When Free Software Depends on Nonfree - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/when-free-depends-on-nonfree <comment><USER2> I am the founder of OpenERP / Odoo and I can't believe what I just read. Just wrote this mail to RMS, hope he will fix his post:

Although we do sell a service to help companies upgrade, there is also an open source tool by the Odoo Community Association to upgrade OpenERP: OpenUpgrade. [1] There is not a single dependency in OpenERP/Odoo against proprietary software or services. We have always fought about any kind of lock-in.

Can you fix your post? it's probably not the intention of gnu.org to make FUD against others open source project.

I guess you have been misinformed by Luis since he has done a lot of misinformation when he decided to fork to promote his project.

Having said that, you should have a look at what we do. We replace thousands of proprietary management software by Odoo, converting whole governments [2], SMEs and big companies as well as NGOs. (60% of the top 10 NGOs are run by Odoo: doctors without borders, red cross, ...)

[1] [https://doc.therp.nl/openupgrade/](https://doc.therp.nl/openupgrade/) [2] [https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/portugals- an...](https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/portugals-annual- school-teacher-allocation-handled-open-source-erp)

<comment><USER3> > an open source tool

I expect rms is gonna say something about being told about "open source", heh.

> There is not a single dependency in OpenERP/Odoo against proprietary > software or services.

So, do your servers just run OpenUpgrade? Are you basically just helping others with the overhead of running OpenUpgrade? Or do you have secret sauce that works stronger, faster, higher than OpenUpgrade?

<comment><USER4> RMS may think he is the definition of what is open source and what isn't, that doesn't mean he is or can't be wrong.

<comment><USER3> Open source is a synonym for free software coined in 1998 by Christine Petersen, promoted by Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens and funded by Tim O'Reilly as part of a memetic marketing campaign to make people stop thinking about software freedom:

[http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have- forgot...](http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgotten- about-open-source/)

For the most part, it worked. Almost nobody talks about free software, which is what open source was supposed to refer to.

<comment><USER5> > Open source is a synonym for free software

False, I suggest you read [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses- the-point.e...](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point.en.html)

<comment><USER3> It was an exacty synonym in 1998. There have been very minor deviations in very obscure licenses most people haven't heard of, so it's a minor quibble. The article you quote acknowledges twice,

        The two terms describe almost the same category of
        software, but they stand for views based on
        fundamentally different values.

and

        "Free software." "Open source." If it's the same
        software (or nearly so), does it matter which name you
        use?

OSI's intent was always to refer to the exact same thing as "free software", just use different language, and thus different arguments in favour of it.

<comment><USER6> > OSI's intent was always to refer to the exact same thing as "free software", > just use different language, and thus different arguments in favour of it.

If you use "different arguments" than freedom to argue about software freedom, then it's no longer the same movement. The free software movement has always been about ethics. The open source movement has no ethical backing, it values code quality over ethical treatment of users (which is why people talk about "open source DRM implementations" \-- since DRM is meant to subjugate users, it cannot be free software. But it can be "open source").

<comment><USER7> wow, I really do not want to quibble with you about something we agree on, so for the record, "hey everybody, I agree with cyphar!"

However: the GPL2 says that you can impose no restrictions on what what people can implement with free software so long as they it is only redistributed as free software, so it seems to me that while DRM'ed software is not free, DRM software itself could be free. Hey, if a DRM scheme could be designed to ensure software freedom, it might even be embraced; we already have GPL clickwrap license clicks which a narrow reading of the GPL might suggest you can't have (it's an "additional restriction" that the original software you licensed may not have had; for instance, if clickwraps are covered by law that the GPL is not covered by, you are forcing additional terms)

I know that the GPL3 had some fine tuning with regard to TiVoization and web servers, but I'm not aware that it would bar DRM software itself; but perhaps.

OK, I found it here for GPL3. You are partially correct that the GPL3 contains some anti-DRM measures but not in the sense you describe:

[http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide- gplv3.en.html](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.en.html) "It's always possible to use GPLed code to write software that implements DRM. However, if someone does that with code protected by GPLv3, section 3 says that the system will not count as an effective technological "protection" measure. This means that if you break the DRM, you'll be free to distribute your own software that does that, and you won't be threatened by the DMCA or similar laws."

I thought one aspect of the GPL (copyleft being a clever copyright hack) is that the license applies only to the code you are licensing, and not to other copyrighted works you may have authored, but in a certain sense it does. I'm sure RMS and Moglen and FSF have thought harder about this than I have, so it's quite likely I'm missing something; however they do have broader agendas as well.

<comment><USER6> If you don't have a system that takes away your freedom with tivoisation, then yes you can have free software that implements DRM. But there's no purpose to that software because it cannot be used to restrict your users (the whole point of DRM). In addition, the software is actually not effectively free because you cannot exercise any of the freedoms because you might get DMCA'd (especially freedoms #1 and #3 -- where modification involves removing the digital handcuffs).

So, _practically speaking_ , you can't have free DRM software. But you can have "open source" DRM software, because there's no part of the OSI that classifies software that acts like such a trap as being immoral. The GPLv3 essentially ensures that a user is not threatened by legal threats about breaking DRM in a piece of free software. It's the only software license that ensures this AFAIK, so I'm a bit sad more people don't use it for firmware and other places where defence against tivoisation matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _" upgrading to the next version of OpenERP required sending the database (full of patients' medical data) to OpenERP's server for reformatting."_

"Required" is a big overstatement. OpenERP (now Odoo) is FOSS, and uses a standard Postgres database. The thing is that Odoo didn't release the migration scripts when a new version was released, but you weren't _required_ to use their service; OpenUpgrade[1], a community project for implementing these scripts, is proof of that - we've successfully used it to migrate all our clients from version 6.1 to 7 to 8.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Odoo S.A., but I do work for a company that sells services based on the software.

[1] [https://doc.therp.nl/openupgrade/](https://doc.therp.nl/openupgrade/)

<comment><USER9> Why do Odoo S.A. not release the migration scripts? Is it the core of their business model that people do not have access to migration and are thus forced to buy from Odoo?

<comment><USER2> Two years ago, it used to be our business model: selling maintenance services to bigger companies (includes unlimited technical support for bugfixes and upgrades). We tried hard to grow on services rather than selling proprietary features. (I don't think another open source software vendor succeeded to push a business model relying on services that far)

We grew up to 300 employees with this model but reached the limit of the model. (most companies don't want to pay for bugfixes and prefer to buy upgrades later) Now, we rely on 3 different offers: [https://odoo.com/pricing](https://odoo.com/pricing)

Since we switched to the new open core model, everything is simpler. Revenues grew a lot (monthly MRR growth is 242% higher than before) and we can invest more in the development of the open source product. Relationship with partners is easier too.

Disclaimer: I am the founder/CEO of Odoo.

<comment><USER3> > We grew up to 300 employees with this model but reached the limit of the > model

Why do you need to grow more? 300 sounds like a very big company already.

<comment><USER2> Mostly, because we are too small for what we do: [https://www.odoo.com/page/all-apps](https://www.odoo.com/page/all-apps)

Our promise is to cover all enterprise needs in a single software, while being super easy to use. It's something nobody succeeded for now on. On the market, you have two types of players: ERP (SAP, Oracle, MS. Dynamics) who deliver a huge business benefit but a poor usability (expensive and inefficient) and one-app vendors (trello, slack, mailchimp) who have a great usability but a low business value. The first category has a huge revenue per customer, and the second category can attract a lot of customers.

We think we can crack that, and offer the best of the two worlds: all business needs, fully integrated, with a top notch usability. We are in a very good position to do it, and be the first to do it. [1] (and every competitors try to do that but they are far from succeeding)

To succeed, we need serious investments in the product and the service offer. We don't need to be very big (e.g. 10.000 people), but 300 is too small for what we do.

tl;dr we want to fix a huge problem and to do it, we need resources.

[1] [https://odoocdn.com/openerp_website/static/src/img/2016/home...](https://odoocdn.com/openerp_website/static/src/img/2016/home/hp_graph_04.svg)

<comment><USER3> Quite the marketing pitch. I'm sorry that you had to sell some proprietary software to do it.

<comment><USER3> Just wanted to add, I think it is regretful that it was not possible for Odoo to grow a business on free software. I hope to be able to best Odoo at this some day, in a different domain.

At the same time, I am unapologetic for classifying pinky07's language as marketing. Evidence of marketing-speak is in "open source" instead of "free software", "open core" instead of "proprietary extensions" and other things such as "top notch usability", "best of both worlds".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I first saw SaaSS I figured RMS had his own acronym for SaaS, and sure enough further in the article he spells it out - Service as a Software Substitute.

I like it!

<comment><USER11> Isn't 'substitute' implicit? I don't see the point.

<comment><USER10> It is implicit, the point is this makes it _explicit_.

<comment><USER11> But why? It's obvious. Making it explicit has no benefit, and makes you waste a bunch of words explaining yourself.

<comment><USER12> Making it explicit has the benefit of making people actually think about who has control over the computers they are using.

<comment><USER11> Saying it's a service already makes the control explicit. Adding the word 'substitute' does nothing on that front.

<comment><USER12> It seems to me that people rarely think about the software behind a service, this is a mechanism to bring that secret software into people's minds and discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I recently came across this situation when attempting to hack on Keepass2Android [0], a Keepass client for Android. It was written with Xamarin, which was a closed-source framework at the time. Having to download and use software with a 30-day trial to hack on an open-source project seemed wrong.

Now that the Xamarin SDK is open-source[1] it looks like it's moving towards being freed, which I think is a good thing. That said, I'm not sure the IDE is available on Linux yet, so I guess it's still relying on non-free software.

[0] [https://keepass2android.codeplex.com/](https://keepass2android.codeplex.com/)

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/03/xamari...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/03/xamarin-now-free-in-visual-studio/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Leaving aside the factually inaccuracy in the example...

If you want to stick with 'N', you can. And you can fix it to suit your needs. If you want to convert your database, there are no barriers in your way -- and you can distribute your results. Or maybe you want N+1 to work with the old format -- either way, nothing's stopping you.

If you're not categorically against proprietary software, the converter may be a really good purchase; better than any of the above options. But you're not 'trapped' into buying it -- no more so than, say, GIMP 'traps' you into using photoshop by lacking non-destructive editing features.

The fact that the situation would be kind of lame is because for almost everyone, in practice, It's vastly more useful for your software to be actively maintained than it is for it to be 'open' \-- and the developers abandon 'n' when they move on.

</comment><comment><USER15> Free Software exists because employees of non-free software pay thevwages that free software can be written in the free time

<comment><USER8> Hi! I'm a developer working for a company (which happens to work with the software mentioned in the article) and which pays me to write AGPL/LGPL licensed code. And I can assure you there are many similar companies around the world, usually not behemoths like MS or Google, yet writing business critical software for very large companies, often based on the cooperation that only FOSS allows.

<comment><USER16> Where does is the money coming from? I'd like to know what business model the company you work for employs.

<comment><USER8> A company needs some kind of software that doesn't exist (or which is too expensive when they only need a subset), so we build it for them on top of Odoo. We also offer hosting, training, support, data migration, etc.

Note: while our software is FOSS, we don't publicly publish all of it, though our clients are free to do so.

<comment><USER17> "Note: while our software is FOSS, we don't publicly publish all of it, though our clients are free to do so."

That sounds like what I used to do with my trade secrets that I semi-publish. Enough detail out that hardworking specialists can build it. I'm curious what you mean by it though. Ive considered a model that sounds similar as I figured companies would be incentivized to keep paying anyway so updates/support have steady quality. Was worried about cloning, though.

<comment><USER8> Odoo is essentially a generic platform for which one writes modules, either self-contained or as extensions of others. When a client comes to us with a need, we implement a solution using a mix of new modules and existing ones. When it's finished, the client gets a FOSS license to all the modules, so they aren't locked-in to us. What we don't do is necessarily publish all modules on Github or similar; we make that decision case by case.

<comment><USER17> Interesting. Reminds me of a discussion here where so many FOSS projects were barely scraping by, overloaded with reauests from non-paying users. A few showed up to say simply: "tell them to pay you go build or support the feature if they _really_ want it." Seems your company is playing it wiser than most. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Okay, so he mentions OpenERP, but I think we all know he means Github, right?

<comment><USER11> Isn't Github a standard closed-source service? I don't see how the article would apply. It's close to the opposite; migration from git host to git host is easy and open-source.

<comment><USER18> Not when all your code, bug reports, wiki, etc. etc. etc are on a single platform, as a service.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not nearly as fanatic about this as Stallman and I'm fine using GitHub for everything, but it is a non-free dependency for every single project hosted on it.

<comment><USER11> That's still just a simple proprietary service. There's no connection to what the article focuses on. Part you can't migrate, and the part that does migrate does so with open-source tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article made me change my[0] business' choice from Odoo to Tryton. Thanks to RMS for pointing me/us to this better option.

[http://medicalcannab.is](http://medicalcannab.is)

<comment><USER8> Your site's tirade against "broken encryption" is weird. You do know that no major desktop browser uses OpenSSL, right?

<comment><USER20> But most HTTP servers do use OpenSSL, so the tirade is not wrong.

<comment><USER8> But that's up to them, to choose a server which doesn't. Whereas currently, people are being redirected to the safe site from a completely unprotected landing page, so they can get MITM'ed and sent to a honeypot instead.

<comment><USER19> please let me know how someone can be MITM'ed when connecting to medicalcannab.is over Tor.

When you connect to the domain with torbrowser, the server detects your IP, then redirects to the appropriate .onion site if coming from an exit node. In order to be MITM'd, you'd have to either be using a Tor exit node that was compromised, or my server would have to be completely compromised beforehand.

neither of these seem like likely scenarios, so I'm curious as to what you see that I don't.

<comment><USER21> You should assume Tor exit nodes to be hostile. There have been exit nodes that injected malicious code into binaries downloaded through them, and running an exit node is an obvious choice for an attacker, hoping for people running unencrypted traffic through them.

<comment><USER19> Fair enough. someone could mirror my site's content, and we wouldn't have the ability to check where it's going.

However, that's not too much an issue. we don't offer binaries (outside of two pdf files that may have a jpg embedded), and nothing on our Onion site requires a download. The most they could really do is make someone give bitcoins to the wrong wallet. That's a pretty easy customer service issue to solve ("We are not responsible for bitcoins sent to wrong wallets").

I guess I'm not seeing the vulnerability here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Proprietary software companies trap you, so you utilize GPL to trap more lazy programmers? Selfish people are always selfish, lazy ones are still lazy. I don't like this model.

<comment><USER23> While I'm not a fan of the GPL and its viral nature either either, the kind of trapping you're referring to is not at all the same thing.

If GCC was the only C compiler in the world, my Apache licensed (or hell, public domain) C project wouldn't really be "trapped" by GCC being GPL licensed, because that license allows me and my users unfettered access to GCC whenever we want, so there's no one who can't access compilation of my project, now or ever.

<comment><USER22> Your example does not solve this problem: You may rely on some excellent GPLed softwares, but you want to distribute it with some close-source softwares. Then you might become the lazy programmers. I can see how GPL fans hate close- source software, but they can also choose another license, so programmers could share their works easier, also get more ideas from non-GPL fans.

ADDED: This same problem originates from close-source software, so GPL is another extreme I don't like. People from both sides still continue to develop great softwares, but what about MIT/Apache/BSD/...-licensed softwares? I choose the golden mean. I don't mean GPL is a bad thing, I just don't want to blindly support it. Times are changing.

<comment><USER6> The world of free software would not exist today without the GPL. If everyone had used lax licenses, companies would've made proprietary forks and driven free software out of existence.

Also, choosing MIT because "it's the middle ground" is a middle of the road fallacy. The GPL ensures users will always have freedom when using the software. Lax licenses provides no such assurance and proprietary software obviously doesn't provide anyone freedom.

The purpose of the GPL is to halt malicious companies from using free software to mistreat users. The middle ground isn't better in this case.

<comment><USER22> Even if the source is guarded by GPL, the idea behind the source can be copied and represented in another form. Then the freedom defined by GPL is obscure to me. MIT licenses saves me from time-consuming copycat situations. Yeah, I am lazy, but I'm more willing to share (hard-working now) if you don't push me to extreme.

I know the pattent laws in the past were somewhat ridiculous compared to what they are today (though still ridiculous sometimes), so GPL was/is really great then, just like the Creative Commons licenses.

<comment><USER23> Free software licenses have to do with copyright law, not patent law. And the only major change in copyright law in the last few decades was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which isn't super relevant to the issues in free software.

<comment><USER22> Oh yes, thank you. I always relate free software to patent trolls, because software patents have huge impact on software development. When I relate GPL to Creative Commons, I mean they are good role models for defending legal rights and interests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As usual, RMS is content to sit back and complain rather than take action to try to effect positive change.

Has he written any code in the last decade, or is he still going around giving the same tired speeches over and over?

Do his anachronistic computing habits contribute to his continued irrelevance?

Ubiquitous broadband connectivity has changed the world and it seems RMS is still living in the past. I hate SaaS models just as much as the next user, but I am also a realist. There's just no reason for corporations to take RMS's "ethical" route when the profits lie squarely in the other direction. Lofty academic ideals don't buy your family groceries.

<comment><USER23> > There's just no reason for corporations to take RMS's "ethical" route when > the profits lie squarely in the other direction. Lofty academic ideals don't > buy your family groceries.

I agree he's a bit too extreme; I recall a video where he told a proprietary software developer that between continuing to do his job and letting his children starve, he should do the latter.

But there does have to be _someone_ advocating for this, because free software is in general a social good and is unarguably indispensable in our industry. It's not impossible to make money off it either; look at Red Hat and Canonical, for example. But I'd never argue that all software has to be free or that everyone should do it.

<comment><USER8> _I agree he 's a bit too extreme; I recall a video where he told a proprietary software developer that between continuing to do his job and letting his children starve, he should do the latter._

I'd like to know the context, because that sounds like a "ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer" situation. It's a common trolling/derailing technique: you make a general point, and people reply with these very specific and extreme situations that "disprove" it.

 _I 'd never argue that all software has to be free or that everyone should do it._

Why not?

<comment><USER11> >I'd like to know the context, because that sounds like a "ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer" situation.

Agreed. The situation where you have to do an ultra-specific job or starve from lack of employment doesn't really exist. Jobs manage to appear and disappear over time without a death toll of millions.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon's Invasion of the CIA Is a Seismic Shift in Cloud Computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/06/amazon-cia/ <comment><USER2> Except for marketing terminology, I don't think the shift is that seismic.

While one part of cloud computing is having on demand infrastructure, the other part is software: being able to utilize existing infrastructure in the most efficient way possible. To most startups, the hardware part is where the value is. For companies that can already afford a lot of hardware, the value is in the software.

To that end, Amazon has very good software which can quickly let a company change the dynamics of its infrastructure. Before, Amazon was trying to sell the whole package. Now they are willing to just sell the software it seems.</comment>


Chomsky on Google's contribution to 'fake news' - <AUTHOR> Excerpt from video for those who, like myself, prefer to read:
Google talk interviewer: "How do you think Google can and should handle the fake news problem? We have a big hammer. We're looking for nails."
Chomsky: "Well, by not contributing to it."
"See, advertising's a very interesting phenomenon. Any of you who've taken an economics course know that... the marvels of the market that we're supposed to admire and worship are because the market is based on informed consumers making rational choices... Turn on your television set. Do you see efforts by corporations to create... informed consumers making rational choices? Is that what you see when you see an ad for cars? If we had a market system... when General Motors is advertising a car, what you would see is a list of the characteristics of the car, along with a report by Consumer Reports saying what's wrong with it and so on... But you don't see that.
"Huge amounts of capital are expended every year to try to undermine markets... by creating uninformed consumers making irrational choices; and driving them to consumerism...
"That's what ought to be taught in economics courses: massive efforts by the business community to undermine markets."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C-zWrhFqpM
The Canary reported this though ironically with so many ads you can hardly see the article https://www.thecanary.co/2017/07/04/noam-chomsky-flips-the-debate-about-fake-news-on-its-head-in-a-room-full-of-google-staff-video/ <comment><USER2> What a bunch of nonsense on so many levels.

What does advertising have to do with fake news? What does advertisement having to do with a "informed consumer"? Yes, GM does not run ads listing all the technical specs of their cars, because that is not what consumers are interested in. For most people, buying a car has largely something you do with personal taste, gut feeling and overall appeal. Technical specs of cars in a given price range are more or less all the same across all brands, so the only way to differentiate is to appeal to the consumers gut feelings.

<comment><USER3> > What does advertising have to do with fake news?

You need surface to display ads. Fake news is this surface and Google/Facebook take a big cut of their revenue from it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an interesting secondary phenomenon you point out, that could be helped (not entirely fixed) by disabling google ads on known fake news sites.

Still, the primary issue is that the ads themselves are biased and google makes its living from them. Until Google diversifies more from ad revenue it will always have conflicted motives when it comes to removing bias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >by creating uninformed consumers making irrational choices; and driving them to consumerism...

I am not sure. Isn't this a well known and intended effect of the Ads and PR stunts?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes of course. What are you not sure about?</comment></comment>


RSSCloud Vs. PubSubHubbub: Why The Fat Pings Win - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/09/rsscloud-vs-pubsubhubbub-why-the-fat-pings-win/

<comment><USER2> The submitted link forgot the 'l' in cloud. Here's the actual link: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/09/rsscloud-vs- pubsubhubbu...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/09/rsscloud-vs-pubsubhubbub- why-the-fat-pings-win/)

The article itself is worth a read. The only thing that bugs me is that the author, and a lot of other people covering this story, don't mention that RSSCloud doesn't support Atom at all (or more accurately it does in theory but not in practice). I think that's pretty significant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Crap - don't know how that happened. I've reposted the article with the correct link if you care to thumb that one up instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The article mentions that the explicit unsubscription of PuSH is an advantage over the implicit approach of rssCloud. With garbage collection being a major problem of publish/subscribe in distributed systems, the author needs to mention how PuSH deals with it in order to assert superiority. Without acknowledging it, the credibility of the article is limited

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an important point. You can see how PuSH handles it here: [http://pubsubhubbub.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pubsubhubbub- co...](http://pubsubhubbub.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pubsubhubbub- core-0.2.html#autorefresh)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The coining word PuSH of PubSubHubBub is just ... marvelous

</comment><comment><USER4> That Bub part of PuSH seems as random bits. But I have got it used in:

      * PubBub for a publishing client;
      * HubBub for a hub; and
      * SubBub for a subscribing client.

</comment><comment><USER5> I should think the reduced latency from receiving the data within the update would be a greater benefit of a fat ping.</comment>


How to ask for a raise (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jocelyngoldfein/how-to-ask-for-a-raise-da34ee4ecd5a

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the only article I know that addresses the biggest stress in negotiation:

"Too much overt concern with compensation also implies that you don't trust the system to reward your merit — which is tantamount to saying that you don't trust your boss. And if I'm your boss and you signal to me that you don't trust me, then yes, I start to wonder if I can trust you."</comment>


Sim-Template – A Clojure Template for Simulation Testing - <AUTHOR> http://homegrown.io/articles/introducing-sim-template/

<comment><USER2> Simulation testing using simulant is very intriguing to me. But up till now its been pretty impenetrable. Glad to see somebody picking up the education baton.</comment>


Antennapod: Easy-to-use, flexible and open-source podcast manager for Android - <AUTHOR> https://antennapod.org/ <comment><USER2> I am using AntennaPod for years now and absolutely love it. Not the best UI, but all the functionality I could wish for.

It's one of three "hard to switch to iOS" apps:

1\. Newpipe <3 2\. AntennaPod 3\. Slide for Reddit

</comment><comment><USER3> I looked at this in the past and found it to work well but is (was?) missing a couple of key (to me) features:

* Customizable playback speed (at least in the past, there were no FOSS libraries for this) * Per-podcast volume controls. One podcast I listen to (Data Skeptic) needs a volume boost

<comment><USER3> Just downloaded it and it does in fact have variable playback speed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Still, sync is unreliable and playback is glitchy. Do not recommend unless you are a FOSS or decentralization zealot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sync may not be working well if your phone is on power saving mode, so that's worth double-checking, but I've never had any issues with playback.

Have you considered filing a bug report?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Smart Playlists for Spotify - <AUTHOR> https://smartplaylistsforspotify.co.uk/ <comment><AUTHOR> Coming from iTunes I really liked the Smart Playlist feature so I created an app to create and push them to Spotify. It currently only uses Songs you've saved to "Your Music" but I plan to expand it to use other sources such as specific playlists.

Any feedback most welcome!

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea! What you also could do to expand the smart playlist feature even more is if you give in an artist name, and only put in related artists' songs. The current features you have implemented are only based on search queries if I'm not mistaken.

Also the playlist scrobller you mentioned would be a great option. What about groups of playlists? What about playlists you follow?

One big plus is the era's playlists already at hand! I think it's a neat thing to have!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, related artists' songs would be interesting - <USER2> be possibly using their API. Yes currently it's just search queries. Expanding the songs to source from e.g. multiple playlists is something I'll be working on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is a really cool Spotify playlist builder here: [http://smarterplaylists.playlistmachinery.com/index.html](http://smarterplaylists.playlistmachinery.com/index.html)

And it's actively maintained by some guy on Twitter.</comment>


ICE Just Gave America's Hottest iPhone Hackers Their Biggest Payday Yet - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/09/18/ice-just-gave-americas-hottest-iphone-hackers-their-biggest-payday-yet/#4f5bdee64d02 <comment><USER2> > The startup, cofounded by an ex-Apple security staffer [...]

I'm not even sure who to be the most mad at here. What a sell-out...</comment>


The decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes at the top - <AUTHOR> http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2015/03/jaumotte.htm <comment><USER2> The wealthy in the US have successfully lobbied for "Right to Work" legislation and have managed to pump out anti-union propaganda that is being parroted in this thread for decades. This costs money and effort. Why do you suppose they have done this? Out of the goodness of their hearts? Because it benefits the individual worker? Or because it allows them to keep a larger share of the output of the economy?

Income inequality is the highest it has been since the beginning of the depression. Real wages have been flat for decades despite large gains in GDP. Is that a sign that workers have excellent leverage in negotiations?

Programmers are in a privileged position right now because there aren't enough of us to fill demand. That will not be the case forever. Look at what has happened with law - people saw the money to be made, flooded the market, and now a law degree doesn't really mean shit unless you're from a Big N school. The majority of programming work is not innovative or challenging - look at how many "I taught myself Javascript Framework 38! Look what I built" posts that flood this site. What do you think the long-term outlook for programming work is going to be like? Are you going to be the special snowflake ninja 10X rockstar in 10 years? Are you going to be happy to have no collective bargaining then?

<comment><USER3> Target shows its employees anti-union propaganda videos. It's interesting how it presents a union as a big bad "other" that would necessarily work against its members' interests, and to see many of the familiar arguments cast in a ham-handed way towards retail employees. Do we also believe in the 10x retail employee, or do we agree that retail is a sector where employees have a lot to gain from collective bargaining?

[http://gawker.com/5811371/heres-the-cheesy-anti-union- video-...](http://gawker.com/5811371/heres-the-cheesy-anti-union-video-all- target-employees-must-endure)

[http://gawker.com/behold-targets-brand-new-cheesy-anti- union...](http://gawker.com/behold-targets-brand-new-cheesy-anti-union- video-1547193676)

<comment><USER4> When i was putting myself thru college there was a time I worked at a job which required I join a union. I detested them very much. They were a bunch of fat cats who did nothing for the regular workers and much less for a part- timer[1]. all they cared was the organization itself. the workers were there as a necessary ingredient to keep the organization alive --rather then actually do anything for the workers.

So, to this day, I loathe unions, in practice, perhaps not in theory, but in practice I do. I also did not enjoy the 'machismo' that happens in unions.

[1] I sprained my ankle at work while doing work and yet they did nothing for me. I had to pay the xray bills myself (I don't recall how much it was, but they did nothing to make things better for me). So I have little sympathy for the institution.

<comment><USER5> Ooh, anecdotes. I worked for an abusive employer once (American corporation, funnily enough), and I joined a union, and it protected me from further abuse because my managers were scared of the union, because it was an activist union.

So yeah. My union good, your union bad, let's not make blanket assertions based on one experience...

<comment><USER6> And you believe that using the union as an enforcer or as a protection racket was a good experience for you?

Just so I have this straight, you thought that a good outcome was to have your (clearly abusive) manager(s) silently seething with rage against you, but impotent to act on it, because of the union protection?

This was a good outcome to you, over, say leaving that hostile environment as fast as humanly possible, or, I don't know, turning in the manager(s) to higher-ups (or to state agencies if the abuse warranted)?

<comment><USER7> Whistleblowing on mgmt is a great way to get blacklisted, and one person's ability to quit their job does not address the root cause of the abuse.

Why should the burden be on the worker to find a new job anyway? If the abuse is coming from mgmt, it should be their responsibility to make it right.

<comment><USER6> I agree, but how might you imagine that management would find this out if the person is unwilling to speak up, instead relying on the silent fear of the union to keep it at bay?

Do you think that leaving the abusive manager in place, but impotent, is a better outcome? For whom? The company, the employees?

<comment><USER5> > How might you imagine that management would find this out if the person is > unwilling to speak up

The entire management structure in place was the problem. Are you seriously suggesting I should have attempted to contact my manager's boss in the USA, instead of joining a union?

<comment><USER6> Yes, I am not only suggesting that, I am baffled as to how you think not making noise about it and letting it lay in some Mexican standoff with the union was better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Before anyone brings up the "I want to be paid for my skill, not my seniority," I'd just like to point out:

If you formed a union at your workplace, _you and your colleagues_ would get to decide the rules like that.

And a few other things I think are worth saying...

A union is a legal framework for the employees (who have no ownership stake in the business, despite putting their time and energy into the business day after day) to recast some of the power imbalance in their favor; since many of us here are employees, and not owners, we _should_ be looking out for our interests.

Aaand...a union isn't a "let's all be lazy and wreck businesses" framework; that's a bit of nonsensical propaganda that we've all swum in for the last few decades.

<comment><USER9> "you and your colleagues would get to decide the rules like that"

False. People who worked there before you decided the rules. Once you have an entrenched senior workforce the probability that they will vote themselves less power or money is remarkably low. It's basically the same problem as NIMBYism.

<comment><USER10> In a blog entry by Micheal O. Church [1], he argues that in the companies that most need unionization, the downsides like wage normalization and seniority rules _are already in place_ , and adding unionization to the mix almost _can 't_ make things worse.

He also provides examples of unionized industries where "star performers" have no wage limits -- that the only limit is in the minimum pay for a position. And he points out the many ways a union could support programmer rights (for instance, the right to own personal projects), and kill damaging practices like stack ranking.

We need _something._ That much is clear. Whether it's a professional guild or a union, I'm not sure. But the status quo is awful for most of us. [2]

[1] [https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/it-might- be-...](https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/it-might-be-time-for- software-engineers-especially-in-silicon-valley-to-unionize/)

[2] I'm actually one of the "1%" who is quite well compensated, but I think more of us should be compensated based on our abilities. And I _do_ want to get rid of the "we own your free time projects" rules everywhere; I consider those to be morally reprehensible.

Edit: Added "unionized" to the second paragraph to make it clear what I meant.

<comment><USER11> _But the status quo is awful for most of us._

No offense, but I think that statement is ridiculous. You admit you're in the top 1% of income earners in the US and you choose to use the word "awful" for your predicament?

<comment><USER12> Just because he's rich doesn't mean he can't sympathise with or understand the plight of the middle class, just like most people understand and sympathize with the plight of the poor.

<comment><USER11> Unless I'm reading the post wrong, he's saying it's "awful for us". That would include him, someone in the 1%.

My point is, the "plight of programmers" comes nowhere close to "awful" when you actually look at what some workers have to put up with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There seem to be a lot of posts that state, in one form or another, that unions are imperfect. Unions, it seems, are flawed and can indeed at times, or indeed regularly, act in the interests of senior officials rather than those of their members. Hello! They are organizations. They are staffed by human beings. They are not going to be perfect. They will do dumb things. Some may be outright corrupt. This however is not the point. The issue is not whether they live up to their ideals any more than whether any other organization does so. The point is whether their basic mission is such that they add value to the life of the average working stiff. On this last point the evidence is fairly clear. For all their hideous imperfections, most people are better off with some kind of umbrella organization acting more or less in their interests. Do you really imagine that the 'fat cats' think that their managers optimize their earnings as they would like? Do you think that they imagine that the members of congress they pay off do as good a job as they would like tweaking the laws to their liking? Of course not. They are pissed. They don't think they get value for money. They dis this lobbyist and scream at that editor and hold back funding from that congressman. Life isn't perfect. Why should unions be any different?

</comment><comment><USER14> I work for a large private sector union. Unions are not perfect, nothing is, but they are also completely democratic institutions. But, the decline in union membership does not tell the whole story about the decline of wages in America.

I believe the decline in wages and union membership reflects a shift in how people value themselves as human beings, and their relationship to their fellow man.

The biggest obstacle to increasing wages to more equitable levels comes from the mentality: "At least I have a job", "I will be rich someday", "I can make it on my own", "I'm only going to work here for a year". These thoughts are what has allowed wages to be pushed to their lowest levels in recent history without any push-back from the work force.

Unions at their core are nothing more than a group of workers who get together to negotiate a contract and are willing to take action to force the employer to sit down and negotiate. This used to be understood, but at some point unions became viewed as some sort of "servicing" entity that drew its powers from a mysterious legal paper. Members forgot that the union was THEM.

Thankfully, the labor movement is starting reverse course from decades of this mentality.

The truth is that, the only power which workers (unionized or not) have is to withhold labor in a coordinated manner. Contracts are meaningless without the power of a strike. Without workers being willing to all withhold labor together, union or not, wages will continue to decline until a moral crisis is reached.

Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble, but "unions" are just groups of workers who have a 501(c)(5) paper with IRS that allows them pool money together to organize.

<comment><USER15> _I believe the decline in wages and union membership reflects a shift in how people value themselves as human beings, and their relationship to their fellow man._

From the data I am looking at, wages started to stagnate (I see no clear decline trend) around the year 1965, which roughly coincides with when women started to enter the workforce in a meaningful way. Could it be simply that the near-doubling of the labour pool pushed the supply beyond the demand, thus depressing prices and forcing people to take what they can get? More recently, we might say robots have helped increase the supply even further.

Like you recognized later on in your post, the power of the union comes from artificially restricting the supply of workers to make supply and demand work in their favour, so does it not stand to reason that attitude shift you have observed is a result of the same market economics, not the other way around?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Right to work and its ilk have a very expressed intention of neutering unionization efforts.

Keep in mind, that with a proper front for labor to negotiate with firms, compensation is kept at a fair market level.

We haven't seen compensation increases in most occupations in 30 years.

You, as a worker, are owed a much larger compensation that should be what the market would bear if you were able to negotiate on a much fairer plane with your employer.

As IT workers, we are a huge revenue drain compared to other workers on the books, despite any claims to how much 'worth' we might bring to a company. Ideally, for them, those wages will go down. The industry has shown time and again that it will defy the law to keep our pay low and below its true market value.

<comment><USER9> Why is collective negotiation fair but non-collective unfair? That feels like a faulty premise.

<comment><USER16> You're missing the point. When you are an individual negotiating with a well- lawyered, well-moneyed organization who holds power (your ability to make a living) over you, that is not a negotiation. It is reminiscent of Hobson's choice.

A negotiation happens when both sides have a fairer footing in terms of what they have to offer and lose.

When a union goes to negotiate with a corporation, their relationship is on an equal footing. This allows for better negotiations in terms of compensation, working conditions, benefits and what not.

It is the check and balance that the inequal relationship between a sole worker and a corporation needs.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps we're considering different scenarios. Hobson's choice may possibly apply to unskilled or low skilled jobs. So anything that pays less than $50,000/year in the US.

Above $50k individuals absolutely have the ability to negotiate. And to do so strongly from a position of power. Good help is hard to find. When you're in the 6 figure range negotiating with huge corporations is the best. Small shops are tight on cash. There's not a lot of wiggle room. For huge corporations there's a lot of room to negotiate. Salary, bonuses, paid time off, and more. It's not crazy to negotiate 50% more compensation than their median offer for a given position.

<comment><USER17> Doesn't scandals such as the Non-poaching case between Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, etc. reveal that even high-skilled workers aren't immune to the tricks of corporate management?

<comment><USER18> Well, the point about that scandal was that what Apple, Google and others were doing was illegal.

<comment><USER19> But since you can't jail a corporation, all it boils down for Apple, Google and others is a simple financial cost/benefit calculation. And I'm not sure if the class action lawsuit tipped the scale towards not doing such things yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think unionizing is actually aiming way too low for many workers. Even lower-skill ones.

As an example, people have bandied about ideas about whether Uber drivers should unionize. But Uber drivers _already own the means of production_. So if you could effectively organize them, don't bother with a union, just create a worker-owned cooperate that competes directly with Uber. Get 100,000 drivers to chip in $10 a month and you can fund a really nice app plus the necessary lawyers.

The same pattern reoccurs in many parts of the modern economy. Many businesses are so capital-efficient that they only exist because they're good at coordinating workers -- not because they monopolize the working capital. So if you can organize workers, skip the union and go directly to worker ownership.

<comment><USER17> This is a really great idea, and brings something that's ironically been absent in this entire conversation: innovation. Why not "disrupt" the state of labor? So many startups are already involved in the art of social engineering and tweaking, why not create a modern equivalent to unions that could empower workers in a different way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm guessing my opinion won't be popular here, but I don't see anyone saying anything similar, so I'm going to speak up.

There was once a time where unions were necessary. Personally, I think that time is long past.

Now, I think unions breed mediocrity, and set up situations where you have folks with an attitude of entitlement striking when they don't get every last bit of their way. Walking around with picket signs like as if they are owed everything.

Time to join the real world, with the rest of us. You don't always get what you want.

We had gas prices go way down in the last couple months, then they went all the way back up. I had heard it attributed to refinery workers striking, because some had been laid off. I don't know if that is true, or not, but if it is... it only proves my point.

<comment><USER22> I think it's time for you to join the real world. Union workers are not entitled. You are coming from a place of entitlement if you think that life is that good for most workers. Union workers are trying to regain some semblance of power in an exploitative relationship. Many employers (all of the most efficient and therefore successful ones) are abusive. Even the hyper-entitled, and therefore hyper-libertarian software engineers are abused by their employers - employers break the law and collude to depress wages, if you want a real example from the news. Employees as a whole in this country are currently getting screwed -- because of a very well funded and long-running campaign by business interests to destroy unions through criminal action, regulatory capture, propaganda, etc. Incidentally it's much easier to convince software engineers to turn on each other and work against their best interests, all it takes is a quick ego stroke -- claim 'no, we're only going to screw over the \bad\ engineers, and you're not one of them... are you?' Fortunately some of them trying to stop it. Complaining about gas prices changing because of those pesky entitled blue collar upstarts acting above their class and demanding to be treated like human beings doesn't particularly endear people to your cause either. There are arguments to be made against unions; none of these are them.

<comment><USER21> Before I comment, I want to clarify. I'm _not_ trying to come across like a jerk.

I certainly think there are things about the current system of employment that can improve. But you can negotiate what you get.

I stand by the statement that you don't always get what you want, but you can compromise with an employer and meet in the middle. Digging your heels in (like unions often do) isn't very productive.

If you don't like the terms, you can look for employment elsewhere, right?

One other thing to consider... remove the gatekeeper/middleman. By that, I mean work for yourself. It's not easy, but you have more flexibility to charge what you want, and go after the things that are important to you, in your work.

In addition to working for yourself, I'd like to add that having multiple streams of income, even small, can give you a greater degree of freedom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When a union is used to defend rights, it is good. When a union is used for exploitation, it is bad.

The problem is when unions grow too large, and become politically lucrative feeding grounds. The government hands out certain contracts to certain unions to gain their votes (and in some cases, their returned financial support), while squashing "fair competition" (not everyone is, or cares to be, unionized, especially when the disagree with the principles and practices of some unions).

<comment><USER24> Sounds like a problem with contract selection, honestly. Maybe use an independent [agnostic] party to select vendors for major government contracts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Although the study (or summary) heavily implies that the decline in unionizing causes greater income inequality, the standard correlation-is-not-causation caveat still applies.

In particular, there's a plausible argument that greater automation is a confounding variable, insofar that (a) easy-to-automate jobs tend to be more unionized than hard-to-automate jobs and (b) automation leads to outsized rewards for relatively small groups of people (investors, owners, inventors, etc.)

That's not to say unions _don 't_ matter, but I'm curious if there's any research that attempts to distinguish between unionization and new technological developments.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's so strange to notice that we live in a democratic society but work in authoritarian organizations (for employees at least). By getting rid of unions, we made it clear as to who owns the companies and who have rights within the company. Having some say in the direction that the company is moving towards seems like a reasonable thing to ask for.

<comment><USER27> This is especially more funny when you consider corporate influence in politics, along with the influence of money. Corporations and the rich have a disproportionate influence yet it would be audacious to ever propose workers having a vote in these matters.

Owners of corporations are of course delighted when employees are fractured, unable to coalesce to wage battles for greater equality and say in decision- making and sharing profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Unions do not negotiate the best deal for the employees, they negotiate the best deal for the union.

One of the terms unions love to have is a requirement that all employees be members of the union.

When you have to pay the union in order to keep your job, the union becomes a tax on your income... and the union has no incentive to treate you right-- as what are you going to do? Quit and go work for another company? That's your only option.

That modern unions attempt to force employees to be members when the employees don't want to-- shows that the unions themselves know they aren't offering an advantage to the employees that the employees would voluntarily choose.

Walmart doesn't force me to buy its hot dogs. Walmart competes with other hot dog providers for my business. (And loses because there is a very good german deli in this town.)

<comment><USER29> 1\. Closed shops are pretty much necessary for Unions to form or persist. It give Unions bargaining power.

2\. Unions are democracies, in a functioning democracy what's good for the power structure should be good for the electorate.

<comment><USER30> _> in a functioning democracy what's good for the power structure should be good for the electorate_

So basically, you're saying that there is no such thing as a "functioning" democracy.

<comment><USER31> I don't think that's accurate. Many democratic countries are run in a fashion that reasonably approximates what is good for their electorate. Yes, they don't match it perfectly, but compared to any other form of government that has ever been implemented on a large scale, it has worked very well.

<comment><USER30> _> Many democratic countries are run in a fashion that reasonably approximates what is good for their electorate._

I think this is a judgment call (it depends on what you believe is "good" for the electorate, particularly in the long term vs. the short term), but let's assume it's true for the sake of argument. That still doesn't mean that what's good for the power structure is good for the electorate. For a democracy to do what's good for the electorate, elected representatives have to act in the electorate's interest, and the only benefit to their own interest that they can consistently expect from that is getting re-elected. They can't make backroom deals with lobbyists, they can't promise favorable legislation to corporations in exchange for cushy jobs after retirement, etc., etc. In short, they can't do all the things that politicians in democracies routinely do to further their own interests, because those things are not good for the electorate.

So if the definition of a "functioning" democracy is that what's good for the power structure is good for the electorate, then I don't think such a thing exists, has ever existed, or can exist. The interests of the power structure will always be in conflict with the interests of the electorate. Some democracies may manage that conflict better than others, but it's always going to be there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think the problem is that the word unionization encapsulates many different things which should not necessarily be tied together. Collective bargaining, employees having a voice on the running of the business, legal and advisory services provided by someone on your side as opposed to someone with interests diametrically opposed to yours (the CEOs, not the companies), elections of representatives, etc.

As a whole these (as the data conclusively proves) were better for workers and probably the companies as well at the expense of the C-level suits. But it is probably true that some of ideas implemented by unions did work against workers. The solution is not to throw the baby out with the bath water but to analyze and experiment with different union structures which reduce the negative effects and enhance the positive ones.

Unfortunately, Americans have decide to wholesale reject and vilify the only structure that empowers non-owners even slightly which despite all its faults was still better for most Americans, instead of trying to separate the effective ones from the ineffective ones, and are reaping the unequal society they have sowed.

Gotta give credit to our wealthy overlords who have done an impressive job of getting people to vote against their own interests by splitting people along various social dividing lines as well as magnifying limited failures of systems as endemic to them.

<comment><USER28> Consider for a second that maybe they aren't voting against their own interests.

My interest is not in having some jackhole thug whose primary skill is breaking kneecaps going around and negotiating my salary, thank you very much.

With unions you always have the principle-agent problem. The union is going to negotiate for its best interest, not necessarily the employees and certainly not a specific employees. There's a long history of these kinds of union abuses. This is why the unions in america are closely associated iwht the mob (that and the fact that the mob is what started the unions in america.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon- cap...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism- marx-two-americas-wire)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNttT7hDKsk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNttT7hDKsk)

The above two links go to the same essay by author of "The Wire" David Simon in written and video forms. He discusses specifically the problem of unions... and the problem of capital. If you have the time, please watch and/or read this essay.

A very, very brief summary:

Unions are absolutely necessary, but not because of some specific feature they might achieve. Instead, they are a _check_ on capital. (and vice versa). Similar to our "adversarial" judicial system - where each side is _expected_ to fight hard for their own interests - it is the struggle between labor and capital that produces a working economy. If either side actually gets what they want, the system becomes pathological.

So yes, unions are an inefficiency. That was the intended effect. There is a lot of hostility in this very thread to the idea that "those people" \- in this case, "people I see as 'lower-quality engineers'" \- might be getting something they "don't deserve". Or the fear might be that helping the bottom end would require taking from someone else, as if the economy was some zero- sum game. Yes, _some amount_ of those effect was the _goal_.

The alternative that says some variation of "fsck you, I've got mine" may betray a lack of empathy in the speaker, but in most cases I suspect it betrays a belief in one of our most damaging cultural myths: the "just world" fallacy we call the "free market".

The question isn't really about unions. Instead, the question to ask yourself is "are we in this together?" Do you want a society with a functioning economy or not? Or do you want to let us continue our slide back into feudalism... and probably some sort of violent rebellion in the long run.

To make society work, it might require occasionally _helping_ those that are less fortunate. Just like we do with "taxes" and "health insurance". Forming a union _and participating in it_ might be one of the ways you can provide input on how these issues should be managed.

<comment><USER34> Thanks for the link. Terrific essay. I often look at the industry I'm in and the dominant political & economic perceptions the participants adhere to and wonder if there is an ignorance of history, or just a misguided belief that "it's different this time".

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Unions suffer from the same problem as communist states: they are theoretically superb, but practically cumbersome and prone to abuse.

A successful union should be able to

\- Guarantee minimum wages and conditions for all employees.

\- Hold management to account on malpractice towards employees.

\- Not limit individual employees ability to command higher wages or conditions than the minimum.

\- Not limit the ability of companies to make decisions that improve the health of the company.

\- Allow employees to be agile in what they need from the company, without calcifying previous agreements.

\- Not privilege the employment of union representatives.

In practice good unions hit some of these, but not all. And anti-union folks tend to carp on the ones that they're poor at.

I'd love to see a model for how to unionise that provided all these qualities.

They aren't called 'unions', but there are professional organizations that act as unions and are generally respected: doctors, accountants, etc. They don't hit all my points, but I think, on balance, programmers would benefit from something similar.

<comment><USER36> >Not limit the ability of companies to make decisions that improve the health of the company.

The only purpose of unions is to limit the ability of companies to make decisions that improve the health of the company (at the expense of the people who work for it.)

<comment><USER35> Why put the last phrase in parentheses when removing it would totally alter the meaning?

The only purpose of surgeons is to hack into peoples bodies and mess about with their internal organs (when the person's health would be worse if they did not). See? It's easy to play those games.

Employment isn't a zero sum game. Employees can benefit from a healthy company. Unions should facilitate the growth of a company in ways that do not exploit the workforce.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> My friend worked at place with unions in Ireland:

* Safety was 'important', every year they checked that chairs and screens are ergonomically positioned. However lab vent contamination with poison was swept under rag.

* Monthly union membership fee 50 euro. This was 'optional', but most people paid to avoid problems.

* union had huge income surplus. It was used to send union leaders to 'seminars' on exotic locations.

* in case of strike, union would not compensate first three days (except officials who were organizing the strike). All strikes very under 3 days. Basically extra holiday.

* that place had 10 HR persons on 120 personnel. My company had 1 HR for 110 people.

* People with permanent contracts were untouchable.

* 70% people worked on 6 month contracts extended for YEARS.

* This company spend fifty year budget on huge unnecessary building. There were no money left to hire people

<comment><USER38> Maybe the workers should form some sort of group to collectively bargain with the union.

<comment><USER17> Ideally, shouldn't there be multiple unions within a workforce, to compete with each other, just as there are multiple corporations?

<comment><USER38> Ah, but then one of the unions could free-ride on the sacrifices of the others, and the whole system would collapse bit by bit! No, if you have multiple unions, then obviously they need to form a union-of-unions to allow the unions to collectively bargain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I would be interested in learning about forms of unionisation via co-operative structures.

The perception is that unions can "block" things, that is also their power.

Co-operatives distribute ownership, and thus responsibility and profits.

</comment><comment><USER40> Interesting idea, its possible though that rather than unionization the issue is a lack of dividends. The efficiency of enterprises to generate value has gone up quite a bit, without significant competition, that leads to excess profits. How that extra capital is allocated can be to pay employees more, accumulate cash, or pay it out to the share holders.

In the 30's the "profit" for the non-institutional investor from owning stock was receiving dividends on a pro-rata basis, not trading the stock. In the run up of the market from the 80's trading was more valuable than holding, and technology companies, companies that increasingly made up the composition of stocks were more likely to not pay any dividends at all.

You might ask yourself why you hold stock in any company that doesn't pay you a dividend. What are they doing with the capital they generate? Your only recourse is to sell the stock when the value goes up. The status quo is good for the company, they can put money in (value goes up) and take money out (value goes down) of your pocket all day and you can't do a thing about it (except to stop playing by selling the stock) whereas with a dividend once you've received the check the worst that can happen is the next year you don't get one.

So really the companies are giving your dividend money to their top executives rather than you. As a shareholder you should work on changing that :-)

</comment><comment><USER17> In this commentary thread, I see a lot of opinions about unions, as well as anecdata, but little in the way of actual discussion of the findings that the article is talking about.

I myself lack the economic and statistical knowledge to offer such discussion, but would very much like to read discussion from those who are knowledgeable.

</comment><comment><USER41> this article takes a correlation and proceeds to imply causation from it. There is a correlation between recent rise of inequality in advanced economies and decline in unionization. But, global inequality has decreased over the same period. It's quite probable that the same forces are driving all 3 of these

</comment><comment><USER42> cause and effect have been misidentified. the craptastic business environment in the US has led to fall of the system. unions can't survive because they've helped price american labor out of the market. union money has gone unilaterally to democrats who raise more taxes and levy more and more rules and regulations and entitlements driving up taxes and corruption. the union centers, like detroit and many other traditional union strongholds collapsed, businesses went to friendlier environments.

i personally despise unions. they force people into collectivism and destroy any individuality. my dad was a long time of this. he used to get letters from the union telling him he was working too hard and making other people look bad. he should have been given pay raises, not punished for working hard for his company.

</comment><comment><USER43> People who think the labor movement was the creation of heroic union organizers have a problem to explain: why are unions shrinking now? The best they can do is fall back on the default explanation of people living in fallen civilizations. Our ancestors were giants. The workers of the early twentieth century must have had a moral courage that's lacking today.

In fact there's a simpler explanation. The early twentieth century was just a fast-growing startup overpaying for infrastructure. And we in the present are not a fallen people, who have abandoned whatever mysterious high-minded principles produced the high-paying union job. We simply live in a time when the fast-growing companies overspend on different things.

<comment><USER16> Or you can look at the legislature enacted to curb unionism instead of comparing the twentieth century to a start up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'd love to see better information on alternative collective bargaining to unions, which is a loaded word in the U.S. I've never worked as a union member, but my impression from working with them is that they undermine their own success long term by over protecting incumbent members and reducing organizational agility, but do a good job of improving the live of their averages member in the short to midterm.

I've often mused on how to make collective bargaining work better without much success. I wonder if employee owned corporations that function like contractors would be better (the employees start working for the union once the collective bargaining goes into effect.)

</comment><comment><USER45> It's pretty ironic that the party of small government favors a policy of huge government overreach into the ability of various to enter into contracts with each other. That's all Unions really boil down to: contracts. It's supposed to be what makes this country a superior place to do business, the fact that you can enter into binding contracts which will be enforced. But hey, if you know how to operate the institutionalized bribery system known as campaign finance, you can get the government to rewrite the contract to your advantage, or even deny your counterparty the ability to enter into a binding contract at all.

</comment><comment><USER46> the primary function of unions is to improve working conditions and increase wages for its members. the improved working conditions are welcome in developing nations, but the increased wages come at a cost, for unions can only ensure higher wages by limiting the number of jobs available. furthermore, unions must define a set of criteria for the acceptance of new union members that discriminates for reasons wholly irrelevant to employers.

</comment><comment><USER47> I feel ambivalent about unions, but here's what I see.

Lots of people are criticising unions, because sometimes they are inefficient or corrupt.

Equally, I could write a rant about how employers are inefficient and corrupt.

So, my question is, what's the alternative to unionisation? Because currently, these arguments seem to say "let's get rid of the unions, and just let people be powerless and exploited."

Criticism is easy. Constructive criticism is something different.

[edit: typo]

</comment><comment><USER48> I wonder if unions can benefit from the "instant direct democracy" that technology allows but isn't currently used in most governments.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think an interesting Union would be one that lets employees decide who they want to be their direct supervisor along with some sort of incentive for output.

<comment><USER50> Start your own company, and you're free to try that out. Trying to force your own will on someone else's company and business plan is an economic road-to- ruin for everybody. Just ask the US Auto-makers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> The top 10% are also putting in a lot more hours. Moreover, a good education, which now costs about $150k, is no longer a guarantee of a good job. I have many friends who won't pay off their student loans until they are 40. I have other friends with union jobs but little additional education that have houses and boat. Why should someone be compensated more than those who took the risk to pursue a higher education?

<comment><USER52> It sounds like the more compensated made better choices. Why does risk-taking engender high pay than working for good money? If the facts in the books aren't worth a damn to the employers, maybe the higher education has no market value?

Just because someone says it's a 'good education' doesn't mean it breeds worthwhile labor in a market.

<comment><USER51> A society where people are not compensated for taking risks is called communism. How did that work out?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Correlation does not equal causation.

Technology multipliers are the cause of income disparity.</comment>


Want to work at Google? Answer these questions - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/05/start/want-to-work-at-google?page=all

<comment><USER2> Google hasn't been asking riddles in interview questions for years now. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're outright disallowed.

Similar articles have been written many times over, here's a thread with all that is relevant: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130984>

</comment><comment><USER3> /sigh

With the caveat that I have no knowledge about how hiring works in sales, finance and, well, every area outside of engineering, if you want to get hired in engineering, almost none of this is relevant.

I don't know who perpetuates these myths but they're simply not true.

Interviewing as a software engineer will involve being asked questions that demonstrate your ability to formulate a solution (and turn it into code), test your knowledge of fundamental algorithms and test system design.

Questions about being shrunk to a penny and other such obtuse brain-teasers have never, to my knowledge, been part of engineering hiring. Individual interviewers may stray into this territory but they're not following (current) protocol if they do.

Of course, I can't speak to how things were years ago (before I joined) but it's not relevant now. Ignore this advice.

</comment><comment><USER4> Want me to work at your company? Don't ask these questions</comment>


PSA: Bountysource charges a 10% fee whether or not your bounty is earned - <AUTHOR> I heard about Bountysource on HN and I thought I'd give it a try. I pledged $100 for an enhancement to a project I like and I opted for a 90 day limit. The 90 days came and went. Bountysource didn't refund my money. I emailed them asking them to do so and they did. But they didn't refund my money to my Paypal account (through which I had paid the bounty up front). Instead they refunded it to my Bountysource balance. They then charged me $10 to move the funds back to Paypal.
So, shame on me for not reading the fine print--I assumed I'd get all my money back if the bounty wasn't successfully claimed. I don't find the policy unreasonable--they gotta support the site somehow I suppose. But now that I know I'm charged for taking money out, I'm less inclined to put money in. Seems to me they'd be better off charging only when there's a 'win' for everyone to feel good about.
Anyway, caveat emptor. <comment><USER2> Unless they've changed their web page, I wouldn't really call this fine print. It's in the FAQ and it looks to be in massive print at the top of the Fees page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough, the font is big. Nonetheless, I wasn't clear on that point going in, and I read the FAQ before pledging. I'd say I was reading it through a certain lens, expecting one thing and failing to notice the contradiction to my expectation in their policy. That's my mistake, like I said. I figure others might have the same bias and make the same mistake in their reading of the FAQ, thus the PSA.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, I was charged a $2.91 fee by PayPal for the Bountysource refund, so I netted $87.09 back from my original $100 pledge.</comment>


Epiphany switches from Gecko to WebKit - <AUTHOR> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-list/2008-April/msg00000.html <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool, WebKit is really leading the pack, making great advancements, and actually pushing them out to consumers (especially with the latest Safari)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not a joke: [http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany- list/2008-April/msg0...](http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany- list/2008-April/msg00004.html)</comment>


Out-of-print math books - <AUTHOR> http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/timothy-chow-out-of-print-math-books/

<comment><USER2> Sometimes I wonder if in the age of print-on-demand, copyright should also be an obligation to make something available.

<comment><USER3> If you made that the law people would simply sell it at $100 billion dollars.

<comment><USER2> I know, it would probably be impossible to get it right. But with POD, it really sucks if publishers withhold some important works from the public.

Maybe the law could be that if the publisher doesn't make it available within a reasonable timeframe, it become legal to offer it as POD edition.

<comment><USER4> I think it would probably take a court challenge for that to happen. That being said, I think a court challenge would probably have a good chance at succeeding, especially if you were offering a copyrighted piece up without financial reward.

Big pockets required for that one though... perhaps when I'm rich. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The comments are really interesting.</comment>


United Airlines bug bounty program - <AUTHOR> http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/Contact/bugbounty.aspx? <comment><USER2> Paid in United miles? Not really an incentive there.

<comment><USER3> Not only that, but: "Award miles offered under this Program are not Premier® qualifying miles." So you don't even get the free checked bag and priority check-in that those miles would otherwise entitle you to.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. They should be award miles that allow for PQM accrual. Or make them all PQM. That way someone could get gold for life (plus spouse) for a code execution exploit.

<comment><USER5> Even if you got the PQMs, you'd still need the dollars to get the status. So it's not that helpful, is it?

<comment><USER6> But the top prize is one million miles, which would get you lifetime status. Delta and United don't (yet) have spend requirements for lifetime status, AFAIK.

Conferring lifetime status isn't necessarily even that expensive to the airline--you only get the benefits after you give the airline your money for tickets. It also creates an incentives to buy tickets on one particular airline, even when they might be slightly more expensive (which is the _whole_ purpose of frequent flier CRM programs).

<comment><USER4> Yep, exactly. If they were 1mil PQM or 1mil BIS you'd hit million miler and get gold for life. Gold, which only kicks in when you actually fly (like you pointed out).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Bugs that are eligible for submission: ... The ability to brute-force reservations, MileagePlus numbers, PINs or passwords"

"Do not attempt: ... Brute-force attacks"

This seems contradictory. I assume the intent is to not allow DoS attacks (although they call that out separately further down the list)?

<comment><USER8> Not exactly.

Seems they're saying they'd accept a bug that can be caused by brute-force, but do not actually attempt a brute force yourself.

But yeah I'd guess they don't want intentionally invite a bunch of people to DoS the site.

<comment><USER9> Another interpretation is that, if you discover something similar to what Weev discovered, do not do what Weev did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Bugs on onboard Wi-Fi, entertainment systems or avionics" are not eligible for bounties.

It's very strange to see website timing attacks as worth rewarding, but not avionics. Perhaps they'd rather not incentivize people to attack airplanes in flight?

<comment><USER11> Yes, I am pretty sure it is a safety thing. That would be very dangerous to encourage people to try to hack a flight in the air.

<comment><USER12> It would be a good idea to provide access to that sort of equipment on the ground. Bugs that can lead to loss of life should be of much higher priority than bugs that can merely lead to loss of profit on a web site.

Though the avionics industry would obviously balk at the proposition, those systems are already spectacularly vulnerable, and they'd hate to lose face.

<comment><USER13> "...those systems are already spectacularly vulnerable..."

Absolutely untrue, unless you have physical access to them (at which point any system is vulnerable). In truth, the maintenance port on a 787, for example, (which is the only place you could feasibly get the kind of access you'd need to even attempt an exploit) is located in the avionics bay. At the point that an unauthorized party has gained access to the avionics bay, you've got a much bigger problem than software exploits.

If you're referring the Chris Roberts' dubious "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" grrcon talk ... well, I'm sorry, but claiming that you've "made friends <giggle>" with an airplane doesn't seem very substantive to me.

Avionics code is some of the most extensively tested code in the world, with 100% statement and decision coverage, 100% requirements test coverage, extensive robustness testing, and somewhere between a handful and hundreds of eyes having reviewed every single line (depending on criticality level). Additionally, design constraints are followed for high criticality software that simply eliminate many types of attacks - no dynamic allocation, mathematically provable static stack analysis, etc. etc. etc. (get yourself a copy of DO-178B and read it if you really want to know all the details). I would bet a significant amount of money that the defect rate per N lines of code in avionics software is probably substantially lower than almost all other commercial software. There's also the fact that on modern aircraft using Ethernet based networks, message routing and authentication are implemented in both hardware and software at multiple layers by independent teams, which greatly reduces the chances of a common fault that allows a successful attack (even if you _could_ gain physical access to the network).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Exactly what you'd expect from an airline:

"Bugs or potential Bugs you discover may not at any time be disclosed publicly or to a third-party. Doing so will disqualify you from receiving award miles."

It's as if it was designed in the same spirit as a frequent flyer program -- really stingy payout, with lots of strings attached. I can't see how this can incentivise anyone to do free penetration-testing for them.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is having rude stewardesses and planes that are never on time bugs? Is grouping two flights into one flight number to deceive people into buying 3 stop international flights a bug? If so please pay me in minimal airline miles which I can then use to waste more of my time on the shittiest airline in the world.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not a hacker - how much should you normally get paid for a low/medium/high bug? 50k points ~= $1500; 250k points ~= $7500; 1m points ~= $30k.

A lot more if you redeem for int'l biz/first class...

<comment><USER17> 3 cents per mile seems like a pretty high valuation to me. I usually use 1.5 cpm. You can do better, as you mentioned, but this is a good EV for me.

<comment><USER16> True.

Another gem in the ToS: "You are responsible for any tax implications that apply based on your country of residency and citizenship."

I know miles earned from credit cards are _not_ taxed, but I do know for a fact that Citibank sends out a 1099 for new checking accounts that come with bonus miles.

If United sends you a 1099 based on the market value of a mile (likely between 2-3 cents each), then you're looking at non-trivial tax implications as well.

<comment><USER18> United doesn't send out 1099s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If they actually cared about their site they would go back to the old united.com, not the crappy one Continental brought with them in the merger.

I would have been a lifeline customer, but Continental ruined it.

<comment><USER7> They're currently beta testing a new (more modern) site: [https://beta.united.com/ual/en/us/](https://beta.united.com/ual/en/us/)

<comment><USER20> I like Virgin's [https://www.virginamerica.com/](https://www.virginamerica.com/) way more than even their beta one. I guess they're going for different demographics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Code injection on live systems" is not allowed? what does this even mean?

If I put ?param=' and it crashes with an SQL error have I performed code injection on a live system?

<comment><USER22> Well in that case they'd presumably have a log and they would see no suspicious payload.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think this idea of bounty programs even among non-tech companies will continue to grow. I recently wrote about this in-depth as a solution to many of the online security problems: [http://mytwoandahalfcents.com/prevent- enterprise-security-br...](http://mytwoandahalfcents.com/prevent-enterprise- security-breach-invert-model/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Where is their PGP key?</comment>


Show HN: Broody – a testing ground for your startup's wording - <AUTHOR> https://broody.io <comment><AUTHOR> My partner and I have launched a few products over the last decade or so, and while we love design and development, launching is mostly writing. It's writing tag lines, descriptions, titles, tweets, emails, etc. and constantly trying to communicate how your product solves a problem. But we're not writers, so this has always been a slow-going process of self doubt and best guesses.

We built Broody to give entrepreneurs a place to test their startup's language, collect feedback from a preview audience, and discover wording that works.

We'd love for you to try it and let us know what you think.</comment>


Ask HN: Books to get started on Angel Investment - <AUTHOR>

What books do you recommend to get started with Angel Investment? <comment><USER2> The Definitive Guide to Raising Money from Angels, by Bill Payne. <http://billpayne.com/definitiveguide.html>

Yes, the site looks like godawful direct marketing spam and yes, it's written for entrepreneurs looking to raise from angels. But there's a ton of useful info in here about 'how angels work'.

EDIT: There's some weird pricing tests going on on Bill's site - try this URL for the same product, potentially cheaper: <http://billpayne.com/get-angel- money></comment>


Ask HN: How would you design a scalable chat bot for something like Discord? - <AUTHOR> I have 2 months of furlough, and I'd like to improve my Python (and other) skills and, for once, start and finish a project. For once I've decided to pick a project which will actually both interest and benefit myself.
I wrote a simple chat bot to manage xp/levels/roles, amongst various other things, in  a Discord server for a popular community. I've since used the same bot in other communities, but it just runs as a clone of a Python repo for each bot, using supervisord on a Digital Ocean VPS. Each bot also has its own developer 'app' within the Discord environment and associated tokens, which is getting cumbersome to manage.
As I've got time to focus on it, I'd like to create a singular bot, with a web UI to manage it, with a very long term end goal of maybe competing with other services like Mee6, but a shorter term goal of making it easy for me to easily add the bot to new communities and configure it - without config + manual steps over SSH.
It's quite niche, but if anyone has any similar experience, I'd be eager to hear any opinions. For example: My first instinct based upon my work experience was a Docker container per bot, but from testing, as far as I can see I need a single instance which handles all servers if I want to use one developer 'app' like Mee6 or Dyno.
Any hints/links or similar welcome. <comment><USER3> Docker alone would not add automatic scalability. You'd need to add an orchestration layer.

Seems like your current bot would be fine in multiple servers if you added an additional server argument to each of the i/o's.

Don't overthink it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I have some projects at work which manage containers in this kind of fashion, which is probably why I'm applying that to this and over-engineering - which I almost always do.

The current bot could work with just passing in a token, and then fetching its settings from a REST API (for the web bit) instead of just a JSON file - <USER2> only issue with this approach is I think it'd require the user to setup a developer app with discord user, instead of the nice seamless 'invite and it works' approach other bots seem to have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can certainly run more than one Discord server on a single running instance of the bot. That's probably more code, but you could run the web server as part of the same process. I would generally discourage that though, because then you can have your bots DDoSed by just DDoSing your web server.

The easier incarnation is to store the Discord connection configs in a database. Make a web server and UI to manage the database (the Django admin panel is probably enough, which would make it low code). Then have the web server manage an orchestration layer by pulling configs from the database. The easy solution is probably to have your web server write out supervisord config files templated from the data in the database, and then send reload signals to supervisord. The more difficult option there would be to write your own process management layer (probably not worth it, you're just rewriting supervisord at that point). Or you could maybe just pull in supervisord as a library and use it.

That solution is less resource efficient, but not at a "break the bank" level.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, you've described what I had in my head as a rough way of doing things - the issue with this approach is that it appears to be one bot instance per user. I.e. if I want the same 'user' to be able to be invited to unlimited servers, that 'user' must run from a single application instance - meaning all server chats flow through a single app instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a discord bot running in our FortressOne discord. It keeps track of who is in what server and spams the channel with that information. It requires some short term persistence so it runs across two containers, one with the application code and the other with redis. It takes hundreds of requests daily and sends many millions, seems to be very stable. [https://github.com/FortressOne/qwtf-discord- bot](https://github.com/FortressOne/qwtf-discord-bot)

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://docs.mattermost.com/overview/product.html#about- the-...](https://docs.mattermost.com/overview/product.html#about-the- mattermost-open-source-project)

[https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge](https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge)

[https://git.koesters.xyz/timo/conduit](https://git.koesters.xyz/timo/conduit)

[https://matrix.org/docs/guides/introduction](https://matrix.org/docs/guides/introduction)

</comment><comment><USER7> Why did you clone in the beginning? Why couldn't you have just on developer app send requests from multiple communities to one endpoint for your app?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know how well that would scale though with multiple popular servers.

<comment><USER7> It can scale well since you can use a load balancer if traffic gets too much for one server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the discussion of Discord Bots, be aware of Discord Bots that share your private group channel data online.</comment>


Hackathon Fundraising - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/la-hacks/hackathon-fundraising-d41a00b8f762 <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this!

Feel free to reach out to me at any point :)

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem! Thanks for the awesome time at LA Hacks :D</comment></comment>


Show HN: If a Tree Falls in the Forest, an indie horror game written in Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://sisyphus.rocks/if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest <comment><USER2> Given that this is Clojure scripting in a Unity3D game, the HN crowd might be more interested in the code than the actual gameplay.

Also, a screenshot or gameplay video and listing minimum system resources would be nice for those who don't want to commit to downloading a binary and running it just to see what happens. On the lowest possible graphics setting it seems to use far more RAM and memory than a simple 3D game like this should. I don't have an ancient system by any means but it completely froze Windows the first time I opened it.</comment>