Microsoft helped imprison a man for 'counterfeiting' software it gives away free - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/25/how-microsoft-helped-imprison-a-man-for-counterfeiting-software-it-gives-away-for-free/ <comment><USER3> So many in this case are missing the point.

If Microsoft caught him violating their copyright, and it bothered Microsoft, Microsoft should have sued in civil court. That is the purpose of civil court- to penalize wrongdoing by companies. Happens all the time.

But Microsoft was never going to recover anything in civil court.

So Microsoft lied to the US government about the value of what was being "stolen", and got the US government to foot the bill of prosecuting the case.

This is called a civil-criminal hybrid case. It should be civilly prosecuted, but the US government gets in cahoots with a corporation and the pair conspire to make it a criminal prosecution, which allows the corporation to de facto imprison any person it helps to convict.

Microsoft was able to avoid the lion's share of the legal fees, and won't be responsible for any fees when and if the case is successfully appealed. You will, as a taxpayer, footing the DOJ's bill.

Any restitution Mr. Lundgren pays will be far higher a return than Microsoft could have gained in a civil case. As for the investigating body within the government, it gets enriched through forfeiture. Everybody wins, except the small guy and the taxpayer.

Mr. Lundgren might have been in a stronger position if he had not pled guilty to two of the counts. Whether to sign away your integrity for a potentially lighter sentence is a decision no one should have to make.

<comment><USER4> > So Microsoft lied to the US government about the value of what was being > "stolen", and got the US government to foot the bill of prosecuting the > case.

Source for that?

Microsoft is clearly denying this, so who is right?:

> "Microsoft did not bring this case: U.S. Customs referred the case to > federal prosecutors after intercepting shipments of counterfeit software > imported from China by Mr. Lundgren."

and

> "Customs authorities referred the case to federal prosecutors. The United > States Attorney's Office in Miami pressed charges and Mr. Lundgren pleaded > guilty. Microsoft was called as an expert witness toward the end of the > legal proceedings. "

From: [https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/04/27/the- fac...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/04/27/the-facts-about- a-recent-counterfeiting-case-brought-by-the-u-s-government/)

<comment><USER3> Source that Microsoft lied? Gov Exhibit 17. There are probably many more.

There are about three or four lies on there, which anybody familiar with the computer recycling business can confirm.

Microsoft had no potential sales of genuine operating systems through this conduct because any license these discs would have been useful for was affixed to the computer and not included with the counterfeit discs. Hence, the loss and restitution amount were falsely stated.

As to the fanciful notion that Microsoft was somehow called in at the 11th hour, with zero involvement in the case prior to that moment, one would only need to talk to any attorney versed in criminal law to disabuse themselves of it.

Prosecutors don't bring cases they aren't relatively certain they can win- that's why they have a 93+% win rate. That means contacting the "victim" from the get-go to make sure they're willing to cooperate and testify.

<comment><USER5> _Source that Microsoft lied? Gov Exhibit 17. There are probably many more._

I'm not finding this via Google searches... What incantation should I use?

Which parts of the exhibit are you referring to?

[edit: I did find this, which is from the defense. The defense doesn't claim that Microsoft stated that the value of each restore disk was $25.

"The Government provided no proof of the price at which the Microsoft software was sold in any market without a license or product key. Indeed, the Court had no proof that Windows software was ever sold in any market at any price without a license or product key. Thus, the Court had no basis to determine the retail value of the infringed item, i.e., the Microsoft software without a license or product key. With no proof of the retail value of the infringed item, the Court was left to assume that the Windows software without a license and product key had the exact same retail value as an installation disc with Windows software, a license, and a product key sold to refurbishers. In concluding that the infringement value of the software was $25 - the price charged to refurbishers for an installation disc with copy of the Windows software together with a license and a product key – the Court apparently did so." [https://resource-recycling.com/e-scrap/wp- content/uploads/si...](https://resource-recycling.com/e-scrap/wp- content/uploads/sites/2/2017/07/Lundgren-emergency-motion.pdf) ]

 _There are about three or four lies on there, which anybody familiar with the computer recycling business can confirm._

For those of us who aren't familiar with the computer recycling business (myself included) could you confirm them?

The rest of your comment is speculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> His punishment seems disproportionate and stupid (like, why are we spending money to lock him up instead of fining him more?); but he clearly intended to make disks that buyers would think were factory originals, and knew that he was breaking the law. From his email:

> I can look in to the missing boxes - Usually in my history - Customs just > ships them to you 3 weeks later.

> If they call you - play stupid and just tell them that you ordered from an > asset management overseas.

> Tell him that the product was guaranteed to be real and that you paid a very > high price for it. Act upset as to why you had not received your product > yet.

Obviously cherry-picked by the prosecutors; but there's a lot more, and it makes him look much worse than the press coverage does.

[https://blogs.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/sites/5/2018/04/2LU...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/sites/5/2018/04/2LUNDGREN6.pdf)

ETA: And why do the media keep repeating the $0.25/disk? There's a PO where he sold some for $3 or $4 each. Less than the stupid $25, but not charity.

<comment><USER7> Those seem like ideas on how to get past customs more easily, not necessarily an admission of any wrongdoing.

<comment><USER8> Lying to customs was the wrongdoing that initially saw him indicted.

The easy way to not have any issues with customs of course, would be to send disks without decoration as "blank CDs". Ockham's razor suggests this approach is the one you'd take if you meant to ship people a helpful installation CD at cost price.

Instead, he pays a lot of attention to whether they can pass for the real thing to customers, and then notes that for some product lines them looking like the real thing is forcing him to pay extra to send them airmail because customs check anything that looks like shipped software CDs with the licence holder...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The title on the original is "How Microsoft helped imprison a man for 'counterfeiting' software it gives away for free". Even that title is misleading, but the shortened title here is wrong because "Free Software" has a specific meaning.

Referring to Microsoft Windows as "free software" is just wrong. Microsoft Windows is not Free Software. Even if you leave out the caps intending to refer to price only, the title is wrong. Windows is not for free. You can only get unlicensed copies for free. Which is what the article is about.

<comment><USER10> >Microsoft Windows is not Free Software.

Sorry, but allowing the Free Software movement to insist they are the sole proprietors of the definition of "free" is wrong. About as wrong as the people who are trying to co-opt the word "racism".

If something can be had for $0, it is free. Even with a capital F. That there exists other definition of free does not prevent people from legitimately using this definition.

<comment><USER9> You go use the word "free" however you want. And if you refer to software that is for free as "free software", expect to be misundertood.

<comment><USER10> >And if you refer to software that is for free as "free software", expect to be misundertood.

1\. For the majority of the population, I will not be misunderstood. Only confusing for a certain crowd (FSF advocates). But that's a hole they dug themselves into, so my sympathies are wanting.

2\. Let's be frank: Your statement applies more to people who use it the way you prefer, as opposed to my usage. If it weren't the case, then I wouldn't encounter so many people all over the Internet going out of their way to point out pseudo-clarifications.

Don't get me wrong - I'm an advocate of what you call free software, and am even a fan of the GPL. That doesn't mean I'll buy everything they push.

<comment><USER9> The original title on Hacker News here ended with something like "distributing free software". I took issue with that because it was about distributing copies of Windows which is not by any definition free software.

I wasn't protesting the general case, just this instance. If the title hadn't been misleading to me, I wouldn't have cared. I don't generally care about licensing issues around Microsoft Windows. Though this one is an interesting case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Title is missleading:

"His actual crime, which he pleaded guilty to, was counterfeiting the packaging to make the discs pass for Dell-branded ones."

He misled his customers in order to make money.

This isnt really different than selling knock off gucci handbags. Sure they probably work & look the same, but it does damage to the legitimate brand.

<comment><USER12> Counterfeit handbags damage the brand either by being made of poor quality materials, or by just being sold cheaply, which undercuts the brand's ability to charge a premium. (Not making a value judgment of these practices; just it is what it is.)

Neither of those things is the case here. The discs are near-identical in quality to the discs Dell would have furnished, and (as far as I can tell), Dell essentially gives the discs away for free, only charging more or less for the effort needed to manufacture and ship them. Either way, Dell is certainly not profiting in any meaningful way from these discs, and getting a disc from someone else certainly wouldn't harm Dell's brand. They provide this service as a convenience to the customer, and likely it's actually a cost center.

Should he have used Dell's labeling and packaging? No, of course not. That was incredibly stupid. I don't think he did it with any nefarious reason to deceive; likely he just figured that a technically-unsophisticated customer would trust the discs more with the brand name matching the computer (even though a hypothetical disc with his own logo and packaging would be just as safe). A poor decision legally-speaking, definitely, but I don't see how throwing him in jail could ever be anything but an extreme overreaction to the facts at hand.

<comment><USER13> Jail for organised offences like this actually has relatively good evidence.

For most crimes we know the penalties don't really act as a deterrent, because people committing them aren't taking any sort of calculated risk - <USER2> smackhead burgling a house isn't going "Man, given the sentencing guidelines in this state I should prefer to go for fewer, high end houses" or "Really car theft has a better risk-reward ratio", so sentences for these crimes basically just take criminals off the streets, they're a form of revenge for the victim, and maybe there's a small chance the criminal is reformed if the prison institution is set up to encourage that.

But for crimes like industrial-scale counterfeiting (at one point Lundgren promises his Chinese counterfeiting team will do a better job of copying the next batch of CDs, this isn't one guy with a photocopier and a CD burner, he's hired a factory to make the copies) the actors are really weighing it up so there actually is a deterrent factor. Longer sentences for these crimes actually deter crime.

The court says (and the appeal affirms) if you counterfeit a $1000 handbag, that's $1000 in terms of the guidelines. It doesn't matter that your counterfeit was only sold to end consumers for $500, or that the raw materials cost $80, or that your profits at the back end were only $18 per bag, the sentencing is focused on the price of the thing you knocked off. Official CDs for refurbing XP Pro PCs are... drum roll... $25. The court said "$25 per infringement" and now this counterfeiter has to go to jail for a few months. Works for me.

Don't worry, I'm sure Lundgren will use his fame to launch a "legitimate" electronic waste recycling outfit when he's out, he can do some great interviews about how he's really changed now, and then the tech press can report with "astonishment" in 2-3 years when the waste he's getting paid to have "professionally recycled to the highest standards" is found dumped in a toxic creek in Alabama or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Look, I'm not saying that this is right or not, but this article does a horrible job of arguing its point, and it's completely lacking any understanding of the law.

"Furthermore: People weren't buying software, let alone "counterfeit software." The discs in question are at best "unauthorized" copies of software provided for free by Microsoft, not really a term that carries a lot of legal or even rhetorical weight."

I can even... just... What does that even mean? What does 'buying the software' mean vs 'buying the licence'? This author clearly has no idea about copyright law at all, and has constructed a complete alternative narrative in his head, which he is then using to attack a straw man.

A 'licence' is a contract between two parties, in which one party (usually) agrees to pay a certain amount of money (the 'licence fee') and where the other party then lets the one paying the fee make a copy of some work to use it. A copyright holder, and he/she alone, has the right to make copies or authorize others to make copies of a work. So 'unauthorized copies' _are the very definition_ of copyright infringement. What does the author mean 'not really a term that carries a lot of legal weight'? This whole artificial 'Microsoft makes it available for free online and you're not really buying that, you're buying the licence' is complete jibber jabber - sure you can download it, but the terms put very clear restrictions on who can download it, why and what can be done with it after.

And yes there's all sorts of confounding factors - how much did the guy charge, and this is a criminal case and not a civil one, and there is the Dell branding thing, and there is intent, on and on. But my point is: this author shouldn't write about things he clearly has absolutely no clue about.

<comment><USER15> >A copyright holder, and he/she alone, has the right to make copies or authorize others to make copies of a work.

In this case, Microsoft provided that authorisation to its license holders by making available a web tool where they could create their own installation media for the software they were licensed to use.

So the software was indeed "free" for licensed users - the very same people who were receiving the disks - in the sense they were not required to pay for it. It might be a license violation to download and burn the disks on their behalf, but that's a civil matter.

The crucial element for proving criminal copyright infringement was a personal gain figure that was manufactured by the Microsoft expert witness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is quite disingenuous.

The lie is in the first sentence: "...15 months in prison for selling discs that let people reinstall Windows on _licensed machines_.

(emphasis mine)

The prosecution successfully argued the machines these discs were meant to be sold with did not have valid Windows licenses (and that these discs were part of an effort to avoid purchasing them).

You will want to find another article on this case to read about it since this dances fast to avoid addressing it.

We have a crime, a guilty plea, and sentencing. And a careful review in the appeal. Hard to see what's wrong here.

<comment><USER17> They only don't because Microsoft wanted to double-dip. They want one license fee when the computer is originally sold, and then a second ($25) every time it is resold.

The problem with that is that Microsoft cannot have it both ways, either the license is tied to the physical hardware (in which case recyclers don't need to pay $25) or it isn't (in which case people should be able to resell them on eBay).

<comment><USER16> I don't think software licenses are necessarily restricted to common notions of ownership, as you suggest.

Whether that's right and good is another question entirely. Personally, I'd like to see strong consumer protection laws so that software license couldn't violate common notions of ownership in cases where negotiation of terms isn't possible, but that's an idea for a better future, not really relevant to this case.

<comment><USER17> > I don't think software licenses are necessarily restricted to common notions > of ownership, as you suggest.

They are in the EU. The US takes a much more pro-business stance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If Lundgren was counterfeiting software that you could "download for free", then why did he and Bob Wolff go around buying genuine Dell recovery discs in order to produce their own copies?

<comment><USER19> The article addresses this:

 _Of course, if you don't have a DVD burner (remember, this was a while back — these days you'd use a USB drive), you'd have to get one from a friend who has one, a licensed refurbisher, or your manufacturer (for instance, Dell or Lenovo) for a fee._

<comment><USER18> That is not in any way related to this.

Why did Lundgren buy a genuine Dell recovery disc if the software was available for free online? There would be no need to buy a genuine Dell recovery disc to serve as the master disc for his cloned discs.

Of course, I do know the answer as I am not naïve: the Dell recovery disc is not the same as the Microsoft.com ISO download you can procure. The Dell disc contains an installation of Windows + some Dell extra content that you would expect to have in a Dell disc. And if he was to download the ISO from Microsoft and burn it onto a DVD, it would produce a checksum that wouldn't be identical to the Dell recovery disc, revealing it as a counterfeit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 15 months sounds excessive, but the fact the software could be downloaded by customers for free is not a mitigating factor in a guy attempting to make a profit making it look as much as possible like a paid for product sold by Dell/Microsoft...

<comment><USER20> > 15 months sounds excessive, but the fact the software could be downloaded by > customers for free is not a mitigating factor in a guy attempting to make a > profit making it look as much as possible like a paid for product sold by > Dell/Microsoft...

I don't know if I would call it 'trying to make profit' when you make CDs in China, ship them to US and sell the CDs for 25 cent a piece.

According to himself he made no money off of this both because no one wanted to buy the CDs and the price didn't really allow for profit.

<comment><USER8> According to emails he wrote whilst not trying to defend a court case, it was very, very important to him the disks could not be distinguished from the real thing even though he knew these were far more risky to import than unprinted CDs, and very important to get as many sales as possible. Court submissions seem to indicate he had another line in Canon CDs which he was quite happy encouraging his partner to continue to sell for $30-40 a pop on eBay...

If you read the original court docs, Microsoft also claim the Dell disks normally supplied only to Dell customers allow Windows to be used without activating, and that an active secondary market exists for the real thing because of that.

<comment><USER20> Do you have a link to the court documents? This whole thing seems like a mess regardless of who is right. Although I'm quite sure these recovery discs do not allow you to install windows without a license.

They never did when I used such discs back in the days, and why would DELL be allowed to distribute software making such a thing possible? Of course you could argue that he has manipulated the program on the disc but as far as I know that has not been proven and he is claiming he did not.

<comment><USER8> Docs are linked to from Microsoft's blog.

They answer your question on the Dell disks, which basically boils down to the convenience of customers unable to reactivate properly for whatever reason, who merely get nag screens. May only have applied to some Dell customer groups and some Windows versions and I'm not about to dig out my old Dell XP reinstallation disk to find out! Presumably they trust that [certain groups of] Dell customers are not buying new computers with bundled Windows versions with the intention of reusing the software on unlicensed older machines, and make enough from selling the OEM licence not to care about the low level of piracy they anticipated as a result.

[https://blogs.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/sites/5/2018/04/FIN...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/sites/5/2018/04/FINAL- FILED-BRIEF-11.17.17-004.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Did he or did he not seek to make a meaningful profit from this activity? I can't see information on that in the article. Also did he use the downloadable file or did he actually burn from an existing DELL disc? I think there would be software differences potentially there right? I got a reinstallation media sent out from DELL and it definitely seemed customised.

<comment><USER20> According to what he says himself in an interview he was selling the CDs 25 cent a piece after paying for production in China and shipping to the US. I don't think you can get much meaningful profit from that.

<comment><USER22> It's been reported that he earned $28,000 from the transaction.

<comment><USER20> Yes, he claims that was all the money he ever got from his 'accomplice' for selling a lot of things over several years, including screws and the CDs in question. The CDs according to him were only a minor part of that sum.

Doesn't mean it's necessarily true, for obvious reasons. And one can only hope the court looked through all that as thoroughly as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just spotted this has been discussed before on HN, complete with comments from the Techcrunch author

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16946478&goto=news](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16946478&goto=news)

</comment><comment><USER23> The other side of the case, which contains a lot of detail not mentioned here:

[https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/04/27/the- fac...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/04/27/the-facts-about- a-recent-counterfeiting-case-brought-by-the-u-s-government/)

<comment><USER24> That definitely paints a different picture of the situation.

> Evidence submitted to the court shows that one transaction alone generated > $28,000 in revenue for Mr. Lundgren and his co-defendant from the sale of > 8,000 counterfeit software discs.

That's quite a bit more than 25 cents per disc.

Should Microsoft charge $25 for a disc and license to run windows on a refurbished, maybe not. But, I have a hard time believing that anyone could attempt to build a legitimate business based like the one described in this case and not expect some kind of legal repercussions.

> Sentencing guidelines for Mr. Lundgren were calculated at 37 to 46 months, > according to federal sentencing rules, and the judge in this case issued a > below-guidelines sentence of 15 months

I'm not sure how I feel about the prison sentence. I understand that to many people this feels like punishing someone that was trying to make the world a better place, but I can also see how this falls under the piracy / copyright infringement umbrella.

> Mr. Lundgren was even warned by a customs seizure notice that his conduct > was illegal and given the opportunity to stop before he was prosecuted.

If this is true I have a hard time feeling bad for the guy. He should have consulted a lawyer at that point. At the least he was aware of the possible consequences.

<comment><USER20> According to 'the defendant' that value is all of the money he got from Bob Wolff over a couple of Years not only from the discs. The discs returned a lot less. Though of course that might be a lie, I wouldn't know.

<comment><USER6> The purchase order says $28k for 8k disks. It would be funny if he's telling the truth, and the fake PO that he made for an unrelated reason came back to bite him here...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Its like this, linux is FREE, but if you start impersonating red hat to push linux you'll be in trouble

</comment><comment><USER25> Its free for YOU to use, its not free to copy them impersonate MS and profit off them en masse

</comment><comment><USER26> I stopped buying windows and the MS Office suite years ago when Microsoft clearly stopped caring about its consumer base. As for this case, its unfair to Lundgren - should have had better lawyers - Microsoft is simply taking advantage of the best legal system money can buy to keep its shareholders happy

</comment><comment><USER27> Microsoft didn't imprison anyone. The U.S. government did.</comment>


An Open Letter to the FB Recruiter Who Gets Ordered, Every Quarter, to Email Me - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mjw_50072/an-open-letter-to-the-fb-recruiter-who-gets-ordered-every-quarter-to-email-me-dc761c9ddb42 <comment><USER2> Why such arrogance? Just set up a filter or simply click report spam if this message really annoys you.

You don't like Facebook, you have your reasons. Thousands of Facebook employees and millions of people worldwide disagree with you. Maybe you are right, maybe you are wrong. So why be so hostile towards people who work for the company?

Shame on you for your rudeness towards a human being who did nothing wrong.

<comment><USER3> How were they rude? His FIRST line was "Hi REDACTED. I know you're just doing your job."

They weren't arrogant or hostile to the person who emailed them.

He has a strong opinions on Facebook, as do, I'm sure, millions of other people, and rightly so, given what they have been shown to be doing for several years.

I think the arrogance lies entirely on your side.

<comment><USER2> > How were they rude?

Suppose you don't like cars. And your neighbor car owner came to you and invited you to have a cup of tee.

Polite person responds with thank you maybe another time.

Rude person would say that your car is ugly, I hate cars, and I know you are just a car owner because you need to bring your kids to school, but all cars must be destroyed especially yours, we need to save the planet, cars destroy communities.

People can write blog posts with criticism of cars. But they don't attack car owners personally.

People can write blog posts criticizing Facebook. But they should not direct their anger to employees.

<comment><USER3> > People can write blog posts criticizing Facebook. But they should not direct > their anger to employees.

Please quote the part of the post where he directs his anger DIRECTLY at employees?

<comment><USER4> The title of the article is "An Open Letter to the FB recruiter" and not "An Open Letter to FB"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess author wants on the BOLO list:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/facebooks-security-team- trac...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/facebooks-security-team-tracks-posts- location-for-bolo-threat-list.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19220831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19220831)

</comment><comment><USER6> People complaining about rudeness or arrogance towards the recruiter are deliberately missing the point. The author is venting about the thing Facebook has become. It's an opinion piece. The fact that it started with repeated recruiter emails is just the window dressing, the hook.

This is no different than a wapo editor seeing some seedy Facebook post and opining at length about it in an article.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's considerably more measured than my own responses.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reply with this to the recruiter instead of publishing an "open letter", and I'm sure you'll never hear from them again.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if everyone loves the work this guy does for a living.

<comment><USER10> Is he continually contacting you about it?</comment></comment>


Show HN: My weekend project, Remojōbo: a remote job board for web nerds - <AUTHOR> http://remojobo.com <comment><USER2> It's great to see that you're focusing in on specific a niche, since that's where most of the money is in the job board industry and its the quickest way for you to attract an audience. The fact that your job list is hand curated and you are zeroing in on remote work, which is important to many in the tech community, will go a long way towards building an audience.

Right now, your biggest strength is that you're on the front page of Hacker News and have a lot of eye balls from a very sought after, hard to recruit niche. Even if your traffic & mailing list numbers are not high, it doesn't matter since you control access to a very targeted audience.

I would stop developing and immediately start reaching out to companies with remote positions listed and succinctly explain:

\- What Hacker News, and why its a big deal for them that you're on the front page

\- Why this is timely (Yahoo's recent policy change)

\- It costs $100 to post and they should post now before the buzz goes away. (This is nothing in contrast to a 20-30K agency fee, and the fact that this is time sensitive will help)

As you continue to build the site, I would look into using an existing turn key solution for running a job board. They're not built in the sexiest backend technologies, but you can likely do a lot to skin the front end and have a clean, modern web design like your site. A few to check out:

\- <http://www.jobamatic.com>

\- <http://jobboardsoftware.com/>

\- <http://www.jobboardbuilder.com/>

<comment><USER3> If you weren't against building site based on WordPress, a nice addition to the job board software list would be JobEngine: <http://www.enginethemes.com/themes/jobengine>

I think its design is quite more modern than most of the other players in the field. Here is the demo site: <http://demo.enginethemes.com/jobengine>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I personally dislike the idea of (further) fragmenting things like job boards (or real estate listings, or travel fares, etc.) where breadth is critical. How is this better than a general-purpose job board with an option to filter by remote-friendliness? Unless people are willing to potentially miss out on listings that don't happen to be on this particular board, this is just one more addition to a long list of places the user has to keep track of if they are job-hunting.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know ... another example of this: <http://xkcd.com/927/>.

The hope is that, eventually, this would be a place where we could aggregate the remote jobs featured _at_ the various job boards (at least, the major ones: Authentic Jobs, GitHub, 37signals, Stack Overflow) in one place.

<comment><USER5> That's what <http://jobmote.com/> does currently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry. Should have been clearer. What jobmote does (and I wasn't aware of them before I built Remojobo) is actually aggregate the content. All we'd ever do would be to link to Authentic Jobs et al. My interest isn't in pulling traffic away from the existing boards; just helping people _find_ the remote jobs more easily. And, if companies want to highlight their posts on Remojobo by making their posts "featured", that's great, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I made this as a way to see remote / telecommuting / anywhere jobs. I'm posting it now mainly as a way to "force the MVP", and to stop fiddling with it.

I'd love to know any feedback you guys have. Thanks!

<comment><USER6> Dude, this is impressively MVP. Google forms for submitting, and just linking to a 3rd party webpage for actual job details. Awesome.

Are you just manually updating the page by hand when people add jobs? Kinda concierge style. I would actually respect that all the more.

People talk a big game on MVP, but it's cool to come across where someone actually gets it.

How did you get your initial inventory? Just manually sifting through HN posts? I think getting new and quality inventory will be the biggest challenge, that's harder than getting job seekers.

You've basically created a less crappy and niche focused indeed.com:

[http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=&l=Remote](http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=&l=Remote)

I'm not sure if indeed.com spiders automatically or what, but I'm guessing you could emulate their approach to getting job openings.

Another option is to try to actively partner with headhunters who often have a source of inventory you wouldn't normally see on job boards.

As for the UI, ignore the haters. The simplicity reminds me of Startupers (<http://www.startupers.com/>) which is doing just fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I started with raw HTML, but wanted to have an interface that wouldn't require FTP-ing / SSH-ing, etc., so I played with a Gist as a datastore (example JSON: <https://gist.github.com/charliepark/5037450>; explanation of how I used it: <https://gist.github.com/charliepark/5055709>), but realized I wanted a little more flexibility. So I quickly hacked together a WordPress template so I could submit entries, where they could be filtered ("featured" and "not featured"), and they'd get cleaned up automatically (14 days on the page for not-featured posts, 1 month for featured posts). So maybe not quiiiite as MVP as I could have gone, but it was a good quick lesson in WordPress hacking. Side note: I'm happy to report that, with caching, WordPress pages can handle HN levels of traffic without a problem.

Initial inventory was a combination of seeing posts on other job boards, poking around at companies I know are remote-friendly, and seeing the "hiring" thread on HN last week. In terms of inventory, I'm hoping to highlight jobs that are already posted at other job boards as well as posting original ones. I'm curious to see how this chicken/egg problem resolves. I have a few thoughts, but we'll see.

Thanks for the encouragement on the UI. I'll keep fiddling with it to see what I can do to make it more legible without killing the spirit of the page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like how Patio11 is now a job title.

I think the background makes the text a little hard to read though

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I think the OP should change the image or at least use a Gaussian blur on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just made it darker; hopefully that'll help with the contrast.

<comment><USER8> Just tried it again. I think the problem is more with the fireplace and other stuff behind the text. The user's eye gaze is caught in a tug-of-war between the text and the imagery when he's scrolling.

<comment><USER9> Ditto, for me it's the artifacting mixed with how busy it is. A blur would resolve both of these.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been thinking of going remote in the next few years. Something I'm curious about is how it affects salary negotiation. To those of you who work remotely, have you found that companies typically try to pay you less than their on-site developers because you most likely live in a cheaper area?

</comment><comment><USER11> First job I clicked on had this description: "Due to our rapid growth, we now need an in-house web developer. Initially we are looking to work together on a contractual basis (a "trial by fire," if you'd prefer) for"

I like the idea but you should really make sure all of the hobs are "remote".

[edit] it was the Evil Genius post - [https://jobs.github.com/positions/d11107fe-7bb7-11e2-89f3-8b...](https://jobs.github.com/positions/d11107fe-7bb7-11e2-89f3-8b..). Also: I have heard from several people that all DevinArt post are BS. They always post the same thing and I have never found a single person they ever actually spoke to or interviewed.

<comment><USER12> DeviantART actually interviewed me, but I was unimpressed by their hiring process. It seemed very make-shift (i.e. "I'll contact you shortly," then next contact comes 3 weeks later). In the end I was waiting for another interview (apparently the interviewer was on vacation), but was then dropped because 'the position was filled,' or something similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Something warm about remote workers helping out others who want to work remote. I built <http://imnosy.com> to be able to track when webpages are updated. I'm going to add <http://remojobo.com/> and <http://jobmote.com/> to it now.

Best of luck Charlie!

</comment><comment><USER14> $300 in revenue already? Nice job!

<comment><USER15> my thoughts too :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for creating this, now _please_ throw some rgba(0,0,0,0.5) on to the job listing background-color!

</comment><comment><USER17> I prefer <http://jobmote.com> simply because of the interface.

</comment><comment><USER18> There are many employment-related hashtags you can be using when you post to twitter that may increase your audience. I'm sure there are some for working remotely as well.

Beautiful site - nice work.

<comment><USER19> Could you elaborate on this some for those of us that do not use twitter as much?

<comment><USER18> Sure. Twitter hashtags can be found here:

<http://www.hashtags.org/>

Adding a hashtag to a tweet can increase the number of people who see it. Here's a good overview of why and how to use hashtags:

[http://www.hashtags.org/platforms/twitter/why-use- hashtags-g...](http://www.hashtags.org/platforms/twitter/why-use-hashtags- guide-to-the-micro-blogging-universe/)

In this case, it appears that both #remote and #telecommute would be relevant hashtags to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> <http://remojobo.com/feed/> is broken. Error message is:

       error on line 43 at column 15: xmlParseEntityRef: no name

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. It was a weird encoding issue. I think it's fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is awesome....I would love to see 'contractor gigs' and other, highly curated, freelance gigs posted here. The good kind, not the crappy Craigslist variety.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hah, I was thinking to create exactly this, but changed my mind when StackOverflow Careers site introduced "Only telecommute jobs" flag in their filter.

</comment><comment><USER23> very very nice!

</comment><comment><USER24> Suggestion: what do you think of making the poster mark a checkbox for US, World or Other/"Choose region"..?

anywhere != anywhere in US

<comment><USER25> Excellent suggestion. I'd use this site if it had some kind of region filtering...</comment></comment>


10 Lessons Learned in Training Knowledge Workers - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonobacon.org/2016/08/01/10-lessons-learned-in-training-knowledge-workers/ <comment><USER2> I do a lot of training too...so I appreciate ideas to make it better.

At the same time, I found myself thinking: Is this the equivalent of a Gilded Age course on "How to be a good manservant or lady's maid". It just seems somehow disconnected from the economic system that defines student's options and the expectations put on them. Even the course itself was funded by social programs - another artifact of the economic context. That must say something about the actual value of the course to students (like, can they realistically benefit from such a course?).

I don't know the point of my comment...it's just my thoughts.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does blockchain get so much hate here? - <AUTHOR> Sure there is a lot of discussion about how cryptocurrencies can fit in the existing economic system or regulations etc. What is surprising though is that there is a lot of genuine hate over blockchain and the whole sector.
You can see that from downvotes here that are vindictive to any comment in favor, you can see huge upvotes for articles saying blockchain is BS.
All in all, blockchain is firstly supposed to be a technology. As such, it makes no sense to trash talk it and ridicule it.
Secondly, this technology tries (at best without any guarantees) to bring a societal change meaning transparency for everybody, financial inclusion, censorship resistance etc.
How can these things be hated upon? Why? I understand the "i told you it was a bubble" effect but I can never imagine someone hating on new tech discoveries for reasons other than psychology. <comment><USER2> Most people on HN, myself included, do not hate blockchain, but are _extremely_ skeptical of the discourse and community that has grown up around it for a few reasons:

\- Blockchain is essentially a distributed database. It's an interesting implementation of the idea, but the universe of problems that this can solve is significantly smaller than blockchain proponents will ever acknowledge. That kind of intellectual dishonesty does not sit well with people who by professional habit think critically about the applications of any new technology. There are a lot of those people on HN.

\- It is extremely profitable to over-hype blockchain. There are enormous amounts of money to be made by bilking the greater fool in the cryptocurrency market and the best way to do that is to create media buzz, including on this platform. That obviously rubs people the wrong way. No one likes sleaze-bags.

\- The proportion of conversations about cryptocurrency that involve a massive misunderstanding of monetary economics, databases, and the word 'algorithm' approaches 1. If you ask someone what the differences are between fiat currency, gold, and bitcoin, you will generally get an answer that is complete nonsense. Most (many?) people have experienced the desperation of trying to escape a tedious conversation about the evils of fiat currency, or reading comments on HN/other platforms that sound like cult-speak. That shouldn't matter and every great idea has had proponents that are idiots, but people associate the things hear about something with the thing itself, and a lot of what is said about blockchain is pretty dumb.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't 'hate' blockchain. At various points, I've tried to use blockchain technology to solve various supply chain, ecommerce and even worked for a startup that wanted to apply blockchain technology to user authentication. So, I definitely don't hate blockchain, however, my experience with the technology has lead me to be extremely skeptical for these reasons:

1.) The technology feels too immature for its age. Whenever I work with a blockchain, I feel like I'm working with bleeding edge technology that was theorized months ago and released weeks ago. Yet, blockchain is about a decade old.

2.) For all the hype, blockchain is just a distributed database.

3.) There are more mature, cheaper ways to solve the vast majority of problems that distributed databases are useful for solving. This always killed off my blockchain dreams. Once I got past the (often self inflated) hype, I was always left with the actuality that I could solve each problem without a blockchain in less than half the time it would take me to solve it with a blockchain.

4.) I've been collecting data off cryptocurrency exchanges for long enough that I can make some conclusions about the market. My conclusion is that I'm significantly better at predicting results from hands of blackjack than I am from predicting results from crypto trading. Cryptocurrency is the one killer application I've found for blockchain, but it's too irrational for me to ever get involved.

Long story short, in my experience, blockchain is a solution looking for a problem. This could be solved by more mature tooling, since often, as an implementor, I'm struck by how much more efficient it would be to solve distributed problems with tools other than a bc. And, the one space where bc is a great solution makes too little sense for me to get involved in.

<comment><AUTHOR> but cryptocurrency is not for making profit. It's a killer application because its censorship resistant peer to peer digital money without counterfeiting and fungible (some of the coins). That you can't predict the price is totally irrelevant of the application and societal changes this can bring.

<comment><USER4> That may have been the initial motivation and intent. But it's not true of the reality, and hasn't been for several years.

> That you can't predict the price is totally irrelevant...

For something that aspires to be "money", that is _highly_ relevant.

<comment><AUTHOR> not if the base currency is Bitcoin (I know...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think I'd characterise the discussions around the technology as hate. Maybe with the exception of the environmental cost of Proof of Work.

Where most of the heat comes from, in my opinion, is the religion that's grown around it. Fundamentally, it is just a technology; clever in parts, flawed in others.

Some people have ascribed almost messianic qualities to it. And like many religions, the adherents often just ignore evidence that doesn't align with their worldview.

Personally, I find the religion bit irritating but I don't hate it. I do find it frustrating because it taints the technology which, in my opinion, does have merit.

</comment><comment><USER6> The technical reasons why blockchain is overhyped are well-described by others, including this succinct presentation the other day: [https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/980485587827224577?s=21](https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/980485587827224577?s=21) .

But I suspect what really annoys people about blockchain is that it's making lucky, foolish, or crooked people very rich. For now, anyway.

The lucky and the fools - who either got in super early, or spent a lot of their net worth on a speculative asset - now consider themselves geniuses and proselytize how blockchain is going to change the world. Worst example: crypto bro disaster capitalists in Puerto Rico. [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/technology/cryptocurre...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/technology/cryptocurrency- puerto-rico.html)

The crooked - do I even need to explain?

PS: I'm not saying everyone who is into blockchain is lucky, foolish, or crooked. Just the vast majority at this time. Notable exceptions: some of the original Bitcoin developers, Vitalik Buterin, apparently the whole nation of Argentina ([https://twitter.com/santisiri/status/980483903633977344?s=21](https://twitter.com/santisiri/status/980483903633977344?s=21)), and some interesting projects like Filecoin.

PPS: I forgot the most annoying bitcoin supporters: anarchocapitalists. For them, it's all about making money laundering go mainstream. These people cheer for the defunding of public institutions and the disenfranchisement of everyone who isn't already in the 1%.

<comment><USER7> Valid point about crooked, but why the hate for lucky/foolish people? A lot of people owe their success in life (at least partially) to luck, being at the correct place at the correct time. Not just financially, but in relationships/politics etc.

A lot of deserving/smart/hard working people don't get what they deserve, but a lot of dumb/lazy people get more than what they worked for. That's how life works, isn't it?

<comment><AUTHOR> exactly. it's funny that the same people that don't like communism where these things don't happen get very mad about how capitalism works and how some people become rich without skills/effort (although it's just random variance I am not saying that skills are not rewarded).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13420777](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13420777)

<comment><AUTHOR> yes I know but there is a time factor, these days is even more pronnounced

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem is that, as a technology, blockchain does almost nothing new. It's a much slower and less-efficient version of technology that already works correctly (i.e. the distributed database).

The only thing that proof-of-work (or proof-of-whatever) accomplishes is that it addresses the "double-spend" problem whereby the same person signs two mutually incompatible transactions and tries to get different nodes to respond to both of those transactions as if they were valid.

Proof-of-work addresses this issue by using a voting system whereby everybody gets votes based on how much electricity they waste. There are other, better, ways to address this issue.

Anyway, I could talk about blockchain and what's wrong with it all day, but I don't want to bore you. I could also talk about specifically what's wrong with Bitcoin and what would _still_ be wrong with Bitcoin even if it were implemented using a sane distributed database, but again, I don't want to bore you.

The important thing to remember out of all of this is that you have a fundamentally silly technology. So it's only ever going to be used by people who don't understand it, or people who are trying to trick other people.

It is therefore not an coincidence that there are so many blockchain-based scams. And it's also not a coincidence that it's so hard to tell the difference between what's a scam and what's not. These are fundamental consequences to the nature of blockchain as a technology.

And if you think I don't know what I'm talking about, you should probably know that, for a time I was considering using blockchain as the underlying technology for my digital currency project. But the more I learned about blockchain, the more I came to realize that there's essentially nothing there.

If you think I'm wrong, prove me wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> how and why (incentive) would you run a node of a distributed database checking that all the country's assets and budget spending is transparent and not tampered with if not with this technology? truly curious about the just a distributed argument

<comment><USER9> Hmm. I'm not sure I fully understand the question. Anyone who wants a country's assets and budget spending to be transparent would be free to run a node. And there's nothing about a traditional distributed database that prevents it from using hash pointers to ensure that the history cannot be tampered with. That's not a special feature of blockchain.

The question is: how do you get a country to record all its transactions in a public ledger? Once you've figured that out, the technology to use for it probably isn't blockchain.

Most of the work that goes into running a Bitcoin node is actually just for burning electricity to find the next block. No real work is being done in proof-of-work.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is that this would work if we lived in Utopia. Since we don't then running nodes needs some incentive because electricity costs money and that's where the difference lies and why cryptocurrencies exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A lot of skepticism is warranted. But there is also a lot of bias and unwarranted skepticism. Or more specifically, lack of faith.

Blockchain's is like a precocious child and everyone is saying this genius will revolutionize the world. It is still a child though.

Faith is the opposite of technical measurement so for many people anything that requires faith deserves a heaping ton of skepticism. The biggest negative example in many people's minds is religion.

Blockchain involves not only technology but psychology, economics, politics, etc... It mixed in a lot of soft things that tech people may not appreciate.

Many people get involved in tech or other hard fields BECAUSE they don't see the value of soft things. Combined with the recent validation of tech (tech hasn't always had such high relative salaries) that "idiots" or "wee-woo" people are making bank is very distressing.

The validation of tech via money has in some ways poisoned the original mindset of technology as empowerment for all. That people can make money doing things they don't understand is anathema in tech circles.

Especially as tech workers (I am one btw) often consider themselves having cutting edge ideas and more foresight but somehow missed the boat. Either they have to admit they were shortsighted and over-conservatism or that other people are fools.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's not hate it's normie and charlatan fatigue.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think because from a technology perspective it's only a 6-7. "Tech people" only find it mildly interesting at best. and let's face it devalues code and the skills of people that make it.

"tech money people"(VCs/Angels) find it interesting because it allows you to monetize something you couldn't before a protocol. Also, it's interesting because it lets you capture value from an economy as opposed to just a marketplace. (I'm calling an economy something where the rules aren't as rigid and controlled as much by a central authority versus an ebay or uber). ie Why some VCs are investing in it.

The open question is just because you monetize V1 or V2 of a protocol does it allow you to profit or does V1.2A split and you lose your shirt.

Plus, as with any new "tech" it's over hyped at best and a lot of fraud at worst.

And it's current best Use Cases "secret economies" aren't exactly something that's going to benefit society in general.

</comment><comment><USER13> The problem, for me (and I'm hardly an expert) is that you need a considerable amount of double speak to work through it.

Anonymous? No, this isn't going to help with censorship.

Crypto that's world changing? How we all forget history.

My problems with crypto run deep, but it's really a high-level poker game. I know I'm a sucker that doesn't know the rules, but 99% who's diving in aren't aware of this fact.

Distributed / decentralized internet? Ugh... Let's talk when our cell phones have 100tb of storage.

I've had the misfortune of working on crypto contracts. I'll never do it again. If you honestly believe your information is safe or if you believe the developers working on this stuff are l33t, I'm sorry, but I have to burst your bubble.

In my opinion, the tech is interesting in it's own right for research, but real-world uses has shown it to be dangerous, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

<comment><USER14> > Anonymous

Bitcoin is almost the opposite however ZCash and Monero do offer anonymity.

> World Changing

The world has changed because of cryptocoins. It's empowered criminals but it's also become a way to get around price controls (e.g. The adoption in Cyprus). Not always for the better but certainly it has caused change.

There are a lot of people who don't know what they are doing in this space but that is to be expected from any new technology with mass adoption. Very few people even in established industries have the whole picture - yet they are able to operate in their niche.

<comment><AUTHOR> actually the amount of criminals using cryptocurrency is very minimal there are reports from EU official bodies. This is a myth. Also capital controls are in Greece but very few people use it. A much better example is Venezuela where many people do.

<comment><USER15> > A much better example is Venezuela where many people do.

I've yet to see any evidence of this being true, it appears to be a claim backed by endless "news" articles that have sourced other such articles in some giant stack of crypto-turtles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm just reacting against the use of "blockchain" as a mass noun. It's absurd to talk about a data structure as though it were a substance, like toothpaste or motor oil, and I have a hard time taking anyone seriously if they think this is normal.

<comment><AUTHOR> blockchain is a term for a technology that is much more than a data structure. if you object to the term that's fine, come up with a new one?

<comment><USER17> "The blockchain". Problem solved.

Really, skipping the article sounds infantile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's a lot of hype surrounding blockchain. It's cool technology but IMO a lot of the talk in business (in my own sphere) sounds like, "How can we sell this expensive, flashy tech for a lot of money and cash in on the gravy train?".

</comment><comment><USER19> Most of the hate for it is spite and envy combined with a little bit of groupthink.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think there is a question of terminology here, Blockchain is a concept, Cryptocurrency is an application of that concept.

I imagine there are few people on HN who hate blockchain, it is a useful concept and forms the basis for some very useful technologies i.e. Git version control.

I imagine there are a whole range of reasons for negativity toward Cryptocurrency/Cryptoassets on HN. Personally I think the enormous number of new ICO and currencies being made available is purely driven by greed and fraud. While I see bitcoin and other major coins representing a great new application of the technology, I think it's been over-hyped to the point where I just tune it out.

TL;DR: Crypto != Blockchain. People hate Crypto for many reasons.

<comment><USER20> One more thing.

Shoehorning new applications of Blockchain concepts into every new conceivable application, especially where the key advantages, i.e. decentralised trust, distributed consensus are not needed also causes a great deal of hate. But so it should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > All in all, blockchain is firstly supposed to be a technology. As such, it > makes no sense to trash talk it and ridicule it.

Bullshit. Who says we can't hate a technology? I hate XML.

</comment><comment><USER22> The widely touted notion that technical people are open-minded is laughably absurd.

The opposite is true.

Never has a collective so violently assailed change more than ours, whose identity and livelihood swing on the strictest adherence to dubious 'norms' and unconsidered methods. Pattern-think is everywhere.

We are not innovators, we are craven perpetuators who fear any form of change that may lay bare our vulnerability.</comment>


No more cellphone minutes? AT&T expects data-only plans in two years - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/no-more-cellphone-minutes-att-expects-data-only-plans-in-two-years/ <comment><USER2> Should have been here 4 years ago.</comment>


[SF] Weebly is hiring! - <AUTHOR> http://www.weebly.com/jobs.html <comment><USER2> The puzzle was fun. So what are people supposed to do with the secret code, email it to you? Or is there a place for it that I missed? Anyway, good way to make it interesting!

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, the idea is that if we get an email with a correct response, that should bring people to the top of the pack, as it demonstrates at least a certain basic understanding in JS debugging, basic concepts, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hmm, if they didn't make their own website using Weebly, why would I ever want to use Weebly?

<comment><USER4> Because a Weebly website isn't, itself, a multi-website management interface; it's just static pages (as far as I know). Would you suggest Excel be coded in cellular formulae?

<comment><USER3> How non-Godelian of them.</comment></comment></comment>


Hyperloop proposal: Bad joke or attempt to sabotage California HSR project? - <AUTHOR> http://stopandmove.blogspot.com/2013/08/hyperloop-proposal-bad-joke-or-attempt.html

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting proposal, and I'd be keen to read a constructive (and less 'emotional') breakdown of the possible things that Musk might have to gain from the HSR project being ditched.

However, I think it's worth pointing out that the science appears to be fairly good in the Hyperloop paper. Certainly from my brief read through, it appears plausible, and on top of that I have yet to see an attack on the actual mechanism, with most criticisms focussing on the 'politics' surrounding the idea.

So I'd like to raise a few points to think about on the politics and funding side of things.

1\. Elon Musk seems to have a fairly good track record of massively optimising processes and re-inventing manufacturing methods. Tesla factories seem to be very well engineered themselves, but more importantly is SpaceX which has managed to reduce the cost of space travel by very significant amounts, I think it's down to about 25% of what it used to be to re-supply the ISS, and much of this saving comes from improved manufacturing and testing processes for the rockets.

2\. Musk also appears to have a good track record of negotiations and dealings with councils, local authorities (or whatever they are called in the US) which would help him a lot with getting building permission. From what I can tell Tesla's network of superchargers will have been mostly a logistics and negotiation problem, rather than a technological one.

I'm not sure if just anyone could do this for $6bn, but if the science is shown to be sound, I'd bet that Musk could have a good attempt for under $10bn, which is still a massive reduction on the $60bn for the HSR project.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bullet trains, maglev, airplanes were all a joke until they worked.</comment>


Stride, Atlassian's Slack competitor, opens its API to all developers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/20/stride-atlassians-slack-competitor-opens-its-api-to-all-developers/ <comment><USER2> Long time hipchat user here (both DC and Cloud), the rollout of Stride rubbed me all kinds of wrong ways. They 'replaced' HipChat w/ Strie but didn't keep many of the same features/integrations and then FORCED you to switch by a deadline. I get upgrades and progress, but how about rolling upgrade, swap out the client, move everyone over automatically and not pain your users? For my team, we said screw it and 'migrated' to Slack. Give us a chance to switch, we switched.

<comment><USER3> Inaccurate.

Data center has not been sunset. [https://www.stride.com/help- center/frequently-asked-question...](https://www.stride.com/help- center/frequently-asked-questions/stride-and-hipchat-data- center#faq-64bbd492-e920-4693-9abf-1688729a2bab)

I also don't think anyone was forced to switch but I could be wrong. An email requesting or encouraging some action is different from being forced to do something.

<comment><USER2> I was just saying I have used DC in addition to Cloud. We migrated to cloud from DC about a year ago, and was forced to switch last week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What happened to HipChat? It was already the same thing as Slack for less money.

<comment><USER5> Stride is just re-branded HipChat.

<comment><USER6> I know it sounds silly but I believe the main reason for HipChat failing is mostly because the name was so uncool.

<comment><USER7> More likely it's just that HipChat isn't a great product experience.

As an example, the only way to edit a message is to use a sed-style "s/foo/bar", which is absurd. Because of this, you can't edit messages other than the most recent one, and if you want to edit one instance of "foo" but not another instance of "foo" you're out of luck. That's a terrible piece of UX even if you're in the only subset of users (software devs familiar with sed-style search and replace) where it makes any sense whatsoever

<comment><USER8> One time I was trying to correct and "its" that should've been an "it's", but I didn't realized there was a preceding, correct "its" in the post. I ended up changing that "its" to an incorrect "it's", while also leaving the following incorrect "its". It was inconsequential, but very frustrating.

As a sibling comment said, the main reason my team abandoned Hipchat for Slack was Hipchat was hopelessly buggy and unreliable at the time we tried to use it.

<comment><USER9> Um, you should have sed'd the whole sentence! J/K: totally absurd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Haven't used Stride yet but as someone who hates always-on chat I could see myself really appreciating its deep work oriented features: mute notifications, allow others in the channel to mark things as "task", "decision", "outcome" so you can go back and find important things you missed while deep working.

[https://www.stride.com](https://www.stride.com)

<comment><USER11> Something about this comment feels very much like an ad.

<comment><USER12> Especially because you can always mute Slack or use do not disturb as well.

<comment><USER13> But can Slack help you rethink team communication, or redefine the way teams move work forward, together? I know I want a messaging tool that _delivers results_.

[https://www.stride.com/](https://www.stride.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just don't fuck up Trello guys, for the love of god.

<comment><USER15> Trello seems to have lost it's use after it got made into a separate company. It seems to have gotten worse after it got bought out by Atlassian. No real intriguing features.

Also, Atlassian used to be loved by developers, after it ipoed it just seems not loved

<comment><USER16> This is not my experience. Trello has continued to work just fine after its acquisition by Atlassian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sad thing is there isn't even baseline feature parity. Not sure what's going to happen when they give my org a date to move by. Without some of the more enterprisey features, we can't move to Stride.

Oh and the FU on all of our existing integration use is cute.

They should have released it as a UI improvement for HipChat, not a whole new ecosystem.

<comment><USER18> > Oh and the FU on all of our existing integration use is cute.

I certainly didn't appreciate it. As someone who invests significant portions of time building integrations between various systems in our development team, I quickly hit the brakes the second I heard the Stride announcement.

Since our organization is being forced to move from HipChat, we're reviewing alternatives rather than blindly continuing onward toward Stride.

I strongly doubt that this will have any impact on Atlassian's bottom-line, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> biggest gripe with Atlassian is all their products are slow as hell. Hipchat was sluggish and buggy but at least they were steadily improving. Now everyone has to start over on a new platform (?) Confluence, how freakin long does it take to return a static info page, Seconds? As if visiting the HR subdomain wasn't painful enough already. Heaven forbid you click on something makes a POST request in JIRA, RIP developer.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. If anyone from Atlassian is reading this, the changes to Jira and Confluence make me think something is wrong there. I have been a faithful Jira user for over a decade and it has gotten markedly worse as a product in the past year. Maybe it's more profitable with app/marketplace, but the experience with multiple integrated apps is dog slow. Navigability has gotten worse. HipChat had uptime issues to the point my company moved to Slack. I am worried for you guys.

<comment><USER21> I agree with this. In 2006 I was a huge fan of JIRA and it just felt like such a well designed app.

Now it has some kind of Designer disease, where it looks beautiful (truly, I love the style and fonts and colors), but I simply can't find my way around it. And I get very frustrated trying to do basic things because the app is also really slow (clearly 500ms+ per request). It's clear that it's still a server-side app and not a SPA which is the kind responsiveness everyone expects nowadays.

So our two person team went back to using Excel. Jira just takes too long to get things done with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Stride's WYSIWG editor is really unpleasant (and had several showstopping bugs which they're only just ironing out).

I have an open ticket to have a profile option to disable it, but ...crickets.

</comment><comment><USER23> Michael Tiemann used to say that he wasn't interested in trying to pitch to a company unless he thought his product (Red Hat Linux) was four times better than what they currently had: the costs and risks of a switch can easily negate the value of changing to a product that is only somewhat better than the incumbent. Unless Stride does _something_ massively better than Slack, I don't see how Stride can compete.

<comment><USER24> Slack's challenge is that it's just Slack. It's an extra monthly cost, extra thing to the manage.

Atlassian can sell you the integrated package. One price, one invoice, tight integration between products.

I don't have any data on this, but I think one reason for Slack's success was that people could just start using it without going thorough the IT. I'd assume there's still a huge number of companies who haven't made an official choice on this space. Those might be tempted to go with offerings from Atlassian or Microsoft.

Slack could be interesting acquisition for Dropbox (haven't thought out if it could work financially).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I didn't find any reference to encryption or security matters on Stride, anyone?

I want to believe that keybase will be soon mature enough to compete against Slack and other similar services...

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't know what it is about Atlassian's branding but it always feels uncomfortably corporate to use any of their software. I'm worried that if I start using Atlassian software I'm going to have to buy inexpensive business- casual clothes, commute an hour and 15 minutes both ways, make small talk with Janet from accounting by the coffee machine while my mocha latte brews, and get Greg my middle-manager my self-assessment by EOD.

<comment><USER27> The primary function of Atlassian software is to say "Access denied." You tell Greg he needs to give you permission to do whatever. Greg says he'll do that after he gets your self-assessment. He later writes on your self-assessment receipt that you're a whiner lacking self-motivation.

I've used Confluence for two years. It's slow and the editor is buggy. The primary function is to prevent me from making a document public. I've used JIRA for 8 years. JIRA's primary function is to send email.

I'd say your assessment is accurate.

<comment><USER28> Wait, people actually read jira emails? I just filter it to my 'ham' folder.

<comment><USER27> 80% of my coworkers do not read them. I read the ~5% of them that contain more than "Status: -Open- Assigned." Of my remaining coworkers, there are a dozen that reply from their mail client, which just makes everything worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hipchat 2017 works perfectly fine for a chat app (which @tootie said have been basically the same for 30 years).

We have not been forced to migrate to Stride yet, but I am bummed about this can I keep kicking down the road.

I don't care how much better Stride is, Hipchat is good enough for us.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't understand the point of all these stupid chat apps... Discord, Slack ect...

If you need real time there is IRC. Otherwise, just setup a mailing list.

<comment><USER31> > If you need real time there is IRC.

The problem with IRC is that you cannot get chat history of a channel unless you configure a bouncer to do it for you. On that note, what's your opinion on XMPP? We used to use a XMPP server for internal company communication and the server was configured to replay the chat history to a client when it connected.

> Otherwise, just setup a mailing list.

That has a similar problem to IRC which is that new members cannot easily access messages sent before they joined. A better option would be an internally hosted NNTP server.

<comment><USER30> You could do that as well with IRC.

I like IRC since the protocol is so simple you could almost type in a raw telnet session live.

That simplicity also means it's not to hard to add additional things to it. If you want.

<comment><USER31> > You could do that as well with IRC.

You mean replaying channel chat history on the server side without having to use a bouncer?

> I like IRC since the protocol is so simple you could almost type in a raw > telnet session live.

That is true and it makes writing bots relatively easy. From what I've read about XMPP, it appears that most languages have libraries to abstract the XMPP protocol to make writing a bot easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sad to see no one's mentioning Mattermost.

</comment><comment><USER33> Did anyone else notice the Easter egg in Hipchat's web client when using js debugging tools?

</comment><comment><USER34> everybody here seems to be griping about it, but from the overview on their website it seems like a reasonable alternative to slack, and the free tier includes group video chat and screen sharing. that sounds pretty sweet to me.

</comment><comment><USER35> did they ditch hipchat?

</comment><comment><USER36> it's safe to say this won't be killing slack in any meaningful way. wow, that's a terribly atlassian UI they plopped on there. no offense to the dev team(s), i'm sure they had no say in making it so cluttered. slack wins because they make focus on communication not mandatory UI components that have no place in a chat app.

<comment><USER37> I've not ever used Stride however I've now just tried it as a curiosity to see this UI that you find fault with. It feels figuratively just like Slack. I'm actually surprised just how similar it is in so many respects. So I'd love to hear your elaboration on the poorness of the Stride UI.</comment></comment>


Hitchhiking's Time Has Come Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/opinion/sunday/hitchhikings-time-has-come-again.html <comment><USER2> I worked in Cuba for a while. They have a well established system of ride- sharing.

It's generally for profit. In Havana, old American cars* (maquinas) run along established routes, with fixed fares. You can travel the city for 50 cents to a dollar, roughly.

Between cities, it's easy to find drivers who will take passengers, and hitchhiking (for money) is a very common and fluid system.

It's well in advance of our carpooling system in many ways, and all without smartphones.

I don't think it would work _without_ smartphones here, but there's space in the market for an Airbnb of ridesharing. The underlying idea is monetization of spare private capacity.

Edit: I should add that the system is very, very safe. But Cuba is also very, very safe, so it's hard to draw conclusions.

*The American cars have replacement motors. Soviet and eastern european generally don't act as public taxis. Likely due to space, the America cars can fit 6-8 passengers.

</comment><comment><USER3> i pathologically pick up hitchhikers, and i agree that it's unlikely to be dangerous. not once have i felt like i was in an unsafe situation, though i am a decent sized guy. but there is a lot of "color" out there - old guys pressing me to get a hotel room with them and get it on, or people with bad drugs and/or tenuous grips on reality. my best experiences have always been around winter resorts - in my experience people hitching i70 in CO or tahoe in CA are almost always chill and pretty local. i'm still happy to do it, but i wouldn't really regard it as ready for prime time as the author.

for what it's worth the ride sharing apps, while interesting, don't seem ready to take the place of hitching in my mind. hitching serves a [casual||down market] segment that smart phone apps aren't ready to conquer (yet?).

<comment><USER4> _> i pathologically pick up hitchhikers_

In the early 90's in Homer, Alaska, this was just normal behavior.

 _> but there is a lot of "color" out there_

Also true for Homer. However, at no time did I ever feel unsafe. (From picking up hitchhikers.)

<comment><USER5> Also normal behavior in Hawaii.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my early 20s, I had an awful experience hitch hiking. I'll never do it again because I seriously thought I would not live to see the next day.

During that time, I knew quite a few people who hitch-hiked long distances. Every single one of them had experiences where they thought they were going to die or sensed they were is serious danger. Don't get me wrong, 90% of the experience is positive and interesting, but that 1 / 10 ride you get will scare you straight.

The numbers may suggest that hitch hiking is safe, but the numbers don't, and cannot, tell the stories of those that had good reason to be traumatized by a bad experience. As an experiment, try hitch hiking across one entire state. I would gladly offer my $10 to your $7 that you wouldn't want to do it again.

EDIT to add: I hitch hiked in Florida.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article is asinine. Hitch hiking never went away. Maybe it's been less visible for the class of people who can get Op-Eds published in the New York Times, but it's gone on as normal long past the time of its "murder" given in this article.

It's a commonly-repeated myth that hitching is illegal in the U.S. Most states simply have laws making it illegal to stand on the "travelled portion of a public way", which is a stupid way to hitch anyway. See <http://hitchwiki.org/en/United_States_of_America> for details.

See <http://hitchwiki.org> for tips if you want to get in on the fun.

<comment><USER8> As someone who has been [arrested | note: _it's complicated_. None of my 'offenses' were ultimately criminal, and I have no record.] for hitchhiking multiple times (and hitchhiked over tens of thousands of miles before turning 20)– _nobody cares_. Argue all you want, but unless you're grossly mistreated (and that's by their definition, not yours) in custody, I doubt even the most local branch of the ACLU will give a damn about your claim. Do I think it's stupid? Of course. But it still doesn't fly everywhere, and wherever you go you have to be able to figure out the turf if you don't want a hefty fine or a night of 'lodging' or more. Obviously, it gets much worse if you're a minor– and good luck convincing anyone if you're emancipated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm worried that the article presents the statistic:

"in 1974 that hitchhiking was a factor in 0.63 percent of crimes [in California]"

and brushes this off like it was nothing. This seems like a disturbingly high percentage to me (although we don't know what percentage of people hitchhiked).

If you consider that good risk management often involves avoiding 1 in a thousand chances, sometimes 1 in a million (depending on the cost if it occurs) it seems to me like hitchhiking should still be something you regard as having higher-than-average risks.

<comment><USER10> I also noticed that, though I'd want to know some more details, mostly what "a factor in" means. If it's a stricter definition, where the hitchhiker or the person picking them up committed a crime with the other party as the victim, that does seem like a quite high percentage. On the other hand, I suspect they might be using a very loose definition of "a factor in", where they're counting any crime committed by a person who hitchhiked at any point close in time to the crime, as having been indirectly facilitated by hitchhiking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Casual carpooling is the quite common in some areas. The one I'm most familiar with is between northern Virginia and DC. There are "slug" [0] lines scattered around, commonly at commuter parking lots. I-395 has HOV-3 lanes on it, and it can cut a commute from around between an hour to an hour and a half to around thirty minutes. Passengers line up, and as a driver pulls up, he tells the person in the front of the line where he's going and how many he needs. The message is passed down the line (typically by the head of line yelling it out), and passengers step out of line and get a free ride in.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging>

</comment><comment><USER12> I have successfully hitchhiked in western Europe, mostly France. It can take time to find a ride, but I (young middle class white male, clean shaven) was always picked up by ordinary folks just happy to help out. The trickiest part is finding a spot where people have the time to see you and slow down- in my experience, just before highway tolls is best.

<comment><USER13> > The trickiest part is finding a spot

gas station? truck parking?

<comment><USER14> Gas station is not great because people generally don't like being approached; they think you're going to ask for money, ostensibly for gasoline. It's also more difficult to target people going the direction you're going.

Truck parking might work if you're looking to get to the opposite coast, but a trucker isn't exactly going to be super amicable about dropping you off in the middle of the metro center of the next city over. He's got a schedule to keep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd be curious in hearing more about why the FBI and law enforcement brought on this fear campaign against it. Hippies "irked" them isn't really an explanation.

<comment><USER16> Well, I take it tracking people gets significantly harder in rampant hitchhiking, without a car registered to someone's name, or a bus/train ticket in their name (possibly tied to a credit card).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hitchhiking for me is the exact oposite of technology. It is about connecting with people on a deep level. When I give rides I always hear amazingly unique snip of someone's life story and it inspires me.

When I get rides I realize how compassionate humans are. I have hitched all over the world in cars, motorcycles and a pump trolly (train), my mother even hitched on a turboprop plane once.

I met this guy Rock Eagle who free soloed the Eiffel Tower, an 80yo driving 90mph over a mountain pass to visit his girlfriend, a young woman hitchhiking North and South America alone (and doing just fine), a drunk gangster who told me he wouldn't kill me and parents who gave me the keys to their house and car while they went on vacation.

Big cities are hard, but you take public transportation to the end of a line or bus route and start there.

There are risks associated with any activity, but the most dangerous one is sitting on your ass watching the world through a screen.

Your thumb has been and always will be the most sustainable, renewable, friendly, loving, compassionate, eye-opening form of transportation on this planet.

<comment><USER18> Completely agree. I did some Hitch-hiking as well (in Canada, France, and Australia) and only have good experiences.

Canada was the best. I got a ride from a native american who smuggled me aboard the ferry he worked on, so I could cross to Prince Edwards Island for free. I got a ride from an older couple and their grandson in a camper, who invited me to stay with them at a campsite (and gave me my first taste of Moosehead lager). And in Newfoundland, apart from plenty of good car rides, interesting conversations, (and being invited for Moose meat dinner, and even overnight stays) I got a 'ride' from one coastal village to the next, from a couple on a tiny boat, that were motoring around Newfoundland.

In France and the Netherlands I did some hitch-hiking as well, both for practical reasons (when there was no bus), and for fun. Was a bit harder there, but on overall it was great. Australia was ok too, though it could be a while before one got a ride...

What I especially liked about it is the enormous diversity of people that one meets, and the life-stories they can tell. From a factory worker on his way home from the night-shift, metal-heads in a minivan heading for a French rock concert, and people racing across states to visit an ill relative, to doctors on holiday in their BMW, and land-lords making their round in a cabrio sports- car.

Thumbs up to hitch-hiking!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I hitched for nine months in New Zealand, and loved every minute of it. Never felt uncomfortable, had a lot of fantastic conversations.

Full disclosure, a woman was raped and murdered while hitchhiking, only a few km from a town I was staying, while I was there. But I was out hitching the next day, and still had no trouble. I don't know what moral to draw from that.

Still, if hitching comes back to the States, I'll be nothing but pleased.

<comment><USER20> > I don't know what moral to draw from that.

The same moral you get from living in a region (city, state, country, etc.) where serious crimes happen: Unlikely things occur.

The same reasoning that says the dice (2d6) can come up twelve even though there's only one way for that to happen says you _can_ be killed hitchhiking, or picking up hitchhikers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've always been wary of hitchhiking and hitchhikers for that matter but I've taken a few "chances" recently here in Montreal and I've had great results and stories come of it. It really does cut down on the loneliness of long commutes. It's amazing how you still get strange glances from other passing cars when you pull over and let a hitchhiker in, particularly if she's a woman. We really need to get over this...

A company that graduated the FounderFuel accelerator with us, called "Live Rides" (<http://liverides.com>) has built an awesome app for Canadians to find/offer rides by adding safety through a social layer. If you're Canadian, check it out and give "hitchhiking" a try, it's really a blast no matter what side you're on.

<comment><USER22> "Cool", I thought, until I checked it out. "Ah, iOS only, too bad", I said to meself.

<comment><USER14> There are people who use things other than iOS? Color me surprised.

 _crooked grin_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> many years ago i picked up a few people in my time hitchhiking, and used it once to get back to town when my car broke down. neve had an issue.

one of the guys i gave a lift to suggested that as a man to never pick up a woman hitchhiker. it's too easy for her to claim that you tried to assault her and get your day ruined until it all gets sorted out. (curious if this is true.) he also helped me to learn some techniques to get out of giving someone a ride who, once you pull over, is actually all kinds of messed up.

haven't driven significant distances alone in eons, so i haven't run into this in a long time. interesting piece to appear in the NYT however.

</comment><comment><USER24> I travelled to Jakarta quite a few times over the past year and was surprised to see literally thousands of people hitching on the main roads of the CBD.

Turns out they are 'Jockeys' that people pay to pick up so they can drive on the major downtown roads that have a 3-person min for each car. It's essentially hitch hiking to go no where.

[http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/jakarta/jockeys-and-ojeks- mor...](http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/jakarta/jockeys-and-ojeks-more-of-a- problem-than-a-solution/516499)

</comment><comment><USER25> Strange, the author neglected to mention the 511 ride share program in NYC, which was encouraging carpooling before Sandy.

<http://511ny.org/rideshare/>

</comment><comment><USER26> _> The one agency to commission a study on the subject, the California Highway Patrol, found in 1974 that hitchhiking was a factor in 0.63 percent of crimes in the state._

Even if crime was a factor in 100% of hitchhiking incidents, this statistic could still be true. So the authors claim that it's "hardly Russian roulette", based on this, is meaningless.

Given the enormity of crime, just because reducing hitchhiking wouldn't reduce crime doesn't mean hitchhiking is not dangerous.

<comment><USER27> Right, the correct statistic would be what proportion of hitchhiking journeys result in a crime.

<comment><USER28> Or, if you want to go the other way and show an absurdly wrong (yet factually correct) statistic, you could proclaim that "100% of hitchhiking murders involve hitchhiking!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I pick up hitchhikers whenever I can. If it's a big inconvenience (a hippie with a huge dog) or if I think something is sketchy, I won't do it. Ive never had any real trouble.

</comment><comment><USER30> The author neglected to mention that robocars are coming and so hitchhiking will become irrelevant before it's second coming.

<comment><USER31> I don't really follow developments in the robocar world, but I would have thought the passenger would still be able to tell the car to stop for a hitcher.</comment></comment>


The one chart about oil's future everyone should see - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2012/1219/The-one-chart-about-oil-s-future-everyone-should-see

<comment><USER2> This makes me think twice about the F-150 I am about to purchase.</comment>