Ask HN: Should I deploy my code and lay off 80 people? - <AUTHOR> Throw away account.
I work as a programmer at a medium sized old school insurance company in the midwest on an internal application which assigns documents to a group of analysts for review. Accurate data is very important but we frequently get missing, incomplete or incorrect data in our claims, insurance adjustments or estimates.
A few months ago I had the opportunity to spend some time in one of our analyst centers to learn how they work. We have a total 80 analysts who review and scrub data mostly based on experience, lookups, cross comparison or simply informed guesses.
I found the work rather mindless and depressing which immediately made me brainstorm how I could automate the process given that I saw most of the same patterns repeating over and over.
So...I spent the next few months after work writing a small component which uses the same heuristics, lookups, guesses and techniques used by the analysts to correct the data. From my testing and comparing already reviewed documents with my output, it's at least as effective as our analyst team in a majority of cases.
So...what do I do now? Do I tell my management and potentially cost 80 people their jobs or do I just keep it to myself? I know some of the analysts are single mothers or people close to retirement. <comment><USER2> Obviously, I don't know the details of the situation, but here's my 2 cents.

You're saying that your program is already as effective as your team in the majority of cases. I've done my fair share of automation, and very often people underestimate the amount of work required to bring a script to the level of an human (which is normal! You're the person who wrote the script after all). Your script is most likely going to be 30% to 50% as productive as a normal person, at least in the beginning.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there's a lot of work that can't be automated. These people may have domain-specific knowledge that you don't have. Very often domain experts take decisions which look like guesses but aren't.

What I would do in your place would be to redesign your program to be a tool to supplement humans. You could sell it as such to your higher-ups, and help some of those people keep their jobs.

Also note that it's somewhat unlikely to have a massive lay-off happen. Most people will get reaffected to another role or a slightly different mission. Managers don't like shrinking headcount.

Finally, don't forget to take credit for this. You've been toiling on this for months after all, on your own. You deserve credit for it.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I work on an Eng team that works very closely with analysts. Basically, you can't build good tooling if you don't have your hands in the data, and analysts are employed to have their hands in the data... You'll do best if you can get the analysts using your tools, freeing them up to find new, useful features, which eventually get worked into the tooling, and so on.

<comment><USER4> Not only is this a productive use of automation but a humanistic one. If you can enable/empower other people your solutions will be far more successful than simply trying to bring your existing solution up to parity with the existing domain experts, as far as the job is concerned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The reality is you won't be costing 80 people their jobs. Some might lose but in a lot of cases the analysts will switch duties slightly to first validating your output, then on to finding new issues etc. Some will likely be let go or asked to move to a different position over time but it won't happen immediately.

Either way, progress doesn't stop, so whether you do it or management hires some firm in the future to come do automate the process it will happen.

I know it seems a little cold, but what I found through being a consultant and automating processes like this is that rarely was there any significant layoff of people. Usually instead people get reassigned after some proof that the system works. And more likely the directors and managers of those departments start finding ways to use those people to improve other areas, because they can now, since mundane crap is off their plate.

</comment><comment><USER6> Historically, extra efficiency does not mean less work, but rather more work.

For example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

What you should do is talk to sales and let them know your company can now handle far more business than before, at lower cost.

</comment><comment><USER7> I call bullshit on the "potentially cost 80 people their jobs". For any "old- school insurance company", I'm confident there's a hell of a lot higher standard for firing 80 people than some program "at least as effective as our analyst team in a majority of cases" according to some IT guy.

<comment><USER8> > I'm confident there's a hell of a lot higher standard for firing 80 people > than some program

From where do you manufacture this confidence? Insurance is a highly competitive business and we/you know virtually nothing about this company. No financials. No growth metrics. An unknown number of employees. Leverage? No. Cash on hand? nah.

We have a few sentences from a narrator with less credibility than Holden Caufield throwing out some lofty claim that sounds a lot more like a survey disguised as a question, than an engineer wrestling with the magnitude of a breakthrough. I would hesitate before projecting confidence with this little information. There are many hypothetical situations I could imagine that run counter to your appraisal, but I could never get comfortable with them because with no data or info it would be quite baseless.

Caveat, I believe the main post to be utter bullshit. I would assume someone thoughtful enough to build this system would likely have considered this before working for several months on this without consulting anyone in the company. Further, s/he doesn't participate in the discussion _at all_ which is what I would expect from someone wrestling with an ethical issue. They would have likely made a decision and tried to justify and defend it in the comments section.

Sounds like they just whipped up a GUI using Visual Basic and used the IP address to generate the TPS reports using _real-time-big-data-pattern- matching-artificial-intelligience-NLP_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Give the software to those 80 people and let them chill out until management finds out. But seriously, if your software does what you say it does, I would setup a SaaS and try to sell it to insurance companies.

<comment><USER10> This. I wrote some software that relieved admin assistants at a school from having to slog through spreadsheets to find room assignment conflicts. There was no shortage of far less mind-numbing tasks to fill up the time the program saved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> During a period of my life I played World of Warcraft. I eventually got banned for botting. After initially feeling anger, I felt free. Who wants to play a game so boring that a robot could do it? The 80 people are probably intelligent and reliable people. They will find something more challenging and rewarding.

</comment><comment><USER12> A lot of great comments here. Firstly, we have to deal with an uncomfortable truth that software is indeed eating the world. The consequences of that won't be 100% layoffs, but the world will change, we can't stop it, and we have to accept that. I can't add anything to what's been discussed here already (again, a lot of great comments). So I thought I'd just point you to some related stories and other corresponding discussions, one of them a classic.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq/reddit_my_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq/reddit_my_friends_call_me_a_scumbag_because_i/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/vomtn/update_my_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/vomtn/update_my_friends_call_me_a_scumbag_because_i/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/277zi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/277zih/that_time_that_i_automated_a_woman_out_of_a_job/)

<comment><USER4> We should write software to handle the mundane aspects of existing jobs and empower our fellow humans to do more with their time than they could before.

<comment><USER12> There are three uncomfortable truths that get revealed when we do that:

1\. Fewer people would be required to do the work, so layoffs would happen anyway. To what extent depends on the way the software was written and the way the tasks are traditionally done. But it happens.

2\. There are people out there who find it difficult to do anything more than a mundane task. Issues of motivation and ability are rooted in personality, upbringing, education, and even mental health. Doing this punishes those people, sometimes fairly, and sometimes unfairly.

3\. Among the people who get fired, there is a subset who find it difficult to retrain themselves for something else. They may not have a good life. For another subset, the experience of getting fired is devastating, and unemployment starts a long road of mental health issues. [https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=unemployment+takes+a+...](https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=unemployment+takes+a+mental+toll)

If we want to be cold about it, it's survival of the fittest. Having done this type of automation work before, I found that I was uncomfortable with that concept when applied to society, even if it's seemingly true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My gut instinct is that we're providing feedback for somebody's ethics homework. That doesn't make this any less of an important or entertaining discussion to have.

<comment><USER8> I 100% concur. If you look at PakG1's post above he links several similar Reddit posts. The OP is active in every thread defending their decision/POV.

This thread is silent either because the troll got bored or because they didn't want to influence the discussion as they would compromise the objectivity of the exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Having worked at an old school insurance company I witnessed many cases of inefficiencies that I could fix but they are VERY resistant to change. VERY. Where I was held on to long-standing processes because "that is the way it has always been done" and those people have usually been there 5, 10, 20 plus years. Be very careful suggesting that you will put any amount of people out of a job. Old school companies don't often appreciate someone disrupting the way they have been doing things, especially if they have been in business for a long time. I would approach it as you think you found a way to make jobs easier and more efficient rather than boldly claiming your code will immediately replace 80 people.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you don't deploy it, eventually someone else will.

I agree that even if it implements perfectly, it's unlikely to mean 80 layoffs (versus redeployments, or using those people for more valuable work).

However, if you don't release this solution chances are the person who does will have discovered and implemented it at a competitor's company - and THAT could lead to a lot of job losses where you work, including yours.

</comment><comment><USER16> The odds that 1 script will make 80 expert analyst jobs' obsolete aren't big. However, perhaps your script will make their jobs easier, automating the mindless stuff freeing their time for the more challenging stuff. In that case, perhaps in time the department can become a bit leaner, the analyst's jobs get better. The analyst that aren't needed anymore can A) find a different job in the company if they are competent people or B) find work elsewhere of they are not competent people for your organization. Everybody wins.

</comment><comment><USER17> You should deploy it; you are more likely to gain a valuable lesson in humility than cost 80 people their jobs.

<comment><USER18> There is some truth in this. Every time I have thought I knew how people would respond to my brilliant ideas, I was wrong.

<comment><USER19> I fully and unequivocally concur.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 80 people probably won't lose their jobs. Some will be reassigned, some retire, others will leave, etc. However, you can probably achieve a significant cost saving. Put together something compelling, i.e. take 5-10 reports put together by people and 5-10 by your software. Ask management to pick the files put together by the team. Show your software is just as accurate.

What you do then is you leverage the heck out of this opportunity to increase your salary. If you can save the company $4M in annual staff expenses, ask (read: demand) for a one time $2m bonus and a $500k increase in salary. Get this stuff in writing. Make sure they can't screw you over and "steal" your system if they don't want to give you a decent bonus. This has value.

Don't talk about money before proving it actually works.

</comment><comment><USER21> What do you _want_ to do? Do you want to be the lead person adding automation to the analysts jobs? It sounds like you could catapult yourself up a few rungs on the ladder and have a staff working with you to improve the analysts' jobs with automation tools.

You do not explicitly state whether you created this software on company time or with company equipment. If you did it with personal equipment, I'd try to sell it to them. If that's unworkable, you could give the software to them and then offer to be their consultant to keep it working and to add features, at a hefty salary bump.

Ultimately we need to know what you are trying to optimize for: positioning in the company hierarchy, money, ...?

<comment><USER22> I'm pretty sure OP wrote it for their own personal enjoyment

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'll offer my earnest respect for thinking about your actions in a broad context, and not just looking at the neat code you've written, or the career ambitions which you may achieve by deploying this code, but rather the entirety of the consequences of your actions, both for the other employees in the company, the customers, the shareholders, the general public, etc.

I think that kind of thinking is commendable, and rare, and we would live in a better world if we had more of it, regardless of which path you choose to take in your current situation.

</comment><comment><USER24> _" In the majority of cases"_

What happens in the rest of the cases? Does it get them wrong, or does it kick them out for manual review?

What happens when the rules change? (Example: if your data involves ICD codes, there's the recent ICD-10 rollout.)

It needs to fail gracefully, and it needs to allow for whatever amount of manual review/supervision the "old school" people in charge are comfortable with, and for that comfort level to change.

If it doesn't do those things, telling management probably won't get much (except maybe "cool, can you make it actually useful?" or "quit sticking your nose in where it's not wanted").

If it does... that's not what you're there to do. You'll probably still have to fight for management buy-in etc. As an insurance company, they'll probably be against taking unknown risks (like replacing a known working process with untested software someone wrote at home).

If you really want to get them to use your project, you're more-or-less dabbling in a somewhat watered-down version of enterprise sales (minus the enterprise price point, since work-related software you wrote is quite possibly owned by your employer regardless of being written at home during off-hours). Is that something that actually interests you?

</comment><comment><USER8> > I spent the next few months after work writing a small component which uses > the same heuristics.

While not unheard of, I find it pretty peculiar you spent several months of your personal time:

* Developing some speculative software which is very likely to be protected IP from your company.

* Not telling managers you were using proprietary data to build an application for which they are your only possible customers.

* Only after all of the leg work is done _building an app to process info_ do you yourself process the only info you had all along

> I know some of the analysts are single mothers or people close to > retirement.

I mean, what were you doing this whole time where this didn't occur to you until hundreds of hours later?

Just casually break out your GUI interface via visual basic, plug the ip address into _heuristics, lookups, guesses and techniques_ [0] and get missing, incomplete or incorrect data?

It's not an impossible task but in several months I find it hard to believe you alone would be able to find the correct address for "Dan Palmer from Kansas" or identify that he moved from the apartment a few months ago. I would assume if you were clever enough to pull this off you would have been forward thinking enough to consider the ramifications.

[0] list of arbitrary nouns related to prediction.

</comment><comment><USER25> As others have mentioned there's the risk of outlier cases consuming any potential savings on the happy path. But what I think is more important is a potential pitfall involving the company's mission. Saving money is not a core business operation, making money is. Thus the disruption of changing processes and laying people off is often not worth the opportunity cost of creating new products or refining pricing models. Using the $4 million in wages per year conjectured elsewhere, that's rounding error compared to a percentage point improvement in returns when many billions of dollars of assets are under management [as is typical for a big insurance agency].

There's also a role for queueing theory. The 'slack' staffing in normal times can be redeployed in outlier events such as a natural catastrophe that spikes claims and invokes fine print policy terms. Experienced claims reviewers might be considered an in-house form of re-insurance. And insurance companies only survive over the long term because there is re-insurance to pool outlying risks.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yes. That's your job. Or, you should quit.

People getting laid off is not your responsibility. If it happens, that's a problem with the company.

<comment><USER18> Empathy. Look it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Shouldn't you try and sell it to them? It sounds like your software is worth at least 3 million dollars a year.

<comment><USER28> Sounds legally fraught if you've already developed it using anything vaguely resembling company time, property or data.

You could always go to your boss and tell him you've had an idea and that you'll need two years on an increased salary plus two assistants to implement it, though. Then spend six man-years implementing what you've already done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Speaking as a hiring manager I always look for achievements like this when parsing a resume or interviewing a candidate. The best candidates always have a few standout achievements that really grab your attention.

If you had to summarise your time at your current employer to just a few dot points this one will immediately get noticed: \- In my own time I developed a system that helped semi-automate the work of 80 analysts. Overall cost savings in year one were X and time to delivery reduced to Y.

You could also look to launch a business around what you have built but it sounds like it may be too small of a niche to just drop into any business without extensive customisation.

</comment><comment><USER30> We find it's always better to fire people on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there's less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week.

<comment><USER31> Why not after Christmas? You avoid the suicide season.

Of course everyone's overspent and used up their holidays relaxing where they could have been saving and job seeking.

Here's some reasons not too.

\- You did this on your own time - stop selling yourself and every other programmer short by giving away your work for free. If this could save them X in wages then the software is worth at least double that assuming a two year ROI and if you only sold it to them.

\- You're not going to get a promotion or a raise for doing this. If a pat on the back from management is going to be the highlight of your life, go ahead.

I would suggest holding off until you leave. Make it stand alone and generalised. Anything that smells like their IP should be gone or containable in an editable ruleset. Throw out the ruleset you have and make populating it part of the setup and work with them to define their own rules.

License the system as a SAAS at a price that gives them a reasonable saving.

Find more customers and repeat.

<comment><USER32> You obviously didn't get the reference ;) [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/quotes](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/quotes)

<comment><USER31> No, but thanks for reminding me that I really need to watch it sometime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Do it. If not you, somebody else will do it, and that may make you repent later on, if you don't.

Not to be insensitive to the loss of employment of so many people. But if its possible to automate the process by you in spare time, then its likely that few others in the company at the top, also know of that possibility, and are just plain busy with other things, to think of it right now. Happens all the time in companies.

</comment><comment><USER34> What you are looking at as saving 80 people's jobs is also costing customers millions in aggregate. It's pretty clear cut what to do here.

</comment><comment><USER35> While some jobs may diminish with DevOps, others will emerge These people you will likely be positioned very well for the next job, often with the same company. Companies need their effecient people or they will not be successful.

</comment><comment><USER36> You can convert your small app to "suggestion engine" to make your analysts work easier. Maybe some review-tracking for their performance report, which is win-win for you, your company and making 80 people life easier.

</comment><comment><USER37> >80 analysts who review and scrub data mostly based on experience, lookups, cross comparison or simply informed guesses.

Nice to know you wrote IA. Thanks to you for emulating the complete intricacies of the human brain!

</comment><comment><USER38> You should just ask them to use your tools and sell it internally as a productivity tool. Tell the management that it will increase the output by 10X and they can get 10X more work done in the same time.

</comment><comment><USER39> If your going to deploy it, you should find a way to capitalize on it. Either create a SaaS or ask for a higher salary.

</comment><comment><USER18> Just pack up your code and put it away.

What counts in life is how many people turn up to see you off.

Look into your soul. You know what sort of person you are. Are you the sort who needs a pat on the back for being clever (at the cost of the wellbeing of other people), or do you need an inner, private satisfaction that you do the right thing by other people.

It would be different if you were the owner of the company, you would then have different obligations, but you're not.

<comment><USER40> > What counts in life is how many people turn up to see you off.

If you judge the value of your life based on other people's opinion of you, you will never be happy. We all do it to a degree, but making it the ultimate goal will only lead to failure.

How many great men or woman, who did wonders for humanity (on a micro or macro level), died alone? Many I think, Tesla springs to mind.

Judge your life on how you treat others, for that is someone you can control, not how popular you are at the end (something you can't control).

(Stoicism 101)

<comment><USER18> My point is that if you hold in your hand the fate of 80 people including single mothers and people late in their career, and you choose to end the income of those people when it is really neither here nor there for you personally, then you are a jerk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> hi nowherenice,

I think you should go ahead and tell your management about your component with a certain mention that it is based on analysts' inputs.

By the time your component is production ready, the management should consider repurposing the existing analysts or give them heads up to find new jobs.

bvenkysubbu (I write automations for my living)

</comment><comment><USER42> Reducing manual labor through automation is the entire point of your job.

</comment><comment><USER43> Be smart about it, or those 80 people may decide to lay you off.

</comment><comment><USER44> You should just quit and build a unicorn.

</comment><comment><USER45> I would do whatever you feel is in your best interests. Don't worry about the finances or jobs of other people, it's not your responsibility. Also don't worry about the well-being of the company unless you have a large financial stake in it. Who cares if they're wasting money on employing them.

Your role as an engineer is to write code. I wouldn't step too far outside of that. Let management do what they want.

<comment><USER46> Perhaps you should have gotten a go ahead to do the work. But now that you have done it, demonstrate it to your manager. Present the pros & cons.

Doing so you demonstrate your initiative and abilities.

Then as already suggested, let management do what they are paid to do.

Business is not a social justice exercise, especially not for engineers.

<comment><USER47> > Business is not a social justice exercise, especially not for engineers.

Actually, ethics are _especially_ important for engineers, as they are often the ones with the skills to bring about impactful changes to society.

Makes me think the IEEE and ACM codes of ethics should be more known: * [http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html](http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html) * [http://www.acm.org/about/se-code](http://www.acm.org/about/se-code)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Comedy option:

Go to _their_ manager, explain that your software might cause the loss of their department/minions, and instead see if they're willing to pay you extra for your tool/consulting on using the tool/guarantee you won't share your tool.

Everyone can win in this situation.

<comment><USER49> That sounds more like extortion.</comment></comment>


The Best Deal In Startup Land - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/09/the-best-deal-in-startup-land.html

<comment><USER2> Right on. The YC experience is worth so much more than just $15k-25k. It's like giving some stock to part time consultants. Except the consultants are none other than PG, Jessica and Trevor, and they pay you $15-25k! Then you also get the seal of approval and doors instantly open. And you get to learn from others' mistakes and triumphs as you see first hand 20+ other startups thrive and die. Plus you get access to the YC alum network.

PLUS, there are virtually no costs of the YC process. You fill out an application: 1-2 hours. You interview: 10 minutes + travel time. You fill out some paperwork: 3-4 hours. Boom, you get a check and have a Delaware corporation. Maybe you don't get in and you're out a few hours of work.

Compare that to the fundraising process with anyone else. Of course, I'm preaching to the choir here. But I just wanted to add another data point.

</comment><comment><USER3> "You could say that giving up 6% for $25k is a bad deal, that it values the business at less than $500k"

I'll take it further. This is a good deal without the mentoring, although I can't imagine anyone finding your startup valuable without you taking good mentoring. Who is the kook that thinks a startup with no finished product, no users, certainly no "customers", so clearly no proven biz model, is even worth $500k?

Does Sarah Lacy have any first hand experience at the helm of a start-up? Based on her opinion I can't imagine so. As a person that has been doing startups for 20+ years, I can say its a no-brainer to give up 6% for a little cash and proven leadership.

<comment><USER3> I'll add two more data points to 6% being a reasonably small amount.

1 - I had a great mentor years ago. His software company, which is still running strong for 20 years, gave 5% to each of several key employees (they had good salaries as well). He thought it a no-brainer and his success shows it.

2 - I had an investor in '98; things went sideways. The investor received both IT product/services from my startup plus 5% of my company in return for carrying my costs that year. When it became clear we needed to part ways, I called my old mentor to ask what to do. He told me to let the partner keep the 5% even if I didn't have to (I didn't and didn't even have to fight about it). He told me it was a small amount, it would get diluted over further investments and if those further investments never materialized, it meant the company is dying so the 5% is worthless anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As the YC FAQ states: _"Half (maybe more) of the startups we fund don't need the money. ..."_

I'd really like to be a part of YC someday soon–and I definitely wouldn't need the money. My problem is finding time to be away from my current company long enough to focus on and launch a new idea.

When I read that Sarah Lacy comment last night, I thought it was one of the more short-sighted comments I'd read on TC. Is that par for the course for her?

<comment><USER5> > _My problem is finding time to be away from my current company long > enough..._

I don't know if this is _your_ company you're talking about, or just a regular type job working for someone else. If it's your own company, then so far I've found that trying to clear time for a YC startup is forcing me to formalize and replicate other aspects of my current business, which is really good for it. So, it might be worthwhile to push for YC anyway; if nothing else, your existing business will thank you for it.

<comment><USER4> Yes it is my own. And that's probably what I need to do. My hope was to take a 3-6 month "sabattical" this year, be off day-to-day stuff, and work on new ideas. Unfortunatley, I woke up the other day and realized it was September :)

Good advice, thanks.

<comment><USER6> > Unfortunately, I woke up the other day and realized it was September :)

I hate it when that happens. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The usual reason that you don't want to give up too much equity is because you're selling control of the company -- not because you're worried about losing a small percentage of your exit. The difference between $10.7 and $10 million isn't all that worrisome.

I don't see much of a reason to worry about that in the YC case. I'm not worried about them trying to take over the board or block an exit or forcibly change a product strategy.

</comment><comment><USER8> certainly the ycombinator clones are interesting and may even begin to make a difference. But, if the value proposition of ycombinator is essentially PGs talent, help, and networking, how much can the knockoffs really give you.

That being said, as with the author, it is even more clear to me ycombinator itself is the best deal out there

<comment><USER9> There are plenty of other talented and well connected angels out there. You have to remember that before yc PG was just another dot-com millionaire (well he had the essays + lisp fame + anti-spam fame but in business terms not that much).

It wouldn't make much sense to go to YC if for example you were building b2b enterprise apps or targeting non-english speaking market where YC lacks expertise, but other YC-style programs might be much more suitable.

<comment><USER10> _It wouldn't make much sense to go to YC if for example you were building b2b enterprise apps_

On the contrary, I'm pretty sure YC are not only interested in such startups, they've funded some.

<comment><USER11> viaweb made software for businesses to setup shop online. though it was not a b2b app, it was not not a cutesy consumer app.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Would You Ever Stop Using Credit Cards? - <AUTHOR>

We all use credit cards, but they are actually suboptimal:
1) They're expensive (merchants pay ~3% fees which makes items more expensive for us) 2) They're not safe-- anyone can read the numbers off your card and steal it. This also makes credit cards more expensive, bc the banks need to charge more in fees to cover fraudulent transactions 3) They incentivize us to spend money we don't have (and then pay fees on that money) 4) They're inefficient. Requires 4-5 different parties to pass money around.
5) Only works in one currency and in one country (without paying massive fees)
I'm working on a project using Ripple that would solve all this, but it would require people getting something that worked more like a debit card instead of their credit cards.
Would you use it?
Would love to hear feedback.
More info here: www.getwayve.com/dumb <comment><USER2> While your points are valid and I personally don't like the inefficiencies, the challenge is that credit card companies are good at hiding these details from consumers.

1) Rules are in place so merchants can't markup products when using a credit card so the standard displayed price already includes the markup and cash paying customers are typically not rewarded.

2) An annoyance for customers, but it is mostly the credit card companies on the hook. The credit card companies know this but calculated the money lost to fraud is still outweighed by consumer convenience. Also, we are seeing things like Apple Pay starting to address the credit card number.

3) But there is an advantage to people who do know how to stay within a budget and not overspend. First, if money is stolen or their is a dispute, then the credit card issuer is on the hook and they have a strong incentive to resolve the issue quickly and fairly. When money is taken from your bank account as in a debit and there is a problem, you may have liquidity problems as you wait for this to be resolved. Liquidity problems can cause huge problems for people.

4) Yes, they are inefficient, but banks deal with this (mostly), generally not consumers (unless you are talking about ACH or wire transfers). (The exception is 'what credit cards do you accept here' if the answer isn't all of them.)

5) Yes, though since currencies fluctuate, it is kind of a messy problem and credit cards at least made it convenient.

Bonus) I'll also add that credit cards have both reward incentives and protection policies, which most people seem to forget about. (I usually have to remind people that if they used a credit card to purchase a computer and it broke just out of warranty, they probably have an extra year of extended warranty through their credit card.) And people seem to go crazy for frequent flier miles and such rewards, even though it may not be totally cost effective in the end.

<comment><USER3> > _I 'll also add that credit cards have both reward incentives and protection > policies_

My most-used card (American Express Blue Cash Preferred) gives me 6% back on groceries and 3% back on gas. It also has tons of purchase protection and insurance benefits.

So not only do I not care what merchants have to pay to accept my card, AmEx is paying me lots of money every year to use their card.

Those are some high hurdles to get over.

<comment><USER4> And those "groceries" might as well be Amazon gift cards purchased in a grocery store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a bad place to do customer research. This is not at all a representative sample of any large population, and any fintech product needs to reach massive audiences to be profitable.

First, some issues with your site:

\- Credit card technology _has_ changed since the 70s. All of my cards are now chip-and-PIN.

\- Proofread your copy. It should take you a split second, which is how long it took me. "It + is" = "it's", "what + is" = "what's". It's not hard.

\- Nothing is hacker-proof. Don't make that claim. You can say that it's safer, but you can't responsibly say that it's un-hackable.

> _1) They 're expensive (merchants pay ~3% fees which makes items more > expensive for us)_

As a user, why would I care about this? Merchants should pay something, since they get a benefit out of it. I personally don't carry cash and don't buy things that require me to use it.

> _2) They 're not safe-- anyone can read the numbers off your card and steal > it. This also makes credit cards more expensive, bc the banks need to charge > more in fees to cover fraudulent transactions_

Again, the cost here isn't on my end. My cards have been stolen a few times, and my card issuer solved the problem immediately.

> _3) They incentivize us to spend money we don 't have (and then pay fees on > that money)_

No, they don't incentivize us to spend money we don't have. They make it _easier_ to spend money we don't have. And again, not a problem for people who are able to resist the temptation. I spend almost 100% of my money through my credit card, and I've never paid any fees (i.e. interest).

> _4) They 're inefficient. Requires 4-5 different parties to pass money > around._

Again, as a user, don't care.

> _5) Only works in one currency and in one country (without paying massive > fees)_

If you're visiting a country for a one-off trip, the fees aren't bad. If you go to that country regularly, it's trivial to get a card for that country. A lot of international travel is for business, so the user doesn't care about the fees anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> > 5) Only works in one currency and in one country (without paying massive > fees)

There are a lot of cards which charge nothing for foreign transactions. To name a specific example the Capital One QuickSilver card. If you look around the market there are several more which offer a variety of other things in addition to that (depending on your needs and credit).

I've also got a zero foreign transaction CC in the UK from Halifax.

</comment><comment><USER6> When you say "credit card" do you mean a card backed by a revolving credit account, or do you mean a card which uses one of the Visa/MasterCard/Discover/Amex networks?

Every debit card I've had for years has also been a Visa card. I don't generally carry a card backed by a credit account for everyday use, but many of the transactions I make using the card which is backed by my bank account run through a "credit card" network.

It's not clear from your description which of the downsides you list would actually apply to this situation.

</comment><comment><USER7> > 1) They're expensive (merchants pay ~3% fees which makes items more > expensive for us)

As a consumer I don't care. I get 3-6% back on purchases so even if you raised rates or gave a cash discount generally it is still cheaper for me. Also, I get other benefits such as an extra warranty.

> 2) They're not safe-- anyone can read the numbers off your card and steal > it. This also makes credit cards more expensive, bc the banks need to charge > more in fees to cover fraudulent transactions

If someone steals my wallet all my cash is gone. If someone steals or reads my CC # I am out $0 and a few hours changing billing. With things like applepay I don't even need to pull out the actual card that much anymore. Apparently, ripple doesn't support charge backs. This is a non-starter for me.

> 3) They incentivize us to spend money we don't have (and then pay fees on > that money)

I've had a credit card for 12 years and have never paid a fee. Yes, it makes it easier TO pay, but I don't buy something I don't have the money to immediately pay off.

> 4) They're inefficient. Requires 4-5 different parties to pass money around.

As a consumer I don't care.

> 5) Only works in one currency and in one country (without paying massive > fees)

Mine will work in multiple countries and currencies. The exchange rate is as good as any other I can get. And once again, if I was to exchange for cash I can lose the cash.

</comment><comment><USER8> The whole point of a credit card is to spend money I don't have. The card helps me avoid liquidity problems. A debit card won't, without additional preparation on my part... preparation I prefer to avoid, and as such, have obtained a credit card to help me avoid.

What would make me give that up? A system whereby I can scan my fingerprint and enter a password. Then, I wouldn't need to carry a card. Right now, that's the main inconvenience of the credit card, but I appreciate the way it works and what it does, it's only the form that poses any "problems".

</comment><comment><USER9> You'd have to pay me more than my cashback credit card is currently paying me. Doesn't sound like an easy task while remaining profitable.

</comment><comment><USER10> If I could use alipay everywhere I'd probably stop.</comment>


California's Blackout Warning. Renewable mandates cause electricity shortages - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-blackout-warning-11597606724 <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

[O]ther states are managing to keep power flowing. Why can't California?

California last experienced rolling blackouts in 2001 amid energy market manipulation by speculators. This time the cause is energy market manipulation by anti-fossil fuel politicians. Democrats have mandated that renewables account for 60% of state electricity by 2030, which has forced power providers to invest in renewable energy sources now to meet the deadline. The result is something of a Rube Goldberg physics experiment.

During peak daylight hours, California produces a surplus of solar energy, and power generators may be ordered or paid to cut back their production so the grid isn't overloaded. On Friday and Saturday Caiso reported about 1,000 mega- watt hours (MWh) were curtailed—enough to power 30,000 homes. This year 1.3 million MWh of power have been curtailed.

But this means supply shortages can occur in the evening when solar energy plunges but demand for power remains high. That's what happened this weekend. Many natural gas and nuclear plants that can generate power 24/7 have shut down in recent years because they can't compete with heavily subsidized green energy. A 10-year-old natural gas power plant in California's Inland Empire is being decommissioned this year—20 to 30 years earlier than its planned lifespan.

State water regulations are also forcing the shutdown of "peaker" plants along the coast that can quickly ramp up generation when the sun goes down. This is why the Public Utilities Commission last year warned the state could face an energy shortage as early as 2021 on hot summer evenings. That day has arrived a year early.

<comment><USER2> This certainly sounds it is more about bad planning than viability of renewables. Maybe a gas plant isn't economically viable if it just runs on peak hours, but the can be quickly brought to a state where energy is produced. Nuclear plants have more difficulties here, coal plants are dirtier.

Every form of energy production has advantages and disadvantages...</comment></comment>


Thermal a free, open-source, cross-platform Git GUI application - <AUTHOR> Thermal is free, open-source, the cross-platform desktop application allows you to manage your Git repositories at one place by providing a simple to use graphic interface with built-in features like commits, history, repository settings and more.
Here's a youtube video: https://youtu.be/FXZNLEhGvLg (intro)
## Features
- Repository stats - Clone repository - Create a new repository - Commit - History - and a lot more...
- Website: [https://thermal.codecarrot.net](https://thermal.codecarrot.net/) - GitHub: [https://github.com/gitthermal/thermal](https://github.com/gitthermal/thermal) - Discord: [https://discord.gg/DcSNmts](https://discord.gg/DcSNmts)
Have any questions? You can message me in [Thermal Discord Server](https://discord.gg/DcSNmts).
Pls, don't forget to give a star on the GitHub repository.
Happy commits <comment><USER2> Nice work! As you may have noticed HN does not support markdown, so you might wanna change this post.

Also, I'd recommend to repost a direct link to the GitHub repo and add "Show HN:" at the beginning of the title. You may have a better chance of getting attention that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad! You liked it.

Should I edit the title of this post and append "Show HN:"?

<comment><USER2> It would be better to repost the direct link (if not posted yet) and use the Show HN title there.

Look at the "Show" section (linked above) for examples.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gotcha. Will do that.

<comment><USER2> Great, good luck!

Your GitHub README looks reasonably good. This is likely going to be successful. The website has some issues. The download page displays empty dropdowns on the left-hand side of the download buttons, for instance (I'm on a Mac).

You might want to fix all "WTFs" on the main user journey before posting your links as successful links cannot be reposted for a year or so. (And getting that success again becomes harder once you've had attention here.)

If you consider posting a direct link to your website, make sure it can handle the peak load. HN loads can be brutal.

If you need more help, let me know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, for best wishes.

Oh! I see, what you mean by empty dropdown. I have provided the option to download different type of build format (.dgm or .zip).

Once you will click on the dropdown you will see the list of different available builds.

I did try to post the GitHub repository URL, but HN news told me to slow down the posting process.

Just kept my finger cross, hoping servers can handle the peak load.

I would love to chat with you more, if possible, do consider joining our Thermal Discord Server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work. Use `Show HN`

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, thanks.</comment></comment>


PHP Tips and Tricks - Codular - <AUTHOR> http://codular.com/php-tips-tricks

<comment><USER2> I've used PHP a lot, work at a name-brand startup that uses a fair bit of PHP in the stack, and have an OSS PHP project I'm proud of (<https://github.com/shaneharter/PHP-Daemon>). That is to say, I'm not a PHP hater. I see many flaws in the language, many many actually, but I'm not a hater.

But I really disagree with some of this.

First, why call variable references "pointers"? You're just breeding ignorance there. Understanding pointers is a valuable skill for a software engineer, even if they'll never use the skill directly in their day job as a PHP developer.

Second, you're introducing concepts that are a little sleazy like variable variables without any commentary on downsides or best practices. There is effectively nothing you can do with a variable variable that you cannot do with an associative array.

And fine, if you don't want to editorialize, if you want to just teach facts of the language without adding opinion, why invent the term "pointers" that, as far as I've ever read, is not used in any official PHP documentation.

<comment><USER3> Agreed on some points. A mention of the serious trouble you can get in with variable variables is in order. I would never feel comfortable using user input to dictate a variable reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not one to complain about the distribution of training information, but isn't this a little... simplistic for HN? This seems more the typical /r/PHP content.

I mean, is there anyone here who doesn't know what the ternary operator is?

<comment><USER5> I'd be willing to be that 90% of people here don't know what the PHP ternary operator does.

(It's left associative, unlike literally every other language that has a ternary operator.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an excellent example of how _not_ to write code.

Custom autoloading scheme instead of PSR-0? Classname.inc.php, seriously? Moving on, dynamic variables are a terrible unfeature that should be avoided. References usually cause more harm than good and should be avoided as well. And finally, a class which is named with a redundant "Class" suffix, containing only static members, aka class-oriented programming.

</comment><comment><USER7> The TimeClass:relative() function is a bit nasty, how many times do you need to calculate date('d/m/Y', $time) ?!.

[edit] Or, time() for that matter, in fact this could be a subtle bug, as the return value of time() may vary throughout the function (unlikely, I know!)

<comment><USER8> Subtle and hard to trace bugs, yes. Can also happen if time() is used several times in a request, but in different functions. I've taken to preferring $_SERVER['REQUEST_TIME'] in most cases.

<comment><USER9> If you're spending a few seconds rendering HTML, you probably have other big problems to solve above optimizing around time().

<comment><USER8> That's the thing. You don't have to. Two subsequent SQL INSERTs may occur only microseconds apart, but the result may still differ by a second, causing a problem with datetime. And it's horribly naieve to think every request always completes in a few milliseconds. There are plenty of good reasons a request may take a longer time. From overloaded servers to network congestion to long running cronjobs or other processes.

<comment><USER9> Depending on the situation you would want database inserts to reflect the passage of time, and not always stick to a 'start of request/job' time. I can see the desire of the parent to want to have all the HTML generated with the same understanding of time, but as a general practice I still think its a bad one to fix time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> `spl_autoload_register()` is awesome. This is how we implement it:

        spl_autoload_register(function ($class_name) {
            require(dirname(dirname(__FILE__)) . "/classes/" . $class_name . ".php");
        });

Protip here is `dirname(__FILE__)`

<comment><USER11> See __DIR__ if >= 5.3

<comment><USER4> Which, since he's using an anonymous function, he would be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Loved it! From basics to really useful example. Is there any way to see the schedule of posts?

</comment><comment><USER13> Using Ternary Operators you can make a fizzbuzz program in 2 lines or less.

This post reminded me of them and it'll help me neaten up some of my code. Thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: What software do you use for project and resource management? - <AUTHOR> I am wondering what folks are using for project and resource management (e.g. MS project, Project Libre, etc) <comment><USER2> On the Mac, Merlin Project [1] and OmniPlan [2] might be worth a look. They've both been around a long time and seems to be the MS Project equivalent for Mac. Not having a PC version is a pain though.

On the web, Harvest Forecast [3] looked tempting, but I haven't dived into using it. I love Harvest for my solo time accounting though.

For solo projects, I really like Mr Schedule [4] and its keyboard driven outliner type interface (inspired by Joel Spolsky's Painless Software Schedules). It doesn't do resource management, so is unlikely to be helpful to you (but maybe to someone else here). Sadly it seems abandoned & requires Java, so I've been making my own cross-platform clone of it (just for my own use for now).

I tried ProjectLibre and it just felt horribly, horribly broken.

I wish someone would make a decent Android tablet app for project management, bonus points if it supported the Samsung Galaxy S-Pen for reordering tasks etc. I tried several Android apps & didn't find anything I liked.

[1] [http://projectwizards.net/en/products/merlin-project/what- is](http://projectwizards.net/en/products/merlin-project/what-is)

[2] [https://www.omnigroup.com/omniplan](https://www.omnigroup.com/omniplan)

[3] [https://www.getharvest.com/forecast](https://www.getharvest.com/forecast)

[4] [http://pietschy.com/products/mr- schedule/screenshots.html](http://pietschy.com/products/mr- schedule/screenshots.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> We use Phabricator and Scrum Sprint Plugin from Mediawiki. It fits our workflow. IMO, it is a hybrid between Pivotal Tracker and JIRA.

</comment><comment><USER4> What level of functionality do you require? The solutions mentioned below (and in your question) provide quite a wide range.

Are you trying to track a team, or a single person? Do you want to use it to plan (at full project manager level) multiple projects, or do you just need to see where you're at with a handful of projects?

<comment><AUTHOR> I need to track tasks over several members of a team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to see such thread asking abt project mgt tools. Some time last year in forum like reddit or hn (cant rmb), i rmb seeing similar thread and i saw Trello mentioned many times.

At here i don't even see trello.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're using emacs. Check out org-mode. With org-mode, you can organize everything in plain text.

</comment><comment><USER7> Use Google Drive? its old school you have excel, words, drawing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I cant level tasks and see if resources are overallocated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We use Wrike at current job. I use Asana for side projects.

<comment><USER9> We use Wrike too. Getting rid of it completely can't happen soon enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Using Asana. Integrates nicely with Slack.

</comment><comment><USER11> I use RowStack.com, it's my project.

</comment><comment><USER12> Mingle

</comment><comment><USER13> hiTask.com - simple project management dashboard.

</comment><comment><USER14> Freedcamp

</comment><comment><USER15> Pomotodo!

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you use this to find out how much a person is tasked?

<comment><USER15> How much time there spending on what. You can even calculate the ROI of time investments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> i was used joomla</comment>


Google closes Motorola Spain and 30 other subsidiaries in order to fight iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.xataka.com/moviles/google-cierra-motorola-espana-a-pesar-de-sus-ventas-en-su-guerra-global-al-iphone

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if it's OK to submit things on other languages but this blog is the original source, they worked in the exclusive and since HN guidelines say that it's better to submit the original source, here it is. Feel free to remove it if it doesn't comply the rules.

Here you have the translated page [http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xataka.com%2Fmoviles%2Fgoogle- cierra-motorola-espana-a-pesar-de-sus-ventas-en-su-guerra-global-al- iphone&act=url)</comment>


Japan nuclear body says radioactive water at Fukushima an 'emergency' - <AUTHOR> http://preview.reuters.com/2013/8/5/fukushima-radioactive-water-likely-breached <comment><USER2> Anyone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe for two years Tepco has been dumping about 150 tons of water a day on the melted cores at the bottom of the reactor buildings (or wherever they are), and pumping 100 tons of it out to filter and reuse.

Obviously, 50 tons/days has disappeared every day for 2+ years. Since that water came in contact with the melted cores is extremely radioactive (not just tritium). Measurements of the water filling the lower levels of turbine buildings supports this thinking (something like 1 Seivert/hr).

Since TEPCO has not allowed any independent measurements of the ocean within kilometers of the site, nor independent ground water measurements, and the independent ocean measurements taken at large distance from the site do not show a decrease in contamination vs. time, it appears likely they've been leaking substantial amounts of cesium and other radionuclides into the ocean for >2 years.

If so, an impressive coverup. The math is simple, water in minus water out, and where did the missing water go.

<comment><USER3> Hmm we'll lets run this thru the engineering filter and see how much is reasonable.

Well, something that can't run forever, stops, and its been close enough to forever that you can assume we're evaporating away 50 tons/day. Where else could it be going? But is that a reasonable evap rate from an engineering perspective?

50 tons is about 50K kilograms. Takes about a KWH to boil away a kilo of water so we're looking at about 50K KWH or 50 MWH per day. Now there's about 25 hours in a day so thats about 2 MW continuous boiling away water, or at least on long term average.

A big reactor runs in the GW range but decay heat starts around 10% and slowly drops over time. Actually a couple years in, most should be gone although the long tail is pretty long. So it was dumping out tens of MW continuously and now maybe much less. So we're looking at a couple MW generated, vs a couple MW to make that much water vapor. Seems reasonable. So I'm willing to believe from an engineering estimate, aside from solar heating and whatever, that 50 tons of water simply evaporates away.

We can argue volumetric, if a ton is about 1K kilos and 1 L water is about 1 Kg, that would strongly imply a ton of water is about a 1K liters or about one cubic meter. I suppose we could have gotten to this same point by talking about mL vs cubic centimeters vs grams. Anyway you're claiming a cube of water a meter on a side, stacked 50 tall each day, for a couple years. I say that most of that has to have evaporated away otherwise you'd have 50 meters deep of water covering the entire site after a thousand or so days.

<comment><USER2> All good, but there is no boiling.

Just evaporation from the surface of the pooled water flooding the buildings, which will not be significant, even if it wasn't at a humid oceanside location.

<comment><USER3> You're talking about a small decimal point variation in heat of vaporization aka enthalpy of vaporization. You are correct it does in fact vary by temp, but as a percentage, less than my vast rounding errors. One problem is heat of vaporization usually drops with temp. So evaporating water at 400 degrees in a boiler takes somewhat less energy than evaporating the same amount on a open to the air pond, and there's not much of a pressure vessel around the plant anymore anyway. For all intents and purposes given reasonable rounding the energy required to evaporate the water is more or less constant in that location.

This has to do with the strength of the hydrogen bond in water. The energy require to vaporize the water is the same as hundreds of degrees of merely heating the water, thats why the starting temp has little effect on water boiling rate, etc.

Still I stand by my numbers, 2 MW continuously can evaporate your 50 tons of water per day, to one sig fig.

Note that we're not arguing about much. Sunlight is like a KW per sq meter so we're arguing about the energy from 2000 or so sq meters of sunlit area, which isn't much compared to a giant nuclear plant facility.

It just doesn't strike me as much of an engineering challenge to evaporate 50 tons/day given that size of a facility and the decay heat and the solar insolation.

<comment><USER2> Those are some awesome calculations. Since we are talking Japan's food supply and the Pacific Ocean, it would be nice to have some independent measurements taken on site, in addition to your nice back-of-the-envelope calculations.

Keep in mind this water is all indoors, so unless you have some openings you are blowing air in, there will be no evaporation whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> More details would be nice. As the article notes, tritium itself is _almost_ innocuous (its decay is via a weak beta particle emission, about the only way it could hurt you is if you ingested a lot of it).

Either way the problem with radioactive materials relates to the _concentration_ in solution of radioactive materials more than the binary "radioactiveness" of the material. After all the human body itself is 'radioactive' if only from the K-40 and C-14 that are present.

Without knowing the concentration of radioactive contaminants like Co-60 and radiocesium that might leak into the sea it's hard to know how much of an 'emergency' we'd be looking at. All we'd know for sure is that TEPCO is incompetent... but then what else is new?

<comment><USER5> It would be hugely better to actually have details.

Water, aka H2O, doesn't activate so it is not radioactive, it can however carry radioactive isotopes in solution. Is the groundwater flowing from the neighbouring area? (implied) then the it is carrying cesium from the environment away (good thing if you want to move back into the neighbourhood) is it picking up new contaminants from a broken reactor vessel?

I wonder if anyone has a better source for data here.

<comment><USER4> Water _can_ activate (much more so than you think in fact, though I can't discuss further maybe someone with a civilian background in nuclear physics can fill in).

Certainly the long-term danger is more from what the water will carry in solution than from the water itself though.

<comment><USER3> "though I can't discuss further maybe someone with a civilian background in nuclear physics can fill in"

Oh spare us the cloak and dagger. I don't think oxygen radioactivation has been classified for about 80 years now.

There's even a pretty good wikipedia page at

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_oxygen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_oxygen)

The "natural" stable isotope O-16 needs to get triple neutron activated before you get an unstable isotope O-19 and the half life of that is like a minute. So its about half a million minutes per year, and its been about two years, so thats about a million half lives later... I think all the O-19 is long gone.

I do agree 100% that the "stuff" dissolved in the water is about a zillion times more important than the oxygen itself.

Its so mainstream there's some interesting radio oxygen dating work done using the Dole Effect, which also has a wiki page. TLDR is photosynthesis preferentially concentrates certain O isotopes so you can make all kinds of assumptions about glaciation and where plants are growing (ocean or land) given some 16O:18O ratios.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dole_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dole_effect)

There's even a cool wikipedia article with a UTF-8 name.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9418O](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9418O)

Which brings you to the greater topic of isotope geochemistry

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_geochemistry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_geochemistry)

I'm sure there is at least some cloak and dagger stuff that can't be discussed but there's a simply huge amount of open literature about oxygen radioactivity. I would suspect there's more open lit stuff about isotopic geochemistry than cloak and dagger stuff.

<comment><USER4> > Oh spare us the cloak and dagger. I don't think oxygen radioactivation has > been classified for about 80 years now.

I'm not trying to be cloak and dagger, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned that a civilian trained nuclear physicist can tell you the exact answer.

However I do not have CG-RN Rev 3 completely memorized and I no longer have access to it, so unless I know for sure something is not NNPI or otherwise protected by the Atomic Energy Act then I don't discuss it. Not that I don't agree that it's _pretty crazy_ that someone who's never been in the Navy could go and look at Wikipedia and discuss it with someone else and be just fine but that the person who's been in the nuclear Navy cannot... but then I've never attributed "common sense" to the military.

With all that said, you haven't hit on exactly what I'm talking about (not that oxygen activation isn't cool). I will say the actual answer is pretty mundane, not at all cloak-and-daggery.

<comment><USER3> "Not that I don't agree that it's pretty crazy"

Well if that's how the Navy is, then that's how it is. I was MOS 55R in the army and that's not how how we do it. Then again I was not a 55G which (was) the nuke guys. Maybe they have excessive rules, maybe not.

As for n activation of (pure) water that either the O which is harmless or the H which is almost too obvious or playing games with contaminants. Nobody uses pure water as a coolant other than maybe training/experimental/university reactors, so there's the chemical shim system (and its inevitable contaminants). Or simple mechanical contamination like household dust essentially. Or corrosion (however slow) of non-bulk parts of the reactor, iron, carbon, and chromium from the walls are irrelevant but copper ions from slowly corroding cabling or something. Good luck being nearby the ocean and not having detectable chloride ion concentration, however low. Or dissolved nitrogen from the air, argon etc from the air. Sealing/gasketing material incredibly slowly corroding away. There's more to stainless steel than just Fe/C/Cr so if you corrode enough of it... Not much other options, its a pretty highly controlled area.

<comment><USER6> It's how it is with nuclear information everywhere in the US government. If you don't _know_ that you can talk about it, you don't.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_secret](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_secret)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fukushima converted me away from being a supporter of nuclear, or at least conventional nuclear. _Maybe_ something like LFTR or WAMSR could re-open the debate in my mind, but the debate for conventional solid-phase reactor cores is pretty much closed.

Not because I buy into all the fear mongering about radiation, but for a much simpler reason: it showed that conventional nuclear is not cost-effective vs. the alternatives and is not scalable.

In any system, accidents will happen. Worst case accidents will happen. The frequency may be low, but Fukushima shows that _one_ singular bad accident can completely obliterate the economic rationale for nuclear power in a given country. Fukushima is going to be a billions-a-year money pit for Japan for at least the next decade and a half.

Given those costs plus the fact that nuclear without accidents is not substantially cheaper than alternatives, it just seems more _rational_ to invest the money and R&D effort required to solve the energy storage and distribution problems associated with solar and wind energy.

In the end, provided we can back them up and distribute the power efficiently, there is actually more energy available from the sun and the wind than there is from any actionable real-world plan for scaling nuclear that I've ever seen. Renewables also have many other benefits including:

\- Very low risk... basically no more dangerous than any other construction or manufacturing.

\- No fuel, so little to no real sustainability concerns. This means that once we make them work they will work forever and we won't have to worry about energy anymore.

\- Small incremental investment cost. Wind and solar can be deployed in small increments, and it's exponentially easier to raise small increments of money than large ones.

\- Less politically centralized. Nuclear demands centralized regulation and huge centralized financial control, and nuke plants are central points of failure for the entire industrial system built around them. Were we to rely on them exclusively they would become easy "off switches." Renewables by contrast open up the potential for a "PC revolution" in energy.

It just seems like a no brainer for me. Nuclear is a boondoggle, at least for most uses.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand how an empirical analysis, such as this purports to be, could get around the fact that "conventional" power generation kills far more people than nuclear ever has.

<comment><USER2> In deciding what to build next, you would compare nuclear with the other future options, which do not include coal.

No one argues that solar or wind will kill anyone.

And, the real problem with nuclear is that it isn't cost effective. If the free market was operating, no plants nuclear plants would be built in the US. It is only with govt. subsidies making 90% the up-front cost risk-free there has been even a nibble of interest from free market investors. And even that interest has petered out.

<comment><USER9> But if the free market was truly operating would we be building any wind and solar plants? When it comes down to it aren't coal plants still the most economical from a market stand-point?

<comment><USER10> >aren't coal plants still the most economical from a market stand-point

only in the current environment there most of the cost of coal energy (green house gas and other pollutants emissions, environment destruction where coal is mined, etc...) is socialized

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Has anyone done tests to see how the radioactive water and other contaminants have affected the pacific as a whole? how about the fish stock near japan?

[http://www.grida.no/images/series/vg- climate/large/32.jpg](http://www.grida.no/images/series/vg- climate/large/32.jpg)

<comment><USER12> Does this mean we have to start equipping undersea seismic sensors and surface buoys with geiger counters? :(

<comment><USER13> The dilution of the radioactive content by the ocean is probably high. Overall the risk is low for significant contamination due to the overall ocean volume.

The issues are so-called hot-spots which cause certain fish to be extremely radioactive and streams causing concentrations of radioactive materials highly contaminating only certain regions and fish.

That being said, there are so many pollutants in the oceans that I'm confused why people are not more outraged about ocean pollution.

Vice Documentary about garbage streams. e.g. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D41rO7mL6zM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D41rO7mL6zM)

Finally, its certainly not acceptable to have on-going ocean pollution, which is probably happening in Fukushima Daiichi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> `Tepco's "sense of crisis is weak"`, ultimately the problem.

<comment><USER13> The infamous Atomic Village problem, particularly Tepco's corruption is quite well known and paradoxically accepted by the society.

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

(turn on captions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> But what was leaked is really not all that much. Recall that 1Bq is a disintegration per second, and, although a few trillion is quite a bit, this is over a massive volume. Now, there's nothing stated in terms of how much leaked into water sources, so, there's little judgment that can be made. But I believe it's little to truly worry about.</comment>


Is The Real Estate Industry Ripe For Disruption? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bird-dog.co/blog/2014/5/13/using-a-realtor-makes-buying-selling-real-estate-a-drag

<comment><USER2> Having bought/sold a few properties, the value proposition that real estate agents try to offer are in terms of providing advice regarding the transaction.

Most agents can't really give you good advice whether this is a good financial investment, and -- in my experience -- may not even have a good enough judgement to tell you whether the area is good, the market timing is appropriate, etc.

Given that all they do -- in my eyes -- is provide advice on the contract, they're overpaid. Mind you, a lawyer needs to review everything anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, it is. The only house I bought was an owner-to-owner before the days of the web and even then I couldn't see what value the realtors would have brought to the game. Now they seem totally useless parasites, at least for residential sales.</comment>


Should I turn down a Amazon AWS job offer over this? - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/anonymous/1132ffc6f32ca6416cd92aa82009d3de <comment><USER2> The assignment of invention disclaimer is straight out of Washington state law [[http://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=49.44.140](http://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=49.44.140)]. They're required to put it in their employee agreement, but basically anything done on your own time on your own equipment is yours, by law. You don't need permission to reserve those rights.

The moonlighting, on the other hand, where you make money on your side projects, is not protected by Washington state law (California is much more friendly to that). If what you're doing is not a conflict on interest, you'll still have to negotiate it. If it is a conflict of interest, forget it.

Finally, you're about to sign a contract for hundreds of thousands of dollars and a good chunk of your waking hours. Consulting an employment lawyer is relatively cheap by comparison. They'll be able to fill you in on your rights under the law, what's standard in the contract, what's not standard, what's just plain unenforceable, and what you'll have to negotiate to protect the side projects you care about.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've worked at Microsoft, Amazon, and several other places. These clauses are pretty standard. I'd say it would be unusual to find a place that doesn't make you sign these (or similar) clauses. My experience has been that it mostly depends on your relationship with your boss. If you're a strong performer and your side interests don't interfere or compete with the company, you're "usually" fine. That's not a guarantee: it's just the odds. Your location of employment also matters. I assume you're planning to work in Seattle, and unfortunately Washington is company-friendly when it comes to worker rights. California is usually more worker-friendly. If you're planning on working on AWS, you're probably going to have little free time. Don't fret this legalese if you plan on dabbling in open source or write games on your free time. However if you're probably going to run into problems than other than just legal ones if you're planning on creating a business on the side: amazon usually demands too much to leave you with much free time.

<comment><USER4> I would argue that just because it is standard doesn't mean it should be. I think the original poster is right in being concerned, even if it's typically not enforced

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the big red flag for you:

 _Truth be told I 'm really uncomfortable with the idea of having to get written permission to work on a weekend side project that makes money. I already have side projects that make money, and I have ideas for more._

That will have to stop, and if you don't want to stop it then you should try to negotiate an addendum to the agreement for you that allows it. If they refuse you have your answer.

</comment><comment><USER6> (Disclaimer: I am an attorney, non-practicing; this is not legal advice.)

An "assignment of invention" section has been in every employment agreement at every technology company I've ever worked at. It's about as boilerplate as it gets.

However, as noted in the language, it doesn't apply to anything you've worked on, on your own time, with your own equipment. The key here is that anything you want to claim as your own, you can't work on it in their offices or facilities, and you can't use their equipment. So use only your own personal computer to work on it, at home (or at least outside their offices), and never touch your work with any company-provided assets. This includes commenting on it, answering emails about it, etc.

As noted in there, they do give you the opportunity to list all the inventions you've worked on prior to employment, so they can't make a claim on them.

As for the other clause, about not carrying on any other work, I'd consult an attorney in your state. In California, for instance, they're almost totally unenforceable. Elsewhere, I'm not sure it's enforceable if your other work doesn't compete with that of your employer in any substantial way.

Courts care about facts. And cases don't get to court unless you've really angered your employer in some way, or you've made so much money with your side business that they have a financial reason to try to get a piece of it.

Finally, at a large company like Amazon, unless you're a C-level executive, they're not going to negotiate on employment terms. So you'll probably have to take it or leave it.

<comment><USER7> As not-legal advice, how would this work if you use your own equipment to perform work for your company and also for your own personal work?

For example, if you have your own ESX server with a lot of resources that you use to host virtual machines. Some virtual machines you use to test your company's product when it's more convenient than using a cloud, and other virtual machines you use for your own side-project.

Is it dangerous to combine the two in that fashion?

<comment><USER8> I'm very curious about this as well - if you do salary work on a personal resources, does it give your employer any extra claim on personal projects created using the same resources (assuming the personal projects were done on personal time)?

Bonus question: if you're salaried and on-call 24/7, does any time qualify as "personal time"/"off-the-clock"?

(Edit: clarification)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every contract is negotiable until you sign it.

While the clauses are standard, it doesn't mean they're required. If you're passionate about something, push for a change. I've gotten the "no side gigs" clause changed a number of times.

Just a simple rephrasing of "will devote Employee's entire productive time" to "will devote a _substantial majority_ of Employee's productive time" can give you flexibility.

</comment><comment><USER10> I left Amazon a couple weeks ago to join a start-up. One of the reasons I did so was because I was tired of being tied down by Amazon's non-compete agreement.

When you work for Amazon, you can't contribute to open-source. Basically, you can't contribute anything unless it gives Amazon an advantage of some kind (fix a bug in the Linux kernel that's causing AWS issues, for example) or if it will somehow be impossible for the project to ever be used by a competitor to gain an advantage. There's lots of progress being made internally to try to open that up, but after 5 years I never met or heard of an employee who had been given permission to contribute to an open source project.

You also can't have personal projects if you ever plan to share them. I asked permission a couple times to do a side project on my own time, with my own hardware. The first time, legal flat out told me 'no' because Amazon also was involved in that industry- the industry in question being 'machine learning'. The second time, they wouldn't say 'yes' or 'no', they just directed me to the non-compete agreement and told me to 'follow whatever it says'. IE: do what you want, but we reserve the right to sue you.

I wound up doing some side projects that were purely Amazon-internal[0]. It got boring.

All that said, I loved my time at Amazon. I worked with great people, had some crazy times (Amazon Fulfillment is a crazy, fun business), and learned so damn much. If this start-up doesn't work out I may even try to go back. It's a place that has problems, but it's not a bad place- if you don't care about the non-compete stuff.

[0]If you work at Amazon, I wrote 'RediFork' over a couple of dull weekends when I was an SDE1.

<comment><USER11> > When you work for Amazon, you can't contribute to open-source.

Not in my experience. I've never been denied an open-source participation request.

> You also can't have personal projects if you ever plan to share them.

Also not my experience. I have plenty of side projects and every one of them has been approved.

P.S. Thanks for RediFork!

<comment><USER10> I guess our experiences were different. I definitely applied, and was definitely shot down. Guess it depends on what you want to do? Or maybe they loosened up over time.

When they stopped saying 'no' and just saying 'here's the non-compete doc, you figure out if it's allowed or not', I just stopped trying.

On the bright side- hey look, you're a person who actually got permission! I can no longer say I've never met someone given permission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side- pr...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/)

This was a nice article about this topic posted here a few weeks ago

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER12> Also I work at Amazon. I don't know if they would ever be active in pursuing the deals of my contract, but I decided to receive permission to do an external hackathon and I'm not sure how they'd feel about me doing a side project for money. The contract is certainly enough to make me think twice.

Best of luck. Happy to answer more amazon q's if you reach out

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You present it as take it or leave it, other option if you lean towards "leave it" is to ask for an addendum that restricts there rights. Could be as simple as any disputes going to independent tribunal and notification of own projects required rather than permission. Amazon acknowledgement of current project / self employment.

</comment><comment><USER14> Will you be employed in California? If so, there are legal protections for employees that more or less void those sorts of agreements.

<comment><USER15> Are you sure "non-competes are unenforceable in California" generally refers to a different form where you agree to not work for competitors after stopping employment at a given company. If you use company equipment or company time, your work is subject to assignment to the company; I don't know how enforceable the clauses about competing fields with the company are, but usually there's a form to declare when you join (claim widely).

<comment><USER14> I should have been more specific. I was talking about the California law that more or less states that whenever you do work on your own equipment and time off, it's yours and not your employer's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > ATTENTION AND EFFORT. During employment, Employee will devote Employee's > entire productive time, ability, attention, and effort to furthering > Amazon's best interests and will not (without Amazon's prior written > consent) carry on any separate professional or other gainful employment, > including self-employment and contract work

OK, so that sentence consists of two parts, connected by an "and".

1\. You will devote your entire productive time to furthering Amazon's best interests, and

2\. You will not (without prior written consent) carry on any gainful employment outside of Amazon.

If those are meant to be independent restrictions, then #1 is incredibly restrictive. Suppose you work a shift that gives you weekends off. If you were to spend a Saturday afternoon at home fixing a leaky faucet you could arguably be violating #1! Most people would say that was productive time, and it would be hard to argue that it was devoted to furthering Amazon's best interests [1].

I assume that Amazon does not actually intend to prohibit employees from fixing leaky faucets, mowing their lawn, cooking dinner, helping their children with homework, and so on. I would prefer, though, for it to be clear that this is the case, rather than having to guess Amazon's intent.

[1] ...unless you want to make the argument that an employee worrying about a leaky faucet at home will be distracted and not able to do their best work when at the office, so taking care of the faucet does further Amazon's interests.

</comment><comment><USER17> Talk to your would-be boss about what would be acceptable in the future. If your boss can't answer, escalate the question to someone that can. If you have existing side projects, disclose them, and ask for written permission up front.

For future projects, if they don't honor the verbal commitments they make during hiring, you can always quit if you are in CA. WA has non-compete agreements, so quitting there might be messy.

Note that you do not realistically have time/energy to work two jobs at once, and they are paying you to be full time. Look at your requests from that point of view before deciding you future employer is being unreasonable.

[edit: Also, demanding you put requests in writing is as much for your benefit as Amazon's. I bet at least one Amazon employee has been building drones as a hobby for years, and published code/plans online. Now Amazon is making drones. A "yes, you can play with drones on the weekend" letter from legal is now worth its weight in gold for that person.]

</comment><comment><USER11> [Disclosure: AWS employee]

This kind of clause has been part of every offer letter I've ever received from a company with >100 employees

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to know. Is it enforced rigorously within Amazon? Specifically the attention and effort aspect. Do Amazon employees really have to get written permission from Amazon to work on side projects that might make money?

<comment><USER18> You should assume that it will be enforced. Signing a contract on the assumption that certain clauses might not be enforced is a mugs game.

Bearing in mind that amazon has a reputation as a shitty employer, I personally would make desired revisions to the contract, hand it back to them and say "this is what I want, let's negotiate".

If they insist on the boilerplate version of the contract, and cannot be persuaded to alter even small details to make you more comfortable, then you should nope the fuck out of there (unless you have no other financial option, in which case take it and immediately start searching for a bullying-free workplace. Don't forget to tell them on the way out why you chose to bail).

<comment><USER19> > You should assume that it will be enforced. Signing a contract on the > assumption that certain clauses might not be enforced is a mugs game.

I do that all the time.

Where I come from, there are plenty of standard clauses put in every contracts, which are 100% guaranteed illegal and not enforceable.

Usually, ignoring them is easier than negotiating the contract.

<comment><USER18> >Usually, ignoring them is easier than negotiating the contract.

You're mistaken. If the other party to the contract doesn't believe you, they may enforce the clause anyway, and then you'll have to pay for a lawyer to go and get it unenforced.

Particularly if the clause was related to something time sensitive (e.g. something to do with shares, or something that prevented you from launching a product at the right moment), the court will not reward you for the opportunity value lost.

If the clause is not legal, you should address that /before signing/ and have it removed from the contract. Doing otherwise on the assumption that the clause is unenforceable is arrogant and puts way too much faith in your local judicial system. It probably won't bite you in the arse, but it's one of those "if you do shoot yourself in the foot, you're gonna blow your whole damn leg off, not just the foot" situations.

<comment><USER19> Partially agree. For sure: Don't fuck with shares or anything important that might blow your leg off.

I'm talking of minor things. Like the classic non compete "You can't work in <x> domain for 1 year after you leave <company>". It's illegal and invalid at the place I was when I signed that contract (safe advice: don't generalize). Every one knows it's not valid.

If the company wants to enforce it, they also have to take lawyers and risk their reputations. Then it will go to trial, where the judge will pick up the exact same case for 10 years ago that defined 1) that clause is invalid 2) company loose the trial and can't appeal 3) exact figures for damages and payback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is standard but it requires more scrutiny. Contracts are intended to be a two-way agreement, not a way to manipulate you into giving up your IP rights for the sake of employment.

I'd say push back and bring up the fact that you have existing side projects. You could feasibly get an exception if Amazon is a decent company.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Any provision in this Agreement requiring Employee to assign rights in Inventions does not and will not apply to any Invention for which no equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information of Employer was used and that was developed entirely on Employee's own time, unless (a) the Invention relates (i) directly to the business of Employer, or (ii) to Employer's actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development"

My employment agreement doesn't have this clause and my employer made it very clear what I do in personal time is also owned by the company even if it does not relate to the company's business :( so by that standard this is lenient.

I've been at this company years. In hindsight I wouldn't have signed it but I'm stuck in it now.

<comment><USER22> It's possible that it's unenforceable/unlawful anyway, depending on your jurisdiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Never turn it down.

If nothing else, you can always come back with "I have outside projects and I'll need a blanket exemption for projects that I started on before working at Amazon."

<comment><USER11> I was able to negotiate this before I started at Amazon, this is a great point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Those contract clauses are more or less standard fare. I've had several contracts like that, including at startups.

If you have significant commercial interests that require time commitment aside from your day job, you should talk about them with your prospective employer beforehand.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you think you'll be working on something of your own, turn off the offer and tell them why. Better, negotiate a different agreement now. That's a standard contract but they might not care leaving you some margin to pursue your own business.

</comment><comment><USER26> Assignment of Invention is standard boilerplate in every offer letter I've ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER27> I know this doesn't apply to you, but thought others would find it interesting: in the U.K. the employer owns the rights to your inventions during employment, per the Employment Act, unless explicitly written otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is extremely standard. The same language was used at my last two jobs.

<comment><USER29> It can also be easily negotiated out, if the employer is reasonable.

<comment><USER30> Not at Apple as far as I've last heard (5 years ago). I know we're talking about Amazon here, but mentioning this because it surprised me how much of a cult Apple seems like internally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is standard and included in any large company's employment contract. They can't afford not to have it as some sort of fear inducing defense. Accept the offer. Then send a written request to your HR contact for permission to continue working on your current side projects that make money and don't directly compete with Amazon. You will most likely get it. Cross other bridges when you reach them.

Most companies rarely pursue this unless and only do it for very senior folks involved in ground breaking future strategy. As an example, Amazon didn't go after Instacart. Google hasn't gone after their self-driving folks that defected, and I bet they had similar agreements.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think you may be misreading the section regarding projects that you develop on your own time with your own equipment (unless I'm misreading it, which is also very possible):

> "Any provision in this Agreement requiring Employee to assign rights in > Inventions does not and will not apply to any Invention for which no > equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information of Employer was > used and that was developed entirely on Employee's own time, unless (a) the > Invention relates (i) directly to the business of Employer, or (ii) to > Employer's actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development"

Note the operative phrase: _does not and will not apply to any Invention..._

<comment><AUTHOR> However it follows up by saying unless it relates to the employers research or development. My concern is that since Amazon is such a large company the size of their field of anticipated research and development is so large they can probably claim just about anything I came up with on my own time.

<comment><USER33> Working at Amazon is an extremely intense and consuming experience, but it is also a unique opportunity to learn how to operate software at the highest scale. While there I suggest you focus on learning as much from your day job as possible and do not obsess about your potential side projects in the interim.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's definitely a reasonable way of looking at it. I expect that if I enjoy the work and am absorbed in it as much as I'd expect probably wouldn't work on new side projects that much, but I do already have existing open source projects and side projects, and I'm worried about that.

<comment><USER11> I was able to negotiate a blanket exception for existing projects. They are open to it.

Feel free to email me if you want to chat more about my own experiences on AWS

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Relevant thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13142543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13142543)

</comment><comment><USER35> I'd say to either: 1) focus on your side projects and develop them into real buisines (and skip this Amazon gig)

Or

2) take Amazon gig and make your side projects free and just work on them for fun

</comment><comment><USER36> Indefinite articles and vowels mean that any way you slice it, the title of this submission should be corrected.

</comment><comment><USER37> Why not just list all your ideas and stick to them?

</comment><comment><USER38> Both of these clauses are pretty standard at the top tech companies. I don't know whether it is just boilerplate legalese or they actually enforce it.

</comment><comment><USER39> No you should turn down the job at AWS because Amazon has extremely poor ratings on glass door, overworks all of their employees and pays very poorly.

<comment><USER11> I think that there is definitely a culture problem in a lot of the retail-side of Amazon, but in my experience AWS has treated its people very well. I work at AWS and work a standard 40 hour week, have had a great experience, and Google refused to match my compensation.</comment></comment>


Nate Silver of 538 Signs With Penguin In Two Book Deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.observer.com/2008/media/nate-silver-signs-penguin-two-book-deal-worth-sum-high-six-figures

<comment><USER2> Hopefully he will reveal more technical details about his statistical methods.

<comment><USER3> When you're making predictions based off complex models like he is, transparency gives you more credibility. There's actually a pretty good description here: [http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/03/frequently-asked- ques...](http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/03/frequently-asked-questions- last-revised.html)

Go through that page with a basic statistical package, plus maybe Wikipedia for reference and you can probably see most of what he did.

<comment><USER2> Well, I was hoping for more details than a brief answer to a FAQ.

See this earlier post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=356461>

 _His baseball projections are based on a proprietary algorithm (PECOTA)._

From wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PECOTA> :

 _detailed formulas are proprietary and have not been shared with the baseball research community._

<comment><USER3> Well, he lists all the variables in the regression he uses, tells you where he gets the polls, how he weights them, how he adjusts for timing, how he incorporates the regression results, etc. The FAQ is anything but brief -- there are LOTS of little links where he specifies all the details.

I agree it's not super well-documented where you can just plug-in numbers and go, but it seems like he provides the details that someone else would need to do something similar.

It depends on your goal. If you want to exactly replicate his work, you'd need access to the exact same data, and maybe he hasn't specified exactly what he uses to train the regression model. But if you just want to do something similar, the ingredients are all right there.

Also, re: the "proprietary" formula, it means that you don't know the specific parameters his model uses. But if you just want to learn how to do something similar (which is what it seems like is your goal), the information is all there. The methods aren't proprietary at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment>