Nokia and Microsoft Announce Plans for Mobile Partnership - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2011/feb11/02-11partnership.mspx <comment><USER2> There's the Nokia version too: [http://press.nokia.com/2011/02/11/nokia- outlines-new-strateg...](http://press.nokia.com/2011/02/11/nokia-outlines-new- strategy-introduces-new-leadership-operational-structure/)

From the Nokia announcement, but not MS: _Under the new strategy, MeeGo becomes an open-source, mobile operating system project. MeeGo will place increased emphasis on longer-term market exploration of next-generation devices, platforms and user experiences. Nokia still plans to ship a MeeGo- related product later this year._

<comment><USER3> \- MeeGo is already open-source

\- "a product" sounds like "one single product" to my non-native english reading comprehension skill

As a ex-maemo user (N810) and someone that took a long, hard look at the N900 last time a new phone was due I'm sad. This is the sure death of that platform imo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder what this means for Qt, given that the Windows Phone of today runs its apps in a CLR/Silverlight sandbox.

<comment><USER5> No Qt on windows phones, although Nokia's site still says:

[http://developer.qt.nokia.com/faq/answer/is_qt_compatible_wi...](http://developer.qt.nokia.com/faq/answer/is_qt_compatible_with_.net)

"Is Qt compatible with .NET?

Yes. You can use Qt to create .NET-compatible applications. For details on how to do this, please refer to Using Qt objects in Microsoft .NET in the documentation at <http://qt.nokia.com/doc/activeqt.html.>

<comment><USER4> Fixed link: <http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7/activeqt.html>

Apparently they integrate Qt with .NET via COM, which AFAIR is not available on Windows phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I still hope, that they will release n9 with meego this year. Nokia with Windows phone os doesn't sound right.

This announcement doesn't really come as surprise. IMO it will be success, if Microsoft opens it os to other frameworks.

edit: As we can see, it comes as a bad news to nokia really. Todays pre- mareket share value have droped already by ~8%.

</comment><comment><USER7> What Nokia gains is a solid partner in the top end segment of the smartphone market - enterprise. The first casualty of the merger will likely be RIM. Android and iOS will suffer in the enterprise as well because of Microsoft's ability to offer better integration with its enterprise software.

Nokia has already gained several billion dollars in next generation mobile OS R&D, and need no longer worry about the uncertainty of the Java's future. In addition they are able to remove the high barrier to entry presented by C++ in order to attract new third party developers.

</comment><comment><USER8> It was inevitable. Personally, I was hoping Nokia would go with Android.

I'm not sure how well this partnership is going to work, but it might take a while to get used to the idea of non-Symbian Nokia's.

</comment><comment><USER9> A lot of views on this deal have Nokia selling the farm. I don't think so. I'll bet Nokia is paying $0 per license for this with unlimited access to source code etc etc. This is because MS has been flogging their new phone OS for almost a year with very little traction. The lynch pin of it all though is...how do the search proceeds get split?

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow, disclaimer longer than the press-release. Which poor soul was forced to write such a thing...

</comment><comment><USER11> haha the losers are partnering up. Nice move. This was visible from many years ago. Starting from details like how microsoft windows annoys you to install updates or creates pop ups and how slow your machine gets after a while. Also take Nokia's mediocre symbian GUI with no developer/hacker perspective whatsoever on their devices.

</comment><comment><USER12> i hear the Borg pays really well..:)</comment>


Stupid Patent of the Month: Movies from the Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/11/stupid-patent-month-movies-cloud <comment><USER2> is 143movies.com safe to use?</comment>


The Steps to a Universal Online Tutor - <AUTHOR> http://davidvandegrift.com/blog?id=63 <comment><USER2> There are many people noodling around with some implementation or another of Stephenson's "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer". [1] [2] [3] [4] There is indeed an XPRIZE that directly acknowledges the influence of Stephenson's vision. [5] This article contributes to that ongoing, healthy mania to create such a tool by identifying some of the hard AI problems that need to be solved to realize the tool.

I think Stephenson side-stepped some of the identified hard AI problems by indicating the visualized primer was designed towards children and teens in mind with a pre-configured topic "curriculum" (addresses some of Navigating a Semantic Graph and Knowledge Ingestion Engine), and the original primer used "ractors", professional actors who voiced and emoted avatars in the primer with appropriate cues from the primer on what to say, etc. (addresses Natural Language Understanding and Natural Language Generation).

[1] [http://proto-knowledge.blogspot.com/2011/11/building- young-l...](http://proto-knowledge.blogspot.com/2011/11/building-young-ladys- illustrated-primer.html)

[2] [https://medium.com/message/the-kindle- wink-4f61cd5c84c5#.1bx...](https://medium.com/message/the-kindle- wink-4f61cd5c84c5#.1bxexf3ac)

[3] [https://www.quora.com/Who-is-making-Primers-inspired-by- the-...](https://www.quora.com/Who-is-making-Primers-inspired-by-the-Young- Ladys-Illustrated-Primer)

[4] [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/08/the...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/08/the- young-ladys-illustrated-primer.html)

[5] [http://forum.xprize.org/t/a-young-ladys-illustrated- primer/3...](http://forum.xprize.org/t/a-young-ladys-illustrated-primer/308/4)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been designing a variation of this for almost a decade, waiting for the remaining technologies to fall in place for the interface.

These past few weeks contained an announcement which is probably the last one.

I use a tiny component of it every day, and my current project leverages different types of AI.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think IBM has been making some important contributions in turning into product all that research in the AI (and related) field with its Watson congnitive system. I recently started a research internship at IBM Research and I've played a little with Watson. I must say that it works very well in understanding natural language and providing useful responses.</comment>


Slack faces growing challenge from Microsoft - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/c91a5136-1fa3-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87c65 <comment><AUTHOR> Without paywall: [https://outline.com/zvEjNy](https://outline.com/zvEjNy)</comment>


A Cheating Scandal Rocking the Poker World - <AUTHOR> https://www.theringer.com/2019/10/4/20899034/poker-cheating-mike-postle-stones-gambling-hall-twitch-no-limit-holdem-sacramento-veronica-brill <comment><USER2> For people who are not familiar with poker and dont understand why people are 100% sure this person is cheating, allow me to explain.

This player continously makes decisions playing poker that are theoretically unsound and manages to always win the maximum and lose the minimum amount of money possible.

So not only are his plays theoretically unsound, there is no observable underlying strategy to his play. He plays conservatively when the player he is playing has the best hand and he plays aggressively when the player he is playing has a worse hand.

The only thing consistent about his play is that his decision is the perfect play he could make if he had access to the other players cards.

This kind of play is possible in a very small sample but this person has been playing this way consistently for a year now.

<comment><USER3> How do you falsify his claim that he can read his opponent's faces and tell what cards they have? Isn't that a common skill in high level poker?

<comment><USER4> A couple of responses here:

First, the issue is that he's winning at a rate that is 10+ standard deviations above what the typical winning/profitable player is achieving. These results are accomplished across a significant sample of sessions (39 live streamed ones), and across almost a year.

If you consider some of the players considered the best "live readers" in the history of the game (Ivey, Negreanu, etc.), none have won at the rate that he has.

Secondly, he's playing $1/3 and $5/5 poker in a city (Sacramento) that is not exactly a gambling mecca. You would expect someone who is as good as he is to play higher stakes games. $1/3 and $5/5 are stakes offered at nearly any casino.

Third, he's performed well against some elite pros. Matt Berkey (who regularly plays the highest stakes in Vegas) was in a streamed game against Postle, and Postle performed extremely well in heads-up hands. Given that Berkey is playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars on a nightly basis in Vegas, and seems to be a profitable player in those games, are we supposed to believe that Postle somehow has identified body language tells that no one else has discovered?

This is not even considering other facts like:

* Postle used to consult for the production team behind the streaming for the casino

* Postle used to claim to run some kind of app development company, and has since deleted his LinkedIn

* The extreme winning sessions seem to only have taken place during streamed games

Sure, it's possible that there's a benign explanation here, but it's looking far and far more unlikely.

<comment><USER5> Not definitive by itself, but the hat is very suspect: [https://www.vegasslotsonline.com/news/wp- content/uploads/201...](https://www.vegasslotsonline.com/news/wp- content/uploads/2019/10/mike-postle-hat-montage-1024x566.jpg)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, looks like a high probability of electronics in the hat.

<comment><USER7> well then let's just hope those electronics don't fall out of the hat the way he moves it around...

[https://youtu.be/Eg34YTF-meA?t=7502](https://youtu.be/Eg34YTF-meA?t=7502) (yes, url with timecode :) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems to me that security at the venue is extremely inconsistent. They care enough about cheating to time-delay the stream (even to the announcers), but players are allowed to have phones and keys and things at the table? Maybe don't allow that?

<comment><USER9> Seriously, even a phone without internet seems like a massive opportunity to cheat. Simply create a custom app that allows you to input all available information via accelerometer input or volume button clicks which is fed to a poker engine and the then the app communicates the result of the engine's decision via vibration pulses.

Even IF you allow phones though, it seems insane not to make players play in an RF-shielded room so that radio signals can't enter or leave.

<comment><USER10> It sounds like your idea is just calculating odds - this is a slight advantage, but most pro's have learned to do this in their heads already. Poker math isn't very complicated.

<comment><USER11> maybe this is just my ignorance showing, but really? people can just computer large factorials and binomial coefficients in their heads fast enough to participate in the game?

I had always thought that knowing the odds exactly just wasn't that useful because there was a lot of missing information and it was more important to read one's opponents.

<comment><USER12> It's usually not anywhere near that complicated. To use an example from the article he folded a QJ against a QT with 89J on the board with no flush possibilities. In this case there are not very many hands that can be beating him: the pocket pairs AA, KK, QQ, JJ, 99, 88, stuff that makes two pair like J9, J8, 98, and the straights QT and T7. Overall this is going to be close to the chance when holding 77 that your opponent has a higher pair, which most professional players will "just know" is about 3-4% because they memorize tables of such facts[1]. This means he should believe he's a pretty substantial favorite and why the fold was so unexpected.

[1] [https://poker.stackexchange.com/questions/1203/pocket- pair-s...](https://poker.stackexchange.com/questions/1203/pocket-pair- starting-hands-vs-probability-of-opponent-having-a-pocket-pair)

<comment><USER13> It is that complicated if you're trying to factor accurate ranges, card removal and bet sizing. He's obviously not doing this because he's playing an exploitative style. In otherwords, he's guessing perfectly based on his perceptions.

For the mathematically perfect, they spend hours studying solvers which takes considerable processing power to generate the trees. A human player can calculate aspects of it but they can really only memorize what the solver would do. And some high stakes online players are using custom software to augment their decisions.

Depending on the bet size, the solver could call the turn a % of times. And depending on blockers, unblockers and the bet sizing, the solver could advocate to call/raise/fold.

<comment><USER2> Unless you are playing at the absolute elite levels you do not need to perfectly calculate your own range or another persons. But yes, the better you get the more complicated the math is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it just me, or do others find it disturbing that very serious accusations are being made and promoted with nothing but very circumstantial evidence.

I read the article expecting to find some solid evidence of cheating, but instead is just a bunch of speculation and innuendo.

<comment><USER15> Occam's Razor.

They need to rip the RFID tags out and watch his performance completely suffer.

<comment><USER16> I fired up the last live stream and it seems they put in a "electronic devices need to be away from the table" rule. [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/489058455?t=13m51s](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/489058455?t=13m51s)

But it doesn't seem to be a rule they enforce all the time (as one player said "that would be a good rule to have all the time") but the other players said they liked the rule simply cause people actually pay attention to the game instead of their phones now.

If it is how others have suggested in this thread, he has a tap into the system reading the cards and they if they only have that card reading system enabled during the live streamed games (Postle only seems to play during the live games and would be constantly looking at his phone) then that would be "enough".

If he is using a large reader in a bag or something then surely something powerful enough to read his opponents cards would also be picking up the cards in the dealers hands (the rest of the deck) esp if his opponent is on the other side of the table with the dealer in-between them.

That's just my speculation on the matter.

EDIT: Though he does seem to have his phone in his breast pocket. And if he really does have a tap into the system it wouldn't take much to create some easy to conceal device to feed him data via another mean other than a phone screen.

Some of the other games seem to happily have some of the players wearing headphones and the like so unless there was an outright ban on electronics near the table their would still be "issues".

If he does indeed have an "in" to the system then even ripping out the RFID system and replacing it with cameras (like in other televised poker games could be a data leak unless they ripped out the WHOLE thing and started a fresh with another company supplying the tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> He keeps his phone on the chair between his legs. He glances down at his phone before making a decision.

Why is that even allowed?

Why is he, or anyone else, allowed a phone in the room at all?

I mean, the mere presence of a phone is just such an obvious vector for cheating.

<comment><USER18> This is so obvious it is not even ridiculous. Like: hey this pupil keeps his phone under the table while the other ones put it on it during an exam. And he aces it!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Taking a look at his BB/100 (big blinds per 100 hands) versus "normal" players (and against potripper, a known cheater) shows just how out of the ordinary Postle is playing: [https://i.imgur.com/66i3Tii.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/66i3Tii.jpg). Admittedly, the sample size is small (live poker is much slower than online), but his win rate is outrageous.

For context: against good players (e.g. perhaps NL1000 in the bay area, and maybe NL50 online), a winrate over 10BB/100 over a long period of time is considered very good.

<comment><USER20> Is this the number of Big Blinds that he eventually wins or something else?

<comment><USER21> VPIP - Voluntarily put in pot - So % of preflop hands where the player bet money. How 'active' a player is in terms of betting.

BB/100 is a calculation of how many 'big blinds' the player has won per 100, where big blinds is a specific $ amount. Effectively it's how profitable the player is.

As you can see, he's high on VPIP, which means he bets on a high percentage of hands. At the same time, his play remains highly profitable. It's so far out of the norm there's only one plausible explanation.

<comment><USER20> > It's so far out of the norm there's only one plausible explanation.

The greatest poker player that ever lived? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For those who say there is no conclusive evidence.

CERN considers 5 sigma as the level where they are confident of announcing a discovery of new scientific result. 7 sigma for Higgs Boson. Statistical evidence against Mike Postle's game is stronger than that. It also only happens during streamed games with RFID chips in a single casino.

Either world's best player is playing for peanuts (relatively speaking) in single venue using high variance style without variance or he is cheating.

<comment><USER23> That's the same kind of reasoning that sent a mom of whose babies died to prison for decades. (I can't remember her name so can't link, sorry - it's a well known story of a mother getting convicted for double child murder because a doctor did some shitty statistics in court).

Sure, the chance is high. But if there is no conclusive evidence, then there's no conclusive evidence.

That might be enough for angry Twitter mobs, but I sure hope that it's not enough for court.

<comment><USER22> Your argument goes as follows:

There has been bad statistics in some completely different case. This argument uses statistics. We can conclude that this argument is also bad.

<comment><USER24> No, that's not the argument. The argument is that something that's highly improbable for _this_ person to do is probable for _someone_ to do.

Consider if you had 1,000,000 people flipping coins. You'd expect one of them to flip 20 heads in a row. However, if you took the person who did it to court, you'd argue: it's highly unlikely this person could flip 20 heads in a row. They must be cheating!

I don't know enough about this case to say if it's correct, but OP is saying more than "dur people use bad statistics". They're saying it's the same fallacy. In the woman with the babies case, SIDS is rare, but in a country with millions of mothers it can happen to the same one twice. In this case, playing perfect hands is rare, but in a country of millions of players, you'd expect someone to, _somewhere_ , maybe in a podunk town of small scale games.

Of course, the fallacy doesn't make _forward_ predictions. If he continues to win improbably after he's been identified, then it's not that.

<comment><USER25> It's not a fallacy; it's that using a purely probabilistic approach here is not warranted. It requires some Bayesian reasoning.

The main difference is in the SIDS case, you have a sample size of 2.

In the Postle case, we have hundreds of hands he is involved in; dozens of sessions. Multiple instances of where he makes incredibly good reads, contrary to optimal theoretical play. (the article also notably does not detail any incorrect reads).

We also have a good understanding of how playing lots (50 %) of hands should affect his variance, yet he seems to come out of almost every session a winner. He should be coming away a loser a lot more.

The idea in popular culture that great poker players can "read" other players like a book is overblown, and a bit obsolete. Modern live players have learned to conceal their intentions much better than in the past. Yes some players may still have slight tells, but unless his opponents' eyes are bulging out of their head like a cartoon wolf when they get a flush, that can only account for a slight edge.

So sure, if you take a purely probabilistic approach and say "well, somebody somewhere could go on that sort of run", then it looks like a fallacy. But if you take the other data: That he doesn't play in other cash games, that he cashes almost every time despite a high variance style, that he makes theoretically unsound plays at critical times and they always turn out to be correct, that other legendary players do not have these sorts of results...then it seems to me there is a very high likelihood that he is cheating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> bloody-crow So, there cameras live-shooting the whole thing and another system that overlays rfid readings over it. The resulting footage than gets stored on some system and being broadcasted with a 30 minutes delay to twitch.

There's enough opportunity to leak this information in near-realtime via some previously planted backdoor (Postle is a former employee), or a current accomplice from within the company.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow, putting RFID chips in every card... gee what could go wrong?

How does that idea even get past the whiteboarding stage? Seems so stupid for any poker house to do that. I mean come on, there is real money at stake and you are putting RFID TAGS IN EVERY CARD???

<comment><USER26> Couldn't each RFID tag have a UUID that maps to some in-house database to decode them to their actual card value? Each card/deck would essentially be "unique" and if you read the tags all you'd know is that your opponent is holding cards B8BB148A-1BA4-493D-A9C4-884A2AAA4491 and 1534DE97-B227-4292-817E-01112B9BC1E5.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER27> Unless you never reuse a single card, then whoever is scanning the cards can know what a card is if it's played again.

<comment><USER28> Could be worked around by rolling the IDs every time cards go through the shuffler. That's beyond the capability of most commercially available RFID tags, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Soon the thread on TwoPlusTwo resembled a detective's corkboard with red > string wound around pushpins, connecting the various dots that revealed the > definitive answer to the mystery

What definitive answer? All I ever see in the article is speculation, circumstantial evidence and statistical analysis this indicates something is probably going on.

This article is very underwhelming and short on actual details.

<comment><USER30> To me it appears he has access to the system that scans the rfids of the cards.

Article mentions that he was involved with a company that consulted with the casino.

Someone should run some tcpdumps on their wifi.

<comment><USER29> That seems like a quite likely explanation. It doesn't seem like actual definitive evidence would be that hard to find (if the relevant people were actually interested in finding it).

Does it really matter if you have exposed one cheater who over-used the system when the system still has unknown and unfixed flaws that could be enabling other, more circumspect cheaters?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Accompanying TwoPlusTwo thread: [https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news- views-gossip/mike...](https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views- gossip/mike-postle-cheating-allegations-faq-first-post-1753388/)

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't understand why they need RFID if the stream is delayed 30 minutes... Just look at the cards afterwards and backfill the information onto the stream...

<comment><USER32> That wouldn't be practical. It would slow the game down to a point of being almost unplayable and the way cards are discarded currently would prevent that.

<comment><USER31> RFID seems like it wouldn't be practical... how do you keep players from reading the signals?

<comment><USER33> Close range sensors and secure transmissions.

As long as the reader has to be within a couple of centimetres of the cards there's really nothing other players at the table can do to get the data that isn't obvious. It's not like you can lean over the table and scan your opponent's cards with your phone without raising a few eyebrows.

I'd guess the transmission of the card data from the table to the servers for the broadcast wasn't secure. Either because someone involved set it up that way on purpose to cheat, or because they had a 'password123' sort of password on it without thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Doug Polk did a funnny YT takedown of this story a few days ago. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDtE9vrRiA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDtE9vrRiA)

He shows a clip with Mike's brother talking about how Mike will do anything he can to angle shoot (eg. cheat). Funny stuff.

</comment><comment><USER35> Looks like it's been figured out [0].

[0] [https://mobile.twitter.com/vdthemyk/status/11798924471424491...](https://mobile.twitter.com/vdthemyk/status/1179892447142449153?s=09)

</comment><comment><USER36> _While his neighbors keep their phones on the table, he always keeps his phone on his chair between his legs, with his left hand holding it in place beneath the table._

That casino allows phones at a high-stakes poker table? Duh.

<comment><USER37> I mean last time I was in Vegas was 2013 and couldn't use my phone playing black jack

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> There are way too many red flags here(only playing superhumanly at the RFID games, in fact not playing elsewhere,etc).

There are some similarities to chess cheating here.

There were defenders to the infamous Borislav Ivanov too ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borislav_Ivanov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borislav_Ivanov)) even though all decent chess players could tell he was cheating.

In the Borislav's case the cheating method was not found although many suspect it was a vibrating smartphone in his shoes.

Of course there are differences between poker and chess cheating as well.

Pure poker computer without the extra information would not be that much of a help to a good player.

What is similar is that both of these players make superhuman moves consistently.

Less greedier cheaters would not be caught so easily.

Like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igors_Rausis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igors_Rausis) it was very suspicious (mostly because of his age) but until the smoking gun in the toilet it was still somewhat plausible that he was not cheating.

</comment><comment><USER39> Don't read the article, it lacks any factual evidence. It's like a book without an end, where the murder hasn't been found yet (if there was any).

<comment><USER18> No but it does point out clues: word hay AND phone under the table or not showing. Left hand not visible.

I would not let any student of mine do any of those things in an exam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't believe in ESP, but I know others that do. I have pointed out to some friends that Las Vegas wouldn't exist as it does if there were people that really had ESP. They could use telekinesis to control the outcome of games or they could use clairvoyance and precognition to predict what was going to happen or they could use telepathy to read others cards. If ESP existed in a group of people I believe that many would reside in Vegas living off their abilities and not performing tricks for gulible researchers.

The fact that Postle doesn't cash in on this remarkable ability by playing in higher stake games makes his performance suspicious to me just as people that claim ESP that don't bother to take the casinos for millions makes he skeptical of their claims.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think his "hack" is something far simpler than having a co-conspirator. As he helped setup the live streaming system, he also installed a piece of software that nicely calculates what to do at every step and simply sends him his own percentage calculation. This is far more difficult to detect and would require reverse engineering the entire system end to end to find the culprit. It could be anything from a backdoor in the RFID system to an AI that reads the video stream when it gets sent into OBS. There are tons of vectors that could easily be setup. I very much hope that the resolution here isn't just a Civil penalty but that the FBI gets involved and he goes to jail.

<comment><USER42> The FBI does sometimes take an interest in massive ongoing fraud...

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Can someone give the tl;dr on whether it was actually proven? I tried to read the article but it's paragraph after paragraph of "As I enjoyed my chocolate cake on a patio at a Parision bistro, the sun pleasantly warming the table and people going about their business unaware of the wrongs of the world, my thoughts turned to the prime numbers and how they related to music" and almost none of it has any real information.

<comment><USER44> No, it has not been proven. All of the evidence (like his impossible winning statistics) lean toward cheating, but there's no smoking gun at this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> So what is the consensus? He has an accomplice who is watching the stream and texting info? Does the stream show the players' cards (never seen it)?

<comment><USER15> Read the article dude, it explains it

<comment><USER45> I did read it. It doesn't actually confirm anything.

<comment><USER46> >He has an accomplice who is watching the stream and texting info? Does the stream show the players' cards (never seen it)?

From the 4th sentence of the article:

>and the game was broadcast on a half-hour delay so that viewers couldn't relay information from the broadcast to the players during the hands

<comment> bloody-crow It's entirely possible that as a former employee he has access to the system that is responsible for introducing the streaming delay and gets a real-time feed on his phone or some other wearable device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> well, I think this whole thing is going a bit out of proportion. what do we have so far?

\- a guy is doing something highly unlikely(not impossible, just unlikely)

\- lots of speculation

\- the whole internet seems to be out to get him.

In 2009 German speed skater Claudia Pechstein was banned for 2 years from the sport based on irregular levels of reticulocytes in her blood. Nobody could prove that she was doping, however this was the first case of a ban based on circumstantial evidence alone; no forbidden substances were ever found during her repeated tests. Later it turend out that she had a rare genetic disorder called Hereditary spherocytosis. While the court-stuff is still ongoing, science papers have been written, and the IOC has refined the test. still she lost 2 years at the top of her game.

I must admit that figuring out this riddle is rather tantalizing, I have been nerd-sniped by good riddles in the past, however my Cpt. Picard-sense is tingeling. let's keep the pitchforks at bay, shall we?

</comment><comment><USER47> What is a plausible technical explanation for how he is cheating?

A phone in between your legs, though suspicious, is not enough evidence.

And who thought it was a good idea to put RFID in playing cards?

<comment><USER48> Simplest explanation would be an inside job.

The article says he worked for the casino as a consultant at some point in the past.

So he has a connection that works on the livestream production that has access to the RFID-provided hole card information in real-time (perhaps through a software backdoor?)

Then he has some kind of device attached somewhere on his body that receives some signal that tells him what other players have, sent to him by the insider setup.

This could be a BLE device connected to his phone that vibrates morse code or some other signal, etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I assume all this heat will bring on an actual law enforcement investigation? I mean, that has to be some serious fraud if he's actually cheating?

</comment><comment><USER49> The only thing this circumstanial evidence justifies is an investigation. The author is stating he's a cheater like a matter of fact.

<comment><USER42> If he weren't cheating, he would be happy to play poker in literally any other venue besides this one particular streaming program for which he personally set up the RFID. He would win in those other venues in similar dominant fashion, and we'd all hail him as a great poker player and not at all a cheater.

He hasn't done that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> While I recognise the valid points made elsewhere in this discussion about this guy's luck and/or cheating, I can't help wonder about how we would react differently to an AI "oracle" that gave useful solutions to problems we can't /couldn't solve. Where is the boundary between experiential evidence and statistical "proof"?

<comment><USER51> I'm not sure I fully understand your comment but I certainly wouldn't wager my money playing poker against the system you describe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> So what's the problem here? Just check his magic hat and sue him to hell.

</comment><comment><USER53> Should be easy to disrupt his numbers: play against him with your cards always turned down. Do no look at them :)

</comment><comment><USER54> =w2hhjjjg34tg

</comment><comment><USER55> TLDR: a poker player has an unusually high win rate, says he's not cheating, online sleuths are trying to find cheating evidence. No concrete conclusion.

<comment><USER56> Take a look at other comments in this thread - I don't see how it could _not_ be cheating.

<comment><USER55> I didn't say he is or isn't. Just that no concrete conclusion has happened - the casino hasn't agreed that he was cheating and kicked him out. He still seems to be participating and claiming innocence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Sorry I've just watched a random show with Mike Apostle on yt and I have to say - by this small sample - bullshit. Assuming he cheats, I don't see how. He played dominating hands with very classic conservative playstyle, not unnecessarily asking for value. He made risky pre flop all ins. He bluffed loosing hands. All sort of stuff that happens in an average poker game. Not sure why I even watched him playing considering the awful article.

<comment><USER42> Focusing on the wrong things is a great way to lose lots of money in poker, and in life.

<comment><USER57> Thanks for the help mate. I will now focus on the right things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Live higher-stakes but non-professional players have major tells. They're good enough to play good hands and know the odds, but not good enough to bluff, make hero calls or folds.

I used to play 10/20 and 25/50 PLO, and while the game is different, the pattern described is pretty typical. Big multiway pots and speculative hands are the rule, so if a draw completes and there's 4 players in the hand, someone has it.

This doesn't sound like cheating, just a typical higher stakes game but on TV.

<comment><USER59> This is one of the worst comments I have seen on HN. I don't think you actually checked any evidence before commenting.

I have played poker professionally for more than 10 years and I am 100% sure he was cheating.

It's not that he is playing well and making good reads. Actually often he plays like shit but happens to make some correct decisions postflop. Decicions that in long run would be really bad but in those cases were perfect. One nice example is where he went allin preflop with 45o against two players who both had AK.

Please check some of the streams and come back here to comment. You can start from Doug Polk videos. If you don't see that he is cheating then you are not a winning player and probably never have been.

<comment><USER58> I haven't checked out any of those vids. Maybe it is obvious cheating, maybe he's a fish on a heater, but until someone has actual proof he's cheated, I'm not about mob justice.</comment></comment></comment>


I Used to Be a Human Being - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-technology-almost-killed-me.html <comment><USER2> Debatable.

</comment><comment><USER3> A real human bean.</comment>


A new python PDF rendering library - <AUTHOR> A new python PDF rendering library (css/html to pdf) with special focus on long reports (splitting tables f.e.) - early stage. but get in touch if you think it might be useful. OpenSource since first commit.<p>https://github.com/systori/bericht <comment><USER2> How is this different from what already exists?</comment>


An alternative to employee options/equity grants - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2987-an-alternative-to-employee-optionsequity-grants <comment><USER2> I think its a creative solution in response to the employee ask, but it doesn't seem to actually resolve the issue does it?

One of the reasons that equity grants work is that people are incented to grow the company as the bigger/more valuable the company becomes they participate in that valuation growth. As equity, there is also the notion that if circumstances dictate that you move on you will still be rewarded for your hard work 'later'.

The 'units for time served' system effectively simplifies to this if you allow the employees to 'keep' units after they leave the company.

Its disingenuous to say 'we have no intention of selling or going public' since I can assure you that you also have 'no intention of doing this for the rest of our lives'.

And no, I cannot read Jason's thoughts, but I can reason to this statement logically. Jason (and other co-owners) of the company have interests outside of 37signals. Working there may be the awesomest thing in the world now, but at some point when the realization comes that you're time on the planet is finite, it occurs to one that perhaps they should take some time to do some of these other things. The notion that if you had enough savings you could live off the returns from that capital, and do the things you love, and not worry about specific deadlines, becomes more and more appealing. At some point the owners reach the 'tipping' point where they would rather work 'free form' where the cash flow for basic lifestyle was disassociated from the work product they're doing (the word 'retired' really doesn't cut it, more like 'base expenses covered before work income is considered') If the combination of owners wanting to change their lifestyle, and some entity is willing to offer you enough money for 37signals to make that change possible cross, the environment is ripe for a sale. The only other statistically probable 'exit' for LLCs is for the founder to die unexpectedly. The outlier case is the founder runs the company until senility and degeneration results in them dying leaving behind what was once a thriving business/practice/partnership and is now simply an obligation to file a tax return once a year.

By that reasoning I know that the principals of 37signals are going to either 'sell the company' or 'go public' at some point in the future, regardless of their protestations to the contrary. And when that happens, you've carved out 5% of the sales price / market value for the employees who have stuck with you to that point and are currently there. Which is admirable.

But Jason's point number 3:

 _It should reward current employees. This was about who was at the company at the time of a sale/IPO, not people who worked here years ago._

Does not sound like the system would provide anything for the folks who were instrumental in you getting there but for one reason or another had left the company. This system might leave them with a bad taste.

A variation on this system would be to reserve a larger chunk (say 25%) of the transaction price or fair market value (FMV), and accumulate your units on a monthly basis (so 1 unit per non-owner employee / month) which fill the whole pool over the lifetime of the company ( prior to sale / IPO ). Allowing employees to retain their unit-shares even after people leave, so basically the employee-month units slowly grow over time (while the value of the company grows over time) and the payout is proportionate to the time of service, and is retained for employees who have left, and requires only that you compute the integral number of months any employee has worked. (no admin overhead). Finally, it gives a better signal of recognition to your employees that you value them with a more meaningful percentage than 5%.

A sample worked problem where each employee-month-unit (EMU) accumuates 1 per non-owner employee per month.

3 founders, $500K seed round

+1 year 5 employees (2 non-owners) (24 EMU accumulate if sold each EMU worth slightly more than 1% of the company)

+2 year 15 employees (12 non-owners) (+144 EMU, 168 total, at sale each EMU worth .14% of the company, 2 yr vet worth 3.6%)

+3 year 20 employees (17 non-owners) (+ 204 EMU, 372 total, each unit worth .07% of the sale price)

People who stick around get a bigger payout, leaving isn't a penalty (you may not have a choice), and everyone gets rewarded the same.

Unfortunately given that some employees are going to have a much bigger impact on the success and 'value' of the company than others, I doubt they would go for that scheme either. That doing compensation is hard isn't really a very surprising result I guess.

<comment><USER3> Some context your analysis is missing:

37signals is older than any YC company. In its current incarnation, I believe it's older than Facebook. It is clearly not on the same trajectory as the typical company we talk about on HN. It is not a flavor-of-the-month, or even of-the-year, for Fried and DHH.

 _and_

Supply and demand probably does give them an edge on employee comp, but from friends I know who've worked there, they're making market wages. People aren't taking jobs there on the promise of hockey-stick upside. It's a pretty amazing work environment. You should see the offices. Place is nuts.

 _You_ don't have to take them up on their comp plan, but it's naive to write comments as if there was something wrong with it. Most YC companies would be very poorly served indeed by the comp plan 37signals laid out here; those companies are all on VC shoot-the-moon trajectories, and a stake in a liquidity event is a big chunk of the reason you'd work at any of them. In 37signals case, you have to start by defining what a liquidity event even looks like.

<comment><USER2> It was not my intent to criticize their overall compensation plan. Jason put this blog post up as their response to the employee request for equity participation. My analysis was to look at how his solution responded to that request. I works well in some ways, not as well in others.

As I mentioned the desire on his part and that of the other owners to respond to that request was admirable. And certainly for non S-Corp type businesses it can be very difficult to respond to this sort of request in any way.

My comment on compensation was targeted to exactly this:

"People aren't taking jobs there on the promise of hockey-stick upside. It's a pretty amazing work environment. You should see the offices. Place is nuts."

Compensation is such a rich confluence of things, from wages to benefits to corporate culture to 'lifestyle perks' to profit sharing. My mother-in-law ran a CPA practice for 30 years and did various things over those years as forms of compensation. So its a rich, complicated, highly nuanced, and rarely replicatable space where companies have to operate. I get that.

<comment><USER3> The word "disingenuous" means something unflattering. Also, compensation may indeed be a rich tapestry, but options only matter if you're going to sell, go public, or buy them back. For companies without a defined trajectory towards liquidity, they're actually deceptive.

<comment><USER2> Ahh, got it. Perhaps naive would have been a better word, although I recognize that in some circles that can be a larger insult. And for the record, I think that their plan for this 5% is much less deceptive than options in an S-Corp can be.

The disparity for me is that Jason makes this claim, "And since we have no intention of selling 37signals or going public – the two scenarios where options/equity really make sense – the complexity became too hard to justify."

My claim is that _that statement_ is disingenuous because it posits the following argument; The company will never be sold, thus options or equity would never be liquidated, so providing equity or options doesn't make sense. The implicit claim on which this argument rests is that they will _never_ sell the company, and that claim is neither supported by a structural contingency on the company, nor supported by a statistical comparison with the ways in which LLCs are dissolved (granted medical practices and law practices seem to dominate in this area, and can skew the results). In my opinion, it deceptively leaves that impression rather than being 'up front' about what are the real constraints.

I would completely believe him if he said instead "The Articles of Organization for the LLC specify exactly how any proceeds from the sale or dissolution of this company are to be distributed, and we are loathe to change them. Thus we don't really have an option here." (no pun intended)

And again, I think its _really impressive_ that they came up with a way to share 5% of the proceeds when the company is sold. I merely suggested some ways they could make it 'look more' like what other people get in terms of equity and options by both allowing people to keep accumulated time after leaving the company and by having those 'units' represent a similarly sized chunk of the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mature LLCs do have tricky issues when it comes to option grants for employees. Among other things:

1\. LLCs are partnership-like entities governed by an operating agreement and every owner (member) has to sign and agree to the terms of such agreement, meaning also that every owner (employee) gets to see in intimate detail who owns what within the company, who has what management authority, who has invested what, and the like. Bad for the company.

2\. LLCs have no counterpart to ISO-like grants, meaning that everyone who exercises options can (normally) effectively do so only at the time of a liquidity event because he would otherwise have to pay an immediate tax on the "spread" (difference between exercise price and fair value of equity interest acquired) as of the date of exercise and would thereafter hold an illiquid investment for what could be many years. Bad for the employee.

3\. Apart from the limitations of LLCs themselves, it becomes difficult to administer an option plan when the value of a company is already high because it costs too much for employees to buy into it. For example, if a company is already worth $10M, the exercise price of options needed to buy .001% of it would be $10K. How many employees want to part with real dollars for the hope of a speculative return way down the road, especially if the company itself says it has no plans to move toward a liquidity event any time soon?

Hence, the alternative plan adopted here makes sense. It does _not_ represent any form of true equity interest but is an employee bonus plan. This means you lose the benefits if you leave employment. It also means you get, at best, employee compensation that is subject to tax at ordinary income tax rates as well as to all employment taxes (though no tax is due until the bonus is paid). It also means that the interest is not transferable. It is basically a special reward granted to those who stick it out over the years until the company gets to a liquidity event. It is not perfect but, given the problems noted above, it is actually a pretty good solution to the problem of how to afford special incentives to key employees whom you want to add value to a growing but mature company operating in LLC form.

<comment><USER3> Since we're on the subject: aren't there restrictions for LLCs about principles/members taking W2 wages? I know there's a way around this, but I'm curious about what the best practice is for issuing equity to employees at LLCs.

<comment><USER4> The members in an LLC can take W-2 compensation just as owners of any other entity can be employed by that entity and take salary, etc. There are no special restrictions on this, at least that I am aware of.

If early-stage LLCs want to adopt equity incentives, they can mimic what a corporation does with a little custom drafting to the operating agreement. Instead of defining ownership in terms of percentage ownership as set forth in a schedule (the typical LLC pattern), LLC owners who want to issue equity to employees can define the ownership in terms of "units" of ownership. They define a number of authorized units in an operating agreement (e.g., 10M units) and then reserve a grouping of them for an equity incentive pool. These can then be used to support unit option grants (like stock options, albeit always NQO and never ISO) or restricted unit grants (akin to restricted stock grants in a corporation). If this is all done in the early stage, the units can be priced at nominal pricing so as to avoid adverse tax consequences to the employees. There is still the problem of option holders being taxed on the spread on the date of exercise (as with NQO options in a corporation) but, otherwise, such grants may be made very much as they would be in a corporation (made subject to vesting, etc.).

The key to an effective plan is to do this early in the LLC's existence and, if done in that way, this is pretty comparable to what happens with a corporation (except for the absence of ISO-like options). As long as this is all done right, there are no special restrictions on issuing equity incentives to employees in an LLC.

LLCs are state-specific and it might be that there are special restrictions in Illinois or other states that don't exist in California where I practice. But the above sums up the essence of how it is done here.

<comment><USER5> I do not pretend for a moment to be the attorney here, but it is my understanding that members of LLC, unless that LLC has made an 8832 election, are mandatorily considered self-employed and must make quarterly SEP payments, and that they cannot be employed as W-2 because, as a creature of state statute, the LLC is not held at the federal level (for tax purposes) to be a distinct entity apart from its members.

<comment><USER6> This is false in at least the commonly understood case, you can elect to be treated like an S-Corp under an LLC and receive a salary and keep your SEP-IRA among other things.

The obligation to be 1099 is the default case for single-proprietor LLCs but can be overcome as I described above. It is not necessarily the case for multiple-member LLCs.

FYI:

I am not a lawyer, but I have done all this before.

<comment><USER5> _you can elect to be treated like an S-Corp_

Right, that's what an 8832 election I referred to in the original comment is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This plan conjures an image of accountant given a copy of the PHP manual and the instruction to write a login form. He may do it the right way... but I'd be a wee bit scared.

Prior to implementing something like this at your own company, I'd ring your friendly neighborhood tax accountant and make sure you didn't just create a taxable event for all employees. Much like writing a login form, I think there are a lot of very subtle infelicities in implementations which have very serious consequences.

<comment><USER8> We had the plan vetted by lawyers and accountants. It's a taxable event should it trigger, but by then you have money to pay the taxes. It's not taxable at its implementation.

<comment><USER9> The bonus would, however, be taxed as income and not as capital gains. That's kind of a bummer.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. In a large exit, this could more-than-halve what employees net, moving the proceeds from a 15-20% long-term capital-gains rate up to a 35-40% regular-income rate.

<comment><USER11> How is 60-65% less than half of 80-85% ?

<comment><USER10> Yes, I mispoke, and should have said 'more-than-double what they pay in taxes', rather than talking about the net.

In a max-tax scenario (high-tax state like California, expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2013), the bulk of a large exit would be taxed at about 53% if ordinary income, but only about 33% if long-term capital gains treatment can be obtained. So they'd be netting about 30% less due to the 'bonus' approach rather than equity.

(I'm counting medicare tax, which no longer phases out any income, but not social security, which isn't collected on income over ~$107K.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The classic alternative to options/equity is a partner track. That's how huge law firms and the big 4 accounting firms do it. There are multiple levels in the partnerships, and the upper levels are often pretty spectacular.

Partner tracks address some of the concerns Fried brings up here. For instance, they reward current employees and don't create a class of former employees with a painful claim on forward revenues. They're simpler than options (you're gunning to "make partner"; you don't need an Excel spreadsheet to figure out what a win is).

They also have downsides; for instance, the biggest partner tracks are also all up-or-out systems where competent employees who are assets to the team but not ambitious enough to make partner are incented to leave.

So the question I have is, why didn't 37signals do that? It's a proven model. I ask because I'm sure there's a reason, and I'd love to hear it.

<comment><USER12> Isn't this fairly onerous to administer? At my previous company, a private consulting firm, there are some shareholders who are kept around largely because there is not liquidity available and if you've been around for 25 years, even if much of this was during a period of demographically-driven economic growth, it's hard to get rid of you as a partner (since you have to be bought out) no matter how little value you provide. I'm interested to hear why 37signals didn't go with this model and if they'd ever consider going with an S or C-corp over the LLC.

<comment><USER3> I don't know; I've never administered one. But: the scheme I described also accounts for most small consultancies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> To clarify: * Employees working now will get nothing if they leave. * The amount you get is not tied to performance. * Chances of this happening are slim. * In many cases employees get new stock-option/bonuses at M&A anyway (to keep them on board).

Sounds like the only good thing from this is: You have something to tell loyal employees asking you why you won't share with them some of the proceeds they created you by hard work.

<comment><USER14> That's the main reason I like traditional options/equity, it makes me feel like I own part of the company (no matter how delusional or small of a share that may be), so sure I get paid for 40 hours of work, but if I work 60 hours and don't get overtime, it's not terrible because I'm helping the company I own part of.

37sigs has implemented essentially a non-performance based bonus (which is also what they call it), which kind of defeats the point of equity/options at all in my opinion. An interesting question would be, if 37sigs does take any more investment in the future, and this pool stays the same, it does seem to have the advantage of not being diluted?

<comment><USER15> The employees want the sale price of the company to be higher so their portion of the 5% pool will be higher. As far as incentives go, it's not much different from equity/options.

<comment><USER16> There are the tax implications. This scheme will be ordinary income and subject to FICA and income tax rather than being taxed as capital gains. By being clever they're screwing their employees out of a lot of money. Employees also can't make an 83(b) election on a bonus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's like anti-profit sharing. The employees own part of the company, but only for acquisitions and not for profits.

<comment><USER3> This is like an anti-comment. No part of it makes sense.

The employees _do not_ own part of the company. They're promised a bonus in the (unlikely) instance of a major liquidity event.

Granting them that bonus in no way injures any other element of their comp. This is so much the case that Fried says most of his employees have probably forgotten they even have this bonus. That's not what you say when you're using a comp scheme as leverage with your employees.

You have no idea what 37signals people make, how profit sharing and incentive comp work, or why people choose to work there. But you feel just fine snarking about them because they don't fit into the "first engineering hire gets 5%" shoot-the-moon mold we normally talk about on HN.

<comment><USER17> Dude. You totally misunderstood my comment. An actual ownership stake means you share in both profits and acquisitions. A typical employee profit sharing means the employees shares in profits but not in an acquisition unless they also get stock options. In the scheme described, the employees share in acquisitions but not profit. So it is the anti-profit sharing. Anti- not meaning bad. Anti- meaning opposite. Maybe not the deepest thing in the world, but geez, you took it a bit too seriously.

<comment><USER3> Options or restricted shares --- or even the common stock of publicly traded companies --- do not automatically entitle the owners to a share of the profits. Profit sharing and equity are orthogonal issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You're giving away 5% of the pre-tax value, but that only translates to 2.5% net for those at the receiving end here.

One key distinction with options is that they can be more tax advantageous if the employee exercises and holds their stock for more than one year, triggering long term capital gains (LT cap gains may or may not exist in the future, though).

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't know... What are some realistic numbers here? Suppose a mere $10m acquisition, 5% is a mere $500k. Suppose 10 employees, 5 are maxed out, the other 5 have 4,3,2,1,0 units respectively. The payout range then is $14k to $71k. Working there for 5+ years, taking home only $71k, which is definitely nice, while the boss gets at least a few million... I think employees should be made as happy as possible at acquisition time. I'm not sure this scheme would accomplish that, but I don't know what realistic numbers would be nor what competitive options/equity figures would look like.

<comment><USER20> Could be interesting to also apply this scheme to the company's yearly earnings! That way everybody would get something out of it, and it wouldn't focus the company so much on an acquisition/IPO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They're trading the 'unfair' uneven distribution of equity based on position for one in which people are compensated equally regardless of position. This twist on the distribution seems like a great way to attract people to fill those positions that generally come with a less-than-average equity expectation. However, I'd be willing to guess that there is a negative correlation between ease of filling a position with a high-quality hire and the average expected equity amount for that position.

It seems to be a disincentive for those with higher-than-average equity expectation in that it implies that their contribution to the company is valued at the same amount proportionally as the lowest-contributing employee of the company, salary notwithstanding. If you are looking to hire a new CEO and inform him/her that, in the case of an IPO or acquisition, the new secretary hired last week will get the same cut of the bonus pool as the prospective CEO, they might be less inclined to work for you vs a company that, all else being equal, might offer them a proportionally higher payout.

Edit: Response to reply by jarin:

1) Right, I meant to encompass salary with 'all else being equal' in the last sentence.

2) The fact that something is currently unlikely doesn't mean that it won't ever become more likely. I think ChuckMcM's reply addresses this pretty well: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2888740>

<comment><USER22> You have to consider two things though:

1) They pay good salaries.

2) They are not seeking an exit strategy, and this is merely a "just in case" scenario.

I would guess that most technical and executive hires come to the company with full knowledge that an IPO or sale is against their core values.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Personally, I would be more interested in a profit-sharing system. I understand that actual equity is difficult to do in some situations, but the 1-5 units system could be adapted to offer profit sharing. When the company makes a profit, the portion designated as a distribution gets divided into the total units as employee bonuses. I'm not sure how these units are handled once an employee leaves, but as a guarantee against missing out on a windfall profit or exit I could see this system being useful.

</comment><comment><USER24> This just seems like the owners are being menschen in trying to ensure everyone gets a taste if they ever IPO.

Given that this "isn't [used as] an incentive to work at 37signals" I don't see how it's an _alternative_ to options which exist entirely to incentivize employees & management.

</comment><comment><USER25> I really like the simplicity and overall fairness of the plan.

The only thing I wouldn't like (and it could very well be that way for technical reasons[1]) is the part where only current employees get a part of it. I understand the idea behind that but if someone were to do fantastic work for them for over 5 years and leave 6 months before Jason Fried and DHH change their mind about selling, that employee might feel stiffed.

Instead, I could see a system where you earn units while you work there and lose them for the time you don't work with them, at the same or different rate. Say you earn 1 unit per year worked but lose 2+ per year non-worked.

But, you know what? It's their company, they do it however they want to :) and considering they have no obligations to put that in place, it's hard to argue.

[1] e.g. maybe it's a pain to pay somebody anything once they're not on the payroll…

</comment><comment><USER26> I think this is a really smart, fair program that every startup should read, especially since most companies (even those that want to) don't get sold/IPO at a huge price that makes tiny options worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER27> They say: _"I wouldn't be surprised if many employees have forgotten about it or don"t even know about it at all."_

Which means it's not by any means _"An alternative to employee options/equity grants"_.

</comment><comment><USER28> This seems more like an attempt at rationalizing "equity" (in the social sense) rather than motivating performance, which is fine. I would love to hear what the document is that guarantees execution of their promise at a sale. And why not put 5% of shares into a trust for employees per the allocation stated so they don't face the significantly higher tax rate of ordinary income? Thanks for sharing your idea.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't know...

I like that you're trying to address the problem, but I think this points to another problem, which is the core issue of whether you actually care about your employees' success as much as you do about the company.

On a grand level, no, of course not, but at the micro level, you should.

You want people to stay, even though they're considering moving on to form something of their own. You want them to feel like they are 37 lifers.

Obviously, you want some to graduate and move on to bigger things too. These types are also valuable.

All in all, it doesn't feel to me like you care about your employees, especially when one founder is busy in LA and/or racing around in expensive cars, and the other is writing posts like this.

If I were an employee and presented with a plan like this, I wouldn't feel the need to invest in anything more than a paycheck, and while that's great for many companies, that doesn't seem right for one, like 37 Signals, that once was cutting edge.

I want something I can sink my teeth into, and feel like I'm going somewhere. I have a feeling many other HN'ers feel the same. This won't attract people like that, or get them to stay, but maybe those aren't the type of people you want?

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't understand how this is any kind of incentive at all. They've declared they have absolutely no intention of ever making good on it (will never sell out or go public). They don't even tell new employees about it.

Other than making themselves feel like good benevolent managers, this utterly fails as an incentive. What's the point?

<comment><USER31> It's not meant to be an incentive.

<comment><USER30> The very title is "An alternative to employee options/equity grants", which are certainly meant to be incentives!

The thing that makes these completely worthless is, should the company ever actually have an equity event they are void, as the new owner may do whatever they please which probably won't include honoring "these spreadsheet scribbles we put together with no legal weight whatsoever"

<comment><USER31> In the comments on the original blog post, Jason Fried says:

"Because we're making the point that this payout should not be expected. You should not be banking on this. It's not an incentive to work at 37signals. It's purely a bonus."

<comment><USER30> A bonus is an incentive. And this one is defined as 1) never going to be paid, and 2) not legally binding in any case.

The whole idea is doubletalk; that's my point. Its a non-incentive incentive. Its a non-paying insurance policy.

<comment><USER31> An incentive is a device to motivate employees. This is not what they are trying to do. They did not start with the problem, "How can we motivate our employees?"

Incentive to work better is not the only motivation that an employer may have to share money with an employee. Generosity is another motivation, for example.

Only Jason knows his true motivations, but if he says it's not an incentive, there is nothing inconsistent or logically wrong with that.

<comment><USER30> Ok, then if he's so generous, why not quit screwing around and just share equity? Then, if a loyal employee leaves after 5 years they own something of what they built. If they get bought out the loyal employees would have some legal leverage to profit by the buyout.

Instead they have a promise of a bonus they're never going to get (by his own declaration), and have to start wondering what he's playing around at. Its the opposite of generosity - "its all mine, but maybe some indefinite share might go to you if somebody else later feels like it, but I'm going to try hard so that never happens"

This non-bonus bonus plan seems to be lazy, ineffective and insincere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can vouch for the agreeableness of this system. I received a bonus from a similar pool when the company I was working at was sold. It came across to me and everyone else who received it as a genuine and thoughtful act.

That may have been ameliorated by the fact that there was no expectation ordinary employees would get anything -- we just found out about this bonus at the same time we got our "Welcome to [Acquiring Company]" letters. The founders also had a very generous profit-sharing-equivalent project bonus plan as well, but as has been mentioned, this is in an industry where bonuses are more prevalent than equity.

</comment><comment><USER33> It seems broken. While the guiding principles are interesting, there's a reason why stock-option plans have evolved to where they are today: all cases have been tried, and they are well understood.

One example of problem in Jason's plan: if you go IPO, you immediately owe 5% payments on the full valuation of your company, to your employees. Where is this money coming from? The money raised during the IPO? Fine, but how many shares did you float?

<comment><USER3> "Broken". They're a 30-odd person web app company in Chicago. They aren't going public. They're throwing off cash at a rate that allows them to buy supercars. They're not selling. Why would they? What the fuck good would "options" do any of their employees? Options don't mean anything unless you go public or sell the company.

Believe it or not, _most companies_ don't sell or go public. PwC and E&Y seem to incent employees just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "We treat this entire idea purely as a bonus in the unlikely even of a future sale/IPO."

At far too many companies, equity is seen by the employer and employee as a form of cash-equivalent compensation, even though it isn't unless that equity has an income stream attached to it (as would be the case in, say, a grant of restricted stock in a company that pays dividends). So it's somewhat refreshing to see a high-profile tech company eschewing this.

The problem here is that 37signals' "plan" lacks all substance. The company doesn't intend to go public or seek acquisition, and its "bonus pool" is potentially limited to just 5% of any acquisition price.

As such, this "plan" doesn't promote retention the way equity does, and for all intents and purposes, it doesn't promote much of anything as the savvy employee will never expect it to bear any fruit.

Put differently, this "plan" feels sort of like an equity version of a poorly- made Louis V. knock-off. While, to its credit, 37signals' isn't pitching this as a justification for a less-than-market salary, there's a strong argument to be made that offering an equity substitute like this is _worse_ than not offering equity at all.

The better approach for a company like 37signals? Make sure salaries are highly-competitive, offer an attractive benefits package and, if you want employees to feel like they have a direct "stake" in the company's success, implement a profit sharing plan. The benefit of this approach is that you attract the type of employee who wants to work at a company like yours without creating any confusion on trying to pretend that you're offering something that you're not willing to offer.

</comment><comment><USER35> "And since we have no intention of selling 37signals or going public"

It seems to me to be unfair to create incentives like this without intending on ever paying them out. I'm glad that they are creating this now instead of if and or when they are acquired, but I still think equity grants are a more fair way of handling incentives.

<comment><USER36> This is one of the reasons we don't formally discuss or disclose this plan when hiring people. It's not pitched as an incentive to work at 37signals. It's a bonus, purely a bonus, if/when something very unlikely happens. We do not factor this in to the overall compensation package when making people offers or giving people raises.

<comment><USER17> Do you think this detailed plan is even worthwhile then, rather than just a stated commitment to pay out at least 5% of the sales price to employees?

<comment><USER36> It's not terribly detailed. It's a few paragraphs long with a couple of pages of standard legal boilerplate. Employees don't have to sign anything or sign up for anything. It's better for everyone that it's in writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I always thought something like this would be the more fair:

        Employee X share = (Max(0, Business Days Worked Before Sale - Business Days After Leaving Employment) / (Business Days Open Before Sale * Total Number of Employees)) * Total Employee Equity Percentage * Total Equity Amount

</comment><comment><USER38> We have this at my company at well. However, I treat it as a piece of paper, no more no less because the owner of my company has no intention to sale at all.

</comment><comment><USER39> Doesn't that miss the point of giving your employees incentive to work "above and beyond", to the benefit of the company and all? It's a good thing they don't tell the employees, cuz what would an employee want with worthless "BIG IF" points?

</comment><comment><USER40> Why max at 5?

<comment><USER36> So one or two employees that have been with the company for significantly longer than everyone else don't substantially dilute the pool.

<comment><USER25> That would make for odd office dynamics where the more senior employees are driven to quit by the less senior ones…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wow, gives employees all the impression of co-ownership but none of the real co-ownership.

Much like the Skype-SilverLake plan.

37signals sure has some good lawyers!</comment>


Ask HN: What part of Silicon Valley should I move to? - <AUTHOR>

Ok so this post has been coming for sometime, however today was one of those days when I realized that I am inherently more productive when not surrounded by people who constantly call me for petty computer problems that I frankly, do not have time for and do not have the heart to charge for.
I am a 20-something (straight) white male who loves all things tech, I am not prejudice or homophobic and I love a great conversation, book or business deal more than any woman I have ever met. I feel that the valley is where I need to be (maybe more for my sanity than anything) I grew up in the south (Louisiana) and have lived here all my life but am ready for a change.
I am planning and have been planning for over 6 months now to move to San Francisco. I am a freelancer and have been developing for almost 10 years now but only professionally for about 3-3.5. I have plenty of work and customers that will continue to use me no matter the location I am in physically. I can reasonably afford to live several years without much fuss or being cash strapped.
I want to go to the valley because I cannot have a boss, I HAVE to work for myself and I want to start some new and innovative companies in the heart of SV. So I am asking you guys where I should move in SV to meet interesting, intelligent hackers who can help me further myself in my endeavors into technology? I would ideally like to be in a place where I can meet just as many great minds in a coffee shop as I can by attending tech workshops and seminars. I am cheap by nature but as long as rent is under $2000 or so per month I will be comfortable paying it without hassle. Please help me figure out what place would be the most fitting to my nature.
Thanks in advance for the help HN <comment><USER2> Go visit first and see what areas click for you. This topic has also been hashed out a number of times here, so search the archives.</comment>


Show HN: Spark Inspector, a run-time debugging tool for iOS apps - <AUTHOR> http://static.sparkinspector.com/ <comment><USER2> Wow, in about 4 minutes I was able to track down a UI positioning bug with the UINavigationBar that has been nagging us for two months.

Buying 5 copies now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice work, but certainly no replacement for PonyDebugger[0] with SuperDB[1]. Plus, they're both FOSS.

Sure, those don't have support for NSNotifications, but I've found it's best to avoid those as much as possible anyway (essentially like a super GOTO).

[0] <https://github.com/square/PonyDebugger> [1] <http://shopify.github.io/superdb/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree—PonyDebugger is great. I think it's less trivial to use, though. My goal with the Spark Inspector (and it's setup assistant, which makes all of the project changes for you) is to bring down the difficulty and provide an experience on par with Apple's built-in developer tools. I'd love to integrate FScript into the app so you can issue SuperDB-style commands. I think I'm gonna try to auto-convert into their NextStep syntax so people don't have to worry about it, though - we'll see how it goes :-)

<comment><USER4> Author of SuperDB here. I think you should be able to embed most of SuperDB itself directly in Spark Inspector. I'm not sure how you're doing runtime inspection, but SuperDB already has most of the underlying stuff already hooked up. I think they'd make a lovely pair!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excited to play with this!

JFYI Chrome (26.0.1410.65) is bugging out all over the video element as I scroll: <http://bit.ly/19iUieq>. Firefox doesn't support the mime type. Safari/Canary etc are fine. I'd suggest just posting the video to YouTube and embedding it using the iframe player, as it's so captivating.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up! I'll see what I can do - I noticed that in Chrome but I figured it was just me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's hoping Apple buys these guys soon. Is it really just an inspector or can you get your changes to be reflected in the code?

<comment><USER7> You can make some display/position changes in the inspector that are reflected live in the Simulator, but I haven't found a way to turn that into any permanent change.

I've been thinking of it as a Firebug-style tool for iOS.

<comment><USER8> <http://mireus.com/xrayeditor/> <\- does this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow this is great. I will very likely buy the app when the trial is over.

One thing that was strage is the app asked for my contacts. I think it was due to something in the crash reporting. If you want my email address so you can provide support, that is great, but asking for access to my contacts turns a good thing into a bad impression.

<comment><AUTHOR> @jcampbell - I just installed the app in a new user account and it looks like that is caused by the crash reporter trying to get your email address. Definitely a bad experience - I'll see if I can fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd love to try it, but it only runs on OS X 10.8 or later.

<comment><USER11> Any chance of a port to 10.7? I'd have bought it last week (when I first found it) if it hadn't been 10.8 only.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll try to change the deployment target and see if I can make it 10.7 compatible - shouldn't be too hard. I actually went 10.8-only because Apple usually requires the latest version of Mac OS for iOS development, so I figured most developers would be on 10.8!

<comment><USER11> Excellent, thanks very much. I might be the only laggard left. I'm now following @SparkInspector on twitter to keep an eye out for 10.7 support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great job, this is and incredible leap for iOS development. I foresee this becoming an essential tool in a lot of developers workflow.

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks really nice - I like it. I did have one small issue though: I had Spark Inspector add itself to one of my projects that has two targets, and it added its frameworks to the wrong target. Not a huge issue, but perhaps something for others to be aware of.

</comment><comment><USER14> This tool is slick! It should be part of Xcode. It lets you peel back every layer of every item in your UI and also monitors the notifications - all in real time.

</comment><comment><USER15> I heard about this a few days ago on Twitter and immediately purchased it. Absolutely incredible tool, great presentation, and a price I could not resist.

</comment><comment><USER7> This tool is pretty amazing. I first heard about it last week, bought it after using it for 10 minutes, and now it's a solid part of my workflow.

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anybody know of a similar tool for Android?

<comment><AUTHOR> To my knowledge there isn't one. I talked to a friend of mine that works on the Android core, and he said it'd be a challenge to do without continuously polling the entire view stack for changes. Objective-C's runtime makes it easy to hook into methods and watch for changes, but Java isn't so flexible. He said it'd probably require a custom build of the Android OS to do well. But I'd love for both of us to be proven wrong!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does this exist for HTML?

<comment><USER18> Yes, every browser has an inspector that lets you change elements in realtime. Right click somewhere on the page and select "Inspect element".

<comment><USER17> Sorry, I'm aware of that. Thanks for suggesting it, though. I'm in particular interested in the 3D view.</comment></comment></comment>