If You Want to Go Broke, Listen to a Billionaire - <AUTHOR> https://sideprojectplaybook.com/if-you-want-to-go-broke-listen-to-a-billionaire/ <comment><USER2> I think it's worth discussing things that _actually_ lead to positive outcomes in business settings rather than looking at outliers who mostly got lucky. People I know in the "successful entrepreneurs despite never getting lucky" category generally have some combination of attributes that the whole VC industry (including wishful founders) often downplays:

\- Actual domain expertise (a summer internship or talking to a few people doesn't count)

\- A solid grasp on business fundamentals and managing teams effectively

\- A strong network of people who serve as potential employees, partners, customers, mentors, etc. due to being outgoing and generally spending time on developing relationships

\- An uncanny ability to recognize niche business problems that are underserved by existing options

\- A willingness to laugh at concepts like "work-life balance", "happy marriage", and "spend more time with your kids"

\- The ability to build a strong team from nothing and keep it strong by firing people who suck and rewarding people who are good

\- Recognition of what you are and are not good at, and then finding good people to do the latter for you

\- The ability to sell things effectively (no, if you build it they probably won't just come)

I'm sure others on HN have their own lists.

<comment><USER3> Why do you need to categorise this? It seems so utterly futile: "Oh, just do these ten things, and you will become a billionaire...all you need to know is the secret knowledge that only billionaires know".

Do something you enjoy. Stop trying to study the success of other people and reverse engineer it. Not for anything else: you can be sure that they spent more time just doing the thing they wanted to do rather than study other people for tips.

I do get this feeling. I went through it. But then I realised that none of the stuff that matters to me is going to change. If you want to be able to jump into a big pool of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck...then maybe.

Also, if you are really interested in business the absolute last thing you should be doing is building lists of personal characteristics. Read what public companies are doing, read financial reports, etc. That is actual business (I don't think the OP is interested in business, he just wants success...which is something else...go into politics maybe?).

<comment><USER4> "Oh, just do these ten things, and you will become a billionaire"

I think you're completely misconstruing what you responded to. That list is neither about becoming a billionaire nor about what to do to get there. It's describing talents or tendencies that make people build things worth millions, not billions.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's misconstrued at all. You build things worth millions or billions by doing the actual work to build them. Not by aping the personality traits of people who built other things.

<comment><USER4> If your point is that hardly anyone can read a list of personality traits and then go out and adopt them, I certainly agree. But I don't think that was being promoted as plausible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Investing is a "loser's game". By comparing it to tennis: a "winner's game" is a tennis game in which you try to play the ball so well that your opponent can't handle it, and you score a point. This is how professionals play tennis, they win by superior play. An amateur is playing a "loser's game" \- focused on just bouncing the ball 20 times and hoping that his opponent bounces the ball only 19 times. Similarly in investing the whole point is to avoid trouble, stay in the game for a long time and _maybe_ eventually score a nice win on the way. This implies insistence on low prices (buy low sell high / margin of safety), not chasing crazy returns (because crazy high returns are often surrounded by crazy bad losses) and diversification (accepting the fact that one's judgement is probably poor and that there is inherent randomness in the world).

<comment><USER7> It should be noted that Stockfish chess heavily prunes its searches because it too plays a "loser's game". Instead of searching for the best move, Stockfish narrows its search and simply tries to prove that the move it does pick "isn't bad".

Ameatur level Chess is about figuring out a good "trick": a powerful pin or maybe a fork that the opponent didn't see. So low-level chess is a "winner's game".

High-level chess, at least computer chess, is more about making fewer mistakes than the opponent.

\</comment></comment><comment>---

Bogey Golf is another one. Playing for +18 leads to a score of ~88 after a round of golf, solid for an amateur. Not good enough for the pro-leagues. You get onto the green in 3-shots and only have 2-putts.

Pro-players of course take big, aggressive hits. Tiger Woods in his hayday would get onto the green in just 1-shot (throwing out his back and knee, it certainly wasn't a healthy swing). But a typical player who tried to hit that hard would end up missing their shots, whiffing the ball, or just straight up sending the ball out of bounds.

<comment><USER8> A common saying in chess is that the winner is the person who made the second to last mistake.

However, having played quite a bit against stockfish it certainly doesn't feel like that. It just crushes you, mercilessly and swiftly no matter what you do.

<comment><USER7> Well, Stockfish probably exhaustively checks all moves ~4 or 5 ply forward.

But the move that Stockfish picks has been searched to depth 30 or even 50, depending on how easy or hard the position is. Its infeasible to actually search all possibilities, but Stockfish basically is searching "deep", to ensure that most obvious tactical patterns are accounted for (orderings of captures and stuff of that nature)

That's roughly the "shape" of Stockfish's search tree. Super deep for the moves it picks, but very shallow on its exhaustive search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great read! Lots of potent talking points for your next financial meeting at work.

I saw a company advisor get all bent because so many people were taking out 401k loans. So we had to listen to him (a millionaire) and the CEO (also a millionaire) talk about how "cheap" money is at the moment and how they're both taking out mortgages and investing the money because their mortgage rates are so low. Then my boss said, verbatim, "I know, for a fact, with what you're making that any of you could get a loan at a credit union right now."

There's a lot of older people in my industry who take an executives word for gospel. It was heartbreaking to see this man gaslight everybody with his unwitting ignorance to how real people get by.

<comment><USER4> Do you in fact know anyone who has taken a 401k loan?

Right now, I can't get a mortgage loan from a bank, but then again, I don't have a 401k either. I'm not sure of what scenario would make me do it if I did have a 401k.

<comment><USER9> There was one guy who shared his experience. He said he has high risk investments and was worried about the market. When things stabilized he put the money back.

Another shared that he used it for home repair. Another bought a car.

The downside seem to be 1) high fees 2) that money isn't making interest 3) you wind up paying tax on it when you pay the loan back with your regular pay.

<comment><USER4> I don't know. When I had the option of taking a 401k loan, my impression was it was a thing that had no reason to exist, much like an HSA. It's all a net loss to society to set up these games with rules for avoiding taxes that bait people into making decisions that cause problems later on.

<comment><USER9> I think the only time it truly makes sense is when your credit is so bad you can't take out another line of credit, assuming you can afford to pay it back.

The only pro that I could see to it was that it doesn't require a credit check. You're borrowing your own money.

However, this is far outweighed by the fact that if you leave the company the balance is due immediately. So if you borrow $10k and get fired with a $5k balance you will immediately owe your company $5k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My current role has me interacting on a regular basis with the CEO and several VPs of a Fortune 500 company.

Now, don't get me wrong, each of them have definite skill sets, but when it comes to business strategy, they're just guessing like the rest of us. Of course their guesses are more informed than mine, but they are still guesses.

What I've noticed makes for a very effective senior leader is the ability to ask the right questions - they may have little to know domain knowledge, but they still have a good ability to smoke out a bullshit story.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interestingly enough I see a parallel to this in my family.

I'm the one with the high end financial education so they ask me for advice (fair enough). Yet circumstances differ so it's invariable a case of "do as I say, not as I do". No sister...leveraged derivatives with short DTEs aren't for you.

...weird parallel in a microcosm sense.

</comment><comment><USER12> This article could have just as easily been titled "If You Want to Go _For_ Broke, Listen to a Billionaire"

Not all startups are VC-backable; not all entrepreneurs are trying to build massive companies. Entrepreneurs, as a microcosm of all people, have a wide variety of values and goals.

So when the author says:

> A Better Formula For Regular Entrepreneurs

What's "better"? What's a "regular entrepreneur"? More precise language might be something like "A formula with a higher chance of success for entrepreneurs who value a likely moderately-positive outcome over an unlikely massively- positive outcome."

Personally, I'm going for broke. I want to create the largest possible positive impact that I can for humanity. VC incentives to seek unicorns may not be aligned with all entrepreneurs, especially the "regular entrepreneurs" above. But I think for some, the incentives and economics are aligned.

<comment><USER13> Then that's the right strategy for you. You're intentionally loading all your bets towards a single massive payday.

For someone on Main Street, however, the odds of any payoff are probably more important than the size of the potential payoff.

<comment><USER14> I've known a lot of Main Street entrepreneurs over the years, small business people of various levels of success. I know far more of those people than I know entrepreneurs that have been VC-backed.

I'm talking about people that own insurance agencies, small city newspapers, boutique shops, fast food franchises, small consulting businesses in tech or elsewhere, car dealerships, convenience stores, bakeries, food shops, and so on.

To add to what the parent, Will, said - very few people in general possess extraordinary skill at anything. That's just reality. It's true of most business creators as well as it is the general population. Most entrepreneurs don't have access to the networks required to raise millions of dollars in venture capital, even if they wanted to. And given the very finite nature of such things (there are only so many VCs and so much money, and relatively few VC deals even in the largest economy that has 330m people), most could never get access to them. The numbers are badly against anyone that wants to attempt it.

You're not building the next giant company without extraordinary skill, most likely. Sure, there are some flukes that get through somehow, mostly that isn't the case however. Mostly, it takes extraordinarily skill at a thing, combined with immense luck, typically immense hard work, immense sacrifice, and access to elite networks. Yes, Joe/Jane Average can beat the odds, overcome everything that is dramatically stacked against them, it happens, and it's kind of like hitting the lottery. More likely they'll ruin their life chasing a nearly impossible dream.

99%+ of the population is eliminated from contention instantly. It's simply not a consideration, it's not a potential, and I believe most of them know it. Certainly all the small business operators I've ever talked to, they tend to understand their capabilities and limits very well, especially those that have been in business a while. They know better than to waste their time on fantasies (and that isn't a bad thing). Very few of them that I know did it to try to get very wealthy, mostly it was for all the other reasons: independence, not having a boss, charting your own course, pursuing a solid opportunity that becomes a good job, doing something they enjoy, etc. The VC game is an entirely different beast, it makes perfect sense that most entrepreneurs would have little interest in it.

<comment><USER13> Bingo... a stable business you enjoy pursued for sustainable reasons. I'd add a slight financial component to the list of reasons (hiding in my basement for $50K/year isn't appealing) but that seems consistent with the strategy I recommended.

A second benefit: many established small businesses can be bought for under 5 X EBITDA ($10 MM - $100 MM sales) which usually can be levered up 3:1 using an SBA loan. You could also generate similar returns by funding the right types of organic growth projects. If chosen prudently, there's a lot of upside in those numbers.... (with some risk, naturally)

So while they may do it for the lifestyle, the underlying investment dynamics of the niche are very attractive...

<comment><USER14> One of my favorite small business examples is a friend that quit working for an insurance agency and bought one of his own (typical car & property insurance agency) for 1x sales. In service segments like insurance or accounting, it's often easy to find businesses to buy at 1x sales. The former owner was retiring and ready to be done with it.

Simple small business concept. He instantly replaced his former income, bought himself a job. The purchase paid for itself in a few years. Since the purchase he has organically - with very little advertising effort, mostly through good customer attention - increased the size of the business 4x or so. The year by year growth goals are very modest, and over time the persistent gains obviously add up (snowball down the hill). The same effort he would have been putting in for his former employer, will make him a multi-millionaire instead, with quite modest risk.

He doesn't regard himself as an entrepreneur, he thinks of being an entrepreneur as those that take very outsized risk (the media propaganda version everyone gets fed). He's wrong though, he's an excellent example of an entrepreneur. The best entrepreneurs are usually those that understand the task is to eliminate the risk in the equation, not to actually take or pursue risk. Risk is what threatens the business, eliminating the risk is what ensures prosperity (or at least gives you the best shot at it). In my observation, small business operators are often frequently quite good at spotting and quickly eliminating risk in their businesses, they're very close to the metal so to speak, very exposed to the nerves of the operation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I went down the rabbit hole with the Kelly Criterion recently, last time I thought about venture capitalism. Starting with a scenario of a repeated bet where you have a 10% chance of a 50:1 upside, Kelly says to bet a percentage of your bankroll each time, while someone of a more conservative bent might want to have a 95% chance of not going below a certain drawdown.

With those stats, you have to bet 28-29 times to have a 95% chance of winning your 50x upside. So depending on your maximum drawdown, you have to make a much smaller bet than what Kelly Criterion counsels.

In fact that seems to be a general thing - Kelly Criterion is generally about maximizing geometric returns, but the volatility will kill you - it takes _lot_ of betting to have high odds of being close to those theoretical returns.

I'm not really experienced enough with the math to find strategies that maximize your expected growth when subjected to a certain drawdown restriction, but that's what people need when they are at lower net worth levels.

<comment><USER16> The math works out a lot better if your society has a strong social safety net, and friendly bankruptcy and limited liability laws.

<comment><USER15> Man, I have to learn more about that at some point. I own a business but it was never designed to be one that took out a business loan. I never even considered it because I just equated losing it with the awfulness of losing a bunch of personal money. Is there a class one can take that teaches people how to work the bankruptcy/llc system the way it's intended to be worked? Meaning, not abusing it, but being "entrepreneurial" in the way that those laws are apparently supposed to incentivize?

<comment><USER17> I think it's more of a thing where you talk to a bankruptcy lawyer. I'm sure some are willing to talk for free for 30 minutes or so. Maybe talk to one or two, then draw up a list of questions and pay one for a full consultation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While I'm no investor or anything, there's one life-y takeaway from this article: diversify your areas of interests. Take as many bets as possible. I've always been working on it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ah. This is about entrepreneurs, not average people.

To become rich (not broke), listen instead to billionaires like Warren Buffett or millionaires like Jack Bogle. They both offer plans for average people to become wealthy. (With very high probabilities of happening. But it takes decades.)

See Bogleheads.org for details.

</comment><comment><USER20> Love this. Reminds me of one of my favorite xkcd's on survivorship bias: [https://xkcd.com/1827/](https://xkcd.com/1827/)

<comment><USER4> The other day, I was asked to graph project completion time against starting year, in the hopes of showing a positive trend.

Well, going from 2017 to 2018 to 2019 seemed to show an obviously improving trend. But then I realized I needed to explain that it's not just a coincidence that 2017 had more projects that took over a year, compared to 2019.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So is there a concerte example where a big competitior "crushed" a smaller one?

I can give plenty for which a small competitior crashed a big one.

<comment><USER22> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_law...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_lawsuit)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v._Intel_Corp).

Also, see Amazon vs any of the 3rd party Amazon Marketplace sellers subsequently displaced using the various Amazon home brands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If we don't have technologists going for historical wins (or 10,000x returns, in VC speak), then our society will forever stagnate.

Lifestyle businesses won't drive the developed world into 10%+ GDP annual growth. But a few moonshots succeeding might actually be able to do that.

I'll keep listening to the billionaires, thank you very much. Am 100% willing to go bust (we're all going bust in the long-run).

</comment><comment><USER24> If you want to be rich, act like a billionaire (actions speak louder then words).

<comment><USER25> How do billionaires act? I don't know any personally.

<comment><USER26> It's not very useful advice, given that is spans from Elon Musk - who uses a top of the line business jet to commute from one part of the Bay area to another, very eco-conscious, and owns multiple mansions - to Warren Buffet who famously lives in the relatively modest house he purchased decades ago.

<comment><USER13> Exactly.

Mathematically we're living in different universes. Moves that are rational for someone who has a few billion dollars under management don't work for the rest of us, because we're unable to diversify risk to the same extent.

Along the same lines, however, our "hurdle rate" for a life impacting investment is substantially lower....</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Two Startups Point To Semantic Search's Future - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/09/16/using-human-effort-to-make-semantic-search-useful/ <comment><USER2> Semantic search is one of those ideas that every tech person loves, and many people point out as the future, but has not been able to find a product market fit and really taken off.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I quit my job? - <AUTHOR> Hello
I'm recently out of High School, and I've been programming for most of my life. My current situation is that I need extra money for college.
I recently started working a contract for a friend of a friend. It's paying me $3500, and $100/month through college.
The only issue is, a couple of weeks before this was a sure thing, I started working in a cafe - to make sure I had money in college.
Right now I'm working on both, and it's exhausting. I'm concerned I won't be able to complete the contract to the best of my ability, but the cafe is a small business and it would be shitty to leave. I'm spending most of my evenings stressed and tired, and I'm worried about burnout.
I don't need the money from both, however it would be very helpful. The contract is also pretty great experience, and I'd like something decent on my resume for when I want to find an internship next summer.
What do you recommend? Quit the cafe, or try and stick it until college starts? I'm contractually obliged to give a weeks notice. <comment><USER2> I would quit the cafe job, based on what information you've provided. If you truly don't _need_ the money, and if you're really approaching burnout, then drop it. The last thing you want is to let your grades suffer, or perform poorly on the contract job, over a job that isn't part of your future.

Anybody running a cafe should be familiar with people coming and going. People don't typically take jobs like that intending it to be lifelong employment. Give a proper notice and do things professionally and there shouldn't be any hard feelings, and you'll have nothing to feel guilty about.</comment>


Lessons Learned from a Pharma-Free Practice Transformation - <AUTHOR> http://www.jabfm.org/content/26/3/332.long

<comment><USER2> _The Truth About the Drug Companies by Marcia Angell was read and discussed._

The fact that Marcia Angell's book was required reading pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the clinic's culture.

Angell's book is a terribly one sided and highly inaccurate depiction of the pharma industry. She has made statements that boggle the mind of anyone familiar with how the industry operates.

<comment><USER3> I'm somewhat familiar with industry practices (worked on software for the pharma industry) and just read 'Bad Pharma' by Ben Goldacre. It is a pretty well sourced and argued description of practices in the pharma industry and I haven't seen any worthy rebuttal of his arguments.

I'm not familiar with Marcia Angell's book, would you care to elaborate on those 'statements that boggle the mind'?

<comment><USER2> Probably one of the better critiques of Angell's statements is Derek Lowe, an R&D chemist in the pharmaceutical industry.

[http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/12/03/marcia_angel...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/12/03/marcia_angells_interview_i_just_cant.php)

I have no problem if someone disagrees with the pharmaceutical industry on a fundamental level (i.e. "there should be no profit in healthcare"), but if you start spreading misinformation and half-truths, I lose a lot of respect for that person.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, thanks. Though not having read her book, one of the critiques seem to be that pharma companies spent a disproportionate amount on marketing and sales. And that is something I have to agree with. At the moment it looks like the industry is closing research facilities all the time one of their drugs falls from the patent cliff while keeping marketing budgets untouched. Looking at the research organization and the innovation of their approaches, I must say that they are vastly behind and extremely conservative. Novartis seems to be doing it right, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doctors can't even accept a pen from the pharma industry anymore. This paper is about 20 years past when it would have helped make a difference.

</comment><comment><USER5> The paper here is completely backwards. It is because of the AMA, HHS, FDA and the rest that doctors spend 30 years getting licensed. After this point they are isolated, and kept separate from the rest of the medical supply chain (drugs, devices, imaging, diagnostics). Try doing it full stack and see how quickly the attorney general comes at you for competing with the local hospital. Doctors are also kept in the dark about prices, though are all too happy to accept high salaries. This set of affairs is one of the contributors to spiraling costs. No one wants to admit that health care has a price, and that the scarcity of (say) MRI machine time will either be allocated by market mechanisms or by queues and politics.</comment>


Ask HN: Opportunity cost fear is paralyzing me - <AUTHOR> Have you ever been in a situation where you have so many projects and ideas to work on but don't know which one is most likely to succeed? It seems this fear of not allocating my time optimally is paralyzing me at such a point that I end up not working on anything at all. Any tip on how to get over this problem? Lack of focus is killing me :/ <comment><USER2> Projects started fail frequently, projects unstarted succeed never. Pick one you can deliver in a short amount of time. Do so. There, you now have a base for expansion/learning and the habits required to successfully ship stuff.

<comment><USER3> I agree with this one, take the simplest project fist and knock it out, I would use a second measure though. I would take would weight the project by simplicity and potential for revenue. The one that is the simplest with the highest potential for revenue would be the one I would start on first. You may not end up selecting the simplest project nor the one that will make you rich but you will select a project that will be easier to get out the door while contributing to war chest funds to get the others done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have the same problem. Realistically, all your ideas will fail, so instead pick the one you find most interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great advice :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Milestones. You can work on multiple projects, it might even be encouraged in the beginning stages of a startup. If you can get your ideas built into semi- working prototypes they'll be in a better place should you decide to come back to them later. On several occasions I've built proof-of-concepts but ended getting bored of it, leaving it on the back-burner, but later be able to take all that working code and incorporate it into my other projects.

<comment><USER3> I have to disagree here, context switching for a developer kills productivity. I believe that focusing on a single project until the end will better serve the poster in the end. They will have a shorter time to market and they reduce their risk of abandoning work latter on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You might try to find an external source of motivation. In my case when someone can benefit from or is depending on my work it provides strong motivation to finish.

This could take the form of:

\- a partner/cofounder

\- a client (which means you'll get paid at least once, possibly more depending on how you structure the deal)

\- presales

\- a target user, real or imagined

\- a public commitment, to friends or "HN December Launch Pad" (for example ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> I use Mike Cohn "theme scoring" to prioritize my projects:

<http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-scoring></comment>


Show HN: Vue.js Free Dashboard on DashboardPack.com - <AUTHOR> https://dashboardpack.com/theme-details/architectui-react-dashboard-free/ <comment> saverio-murgia The link brings to a React Dashboard and the Vue version is not free (it's actually $24). Wrong title?</comment>


Reactors: Foundational framework for distributed computing - <AUTHOR> http://reactors.io/ <comment><USER2> Haven't used this, but hopefully it is better than the nightmare that is Akka (more reasons than I want to list here...maybe a blog post).

<comment><USER3> Why is Akka a nightmare?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> jvm jvm jvm. Flink. Storm. Spark. Beam. projectreactor. Reactors. Samza. How spoiled are Java/Scala programmers but is there anybody doing anything similar in distributed computing frameworks that targets something other than the Java Virtual Machine? Go? Erlang? C? Ocaml? Anyone? Why always the JVM? Sure I understand that business loves java, but _every single one?_

<comment><USER5> What about Pony for the erlang vm?

<comment><USER6> Pony (ponylang.org) is really interesting but it is a compiler with its own target and doesn't run on the Erlang VM.

(Perhaps you meant 'or'? Apologies if so.)

<comment><USER5> Ah you are correct. I'm not sure why I thought Pony ran on the BEAM VM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> (Another site useless without JS enabled. Boo.)

<comment><USER8> Lots of people on HN make money with web "development". Filling sites with shit is their only job (99.9999% of sites could be as simple as [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)). And you know what? HN doesn't like to be criticized. Do they care if they ruin the web? Nope, if money is flowing...

<comment><USER7> Well, my basic gripe (and the reason I keep whinging about it on HN, thhhhpt!) is the disconnect between thinking they're hot shit and neglecting to put a no-script tag with "Needs JS fool!" on their thing.

I'm willing to be all, "OH noes, mah points!", and take the downvotes just for the satisfaction of putting that burr under folks' saddles.

If even one web developer is reached all my shitty whining will have been worth it. I'll be a fucking hero! Like Peter fucking Thiel! "Philanthropy" That's what it is.</comment></comment></comment>


New Baryons Discovered at CERN - <AUTHOR> http://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/lhcb-public/Welcome.html#Xic <comment><USER2> The interesting part if you are not interested in the business as usual part of particle physics is:

> _10 March 2020: B0 → K_ μ+ μ-: more data confirm old puzzle.*

> _Compared with the previous LHCb results, the overall tension with the > Standard Model (SM) is observed to mildly increase._

> _However, the global fit to several angular observables shows that the > overall tension with the SM increases from 3.0 to 3.3σ._

[Note that the "increase" in the second quote and the "increase" in the third quote are in different comparisons.]

The idea is that the transformation in the experiment is actually B0 → <something> → K* μ+ μ- , where there are many known versions of <something>. But they got a weird result, so there "must" be some unknown versions of <something>.

This is 3σ, that means that a random fluke has less than .3% of probability of producing a similar looking weird data. The problem is that they (and other groups) are running hundred of experiments, so there is a chance that this is just good/bad luck instead of a unknown <something>.

A 3σ is unusual enough to remember, and to try to explain it with new theories, but don't get to attached to a 3σ resonance because they may fade away.</comment>


What supplanted the wiki – and why? - <AUTHOR>

About 2001 wikis were all the rage; popular and pointing to a sharing-future.
Sure we've got big wiki sites (Wikipedia, Wikia) but they haven't gone mainstream in the way a blog or CMS has. Why?
Was it because companies found they can make more money from users when the information is shared differently (Facebook)?
For corporate websites, for whom collaborative editing was never needed (no thank you, I don't want the public altering my site) other systems might have made more sense -- but the wiki's flexibility and ease of expansion are useful features.
There have been newer developments, such as the federated wiki [0], but checking around again for a platform with collaborative editing, an audit trail and an approval process, I felt I was back in 2003. Nothing has changed. Why?
[0]: http://hapgood.us/2014/11/06/federated-education-new-directions-in-digital-collaboration/ <comment><USER2> Wikipedia is totally mainstream, and it now has sister-sites like Wikiquote, Wikia, etc.

There are also a lot of smaller niche sites that use wikis in one particular domain, eg. A Wiki of Ice and Fire, Wiki 24, Hunger Games Wiki, etc. And Wikis are often used inside corporate networks as well - Google certainly had one that was quite active.

I don't think Wikis have been supplanted at all. They're just no longer at the top of the hype cycle. They get used when they're appropriate, people are productive with them, but emotional energy is directed instead to newer technologies.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem with wikis is they have little self curation. Wikipedia without waterfall management becomes the wikiwikiweb[1]. The information in a wiki isn't self organizing.

The successor may look more like StackOverflow. Topics aren't siloed and additions of information are low friction. It's easier for users to slice and dice information to fit their needs...I can search for SQL and Modula2.

[1] [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki)</comment>


Ask HN: What features on HN do you use the least? - <AUTHOR> I've been using HN for about a year off and on. Here are some of the features I never use either because they are hidden or not useful:<p>1. Search 2. Hide <comment><USER2> The out-of-context thought stream at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments](https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments) ("comments" in the top bar)

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Does any make use of that?

<comment><USER3> I use it all the time to see which stories have active discussions.

<comment><USER4> [http://news.ycombinator.com/active](http://news.ycombinator.com/active)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use search about 10 times a week. I often remember the title of an article that I didn't have time to read and search for that. I still remember fondly searchyc.com

I used to look at new more often and upvote interesting articles but haven't had time to in a while (or rather I've been procrastinating slightly less).

I guess the only features I never use is the jobs section and the new hide link.

<comment><USER6> I often use hn.algolia.com to search for articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The features I use least are the ones I don't know about. Unfortunately I cannot list them for you because I don't know about them.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use search constantly, and I am surprised you think it is either hidden or not useful. To me it's extremely useful, and the search box is on nearly every page, which makes it hard to think of as hidden. So I'm confused by your assertion about that - perhaps you could explain further.

"Hide" is new, and I've not played with it much. However, given that it's relatively new, I'm being on-boarded by the facility it provides. I'd be interested to know why you think it's not useful, as it's certainly not hidden.

In truth, I don't know of any features I don't use. Perhaps you could compile a list of them for people to check against. After all, if someone doesn't know about a feature, they won't name it as something they don't use.

</comment><comment> j-pb Hide is an anti feature. I constantly click it on accident because it's approximately where your thumb touches to sroll or to click on a header.

Edit: Lots of folks apparently missunderstanding me. I'm not talking about comment collapsing which is essential but about story hiding on the front page.

Also it wouldn't be as bad if there was a convenient way to unhide stories.

<comment><USER9> Could not disagree more strenuously. If HN wanted to do the color thing to indicate depth I would also be ok with it, but the collapse feature is one of the nicest things HN has introduced in years and saves me tons of scrolling.

<comment> j-pb I'm not talking about comment collapsing which is essential but about story hiding on the front page.

<comment><USER9> Ah, apologies. I still like that though :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Why?

<comment><USER9> Because there are often stories which sit at the top of the page for extremely long periods which are not interesting, its a was to paginate the information off the front page which I find boring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The front page. I exclusively use hckrnews as my entry point, and have for years now. It caches articles that make the front page, so I don't need to manually re-scan the front page for new stuff nor worry about missing something that made it to the front page.

[http://hckrnews.com](http://hckrnews.com)

</comment><comment><USER11> I never knew search existed. It's amazing how blind to things in unusual position I am.

I don't understand why we can't have larger buttons by default though!

</comment><comment><USER12> I love the hacker news search. It's on every page, so no need to remember where it is. Best part- I would guess that about 3/4 of the time I search, I find what I'm looking for.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't use any of the feeds other than /news

I don't use Search, but only because I find the results to be awful. I always end up searching (and succeeding) on Google instead.

</comment><comment><USER14> The articles about companies instead of ideas.

</comment><comment><USER15> I use search before submitting something new to make sure something similar was not posted before. And hide is a relatively new feature, I just started using them.

</comment><comment><USER16> One thing to add, is that I love the [Hacker News Enhancement Suite]([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm?hl=en)) and it's no fun using HN without it :)

</comment><comment><USER17> The weekly Muse hiring post.

</comment><comment><USER18> Search is pretty much it. I don't use it because I don't submit stories. I use Hide sometimes when I feel an article and/or its comments are terrible. I use flag probably too much because I want to keep the link quality on HN high.

</comment><comment><USER19> Filtering by 'show' or 'ask' at the top. I used the site for years before I noticed that they existed.

</comment><comment><USER20> Logout

</comment><comment><USER21> The upvote button (because I'm a hater and all I do is downvote).

</comment><comment><USER22> I accidentally click on hide when aiming for the comments link

</comment><comment><USER23> Search is frustrating, but it works for some stuff. The devs have HN accounts, and I think they're receptive if you have any suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER24> Flag and hide!

</comment><comment><USER25> I use flag because I can't downvote.

They say if you use flag often you lose your flagging ability, but I don't care because I'm banned often and I have to keep creating accounts.

<comment><AUTHOR> You have a lot of karma for being banned often. ha.

<comment><USER25> That is correct, but as you can see this account is not even two months old.

<comment><AUTHOR> Congrats. Don't fuck this one up!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Live-view Google Analytics comparison graph - <AUTHOR> http://www.bckmn.com/stark-lines/?utm_source=hackers

<comment><USER2> is the source to this available anywhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/jbckmn/bckmnNode/blob/master/public/javas...](https://github.com/jbckmn/bckmnNode/blob/master/public/javascripts/starkLines/sitebeat.js)

You'll need special permissions granted to access the real-time GA API, though. Wrote about it here: [http://www.bckmn.com/blog/stark- lines](http://www.bckmn.com/blog/stark-lines)

<comment><USER2> Thanks. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Uber using driver selfies to enhance security, powered by MS Cognitive Services - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.microsoft.com/transform/feature/how-uber-is-using-driver-selfies-to-enhance-security-powered-by-microsoft-cognitive-services/#sm.0000nobdqd61xd7xwf426q4g2ddwz <comment><USER2> Has anyone read anything that explains how Uber will detect a photo of a photo?

<comment><USER3> Should make them take a video and pull a frame of the video - much harder to fake</comment></comment>


Rory Sutherland's 10 Rules of Alchemy - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UirCaM5kg9E <comment><AUTHOR> "The opposite of a good idea...

...can be _another good idea_."

This talk starts utterly brilliantly and continues to be utterly brilliant the whole way through.

Well worth watching!</comment>


Show HN: MyHikes.org – share your hiking/backpacking trips via GPX - <AUTHOR> https://myhikes.org <comment><AUTHOR> I built MyHikes.org back in early 2015 as a way for me and my friends to document our backpacking and hiking trips. This year I decided to open it up to the public for feedback and to see if there were people out there that wanted to share their trips via GPX. I got a bunch of people to sign up and a bunch of new trail data from 2017. The data set is small, but I'm not really aiming for large numbers, just trying to get new trails to help people find new places to explore.

If you enjoy hiking or backpacking, feel free to check it out. You can import any GPX file from a multitude of apps and devices (like Garmin trackers, etc). All/any feedback is much appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER2> Estimated distances are way off for me, but it did find some things. Searching for hikes in the Catskills was a disaster but the Catskills are strange and obscure, and a "well developed" trail in the Catskills can be like bushwhacking in most places.

<comment><AUTHOR> 'Estimated distances are way off for me' can you elaborate? I'll surely look into this or at least try to make the results make more sense based on your search :)

<comment><USER2> It could be a misunderstanding on my part. I thought the distances were distances from my location, maybe they were the length of the hike, which would have made more sense. My search was "Brooktondale, NY"

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh gotcha, yep those are the lengths of the trails, but I can see why you would be confused. If I add a 'distance from' label for each trail when searching via nearby/radius, it probably be less confusing. This feedback is really helpful though thanks a lot!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


12 most influential programmers working today - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/most-influential-programmers-2015-7

<comment><USER2> Great quote: "Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup invented the C++ programming language in 1978, taking the C language invented by the late Dennis Ritchie and adding new features that made it more usable by the masses. "

Yeah, right. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't use the word 'usable' here, that's true :) However, C++ and those who built it deserve a spot on that list.

C++ gave the programmer tight control over everything that's happening. I see it like driving a car with a manual gear while other languages like Java, Ruby, Python or PHP are automatic gear cars.

<comment><USER3> >C++ gave the programmer tight control over everything that's happening.

I think of it more that C++ decoupled all the knowledge that was required to do things (which C previously required), and thus the purpose of making C++ "easier to use" for new developers maybe did accomplish some sort of goal in that direction.

But I say that as a C developer who has witnessed the world go mad. It is of course, all C's fault, but the fact that we're still using it, somewhere, under it all, is some sort of victory.

C++ "decoupled things" because you no longer needed to actually read code to trust that it was going to work the way it said it was going to work, which is something you do in C (i.e. read all code) .. as well as other languages of course. Well, if you have the ethos of "read all code", no matter the language, there are some where that is easy to do, and others where its a bit of a drag.

(Mostly, its the languages that have IDE support, or which attract insufficiently brain-dead people that they can actually use EMACS to get around.)

If all you have is a simple editor, though, there are some languages that truly shine, and C is thankfully still one of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been getting "Too many redirects" from businessinsider.com all day.</comment>


The France do not have a digital bomb - <AUTHOR> http://spirale.io/la-france-na-pas-de-bombe-numerique/

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this to see other continents people reactions.

So what are your thoughts on this?</comment>


How to add robust keyboard shortcuts to your site - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bugsnag.com/2013/12/16/robust-keyboard-shortcuts/

<comment><USER2> ... but please don't, because you probably shouldn't. I wish my user agent wouldn't respect keyboard shortcuts except perhaps a whitelist of sites. Too often they replace actual browser interaction shortcuts, e.g. spacebar to pagedown (google is often guilty of this).

<comment><USER3> This is actually a really good point, I've seen many sites take the approach of adding keyboard shortcuts but avoiding the main "default" actions, (eg. space bar, up, down).

<comment><USER2> ... and since they can't know what those actions are (since it's up to the user-agent), we're at an awkward nonstandard cat-and-mouse game. Long live ze veb!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish the article would go more into keypress events in general and properly organizing code to make attaching shortcuts to it simple, rather than building yet another antipattern into the Jenga tower of bad jQuery code.

The real root of the problem here is systematically tying UI actions to events on specific elements in the DOM. Instead of working around it, why not write slightly cleaner code in the first place?

It's also not strictly necessary to use a third-party library for this unless you're butting heads with one of the edge cases the library is designed to solve.

<comment><USER3> You could trivially restructure the code to factor out global page actions into an object, like this:

        // Make a global page actions object
        PageActions = {
          selectAll: function (event, context) {...},
          nextPage: function (event, context) {...},
          prevPage: function (event, context) {...},
        };

        // Hook up clicks to global actions
        // Eg: All
        $("[data-action]").click(function () {
          var action = $(this).data("action");
          PageActions.selectAll("click", this);
        });

        // Hook up keypresses to global actions
        Mousetrap.bind("a", function () {
          PageActions.selectAll("keypress", this);
        });

This would help with code structure and organization, at the cost of flexibility.

<comment><USER4> I like to go one step further and simply add a global event delegate to transparently tie DOM elements into a UI controller scoped to a particular portion of the application (to account for sidebars acting differently than the main content). Since 95% of the events handled are click events, it saves a lot of time.

The whole thing ends up being about ten lines of code to implement and handles event binding for practically the entire application. Literally ends up cutting out thousands of lines of boilerplate in larger applications.

I've also found that the actual event object is only useful in a very small amount of cases (drag events and such), to the point where if I ever really need to pass it along, I'll just write a custom event controller for it (using data-handler to specify the custom controller).

When I have too much free time on my hands, I cut out the data attributes entirely and instead route using good old normal hrefs, which as a bonus can render on their own if something goes wrong with the JS.</comment></comment></comment>


The leaking battery: A privacy analysis of the HTML5 Battery Status API [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/616.pdf <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9843681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9843681)</comment>


Kids? Just Say No - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/having-children-is-not-life-affirming-its-immoral <comment><USER2> > People should never, under any circumstance, procreate

The human race would have a serious problem in about 70 years if we all adopted this approach.

> Certainly, sentencing someone to such a world is the worst of all crimes, > and a serious moral violation.

If the "feedback" is in fact genuine I feel for him/her but to associate the unfortunate aspects of their life as a "sentence" by the parents is particularly selfish IMO.

No parent wants their child to suffer, and to imply they should have foreseen the situation and just not had the child is quite selfish and doesn't consider the anguish the parents must feel as they see the child they raised in misery.

<comment><USER3> > No parent wants their child to suffer

Some do, the ones who know that their child will have a range of illnesses, disabilities, etc. but decide to keep it in the name of their selfishness (or faith, or whatever reason they have), instead of aborting.

They make the decision to have a suffering child out of moral comfort, so some, yes, deliberately want their child to suffer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This ignores a basic truth of evolution. You think you can "choose" against children, for the environment. But that is not allowed.

If you take that choice, long term, it'll simply result in others, presumably less ecologically conscious, doing it for you.

Furthermore, one can easily argue that fluctuating numbers of animals is far worse than just large numbers of them. Animals will adapt to having larger numbers (by, for instance, shrinking their bodies). Fluctuating numbers, well, read the history of environmental protection at Yellowstone park for instance to hear what can happen.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is basically the exact opposite of the Repugnant Conclusion, which states that many poor lives is better than fewer happy lives. This ran on HN within the last year.

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant- conclusion/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Sometimes I feel like those advocating for not having children are doing the world a favor by following their own advice.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can't put my finger exactly as to why but his argument reminds me of that part in the book Catch-22 where one person argues that they don't believe in God because the world is so terrible and the other counters that they don't believe in God either - but they don't believe in a good and just God not in an evil and cruel God.

Maybe it's because the logic seems to be that existence is terrible so we're doing the unborn a favor by saving them from it. Given the shortness of our time (something the author mentions) it seems like no great harm is done. And in any case wouldn't it be more fair to give the unborn the opportunity to make the choice of existence or not themselves?

</comment><comment><USER8> I read the article once, and didn't find it interesting. The TL;DR that was apparent to me was "existence is pain".

I read the article again, this time in Mr. Meeseeks' voice. It was substantially improved.

</comment><comment><USER9> This article troubled me. There are many good reasons to have children, and likely many bad reasons. I think everyone's situation is different, and there's no definitive answer for either side.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is being alive and has always been: a struggle for survival. With all the capital we accumulated as a civilization this might no longer be evident: we are all competing and collaborating in order to obtain scarce resources (like food, shelter, etc.)

People who don't embrace this and won't have kids will just exit the gene pool. Life will go on.

</comment><comment><USER11> "thoughtful people should pause and reflect rather than hastily dismiss it as mad or wicked"

Here's the problem: I want _thoughtful_ people to _have_ kids. Otherwise only the less intelligent, thoughtless folks would be having kids and the human race will be marching on to madness.</comment>


Interview with CTO and Co-founder of Zapier on Working with Remote Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://youteam.io/blog/interview-with-bryan-cto-and-co-founder-of-zapier-on-working-with-remote-engineers/ <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: said CTO.

Happy to answer any questions — though we definitely don't presume we have all the answers, we're constantly learning!

We are also hiring remote engineers — [https://zapier.com/jobs/](https://zapier.com/jobs/). Would lov to talk to anyone in the JS, k8s, and Python community!

<comment><USER3> Experienced remote engineer here with a good deal of experience in k8s, Python, Linux, application architecture and design, the works. Applied to Zapier Infrastructure Engineer position a little over a year ago, if memory serves. Twice, actually; one time my application was closed out almost immediately. Waited several months and the same gig had been reposted and/or reactivated, so I applied again. This time I got a message once a week for about six weeks that said they were reviewing my application, and then I got a message that said they weren't interested. My only contact was an internal recruiter, and I never spoke to or received any information from anyone technical.

It was a disappointment because I expected better from a YC company's process. Of course, I can't really blame Zapier for passing, as I'm sure there are a great deal of applicants and, since I never talked to anyone, I can't know whether we'd be a good match, technically or culturally. For example, many remote companies, especially those that are primarily staffed with offshore employees, are just trying to pinch pennies and paper over it by talking about the hipness and uniqueness of their remote workforce.

Zapier is a custom Q&A intake application [or, at least the applications I filled out were], so it's irksome to write real answers to those Qs and get nothing back. I'd much rather write an HN post where I can wear my rightly- deserved downvotes and critiques with pride -- then I at least get something for the effort! ;)

So, note well, potential applicants: "would love to talk" seems to mean "would love to have you languish in our HR system after you've taken the time to fill out our bespoke long-form questionnaire". Like I said above, usually it's hard to fault companies too heavily for this, but when the CTO is making a personal appeal on HN, I feel like a counterpoint is warranted.

Hiring in general seems to go very slowly these days. I don't know if everyone is flooded with fake resumes from "bootcamp grads" or what now, but 5 years ago or so, you could normally expect to hear back within a few days if someone was interested. It's a different ball game now. In the last couple weeks I've gotten two replies to applications I sent in around Christmas time -- one "an invitation to interview" from a well-known company (which I ignored), and one a message from another company that they'd closed out my application in their HR platform.

Disclaimer: my experience from memory. Intervals and dates may be fuzzy. Not going to dig up the correspondence.

<comment><USER4> Cookiecaper, I understand where you are coming from but complaining only makes you look like a sore loser. You are not helping your position by this post. Consider taking constructive action.

<comment> barry-cotter He's telling people about his experience of applying to Zapier in the comments to a post about Zapier. It's relevant and no more gives the impression of being sour grapes than the people who don't interview at Google after two rounds of apply again next year when Google recruiters email them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anecdotally I'm finding this shift to remote work in some area's fascinating and powerful.

My career started only about 5 years ago but over that time each position I've had has either been fully remote or had a remote aspect to it.

The company I now work for had a similar start to zapier but with one key difference: the co-founders were opposed to remote work. However the market forces of hiring the right people pushed this venture to become remote and our team is now scattered across North America and Asia.

I think we're going to continue to see companies moving in this direction and more "remote native" workers like myself come to expect it. Especially after visiting Canggu I don't think the trend is going to reverse itself.

<comment><USER2> We definitely believe the future of work is remote in nature. Physical locality is a vestige from days where manual work dominated -- knowledge work has no such constraint. People want autonomy, and not just in work -- but life too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Remote is a management skill and an effective hiring advantage. 43% of American employees reported in 2017 working remote at least part of the time, and 31% of those are 80-100% remote, up from 24% in 2012.

The world has changed and I don't think we're going back.

<comment><USER7> Exactly - its nothing to fear if you are good manager. If the person is screwing around you will find out quickly when projects slip over and over.

<comment><USER8> It's not just ensuring they are productive, it's also ensuring that they feel included and their voice isn't drowned out by the proximity and presence of the local team. So yes, nothing to fear, but it takes a little more tending to if you have a blended local/remote team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> During the last 5 years I've been managing two fully remote small teams, across different time zones (one team CET+Philippines, the other one CET+India+Philippines).

Some of my takeaways:

* Doing a 15 minutes "daily standup" (we use hangouts, audio-only) is really, really useful. Of course, for some people the meeting won't be at the beginning of their day, but it can work all the same. It's the one thing that I would recommend the most: creating cohesion in a remote team is much more challenging than in person, and this helps a lot. Insist on everybody being on time: my teams are very, very flexible, except for this one rule. When somebody has a bad connection, they still participate in a group chat.

* For task management we use Trello (with a kanban-like approach). It's great for asynchronous communication - in one of the two teams, we even use it to communicate with the customer; this only worked after we were able to "educate" the customer about a scrum-like approach. Only try it if you have a very collaborative relationship with the customer.

* When there is the need to share longer specs than those that can fit on trello, we use google docs - the ability to collaborate both with real-time shared editing and with comments and suggestions is very valuable.

* For brainstorming, drawing architectural diagrams, discussing design etc. I find murally a godsent: [https://mural.co/](https://mural.co/)

* For quick real-time communication we use chat (again, hangouts). But whenever I see that it takes more than just a few lines to finish talking, I suggest increasing the bandwidth and upgrading to an audio call with screen-sharing. Some people don't like that very much, but we saved hundreds of hours - and a lot of frustration - by doing this.

* If the person you need isn't online right when you need them, we resort to comments on trello or just plain old email.

* Not everybody can work well remotely - it requires A LOT of self-discipline and self-motivation. At the beginning, I hired some people even if I had some doubts about those traits, or I started having those doubts in the first weeks, and tried many different ways to motivate them and get better results. I never succeeded - this could have been my limitation, but grooming devs remotely is objectively much more difficult than doing that in person. So, my suggestion is: when in doubt, don't hire. If you have doubts early on, fire (I don't like doing that, but paid a very heavy toll in terms of stress when I didn't do it).

Shameless plug: I'm currently looking for a career change. If interested, take a look at my profile :)

<comment><USER10> I know this can be a polarizing opinion, but I have found when fully remote to force video whenever possible. Seeing everyone, their location, facial expressions, etc... really helps build a team and empathy when stressful moments arise.

<comment><USER11> To complete the polarity, I would hate this.

Being able to dress down comfortably is one of the benefits of remote work. I work 90% on slack and not knowing what facial expression someone is making has never hindered dealing with a crunch - my teammates are on point and engaged as it is.

For me the dead air in a crunch time call, the need to split my attention, etc. would just increase the stress.

I think communicating effectively via text as well as comprehending meta cues in received messages may be a learned skill.

<comment><USER10> > Being able to dress down comfortably is one of the benefits of remote work.

How comfortable are we talking? Like shirtless? I don't know of anyone expecting people to be office dressed when working at home. If that's the case, then yeah I fully agree with your point.

> For me the dead air in a crunch time call, the need to split my attention, > etc. would just increase the stress.

I think there was some confusion about my original statement. I was not talking about being on a video call during crunch time, but that seeing your co-workers on a regular basis helps you know them better and thus have more empathy and understanding when a problem time arises. The point is to build a bond with co-workers similar to when working in a office so that the same work product can be created.

> I think communicating effectively via text as well as comprehending meta > cues in received messages may be a learned skill.

I agree, which is why most of my teams communication is over chat and email. My original point was _if_ a meeting is required then it should be video whenever possible. This includes daily stand ups. I have found anecdotally that having regular video chats improves chat and email communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone considered remote working as a part time job in addition to a traditional full time role?

<comment><USER13> Moonlighting? I did that for awhile to build up my client base until I transitioned to full time consulting. Hard to do long term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I was onboarding with a remote company, we had an open hangouts video call and I was able ask the other guy questions whenever I needed. It was like being the same room together and it was pretty amazing.

It's not something I see done that often, but if your 'remote in similar timezones' it does remove a friction point. We only did it for a day or two as part of getting set up with the new codebase, but I found it fairly effective.

</comment><comment><USER15> I work fully remote now too. Thoughts:

\- It helps that everyone is a senior dev on my current project. There's nobody on the team who needs to be handheld through anything. I've pretty much said "Welcome, I see you were able to build the project. Let's automate a Valgrind step in the CI pipeline". And like magic the new guy does a merge request with a Valgrind step soon after.

\- Being remote also means you are effectively only looking for senior staff, because you get so many CVs, why would you go for an unproven junior guy? You also tend to think young people are slackers, or someone on your team will. The only time I worked with someone fresh from a bootcamp was because she was inexpensive. Good worker though.

\- Tools: Slack, GitLab. They seem so intuitive, never met a dev who needed to be shown how they work. Slack for discussions. GitLab issues for specific issues.

\- Culture: wrong personalities are magnified. When you aren't talking to someone in person there's no facial feedback. If someone says something people don't like in person, they often get the feedback from the listeners quickly and are able to change tone. Online, this is not so easy. We had one guy who was being very aggressive in technical discussions, and it annoyed people.

\- Tools/Culture: some people are resistant to organising their work through issue tracking and version control. This was a huge problem at an onsite job I had years ago. If it had been remote, it would have been even more of a disaster. Part of the issue is when you write a bug report, you are implying someone has done something wrong. This is a terrible attitude. Along similar lines, if you create a goal like a milestone, you are again setting yourself up for failure if you don't reach it. What kind of people are prone think this way? Strategy quants whose job it is to deliver the magic that can't be found in any published work, and whose work is greatly affected by randomness. Now I'm sure they're not all like that, but the ones I worked with did seem to have rather fragile egos.

\- Culture: Not everyone wants to work remote. One guy left because he missed the camaraderie of the office, the on/off of being in or not. Of the people who love remote, a lot have families. Then there's the ones who use it to globetrot. Those two tend to not have an on/off. They're always kinda there, kinda not.

\- Culture: Meetings are drop-in, drop-out. In real life some people like being able to call a bunch of people into a room and have them stay there for questioning. I don't think I've ever met anyone who liked that. Online meetings are asynchronous. I might say something, then go to the bathroom without telling anyone, then come right back and catch up. People leave to get their kids, and you don't expect them to be right there. But coding work tends to accommodate that.

<comment><USER16> To your last point: are the meetings solely text chat based?

<comment><USER15> Occasionally people will do a video meeting, but it's rare. Of course there's also the socials for those who happen to live near London.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hope you weren't working with any Russian teams this last two weeks... internet shutdown has ruined protectivity

<comment><USER18> Can you expand on this? I work with some Russian open source developers. I heard the news about Russia blocking Telegram (we use IRC). Has it affected git hosting services and the like?

<comment><USER19> Telegram moved to the public cloud providers Google Cloud Platform and Amazon, meaning Russia was blocking a significant proportion of those providers IP Address space as Telegram moved servers around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What AV equipment do you use that you find indespensible?

<comment><USER21> From experience doing a bit of podcasting.

1 A proper professional external sound card

2 Pro / Semi Pro microphones no need for condensers etc a Sure SM58 is good enough.

3 for skype its often better to have dedicated skype drone machine and feed your audio into that.

4 a good video camera.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Solid marketing content.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, from the outside, it seems like they take remote seriously and do it very effectively: [https://zapier.com/jobs/](https://zapier.com/jobs/)

Glassdoor seems to agree: [https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Zapier- Reviews-E1196705.ht...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Zapier- Reviews-E1196705.htm)

Note: I have zero affiliation with Zapier, other than being a satisfied customer. Just happened to run across their hiring page today and was impressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I first heard about Zapier when I started my side project, [https://parserr.com](https://parserr.com). We have now actually been listed as an integration with them and Id still do anything to work there. Currently working as an engineering manager, id kill for an opening there as I so believe in their product and their remote first culture.</comment>


The Guardian has moved to HTTPS - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/info/developer-blog/2016/nov/29/the-guardian-has-moved-to-https <comment><USER2> It's always good to see more web sites switching to HTTPS. I can't help thinking about something I read on Twitter a couple of years ago, and I wonder if they are mitigating the risk:

"I'm all in favor of news sites using HTTPS, but I assume they're also going to pad all their articles to a uniform length?" \-- [https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/53504312624809574...](https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/535043126248095744)

<comment><USER3> An interesting attack and something that we'll consider. HTTP/2 should add a significant amount of noise to this, but ultimately adding random padding to every response or padding that compresses to a consistent length would be the best solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am slightly worried that a lot of public Wifi seems to be unable to redirect you to the login page (think Starbucks) if you visit [https://](https://) sites. The Guardian was my go-to for such situation so that I could login and get online.

I'm not sure how these redirects work (DNS? Inserting JS into the page?) but it seems to be a common problem.

<comment><USER5> There seems to be some protocol by which operating systems automatically launch the login page upon connecting to the WiFi network. Unfortunately, it seems to fail pretty often and probably doesn't work for bridged connections.

<comment><USER6> There's no standard protocol in widespread use. Typically operating systems attempt to fetch a known resource when connecting to a new Wi-Fi network, and if it redirects, then they treat the destination as the captive portal sign-in page and display it with special chrome / modally. The URL each platform attempts to load varies by vendor and version.

<comment><USER7> Do you have any links to resources or know what name(s) people use when talking about this strategy? I'd be interested to know which URL Debian attempts to fetch, but I'm not sure how I'd even begin to search for the answer.

<comment><USER8> "Captive portal detection"

And here's your answer: [http://network-test.debian.org/nm](http://network- test.debian.org/nm)

<comment><USER7> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The more websites on HTTPS the merrier. It's interesting that they mention being able to use new HTML/JS features that are now only available over HTTPS. That's one way to push more people for HTTPS even if they don't care about the privacy/security reasons.

</comment><comment><USER10> So what's involved in compromising a site using HTTPS? Off the top of my head, you would have to have control over a trusted CA, and the ability to MITM a connection to the site. Probably not plausible for bedroom hackers, but seems trivial for state actors.

Do browsers offer any kind of certificate pinning for arbitrary sites? It seems strange that this is a default feature in ssh but not https.

<comment><USER11> HTTPS doesn't provide any protection to the website, it can hinder MITM attacks against modern browsers and aware users, but it doesn't reduce the attack surface on the website (in fact it actually increases it).

As for certificate pinning, some browser do e.g. I'm pretty sure that Chrome has certificate pinning for at least some google services.

Also HSTS with HPKP (HTTP Public Key Pinning) can be used to further increase the resilience of HTTPS services against MITM attacks (both local and network adjacent).

That said if an adversary is capable of doing even basic network adjacent attacks they can still do a redirection via DNS which is why it's important to not have HTTP support only or have a fully enforced redirect which will likely to get the target stuck on a redirect loop.

For DNS redirection attacks all they need to do is to be faster than the DNS responder or poison the local DNS cache.

<comment><USER12> HTTPS stops MITM except for nation-state attackers.

How does it increase the attack surface?

<comment><USER11> On the website?

An additional library e.g. OpenSSL (heartbleed), HTTPS crypto attacks (e.g. beast), an additional business processes that can be compromised both from the CA/issuers standpoint and from the website admin POV, and an additional resource to protect and securely distribute(private keys).

All and all you now have a greater attack surface as an entity, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't use HTTPS, but as far as risk management goes things change.

You as a user aren't affected unless you erroneously implicitly trust encrypted traffic considerably more than unencrypted one.

HTTPS also doesn't stops MITM attacks from non-state actors. People trust untrusted certificates, the certificate supply chain can be easily poisoned as time and time again we've seen that everyone and their mother managed to make CA's issue certificates under false pretences or otherwise erroneously and DNS / packet racing attacks still can work unless the website implements HTTPS strictly.

<comment><USER12> > An additional library e.g. OpenSSL (heartbleed), HTTPS crypto attacks (e.g. > beast), an additional business processes that can be compromised both from > the CA/issuers standpoint and from the website admin POV, and an additional > resource to protect and securely distribute(private keys).

If these things are attacked, your security is not worse than HTTP.

HPKP and HSTS fix the problems you've described.

<comment><USER11> Again you are talking about 2 different attack vectors here, the GP was talking about compromising the website, an attack against the traffic between the website and the client does not compromises the website in any case.

And no if these things are attacked, at least as far as the library goes things aren't no worse than HTTP because it's a completely different threat scenario which can actually compromise the website/host rather than just poison a single client session.

For example [https://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-6309](https://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-6309) which poentially allows for RCE if you use a vulnerable version of OpenSSL exposes your website to completely different threats than if you would only use HTTP, not worse, not better just an additional and quite different threat.

This is why when you implement HTTPS or any other additional service you need to understand how it changes the attack surface of your service from both a technical and operational perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze.html?host=www.thegua...](https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze.html?host=www.theguardian.com)

Still getting a 50/100... somehow that's a "C" on the Mozilla curve.

</comment><comment><USER14> "The reasons for our move"

If they wrote this 5+ years ago, kudos. Now, today... seems a bit like a very bad (and very late) ad campaign or excuse.. And in all fairness, it could have summarized, as 'we cared more about money then serving https to our readers'

<comment><USER15> As far as I know, they are one of the few big media outlets to support https. So yes, this should have been done earlier, but kudos to them for pioneering this in their field and for publishing a short instruction manual for whoever else is planning this.

I'm not surprised that they are worried about the financial impact of https on their (very modest) revenue. It's a big investment for an industry struggling financially.

<comment><USER16> RT switched to HTTPS a while back. [https://www.rt.com/](https://www.rt.com/)

> I'm not surprised that they are worried about the financial impact of https > on their (very modest) revenue.

I don't see anything to that effect in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> time to review this superuser answer and ponder some deep questions about public wifi's [http://superuser.com/questions/1132148/how-do-you-force- publ...](http://superuser.com/questions/1132148/how-do-you-force-public-wifi- connect-modal-to-open-on-macos) and new vocab word of the day is "captive portal"

</comment><comment><USER18> The Guardian uses Fastly CDN as a result the TLS certificate is Fastly's SAN certificate, which also has over 150+ DNS entries to cover. Just thought it's interesting to point out.

$ openssl s_client -connect theguardian.com:443 | openssl x509 -noout -text | grep 'DNS:' | tr ', ' '\n' depth=1 /C=BE/O=GlobalSign nv-sa/CN=GlobalSign Organization Validation CA - SHA256 - G2 verify error:num=20:unable to get local issuer certificate verify return:0 DNS:i.ssl.fastly.net DNS: _.am- autoparts.com DNS:_.am-autopartsqa.com DNS: _.i.ssl.fastly.net DNS:_.s.tmol.io DNS:4ormat.com DNS: _.4ormat.com DNS:500px.net DNS:_.500px.net DNS:500px.org DNS: _.500px.org DNS:abtasty.com DNS:_.abtasty.com DNS:api.yerdle.com DNS:biomedcentral.com DNS: _.biomedcentral.com DNS:bliyoo.bruna.nl DNS:cdn.mmgcache.net DNS:cleverbot.io DNS:_.cleverbot.io DNS:collective- media.net DNS: _.collective-media.net DNS:decalgirl.com DNS:_.decalgirl.com DNS:engagesciences.com DNS: _.engagesciences.com DNS:famous.co DNS:_.famous.co DNS:fitbit.com DNS: _.fitbit.com DNS:format.com DNS:_.format.com DNS:github.app.secretcdn.net DNS: _.github.app.secretcdn.net DNS:global- pop.tumblr.com DNS:_.global-pop.tumblr.com DNS:goodeggs.com DNS: _.goodeggs.com DNS:grindr.com DNS:_.grindr.com DNS:guim.co.uk DNS: _.guim.co.uk DNS:hackster.io DNS:_.hackster.io DNS:harveynichols.com DNS: _.harveynichols.com DNS:help.optimizely.com DNS:huevosbuenos.com DNS:_.huevosbuenos.com DNS:img.society6.com DNS: _.img.society6.com DNS:inverse.com DNS:_.inverse.com DNS:kilmer.io DNS: _.kilmer.io DNS:kindsnacks.com DNS:_.kindsnacks.com DNS:learn.optimizely.com DNS:live.cf.public.springer.com DNS: _.live.cf.public.springer.com DNS:logoscdn.com DNS:_.logoscdn.com DNS:m.au.vjukebox.com DNS:m.ca.vjukebox.com DNS:m.uk.vjukebox.com DNS:m.us.vjukebox.com DNS:maps.tmol.co DNS:mapsapi.tmol.co DNS:mapsapi.tmol.io DNS:mapsint.tmol.co DNS:mapsintqa.tmol.co DNS:mapsqa.tmol.co DNS:meerkatapp.co DNS: _.meerkatapp.co DNS:modafinilcat.com DNS:my.ticketmaster.ca DNS:offerpop.com DNS:_.offerpop.com DNS:ogol.io DNS: _.ogol.io DNS:optimizely.com DNS:performance.service.gov.uk DNS:_.performance.service.gov.uk DNS:preview.performance.service.gov.uk DNS: _.preview.performance.service.gov.uk DNS:production.performance.service.gov.uk DNS:_.production.performance.service.gov.uk DNS:q-static.com DNS: _.q-static.com DNS:qa.cashstar.com DNS:_.qa.cashstar.com DNS:reissdev.com DNS: _.reissdev.com DNS:s.sellocdn.com DNS:_.s.sellocdn.com DNS:s2.tmol.co DNS:s2.tmol.io DNS:scanscout2.com DNS: _.scanscout2.com DNS:screenshot.click DNS:_.screenshot.click DNS:skedge.me DNS: _.skedge.me DNS:snapshot.raintank.io DNS:spotfront.mathtag.com DNS:springer.com DNS:_.springer.com DNS:squarecdn.com DNS: _.squarecdn.com DNS:staging.performance.service.gov.uk DNS:_.staging.performance.service.gov.uk DNS:static.awesomeom.com DNS:subscribe.theguardian.com DNS:teamtreehouse.com DNS: _.teamtreehouse.com DNS:theguardian.com DNS:_.theguardian.com DNS:timeout.cat DNS: _.timeout.cat DNS:timeout.com DNS:_.timeout.com DNS:timeout.es DNS: _.timeout.es DNS:timeout.fr DNS:_.timeout.fr DNS:timeoutkorea.kr DNS: _.timeoutkorea.kr DNS:timeoutmexico.mx DNS:_.timeoutmexico.mx DNS:u.sellocdn.com DNS: _.u.sellocdn.com DNS:venue.tmol.co DNS:venue.tmol.io DNS:venueint.tmol.co DNS:venueqa.tmol.co DNS:vjukebox.com DNS:_.vjukebox.com DNS:www.alarmgrid.com DNS:www.edgee.com DNS:www.freshbooks.com DNS:www.graspwise.com DNS:www.modafinilcat.com DNS:www.msdayofgiving.org DNS:www.neste.com DNS:www.optimizely.com DNS:www.optimizelystaging.com DNS:www.reiss.com DNS:www1.ticketmaster.ca DNS:www1.ticketmaster.com DNS:xkcd.com DNS:*.xkcd.com ^C

<comment><USER3> We're working on it!

We're in the process of switching to a dedicated certificate that only contains Guardian properties.

</comment></comment><comment> noir-york Great! Now if only they would move back to the center...

<comment><USER19> Just out of curiosity, where would you place them currently?

<comment> noir-york Left of center?

Their news coverage is good (SportsDirect being a case in point). Its the opinion pages which makes me wonder.

<comment><USER19> Yeah I would agree that they're left of centre. But I would say that they have moved more to the right in the last few years.

I guess that probably says something about our politics too :-)

<comment> noir-york Interesting that you believe that they've moved right. I sorta think they've (particularly the opinion pages) moved left, especially with regards to social issues.

> I guess that probably says something about our politics too

I was gonna agree with you and then I thought that in fact, it should be possible to place someone's politics on a scale that is independent of the observer. Keynesian is to the left of supply-side economics for instance. Social issues are on their own scale.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Challenges in Search on Streaming Services: Netflix Case Study - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.04638 <comment><USER2> Netflix is one of my favorite examples of a search service that would be infinitely improved with a really low-tech change that will probably never get implemented because it doesn't give the data scientists something to talk about over beer: Filtering

So often, what I'm looking for is something like, "G rated content, not by Disney, less than 30 minutes long", or "Documentaries that I haven't watched yet, with an audio track in French, that are available for offline viewing". With a search space the size of Netflix's library. There's no need for a search string there. Nor is there a need for anything fancy like recommendation or expanding to items that are similar to direct hits on the search string, because, these days, a basic filter like that will only yield a page or two of results, anyway. And would be really easy to for them to implement, because they already have their library tagged with pretty much anything I could think to filter on, anyway, so they can use it as features for the fancy-schmancy recommendation engine.

More generally, I stopped having a need for a juiced up search engine and recommendation system in Netflix the exact moment I stopped owning a DVD player.

<comment><USER3> Comedy Central had something like that for their shorts from The Daily Show, back in like 2012. You could drill down with things Person:"Samantha Bee" in place:"New Jersey" in when:2009.

It was really quite remarkable. But then the UX experts got to it, and ruined it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >and support searches for unavailable (out-of-catalog) entities

This is a subtle killer feature of Netflix's search, and something not often done by others. By including these unavailable entities, it allows Netflix's similarity and recommendation engines to still understand what the user was looking for, and provide things that are relevant and similar, even if they aren't exactly what the user is looking for.

That being said, this is a lot easier for something that has a relatively finite, known set of items (movies) in contrast to things with lots of items that can be differentiated in smaller, subtler ways (e-commerce, web documents).</comment>


68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless - <AUTHOR> http://cloudability.com/blog/68-of-the-fortune-100-are-clueless

<comment><USER2> My first thought was "is there any actual content in among the buzzwords". My second thought was "what's he trying to sell". Apparently, cloudability is a service that allows you to track your "cloud" spending, which seems totally useless to me. I mean, why should I track SaaS and Amazon S3 backups in the same category, but leave off $1000 Yourkit license in some other category?

<comment><USER3> I agree... the post just has a sensationalized title. He was just missing his company's pitch at the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > We need better tools that let companies understand and budget for the cloud > money they are already spending while at the same time letting end users > sign up for the services they need to do their jobs.

This kind of tool would be aimed at precisely the market that would never pay for it.

If employees need to circumvent company policy to use Basecamp, the only way in which such a tool would be used is to identify culprits and get them back in line.

edit: on the other hand I would love a startup to prove me wrong :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd counter that if Company X learns that they're employees are using Basecamp at $99/mo to actually get things done rather than a much more expensive tool that team members don't want to use, the company has gained a valuable insight into how they can save a lot of money (and make their team's life easier). Call me a dreamer but I believe everyone wins on the cloud.

<comment><USER5> I worked at a company that had invested big $$$ into an agile tool without consulting the teams if it was adequate for their needs. For a month or 2, the teams used the tool as required. Eventually, when the boss turned his back, each team quietly found a tool. Because they were being quiet, each team found a different tool from every other team. They were actually tracking their progress in both systems, but the expensive one was only being updated afterwards. Everyone would sit around the easy-to-use tool and plan things, and then 1 unlucky soul had to transcribe it into the crappy tool. This actually sped things up because the crappy tool would waste time x5, where the combination of tools only wasted time x1. (And we usually got a non-developer to do the transcribing, too.)

Eventually, the whole thing came to light and the company was forced to admit how stupid they were being.

See, they had paid for a year's service of the bad tool, and they were adamant that they get their money's worth. They were absolutely blind to how much money they were wasting daily. The sunk cost was sunk. There was no way to recover from that, and the tool just couldn't be salvaged.

<comment><USER6> Curious: after the year of service was up, did the company decide to go with one of the other tools you guys found, or did they keep dropping stupid money?

<comment><USER5> After about 5 or 6 months of that nonsense, they discovered the deception (because we let them in on it... that was a nervous moment, and I got to break the news. lucky me!) and they finally relented and stopped pestering us about the tool they paid too much for. All the teams agreed fairly quickly that 1 particular tool was better, and we all standardized on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The surprising thing to me is the lack of concern over the security of cloud services. There are real risks in not having proper data segregation or even know in which country your data is stored in. Or what the security at the data center(s) is like.

Subverting the bureaucratic channel at a large corporation to "get on the cloud" must drive the CPO and CSO nuts. There is a time and place for bureaucracy.

<comment><USER8> More accurately, there is a time and place for controls and discipline. You can have both without actual bureaucracy, or, more commonly, bureaucracy with neither of desirable ends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You might think they are clueless but there is a method to IT's madness. I would not recommend publicly trashing anybody in corporate buying chain if you ever plan to go upscale and sell your services for 7 figures at CIO's level. Nobody appreciates being publicly called a fool.

CIO's job is to manage massive resources and organizations - first and foremost to keep the critical line-of-business systems running. For most of them cloud right now is neither the top priority nor a viable substitute for core infrastructure. You are right on with your strategy to get foot in the door to circumvent their slow-moving processes. However you should be thinking of how to work yourself into their higher-level planning process instead of positioning yourself as adversary of their corporate policy by calling it stupid.

Just remember, the CIOs have the power to ban technologies that sneak out through the back door. Alienate them at your own peril!

EDIT: Whoever down voted this, please post an actual substantive rebuttal.

<comment><USER10> >Just remember, the CIOs have the power to ban technologies that sneak out through the back door. Alienate them at your own peril!

I agree about the general idea of not throwing stones into the sky. They have a tendency to fall back down on one's nose.

However banning tools that were 'snuck in through the back door' because of their efficiency and because nobody had the heart to follow the actual procedure to get them through the front door strikes me as profoundly childish. Especially if it is done as some sort of vengeance, or 'just because we can'. In fact about just as childish as throwing stones into the sky.

I'm being a bit idealistic here. There will always be turf wars in BigCos. But hey if some people switched from trying to look like the best and brightest to getting stuff done instead, i'd be all for it.

<comment><USER9> My point was not whether "banning tools that were 'snuck in through the back door'" is childish or fair or unfair. That's not even relevant. The point was that they have the power to do this and they do not hesitate to use it. Occasionally they even have valid reasons related to security and business continuity. Remember how all those defense / intelligence secrets walked out of the door on a USB stick and ended up on Wikileaks?

There is no place for idealism in selling to BigCos. You have to work through the process and build your case or someone else will steal your deal, possibly with an inferior product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Our post on how "rogue" cloud services are making their way into the Fortune 100/500/50 ... a response to 37Signals blog.

<comment><USER11> What makes Basecamp "cloud"? There's a material difference between software delivered as a service and ephemeral IT infrastructure (cloud computing).

<comment><AUTHOR> I think of cloud using @davenielsen's OSSM description: services that are On- Demand, Self-Service, Scalable, Measureable. [https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/d8...](https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/d8524a57-3a71-4212-93e6-29a440e8f425/entry/dave_nielsen_explains_why_cloud_computing_is_ossm_awesome?lang=en)

<comment><USER12> You're just talking about hosted software, then. That's been around since the 90s...

Using Cloud to mean abstracted server infrastructure is much more useful. Otherwise it's just a meaningless catch-all marketing term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, how do you pitch the CIO on something the company is already using?

Salesperson: This software is so easy and ... CIO: Won't it be a big learning curve Saleperson: Well, actually, your company is already using our software

<comment><USER9> Exactly.

What you pitch them is on buying larger license for the whole enterprise, increasing the usage and integrating deeper into their systems.

Getting from a handful of users to thousands is easier to do when you have both initial end user champions and the support of IT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So does "the cloud" mean "web applications or services" now?

<comment><USER15> I can't improve on this:

[http://everythingsysadmin.com/2011/06/avoid-using-the- term-c...](http://everythingsysadmin.com/2011/06/avoid-using-the-term-cloud- com.html)

<comment><USER16> That's precisely how we look at it internally -- IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. We speak in terms of "the cloud", as coarse and imprecise a term as it is, because that's what a lot of the people we're trying to reach are thinking in terms of and looking for. Plus, it just flows more smoothly than "IaaS/PaaS/SaaS" in a headline. :)

<comment><USER14> I like the terms *aaS, but I don't they don't exactly roll of the tongue (either four syllables or a too generic term that sounds silly and is easily confused with other things).</comment></comment></comment></comment>