On Privacy versus Freedom - <AUTHOR> https://matrix.org/blog/2020/02/01/on-privacy-versus-freedom/ <comment><USER3> My biggest problem with messaging applications as a whole is that I need so many of them. I have a few contacts who are reachable with Signal, a few more who are reachable on Hangouts or whatever Google is calling its latest thing, and a few more who are reachable with Skype. That's three programs, to communicate with three different subsets of people. I'm sure if I used Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp, I'd have two more subsets of people who are only reachable through those.

XMPP was supposed to solve all those problems when it came out in the early 2000s. But then all the big tech companies who build "ecosystems" decided to push their own applications, all incompatible with one another. So here we are again with this proliferation of programs that really only do one thing: communication. It's like the 90s / early 2000s with the proliferation of instant messengers: ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and on and on and on. The players are different, but the game is still the same. I suspect that twenty years from now, when the players have all changed yet again, there will still be one reliable method of reaching me: IRC.

If the Googles and Whatsapps and Facebooks of the world had been around in the early 90s, you'd have one email client from Facebook for mailing Joe and Fred, an email client from Google for mailing Mary and Jane, and an email client from Whatsapp for mailing Alice and Bob. Thankfully, email became entrenched before that could happen.

I want messaging to be like email, where I use one and exactly one program to communicate with all of my contacts, regardless of what server they use. People say that federation is more complicated than centralization. I'm sure that's true for developers, but in fact, federation can be vastly simplifying for an end user. I'm a fundamentally lazy person. Having to learn all these different messaging tools is frankly a waste of my time. All I want is a federated protocol and an open system, be it Matrix, XMPP, or something else.

As a final aside, you know what else that bugs me? The word "ecosystem". I worked for a big tech company for a while, and the only people I ever heard use that word were people out to build a walled garden.

<comment><USER4> > XMPP was supposed to solve all those problems when it came out

That's also what Matrix said it would solve when it started. Except now it's yet another protocol with its own chatrooms that are not reachable from any other protocol by default (even rooms on matrix.org); and bridges are at best in "beta" (except the Telegram bridge, which is "late beta"): [https://matrix.org/bridges/](https://matrix.org/bridges/)

<comment><AUTHOR> We tend to be pretty conservative on maturity estimates on Matrix (and bad at keeping the website updated).

IRC, Slack, Gitter bridges are all considered stable these days.

XMPP, Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp work usably too.

The UX for managing them is not always great or consistent (we're working on that currently), but "yet another protocol with its own chatrooms" is untrue. You can certainly access the entirety of Matrix via Bifrost (the XMPP bridge) if you so desire, for instance.

<comment><USER5> Hi, I am trying to write an article in French to introduce Matrix to a wider public. Especially non tech people.

So I'd like to describe the possibilities accurately. Bridges are a very interesting feature, but how do you implement them ?

I went to the #whatsapp:maunium.net room and only saw guys wondering the same thing with no answer given to them.

I went to [https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-whatsapp/wiki/Bridge- setup](https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-whatsapp/wiki/Bridge-setup) and understood they have to be implemented from the server itself ? Is that right ? So as a basic user I can't really make any adjustment on my side to join a Whatsapp group from Matrix, right ?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice- bridge/blob/...](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice- bridge/blob/master/HOWTO.md) explains how to write them.

For adding them to a chat as a user, you need to use an integration manager (eg t2bot.io) or to run one yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One frustrating thing about Moxie's original post is that Signal derives huge amounts of value by piggybacking on an existing distributed federated network: the phone system. If phone numbers weren't an existing working identifiers that people had regardless of what OS, carrier, or messaging app, Signal as designed wouldn't work.

People should think harder about how to replicate that experience, instead of how to appropriate it and then abandon it.

<comment><USER7> In his "The Ecosystem is Moving" talk at CCC, he had many presumptuous and dubious "arguments" but one regarding privacy of phone numbers was that a user's APN would be used to determine their phone number, so there was no point in trying to keep phone numbers private.

This fails to account for the possibility of not using the cellular network. With unlocked smartphones, it is possible to remove the SIM card, clear any APN settings and access WiFi. That can be enough for a messaging app to work.

The only identifier needed for iMessage and FaceTime is a working e-mail address (and only for sign up). No cellular account is required.

<comment><USER8> That's not the representative experience for most consumers/users. Most people do have a phone number, though, so it's easy enough to bootstrap with.

I might not agree with the phone number thing, but I recognize the tradeoff being made and am willing to begrudgingly accept that for right now, Signal/Moxie are probably making the right call. It's not like they're not moving to fix it anyway.

Also, unless I misunderstood him, the APN bit is referencing push notifications, and he's right - if that's out there, it could identify you not just by phone but by Apple account in general. You realistically can't use Signal without an Apple ID, as you couldn't get it from the store otherwise.

<comment><USER9> > You realistically can't use Signal without an Apple ID

I do, because I got it and signed up for an account on my Android phone...

Okay, I realize what you're getting at here, but it seriously irks me when people talk as if Apple was the only ecosystem, or even the most popular ecosystem, when it is neither.

I probably don't even need a Google Play Store account if I can find an unmodified APK that's signed by OWS.

<comment><USER7>
       curl https://updates.signal.org/android/latest.json |grep -o "http[^\"]*"

[https://updates.signal.org/android/Signal-website- universal-...](https://updates.signal.org/android/Signal-website-universal- release-4.52.4.apk)

Source: [https://signal.org/android/apk/](https://signal.org/android/apk/)

<comment><USER9> Thanks! I must admit I never looked for one, the point was more about the possibility. I think this implies it is definitely false that OWS would be able to identify you without a phone number. Because there are ways to use their app without providing any other personal identifier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When i asked if i could use his libraries in ios/android apps Moxie refused. He licensed them under GPL that prohibits distributing of software via app stores. Quite a strange for a guy who claim that he wants to spread encryption. Sure, but only on your own platform. Fastforward he sold such rights for a whatsapp. Just simple business, nothing about privacy itself.

<comment><USER11> Can you explain how GPL prohibits distribution via app stores?

<comment><USER12> Generally, the way app stores work is that the developer uploads a copy of the app to the app store, and then the app store makes and distributes copies of that for people that request the app.

Note that since it is the app store making those copies for end users, the app store needs permission of the copyright owner to do so. There will be something in the agreement between the app developer and the app store that says that the developer grants such permission when the developer submits the app.

For app code whose copyright is actually owned by the developer, that's all that is necessary. The developer is able to grant all the necessary permissions to the app store.

If the app contains code that the developer does not own, then the app store also needs permission from the owner of that code in order to make and distribute copies of the app.

Consider a developer who includes someone else's GPL code in their app. To be able to make and distribute copies of it, the app store is going to have to obey GPL.

Most app stores require downloaders to agree to a license agreement with the app store, which typically includes things like prohibiting reverse engineering and prohibiting reselling or making and distributing copies.

GPL, however, prohibits such restrictions. If you impose such restrictions, GPL does not give you copyright permission to make and distribute copies. This makes the app store license and GPL incompatible, and so the software cannot be distributed on the store.

<comment><USER13> IMO this is pure laziness on the part of the app store. Any store could just say "this app is licensed to you under the GPL — download source here."

Even ignoring licensing, I think app stores could add considerable value by offering reproducible builds. Let developers upload source, verify the has (git tree hash or plain sha256sum), and rebuild in a sandbox server-side. Reject the submission unless the binary's hash matches the developer's.

Now stick a badge on it: "verified open-source build". And give it a small bonus in ranking relative to other apps.

<comment><USER14> Adding that license information doesn't help the end user to run modified code. You need an apple developer license to run changes that you have made. Thus, the code is not free.

On the other hand, apple offering to compile and run any modification that users made will never happen. Then, people could start with one program and run whatever they want. The app store would collapse.

<comment><USER13> That doesn't contradict my point. Apple could achieve two goals here:

1\. Allowing GPL code in a lightweight and compliant manner at a essentially no cost to Apple.

2\. Adding a class of free (or paid) open-source apps that are more trustworthy. If Apple could effectively replace a decent fraction of the free shitware apps on the App Store with better free, open-source apps, the value to end-users and hence the value of the platform would increase.

There is no requirement in the GPL that recipients of source code be able to run modified versions of the code on the target device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Moxie / signal chooses pragmatism over purity, and is striving towards improve the status quo bit by bit vs a pure perfect solution that never ships, even though that improvement has it's own vital problems.

You can see it in his choices, and you can see how they want to eventually deliver improvements like no phone numbers, with them working on things like secure value recovery.

I kind of wish he spelled it out fully for the nit picky peanut gallery out there, so he can just reference it instead of wasting energy on them. You can just feel the exasperation when you read his writing and see him speak about this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd argue that Matrix also chooses pragmatism over purity - the balance is more that we prioritise freedom _as well_ as privacy.

Signal's whole mantra of "only implement features which are privacy preserving" is a great mentality. It's just a shame it comes at the expense of locking down the platform.

<comment><USER16> I'd argue you can't prioritise two things: prioritisation means deciding what comes first when you have to choose between two things. And it appears to me that Signal tries to ensure privacy first, and then sees if it can make that work with freedom later (see e.g. the delay in adding support for de-googled Android, or the ground work they're only doing now that might (or might not) lead to accounts without phone numbers), whereas Matrix does it the other way around (by first working on support for many different clients, and then trying to make that work with encryption). I hope that both succeed, and I'm happy that both paths are taken.

As an aside, I'd like to voice my appreciation for how you respectfully acknowledged moxie's point of view, take effort to understand it, and then pinpoint why you reach different conclusions from the same observations. A pleasure to read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _> The ecosystem is moving_

It has been "moving" from the times of Compuserve and AOL trying to prevent e-mail federation. Good thing they failed then! Kudos to Matrix for pushing against such movement in IMs. Someone has to push against it, instead of looking for excuses to proliferate walled gardens.

 _> If users don't trust their app provider, they can always go switch apps, which gives them freedom._

Sounds like Moxie meant it's a downside. It's a huge benefit! Forcing one to use something that's not trusted is horrendous.

</comment><comment><USER18> I won't touch signal because I care about user freedom more than privacy. (Both are important)

No 3rd party clients, mandatory updates, mandatory google play services, and mobile only are all deal breakers.

<comment><USER19> > mandatory google play services

Note that since a while there is also the possibility of using web sockets. But they are an extreme battery drain, and thus google services are quasi- mandatory. Telegram solves this without being a battery drain, possibly at the cost of delivering messages with a delay, but why isn't that _my_ choice.

<comment><USER20> I can't tell you how they do it, but Telegram is _lightning_ fast with push notifications across all kinds of devices, including Android. Been rocking it as my primary messenger for years.

Whenever a few of us are sitting around in real life, and someone sends something to a group chat, all the phones on the table will buzz instantly together (iOS and Android).

And on top of that, battery usage is really low on Android. I use it a TON, and it's never in the top n apps of battery usage. Meanwhile, I can just _open_ Snapchat once, and I lose a few percent.

<comment><USER21> Telegram is GPL, I think it would be worth it to see how they use it, because it honestly is absolutely incredible.

<comment><USER17> Telegram server is closed.

<comment><USER21> Yes but the implementation of the notification handling is impressive on the client side. The server side software as far as this is concerned should be easily deducible and isn't the interesting part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Email is flawed and will become a one way protocol to receive spam, newsletters and invoices just like paper mail. I think Matrix is our second chance to build a secure federated communication suite. So far it's going in the right direction...

<comment><USER23> > Email is flawed and will become a one way protocol to receive spam, > newsletters and invoices just like paper mail.

I don't recall the last time I've received spam in my email inbox among the tens of emails I've receive daily, and newsletters/invoices are messages that users intend to subscribe. You might argue that instant messaging scratches an itch that email doesn't, but that's a bit shortsighted and doesn't make a case on why email is flawed.

<comment><USER24> Newsletters and other BS notifications _are_ the new spam.

Sure, you can technically opt-out and keep your inbox clean by spending 5 minutes opting out of the garbage every time you sign up to a new service, but that's irrelevant considering nobody does this and most of my friends' mailboxes are pretty much unusable because this kind of spam arrives every minute and they have tens of thousands of unread emails in their inbox.

However, in this case I'm not sure Matrix or any other service would be the solution. If the service is neutral and doesn't impose policies on the content then scum like marketers will just move to it. On the other hand actually having "acceptable use policies" would require centralisation and bring its own problems to the table.

The real solution here is regulation, not technology.

<comment><USER25> Most sites will allow you to opt out from account creation and also will allow you to unsubscribe without even having to login to your account. If your mailbox has 10k+ spam messages it is IMO a personal problem of either not opting out, or signing up for total garbage sites in the first place.

<comment><USER24> Most subscription options at signup are using dark patterns to make you subscribe against your will ("untick this box if you want to miss out on the inconvenience of not receiving our latest deal").

There's also the issue of it being implemented badly (mostly by mistake rather than on purpose) where there are several spam systems & lists, the website opts you out of one but there's another one in the background you can't opt out of without at least receiving one and clicking the unsubscribe link - sometimes they make multiple campaigns so opting out of one doesn't mean you're safe from the next one, etc.

And finally there are those who aren't technically marketing but a huge lack of respect for the person's time & attention - customer service reviews and the "how did we do?" emails. Why can't you put the feedback buttons in the existing emails instead of sending a new one and interrupting my flow & wasting my time?

For the latter I had a company doing this every single f'ing time for every ticket I opened about a benign bug or suggestion (using in-app chat still opens a ticket thanks to Zendesk Chat). I've eventually started forwarding them straight back into the main support email. I think they got the hint after several months - I've removed the forwarding rule and the feedback crap is nowhere to be seen. VICTORY!

Even if there are not technically marketing a lot of companies just have a complete lack of respect for their users time. Let's take Facebook, Twitter or even Spotify for example; they have like over 20 categories of email notifications (excluding the newsletter) which are guaranteed to fill up your inbox by themselves, let alone having signed up to multiple of those services. You shouldn't have to be manually unticking 20+ checkboxes just to enjoy a clean inbox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think the timing makes Moxie's point very well without him saying a thing.

All these years later Matrix only has... The ambition to some day try to offer the core privacy features Signal already delivered back then. Some of the most basic stuff is, you believe, almost kinda sorta done.

This is, to be clear, much better than just sitting back insisting you were right but not lifting a finger. But for an actual user who needed privacy and security any time between then and now - and for future users who need it between now and whenever you get this stuff working in the real world, it was Signal that delivered. Moxie was right so far.

<comment><USER27> >All these years later Matrix only has... The ambition to some day try to offer the core privacy features Signal already delivered back then.

E2E on Matrix works, plus key verification is easier than on Signal. Managing metadata is hard, but my Matrix homeserver doesn't have my phone number (unlike Signal) and does not require Google Cloud Messaging. I can even run it on a PinePhone or Pocket CHIP!

>But for an actual user who needed privacy and security any time between then and now - and for future users who need it between now and whenever you get this stuff working in the real world, it was Signal that delivered. Moxie was right so far.

Tell that to the people getting imprisoned due to Signal's metadata leaks: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21747424](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21747424)

<comment><USER28> E2E in Matrix "works" with which Matrix clients? The whole point of a decentralized federated messaging protocol is to allow people to build their own clients. Do Matrix clients uniformly and interoperably support E2E today?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nearly; we're aiming to force on E2E by default at end of Jan (but it's getting tight). There are at least 6 complete independent implementations, and once cross-signing lands it's good to go. For clients/bots/bridges without E2E we have pantalaimon (a clientside daemon which you proxy all the traffic through in order to encrypt it).

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, what are these implementations?

<comment><AUTHOR> matrix-js-sdk, matrix-ios-sdk, matrix-android-sdk, matrix-androidx-sdk (soon to be refactored out of riotx), matrix-nio (py3), mtx-client (c++).

In dev you also have libQuotient, metaolm and matrix-purple.

matrix-python-sdk also has support, but got replaced by matrix-nio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Actually Moxies talk "36C3 - The ecosystem is moving" was recorded: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8)

<comment><USER30> He didn't want it to be, though.

[https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1211427007596154881?s=21](https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1211427007596154881?s=21)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Nice essay, Matthew, thanks!

I'll stay with XMPP until they take it from my cold, dead hands.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks :) (you can always use XMPP via Matrix via Bifröst - just sayin' ;D)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This reminds me of the book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", which is also about a father-son roadtrip, and which uses it as an excuse to talk about what happens when we do long, boring tasks requiring some focus but leaving enough of the brain unoccupied. It's a good book and I should probably reread it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Signal really tries hard to not be trustworthy.

The way they defend WhatsApp is heart-breaking. It's cute to see them saying there is no backdoor when it can't be proven to be the case, since it's all proprietary. They can't show the server side wasn't tampered with. Same with Skype.

<comment><USER34> The constant repetition of this ignorant claim is starting to be annoying. Think there is a client backdoor? Go find it. It is not like the binary is not available to you. It is not like there are not emulators in which you can step through the code. Please, show us the backdoor.

Server side tampering? Show us how it can be done. Create a server that can tamper with a patched client. Demonstrate your chops.

<comment><USER35> I see you're formerly from FB.

It's not up to us to reverse engineer a binary every update to guess if it's secure...

It's up to Facebook, which has time and again proven that it is absolutely not trustworthy, to open its code and make builds auditable, inspectable, and reproducible.

This is what ANY secure software does. That's the cost of entry. Imagine if OpenSSH were closed and its devs issued the same response you just did. "Just reverse engineer the binary and prove that it's not secure!"

Rediculous.

<comment><USER34> Actually it _is_ up to you; put up or shut up is a fairly well-known principle. Find the backdoor and make yourself famous, or continue to whine and listen to everyone laugh.

I left FB because it was getting too creepy and I would not trust 99% of FB dev with a single shred of my personal info, but the code is right there for you and people who actually have skills to disassemble and examine. They are under no obligation to do your work for you and the people who can actually do the work make good money so maybe you will learn a useful skill or two.

<comment><USER36> Random people are not in obiligation for Facebook to constantly reverse- engineer their binary code just because they do not want to publish their sources. This is not a criminal trial, but engineering. A mere doubt might be well enough to look for other solutions.

All that money and effort is probably better spent in e. g. developing alternative communication systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think that protocols that are simple and open should be used, rather than very complicated and messy ones. Text-based also helps since it allows to use without specialized software. IRC is designed like this and I think it is good.

<comment><USER38> This is a very unpopular position from a security perspective. All messages should be exchanged by some type-safe structured container like protobuf to avoid a huge class of bugs that comes from quoting and odd character sets, manually implementing parsers, confusing types, and broken string arithmetic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Democracy and republics are hard, so we should all just give up and have autocratic governments"

It may sound flippant or unrelated, but I think this extreme projection of his argument makes it evident how silly it is. This is one of the reasons I switched away from using Signal, as much as I'd like better privacy on my text messages it's not worth handing that much control over to someone I shouldn't have to put my trust in. Instead I do my text messages over Jabber/XMPP with jmp.chat now and for others who have a proper XMPP address I use that (which gives me the option of OMEMO encryption which is basically the XMPP version of the signal double ratchet).

For the average user, installing conversations.im and hitting "create account" or whatever and calling it a day is good enough, so it's not even significantly harder than dealing with Signal.

<comment><USER40> How about that being in an atocracy might be much better when you have a population of 51% wolves and 49% sheep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I saw Moxie Marlinspike's talk when it was posted on CCC's official channel [1] and was disgusted by it. The talk has been now censored and video was made private. It was one of the most defeatist talks I've ever come across when it comes to messaging and privacy. His message was basically that anything you do is pointless and that his and WhatsApp/Facebook's way is the right one.

I've used Signal on few occasions in the past but his talk made me uninstall it. I simply do not trust him after hearing his opinions. I do not support centralization and other ideals he's now pushing (including the use of a phone number as Signal's primary ID).

The talk was mirrored on few channels on YT [2] and you can still see it.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdM- XTRyC9c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdM-XTRyC9c) (it's a private video now)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8) (working link, who knows for how long so mirror it).

<comment><USER42> Wire seemed like a decent alternative where you're not required a number, I think only an email. Also you can delete your account.

<comment><USER28> It's fine, but you should know that pretty much everything Moxie and Signal talk about contrast sharply with Wire. For instance: last I checked, Wire stores your entire social graph on their servers in a database --- effectively forever, Wire stores a plaintext log of everyone you've communicated with.

<comment><USER43> To be fair, since there is no remote attestation possible for the Signal servers, and you realistically can't run one yourself, you only have their word that they don't store any of that information.

This is similar guarantees that a lot of other chat and VPN companies offer. Personally I would consider any information given out to a company non-secret, especially to those operating outside my jurisdiction.

<comment><USER28> The difference is that Signal's competitors are designed in such a way that they _have_ to keep this information, and Signal has delayed key features, like user profiles, until they've managed to create designs that don't have these restrictions.

So the logic you're using here is essentially: "since we have to take Signal's word for some part of this, we might as well use services that promise the exact opposite". I don't find that argument persuasive, but you do you.

<comment><USER43> There's no reason to caricature anyone's arguments here. Why the antagonism?

<comment><USER28> Help me understand where I've lapsed into caricature?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is no one going to talk about how much more complex matrix is than signal?

<comment><AUTHOR> overall it's more complex thanks to the decentralisation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> First off, I have to say this about matrix: they have by far the best foss community I have seen. Excellent work on managing the community, others should take note.

Second, both signal and matrix collect too much metadata. signal means you're completely screwed by their dependency on phone numbers. I expect little metadata privacy from signal because to me, it is practically the same as using my SSN or fingerprint as my user name,same for all my contacts, this key field is used by everyone and their mother to track everything we do like 1984 was target practice. For matrix, it's the defaults and how easy it is for others to fingerprint you using your specific device (equivalent of a user- agent seen by everyone iirc?) and other profile details ,but none of this is easy to correlate and answer questions like "which social network demographic micro-group does this user belong to so we can perform targeted infiltration of their device?" or "Hey, let's use this phone number to look perform the equivalent of a background check on this person who is sending us a message because we now have their phone number". Oh and the best part is, you can't just get a burner to use for registration, and to link a signal desktop,you need the mobile app. Matrix has none of these issues.

Third, consider your threat models carefully. As an individual, is it better if you have infrasructure diversity and protocol interoperability or is it better to put all your eggs in signal's basket. I never liked their use of google infra at the begining for example because I consider google more of a threat to me than most other parties. I can see the argument both ways. I personally consider the set of parties that have the most to benefit from targeting me as an individual plus those who have the most to benefit from dragnet surveillance where I reside. To me, matrix is more flexible to adopt to various threat models by for example self hosting compared to using a popular matrix server. Signal is better than the competition, if your fear is being exposed to unpatched vulnerabilities and/or if you are worried about metadata snooping (but you trust signal's infra provider, still google??) Then Signal makes more sense. For dragnet, I think matrix is better for me because implementation vulns only apply to a few users,making reliable dragnet attacks less likely. For anyone that might target me, my mobile phone is completely defenseless, so my concern is someone identifying _my_ specific device for targeted attacks, with matrix they need to compromise the matrix server and even then they might need to do a lot more work to correlate which matrix user is me (real life "target worthy" identity). Where as with signal,they can easily micro target a group ,find out everyone's phone numbers (e.g.: hk protesters) and target their device for further exploitation via signal or any other pwnable app that is known to present on a device associated with that phone number.Practically, I am more worried about how each app fits in with everything else I do and matrix wins the security round for me.

Last but not least, I use signal for 98% of my comms because the phone number usage by Signal means I can easily connect to and invite people who don't have signal. If there is a Matrix client app that can be used as an sms client and can discover contacts' matrix account/server over sms without communicating or collecting phone number/name details of the contact, I think i might jump ship. The way I envision this to work is: the matrix client would have an invite button for non-matrix contacts and it will have an option to initiate discovery of contacts. Both options would do a challenge-response with each contact and instead of associating with a phone number they would ask to create a new martrix only contact.

</comment><comment><USER46> Matthew outlined much of the Matrix problems but not in the context of the latter part of his idealistic thoughts.

Just going to point out that if agreeing on spec is six time slower, that's just the first car of traffic jam slowing down. The next car has to slow down more: The feature needs to move into SDKs. Then the next car, the client vendors need to actually implement and test their implementation of the feature and write documentation. That's even more slow.

"HOWEVER: all of this completely ignores one critical thing - the value of freedom."

I really value freedom. To me freedom means a non-technical dissident doesn't have to sit in jail when their messages weren't E2EE. It doesn't mean I can choose a value from a list of servers and have faceless entity #1, #2 or #3, or worse, Mike - the creepy IT guy from my peers - observe my metadata with everybody, and content with Karen who refuses to switch to Matrix client that supports E2EE.

"Freedom to run your own server (perhaps invisibly in your app, in a P2P world)."

Now this is something I can get behind. Which is why I've spent the last eight years working on P2P messaging system. Perhaps Matrix should move their efforts into being the change they want to see in the world instead of defending a bad solution of decentralization by saying they're thinking about implementing a better solution of P2P.

"Freedom to pick which country your server runs in"

Which you can't do if you're running P2P server on your device. I think every faceless service provider from Signal to any XMPP server has the same guarantee of privacy in practice. The only difference is Signal has to abide by the GDPR, independent users hosting servers don't. Before anyone screams about PRISM, I will point out that coercing insertion of a backdoor is the same as compelled speech, which would violate the constitution.

"Freedom to select how much metadata and history to keep."

We have precedence of Signal keeping none of that. With Matrix servers the server has access to all metadata by default, the server program doesn't attempt to hide anything, there's no sealed sender etc. Your only hope is to run your own server, somehow convince your peers you're the one they should trust with their metadata (there's a third party on every decentralized server with more than two users), and hope you don't grow enough to get hacked by nation state actors or criminals.

"Freedom to choose which apps to use - while still having the freedom to talk to anyone you like. Freedom to connect your own functionality - bots, bridges, integrations etc"

A nice idea, but everyone needs to have same features for it to work, so what you get is differences in UI, implementation language, and platform support. What matters most here is the programming language: Matrix client written in Rust is more secure that one written in C. But unless everyone uses the Rust version, the group chat is as secure as the weakest link. Same goes with bridges. You'll never have security because of this guy who likes to re-live their youth through irssi: [https://xkcd.com/1782/](https://xkcd.com/1782/)

Also, what happens when Facebook implements their own Matrix client that steals your metadata from the endpoint, and what happens when they start bundling their app on every Samsung smartphone? Perhaps it's not your idealistic Riot client that's the problem, perhaps it's the bundled spyware on every peers' device used by people who just, don't care. I'm not saying Signal fixes the problem of user laziness, I'm saying it's better to know what's on the receiving end.

"Freedom to select which identifiers (if any) to use to register your account."

Which is kind of pointless considering the IP-address still leaks to the server by default. And the UUID means all your metadata can be tied together. The social graph is revealed to the server so unless everyone keeps rolling their IDs and exchanging them over some other channel, it's pretty much impossible to hide metadata from a malicious server running statistical analysis. Even if you're not malicious, there's no way to know if your server has been compromised. Or, if you somehow can harden your server against the NSAs of this world, please, go work for the Freedom of The Press Foundation or something.

"Freedom to extend the protocol."

When the protocol fails to mandate BASIC security features like E2EE, it's kind of pointless to talk about the possibilities of extendability. There's always going to be maintainers and theyneed to prioritize, so there's always going to be someone who decides whether something will be implemented by them. Signal doesn't forbid pull-requests if you want something done. The nice thing is, it's at least six times faster to do it for Signal.

"Freedom to write your own client, or build whole new as-yet-unimagined systems on top."

So it's the freedom of the developer we're talking about. Reminds me of BSD vs GPL (BSD says developer has freedom to fuck over users with proprietary fork, GPL says user has right to not be abused like that, and that developers have the obligation to not do that). It's the rights of the users that matter. That is, human rights. You can merge as-yet-unimagined systems to Signal. You might face initial criticism because it needs to be secure by default. But it's not like Moxie will show you the finger for proposing something before it's discovered or announced. I have first hand experience with this: [https://github.com/signalapp/Signal- Android/issues/4171](https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/4171)

"It's true that if you're writing a messaging app optimized for privacy at any cost, Moxie's approach is one way to do it."

If you consider privacy is a human right, developer freedom isn't, it's easier to see who has their priorities in order.

"you end up thoroughly putting all your eggs in one basket, trusting past, present & future Signal to retain its values, stay up and somehow dodge compromise & censorship… despite probably being the single highest value attack target on the 'net."

So which one is easier to subvert, community of experts constantly under scrutiny by peer experts trying desperately to make a name for themselves, or open work group on protocol that still isn't secure by default, and that is much more susceptible to stagnation via bike-shedding and mission hijacking. OpenPGP work group still hasn't agreed on v5 fingerprint, the SHAppening happened five years ago. I'm going to have to disagree and say I don't have faith in unnecessarily large organizations.

I'm just going to say this FUD is worth being pointed out, but that it's not worthy of dissection.

"We owe the entire success of the Internet (let alone the Web) to openness, interoperability and decentralization."

A thought that was denounced in the 36c3 talk whether you watched the stream or not.

"To declare that openness, interoperability and decentralization is 'too hard' and not worth the effort when building a messaging solution is to throw away all the potential of the vibrancy, creativity and innovation that comes from an open network"

The worth was not addressed by this writing in any way, and the practical problems that far outweigh the idealistic goals were discussed by Moxie because what matters is the human rights to privacy of the users of the tool, not whether the infrastructure is based on idealistic ideas that don't offer tangible security benefits in practice.

Like Moxie said, prove that decentralization works by doing the bare necessities of implementing E2EE, then it's worth discussing whether the idealism part matters, and if decentralization has something useful to offer.

"Sure, you may end up with a super-private messaging app - but one that starts to smell alarmingly like a walled garden like Facebook's Internet.org initiative, or an AOL keyword, or Google's AMP. "

The negative connotations of these companies are about lack of respecting privacy. It's really weird to essentially say "you end up with super private app that shares other commonalities with privacy invading companies". Walled garden isn't ideal, but for now, it's more secure and that's what matters more to users.

"So, we continue to gladly take up Moxie's challenge to prove him wrong - <USER2> show that it's both possible and imperative to create an open decentralized messaging platform which (if you use reputable apps and servers) can be as secure and metadata-protecting as Signal…"

That's the attitude we need. Now go out there and use your preferred methods to make the idealistic protocol secure by default! Just don't expect me or anyone else to recommend its use before that happens.

"and indeed more so, given you can run your server off the grid, and don't need to register with a phone number"

Will you be getting rid of IP-address leak to servers too? Quick jabs in closing notes that aren't thought out too well are not very nice.

"and in future may not even need a server at all."

Also maybe reconsider ending your refutal of criticism towards decentralized architecture by hinting that users should look towards upcoming P2P architecture.

<comment><USER36> Signal could be more tolerable if they did not threaten and harass those who develop third-party clients, citing their unreasoned claims that they somehow "burden" them (1). They cannot demand pull requests if they treat the community like that. Depending on the locale, even frivolous lawsuits can be a real nuisance.

1) [https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...](https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165)

Encryption is also not the only thing that matters. Amateurish functionality omissions are really annoying. For example, in 2015, Signal developers removed the option to create, join or leave groups in the desktop client (2), and they apparently haven't still fixed it. They don't want, nor does anyone else. Maybe a less hostile approach towards community would yield better results.

2) [https://github.com/signalapp/Signal- Desktop/issues/530](https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/530)

While I agree with you that this Matrix e2ee thing has took way, way too long, let's not pretend that everything happens at time in those walled garden systems...

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> > Moxie didn't want the 36C3 talk recorded

Curious why. Anyway it's there: [https://peertube.co.uk/videos/watch/12be5396-2a25-4ec8-a92a-...](https://peertube.co.uk/videos/watch/12be5396-2a25-4ec8-a92a-674b1cb6b270)

<comment><USER48> Here's his reasoning: [https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1211443530335281153](https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1211443530335281153)

<comment><USER49> > I just prefer to present something as part of a conversation that's > happening in a place, rather than a webinar that I'm broadcasting forever to > the world.

To me it sounds an awful lot like not wanting to be scrutinized or held accountable for what he says.

I also find this rather disappointing as it excludes anyone who is unable, for whatever reason, to be at his talks from hearing what he has to say. Given how influential he's been in this domain, this sadness me quite a bit.

> I have less faith in the internet as a place where a conversation can happen

This feels a bit ironic, given he's built an enterprise on enabling conversations to happen on the internet, though arguably only with a limited set of people.

> , and the timelessness of it decontextualizes.

Not quite sure what that's supposed to mean. Perhaps it's a language barrier thing, but I can't parse that into something sensible.

<comment><USER28> In addition to writing on the Signal blog and on Twitter, he's on HN regularly addressing questions about what he's doing; you've had plenty of opportunities to engage with him directly. This seems like a swipe you're making for its own sake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Moxie has always gaslit users with legitimate concerns because addressing them would mean giving up power. Signal is a self serving design and driven by self serving decisions. I've written about this in depth before:

[https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/08/Signal.html](https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/08/Signal.html)

I still stand by everything I said here, and lots more that goes unsaid in this article. Every single weird decision Signal makes is not because they've reasonably decided to come down on some side of the fence that others haven't - it's because their decisions serve moxie's wants above anyone else.

<comment><USER51> No personal attacks on HN, please, regardless of how right you are or feel, or how wrong someone is or you feel they are. Maybe you don't owe that person better, but you owe this community better if you're posting here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER50> Sorry, you're right. I've edited it to be about the behavior instead of the person.

<comment><USER28> From the comment I see right now and the logic you're using here, "have you stopped beating your wife" wouldn't qualify as a personal attack.

<comment><USER50> And if we extrapolate your logic, we can never comment on anyone's bad behavior at all. My complaints are on topic for the article in question, I'm not just swinging at Moxie at random here.

<comment><USER28> The "beating your wife" bit comes with words like "gaslight", "self-serving", and "moxie's wants above all else". I'm trying to imagine what the comment originally said, because the one you've edited is obviously a personal attack.

Not to mention the fact that you appear to have just conceded my point. "But we were talking about Bob!" doesn't make it OK to ask Bob whether he's stopped beating his wife.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Unfairly Flagged Submissions? - <AUTHOR> There was an interesting story from the Guardian submitted today (not by me), "The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes".. Which was fascinating, well-written, well-researched, about how a lot of things in the world are designed to fit men's bodies, and can cause problems (or death) when women try to use them. It first attracted 1 horrible comment, then after 3 more comments it was [dead][flagged]. I didn't see anything in the article that would at all warrant flagging, so I tried submitting it myself, but just ended up on the comment page of the previous attempt. The topic seems one very relevant to people in computer-related fields of all kinds, and one I don't remember reading about before, so I don't think it's been done to death on here.
So I was wondering... 1. Does this often happen on here, stories on particular topics flagged to seemingly censor them, prevent them being discussed (which is a matter of opinion, I guess, which ones fit that description and which don't). Are there notable examples of this from the past?
And 2. What should I do here? I don't know if it was a couple of people effectively vetoing the article, or some kind of consensus. I was very surprised to see this story flagged, and would have liked to see it discussed. <comment><USER2> Gender-related articles inspire a lot of nasty HN threads, often bringing in politics and pseudoscience.

My opinion is that they're within the scope of science and curiosity that HN encourages, but I wouldn't be surprised if people on both sides of gender issues are flagging them because HN just hasn't been a good forum for that discussion.

I personally have been so disgusted by some of the commentary on gender- related articles that I've considered quitting the site, and the only other topic that has made me feel that way is race/eugenics. Neither gender nor race seem to be topics that are tolerated for long here and, while I don't flag them, I think that might be for the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK thanks, yes, maybe you're right. Well, 'hide' would work for those people. It's a shame. (This article was also about design, technology etc. Also there seemed scope for startups to help with the problem with new better designs.)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was the dead/flagged submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19250686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19250686)

</comment><comment><USER3> The HN moderators will respond to you if you email them, it might be worth emailing them and asking them what happened. They can take a while.

Their email address is in the contact link at the bottom of the site.

Unfortunately HN does have a misogynistic contingent, however some readers also believe general news is against guidelines (it's not). In this case it's clearly been flagged against the norm as you can see that most other guardian articles don't get flagged:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=theguardian.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=theguardian.com)

I think HN also has an anti-flame filter, it might have been caught up in that too.

</comment><comment><USER4> At least the users flag gender and race based submissions organically or so I have noticed.

Try submitting anything here that criticizes China, Russia, India or Israel and watch an army of accounts flag your submission. They seem to have the hallmarks of a state sponsored clean up, especially true on the subject of China.

<comment><USER5> HN has a very diverse user base, many of which love their countries of origin dearly. What is sometimes seen as organized behavior, often grows organically.

Because HN does not expose downvotes to users with less than 500 karma, flagging becomes the "I disagree" button.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but it is a very inappropriate "I disagree".

Or, maybe better, it is "I disagree and thus you shut up". :(

EDIT: In the meantime, I "vouched" for the article and read it (for the sake of "freedom of speech"). Though it doesn't "deserve" IMHO to be "flagged" it is all in all a "plug" for a book (that from the excerpt in the article doesn't sound as a good one).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's normal. HN users will randomly flag everything to death. Just now, people flagged my Paul Krugman submission.

A few years ago people flagged an interesting article about a strange medical condition and there were a few comments that this is totally unbelievable, and the publication is obviously crap. Today they would call it fake news.

So I thought, okay, it is easy to mistake. And submitted the paper published in a reputable peer-reviewed medical journal about that incident. Flagged again. I just resubmit every now and then.

Don't take it personal. People are stupid and/or malicious. Sometimes there are enough of those to succeed. Mostly there aren't and normal people prevail.</comment>


Warren Buffett Joins the Crowd Struggling to Understand Oracle - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-26/buffett-joins-crowd-struggling-to-assess-opaque-oracle <comment><USER2> Related discussion from four days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19289583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19289583)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've worked with a public company whose stack is Oracle services. Pretty much every company on that field is Oracle as well, that explains (to me) much of how is Oracle's customer base: this field has been under Oracle & Java database->bus->services->cms since forever, why would one company start and not hire them to have access to the same features, be able to grap a few engineers, and skip "reiventing the wheel"?

What this company (and every other in that field) is doing: moving small, microservice-able tasks to AWS. Scale and costs are way cheaper. But it's a very long-term move: a couple of years pass and bam!, here's another Oracle multi-million extension contract they must pay to continue to have the lights on. But to the executive's perspective, this is just the cost of doing business in that field, it's the same for the competition. You could argue this is the same "no one ever got fired for hiring Microsoft/IBM" mentality.

Oracle stack is obsolete, but as a business they aren't, simply because it will still take a very long time until most companies reliant of their stack be able to move out without great risk to core business.

<comment><USER4> Oracle blew a great opportunity. Internal CRUD apps developed by Oracle Forms worked pretty well, were quick to make, had a well-fitting CRUD-centric programming API, and did the job. Even though they were ugly and visually out of style, they made CRUD easy. Our Forms developers were about 4x more productive than our MVC devs. The MVC devs can put all kinds of fancy-dancy JavaScript widgets on pages that dazzle users, but they are always breaking.

But then Oracle moved their Forms client to Java, creating all kinds of versioning headaches and security risks. They should have stuck with the dedicated stand-alone EXE Forms client: a kind of GUI browser. It was a very practical tool for in-house and specialty apps, but Oracle ruined it with Java.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, the quote by Warren Buffet is IMHO great:

>"Larry Ellison has done a fantastic job with Oracle,'' Buffett said Monday in a CNBC interview. "I've followed from the standpoint of reading about it, but I felt like I didn't understand the business. Particularly after my experience with IBM, _I don't think I understand exactly where the cloud is going._ ''

<comment><USER6> When Buffet thinks "this is BS, I won't touch it", he says politely "I don't understand". He's been repeating it for 40 years.

He doesn't want to fight. He doesn't care about being right in the eyes of others.

I stole this line 10 years ago to decline the invitation "oh, you are a programmer, can you take a look at my computer ?". I don't understand Windows so I can't, because I use Linux. Declaring yourself incompetent is a fantastic social cheat code.

<comment><USER7> I do even one better to get out of doing IT work. If someone random asks me to do computer maintenance I profess my incompetence but say that I'll give it a try. I just go into settings and make the problem one epsilon worse. Then I give it back and say "ugh I don't know what I did, I just [disabled the network adapter] but now it won't even open the WiFi menu." Gives them enough information to reverse what I did but makes sure they never ask me again.

<comment><USER8> seems pretty malicious

why not just ask them to pay you for your time, or else say sorry you need to hire a professional instead of giving them more grief

<comment><USER9> Last week my mother called me after she broke down on the side of the road. So I popped her hood, broke her timing belt, then sped off.

Have to agree with you, seems fairly pointless to kick someone while they're down. Computer problems are stressful, so it's not surprising someone would ask the first person they know is remotely involved with computing for help. It's very easy just to tell someone a few things that they might try googling.

<comment><USER10> >It's very easy just to tell someone a few things that they might try googling.

That seems to frequently be perceived as an insult though.

For some reason, everyone thinks that "computer people" can be counted on to solve their Windows PC problems for free, though they wouldn't ask their relative who's a car salesman to fix their car.

<comment><USER11> Setting boundaries and knowing when to bend them a bit is a skill everyone needs to have. So is understanding and respecting others' boundaries.

<comment><USER10> It's a good skill, yes, but you can't expect everyone to be good at it (just like anything), and I think it's a lot worse when you're dealing with family members.

I don't have an actual solution here, I'm just pointing out that this seems to be a common problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's minimal need to understand their $40 billion in sales. Do they have growth or not, and what is the quality of the growth in producing profit. It's that simple ultimately.

Sales 2014: $38.2 billion; sales 2018: $39.8 billion

No growth beyond inflation. Net income hasn't climbed (roughly stuck at $9-$10 billion for the last five years). Annual debt interest costs have more than doubled to $2 billion as they've made a mess of their balance sheet.

In two years AWS will be as large as their entire business.

In the five years Oracle has seen zero growth, Salesforce has gone from $4b to $10.5b in sales. It's likely that over the next five years Oracle will again see near zero growth and Salesforce will double in size.

Here's what a successful cloud transition with growth actually looks like:

Adobe's business was stagnant for years. Then.... Sales 2014: $4.1b; 2015: $4.8b; 2016: $5.8b; 2017: $7.3b; 2018: $9b.

Their profit skyrocketed from $268m in 2014, to $2.6b for 2018. They earned as much last quarter as they did for all of 2015. The stock has gone from $60 to $250 / share.

You can tell exactly how well Oracle's cloud transition is going by the fact that everybody around them is eating their lunch and seeing growth, from AWS, to Microsoft, to Salesforce, to dozens of other enterprise software companies. Microsoft had watched its top line stagnate for several years as they struggled to find new growth. And then suddenly a big jump: $96b in sales, to $110b in sales, over the prior year. Another example of cloud transition growth in action.

<comment><USER13> While your post is informative and I agree with it I can't see an argument that showcases why Oracle would not have the same exact jumpin the next few years like Microsoft and Adobe had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, idk. I used to work at Oracle and from what I could discern (as a pretty low-level employee) Thomas Kurian was largely responsible for spearheading the cloud efforts on the technical side of things. He's since left the company.

I worked with great people at Oracle but I disliked working there immensely. Compared to a lot of other big-name tech companies, their approach to managing employees and their approach to innovation is extremely outdated and somewhat draconian (in certain arenas). Furthermore, I got the sense that any customers we had were largely the result of good salesmanship and unforgiving lock-in. I'm sure it's probably not like this on every team at Oracle, but that was my experience. It was also incredibly clear from the scarce (once a year? if that?) corporate wide pow-wows and communications from above that the company's top executives not only don't understand their employees but also quite clearly don't care about them, their advancement, or happiness. Hell, Oracle was _just_ starting to bring macs into the workplace in the name of appeasing employees and improving employee-executive relations when I left in early _2018_.

</comment><comment><USER15> That's pretty easy. If Oracles numbers for cloud were awesome they'd certain disclose that. Since the don't we can safely assume they're struggling and want to hide it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yeah, I've been scratching my head, too. Oracle's P/E ratio implies the expectation of great growth, but to me Oracle looks kind of floundering with competition from F/OSS databases and all the failed acquisitions / new lines of business such as "cloud".

I would short Oracle if the overvaluation wasn't so old and stable. Hard to guess if or when it will end.

<comment><USER17> > Oracle's P/E ratio implies the expectation of great growth, but to me Oracle > looks kind of floundering with competition from F/OSS databases and all the > failed acquisitions / new lines of business such as "cloud".

Umm, ORCL's PE is currently 18.7 and the average PE of the S&P 500 is currently around 21 so your statement about a PE that is pricing in "great growth" is dubious at best:). The average S&P 500 PE ratio is also above 18 if you start at a reasonable date of say 1980..

[http://www.multpl.com/](http://www.multpl.com/)

<comment><USER16> Yeah, looks like I misremembered the degree of overvaluation. That said, you have to compare it to valuations of dividend stocks (~15 - Apple, uh... OK, difficult. McD's, Procter & Gamble 25?!, Ford 10...) and growth stocks (~25 - Google, Microsoft, Facebook). Oracle is more of a shrinkage stock IMO...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The head scratcher is no one likes being an Oracle customer. I've never met one.

<comment><USER19> They apparently like it better than being a IBM DB2 customer or a Microsoft SQL Server customer or a Sybase customer or a Teradata customer or a ...[I think you get my point].

Oracle is good at extracting the maximum profit from their sales. They're aggressive about sales and policing usage and they don't often cut customers slack. They've learned that clients will try to give them the shaft and they do their best to not get shafted. They're good capitalists as well as the best database developers in the world.

<comment><USER20> >Oracle is good at extracting the maximum profit from their sales. They're aggressive about sales and policing usage and they don't often cut customers slack.

Sounds like a horrible company to work with. Most of the people I know that use Oracle services/products due so because they are stuck with them

<comment><USER19> Most of the people you know that use Oracle would likely quit if their CFO or CIO came in and told them to migrate away from Oracle. Oracle's stuff works and works right. Furthermore, expertise on Oracle tools is well-compensated and consequently it is common for Oracle expertise to leave for higher-paid jobs (also using Oracle) should a firm cease to use Oracle.

My point is that, despite a proliferation of free and open software, companies still often _pay_ for good software that works correctly. And Oracle extracts their pound of flesh w/o taking a single drop of blood. Oracle's is a very strong business model that is no accident and results largely from having no peers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Realistically, a lot of "tech giant" business models are somewhat weird.

Google is a search engine + search engine monetisation engine. They have some third parties participating in the ad market (notably other search engines) and some non-search properties (eg YouTube) that contribute some as revenue but search+AdWords is still the core.

Meanwhile, most of the notable things google do are in unrelated or marginally related to the business model. Android, chrome, self driving cars...

It's as if most of the company has nothing to do with the business. They used to explain this with a VC metaphor, but that seems to be gone.

FB & twitter are even stranger. Why do they have 100X more employees and costs than they had a few years ago, while not apparently outputting much more than they were outputting before. They're still "just" social media sites. With all due respect to ad-tech and content ranking algorithms...

The common denominator is a revenue stream that comes from dominating a niche and very little relationship between what the company invests in and how it makes money. They didn't/couldn't have actually directed themselves towards those things as goals.

Oracle is similar. They're deeply embedded in their customer's businesses. That means a captive market. This generates a revenue stream. There's no predictable way of turning that revenue into a cloud service, no matter how much they're willing to spend.

Ultimately, the problem is that the market as a whole is overfunded. Investors don't want dividends, so they get highly speculative/dubious investments instead.

<comment><USER22> Alphabet (and not Google) is actually trying to be like berkshire hathaway - conglomerate holding company (at least according to Eric Schmidt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a US citizen I do not want a single cent of tax dollars going to Larry. It's infuriating the US government is Oracle's biggest customer.

<comment><USER24> Same with IBM. I just read the Canadian prime minister _praising_ the work done on a new payroll system, so I decided to look it up: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system)

> In June 2011, IBM won the contract to set up the system, using PeopleSoft > software; the original contract was for $5.7 million, but IBM was eventually > paid $185 million.

...that's 32x the original price.

Everyone in software knows exactly how IBM and Oracle make their money. That part's not a mystery. The bigger mystery to me is why these governments and big companies keep spending money on these professional leeches and expecting a different result.

Do other gov contractors charge 32x the original budget? Do construction, or ad companies, or accountants? Or is it just software?

<comment><USER25> Defense contractors, construction occasionally. It's pretty nuts. The east span of the bay bridge was something like 5x the original cost estimate. I think some of this ends up being because of the same reasons that home general contractors end up charging far more than the estimate: modifications cost extra. "Oh you wanted this feature? It wasn't in the contract, we can do it but that'll be $X. Oh you need to include this other system? That's out of scope but for $Y we can solve it." Million here, a million there and pretty soon you're talking real money ;)

[https://www.wnyc.org/story/316201-brief- history-64-billion-b...](https://www.wnyc.org/story/316201-brief- history-64-billion-bay-bridge/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I remember when Oracle bought Sun and the OpenSolaris guys didn't quite fit in.

"don't make the mistake of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison" \- Bryan Cantrell

skip to 38:20 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc)

<comment><USER27> Just yesterday I came across one of his other videos, and I guess Bryan Cantrill still as a bit of grudge against Oracle:

Light ranting: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm8P4oCIY3g&t=10m10s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm8P4oCIY3g&t=10m10s)

A bit heavier ranting (with the fallout after his usenix ranting): [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm8P4oCIY3g&t=14m21s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm8P4oCIY3g&t=14m21s)

Selected quote: "Any explanation of Oracle that doesn't end with a nazi allegory does not fully explain Oracle"

Bryan Cantrill is really fun to listen to, is a tech veteran now, and is still as passionate and energetic as he was the first day (Another interesting video about programming languages he experienced during his (long by tech standards) career: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjFM8vw3pbU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjFM8vw3pbU))

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> >[interviwer] What two industries are the first you should learn when developing your circle of competence?

>[Buffett] Look for simple businesses. If I gave you $10M to invest right now and you only had three weeks to spend it and you could only spend it in Omaha, you'd look for simple, understandable, strong businesses. You look at the Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM). You wouldn't look at the third best fast food chain. You might look at McDonald's, because it is number one and will probably always been number one. They have share of mind. What about Oracle? Too hard. GM? Too hard. You can't predict the future for these two companies. Too many variables.

That was 2009. Looks like he's decided that was still the case.

Also going by the top comment in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19289583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19289583) three days ago:

... "I probably met nearly 100 developers, and when I asked all of them what they use Oracle for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM openly told me that their companies use Oracle right now but they hate it and they were all in the process of transitioning to other providers or open source solutions."...

I'd guess shorting Oracle might be more the thing to do. Typically customer reaction proceeds the financial numbers moving.

</comment><comment><USER29> In this day and age if I owned a company, and some Director or VP suggested using anything from Oracle or HP, I would assume they were getting some kind of fringe benefit from the sales person and fire them immediately.

</comment><comment><USER30> Warren Buffet doesn't understand that you shouldn't anthropomorphize the lawnmower.

[https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=1983](https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=1983)

<comment><USER31> Quote is at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc#t=38m25s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc#t=38m25s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> MongoDB would be a great acquisition target for Oracle. Their recent acquisition of mLab along with their Atlas offering could create a nice headline to help boost the perception that Oracle is actively moving its database business to the cloud.

Mongo trades at a premium, but its market cap is in the single-digit billions & is nothing Oracle couldn't afford right now. Plus, Oracle's massive legal machine could move the licensing innovation needle even further in the direction of Mongo's recent move to SSPL.

Disclaimer: I work for Salesforce

<comment><USER33> > Plus, Oracle's massive legal machine could move the licensing innovation > needle even further in the direction of Mongo's recent move to SSPL.

Proprietary licensing that has a veneer of openness isn't a legal innovation issue, it's a PR innovation issue (how to get the goodwill and community support that comes with open source while using proprietary licensing that doesn't provide the freedom of open source.) Oracle doesn't have any particular special PR competence when it comes to targeting the audience for whom open source is a big draw, and seems quite happy locking anything that they don't want to share with the community behind traditional proprietary licensing, so I wouldn't see the SSPL game and Oracle having a lot to offer each other. SSPL is for people who want to be like Oracle but pretend they aren't, and even if Oracle cared about the pretense, there's not a lot of indication that the SSPL approach works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Seems pretty obvious — Oracle isn't disclosing specific cloud data in their financials because the data would be embarrassing.

</comment><comment><USER35> Have you read his shareholder letters? To be fair, Buffett doesn't understand anything cloud or computer related.

<comment><USER36> Often used Buffet quotes: "If you don't know jewelry, know your jeweler". I suspect that Larry Ellison is factor in the decision to drop Oracle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I could help explain it for him.

Take something like RAC.

Call it "Cloud On-premises."

Viola! Cloud sales are up.

</comment><comment><USER38> As a former Oracle employee, it's easy to see Oracle's shitty business model--

"Extort everyone for obscene license fees because we currently can, and force them to buy cloud credits they'll never use because Amazon."

<comment><USER39> Oracle consultant here.

There's nothing more disheartening then digging into an issue on a new site and realizing someone checked (or didn't uncheck) a box during install years ago and the system is not complying with its licensing.

The licence fees for small features you might not even know your using can be pretty brutal.

<comment><USER4> Reminds of those "free" software install dialogs that did everything they could to trick you into installing extra spam-ware using double negatives: "Do you _not_ want to skip installing the _Great Deals_ browser tool-bar?"

Microsoft got into similar hot water tricking people into installing Windows 10 via confusing dialog boxes.

<comment><USER40> I won't not never uncheck a box that isn't unlike that one.

<comment><USER41> I think what you were meaning to say is that you won't _never not_ uncheck said boxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The SEC dogs Elon Musk but doesn't dare lock horns with Larry Ellison, the pathological corporate sociopath whose company locks users into seemingly never ending software leases with threatened audits and whose corp has teams of lawyers and only offers "limited breakdowns in its financial disclosures" . . .

Larry recently bragged how even Amazon is under his cloak using Oracle because there is nothing out there better. Bezos response: We'll build our own database no matter what the cost and then we'll compete against you signing up what were your customers. How do you like that Larry ?

<comment><USER43> Amazon has developed Aurora and DynamoDB.

And they are free to use any of the open source ones.

Your narrative makes little sense.

<comment><USER44> Ellison claims ([https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazons-consumer-business- move...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazons-consumer-business-moves-from- oracle-to-aws-but-larry-ellisons-wont-stop-talking/)) Aurora is Oracle's because it's MySQL based:

> So this is another claim I'm going to make, Aurora, not built by Amazon, > built by us, called MySQL. Amazon just gave it a new name. It's also true of > Redshift. Amazon didn't build Redshift, that's not what they do. These are > -- they just open-sourced pieces where they built -- that they used to build > their cloud. They did a great job. They did a great job of making those > pieces available in a coherent -- deliver them in a coherent cloud. I give > them a lot of credit. But they don't build databases. Amazon still runs all > of their -- all of Amazon on Oracle Database. They are trying, they promised > because they don't like me reminding them of that publicly. They said > they're trying to get off Oracle by 2020.

> Aurora is our other database. It's our low-end database. It's our database. > It's not theirs. Well, it's open source. Anyone can use it for nothing.

(This is bullshit, of course.)</comment></comment></comment>


An Office Made of Software - <AUTHOR> http://geoff.greer.fm/2013/08/28/an-office-made-of-software/

<comment><USER2> I've worked from home for 13 years. It's bloody hard. And although most of my work is done solo, my experience has been that collaborative efforts are _far_ more difficult and slow when we can't physically get together.

The advantages of working from home are obvious. Short commute, convenience, midday naps, no pants required... no wonder people want it.

But the _dis_ advantages are really only apparent once you try it. It's hard to get motivated. It's hard to feel a sense of accomplishment. No sense of office "buzz" or excitement. No one to carry you through the mid-afternoon doldrums. When collaborating, all that rich human emotion and nuance is squeezed through a soda straw. Can't go for a walk and talk through a challenging issue. No commute to transition from "work mode" to "family mode." No high fives.

I'm a hard-core introvert, and I _miss_ people.

My business has been a one-man business for the last thirteen years. One of my greatest hopes is that, when I'm successful enough to be a sustainable multi- person business, that we'll have a kick-ass office where we all work together. Because working from home isn't all it's cracked up to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> I worked from home for almost a year. It was a great thing for me, because ever since then I consider an office a perk and not an obligation. My reasons are below. Everyone is different, and for many people offices are a great thing.

\- I had trouble mentally getting into work mode at home.

\- Since my home windows are not tinted (I've since noticed that most office windows are), I was readily aware whenever the weather was nice. In those cases, if you can imagine this, I felt guilty for working because I should be enjoying the weather!

\- I only ever felt proud of a day's work during a stellar day. Anything less made me feel inadequate (in the office, I feel good about what I accomplish and don't feel guilty about less productive periods).

\- My pets do not come to the office. I love them, but they are distracting!

<comment><USER4> > \- I only ever felt proud of a day's work during a stellar day. Anything > less made me feel inadequate (in the office, I feel good about what I > accomplish and don't feel guilty about less productive periods).

This. Surely this should be considered a fair _drawback_ of office work?

My qualms are with the fact that office work seems to sorely hinder one's ability to self-report about _actual_ productivity. Whilst this is lovely for one's mood (the value of which should, admittedly, not be understated), it seems to bode ill for effectively self-managing one's efforts to _get work done_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" Offices are a good idea for many jobs today, but there is one specific case where I think they're no longer beneficial: software companies. What do programmers do all day?"_

See what just happened there? The author jumped to the conclusion that "software companies" employ nobody except "programmers". That might be true for a tiny start-up, but once you reach a certain size, all types of other jobs spring up:

\- Managing payroll, health insurance and other benefits

\- Sales and marketing

\- Legal and accounting: someone has to negotiate the contracts for data center services (even if all the services are outsourced); someone has to pay the company's bills; someone has to do the taxes and other legal paperwork (lots of extra paperwork if it's a publicly traded company); someone has to reimburse employees for travel and other expenses.

\- Recruiting

Imagine a software company with just a hundred employees (not a very big company at all, compared to Facebook's 5000 or Google's 45000) that consists of just people working from home. It doesn't seem to scale.

<comment><USER6> Why wouldn't this scale? Sales people typically only work out of offices a couple days a week if that much. They can make sales calls from anywhere and typically close big deals in person outside of their office. Is there a particular reason you think this wouldn't work apart from no one is doing it now?

<comment><USER7> Distributed companies require strong product and project management cultures - if it's a product that's sellable by sales people, there might be a dozen tweaks a day that might flow in engineers' direction - TSV export on top of CSV, change the gradient schema to a darker blue color, find out why two records are missing from a large customer's account, etc.

In tight shops where sales sits next to engineers and personal relationships are built, those small issues tend to get resolved rather quickly, leading to happier parties on both end, happier customers and higher product quality.

In distributed shops request must flow through a gatekeeper, such as project manager, who then keeps and prioritizes a list of such requests. Sales people then complain that nothing ever gets done, and requests go into a vacuum, while engineers complain about too much bureaucracy and inability to concentrate on large projects with all the pesky requests streaming in.

<comment><USER8> > _In distributed shops request must flow through a gatekeeper, such as > project manager,_

Why not a web forum or a chatroom? Some chat software even allows screen sharing.

<comment><USER7> If the company culture is supportive of such collaboration, that's a great thing to cherish. Frequently with no codified processes engineers would adopt a NMP ("Not My Problem") attitude, with questions getting ignored, and the rest of the organization paying less attention to the channel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Remote working isn't for everyone.

The hardest part is motivation, not necessarily because the temptation to goof off is higher at home (sometimes it can be the opposite, if you are in an office where goofing off is common).

You don't get the human reactions to your work. For example you can't build some feature and just grab the nearest person to show and see their subtle reactions to it. You don't get to walk past another part of the building and see a room full of people using your software to get their work done or whatever the effect of what you are doing is.

Instead you end up sending an email at 7PM saying "I have completed item #232" and you get one back the following morning saying "ok, proceed with item #233".

<comment><USER10> Why don't you just grab the nearest person on IRC?

Also, the way your write it sounds like you and your teammates communicate so tersely as to be an impediment. Don't do that.

In every office I've ever been in, all the programmers type to each other all day long on IRC. In all the distributed workplaces I've ever been, they do the same exact thing, miles apart.

Talk to each other. All day long. Constantly. On IRC. Just like you do in an office.

<comment><USER9> I don't know if IRC is a great substitute for seeing a personal reaction complete with body language. Just little things like seeing whether someones eyes light up or glaze over when you show them something.

IRC can also be easily ignored as people go "AFK" or "busy", it's harder to ignore someone standing in your face.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Well, the whole point of an office is to get work done.

I'm not sure about that. The whole point of an office seems to be to allow management to _verify_ that you're getting work done. Or, to put it even more accurately, to allow management to _feel like_ they're verifying that you're getting work done.

I'm not sure Floobits addresses that. In fact, I'm not sure that it's possible for a product to address that. It seems like the sort of thing that'll require a generational shift (as newer managers comfortable with remote work replace older managers who aren't).

<comment><USER12> > The whole point of an office seems to be to allow management to verify that > you're getting work done.

This part is pretty easy. Whether remote or working in an office space, daily standups, commit logs and the delivery of results can go a long way in figuring out if someone is actually getting stuff done, or is just pretending to busy at a desk.

There are a couple of things people don't seem to address enough though.

\- A lot of software development involves a group people designing and debating the architecture in front of a whiteboard. Most of this discussion is not preemptive, but rather happens on the spur of the moment.

\- I strongly believe (but no data to back this up) that you are more productive when you work with a team you are comfortable with, both technically and on an informal social basis. This involves intense coding sprints through late nights or just having a couple drinks at the bar in the corner of the street.

I would be happy if working remotely really works for programmers, but everyone seems to be talking about the wrong issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are two types of people, those who feel energized being around people and those who feel energized by internal deliberation. Offices exist to satisfy the first category.

What is happening though is that the valuable work of today is conducted by internal deliberation (building apps, predicting prices, writing compelling blog posts).

As it becomes more possible for people to distribute their work without a company (app stores and the like), the office will be bled dry.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've often felt similarly, having worked on a number of remote projects.

But at the end of the day our efficiency/productivity in making major decisions is much higher when we gather. Technologically, this is driven by 2 things: 1) Whiteboarding software just isn't there. I can't as effortlessly sketch something out and share it with remote people as I can on a physical white board (which is arguably as relevant to "software companies" as actually writing code). 2) Audio/visual latency still exists. Even if I closed my eyes, I could still tell who's in the room and who's not. Sometimes I'll come in just for a meeting because of this.

I do think a happy medium exists in much smaller offices/coworking spaces where most people are WFH a lot but come in once a week for meetings.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm quite fond of private offices per engineer, with sets of four offices with doors pointing inward into a hallway. This allows each engineer to easily do a quick chat with the two across the hall, and a tiny walk brings you into your neighbor's office.

As the article points out, private offices are considered more expensive. The question is, how expensive are they? Is it the increased floor space they take up? The cost of the materials for walls and doors? More complex heating and cooling?

It's a sad trend indeed; here in Tokyo private offices are almost unheard of, and even back home in the SF Bay Area private offices are quickly going out of fashion.

The fact is that, for some engineers, auditory and visual distractions can ruin the focus needed to achieve goals. Open plan and cubicle offices are hell for these engineers.

</comment><comment><USER16> Thought: A team of competent people will work together well no matter their physical situation.

Thought the Second: It's going to take some really _good_ software to replicate the intangible benefits found when people work in the same office. Overheard hallway chats, oh-by-the-ways in the break room, impromptu white board discussions.

Thought the third: Because these intangibles cannot be measured, a majority of HN readers are going to have a difficult time seeing the value of them. Commit messages, working code doing something - you can measure that, and it is good.

How do you measure the value of a game of ping-pong during lunch?

</comment><comment><USER17> It's alright to work from home once you get past the wanking stage.

</comment><comment><USER18> our commercial offices house sales professionals and executives. board rooms, client meetings, land lines, water coolers, coffee machines, nice views of the city.

most of our programmers work remotely from their homes, and our systems administrators work from home and in the datacenter.

equilibrium.

<comment><USER19> Where do you work if you don't mind me asking?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _What do programmers do all day? They read code. They write code. They read docs. ..._

How are programmers different than bloggers, secretaries, online and social media marketeers, customer service reps, etc.. in this regard?

<comment><USER21> Secretaries are different because their job is to work with someone else. All the others you mention should be able to work from home the same as programmers, imo - are you saying they shouldn't and therefore programmers shouldn't, or asking why people here care about programmers and not social media reps?</comment></comment>


Sage Solitaire Poker – next big thing after 2048 game - <AUTHOR> http://playsolitaire.mobi <comment><USER2> Not bad. Could use more "sugar" and other eye candy but the mechanic's interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for feedback. We will make note on this :)</comment></comment>


Rowling, Rushdie and Atwood warn against 'intolerance' in open letter - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/08/jk-rowling-rushdie-and-atwood-warn-against-intolerance-in-open-letter <comment><USER2> The letter itself was discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23759283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23759283)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The letter [https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open- debate/](https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing the original letter!

Many good points therein, can we still able to have a conversation about conversations, are we too far gone, can we course correct?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences._

All fine and good, but the authors need to specifically say what topics good faith disagreement can be had on or this is just special pleading on behalf of their particular point on the ideological spectrum.

<comment><USER5> Don't you have that backward? If they had to specify the topics, then that would be special pleading. As it is, they're making a case for the default position; "general pleading" so to speak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My feeling is that the origin of attack on allies (people largely on your side who also partly disagree or speak in a tone-deaf way) stems from the broader hostility between left and right. That has made progress impossible, and faced with frustration at the lack of communication or any hint of compromise, people lash out at those who should be on their own side. At least they're listening.

I don't like it either, and I don't think it's helpful, but I understand the frustration. Fragmentation has long been a problem for progressivism. There are so many injustices, and since each happens to a group that is marginalized, the only way forward is unity. We have to back each other. Especially since the system is designed to be conservative: it requires multiple branches to pass legislation, any of whom can halt it, sometimes by a minority vote. About the only significant progress ever comes only from the Supreme Court, which is dominated by conservative judges who will often prescribe a legislative solution. Which they know won't happen.

People should be able to disagree publicly and loudly with their allies. But when faced with an opposition who will oppose anything you say solely because you say it (even reversing their own past positions to do so), you face an impossible dilemma. You need unity, but can't reach it without disagreeing publicly. And when you despair from the fact that the system is stacked against you and you perceive that nothing you do will help, lashing out at any pretext at least feels like some kind of accomplishment.

We need to fight against that impulse, but we won't do that without identifying the cause. And I believe that the cause stems from the right wing intransigence that has long since past any sincere ideological disagreement into active hostility and denial of reality. If we can't win fights against people who deny well-recognized science on many fronts, and promote conspiracy theories not just at the fringes but at all top levels of leadership, how can we actually win anything?

<comment><USER7> This is very true. It isn't possible for two political parties to have fruitful process and debate without both acting in good faith.

I would also point out that for many white people in the US, political affiliation is merely a way to claim tribal membership in a group as our fundamental rights are already secure. Of course this is also true more generally, but look at polling information by demographic and it's clear for example that black voters aren't confused about who is working against their interests, and largely vote accordingly. The tribalistic people have little inherant interest in policy, and care much more about protecting their identities as group members. There can be value in exerting internal pressure on those people to statistically help move the herd. An analogy might be a dog snapping at sheep to move them to safety. A sheep dog that gets too agressive and actually bites to cause injury is counterproductive, so this has to be done diplomatically.

<comment><USER2> > Of course this is also true more generally, but look at polling information > by demographic and it's clear for example that black voters aren't confused > about who is working against their interests, and largely vote accordingly. > ...

You do realize that this is a tautological argument, right? One could just as easily argue that black people are voting for policymakers who, by and large, seek to patronize and infantilize them, thereby "protecting their identities as group members" even as they're in fact working against their long-term interests.

<comment><USER7> You should try talking to black people sometime and you will see this is not the case

<comment><USER2> Talking to voters is always a good idea, of course. I'm fairly sure that quite a few white voters would want to similarly disabuse us both of this notion that they only vote based on pure tribal loyalty, and don't actually care about their broader interests, however construed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Rowling, whose beliefs on transgender rights have recently seen scores of Harry Potter fans distance themselves from her [...]"

That's an understatement. She's effectively canceled for rest of her writing career for even thinking what she ended up writing.

Looking forward to the next chapter though - the best is yet to come.

<comment><USER9> >She's effectively canceled for rest of her writing career for even thinking what she ended up writing.

No, she isn't. Her views on transgender rights, offensive as I and many others find them, are still comfortably mainstream. She lost a lot of Harry Potter fans, but a lot of fans have also chosen to divorce their love of her work from her politics, and many others simply couldn't care less. I seriously doubt publishers are going to refuse to publish her, bookstores to stock her, or studios to turn down piles of money from franchising her work. I seriously doubt that she's going to be wanting for fame, readership or money in the forseeable future.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, her concerns are still far from "mainstream". Most people have no idea that "detransitioning" is actually a thing for quite a few trans folks, or that "rapid onset" gender-dysphoric identity is a serious concern as relating to a minority of young people whose self-perception and orientation seems to be strongly influenced by their "progressive" social milieus.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Amazon deletes your reviews - <AUTHOR> https://feedcheck.co/blog/why-amazon-deletes-your-reviews/ <comment><AUTHOR> Please share with us your experience on this topic</comment>


Steve Jobs, Superhero - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/steve-jobs-superhero

<comment><USER2> It seems unavoidable that from now on lots of managers the world over will cargo cult the surface characteristics of Steve Jobs' management style in the hope of obtaining his "magic", everybody seems to have read that book. I hope it won't be a huge fad, working under a second-rate Jobs imitator is pretty much my vision of Hell.

<comment><USER3> Similarly, I have nightmares of working with a second rate designer who has drank too much Apple Kool Aid. DESIGN UBER ALLES! Stop being so pessimistic, codemonkey!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another bulletpoint suggestion for motivating top talent: * Set up no-poach agreements with other employers so that they can never leave.

Wotta superhero!

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't think there's a "cast & stone" mantra to success. I believe great guys like Steve find their own mantra independently and that's what works. Understand your work force, business and independently derive your own mantra. I guess that's what Steve asked others to do, not copy him.

<comment><USER6> Have I been wrong 40+ years when I've been saying "cast _IN_ stone"? If so, what is the etymology of that phrase? (I was at least in my teens when I was told the saying was "for all intents _AND_ purposes" instead of "for all intensive purposes".)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author read Steve's biography and came away thinking Steve was some kind of superhero. He argues Steve used his weaknesses along with his strengths to become some kind of miraculous management guru, successfully motivating his top talent despite being "prickly".

That's not the same book I read. I was a big Steve supporter, but I've lost most of the respect I had for the man after reading his biography. The book I read showed an immature, volatile, rude and cold man who had more luck than he deserved. Sure Steve was smart, and he was by all accounts charismatic. But at the end of the day, he wasn't a very good human being. Steve acted like an impetuous child. He was an orphan who in turn abandoned his own children. He sounded like a terrible husband and an even worse friend. His management style to me sounded like that of a three year old. Screaming, crying, pitching fits and generally caring only about himself.

I think the author is giving Steve too much credit for the way he handled his top employees. There were plenty listed in the biography who left, disgusted by him. If Steve had even an ounce of empathy for others, I imagine he could have gone even farther than he did.

<comment><USER8> After reading the book, I thought much the same as you did and felt quite underwhelmed as a result.

However, that said, after reading that post today, it turns out I did learn something from that book/the "Jobs" way and that is to focus on the top performers. Sure, some left but it would seem the right ones stayed given where Apple is today. Whilst Steve may not have always been able to explain exactly what he wanted, he certainly knew what he wanted. Those that stuck with him obviously learnt to deal with that better than the others.

So if anything, that article has helped me 'get' something from a book that I was otherwise disappointed with, and for that I am grateful. Fingers crossed I find myself in a role one day where I can combine multiple management approaches, including some of the ones used by Steve Jobs, to maybe achieve an even greater result.</comment></comment>


Why does Microsoft not have free food like Google and Facebook? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Why-does-Microsoft-not-have-free-food-like-Google-and-Facebook/answer/Amin-Ariana?share=1

<comment><USER2> Given a choice, I'd rather not have a company provided/subsidized meal. It's a taxable benefit.</comment>