Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzVeRq <comment><USER3> I hate fear-driven cultures where presentations/meetings/casual talk with the CEO are treated as a gladiator match. In addition to Bezos, of course Jobs and (from what I read) Gates created such cultures. Another interesting, lesser known example was Col. Robert R.MacCormick, the editor for the _Chicago Tribune_ for long years. He was described as "remote, coldly aloof, ruthless aristocrat, living in lonely magnificence, disdaining the common people... an exceptional man, a lone wolf whose strength and courage could be looked up to, but at the same time had to be feared; an eccentric, misanthropic genius whose haughty bearing, cold eye and steely reserve made it impossible to like or trust him." [Interesting anecdote: He had all the walls of his penthouse office at the _Tribune_ covered with dark wood, including the door, so that after your meeting ended, you would have great difficulty finding the door to get back out, suffering under his humiliating gaze.]

That _doesn't_ mean that such draconian cultures are unsuccessful, just the opposite. The problem is, success becomes very much dependent on the quality of the leader(s), e.g. compare Libya and China; the performance becomes very brittle.

The main paradox of humanity, of course, is why people continuously create such fear-driven, hero-worshiping hierarchies, although it causes great personal stress to them. Belief in a strong, super-genius, infallible leader that we can _never_ equal and/or please, may be ingrained in our brains, be it religion or, as in this case, CEO worship.

<comment><USER4> My observation is that a fear-driven culture is often not intentional. They usually stem from a culture where cutting the bullshit and getting to the point is encouraged. Most people are used to a culture where niceties are important, and when they are put in front of a person that cares about results more than niceties, they can misinterpret that behavior for aggressiveness. In turn, the people who misinterpret that behavior take their cues from it, and turn it into actual aggressiveness, in sort-of a cultural game of telephone.

<comment><USER5> > They usually stem from a culture where cutting the bullshit and getting to > the point is encouraged.

My observation is the opposite. The incompetent use fear and anger. The competent don't need to resort to the lizard part of their brain to communicate with their subordinates.

Imagine if this guy worked at Apple. He'd be fired and blacklisted. Some companies just have better cultures than others. Sorry I just don't buy the whole "ubermen should piss on everyone else because they are better than everyone and any show of manners is a show of weakness!!" Ayn Rand-fest.

While I undestand the importance of good work and brevity and being challenged, I suggest you actually read about what its like working with characters like Steve Jobs. Phrases like "What the fuck is wrong with you, moron?" are casually tossed around. That's not executive bullshit cutting, that's petty personal and childish attacks.

<comment><USER4> I think there's a balance. One should spend effort on showing manner and being considerate of peoples' feelings. At the same time, sometimes these sorts of things can become pathological to the point where you spend more time making people feel good rather than getting things done.

As an example, I'm thinking of meetings where everyone speaks up to be heard whether or not they have something valuable to say. Often times, its warranted to simply say "Let's stay on-topic," or "Let's off-line that discussion." Peoples' feelings will be hurt by this, but its necessary to stay productive. Likewise, if someone has an uber-urgent task for me to accomplish that isn't _really_ urgent, I'll tell politely but firmly tell them that I don't have the time and that they should put it in my back-log. This sometimes results in hurt feelings, but its necessary to keep focused.

Regardless, that's a digression from my main point, which is that I don't think the fear-based culture is always intentional. Your experiences don't reflect mine, which is fine, and I concede that incompetent may use fear and anger to keep people in line. I've simply not worked in those sorts of organizations before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I worked at google for a couple months this year. My experience of their so- called open corporate culture was a bizarre mix of elements from William Gibson's _The Belonging Kind_ and Robot Chicken's _Our Newest Member, Calvin_. It was one of the loneliest and depressing experiences of my adult life (but with really good food).

That said, it turned out that way because I was stupid and naive and let myself get flung into the russian roulette of their blind allocation process. This put me on a team doing work for which I had no real relevant experience and working under a manager who promptly forgot I existed for 3 months.

I'd call my experience an outlier, and it all turned out well in the end when I fled the place for a better offer doing work far more relevant to my previous job experience, except that I keep running into others that had almost exactly the same thing happen to them.

Amidst the hooplah of Larry and Sergei's Montessori for overgrown gifted kids, there's something very rotten, elitist, and ineffective going on at the googleplex and the initial frustration in Steve's rant hinted to me that deep down he knows this too. Perhaps I'm wrong. But I had such high hopes for the place and they were utterly dashed on the rocks.

<comment><USER7> >there's something very rotten, elitist, and ineffective going on at the googleplex and the initial frustration in Steve's rant hinted to me that deep down he knows this too.

He does.

He wrote the original to pander to them, while bashing Amazon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The issue of "so smart he needs a challenge so leave something for him to find" may overlap with "so narcissistic he needs something to smack you with so make a deliberate 'mistake' for him to find". I've found this quite effective; some people just need to find _something_ wrong with your idea/presentation/execution, so when they're going to review it, don't polish it to perfection - leave an error somewhere; you know what the mistake is, you know what the solution is, you'll take care of it right after it's noticed, and you'll give him _something_ to criticize so he doesn't have to invent some off-the-wall delusion which you must now accommodate.

I'm not equating smart with narcissistic, just noting similar behavior with similar ways to mitigate damage vectors.

<comment><USER9> I've always called this tactic "The Admiral's Pipe" after this story: <http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brada/archive/2005/05/12/417064.aspx>

<comment><USER10> It's also been called The Duck:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2349378/new- programming-j...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2349378/new-programming- jargon-you-coined/2444361#2444361)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> His description of presentations to Bezos reminds the infamous BillG reviews

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html>

<comment><USER12> > The cult of the MBA likes to believe that you can run organizations that do > things that you don't understand.

Exactly.

A few years back, I found myself in a one-on-one saying: "you would think someone taking a job managing a hog farm would at least know what a hog is."

Though, that was about web-development.

A suitable allegory.

<comment><USER13> Except it doesn't always apply.

Lou Gerstner and Meg Whitman are two examples from the technology world. Both came into their jobs at IBM and eBay with zero tech experience, but got up to speed very quickly. Of course, had they failed to do so they would have been out within a year or two.

<comment><USER14> The life and times of eBay does not say good things about the IT-challenged MBA.

Speaking of Yegge and Amazon: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/ebay- patents-10-clic...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/ebay- patents-10-click-checkout.html)

Amazon has continued to grow in simplicity and coverage, including ease of purchase with third-parties (eBay's dealer market). Meanwhile, buying on eBay is still a huge pain, with no integration between eBay and its own subsidiary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15>
        The last step before you're ready to present to
        him is this: Delete every third paragraph.

This must have been excruciatingly difficult for Yegge :-)

<comment><USER16> Harder for the the guy with only two paragraphs, though...

<comment><USER17> Easier, I'd say. I was hoping "I deleted eery third paragraph" was going to be his response to "why isn't data mining on here?".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it me or does this read like a big ass-kissing of Bezos after he tore him apart in the accidentally leaked memo? Not saying it isnt true but...

<comment><USER19> He said it himself _"I've always skirted any perceived shortcomings and focused on what they do well."_

Now he's doing that again, in a big way. He's saying "Bezos is a genius" and not saying "Bezos is a micromanaging asshole"

<comment><USER20> And yet everyone reading it seems to have worked out that Bezos is a micromanaging asshole as well as a genius. Interesting, that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 I'm curious how these "Jeff Presentations" go.

Powerpoint presentations are banned, instead you have to write your arguments as an essay.

So is the meeting essentially Bezos reading your writing, with the rest of the room waiting for any indication about the emperor's mood?

Or does the presenter read from the prose as a script?

Can any Amazon-ers give any insight?

<comment><USER21> Standard practice at Amazon is to quiet read the materials at the start of the meeting. I think the logic goes that you want to make sure everyone reads the material, so you may as well have everyone read the material at the same time, and discuss it when it is fresh in mind.

As a related effect, it encourages people to write tightly focused documents that can be read in 15 minutes.

It's not a horrible practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Although it was a great read, to me it lacked a kind of authenticity.

The first Yegge post felt real, authentic, natural and fully charged. This second one although better formatted and edited, lacked something. It just seemed obigatory and bland.

It is rather amazing that you can feel emotions through words.

Or am I the only one thinking this way?

<comment><USER23> I think you're being harsh.

I think it was probably more considered but I'm guessing that everything he's written since THAT post has been more considered - it would be a completely natural reaction to having accidentally laid yourself bare. After all whom amongst us having accidentally forwarded an e-mail to the wrong person hasn't got a little more careful about what we say for a while afterwards?

But I still think it sounds genuine and honest, just a little more polished.

<comment><USER22> Ok, maybe considered is less harsh than bland.

But do you think it is a good thing?

The first time I noticed this was when I listed to the original and then studio version of 2 Pac's "Hit 'em up". In the first he was really and truly angry and you could feel it. The second version was 'just there'.

When actors and actresses get "into character" it is really clear. They mean what they act and it seems natural.

let us just say he was "in character" in the first post but not in the second.

<comment><USER23> The problem is that anger often sounds more authentic but anyone who has ever been angry will testify that what you say when you're angry (or even just irritated) doesn't necessarily reflect your actual view, just one facet of it.

Yegge's original piece was making a specific point and he came out with examples that supported that but that doesn't mean that those examples represent Yegge's overall view of Bezos and it's reasonable that he might want to throw out the other side of it.

In terms of whether it's honest - from both pieces I think it's fairly clear that Yegge doesn't believe that Bezos gives a shit what Yegge thinks so I see no reason why Yegge wouldn't be being truthful.

But even if Yegge was toning himself down, I don't have an issue with that.

I think that among some in the tech community there is a feeling that "honesty" and "truth" tend to trump everything. While that's great in theory the baggage (usually personal offence) that comes with it has to be considered.

Ultimately life is about getting stuff done and for most of us who aren't Jobs or Bezos level genius where brutal honesty will be forgiven, a "polished" truth will often get us better responses from others than it's more brutal counterpart.

If that's the case we all have to ask ourselves do you want to be right, or do you want to get things done?

Note: I'm not talking about lying here, I'm just talking about how you present the truth.

<comment><USER22> So how do you suggest you convey true emotions through words while being diplomatic? As we both agree 'considered' posts can eliminate the true feeling.

I do not think only anger can be conveyed.

I am not being specific about this very situation. And I agree that being diplomatic can be more effective most times.

Edited: To provide contest for question.

<comment><USER23> I don't think considered posts do eliminate the true feeling.

They eliminate the visceral, immediate reaction but that's only one part of the truth. If you're angry (or happy) at someone that's certainly a true feeling but is it any truer than the way you feel 10 minutes later when you've calmed down a bit and considered things?

If a colleague irritates me and I shout at him sure that's a representation of part of what I feel at that moment, but it doesn't represent the fact that ultimately I respect them and they normally do great work. So is shouting at them really my true feeling or just one small element of it that ultimately doesn't represent what I feel very well at all?

Ultimately though I think you have to ask yourself what am I try to achieve, how is what I'm going to say going to achieve that and am I happy that it really does represent "the truth" or is it just a knee jerk reaction (good or bad).

<comment><USER22> _If you're angry (or happy) at someone that's certainly a true feeling but is it any truer than the way you feel 10 minutes later when you've calmed down a bit and considered things?_

You have made great sense and raised a thought provoking questuion here.

 _Ultimately though I think you have to ask yourself what am I try to achieve, how is what I'm going to say going to achieve that and am I happy..."_

You have summed it up perfectly.

Combining your two statements above is quite an insight. A great one. Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My apologies for straying near politics but i think Yegge's just defined the best characterization of the 1% :P

> _In some sense you wouldn't even be human anymore. People like Jeff are > better regarded as hyper-intelligent aliens with a tangential interest in > human affairs._

The difference between this description and Yegge's later description of Bezos as being like the Dread Pirate Roberts of Princess Bride fame, is that Roberts is a clever human putting on a very clever show to develop a reputation which does work for Roberts.

Bezos on the other hand, by all accounts, actually does make people walk the plank. Whether he does it because he's a super-human alien intellect, or some other reason, doesn't change the fact that he's built up a climate of fear around him. If anything, describing him as a super-human alien disturbs me more than if he were acting out of the same motivation as the Dread Pirate Roberts.

<comment><USER25> Sorry, but you're way over-optimistic if you think the 1% has the kind of intelligence (and I'm not talking pure IQ) and focus Bezos has. Bezos is more like 0.01%.

And I'd venture to say that the OWS movement wouldn't have much against Bezos. They're more against fratboys that rose to prominence and wealth through connections. And finance. Yeah, definitely finance. It's there that they sense some kind of unwarranted self-worth and wealth.

<comment><USER26> Bezos started out on "Wall St", working at D.E. Shaw in NYC.

<comment><USER27> D.E Shaw was starting Internet startups in the early 90s, Bezos pitched them Amazon and they did Netzero instead so he headed west

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Steve, if you are reading this, any chance you can throw some light on _the core skills a generalist engineer ought to know_?

<comment><USER29> I'll leave it up to Steve to answer that, but this may help you get the idea:

[https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential- pho...](https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential-phone-screen- questions)

This is a Steve's post on how he conducts and what he expects from phone interviews.

It's over seven years old so proceed with care -- it's possible that his views changed since then.

Also, this is probably more of a bare minimum rather than the whole picture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> By the way, the most important part of the post is where he says that Google is following through on the problems he pointed out. I'd be curious to see what (if) will come out of this - if they will expose their internal services to third parties, that will be great news.

<comment><USER31> No, that was just polite talk. This isn't new -- this has been a glaring issue for a while.

And if they were serious about it, Brin wouldn't have replied so flippantly. Google is just a one product company (with Gmail being the exception that proves the rule) lacking the humility and gravitas to be more.

<comment><USER32> Android, Youtube, and Maps aren't products?

<comment><USER33> While I assume they meant the one product was search, it would probably be accurate to stay that the product is advertising and that they rest exists to feed the beast. But I doubt that was the innuendo of their rant.

<comment><USER34> In the same way that television shows are all about advertising and the acting/stories/dialogue are just to 'feed the beast'?

You're confusing what Google's main product is with how they make money.

That's a bit insulting to the engineers at Google that make Search so good.

<comment><USER35> It's perfectly reasonable to decline calling something a "product" if it doesn't make money. A widget company might produce a lot of memos in its daily operation, and might have its own cafeteria that produces food for its employees. But I think most people wouldn't count lunches or memos among the company's "products," no matter how good they might be.

<comment><USER34> Not even close to being the same thing. Google does search. That's what they are known for. Advertising is how they monetize search (which incidentally came long after they launched their search engine). Only us geeks with an axe to grind would associate Google with advertising before search. Would you call a site like Daring Fireball a site that specializes in thoughtful essays on technology? Or a site that tries to sell the customer's eyeballs to sponsors and advertisers?

<comment><USER36> A product is something you sell to a customer.

IMO, Emacs is one of the best pieces of code that the FSF makes, but there's an important sense in which it's not accurate to call it a "product" of theirs.

Google _sells_ advertising space to advertisers, while they _give away_ search and maps to the users to facilitate the selling of said advertising. (GMail is an exception because they offer business products built out of GMail.)

The fact that search might not be considered a product need not reflect a value judgment. Either way, it is a very nice service they provide.

But when people refer to Google as an advertising company rather than a search company, they are correct from a business standpoint. Likewise, many media companies -- whether like the New York _Times_ or like Daring Fireball -- have always "really" been in the advertising sales business. (Though some, like the _Times_ are also in the content sales business.) Those companies obviously take great pride in the content they produce that draw the eyeballs to those ads, but it wouldn't be a viable business if the content was all they did.

<comment><USER37> If we want to be nitpicky, one could claim Google has multiple products since they sell advertising in search, maps, gmail, and more.

<comment><USER36> Are these discrete products to their AdSense customers? I would think it would make more sense to break it down by display/text than by site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Steve Yegge just might help g+ steal some market share from facebook yet. Every time he releases something like this on g+ I end up spending a few minutes on the site that I would not have otherwise.

<comment><USER37> I'm actually seeing a significant amount of longer-format posts (especially from technically-minded people) on Google+. It's a mix of a Facebook status update and a Facebook note and it's pretty easy to write and publish. (Steve's privacy setting slip-up notwithstanding...) In a way Google+ seems to be doing to Tumblr (and in lesser degree Posterous) what Facebook did to Myspace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Actually, that is pretty close to how you should talk to -anyone- who likes thinking and does it well. If they have a question, they will ask it. You don't need to fill in every gap. (You need to KNOW it, but you don't need to say it.)

I would leave out the 'delete every third paragraph' bit, though. Or change it to 'delete anything that can be inferred.'

</comment><comment><USER40> So he validates the post <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465882> posted here 3 years ago.

Snapshot of the blog [http://web.archive.org/web/20090211060734/http://blog.layer8...](http://web.archive.org/web/20090211060734/http://blog.layer8.net/2009/01/i-was- trying-to-avoid-this.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> Contrary to what he wrote here, Steve actually has ragged on Amazon in the past, in particular in "Have You Ever Legalized Marijuana?" -- the imagery of Amazon doing things by burning through people like little tea-lights _really_ stuck in my mind.

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever- legali...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized- marijuana.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> I wonder if Steve needs to move to marketing? He's done an awesome job here of highlighting one massive difference between GPlus and Facebook - that you can really publish publicly to the whole world, the way the web was intended.

<comment><USER43> This isn't a difference; you can do the same on Facebook.

Here are a couple of examples:

via a Facebook page called 'notes': [http://www.facebook.com/notes/web20/robert-scoble-on- cloud-c...](http://www.facebook.com/notes/web20/robert-scoble-on-cloud- computing-bubble-or-revolution/10150270162038624?ref=nf)

via user Scoble's wall: <http://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/posts/10150358391274655>.

No Facebook account needed to view either.

<comment><USER44> Notes have been around for 5+ years and I've never seen them linked as news stories. In contrast, I've seen Google+ updates consistently submitted as news to HN and other sources. There _is_ a significant difference between Google+ updates and Facebook Notes and it's worth thinking about why. I suspect it has to do with the fact that status updates and public posting in Google+ are the same interface. For Facebook, status updates are character limited and you have to click into the Notes tab in order to write something longer.

<comment><USER43> While I agree those differences are important I think culture also plays a large role.

Facebook started primarily as a website for college students to share privately with their friends.

Google Plus started by emphasizing that you can choose who you want to share with (including the public) and shipped with a "subscribe-like" feature that allowed technical people to add many of the same tech celebrities that they were following on Twitter. Since it takes awhile to convert one's friends to a new service, for many tech people, reading public posts by these other tech people became the prominent way they use the service.

You can mostly do the same things on each site (albeit at different levels of convenience), but their beginnings help shape how people think about and use the sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Combined with all the talk of Isaacson's new Steve Jobs biography, makes me want to read an in-depth biography of Bezos's life.

<comment><USER46> Comes out next week: [http://www.amazon.com/One-Click-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon- com/dp/159...](http://www.amazon.com/One-Click-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon- com/dp/1591843758/)

<comment><USER47> I'm actually more interested to read this, for several reasons:

Much of the "Steve Jobs story" is quite public already - it's stuff that you just can't help knowing. Reed, Wozniak, kicked out of Apple, Next, Pixar, etc... I'm sure the bio will have some new details, but the basic plot is pretty well known.

Jeff Bezos, OTOH, is someone I know relatively little about. Also, given that my nascent LiberWriter business deals with Kindle formatting, decisions those guys are making have a very real impact on me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Well written! Is Jeff Bezos really like he paints him to be?

<comment><USER49> I've presented to Bezos once. It went about the same as Yegge's experience, except I didn't have his balls to laugh in my CEO's face ;)

The whole thing felt like I was meeting the President - layer after layer of aides and executive assistants, tons of security, and briefings on where to sit, where to not sit, where to stand, where to not stand, look him in the eye when you shake his hand, etc etc. It was kind of surreal.

I haven't presented to any other big-corp CEO other than him, so I can't really draw any comparisons.

One thing Yegge brought up that I also felt the same about walking out of that room: Jeff is _really_ smart, like _really, really_ smart. I was warned about this beforehand and spent two weeks poring over every single detail, potential feature, _everything_ about the idea I was presenting. He _still_ managed to come out of left field with relevant questions that none of us had even thought of. So I can corroborate that side of the story.

The comparison to Liszt also seems apt - before we were even done presenting, he'd already grokked it to a surprising degree, and was already expanding upon the idea in out loud. You could _hear_ my manager scribbling like a madman trying to get all of this down. This might not seem _especially_ amazing, but the Director and VP level people I presented the very same idea to had not the same depth of insight. I remember being very impressed on the spot.

I'm no longer with Amazon, and I don't particularly want to go back - <USER2> that's not due to bad top management, IMO Bezos is one of the keenest tech CEOs around. He might be the closest thing we have left to Jobs.

To balance it out a bit and not make this seems like a complete Amazon love- fest: Jeff _loved_ our idea, he gave us the green light right away. We left that room ecstatic thinking we were about to change the online retail experience forever.

Then middle management showed up. There was political infighting about who owns the project - it straddled multiple disciplines (hence why it was so groundbreaking), and there was a mixture of both hot-potato-oh-god-you-take-it and this-is-amazing-we-need-the-credit-on-this.

The teams that were interested were unwilling to yield to other teams that (rightfully, given their expertise and domain) wanted in, and some teams we needed support from kept punting it since it wasn't in their yearly plan (put together, well, a year or more ago). The project would have provided very powerfully tangible, very high-profile benefits to the customer, but said benefits weren't part of the metrics on which our department was getting judged, so at the VP level the willingness to devote resources was almost non- existent. There was lots of lip service given - especially about how a few people were able to hack together this _thing_ and make it all the way to a Jeff Presentation.

But ultimately the project froze. It was, actually, probably _the_ main reason I decided to leave Amazon for a smaller, more agile startup, where if the CEO wants something done, by golly, it's gettin' done.

<comment><USER50> That's a good illustration of no matter how brilliant the leader is, a bad team under them and/or poor execution can lead to failure.

Even with this infighting and whatnot going on Amazon is still doing amazing things. I'd be interesting to see what it'd look like if they were able to execute everything well.

It seems that's also a crucial role of the exec - if they see something that needs to be happening and it's not, they need to get in there make the necessary changes.

<comment><USER51> How does a good leader end up with a bad team? That's worth understanding.

<comment><USER52> There are probably a million different ways for it to go bad.

There is a theory that gets posted here from time to time that As hire As and a few Bs that get through the filter, Bs hire Bs and a few Cs get through the filter, and so on down the line until you have hired people you really shouldn't have.

The other theory is promote until incompetent.

My guess is much more mundane, when you hire middle management they act like middle management. Which works as long as Their sphere of responsibility and control is well defined. When you need to cross cut concerns middle management actively fights against it. All most like using inheritance for code reuse and having deep inheritance hierarchies.

<comment><USER51> The theory is usually stated as A's hire A's and B's hire C's (because they are afraid of being usurped)

<comment><USER53> Also B's can't tell the difference between A's, B's and C's.

<comment><USER37> Since classifying people appears to be so trivial it can be boiled down to one character, does being bothered by the use of apostrophes in pluralization make me an A, a B, or a C?

<comment><USER52> I think that puts you solidly in the B or C category for unwillingness to think outside the box.</sarcasm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Steve left out data mining and machine learning from his presentation and Bezos spotted it. Is that an example of Bezos' smarts or just a silly omission on Steve's part? Steve keeps emphasizing how smart Bezos is but I see no evidence of it in this post. It just seems like Bezos is good at spotting obvious mistakes people make.

</comment><comment><USER55> Link to the accidental post

[https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesv...](https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

</comment><comment><USER56> Whatever. Jeff might be super smart, but apparently he is not smart enough to instill some happiness in the people he works with.

I cannot help it, but I have little respect for people who do this, _especially_ if they are super smart.

<comment><USER35> Why is that a necessary quality for smartness? Amazon seems to be doing quite well in spite of it.

<comment><USER57> Just because you can be financially successful being an asshole doesn't make being an asshole ok.

I think there's a subtle (but important) distinction. Smart people can get away with having poor people skills: accidentally offending people, putting their foot in their mouth, and forgetting about the _human_ element in technology. That can be forgiven, and may even be an advantage.

At the same time, there's a difference between having poor people skills and being an asshole: _intentionally_ offending people, putting others down so you can get ahead, and willfully ignoring the human element make you an asshole. I think this often (but unfortunately not often enough) hurts people more than it helps.

Bezos sounds like a bit of a grey area. However, I don't think you can make a decision on this based on the performance of amazon. He's certainly successful at what he does, but there are any number of people who have created success at too high a cost: demoralized people, broken laws, and ultimately a bigger burden is placed on society than the gain that made them successful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I agree with this description of Jeff Bezos:; I hear the similar stories.

Actually, majority of successful leaders (founders, etc.) have s very strong "bullshit detector": for kind of bullshit one can use to receive promotions all way up to a director position - even up to VP.

And it also shows that some people are not succeeding because they are paralyzed by fear of poverty.

</comment><comment><USER59> The one paragraph that hits home to me was the last:

"That's where the "Dread Pirate Bezos" line came from. I worked hard and had fun, but every day I honestly worried they might fire me in the morning. Sure, it was a kind of paranoia. But it was sort of healthy in a way. I kept my resume up to date, and I kept my skills up to date, and I never worried about saying something stupid and ruining my career. Because hey, they were most likely going to fire me in the morning."

How else can you know your on the 'edge' of your own personal abilities? Nice to know that no matter who you are, those feelings don't go away... unless your Bezos (hey there has to be a few people like that around). :-)

</comment><comment><USER60> A hyper-intelligent alien is supposedly in our midst and the only evidence given of his vast intelligence is that once upon a time he asked why two software concepts that have been used prominently for years to great profit in his software business that's been running for years were left off a list? Really?

</comment><comment><USER61> I feel this is a general perception of a leader at any large enough institution. The sense of what they've accomplished makes us perceive them as extraordinary. By the time we get to interact with them, we've created this larger than life image.

Perhaps, inducing that into your team makes you a good leader. Perhaps not.

</comment><comment><USER62> I think that is a good way to approach anything in life. Prepare hard for it but accept that there'll always be people smarter/better than you. That way, you will worry less about bombing out during presentations, and be more receptive to constructive criticisms.

</comment><comment><USER63> Any copy of the original anywhere?

As an aside: did he just say Franz Liszt was "famous-ish"?!

<comment><USER64> The fact that you reacted that way indicates that he's not actually as famous as you'd like him to be. If he'd described George Washington as a "famous-ish" general, you'd know he was being sarcastic.

<comment><USER65> I think this is e a cultural distance effect. I belong to a generation and live in a place where Liszt is part of the core. I recognise other places and generations may be different.

Back on topic, I always used to smile when I saw the Lisp interpreter known as Franz Lisp load up. Pity they re-branded it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Hey Steve, lots of Hacker News readers are just as smart as Jeff Bezos. Some of us may even be smarter. You may remove every third paragraph for him, but you can remove every third _word_ for us and we can fill in the rest with our giant brains. Here goes:

Last week accidentally posted internal rant service platforms my public account. It somehow viral, which nothing short stupefying given it was massive Wall Text. The thing still surreal.

Amazingly, nothing happened to at Google. just laughed me a, all the up to top, for committed what be the of all screwups in history.

But also listened, is super. I probably talk much it, but already figuring how to with some the issues raised. I I shouldn't surprised. When I in my post that "does everything", I meant. When they're with any at all, it's technical organizational or, they set to solve in a way.

Anyway, whenever goes viral, start wondering it was or staged. accident was. While I no proof, can offer what I is the convincing evidence: the last and a years, I never once on Amazon. Even just months ago, a keynote I gave a conference, was pretty when I about my there. I've skirted any shortcomings and on what do well.

I still a lot friends at. In fact place is of people admire and. And up now I prided myself my professionalism I have about Amazon. on the, even in internal memo, uncharacteristically unprofessional me. So been feeling guilty for past week.

Without retracting I said, like to a more picture for. I'm going try to that picture some true that I've shared publicly. secondhand: it's stuff I myself there. hope you'll the stories, because it's hell of interesting place.

Amazon started Jeff, I'll my stories one about.

Amazon War #1: Jeff

Over years I people give to Jeff and come bruised: emotionally, often career- ily. you came with a or a, you were for joy. to Jeff a gauntlet tends to people back the cave lick their and stay of the for a.

I say and you think PowerPoint, no: he PowerPoint there years ago. not allowed the campus. you present Jeff, you it as.

One day came time me to to Jeff. felt like... don't know, how they around you you're going meet the. People giving last-minute advice, you luck, you past of admins security guards. like you're a movie. gladiator movie.

I'd spent watching Jeff action before turn came, I had in an way. My presentation --, roughly speaking about the skills a engineer ought know -- was resounding success. loved it. everyone was me on back and me like just completed game-winning hail-mary or something. VP told privately: "Presentations Jeff never that well."

here's the: I had suspected Jeff going to my presentation. see, I noticed two about him, him over years, that had either caught on, or else had not out how make the actionable.

Here how I. Amazon people, note. This will you. I dead serious.

prepare a for Jeff, make damn you know there is know about subject. Then a prose explaining the and solution(s). it exactly way you write it a leading or industry on the.

is: assume already knows about it. he knows than you about it. if you groundbreakingly original in your, just pretend old hat him. Write prose in succinct, direct, way that would write a world-leading on the.

almost done. last step you're ready present to is this: every third.

Now you're to present!

in the there was famous-ish composer/pianist Franz Liszt. is widely to have the greatest who ever. He could anything you him, including stuff not written for, like opera. He was staggeringly good sight-reading that brain was fully engaged the first. After that get bored start embellishing his own.

Bezos is goddamned smart you have turn it a game him or be bored annoyed with. That was first realization him. Who how smart was before became a -- let's just it was "frigging smart", he did Amazon from. But for he's had of people care of for him. doesn't have do anything all except himself in morning and presentations all long. So really, REALLY at reading. He's like Franz Liszt sight-reading presentations.

you have start tearing whole paragraphs, even pages, make it for him. will fill the gaps without missing beat. And brain will less time get annoyed the slow of your.

I mean, what it be like start off an incredibly person, arguably first-class genius, then somehow up in situation where have a view of industry battlefield ten years. only do have more than anyone, and access more information anyone else, also have long-term eagle-eye that only handful of in the enjoy.

In sense you even be anymore. People Jeff are regarded as aliens with tangential interest human affairs.

how do prepare a for a alien? Well, my second: He will you. Knowing about your is only first-line defense you. It's armor that eat through the first minutes. He going to at least deep insight the subject, there on spot, and going to you look a complete.

me folks, saw this time and, for years. Bezos has these incredibly, experienced domain surrounding him huge meetings, on a basis he of shit they never coming. It's guaranteed facepalm.

So I he was to think something that hadn't. I know what might be, I'd spent trying to of everything. had reviewed material with of people. it didn't. I knew was going blindside me, that's what when you to Jeff.

you assume coming, then not going catch you as off-guard.

of course happened. I Data Mining. in the. He asked point-blank, very: "Why aren't Mining and Learning in list?" And laughed right his face, sent a wave through stone-faced jury VPs who been listening silence, waiting a cue Jeff as whether he going to happy or was headed the salt.

I laughed I was. He'd caught with my down around ankles, right front of, despite all excruciating weeks preparation. I even deleted a third the exposition to keep giant brain, but it matter. He'd it again, I looked a total in front everyone. It was awesome.

So, of course couldn't help. And I: "Yup, you me. I know why not in. It should. I'm a. I'll add." And he, and we on, and was great. the VPs smiling. It the hell of me they'd had wait for cue, but whatever. was good.

have to: most people scared around because they waaaay too about trying keep their. People in positions sometimes a little much personal invested in success. Can imagine how it must for him be around people all long? But -- well, I I was to get every single. So fuck. Might as aim high go out a ball flame.

That's the "Dread Bezos" line from. I hard and fun, but day I worried they fire me the morning. it was kind of. But it sort of in a. I kept resume up date, and kept my up to, and I worried about something stupid ruining my. Because hey, were most going to me in morning.

<comment><USER67> That was surprisingly legible!

And I don't think it is because of my 'giant brain', considering how long it took me to understand Taylor Series in university.

<comment><USER68> It just reads like an annoying Google Voice transcript. Probably bears no resemblance to the presentation to Bezos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> > That is: assume he already knows everything about it. Assume he knows more > than you do about it. Even if you have groundbreakingly original ideas in > your material, just pretend it's old hat for him. Write your prose in the > succinct, direct, no-explanations way that you would write for a world- > leading expert on the material.

So if he knows everything, why am I writing for him?

<comment><USER70> How do you know your minions are any good when you delegate tasks to them? How do you find out if they can think for themselves?

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> This post actually is _more_ telling about the absurdity of working at Amazon than the post he took down.

</comment><comment><USER72> Anyone could please paste the follow up here? All social networks blocked at my company.

<comment><USER73> Same here. It's annoying that people are now using the social network for content they'd otherwise post on a blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> With a company the size of Google, isn't releasing something for every employee considered almost "making public" ?

</comment><comment><USER75> Misdirection and inauthentic, that's what I call Steve Yegge's follow up piece.

Internet attention spans suck.

Remember his first post? Amazon is doing everything wrong and Google is doing everything right.

If Bezos is a super intelligent alien, this begs the question, why is Amazon doing everything wrong?

Also, Google didn't fire Steve Yegge because he did what their 6-figured marketing people couldn't: With a single post, Steve Yegge brought millions of uniques to Google+.

</comment><comment><USER76> The Bezos-presentation formula would probably work well for Y Combinator applications

</comment><comment><USER77> I wouldnt be surprised if Steve has a book deal coming.

</comment><comment><USER78> I doubt it was actually "accidental".

</comment><comment><USER79> Is Steve trying to win the award for the brownest nose in the tech industry?

</comment><comment><USER80> Gee.. This guy loves writing.

</comment><comment><USER81> Interesting read on Bezos. Did not know that he was like that. I added Yegge to my circles since he seems to tell a story well.

</comment><comment><USER82> I still can't believe the first post was not a fake. Gosh, it didn't contain any figures. How in a data-driven company can you propose some analysis without them?

<comment><USER83> The same way people don't need any figures to accept that a law prohibiting murder is a good idea. You demonstrate a sufficiently compelling argument and often only words are needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Liszt was "famous-ish"? No wonder nobody knows him today.

<comment><USER51> Franz Lisp is named after him.</comment></comment>


From M.S. Patients, Outcry for Unproved Treatment - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/health/29vein.html

<comment><AUTHOR> An earlier article about this medical procedure was posted by pg,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1257229>

so I thought I should post a follow-up.</comment>


JavaScript Benchmark Quality - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-benchmark-quality/

<comment><USER2> The problem with long-running tests, however, is that they don't reflect real- world, in-browser use of JavaScript. If your browser doesn't respond for half a second because your JavaScript is doing some computations, then your users aren't going to be happy. DOM performance must not be forgotten either, along with rendering speed of said DOM changes. That's not so easy to benchmark, of course.</comment>


Ask HN: Have any newspaper/media companies traded ads for startup equity? - <AUTHOR>

Many newspaper companies are struggling with a move to digital as well as potentially diversifying their offering online.
I was wondering this morning why a newspaper/media company couldn't explore trading ads/promos with online startups for equity? If managed carefully, the risk could be minimal.
Would startups give up some equity in exchange for weeks/months of help with advertising to get some traction when they launch?
Obviously some level of oversight, the assurance of equity and whatever else would take a bit of time and paperwork, but surely that wouldn't be beyond an established organisation with survival as motivation? <comment><USER2> [http://www.economist.com/node/21552271](http://www.economist.com/node/21552271)</comment>


Show HN: Blind for Apartments – Stay in touch with your neighbors anonymously - <AUTHOR> http://www.supneighbors.com/ <comment><USER2> what is this? there's no explanation and the link to download the app isn't working.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about what happened. For me the download link always worked. I'll look into it immediately.

Anyways this is an app to discuss anything with your neighbors without sharing your identity. Whether you want to find out about rent hikes, parking problems or anything you wonder regarding your community, you can use Neighbors app.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/neighbors/id1338653802?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/neighbors/id1338653802?mt=8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> why i am not able to submit link

<comment><USER4> > why i am not able to submit link

Cause you still young here

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cause you still young here</comment>


Sprint to Buy 33% of Jay Z's Tidal Music Service - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/sprint-to-buy-33-of-jay-zs-tidal-music-service-1485178245 <comment><USER2> Paywall fail.</comment>


Telegram Bot Platform - <AUTHOR> https://telegram.org/blog/bot-revolution <comment><USER2> Just yesterday I was trying to get a bot working on the TextSecure platform. A vastly disappointing experience: almost not existing libraries, sparse and incomplete documentation, unstable protocol breaking without any kind of notice ([https://github.com/JavaJens/TextSecure/issues/6](https://github.com/JavaJens/TextSecure/issues/6), for example). And still no way to register without a phone, which would be amazing for this kind of project: [https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues/1085](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/issues/1085)

I think Telegram is succeeding in what TextSecure is failing: attracting a widespread community of developers. This is only a confirmation, in my opinion.

EDIT: and, by the way, while Telegram security is no good, I wonder why we cannot have both (security & developer-friendliness)

<comment><USER3> Try using libtextsecure instead of interacting with websockets directly. We publish artifacts, and while the API might change over time, if you stick with a versioned artifact you'll be good. [http://open-whisper- systems.readme.io/v1.0/docs/textsecure-j...](http://open-whisper- systems.readme.io/v1.0/docs/textsecure-java-library)

We have a few bots in production that use libtextsecure and have been running fine for almost a year without any maintenance.

<comment><USER4> Last year I wanted to help out with the TextSecure browser (chrome extension) project and had a similar experience as the OP.

I was a bit at loss about where to begin, as I couldn't find documentation about getting the extension setup for dev/testing. Specifically I couldn't get past the QR-code auth screen as I seemed to be missing some special configuration to connect with the servers.

I just assumed it wasn't really ready for outside devs yet.

But I just checked back in on the repo and it looks like a new CONTRIBUTING doc has been added, which is great: [https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure- Browser/blob/ma...](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure- Browser/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) This is the type of stuff I was looking for.

I'm happy to see WhisperSystems making contributing more accessible. I probably could have learned this stuff by asking the devs, but I didn't want to bother them, I much prefer reading docs and playing with it myself first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I briefly looked at Telegram's crypto code a couple months ago. Here's a few funny things I spotted:

Telegram's message format uses ambiguous padding, so they have to try all padding lengths when validating a message: [https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/...](https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/src/main/java/org/telegram/messenger/HandshakeAction.java#L346)

That loop leaks timing information, as does the "Utilities.arraysEquals" method it uses. I'm not sure if it opens up a timing attack, but it's suspect: [https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/...](https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/src/main/java/org/telegram/messenger/Utilities.java#L283)

There is another spot where they pad with zero bytes without any authentication. This may leave room to mess with the protocol: [https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/...](https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/src/main/java/org/telegram/messenger/HandshakeAction.java#L261)

There are also some weird things throughout the code, like using SecureRandom.nextDouble() all over: [https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/...](https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/src/main/java/org/telegram/android/SecretChatHelper.java#L1531) [https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/...](https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/src/main/java/org/telegram/messenger/HandshakeAction.java#L164)

<comment><USER6> What does leaking timing information mean?

<comment><USER5> Nate Lawson has a good explanation of timing attacks (against my own code): [http://rdist.root.org/2009/05/28/timing-attack-in-google- key...](http://rdist.root.org/2009/05/28/timing-attack-in-google-keyczar- library/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've beeing developing this [https://github.com/yagop/telegram- bot](https://github.com/yagop/telegram-bot) for a year. Currently most Telegram Bots uses my proyect for building bots.

Now it's deprecated and I'm really sad about that.

<comment><USER8> Hey! I found your work really useful. Thanks very much for your effort :) I look forward to your next project!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> OT:

Awesome, great, APIs are good.

Know what's better? Open specifications and federated services. It's called XMPP and if it's not enough, then something better should be developed.

Is this the replacement of SMS? Not sure what people would have thought at the time if they could not send SMS to other mobile carriers. It saddens me even more to see public institutions moving their SMS infrastructure to the new 'carriers'.

Protocols are not a new thing. Let's not go back to the time were computers could not talk to each other.

<comment><USER10> Anecdote:

In our company, we recently switched from Jabber to Telegram.

Telegram is easier to use on multiple devices (it synchronized automatically and you don't have to worry that if you leave one device open, you won't get the message elsewhere), has both a usable mobile app and a usable web/desktop app, it has the "private" chat that's much easier to use than OTR (Pidgin, Gadjim and Adium each implement OTR differntly and it never works right cross- client), and, as one co-worker noted, it finally looks like something from 21st century.

TextSecure/Signal/what's the name now has - in addition to confusing branding cross-OS - strange SMS reliance and no working desktop app. I would prefer it to Telegram though, if they had some reliable destop application, but they don't.

<comment><USER11> TextSecure SMS is getting phased out.

[https://whispersystems.org/blog/goodbye-encrypted- sms/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/goodbye-encrypted-sms/)

<comment><USER12> Encrypted SMS is, but the Android app will (apparently) continue to support unencrypted SMS.

<comment><USER13> This is why I switched to SMSSecure. It's a TextSecure fork that continues to support encrypted SMS direct to the phone and not through a server of any kind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is nice, but I really wonder why they don't focus on more important things. For example this issue I opened over a year ago, asking them to use end-to-end encryption by default and for group chats: [https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/issues/156](https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/issues/156)

Probably because features are more important than security, sigh.

<comment><USER15> It's not that easy: How would you exchange the private keys when using multiple clients? This would require to user to transfer the private key files or to remember a secure password. Both options aren't possible for usability reasons if you want to beat WhatsApp.

<comment><USER14> This has been discussed a lot in the issue thread. Key exchange really isn't the issue.

Scanning a QR code or creating a secure connection between the clients to exchange the keys isn't that hard.

<comment><USER15> What when I want to login at a computer but don't have my phone with me?

<comment><USER16> Same as using 1Password — you don't.

You're trading convenience for increased security.

<comment><USER17> This is why it isn't 'by default'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Telegram is about freedom and openness – our code is open for everyone, _as > is our API_.

Open _for usage_ I guess. It's a pity that the API (and server) source is still closed. The Bot Platform is a cool initiative anyways, so good luck!

<comment><USER15> Not only for usage. The protocol is open and the clients are GPLv3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Telegram is not truly open source. They utilize a pre-compiled library for the actual messaging code, as seen here:

[https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/tree/master/TMessagesProj/...](https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/tree/master/TMessagesProj/libs)

They would like to have you believe otherwise through their PR efforts, but I wouldn't trust them simply on the fact that they claim they are open source when they are not, and it's not clear what's going on in that binary lib. If they never claimed to be open source in the first place, it would be a different story.

<comment><USER20> Ehm, the "jni/" directory contains the source for those files. Running "ndk- build" (from Android NDK) in top-level dir will recompile them.

Looking at the source the libraries contain AES code, libjpeg, libwebp and libyuv to handle image decoding, some image blur algorithms and video NV21-YUV conversion routines.

Nothing out of the ordinary for an Android app - offloading CPU intensive stuff to C/C++ where it's almost always noticably slower.

Can you please, PLEASE, check your facts before jumping the gun next time?

<comment><USER19> I retract my statement. This used to be the case, but appears to no longer be so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I believe this an amazing move by Telegram. I firmly believe that open platforms tend to win in the long run.

Whatsapp should take the hint and open up their platform for developers... Curiously I was thinking about building bot-based services on their platform (largest user base in my country), but basically gave up after seing how closed they are to any initiative like this. Felt even worse after reading things like this: [https://twitter.com/gcmartinelli/status/605776036358291456](https://twitter.com/gcmartinelli/status/605776036358291456)

<comment><USER22> [http://www.whatshash.com/](http://www.whatshash.com/) Someone built whatsapp bot! I dont know if they used some official api or what.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the reference! I've seen some implementations ([https://github.com/asdofindia/python-whatsapp- bot](https://github.com/asdofindia/python-whatsapp-bot)) but usually Whatsapp bans accounts that do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> daniel-levin Telegram is really cool. I have long thought about what additions and modifications I could make to my mobile texting program. Now I have to convince all my friends to move from Whatsapp.

</comment><comment><USER23> Great news ! Check out Github bot for sure people . I am already in love ! This feature is making me remember my own simple telegram bot that helped me to convey 1000 Happy birthdays to my friend in 15 mins. [https://gist.github.com/scriptnull/7877b404f33de2b7445a](https://gist.github.com/scriptnull/7877b404f33de2b7445a)

<comment><USER24> Your friend sure appreciated that...

<comment><USER23> yeah ! He was surprised and so were my other friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I woke up one night with the idea that if WhatsApp allowed API integration, it would so awesome : you could message DHL or UPS with your waybill tracking number, and they could push updates to you.

More interestingly, the WhatsApp text box then effectively becomes a REPL shell to a remote API : you could ask for stopping updates, updates only once a day, etc; If the remote server implements a DSL, you could do a LOT.

The possibilities were endless and exciting.

But I have a feeling WhatsApp / their new owner are going to just let the opportunity pass by. If anyone at FB is reading this : guys, Business integration with WhatsApp is where the next $250 billion is. That's how FB will get a permanent, maybe even irreversible, grip on mobile. Imagine every service business providing updates via WhatsApp by integrating with their backend.

<comment><USER26> They did announce plans for B2C use cases earlier this year (and of course are already used for conducting business, but only for communicating with a human on the other end

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> All the comments on this news item made me really want to try this out and see how it works.

I downloaded and installed the desktop version. Created an account with my phone number (okay: if I ever lose my phone, I'll permanently lose access to my account!).

I see how to add contacts. I need their phone number. I don't know my friend's numbers. We use facebook, xmpp, email, lots of shit, but nobody still relies on SMS nowadays, and my phonebook is literally under 10 entries long (and I'm sure mum and dad won't be using Telegram).

This reliance on old networks really kills it for me. IMHO, linking an account to a device that _can_ get stolen or lost is also something I'll never really understand.

</comment><comment><USER28> Telegram is the company that ignores proven crypto standards, rolls their own crypto without any verification or audit, then offers a $200k bounty to "break" their crypto by requiring developers to work with an arm tied behind their back by reducing the types of attacks that could be made in the real world.

Seems MTProto is the same as its always been

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6931457](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6931457)

[http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams- crypta...](http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams- cryptanalysis-contest)

</comment><comment><USER29> Bananas or oranges anyone? [http://telegram.me/PollBot?startgroup=c4dd5512c96b2952a17396...](http://telegram.me/PollBot?startgroup=c4dd5512c96b2952a17396273a72e18f)

<comment><USER30> Not found There is no Telegram account with the username you provided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I really like that they embrace HATEOAS, e.g., "what can this bot do?", even though the API might not be strictly RESTful (they call it an "HTTP-based interface").

</comment><comment><USER32> Can telegram be considered safe? I looked at eff's guide to secure chat earlier today and was quite confused that it seeming,y scores full marks and not-full marks.

[https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard](https://www.eff.org/secure- messaging-scorecard)

</comment><comment><USER33> I've always been surprised something like this never really got going. I think the issue here is that it needs to be on message platforms that people actually use (iMessage, WhatsApp, Gchat, etc). Is it really not possible to hook in to those platforms?

<comment><USER34> The moment you hook into those systems, you're segmenting your userbase. If you rely on iMessage for transport, you can only talk to Apple users. The situation is similar with Hangouts and WhatsApp - while you're not limited to one device manufacturer, there's no official API, and any attempt to do so is a hack that could break at any time with no warning.

Telegram is slightly better in that it at least has a client API, but you're still locked to a single provider (the official Telegram server).

<comment><USER33> And that provider is a tiny fraction the size of iMessage, GChat, WhatsApp, et al.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Create you own bot with Node.js! [https://github.com/orzFly/node-telegram- bot](https://github.com/orzFly/node-telegram-bot)

</comment><comment><USER36> I made a simple bot plugins based in Node.js. [https://github.com/dlion/smagenBot](https://github.com/dlion/smagenBot)

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm guessing this was inspired by IRC eggdrop bots? Seem awfully similar, just different comms mechanism

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't have any experience with Telegram. Can anyone share how it compares with Slack?

<comment><USER39> They have completely different goals, Telegram is a competitor to SMS/WhatsApp, not Slack/IRC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is great, nice work guys

</comment><comment><USER41> PingBot for server health monitoring anyone? or we'll just spam chats with Elisa clones?</comment>


Show HN: Our Code Stories - <AUTHOR> Our Code Stories (https://ourcodestories.com) is a site that holds animated, annotated code walk-throughs called 'playbacks'. These resemble recorded live code demos but one can usually get through a playback faster than a video by skipping only to the points where the author has something to say.
These can be used to create code-oriented tutorials and programming books. Here is a 'book' I wrote about Clojure:
https://ourcodestories.com/markm208/Playlist/4
The site can also be used to create professional programming portfolios. These animated playbacks are a great way to communicate how one thinks about problem solving and code to potential employers. A dev can add text, images, screenshots, and video comments to their code. Finally, the guided walk-throughs can be used to help dev teams prepare for a code review or get a new team member up to speed on a code base.
Users can create an unlimited number of free public and private playbacks. They can also charge a fee to access a group of playbacks. For example, if someone wants to write a book about a programming topic they can use Our Code Stories instead of going through a traditional publisher. I am hoping to disrupt traditional programming book publishing with playbacks. Authors receive 75% of each sale.
Playbacks are made by using the open-source software that I created called 'Storyteller' (https://markm208.github.io/storyteller/index.html). Storyteller is a plugin to the Visual Studio Code editor. Our Code Stories is a site that holds groups of Storyteller playbacks kind of like how GitHub holds Git repos. Follow us @ourcodestories.
I am curious whether professional sw devs will find this medium useful. I welcome any feedback. I am also looking for brave people to use the tools to create and publish their own playbacks. I am willing to help early adopters with any issues they have (email me @ my profile email). <comment><USER2> This looks really interesting. I think I'll try it out for a tutorial session. I look forward to digging into the underlying project as well!</comment>


Opinion: Why desktop Linux may have lost its chance - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9132158/Opinion_Why_desktop_Linux_may_have_lost_its_chance?taxonomyId=122&pageNumber=1

<comment><USER2> Don't bother reading it. Here is the last paragraph.

      As apps and data move into the cloud, the traditional
      PC metaphors are beginning to lose their relevance.
      We're entering the age of the invisible PC: a world
      where Windows may soon seem as archaic and limiting
      as the mainframes of yesterday. The new computing
      model is extending the digital workspace beyond
      the desktop to a range of new devices -- including
      smartphones, netbooks, and gadgets not even
      invented yet. Some of these devices run Linux now,
      and many more will in the future. The value
      proposition of open source for hardware manufacturers
      is such that Linux's future as a vital, thriving
      client-side OS is all but assured. It just won't
      be on the desktop.

Don't bother reading that even. Here it is in a sentence.

      A lot of people don't use Linux.

<comment><USER3> A lot of people don't use linux, but they will in the future, just not on the desktop, cause nobody will use a desktop in the future?

<comment><USER2> Right. This "client-side OS" that "is all but assured" will be running on the... server perhaps? Haha!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's hard to beat the home team. Microsoft (and Apple) created what we think of as a desktop computer. It's not enough for Linux to be "just as good" and not even enough for them to be "a little bit better" Linux would have to totally redefine what a desktop computer is and how it works. I don't think there's enough room for innovation in what we think of as a desktop computer experience for that to ever happen. As this article rightly states Linux is on the ground floor of the next wave and that's a good spot to be. Linux won't be visible however. How many TIVO owners know they're running Linux? 1%? less? It's a great product though because TIVO was able to focus on things like usability, UI design, predictive recording, etc. Linux is a fantastic foundation but someone else has to build the house.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, there's always been a lot of "I can't use anything other than what I'm used to because everything else is too different" and "Why would I switch to that? It works exactly like what I already have". I've heard this from a number of people over the years concerning even trying Linux, both usually from the same person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> the main problem with linux is that it doesn't limit the users choices enough. It's fine to keep all the choices available, but put them behind the scenes. When someone boots up a linux distro for the first time they should see a browser, a word processor, email, a media player, and an IM client...some basic games too. ubuntu netbook remix is the best example of this that i've seen. Once you get this down, polish polish polish. The average user doing average tasks should _never_ see anything but a slick GUI. If you sit any non computer savvy person down in front of it and they see anything else you have failed and you need to do more tweaking.

this is why apple can charge a huge premium on their products. people sit down and it _goes_.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have used Windows through many generations. I was happy. I began to feel frustrated as a user because I felt constrained somehow. I could find tools but actually making tools, i.e. programming, was out there somewhere that I could not get a handle on. I grew up on machines with BASIC at the command prompt and was initially just fine with Windows. I had a spreadsheet and email and a browser, what more could I want? I initially tried Ubuntu Linux because of a piece of software that was only available on Linux. I found Linux incredibly frustrating. Where were my clickable GUIs? Command lines and sudo and permissions drove me crazy. Eventually I became somewhat comfortable with those things, found my way through the various forums, learned the file hierarchy well enough to deal. Downloaded an IDE or 6, played with C and Python and Ruby. Got to the point where I can fix a weird problem in an hour or so. And.... I still have this legacy XP machine that my business runs on. A machine I have grown to hate, that feels like a prison. That requires constant registry cleaning, virus removing and endless invested time that does not lead to any kind of progress.

But....I can't just jump on over to Linux completely. I have Quickbooks holding me back. Eventually I will get SQL Register going or some other solution running and slurp all the legacy data from two companies into it.

I am an earlyish adopter, not at the front of the curve but before the hump for sure. I am not a typical user I am small business oriented, certainly not a gamer or a casual user.

I believe that Linux will prevail in time. It is important to remember that the widespread use of computers is barely a decade old. It may seem like an eternity if you are living in the fast paced world of development and business, but it has been only seconds for everyone else.

<comment><USER8> Have you considered running your legacy Windows software in a VM? VirtualBox is free.

<comment><USER9> If the GPL version is enough, then yes, it is free. But the free as a beer binary is not free for his purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the author makes some very valid arguments and presents them in a non- dogmatic way (from either side). I use Linux at home and Windows at work and am fairly happy in both environments. In general, I've found that Linux applications tend to lack polish and Windows applications (and the OS) tend to lack functionality (from a developer's POV).

I can also agree with the author that the fragmentation of the Linux market poses a significant barrier to entry to most unintiated and nontechnical users.

<comment><USER11> Ubuntu has noticeably reduced fragmentation of the "user-visible" Linux (client-side). Fragmentation of the server side Linux (Red Hat, SUSE etc) is less important.

Ubuntu has also somewhat lowered the startup costs and the learning curve. Of course, only so much can be done in this department.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd rather leave versions of Linux like Ubuntu and their ilk and keep the amateurs out of our way as we use the professional setups and leave us alone.

<comment><USER13> Professional in terms of Enterprise Finance/HR - like Windows XP/Vista/7? Professional in terms of Music/Design (OS X)? Professional in terms of Rock Solid Reliability and Stability (AIX?) Professional in terms of Security? (OpenBSD?)

I wonder which Profession choses Linux? Software Developers are all over the map. Professional Startups? Professional SysAdmins?

<comment><USER14> I'm satisfied by "professional as in not a mere pundit". Why would it need to be more specific than that? Yeah, I know pundits get paid. I figured it was implied that we were limiting the scope to those who use the system in question.</comment></comment></comment>


Manhattan: Real-time, multi-tenant distributed database for Twitter scale - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/2014/manhattan-our-real-time-multi-tenant-distributed-database-for-twitter-scale <comment><USER2> From what I understand, Manhattan is based on the ideas from ElephantDB. Unfortunately, development has pretty much stopped on ElephantDB despite the fact a book by Nathan Marz is being written about big data that is dependent on it. [http://www.manning.com/marz/](http://www.manning.com/marz/)

Summingbird (bear with me, I'll tie this in) is also twitter's answer for writing code once and seeing it run on a variety of execution platforms such as hadoop, storm, spark, akka, etc... Not all of these have been built out, but the platform was designed to be a generic framework to support write once execute everywhere.

Summingbird is written to support Manhattan's model as well. The high level idea is to use versioning to determine whether a request is precomputed (batch), computed (realtime) or a hybrid (precomputed + computed). These are expressed as monads with basic functionality present in algebird. One way to bring support to this model to the open source world would be to implement storehaus bindings for elephantdb and to resurrect elephantdb or build a similar service to provide storage similar to Manhattan.

Overall, very early yet promising work in the open source community.

[edit: book is not about elephantdb, but is a critical component. modified wording. Also added link]

<comment><USER3> When Manhattan first started, our first use case was this. To support batch (something we talk about in our blog post). Similar to ElephantDB, the biggest difference was we wrote our own storage engine (seadb), instead of using BDBJE. We built the hadoop pipeline service so developers only needed to supply us with sequence files and we did the work for them by watching.

Over time, Manhattan evolved into a fully fledged read/write database that is able to support batch + read/write in the same system. Batch is great for some use cases, but sometimes the cost is too expensive when you factor in how much processing power, storage, etc is needed for that model. We support both of course still we want developers to have the freedom to increase their productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Corresponding Twitter Engineering blog post: [https://blog.twitter.com/2014/manhattan-our-real-time- multi-...](https://blog.twitter.com/2014/manhattan-our-real-time-multi-tenant- distributed-database-for-twitter-scale)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that's much more interesting. The wired article just repeats the overview and loses the interesting technical details. I'm not sure why it was posted instead of the original content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think its not an exaggeration at all. Twitter literally pulls data from thousands of servers but we are missing the point of Manhattan. As some of us know twitter services scale dynamic according the load they are serving and some engineers at Twitter decide to buy a hole truck of steroids to this idea. Here is a trick - We make container agents (storage services) "clients" of the Manhattan database(the core). They are Mesos processes which scale dynamic to the needs of the service (i.e 1 container = 10000 reads/writes per second, 2 containers = 20000 read/writes per second and so on) which allows the dynamic scaling of requests per second and writes per second. The core handles finding actual machines which have the data, replicating it and so on. There might be realtime storage service contaners which need fast data access, batch importer and timeseries they mention and so on. This requires a lot of gymnastics but offer a lot of nice features.The Manhattan database acts as virtual layer over thousands of machines and storage services allows for customized data manipulation. Cool...huh? According importance and scale (multi dc) this operates on i think it almost impossible to open source this. But who knows. miracles are happening now and then.

<comment><USER6> Or at least i think that is happening something along those lines.

<comment><USER6> And their Alerting system is called Koalabird(picture of manhattan db - Section Alerting :))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting.. The database sounds almost too good to be true. I wonder if they'll open source this. They've done so in the past with projects like Storm, so I'm hopeful.

<comment><USER8> Consistency, that's the usual performance killer.

They have got the hadoop watcher right as well as the BTree/SSTable update mechanisms - heavy import, light update is a use-case that is not catered to usually.

The rest of it feels a lot like memcache (membase/zbase impls) when reading up on its architecture - plus SSDs, that's always going to beats the pants off anything with disks.

Looks good overall, this is probably not for you if want to do exact counters or match up different counters (i.e +1,+1,+1 for a counter funnel).

If you don't need updates to be consistent, like if you imported hadoop data in without modification, this starts to look like a really good model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone enlighten me as to why 6000 tweets a second is something to make a big deal about? At 140 characters per message that comes out to 840,000 bytes/s < 1 Megabytes per second. In 2014 is a service that can handle 1 Megabytes/s impressive?

<comment><USER10> It's not. Figuring out which of the 240 million accounts they should be sent to is.

<comment><USER11> I spent a little while trying to implement a twitter back end for fun during their fail whale period and it's really just a data structure problem. (Edit: _Figuring out which of the 240 million accounts they should be sent to._ ) You can literally get the basic freed process running 10k tweets per second with 100 million accounts on a single PC and a 1Gbit Ethernet connection where the Ethernet connection is the bottleneck. Fanning that out to various places to listen in is a fairly basic scaling issue.

Not that I took it vary far, but my first stab to see what the scaling issues would be was actually plenty fast to run there feed process at the time.

PS: The 'trick' is to keep two lists one everything a user follows, and another is everything that follows each account. For showing the messages to someone when they log in you keep the last 10 message Id's with timestamp or sequence ID so if someone follows 5k accounts you can avoid looking at the vast majority of those messages then sign them up the device to listen to new messages. (Sure, sometimes you will need to look past that top 10 but it's rather effective.)

(And for the downvoters I can upload some code if you want to see it.)

<comment><USER12> Ah, hubris. Try simulating some celebrities talking to one another. 15M followers (Ashton Kutcher) / 10K fanouts per second = 25 minutes to deliver one tweet.

That's the difference between "getting the basic process running" and operating at scale.

<comment><USER11> Ehh, first off the 2009 twitter was vary different than the 2014 beast. For some context: [http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/social- networking...](http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/social- networking/information/5-events-to-crash-twitter.htm)

Back when they where growing from 500,000 users to 7 million total users they where having major issues and that's when I was looking into things.

Anyway, not I was suggesting 1GB would be fine today. Still, I was saturating a 1GB connection so 15M (over twice the total users back then) * ~200bytes * 8 / ~1000^3 = ~24 seconds did you have an extra 60x multiplier in there somewhere?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't even look at databases before Aphyr verifies it they keep their promises...

<comment><USER14> You'd be better served by using his Jepsen series as an opportunity to learn how to evaluate and break databases yourself instead of waiting to be spoonfed.

A $DATABASE_COMPANY was recently looking to hire somebody to be a dedicated database breaker. The Jepsen series was mentioned in the job post.

Worshipping celebrity is unhealthy in what should be an engineering profession and is a sign of a deeply embedded pop culture.

Don't be lazy.

<comment><USER13> I was kidding.. I never needed to use anything but Postgres.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Article calls Gizzard, "strongly consistent" Gizzard's GitHub page says, "eventually consistent"[1]. What?

[1] [https://github.com/twitter/gizzard](https://github.com/twitter/gizzard)

<comment><USER3> Yes, I think the article got that wrong. You are right that Gizzard is eventually consistent. The storage engine for Gizzard is mySQL, so in the event you want to do some node-local indexing, you at least have mySQL's strong consistency, but you won't achieve it in the overall system across keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Real-time" is a bit of a misnomer as far as databases are concerned, especially if you're talking about a system that defaults to eventual consistency. I think they would have been better off saying "high- availability".

<comment><USER17> High availability isn't the same thing as having consistently low latencies. Some databases have spiky latency graphs without it being an availability issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone else find the opening statement a little misleading? Yes they originally come from one place, but they are sent from Twitter to the app of your choosing via JSON or similar. Sure there's going to be more than one request for the icon sprite and user avatars, but all from Twitter.

"When you open the Twitter app on your smartphone and all those tweets, links, icons, photos, and videos materialize in front of you, they're not coming from one place. They're coming from thousands of places."

<comment><USER5> It sounds like you're misinterpreting. The way I'm reading it, by "thousands of places" they mean "thousands of machines". Which may be an exaggeration, but it should be trivially obvious that data is sharded and must be collated for display.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So this is an internal system right? What is the point of telling the world if it's not available for anyone to look at or use. Perhaps a recruiting exercise?

<comment><USER16> Google, for one, has been doing this kind of thing for years. Dremel ([http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36632.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36632.html)), for instance, was the subject of a paper they published after they'd been developing and using it internally for years. It's never been open sourced, but there's now Apache Drill ([http://incubator.apache.org/drill/](http://incubator.apache.org/drill/)) which is based on the same paper. In short, it's part marketing, part recruiting, and part ego. I'm hopeful that Twitter will at least publish a research paper that digs into some of the nuances of Manhattan and compares/contrasts against other technologies.

<comment><USER4> There is also Parquet from Twitter which is inspired by the Dremel paper: [https://blog.twitter.com/2013/dremel-made-simple-with- parque...](https://blog.twitter.com/2013/dremel-made-simple-with-parquet)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Although I think that the article is interesting, I'm missing some details, like more engineering stuff, rather than high level details.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the technical blog post: [https://blog.twitter.com/2014/manhattan-our- real-time-multi-...](https://blog.twitter.com/2014/manhattan-our-real-time- multi-tenant-distributed-database-for-twitter-scale)</comment></comment>


Getsploit tool. Search all the exploits from the terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vulnersCom/getsploit <comment><USER2> So, are these weaponized exploits, like you'd get with MetaSploit?</comment>