From Idea to 10 Paying Customers in Less Than a Week - <AUTHOR> http://casjam.com/how-dan-norris-wp-curve-attracted-10-paying-customers-in-the-first/ <comment><USER2> "Both of his products, while seemingly very different, actually serve much of the same audience."

Exactly. That line is very important. In reality, he had an idea for a product _and an existing market he had direct access to_. That "less than a week" bit should really include the time it took to build the audience in the first place, which is probably a lot more than a week. A somewhat disingenuous claim.

<comment><USER3> like 99% of all the headlines that proclaim to do/learn something in a relatively short time period there is always something that is not counted.

 _Learn to write apps in 10 minutes! here the source code for an hello world, to learn anything else it will only take the rest of your life._

<comment><AUTHOR> It's true that the kernal of the idea may have originated earlier, and developed over a longer period of time (which is kind of what Dan explained during the interview). But the point I was getting at with this title was that it was less than 1 week from the day Dan decided to pursue this idea and actually start this company that he had 10 paying customers.

Most founders have an idea, decide it's something they would like to pursue, then spend many weeks/months working to validate it, build MVP, attract customers. You can't deny that WP Curve started and gained initial traction exceptionally faster than most.

<comment><USER4> > Most founders have an idea, decide it's something they would like to pursue, > then spend many weeks/months working to validate it, build MVP, attract > customers. You can't deny that WP Curve started and gained initial traction > exceptionally faster than most.

I disagree. Most founders with an audience can generally get 10 paying customers fairly quickly. And, frankly, I think 10 days isn't at all fast, especially these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> For people who are new to creating/launching a product, 10 customers in the first week would be a huge win. So this is a very instructive conversation for people in that camp (who I'd guess are the majority).

And the impressive part of this story is its not 10 customers within 1 week of "launch" day. It's 10 customers within about a week of deciding on the "idea". Idea --> MVP launch --> Paying customers... 1 week.

<comment><USER5> Is there anything more to the MVP than the website and I would guess a ticketing/live chat system? I'll admit I didn't listen to the audio, was hoping for a transcript.

<comment><USER6> Hey mate. Actually we didn't even have a ticketing system for the first month or so. Even now we barely use it. It's mostly email. I had a live chat widget (Olark) that I'd paid a year for from my last business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If there was a Cosmo-style magazine for startup founders, this headline would be one of the promos on the cover.

<comment><USER8> The rest of the magazine would be like, "patio11's dos and don'ts of summer SEO", "can lisp trim your application's waistline?", and "infosec schadenfreude! how to protect your app". viz., HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How can you turn a profit from unlimited 30mins job at 69$/m and even moderate capacity utilization?

<comment><USER6> Hey there. We made a few assumption about how much people will use the service, how much it costs us to get developers etc when we started. So far those assumptions are proving to be very accurate.

Most people utilize us a few times a month for small jobs. Some less, some more. The fee is per site so there's a natural limit to how many small issues a website owner runs into. We are also careful to target the kind of people that really need us and make great customers.

We don't have to worry about traditional agency expenses, offices, local staff, project management, all of the hassles in signing up new clients for project work (quoting, scoping, passwords etc). It's actually very efficient, it's not uncommon for us to get through 6-10 jobs per day per developer.

We will have to closely look at this as we grow but so far so good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good idea for a service. Recently I told someone that a business can be built based solely on broken wordpress installations and this validates that it is indeed a big problem out there. Naturally the only reason I thought this was due to the emails I get related to this, and I never want to waste my time getting involved with wordpress. Now I have a site to recommend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya, one of the great aspects / hidden benefit of a service like this is how it makes the lives of web developers easier because they have a reliable service they can refer clients to when they don't want to handle those pesky small maintenance tasks anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey thanks for the article share. I know it is a little early, but in your 24 hour live chat support, have you had any abuse from your clients or have things been more self regulating for them?

Secondly, when offering your paid product service, did you ever consider omitting the 24 hour live chat support or is that a fundamental part of your value proposition?

<comment><USER6> Hey there

So far clients have been great. We are making a deliberate effort to target a certain kind of business which helps a lot. It may get to the point where we decide before we allow someone to become a customer but we aren't there yet. We have things in place if people abuse the service.

I didn't really consider omitting the 24 hour aspect for 3 reasons. 1 is I really wanted to have something I could offer worldwide which means covering pretty close to 24 hours anyway. 2 because I want customers to not have to think. They just know we'll be there. People pay for the fact that they don't need to worry, they don't need to think about whether we will respond. The final reason is without it, it wouldn't be that much of a talking point and we wouldn't have a big point of difference. This is helping us get early traction I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any blog post that purport to achieve anything substantial in less time that usual has uncounted costs. "Learn this new language in 20 mins (after learning to program other languages for years)"

</comment><comment><USER13> omg u r teh next steven job?

What really is the point of this article? Can someone wake me up when we are ready to let go of this passive income bullshit, worshipping the 'entrepreneur' as someone who can pull money out of their ass crack by finding and statistically needling their way into some exploitative niche and start focussing on things which have real social purpose and _meaning_ and _value_ to their creators and users?

<comment><USER14> There are quite a few points of contention to be made with your comment:

First off, to group "24/7 on-call Wordpress support" with passive income is... well, a very, _very_ long stretch.

 _on things which have real social purpose and meaning and value to their creators or users_

"Someone I can turn to when my website blows up because of this new plugin I added" most assuredly provides meaning and value to WP Curve's customers. Also, I'm not sure who's exploiting who in that relationship.

But you're right, Dan should shut down WP Curve and the customers who are paying him real money to solve real problems and focus on more meaningful things.. like maybe building a social discovery app.</comment></comment>


Netflix Earnings Are Driven by Investment in Original Content - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/01/netflix-investing-original-shows-finally-pays-off/ <comment><USER3> This comment from Reddit user SmegmataTheFirst really nails it:

 _" tl;dr: Advertising ruins everything, which is why netflix originals are better than cable TV shows."_

[https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5ou7px/netflixs_...](https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5ou7px/netflixs_gamble_pays_off_as_subscriptions_soar/dcmczmz/)

<comment><USER4> Why are there ads on cable tv? Why can't they just charge tv subscribers the whole amount and get rid of ads on tv? If netflix can do it, why can't tv do the same?

<comment><USER5> Cable originally didn't have ads. They just discovered they could put ads in and nobody cancelled their subscriptions.

<comment><USER6> Which basically means it's the consummer fault again. I mean, yes, they are evil. But just like disease, it's useless to blame it. There will always be diseases. It's our responsibility to cure current ones and create environments to avoid future ones. Which means for businesses, if you want them to stop misbehave, you should stop rewarding them when they do. Just like in politics.

Which amazingly we don't do.

<comment><USER7> Especially in a capitalistic world, I believe this is paramount.

Oh you don't like google and facebook eventually abusing what they know about you? Don't use their services.

<comment><USER6> In a capitalistic world, the bank note is a vote bulletin. The only one that is always listened to, and that you can use every day, on every topic. And also the one they don't teach you about in school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Remember this from four years ago: "The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us." [0]

In that entire article, there's not a single mention of HBO Go. Looks like Netflix succeeded.

0: [http://gizmodo.com/5980103/netflix-the-goal-is-to-become- hbo...](http://gizmodo.com/5980103/netflix-the-goal-is-to-become-hbo-faster- than-hbo-can-become-us)

<comment><USER9> I met a then-CTO of HBO on a train once, talked for a few hours from NYC to upstate. I (digitally) followed the news about him for a bit - it seemed pretty clear from the time we spent talking, and what I saw digitally subsequently, that he tried and failed to get HBO to understand streaming and the web. HBO content is still amazing, and HBO isn't _bad_ , but... It's certainly not as good as Netflix.

It occurs to me that it's a lot easier for Netflix to become HBO, than for HBO to become Netflix - You don't need to build up a tech base, or a talent pool, to make an amazing show - it's all rented or hired per thing, so if you can pay for the talent, it's available, and can start making magic immediately.

Not trying to imply the creation of amazing content is _easy_ , more that the lead time is waaay less than for the creation of tech like Netflix's.

<comment><USER10>
      he tried and failed to get HBO to understand streaming

I think it's very difficult when you're in charge of a business with a line of business that's profitable /right now/ to knowingly cannibalise that line of business with a new model that will /make you less money/ \- even if the change is vital to keep you in business in 10-20 years time.

After all, if you're making $10 per customer per month, it's bound to be an uphill battle to convince people you should change to a business model that makes you $5 per customer per month.

<comment><USER11> It's not just difficult, it's a bad idea for you. If you know your company will be successful enough to give you your paycheck for the entire duration you stay there (10-15yrs seems like a reasonable maximum), then you should actively defend the status quo. Why make such investments, stick your neck out, and assume extra risk when you're not going to see the payoff?

This is my theory for why so many companies have outdated business models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only one who feels "Netflix Original" became a negative this year?

When I first signed up, Netflix Original meant high quality shows produced/funded by Netflix itself, like House Of Cards & Orange Is The New Black & Daredevil. Netflix Original meant the best TV you've ever watched.

Now Netflix Original often means terrible unfunny stand-up comedy, or made- for-TV movies by big name stars phoning it in. Much of the new Netflix Original content is rated one-star - on my account I see Wet Hot American Summer, XOXO, Easy, Chelsea, A Very Murray Christmas, The Ranch, Mascots, Chewing Gum, Richie Rich, Lost & Found, all with one star. And there's a ton more. Worse is that it keeps pushing those as recommendations to me, even though it thinks I'll only rate them 1 star.

I can't see myself cancelling my Netflix yet, but there have been times when I've been tempted to pause it for a month or so.

<comment><USER13> Netflix is in a growth phase and, no surprise, they're catering a much bigger audience now. Besides all the shows you listed, it's recently aired Stranger Things, Narcos, The Crown, Longmire, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmitt, The OA, etc. These shows aren't going to appeal to everyone, but they're going to be somebody's favorite show.

Daredevil never really did it for me. I thought their Wet Hot American Summer reboot was really entertaining. Go figure.

<comment><USER14> Longmire is a great example of the problem I have with "Netflix original".

It started on A&E 2012 to 2014; it's produced by Warner Horizon -- how is this original to Netflix?

<comment><USER12> I'm glad someone else picked up on this!

Lots of the Netflix Originals aren't by Netflix at all. In Australia, The Expanse is a "Netflix Original", even though in America it's on Amazon Prime Video and was made by SyFy. Glitch is a "Netflix Original" in the US, but it was made by ABC Australia. And we have Designated Survivor as a Netflix Original in Australia, even though it's made by ABC Studios and currently airing on ABC in the US.

It seems Netflix Original now just means "currently Netflix holds exclusive rights to this show in your country".

<comment><USER15> > Glitch is a "Netflix Original" in the US, but it was made by ABC Australia.

Netflix is on the production team for the second season.

> It seems Netflix Original now just means "currently Netflix holds exclusive > rights to this show in your country".

That's not really out-of-line with current industry norms though. Larger production companies buy the rights to films made by smaller production companies and put their names on them all the time. For example, Moon comes to mind. Sony didn't produce it but it's a "Sony Picture". Or Primer, StudioCanal had nothing to do with the production but is currently listed as the production company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To me the deal breaker is ads. I think as a society we have begun to grow out of ads, I personally cannot stand them. I can only just tolerate the 5 second YouTube ads.

<comment><USER17> I have nothing wrong with ads, though my viewpoint of ads is they need to target `me` instead of `them`. Eg... 6700K Is now for sale for $200AUD or 1080p is for sale for bargain prices!

Though most of the ad's I see have a handsome margin added to the product that I neither want nor if I did I could find somewhere on ebay cheaper.

<comment><USER18> My problem (not a problem for me though) with ads is, that I do not trust them at all anymore. Even if I would see an interesting looking ad advertising a cheap 6700K I would think to myself, that they must have paid for the ad somehow and I can probably find it even cheaper somewhere else.

<comment><USER17> I have to agree I've had exactly the same situation. Wish I could say otherwise.

The only thing today that directed me to specific products and services are sites like hackernews, youtube channels like Eli the Computer Guy, and Louis Rossmann. I've donated about $500AUD to different youtube gaming review channels (because I like their content). I've donated to schools and donated my time with teaching programming. Though do I trust a advertisement GIF or Ads in the middle of a youtube video (hell no!).

Deep down I do want advertisement to get better and I DO want them to target me with meaning full advertisement. Though it still is a game of pop-ups in the middle of the screen of Skype, News, Web-sites all wanting to TELL me about how special they're.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Old media tried to kill them by cutting them off from content. Instead of letting it happen, they proceeded to replace old media as a source of content.

<comment><USER17> Granted Old media did have the funds and backing to purchase Netflix out or offer competitive alternatives.

<comment><USER20> Blockbuster declined to buy Netflix for $50M in 2000. Now Blockbuster is gone and Netflix is worth a lot more than $50M.

Edit, source: [http://www.businessinsider.com/blockbuster-ceo-passed-up- cha...](http://www.businessinsider.com/blockbuster-ceo-passed-up-chance-to- buy-netflix-for-50-million-2015-7)

<comment><USER21> Netflix was a very different thing back then. Didn't Blockbuster try to make their own Netflix?

<comment><USER22> They did; both the streaming and disc-by-mail parts of Netflix. Both failed, because of price and paucity of content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I agree, Netflix is killing it. First of all, their selection in Canada is amazing, despite what anyone says. Second, I'm pretty sure I watch more of their original content than anything. They have great taste, fund the right people, they've progressed well beyond what I ever expected. Third - <USER2> app, can download content for offline.

Anyhow, they're killing it on every front, and it costs what, $10/month? I'd pay much more. Anyhow good job Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER24> Well, the fact that they're the only TV service that doesn't shove you "We don't want your money, go away" screen to most of the world is helping their subscriber count. And since they're a monthly billed service, adding a few 10 millions subscribers at 10EUR a month does help a bit with bottom line.

Meanwhile, HBO Now and other cable fossils still show "We refuse to accept your 15EUR/month" screens to most EU and world countries. Serves them right.

<comment><USER25> True. Last year the number of non-US subscribers overtook the number of US subscribers of Netflix. They are now starting to invest in non-English content as well. Should be interesting, as long as they keep offering their own content globally.

Netflix still suffers from a fragmented back catalogue though, where non- Netflix Original content can only be viewed in certain geographic regions.

<comment><USER26> It makes me happy as a Norwegian living in the UK that the major Norwegian language series (Lillyhammer, Occupied, Nobel) are now available on Netflix in the UK.

I still hope they can go even further and offer globally their back catalogue of kids shows in Norwegian language currently only available in Netflix Norway. I noticed some UK shows are available with Norwegian subtitles but for the smallest it would be good to have the audio track as well.

This is probably all down to what ever rights agreements they have signed with the local publishers. And would apply to every countries catalogue and agreements, so not an easy negotiation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As Hollywood discovered in the 30's and 40's, controlling both production and distribution simultaneously can be very profitable. However, they also discovered that anti-trust lawsuits suck[1]. Refuse to show your competitors' movies in your theaters and millions of voting consumers begin to grumble.

Netflix's execs have some serious cajones to go where Hollywood went almost a century ago. They're going to need to be _very_ careful in order to avoid government interference. Showing even a hint of favoritism towards their own content could land them in heaps of trouble. Maybe online distribution will be viewed differently than cinemas were, or maybe it won't.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc).

<comment><USER28> House of Cards is available for purchase on Comcast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> TIL Netflix (1997) has been around longer than Google (1998)

<comment><USER30> I had Netflix around 1999 and I lived close to one of their shipping centers. The turn around time was about two days and I could request three DVDs at a time. It was glorious. Huge selection of awesome DVD movies. All sorts of stuff you would never find in a rental store. Sad that you can't stream those great movies now but I'm still a Netflix subscriber.

<comment><USER31> What's even more sad is they are blocking VPNs and have more of the actually good shows only available in the UK. I'd like to see them fix their multinational deals better. Going to have to find alternative means soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Now that net neutrality is history doesn't it seem like netflix (and by extension Amazon) extremely vulnerable to the lack of competition in the ISP space in the US?

Google at least had something of a workaround with their various efforts to provide access, but I don't see how they are going to circumvent the tollbooths which are popping up on the last mile.

<comment><USER33> On the flip side, is no one worried about the seeming lack of a viable competitor to Netflix?

<comment><USER34> Amazon Prime, Hulu, Google Video, HBO is online now, Vudu... I'm not sure what you're saying.

<comment><USER35> > HBO is online now

Sounds good! <goes to Google>

> "HBO GO. It's HBO. Anywhere."

Awesome!

> "To access HBO GO℠, you must reside within the fifty states of the United > States of America."

Oh. _That_ anywhere.

<comment><USER36> You can also get HBO online in Sweden and Norway for example, but branded as HBO Nordic. So it's not only in the US, but for some reason they're not using the HBO GO branding outside the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> For me what I'm really enjoying about Netflix right now, is not their original, exclusively for Netflix, content, but the foreign content they're bringing in, such as "Trapped" and "Occupied", which are shows from Iceland and Norway respectively.

The BBC has done a pretty good job of buying and airing foreign TV, but in North America a lot of this stuff hasn't come over. I really appreciate the effort that Netflix has done to air this sort of thing and I hope to see a lot more.

Independent of their foreign nature, these are really good shows, but their foreignness makes them even more interesting as you get a bit of a glimpse into a different culture without having to travel yourself.

<comment><USER38> One of their better shows last year was Marcella [1], the British show from the guy who wrote the original The Bridge (Broen/Bron).

(If you liked Trapped, make sure you check out Baltasar Kormákur's [2] other non-Hollywood work. 101 Reykjavik and Jar City are particularly good. I also liked The Sea.)

I love that they're pulling in quality indie/foreign films such as Rams [3], but these are few and far apart. There are so many superb "arthouse" films out there that they could offer. I wish someone would sponsor the digitalization of older "out of print" works that now only survives on old, out-of-production DVDs or on VHS. I wanted to find a few of Icelandic director Friðrik Þór Friðriksson's films (Children of Nature is one of my all-time favourites), but they're not available anywhere. I was hopeful for Filmstruck [4], but their selection is very limited.

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5269594/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5269594/)

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

[3] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3296658/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3296658/)

[4] [https://filmstruck.com/](https://filmstruck.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> What's interesting to me is that while Netflix is often the primary financier, the traditional studios are still the ones producing the content.

If Netflix has found a worldwide market for content, that's good news for the studios they're hiring to produce that content.

I'm curious if the additional revenue from Netflix, and presumably Amazon, Hulu, and a nervous HBO will be enough to offset the declining revenue from broadcast TV.

</comment><comment><USER40> I wish their streaming catalog was better, I can never find movies I really want to watch so I still get blu-rays because it actually has a lot of content.

</comment><comment><USER9> I started to feel this after House of Cards; the feeling progressed through Sense8 and Stranger Things, and has finally come a head with The OA:

As a developer, I want to make something as beautiful as a Netflix original. I'm not really sure how, tho...

<comment><USER9> On further thought, I think my best bet is a framework...? Languages are much harder to get off the the ground, but the true beauty* lies in the amazing ideas in which / with which one thinks while programming.

* As opposed to, eh, merely aesthetic beauty - that code looks good.

<comment><USER41> If you are ever interested in pursuing aesthetic beauty as a developer, you might enjoy generative/procedural art.

Tools like Processing[0] are very accessible even to those with minimal programming experience, and can be very powerful and fluid environments if you have any familiarity with Java or similar languages (or clojure[1]). It's very easy to iterate rapidly (even some live-coding elements) and have a lot of visual feedback, such that it almost feels more like sculpting than a normal programming workflow.

[0][https://processing.org/](https://processing.org/)

[1][https://github.com/quil/quil](https://github.com/quil/quil)

<comment><USER9> Thank you! But not the thing. I don't want to use software to make something beautiful, or make software that is used to make beautiful things; I want to make beautiful code. Does that make sense?

(Unless you think the codebases of these projects are themselves beautiful? Then they might be a The Thing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "In 2016, Netflix spent $5 billion on original programming. Netflix plans to spend $6 billion creating 1000 hours of new content this year, more than doubling its 2016 lineup." That's a little bit worrying : double the content, with only a slightly higher budget. I wonder what impact this will have on the quality of the shows. No advertising is great but meaningless when the content is rubbish.

<comment><USER36> _I wonder what impact this will have on the quality of the shows._

If they're smart, none. You can't just go out and buy quality. Stranger Things for example was a pretty low budget show and most people really quite liked it. Marco Polo on the other hand cost a fuck ton and I've yet to meet anyone who really liked it.

<comment><USER43> > Marco Polo on the other hand cost a fuck ton and I've yet to meet anyone who > really liked it.

My wife's pitch to try to get me to watch that was "it's pretty good when Marco Polo's not in the scene". Didn't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm constantly bummed out they don't have classics like Top Gun or nearly any DC series like The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow etc.

But there will always be someone bummed out.

Edit: apparently at least not within Australia.

<comment><USER45> I just checked, and in the US, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Arrow and Supergirl are all on Netflix streaming right now.

You're right about Top Gun, though.

<comment><USER44> Damn! We don't have them in Australia.

<comment><USER12> Arrow is on Netflix Australia, as is Gotham, but I think a rival streaming service has the rights to The Flash (Stan? Presto?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> There is basically a line break between talking about the results and drawing conclusions. Nothing explains why the success should come from original content. Sure, it's a factor, but calling it The Reason is awkward.

Also I don't think Netflix has won the streaming wars, already. I use both Netflix and Amazon (with two more competitors I don't use, in my country). And they are actually different enough to both survive together. Netflix is the everybody solution: cheap, broad, but certainly not covering all corners. Amazon is the "rich" solution: You can have nearly everything there is, but for some of it you need to pay premium (i.e., buy/rent the movie despite paying for prime already).

</comment><comment><USER47> They just understood the basic, that people can drop 10 bucks a month for an unlimited pass. Meanwhile some other company still try to sell you downloadable 15 years old movies for $15 each ...

</comment><comment><USER48> Netflix original content is amazing. IMO, they are the foundation of a new golden age of television.

Honestly, if you browse Netflix originals and choose one with 5 stars, and give it 3 episodes, you're most likely going to be hooked and start binge watching into the wee morning hours.

I speak from very recent experience -- first with Stranger Things, then Travelers (it's fantastic), and now Lovesick (possibly the funniest comedy I have ever seen and also my wife's new favorite show).

<comment><USER49> Although I really like Lovesick, it is only an original since the second season. That might be a really good strategy though, just buy up the best (cancelled) gems and let the original crew create more of it. They should have done that with Party Down too.

<comment><USER50> It also used to be called "Scrotal Recall", in what is possibly the worst TV show naming disaster ever and probably the reason it got cancelled.

Netflix quickly changed the name

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Interesting. At home we've grown increasingly dissatisfied with Netflix. It takes forever to find anything good to watch. There was a time when they had reasonably current good movies. Now it can take us 30 minutes of clicking around to find something decent and, more often than not, we give up.

Let's put it this way, we are finding that we are recording dozens of movies shown on the FX channel an end-up watching these recordings, even though FX is great about ruining the experience with pointless commentary and tons of commercials (thankfully fast-forward on the DVR takes care of that).

FX (and others) have had better content for at least a year. Not sure why we keep paying Netflix. I need to have a serious look at Amazon video and other options.

</comment><comment><USER52> >He expects Netflix to monetize existing subscriptions by doing things like adopting higher pricing tiers for 4K content.

They already do, in the UK at least. 4k is only on the top tier 4 stream subscription. The standard subscription is 2 stream and tops out at 1080p.

</comment><comment><USER53> > Very few people will join Netflix for just one title,

Obviously, because it would cost too much. However with enough customers paying monthly for the full service maybe they will start thinking about video on demand. I'd pay 1 Euro (not more) per episode.

</comment><comment><USER54> Netflix is such a great service, I'd say they are the ones that are truly represent the disruption Silicon Valley dreams of so often in, in the positivest sense. Shame the world around them is less than great. Their existence in the US is being hampered by petty, extortionist ISPs who couldn't tell the truth if their lives depended on it and by dumb licensing and copyright laws. Their catalogue abroad is often less than 10% of the American one (my country has 12% of it! - according to [https://www.finder.com/netflix- usa-vs-world-content](https://www.finder.com/netflix-usa-vs-world-content)). I remember, when they finally expanded to my country, I quickly signed up and the first thing I did was search for House of Cards, just to see no results. It was very disappointing, because their original content is really good, in fact good enough that they created the market in which everybody wants to be Netflix, so they are all trying to create quality original programming, and that's a competition I love seeing.

I used to be a Netflix subscriber via VPN, before they officially opened here, but it just became cumbersome and risky to connect (remember the controversy surrounding sketchy Chrome VPN plugins?). Unfortunately, right now I don't have an active subscription at the moment, sadly, because I finished watching most of the things that interested me from their catalogue in 4 months. Kind of a shame because the company that cracks international expansion first is usually the one to stay in those markets.

On the streaming music front, aside from some sketchier ones, Apple Music was one of the first to open up shop here, and I'm still using it with no plans to ever abandon it because it's a great service -- not only that, but Apple decided to offer regionalised pricing, so their is priced very fairly (to compare and contrast, their subscription costs a little more than twice the amount than here, but the country I live in being a poorer one, I think it's perfectly acceptable). On top of that, they have their original content. Even if Spotify managed to come to this market, I wouldn't switch. There was a time when I desperately tried to pay for their service but they did not let me, now I wouldn't, because I already have superior service.

Edit: I can't stand advertising on services, the ads on most American TV channels and services are so bad that I have to stop using them from time to time. It's not exactly the norm in my country, but there was a time when I thought our ads were crazy annoying! Some of it is extra annoying, like YouTube's, I would love to get YouTube Red, but it's not available here, even tho Google introduced some really crappy business practices to try and steer users towards it.

</comment><comment><USER55> Can you please change the title in something more clear for non native speakers?

"killing it" is not a positive statement for foreigners! It looks like they are dismissing their content creation department!.

<comment><USER55> So… not understanding the language of the title and asking for clarification is worth a downvote?

<comment><USER55> Thanks to everyone who upvoted me again :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Yeah. Amazon released Prime internationally recently. And it has 7 day free demo period, so I thought I'll try it. I open app and see - aww, it's like 15 TV shows and a hundred movies? Come on... Then - ok, lets check what they actually have available. The Man in High Castle? Looks promising...

And I'm still subscribed :) . Need to check Netflix too, hope they have a bigger content selection.

</comment><comment><USER57> Amazon Prime Video just launched in India. While it doesn't have the show quality of Netflix, it is significantly cheaper at a reported Rs. 1000/year (against Netflix' Rs. 600/month or Rs. 7200/year)

They'll have to figure out their pricing if they want to do well in these markets

<comment><USER58> They also launched extremely cheap in South America, but they basically have no content, so they can't compete with Netflix here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Watching The Crown recently got me thinking about the current massive production of Western media content.

You know how a tree over produces seeds in the final phase of it's life? One last push to spread it's genes?

What if the decline of global western hegemony is producing art in much the same way?

</comment><comment><USER60> The evolution of Netflix is impressive. It became an 'international' company when it opened up the streaming service to Canada in 2010, and now they operate in over 190 countries.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is interesting in the larger context of Broadcast Media w.r.t. news, too -- their power and relevancy are ever declining.

</comment><comment><USER62> Wired.com is adblock-walled? How ironic.

</comment><comment><USER63> So, when are they going to release their films and shows DRM-free?

<comment><USER21> Why would they want to do that? You're not buying their content. You are leasing it for as long as you are a subscriber.

This isn't a DVD that you physically own and can make a strong case for format shifting to watch on other devices.

<comment><USER63> _> Why would they want to do that?_

Why wouldn't they want to do that? When they were pushing EME garbage into HTML standard, their main excuse was that it's not because they want DRM, but because without it, major film studios won't release anything through them. That was before they started making their own stuff. And now that they do, where is it DRM-free?

 _> You're not buying their content._

What stops them from selling it? It's theirs, they can do whatever they want.

<comment><USER12> They do sell it... on DVD & Blu-ray. If you don't mind spending $120 you can get all four seasons of House Of Cards on DVD. But that would also buy a year of Netflix, and most people would see the Netflix subscription as the better deal.

<comment><USER63> _> They do sell it... on DVD & Blu-ray._

Who needs obsolete physical media these days? Where are they selling files?

<comment><USER49> Yes please. Let me automatically download episodes in the highest quality and watch them the way I like it, in Kodi: always full screen, 24p, CEC. In short, give me a legal usenet alternative.

<comment><USER64> How much are you willing to pay for it?

<comment><USER49> The same amount as a Netflix HD subscription more or less. Download speed can even be a bit lower than streaming rate, and the connection does not have to be as reliable, so it should be cheaper to provide. Unfortunately I think I am an outlier. Most people probably like the ready-to-use apps on tv/media box/phone/etc. .

<comment><USER64> The difference is that I can't access Netflix content after the end of my subscription. With your model I could pay for a month, load as much as I can and watch for the next 6 months. Repeat as necessary.

I'd enjoy a way _to buy_ not DRMed, high quality digital movies. But I don't have any illusions that a subscription model is feasible without DRM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Clearly everyone is watching Fuller House</comment>


Just fixed a 20-year-old bug… - <AUTHOR> http://www.azulsystems.com/blog/cliff/2011-08-28-just-fixed-a-20-year-old-bug <comment><USER2>
        // Slimey cheap key comparator.
        int32 cmpkey(const void *key1, const void *key2) {
            return (int32)((intptr_t)key1 - (intptr_t)key2);
        }

Any C programmer's spidey sense should tingle when they see a ternary comparison function implemented like this. Let's look at the canonical example:

        int intcmp(int x, int y) { return x - y; }

It seems perfectly fine. After all, cmp functions are usually allowed to return any signed number, not only -1, 0 or +1. But what happens if x is INT_MAX and y is INT_MIN? You get signed integer overflow. That's bad. In theory, it's really, really bad because signed integer overflow in C is undefined, so it could launch nuclear missiles, segfault, or give a compiler like GCC total license to fuck with your code in all kinds of ways that are hard to imagine. In practice, on 2's complement machines, it's just really bad since INT_MAX - INT_MIN = -1 doesn't have the right sign.

Returning to Cliff's code, since he's only using the cmp function for equality and not ordering, the overflow problem doesn't manifest itself. If he were using it for ordering in a sorted array or search tree, you might think that this wouldn't cause a bug as long as all he needed was a consistent ordering rather than any particular one. Well, you'd be wrong, because intcmp violates transitivity. Mathematically speaking, INT_MIN+1 < 0 < INT_MAX. According to intcmp, INT_MIN+1 < 0 and 0 < INT_MAX but INT_MIN+1 > INT_MAX. This breaks the invariants of your sorting and search tree code, so all bets are off.

The solution? Do the simple thing:

        int intcmp(int x, int y) { return x < y ? -1 : x > y ? +1 : 0; }

Your compiler can turn this into a few branchless instructions with a single CMP.

<comment><USER3> x = INT_MAX & y = -1 is enough to break your intcmp example. There are a wide range of inputs that would cause a problem.

<comment><USER2> Yes, it's as you say.

Signed arithmetic is a minefield in C. Here is a case that also explains why my intransitivity example for simplicity used INT_MIN+1 rather than INT_MIN:

        // buffer size must be >= ceil(log10(INT_MAX)) + 2
        void itoa(int x, char *buf)
        {
            if (x == 0) { *buf++ = '0'; *buf = 0; return; }
            if (x < 0) { *buf++ = '-'; x = -x; }
            // handle the x > 0 case.
        }

This seems like a solid algorithmic strategy for this problem: reduce to the positive case. Unfortunately things go very badly if x is INT_MIN. You get another signed integer overflow which in theory is wholly undefined by C. But in practice, with 2's complement arithmetic, you get x == -x. (As a corollary, the antisymmetry property intcmp(x, y) = -intcmp(y, x) fails when e.g. x = INT_MIN and y = 0, so we lose both transitivity _and_ antisymmetry.)

Anyway, the itoa strategy is great on an algorithmic level but the implementation fails due to messy reality. The proper implementation uses a cast to an unsigned variable without any explicit negation. This obviously works on 2's complement machines, and Steele and Harbison's C - A Reference Manual, pp. 190 suggests it is well-defined and portable:

"Except for the type _Bool, the general rule for converting from one integer type to another is that the mathematical value of the result should equal the original mathematical value if that is possible. For example, if an unsigned integer has the value 15 and this value is to be converted to a signed type, the resulting signed value should be 15 also. If it is not possible to represent the original value of an object of the new type, then there are two cases.

If the result type is a signed type, then the conversion is considered to have overflowed and the result value is technically not defined. If the result type is an unsigned type, then the result must be that unique value of the result type that is equal (congruent) mod 2^n to the original value, where n is equal to the number of bits used in the representation of the result type. If signed integers are represented using twos-complement notation, then no change of representation is necessary when converting between signed and unsigned integers of the same size. However, if signed integers are represented in some other way, such as with ones-complement or sign-magnitude representation, then a change of representation will be necessary."

Unsigned arithmetic has well-defined semantics in C (wrap-around on overflow, etc). Unfortunately it has other legacy issues with things like mixed signed/unsigned comparison: if x is an unsigned int then x > -1 is always false rather than being always true as you'd expect. In practice I use signed integers for everything, even variables subject to non-negativity invariants, except when I need to rely on wrap-around or bitwise operations.

In summary, all this stuff is hard to get right. It's silly that I have to carry around all this esoterica in my head to write correct code. It doesn't help that compilers like GCC are increasingly taking advantage of theoretically undefined behavior in people's code to create (often very marginal) opportunities for optimization; if you want to be scared shitless, read this presentation: [https://www.securecoding.cert.org/confluence/download/attach...](https://www.securecoding.cert.org/confluence/download/attachments/40402999/Dangerous+Optimizations.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Checked out openjdk just to see that file, I thought it would be interesting to run cloc on hotspot:

        hotspot $ cloc .
            3742 text files.
            3663 unique files.
             343 files ignored.

        http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.53  T=28.0 s (120.9 files/s, 37436.2 lines/s)
        </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--
        Language                      files          blank        comment           code
        </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--
        C++                             712          67857         102162         365876
        Java                           1556          25399          54259         188050
        C/C++ Header                    852          29418          52451         112257
        XML                              77            504            231          15759
        C                                20           1494           2527           8430
        XSLT                              7            564            166           4392
        Assembly                          6             91             36           2256
        HTML                              7            230              3           2010
        Bourne Shell                     75            497           1800           1767
        make                             20            387            841           1579
        Javascript                        2            130            188            917
        D                                 4             83            127            869
        SKILL                             3             74              0            526
        DOS Batch                        42            176           1025            423
        ASP.Net                           1             22              0            141
        Bourne Again Shell                1             27             62            123
        Teamcenter def                    1              0              0              7
        </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--
        SUM:                           3386         126953         215878         705382
        </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

<comment><USER4> A couple languages I was unfamiliar with:

\- SKILL: I'm guessing <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_SKILL>

\- Teamcenter def: Guessing <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamcenter>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The code was written 20 years ago, but the -bug- didn't appear until people started writing 64-bit software.

I wouldn't call that a 20-year-old bug... It didn't cause any issues for most of that time because it couldn't have.

<comment><USER6> It was a bug. It should have had

        assert(sizeof(void *) <= sizeof(int32));

(or better yet, a compile-time assertion).

<comment><USER7> Can you imagine that "20 years ago" (for most of us is too early to be programming at this level) you missed this thinking it couldn't possibly be anything but 32 bits for the purpose it was written for?

That said, never assume, because "dict.cpp" stuff happens all the time, except its modern web-incantation is usually called "copy-pasta."

<comment><USER8> Only if you'd been raised on Java.

There had been the shift from 16->32 bit not long before that, so it's not that much of a stretch, and 8->16 before that (well after I got my first computer).

We found an almost identical bit-mismatch bug in a programming language that led a bitmap of tcp connections to appear to go crazy on a customer install in a core piece of software. These bugs cost.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, in that time period you couldn't really get away from writing really defensively. It was even worse, earlier. When I wrote C code for x86 there were all sorts of different memory models you could choose from at compilation, and we were producing both a 16 bit and a 32 bit (for the daring) versions of our product. You couldn't assume _anything_.

I write java now and this is not something I miss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a bit confused... why would that function be faster than `return key1 != key2` ?

Not sure how to compile this function to a 16b target, otherwise I'd check myself :(

<comment><USER11> Typically, at the assembly level, doing a "compare" will change the contents of some CPU flags, but not registers. Normally, those CPU flags would then influence future instructions - most often a "GOTO if this flag is set" instruction.

In this case, you want to return the result of the comparison from a function. Since functions return values in registers, you'd need to do some extra work to copy the result into a register from the flag.

Between compiler optimisations, and the cost of your function call in the grand scheme of things, the difference is likely negligible. This may, or may not, have been the case in 1991. Also, casting to an integer pointer rather than a char pointer means the code has to divide by 4 at least once. (He _did_ write this "optimisation" as an undergraduate!)

EDIT: Actual assembly comparison, from gcc -O3 (Apple's 4.2.x). subl (subtract) and cmpl (compare) take the same amount of time. But then _compare has to do setne to to store the "not equal" flag into a register, then movzbl to expand that result from 8 bits (which is what setne writes) to the full size of an int.

      _subtract:  // return (int)((char*)key1 - (char*)key2))
        pushl	%ebp
        movl	%esp, %ebp
        movl	8(%ebp), %eax
        subl	12(%ebp), %eax
        leave
        ret

      _compare:  // return key1 != key2
        pushl	%ebp
        movl	%esp, %ebp
        movl	12(%ebp), %eax
        cmpl	%eax, 8(%ebp)
        setne	%al
        movzbl	%al, %eax
        leave
        ret

<comment><USER10> Strange, new gcc (4.4.4) produces a much nicer assembly for key1!=key2:

        .LFB0:
            .cfi_startproc
            xorl    %eax, %eax
            cmpq    %rsi, %rdi
            setne   %al
            ret
            .cfi_endproc

Clang 2.8 does something similar to your _compare (I expect new versions to be a bit better)

<comment><USER12> You're comparing two different assembly languages and calling conventions. x64 != x86.

<comment><USER10> You're right. It's been some time since I've looked at any intel-like assembly :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Boy, you'd think anything with an (int32) cast would get seriously eagle-eyed during a 64-bit port...

<comment><USER14> You'd think the first thing someone would do is grep for all typecasts. hmm

One thing you can do to make your typecasts easier to find, assuming you're using C++, is using static_cast. I know it's ugly, but searching for static_cast is much easier than all possible ways you can write a typecast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is it just me who thinks that the OpenJDK's "fix" still has the same bug as the original code?

</comment><comment><USER16> So Dr. Click is a mortal after all. He still rocks and his work and thoughts are hugely informative and influential. Kudos for the upfront self crit.</comment>


Four Remote Packet-Of-Death Vulnerabilities Found in Linux Driver - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/5/13/739

<comment><USER2> Alarmist headline for an obscure driver, that, while included in the kernel, is almost certainly not running on your production Linux server. Seems to be related to products from Ozmo Device Inc. that push USB data over a layer 2 Wi-Fi Direct connection: [http://lxr.free- electrons.com/source/drivers/staging/ozwpan/](http://lxr.free- electrons.com/source/drivers/staging/ozwpan/)

<comment><USER3> From a company that doesn't even appear to be in business anymore:

[http://www.ozmodevices.com/](http://www.ozmodevices.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related oss-sec discussion for CVE assignment:

[http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2015/q2/446](http://seclists.org/oss- sec/2015/q2/446)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's a "staging" driver; not a big deal, you are almost certainly not using this driver.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't jump to such conclusions so fast about the deployment and usage of this driver. Included with many distributions and several devices require its usage.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't look to be enabled in Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint or OpenSuSE to me, which covers the top five. Which distributions are you referring to?

I see OpenSUSE disabled it back in 2013 with a commit message '"Take it behind the barn and shoot it." says Michal. :)', presumably in response to inspection after its previous vulnerabilities -- [http://kernel.opensuse.org/cgit/kernel- source/commit/?id=2c1...](http://kernel.opensuse.org/cgit/kernel- source/commit/?id=2c1c77c5da1ce2e3efb4555261fa2d05f4565ff7)</comment></comment></comment>


Uber's 'hustle-oriented' culture becomes a black mark on employees' résumés - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/07/uber-work-culture-travis-kalanick-susan-fowler-controversy <comment><USER2> It can be worse. Something similar is happening to the "binary option" industry in Tel Aviv, Israel. A "binary option" is a bet on whether some financial indicator will go up or down. While there are such things as real binary options on real exchanges, the ones sold from phone banks in Tel Aviv are bets against the house. The house sets the odds and usually wins, and even when they lose, most binary option shops don't pay up. 80% of investors lose everything. In Israel, it's illegal to scam Israelis this way, but completely legal to scam the rest of the world.

The scale of this industry is substantial. It's doing at least $1.2 billion a year in income, and that's the part that pays taxes in Israel. This has been going on for almost a decade, and the scam was growing rapidly.

Then, in 2016, the jaws began to close. The US CFTC won a big case against the biggest binary option firm in Israel, Banc de Binary. They had to pay back everybody who lost money and pay huge damages. (Banc de Binary once offered $10,000 to anyone who would remove that info from their Wikipedia entry. That attempt backfired, badly.) Then there was a 15-part expose in the Times of Israel, titled "The Wolves of Tel Aviv".[1] Now, finally, there are more investigations and a bill to make it illegal to run this scam out of Israel. Banc De Binary ceased operation a few weeks ago. (Or at least they disappeared, removing their sign from the Banc De Binary Tower.) At least four other binary option "brokers" have gone out of business in recent weeks.

As a result, there are lots of layoffs. Scamming people from a phone bank was a good-paying job. The companies liked to hire recent immigrants to Israel who could speak the languages of their target countries fluently. English and Arabic were the most popular languages. A lobbyist for the binary option industry, testifying before a committee of the Knesset, claimed that there are 20,000 people employed in binary options in Israel, and 60,000 people indirectly. "You see the building boom right now in Tel Aviv? Well, you can just say goodbye to that because most skyscrapers in Tel Aviv will be empty. There will be no one to fill them up." There's even a claim from the binary option industry that shutting down this scam will increase terrorism, because it will take away the income of thousands of Arabs.

So 20,000 scammers are becoming unemployed, in a city of only 400,000 people. A former employee of a binary option company faces a far worse black mark than being from Uber. The binary option salespeople are full time con artists. Nobody legit in finance is going to hire them. Getting any legit job will be tough.

(World's smallest violin plays.)

[1] [http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv- israels-...](http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv-israels-vast- amoral-binary-options-scam-exposed/)

<comment><USER3> I've heard pieces of this story, so thank you for the history and summary.

I suspect what you say is true, this is a 'black mark'. Working for Uber? Maybe if you are in upper management, would it be a similar "black mark" but even then, are you going to blame every C_O for their scandals? Probably not all. As for the 98% of employees? I doubt working for Uber will seriously impact their next job (and much less all following jobs).

Just think, today we don't hold it against middle management or individual contributors who happened to be employed at Enron at the wrong time...

<comment><USER4> Actually after Enron was exposed, most former employees head a very difficult time getting hired. It was a major black mark, made worse by the fact that many employees had significant savings in Enron stock.

<comment><USER5> This really depended on what their role was. Many star traders or analysts were able to get re-hired almost immediately or start their own firms without a problem. Here's an example:

[https://books.google.com/books?id=qwDFL2xIX4kC&pg=PA88&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=qwDFL2xIX4kC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=enron+de+shaw&source=bl&ots=y2ivRoK0_D&sig=7zzdLRutwKKW0F0PgvRvKNIUwaI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjj5fnRg8fSAhVL8CYKHZ04CuUQ6AEIODAF#v=onepage&q=enron%20de%20shaw&f=false)

<comment><USER6> That's a pretty good book, btw...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a classic halo effect [1]. A positive halo was "Google is making lots of money and they have 20% time. So, smart companies should do this." This is a negative halo "Uber is experiencing lots of bad PR and hustling is part of their culture. So, smart companies should stop being scrappy."

The problem isn't scrappiness. It is when you push far past scrappiness and start breaking the law.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect)

<comment><USER8> Uber is not the first (or the last) company to get in trouble for too much "hustling"[0].

It is not just the "hustle" people don't like. People view their employees as sexist bigots. All the smart companies don't want people from that culture.

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/zenefits-under- investigati...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/zenefits-under- investigation-in-california/)

<comment><USER9> Won't go too far to say all Uber employees are sexist bigots, but I do, after all these media exposure, now have a images they have a strong feel-good bro culture

<comment><USER10> I think a company with a strong and directed culture will even absorb former "bro dudes" successfully and de-bro them. (Meaning, they will learn empathy and stop behaving in a way that hurts others)

<comment><USER11> Doubt it. Mainly because if a company has a strong and directed culture they would bounce-back every bro-dudes already in the interview phase for "not a culture fit"

<comment><USER12> There's a spectrum of bro-ness, and I've seen pretty hardcore stereotypical "frat guys" at 22 mature into "normal" adult human beings on a regular basis.

If you can keep your bro-ness under wraps for 4 hours for the interview, you can get hired at a company with a reasonable culture and that will continue to mold and shape you, just like any other community influence to which you are consistently exposed.

<comment><USER13> Why is it someone else's job to "un-bro" them? Why can't it be their job to do it for themselves, and just have them find out they're unemployable in their desired job unless/until they do? Companies insist they won't hire people who'd need to learn other fundamental skills of the job (and that if you want the job, learn that stuff first), so why not this?

<comment><USER12> It is/ought to be, but the stark reality is that you can hide it and appear "normal enough" for 4 hours of interviews.

I'm not making a judgment about "ought to be" just "is".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This piece is another cheap "strike it while the iron is hot" hit job to get attention. Yes, Uber seems to be having serious culture issues but the underlying problems of sexism and favoritism towards "high achievers" are industry-wide - not just limited to Uber. They have a lot at stake - it's only fair to assume that they will come out of this mess and fix their problems as soon as possible.

Uber employees, both current and former, will have _no problem_ getting good offers - tech companies have biases but are smart enough not to mass generalize. The fact that they "made it into Uber" far outweighs any speculation around Uber's culture.

The real black mark is the "hit job oriented" culture of media. They need to step back and rethink what they stand for.

<comment><USER15> > Yes, Uber seems to be having serious culture issues but the underlying > problems of sexism and favoritism towards "high achievers" are industry-wide > - not just limited to Uber.

Although these issues are experienced everywhere, they appear to have a higher occurrence at Uber, so it makes sense to focus more on Uber than the industry as a whole.

> it's only fair to assume that they will come out of this mess and fix their > problems as soon as possible

That's appears to be part of the issue with Uber - their culture of self- promotion at all costs. I have no doubt Uber will do whatever they can to make it through this mess. My major concern is that "whatever they can" is merely superficial change, like maybe firing some token dude who's only been there a month and saying, "See? We've changed!"

The linked article, by associating risk with merely being employed at Uber, does the industry a favor by helping uber to do the Right Thing and protect itself by protecting its employees.

The real change that needs to happen, is that people that work at Uber are safe. What better way to make that happen then threaten Uber's ability to hire and retain talent?

<comment><USER16> > firing some token dude who's only been there a month

I assume this is in reference to Amit Singhal. I don't think "some token dude" is a good characterization of the Senior Vice President of Engineering, and while that was a good sign it's very much not all Uber is doing.

I work at Uber, and _many_ of us are quite fired up about holding the company to account. While there are definitely things we can critique, it does seem that the situation being taken seriously and we're all hoping (and, with reservations, expecting) that there will be real change.

<comment><USER14> Amen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Willingness to generalize an entire group seems far more deserving of a black mark.

<comment><USER18> Hiring is hard. We have to use all the data points available to us. If someone seems to have thrived in a culture that is counter to the culture we're trying to build, that's a valuable data point.

<comment><USER19> Insert {protected minority} and see how it sounds.

People may have worked there for a variety of reasons and/or in different team. Let alone that stuff like Stockholm syndrome exists for a reason.

<comment><USER20> The reason certain minorities are protected is in part because the reason for discrimination is because of race, gender, or other attributes they were born with and cannot change.

The choice of where to work is just that--a choice. Choices have consequences. If you willingly accept continued association with a known group of bad actors, it's reasonable that someone might judge your character poorly for that choice.

<comment><USER19> As if majority of Uber workers thought "hey, I could offend women and do shit there, I want to work for them!". And sure all programmers value workplace image over technical challenges?

It's as reasonable to think ex-Uberist is douche as that ghetto-looking dude stole a bicycle on the way to job interview. Possible? Yes. More likely than average citizen? Yes. Reasonable?

If people would be (soft-)forced to steer clear from anyone who might look like a bad actor, it'd suck big time. Want to take down opponents? Spread some rumours and people are afraid to work with them. Or companies would be over- the-top to look good instead of focusing on what they actually do. Github and their diversity team comes to mind.

<comment><USER21> > And sure all programmers value workplace image over technical challenges?

No, but then they've made a decision and sometimes those come back to haunt you. That said: I wouldn't dismiss someone from a position just because they've worked at Uber, but I would ask "pointed questions" to quote the article. At the end of the day you will have to work with that person and I'd rather work with nice people than not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This should be marked as an opinion piece. I struggle to find the data to back this article. Even the recruiting agency interviewed for the article gave a wishy washy answer.

It may be unfair to make a "black mark" on every journalist at The Guardian, but after the false "WhatsApp considered harmful" stories, I am unable to take anything they print at face value. Response by moxie: [https://whispersystems.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp- backdoo...](https://whispersystems.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/)

<comment><USER23> The Guardian used to be a "serious" newspaper, but since they went after markets outside of the UK, including online, they're more of a "classy tabloid". Farming clickbait. A very unfortunate turn. Used to really enjoy their culture content in the 90s

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It would be tempting to vote no on an otherwise qualified candidate citing "culture fit" who has Uber on their resume and a whiff of "bro dude" about them. Ultimately though I hope I'd resist that temptation, because people deserve the benefit of the doubt; even young, white, physically fit dudes who enjoy sports and previously worked at Uber.

I've worked with some nerds who were awful mean-spirited tyrants, and some bro dudes who were really kind and sweet.

<comment><USER25> _It would be tempting to vote no on an otherwise qualified candidate citing "culture fit" who has Uber on their resume and a whiff of "bro dude" about them. Ultimately though I hope I'd resist that temptation, because people deserve the benefit of the doubt; even young, white, physically fit dudes who enjoy sports and previously worked at Uber._

If you substitute the gender or the color of "young, white physically fit dude" you get blatant racism or sexism.

If someone did something wrong, then hold that against them. Being biased against someone's color or gender isn't ok.

<comment><USER24> _If you substitute the gender or the color of "young, white physically fit dude" you get blatant racism or sexism._

I agree. If I did have a bias against white males I might consider it _technically_ racism or sexism, but not blatant.

In my view it's simplistic to think of bias based on gender or race as sexism or racism without considering the larger societal context. Can a historically dominant gender/race in a given society feel the occasional isolated sting of racism and/or sexism? I believe they can, but I also believe it's a false equivalency to view that with the same lens as the often systemic and institutionalized racism and sexism faced by those in the marginalized minority.

<comment><USER26> Ah, so doing it against whites makes it okay then, because they are the "dominant" race.

<comment><USER24> I think we're having an argument about semantics. I think it's a mistake to conflate racism with prejudice. I believe it diminishes the concepts of racism and sexism to invoke them in a non-systemic context.

<comment><USER26> When you change the meaning of racism to actually mean only institutional racism, the behavior that the old meaning represented suddenly becomes much more acceptable. In my opinion this shows a lack of moral clarity on the part of the people who do this, either willingly or not, since it shows that the reason they were opposed to racism was only because of the social prohibition to whatever was thought to be racist, not to the act of racial prejudice itself.

<comment><USER24> Excellent point. Racism and sexism are big ideas that operate on more than one level. Thanks for the reminder that I was thinking about it a narrow way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Culture shapes how individuals behave, and people will change to accommodate new cultures. They might come in with bad habits, but the only reason I would look at their last company's behavior was if that person had been their early or high enough to shape that culture.

<comment><USER28> One really good point in this thread is that people leave companies for cultural reasons as well as professional ones. Blackballing ex-Uber employees hits not only the people who created that culture but also people who had the integrity to leave _because of that culture_ , who are presumably quite good candidates (culturally).

So yeah, I can't really imagine applying that judgement to people who never had the time/position to shape the culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > "To be perfectly honest, I don't want to work with someone who did well in > that environment," he said. "If you did well in that environment upholding > those values, I probably don't want to work with you."

My faith in humanity has been instantly restored by 10% :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Outside of the deplorable sexual harassment stuff, it wasn't the "hustle" that bothered me in that infamous blog post

What bothered me was all the back stabbing. Those are strong black marks for me against anyone that has worked in management in Uber.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm being contacted around 3 times a day for the last couple of weeks from a laundry list of companies so I don't think the article is true. Not all orgs at uber have/had a bad culture and the engineering teams are fantastic. Many people love working at Uber, but clearly something needs to change, and they are, for the better.

<comment><USER32> Oh, they know people are on the market. That's the vultures circling. They also know they need to be on the lookout to disqualify you if you exhibit bad behavior, so they're going to be very picky in the hiring.

<comment><USER31> Rooting out assholes in interviews is even harder and less reliable than evaluating programmers with whiteboard interviews. The SVP from Google passed an extensive due diligence check, and some of the high performer assholes that got fired hid themselves almost perfectly. Hopefully this environment is over at this point but I'm readying my resume just in case.

<comment><USER33> Given that key HR people at Uber come from Google, is it possible that Uber senior management actually knew about the issues surrounding their star SVP hire from Google when they hired him and were OK with it until reporters were tipped off due to current events and they started sniffing around? I am a little dubious of Uber's narrative that they first found out about this from reporters and fired him soon after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Having worked at companies with varying degrees of "hustle" culture, I have to say I prefer (and I know others who prefer) the hustle, the energy, the sense of urgency, the culture of always being present and checked in. If you've got in-born hustle, it's tough to work around people without it. Once lack of hustle takes hold, it spreads like a virus through a company, and soon everyone comes down with this "eh, we can always do it later" attitude about everything. People start not taking deadlines seriously, start worrying more about taking time to build consensus rather than being quick and decisive. Roll in late to meetings, etc. You can even see it watching foot traffic--non- hustlers physically walk slower through the halls. Companies that hustle aren't for everyone but let's not condemn it. It's good to have a variety of work cultures available because different personalities work better in different environments.

Note the above rant doesn't excuse illegal or discriminatory behavior. I'm just addressing the simplistic "hustle = bad" argument.

<comment><USER35> You're misunderstanding hustle with commitment and energy. See, hustle is urgency for sake of urgency at the expense of everything, including breaking rules and social values.

Going without consensus is also one way companies (esp. small ones) implode or do unethical and illegal things.

What is more, this hustling approach discounts brand perception and PR. We see the effects. You may be fast, but if you damage your brand badly enough in the process you might have as well not have done anything.

<comment><USER34> To me, hustle is simply energy/urgency even when nobody is looking. It doesn't have to have a negative connotation.

<comment><USER36> Unfortunately, we don't get to choose whether or not a word has a negative connotation. "Hustle" suggests duplicity, using people and gaming the system for selfish benefit.

<comment><USER34> I don't think the little league baseball coach encouraging his team to "let's hustle out there guys!" is being duplicitous. It's a shame the word has multiple meanings and that the one with the negative connotation is the one that people always think of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Blah - seems like a sensationalist clickbait article, just cashing in on the current media cycle.

I'm honestly more shocked at the myopic discussion in this thread, quite lacking in understanding the range of motivations of people who work there. I'm a long-time engineering employee, and seen a lot of ups and downs. To build a service that was used by a few thousand in one city to millions all over the world has been one of the most exciting jobs I've had, with great feats of engineering and operational execution. Numbers don't lie that we've built a reliable service - the negative media cycles don't hurt the business. There have been a ton of growing pains, with a lot of agenda-driven empire builders, bro-ey-ness, and general lack of careful cultural development that have contributed to the current situation, and left quite a few rankled employees in its wake. Whether it will come out strong from this situation is up to the strength of the leadership, and we'll see what the remedy holds.

FWIW, I have seen a huge uptick in recruiter inbounds in the last few weeks (understandably), with all the best names Facebook, Google, Amazon and Tesla on the list.

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't think everybody that works at Uber joined because of their hustle culture, was part of that while working there or even knew about it while they worked there. I've seen many companies in my life and I was always amazed about some of the stories I heard at the water cooler about people I'd never expect in places I never expected.

If you're not part of the water cooler circle, focus on your work and the problems you are solving and have a nice bunch of direct colleagues and a manager that's not a big jerk (to you and anybody you see him/her interact with at least) you really might be surprised about hearing this stuff.

If you join Uber in 2017 or later then I feel you might deserve a stigma. But somebody hacking on the API 10 hours per day and minding his own business? Not so much.

</comment><comment><USER39> Befitting of Uber, they stole the "Uber way" and called it their own

"Develop an incomplete solution and beat them to the market" is, of course, the Google Way, the Microsoft way, the Bell Labs way, the IBM way, ..."

Time to market is important.

 _"A lot of them have told me that they're having a hard time finding something new."_

I'm not convinced that this is because they are tained by Uber. It could be that the property "having worked at Uber" carries a statistical bias with "hard to employ elsewhere" simply because perhaps Uber was blindly on-boarding toms, dicks and harriets off the street. (Maybe the way they get drivers at the bottom of the org chart permeates how they staff the rest of it.)

</comment><comment><USER15> Bob: Worked at Uber for 3 years

Joe: Worked at LinkedIn for 3 years

With only this information, which person is more likely to engage in backstabbing or sexual harassment?

With the information available to me, the answer seems clear: Bob

Can somebody explain the fault in my reasoning please?

<comment><USER40> There's nothing wrong with your reasoning, it's just called 'painting an entire group for the sins of some subset". Or in other words, it means you're prejudiced against Uber employees.

<comment><USER15> Are you saying we shouldn't engage in this kind of reasoning because of the words used to describe it? Shouldn't reasoning be used based on its ability to model the world accurately?

If the above reasoning is prejudice, does that make prejudice a good thing?

<comment><USER41> Real question is, if it's true can you still call that prejudice?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is simple to deal with. Uber has picked up a 'roguish' reputation.

This is how it plays out. In an year or 2 'tainted' management is ejected replaced by new management with folks who have the right reputation and say all the right things. They can then move into respectable territory pretty quickly.

For now it suits the decision makers to play this out to their maximum advantage.

</comment><comment><USER36> The "black mark" certainly doesn't apply to all employees. As one of the recruiters indicated, Uber in the work history might prompt pointed behavioral questioning of candidates.

I suspect it might be more of an issue for high-level execs and possibly project/program managers, but you have to screen for assholery for those titles regardless of where they come from.

</comment><comment><USER43> I find myself "bemused" how while Uber was playing fast and loose with all kinds of regulations they were just good buys disrupting a rotten old boys system.

But now that accusations of sexual harassment at the office has been aired, they are suddenly "unclean".

Almost makes one wonder if the whole "feminism/women's rights" terminology has been hijacked and weaponized by some entity that could not care one bit about actual women, but are using the terms and methods for social assassination objectives.

</comment><comment><USER44> I keep waiting for the massive PR siege against Uber to fizzle out but it apparently has marathon legs

<comment><USER45> It's amazing how much circle jerk around this is happening on HN, which usually holds reasonably cold and rational views. I'm not saying that Uber is doing good things but it definitely feels like an organized campaign that successfully snowballed.

<comment><USER22> I don't think it's organized. I've seen otherwise benign organizations and individuals (I'm not saying Uber is benign) dragged through the mud and later vindicated.

Many different publications pile on to vulnerable targets in order to catch up with reader interest. See Fatty Arbuckle, Lindy Chamberlain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Blackmark-oriented culture is problem too.

</comment><comment><USER47> 30 years ago these same a __holes would 've gone to Wall Street. Now they go to Silicon Valley Instead. No surprise that some companies get infected with them as a result.

<comment><USER48> That's a pretty gross generalisation based on one company. There are definitely a few cases but the industry as a whole isn't comparable to Wall Street by any means.

<comment><USER49> Your statement seems to imply you want to exempt Silicon Valley from gross generalization, but still apply it to Wall Street companies?

<comment><USER50> It is probably a bit of an over-generalization, but let us not forget Wall St. did crash the economy and no one at the top was held accountable.

<comment><USER51> And why do you suppose that Silicon Valley will not crash the economy? It's not implausible, with the arrival of increased automation, self-driving cars, etc. that the economy will at least take a major hit as a result of Silicon Valley innovation. And I'll wager a lot of the Valley will get very rich off it, too - just like Wall Street.

<comment><USER52> Hey, it happened on 2000. The only difference was that the dotcom crash didn't have a load of consumer debt behind it.

<comment><USER53> I'm sure you were just speaking casually, but this was far from the only difference. Biggest difference that comes to my mind is the lack of bailouts.

<comment><USER52> The bailouts were a follow-on action.

Back in 2000, we had an asset bubble, primarily in tech stocks but also in stocks generally. But the bubble was not primarily debt-fuelled (Thank you, post-great-depression limits on margin loans!); when in burst, it had no direct, lasting consequences. Sure, a lot of people felt less wealthy, which caused a bit of a general slowdown, but the economy recovered fairly quickly.

In 2007, we had an asset bubble in the housing market, fuelled primarily by consumer debt. When the bubble started bursting, consumers stopped being able to get big loans, meaning they couldn't buy at those prices and couldn't refinance their existing huge loans. Housing prices dropped, meaning even fewer loans, more foreclosures, more houses on the market and lower prices. Because consumer debt was also financing the rest of the economy, the collapse of that and the ensuing pessimism put the binders on the whole economy, hard.

In the midst of this, the institutions that had been making the loans discovered that the paper they had been shuffling around was actually worthless, leaving them with many debts and few assets. The bailouts were intended to do two things:

1\. Improve the balance sheets of the financial institutions, preventing them from going bankrupt and falling over like a sack of doorknobs. (IMO, this was ultimately both good and bad. Uncontrolled collapse would have been _bad,_ but a restructuring and breakup of those firms is _still_ necessary or it's going to happen again.)

2\. Increase the money supply, through the banks-make-loans-loans-go-into- accounts-banks-make-loans cycle. This was necessary to avoid deflation and support the overall economy. (Want to shoot an economy in the head? Think inflation is bad? Check out deflation.) Unfortunately, banks weren't making loans, so that didn't happen. Modern economic theory at its finest, ladies and gentlemen. Oopsie.

I maintain that the big, primary difference is the amount of leverage applied on the downside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> It's worse when you have a black mark on your record for actually hustling.</comment>


Further (a roadmap for pfSense) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.pfsense.org/?p=1588

<comment><USER2> Couldn't agree more with almost everything in the post (the one exception being the comment about salt stack) - very exiting times ahead.</comment>


VMware Buys AirWatch for $1.54 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/vmware-buys-mobile-security-firm-for-1-54-billion/

<comment><USER2> Huh. It's clearly a huge number, but AirWatch just raised a $200MM Series A (+$25MM add-on) last year on a $1B valuation, and everyone was talking about them going public. I wonder how happy the investors are with the 50% return on a 12 month investment?

(And doesn't it show just how insane VC funding is, when you realize that some of the investors may actually be disappointed?)

<comment><USER3> I work at the VC that invested in AirWatch last year. We're happy with the investment given that it was a relatively quick and clean exit given our typical 3-5+ year exit timeline.

<comment><USER4> It's definitely not a total win - first, the return isn't actually ~50% given the $365M in installment payments and assumed unvested equity; second, your LPs committed capital to your fund expecting a certain IRR over the length of the fund (7 years i'm guessing? 10?). Getting them a low- to mid-double digit IRR over 1 year is nice, but it also means that they now have to spend money figuring out how to redeploy that capital for the next 6 years.

<comment><USER5> That's not how VC/PE typically works. Exit capital is returned, not reinvested.

<comment><USER4> Sorry I wasn't clear with my pronouns (?) - "they" referred to the LPs, not Insight. Meaning that now the LPs (not Insight) have to figure out how to reinvest the capital that was returned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How's this acquisition strategic for VMware?

<comment><USER7> Speculation: Gartner's recent negative view on VMware's innovation capabilities caused VMware management to freak out and go out and buy anything "innovative" that was for sale in the mobility arena. Mobility is hot, and VMware wants have a piece of the cake.

<comment><USER8> That's a really simplistic speculation. VMware management is considerably more measured than that. VMware has had an End-User-Computing units for years now. With more computing done on mobile and less on PCs, it stands to reason that VMware would like to move in that direction too for their EUC group, especially if the disruption upends the entrenched position Citrix has had on the PC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I work at AirWatch. This a great win for the Atlanta seed ecosystem.

<comment><USER10> You are assuming that AirWatch is going to stay in ATL. What happens when VMWare wants you guys to move?

I dont know why you still consider yourselves a startup, you guys were probably a startup in the Wandering Wifi days but I think those times have past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> We have AirWatch, and I didn't know they were considered a startup. It really explains their support knowing this.

<comment><USER12> The support is of good quality or bad?

<comment><USER11> Completely lapsed and left that out. Support is very cavalier. If you submit a web ticket, it can be days before they even look at it. A lot of problems are just brushed off, you're given a curt "its not a problem with our software" and that is that. I understand they are at the mercy of the device vendor when it comes to certain things, for example Apple cutting off device tracking of WiFi-only iPads.

I really dislike the blackbox aspect of AirWatch itself. You prep the servers, but they perform the install and the updates. You have to pay for updates out of a bank of paid hours. For example, you want to go from 5.5 to 5.6. If it takes an hour and a half, it is taken out of your bank. You also pay for every device you have checked into AirWatch. It just reeks of double-charging. You don't get charged if you have a problem stemming from a bug.

I install and maintain much more complicated software. I'd really rather they give me the update and if it goes awry then I'd call support. It runs on Windows server, it isn't rocket science.

The initial install support and training was sub-par, too. The same engineer that performs the install also gives you a basic rundown on the console. Very quick, and sometimes the best technical people shouldn't also train people on its usage.

That all being said, I have about 1200 devices in AirWatch. More or less I am the only person for the deployment and maintenance of these devices. I have very little complaints about the use of AirWatch, my job would be a lot more difficult without it.

<comment><USER8> If I was an investor, these types of answers are the real gems that I would look for before making any acquisition.

"That all being said, I have about 1200 devices in AirWatch. More or less I am the only person for the deployment and maintenance of these devices. I have very little complaints about the use of AirWatch, my job would be a lot more difficult without it."

That is value right there.

<comment><USER13> And in fact, these are the sorts of things that M&A departments at large companies look for - companies with good market share, a product that drives value, but perhaps are not perfect on execution (sales, support, implementation), because that's where the acquirer can add incremental value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I guess the employee is getting screwed?

<comment><USER15> Looks like an upround to me, but the question is what the liquidation preference was, and whether there was any money leftover for the common (I.E. employees)

<comment><USER16> You also need to keep in mind that this is an Atlanta-based company and not a Silicon Valley based one. The employees are likely to have worse contracts that what you'd find in the Bay Area, especially if the original and seed investors were local to the Atlanta region or Southeast. I know that term sheets from Raleigh-Durham investors are typically less favorable than out here in the Bay Area and I would expect the same in the Atlanta ecosystem.

In secondary funding markets, VCs have far more bargaining power. If you have real traction and are in those markets, you simply don't raise money there. You come out to the Bay Area instead where more VCs will compete to invest in you.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, I don't quite get it. Why are the employees screwed? I know that the VSs got liquidate first usually. But the employees also have their shares value raised in their pocket. If the contracts are not favorable, then even if they go IPO, it's the same for the employees, right? This is different from a new round of VC investment which may dilute the employees holdings.

<comment><USER16>
        "I know that the VSs got liquidate first usually."

That statement is accurate for secondary markets, but for the Bay Area, I'd say it's more accurate to say "I know that the VSs got liquidate first _historically_ , but that's not necessarily the default today."

I'm saying that companies raising rounds in secondary markets like Atlanta and Raleigh typically get less favorable terms than those raising money in Silicon Valley. They have fewer VCs to choose from and the local VCs have term sheet expectations more similar to the term sheet expectations in the Bay Area from several years ago, which are far less favorable to term sheets today. I doubt that startups in secondary markets could even find investors willing to offer convertible notes or willing to budge on liquidation preferences.

<comment><USER17> Thank you for your information. Do you mean in Silicon Valley, VCs are rarely get preferred stocks from the startup company? But why are they offering convertible notes which to me is more risk for the startup companies than the VCs?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


We have a 10-20 year lead on databases over Amazon – Larry Ellison - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrzMYL901AQ&feature=youtu.be&t=206 <comment><USER2> Not often you get to laugh that hard, Thanks for sharing</comment>


Apple Mac Pro is now available to buy - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ <comment><USER2> $57,545.00 with every currently available hardware option.

EDIT: Now $59,945.00 with the added options.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was just looking at that. Don't forget the displays!

<comment><USER2> That includes one Pro Display XDR. Of course, we'll really need at least 6 of those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reviews are already up:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPswcaSsu8&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPswcaSsu8&feature=youtu.be)

</comment><comment><USER3> If the price was much lower (similar to the 2013 Mac Pro for the base model), and the case didn't look like 80s Art Deco threw up over a bathroom magazine rack, I'd probably get one.

<comment><USER4> This will probably come across as dismissive, but you're not their target audience then?

Seems this is for super high end specialized setups (not just your average Xcode usage), with companies/people who can afford a $50k workstation to improve the productivity of their $500k employee(s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >ultimate in CPU performance...28 cores, 64 PCI Express lanes

Did they mean to launch pre November 25/3970x?

</comment><comment><USER6> $400 for wheels. sigh.</comment>