Comcast's $30.7B bid for Sky bets on the past as Disney chases the future - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/comcasts-307-billion-bid-for-sky-is-bet-on-the-past-just-as-disney-chases-the-future-2018-2 <comment><AUTHOR> Is there anybody on the planet who doesn't think Comcast et. al. aren't just salivating over their new rent-seeking business model, post Net Neutrality?</comment>


dataclass, a stdlib alternative to attrs, coming in Python 3.7 - <AUTHOR> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0557/ <comment><USER2> This could dramatically reduce boilerplate and still produce idiomatic OO code. I'm very excited about this.</comment>


Do you Outsource External DNS? Think Again. - <AUTHOR> http://openwebdeveloper.sys-con.com/node/906852

<comment><USER2> Page not found

maybe they outsource web hosting...

<comment><USER3> Isn't this sys-con.com site catching a lot of crap for rebranding content form other sites?

<http://aralbalkan.com/2067>

I can't find the original link for this post but I'm sure there is one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"Disclosure: I work for Infoblox, a vendor who offers a DNS appliance. Even worse, I'm in the marketing department. "_

At least he's honest.

The article basically questions the wisdom of placing an essential service like DNS in the hands of a possible DDOS target/single point of failure mega- provider. Fair enough, I agree actually, I run all my own DNS for exactly that reason.

Don't like the chances of selling a DNS "Appliance", though - anyone trusted to be technically competent enough to design the network in the first place should probably know how to set up a server themselves. Configuring BIND (or whatever) is not the hard part really, the hard part is knowing what to configure it with!</comment>


Bash is a bad programming language - <AUTHOR> http://bashisabadprogramminglanguage.xyz <comment><USER2> "Stop using unportable sed/awk/readline/sh/ksh/csh black magic."

Anybody considering those tools to be 'black magic' is very likely to be a non-unix person. There are several quotes for the benefit of people like that:

"Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be very selective about who it decides to make friends with. -- unknown"

"Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. -- Henry Spencer, programmer"

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing wrong with awk. I have serious beef with people who are writing scripts using them and not aware of portability issues, tho.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to start a business while working a 9-5 coding job? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys. My main issue is being able to start a business while working for a regular employer. It's something I've wanted to do for years but I can't find a single place that doesn't require a non-compete+IP assignment agreement.
The normal advice is to keep on with your employer until you grow your side business to profitability. That would be great if every single employer didn't shackle my mind with "agreements" that make it nigh impossible to do anything of value for myself.
I've roughly calculated I could save enough to quit my job with a year runway if I save for 3 years (a long ass time)! The other common advice is to get investment from friends and family, as if most people's f&f have 50k they're able to throw at anything let alone someone who's financially independent and outwardly successful.
So given that the HN crowd has a ton of entrepreneurs and business owners, how do you do it? There must be some way out that I'm not seeing. Are these employment agreements not really enforceable? Scare tactics like telling employees they can't talk about salary? Is investment easier to come by than it seems? Small business loans? I spent a few years of my life getting into a position where starting a business is reasonable minus the lack of money. I don't want to watch another three years go by before I can do anything about it. <comment><USER2> If you create something Not related to your job you are safe about the f __*ng non-compete.

How to start?

2\. Wake up at 5am and work 2 hours daily.

1\. But most important, just create a landing page to see if there are any signups before you spend a year working on it.

3\. If there's any interest, work on a minimal paying version that has a positive cash flow from day one.

4\. Sales and marketing. Invest in a good ad campaign, word of mouth, and some user research if you can.

5\. Fail fast, try more than one marketing idea.

<comment><USER3> Great point. I would take it a step further and fully test the distribution model that you would expect to have when your product is complete. More than likely, your sales & marketing would go beyond a landing page. If you can force yourself to solve the distribution part, the product creation part is that much more fulfilling knowing that you'll have traction when you're done, or even already have it before shipping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a really interesting topic. I think almost every developer dreams about his own business or product. I personally don't see that sitting minimum 8 hours per day for someone else makes sense, but on the other side at the same time, you are safe, someone else takes care about lot of things for you. It's hard to project any path which leads to own successful business. So far what I have seen is that only thing that counts here are balls, if you know what I mean :) One of the ways which is reasonable for me, is to first try to switch to freelancing and there you can test and see are you actually able to take care about lot of things that are usually done by the company, and btw those things are not coding. With your experience and knowledge you should be able to find really good freelancing jobs or you can even try to join some platform for freelancers... Being a freelancer is almost the same as starting your own business. Later if you see that you can earn lot more money or to hire some geeks, just open a company and take a next step.

</comment><comment><USER5> So long as you work in something completely unrelated to your job, never talk about it at work, never bring it up at work, don't even google it. Don't work on it, don't use their equipment, don't take their equipment home, or use any resources. Don't partner up with any coworker or ex-colleague, you should be fine. If it turns into million dollar idea, you could be sued, but then you can afford a lawyer, if it doesn't turn into something big, you probably won't be sued.

</comment><comment><USER6> After you've gotten a lawyer to look at your current agreement, you may find it's enforceable and actually prevents you from building a side project.

If that's the case, you do have the option of finding a new job. Some companies have more lenient IP agreements. And if you're a desirable enough candidate _and_ it's a small company, you can negotiate a custom IP contract.

I've done that twice!

If you negotiate an IP contract and you get back "but our lawyer says the contract is cool", what you do is have your lawyer propose amendments. Often it's not so much the content of the changes that gets pushback, just the effort and cost of the process. So if you pay your lawyer to do the legal work it can make it a lot easier.

(I hired Rex Baker - [http://www.rexbaker.com/](http://www.rexbaker.com/) \- he's great.)

More broadly, negotiation is a key career skill, whether or not you want to be starting your own business. E.g. you can also negotiate a shorter workweek so you have more time for your side business.

I go into this a bit more in an email course I wrote on getting to a sane workweek ([https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/](https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/)), a very abbreviated version of a book I'm working on.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you are one of the best who can do all the developer work fast and the business rules, go for it, little by little.

I am on the other side of the fence. I'm trying to build something for myself but from time to time I dream to be employed. Even when I took a job, not it IT, the employers could see that I was not totally into that job, and I think that was the reason why I left some jobs or I was fired at other times. No one likes an employee who lacks motivation.

I suggest to wait for the right time if you care so much for the current job and dont want to loose it. Once you start a project your mind will be all the time at that. If you dont believe me, I'm telling you I was driving my employer by car and my mind was just not there, I was not going to stop at red at traffic lights, but I did because my employer did shout. And I worked other jobs also but my mind was not there.

</comment><comment><USER8> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it difficult for the employer to prove if you worked on your business while employed? Suppose you don't keep a timestamped code repository, do your market validation work that looks generic (web browsing, some calls and emails to prospective customers), don't use any company equipment, and last but not least do not blast online that you are the owner of a business.

You can then quit when it looks like the business can start generating money, and your employer would be none the wiser, right? Or heck, keep on working as how would they find out? Unless you will need to take investment, you can just keep it a secret?

</comment><comment><USER9> That's the conundrum! It's not easy. And because you don't want to burn bridges and want to have a clear conscience, work on a vertical to your employer's. This means you'll likely need to spend time learning about a new vertical. But that's OK you're determined and hungry. I've done it. People have done it.

So don't overcomplicate. Build a daily habit for the next few years. And don't bog yourself down with little details and ifs and buts. I started with a $80/mo allocation. Some were able to do it with $0/month.

</comment><comment><USER10> Don't really know. Start out with trying to get as disciplined as possible. You have to have minute control over your daily schedule. Start out with allocating 2 hours a day or so.I

As far as IP assignment the only thing I could come up with is to license all your code under GPL. Since you are the creator the sheer complexity of the code and the fact that you wrote it, will make you the unquestionable authority of the project. Lets say Linus Thorvalds applied for a job that requires intimate knowledge of the Linux kernel, he would be among the top candidates to say the least.

But I'm interested to get more information on these IP laws. How common is it that employers use this? I mean the software you are developing might be in some other subset of the market. Would a company really waste time on attaining IP for a product which is far from what they sell? Or am I being naive? Also if the threat is real, would using a GPL license solve this problem? Is it even possible to apply the GPL license legally?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my issue - I don't know. I assume any time is worth wasting if your developer builds even a small business since the value of anything over 5 employees is likely more than a million. Time management is not my concern at all. If I could legally start a business I would begin working on it tomorrow

My current strategy is to open source everything because there's no reasonable way my company can take ownership of something that's free. I can't develop anything for money even though I've been asked to consult many times for many people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A while ago, people on HN were discussing about Joel Spolsky's essay "Developers' side projects". Interesting discussion about the legal concerns and where to start.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13142327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13142327)

// Edited to insert the link to that HN thread.

</comment><comment><USER12> 1\. Find another job where there is no agreement

2\. Work on your side project after work and on the weekends

3\. If you see it's picking up, quit

No excuses...

</comment><comment><USER13> IANAL but unless you are actually competing with your employer, you are fine.

I have worked in major companies and heard far too many developers whining about their non-competes and not taking actions.

Then I know a few who never ever complained about non-compete or any other such non-sense. They are the ones who actually started companies. I am also one of them. Most of my ex-coworkers did their best to scare me and make me quit my sidebusiness but luckily I didn't listen to them.

Just be smart, respect your employer, don't steal their ideas, code, or time. Also don't brag about your sidebusiness. Your boss will have to file paperwork if they hears about your sidebusiness. Don't complicate life for them.

In the end, talk to lawyer just to cya.

</comment><comment><USER14> First of all, talk to a lawyer if you have legal concerns. HN is not the right place to take advice about legal issues.

Second, I would explore the idea of working part-time. Last April I switched jobs and now work part-time at one company while having two days a week to work on my own software. I make enough money at my part-time job to give myself infinite runway (my personal expenses are low, I have health insurance through that job, and I'm still contributing to retirement/savings which is important to not overlook). In my opinion, this is a much better option than going freelance, as you only have to context switch between two projects and you always know you have a paycheck coming in the door.

</comment><comment><USER15> Work as an independent contractor. You are not an employee and even if you create IP for your client, they do not own your off time. For example, if you had two clients, they would not own the others ip.

If they send you a blanket ip agreement as a contractor, modify it to only agree to the created ip during working hours.

Rules are: Not on company equipment Not on company time Work on projects not related to your day job

Being employee status is trickier than a independent consultant though.

</comment><comment><USER16> Talk to a lawyer and see if the agreement is enforceable or if it would be thrown out in court. From there you know how you can proceed.

</comment><comment><USER17> if you are in CA, come work for state, there is no agreement and the work load is so light that you can do it in less than 2 days a week and do other stuff with you remaining time. I am doing on my own side project now and I am happy here for now.

if you want more information shoot me an email at bpourtaherian at yahoo :D.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here is a way, you dont have to start a business for you to test your idea.

We are building a platform where people can contribute create. We are doing a meta campaign to crowdsource our own dev.

Please check out www.crowdraising.co Once you have a team then you can start a business. This should help with your current dilemma as well.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is your idea related to the business you currently work at? If not, just build it.

<comment><AUTHOR> My employment agreement at last three companies says they own any intellectual property I create on or off business hours with or without using company equipment. Whether or not its related to the current business.

<comment><USER19> Not a lawyer, but certainly sounds overbearing and probably not enforceable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I should talk to a lawyer...

<comment><USER20> _Definitely_ you should talk to a lawyer. If your employer is going to take it, why bother? If not, go for it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> you could look a businesses out side of developing a platform. something without intellectual property.</comment>


Radical Opacity - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/web/25997/ <comment><USER2> OMGWTFBBQ

THIS is making headlines about Internet innovation? Is the net over?</comment>


Earth and Sun - <AUTHOR> https://ciechanow.ski/earth-and-sun/ <comment><USER2> This is awesome. This would be useful for every science teacher and student.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you! A beautiful article!</comment>


Police are getting tanks and heavy weapons from Pentagon for nearly free - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/column-militarization-u-police-forces-175828669.html

<comment><USER2> Making the police into a military body. This can only turn out well, eh?

There's a reason why the US constitution forbids using the US military against its own citizens. There's also the European experience with military police (universally bad) and more recently, the Soviet experience with their various internal armies and militarized police (also bad).

Have we learned nothing from our fellow humans?</comment>


Here's a Neat Trick Using the :Focus Pseudo-Class - <AUTHOR> http://joshnh.com/2012/12/03/heres-a-neat-trick-using-the-focus-pseudo-class/

<comment><USER2> Nice! I love the simplicity, and the fact that this is actually relatively semantic styling, and doesn't require any extra markup.</comment>


The Kawaiization of Product Design - <AUTHOR> https://vanschneider.com/the-kawaiization-of-product-design <comment><USER3> I'm not sure I'd call this "kawaii," as that has a particular (and often cringey) connotation.

But, there is something deeply unappealing about this style. I'm not sure I can even describe it properly. It just reminds me of the most boring parts of my childhood: the aesthetic of dentist office waiting rooms, and middle school pamphlets aimed at teaching kids about sociology.

My past association with this sort of aesthetic is so innoffensively boring, I almost can't even stand to look at it. And, as and adult, it no longer strikes me as just boring, but also insidious in the way that all marketing is insidious: it promises one thing, and behind the marketing is something else. A pleasant and inoffensive advertisement is in actuality just a regular old business who wants your money. There's (usually) nothing evil the business, but of course the feeling portrayed by the marketing is a lie.

<comment><USER4> > _I'm not sure I'd call this "kawaii," as that has a particular (and often > cringey) connotation._

Kawaii is great within the culture it created it (and not cringey, in fact, cringey is a cringey neologism applied to everything these days).

But this is definitely not Kawaii - doesn't have any major kawaii characteristics as known. Cute in some way != kawaii (which might mean "cute" etymologically, but refers to a specific aesthetic).

Your description "middle school pamphlets aimed at teaching kids about sociology" is spot on (at least concerning the human-like figures and color tones).

<comment><USER5> I think you're being too narrow in application. People exclaim kawaii liberally —about as liberally as "oishi" for food delicious or just so-so.

<comment><USER3> It's the eternal debate: does the term mean what it originally meant, or does it mean what people commonly use it to mean? People will drift between meanings.

<comment><USER6> And it also means something different to westeners on the internet than it would to Japanese people. As hilarious as that is, it's nonetheless reality

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Literally nothing in this article could be described as "kawaii", kawaii is meant to invoke the same feelings you'd get from looking at a cute kitten. None of these illustrations do that or set out to do that.

"Corporate Memphis" is one way I've seen this described more accurately [0].

[0] [https://qz.com/quartzy/1728767/why-editorial- illustrations-l...](https://qz.com/quartzy/1728767/why-editorial- illustrations-look-so-similar-these-days/)

<comment><USER8> +1 as Japanese. I never heard this type of styles called as "kawaii".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is tangential to the author's argument but it's amusing to see how the word "kawaii" has taken a life of its own in the West.

In Japan we often make gratuitous use of English words ( _yokomoji_ , lit. "sideways-written characters") to make things sound more interesting than they really are, seems like it works the other way around too.

<comment> GuB-42 In France too, English words are commonly used to make things sound more interesting, more modern.

Especially hilarious when management uses English words, often improperly, when a perfectly adequate and commonly used French word exists.

Maybe it is a global trend all over the the world since English became the de facto international language.

<comment><USER10> > In France too, [...] hilarious when management uses English words

Recently (well... back when going to the office was still a thing) I had a meeting with a senior manager at our company. At the end of the meeting, he grabbed his iPhone and said "I am going to take a selfie of the whiteboard" (in French except for the word 'selfie') thinking that meant any kind of picture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On a related note, I wish product designers stop to cater to beginners. That is, stop equating easy of use and ease of use by somebody who never used the product.

Somebody who sees the product for the first time will have very different requirements than somebody who is seeing it every day. The latter is able to learn some productivity tricks, that might be opaque to beginner, but make the product actually easier to use.

<comment><USER12> I think the product designers have the right approach here. Having worked in a lot of large corporates, you find a lot of people who are just experts in using some over complicated piece of garbage software. If I have to attend a 3 day training seminar just to figure out the basic functionality of your app, then I think you've done it wrong.

Software should make it as easy as possible for people to immediately start doing something useful with it. Make advanced features available via the API, and make sure logs and APM are easy to ingest. Advanced users likely won't have any interest in your web interface anyhow.

<comment><USER13> I'd disagree. Some things are hard and the ergonomics makes it worth a little confusion. CAD software like xcircuit is a good example of this (although they definitely could stand to make the save dialog a little more intuitive.)

<comment><USER12> Becoming an advanced photoshop user is difficult too. But I can still fire it up and doing basic image editing with about 2 minutes worth of figuring-out. Excel is almost a full RDBMS, but the basics don't really need any training.

<comment><USER13> I don't think excel can do joins which is a big part of the "R" in RDBMS but I don't use excel often so I could be wrong.

<comment><USER14> I'm fairly sure it can. It's been years - almost a decade, now! - since I've had to use Excel for anything productive, but I vividly recall using VLOOKUP to create what were effectively views from a SQL perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > It could be just a trend, or it could be we are becoming more human, more > childlike because we're tired of being grownups.

This conclusion completely misses the point. What has changed is what "growing up" means. I see that many people around me in their late thirties care more about the environment, care more about the mental health of their children, are more playful and are better at their jobs that previous generations.

Suffering is part of adult life, that is a sad truth. But, to make life dull and hard to look like an adult is plain wrong and inverts cause and effect. A somber life without enjoyment does not show that you are "being a grownup". To be playful, to enjoy life, to want to learn and grow are characteristics not just of children but of balanced smart adults.

> Given the context of the world around us, we are searching for positivity > and comfort, and that's why we add emojis to our spreadsheets.

Like any human being before us, like any living organism that has reproduced on Earth to look for comfort is the natural and responsible thing to do. Do you see lions hunting more that they need? Do you see plants growing away from the sun? Sometimes there is trade offs and you choose the lesser evil, but suffering when not needed is a dangerous stupid idea.

<comment><USER16> > A somber life without enjoyment does not show that you are "being a grownup"

Was there ever really a time when ppl thought this was what growing up meant?

<comment><USER17> It's the "boomer" fantasy of what _their_ parents and grandparents were doing before them. Hence why movies in the 60s/70s began to carry anti-authority "live your life" messages more and more until we're saturated in them at this point generations later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The deformed, grotesque, inflated humanoids they use in flat design are opposite to 'kawaii', and opposite in motivation. Instead of hitting your instincts with a supernormal cuteness/sweetness stimulus, it's supposed to desensitise you to 'differences' in humans. It's ideologically tinged

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I'm wondering from time to time, what's going on with the strange cult of the small head. I've seen that illustrators call this trend 'big limbs', but I call it 'small head'. As in 'Let's not focus on this big head of yours, shrink your head, just go with the flow'. Get rid of your brain, your thoughts, your personality, everyone is OK. Looks like it's the millenial's equivalent of the boomers' large nose cartoony characters (or maybe a shitty pastel family-friendly castrated version of Robert Crumb's body fantasies) and it will pass. However, I think this one's still in its prime time and gonna keep pissing me off for quite a long time. Maybe I should try harder to propagate the style I enjoy- giant head, no body, tiny limbs.

<comment><USER20> It seems that a good chunk of the web design community went bananas on Humaaans[0], probably because Facebook started using similar small-headed, monstrous-limbed, absurdly deformed human caricatures. I absolutely abhore this trend, and feel the same way you do: it deemphasizes what's truly unique about humans - our brains, our minds, our personalities.

\--

[0] - [https://www.humaaans.com/](https://www.humaaans.com/)

<comment><USER19> Cool to see someone that shares my view. Of course it's not all black and white. There are some illustrators who have established a name for themselves, like Karol Banach. People like him incorporate this template for human proportions into their trademark style, but the body elements are neatly composed into a larger picture. It's mostly mimicking 20th century fine painting styles. Decidedly more Picasso than Matisse. And then there are all those poor schmucks pumping out commodity illustration. Aside from Humaans, I think I've also seen some official guidelines for Illustration by Facebook. This is sad. This is how the Internet got corporate. Also, there's this thing to make process faster for the more ambitious ones: [https://galshir.com/posea](https://galshir.com/posea)

<comment><USER20> That's an interesting app, thanks! I'm actually looking for tools for generating properly-sized vector human figures, or even doing skeletal animation on vector graphics.

Speaking of art style of human figures on the web, my favourite one is [https://undraw.co/illustrations](https://undraw.co/illustrations). These are the kind of images I'd like to see more on the web, instead of Humaaans lookalikes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As other commentators have mentioned, the analogy to "kawaii" is inaccurate and inappropriate; it's much closer to what's been termed Corporate Memphis[1] than kawaii. Key differences:

\- Corporate Memphis uses an abridged contrast ("flat") full range palette that is meant to a) be legible and b) not stand out. Human forms are flattened, with intentionally minimized, abstract differentiation between entities. This makes sense because the emphasis is on legibility and universal visual communication, not flair.

\- Kawaii uses uses an expanded range palette with a lot of emphasis on pastels and cel shading to create a 2.5D world that is probably aesthetically closer to Surrealism. Kawaii human forms are caricatures, full of cartoonish distortions. The whole point is expression, quirkiness, flair and alternate reality building.

[1] [https://qz.com/quartzy/1728767/why-editorial- illustrations-l...](https://qz.com/quartzy/1728767/why-editorial- illustrations-look-so-similar-these-days/)

</comment><comment><USER22> If clay figures are the price to pay for clean, spaced user interfaces and readable text, then bring it on.

This is the first time that I actually like a design trend in the web. Thank god we got rid of those barely readable thin grey fonts on white backgrounds.

<comment><USER23> that was the worst. Don't get me started on the trend for large line-spacing that makes text as unreadable as the duoble-spaced preprints I just refuse to read.

<comment><USER24> You have forgotten 90's web pages, not from templates and designed by edit-in- the-browser where you can choose any color for foreground and background (and people usually did)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This reminds me of the anime series Psycho Pass. Police officers wear holographic suits to look like theme park mascots so they don't disturb people. Then they end up shooting criminals with a laser cannon that makes them explode like bags of blood flashing to a boil in a microwave.

</comment><comment><USER26> I thought this would be more about how emojis have invaded products.

I recognise their communication value but they are aesthetic disasters (colour, dated cartoon style, cacophony) and they are real lowest common denominator expressions - often the equivalent of a fart noise or a "+1". To support emoji you hand over a huge slice of product aesthetic and expressivity to something which in all essentials, is very childish.

I looked at reddit recently and all the emoji awards that can even apply background animations like flames gave me the strong impression that "this is not for adults". For something smaller that might be a fine choice but reddit's opportunity seems to be much larger as the pre-eminent threaded discussion site across all demographics and if anything I suspect longer form discussion skews older.

<comment><USER27> Emoji are a native part of the vocabulary of a couple generations now. What you might be noticing is a platform signaling that it's supporting those folks as well.

Every Millennial is an adult, as are many Gen Z'ers, and these plus the first all-21st century generation are going to have come to expect emoji to exist and existed in digital spaces where emoji are a part of the jargon.

Why would it make sense for Reddit to force these people to communicate less completely than they are used to doing?

<comment><USER28> I think it goes back a lot longer than that - humans have been using symbols to express feelings for thousands of years. Written language is really the child of that. Personally I think humans will always communicate via little pictogram symbols, regardless of how perfect written communication with words is. There is something very innate about two eyes and an upward curved line meaning happy - and lots of similar examples. Emojis are just a form of this.

<comment><USER26> True but I don't think any pictogram language has ever been as ugly as emoji. It's the "programmer art" of pictograms. Brushes and carving seem to be helpful design constraints to drive restraint, regularity and simplicity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think part of it it's the "build your design from blocks" mentality that is so dominant nowadays.

There's a lot of ways to do hard aesthetics, but pretty much one way to do kawaii (roundness, pastels, flat appearance). Joining kawaii-sh art from different sources is way easier than joining other kinds of graphics.

I would guess that a significant part of the trend is people following the path of least resistance.

<comment><USER24> I can see the other side of "building from a theme" or "building from a template", where you can choose a template that works for everyone, even old people, the colorblind, or even completely blind.

It is better than the 90's web pages where people could choose any foreground or background color, and people were free to choose yellow on green.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I noticed this a lot more on signs and posters when I moved to Singapore earlier this year. Back in Melbourne, design seemed a lot more varied, but everything here is the same style. My guess is that a lot of the signage is from government agencies here who hire the same design teams?

Anyway, design trends come and go. We have seen this in the last couple of decades with the heavy skeuomorphic designs found in earlier Apple products and then later the "flat design" trend.

I'm curious what the next trend will be?

<comment><USER31> That is one thing that I find concerning about Asia (having lived both in Singapore and Hong Kong). Messages from various government agencies are written and illustrated like kid books. It makes me uncomfortable that either 1. grown-ups are so infantilized that they need to be addressed like that or 2. that governments feel their grown-ups are too stupide to be talked to normally.

<comment><USER32> I do not recall the metro warning signs in France. I do remember them in Japan. It's because the Japanese ones were funny and draw you in to a story.

You could have the following without the pictures: [https://pradt.co/imgs/poster/pleasedoit02.gif](https://pradt.co/imgs/poster/pleasedoit02.gif)

There's different styles to this, there's variations which are more Disney or Anime like, what's the issue? The point is to draw attention, I don't see what the need is for the ostensible seriousness, if it's not effective at educating and drawing people in to your message.

<comment><USER33> I'm surprised you don't remember the Rabbit of Paris Metro: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_of_Paris_Métro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_of_Paris_Métro) (maybe they changed it?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> type-2 Why did he decide to call it kawaiization? I don't think this kind of design is inspired from japan, even though the rounded corners, soft color palette can be considered "cute", they exist because they are perceived as "modern web design". I put it in quotes but honestly I don't hate it. It is pleasing to the eyes.

<comment><USER34> Agreed, there's no additional meaning to the world kawaii that isn't already captured by the word cute. Actual Japanese websites look nothing like what the author describes.

<comment> type-2 Pretty much. Though it is a very international thing, I think chinese websites in general look more "kawaii" if we use the world like the author(?). For eg. take look at www.ui.cn

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The cute'ification of design is definitely a thing. When you think about what something is supposed to signify, it appeals to certain aesthetic reference points. Within a particular critical framework, all design is to signal alignment to perceptions of power, and reflecting the ones from your customers minds is how a product succeeds.

Personally, I find this kind of design originates in those corporate retreat exercises where you co-operate in infantalizing play-time and people are forced to compete to demonstrate submission and remove indicators of individual quality or personality as "edges" that create friction to the dynamic flow of power. In the design language, removing edges and clear lines that might signal "either/or, black and white" thinking in the design reflects this value of passive, liquid, flexibility - which is the opposite of decisive, directed, or forceful aesthetics of 80's, 90's and 00's coroporate design languages.

Compare it to the 90s-00's Italian Futurist corporate design language of some major internet companies, which was perhaps in hindsight an unfortunate choice, and was the polar opposite of the unthreatening startup languages of today.

The values implicit in the design are fascinating to consider, but a critical view of them would take the topic into more controversial territory.

</comment><comment><USER36> See also the recent related HN discussion [1] about "Corporate Memphis" which is orthogonal in principle from Kawaii, but in practise often overlapping.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22890877](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22890877)

</comment><comment><USER37> The author uses what look like Dribbble screenshots to prove his point. Dribbble does not represent the majority state of product designs.

<comment><USER38> This is an important point! Dribbble shots are usually not from actual products, so you can't use them as evidence for a real world trend.

Another point is that you should not generalize about the design of a product based on marketing pages. Often, the design for these pages is contracted out to studios who don't touch the rest of the product. How often do the products look and feel like the home page? Almost never.

Maybe this is a trivial point, but what I mean is: he shouldn't state this as if it were a product design trend, when (if it is a trend at all) it's a marketing trend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think it's really just that digital art has become so prolific and cutesy things are just the easiest to make. Every company wanted minimalism but now everyone looks the same so we have to garnish it with cheap art so it's not too minimal and now everyone is doing that.

</comment><comment><USER40> Recently discussed, an article with an almost synonymous title: "On Infantilization in Digital Environments (2015)"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22490089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22490089)

</comment><comment><USER41> I think the reason the cuteness is unnerving is because these sites are selling tools. It would be weird to buy a hammer covered in some soft fuzzy material, so why are these digital tools designed to look like children's sites? Moreover, why do they obfuscate key product specifications and functions in favor of vague promises of increased productivity (more goodness as one comment said)? I think the answer is that the low hanging SAAS fruit has mostly been taken and all the new SAAS apps have an increasing smaller niche and therefore increasingly smaller value proposition.

</comment><comment><USER42> By "product design" do they mean "visual design of marketing sites"?

Anyway, trends come and go. I don't think there's any meaning to be derived here beyond "attractive marketing collateral is appealing."

</comment><comment><USER43> > Our app designs have become soft, sweet, inoffensive. Bank interfaces use > pastels, rounded corners and soft drop shadows to make mundane or unpleasant > tasks more "fun." Animojis have taken over our chats, and our productivity > tools are starting to look like Animal Crossing.

This is the part of this that galls me the most. Weaponizing UI design as a substitute for UX simplicity, and using that weaponized design to bluster past the UX shortcomings of your service in your service's marketing.

<comment><USER20> "Weaponizing UI design" is a perfect description. These designs aren't meant to be thought about, they're meant to push emotional buttons in your head. They're meant to make you feel safe, make you shut down critical thinking, in order to make you more receptive to the marketing message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Even Apple is taking small steps in that direction. See their web site.

Until recently, Apple's design aesthetic seemed to be borrowed from Bang and Olufsen audio gear from the 1980s. Hard-edged, stark, monochrome, good materials, barely visible controls. Sony long had a playful look, but lost out. Will Apple go with the playful look, or fight it? So far, Apple has lightened up enough to ship phones that have colored cases, but no decorative artwork.

<comment><USER45> It's older than that. Jony Ive is/was an unabashed Braun disciple

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Everything looks like clipart and templates these days.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is a really insightful way of framing the trend. I hadn't thought about it this way before but it makes perfect sense.

However: I think there's a more sinister aspect that's not covered in the article. Think about how dystopian so many software products are today - <USER2> privacy violations, the toxic social interactions, the dark patterns. It makes _perfect sense_ that the companies behind these products would lean as hard into kawaii as they can, to mask the bad stuff and make the user more receptive. Who could be worried about the personal information they're giving away when there's a cute little cartoon animal shyly asking for it?

</comment><comment><USER48> See related, the Dribbbilization of design (2013): [https://www.intercom.com/blog/the-dribbblisation-of- design](https://www.intercom.com/blog/the-dribbblisation-of-design)

<comment><USER49> This is it more than anything. Author is complaining about cute trend comming up that he probably dislikes yet the bigger problem is almost complete unification of design that follows trends.

It's the maximal safe choice, ultimate lack of imagination and fear of experimenttion. I guess makes sense business wise?

By the way its not like van Schneider (author of the article) is some kind of daring pushing the envelope designer. He might not make things cute but overall makes pretty trendy dribbly stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Arguably Google started this trend - it had a multicoloured logo, their head office was called a "campus", they had beanbags, etc. It has defined a generation of corporate messaging: non-threatening, childlike simplicity. Compare and contrast companies called things like "INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES", built at a time when corporations wanted to exude power, scale, financial strength, and technical brilliance.

<comment><USER51> Doesn't negate the rest of your point, but just for your information, business parks have long been called campuses; that's not a Google or infantile thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> It's all design for hordes of mediocre cheap designers

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't know what kind of art you guys grew up with, but when I was a kid all the art I was exposed to (in cartoons and textbooks and whatnot) used saturated colors and was shaded. This is the exact opposite of the art style I associate with "infantilization". It's abstract and flat and uses pastel colors, like something out of a mural.

</comment><comment><USER53> Not kawaii, but good callout nonetheless. This is just what designs end up looking like when you consider 7 billion people your target audience and want to market to them all simultaneously. It's for everyone and also for no one; it's soulless garbage.

</comment><comment><USER54> This talk about "kawaii" a lie meant to erase the work I did on @humansofflat until designers canceled me: [https://twitter.com/HumansOfFlat](https://twitter.com/HumansOfFlat)

</comment><comment><USER55> mention swiss design too maybe? [https://creativemarket.com/blog/swiss-design- history-example...](https://creativemarket.com/blog/swiss-design-history- examples)

It's just less soft and round

</comment><comment><USER34> Author could've just called it cutification without wasting a paragraph to explain a common loanword. It's not like these trends actually come from Japan. Look at some of these top 20 Japanese sites[0], none of them look like what the author's describing.

[0] [https://m.yahoo.co.jp/](https://m.yahoo.co.jp/) [https://smt.docomo.ne.jp/](https://smt.docomo.ne.jp/) [https://www.rakuten.co.jp/](https://www.rakuten.co.jp/)

<comment><USER56> The author is probably referring to a general trend in Japan where simple, cute, slice of life ambience is becoming very popular in various media like video games and anime.

<comment><USER34> The general trend of Kawaii things also looks nothing like the websites he's talking about. For example, they lack the distinctive hand-drawn cartoon art style like this site has[0].

[0] [http://www.mitchiri-neko.com/](http://www.mitchiri-neko.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I've been trying to remember where I read this word a long time ago, like decades. Was it a well known brand? Music? Electronics? Sports?

<comment><USER58> Kawai make pianos.

Not the same as kawaii, which means "cute".

<comment><USER57> Thank you. My memory is really bad. Guess who owned an upright one for a few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I actually actively ignore this kind of marketing aesthetic. It screams lightweight, throwaway, fake. I'm probably wrong sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER60> "or we see a puppy and have an urge to squeeze it" \- stroke or cuddle perhaps, but SQUEEZE?!

<comment><USER61> That's actually just a natural response, have you ever seen how a child impulsively and strongly squeezes a teddy bear?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Cartoon humans in advertising is a big turn off for me. Are you serious or just playing around?

</comment><comment><USER63> Round corners, nice. Hope next they will figure out 3d buttons and how to draw humans.

</comment><comment><USER64> The kawaii style was a few years ago. It's all about the blob people now.

</comment><comment><USER65> > and our productivity tools are starting to look like Animal Crossing.

bada-bing!

</comment><comment><USER66> everything is kawaii until you actually start using the products ^^

</comment><comment><USER67> I agree with the authors implied reason that Kawaii is a way for people to escape reality.

It first became popular in Japan, where there is also Hikkomori (adults refusing to leave the house), Grasseaters (young men refusing to date), and lots of fantasy harem videos on TV.

And now that the pressure increases in western societies, we see similar problems and similar escape mechanisms.

FYI alcohol is not accessible to people under 21 in Japan, thereby denying them one of the most popular western stress relieve drugs.

<comment><USER68> > FYI alcohol is not accessible to people under 21 in Japan, thereby denying > them one of the most popular western stress relieve drugs.

Well, it's not supposed to be accessible to people under 21 in my state either.

<comment><USER67> Here in Germany, you can legally buy beer at 16...

<comment><USER69> Same here in Switzerland. Beer: 16. Wine and spirits: 18. Tobacco: No age limit to 18 (depending on canton). Driving (car): 18. Driving (tractor): 14. Voting: 18. Mandatory army service: 18.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is the Web dead? Is it alive and kicking? What is the Web anyway? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/53e4de6c1630

<comment><USER2> It's no longer about what it is but what it will become: it's bound to evolve into a new & exciting environment, where everything is an app instead of a site, where user's interactions are more important than just views and, ultimately, where apps are interlinked into a Web ... of apps.</comment>


Building Atila: The Essential Software Startup Tech Stack - <AUTHOR> https://atila.ca/blog/tomiwa/building-atila-the-essential-software-startup-tech-stack <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone,

I wrote a blog post on how our startup atila.ca chose and built our tech stack. Our team is all students and most of us started programming just 2 years ago so we'd love to get your thoughts on our stack and advice on how we can improve.</comment>


Volatile Software (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/04/volatile-software/ <comment><USER2> This has expressed the ideas in my head far better than I could. When I first started to work with Rails in many projects I just dumped all of the gems I wanted to use in my Gemfile. I quickly learned that a simple bundle update could fuck my shit up pretty badly by having gems change APIs, remove features or both.

Since then I always specify the exact versions of my gems or in cases where the gem authors are known to be comptent use the "~>" operator. I find it to be stupid though much like the article states, why are newer versions making my life harder when they are supposed to be _better_?

</comment><comment><USER3> I personally think it's better to break backwards compatibility if you're removing or changing something that was bad in the first place. Otherwise, there is no need, and thus it never breaks. Much like in the case of your list of non breaking programs.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I personally think it's better to break backwards compatibility if you're > removing or changing something that was bad in the first place.

This is the false dichotomy that I want to dispel. You can remove/change bad things while maintaining backwards compatibility in most cases! It just takes a little bit of extra glue code!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to choose projects for undergraduate courses - <AUTHOR> I often face a difficult time choosing a project for my undergraduate courses. Sometimes I go through Google Scholar or ACM Digitial Library for latest works related to the course while other times going through past projects by students of similar courses at other universities to get ideas. Would like to know how you choose a project to undertake for a coursework, considering there also are time limitations of 2 or 3 months. <comment><USER2> What's something that will keep you interested for 2-3 months?

This is your chance to show that you can tackle a project without getting distracted by shiny new tech. Can you go back to it day after day without getting bored?

Choosing something "cool" might look good on a CV for a short while, but much more important is the work ethic it will instill in you.</comment>


Lessons from a year's worth of hiring data - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alinelerner.com/lessons-from-a-years-worth-of-hiring-data/ <comment><USER2> > The most significant feature by far was the presence of typos, grammatical > errors, or syntactic inconsistencies.

I've always used attention to detail when writing (although I give a pass on grammar/spelling to some extent to non-native speakers) as a proxy for general professionalism/intelligence with relatively high accuracy.

If you can't be assed to write accurately and consistently in your native language (and/or don't avail yourself of the myriad automated tools to achieve this end), how can anyone expect you to be accurate and consistent in any other endeavor? It's not like language and written communication is unimportant; indeed it may be the most important skill any information worker can have.

If I were considering hiring a native speaker of English, a single homonym misuse (its/it's, effect/affect, et c.) or lack of subject-verb agreement in any pre-hire communication (emails, CV, their public-facing website, READMEs on Github) would be sufficient for a NO HIRE in my book.

<comment><USER3> While I agree that immaculate attention to detail is important in documents you're creating for formal consumption (e.g. CVs/resumes), I don't see how the same extends to emails, websites and READMEs.

I'm a native English speaker and despite being well aware of homonym misuse, my brain doesn't always play the game and occasionally I find myself using the wrong word in my writing with no rational explanation.

Similarly, I often find myself leaving out words in my writing that I don't notice are missing even after re-reading a paragraph many times. (I fall for "PARIS IN THE THE SPRING" almost every time it comes up.)

Alternatively I'll change the wording in a sentence and not notice stray words are left over in the wrong order, again even after re-reading. Usually I have to do something else and look back at what I've written to read it with "fresh eyes". I imagine dyslexic people have similar problems.

Despite these issues I've been complimented many times on the quality of my technical writing and my code, so I don't consider my natural language issues as much of a disability when it comes to programming or technical work. That is, until I encounter somebody who holds your beliefs.

It seems obvious to me that there's a vast difference between somebody writing a CV using obviously incorrect spelling or random formatting, or inconsistent capitalisation, punctuation, tenses, etc., and somebody who makes one or two typos in a blog post on their personal home page.

<comment><USER4> It is almost impossible to proof read a document you wrote yourself for typos, specifically repeated/replaced words, immediately (while you can still remember writing it.) I don't know if this is true in all languages, but it's definitely true in English.

This is because your brain subvocalises (reads back) what you _meant_ to say, not what you actually wrote, when you re-read and can still remember the sentence in your head.

I know of at least one example of a Deputy Headmaster, who was also my maths teacher, accidentally typing in a swearword to a school report. My Dad (the IT manager, whose job it was to check all the reports before they were posted) got him to read it back aloud (a day or so after he wrote it) and he read out the sanitised/corrected version, aloud, from a piece of paper with the swearword staring him in the face. He was _very_ embarrassed when my dad pointed it out.

In cases like that, you wish you could define a specialised dictionary without the swearwords, so that dangerous typos jump out at you!

to GP: tooling can only get you so far, and you're battling against your own brain the rest of the way. A 2AM README typo is forgivable; a CV/cover letter issue (where you were supposed to be concentrating, and/or getting someone to proof read for you) less so.

<comment><USER2> Typos are one thing, misuse of homonyms or lack of subject/verb agreement is another entirely. I wouldn't begrudge someone a "teh" in a readme THAT much (though, again: where the fuck is your spellcheck?), but a misuse of "your" for "you're" immediately makes me start to question if they have a clue what they're doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" As soon as you get someone who's never been an engineer making hiring decisions, you need to set up proxies for aptitude. Because these proxies need to be easily detectable, things like a CS degree from a top school become paramount."_

No doubt this is true to a some extent, and perhaps even to a large one. But let's not give the HR drones too much credit here.

How many of _us_ have ever had to sift through a stack of 100 resumes or more in, say, a week or less? It's not an easy task. It's especially difficult for hiring managers, because they have day jobs to perform. They may not _mean_ for things like "Google," or "Harvard," or "L33t CS Degree" to become proxies for our honest, thorough, intellectually rigorous analysis of every resume in the pile. But these things become a sort of shorthand.

HR types seem more prone to overemphasizing the letter of the law, to putting pedigree on a pedestal, and to thinking as un-differently as possible. But given a thick stack and a few measly hours, I doubt most of us fare _significantly_ better.

If we're serious about moving toward a better hiring process, we need to start by recognizing the limitations of the resume itself as a normative tool.

<comment><USER6> Author of the original post here. I agree completely and recently wrote about this problem: [http://blog.alinelerner.com/silicon-valley-hiring-is-not- a-m...](http://blog.alinelerner.com/silicon-valley-hiring-is-not-a- meritocracy/)

TL;DR It would be awesome if candidates had the option to do a coding assignment and submit a writing sample in lieu of a traditional resume/cover letter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _I interviewed roughly 300 people for our back-end /full-stack engineer position_

Q1. - Given that most companies interview less than 10% of the total number of applicants, I would love to know how one job received 3,000 applicants.

Q2. - Why did you have to interview 300 people to fill one job? There is a serious flaw in that strategy. If you spent one hour with every candidate you interviewed, that works out at just under 6 weeks of back to back interviews. That's not taking into consideration the logistics involved in filtering and processing these 300. All that aside, do you not consider it to be exceptionally flawed that you had to interview 300 different people in order to find one suitable person for the job?

<comment><USER6> 0\. Peroni, thank you for reading this. I've been a fan of your writing for years, and your take on hiring was one of the things that ultimately helped me make the decision to switch from coding to recruiting.

1\. Yeah, over the course of a year, we got several thousand applications/resumes for this position. The interview rate was roughly 1 in 10.

2\. We interviewed 300 people and made offers to 6, i.e. the hit rate was 1 in 50, or 2%. Moreover (and fortunately!), each individual filtering round and subsequent interview took much less than an hour.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the kind words. I feel exceptionally guilty for my harsh feedback now.

I'm still bothered by the 1 in 50 ratio. Maybe I'm misinterpreting it. Does that 50 include people who get phone screened or is that 50 exclusively people you have met face to face?

If it's the former rather than the latter, then consider my incredulity null and void. If it's the latter then you should drop me an email as I would jump at the chance to help you to halve that number.

<comment><USER6> Thank you :)

The 50 includes people who got phone screened. The onsite to offer ratio was something like 3 to 1, if memory serves. I will update the original post to make that clearer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting results that seem to challenge some received wisdom. However, N=1!

What this study tells you is the systematic relationship between resume detectable attributes and getting hired at this particular company. If this same analysis was carried out at 29 more companies we would have N=30 which is considered a small sample size. To effectively do that the author would need to put out a detailed description of methods for coding resumes and ideally a means of determining inter-rater reliability and so on.

Interesting conversation starter - but please no one make any important decisions based on this.

<comment><USER9> Depends. From the point of view of the applicant perhaps N=1 as only one company's hiring was investigated. But from the point of view of someone scanning resumes, N=300 (there were 300 applicants considered).

<comment><USER8> From the perspective of lessons learned, that is generalizable truths, one can only generalize to that company. So the reader of this article can only really say, this is highly relevant and accurate if I intend to apply for an engineering position at this particular company. Beyond that it falls into the same anecdotal category as any other advice dispensed by recruiters or HR personnel who have responsibility to screen applicants entering into the interview process.

The big difference is this recruiter has gone to the trouble of actually measuring a number of factors and assumptions and can say with great confidence, this is how it works in a particular company. In that regard it is certainly more weighty than the type of blog post that says "I have been doing screening for 5 years and this is what matters to me. And, by the way it seems to correlate to hiring decisions at the back end of the process."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Excellent piece.

I was getting sick of reading about "cultural hiring" on HN. Finally someone has some numbers instead of trying to justify why they should only hire people who look and sound like themselves.

<comment><USER11> actually hiring based grammar mistakes is " cultural hiring". I assume they were not hiring immigrants based on the stats presented.

<comment><USER9> I know lots of immigrants with excellent grammar and spelling. A few who even bother to get someone else to check their resume for that stuff.

<comment><USER11> Professional proof reading costs money. If you are modifying your resume for each job you are applying, it will cost you a fortune. And asking your friends who speak English natively(very few immigrants have those) is not so good since most native speakers have grammar problems( unless you have a friend with a Phd in English lit).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amongst applicants mentioning GPA: 30% have GPA 3.8 or higher

Amongst job offers mentioning GPA: 67% have GPA 3.8 or higher

Author's conclusion: GPA doesn't seem to matter

Alternative conclusion: If you mention your GPA, 3.8 or higher gives you 5 times the chance of being hired.

*Edited for my bad.

<comment><USER13> Be careful with those numbers. He mentions that half the applicants didn't list a GPA. He also mentions that because of this, their are likely biases in those numbers. He makes mention of this in the comments.

Basically, the data isn't clear.

<comment><USER12> My point is that the author's conclusion is way more than a stretch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice data! However, I'd love to understand the relationship between those attributes and quality of employee. Perhaps a government funded study where you select 100 resumes at random and hire all of them for 6 months? Piece of cake.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, tracking on-the-job performance would be much more interesting than just looking at whether or not someone got an offer. I hope to be able to do this kind of study in the future with the advent of more data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice article! Two thoughts on the issue of grammar/spelling mistakes:

1\. The anecdotal argument: i know a great developer, very detail-oriented, math/stats genius, great team player, elite company background. But he's dyslexic. Let's not hope you would apply your filter there.

2\. Great teams need a balance between detail-oriented and not so detail- oriented folks. I know quite a few excellent programmers who can get lost in the details. People with less focus on the details are often the more visionary ones, the ones with the big picture. Truly great people can switch between the two, but they are rare.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Of all the companies that our applicants had on their resumes, I classified > the following as elite: Amazon, Apple, Evernote, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, > Microsoft, Oracle, _any Y Combinator startup_ , Yelp, and Zynga.

I'm not sure an "elite" filter is a great filter, but it's not surprising that it is used. What is surprising is that the OP considers "any Y Combinator startup" to be an "elite" company.

More than 500 companies have passed through Y Combinator and I doubt that most of them would be instantly recognizable as Y Combinator companies on a resume unless Y Combinator was mentioned. Grouping _all_ former employees of Y Combinator startups into an "elite" category seems like it requires an unnecessarily big leap of faith on the part of the prospective employer.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hey guys, I'm the author of the original post. Happy to answer any questions.

Also, for some more discussion, see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5919819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5919819) (last time this piece was on HN).

</comment><comment><USER17> >>having worked at a top company matters

does that mean that it makes more sense to know how top companies hire, rather than small ones, since small companies just shadow decision made by bigger ones and check for typos and grammatical mistakes?

<comment><USER18> To be honest, most of the top programmers or engineers that I know have terrible, terrible grammar and spelling. A number of them do not speak English as a first language but others just don't seem to care that much.

Would I base my hiring decision for a new programmer or engineer on the amount of spelling mistakes in a resume? I would give it thought but I would be more interested in actual real life working experience.

<comment><USER13> > To be honest, most of the top programmers or engineers that I know have > terrible, terrible grammar and spelling

On their resume? Or just in emails they are sending out or in chat?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > I ran this analysis on people whom we decided to interview rather than on > every applicant; roughly out 9 out of 10 applicants were screened out before > the first round.

Although the author acknowledges this will taint the results, it seems like a major filter especially when you are crafting rules for screening by non- engineers. For example, the results for "Offer Likelihood as a Function of Highest Degree Earned" could shift quite a bit if those with higher degrees were basically passed through the first cut.

Why not run a subset of the analysis using the full set of applicants?

</comment><comment><USER20> It's somewhat interesting that grammar/typos etc. matter this much. It's a little hard for me to believe because I'd think "projects, projects, projects, get stuff done" trumps all.

Did you adjust for native speakers vs. non-native speakers in any way?

Also maybe I'm naive but why can't engineers do the HR even at big companies? Imo for knowledge workers you really can't afford to outsource HR to people that have no domain expertise.

<comment><USER21> At the big companies, HR doesn't handle the complete hiring process, but a good HR department can do effective pre-screening for the hiring manager. I like the fact that the OP points out that if you provide sufficient criteria to HR, they can effectively screen resumes. (The problem that I've seen - which can be avoided - is that either no criteria are given to HR or the criteria are too tight.)

Why should an engineer spend time pre-screening for typos? And, if the hiring manager is adamant that the candidates must be proficient in language/methodology X, why should an engineer waste time looking at resumes that don't even mention language/methodology X? (Maybe the hiring manager shouldn't be adamant about lanauge/methodology. Maybe judgement should be used. So that's a criterion that should not be passed on HR, in that case. If it is, that's the fault of the hiring manager, not HR.)

Also, a good HR department can keep you from getting into legal trouble with illegal questions/behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> this is an extraordinary claim.

stop and think about it for a second.

if it's true, then whatever trait leads one to being punctilious about spelling also makes one a great engineer.

forget the guy who's really good at linear algebra or can write his own compiler ... the guy who is perfect with his spelling will be the better engineer.

I'd love to see more research on this because it would be really fascinating result if true.

<comment><USER23> In an age where word processors highlight mistakes and offer suggestions, errors of the kind that would be caught automagically are akin to checking in code that doesn't compile.

I don't really care about email (esp. if written on a phone) but a CV is, as others have said, a formal document.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ultimate Troll: Wrote plenty good code, frequent speaker, founder of several companies, hacker.

Send resume that has grammatical errors, or syntactic inconsistencies. Turn down by technical recruiting, then post with details.</comment>


Oracle blames Google for shutting it out of the smartphone industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.fudzilla.com/news/mobile/48416-oracle-blames-google-for-shutting-it-out-of-the-smartphone-industry <comment> java-man I think this lawsuit was probably the most damaging action made to java ecosystem. Undermined the very foundation of having a platform-agnostic computing.

</comment><comment><USER2> WHERE CAN I GET AN ORACLE PHONE? I WANT IT!</comment>


New Bespin Release - <AUTHOR> https://mozillalabs.com/bespin/

<comment><USER2> I'm having a hard time understanding what the Bespin license and structure is. More to the point, this "release" seems to point towards a "server-only" update, which doesn't seem to have a source code repository.

So -- they are releasing an open-source thin client but keeping the server side closed-source ? That doesn't sound encouraging...

<comment><USER3> The server and client are both open source. You can choose from the MPL, GPL, or LGPL.

The setup guide for the server is available here:

<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Bespin/DeveloperGuide/Setup>

<comment><USER2> Thanks !

I went to <http://mozillalabs.com/bespin/> where you have a "Developer Resources" menu but it only links to the bespin client, not server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Direct link to 0.7.1 announcement:

[http://mozillalabs.com/bespin/2010/04/07/bespin-0-7-1-bryce-...](http://mozillalabs.com/bespin/2010/04/07/bespin-0-7-1-bryce- released-bespin-rebooted/)

Mozilla, please let people test Bespin without login. Or at least provide a way to recover a password, and let us login with an email.</comment>


Humble Wikipedia Bundle - <AUTHOR> https://www.humblebundle.com/wikipedia <comment><USER2> Little unusual, but good cause to support anyway.

The best part:

> Get a massive encyclopedia that's valued at nothing, because you can read it > all online for free.</comment>


Health Giant Sutter Destroys Evidence in Crucial Antitrust Case Over High Prices - <AUTHOR> https://californiahealthline.org/news/health-giant-sutter-destroys-evidence-in-high-profile-antitrust-case-over-high-prices/ <comment><USER2> Penalties for corporate misbehavior are absurdly small, particularly in cases of obvious malice or fraud.

Until executives and shareholders feel real pain, companies can simply make their decisions based on cost outcomes. In most cases, the financial incentive to cheat and flaunt the law is just too great compared to the risk of penalty.

Throw some execs in jail, starting with the CEO. If CEOs are so valuable that they can be paid 100x median employee wage, then they should have some real responsibility. And penalize the stock in some way so the investors feel the pain. Sure, it's not their fault necessarily; but if you make the investors angry enough, they will demand proper behavior from the companies they invest in.

<comment><USER3> Along with more obvious reasons like corruption, one reason prosecutors don't like to go after shareholders or shut down the company is that there are a lot of people who work for these companies who aren't responsible for bad acts, who have families to support and putting lots of people out of work for something out of their control is political suicide.

<comment><USER4> This makes no sense, because CEOs are not irreplaceable (and, thus, should not be immune). Just replace a bad CEO with a good one and all "innocent" workers will not only not suffer, but will be in a better shape due to expected overall improvement of the company's culture and performance.

<comment><USER5> The 'just replace' kind of makes no sense. Replacing senior staff has all kinds of ripple effects throughout a corporation. I would propose that hardly any illegal or immoral act of big corp starts with the CEO. It's a cabal usually. Just cutting the head of won't work. I would like to read about clearly immoral companies coming clean, tips? In fear many only clear their act up in nominem.

<comment><USER4> I stand by my opinion, but you have to read it not literally. Firstly and obviously, the phrase "just replace" is somewhat a simplification, even though I believe that, in any decent organization, it should not have any ripple effects at all. Secondly, assuming you attempt to read between lines, my points do not specifically target CEOs per se, but upper management, who almost always is the mastermind, initiator, orchestrator and beneficiary of illegal and/or immoral acts in corporations ("cabal" in your parlance).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know much about this particular case, but I know that Sutter Health is a reckless, ruthless, predatory company that is a not-for-profit in name only, and uses all the same tactics that PE companies use to take over and leverage hospitals to expand its network. They don't care about their patients, as evidenced by their dispute with Blue Shield a few years ago (previous story: [https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/04/07/4732535...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/04/07/473253558/big-california-firms-take-on-health-care-giant- over-cost-of-care)) where many thousands of users were left with no insurance coverage and kicked out of their groups while Sutter engaged in brinkmanship while negotiating with Blue Shield.

</comment><comment><USER7> I keep asking in the US when we are going to have had enough of this entire health-care fiasco.

Nobody is happy with it, the people who are victimized by companies like Sutter aren't happy and I guess most folks that work at the Sutters of the country aren't happy either. They are just going through the motions in quite desperation because house payments but it sucks and what they are doing sucks and they know it.

It's kind of like the Soviet Union right before the fall. People knew there were deep structural problems, the plebs, the party officials, they had to have known. But for the time being they just kept going through the motions until one day the the farce just got too onerous to pretend anymore.

That day is about here I think. Or rather hope. The entire setup between government, insurance and corps like Sutter is very truly nuts and isn't serving the needs it was designed for. I don't think that's a fringe belief either but a growing understanding.

<comment><USER8> Also, healthcare isn't the only industry with that type of problem.

That makes the issue more resonant, because the deep corruption of the legal system and routine criminality of corporations cuts across pretty much every facet of life.

Intentional criminality by corporations should be treated _exactly_ like intentional criminality by gangs, with the leaders rounded up and served sentences according to the scale they operated on. Anything in excess of a billion dollars of criminal activity should be a life sentence.

I somehow think compliance would be much better if executives were held responsible for it. But... That's how corruption works -- they're not.

<comment><USER9> Meanwhile, in China: [https://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/09/chinese-billionaire- executed...](https://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/09/chinese-billionaire-executed-for- mafia-style-gang.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sutter says "part of a routine destruction of old paper records"

If that's true, they can be required to show evidence of the rest of this routine and how it was possible for the mistake to happen. Apparently they havn't destroyed documents for at least 17 years so it doesn't sound very routine at all.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sigh. Why not?

Unless a judge either throws a CEO in jail or applies a "death penalty" to a company, there is nothing to lose.

<comment><USER12> _Sigh. Why not?_

Because when we catch you, even if it were an "unfortunate mistake", your company gets an automatic "unfortunate" finding for the plaintiff. Of course it doesn't currently work that way. OTOH, the judge will probably be none too pleased. Perhaps not resulting in an automatic finding for the plaintiff, but I'd imagine defense has an uphill climb from there.

<comment><USER13> Why not?

Few years ago found an article claiming that the threat of prison keeps middle class people in line. Actual prison is needed for poor people. However wealthy people just the loss of reputation and law suits are enough to keep them in line.

It was written of a chief appellate court justice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So the expected value of obstruction of justice is better than the penalty for the crime. Oh boy...

</comment><comment><USER15> Twenty years ago, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_Corporation_of_Americ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_Corporation_of_America#Fraud_investigations)

</comment><comment><USER16> I really don't understand what is not legal with charging what you can for drugs. I'm not a fan of capitalism, but what is not legal or even considered immoral about charging what the market will bare?

<comment><USER17> the market will bear a surprising amount of people dying because they are too poor to live, and make more profit that way than selling the drugs at low prices to poor people. I'm not a professor of ethics or anything, but I feel like that's probably not super moral. Speaking broadly, I'm not sure we can consider the market to be a moral entity, or at least not while we externalize the costs of im- and amoral behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The actual issue of the case is that healthcare providers have been consolidating for a number of years, so much so that in the northeast is very rare to find independent providers. Small doctor practices are now usually part of a larger provider instead of being independent. The small practice gets to hand of administration of billing issues and gets much better rates from insurers. Hospitals get more referrals. In some areas, you end up with 1 or 2 providers so insurance companies have no choice but to pay high prices and pass those on to consumers.

</comment><comment><USER19> > The trial is scheduled for June 2019.

The US justice system is baffling.

<comment><USER20> This sounds like a complex case. Doesn't seem odd that the plaintiff and defendants need time to prepare.

<comment><USER21> Almost two years to prepare?

<comment><USER22> 15 million pieces of documents and 1400 witnesses to talk to. I made those numbers up but on HCA case apparently the Govt had 13,000 boxes of documents...500 FBI agents participated and HCA spent $300 mil in their defense [https://books.google.com/books?id=5SwZ0j9lf40C&pg=PA235&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=5SwZ0j9lf40C&pg=PA235&lpg=PA235&dq=most+complex+case+ever+million+documents&source=bl&ots=MMMVEg4Tm_&sig=ltNxIsc5tG9qhFCAyn7qn-7GwOc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiF9r3b0sfXAhVFSRoKHT2ICdMQ6AEIPDAE#v=onepage&q=most%20complex%20case%20ever%20million%20documents&f=false)

<comment><USER23> That right there is an argument for laws resembling antitrust laws, but simply aimed at corporate power, rather than excessive market power.

The efficiencies gained by mega corporations aren't that big, we shouldn't let them use size complexity to obscure malfeasance.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How the baby boomers destroyed everything - <AUTHOR> https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/02/26/how-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/lVB9eG5mATw3wxo6XmDZFL/story.html <comment><USER3> As non-US citizen and I am in no position to agree or counter to what is being mentioned in the article. However, I am surprised that the baby-boomers are looked as 'us vs them' whereas the generation change is more of a Continuum. I am sure our next generation will blame us for ruining it for them.

Baby boomers say lot of first things getting unfold in front of them e.g Humans going to moon, Nuclear tech, Electronics, Mass entertainment (Television), etc. These are the legacy of that generation. Many of things they simply couldn't have guessed the consequences of their actions.

The same thing applies to the current generation. What will be our legacy? One of the things is increasing removal of human beings from the equation using AI, automation, etc. We do not know fully how this is going to affect future generations. If things get screwed-up the next generation will blame us.

<comment><USER4> > Baby boomers say lot of first things getting unfold in front of them e.g > Humans going to moon, Nuclear tech, Electronics, Mass entertainment > (Television), etc. These are the legacy of that generation.

These things you've listed are the legacy of the Baby Boomers parents, the so- called Greatest Generation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the UK I can see a similar pattern to what has gone on in the U.S. so I am willing to agree with the author.

With anything psychology it can take many years to spot what is truly going on and to have the words to understand that. By nature we are deferential to our parents and live life by their values.

The classic for me is the boomer advice to their children to save like they did to buy a house like they did. The boomer houses get chopped up into flats costing £500000 each, so a boomer house is probably a good £1.5M and that is a lot more than the inflation adjusted amount that they paid. Easily ten times the amount. That is a lot of cash to get out of the younger generation for them to buy boomer property.

With the advice to save and buy a house there is no appreciation that the situation has changed, any protests will be met with how the younger generation have to just work hard like they did. They can't be told that their generation stole the wealth.

There was extremely high inflation in the 1970's when the property-as- investment craze got going. Property was always kept out of the inflation index even though rent/mortgage is the biggest expense anyone pays. House price inflation has been double digit and always praised as a good thing, which it is for the boomers. There are years when the property market crashes but boomers can ride those situations out, they can still borrow against property.

<comment><USER6> This does seem to be a reality western youth do need to deal with.

Boomers _encourage_ Millennials to play property, after all, it's in their best interests. I supposed they can't complain when their kids decide to live at home into their thirties and pay little to no rent, where else do they go? :)

Pension concessions could do with a review, with all that money, maybe it should be millennials getting a cheap train ticket here and there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article makes as much sense if you understand "boomers" means "Americans". The article was intentionally inflammatory and makes sweeping generalizations, and seems mostly to be a venue for the author to air his prejudices. Would classify as "screed" (definition 1c in Merriam-Webster: a ranting piece of writing).

</comment><comment><USER8> As tempting as a purely generational hypothesis is, it's challenging to point the finger at such a huge population as "sociopaths". Many of the 60's radicals and celebrities were born a little bit too early to be categorically Boomers(post-1945) and many within the generation faced new, unprecedented forms of market competition and technology displacements - white-collar temping/freelancing rose with computerization and the end of the dedicated secretary, recorded music took over live music, multiple generations of automobile-only suburbs were built, and the onset of containerized shipping and the resulting new globalization spanned their entire lives. There're plenty more examples like that - and lots of room for errors and untested new ethics in all of it. Some of them were inherited from consequences of pre- Boomer policies, others arose because of the marketplace or political clime.

And in many ways, the experience of the rich Boomers is functionally different from the rest of the group. At all levels, it seems, one can find a terror over "losing what I have," but the elite group can leverage their finances and connections to vote themselves more, while the rest are political pawns in comparison, with a house and possibly some stocks as their only assets - <USER2> small to be a major voice, too big to be rolled over politically, so they mostly act to obstruct change. In that sense I find the Boomer dynamic kind of pitiful, because they really lost the idea of community in attempting to follow through on a world containing millions of tiny fiefdoms, even to the point where my own mom thinks appeals to "community" are basically "Communism".

The Millennials - sample size, myself and my friend group - are more focused on a combination of daily survival, and where they get the breathing room, lifestyle fit. There are no expectations for stability. Career scripts are exceptional and tend to require being on a government job track. There's a lot of fluidity, a lot of meeting different people and maybe only knowing them for a little while before things change again. You can fall out of touch with friends by accident - because they don't play the same video game as you, or they stayed off a social network, or a thousand little things. There's constant pressure to make it all work, but also a bountiful world of _stuff_ to access - people, information, services - far more than was in the Yellow Pages, the local newspaper, or trade journals. There is no wise elder telling us how to navigate it, but it's nowhere near as cold and lonely as those suburban streets and highways.

<comment><USER9> It sounds a lot like you are looking at your own life by living it and looking at your that of your parent's from an overview of their past. Ask them what they were doing and how they felt at your age at the start of their career and trying to raise a family and I'll bet they had the same anxieties that you do on a day to day basis. I don't like this habit online discussions have of blaming Baby Boomers for "everything" because they usually aren't here to give their side of the story.

<comment><USER8> I know what my parents say about the starts of their careers.

Dad: _abject strong-silence, refuses to reminisce because it makes him look less competent, I hear about all the odd jobs he tried before programming from Mom_

Mom: playing music is a bad business and sheet music is a bad business and teaching is a bad business and everyone was hostile about everything I tried and I never succeeded - _votes Trump_

I say anything about what things are like for me and they're stunned, they can't relate. Mom makes a good effort to relate, but it mostly turns into her career story each time.

I don't blame the generation, really, though. I blame whatever sociocultural fallout it is that created such scared, damaged people.

<comment><USER10> After Nixon was done some boomers were more damaged than scared, others the reverse.

Lots were scared and damaged by the immediate situation, but others had also traditionally inherited both feelings which were passed down by their grandparents to their parents to them over the 70 years leading up to Nixon.

Uncautious boomers who were caught by surprise by the finality of the 1970's were the most unprepared for increasing opportunities to no longer be generally available to themselves or future generations.

There was widespread superstition that this can't really be happening in the USA and that is an element of the boomer groupthink that still colors their understanding of more recent generations.

For boomers whose parents had the opportunity and successfully used it to achieve financial prosperity from scratch without the benefit of any family resources beforehand, it was very common for their grandparents to still be existing on the same type of survival rations that got them through the Great Depression, even while the boomers themselves were growing up in a priveleged community.

Yes, that's the last generation to be able to arrive that much better off than their grandparents, but it's not their fault.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> grey-area Will we ever tire of blaming scapegoats?

<comment><USER11> Never; it is hard(er) to do anything without a scapegoat / common enemy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> No case is made that gen x or gen y would have done any better.

<comment><USER13> It's not that the specific, individual people were different, it's that their environment was. From that arose patterns of group behaviour that have left us with oceans filling up with plastic, and absurd wealth disparity. It's about the legacy they've left us and that they're still not taking responsibility for it, nor letting go of the reins.

<comment><USER10> Nope the environment was not that much different than today, and the patterns of group behaviour leading to a now plastic disposable society and the increasing degree of wealth disparity were well established before any boomers were even a twinkle in their previous generation's eye.

It's just that the boomers were unable to overcome the grip from centuries of disparity, and failed to achieve perfection before having children themselves.

<comment><USER13> >environment was not that much different than today

Okay, mate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sorry, the disadvantages the author complains about were set into motion almost irreversibly years before many "boomers" parents were even born, by the formation of the Federal Reserve and the taxation of income replacing the taxation of commerce, followed by Depression then devastating currency devaluation when most boomers parents were still too young to understand the direct impact of this blow compounded across future generations.

Some economists still don't even understand.

Stopping Nixon was the last chance to curtail this loss of prosperity, just because those aware boomers failed to overcome overwhelming odds doesn't mean the blame lies with them, or even those who were less aware.

Yup, a previous generation is to blame, but baby boomers ain't it.

Average citizens having typical resource shortages are supposed to be powerless to do anything but complain. This is by design. Those having resource surpluses would be the only ones capable of changing the situation, whether they are above average or not. Even if all you are going to do is whine about it, at least improve your aim by a few decades and identify the correct previous generation to begin with.

Nixon was even too young to have initiated the accelerated removal of opportunity from the working class, he was just happily continuing to help nail the coffin back together, after a world war hard won through previous administrations temporarily releasing prosperity in a fit of desperation.

Boomers were all still way too young to have much power over political parties established to only truly work for a few percent of well-entrenched dynasties, but it doesn't mean they didn't try. Plus IIRC Nixon and his war were actually stopped, but it was just too late to save a very significant percentage of the wealth of a nation.

Wall Street was hurt but not relatively as bad, since the main thing permanently lost was wealth that had survived amongst the 99% over many generations enduring the above periodic confiscations, or which had been accumulated even more rarely afterward in spite of them.

Even then some wealth still survived scattered among the 99% and if those are the main boomers you are exposed to it would be easy to completely miss the way that wealth has always been out of reach for the true majority of boomer age citizens simply because they are just too young.

I don't see any more recent generations actually stopping wars, or accomplishing the removal of any Clinton, Bush, Obama or Trump before they are good and ready to leave after carrying out their deeds.

Or even less likely adopting a structure of increasing prosperity for those who are not already prosperous, and it's been a long 21st century.

Looks like it's turning out just like the 20th century except without the resources of a more widely properous previous century to fall back on.

Social disaster is often the result of financial disaster.

Social Security was also a result of the financial disasters outlined above.

Everyone living today has grown up with the full knowledge of the committment made to the retired elderly of future generations, by wiser rulers who witnessed the stepwise deprecation of the viability of private savings options almost a century ago.

It's taxes on income & property which make savings impossible for most working people, not a defect in the collective attitude of a still-living recent generation.

Therefore a public retirement savings component was enacted for all who participate, and after continued removal of wealth from the middle class it now often represents not an augmentation but the whole enchilada, the only thing left on the plate.

Obviously capitalists have benefitted by not having to pay employees enough to fully save for their own retirement, while retirees have benefitted from what amounts to nothing more than a safety net these days.

Not the greatest benefits for either, well that's all you have left with the balance of prosperity this far offset for so long.

But it's plain to see that with Social Security everybody wins.

Unless you're not very good at doing the math.</comment>


Apple also fired a Test Engineer for showing Woz an iPad - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5523673/steve-wozniak-on-apple-security-employee-termination-and-gray-powel

<comment><USER2> Apple is an extremely successful company, and one of the things that makes it iconic is its ability to introduce highly unusual and valuable products. They would be quite stupid _not_ to have high security at the very least.

These rules may not be completely reasonable, and they may not be how I'd run a company. However, they _are_ absolutely simple to obey. It is like speeding: it is extremely easy to not get tickets, you just have to follow the rules. You can't whine about getting a ticket, because it's not like there wasn't a perfectly good way to avoid it. Same with Apple employees caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Woz: "I myself never prod Apple friends into saying things about unreleased Apple products. I'm not in the group where early knowledge equates to value. I don't play the rumor mill game. So I had little interest in seeing this iPad beyond a couple of minutes.

In my opinion, Apple was not hurt by my being shown this iPad. And if the employee who showed it to me believed that he could show it after April 3, then that's another factor.

I did describe this to Steve Jobs the night of the iPad introduction and he said "so it's no big deal." We talked about family things after that for a short while. But that engineer did get fired."

<comment><USER3> Break rules, suffer consequences. Consistent enforcement of rules emphasizes how seriously they should be taken, even if the rule itself is unkind for these sorts of edge cases.</comment></comment>


A man trying to automate Thailand's hospitals - <AUTHOR> https://restofworld.org/2020/the-man-trying-to-automate-thailands-hospitals/ <comment><USER2> From the article "SOFA robots have become something of a national treasure in Thailand."

Strange, I live in Thailand and have been following the news closely ever since the pandemic hit but I have not heard of this or seen it mentioned in Thai media. Perhaps a bit of hyperbole to call it a national treasure.

<comment><USER3> It has been mentioned in Thai mainstream media, but not really a top headline[1][2][3][4], but "national treasure" definitely sounds like a hyperbole.

[1] [https://www.thairath.co.th/news/tech/technology/1836736](https://www.thairath.co.th/news/tech/technology/1836736)

[2] [https://www.mcot.net/viewtna/5eccba21e3f8e40af8448090](https://www.mcot.net/viewtna/5eccba21e3f8e40af8448090)

[3] [https://www.bangkokbiznews.com/news/detail/888783?ans=](https://www.bangkokbiznews.com/news/detail/888783?ans=)

[4] [https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/1896230/fibo-unveils- ro...](https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/1896230/fibo-unveils-robots-for- outbreak)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _For now, Thailand has successfully contained the virus.

Two decades ago, Laowattana was considered a fringe scientist by his peers. But the pandemic has been a bittersweet validation of his life's work._

A little good news coming out in a sea of news about people dropping the ball and what not. Also, the part about designing robots in a culturally sensitive manner is fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cant agree more:

"I don't like the coronavirus, but the pandemic is a fast-forward button."

</comment><comment><USER6> nice! badly needed in South Asia</comment>


Vim 8.0.1238 adds highlighting of all matches while incremental searching - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vim/vim/releases/tag/v8.0.1238 <comment><AUTHOR> Enable 'incsearch' and 'hlsearch':

[https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/79hi4q/vim_801238_adds...](https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/79hi4q/vim_801238_adds_highlighting_of_all_matches_while/)</comment>


Google Predicts Ads in Odd Spots Like Thermostats - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/05/21/google-predicts-ads-in-odd-spots-like-thermostats/ <comment><USER2> Google even suggesting ads on Nest is pretty disgusting to me. When I pay for a device from a company that is where they should be getting their profit - don't bait and switch and then serve ads to me.

<comment><USER3> This is pretty much the norm today, though. Cheaper kindles come with ads. Laptops and phones come with bundled software that the developers paid to be on there. The menus in your cable service have ads. Movies have ads. They're everywhere in stuff you pay for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The biggest problem with the ad model is that it effectively kills off most chances of a paid ad-free product to exist. If you had the option to pay to not have ads, many of the better off would pay for that privilege, most of which are the very people more advertisers are trying to reach. A market that includes everyone is going to be far more valuable per set of eyeballs than one that only includes people with not much money to spend.

</comment><comment><USER5> "It is cold. Would you like a sweater? Buy one on Google Shopping Express!"

Saves energy and helps the environment too.

</comment><comment><USER6> How exactly would I pitch this to a client?

Would they be text? If they're text, how would they click through? Text ads have negligible impact on recall without some sort of image. Whatever happened to context sensitivity?</comment>


Want a performant site? Flat-file sites are totally the new old thing - <AUTHOR> http://www.loadzen.com/knowhow/2010/07/24/need-performance-consider-a-flat-file-site/

<comment><USER2> Why not just offload static resources to a CDN and cache dynamic content so as little work is done as possible? I can see how flat-files are good for completely static sites like blogs, but that seems more like a corner case.</comment>