Don't be a startup martyr - <AUTHOR> http://differential.io/blog/dont-be-a-startup-martyr

<comment><USER2> I'm getting tired of this "everyone should work as I do" mentality.

Does everyone work well past 8 hours? No. Do some people fucking love it, live for it, are great at it, and wouldn't do it any other way? Fuck yes.

Every single one of these pieces reads as a justification for why the writer doesn't work as many hours as the person he's writing about. He creates this gangly strawman who's overworking for all the wrong reasons, and inevitably burns out, but this just doesn't represent reality.

Sure, people burn out, sure people overwork, but that is _not_ the inevitable conclusion everyone's trying to paint it as. Some people have more work endurance than others, period. Sure, you work hard for 8 hours and go home, but the guy you bash worked just as hard as you did for the same 8 hours, and then he stuck around for another 5 or 6 hours and kept working just as hard.

There's unnecessary glorification in getting no sleep and eating like shit - that's a signaling problem, and has nothing to do with the acts themselves.

I just don't get why people refuse to accept the fact that there are others out there who can do more than they can. It's true for _literally_ everyone (except one guy. In the world.).

<comment><USER3> Since it's easy to confuse, it's worth explicitly highlighting the benefits of, above all, ultimately, maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

You and the author, together, are correct.

Someone may achieve 'balance' at 30, 60, 80 hours a week. YMMV. But the operative phrase is 'balance'.

I also consider the phrases 'unnecessary' and 'signaling problem' far too light to describe the ill effects of '[glorifying] getting no sleep and eating like shit'. It is a fucking cancer.

As an industry and a niche, we're _really_ bad at promoting this.

<comment><USER3> To that end, what is 'balance'?

Some may argue the weight on the other side of the seesaw - the startup or product you work on - has such dismally low possibility of 'taking off'/earning you life-changing money/etc that it's not worth putting a premium on work hours, as opposed to living and enjoying your youth.

That, right there, is the substance of debate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well said. It seldom is about the number of hours someone puts on building something. It's the experience, journey and the continuous learning curve that matters. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> So true, thx for sharing!</comment>


A challenge to say one nice thing daily about a developer you respect - <AUTHOR> http://notmagic.org/2013/01/28/one-nice-thing

<comment><USER2> I'm in.</comment>


Google is outdated – Twitter is the next search giant? - <AUTHOR> Google is the search giant at the  moment among all others and they have been on top more than a decade now. They have brought all new technologies and strategies to bring the best search results to the users and it all were successful without no doubt until 2016. Either is is due the social media take over the internet or something else, Google seems to bring out outdated search results constantly. For an example, when you search for a best digital advertising campaign, if received results from 2012 is really bad on the reputation they had. But if you looks at their entire search mechanism and the modal, it is true that it still runs on old metrics such as page rank and indexing which they introduced decades ago. Now the internet is far and far more have changed than years ago as well as user behaviors. We (Represents internet users) are in the need of fresh and
real time information. Google is failing in this situation. But twitter can provide the solution to the current need. They can become the next level of search giant. So how can they do this without affecting their current status? Can they adopt this? I have made the successful model which has worked and if anyone from twitter out there, please reach to me on - email@example.com. <comment><USER2> >> But if you looks at their entire search mechanism and the modal, it is true that it still runs on old metrics such as page rank and indexing which they introduced decades ago.

Not true.

>> Google seems to bring out outdated search results constantly.

If they want, they can easily tweak their algorithm to bring fresh results.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest - Page Rank kills the fresh information most of the time.

Agree on that they can tweak their algorithm. But why not doing it so.........

<comment><USER3> See, and my complaint is that too often it buries reputable older results in favor of freshness.

If you want only newer results, look under the "tools" menu and refine your results by date.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we are heading in to a different path of the discussion. Google will provide you the fresh content if you adjust the settings. But will it give you real time information. Nope. It takes time to index and rank. Aren't we search in Twitter for something urgent or real time information rather Google?

<comment><USER3> Oh, I see what you mean now. I've never had any particular need for that. And twitter's search is pretty crappy for anything else; and the signal to noise ratio and general quality of its content is awful either way. So no, I don't think Google is outdated. They serve very different use cases.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


San Francisco university lays off IT workers, jobs head to India - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/news/san-francisco-university-lays-off-workers-jobs-head-015039330--finance.html <comment><USER2> Can someone give an actual moral reason why this is bad?

Can you explain to me why where you geographically located needs to matter? Or why Americans should be or feel entitled to jobs? If someone is willing to do it cheaper, than a business is dumb to pay more just to reinforce nationalism.

This weird entitlement around jobs in America is strange to me. I appreciate the living hell out of my job, because I know it could be done by someone outside the US for cheaper (and my Company has a tech office in Bangalore). You can't appreciate something and expect it/be entitled to it at the same time.

Regardless of the rest though, that moral question is what matters - what is immoral about hiring people outside of your country? Why is nationalism considered a virtue?

<comment><USER3> You're asking an implicitly deontological question with an explicitly consequentialist answer. This kind of "outsourcing economy" _has been tried_ , and we have observed mostly negative effects. It deskills the country which pays for the goods, creates trade imbalances that help to break down what's left of our international system, impoverishes the people who are disemployed, and exploits the people who are newly employed.

Worse, the gains-from-trade that economists say ought to occur are allocated entirely to the owners of firms and equities, rather than being redistributed to the former workers to help smooth out economic transitions.

>This weird entitlement around jobs in America is strange to me.

That's because America's not willing to spend any resources on retraining workers or redistributing wealth away from the owning class, so "jobs" are the one thing people absolutely need to stay alive.

<comment><USER4> Loved your answer but adding some explanations for those of us not as smart as you:

Deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek δέον, deon, "obligation, duty") is the normative ethical position that judges the morality of an action based on rules. It is sometimes described as "duty-" or "obligation-" or "rule-" based ethics, because rules "bind you to your duty."

Consequentialism is the class of normative ethical theories holding that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct.

<comment><USER3> Gaaah, I should make some coffee. Big words come out when I don't drink enough caffeine to use small ones.

<comment><USER5> Or just use EasyWrite : [http://easywrite.parishod.com/](http://easywrite.parishod.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An important point, not well-covered. The employees worked for UCSF Medical Center, which is a corporation affiliated with UCSF. It's not actually a university- it's a hospital. There is a huge, weird overlap between UCSF and UCSF Health/Medical Center.

Also, UCSF Health is known for having merged with Stanford Health (they claimed both of them would go out of business if they didn't merge), laying off its entire staff, then rehiring them with a limited contract, and then un- merging: [https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?artic...](https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=40228)

(disclaimer: I was a PhD student at UCSF during the debacle).

<comment><USER7> Sounds like incompetent management led by MBAs gone wild. Imagine all the cost savings guys.

<comment><USER8> I would argue competent and effective management by people who view profits worth more than ensuring everyone can enjoy life. These people aren't idiots, they understand game theory, supply and demand and cost cutting to the point they are paid absurd amounts to do the work they do. In my opinion, techs problem is that the builders/maintainers trust leadership not to cut off their heads. Only friends are safe.

<comment><USER7> The reason that they are paid a lot is because they can justify their pay in terms of cost-savings. If you have a large company paying tens of millions in salary and you cut out a few jobs you can save the company a million dollars. For that you can justify a 1% pay, say 150k or 250k.

Funny thing is the tools are dumb in that they can't actually predict the long-term and mid-term effects of bringing on such a change. And this is a text-book case of that because they have reverted back to independent entities. Like for instance knowledge lost. How do you account for that? Loss of morale? How do you account for that. Communication problems, etc. etc. etc. All these things can be a competitive advantages or disadvantages for a corporation. They can potentially make or break a company.

In fact someone should create an AI called MBA AI to do this sort of shit and make a killing doing it. Just replace idiot MBAs with their dumb tools with an AI. It should be simple enough to automate to generate cost saving estimates and so on. Without actually being able to predict the actual outcome in any meaningful way.

I will finally add that in the end Jurassic Park was caused by an underpaid IT contractor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I worked in IT at a university for 7 years. I do not see this saving money over the 5 year term. It probably would have made more sense to relocate the IT staff out of the Bay area to a less costly location, but still be in the same time zone and able to be on site if needed. Looking at the map, the university looks land-locked and unable to expand. The idea of getting more office or classroom space by eliminating onsite IT was probably enticing, in addition to the expected cost savings.

<comment><USER10> Of late I have felt that this is the technique used by companies to get ride of older and expensive employees. A few years later they'll find that outsourcing is not worth it , and start hiring younger people again. That's a cheaper way to reduce healthcare and other costs that the employer has to pay for every employee

<comment><USER11> I think you're right and you can spot check it by looking at some of the photos of the laid off workers in various articles about this move. They all appear to be in their 50s at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Many more jobs have been outsourced to India through American companies like HP, IBM, DELL.

Is outsourcing a problem worth mentioning only when a company incorporated in India gets such contracts?

Or, is there a subtle hint of racial/country bias against Indians?

I ask this because I never see such damning articles when whole departments/section of companies are closed when outsourced to American companies. And circumstances are very similar.

Older employees cost company more because of America's awesome healthcare and insurance system. Techn knowledge gets commoditised and automated so quickly, these older employees are almost always phased out by outsourcing the jobs.

It's just that when the company getting that contract is Indian, all hell breaks loose.

<comment><USER12> "America's awesome healthcare and insurance system" Huh?

<comment> purple-again We have some of the best healthcare in the world. Many of the rich elite from around the world fly into the US for treatment.

We do however have a problem with accessing that healthcare. How do you allocate limited resources? We chose capitalism to decide.

<comment><USER10> True. Healthcare quality is "probably" great, if one can afford it. And that indirectly means if the employer can afford to subsidize your health insurance premiums so that you can afford that amazing healthcare.

"How do you access limited resources?" Why are the resources limited? How about making medical education free (paid by US taxpayer), so that only those who want to serve in the field of medicine will become doctors, and go on to earn a good living if they are good doctors?

Why not generate 100x medicine graduates than current number?

Problem is with crony capitalism. Doctors dont want over supply of doctors. Insurers are happy with constrained supply of healthcare. Richer people are happy with what they can afford.

Not rich and aging population gets screwed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm always curious about the math behind the cost savings in these types of off-shoring arrangements. I'm sure I'm missing something here, but if the HCL contract is for $50M, and they're claiming savings of $30M, that means that the expenditures for the original 97 employees+contractors would have worked out to approximately $825,000 per head, on average. ($80M / (49 + 48))

Now I know wages in the Bay Area are skewed, but even all in with benefits I'm sure that's much higher than the salaries of the replaced individuals.

Best to those being replaced, I'm sure they'll be picked up by smarter employers.

EDIT: Thanks to @jt2190 and @ar-jan for pointing out that I forgot to divide by 5, which gives a much more reasonable answer. It's a little too early here... ;)

<comment><USER14> You forgot to divide by five years.

165 000 USD per head, on average. $80M / (49 + 48) / 5

Edit: the savings likely also include things like benefits, office space, administration, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, all we hear about anymore is the great "shortage of tech workers", so this shouldn't be a huge problem. These folks will simply waltz into any number of area tech firms tomorrow and find jobs with all these companies "struggling to find talent", am I right?

<comment><USER16> The problem is that it is actually a "shortage of (cheap) tech workers". Quality is expensive, and companies don't want to pay for expensive american tech workers when they can cut costs by paying for cheap overseas tech workers.

<comment><USER17> The problem for US tech workers is that Eastern Europe is already ahead and India and China are catching up.

Writing a web app can be done by anyone in the world. Writing a driver and understanding intricacies of an operating system, fewer. Creating and implementing new algorithms? Well...

Sucks to be them. US somehow killed its huge research advantage enjoyed by years of successful brain drain from all over the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> UCSF is one of the wealthiest medical research institutions in the world. It's stunning they can't support an in house IT staff.

Granted, in my experience University IT staffs are generally pretty awful. Usually, each individual lab will have one or two people with a lot of Linux experience who end up doing all of the actual work.

<comment><USER19> Contrast this with the Texas Medical Center (largest in the world [1]) in Houston where the cost of living is dirt cheap.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Medical_Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Medical_Center)

<comment><USER20> I wouldn't say it's dirt cheap. The Medical Center in particular is in a very wealthy area of Houston and is across the street from Rice and a neighborhood of $1M+ homes.

The dirt cheap homes are 20 miles out in the suburbs or in very high crime areas.

<comment><USER21> You're exaggerating greatly. Almost the entire Houston metropolitan area is less than 20 miles from the Medical center.

Plenty of homes are near the Medical center. Nearly all of Houston is "dirt cheap" when compared with San Francisco's price bubble.

As for crime, Houston is safer than SF proper and doesn't have San Francisco's vagrancy problems, which are as much a product of the city fathers as of the vagrants themselves.

<comment><USER22> I don't think that's a fair comparison at all. Having been in both places (currently live in Houston) we have a bad vagrancy problem that has only recently been addressed due to the superbowl.

Furthermore keep in mind the list price on a house in Houston isn't indicative of the true cost. There is a 3-5% property tax that is paid out annually. I currently pay $14,000/yr in property tax against a $320k mortgage. That's after homesteading discount and disputing the property value appraisal to be lower than what I actually paid for it.

<comment><USER23> > I don't think that's a fair comparison at all.

How much income tax do you pay in Texas vs California?

California [1]:

1% on the first $7,850 of taxable income.

2% on taxable income between $7,851 and $18,610.

4% on taxable income between $18,611 and $29,372.

6% on taxable income between $29,373 and $40,773.

8% on taxable income between $40,774 and $51,530.

9.3% on taxable income between $51,531 and $263,222.

10.3% on taxable income between $263,223 and 315,866.

11.3% on taxable income between $315,867 and $526,443.

12.3% on taxable income of $526,444 and above.

Texas [2]: Texas residents pay no personal state income tax.

[1] [http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/state-taxes- california...](http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/state-taxes- california.aspx)

[2] [http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/state-taxes- texas.aspx](http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/state-taxes-texas.aspx)

> There is a 3-5% property tax that is paid out annually. I currently pay > $14,000/yr in property tax against a $320k mortgage.

Yes, that's high. However, consider what $320k gets you in SF vs Houston. With $320k I can get a decent sized house in Houston vs a tiny studio in SF (if that).

One state is not necessarily better than the other. They are making trade offs. These trade offs benefit you depending on your lifestyle and circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Longer term, outsourced IT costs for larger projects are not lower than having staff. The cost savings could be in outsourcing infrastructure too, although the way medical systems are required to be maintained in US it's hard to imagine they'd move their stuff to AWS, or if they did whether it would be much cheaper.

Curious to know of real reasons - maybe some internal politics? Or maybe they had issues with staff skills/retraining?

<comment><USER25> Not sure if this applies to edu, but here's the way it normally seems to work in corporate:

Aspiring manager decides to hitch his or her wagon to offshoring IT initiative. Manager hires consulting firm to handle details / take fall if it goes poorly. Switch-over normally goes well. Cost savings are demonstrated in year 1.

Manager gets promotion / bonus because of fine job he or she did. Consulting firm gets paid because they delivered. Offshore IT appears to be working well.

In year 2, company finds out there's an extremely frequent business interaction with IT that wasn't covered by the contract (because management lives in a land of abstracted rather than actual business processes). Offshore IT bills them an arm and a leg for it. Repeat this for every change request. Service also seems to degrade as new faces are substituted in on the offshore side (B team for A team).

In year 3, company needs to migrate to a new business system. Offshore IT (under current contract) is revealed as utterly incompetent for something this complex. Offshore IT will happily sign a new contract to make it happen, if company is willing to pay more.

In year 4, company is still attempting the migration. After signing the migration contract, offshore assigned more competent resources. However, it is revealed there is now no one left at the company with deep expertise in the system (the person who worked on it for 20 years was let go during the offshoring) to interface with offshore IT experts. And of course nothing was documented.

In year 5, the migration is still ostensibly underway but has generally been accepted as failing. The offshore IT initiative is now regarded as a more expensive boondoggle that delivered worse service.

The manager moved on somewhere around year 3.5, securing a better position based on his or her track record with successful IT offshoring. Which they are then asked to do for their new employer.

The consultants are also in strong demand, based on their track record of successful IT offshoring initiatives. Any problems that occured when they were no longer involved obviously can't be attributed to them.

Tl;dr - pump and dump with a department of employees and people's lives

<comment><USER26> This is so very true based on my experiences with pharma. The only addition I'd make in year 1 is that most of the company is told that everything will be business as usual. It's not "BAU" because the Offshore IT team brings new processes and there is often a cultural mismatch. The business teams then decide to be uncooperative and work as much as possible outside the bounds of IT for the next 4 years. This makes the environment even more poisonous for all involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When blue collar workers getting outsourced comments here are usually full of pontification on capitalism and shareholder interest.

When it comes to service workers some commentators are nearly gleeful at the prospect of job losses and cost savings by ai never mind it's decades away if at all.

Individualism can only take you so far. Without meaningful community and social structures based on common good and mutual respect the lack of empathy and sometimes open disrespect of other peoples life conditions will ultimately come back to bite you.

</comment><comment><USER28> Good luck to those losing their jobs, and good luck to the university staff and students - you're going to need it. HCL is terrible.

<comment><USER29> All University IT departments I have interacted with were terrible too. Universities simply cannot pay market-level salaries for IT staff because it would turn the whole pay-pyramid upside-down. The ones who stay, spend most of their time making sure their work is neither cheap nor good: You cannot use the cloud! but you can have this VMWare virtual from 2009. You need to store 500TB? we don't have it but don't you dare to use S3. To get stuff done you have to essentially run a shadow IT group. Let's see how the UCSF experiment turns out.

<comment><USER30> They could pay what is justified if they wanted. University pay is usually topped by sports coaches (and not just head coaches, at many universities numerous assistant coaches make more than any executives at the school and all academic staff).

There is no reason IT staff couldn't be paid at market rates. Poor management of IT is due to poor management not because "Universities simply cannot pay market-level salaries for IT staff."

<comment><USER31> "University pay is usually topped by sports coaches (and not just head coaches, at many universities numerous assistant coaches make more than any executives at the school and all academic staff)."

Coaches & sports staff at the high level you are referring to, are NOT funded by the university budget. They're funded by specific athletic funds that is from sports revenue & that boosters pay into.

This is not an equivalent scenario - you're basically saying that a University should go set up an IT Booster Fund and have interested parties pay into it in order to pay these market rates - which they wouldn't (would you? I sure wouldn't).

"The other problem with the salary comparison is that Alabama taxpayers aren't paying Mr. Saban, and so his salary doesn't take any money away from professors. One of the benefits to come out of the rampant commercialism of college athletics is that media conglomerates and sneaker companies are willing to pay huge sums for the broadcast and apparel rights. Thus, Mr. Saban will be paid out of Alabama's $70 million athletic budget, with little or no impact on academic departments."[0]

[0] [http://web.archive.org/web/20160325043141/http://www.wsj.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160325043141/http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122853304793584959)

<comment><USER32> But who pays for the infrastructure of the sports, from what I've seen of stadium and amenities investments it's almost always the public that pays for that, and in that case the state does pay a lot to the athletics funds. One have to be real careful when thinking that the abstract budgets are not related.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yesterday when it came to outsourcing of jobs, Trump only said 'China', 'China', 'China'.

I don't know what magical spell has India cast over Americans that all American politicians have become totally stone blind to the fact that how damaging India has been to outsourcing of jobs from America to India and how many highly skilled/educated Americans have been left without jobs due to India's usurping of jobs.

And to those bleeding hearts who highlight scarce attempts of Indian companies hiring in US - don't forget the fact that such job numbers dwarf the amount of jobs that have been outsourced to India. And for those karma-believers who think that one day India will taste its own medicine when they outsource to poorer nations than India - let me tell you something: India is one nation that will never,ever outsource its own jobs to other nations (mickey mouse examples won't count).

How the heck can IT folks from US/Canada/UK and other such nations compete with India (and in some cases with Philippines) where wages are so low that if we here in the Western World were to work with such wages, we would need to have 3 jobs to make our ends meet.

<comment><USER34> "I don't know what magical spell has India cast over Americans"

This is a common question esp. among Pakistanis ("m23khan" is someone from Pakistan living in Canada, available from his HN comments). Please let me explain. (1) India is the biggest democracy in the world. US is the oldest democracy. We share common values like liberty, equality, secularism. (2) India has the potential to be largest growth market for American companies (think Android, Uber, American defense companies, etc.). (3) No Indian has been involved in terrorism attacks in US. (4) Indians integrate in US much faster than other immigrant communities, reasons could be familiarity with English, belief in freedom of speech, etc. (5) Significant contributions made by Indian-Americans - look at their work as Professors, as doctors, as CEOs, as journalists. (6) In spite of sharing many values with US, India is not afraid to distance itself from American policies when they do not agree, e.g. India said no for troops in Iraq, led the non-aligned movement during Cold War. My guess is that America respects a principled country more than a country which keeps asking for more $ while pointing a gun to its own head.

So it should not be difficult to understand why India is considered as an ally by US.

<comment><USER17> It is more likely that India can be invaded if all goes wrong, but China would easily withstand US military nowadays.

In other words, Chinese negotiate from the position of strength in all regards. And they do want to keep control of their economy and their internal market.

<comment><USER35> What is this? Civilization 2 or something. HN too is subject to such juvenile commentary like Reddit, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Hopefully that school doesn't have a CS or IT program, 'cause that's a pretty strong wave-off for people considering what career to go for.

</comment><comment><USER37> Quote from UCSF "... I.T. costs have nearly tripled between 2011 and 2015"

This is the real story. The ballooning salaries and cost of living in San Francisco from the tech boom has completely blown UC's budget out of proportion.

These people are not downtrodden factory workers in some midwestern town losing their livelihoods. They are highly qualified IT workers in the hottest job market that has ever existed anywhere. They will all have job offers in weeks.

</comment><comment><USER38> What's the work involved in these jobs?

If it's being done remotely it can't be any physical maintenance as that'd require being on site.

<comment><USER19> Just because the company is based in India doesn't mean all the staff is. There is probably "remote hands" or light network engineering on site with the bulk administration being done remotely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > "It's a downgrading of services and a slap in the face for the customers," > said Ho

I'd express my sympathy - but these statements tend to be incorrect and said out of frustration. Infact, there is a higher probability for improvement in service and customer experience - provided it is maintenance work and the control point decisions are not outsourced. However, if customer-experience depends on cultural experience - the story could be different. And in this case HCL is a reputed organization (not too different from the likes of TCS, Infosys)

> as a way to save $30 million over five years.

Doesn't happen and/or highly unlikely to occur. What happens is: They start saving initially. After some time their costs start rising, but they are still saving. In parallel, the company (to whom they outsourced) starts cross- selling. This new expense doesn't affect the savings figure - afterall they are spending on "something new". Well this "something new" costs higher. Slowly - outsourcers start outsourcing decision making (and sometimes managers get themselves fired). And then the tables turn over. Later the outsourcer is so much dependent that its hard and costly to take jobs back in, because it requires a business-system overhaul. And the company would make sure (by resolving some pain points) that you are not firing them and keep tolerating them. Nothing specific to India here, it happens with Indian consulting cos and with US-based consulting cos. The only difference is that the latter provides _slightly_ better quality at a 50-80% higher cost.

</comment><comment><USER40> A lot of criticism of how bad it will be with the outsourcing company, but clearly the real worry is local people losing their jobs to foreigners. Why blame the university? It's not a charity. If anyone really cares about the workers who lost their jobs, they can look up their address and mail them a check.

<comment><USER41> Seems like you may have missed the whole, "Give a man a fish..." thing growing up.

<comment><USER42> Not GP, but there is a sliver of sound logic in the call to put your money where your mouth is.

Why not start a charity/non-profit that assists such victims of outsourcing? I'd think unemployment benefits were supposed to do that. And that is not too far from you, me and all other taxpayers writing a check to such folks. Is it?

<comment><USER43> Not the GP, but because starting a charity/non-profit that's worth a damn takes a ridiculous amount of work, and in areas I'm not terribly proficient in, and I have a plethora of other things that I would like to do with my limited time on earth.

I already have about 100+ things I'd love to create, contribute to, or accomplish, if only I had the time and money to do so. I do what I can, but that list just keeps growing, not shrinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Hidden secret is [http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians- among-...](http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians-among-most- corrupt-while-doing-business-abroad.htm)

<comment><USER17> Open secret you mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think it's deceptive to frame this as Indians stealing American jobs. It's more like American engineers are being overpaid at the expense of UCSF patients and CA taxpayers.

<comment><USER16> American engineers are being overpaid, or Indian engineers are being underpaid?

<comment><USER45> I think this question should be discussed alongside the question of why US healthcare is so expensive and inefficient compared to the rest of the world.

<comment><USER46> because we don't do the same thing that we do in IT like importing doctors, meds ect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why isn't anyone talking about the lack of funding for universities and educational institutes? Isn't that too a part of the problem?

Or is there no lack of funding?

</comment><comment><USER48> The goal is opex obviously.

</comment><comment><USER44> Try hiring Politicians on H1B</comment>


Why I'm Not Going to Read Your Resume - <AUTHOR> http://blog.larajobs.com/im-not-going-read-resume/

<comment><USER2> > I want to FEEL your desire to work with us.

I don't know if I want to work with you. You haven't done excellent job of selling yourself to me _yet_ (especially with posts like this).

Moreover, most probably it's you who hasn't done your homework when redacting job post. It's probably _another_ "young company with long traditions" and "international market leader", requiring "proficiency with Oracle, .NET, Tomcat/JBoss and ActiveDirectory" and offering "dynamic team, competitive salary and opportunity for professional development". Why would I feel at this point the _desire_ to work specifically with you? How do you differ from all the others in the market?

And if you are too busy to do your job of looking for a good candidate, then a) you probably should change jobs, and/or b) I don't necessarily want to work with you. It's possible that there is more people acting incompetently in your company (either because the people are just incompetent themselves or because company doesn't give them possibility to act competently).

</comment><comment><USER3> > As the hiring manager I'm going to judge the book by it's cover.

I am constantly surprised by the people involved in hiring who seem to want to leave themselves open to legal action.

The rest of it is mostly common sense advice. But I hate the bit of advice ab0out being creative with subject lines.

> Sure, you can put the job title as the subject line. It's not HORRIBLE to do > that, but it also earns you zero points. Think creatively! Most technical > jobs require creativity,

Holy crap, if I advertise a job I _want_ you to put the fucking job title in the subject line to give me some chance of finding it. Please don't get "creative" with subject lines.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why I'm not going to read your article...

You sound like a self-important dick.</comment>


Ken Goldberg: Creative robots, Kurzweil fallacy, and what it means to be human - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/20/creativity/ingenious-ken-goldberg <comment><USER3> I enjoyed the piece, and it's always nice to hear a voice of reason on the "danger" of robotics. On the other hand, I found the format disappointingly dumb. What was the value of making me scroll down, click a title, then scroll back up to watch the video in the header? Maybe I missed something.

<comment><USER4> We admit the player was clunky. We have a new one, as you can see in our interview with Ricard Saykally, [http://nautil.us/issue/25/water/ingenious- richard-saykally](http://nautil.us/issue/25/water/ingenious-richard-saykally), And are going through the process of converting earlier interviews.

<comment><USER5> Transcripts!

You know this thing called reading? It's about ten times faster than video for sharing verbal content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So his argument is "I can't think of how to build AI, and it looks pretty hard so, yeah." At least he admits it is "special" to him.

How is that an argument against Kurzweil? So far, we have no real ideas on consciousness. So it seems that until we've at least figured out that, no should should be making flat prohibitions on what we can achieve. (Kurzweil could be wildly off on timelines but that's the most obvious and only real criticism there is right?)

Not to mention, as far as we can tell, we are machines. So it takes an extra something to say we can't ever build ourselves. (Let alone figure ourselves out and improve on the design.)

<comment><USER7> Not knowing how to do a thing is a pretty good argument against it actually happening in any short period of time. Since we can't even define consciousness... conscious machines seem pretty speculative.

As far as Kurzweil goes as a prophet: how is his track record? Pretty bad as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER8> "As far as Kurzweil goes as a prophet: how is his track record? Pretty bad as far as I can tell."

Actually, it's pretty good, if you consider his predictions from 15 years or so ago and take some liberty in interpretation. I forgot where I read the list that enumerated it, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Creativity is doing something new and interesting"

Uh, I don't doubt that this kind of sentiment arises when one has worked with robots for a while and done some impressive stuff but had them consistently fail to inspire a feeling of interestingness in one.

But the statement itself is, ironically, neither new nor interesting since beyond interestingness being something people sense, the statement gives one not a clue what the criteria is for determining its presence. And a remarkable number of critiques of AI by very insightful people come down to a kind of vitalism - come down to a long, round-about way of saying "robots just don't that special something".

And, of course, humans so far have failed in producing a wide range of human- like behaviors in robots and programs. There is something of a psychological tendency to take everything a computer can do and deprecate relative to everything a computer can't do - playing chess was once something people imagined would involve "intelligence" but now no longer do, etc.

All that said, I'd like to shout-out for Douglas Hofstadters' Fluid Analogies [1] approach, which actually makes an effort to describe and define some aspects of creativity.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_Concepts_and_Creative_An...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_Concepts_and_Creative_Analogies)

<comment><USER5> Also, this isn't comparing like for like - because you're comparing the most exceptional and gifted individuals out of a human population of billions with a single robot or piece of software.

The vast majority of humans aren't particularly creative either. People who can do (e.g.) music a bit are maybe 25% of the population.

Of those, most are imitators with enough technique and expression to successfully reproduce familiar tropes, but not to be inventive.

Innovators are maybe 0.1% of the population - and that number is a complete guess, because so far as I know there's been absolutely no research into creativity in populations.

So "that special something" is rare already. The problem with computational creativity is that success is partly social and psychological - new tropes have to capture the imagination in some way, and it's very difficult for a machine with no model of human emotional and psychological responses to calibrate its output to meet that goal.

<comment><USER10> Not only that, but the specialness is totally in the eye of the beholder - <USER2> man's trash is another man's fine art. And if told that trash was painted by a certain Mr Picasso, perceptions might change rather quickly. There's a reason the scientific method is so important -- it's the best way we know not to fool ourselves all the time.

<comment><USER5> Picasso didn't produce trash because he couldn't paint. He could paint and draw incredibly well. But he got very bored by painting incredibly well before he hit 20.

Everything after that was one attempt after another to invent new visual languages for painting.

The cultural value of those attempts is completely different to the resale auction value of a Picasso, which is driven entirely by market speculation and the fact that highly rated artworks are treated as a convenient store of value - rather like gold, but more compact and lighter.

Cultural value is probably best measured by influence. On that basis Picasso scores very high, as one of the creators of abstracted figurative art. That trope remains mysterious to people who believe painting should be about photo- accurate or easy-to-read figurative work, but it's been a huge driver of fine art and all kinds of commercial illustration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> it's nice to some dissent to Kurzweil and the ai singularity pov questioned.

In my opinion KG's view here is closer to the truth of it.

It seems to me that the human organism is the singularity, and like many of our technologies, including metallurgy, cities, nuclear weapons, and bioengineering, computer tech and automation has the ability to wipe us out.

But it won't be because it becomes conscious and turns on us; it will be because we cause some chain reaction or blunder, by accident or on purpose: like wiping out an invaluable resource like air or water, or by otherwise destabilizing the global biosphere, or through some code typo that causes automated manufacture machinery to eat us for breakfast.

But the fear of machines gaining consciousness is, at least in our age, pure fantasy. If consciousness were a directly related to complexity, then the moon and sun would be awake and singing -- both are stuffed to the gills with highly organized information! Computers that can provide complex answers, or walk and talk as if they were conscious are no more awake than the moon or sun, and to say otherwise is to be a carnival salesman.

Kurzweil and his ilk are seeing the human consciousness in the mirror of the machine and it scares them, as it should. But it's a mistake to think that the machine will awaken accidentally or casually, as result of simply adding too many circuits, or feeding the wrong code into the wrong compiler. That idea applied to computers is a philosophical misunderstanding of the difference between intelligence and consciousness.

A conscious machine is not something that can be made without extraordinary technical ability and intention-ality - it's on par with the ability to colonize planets - way beyond us, and not something likely to happen by accident, except of course in the traditional sense of already having the ability to do so :}

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice, thanks for posting that. I knew Goldberg from his work / papers, but had not heard him speak before. I need to check if he teaches any online classes.</comment>


New Pricing for G Suite Basic and Business Editions - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/new-pricing-for-g-suite-basic-and-business-editions <comment><USER2> Why is "New Pricing" always higher? Not a real question, but it lowers my confidence in Google to see them pull stupid marketing tricks like this.

I'm also a little surprised they're raising prices. I figured this monthly revenue was practically nothing on their bottom line, and that they would prefer to keep users on their platform for network effect reasons.

Their chat product also kinda sucks. Ever tried searching your hangouts for a nugget of information? Generally when I think I've typed something in hangouts, I do a search, find absolutely nothing relevant (despite knowing it's in there somewhere), give up, and just check another source.

<comment><USER3> _I 'm also a little surprised they're raising prices._

They are leveraging(forcing?) their dominance in email to charge more. OTOH, I'm finding their docs stuff to be pretty good these days.

<comment><USER4> >OTOH, I'm finding their docs stuff to be pretty good these days.

What do you mean? You're willing to pay higher because they improved their documentation?

<comment><USER5> "Google Docs" (docs.google.com) not "Google documentation"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am a long-time user of GSuite/ Google Apps for Work and have a custom domain with accounts for my family members. I updated my free tier account from 2009 to a paid subscription in 2014, which I must say now, was a big mistake. The biggest drawback I see currently is that some features will never come to GSuite, like family subscriptions for Google Play Music and sharing of purchased apps and movies. Every purchase made with my GSuite account will be gone, if I choose to cancel my subscription and decide to go somewhere else. This is what really bothers me currently and prevents me from switching to another service. It would be fair, to have a GSuite-to-Free account functionality somewhere for the Google Play purchases. I would also be happy, if they would keep a cheaper GSuite subscription for families with less features but all the family sharing options.

Beside that, I am not completely sure, if it is legal to have purchases/ paid digital goods linked to a monthly/annually paid account.

<comment><USER7> The odd thing is that you can freely share family subscriptions bought on a single GMail account with members of a GSuite org.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an aside, google breaks things for the free users of gsuite (academic or grandfathered accounts) and shows no intent to fix it. While its understandable that they don't provide a high level of support, breaking things and not fixing them doesn't give me confidence to ever want to pay for the higher tier products.

example: gmail's "default routing" is mostly ignored with the proviso that it knows that the rules exist so if one creates a user that corresponds to an email already in the default routing section, it complains.

</comment><comment><USER9> We have to ask the question...why do these vendors keep increasing prices? Shouldn't the economies of scale reduce prices instead? AWS has the right attitude to keep reducing prices. We need this attitude in software.

Its either greed or market pressure to keep showing increasing profits/growth.

PS: I am with Zoho. We recently reduced prices. [https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html](https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html)

<comment><USER10> As a user of Zoho who switched from GSuite. I've been very happy with your service so far. Support got back to me quickly when I needed help and the documentation answered most of my questions. I find some of the plans a bit confusing, but I can do everything I need to do. I didn't even realize prices went down, but whatever I paid was a good deal for what I've gotten. Thanks!

I am not affiliated with Zoho in any way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a couple small businesses on it for nothing other than convenience. I clicked this hoping for a pleasant surprise but instead got an expected reality. No problem, email migration is one of the easiest out there (as long as you aren't to tangled in their other services) and I find myself using clients more than their web interface anymore so much of the gmail advantage is non-existent.

<comment><USER12> Was the gmail advantage ever in their web interface? For me it was always their spam handling that set them apart from everyone else.

<comment><USER13> > Was the gmail advantage ever in their web interface?

Compared to hotmail and yahoo mail it was, compared to a desktop client not so much.

> For me it was always their spam handling that set them apart from everyone > else.

It seems they've done such a good job that there isn't much of a spam market anymore, looking in my spam folder (gmail) I'm averaging 1-2 a day and that includes false positives.

On the corporate email using a different filter I only see about 1 spam message get through a year, so they might not even have a competitive advantage there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This could backfire. While $2/mo is no big deal, a lot of smaller customers don't actually need the "Business" flavor so they could downgrade to "Basic". Or they could consider moving to Microsoft: $12 per user is substantially more than Office 365 Business (which costs $10 per user per month, or just $8.25/user/mo with 1 year commitment).

<comment><USER15> Or move to FastMail.

<comment><USER14> FastMail offers spreadsheets, word processing, and cloud storage now?

<comment><USER15> No, but your business might not need those features. Why pay for what you're not using?

<comment><USER16> Most businesses do need those features. Businesses using only mail are relatively few and far between.

<comment><USER17> true, but they might not need all of their documents in the cloud. Google Sheets/etc is still going to be free, Office is affordable, or even the Pages/Numbers/Keynote option works if you're a Mac shop.

Or perhaps even LibreOffice.

<comment><USER18> You can't use a free version of Google Drive if you run a business.

You'll eventually need to be able to turn off access for employees who leave, and run audits to verify that you're in compliance around data security. If you're on the free version, even if you have everyone re-create an account with their company email, you still can't administer anything and you'd be forced to ask your staff for their passwords in order to verify sharing access.

<comment><USER17> That's not going stop people from trying, and stumbling along the way. _shrug_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wait. So am I getting this right? They scrapped Hangouts, in favour of 2 seperate apps, Hangout Meet and Hangout Chat, and they are using that as a reason to raise their prices?

Cloud Search seems interesting. But the email auto-completion isn't full enough, especially in a business environment to even bother using. None of this is worth a 20% increase in prices...

</comment><comment><USER20> I have heard stories of one bad employee account locked by Google make the whole domain being locked. It take days to contact unlock...

</comment><comment><USER18> Literally just a 20% price hike.

Why bother with all the fluff, just say, "We're charging you 20% more now."

</comment><comment><USER21> Honestly, for what they are offering it's still pretty cheap, if you include Gmail, G-Suite and Meet. I'd love them to have a proper chat app though.

There is a lot of young startups offering just a single product for a higher monthly price. Still, I was thinking that Google cares more about the adoption of its cloud office package and probably doesn't get a lot of its revenue from it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Literally the only reason I pay for GSuite is to be able to use Gmail with my custom domains. I imagine a lot of their Basic membership subscribers are similar. This might be a deal-breaker for me because I was already debating on if it was worth the $5/mo.

Are there any other solid alternatives that the HN crowd can recommend?

<comment><USER23> Check out Migadu. They are a Swiss company and offer unlimited domains and mailboxes for just $4 a month. The only drawback is that you can only send 100 emails a day combined from all your email addresses. Good for personal use I guess.

They also have higher tiers if you want to send more emails.

[https://www.migadu.com/en/pricing.html](https://www.migadu.com/en/pricing.html)

<comment><USER24> Omg! That's absolutely exactly what I need for all my sites. Thank you!

<comment><USER25> And it gets even better

 _Before paying a cent, all our users evaluate Migadu through our free, unlimited trial plan. The free plan supports one email domain, unlimited number of mailboxes, 1 Gigabyte of email storage and 10 outgoing messages per day which include a discreet signature "Sent via Migadu" at the bottom of each message.

If the limits of the free trial plan fit your needs and you do not mind the signature, you are welcome to stay on the free plan forever. There is no time limit. Upgrade only when ready and convinced._

I mean I rarely sent more than 10 email on my personal account. It is more of a receiving end. And this is awesome.

Edit: This needs to get submitted to HN in later hours for more exposure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder their reason behind the price increase,

Inflation as in developers salary is forever increasing.

Or they charge more just because they can.

</comment><comment><USER26> I used Hangouts today and it was really bad.

Had much better experience with AWS Chime and Zoom.

<comment><USER27> We've been using Google Meet [https://meet.google.com](https://meet.google.com) which is the current comparable to Zoom, Webex, etc. It's pretty solid. Actually like it more than other services. Curious, what issues did you face?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> TLDR: We are increasing prices 20%.</comment>


Who Called Git? An Unusual Debugging Story - <AUTHOR> http://schneems.com/2016/11/28/who-called-git-an-unusual-debugging-story/ <comment><USER2> I actually think bottom-up debugging (in this case, by overriding a system binary) is a great way to narrow down hard-to-track problems, and I use the technique all the time. One of my favorites is chmodding a file 000 to force a permissions error by whatever accesses it.</comment>


1996, or what happened with TI calculators - <AUTHOR> http://www.xkcd.com/768/

<comment><USER3> I love my HP-50G calculator, although I think they could improve the screen a bit... I'd appreciate higher resolution, faster refresh, maybe color.

However, having completed all the math and science courses for my degree, I'm not using the HP much any more. Usually it's more convenient to fire up "bc" instead of hunting up the calculator, despite the limitations of bc.

Oh, and I just can't see smartphones replacing graphing calculators. I like a calculator because it has all those buttons conveniently placed--for most things, I don't have to go through any menus. You simply can't fit all that on the screen of a smartphone and still be able to press the buttons on-screen. I ran an HP-48 emulator on a Droid, and while it was good, it was certainly no replacement for the real thing

</comment><comment><USER4> I recently, on a lark, looked up graphing calculators on Amazon to see what the state-of-the-art was (I was super into my TI-83 in high school). Wow, color me dissapointed...

At least there is one with a "touchpad" now:

[http://www.amazon.com/Texas-Instruments-Ti-nspire- Graphing-C...](http://www.amazon.com/Texas-Instruments-Ti-nspire-Graphing- Calculator/dp/B003FVGERY) (No referral code.)

I wonder if smartphones are/will replace dedicated graphing calculators? Any current students or teachers/profs/TAs that have an insight on the matter?

<comment><USER5> I can't see people being allowed to use a smartphone during an exam --- how can the invigilator know they are using the approved calculator app and not asking the internet for help?

<comment><USER6> Apparently, there are calc apps you can easily get that will store text. Apparently, a number of my classmates used this ability for tests - <USER2> various information and formulas we were required to memorize.

I'm not tooting my own horn in saying I didn't participate - I'm no noble man, but one thing I will not do is cheat in college. I was, however, very disappointed to learn that apparently such cheating is rampant.

<comment><USER3> You certainly don't need any special app. The TI program editor makes it extremely easy to store your notes as programs. HP calculators are a little more annoying for editing, but it's still easy to store text in a string variable.

I did it on occasion, because sometimes there's such a ridiculous number of complex formulae that I'd rather spend my time practicing their use rather than memorizing them.

The students who bank their whole grade on the notes in the calculator... typically can't pass anyway, because they don't know how to use the formulae.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think part of the point is that the price didn't go down like all the other stuff they were looking at in the old Computer Shopper ads.</comment>


I think I won the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://friendfeed.com/building43/c93c73e3/so-last-night-i-won-internet-social-media-driven

<comment><AUTHOR> Wild claims brought on my late night coding. Enthusiasm can sometimes blind our better sense of wisdom</comment>


Report: Amazon Is Planning a Whole Foods Expansion to Benefit Prime Now - sahin-boydas https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/31/report-amazon-is-planning-a-whole-foods-expansion-to-benefit-prime-now/ <comment><AUTHOR> I dunno about that.

It is one thing to put mall stores out of business because they aren't really competitive. (eg. nobody is going to cross-shop Victoria's secret and Target or American Eagle and Sears.) Heck, shopping at the mall is painful enough that I'm not going to cross-shop Old Navy and Target even though they are next door.

Many purchases are episodic that vendors are inclined to play "Prisoner's Dilemma" games with their customers. For instance, there was a time when Wal _Mart had $20 sneakers that were certainly worth more than 1 /5 of a pair of Brooks that cost $100. (At that price I'd buy two different colors because I liked both) Once I got in the habit of going to Wal_Mart to get sneakers they switched to styles and construction that was awful and I got another pair of Brooks instead.

Grocery is competitive because you buy groceries every week so supermarkets have a strong incentive to keep you coming back by upholding their brand. That makes it much harder for Amazon to muscle in, whereas most of the stores at the mall have been coasting for years and until they started to fail they'd just say that people who think "mall stores suck" are just out of touch agoraphobic eggheads.

</comment><comment> sahin-boydas [https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-plans-to-add-whole- foods...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-plans-to-add-whole-foods- stores-11546178520)

<comment><AUTHOR> paywall</comment></comment>


Zombie Theme Park in Detroit - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/zworlddetroit?c=home <comment><USER2> Aesthetically, the idea of a 'zombie theme park' is pretty weak. I get it; there's a lot of people who think zombies are the bees' knees. But a theme park dedicated entirely to them? You know how one dimensional zombies are? After running away from moaning, stumbling zombies for an hour, this would get boring as hell. And most people don't even commit to the acting (lame).

Practically, what the hell is the matter with people? There are homeless and poverty-stricken families and individuals all around Detroit. At the very least the structures could be used to house people who are at risk of heat stroke in the summer months and of freezing in the winter. More ambitious plans could be proposed which puts small businesses up rent-free, possibly getting the homeless jobs that could help them work their way out of poverty. Communal living spaces could be erected, or shared housing for artists and students. But instead they think it'd be fun for a bunch of middle class white nerds to run around going "Braaaaaaains!!"

This is a great example of a more practical use for the neighborhood: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/13/charismata-homes- of...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/13/charismata-homes-offers- detroit-homeless-mothers-shelter_n_1510219.html) [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/garden/in-detroit-help- fo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/garden/in-detroit-help-for-the- formerly-homeless-q-and-a.html)

<comment><USER3> And there are starving people in Africa, too. All that you suggest is already being done in Detroit. Personally, I think I would be bored after about an hour like you say but it would be really cool if they could pull this off.

The Detroit area (including parts of Detroit proper) isn't a complete wasteland. There are a lot of people in the area that want to have a little fun in their life, like anywhere else in the world. There's nothing wrong with that. If they pull it off, this would attract people from all over the region (and I'm sure far beyond), which can only be a good thing for the economy.

FWIW, I don't think they'll pull this off, especially for $145,000, but I like that someone's trying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a British person, I can't help but worry about how they're going to make a 200 acre expanse of Detroit safe enough to play this game. Making sure that the structures are sound, that there isn't dangerous debris around etc. The job of clearing up alone seems like a massive undertaking.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cute, but completely unrealistic. Is this a middle-school project?

It's a liability waiting to happen, and I have no idea how $145,000 in capital will get them started; try at least two orders of magnitude more. Theme parks aren't exactly killing it nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER6> _While we like the positive developments we're seeing in Detroit's downtown and along the Woodward corridor, we lamented what happened to the neighborhoods._

This would not be a positive. The Mower Gang and urban farmers -- that's a positive. The RoboCop statue kickstarter was at least funny; this is just dumb.

</comment><comment><USER7> Something similar to this already happens in the UK, except it takes place in the middle of cities rather than in abandoned areas:

<http://2.8hourslater.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like a legal liability ready to happen. Ambitious, but one step on a rusty nail and lawsuits ensue. Though I like the creativity of solving the inner city blight.

</comment><comment><USER9> Meta: For a website discussing startups, this discussion seems quite pessimistic to me. I am not aware of all the technical difficulties, I am not certain it will be the most fun project in the world, but I wouldn't give it the disparaging remarks I see here. I am certain they'll have difficulties with the local government and who knows if it will be successful, but I am in favor of people trying strange new things.

Even if it is a "completely unrealistic ... middle school project" or a "poorly thought out idea", the worst that could happen is that the people trying to put this together will learn a lot, and hopefully use that experience to try something awesome later. Considering what they are trying to put together, they clearly think this is awesome, and in that light I'd say it's worth the risk of doing.

<further muttering about "armchair entrepreneurs" and such would go here, but toned down to avoid rant-type material>

Disclaimer: I'm from near Detroit. Not sure how much that changes my opinion on this, though.

</comment><comment><USER10> To me 90% of the fun of living out a zombie apocalypse is taking a baseball bat to the side of a zombie's head. I don't really want to run around and hide all night.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a poorly thought out idea. If the city took two years (after initial opposition) to agree to a tree farm I can not imagine they'd ever get support for this idea.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230489870457747...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304898704577479090390757800.html)

What happens when someone running from 'zombies' gets injured inside one of the buildings? Just making the structures safe for the game would run into millions of dollars.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can understand taking over an abandoned mall to make a "Zombie Theme Park" like was done in the UK

<http://www.zedevents.co.uk/the-mall/>

but 200 acres is pretty big, and outdoors makes everything more complicated.

<comment><USER13> And decades of dumping. And slum lords. And wild dogs. And squatters. And massive pollution. And peripheral crime. And dodgy-to-nonexistent infrastructure.

People see cheap building sales in Detroit and they don't realize those almost always come with requirements to pay back-taxes, tear down all the structures, decontaminate the grounds, etc.

There are good (read: expensive) reasons that much of Detroit remains abandoned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is already kinda sorta a MVP for this in form of Zombie 5k challenges like 'Run for your Life':

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4XvnVz9qDQ>

The Zombie Theme park would seem like a scaled up version of those as it seems to have similar limitations (no weapons) and rules (if you lose your tags you become a zombie).

</comment><comment><USER15> Paintball guns could make this more interesting.

<comment><USER16> Near my city there's an airsoft field where weekend zombie events are organized.

Basically, you assemble a group, pay the entrance, and a group of actors disguised as zombies attack you in the forest.

Being paid actors, they play it real, safe, and "correctly" die when they should.

<comment><USER17> That sounds pretty miserable being a zombie. It would suck getting within 5 feet of someone and getting unloaded on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My first question would be; Who's gonna be the zombie? Are they gonna hire these people? From what they are trying to do it seems they needs "lots" of zombies...

I don't think this project will be financially viable and a big liability on top of that..

</comment><comment><USER19> The most interesting aspect of this: What can be done with an area like that, in a way that involves maintaining the current aesthetics?

We've done that before, with old power stations and churches.

</comment><comment><USER20> Are we at peak zombie yet? This infatuation seems almost unkillable.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can someone say "liability issues"?

</comment><comment><USER22> how am I supposed to kill zombies?!

</comment><comment><USER23> I thought Detroit itself was already supposed to be something like a zombie theme park.</comment>


How to meet new people in the Valley? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>So I've just moved to Palo Alto, and I haven't met anyone outside of my company. Any suggestions on how best to meet new people? <comment><USER2> I need a help from friend all over world.</comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't Apple Buy Adobe? - <AUTHOR>

I've long wondered why Apple doesn't buy Adobe.
The two companies have a long and storied history together going back to the good old days when Adobe created/supplied the Postscript printer language, not to mention Display Postscript used in the NeXT computer built by Jobs; but the reality is Apple has always needed Adobe more than the other way around.
With the recent news that Microsoft and Adobe are getting chummy together, I would think this is a perfect opportunity for Apple to buy Adobe.  They could even site the potential damage of a rumored purchase from Microsoft as primary reason for the move (a pre-emtive strike).
The Creative Suite as an Apple product would round out their professional software offering nicely alongside Logic and Final Cut. Not only would this protect Apple from Adobe becoming a Microsoft exclusive, they would be able to make the mac version of Adobe products either mac exclusive or at the very least the top priority. The would also have ownership of Flash, which I have to believe would almost be worth it alone.  All together I'd think this is a huge win-win for Apple.
So why not? Anti-trust? It would seem they (Apple) are such a small fish in the over-all PC market, Anti-trust just doesn't add up to me. <comment><USER2> Probably because of THE grudge (about Apple being abandoned by Adobe in its darkest hour), lack of respect for Adobe (calling them out as lazy), overlapping products (the dependency on Adobe is smaller than you think), unwillingness to further a "past" technology that goes contrary to where Apple is headed.

But yeah, your point about Microsoft is taken.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple using up a significant portion of their cash reserves on Adobe is very small-minded, 1990s-era thinking in my opinion.

Apple has a chance to absolutely dominate the next decade or two of computing in the most important mobile categories and become one of the most profitable companies ever. Anything that detracts from this massive opportunity, such as refocusing on much smaller creative professional markets, should probably be avoided.

</comment><comment><USER4> Apple creates good software to sell amazing hardware.

Adobe creates shitty software to sell other software.

Adobe has considerable legacy baggage that would be very difficult for Apple to deal with.</comment>


1900 NYC colorized by latest and unreleased DeOldify model - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/citnaj/status/1219156481762713602 <comment><USER2> Color palette leans too much towards purple, and the whites are far too bright -- those people would be lucky to own two outfits, and keeping the shirts that white on a daily basis without laundry facilities would have been impossible. Not to mention the smoke and soot from coal-burning stoves would have affected the white lintels more.

<comment><USER3> And the fascinating/mildly disturbing thing is that because the image looks so convincing to our expectations (which is what these sorts of models are best at achieving), everyone who sees it subconsciously accepts it as reality, even though most of these colors are probably wrong. It's not "restoring" the color, it's making it up. Even those of us who know better can fall into that trap if we aren't thinking about it.

Of course for a toy example like this it doesn't really matter. But at a large enough scale, something like this could subtly distort our collective concept of the past. More importantly, when applying ML models to much more impactful domains, they can easily create a more dangerous, subtle collective self- delusion about reality that by definition is very convincing even to its creators.

For a slightly more meaningful example: lots of people in the replies are posting pictures of their relatives, asking them to be colorized. In a very real way this model is subtly re-writing people's memories of what their loved ones looked like.

<comment><USER4> "something like this could subtly distort our collective concept of the past"

[https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2014/11/09](https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2014/11/09)

...really?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would these projects benefit from having real world reference colors?

Find the actual objects in the real world, like bricks, stones, paints, flowers, then sample them.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not perfect but pretty damn awesome!</comment>


NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says league will not apologize to China - <AUTHOR> https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/10/8/20904593/nba-china-commissioner-adam-silver-no-apology <comment><USER2> Now that the NBA has established that they do, in fact, possess spines it seems there is a prime opportunity here. "When we exported basketball to China, we weren't just bringing a sport to a new market. No, we were exporting our values. Our uniquely American values, that stand for the right to say what's on our mind, and we will be DAMNED if we let another country tell us what we can and cannot say. As managing director of the NBA, I stand before you to say, America: fuck yeah!"

Now, do you want to appeal your red-blooded native fan base, or you gonna go chase a few extra dollars overseas?

 _Note: I don 't even watch basketball, so they can do what they want. But if I were in charge..._

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted this link in response to the op-ed posted yesterday ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21184008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21184008)) incorrectly claiming the NBA apologized to China for the Morey Tweet. It has been repeatedly cited in the Blizzard discussion ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190265)) as evidence.</comment>


A song about the GNU public license - <AUTHOR> There was a time, back in 1999 or so, when people were filled with revolutionary fire about the future of the internet and the merits of open source code. Recently, though, in light of so many abuses of binary blobs, like in the volkswagen scandal, and now Huawei, and shenanigans in the IETF, it feels as though we've lost our way.
I wrote this song at the famous 1999 linuxworld conference, where redhat had just gone public, and it seemed like we could truly change the world.
I recorded this version at the IETF 104 conference while fighting a battle with cablelabs over the last half a bit in the IP header. I've been playing it a lot. Is there a way back from the abyss, a way to recapture that fire we once felt?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gx_r5ohYaA <comment><USER2> Oh boy. This is an awesome gem in the open source world. Did you know about RMS's song: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJUDx7iEJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJUDx7iEJw)

He is drumming on the laptop. [laugh cry]</comment>


Ask HN: Install C and C++? - <AUTHOR> I want to install C and C++ on my Windows 7. From where I can download these language? <comment> Ruud-v-A [https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/](https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/) includes an MSVC compiler.

[http://www.msys2.org/](http://www.msys2.org/) can be used to install GCC.</comment>


Xcode 12 - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/xcode/ <comment><USER2> I haven't spent much time with it, just opened a Swift project, and also a SwiftUI project. If you install the Big Sur beta, definitely also update to the XCode 12 beta.

The layout is more spaced out (lots more blank areas) whit is similar to macOS Big Sur's UI design.</comment>


Ray Kurzweil Vows To Right E-Reader Wrongs - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/ray-kurzweil-vows-to-right-e-reader-wrongs/?src=twr <comment><USER2> The people I know who are aware of e-readers and have not adopted them are holding off not because of presentation issues, but because of DRM concerns ("Once I buy this e-book, will I have the same freedom that I had with the dead tree book?").

It may be that content presentation issues are holding off more _publishers_ from joining the fray, but the main beneficiaries of that would be textbook publishers, and right now many of them don't seem to be very enthusiastic about the e-book market at all.

Still, it will be interesting to see what happens.

[Edit in light of responses: I am not suggesting that people I know constitute a representative sample; but I haven't seen much real data either - I would be interested to know what the real issues are in the wider population]

<comment><USER3> I'm holding off because it's just not the same thing. I read a few fiction books a month, I enjoy going to a bookstore, picking out books, carrying them home, reading them, and putting them on a shelf. I enjoy having friends over, and discussing books while standing in front of the shelves. I can lend out my books or give them away. Good books get worn and loved and scratched and used and thumbed. I can place good books in better spots than bad books. And they're all gonna last a lot longer than any electronic books and always be accessible. A book has no bootup-time, no interface, no buttons, no electricity, no charger, no bit-rot, no broken files, no virtual cloud-based shelves tied to an arbitrary account, no uptime, no downtime, no batteries, no keyboards, no nothing.

For fiction, having my entire library with me all the time is useless, because that's just not how I read. I travel a lot, but only carry one or two books with me. That's enough.

It's been a long while since I was in school or university and read textbooks, but the value of having actual paper books that you can write your own notes and drawings in is very high.

For reference books, when I need them, I'm usually at a computer anyway, and why look in a single reference book when I can use the entire internet instead?

DRM? That's at the bottom of the list of drawbacks with e-books for me.

<comment><USER4> This is the issue for most people I know as well. Everyone I know who reads a lot also enjoys the experience _around_ reading, from browsing bookstores to the care and feeding of a good bookshelf.

When it comes to DRM, I don't think it's a big issue, because,

\- Non-tech people don't care about it.

\- Tech people care deeply about it, but know how to get a pirated copy in case the DRM crashes on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This was a slightly surprising footnote in the article:

 _When not making e-reader software and predicting man's future, Mr. Kurzweil spends some time building automated financial trading systems for hedge funds through a company called FatKat._

It seems like everyone needs to build a bankruptcy engine at least once.

</comment><comment><USER5> To me, e-readers are not about software.

Simply put, for me the Kindle 2 is good enough in the software department, and perfect in the hardware department. All that is left is refinements.

I find myself shaking my head every time someone trumpets a new e-reader or e-reader software. I'm probably a minority in this, but in my opinion none of them get it; the most important part of the e-reader is that e-ink display.

Books that are not pure text and require images and formatting are a different beast, but I would argue that segment of the book industry can be best addressed with a Kindle DX-esque device and color e-ink, whenever that comes about. Of course, they will never be able to fix the most difficult part of reference books. A pure text book is usually read linearly, front to back. Reference books are flipped through, bookmarking pages with dog-ears and fingers. Text search is amazing, but it doesn't make up for that quick-scan, easily-navigated ability of reference books.

<comment><USER6> Really? I'm trying out a kindle dx, and I hate that I have to press the shift key on each and every digit of the number of a page I want to go to. You'd think they'd default to digits on the "go to page" dialog. Also the buttons feel like they are going to break.

Maybe different strokes for different folks...

<comment><USER5> I was confused by your comment, as I have never had this issue. I just looked at my Kindle 2 and figured out why; it has number keys. I'm not sure why they took them out on the DX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Uhhhhh....

My Android has a pdf reader. It renders anything that fits within its memory constraints easily.

How is Kurzweil Handwaving, Inc. going to substantially improve on that? Scale it up to a nice sharp (PixelQi?) display, put it on a tablet -- presto.

<comment><USER8> Not sure why you are getting downvoted so much. I had the exact same thoughts after reading this.. "Uhm, so we have a new post script?"

<comment><USER9> PDF and postscript have no ability to reflow text. That is a huge limitation for reading the same content on mobile devices, tablets, and PCs. This has been discussed before here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1394134>

I think its somewhat sad that Knuth solved this problem in 1978 and we're still dealing with terribly formatted web pages and ebooks over 30 years later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone here know any of the tech specifics of Blio? I think I'd read months ago it was based on PDF?</comment>


Lab Grown Kidneys functioning in vivo - <AUTHOR> http://www.thelatestnews.com/lab-grown-kidneys-are-a-success/ <comment><AUTHOR> The abstract the article talks about: [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/09/15/1507803112.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/09/15/1507803112.abstract?sid=befb3fb9-cc8d-40ca- bb0e-16630dca254b)

Or by DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1507803112

I Had no idea things had moved so quickly. Not sure when the full paper is being published but am excited to read it!</comment>


The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-pay-gap-is-a-complete-myth/

<comment><USER2> why should I care what this one author says? The academic consensus it that there is a gender pay gap.

<comment><USER3> Well, the truth is somewhere between the two of you. The academic consensus (at least among economists) says that there is a gender pay gap that they cannot account for other than because of discrimination, but that it is in the single-digits, contrary to activists' claims.</comment></comment>


Cocos2d-html5 alpha released, A 100% cocos2d Javascript engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.cocos2d-x.org/news/55

<comment><USER2> Is this supposed to be "a 100% Javascript cocos2d engine"? (Right now, it is "a 100% cocos2d Javascript engine".)</comment>


Use Bee Colony Algorithms to Solve Impossible Problems - <AUTHOR> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg983491.aspx

<comment><USER2> That's really awesome. Who would've guessed MSDN magazine printed articles that out there? Might have to give it a try.</comment>


LulzSec hackers jailed - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/16/lulzsec_sentencing/ <comment><USER2> So all these people got jailed or disciplined, except the leader... who is now working for the FBI?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it's interesting that this whole LulzSec thing turned out to be a "false flag psyop" by the FBI. This would mean that while "Sabu" was an informant, many of the hacks performed were sanctioned by the FBI.

<comment><USER4> A conspiracy? Tell us more!

<comment><USER5> Are you mocking the idea of one single person being undercover by calling it a 'conspiracy'?

<comment><USER6> No he's mocking the idea that the FBI sanctioned the attacks. As far as I can tell, all major hacks by lulzsec predate the conversion of Sabu, but even if the FBI had control of Sabu before some of the attacks, that does not mean the FBI sanctioned them.

At best the FBI decided it was more important to catch these people than it was to prevent the leaking of some cc's.

<comment><USER5> It depends on your definition of 'sanctioned'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They built their project on sand: public media.

</comment><comment><USER7> You know, as someone with no shares in any public companies, it was a fun ride while it lasted.

<comment><USER8> care to explain?</comment></comment>


What HN readers think of remote work - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
So last week I launched www.letsgoremote.ca on hackernews and was fortunate enough to draw enough interest to receive thousands of responses to my remote work quiz & recommendation system.
Since then I have updated the quiz and recommendation functionality substantially and built a feature that now allows you to see how you "stack up" relative to your peers. Once again any feedback/comments would be absolutely amazing.
<comment>====
I HAVE ATTACHED THE FINDINGS IN A COMMENT BELOW AS IT WAS TOO LONG FOR THE ORIGINAL POST
</comment><comment>====
Thank you for all who filled out the quiz on the first go around, I spent another weekend on this project to update it considerably based on feedback and would once again love any suggestions/feedback, apologies if it is still a little rough around the edges.
I genuinely hope that this could help steer at least one company towards a more positive remote work experience.
So if anyone wants to chat in further or has questions about how to improve their own business experience, they can also send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com and I would be happy to hop on a quick video call and offer any assistance I can.
Cody </comment><comment><AUTHOR> Results from [https://www.letsgoremote.ca](https://www.letsgoremote.ca)

INDIVIDUALS

\- An overwhelming 79.8% of the individuals enjoy WFH

\- Just under half of the individuals claim to have "expert" level of experience working from home, 84% of these individuals enjoy WFH, but you have to assume that there is some degree of self-selection going on here

\- Of the individuals who like WFH, 82% had a good "home office" setup

\- The largest problems tended to be: focusing, missing the office, and feeling isolated in that order

\- The largest problem that people wrote in was that there isn't a clear separation between work and home life and they are working more hours from home

\- For people who missed their office, the main reasons were: saying hi to coworkers (73%) and getting out of the home (70%). These were considerably higher than too many distractions at home (19%) and too much noise at home (5%)

\- If an individual complained about being bored, they are only 66% likely to enjoy WFH

If an individual says they don't have a routine, they are only 58% likely to enjoy WFH

\- Pretty much the only subgroup of people who disliked WFH more than enjoyed it were people who complained about missing dressing up for the office

\- People expressed an interest in wanting to learn an additional language, code, personal finance and then cook in descending order.

EMPLOYERS

\- The top problems for employers were 1) maintaining a sense of community: 57%, 2) maintaining employee morale: 50% and 3) keeping employees accountable: 43%. Problems with morale were amplified in "expert" remote companies

\- Chat was by the most common source of communication (75%)

\- Spanning multiple timezones made no significant impact on whether or not the company had problems with maintaining a community and/or employee morale

\- Just under half the companies typically communicate with whiteboards

\- The main employee count range tended to be from 10-80

\- The most common project management style was a good ol' fashioned checklist.</comment>


Problem Solving and Clojure 1.9 (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hickey_Rich/ProblemSolving.md <comment><AUTHOR> > I think a big problem is you grab a library and you really have no idea what > you've gotten. Maybe it has a label. It says it's 1.2, but you don't know > which functions inside it have changed, or why. You don't actually know what > you're running. And maybe the jar file or artifact tells you something about > the source that was used to produce it, but the process that was used to > produce it is often opaque. And any of that could be wrong because there's a > lot of human steps involved in producing artifacts. And because so many > people use Git, I'd like to get closer to leveraging some of the features > there, in particular using SHA's and content-based addressing to talk about > things.

> I had worked on a library called Codeq, which we'll have a new version of > soon, that sort of extends the Git model down to the function level, so you > would have SHA's for individual functions, and you could have dependencies > on functions, instead of on artifacts. So a lot of work is happening around > that, and some of that manifests itself in this dependency tool.

<comment><USER2> Similar to what Unison is doing. Functions are identified by a hash and the names are ephemeral.

<comment><USER3> It took a moment to google what Unison is. Apparently a new programming language: [https://github.com/unisonweb/unison](https://github.com/unisonweb/unison)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Screenshot Saturday - <AUTHOR>

Please post a screenshot and a few words of explanation about what you have been working on for the past week. <comment><USER3> [http://imgur.com/4t3tVuE](http://imgur.com/4t3tVuE)

Multiplayer version of 2048 game with an interesting twist. Available on the App Store: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/2048-addictive-number- puzzle...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/2048-addictive-number- puzzle/id844505418)

The game is played on a single board shared between 2 players who take turns to play. The score of a player is computed by the number on the tiles that the player merges when playing his turn. The game ends when there are no moves remaining or someone reaches the 2048 tile. At this point, the player with the highest score wins the game.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ace- subido/pouchnote/maste...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ace- subido/pouchnote/master/docs/images/note_entry.png)

[https://github.com/ace-subido/pouchnote](https://github.com/ace- subido/pouchnote)

Pouchnote is a really small accounting system; an income and expense ledger. It's good for quickly jotting down income and expense entries without thinking hard about excel sheet cell computations and following formats.

Worked on Ansible deployment scripts and more unit tests for the code. Open- sourced it on Github.

I'll make it into a Docker image if the need arises.

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://i.imgur.com/QS3R4sP.png](http://i.imgur.com/QS3R4sP.png)

My day job is at a boutique financial services firm (9 full-time employees) with a lot of people out of the office at times. Most of us take on many roles and over time I found that I was keeping track of a lot of operational/hr type of things in a lot of different places. I created StartOpz ([http://www.startopz.com](http://www.startopz.com)) to put all of it in one place. The key thing for me is that I get one email every morning that includes anything that needs my attention. Hopefully should be ready to launch publicly in a month or so.

</comment><comment><USER6> SoundCloud Wall </comment><comment></comment><comment>===

Faster way to discover new music.

[http://i.imgur.com/4rsGkDV.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/4rsGkDV.jpg)

[https://github.com/karan/SoundWall](https://github.com/karan/SoundWall)

</comment><comment></comment><comment>===

This is something I've been working on for the last >2 weeks and hit HN frontpage a few days ago. It's almost complete, I'm still working on the UI a bit.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://cl.ly/image/2v0I1B3t0Q1G](http://cl.ly/image/2v0I1B3t0Q1G)

I've been working on my MVP - <USER2> ([http://www.securegate.io](http://www.securegate.io)). It's basically a simple API which can be integrated to provide SMS Verification or can be used as a two factor authentication system for example.

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://i.imgur.com/29GqxGq.png](http://i.imgur.com/29GqxGq.png)

[https://webservice.management](https://webservice.management)

Webservice.management is better cloud management tool with NLP and batteries included for automation. I've been working on this for a few months now and got the website live this week.

</comment><comment><USER9> My lang/lisplike frontend to ruby: [http://i.imgur.com/BeHMsTx.png](http://i.imgur.com/BeHMsTx.png)

Screenshot is a snippet from a static site generator I built with it, the project lives here: [https://github.com/bobjflong/drog_lisp](https://github.com/bobjflong/drog_lisp)

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://imgur.com/sVPTSOv](http://imgur.com/sVPTSOv)

An iOS app for managing Salesforce test coverage. Been working on it for a few months with a work buddy, hacked on it quite a bit this weekend. Almost ready!

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://i.imgur.com/1EXSbBc.png](http://i.imgur.com/1EXSbBc.png)

New monthly club called "Pen Japan". Each month I send subscribers a set of cute stationery.

</comment><comment><USER12> Eh-eh, do better</comment>


Silicon Valley Helped Create Trump, and That's Bad for It - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/opinion/silicon-valley-helped-create-trump-and-thats-bad-for-it.html <comment><USER2> Personally, I am concerned around this new mantra to eliminate fake news. Who are the gatekeepers of said truthfulness. Now I am not arguing that fake news does not abound on the Internet but a call to arms for companies to eliminate "Fake" news sounds too close to censorship for my fancy.

<comment><USER3> Governments censor. Private institutions editorialize.

If the NYT chooses not to print an op-ed you send them, it is NOT censorship.

If the United States government forces the NYT not to print your op-ed, it IS censorship.

See the difference?

<comment><USER4> So what happens when the NYT prints a story that ends up being fabricated, or uses false (or fake) data to support an op-ed?

In this brave, new world where "fake news" is filtered out, will the "truthy" organizations be given a free pass?

That's _my_ biggest concern. As it stands now, publications often do their best to bury retractions and corrections.

<comment><USER5> It probably became fake news when we stopped buying the NYT in print. Now it's mostly fake news because they give out 10 fake news items per month and expect me and you and everyone else to pay for the "real" news so they can run their news outlet. But then we won't so then they'll just accept money from anyone with an agenda.

<comment><USER6> > But then we won't so then they'll just accept money from anyone with an > agenda.

That is an extraordinary claim to make. Do you have any evidence to back that up?

<comment><USER7> You must be a blast at parties.

<comment><USER8> This is boiler-plate internet snark that one can find all over the web, but is typically looked at unfavorably on HN because it adds nothing to the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My very unscientific feeling: The constant influx of pieces like this since the election feels like the mainstream media redirecting calls of "echo chamber" elsewhere.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I don't think it's invalid to say that fake news is a serious problem (or even that it probably helped elect Trump), but I think there's a much deeper crisis of news, bias, and the nature of truth in the Internet age that needs to be addressed head-on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> We can't know whether fake news tilted the election towards Trump. There is no experiment or analysis that can conclusively dis/prove that hypothesis. NYT and others should be humble here. Sure, fake news is stupid, but so is claiming that it "helped elect Trump"

<comment><USER12> Here's the narrative- "This outcome is so out of whack that either you guys are just the stupidest, most gullible people, or you are normal people, who would have voted for us, had you not been fooled by malevolent and manipulative forces."

It's an easy way to console your butthurt when you lost- just claiming that had everyone been better informed, they'd have done the 'right' thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> No the nytimes helped elect trump by refusing to admit his chances were much higher since the beginning, and trying to hide clintons flaws. This is an article I expect to see on gawker not a legit newspaper.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure I would say that the nytimes was hiding how well Trump was doing. Trump did not do well in most polls, Clinton was usually ahead and did win the popular vote. The election results weren't really expected. It would have been nice if the nytimes had been able to see through the bad data, but I think that was more of a problem with the bad data than any political leanings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thus is just the NYT throwing the dead cat into Silicon Valley while bringing you more Trump bad press. Move along.

</comment><comment><USER12> "... the anger and misinformation of the voters who helped propel him to the presidency."

And we start off with insults and dismissal-- the reason she didn't win and that the Times is reviled for its reporting by various groups.

<comment><USER6> This is an opinion piece. There is a difference between opinion pieces and reporting, a distinction that lots of people seem to be missing recently. You shouldn't revile a newspaper's reporting based on its opinion pieces.

<comment><USER12> I full well understand the distinction. And normally, I'd agree with you, however, in this case, I feel his opinions and points are indicative of the larger NYT itself, and even after such a surprise drubbing, they continue to ignore reality with hope of assuaging their feelings-- 'surely it can't be we that are wrong...'

The Times went so far out of their way to torpedo Trump and promote his opponent that Solzberger Jr had to remind everyone that they are dedicated to impartiality ([http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/us/elections/to-our- reader...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/us/elections/to-our-readers-from- the-publisher-and-executive-editor.html?_r=0)).

We wait, with anticipation, the results of this renewal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Pointing fingers and finding scapegoat. How does that add any value? How many people in rural Alabama use Internet?

</comment><comment><USER16> So much for the soul-searching and reform that the Democratic Party so desperately needs.</comment>