Capitalism's Fundamental Flaw - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/05/innovation-ayn-rand-intelligent-technology-capitalism.html <comment><USER3> A fundamental flaw in the article:

"The banks, however, are another matter altogether, and this is where I think capitalism has hit a roadblock. The government has intervened to save many of them, and now, these bailed out banks want to hand out billions in bonuses to their non-performing employees. Capitalism gave way to welfare economics, and now the government has to intervene further to limit these looters from behaving badly by imposing taxes and regulations."

If the government hadn't intervened in the first place, and instead let these irresponsible banks fail, then the transfer of taxpayer money in the form of bonuses never would have happened.

What she's describing here is, in actuality, yet another flaw of government intervention.

<comment><USER4> Right. And allow the economy to go into a long-term depression with 25%+ unemployment. A government "for the people" does not have a choice in this matter. The real problem is that bankers/speculators have so much power on the outcome for people who are not at all related to the industry.

<comment><USER5> The point isn't whether or not the government should have intervened, the point is that because they did we can't blame Capitalism for the outcome of that specific action. A purely capitalist market would have let the financial crisis run is course, right or wrong. At least, that's how I see it.

<comment><USER6> The thing is the US isn't purely capitalist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the appeal of finance is the intellectual leverage one gets there. If I am really bright and I can develop a profitable arbitrage trade in the marketplace I can turn it near instantly into millions of dollars (if I'm right, obviously the market does not give points for effort).

If I'm in a start up, which we would probably consider to be very high cleverness to reward leverage, it can take a long time and have lots of randomness to get the big payoff, e.g. Kiko.

Now, compare that to being an employee, where to get enormous payoff you have to climb the ladder into stock options land.

The article's point is that this is not how the world should be, but markets cause this by construction: If I'm stranded on an island with a bunch of Robinson Crusoes I'm going to try swapping coconuts for mangoes across the island before I start experimenting with cross breeding them.

From a welfare perspective it even makes sense to do the easy things first (trade) and the hard stuff next (R&D) because effort is more likely to be rewarded in the former than the latter.

One could also complain about how all the socially well connected are lobbyists instead of high school teachers and the beautiful are in pharmaceutical sales rather than portrait modeling. Sure it's sad, but also mostly inevitable.

<comment><USER8> > if I'm right, obviously the market does not give points for effort

But the market does give points for effort. How else do you explain the bonuses awarded to bankers who damaged the economy? They were rewarded despite their antisuccess.

<comment><USER9> You're blatantly taking that out of context. GP's idea was to "develop a profitable arbitrage trade" using one's intelligence, not to go work for a bank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The reason speculators can make tons of money on Wall Street, is because they can get people to play along.

You don't make money because an asset you own rises. You make money because someone buys it at that price. (That's the same, I know, but it's an important point to understand - it's NOT just numbers going up and down in a computer, at the end of the chain there's actual liquid money changing hands).

Now we've lived through two financial bubbles right after each other, and one can hope that people will learn that sharp rises in the value of an asset are often inflated, and stop putting their money into the game. After all, those who bet and then hedged their bets on real estate (this time) and .coms (last time) were also (generally!) the ones who lost the most.

<comment><USER11> _at the end of the chain there's actual liquid money changing hands_

Naked short selling doesn't require one to have any money to invest nor any shares. You can still make a lot of money and destroy a company's shares if well connected enough. The price falling on the shares is only produced by the apparent glut of shares offered for sale, they don't need to sell initially to produce a price fall, the offer is enough. Once the naked sale has iterated through a couple of loops and many other offers appear as the stock falls then the price plummets, not because of sales but because of lack of sales.

You make money because no one buys. Traders can make money any way the market moves and if sufficiently skilled and backed can make the market move - <USER2> _is_ just numbers going up and down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Perhaps a better title would be "Mercantilism's fundamental flaw". Rand makes few assumptions regarding the inherent integrity of "leaders"; in fact, she assumes no such integrity, and argues for liberty.

While we trip over ourselves (as a society) to give up our freedoms and grant ever more sweeping power to "leaders" to save us, we will reap what we deserve -- ever greater examples of waste, bungling, abuse, malinvestment and looting, on scales simply unimaginable just a few years ago.

We gave up our ability to directly monetize wealth 2 or 3 generations ago -- what features of our present financial system makes you believe that it is "Capitalism"? Government giveth, and government taketh away. Sounds like good, old-time kingly Mercantilism to me...

<comment><USER8> I hate to bring this to a general discussion of capitalism/Rand etc., but I have a question:

How is Rand's "liberty" supposed to be provided?

It seems to me we already live in a universe where people have as much free will as we ever will. Some people use this free will to restrict the free will of others. Sometimes this is a government, sometimes it's a corporation, or sometimes it's a kidnapper.

But what hypothetical external agent could ever ensure that no one's free will will be restricted? To have such a system would necessitate restricting people's free will so that they couldn't restrict each other's free will; it would be a self-defeating situation.

This is analogous to the set of all sets in mathematics, or other paradoxes that arise by having "all powerful" objects. Humans are so free, that we are free to kill ourselves (for instance), and remove our freedom. Likewise, we are free to disable our own free will.

How could Rand change things so that this is not the case?

In my view, governments are the result of the utter freedom we have as humans. It is simply absurd to think of getting rid of the systems that restrict freedom; if we did, the freedoms granted would simply create new systems, like corporations, or another government, that would replace all the functions of the system we got rid of.

Let me put it another way: It seems we already have maximal liberty. How are things ever going to be better in that respect?

<comment><USER13> I was going to submit this a few days ago, but I don't like Rand-only discussions. However, I'd like to contribute to the thread with this recent Slate article, which abruptly reversed almost all my remaining positive feelings about Rand:

<http://www.slate.com/id/2233966/>

Not only was she a hypocrite who ignored her own teachings when things got personal, she worshipped a serial killer who raped and dismembered a 12-year- old girl, because she saw him as a hero defying society.

<comment><USER14> Considering how much just about every other quote in that article was taken out of context, I would expect that was too.

<comment><USER13> The Branden quotes weren't taken out of context. It was the Branden affair that first led me to doubt her words, and that's pretty much as it happened.

Back-up of the mass murdering psychopath bits: <http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm> FTA:

 _According to Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra, she deliberately modeled Renahan - intended to be her first sketch of her ideal man - after this same William Edward Hickman. Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should."_

So she modeled her initial Randian Hero after the psychopath.

 _In the original version of her first novel We the Living: "What are your masses [of humanity] but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?"_

Sounds Jokereqsue, no?

 _Of The Fountainhead's hero, Howard Roark: He "has learned long ago, with his first consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world."_

And:

 _The editor also provides the briefest and most detail-free synopsis of Hickman's crime possible: "He was accused of kidnapping and murdering a young girl. He was found guilty and sentenced to death in February of 1928; he was hanged on October 20, 1928."_

 _As far as I can tell, this is the one and only reference to Hickman's victim to be found anywhere in the book. Ayn Rand never mentions the victim at all in any of her journal entries. The closest she comes is a sneering reference to another girl, "who wrote a letter to Hickman [in jail], asking him 'to get religion so that little girls everywhere would stop being afraid of him.'"_

Pretty damning. And there's much, much more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A sobering read about the problems our system faces is <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice>.

During the last boom a full 40% of all of the profits in the system came from the non-productive activity of people manipulating cash flows. This is simply not a sustainable financial structure. History shows that economies that are based on financial manipulation rather than production don't last. The USA isn't the first to combine of financial manipulation along with the export of production and the knowledge that previous lead to persistent economic advantage. In the last several hundred years Spain, Holland and England did this. In all previous cases it was a big factor leading to financial collapse and the loss of empire.

Is there any reason to believe it will work any better for us?

</comment><comment><USER16> "Integrity, justice, fairness, work-ethic, excellence--all have fallen prey to greed."

Greed is tempered by risk when the government can't save you.

<comment><USER17> Greed would be tempered a lot more by risk if the government didn't save anyone.

<comment><USER5> I think that is what richcollins is saying. What I took away from that article, although I don't think it is quite what the author had in mind, is that Capitalism is flaw by the fact that our government does not allow/force us be purely capitalistic. The safety nets open the doors for greater risk, which require bigger safety nets.

<comment><USER6> Humans aren't angels. Just as we need laws to protect us from killing each other or stealing we need laws to protect us from ourselves in the economy.

Whatever system we have, however much it naturally encourages innovation, _someone_ will try to manipulate it.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. I think people spend too much time arguing about "capitalism the ideal" when what we should be talking about is "capitalism the implementation."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In hindsight the present situation is pretty predictable: as the # of goods produced increases and the amount of specialization increases the value supplied by the intermediary network ("the financial system") increases.

The way the financial system is currently "architected" (a strange term, but I'll use it) it has as a class an inordinate amount of negotiating power vis- a-vis everyone else (!), and thus is able to capture much of what ought to be consumer and producer surplus.

As much of the value it adds is due to network effects just going to a gold standard (which is a popular cure-all on the internet) wouldn't change much, even if you thought that was a good idea; there's still the same tremendous problem of coordinating trade in the same complex, highly-specialized economy and the central switchboard is still ideally placed to extract most of that value.

The easiest-to-envision solution is to forcibly unbundle the basic storage- and-transmission of credits between accounts (full-reserve checking accounts, basically) and run that infrastructure as a public utility (a handful of mainframes in the fort knox). Let the private sector sell value-added services on top of this, but don't leave the basic infrastructure of value-exchange in the hands of the private sector, who will retain the ability to hold the country up for ransom.

It's an easy solution to envision but it's hard to see much happening; it is too radical a shift to go down easily (and all that surplus value captured funds a lot of lobbying) and it too closely resembles socialism and other bugaboos to be an easy sell to the public at large.

(!) Where we are now is pretty analogous to having the local power company -- which provides necessary services to its area of operation -- also involved in speculative ventures that backfired enough that its continual operation is threatened; having the ability to turn the lights off would naturally give the local power company a lot of leverage negotiating for a bailout.

Suppose that the "too big to fail" banks were allowed to fail, and there was temporarily a severe disruption in the banking system. How would you propose that federal, state, and local law enforcement and other "essential services" get paid? With cash -- dangerous and risky? With checks -- while the banking system isn't reliably working? Would you trust them to work without pay for very long?

</comment><comment><USER20> If the government imposed a small tax on stock purchases and other financial transactions, with the tax level rising according to the number of intermediaries and the amount of leverage, then working in an organization through which lots of money passes would not be such a lucrative career.

(And if it remained lucrative, at least the government would be able to participate in the bounty that comes from skimming a few parts-per-thousand off the top of a very large cash flow.)

<comment><USER21> _working in an organization through which lots of money passes would not be such a lucrative career_

No, those people would just go work for the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This article suggests, twice, that "most intelligent people" agree with the author. Surely there is a better way of proving these facts, than just using such an assertion?

</comment><comment><USER23> That's not the flaw of capitalism.

It is a hopefully temporary result of a world wide obsession with financial speculation.

Part of that is specific government policy resulting in financial speculation being more profitable then brick and mortar and bits and bytes businesses. I'm not just talking about the fed, and printing money, but also about trade policy.

The other part is lack of supply. When people can charge 2 and 20 and the 2 even if they suck, that means either there are a lot of people deliberately looking to lose money, or there is a shortage of hedge funds. And while those have exploded in number in recent years, that is not enough.

The government, through Ph.D. programs encourages education, some say this supply side intervention has the uninteded consequence of depressing wages for Ph.Ds. But what if the government strongly encouraged everyone to go into wall street? Politically it would be crazy to try and explain why we're paying for people to become bankers or fund managers. But a flood of talent is perhaps exactly what we need, to even out supply and demand.

</comment><comment><USER24> Antonio - good find. I read this article earlier this morning and it spoke directly to the disconnect I've noticed as well. Logistically, what do you think leaders on the Street and in business can do to curb these short- termist, corrupted practices?

<comment><USER25> If you don't mind me chiming in, I think the lesson is that there really is nothing that can be done to curb it.

Why? Two reasons.

First, every time we create legislation, laws and other governing to something, the problem either gets worse or creates a whole new set of issues. The problem becomes a snowball -- you can look at the examples there to see some of this.

Second, the saying that goes something like "locks keep out the curious, not thieves" is very true. Those who want to scam will always find a way and there is nothing to stop them, only try and catch them and prosecute them.

I could go on with a very lengthy post about this and sound very studious, but I think those two points in their simpler form make a lot of sense. What do you think?

<comment><USER26> I disagree strongly.

1) Legislation can change things significantly and effectively. It can also merely shovel things around. Both are possible and doggedly asserting that only one effect ever happens is just ridiculous.

2) Locks keep out thieves very well a lot of the time. They may not keep out every thief, but it keeps out most of them, most of the time.

<comment><USER25> Very glad you engaged, now on to my rebuttal...

Really?

Show me a piece of legislation that hasn't shoveled things around? And show legislation that actually changed things significantly and effectively without already having legislation in place that it enhanced? Drugs? Education? Prostitution? None of those for sure. I know, gun laws? Nope, not there either.

And in regards to your response to my use of the saying "locks keep out the curious, but not thieves", you have to understand the underlying principle to completely get it. No "locks" (and we aren't talking just physical) keep out thieves, only the curious. Bernie Madoff anyone? The underlying principle to that saying ties with the really corny saying "where there is a will, there is a way". When someone really wants to do something, locks are not a deterrent, they will find a way.

Cheers to you for debating with me, really enjoy it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The fundamental flaw of capitalism is the tendency for wealth to concentrate in the hands of those that already own the capital. There's nothing to be done about it because the fundamental flaw is more like a fundamental feature.

</comment><comment><USER6> I though it was quite obvious captialism provides only incentive to increase profits, and that it does not necessarily correspond with an incentive to make better profits.

Consider communism, ideally no one will worry about financial gain and everyone focuses on self actualization and innovation (because there's no monetary incentive, so only the truly altruistic thrive). However there's yet to be an implementation this ideal.

It's probably impossible to achieve a perfect system, so I think the answer lies in a more perfect balance of capitalism and communism.

</comment><comment><USER28> _The banks, however, are another matter altogether, and this is where I think capitalism has hit a roadblock. The government has intervened to save many of them, [...]_

That's not capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER29> There's a fundamental flaw in the logic that concludes that "government must intervene to stop the shameless looting of taxpayer money." Taxation itself is government intervention.

Abuse of money received from a government that shamelessly loots its people for the "common good" and through manipulation of a highly regulated system is no more an indictment of Capitalism than failure to run is an indictment of a man tied to a chair.

<comment><USER30> There's a fundamental flaw in your reasoning too. You can't have capitalism without some form of government and you can't have government without some form of taxation.

<comment><USER29> Maybe the term capitalism has a different meaning to you than it does to me, but I use almost synonymously with "free markets." And I would actually make the case that you can _only_ have "pure" free-markets _without_ government.

What I was suggesting in my comment above is that the failures of a bound and adulterated form of free markets do not indicate that free market principles are themselves flawed. The notion that banks' or other firms' abuse of bailout money is a problem with capitalism neglects that an extremely important (and often ignored) freedom in capitalism is the freedom to fail.

<comment><USER31> I agree that free market capitalism ended when the government bailed out the banks. I think, the issue on that is what would have happened if the banks were not bailed out? Many believe, the western financial system would have collapsed and we would have been sitting amidst 25-30% unemployment right now. Most economists agree that bailing out the banks was the right thing to do under the circumstances, and faced with the consequences.

But now that we do have a financial system that has not collapsed, we need to rethink how we recover from 10% unemployment and a gaping deficit wound that has been created.

For that to happen, we need more people like Kao, fewer like Soros. Those, after all, just examples. My point is, the system has created incentives for people to be attracted to the Soros-like professions, not the Kao-like professions.

And what we need right now are more the Kao-like innovators (and the Jobs like entrepreneurs, who, to your point, is very wealthy).

But entrepreneurship and innovation are not short-term money-making propositions the way speculation-oriented professions are. And my point is we're diverting the youth in two directions as a result: (a) an entitlement path, where they expect the government to come to their rescue (b) the speculator path, where they are attracted by easy money.

The path that is longer, harder, riskier - the path of building, creating, innovating - is losing out in the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."

-Ben Franklin

The flaw in capitalism is us.

</comment><comment><USER33> From the article:

"She assumed integrity is implicit in the characters of the "leaders.""

I haven't read much Ayn Rand (i.e., none), but I've read a lot about what she has said and written. Is the quote from the article above dramatic license on the case of the author, or did Rand actually state that integrity is a required characteristic in the 'leaders'?

</comment><comment><USER34> "The government has intervened to save many of them, and now, these bailed out banks want to hand out billions in bonuses to their non-performing employees"

So presumes the author that the people who are ostensibly receiving "billions" in bonuses are the same people who pushed this over-leveraging scam. All bankers are equal, none managed wisely.

"And thus, we lose Berkeley Ph.Ds in nuclear physics to hedge funds and MIT computer scientists capable of delivering computing to 6 billion people to derivative manipulation on Wall Street."

So presumes the author that nuclear physics and democratization of computing are more noble pursuits than finance. What he forgets is that mortgage-backed derivatives really did reduce risk for really bad mortgages. This was a phenomenal development, we could get more people into houses while not losing our shirts in the deals. Unfortunately, those same mathematicians weren't the ones employing this great tool that they created. "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." It's not that mortgage-backed derivatives were wrong or evil or bad, it's that they were grossly overused. They _reduce_ risk, they don't eliminate it, so when the scenario in which that risk turned to losses came true, the losses were too much to handle.

But, few people saw the risk for what it was because the Fed suppressed the price of money to lower-than-market rates, explicitly encouraging this sort of speculation. Price floors lead to shortages, this is a basic tenet of Capitalism. Is it any wonder that the entire nation is over-leveraged? Without the manipulation of the Fed, the price of money (interest rates) would have been much higher and this sort of speculation would not have happened.

<comment><USER35> So you're arguing that an accounting trick to statistically suppress risk and get a few more million people into homes that they ended up having taken away from them is fundamentally the same level of contribution to society as people inventing the Internet, the Telephone, Chemotherapy, Relativity, etc.?

You, sir, have an interesting outlook on life. But hey I guess a few high-risk buyers got to hang out in someone else's house for awhile, and that's good right?

<comment><USER7> I think his point is that, traditionally lending was a very local matter with local banks and local capital issues. If Norwegian pension funds want to fund a mortgage for a home in Paducah, KY, without some kind of securitization they're stuck earnings treasury rates and the home loan is charging the interest rate demanded by Paducah capitalists whether its higher than the Norwegian's rate are not.

The point is, there are gains from trade to be had from securitizing mortgages, the trick is to design them so that the information asymmetry costs don't outweigh the benefits. Maybe that's impossible and mortgage derivatives will always be value destroying but I doubt it.

<comment><USER35> Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that he's implicitly equating an accounting technique with the Theory of Relativity, the invention of the Internet, etc.

This worldview seems shocking to me. It's hard to imagine that someone can equate a vaccine for polio and a statistical method as equally beneficial to society, especially when one caused such woe and the other eradicated a crippling disease.

<comment><USER34> I never made that valuation, you made it for me. I said that the author implied finance was a lesser career choice than nuclear physics, then provided an example where statistical analysis can be used in finance to provide a social good.

Not all bad-credit people are bums looking to default on their loans, skirting the credit collectors as long as they can, living on the underbelly of society. But people who were hit hard by a disaster, made a few mistakes in the past, or are just getting started out are lumped in with the deadbeats. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell them apart, based on financial numbers. By minimizing risk in dealing with these types of loans, the people who are legitimately trying to improve their lives are given an avenue to show they are responsible enough to own a home.

There is still risk involved, but the construct is not inherently deceiving about its risk level. The problem was over-leveraging on this type of activity. Even over-leveraging on mutual funds and money market funds can make you lose your shirt.

"an accounting trick to statistically suppress risk" Mortgage-backed securities as a construct unto themselves are no more an "accounting trick" anymore than accident, life, or health insurance policies are "account tricks". Regardless, "risk" is nothing but a probability factor anyway. Risk is the probability of losing money on an investment, not the certainty of it. To organize assets together in vehicles that allow the earnings of the winners offset the losses of the losers, you're not performing accounting legerdemain, you are reducing actual risk.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Formula E SUV - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/6/20684239/formula-e-extreme-offroad-suv-goodwood <comment><USER2> > which was created by Formula E founder Alejandro Agag, is to race in far- > flung places with "fragile ecosystems" to "highlight the impact of climate > change," as well as promote electric vehicle technology.

Well well. There's always an excuse for it :-/

Edit: by all means raise awareness but maybe not by bringing a racing circus to town.

</comment><comment><USER3> Surely something like E Touring Cars would be a better fit? It's still road racing, so could use the same tracks on the same weekends and helps push the state of the art in consumer cars more directly.

This looks more like a group B rally car, which didn't turn out so well...

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_B](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_B)

</comment><comment><USER4> Calling that an SUV is a stretch but damn does that look fun to drive!

<comment><USER5> Yes indeed, it looks actually suitable for rough terrain and will be driven in such.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Finally found my climate change prepper car.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you prefer when signing up for a new service? - <AUTHOR>

I found that most people tend to use facebook more instead of email for signing up. (Not sure if they realize that it still gives out their email anyway).
I am curious what do you feel the most comfortable with when signing up for a new service: - Facebook - Twitter - G+ - Email - Other ( Please specify) <comment><USER2> Most definitely prefer email. Every great once in a while I'll switch to a facebook login - generally a combination of ease of use and a moderate-to- heavy use of the service.

In fact, I'll usually pass if I am not offered the email option along with the others.

</comment><comment><USER3> Email

I pretty much won't do it on Facebook, especially if the permissions are looking for anything besides my basic info.

I use a throwaway email address if the service is potentially sketchy in any way.

</comment><comment><USER4> Depends on the service.

Sometimes when I just want to try it out or am curious, if they have email, then I use a dummy email account Ive set up for this purpose.

Other times, Twitter

</comment><comment><USER5> Twitter or FB

</comment><comment><USER6> Email

</comment><comment><USER7> G+

</comment><comment><USER8> email</comment>


Live From HTC's New York Press Event - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/19/live-from-htcs-new-york-press-event/

<comment><USER2> Interesting that HTC have gone the 'bright colours' route as well. I'm a fan- it's about time that people tried to make phones look bold and exciting.

<comment><USER3> Panache!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm still disappointed that Sprint hasn't picked up any of these recently announced WP8 phones.</comment>


The Rise of Workplace Surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/06/workplace-surveillance-big-brother-technology <comment><USER2> I remember this post [https://www.reddit.com/r/excel/comments/2jtd2f/worked_on_a_c...](https://www.reddit.com/r/excel/comments/2jtd2f/worked_on_a_completely_locked_down_machine_time/).

This is what happens you try to calculate productivity with how much salary you get.

The poster make video player in excel to padding his clock time because he already finished his work in 1 hours and need 3 hours to appear busy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Parodied very effectively in _Snow Crash_ (1992), where one of the characters has to spend exactly the right amount of time reading a document. Too much would be deemed slacking; too little would be inattentiveness.

</comment><comment><USER4> This makes work a panopticon prison.

> The concept of the design is to allow all (pan-) inmates of an institution > to be observed (-opticon) by a single watchman without the inmates being > able to tell whether or not they are being watched.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon)

<comment><USER5> This is is automated, real time, omnipresent surveillance of everyone.

It's worse than a panopticon as in a panopticon prison you have one person surveilling 1000 for example but only able to watch one at a time. The idea is the prisoners never know who is being watched so in theory they all behave thinking they are all being watched. But math kinda destroys that theory as they each have at least a 1000:1 chance of being watched so the odds are in the prisoner's favor.

<comment><USER6> That's a good point but even a total surveillance system has limits of actionability. Any given response system or mechanism is going to have limits of attention _that it can apply to actual and justifiably observed behaviour_. That is, _if the goal_ is to identify, and reduce, negative behaviours, then whatever it is that your policing mechanism is can only act on some _n_ cases in any given period of time.

The problem is that reducing negative behaviours in a just fashion is _not_ the only, or even the most likely, possible dynamic for such a system. In a tyrannical regime (political, social, economic: this is _not_ strictly related to politics), there's a great deal of power and control to be had _by acting arbitrarily, without predictability, and without recourse, at any given time.

Take the example given in _Paths of Glory _, a 1957 film telling the story of the (arbitrary) execution of three French soldiers who had refused to undertake suicidal attacks in the trench warfare of World War I. The process draws on the ancient tradition of_ decimation _, which is the arbitrary killing of one in ten_ of ones own troops* in order to instill on the remainder the consequences of failure to follow command.

The real risk of global surveillance is that it provides _either_ the justification for, _or the plausibility of justification for_ , arbitrary prosecution of any given individual at any given time.

That's an absolutely despotic state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this article a joke?

"Last year an employee at an IT services company sent a private chat message to a friend at work worried that he had just shared his sexual identity with his manager in a meeting and fearing he'd face career reprisal. Wiretap detected the employee's concern and alerted a senior company exec who was then able to intervene, talk to the manager and defuse the situation."

What. the. fuck.

thanks "senior exec" for reading my messages, stepping in and "defusing the situation" whatever that means.

it gets worse:

"Or if you usually touch 10 documents a day and print two and suddenly you are touching 500 and printing 200 that may mean you're stealing documents in preparation of leaving the company."

of course, that's the only possible logical conclusion.

What a waste of time, if I ever saw this in place as an employee or manager I would immediately leave and possibly sue.

<comment><USER8> I lost it at "[...] when an All State Insurance franchise did a live demonstration of Interguard's software to other dealers. The technology started scanning the network and almost immediately found an email with the words "client list" and "résumé". The demonstrator opened the email in front of a room full of peers to discover his best employee was plotting to move to another company."

What is wrong with people?

<comment><USER9> When you optimize for profit at any cost as a company, that kind of mindset carries over into you employee/leadership culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If an employer feels the need to do this, it's a major red flag that there are serious issues in their culture and management. Monitoring your employees will just make things worse.

<comment><USER11> My last company started having design sessions to build a system that would monitor how much employees were actively engaged at their desk. I tried to steer them to "rewarding employees who were working hard" goal, but they were only interested in punishing people. It was a real eye opener into the culture that was forming.

<comment><USER12> The sad thing is that at that point they probably did need those systems, as I imagine all the good workers would leave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A bank I worked for last year rolled out monitoring software to all their IT staff. It recorded the window title of the application with focus on a regular schedule and kept this in a log somewhere. They said the results would only be used in aggregate, but that was treated with skepticism.

Also, the app does pop up with alerts every so often suggesting you take a yoga break so it is adding a lot of value. /Sarcasm

<comment><USER14> The solution is to provide terminals with only access to work tools.

No-one plays Solitaire on a supermarket checkout till

(cue someone finding a photo of someone playing Solitaire on a supermarket checkout till)

<comment><USER7> The solution is to hire people that care about their job, or at least people who are accountable for their output.

Difficult in a supermarket checkout scenario though.

<comment><USER14> Hiring people who care and keeping them in that mindset is hard, especially at scale.

32.9% of U.S. employees "engaged" in workplace in February (2015)

[http://news.gallup.com/poll/181895/employee-engagement- reach...](http://news.gallup.com/poll/181895/employee-engagement-reaches- three-year-high.aspx)

and from a 2014 report

[http://www.aon.com/attachments/human-capital- consulting/2014...](http://www.aon.com/attachments/human-capital- consulting/2014-trends-in-global-employee-engagement-report.pdf)

There are signs that the employee value proposition is breaking down. Perceptions of internal brand alignment have decreased 4 percentage points in the last two years. More employees are saying positive things about their organization and striving to go above and beyond. Engagement overall has increased, but the global element signifying intent to "Stay" with their companies has shown no change. Employees are engaging more, but only a little over half see a long-term path with their current company and fewer see a compelling value proposition to keep their talents with the current company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm coming to the conclusion that, _at a society scale_ , there's a fundamental conflict such that _advances in communications technologies undermine trust_.

This is a case of paradox of composition -- whilst _at a personal scale_ improved communications can increase trust, at a _mass_ scale, the tendency seems to be to undermine it. This increasingly strikes me as a problem.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communications_advances_undermine_trust/)

In a world without high-speed, high-bandwidth, rapid, and reliable communications, you have to extend, and rely on, trust between individuals. Cultures evolve systems (usually religious) to create and foster a sufficiently-reliable trust network.

As communications improve, reliance on that trust diminishes. You no longer need to be able to rely on a person working in your interest for days, or weeks, or months, or years. You can check on them at a moment's notice. You can monitor them continuously, across a wide range of metrics, without their conscious awareness.

A domain built on Trust becomes instead Panopticon.

(Further discussions of trust: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=trust&restrict...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=trust&restrict_sr=on))

<comment><USER15> This ties interestingly to the news about Bitcoin power usage from last week: [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin- mi...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining- electricity-consumption-ethereum-energy-climate-change)

The beauty of Bitcoin is an inherently-trustworthy transaction structure without the need for a central authority or trust between parties. The cost is exactly what you describe - trust is replaced by a massive expenditure of work to independently verify everything. It's an interesting microcosm of what's happening throughout society in general.

<comment><USER6> David Gerard, author of _Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain_ , has made just that point. I can't quote it enough (three times so far at my Reddit blog):

 _Decentralisation is the paramount feature in bitcoin, but it turns out that that 's a bad idea that's really, really expensive, because it turns out that a tiny bit of trust saves you a fortune._

 _" Decentralised" isn't a useful buzzword in a lot of ways, because it turns out that you want to be a part of society._

From his interview with the _Financial Times_ :

[https://soundcloud.com/user-544122300/gerardpod](https://soundcloud.com/user-544122300/gerardpod)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Companys have no need to get into employee home. And employees should not give access to a camera inside their home. Its impossible to know who has access to that camera. The companies can set up an remote environment(remote pc) that employee must connect to in order to work. And that PC the company can connect to and monitor whats being worked on.

If the company can connect to the user computer and install software there, that means the user just opened up his computer to the company. And, if the company software happens to be "buggy" (to say the least) it could mean that company has teorically hacked the employee computer and now has access to every single file on that machine and if it wants it can try to connect to other machines on the same network. If the company software malfunctions, it could delete all the user files or share with others in the internet.

Having said that, its probably important to separate. As a last resource if the company really want to monitor the employee, use 1 internet for company (with 1 computer only for work related) and 1 internet for home usage (and home computers).

</comment><comment><USER17> It's only creepy when your employer does it, not when your social media platform does ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> No what's creepy is that we've got enough surveillance from social media and CCTV, now it's in our workplace too. That's _most_ of our day. Sheesh, these people need to get a life

Edit: typo

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Huh. I wonder if all of the folks building and selling these systems have it pointed at themselves (the email monitoring, the webcams)? Or is it just for the common workers?

Just because someone is paying you doesn't give them carte blanche to examine every minute of your time working. That was never explicit before because it was never possible before, but i guess we need to make it explicit now.

<comment><USER19> It's almost certainly _not_ being used by the creators. It's the same thing as politicians; It doesn't affect me, and it sounds like a good idea on paper, so go for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This. I live this everyday and they talk about it in terms of "insider threat" and "user behavior analytics". Yes , every last thing you do at work is being monitored and analyzed.

You see,I am at a point where I wish it stopped at work. $work these days spies on your off work activities as well. Essentially making you their slave.

If you don't experience this,then maybe your company isn't big enough to afford it(or if it is,please tell me more about this wonderful company that let's you do your job without 24/7 surveillance)

EDIT:Just search for " user behavior analytics".Orwell would be impressed

</comment><comment><USER21> These kind of tech has always been marketed to enterprises under various ruses. It's persistent. If the company happens to have immature control freaks in decision maker roles then they manage to sell.

Ultimately its culture and the decision makers get to decide. Monitoring is of course downwards and those making the decision do not get to be monitored in this intrusive fashion.

<comment><USER22> Except we're getting better at quantifying, and the better we are at it, the more we can optimize. Factory workers didn't use to be measured, but then they were. And now they're automated. Many aspects of white collar jobs are not impervious to this either. As we move up the chain, we'll see that even more can be measured and optimized, even for the decision makers. Just make sure you keep climbing!

Edit: it also helps when firing people, as you can make a list of metrics and then make goals that are just out of reach for bottom 50% of performers. Then when you need to fire people and deny unemployment, you point to the metrics they were failing and you have a valid cause to terminate for lack of performance, thus saving you money on unemployment insurance premiums.

<comment><USER21> This is a bit of a straw man. You don't need surveillance technology for this.

If a worker is expected to make 10 pieces of an item per hour its easy for managers to verify this. For a knowledge or creative worker it's similarly easy to verify expected performance.

This is not new, workers have been measured for performance everywhere since manufacturing and corporate jobs began.

If we ignore that for a moment, the point you are making applies to management too, yet this tech is guaranteed to not be used for management where things and outcomes are left 'more fuzzy'. Why?

How about we apply it to governance with complete transparency to the electorate. Nope, not going to happen. Because its exploitative and intrusive and will only be applied to the powerless lowest who have no choice.

<comment><USER3> > For a knowledge or creative worker it's similarly easy to verify expected > performance.

No it really isn't! Coding performance metrics are a wasteland of failed techniques.

<comment><USER15> Hence, I think, the rise of judging programmers on business outcomes. Revenue increases aren't a great metric for programmers (no one has a damn clue how to quantify tech debt and futureproofing), but at least they aren't actively destructive. Similarly, "story point velocity" and the like aren't tied to anything intrinsic, but at least they can sometimes be used as a predictor of quality.

Meanwhile the history of the field is one of judging programmers on bugs fixed, lines written, commit frequency, or a hundred other standards that are _only_ perverse incentives. Most aren't even Goodhart's law issues, because they weren't predictive _before_ they became targets!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would quit, without second thought. I have always been of the opinion that you need to hire the right people and fire and bad ones. Workplace surveillance is a trying to fill a gap for BAD managers/mgmt. This crosses so many lines.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd refuse to work anywhere that did this. It puts people on a treadmill they can't get off of.

<comment><USER9> I think it's safe to assume that every employer does this, to some extent. Sure, some may simply be doing automated scanning of your emails and document access to ensure you're not leaking secrets, but it's a slippery slope that only takes one leader to go to hell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Relevant: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11305701](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11305701)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Now that surveillance is getting cleverer, the question is, how do we know if we're being monitored? How can we tell which companies practice surveillance?

<comment><USER26> It's a chilling effect. Because you probably can't detect who's monitoring you, you must assume _all companies_ do--potentially even the ones that say they don't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Must the 21st century be characterised by paranoia/vigilance? :(

<comment><USER9> No, it doesn't have to be that way. But when both corporate government leaders want, and are getting, unparalleled visibility into what we do and what we think; the only practical counter to that is paranoia and vigilance.

There is another alternative - acceptance - something which is much easier on your mind. Acceptance isn't an option for everyone, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I suppose this entire article is about the USA given the first paragraph plus this being part of The Guardian's World section (ie. not local UK).

On which jurisdiction(s) does this apply? Readers (pref lawyers) should check if this is legal in their jurisdiction(s).

For people from NL I can recommend Arnoud Engelfriet's blog (a Dutch lawyer specialised in IT law) [1] and its search feature.

An ontopic example discussing whether an employer is allowed to see private files in a business OneDrive account is discussed [2]. There are many more examples, but the blog is in Dutch and generally applies to Dutch law, so YMMV. I'm curious if similar websites or platforms exist for other jurisdictions.

[1] [https://blog.iusmentis.com](https://blog.iusmentis.com)

[2] [https://blog.iusmentis.com/2016/10/17/mag-werkgever- privebes...](https://blog.iusmentis.com/2016/10/17/mag-werkgever- privebestanden-zakelijke-onedrive-bekijken/)

<comment><USER28> CERN certainly does this for at least a decade, although it has its own "jurisdiction". Management likes it a lot, because it is so easy to abuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Obligatory link to Manna:

[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER30> At a company with a healthy culture, managers should be hiring people who they trust to get their jobs done. If you feel the need to watch your employee's every move, why would you hire them in the first place? Treating employees like delinquent children instead of mature teammates indicates a very sick company culture that I would avoid at all costs.

</comment><comment><USER31> Hmm, I don't know that "rise" is a good description. This is just a reminder that if you are using employer owned resources, you should not have an expectation of privacy. It has been this way for decades and is no different now. Perhaps, the only difference is the ability for a system to detect anomalies without human intervention.

</comment><comment><USER32> "If a paralegal is writing a document and every few seconds is switching to Hipchat, Outlook and Word then there's an issue that can be resolved by addressing it with the employee"

Wait, what? Are they trying to do ADHD diagnosis from window activity?

<comment><USER33> And stupider, "can be resolved by addressing it with the employee"... You just _know_ this company is going to put that employee through a couple hours of some awful corporate video training about motivation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "If you are a parent and you have a teenage son or daughter coming home late and not doing their homework you might wonder what they are doing. It's the same as employees."

Uhh, no. Employees are adults.

</comment><comment><USER35> How would you know you're being monitored?

</comment><comment><USER36> If a workplace implemented this, this would create anxiety in their workers causing them to leave.</comment>


Full details on CVE-2015-0096 and the failed MS10-046 Stuxnet fix - <AUTHOR> http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-Security-Research-Blog/Full-details-on-CVE-2015-0096-and-the-failed-MS10-046-Stuxnet/ba-p/6718459#.VP_m_lOS2hx

<comment><USER2> Out of curiosity, does anyone understand why it was a good idea in the first place to have icons pointing to a DLL instead of having a static icon name or icon id?

<comment><USER3> Well, the reason for having it was for Control Panel items. In such cases, you'd want the icon in sync with the Control Panel item's. Windows, in general, likes to keep its icons in one place and then reference them from somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of how "hacking a computer" is depicted in a movie or in tv- series.

"All we need to do is attach this usb stick and we can download all the files from their computer"

Well, almost, at least.

</comment><comment><USER5> So Windows can run code simply by browsing to a directory with the default shell?

I have no words...

<comment><USER6> Windows has a bug which was likely a design decision made in Windows 95 development (maybe earlier, Windows 3.1 had CPL applets also). Security wasn't taken as seriously in that era.

While evidently their bug fix was a little hacky, I guess re-designing how Control Panel applet icons are rendered was considered too big of a change for what was essentially a security patch.

Hopefully they kill classic Control Panel completely at some stage in the next few years. Windows 8, 8.1, and now 10 are going down that road but there are a lot of legacy Control Panel applets by third parties which they have to deal with somehow.

<comment><USER7> Windows needed to kill the legacy control panel for a long time. They've put some new (worse)) front ends to it over time but once you click down to it there's some ancient non-resizable textarea to read something important in.

They should rebuild it in something powershell can poke so every single windows setting can be done from the command line, slap a gui on top of that and manage it all with DSC. Much like how all the new server orientated features have gone.

<comment><USER2> I agree on powershell. But I am less enthusiastic about their "metro" style which look extremely oversimplified from the samples I have seen (and all full screen, which replaces the frustration of the non-resizable grey boxes with another!).

<comment><USER7> UI aside I am referring to applications like the new server manager that are literally a front end to PS cmdlets.

Full screen only metro is gone as of W10 it seems. It's just a flatter art style and I think the metro stuff something else again, it's not some powershell driving layer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am assuming that the code being run is the DllMain which is normally called during LoadLibrary. The proper fix would have been to just map the DLL into memory _without_ running DllMain, since that is not necessary to read the icons.

</comment><comment><USER9> Its still so surprising to me that human error is still occurring in security. Surely, companies/organisations should provide training to stop them form being insecure.

<comment><USER2> I think the problem with something like Windows is that it is too big to be secure.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Free startup idea - <AUTHOR>

This is a hardware idea and I would have no clue how to execute it. So I'm going to give the idea away.
The problem with physical advertising is that there's no way to measure its effectiveness. For example, I live in Boston, and currently, H&M is advertising at the T-stop near my house. The last time I was at the stop I was thinking "how the hell do they know if that ad is actually sending customers to their stores"? This idea would solve this problem using two small hardware widgets.
The first would be on or near the sign at the T stop. It would pick up, and identify unique cell phone signals within 20-50ft. If it finds a new cellphone, it would record the visitor.
The second widget would be at the H&M store in town (or at all of them!). Whenever a new phone walks into the store, the widget would cross-check the unique signal with a DB and determine wether the user saw an ad this week/month/year.
With years of data, one could measure which ads are  effective and which ones are not.
Thoughts?
P.S. There are two assumptions* I made: 1. Each cellphone emits a unique signal.
2. This unique signal can be picked up and detected with fairly straightforward hardware.
*I confirmed these assumptions with a friend who's a hardware engineer at the FCC. <comment><USER2> There's a problem with this. On GSM at least, my understanding is that the unique identifier (the IMSI) is rarely sent over the air, and more often an encrypted counterpart is sent.

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

You'll have a lot of problems with this, both with uniquely identifying subscribers, and ensuring that you are not violating any privacy laws.

Check out OpenBTS and OpenBSC for basic code and feasibility stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> "no way to measure effectiveness of physical advertising"

With the largest exception being internet advertising there isn't a good way to really see if an advert is physically bringing people into a store.

Advertising can lead to purchasing decisions but the general traditional purpose is to establish an emotional relationship between the consumer and a brand and or to raise awareness about said brand.

Examples:

Campaign 1 Coca Cola Refreshing, new drink that you enjoy with your friends and quences your thirst during the summer (focusing on emotional relationship)

Campaign 2 Truth.org Smoking is bad! You're going to die! Rah Rah Rah! (focusing on awareness)

Campaigns were made up fyi

They have ways to measure how these messages are received. In terms of the purchasing decision process, advertising won't really affect the consideration aspect; marketing will hit that harder which is where you'll find people "actually [getting] sent to their stores".

I would agree with the person who posted earlier saying you should expand your idea to see how cell phones can affect the advertising industry in new ways entirely; you're on a good track and if you want help let me know!

Source: Advertising guy

</comment><comment><USER4> It might help to broaden the question to: how can mobile devices provide meaningful information to businesses? With this, you've expanded the realm of use from just quantifying ad efficacy to all activities a mobile device user might pursue. Perhaps there is a way to incorporate mobile internet use, cell phone use and physical location into a meaningful picture for the business, to help understand not only how many are responding to ads, but who they are - other interests/buying habits, other stores frequented, events surrounding decision to enter store/make purchase. Rather than a device owned by H&M, why not a service provided to all retail establishments?

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a clear privacy violation to me.

It may not in this case, but when you consider that data like this has its way of getting out to other people and used in ways not originally intended. Imagine your employer being able to pay for access to a database that has your complete location history as captured by such devices.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's a third, much more important, assumption: you're assuming that the marketers _want_ to know the conversion numbers. We, being internet nerds, want to measure everything. But brand advertisers may not want/need to.

<comment><USER3> Advertisers definatly want to know who they're hitting, if they don't then they're a small town shop not understanding their job.

It's important to be able to show how you impacted the consumers awareness, and if you're able to motivate their purchasing decision process then that's definitely something to brag about.

When an agencies account comes up for review they need to show what type of ROI they gave back to their client,No one wants to lose a big account in a review because they can't show how they succeeded!

Source: Advertising guy :), ask me anything!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Using the technology that you suggested would be a great way to pay at toll booths.

<comment><USER3> That tech is already taken care of, I visited CO recently and they just scan your license plate and send you a bill once a month or you can get an RFID chip in your dash that they can scan. No stopping, no lines, no surly emotionally damaged (no wonder lol) CSR's taking your money etc etc.</comment></comment>


Show HN: The wearable that communicates entirely through your sense of touch - <AUTHOR> https://wearmoment.com <comment><USER2> This is the kind of thing that I think could be really amazing, or a total dud. I'd definitely need to be able to try it out before I throw down over a hundred dollars.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like bullcrap to me

<comment><USER4> Another co-founder here-- definitely understand the skepticism. If you'd like to learn more about the science behind Moment, check out this page: [https://wearmoment.com/learn](https://wearmoment.com/learn)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can anyone speak to the effectiveness of this? Never heard of this idea, but are the vibrations precise enough?

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the co-founders of this company, just to be transparent about that, but the vibrations are definitely precise enough to create distinguishable shapes and patterns on the skin.

We're using linear resonant actuators, rather than the ERMs normally found in wearable devices and personal electronics, because they allow us to have precise control over the intensity of the vibration we're creating. We take advantage of this and the psychological phenomenon of tactile illusions in order to create the sensation of vibrations that actually move from one place to another on the surface of your skin--allowing us to convey an upcoming turn or the passage of time just through your sense of touch.

</comment></comment><comment> ihateveey-iri Damn this is cool

<comment><USER6> Its true my life has been around metal field that with time my hands are rough and I can feel polarity

<comment><USER6> I feel vibrations around metal electrics. And it seems to follow wherever I go</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do I need to start an incubator? - <AUTHOR>

I'm an software engineer and for a variety of reasons I want to start a grassroots incubator to help my fellow under-served engineers and founders and to invest in good ideas without involving all the institutional... stuff.  What do I realistically need in terms of seed money, time, office space, mentors, etc. <comment><USER2> Unfortunately I have absolutely no idea.

Found you after having just done some googling on the subject of incompetent product managers, and having found your post here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832109](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832109), and then read a bit of your post history. It seems like you have some great insight into the industry (mostly about how management sucks).

If you ever figure it out, I'd love to hear more about your incubator.

Also, while I hopefully have your attention. I've just recently finished binge reading some of this blog michaelochurch.wordpress.com from a fairly prolific HNer. He's got some lovely stuff to say about the industry too. Would love to know if you've got any recommended readings yourself.

(Yes I created this account to contact you. I'm a longtime lurker and finally pulled the trigger because I really loved some of your posts. Hope this isn't too creepy.)</comment>


Ask HN: C# developer looking to apply for Google - <AUTHOR>

Excuse the throwaway. My bosses uses HN and he knows my username.
I've been a .NET Developer in the UK for a number of years now, with most of those years in an agency setting, working on the websites for numerous large clients. I'd firmly say that I'm a solid mid-to-senior C# developer. In my spare time I also write Python on my Ubuntu box, and I have about 3-4 projects on GitHub using Django. I'm not proficient with Python just yet, but I reckon that I know enough Python and Java to be functional.
I'm currently a happy mid-to-senior developer, but like a lot of developers out there, I'd love to work for a large company, and the likes of Google are as large as they get. However, there are a few things holding me back from applying:
1. Even though I have a Computer Science degree, my theoretical knowledge is sorely lacking, mainly because my university was mainly a "Java-school". This is something I'm working on and given a few more months I'll probably be up to scratch and able to cram a bit more theoretical CS into my brain.
2. If I were to land an interview at Google for a Software Engineering role I'd go in armed mainly with C#. Some say that Google interviewers are fine with C#, but from what I've read there's a good chance of being rejected for being too Windows centric.
3. I'm comfortable with Linux and the terminal, but my professional experience outside of deploying the odd PHP and Ruby site is with Windows servers.
I've given myself the goal of applying to Google by the summer of 2014, giving me the best part of 18 months to improve my theoretical and programming language to a suitable level for that kind of career jump. However, I'll still be a .NET developer, and I cannot help but feel that going into a Google interview using C# is going to set me back considerably.
So, Googlers and .NET developers, do you feel that being a .NET developer is going to hold me back at all? Is it worth waiting and going in with a different language? <comment><USER2> What I have to say is completely unrelated to your qualifications. But...

Are you sure Google is what you want? From what I've heard from people I know who work or have worked there, Google is quite substantially bureaucratic, and due to the rigidity of all the standards they have (everything must be built at scale, many layers of code reviews), it is very hard to get anything done there nowadays. Have you talked to _several_ current _and_ former Googlers about what they think about the culture and the pace of learning? I've heard of instances where a team at Google will built _and entire_ product, and it'll get completely cancelled even though they built the whole thing already. You'd never see this happen at a startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't get me wrong. I loved working at my last startup, and luckily things went really well and the company was acquired by a multi-national firm based on the strength of one of our websites. I've also worked at unsuccessful companies and have faced redundancy. However, I'm at a decent, growing company and am earning good money, and given my experiences with some startups the work can be exciting, but the hours are long and the money much better than what you'd find at an agency.

I spoke to some Googlers fairly recently, which prompted me to ask this question on here. They seemed fairly put off by someone wanting to program using .NET and acted as if someone who would go into a Google interview armed with C# would be laughed out.

For all I know, Google might not be a perfect fit for me, but I love the kind of work that they do, and the idea of working on scalable products definitely interests me. It's also one of, if not the best place to work in the world, and they have offices all around the world so I wouldn't be tied to one area should I decide that I'd like to move to America. There is bureaucracy in most companies and I bet Google isn't any different, but it's a great environment and I'd be a lot happier going through code reviews on complex projects with smart developers than building typical websites and applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd imagine Google cares a lot more about your raw abilities rather then your proficiency in Python/C++. As long as you can solve comp sci problems in those languages, then you should be fine.

Demonstrating that you have performed exceptionally during your career means more to most high end employers than how much of a code library you have memorized. Most people stand out as exceptional by going to Stanford, doing well at other large tech companies, contributing to open source, etc. Try to find ways to make yourself stand out and show that you have made consistent progress over your career.

Also, why not quit your job to perform a more demanding, stressful, and growth encouraging job like joining a startup?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've got a few projects behind me, and some impressive clients behind me, so that part doesn't necessarily worry me. My biggest worry is whether being a part of the "dark side" of Microsoft will have a negative impact on my interview.

As for startups, my first company outside of university was a startup. I was the lead developer for a while and I left the company once they had been acquired because I felt that I needed to learn from more senior developers. I still feel that way, which leads me to want to work at a company like Google, so I can learn from the best.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What stack should I use to build my basic web app  as of 3/29/18 - <AUTHOR> Maybe we can make this a monthly thing, lol :-) <comment><USER2> Whatever stack you know the best. The technology really doesn't matter a lot, compared to a lot of other success criteria.

Unless the objective is to learn - then picking the one that you know best is not a good strategy :)

<comment><USER3> This would be my answer every month ( after you this time ;))

<comment><USER4> Mine too :)

Most of my applications are built using Perl and the excellent CGI::Application module/framework.

I've used Dancer a couple of times, but that tends to be for smaller applications, and it has to be said that the last remaining dancer application I used in production was replaced by a port to golang this morning. Partly for a fun learning experience, and partly to simplify deployment.

For new projects, if they were small and self-contained, I'd probably gamble on golang. If they were more complex, or I was in a rush, I'd use Perl.

<comment><USER5> What happened to Slaughter?

Except for perhaps an unfortunate name it was an interesting project. I can see that all links to it doesn't work anymore..

<comment><USER4> It didn't seem to get much traction, so I stopped work on it. A few years later I removed references to it, but I still have the repositories if users do query me.

My recollection is that modules that are removed from CPAN are still mirrored, so they should still be available, but I admit I've not checked recently.

<comment><USER5> For reference the latest App::Slaughter can be found here:

[http://backpan.perl.org/authors/id/S/SK/SKX/](http://backpan.perl.org/authors/id/S/SK/SKX/)

Why not put it back on Github? I always find it interesting to look on other projects when I have an idea etc. Deprecated or not.

I am getting tired of puppet/ansible and dream of the pure Perl + Shell world I used to live in. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://djangoframework.com](http://djangoframework.com) is overall one of the best documented + most stable web frameworks out there.

Besides the actual functionality, that you can also get from smaller libraries, you want a framework because it gives you standard go-to solutions for many common questions you encounter when making a basic, relational database backed application (database access, database migrations, templating, forms, validation, caching, translation, etc.)

<comment><USER7> I've used Django and I liked it but it really was quite slow.

<comment><USER8> Really, I have been using Django for a while now. Its rarely the Django code that is the bottleneck, usually it needs some DB tuning.

(If you don't know the ORM well, its easy to let it generate a LOT of queries, have you added django-debug-toolbar to your project to see what it is generating?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The correct answer as of ${any_date_in_any_esoteric_format} is:

\- It depends on what you are trying to build. Basic web app can be anything from a Trello clone to Instagram. Each has it's own limitations.

\- Go with what is tried and tested. Pick up something that is supported, where if you get stuck you can reach out to people for a fix. One of the few good things of the clusterf __k that the current JS ecosystem is is that many many amazing developers who are extremely responsive to questions are part of it. That makes life just a little bit easier.

\- Use what you are comfortable with. Prefer a proper backend and frontend? Go for it. Everything in NodeJS is your cup of tea? Works just fine. In the end happy developer = productive developer. Just because assembly is 1000 times faster than Python does not mean you should code in assembly. Pick your tradeoffs.

<comment><USER10> I'm just wondering if you're not from the USA? Because that date format is very common here particularly for written dates.

Whenever I write a check or sign and date something, that's how I write it.

<comment><USER9> Nope I'm not, though I work at a company with 2 engineering offices in MV and Dallas. Just FYI: Other than the USA, this format is not used anywhere else:

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/stackabuse/media/date-formats- world...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/stackabuse/media/date-formats-world.png)

Working with a global company, I tend to use 29 Mar 2018, which is much more unambiguous (and in code we usually use yyyymmdd, which makes it easier to search for logs/output of a year/month/day etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Where are the hipsters in this thread? Fine, I'll be the hipster.

I've worked on pure PHP, Flask, Pyramid, Django, Laravel stacks, and I haven't warmed up to any of those. I'm in the vocal minority that says Django made me hate Python.

So here's my stack for 2018: Elixir+Phoenix on the backend, GraphQL as API protocol, React (and Typescript?) on the frontend.

Functional and immutable language on the backend + functionally-inspired data flow on the front end? Yes, please.

Now, if I could have monadic constructs and better typing on Elixir I'd be in heaven.

</comment><comment><USER12> I feel it's important to throw Laravel + Vuejs into the mix. It's an extremely powerful framework on the LAMP side of things, fully PHP 7.2+ functional, and continues to improve w/ every major iteration from JWT, oauth2, queue workflows, console utility workflows, ORM, DBAL, Migrations, mutli-database support via PDO, blade templates. It's pretty hard to go wrong.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'll throw a hat in the ring for WebGL+WebAssembly and x86 assembly on the server

<comment><USER14> This guy, what a forward thinker!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Basic? You need good documentation, and Philip Greenspun's book is now available for free[1]! So go with that, although you might want to swap out Oracle with MySQL -- it's from the same company anyway! AOLServer is still fine.[2]

[1]: [http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/](http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/)

[2]: [https://github.com/aolserver/aolserver](https://github.com/aolserver/aolserver)

</comment><comment><USER16> 3/29/18? What sort of date format is that?

Regardless of your stack, use ISO 8601 for dates.

<comment><USER17> That's the third of Thunderfiretober of 2018, what's your problem, isn't that clear? ;)

Playing devil's advocate here. This kind of date formatting is really confusing to me (German) and I almost overread that the question asked for the current en vogue tech...

<comment><USER16> > This kind of date formatting is really confusing to me

You, me, and most of the world outside the USA. Check out the map here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The simplest stack for me is:

Frontend - Plain HTML/CSS/JS

Backend - Node, Express with Nunjucks for templating

If I want to get a bit fancy:

Frontend - Vue, Bootstrap4

Backend - Node, Express, Nunjucks

DB - SQLite3 using Sequelize as ORM

Surprisingly, you can accomplish lot of stuff with the second setup.

If im going to deploy to production:

Provider - Either small DO droplet ($5.00) or tiny AWS (free)

Webserver - nginx as reverse proxy for node (free)

Firewall - UFW (free)

Email - mailgun (free)

Domain - namecheap (depends on domain name. $10.00/yr more or less)

For a basic setup you wont need any scaling setup (CDN, load-balancer and whatnot) which like what, 99% of the time?

<comment><USER19> I like that set up.

For me its ejs over nunjucks. Mysql, and no ORM. I'd also probably use something like elastic beanstalk vs piecing it all together myself - to keep things simple.

And I'd use sendgrid over mailgun, primarily for deliverability but also I find their service/api/dashboard very user friendly.

If taking payments I'd use stripe

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I use a basic LAMP stack (CentOS, Apache, MariaDB, PHP 7). No frameworks. Some of my projects are quite large (tables with billions of rows, and over a million users). It might not be fashionable, but it works, it's fast (for development, and for end-users), it's well documented, and it's been tested for decades. I have no plans to change, and my new projects in development are using the same.

<comment><USER21> The problem with this is, when you pull in new developers - it takes them weeks or months to understand everything. Whereas a Laravel app, they need maybe a few days at best to figure out what design principles you're using and what style, and where you put repos/models and such, but then they're good to go.

I hate working on code where some systems engineer from the 80's thinks they're big and bad and can code an awesome website using just propel + plain php and then expect every new dev to just learn it and love it as much as they do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Do I sense a bit of sarcasm regarding longevity of JS frameworks here?

As other commenters say, if you want results, choose whatever stack you are most productive with.

As you say 'basic' web app: I'd recommend using Firebase, if you are comfortable with the vendor lock-in. For auth, database and deployment it doesn't get much simpler than this.

<comment><USER21> Strapi is something I've been looking at as a self-hosted firebase competitor for just an api for mobile apps, etc.. It's pretty cool, when I don't want to build out a full-fledge laravel app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I really think it depends on the programming languages you know, if you know any. For example, if you know Python, just use Django or Flask. If you know c#, just use that.

However, if you don't know any programming languages and plan to do "just" web development, WAMP and MEAN stack is the way to go.

edit: WAMP -> (XAMP)

</comment><comment><USER24> Go for what works for you, a popular stack may not necessarily be best for you unless you, at least, have experience with the technologies. My current default stack. Frontend: Vuejs (pwa) Backend: Go (exposes json api endpoints for frontend) DB: mariadb / sqlite

<comment><USER25> > Backend: Go (exposes json api endpoints for frontend)

Do you use Swagger or sth. like that to auto-generate the boilerplate from an API spec?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> AWS Serverless.

Cheap, "fresh", and scalable in complexity with too many services to mention.

It's easy, plenty of example code available and will get your feet wet in the hyped secdevops which might land you a nice project sooner or later.

</comment><comment> emily-c There really aren't any wrong answers here but I've had good personal experience with Vue, Go, and Postgres. Make sure you use vue-cli. vuefire is also very convenient if you're so inclined.

</comment><comment><USER27> GraphQL stack :)

Frontend: React + Apollo Client + Netlify

Backend: Typescript + Node.js + Apollo Server (graphql-yoga) + Graphcool/Prisma + Apex Up to deploy to AWS Lambda + AWS RDS

</comment><comment><USER28> This is maybe a stupid question, but why not Rails? I still use it as my go-to backend, but it seems to be out of fashion nowadays.

<comment><USER29> If it's a basic CRUD app Rails would be a great option (Rails is good for a lot more than that of course!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I am going to go against the grain here and say you should pick with whatever you are most skilled at and feels natural to you.

Unless you have very specific requirements, it matters very little; especially if your goal is to push a product

Nowadays there are many options and a lot of them are reliable.

E.g

Rails, PostgreSQL, React

Django, PostgreSQL, VueJs

Phoenix. PostgreSQL, Jquery

<comment><USER21> But you're saying back/frontends don't matter...but definitely use postgres... lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Check out this recent Ask HN:

Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app in 2018?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16508965](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16508965)

It has 177 comments and some good meaty answers.

</comment><comment><USER32> If you know Python well, tornado + mongodb(motor) is pretty neat !

</comment><comment><USER33> Entirely depends on what you're building. If it's crazy complex go native now. Super complex web apps are as the rarest of the rare, and damn near impossible. Like a handful ever, rare. That's not to be said that it cannot be done. If it's medium to basic, use a framework like Vue or Preact and a VDOM. Everything will stem from that. Node.JS is a given, maybe Go, but all other decisions depend on what you are building.

</comment><comment><USER34> Rails + intercooler.js gives you most of the functionality you need with a minimum of complexity.

</comment><comment><USER35> If it's an MVP? Then anything you can use to stand up the mvp quickly.

</comment><comment><USER36> backend on kotlin with (maybe) Spring 5; frontend with Angular 4 or Vue 2; datastore on apache cassandra ; mobile version with flutter/dart ?... probably cover all your bases for the stack-du-jour.

</comment><comment><USER37> You can try Vue.js & Buffalo.

</comment><comment><USER38> What does the app do?

<comment><USER39> Try going through the comments and you will figure it out.

Also go through [https://www.tipsindeed.net](https://www.tipsindeed.net)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> html5 and nginx.</comment>


40 percent of college students say their next computer purchase will be a Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/26/morgan_stanley_40_of_college_students_plan_to_buy_macs.html <comment><USER2> I'm not sure this is a good thing.

As far as I can see, Apple is if anything even more tyrannical and monopolistic than Microsoft, the main difference being that Apple is sexier. Apple wants the computer to become like a household appliance, closed to outside modification.

Looking at how they've run iTunes, the restrictive iPhone SDK, etc ... M$ wanted to control all your software but they at least gave you some choice on hardware. If Apple becomes the new monopoly we won't even have any say on that.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a bit worrying, but at least it will be a monopoly they've earned one user at a time, like Google, rather than an existing monopoly they took over from the previous owner, like Microsoft.

That will tend to limit their misdeeds, because to do that a company has to have a different type of employee. If Google wanted to start being evil, they'd face an internal revolt. And Apple too, to some extent.

<comment><USER3> OS's have some network externalities, so "one user at a time" isn't entirely accurate. There's a tipping point in there some where.

Have you read "In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 years of High Tech Marketing Disasters" ? He makes a convincing case that a lot of the MS monopoly comes not from brilliant products or evil genius, but by hitching a ride on a more open platform, and having had less disasters than the competition.

I'm not sure I agree with him 100%, because once they got that toehold, they sure exploited it to crush everyone else. I don't have many doubts that Jobs has some crushing tendencies himself - exhibit #1 is the look and feel lawsuit.

<comment><USER4> Oops: I downmodded you by mistake when I meant to downmod the lame South Park metaphor. Sorry!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it will be interesting to see how many of them are willing to put their money where their mouth is and plunk down $1000-2000 for an email/Internet research/word processing machine.

Are we in fact entering circumstances where it's believed you need a Core 2 Duo machine with 1-2 GB RAM to run Word, Excel, and a web browser? (I'm assuming most students aren't running or writing finite element codes, simulations, and other computationally intensive programs where more cores and more clock speed gives you huge gains.)

<comment><USER6> I think jwz's "How will this software get me laid?" question applies (albeit to hardware): <http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html>

So, for $1,000 to $2,000 I get a really cool computer and an increased chance of getting laid. I'd like to see Dell fight that value proposition.

<comment><USER4> The argument that buying Mac will help you get laid is flimsy. It is not based on anything worthy of the name "data".

The average college student is better off spending $150 for an old PC, putting Linux on it, and spending the other $850 to $1,850 on hookers if he is unsatisfied with his sex life.

This seems pretty obvious to me, and I would think would be obvious to anyone else who stopped watching TV (and hence TV commercials) and listening to the radio (and hence radio commercials) as long ago as I did (about 16 years ago).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I kinda get why people would like mac notebooks, they seem to be pretty nice, but I just can't get why techies/geeks/hackers like the iPhone. Yes the hardware is pretty, but due to Apple's political decisions, it is one of the most closed systems out there - restrictive API, restrictive distribution, remote bricking, no unlocking. Hackers buying iPhones seems a bit like Greenpeace donating money for Japanese whale "research" to me.

<comment><USER8> But unlocking is easy if you're a hacker. It's the non-hackers that apple is screwing the most.

The point of knowing how to hack stuff in this way is to get the most out of your soft/hardware, not to support the most hacker-friendly company with your completely insignificant amount of funds.

<comment><USER7> I know you can jailbreak it, but you can ultimately hack anything to do anything (ie, people putting linux on every damn piece of electronics out there).

And yes, it matters a lot which company you support, since not only do a significant number of insignificant funds add up, but you're giving them mindshare and encouraging others to follow (which is kinda the point of pg's mac essay).

Just to give you an idea of why I'm so mad at Apple, the project that I'm working on right now needs a very good mobile component. Android is completely open and lets you do everything you need, so the first version is based on that. However, there can't be an iPhone app because Jobs is a control freak, he has decreed that I should not have the ability to write what I want to write.

So no, I just don't understand why people that supposedly value openness have such adulation for one of the most restrictive platforms out there. The eye- candy isn't worth it.

<comment><USER8> No significant percentage of people actually value this form of openness.

<comment><USER7> Really? Perhaps Apple should try selling their laptops with the same restrictions then?

People may not use the same specific terms, but whether it's computing or politics or anything else, they don't like to be arbitrarily told they can't do what they want to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This figure doesn't surprise me. Every day I see signs to suggest Apple will soon be leaving Microsoft in the dust. Yesterday, a professional acquaintance suddenly announced he was buying an iMac. If you knew this guy, who has praised PCs and MS for _years_ , you would know how big a deal this is. I was almost speechless. Time to go long on Apple, Inc.

</comment><comment><USER10> I should be personally getting paid by apple, or buy some stock.

3 of my friends have made the jump after playing with my Macbook.

It is taking a lot of willpower to not get an Air or MBP.

<comment><USER6> The solution to your will power problem is that Apple should start just selling subscriptions. You sign up for an iBuy subscription and send in $300 a month. Apple randomly sends you cool stuff.

<comment><USER10> I would be willing to pay 10x as much for such a service! :P

The problem with that service is I am far too cheap and picky to subscribe.

They need to stop releasing such great new products. You can't go play with a Macbook Air and not consider purchasing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Surveys where people say what they will do in the future, and an empty sack, are worth about the same as a sack.

Come on, you measure what people do, not what they claim they'll do. And if somebody came to YC with a piece like this in her quiver, you'd probably be the first one to grill them about it...

</comment><comment><USER12> So we are in trouble... I like a lot Macs, and it is what I suggest to computer agnostic guys, but unless you plan to install a unix-like operating system there it is very hard to think that an hacker can use this kind if user interface.

Hackers are much smarter than the people apple have in mind when designing the user interface, so the mac user interface is an obstacle between the computer and the hacker.

</comment><comment><USER13> 89 percent of college students say their next paper will be finished on time. ;)

</comment><comment><USER14> Mostly in the US. I dont see any evidence of Macs becoming more popular in India for example. Any observations from Europe?

<comment><USER15> Over here in Holland, Macs are definitely becoming more and more popular. Not sure about the rest of europe though, but my guess is that it's the same all over europe...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just wondering - is anyone else seeing this as an entrepreneur opportunity?

This seems to me to be more of a sense of dissatisfaction with the current (aesthetic, quality, speed, you-name-it) of the PC/laptop. The current mindset of the Windows laptop industry (cutting quality of parts and shoving tons of unneeded software on you to cut costs and improve short term sales) is killing the industry from the inside out, and Macs, although much more costly than an average PC laptop, values the satisfaction of the customer more than the price point.

<comment><USER17> in my case i just don't like vista. its DRM crap, plus the interface that looks like it was designed by a committee of people checking things off a list rather than a single artist who actually knows how it must be done

it's not enough for me to get a mac though. i'll stick with my XP Media Center edition for the time being

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a college student I estimate that 3 of 10 students use Macs. When I walk through the cafeteria I like to see how many Macbooks there are, to see if PGs 10 year prediction will come true.

<comment><USER19> For those of us that haven't heard, what's the prediction?

<comment><USER6> <http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I grab a cup of coffee every morning from a local indy coffee shop who offers free Wifi, and, over the past two years I have certainly noticed there are more and more little glowing apple icons to go along with all the white ear- bud cords.

I wish I could find the source where I read a comment about the ergonomics of apple products. It was something along the line of a cross between a kitchen appliance and a dildo. I still smile when I think of that.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am probably going to get an Apple in a few days. I absolutely abhor windows and am comfortable in Linux. Any advice? Is the pro worth it/necessary for developing web apps? (I am comfortable using a smaller size laptop)

<comment><USER22> I got a macbook last year. The massive student discount contributed most to my decision. But, it does look really cool in my hemp messenger bag.

Running Ubuntu on it is a nightmare, so I am beginning to regret my decision. Now, I just do all of my work over ssh on my server or my labs' boxes.

And a pro definitely is not nearly worth it (and doesn't look nearly as cool).

<comment><USER21> how are you trying to run Ubuntu? Parallels, boot camp, VMware? I was hoping to be able to run Linux at least as running it through VMware on Windows.

<comment><USER23> Yes you can run Linux and Windows under OSX via VMware Fusion. I have a Macbook Pro 2.4Ghz with 2gb Ram and its great for all my needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Macs are known as gorgeous pieces of hardware and that seems to be their main functionality. As Neal Stephenson stated, they are polished and nice to look at, hence why the prices are jacked up but that is all that they have going for them. Nowadays, most things that are exuberantly expensive must be worth something and are therefore sought out and it becomes a trend.

If your best friend has a $3000 Mac monitor, why shouldn't you have one?

In my opinion, Dells are pretty sturdy machines though a bit hefty. I would like to get my hands on an HP computer though. That is a beaut.

</comment><comment><USER25> Run Linux, OSX & XP on a single machine, without rebooting. That's bliss for web dev like me. Sure, those college students may be lured by the 'ooo, shiny ...' factor but they stay for the power & ease of use.

One of the keys to Apple's success is the marriage of open and closed systems: *NIX at the bottom with a well thought-out and (closed) UI on top. Good design (& designers) tend to be dictatorial because difficult decisions need to be made (which features to leave out). Hence the closed GUI system.

</comment><comment><USER26> I know 5 students who bought new laptops in the last 2 years, 3 of them chose a Mac. Also, most laptops at a local Starbucks popular with students are Macs. PG was right.

</comment><comment><USER27> why is everyone so smitten with Macs? the average college student does not need one and would be better served by buying an iPhone and a $400 dell

</comment><comment><USER28> In some of my arts classes, if you sit in the back, all you see is a sea of white Macs.

</comment><comment><USER29> Superiority and ease of use aside.

People's taste always change once in a while. We've been living in the world of Windows for 10-15 years. People got bored with Windows and Dell.

Mac gives them a new "toy" (not literally, but gadget wise).

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd venture a guess that 15-20% of the entire population's next computer will be a mac. I know I'm making the switch.

</comment><comment><USER31> if you aren't going to be running osx what is the point of buying a mac? especially now that they run on intel cores?

</comment><comment><USER32> apple is the new (or soon to be) windows. the king is dead. long live the king.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is great news. It's great to see people waking up. I've personally converted 7 people to Apple. I hate using a windows pc anymore. I switched to compose music. It's a huge difference. This bodes well for the taste of the upcoming generation.

The only time I have missed my PC was when I wanted to delete forward from the cursor. Then I learned that fn + del deletes forward and I have been a faithful convert ever since.

</comment><comment><USER34> The concept of simplicity is the foundation of Mac's and Apple products and is why they are gaining ground. _nix is for is for "Geeks" (Yes, I'm a Geek). It has always been about Geeks, it will always be about geeks. The additional benefit of OS X is that it still has the underlying Geekland that the_ nix crowd loves. For those that aren't at the Geek level of TechKnowledgy (Copyright 200-now), Macs will keep on purring with minimal fuss.

</comment><comment><USER35> AAPL is probably a great stock to short now. Expensive discretionary consumer fluff. It'll tank in the year ahead.

</comment><comment><USER34> our next computer will be a Mac as well, when our old Dell desktop finally dies. When you can run OSX and Windows on one machine, why ever buy a PC again unless you're a hard-core gamer?

<comment><USER3> To run Linux, of course!

<comment><USER34> I know you're probably joking, but in the limited experience I've had with Linux, I've never had a more negative experience with an operating system than I did with Linux. I'd run Windows XP way before I'd consider running Linux. At least XP works. OSX has tons of advantages over Linux, including a window interface that runs smoothly, OSX has way more software available and there is no discussion whatsoever to be had in this area, and OSX has a lot better tech support available to users. I could go on and on. Linux is a hobby OS at best.

<comment><USER3> "Hobby OS"? Is this some sort of April fool's troll?

<comment><USER34> No, there are actually people who think Linux sucks when compared to OSX.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but on a site labeled "hacker news", you'd hope to find people at least willing to consider that different OS's have different advantages, and that for hackers, Linux has a lot of them. Being able to hack the kernel is handy (yes, I have). Being able to debug pretty much any aspect of the system is handy. Not being in any way a second class citizen on your own computer is great. The freedom to take the whole thing and repurpose it if needs be, to create all kinds of interesting special purpose systems, from servers to Android type embedded devices is a huge business advantage.

But, being an observant guy, it's easy to see that Mac OS has its own strengths as well. My parents run it, for instance, and I'm sure it's better for them.

Comments like "hobby OS" and "linux sucks", though, are not indicative of serious thinking on the matter.

<comment><USER34> of course you are correct. I've been a Mac user since 1984 so I am horribly biased :-) In my three attempts to get Linux to run on a PC, I had three tremendous failures so I've given up. I can run most popular free apps like OpenOffice on OSX anyway (and I do) so I don't have a need for Linux. But for cheap hardware and the ultimate ability to tinker without big brother looking over your shoulder, Linux is fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Mac rock, I still don't own one, but I use them all the till. They super cool.</comment>