Sailfish OS Oulanka is now available - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jolla.com/oulanka/ <comment><USER2> I am still waiting for the time I can actually _buy_ a phone running one of these alternate OSes. Jolla has a shop, but shop.jolla.com is "not available in my country". (I can't even see what they're selling!)

<comment><USER3> If you _really_ want an iPhone or Android alternative you can buy a license (they sell an Sailfish OS for Xperia X or XA2 (you have to bring/buy the device by yourself)) also from non-supported countries:

\- [https://together.jolla.com/question/187365/shop-sorry-not- av...](https://together.jolla.com/question/187365/shop-sorry-not-available-in- your-country/)

\- [https://together.jolla.com/question/169734/sailfishx-not- ava...](https://together.jolla.com/question/169734/sailfishx-not-available-in- some-countries/)

If this is too complicated you likely wouldn't be happy with Sailfish anyway as there are quite some drawbacks (and also of course highlights).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have used Sailfish OS as my only phone for 4 years now. The nice things are that it comes with a terminal emulator, you can get a (root) shell, call rpm, ip etc.

The not so nice thing is that the company obviously has no ressources to do anything about the browser. It is a seriously outdated Firefox.

The HW situation is not so bright at the moment. They still support the original models Jolla and Jolla C. But I guess all phones that have been used are showing serious signs of age by now.

Sony Xperia X is no longer sold. They are stuck at a 3.10 kernel and Android 4.4. I am typing this message on one.

Sony Xperia XZ solves these dead ends, but there seem still issues with the baseport, so the SW is only called beta.

For anybody considering Sailfish, if you are happy with F-Droid and proud of not running Google Play Services then this might be for you. Of course there are also real purists who don't even install the Android support.

</comment><comment><USER5> Now that Nokia (HMD) is shipping phones. Jolla should collaborate with them on a Sailfish device.

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://blog.jolla.com/content/uploads/2019/03/battery1-1024...](https://blog.jolla.com/content/uploads/2019/03/battery1-1024x649.png)

That contrast is terrible.

<comment><USER7> It is because of the ambience/theme. You can change it as per your wish.</comment></comment>


Yelp: More than half of restaurants temporarily closed now permanently shuttered - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/article/yelp-restaurants-temporary-permanent-closures/ <comment><USER2> This pandemic has been extra hard on Restaurants.

In India, an alternative to dining out has emerged in recent years. These are called "Curry Points". (Perhaps they are called Delis in the US, I'm not sure)

See, Indian food is always a binary thing. As in, we eat a base item (Rice, pancakes like Dosa, Chapathi, etc) along with a curry. There are very few cuisines that consist of only one item. And most of them are from other countries. Examples are Noodles and Pizzas, etc.

So a staple Indian dinner is a bowl of rice, with two / three or more curries / gravys etc.

The "Curry Points" I have mentioned, simply sell the curries and gravies. They usually have about 20 different ones. People buy their choice, with each sachet costing about 10 - 20 rs ( 1 USD is about 80 Rs, so about 30 cents), go home, prepare rice or chapathis, which are very easy and quick to make, and have a decent dinner that does not cost an arm and a leg.

A decent dinner for 2 at a good restaurant in urban centers costs about 800 to 1000 (about 10 - 12 USD), but considering average household income in urban centers is about 40,000 Rs. (500 USD) per month , they are not suitable for daily visits.

A similar dinner for 2, with say 4 curries, costs about 2 USD. And that is including costs of rice / chapathis, energy costs, etc.

I don't know if this kind of model existd in the USA or European countries, but the businesses are very profitable. The store front is hardly 5 ft x 7 ft, costs about 4000 Rs. per month (about 50 USD Per month). Some store fronts are simply vans. Curries are prepared at homes and the storefronts are open for about 3 hours in the evening.

Perhaps this could be one answer to closing restaurants.

<comment><USER3> The US doesn't have nearly as many street food vendors as some other countries. I've never seen anything like a Taiwan night market, for example, where you might find one person selling green onion pancakes, cooked one by one on a griddle, for a price that's low even by local standards.

I wonder whether regulatory capture is happening, either intentionally or organically, by way of licensing, inspection, and food preparation rules that make it hard for anything smaller than a food truck to thrive in the US.

<comment><USER2> In India, regulation is lax and enforcement is even worse.

However, I have found free market forces weeding out low quality ones. It's not a perfect solution, but it works.

Most of the food prepared in these curry points is usually fresh.

However, they offer a great way to have a sumptuous meal,with many varieties for very low cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> But, according to their data very very few restaurants were temporarily closed _or_ permanently closed. The two most impacted cities were 7.9 and 8.2 closures per thousand (so, less than 1%).

I was under the impression restaurants were a sufficiently difficult business that new restaurants failed at a pretty high rate (a quarter withinin a year, half within 3 years, per this source: [https://www.restaurantowner.com/public/Restaurant-Failure- Ra...](https://www.restaurantowner.com/public/Restaurant-Failure-Rates- Recounted-Where-Do-They-Get-Those-Numbers.cfm)). Given this, I'm not sure this <1% permanent closure rate is that unusual.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you want to talk about economic justice and helping tear down barriers that disadvantage the poor and underserved, having a national strategy that targets businesses like restaurants would be a good place to start. Along with other similar industries. Restaurants are a big driver of entry-level and family- supporting jobs. As you can see, they're also the most vulnerable to insolvency.

It would be better than Congress doing the mindless easy thing and promulgating untargeted subsidies that larger corporate entities are the most talented at cashing in on. By the way, the amount of paperwork and disorganization of these stimulus implementations doesn't help the most short- staffed family businesses. But I would guess doing things properly and strategically takes work and judgement that we don't have right now.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure how much a better strategy could help, since most American restaurants teeter on the edge of failure even in a good year. Even if we tossed around enough aid to keep restaurant books balanced until the far off point when they can open at full capacity, how many restaurants would survive the reopening? (It's not an exact comparison, but something like 60% of restaurants fail within a year after starting.)

And how many restaurant owners are willing to put their life on pause indefinitely?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In california reopening moved our daily death rate from ~60ppl per day to ~90[1]

I hate to say it, but we all have to go sometime. Is smashing the economic means of the masses worth the lives of so few?

There are plenty of other economic vs. life preserving trade offs we make elsewhere, so clearly that's not a valid rebuttal.

When will we decide that the emotional response to Covid is not a rational one?

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/california/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/california/)

<comment><USER8> It doesn't seem right that one should be forced to go before it's "their" time as a result of the masses' inability to care about the collective health of their neighbors.

<comment><USER7> No one would force someone to expose themselves to that risk should they choose not to participate in the wider society. Your point would make sense if people were intentionally spreading the disease. (ftr i am against covid parties). But in this case for someone to get the disease they must choose to expose themselves to it (by going to a restaurant, by not sanitizing their hands before touching their eyes et al)

The point is that the freedoms/rights of the masses are being restricted for the benefit of few.

And to be clear I'm not saying that people should not be prudent whilst retaining their freedoms. It's prudent to wear a seat belt in a car, or a helmet on a motorcycle. Similarly it's prudent to wear a mask and sanitize hands and objects.

But to tell everyone they cannot drive because someone (not the driver) might die, or you cannot drive a motorcycle because it increases your chance of death over alternative means of transport has never been a rational argument. Yet we take similar arguments about covid19 as sufficient?

<comment><USER8> I see your points, but I admittedly have a different perspective.

Sure, no one would force a person to expose themselves to that risk. However, for much of the population, there comes a point where they have to participate in the wider society for necessities, e.g. groceries; obviously, there are a few exceptions to that statement. Sure, they could get their groceries delivered, if they can afford it. But if they can't afford it, then they must participate in order to continue to live. All of this doesn't even begin to touch on essential workers, who are forced to work and may not have an easy time attaining another job.

The freedoms and rights aren't being restricted for the benefit of few; it's for the _safety_ of many.

The example for driving doesn't match here, I feel. One can observe cars driving erratically and do their best to avoid them or one choose to take an alternative mode of transport in order to avoid getting into a car accident. But viral transmission doesn't have any realistic similarity to traffic deaths. One cannot see viral particles in the air as they get transmitted from one person to another. And anyone who comes into contact with that person is at risk from the moment the transmitter contracts the virus until they become immune. Traffic deaths don't work like that.

One cannot choose to not to be a part of society when they are required to participate to be able to live. That ability to live is a right afforded to everyone. Why is someone's right to life worth less than someone's temporarily restricted freedom to do what they want?

Are you comfortable dying for my right to see an improv show? Because I'll tell you right now, I'm sure as hell not comfortable dying for yours.

Is smashing the already transient lives of real people worth the bottom lines of a few restaurants?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It would be interesting to know how many restaurant closures there were around the same time last year.

</comment><comment><USER10> Not only restaurants. A lot of people reinvented self-sufficiency: from doing their own hair, nails, to planting fruits and veggies in their backyards. There are many negative effects of the pandemic, worst of all, all the suffering, but also many positive ones as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well this is sad.

It seems to me that this should have been avoidable - along with others like airlines and cruise lines saying they're going to go bankrupt. Why is hitting "pause" for half a year such a death sentence? As an individual, while I don't have a lot of money and my income is 0 currently, I've reduced expenses and could live off my savings for the next couple years. Why can't businesses do a similar thing -- is there some competitive advantage, in better times, that motivates businesses to keep almost nothing in reserves?

<comment><USER12> Because you can't hit pause on your liabilities. Double entry bookkeeping doesn't give a care about your virus. Your liabilities are someone else's assets. A pause in business activity on the scale we're seeing causes a chain reaction. The restaurant can't pause rent or loans (and even if they could, that just causes other downstream effects for bank balance sheets who can no longer loan out as much because their reserves are tapped, etc), or pause utilities, and when the restaurant ceases to purchase food and equipment that causes downstream effects on distributors and suppliers who have to tighten their belt which affects their creditors, employees, and suppliers, which affects everything else. Many restaurants lease or rent their equipment. There are huge capital costs to starting a restaurant.

Businesses often operate on the margins, especially restaurants. They have to pull a lot of volume in order to make it selling food at $10-20 a plate. They maybe have 3% net profit margins, so they need to sell millions of dollars worth of food to make a decent income for the owners.

<comment><USER13> This is the problem with everybody being leveraged to the hilt.

I suspect some small fraction of property owners, however, are unleveraged, absentee, and likely willing to grant rent forbearance for quite awhile. For example, older people holding onto real estate for their children, or who simply really like their tenant and are committed to the community. Restaurants lucky enough to have such landlords, or similarly situated landlord-restaurateurs, are probably counting their blessings right now.

We wouldn't have a very dynamic economy if everybody operated this way, but at least there's _some_ heterogeneity to help us bootstrap things. No comfort for the huge number of people who have effectively lost their life savings, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jeppesen-io For years and years the internet has been full of "something something is going to be the next economic disaster". Sometimes that's Obama or Trump elected. Sometimes it's high corporate or government debt.

Always thought they were along the lines of even a broken clock is right twice a day, at best.

But this, makes me worry for the first time</comment>


Should I drop out? - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I am a student major in Computer Engineering and I am in 3rd year now. I have been following Hackernews for a long time because I am interested in technology and start up. I really love learning practical technologies which I can see their  result immediately. Gradually, what I am self-learning  are divergent from what I am taught in my university (I am self-learning iOS game development, Node.js... and I think you have already known what our university is teaching us). This makes me headache because my time is limited, I feel I cannot do both well. Therefore, I consider drop out and focus on self-learning. Does anyone have the same experience? Can you share what you did then? Thank you. <comment><USER2> stay in school. buckle down and put your school and social happyness first.

make games on the side. game programming is very relevant to other tech, development processes, bugfixing, optimizing, security issues, anti-cheat methods, etc are often more straight-forward in game programming than in other places. for example you never have to optimize a php app until it has tons of users... so maybe, less php developers optimize code than game developers, etc. also not as many ppl know how to write networking and 3d code, so it is a great place to start if you want to end up with a great job/skillset.

if you want to drop out my advice would be not drop out until you have a job lined up.

having a 40hr/week job + commute and trying to work on the side feels exactly the same as having class. too much to do and limited time. trust me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much. The last line is very reasonable ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Stay in school, but don't worry too much about grades. Spend as much time as you can working on projects that interest you. You're also in a great position to meet the people you might want to build something (like a startup) with in the future.</comment>


DHI Group plans to sell off Slashdot and Sourceforge - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/07/dhi-group-plans-to-sell-off-slashdot-and-sourceforge/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure they'll find a buyer... they managed to ruin them pretty badly.

Now, for slashdot, the slashdot crowd definitely has some responsibility. Still, they did pretty much anything they could to antagonize them (although, I'm not sure what they could have done not to, it seems like it's a pretty important part of being a slashdotter to hate on the staff).

<comment><USER3> _it seems like it 's a pretty important part of being a slashdotter to hate on the staff_

I wouldn't go that far. I was on Slashdot for a very long time and witnessed many changes of ownership. Sure, there are always a few people that will grumble when anything is changed, but I don't think any of the ownership changes caused that much uproar before Dice came along. Auto-playing video ads of models walking down runways on Slashdot? Adware/malware bundling on SourceForge? Dice made it really clear that they didn't have an ounce of respect for the community. I think the bulk of the community would have tolerated reasonable efforts at monetization, but Dice went way beyond reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who the hell is going to buy sourceforge at this point? It's not even worth the intellectual property behind the scenes. Maybe someone like cnet who wants another distribution channel for not-quite-malware.</comment>


Can I work as a software developer without a degree? - <AUTHOR> I'm 27 years old from Europe, I love technology especially Linux and Im programming since I was 16. I never had a chance to go to college but I've worked in the past as a local freelancer and technical. I have master some tools and systems like Linux, web servers, Docker, Angular, Nodejs, JavaScript, Mongodb, MySQL but I dont have enough experience and a CS degree. Is there any chance to succeed if I lunch 3-4 big projects and keep dreaming till one day a company out of nowhere hire me or should I just give up and switch to something more "handy" and be another underpaid worker? <comment><USER2> I'm a Technical Fellow at a company with over 15k employees in the medical testing industry.

I began programming on a Tandy TRS-80, but today I primarily work in Angular, Node and TypeScript.

I have no formal training.

So yes, with the right experience for the role, you don't need a degree.

When I'm interviewing candidates, the last thing I care about is their degree.

I want to know what their passion is, how they approach solving problems, etc.

Regardless of whether you're self-taught, being able to demonstrate your work on Github or a personal site is an absolute must.

Experience takes time to acquire. Be patient. Work on and learn what you _want_ to be doing in your spare time. That will pay off faster than anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was in the same boat as you, just a couple years older, and decided to attend university to get my bachelors in CS. Mind you I was working in the field already and making good money. I discovered that not having the degree meant I had knowledge gaps in a lot of areas. The popular opinion is that you can learn everything online and degrees are entirely useless. In my opinion going back to university to get the degree was the best decision I ever made.

</comment><comment><USER4> Apply for jobs anyways. Don't wait until you "check all the boxes."

One thing that may help is to put up repos of stuff you've worked on, on GitHub.

Contribute to open source projects that align with things you're interested in.

The key to getting work at more and more places, it's not whether or not you have a degree... it's being able to demonstrate that you know what you're doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that's exactly what I'm doing right now. I put myself in an endless learning loop just to "check" every box. I jump from one tool/system to another and try to master everything before start applying to any IT job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> i work as developer with mainly with nodejs, mongodb, mysql, reactjs and i dont have a degree. Most of the developers i know have no degree either. Have a degree is a really good plus for interviews but is not required.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, but not in Germany.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, lots of programmers don't have degrees.</comment>


Btree vs. LSM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wiredtiger/wiredtiger/wiki/Btree-vs-LSM <comment><USER2> I have a lot of respect for the author of that page, Alex Gorrod. However, this benchmark is quite dated (2014). The WiredTiger codebase was still immature when it was written. Since WiredTiger's acquisition by MongoDB (the company) and integration in to MongoDB (the database), the btree and LSM implementations have undergone extensive changes and are now much more hardened and adapted to production workloads. Furthermore it would be worth considering other engines such as InnoDb (btree) and RocksDB (LSM), which along with WiredTiger are considered the leading open source storage engines.

For more recent and realistic benchmarks you should look at the work of Mark Callaghan.

<comment><USER3> Mark's blog: [http://smalldatum.blogspot.co.uk/](http://smalldatum.blogspot.co.uk/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great analysis but can someone fork this and update the graphs to improve some things? I'd do it but I'm on a really bad internet connection right now.

1\. Use SI magnitudes, so that we don't have to count the zeros. (so 100k instead of 100000.)

2\. Either use the same chart for LSM vs Btree for each of read and write, or at the very least use the same y axis between the two.

3\. It's hard to see the difference on the limited write benchmarks. Can we make it either logarithmic or another graph with these differences highlighted?

<comment><USER5> Many benchmarks on different dbs using either lsm/btree on different environments/data-sets: [https://symas.com/products/lightning-memory-mapped- database/...](https://symas.com/products/lightning-memory-mapped- database/project-benchmarks/) (including wired tiger)

<comment><USER6> I agree that the quality of each implementation is very pertinent here. I wonder if the B-Tree implementation in question used the Lehman & Yao B-link technique, in order to obviate the need for "latch coupling"/"crabbing". At the same time, it's interesting to consider if the LSM implementation is similarly optimized to minimize low-level locks/semaphore overhead, if in fact that's actually possible.

In general, B-Tree index performance has plenty to do with low-level optimizations, beyond things that are published in academic papers. I'm talking about things like micro-optimizing the number of CPU cache misses on internal pages, the use of interpolation search, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My favorite database _by far_ today is LMDB (B+Tree).[0] Performance is insane, and very low-variance. Reads scale linearly with core counts, and it has a lot of useful index types and knobs to get maximum performance.

What am I most looking forward to using later this year? ScyllaDB[1] and CockroachDB[2], both in conjunction with LMDB.

[0] [http://126.96.36.199/doc/](http://220.127.116.11/doc/)

[1] [http://www.scylladb.com/](http://www.scylladb.com/)

[2] [https://www.cockroachlabs.com/](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/)

<comment><USER8> Really liking CockroachDB so far.

Also reading through their site, I didn't know Google's Spanner required AtomicClocks! Holy deep pockets Batman!

<comment><USER9> I don't think such clocks are that expensive. A quick search shows several companies offering them ready to go. I'd guess that even relative to the engineering time involved, the cost of the clocks was irrelevant.

GPS NTP servers start at $1000, but I dunno how much that delivers. The actual GPS signal is probably accurate enough, but the rest of the hardware chain on a $1000 box might not be <1ms. Google might have also wanted a backup in case antennas are disturbed or GPS signal somehow interrupted?

But even then - just because Google chose 7ms doesn't mean everyone else has to. Drop a GPS NTP master at each site and live with that? I wouldn't imagine it'd get much worse than 10-20ms?

I don't really know a whole lot about this though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> B-epsilon trees are a modification of B-trees that support much higher write throughput. It is done by adding a buffer to each node in the tree so that you don't need to travel all the way down the tree every time. When a buffer is full all its contents are pushed down to the next level in one batch. It would be interesting to see how well they stack up against LSM's write throughput.

<comment><USER5> Looks like fractal trees: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_tree_index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_tree_index)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the link, that cleared up a confusion that I've had for a while. I've read a lot of contradictory things about fractal trees, but apparently they changed the data structure from a COLA to a B-epsilon tree at some point but kept the name fractal tree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The used synthetic benchmark is not a great indicator of performance in most (any?) production environments. It's generally useful and interesting to understand the tradeoffs between an LSM and B-Tree. Particularly, if you have an update or delete heavy workload the compaction cost of an LSM can become an issue. B-Tree's don't suffer from compaction issues, so in some sense trade consistently slower writes instead of amortizing out an I/O intensive compaction.

Some of the worst production experiences I've had came from exhausting I/O on the database, and then having LevelDB / RocksDB / LSM stores kick off their compaction. B-Tree will give you a very consistent redline in terms of performance generally.

TL;DR: There are trade offs between the two, but this benchmark is not particularly insightful given that it doesn't really test any of the interesting boundary conditions or real world query patterns.

</comment><comment><USER12> B-trees (especially Copy on Write B-trees) tend to be limited by the disk seek performance. The write performance of a virgin B-tree will also vary substantially depending on the keys that are being inserted. Random keys will lead to a lot of splitting of the tree which can be slow as it requires a lot of locking and allocation. Sequential keys will amortise the expensive part of building the structure of the tree.

This test uses a 10GB test size which is very small compared to the size of RAM available for the page cache. This will hide the seek penalties that the B-Tree takes on reads. Over a much larger test one would expect the write performance of a well written LSM to flatten out to a constant, indefinitely sustainable, rate. A (COW) B-tree would be expected to gradually degrade over time as it gets more fragmented and takes more seek penalties for writes and range reads.

The seek penalty is relevant for SSDs as there are still only a finite number available: you can expect on the order of 100K/s rather than the 100/s you might expect from a conventional disk. You still want to be mostly operating those things in streaming read mode where possible.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to see a breakdown of Databases broken down by their primary underlying storage mechanism (eg):

\- RDBMS: B-Tree Layout (good for lookups)

\- No-SQL (like) DB's: LSM (good for heavy write throughputs)

And then there's ones like Dremel which opt for high-octane full-table scans.

<comment><USER13> RDBMS often support a variety of primary and secondary index types. There's nothing about the relational model or SQL that won't work with an LSM tree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Might be a stupid question, but is this performance of just the data structure in memory or with reading/writing to disk also?

<comment><USER15> LSMs and Btrees are both data structures designed for use with disks, so the tests were probably run with disks.

<comment><USER16> Anything with blocks. SSD have blocks. nvme on the other hand....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> here's a comparison of the LSM and Fractal trees.

[http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/8/6/tokutek-white- paper...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/8/6/tokutek-white-paper-a- comparison-of-log-structured-merge-lsm.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> I noticed they used LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib64/libjemalloc.so

glibc malloc not up to the task?

<comment><USER19> People often run MySQL with jemalloc preloaded. Here's a benchmark comparing glibc ptmalloc, jemalloc and tcmalloc for some storage engines: [http://lmdb.tech/bench/inmem/malloc/](http://lmdb.tech/bench/inmem/malloc/)</comment></comment>


Why Marissa Mayer's 130-Hour Work Week Idea Is Completely, Totally Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/john-brandon/why-marissa-mayers-130-hour-work-week-idea-is-completely-totally-wrong.html <comment><USER2> Marissa utterly failed at Yahoo. Her advice is not to be listened to, IMO.

<comment><USER3> Her job was to increase shareholder value. She did exactly that, and very well.

<comment><USER4> Meh. Not impressed by her work at Yahoo either. Most of the valuable contributions that Yahoo made from an innovation standpoint pre-dated her arrival. Also, she was largely billed as a catalyst for sparking Google-esque innovation but her tenure was marred by copy cat initiatives and ideas that were not fresh and ultimately lead to Yahoo just cashing out.

<comment><USER3> None of that matters, her job was to extract shareholder value from Yahoo, not save puppies or innovate or grow the business. She organised splitting off parts for sale for big money paychecks. I'm far from her biggest fan, but she did what she was hired to do as CEO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 130, Marissa is missing the point of life. Yes, work is important but If she's working that many hours then she needs to know that we work to live a nice life but if all of life is taken over by work then what's the point.

Also, her job as head of the company is to determine strategy and get the right people in place to execute the vision and guide the ship as needed. Micro managing can never work at a company with 1000's of people. If she worked that many hours, I suspect that was her problem. She lost the forest for the trees. Shame because it would have been great, if she could have made Yahoo the power house it once was.

<comment><USER6> >130, Marissa is missing the point of life. Yes, work is important but If she's working that many hours then she needs to know that we work to live a nice life but if all of life is taken over by work then what's the point.

"What's the point" of life is a question for which nobody has a definitive answer. Hell, if you can answer that for just your own life you're miles ahead of most people.

Some people aren't happy unless they have a project that consumes every waking moment, and she may be one.

You never want a person like that in management at any level unless they understand how different they are from normal people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 18.5 hours per day, including Sundays. I guess this is only possible if you use some nootropic. Considering that she has invested in nootrobox [1], I guess she took that path.

Not that I am against nootropics (I have tried many of them; good short-term; disaster for long-term usage), but it would be great to have the full history.

[2] [https://nootrobox.com/team](https://nootrobox.com/team)

</comment><comment><USER8> Ms. Mayer has apparently forgotten one of the fundamental laws of economics. (Not surprising, really, but I digress). The only way that you can sustain long term growth is through improvements in productivity. Working smarter, not harder. I'm surprised that no one has pointed that out.</comment>


Bay Area BART Salaries - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area?Entity=Bay%20Area%20Rapid%20Transit <comment><USER2> I am on page 60 where train operators and station agents are making $122 000.

The difference between "workers" and manager salaries is about 4x, pretty low compared to the private sector.

I find the salaries to be outrageously high, even factoring in that we are talking about the Bay Area & San Francisco. Considering that the average age of BART's cars is 30 years [1], the money seems better spend on updating the equipment.

[1] [http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/bart-moved-update- rapidl...](http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/bart-moved-update-rapidly- aging-fleet-train-cars/nYKGq/)

<comment><USER3> Union mechanics update the equipment, and BART has been offering pay increases, which they also admit are not increases, preferentially to safety improvements.

For instance, the lighting situation in the tunnels is unacceptable and has likely been involved in at least one worker death.

BART workers have important jobs, evidenced by the pain we're experiencing as a region without them. That's what strikes are about.

Would you appreciate your salary negotiation going something like this:

      "Hey, four years ago when the company and our customers were struggling, I accepted a pay freeze to cover essential costs to keep us afloat."

      "Thanks for that.  We'd like you to start covering some of the costs of your benefits, though we're actually doing a good bit better.  We're going to give you a raise that amounts to half of inflation in the most optimistic of light, and that will cover the new costs we're asking you to cover.  We're going to do this so that we can go to the press and say that we offered you a raise, you're a bunch of ungrateful fucks, and look at how you've fucked all of the poor riders.  Also, on top of that, all of the things you've asked us to purchase for the system that would increase worker safety are rejected or deferred - we don't think that should be a part of your negotiation, even if you're saying that you might be willing to accept the pay we're offering if we budged a bit more on these costs.  Do you accept?"

[http://www.keepbartrunning.com/an_open_letter_to_the_communi...](http://www.keepbartrunning.com/an_open_letter_to_the_community_from_the_bart_workers)

<comment><USER4> I'm an outsider to west coast city politics, but I suspect it's the same all over: the details of why the public workers are striking won't matter. Previous sacrifices and safety concerns be damned. All the public at large will hear thanks to this salary data is that the public worker is doing substantially better than they are in terms of pay and benefits, and likely for less time and effort. Of course, the majority of people --who labour under private entities that regard salaries as costs to be minimized-- could never expect such treatment. And if they can't get it then they sure as hell won't stand for someone else getting it on their taxpayer dime.

It's classic divide and conquer class stratification, and you don't even have to do the agitating yourself.

<comment><USER5> *>"I'm an outsider to west coast city politics, but I suspect it's the same all over: the details of why the public workers are striking won't matter."

Yep.

I can personally confirm that things of this sort play out precisely the same way among east coast equivalents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a better way to look at the salaries.

[http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/BARTsalaries/BARTsal...](http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/BARTsalaries/BARTsalariesandovertime?:embed=y&:display_count=no)

Tableau Rocks!

<comment><USER7> Something seems to be wrong. I see base salaries over 200k but in the tableau link the max base is 190k.

<comment><USER8> was thinking the same

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow. BART employees make more than an average Software Developer and yet they want to go on a strike. What a shame.

<comment><USER3> Actually, the high salaried employees you see are people like the General Manager who refuse to personally come to the bargaining table at all, and probably approve raises for themselves.

The average salary of striking workers is about $61k, and management has accepted that their current offer only results in a substantive increase of $1 over four years, after BART workers accepted a freeze four years ago to inject $100M into the system.

More info:

      http://www.keepbartrunning.com/an_open_letter_to_the_community_from_the_bart_workers

<comment><USER10> The average pay for a Bay Area worker is $65K. That worker is a professional with a college degree. Why does unskilled transit work deserve so much pay?

<comment><USER11> They provide a great service to people like you and I who use their transport, washrooms etc. If they were not paid well they would not do their jobs and the BART system would be in disarray. They deserve pay increases just like everyone else.

<comment><USER12> Clearly you have never used a BART washroom, my friend. Though, the confusion is understandable, since BART stations tend to smell like washrooms outside the washrooms too.

Tell me more about what a good job BART employees do.

<comment><USER13> BART has public washrooms? I thought they were all closed to the public. (I've only been in a handful of stations, and don't usually check out the washrooms, but I believe the montgomery street one has a sign on the door to that effect.)

<comment><USER14> I was under the impression that many of them were closed after 9-11. I was told by a BART employee that that is why the Berkeley BART bathroom has been closed for years.

<comment><USER12> There's an open one in Rockridge BART at least. Now that I think of it, that's the only station I've been in that has a bathroom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Comments here are disappointing. Pay is what employers are willing or need to pay to maintain skilled expertise. There's absolutely nothing wrong with collective bargaining driving up the price of the cost of employees. These salaries are middle class salaries in the Bay Area and barely enough to buy a house in some of the poorer areas. If you are unhappy with your own pay, work hard to improve your station in life. It is tax payer money, but it's paying what is needed in order to keep BART moving. BART provides an immense service to the bay area, and it can't happen without the drivers and staff. They provide a valuable service, and I support their strike.

<comment><USER16> "These salaries are middle class salaries in the Bay Area and barely enough to buy a house in some of the poorer areas."

Whether someone can afford a house or not has nothing to do with what market rate for work should be.

"One of the biggest divergences between the Daddy Model and reality is the valuation of hard work. In the Daddy Model, hard work is in itself deserving. In reality, wealth is measured by what one delivers, not how much effort it costs. If I paint someone's house, the owner shouldn't pay me extra for doing it with a toothbrush.

It will seem to someone still implicitly operating on the Daddy Model that it is unfair when someone works hard and doesn't get paid much. To help clarify the matter, get rid of everyone else and put our worker on a desert island, hunting and gathering fruit. If he's bad at it he'll work very hard and not end up with much food. Is this unfair? Who is being unfair to him?" \- [http://paulgraham.com/gap.html](http://paulgraham.com/gap.html)

<comment><USER15> The mental gymnastics between perceived value of what these individuals do and the actual value (and damage the strike is doing to the local economy) do not match. It doesn't matter if you think these people are just pushing buttons. BART isn't running, and that immense value is not being provided. It also doesn't matter what people think these people should earn. It's what BART is willing to pay, and what employees are willing to accept to work there.

<comment><USER16> When a service is both essential and a natural monopoly, employees extracting all of the "immense value being provided" is _very_ , _very_ bad. Suppose the employees of SF's water company were allowed to charge the full value provided by delivering water to San Francisco. People can't do without water, and so everyone's water bill would now be thousands of dollars a month, since they have no alternative but to pay it. And the next week, everyone would realize this sucked and anyone who was able to would leave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This narrative gets played over and over. People get ahold of public workers' salaries, see that they're getting a decent wage, and get all huffy that those public workers are personally stealing their hard earned taxpayer money. It's another version of people getting all upset when they see people buying nice things with food stamps.

When I see those salaries, I think the following:

* I'm glad to see that there's people at BART making a decent wage.

* There are certainly other groups not making as much money.

* What are the forces keeping other groups from making as much money, and how can we get them more?

* San Francisco is in one of the richest regions on the planet. Why shouldn't its public employees make a good livable wage?

* As a public transit user, I like knowing that the person I'm trusting my life with has enough money to keep their blood sugar up and their cortisol levels down.

</comment><comment><USER18> Things start looking weird when you get to the later pages (I'm looking at page 130, sorted by TCOE). For instance: Bodin, Gwendolyn (Train Operator, R-Line Rail Operations): Base pay: $2,901, Medical/Dental/Vision: $20,183

There's a bunch of people who I assume retired, with low base pay but a high "Other" (which includes vacation day payouts).

Of course near the top there's a ton of overtime, lots of police, which is "normal" (no idea if it's actually legitimate), but lots of other jobs too, including some that I'd expect to be salary, like "Moore, Timothy (Principal Marketing Rep, Communications): Base $100,595, Overtime $40,165"

</comment><comment><USER19> fyi, publicizing how much union workers are paid is a common negotiation tactic by employers, attempting to erode public support for strikers.

However you interpret the numbers and whatever you post about them, you're shifting the conversation from union concerns and talking points to management's.

<comment><USER20> Is that wrong? I don't understand. Are the unions always right? Should we focus only on their concerns?

<comment><USER21> Furthermore, it seems difficult to examine the situation at all without considering how much the workers are paid, and how much the company or government service earns or loses, and in the case of the government, how effectively it provides its service to the community.

How can we really intelligently discuss the issue without knowing it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I got an awesome tweet this morning in regard to the BART strike that just wanted to share:

@cjc: Average BART employee salary is $83K/yr. A teacher with 10 years of experience in San Francisco makes $50K/yr. Who's striking again?

<comment><USER23> I'm assuming that average that you're posting is just the average of all the salaries listed in the data provide. This includes all the administrators (as far as I can tell). To be a useful comparison, you'd have to include all the salaries of the administrators OR only average the union workers with 10 years of experience (or whatever is the equivalent of a teacher with 10 years of experience).

Interestingly, where did this person get this data? Is it publicly available?

<comment><USER22> [http://www.sfusd.edu/en/assets/sfusd- staff/contract%20and%20...](http://www.sfusd.edu/en/assets/sfusd- staff/contract%20and%20salary%20schedules/Teachers%20TK-12%20Salary%20Schedule.pdf)

[http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/talks-between-bart- union...](http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/talks-between-bart-unions- management-resume/nYZmf/)

Since she's an ex-googler, I would hope it wasn't broad speculation, those are her sources.

My stand on BART though is that they provide a very _critical_ service to the Bay Area. So they have a lot leverage in their hands since the strike is being felt throughout the entire bay and all professional classes. I disagree that it should be happening if their pay is that high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't buy all the outraged posts here or the facebook comments on the article. I expect _everyone_ to negotiate hard on their behalf to put themselves and their families in the very best position they are able.

Don't come crying to me because in your mind you value a BART employees contribution more or less than a teachers or your own contribution to society and you don't think it's fair. It's not about your subjective value of x or y or anyone's idea of fairness. It's about each parties leverage and negating position and nothing else.

<comment><USER25> Except public employees' counter-parties at the negotiating tables are politicians financed by public employees' unions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Day-old discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5974829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5974829)

</comment><comment><USER27> [http://www.alternet.org/labor/7-things-you-need-know- about-b...](http://www.alternet.org/labor/7-things-you-need-know-about-bart- strike-california?paging=off)

[http://www.thenation.com/blog/175063/bart-strike-another- ins...](http://www.thenation.com/blog/175063/bart-strike-another-instance- media-portraying-workers-greedy#axzz2XwOY4YDO)

</comment><comment><USER28> Police make a lot of money. Their overtime is very substantial even if their base salary is already up there.

</comment><comment><USER29> What about the police officer on page 3 with a base of 73ish, yet a total of over 500k... Bonuses of over 100k. My figures could be off, though, because every time I load the page some data disappears. Anyone else getting missing info?

<comment><USER18> No one has a total over 500k – the default sort is by total pay and the first on the list is Dorothy Dugger (General Mgr, Deputy General Manager), $419,661. What's the person's name? (Note that "Other" includes bonuses, but also includes payout for unused vacation time, which could be accrued over time – so in some cases it might represent something accumulated over many years.)</comment></comment>


GeoCities Japan is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1408120/yahoo-japan-is-shutting-down-its-website-hosting-service-geocities/ <comment><USER2> Slightly off-topic, but I saw in another HN thread the other day that someone created an open source fork of GeoCities. NeoCities [1] and a GitHub repo [2]

I hope it makes a come-back, animated gifs and all.

[1] - [https://neocities.org/](https://neocities.org/)

[2] - [https://github.com/neocities](https://github.com/neocities)

<comment><USER3> Depends on your definition of "fork". Successor, maybe.

Neocities has been around for at least 5 years: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5918724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5918724)

<comment><USER2> Very good point. I should have said succeeded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "A decade ago, internet users who grew up with Web 1.0 bid a fond farewell to [Geocities]" <\-- this is what really hit me. It was a _decade_ ago that GeoCities shut down? I honestly would have estimated that to be no more than 5 years ago.

<comment><USER5> Funny how perspectives work. I had a small Quake page on Geocities, and I know for sure I was in my teens, like 18, so like 20 years ago. So to hear it was ONLY 10 years ago is kinda shocking to me.

<comment><USER6> I would have guessed 20 years as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Several years ago, Infoseek, one of the most popular - possibly more than GeoCities - web hosting services in Japan shut down and a huge amount of valuable content accumulated over decades has been lost forever.

What makes matters worse, unlike when GeoCities in the US shut down, no one created an archive of the websites hosted on Infoseek before they went offline. Possibly because they are not interested in preserving cultural legacy.

So I hope someone reading this news would create an archive of GeoCities Japan, as I cannot expect the Japanese to do it.

<comment><USER8> You should notify ArchiveTeam about it: [https://archiveteam.org](https://archiveteam.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How much data is it? Is it really that hard to just keep it available in read- only? Seems like the ads they could serve would justify its existence.

<comment><USER10> Assuming they have thought of those options, perhaps that tells you how little value there is there.

<comment><USER11> "value"

Today the only measure of "value" is the money it brings. Imagine of museums, archeology, libraries, archivist would only be thinking along those lines as well.

Geocities had a lot of value, and, unlike physical bookshelves, it would have been very simple to keep it going as static, read-only sites. Same applies here.

Related: [https://medium.com/message/never-trust-a-corporation-to- do-a...](https://medium.com/message/never-trust-a-corporation-to-do-a- librarys-job-f58db4673351)

<comment><USER10> > Imagine of museums, archeology, libraries, archivist would only be thinking > along those lines as well.

You don't have to imagine. They make these kinds of decisions all the time.

I'm not saying that it would have been difficult or expensive to keep it going as a static thing. Just that even a tiny cost is apparently too much.

Maybe this announcement will encourage somebody that cares more about the data than GeoCities Japan to come along and buy it from them with the intention of preserving it.

<comment><USER12> Seriously. Museums/archives throw out things ALL THE TIME because they can't afford to keep housing them.

<comment><USER13> It is true that museums and libraries prune their collections. What's not true is that they make these determinations from the same profit motive that drives businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://www.cameronsworld.net/](https://www.cameronsworld.net/) is a lovely tribute to the lost GeoCities pages (warning has sound).

</comment><comment><USER13> When I was in Japan Yahoo Search was still the big thing, as alluded to in the article. It seems like their lack of presence on smartphones might have been the beginning of the end for them.

<comment><USER15> Yahoo Auction Japan ([https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/](https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/)) is still very active as well.

<comment><USER16> Maybe eBay saw the writing on the wall there and that's why they bought qoo10.jp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fortunately, there is a number of static hosting providers that are better than the old generation nowadays (e.g. GitHub pages, Netlify, Aerobatic). I just hope the content archive is not going to be lost.

<comment><USER18> > I just hope the content archive is not going to be lost.

[https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1046669423413669888](https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1046669423413669888)

(and you can (probably) help!)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Clean your email lists right in your browser - <AUTHOR> https://mailswift.io/list-cleaner/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello Everyone,

Almost all of us are familiar with the challenges of keeping our email lists clean. Keeping your lists clean not only helps maintain your sender reputation but also decreases unnecessary costs and frustrations.

However, though not complex, it is extremely tedious and time consuming to keep an email list clean. Especially if you have a growing subscriber base and the tools you use do not have required checks in place.

We were also in such a situation with our mailing lists and that is when we built a list cleaner that is useful yet simple while respecting privacy by design.

Our list cleaner works right in your browser, ensuring that your subscriber data does not leave your computer. You can also save your original list with detailed diagnostic style comments. Check it out ([https://mailswift.io/list- cleaner/](https://mailswift.io/list-cleaner/))

What it does \- Weeds out duplicates \- Removes all emails with invalid TLDs (There are 1543 Known TLDs) \- Detects high risk domains (We currently track 3753 High Risk Domains) \- Filters emails with bad syntax

What it doesn't do \- Deliverability Check \- Detect Catch all \- Detect spam traps/honey pots etc.

More Info: \- It is a free tool \- The tool comes with complete data security \- The tool is GDPR/Privacy laws compliant by design

</comment><comment><USER2> This is awesome, congrats p12dpraneeth! I love that this runs directly in the browser so I can keep my data private. Will it brick my browser if I run it on a 100k+ list though?</comment>


Using Latex with Dropbox - <AUTHOR> http://cheind.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/using-latex-with-dropbox/

<comment><USER2> I don't have any hard data, but I would guess a majority of the users of the Latex+Dropbox combo are _not_ on Windows. All those various nix users will not find any useful meat in this post. It would have been nice to submit it under a title like: Using Latex with Dropbox _on Windows_

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Translating the script to linux is however just a matter of exchanging some of the bash commands with corresponding shell syntax. Frankly, I don't have access to a linux box right now. Maybe you could give it a try to convert it?</comment></comment>


New proposed law would mandate NSA to disclose discovered vulnerabilities - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-attacks-nsa-legislation-idUSKCN18D2WK <comment><USER2> Bad idea. Why not just create a government agency with clear and focused mandate only on security.</comment>


The best way to get unstuck - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/11/the-best-way-to-get-unstuck.html

<comment><USER2> "The way to get unstuck is to start down the wrong path, right now." loved it.</comment>


Interactive Mapreduce | CouchDB - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mudynamics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/icouch.html

<comment><USER2> This is a really great introduction to Couch, and if you like this model of working with data, you can keep exploring as soon as installing Couch. The database has a fantastic admin console that lets you explore your data, create and edit views ad hoc, and try out more advanced couch features. It has a great UI too.

<comment><USER3> I wrote this originally for an internal brown bag as a gentle introduction for SQL-oriented folks. Glad it helped!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is very good! I hope it'll be continually supported with new, complex MapReduces as you think of them.</comment>


Deep Learning for Programmers book 0.18.0 released (GPU, CPU) - <AUTHOR> https://aiprobook.com/deep-learning-for-programmers/?release=0.18.0&src=hn <comment><AUTHOR> From scratch, uses Intel's DNNL and MKL, and Nvidia's cuDNN as backends, with a sprinkle of Clojure's niceties.</comment>


Risks Are Rising While Low Risks Are Discounted - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/risks-rising-while-low-discounted-ray-dalio <comment><AUTHOR> Key takeaway:

 _> We can also say that if the above things go badly, it would seem that gold (more than other safe haven assets like the dollar, yen, and treasuries) would benefit, so if you don't have 5-10% of your assets in gold as a hedge, we'd suggest that you relook at this. Don't let traditional biases, rather than an excellent analysis, stand in the way of you doing this (and if you do have an excellent analysis of why you shouldn't have such an allocation to gold, we'd appreciate you sharing it with us)._</comment>


Hire slow, fire slower - <AUTHOR> https://nathanjeffery.co/2015/10/17/hire-slow-fire-slower/ <comment><USER2> programmers are exceptionally slow to work in too, the same guy after a year is going to be way more productive. i would get rid of anyone who does not seem interested in tackling difficult problems and try to spend all their time on scrum, meetings and documentation. you would need close tabs on the team to be able to distinguish these from the rest.

hire cheap, fire slow and give out raises generously is the best way to win the tech HR game.

<comment><AUTHOR> Super valid points. Thanks. I definitely agree with giving out raises (and/or bonuses) generously.</comment></comment>


How security companies use hacker techniques to improve their Google rank - <AUTHOR> https://www.golemtechnologies.com/blog/should-internet-security-firms-use-hacking-techniques-to-improve-search-engine-rankings

<comment><USER2> The author is careless in using screenshots that implicate companies that have nothing to do with this issue. This article is a linkbait remix of the most obvious security tip out there: don't download and install stuff from places you don't know you can trust.

Proving my point...I can't speak to the Wordpress themes, but one of the screenshot looks like it's the Drupal theme called Acquia Marina (<http://drupal.org/node/315555>).

You've got four people who are commiting to the git repository (<http://drupal.org/node/315548/committers>). The only way this code gets in there is if one of those four is putting it in, which they're not as you can view the commits and dig through the code to see if there is anything like this (<http://drupal.org/node/315548/commits>). They have not.

Therefore this theme has to be coming from another source rather than Drupal.org, the officially supported source for Drupal themes, and to my point, Acquia, a company founded by Dries Buytaert, the fellow that created Drupal.

So if you're downloading code for Drupal from somewhere other than Drupal.org, or downloading themes for WP from somewhere other than WP, or Microsoft system patches from somewhere other than Microsoft, or apt-get-ing from random sources, yup, you've got a risk exposure.

As an aside, the OP site is using Drupal.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let me play devil's advocate here. Is there any proof that the companies who are linked to are aware of the links? Isn't it possible that someone else (say, a rival company looking to tarnish a rival's reputation) is buying the links? Or that the companies have contracted out SEO to a third party, which is buying links in violation of their contract?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> there is plenty of free software which is up front about including ad's, which is the ethical way to offer free software and get paid to do so. Also, this is not some software that was developed as free, but often pirated themes/modules/plugins modified and then billed as free to put in ads.

Also, one of the links in the article does show many of these echo'd. In some cases it is a lot of javascript, in other pure links.

As for proof, you are right, it is possible these guys are using unethical SEO firms instead, but I still think they should be monitoring and dealing with this issue. In some cases, there are thousands of backlinks which have similar footprints. I have trouble buying that they are blissfully unaware.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe this is why all the top search results seem to give away scare-ware or the "Your PC is infected now!" and offers to infect it some more....

</comment><comment><USER5> sure.. it is possible everything you wrote there... but just echo that code.. and read the source-code... then come with a post and start complaining about free software...</comment>


Hey Dropbox, why can't I compare file versions like this? - <AUTHOR> http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/whycanticomparefileversions.html <comment><USER2> Simple: just install MS Visual SourceSafe!

In all seriousness, though, I wanted this so badly that I started (and failed) a startup with 12 employees nine years ago to build it. It was conceived for use in working with "big data" but the system essentially provided Etherpad- like scrubbable versioning of all common office document formats as a side- effect. All of it was structured in an environment more similar to the social aspects of Github than Dropbox, but you could sync up to your filesystem via a FUSE wrapper. That is, people could easily follow or fork your work in progress. If we'd continued, you'd have been able to accept the equivalent of PRs on your Word docs.

It was so awesome that we couldn't find anyone to pay for it, sadly. Armchair quarterbacks would fairly accuse us of failing to do proper customer development.

I can't speak to the technical limitations of Dropbox's versioning implementation, but given that they already have both viewing AND versioning running for a decade, I honestly can't believe it would take more than a few months for a small team to implement Etherpad-like editing functionality for the office suite document formats.

<comment><USER3> That sounds pretty cool, though I'd have to think about how such a thing would function with the workflow of my team. I think it could be done though! It sounds like a more reliable way to do shared work on office docs.

I see some issues with it. No matter how smooth you make this, any software with pull requests is going to be considered "technical". Christ, people think basic excel skills are "technical". SO you have to get over that hurdle. But personally, if I've already gotten people over that hurdle, I might as well just use git and LaTeX documents.

I don't know, I think it sounds awesome, but I also think it might be tough to sell.

<comment><USER2> We tried to attack the market with a Github model: share your open source data and docs publicly (our true passion) and pay to have private repos.

Our mistake, as I said elsewhere, is that there was no market. We had many sales conversations and zero takers. For context, we were fully under the spell of The Great Big Data Hype of 2011 (see the current AI hype for reference) and convinced ourselves that there would be so many opportunities that we'd have our pick of which path to take.

In fairness to our past selves, for a while this seemed true; valuations were insane for companies with vague value props in the space. And we met with dozens of influencers in the data world and they all professed to be excited to use it. Most of them ultimately logged in once, realized they had no hair- on-fire problem for us to solve, and stopped returning our emails. It was frustrating in the extreme.

I just found one of our product videos on Youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWMjQhhxhQ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWMjQhhxhQ4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The irony here, is that Drew jokes about how Dropbox is going to solve these ridiculous file name versioning convention with their product in their famous YC application:

> Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has > discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)

> The ridiculous things people name their documents to do versioning, like > "proposal v2 good revised NEW 11-15-06.doc", continue to crack me up.

[https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/dropbox](https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/dropbox)

And yet here we are a decade and change later and Dropbox, while having solved "a" problem, sits like a ridiculous behemoth leaving it's users hungry for so many other pain points to be addressed by another savior, including especially this one problem they said they're gonna solve.

<comment><USER5> Dropbox still hasn't solved many of its core issues but it has been investing in Paper (which I personally have never seen anyone using) and all that design crap from a couple of years ago.

I introduced a lot of people to Dropbox like 8-9 years ago and after using it to share files with other people I found out the hard way it's a terrible tool for that. I then used it for a couple more years to share files between my machines but they haven been introducing so much crap in their desktop app that I moved to sync.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Former dbx employee here— they always wanted to do it but it is technically challenging to build a fully functional product here accounting for things like formatting/comments/etc. when you have such a large enterprise user base there are often trade offs - ship a basic prototype and risk customer confusion/complaints or invest lots of resources and draw away from other projects

<comment><USER7> This is such a non-argument. They could've easily just started with text- diffs, then photo diffs. And later do doc diffs. Perhaps with some disclaimers. Heck, they don't do that for their main product, so why would they even do that for such a product. It's probably in the terms somewhere.

The reason they're not doing it is because they want a piece of the productivity pie.

They're not getting it from me. Ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A feature like this is VERY application specific for a lot of files since you can't just take out the rendering engine and would need to usually have a third party make the software to render to web-views, whether opensource or proprietary. It's not even as if first party software is allowed to run as server. Example, psd rendering to web. AFAIK photoshop has no server license. Pretty much all services that need to render psd files use ImageMagick afaik. I looked it up and iirc. Photoshop's own api is pretty terrible to interact with and iirc licensing for servers is weird and expensive even if available.

EDIT: This comment is almost a word salad, I need to sleep lol.

<comment><USER9> While true, as others have said it could be rolled out piece-meal. For me, for example, simple text diffing would scratch a major itch, both for text and code.

<comment><USER10> Right, but as the article points out - github already has the feature for some file formats, but it's not good enough for him because he wants it specifically for powerpoint and word.

In other words, someone wants a diff tool for Microsoft products but specifically wants Dropbox to implement it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Serious question - does anyone want this:

      ssh email@example.com diff some/file .zfs/snapshot/yesterday/some/file

We can implement this later today if it sounds useful ... I was sort of surprised that 'diff' was not already a whitelisted command[1] ...

[1] [https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/remote_commands.html](https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/remote_commands.html)

<comment><USER12> Does rsync.net automatically run and name zfs snapshots?

<comment><USER11> Yes. By default, every rsync.net account has 7 daily snapshots that are created and rotated automatically - no intervention on your end is required.

You may optionally set any arbitrary schedule you like (day/week/month/quarter/year) and you simply pay for the bits on disk that those (efficient, changes only) snapshots take up. Sometimes they take up almost nothing.

My favorite part of all of this is that the snapshots are _immutable, or read- only_. No matter who attacks your rsync.net login or what password you lose, the snapshots cannot be destroyed by any outside action.

This allows for some interesting insurance against ransomware / Mallory ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I missing something? This already exists in Google Docs. Much easier to implement when the doc is database-backed (recording every keystroke for OT) vs file-based.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, the thing is, you can't do this in a file-format-agnostic way (you need to know what a Word doc or an Excel sheet is), which makes the file system layer the wrong level of abstraction to consider.

<comment><USER15> You can, as long as your files have a meaningful representation as a text file. This is a good idea anyways.

<comment><USER16> That representation is one way to encode the file-format knowledge you need.

Any other way to implement would probably also involve one common format (or a small few) behind the scenes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There are third party document compare tools.

Dropbox could just buy one of these companies and work on integrate the solution with its platform.

All arguments about the complexity of this feature are bogus when it has been solved several times by different vendors over the last decades.

One such tool found via DDG: [https://draftable.com/compare](https://draftable.com/compare)

<comment><USER18> One thing that looks weird about Draftable is that many of the comparisons are publicly-viewable. I wonder if that's intended? See e.g. [https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adraftable.com+%22busi...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adraftable.com+%22business%22)

<comment><USER19> Trying 'site:draftable.com "confidental"' yields interesting results. Pretty sure it's not intended

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Word already has a diff view implementation that is pretty robust - it's very useful for figuring out what changed across manually-versioned documents. This is in addition to classical track changes feature.

Adobe Acrobat also has a diff (including visual diff) feature that can be used to do advanced comparisons if necessary.

Granted, author's suggestion is more user friendly and integrated.

<comment><USER18> _"Word already has a diff view implementation that is pretty robust"_

It does? Didn't know that. How does one activate it?

<comment><USER21> They call it "compare"

<comment><USER20> Open a document and go to "Review" ribbon and then click "Compare...".

You can do "Combine" which is effectively a merge interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> my solution is to use pandoc to generate the diffs. Combines the benefits of word formatting but allows me to see the changes in git. (I use it mainly for my resume)

I wrote up about it here for the curious: [https://www.vivekkalyan.com/using- git-for-word](https://www.vivekkalyan.com/using-git-for-word)

<comment><USER4> Have you seen any options take advantage of the fact that docx files are just zipped xml files? I can see the git repo ballooning if you have a few images and you commit frequently!

<comment><USER18> Diffing the contents of an Office document is not trivial. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22222667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22222667)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Isn't the track changes feature of Word sufficient? I don't use Dropbox though so perhaps it loses that..?

<comment><USER24> Author writes:

> _...but this is useless. Timestamps??? Tell me what changed! Let me see the > changes over time. Word has a change tracking feature, but my PhD in > computer science isn 't enough for me to figure it out._

> _But but but Austin, you should be using a proper version control system! > Just use Git and GitHub!_

Found that aside curious, as track changes in Word is a first class versioning implementation with word processing and editors savvy, just as Git is a first class versioning implementation that's code lines and commits savvy.

Surely headspace around track changes is less "PhD" than git.

<comment><USER18> _"Surely headspace around track changes is less 'PhD' than git."_

Have you tried track changes? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can see a company like github or dropbox developing visual versioning and promoting it to make users dependent upon it. It would be an extremely sticky feature that made it hard for users to like competing products.

Imagine how github could push for MS Office integration and become a versioning powerhouse for non-code-stuff.

But I can't see it standing as a stand-alone product that people would really pay for. It has to be part of something else.

<comment><USER18> _"But I can 't see it standing as a stand-alone product that people would really pay for"_

IMHO, if it could be smoothly integrated to e.g. Git then there would probably quite a few companies that would pay good money for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Version handling is built into Office 365, and many comments here indicate it's even in the relatively crappy Google Docs, but I'm sure there's a market for pretending it isn't and selling incredibly shitty half-baked attempts as a B2B SaaS offering (this is not a sarcastic "I'm sure", I know about this market space and it disgusts me on a deep level)

<comment><USER27> I'm a lawyer who uses Word's track changes as an integral component of my work. I haven't seen a single meaningful improvement in that feature in 20 years. Right down to the fact that I have to open "compare..." from within a document, but then have to go hunt the same document down in the file system to set it as the original. Don't get me started on every other reason that Word has failed to innovate on this front.

The solution is to dump Office and use text files, if you can get away with it.

<comment><USER28> What's wild to me is that a third-party product, Workshare Compare, actually does a better job of this than Microsoft does with its own product. Workshare is used widely in the AmLaw 100.

<comment><USER27> Also a garbage product IMO. The distance from something like git to Workshare is measured in light years.

<comment><USER28> I use Workshare several times a day, every day. Most transactional attorneys do. I find it works well for its intended purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I associate features like this with etherpad[0] which I was in the habit of using for years for collaborative projects.

[0]: [https://etherpad.org](https://etherpad.org)

<comment><USER30> Or Dropbox Paper which has origins in Etherpad.

<comment><USER31> Huh, Etherpad was acquired by Google in 2009 and a fork of Etherpad, Hackpad, was acquired by Dropbox in 2014 [1]. Both projects got folded however: Etherpad into Google Wave, and Hackpad into Dropbox Paper.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackpad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackpad)

<comment><USER32> Etherpad lite is still alive: [https://github.com/ether/etherpad- lite](https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This looks similar to redline and blackline document comparisons[1]. We do this on our site[2] where we display large financial documents that average 100 pages. Identifying what text and tables were removed, added and changed from one year to another is useful information for predicting future company earnings[3]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_comparison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_comparison)

[2] [https://Last10K.com/compare.gif](https://Last10K.com/compare.gif)

[3] [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-22/10-k-c...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-22/10-k-company- filings-are-actually-worth-reading)

Update: The site in reference is [https://Last10K.com](https://Last10K.com)

<comment><USER18> I' afraid I don't follow… What do you mean by "our site"? Is it a system you developed for internal use or is it a product/service you sell?

<comment><USER33> Sorry, I just updated the comment with a direct link to the site which is a freemium SaaS. The other site link is an animated gif that shows how to toggle between the redline and blackline views.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Modern MS documents files are zipped XML. To do this comparison they would need to unzip each file, run it through a rendering engine and hold it in memory, and then do version comparison. For this to be feasible you would need to use a file format that supports this sort of comparison in a way that isn't very resource intensive.

<comment><USER35> It's not that, it's not like 100% of your users will be diffing documents 100% of the time. The real reason is that office formats are super, super complex and diffing them is a hard problem, even more so for the proprietary Microsoft formats.

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/02/19/why-are-the- micros...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/02/19/why-are-the-microsoft- office-file-formats-so-complicated-and-some-workarounds/)

The "zipped XMLs" you mention are basically XML dumps of the former binary format that evolved organically from the 1980s, when resources were scarce and they had to hack together a working office solution.

<comment><USER36> The proper way to diff .docx documents would be to Microsoft release a diff tool for .docx documents. If they released a three-way merge tool as well then it could be used in git too. git supports 3rd party diff and merge tools for specific file formats.

<comment><USER35> It might be a lot of work and the benefits are not super obvious for them (other than community goodwill :-) ).

<comment><USER37> They already got the functionality to diff between two documents in Word. I use it all the time to see if legal made any changes while "forgetting" track changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is a great idea, both one drive and gdrive have a versions feature but the UI isn't great. This is terrific UX.

It's obvious UI on the level of pinch to zoom and mouse input. Hard to come up with but obviously the right choice once suggested.

<comment><USER38> I'd also like to add on a different note, I don't really get why git can't support docx, pptx, and xlsx. They're open standards not binary blobs. Basically just zipped xml.

<comment><USER39> You can configure it to support it. Git supports configuring different diff programs for different file types. And there are tools to diff docx etc.

<comment><USER40> Can I configure Git such that the merge of Haskell source code (any language will do) with base A:

        add x y = x + y

left B:

        add z y = z + y

and right C:

        add x w = x + w

succeeds without a conflict?

<comment><USER41> I don't like the example. Unless I'm missing something, all three of these are exactly equivalent, so you could accept any of them as the result of a merge.

But the problem with that idea is that two different people explicitly made a change that looks meaningless. That tells us that we're evaluating "equivalent" incorrectly, which means we don't actually have any remaining justification for picking one over another, and the conflict is hopeless without further input.

<comment><USER40> The correct merge, in my _opinion_ would be D:

        add z w = z + w

My justification is that if you put each identifier on a separate line like this:

        fn add(
            x: i32,
            y: i32,
        ) -> i32 {
            x
            +
            y
        }

then as far as I know, Git would happily merge B and C into D.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I have the exact same question for Git. I miss Perforce timelapse view so much. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I wish GitHub made it easier to do diffs between a specific commit and many other commits, like with a timeline. Would be great for visually tracking down when a change was introduced or how the code has evolved over time.

That was an inspiration for a tool I built called Yestercode [1] (though it uses undo history, not version control).

[1] [http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/pubs/Henley2016VLHCC_Yestercode...](http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/pubs/Henley2016VLHCC_Yestercode.pdf)

<comment><USER43> They've at least improved it for release comparison: [https://github.blog/changelog/2020-01-13-shortcut-to- compare...](https://github.blog/changelog/2020-01-13-shortcut-to-compare- across-two-releases)

<comment><USER44> technical but important nit: github is not git.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Cloud word processors like Zoho Writer & Google Docs already have version comparison features. But this idea of a sliding time traveler for documents is very intuitive!

Also Zoho Writer has a combine feature, that lets you upload a docx and combine it with another docx - with the changes highlighted as tracked- changes. Pretty handy for comparing docx files.

[https://writer.zoho.com](https://writer.zoho.com)

</comment><comment><USER46> Google docs, at least, has version history with named versions.

I don't think I'd want a scrub bar like that though, maybe? I suppose I've never tried it.

<comment><USER47> I think you'ld probably want a tree for undo/redo... it works for git and photoshop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Reminds me of the _yesterday_ [1] tool from Plan 9. Pretty much what the author expects, except with textual interface rather than a slider.

OHTF Vg'f uneq gb hfr guvf pbzznaq jvgubhg fvatvat.

\--

[1] [http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/yesterday](http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/yesterday)

</comment><comment><USER49> I've always wanted to be able to right-click on a file that is synced in Dropbox and either have a submenu with versions to select or an option that pops up a window with the file's version history. Without having to open the Dropbox web app.

</comment><comment><USER50> What if it's time to add features to the undo/redo construct as a whole? Maybe not discarding redo history when a modification is made in the past for example. Computers have improved a giant amount since undo was designed (clipboard too, for that matter). We should be redesigning these common* features to keep up with the times.

*often (not in MS Office probably) the undo buffer is managed by the OS. It's conceivable that some rethinking could happen at the OS level.

<comment><USER51> vim 7+ keeps an 'undo tree' that permits this (it can also be instructed to keep it in a file to persist across sessions). It's helpful to install a visualization extension to seek around easier ([https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1088864/how-is-vims- undo...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1088864/how-is-vims-undo-tree- used))

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Google Wave had this exact thing, practically to the pixel.

<comment><USER53> Google Wave was so innovative that it had to be shut down... sadly...

<comment><USER54> Yeah, one of the Big Data Lizards (Google, FB) had to close one of their services. Somehow, I don't feel sad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Wasn't the timeline concept a core part of Google Wave? If I recall correctly you were able to scrub through the entire history of a document in a similar way.

<comment><USER56> That's the first thing that came to my mind as well. RIP Wave?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm still waiting for dropbox to support editing .txt files in the browser.

It supports docx, excel and whatnot. But .txt file? That's too complex.

</comment><comment><USER58> I remember ~4 years ago, I needed to retrieve an old file, and I discovered that DropBox does write a diff-based repo, which you can restore at different points. I don't remember the details, but I needed to use some sort of CLI to access/navigate it on the host system.

In short, it is probably possible now, using what DropBox already exposes.

<comment><USER18> _"DropBox does write a diff-based repo"_

Are you sure? I've never heard about that.

<comment><USER59> me neither, any more info?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> > So why isn't this built directly into Dropbox, Google Docs, and Microsoft > Office?

macOS includes a built-in version history since OSX Leopard. Sadly the flashy version UI with 3D effects is not the best to find differences and many programs doesn't use the native frameworks that bring this feature (e.g MS apps, Adobe apps)

<comment><USER18> _"macOS includes a built-in version history since OSX Leopard"_

I had no idea. Do you have any pointers for further reading? That would be very interesting.

<comment><USER61> I believe the grandparent is referring to Time Machine. Some of its versioning features may have been integrated into iCloud storage as well (not sure).

<comment><USER60> Yes, I was referring to the file version history. Sorry I couldn't recall if it was introduced in Leopard or Snow Leopard.

I totally agree with the comment from dreamcompiler, the file history feature is a great idea but the execution needs a lot of improvement.

The main issue to me is not the change to Save as.. behavior. To me the problem is that most of the apps didn't adopted it. In particular cross platform apps ignore it. So you never get used to the behavior change.

The version history UI, is also too "heavy". It has a slider to go back in time, but surrounded by a faux app window simulating traveling in time with your app state... sounds cool but is distracting and not so useful to find differences.

And yes, it works with iCloud, but only in apps that use auto save APIs: [https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- guideline...](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- guidelines/macos/system-capabilities/auto-save/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I used [0] for a while when I was exploring this space and was briefly in touch with the developer.

It's pretty useful and impressive in its current state but isn't being actively developed from what I understand.

[0] [https://www.revisionsapp.com/](https://www.revisionsapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER63> This is a really similar idea to a Chrome extension that exists for Google Docs, Draftback: [https://features.jsomers.net/how-i-reverse-engineered- google...](https://features.jsomers.net/how-i-reverse-engineered-google-docs/)

</comment><comment><USER64> It's almost like people just want to use sharepoint and onedrive.

I avoided both for as long as possible, but we switched to office365 at work and the integration between the two, and teams, is pretty great tbh.

</comment><comment><USER65> Wrike (project management software) actually does this, but it is for only text descriptions which makes it easier. Wrike also color codes changes by user.

</comment><comment><USER61> Version History already exists in MS Word for documents that are saved in OneDrive with AutoSave.

</comment><comment><USER66> Because dropbox is not version control (i think?)

</comment><comment><USER67> Wikipedia could use something like this, too.

<comment><USER68> What I would love for wikipedia is ability to select a block of text and click "show me when this was last changed"</comment></comment>


Evolution of Diet - <AUTHOR> http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of-diet/

<comment><USER2> That is quite possibly the most annoying web page I've ever had to scroll through. Come on, scrolling is just not one of those things that needs to be "re-imagined". Focus on the content instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> TLDR; Humans have traditionally eaten almost everything. There is no one ideal human diet. Paleo diets focus too much on meat, which kills you and gives you cancer, particularly if your ancestors were adapted to plant-based diets. Processed foods also kill you, but today we can't survive on raw, unprocessed food alone. Eat more local fruits and vegetables, a little meat, fish, and some whole grains (as in the highly touted Mediterranean diet), and exercise an hour a day.

Annoying formatting but a great article: I joyfully went through every little image caption. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER4> Not only is there no one ideal diet, many people assume an ideal diet would be constant, every day, every week, all year, and over almost all of one's lifespan. Even the question of natural vs. engineered diet breaks down once we get past the age where we would have made a difference in survival of a family or tribal unit. Diet as an element of life extension is unlikely to be identical to any "paleo" otherwise prehistoric diet.</comment></comment>


Before Driving a Zipcar, Consider Liability Insurance - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/your-money/23money.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> This reads like a hit piece by someone with a grudge against zipcar, for some reason. It seems well written enough but I can't figure out why zipcar is mentioned repeatedly when he provides examples of other car sharing services that do worse, and one person he quotes mentions individuals with 50k policy limits. This article would be better if it was cautioning all car drivers to ensure they had adequate insurance.

<comment><USER3> I like how he proudly claims to have been advocating this issue since 2005, then begrudgingly writes that it has never been an actual problem in ZipCar's history.

<comment><USER4> You buy insurance mostly to protect against costs that are expensive and unlikely to happen. The article points out that in New York, which has a lot of Zipcar customers, 3 percent of bodily injury liability insurane claims are over $300,000. So although no Zipcar rental has yet resulted in such a claim, it still seems like something worth insuring against.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What the hell kind of story is this? The $300,000 is a perfectly reasonable coverage. Right now I have $250,000 per person and $500,000 per accident liability coverage and I find that to be perfectly reasonable. You can't even go over $500,000. This hit piece making it seem like $300,000 is cheaping/screwing the customer is pretty sickening.

<comment><USER6> > The $300,000 is a perfectly reasonable coverage.

Really? My liability insurance in Germany covers up to €100 million per accident, and that's pretty standard. I always feel a bit anxious when driving rental cars in the US (even with SLI) considering how sue happy Americans are.

<comment><USER5> Random googlings point me towards Haftpflichtversicherung being German Third party liability insurance which seems to be uniquely German in that it is so high compared to other countries. The linked forum[1] talks about Germans being shocked others don't carry such high coverage.

US States set their own minimums and none break $100k required. [2]

[1] <http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t97713.html> [2] [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_auto_insurance#Requirements_by_State)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a cheap shot for sure, but it would be nice if zipcar offered some extended liability coverage.

EDIT: If any hn'ers have experience with non-owner's auto insurance and didn't totally hate the company, please let me know.</comment>


Nokia Chief Gets Record Speeding Fine - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1759791.stm

<comment><USER2> My first thought was "what, again? Didn't they learn from the last one?" Then I saw that the dateline was 2002 - this was the last one.

FWIW, that record has been broken several time since 2002, both in Finland (Jussi Salonoja had to pay $200,000 for driving 50kph in a 25kph zone) and in Switzerland ($290,000 for driving 137kph through an 80kph zone).

See [http://jalopnik.com/the-eight-biggest-speeding-tickets- ever-...](http://jalopnik.com/the-eight-biggest-speeding-tickets-ever- issued-1108358708) for more details and more examples of high speed limits. The highest they list is $1 million, also in Switzerland, but everyone references the same article in the Telegraph, which isn't substantial enough for me.

<comment><USER3> There is an article in the Swiss press about that case but no mention of what he ended up paying in the end. They did take his car as collateral which is valued at ~300,000 USD.

[http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/panorama/vermischtes/Tempo-290--...](http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/panorama/vermischtes/Tempo-290 --wie-der-Freiburger-Extremraser-gefasst-wurde/story/25212763)

<comment><USER3> Looks like he "only" had to pay ~27,000 USD. [http://www.20min.ch/schweiz/bern/story/Mit-260-auf-der- Autob...](http://www.20min.ch/schweiz/bern/story/Mit-260-auf-der-Autobahn--- das-Video-18744150)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> (2002)</comment>