Ask HN: Boss/Founder keeping my departure a secret. What to do? - <AUTHOR> I work for a small startup based in Cambridge, MA. A little over two weeks ago, I have my notice that I had found a new job and was leaving the company. The founder asked that I not tell the team yet because he wanted to decide how to break it to them - he was worried about how it'd impact morale and wanted to make sure it was handled well. I thought that this meant he'd share it with the team the following week.
Today is my last day, and he still hasn't told the team. Last last night, he pinged me in a DM on Slack and asked me not to tell anyone today. He wants to wait until next week, and he will tell the team himself. He also asked me to remove a line from my status report saying that I had left one particular project "wrapped up and ready to integrate with the main product."
Right now I'm worried. I wonder if he plans on telling the team that I was let go, rather than me giving notice and leaving amicably for a new opportunity. The fact that he wants me to update the status report feels like he wants no trace of the fact that I knew I was leaving.
I really want to leave on good terms. The founder is a good contact to have and I don't want to burn any bridges. Up until now we've had a great working relationship and he's frequently praised me and my work. I'm not sure at this point what I should do. Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> I think that transparency is key here. He hasn't been transparent with you about his announcement plans, or with the team about you leaving. I recommend being honest with him and the team. Tell him that you'll be announcing your departure to the team today. You could even say that you want to announce it together with him. If he doesn't want to be there, then that's fine too. But it's normal to want to say goodbye, grab lunch / drinks together, or whatever when leaving a job. He doesn't need to be prescriptive about this. I've had people leave my startup, and I've had to fire people. I am telling you right now, it's so much better for morale if someone leaves, then gets fired. It sounds like this guy is taking it personally and is worried his reputation of having someone on his team leave. Sounds like you're making a good move, by moving on.

Again, I would just be honest about your intentions and then deliver the news to everyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I agree with you on all points. Another factor making this is a little weird is that I'm a remote employee, so I won't be "going away" w/ drinks or luncheon or whatever like most employees do. But yeah, this whole episode sorta confirms that I'm making the right decision. :-/

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A little different take then some here. Many founders I have worked with over the years are paranoid that a leaving employee/contractor will steal other employees or others will ask them where they are going and it becomes a distraction etc. So they get really nervous and try to control the situation, in the end it will always backfire on them. IMO, it isn't that the founders are bad people, but they are intently paranoid of anything that can disrupt their team, company etc. What most don't seem to realize is many times it is their own behavior causing the issue, not yours or anyone else. A good/experienced founder would have announced your leaving early on and been open with the team etc, many times I have seen them take credit in a small way saying what you learned there probably made you more valuable (which isn't untrue many times).

My 2 cents, tell a couple of people you like/trust at the company that you are leaving and that you would have told them sooner but that you were respecting the wishes of the founder. They will get it, and if they all know this founder will probably be able to see it. Like you said in other comments, no reason to bad mouth or disparage the situation or Founder, just make it clear you are leaving, as that is important to you.

Also, use Social Media as a benefit here. I am sure if you use LinkedIn for example, a number of your fellow employees are on LinkedIn, update your profile to show you are moving on. They will see it and reach out to you, either today or sometime soon. If they aren't on your connections list, send them connection requests so they can see your profile update etc. Just your connection request will likely trigger some interest.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would politely insist that an email be sent out by the founder about your departure before the end of day. That way you get a chance of talking to your co-workers and explain the situation in your own words. To be clear, always be polite and never talk disparagingly about the company and co-founder, but the fact that you can't have a proper goodbye is a little strange. I've learned that it's always better to rip off the band-aid as quickly as possible while agreeing on an acceptable and honest message with the employee who is leaving. Better late than never I guess, so I would ask for this first thing this morning.

If it happens, send an email at the end of the day thanking everyone for the time you had with them, the knowledge you gain and the fun you had. Give your personal email and phone number in case there are any questions and/or someone wants to keep in touch with you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually drafted my "goodbye email" yesterday. :) And it was nothing but gracious and positive about the company and its potential, along with my personal contact info. I have no intention of disparaging the company or founder or anything - I'm more professional than that! ^_^

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE: Let my boss politely know that I was uncomfortable w/ this arrangement. He wasn't thrilled, but asked if he could address the team himself so it wouldn't be a complete shock, and of course I agreed. Talking to people discretely after (I'm a remote employee), it sounds like he didn't make it very clear that I gave my notice weeks ago and that everything was above- board on my end, so I told two trusted people what really went down in case it matters but I probably won't tell anyone else. I'll be sending out a goodbye message at the end of the day.

Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions!

<comment><USER5> The goodbye message is a superb idea, just so everyone knows how professional you were during this period (even though your boss was not).

Just send it before your official termination period (if you specified one) and not after. You should be completely off company resources once you are gone. Include your personal email address in the farewell letter, but do _not_ check company email once you are out the door.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would just tell my coworkers in private and say my farewells that way, but specify to not spread it around because it was asked that I not for some reason I don't understand. Your coworkers will spread it around themselves but hopefully not get back to your boss. If it does, just say you only told one person in confidence because of your personal relationship, and didn't intend for it to spread.

This solution is good because if your boss tries to bullshit your team, like say you were fired, they will know it's not true but they aren't going to try to contradict your boss either.

</comment><comment><USER7> Post a link to this in your Slack. They'll figure it out quick. ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> It might be a good idea to discretely gather contact info for some of the team members you trust. That way you will be able to let folks know privately afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER9> > he was worried about how it'd impact morale and wanted to make sure it was > handled well.

Suggest you and the Boss make a joint-announcement, right after lunch time, group-huddle style.

Tell him you'll make him look good and assure everyone you'll be available to assist in the transition.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am probably overreacting but something seems odd and you seem to feel this too (hence your post)... protect yourself with paper/email trail. If nothing else your fellow employees should know what happened and that you did your best to leave on good terms with sufficient notice. Hope you at least have an email or two about when you informed your boss you are leaving.

In my opinion the boss has put himself in a corner by delaying the announcement and its not like he can come out and say anything sensible at this point without disparaging you.

</comment><comment><USER11> My recommendation (as someone who has worked and managed in both small start- ups and large companies):

\-- Follow your boss' lead. It's his company. He has a sense for how he wants to stage-manage it, and you should let him do that, as long as he is still your boss and especially if you respect him and care about his opinion.

\-- For anyone whom you care about, make sure that you have their contact info (if it's a small team, I presume you already know everyone's phone numbers, FB logins, Twitter handles, etc). Reach out to them next week after you know he's made the announcement and suggest getting together for a beer. If there's any mis-information, you can set the story straight. If they're like, "dude, wtf, why u just skip out?" then you can tell them that the boss asked you not to disclose it.

\-- if the founder is going to bad-mouth you, there's nothing to stop him from doing it the day after you leave anyway -- or he would have called the meeting today, not invited you, and sent you home at lunchtime. So stop worrying about something you can't control and roll with it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Are they asking you to sign a release or any other document as you depart? If so, you could insist on a non-disparagement clause. If they want to wait until after you leave to tell everyone, that's their business, but if they mislead people as to the circumstances of your departure, that potentially injures you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah, haven't been asked for that. But if I am, that's not a bad idea. Might be a little late considering today is my last day. :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ping back saying you are not comfortable with that. Which is the truth you aren't.

Don't phrase it as a question either. You have played by his rules till the very end, this last request is not reasonable.

Say goodbye to your colleagues.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ask him the real reason why you still can't talk about it on the last day ? The whole "it will make the team worry" isn't working anymore. Kind of sounds like a dirty move, I'm afraid.

</comment><comment><USER15> If any of them read Hacker News, it seems that this will work itself out shortly - you have employment/project history in your profile, so I bet they could figure out that it's you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I removed a lot from my profile but I knew that, without a throwaway, if anyone really tried hard enough they could figure it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's always great to get personal emails etc from your coworkers to keep in touch. Explain, that this is important to you. There is no reasonable excuse for him to stop you.

</comment><comment><USER17> You could talk to the founder today and say you'd like to say a proper goodbye to your team before you leave. Ask what's the best way to do that in his mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. That's what I'll likely end up doing. Just need to cool off a bit first. :)</comment></comment>


Windows chief Terry Myerson out as Microsoft reorganizes - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/29/microsoft-reorganizes-splits-company-into-2-divisions.html <comment><USER3> Microsoft makes the most stable, easiest to use desktop OS, especially since Apple started slowing dwindling MacOS to make it into some kind of iOS varient.

Windows still drives me nuts, has ads, gets stuck in tablet mode when I'm on a desktop, and has driver issues from time to time, but the OS has grown to become my favorite desktop environment in the past few years, if for no other reason than that everyone else keeps screwing around and tweaking things that don't need tweaking. Linux GUIs have been getting all fancy with it, Apple thinks desktops are just for making Apple software, and yet Windows remains a great place to play games, watch movies, browse the Web. It's by far and away the fastest, most responsive desktop GUI out there. I hope it gets back to basics.

<comment><USER4> Mixing some things together, uh?

You can't tell me that you windows drives you nuts, and keeps tweaking and tweaking making it worse. Still it is (your opinion) better as linux GUIs or Apple's one.

And as arguments you mention playing games, watch movies, and browse the web?! All three are possible on all mentioned systems. The last two even in the completely same way as on windows (besides user interface).

I am just glad that i switched to the other two options and never had to look back. Apple also fucks up things. Still a pretty solid system for my use case. Also i am not able to see the iOS-varent movement you mentioned. Also Linux GUIs get better and better. It shocks me everytime what Windows Users tolerate while bashing the other two system, when i have to configure something on our AD (only used Windows Server in house). Inconsistent GUI Designs on expensive software, xbox gaming center preinstalled on a SERVER EDITION, everything shuffeled together, ...

<comment><USER5> Owner of windows 10 desktop, windows 7 laptop, and macbook pro here. Windows can go to hell. So many important things are crazy inconsistent. When plugging headphones stops being a complicated and finicky process I will consider re- evaluating my opinions.

Also do you know what the difference between a Windows fuckup and a macOS fuckup is? The macOS fuckup makes news while the Windows one in business as usual.

And there are adds. Built in to my OS. Fuck that.

<comment><USER6> Actually Windows has one of the easiest ways to switch between Audio outputs, right from the taskbar. I have no idea what you are talking about.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you have used a Mac recently then. When you plug headphones in, the sound outputs through the headphones. And it works if the computer was off when you plugged them in. Or asleep. Or closed. I probably care way to much about this.

<comment><USER7> > When you plug headphones in, the sound outputs through the headphones.

That's how Windows 10 behaves for me. I already knew it, but just tried again for you playing a movie using VLC and plugging in my headphones. Works like a charm.

<comment><USER5> No pop-up menus?

<comment><USER7> No nothing. Also, forgot to mention another test, went to hibernate while the sound playing through laptop's speakers, plugged in headphones while the machine is off, started the machine. Sound was coming through the headphones after the boot. I'm on a t450s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hope this gets them to focus Windows 10 back on corporate uses, or at least giving back some reasonable aspect of control. Candy Crush ads built in to Windows Pro is just absurd. MS already lost the mobile war, so they should be focusing on where they really shine, not trying to dumb it down to straddle multiple markets at once.

<comment><USER9> I have Windows 10 Pro and haven't ever seen an ad.

I'm genuinely curious what the difference is between my install and yours.

<comment><USER10> Windows 10 Pro has advertisements in the Login screen background, and the Start Menu -- by default, on every fresh install.

Yes, you can turn these advertisements off easily. But considering how much we pay for Pro (~$200), there shouldn't be any advertisements _anywhere_.

<comment><USER11> To be clear though, these "ads" are solely for Microsoft/Windows features, the most third party they get is being "suggested" apps on the Windows Store. Some people may not perceive them as "ads" (and Microsoft claims they aren't, as laughable as that is), because they are connected to Windows features, you'll never get sent to a third party webpage from these things.

And I don't think they're actually paid ads, for either the suggested apps or the rare occasion they've put an "ad" as the lock screen background. They've promoted the Surface on it before, and then for Tomb Raider, I think they were mostly pushing the idea of "hey, you can get games in the Windows Store now", rather than it necessarily being a paid campaign with the game studio.

<comment><USER12> > And I don't think they're actually paid ads, for either the suggested apps > or the rare occasion they've put an "ad" as the lock screen background. > They've promoted the Surface on it before, and then for Tomb Raider, I think > they were mostly pushing the idea of "hey, you can get games in the Windows > Store now", rather than it necessarily being a paid campaign with the game > studio.

So you're saying MS doesn't profit if you buy a Surface or something from the Windows Store?

<comment><USER11> No, nor I didn't suggest otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 'and one transition we have been planning for is for Terry Myerson to pursue his next chapter outside Microsoft. "

Gotta love corporate speak. Do they even realize how awful that is?

<comment><USER14> What else are they gonna do? "Fuck this guy amirite boys? Eat shit Terry!"

Personally I have no problem with politeness, even if it's a veneer. There's a reason cities full of millions of people can function without clawing eachother's throats out, and it's got nothing to do with Law.

<comment><USER13> This is not politeness but it's a cynical play with words. They should just say "We have decided to replace Terry Myerson".

<comment><USER14> Doesn't that do a disservice to Terry? The guy's been there what, two decades? They probably are grateful to him for their time there.

Why load headlines with any form of negative language whatsoever? Why plop any mines into future interviews he may have with other companies?

<comment><USER13> It's clear to everyone that he has been fired. Otherwise they would have let him resign by himself.

Saying "we have been planning for is for Terry Myerson to pursue his next chapter outside Microsoft" is a stab in the back. Not only did they show him the way to out but they also gave him a kick in the ass while on the way out.

<comment><USER14> "Fired" is such a loaded word. There are many reasons for a company to want someone to leave, and not all of them necessarily "negative."

Off the top of my head, when the oil and gas market dipped in 2014, tons of great engineers lost their jobs because the companies simply didn't have work for them. Or a CEO that's _really good_ at 5-50 startups simply not being a good fit for scaling 50-100 and upwards of 1000s of employees. Etc.

<comment><USER13> Trust me. He has been pushed out forcefully. Otherwise he would have resigned to "spend more time with his family".

<comment><USER15> To me, 'resigned to spend more time with his family' sounds like corp-speak for 'had a mental breakdown', or, 'succumbed to alcoholic dementia'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This provides a lot more detail on what's going on, instead of focusing on the (admittedly shocking) news about Myerson:

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-and-why-microsoft- is-...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-and-why-microsoft-is-splitting- up-windows-in-its-latest-reorg/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting. Terry Myerson was the head of the Windows Phone division through WP 7, 8 and the early part of WP 10 and bore at least some responsibility for its (lack of) success before being promoted to head of the Windows division as a whole. The inclusion of the much derided tie-in ads in Windows required at least his tacit approval.

The general impression was that he was one of Satya Nadella's darlings. One wonders what finally felled him?

<comment><USER18> Windows Phone was good.

The subsequent attempts to turn desktop Windows into Windows Phone were infuriating and ill-conceived. Almost everything that I liked about Windows Phone did not translate to the desktop.

<comment><USER19> Windows Phone was definitely NOT good. It was stable, and it was visually appealing. But it was always "almost there". It always gave you the impression that the next update would get there, but updates were super slow, if you would get them at all.

<comment><USER11> Windows 10 Mobile gets updates every month, just like Windows 10 does. (Also, it's fun to measure how much faster Windows Mobile phones are still patched for major vulnerabilities than Android phones. Even the Pixel took like three extra months to get the KRACK patch.)

<comment><USER19> Android is a really really low bar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Linux (various OS's on that kernal) have been objectively more stable and easier to use than windows since windows 8 came out. I plugged an Ubuntu machine into my work network and could print to any printer without installing any extra drivers! Updates ONLY when I want them. Also, no bloatware or unnecessary personal assistant tied to every search feature. Microsoft should've just polished windows 7.

<comment><USER21> Ubuntu installs by default updates automatically. Even if you choose no automatic updates during install.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's a bit disconcerting to see the apparent narrow mindedness of educated, technical people in regards to the forced windows update system. Linux's way of manual updating is better than windows, only because the only people using Linux are capable of understanding security issues and will update as soon as is is convenient.

The majority of the windows user base is of people who do not understand and maybe do not want to understand the security issues. Windows had the option to manually control the update process in windows 7. The HN demographic updates on time, grandma and the guy in accounting don't. They won't update until a major security issue reaches the mainstream. Even then the majority don't update simply because unlike us, they do not have the knowledge to do so.

Microsoft had to make a hard choice, and they made the hard choice. That hard choice is the reason 98% of wannacry infections were on windows 7 and barely 1% on windows 10.

If ubuntu somehow ends up replacing windows in hands of the general public, don't be surprised to see the same update system to appear in it.

<comment><USER23> > If ubuntu somehow ends up replacing windows in hands of the general public, > don't be surprised to see the same update system to appear in it.

If that happens, don't be surprised when a fork of Ubuntu comes out without the forced updates.

> The majority of the windows user base is of people who do not understand and > maybe do not want to understand the security issues. Windows had the option > to manually control the update process in windows 7. The HN demographic > updates on time, grandma and the guy in accounting don't. They won't update > until a major security issue reaches the mainstream. Even then the majority > don't update simply because unlike us, they do not have the knowledge to do > so.

The choice doesn't have to be between 'update now' and 'update never'. There are more polite ways of pestering people into doing something good, than completely hijacking their system.

The choice doesn't have to be between 'security updates AND feature updates, together' or 'nothing at all'. The "feature" updates don't have to include ads and auto-reinstalled Candy Crush. The "security" updates don't have to auto- enable explicitly disabled telemetry settings of users.

All of the development machines in my office either auto-apply security updates or prominently nag us to manually apply updates that can/could not be automatically applied. None of them reboot in the middle of a development session. None of them auto-install feature updates or ads or sponsored apps. All of them run Kubuntu LTS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If I read this correctly, Windows is no longer a top level division of Microsoft and is a part of Experiences and Devices.

This is huge. Few companies have reinvented themselves as many times as Microsoft has. From developer tools (BASIC) to Dos to Windows to Office and now to Cloud and Services.

Under Nadella, Microsoft has regained the agility for which it was famous for under Bill Gates.

<comment><USER25> Sort of. Windows shell/app/device teams got merged with other "experience" teams (i.e., Office), while Windows platform teams got merged with other platform teams (i.e., Azure)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Reading all these comments concludes...

Windows 10 - <USER2>

macOS - Slow & buggy.

Linux - No Apps & Games, Frequent changes in fancy GUIs

I think we've run out of options here. It's 2018 and we still don't have a solid Operating System. This is really sad.

I just hope fuchsia takes off really well.

<comment><USER27> Lol, we still don't even know what Fuschia really IS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I really hope they make fixing the long standing Windows usability issues a priority rather than adding even more "features" that nobody wants or uses.

<comment><USER29> If they fixed my two biggest pet peeves with Windows 10, I'd be so, so happy.

My number one pet peeve after switching back to Windows from Mac is the search.

On Mac, I used a hotkey for Spotlight to launch apps. It always found the right stuff, even with typos.

On Windows, the Search results can be ridiculously bad even when you spell things correctly. Given how MS owns a search engine and that Apple doesn't, you'd expect it to be much, much better.

My number two pet peeve is that there are two types settings - the new Windows 8/10 settings and the old Windows Control Panel. I don't know why it's taking so long to consolidate them, it unnecessarily complicates the user experience. Just pick one and go with it.

<comment><USER30> I gave up on Windows Search long ago. These days, I disable Windows Search indexing entirely, and use the Void Tools software called "Everything" \- it needs a new name so you can use it as a verb (I Everythinged for the file sounds wrong), but other than that, it is a near-flawless, INSTANT search.

Once, I was searching and searching for a particular file, couldn't find it anywhere. Was starting to wonder if I had deleted it or lost it...so I went looking and found HN users referring to this Everything thing.

I installed it, checked the box for "run Everything now" on the finish wizard, the window loaded, I typed the name, and poof, there the file was, 27 (or whatever, way more than 5) directories deep. My jaw hit the floor, and the rest is history.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, I get it. The first thing I disable on any Windows machine is the "search the web" part of search. I _never ever_ want a web search when I'm using the Windows search box. That default behavior drove me nuts.

The only thing I really use it for is launching apps (via the Windows key), in the way I used to use a hot key + spotlight on Mac.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is provably good for Microsoft. I watched a couple of presentations and Myerson never came across as very savvy in presenting their technologies. Not sure about his internal doings though, but they should have always used someone else to demo and present things.

</comment><comment><USER32> Putting Scott Guthrie in charge of Cloud and AI seems like a great move.

</comment><comment><USER33> 100% men. No women in a memo mentioning about 20 execs.

</comment><comment><USER34> I hope the new windows chief will take updates mess on top priority.

</comment><comment><USER35> I remember last year Microsoft did some major reorgs as well. Is it typical for Microsoft size organizations to re-org so much ?

While re-orgs are probably good for re-organizing the workforce around a set of goals but I think for lower level managers and individual contributors these are very distracting. Constant change in leadership affects employee morale.

</comment><comment><USER36> As someone joining Windows and Devices group out of college this summer, should I expect this to affect me?

<comment><USER37> Hey John, I work at MS too and welcome! As for how this may impact you, you should speak with your recruiter and connect with your hiring manager. Please do not hesitate to ask.

Personal experience differ, but here's my story. When I joined MS 9 years ago it was in the midst of the big layoffs, and my recruiter reached out immediately after news broke and made sure that everything is still in place and I am still due to start in the summer after my graduation, and I've been happily working here since.

Good luck!

<comment><USER36> Awesome, thanks for sharing your experience! I'll reach out to them if I don't hear anything. Looking forward to joining you all!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> He's lead windows for the last 21 years. He gave us Windows 2000, ME, Vista, 8, and 10. I am not surprised his time is up.

Microsoft has lost the next generation of computer users to Android and iOS because of their regular release of completely botched products. The enterprise company I work for just rolled out their Mac program and we are slowly transitioning from Windows.

It's time for a shake up.

<comment><USER16> Steven Sinofsky led the Windows division from 2009 through 2012.</comment></comment>


Farmers Deal with Glut of Food as Coronavirus Closes Restaurants - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/farmers-deal-with-glut-of-food-as-coronavirus-closes-restaurants-11586439722 <comment><USER2> Does this mean people eat less food? Or do restaurants throw away a lot of food?

<comment><USER3> Both. Even in good times restaurants discard a fairly large amount of food (there are even some charities devoted to collecting and redistributing that excess).

Now a lot of people are out of work and going hungry. Food banks are overwhelmed.</comment></comment>


Transit Resiliency Amidst Pandemic: Trends in Micromobility - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/sharing-the-ride-with-lyft/changes-in-bike-and-scooter-travel-behavior-during-covid-19-3b1444ab99cd <comment><AUTHOR> This is an interesting look at how transit is shifting around public Micromobility options like scooters and bike share. Notably, commute hours seem to be drifting away from bimodal morning-evening. A neat take!</comment>


Ode to Sequel - <AUTHOR> http://twin.github.io/ode-to-sequel/ <comment><USER2> Even when you're not using it for your app, sequel + irb make a nice database repl, especially useful if you want to transform and analyze some data with Ruby methods or need to work with several databases at once.

<comment> janko-m Yes, multiple databases are really useful for me, for some reason I often need to transfer data from one to another, e.g. legacy database to a new improved one (which I think happens often if you're in a non-startup).

In ActiveRecord you would have to specify for each model to which the database to connect. And then you have to figure out how to call a User model in one database, and how in the other (you have to call them differently, even if table names are the same). I think it can get pretty chaotic with something bigger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We do a lot of small apps with Sinatra, shared postgres database and sequel.

Since we are very data and database centric, sequel is all we ever wanted since it supports all advanced pg constructs.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't do Ruby anymore, but back when I first started I did a little side project with Sinatra and Sequel and definitely enjoyed it over ActiveRecord. As another user said, now that I'm a Python programmer, I have always been drawn to SQLAlchemy in a similar way.

</comment><comment><USER5> As someone who hasn't worked with Ruby in a while, I'm curious to hear if anyone has opinions on how Sequel compares to DataMapper.

<comment><USER6> Sequel is live, Datamapper is dead and Rom is about to be born.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sequel is an absolute joy to use. I've not seen a better thought-out ORM. Jeremy's support efforts are exemplary as well.

</comment><comment><USER8> As someone who is just dipping my toes into Rails (but has used plenty of other ORMs in other languages): ActiveRecord doesn't have native left join support?!

I'm really glad I came across this before starting my first Rails project. Thanks for the post!

</comment><comment><USER9> I had a similar experience switching from Django's ORM to SQLAlchemy.

The useful part of SQLAlchemy is the SQL library part. The ORM built on top, while nice, is entirely optional.

<comment><USER10> SQLAlchemy does have the issue that, as far as I know, you can't use it "entity-less": you always need to have Table and Column objects instantiated (possibly via reflection, but still…). That you can use sequel solely for query building without needing any kind of backing objects is neat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> white on white text \w Javascript. Why can't you use black by default? And no, I don't want to enable Javascript just to read an article.

<comment> janko-m Sorry for that, fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's nice to see people still finding and taking interest in Sequel. It was always my favorite ruby ORM. :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Sequel is the bee's knees

</comment><comment><USER14> Enjoyed the article, it describes most of the issues I had with ActiveRecord.</comment>


Valley of Broken Dreams: A YC Postmortem - <AUTHOR> http://warren.igsig.org/?p=19

<comment><USER2> Sadly, we did not make it either. Since I don't have a blog, I'll just say a few things here...

Basically, we did everything we could on our end:

-Had a pretty good demo. We spent a few months working on it part-time and we had the entire thing up and running with enough features for it to be roughly usable and we had some nice mock-ups of the future stuff we wanted to put in. I even showed them that TechCrunch featured one of the UI components (that was released as a standalone widget) done by our UI guy.

-we prepared very well. We met with a few people from the local startup community (organizers of DemoCamp, a CEO and CTO of a local startup, etc) and had them pick apart our pitch. They did a very good job and brought up a lot of concerns which we worked out. People I emailed beforehand said to expect a lot of questions at the interview and to think on your feet, but because we had already gone through this 3 times with the local people, none of the questions during the interview were new to us and we had decent answers.

So why didn't we get accepted? Well, there were simply better teams around that day. The email from pg did give two reasons, but to be honest, they were pretty flaky. The first was the community aspect (ie, it depended on user generated content) and the second our planned revenue stream. We had good answers to these ready since we expected they'd be raised during the interview and plenty of previous YC startups had overcome the same problems. The way I see it, if pg's philosophy is "build something nice people want to use, then worry about the money" and he rejects you because of revenue concerns, then it's basically a nice way of saying "Sorry, I just liked the other teams better"

Of course this illustrates a one of the downsides of the whole startup thing. A lot of the things you do in life are pretty deterministic: if you spend 1hr/day learning Spanish, you'll know it well sooner or later, if you spend 1hr/day working out, you'll increase your stamina or muscles or whatever you're working on. If you work 1hr/day on a startup up.. well, its probabilistic, so all you're doing is tilting the odds in your favour, but you're never guaranteed anything - be it progress or success or whatever. So all the work on the app and all of the preparation for the demo/interview was for naught.

Anyway... it'd be a shame to throw so much work away, so we'll probably work on it a bit more, then release it as a side project or something. At least have a decent project to put on future resumes or whatever.

<comment><USER3> Your last paragraph strongly suggests to me that you were rightly rejected.

Here's the last paragraph:

 _Anyway... it'd be a shame to throw so much work away, so we'll probably work on it a bit more, then release it as a side project or something. At least have a decent project to put on future resumes or whatever._

Translation: "Because one VC firm rejected us, I... _suppose_...I can still use the incipient startup as resume filler. Or whatever""

That's a loser attitude if there ever was one, and I'm going to guess that VCs look for it.

<comment><USER4> "That's a loser attitude if there ever was one, and I'm going to guess that VCs look for it."

I'd imagine VCs look for it too, but it's important to remember that what people _say_ and what they _do_ often have no correlation, and it works both ways. There're some folks that are all "rah, rah, we're going to take over the world" and then they crumble at the first difficulty. Then there are others that are "well, maybe it'll work and maybe it won't, but if it doesn't it'll look great on a resume, so I think I might give it a try, at least for now", then they keep at it for 8 years and exit for millions of dollars.

I'm reminded of James Hong's "Happiness = Reality - Expectations, so I do my best to keep expectations low" post. Everybody chided him for being so blase and said that if he expected to fail, of course he would. But if you look at what James has actually done, it's clear that he _hasn't_ failed, he just keeps his expectations low as a trick to stay motivated.

<comment><USER5> There's a funny disconnect that you can pull off though that I find quite useful. You can still be determined that you're going to take over the world without actually expecting it. It doesn't make much logical sense, but it's a pretty convenient way to approach things. From what I can tell this mindset is pretty prevant in i.e. sports teams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I should have reposted my old YC interview advice comment... I'll write a new set for the next round.

One of the main tips and a reason we didn't get in is that if PG and co suggest some kind of change to you, you should agree with whatever they say. One thing they're testing for is flexibility. Don't waste time defending yourself against them because you can't win.

Whatever they told you, think about it, run with it, and reapply in 5 months. If you can actually make progress towards solving online dating they'll accept you in a heartbeat. If YC was a VC that had a model for the types of companies they were going to invest in, online dating would be at the very top of the list.

<comment><USER7> As someone who was also turned down, my advice is actually the opposite: Do _not_ reapply in 5 months.

It's a mental thing. If you always keep the dream of YC on a golden pedestal in your mind (one that must be reached in order to be successful), you could be setting yourself up for further disappointment and wasting valuable time. I'm not saying that YC is not worth aspiring for (I still think its a tremendous opportunity), just that dwelling on it rather than your product will kill you.

5 months is a long time in startup world. You need to put your defeat behind you as quickly as possible and focus on building your product. Remember, that is what is really the most important.

Hopefully you learned some useful things about your idea and team from your interview. We certainly did, and for that I'm thankful. Its a little disappointing to hear that they no longer talk things over with you on the phone, but at least you got to meet some smart people and got some critical advice during the interview.

<comment><USER4> As someone who's been turned down 4 times from YC without getting to the interview stage, I'd say _do_ reapply in 5 months. Don't fixate on it, definitely do stuff in the meantime, but I think you should treat it as just one more thing you can do to maximize the chance of success for your startup.

The big advantage of applying isn't so much that you'll get in (I've kinda given up hope of that happening unless a buyout is imminent, a la Fleaflicker, and at that point we wouldn't need them). It's that it gives you a regular point to check your progress and see how what you've done stacks up against what you said you'd do. My experience - with 3 consecutive application cycles - is that we're basically doing exactly what we said we'd do in the first application, just 60-80% slower than we anticipated. That's very useful data when we're planning future milestones.

It also gives you a chance to revisit your assumptions and make any necessary course corrections. For example, we had a founding-team issue that PG brought to our attention with the first application that we corrected between app 1 and app 2. Several of the competitors we were initially afraid of have not materialized. The market as a whole does not seem to be developing as quickly as we thought it would, though it does seem to be developing. That's very useful data when we're trying to budget finances and decide whether it's time to go for outside funding. We have the excuse to take another close look at our competitors and see what they're doing wrong and what they're doing right.

It's easy to go full steam ahead on coding and then miss fundamental changes in the environment that render all your coding useless. 6 months is just about the right period of time to revisit your assumptions and see if it's still worth doing. You should be doing this anyway as a business, but YC gives you an excuse and a deadline.

<comment><USER7> I only say that because it seems few groups continue to build their product into something of quality after being rejected by YC and its sad. A prevailing view is if they cant be funded by YC, then there is no point in continuing.

Its almost as if YC could foresee this would happen with certain groups and it turns out true. Why does it seem all groups who are funded by YC continue to build something and all who are not, dont? I am exaggerating about the sharpness of that division but not by much.

It might often be because the idea is so early stage that it is easy for the founders to get derailed before following through with its execution. It might also be viewing YC as a requirement to be successful rather than one option.

You alone decide if you are willing to work until you bleed in order to build something great. So dont waste too much time thinking about things which could get in the way. I would really to see more founders pick themselves up after rejection and go on to release something stellar.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure it's two-fold. YC filters out people who aren't committed. Also, having someone believe in you makes you believe in yourself--it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This works in a negative sense, as well. For example, when pg says your chances of succeeding without a cofounder are low, if you internalize that, you won't succeed without a co-founder, because "why try" if you can't succeed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Secret to life: it's about the stories.

Fifty years from now will you remember that day spent coding, or will you remember your adventure in California?

</comment><comment><USER10> just going through the process of failing already puts you ahead. after school, most people don't put themselves in positions where they can fail at something. it's not human nature. so congrats.

</comment><comment><USER11> you're putting waaaay too much weight on this silly idea of startup success. seriously man, put things in perspective. what exactly were you expecting to get? life comes with its own sets of problems regardless of where you are.

if you have any savings go and travel the world. if you don't, work for a year, and then do it. my guess would be that 3 months from now you'll be laughing at yourself.

good luck.

</comment><comment><USER12> "What has greater social impact than online dating?!"

getting laid with online dating ?

<comment><USER13> If you are downmodding this, quickly read some craigslist person seeking person posts.

I would guess the majority are just looking for random sexual hookups. Some sort of eHarmony matching for sexual partners would probably be an overwhelming success.

<comment><USER14> id make a wild guess and say those already exist in community form on the internets.

for sex the problem is the same as in "real" life, women can choose so i doubt its just hooking up over the internets to get laid...

if guess its 10 to 1 or worse men to women wanting to get laid...

and that 1/10 is not jessica alba.

<comment><USER13> I really doubt that the ratio is 10:1, and if it is on most sites like that then there lies the problem to be solved.

Given any sort of relationship definition, I would guess that is never far off 1:1 for women and men interested.

And not all men are interested in finding Jessica Alba...she is obviously attractive but that is only a piece of the puzzle :)

<comment><USER15> Strangely enough, I know someone who got a PhD studying behavior on dating sites. She worked with a few dating sites and had access to their data. She also came up with clever ways to mine data from sites that didn't give her explicit permission. You're right in doubting the 10:1 ratio - it is more like 20:1 to 100:1 depending on what site you're on.

<comment><USER13> I don't disagree with you or your friend's numbers.

What I was trying to say was the number of women in general who participate in something like one night stands or a purely sexual relationship MUST be closer to 1:1 than 10:1 or 100:1.

Hence, there is great opportunity in putting together both sides of the equation, online sites by your numbers need to somehow draw the attention of women who they are clearly neglecting to serve well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bah. Getting rejected by YC is not the end of the world; and getting accepted by YC is no guarantee of success. At the end of the day, if you don't truly believe in your startup, then why are you doing it?

</comment><comment><USER17> Just like OP, one thing I didn't like about the interviews was the instant and final yes-or-no answer. In our case, YC said they were worried about a problem we did not think would be a serious issue. We did come up with a solution, but only a few hours later, which, apparently, was too late.

<comment><USER18> _one thing I didn't like about the interviews was the instant and final yes- or-no answer_

Yes, that is a problem for us too. We'd like to be able to spend longer with each group. But we want to give the maximum number of groups a chance to interview. If we spent more time on each interview, we'd have to interview fewer groups.

<comment><USER19> Have you considered drafting some YC alumni into helping you do interviews? I'm imagining a system where applicants would have several interviews with YC alumni and then you'd interview the groups which get the most "yes" votes from your alumni screeners -- I'm guessing that after going through the YC program people get reasonably good at identifying what it takes to be a successful YC participant.

Of course, this would depend on the availability of YC alumni. I know I'd sign up to do it -- if I were a YC alumnus, that is -- but the fact that I spend several hours per week acting as an alumni representative on my alma mater's university senate (and committees thereof) marks me as being unusually prone to volunteer for such things.

<comment><USER18> We did that this cycle. It seems to have worked well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It sounds like the founder didn't really believe in the idea.

I would not invest in founders that aren't passionate about what they are doing.

Find something that makes you excited.

<comment><USER21> Speaking of investing, now that your startup's been acquired have you thought about becoming an angel investor?

Everyone's always saying there's a need for more startup investors who were formerly startup founders themselves. Checking your profile on Fleaflicker, I see you're in NYC; there are bound to be angel investor groups that you could join if you didn't want to do it alone.

<comment><USER20> I'm not done with Fleaflicker yet. It's still my top priority. But yes, the thought has crossed my mind. Nothing more than that though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you have an idea you really believe in and you quit because YC didn't buy into it then you're fooling yourself.

You really need to follow through with your ideas whether or not other people believe after they heard your pitch for 10 minutes.

YC is indeed a great opportunity, but it's definitely not the only one. Keep working at your idea, go out to conferences and meet-ups -- you can network on your own. Be yourself and be your product.

I believe something that is important to YC is that you are not banking on their funding to fulfill your idea. You need to have the mentality that you are going to finish your product with or without them. You need to make them want to get on your boat rather than you praying to be on theirs.

We came across the application and decided to fill out as an exercise for solidifying our idea. Whether or not YC was going to fund us, we still had a plan of action, which is essentially still the same. I feel that our mentality is what gave us the confidence to interview the way we did.

Try again next time, don't be so bitter. Give value before you get value. If you make your product and it is good, word will spread, and you will succeed, just keep at it. Please.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sounds like you have some good takeaways from the experience. Next time, it won't be pg making comments but customers. You'll have to work harder to read between the lines, but you'll do fine if you give their suggestions, hints, and concerns the same weight you should have given pg's.

</comment><comment><USER24> Congrats! Hopefully the first of many rejections.

(and eventual success)

</comment><comment><USER25> YC is not the be all and end all. We all have rough rides at time and fall down. Pick yourself up, learn from the experience and keep moving forward, don't stop.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd be happy to hear about the online dating ideas. I think that is an are that's ripe for new thinking.

<comment><USER27> I have been following Paul Graham for some time and attended Startup School a couple years ago. At that time pg was somewhat adamant that they were not be interested in funding companies innovating in the 'online dating' space. Of course they ended up funding iminlikewithyou. But the initial negativity led me to decide against applying to YC. But it hasnt stopped our team from following our dream. We have been working very hard on modernizing (in fact revolutionizing) 'online dating'. When I tell people this they are generally unbelieving and point out all the terrible shortcomings of current sites. To me, that signals opportunity. We are really going to change things for the better. Although our site is still under wraps, if you are interested in finding out more then visit <http://www.jumbledate.com> and put your name on the list.

<comment><USER18> _At that time pg was somewhat adamant that they were not be interested in funding companies innovating in the 'online dating' space._

I doubt I said that. In fact I used the wretchedness of existing dating sites as an example of an opportunity for startups in a couple early essays on startups.

<comment><USER27> Yes, it was exactly those articles ('Ideas for Startups' and 'How to Start a Startup') that solidified my intentions to leave the (poorly managed) startup I was currently working on and do my own thing. I have never looked back. The comment I was referring to didn't appear in an article, but rather in a conversation when pg said something like (paraphrasing) "We have seen enough applications with ideas for online dating sites." If I am mistaken about this, then I apologize, perhaps I simply didn't limn the context or feeling of the statement. In any case, my original intent in commenting was to say, 'Follow your heart and your dreams, regardless of what the world says.' You will almost certainly learn something valuable from this experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> go out and build your product and let the users prove whether or not your startup is valuable.</comment>


Virgin Galactic Makes Space for Second Time in Ten Weeks with Three on Board - <AUTHOR> https://www.virgingalactic.com/articles/virgin-galactic-makes-space-for-second-time-in-ten-weeks-with-three-on-board/ <comment><USER2> How much of these achievements are actually Northrop Grumman now? Does Virgin still do engineering or are they mainly responsibil for vision and financing?

Also with Northrop working on this we can expect these advances to end up in weapons eventually?

</comment><comment><USER3> If you haven't seen it, I highly encourage the documentary: black sky" about scaled composites and Virgin Galactic.</comment>


There is a Horse in the Apple Store - <AUTHOR> http://blog.frankchimero.com/post/1059696119/there-is-a-horse-in-the-apple-store <comment><USER2> For me personally, some of the not-being-that-excited-ness is that I grew up reading sci-fi and cyberpunk, and basically always assumed these things were possible and likely, just a matter of implementation details. A device that can translate any language at a button-push? Sure, I heard about it when I was eight. A device you carry around that instantly connects to some sort of communication network? Yeah, I've probably read about a dozen takes on those. Etc.

Weirdly, actually having it doesn't seem to make a huge difference to me. The _idea_ of something like a smartphone was pretty exciting when I read about it in the 1980s, and it was interesting to follow early PDA forays like the Newton. But now that they exist and work well, I haven't even gotten around to buying one yet; by the time reality caught up, it wasn't that exciting anymore.

<comment><USER3> I grew up with a ravenous appetite for science fiction too. In particular, I was fascinated by handheld computers.

Tricorders, PADDs, Al's Handlink, SELMA, they all drove my imagination nuts.

From my early Handspring visor to today's iPhone 4, real life handhelds have been exciting because they slake my childhood thirst for a piece of the future.

I'm a little sad, though. The first iPhone pretty much put all scifi handhelds to shame, and the iPhone 4 with FaceTime beats even the video communicator from Earth: Final Conflict. After playing with Epic Citadel and seeing the ridiculous graphical power in that tiny package, there's nothing left to thrill in me in the land of pocket computers. The depths of those childhood fantasies have been plumbed.

Ah well. We still have ocular implants with augmented reality HUD overlays and telescopic vision to look forward to!

<comment><USER2> Hmm, I can see that on the technological front, but culturally to me it hasn't surpassed the imagined future. I might've read too much cyberpunk, but when I was a kid I really thought this kind of tech was going to totally change things... we were going to live in _cyberspace_ now. Somehow, using smartphones to look up yelp reviews, traffic directions, and email doesn't seem like what I was hoping for. In some weird way, BBSs were more exciting and futuristic to me, creating an ASCII-based virtual world out of beeps on a telephone line between my computer and some random sysop's computer, and with a cultural ethos that this was a new world we could define. Maybe I'm jaded, but now the internet just feels like an extension of irl.

<comment><USER4> Having grown older, I've become more and more convinced that spending a lot of time in cyberspace is a fundamentally bad idea. Using technology to enhance my life in the real world? Fantastic. Using technology to escape into a virtual world? Doesn't sound healthy.

<comment><USER2> I guess I don't do it much anymore (posting on forums like this notwithstanding), but I'm not sure I've changed my mind overall. There's a certain kind of community that BBSs, along with medium-sized Usenet groups / webforums / mailing lists / etc. gave, that is somewhat different from IRL kinds of communities, and also different from both very small online communities (people you already know) and very large online communities (places like reddit, Slashdot, and HN). Not to promote a _replacement_ of rl with cyberspace, but I think it's an interesting experiment where something is lost by it not persisting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe I'm just drunk, having just been kicked out at bar time from the place around the corner[1], but this resonated with me: "When does the magic of a situation fade? When do we get acclimated to the exceptional?...We define a pattern, no matter how exceptional, and acclimate ourselves to it?"

I'm surrounded by exceptional situations every day and they just seem mundane. Tonight I congratulated a guy who just signed a record deal with Sub Pop Records. Earlier this week, I landed a development contract for an iOS app that I think will revolutionize its market come early next year. It goes on from there. These sorts of things seem normal to me now. At 15, I would've been, to quote the article, gobsmacked by my involvement—however tangential—in any of them.

Are human beings just so easily adaptable to their circumstances that they start missing the depth of these 'big' events after a while? What must it be like to be Bill Gates or Bono? "Had dinner with Queen Rania of Jordan and the food was middling to fair. My Gulfstream's flight to New York was delayed due to weather issues. What a joke. Don't they know I'm supposed to have coffee with Bill Clinton tomorrow morning to talk about his philanthropic efforts?"

Where's the magic? What does it take to surprise and delight us? Obviously not a pony.

[1] the haagen-dazs ice cream bar I'm chewing on right now doesn't hurt either: having a 24 hour supermarket across the street is the bomb. Get kicked out of the bar, go buy ice cream. Not a bad way to end a Friday night.

<comment><USER6> There is a well-known corollary here with happiness. People think that if they are million- or billionaires, or have a super-fit girlfriend, or drive a ridiculous car or live in a massive house or whatever they'll be happy, or at least happier. However all studies have shown that rich people are not happier than poor(er) people. And more interesting is people that have suffered catastrophic accidents or contracted disabling diseases: on average these people are no less happy than anyone else.

<comment><USER7> Your statement is just wrong. Angus Deaton at Princeton found "Each doubling of national income is associated with a near one unit increase in average life-satisfaction measured on an eleven point scale from 0 ('the worst possible life') to 10 ('the best possible life')". I'm all for deluding yourself with baseless platitudes to rationalize your lack of success, and then getting a Yeah! Yeah! rally of upvotes from people similarly situated, but please don't advance such falsity here.

<comment><USER8> I don't think the rude dismissal is warranted.

I think the point retube was trying to reference is that studies have shown that people vastly overestimate the magnitude and duration of changes in happiness due to a windfall or catastrophe (the most recent source I have for this is Dan Ariely's _Upside of Irrationality_ ). While there is a shift of overall life satisfaction, major changes are much less impactful to your long- term happiness than you would predict (presumably due to growing familiarity, adaptation, and the general "the grass is greener" bias we all have).

At any rate, I, specifically, would be happier without reading personally- attacking rebuttals on HN. Is that really needed to make your point?

<comment><USER6> thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know it's not the topic of the submission but I would have very much liked to get an explanation. Is it maybe a guide horse? See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide_horse>

<comment><USER10> Yes it is an assistance animal[1]. It is kind of sad that the guy never figured it out. At least he didn't go and try to pet it or something.

[1]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04Creatures-t.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04Creatures-t.html)

<comment><USER11> >Yes it is an assistance animal[1]. It is kind of sad that the guy never figured it out.

Are you sure. Why could it not be a pet? The image in the OP doesn't appear to show a harness (as in the NYTimes article) as is usual for an assistance animal. In my country assistance animals usually wear some high-vis in public too.

<comment><USER10> It could be a pet, I'm no expert. They don't have to have a harness, though, I'v seen seizure alert dogs with just a leash. They do usually have to have some kind of identifying clothing on, though, so you're probably right on that one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, I wasn't expecting an actual horse. I thought for sure this was some kind of Trojan Horse metaphor about Ping and the iTunes store...

<comment><USER13> Yup, I was thinking an "elephant in the room" kind of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of the time I saw Steve Jobs in the Apple Store, Palo Alto. No one was looking at him, except me. Eventually, I walked up to him and said hello. Then, I showed him Whiteboard: Collaborative Drawing, the iPad app I developed, on the new iPad I had just bought.

To modify part of the article to fit my experience...

I asked one of the Apple Store employees: "Do you realize Steve Jobs is behind you?"He sighs at me and says, "Yes, he's in here all the time."

<comment><USER15> What did he think of your app?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really like the observations his niece makes, specifically _"When I play hide and seek with my friends I have to hide, but if I don't want to be seen by grown-ups I just have to be quiet."_

<comment><USER17> The interaction between children and adults in our culture is weird nowadays.

I was at the zoo with my girlfriend in the reptile section. A little boy was staring into the same tank that we were, his mom was maybe ten feet away. You know how reptiles are, they are always hiding behind some rock or branch or just blending in nefariously. So I ask the boy, "Do you see the snake?" It felt awkward to ignore another human being crowding around the glass with us and I figured I would give him a chance to feel good by showing off his superior reptile-spotting ability.

He seemed shocked that an adult he didn't know would talk to him. There's something weird about that being weird.

<comment><USER18> Probably a U.S. cultural thing. I find it weird talking to other parents' kids too (I'm a father of two), as you don't know how the other parents will handle it. I'd like to think there are places in this world that aren't so paranoid.

<comment><USER19> It's not just a U.S. thing. I'm a UK father of 3 small boys, and it's a given over here that you should be very wary of interation with any child unless you have some kind of relationship with their parent. It's somewhat relaxed where parents feel more comfortable; a zoo might qualify for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That article brought me more enjoyment-per-paragraph than just about anything in a while. I do wish the photo was revealed somewhere in the middle of the post though. I shared it with my wife that way, and it really has a pretty profound affect to wonder if it's just a metaphor for the first half-dozen paragraphs.

<comment><USER21> Even with the photograph I thought it was just a metaphor until the end. I assumed he had just photoshopped the horse in to make the article more amusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am in love with the title. "There is a horse in the Apple Store". I want it on t-shirts and cereal boxes and in graffiti on highway overpasses.

I am not even sure what it really means. I know it's purely literal, but it's almost poetic.

<comment><USER23> It's not purely literal, Frank Chimeri generalizes the experience to whenever something is naturally astonishing but somehow now impossible to notice.

The "tiny horse" effect!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Technically, it is not a pony but a falabella horse which is a miniature horse originating from Latin America. I know that it is somewhat irrelevant :) But many people have them as pets.

</comment><comment><USER25> Great article. The author coins the term "tiny pony" to describe the tendency of becoming acclimated to certain exceptional things. ie: There's a pony in the apple store and no one seems to care. Because its always there..

Maybe its because we're so focused on ourselves? I still have a regular brick- type cell phone. So its a lot of fun for me to play with an iPhone or iPad whenever I'm at the store, or when my friends let me play with theirs. I always get an urge to buy one - it could totally make my life better (especially mobile internet).

But if I buy it, I know the magic will go away. It's particular exceptional- ness will become an expectation, and even a frustration when it doesn't work correctly. And after a certain period, I'd likely refer to it as just another brick-type object, compared with whatever relatively exceptional technology is out then.

<comment><USER26> I got an HTC Incredible which is about on par with an iPhone (in between the 3g and the 4g), and it still seems like magic when I use it.

<comment><USER27> I think this speaks more to your attitude than to the model and brand of phone.

<comment><USER26> Wasn't trying to say anything about model and brand -- if I had an iPhone instead I would probably say the same thing. My point was that getting the thing doesn't necessarily take away the 'magic'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> When I read this post, I thought the whole thing was a just a weird metaphor. I saw the picture at the top, but since there was no explanation in the article of why the pony was in the store, I thought the author had simply photoshopped the pony in. It was only after seeing all these comments taking the claim so seriously that I realized the guy really had seen a pony in the Apple Store.

</comment><comment><USER29> Related:

"Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy" -

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk>

<comment><USER30> Classic bit. Also see [http://comedians.jokes.com/patton-oswalt/videos/dvd--- exclus...](http://comedians.jokes.com/patton-oswalt/videos/dvd---exclusive- patton-oswalt---the-year-2009/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> _But there are no children in the Apple Store, for the same reason you would not see a child in a jewelry store: things are small and fragile and expensive and shiny._

In my experience, there are usually quite a number of children in Apple Stores.

<comment><USER32> Our local apple store even has kid accessible iMacs for them to play with. And there are always kids during "normal" hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> When the tiny pony is a negative thing, many call it Creeping Normalcy [1]. Sounds like the same phenonmenon to me: adjustments that come slowly enough do not get appreciated. Louis CK has a funny bit about it [2].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normalcy>

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk>

</comment><comment><USER34> I loved the article. Like someone said above, it's like reading a mini-drama.

What really made it for me is how I can relate to it. I'm constantly taken back and think things like 'So many people are trying to take the world into new directions, myself included, and some are successful. The rest of the world gets the end results and we get accustomed to them so incredibly fast. Often times ignoring all the work done or the brilliance of the piece itself.'

Like, for example, I can literally work on my idea for a business, listen to virtually any record that has ever existed that I want to listen, watch any movie that I could possibly want to watch and thousands of other activities all in a single day and without leaving my house.

I could witness the huge developments that other people are making all around the globe and watch some of the most brilliant minds the world has, often the developers themselves, give feedback on said events. And yes, I'm talking about HN.

All in all, it's a great age to live. I'm only 20 and not particularly wealthy, but boy has the trip thus far been incredible.

</comment><comment><USER35> Great narrative! The picture wouldn't have been the same without it.

This is probably explained by the _Change blindness_ phenomenon. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_blindness>

<comment><USER36> THANK you for mentioning that there was a picture there. The page made so much more sense after I loaded it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The picture on this post likely depicts a seeing eye horse: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide_horse>

Here's the advantage: both dogs and horses require years to train in this capacity. However, horses then live much longer than dogs, maximizing the value of the training time invested in them.

Plus, they're extremely cute.

</comment><comment><USER38> _A black president, whose father is from Kenya and mother is from Kansas, being elected President of the United States is a tiny pony.

When does the magic of a situation fade?_

I guess that guy hasn't seen any poll numbers lately. It's still pretty cool that we elected a black president, but the magic faded a while ago.

</comment><comment><USER39> I like how the author of the post explains his emotions and conclusions, it's like reading a mini drama :)

</comment><comment><USER40> _Off-Topic: Most stories about... cute animal pictures._

 _On-Topic: ...anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

Perhaps it is only me, but that things are amazing certainly does not gratify my intellectual curiosity. That things are amazing is a given.

</comment><comment><USER41> I grew up with airplanes being old hat. But still prickles run down my spine when I look at that old photo of the Wright Flyer's first flight. What an incredible achievement that was, and how long man had dreamed about flying!

</comment><comment><USER42> It reminds me on a passage in Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy by D.Adams. He basically says that people unconsciously ignore / blind out strange not- explainable things.

He also had a funny term for that but I forgot it...

<comment><USER43> Are you talking about "Somebody else's problem"? From the books: "An SEP [somebody else's problem] is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem.... The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye."

Apparently, this term is now actually used in Psychology to describe actual phenomena, according to Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_elses_problem>

<comment><USER42> Ah thanks for linking it, that is what I meant. :)

Btw., your link was broken. Here is the correct one: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Elses_Problem>

<comment><USER44> Both links are wrong.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Elses_Problem>

<comment><USER43> OK this is getting ridiculous, we all posted the same link and they're all broken. Maybe it's a problem with HN?

Here's another attempt, I want to see what happens: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Elses_Problem>

EDIT: OK, the problem is HN removes the apostrophe (') from the word "Else's". Not sure why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> In all this talk I think you guys might be missing the most remarkable thing of all.

There was a _horse_ in the _Apple store_.

</comment><comment><USER46> A whole thread about a mini horse and not one mention of Rob & Big? I miss Big Black.

</comment><comment><USER47> Also, in the hospital.

</comment><comment><USER48> Had he been paying attention, he would have noticed there's also a man in a kilt.

<comment><USER4> That's probably a "Utilikilt": <http://www.utilikilts.com/>

They're not that unusual--I've met at least two people who have one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> What I don't--- OMG PONIES!

In all seriousness, it may be a trained assistance pet for the blind.

</comment><comment><USER50> Displaced "viral marketing?"</comment>


There's no tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg&feature=player_embedded

<comment><AUTHOR> Half-hour animated documentary about resource depletion, energy and the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet.</comment>


Early Spring for Mid-Atlantic U.S. Suburbs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120309104839.htm <comment><USER2> > Forests are, in effect, the world's air filters.

Actually, the oceans are the world's air filters. Forests are a big proportion if you look only at land, but the Earth is not mostly covered with land.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, I guess that's the price we pay for having such a productive, fast- growing city.

</comment><comment><USER4> you mean to tell me it has NOTHING to do with global warming?

<comment><USER5> Did you read the full article? I didn't because it is behind a paywall and CBA to jump through the hoops I have to in order to read journals, but I can tell you the journal is chock full of GW topics.

For as much as GW is talked about, there is still no reliable model [1] for predicting climate change, so it is kind of nice to see talk about something else, maybe which researchers can be sure on.

By the way, this was the mildest winter I remember in the Northeast, but there have been similarly mild ones. The cherry blossom festival has been moved up 3 weeks because of how warm it has been. If anyone ever considers visiting DC for this, I suggest you go to the festival in Philly instead because the location is 100x nicer.

[1] (PDF) [http://www.stephankinsella.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/10/Ha...](http://www.stephankinsella.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/10/HaydenToJackson.pdf)</comment></comment>


The Rails Value Proposition No Longer Adds Up (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://mattbriggs.net/blog/2014/09/09/the-rails-value-proposition-no-longer-adds-up/

<comment><USER2> Rails still wins on one very important metric: development speed. Thanks to the rich ecosystem of gems and succinct API I can get something up and running on Rails fast. In the early stages of a project that often counts for more than anything else. Even for a pure JSON API backend Rails still beats anything else I've tried.

<comment><USER3> I don't think so. Development speed in the Rails ecosystem is slowed down by the gems tendency to mess things up with very liberal monkey patching.

Continuing to use Rails today is like staying with PHP yesterday, you continue because that's what you know the best and that you have heavily invested in, not because it's the best out there.

EDIT:

* My best alternative for now: Django

* The Rails community is awesome

* Ruby is awesome

It's just that Rails grew too much as a hairy ball now.

<comment><USER4> And what's the best out there ?

<comment><USER3> I think Django is winning in a lot of points compared to rails now: Small API, simple to use and deploy, nice performances, comparable ecosystem,...

<comment><USER4> I believe Rails can be as modular and stripped down ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes, because Clojure and Go used soooooo much more than F#, Scala and Lua (among others).

Rails was nice when it came out, other languages/frameworks caught up. NodeJS non-blocking IO was nice when it came out, other languages/frameworks caught up. Now that you have those 'features' in other languages (Play for JVM and ASP MVC on .net to name two), some folks gone back to those platforms while others stayed in Rails/NodeJS. Only the freaking hipsters - look at me I have a blog - developers are switching platforms every 2 years for the next shiny thing.

(and I know there were other languages/frameworks that did similar as Rails/NodeJS but just never caught up)

</comment><comment><USER6> People reducting Rails to a framework used to "generate HTML" like the author have a quite narrow vision of what Rails is capable of in 2015. It's perfectly possible (and easy) to use it as the backend for an API and there have even been moves towards getting out of the classic HTTP request/response foundation of the framework (ActionCable, ActionController::Live to name a few).

</comment><comment><USER7> I bought into this type of hyperbole a few years ago when some Node frameworks were picking up steam (Sails and Meteor mostly). After six months of being reminded of what a less mature ecosystem does for productivity, I came back to Rails with a new sense of gratitude.

</comment><comment><USER8> To be honest it never did. Rails was far too full of magic, security holes, shitty architecture that fell apart under even small load to be taken seriously, and yet it was. The rest of us carried on quietly delivering quality apps, a bit baffled by the rails brogrammers who got their thrills annoying zed shaw with penis pull requests in github. Then they moved onto the next shiny piece of shit, nodejs, and made that kind of sucky too.

<comment><USER9> from shit, you can grow flowers. from diamonds, not. :-)

if you feel more comfortable with other tools/stacks, then good for you. other people managed to build successfull apps with rails, node and even PHP! you just need to know what you're doing and do it well.</comment></comment>


Is Snapchat only used for sexting? We asked 5,000 people to find out - <AUTHOR> http://survata.com/blog/is-snapchat-only-used-for-sexting-we-asked-5000-people-to-find-out/ <comment><USER2> The methodology of the survey is somewhat weak. Snapchat has only been popular for about a year, whereas sexting has been common for 5+ years now. Not only does this mean that users have had a much longer time to sext via SMS than snapchat, but because it's a self-reported survey it's even worse; users are much more likely to admit to something the longer ago it happened in the past, which skews the data even further. It would have been much better to ask users whether they had sexted within the past six months or whatever.

<comment><USER3> Survata co-founder here.

Good point. We had the same thought and did consider running a survey variant with the fixed 6 mo time frame. And we may just give it a try to see how the results are affected.

Even with the current wording, I find the SMS comparison useful. It demonstrates that people are willing to admit to sexting in the anonymous Survata survey format. I like your hypothesis about greater willingness to admit to "bad behavior" in the distant past than in the recent past. My intuition is that anonymity weakens that effect, but we'll have to measure to know for certain.

<comment><USER2> "I like your hypothesis about greater willingness to admit to "bad behavior" in the distant past than in the recent past. My intuition is that anonymity weakens that effect, but we'll have to measure to know for certain."

If you look at this report on the validity of self-reported drug use, it goes into the issue of how people are more likely to admit bad behavior that happened long ago. Anonymity probably does ameliorate the problem, but I'm guessing that it would still be significant.

[http://archives.drugabuse.gov/pdf/monographs/monograph167/do...](http://archives.drugabuse.gov/pdf/monographs/monograph167/download167.html)

<comment><USER4> Great link—thanks for posting it—too few people cite the sources for their beliefs. In a related context, "Truth and consequences: using the bogus pipeline to examine sex differences in self-reported sexuality" discusses how "some of the sex differences in self-reports of sexuality are not due to actual sex differences in behavior, but rather to differences in reporting as a function of differential normative expectations for men and women": [http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Truth+and+consequences%3a+usin...](http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Truth+and+consequences%3a+using+the+bogus+pipeline+to+examine+sex...-a0101530208) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to reason that people who use SnapChat for sexting are doing so to hide the fact that they're sexting, so they might be less likely to admit to it (even on an anonymous survey). Someone who uses text messaging may feel less compelled to hide it at all. This would be especially true for kids (under 18) since you also ask the age on the survey.

Not sure how big a role this might actually play in the results.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Thanks for the feedback. We only surveyed respondents 18+ for this survey. We agree kids under 18 would have been more likely to lie about this type of behavior.

<comment><USER6> I've read of a technique where for self-reported statistics you mix in a non- pertinent question with a known probability, using Bayes to extract the original prior probability.

For example, instead of asking kids "do you smoke pot?" you ask that of 80% of people and the other 20% get "do you own a dog?"; the surveyor has no idea which question was asked but knows the overall population of dog owners.

Does this technique have a name that you know of and did you consider it?

<comment><USER7> I know of a method in which you give each respondent a coin and ask them to flip it in secret. If the coin lands heads, answer "Yes," if not, answer honestly. Then, if you ask a question like "Have you sexted?" or "Do you use drugs?", you may get survey results that look like 60% yes and 40% no. You subtract 50% from the yes count to account for the coin toss and get accurate overall results, but the participants have plausible deniability.

However, I can't remember the name of it, nor the article I read about it, and Google isn't helping.

<comment><USER8> Interesting. I imagine this method would be particularly helpful for non- anonymized surveys.

Obviously, this would only be helpful if you don't have a good idea of how many people would lie in the first place. It also depends on the assumption that people won't lie given this plausible deniability.

The biggest problem I see is that this could only increase the variance of your survey results. The way I see it you have three binomial distributions base on three random variables:

      1. The number of people who would answer yes to the survey question if they were honest.
      2. The number of people who lied. (This is clearly not independent to the first random variable)
      3. The number of people who flipped heads. (This clearly is independent)

The problem is that coin flipping has the highest possible variance of any binomial distribution for any given sample size. So even if the variance created by people lying is completely eliminated, it would be more than counteracted by the variance introduced by the coin flipping.

I still really like this method since the increased variance is a moot point if giving people plausible deniability is the best way to normalize for lying. And you can always increase your confidence in the resulting proportion by increasing your sample size.

It would be interesting to run anonymized and non-anonymized surveys with the coin flip and without to try to determine how much anonymization reduces lying on various survey questions.

One nitpick: You should subtract 50% from the yes count and then multiply by two. So in your example, you would expect that 20% of those surveyed truly sexted or use drugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No way I'm trusting this informal survey unless they have a plausible, data- backed explanation for the supposed huge gender disparity in sexting.

The only halfway plausible explanation is that the 3.4% of men who are gay or bi all sext with each other. In other words, a large number of the respondents lied and the data is invalid.

That said, anecdotal evidence (the people I talk do every day) strongly indicates that people _are_ in fact occasionally using Snapchat for other things than sexting

<comment><USER10> Hasn't prior research established that men on average overstate sexual experience and women on average understate? I think I've seen this come up in surveys of number of partners and frequency, so it doesn't surprise me at all that it would happen in sexting surveys.

Even assuming all of the participants are being truthful, you'll have some problems with definitions not being shared by the participants. The classic example is "Does oral sex count?" Men, for whom a large number of partners is (sometimes) culturally good, may be inclined to count it. Women, for whom a large number of partners is (sometimes) culturally bad, might not count it.

With respect to sexting, imagine a woman sends a man a picture of herself in a low-cut dress. The man might say, "she was totally sexting me", and believe it, the woman might say, "I was fully dressed in an outfit seen by hundreds of people at a party, how can that be sexting?", and believe it.

<comment><USER11> _Hasn't prior research established that men on average overstate sexual experience and women on average understate_

How would you be able to tell?

<comment><USER10> In the case of systematic lying it'd be hard, but when the problem is definitions -- what counts as sex and sexting -- you just need to ask more and more detailed questions and then the reasons become obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Frequently cited uses were to "send funny pictures to my friends" or "make > silly faces for my friends" or "send jokes to my friends."

I don't mean to be a grumpy old man, but this seems even more pointless than usual. If it's _not_ being used for sexual photos, then it's surely a fad that's going to die in a few months.

All that other crap can be done via normal messaging; there's precious little reason to use Snapchat except that it's (briefly, for now) the popular new thing.

<comment><USER13> _I don't mean to be a grumpy old man, but this seems even more pointless than usual._

To disagree with mmakunas, I don't think people care about the privacy angle so much- I think it's about creating something entirely disposable, and the freedom that gives you. It's like an anti-Instagram- no filters and perfectly positioned shots, just point, shoot, send.

I'm not sure what the exactly psychology of it is or whether it even matters that the photos disappear but a _lot_ of teens use Snapchat. Just take a look at the demographics of a Twitter search:

[https://twitter.com/search?q=snapchat%20me&src=typd](https://twitter.com/search?q=snapchat%20me&src=typd)

Even if Snapchat doesn't do anything that normal messaging can't, they've clearly packaged it in such a way that it's tremendously popular. After all, if it was possible with normal messaging, why wasn't anyone doing it until Snapchat came about?

<comment><USER14> Interesting point.

 _I think it's about creating something entirely disposable, and the freedom that_

Part of that freedom comes from the level of privacy I think. But from looking at those tweets maybe I'm over estimating how people are _explicitly_ thinking about privacy.

It just goes to show that is not always about creating something where the individual bits of functionality are new. Sometime the most compelling thing is putting a novel spin on what we already do and building a network of users around that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Survata is a YC company that uses those spammy "survey walls", forcing users to answer a survey to get content they want. This data is garbage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Survata co-founder here.

Thanks for your comment. We're constantly testing the accuracy of our network, and building technology to screen out respondents who are lying to us. To date, the results are good. For example, when we ask respondents "Which time zone are you in?" or "Who is the president of the United State" we see around 97% accuracy. We see this as evidence of quality data.

<comment><USER16> Although, questions with non-personally identifiable data or more likely to get honest answers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting relevant article: [http://blog.garrytan.com/tenth-grade-tech- trends-my-survey-d...](http://blog.garrytan.com/tenth-grade-tech-trends-my- survey-data-says-s)

And its HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5027306>

I performed a few Google searches on Snapchat. I was very surprised to see the fanaticism around it being used by young people for Sexting alone. The above article paints a much different picture.

<comment><USER18> people also lie, when you just sent a sex picture and they ask you if you juste sent that, I'm incline to think you will say you didn't.

Personally i don't trust their stats, it's lower than the average for text messages, which really does not make any sense to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Thanks for the feedback. We also asked respondents about sexting over text messaging, and got a similar rate (26%) to other studies about sexting[1]. Of course, as we note, this is entirely self-reported behavior and not observed behavior.

[1]<http://cbsloc.al/Nv7WPR>

<comment><USER19> "We did a survey where we asked 1000 respondents about whether they lied in survey responses. 100% answered 'no'"

<comment><USER20> Well, that actually might be the case.

More interesting would be if they answered, "yes"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow, a lot of denial on this particular topic. Let's be real. Even facebook is used a lot for hookups. All mediums will have sex on them because we are sexual by nature. So of course this medium will be exploited fully and denied in public because it's a sensitive topic. Why dwell? Who cares? Are we such prudes?

And come on, just asking them? Go ask the guys in the head shop what kind of pipes they are selling. Tobacco pipes of course. But we didn't just fall off the turnip truck.

</comment><comment><USER22> Can somebody explain to me what is stopping someone from hitting the power + home button simultaneously and creating a photo of whatever is in the screen effectively working around the "self destruct" nature of Snapchat?

<comment><USER23> I believe it detects the action and rats you out although it can't actually stop it. I don't use the app but there was a story recently on some people figuring out a way to evade detection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've received ~10 snapchats a day for the past month, and I have never received a sexting photo via snapchat. Instead my friends send pictures of: food, landscapes, people they are with, pets, etc...

Basically the point of Snapshot is to share mundane photos without the other person being able to share with their friends all the boring photos you send them throughout the day.

</comment><comment><USER25> In terms of the comparison with SMS, this survey also seems to miss that sexting via text (words) is very different than sexting via snapchat (pictures). I'm sure a much higher percentage of the population is more comfortable with the former than latter, which doesn't make the comparison all that surprising.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's common wisdom that Snapchat appeals particularly to those _under_ the age of 18. This study focused only on "respondents aged 18 to 29".

What people (read: the media) really want to know is "are teens sexting with Snapchat?" Naturally, it's harder to get survey results for that demographic.

</comment><comment><USER27> Nice to see the old maxim still holds true: "Every title phrased as a question can be answered with: no."

</comment><comment><USER28> Not only. I just started using it a few weeks ago and I can say it has legitimate uses outside of sexting. The ability to write on an image or draw on it is quite useful.

</comment><comment><USER29> imho there is something here with a neural correlate related to gambling, e.g. I send my mom/boss/teacher a funny face picture or I send my crush a love note with an expiration date and I can cash in on the thrill with a low chance of the risk of exposure</comment>