Young Money – Beating "The Man" by Spending Less - <AUTHOR> http://www.unfinishedman.com/young-money-beating-the-man-by-spending-less/

<comment><USER2> Funny coming from unfinishedman.com, which is the blog people go to when they look at The Sharper Image and think "but what do you have that's REALLY frivolous?"

[1] [http://www.unfinishedman.com/aviator-wing-desk-inspired- by-w...](http://www.unfinishedman.com/aviator-wing-desk-inspired-by- ww2-fighter-planes/) [2] [http://www.unfinishedman.com/electric-hot-tub-boat- for-ultim...](http://www.unfinishedman.com/electric-hot-tub-boat-for-ultimate- relaxation/) [3] [http://www.unfinishedman.com/mercedes-benz-c63-amg- edition-5...](http://www.unfinishedman.com/mercedes-benz-c63-amg- edition-507-coupe/)

<comment><USER3> Plenty of irony on that site. I liked the ad for a $300 discount card disguised as another article. Promises to let you live like a "founder" by buying high priced crap from Bonobo at a discount. Very well targeted for the ycombinator crowd.

[http://www.unfinishedman.com/founderscard-live-like-a- prince...](http://www.unfinishedman.com/founderscard-live-like-a-prince-pay- like-a-pauper/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Life is hard, and it's most certainly unfair… perhaps more so for our > generation that any previous.

Absolutely absurd.

You really think you have it worse than somebody born into slavery? Or worse than a medieval serf?

A large fraction of humans alive _right now_ would look on your lifestyle as extremely privileged.

This kind of statement comes across as pitifully ignorant whining. You actually _hurt_ the cause of fixing real injustices when you fly off into hyperbole like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> You realize the article focuses on debt in regards to students and young people, right? Yeah, there's a bit of hyperbole, but I think my reference to "toughest... generation... evar..." makes sense in the context of "young people have it pretty shitty right now". Clearly you disagree, so fair enough. :)

<comment><USER5> At the same time, this type of hyperbole makes it way too easy to dismiss arguments like these as whiny and lacking perspective. It's rhetorically unsound, and it doesn't do its side much in the way of favors.

<comment><USER6> _whiny and lacking perspective_

Like everything else young people find persuasive? (That was whiny and hyperbolic, too, because young people like irony.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like advice for a straw man. Author bases the whole diatribe on people he doesn't know around his college town. He presumes that everyone around him carrying gadgetry and nice clothes must be destroying themselves financially to do so, and can barely afford to eat.

While no doubt these people actually do exist, IMO author is really reaching here. This reads like "I'm starter than all these idiots".

<comment><USER8> While you're correct about not generalizing, the number of students who are in debt is enormous[1]. Everyone wants to be amazingly educated with all the latest awesome gadgets, and unfortunately, it really is causing a lot of problems for society. The author really is doing a good job for himself if he is saving up some money and getting out of debt.

We'll see how it goes...

[1] <http://www.asa.org/policy/resources/stats/default.aspx>

<comment><USER9> I wonder if taking out a student loan puts people in a mindset where they are more willing to take on debt?

If you're already borrowing some thousands of $ for an education on the basis that you will "make it back when I graduate" what's a few more hundred $ for an iphone?

<comment><USER10> That was my mindset when, after college, I got my first credit cards. What's another thousand bucks on top of 30k?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Life is hard, and it's most certainly unfair… perhaps more so for our generation than any previous."

Uhm, have you ever heard of World War II? I'm pretty sure the MacBook-toting hipsters you describe have a slightly easier life than those people had to serve in Vietnam or World War II.

<comment><AUTHOR> I considered pointing this out, and the great depression too. I can't say (and didn't say) that our generation is definitely harder off (I wasn't born during the previously stated time periods), however... from everything I've seen, youth today are in for a really, really shitty time. Perhaps saying "worse than its been in a long, long time" would have been more balanced.

<comment><USER12> Easy access to debt isn't really a harbinger of a really, really shitty time.

If anything, the fact that the debt 'crisis' is global will end up making student loans easy(er) to repay (because inflation).

<comment><USER13> It's less the easy access to debt that's the problem, but the requirement of going into debt for a chance to not be in debt. For a very significant portion of people, they only chance at a decent job is college - there really aren't that many decent jobs available for the "no degree" people. Of course the degree isn't a guarantee of a job, just a prerequisite. And of course most people can't just up and pay for college, so the debt load is a becomes part of that prerequisite.

So the requirement of debt for a chance, is probably a harbinger of a really, really shitty time.

(NOTE: please... no "but _I_ am different in w.r.t. that stuff" posts... the terms "many", "significant portion", and "most" mean some aren't in that category, but that doesn't change the statistics).

<comment><USER12> Yes, college is a poor, expensive employability filter.

Still, it hardly takes a $50,000 psychology degree (people just looking for a credential should be fine with a state school) to get a job in a high tech factory, a $10,000 or $15,000 technology certificate is a lot more sensible.

And I don't mean to argue that these choices are easy or that it is great that people face them, but going $150,000 into debt is not the only path out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wanted to input that I as a student am basically the opposite of what this article is talking about. I'm from West-Europe so maybe that's a huge factor.

I spend less than €100 a month. I live with my parents, and currently doing a Masters in the best uni of my country, which costs around €550 for a year. I take the train to class everyday which is about 1 hour, but a train subscription costs me €80 for 3 months. A car is a luxury here and in my opinion, useless if you live in a city.

I don't have any debt whatsoever and have never seen why I should go into debt. I almost never spend on anything not necessary. heck sometimes I wonder WHY I don't buy more things. My computer is 5+ years old and still in good shape, so are most of my clothes, although I do buy new stuff every year.

If I do buy a gadget like my smartphone, I save for it first, I don't even have a credit card. I have never bought things and paid them after. Interest rates are the devil. Own your assets, not the other way around.

Stop spending so much.

<comment><USER15> Western europeans don't all have it this good. For example in London the train fare for an hour journey each way might be more like 700 pounds per quarter (roughly 15 times your own). There are some student discounts but they don't nearly make up that difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> But if people stop buying crap won't the crap making and marketing companies stop hiring so many of these college grads and instead of buying iphones they can't afford they now have to buy food they can't afford?

<comment><USER16> "But if people stop throwing rocks to break windows, how will the window makers make a living?"

<comment><USER9> In this case the window makers are probably web startups. If college kids weren't buying all these iphones what would be the value of geolocated picture dating services or whatever?

<comment><USER16> It's interesting to hear what people consider window breaking and window making. Even in the canonical example of lawyers (who only "split the pie"), some provide a social good by defending innocent people against what some people consider a corrupt body of laws.

I recently finished reading John Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" and found the taxation proposal near the end intriguing, if a bit alien. Tax rates are adjusted based on scoring of profession on three axes: training/talent, drawbacks (like unpredictable hours and dirty working conditions), and social indispensability. On all three axes, advertisers would score a zero, thereby qualifying for a 90% tax rate. I wonder where people would score people who work in a lot of these startups? I suppose it would depend heavily on what the startup was doing.

<comment><USER9> If you start following the consequences of the existence of any profession or product to the logical conclusion you can come up with some surprising things. Which is probably why such a tax scheme would be fairly unworkable in practice and would incentivise industries to introduce unnecessary training or overcomplicate their work.

In the case of web startups you can go from "college students all have smartphones so let's build a social network for them to share their most banal thoughts" to "almost everyone in the US will have a smartphone within 5 years and a social networking profile, how can we use this information to provide more efficient public services?". So frivolous spending can accidently create opportunity for much more valuable work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article hardly offers any new insight. Its just a rant on how the author perceives most young people are spending their money on 'useless crap' and exhorts them not to do so.

Move on people.</comment>


"Security problems are primarily just bugs" - <AUTHOR> http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/11/why-linus-is-right-as-usual.html#.WhKEqnXytCU <comment><USER2> > Also, since most security people aren't developers, they are also a bit > clueless how things actually work. Bounds-checking, which they define as > purely a security feature to stop buffer-overflows is actually > overwhelmingly a debugging feature. Developers know this, security "experts" > tend not to. These kernel changes were made by security people who failed to > understand this, who failed to realize that their changes would uncover lots > of bugs in existing code, and that killing buggy code was hugely > inappropriate.

Sorry, but I completely disagree here. Many of us that care about security are developers that have to clean up the mess of such ideas.

And to once more paraphrase Hoare's Turing award speech.

"Many years later we asked our customers whether they wished us to provide an option to switch off these checks in the interests of efficiency on production runs. Unanimously, they urged us not to--they already knew how frequently subscript errors occur on production runs where failure to detect them could be disastrous. I note with fear and horror that even in 1980, language designers and users have not learned this lesson. In any respectable branch of engineering, failure to observe such elementary precautions would have long been against the law."

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I am extremely confused at this, too. I am a developer by profession who happens to care about security because I care about delivering a good product. I'm not a "security person." Bounds-checking is a way for me to deliver a good product, and killing buggy code is sort of my _job_. Bounds-checking should be enabled in production.

<comment><USER4> One size does not fit all. Any debugging safety net will have a cost in terms of performance, and you usually have to pay that cost regardless of whether your code has bugs. It's why we don't release debug builds to customers or use them in production.

If it is vital to your application to detect a certain kind of bug in production, then turn the checking on in production and pay the cost. Maybe it is not vital to my application or my application does not have these bugs. In my case it would be needless to pay the cost.

To me, essential to delivering a good product is detecting and killing defective code before delivery. I recognize however, that this attitude is becoming more and more old fashioned.

<comment><USER5> > To me, essential to delivering a good product is detecting and killing > defective code before delivery.

The problem is that you cannot prove the non-existence of bugs, even if you formally verify all your code, you've only proven that it conforms to spec, not that the spec is flawless.

This is why you should always code defensively. Assume all code is buggy and take steps to deal with that. Code is written by humans, and humans make mistakes.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to deliver a flawless product, only that you should acknowledge the fact that you're going to fail.

<comment><USER6> Your argument would be in favour of a defensive spec, not in favour of a defensive implementation.

To explain: your spec will have a few hygiene clauses like 'no stack overflow' or 'no crashes' and some things about what useful things the program should actually do.

The latter is hard to formalise and deserve defense in depth. Lots of the former are easy to formalise and you can rely on the compiler to get it right.

And that's what we are doing already anyway: even in C we just trust that a loop will compile to the appropriate conditional jumps and don't add defensive measures to check that.

<comment><USER5> The point is that you're not going to do formal verification of your software. There is actually very little formally verified software out there, and the verified code that does exist is relatively small.

And no, you can't rely on the compiler to get it right. Maybe if you only write Haskell you can get there 99% but there will always be human errors in code that the compiler can't find.

<comment><USER6> We rely on computers to get parts of our spec right all the time. Yes, a higher level language lets you offload more to the computer (like Haskell), but even in C we are doing some off that.

Yes, in practice you seldom have much of a formal spec, agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Linus advocates: 1) first do no harm to the kernel. 2) better to phase in warnings and fixes, rather than enforce a panic. 3) there's sufficient track record of security in practice.

This sounds fully reasonable to me. If you're an OS builder and prefer an immediate-panic hardened system, then catch the warnings.

Linux kernel post: [http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1711.2/01701.html](http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1711.2/01701.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> This strongly reminds me of the famous paper by Daniel J. Bernstein:

"Some thoughts on security after ten years of qmail 1.0"

[https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf](https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf)

<comment><USER9> I found a txt version of this: [http://ondoc.logand.com/d/721/txt](http://ondoc.logand.com/d/721/txt)

It's a bit easier for me to read without a fixed page layout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am also in whole-hearted agreement with Linus, here. In fact, I ran into this just recently. I discovered one of our systems at work actually stored _encrypted_ passwords rather than just hashed ones, and _decrypted_ it for validation. Yuck!

Of course, I put a fix and a database migration in place as soon as I could and all is well now, but this worries me. It worries me because it must have been done out of ignorance (bad) or intentionally (worse) and billed as a feature or something. Neither of these things are mere bugs. This gaping flaw wasn't introduced by accident.

<comment><USER11> Or maybe incomplete understanding of the system. I had lobby for a year to get even a simple encrypted passwords. "Why do we need encrypted passwords behind a corporate firewall?" they asked. That sucked all the energy out of me.

So when they wrote a script to run a db extract, get all company salary data in csv and share it with literally 50+ people I gave up. Getting them to even encrypt data seemed impossible.

<comment><USER10> Oh geez, that's nuts. That's like asking, "Why do I need to put my valuables in a safe if I have a lock on my front door?"

<comment><USER12> > That's like asking, "Why do I need to put my valuables in a safe if I have a > lock on my front door?"

Not the GP, but I've experienced similar things during my career, and these sorts of analogies tend to work really well when explaining technical points to non-technical (and, sadly, even "technical") people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Security problems are bugs, sure. But a different kind. Security is a non- functional requirement.

In an analogy with construction, each room is a functional requirement, and non-functional requirements are the materials you used to build, which can be considered some sort of quality attribute.

And just like in construction, if after building a house you are given more strict seismic requirements, fire prevention, etc... you might need to rebuild the entire house.

<comment><USER14> Is a room any more a functional requirement than security? A roof keeps the rain off, walls keep the wind out and keep things private, but rooms are more containers than requirements. And if closing a door at the right angle causes the roof to fall in, that's a failure of function.

<comment><USER15> My understanding of _functional_ requirement is that it is binary. Function is either there or not. A non-functional requirement can sometimes be measured, but not in a yes or no fashion. For example, frames per second is non- functional. Things are no secure or insecure in general, thus non-functional.

You can turn non-functional into function requirement if you specify a boundary. For example, a 60 frames per second requirement is functional. For security, you can require "secure under certain attacker models" to make it functional.

Example: Is Signal communication secure, if you assume the attacker can only read data on the server? There is an answer and it is probably "no". That does not mean, Signal is secure in general. An attacker which can access your phone breaks the security.

(It is also not really binary, because someone might find a hole somewhere in the future, but for practical purposes, we can assume the crypto holds)

<comment><USER16> > Things are no secure or insecure in general, thus non-functional.

I would disagree with this assertion. A really common phrase in the infosec community is that "Security is not binary"

<comment><USER17> Are you literate? Go back and reread the first sentence of the comment you are replying to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another, similar, take, from ALE2014:

[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rXyl_YF-0lg3W8yY9mSo...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rXyl_YF-0lg3W8yY9mSo4UaoUrEWo8hKAng- GsF9XeI/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000#slide=id.g376b8bd03_011)

Security problems are, first and foremost, about CORRECTNESS. If you find an issue, most probably something has been done in an incorrect way by somebody who didn't really understand something. It's much harder to find out some security bug which is not a functional bug (for some part of the domain, not just the sweet spot).

Of course that doesn't really apply to C or C++, where it's easy to do dumb mistakes by chance.

</comment><comment><USER19> Considering that large number of breaches are through social engineering that statement is largely off.

</comment><comment><USER20> DJB's approach to the problem:

" _Nowadays I am much more insistent on programming language support for smaller-scale partitioning, sane bounds checking, automatic updates of "summary" variables (e.g., "the number of nonzero elements of this array"), etc. By "sane bounds checking" I don't mean what people normally mean by "bounds checking," namely raising an exception if an index is out of range; what I mean is automatic array extension on writes, and automatic zero-fill on reads. (Out of memory? See Section 4.2.) Doing the same work by hand is silly_ "[0]

[0] [https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf](https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER21> I guess this is why Google is doing the right thing by working on its own microkernel. Similarly for Grsec guys, who forked Linux.

Fundamental difference of opinions like these is why forks should happen in the open source world. I would like to see someone do a "LibreSSL" version of the Linux kernel, by cleaning it up of all the unneeded legacy cruft, modernizing its architecture, and making it more secure.

I imagine only someone like Google (for servers, Chrome OS, and Android) or Microsoft (cloud services) could take on such a project, but of course they could only _lead_ such a project. They would also need an _alliance_ of partners to support the project.

However, if they are committed to it and serious about making it way better from a security point of view, I could see many companies jumping ship from Linux Classic, especially in the automotive and IoT worlds, also also from web hosting world, and so on.

Alternatively, perhaps the large companies could start supporting Rust OS/kernels such as Redox.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well yes in hindsight of course.

</comment><comment><USER23> > Despite his unreasonable tone, Linus is a hugely reasonable person.

Is this a legitimate leadership technique? I mean I presume the intention is to have a kind of megaphone which will get the attention of a widely dispersed, highly independent group of people. The ultimate cat herding weapon. On the other hand I find it really unpleasant and feel like there must be better ways.

<comment><USER24> Linus is extremely lucky to have found his niche, as he is otherwise unemployable. One of his sweary rants at a cow-orker in any normal company would see him fired for gross misconduct and probably a restraining order taken out. Much of the toxic behaviour in the tech industry can be traced back to Linus "getting away with it".

<comment><USER25> It's the "designated asshole" archetype, the role can have a purpose in large companies in some rare circumstances.

<comment><USER24> _the "designated asshole" archetype_

A previous employer had someone in that "role", I don't think he will ever be able to work at any company that employs a former cow-orker of his. It may be fun for a short while for a certain kind of person, but it's career suicide.

<comment><USER25> I don't think it's fun actually. It's just the job.

There are some roles, like the one Linux has, where a critical aspect of the work is to tell NO to people and reject most of their requests.

<comment><USER24> It's perfectly possible to say "no" without being obnoxious. But some people revel in it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Inside eBay's bizarre campaign against a blog critic - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ebay-harassment-campaign-pig-cockroach-blog-11593009038 <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/f7HSw](http://archive.is/f7HSw)

</comment><comment><USER3> Inexcusable. Sad. Horrible.

The two questions in my mind are:

First, how could something this horrible happen at such a high level at such a prominent company? I mean, eBay is not some rinky-dinky business run by fly- by-night operators in a shady part of town. We're talking about a well-known publicly traded company that is a component of the S&P 500 with a market capitalization in the tens of billions of dollars. Auntie Tilly would be delighted to hear her niece got a job offer at eBay after college.

Second, is this kind of horrendous antisocial behavior ("we can do whatever we want this side of legal with impunity") _representative_ of behavioral patterns at the higher levels of large, prominent, powerful companies? Or is eBay just an exception, the proverbial bad apple in a basket of mostly good apples? I would hope it's the latter.

<comment><USER4> Sad? Horrible? How about batshit insane! C-suits going after nobodies is, well... this. I mean, that must have been some crazy amounts of coke and bad judgements all around, to get SIX seriously unhinged individuals to the top of eBay of all the places. How does it even happen? I mean i've seen some amoral corporate bullshit, and shady shit, strays into "not strictly legal" and "how can legal cover our ass?", but this, this is crazy in literal sense.

<comment><USER5> How does it happen?

Someone passes around a blog. Someone else jokes "wouldn't it be funny if we...". Someone else says "Hey, I'm bored, we have loads of cash & free time, sounds like a fun prank!"

Not hard to lose touch with the reality of what one's doing

<comment><USER6> Article discusses how they were not joking but, instead, paranoid that she was getting funding from Amazon, their competitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What amazed me most from the FBI affidavit[0] was the sheer arrogance of these people. Baugh seriously thought he could make up some story on the spot to explain eBay employees being on the opposite side of the country and the police would just drop it.

[0] [https://www.scribd.com/document/465728291/FBI-Affidavit- agai...](https://www.scribd.com/document/465728291/FBI-Affidavit-against-eBay- employees-for-harassment)

<comment><USER8> Another insider threat program gone rogue...

How many insider threat programs at various firms are really being used to implement systemic discrimination?

I thought it was becoming common knowledge many Silicon Valley campuses and other corporations use an IMSI catcher/Stringray to capture personal cellular communications of its employees...

[https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-tesla-employee-claims- the...](https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-tesla-employee-claims-theft-drugs- and-surveillance-at-gigafactory-2018-8)

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/3/16408724/waymo-uber- lewan...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/3/16408724/waymo-uber-lewandowski- travis-kalanick)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-nuvia- lawsuit/apple...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-nuvia- lawsuit/apple-lawsuit-tests-if-an-employee-can-plan-rival-startup-while-on- payroll-idUSKBN1ZK16R)

I am pretty sure none of these people used their corporate issued cell phones...

I would not be surprised if ebay hired a firm to park an IMSI catcher machine close enough to the home of these people.

The reason they felt secure enough to deny these accusations implies they have all done this before.

<comment><USER9> Lots of my coworkers use their corporate phone as their personal phone. There's a process for porting your phone number over when you get the corp phone. People do it because it's simpler to have one phone, or just to save money. I would never do this but I understand why someone with a different background and worldview would.

<comment><USER10> Myself and probably most of my coworkers just use our personal phones as company phones. Not sure if you see that as different. Also don't do activities on them that are... criminal.

<comment><USER9> Suppose I buy an iPhone from Apple, and load up a work profile on it. I need to trust that Apple doesn't give my personal data to the employer profile, and my employer doesn't have a zero-day to circumvent those controls. I also need to trust that the phone company (or my VPN) provider doesn't give my browsing history to my employer. I'm pretty comfortable with all of those assumptions.

Now instead suppose my employer gives me an iPhone with a cell plan they are paying for. Now there are more questions - is this a vanilla iPhone or is some kind of tracking software installed on it? Perhaps the phone company will freely give up my browsing history to my employer? I'm a lot less comfortable with this. It feels like my employer has legal authority and technical capability to see a lot of what I'm doing on the phone.

Edit:

> Also don't do activities on them that are... criminal.

I'd not worried that employer would get me in trouble with the government for criminal activity. My behavior is a little more constrained by worries that somebody at company could be analyzing my browsing history for violations of company policy, which in a worst-case scenario could get me terminated or cause me to face civil litigation, especially if I were to do a startup.

<comment><USER10> I generally agree although you may still be asked to install MDM on that phone to access, say, work email. How obtrusive that MDM is depends on your company's policies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's a non-paywalled version:

[https://liber.post- gazette.com/news/nation/2020/06/15/eBay-e...](https://liber.post- gazette.com/news/nation/2020/06/15/eBay-employees-cyberstalking-charges- threats-Devin-Wenig-spiders-cockroaches-pig-mask- Massachusetts/stories/202006150100)

Just insane.

<comment><USER12> That's from 9 days ago and the story at that point was discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23529035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23529035).

Not sure what's new in the current article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Every part of this is wrong.

What happened to the targets was appalling. But why why why why do people believe the utter fiction that these companies put out after this happened?

If you are the Board, what the hell are you doing here? This guy was clearly not on the level, why didn't this come up? And why is anyone getting paid near $100m to manage EBay into the ground. As an investor, this makes no sense. The issue is that you have this perpetual circle of utter incompetent human beings on Board spending other people's money.

And if you are the CEO, it doesn't matter if you knew it about or not. He is quite clearly lying but what is most amazing here is that his lie doesn't even explain the behaviour. If you are the CEO, THIS IS YOUR JOB! Take responsibility. Also, he quite clearly was directly responsible for this. You have to be an utter degenerate to know the police have texts of you saying to take someone down, and then tell the media it was nothing to do with you.

This is why I truly despair as an investor though. You are surrounded by people who are utterly and totally incompetent. Boards aren't up to it. Executives aren't up to it. And I am trusting my reputation on them. This is like having to ride a donkey in the Kentucky Derby.

(And btw, the EBay Board is apparently "stacked". Omiydar, the ex-CEO of Bain is Chairman, VC/founders, CEO of Lyft, former Chairman of NBC, CEO of Intel...all people who have mostly made their living acting as agents rather than principals...btw, the head of the Compensation Committee was the guy who is known only for driving Gap into the ground...something of an expert in failure then).

<comment><USER14> I feel at a certain level of leadership in large companies, you just _make it_ into the club and no matter what you do, some other large company will pick you up due to the same mindset of "no one ever got fired for buying IBM".

The last SVP of my working org dropped the ball so hard our client walked away from hundreds of millions of dollars in hardware and infrastructure just to be done with it. He got canned then picked up by a similar company inside two months with the same title.

<comment><USER13> Correct. There was a post the other day about VC "pattern matching" causing discrimination...this is the same thing.

Most executives are chosen because they look like executives, and have a good CV. If you have failed but have an MBA from Harvard, people will give you a pass.

I don't know how you solve this either btw. Part of the problem is people failing but the obvious connected factor is companies hiring poorly. Hiring is where many companies go wrong imo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This story is so wild, imagine being this couple and trying to tell the police ebay execs are harassing me because I wrote mean things about them on the internet. This is a widespread thing that's going on in our culture right now, organized bullying and targetted harassment by those in power and it's having devastating consequences on the public discourse. This case is unique because the overconfidence and carelessness of the execs led to them being caught but in most cases people aren't reckless enough to leave easily tracked evidence of their misdeeds.

I can think of multiple examples of agriculture/pharma companies and game publishers engaging in this type of retaliatory harassment, most cases they're not careless enough to get caught.

<comment><USER16> It makes me wonder how often things like this might be happening in cases that typically get written off as somebody having paranoid persecution delusions about being "gangstalked." If this couple had told me their story, I have little doubt that I wouldn't have believed them.

<comment><USER17> Happens all the time, it's just that the bad actors are usually more competent and better at distancing themselves than the people at eBay.

A good example is what Chevron is doing right now to Steven Donziger, an attorney who won a settlement against them for their polluting in Ecuador:

[https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador- lawsuit-...](https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit- steven-donziger/)

Also Weinstein's use of Black Cube:

[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jan/30/harvey- weinstei...](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jan/30/harvey-weinstein- black-cube-new-york-times)

<comment><USER18> Wow that lawyer got completely taken off the board.

I wish more people know about donziger's case

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There have been other cases like this, right? I can't think of them right now but powerful people get obsessed with anonymous message board commenters and then go on a rampage. Musk has called people at home and where they work. Back in the day Yahoo message board posters used to drive companies crazy. It's a weird phenomenon because literally the only people who care are the executives themselves. Nobody else, not even their spouses or competitors, cares. I'll call it Fishbowl Syndrome because the executives think they're in a fishbowl under constant scrutiny and literally nobody else cares what's going on with the fish.

</comment><comment><USER20> Easily one of the most bizarre stories of corporate malfeasance I've ever heard about. The blog/newsletter in question is likely the top in its niche, but it wasn't even in the top 200,000 of sites ranked by SimilarWeb – the WSJ, which according to the affidavit the executive mused as being the next of their targets – is ranked in the top 900.

In fact, most of this blog's coverage was linking to and discussing eBay- related stories from mainstream press like the WSJ. The pure malice of the alleged actions is unfathomable, but how did these senior managers and contractors have the time to even give a shit?

<comment><USER21> They are paid too much for the supposed labor they give out, so they have the finances and time to ruin the lives of people they deem to be below them.

Which just happens to be everyone who is paid less than them.

The solution is to gut executive pay several thousand percent so it is back in line with the rest of the world.

<comment><USER22> Agree with you 100%. Funny how we have the thread next door here on HN full of people explaining how billionaires worked hard to get their money and deserve to create their little dynasties with it.

<comment><USER18> 99% of executives are not billionaires.

Conflating the 2 shows little understanding of the issue at hand.

The same logic would put Bush and Obama as statesmen, at the same level of Washington and Adams.

Yet, the former 2 are examples of people that didnt risk much in order to attain power and achieve their ambitions.

The latter 2 put everything on the line, risking their own loved ones by going against the single most powerful empire in the world. Let that sink in.

This is why founding fathers, like Ford, MLK, and even Trump, have a cult-like following despite their personal failings.

Thats why billionaires are inspirational (the ones that didnt make their fortune from using govt, or its handout) . They have scars of battle, like real warriors.

Executives are only good at 1 thing. Climbing the ladder... at others expense. Pushing buttons...to kill people. Like cowards.

Dont put executives and billionaires in the same bucket.

Cowards don't belong in the same group as warriors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What was this couple writing about Ebay that made the execs so angry that they would risk committing crime? I would imagine a company the size of Ebay has many people writing bad things about it. What was different in this case? I have been searching but cant find anything. I found the news letter was called EcommerceBytes.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, it's odd. You can understand security types with no ethics or considerations of negative publicity might feel inclined to harass people they think are giving away corporate secrets or exposing misdeeds or wrecking their acquisition plans, but a massive b2c platform company with the inevitable amount of criticism going after trade bloggers for some uncomplimentary articles some of their sellers might read is just bizarre. It doesn't look like their coverage of ebay is particularly negative, and it's not like there's a lack of actual scammers for bored security types to pursue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23529035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23529035)

</comment><comment><USER26> The character "Hoover" in HBO's silicon valley is not extremely far off the mark, as a parody of ex-law-enforcement/intelligence types who end up working for big corporate america.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY2A3c3-lUY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY2A3c3-lUY)

<comment><USER27> That entire show is just a 5% exaggeration of the real Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER28> In a lot of ways that shows has to play down how fucked the culture is in tech/ SV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Disgusting. Never shopping from eBay again, though I can't remember the last time I did if I'm being honest.

How do current employees feel about this?

</comment><comment><USER30> I just finished reading and all I can say is kudos to NPD ( polite, professional and effective ). It still speaks volumes about the arrogance od the executives since it is clear that they thought it could have easily become ' we dont know; we cant track em'.

</comment><comment><USER31> From the bottom up in an organization you only see the Peter Principle at work. From top down you realize this is just a matter of perspective because from the top you witness an additional layer of narcissism and then piramide is called the Gervais principle. This is actually the default mode many companies end up in.

[https://blas.com/the-gervais-principle/](https://blas.com/the-gervais- principle/)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm reminding of the "stay-behind" teams from the Cold War.

NATO was afraid of a Soviet invasion. They knew in a ground war, the Soviets would take several countries.

So countries created "stay-behind" teams to coordinate resistance in the aftermath of an occupation.

The problem is these teams had nothing to do. So they "made themselves busy" by bothering domestic groups they thought were pro-communist.

It was a big problem in Italy.

These guys have titles like "Director of Global Resilience." Their job is to keep operations up and running in a catastrophe.

But there was no catastrophe (yet). So they kept themselves busy.

</comment><comment><USER33> Tangential-ish to the story, but if in reaction someone wanst tp boycott ebay, where would one sell small, one-off lots? Old hardware, used books, etc? Facebook is a no-go. Gumtree is owned by ebay. Amazon is also a nasty company.

I'm in the uk, so no craigslist.

</comment><comment><USER34> Is there still any overlap between PayPal and eBay? We often hear stories about PayPal's toxic behavior. Maybe PayPal's and eBay's toxic culture is shared.

</comment><comment><USER35> Anyone know how they got deleted and decrypted WhatsApp chat messages between the individual?? I thought WhatsApp was end to end encrypted? iCloud backups?

<comment><USER36> FBI got access to the phones in question. And you can do quite a lot with physical access to a device, including restoring messages from local cache. I don't know the technical details, but googling for "forensics whats app deletes messages" yields several interesting articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> [https://archive.vn/f7HSw](https://archive.vn/f7HSw)

</comment><comment><USER38> Stories like this makes me wonder if episodes such as this one are much more prevalent than we hear.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 "director of global resiliency" is one heck of an interesting job title

</comment><comment><USER39> Yeah this whole thing is playing out really strange.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is there any non-paywalled variant of this story at another news site?

</comment><comment><USER41> title is missing [paywall]

<comment><USER42> The footer Guidelines do not specify that usage, and arbitrary tags other than [video] [pdf] (year) are historically unacceptable to the mods here. If you think that this should be added to the guidelines, consider emailing the site mods using the footer Contact link.

<comment><USER12> [audio] and [slides] are also ok! I forget if there are others.

<comment><USER42> Excellent! You should add those to the guidelines :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is the fear of many people with mental illness: gangstalking.

<comment><USER23> Its amazing every time I come across one of these people on youtube that believe they are being gang stalked or e harassed. Even though I am pretty sure they are not being stalked to them it IS real. That must be a terrible existence. If I were to try to convince them otherwise they would assume I am in on it.

<comment><USER44> It's unfortunate when _most_ people who think they are victims of a conspiracy are mistaken or delusional, but _sometimes_ people actually are.

We can't just disregard all of the claims, we also can't just credulously believe every claim, but they also are numerous enough -- and difficult enough to investigate -- that we also can't feasibly do a thorough investigation of each.

<comment><USER16> I suspect it's probably the case that most are crazy, but I'm not confident. Youtube, reddit, etc are where I get this impression from, but these sites optimize for views and therefore have a tendency to amplify the more sensational examples of anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This doesn't work.

<comment><USER46> What specifically doesn't work?

<comment><USER47> Same for me. I do get an DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN in Chrome, but other archive domains like [https://archive.vn/f7HSw](https://archive.vn/f7HSw) works.

<comment><USER48> Their domain doesn't work with Cloudflare DNS because they use non-standard records.

<comment><USER49> They don't use non-standard records; if your resolver protects your privacy by not sending them your IP, they will intentionally return bad records specifically to fuck with you.

<comment><USER21> This is the correct comment, they purposefully block Cloudflare traffic due to them not forwarding user data.

They stated they need it to stay in line with the law but they can do that with things like the user's IP. To go that far to insist on getting a specific type of user data is sketchy.

<comment><USER49> They do quite a bit worse on top of that, ctrl-f pixel.archive.is in view source when you visit any archived page.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google PageSpeed Service - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/service

<comment><USER2> From the sound of it this sounds like a sort of transparent proxy service on sterioids.

Reason I say that is given "PageSpeed Service is an online service to automatically speed up loading of your web pages. PageSpeed Service fetches content from your servers, rewrites your pages by applying web performance best practices and serves them to end users via Google's servers across the globe."

It sound like it just rewrites the pages for googles servers to offer up and does not imply that they would rewrite the content of your website. So I'm intrigued in how this actualy works, but to me sounds like a transparent proxy service and in that I wonder if this only realy works out if the user uses googles DNS's. Can anybody who has used this service clarify.</comment>


World Income Inequality in one chart - <AUTHOR> http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/01/world-income-inequality.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+marginalrevolution/hCQh+(Marginal+Revolution)&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

<comment><USER2> The author says the chart is adjusted for purchasing power.

But it isn't.</comment>


Ask HN: Git GUI and Text Editor for Non-Programmers? - <AUTHOR> Let me explain: I have a website (https://github.com/finnito/Science) which is a Hugo website and thus mostly Markdown. I use this website to create all my secondary school Science teaching resources.
I am considering trying to find a co-worker or two to work on it with me as to flesh it out and get better material, but here is the catch: Science teachers aren't programmers and don't want to spend time learning the CLI, the intricacies of git or anything; they generally just want to update a file and at most leave a little commit message.
I have spent quite a while making sure the deploy pipeline is quite reliable and am fine with people committing to master etc.
I am looking for a way to best get people set up editing files and contributing without much trouble. Do you have any thoughts or recommendations? <comment><USER2> gitbook is what you are looking for. if you dont mind hosting it on a subdomain. You could also use a headless cms like strapi or graphcms or contentful where teachers add content and you can deploy it wherever statically</comment>


Betting Strategy to Beat the Bookies at Football Games - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Lisandro79/BeatTheBookie <comment><USER2> Interesting that they were generating pretty insignificant returns and their accounts got flagged.

Their bets were not that large $50... wonder what aspect of their play got them flagged.

I would assume the bookies are aware of when they are offering an odd that is above market...they also would know that this is an areas where they are potentially exposed. So maybe they report on that and see who is betting exclusively on those positions?

Confusing though - because they are often offering those odds because they want to balance their position to reduce risk...so wouldn't they want people to be on those odds?</comment>


Jack Dorsey Is At Twitter Officially On Tuesday Afternoons - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/09/jack-dorsey-im-at-twitter-on-tuesday-afternoons-and-all-my-reports-moved-back-to-costolo-in-january/ <comment><USER2> I guess the 16-hour workday thing didn't work out.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> He is focusing on brand and logo.</comment>


Thin and Inexpensive Netbooks Affect PC Industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/technology/02netbooks.html?src=sch <comment><USER2> _Netbook makers have turned to Linux, an open-source operating system that costs $3 instead of the $25 that Microsoft typically charges for Windows XP._

I think I owe somebody $3!

Seriously, what an odd statement/error. Maybe someone is charging somebody $3 for Linux, but you would think that the nytimes.com would know what Linux is...

<comment><USER3> Not an error at all. Linux is free "in terms of liberty, not price". Just because you know how to get it, install it, and customize it to your settings for free doesn't mean everyone does. That $3 covers things like sending consultants to the manufacturer, writing specialized drivers, and removing certain parts of Linux to make it run faster.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure it's possible to work out a per-copy price for Linux, but that number probably came from the cost of Windows XP Starter Edition, and the reporter got it muddled up.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=windows%20%243>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Forget, for a moment, about whether this is the end of the PC industry or not (I would bet on not...). What I find intriguing about this article is the mention of AT&T giving away cheap netbooks to wireless subscribers. What I find even more intriguing is that, even with 4 desktops and 2 laptops on my desk (don't ask), I'm really tempted by that offer.

Maybe not the next generation of standards (LTE and 802.11n), but the generation after that will, I believe, mark the end of the distinction between local wireless and long-range wireless. That devices like iPhones and Netbooks should appear as an consequence (or even in anticipation) is not so surprising, then.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am thinking of getting either an Asus Eee or HP Mini. Does anyone have any experience playing Hulu or other flash sites on one of these? How does it compare?

<comment><USER7> FWIW, I really love my Acer Aspire One which I've been using for 6 months or so. I'm not an active Hulu user but I did just give it a try and watched about 5 minutes of Family Guy without incident; your mileage may vary.

Originally, I picked it up just to satisfy my inner geek and thought it might be good for my 7 year old daughter. On that score, it sucks because educational/kids games just can't handle the small screen. I can play a mean game of desktop tower defense or a few goodoldgames.com games, but as a gaming machine, you'll be disappointed.

I use it mostly for surfing the web, skyping, and watching video while traveling, and it works great. I bought a 3rd party battery off ebay and can literally run it for 6 hours watching video which covers most of the travel I've had to do. When around the house, I tend to use it more than our other laptop; it's just so light and easy to carry from room to room, I prefer it for short stints of web surfing.

It's also fairly hackable; I have it running linux, winxp, and MacOS (although I did replace the wireless card to get it working properly).

My wife is going to give it a go for a couple weeks to see if she can effectively use it to replace her laptop at work. With the slightly smaller keyboard and less than stellar mouse, I don't think it would be good for 8 hours of office work alone, but when connected to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, it might work for her and you can't beat how much lighter it is to lug around.

I think the sweet spot of the market is teens and college students who don't care about video gaming. With it's long battery life and small size, it would be awesome for taking notes in class, and be good enough in a dorm room with an external monitor and keyboard, for most other non-gaming use.

You also can't beat the price albeit for $200 more or so, you can get a pretty decent laptop these days (or if you are like me and buy extra junk like a battery, external dvd reader, and a wifi card, it's almost a wash).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How are they not considered part of the PC industry?

<comment><USER9> they are cheaper and lower margin

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks OLPC.

<comment><USER11> More "thanks Asus", I think?

<comment><USER5> Well, if we're going to play that game, wouldn't it be more like "thanks Alan Kay and Dynabook"?

<comment><USER12> No, it's pretty fair to say Asus developed the first netbook, proving the segment was commercially viable. OLPC got some publicity among the nerd crowd but had no real effect on the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> short dell, appl, hp?

</comment><comment><USER13> RIP PC, for at least you lasted longer than VHS.</comment>


Cut off from Wi-Fi, Cuban youngsters build secret computer network - <AUTHOR> http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2015/01/26/cut-off-from-wi-fi-cuban-youngsters-build-secret-computer-network/

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948525)</comment>


When taking a harmful job might be justified: an in-depth analysis - <AUTHOR> https://80000hours.org/articles/harmful-career/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, I'm the author of the post and happy to take questions.</comment>


New Logo for Facebook Done In-House with Eric Olson - <AUTHOR> http://underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_for_facebook_done_in-house_with_eric_olson.php

<comment><USER2> imagine getting paid to choose a font and put it on a blue rectangle. I'm wasting my life...</comment>


StackExchange Tagger - <AUTHOR> http://shagunsodhani.in/StackExchange-tagger/ <comment><USER2> Looks interesting! I hope they don't compare their results with the tags on the page to determine how good their tagger is, because there are plenty of questions that the authors tag incorrectly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great work. It might be a good idea to add usage instructions to the GitHub readme. A few questions:

— Are you releasing the dataset? Is there any place I can get more details about the dataset? I'd love to see how well a simple RNNLM does.

— Is it an end-to-end pipeline? As in, if I have a SE question url or text, can I just pass that in and it'll automatically do all the preprocessing and give me the predicted tag?

— Is the trained model available somewhere?

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the suggestion @abhshkdz! I will add the setup/usage instructions. As for your questions, \- You can use a sample from [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/tags/cc-wiki- dump/](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/tags/cc-wiki-dump/) \- The end-to-end pipeline is missing. But that's easy to add. Will update the project soon. \- The project was done some time back and we do not have the trained model with us now.

<comment><USER3> I see, okay. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Link to supporting paper: [https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsd...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxzYW5rZXRtZWh0YWlpdHJ8Z3g6MzE4MGU0NDVjMGU5OGE1MQ)

<comment><USER6> Sorry, But I can't access this link. Looks like it is dynamic generated, but I got to access from here: [https://sites.google.com/site/sanketmehtaiitr/home/stack- exc...](https://sites.google.com/site/sanketmehtaiitr/home/stack-exchange- tagger)</comment></comment>


Body Dysmorphia - Using Kinect to render yourself as fat or skinny in real time - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/17075378

<comment><AUTHOR> Full blog post here: <http://www.flight404.com/blog/?p=472></comment>


Ask HN: Are managers necessary? - <AUTHOR>

I'm wondering if some mid-sized companies (20+, larger ones too) works without the manager as a single role? What are your thoughts on this? Could a model with developers and designers doing planning amongst each other work? Or would it be to distracting to add a 'managing' task to the workflow? <comment><USER2> I work in a small consultancy / contracting place. For a lot of projects I have to write the proposal, attend pre-spec meetings, come up with the costings, get the purchase order, deal with all the 'commercial issues', invoicing etc

Sometimes it's ok, but I would prefer if we had a dedicated person to doing that all the time.

Managers are definitely useful for paperwork and dealing with commercial / political situations :)

<comment><USER3> I agree. I like having a technical lead dealing with all aspects technical and a manager dealing with paperwork, burn rates, BS customer issues, politics, etc. This frees up the technical lead to do the required technical work.

The larger the company the greater the need from what I have experienced. Technically its not required, but I'd rather not be dealing with those aspects. I forgot where I read it, but I've heard the manager role being described as a sh*t umbrella. Its there to keep everyone below him/her clean so they can focus on their work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In a perfect world, there would be no need for managers. Everyone would come together as a collective, agree on what needed to be done, and then go off and do it. People would always follow through on their commitments, or report issues immediately so that the group could adjust plans. There would also be no need to document and communicate a plan (like the barn-raising scene in _Witness_ , the canonical example). People would understand their role, and how it contributes to the whole, and would always act congruently with the goals of the group.

Of course, we don't live in that perfect world. In the real world, we need managers at various times, to help make the group more effective. So, with respect to the title of your post, yes, managers are necessary. The secondary question that I believe you touch on, "does manager have to be a dedicated role", is more complicated. In the company I work for, many of our employees move in and out of management roles, in addition to their day-to-day project responsibilities. I've seen other organizations that are successful with a similar approach. I think that where the team consists of highly trained professionals, who have the requisite maturity, it _is_ possible to operate with a part-time manager.

</comment><comment><USER5> I personally enjoy having producers, which in a sense are like product managers. The primary benefit is that producers can deal with the client, whether internal or external. Programming and designing require long blocks of concentration and it's hard to delivery quality products if you're routinely interrupted.

</comment><comment><USER6> I disagree with the OP that managers "ideally" wouldn't be necessary. It's only the stigma of BAD managers that we dislike. A great manager is a LEADER who inspires and moves everything forward. Without those people we're just a bunch of people working in parallel in a room, hoping it actually connects in some useful way at the end. The person who can draw everyone together for a common purpose and create a synchronous working environment IS the manager (whether you call him that or not).

Let's not confuse the necessary role of a leader with the horrible implementation by so many unqualified and stoopid people.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's possible for a group to share a common goal, without a person connecting them.

Of course, if people in the group don't share goals - I think it necessary to have someone keeping everyone 'on track'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The benefit of having a manager (whether they be full time or part time) is to have a central figure with vision on where to take the current project.

It is easy to have people that move in and out of management roles for different projects, but each project will benefit from having a single person with the vision to take the project from a collective of individual workers to a deliverable product within an acceptable time frame, of an acceptable scope, at an acceptable performance level and for an acceptable price.

<comment><USER8> i disagree with your first point, management and leadership are fundamentally different disciplines. management is more about execution and risk mitigation whereas leadership is more about strategy, vision (as you stated), and perhaps thinking outside the box to create change, change is risky. though i do think you need both to move up the proverbial ladder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> great question, i used to wonder what the heck my development manager was doing all day, then i became him. currently i work in a mid-sized company (150+).

if developers and designers could work out effective processes while maintaining everyone's happiness/career growth, but at the same time pump out good product then yes, you don't need a manager.

perhaps smaller companies are able to make good decisions quickly and don't need to be bound by so many processes, and i imagine happiness is really unimportant to everyone in these types of environments anyway because everyone's already a masochist, but anytime you have multiple divisions with different priorities then you need someone. decision making processes typically become difficult when there are too many involved.</comment>


Disappointments of iOS 6 - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/06/16/disappointments-ios-6/

<comment><USER2> The author confuses feature fragmentation (iOS) with API fragmentation (Android). I'd much rather miss out on Siri than not be able to install the latest hot new app because I'm running an old version of the OS.

I find that #1 and #2 are the only reasonable complaints. They're playing catch up to Android nowadays instead of leading as they did 5 years ago. Even though I'm an Apple fanboy and Android has a lot of problems, I can no longer automatically recommend iOS to someone switching from a basic phone.

My primary concern with iOS is that, now that it is an "established" OS, Apple has fallen into the feature-driven update cycle that plagues a lot of software and hurts usability: adding new features to sell an upgrade instead of fixing old features. I fear that iOS will turn into Windows. There are so many interaction designs that, while amazing, beautiful and intuitive in 2007, are no longer that. iOS has accumulated a lot of cruft over the past 5 years and, more than new features, I'd like to see Apple reinvent the phone again.

</comment><comment><USER3> "We're stuck with it for another 18 months"

uh... I'm not so sure this is a "problem."

I'd rather be "stuck" with a solid, stable, and useful operating system on a device that needs to be reliable and always available.

Am I disappointed in iOS6? Yes, but not necessarily am I concerned that I'm "stuck" with it.

Primarily my disappointments are pretty geeky.

1) Not enough major advancements (inter-app communication)

2) It seems a bit weird to introduce so many non-developer features in the keynote, at a developer conference.

Regardless, I don't think we're "stuck" with it. I think they need to up the game for iOS 7 though, and if they don't then we may have a bit of a problem.

<comment><USER4> I think the authors point is that Apple used to _lead_ , but with iOS 6 you can clearly see Apple being the laggard.

That makes him uneasy about Apple's (and iOS's) future. Remember how Microsoft used to kick ass? Remember how they used to drive/dictate how the entire PC industry was supposed to run? You remember that?

Slowly but surely they stopped doing that. Anti-trust lawsuits didn't help either. And where has that landed Microsoft today?

A cautious company, almost afraid of releasing a new version of MSIE, a web- browser, a minor component of their OS, which isn't 100% standards-compliant and with only the correct draft-specifications included, because last they they released something which did something differently than Firefox, the entire internet hated them for it.

A software company afraid of releasing software. At this point they are a turtle hiding in their shell. Not a very interesting thing to follow.

Apple isn't quite there yet, but it has been clear from the last years' (lack of) progress and development, that iOS is at a clear standstill. It makes you wonder why and what the future holds.

So his point was not if iOS 6 is terrible or not. His complaint is basically that he expected _better_ from Apple. And now Apple is seemingly no longer able to deliver that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _"We're stuck with it for another 18 months"_

Better than being stuck for 4 years, are most Android users are, with the majority of devices out there, even new ones, not having the latest version (or not even the one BEFORE that).

<comment><USER6> Four years? Do you expect anyone to take that kind of hyperbole seriously? Android 1.0 was released just shy of four years ago, in September of 2008. Are you seriously trying to claim people are buying 1.0 devices? And yes, Gingerbread is the by far most common version in use right now, but it's barely 18 months old. Meanwhile ICS is fast becoming the norm for new devices.

Seriously, Android fragmentation is an issue, but you'd be better served to keep your criticism at least in the same universe as objective reality.

<comment><USER5> > Android 1.0 was released just shy of four years ago, in September of 2008.

Well, two+ years then, although it seemed much longer in my mind. I remember having an Android phone back in the day, I've had 3 versions of iOS and 2 iOS devices since then.

According to Wikipedia, 20% still use Froyo (mid 2010) and 65% use Gingerbread (late 2010).

> _Meanwhile ICS is fast becoming the norm for new devices._

With only 7% using it as of now, despite it being 8 months out already, I wouldn't hold my breath. And even if it catches one 6 months from now, the next version will also be similarly stalled, and so on.

<comment><USER6> >Well, two+ years then, although it seemed much longer in my mind. I remember having an Android phone back in the day, I've had 3 versions of iOS and 2 iOS devices since then.

That's still absurd hyperbole. You're claiming that more than half of Android users are on a 2+ year-old version, but the figures you're citing show 75% are running an 18 month-old or newer version.

>With only 7% using it as of now, despite it being 8 months out already, I wouldn't hold my breath. And even if it catches one 6 months from now, the next version will also be similarly stalled, and so on.

That number is for devices seen in circulation by Google Play. It makes sense that you'd see lower numbers for the newest version. Existing user haven't upgraded phones yet and old inventory takes time to clear out. More importantly, most handset manufacturers haven't been through a holiday buying season with ICS yet (because Verizon had a Samsung exclusive but shipped after last year's holiday buying peak).

So, I appreciate the gist of your argument, but you undermine your point with hyperbole and outright falsehoods. Objectively speaking, fragmentation and version updates are a difficult problem for any manufacturer, and even Apple is not immune. For example, I had an iPhone 3g that became pretty useless after the iOS 4 update, meanwhile I had over a year left on my contract. All in all it was a very bad customer experience even though I did receive the newest version, whereas I'm extremely happy with my Galaxy Nexus running ICS.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is the development of automated tests a waste of time for a startup? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Think of unit-testing as a tool and not a dogma.

Proper unit-testing roughly doubles the amount of time it takes me to write a "unit" of code. This is a high cost so I do not have 100% unit-test coverage.

Over time I have developed an intuition about whether I NEED a unit-test for a particular unit. When I think I need tests I write them.

Typically I'm correct about whether the units need tests but when I make a mistake (as evidenced by bugs in the code I didn't unit-test) I go back and write the tests.

This "middle way" works well for me.

<comment><USER3> Research has shown [1] that unit testing actually cuts development time by 20%-30%, because in the long run you will spend less time debugging code or fixing code broken by other changes.

[1] - I don't have time to look-up the specific link right now, so you'll need to trust me on this one! :) But I'm sure one can google it. I remember reading it on an IEEE magazine years ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> In what context does it cut development time?

<comment><USER4> If you only count the initial development time as "development," writing tests will increase your development time. If you take a longer view, and consider maintenance and later development, having a good test suite makes it easier to find bugs and makes it possible to add features and improve code with confidence that you aren't breaking code that relies on your test suite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Without automatic testing dynamic languages _are not_ very productive because they do not catch type mismatch errors during compilation time (there isn't one). With statically typed languages you get a lot of tiny issues taken care of once you hit magic "compile" button and compiler does some basic sanity checks.

Without solid unit tests backing you, activities like removing "obsolete" methods or renaming classes/modules turn into nightmare with duck typed languages.

<comment><AUTHOR> We didn't write tests for our last startup and we never had too many problems with bugs.

We do write tests for this one and we don't have too many problems with bugs.

Tests take almost as much time to develop as the features do. I just wonder if it is worth the time and if other people with startups write automated tests.

<comment><USER5> No difference? That's pretty impressive. I wish I was able to look at your process. Either your engineers are extremely smart and anal about their practicies or your domain is very simplistic (ta-da lists).

At my previous start up we had unit tests run on the entire system automatically after every check-in (with CruiseControl) and whenever someone broke a test suite, everybody got an email with name of the offender and diffs of his code against the trunk.

We also had a "beer rule" about violatros gettings drinks for everyone, to make the process a bit more exciting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Facebook doesn't have an automated test suite. I wouldn't call that a simplistic app.

<comment><USER6> really?! I would be shocked if they dont have at least automated testing on their most critical systems. Whats the source of that info?

<comment><AUTHOR> we asked Mark Zuckerberg at Startup School

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another huge side advantage of automated tests is that it becomes a live documentation of how to use your code (unit tests as "sample code")

</comment><comment><USER7> it depends, and in my experience can be reduced to a cost/benefit analysis. a sprinkle of different things has worked for me -- some things to think about:

what's the impact of a typical bug in your app: an error 500 page (annoying) or a BSOD or corrupted data (much worse) or a missile hitting a house? these will merit different levels of testing rigor.

if something is breaking, how do you even know? how much time will have elapsed? how long will it take you to find the cause, and is suitable debugging information available for your investigation? how quickly can you come up with a fix, and how expensive is it to deploy it? this is, in my experience, a _much_ more effective place to optimize if you're a web app, especially if you're a small team.

for the non-core pieces of a web app, i'd rather release twice as fast and have logging and monitoring infrastructure in place to find and fix problems quickly (e.g. exception - logged and SMSed to our cell phones) than spend 2x to write unit tests (and maintaining them later.) a nice property is that you'll tend to find bugs roughly in order of decreasing impact, or at least prevalence. however, this approach won't do much against silent failures or bugs that are both rare and high impact.

there are lots of other effective tools: automated smoke tests (by which i mean end-to-end tests that quickly test large pieces of the app) deliver a lot of bang for buck, and root out unintended consequences of seemingly local changes that even unit tests sometimes miss. i also find generous use of the assert keyword finds failures fast/nearer to the cause.

</comment><comment><USER5> I find it really counterproductive whenever people bring the following arguments to the table (during discussions):

"I don't use it" or "Facebook does not use it". So? What does that prove? Who taught you gentleman, to use such useless arguments in a debate. It sounds like "I do not believe unit tests are useful _because_ I do not use them". Your logic is reversed.

BTW Einstein did not unit test either.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lets not forget about quality of unit tests. I've seen people writing completely idiotic tests that really do not prevent them from anything (like calling methods and making sure they do not throw exceptions). Such "unit testing" is your time well wasted indeed. Another example is to go too low or too high, i.e. being unable to find a proper balance between unit/integration.

IMO proper unit testing is a skill and takes some time to acquire. Currently I am thinking about good interview questions for our candidates that help us find out how well people understand the _reasons and goals_ of good UT.

Moreover, there are some areas of development that are notoriously hard to unit-test (with good results): Win32 UI is a good example, and even in those cases it's possible to write little, but highly effective UT-code (for instance if you have a unit-test-friendly design in place, like mediator pattern when you can "drive" your UI actions by sending commands to it).

</comment><comment><USER8> I actually complete disagree with sillydude. Even though automated tests may make the team be a bit slower while developing, the suite sure as hell makes the code the team produces more reliable. So, while the speed of development is very important, so is quality of the product you get out there, even when it's something simple. The more small, simple bugs you can get out of the way before launch, the better. So, automated tests are, at least in my opinion, high priority.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there evidence that time spent writing tests improves the quality of the code over time spent reading the code and trying to make sure it is simple and straightforward?

<comment><USER4> There's no evidence that reading the code and trying to make sure it is simple and straightforward improves the quality code, for that matter.

The quality of the code is a combination of the quality of the programmers and the quality of the processes they use to produce the code. If you have really good programmers, they can use a shoddy process (write, compile, ship) and still produce reasonable quality code; if you have average programmers with a good process (write test, write code, compile, fix warnings, compile, run test suite, fix errors, compile, run test suite, ship), you can produce good code.

What I've found is that whether a test will be useful or not depends on the nature of the code. If I'm writing logic code or building a domain-specific language, an automated test suite means the difference between getting it right quickly and taking a long time to get it hopefully probably mostly right.

Readability is only one aspect of code quality, and code that does something complex and convoluted will never be simple and straightforward. For that matter, complex, convoluted, and correct is preferable to simple, straightforward, and wrong, and that's the sort of thing that a test suite will tell you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I meant reading it as you (re)write it.

<comment><USER4> Even then! I've seen programmers read the code, get it wrong, and rewrite it in a way that introduces bugs. Hell, I've _been_ that programmer. It's clear, it's readable, it's concise, and it's wrong.

Readability and correctness are orthogonal concepts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The larger your units the more important unit testing is. Now replace larger with smaller and more with less.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you have humans writing code for you, tests are an imperative. Without tests, one seemingly small code error can wipe out a smatter of user-created data accidentally. Sure, it's worse case, but it could also mean lights out for your startup. You have to decide if it's worth the risk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Shouldn't you be backing this kind of data up? You can't guarantee that tests will catch this anyway.

<comment><USER10> If you've got good coverage, you'll have a great chance that they will. You've got to actively monitor your coverage though.

As far as backups go, a backup is only as good as it's age. If a startup is struggling to decide if they've got the resources for writing tests, they probably don't have the resources for maintaining a real-time database mirror either. You can argue that you should always back up before you roll out a code update, but the real world's not always like that.

<comment><USER2> If one is using Postgres as the DB it is not really necessary to set up a real-time database mirror to have a very robust error recovery strategy. (I can't speak about MySQL but there is probably a similar feature.)

All you need to do is configure the Point In Time Recovery feature, write a little backup script (mine is 165 lines of Python), and then call it from cron.

With PITR as long as you have the last backup and the archived WAL files made since the last backup you can recover to the SECOND before your program puked all over the DB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I always go back and forth on this one. It always feels great when the tests catch an introduced bug, but it is really worth the time you could be spending on testing out new features with users?

I wonder if the solution is to be careful to write very simple, well designed code.

<comment><USER11> I've gone back and forth on this issue too. I don't really have a firm opinion on the subject, so all I can do is share my experiences.

At inAsphere.com (2000 teen content dot-com), we had no tests and didn't really miss them. Our software was dead-simple though: a bunch of 3rd-party forum and link directory stuff. We got killed for other reasons (i.e. there wasn't really a market and we kinda sucked content-wise).

At Traxit (2000-2001 venture backed startup I worked at, selling remote access software to get through firewalls) we had no unit tests, and it sank the company. We got into a QA death spiral, where every bug that QA found made the engineers introduce 5 more, and the product quality suffered so much that we cancelled our launch. Cancelling the launch is the _absolute worst thing_ you can do if you have venture funding, because the VCs will swoop in, throw out most of the management team, and try to pick up the pieces. Of course they'll fail, so the company folded about 6 months after I left.

At FictionAlley (2002-2005 nonprofit Harry Potter fanfiction archive), I started with comprehensive unit tests, determined not to repeat the mistakes at Traxit. I then got frustrated with how I was spending as much time writing test code as production code, and abandoned them. It eventually launched, a little buggy, and the users were reasonably happy despite some annoyance at the bugs. However, the lack of up-to-date tests has made it very difficult for new developers to come up to speed and change things, which means that imperfections in the architecture have kinda fossilized.

At my previous project at my current employer (2006 IDE plugin), I released without any unit tests. I then spent 2-3 weeks _immediately_ after release writing a fairly comprehensive test suite for it. Overall it's been pretty successful: product quality is fairly high, and the tests have caught several insidious bugs since. I find they're most useful as a sanity check to show me I'm about to do something stupid. Often I'll do something that looks like a trivial refactoring and then roll back when I find out it's made a whole bunch of tests fail.

At my current project at my employer (2007 financial webapp), we have no unit tests. We are getting along okay without them, but that could be because we haven't really met reality yet. When my employer has released previous products (again, without any unit tests or QA), we've had to deal with some pretty pissed-off customers because of the product quality or lack thereof.

At my startup (2007, flash games website), I've had fairly comprehensive unit tests from the beginning. I haven't been running them lately, and they're a bit out of date, again because it takes as much time to maintain the tests as to write the code. While I was running them, they were useful in the same way as above: they keep me from doing stupid things and making silly mistakes. I plan to go back and make them pass 100% before or soon after launch.

If I had to summarize, I'd recommend that you skip them until after launch, and then _any_ time you don't have an imminent feature request, spend that firming up the test suite. That way you don't delay your release too much but they'll still be there for you when you need them, and you also don't start writing them until the feature set has somewhat stabilized. They're a big investment, but they do pay you back.

<comment><USER12> For some reason, I really like the philosophy of "Don't write unit tests until right before you launch, then maintain them". Good observation.

<comment><USER13> I second that. Once you've launched, your product is usually fairly stable (in terms of domain, big features, etc) and the tests are worth it for confidence in smaller changes/maintenance. Before then, your code base changes so often that updating the tests start dragging down your productivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I tend to write unit tests for core functions/modules as I develop them. It helps me create an API and to think about it's use/documentation. I also write tests whenever I come across a non trivial bug: write a test to create the bug, fix the bug, prove it by passing test. I haven't gone the whole hog and employed test driven development. I think all types of testing matter most once deployed. You need to prevent your customers 'testing' your app :-) Of course retro fitting tests is often a waste of time as your perspective isn't so clear.

There is always a balancing act between prefect text book engineering and just making some money!

</comment><comment><USER15> It also depends on the size of your team and the quality of engineers and code. Having tests is usually a plus, but they don't always have to be a high priority.

</comment><comment><USER16> My unit tests are mostly related to the core logic. The only UI testing I do is automated XHTML validation of pages generated for a test set.

</comment><comment><USER17> Writing tests is just part of programming, whether it's for a startup or any other project.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a pretty conformist thing to say</comment></comment>


The f.lens, first optical light collimator for smartphones - <AUTHOR> http://flens.co/ks <comment><AUTHOR> A small project of mine. In real life I'm a (bored) web dev. Please don't hate before finding yourself in a trip in rural Moldova in the middle of nowhere without any lamp on the street. This is how the idea came. The website is cool! [http://flens.co](http://flens.co) ;)</comment>


Google Apps for your domain is awesome, except when it isn't - <AUTHOR> http://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/11/12/issues_with_google_apps/ <comment><USER2> the author mentions he bought the domain from a domain name squatter...

When I buy domains from such folk I always do some due diligence to check things like:

* The complete whois history of the domain (who had it before they 'squatted' it - might there be a trademark issue, etc). Worth paying $10 for.

* Is the domain on any spam blacklists, corporate firewall black lists (adult content, gambling etc), etc

* What kind of search pollution does the domain have

... looks like I should add "is domain already on Google Apps"? And if so, negotiate the Google Apps account be shut down by the current owner as part of it the escrow fulfillment requirements. Thanks for this heads-up!

To the OP: If the expiry doesn't run it's natural course, I would contact Don Dodge at Google who is a community-focused executive who runs Google Apps. See if you have any mutual contacts via LinkedIn otherwise email me for an intro (see my profile for addy)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ben, if I'm remembering correctly, we actually met in Denver before at the Defrag conference. You going to be there again next week?

<comment><USER2> We did! I'm not going, sadly. I am forwarding this thread to Don, however.

I don't want to take over this thread with personal convo, but drop me a line and let me know what you are up to via email!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Had a somewhat related error. My admin account said "this account has been disabled". I simply cannot progress further. You cannot delete the domain, you cannot start over, there is no way of contacting anyone within google, there is no reason why it would be disabled.

Just a total black-box: from one day to the next everything is disabled, and it's the end of your companies account.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel your pain. I had a similar thing happen with my AdSense account. They said they had detected invalid activity and my account was closed. I appealed once and lost. Even though I hadn't done anything wrong, it wasn't worth the energy to me to fight for it.

I love Google products, but their lack of decent support kills me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The domain might be an alias for a different Google Apps domain. If this is the case you would see the the same server error.

I recommend posting to the support forum (they do have employees watching it). If that doesn't pan out you could contact someone on this page (as noted by dotBen). <http://developer.googleapps.com/google-team>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link to the Google team. That's a great idea. I wasn't aware of the possible alias issue.

I looked at the support forum but saw lots of people asking questions but it didn't seem like anyone was getting any real help from Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can use Gmail to email from your account, but not through Google Apps. You set up the IMAP server and authorize your regular Gmail account to send and receive emails. Then just set up a filter to keep things organized. It's not an ideal solution, but you can use your email through the Gmail interface (and spam protection) in the mean time.</comment>


Social media companies step up battle against militant propaganda - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-shooting-socialmedia-insig-idUKKBN0TO0OS20151207 <comment><USER2> This just smells like the start of censorship creeping into these platforms...

Twitter was pivotal in the Arab Spring. I can't see Twitter ever being pivotal again in future struggles if regimes can demand them to censor rebellious accounts

It's not "social" if the society can be censored.

Edit: Now that Twitter will be closing "terrorist" accounts, how long until Japan demand Twitter to close the @SeaShepherd account?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm of the belief that most active terrorist orgs are unlikely to have a strong Facebook presence, and that even if they do, they're unlikely to do anything of a threatening nature there. If anything, it would seem as though you might want to keep whatever is happing there for honeypot reasons.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, you'd be surprised how many criminals seem to seek glory for their actions and then wonder how they get arrested afterwards.

Just ask all the criminals who stole things, got involved in selling drugs, etc, then boasted about it on Facebook. There have been cases of criminals boasting about their killings online, or their plans for mass attacks. I remember the shock when one of these crimes had turned out to have been planned on 4chan or another similar site.

People who break the law are often driven as much by personal fame and glory as anyone else, and both the internet companies shutting their accounts and the police and security services carefully monitoring them are good ideas for just that reason.

<comment><USER5> The 4chan example was the mass shooting at a community college in Oregon.

Personally I find a connection between how many people see computing as a black box, and the criminals who insist on posting there deeds to social media and elsewhere. To them it's a magical conduit to millions of people. I wonder if there's a deeper study into this because as a software developer I find it hard to believe that others can't at least get a sense that it's all derived from 1's and 0's.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who owns (legally) user comments at HN? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Copyright is owned by the writers; HN has implied license to display. (This has come up before; fairly sure I am quoting a lawyer.)

[Edit to add: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3641312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3641312) <\-- Grellas is, indeed, a lawyer.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Help use Google Doodle to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 - <AUTHOR>

Finding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is a problem google could solve by crowdsourcing the search on the google doodle
They could use an algorithm to generate different satellite images through  the possible search images as the google doodle, they could put a toggle button, 'anything look like a plane or wreckage here?'  Yes/no.   For every yes, show it to more people, see if they agree
I'm sure google has better algorithm experts to figure out what the best images to show are than I can figure out,
but google can find that plane
I've already submitted this to google via email at firstname.lastname@example.com as suggested on http://www.google.com/doodles/about
I suspect there are people on HN who are fewer degrees of seperation from who figures out the google doodle than I am though
If you happen to be one of those people, who might be able to send a personal email, or send a text, or make a phone call to someone who could advocate for that being the google doodle, I would appreciate that
needless to say, if google was able to help solve this mystery, I would imagine that would be pretty good publicity for the company
Thanks for your consideration <comment><USER2> Google is a website commonly visited by people of all ages. Every doodle I have seen has been whimsical and also safe for children, but putting a doodle searching for wreckage like this would be asking children all over the world when they look at their computer one day, "Do you see 300 dead people in this photo, Yes or No?" I can't see Google finding this an acceptable use of their brand, even though their homepage does command a lot of eyeballs.

Perhaps Google CAN use their influence to help the search, but I don't think it will be with a doodle. Is there any more appropriate Google-owned venue where this would be more acceptable?

<comment><USER3> Another thing - a script to do this could take at least 2-3 days to code. Things could change pretty drastically by then. Of course, we might be able to reuse the code for another unfortunate time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's an interesting idea but I guess the problem here is about setting a precedent. Why is it ok for that plane and not many other uses (e.g. Amber alerts)? They just wouldn't want to go there

<comment><USER5> It's their website, they should be able to do what they want with it. Nothing about them would obligate them to assist in _every_ instance. There is no slippery slope.

Also, maybe they _should_ consider doing amber alerts and stuff like that. But it's independent of this question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a well-intentioned idea, but another thing I see wrong with it is that there are, what, 200 million square miles the plane could be in? Of which we'd only expect one to contain the plane (..hopefully..). You're just going to get too much noise/too many trolls to observe a 5.0e-9 event precisely (sure, you could weight the 'yes' pictures to show up more often, but wouldn't that just give more power to the trolls, and thereby obscure further the chance of seeing the actual plane picture?)

<comment><USER5> You'd just show people the pictures multiple times, and take the one with the most yeses. Discard the results (or weight them a lower amount) of people that just press the button over and over again, or stuff like that.</comment></comment>


Show HN: healthcorpus, visual search for medical articles - <AUTHOR> http://healthcorpus.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, I work with Nhumi Technologies in Zurich, Switzerland and we just launched our brand new site healthcorpus.com. Healthcorpus helps you find, create and share health information online. Its highlight is the unique visual search engine that lets users click on a virtual body to find relevant articles.

healthcorpus is also our first major project where the backend is written in Go.

Ask away if you have any questions!</comment>


Ask HN: Workflow Issue: How to "deformat" text without losing links? - <AUTHOR>

What's the best way to get text from Word into raw HTML...without cutting out URLs, bold tags, italics and underlining?
I run a Drupal-powered news site.  We've got about 30 contributors.  They post their own work.  Sometimes I post it for them.
These people always write in Word.  No matter how many times I ask them not to, they do.  Pasting into our site from Word leads to formatting problems.  Now, I've got a tinymce plugin that will strip out all formatting from the text and just give me plain text...but then I lose useful tags like <a>, <b>, and <i> and have to add them in again.  I don't have time to add in 30 links again.  And I don't have time to strip out all the awful <span style="font-family:cambria">-type tags that Word puts into the text.
Solutions? <comment><USER2> Put a good rich text editor in your site. Here's a few good ones:

[http://bulletproofbox.com/web-based-rich-text-editors- compar...](http://bulletproofbox.com/web-based-rich-text-editors-compared/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a solved problem.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=word+cleaner+html>

</comment><comment><USER4> i like the javascript rich text editor idea.

you could also go with a basic regex removal of everything that isn't 'useful'. just strip out all tags except a/i/b/u and strip out all 'style="*"'.

since its drupal and all, its in php, so this is perhaps in order: <http://us2.php.net/strip-tags></comment>