3-D-printed magnets outperform conventional versions, conserve rare materials - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-11-d-printed-permanent-magnets-outperform-conventional.html <comment><USER2> This is the sort of manufacturing that really can benefit from 3D printing. Imagine fabricating a rocket nozzle from high-priced material, without generating any chips or other machining waste.</comment>


Ask HN: As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health? - <AUTHOR> What indicators do you look at to determine whether the company is in good or bad health or trending in a direction?
Do you have anecdotes (or even more significant data!) about signs or events or shifts in culture that ended up foretelling a change to the company?
[Update(s)]
I mainly meant "startup" (i.e. not Fortune 500) when I said company. But I don't want to prevent discussions about larger entities, so perhaps we can preface comments with which type of company you're talking about if necessary. :) <comment><USER3> They suddenly decide to inventory equipment (determine company value or collateral). Cutting back on benefits like 401k matching. Delays buying new equipment. People quitting and not being replaced. Senior management having all-day private meetings. They request your background information as if to determine if you are qualified for current or new positions (if company is discussing being acquired). Hackathons with a theme completely off target from current products. Multiple sets of men in suits touring the office. Managers stop downloading latest version of the beta-test app. Managers stop showing up for meetings. Managers stop caring about product quality. You look up from your desk and realize the office is empty when it should be busy - <USER2> those people are being terminated or you are being terminated.

<comment><USER4> "Multiple sets of men in suits touring the office"

New tenants being shown round the office you are in can be a bit worrying...

<comment><USER5> Not to discount what you're saying, but there are several sets of "men in suits" that appear long before you lose your office space.

Some are your investors (or work for them). Some are consultants or advisors, promising to solve all your problems. The service provider you're re- negotiating payment terms with. Potential acquirers, etc.

<comment><USER6> Must they be men?

<comment><USER7> Of course not. They also don't need to be in suits. The wording is just meant to evoke particular imagery. And the comment that you replied to just used that quoted section from the parent and grandparent, anyhow. If you have a problem with the wording, then you have a problem more directly with the grandparent than with this comment, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a great article on this topic from Steve Blank:

[https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle- ear...](https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle- earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/)

He argues that a leading indicator is when free food/drinks are removed, as it's a sign that the company is moving from a growth, "we're all in it together" mentality to a cost-cutting one.

I, personally, focus on who's getting promoted and who's leaving. If a company is promoting internally and retaining people, then it's typically in a good place; if a lot of people are getting hired above others, and new employees aren't staying long, then it's in poor health.

<comment><USER9> When I read things like this, I like to take a moment to realise how fortunate we are to work in a sector where something like freebies is almost considered to be a sacred right. Is there any other profession or sector where they get the same treatment?

I don't think removing or reducing these benefits is a sign of poor health. I think it's more a sign of turning into a proper business (which needs to answer to the people who put the money to buy all these drinks in the first place), which isn't for everyone, but it doesn't _have_ to be a bad sign.

I do agree with the second part. The attrition rate is definitely something to keep tabs on, but it's important to know why people are leaving.

<comment><USER10> > I like to take a moment to realise how fortunate we are to work in a sector > where something like freebies is almost considered to be a sacred right.

Bear in mind that, most programmers do not get paid overtime, and are expected to work like horses. The reason freebies are sacred rights are because those are, in part, the unofficial payment for working in such conditions.

<comment><USER8> Yup. I would take getting paid overtime over freebies hands down. 1.5x for every hour worked over 40? Sign me up.

<comment><USER11> 1.5 is a little low 1.75 after 8 Pm 2x at weekend and 2x plus a day TOIL for sunday

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One simple thing missing in most of these replies: ask questions. Ask your boss, ask your peers, ask the CEO now and then.

      - How is the company doing against its goals for the year?
      - What does our runway look like?
      - What signs of product success are we expecting? What are we seeing?

Note that in any company, and especially in a startup, all of these questions are rife with uncertainty and stress. You should expect these to touch a nerve, and request brutally honest answers. Leaders experience existential fear on these topics frequently, even in great companies.

In the responses, be wary of blithe positivity more than bad news. Bad news is normal; a healthy organization learns from it and improves. Optimism disconnected from reality is either an attempt to mislead you or a sign of blindness to results.

<comment><USER13> I definitely have had employers that basically refused to discuss such things (in one particularly egregious example, a company with 10 people).

It's frustrating, but some small company CEOs also get very wrapped up in emulating what "Corporate" looked like at bigger companies. That includes keeping information from employees, because if they knew how bad it was they might leave, word might travel to investors, etc.

<comment><USER12> Refusing the discussion is a categorically bad sign, though of course some details won't be public. Best case, the leader is deluded in a way that limits learning. Like an entrepreneur who wants you to sign an NDA to discuss their idea, this sort of behavior is now obviously bad.

Relatedly, when a candidate asks these types of questions during the recruitment process, this signals that you're clueful. A good employer will happily engage. A bad one will switch to a more gullible candidate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I generally work for smaller companies, < 50 total staff. Most of my variables and data pieces others have said. My main "rats, sinking ship" is in regards to others working there;

Health note: Employee churn when churn is not the norm.

Health warning: Certain people leaving with enough business knowledge it's noticeable they're gone

Health crisis: Multiple health warnings in quick succession (within 2 years).

At warning level I make sure my CV is updated and start setting up job alerts. At crisis I'm actively applying for jobs to keep my options wide open.

Edit: Ooh reading another comment - I watch the public docs of the company I'm working for. It's a year or so out financials-wise but you can get some info from it.

<comment><USER15> I'd actually counsel updating the resume every 6 months and applying to at least one job posting with it, just to get a sense of the local job scene. And even if your current company is fine, you might get the chance to switch to one that is better. At the very least, you get some interview practice, which never hurts.

One does get slightly paranoid after getting laid off with only 3 days notice and no severance, one time.

If your management feels that it has to offer some form of reassurance to its employees, in the form of "Don't worry: X will probably not happen," then you should create a contingency plan, as though X is happening next month.

<comment><USER14> I do try to keep it up to date every so often - though saying that I've been in my current job over a year and haven't touched it.. - those yellow and red flags definitely trigger a more urgent need to update it

HN being the global sort of place I (and others) should really mention where I'm at - in the UK at least short of anything that gets me fired on the spot I know I'll have a month's notice if I do need to start looking so that does give a bit of complacency as it's in writing in my contract.

Having said that it couldn't hurt to keep the eyes open, the job I've got now was a lucky gem of a find

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cutting of catered lunches is a strong signal that the company is in a cash crunch. You can try to propose a weekly catered lunch at your company to "encourage communication" and watch it is a signal. In the past I instituted weekly catered lunches at a company, which were halved from weekly to bi- weekly the moment finance knew there was trouble.

Other indicators: delayed salary reviews, senior staff leaving (and not being replaced, because money) or minority shareholders trying to sell their stakes.

<comment><USER17> How often do salary reviews generally occur for someone working as a developer (or IT I suppose?)

<comment><USER18> _> How often do salary reviews generally occur for someone working as a developer (or IT I suppose?)_

It's served me well to have at least one interview per year with a different company in your field to see what they're offering. Doing this has really helped me understand what the market is willing to pay for my skills, and has more than once caused me to shift the direction of my career because the work they were doing was interesting enough that I switched jobs.

You don't necessarily have to accept the job, and I would caution against switching jobs every single year, but I've definitely found the experience helpful. It also forces you to keep your CV up to date, and it's also great interview practice. I've definitely taken lessons learned from my various interviews and applied them to interviewing candidates for our company.

<comment><USER19> > It's served me well to have at least one interview per year with a different > company

That sounds like really good advice: finding out what's out there, getting interview experience and stopping that "fear of change" feeling you can end up with when you work for one company for a long time.

<comment><USER7> > and stopping that "fear of change" feeling you can end up with when you work > for one company for a long time.

That's what I'm dealing with right now. I've been 9 years at the place that I started at, right out of college. Missed some signs of a downward slide that I should've recognized, and I feel like my current team is a "dead team walking", just waiting for the company to find a way to get rid of us.

So I've got pressure to move on, and my most solid options mean moving my family. If I'd been searching over the last couple of years, I'm sure I could've found something cool and suitable, but still in my current area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Many answers are negative assuming decline, or provide an extremely complicated answer to a simple problem. I'd propose based on decades of observation that you model the behavior and personality of all of management as if it was one person. Now is that imaginary merged individual person a lunatic deep in cocaine addiction psychosis? That might be a bad sign. Is that imaginary merged person a reasonable good leader? Sounds like a good sign. Is that one merged person in a civil war with its large number of multiple personalities? Run like hell.

This is what "real" culture fit actually is, whereas what culture fit means in 2017 as currently deployed is "we only hire young white ivy-league(-ish) males" which is a totally different concept or problem.

<comment><USER21> _> I'd propose based on decades of observation that you model the behavior and personality of all of management as if it was one person._

The problem I see with this advice is that many technical people (e.g. presumably many HN readers) are not good at "reading people". It's very similar to socially-inept engineers asking _" how can I tell if a girl would be ok with me asking her out on a date?"_ We then respond with more well- meaning advice, _" if she smiles at you, that's a good sign."_ And then the engineer might ask, _" well, how can I tell if her smile is genuine affection or just politeness?"_ ... and so on and so on ... into a sort of infinite recursion into the mysteries of "people behavior".

If the engineer is the kind of person that can read Ribbonfarm's Gervais Principle[1] and say to him/herself, _" that was a waste of time because that's all obvious information"_, then yes, he can follow your advice. He/she can evaluate the managers as if they were chess pieces and figure out the health of the company.

If you're the type that's not "tuned in" into how people exhibit _implicit behaviors_ , you'll need a Plan B. E.g. look at the financials or other strategy.

[1] [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais- principle/](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> TLDR: You assess health by if you're getting paid what you think it's worth to stay in the job. If you're okay with the pay, and you like the job, be a pro and stay as long as the pay comes in.

A big warning sign was that my employer interview great candidates, make offers, and then the candidate didn't accept. The problem was that we weren't paying competitively.

I tried to express this to upper management, and then instead of fixing the problem, they just gave me a raise. (From below market rate to below market rate but able to start putting money in the newly-offered 401k.)

Shortly afterwards, I interviewed at one of our major competitors. The next day I looked at one of the founders and said, "if there's a chance to exit via acquisition, we need to take it."

Turns out there was an acquisition deal in the works, but we couldn't know due to how US law works. One of the higher-ups asked me to investigate "a bug," and when I looked at her logs, all I saw were references to an upcoming acquisition. I then knew to stick around and give the new owners a chance.

There's a lot to be said for sticking through a few months of uncertainty when it works out to be a great job in the long run.

<comment><USER23> "There's a lot to be said for sticking through a few months of uncertainty when it works out to be a great job in the long run."

This. You have to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em. It's not easy with startups to decide which way to go due to the uncertainty inherent in new businesses. I would tend toward hold if the following is true:

1.) The company is meeting a real market need even if it's not doing it very well. The tell: customers 'get' the problem you are trying to solve and want to talk to you. If they stick around but complain a lot about the product that's actually a good sign.

2.) You can afford to lose your job. Getting to a payoff involves some tolerance for risk. Investors take the same risk with their money.

<comment><USER24> How would apply this advice to a forture 500 company where "payoff" isn't part of the equation?

<comment><USER23> It's definitely harder but I would look for your group being in a growing market that's aligned with the strategic direction of the company. That said, you have to make an effort to keep your ear to the ground.

If you hear people use the word "cash cow" when referring to your group or you can't figure out what the company strategy those are signs it might be time to look for something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My dad used to say: "Son, when assessing the company's health, look for two things: coffee, and toilet paper. If the coffee is not refilled, it means nobody cares, and the company soon will start having serious trouble. If the toilet paper is not refilled, it means there's no money whatsoever, and you should nope out". Worked for me ever since.

</comment><comment><USER26> \- Employee turnover: a large layoff \- Retention: some many know something you don't, especially at the high levels. \- Restructuring/reorging: there are companies that view this method as a panacea for all ailments (rather than treating the underlying issue(s)). \- Projects funded: a concentrated focus on projects that "reduce cost" or "introduce efficiencies" rather than on growth and R&D may be indicative of either a contraction to make a company more palatable for a buy-out, or a simple general state of the money in the bank.

<comment><USER27> I saw all of these in a single year in the IT department of a former client.

\- A new CIO, \- Then within his first week, a layoff of all the network engineers (except the manager) right before an all heads meeting \- An all heads meeting where we were to provided an "accounting of our yearly hours" and it had to equal to 2080 and a reorganization of IT to be instead of a solutions provider to the company, a help desk. \- Then over the course of the next three months, a lot of new projects that combined the various services we consumed (hr, payroll, etc) under one single product, beefed up helpdesk staff count (all temp/contract workers) and layoffs from various orgs in IT: security, development, and helpdesk (employees). \- Then over the next two months, employee staff count dropped further bringing the total at the beginning from 60 heads to 12. And all the employees were replaced with contractors.

That said, the company gave out larger bonuses because the bonus pool had already been agreed to, and the employee count was almost non existent, so bigger bonuses spread around to the managers (since they were all that was left). Also the company is still growing elsewhere, just shrinking the places that are "cost centers".

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A key indicator I've seen in past companies was when "top skill" or "top manager" level people suddenly submit their resignation and then spend two weeks calmly walking around the office with an ear-to-ear grin. Not too long after that, whisperings of "Why?" start circulating. And shortly after that, I got an upbeat email from HR about "Exciting new company direction" and "Rethinking our core strategies for better customer alignment." In all seriousness, shake-ups and re-alignments are frightening and kill everyone's morale with fears of uncertainty.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've given another answer, but on the meta level, it shouldn't matter to you if a company is doing well. The only thing that should matter is are you learning skills for which there is a market? Getting in the mindset that your "job" does not determine your well being but your skills do.

That mindset presupposes a few things:

A) that you always have your finger on the market and the skills that are in demand

B) your network is strong - including recruiters.

C) You live below your means and have enough in liquid savings to survive a job loss and getting a new job.

<comment><USER30> I completely agree with this approach. The best job security is being good at what you do. Fortunately, we work in an industry where if you are even slightly talented, you will have no trouble finding a new job. So, don't worry too much about how the company is doing. Stick around as long as you are getting paid, the work is interesting, and you are growing in your knowledge/skills. Ensure you have savings for any disasters. And always be scouting the market for new opportunities.

<comment><USER29> True. I think the only time I really worried about my job is between 2008 - 2011. Between the economy sucking and me not following my own advice, I was in a very precarious position.

I told myself I would never do that again

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's a bit subjective, and the more general the statement, the less meaning it would have.

Say a company is becoming corporate and dull, but at the same time becoming more profitable. Are they in good or bad health? As a short-term shareholder you might see them in good health, but as an employee you might see them in bad health.

That said, my experience is to look at team meetings. If they are full of conflict that is resolved respectfully by the end of the meeting, that's usually a good sign. If the same person is dominating and everyone else is quiet, that's a bad sign. If the same arguments keep repeating themselves, that's a bad sign. If there is no conflict at all, and people just stare out of the window while others are talking, that's a bad sign.

At bad companies, everyone knows the real story, but nobody says it out loud. Good people leave, bad people stay, and the problem gets worse.

</comment><comment><USER32> Also relevant should be the question how to act in different phases. An unhealthy company is not necessarily dying. And even a dying company is not necessarily bad for you. It's like with real people. When someone dies some others start to check out the valuables to get the best for themselves. If you are working in a brilliant team inside a dying company, you may all get picked up, get a raise, and be welcomed into new arms. That's one way to get into Google for instance.

For figuring out the current health status, I'd check:

the product line - is it understandable? is it modern? is it efficient?

the customer base - do they have customers that wouldn't easily change to alternative options?

the management team - do they have visions? are they cooperating? are they lying psychopaths, ambitious inventors, calm survivors (thinking Merkel here), idiotic burocrats?

HR - HR is managements comm channel to the employees. Does the promo material look good? How close is the promo material to the actual day-to-day work?

People - are there smart people you like to work with? How many of them are currently joining? How many of them are currently leaving?

Hiring - you are either new and just got hired or there for a long time and probably at least hear things about the hiring process at the water cooler. how reasonable does it sound? does it filter out idiots? does it assess quality attributes like culture? Does the feedback from the interviewers have influence on the hiring decision (more often than you think they actually just hire anybody, if they are hiring at all).

<comment><USER33> re: the product line - also, is it sticky/easy to migrate away? I've worked for places with products that were not great but had institutional customers who required acts of god to change vendors. We were okay.

<comment><USER32> The list is meant more as a list of variables to compare, not as a list of possible red flags. If one or two factors are totally bad it still doesn't necessarily mean that you would call the patient "sick", especially when corresponding factors are fine.

Strong market position with bad products is usually okay. But if you know that and then hear about a deal that may risk decreasing the market position, then you know that there's a good chance it will get a lot worse and you can already start screening the job market for alternatives.

Also there are some factors, like good colleagues, which can compensate a lot for you personally, like bad HR department and bureaucratic leadership.

And sometimes things that are bad for you personally are actually good for the company. For instance if your customer is the government then bureaucratic leadership may actually be a market advantage over the competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Employee experience. The biggest problem at the company I recently left was inexperience. The company thought they could hire cheap and simply cross train and up-skill everyone. A FTSE 100 company. Eg a dev manager was a js dev now managing half the 200 odd dev dept. Hired mostly PHP devs who were all going to be cross trained as Go devs. My last manager had no management experience and was also the dept's Go tech lead, with no Go experience - a PHP dev, now starting at amazon, should be entertaining. Another Go dev on the team an ex- lawyer with two years dev experience as a ruby dev. The place was disorganised, frustrating, and not delivering. Toward the end of last year people started leaving, then more, then more - exodus. The dept has effectively collapsed as it's now a fraction of the size and a significant proportion of the remaining devs are new. It won't absolutely collapse because like all big corps they'll just keep hiring replacements and eventually paper over the cracks. They're now "restructuring", but the same rookies are still running the show so they're probably just going to botch it all over again, just in a different way.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a handy pocket guide. Quite seriously, start looking around if your gut is telling you to.

[http://wiki.c2.com/?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom](http://wiki.c2.com/?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom)

</comment><comment><USER36> When growth numbers are consistently not hit. Always push for transparency at a smaller company - if there isn't one already, attempt to implement an all- hands meeting at least bi-weekly that reviews goals for the quarter / year and the company's progress. If direction is constantly changing at a 1 or 2 month cadence, it's likely that there may be a shakeup coming sooner rather than later.

It's wise to have a bit of cynicism when discussing company goals, progress, outcomes - things may not always be as bright as they seem. It's a good exercise to take these numbers and reduce them by a certain percentage, and see if those numbers are still good for company growth & stability.

<comment><USER37> It's really hard to tell as an employee.

Management can blow sunshine at these kind of meetings and you'd need second sight to see the truth.

Last time I was at a company that suddenly imploded everything was great one week, and then a week later half the staff got laid off.

<comment><USER36> That's true. Stats can be cherry-picked or distorted. That's why it's preferable to choose the goals / metrics at the start of the period so that other metrics can't be cherry-picked based on what might show "good" growth to employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've read that a good way to get an early indicator of future health is to pay attention to the spending on the small things.

Does your company have paid lunches?

Does it have a snack vending machine or something similar?

A coffee machine with k-cups?

Other little perks that seem insignificant but are nice to have.

If these things start to go away, the company is experiencing financial stress.

<comment><USER39> However, if these things never were there in the first place, it just means that you're not in the SV bubble.

<comment><USER40> Yeah, here in St Paul, we get only coffee paid for and we're quite healthy, I think. Not everywhere gets a smorgasbord of free food and snacks and I'm not convinced it's a worthwhile expense.

<comment><USER41> Have you ever experienced it? I used to think it was silly, too, but I've come to appreciate the convenience of not having to buy and pack my own snack items. It's also much cheaper than salary and benefits to extract extra work out of younger and naive developers. Sorta like giving the newly hired former intern the title "senior engineer."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The last company I worked at before it was acquired went through a phase of making everything 'legit' \- which looking back on it now makes sense.

\- Making sure that everybody had their work laptops/phones properly secured, requiring RSA tags for VPN access etc.

\- Lots of new policies, mainly things that we did anyway, but just fully documented and meetings to make sure that everybody understood their roles in them.

\- Lots more focus on 'customer satisfaction' and making sure that deadlines were met

\- Rewards for helping to clear the backlog of things that needed doing

Basically, a lot of dotting the I's and crossing the T's. Oh, and a lot more visits from the head guys over in the US.

Edit: Not a startup, just a company doing well.

<comment><USER43> Pretty sure things like this can happen for other reasons as well though, like when a company is going for it's next financing round.

<comment><USER42> Very true, I should have prefaced my comment above with "Not a startup"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I look at a few things. Company structure is quite telling. The relationship between teams, how teams work together. I usually get a good feel for any potential dysfunction in an organisation by this. The more splitting up and dividing there is going on, the more unhealthy it usually is. If the company is small enough, it should be self organising to some degree of success.

Other questions to consider:

\- Are staff able to be honest?

\- Is the company able to be honest with itself?

\- Does the company have a vision that actually sells itself?

\- Is the company actually pursuing that vision with it's actions?

\- Does the company leverage the intelligence of it's employees, or does it just hand them work to perform?

</comment><comment><USER45> My company's CEO says he looks at the survey answers to "Would you recommend Company X as a good place to work" as a health indicator of how the company's doing. Which makes sense to me, since if the employees overall would recommend it as a place to work, it's probably reasonably stable and rewarding, has reasonably trusted managers, etc.

I've never delved deep into actual statistics on this, though, so consider this just an anecdote.

<comment><USER46> Yup - that's an ENPS survey (more info-> [https://www.fridayfeedback.com/enps- employee-net-promoter-sc...](https://www.fridayfeedback.com/enps-employee-net- promoter-score)) and is modeled after the NPS survey organizations send to customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> When the CFO or high performing sales guys leave. They know what they money situation looks like and are going to be the first to leave when it get's rough.

</comment><comment> awinter-py If you can't get a straight answer from your manager, or your manager doesn't know, then the company isn't healthy.

Managers (a) love to brag about success and (b) it's their job to retain you, and part of retention is informing you about the company's financials.

It's totally okay to ask questions like 'how long can we survive if we don't grow' and 'how long does this continue before we close our doors or fire people'.

The good news is if you don't know about the health of the company you're probably too junior to be first on the chopping block.

If you're asking the harder question of 'are we going to be #3 in our sector in 5 years', you can't trust your managers on that one. They're too optimistic. Do serious competitive market research like you'd do when starting a company -- find a way to measure comparative sales, marketing activity, team strength. Read the linkedin pages of the leadership and key players and look for missing skillsets.

</comment><comment><USER48> * Late payments to employees (checks, expense reports etc)

* Banker-looking people coming by

* Drawn out fund raising periods with promises every month that next month something will be announced.

* Churn in the C-suite or at VP level.

* Plants being carted away

</comment><comment><USER49> One indicator I use is the bullshit level and its derivatives. You can define bullshit any way you like; my definition is "activity that adds no value to the company, or (worse) actively impedes people who are adding value to the company."

If the bullshit level is high, I think about leaving. If the first derivative of the bullshit level is also positive (bullshit is increasing) I lean heavily toward leaving. (If the first derivative is negative, the company might be healthy and pivoting after a setback.)

If both the first and the _second_ derivatives of bullshit are positive (bullshit is not only increasing but accelerating) it's time to leave immediately.

</comment><comment><USER21> Availability of information to analyze will depend on whether it's a public vs private company.

If it's a public company, an employee can look at the health in many of the same ways that Warren Buffet would look at it. Look at it's profit & loss statements for the last few years. If it took on debt, try to find out what the debt was used for. Look at the credit agencies' bond rating for the company. If it's not AAA, research why. Look at the company's major customers. Is it a growing marketplace?

If it's a private company, intelligence gathering is going to be harder and you often won't have good info until you actually work there. You can try to synthesize information from glassdoor, Google News (e.g. lawsuits, settlements, etc), and other sources.

 _> I mainly meant "startup" (i.e. not Fortune 500) _

In this case, I would ask the hiring manager (often the founder) if the company is cash-flow positive. If not, ask how much "runway" is left before the company runs out of money. Some founders may push back with _" I can't disclose financials, yada yada"_ ... maybe because of his paranoia about competitor espionage. You then have to ask yourself if you're willing to join a company with limited information. You can join a not-yet-profitable company because sometimes, it all works out. That said, the idea of concrete financial dialogue is to _make the risks transparent_ to the employee.

</comment><comment><USER50> If you're moving to a new open space office that looks for a visitor to be fantastic but is a pain to actually work in; if your company hires like crazy without a good idea of what new people will actually be working on; if a CTO that has been on-hands becomes distant and hires a level of middle technical managers — all that means that the company is trying to inflate it's value and be bought. Not necessarily a bad thing, but you can count on the culture shift pretty soon.

</comment><comment><USER51> "Company" is a broad word, and can include a wide variety of different types of organizations - but if you're talking specifically about startups, look at the following:

Cash in the Bank / Burn Rate - How much cash does the company have? How much of that cash is it spending each month? How long until the company reaches profitability? Could the company be profitable now if it wanted to be?

Headcount - LinkedIn actually tracks this now. How has the total headcount of the company changed over time, particularly recently? Headcount is certainly not a measure of success, but a significant decrease in headcount may be a red flag.

Growth Rate - How fast is the company growing? Ideally you're looking at this in terms of revenue.

Unit Economics - Even if the company is growing, is it making money from every sale? Or is it "spending $1 to earn $0.95" ? Getting a handle on the bottoms- up unit economics of whatever the company is selling is important to really getting a picture of its overall health.

Grit of the Founders - This may be more important than everything else on the list! Every startup is going to feel - frequently - like it's in "bad health." Founders with determination, grit, and the ability to fight through the tough times will overcome a lot of the problems presented by other items on this list.

<comment><USER52> Benefit of being an employee in this scenario is that you have access to info outsiders don't. So take some of your metrics like headcount and unit economics and make them forward-looking: open job reqs and contract expirations perhaps.

Other things like grit of the founders can't really be controlled. That will never change for the life of a company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> It's all about the money. Cost cutting such as layoffs, no annual bonus, no more free snacks, shutting down promising projects.

When a company is doing well, it's usually the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER54> Some other warning signs:

\- When you get rid of your QA team in the name of "quality" with everyone being responsible for testing, but then never provide adequate testing resources or environments. And when quality and velocity inevitably drop, and everyone claims they want to improve quality, but it's never actually prioritized.

\- More generally, when your company is saying one thing and doing another.

\- When your executive team flat out lies, and doesn't even blink when questioned about it.

</comment><comment><USER55> One tip I have from years in a company that was undergoing major changes in its business model is to pay attention to other workers. In my case, the shop floor guys at an automation company smelled the shift in the wind long before anyone else, and weren't afraid to call it out. When the vast majority (maybe 500-1k machinists) were let go in rapid succession, it was shocking...except if you'd paid attention.

</comment><comment><USER56> Me and people close to me been a witness to a startup demise several times. In a startup it's really easy to tell - the product falls short of revenues/active users expectations, the funding starts to run out, the management starts to act frantic and invents all kinds of "creative" ways to "revive" the product, core team members start departing :)

</comment><comment><USER57> I guess it would depend on the size and status of the company. What I mean by that, you would judge a startup 1-10 people that is privately held substantially differently than 1000+ employee publicly traded company. These indicators that you are looking for are going to be vastly different along the size spectrum of companies.

</comment><comment><USER58> it does not directly state the health but it indicates if it is a good employer: number of interns : if the ratio is roughly 1:1 I would quickly look for another company

</comment><comment><USER59> I think employees are a lagging indicator. If the product is being offered at all, look at customers.

If you're not customer-facing, talk to a customer-facing engineer or even account manager. "How's the X account?" "Tell me about a customer we've made successful." Don't accept "The account is fine." _Drill down and ask for details_ ; they're the only things that matter.

You're internal, so unless your company is really $&#+ed up and silo'd, you shouldn't have a problem getting a feel with a modicum of social skills.

If you're not making customers happy, and management is proceeding with business as usual, start looking for a new job.

</comment><comment> le-mark One company I was at shipped a hardware product. The hardware would come in from the manufacturer, the techs on site would flash the firmware, apply stickers, and ship to customers. When I started they were shipping 10-15 boxes a day (this was easy to judge, they sat by the entrance and the UPS guy would come in and get them). Then a few month later, the senior sales guy left, and a new vp of sales was brought in. Over the course of a year, outgoing devices went to near zero. That's when I started looking. A year later the company was still alive, but limping with a skeleton crew of devs and techs. Most who stayed were fired.

<comment><USER52> The sales team are at the leading edge of product-market fit. I've found that their level of engagement, or success, or retention, is a great metric.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I do a simple version of a balanced scorecard:

1) Financial/Stakeholders - Are we raking in revenue? What type of revenue (high-touch, low-touch. high-volume/low-margin or low-volume/high-margin)? Are we consistently making this or is it totally dependent on the connections of 1-2 people? Can it be recreated? A bad sign is if people are being shifted to different projects all the time without one being totally completed/closed.

2) Customer/External Relationships - #1 is dependent on this. You can't make money with people giving you money. Do we have sufficient customers/market to provide the type of revenue needed? Do customers like us? What's the market feedback? A bad sign is if sales is overcommitting through the teeth about the products/services just to get them onboard.

3) Activities/Internal processes - #2 is dependent on this. You cant continually create things to sell and build customer relationships without a proper cycle of operations. Do we have processes? Does the process last long enough to get feedback? Or are the activities fickle and do not have solid implementations? A fishy sign is if there seems to be a totally new sales/engineering process every month, or isn't implemented rigidly and the org chart changes every 2 quarters.

4) Learning and growth (People-aspect) - Most important. #1, #2, #3 is dependent on this. You can't have processes/services/products without people. Based on the product/value that the company is providing to customers, are they valuing the people that creates this value? (training, leadership roles, ownership of product/services, etc.). Is there career growth for people that create this value? A fishy example would be: leadership positions in a product-based tech startup where there isn't at least one person with a history of software-engineering/operations and is instead filled with a group of salesmen. That startup would probably best be a consulting business, since the way things would be led hampers any kind of effort in building an effective product development pipeline/operation. Another bad sign for that type of startup is when key staff engineers are leaving, their positions are left empty and more managers are hired instead.

</comment><comment><USER61> Cynicism.

If there's none at all, then people likely are afraid to talk openly. When there's cynicism about everything (revenue goals, vision, hiring, retention, ...), that's a sign that most everybody has lost hope.

</comment><comment><USER62> We have a weekly all-hands where major issues (good or bad) would be mentioned, and where we get an overview of all core metrics. We have a monthly all-hands where we go into detail on all the metrics and how each team's metrics build up to the overall company performance. We know how much we're targeting/getting in funding rounds. We can ask questions about any of this in one-to-ones with managers that happen fortnightly.

Basically we're pretty good at transparency, so most people just know all of this. It's a nice environment to work in!

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm reading a lot of these answers and they could be describing companies that are hugely profitable and growing. Profitable companies cut back on coffee, have high turnover, cynical employees etc.

It really doesn't matter. Any company can blow up at any time due to fraud or mergers or whatever. You might get fired because your boss might want to replace you with their old college roommate. Or the CEO decides to kill your whole division because they're chasing some dumb fad.

<comment><USER64> And extremely fit people sometimes go on diets. But generally, someone on a diet isn't likely to be extremely fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> A good bellwether for a startup is the sales force. They leave when there is no more money-making opportunity.

(Of course, a startup can still pivot to uncover opportunity.)

</comment><comment><USER66> Look at churn (staff turnover). It's actually a question I ask in interviews. If churn is either extraordinarily high or low I want to know why.

</comment><comment><USER67> In my case:

      * Stock price
      * Attitude of employees
      * Attitude of management
      * Statements and sometimes rumors heard around the office

</comment><comment><USER68> Treat it as a learning opportunity. Three buckets to triage employees into: (o) the oblivious employees, (i) employees who step up and show initiative, and (ii) employees who decide to goof off and do nothing since some of the management chain is likely missing and not being replaced.

Companies that are successful are often unwilling to risk any element of their success and can be rigid/inflexible.

</comment><comment><USER69> When evaluating startups there are few key matrices \- financial stability - most notably runway. Taking funding and # of employees can give you a rough sense of things

\- key people churn

\- business traction graph - depending on the market you are in you can get some sense through similarweb and the likes

We took it to the next level at Yodas and provide detailed analysis. We help individuals make better, more informed career decisions.

</comment><comment><USER70> I work at a startup and every second week we run an anonymous [https://www.menti.com](https://www.menti.com) where all emplyees get to vote between 1-9 how happy they are at work. It's a simple metric that gives management some insight about how the company is going.

</comment><comment><USER71> A simple one is growth. If you're at a startup, it needs to grow. If growth isn't what it should be, it's decelerating, or it's zero, that's trouble. Wait for 6-12 months (depending on size and stability of company), if it's not improving, start looking for other options.

</comment><comment><USER72> At my last couple of jobs my raises and bonuses were getting smaller over the last year or two I was there even though the company was supposedly taking in more revenue. We weren't expanding or hiring anyone so I started looking for new jobs. Both went under within a year of me leaving.

</comment><comment><USER73> My main thing is are they at all organised as a whole - if everything is in disarray and departments have no idea (or interest in) what the others are doing then it's likely going to be very painful. A company that is pulling in one direction is an exciting place.

</comment><comment><USER74> How fragmented is the industry? A fragmented industry is waiting for a well capitalized player to consolidate small companies into a industry leader. How close the founder is to retirement... As the founder approaches age 65, he might be looking to cash out.

</comment><comment><USER75> For public companies, it can be an easier task:

\- If executive insiders are buying stock: a good sign!

\- If executive insiders are selling stock: could be a good or bad sign (e.g., they might sell because they are purchasing a house.)

\- If executive insiders are selling _everything_ : very bad sign

</comment><comment><USER76> Communication, how well are groups within the company communicating? Do groups tend to re-invent the wheel because they do not know about what other groups are doing?

Learning, what types of opportunities are employees given to develop skills and learn new skills?

</comment><comment><USER77> The free-food patterns don't apply on a company which is frugal by nature, e.g. Amazon

</comment><comment><USER78> Make friends with whoever does accounts payable. In many companies, paying vendors later than agreed terms would be the first sign of trouble. Companies will often do that before anything directly visible to employees.

<comment><USER79> I heard Trump did this to many of his contractors.

<comment><USER78> I would guess it happens at every company when financial struggles arise. It's the easiest lever to pull.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Quality of snacks

<comment><USER81> or presence of snacks.

<comment><USER82> and absence of burnt palapas

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> One company I worked for (international) had the new CIO visit our office. He said "don't worry there will be no layoffs". Two week later they started and shortly the whole office was gone.

</comment><comment><USER84> Generally, when a paycheck bounces, it's a bad sign. Now, in my experience, the company didn't die for another year after the bounced paychecks, but it was definitely writing on the wall!

</comment><comment><USER85> When senior people that you have a personal relationship with, who are no higher than first level managers and not necessarily managers at all, tell you that the company is dying. Been there twice.

</comment><comment><USER86> I work for a fairly large manufacturing company in Japan (about 15k employees). I don't think it will go bankrupt, but I think it is unhealthy and will eventually be automated with most people being made to leave, or it will lose a fairly large chunk of its market share and be dismembered and rebuilt by the American office.

Some things I observed that led me to doing a job search.

> Insurmountable Recruiting difficulties

I was promised a team of 5 junior devs under myself, but that never happened. There was always a new process, or a new form that had to be filled out; they got filled in and nothing happened.

Eventually the company started projects to hire people with disadvantaged career histories (Chinese / Korean residents, women who had left their previous job after pregnancy, et cetra). I felt this was a great policy but I was eventually clued into the real origin of the policy and why I never got the team I was promised.

Apparently, we had (and still have) an excessively poor reputation. Not criminal; just in terms of leadership (at all levels), salary and work load. Successful mid-career job seekers could not be expected to join. As such, disadvantaged workers and the lowest level of university graduate comes (the kind who has "Tennis Club" as a prominent part of their university "experience"). My lack of experience at large Japanese corporations is also why I didn't have the foresight to check 2chan or Vorkers (glassdoor-like company in Japan)

> New Emmanuel Goldsteins on a regular basis.

"We would be great but... is terrible" is a constant refrain at these sorts of companies. You can fill in the blank with a C-Level executive, a new employee, or a clique in the office. If you are assigning real people in a capitalist enterprise the role of "villain", then the environment is not going to improve. It is like saving a marriage after you tell friends to take sides.

> Inappropriate focus on loyalty

I have literally experienced a C-level officer making these statements in a work environment, about people who are so low in rank so as to be below his level of concern. If a junior accountant leaves for a better position at another company, one with less stress and better pay, it is the obvious and correct decision, not an act of "disloyalty".

> No objective source of truth or success

While I ran a business previously, I could be convinced by objective measures of truth (profit being #1). At my current office, there is no single source of truth, nor a single measure of success. This creates a difficult spiral of wasted time and effort when starting projects; in the end, calling in "outsiders" to resolve the issue (by giving them superuser access over the project structure) simply delays the hard questions (who is in charge / gets credit & blame / by what measure are we doing something), and further infantilizes the office.

> Senior people left and were never replaced

Literally the second most senior person in my part of the org left and wasn't replaced for more than 2 years. Junior managers reported straight to the C-suite. His eventual replacement lacked his depth of knowledge and greatly damaged the collegial atmosphere that existed within the Japanese team before her hire.

> Easy things are difficult

There are X (where X is a number greater than 5) different approval processes for me to pay a vendor who has already finished the work.

</comment><comment><USER87> No news is bad news. If you stop hearing about new developments, the reality is almost certainly bad.

Looking back to a few layoffs, that was a common sign. I _think_ I can spot it next time.

</comment><comment><USER88> The usually open CEO suddenly starts having closed door meetings.

<comment><USER89> This could also be sign of the opposite depending on the circumstances. For startups, founders want an exit when the company is at its healthiest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Usually the biggest indication is cutting salary and benefits, I'm including not giving raises as a salary cut. Cutting vacation days is definitely a salary cut.

</comment><comment><USER91> Free food :). The last Fortune 500 I worked at the number of meetings with food provided was highly correlated with how well the stock performed durring earning.

</comment><comment><USER92> Sales = Company health When the company is not able to make $$ due to bad product, employee turnaround, Sales or culture it is in bad health.

</comment><comment><USER93> Cutting vacation days was mentioned. I'm wondering if switching from fixed vacation days to unlimited is also a sign of penny-pinching.

</comment><comment><USER94> Glassdoor reviews.

</comment><comment><USER95> Users and revenue.

User and revenue growth rate.

One bad sign is if the CEO is replaced. Another bad sign is if the company can't figure out how to make money.

</comment><comment><USER96> Status of accounts payable - is the company stretching out payments to vendors? Are vendors getting angry or lawyering up?

</comment><comment><USER97> marketing team slices its customers pool into : customer-we'll-soon-contact, potential customers, potential leads, short-list-customers, customers with who we have very good relationships, customers who'll introduces to even bigger customers. You get it, many types of customers except the paying-type...

</comment><comment><USER52> Executive engagement, number of open job reqs, revenue goals (not necessarily growth or metrics of past)

</comment><comment><USER82> If you find yourself asking questions like this, that's a sign something might be awry.

<comment><USER98> If you are not asking questions like this, you may just be one of the willfully oblivious ditch diggers who is just there to work. And that's fine.

Even in the days of galley slaves, there was probably only a small percentage of rowers who actually wondered where they were going. Most people just shut up and row.

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> CFO left a year after IPO. Then we had things that seemed like busy work.

</comment><comment><USER100> I would look at Culture and Financial. A lot of other things are fixable.

</comment><comment><USER101> They ask you for a list of all the passwords you control.

</comment><comment><USER102> turn over.

A "normal turn over" in IT is 10%

In normal companies it is less.

If more, flee.

</comment><comment><USER94> Glassdoor reviews

</comment><comment><USER29> Simple answer: Any startup that isn't profitable isn't healthy.

More importantly, any company that has negative marginal profit, is definitely not healthy (i.e. Uber)

</comment><comment><USER103> The easist method is by trend in employee count. If headcount is rising, that's a good indicator, if it's falling, that's generally bad. Stable can be perfectly fine, or bad, depending on the company. You may have concerns about the magnitude of growth, or claim lay-offs were justified or turnover is natural, but the trend generally holds.

You should also pay attention to other employees; ask yourself why folks who leave are leaving. This seems easy, but I know one start-up well where a small trickle of occasional high-level departures turned into an eventual flood and bankruptcy.

Beyond that, it's the usual. Anything you can tell about sales growth, competitive intensity, leadership, etc. are all helpful and good data points.

<comment><USER31> Rising headcount is not necessarily a good sign. To the contrary, it's often a sign that the company is haemorrhaging cash, hoping that if they hire enough staff something magic will happen before time runs out.

<comment> le-mark There's also the idea that head count can signal revenue, or expected revenue. Companies looking to be bought can go on hiring sprees to appear more healthier to potential buyers. I experienced this at one company, when the new owner installed their CEO, the first thing he did was slash head count.</comment></comment></comment>


US Tech Lobbying - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-lobbying-idUSKCN1PG2TD <comment><USER2> Not sure why we are going after them. It's the isp providers who need to be reined in.</comment>


GraphQL Playground – IDE for GraphQL Queries - <AUTHOR> https://blog.graph.cool/introducing-graphql-playground-f1e0a018f05d <comment><AUTHOR> We're super excited to open-source the GraphQL Playground today. While working with GraphQL over the past two years, we've continuously tried to improve our development workflows - this is the result.

For those of you who are familiar with GraphiQL, here are some of the biggest additions:

* Works standalone as a multi-platform desktop app (and web)

* Interactive, multi-column API docs (with keyboard support)

* Sharing of your GraphQL queries/endpoints via GraphQL Bin

* Support for real-time subscriptions

* Other features like HTTP headers, VIM mode, tabs, query history & more

\--

We're looking forward to your feedback and hope you find it useful for your GraphQL workflows! Happy developing!

</comment><comment><USER2> Congratulations to the graph.cool team! I've been following them for a couple of months now and I am very impressed by the passion and the progress that they put in. Some really cool stuff cooking in the GraphQL community.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your support! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm so excited to see this launch! It pairs great with Apollo Launchpad and the sharing feature is top notch!

</comment><comment><USER4> I am _constantly_ impressed with all of the Graphcool team. It seems like every week there is some new innovation from them.

Keep up the excellent work Graphcool!</comment>


My HomePod Review (Om Malik) - <AUTHOR> https://om.co/2018/02/06/my-homepod-review/ <comment><USER2> The reason I am not considering Apple HomePod is the restriction to the Apple ecosystem. This is what the author concludes as well. Given Apple's history, we will probably never see Spotify integration with Siri. Its integration with Androids is also not as great. I don't think it makes sense even if you're completely in the Apple ecosystem.

I use Spotify for my music on Echo dot. I connect my Echo dot with a 2.1 speaker system. I can get a much better speaker system with woofers and smart capabilities for much lower cost this way. So I don't get the appeal of HomePod if the main draw is its sound capabilities when compared to Echo or Google Home.

<comment><USER3> > So I don't get the appeal of HomePod if the main draw is its sound > capabilities when compared to Echo or Google Home.

The impression I get from various discussions is its sound capabilities are better than nearly anything else under $1000.

As Om indicates, I don't think it's Google and Amazon that Apple is aiming for here. They're not trying to make a smart speaker play: they're trying to make a music play.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Unlimited Free Backup For Life (built in HTML5)  - <AUTHOR> http://thirsty.com <comment><USER2> I need to write a bot that posts this every time a new free online storage sites pop up on HN:

 _The only compelling aspect of the offering is the promise of free storage. I don't see a dollar sign anywhere on the site, so I don't understand how they intend to keep that promise for very long. I refuse to sign up for a product, much less take the time to integrate it into my workflow, without knowing that it will be around for longer than a few months._

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Martin, We are planning to stay alive for 100 years this is a very long term play. We are planning to kill the OS by letting users execute any file type in the cloud: PSDs, AI, you name it, open, edit, save and publish. The way we will make money is from enterprise (which we got already some clients) and from apps that will be built on top of Thirsty. We don't believe that people should be charged for backup because it complicates things: data plans, pricing, data transfers etc all this is just confusing to most users. We make it simple it's free that's it. This is our first day launching we will be adding some awesome features in the upcoming weeks. Thank you for the feedback.

<comment><USER3> That's great and all.

Who pays your bills in the next 12 months?

<comment><USER4> Better question: Who paid for thirsty.com? Dictionary words are not cheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How will you sustain a "free storage" site without any income? Surely you must be charging someone for something.

If not, it leads me to believe you might do something with our data to make money. I don't want to jump to conclusions, so it might be a better idea if you just tell us how you plan to capitalize on the service before we upload our content!

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not making any money from your data. We make money from the enterprise and it will stay that way, we don't charge consumers and wont charge in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What does HTML5 have to do with Cloud Backup? Does it use localStorage or something? ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> We use HTML5 drag and drop so that you don't need to install any software to upload your data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No privacy policy or terms of use, and you expect me to send you my data?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just fixed sorry we forgot to add it to the home page, it was inside the account.

<comment><USER8> While the footer on the why_us page now includes the TOS and Privacy links, the main page does not have that.

Also, your blog link is dead.

Also, while not logged in, if I go to the why_us page, there is a search bar available to be used at the top of the screen. However, I am unable to really interact with it in any meaningful way.

In your TOS, you refer to the privacy page as being at: <http://www.Thirsty.com/t/privacy>. However, that is not where it is located.

This segment of your TOS is nonsensical: "The above licenses granted by you in video Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your videos from the Service"

And just curious, the last line of their TOS is that they are enforcing a statute of limitations of 1 year on any actions that you would want to take against them. Are we actually able to give up that right in a contract / TOS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First reactions:

1) "Create and discover hard drives" => "huh? what on earth does that mean?"

2) "Share, make them password protected or open them up for others to add to it" => I'm no closer to understanding what your product does.

3) Enter your email, enter your password => I don't know what this is, why it exists, I don't have an account, and you can't have my email address.

If you're going to get that information from me, you're going to have to spell out in understandable terms what problems you're solving.

And, although everybody else has said it: nobody believes "unlimited and free forever". Doesn't particularly matter if you've found a way to do it, it's not credible. And the "available gigabytes" thing at the bottom is obviously fake, lending to the overall feeling of impending bait-and-switch.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can't beat a quote like this from the creator: "We are planning to stay alive for 100 years this is a very long term play. We are planning to kill the OS by letting users execute any file type in the cloud"

I think not, but thanks anyway.

</comment><comment><USER11> I do like how your "available gigabytes" counter is simply the current time with some division and sub stringing involved .. \o/

$('span#available_space').text(addCommas(((date.getTime()/2500).toFixed(2)).substring(1,12)))

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd like an explanation of the service that doesn't require signing up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey sorry about that you can check out more about the product here: <http://thirsty.com/why_us> email me at: email@example.com if you have any questions would love to help :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If it's not too much to ask, who is paying for all that free space ?

</comment><comment><USER14> I just signed up, created a room, named it, tagged it, uploaded a file to it and saved it. Now I have no idea how to find that room. Tried searching for it, nothing happens. This looked promising and then... it just falls flat.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can see it in the footer, sorry we just launched today and we are only 2 engineers trying our best to fix everything asap. Tell me if you see it in the footer. Btw it is free back up for life and its safe, so your files are there no worries, tell me if you would like anything else to improve your exp you can email me at email@example.com if you need any help with something.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the quick response. I now see the room in the footer. I clicked it and my file is nowhere to be found...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An app for Chrome OS/iOS etc would be avery good idea. Their users don't have a filesystem(or are kept unaware of it) and so they might take to it much quicker. Just a thought.

</comment><comment><USER8> Your blog is full of the most unrelated posts that I've ever seen.

<http://blog.thirsty.com/page/2/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Cannot upload large files ??? I have some MKVs I would like to backup and it's not letting me upload (8gb file)

<comment><AUTHOR> We just launched today, technically you can we are soon releasing an update that will let you upload any size file. for now the limit is 5GBs. Do you have smaller files you can upload would love for you to test it and give us feedback.

<comment><USER13> Ok, thanks for the feedback !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Also, the search bar on the "why us" page does nothing. Also, I'm not really sure what you do still.

</comment><comment><USER17> Do you have any plans to release a bash client to upload files? I'd love to use crontab to backup my new files.

Thanks

<comment> saiko-chriskun that's an awesome idea :D. I'll put it on our todo list ^^

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> You must charge. Otherwise, there is a risk important data will be lost if you go out of business.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd prefer the header to be fixed and not the footer, or at least both.

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone remember backify?

Yeah, I do too. I lost all of my data after all of their accounts got closed (luckily I wasn't relying on my backups here).

This sort of service cannot be sustained and I can't trust it with any important data. I know you say that you are different, but I've seen it too many times before.</comment>


Why We Moved from Amazon Web Services to Google Cloud Platform? - <AUTHOR> https://lugassy.net/why-we-moved-from-amazon-web-services-to-google-cloud-platform-726c412fd667 <comment><USER2> How does google support compare to AWS support?

<comment><AUTHOR> I found gcp support to just work, for $150, the monthly cost of silver support, I was able to get tons of best practices and guidelines from actual google developers.</comment></comment>


AtomBombing: A Code Injection That Bypasses Current Security Solutions - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ensilo.com/atombombing-a-code-injection-that-bypasses-current-security-solutions <comment><USER2> This doesn't seem all that exciting to me. If you have a handle to a target thread that allows you to call QueueUserAPC, it's game over already. You can own that thread in so many ways that I don't see why a new one is exciting. (Heck, you could just use the debugging APIs.)

This seems like of like saying "hey look, root on a Linux system can inject code into Chrome". No kidding.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, the basic mindset and operating premise of these security companies is to find _anything_ that could even be the tiniest bit exploitable and hype it as a huge risk... I have a suspicion that they will not be satisfied until everyone's computers are turned into virtual prisons and controlled by some central entity.

<comment><USER4> And no one can add a new bit of software to this computer you "own" until the software has submitted to draconian laws and been reviewed by their experts who will entirely decide your developer livelihood. You'll pay money for the possibility to maybe let a user ever run the software you spent years developing.

We'll call it the iPhone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1) You need to open a thread handle, and you can only do that on processes running in the same security context the attacking thread. So you can already execute code, and this vector alone does not give you privilege escalation. It does however allow you to execute code in another process.

2) It uses NtQueueApcThread for 1), which is a known vector for this type of "attack", see e.g., [1]. That code uses NtQueueApcThread to call LoadLibrary in the target process

3) the "new" thing presented in the article is to get a ROP-chain in the called process by using atom tables

I don't know. I have been away from windows for about ten years, and a lot may have happened, but this doesn't seem like it would allow me to do something that I couldn't already do. What is the benefit here, compared to e.g., using NtQueueApcThread and LoadLibrary to load the code?

[1] [http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/11777/InjLib-A- Library-t...](http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/11777/InjLib-A-Library-that- implements-remote-code-injec)

<comment><USER3> _It does however allow you to execute code in another process._

CreateRemoteThread also allows you to do this, quite straightforwardly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disclaimer: I'm clueless.

They claim that there's basically no way to fix this (it's a consequence of the design of some features, Atoms). But as far as I understand they have to call the (undocumented, according to the blog) NtQueueApcThread function.

a) What guarantees are given for undocumented API methods in Windows? I know Microsoft tries hard to make everyone happy, to be backwards compatible. But - even for stuff like this?

b) For AV solutions: Wouldn't this undocumented call be a somewhat decent marker?

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow. Is this really as bad as it sounds? I'm no security researcher but this sounds quite bad:

"AtomBombing is performed just by using the underlying Windows mechanisms. There is no need to exploit operating system bugs or vulnerabilities.

Since the issue cannot be fixed, there is no notion of a patch for this"

I'm guessing that if this starts to be a popular attack vector, security firms would try to come up with some sort of atom integrity checker or something, but still, this doesn't look good.

Or am I missing something and maybe it's really not that bad? any one has any resources to read up more on atoms (besides the research paper)?

<comment><USER8> If you have an active virus on your system, it can use this method (or any other already known method) to inject its code into, say, your browser and steal credit card info or some such.

Nothing new, but a few new tricks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's the real paper.[1]

Windows has a terrible mechanism for inter-thread procedure calls. This is a way to get another thread to call a function determined by the sending thread. (What could possibly go wrong with that?) There are some security safeguards around this, but not enough.

This looks like something left over from the Windows 3.1/DOS days of no memory protection. Microsoft does not recommend it for threads outside the caller's process[2], but it's still in the OS. Some Windows expert might try disabling it for inter-process calls and see what breaks. It's only supposed to work for "desktop processes" anyway; for servers it could be disabled.

(I'm all in favor of inter-process calls, but the QNX MsgSend/MsgReceive/MsgReply mechanism is far better than this. Most others are far worse. Either performance or security is poor.)

[1] [https://breakingmalware.com/injection- techniques/atombombing...](https://breakingmalware.com/injection- techniques/atombombing-brand-new-code-injection-for-windows/) [2] [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/ms6...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/ms684954\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

<comment><USER10> Non domain windows systems are quite easy to hack, those connected to a domain server are harder but still not impossible. As they have already persuaded a user to run evil.exe assuming they have sufficient admin privileges, you can do a lot of damage in a lot of ways.

People can learn alot from using this little tool to see a variety of attack vectors just by using api's.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've read all the text yesterday and still don't see an explanation how code is executed. I know Windows atom tables as a feature used in DDE (say for clipboard infrastructure), and it's been there like forever, but how is the code from the table executed?

<comment><USER7> In the research paper there's a bit more of an explanation. I really can't explain it since I'm no expert but I believe the relevant bit is this:

"...a new exploitation technique was invented solely to bypass DEP: ROP – Return Oriented Programming.

How can we use ROP to our advantage in order to execute our shellcode in the target process?

We can copy our code to an RW code cave in the target process (using the method described in stage 1). Then use a meticulously crafted ROP chain to allocate RWX memory, copy the code from the RW code cave to the newly allocated RWX memory, and finally jump to the RWX memory and execute it."

Then a bit later it says:

"This syscall will set the context (register values) of hThread to the values contained in lpContext. If we can get the target process to call this syscall with an lpContext that will set ESP to point to our ROP chain and set EIP to point to ZwAllocateVirtualMemory, then our ROP chain will execute. The execution of the ROP chain will eventually lead to the execution of our shellcode."

<comment><USER11> Thanks, I need to reread it, because I'm not sure who invokes the syscall. Quite possibly it's automated via an innocuous looking DDE invocation. Basically, I'm wondering what piece of code writes to the table and then makes some other aimed for application run the code from the table. If it's a piece of code that's already running as the same user, then the aim must be to make a higher privileged application to execute the code from the table. Need to brush up my Win32 knowledge to make sense of it, I guess.</comment></comment></comment>


Encrypted, open-source, peer-to-peer video calls - <AUTHOR> https://p2p.chat/ <comment><USER2> What makes this better or different from all of the other WebRTC video apps?

How do you address this issue that video chat on WebRTC is really bad?

<comment><USER2> I see we just downvotes comments that challenge rather than addressing the valid criticism.</comment></comment>


Starting Now, All Intel Microprocessors Are Conflict-Free - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3024292/starting-now-all-intel-microprocessors-are-conflict-free-heres-how-the-company-did-it

<comment><USER2> I completely misunderstood the headline: I thought this had something to do with conflict misses.

<comment><USER3> Haha yes, me too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a very brave statement, given that there's currently no clear data for Tin/Tungsten/Tantalum/Gold smelters' ore origins. I've seen the data. Two of the eleven tantalum smelters on the planet have been audited. The others aren't sure where all their ore comes from. Big problem. Working on solving it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Umm OK, they are complying with the Dodd-Frank Act and acting like they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts...

How moving.

<comment><USER6> They did a bit more than that. They originally considered pulling out of the region entirely, but then a lot of people not involved in those conflicts would also lose their income. So instead, they spent extra time and money to figure out which mines, smelters, etc in the conflict areas were okay and which weren't. And that makes this very good news.

<comment><USER5> A lot of large US companies pulled out. This drove prices down. So low in fact that it became cost effective enough for Google to go back (and in some cases remain).

Again, how moving... If Google really was so generous and humanitarian, why don't they start paying the previous rate in these regions?

<comment><USER7> Um, Google doesn't actually appear in this story. Where did you get that from?

<comment><USER5> My bad I meant Intel but said Google. I had Google on the brain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So this makes for ok PR, but when there is a global market for commodities this is all feel good bullshit. Sure the atoms that are in your CPU weren't mined in a warzone but does that absolve you of complicity in participating in a global economy that is going to source raw materials from anywhere it can regardless of the conditions?

Great command and control on the supply chain side but somehow I wonder what the data is on whether this actually makes any real impact on the conflicts in question beyond further reducing the capital flow to already incredibly impoverished regions.

<comment><USER9> IThe real world is shades of gray, not black and white. There is no 'good' only 'less bad'. This is definitely less bad. They now know their foundries, can put a face to their supply line lower levels, and can ask questions. No Nobel prize, just one step that others should follow. And they did not pull out of impoverished regions, they made sure the foundries they work with are responsibly resourcing raw materials.

<comment><USER10> (Not gp) Interesting, but I've always believed the world is black and white, but we are imperfect creatures with limited vision so we see a lot of grey. If you cannot see all the pieces and interactions, you hope experience and education can allow you to make the best decisions.

This is probably why I consider "the end justifies the means" to be the definition of evil. I really cannot imagine thinking there is no 'good' and only 'less bad'.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Finally a simple task manager for console - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/FOSS-the-world/splan-sh <comment><USER2> see also [https://taskwarrior.org/](https://taskwarrior.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Taskwarrior is a powerful task manager, but it's in most cases excessively complicated while the features are not used. This one is simple enough for ordinary use.</comment></comment>


The Five Types of Nicolas Cage Movies - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-five-types-of-nicolas-cage-movies/ <comment><USER2> "Is the movie in 3D?" "No, but your face is!" Today we would consider his role in Valley Girl as stalkerish.</comment>


Learn to Code by Coding - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/learn-to-code-by-coding-d1e241de81c0#.8dabifdar <comment><USER2> As a user of freecodecamp, this is a nice new year gift.</comment>


Changing the way you sit could add years to your life - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24732913-000-how-changing-the-way-you-sit-could-add-years-to-your-life/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone have a non-paywall link?

(And if you know how to create one, can you share the method?)

<comment><USER3> No, but their latest podcast covers some of it (from about mid way):

[https://www.newscientist.com/podcasts/](https://www.newscientist.com/podcasts/)

And it turn mentions the following paper:

[https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...](https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1281&context=hc_pubs)

Now... in the past the New Scientist complained about paywalled scientific papers, so now they create a paywalled article from a freely accessible paper? - the irony...!

'Set science free from publishers' paywalls'

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21937-set-science- fre...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21937-set-science-free-from- publishers-paywalls/)

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the links. The podcast was excellent. I guess my focus locus upright "seat" was a good idea after all. Haha.

Interesting about the paywall history. And what irony, indeed.

<comment><USER4> How can you sit standing for 8-10 hours in a day?

<comment><USER2> These focus locus "chairs" work for me.

[https://youtu.be/8R6ug5lgbFk](https://youtu.be/8R6ug5lgbFk)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Forex Trading Gambling? - <AUTHOR> So my brother just really got into forex, and he sort of encourages me to give it a trial, but I have always seen stuffs like that as gambling, but then perhaps maybe I am just biased, which brings me to the subject matter at hand, I will like to know what your opinions are on forex, is it gambling or not. <comment><USER2> Yes.

Casino house games are set up in a way that the player is guaranteed to be losing in the long run (all of the player's decisions have negative expected value). So maybe trading is more similar to poker because in both of them it's possible to have positive EV but they still have many of the problematic aspects of gambling such as:

\- uncertain outcome

\- opportunity to lose or win large amounts of money

\- some element of skill and the opportunity to "have and edge"

\- confounding skill and luck - it's easy to attribute your wins to your skill and your losses to bad luck

\- need for emotional regulation to avoid making bad decisions (also known as tilt)

\- need for emotional regulation after a session to deal with large losses (or even large wins)

\- the fact that you can make good decisions and still lose, in fact this will happen a lot

\- the randomness of the outcome and all the associated cognitive biases are prime factors in creating addictive behavior (often to the point where it's problematic)

That's why I would label it as gambling, which doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad. But it's important to be aware of the risks and know that most people's personality and their emotional and mental tooling isn't well suited for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> "An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative." -- Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor

<comment><USER4> Speculation is economically distinct from gambling. At a cursory level you can draw comparisons between the two, but there is a meaningful difference between them. Speculation is a form of investment in which the investor accepts significant risk for (potentially) outsized returns which are decoupled from the consensus fundamental value of an asset. Gambling is not a form of investment; it's a form of trading in which participants have no or negligible information and cannot perform better than chance.

You can engage in gambling or speculation when trading forex, because it enables _both_ activities. There are rational reasons to engage in speculation, whereas there aren't any to engage in gambling. Generally the test of rationality lies at the line of information asymmetry: do you have information which the market does not? Then you can engage in speculation _and_ positively inform price discovery, which contributes to the well- functioning of the market. If you do _not_ have superior information and you're not trading on the fundamental value of a thing, you're gambling. There are similar tests to distinguish gambling from hedging and arbitrage, both of which also comprise legitimate economic activity

Graham himself acknowledges in that very book that speculation is a necessary function for markets, because someone needs to accept risk in order to keep the value machine running (i.e. empower short term price discovery). His primary thesis is not that speculation and gambling are equivalent; rather, that as an individual you are more likely to be gambling than speculating.

While modern perspectives on this topic do split hairs, the generally accepted view is that speculation and investing operate along a continuum. Strong opinions to the contrary tend to be rooted in moral and ideological disagreements, not economic nuance. It's not particularly useful to condemn speculation as gambling because a lot of legitimate and useful investing is very risk-tolerant. A much better heuristic is whether or not it's an individual or a firm engaging in the trading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any trading could be either gambling or trading. Gambling is when you put your money w/o any knowledge and hope "faith" will make you "lucky". Trading is when you understand finance, the underlying concepts of the securities you are trading and when you are well informed about the currency (for the forex at least) you will trade. All currencies are linked to the fundamentals of the country they belong to - finance, GDP, etc. For me personally they are harder to trade, as you need to inform yourself and learn a lot of the country's financials. Stocks are easier in that way, that when you know what to look for in the business of a company, you will find somewhere value, and you will "buy that business" \- a trade, not a gamble.

</comment><comment><USER6> The proper term would be "speculating", not gambling.

<comment><USER4> Assuming you're not being facetious, while that's technically correct it's probably better to assume an individual trading forex is gambling rather than engaging in legitimate and well-informed speculation. Likewise for options trading.

<comment><USER7> Options trading is a skill. Poker is a much harder but I hate seeing people say options trading is gambling. You just need to find an advantage. I am not the most skilled developer, I definitely wouldn't get a job at a FANG with my skills, but I was able to build a strategy that works wonders for me with the skills I have. If people on here use their skill, they can play with the data, use TA, and find an edge, maybe better than mine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes.

It's zero sum, you don't have any real influence on the market if you're at the "give it a trial" level, and you don't have any knowledge advantage over other actors in the market. (cf. investing in stock categories you understand, which has the risk of losing money and significantly overestimating your ability associated with gambling, but does at least have a realistic prospect of an overall upward trend in prices and some possibility you can understand certain relevant things better than the big institutional investors moving the market price)

There are practical reasons to trade forex like a multinational company hedging against currency movements causing income to fall in one part of the world, but that doesn't sound like what your brother is doing...

</comment><comment><USER9> It is worse than gambling since you are going to lose everything. I know plenty of casual gamblers who put a certain amount through a casino and walk away with their wealth intact.

Everyone I know who has gone into forex trading has lost everything they owned (admittedly this is a smallish sample). They seemed to think they had figured out some smart system, but they all blew up in the end. Very dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER10> It depends on what you're doing with the forex trading.

If, as I'm guessing is the case with your brother, you trade with the hope/expectation that a rate will move towards you in the future and you'll profit from that rate move, then that's just common or garden gambling.

But it's also used to buy or sell currency because you cash in that currency, hedge the forex component of an asset/liability, make a market etc. Different people have different use cases.

</comment><comment><USER11> Considering the terrible YouTube ads featuring millionaires that "work from home", "have no boss", and "make 10k in a matter of minutes", I would say yes.

If it was a reasonable realm to make a lot of money in, the ivy graduates at hedge funds and IB's would be doing it, not Joe Schmo who is paying for an ad for you to take his Forex class.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's been a few years since i worked in forex trading but when I did it had the reputation for being the most _shady_ of the various things you could trade.

You are largely having your deals set by your counterparty which is not what you want to have.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's sort of like horse racing.

It's gambling for most people, and crosses over to speculation for a limited population of people with domain expertise.

</comment><comment><USER14> I worked at a Forex company and most people will lose. So ya it's pretty much like going into a casino

<comment><USER7> Casino is throwing money away or a way to entertain yourself for a few $K, except for Poker which is highly skilled. Trading is a skill. I lost more money in all the above scenarios compared to most people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does he know something that noone else does?

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes.</comment>


Drupal 7 and 8 core critical release on April 25th, 2018 PSA-2018-003 - <AUTHOR> https://www.drupal.org/psa-2018-003 <comment><USER2> CVE: [https://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-7602](https://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-7602)

Nothing interesting there yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmmm, just learned about an up to date instance being hacked. Learned how it happened, so now waiting for the announcement to confirm if there's a chance it was exploited before the CVE was announced.</comment>


Onion is now a Reserved tld - <AUTHOR> https://www.iana.org/assignments/special-use-domain-names/special-use-domain-names.xhtml <comment><USER2> Just because the title doesn't make it clear, .onion is reserved for Tor usage, as is the case today; it's not been reserved for something else. There even is an RFC for that ([https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-dnsop- onion-tld/...](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-dnsop-onion- tld/?include_text=1))</comment>


The FBI Scandal - <AUTHOR> https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-fbi-scandal/ <comment><USER2> A longish read, but a good synopsis of the events and findings of the past few years.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's worse. Warrants extend two steps removed from the target. Consider what this means with Carter Page as an example.

1\. can spy on Carter Page

2\. can spy on anybody who communicated with Carter Page

3\. can spy on anybody who communicated with anybody who communicated with Carter Page

If a person exists who communicated with both Carter Page and Donald Trump, then the warrant allows spying on Donald Trump. It is nearly certain that such a person exists.</comment>


I suck at writing unit tests, but I'm trying to change - <AUTHOR> http://kevgriffin.com/i-suck-at-writing-unit-tests/

<comment><USER2> The advice I've always given people is to realize that they're already testing, and that they should just keep those tests rather than throw them away.

If you're writing a function to do a calculation, you almost certainly create a little script to call it and make sure it's working correctly, right? Well, don't just do it with irb (or whatever), put it in a directory called tests, and set it to run automatically. If you change it and it breaks at some point, you'll be alerted to the problem.

Now, if to run a test, you instead fire up a server, click or type on a page, and check output, automate that process and put it in test folder.

Here's the problem - sometimes the tools are designed so that it's far easier to fire up the server and do this manually than it is to automate it. This creates a problem, since writing tests should be as easy (or easier) than doing things manually. When this happens, yeah, your tools are tempting you to not write tests.

At that point, unfortunately, you do need to bring a bit of personal discipline to it, as well as sometimes push back against clients or managers who are tapping their fingers impatiently about features. And while people _should_ write tests, I can't exactly act all surprised and appalled if they don't.</comment>


There are now more U.S. jobs in solar industry than coal mining - <AUTHOR> http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2014/jul/06/sheldon-whitehouse/there-are-already-more-american-jobs-solar-industr/

<comment><USER2> In that jobs are inversely proportional to the amount of productivity in an industry, one would conclude that coal mining jobs are very productive and solar not so much. This is not an argument for solar, because if the amount of jobs is what matters, then we should be putting tons of money into the post office. Do we still have 700K people delivering snail main?</comment>


Mammoth dung, prehistoric goo may speed warming - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL1076886120070917?pageNumber=1

<comment><USER2> What's always bothered me about the global warming debate is that everyone seems more concerned with who to blame, rather than how to solve the problem. One side is spewing absurd doomsday scenarios completely out of touch with reality, and the other side is just pretending the problem doesn't exist.

The doomsday side is essentially advocating atavism - shutting down economic activity, and relying on grossly inefficient sources of power (how many environmentalists advocate the only sane option i.e, nuclear?) This will obviously have profoundly negative economic consequences. Especially in developing nations. No serious economist disputes this. In effect this argument is like saying that because car accidents cause a lot of deaths, the solution is to stop driving.

The "ignore it" side is basically claiming that this isn't a problem and we should just keep doin' what were doin'. So if this problem does end up biting us in the ass, we would be completely unprepared to deal with it.

But there are numerous solutions here. Nuclear power is probably the simplest. Helping developing nations industrialize is another - it's pretty well established that industrialization = wealth = less pollution. Then there are more radical solutions like installing CO2 scrubbers. The point is that technology always has costs associated with it. Nothing is free. What we should be concerned with is how to deal with the costs, rather than eliminate the life saving technology.

<comment><USER3> Wait, isn't the industrialization of China/India greatly contributing to carbon emissions? Without any industry, what is there to do the pollution?

<comment><USER2> Russia, China and India are some of the worst polluters. So are many countries in Africa. The problem is that when you're absymally poor, you don't have the resources to worry about how clean your wealth production is. Which is why they clearcut their forests without replanting and don't process their waste. And you can forget about things like recycling.

Here's an interesting fact that you rarely hear. Air and water quality in the US has been going up for the last 80 years. Right through all the industrialization and double digit increases in life expectancy and productivity. The reasons are simple - improved waste management, more efficient production, better recycling programs etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Which kind of suggests that the future of _every_ planet with life on it is runaway global warming, doesn't it? So what, we should stop trying to regulate our emissions because we're facing certain doom anyway?

Well, according to the article, it's surfacing now because the permafrost isn't so "perma" any more... something in which humans are directly implicated. So gee, it might well be too late for us now - but it wouldn't have been 50 years ago.

...Oops.

Perhaps everyone of any influence in world affairs at all since World War II needs to get together and figure out _precisely_ how best to say to our generation, "Sorry about your planet".

 _edit_ : Turns out the 500 billion tonne figure is a one-off, worst case release. Not an annual figure. Remind me, what's 500/7 again? And why exactly does "thanks to human development, mass extinction might suddenly leap one lifespan closer" mean either "it's not our fault, really it isn't, nature is evil and killing us all" or "see, there's nothing to worry about, humanity is barely having any effect at all"?

</comment><comment><USER5> Title doesn't match the article:

"Permafrost areas hold 500 billion tonnes of carbon, which can fast turn into greenhouse gases," Zimov said.

Only a fraction of that carbon will ever be converted to CO2.

<comment><USER4> In fairness, the title says "carbon", not "carbon dioxide". The article itself fingers methane, though, which is even worse.

Not that the title here isn't quite misleading enough, of course - it's just not misleading in that particular way. ;)

<comment><USER5> It's not misleading at all now, but it originally spoke of 500B tons released into the atmosphere yearly.</comment></comment></comment>


How much does it cost to develop an app? The true price of starting from scratch - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/11/24/much-cost-develop-app-true-expense-starting-scratch/ I've made over 20 apps for Windows 8 (I'm also a student) for exactly $0. These apps are not the best, but with some work, I believe I could make a good/successful, full scaled app. <comment><AUTHOR> I've made about 20 apps for Windows 8 for the price of $0. Although I am a student, and got $20 lifted from a year of membership, and free Visual Studio Pro, this seems to be a little biased. I think that if I work on it, and make a full-scaled app, I could make a good/successful app. This article seems to be intended for people who won't develop the app themselves.</comment>