Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-free-cafeteria-food-facebook-ban-2018-7 <comment><USER3> This is one of the most stupid policy I have ever seen in the bay area (and there are a lot of stupid ones over here).

As much as I dislike some of the big tech cos and the TechBros working there bragging about the free food all the time, I still believe a company should be able to decide if they want to offer food or not.

Restaurants were unable to turn a profit, so they lobbied successfully and now everyone beside them got a worse outcome.

This is economy 101. A highly visible group of people lobbied hard (in this case the restaurants), and they put a small burden on everyone else to have their issue resolved. However when you calculate the outcome, the burden on everyone else is bigger than the gain that the highly visible group got out of it. Everyone is worse off.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, it's not quite 'economy 101'.

Or rather, 'economy 101' is that anyone with enough leverage, will use monopoly powers in one area, to take control of an adjacent economy.

American Oil empires were not built on some new amazing way to get at oil, it was because some had control of the railroads, and charged their competitors a little more to transport therefore putting them out of business (through aggressive consolidation).

The FB cafeteria example is not a very good one admittedly, but an alternative could be 'they buy up all the restaurants in the area and make them exclusively available for FB staff'. Which they very well could do, and it would then seem kind of crazy, no?

Economically speaking, it would be 'above bar'. After all, 'free market', right? If neighbourhood residents want to eat in a restaurant, screw them, they can go across town!

We live in communities, not economies.

The city ordinance is stupid, but the motivation is not.

Ironically, these are 'rich people problems' ... the kinds of things that happen when little dots of wealth blow up and there is a huge economic inequality, even if most people are 'kind of well off'.

<comment><USER5> As it turns out, poverty doesn't cause crime. It's _relative_ poverty that causes crime. Basically, if people are low down enough on the dominance hierarchy, they feel like they have no hope of getting anywhere, then why shouldn't they start acting up?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3XYHPAwBzE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3XYHPAwBzE)

(On the other hand, in societies where everyone is poor, there can be peace.)

<comment><USER6> If you're in a society where everyone is poor, there is not peace, there's extreme violence being applied by a government that is responsible for _everyone_ being poor (it's not just a subtle thing for everyone to be poor, that requires an incredible amount of persistent violence and rights denial by a central authority with overwhelming power). You're just swapping one type of violence out for another.

<comment><USER7> There's no need for a central power for that.

Tribes constantly warred with each other, because they saw that as a good way to get resources.

Of course, during the middle ages it was feudalism, which was not centralized at all, it was stratified. Classes, classes, classes. Haves and have not-s. The haves of course arranged things in a way to keep what they have, so they come up with rights for themselves, which were very much not egalitarian ones.

And of course there's the real centralized one-party autocratic setup, where instead of noble houses openly competing with each other, people just play the subtle game of extort those who are under you, which makes inequality even worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _The ban wouldn 't be retroactive, however, so on-site food at companies > like Google and Twitter would still be available_

Cool, so start-ups lose a potential hiring perk to the incumbents.

(Does anyone know the story behind this bill? Which politicians and restaurants supported it? I'd like to avoid the latter going forward.)

<comment> FLUX-YOU >Cool, so start-ups lose a potential hiring perk to the incumbents.

They could just do something similar to what colleges do:

\- increase salaries just a bit

\- but the increased salary goes to a food card

\- employees can't easily turn this into cash

\- you swipe it and "pay"

\- the company is essentially paying for the employee's food

Money changes hands, but no one is at a net loss than what a free food perk would cost.

<comment><USER9> The benefit of a company cafeteria is mostly that you don't lose half an hour walking to a restaurant, waiting in line, ordering etc.

It's not about the money.

<comment><USER10> Yes, it's not about the money. It's about slavery. Tech giants want their workers to spend as much time as possible near their working places. Even during their lunch time when people are supposed to get some rest from their jobs, walk to the nearby restaurant, maybe meet some new people instead of those faces they see every f'ng day. NO! Facebook, etc. don't allow any distraction. They wrap slavery in shiny candies and give it to employees who are so happy that they are bragging about sushi, whatever to instagram. The new regulations are going to break that and that's perfect!

<comment><USER11> I've read a number of definitions of slavery coming from a variety of political perspectives. Some go so far as to term hiring anyone who isn't independently wealthy to work for wages "slavery".

None of them included giving employees perks in the hope that it will increase their productivity.

<comment><USER10> They definitely want to increase your productivity, you are right. Your productivity drives their revenue forward. They are willing to contribute small amount of that revenue for giving you free food. But do you really want to be like that? Work harder for free food?

<comment><USER11> I don't think the purpose of free food is to incentivize employees to work _harder_. It's to let employees have lunch in the office without having to leave. As mentioned several times in the comments here, employees at companies that provide this option tend to _like_ it.

<comment><USER10> it is to _make_ employees have lunch in the office without _letting_ them leave.

<comment><USER12> None of these tech companies make anyone eat the lunch and they certainly let employees leave. Do some research before posting.

<comment><USER10> Indeed they don't lock employees inside the building. Indeed it's far from slavery. It's wrong word. Rather it's exploiting of employees by using cheap tricks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Company-provided lunch provides an opportunity to build relationship among the coworkers. Most people do not says "no" to free lunch, especially if it's good. So, they naturally sit down together to eat.

When I worked at a company that offered free lunch, the company used it to help build rapport and camaraderie among the coworkers. It's one time during the day when the entire team can sit down and eat lunch together and get to know about each other, which is not possible through Slack nor via meetings. Just hanging out with everyone on the team, talking about the latest Marvel movie or Star wars, etc. It was also about convenience as well as reducing stress and decisions on an already-busy day.

If the team still wants to do lunch together everyday at an outside restaurant, it would not be easy, especially the logistics, which would be a nightmare -- getting everyone to agree on one place where everyone likes their food, finding a place that can seat the entire group at a single table, finding transportation / assigning driver/riders if it's beyond walking distance, and having to divide the check afterward (or Venmo), etc. Just for a meal that lasts no more than an hour, top.

<comment><USER14> _When I worked at a company that offered free lunch, the company used it to help build rapport and camaraderie among the coworkers. It 's one time during the day when the entire team can sit down and eat lunch together and get to know about each other, which is not possible through Slack nor via meetings. _

I stopped bringing my lunch to work and go out to eat specifically to get a break from my coworkers. Not that there is anything wrong with my coworkers, but I really enjoy the alone time in the middle of the day where I can just sit back and read.

<comment><USER15> And that's great if that's what you want. OP was just saying that free, internal lunch promotes team bonding for those who do desire it.

<comment><USER16> I work at a company that doesn't provide lunch, and we still manage to go out together and "bond".

Miracles do happen.

<comment><USER17> Why were you under the impression that nobody here knew that was a possibility and needed an exceptional anecdote?

The upstream comment even said free lunch "promoted" camaraderie, not "is the only way it can happen."

<comment><USER16> The original comment regarding "bonding" was equally anecdotal - you just agree with it, and therefore perceive it to be an argument.

Rationally, there's no inherent reason that free lunches promote "bonding", and no inherent reason that teams that go out to lunch won't bond. It's just cargo culting and post hoc rationalization for people liking free food.

Intellectual rigor is alive and well on HN.

<comment><USER18> I absolutely brushed shoulders with more coworkers when I worked at a company that had a cafeteria (this wasn't even free to us). My current teammates eat together sometimes, but unless it's an 'event' it's just 2-3 people, and always someone who wont go due to diet or financial reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Lotta hate for Mountain View in the comments here, which is ironic because with this ordnance Mountain View is trying to fix a problem that tech companies get a lot of hate on HN for. I've got mixed feelings about this, so I'll try and explain both sides:

The problem MV's fixing is the perception that highly-paid tech workers have become a class of their own, isolated from the larger communities in which they live and insulated from negative social consequences in the communities around them. When you get paid a high salary, eat at work, only socialize with coworkers, have all your logistic needs taken care of by your rich employer, and only go home to sleep, it's really easy to feel like your city's problems are other peoples' problems. In other threads on HN, you will see plenty of mudslinging about tech workers who step over homeless people on their way to work or kick neighborhood teams off a public basketball court so they can play a company game.

The Village at San Antonio is supposed to be exactly the type of mixed-use, mixed-income development that urban planners salivate over today. It's got a mix of luxury apartments and affordable housing over street-level retail, connected by pedestrian thoroughfares to the office space that Facebook is about to rent. There are over a dozen restaurants within walking distance, ranging from Chili's, Veggie Grill, and Sajj to The Counter burgers to upscale sit-down places, along with a Walmart, a Safeway, and a Whole Foods. The whole point is to fix all the problems with tech insularity and wealth polarization that everyone complains about here.

OTOH, the cynic in me says that it won't actually do a damn thing about this, and that tech workers will stand around talking to each other and ignoring the locals in line for Veggie Grill while the service workers around them eat at the Walmart cafeteria. And the only effect will be to reduce efficiency for people who could otherwise just grab free food, take it back to their desk, and get back to work. A lot of the point of the free cafes at Google was to cut out the friction of deciding where to eat, walking there, and paying, and instead just focus on the job we had to do.

There's no free lunch. Sometimes it turns out our desires are contradictory, and the flip side of intangibles like community engagement are reduced efficiency and heavy-handed regulation.

<comment><USER20> I feel what you're saying, and that definitely is something that happens. Especially for people who move for the job, it's very easy to keep oneself separate from the community. But making it illegal to feed your employees is a very stupid, very authoritarian way of dealing with it that feels like a terrible idea. I don't want to be told where to shop, ever, for any reason, and I dislike that these local governments are trying to force people to spend money at specific places over others. It would be difficult to describe this as any part of a free economy, and if I were starting one of these startups it would be a bad indicator for what might happen in the future and I would be extremely reluctant to set up shop in the town. What if the next move is even more egregious? Can't risk it man.

<comment><USER21> I see these types of comments, and I have a really hard time viewing them as anything but pretty entitled.

I mean, yeah, it's unfortunate for those who won't get free lunches anymore (I'm currently part of the group that does, although I'm not in the bay area) but it's not like you _deserve_ free food as a perk any more than any other random worker. If it were my company inflicting the decision on me after a record earnings call, yeah, I'd probably be pretty pissed off. But a city trying to make sure a corporation in a public, mixed use space doesn't insulate itself too much from the surrounding economy? There are pretty obviously people who benefit and people who are harmed, but it's not like this is the end of the world, those employees just aren't getting a benefit 99% of other employees in the world don't get either.

<comment><USER22> Private corporations on private property should be able to make private contracts with employee as they see fit, without government interference.

<comment><USER23> If the private corporation didn't like the conditions of the city zoning and development laws, they could build their office elsewhere.

<comment><USER24> Or instead we could vote these politicians out of office.

There are more techies moving to the bay area every day. Sooner or later those numbers add up and we've got ourselves a real voting bloc.

<comment><USER19> These were the politicians that techies voted _into_ office. The politicians that techies voted out of office opposed all development whatsoever - <USER2> were the folks that opposed the San Antonio Center development as a whole, and that blocked the North Bayshore redevelopment for over a decade until Googlers actually did form a voting bloc and voted the supervisors opposed to redevelopment out en-masse.

There are a surprising number of tech employees who actually do favor smart urbanization, community engagement, and mixed-use developments instead of holing themselves up in their employers and writing code. Tech (and particular Big Tech) has become a lot more extroverted than the days when it was kids who got bullied at recess because they spent all day playing with computers rather than learning social skills. (And IMHO, this is one reason why the industry has become less innovative lately - there are fewer programmers willing to hole themselves up with a computer for years until they solve a hard technical problem, and fewer managers willing to sponsor that kind of work. The Erlich Bachmans are outnumbering the Richard Hendricks.)

<comment><USER24> Indeed.

As bad as the current supervisors are, the former ones were a hundred times worse as they opposed ALL development.

And because of the changing demographics of the city, the worse politicians were voted out. Which basically proves my point.

And as demographics continue to change, the political power of this voting Bloc will continue to improve as well.

Maybe in another decade this increase in voting power will allow us to vote in politicians who are actually decent, as opposed to merely being less horrible than previous ones.

Yes, techie voting power has fought off the worst of the problems, but we can still continue to improve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is very interesting for me for a very different reason:

We're in Germany where this is taxed heavily. If you offer your employees free meals, this becomes part of their taxable income, so you actually have to give them a raise to even this out, and then you have employees that want to opt- out to get the hands on that cash...

I always wondered how Google Germany deals with this. There is a minimum below which it doesn't get taxed and specific items like coffee, water etc fall out of this, but it blew my mind the first time I was trying to set something like this up for our company.

<comment><USER26> It's taxable in the US as well.

There have been occasional attempts to enforce the law - IRS recently made noises in 2014/15.

The challenge is that it's taxable to the employees but hard to track and prove, it's for relatively little money per employee, and the firms argue that it's for their benefit to secure information/improve productivity/build cohesion...

Google can and will fight far harder than the IRS is willing to on this issue and the IRS isn't entirely sure that they'd win. The IRS can spend resources in places to make a much higher return with an almost certain chance of success.

So no effective taxes on meals.

To make it happen in your company, follow the Google and Uber strategy. Just do it and deal with the law later.

Your ability to pay any fines later may be different from Google's and the chance that one of your employees will call the tax office on you may be dramatically higher because Germany.

<comment><USER27> Free meals are considered income?

But free benefits are not considered income?

I don't see the difference between the two.

<comment><USER26> Most benefits are taxable at least in part.

Health is the most tax advantaged, and then retirement. Comes from WWII era rules aimed to prevent wage increases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Man - California, specifically the Valley, is completely off its rocker when it comes to policy making.

I really hope Amazon's new HQ helps pave the way to start de-centralizing the tech industry from that one, overcrowded, and increasingly almost hostile spot.

<comment><USER29> I'd just like to point out that Amazon HQ isn't in California, it's in Washington over near Microsoft, separated by half of California and the state of Oregon. Either way, I hope the same

<comment><USER30> Poster you're replying to said 'new HQ' indicating their comment was about the place Amazon is shopping to build, not their current Seattle HQ.

<comment><USER29> Right, but it sounded as if they were implying the old HQ was in Silicon Valley. I'm sure that wasn't the intention, just clarifying for the possibility of readers who may misinterpret.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm sorry but this is so f*cking stupid.

As a Bay Area resident my priorities are the cost of housing, cleaning our dirty streets and alleviating traffic congestion.

This is an example of progressivism gone awry. Solving the basics is incredibly important. Our quality of life is in decline (in the bay area) and this is the best our politicians can do?

I'm enraged.

<comment><USER32> If all tech workers went out for lunch every day that would be a huge boon to the local low skill labor market.

<comment><USER33> So over 20,000 employees would leave the Googleplex every day at noon to get lunch?

This just means the next massive campus complex will not open in Mountain View. Big profitable companies and their hordes of tax paying employees will go elsewhere, and definitely will not be supporting MTV's local businesses.

Welcome to the wonderful world of unintended consequences!

<comment><USER34> Is there anything stopping the next campus from opening a restaurant and not charging their employees?

<comment><USER35> Some thing exactly like that will happen.

 _" We don't serve free food to our employee, we charge $0.000001 per meal"._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was not surprised when I read the headline, but I was surprised when I saw the reason when I read the article.

I had expected it would be over taxes.

From the photos and description in the article and elsewhere, it looks like you can get full meals for free, meals that would cost at least $10 if bought at retail.

An employee who took two meals a day at the free company cafeteria every working day would be getting a benefit worth almost $5000/year. That's equivalent to something like an extra $8000/year salary.

I believe that food provided to employees is normally not taxable for the employee, and is actually deductible as a business expense by the employer (but I've not looked into how the recent major tax changes may have affected that), but I think that was intended for things like where employees have to remain available for emergencies during meal periods, or where meal breaks are too short to allow employees time to go get food, and things like that.

The term of art is that the meals have to be provided for the employer's convenience. In the short meal break case, for example, providing meals is for the employer's convenience because it saves them from having to offer longer meal breaks.

Meals offered for things like goodwill, morale, or attracting employees are not considered to be for the employer's convenience, but are still OK if they are de minimis. So things like donuts, soft drinks, meals when employees have to take occasional overtime, the occasional company party or picnic, and things like that are fine.

Putting in a cafeteria that offers free full meals to all employees all the time probably is not de minimis. It may not actually violate tax laws, but if it does not it is pushing the limits hard so I'd certainly not be surprised to see attempts to crack down from that angle.

<comment><USER37> Except of course that the _value_ of the food is not $10 because it is not being bought retail.

So the real value is probably more like $2, and even at two full meals per day that would translate to 200 working days times $4 is about $800.

<comment><USER4> No, value is $10. Cost of ingredients $2. But 'making a nice dish and serving it is labour intensive' and so that brings it up to $9, the remaining $1 would be the profit of the restaurant.

A better way to think of it would be how much it would cost otherwise, and it's $10. So the calculation of annual value is pretty much there.

<comment><USER38> A cafeteria with a ton of business and no need to advertise can probably cut those costs by a couple more dollars though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This was covered by the local news [1] and the city council member who was interviewed said:

> _"We felt the employees who work there should be able to patronize the > businesses—the smaller businesses—in this shopping center"_

Employees already have the _ability_ to patronize these businesses. This law is about compelling patronage.

1: [https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook- Offices-M...](https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook-Offices- Means-New-Business-for-Mountain-View-Restaurants-488948401.html)

<comment><USER40> Yes, compelling people to buy things that ought to be a personal and private decision is a very popular policy position for governments to take in recent years.

<comment><USER41> The government isn't compelling you to go to the local shopping centre. You can still order off Amazon.

<comment><USER42> Still.

But given this, can you say it will be for long?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This reminds me of the Steve Blank story about when companies stop giving out free soda: [https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle- ear...](https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle- earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/)

<comment><USER44> Came for this link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Much easier for city councils to virtue signal on non issues rather than tackling the sea of needles and shit on their sidewalks.

</comment><comment><USER46> This feels politically coherent: it strikes a populist chord, but just furthers the rent-seeking interests in the area. It's of the same ilk as NIMBYism, but this time, it's a different form of rent.

<comment><USER26> Note that the Golden Gate Restaurant Association supported the 2 supervisors who introduced the measure and has provided quotes as to how good an idea it is.

No one has mentioned the jobs to be destroyed in catering, nor the fact that catering jobs pay far better than restaurants for all the people making the food!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Since the article doesn't have it that i saw, here's the text of the facebook development condition in san antonio center:

""CAFETERIA CONDITION: In order to foster synergy between office, restaurant, and retail uses in the Center and realize the economic vitality of the project, the project anticipates employees in the office space will utilize food and retail services available in the Center. The applicant will encourage tenants and employees of tenants to utilize food and retail services available in the Center. Neither the applicant nor tenant(s) will subsidize meals by more than fifty percent (50%) or provide free meals for employees in the office space on a regular daily basis. An employer can subsidize or pay for employee meals as long as they are patronizing restaurants in the Center.

In addition: The applicant may make a request to amend this condition. The City Manager or a designee may make a recommendation to the City Council on this matter."

</comment><comment><USER48> Laughable. Do these politicians think that the food is conjured out of thin air with magic?

These cafeterias are located in the city (just like a restaurant would be), creating jobs in the city (just like a restaurant would), paying good wages and benefits to these people (unlike most restaurants would).

<comment><USER49> >paying good wages and benefits to these people

Absurdity of this proposal aside, most food service workers in these cafeterias are contractors who are not paid well and receive shitty, if any, benefits.

<comment><USER50> How does working at a cafeteria provider like Bon Appetit compare to working at a restaurant? By that I mean a place where office workers are likely to get lunch daily, where the typical lunch costs <$10.

Also consider that workplace cafeteria jobs generally have fixed schedules with weekends off.

<comment><USER41> Never worked at a mass catering company like Compass Group myself, but I know people who have. They are terrible places to work compared to a restaurant.

The smaller catering companies, with <30 employees aren't usually too different from a restaurant, but the big ones are run by corporate bean counters, where everything and everyone is just a number in a spreadsheet.

I guess it's no different from your local mom & pop Italian restaurant vs Olive Garden in that respect though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> If cities want employees to patronize local businesses, they they should start providing enough housing so employees can live near work. Stop forcing employees to live 30 miles away by restricting housing and then complain "But why won't they shop here!?"

<comment><USER52> No, they should stop getting in the way of housing. Definitely not provide it, that's just calling for a catastrophe as we can see from policies like this one.

<comment><USER51> I didn't mean "provide" as in the city building housing themselves, but meant "provide" as in to make planning decisions that allow developers to build higher density housing, especially near existing transit.

<comment><USER52> Oh, okay. Many people actually think the government should be the organization that builds and then provides housing. :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> These cities really are trying their hardest to kill their golden goose.

<comment><USER54> Yeah, really. Big tech companies, come down here to Texas. With your well- above-market-average salaries and free food.

<comment><USER55> And regressive state politics and terrible culture and weather. Tech companies hiring in Texas is a negative signal.

<comment><USER53> Regressive is in the eye of the beholder.

<comment><USER55> A state that thrives on the glorification of implements of violence, considers the health of women and sexuality to be subordinate to religious beliefs, and education a luxury is one I'd consider regressive. Others certainly disagree: I would not want to live in communities where their voice has any political power, and the feeling is probably mutual. So this negative signal is a win- win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I can kind of see where Mountain View is coming from, basically the "San Antonio Center" (if you didn't read the article, MV is only applying the restriction in that particular place, not in the whole MV) is one of two places in MV with some life and bustle (it's kinda the day destination, having a bunch of grocery shops as well as a walmart, kohls and target and the other is kind of the night destination, being more focused around restaurants and nightclubs), and if they allow some big company to have their own cafeterias and self-segregate it could risk killing the life of the place.

One thing they should do in my opinion is make the place more pedestrian friendly. Maybe they could replace the big parking lots that create sprawl with denser garages?

<comment><USER57> Why would it risk killing the life of the place? The people who already eat lunch there will still eat lunch there. This is simply a money grab by the people who happen to already be there, just like Prop 13 and rent control.

<comment><USER58> Large employers moving in and increasing land value would also increase the rent that a commercial landlord could get for offices vs. restaurants. Restaurants get no upside to this since it's very hard to compete with free. And this is before we consider that new companies moving in with free cafeterias could be replacing old companies with no free cafeterias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I live about 10 minutes from this location, and often frequent the restaurants there. It's smack dab in a high-traffic area (San Antonio+El Camino) and judging from the crowds, I can assure you that they get plenty of business already from the local community, even without Facebook.

That said, I would still have no problem if it was the landlord (WeWork) making this restriction, instead of the MTV government. This is a private business-to-business matter, and shouldn't be the domain of government.

</comment><comment><USER60> A place that I worked (not in the bay area) had a cafeteria where employees could eat one meal for free per workday by using a meal ticket. They also cut deals with nearby restaurants so the meal tickets could be used as basically $5 vouchers at the restaurants. That seemed like an OK compromise. Not sure how it worked behind the scenes.

<comment><USER28> Why should there even be a "compromise"?

My employer gives me free health care. Should that be restricted so I have to spend my own dollars and not get the benefit of a group plan?

Should employers not be allowed to give a transit subsidy because it hurts Lyft/Uber?

Maybe tech companies should not be allowed to offer stock based compensation because it's unfair to other city residents who work jobs without such things.

<comment><USER14> _My employer gives me free health care._

Your health care is not "free" it's part of your compensation where the employer gets to choose how you're compensated. I get healthcare via my wife's insurance and I would much rather have the money.

In a sane society, your health care wouldn't be tied to your employer.

<comment><USER28> It's "free" in the same sense that the food is.

<comment><USER61> Contesting this on the grounds that until a line-item on my paystub starts showing up for the cost of a free lunch, I don't think they're comparable at all.

<comment><USER62> The line-item on your pay stub was a mandate from Obamacare for price transparency. Prior to that the employer contribution for healthcare did not appear.

<comment><USER63> "Trumpfeed" will probably have a similar requirement...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My bet is that it makes no difference.

FB workers are rich, and they'll not want to eat every day in the caf, and they'll be out and about as much as they would otherwise.

The alternative won't be 'restos' it will be 'the microwave'.

<comment><USER64> It's going to make a huge difference in terms of FB's appeal to potential employees. Who wants to work at FB if it means that you'll have to waste time and energy figuring out what to do for lunch every day?

<comment><USER65> I dont think that's considered a deal breaker for most people, or even a major consideration

<comment><USER66> If two companies offer offer same salary and similar in every other sense, but one doesn't offer free food, I will choose one that does. If the company that doesn't offer food has +$20 salary per day, I would probably still choose one with food. It's easier, more convenient and probably healthier as well.

<comment><USER4> "If two companies offer offer same salary and similar in every other sense, but one doesn't offer free food, I will choose one that does."

... but in reality there are hardly any jobs that are so directly equal.

I used to always 'go for the money' when I was younger, but now ... all the other factors matter so much. Just the temperament of your direct reports matter so much. One fewer headache a week? What's that worth? A lot :)

Meals are a nice thing, but relatively small in the equation, at least compared to all the things related to the job ... and I find the food more a matter of convenience than anything. Personally, I'd be happy with free microwave burritos on those 'I'm busy' days, but that's just me.

<comment><USER67> I would argue that figuring out where to go for lunch, getting there, waiting in line with the dozens if not more other people who had a similar hankering, getting my food, eating in a crowded area or taking it back to work, are way more than one headache a week. I would consider that a daily migraine. In fact, that was my daily migraine before I just stopped going out for lunch altogether.

Free food isnt just about the food. Its also the convenience. I already have to fight traffic getting to work, and I fight through the crowds any time I go shopping or anywhere remotely popular in the area. Having to deal with that madness in the middle of a work day when I just want a meal would certainly be a dealbreaker for me.

And from my understanding, you wouldn't get any free microwave burritos -- those would be illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> All the ripple effects of this are so poorly thought out. There'd be environmental effects--all that takeout is going to come in disposable containers instead of reusable plates. There'd be delivery congestion-- personal delivery and catering increases. There's the fact that you're just putting tech kitchen workers out of a steady, consistent job (not to mention, those workers don't rely on tips!). And then at the end of the day, most people aren't going to go to sit-down restaurants to spend $20 on a sandwich in SF; they're just going to bring food from home.

<comment><USER21> > putting tech kitchen workers out of a steady, consistent job

From what I understand, pretty much 100% of the work is fulfilled by contractors. While I could be wrong, that's not what I would call a "steady, consistent job"

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Honestly the most offensive part of this is the tired Silicon Valley stereotype that tech workers don't "participate in the local economy" or "interact with their community".

The people I know in SF tech take BART, grocery shop, buy coffee, go to bars, go out for dinner, buy clothes, buy and sell on craigslist, hang out in parks, play soccer, bike, go dancing, date, have kids, etc, all in their city just like everyone else.

We are not that different from any other professional industry and shouldn't let people imply that we somehow contribute less to this city.

<comment><USER70> This! When tech workers make up more than an eighth of the city's population and are some of the biggest local tax contributors as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> > _San Francisco Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech > companies ..._

... while they hand out hundreds of thousands of free needles that end up on the street, among shit.

<comment><USER41> I live in one of the heroin hotspots of Australia, where they hand out free needles like candy.

It's better than the alternative, which is people sharing needles and giving each other all sorts of diseases.

Not only do they hand out free needles though, but also free sharps containers, and there are needle disposal bins all over the place for users to drop their used needles in.

I'm not sure how they convinced all the heroin users to dispose of their needles correctly, but they've done a fairly good job. It's rare for me to see a needle on the street.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Can everyone in this thread stop assuming Facebook employees are rich? There are plenty of non-engineering employees who make $50K for example and the free meals offer a huge benefit to them and even their families.

</comment><comment><USER73> So, are tech companies going to finally leave the bay area or what? I can see we're not welcome here.

</comment><comment><USER74> I don't see any positive outcome to policy that tries to _restrict_ benefits companies can offer? In a nation where many companies don't offer the greatest benefits anyway, it seems rather atrocious.

I get that this is localized in an area that has companies that probably offer better benefits than most others, but the idea of restricting benefits at all seems ludicrous to me

<comment><USER75> This is especially funny if one remembers the genesis of fringe benefits in the US. Those proliferated after, in the years of WWII, the government moved to cap salaries paid by companies. The companies, looking to attract best workers, started to offer a variety of fringe benefits - health insurance, lodging, life insurance, free food, free clothes ("uniform"), etc.

The regulation treadmill never stops, there's always a need to introduce new regulation to fix things broken by the previous regulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Can anyone comment on the legality of this? IANAL and it's just a feeling, but it seems like this must be unconstitutional somehow?

<comment><USER47> It's likely legal for states to do it It would not be legal for the feds.

There are fun loopholes though. Here's the text of the condition for facebook.

"CAFETERIA CONDITION: In order to foster synergy between office, restaurant, and retail uses in the Center and realize the economic vitality of the project, the project anticipates employees in the office space will utilize food and retail services available in the Center. The applicant will encourage tenants and employees of tenants to utilize food and retail services available in the Center. Neither the applicant nor tenant(s) will subsidize meals by more than fifty percent (50%) or provide free meals for employees in the office space on a regular daily basis. An employer can subsidize or pay for employee meals as long as they are patronizing restaurants in the Center.

In addition: The applicant may make a request to amend this condition. The City Manager or a designee may make a recommendation to the City Council on this matter."

So for example:

Facebook could open a restaurant in the center. If it does, it cannot legally choose to discriminate in who they serve (in california, anyway. In a lot of states you often can).

It can, however, legally price discriminate in various ways (AFAIK, if someone has case law otherwise, love to see it). This is in fact, quite common.

So for example, it could charge the public that walks in 1 million a meal. It could offer advance tickets to employees at no charge, and no one else.

This is also non-discriminatory on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin (which is what the 1964 civil rights act covers), disabilities (covering the ADA), etc.

I don't believe it would be found discriminatory to a protected class in most states (a lot of states add political affiliation, etc).

(this is just an example, and one i'm sure the IRS would have fun with :P)

<comment><USER77> There's a law in certain states that you can't serve alcohol in an establishment that doesn't also serve food. So, many breweries have tasting rooms where at the bottom of the menu, it makes it clear that, by law, they are required to have a food section - with a single token item which they will serve you, like a Pizza Pop or a single M&M - with jocular disdain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Techies in the Bay area need to get more involved in local politics. They are what makes the area tick and without them nobody would give a shit about the area. This finally need to get reflected in local politics, not nimby and keeping crap like it was in the seventies. Let's build that damn city from Blade Runner!

</comment><comment><USER79> I want to say this is the least rude way but I'll just say it -- this really seems like an oversight of local restaurants being unable to adapt to the market they have. It's similar to how certain stores who failed to realize online retail failed.

Right now, with tech it's heavily favored toward catered food which local restaurants don't necessarily specialize in. At my start up we have a generic catering company that will have a rotating meal each day. It's cost-effective and still good quality food and removes the hassle of our Workplace Services from figuring out what food we should get next time.

If local restaurants could adapt to such a model and made more of an effort to advertise toward their market and perhaps arrange a monthly catered meal or something of the sort, they might see themselves doing better.

<comment><USER21> > this really seems like an oversight of local restaurants being unable to > adapt to the market they have

I mean, how are you supposed to compete against cafeterias that get to literally embed themselves in a campus?

> At my start up we have a generic catering company that will have a rotating > meal each day

FWIU that would still be allowed under the rules everyone's complaining about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> This is very interesting, I had never considered the impact free food at a large office has on its surroundings. The legislation certainly sounds backwards, but to me the situation is reminiscent of a company using profits from one sector to subsidize another, in order to drown out competitors in that space. I don't think Facebook is actually trying to kill off restaurants, but this is definitely how you would do it in an anti-competitive way.

<comment><USER81> I don't see what's anticompetitive about it - surely they buy the food they give out from local retailers?

<comment><USER82> A food wholesaler and a restaurant are two entirely different businesses.

<comment><USER83> I think the idea is that it's still a local business that handles it. And it's locals who are hired to prepare the food, just like a local restaurant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> How about Tech companies spin out their Cafe and require their worker to pay for it?

The companies would have owned the property, and making the meal cost at least 30% cheaper.

<comment><USER85> That's pretty similar to what Microsoft does with its myriad Cafés on campus. The food seemed cheaper than a restaurant, as if they charge for labor + ingredients. You could only order there as an employee or guest of an employee, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Folks, these companies can still offer free food. At smaller companies in NY that don't have a cafeteria but want to keep the employees in for lunch they give out a seamless allowance. It works quite well. Not sure if it would scale to an office with thousands of workers but it probably could. Some places also order catering from local food vendors.

</comment><comment><USER87> So, let me get this straight. Bay Area creates legislation like building codes, permitting, increased minimum wage etc. that makes it very expensive to open and run a restaurant. That is probably reflected in the food prices, which makes subsidized food at work an attractive perk. To counteract this problem, even more legislation is proposed.

</comment><comment><USER88> This title is a little hyperbolic. There has exactly been two proposals. One in Mountain View, that only applies to a single office development. That also doesn't ban office cafeterias, but limits subsidies. The other one is in proposal stages in SF, which is a regulatory capture by the local restaurant industry. Unlikely to pass

</comment><comment><USER89> I'll end this by saying "this is so f*cking stupid."

It is not the problem of the business that decides to plant itself in a location and provide food first off. All the vendors of that location are privy to supply... unless this large corp has signed a contract with a specific vendor.

However, if they did, the individual food vendor would never know because it would be like the corp planned to not make a footprint. So they just provided food. nbd. So they did not hurt the local market and keeping it inward.

So now outside food vendors are irritated because a precaution was put in place to not affect them, but "an unknown - of growing" got too big and now they feel they can't survive next to their neighbor. --Valid point. So how do we as big corps help the neighbor... and this is not just about food.

</comment><comment><USER90> There is a lot of good food in this area (San Antonio shopping center in Mountain View), places that would draw the workers on their own merits anyway. Sajj, Chef Chu's, Dittmers, Mamacitas food truck, Paul Martin, Pacific Fresh, several pho places, I could go on.

<comment><USER57> Exactly. A big tech office next door will only give them nore customers than they have already, even if the office has its own cafeteria. Why are they forcing _everybody_ to leave their office to eat?

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> If I read correctly, Alphabet can just add another letter that's a catering company with a commercial kitchen and bring all the meals in on trucks. "Startups" don't have their own food preparation operations as-is, they use catering or similar food delivery which seem unaffected. Maybe the people affected don't realize that. More demand from those services might even make them cheaper as more players enter the space. I don't see who loses, unless "kitchen" extends all the way down to stocked pantries and dish washers.

No opinions of my own offered here. I've enjoyed offices with and without meal options in SoMa and around the Bay.

</comment><comment><USER92> This is how businesses get driven to the suburbs.

<comment><USER93> That is the usual refrain from the "die techie scum" SF denizens: "go back to the suburbs!"

Unfortunately the suburbs are now hostile too: [https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook- Offices-M...](https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook-Offices- Means-New-Business-for-Mountain-View-Restaurants-488948401.html)

<comment><USER33> MTV isn't "hostile" to tech. It just got greedy and is trying to get more out of its resident tech companies.

"So we have all these big tech companies opening offices in our town... How do we get more out of them... Let's force their employees to buy their food in local stores by banning free food... Let's tax them a bit more..."

Etc.

This will work in the short term, especially when some of these rules only apply to new offices.

It will fail on the long term, as more and more companies question the wisdom of setting up shops in the Valley and California in general, and move to locations with much lower tax and restrictions, such as Austin TX.

<comment><USER94> >It will fail on the long term, as more and more companies question the wisdom of setting up shops in the Valley and California in general, and move to locations with much lower tax and restrictions, such as Austin TX.

But that will only last a decade or two before they turn Austin (or wherever) into SF 2.0 and all the business goes elsewhere.

<comment><USER33> > But that will only last a decade or two before they turn Austin (or > wherever) into SF 2.0 and all the business goes elsewhere.

I don't think local government in Texas is as amenable to well-meaning but ultimately intrusive and disruptive policies like in Northern California.

<comment><USER94> By the time Austin is SF2.0 local government in Austin will be made up of all the same clowns that make up local government in SF. CA was like Texas once upon a time.

<comment><USER33> You think? In my opinion, it's the manifestation of the hippy culture of the 60s and 70s.

California was never a hands-off state, never had the hands-off tradition that Texas had.

I don't see any reason to expect that the same stuff would happen in TX.

<comment><USER95> Austin was the hippy central of Texas until the tech boom.

<comment><USER33> Different kind of hippies, I believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> Wow what in the crazy head reason did they have to not want to allow companies to offer free food?? The impact of this would be more traffic at lunch time right and didn't the Bay Area already have terrible traffic ?

</comment><comment><USER89> Everyone knows that while deep in code, running out to get food wastes a shitload of time. 30min travel. 15min to eat(best case if rushing)worse if farther. These Golden Gate Restaurant Association people do not have any observation of that because they do not code on a regurlar basis. Not to mention, the 15 mins lost by distraction. So much wasted time because they can't get their restaurant into a cafeteria. Did they offer to vendor to the cafeteria? How were they doing before the cafeteria showed up. I'm sure they were doing just the same.

</comment><comment><USER97> Bay Area should focus on fixing the housing crisis, homeless issue, traffic congestion, and a dying BART system.

But at the same time, I'm not shocked. This is a classic California move and government overstep.

</comment><comment><USER98> Cracking down on cafeterias might bring some business to the restaurants, but it takes away business from people running these cafeterias: cooks, cleaning staff, grocery delivery, etc. Most of these people are local. So it is basically re-distribution of income between two different groups of Mountain View residents and as such is pretty pointless, economically.

P.S. I work at MTV area and finding parking at lunch is already a challenge. With the influx of Facebook lunchgoers, it will become impossible to park in downtown.

</comment><comment><USER99> This is pure political theater and a distraction from real issues. This has two possible outcomes:

1\. The "Progressive" majority on the Board of Supervisors passes it and Mayor Breed vetoes it, giving Progressives yet another "you're a shill for big tech!" line of attack

2\. It doesn't make it out of committee and everybody quickly forgets what an ass Aaron Peskin is

Just ignore it and donate to reform-minded leaders like Theo Ellington, Sonja Trauss, and Christine Johnson.

</comment><comment><USER100> Does anyone know if the government tried to get any of the companies to try to partner with local food places? Like grahamburger mentioned in their post?

<comment><USER101> Most of the companies which provide free lunches _do_ partner with local food places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> Total cost to businesses is huge.

Assume you have employees on an average salary of USD$140K (example round figure) doing 7 hours work with 1 hour for lunch.

Ignoring the staggering environmental impact, if you lose an extra 30 minutes (1/14th of the 7 hour work day) because of transport and parking bullshit due to this new rule, then you are effectively losing USD$10K per annum per employee.

</comment><comment><USER103> Maybe its time for companies to consider building cities that just serve their needs and that are connected to existing cities by high speed rail. Build the housing too.

You can't really do that in the coastal areas but maybe inland or in states like Arizona or New Mexico. Put it all under a solar dome so you can control the heat. Okay, maybe that's too much :-)

</comment><comment><USER104> Now the perk will be $1 meals instead of free.

</comment><comment><USER105> What's stopping FB from ordering catering and pre-packaged meals for their employess from one of these large contract companies : [https://www.food- management.com/top-50-contract-companies](https://www.food- management.com/top-50-contract-companies) ?

</comment><comment><USER106> as someone who works in a place a solid few miles from restaurants, and has a break room with a few microwaves/a toaster oven as well as a vending machine with gas station tier food... how common are workplace cafeterias like this? is it just sv megacompanies or is it smaller firms across the country?

<comment><USER107> I work for a medium sized company in the commercial insurance space in PA. We have a cafeteria. They do charge for meals, but we have access to unlimited drinks. I think larger companies in general will have a cafeteria of some kind, but free food is very much a perk of software companies on the whole, I do believe.

<comment><USER106> i don't even mind charging for meals, but not having to spend most of my lunch break driving for easy food would be a huge plus. guess i know what to look for once i graduate.

<comment><USER108> I've worked in a lot of places with cafeterias in the Bay Area and we still went out to eat a few times a week for variety, a change of pace and to satisfy a desire for some food that was not available or much higher quality than the cafeterias, and since we commuted together from/to restaurants, it was more time spent socializing with coworkers and getting out of the office and getting some sun and fresh air. In my opinion so it might not matter to everyone, it's kind of a waste to live here with this fantastic weather 9-10 months a year and not spend some of that time outdoors, even during the work day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> More specifically they are prohibiting on site kitchens. They are not prohibiting free food that is catered.

</comment><comment><USER110> This is a good thing if done correctly. Companies could potentially use free food and other facilities (at the company) as an excuse to give a lower wage. There's also perceived pressure to stay late and work. Why go home when you have everything you need at work?

</comment><comment><USER111> I can see the motivation here for the SF legislation, it _is_ problematic that we tend not to leave the office for lunch, but there are some major issues that the author, Asha Safai, has clearly missed:

      (a) Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Genentech are grandfathered into their cafeterias, and it's fairly unlikely any other companies will build cafeterias.
      (b) This is partially because most companies are too small for a dedicated cafeteria, so they use a catering service like ZeroCater, which source most meals from local restaurants that don't do much or any lunch service.
      (c) There are other companies like Gap, which have a cafeteria largely because there is nothing near their office but parking lots, and they are next to UCSF which certainly has at least one cafeteria at that location.

I think there is work to be done here, I think that this _does_ tie into other problems like housing and general rent, but I don't think it's a good solution to it.

One of the major ways this misses the boat is that there are lower paid employees in tech companies, often contractors, who have access to free food in ways that substantially makes life more affordable for them. So yes, engineers pulling six figures are maybe given a little toooo much perks, but when that is spread around, I'm strongly in favor of it. There are people in these tech offices making not much more than minimum wage, and I'm not just talking about janitorial and maintenance staff - I'm talking about CS, QA, UX contractors and all manner of other office work.

Safai is not really a progressive, so he's probably come up with this idea to overcompensate for that and appeal to progressives. This doesn't really sound like Aaron Peskin, either, who mostly works to coalition build and is primarily focused on housing policy.

I would suspect that Peskin is supporting this to get Safai to work with him on some other bill, and that he expects it to fail.

<comment><USER112> I worked at Genentech in 2004. My recollection is that there are zero restaurants nearby, and that I had to park in garage and then ride a shuttle to the office due to limited parking. Not having the excellent cafeteria would have been a hassle there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> If it were my company- everything would be $0.01, thus not free. Stupid rule.

</comment><comment><USER114> If they do this for food, they should do it for coffee. Even more companies have free coffee than have free food. Just think of all the new cafes that could survive and the jobs that would add! \s

</comment><comment><USER115> This ridiculous law can be easily bypassed with vending machines and food delivery directly to office(doesn't even have to be out of building, making food on-site is not illegal).

</comment><comment><USER116> This is the beginning of the end for SF. Now that the techies are forced to experience the third world standards of the city, they will move to more habitable cities, like Detroit.

</comment><comment><USER117> So from reading the regulation it appears Facebook can just open a public restaurant in the center. Charge $200 per meal but subsidize it completely for their own employees.

</comment><comment><USER118> So catering industry workers' (and tech) jobs are less important than restaurant workers jobs - according to California city councils.

</comment><comment><USER117> As someone not in Bay Area I find it hilarious. As someone who may have to move there it's enraging.

</comment><comment><USER119> one zoned development decision made 4 years ago, and one new proposal now is a crackdown? please.

</comment><comment><USER120> Aren't these free meals essentially untaxed compensation for employees?

</comment><comment><USER121> Could tech companies charge a penny and take it out of employees paychecks?

</comment><comment><USER122> Ummm, just pack a lunch? Really, why would you spend a bunch of time in the middle of your work day to go out for lunch. I just want to get my work done so I can enjoy rest of the day. Seriously, on days I forget to bring lunch I just skip it and eat later, no big deal.

</comment><comment><USER123> "cracking down" ??

They aren't doing anything wrong.

</comment><comment><USER124> But, doesn't this contradict the spirit of free markets?

<comment><USER125> Do you think that matters one bit to those who advocate for these kinds of measures? Not everyone is a proponent of free markets, and some of them are in positions of power - and this kind of measure should illustrate that in abundance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER126> Cannot bundle a free meal with your job because it's abusing your position to stifle competition. I jest but I imagine it may be hard for some restaurants to open and offer lunch menu's in these areas.

</comment><comment><USER127> There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

</comment><comment><USER128> Another victory for the bag lunch.

</comment><comment><USER129> "The restriction aims to increase business for local food retailers."

Wow. Incredibly corrupt. I'm guessing next lunch boxes are going to be banned?

<comment><USER130> The stupid thing is that most of the tech companies, outside of the giant ones, get their food from local retailers.

<comment><USER131> This proposal would ban the construction of office cafeterias so if you're just serving free catered food (which is what most small and medium companies do, I'd guess) it's fine.

<comment><USER132> Exactly. Why waste space for cafeteria. I like to eat at my desk anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> Talk about fascist capitalism. If I ran these companies I'd make everything cost one cent and have a giant barrel of pennies just sitting around with "take what you need" written in it. It's not free anymore. Problem solved.

<comment><USER134> That's taxable income then, no?

<comment><USER135> Yes, the penny-per-meal charge would be a tiny amount of income which, presuming deductible business expenses did not increase to absorb it, would be subject to corporate income tax (which is really a retained profits tax.)

None of the companies involved are even going to notice it.

<comment><USER136> No, it's the value of the free meals that's considered taxable income. IIRC there was already a controversy about this a couple years ago. Employees getting the equivalent of what, $20 in free food every day? That adds up to real money.

<comment><USER135> The decision to charge a penny by the company doesn't change that in any meaningful way, AFAICT, so it may be a tax issue for employees, but it doesn't seem relevant to the proposal that was being discussed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> California's found a unique way to incorporate only the shitty parts of European socialism without adding in any of the massive benefits. We get the same high taxes and restrictive overreaching laws without any of the free healthcare, free university tuition, or pension plans.

<comment><USER137> How is this European socialism? I'm unaware of such restriction in Europe. Also, the zoning rules in most of Europe are much saner.

</comment></comment><comment> Sushi-san This reminds me of WeWork's company-wide ban of meat for employees.</comment>


Ask HN: Build server to use in 2018? - <AUTHOR> I've got a "twelve factor app" which is built and run via docker-compose, with client code served as a static bundle. I've got deployment to a new server down to running a single command, but currently the server itself builds the containers and then runs them, which is not ideal for reproducibility.
I'm looking to add a build server into the mix. It needs to integrate with GitHub, build code, setup/tear down environments, deploy builds to environments, run acceptance tests and then make itself available for human QA. Ideally I want to be able to automatically spin up a new environment for any arbitrary commit, so that eg we can do QA at time of PR.
I've never setup a build server / CI system, but I've used Jenkins in the past as an intern. That was a while ago though, and since this stack is very modern, I'm wondering if there is a better alternative in 2018, more suited to this architecture (especially the heavy reliance on docker).
I've been reading about drone.ci and it looks like the top contender so far. Does anyone have experience with Drone, recommend any other systems (including Jenkins), or have any general advice to offer? <comment><USER2> You can try gitlab and gitlab-runner [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/)</comment>


Contest time. Build an app with IndexTank + Factual - <AUTHOR> http://blog.indextank.com/546/contest-time-build-an-app-with-indextank-factual/

<comment><USER2> Can the submission be a webapp running locally? Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> If by locally you mean running your on desktop/laptop/smartphone/robot dog acting as a web server, then yes. If people have to download it, no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> cool!</comment>


Show HN: SellingCircle – Making buying and selling SaaS pleasant again - eric-flw http://www.sellingcircle.net <comment><AUTHOR> how do you get the leads? seems like that part would be very expensive and are you passing the cost on to the seller?</comment>


The complete infeasibility of the Boring Company - <AUTHOR> http://amateurplanner.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-complete-infeasibility-of-boring.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> Ive never seen someone hype so hard.

This is some crypto pump and dump style straight out of Elon's mouth.</comment>


Computational sociology - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_sociology <comment><USER2> See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_\(fictional\))

Snark aside, I'm definitely interested in whether or not this field will have impacts on future policy. In order to be useful I feel it would have to actively avoid simplifying assumptions that have trapped similar fields.

<comment><USER3> Regarding academic study, sociology is so partisan you need not worry about them using computer science and/or logic to uncover hidden truths in the near future.

In the private sector however, companies such as Premise and Palantir are already eons ahead of academia, but their insights and data are proprietary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's another field closely related to Computational Sociology called "Computational Social Science" \- an area/community which I was a part of.

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

There are many universities like Stanford, Cornell and Columbia which have dedicated working groups for Computational Social Science.

[https://iriss.stanford.edu/css](https://iriss.stanford.edu/css)

[http://as.cornell.edu/block/computational-social- sciences](http://as.cornell.edu/block/computational-social-sciences)

[http://datascience.columbia.edu/computational-social- science](http://datascience.columbia.edu/computational-social-science)

<comment><USER5> This is my field, too. I am a Ph.D. candidate in computational social science, working on a computational model of social belief systems.

I'm quite happy to see this on HN. Like many other disciplines, our field is blossoming with the rise of cheap, high performance computing!

If your involved in this field and on HN, please reach out to me at @generativist on twitter. I'm in the process of setting up a community for CSS work, and will be soliciting feedback soon!

<comment><USER6> Can you talk about what software packages, perhaps data structures and algorithms you use? Any shortcomings / low hanging fruit? I see the domain as an invaluable tool for a few applications... any particularly strong ones you can see?

<comment><USER7> Wrt to algorithms / techniques used, you might want to check out this textbook by some of the Cornell folks:

[http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks- book/](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/)

They also made an EdX course for it:

[https://www.edx.org/course/networks-crowds-markets- cornellx-...](https://www.edx.org/course/networks-crowds-markets-cornellx- info2040x-2)

<comment><USER8> Coursera offers about a half dozen courses in subjects seemingly related to CompSoc:

Social and Economic Networks: Models and Analysis, Stanford

Networks: Friends, Money, and Bytes, Princeton

Sampling People, Networks and Records, Michigan

Applied Social Network Analysis in Python, Michigan

Capstone: Analyzing (Social) Network Data, UCSD

Social Computing, UCSD

Measuring Causal Effect in the Social Sciences, U Copenhagen

Smart Cities, EPFL

Organizational Analysis, Stanford

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The "impact on society" paragrapg is quite short. Has any work of computational sociology inspired a real policy?

Could it replace economy as the main driver of politics and policies?

<comment><USER10> Re policy, it's used e.g. in environmental resource management (regional level), anti-terrorism (networks, opinion dynamics), urban planning, disease control. Policy isn't based alone on it, of course. But it's used as an ingredient. Often the models aren't good enough (lack of data and quantifiable causal relationships) to gain an exact image of the modeled system, but they provide a general system understanding (system behavior under different [intervention] scenarios) that is often educational and gives insights that then need to be empirically validated.

A barrier to increase its use in policy-making is the "science-policy gap" between researchers and decision-makers. Either they don't understand the utility of model results and dismiss them or they trust them too much--both is not good. So researchers had to come up with ways to communicate results, often include decision-makers (and other stakeholders) in the modeling process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Come say Hi in Berlin if you're interested in this field ! [http://cmb.huma- num.fr/](http://cmb.huma-num.fr/)

</comment><comment><USER12> How can I get into this field? I'm a senior CS student.

<comment><USER13> If it's repeated in coming years, you should go to this summer school: [https://www.russellsage.org/summer-institute- computational-s...](https://www.russellsage.org/summer-institute- computational-social-science-june-18-july-1-2017)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty interesting tangent: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocybernetics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocybernetics)</comment>


Fraser Speirs's iPad commentary: Future Shock - <AUTHOR> http://speirs.org/blog/2010/1/29/future-shock.html <comment><USER2> While that's true, the orthogonal skills can sometimes make the real work easier. Knowing even a small amount of VBA could save you hours in Excel. Knowing a small amount of Python could let you rename every mp3 file on your hard drive in 5 minutes. When you remove access to the low levels of the computer, you remove a lot of the ability to solve one-off problems. There are people who put panels inside panels on WinForms just to get a border color other than black, because they aren't aware they can override Panel.OnPaint. Having only high-level access may make easy things easier, but it can also make hard things much harder.

There was a great submission here recently called "Programming as a super power" ([http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2010/01/20/programmin...](http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2010/01/20/programming- as-a-super-power.aspx)), where the author said that "there are more programs that should be written than professional programmers can ever write." This could be abstracted to "there are more things that should be done at a low level than superusers can ever do." So if the iPad doesn't _let_ you do things at a low level, there will be negative consequences.

<comment><USER3> Let's take it as a given that the iPad and like devices won't kill normal computers any time soon, if ever, so those of us who know we want to tinker will have a place to do it.

The question, then, is if one is designing a mass-market computing device, is the ability to tinker with it going to produce enough good in the world to offset all the misery it causes to other people? For every person that saves ten hours using VBA to program their spreadsheet, how many other people lose hours because they get a virus or install incompatible programs or corrupt some obscure system file?

In other words: you're 100% correct that there will be negative consequences, but don't forget that there will be positive consequences as well. It's a judgment call as to which side you think weighs more heavily and where the overall balance will be. Yes, you lose something important and valuable when you lose the ability to tinker. Yes, the world would be better if you could have that AND not have people frustrated and crippled by their technology. But no one has figured out how to do both yet.

I think it's fair to say that you have to make the choice, and you can't have it both ways. And given that choice, my personal accounting tells me that we gain a lot more by removing the frustration than we lose by removing the power. While we lose something, I think we gain a lot more, and I don't see any way to gain it without giving something up.

<comment><USER4> I think there are more solutions than just open or closed. I just recently tried my hand at Blackberry development. It runs 2 type of code. Signed and unsigned. Accessing certain API's requires signed code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The iPad is great technology, to be sure. And a lot of that technology may be incorporated into the future of computing. However, I'd suggest that the shock comes from the fact that this particular iPad is a computer for the past, not the future. It's great for moms and grandpas--people who grew up without computers. The moms and dads of my generation--people who are in their teens and twenties now--are pretty comfortable with the computers we have already. We want a computer that incorporates the technology of the iPad to enhance the power and flexibility that we are used to, not cripple it. That's why the iPad is disappointing--because we wanted the future, not an indicator of the future.

<comment><USER6> Anecdote: Wednesday evening, my younger sister's laptop crashed while shutting down. She pressed the off button, the screen when dark. The next day, she pushes the power button, screen lights up, displays the crashed logging off screen. She has to call me up to teach her how to use the power button to restart the computer - 1 sec for sleep, 10 sec for _really_ off.

A few people in their teens and twenties are pretty comfortable, many more are not.

<comment><USER5> Of course, but I'm not saying that computers shouldn't become easier to use and more elegant--they absolutely should. I'm saying that they should become more capable at the same time, not less capable.

<comment><USER6> Capable is a tricky word, without a user who can use it the computer is capable of nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's a very good strawman. Nobody's complaining because it's too simple. As far as I can tell they're complaining because it's not open.

<comment><USER8> Can software that is open without bound remain simple (non-complex), logistically, politically, technically?

<comment><USER9> How many years has Linux been trying? 10? More? And they're still not there. Android is probably the next best hope.

<comment><USER10> """There's another reality distortion field at work, though, and everyone that makes a living from the tech industry is within its tractor-beam. That RDF tells us that computers are awesome, they work great and only those too stupid to live can't work them"""

Not _everyone_. It's more and more obvious to me that I only thrive in computing where I can control my environment. I do make a living from the tech industry, and I find myself in the same position as "normals" do when faced with "software for normals", and I hate it as much as "they" do.

Error messages are meaningless to "them" but meaningful to me. So called 'friendly' error messages are also meaningless to "them" and worse they are meaningless to me as well.

Hiding complexity isn't simplifying things. Arjan van de Ven said about the 5 second linux boot project "Don't settle for 'make boot faster'; it's the wrong question. [..] It's not about booting faster, it's about booting in 5 seconds". - <http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/>

Apple are saying "it's not about a nice GUI over the top of a complex system, it's about a simple system". They've thrown out everything they can get away with and then a bit more; which Linux distro's can't or wont do. Linux is 'simplified' by people who don't want or need it to be simple, Windows is 'simplified' by people hobbled by backwards compatibility, inertia and lack of focused obsessive direction.

<comment><USER9> "They've thrown out everything they can get away with and then a bit more; which Linux distro's can't or wont do."

 _Bravo._ I would hazard to guess ChromeOS is Google's stab at this. There's also Jolicloud and some others for netbooks, so maybe there's hope in that direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's a Star Trek prop from 1987, called a PADD.

<http://imgur.com/e3fju.jpg>

<comment><USER12> Funny that 80s and 90s sci-fi is beginning to look just as archaic as 60s sci- fi (blinking light bulbs and many switches) looked then. We're not quite there yet, but soon we will.

<comment><USER13> Very true--my old phone was essentially Kirk's communicator, and the iPhone surpassed it.

<http://images2.fanpop.com/external/860814>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Will the ipad actually be useful for the things people actually need to get done to do their jobs? and contribute to a better world because of it? I think in very limited cases it will, but will mainly help non technical people consume more media. Is this a good thing? I personally think not, because I like nature too much. I am happy that some people do not spend their life glued to a screen. Others may differ on this. In terms of useful applications, for doctors and for others who need convenient information retrieval, the Ipad will be great, and I welcome it. On the most part though it will just be a gadget that people will get addicted to and waste more or their worthwhile lives on. Real work will be done on real computers (with a keyboard).

<comment><USER15> _but will mainly help non technical people consume more media_

Why is "non technical" there? Do electronics engineers construct TV and Radio sets for themselves, or just grab one off the shelf and are happy with it?

I do not want to write a browser when I want to consume the web I will be more than happy to use one someone already wrote — given that it is good enough for the task. What iPad comes with is more than good enough for the things it is intended for.

<comment><USER14> By non technical, all that was meant was, people who currently find technologies hard to use. I agree it will help everyone consume more media, but it will particularly help these people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reading all the comments about iPad, I can see how people fantasize and abstract things. I mean, the iPad it's just the result of a trend that derived from the iPhone, Kindle [, etc] success. iPad as computer killer, simplicity/complexity that help/destroy the world, et cetera.

I'm not talking only for the product itself, but derivation of the product, the mission, and all this stuff. By fantasy I mean that they overestimate, creating tales, of what it's simply a business decision, following current trends.

Not just hype, but _fantasy_.

EDIT: I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, I really like to learn new perspectives. Fantasy in the sense of fanboys of StarTrek, Apple, WoW, Dungeons & Dragons.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sigh. Why does everyone have to labor under the belief that background processes are somehow impossible for iPhone/iPad hardware or Apple? Apple can create an API to register short functions with hard-retime constraints. That allows OS X (Apple) to dole out milli-watts to background Apps exactly as it sees fit while satisfying 90% of dev's needs. I predict it will happen.</comment>


Ask HN: Interviews – what is the point of whiteboard coding with perfect syntax? - <AUTHOR> I'm finding writing code on a whiteboard totally throws me and is a completely different experience to being in front of a machine. I perform spectacularly poorly, with just zero "flow". What is the point of a whiteboard coding interview? Why can't you just equally put up a large screen and an IDE? <comment><USER2> Asking you to write code that's _basically_ right is sort of stupid, but not that bad. Asking for syntax-perfect code is just stupid hazing; ideally you'll have a good interviewer that wants to see _how_ you solve a problem.

If you have issues with these kinds of interviews here's my advice: write tests on the whiteboard, and explain you'll run the tests on the code after first pass. That way you don't get nitpicked to death over typos or simple mistakes, and you look like a careful programmer.

See [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/04/04/interview- puzzles/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/04/04/interview-puzzles/) for full writeup.</comment>


Ask HN: Who is likely to benefit from SOPA? - <AUTHOR>

I am from India and know next to nothing about law making procedures in united states. As an Indian my experience is that the rulers first look at their self interests first and then only provide some verbal convolutions to describe how the proposed law will help the ordinary citizens. If it does benefit the general public its mostly by pure accident. Well, being mostly and illiterate nation the degree to which our rulers succeed is very high.
I dont think the basic motivation of politicians in united states is likely to be much different. I hear the deep pocketed companies influence the politicians a lot in USA.
Can it be the case that the non technology companies such as Oil companies and Financial organizations which have been the most valued companies in last few decades felt threatened that new technology companies like Apple, Google etc. will grow much bigger than them and influence the lawmakers more than non-tech companies ?
If there are less and less start ups, if Google and Facebook find it difficult to operate wouldn't these people be benefited the most? <comment><USER2> Digamber, I came from India to the US about 2 years ago and it has been a deep learning curve!

You're right that the basic motivation behind the politician's actions are pretty much the same.

However, it is not the Oil and Financial Organisations that stand to gain from SOPA, it is the TV and Film industry. They put in millions of dollars to make movies each year and then do their best to protect their assets. This is not so in India, where it is common knowledge that a movie/song will be pirated within a few hours of it's release.

What's important to know is that if SOPA/PIPA or any other variants are allowed to be passed, they will benefit the Movie industry by giving them the right to shut down practically any website (in a simple way of putting it) without much need for logic. This threatens all the big search and knowledge providers on the internet - Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit, MegaUpload etc.

The funny thing is, of course, all of this is being done ONLY against Internet users in the US. So, the rest of the world can happily pirate movies and share songs, but US citizens will have to pay the price for SOPA. (HN, correct me if I'm wrong here)

</comment><comment><USER3> If the number of startups declines due to SOPA, the rest of the world™ will benefit, as many US based internet firms and developers will go elsewhere in search of better legislation.

</comment><comment><USER4> Lawyers will benefit a lot. As a class, lawyers, especially those specializing in "Intellectual Property" will benefit financially the most.

</comment><comment><USER5> The people who will benefit are the congressmen and their business partners. They will have the power to take down websites they don't like.</comment>