Show HN: Fed up with Apple's Reminders app? I've built a better replacement - <AUTHOR> https://www.betterremindersapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I've been working on this app for a year now. Let me know what you think!

Here's some promo codes: FHFHKLLENM9A TTRJEE4E9NNK Y3PPNFNY4PFY MWX7LE37WN7K 44PPTRLH6ETX YPLYXEMTF3N6 4TY3RLAKHFMH RKKY3YHHWNKN 49JR3TWLJPPF L3TY7MAXEEMX E7WJMML93RJR XAXWKA99YKFW RXFYRA4YP9HJ AFJHWJLPFNPM FYMTKWW7PYRY KJH4MAEKFL9Y HEFR7N6T66F7 3A9YPW3MRLH7 96M3EP4HKXLJ 9RRTREPF9FJP K6RRJKK3E7HP PH4X67YXXA96 M6J4JWWKY3T3 WYJM6A9WRXKP NTJ74ERM4MFW FYATENNPKX3W PJWKNLWYTMWA H7AFJM7X9H9F NF6WEJPXPJPJ 9TJ6HPMJEK9T 73XRLRYAMN9E KFYTELXEMLHR KHEYRPYN3EMK 63E64LLYHXXM HHWMJAHRYMY6 NELTKWF7XRK6 9WXKJAH3PJNR 4Y93YKFEMTWT E9MJT7T63H3T LFEJ3TJFHMPE NFHHELWNKHRT 6J3KW69MMWNA 64KYPTWHRRKJ 7AL99X6M6YM6 9KJX7AXM4RYN E96RYEEJPA4M 7WE6463AEFPY 3NATM69N7R9R EX9EPF9YWRHY JJ3KY3EEARFT E4W9EPM9A9PY NW746XYHKAP3 9A9JRYEYL6X7 HXH7P3A3YHKN 4XE99MK937RL KEAW9LW9WHLN WR7ELKEMYRM3 ERMFPH6LY43H NA4LKKTXHJT4 FTLXRJE6JHTM ELHFPFJ4WR7Y EHF6KRR9WXYN XPLMRFTWYR6F 99ETX6P97Y69 EHET643HH7TK XLX4M6HHWJKH PRTPEH93HNM7 47LTYH64EFT9 P6A6EM3H49T7 6HMWT999E63F L3W3EHAFW6Y9 TTAKPJXP4HYN 9PFLFPNWAFKN K64H69KX4W4A A6XWM9KKE4WT JAW9LXW9LM94 3XRW6T7WXMYR F6WJR6Y4XELJ 6RWKXN4KYHNP AM7KPEH9FN7W

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I just downloaded it and will let you know what I think!

Note to others: I used FHFHKLLENM9A

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Here are a few things that I love:

\- The app icon changes based on the theme. I didn't know that was possible!

\- Very clean visual design and UI. Really nice!

What I would improve:

\- Some of my reminders from the Apple Reminders app have URLs attached to them, but there doesn't seem to be a way to click on them in your app. (I have to go to "View Note" and copy & paste into Safari). This happens for notes that were shared from Safari to the Reminders app.

\- That permission screen in the beginning is really weird. I just skipped it. I prefer to grant app permissions when I actually need them, not when I just downloaded the app and launch it for the first time.

\- The delete button is not really self-explanatory. I have never seen that specific icon in any iOS app, so I was surprised that it deleted my reminder when I clicked it out of curiosity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the great feedback!

Re: urls, there's a property on each reminder for URLs, but Apple's Reminders app actually doesn't use it. I talked to the engineers behind EventKit, and they recommended I use it for my app (there may be an update where it gets set properly). This means a slight incompatibility between Apple's and my Reminder app. If you create a reminder using the Share action for my app (by clicking the box with the arrow pointing up while in Safari, for example), it should set that property properly, and you should be able to view the website in the app directly.

Re: permissions, I totally agree with you, but for this app, a lot of the permissions are required right at the launch of the app (access to reminders, notifications, and location are required for the app to be useful). I have built in some logic to prompt you when the permission is needed, but I figured giving the description of how each was going to be used would mitigate the up front prompting.

Re: delete button, the red circle icon was actually taken from iOS directly (Go to Music > Playlists > Select a playlist > Edit to see an example in an Apple app). But I'll give some thought on updating the icon to be more explicit!

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the answers!

That's a bummer about the URLs. Unfortunately, the URL property set by your app doesn't display at all in the OSX version of Apple's reminders app. I can't imagine using it without sync to all my other devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am planning on releasing a macOS app in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been trying this for the last few days so here are my thoughts.

Let me preface that I just came back to iOS after two years android, used iOS 10 for a couple of weeks and now iOS 11. I like the design a lot and specifically the dark theme (as well as the dark icon). The creation process was something that was a little weird on my first try but works pretty good now and I like the presets for time based reminders.

What I would've liked would be some alert or note that told me what would happen with the stock reminders once I allow the required permissions. Because once I allowed access to my reminders from this app I would obviously like for the stock reminders app to no longer notify me since this app now does it. So maybe some heads up for the user once he enabled both access to reminders and notifications to disable the notifications of the stock app to avoid duplicate notificaitions. Nothing big, but something that I had to figure out myself that would've been nice to just be told in the app.

What seemed to be possible in iOS 10 was that you could mark a reminder as done from the notification, which doesn't seem to be possible here. Not sure if that's a limitation of iOS 11 or I've set up something wrong but it's rather annoying to go into the app to mark something as done. At least for how I use the reminders, I just want a quick notification to tell me that I need to go into my standup meeting or that I don't forget to order lunch. Right now I only have the option of "Open" (swipe to right), "View" & "Clear" (swipe to left) while all of them leave the reminder untouched. I would just want the notification to be shown, mark it off from the lockscreen and then go to the meeting or whatever. Again, as far as I can tell, the stock reminders behave the same in iOS11, but would be nice if this could be improved upon somehow.

An idea that I had in my head that I would like to have would be to combine time based and location based reminders into one. For example: "Remind me every weekday at 1PM if I'm at work to grab lunch". It's mostly just a quality of life improvement for me, I don't think it'd be that useful apart from these narrow scenarios so I'll probably just stick with time based for now and just tick them off even I'm not at the location.

Thank you for sharing!

P.S.: Used EX9EPF9YWRHY

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the feedback! That's a good point about turning off the stock Reminders app notifications, I'll see what I can do.

As for iOS 11 Notifications, you can actually complete reminders from the notification. You can either force touch the notification (on an iPhone 6s or newer), or click View to see the actions for the notification. Complete is one of them, as well as "remind me in 15 minutes".

That's an interesting idea about filtering time alerts by location, but as of right now, iOS does not allow that granular of triggers. It's only location or time for now, but maybe iOS 12 will be different.

I hope you continue to enjoy the app, and please let me know if you have any other suggestions!

<comment><USER3> Thanks for coming back to me!

> You can [...] force touch the notification or click View

I was not aware that you could force touch notifications at all and I feel kinda dumb that I never tried it. But thanks for the heads up!

> That's an interesting idea about filtering time alerts by location, but as > of right now, iOS does not allow that granular of triggers.

I figured this was the case. Not a huge issue, would've just been a neat addition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha glad I was able to teach you something new! Yeah, hopefully iOS 12 has more complex notification triggers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I downloaded the app and went past the permissions screen. I was greeted with a blank page, list button grayed out, all I could do was open settings. I had to quit the app and reopen it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm that's weird. That means that the EventKit API was unable to fetch your reminders on that particular launch. It should be an anomaly though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Besides "night mode" I don't see how this is different than the built in reminders app?

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, the apps have the same feature set (although my app has slightly more modern UI). In the next few releases I plan on adding some features that Apple's app doesn't have, so keep an eye out for that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Requires iOS 11.0 or later.</comment>


Android soon to be able to distribute Python apps as .APKs - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/cl5q5/android_soon_to_be_able_to_distribute_python_apps/ <comment><USER2> ASE is awesome, but it doesn't expose the full android API to python scripts. <http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/wiki/ApiReference> is what you get currently, though this list seems to be growing pretty quickly.

<comment><USER3> Google Apps Scripts is also awesome!

<http://www.google.com/google-d-s/scripts/scripts.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Project #6 for the Ruby Summer of Code is getting JRuby apps on Android to work:

<http://rubysoc.org/projects>

<comment><USER5> You can do some sick stuff right now: Ruboto On Acid

<http://jay.mcgavren.com/blog/archives/1419>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been really happy ever since I installed Python on my Droid. It's really fun to show off how you can access text-to-speech with droid.speak().

I'm not sure I buy it will be useful for development without a custom VM, but I have the full power of a 500 mhz (ish) processor wherever I am.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone know how scripted apps affect battery life?

<comment><USER8> My first thought as well. Battery life on my Incredible is poor at best as it is. I don't want to pony up for an oversize battery and wreck the profile, I need it to fit in a case/holster/mount/etc.

<comment><USER9> How fast does battery technology progress? I've replaced a few batteries in iPods and Nintendo DS's and I'm fairly certain they were rated much higher than the stock ones, while being surprisingly cheap.

Does it go fast enough to make a material difference between choosing a phone with or without user accessible batteries and purchasing a newer battery 6 or 12 months later?

<comment><USER10> Interesting, I've never thought about replacing a phone battery with a higher- end model (can you tell I have an iPhone?) I'm curious as to the actual battery life gains one would see and the effect on weight , etc.

I must have benchmarks!

<comment><USER11> From what I've seen extended life batteries for phones tend to be 100-200mAh larger than stock batteries. So I think that would work out to a ~10% improvement for most phones. It really depends on the capacity of the OEM battery. I remember seeing a 2000mAh+ battery for the EVO which would be nearly a 25% improvement over the stock battery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just to provide a counterpoint: N900/Maemo has had the ability to have apps distributed in an arbitrary language since launch, and Nokia seems to especially like Python, sponsoring the developement of Qt bindings for it etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> Now the important question, will it hurt frame rate if games are developed using Python instead of Java for android?

<comment><USER14> a python interface to a lower level rendering library could mitigate most of that effect.

otoh, serious game writing is pretty hardcore tech, cutting-edge game devs probably won't jump into python right away.

<comment><USER15> Python is going to chug even on relatively simple action games. I did write some 2D stuff in Pygame/SDL and Pygame/OpenGL back in the early-mid 2000s that could do 30FPS, but to do it was akin to writing in BASIC on an 8-bit; you had to micro-optimize in a fairly brutal way, one which obscured Python's powers. Things like rendering a tilemap could get huge speed boosts simply by avoiding nested loops in favor of a cache. Even using OpenGL wasn't really enough to secure a comfortable margin of performance.

If I did it again I would have an easier time because I missed a few critical constructs back then(most notably, the array package). It still wouldn't be pretty, especially not on a phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hope this stuff is executing on top of Dalvik and not via the NDK.

</comment><comment><USER17> Noob here: What about the GUI? How it will be created?</comment>


Jesse Willms, the Dark Lord of the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/the-dark-lord-of-the-internet/355726/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> This guy is a criminal. Why does The Atlantic paint him as some kind of marketing genius? If people knew how they were going to be charged for his products and services, they never would've hit the Buy button. He tricks people, which is not a talent IMO. I'm Canadian and from Edmonton, and I'm embarrassed that this fool lives on this side of the 49th.

<comment><USER3> The article seemed pretty balanced actually. He is not a convicted criminal thanks to unfortunate loopholes..

Tracking his business closely would be a good opportunity for legislators looking to reform payment systems. But any reform would have to affect a whole class of payments designed based on human psychological defects. I.e. a good reform is a big battle with most phone companies, gyms, etc.

I found it funny to reach the end and see their affiliate marketing... So, thanks "theatlantic", and I would fund your article through what sounds like a very legitimate affiliate retirement plan, but Jesus is already a part of my father's retirement plan. (He swears to him he'll never retire.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TLDR:

 _Between 2007 and 2011, the lawsuit claimed, Willms defrauded consumers of some $467 million by enticing them to sign up for "risk free" product trials and then billing their cards recurring fees for a litany of automatically enrolled services they hadn't noticed in the fine print. In just a few months, Willms's companies could charge a consumer hundreds of dollars like this, and making the flurry of debits stop was such a convoluted process for those ensnared by one of his schemes that some customers just canceled their credit cards and opened new ones._

ie. this guy basically used the brokenness of credit card recurring charge management systems to steal small amounts of money from many dumber consumers on a recurring basis, and became filthy rich in the process. Apparently without actually breaking any laws... but _In the end, Willms's arguments won little sympathy in court_.

<comment><USER5> Re: " _in the end_ ": Except it didn't matter, since he kept all the cash and is still doing it today.

</comment></comment><comment> hippee-lee To a certain extent this behavior is nothing new. The 12 CD's for a penny scams I fell pray to as a child come to mind. The people who think like that have just moved online.

One thing I don't see getting much attention here is the section on regulation and the lack of interest by tech companies who provide the platforms for people like this to exploit on.

Quoting part of the article, "... the tech companies that carry those ads tend to throw up their hands an declaim that the web is so huge that no one could hope to monitor it all."

This section of the article, where Edelman is quoted several times, stood out to me. It made me a little more sympathetic to regulation. In that, if there is no incentive inside the large tech companies to identify and punish or eliminate the Jesse Williams of the world from their platforms, why shouldn't they be held accountable for the consequences of the behavior enabled by the platform they developed?

One more quotes that stood out to me and made sense:

\- "If Jesse Williams is responsible for the bad things his contractors did, why is Google not responsible for the bad things its advertisers did?"

To extend on that and not just limit this to Google - Uber recently got some bad publicity in LA. One incident where someone was charged several hundred dollars for what amounted to a cab ride home to from a bar and another where an uber rider left their cell phone in the car. Then the driver held the phone ransom for several hundred dollars and still never returned it. In the one case Uber suspended the drivers account and was trying to help the phone owner.

The point I am trying to make by bringing up Uber, who is not an advertising company, is as follows. Technology extends and scales human ability. But the onus is still on people to use technology morally, ethically & responsibly. The double edge on technology's sword is that not all people make choices with morals or ethics in mind. So, is a technology provider responsible for self policing their platform? Idk but reading the Atlantic article sway my opinion in the direction of, If the technology provider won't or "can't" be responsible then they open the doors for regulation without any sympathy from me.

<comment><USER6> _> To a certain extent this behavior is nothing new. The 12 CD's for a penny scams I fell pray to as a child come to mind._

I'm not sure that I'd call that a scam. Myself and several of my friends were legitimate customers and never had any issues.

If it were a scam, though, it certainly worked both ways. I worked for Columbia House as a teenager ("data entry"), entering in all those applications that people sent in. We received an absurd number of obviously bullshit applications (e.g.: "Mickey Mouse", "Donald Duck", etc.) -- sometimes one after another, all with the same address and handwriting -- but were told to enter them in anyways.

<comment> hippee-lee Perhaps scam is the wrong word? Like the online affiliate model, there was quite a bit of fine print that I did not read. Notably the part (I'm paraphrasing here) where I get charged and continue to get charged if certain conditions are not met. As a 10 year old perhaps scam is the wrong word. But, to me, it feels very similar to the affiliate model of advertising online today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Finally, we get to see the face of the creator of those "1 weird tip" ads. Now if him and the woman who created those dumb dancing lowermybills ads would get together we'd have a real turd bomb in the making.

There's nothing "genius" about ripping people off over and over again, it just takes a high degree of disrespect for your fellow man. That and, jesus, if you're going to make your living as a scam artist at least hire a web designer that doesn't make every one of your websites look so obviously shoddy and awful.

<comment><USER8> The poor-quality web design is by intent. Users think they are dealing with a small business trying to sell its merchandise online without a fancy web team. It's like con artists who dress poorly to look like their mark. More credible.

<comment><USER9> Alternatively, the poor quality ensures that only rubes will click through. Why PPC for people who are going to be skeptical anyway?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Off topic rant: why in the world does that site take nearly half a minute to load completely and why does it keep jumping around to different sections (eventually leaving me at the bottom of the screen) during that absurd load?

I'm still not sure about the jumping but the load time might be the result of:

      370 requests  ❘  4.0 MB transferred  ❘  45.30 s (load: 41.60 s, DOMContentLoaded: 19.41 s)

Edit: typo and more data

<comment><USER11> Ghostery counts 19 or 20 trackers depending on what you want included. It's getting out of control!

<comment><USER12> I block everything and I get 25 blocked when visiting The Atlantic. Probably the worst site I've seen yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a contingent of HN people reading this article who see nothing wrong at all and are now trying to figure out how to become the same thing themselves.

<comment><USER14> I am one of those, not because I want to scam people, but because I make a legitimate product that receives lots of praise and even some press, and yet my sales are so near zero that I don't even bother remembering how much they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't like to dwell on writing style because that's not the focus of this community (plus, I'm far from perfect when it comes to writing), but I thought the author's overuse of descriptive words made this story hard to read:

"That Friday afternoon, resplendent in a lustrous violet button-down, William packed half a dozen friends into a private plane on a frosty Edmonton, Alberta, tarmac and jetted off to Las Vegas."

This was the second or third sentence. I was just getting into the flow of the story and felt bombarded by all that information. I could have waited to read about the color of the guy's shirt.

<comment><USER16> The Atlantic isn't quite as high browed as the New Yorker, but they're both literary magazines and so the prose style is somewhat to be expected. :P

(The Atlantic is one of my favorite magazines)

<comment><USER15> I appreciate your point. I'm also a big fan of The Atlantic and The New Yorker is my favorite magazine. :)

I think most of the magazines' authors write literary pieces without overusing descriptive words. To me adjectives and adverbs are the worst culprits in terms of slowing down readers. It's usually better to pack meaning into verbs.

For example, someone could write, "A tall attractive woman with bright shiny shoes approached the fat gentleman by the bar." Alternatively, he or she could write, "The woman sauntered toward the gentleman by the bar."

While the two sentences aren't equivalent in meaning, they paint a similar picture. The second sentence is better in my opinion because it keeps a certain flow going.

Stephen King wrote about this, referring to adverbs as "flat tires": [http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/03/13/stephen- ki...](http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/03/13/stephen-king-on- adverbs/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think there are three clear parties that need to take more active steps to try to reign in these kinds of Shysters:

1) Google - Institute a "Reputation Rank"/or other algos. internally when selling Ads thru any platform. If there is some hint that an ad-buyer is into some questionable stuff yank their ads, ban them from buying any more. Have a dedicated staff that investigates fraud ads and make it simple for the customers to file complaints about specific ads.

2) Visa/MC/Amex - The central lynch-pin - if they cannot bill, they cannot cheat. Tune your systems to ban these shysters faster.

3) Govt. - Create a dedicated Agency to help consumers with Internet commerce related fraud complaints. The nature of Internet makes it a fundamentally different animal to conduct business on - you need a fundamentally different kind of dept. to help keep track of Fraud.

<comment><USER18> For #2 I think it would be nice to see greater availability of "virtual CC numbers", where you can set some arbitrary limit for and it is not exceeded.

It seems limited to a few banks that I choose not to be customers of though, so maybe the feature doesn't work as well as I hope it would.

I would certainly like to see better tools as a card owner, which I could use to better protect myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's worth looking at this from multiple angles.

The human being in me says: "This behaviour is morally and ethically reprehensible, and should be illegal. He should be in jail because he's a con artist who defrauds people."

The idealist in me says: "This guy is preying on the weak and hurting people."

The ruthless entrepreneur in me says: "This guy is using a system that works, and it's producing real results".

The marketer and strategist in me says: "This guy is using a system that relies on intentionally ugly or shady ads to qualify out people who are capable of fighting back. He then gets their credit card number, and repeatedly makes a bunch of sketchy recurring charges that are nearly impossible to fight and/or cancel. What a genius system for making money. People can't fight something they don't know about or are unwilling to cancel."

From a purely objective standpoint his system works because it's based on an understanding of human behavior, psychology and emotion. He knows how to create ads that get clicked, and how to get people to enter their credit card numbers and agree to charges.

We would do well to learn how to get past emotions like disgust and flip around the perspective here. How can we apply some of his strategies and tactics in ways that are morally and ethically sound to our own legitimate ventures?

Here are the insights I gained from the article:

* There is a HUGE traffic opportunity with ads and ad networks, and it's highly scalable * Focus on areas of high existing search demand * If you can convert, you can really crank up the paid traffic engine * If you generate the most revenue in your niche you'll win the advertising game because you can pay the most for traffic * Upsell to a bunch of small recurring charges that are bite-sized so they don't seem like much, but they add up to a lot over time

From a purely analytical and objective standpoint you gotta hand it to the guy for his execution.

</comment><comment><USER20> This a seems a clear advantage for bitcoin - scammy businesses don't have access to your account to continue charging you (unlike credit cards).

Sure, you can't do the initial chargeback but the main issue here was with the recurring charges.

Also bitcoin preventing chargebacks eliminates fraud for the retailer.

<comment><USER21> On a side issue, that kind of sucks too, subscriptions are cool, let's see how they get implemented over bitcoin.

Probably you could authorize your wallet holder to deduct a certanin amount each month.

<comment><USER14> Chargeback and subscription can be done using bitcoin scripting, that is part of the protocol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find it unreal to read about a professional conman having his scam advertised on Google shortly after the Rap Genius incident. Clearly Google has interesting priorities.

</comment><comment><USER23> It seems like a number of problems (erosion of privacy, abuse of advertising channels, etc) would cease to exist if users were charged some small sum for the use of Web services that are now ad-supported.

As someone who's utterly naive when it comes to building a Web property, I'd like to understand why this idea is bad/hard/crazy. What is a typical set of eyeballs really worth on a high-traffic site? Are paywalls the kiss of death?

<comment><USER24> How would those web services attract users without placing ads on other sites?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If the terms are listed, and the user states they read and agree to the terms, _it is not fraud._ Feeling regret does not equate to fraud.

If the terms were made available before purchase, and the user was made to agree to the terms, then I do not see what fraud took place. If people want to agree to contracts they don't read, then there's not much anyone can do about that...

If someone did not think there would be recurring charges, then they did not read the terms they took responsibility for reading and that they _stated_ they read and agreed to.

Either people knew about the recurring charges and agreed... or they stated that they read the terms they actually didn't read and agree to them.

The real problem here, if there is one at all, is that people agree to terms they don't bother reading.

</comment><comment><USER26> Something is deeply wrong with the world in which a scammer who spams and exploits idiots and then over-charge their cards, the way porn industry does for ages, is portrayed as a new hero.

<comment><USER27> Where did you see him being portrayed as a hero?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like a opportunity for the NSA -- who should be aware of all of this -- to close them down and gain some credibility.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if the ever-vigilant FTC has noticed anything shady about what Wall Street has been doing for years now.

</comment><comment><USER30> Finally a post that warrants the most overused of HN accusations: SNAKE OIL! ;)</comment>


Twitter Password Breach Leads to "Aging" Advice - <AUTHOR> https://www.novainfosec.com/2012/11/13/twitter-password-breach-leads-to-aging-advice/ <comment><USER2> Maybe OWASP needs an update too? <https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Allowing_password_aging></comment>


Any startup tackling healthcare? - <AUTHOR>

Startups launch here very week. We see messaging, productivity, ad networks, etc...I am wondering if your strartup or one that is close to you is changing the world by tackling the Health industry. Thank you all <comment><USER2> I was actual talking with a nursing friend about this idea today. The troubles are numerous. Firstly, the best adopters of a health care product would be hospitals, which are big, numerous and have some money. However, they have also proven to be terribly slow adopters of technology, even when it could help, overly bureaucratic, and are often unwilling to use webapps due to privacy concerns.

I remember reading somewhere (in a book by Taleb or Gladwell, or in a TEDTalk) that there are revolutionary apps that are used for diagnostics, as doctors screw up constantly. Those programs, I believe, are made by big health companies, which presumable have the data and expertise.

Separate from hospitals, we have private practice doctors. I'm not sure what space there is for startups on the needs of doctors. Obviously someone could likely make a lot of money if they could centralize billing and invoices in a manner better than HMOs, but I'm not sure what you would do.

Having said that, Paul Graham says a great startup provides a simple solution to an overlooked problem (etc) so I think there is a lot to be done here.

<comment><USER3> _Separate from hospitals, we have private practice doctors. I'm not sure what space there is for startups on the needs of doctors. Obviously someone could likely make a lot of money if they could centralize billing and invoices in a manner better than HMOs, but I'm not sure what you would do._

Depending on the practise, I believe there is plenty of room for something that can make a doctor's life easier. Perhaps some way of organising information and programs easier in a more logical manner?

I know my doctor has a desktop that is literally full with icons of various programs and resource links etc and I'm sure there are many others out there that are probably in the same boat that could benefit from something better. His particular practise serves most of its resource information off a central server so that all of the doctors that work there can access that information.

Just throwing some quick ideas out there, what about a Digg-like site for medical professionals? Something that automatically scrapes/submits information from various medical journal sites online so that medical professionals can work out relevancy for themselves?

Offtopic point: I have a very good relationship with my doctor and we've often talked about technology before in my past visits as that is one of his other hobbies, so I made sure to consult with him when I came up with my idea to see if he thought it was a viable solution to the problem we are tackling, so yeah - there is definitely room.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I worked for years for a internet-healthcare startup building a webapp for physician practices, with lots of attention to billing. After a successful IPO, a couple of us have branched out to a new company (<http://www.mariahealth.com>) trying to improve the user experience of healthcare.

Regulations need to be considered, but a bigger challenge is that many powerful players (e.g. hospitals, health insurance cos.) who you often need to work with and can be risk-averse or capricious with respect to technology and startups. But that situation has improved hugely over the course of the last year or two.

As a result it seems like a good time for startups. Especially in the U.S., but not only there (differences between different countries health systems are often exaggerated). I doubt there's an industry where it's easier to find problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> We have sent in our application to YC for this round for an app we're working on that will work on tackling some aspects of the health industry.

I'm not sure if we'll get in or not (as we dont have demonstrated experience in the startup world) but we will endevour to get our app released regardless.

</comment><comment><USER5> In an informal survey I did, doctors seemed very technophobic. I went to a teaching hospitals website and brought up a list of new residents. 0/10 were members of facebook or linkedIn. Compared to my mechanical engineering lab (I am a graduate student) where it is 5/5.

In my opinion (based on doctors I know), smart people who are technophobic go into medicine.

But I do agree that this area should have tons of opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER6> We have a site in the pipeline targeting health-related topics, but nothing that would interface with the Health Industry directly.

I also have Kurzweilian dreams for other ventures, but the regulations are so daunting that it's so hard to justify exploring healthcare products/services.

</comment><comment><USER7> In an Indian State there is an interesting Govt sponsored healthcare <http://aarogyasri.org/>

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://within3.com> is a local startup in Cleveland that some members hang out on YC

</comment><comment><USER9> revolutionhealth is one that tried with serious finance and backing that seems to have failed?

<comment><AUTHOR> if you are referring to <http://www.revolutionhealth.com/>, they seem to have a traffic nearing 3M uniques a month. That sounds good to me.</comment></comment>


Distraught Mom Letter to Amazon Claims Daughter Alexa Is Constantly Bullied - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Distraught-Family-Pens-Letter-to-Amazon-Over-Bullying-Issues-With-Daughter-Who-Shares-Name-With-Alexa-Device-Jeff-Bezos-CEO-Massachusetts-501659891.html <comment><USER2> > _I have sent your feedback on to our internal teams._

> _Thanks for making sure we 're aware of your experience._

The standard "non-response" \- I see this all the time, and even when pressed, and further assurances are given, nothing changes.

And nothing will change. Problems suffered by small numbers of individuals, perhaps even in the thousands, are completely irrelevant to companies such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and more. They don't care, won't care, can't afford to care, and nothing will change.

There are days I hate the world we live in.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, talk about unintended consequences. I wonder if Amazon will be willing to back out of $$$ worth of branding value there (Here's a hint: probably not) but they could fairly easily with little ground lost by simply renaming them all "echo". It's already part of the brand, and not likely to clash with common usage much.

<comment><USER4> my daughters name is echo and i would fear this same thing so please no..my other son named google already suffers enough as it is</comment></comment>


DoH Secure DNS Doesn't Make Us a Villain Mozilla Tells UK ISP's - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/06/mozilla_ukisp_vallain/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20369951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20369951)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20362548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20362548)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20358300](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20358300)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so low of these UK ISPs to take a swing at the non-profit Firefox instead of Google's proposed for-profit instance of DoH with Chrome.

Their only plausible motive would therefore seem to be that they currently enjoy profiting off your raw browsing data and violating your privacy at the highest level by spying on it and selling it. It can hardly be plausible that 'safety' is what they're concerned about.

I have always chosen ISPs that seem to support the little guy, and if there were one that wasn't in this Association to make a point, I'd join it. Can anyone in the UK speak to this to help out our UK readers?

<comment><USER4> Andrews and Arnold are outside ISPA, have a healthy respect of privacy and a healthy disrespect of logging and block lists. The owner blogs at [https://www.revk.uk](https://www.revk.uk)

Zen are in ISPA, but don't participate in any blocking or filtering.

They both provide service leagues ahead of the big ones, have tech support that's UK based and actually have a clue what they're on about.

<comment><USER5> I don't know their ISPA status but I have been incredibly impressed with Aquiss, who offer similar levels of support to A&A. They also offer month-to- month phone lines and internet service without a minimum term, which is unusual in the UK.

<comment><USER4> Zen don't have minimum terms, seem to remember A&A have a one off setup fee for no term.

The majors prefer you not to leave when you realise they're crap. :)

<comment><USER5> Good to know - thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> UK is dystopia and it is crazy how almost all UK political parties support this sensorship and even seem to be one upping eachother.

<comment><USER7> > UK is dystopia

Yes, except compared to all the other countries.

<comment><USER6> Well it is pretty nice place maybe compared to other countries like China, Iran and North Korea. UK jails people for making jokes, singing rap lyrics. Your government wants to ban porn and demand encryption has backdoors, sensorship of the internet is just par for the course. It is completely insane.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jan/31/skengdo-and- am...](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jan/31/skengdo-and-am-the-drill- rappers-sentenced-for-playing-their-song)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This doesn't seems it should be the function of the browser; rather, to run a local DNS service which is only accessible on your computer, and then you can make it to access the DNS data by use of whatever you want to use, whether HTTPS or Namecoin or whatever, possibly even more than one. Then you can use it with any programs, and not only with Firefox.

The ISP should not censor it. (I also think that HTTPS is probably not the best protocol for DNS, although it can still be used; just making DNS as TCP instead of UDP and then adding TLS, would help. But regardless of which way is done, it should be a separate program that the browser and other program using internet does not need to know the implementation of.)

<comment><USER10> Getting all operating systems to do that, across the board, is much harder than changing a cross-platform browser.

Also, operating systems would have a much harder time doing that, especially if they don't all have integrated support for captive portal detection and similar.

> just making DNS as TCP instead of UDP and then adding TLS, would help

Then systems in the middle can tell it's DNS, and block it.

We're moving towards a world where _all_ traffic will look like HTTPS, or eventually like http/3.

<comment><USER11> > Getting all operating systems to do that, across the board, is much harder > than changing a cross-platform browser.

Is it? I understand that Debian has just added support. It should be as easy for Google to add it to Android as add it to Chrome. That leaves only Apple and Microsoft -- and even before that, anyone who likes to can set the DNS server in those operating systems to a stub that makes queries via DoH, either running on the local machine or connected via VPN. (I'm making that sound very tech nerd, but actually doing it isn't inherently any harder than installing Firefox.)

> Also, operating systems would have a much harder time doing that, especially > if they don't all have integrated support for captive portal detection and > similar.

Wouldn't it be the same issue for Firefox?

> We're moving towards a world where _all_ traffic will look like HTTPS, or > eventually like http/3.

Sad but true. Though at least HTTP/3 looks to support UDP, at which point it becomes a lot more reasonable to encapsulate whatever inside it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems to indicate one thing, and that is that DoH is an effective privacy control.

At least I have switched over my entire network to DoH through Pi-Hole.</comment>


Startup Fuck-ups: How we lost 25% of our monthly revenue overnight - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@insync/startup-fuck-ups-how-we-lost-25-of-our-monthly-revenue-overnight-1e3529aa9e01 <comment><USER2> This could be solved an even more fundamental way: Don't run your own mailer as a startup. There are lots of companies that will be responsible for email deliverability on your behalf, via an API. If it took them 3 months to notice no mail was being sent at all, imagine how long it's going to take them to figure out that their IP is blacklisted in Spamhaus or any number of other deliverability issues?

<comment><USER3> Not everyone wants to outsource transactional mail handling to a third party.

<comment><USER4> Just because you don't want to doesn't mean you shouldn't.

The major advantage to outsourcing it is that the people you're handing the job over to actually know what they're doing and are experts at it. Plus they can spend 24 hours a day checking this stuff instead of you.

The arguments for being in-house on absolutely anything but your core competency when you're an early-stage startup are really hard to justify.

<comment><USER5> Especially with the number of services that offer zero-cost plans at low usage levels! You can rarely even make a fiscal argument for keeping this kind of stuff in-house, much less a skills argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _What we found was that a number of failed jobs were being kept by the system, which meant that these were taking up a ton of space that they shouldn't have been.

To fix the issue, we put together a script to delete the failed items, since any retries to send them didn't appear to work._

At this point my head was screaming "NOOOOooooo!" and made me feel bad for author for the whatever disaster would soon follow.

Not only was the problem not fixed, it wasn't even understood. Hiding the problem by fixing its symptoms will rarely get you far. I don't think I'm even Captain Hindsighting here, as I've learned over and over that not understanding the root cause of any issue means you will be screwed by the issue sooner or later, and it likely will not be pretty.

Sure, sometimes you don't have the time to get to bottom of an issue, but even then you cannot pretend that it's fixed. It'll be back with a vengeance.

<comment><USER7> Well said. This is the end result of letting developers perform system administration tasks. I doubt that they were able to Google the root cause on Stack Overflow. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think terms like "Fuck-ups" or "screwed" should belong in corporate communications, start-up or not. It's cool they are talking about this openly, but unfortunately what I took from their write-up is that their communication style is less than professional.

<comment><USER9> I don't care what language they use, personally. However I am at work and having the F-word in 72pt font blaring from the top of my browser made scroll down very quickly. I doubt my bosses would be thrilled to see that.

<comment><USER10> Man, I'm sorry, but what sort of job do you have where seeing the word "Fuck" is like an actual job risk?

<comment><USER9> It pays awesome and is easy work. If the handbook prohibited saying the word "zucchini" under penalty of dismissal I'd happily strike the word from my vocabulary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Further evidence that "if you aren't monitoring it, it isn't happening"! Ensuring that code is monitorable needs to be right up there with ensuring it's testable.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Small" is relative -- at the "small startup" I run, our email volume is low enough that I BCC myself on every email the site sends. Poor man's monitoring and it won't scale, but I usually notice within hours if something had been broken.

<comment><USER13> Where I work, BCC-ing on all mails is not scalable. Instead a random sample of the mails is sent to ourselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who has created quite a few of these mailers, the queue getting stuck on a single piece of mail and hanging indefinitely is incredibly common. As time has gone on my solutions have become simpler and more pragmatic, since additional complexity breads additional problems.

For example, if I was going to design an emailer today:

-Grab the email from a database save it to a file (likely one or several XML files) and place it in an "Outgoing" directory (ye olde file system).

\- Then have a process which grabs an atomic lock (only one running at a time!), gets the directory listings, and launches the actual "sender" for every file individually (concurrently).

\- When the launcher launches the sender it records the PIDs of the process against the actual emails/XML files internally.

\- After a set wait period if any processes are still running, the launcher kills them, and moves the email/XML into a "Failed" directory which we monitor independantly.

\- Every email which is sent gets moved to an "Archive" directory by the sender process, and we monitor that to see if no emails have been archived for a long time (e.g. 30 minutes).

You can accomplish the same thing using a database (Outgoing, Achive, and Failed tables), but frankly with so many awesome file system tools already around it doesn't make sense to reinvent that wheel. Plus people intuitively understand that if a file is sitting in the "Outgoing" or "Failed" directories then it hasn't been sent yet (just like your client would!).

<comment><USER15> Sounds like you just recreated Microsoft Biztalk.

But to sound less like a dick - communicating with a low probability of errors is hard !

<comment><USER16> Having implemented, deployed, and supported "workflows" using BizTalk, ICAN/JCAPS, Orion, homegrown JMS-based stacks, Cache & Ensemble, etc...

Someone1234's solution is the antithesis of BizTalk, the complete refutation of the ultimate futility of using workflow engines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you don't outsource this type of service (preferred solution imho) then from the very beginning you have to monitor internally (the solution done after the fact) and also and most importantly externally, in this case having one or more monitored client-like email accounts.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have a script that sets up 90% of a full nagios/icinga server automatically in about 5 minutes.

Why, in 2014, are people still not monitoring everything as job #1?

Why isn't this being taught in schools? How do people with tech jobs not know this?

</comment><comment><USER10> Make sure your mistakes never directly affect your consumers. Don't spam them, don't overload them with ads, and don't leak their PII. Quickest way to lose customers.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd really like to know what the mail server software was that failed this way.

</comment><comment><USER20> No one in the company was subscribed to their mailings?

Hope they're monitoring their backups.

</comment><comment><USER21> _scheduled emails to check in with our users._

That's not "transactional email". That's spam.

You're a spammer. Die.

</comment><comment><USER22> "I am single, 41 and pregnant"...

I don't know when pregnancy became a part of a person's identity. I guess this adds to the coolness factor these days because you have to try harder? Sigh.

<comment><USER23> Where does it say this? (I guess it's been removed?)

And why does it matter to you whether or not the author considers being pregnant to be part of her identity?

IMO it would be more healthy to comment on the content of article than than the author's identity.</comment></comment>


The Humble Brilliance of Italy's Moka Coffee Pot (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/make-coffee-moka-pot <comment><USER2> I have used a Bialetti for the last twenty years and will not use anything else to make coffee. Forms meets function meets flavor.

</comment><comment><USER3> Strong brews. Compact and portable. No filters or expensive grinders required.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this a percolator?

<comment><USER5> [https://youtu.be/E9avjD9ugXc](https://youtu.be/E9avjD9ugXc)

All you ever wanted to know (and some things you probably didn't) about percolators.

Key difference being that the moka pot separates the brewed coffee from the clean water, whereas percolators re-heat brewed coffee to be circulated back through the grounds (thus burning a significant quantity of the resulting brew).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any tips on brewing with a Moka pot?

<comment><USER3> Use a cheap blade grinder for a fine grind.

Add water until it reaches the bottom of the valve.

Fill and gently pat, but don't pack, the filter with grinds.

Screw it together and put it on something hot until it finishes gurgling and starts hissing.

Enjoy!

(I use one twice a day and have been for several years.)

<comment><USER7> Oh damn I'm going to be one of those guys. Apologies in advance.

Burr grinders, especially manual ones, are fairly cheap. A $40 Hario Mini Mill does a fine job at a fine grind, and won't produce as much powder as the blade grinder.

Pre-heating the water before filling the base will reduce time on the stove, which will help prevent the grounds from cooking while they brew.

<comment><USER3> I'll try the preheating and see how it goes.

My $10 grinder is simple, small, less than $40, and it's been working great for 5 years now.

If it ever breaks, I'll consider upgrading.

Although now I'm tempted to buy a burr grinder and do a blind taste test.

<comment><USER7> I'm not convinced I can taste the difference. People think they can. ;)

A better grinder may help avoid powder that can be a problem with some brew methods. And a nicer manual grinder will usually grind faster, which can be convenient in the morning.

But I used a blade grinder and a French press for years. It's fine. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Face transplant patient is revealed - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/05/science/AP-MED-Face-Transplant.html?hp

<comment><USER2> <psa> I've been an ER nurse for years, and the most rewarding times of that career have been when I can work my tail off to keep a donors body going long enough to harvest the organs. Donors give an amazing and precious gift to dozens people. I've cared for both donors and recipients. It's a beautiful and amazing thing. Think about it and talk to your family about it.</psa>

<comment><USER3> Are there honestly many people these days who aren't donors? I'm sure the answer is yes, but I'll still be surprised by it.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure there are quite a few people who aren't donors and don't know that they have to elect to be one.

Otherwise, I guess maybe people aren't for religious reasons? I'm not sure on that.

<comment><USER5> I choose not to be a donor.

My cousin died a few years back. He had an untreated cavity that turned very infectious. Now, a few months later, he got out of the shower and just died. The doctor said that he seemed to have died before he even hit the ground..

In the same room as the doctor explaining that "We dont know what killed your son" were the body harvesters. All they could do was to pressure the parents, my uncle and aunt, to donate every part of his body, even though they had no idea WHAT killed him.

I do find these body parts people just plain disgusting. To these people, "No" means keep pestering more.

And yes, I also do worry that if a RN or doctor sees that donor card, they might not do as good of a job to save me. Not that they would do _bad_, but they would quit sooner than a non-donor.

<comment><USER6> "I do find these body parts people just plain disgusting."

Saving lives is more important than your feelings.

<comment><USER5> It's not "feelings".

If somebody makes a conscious decision and goes about to explicitly allow harvesting, then so be it. Decision's done.

Instead, these people prey on organs from the recently deceased. In my case, he died not knowing what killed him. It was an infection of sorts but we just don't know. He didn't make a decision about harvesting after he was gone, so they should respect his wishes (or lack thereof).

<comment><USER6> "these people prey on organs from the recently deceased."

They're trying to save lives. Make no mistake, people's lives are jeopardized every time someone decides that the integrity of a corpse is more important.

Edit to add: the description of medical professionals as "preying" on the dead is an odd one. One cannot prey on dead bodies, which have no thoughts or feelings. The only problem with what they do is the effect on the feelings of the living (e.g. yourself) but as I indicated, saving lives is more important. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's actually quite amazing how important appearance is, for people that have had it stripped away from them.

My girlfriend, a cancer survivor, envisions a young adult cancer charity that focuses on the cosmetic aspects of treatment: paying for wigs, teaching girls how to do makeup. At first, I thought her idea was missing the point, but then she explained to me how uplifting it is to have some modicum of control over your appearance during treatment and recovery.

<comment><USER8> _Few patients suffer more of mental discomfort than the unfortunate possessors of some unsightly disfigurement on the face which attracts constant notice, few are more solicitous for any operation which promises relief, and none are more grateful for the slightest improvement in their condition_

[http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/2004/1/...](http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/2004/1/2004_1_60_print.shtml)

Not strange. Actual pain has known bounds, but if you have some unsightliness, you never know what people are thinking. Socially, you might be a monster--and you can't tell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Man I can't wait until we can put a bunch of stem cells on scaffolding and reactivate certain embryogenic pathways to grow organs. Maybe even faces, though what you'd get is a baby face.

<comment><USER10> You wouldn't get a baby face. The shape of the face is determined by the bones under it, not by the skin on top. (Although the skin would be smooth, and not lined.) So a face donor recipient does not get the face of the donor.

Also, faces (i.e. skin) is actually the easiest organ to grow, and doesn't need stem cells. I read about a burn victim where they took some skin from under his belt buckle (The only non burned skin on him), and stretched, then split, then stretched some more till they were able to cover him (took months).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think what they have done here is a real victory for science. Also they have given back something that we all take for granted. It makes you wonder what we will be able to do next.

</comment><comment><USER12> I just realized why I got a strange feeling. Her face looks like a Mii! (In the most tasteful fashion.)

</comment><comment><USER13> Damn, couldn't they do something about her cheeks?

<comment><USER14> it said that they are going to deal with her cheeks once her nerves and muscles grow in better. It'll be most telling a year or two from now once it all settles down and they can fix some of the drooping problems. I hope to see a followup someday - it'd be super amazing to see the difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's nice to see that in this world of open source, patents are getting some attention and IP is still valued.</comment>


What it's like to work for Stripe - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alexmaccaw.com/stripes-culture

<comment><USER2> There's a post below, which is [dead], but which raises an issue I was curious about. Is the daily group lunch treated as required, or is it totally OK to skip it? And even if it's not _officially_ required, is there any sort of peer-pressure thing / shunning of people who don't participate?

IF it's optional and truly treated that way, it sounds like a great idea to me. Otherwise, I'd consider it downright toxic. At every job I've ever had, I treat my lunchtime as, well, mine. If I need to go run errands, or just want to be alone, or want to go sit at Starbucks and answer emails for the startup I'm working on on the side, whatever, I do it over lunch. Or sometimes I just plain feel like skipping lunch for some random reason. If I had that freedom denied to me, I'd be miserable.

<comment><USER3> Answer: I am currently skipping group lunch :).

<comment><USER2> Cool. Do most people pretty much do group lunch most days, or is it common for individuals, or small groups, to go off and do their own thing?

Just legitimately curious... not knocking the idea. Like I said, if it's not mandatory, I'm all for it. Just wondering how the culture has evolved around that.

<comment><USER3> I'd say probably 80% of the company is at lunch on any given day. Sometimes people will go and grab food from food trucks or restaurants in the area, though they'll also often bring it back and eat with everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Participating in support, as the author mentions, is an incredible learning experience. I handle all incoming emails for the manufacturing business I work at. Even though I end up filtering and passing on most emails, I get to see what customers are saying, asking, wanting, etc. If something needs to be handled by a higher-up, they often include me on the following interaction with the customer. This has taught me a lot about the philosophies and decision-making process that has made the business successful. I am now at a point where I am handling more emails than I am passing on. I can't think of any way I could have learned as much as I have and had it make sense and really sink in.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Every single engineer does support, on a bi-weekly rotation. Even the founders John and Patrick. We provide support over an IRC channel, email, and through Stripe answers."

This is one of the worst policies I've ever encountered. Companies that I've been involved with often do this at first, because at first, everyone SHOULD do support. After a few years, it's horribly unproductive. It creates a long term crisis culture that is reactive rather than proactive. Many days the entire development team will not be working on their individual development tasks and instead be ganging up on some perceived production crisis.

You need to introduce the concept of triage, not gang-support and no rotating support. Rotating support isn't just bad for your developers, it's a horrible way to support your customers. One week you have a problem that gets resolved quickly because the guy on support actually wrote the code that you are having a problem with. The next week, the same support call takes three days because the guy on support has no idea where that code even lives and has to learn the process. You might say 'oh, but that's how we cross train', to which I, as a customer, point out that those three days I had to wait for an answer were unacceptable, and you should have a better plan on cross training than 'wait til something breaks and throw completely clueless resources at it'.

</comment><comment><USER6> > When you hire great people, you can afford to give them a lot of autonomy.

I think you have this completely backwards: in order to be great, autonomy is required. There's much written about motivations and what makes people happy in the workplace but micromanagement is one of the most easily recognizable anti-habits of a bad work environment. It breeds resentment and engenders an atmosphere of distrust. Bring out the best in people by giving them autonomy.

<comment><USER7> It's probably some measure of both, but from my experience there are some people you can't afford to give autonomy.

<comment><USER8> Then you can't afford to keep them around either, right?

<comment><USER9> Depends who you are and how big you are. Not every company can have the very best employees in the industry.

<comment><USER10> Read the OP. Its not about the best it is about giving all people autonomy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love the part about email transparency. That's been my ideal as well, so it's great to see that it actually works in practice.

One big question I have though is around compensation. How transparent are you guys with compensation, and what lessons have you learned there?

<comment><USER12> It's a tough question. We consider compensation to be confidential to both employees and the company -- in general, it's not our information to share.

Within the constraints of that, though, we try to be as open as possible. In particular, we share some information about current salaries at Stripe with new hires, and we share full details about all of Stripe's investment and the terms on which it was taken.

<comment><USER13> In considering doing something similar with my company, I'm wondering if there is an override for the auto CC that should be available to certain accounts?

<comment><USER14> I could be wrong but it doesn't sound like it's an "auto CC", but rather a "convention" as Alex said in another comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The truly interesting challenge will be how effectively they transition these policies as they scale. For example, the flood-of-email with filters works incredibly well for transparency at 40 people, but becomes an unmanageable deluge much past 100. The Capture the Flag runs, though, look like an idea that's both awesome and sustainable.

<comment><USER16> FWIW, Google also does the flood-of-email with filters thing, and it still works at 30,000 employees. People don't subscribe to every single mailing list anymore, but most e-mails are CC'd to at least a team mailing list, as are (usually) every code review and every bug.

I get about 300 emails a day, several of which are mailing list digests with 25 emails apiece. I actually skim them all; I'm one of two people I know who doesn't use filters, and I think the other one gave up recently. For someone who's an informationavore like me, though, it's paradise, and a great way of keeping up the illusion of knowing everything.

<comment><USER9> It is probably good to have someone in this role, if everyone were doing it it would probably be a productivity drain. But as the only one doing it you may be able to spot issues that no one else has the same total oversight to catch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > every email at Stripe is CC-ed to lists that go to either the entire company > or to any particular team. This includes internal person-to-person > correspondence

I recently watched an 1990 Steve Jobs interview[1] in which he gushed about this very idea as being a workflow of the future. Since the "desktop revolution" was old news, he was moving on to the "business process revolution" (something like that), enabled by networked computers. Companies would love it because it removed the friction of traditional employee work roles/titles and geography, and allowed managers to observe communication and measure stuff. It's interesting to see a company actually doing pretty much exactly what Jobs described in the video.

Although obviously, open source has used that model with great success.

[1] <http://video.pbs.org/video/2151510911/>

</comment><comment><USER18> A lot of these awesome things (weekly standups, together lunches, socials etc.) are feasible when the team is still small. As the team scales, this starts getting more and more difficult and ultimately, silos form among the different functions (sales/support/eng etc.). Probably this might not be felt to such an extent given that stripe is (and will be) engineering heavy (I presume). But I've witnessed this first hand at the startup where I work. Things were awesome when the team size was about 20-25. As we grew to ~150 folks over the last 2 years, a lot of the things start to break.

<comment><USER19> I enjoy the occasional social as much as they next guy, but as I get older, my family becomes more important. Is it the case that the majority of employees have fewer external social attachments? Do you (OP, or anyone else here) think the idea of socials, which long term might have a tendency to become de facto mandatory, is sustainable as the workforce ages (and starts families)?

<comment><USER20> A number of people at Stripe have families or have other social attachments. We try hard to ensure we're not making lifestyle assumptions when we hold social things. Some of this involves giving good advance notice, other times it's around timing. Trivial example: recently, we moved an internal talk series from dinner time to 4pm, so that people who don't stay for dinner aren't excluded. I think explicitly keeping things like that in mind helps.

<comment><USER21> But this would eventually converge to the 9-5 frame of things, wouldn't it? This is the only time of day that everyone is absolutely certain to have no other commitments other than working.

Also, the fact that you had the talk initially set for the dinner time basically means that your culture is already incompatible with the lifestyle of those who value family over work. I am _not_ saying it's a bad thing, I used to actually sleep at work when I was younger, but it is an indication of problems you'll face once your team gets over a certain size. Diversity has a smaller common overlap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Love the idea of a paper reading group. In case anyone missed the link in the article, they've put a bunch of the recently read papers up at <https://github.com/gdb/stripe-prg/wiki/Papers>

<comment><USER22> I have been trying to get a group of people together once a month to read a paper. We have a google group at [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/papers- in...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/papers-in-computer- science), and meet over Hangouts. Anyone interested should join up and suggest papers!

<comment><USER23> This is a neat idea. I think I'll sign up :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From the article, emphasis mine:

      > None of this would matter if Stripe didn't have
      > fantastic people. Hiring well is the key to all of this,
      > and people are the foundation of any company's culture.
      > Frankly, I've never seen a team like Stripe's; *** we
      > have the best people in the industry ***.

Stripe's current success allows them to be very selective about who they hire, which allows them to be fussy about all of the qualities that _they_ think makes a great employee.

There are a number of factors that could "flip" the company's hiring from very selective to less selective. For example:

      * Parts of their culture might not scale indefinitely.
      * They might start running short of cash, and have to
        settle for less expensive hires, or cut some of the
        office luxuries.
      * They might have to start hiring so fast that they can't
        be as selective about their hires.
      * Their tech stack will grow old, and unappealing to
        energetic self-starters who want to work with the hot
        new thing.
      * Their current employees will get older, start families,
        and have other equally (if not more) important things
        than work.

Clearly, Stripe cares about their culture, and I'm sure that they'll do everything they can keep their workplace experience great, however, cultures are as much an art as they are a science, and what works well for a small group doesn't necessarily work for a large one.

(edit: formatting)

</comment><comment><USER7> Everything in the post seems positive. Is there anything that is not so great about working at Stripe or could be improved? Alex may be too new to answer but it would be great if other Stripe employees could weigh in.

</comment><comment><USER25> You just _had_ to make the rest of us jealous, didn't you.

<comment><USER26> Yes, I read this sort of thing, then look back at the desk I am chained to, and want to weep.

<comment><USER27> I think they're hiring!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm curious about hours of operation. Are you folks 9-5? How flexible is it?

</comment><comment><USER29> All the communication channels may seem like information overload, but I would welcome it. I really like the part of open email (no more elite side bar conversations between people that don't know as much as they thought they did)

The best part is the IRC channel for chat that has a bot to log my status report (optional) and record for posterity and put it on the shared dashboard as encouragement, recognition and engagement.

sigh... I need coworkers that know what IRC is..

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd really like to learn more about your usage of irc and how the bots were set up. Did someone create the bots for different tasks by hand or are there good libraries for setting them up? Does everyone have irc open all day? And if so isn't it incredibly distracting?

</comment><comment><USER31> Huge fan of Stripe and love the part about email transparency - we have similar practices here as well.

I'm curious to hear if people at Stripe have given thought to just having all emails sucked into a searchable CRM versus having to manually add cc's each time?

<comment><USER32> We have a good way of doing that with our product GrexIt (<http://grexit.com>) - GrexIt helps you share Gmail labels. So you can just address an email to who you want it to address it to, and add a Gmail label to it to share it with a set of people. They get the email in their inboxes cleanly filed under the corresponding label.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Thanks for the article! Gives me hope :D

</comment><comment><USER34> ... all I wonder though is what it's like to _use_ Stripe (no, we are not in the US).

<comment><USER35> Use it? You spend 30 minutes integrating it and then move on with your life =)

<comment><USER34> \+ years waiting for it if your company is in Europe... We are still in the waiting phase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> some people have knack of building great teams.

</comment><comment><USER37> All emails CC'd.

IRC!

Wow, that must be a pretty shitty job. Not to mention the time wasted with Allhands meetings.

</comment><comment><USER38> Enjoy it while you can, it will all go downhill when you start hiring sales/marketing people ... ;-)

<comment><USER12> [Disclaimer: Stripe cofounder.]

I know you probably mean this at least in part in jest, but I've found this to be a pretty common perception in the tech industry. It's probably worth addressing directly.

We want to work with the best engineers, but it's arrogant to assume that that's all that we'll need, or that hiring non-engineering people will cause our culture to deteriorate.

That's not to say that that doesn't happen at some companies (obviously). If you view sales/marketing people as second class, and don't put the same thought into that part of the culture, it'll inevitably be worse. Without a lot of care, it's very easy to build a bad engineering culture too.

While building great software is at the very core of what we do, we won't be able to do everything that we want to accomplish by _just_ hiring engineers. We need people who like talking to users, and people who can describe what Stripe is doing to the world at large, and people who'll help build the countless parts of Stripe that aren't purely about code.

If companies choose to ignore sales, marketing, partnerships, support, and everything else, they should be pretty explicit about the compromise: they're trading off success for narrow-minded solipsism.

We've hired people who aren't full-time engineers, and we'll hire lots more. We want people who can craft both kernel exploits and memorable prose. Those who spend their days working with people instead of code are just as important as anyone else, and their contributions are just as large.

<comment><USER39> At Parse.ly, we find an easy way of making sales and product teams co-exist nicely is to encourage actual collaboration. For example, some of our engineers built the sales team an engagement dashboard that allows them to track customer usage analytics unified across many of our tracking systems. This makes it clear that the teams have a shared goal and that we can leverage each other's skills to the fullest.</comment></comment></comment>


Firing mods and forced relicensing: Stack Exchange - <AUTHOR> https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-mods-and-forced-relicensing-is-stack-exchange-still-interested-in-cooper <comment><USER2> Extensive previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21113344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21113344)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hard to feel sorry for the mods or so, they put down ppeople seeking help and refuse to listen to appeals.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a way to run a business, upset the customers by taking a crap on employees/mods who can help customers.</comment></comment>


Tuning In to Dropping Out - Which educations to subsidize - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/Tuning-In-to-Dropping-Out/130967/ <comment><USER2> From the article: "The focus on college education has distracted government and students from apprenticeship opportunities. Why should a major in English literature be subsidized with room and board on a beautiful campus with Olympic-size swimming pools and state-of-the-art athletic facilities when apprentices in nursing, electrical work, and new high-tech fields like mechatronics are typically unsubsidized (or less subsidized)? College students even get discounts at the movie theater; when was the last time you saw a discount for an electrical apprentice?"

That's a really good question. Back when I pursued my undergraduate degree (majoring in a modern foreign language), the state university's budget and sources of revenue were such that students paid about one-third of the cost of their educations through tuition payments. (That percentage has since increased for undergraduates at my alma mater, and of course this leaves aside the issue of who is subsidizing the students' tuition payments.) State appropriations funded by all taxpayers in my state paid for about another third of the university's undergraduate education expenses. (This percentage has decreased since I graduated.) Federal and private grants and all other sources of university income paid for the other third. (The university has since become better at private fund-raising--I get fund-raising telephone calls all the time as an alumnus--and a little better at licensing inventions and the like, but I think has a lower percentage of direct federal grants than it did when I was a student.) If a college education returns economic benefits to a student, and that is the usual claim, why doesn't the student just time- shift those economic returns by attending college with student loans? What is the rationale for public subsidies for university studies, and does that rationale suggest that other forms of studying should also be subsidized? Does that rationale suggest that different college major subjects ought to be subsidized at different levels of subsidy?</comment>


Y Combinator is prohibited - <AUTHOR>

I've been reading HN for couple of months now and I'm really happy with the news that people subit etc.
Also, I'm working in my own startup for around two years now and doing just fine :)
Recently I've sent a link to YCombinator's HN to all my friends and one of them (who works in multinational bank) replied to me with this:
IWSS Security Event Access to the URL http://news.ycombinator.com/news is currently restricted because it belongs to the Company Prohibited Sites category group. <comment><USER2> Perhaps the bank wishes to avoid brain-drain... and hopes to prevent its IT people from discovering more enlightened employment opportunities in more open parts of the world economy? :/

</comment><comment><USER3> I expect it was the use of 'Hacker' in the page content and meta tags.

<comment><USER4> That's what happened here, it was even blocked as category: hacking. Only lasted about a week, though. Comforting in a way that they had a human check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Try <http://hackerne.ws/> or <http://icombinator.net/> or use your phone.

<comment><USER6> didn't know those existed...are those owned/operated by PG?

<comment><USER7> icombinator.net no. the other one is not mentioning it..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Big companies often use an off the shelf content filtering setup whose support contract includes blocked site lists with regular updates. I used to work for a bank that used one called SurfControl (who apparently have been acquired by WebSense: <http://www.websense.com/site/scwelcome/index.html>).

So every now and then at work I would return to a site I'd been visiting regularly and it would be blocked after a new URL database update had come through. Sometimes it would eventually be unblocked again some time after that.

<comment><USER9> My School has blockers unfourtunately. Blocked me from reading a government website about suicide for an english report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I got bitten by this when I worked at an Investment Bank in London. It made me realise how much I valued my freedom to choose what and where I browse. Sad really, as IT staff in big mega-corps could probably do with an injection of entrepreneurial spirit.

<comment><USER11> Its likely an automated/keyword filter, or a list they bought from someone else.

Turning off all filtering invites phishing, spyware, malware into your network, so thats not a great solution. My bet is that 9 times out of 10, if you email IT and they check it out, they can get it whitelisted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You should also be aware that many large companies have tools to see what you have surfed, and for how often you do so.

If you can ssh out, just forward a port to a Squid proxy on a machine at home or use one of the low cost VPS providers. Then setup your browser to use said proxy on the local port.

You can forward ports on Windows using Putty, and of course you can use Linux/OS X to do this easily.

</comment><comment><USER13> You can always browse off the mobile network using an iPhone (like I frequently do)

</comment><comment><USER14> This message is just from Trend Micro's Interscan Web Security Suite product (that's the "IWSS" bit. It's typically hooked into existing web proxies via ICAP.)

Trend have an "interesting" track-record of site categorisation, but it's possible that the URL is correctly categorised and the operators of the IWSS have chosen to block that category.

Then again, the people that Trend employ to visit websites probably just saw the name "Hacker news" and filed it as 'hacking'/bad stuff. They probably don't spend too much time on any individual web site.

</comment><comment><USER15> perhaps the staggering volume of content to keep up with on HN is proving a distraction to their workers.

</comment><comment><USER16> Shouldn't these people be working when they are at work?

<comment><USER17> If you're honestly asking this question, I think you've missed the point of a lot of what's said here on HN.

You might even want to pick up a copy of "The Hacker Ethic" by Pekka Himanen.

<comment><USER16> I understand well what is said here. With that said, if you are at work, you do your work. Also, you should not be using corporate bandwith to catch up on your own reading agenda. Do that at home.

<comment><USER18> What he should and shouldn't do is for him and his employer to decide, not you.

<comment><USER16> You don't find it ironic that you are now telling me what I should and should not do?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gated Linear Networks - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.01526 <comment><USER2> That is an amazing paper, a great result and new neutral architectures are long overdue.

But I don't believe that this has any significance in practice.

GPU memory is the limiting factor for most current AI approaches. And that's where the typical convolutional architectures shine, because they effectively compress the input data, then work on the compressed representation, then decompress the results. With gated linear networks, I'm required to always work on the full input data, because it's a one step prediction. As the result, I'll run out of GPU memory before I reach a learning capacity that is comparable to conv nets.

<comment><USER3> Convolution is a linear operation; in the case of images, you can view it as a multiplication with a doubly block circulant matrix. I can't see any barriers to hybrid approaches here, though it seems difficult to avoid using backpropagation for credit assignment within the convolutional layers.

Re: significance, how about their application in regression: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.05964](https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.05964) ? Or in contextual bandits: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.11611](https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.11611) ?

Disclaimer: I am one of the authors (Joel).

<comment><USER2> Wow, that G-GLN paper is really new. Thanks for sharing it :)

My first impression is that this will be very challenging to use for many of the people currently using AI in practice, because of the requirement to have a convex and gaussian-distributed result.

For example, I currently work on optical flow and the loss functions are usually very jumpy and usually only convex within a few pixels around the correct result. I have seen plenty of modeling errors in optical flow SOTA papers, for example casting a boolean occlusion term so that it can be added to the loss (Won't work, no gradient). I have also seen how strongly authors struggle with the irregularities of their loss function and issues with convergence, for example by fixing all random initialization to a seed and then parameter-scanning on that value (Very expensive).

Notable examples of the difficulties faced would be [https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.04998](https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.04998) which I have never seen converge from random initialization or [https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.07837](https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.07837) which diverges without supervised pre-training.

Also, while many people use the gaussian-distributed euclidean norm of the difference between prediction and groundtruth as their main loss term, there has been a lot of discussions recently if that is a good idea, because it forces the neural network to represent uncertainty with blur. But optical flow tends to have sharp edges where objects end.

Combined, that means the problems that I work on usually do not have a gaussian-distributed loss and usually are irregular and never convex, so I'm not sure if I could use G-GLN.

But the application to contextual bandits looks VERY interesting to me :)

I see great potential in using conv layers as pre-compression and then applying decision trees on the resulting intermediate representation.

What I previously did for object segmentation was to sample a random but fixed set of feature pair differences and use the signs as bit flags. I then trained the decision trees on those bits to predict the boundary shape around that pixel. I got the general idea from this paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.5549](https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.5549)

But it sounds like moving from difference bits to halfspaces and from linear regression to GLN, your paper "Online Learning in Contextual Bandits using Gated Linear Networks" could greatly improve on that. I'd be curious to see how those bandits do on BSDS500.

BTW, are you aware of any discussion groups for AI image processing that are open to members of the public?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/deeplearning/](https://www.reddit.com/r/deeplearning/) seems to be mostly people that just took a Udemy / Coursera course, so it's usually about re-using existing models and almost no talk about research.

<comment><USER4> > BTW, are you aware of any discussion groups for AI image processing that are > open to members of the public?

r/machinelearning is the most suitable subreddit for this, since it is actively frequented by researchers and the quality of discussion is much higher than in r/deeplearning

<comment><USER2> Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "We show that this architecture gives rise to universal learning capabilities in the limit, with effective model capacity increasing as a function of network size in a manner comparable with deep ReLU networks."

What exactly this statement means?

<comment><USER2> They mean that if you add parameters, the learning capability of their approach grows by a similar amount as if you would add the same number of parameters to a conv+ReLu network (the standard approach).

That "universal" is a weird claim in my opinion, but they mean that with enough parameters, this architecture can learn everything.

<comment><USER5> I was able to get the second part of the statement. but I haven't seen the use of "in limit" in a statement like this.

Yes, the universal approximation is a strong claim. NN has been proven to have universal approximation theoretically.

<comment><USER3> The result here is stronger, in the sense that typical NN universality results are statements with respect to just capacity (and not how you optimise them). Here, the result holds with respect to both capacity + a choice of suitable no regret online convex optimisation algorithm (e.g. online gradient descent). Of course, this is just one desirable property of a general purpose learning algorithm.

<comment><USER6> Do you know of any other kinds of universal function approximators that also have a good regret bound like this, or is yours the first one?

global convergence to any arbitrarily weird function at rate O(sqrt(T)) seems amazing, almost too good to be true, and I'm wondering what the catch is. Maybe it's just a moderately nice property but not extraordinary? Maybe there are some horrible constants hiding in there?

<comment><USER3> 1) It's definitely not the first. Other methods have universal guarantees of some form or other with well quantified rates of convergence, e.g. k-NN would be the best known example.

2) There are some restrictions on the class of density functions it can model, so arbitrarily weird is a bit strong, but the model class is very general.

3) The weights needed to model any function in this class although finite, can be arbitrarily large. The regret of a single neuron has a dependence on the diameter of the convex set your weights reside in, so there is a nasty constant of sorts in there, and this will also carry over when you analyse the regret of a complete network. With such a general statement, it's unavoidable sadly.

4) The universality result on its own is just a nice property. See it as the first stepping stone to a more meaningful analysis. What you really want is for the model class to grow as you add more neurons, using weights within a realistic range, and that the method performs well in practice on some problems people care about -- we provide empirical evidence that the capacity grows on par with deep relu networks with our capacity experiments, and show a bunch of results where the method works, but we don't have a theoretical characterisation of the class of density functions it can model well (i.e. if the function has some nice structural property, then a network of reasonable size is guaranteed to learn a good approximation quickly). Such a result would be extraordinary in my eyes. Because the network is composed of simple and well understood building blocks, I am optimistic that such an analysis will be possible in the future.

<comment><USER6> thank you very much for the detailed response!

much to chew on here, it really does seem like a very interesting class of models. from the papers it sounds like in practice clipping weights to a small set works okay, so the constant factors shouldn't be too bad.

i may have to sit down and try to implement these...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I didn't realise Hutter was on leave from ANU at DeepMind.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a relative neophyte in this realm, this is fascniating to read. Comparing this to the the models/methods to derive said properties, is good education for me.</comment>


What If All the World Ran Linux? - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/122210-what-if-all-the-world.html?page=1

<comment><USER2> His entire blog post is based on the assumption that linux wouldn't have as much malware - however keep in mind that the greatest risk to a system is the user themselves. It doesn't matter how hardened the system is or how many protection schemes are built in, if you have a pop up telling the user "ENTER YOUR ROOT PASSWORD AND WIN $$$ NOW!" eventually someone is going to do it.

At some point users will cry out for a system that doesn't require a password to install stuff, and someone will react to provide that product to the market.

Remember that there's a lot more to computer security than computers.

<comment><USER3> this is where package management is great. The user that will enter their root password to win $$$ is also the user who is way less likely to open up a config file and add an untrusted repo. Not to mention the benefit of automatic software updates. The iphone appstore has already trained users to use what is essentially a package management system (without the option to add other repos).

<comment><USER4> Once the program has sudo privileges, it can pretty much add a pirate repo (or replace an official one), changing crypto keys and so on...

OTOH, Linux users don't google program names and download executables they run as admins from the first hit they get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Original article: [http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/214596/what_if...](http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/214596/what_if_all_the_world_ran_linux.html)

<comment><USER4> And HN discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2032776>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm beginning to see Linux as simple a broad open platform that is very customizable to individual needs. The idea of the spanning, generally somewhat similar but incompatible enough to be a nuisance, problematic because you have to install it on your own in virtually all cases, desktop Linux is a dying breed. I say this as a sole user of desktop Linux for nearly ten years (currently typing in CrunchBang, a Debian respin).

Why? The places where Linux has slowly started to spin are independent ecosystems each spun from Linux. This has slowly been becoming the case in the mobile sphere. But the mobile OSs that are winning are not the ones that are much codeshared with desktop Linux like Maemo, but those that exist in independent ecosystems like webOS and Android, not to mention the open source devices like Kindles and Tom Toms that you never think about the OS on.

Even the main Linux distros for desktops and similar x86 devices are beginning to separate. Ubuntu is looking at alternatives to the X server. Chrome OS has the possibility to make inroads which is not a traditional distro in any sense. Linux as a kernel is becoming something diverse that can be respun to many different uses.

Used to, the Linux landscape was fairly consistent. Mobile devices that ran the Linux kernel were using much of the same code and software as the desktop Linux distros. For example, Dillo was a web browser used on Linux ports to mobile devices and the desktop. I had mobile Linux devices in the past that ran Pidgin.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Windows tends to be associated with a lot of unplanned downtime"

I would say that Windows is more associated with the need to have a lot of _planned_ downtime.

<comment><USER4> I think both situations happen with a much higher frequency than competing platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What part of Linux' greater immunity to malware comes from the more logical permissions, and the more free-form naming?

By that, I mean that "executable" comes from a permission, not from an "extension", and that "extensions" in Linux are really just naming conventions.

I also note that every one not leveraged to the hilt into Microsoft technology acknowledges the effect of the Windows monoculture.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. If Joe Clueless downloads a program and double clicks it, it won't run.

If the user is so clueless as to download malware, he probably won't be able to chmod it into executableness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like how the first point is essentially that the diversity of Linux would make it hard for malware writers because of the differences between distributions, and the last point seems to assume that the diversity is NOT a problem to writing Linux software.</comment>


Full Circle - <AUTHOR> http://blog.disrupto.com/post/7888948643/memberly

<comment><USER2> Nice piece, though a more informative submission title might be something like:

Memberly helps you run a subscription business (we built it sell tea)

</comment><comment><USER3> This needs a better title, I thought it was another silly tau vs pi post.

<comment><USER4> I thought so too (and I wrote _The Tau Manifesto_ ). The service looks good, and it deserves more recognition than it will get with this bland title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are considering offering your services as a monthly subscription for your clients, my startup <http://TaskArmy.com> helps you do that (and promote your service across its directory).

</comment><comment><USER6> brilliant idea that should help a lot of small companies and individuals out there. I know my wife subscribes to a makeup service along the lines of what Member.ly customers seem to be doing.</comment>


Acing the Technical Interview - <AUTHOR> http://tech.tripadvisor.com/2012/04/acing-technical-interview.html

<comment><USER2> I think there are two type of people who will do well in an interview like this: A) People who actually do know this stuff backwards and forwards. That one class fifteen years ago is still at their fingertips, and they are able to both talk and code fluently, shifting effortlessly from one to the other. B) People who want a job enough to put in the leg work, review these concepts, think about how they apply to real-world problems, practice writing code without an IDE, look up things they are likely to encounter talking to the specific company and so forth.

While As are an awesome hire, Bs are likely to bring the same work ethic to their job (at least, as long as they are happy there). Either way, you win.</comment>


Providing mTLS Identities to Lambdas - <AUTHOR> https://developer.squareup.com/blog/providing-mtls-identities-to-lambdas <comment><AUTHOR> At Square most of the applications run in the datacenters and this project allows AWS Lambda instances to seamlessly call into the datacenters -- basically developers can break out part of their apps and deploy them as Lambdas.

This is a deep-dive on the mTLS set-up for Lambdas, but for general overview check out [https://developer.squareup.com/blog/enabling-serverless- appl...](https://developer.squareup.com/blog/enabling-serverless-applications- at-square/)</comment>


What the heck is Backstage anyway? - <AUTHOR> https://labs.spotify.com/2020/03/17/what-the-heck-is-backstage-anyway/ <comment><USER2> Previous thread on this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22593568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22593568)

<comment><USER3> that thread is dominated by confusion about what backstage _is_. i'm hoping this thread will have some new insights.

<comment><USER2> Yes; perhaps that's why they made this article.

(Just to be clear, the reason for linking to previous threads is just to satisfy curiosity. If it were a dupe we'd mark it as such.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's cool and all, but it seems like it would be more fair for Spotify to spend its extra money actually paying artists.

<comment><USER5> I'd like a way to directly tip artists. Let me set a tip budget in my account and then give me a button push a few cents any time I listen to a song I really love.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This story describes it pretty well too:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22595224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22595224)

</comment><comment><USER7> My summary: Centralized portal to deploy microservices.

No need to go through GCP/AWS list of portals (config networking, ssh, etc.) and then get your Git account setup on that VM.

<comment><USER8> More accurate to say it's a centralized portal to all backend systems, including deployment, CI, documentation, code management, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it looks nice!</comment>