communities in Pakistan_

 _Results: Children younger than 15 years living in households that received handwashing promotion and plain soap had a 53% lower incidence of diarrhea (95% confidence interval [CI], –65% to –41%) compared with children living in control neighborhoods. Infants living in households that received handwashing promotion and plain soap had 39% fewer days with diarrhea (95% CI, –61% to –16%) vs infants living in control neighborhoods. Severely malnourished children (weight for age z score, <–3.0) younger than 5 years living in households that received handwashing promotion and plain soap had 42% fewer days with diarrhea (95% CI, –69% to –16%) vs severely malnourished children in the control group. Similar reductions in diarrhea were observed among children living in households receiving antibacterial soap._

<http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/291/21/2547.full>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of a Radiolab podcast about parasites and the improvement of productivity in the deep south as a result of the introduction of outhouses.

<http://www.radiolab.org/2009/sep/07/>

(it's the part about farmers, not sure about a specific seek to point, sorry it's been a while)

</comment><comment><USER7> > _microwave plasma gasification may be energy self-sufficient, provided that > [...] high throughput of human waste matter can be obtained._

EPIC way to say "for god's sake keep shitting"

</comment><comment><USER8> So, you don't have sanitation, but, somehow, they figure out you would be able to maintain and operate a self-sustaining facility that gasifies your waste using microwave heated plasma that's also, somehow, compact enough you don't have to build the sanitation system you didn't have in the first place to drive your waste into the facility.

What baffles me is that the people bright enough to invent it didn't come with a similarly brilliant excuse to deploy it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Aren't there already cheap composting toilets that safely and relatively odorlessly compost human waste, without he assistance of a bunch of grant- hungry, plasma torch-wielding scientists.

If I recall, you can't pee in them due to ammonia, but there are separate ways to handle fluid wastes.

Perhaps the articles is just trying to disguise the use of incinerators.

</comment><comment><USER10> Solar composting outhouses? Just like already exist in some campgrounds?

Is this really a problem that needs a new solution?

</comment><comment><USER11> Aren't they over-thinking this a bit? This seems like the Microsoft-ification of crapper design, i.e. gratuitously complicated, unmaintainable and essentially irrelevant to the basic problem.

We are talking mostly about places without proper sanitation, how are they supposed to have (and sustain) facilities for generating plasma?

Left to itself human waste degrades and the residue can be used for fertilizer or maybe even fuel. A cesspit or septic tank provides for safe storage until it is ready for disposal, preferably in a way that aids the local population.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad Bill is putting some money towards this. It seems quite complex but if they can make it cheap and easily maintainable it could save a lot of lives.

For anyone who doesn't think this is a big problem, picture taking DOUBLE the population of the USA, moving them to an area ~1/3 the size and having them defecate in the open with no sanitation. This (from what I've read) is pretty much the situation in India, where more people have mobile phones than access to proper toilets.

</comment><comment><USER12> If it needs "high throughput of human waste matter", it's not a toilet, it's a sewage treatment plant.

</comment><comment><USER13> "We will apply microwave technology to transform human waste into electricity."

Not sure how this works, but it sounds like it would only worsen the situation.

</comment><comment><USER14> How robust can you make a system that seems to require constant energy input? That is to say, what if nobody shits in it for a while?

<comment><USER15> There's a technology called - battery. Some hold energy for quite a while. And the article mentions Rwanda. If the prime market is this huge continent, then you might be able to use the sun to augment the "other energy source".

I think it's interesting to notice that most (I try hard not to write all) comments so far seem to be armchair designer style. It's like 'build the next toilet' is a new bike shed.

Yeah, I'm skeptical as well, but assuming that the scientists are full of .. err - just want to grab the money and have no clue what they are talking about seems weird to me..

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> good that he decided to address the issue at the receiving side of the system, not at the producing - i mean, with his money he could have commissioned a some "human anatomy and physiology improvement" research ...

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a very worthy cause, but I think they might be overdoing it. The issue is major - the number of people without access to toilets is roughly equivalent to the number of people with internet access... last chart of this infographic: [http://feefighters.com/blog/ff_infographic/tech-boom-or- bubb...](http://feefighters.com/blog/ff_infographic/tech-boom-or-bubble-lets- look-at-the-data/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Considering Bill Gate's previous on-record comment about how improved vaccination programs could _reduce_ population, I wouldn't be surprised if there'll be some 'accidental consequences' of this system. How much fertility reduction do you get if everyone sitting on a 'microwave toilet' has their testicles 'slightly' cooked?

Only partly joking. Gates has signed on with the Bilderbergers, and their clearly stated objectives are to radically reduce world population by any means and as soon as possible. Figures in the range 500 million to 900 million (survivors) frequently pop up in Bilderberger-related stories.

One thing to watch would be the financial estimates. Keeping technology like that working in remote/undeveloped locations won't be cheap. If the Gates Foundation is going to foot the bill for operational servicing of the 'microwave toilets' on a large scale, then...

<comment><USER19> Have any evidence to support this Alex Jones drivel?

Bill Gates has done more for the poor than all the conspiracy theorists in the world combined.

<comment><USER18> "The world today has 6.8 billion people... that's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent." \-- Bill Gates (in public speech with published video) I saw the video, the quote is correct. Don't have link handy, find it yourself. Did he mis-speak? Maybe. He never corrected it, despite it going viral.

<comment><USER19> I've seen the video and the context is clear. He's talking about reducing the population growth by 10-15%. Why is this bad? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WQtRI7A064>

I've heard Alex Jones. I don't see any evidence that the Bilderberger meetings are discussing mass murder.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Interview with Ubuntu Kernel Manager - <AUTHOR> http://pcper.com/news/Editorial/Interview-Pete-Graner-Manager-Ubuntu-Kernel-Team

<comment><AUTHOR> Would anyone like to add any questions to this interview?</comment>


MySpace to relaunch itself again  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19712478

<comment><USER2> Here are a few other submissions of this story:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4567052> <\- This one has the discussion

Also:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4566629>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4566804>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4567067>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4567089>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4567175>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4567190>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4568834>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4569606>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4572608></comment>


Creator of RoR, David Heinemeier Hansson on Askolo - <AUTHOR> http://askolo.com/dhh

<comment><USER2> Does not appear David agreed to participate or actually made this account, looks like it was made for him. In which case, I hope Askolo was deliberately planning to get a lot of bad press. David has specifically complained about other companies doing this recently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi asolve, we invited dhh to join Askolo and he created that account. We only changed the default picture (the askolo mascot) to his picture found online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Login to FB or Signup to know "Why are you such a twat?" Thanks but no thanks..</comment>