WPaxos: a wide area network Paxos protocol - <AUTHOR> https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2017/12/wpaxos-wide-area-network-paxos-protocol.html <comment><USER2> Need some non holiday time to read this fully, but it's worth noting that aside from Spanner, Cloud Datastore (using Megastore tech) and Cloud Firestore (using the same tech as Cloud Spanner) all do Paxos across several data centers over a wide area and achieve millions non batched writes/second.

Sometimes it can be hard to tease out the true trade-offs in the systems as they don't get as detailed acknowledgement, but from a quick read it looks like tail latency will will be worse.

Improvements in consensus algos often have issues, correct implementation is hard, but it can make previously impossible things tenable which I find exciting.

<comment><USER3> The fact that Google is able to achieve good write performance with standard Paxos over wide areas is a direct result of their advanced network infrastructure and low latency data center interconnects. I imagine there are lots of people without a Google-class network who would benefit from WPaxos or something similar.

<comment><USER2> Our network definitely makes a big difference, but even we don't just use straight up vanilla Paxos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks like the core of the idea is "object stealing". In most consensus algorithms you'll have a single leader, worldwide, that is in charge of sequencing all objects. Either that, or you partition objects across leaders and then coordinate across partitions.

In this algorithm you have multiple leaders, where a leader can be in charge of a particular object temporarily by "stealing" it. This brings control to the datacenter that needs it, reducing latency.

It's an interesting idea, and I haven't fully absorbed the paper. But I'll comment on it anyway. It's always easier to criticize when you're ignorant of the details :)

In general, I don't like these algorithms that only guarantee a partial ordering. In other words, instead of having a single global total ordering of all transactions, you have an ordering of operations that apply to a single object or key or a related group of keys. This means you can't know if object A got updated before object B. You can't know the total state of the system as of a snapshot in time, or as of the moment a node membership change happens. (Maybe. There might be workarounds for these issues, at the cost of some complexity.)

This paper is a good contribution, but we ain't there yet.

<comment><USER5> I also haven't read through the technical report in detail, but in skimming through parts of it, it looks like WPaxos is supposed to provide linearizability. More specifically, the authors state that:

> WPaxos maintains separate logs for every object and provides per-object > linearizability.

Linearizability is a composable correctness condition, so per-object linearizability implies that the composition of all the objects is linearizable. Thus, WPaxos does in fact provide a single total ordering of all operations. Nearly all of the replicated state machines via consensus protocols (Paxos, EPaxos, Mencius, Generalized Paxos, etc.) provide this same consistency level.

<comment><USER6> Time to let my ignorance shine:

> Linearizability is a composeable correctness condition

So if all I know is that A1 precedes A2 and that B1 precedes B2, how do I make assertions about the ordering of A2 and B2? Is "linear" in the context that you are talking about more specific than "orderable"?

GP isn't complaining that the algorithm is incorrect, just that it doesn't have the property of being replayed or reversed in a deterministic way. Most applications don't need this property, I am just trying to see if I'm missing a part of your argument.

<comment><USER5> Maurice Herlihy and Jeanette Wing introduced linearizability back in 1990 [1]. It stipulates that the result of a concurrent execution of the system is equivalent to a result from a sequential execution where the order of the sequential execution respects the real-time order of operations in the concurrent execution.

In this context, you could probably use "linear" and "orderable" to mean the same thing. The idea is that, for any linearizable execution, there exists an equivalent total order of the operations. Because there exists a total order, if a client C1 sees A2 before B2 then a client C2 cannot see B2 before A2.

[1] [https://cs.brown.edu/~mph/HerlihyW90/p463-herlihy.pdf](https://cs.brown.edu/~mph/HerlihyW90/p463-herlihy.pdf)

<comment><USER7> You still haven't answered the question though.

The definition of linearizability is not in question.

The question is does this specific system we are discussing have global- linearizability or is there separate per-object (or some other bucketing method) linearizability.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, I was trying to give the GP more context for my initial comment.

As I said in my initial comment, the authors state that WPaxos provides per- object linearizability, which implies that it provides (to use your term, "global"-)linearizability.

<comment><USER2> It doesn't, the authors are calling this out to limit the scope of linearizability to per-object. You're thinking about strict serializability.

The authors mention that transactions can be implemented in a way to support this by including a first step to steal all objects needed by the transaction. I believe this would give you strict serializability at a global level, but does have trade-offs in needing to know all objects at the start of a transaction, and other implications on latency, etc from this step.

The authors also note they haven't implemented transactions yet.

Also worth noting that some of the extensions/optimizations, such as the mentioned 'locality adaptive object stealing optimization' won't work as described with multi-object transactions. I could see additional work to identify groups of objects, but this would be very workload specific and not suitable as a generic solution.

<comment><USER5> I'm not thinking of strict serializability - I do actually mean linearizability.

My previous comments were referring to the basic algorithm presented as the main contribution of this paper in section 3. In this algorithm, "Every command accesses only one object o." With each operation applying to a single object and each object satisfying linearizability, the system as a whole will be linearizable.

The distinction between linearizability and strict serializability is somewhat subtle. I highly recommend this blog post [1] by Irene Zhang and this blog post [2] by Peter Bailis for some really great discussion on the subtleties involved.

[1] [https://irenezhang.net/blog/2015/02/01/consistency.html](https://irenezhang.net/blog/2015/02/01/consistency.html)

[2] [http://www.bailis.org/blog/linearizability-versus- serializab...](http://www.bailis.org/blog/linearizability-versus- serializability/)

<comment><USER4> Perhaps we should step away from the terms "linearizability" and "serializability" and speak of global total ordering. That's what some other systems provide and this one doesn't. It's a valuable feature because it makes it possible to know the state of the system as of a snapshot in time.

<comment><USER5> This is exactly what I was addressing in your initial comment! This system provides a global total ordering of operations. It's the whole point of a replicated state machine.

The ensuing conversation explored how/why the system provides a global total ordering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's a huge positive development that there's a reference implementation as well, in go. At least helpful for evaluation, possibly for a production implementation also.

</comment><comment><USER9> What are example real world applications and/or use-cases where number of acceptors must be more than 3 or 5? Thanks.</comment>


Is My Shift Key On Or Not (iOS 7.1) - <AUTHOR> http://ismyshiftkeyonornot.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm disliking this design decision so far; maybe I'm just too used to the 7.0 behavior, but the new shift button seems wrong.

It looks fine in isolation on this web page - left is empty, right is full - but on the keyboard sits right next to a WHITE button with BLACK lettering that matches the "on" image pretty well. Why, when toggled on, does it become MORE like the unpressed buttons next to it?

If there was at least a black outline on the arrow when empty, it would indicate off (empty) and on (full) better.

</comment><comment><USER3> IF ONLY THERE WAS AN EASIER WAY TO TELL IF MY SHIFT KEY IS ON</comment>


Ask HN: Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job? - <AUTHOR> Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job (as opposed to it being a tedious grind for money)? If so, what do you do and what are your working conditions? <comment><USER2> I love mine. I've been here for two years and I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop; it continues not to.

I'm a senior backend engineer in a healthcare startup, but I think the single biggest determining factor to why this place is so awesome is that my coworkers genuinely, complete respect each other. That manifests in lots of ways:

\- Arguing and infighting is nonexistent. When Joe proposes something and Jane disagrees, it's on a professional, technical level. Joe knows this and responds in kind. Agreements are made and consensus reached.

\- Sometimes we make mistakes, but we all know that it's because a smart person acted on perhaps incomplete information, not because they're incompetent or untrustworthy. We have actual blameless post-mortems to figure out what happened and how to prevent it, and then we move on.

\- If you want vacation, you take vacation. We know you're not a slacker who's trying to get away with working as little as possible.

\- If I have a question about a management decision, I ask the CEO to explain it. He makes time to meet with me and we discuss it. There's _never_ any "because I said so". There've been times when I think I might have made a different decision (or maybe not; he has more information about it than I do), but I've always been 100% convinced that the decision was reasonable and justifiable.

There are literally no hiring requirements more important than "treats others with respect". If you're an asshole genius, don't bother applying because you won't fit in at all here. Those people would wreck our corporate culture so we avoid them like the plague. No one is so much better than my awesome coworkers that it'd be worthwhile.

<comment><USER3> How do you maintain the "treat others with respect, keep it professional" culture without getting into a position where some team members become sensitive to any amount of criticism, and the focus becomes more about not upsetting people rather than genuinely caring to provide kind but constructive feedback and move forward?

Basically, how to you strengthen and guide this part of it:

>When Joe proposes something and Jane disagrees, it's on a professional, technical level. Joe knows this and responds in kind.

<comment><USER4> Either you need to work on how you deliver the message, or your manager needs to handle the other team members as difficult.

(Assuming that you're not rejecting pull requests with "this code sucks,") It's time to escalate the problem with management. Otherwise, you need to plan to spend more time mentoring, and/or find another strong member of the team to split the mentoring with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I work from home for a profitable business-to-business startup servicing the payments underwriting industry. I did not know such an industry existed before working on this project, and the job came through my alumni network on LinkedIn. I just started my fifth year with this organization. My responsibilities include everything engineering; everyone else focuses sales.

I've met one of the three co-founders twice, first for an interview and second for a weekend with his family. All three co-founders join me five days a week for a brief standup/scrum and one day each week we include a sales and strategy update.

They pay in the range of my market value and have steadily increased my equity share of the enterprise. I supplement that income by teaching sea kayak technique and rescue year-round and snowboard instruction in the winter.

I try to put in at least four hours of work every day, including weekends, and balance that with four hours of year-round kayaking, hiking, house-work, seasonal snow-sports, or some other physical activity.

I do this "job" to keep my brain sharp and hope to continue well past the point of typical retirement. The same applies for my non-"job" activities. If I did not need to worry about saving for retirement, I would probably still do this. The joy comes from solving problems, not from stacking cash.

Become the low-key hero your co-workers need.

p.s. I started kayaking seriously twelve years ago because I would see these people in their 70s surfing big waves in 16' boats. "That's what I want to be when I grow up, that or retired!"

<comment><USER6> "I try to put in at least four hours of work every day, including weekends, and balance that with four hours of year-round kayaking, hiking, house-work, seasonal snow-sports, or some other physical activity."

Well done for achieving work-life balance.

<comment><USER5> Appreciate the sentiment, but gotta admit that I feel like I am still pretty far from this achievement. I suspect that balance is a goal that will remain perpetually just out of reach, and I am fine with continuing to work on it! To that point, I started skateboarding last week in an effort to improve balance. Rodney Mullen is my new hero.

<comment><USER7> I would recommend slack-lining as well if you are looking to improve balance. I also think it is safer than skateboarding too in terms of joint health and all of that.

<comment><USER5> I have a slack-line but get very little opportunity to use it. I'll start keeping it in the vehicle so I can bring it on kayak expeditions–adequate clothes-line and camp couch–and on the off chance I find a spot to use it.

I am looking to increase the impact, not reduce it. I know that I need more bone-rattling in my life and can't justify the purchase of a Juvent. Skateboarding provides benefits similar to that of a Juvent, plus I might learn how to fall (and skate).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The best job I've ever had is about 10% interesting and 90% horrible grind. I've come to believe the secret to getting something out of a career is learning to love the grind.

Incidentally, that 10/90 ratio happens to dominate everything else worth pursuing also. Sports in particular. You get that initial ramp up high and then when you hit the part with smaller and smaller gains, that's where "learning to love the grind" kicks in. It's much harder than it sounds, too!

<comment><USER9> right on. one of the reasons folks who jump ship too often look suspect resume-wise. not always the case but those frequent short gigs look like the person is prone to bailing after the ramp-up honeymoon is over and it's time to get sh1t done.

<comment><USER2> Before my current job, I'd gone through a few 6-months or 1-year jobs (after spending 8 years at my previous place). For me, at least, it wasn't so much "we're no longer in the honeymoon phase" as "wow, this really just isn't a good fit". I see it kind of like getting out of a dead-end relationship: why drag it out if you know it's not going to work? I think it's better to recognize the disconnect and get out quickly while everyone can part as friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been a programmer for 30 years, and I could reasonably be considered to be a senior dev.

Yes, I'm very happy with my job. I work at a company which cares deeply about solving hard problems well, and that care translates into good working conditions, great work/life balance, support from management for engineering concerns, and a very nice benefits package. There is also a focus on having separate promotion tracks for managers vs. more technically inclined people.

There have been jobs where I have either tired of the novelty of the problems, changes in management, changes in company policy, etc., but at that point I find a new job in a better company and continue to find happiness.

If you're not happy where you are, and you are considered a senior dev, then take responsibility for yourself and find a position that you enjoy. If you're locked into a company because of golden handcuffs, lack of local resources, or family obligations, then find activities outside of work that provide what you're missing.

<comment><USER11> If you don't mind me asking some questions:

How do you feel about working in this industry? Have you moved jobs a lot?

The reason I ask is my parents have been "working" or in their adulthood as parents/slightly before having children for roughly 30 years and for the most part have kept the same jobs. So as a new software engineer fresh out of school, they find the idea of needing to switch jobs for higher pay, new challenges, etc. to be a bit unbelievable and disagree that I should eventually do that.

<comment><USER12> It's a different world nowadays. Switching jobs every 1-3 years is more the norm now than being a lifer (for most industries, not just software dev). They're probably coming from the perspective of the time they lived in, and don't realize that the world has changed quickly around them over the decades. And the younger you are, the more expected it is.

My parents are the same way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Super happy senior developer/consultant. Now I work for myself in an office out in the country but I've had lots of normal dev jobs. Lots of work variety, this year I've worked on; WPF/C# app for laser welding, C++/OpenGL/graphics for radar, and C++/OpenCV/computer vision for tracking the spin of golf balls. I'm going kayaking this afternoon after I check in some changes. It wasn't always this good but I've always been happy to go in to work at the companies I worked for. [1] _Life it too short to work someplace that makes you unhappy when you could be working someplace where you actually enjoy going in to work every day._ [2]

By your question I suspect what you _really_ want to know is how to be a happy senior developer. I'm not in the "web world" so it might not be applicable but here is an approach that has worked for me:

1) Work for small or tiny companies. A tiny company doesn't have many "dark surfaces" for incompetent/lazy/"political climber" types to grow in. When there are only 4 people rowing the boat you can tell pretty quick if someone isn't pulling their oar. Large enough to have an HR department? Probably too big.

2) Work on new code. I've almost never worked on code older than a year that I didn't write. You know who needs developers to write green field code? New, tiny companies, that's who. Startups are small but you they aren't the only small companies.

3) Work with nice people that are smarter than you. Working with people smarter than I am has always been a given for me...

4) Try contracting, direct if possible.

[1] I've been doing this for 30+ years.

[2] Not sure if this applies to women. :-( My wife is also a developer and it kills me how much harder working life is for her simply because she's female.

<comment><USER4> > I'm not in the "web world" so it might not be applicable but here is an > approach that has worked for me

I've found that anything interesting is more than just writing a generic website or a generic web service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love my job even though it's the hardest job I've ever had in terms of hours worked and learning curve. I worked 8 years at a big corporation where I was fairly high up and was paid a really nice salary along with RSUs but the last 3 to 4 years there was just miserable for me. Based on my current happiness and contrasted with my previous unhappiness, I think the reasons are:

1\. My work see the light of day. My efforts matter. I don't mind working hard as long as it is not wasted. At large corporations, projects, even big ones, are often scrapped for reasons that aren't anything related to the the technical work. I get it but it still sucks and it really makes me not want to try hard. Having effort and outcome being correlated with each other is a huge motivator.

2\. I know what's going on but am never the smartest person in the room. Working with people at least as smart and skilled as I am is amazing. I don't have to worry about other people and their work. We can just divide up the work and be reasonably sure things will get done in a reasonable way. If not, talk it over and fix it.

3\. I have a lot of responsibility and independence and we attack the problem. I've had the opportunity to learn and experiment with so much in just two years and those experiments are actually getting deployed. Having a hand in pushing things like Docker, Clojure, etc. at my company is amazing. I remember all the silly meetings at my old job over the choice of language for QA that ended up exactly where we started versus now when we decided to try out a new tool written in Clojure even though none of us ever used Clojure. We are all smart enough engineers, why should a new language stop us from solving the problem.

</comment><comment><USER15> All the senior devs I've worked with who seemed truly happy at work were that way because they spent plenty of time with their family, volunteering, and just doing stuff outside of work that was meaningful to them. None of them poured everything they had in their job, tying it with their identity.

People in that latter category tended to be more brilliant in general (for example a problem comes up and they immediately know of 3 different ways to solve it, half a day later they tested all 3 for that particular problem, half a day later a first implementation is up and running, while it'd take most other people a full week to reach the first step), but they seemed to have way more up and downs with their mood and happiness and general.

Obviously this is a generalization from my ~10 years or so in professional dev environments.

As a senior dev who tends to identify more with the second category in terms of happiness fluctuations, I've been trying to be more like people I've known in the first category.

<comment><USER16> This is not confined to tech. When I look at senior people in all the fields my friends and family work in, you have a small core group who - bless them - live for the work and thrive on it, a good chunk of very successful people who like it enough and realize the fullness of life is not entirely in the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, I dunno what "senior" is, but we do agency-style work for clients and my boss bills me that way.

I'm on a very small team where I'm the technical lead and I code every day. I make whatever tech decisions I want.

I have a salary that's not large, but I also work a 30 hour week. 100% remote and nobody cares when those 30-ish hours are as long as I get stuff done and make some rare client meetings.

I trust my boss, who does the sales for the company, and generally she sells these really great projects with a lot of padding so there is always plenty of slack (praise bob).

Sometimes the projects are kind of dumb, but I'm still learning new things and they are large enough in scope that I can dive into some fun stuff.

So with all that, working is not a bad deal for me at all... it's something that I spend a whole lot of time doing, but it's also fun and pays well and I still have time for my 16-year-old, a girlfriend, and playing some music with friends.

<comment><USER18> want to work there

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not really. Not enough challenging/interesting work to go around it seems. My current job doesn't even really involve 'developing' anything. Mostly going to meetings and writing documentation.

I've tried hunting for a new job, but there's definitely a glut of senior software engineers these days. This current job, whilst boring as hell, pays well and doesn't demand overly long hours from me. And since I have my side project(s) to serve as a creative outlet to satisfy my 'coding' urges, I've stopped caring about finding other work for the time being.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting question.

About 5 years into my career I was asking myself the same thing. At the time I must have gone through 10 - 15 full time gigs, either quitting or getting fired so I knew something was not right. I could do the work but definitely never saw myself in there for the long run so quickly lost the passion for it.

Co workers were always friendly and sociable, but with very different interests, I'd also never imagine myself as them in 5 to 10 years. Sounds judgmental but it's important to sometimes look at who's around you as you more often than not end becoming them. Looking back, it was a lot to do with me not being that confident in what I wanted to do or become and a little lost.

I started working remotely which gave me so much more freedom as far as traveling and training in other things that I've really enjoyed the last 3 years. To the point where if I'm not coding for a couple of weeks - I really miss it.

I'm grateful everyday for the amount of freedom and money you can make programming when you compare it to SOOO many dead end careers out there.

TLDR; Keep asking questions, keep trying different roles, hang out with people doing jobs in completely different industries: service industry, sales... keep at it, something will click :D

</comment><comment><USER21> If you're not happy, and your job feels like a grind... it's probably time to get out. Life's too short to hate what you do for 8 hours a day. You should identify what motivates you, and try to pursue that. For example, I found I was not really motivated by technical challenges anymore. I found I was more interested in the business. I cared about the problem my code solved, why the code was needed, and who it helped. At the time I was a "Lead", but the path I was on only lead to me being pigeoned holed into more "technical" positions. They let me pick how to build it, but I was never exposed to the why we're building it (more than the context required to build it). I found consulting as a way to expose myself more to the business. Fortunately, I had built a great network, and that gave me a start. I've only been doing it for about 8 months, but I'm far happier with this than when I was just another "senior engineer".

<comment><USER22> Isn't consulting still working on the how and not the why, just a different way to be paid?

<comment><USER23> I've been consulting for 17 years...

Even though the company is just me, I approach it as a business and do a mix of hourly projects and fixed fee projects. At any given time I have 1-3 projects going on at once.

What I work on depends primarily on the client. With some clients it is all about the 'why' and we do real business analysis. These are massively rewarding.

Other clients treat me like someone who "Shovels poop for money" and just want me to do whatever they say. These are not as rewarding--but are often profitable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b Very happy. I was working at a firm full time for about 7 years. I told them I wanted more time to be with my family, develop personal projects and live abroad, and that I would really love to continue working part time and remotely. So now I consult part time for them from abroad. I took a pay cut, but I'm still very decently paid.

<comment><USER5> This! Be honest and open about your needs, goals, and desires.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm a senior level systems engineer and architect at an F500. I'm happy. We're not a pure software company, but make equipment that's supported by software. We're in the midwest, so the pace of life isn't quite as hectic -- I'm not getting rich, but I have great work-life balance and live in a town with good schools, etc.

I love programming, and do quite a lot of it. But watching what the software devs do all day, I'm not sure I'd enjoy the drudgery.

What keeps me out of the drudge zone is the fact that my work is not predictable -- I get the weird problems that are not fully within any particular skill set. So it can't be planned or managed.

</comment><comment><USER25> I was a mechanical engineer for many years... And hated every job I had. I woke up every day dreading my work. I honestly believed that I would hate work forever.

Now I'm a coder (actually now I'm a manager, so less coding, but still a bit) and I really love my job. I wish I could work more. I love coming to work, I love my team, and we really have a ton of fun.

Our office is really chill but I have my own desire to be productive and write high-quality code. My teammates are great.

So my advice is: Don't give up. Like relationships, you can't stop searching for the right now, but because all the others have been terrible so far. Good jobs _are_ out there!

</comment><comment><USER26> I have been doing this for more than 20 years and I am kind of tired of it. Maybe I am glorifying the past but when I started there was much less bureaucracy and management overhead. I/we got presented with a problem and then went off to figure it out. Now there are so many non-technical people micromanaging, evaluating, reporting, withholding information, counting story points and other stuff. Maybe SW dev just has become too much mainstream. I think I long for the wild-west days of SW dev :-)

<comment><USER27> > Now there are so many non-technical people micromanaging, evaluating, > reporting, withholding information, counting story points and other stuff.

Ah, the Scourge Of Agile. I yearn for the day people see it as the micromanaging abomination it is and we can get back to treating developers like adults, not naughty children.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm reasonably happy. I don't know if I meet your definition of "senior dev" but the word "Senior" appears in my job title.

I work for a biometrics software company. We all work about 40 hours a week under normal conditions, more if and when circumstances warrant it. Our boss was previously on the team and promoted from within; he is also excellent at shielding us from distractions from above if we do not need to know about them. I am paid slightly less than the median for a person of my relative experience, but that is mainly because of the drift that happens when you work at the same company for a number of years, and I don't mind much because the environment is quite nice. Everyone is polite, professional, and is a valuable part of achieving our company's objectives (we employ less than 100 people). Despite working primarily on a product that has been around a long time, I am always doing something where I am learning something new. I get 3 weeks of vacation every year (but rarely use all of it) that I can use pretty much whenever.

If you are actually somewhat decent at writing software and live in or near a competitive market, I would encourage your to be as selective as possible when it comes to "working conditions", but watch out for gimmicks that are designed to keep you in the office, like free meals. I'd also stay away from any companies where excessive overtime is commonplace (it's a sign of poor management), or where there are lots of attempts to portray the company as more than just a company (it can be a sign that they will not respect boundaries between their desired identity for you and your individual will).

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm fairly happy as a senior dev. This particular week is stressful because we're nearing a release. But outside of the extra hours I'm working for the next 2 weeks, I don't usually have to work more than 40/wk. I work on very interesting problems with very smart and interesting people. I make a lot of money and have great benefits. I live in a nice place and am close to my work, which is only possible because they compensate me well. I definitely want to change some things about my current situation, so I'm working on that.

I've been at my current job for 12 years. 6 years ago I was really annoyed with work. It seemed like we were in permanent maintenance mode, so there wasn't much fun stuff to work on, and I didn't have a lot of say in what I was doing or where it was going. I went and interviewed with competitors and a few startups. I was offered a job at a startup, but when I looked at the work, it was hardly any better than what we were doing, the product was doomed to fail (and it did), and I would have been doing longer hours for fewer benefits and working with people who were far less senior than me but who had very large egos. I ended up turning it down and instead talking to my manager about why I was unhappy. As new projects came along, I got to do newer things that were more interesting and came to love it again.

It's not all good. We currently have one or two people in our upper management who are not good at their jobs and who don't seem to care about their employees' well-being. But we're working on fixing that and the downsides are not nearly bad enough to consider leaving again. If they get worse, I may decide it's time to jump ship, but there's a good chance they'll get better and I'm actively working on making that happen.

</comment><comment><USER30> 34 years of experience... I am reasonably happy with my compensation and work/life balance. I am not reasonably happy with what I do 40 hours a week, primarily because I do not control the high level objectives, nor the resources to make it happen. This is why they pay me, to do their bidding. I'm ok with it because it allows me to make my time outside of work, fulfilling and meaningful.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have 19 managers, none of them understanding the job at hand and a family I can't see because of 3h/day commutation.

Else the job is fine.

Ho! And I inherited a fork of 500k slocc using 5 languages and so much frameworks I can't count them anymore.

I am the janitor of a huge codebase with a management under acid, but it pays enough for me to not sleep under the bridge, so I guess I am happy.

<comment><USER4> You're probably on a sinking ship and don't even realize it. If it's really that bad, I suggest quitting in with the smallest amount of notice you can give and hopping on the job market tomorrow.

Remember to thoroughly vhet your future employer. Job interviews are a two-way street. There's nothing wrong with finishing an interview and then telling the employment agency that you don't want to continue the interview. I did that a few times while looking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've learned to appreciate my job for what it is, and for the benefits that it provides in comparison to other jobs that I could easily obtain.

It took me almost a decade of bouncing from a few different jobs, and failing miserably at trying to run my own company, before I found my current job.

My job isn't perfect, but no job is. I'm board and eager to move to another opportunity, but that opportunity will be chosen very carefully. I've already made the mistake of moving too fast, and I'm perfectly happy to sit in my current job for another 2-3 years if I need to.

Why? I interviewed at another company about a year ago; and for reasons that were hard to explain, it just didn't seem to be as good as my current job. A few months after they offered me a position, they were acquired and the team now has quite a bit of stress. Changing jobs wouldn't have improved much.

<comment> le-mark > I've learned to appreciate my job for what it is, and for the benefits that > it provides in comparison to other jobs that I could easily obtain.

This is what it boils down to, imo. Currently I'm working on a horrendous legacy code base with a very low performing team, in a very low performing organization. Over the years I've learned what matters to me, and this job has what I need: good pay, time off, and I can come and go as I please so long as I'm here for "core" hours (ie on location, not remote). The last part is another way to say my boss is cool. He's new too, although he's been here longer than I have. We're both dismayed at the do nothing culture, and terrible code here.

That's about all anyone can ask for IME, find out what matters to you and optimize for that. When I go home I don't give a thought for work, I get to concentrate on my family 100%.

<comment><USER4> > > I've learned to appreciate my job for what it is, and for the benefits > that it provides in comparison to other jobs that I could easily obtain.

Part of why it works out so well for me is that I have enough clout to avoid things I don't want to do. IE, I don't want to be a manager. When my manager, (who's titled a director,) decided that I was going to become a manager, it basically went like this:

Me: "I don't want to be a manager."

My boss, "You're not going to be a manager, you're just going to do [everything that a manager does]. You need to grow in your career."

Me: "That sounds like you want me to be a manager."

I saw right through that and made it pretty clear that I wasn't going to be a manager, and I wasn't going to be tricked into being a manager without the title of manager. If I was going to be forced to be a manager, I was going to take that job I mentioned in my original post. It helped that I missed a meeting with upper management because a job interview ran long.

In part, it's not that I don't want to be a manager, I don't want to be a manager for the company I work for. I know too much of the code to be hands- off, and I'm remote. The culture is far too interrupt-driven in our office to be a remote manager.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I was for about four years. Then something changed, the tone of the office changed. There's a drive to get poor quality work out the door fast rather than high quality work when it's ready (which is why I took this job to begin with).

<comment><USER33> Yeah. Jobs and teams are good... until they're not. No good situation is forever. But if you've got management sanity, good coworkers, and interesting work, don't casually walk away - until it changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yes, but mostly because I co-founded a company working in an area I was interested in and enthusiastic about (VR). I work remote from home (the company is currently fully remote) and we all have pretty flexible working conditions.

</comment><comment><USER35> Yep, I like my job. I work at a healthcare startup and have been here since near the beginning.

Working conditions are nice, I'm on one of many small-ish teams (usually 5-10 people including management), 9-5 work doesn't raise eyebrows, I get to work with decent technology (clojure/scala/typescript), my colleagues are clever, and I've gotten much better at programming.

One of the best parts is that though it may be a bit circuitous, I can usually see exactly who I'm helping and how.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm not sure exactly what you mean by senior, but my title says I'm senior (6 years exp, 3 in this job). I would say I'm beyond reasonably happy. I found a good company with senior management I can believe in and co-workers who are strong technically and easy to work with. Although the industry, advertising, is no one's favorite, our mission is to make it suck less while supporting people who create real journalistic value which I can get behind.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is a really good question. Yes, I'll get to an answer (skip to the bullets at the end if you want), but first I'll set the scene a little. Junior devs who chafe under others' direction/decisions/criticism often think everything will get better once they're senior themselves. I know I did. It reminds me a bit of kids/teenagers who think being out of school and/or head of a household is going to be a great liberating experience. Again, I did. But the reality in both cases is addressed by this cartoon - a copy of which lives on our fridge.

[http://www.fowllanguagecomics.com/homework-bonus- panel/](http://www.fowllanguagecomics.com/homework-bonus-panel/)

So yes, being a senior dev often means spending _way_ too much time doing all of the less-fun things on a project. Planning and scheduling, maintaining all of the infrastructure others depend on, interfacing with other groups, etc. Spending half of every day reviewing (and having to argue about) others' code is even more annoying than having your own code reviewed once in a while. Being the "debugger of last resort" is satisfying once you're done, but can be intensely frustrating while you're in it.

This list of gripes suggests the solution: one must _actively_ resist all of these extra roles. Relentlessly. Yes, you'll be dragged into doing all that stuff anyway, but if what you enjoy is designing and coding then you have to _protect_ that time. With all that said, here are some of the keys for me:

* Find fun projects and good people to work with. Always important, but ever more so as you become more senior.

* Work from home (at least part of the time - for me it's practically always)

* Explicitly block out time for the different activities. Set aside a morning for code reviews, an afternoon for your own coding, etc. For me, working in a time zone three hours ahead of most of my peers is a _huge_ plus here.

* Require meetings to be scheduled well in advance. Decline with prejudice when people get too casual about this. Make it clear every once in a while that you're doing this as a matter of policy/principle. To soften that, show interest in the _content_ e.g. by providing offline feedback.

* In general, say "no" a lot. Be polite, compromise or defer when you need to, but don't be a pushover and don't be passive-aggressive.

* Accept that you might get dinged for all these things. You might get fewer promotions or smaller raises, maybe even a bad review. OTOH, the increased focus on what you're best at and most passionate about might _improve_ your performance compared to being pulled in seven different directions.

<comment><USER4> Can't agree more!

Most important, if you get dinged in a review, escalate. There's nothing like the company founder going to your boss and and saying that the thing you're getting dinged for is not your job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't find my job to be a tedious grind at all. I enjoy working as part of a team (specifically my current one) and helping to make everyone around me and the business successful.

I have had to shift around the day-to-day tasks I work on occasionally, but finding and working on high leverage parts of our technology and business is pretty rewarding.

</comment><comment><USER39> I am a senior dev and work in a fortune 10 company. I only do it for money. I used to very excited about software, but after 10 years of development have realized, only few get to have fun at software and also get paid for it.

</comment><comment><USER40> Please first define "happy"? Is it bursting with joy to step foot in the door everyday? Yes, I step feet in an out various times throughout the doors in the office and I am happy to peel my eyes off of the computer screen.

</comment><comment><USER41> Yes. Senior Freelance Full Stack Engineer at the moment. ~18 years of coding, ~15 years of professional work. Been in startups, both my own and as an employee.

</comment><comment><USER42> I am a contractor who has a few startup exits under my belt. I hack and work to help and further man. I don't need the cash and don't have a family.

<comment><USER43> So you're a contractor who just jumps between startups? How do you get started with this? Just a network with lots of entrepreneurs I presume? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Yep! Love my job. It can be annoying sometimes but in general I work with amazing people, which is probably the most important piece of the puzzle.

</comment><comment><USER27> No but that's why I'm a contractor because the £££ offset the misery.

</comment><comment><USER45> Of course writing code is always fun. Meetings can be fun when you ignore the meeting and keep working.

</comment><comment><USER46> Who is a senior dev?

<comment><AUTHOR> I had in mind someone who's been in at least a couple companies (megacorps, startups, something in between in terms of size, tech companies but also regular "boring" businesses like a bank), has some tech lead experience (or is at least very influential in his team). In other words, someone who had enough opportunity to see what flavors of the job are available and what it really entails.

As for the purpose, I mostly included it in my question to specifically not get answers from less experienced people, who may still be in their honeymoon period.

The background here is that I am in a job that will allow me to retire in 5 years (and nothing else pays even close in my country) but is so mind- bogglingly nonsensical that I wonder if it would make sense to change it to something satisfying even if it having to work much longer.</comment></comment>


NASA Shares Initial Findings from Boeing Starliner Orbital Test Investigation - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2020/02/07/nasa-shares-initial-findings-from-boeing-starliner-orbital-flight-test-investigation/ <comment><USER2> > Software defects, particularly in complex spacecraft code, are not > unexpected. However, there were numerous instances where the Boeing software > quality processes either should have or could have uncovered the defects.

Again Boeing's software development practices are coming around to bite it in the ass. There needs to be a reckoning in the company and soon.

<comment><USER3> I must respectfully disagree.

Boeing is doing EXACTLY the right thing to increase shareholder value.

You forget these things are done under Cost Plus contracts.

You get paid to make something broken. If it is broken, you get to fix it and get paid extra for the fix. If the fix is broken, you get paid again to fix the broken fix.

Another example. Having SLS go so spectacularly over budget and so astonishingly behind schedule is one of the most profitable things ever done. Never get it off the ground. Just ensure the project is never canceled.

Now I hate to sound like a troll. Or like this is a joke. And maybe it is a joke.

BUT IT IS REALITY. The reality we live in. Sorry if it's not what we wish it was.

(NOTE: see below a reply indicating this is NOT a cost plus contract)

<comment><USER4> Companies don't like cost plus. The amount of profit is limited, and the govt has total access to all book keeping. In addition, the govt program doesn't have an unlimited budget. They have some 'management reserve' that can be added to a cost plus contract when the initial funding is consumed. When that is gone, it is a big problem. Companies like Firm Fixed price. Possibility to bring in more than a 5 or 6% profit.

<comment><AUTHOR> The JWST serves as a pretty good counterpoint to this argument.

Initial budget $0.5B. Current budget: $10.0B.

<comment><USER4> I am sure there are exceptions. Let me try to add some clarity, from my work experience. Cost Plus work is only done when there is risk. It is monitored on a cost and schedule basis by the customer (govt). At certain cost milestones, there is a decision to stop, add more money, change requirements; deal with reality after more has been learned about the problem. It is agile to the extreme (from the development lifecycle perspective).

As a government contractor it is extremely bad for business to not deliver on a cost plus contract (meaning your customer has exhausted his budget; not what he originally OK'd you starting with). In this case the contractor can not finish the work and take a loss, as that is against the FAR. What happens is the customer is stuck and, in general, they remember. Now, if you are the only game in town, perhaps it is a way to force the govt to throw you more cash. Most contracts are not like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh dear ... the 737MAX of spacecraft.</comment>


Nimrod: The Return of Pascal - <AUTHOR> http://steved-imaginaryreal.blogspot.sg/2013/09/nimrod-return-of-pascal.html <comment><USER2> "Pascal" in this context seems to be "static typing with bounds checking" along with a handful of superficial syntactic similarities (but far more differences). You could substitute "Pascal" with a substantial subset of Algol-like languages and the comparison would make just as much (or little) sense.

<comment><USER3> As about bounds checking, unfortunately, there aren't many languages with dependent typing. (And Nimrod lacks them too.)

I mean, it's frustrating when a program suddenly fails at runtime. Especially when it can be proved at compile time that values won't (actually, can't) get out of bounds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lazarus and Free Pascal have been around for an age, likewise Delphi for even longer. And they're all still here. Pascal adoption may have slowed, but it has always been here and no "return" is necessary.

Nice project though.

<comment><USER5> Wow, I knew about Lazarus but I didn't realize there were still new versions of Delphi coming out. Anyone used it recently?

Delphi got me my first paying programming jobs. I remember when later versions came bundled with Delphi 1.0 so you could still build 16-bit applications with it :)

<comment><USER6> Recent releases of Delphi have been troubled and a bit directionless; it seems like Embarcadero, the current owners, are understaffed or incapable, and they seem scattered and unable to make consistent strategic decisions.

<comment><USER5> Bummer, but not too surprising. I was puzzled by some of the decisions they made back in the Inprise years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Previous discussion of this post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6316536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6316536).

A longer thread about Nimrod: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6272600](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6272600).

</comment><comment><USER8> Not sure if this will really help improve the adoption rates for Pascal.

</comment><comment><USER9> In a world with maps and folds do new languages really need for-loops? They seem like putting goto into a language as a fallback for uncommon performance cases and people who don't have the hang of higher order functions.

In particular, I don't like the fact the for-loops are often used in first examples. I had that issue when I looked at tutorials for D and Go for the first time. My initial reaction was "Seriously?"

<comment><USER10> Loops have their place: in imperative languages, they allow you to very naturally express a series of instructions, which are of course what imperative languages are meant to express in the first place. By the same token, loops aren't really of much use in functional languages, if they're supported at all, unless the language also supports destructive update (and therefore has imperative features). One can debate the merits of imperative vs. functional programming, but there's no reason to avoid for-loops as a natural expression within the imperative paradigm.

One thing I like about python loops, which CoffeeScript and Ruby, and apparently Nimrod, have adopted as well, is that they make you iterate over a data structure, rather than the C-style of providing start, finish, and step. Iterating over a data structure provides a better guarantee that the loop will terminate without errors (whereas, in Java for example, you could fall off the end of a linked list or an array if you're not careful about your ending test or update step). This ends up being conceptually similar to a map, which is how Ruby's each method works anyway.

<comment><USER11> In Java, you can iterate over a collection or an array without fiddling with indexes, eg:

        for (Foo foo : foos) {
            ...
        }</comment></comment></comment>


Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110728/00525815296/that-didnt-take-long-spotify-sued-patent-infringement-just-weeks-after-entering-us-market.shtml <comment><USER2> I am really curious if an event like _this_ will eventually promote change in the software patent laws.

We've been watching events like Lodsys running around kicking everyone in the knees and international developers pulling their apps out of the app store out of fear of litigation[1] while Apple seems unable[3] to actively step in and protect its developers.

Then you have other patent trolls sitting around, biding their time and waiting for targets to become profitable enough to make it worth their while to sue[2]

For something that was created with the sole purpose of protecting innovation, it has really become a perversion. Hindsight is always 20/20, but I think the original laws were put in place out of good intentions (path to hell and all that...)

If software patents are done away with, I think we just throw the pendulum in the opposite direction and now everyone with money and strong development teams steamroll the competition.

For example, I am sure Skype developed and patented some seriously impressive tech for VoIP and video that Google, Microsoft and Apple would have simply ripped off if given the chance... as opposed to licensing it or buying the parent company.

There has got to be a middle ground where the original intent of the patent system is maintained, but we do away with these selfish/unprincipled folks that buy up portfolios just to molest the system.

[1] [http://www.iphoneanswers.net/2499/will-international-app- dev...](http://www.iphoneanswers.net/2499/will-international-app-developers- leave-the-us-app-store-over-patent-fears.html)

[2] <http://mashable.com/2011/07/25/angry-birds-lawsuit/>

[3] [http://www.edibleapple.com/lodsys-argues-against-apples- moti...](http://www.edibleapple.com/lodsys-argues-against-apples-motion-to- intervene-on-behalf-of-ios-developers/)

<comment><USER3> IANAL but I have to imagine that one simple rule would bring back the validity of patents as an innovation protector:

If you have a patent, you MUST have a product or be working on a product using the technology in question or you cannot litigate others using your idea.

Patents are required to protect the truly innovative individuals and groups from huge corporations who can, as you said, just steamroll them and steal ideas.

I'm afraid it will get a lot worse before we finally get this fixed, though.

<comment><USER4> That rule is easily circumvented. Just write a 10 line python script that references the patent. Release it as MyPatentApp version 1.0 and we're back to litigation square 1.

I believe that in such a quickly changing engineering landscape as software, best way to fix patent troll problem is to make software patents expire in 2-3 years.

<comment><USER2> Hrrmmm... good point.

So all that would do is require patent trolls to keep around a small development team to mockup wrappers to whatever IP they buy up to show they wrote it?

I suppose the due-diligence requires to disprove shenanigans wouldn't scale and could easily be gamed by reams and reams of "source code" that actually did nothing described in the patent but was sufficiently complex so as to confuse.

This makes me think your approach to expiring them after a short period of time is the right approach to start with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Until recently, I thought that the patents issue was a PITA, but not that big of a deal, and something that would eventually pass after a lot of damage is done.

Now, I really believe that unless things change, the US is going to have a lot of trouble attracting new businesses to start at home, or foreign companies providing services in the US. Spotify will run their own cost benefit analysis of fighting the lawsuit versus attracting future revenue. Many small services that cannot afford an upfront lawsuit in the hope of future American revenue will just not open shop or services for the US.

It hurts me to see how the patent system is screwing with every damn thing. As they say for startups, competition from other countries won't hurt America, but inefficiencies and bad decisions within would. And IMHO the risk is not hypothetical anymore.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. Usually when these threads pop up there's some speculation on getting rid of software patents, but I'm afraid that's no longer in the relam of possiblitity.

Way too much money has been poured into buying massive patent portfolios by the big boys, from Apple & Co. to Paul Allen. If some upstart Congressman suddenly tried to pass a law to invalidate them, you can bet multi-millions would be spent to prevent that and get him/her unelected.

A compromise that protects startups in some way may be the best we can hope for at this point, I'm afraid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> With that kind of welcome, I'd just say screw it and leave. The US is a big market sure, but there's lots more Europe to do where there's less crazy.

I'll go back to listening to spotify via a vpn through our sever in London. An IP curtain has descended across the continent...

</comment><comment><USER8> "You could have asked any semi-competent engineer how would you build a digital music streaming service, and you would have received a similar general explanation."

The question I had after reading that was "who thought to ask about building a digital music streaming service in 1995?"

I was a little disappointed the post didn't cover that.

Statements like that remind me of the often cited "I could have done that" when people talk about art.

<comment><USER9> Patents are for actual technical implementation, not ideas for things which would be nice if they could actually be built. I don't get a patent for imagining how great it would be to have pizza delivered by slingshot _even if_ no one has thought of it before, and _even if_ it delivering pizza by slingshot turns out to revolutionize the world. I have to actually invent the slingshot capable of delivering a pizza accurately. And if that invention is obvious for a semi-competent engineer ("Put pizza on big pannk stuck in the ground. Pull back plank and release.") I won't be awarded a patent.

Now, I can agree that it's conceivable that there _could_ be a benefit for allowing such ideas to be patented. For instance, I've always thought that it would be convenient to have a foot-pedal to turn on your kitchen sink so you didn't have to use your hands to turn on and off the water while you washed dishes. In my imagination, the everyone would immediately realize how great these pedals were if a single company started to produce them. And, in that case, everyone would enjoy a huge boost in utility.

However, there's no way for me to capture any of that surplus because I can't patent a foot pedal for a sink under the current definition of a patent. If I started a company to sell these foot pedal installation, and it became popular, a million other companies could enter the market and sink me. And, all things considered, it's probably better that way.

<comment><USER7> Every hospital I've ever been in has foot pedal operated sinks on the way into the OR's. Most of the gizmos either have a patent number or a pending etched somewhere on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This patent was filed in 1995 [edit: and it actually claims priority back to 1994]. Was there really much relevant prior art in this space back then?

One other comment: I really appreciate that techdirt actually included a claim from the patent. Most articles posted here just quote the title or the abstract, which is useless as far as determining what's covered and what's not.

<comment><USER11> Back in 1992 we used to stream music over the network of Sun machines at St. Andrews university[1].

The way we did it was pretty trivial: just piping into rsh from and to /dev/audio. However it was certainly streaming of music by anyone's definition.

[1] Making the admins of said network mighty pissed off in the process -- I believe the whole campus was on 10 Mbps at the time.

<comment><USER12> From what I can tell reading the patent, what you describe would not be prior art.

Two things would need to be present -- DRM of some sort. And music metadata.

These are two things that I suspect Spotify makes use of. I suspect you probably didn't at St Andrews for your streaming, but let me know if you did.

<comment><USER10> Just a semantic thing, but it is still prior art... it's just probably not prior art that, on its own, is enough to invalidate these claims. It could still be relevant for obviousness purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Everytime something like this is posted on HN, people say in the comments "I hope _this_ will push patent reform". I feel like this issue has been brought to light a lot recently, but is this just my bias as an HN reader? Have lawsuits and patent fights been going on for many years, or is it escalating right now?

<comment><USER14> This Forbes article: [http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/07/28/the- supreme-co...](http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/07/28/the-supreme- court-should-invalidate-software-patents/)

Makes a neat argument that software patent arguments are finally entering the mainstream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> And they wonder why some companies don't want to do business in US anymore. US has a lot to fix to bring its economy back.

</comment><comment><USER16> It is Spotify today, which is just a music streaming service.. for which a lot of other alternatives already exist. It could be a high-tech foreign robotics company in future which might just decide not to market products in US or worse price them much higher factoring in all the litigation fee...

</comment><comment><USER17> This is ridiculous. How were they even approved a patent for something so broad and general? Is it a matter of the judges not understanding the technology?

There are a lot of recent law school grads out there that are having a hard time finding jobs. I tell a few of my friends in such a situation all the time that they should get into the IT area because there is so much going on. What's the climate like for challenging patents like this in court?

<comment><USER18> Judges don't grant patents. The US Patent Office does that. Patents this broad are not at all unusual.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for clarifying, I should look into it more but it's sometimes difficult to follow these legal things.

I know it's not unusual, that's my basic question. I can't imagine anyone reading the patent excerpt in that article and going "oh yeah, Spotify definitely ripped that off." Why are these vague and general patents getting approved?

<comment><USER19> You should really listen to last week's This American Life, available on podcast.

You'd be horrified to learn that not only are overbroad patents being awarded to people, but also regularly being awarded to multiple people/business entities. Multiple groups holding patents for the same things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder what would happen if patents had to be renewed each year, and the renewal fee doubled each year?

<comment><USER21> Wow, now there's a genuinely interesting idea I haven't heard before. It would prevent against patent trolls biding their time until someone profitably introduced something.

It's kind of a "put your money where your mouth is" type solution, which actually helps the little guy, too. I like it!

It doesn't help against granting stupid patents in the first place (e.g. Amazon's one click checkout), but limits their impact, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd like to file a patent please. It's for a system of computer fastness where somehow we manage to get a processor to switch at a frequency of 1000ghz and use that speed to perform rapid computations to execute various programs really fast.

 _wait 15 years_

Booyah!!

</comment><comment><USER23> I hate patents as much as the next guy, but to imply a patent is less valid because it was purchased is bunk. Part of the value of patents is that the inventor can sell them. If they aren't as compelling after being sold, then the inventor can not demand as high a price. That doesn't seem fair to the inventor. The fact that the patent has changed hands should not influence anyone's opinion on the matter.

</comment><comment><USER24> But why Spotify and why now? Couldn't they have hit Apple, Real, Microsoft, (new) Napster, Amazon, Pandora, Last.fm and a zillion other drm-music-to- device streaming services before now? Have they summonsed these services already but we just don't know about it? Who exactly is trying to keep Spotify out?

<comment><USER25> Spotify is just getting established in the US market, so they might be particularly attractive, weak prey that can be easily killed in order to establish a precedent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> One of the problems is that this companies don't have anything to loose by bringing these lawsuits. They just have to fill some papers electronically, pay a few hundred dollars and the other party have to loose thousands of dollars to protect itself.

<comment><USER27> I'm not for these patent trolls at all... but litigation costs money on both sides, not just defending.

<comment><USER26> The cases that these patent trolls bring to court are very similar to each other. If you check the court summons they are almost all the same, they just change the name of the company and some little details.

<comment><USER27> Right... but the actual court case will cost money. Filing a lawsuit might be cheap but following through surely can't be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Maybe this is the buzz Spotify was banking on to get to 50M users.

</comment><comment><USER29> As a result, patent lawyers, who know zilch about software or technology are making a killing.

</comment><comment><USER30> Somebody wants a piece of that pie.</comment>


Ask HN: Collecting pictures from friends using a selfhosted service? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN!
My wife and I had a wedding ceremony today, and our friends clicked some great photos that we'd really like to have. However, co-ordinating the sharing of these pictures manually is overwhelming.
I do not prefer a 3rd party hosted service for this. No Facebook messenger/WhatsApp/Dropbox/iCloud/Google Photos. This restriction is due to privacy concerns and the fact that not all of our friends have the same service. Not all on Facebook, Not all are using iPhones, Not all have a Google account etc.
What I'd really like is to run some kind of service on my webserver, and generate an easy to use url/link that our friends will use to just drag & drop their photos of us. Ideally, we'd like to not ask our friends install any app on their phones. It should just be a link they open in the browser of their phones, and select pictures to upload - done.
I could not find such tools through Google search. Anybody here have any ideas? <comment><USER2> For most people, I would bet that sending over email is the easiest thing. Create an address specifically for photos and write a script to download the attachments. You might run into issues with attachment sizes of course. But hopefully most people only have 5-10 photos they want to share. For those who want to give you a whole roll of shots, they might just be the edge case where they can just upload to their a shared GDrive or Dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can do the following things to achieve this :

1\. Create php script to upload image and then save it to your webserver. 2\. Save the names of the photo in the database with a single random string to identify the photos. 3\. Read this random string to identify and display the images (or create a download link for the images) 4\. Share this URL with your friends.

Its just my opinion, I am looking for what other have to say.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have no idea what your platform or experience level is, but if you have macOS, then maybe MAMP is worth a shot. You could set up your own personal Wordpress blog and only expose the upload interface?

[https://www.mamp.info/en/](https://www.mamp.info/en/)

Sorry to be unfamiliar with other platforms in this context.

</comment><comment><USER5> A simple flask or Django app will work</comment>


Concerns teen being 'railroaded' in privacy breach to cover government slip - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/concerns-teen-being-railroaded-in-privacy-breach-to-cover-government-slip-1.4616972 <comment><AUTHOR> This is the dangerous side of data being exposed by poor system design being discussed / referred to as a "breach".

This is the law in Canada he was charged under: [http://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-342.1.h...](http://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-342.1.html)</comment>


We Need a Working-Class Media - <AUTHOR> https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/why-we-need-a-working-class-media <comment><USER2> You mean, like bloggers?</comment>


Entire BBC Story (incl. final close-up) shot by Drone - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25303252

<comment></comment>


Apple's Organizational Crossroads - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2016/apples-organizational-crossroads/ <comment><USER2> I greatly enjoyed reading this article - the author comes with some excellent research and history behind his assertions.

I'm surprised to see no mention of Hewlett-Packard's similar struggles with corporate structure as it shifted into services.</comment>


Mozilla CEO donated to rightwing candidates, records show - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/02/controversial-mozilla-ceo-made-donations-right-wing-candidates-brendan-eich

<comment><USER2> Yes free software and open source can be adopted by those to the right of the political spectrum. Is this surprising, how?

Perhaps it's because we think that FOSS is free like socialism. I think it's more free as in free market. Perhaps it's because those in power have defended certain corporations in anti competitive practices and patents etc - but this is not really a political issue, more like corruption.

I work with open data - and one of the things we see in this field is that proprietary software likes it, a lot. It means that there's loads of great data to run on the software. And free software is used by commercial companies also.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think partly because the free market tends to be very money-driven, whilst FOSS doesn't. But, in general, it's no surprise that some members of the community have pretty right-wing views, and not necessarily much of a problem, beyond the wider implications. In this particular case, it's fodder for those wishing to attack Eich, and possibly more reason for those concerned about Mozilla's working environment and how it will be affected. Personally, I don't think there will be any direct impact on life at Mozilla, and the products it produces are hardly about to start being politicised, but it's more of a general concern that companies and CEOs convey some kind of authority, and views such as his might be lent credence as a result.</comment></comment>


Apple and Google to merge iOS and Android together - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamezebo.com/news/2011/04/01/apple-and-google-merge-ios-and-android-together

<comment><AUTHOR> I find it fascinating entertainment when people post "news" such as this with no informal or parenthetical citing, other than "An Apple Spokesperson said." For that matter, I could be an apple spokesperson, and say whatever I wanted in the name of Apple with no basis or backing.

</comment><comment><USER2> Would have been funnier if it were posted 4 days ago =)</comment>


Is a Crash Coming? Reasons to Be Cautious - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703723504575425723973560744.html# <comment><USER3> The crash is not coming, it's just returning. The original one was never over. Its effects were just postponed by pouring money in it (aka bailouts and buy- outs).

The real reasons - ultra high debt of all players, errors in the system, for- profit players not controllable by the three political branches - were not remedied, in fact they might have been even worsened (the debt increased because of the bailouts).

<comment><USER4> Why does this have 23 upvotes?

Nothing of any substance is stated here. Vague comments about "the players" and "the debt"--what players? Whose debt? To what extent an opinion can be extracted from this post, it's wrong. For example, I don't know who "the players" he refers to are, but my guess is they are _supposed_ to be for profit.

<comment><USER3> As for the indebtedness, I was speaking about the key layers of the economy - personal/household debt[1], corporate debt and public (government) debt[2]. We've grown accustomed to the debt as a regular part of our life, of how our households, businesses and whole countries work. This is very dangerous.

Regarding the unaccountability of the for-profit players, mind you, I'm pro- free-market as anyone here. But this piece of news[3] makes you rethink what happens at the highest level of the market, how the largest enterprises become uncontrollable institutions on their own.

[1] <http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/housedebt/>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png>

[3] <http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64796>

<comment><USER4> That third source is the Rolling Stone article everyone has seen a thousand times, wherein many perfectly ordinary market maneuvers are presented mixed in with a few instances of meso-level shady-looking deals, spiced with inflammatory rhetoric to make everything look bad. Then the whole parade of anecdotes and claims is cast as a sinister, company-wide conspiracy to deliberately profit off ruining the American economy, putting Goldman on the same level as the mythical Illuminati. Of the sources you could have chose to cite, that one isn't the best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This just in: an uniformed writer has ten reasons not to invest. In other news, there's unrest in the Middle East.

Almost nobody in the world can predict stock trends profitably. You especially cannot predict stock trends from articles in the paper. In general, people smart enough to predict stock trends and understand the macro factors will be working in stocks, not writing second-rate personal finance pieces for the WSJ.

(Also, the article essentially begins with, "I don't make predictions... but here are 10 reasons I predict a crash might happen". How silly.)

<comment><USER5> _In general, people smart enough to predict stock trends and understand the macro factors will be working in stocks, not writing second-rate personal finance pieces for the WSJ._

In general, a reputable paper like the WSJ will hire people that are smart enough to predict stock trend and understand the macro factors, people that may be working in stocks, to write finance pieces.

You provide no arguments to support your assertion that the writer is uninformed. The only argument is a single broad stroke that implies that nobody with enough understanding of the subject writes for any newspaper, which is easily refuted by all the articles written by exactly such people over the years.

<comment><USER4> _In general, a reputable paper like the WSJ will hire people that are smart enough to predict stock trend and understand the macro factors_

This is not true at all and I don't know where this is coming from. The signal to noise ratio in the mainstream media's personal finance pages is famously low. The WSJ is known for its reporting, not its investment advice. And had you bothered to look up the author on Wikipedia, you would have seen he doesn't work in equities, and apparently never has.

Sure, the author might turn out to be a genius who identified all the factors that will lead to the next big crash--if so, how come the genius reasoning is not evident in the article? Assertions like the second item--'the Fed is buying Treasuries, must mean they're nervous'--are presented in an unconvincing way. I assumed it was self-evident that these claims were unconvincing, but apparently it wasn't so.

So here's why that claim, among others, was uninformed: the Fed's stated policy is actually to not change the size of their portfolio of securities held outright. The treasury purchases are offsetting principal payments of other debt. The neutrality of this policy does not suggest 'nervousness' at all. [http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/opolicy/operating_policy_1...](http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/opolicy/operating_policy_100810.html)

<comment><USER5>
      I assumed it was self-evident that these claims were unconvincing [..]

Then there's no need to comment. Comments in places like these add value when they contain information above and beyond what is already contained in the article. If your assumption is correct, your comment simply states what everyone already knows. If the assumption is incorrect, your comment doesn't provide any argument to convince others that your claim is correct and the article is wrong. In either case, your comment doesn't add anything. There's no need to point out the blatantly obvious, unless to explain why it is blatantly obvious to someone for whom it isn't blatantly obvious.

What threatens the signal-to-noise ratio of HN is that more and more people start making unsubstantiated claims concerning articles. They may be right, but I, as someone with only casual knowledge of a given subject, will never know. People responding only to state their opinion, without supporting it with possibly convincing arguments. I don't feel those kinds of comments are worthwhile.

      And had you bothered to look up the author on Wikipedia

My point is that your argument was too broad and this individual author's credentials are inconsequential. Even if reporting in personal finance is awful in general, then after your comment, I still didn't know why this piece in particular is awful.

<comment><USER6> cynicalkane's biased; he programs for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Of course he wants to persuade the lemmings to invest so that he still has a job. Logical? yes. Immoral? probably.

<comment><USER4> It's nice that you think the HN readership is a bunch of lemmings off whom I intend to directly profit, but the CME is a futures exchange and has almost nothing to do with personal investing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a little skeptical of claim #1. According to Reuters, the P/E of the S&P 500 is at 16.1 (see [http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/financialHighlights?sy...](http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/financialHighlights?symbol=KO); look in the "Valuation Ratios" section in the right-most column). If 16 is the average, then the market is fairly priced.

The Schiller figure he references might include all publicly traded companies. If so, it might suggest that less well-known companies (outside the 500 most popular) are over-priced. But since the 500 most popular drive the market, you can't conclude a crash from that.

Most large-cap companies I have been looking at are trading at 15 year lows for the P/E, and at close to 15 year highs for dividend ratios. They still might be over-priced in an absolute sense, but we haven't seen prices this good in 15 years.

<comment><USER8> The article doesn't make it very clear, but Shiller's number is based on the average inflation-adjusted earnings of the previous 10 years.

See the Excel file here: <http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm>

The stock market is still very highly priced compared to historical standards (excluding the past 15 or so years).

See also the graphs on: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Shiller>

<comment><USER7> I downloaded his Excel sheet (which has more recent numbers than Wikipedia). I'm not sure what he means by "real price" and "real earnings" (as opposed to "reported earnings"?). But if I add a column for "real P/E", it puts us at just under 20, which is on the historical high end. So, following the trend in his data, I would expect the P/E to gradually decline to 15 or so, maybe even down to 10. (Under 10, buy like mad.) However, his data show gradual rises and then declines over a period of 20 - 40 years or so. These are punctuated with sharp drops, but according to these data, I would expect the next correction to drop us down to maybe 18 at most.

From some cursory chart exploration on yahoo, it looks like large-caps might not follow the market moves as much. Mar 2009 was about 50% of the S&P 500's current level, but KO only differed by 30% and JNJ only varied by 10%. I'd say solid dividend companies are not necessarily overpriced.

<comment><USER9> Real vs reported means that the real numbers have been adjusted for inflation from some base year (and looking at the CPI from his data, the base year is mid 1983). The problem with looking at such a huge data set (this goes back to the late 19th century, is that the companies, industries and the world that we live in shifts significantly over time. So the 'real' numbers are extremely important, but I'd have to do some more research to find out how his CPI calculations change from one era to another. This is important because (to the best of my knowledge) there is nothing that says that the P/E ratio of a major industrial company in the 30s (thinking like Rockefeller, etc.) is equivalent to that of a big tech company now. So as industries change, investment attitudes, etc. change, which will affect the overall P/E.

And as far as the market being expensive in relation to historics, again you have to compare apples with apples. There are more people investing now than 50 years ago, and there are more big companies. Both of these facts will drive up the price of the mainstream companies' shares.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's a more scientific way of predicting crashes:

<http://videolectures.net/risc08_sornette_fcrm/>

"Most attempts to explain market failures seek to pinpoint triggering mechanisms that occur hours, days, or weeks before the collapse. Sornette proposes a radically different view: the underlying cause can be sought months and even years before the abrupt, catastrophic event in the build-up of cooperative speculation, into an accelerating rise of the market price, otherwise known as a "bubble." "

</comment><comment><USER11> Sort of an OK article, but he misses the big point: the USA spends more money on their war department than the rest of the world combined, and we don't get any decent kind of return on that investment (although the defense industry and the congress members who they bribe do).

Sorry to sound cynical, but when talking about the economy, people tend to ignore the proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the room: 'defense' spending. This should be the center of conversation about the economy.

<comment><USER12> And defense spending is where billions are lost on side-projects which if made in the public sector, would lead to tons of innovation, but in the defense sector only lead to innovations on killing, which never helps the economy.

<comment><USER13> Almost all of the innovations that the post-war prosperity was built on were initially innovations in killing. Radar, sonar, microwave ovens, synthetic rubber, jet engines, antibiotics, atomic power, plastics, employer-provided health care, widespread automobile driving skills, rockets and space travel, satellite communications, computers, the Internet, and GPS all came out either WW2 or DARPA-funded research after the war.

I hate wasteful defense spending and the military-industrial complex as much as anyone, but saying that innovations in killing never help the economy is just patently false.

<comment><USER14> Do you have any evidence that shows that, given similar funds only _the military_ could have provided these innovations?

EDIT: Ok, weapons sure, but most of the entries in that list aren't weapons.

<comment><USER13> The other commenters basically have it right. _Given_ similar funds, no, there are lots of other organizations that could have provided these innovations more effectively. And really, I'd love to see the government double down on peaceful basic scientific research.

The problem is that these organizations will never be given similar funds. People respond to fear; they don't respond to the Higgs Boson. The only way to get billions invested basic science is to say that without it, we're at risk of nuclear annihilation from the Russians/Iraqis/Afghans/Chinese.

<comment><USER14> > People respond to fear; they don't respond to the Higgs Boson.

Is there no hope that we can educate people to be more rational? To look past the short term? And to stop seeing boogy men everywhere?

<comment><USER15> You got the answer right there in your sentence: _educate_ people. And then make sure the center of power lies with _educated_ people. Only trouble is, that's not how this things called democracy is supposed to work

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I should really avoid reading pieces like this. Tempts me to pull out of the market again even though I intended to hold my investments for decades anyway -- I only buy big ol' corporations that pay good dividends.

<comment><USER17> > _Tempts me to pull out of the market again [...]_

Which is how crashes happen in an imaginary economy.

<comment><USER18> That's what is so crazy about the stock market.

There's a strong self-fulfilling prophecy effect caused by mob decisions. If enough people think the stock market will go up, there's a surge in demand to buy stocks and so stock prices go up. If enough people think it will go down, they sell, and prices go down. Funny that.

So the real money may be in being the minority better, especially if you had some way of predicting what the masses will do next so you can take a position that will be profitable for you once the masses start betting. Thus, there's incentive to do a sort of front-running operation but on a huge scale. And to do it you need a media operation of some sort, and possibly some propaganda organs. Any guesses as to whether these theoretical entities already exist?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm skeptical of the doom & gloom stories a few months before an important election. The numbers don't look great but it could be a lot worse.

<comment><USER18> And with the economy, perception can become reality. If a player has a large enough bullhorn they can spew forth Messages that, if enough people believe them or act on them, can nudge economic reality in whatever direction they'd like. The WSJ is one such bullhorn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yeah, all they did was interrupt the correction, not stop it. And they're using the same unsound policies that created the bubble, trading our longterm economic health to get short term consumption-driven phony growth.

And its not just in the US:

      http://seekingalpha.com/article/219542-china-the-mother-of-all-bubbles?source=article_sb_popular

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow, a top 10 list article the the WSJ. I totally expect the US market to go down again for the simple reason that right now, the US looks like a failing empire that can't pay its bills on all levels from consumers to government.

<comment><USER9> Indeed, but remember that there as long as the collectors don't come knocking, whether or not you can pay at any one moment is irrelevant. In this case, it would take China calling in its US loans to adversely affect the States' ability to maintain, and even extend their levels of debt. For various reasons (the least of which is not that the US is the largest importer of goods from China) this isn't likely to happen. At worst China just moves away from holding US Dollars and more reasonably distributes its holdings worldwide. This will likely move the dollar lower, but is unlike to cause any long-term distress.

<comment><USER21> The US will always be able to pay debts in US$. At least as long as they can live with inflation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here we are again, trying to talk ourselves into another crash. I really don't understand the Journals (in particular) fascination with doomsday.

For every item on the list you can point to trends that are positive for the exact same metric. Like (there are a lot of other examples):

<http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100726-710938.html>

I agree that the economy is quite uncertain right now. However, waving the flag of doom isn't really productive at this point. Particularly when you're cherry picking data to arrive at what appears to be a foregone conclusion. I don't know if it's a fascination with disaster or (I suspect) more politically motivated.

Either way, it makes you no better than this guy:

[http://lamarhowell.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/the-end-is- ne...](http://lamarhowell.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/the-end-is-near.jpg)

<comment><USER23> More than doomsday, they play to fears. Back in 2005 it was about DOW 30k and how what a gem real estate was. The fear then was to being "priced out forever". Buy now or lose out, because your puny income won't compare with how much a 100 square foot shack costs in 10 years.

Now its about DOW 1k and losing everything you own.

<comment><USER24> I never understood how anyone could believe the priced out forever argument. A friend tried to argue it to me, but could never explain if everyone is priced out then who is left to buy? It just never made any sense to me even at the high point of the bubble.

I was successful at keeping 2 of my friends from making horrible financial decisions, but a third went ahead anyway. Now she's stuck owning a crappy apartment with an upward adjusting mortgage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Crashes can always come. Efficient markets have already priced in all these well known reasons for one.

This article makes the classic mistake of exaggerating the known risks.

Actually the crash is just as likely to be caused by something unknown. Maybe the US market will crash because the introduction an old age pension in China means they don't need to invest as much, and they just use the money buy Sushi instead.

<comment><USER14> > Efficient markets have already priced in all these well known reasons for > one.

Too bad there's no such thing as an efficient market [1].

[1] <http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284>

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the link.

I think this paper does help put bounds on the upper limits to creating efficiency through some mechanisms. Using those bounds you can think about the limits to which reasons for crashes are not reflected, based on size of the time series of crashes.

I always think of efficient markets as an idea like a frictionless surface, an invalid, simplifying model to make the mathematics tractable. So the question would be is the market close enough to efficient that well understood crashes are reasonably well reflected in it, most of the time: implying you should be thinking about something else.

I guess I should not believe in efficient markets since I work for a large active fund manager.

Our definition of "weakly efficient" is different that the paper you site. Our definition is "close enough to efficient to make exploitation infeasible". And I can't simultaneously believe in that, and believe in our products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I totally lost any trust to the author of that article after I've read this: > 9\. We're looking at gridlock in Washington.

Gridlock in Washington is a good thing for economy. Government is not capable to interfere with business and spends less -- the result -- boom in the economy which we observed in ~1994-2000 ("Clinton with Republican Congress" era).

<comment><USER27> All the unemployed could, and probably should, be put to work building/restoring public infrastructure. None are now because that would be "socialism".

It is a fun/depressing exercise to imagine how you would improve the US if you had 14.5 million (<http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm>) people to order about.

<comment><USER27> Well, I suppose that came out sounding a bit communist, and OT. Fwiw, the point was that, if there's gridlock, then there's no hope of seeing any of the needed job-and-value-creating investment in public infrastructure development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I read this last week and promptly expunged it from my brain. Any "Ten Reasons..." list should be automatically suspect.

</comment><comment><USER29> Insightful piece. However I feel it is not correct to measure deflation by housing prices, since they are never factored in inflation index firstplace.

<comment><USER30> But the debt behind the houses will default, resulting in deflation. You're talking about the CPI, which always only measured owner equivalent rent (so they could hide the inflation).

<comment><USER29> But is there any widely used inflation index that takes house prices into account? It is bound to show tremendous inflation, yet we never see that kind of figures.

<comment><USER30> Not that I know of.

The Shiller index was one of the best metrics for prices themselves but didn't relate to relative inflation that I know of, the math would be easy enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hmm, would this be a contrarian signal to invest?

<comment><USER32> Only if this article represented the conventional wisdom, rather than a pseudo-contrarian view in itself.

Actually it's a difficult time for contrarian investors, since I'm not sure there _is_ a conventional wisdom. But if I had spare money I'd be sticking it all into "socially irresponsible" companies: alcohol, gambling and oil.

<comment><USER25> There is always some conventional wisdom, even if it is not a directional view on the market as a whole.

Here is some conventional wisdom: "eBook readers will be cheap enough (<$99) that most people (>50%) will own one in less than 36 months."

So the contrarian would buy shares in physical book manufacturers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you're into contrary thinking, that's probably a great moment to BUY...

</comment><comment><USER6> Actually, the pink elephant in the room is the huge corporate debt - <USER2> domestic debts at 7.2 Trillions.

"American companies are not in robust financial shape. Federal Reserve data show that their debts have been rising, not falling. By some measures, they are now more leveraged than at any time since the Great Depression.

Central bank and Commerce Department data reveal that gross domestic debts of nonfinancial corporations now amount to 50% of GDP. That's a postwar record. In 1945, it was just 20%. Even at the credit-bubble peaks in the late 1980s and 2005-06, it was only around 45%."

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-biggest-lie-about-us- co...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-biggest-lie-about-us- companies-2010-08-03)

</comment><comment><USER34> This article is crap. He didn't even try to blame the oil spill.

</comment><comment><USER35> WSJ ... DOOM TERROR CRASH ... "GOP a 62% chance of taking control"

hmmm, wha?!</comment>


Rosetta Wearable Disk - <AUTHOR> https://rosettaproject.org/disk/wearable/ <comment><USER2> I had a look at the actual pages and they're pretty bad, Greek is listed as "Ekari-Drabbe" (what the hell is that?) and many languages have unicode symbol encoding errors (e.g. words like "?akke").

<comment><USER3> Ekari is an Indonesian language, and Drabbe is an author of a Dutch book on the language, so I assume Ekari-Drabbe refers to the transliteration of the spoken Ekari language to the Dutch (English-ish) alphabet according to Drabbe's method.

This is probably an off-by-one error. The ISO 639-3 code for Ekari is ekg, and modern Greek's code is ell. I don't know where you found this on the disk, but you should contact the project with the details and let them know so they can correct it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Link to interactive web version here: [https://rosettaproject.org/disk/interactive/](https://rosettaproject.org/disk/interactive/) (for the back: [https://rosettaproject.org/disk/interactive/?disk=back](https://rosettaproject.org/disk/interactive/?disk=back))

Also, interesting they used Google Noto fonts: [https://www.google.com/get/noto/](https://www.google.com/get/noto/)

</comment><comment><USER5> >Despite the rough life my prototype has had, we do recommend reasonable care. It is probably best to wear it as a pendant, or in some way that it doesn't get rough treatment (for example, I wouldn't recommend keeping it on a keychain).

It's 1000 dollars .. i wouldn't let it leave the house.

<comment><USER4> 1000 dollars isn't that bad for a necklace right? What about wedding rings for example.

<comment><USER6> $1000 is a already a very expensive necklace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be nice to have an electronic version. What interface would truly stand the test of time?

<comment><USER8> There is an electronic version on the web-page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1360](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1360)

The tiny rosetta is cool, but I'll keep my neck DVDRW in the mean time, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd buy one, but not for a thousand bucks. If they truly want wide dissemination they need to bring the price down by at least on order of magnitude.

<comment><USER2> Who's going to sift through the absolute mountains of crap with pretty pictures on them we've produced to discover the thing with the invisible lettering, long after languages have been forgotten?

<comment><USER10> Historians.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> this is fascinating.

I wonder if you could do something a tad larger for things like mathematics and logic.

I'd buy that. a wearable reference that you can use with optical magnification.

<comment><USER12> Then all you need is a special contact lens and you can cheat in exams!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What kind of lithography is involved with this?</comment>