Growl 1.3.1 is out, no longer free - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/growl/id467939042

<comment><USER2> The complaints about growl being an impossible distracting productivity suck are overblown, and completely miss the point of growl.

The great thing about growl is that it provides one central place to control notifications, adjusting their parameters with fine grained control. If you find some particular type of notification obnoxious, change its behavior or _turn it off_.

If growl didn't exist, every application would provide its own mechanism for notifications, and the user would be left turning off distracting crap in 10 places instead of one, and unable to adjust that one vital notification to behave as desired.

<comment><USER3> Seems like something that should be built into the OS. It's a feature not a product. Why isn't it just built in?

<comment><USER4> Because many people find animated notifications from apps they're not using horribly annoying.

<comment><USER3> If it was built in properly, you'd be able to configure which apps are allowed to send notifications etc.

<comment><USER5> You can do that with Growl right now. Also, users that don't like it don't even have to consider it if it's 3rd party. I see no problem with the current system. Apple has had a million chances to buy Growl and never has, it's not going to happen.

<comment><USER3> I don't really understand why they would buy Growl. It wouldn't take long for them to add in to OSX themselves.

<comment><USER6> Many third-party applications use Growl for notifications. Buying Growl and maintaining the API would mean that Mac OS X Margay's exciting new Notification Centre feature would have instant support across a wide number of apps.

The actual cost of buying Growl is negligible to Apple.

<comment><USER7> It's Apple. All they have to do is issue a beta and they'll have plenty of people writing to the new API.

The cost of buying Growl isn't just the dollars used to take ownership of the company. You have to integrate the people and the code. For a feature as small as this, it's just plain _easier_ to implement internally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's good. One of the biggest productivity gains you can have as an OSX user is uninstalling Growl. Being interrupted constantly by stuff that doesn't matter ( Email arrived, iTunes changed song, Download done ) will reduce your ability to focus on the task at hand and all of those things can be processed later and don't need immediate attention.

<comment><USER9> I know people really enjoy not being notified. However for things like email for me, since I need to be reading and up to date on them for work, it's much easier to look to the upper right of your screen and see what it is instead of switching apps and checking to see it's just a 'normal' email you don't need to respond to.

<comment><USER10> People also enjoy slot machines and heroin.

(Update: FWIW, I believe the parent read "people enjoy being notified", with no 'not', when I wrote this. Not sure if I misread or it was modified.)

<comment><USER11> Yes, because not being notified is equivalent of gambling and heroin.

<comment><USER10> Actually, _being notified at unpredictable intervals_ , as a bit of random- reward, has effects on the limbic system similar to gambling and drugs. Onscreen notifications let you binge on these little pleasures: enjoyable, yes, but rarely productive.

 _Your strawberries are ready to be harvested!_

<comment><USER10> Also to keep in mind: if you downvote this, you are probably an addict in denial! Our 12-click program is arranging meetings _now_ in major tech hubs, check meetup.com for all the details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even though Growl 1.3.0 was distributed via App Store with the same price tag, the source code was published at <http://code.google.com/p/growl/source>. Seems like that practice has stopped as well.

<comment><USER13> [http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/msg/0793d15920fa...](http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/msg/0793d15920faf093)

<comment><USER14> Thank you for posting that; the headline of this story implies that the new version is less free than 1.3.0, which does not seem to be the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Never had an issue with growl "parasiting" my attention. I'm happy to use it for automated tests feedback.

I have no issue to pay a few bucks for that to help out on maintenance.

</comment><comment><USER16> Uninstalling Growl can also save you some embarrassment. I was interviewing someone last week with my laptop hooked up to a projector (forgot to disable Growl). It took me a while to figure out why someone was giggling. Growl had just broadcast across the bottom of the screen, "From Mint.com: You have exceeded your Fast Food budget for the month."

</comment><comment><USER17> The latest episode of The Basement Coders has interesting coverage of the Growl situation and they interview someone who decided to fork it: [http://basementcoders.com/2011/10/episode-47-fork-you- growl-...](http://basementcoders.com/2011/10/episode-47-fork-you-growl- interview-with-perry-metzger/)

</comment><comment><USER18> How are new users ever going to try out Growl now? There's no free trial (only an old version that doesn't work well under Lion).

I also don't appreciate the way this was pushed to existing users: I got a notification that there is an update for Growl, so I dutifully click on that and promptly get sent to an iTunes store page demanding money.

At this point I've disabled Growl to find out how much I really relied on it.

<comment><USER18> A few days later I'm happy to report that I don't miss Growl at all and have completely uninstalled it now. Turns out bouncing dock icons are sufficient to point out when an application wants attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, I would say, let's fork it.

<comment><USER20> To save $2 and cheat the developers out of earning something for the work they've put into the program over the past 7 years?

It's still open source and you can still compile your own version, but nonetheless the developers deserve a tiny bit of compensation for the work and support they provide.

<comment><USER19> From another comment here, it seems they are discontinuing the open development, so further features wouldn't be open source anymore.

I'm quite sure that other people have already helped out at the source code. That is the point of being open source.

Anyway, I think that such a basic and central application for MacOSX should always be free and open. And if it is not free or not open anymore, the logical consequence would be to have an alternative project for this kind of application. And it would be a logical consequence to base this new project on Growl.

Thus, a fork.

<comment><USER20> I don't know which comment that you are referring to but it is incorrect. I personally confirmed with the project lead that they have no intention of "discontinuing open development."

Growl remains free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer if you're willing to compile it yourself. The $2 fee only applies if you obtain the app through the Mac App Store, of which a mere $1.39 goes to the project's developers.

<comment><USER19> I meant that comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3203473>

So where is the code of 1.3.1? Even when it will be released once, why not immediately? With 'open development', I also really mean open development, as in other open source projects.

Anyway, as others said, this is still not an option, it still should be free. For example, in my own free and open applications which depends on Growl, I would distribute a free copy of Growl now because I want my users to be able to use it for free. And that goes for most Growl-using applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Really disliked Growl when I had it installed.

I wonder why people like it... is there some killer use case, or does it just interrupt your work endlessly with Skype notifications, software updates, and other nonsense?

It's bad enough that I keep my GMail open continuously... I've thought about shutting that down for most of the day too.

<comment><USER22> The key to making Growl good is to prune what it notifies for. What do you actually care about? Me, I mostly use it as an iTunes track info display, just a little note in the bottom corner of my screen that fades in and out quietly, and reappears when I hit a hotkey. I've also used it to display error messages when debugging an Applescript. There's one guy who uses it to [give himself instant visual feedback when he breaks the build]([http://szeryf.wordpress.com/2007/07/30/way-beyond-cool- autot...](http://szeryf.wordpress.com/2007/07/30/way-beyond-cool-autotest- growl-doomguy/)).

I don't have it notify me with info about every email. I don't have it tell me when someone IMs me. If an app starts spamming me with notifications about something I think is unimportant, I go into Growl's prefs and turn that app off.

<comment><USER23> I agree entirely.

I use Growl for exactly one thing: To notify me of deliveries via the Delivery Status widget. Because if I don't act on picking them up quickly, I might have to wait 1 to 2 days to get my package from the office.

Everything else? Off, because there's no material benefit for me being notified.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Seriously, how is this not part of the OS yet? Half a dozen different ways to switch between apps, but no built in notification system to tell that I _should_.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been using the paid version for the last couple of weeks, and it works equally as well as the old version. However they added a rollup feature, so if you're away it would track them all, but you couldn't remove it. The release a few days allowed you to be able to disable it, which works. However there are still some small bugs (like a notification that got stuck and you couldn't remove). It's really about the same as the old version.

The one cool thing they added was the ability to forward growl messages easily over bonjour (auto detection). So if you have two computers, when one is idle, it can forward it's messages to another active computer.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've never wanted growl on my system, and yet somehow it keeps ending up on there without my seeming to have any say in the matter. At least this has given me the reason to uninstall it yet again.

I already have enough distractions as it is.

</comment><comment><USER26> I like may others was using the free version of growl prior to 1.3. When 1.3 came out I paid the $2 and upgraded as I found the product useful and enjoyed the work the developers put in. Now don't get me wrong, I could have just as easily compiled it on my machine and continued to use it, but that would defeat the purpose of continuing to support something I use daily.

With that said, I will say that in 1.3 the roll-up notifications was a true pain to get used to, as there was no way to turn them off. However this has been resolved in 1.3.1 and I urge anyone who didn't enjoy 1.3 to give 1.3.1 a chance.

</comment><comment><USER27> does this mean other apps won't install this attention parasite per default?

<comment><USER28> Typically I've found that they ask first, however even that is annoying.

I don't want growl support, and I haven't wanted growl support in a very long time. I've yet to see a use case for it that didn't seem bent on interrupting the user with a distraction, and preventing them from getting things done.

Screw that, I'll stick with programs bouncing subtly in the dock, where I can ignore them.

(Not to mention, the last time I used growl it (or the programs who used it) suffered from a few bugs which would cause it to occasionally barf notifications all over my screen without warning. How rude!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was wary of this change myself, but I was just prompted to upgrade Growl, which linked to <http://growl.info/growlupdateavailable> and also included a link to source and how to build and install [http://growl.info/documentation/developer/growl-source- insta...](http://growl.info/documentation/developer/growl-source-install.php)

Major props to the Growl team for subsidizing their work while also keeping it free.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is a well known technique to capture a market: release a free (as in gratis) version and when there the market share is sufficient or the competition killed, make a non-free/gratis release with most-wanted features.

Maybe some day people will stop being stupid and understand that Apple is here to make money. If you want reliable software, use free (as in "free speech") software. Or at least OpenSource sofware, you'll always be able to use the latest release!

</comment><comment> buff-a Still free for programmers: [http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/msg/0793d15920fa...](http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/msg/0793d15920faf093?pli=1)

</comment><comment><USER31> To all of the people in this thread complaining about growl:

You realize that you can configure what it alerts you about, yes?

<comment><USER32> I think the bigger problem for people with Growl is many apps installed it without telling you. This tends to put a bad taste in your mouth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sorry, this should be a "feature" of the operating system I'm using, not an additional add-on piece of software that I have to purchase.

<comment><USER34> Actually, it should be a feature of the graphical (or non graphical) environment you are in, not the underlying OS. The OS should not be concerned with how or what things appear on a screen.

<comment><USER35> You're confusing OS with the kernel. The graphical environment _is_ part of the OS.

EDIT: is -> is (often)

<comment><USER36> You are confusing OS with the userland. Graphical environment is not necessarily a part of the OS. If you run Linux you can load a number of different graphical environments.

<comment><USER35> If I use Linux I can load a number of different filesystems. Are these not part of the OS?

While the OS doesn't _necessarily_ have to distribute a graphical environment, it can and it is often a feature of the OS, unlike what rbanffy said.

I've edited my post above.

<comment><USER34> > If I use Linux I can load a number of different filesystems. Are these not > part of the OS?

Actually, most filesystems are part of the kernel. There is the FUSE mechanism, on which you can attach user-space file systems. Filesystem drivers attached in such way are usually (unless you are doing something wrong) portable across OSs that share similar mechanisms and, as the name implies, are withing the user space. not OS-space.

> it is often a feature of the OS

Much like tires are a feature of a car. The fact you bought them together does not mean they are the same object. A tire is not a car much like a GUI is not an OS.

<comment><USER35> Never said they were the same thing. My original post was "is _part of_ the OS".

 _OS space_

Again, that's kernel space. OS is something bigger. Debian is an OS. GNU/Linux is an OS. Linux by itself isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've always had a love/hate relationship with growl. Sometimes it just seems a bit _excessive_ and overly distracting. With growl being a paid app now, will developer support wane? Now that I have to buy it, it might be a good reason to stop being distracted by it for me.

It would have been a better solution if they released a free stripped down version, and a 'Pro' version with the new toys.

<comment><USER38> _With growl being a paid app now, will developer support wane?_

If anything, this will help increase core Growl developer support; they actually profit from spending time on Growl now.

<comment><USER39> I think he was questioning whether developers will continue using Growl notifications.

<comment><USER38> That isn't how I read his statement, even after reading your reply to me.

However.. the SDK is still free, easy to integrate (having done the integration process myself) and users still like it. That last point is, really, the important part here.

<comment><USER40> since you're being deliberately obtuse, i'll spell it out for you on his behalf.

WILL USERS STILL LIKE IT, WHICH IS WHAT GETS DEVELOPER SUPPORT, NOW THAT IT COSTS MONEY?

<comment><USER38> You know? I had a long post written out. About how I'm actually one of those developers who you're questioning and so on. But, none of that is relevant. The only thing that matters is this:

 _Growl is the #2 app in the entire Mac App Store._ It has been in that position since the Growl developers first put it on the App Store weeks ago. The only thing outselling Growl is Mac OS X itself.

So, please. The next time you want to accuse someone of being "deliberately obtuse", consider that the person you are talking to _might actually know what they're talking about_ and step back before you make yourself look silly and condescending. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you want to watch YC's Stanford Course together online? - <AUTHOR> I love YC's Stanford Course "How to start a startup".
You can watch it at your own pace on Youtube, but for many of us, the value is in watching things together and discussing what's being presented. There is tremendous value in the conversations that happen around such classes. The questions asked. The sharing of ideas. The sharing of additional resources.
So I've built a little online classroom and I'll be live streaming YC's course from Monday til Sunday. There'll be a live chatroom to accompany the live stream, so you can chime in, discuss the lectures, make new friends (find a potential new cofounder?) etc.
Question: Would you like to join the watch party, and take this class in your pyjamas from the comfort of your home/where ever you are?
No: Why not?
Yes: Sign up here - https://goo.gl/forms/86bilUmhCneUwW6y2 <comment><USER2> No. I like the idea but I haven't got time every day. I might be able to do an hour or two a week. I'm also probably not in a timezone where it makes sense like bbcbasic also points out.

</comment><comment><USER3> No. Due to being in a different time zone and family commitments means it's hard to get a specific time to do it. Whereas watching on youtube can just be done during a lunchbreak.

</comment><comment><USER4> it is hard to dedicate large chunk of time on a regular basis without clear ROI attached.

What does the watch party offer that a discussion forum doesn't? Is the real time feedback really worth me stressing out about making a chunk of time regularly?

</comment><comment><USER5> Great post, I had no idea they existed.</comment>


Jeff Atwood is wrong about performance - <AUTHOR> http://compaspascal.blogspot.com/2009/07/jeff-atwood-likes-referring-to-his-blog.html <comment><USER2> "Hardware is cheap, programmers are expensive."

 _Mediocre_ programmers are expensive.

Good programmers are the bargain of the century.

If companies would just wise up enough to pay a good programmer 3 times as much as a mediocre programmer to do 10 times the work, do it right, and do it so that it can be maintained reasonably, Jeff Atwood's tradeoff would become moot. But companies generally don't do this, which is probably one of the main reasons the best programmers go off and do their own.

<comment><USER3> 100% agreement, yet:

> If companies would just wise up enough to pay a good programmer 3 times as > much as a mediocre programmer to do 10 times the work...

Very few people have such a good eye for talent. It's really, really hard to do. Jack Welch, one of the better HR people of all time, said his hiring success rate was only 2 out of 3 hires working out even towards the end of his tenure. It's really hard to identify good people, know how they'll change and adapt over time, create a good environment for them, and so on. Vastly under ratedly hard. One of the reasons good people are underpaid is that it's often quite hard to tell them apart from "just okay" people. People are bad at picking talent - they mistake overconfidence and gregariousness for ability, they put put premiums on likability and agreeableness, they look for people who "look like a winner" when that only maybe slightly correlates... hard stuff. Companies whose managers have technical backgrounds have a better chance, but it's still quite a difficult challenge.

<comment><USER2> "Very few people have such a good eye for talent."

That's OK because it's not necessary.

Management doesn't need an eye for talent. It needs an eye for demonstrated performance.

If Programmer A consistently delivers excellent software in x% of the time of Programmers B thru G, the users/customers love it, and the maintenance costs are a small % (if they have a way of measuring this), then what the f*&#%@ else does management need to know? Treat Programmer A appropriately or lose him/her.

Talent is in the eye of the beholder.

Demonstrated performance is on the bottom line.

<comment><USER4> But do managers know how to measure performance? Really?

In an enterprise situation, for example, do "customers" really know if they love the software, or the presentation that sold them the idea, or perhaps they asked for something to be built wrong.

I would suggest that "very few managers have such a good eye for performance" no matter the metric.

<comment><USER5> When I was a low-level employee using custom-built SAP crap, I could have easily lost my job if I dare suggest an "improvement" on the software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _If you have upgraded all your servers without consolidating, year after year, you will notice that your electricity bill is going through the roof._

I don't know, you can buy an awful lot of electricity for an hour of my time, and I'm _cheap_... I think the largest deployment my day job supports probably causes an electricity bill in the hundreds a year range. If you had a meeting between one PL and two engineers to discuss what to do about the electricity bill you could cancel the meeting and pre-pay the next few years.

Adjust if you're Google... but you're not Google.

<comment><USER7> It's not cheap, and you don't have to be Google for it to matter. Most of the time, the costs are just non-obvious to engineering.

Here are some rough numbers.

Power for a single 48U rack usually runs $200-$300/month for two 20amp circuits (possibly +2 for redundancy). A modern 1U server draws anywhere from (roughly) 1.66 to 2.5 amps, and you can only use 80% of a circuit's maximum supported load due to safety regulations, resulting in a total supported count of between 12 to 19 mid-range servers per rack. Higher-end servers have a significantly increased power draw, but potentially higher efficiency, and there can be a significant advantage to leveraging multi-core systems.

In addition to rackspace and power, each server must obviously be connected to the network. The switches draw enough power to potentially decrease the number of supported servers.

Each rack costs roughly $500/month (plus power), and often requires advanced provisioning to ensure that rackspace is available, and if possible, located in the same area. It's not unusual to buy an entire block of space well ahead of actual use to ensure that the business' growth can be accommodated.

Additionally, one requires an operations staff to maintain the servers. Hard drives fail, backups must be done, hardware must be ordered, tested, and finally, deployed. Simple deployment of a single server, including the networking configuration, travel time, and physical work can easily consume 4-8 hours of operations staff time.

When you add together the operational and capital expenditures, I'm not really convinced that the idea is so simple as "servers are cheap, programmers are expensive". Servers, electricity, physical space, and the labor necessary to install and maintain them are not particularly cheap.

I'd propose a new mantra: programmers are expensive, and so are servers and IT, and so let's try to not be monomaniacally flippant about it. Software can be easy to write AND perform reasonably well, and to say otherwise simply appears to be a false dichotomy fronted by those who benefit from it most.

<comment><USER8> You're still talking about a minimum of 12-19 servers though. I'd imagine that the average website doesn't use even that. I think that SO in particular is at 3 servers. Maybe if SO explodes, this will become an issue, but an optimization would likely have to make a difference of a few racks before it it's even worth considering making an optimization based soley on power concerns.

<comment><USER7> Whether an optimization is worth pursuing depends on the business requirements, how much the it costs to implement, and whether there are any additional gains beyond avoiding power, space, and personnel costs.

Simply picking an efficient (both for the developer, and in terms of implementation) language/platform can be enough to start with, and will help you avoid being boxed in later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice straw man. Did anyone ever try to say that it's not worth fixing a 1000x-slowdown error because "we'll just buy 1000 times the hardware, that's cheaper!"?

Obviously there is a balance somewhere between pointless, unmaintainable, expensive over-optimisation on one end and programmer incompetence, bad tool choices and ignorance of hardware limitations on the other.

There will be a sweet spot in the middle, possibly different for all projects, which just has to be figured out by experienced people who knows what they're doing. Why all this trying to take "sides"? It's like getting all fired up about which is "better", planes or ships. _They are both good for different purposes, choose the one that fits your need!_

</comment><comment><USER10> I guess that when the problem is to really scale _a lot_ the big cost may be the energy not the hardware, so the performance the coder can bring you for watt is crucial.

And to use few CPU cycles you need a programmer that is smart enough to know both computer science to select the best algorithms and data structures _and_ low level programming languages to lower the constant times involved in this algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER4> One item left out is floor space. This is a serious consideration, maybe more serious than electricity. Real estate for your server racks has a cost associated with it, and it is not so easy to buy/rent in rack-sized increments.

</comment><comment><USER11> Its a short term vs long term analysis. If you focus on the long term, programmers are cheaper. Short term, it is easier to throw more hardware at the problem. The part that makes it difficult to measure is estimating how fast it will run on the new hardware. Usually if you use good algorithms and data structures with an architecture that matches the problem, adding hardware will scale the performance. Mediocre programmers rarely can get this right unless they are lucky.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is good advice. ankp's comment is also good advice.

A well-run technical organization shouldn't have to choose between good programmers, code that performs, and the ability to quickly operationalize new hardware when necessary. If you're having to choose, you've got more work to do.

</comment><comment><USER13> excellent points. plus the author's writing style is direct and if not humble, than certainly not arrogant.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Jeff Atwood is wrong on the Internet", film at 11. Why is this news?</comment>


Jean Liu Reveals How Didi Kuaidi Is Beating Uber (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/jean-liu-reveals-how-didi-kuaidi-is-beating-uber-1438715398 <comment><USER2> Is it any surprise that Uber can't keep up with a well funded overseas competitor in their native market? I mean just trying to keep up with the changing US regulation landscape that can shift from city to city is hard enough.

I'd almost cede China and stop throwing resources at a market you're likely to lose.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like they just did that:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-01/uber- said-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-01/uber-said-to- merge-china-business-with-didi-in-35-billion-deal)

<comment><USER2> Man I would have looked a lot smarter if I made this comment 3 days ago ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everything mentioned in this article is a relatively small factor compared to the largest -- Didi Kuaidi is a Chinese company, and Uber is not. Didi may indeed have the superior approach, but we won't know until the two companies both try to enter a new market outside of their respective countries at around the same time.

</comment><comment><USER5> My Chinese friend in Beijing once read an article about why Didi was winning. She told me that the article missed one of the most important things in her opinion. With Didi, she can get a fapiao receipt, which she can then give to her company to claim expenses. She can't get a fapiao receipt with Uber. That's why she never takes Uber. I don't know how big of an effect this actually has, it's just an interesting anecdote.

<comment><USER6> > With Didi, she can get a fapiao receipt, which she can then give to her > company to claim expenses. She can't get a fapiao receipt with Uber.

And this right here is here is why you track down your competitors users and ask them why they don't switch.

<comment><USER7> At least in Mexico, Uber (besides a very small number of taxi companies) is the only company that provides "facturas", a government approved invoice. Without it no expenses are deductible. Standard taxis do not provide them most of the time.

That's part of the reason uber was such a big hit in mexico.

So Uber probably knows about the importance of the document, maybe the Chinese don't let them create them.

<comment><USER8> Cabs in Shenzhen all have little dashboard printers for the "fapiao." They aren't official and look like a cheap receipt from a corner store. I doubt it is a regulation thing.

<comment><USER9> Why would they not be official?

How fanciful do you expect of an invoice that comes from a some component of a taxi? A full POS standard?

<comment><USER8> Official meaning not on a government form

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How many doom & gloom articles about Uber have there been this week?

I'm undecided on whether it's legitimate, or verging on smear territory.

<comment><USER11> Such schadenfreude and enmity are natural responses to people or entities which seem overconfident and braggadocios, or which play dirty, or which bully. Uber has created the perception that they are or do all of those things.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps, but if (and that's a big if) that's the main reason behind these articles, then I'm disappointed in these authors for not being above such pettiness. Or maybe my expectation of more dispassionate articles is naive...

But hopefully the "if" condition of the previous paragraph evaluates to false. :)

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure if it's pettiness. Perhaps think of it as a societal or economic immunological response. Such actors seek to punish, in whatever ways they can, entities viewed as "bad actors". This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and may actually be a good thing. As in creating social or economic consequences for those who fail to reciprocate resource sharing, these sorts of punitive actions can be net-wins for economy and society. This point goes beyond Uber itself; a conclusion might be that it's great to create a valuable and disruptive service like Uber... but one could be even more successful in doing so if they weren't a jerk about it (or were more savvy about avoiding the perception that they're a jerk).

It may be petty, as you say. Or it may not be. Regardless, it's sad that journalists today don't consistently go after all bad actors, if they're going to do this. Uber seems fairly inept and heavy-handed in managing their leadership brand, but many other companies have proven how simple it is to placate perception while behaving very destructively behind the scenes.

<comment><USER10> I agree with the principle of there being consequences, but what I don't agree with is for the condemnation to be deliberate and for journalism to be used in service of that, rather than impartial reporting.

When you describe the consequences as an immunological response, I think of something organic, more of an unguided process, not driven by awareness of meta-factors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd missed this article. Very interesting to contrast the (stated) strategies and philosophies of each company. Taking Didi's stated approach at face value, it's easy to see why they chose a beneficial partnership with a company like Lyft which seems to share their ethos while seeking to eliminate Uber (and now succeeding at that).

</comment><comment><USER12> It's all about 关系 in China.</comment>


Nvidia CEO says Moore's Law is dead and GPUs will replace CPUs - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-ceo-says-moores-law-is-dead-and-gpus-will-replace-cpus/ <comment><USER2> Yup and those pentium 4s will get to 10ghz inside of 3 years. wait..</comment>


Is AWS Having Internal DNS Issues? - <AUTHOR> I'm seeing chatter on SO and Twitter about internal DNS issues.  Our 100% AWS app has been having issues for several hours now.<p>Anyone else seeing DNS resolution errors this morning? <comment><USER2> Yep, we're seeing intermittent issues resolving Slack/RDS host records across random instances affecting only one of our two AZs.

</comment><comment><USER2> related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921226)</comment>


Photos from the making of Empire Strikes Back - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2010/10/the-making-of-the-empire-strikes-back-201010?currentPage=all

<comment><USER2> This is a great set of shots. Having watched a _ton_ of "Making of Star Wars" specials on PBS as a kid, I really thought I wasn't going to see anything new here. There were a couple of surprises:

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that until seeing the first photo just a few minutes ago, it never really occurred to me that they would have had to film the opening crawl that way.

Having seen the sequence where Luke falls from the catwalk a million times, it's quite jarring to see all those mattresses below him. Even though intuitively you're aware that they did not film that scene hanging above a thousand foot drop, the visual effects really do allow you to suspend disbelief.

<comment><USER3> "I'm a little embarrassed to admit that until seeing the first photo just a few minutes ago, it never really occurred to me that they would have had to film the opening crawl that way."

I recently discovered (from browsing around the bonus material on the DVD on a lazy Sunday, naturally) that the multi-layer CG starfield effects created by ILM for Star Trek III were put on film by pointing a camera at a computer monitor and recording the output.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Single page: [http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2010/10/the- mak...](http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2010/10/the-making-of- the-empire-strikes-back-201010?currentPage=all)

</comment><comment><USER5> Lucas is so scourged for Jar-Jar and those late 1990s remakes that I often lose sight of how innovative and influential he's been on special effects, movies, and our lives in general.

Lucasfilm and its subsidiaries (Pixar, ILM, THX) should be considered among the great start-ups of our time.

</comment><comment><USER6> You don't really see this in the films, but in a still it's amazing how detailed the X-wing is.

</comment><comment><USER7> Some other one's which were published in Maxim, <http://www.starwars.com/fans/media_news/maxim_esb/index.html>

<comment><USER8> This link is work-safe. At least with noscript. I don't know if there are any racy ads I'm not seeing.

<comment><USER9> Note that it's starwars.com, not maxim.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember watching Empire Strikes Back in a theater and being very disappointed -- I thought they should have flashed To Be Continued at the end -- I had to wait 3 years for the next episode.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was really fine with the painted figures, cardboard sets and resin armors. I wonder why the saga of Star Wars could not continue and if it wouldn't maybe be cheaper to do the next without CGI (classic style). Maybe time for Indian Bollywood studios to show us what they can do to make us dream! ;-)

<comment><USER12> What makes you believe that Bollywood studios don't use cgi? They do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was a reminder to me that special effects weren't always done sitting in front of a computer.

</comment><comment><USER14> So why can't we get more films shot with awesome matte backgrounds like that anymore? Is it really that much cheaper to do a background via CGI than to have it painted?

<comment><USER15> Often the "CGI" background is a combination of "true" CGI, manipulated photos/footage, and digital "hand" painting (at least for the deep backgrounds). It's much more flexible than physical painting. For one thing, there's undo, and versioning, not having to wait for paint to dry, etc etc.

For example, if you want a castle in the mountains in the background, the mountains might be a composite of a photo, and some extra CG. A castle is then rendered "in the rough" ontop of the mountain, and then details hand painted in. And then the whole thing gets another CG/painting treatment to make sure everything fits in and to create more atmosphere. Every matte painting is different.

If you're interested, you can poke around cgsociety's (sorry it's blocked at work) forums in the digital matte painting section. It's really just a huge grab bag of techniques.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you click the print icon the upper right, all the pictures will be displayed on a single page vertically.

</comment><comment><USER17> Damn I forgot how roguishly good looking Harrison Ford was back in the day.

<comment><USER18> He looks a lot like a young David Duchovny.

<comment><USER19> I read an article about the X-Files once where the author talked about how the show flipped the usual formula for television casting on its head. In most television shows, the female lead is hired primarily for her looks while the male lead is supposed to be the one the audience can identify with. In the X-Files, Duchovny was the tall, slim model-ish one while Gillian Anderson was short and basically normal looking. It seems like X-Files fans have a better gender balance than most sci-fi shows. I wonder if having a more normal female lead helped in that regard?

Something similar seems to have happened in Star Wars. It's easy to forget since they've been around for so long, but Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams were ridiculously good looking guys. Mark Hamill was a teen idol from his time on shows like Eight is Enough and The Texas Wheelers (I had to look that name up.) By looks alone, Carrie Fisher might be the least likely of the four to get a magazine cover. (Don't tell my twelve-year-old self, though.)

<comment><USER9> The flaw in your theory is that Carrie Fisher looks absolutely stunning in this picture: <http://www.vanityfair.com/images/hollywood/2010/10/esb08.jpg>

<comment><USER19> Don't get me wrong--Carrie Fisher is pretty. She could have easily been the homecoming queen at my high school. As long as she wasn't too busy doing coke with Tony Bennett or whatever children of famous actors did in the 70's. I'm just saying that she wasn't Daryl Hannah. (For those of you born after 1985, Daryl Hannah was the Megan Fox of the late 70's/early 80's.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yawn. Wake me up when these photographs are re-released in 3D.

<comment><USER17> Ssssh George will hear you, haven't we had our childhood raped enough as it is?!

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately...it is coming whether we like it or not. :-(</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Add social sharing buttons to your PDFs in one minute - <AUTHOR> http://viralmagnets.com <comment><USER2> does it add "social sharing by viral magnets" or something like that?</comment>


"I used Samsung's 49-inch monitor and now I can't go back to smaller displays" - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/2018/04/12/samsung-chg90-49-inch-ultrawide-monitor-review/#NxY1OiPKEPqY <comment><USER2> 1080 height? Hard pass.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been considering a 40" 4K screen for some time now.</comment>


New High of 90% of Americans Satisfied with Personal Life - <AUTHOR> https://news.gallup.com/poll/284285/new-high-americans-satisfied-personal-life.aspx <comment><USER2> "Satisfaction with personal life" will have very different implications for different people to the point of being useless. I feel underpaid and am unspeakably sad about the ways in which my society is declining, but I would answer "yes, extremely" if somebody asked if I was satisfied with my "personal" life. I think there are other people in my exact same position and with my exact same level of happiness who would answer differently if asked this specific question.

<comment><AUTHOR> > "Satisfaction with personal life" will have very different implications for > different people to the point of being useless.

Of course "satisfaction with personal life", like many things in survey, can have very different implications for different people. But it does not necessarily make it being useless.

You could ask more questions about people specific satisfactions with personal life, it does not make the general sense of satisfaction with personal life useless.

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying the problem is that people are made satisfied by different things. I'm saying that I don't believe the concept of "general satisfaction with personal life" is a useful or meaningful concept because of _the English language_ \- because of the different interpretations of what it means. For a counter-example, I think people have a much more consistent feeling of what it means to be "happy" in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what the difference is between this poll and this other poll from last month, with a writeup by the same author:

[https://news.gallup.com/poll/276503/happiness-not-quite- wide...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/276503/happiness-not-quite-widespread- usual.aspx)

EDIT: It seems the primary difference is in the question:

Asking "are you satisfied with your _personal life_ " garners much more of an enthusiastic response than "are you happy", apparently?

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm satisfied but it's only because I make more than twice the median household income by myself with no kids and can work remotely at an easy job. I don't know how 90% is satisfied with so much less.

<comment><USER5> Super rich Hollywood people can't understand how you are happy without hanging out with models and celebrities at your Oceanview house.

<comment><USER6> It's not even true - they may be _less_ likely to be satisfied, for reasons tht you may find ridiculoous (but are not to them). I believe satisfaction comes mostly from within, not necessarily with what you have. It's largely on you to observe either what you have - or what you don't.

<comment><USER7> Yes exactly. Satisfaction is significantly affected by your expectations. If your expectations change, then satisfaction changes as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems to contradict the opioid and suicide epidemics that reduced the American life expectancy statistic; But is a welcome change.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have my doubts in people's ability to assess their own emotions. I'm fairly conscientious, but I often have trouble boiling down my thoughts and feelings into simple words like "happy" or "satisfied". If I were asked if I'm satisfied with my personal life, I'd say yes, but only because saying I'm dissatisfied is negative and gets interpreted the wrong way. People assume too much and make judgments when you give them even the slightest hint that not everything is perfect with you. Life is too complicated for me to actually satisfied or dissatisfied.

<comment><USER10> I feel like there's too many "I" and "me" statements here to substantiate the conclusion that people at large can't assess their own emotions.

<comment><USER9> I didn't say that people at large can't assess their emotions. When I said I have my doubts, what I meant is that I think that people are generally poor at it, which doesn't mean I don't think they're capable. There's a difference.

The rest of what I wrote wasn't really my full reasoning for that conclusion. I can only experience my own emotions, so I have to go with that. And I don't have any diagnosed psychiatric conditions, so I don't think it's that unfair to reflect on my emotional introspection. I never dictated anything other than that I have "doubts".

I don't have a specific reason why I think people aren't very good at assessing their emotions. It's a conclusion from an amalgam of my experiences with other people. People can certainly recognize if they are happy or sad, for instance, but I don't find they are very good at distinguishing between things like contentment and happiness. I've met lots of people who think that an absence of happiness is sadness, when in reality someone can be emotionally neutral.(the connotations around the word unhappy don't help) It's common for people to confuse depression for sadness. Personality and how someone can respond to emotion can mask their feelings, making them less obvious to both others and themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Tepid satisfaction"?

</comment><comment><USER12> If everyone is satisfied, what then is everyone chasing after all the time?

<comment><USER13> Having something to chase is part of being satisfied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I understand the topic is naturally political, but it would be nice to see discussions not super political bashing Trump vs Clinton and so on. A lot of the comments I see here are pretty subjective, anecdotal and emotional. I really don't like seeing this on Hacker News.

Note in the article it says: "WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Nine in 10 Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in their personal life, a new high in Gallup's four-decade trend. The latest figure bests the previous high of 88% recorded in 2003."

In 2003 there were a lot of issues too. 9/11 recently happened, some wars in the Middle East... So why not read the actual article? They try to go into details as to why people are feeling happier. E.g.

"Household income, political party affiliation and marital status are associated with the largest subgroup differences in Americans' satisfaction with their personal life . Roughly 95% of Americans who live in high-income households, who identify as Republicans and who are married say they are satisfied with their personal life -- and about three in four among each of these groups are very satisfied.

Meanwhile, adults in low-income households are the least likely to say they are satisfied with their life, followed by Democrats and unmarried adults. Among each of these groups, small majorities report being very satisfied. Low- income Americans hold the distinction of having the lowest percentage very satisfied

It's likely no coincidence that Americans' heightened satisfaction with their personal life comes as confidence in the U.S. economy and their personal finances are also at long-term or record highs."

The article even talks about races and genders, which again is correlated with income. Being married too. So presumably this happiness is in large part due to the economic boom of late. The article even concludes with this. Comments here can say the question is ambiguous or people don't know how they feel themselves all they want, but the evidence, and just plain intuition, strongly suggests it has a lot to do with the economy. People reeeeaaaallllyy care about bread on the table for their family, not tweets from the president, or the "political climate", or Bad Thing X, or any of the other comments here.

I fully expect downvotes, but hey ho, that's emotional politics for you. What I've actually written should be pretty non-controversial honestly: TL,DR; "People care about family and bread on the table a lot".

<comment><USER15> Somewhere on Twitter that I can't find, this survey was charted back into the 1970s. The lowest the positive response was reported was during stagflation, oil embargo, post-Vietnam years, and it was in the 70%.

<comment><USER14> Yup. The economy matters A LOT. Perhaps the crowd on Hacker News have stable careers so don't value it quite as much, so we find other things to worry about ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Based on 0.0003099022% of the population. Sure thing, I believe this.

</comment><comment> shadow-banned This cannot be accurate. I've traveled the midwest, and so many are miserable. I don't buy this at all.

<comment><USER17> Anecdotal at best.. your experience meeting maybe upwards of 50 people across the midwest cannot possibly be taken with the same consideration as a major polling outlet with 2500x the reach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why are all these comments so grumpy? _"People are happy? What on earth is wrong with them?"_

The awful political situation right now has encouraged me to spend less time keeping up with news, and to spend more time reading classic literature. So, thanks to Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, I am feeling more satisfied with life - just not in the way you'd assume if I just said "I'm happy in my personal life".

<comment><USER2> This is dismissive and insulting. Justified or not, the people you're referring to are clearly incredulous that the poll accurately measures happiness, not that they think there is something wrong with being happy.

<comment><USER18> I agree with you that the poll is probably poorly measured. However, there seems to be a lot of confirmation bias going on in this thread - "This surprises me, therefore it must be wrong". They're not point to any more reliable evidence that suggests the poll is wrong, just giving anecdotal opinions.

<comment><USER19> > 'I agree with you that the poll is probably poorly measured.'

In point of fact, it's a blatant lie. Not a shred of truth to it. 90% of Americans happy with their lives? LOL. "Step away from the crack pipe."

People are so happy to be alive they are at each other's throats daily over any one of millions of political disagreements.

People are so happy they are checking out by the millions via drug overdoses and suicide.

Close to 10% of the entire nation is in prison. Most of those work in sweat shops for big corporations at 50 cents an hour. I bet they're thrilled to be alive also.

We're told unemployment is 2.7%, but when we calculate the numbers ourselves using the exact same methodology as the U.S. government used during the _previous_ Great Depression, we find they have somehow misplaced a decimal point--and that unemployment now is in fact _worse_ than it was in the 1930s.

Which is obvious, to those of us who have eyes to see and ears to hear of all the "I hurt muh back" types roaming about the land, "getting a check", with no gainful employment to speak of.

Anyone who doesn't believe me can go calculate the numbers themselves; but most won't.

What about all of those people screaming about lack of health care, racism, etc; all roses and butterflies in the USA, amirite?

Definitely no major shootouts going on between gangs in Baltimore and Detroit right now. No mile after mile of economic devastation, bombed out neighborhoods as far as the eye can see. Yet another example of the zen garden of bliss that is the USA, with 90% of everyone happy as can be.

Tent cities full of homeless, as far as the eye can see, in major and increasingly even _minor_ cities across the land?

Must I really continue???

The USA, much like the rest of the entire world, is controlled by _lying psychopaths_. And you're complicit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Do we really trust the results of polls anymore? After the 2016 election where all of the polls showed Hillary winning the election, I just don't trust them at all.

It's almost like people are treating polls like SPAM calls, and just tell them anything to keep them on the line as long as possible intentionally giving bogus answers.

<comment><USER21> We shouldn't treat the results of polls as gospel truth, but we should trust them more than we trust our intuitive sense of what's gotta be true. A poll showing 90% of Americans are satisfied with their personal life is a pretty strong refutation of claims like "suchandsuch trend has propelled America to unknown depths of misery", even accounting for the possibility of bias.

<comment><USER22> > We shouldn't treat the results of polls as gospel truth, but we should trust > them more than we trust our intuitive sense of what's gotta be true.

Yes and no. Polls shouldn't be treated as gospel truth, _but they shouldn 't override our intuitions either_. If there's a discrepancy, it means you have to dig _deeper_ find the truth.

<comment><USER21> I think there's a level of discrepancy where they should override our intuitions. If I thought most Americans were unhappy these days, my reaction to seeing this poll would be to question how my intuition went so wrong, not to look for ways the might be biased.

<comment><USER22> > If I thought most Americans were unhappy these days, my reaction to seeing > this poll would be to question how my intuition went so wrong, not to look > for ways the might be biased.

That's putting undue weight on quantified data, and letting it shut down attempts to actually find the truth. Polls can be biased or badly designed, metrics can be gamed or not actually measure what they claim to, or the poll could be founded some flawed assumptions. If you assume your intuition is wrong when you see a "strong" poll result, you'll never discover errors of the kind I just enumerated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This has got to be fake right? Economic disparity, environmental uncertainty, political nonsense. Either the people surveyed are completely tuned out and just glad to be able to watch Netflix all day or mass-shootings are a new way of expressing how personally happy you are.</comment>


Stylus: a new arrow for your design quiver - <AUTHOR> http://www.wellfireinteractive.com/blog/introduction-to-stylus/

<comment><USER2> Just hoping to see more press for Stylus. Sass is an excellent processor too, but Stylus just felt right from the get-go</comment>


Totalitarian travels – by the man who's been to every country in the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/26/totalitarian-travels-gunnar-garfors-the-man-whos-been-to-every-country-in-the-world <comment><AUTHOR> "Eventually, passport back in hand, Garfors booked a flight that had a 13-hour layover in the capital Luanda: "I walked from the airport and had breakfast in a bar that was playing soft porn, refused their offer to display something harder and walked back to the airport.""

Pretty gnarly. Some great tidbits in this article about traveling to places people are told to stay away from.</comment>


Show HN: Home Assistant platform is able to track and control all devices at home - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant <comment><USER2> Are really all the projects you are submitting _your_ projects? Because that's what Show HN is for. [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

Home Assistant also had a recent discussion already: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521743)</comment>


The Cable Model and the Internet Model - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2014/11/the-cable-model-and-the-internet-model/ <comment><USER2> A better analogy (to me) is that the internet infrastructure is part of the commons (like roads, bridges, canals etc) and the internet data is the free exchange of ideas (like phone calls and ham radio broadcasts). Internet technology may be so ubiquitous now that I don't think we can trust control of it to private interests. Arguing in terms of corporations frames it in the wrong light and reminds me of Ma Bell.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recommend also reading the comment/discussion from Mark Cuban at the bottom of the article. Here is the initial comment:

"Come on fred. Cable companies started as analog. They were held back from going digital more quickly because people still watch TV and they had to support old stb. It wasn't a binary go all in for digital or not

And as far as 1k channels are you saying more linear is better than the thousands of hours of HD on demand content they offer to tv viewers ? Or for the remote dvrs coming online ? Consumption of on demand and dvr viewing is growing faster than internet viewing of long firm content. Or did you not notice that side of the equation. People do watch far more digital tv than they do internet video. By a long shot

And you seem to forget that the internet was designed for everything but video. But that's a topic for another time.

If you want to discuss the openness of the net you have to take out netflix. That's one company the discussion of the open internet can't be built around one company (disclosure I own a lot oc nflx stock and do quite a bit of business with )"

<comment><USER4> > And you seem to forget that the internet was designed for everything but > video.

I've had that one leveled at me on more than one occasion (including a very irate backbone operator that was pissed off that my webcam software was about to saturate the transatlantic link) but I really do not agree with that.

The internet was designed to transport bits, to do so connectionless (UDP/IP, Multicast/IP) or using virtual circuits. What the content of those bits was was no doubt important but it is not exactly as if the internet was designed to the exclusion of one particular medium because it happens to produce a lot of bits.

Talk about videoconferencing started in the 1930's, and in via the internet in the 1970's (roughly around the time the internet was built). I highly doubt that you could make a credible claim that streaming video across the world digitally was the one application that the internet was not designed for.

The whole idea is that it transports _bits_ , and that it does so with maximum speed and reliability routing around problems where those are encountered. What those bits represent is an affair of the sender and the receiver.

<comment><USER5> Yep. That was the line that annoyed me the most, other than the continued dismissal of concerns about ISP behavior--it's pretty obvious at this point to anybody in tech that they can't be assumed to be competent and unbiased actors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Net neutrality _is_ the cable model. It locks in local monopolies, aka, utilities.

I find Fred uncharacteristically confused on this. We have local monopolies because cable (and phone) were built according to a utility model. Net neutrality is the legal reification of the utility model.

<comment><USER7> Providing last mile service, be it electrical, water, gas, sewage, or TCP/IP is a natural monopoly. No one is going to build more than one sewage pipe to a customer. It only makes sense that we don't allow these natural monopolies extract monopoly rents. Right now, we do allow the cable companies to do just that, and worse.

If you find that your netflix or youtube is slow, just VPN into a server with a real internet connection and be amazed at how fast the video loads, even with the encryption overhead, all because the VPN bypasses the ISP's domain based throttling. (Unless you're a youtube or netflix employee who can spin up a VM for your own personal VPN or somesuch)

<comment><USER8> Lots of us outside the US have multiple ISPs in competition, usually with their own cables. I'd really like to know what's so impossible about this, or what makes monopolization inevitable. Sure running cable is expensive, but it's hardly outside of the range of typical VC investment. It's not like you need to wire a whole country at once, you can start by serving small & cheaper areas.

<comment><USER9> > Sure running cable is expensive

It's not just expensive, it's fucking hard. Speaking as a guy who occasionally does this for a living.

The revenue you can make on a single phone wire these days just doesn't pay off in five years. Not in ten. Maybe in twenty years, but this break-even delay is too much for any investor who is not at government level!

And this is why speedy stuff like FTTH is deployed in cities and not in rural areas: digging costs approximately the same in rural as in city areas... and if it costs me as provider 50 k€ to wire up 100m of city street with 500 customers, that's paying off in a year. Wiring up a rural area with (if you're lucky, and I'm already leaving out _real_ rural areas!) 50 customers takes 10 years to break even...

And this difference is why it is imperative that last-mile infrastructure building is done by a government entity charging the same amount of money for providing a bitstream Internet uplink to the customer - at a price point where the city customers subsidize the rural customers and the utility provider breaks even.

The added value by telecom providers renting the wires from utility can be e.g. faster peering to Netflix, Facebook caching servers in the next major city, etc.

<comment><USER8> _And this difference is why it is imperative that last-mile infrastructure building is done by a government entity_

Why? I'm really missing that logic step. OK, so rural is too costly to connect. But that doesn't follow that a specific solution is imperative, especially since the vast majority of the population lives in cities.

Why can't the government entity only build in rural/unprofitable areas, by imposing a tax on city connections? More: why can't the government entity simply subsidize the bills of rural users, adjusted to the extra cost of wiring their areas?

Thinking even wider, must we wire? What's keeping wireless point-to-point connections from working here?

Rarely a problem only has one solution, why is this one an exception?

<comment><USER9> > Why can't the government entity only build in rural/unprofitable areas, by > imposing a tax on city connections? More: why can't the government entity > simply subsidize the bills of rural users, adjusted to the extra cost of > wiring their areas?

Because charging every customer the same price regardless where he lives is widely accepted - but just imagine you had a "city tax" appear on your telco bill. You'd be outraged by it...

> Thinking even wider, must we wire? What's keeping wireless point-to-point > connections from working here?

That one is easy to answer: people these days are afraid of radiation and high-voltage lines (NIMBY phenomenon). Also, you would not gain much from point-to-point-connecting a rural village as you'd still have to dig fiber into the village center which you then distribute to the individual houses. But as you are already in the village center, you could also just put a FTTC DSLAM box there and be done (this is what Deutsche Telekom is doing right now in a load of rural areas!).

edit: (microwave) point-to-point communication also usually requires expensive communication gear as well as individual (!) licenses from regulators. In addition during heavy rain, fog or snowfall communication quality decreases drastically, and heavy wind may displace the dishes.

<comment><USER8> _Because charging every customer same price regardless where he lives is widely accepted - but just imagine you had a "city tax" appear on your telco bill. You'd be outraged by it..._

Sure. Which is why you wouldn't charge a "city tax", you'd just charge a tax on everyone, but the subsidy to rural users would simply cover it (and part of the ISP price).

 _Also, you would not gain much from point-to-point-connecting a rural village as you 'd still have to dig fiber into the village center._

I was actually thinking about connecting to the village using microwave, not (just?) to individual homes.

<comment><USER9> > I was actually thinking about connecting to the village using microwave, not > (just?) to individual homes.

The "connect individual homes" part is the expensive part.

Just digging fibers across plain land is easy - just plough them in, bury pipework during road construction (actually mandatory in Germany!) or use existing sewer pipes. Or, even better, use existing overhead poles for HV or MV electricity.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Harvey Mudd is Giving Women the Access Code (to Computer Science) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/giving-women-the-access-code.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Harvey Mudd acceptance rates by sex:

\</comment><comment>---

Male 21%

Female 46.3%

\</comment><comment>---

That the most selective schools with the most interested applicants can fiddle with their programs to get arbitrary demographics is no surprise. With the number people that apply to Harvard I imagine they could have a class of programmers that was 100% midgets if they wanted; that does not mean other universities can do the same.</comment>


Einstein's travel diaries reveal attitudes towards people he met in Asia - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/12/einsteins-travel-diaries-reveal-shocking-xenophobia <comment><USER2> After your death all of your life's browser history, every facebook/youtube/reddit/HN/myspace/etc comment and submission you ever wrote, every photo you ever took, every off-hand remark you ever made in the presence of a smartphone with facebook installed .. will be published for all of the world to read and judge.

Better get that road rage under wraps!

<comment><USER3> > _Better get that road rage under wraps!_

After my death I could not care less...

<comment><USER4> After my death nobody else will care either

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why is it so "shocking"? Discussing racial differences was more common in his time, and being a great scientist does not necessarily coincide with general wisdom.

I hope this story will help people realize that we should not ban the work of people who have said problematic things.

<comment><USER6> This is also addressed in the original article:

> Rosenkranz told the Guardian that although views like Einstein's were > prevalent at the time, they were not universal. "That's usually the reaction > I get – 'we have to understand, he was of the zeitgeist, part of the time' – > but I think I tried here and there to give a broader context. There were > other views out there, more tolerant views," he said.

<comment><USER7> Einstein was a great physicist, but I'm not looking to him for moral guidance. If he was awful for his time that would be sad, but if he's merely average, I don't see why we'd care.

<comment><USER8> > _I'm not looking to him for moral guidance_

I suppose this is the question. Einstein is certainly more known for his moral legacy than most scientists.

He was a WWII refugee and a pacifist, he authored (and later regretted) the letter sparking US nuclear ambitions, he joined the NAACP and his offer of testimony in W.E.B. DuBois' trial led to the charges against him being dropped. To me, this isn't merely the halo effect around his academic work - Einstein was at least a modest player in morality and social politics in his time, and his work fighting racism in the US does add particular relevance to the story.

I agree, though, that the story is already being overblown; we're getting news stories with Einstein's picture edited to look demonic. This is a scientist's diary from the 1920s containing views less racist than ones openly stated by US politicians from the last 50 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't see what the big deal is ... everyone thinks stuff like this in their head, and it's a personal diary. Only recently do we live in a globalized & diverse economy which makes it less _polite_ to say stuff like this. It is a big stretch to equate _lack of politeness_ with _racism_.

<comment><USER10> not everyone

<comment><USER11> ... is an Einstein

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Without taking any sides in this particular case, i highly recommend everyone read Intellectuals and Race[1] by Thomas Sowell. It is a concise, well researched, and largely damning look at how the same intellectual class that is leading the charge of globalized western morality (particularly in regards to enforced diversity, ethnic erasure, race based policies, and identity/victimhood politics) is cut from the very same cloth of their predecessors in the early 20th century (the Progressives) who championed Social Darwinism, racial segregation, and eugenics. He draws many parallels between the two groups, including but not limited to the perceived unanimity of thought amongst the "greatest, leading minds," the utter incomprehensibility by the status quo to even consider dissenting ideas, the ostensible moral superiority, and the faith based reliance upon unproven assertions. It is a brief and powerful read. Regardless of one's politics, Sowell forces the reader to honestly confront preconceived notions not with emotional exhortation, but rather hard facts and verifiable data.

[1][https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Race-Thomas- Sowell/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Race-Thomas- Sowell/dp/0465058728)

</comment><comment><USER13> I think if Einstein were alive today he would see his words and repent to them. Especially in light of other things he has said like: "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.". Though this had nothing to do with race he understood something in those times that many others didn't in regards to human nature.

</comment><comment><USER14> These comments, particularly those about toilet habits don't really look too different from the comments I was reading 5 years about about the behaviour of Chinese tourists, so I'm not sure what to think about this.

If you took a contemporary Chinese sophisticate and transported him or her back to 1920s China, what would his or her comments be like?

<comment><USER15> Shock at different toilet habits is actually the least racist and more understandable reaction. But some of his assertions are indefensible:

> _"I noticed how little difference there is between men and women; I don't > understand what kind of fatal attraction Chinese women possess which > enthrals the corresponding men to such an extent that they are incapable of > defending themselves against the formidable blessing of offspring"_

and

> _"It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the > likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary."_

White supremacists could easily hold these views as well.

<comment><USER16> Those statements boil down to "I think Chinese people are ugly". Do men have a moral obligation to find women of all races beautiful?

<comment><USER15> I can say "I don't find most Chinese women attractive". Or I can say "Chinese women are so ugly, I cannot understand how people manage to reproduce in China". Do you see the difference? One statement is not racist and the other is.

<comment><USER3> Actually both are not racist. Both are subjective statements.

One needs not explicitly add "I, personally" to his personal correspondence.

"Chinese women are so ugly, I cannot understand how people manage to reproduce in China" should be read as: "I find Chinese women so ugly, that I cannot understand how people manage to reproduce in China".

<comment><USER15> I don't understand your point.

It's understood that in personal correspondence everything stated is the opinion of the author. Both my fictional examples were written from a personal point of view.

The actual difference was that one expressed a personal preference without being offensive; the other called a vast group of people "ugly", which is offensive, and expressed incredulity that they even managed to find each other sexually attractive enough to reproduce (which is naive as well as offensive).

Racism is _primarily_ subjective, so that's no excuse either. Rational justifications for racism are more often than not _a posteriori_ justifications.

<comment><USER17> If racism were subjective, we wouldn't ban it in the public scope as there would be no clear standard for anyone to follow in their self-censorship.

Racism should reflect an attribute that can be factually proven--- intelligence, strength, moral character at birth, etc.

It should not reflect a totally subjective physical attribute like beauty.

<comment><USER15> I've never heard your definition of racism ("attributes that can be factually proven"?). In my experience, racism is subjective and every rationalization is done afterwards. How often have you heard of someone convincing an avowed racist of anything based on arguments?

"I've always thought <class of people> were dumb, weak, morally bankrupt, and have brought decadence to our country, but now that I look at this scientific study I'm convinced otherwise".

<comment><USER17> Every racist position I have ever heard of has been defanged by the truth, and proof. Racism is not bad because it makes you feel bad, it is bad because it is demonstrably untrue and basing your society on the bedrock of racist lies is simply shooting yourself in the foot.

I don't know why you disagree.

Do you think racist views are true, but we should ignore them out of political correctness?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is one of those examples of holding a man born in the 19th century to the standards of the 21st. I'm pretty sure lots of the things we think, say, and do will be seen as very problematic in the 22nd century.

<comment><USER19> Indeed. I hope someday people would hold as much disdain and shock as this for statements justifying/rationalising things like gun ownership, immense private wealth when others around you suffer and need for private transport.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is more click-bait journalism; I'm not sure why Einstein should be singled out for sharing the same beliefs as others in the society in which he was raised. "Europeans in 1922 were Xenophobic" is not worthy of an editorial.

The writer claims that Xenophobia was not Universal, and therefore this is interesting. No view is universal; there are people alive today who believe the earth is flat, although they are a minority. In 1922 Europe, only a very small minority of people would not have been Xenophobic.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think people in those days had a very exaggerated idea of the scale of genetic differences between people of different ethic groups. Nowadays we know such differences are a rounding error and that looking at differences in genomes between individuals, those attributable to ethnicity are generally a minority. Back then, this wasn't known.

EDIT - I had a bit of a laugh at the quote about the Chinese supplanting other races. I'm a WASP, but my wife is Chinese and our kids are pretty obviously half Chinese.

<comment><USER22> Does knowledge of genome proximity help you to find women of other races more attractive?

<comment><USER21> I've always found Chinese girls attractive, long before I knew anything at all about population genetics. Not that I know a whole lot about it now, but still. I was lucky enough to go to a school in the UK, but with a large proportion of foreign students from all over Africa, the Middle East and Asia so maybe that had an influence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It strikes me as odd that anytime a person references a characteristic of some people from _some particular_ country, it is generalized into racism against all people who even vaguely look like them so long as the people in question are not white.

If one says "the French are cowards", no one takes it to mean that you believe that all white people are cowards.

This is true even if the speaker is not white themselves, but merely living in a 'white' country.

To me, this means that no statement really stands on its own, but we constantly filter it through our lens of expectations, and current context. Given that, it's hard to look at someone from the past---a fundamentally alien context---then damn them using modern morals.

\---

As a personal example of how we see racism within an implicit context, this poster[1], mentions "negroes" and my immediate feeling is to damn him for racism as in the modern era using that terminology is a sign of racism.

This is despite the fact that my CV could list me as a beneficiary of the _Negro_ College Fund.

20 years ago, the term "coloured" was considered racist to some segments of the USA. Any variations of it, would be simiarly damned. Now, we are all people "of colour" as an accepted truth, and using 'black' is seen as vulgar, and 'african american' is seen inaccurate. Context matters immensely in these topics.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17303571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17303571)

</comment><comment><USER23> The more they pull this historical muckracking crap, the less people are going to care when real racism is happening right in front of them.

</comment><comment><USER8> It goes unnoted in the article, but you could probably get an entire second piece out of the phrase " _...defending themselves against the formidable blessing of offspring._ "

At the time it was written, Einstein had three children (though his first child's story is basically unknown, and she was either adopted or died in infancy). He was also divorced from their mother, with whom both his sons lived, but corresponded with them throughout their lives. I'd be rather interested to see an ambivalent comment like "formidable blessing" put in the context of these relationships.

</comment><comment><USER24> The quotes are translated from german into very specific english word that carries connotation. Going by the translation however, I find the interpretation made by Rosenkranz to be with odds of my own. I see a comment about too high population growth, while Rosenkranz claim it is about "how Chinese men can find their women sufficiently attractive to have offspring with them". A question about why there is a too high population growth is not the same as a question about why there is any population growth.

</comment><comment><USER25> And where is the relevancy of looking at someone's thoughts that he never communicated publicly or acted upon whatsoever? Are we doing a psychoanalysis or something?

</comment><comment><USER26> It's hard to visit a different culture for the first time and not notice their differences as a group. It's only with extended interaction with people from a different culture that their individuality stands out.

I've always thought that the cure for xenophobia is travel, but it's more than just travel that's required. You can't just breeze through as a tourist, you have to spend an extended length of time and get to know people as people.

</comment><comment><USER27> When a white person in historic America encountered the negro slave trade for the first time, becoming aware of the harsh living conditions of millions of people, he have to either conclude that their values regarding justice and the human condition were either in obvious conflict with their own society and culture, or accept the narrative of white supremacy, i.e. blacks were less human and so suffering was OK because it was their natural state. Most chose the latter, as it had the least cognitive dissonance.

A Westerner observing a typical 1920's Chinese person's life for the first time would have experienced the same assault on their fundamental values, especially more humanist values. It was a feudal society, where quiet tolerance in the face of extreme hardship is a cultural value, as is producing as many (male) offspring as possible. Moreover, given harsh standard of living and the large population, human life (especially those of children) was cheap and easily discarded. Finally, post-Qing China would have seemed extremely unsanitary to Western eyes -- even today Chinese authorities struggle with promulgating basic 20th century standards of hygiene (since hygiene is a norm, not a trait).

The foreigner would have been aware that 100's of millions of people lived this way (no one knew China's population was a billion plus until the CCP did the first modern census).

It would have been all to easy to take a dim view on the Chinese as people.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sounds more like "Chinese culture" phobia to me. He said good things about Japanese people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Indiscriminate application of BS modern fad notions like "xenophobia" reveal shallow journalism.

</comment><comment><USER29> Newsflash: Einstein was as human as anybody else.

</comment><comment><USER30> How is this relevant to HN?

<comment><USER4> Because Einstein

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is disgusting. I mean, publication of private diaries is disgusting.

Fuck you, Rosenkranz. I see why Hamlet did not like you that much.</comment>


Edward Snowden: a right to privacy is the same as freedom of speech - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2015/may/22/edward-snowden-rights-to-privacy-video <comment><USER2> auto-playing video!

</comment><comment><USER3> Well said, Ed!</comment>


Ask HN: What is the threshold of karmas that will allow me to downvote comments? - <AUTHOR>

I know it changes overtime. But anyone has any idea about the current threshold? <comment><USER2> Why would you want to do this?

Vote up that which is good and allow the indifferent to languish.

<comment><AUTHOR> hahaha. You are right! But I just want to know!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 500

<comment><USER4> not 500 i guess, i am not able to downvote with 1624 now.

<comment><USER5> I can downvote with only 1030. However, for this article, yours is the only comment that it will let me downvote. Also, a good number of articles on the Ask HN page won't let me downvote although every article I have checked on the front page does; I suspect it may have to do with the age of the comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Over 9000</comment>


Experiment, Simplify, Ship - <AUTHOR> https://blog.golang.org/experiment <comment><USER2> I personally think they missed one big pain point of Go: the logging. The standard logging should be an interface for structured logs that can be implemented by various vendors instead of the current really basic logger. This is especially bad for third party libraries that either force you to use one logging library (logrus, zap, etc) or built their own custom interface which you then have to implement yourself for your logger. That is something they should have stolen from Java...

<comment><USER3> Libraries generally shouldn't depend on concrete loggers. Plumbing a logging interface throughout is a marginal improvement, but really they should provide a a structured tracing interface to let callers decide what events they care about, and how to act on that information.

For example, the httptrace package provides a set of hooks you can opt in to for various http events.

That being said I've only ever experienced a lot of pain when libraries use a global logger. Otherwise it's usually pretty painless to adapt one logging library to another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was an exhausting read because Rich Hickeys "Simple Made Easy" presentation from years ago transmitted a mind-virus to me where I have to stop and have an internal conflict every time I read simpl(e|ify) in a programming context.

It's notable how so many independent programming communities seem enamored with Simple being the goal, yet probably don't even agree on the definition of the term.

<comment><USER5> Is that this? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34_L7t7fD_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34_L7t7fD_U)

<comment><USER4> Here's the original location that has synced slides: [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made- Easy/](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's an eerily condescending tone throughout the piece. It's addressed to programmers and discusses topics like error handling and generics, but talks up trivial concepts as if they're unique, or as if the Go team has thought of them first, or something...

"Experiment, simplify, ship"? Yeah, who would have thought of that! Surely other language teams never do the same...

It's doubly annoying when the whole process involves trivial issues, long ago solved to satisfaction in tons of similar languages... (e.g. Optionals for error handling).

<comment><USER7> This tone has been prevalent in tech writing for years. It's like we all learned to write by listening to TED talks. When I first started coming across the tone as I was learning to be a developer, it was all really fresh and exciting. Everything was so aspirational.

I try to just gloss over it now and let it be, because you never know who might be getting motivated by it like I was, and I would hate to think I ruined their excitement by being jaded about it. But it is still pretty annoying to read.</comment></comment>


Gordon Moore: The Accidental Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/articles/moore/index.html

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this!

If any of you want to know more about Intel's early days, I strongly suggest reading Tedlow's biography of Andy Grove. He goes into great detail about the early culture of Silicon Valley, more than any of the articles I've seen posted online.

</comment><comment><USER3> _It was excellent on-the-job training, but there probably is a more efficient way of training entrepreneurs than by letting them make all the mistakes._

If the strongest Moore can say is that there's "probably" a more efficient way, with all his experience, it makes me doubt there is one. I think it is possible to train people for spin-off companies, because they are in the same kind of business; but for founding a new type of industry, I don't think it's possible to train entrepreneurs, because there's no one who knows how to do it to train them. The only way to learn the unknown is by making "mistakes", a.k.a experiments.

</comment><comment><USER3> _This has minimized spin-offs, because we design our development specifically to transfer into the factory; so we don't have the problem of developing technology and ideas that we have no place for. Technology transfer is always difficult. We have tried to minimize the need to transfer it._

Xerox PARC didn't solve that one.

The Intel guys fully experienced terribly frustrating problems, and then came up with ways of solving them. I think both aspects contribute to their incredible success.

</comment><comment><USER4> I recently read "Crystal Fire", [http://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Fire-Birth- Information-Technol...](http://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Fire-Birth-Information- Technology/dp/0393041247), an account of the invention an commercialization of the transistor. Prominent in the book are Shockley and how the companies that spun off from his original start up founded the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.</comment>


Ask HN: A legal career helping start ups? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a law student interested in start ups. I have a technical background and have mostly focused on intellectual property law while in law school.<p>I'm looking for advice for a career path to one day end up as general counsel for a growing internet start up. Should I work at a law firm first? If so, any suggestions on good firms to apply to? <comment><USER2> I think you'd be better off starting a law firm that sells services to startups. Most startups don't need a full-time lawyer. The few times I've worked at a startup with a full-time lawyer, he's been layed off as soon as things got tight.

<comment><USER3> I wrote a post about just this.

[http://stakeventures.com/articles/2008/11/12/is-the-time- rig...](http://stakeventures.com/articles/2008/11/12/is-the-time-right-for- agile-lawyers)

US lawyers are too focused on the traditional hourly model. We all need lawyers who can think and work in an agile way similar to what we do.

<comment><USER4> I am having trouble picturing an agile legal methodology. Release early and release often is pretty much the exact opposite of what I would want in legal services...

<comment><USER5> How about sue early and sue often?

Seriously, a law firm that deals primarily with tech startups and indie developers would be excellent. I'm thinking LLC articles of organization, EULAs, and website terms of use policies would make a good starting point.

<comment><USER6> <http://www.wolfgreenfield.com/> ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My friend Ryan seems to have found a niche doing just that: <http://www.thestartuplawyer.com>. You might want to reach out to him.

<comment><USER8> I've read this a few times now. Informative writing here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://www.quinnemanuel.com/media/35863/amlaw_mighty_quinn_2...](http://www.quinnemanuel.com/media/35863/amlaw_mighty_quinn_2006.pdf) if you want to work at a law firm that's often compared to a startup. On the other hand, they do all the highly exciting stuff that a startup's general counsel only gets to do if he's seriously botched things.

And tjic is right. It would be saner to work with several startups, rather than being the general counsel for one. I'm curious about why you'd want that specific outcome.

</comment><comment><USER10> There is a local boutique firm that does that where I live (New Counsel - <http://newcounsel.com>), and I think it's worked well for them. As an entrepreneur, I really appreciate working with good lawyers who understand small startups.

<comment><USER11> Awesome, I'm in the Twin Cities. I may be in touch with these guys soon. Thanks for posting this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want to work with startups, you would have either do corporate/securities or IP work. Very difficult to do both, as each is a deep & separate field of law. Thus, it's unlikely that one lawyer could handle all a startup's legal needs (and thus be 'general counsel').

Of course, there is the capital resources issue of having a lawyer full-time. Even if the startup is funded, I doubt the investor(s) would be happy cash (or even the startup's equity) is going towards a full-time lawyer instead of marketing or product dev.

<comment><USER13> General Counsel (GC) normally has different focus than handling all of a firm's legal needs. There are a number of fields of law that a growing startup may be impacted by including contracts, employment, securities, patent, and litigation, to name a few. For a company above a certain size having a lawyer on staff to manage outside legal specialists will quickly pay for itself (you might be surprised what outside legal fees can run).

The primary challenge is to explain to the executive staff the business impact of various legal strategies (and their attendant risks) and to help reach a working consensus on the right balance between particular legal risks and other business risks and opportunities. The GC's are typically senior associates who traded the last few years on the partner track for a reasonable salary and a life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember going to a start-up event a year or so ago at the ORRICK (orrick.com) building in downtown San Francisco that showcased a few start- ups. I remember they had pamphlets out promoting the services they could provide to startups. I don't have any direct experience with their services though. I also remember reading about a lawyer here that focuses mainly on start-ups but his name escapes me at the moment. I'll try and dig it up later.

<comment><USER15> Whoever you talked to is probably on this list:

[http://www.orrick.com/practices/corporate/emergingCompanies/...](http://www.orrick.com/practices/corporate/emergingCompanies/lawyers.asp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Or you could turn your legal expertise into a product and build a start-up around that... how about that? Is that even possible?

<comment><USER17> Of course. We are humans and we should know the possibilities are endless. Infinite wisdom is the human mind.

For example,

He could build a legal information website that answers legal questions, actual lawyers on the website and students talking about issues - a legal network for attorneys.

Then there's the Legal Discussion site where people can contact lawyers over the Internet (webcam, phone, chat) for advice, and a registered and verified lawyer gives it to them over the phone for a fee. A lot of people may have simple legal questions they can ask, and commit to a lawyer for full services later.

What about a yellowpages targeted directly to Lawyers for advertising on the Internet? There are thousand of law offices out there scattered over an immense distance of population that can connect to them better if they advertised on the Internet. The Akron, Ohio lawyer doesn't want to rank for "lawyer" - he'd rather target his town. Charge em a fee for advertising (SEO and search engine marketing) and charge another fee for a website, and another fee for maintenance.

Business ideas come out of the thin air. Execution lies in physical movement.

Go do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

<comment><USER18> If you're not familiar with them have a listen to the podcast Roos did:

<http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1556>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Whatever you do, learn to respond quickly and when you can't proactively notify your clients and offer a referral to someone good but less busy than you are. Just this thing alone will put you head and shoulders above most other lawyers out there.</comment>


Gender pay gap in lawyers due to performance differences [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.econ.upf.edu/~rferrer/files/PAPER.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> This paper, accepted to the top economics journal "Journal of Political Economy", demonstrates how the pay gap in lawyers is due to differences in performance, and that "the differential impact across genders in the presence of young children and differences in aspirations to become a law firm partner account for a large share of the difference in performance."

I hope this scientific study will help inform the debate on the gender pay gap, and in particular will show that the view that the gender pay gap is due in part to different aspirations is based in scientific evidence, not prejudice.</comment>