How Stylo Brought Rust and Servo to Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://bholley.net/blog/2017/stylo.html <comment><USER3> It's gratifying to see how successfully the same organization has learned from the debacle that was the rewrite from Netscape 4 to Mozilla in the first place. That time, they didn't release for years, losing market share and ceding the web to Internet Explorer for the next decade. Joel Spolsky wrote multiple articles[1][2] pointing out their folly.

This time, their "multiple-moonshot effort" is paying off big-time because they're doing it incrementally. Kudos!

[1] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you- should-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never- do-part)

[2] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/11/20/netscape-goes- bonk...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/11/20/netscape-goes-bonkers/)

<comment><USER4> Joel is making two separate claims there, though he doesn't cleanly distinguish them.

One is that rewriting from scratch is going to give you a worse result than incremental change from a technical point of view (the « absolutely no reason to believe that you are going to do a better job than you did the first time » bit).

The second is that independent of the technical merits, rewriting from scratch will be a bad commercial decision (the « throwing away your market leadership » bit).

We now know much more about how this turned out for his chosen example, and I think it's clear he was entirely wrong about the first claim (which he spends most of his time discussing). Gecko was a great technical success, and the cross-platform XUL stuff he complains about turned out to have many advantages (supporting plenty of innovation in addons which I don't think we'd have seen otherwise).

It's less clear whether he's right about the second: certainly Netscape did cede the field to IE for several years, but maybe that would have happened anyway: Netscape 4 wasn't much of a platform to build on. I think mozilla.org considered as a business has done better than most people would have expected in 2000.

<comment><USER5> In Joel's defense, we don't know that gecko is better than X years of incremental changes to Netscape 4.

One of the big issues with software engineering advice is that it is really hard to find apples-to-apples comparisons for outcomes.

<comment><USER4> True.

I think we can say that Gecko ended up technically better than incremental changes to Internet Explorer, which I think was starting off from a more maintainable codebase than Netscape 4. That's hardly conclusive but it's some evidence.

<comment><USER6> > _we can say that Gecko ended up technically better than incremental changes > to Internet Explorer_

> _..._

> _That 's hardly conclusive but it's some evidence._

Given Internet Explorer's monopoly position, and consequent disincentive to compete, it's not really the best comparison.

Compare to something like Opera Presto, a codebase that - while younger than Netscape - predates Internet Explorer, which underwent incremental changes while remaining in a minority market position. It was killed by market forces, but I doubt anyone would contest it was a badly put together piece of software in the end.

Konqueror is another example. It's not quite as compelling, as KHTML itself has fared less well than its forks, Safari WebKit has never exactly been a leader in engine advancement, and Chrome's innovations, while incremental, were largely built on a scratch-rewrite-and-launch-all-at-once of one component (V8). However KHTML/Webkit/Blink is still pretty much an incremental rewrite success story.

<comment><USER7> I actually used Opera because it allowed me to stop websites from hijacking my browser. No capturing my right click or any of this silly bullshit. The exact UI/features I want. Opera 6-12 were good times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Stylo was the culmination of a near-decade of R&D, a multiple-moonshot > effort to build a better browser by building a better language.

This is the most impressive, and useful aspect of all the recent work in Firefox. Rust is an amazing language. It really brings something new to the table with its borrow checker.

The fact that rust was created as part of a greater effort to work on a web browser is amazing.

<comment><USER9> What I wonder, and I do not mean this in negative way, is whether this would have happened in a more commercially oriented organisation. Mozilla remains a foundation, and I consider Rust a fruit of their labour in itself.

To put it another way, I find it hard to justify developing Rust just for a web browser. But if you consider it from the perspective of a foundation developing tools for the developer community as a whole, it makes much more sense.

<comment><USER10> Imagine if some company were to make a completely new language just for an IDE.

<comment><USER11> Is that a reference to JetBrains and Kotlin? :-)

<comment><USER12> Or emacs. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a huge, huge fan of Rust, Stylo, Servo, WebRender, etc. Hats off to everyone involved.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the kind words!

<comment><USER13> You're welcome! I guess while I'm at it I should mention that I am a huge fan of your HN comments also. I learn more from them on a technical level than probably anyone else on this site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > They borrowed Apple's C++ compiler backend, which lets Rust match C++ in > speed without reimplementing decades of platform-specific code generation > optimizations.

This was a pretty smart move by the Rust team, and this gave them a rock solid platform to go cross-platform. In words of Newton, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". Kudos team Rust, and let's hope they eat C++'s lunch soon.

<comment><USER16> Does this just mean LLVM? Because it's weird to describe it as "Apple's", Apple just uses it.

<comment><USER17> It's slightly oversimplified. Apple hired Chris Lattner from academia to ramp up work on LLVM & create Clang. (Apple always hated GNU stuff so the motive might not have been purely technical.)

<comment><USER18> There were a couple of purely technical reasons for Apple to pursue Clang.

1.) GCC was designed for command line use, not to provide integration (for instance, debugging info) into a modern IDE.

2.) Objective-C was not a priority for those who maintained GCC, but was for Apple.

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

<comment><USER17> The Objective-C story is a little more complicated. Originally Apple had a hostile fork of GCC and even initially refused to provide source code until the FSF lawyers got involved. It's a small wonder the GCC Objective-C support is as good as it is considering the politics.

Debugging info works similarly in all compilers (GCC, MSVC etc) - it's saved in the compiler output and read by the tools like IDEs.

<comment><USER18> >For instance, GCC uses a step called fold that is key to the overall compile process, which has the side effect of translating the code tree into a form that looks unlike the original source code. If an error is found during or after the fold step, it can be difficult to translate that back into one location in the original source.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clang#Design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clang#Design)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It might sound very naive to say this, but I found it very cool that it was someone from the States, an Aussie and a Spaniard working on this, open source is something magical when you think about it. Props to everyone involved, all those projects sound like a lot of fun for a good cause.

<comment><USER20> Both the stylo and servo teams are extremely distributed.

For servo we've had long periods of time where no two employees are in the same office (it helps that most folks are remote).

In both teams we found it impossible to pick meeting times that work for everyone so we instead scheduled two sessions for the recurring meetings, and you can show up for one of them (the team lead / etc are usually at both so they're scheduled such that it is possible for them to attend both). Though for Servo we eventually stopped the meeting since we're pretty good at async communication through all the other channels and the meeting wasn't very useful anymore.

Also, to clarify, while that was the initial team, shortly after getting Wikipedia working the team grew with folks from the Servo and Gecko teams. Eventually we had folks living in the US, Paris, Spain, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and Turkey working on it. As well as volunteer contributors from all over the place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love Firefox Quantum and it has replaced Chrome as my browser at home. It's memory consumption is far lower with the same amount of tabs open.

That said, why does it perform slower than Chrome on most benchmarks? Is it due to the Chrome team doing much more grunt work regarding parallelism and asynchronous I/O? Or are there still features in the current Firefox build that still call the original engine?

Does Rust have a runtime penalty as Golang does?

<comment><USER22> > most benchmarks

Which benchmarks are you talking about? It depends on what those benchmarks measure.

For example, a lot of the Quantum work was in user-percieved UI latency; unless the benchmark is measuring that, and I imagine that's a hard thing to measure, it's not going to show up.

> Does Rust have a runtime penalty as Golang does?

Rust has the same amount of runtime as C does: very very little. [https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/blob/master/src/libstd/rt....](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/blob/master/src/libstd/rt.rs)

<comment><USER23> Looking at rt.rs:

      sys::stack_overflow::init();

I probably don't know what this function does, because my initial guess is not very comforting. :)

<comment><USER24> It initializes stack overflow handling. You can read about what that means here, for Unix:

[https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/blob/71340ca4e181b824bcefa...](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/blob/71340ca4e181b824bcefa887f1be60dd0b7352ce/src/libstd/sys/unix/stack_overflow.rs#L79)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "So it's pretty clear by now that "don't make mistakes" is not a viable strategy."

This is more generally known as Constant Flawless Vigilance: [https://capability.party/memes/2017/09/11/constant- flawless-...](https://capability.party/memes/2017/09/11/constant-flawless- vigilance.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> One thing I've been wondering is that Stylo and Webrender can parallelize CSS and Paint, respectively, but I haven't seen any mention in Project Quantum (the project to integrate Servo components into Firefox/Gecko) of any component to parallelize layout, which is probably the biggest bottleneck on the web at the moment.

Is parallel layout something which can only be done through a full rewrite, hence with Servo, and bringing Servo up to full web compatibility, or can this be handled through the Project Quantum process, of hiving off components from Servo into Firefox?

<comment><USER27> The OP links a video from 2015 that implies that one of the advantages of making Stylo the first Servo component in Gecko is that the next phase in the pipeline, layout, will be able to benefit from having a well-defined interface in place. I'm curious about this as well!

<comment><USER28> Since I gave that talk, it's become more clear to me that servo's layout engine is a lot farther from feature-complete than the CSS engine was. So my hunch is that the granularity of incrementalism we used for stylo may not be workable for layout.

That said, we are absolutely going to explore opportunities for more Rust/Servo in layout, so we just need to find the right strategy. One incremental step I'm interested in exploring is to rewrite Gecko's frame constructor in Rust using the servo model, but have it continue to generate frames in the Gecko C++ format. This would give us rayon-driven parallelism in frame construction (which is a big performance bottleneck), while being a lot more tractable than swapping out all of layout at once. Another thing to explore would be borrowing Servo's tech for certain subtypes of layout (i.e. block reflow) and shipping it incrementally.

Each of these may or may not share code with Servo proper, depending on the tradeoffs. But Servo has a lot of neat innovation in that part of the pipeline (like bottom-up frame construction and parallel reflow) that I'm very interested in integrating into Firefox somehow.

We're going to meet in Austin in a few weeks and discuss this. Stay tuned!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congratulations, it's really an unparalleled performance of parallel performance.

<comment><USER29> Speaking of which: does anyone know if some new optimization land in the beta versions a couple of days ago? Or if some bug that caused delays on Linux got fixed?

I updated my developer version yesterday and it was as if Firefox - <USER2> ludicrously fast compared to before - turned on the turbo booster.

Obviously, I'm not complaining ;)

<comment><USER30> The next Servo component is webrender and I'm not certain on if it has been flagged to on for developer edition but that would certainly affect speed.

<comment><USER31> It's only on nightly and still buggy on certain chipsets. At home I have a Kaby Lake system and using WebRender for daily browsing without problems. At work I use a Skylake system which has trouble with some sites, such as [https://tradingview.com](https://tradingview.com)

If you want to read the latest info, there is a good status post from a couple of days ago:

[https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2017/11/27/webrender- newsle...](https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2017/11/27/webrender- newsletter-10/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is a great story. For large, existing code-bases _incremental_ change is the only strategy I've seen work. Kudos to the team behind it.

</comment><comment><USER33> One thing I've noticed about Firefox, especially on mobile, is that transform animations are pretty janky.

Does anyone know if this is being worked on? Should I submit a bug report?

<comment><USER14> Feel free to file a bug report with your hardware, Firefox version, and test case, yes. These often boil down to simple bugs (hardware-specific or page- specific) that can be quickly fixed when isolated.

The medium-term effort to revamp the graphics stack is WebRender. Note that, like Stylo, WebRender is not just meant to achieve parity with other browsers. It's a different architecture entirely that is more similar to what games do than what current browsers do.

<comment><USER34> Firefox' CSS transform/animation performance is terrible on macOS. I filed a bugreport but there's no interest in solving it unfortunately.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407536](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407536)

<comment><USER14> Those are very general conclusions to draw from one test case. The bouncing ball test runs at 60 FPS for me on macOS; most of the time is spent in painting, as expected. Likewise, Stripe scrolls at 60 FPS for me.

I should note that the bouncing ball test is the kind of thing that WebRender is designed to improve—painting-intensive animations—so it's obviously untrue that there's no interest in improving this sort of workload. When running your bouncing ball test in Servo with master WebRender, I observed CPU usage of no higher than 15% (as well as 60 FPS)…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > For example, register allocation is a tedious process that bedeviled > assembly programmers, whereas higher-level languages like C++ handle it > automatically and get it right every single time.

Ideal register allocation is NP-complete, so a compiler can't get it right every single time.

I'm not sure how good in practice modern compilers are at this, but would be curious to know if there's some asm writers who can actually consistently outperform them.

<comment><USER36> Optimal register allocation has been polynomial time for more than 10 years - for some definition of optimal. IIRC it started with programs in SSA form and has dropped that requirement more recently. Modern GCC uses SSA form and I think LLVM might too.

<comment><USER37> GCC and LLVM do not retain SSA form by the time register allocation happens (they both convert to a non-SSA low-level IR before then).

It's also worth pointing out that "optimal" in theory doesn't necessarily correspond to optimal in practice. The hard problem of register allocation isn't coloring the interference graph (since there's not enough registers most of the time), it's deciding how best to spill (or split live ranges, or insert copies, or rematerialize, or ...) the excess registers. Plus, real-world architectures also have issues like requiring specific physical registers for certain instructions and subregister aliasing which are hard to model.

In practice, the most important criterion tends to be to avoid spilling inside loops. This means that rather simple heuristics are generally sufficient to optimally achieve that criterion, and in those cases, excessive spilling outside the loops isn't really going to show up in performance numbers. Thus heuristics are close enough to optimal that it's not worth the compiler time or maintenance to achieve optimality.

<comment><USER38> Yes, the fun in compilers: Even if every phase and every optimization actually produces optimal results, the combination is probably not optimal.

One deep problem is that there is no good optimization goal. Today's CPUs are too complex and unpredictable performance-wise.

Another problem is: Register pressure is one of the most important things to minimize, but how can the phases before register allocation do that? They use a surrogate, like virtual registers, and thus become heuristics even if they solve their theoretical problem optimally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I really like the new Fox. I've tried switching over completely but I think it's causing some random BSODs on my Latitude E5570. The laptop does have a second Nvidia graphics card, for which there is no driver installed. ( don't ask :) I'm perfectly fine with the onboard Intel and I much prefer the extra hours of battery life)

</comment><comment><USER40> > The teams behind revolutionary products succeed because they make strategic > bets about which things to reinvent, and don't waste energy rehashing stuff > that doesn't matter.

This needs to be emphasized more

</comment><comment><USER41> This is a great write-up that gives me warm fuzzy feelings.

What also is interesting for me to realise, though, is that a lot of this was happening at the same time as Mozilla was largely focused on Firefox OS, and receiving a lot of flak for that.

It's a shame that Firefox OS failed, but it was clear that they had to try many different things to remain relevant, and it's excellent to see that one of those is very likely to pay off. Even though Rust might've been dismissed for the same reasons Firefox OS was.

</comment><comment><USER42> FF has for me crashed more times in the last week than in the previous year. - Multiple installs on different Linux systems. The last crash was with a clean profile.

And then there's the disappearing dev tools - that's fun.

EDIT: I hope that there is something weird with my systems. But I fear that the rush to push this out might have been a little hasty.

EDIT EDIT Apart from the crashes the new FF has been nice. I've been able to largely stop using chromium for dev work - so not all is bad.

<comment><USER43> You can go to "about:crashes" to get some more information about reported crashes. If you open a crash report and click the "Bugzilla" tab, you can find out if a bug is on file for that specific stack trace.

<comment><USER42> Cool. I'll check this out next time. Any way to report the disappearing dev tools?

<comment><USER44> Just file it on [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/;](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/;) you can login with your GitHub credentials.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> _For example, register allocation is a tedious process that bedeviled assembly programmers,_

Yet more propaganda. I've been part of the cracking and demo scene since my early childhood. If you didn't code in assembler you might as well not have taken part in it at all, because small fast code was everything. None of us ever had an issue with register allocation, nor do we face such issues today. Not 30+ years ago, not now.

</comment><comment><USER8> > the breadth of the web platform is staggering. It grew organically over > almost three decades, has no clear limits in scope, and has lots of tricky > observables that thwart attempts to simplify.

It would be great to create the html/css/javascript stack from scratch, or at least make a non-backwards-compatible version that is simpler and can perform better. HTML5 showed us that can work.

<comment><USER46> Yeah but Firefox is already struggling while supporting all the possible standards and more ("sorry our site is better view with Google IE4... ehm Google Chrome").

The whole Mozilla strategy of corroding Firefox piece by piece is actually very professional. Big backwards-incompatible transitions in technology almost always fail.

<comment><USER20> > sorry our site is better view with Google IE4... ehm Google Chrome

FWIW this is usually due to folks doing performance work in only one browser or not really testing well and slapping that label on after the fact.

Or stuff like Hangouts and Allo where they use nonstandard features.

The major things Firefox doesn't support that Chrome does are U2F (it does support it now, but flipped off, will flip on soon I think) and web components (support should be available next year I guess; this kinda stalled because of lots of spec churn and Google implementing an earlier incompatible spec early or something.)

<comment><USER47> I've been using a U2F plugin that works everywhere except google, which insists that you cannot possibly have U2F on firefox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> What parts of FF 57 are written in Rust? Just Stylo?

Edit: I don't intend for this to sound like I'm complaining, just interested.

<comment><USER49> Stylo is new in Firefox 57, but Mozilla has shipped other Rust code in earlier Firefox versions:

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation#Rust_components_in_Firefo...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation#Rust_components_in_Firefox)

Completed:

      MP4 metadata parser (Firefox 48)
      Replace uconv with encoding-rs (Firefox 56)
      U2F HID backend (Firefox 57)

In progress:

      URL parser
      WebM demuxer
      WebRender (from Servo)
      Audio remoting for Linux
      SDP parsing in WebRTC (aiming for Firefox 59)
      Linebreaking with xi-unicode
      Optimizing WebVM compiler backend: cretonne

<comment><USER36> Can anyone explain what a URL parser does and why it's so complex? I feel like there's a whole interesting story lurking there.

<comment><USER22> A URL parser takes a string with a URL in it, and returns some sort of data structure that represents the URL.

It's complex because URLs are complex; I believe this is the correct RFC: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986) It's 60 pages long.

(That said, page length is only a _proxy_ for complexity, of course)

<comment><USER50> As someone who once tried to write code to do it to avoid pulling in a dependency.

 _Never_ again, it's not just that the spec is 60 pages long but that the actual behaviour out in the real world is miles away from the spec, the web is a complex place where standards are...rarely standard.

<comment><USER51> When writing code it's a much better idea to write according to [https://url.spec.whatwg.org/](https://url.spec.whatwg.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Off-topic, but does anyone know why in FF on Mac the pinch to zoom functionality is disabled by default? Is there any performance concern?

<comment><USER53> It's a matter of allocating time to implement the missing parts and get it to work properly. Right now the people who could do this are working on other things but it will get done eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Thanks Mozilla Going to donate

</comment><comment><USER55> Anecdote regarding this new FF:

I would find frequent cases where my system would stall for 10-20s (could not caps lock toggle, pointer stopped moving). I almost always have just Chrome and gnome-terminal open (Ubuntu 16.04). I had attributed it to either a hardware or BIOS/firmware defect.

Now, after switching to Firefox I have gone a week without seeing those stalls.

YMMV -- I never bothered to investigate, it could be something as simple as slightly-less-memory-consumption from FF, or still a hardware defect that FF doesn't happen to trigger.

<comment><USER56> This sounds vaguely like what I've been experiencing on recent Chrome versions. On Windows I've had Chrome randomly hang... initially on the network, then after a few seconds even the UI freezes. When that happens, if I launch Firefox and try to access the network, it hangs too. But programs that don't try to access the network don't hang. Then after maybe (very roughly) 30 seconds, it all goes back to normal. No idea what's been going on but it seems like you might be experiencing a same thing, and it seems like a recent bug on Chrome versions, not a firmware issue... I'm just confused at how it affects other programs. It didn't use to be like this just a few weeks ago.

<comment><USER57> I notice chrome having these issues if I'm running out of memory or if another program is trying to read from the hard drive at the same time.

<comment><USER56> I am most definitely not running out of memory or having other programs active. I easily have like > 10 GB free RAM and it happens when nothing else is open.

Like I was suggesting early -- my habits haven't changed. It's started doing this quite recently. It wasn't like this a few weeks ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I use firefox/rust every day. Thanks for the one of the most interesting language!

</comment><comment><USER59> Installed the new firefox, had 1 tab running for a few days which had allocated more than 10gb of virtual memory. I had high hopes but im sticking with chrome.

<comment><USER60> Forgive my ignorance, but does having X amount of virtual memory allocated necessarily correspond to physical memory (and storage for that matter?)

<comment><USER61> No, it doesn't _necessarily_ correspond. It could be an indicator, though. RSS would be more useful, IMO.

That said, even if the poster is correct, it isn't necessarily wrong either. AFAICT, nothing stops JS on a page from allocating that much memory, and "leaking" it (e.g., holding on to the JS object, maybe accidentally in a giant list, and not making use of it). It isn't the browser's fault if JS is actually "using" that much RAM.</comment></comment></comment>


Understanding startup equity basics (for job seekers) - <AUTHOR> https://underdog.io/blog/startup-equity-basics-for-job-seekers <comment><USER2> An important point that the article doesn't discuss is understanding the possible value of your options if the company actually exits.

There are few factors here - what percentage of the company's total share count do your options (vested and unvested) represent. How big of a liquidity preference are you sitting behind. What are the odds the company clears this liquidity preference. What is the likely valuation of any successful exit (i.e., one the clears the liquidity preference, and in the case of options, clears the strike price of the options issued). What are the odds of such an exit. And finally, what are the change of control terms.

In terms of what fraction of the company do your options represent, you'll have to ask how many shares are outstanding and then make a guess as to how many more will get issued between now and success. Remember, each financing results in lots more shares being issued.

What is the liquidity preferences your options sit behind. Usually options convert to common, so that means you are the lowest person on the totem pole. If the company has raised $100MM, there is very likely at least a $100MM preference. That means that if the company exits for $90MM the common shareholders (that's the employee option holders) will get nothing.

In terms of valuations, you can figure out what your options are worth at various exits above the liquidity preference, but only if you know the terms of later financing rounds. Generally, I'd recommend exercising at least 1 share of options as soon as possible so that you have shareholder information rights which should tell you what these terms are so you can calculate the option value.

More importantly, what are the odds of such exit. Generally, a company has more options to exit for $100MM than it does for $1B than it does for $10B. Of course, if the company is wildly successful, the higher the odds of a bigger outcome. The question is, what threshold of success is needed for the options to have enough value.

Finally, you should consider the change of control terms. If a company is acquired, do your shares vest immediately, or are they converted to shares of the acquiring company? What happens if the acquirer fires you? If you are early enough you might be able to negotiate for better change of control provisions. You want to avoid a scenario where the company has a successful exit and the acquirer is not incentivized to keep all the employees that have meaningful option stakes. This is usually less a problem in software developer roles, and more of an issue for sales and executive staff (CFO, CSO, etc.) but it doesn't hurt to have better terms.

In any case, employee stock options are complicated, and often the terms matter more than the price. There is a quote, can't remember who said it, "You name the price, I name the terms."

<comment><AUTHOR> All totally good points. I can make this even more complicated!

>If the company has raised $100MM, there is very likely at least a $100MM preference. That means that if the company exits for $90MM the common shareholders (that's the employee option holders) will get nothing.

In this case, won't blocking rights prevent that exit in most cases? Investors with liquidation preference might not want an exit that comes in lower than their cost basis...

<comment><USER2> Maybe. Investors can give up on a company and want to get their money out which would result in this kind of sale. More likely, as you said, the company will be forced to go for bust given the current climate.

It is also possible for investors to block an exit that can be great for founders and employees. For a $1B fund, a $150MM exit on $10MM raised doesn't move the needle, but it could be life changing for the founders and early employees. Good investors will care about this and try to figure something out. Others might just block the transaction.</comment></comment></comment>


The Sorry State of WYSIWYG Web Editors - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2009/04/the-sorry-state-of-wysiwyg-web-editors <comment><USER2> Bold, italic, heading, list, link, image.

I've never seen a remotely compelling argument for anything more, and I've never seen anything more used in 99.9% of user-generated content. Where did this fascination with perfecting pointless bloat come from?</comment>


Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies, but No One Will Talk - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/popcorn-time-devs-drop-like-flies-but-no-one-will-talk-140420/

<comment><USER2> Maybe the source code is really ugly, and they all silently threw in the towel.</comment>


Some transcripts from the Scaling Bitcoin workshops - <AUTHOR> http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011862.html <comment><USER3> I've seen a lot of noise that blockchain is going to be a huge disruption for everything recently (yeah I know people have been saying it for a while - <USER2> may have been asleep). What would people recommend as the best resource for a) evaluating whether the hype is valid and b) as a technical overview?

<comment><USER4> If the hype is merely about Bitcoin itself as an alternative currency, then simply forget it. That's just some aftershocks of people joining the party lately.

However, if you are talking about Blockchain technology and applications beyond currency and gambling, there may be something onto it. For example, check out Ethereum:

[https://www.ethereum.org/](https://www.ethereum.org/)

This allows you to enforce and reward contracts in a very flexible and completely decentral fashion. Also, "agreeing on one truth/history" has been replaced from "power of work" (arms race to burn energy resources) to a more subtle decentral reputation system. This is more about finding consensus among the network participants as intelligent individuals, rather than who's able to invest more energy/hardware resources more quickly.

Creative stuff like Ethereum has not just the potential to replace payments, but enables companies that are totally differently structured than what we find today. If that's for better or worse, I'm not sure.

But if there's any justified hype about Bitcoin, it's about emerging projects like that - not about Bitcoin itself.

<comment><USER5> Proof-of-Stake is nothing new, and it has serious problems: [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake). There are good reasons why Bitcoin uses "wasteful" proof-of-work.

Bitcoin is the only Blockchain implementation that has gained any kind of traction, and that is due to the incentive model working out. People just don't like it because it challenges their economic worldview.

<comment><USER4> _> Proof-of-Stake is nothing new, and it has serious problems: [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake) _

Would you mind pointing to the relevant sections?

I wasn't able find criticism about Proof-of-Stake there. Instead, the beginning describes the problems with Proof-of-Work (which Proof-of-Stake tries to address). The large middle part describes some systems which mix both PoW and PoS.

 _> People just don't like it because it challenges their economic worldview_

Not sure how this is relevant to the discussion about Bitcoin hypes and Ethereum.

In particular, I don't see why the people who implemented Ethereum shouldn't like Bitcoin. And even if they do dislike Bitcoin, I'm pretty sure this is not because it challenges their economic worldview, as Ethereum challenges the common economic worldview even more.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps the parent wanted to link to Wikipedia (not the Bitcoin Wiki) where the criticism is more concise: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of- stake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake)

 _" One problem is usually called the "nothing at stake" problem, where (in the case of a consensus failure) block-generators have nothing to lose by voting for multiple blockchain-histories, which prevents the consensus from ever resolving"_</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Steve-Jobs-Resigns-as-CEO-of-bw-19285464.html?x=0&.v=1 <comment><USER6> Apple's going to be fine. Steve's most extraordinary work isn't the Mac, the iPhone or the iPad. It's rebuilding Apple in his image. It was creating organizational culture and habits that mimic his weird brain, like their aggressive software prototyping to prove that things work well and feel good.

Fuck, I'll miss him, though. I'll miss the way he got up there each and every time like he was selling you your own personal Jesus in a box. Not out of hucksterism, but because he really was that excited to share what he and his people had been working on. Excited to do things better. Excited to solve problems in a way that was far more tasteful, more satisfying, than anything anyone had bothered to try before. Maybe he'll still do announcements as his health allows – but maybe that would send a weird message.

He's a man who was lucky enough to find out exactly what he did best – and to seize upon it with every cell in his body.

I'm a better person for his example. The resurrection of Apple was one of the most enjoyable things I followed in my childhood. No matter how you feel about his approach, this is a guy who loves his work with an intensity that couldn't be faked and won't be soon matched.

<comment><USER7> _Apple's going to be fine._

One half of Apple is execution. I believe that Jobs has infused the company with a culture based on his favored principles, and it's reasonable to think this culture is sticky.

The other half of Apple is big strategic decisions. _Do the iPod. Do the iPhone. Do the iPad._ I don't know anyone else with a track record like that. I don't know that it's trainable. Until the next smash product line that's not from his lips to Apple's ears, I don't know that Apple is going to be fine.

<comment><USER6> > The other half of Apple is big strategic decisions. Do the iPod. Do the > iPhone. Do the iPad.

It's interesting, though, because to hear Apple's brass tell it, the crucial decisions haven't been "do this" so much as they have been "don't do this, don't do that."

Apple is huge on focus, and they credit that focus with their success more than anything else. Focus seems to be baked into their culture as much as anything else at this point.

A mark of a good leader is being able to build a team that can function even when that leader is absent. So far, Steve Jobs has, for all his eccentricities, succeeded in every other measure of leadership – to an exceptional degree. I'd be pretty shocked if his talents couldn't include the final part of the equation.

<comment><USER8> In the short-term, I'm confident that they can function well absent their leader. Long-term may be a different story. I don't think the company will "follow" Cook the way they follow Jobs.

In order to lead like Jobs, Cook will have to make some very bold decisions. The first time one of those fizzles, the resulting fear will be much greater than it would have been, had Jobs been at the helm. Should he have a streak of fizzles, watch out.

Apple has a very bumpy ride ahead, I do believe. I really hope they do well, though, because I enjoy their products.

<comment><USER9> No, actually. My recommendation to Tim Cook is to _not_ lead like Jobs. There is only one Steve Jobs, and the world knows it. Tim Cook will need to evolve his own leadership style, and the company will need to trust Jobs that he has passed the baton onto the right person.

There's no point trying to replace Jobs, because that's impossible. What's possible is for Cook to become someone different, someone, dare I say it, even _better_ than Jobs (ie less of an ass or a douchebag, but just as exacting when it comes to high product standards with the global business acumen when it comes to supply chain management) - do you see it? Tim Cook now has a chance to make magic happen - He's worked so hard over the last few decades just for a chance to stand in that CEO position - and now that he has it - <USER2> better make the best of it.

My prediction is that Apple will radically change in the next few years - <USER3> has to - in order to say goodbye to Jobs, and welcome the new king - Tim Cook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you."

From the WSJ blog: [http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/08/24/steve-jobs-resigns- as-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/08/24/steve-jobs-resigns-as-apple- ceo/)

EDIT: Now posted on Apple.com: [http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/08/24Letter-from- Steve-...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/08/24Letter-from-Steve- Jobs.html)

<comment><USER11> This hints it's probably about health reasons, which is the saddest part.

<comment><USER12> Hinting is rather unnecessary. Why else would he leave?

<comment><USER13> Because he's 56 years old and wants to start living a well deserved retirement?

He's already on leave. So it isn't like there's a great strain on his health now. I would think no more than there will be when he remains on as chairman of the board. Which is the real point.

If health were forcing him to step down he wouldn't be staying on as Chairman. There are significant duties to being Chairman of the Board. You have to appear in public, you have to go to official functions, and so on. You can't hide a serious illness and still be chairman of the board.

Mark my words: This is all about Tim Cook (Which, if I might toot my own horn, I predicted here: [http://tomstechblog.com/post/Ie28099m-Not-Sure-Steve-Jobs- Is...](http://tomstechblog.com/post/Ie28099m-Not-Sure-Steve-Jobs-Is-All-That- Sicke280a6But-That-Might-Mean-He-Isne28099t-Fully-Coming-Back.aspx))

<comment><USER14> I think health is the only reason that would force Steve Jobs to quit, he _likes_ what he's doing.

Being a Chairman of the board is a message to stockholders: "Don't panic, I'm still available", if he stepped down without an orderly transition Apple stock would probably really take a beating.

The chairman of the board is fairly invisible from a public point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15>
        Apple Computer Inc
        the Apple II
        the Apple //e
        the Apple //c
        the Apple //GS
        the Mac
        Mac OS
        the Mac II
        the NeXT Cube
        NeXTSTEP OS
        NeXTSTEP API
        Objective-C
        Cocoa
        Mac OS X
        the iMac
        the Titanium PowerBook
        the iPod
        iTunes
        the iTunes Music Store
        the iPod Touch
        the iPhone
        the iPad
        iOS
        the App Store

These things have been utterly inspirational and important to me from the time I first discovered computers for myself at age seven, to today. Without them I would not be who I am today, doing what I'm doing today.

Thanks Steve.

(And if you're wondering what Steve Jobs had to do with the Apple //c, //GS, and Mac II, he was the one who brought in Frog Design to design Apple hardware throughout the 80s, and their work was marvelous, just as Jony Ive's work is marvelous today)

<comment><USER16> And that's just Apple. Lest we forget, he changed the music industry, the film industry, the telecommunications industry (and maybe the gaming industry, see Nintendo's struggle vs the iPod and the iPhone as premier mobile gaming devices, but I think this is still up in the air)

Steve is truly, truly an American legend.

<comment><USER17> He's definitely changed the gaming industry. Don't look at the platform, look at the developers. The nature of the iOS platform is giving indie developers some serious visibility that many might not otherwise have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Many of us on HN aspire to the success that Steve's had. We'd love to be him, to build something amazing like Apple. But I bet he'd give anything to have the good health and indeterminate life expectancy that we have tonight. I'll go to sleep thinking how lucky i am. And I'm going for a run tomorrow, because all the success in the world is for nowt if you lose your health.

<comment><USER19> Thank you for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't know why, but I feel a little sad right now. Like being witness to the end of an era.

<comment><USER21> You're sad because you are sensing that there's no replacement for The Steve, either inside Apple or outside.

And you're right.

<comment><USER22> Leaving a void for the next generation to fill. I'm looking forward to it.

<comment><USER23> Every farewell is an opportunity for a new hello.

<comment><USER24> I'm sad too. He is a once-an-epoch leader. Think what the world would be like without him. Amazing that a business leader can be so important and foundational to the world.

<comment><USER25> This is getting to be a bit much....he was an impressive CEO. Important and foundational to the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It makes perfect sense as part of the succession planning for Apple. This way, when Steve (very sadly) resigns "permanently" from any and all jobs, it _will_ just be business as usual and not take down the Apple stock by 30% or something equally ridiculous.

Still, quite a shock.

<comment><USER27> AAPL is still going to tank.

<comment><USER26> Not for very long. There's no real reason for it to do so. This was entirely predictable. Sure, a bunch of people are going to short, but they'll be sorry they did.

<comment><USER23> I truly, sincerely hope you're right. I've always seen Jobs as a visionary leader, but I'm uncertain he's been similarly effective at grooming a leadership team (or individual) with the same vision. Cult of personality and all that.

Part of Apple's success, IMHO, has been Jobs' ability to cut through bureaucracy, egos, corporate politics and industry politics to execute on a pristine vision. Perhaps it's my lack of faith in middle managers, but unless there is a clear mandate from leadership, details & priorities can morph down the chain of command. Visionary products can be diluted by others making what seem like perfectly sound trade-offs. It's the minimization of that dilution, setting of crystal-clear priorities, and making the hard trade-off decisions that has made Jobs such an effective leader at Apple.

That, and his ability to look several steps ahead of an industry - <USER4> arguably to create new industries - that has given rise to so many of Apple's disruptive innovations. Without him, I have a bad feeling Apple will become better at creating sustaining innovations than disruptive ones.

Of course, I don't work there and perhaps there are many others who can make such tough decisions and dream up industry-changing visions. I sincerely hope so. For the growth of the company, I sincerely hope so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is really sad. I'm just glad he got to enjoy the glory of seeing a company he started in his parent's garage become - if only for a moment - <USER5> most valuable enterprise on Earth.

I mean wow, what a ride.

<comment><USER29> He changed how normal people viewed technology.

That's much more important than the volatile numbers made up by Wall Street.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is the first time I have personally felt sad when a CEO has quit his company.

<comment><USER31> I will be sad when Mr. Page and Brin retire as well.

<comment><USER32> true, but hopefully that will be under better circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It pains me to admit it, but I'm relatively relieved. Sure, the stock price will take a beating, but I have to believe that Apple, the company, will remain strong under Tim Cook's leadership.

Why am I relieved? Because, although AAPL is still quite high, I think that investors have been weary of the stock due to the uncertainty of Jobs' health and future. Make no mistake, we'll have a roller coaster for quite a while, but I strongly suspect that the next few product cycles will demonstrate that Apple is still a game-changer even in a world where Jobs is not at the helm.

That being said, I'll miss him. He's a true visionary and such high-profile leaders only come along once in a great while.

<comment><USER34> AAPL is trading at 14.xx P/E. It's low for a company with such an astonishing growth rate. To add some perspective, AMZN's P/E is hovering at 85.xx.

<comment><USER35> AAPL on one had is a Wallstreet darling and on the other a rebel. They don't listen to Wallstreet analysts or investors and are constantly punished for it in their stock price (really it should be much higher but it's not). Instead of producing cheaper laptops to increase market share they just make more featurepacked ones at the same price. Instead of going after the enterprise market they just do basic enterprise sales and implement some enterprise features. Other PC manufacturers got out of the PC business because there is no money to be made there and they double down on it.

Instead of following trends like many other companies they completely buck them. And this gets them painted as unpredictable. And this is why there PE is so low. Because they are constantly growing but the analysts are convinced this is their peak and it only goes downhill from here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Steve Jobs along with Bill Gates and others define the personal computing era. I grew up seeing these people trail-blazed and built up the technology world we know today. It's sad to see Jobs is stepping down, most likely due to health reason. It's like the representation of our computing generation is fading away.

I don't know why but the dialogue from Blade Runner suddenly comes to mind, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain..."

</comment><comment><USER37> Jobs preparing for his very first TV appearance in 1978.

It's funny how very nervous he is. Guess he learned to get over that...

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=o...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ogsI2OAYWnk)

</comment><comment><USER38> Wow. Even though everyone saw this one coming, I dont think anyone expected it to happen so soon. It will be interesting to see how the market reacts tomorrow, I imagine it wont be pretty.

As the COO, Cook did great job lining up and executing the production line. Most of the creative work should already be in the pipeline for the 2012, 2013 releases. We'll see what happens after then.

<comment><USER39> Apple will probably be fine for the next decade. The main concern is if Apple can continue to create disruptive products.

From Jobs' own mouth, it was his idea for the iPad a decade ago and from that sprung the iPhone.

<comment><USER40> The great thing about Apple is that it doen't create disruptive products, but invents new markets altogether.

<comment><USER41> Smart phones existed before the iPhone; Apple/Jobs just made them orders of magnitude better. Tablets have existed before the iPad; Apple/Jobs just made the first one the market fell in love with.

What new markets have they created?

Now, don't get me wrong... I love Apple. I have a Mac and an iPhone and Cinema displays. I'm jealous of my friends with iPads. Etc. I just don't see any brand new markets.

<comment><USER42> I would actually disagree. How many first-year undergrads did you see with a Blackberry or a Windows Mobile device in the pre-iPhone smartphone market? How many middle-aged couples on airplanes did you see with a Fujitsu tablet before the iPad? There were small business and enterprise smartphone and tablet markets before Apple entered them, but there sure weren't consumer markets for these categories.

<comment><USER43> > How many first-year undergrads did you see with a Blackberry or a Windows > Mobile device in the pre-iPhone smartphone market?

Danger's Sidekick line was popular with those less enterprisey demographics and predated the iPhone by quite a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm preparing a presentation for the HN Meetup in London tomorrow and I used Apple as a 'forthcoming' example of Succession and its impact on equity/ share value. Guess I better reword that bit now, and again when the markets open tomorrow.

<comment><USER45> There's a HN meetup in London today?

<comment><USER46> Yup, <http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/events/29224501/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's difficult to imagine this could be for any reason other than his illness, but I'd like to hope against hope.

<comment><USER48> Agreed, in fact I suspect that the 'chairman' position may also just be something to keep the stock from nose-diving and that it may not last long. I just have a feeling that Jobs wouldn't step back until he really really had to, and that it _may_ be a sign of things being worse than he will let on right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The biggest thing Jobs brought to the computing industry is humanity. The understanding that in the end, humans come first.

The second thing is he taught that you don't have to check every box in order to be successful.

He stripped computing back to its roots in science fiction, and built devices that were originally imagined, taking away feature after feature until something is understood.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm sad about this in the same way I'm bummed when a great athlete retires. We've witness one of the greatest turnarounds in history, and though I'm confident that Apple will remain strong, it sucks to see this happen.

That said, when the market dips, buy, buy, buy.

<comment><USER51> I generally agree on buying when there's a dip. Except if the dip is due to a drop in the fundamental ability of said company to execute. A reasonable person could bet that while there may be no near/medium term ability in their ability to execute, that there will be a medium/long term drop. That old saw about A picks A, B picks C, C picks D, etc. There will likely be a decay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I can only feel a bit of sadness not just from his resignation, but from the health circumstances that are likely behind this.

I have to take my hat off to Mr. Jobs. Though there is much I disagree with him on (and personally, I'm not much of an Apple fan or consumer), he's one of the most amazing, talented and driven people I've ever seen.

He's brought a unique and masterful skill to the art of selling, vertical integration, acquisitions and consumer electronics. And I mean _art_. Vertical integration was never something I thought I'd appreciate on an aesthetic level until I saw the level that Jobs has raised that form to time and again. The NeXT computer production line was divine.

I think he's learned tremendously from what happened to Apple the last time he left and has spent extraordinary effort to ensure a smooth and capable team takes over. I can only guess that this might be happening after seeing the capability that the current team has executed with these past few months.

I want Apple in the fight, they continuously raise the bar in the industry and literally make it great to be a consumer, even if you don't buy their stuff yourself.

Kudos to Jobs for a job well done, and I wish him the best in health.

</comment><comment><USER53> And Tim Cook is his successor, it's confirmed:

> Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple

> Tim Cook Named CEO and Jobs Elected Chairman of the Board

> CUPERTINO, California—August 24, 2011—Apple's Board of Directors today > announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the > Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple's Chief Operating Officer, as the > company's new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will > join the Board, effective immediately.

[http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/08/24Steve-Jobs- Resigns...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/08/24Steve-Jobs-Resigns-as- CEO-of-Apple.html)

</comment><comment><USER54> Sad day..I think I must have watched his stanford commencement speech at least a dozen times.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

<comment><USER55> This announcement only makes more poignant what he said in that speech:

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

<comment><USER56> Thank you for reminding me of this quote. Truly epic. <http://spking.com/steve/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And the greatest second act in (business) history draws to a close. He's changed the world. And he made Apple the most valuable company in the world. That's quite some achievement for a terminally ill man.

<comment><USER25> "The problem is I'm older now, I'm 40 years old, and this stuff doesn't change the world. It really doesn't. I'm sorry, it's true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It's been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much — if at all."

\--Steve Jobs

<comment><USER18> In the sense that the building blocks of the world are the same, yes. But it's changed my world - I haven't lost anyone's phone number for years. I take pictures of things. I go running more. I interact with distant friends. And I type faster than ever. I have access to the vast amounts of information in my pocket any time. That's amazing. And my 83 year old neighbour understands that she can touch things to see more information about them. That's amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Apple will be fine for the next 5 years. The iPhone, iPad, MacBooks, iMacs, etc. will carry them and their revenue. They probably have a few new products ready to release within a year as well, maybe TV or something else. The next 5 years I don't see them stalling. The iPhone and iPad have too much momentum. But the big question is from year 6 to 10. Apple needs a product leader, someone who will lead the whole company to rally around the latest and greatest new apple product. Hopefully Tim Cook can fit into that role, with help from Ive, Schiller, and others. Another hopeful note is the leadership institute Jobs has set up inside Apple with ex-business school profs archiving all of Jobs exploits and training then next generation of leaders. However, I think really nobody really knows what Apple will be like from year 6 to 10. But I'll be rooting for Apple and hope they continue to make revolutionary products.

</comment><comment><USER42> Considering where Apple is today, especially in context of its epic journey across the past fifteen years, it almost seems like this would have been time regardless of any concerns about Steve's health. He helmed a company that started one revolution through several more, an eclipsing second act largely unlike anything else in the history of business. You need a one-in-a-million CEO to do that.

Apple doesn't need that where it is now. Its struggles are just memories today. It still needs an incredibly smart CEO that can keep the company on the right path, which it has in Tim Cook, but the era in which Jobs was critical as CEO is over. Whether he's chairman of the board or executive visionary-in- residence, it'll be a more appropriate position for Apple's founder in this new decade.

This doesn't mark the end of Apple's ascendancy, just the very end of the turnaround. The dawn is over. This is Apple greeting the day.

</comment><comment><USER58> Can people stop talking about the effect of the stock? I get it- many of us own AAPL. This is one of the greatest entrepreneurs and CEOs ever stepping down. Let's focus on that.

</comment><comment><USER21> Steve will now be Chairman of the Board, to answer some questions from other comments. It's hard to see how this does not at least hint at some more bad health news, although I too hope that it does not mean this. Here's Steve's letter to the Board:

[http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Letter-from-Steve- bw-220060757...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Letter-from-Steve- bw-2200607574.html?x=0&.v=1)

<comment><USER13> How so? He was already on leave. Being on leave doesn't put a big strain on your health because you're not having to go in to the office. So how would health issues force him to step down?

I guess maybe if he was so sick he physically couldn't go into the office but he's remaining chairman so that can't be the case.

<comment><USER59> The difference between going on leave and resigning is that it's expected that you will come back from leave. Sometimes health problems have a chance of getting better, and sometimes that chance goes away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> One of the most iconic leader of our times. I will miss his keynotes. They were simply joy to watch.

The famous advert "Here's to the crazy ones..misfits.." totally applies to his career. I'm sure if AAPL ever recreates the same ad, he deserves his spot in there.

</comment><comment><USER61> Wow. I very much hope that this not for illness reasons, and instead he simply decided that now was the time to make the changeover.

</comment><comment><USER62> I think the days of Apple having a rock star CEO are over. I genuinely believe that a big part of Apple's success is down to Tim Cook, and I think the company is in good hands. But I doubt he'll ever take to the stage or become the face of Apple. That's no bad thing, but Apple has become a sort of entertainment, a movie almost, that people love to watch. I think those days are over and a new era of "mysterious CEO" is about to be ushered in. If anything, Apple is about to get a lot more secretive.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was really hoping that such succession news would be delivered by the man himself, if and when it happened. But I presume that's not going to happen.

All the best to Steve and his family.

</comment><comment><USER63> What a roller coaster Steve Jobs' life (and his stewardship of Apple) has been. But, all in all, great job. Amazing job. Cheers to Steve.

</comment><comment><USER64> A sad day. Fortunately, he'll continue to inspire the world of technology and entrepreneurs for decades to come. Thanks Steve!

</comment><comment><USER65> Huge news. One can expect an overwhelming wave of punditry about this move, but it'll be interesting to read their official press release and what his role will be moving forward.

Surely he'll still be the arbiter of taste until he's dead?

</comment><comment><USER66> The Edison of our generation. Sad to see Jobs go and hopefully his health has not gotten worse. The greatest turnaround of a company ever – Steve will leave a long legacy.

<comment><USER67> Edison? Please...that's a bit much.

Edison personally created the majority of his inventions. Jobs has an entire company/team behind him. And Jonathan Ives is a big help when it comes to the sleek design of Apple products.

<comment> buff-a _Edison personally created the majority of his inventions._

Citation needed.

From what I know of Edison he was skilled at teamwork, business and PR. Which would make him more like Jobs.

<comment><USER68> Citiation needed

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I wonder how long <http://www.apple.com/pr/> will take to update for this.

<comment><USER10> Apparently about 20 minutes.

Steve's letter is on the site now.

<comment><USER69> I wonder how that delay reflects on the Apple org chart. Do the people behind /pr/ have advance notice of big announcements? Does Steve send his letter to them at the same time he sends it the Wall Street Journal?

<comment><USER59> I'm pretty sure Apple's PR department is in charge of sending Steve's letter to the Wall Street Journal.

<comment><USER69> Probably. It just kind of reminded me of that thing where the original iPhone hardware people supposedly had no idea what the software would look like, and vice versa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> deleted, since: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2922792> said roughly the same thing and 6 minutes earlier.

<comment><USER70> It's not Gruber who predicted this. Every single journalist, analyst, and Apple fan boy predicted the same.

<comment><USER71> Not every one (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2134181> ). I hope all goes well for Steve.

<comment><USER71> Interesting (to me, anyway) that the pundit I referred to in the above linked topic (Bob Cringely) _still_ doesn't think Cook is the replacement: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2923808>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Apple is now worse then Microsoft ever was. Because they're more snaky in putting the thumbscrews on the customers. The true face of Apple is an ugly one. I'm not saying Google or Facebook or Microsoft don't focus on making money on the expense of the customers and on the expense of the freedom of the internet. But I really fail to understand why some of you guys seem to see Steve Jobs as a hero. Are you aware that the direction Steve Jobs and all the big companies are heading to is to force people to buy an app for 5 dollars to write a comment on Hackker News? And as an extra premium they sell your private data to allow other companies rise the prices to the max.

To me Apple has reached a new all time low as they sued Samsung with photoshoped pictures as if Apple had invented the tablet. They made the first great one, but they did not invent it.

EDIT: Typo

</comment><comment><USER72> End of an era definitely. No-one can deny that Jobs has had one of the the most successful turnaround careers ever.

</comment><comment><USER73> Though I believe the company will be fine, this kind of feels like the end of an era. It's sad, as well, because it sounds very much like his reasons for stepping down are health-related, which can't be good.

He's survived and built amazing things in the face of great illness, when a lot of people would have given up. Sure, he had more financial resources than most to put into that battle against cancer, but a large part of it still comes down to determination and will. It would have been easy, several years ago, to say "I'm too tired to do this anymore" when you've fought cancer and don't need the paycheck. Someone like that doesn't step away from something they love unless they feel they absolutely have to.

I just hope Steve and his family are given the respect and privacy they will no doubt need and desire in the weeks and months ahead.

</comment><comment><USER74> As sad as this is, I really am looking forward to see how the company evolves the culture that he's created.

</comment><comment><USER75> I think there's a bit of contradiction in all of the hand-wringing about whether or not Apple needs Steve to survive. Given that his health has been in question for several years, and speculation about what will happen if he has to leave, and given that he is a visionary, masterful auteur who guides Apple's strategy so successfully, don't we trust him to have accounted for all of this and developed a succession plan that continues Apple's success?

If there was really a dearth of innovators, of executors, of strategists at Apple when he leaves, wouldn't he have worked to solve that problem? Great CEOs are hirers and developers of great talent. I suspect Jobs has done as good of a job setting up what happens after today as he has everything else.

</comment><comment><USER76> Thanks for all you've done, Steve.

</comment><comment><USER77> John Gruber wrote that Steve Cook should succeed him last month. <http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/succeeding_steve_jobs>

Edit: Yup, I meant Tim Cook... Doh!

<comment><USER78> Perhaps you mean Tim Cook? Steve Cook is the famous computer scientist who proved that SAT is NP-Complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> CEO or not, this guy is capable of giving you some serious advice that can change your life. Such quality products must come from people with good intentions towards change.

</comment><comment><USER80> When I first read the title I thought it was a joke. I was thinking how can a joke be voted number 1 on HN. Reading through the other titles however made it real. Well, I guess nothing lasts forever, and following Bill Gates, it is now Steve Jobs' time to step down as the CEO.

The other week I was imagining how would Steve Jobs' office look like in the new headquarters they are planning to build. I guess that doesn't hold anymore. Well, we'll just move on.

</comment><comment><USER81> Clearly, he was just as bummed about webOS as everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER82> I can always tell how big the media thinks a story is by how many unusual places I see it reported. As I type this, "Apple's Steve Jobs steps down" is in the headlines box on ESPN.com right between the little league world series and a story about Tom Brady. I think that's a small but fitting tribute to a man whose ideas and leadership have reached people and places beyond what any of us could've imagined even 10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER83> The end of an era for Apple. However, this is hardly unexpected. He has been very ill for a while now. Time for him to focus on himself and his family.

</comment><comment><USER84> Oh no!! This means his illness is now quite severe. There can be _no_ replacement to him.

A lot of people say it's hard working for him (my friends at Apple totally dread meeting him by accident), he's egotistical, parks at a handicapped spot, etc. etc. To those people, I give the following, attributed to Judy Garland: ""They say it's hard to work with Judy Garland...do you have any idea how hard it is to BE Judy Garland?"

Indeed!

<comment><USER85> _A lot of people say it's hard working for him (my friends at Apple totally dread meeting him by accident), he's egotistical, parks at a handicapped spot_

If pancreatic cancer doesn't get you a handicapped spot, I'd sure hate to have what it _does_ take...

<comment><USER86> Sorry, but what? A handicapped spot is for people who, for example, have difficulties walking, or need space to leave the car (wheelchairs). In what way exactly does pancreatic cancer prevents one from using a regular parking spot?

Besides which, cancer is an illness. Not a handicap.

It's fine if you like Steve Jobs or whatever - I agree he was, in some aspects, an important person (though not in positive sense, but that's just my humble opinion). But this pathological apologizing of his faults is plain and simply ridiculous.

<comment><USER87> From <http://dmv.ca.gov/pubs/brochures/fast_facts/ffvr07.htm> :

"You may qualify for a DPplacard or DPplates if you have impaired mobility due to having lost use of one or more lower extremities, or both hands, or have a diagnosed disease that substantially impairs or interferes with mobility, or one who is severely disabled to be unable to move without the aid of an assistive devise."

So yes, illnesses can cause one to become disabled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Remember that just because the market is closed, things still happen, and you can keep an eye on the after hours price.

Edit: as pointed out below, after/pre-hoursm

<comment><USER89> After hours trading is over too. <http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=aapl> The best indicator will probably be pre-trading-hours tomorrow.

<comment><USER89> I am wrong. It is still trading after-hours. It's down about 6%. <http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=aapl>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> It's wise to do this now, in a controlled manner. All the same, it's going to be interesting to see what happens with Apple in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER91> Apple just confirmed Cook will replace Jobs as CEO.

<comment><USER92> Well, yeah, it's in the article.

<comment><USER91> "I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple" != "Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple"

<comment><USER92> Indeed, I should have said it was strongly insinuated in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> From the WSJ on Tim Cook: "people who know him don't consider him to be a visionary". I'd be shocked to hear that Jobs hasn't been grooming his replacement. Cook can keep Apple running for another couple of years, and I expect to see someone else come up as CEO from within the ranks who shares Steve's vision and ability to focus on what makes Apple successful.

<comment><USER94> Do visionaries "rise in the ranks"? Did Steve?

<comment><USER93> Good point. I guess I'm just hopeful the empire doesn't collapse, or if it does we don't lose sight of what a good tech company can be capable of producing (in terms of hard/software at least, itunes notwithstanding).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Without my Mac I would not have learned how to code. I would not have been able to find employment in Web Development, something I enjoy so much.

Without my many iPods over the years I would not be as huge a music fan as I am now. I may not have learned how to play guitar, something I enjoy so much.

I would be completely lost without my iPhone. It makes me the smartest person in the room.

Thanks Steve.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is about timing. AAPL became the most valuable company in the world recently. The best way to quit is when you're on top.

<comment><USER96> No, the best way to quit is when you're not dying.

<comment><USER27> /rimshot

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Apple just lost their greatest salesman. Luckily their products are so nice they go along way to selling themselves.

<comment><USER89> Hm...but the salesman was able to do his job year after year only because of the awesome products. Rule #1 of marketing: Start with a gread product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> The whole resurgence of Apple and the amazing products they've been making are enough, but I'm truly impressed with Apple's early years. The Apple ][ was such a standard in schools, and the first Macs were so unique (admitedly, I like the C64 and Amiga a bit more...). Woz rocks, too.

</comment><comment><USER98> Believe it or not, things can still happen for the better. This change could continue the trend of success through new ideas. Had this not happened I would have said that the peak if the product lifecycle was upon Apple anyway. Hope this makes sense, typin on train from iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER99> Very tough time for Apple ahead

"Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new" - Standford Commencement speech 2005

So "the old" are Gates, Jobs,... (born circa 1950s) and "the new" will be Brin, Page, Zuckerberg...

</comment><comment><USER100> I'm surprised there isn't enough mention of Jonathan Ive in commentary about the future of decision making at Apple. I think he's got a lot of Steve's aesthetic senses, and also has some of the same unquestioned authority/credibility that Steve does.

</comment><comment><USER101> I really, and I mean REALLY, hope that his biography coming out on November 21 this year and his resignation today have nothing to do with his health.

In any way, thank you very much Steve, I guess you can leave your company quite happy and satisfied. :)

</comment><comment><USER102> For some reason this news is reminding me of the O Fortuna song.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Fortuna>

It is passing of an era and things will not be same at Apple or in the tech industry after this.

</comment><comment><USER103> Aww, I was kind of hoping Steve Jobs would do something insanely huge and visionary (in the way that only he can, it seems) with that massive stockpile of cash Apple has.

Looks like it'll come out in dividends or some such run of the mill fashion.

</comment><comment><USER104> He was the biggest public figure behind Apple, though as an Ind. Design student I'll be just as bummed when Johnny Ive steps down. I hope Steve still shows up at the annual Apple Christmas con's, he's such a great presenter.

</comment><comment><USER105> Nothing has changed in the short term, though lets hope that in the long term his successors can keep innovating as much as Apple has under Jobs.

Most importantly though, I hope that Steve recovers soon from whatever might be ailing him.

Somewhat sad times..

</comment><comment><USER106> If you read all the news you would think that the guy just passed away. Good heavens! no. He's only 55. I think we'll see more from him, only different than it used to be. It's life, ever changing...Thanks Steve!

</comment><comment><USER107> I don't like the closedness of iPhone and iPads, I prefer the more open platforms, like Android. But I deeply regret Steve Jobs leaving, he is a visionary, he did a lot of things for which he has my respect.

</comment><comment><USER108> It's really hard to know what to say. Jobs' resignation definitely marks the end of an era, and implies that his health is getting worse, but we all knew that this day was going to come eventually.

</comment><comment><USER109> He took Apple from nearly bankruptcy to become one of the biggest, if not the biggest company in the world. He never stopped changing the world, but best of all, he retired on his own terms.

<comment><USER110> Well, his health is probably forcing him, so it might not be his own terms, but what he accomplished is still the benchmark for anyone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> Is there a good book out there dealing with how steve jobs actually evolved from birth to the production of the Macintosh ? That´s the part of his life that interests me most.

</comment><comment><USER112> "Jobs's greatest creation isn't any Apple product. It is Apple itself."

Source: John Gruber, Daring Fireball blog <http://shar.es/HUYIU>

</comment><comment><USER113> There's a page "leaving card" to thank Steve Jobs for his work as CEO: <http://www.plumpl.com/stevejobs>

</comment><comment><USER40> This is really sad, but with his official biography set to be released, and now this, the writing is on the wall. I certainly hope he recovers, though.

</comment><comment><USER114> I wonder if there was maybe some foresight in him having an official biography approved shortly before he stepped down as CEO.

</comment><comment><USER115> It's always tough when the former CEO is chairman of the board. Has the feeling that daddy is looking over your shoulders...

</comment><comment><USER116> I wonder if this has been timed specifically prior to a major product release (iPhone 5) to help combat any stock drop.

</comment><comment><USER117> I hope Steve would still show up at WWDC :)

</comment><comment><USER118> I have to admit I feel like his letter was more like Lou Gehrig than Michael Jordan. I wish him the absolute best.

</comment><comment><USER119> Truly the end of an epoch in computing, assuming his influence fades quickly in a much reduced role at Apple.

</comment><comment><USER120> Sad to see him leave. Even sadder to see him so unwell. Latest pics of him are gut wrenching.

</comment><comment> g-garron I hope we may still see him around, doing those great presentations. He is a genius on that.

</comment><comment><USER89> So much for the AAPL is going to tank and time to short comments. The change is a blip....

</comment><comment><USER36> This is really sad. His health is failing or he won't resign. It's an end of an era. :(

</comment><comment><USER121> The showman, the leader, the visionary. Get well soon, Steve. We will miss you.

</comment><comment><USER67> Wow there are 9 duplicate stories on HN right now.

Doesn't HN have a duplicate submission filter?

<comment><USER122> That's what upvoting is for. Let the people decide what is most interesting.

<comment><USER67> Why downvote my question? It's a valid attempt to understand how HN filters duplicate stories.

The dupes are also representative of the Internet at large. When a large story breaks, tonnes of people rush out to be "the one" who broke it on their news site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER123> Sad day. He will be missed. I wish -- and hope -- he will get better.

</comment><comment><USER124> Why didn't he wait for the iPhone announcement?

</comment><comment><USER125> Looks like some people are trying to capitalize on this: <http://www.byestevejobs.com>

</comment><comment><USER126> During the time I've read HN I haven't once seen posts get this poetic and sentimental. I wonder what's it like on the Apple side of things.

</comment><comment><USER127>
      >Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world...

Not exactly objective reporting is it?

<comment><USER128> It's a press release. The paragraph in question appears to be in all of Apple's releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER129> San Franciscans are probably wandering the streets wondering if they're going to get their iPhone5 before Christmas.

</comment><comment><USER130> Sad, awful feeling in the gut.

</comment><comment><USER131> I hope he gets well soon

</comment><comment><USER62> iQuit.

</comment><comment><USER92> This article is pretty vague on the details of 'why' he resigned. Does anyone have more information?

All the best to Steve and his family..

<comment><USER132> To put it bluntly, he's dying. His health hasn't been good in a while[1], and he's probably resigning to a) spend time with family before he goes, and b) to limit the damage to the company when he does.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Health_concerns>

<comment><USER92> It's still pretty vague. He had the surgery to remove the tumor. Then an unknown hormone problem? They a liver transplant?

What is he dying from exactly? Does anyone know?

<comment><USER133> That's private. It doesn't really concern us. All we need to know is that his health issues are taking their toll and he recognizes that.

<comment><USER92> Neuroendocrine Tumor/Islet Cell Carcinoma

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER134> I hope Apple will survive this. I don't want to develop for windows.

<comment><USER135> This is ridiculous. Do you honestly think the company will fall to pieces because there's a new CEO, one who has been at the company since 1998 and has worked closely with Steve Jobs? Is Apple's success entirely down to Jobs? What about all the talented engineers and designers who actually design the products and software?

<comment><USER136> You do recall what happened to Apple the last time Jobs left?

I think Apple will be fine, but those doubting do have a valid case to make.

<comment><USER137> I believe the first time Jobs "left", it was due to management thinking they knew better.

This time around, I'm hoping management was taking notes while Jobs was there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER138> Great unbiased journalism: "Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software."

<comment><USER139> That's not journalism -- that's straight from Apple's press release, which is the whole article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER140> so is it eerily quiet on the streets of SF right now ?

<comment><USER141> Yes. But it's because everyone is at Burning Man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER142> Good. (Downvotes please)

</comment><comment><USER143> Cross site poll: What do you think will happen to Apple now that Steve Jobs has resigned? <http://www.wepolls.com/p/2073012>

</comment><comment><USER144> <blockquote> Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices. </blockquote>

I just wanted to highlight this segment as a perfect example of media neutrality.

<comment><USER145> It's part of every press release issued by Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER146> Time to short AAPL.

<comment><USER89> Hmm..the time to do that would've been earlier today (before trading closed). If you do tomorrow, the pre-trading hours, the floor traders (and options traders and hence probably the institutional clients) would've an advantage of half-an-hour before us retail investors. So the opening price itself will be low enough. From then on, it would just be the crowd/herd movement. As Buffet said, "the stock market is a popularity voting contest in the short term, but a weighing machine in the long term".

<comment><USER147> Do you recommend reading "The intelligent investor"?

<comment><USER89> Very highly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER148> Don't worry people, I'll be stepping in as CEO soon.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Tim Cook has reportedly been given the nod, but I'm still sort of hoping that somewhere Zuck is updating his resume

<comment><USER149> Nice one centurion. Like it. Like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER150> "Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices. "

yeah mmm okay, this article is biased.

<comment><USER151> This isn't an article, it's a press release.</comment></comment>


The great nutrient collapse – key crops are getting less nutritious due to CO2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511 <comment><USER2> Let's not jump the gun here. It just shows that there is more to nutrition than simply calories in and calories out.

Changing the size of algae alters the way it gets utilized by zooplankton. That is a far cry from an actual "collapse" of its nutritional content.

Of course, no paper could ever resist a clickbait title.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't forget how CO2 impacts us too.

> on average, a typical participant's cognitive scores dropped 21 percent with > a 400 ppm increase in CO2

[https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-levels- dire...](https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-levels-directly- affect-human-cognition-new-harvard-study-shows-2748e7378941/)

</comment><comment><USER4> There does seem to be evidence that our fruits and vegetables are getting less nutritious[1]. However this seems to be mostly that we are optimizing for everything other than micronutrients and nutrition. When we optimize for growth speed, weather resistance, pest resistance we must be giving up something. Luckily this is a great candidate for a market solution. Plenty of people pay a price-premium for higher nutrient foods (such as higher omega-3 in cage free eggs)

[1] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion- an...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and- nutrition-loss/)

</comment><comment><USER5> So maybe we have to simply cut down on our use of fertilizers if we want the same quality product as before?

</comment><comment><USER6> The last sentence: "When his paper was finally published in 2014, Loladze listed his grant rejections in the acknowledgements."

Five years may not be a long time ... depending on how much time we have.</comment>


Inside the Wall Street Journal's Ethnicity Prediction Calculator - <AUTHOR> https://source.opennews.org/en-US/articles/inside-wall-street-journals-pre/ <comment><AUTHOR> The article links to this, but it's worth highlighting that the agency (the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau) that created this analysis has a Github repo for their work:

[https://github.com/cfpb/proxy-methodology](https://github.com/cfpb/proxy- methodology)

They have also published their methodology here: [http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201409_cfpb_report_proxy-...](http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201409_cfpb_report_proxy- methodology.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> [http://graphics.wsj.com/ally-settlement-race- calculator/](http://graphics.wsj.com/ally-settlement-race-calculator/)

"Note: Hispanic may be of any race." sounds like cheating

<comment><USER3> Hispanic identity, in the eyes of the U.S. Census Bureau, is not a question of race. It's a categorization that they've taken to using for whatever purpose. The WSJ is merely using the available data and qualifying it in the same way that the Census does.

In short, race is a drop-down selection menu, while "Hispanic?" is a separate y/n question, with certain sub-groupings. How does the WSJ presentation of the information amount to cheating?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic#Definitions_in_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic#Definitions_in_the_United_States)

Relevant 2010 Census questions:

Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin? (checkboxes for: "No", and several for "Yes" which specify groups of countries)

What is Person 1's race? (checkboxes for 14 including "other". One possibility was "Black, African Am., or Negro".)

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I never thought to look it up I appreciate the straight forward answer.</comment></comment></comment>


Should I go with native or ionic? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> *

1 point by nidhi40 0 minutes ago | edit | delete

We have launched our beta version in native and tested out. Now we are developing for all platforms and it is going to be for global market. Few people suggested ionic works good with angular JS. and i personally saw ionic and other hybrid platform app doesn't give feelings of native app. Please share your experience... reply</comment>


The Only Good Reason to Launch a Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/phil-libin/the-only-good-reason-to-become-an-entrepreneur.html

<comment><USER2> They left out freedom. I would rather choose my own path than be forced to follow an incompetent boss/manager.

Making money is also important. You may want to change the world, but if you don't have some form of capital coming into the company, you won't ever change the world.</comment>


Programmer Automates His Job for 6 Years,Finally Gets Fired, Forgets How to Code - <AUTHOR> http://interestingengineering.com/programmer-automates-job-6-years-boss-fires-finds/ <comment><USER2> I am not a lawyer, but I think he has a good case if he decides to sue for wrongful termination. He basically did his job.

</comment><comment><USER3> I dont get it Why did he got Fired? He got his Job done without any Complains?</comment>


Ask HN: How clean is your startup code? - <AUTHOR>

So we all know it's important to go public as fast as possible. I was wondering.. how clean is your code?<p>Do you have 10 php files with 5000 lines each? Or some ruby codes with lots of tests? Do you comments a lot? How is your inter documentation? What if someone joins your startup.. how easy will it be for him/her to catch up and understand the code? <comment><USER2> _So we all know it's important to go public as fast as possible_

That makes it all the more important to write clean, well-documented code. I'm an OO PHP developer, I use an MVC framework I developed myself (similar to Symfony, based on the Doctrine ORM, using Smarty for templates). I tend to write self-documenting code, e.g. Website::listAllByUser($id), but I comment extensively anyway. It would be very easy to get a decent programmer up to speed on any of my projects in under an hour.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's important to go fast, which is why you need clean code. To be fair, my startup code isn't the best code that I've ever worked in, but it is solid and tested.

By the way, comments are crap in any kind of software. They are out of date and useless like a minute after they are written. 9 times out of 10 when I come across one in other code I delete it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like to think that my code is pretty clean, but that might be observer bias... but download the Tarsnap code from <https://www.tarsnap.com/> and let me know. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I gave it a look and yeah, it's pretty clean for such low level C.

<comment><USER4> _clean for such low level C_

Do you think it would be cleaner if it was in perl?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to be sure, I wasn't talking about C being low level but more about the stuff you were doing _with C_ that was low level. I could have said: Clean for such low level Scheme or Clean for such low level Perl.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My code falls into three categories:

Pretty clean: this is stuff that has actual people using it _and_ is critical to the business.

Not so clean: stuff that is new, tangential, or experimental. I don't bother refactoring this type of code for one reason - it may end up in the third category...

Deleted: This is stuff that didn't work and isn't worth keeping or is obsolete for one reason or another.

So in a nutshell: launch before you refactor, refactor before it breaks. Lots of great coders hate this.

</comment><comment><USER6> My code was not bad, but not superb. There was good architecture behind and a hundred of unit tests, but still time to market was top priority. So it was good enough and I think it is a waste to write perfect code for startup, since future is unknown.

When product proofs itself, it is time to refactor and maintain perfect code base.

</comment><comment><USER7> My code could be a lot better, but it works for what I needed at the time. I do wish I spent more time making it clean and organized, but the reality is that I am going to do a rewrite anyway. Pumping out the initial version gave us first dibs in the space, so having unclean code really didn't hurt us.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's pretty clean, I want to move to continuous deployment as soon as possible, right now I have automated deployment, but it's not continuous.

I think a great code base is essential to being able to pivot and iterate. I don't think a startup can afford much technical debt unless you are using the VC rocketship model and taking on tonnes of real debt / loss of equity anyway.</comment>


Author Brian Shul on Piloting the SR-71 – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - <AUTHOR> https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=brian+shul+lawence+livermore&&view=detail&mid=3F5CB67FA93A1CD19F0D3F5CB67FA93A1CD19F0D&&FORM=VRDGAR <comment><USER2> I would suggest to tag this content as video.</comment>


Show HN: Timeup.io – Convenient and Efficient Scheduling - <AUTHOR> http://landing.timeup.io

<comment><USER2> Very nice! The only comment: when you try to select before typing the name, the popup says "Please sign in for selecting your timeslots!" which is a bit confusing, I almost closed. It should say something along the lines of: "please type your name on this box!" I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! In the beginning the button was "Sign In" instead of "Join". I believe there is still a big confusion and people think now they have to sign up in order to use timeup. I will follow your advise and measure if the rate of people closing the site will decrease! It definitely sounds less confusing! Best regards :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It maybe something to do with my monitor but small <p> text is quite unreadable on my monitor. Especially this:

"timeup.io was designed both for desktop and mobile. You don't need to download any iOS, Android or Windows application."

Maybe the green background is too light in some monitor setttings?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi diminish, I will take a look on it and try to fix it immediately. Thanks for your hint!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The UI is so white that it is really hard to see what place is clickable and what to do next. My customers are old people over 40 and 50. There is no way that they can do anything in that site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks anonymous344, we received the feedback a couple of times the past days. Currently, we are working on the contrast of the elements and fix this point. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice interface, I really like it to find out timeslots during a day, but I guess for finding out a day that fits best for a meeting, its not as convenient.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply thp. We heard this comment a lot the past days and will implement this feature in the next version. Should be online in the next 2/3 days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some really bad text contrast on that page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey abritishguy, would be awesome to give me some examples to fix contrasts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have yet to try it, but it's certainly easy on the eyes.

Could we have HTTPS connection, please?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi kseistrup, thank you for your feedback! HTTPS connection is definitely on our backlog for the next couple of days! What will come next: \- HTTPS \- Fix of minor known mobile / tablet version \- Improve usability of mobile / tablet version \- Signup Possibility \- User can view their created / joined events \- Password protection of events \- Advanced notification functions of event creators \- Advanced control about required fields of event attendees \- Easier way to invite people \- iCal, Outlook Plugins \- Open source of some custom Angular modules and directives

<comment><USER7> Sounds cool, I'll keep my eyes open!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The images, which open to a lightbox, can not be clicked through, as in a slideshow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed just now! That was a easy one ;) Thank you for your hint!</comment></comment>