Stop Using Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.stopusingfacebook.co/ <comment><USER2> > Because Facebook hired climate change deniers as fact-checkers.

Source:

> Facebook has announced that it was teaming up with CheckYourFact.com, which > is an offshoot of the anti-science media site, The Daily Caller

> The CheckYourFact website brags that: "Our mission is a non-partisan one. > We're loyal to neither people nor parties — only the truth. And while the > fact-checking industry continues to grow, there are still countless > assertions that go unchecked. We exist to fill in the gaps."

Source's source:

> The Daily Caller, which has published misinformation about climate science > for years, was co-founded by the science-denying Fox News host Tucker > Carlson and is backed by major conservative donors, including Charles and > David Koch, the billionaire fossil fuel barons who are the single biggest > funders of climate science misinformation.

They use a source, which uses a source, which argues that CheckYourFact employees are climate change deniers because it's a spin-off of a site that was donated to by climate change deniers.

Looking at the evidence, one of the first links I saw on CheckYourFact's site was debunking a bad thing that Hillary supposedly said [1], which suggests it is not the same in agenda as The Daily Caller.

To the creator of this site: If you want this to have an impact, present the facts as-is, with no sensationalism or dramatization. Most of what you're writing very well may be true, and this seems like a noble cause, but if a reader can pick apart one questionable if not false statement, its legitimacy will be destroyed.

(If you're interested in a great piece on the importance of making claims conservatively and retaining legitimacy in reporting/writing, highly recommend checking out Spotlight, which chronicles the Boston Globe's exposure of the Catholic Church protecting pedophile priests).

[1] [https://checkyourfact.com/2019/11/20/fact-check-hillary- clin...](https://checkyourfact.com/2019/11/20/fact-check-hillary-clinton- donna-brazile-email-wikileaks-donald-trump/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I only use Facebook for events, yet there seems to be no alternative, partly because of the network effect where small and large organizations keep posting their events only to Facebook.

If there was some kind of bot that would automatically crosspost events from Facebook to other social media platforms, then perhaps there would be a chance of winning me over.

<comment><USER4> On top of that, you have certain niche online communities that seem to only be on FB those days (the days of websites with discussion forums are long gone, sadly).

Also, some of my (smart) friends insist on using FB/Messenger for group messaging. I tried to convert them to Whatsapp a few years ago which IMO is way superior, but they still prefer Messenger (which I won't ever install, so I have to use FB web to keep in touch with them).

Whatsapp is now FB-owned, so lately we wanted to move our workgroup chat to Telegram, but one of coworkers boycotted the idea, because she has already a dozen different apps to keep in touch with her friends all over the world and she refuses to install yet another app.

The network effects and inertia are really hard to overcome.

<comment><USER5> FYI Telegram uses dubious encryption and lies about their business (for ex calling themselves a nonprofit when they aren't) and is run by a Russian oligarch who started spending on democracy-related causes after a falling out with Putin. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15281788](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15281788) for example.

WhatsApp's encryption protocol (Axolotl) comes from the open source secure messaging app Signal. If you can't get people to use Signal, WhatsApp is at least much better than Telegram or Facebook messenger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know it's almost become a trope here already, but I'm really becoming increasingly worried about the cultural impact of the kind of entertainment that optimizes for rapid action / reward cycles. Facebook is definitely in that class, even if to me personally it's never been that attractive.

I used to say that it was impossible for me to understand how people could become hooked on activities as ridiculous as gambling on slot machines, and yet I have to shamefully admit that I've probably now spent one or two full years of my life just cycling through different news sites, even when I knew I had probably read almost all of the interesting articles already.

The insidious thing about these things is that you do get something out of it, too. I've come to realize that it's not worth it ultimately. For me, the point where I started to understand that this really wasn't healthy was when I realized that the hours I spent on rapid-reward websites per day was pretty well (negatively) correlated with my mood. It can become an escapist activity, the go-to thing to do to avoid facing actual real-world issues.

I think rapid-reward websites are particularly dangerous to people who are intrinsically very curious and thus drawn to novel information. It's sad to think how much genuinely interesting thoughts of genuinely worthwhile thinkers you could absorb instead, if these sites didn't exhert such a pull. The pessimist in me is really worried about all the 12-year-old John von Neumann's right now being intellectually poisoned by ubiquitous, rapid-reward entertainment.

Anyway, I finally made the decision to change something and blocked almost all of the rapid-reward sites in my hosts file, via browser extension and Android apps... Defense in depth. ;) [1] Now, when I feel really compelled to check some news site, I go for a run. I can honestly say that this is one of the things that I have done in my life that has had the biggest positive impact on my well-being, relative to the effort needed.

[1] Yes, I've made an exception for HN and for one super boring newspaper website. I feel those are actually worth it.

</comment><comment> yoz-y I think these calls to action are preaching to the choir. I don't even use Facebook and my eyes glazed over when seeing this.

<comment><USER7> Why are "these calls to action" just preaching to the choir? Over the last year a bunch of people I know have stopped using google search, Facebook, and the epic games launcher. It's working slowly

<comment><USER8> Actual Google and Facebook usage data strongly suggests otherwise. In cases where one could argue that people are leaving Facebook for a competitor, it has nothing to do with privacy concerns (it would certainly be laughable if anyone thought TikTok would be better in terms of privacy).

<comment><USER9> I've left mostly because of numbness FB leaves me w/ \-- my mind is literally numb from all the hate articles/etc propagated and I see the same crap over and over.

I still have an account, and use messenger w/ wife when she's out and about... but for a social/news 'feed', I've moved over to reddit... the conversations/discussions are a LOT deeper and less assinine (and that's saying something considering some of the culture at reddit can be toxic itself). Plus I can drill down on topics via multi-reddits and such...depending on my mood.

There's also a bit more candor and shock factor on reddit cause of the supposed anonymity people tend to say what they really think even when it's appalling to most other people, so you definitely get a full-spectrum of discussion. It just feels more 'cerebral'.

<comment> yoz-y The big difference between reddit and facebook discussion (at least outside of facebook groups) is that people group by interest rather than social graph. Most of my family and friends are not interested in stuff I am.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Start regulating Facebook.

There, I fixed it to make it more realistic, otherwise it's about as useful as saying "Stop Using Oil".

<comment><USER11> Don't we kind of need to stop using oil though?

<comment><USER10> The point is that a) it's unfair to expect individual consumers to make a difference and b) it's not realistic to expect individual consumers to make a difference because network effects are so powerful. The modern world exists in part because of cheap, plentiful oil. If you live most places in the US, you need a car, and probably a gas-powered one at that. Similarly, Facebook gobbles up information about you even if you decide not to use it. You can't stop using Facebook even if you aren't using Facebook, because Facebook is actually using _you_ and the billions of other people it siphons data from. This libertarian wet dream of "just don't use it" doesn't work on a large scale.

<comment><USER12> Sorry for being toxic but would that mean saying we shouldn't tell people to stop using Facebook will fall on deaf ears as well?

Ideally they would stop using Facebook but if people can just be aware of the horrors involved they can stop using it in full ignorance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The site would make a stronger case if it just kept its stronger points and dropped the ones that are weak. Some weak ones:

This would make a better case if it dropped the ones that are kind of weak.

> Because Facebook was covertly paying teens 13 years old and older to spy on > them.

Didn't this involve people who explicitly download and app that told you it was going to gather this data for research in exchange for payment? I'm having a bit of a problem seeing what was covert about it.

> Because Facebook gave exclusive access to your private messages and friends > to large tech companies, device vendors, retailers, entertainment sites, > automakers and media organizations.

And with this one I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what "exclusive access" means here. It sounds like it was pretty much the opposite of exclusive. I'm not saying giving you data out non-exclusively is better than giving it out exclusively--just that this "exclusive access" claim makes little sense.

> Because Facebook facilitated Brexit by spreading misinformation, made a > fortune and tried to sue to prevent people from finding out.

The essences of this seems to be that people pushing "leave" bought ads on Facebook, and that some of the people who bought the ads may have been shady.

> Because Facebook employees say "F*ck ethics, money is everything".

One engineer said that on Blind. I'm pretty sure you can find one employee with that attitude at pretty much any employer that pays well and has over 100 employees.

</comment><comment><USER14> As I and many privacy advocates would love people to immediately stop using Facebook for privacy-respecting alternatives, I'm afraid that the users won't leave FB, IG or WhatsApp unless the so-called 'Influencers' and their friends leave for other alternatives as they can 'influence' the 'millions' of followers to another platform.

On top of that it's difficult to convince these 'influencers' to move due to the reasons outlined on this web-page if they start to lose their followers, popularity and their money. They will crawl back to FB/IG again if this happens. Rather than target general users, they must target the influencers with millions of users.

Every major social network always had these 'influencers' using it first and their followers always jumping on it afterwards. If a privacy-respecting alternative can somehow help grow an 'influencers' reach or even make them more money without violating their privacy, they will stay and their millions of users will follow them.

</comment><comment><USER15> I like the idea of offering alternatives, but have you considered crowdsourcing those apps? Could add an extra level of transparency if people could select/vote on which alternatives really are better (because that can be awfully subjective).

It would be interesting to link to privacy policies and other relevant information as well!

<comment><USER16> You mean like AlternativeTo does?

[https://alternativeto.net/software/facebook/](https://alternativeto.net/software/facebook/)

<comment><USER15> Good point, though I tend to get too distracted on AlternativeTo. Not sure if it's the design or just too many options and not enough votes. Measuring alternatives on specific dimensions related to the problems with Facebook could be interesting!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oh boy this again.

Everybody has heard about all these things on the telly, on online newspapers, etc. The media launched a massive campaign against Facebook. It didn't work. People find value in Facebook and they don't care about your predicament. Let people enjoy things!

</comment><comment><USER18> The list of reasons is good but the proposed alternatives in terms of social media (as opposed to messaging - which are pretty good) is laughable. Mastodon and all these federated services IMO fail to address the main problem while bringing several other problems to the table; I've explained this in a previous post ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20317513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20317513)) which I'll quote here:

> One big issue is that there's nothing decentralised that currently exists > that can rival the quality & user experience of mainstream social networks, > and decentralisation comes with its own problems (I personally think the > problem with mainstream social media is its ad-based business model and not > centralisation). Mastodon (which seems to be the biggest alternative being > proposed) is still a joke, even the name and branding sounds awful IMO. And > who in their right mind thought calling a post a "toot" > ([https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/toot](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/toot)) > was a good idea. Besides the branding, decentralisation comes with its own > issues like the lack of network-wide content moderation and agreement on > what content is acceptable. There are solutions (more like hacks) around > this where instance admins can choose not to federate with instances they > don't like the policies of, but it then causes problems for end-users where > they can't communicate with their peers on those banned instances despite > all of them being on Mastodon. Good luck explaining to a non-technical > person why they can't talk to/see the posts of certain people despite them > all being on Mastodon, and the solution is to spend time choosing an > instance with policies you agree with and making sure your friends are on it > or on a similar instance that's not banned by yours, and then hoping the > instances stay online without any kind of funding (there's also no knowledge > of whether they would scale to the size of mainstream social networks). The > solution IMO is not Mastodon or any of these fringe social networks. The > main problem is the lack of an ethical business model in mainstream social > media. The solution would be to vote with your wallets and fund a better > Facebook alternative - it could even show the current social networks that > there's profit to be made treating their users with respect and make the > situation better for everyone else too.

<comment><USER19> I think that app does not make it successfull. App can be awful, because friends that use it with us are the real value of social media. So if you'll convince most of your friends to use Mastodon, it may be pretty good social media app. You are right that non-technical people may find hard to use these 'super secure alternatives', but apparently media buzz about evil Facebook did the job and nowadays it's not always obvious that someone is on Facebook. I have some friends that decided to use apps that are not really social media apps as substitute to Facebook - and it turns out that reddit or signal may be a great social media place even though it's not really designed to be one. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A site that renders with JS disabled would be a very good idea here.

Something's also broken the Internet Archive's ability to save the site right now, see:

[https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.stopusingfacebook.c...](https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.stopusingfacebook.co/)

</comment><comment><USER21> If your going to suggest alternatives, don't suggest telegram with all of it's own privacy issues.</comment>


A wireless network for gadgets set to arrive in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248478/A_wireless_network_for_gadgets_set_to_arrive_in_San_Francisco

<comment><USER2> It's an exciting technology but isn't a silver bullet for all connected objects either:

from Sigfox website > On SIGFOX you can send between 0 and 140 messages per day and each message can be up to 12 bytes of actual payload data. The protocol already transmits the device ID, so the 12 bytes represent the actual payload and there is no limits on how you can structure the 12 bytes.

So if I'm correct you can only transmit 1.64 KB per device per day.

<comment><USER3> Considering the article says it operates at 100 bits/second, a daily allocation of 1.64Kb takes a minimum of 2 minutes and 14 seconds to transfer (about 1 second per message).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's hard to link directly, but here is some info for developers [http://sigfox.com/en/#!/technology](http://sigfox.com/en/#!/technology)

</comment><comment><USER5> Ought not this prompt carriers to leverage their existing networks to deliver a similar product. In Australia Telstra delivers 3G via 800mhz - I've been in the middle of buttfck nowhere and still been able to get 5mbit downstream. I'm not aware of any technical reason why existing carriers couldn't deliver a competitive service -ie. rate limited and tiny upload / download qutoa- for dollars per year.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like they're running on 900MHz. To be effective, 900MHz antennas usually must be rather large. May limit the useful applications.

Edit: I stand corrected. [http://www.slashgear.com/whistlegps-dog-tracker- first-to-use...](http://www.slashgear.com/whistlegps-dog-tracker-first-to-use- sigfox-iot-network-21329885/)

<comment><USER7> Yes that is correct, with traditional antenna design. I believe the collar itself has a hidden antenna to allow good impedance matching.

Coming from communications engineering I find ultra band modulation scheme intriguing. I haven't seen any papers that on what this is exactly and am waiting for more information to come out!

Ps: there is work on metamaterial based antenna design to shrink antenna dimensions [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial_antenna](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial_antenna)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems really sketchy to me - they use terminology nobody else uses so it's totally unclear how they would share the 900MHz spectrum, which is very polluted.

<comment><USER9> it shouldnt be that unclear how to share the 900mhz spectrum. fcc part 15 reg indicate how to do this ( freq hoppong etc ). companies like northwest emc help device makers verify compliance and generate correct reports.

<comment><USER8> +1 for NW EMC, I enjoyed working with them.

What I meant was there's no detail on the modulation they are planning to use and no mention of frequency hopping.

I wonder what they mean by "Ultra Narrow Band", at those bit rates it seems you would need hardly any bandwidth at all anyway.

<comment><USER9> ah, got it. yes, what they'll actually do is another matter entirely. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This indeed fills a nice gap, promising!

</comment><comment><USER11> The sigfox.com website is IPv4-only. Let's hope they show more foresight when it comes to the network design.

<comment><USER12> Criticism truly is the currency of HN.

<comment><USER11> The only way we'll ever move beyond IPv4 is to criticize every new thing that requires it.

I don't know whether that's the case for this network (for all I know, it might not be IP-based at all), but the inability to dual-stack one's public- facing website, nearly two years after World IPv6 Launch, is a failure that more people should acknowledge.

<comment><USER13> Do you know who hosts their website?

<comment><USER11> 18.104.22.168 -> AS12876 -> [http://www.online.net/](http://www.online.net/)

I use IPvFoo to get the IP address, then copy-paste it into [http://bgp.he.net/](http://bgp.he.net/) . Note that the www.online.net does at least have working AAAAs.

<comment><USER13> That implies that the lack of ipv6 support on their website has nothing at all to do with their technology.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pivotal Buys Xtreme Labs for $65M in Cash - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20131002/in-a-big-mobile-move-pivotal-buys-xtreme-labs-for-65-million-in-cash <comment><USER2> As a bit offtopic, I've never "heard" of Pivotal directly regarding the kind of work that they do. But I recently started using Jasmine, and decided to look into who is behind it, and I see Pivotal.

I think, "Oh cool. Let's see what else they do.", and man, they fund so many open source projects that are considered "standard".

Just take a look:

[http://pivotallabs.com/tools/](http://pivotallabs.com/tools/)

[http://www.gopivotal.com/about- pivotal/community](http://www.gopivotal.com/about-pivotal/community)

Happy to see a company push open source forward as much.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whenever I see "... for $X in Cash" I really want to believe they rolled up with a cardboard box full of money.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. Why a cardboard box? I picture a briefcase handcuffed to some sort of emissary.

<comment><USER5> Unless it is a bank cheque, I don't think you can fit $65M in a briefcase. If we use breaking bad as reference, we'd need 6 of those 55 gallon barrels to transport $65M in cash, or a really really large cardboard box.

<comment><USER6> 4 barrels at absolute minimum. 5 at a practical minimum, depending on how tightly packed.

 _\- Volume: ~ 74 L (19.6 gal) -_

6.5e7 [$] * (0.06943 [in^3/bill] / 100 [$/bill]) = 45129.5 in^3 ~ 195.366 gallons or 739.54 L

195.366 [gal] / 55 [gal/barrel] = 3.5 [barrels]

Rule-of-thumb: 1.1 L (0.3 gal) / Mega$

 _\- Weight: ~ 650 kg (1433 lbs) -_

A $100 bill weighs exactly 1.00 gram, so $65M (MM) weighs 650 kg (1433 lbs).

The money in each barrel would weigh at most 183 kg (360 lbs), so a water barrel will work since water would weigh about 45 kg (100 lbs) more. Therefore, sealed money barrels float.

Rule-of-thumb: 10 kg (22 lbs) / Mega$

 _\- Other Hazards -_

Mold, insects (silverfish, etc), mudslides, ground-penetrating radar and federal agents

<comment><USER4> Mold, insects (silverfish, etc), mudslides, ground-penetrating radar, federal agents, and neo-nazis!

Thanks for the awesome analysis!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, does Xtreme Labs build custom mobile apps for enterprises? It is sort of hard to cut through all the buzzword bingo in the article.

<comment><USER8> Xtreme Labs builds mobile apps. Our portfolio includes the Facebook, Twitter, and MTV apps, to name a few. We are essentially a contractor, and work on all mobile platforms - Android, iOS, WP8, BB, and Web are the main ones I think.

Source: I work for XL (now part of Pivotal and Pivotal Labs).

<comment><USER9> Not sure having worked on the Facebook and Twitter apps is a selling point - at least not the Android versions!

<comment><USER10> Can I ask what it is that you don't like about the Facebook and Twitter apps?

<comment><USER9> Oh, that is a long, long list, but I'll give a few things:

Facebook: UI doesn't fit with Android standards, and on top of that it sucks too. An example of how to get it right on Android is the Google+ app. They should really be using the standard action bar (or at least a better emulation of it), and the standard navigation drawer. Facebook had an update for the iOS7 visual standards on release, but they still haven't fully embraced the Holo themes introduced 2 years ago on Android. In fact, the Android app's UI is essentially just bad port of how their old iOS6 app looked.

Poor performance overall, this has gotten better as they've switched to a more native UI, but it's still worse than it should be. Scrolling performance is still a bit janky, even on the Nexus 4 - A few seconds with overdraw shown gives plenty of things to fix.

The Image upload UI is pretty bad, especially that horrifically designed notification.

Twitter has similar issues, mostly to do with using non-standard + bad UI. They have a beta version now with a faked Navigation Drawer, but they got lots of things wrong so feels really out of place (why they didn't use the standard one is a mystery).

Overall, the FB + Twitter Android apps clearly get a lot less love than their iOS apps. They have actually been getting better - the facebook app a few years ago was far worse (e.g. couldn't see or add event comments, which is pretty obviously important on mobile), but they still have a long way to go before they match up to the quality of the Google apps on Android (some of which I have problems with also, but that's a different issue!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Writing is on the wall with mobile.

Here is a great presentation on the topic, Mobile is Eating the World. [http://www.slideshare.net/bge20/2013-05-bea](http://www.slideshare.net/bge20/2013-05-bea)

Disclaimer: I'm biased. I work for [http://mokriya.com](http://mokriya.com)

<comment><USER12> Nice portfolio!

<comment><USER11> Thanks! We are having a blast working with such awesome folks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The majority of stake in Xtreme Labs was bought by Chamath Palihapitiya one year ago for $20 million. [http://allthingsd.com/20120925/chamath- palihapitiya-personal...](http://allthingsd.com/20120925/chamath-palihapitiya- personally-buys-majority-stake-in-mobile-development-shop-xtreme-labs/)

Now it's being sold for $65 million. I'm wondering what made Xtreme Labs three times as valuable in a year? And why Chamath sold it so quickly?

<comment><USER14> You made a common error there, Chamath put in $20 for a 'majority' stake, which can be either 50.1% of the shares, or x% where X < 50.1 but represents the largest single block of shares (I've seen both types of stakes being called 'majority stakes')

Lets say it was 50.1% then the post money valuation of the company was $40M (not $20M) so in that scenario the growth in value was 50% (rather than 300%)

That said, since these things don't go into details, he may have lost money on the deal if the deal is structured more for retaining the talent than paying back the investors.

<comment><USER15> This is a good point, and also its worth another note (from the linked article):

 _Palihapitiya put $6 million into the company upfront, he said, and has committed $20 million over the next three years._

The article goes on to note that this was a personal investment, not an investment of his fund. So, all things considered, perhaps not so surprising that he chose to exit opportunistically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is surprising. Consultancies are generally worth 1.25x their annual revenue, or 5x their EBIDTA meaning they are doing 52mm in annual revenue or 13mm in EBIDTA. Perhaps the multiple is significantly higher for the client book.

<comment><USER17> hiring and onboarding 300 "hot" mobile developers (well more probably something like 100 devs plus 100 PM/mgr/etc plus 100 GSA) - this way they paid 200K/head and have them from day 1. Add client book too.</comment></comment>


The Peril of the Laptop Sticker - <AUTHOR> https://callercallsback.com/the-peril-of-the-laptop-sticker-8e15a8b274ff <comment><USER2> I just have random stickers as it's easier to find your laptop in a pile of uniform MacBooks in security lines or at work. Also sometimes it's a good conversation starter if you are at a conference or cafe and people recognize one.

Mine: [https://i.imgur.com/pb074g0.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/pb074g0.jpg)

<comment><USER3> Mine is easily identified in a tech conference as the only one without stickers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's only a personal observation, but I've always associated laptop stickers with the same sort of demographic that likes to plaster their cars with bumper stickers.

<comment><USER5> Could be. But there is a much lazier laptop sticker demographic. It is by far the lowest effort way to tell one MacBook from another. The people who do this with stickers they got at a meetup are the same demographic as healthcare researchers who use pens and writing pads with the name of a prescription medication. It is the lowest effort way to jot something down.

These people don't have bumper stickers because a bumper sticker isn't a low effort way into o do anything. They do tend to have a permanent layer of dust on their car as well as parking stickers that expired six years ago, though

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> To me, stickers layer on a laptop like history. When I retire a laptop, it takes on a character seen outside a theater with layers of posters for bands.

Here's mine -

[https://imgur.com/a/BzweZEQ](https://imgur.com/a/BzweZEQ)

<comment><USER7> I agree, and I work to preserve the historical timeline... The seed for my next pristine macbook: [https://photos.app.goo.gl/h3Fx2DEe5cD7Mkqw6](https://photos.app.goo.gl/h3Fx2DEe5cD7Mkqw6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> >No matter how ugly the sticker is, you pretty much have to put it on your laptop

what world is this person living in? If your sticker is ugly, I won't put it on my laptop and I'll probably say "no thanks" when offered. If asked I'll explain what problem I have with the sticker. Maybe i'm just an asshole.

</comment><comment><USER9> >Stickering a laptop is a social dance with its own moves and behavioral expectations.

Every time I think there are no more possible ways to be surprised at how strict cultural conformity in the bay area is, you guys manage to show me something new.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't read too much into it. I don't think I've had a conversation concerning those stickers other than asking about a conference attendance or questions about their place of work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not a fan of seeing corporate logo stickers on laptops. Instead, I go for full-page custom artwork, for example: [https://www.nayuki.io/res/patchouli- knowledge-laptop-sticker...](https://www.nayuki.io/res/patchouli-knowledge- laptop-sticker/patchouli-201703-sticker-perpendicular.jpg)

<comment><USER12> Hey, nice patchouli!!

On topic, I always prefer getting an aftermarket lid case before putting on all the stickers. Easier to change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I liked how the PowerBook 1400 did it. I kept the clear cover on it and swapped out the picture regularly, or put inserts in it. No muss, no fuss, change as much as you like.

Great keyboard on it too.

<comment><USER14> Good catch.

I had a few 1400s in our fleet of laptops. The clear double-covers kept getting lost, they didn't last very long. As corporate business loaners, to be checked out for travel, they came with extra battery etc in a huge Targus case the size of a carry-on suitcase.

But it was a fun idea. I feel like we lived in a watered-down idea of what that product was supposed to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I guess the author and I come from different cultural backgrounds. I have a few stickers on my laptop to mark big accomplishments, such as after passing a very difficult course. Whenever someone offers me a sticker I put it away and if requested to put it on my computer I politely say that it does not fit my style.

</comment><comment><USER16> Where would I be without my npm sticker? How would anyone know that I'm a legitimate bona-fide hacker?

I only have one rule for stickers on my laptop - nothing tech-related.

</comment><comment><USER17> I currently have these on my MacBook 13": [http://bfx.re/sy1c](http://bfx.re/sy1c) I'm upgrading in a few weeks, though so I'm curious what I'll do with the new one... Might go for some full-size artwork.

</comment><comment><USER18> Are stickers on laptops an American thing? I'm from the UK and I don't think I've ever seen more than one or two stickers on laptops.

Could it also be because be we don't have bumper stickers either?

<comment><USER19> Everyone I used to know in the UK DJ/VJ/festival/tech crew sphere had plenty of stickers.

The pics on this thread with lots of big company logo stickers do look odd to me though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seeing my name in Kenneth Reitz's handwriting on the envelope of Requests stickers that I ordered may have been the moment that I finally felt like a real programmer.

</comment><comment><USER21> My laptop churn rate is so high, if I put stickers on my computer, I'd have to remove them in 6-12 months. You can use this argument if you want. :)

<comment><USER22> What are you doing to your laptops!? Have you considered something rugged or at least semi-rugged?

<comment><USER21> I'm a cross platform tester for my own company. I spend a couple months stabalizing software for say, MacOS 10.14, until it's to satisfaction, and then I move on to say, Windows 10 with a touch screen. And then an ARM and AMD machine, etc. I keep maybe the last four around before selling them. I have a personal laptop as well, but I often replace that one as well as I discover new laptops that I like as I'm testing them.

<comment><USER23> My 2015 rMBP runs both macOS 10.14 and Windows 10 just fine. Are you testing different hardware configurations as well?

<comment><USER21> Yes, and different hardware that they connect to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I rarely put stickers on my laptop, but when I do it's not for the latest tech fad.</comment>


Show HN: TeamPostgreSQL, neat admin interface for PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR>

I am just getting ready to release TeamPostgreSQL 1.05. You can check it out here:
http://www.teampostgresql.com
It is a web-based admin interface for PostgreSQL, with a lot of work put into making it a user-friendly and productive way to work with the database. Hopefully this makes it ideal for when different people need to access the database, including developers, testers, support staff, managers etc. This will be the first release after several months of beta testing and user feedback.
Some feature highlights:
* Pretty neat web interface (GWT powered AJAX GUI)
* Comprehensive database management, including database objects and tablespace management
* Easy yet powerful data viewing, using one-click search, relationship navigation, filtering and more
* Upload and download files directly to/from binary fields
* Tabbed SQL editor with SQL auto-completion
* Favorites function for easy storing/sharing of snippets and scripts
* Import/export of database objects and entire databases
I'd love to hear what you think! <comment><USER2> Please don't take this as knocking your hard work and I like your product, but I don't think another admin interface is not truly what the market needs.

PGAdmin does pretty well and the only significant feature that I see in your front end over PGAdmin (in my very limited exposure to your product), is that your product is web based. While a good feature, it is not the killer feature that knocks the competition dead. I can easily manage my off-site Postgres databases with PGAdmin.

To me where many of the tools that support the open databases are lacking, is in the analytic department. This is truly the hard stuff to do in the database world. adding features like telling me my longest running query, my most CPU intensive query or my most memory intensive query (etc. etc.) and providing a clean UI to display and refine (make recommendations) this information goes along way to helping developers and pay for themselves rapidly. These features sell themselves. Provide these in a good UI and I would definitely look at your product given that Postgres is my turn to DB any time I have a choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comments, I do appreciate the input. A couple of advantages over pgAdmin for an offsite database is that it will not drop connections, and it can easily be configured for SSL using https. Also, clients don't have to install anything.

Feature-wise the focus at this point has mostly been on powerful data navigation, i.e. you can do a quick search for a customer id, click the reference to the purchase order table, click to download a pdf contract directly from a binary field (just an example). The tool provides significant time-savings for these tasks, though you may not discover this unless you delve into the product a little.

More generally there are many little productivity improvements and details that support the user that all add up to provide value, which may not be noticed at a quick glance. I hope to be able to communicate these as efficiently as possible.

Going forward there is a lot of room for the kind of analytical features you mentioned. This is still an early version of the product with focus on core administration tasks. In fact management of running processes is due in the next release.

<comment><USER2> A couple of things, powerful data navigation and export to pdf from the UI are rely nice features and they will make life easier for the end user, but in my experience the main user of a DB admin application are developers, DBA's and admins. Most of which are not as concerned with the actual contents of the data, as they are with the structures of the data as well as the performance of the data.

Developers general concern themselves with the data when they are setting up test, or diagnosing a data related problem but in the coarse of a day most of their focus is on the structure and performance of the data and database.

The point being, generally your call center rep or your accountant (the end user) uses a custom interface dedicated to data navigation and data viewing (coupled with workflow) these features will most likely not be exposed to them and they are the users most advantaged by them, particularly the export to PDF feature.

Again, please don't take this as knocking your hard work, I think that powerful data navigation is important for those times that you do have to directly manage the data and think other DB admin front ends are severely lacking in that departments, but I urge you to keep in mind that in most organizations almost all the end users that are interested in the actual data are buffered away from a raw DB interface, even report writers who know SQL fairly well are buffered with tools such as Cognos and Crystal Reports.

But I think you have the basis to cure a pain point that plagues a lot of organizations given that you now have a good base product to build a robust development tool on.

A portion of (software) developers do not like and look at relational databases as second class to actually writing software. If you can mold your tool in to providing deep analysis and diagnostics and marry that with solution engine that provides recommendations on how to optimize and refine the data structure and query structures so that they are more performant, more secure, less resource intensive and you can do this in a seamless way you are scratching an itch that a good portion of developers cant reach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Again, thanks for your comments, I believe you are right. Particularly administrators are less concerned with what is in the database than how the database is organized and performs - for them the product does not currently offer any particular advantages at this stage. I will seriously consider how to better address this, given that administrators are arguably the most obvious consumers of this kind of product.

At this point the product addresses many of my own pain points of modelling and troubleshooting databases and data related issues from the point of view of a developer. Test departments too will benefit a lot from these features. As for the other groups it is true that they will mostly use a dedicated interface, yet for the time when the occasional manager or supporter does need/want to check out something he can. That is mostly an added benefit from the product being (hopefully) so easy to use.

Thanks for giving me something to consider for the future direction of the product.

By the way, the PDF example just demonstrates how the tool lets you download a file directly from a binary field in a table row (f.ex. bytea type column). It can be any file type, some use the database to store images, for example. Similarly, you can upload a file from your PC directly into a binary field in your table. It is a good example of how the tools makes an otherwise involved task very simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anecdote: I selected a trigger, clicked on "Generate DDL" and it just stayed on "Generating, please wait" forever

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will fix. It is actually a permission getting denied for the demo account (there is an error message being obscured by the progress dialog).

Note that it should work fine when you run as administrator.</comment></comment>


LivingSocial Confirms $175 Million Amazon Investment - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/02/livingsocial-confirms-175-million-amazon-investment/ <comment><USER2> Both Livingsocial and Groupon have lots of work ahead. They cover a large demographic which they need to partition and customize.

If the deal I get in the morning isn't interesting to me, they failed. Ie: both services will regularly email deals about SPAs and hot stone masages, I would not expect many men to be interested by that deal.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good strategy, investing less than 1/25th of the money (as Google is considering) in a competitor of Groupon. I guess that Amazon has little chance of loosing money on this investment since LivingSocial is making money and this business space will grow.

</comment><comment><USER4> $500 million revenues - is that their commission or is it the total amount they intend to bring in (including commission and sales) - there's a huge difference between the two. Assuming $500 mill is their total sales and their commission is 50%, this brings their 'actual' revenues to $250 mill - not a tiny amount, but not nearly $500 mill as well.

<comment><USER5> You're using "sales", "commission", and "revenue" imprecisely/incorrectly.

The money they collect from customers is "revenue".

A portion of those revenues are paid to the local merchant. That is the "Cost of Goods Sold".

The revenue minus the COGS is the "Gross Profit".

So, in your example, then they would indeed have $500M in revenue, and $250M in gross profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> These guys are building real businesses with revenue growing super fast. The beauty here is they saw a great business, Groupon, duplicated and raised bunch of money to grab market share.

<comment><USER7> I would argue that they've improved on it. At least here in Denver Living Social is consistently more useful (particularly for my wife and our friends). Were GroupOn has been going to a lot of non-local website deals recently, Living Social manages to stay relevant. The wife was telling me that they're apparently trying to branch out into things like Vacations as well, which would be really cool.</comment></comment>


Matt Mullenweg on public speaking - <AUTHOR> http://ma.tt/2010/01/public-speaking/

<comment><USER2> The advice of knowing your material really is extremely important. Memorizing what you have to say generally comes across as forced and unnatural. I generally like to have an outline of what I want to say, perhaps with some notes to make sure I don't skip over a the major point, but other than that I make sure I know the material well enough that I can talk about it casually. This is especially important if people may ask questions in the middle of your presentation rather than just at the end (if at all).

There is the extreme where you memorize and script it out and practice it so well that it comes off as totally natural, but I have yet to take it quite to that extreme.

Practice your presentation alot, in front of at least one other person. It will make the specific presentation better and your general presentation skills will increase as well.

<comment><USER3> I do speaking. Here a quick tip: Use prompting questions.

In your notes ask yourself questions that prompt you to make your points, instead of listing out those points directly. Try "So why do I like Git?" instead of "DVCS's are good because the can help avoid some political infighting over code."</comment></comment>


Show HN: I've coded an iOS App to sell more websites - <AUTHOR>

In Germany a lot of small businesses have old websites which are technically not state of the art. Most of them are using HTML4, Frames or simple DIY-Website builder by 1&1 etc.
In total there are about 3.2 million small businesses and 30% don't even have any site. That's why I focus on this market.
Every time I speak to a potential client the first thing I do is analyzing his website for some key facts. Most of them are technical facts like page title or page description. Another tipping point is to show the clients website on a smartphone. It "hurts" them if they see how hard it is to pinch, zoom and scroll on their current website, which often is not optimized.
To be faster in acquisition I've developed an iOS App on my own which addresses these technical points and includes some other functions like checking Adwords click prices.
I've started to learn iOS development about 10 months ago. Coming from PHP and Ruby, the learning curve to Objective-C was pretty tough. About 300 hours of coding and learning went into this app.
Now my question to the hacker news community:
What would You pay for this app? What Do you think is the right pricing in the app store?
Here's the link to the app: https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/onpage-seo/id854357492?mt=8
Thanks for feedback. <comment><AUTHOR> [https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/onpage- seo/id854357492?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/onpage- seo/id854357492?mt=8)</comment>


pg: SOPA could have had a compromise - <AUTHOR> http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=100

<comment><USER2> The author should (re?)read pg's essay.

<comment><AUTHOR> and what would he find?

<comment><USER2> He would find that it never advocated copyright infringement.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was not the point.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Echo, an indie adventure RPG game - <AUTHOR> https://echo2010.weebly.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> We spent 7 years making this game, and still working on more features and stories to release official version. But feel free to give any comment or feedback :).

Follow us if you are interested: Facebook: [https://www.facebook.com/Echo2010.ourvoice/](https://www.facebook.com/Echo2010.ourvoice/)</comment>


Get notified of new RubyGems releases over Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/rubygems <comment><USER2> These kind of automated twitter-bots really don't fit in with my usage of Twitter. They add way too much noise to the stream. I really don't care that gulp 0.1.1 just got released.

Can someone explain to my why you'd want this much info pushed into your stream?

<comment><USER3> You think that's bad then you should see the CPAN upload twitter-bot :) <http://twitter.com/cpan_linked>

But yes I agree with you, this isn't the best way to manually consume this info. I tried it for a little while but just switched back to the relevant RSS feed, which is far easier to skim through quickly without missing too much.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Algorithmic stock music - <AUTHOR> http://computoser.com/stockmusic

<comment><USER2> Surprisingly pleasant. Maybe you'd like to get rid of the donation button for now, it may drive people off?</comment>


Easy Way to Track and Share the Yield of Cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> https://dailycoinprice.com/ <comment><USER2> this looks nice!

I think the UI needs a tweak though to improve clarity; right now it's unclear what i'm really looking at. I had to go mucking about in the menus to understand whats being displayed.

Right now:

$ +120

-4.72% per week

suggest:

$ +120(-4.72%)

last 7 days

the first (and existing) version communicates/infers that the price has dropped -4.72% per week for the last somenumber of weeks, which is confusing. The second reframes the data to clearly be how price/% has changed over the last 7 days.

Otherwise, i'm digging it!</comment>


Show HN: DubJS: A New Way to Build Web Apps - <AUTHOR> http://dubjs.org/blog/intro

<comment><USER2> In my own experience, such simplications begin to fall apart as soon as you find the slightest bit of complexity in what you're building upon them. As soon as something doesn't fit the mold, you adjust the mold - or worse, you adjust the something. The next thing you know, you're spending more time customizing your framework than you are being truly productive.

There is an inherent simplicity in HTML / CSS / JS that can be easily forgotten and difficult to replace. Each has its responsibility: Organization, Style, and Function - The combinations of these 3 simple entities are amazingly capable of representing the entire internet. That's a pretty difficult thing to simplify further.

Nonetheless, I like your approach and I wish you luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> _There is an inherent simplicity in HTML / CSS / JS that can be easily forgotten and difficult to replace. Each has its responsibility: Organization, Style, and Function_

I agree in the simplicity of HTML and CSS if we're talking about simple websites. I've found that for more complex apps, and especially if you're using features of newer, half-specified standards (with style prefixes etc.) things can get a bit out of hand. One thing I want to point out is that you can separate your Dub code by style and function if you want to, although I can understand if you do not want that option.

Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

This is my side-project that I've been working on for a while. It would mean a great deal if you'd give me some feedback.

<comment><USER3> If it's possible to change the title, please prepend with Show HN. Some people (including me) like to vote just for the sake of it. There was a discussion here to vote up Show HNs to support those who ship (can't remember the link though).

<comment><AUTHOR> Done. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As long as it doesn't become abandonware, I could certainly see this serving a niche segment of developers. There continues to exist a surprisingly large number of RAD tools on the market despite many having innate limitations that drastically limit their scope and applicability.

But they continue to exist because there are countless businesses demanding customized software for cheap. My thought is that a tool like this could very well be a welcome addition to the marketplace if it lowered the bar to entry of building web apps by a not-insignificant margin.

As long as DubJS isn't viewed as an effort to replace standard web app development, but merely another way for getting from A to Z that some developers find useful, I think it has a lot of promise!

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, it's not meant to be a universal replacement for standard web development, but as useful option where appropriate.

Thanks for your kind words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The code looks very cool. Great job on creating such a concise dialect. I would have fun experimenting with this, but that's probably as far as it would go as the massive number of people that are already comfortable HTML/CSS can't be ignored. I think it's easy to discount the value of mind share, but why try to replace HTML/CSS when every beginning web developer knows it?

I don't feel any pain in writing HTML/CSS as it is. Also, I would feel a bit uncomfortable moving away from the underlying language, with the feeling that it might make writing/debugging regular javascript more difficult.

</comment><comment><USER6> Kudos for the effort, but it won't fly.

Writing everything in JS isn't gonna make it better all of a sudden, even if it's sanitized JS. HTML and CSS are fine for the jobs they do which is data description and layout.

The problem is JS itself. Specifically, the lack of opinionated language design infers on code. Then we end up having to reinvent the wheel all over again, and again. And we all know how productive that can be.

We have two options here. Writing in yet another language and compiling to JS or writing a JS framework that works around its flaws. I vote for the latter.

<comment><USER7> I think it could totally fly with a language with good declarative support. Why learn separate syntax (html, css) when all you need is some declarative semantics?

Clojure has this sort of thing and any other homoiconic language gets it for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that is my thinking: learning three separate languages is a big burden, especially on beginners.

<comment><USER8> You would need to know them a bit at least - for debugging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "In many cases you might want part (or all) of your app to be served as static markup. Reasons can include rendering speed, supporting environments where JavaScript is missing (or disabled), or search engine optimization."

?!? Why would anyone, ever, serve APP as static pages to those having JS disabled. Web site, thousand times yes, but APP?

<comment><USER10> There is a case for doing both, pre-rendering on the server, and rendering updates on the client. This approach is used by Google plus for example.

I wrote a simple implementation that uses google closure templates to pre- render the page with dynamic content on the server, and to me the app felt more stable. This feeling may be entirely subjective, as I didn't make any actualy measurements.

A counterargument may be that this approach does not scale and would overload a server resulting in worse stabilit/render-time in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting approach, but I far prefer the tack that Angular.js is taking, where they are embracing HTML and extending it's utility, not abstracting it away.

<comment><AUTHOR> My thinking is that HTML has limitations, and can cause a lot of repetition. That's one of the reasons for the abstraction (along with avoiding the need for three separate languages), but I can understand that some people might prefer it as is.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Successful marketing channels/forms for your startup/side project? - <AUTHOR>

For those who have successful startups what has been the most effective form of marketing? <comment><USER2> If you haven't already, I can recommend reading the book Traction - [http://tractionbook.com](http://tractionbook.com)

Gabriel and Justin have done a good job of not just identifying marketing channels loaded with successful case studies, but providing the business framework for testing them on an ongoing basis to keep "moving the needle".

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, i will check out the book</comment></comment>


Try PureScript - <AUTHOR> http://tryps.functorial.com/

<comment><USER2> This explains more. [https://github.com/paf31/purescript](https://github.com/paf31/purescript)

It looks nice and simple to use.

I guess it is similar to these:

[https://github.com/faylang/fay/wiki](https://github.com/faylang/fay/wiki) [https://github.com/evancz/Elm](https://github.com/evancz/Elm) [https://github.com/puffnfresh/roy](https://github.com/puffnfresh/roy)

This one isn't mentioned much but has a similar goal in that the idea is to bring strong typing and a nicer functional style to web programming:

[https://github.com/ku-fpg/sunroof-compiler](https://github.com/ku- fpg/sunroof-compiler)

A lot of info on similar here:

[http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_JavaScript_Problem](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_JavaScript_Problem)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Code is here for anyone interested

[https://github.com/paf31/trypurescript](https://github.com/paf31/trypurescript)</comment>


PHP News – blog's aggregator - <AUTHOR> https://php-news.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's an experimental project where I try to aggregate all interesting blogs from PHP world. You can submit any other blog you find interesting and be notified on Twitter (for now) about new editions (list of posts from last week).</comment>


Visual Basic macros are back in Office Mac 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products

<comment><AUTHOR> Office 2004 had VB, 2008 lost it, now 2011 has it again.

Though I'd obviously rather be automating my documents in Ruby, Python, JavaScript (etc.) it's still nice that Mac Office has stopped being a second class citizen this way.</comment>


Developing ClojureScript Live with Figwheel – ClojureWest Talk - <AUTHOR> http://rigsomelight.com/2015/05/01/developing-clojurescript-with-figwheel.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is author here. I'm available for questions.

<comment><USER2> No questions, but just wanted to say thanks a ton for making an awesome tool that's made my life better!

<comment><AUTHOR> Dude! You are welcome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Go Bruce! Figwheel is awesome.</comment>


'A Woman of No Importance' Finally Gets Her Due - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/04/18/711356336/a-woman-of-no-importance-finally-gets-her-due <comment><AUTHOR> CIA featured story from 2012:

[https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story- archive/...](https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story- archive/2012-featured-story-archive/virginia-hall.html)</comment>


New study yields instructive results on how mindset affects learning - <AUTHOR> http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/february7/dweck-020707.html?view=print

<comment><USER2> > "One very common thing is that often very brilliant children stop working > because they're praised so often that it's what they want to live as-- > brilliant--not as someone who ever makes mistakes," she said.

Exactly my experience. I've been trying to figure out how to motivate myself to actually do anything for my whole adult life (and a good bit before), because in my formative years I basically got As for showing up - not only did I never have to figure out how to work at something, when I did find something difficult I instantly decided I was a failure at it and stopped trying.

Any suggestions on how I can break out of that cycle would be very gratefully received... but I'm scared that at 33, it's too late for me to learn how to learn - or how to fail.

<comment><USER3> OK here's the suggestion.

Do one foolish thing every day.

I am serious. Start small if you have to. Work up to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I completely agree that having that mindset is more motivating and those with it will go further than if they did not.

I wonder however if its true, that the brain is like a muscle and can be significantly improved upon use.

Its easy to test and see that its difficult but possible to go from very overweight to great shape in a few short years. But how easy and common is it to go from really dumb to really smart?

<comment><USER5> To loose weight things you have to do are obvious: eat less, run, pump iron. And whats even better is you have a feed back loop where you can monitor clearly in simple terms ( a number ) that indicates your progress. But to become clever both the method to follow and the way to measure it is so vague. Which is what is at the root of the problem.</comment></comment>


Quality != Quality - <AUTHOR> http://qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2017/10/quality-quality.html <comment><USER2> I have a book on quality (I forget the title) that pointed out the fact that while everyone talks about quality, it is rarely defined. The book went on to define quality thusly: "Quality is the ability to meet a specification" (that's my rephrasing as I can't find the book).

<comment><USER3> Defining quality is easy enough that I always had a hard time fully buying into _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance._

<comment><USER4> If it's that easy - please provide a definition?

Because quality is often _subjective_ , I'll be shocked if you can provide a generalized definition.

<comment><USER5> Perception of quality is subjective. An objective measurement of quality would be how well something fits a set of requirements. Something fitting that definition of "quality" could still be _perceived_ as low-quality, of course, but I think that's a different question.

<comment><USER6> That's _not_ what the book concluded. One of Phaedrus' realizations was that quality is neither subjective (depending on the judge) nor objective (an objective fact, like the mass of a book in kilograms).

<comment><USER5> I never said that it was. I've never read _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_. The previous comment asked for a definition of quality. I provided one that made sense to me.

> One of Phaedrus' realizations was that quality is neither subjective > (depending on the judge) nor objective (an objective fact, like the mass of > a book in kilograms).

Sounds like a contradiction in terms, like a binary value that's neither true nor false. Unless the conclusion was that quality is a composite of some objective properties and some subjective ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the important part of this is that all three circles in their Venn diagram _must_ intersect. If they don't, you'll fail. Either because the production quality is non-existent, no business value is being added, or the product doesn't have the right attributes to be saleable.

How big does this sweet spot intersection need to be? "As large as possible" doesn't sound right - because it says you've spent too much time polishing and not enough time getting it in front of customers. Too small and your value isn't obvious enough, inviting the competition to steal your lunch. So .. perhaps it should be "just right", whatever that means for your market.

<comment><USER8> The author says these are Venn diagrams, but he omits saying what the domain is. Are the members of these sets programs? If so, then he is saying that a program may have any combination (including possibly none) of these three concepts of quality, but a given program (or whatever the elements are) either possesses a given quality, or it does not - the model, as presented, does not allow for degrees of quality. In this interpretation, as large as possible a sweet spot would simply mean that you have many programs having all three qualities, and if that is not optimal, then the model is not complete.

To be clear, I don't think this is what the author meant; I suspect either I have guessed wrongly about the set's domains, or he has just chosen a flawed way of expressing himself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> there is one important aspect of "quality" that leads to all other: quality is achieved at global maximum. A lot of engineering methodology is focused finding a local maximum.

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately, for even highly simplified idealised problem spaces of only moderate complexity, the best algorithm would take longer than the life of the universe to find the global maximum. Worse, for most of them, even if I gave you the global maximum solution, it would take you longer than the life of the universe to verify that.

Or, put another way, actually producing something before the heat-death of the universe is, imho, a prerequisite for quality.

<comment><USER11> _Great artists ship._

<comment><USER6> Van Gogh was a great artist, but he sold almost none of his paintings.

One source: [https://www.thoughtco.com/van-gogh-sold-only-one- painting-40...](https://www.thoughtco.com/van-gogh-sold-only-one- painting-4050008)

<comment><USER11> I believe that ship in this context means to complete, not to market successfully and close a deal which presents a different set of challenges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Chiba-City There are no private languages. Quality is a social determination. Preferences are idiomatic to exposure. They never matter in defining words.

</comment><comment><USER12> duh != dough

</comment><comment><USER13> Is Quality NaN?

<comment><USER14> Everything is a Boolean.

<comment><USER15> Yeah why are they trying so hard to objectify this?

<comment><USER11> It's design or management thinking versus nuts and bolts engineering. Even if it seems superfluous for a given problem, it has value in generality (eg. broadly applicable to complex project management/planning) and optimization (eg. prioritization of development effort/resource allocation against perceived customer experience impact) at macro level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why not just go for an ISO standard definition, like 9000 or 9001? It means to meet specifications. Specifications specify sold gold and it is solid, then it is quality. If it is gold plate then it is not.

<comment><USER17> No ISO 9000 means to follow a set procedure the procedure could be such that quality isn't a concern.

<comment><USER16> Yes the standard is about a process, but it's a process to meet specifications. The process is followed to repeatably meet them.</comment></comment></comment>


The Downfall of Video Chat - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/39001004

<comment><USER2> lol!</comment>


A Bizarre USC Case Shows How Broken Title IX Enforcement Is - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/a-bizarre-usc-case-shows-how-broken-title-ix-enforcement-is.html <comment><USER2> I'd like to attempt to do a complete end run around the impending anecdote war and ask: how the hell are academic professors, lecturers, staff, and students agreeing to serve in a position of power where they make recommendations/findings/whatever on potentially criminal acts by university students without having any expertise whatsoever in criminal law?

If one sits on a university panel and is shown evidence that one student raped another student, how is one's next action _not_ to go to the police station and hand over that exact same evidence?

If one is not being shown any actual evidence, how can one possibly rationalize participating in such a proceeding?

If you are an academic and have served in this capacity, please explain to me how your decision was motivated by anything other than a desire not to rock the boat. Please also explain how serving in a non-expert position of power over students who have potentially committed criminal acts is compatible with being a humble and conscientious scholar.

<comment><USER3> They don't operate with a criminal court's standard of evidence and the punishment meted out is not criminal punishment.

The accuser is free to go to the police in addition to the school's administration, if they chose not to it would be wrong for others to do so.

Say you had some friends over including someone you don't know well and a while later you discovered something valuable was missing. You think that person may have taken it because you don't know them well and they had the opportunity, would you not hesitate invite them over because you have no evidence? "Innocent until proven guilty" is a cornerstone of our criminal legal system but not every judgement can, or should, be based on the same standard.

I'm not comfortable with the position school administrations are put in but recognize that often times it's better than counting on the criminal justice system in a timely fashion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Many ages ago I served as defense counsel, of sorts, at a judiciary board hearing at my university. A young man was accused of stealing textbooks from the campus bookstore, and selling them back. I was given wide latitude to investigate, and I poked a ton of holes into that, found there was zero evidence of the crime. Pure suspicion and assumption. Yet he was suspended for a semester having been found guilty, reasoning it was "more likely than not" he committed the offense. This was absolutely laughable.

I am reminded of this because universities have become adverse to conflict resolution, and conditioned to believe ever accusation, and every "victim" no matter the evidence.

<comment><USER5> Don't look now, but you're alleging the "believe every victim" (with scary air-quotes, no less!) in discussion of a story which alleges the problem of _refusing to believe_ the person the university said was a victim.

<comment><USER4> I could have said things better, as I was trying to make a point about the dispute/discipline procedure of a major university. The victim, IMHO, in this instance is the student. The school believes they are the victim, but they also happen to be the judge and jury. I found the process, the evidence procedures, finding of fact, and guilt, to be seriously flawed.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter to add in-stream ads from accounts you don't follow - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20110831/twitter-ramps-up-its-ad-plan-again-with-ads-you-havent-asked-to-see/

<comment><USER2> Shocked! Shocked, I am!

Good riddance to bad rubbish.</comment>


Ask HN: Percentage of companies NOT getting funding after YC - 100-xyz I used to think that most companies get VC funding after completing YC.  However, recently I am finding that there are many that don't.  They get the 150000 from YC and that's it.  Anyone know what the percentage of such companies are?  Also is this percentage increasing with the recent larger batches? <comment><AUTHOR> This is probably not something anyone wants to talk about. Great question though. It would be interesting to know.</comment>


An Exceptional Change in PHP 7.0 - <AUTHOR> https://daveyshafik.com/archives/69237-an-exceptional-change-in-php-7-0.html <comment><USER2> Amusingly, after months of pointless bikeshedding, we managed to convince the internals team to throw an exception during the extreme case of a CSPRNG failure.

[https://www.sammyk.me/security-changes-to-the- php-7-csprng-i...](https://www.sammyk.me/security-changes-to-the-php-7-csprng- in-rc3)

You can read my arguments on the mailing list, but basically it amounted to:

        $chars = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz234567';
        for ($i = 0; $i < 12; ++$i) {
            $password .= $chars[random_int(0, 31)];
        }

If random_int() returned FALSE, $password would be the string 'aaaaaaaaaaaa' (and you'd have 12 E_WARNING errors in your log).

By making it an exception, random_int() will now fail closed (kill the script by default), but the developer can still handle it gracefully.

        $chars = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz234567';
        try {
            for ($i = 0; $i < 12; ++$i) {
                $password .= $chars[random_int(0, 31)];
            }
        } catch (Throwable $e) {
            $framework->template->kill('An unrecoverable fatal error occurred.');
        }

Or something similar.

Is it a BC break? Sure. Is it worth it? Oh yeah.

<comment><USER3> We need more BC breaks, not fewer. I'd really like to see a lot of functions that return FALSE on failure throw exceptions in the future. We could also tidy up the stdlib a bit and give primatives some OO love.

If you're going to break BC, might as well do it right.

<comment><USER2> So, onwards to PHP (gr)8?

<comment><USER3> I'm hoping Hack can liberate us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow this thread reeks of negativity

<comment><USER5> It's a thread about PHP on Hacker News. Even if there were no comments at all it would still reek of negativity.

<comment><USER6> Honestly I'm amazed that even here on hackernews PHP gets so much hating over meaningless things.

I mean, hating PHP for copying Java OO model in 2004? Com'on... It's not like PHP ever wanted to be a fancy language.

EDIT: Apparently PHP5 was released in 2004, not 2003.

EDIT2: One thing PHP got right over Java: type-hinted parameters are not nullable by default. NullPointerException anyone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why does everything start with a backlash? I do not get this language at all.

<comment><USER8> The namespace separator in PHP is \\. It seems like a horrible idea at first, but in practice the only place you ever see it is at the top of files:

        use Psr\Log\NullLogger;
        use Psr\Log\LoggerInterface;
        use Psr\Log\LogLevel;

…and then the rest of the code just uses NullLogger, LoggerInterface and LogLevel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just don't get why, of all the OO systems out there to inspire an engineer, the PHP people picked Java.

<comment><USER10> PHP is much more of a static language than a dynamic one. Therefore it has more in common with Java/C++ than with Python, Ruby, or JavaScript. It's also a very pragmatic choice for an OO system.

<comment><USER11> PHP wasn't always what it is now, that's OPs point. They are where they chose to go. Probably in the search of legitimacy, they chose to follow the most enterprisey language.

<comment><USER12> But you, like the OP, fail to communicate exactly WHY this is a bad thing. You just take it for granted that your point stands on its own without an explanation.

Why NOT Java?

<comment><USER9> Java is a fairly ugly OO system, basically. It's purely my opinion, of course, but not an uncommon one.

Since I don't have to use PHP I'm not too upset. I was really just lamenting the state of the world.

<comment><USER13> Same thing as before, you've stated it's ugly, but haven't given any specific examples of why you think this.

<comment><USER14> do we really need to see bad java examples to understand his opinion?

<comment><USER15> Just because a language is used to write bad code doesn't mean the language design itself is bad.

<comment><USER16> Exactly. I've seen beautifully written Java and I've seen (and written) ugly Java. The language syntax is by far the least contributing factor to the 'prettiness' of the code. With the exception of BF. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Out of curiosity, why does PHP use backslashes in throwable names?

<comment><USER18> Heh, I was wondering the same. As others have pointed out, it looks like it's the namespace separator. Now someone has to explain why on Earth you need the namespace separator if these class names are already in the namespace?

PHP has an incredible knack for _almost_ copying other languages' features, but making them uglier in some random way, for no particular added benefit.

(I know, I'm a hater... but seriously, why?)

<comment><USER19> The namespace separator is not required if already in the correct scope. I am not sure why the author decided to include them in the examples.

<comment><USER20> Modern PHP code rarely uses the global namespace, so almost everyone who cares about correct handling of the new exceptions will have to prefix them with a backslash anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Both the LogicException and the RuntimeException branches seem kind of pointless... They all describe exceptions that happen with values at runtime and I expect I'd have trouble picking one in a given circumstance. Mostly I see it leading to a lot of inconsistent uses in practice. At least 4 of them would be legitimate choices for a string thats too short, for example.

Ah, PHP.

<comment><USER3> The logic behind the difference is in the fact that PHP doesn't have assertions - the naming is based on the root cause, not when the occur.

A RuntimeException is something like "Database connection failed." A LogicException is an implementation issue (e.g. usually requires a code change to fix).</comment></comment>


Computer Science Rankings - <AUTHOR> http://csrankings.org/ <comment><USER2> Creator of the site here. Suggestions for improvement welcome.</comment>


Is Fatigue Really Just All In Our Heads? - <AUTHOR> http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/energy_for_nothing/

<comment><USER2> As someone who has run everything from 10 miles down to the 100m for the past 15 years, there are two types of barriers of fatigue when at maximal performance.

The first barrier is the pain felt because you're running at max performance. This is all mental, and you learn to love it. The mental barrier grows exponentially more difficult to fight as you get closer to...

The second barrier. The true hard limit, as defined by your body's innate physical capacity to perform. At this point you've managed to push past the mental barrier and used up every ounce of energy. It's typically marked by a visible decrease in performance aka "hitting the wall". I've done it before, and there is no amount of mental convincing that will get the body moving when there is no more fuel in the tank. This shutdown might be a protective function of the brain (as a physical organ) looking to ensure it can still function, but there really is no physical capacity left to continue at speed even if the will is there.

Any true athlete intuitively knows from their training when that second wall is approaching and will time it as best as possible so that they get as close to it as possible just as they finish their performance (hence running faster at the end). This is much more evident in endurance events where blowing past the anaerobic threshold too early is disaster for the competitor.

One of the best events to watch athletes hit the second wall is the 800m.

<comment><USER3> Except that the point of this article is that this "second wall" is in the brain, and not in the muscles.

<comment><USER2> This article is really poorly written from this standpoint, because they claim to argue that peak performance is rooted in unconscious mental processes, but then it goes on to say this:

 _While the fMRI results of the Birmingham experiment were promising, they did not come from subjects who were actually exercising. Because fMRI requires subjects to keep their heads perfectly still, it's not clear how the technique can be effectively applied to bodies in motion._

In this study of cyclists who are clearly still fighting the first barrier (mental), it notes that giving them an energy drink is a boost regardless of whats in it. All this reinforces is that athletic performance is truly mind over body until the body has nothing left to give.

In addition, the article interchanges "mind" and "brain" throughout, which only serves to confuse whether its talking about mental willpower or the brain as an organ (which is entirely physical) functioning to protect itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The first test seemed to me just proving that you can trick your body into releasing energy reserves by giving it the promise of some energy.

In a philosophical sense, fatigue is "in the mind." But in a physical sense, it's a (rough and frequently mistaken) sense of what condition your body is in. Fatigue is a warning system that convinces you to stop before you hurt yourself.

Drugs that shut down the body's self-defense mechanisms let you can easily perform great feats of strength, but you may tear your muscles apart in the process.

<comment><USER5> Wasn't there a cyclist who died on his bike because he had taken something which precisely turned off the brain's fatigue response?

My googling sadly turns up nothing but unrelated doping articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does this explain the feeling of vomiting when you have worked out past your body's capacity? Is that all in your head too?

<comment><USER7> A little side-note: Many people who try active dynamic meditation for the first time, i.e. deep, fast, chaotic breathing through your nose, feel an urge to vomit after just a few minutes. I've had it on a number of occasions. I know it's different from a runners urge to vomit, but ones mind/CNS certainly play a lot of tricks as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So does this apply to mental fatigue also?

<comment><USER9> If yes, what exactly would trick the brain into not feeling mental fatigue?

<comment><USER10> _what exactly would trick the brain into not feeling mental fatigue?_

Switching subject matters that you are working on is great for relieving mental fatigue. That was my study trick in college: whenever I found my mind wandering while doing homework for one subject, I would switch to another subject. I had read somewhere some research finding that mental fatigue is largely subject-specific, and that seems to be born out by my experience.

In the hacker context, if coding is going hard, switch to business promotion for a while, or design, or whatever other task you perform in your start-up. Advise your co-founder to switch whenever one task seems too fatiguing.</comment></comment></comment>


Ryzen System-on-Chip (SoC) - <AUTHOR> https://www.amd.com/en/products/embedded-ryzen-v1000-series <comment><USER2> Wish they could up their CPU & Thread count for Vega consumer solutions, and provide something like Intel with KVMGT. Would be awesome to run Linux with an open source VM for Windows/Mac with full GPU support.</comment>


Google Internet Traffic Is Briefly Misdirected Through Russia, China - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-internet-traffic-is-briefly-misdirected-through-russia-china-1542068392 <comment><USER2> Looks like a buying opportunity coming up on GOOGL soon. Seems like most investors think the world is ending and GOOGL, AMZN, NVDA, FB are going to 0 by week's end.</comment>


Ask HN: Work samples from recruiter's candidates - <AUTHOR>

So like lots of folks I get a crap ton of mail from recruiters, although since I have 'VP' in my title much of it is recruiters trying to 'sell me' on candidates.  This sets up an interesting dynamic, its a pain to try to figure out from the chopped up and 'anonymized' resume if the candidate is any good, and if you do ask them to send you the name its still a pain to figure out if they are worth talking to.
My new strategy is this, ask the recruiter to send the candidate programmer a programming task. Have them send me the results, an explanation of the results, and an analysis of the requirements. (fundamental skills that anyone who wants to get an onsite interview has to have).
So if you're an engineer and the recruiter asks if you'd be willing to do this exercise to see if the job is a good fit, are you ok with that? angry? curious? <comment><USER2> What worthwhile candidate would ever do this? Why would you create a recruiting process that selects for the most desperate, least informed candidates in the hottest seller's market for talent in the last 20 years?

I'm not "angry" about it, just bewildered.

(I'm also a hiring manager; we simply don't work with recruiters.)

<comment><AUTHOR> > What worthwhile candidate would ever do this?

One who was looking for a job but didn't know where to apply? I come across people all the time who are worthwhile candidates but the person who trying to get them placed is clueless. And I come across recruiters who are a waste of oxygen but you can't really know that unless you've got some way to measure their capabilities.

> (I'm also a hiring manager; we simply don't work with recruiters.)

Generally I don't either as there are enough people in my network that when I'm looking to fill a role I can find someone, however when you need to fill a role with a deadline and you don't have a ready source of candidates (this is not uncommon in the Bay Area) for places other than Google, Apple, and Facebook :-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't get a crap ton of recruiter mail. (Yay?) I'm in a good gig now, so I don't really respond to the ones that I _do_ get. Sometimes, if I feel that they're not too slimy, I'll respond by saying "I'm OK now, I'll keep you in mind down the road if I ever need anything," and file away their contact info in the event my current gig goes south. My life is busy enough that I'd probably be annoyed at the presumption I've got time to deal with a work sample test _on top of_ dealing with the spam in the first place. However...

I'm definitely one of those people described in XKCD's nerd sniping strip.[0] If the sample problem actually flicked that little nerve in my brain, you might get a response from me just because I couldn't help myself. But here's the kicker. You'd only get my solution _as long as I could email it directly to you instead of the recruiter_. At that point, even if I'm not interested in working for you _now_ the sample problem you wrote has sparked some interest. Now, I'm interested in striking up a relationship with that might not amount to much at the moment, but may prove fruitful in the future. If we've gotten this far, I'm not interested in dealing with the recruiter any more.

[0] [http://xkcd.com/356/](http://xkcd.com/356/)

</comment><comment><USER4> This task is beyond most recruiters' skill sets to do properly. Most recruiters are also paranoid about any level of direct interaction, since both candidate and interviewer have significant financial incentives to cut them out of the deal, so you'll have to deal with (and work around) that fear.

A five-minute programming exercise that you spend more than 5 minutes designing, that you grade yourself, will be about the most you can do before you start turning off qualified applicants, at least at this early stage. If I want to spend 3 hours on a programming challenge with no guarantee of payment, I can certainly come up with more enjoyable ways to do so where I don't get constant reminders that I'm taking too long.

The best time for the programming challenge comes after the initial "does this person look like they fit into our organization?" set of interviews. Those interviews not only screen out a large percentage of your pool, but also sells your organization to the applicant, incentivizing them to take longer to get the job.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are also the fairly thinly veiled 'hack a thon' type things where you offer a prize of a Macbook Air for best hack using technology X and as part of the signup you get both a number of people's names and a good sense of their coding ability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the first impression you want to make on your candidates? You're the busywork company?

These are the kind of candidates you want? The ones who are willing to have _their_ introduction to a future employer be an annotated answer to a "fundamental skills" problem? Instead of, say, a five-minute chat that touches on such issues as "who am I?" and "who are you?" and "what's the job, really, because the recruiter obviously doesn't know?" and "why might I be unusually happy and successful in this job, and also fun to work with, and therefore worth a lot of your company's money?"

</comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't. I get mail from recruiters every day so it's not feasible to take the time to solve even smallers puzzles. However, I could direct them to my public github work to prove my skills.

Also, I'm not sure all interviewers consider it fantastic if you ace the puzzle if everyone else who works there barely finished it. On the other hand, if I was _guaranteed_ to get an offer by completing the puzzle, it would change my mind. But most companies that wants programming tasks solved assign such a low value to it and values other factors much higher that it just isn't worth the time.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would think about it IF this was a current problem the company was having, and they want to see what potential solutions are out there. So it can't be an imaginary problem (ie typical interview questions)

But then you'll get into all sorts of legal issues (like can you actually use code candidates wrote, etc). So that makes it impractical. So it now enters the realm of boredom since it's an imaginary problem :)

</comment><comment><USER8> No. Recruiters seem to try to fit any candidate into roles they are not appropriate for.

If it was a programming challenge I'd rather be approached by the company doing the hiring.</comment>


HP to Keep PC Division   - <AUTHOR> http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/111027xa.html

<comment><USER2> With all the bad moves HP has made recently, this is a good one.

Although my testimony is likely not worth much, I feel it's important to convey why I think HP's PC division is worth keeping around.

My boss' HP desktop died, he brought it to me to see if I could fix it quickly, and I went through the steps on HP's website to "troubleshoot" it. I was pretty sure the power supply was dead, and I sent an email to support explaining all the steps I went through to determine that. There was an option on the page to list experience level, and I put it at the max.

The first response I got was that they would send a shipping box for it and that they would replace the PSU.

They 1) trusted their customer and 2) didn't back and forth, wasting their time and mine.

I got the box within a few days and returned the system to HP. It was back within 3 days (this is a week total from initial contact to returned system), and the hard drive wasn't even reformatted.

This is the kind of service that I am used to from Apple (fix it and forget it), and it renewed my hope in HP, but this was a little over a year ago, so who knows what's going on now.

<comment><USER3> While I have heard good things from a couple of people about HP's business support, my personal experiences with their consumer support division have been wanting.

My HP laptop has a locked BIOS that prevents you from replacing the wireless card. I sent them an email message describing the BIOS error message that was returned and asking for more information about what were valid wireless cards for the machine. I received a reply telling me to reinstall my wireless card drivers. Over the next few days, I tried to get someone who understood my issue, but was repeatedly told to reinstall drivers, to reseat the card, and a variety of other solutions that seemed to come from some wireless troubleshooting customer support script.

I called, and the person I talked to eventually told me to send the computer in, because "the depot would have a different unlocked BIOS that they could put on". When my computer arrived at the depot, I talked to:

\- a technician who was sympathetic but very confused about why phone support told me to send my computer to the depot,

\- two case managers who started out by telling me that they were "non- technical" who I had to explain what a BIOS was, and

\- a rude senior case manager who yelled at me for wasting everyone's time and told me "if you bought a car with a Sony stereo, you wouldn't expect a Panasonic stereo to work in it". When I told him that he was being rude and I wanted to provide feedback to someone about it, he told me that there was nobody else I could talk to, as his superiors would not want to hear from me.

After a day of not hearing anything from the depot about when my computer would be returned, I called a HP executive support number I found on Consumerist or some other forum. The woman I talked to was exceedingly polite, but admitted she was non-technical, but then told me that my issue was "it was because HP wanted it that way" and even though it is in a user-accessible location, trying to install a different wireless card would void my warranty "just like installing Linux."

A week or so later, HP released a BIOS update to include more wireless cards on the internal whitelist, in order to support the version of the laptop in the Small Business store (same components, starting price was $300 higher).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. What is going on there? At first I thought Apotheker was hired to complete some "unpopular" tasks, and then a new CEO could start over. But it seems like the board was completely asleep while Apotheker made his decisions. I am looking forward to some massive lawsuits brought against these people. Apotheker probably was the most clever guy in this, and knew that he could make a quick 20 million even though he would be fired. Would be interested in insights from HP employees.

<comment><USER5> I suddenly find myself wondering if someone wanted the stock price to crater, to make a takeover or mega-buy-in cheaper.

<comment><USER6> Interesting theory, and with the history of this HP board, this is actually a very minor possibility.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard_spying_scandal>

You've made me wonder if the quality of the algorithms used for trading make it near impossible for the SEC to track these sort of criminal activities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Understanding HP's dilemma is as simple as looking at the comps.

HP is trading at 6.5x P/E currently.

Yet HP's consulting business should be worth more separate (IBM at 14x, Accenture at 18x)

And HP's hardware business should be worth more separate (compare Toshiba at 12x, Apple at 15x, even Dell at 9x)

As a result I understand why they allowed Apotheker to do what he did.

Cut ONCE, bleed heavily and launch two strong, focused companies that aren't burdened by the distraction of the other and can unlock maximum shareholder value.

BUT wow, do they have a fricking communication challenge.

Every press release (even this one) is dry, complicated and nonsensical.

The current press release talks about a "data driven decision".

Why can't they just explain what they're doing and why?

Come on HP.

<comment><USER8> Splitting off HP's hardware business doesn't suddenly make it worth the same as Apple's

That's like claiming if it spun off it's discount coupon business it would be worth the same as groupon.

<comment><USER6> He did provide PE ratios for competitors as well, and HP is the largest PC maker. He isn't valuing them the same as Apple, just that the PE ratio should be similar.

<comment><USER9> The line of reasoning applied here escapes me. In what way are the hardware and consulting business lines distractions to one another? It's like saying a car company's manufacturing business is going to get distracted by the company racing team, because it's possible to draw up different P/E ratios for the two. This overlooks the fundamental and inextricably interlinked business relationships between the two. And it casts aside all kinds of follow-on benefits, such as market & mind share, the halo effect, cross-pollination of new business ideas and seeding of innovation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> First good decision they've made in a while. Too bad they are unlikely to reverse the WebOS decision.

I have to wonder how much this had to do with not finding anyone to buy it at a price they were willing to take.

</comment><comment><USER11> Will they keep WebOS?

<comment><USER12> WebOS has suffered from severe performance and stability problems for three years, with no solution in sight.

This was demonstrated both when the WebOS application layer received a 2X performance boost when ported to WebKit on iOS, and again when Android was ported to the TouchPad hardware and was found to be quite a lot faster than WebOS.

It's quite clear that it is a fundamentally flawed architecture without a future. It's too bad; there's some interesting stuff going on in the application layer, but the underlying OS is a complete turkey.

<comment><USER13> Agreed (as a former Pre user).

I think they should rip out whatever kernel they're using and replace it with BeOS, which has wonderful real-time and multitasking behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This decision is better than their CEO pick (meg whitman) but these big decisions affect each other... I don't see much future but decline for HP

<comment><USER15> Kinda makes me like Whitman more, though. Wish she'd been around before the WebOS disaster.

<comment><USER13> The only credit I give Whitman for this is that she realized that the markets (both PC customers and the stock market) had already spoken, and they did not like the spinoff plan. Analysts had already pointed out that existing synergies (the supply chain, etc.) would be lost. I think it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that the spinoff decision would be reversed, although I'll grant Whitman the benefit of the doubt and assume that she really did study the question deeply and with an open mind.

I doubt she would have reversed the WebOS decision even if she had had the chance. As much as we techies may bemoan it, the fact is that for HP to see any profit from the Palm acquisition, it would have had to suffer losses for several years and then try to recoup them in an extremely competitive environment (read: low margins). I think the real mistake there was when Hurd bought Palm in the first place, and I see no evidence that anyone in HP's upper management thinks otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Personally, this fiasco seemed to me to mirror Netflix's recent missteps, just with far less press.

<comment><USER17> _"You know what HP should do? They should acquire Netflix. Then a week later back away and say "Never mind." Then a month later go ahead and buy Netflix. Those two are made for each other."_

–John Gruber</comment></comment>