Show HN: App for Falling in Love - <AUTHOR> http://loveactualized.com <comment><AUTHOR> I was so impressed with the NYTimes article I saw posted this morning about a study done on strangers falling in love, that I took the questions from the original study and built an app / game. Should be a great tool for first dates or for fun with your lover. Enjoy!

The inspiration was this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8866933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8866933)

<comment><USER2> "most terrible memory"

Yeah, there's a fun one for a first date. Seriously how do you handle that question? Some people have had very bad things happen to them.

<comment><USER3> I'm imagining how I would look/act and how my date would look/act upon _seeing_ that question. I think the use of that question is not in _communicating the information_ of the most terrible memory, but rather in _seeing your partner feel sad_ , then empathizing with him/her.

This helps create a climate of intimacy and trust, regardless of the answer to the question.

Overall, I enjoyed reading the questions and I plan to do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Delish! Awesome. Do you think you would use the app? Or prefer to just have a list of questions? Would love to get your feedback for some press inquiries we are getting!

<comment><USER3> I much prefer the app because me and my partner can't look at anything save the question and each other. Time, space and relationship: There's only the present question and the present partner.

I read the questions on your app without having read the list of questions on NYT or github. When I read those questions (by myself), I was filled with anticipation and not fear or apprehension. I think this is because your app and these questions _pre-structure disclosure in an environment of symmetric experience_. This is really important and I could talk more about this.

You can feel free to email me at zlrthn mouse geemail (replace mouse with @ and fix geemail). I haven't gone through the app with a potential partner but I'll let you know when I do.

Thank you for doing this. Made my day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback. I'd love to talk with you more about this when the neurotransmitters are replenished in my brain after some sleep. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just realized that yesterday was the to-the-day 1 year anniversary of my girlfriend of 3 years dumping me in Palo Alto (via email) the day after she told me she could see us married and happy together (ouch!). Woke up, read HackerNews, and had this insatiable urge to blow off everything I had on my plate for PRMatch.com and code this sucker up. So grateful for all the praise / support / people using it and signing up for more free relationship tools.

Looking forward to some wedding photos!

xo, Anthony

<comment><USER4> Wow, that's cold! Any idea what caused her change of heart?

<comment><USER5> Sounds like she was thinking about their future 'she could see us...' And ultimately decided she wasn't going to marry him.

<comment><AUTHOR> At some point I'll write about it -- but she said she was terrified her family would cut her off because they had a particular idea of a guy she was supposed to be with. It was pretty intense and I went back to her again and again, but ultimately -- we lacked the context to navigate it together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have an idea for an experiment: take this to the UN and have two quarreling diplomats go through the process with each other. Next step - world peace.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's a great idea. I'm certain there is an application of this for conflict resolution. Guided conversation apps for specific situations.

<comment><USER7> You should definitely still add the "kiss each other" easter egg in this application :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Added. See my earlier comment..

[http://imgur.com/6mI0NzN](http://imgur.com/6mI0NzN)

Let me know if you find it.

<comment><USER7> I see, that's awesome :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Zuck just liked this. Congratulations! [https://i.imgur.com/BJHPU4w.png](https://i.imgur.com/BJHPU4w.png) (and enjoy in in-flow of traffic)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Missed this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is the premise really that just the exercise alone produces the result? Wouldn't two people who were totally repulsed by each other's answers not fall in love? What about people who were just lukewarm towards each other's answers?

If that's the case, how does this idea allude to anything other than the concept that two people who generally get along with each other, and were already predisposed to liking each other in the first place, would develop feelings for each other after spending a few hours conversing and learning about each other?

<comment><USER10> The paper linked from the article goes into this a bit. (Though I just skimmed it.) The authors started by thinking people who had similar answers would be more attracted, but found that wasn't the case. Just the act of opening up seems to provide the effect.

Highlighted in purple on page 367:

"Overall, these data suggest that matching in terms of not disagreeing on important attitudes or leading subjects to believe that they and their partners will like each other probably has little impact on the overall closeness subjects achieve through this procedure, or even on their mutual attraction. "

[http://www.stafforini.com/txt/Aron%20et%20al%20-%20The%20exp...](http://www.stafforini.com/txt/Aron%20et%20al%20-%20The%20experimental%20generation%20of%20interpersonal%20closeness.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Super interesting isn't it? Looking forward to doing some experiments with this tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like the "grab a partner" as if it doesn't matter who.

<comment><USER12> I kind of want to try this with someone from a gender I'm not sexually attracted to who is also not sexually attracted to my gender. I'm assuming we'd just end up closer friends.

<comment><USER13> Or gay.

<comment><USER11> Or straight, depending on where you started.

But much of this thread is assuming "in love" (in the sense this practice purportedly produces) is a state that is inherently linked to sexuality. I'm not sure whether or not that's the case.

<comment><USER14> Well, tightly connecting it to sexuality carries an implicit assertion that asexual people cannot love (or be "in love"). Seems untenable.

<comment><USER11> It might motivate the assumption, but it doesn't have to be the case. One can imagine a model where there is some fact about a person that determines who they can fall in love with, and that hetero-, homo-, and bisexuality fall out of that for people with interest in sex, but which is still present but possibly less observable for asexual people. I have no particular confidence that this matches reality well at all, but it should be enough to show that there's no logical implication...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of Friendstrap: [http://gameovenstudios.com/category/friendstrap/#description](http://gameovenstudios.com/category/friendstrap/#description)

<comment><AUTHOR> Friendstrap looks awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awesome to see this! After reading the article, I too thought about making an app for it, but kudos to you for beating me to the punch.

I might suggest making a native app though. Several developers made an absolute killing off their native versions of the NYT's 7 minute workout article (eventually pushing the NYT to release their own app).

<comment><AUTHOR> Releasing it in the next day or so in app store ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did not have desired result. However, it did reveal that my parter was a replicant.

</comment><comment><USER18> I appreciate this for the same reason I appreciate metasploit.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.metasploit.com/](http://www.metasploit.com/) ?

<comment><USER18> Yeah. I think of this fall-in-love trick as a sort of hack. It's certainly not how we expect humans to work. Like metasploit, this service takes full advantage of the vulnerability to bring it to light. Not that there's much that can be done about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I found this study a few years ago, I met a women where i was working told hr about it. A few weeks later I got the courage to ask her out on a date, (She accepted :) and we did the 36 questions together - a year later we are now married. It's such a powerful thing to do with someone you have just met.

Found this as well if anyone is interested - they have made a film about the study in down under Australia, says online it comes out in 2015, heres the link:

[https://www.facebook.com/pages/36-Questions-The- Movie/279767...](https://www.facebook.com/pages/36-Questions-The- Movie/279767198842157)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3511822/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3511822/)

PLD

<comment><AUTHOR> can you email me? I'd love to talk to you more about your experience...

firstname.lastname@example.com

I'm the creator of LoveActualize.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Bug: On Nokia N900's MicroB browser on each step forward or backward it jumps over one question, effectively skipping half of them in total.

I'm aware that it's a really old engine (from somewhere around Firefox 3.5 times), but it sounds like something trivial to fix.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really like the carousel. Nevertheless, for those that are too lazy to click 36 times:

Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

Would you like to be famous? In what way?

Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?

What would constitute a "perfect" day for you?

When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?

Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.

For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

Take 4 minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.

If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?

Is there something that you've dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven't you done it?

What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?

What do you value most in a friendship?

What is your most treasured memory?

What is your most terrible memory?

If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?

What does friendship mean to you?

What roles do love and affection play in your life?

Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of 5 items.

How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people's?

How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

Make 3 true "we" statements each. For instance "We are both in this room feeling ... "

Complete this sentence: "I wish I had someone with whom I could share ... "

If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.

Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time saying things that you might not say to someone you've just met.

Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.

When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

Tell your partner something that you like about them already.

What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?

Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?

Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?

Share a personal problem and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

Almost done. Now silently look into your partners eyes for 4 Minutes.

Congrats! You're in love! :)

<comment><USER22> where are the interview answers? it's no good just having the questions, I won't know what to say!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here's an alternative version featuring random questions: [http://www.fallinloveapp.com](http://www.fallinloveapp.com)

</comment><comment><USER16> Since I'd already started my own version before seeing this, decided to release it anyways. Quite similar, though mine is integrated into more of a story/post format.

[http://www.cafe.com/relationships/questioning- love?u=d39da61...](http://www.cafe.com/relationships/questioning- love?u=d39da615-3bc1-4c0a-a3ef-55c19558fbde)

</comment><comment><USER24> Whilst I appreciate that it may not always be easy to create significant 'chat' on a first date and an app like this enables two people to enter into questions which would otherwise not be asked and through the safety of a third party arbiter, does it not enhance the way our culture arbitrarily relates to love as something that is possible to manufacture and causes no risk to the individual? An "app for falling in love"!!! The safety of these generic questions and the way they avert an danger of imaginative import from either party effectively over throws the possibility of the fall (i.e. risk, danger, ingenuity) required to fall in love. Zizek recently compared online dating and modern dating techniques (like this) to arranged marriages: neither allow for the individual risk to fall in love (become something other than they are through love) as both are moderated by an all powerful other, on the one hand the parents with their infinite gaze into our lives and on the other the normative values of our society that we find no way of freeing ourselves from if we try to enter into love through the reproduction of cliches like this app encourages us to.

<comment><USER25> You lost me at "whilst". OK, not really, but your writing reads like an audition to a contest I'm not holding. Why not just say, "taking risks in love frees us and this app doesn't do that"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Quickly looked over it. Needs spellcheck.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's possible I'm mildly dyslexic as my spelling is terrible. Thanks for the reminder I need extra eyes to get this production ready.. Also, been grinding all day. Thanks for checking it out!

<comment><USER27> To help you out, "Couples therapists estimate that only 5% of relationships ever break out of the power struggle and into true intimacy and self _actulization_." s/actu/actua/ I guess? In the page titled "Warning!".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! Been on a product bender for 36 hours and now have media stuff popping. Fun times in the Love Lab ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> At the risk of my servers being breached / destroyed... I've embedded an easter egg for you guys.. If you unlocked it, it will add an extra final slide that should be useful for first dates ;)

[http://imgur.com/6mI0NzN](http://imgur.com/6mI0NzN)

Don't QUESTION LOVE!

</comment><comment><USER28> It says "a gift to all humans", but [http://loveactualized.com/robots.txt](http://loveactualized.com/robots.txt) does not appear to deny the gift to robots!

<comment><AUTHOR> hahaha... humans are a subset of the superset of who the gift is for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your > partner. Share a total of 5 items.

Could someone explain this question to me?

</comment><comment><USER30> Add the space so it shows up in the Show HN tab.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Any chance this is open-source? I'd love to translate it to Spanish, at a request of my non-English speaking friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok I set up a google doc where you can translate the questions if you'd like to translate.. We will credit the folks who help translate. For now anyone with the link can edit..

[http://bit.ly/1xjb2xh](http://bit.ly/1xjb2xh)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> That was quick.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was sprinting all day to crank it out! Think I started around 11am and went live 11pm. Thanks for checking it out.

<comment><USER33> Can you write up here what you had to do?

The reason I ask is I immediately thought, "Hey it's just a list of questions, and a way to move between pages. Shouldn't take more than an hour." But software projects are often underestimated. What took you 12 ??

<comment><USER34> I'm not the OP (and, btw, would love to hear the real answer) but having been through the exact same process (both the "it should only take an hour" and "wow how did that take 12 hours?" parts), here's my general answer:

Some things just take way longer than we think they will. Sometimes it's sheer mis-estimation (setting up the basic CSS style sheet, getting the layout to look nice, getting the transitions working properly, etc. all seem simple but still require raw time and effort), and sometimes it's just that nasty bit that _should_ be easy and just ends up not being easy ("why isn't the DIV centering??") and you blink and 3 hours have gone by. And that part should have taken 30 seconds.

So it no longer surprises me when things that should be simple end up taking 10 or 100x as long.

BTW - fantastic article on this subject I read recently:

[http://blog.hut8labs.com/coding-fast-and- slow.html](http://blog.hut8labs.com/coding-fast-and-slow.html)

That all being said - OP - would love to hear about your process.

<comment><AUTHOR> YES.. I'm also more of a hack than a hacker so I often have to relearn stuff and nuance. Today my tech cofounder from PRMatch.com forced me to goto sleep and basically said he was going to do the ios / android apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It would be interesting to see how much traffic spiked after Mark Zuckerberg liked it. Do you have any data?

<comment><AUTHOR> I missed the Zuck like. Happy to share a snapshot of the traffic if I can find the timestamp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Suggestion: rename it as "The Love App". Easier to remember, better for media.

<comment><AUTHOR> I set up a $150 Reward Namestorm™ over at Bootname.com to see what happens to float through. Put a buck-fiddy in there as a thanks to the community to see what we come up with.

[https://bootname.com/website/04238657-the-app-for-falling- in...](https://bootname.com/website/04238657-the-app-for-falling-in-love)

Bootname is a site that runs crowdsourced name brainstorming contests aka "Namestorms" and is a Codective Ventures Portfolio company of which I am co- founder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder how well some of these questions could be adapted for job interviews.

</comment><comment><USER37> I fucking hate you guys. We're both crying now.

This game sucks.

<comment><AUTHOR> That can be a good thing to process difficult emotions together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> www.peeps.club connects people (around NYC) biweekly to exchange these 36 questions in person, one on one.

</comment><comment><USER39> I enjoyed that article too. Bravo.

</comment><comment><USER40> Was this made in one day?

<comment><AUTHOR> Started about 11am yesterday, and I think it went live around 2am today. Then stayed up polishing it and then there was a ton of comments online to answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Perfect for a first date"? Taking a 90 minute computer quiz? Snort.

<comment><AUTHOR> Idea is that you'd have the app running and actually have the conversations. I'd be excited to try it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Sad that we need an app to fall in love now ... kudos for making the app though

<comment><USER43> There was no golden age of analog love. Love needs all the help it can get.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you ever read the book Wired Love? It's about two telegraph operators falling in love via morse code. It's from the late 1800's.

[http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2013/07/wired_...](http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2013/07/wired_love_a_ta.php)</comment></comment></comment>


That Sly MINIX – BSD Now 74 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvZKZ4yXbKE

<comment><AUTHOR> Allan Jude of BSDNow interviews Andrew Tanenbaum about the history and current state of MINIX. The interview begins at 21:15.</comment>


The Consumer Is In Charge. Of What? - <AUTHOR> http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-consumer-is-in-charge-of-what.html

<comment><USER2> > Never before have the choices for consumers been so concentrated.

Choice is a flood they are trying to drown you with.

There are 40,000+ grocery products in your supermarket, 50 years ago there were 1000. 10 _new_ SKU's for groceries are issued _every day_ , with a peak in the 1970s of 17 _per day_.

70-80% of these products will fail.

The retail grocery industry spends nearly $1m _per store_ on those failed products.

> consumers

Consumer + voter still equals twice nothing. - Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.</comment>


Minnesota's First Tech Accelerator Now Taking Applications - <AUTHOR> http://tech.mn/news/2011/04/01/project-skyway-minnesotas-first-technology-accelerator/

<comment><USER2> First point.

$6000 in funding that comes with all these restrictions and gives away 9% of ownership is a terrible deal. It values your company at only $67,000.

If your company is only going to be worth $67,000 or less you should stop what you are doing right now and get a job working in services or retail.

On the other hand, if your company is worth much more than $67k, then this is not a good deal at all. VCs are not going to invest unless they think the company will be worth much more than $67k.

Second point.

If you need $6000 and somehow have not managed to save $6000 in the bank working as an engineer or designer then you should also reconsider whether you have the skills to create a successful tech company out of nothing.

Third point.

If you can't get a credit card with a greater than $6000 limit because of poor credit, please consider whether your financial skills are conducive to running a business.

Summary.

If $6000 is what you need to launch your company, borrow the money from mom, sell your car, or get a job for a couple months and save it.

<comment><USER3> Bugsy,

First point: Then don't apply.

Second point - Read... Then read some more. Do a little research on what you get when you are accepted by an accelerator. We are not fortunate enough to have a benefactor like Yuri Milner who is blind betting on an entire system (yet), but then neither are the companies we will fund. We fall directly in line with what most other accelerators invest.

Third and most important point: It's not really about the money. I think if you asked folks who had successfully started, built and exited from an early stage company, if they would give up between 6%-9% to be able to "accelerate their personal and business development; get expert legal advice; learn how to build decent financial models; learn how to build and manage a team; get their software built; get to work closely with and get exposed to hundreds of investors... they would say "absolutely" at least they would if they were smart.

Plus, most accelerators bring in investors to help companies learn how to write a good investor pitch, build a strong case for their business and present themselves in a way that investors feel comfortable with. The they turn around and listen to the pitches from companies that they helped mold. The advantage of this model is too obvious to require elaboration.

Eel was right when speaking of the REAL benefits.

Unfortunately, we haven't done a very good job communicating who our "Captains" (mentors, advisors, investors and friends) are. There will be a more detailed list of mentors and investors on the site shortly, but I assure you that we have the chops and the connections to make the Project Skyway experience a a worthwhile endeavor for early stage tech companies.

So, forget about the $6k. It is there to get you through three months; to pay your cell bill; buy groceries and keep you from having to supplement your income to a degree that you can't focus on your company, your customers, your products and your personal development. It is there to help you become the full-time, balls-out, "Go Big or Go Home" entrepreneur that you will have to be in order to be successful.

<comment><USER2> Regarding applying, I run my own business and I am sure I make more than all you guys combined. My comments are because this is posted on HN not on your web site and I have a right to comment. Maybe some kids will read my comments and realize how bizarre a $6000 offer is all things considered.

Sure, I understand that you are claiming to provide all sorts of introductions to power players, politicians and the illuminati who your site implies are your close and personal friends. Presumably then like Facebook one can get laws passed requiring internet ID and position themselves to get a monopoly. Work the system and create a global police state rather than provide a solid product customers want and choose to use voluntarily because it is valuable to them. Not all creators want to go the route of leveraging politicians with bribes and back door deals to succeed. Some of us just want to make a solid product free from interference from so corrupted politicians working to squash entrepreneurs that don't cut them in for a share as if they are the mafia.

Who are you guys again? How many successful businesses have you founded? Which politicians exactly are you related to and what are examples of your past successes influencing them in subversion of democracy?

A lot of innuendo, very little specifics. It all sounds like a bunch of big talkers looking to grab a slide of ownership of a bunch of companies for peanuts when those companies don't need any such help to succeed.

My opinion would be different if the offers weren't so tiny.

$6000 is nothing. Typical software product should be selling $6000 worth in a day or at most a week or what is the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love how detailed their website is. They know exactly what they're looking for, who's companies they can make a difference with, and they're upfront about it. I'm really interested to see who comes out of this Accelerator since they're so focused.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a long time coming. Project Skyway has the coolest selection process ever for an accelerator plus they don't require a technical co-founder because they are providing every single team 2 full-time developers.

<comment><USER5> Kudos to the launch.

The makeup of the founding team thing will be the make or break. I've barely seen a recent success story of a startup where less then 100% of the founders were technical. It used to be possible but I expect that times have changed in this regard.

Bluntly, this approach sounds wrong to me from an investment portfolio strategy point of view but I'm glad you are taking the risk and try it.

I definitely think that being in Minnesota will be a competitive advantage however. The area is vastly underrated and pretty incredible talents live and work there. Best of luck to your team and project.

<comment><USER6> > _I've barely seen a recent success story of a startup where less then 100% > of the founders were technical._

Groupon and Zyngas's founders aren't programmers. I'd say they're the two biggest hits of the last 5 years.

<comment><USER7> Correction: Andrew Mason actually is a programmer. He built Groupon in Rails.

Also, as the other commenter pointed out, Mark Pincus's co-founder Justin Waldron is a programmer, but Zynga's probably a bad example anyway because Pincus was very much an accomplished entrepreneur with a lot of resources at hand prior to founding Zynga.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From their application:

"Each member must have a moderately full [LinkedIn] profile with a minimum of 2 recommendations and 50 connections."

Is this a thing now?

<comment><USER3> It actually is "a thing" now...or at least it is for us (Project Skyway).

We definitely questioned ourselves as to why we might want to include something like this. In the end, we feel it is a proxy for one's dedication to develop one's network. Certainly it is not the only measure by which one could reasonably judge someone's ability to have become involved in a community and it may not even be the right one, but social networking is a valuable asset and is a tool upon which many of us rely as part of an overall strategy to forward our business' goals.

Plus, because we don't have a crystal ball into which we can peer to ascertain the kinds of networks and organizations our founders have chosen to become involved with, this gives us some information that we might otherwise not be able to get. In the end though, this is just one small piece of a bigger puzzle that we are trying to construct which will ultimately tell us a lot about the people that we will be working with and giving money to.

Project Skyway is about the people, more than just the idea, because people run companies; people succeed or fail; and people are the most valuable asset (or the greatest liability) in any early stage company. We are looking for kick-ass PEOPLE with kick-ass ideas because without one, the other doesn't matter.

<comment><USER8> With all due respect, consider that I am a tech guy with business sense, trying to get seed level funding solo in the Midwest.

LinkedIn represents all the bullshit I wish I could skip in the startup scene. LinkedIn is all the corporate politics and multi-tiered organizational madness I am trying to escape from by launching a startup.

So on the one hand, I feel like I am the prime demographic you should be trying to attract and recruit, but that LinkedIn requirement, combined with the "you don't need a tech guy" stance; it smells like a bullshit factory.

<comment><USER9> I don't know the roots of your strong emotional reaction against Linkedin but at the end of the day we all have our own opinions. Project Skyway can't be everything to everyone. Wish you the best. And I mean it.

<comment><USER8> You're saying that you are a "tech accelerator" who values social networking more highly than technical skills. I'm just kind of baffled by the implications of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Direct Link: <http://www.ProjectSkyway.com>

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice to see some more start-up activity in the mid-west!

<comment><USER11> Agreed! We thought the coasts were getting a little too cocky, hence, we knew we had to break out Project Skyway...<http://j.mp/acceleratormap>

<comment><USER12> Proven returns isn't being cocky. If your plan to compete directly with the coasts startup for startup, idea for idea I wish you the best of luck. I'm going to have to short your stock though. The Midwest at this time and possibly forever can't compete against the coasts for the types of startups project skyway is looking for. They have more quality talent for web/mobile/social/etc. They have more advanced networks and streamlined capitalization. They also have founders going on startup three, four, five and not all successful. If I had a web/mobile/social/etc startup or saw myself being a founder of one, the first thing I would do is move. The statistics of success dictate such.

Things brings up a problem see with project skyway. You are left funding founders not dedicated enough to their startups to move and give their startups the best chance. I would have serious reservations about investing in such a founder.

Incumbators were great even two years ago but now they really aren't as necessary. Thanks to Angel List you don't have to pay an accelerator for access to the network. In the world of Angel List an accelerator is actually a decelerator. If you have an idea for a startup, get a prototype done and submit it to Angel List. If it's got merit, you'll get interest. If not, move onto something else. I view project skyway more as a founder school that you pay with equity rather than an accelerator. I wish it would market itself as such.

The Midwest can kick the coasts' ass any day of the week but not with the type of companies project skyway wants. It's with the type of companies it specifically doesn't want.

I wish project skyway the best (that's Minnesota nice for I don't think it will work).

<comment><USER9> I am the founder of Project Skyway. Just checked out your web site Matt. Great product. Great accomplishment. Would love to have you in our network.

To respond to your comments, we chose not to entertain any device companies like yours because we do not have the expertise, network or resources to benefit these types of companies at this point. Since this is our first class, we wanted to have a narrow focus. This might change however as we add individuals like you to our network. If you don't fell for the spell of the coasts, that is, and continue to enjoy what MN has to offer to our entrepreneurial community.

BTW, I can make an intro for you to the CEO of one of the largest health clubs in the country. They do a lot of biking related events. Might be a good partner to get the word out about your product. Let me know.

<comment><USER12> _Just checked out your web site Matt. Great product. Great accomplishment. Would love to have you in our network._

My company is specifically listed as an example of a company you're not interested in on your website FAQ and you just checked out our website? Additionally I say something challenging about Project Skyway and you ask me to join your network? Thanks but you're better served by guys like Rob Weber and Justin Kaufenberg. They made it. I'm just in the process of.

 _we chose not to entertain any device companies like yours because we do not have the expertise, network or resources to benefit these types of companies at this point._

This is the part I just don't get. MN has more expertise in MedDev (Medtronic, Guidant, Mayo, United Health Care, etc) and hardware (Compellent, Xiotech, Cray, IBM, etc) than anything else. I guess I would add advertising to that list (Fallon, Olsen, Brew).

 _If you don't fell for the spell of the coasts, that is, and continue to enjoy what MN has to offer to our entrepreneurial community._

I'm staying. See above for the reason.

In the end Cem you've made a bet with your own money. We'll see how it plays out.

<comment><USER9> "My company is specifically listed as an example of a company you're not interested in on your website FAQ and you just checked out our website?"

Many people are working together to build Project Skyway. Although I approved our FAQ, I didn't make the connection when I saw your company name.

MN might have more expertise in MedDev or hardware or advertising. I don't. As you stated I am betting my own money. Naturally I put it where I know the most. I would invest in real estate in FL before I invest in a med company. And how much do you think I know about investing in real estate in FL?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Now that the Tevatron is being decommissioned, perhaps we can reuse it as a "tech accelerator". One stream will be VCs at 512GeV, and the other stream will be people with ideas for Facebook clones. Then we just aim them at each other, and suddenly the HN frontpage will have 1TeV less annoyance.

What I meant to say is: "tech accelerator" is a dumb name.

</comment><comment><USER14> Good luck guys! It's nice to see that there's a tech / startup scene getting going in Minnesota.</comment>


Tesla sues Alameda County to force California factory reopening - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/09/tesla-sues-alameda-county-to-force-california-factory-reopening/ <comment><USER2> Active discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129942)

Also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23126517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23126517)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23127552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23127552)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129216)

</comment><comment><USER3> Elon said they have been able to reopen safely in China, and that zero of their 7,000 employees there have died of Corona.

Joe Rogan challenged him on this, asking "how can you trust the Chinese media"?

Elon's answer: We don't have to rely on the media. We know how many people we have. We have to; we do payroll.

He has a point. And zero is a pretty good number.

If they know how to do it in China, they can apply those same safety measures elsewhere. I wish he would also acknowledge family spread and fatalities if there are any, because that can also be a thing. But still, hard news, this is something we are going to have to live with for a while. And they are managing it pretty well in one factory at least.

Also if you haven't ever been to a Tesla factory... it's not a place where people are crammed together by any means. It's vast. Workers are quite spread out for the most part.

<comment><USER4> I can't follow his logic whatsoever.

China...actually handled this outbreak. That's why they can reopen. They were locked down for months in many areas. So that comparison if anything is a justification not to reopen right now - stay locked down long enough to squash this, and we'll be able to safely reopen like China.

If anything he should be suing the county for putting on such an ineffective lockdown which makes this take longer than it needed to. Businesses are forced to close but for individuals it's basically a completely voluntary lockdown right now and I see lots of people opting out, not wearing masks, meeting up with friends, etc.

<comment><USER3> The way you talk about people's behavior, meeting up with friends and such, it almost sounds like going to work in the factory would actually be safer, because people are so physically separated there in their different tasks.

BTW if you don't wear a mask and go out without getting within 6 feet of anyone, you're not opting out of California guidance. You're following it. Masks are for if you do expect to encounter situations where you are closer than 6 feet for an extended time. People are lazy and don't read the fine print, and they miss this part.

<comment><USER4> > BTW if you don't wear a mask and go out without getting within 6 feet of > anyone, you're not opting out of California guidance.

Exactly, this is the type of half-assed measures that may be preventing our decline in cases. (If it's not, and there is good evidence of exactly what types of activities California's continued plateau of cases is coming from, I would be very interested to read about that).

Unless you're in a very rural area, you can't possibly be sure that you won't have to pass within 6 ft of someone when you go outside. A single other person walking on the sidewalk with you is going to inevitably be less than 6 ft away. Not to mention that the 6ft advice was just ballpark to begin with, and the virus can seemingly travel further in e.g. the slipstreams of a runner or biker's breath, or even hang around in the air. Masks should be required even outside during the Phase 1, full-lockdown phase. It's a such a minor additional inconvenience for people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been wondering for a while what the legal mechanism for shutting down businesses in the US actually is. I'm not being snarky, I just literally don't understand the legal mechanism.

Prior to this crisis I would not have thought shutting down businesses at large scale would be possible without legislation. But I haven't heard of much legislative proceedings.

Have governor's and local officials always had very broad powers over people and businesses, they just never used it at scale until the pandemic? I understand if there is a disaster and you can't convene the legislature fast enough to respond, and you need 72 hours of time to let the legislature come together (for example an earthquake or terrorist event). But there has been plenty of time now for our normal legislative process to resume. Does this have to do with an emergency declaration? Is there a limit to how long an emergency can be declared (like 60 days of a year)?

<comment><USER6> The CDC and/or FEMA having emergency powers during pandemics beyond what might be expected was something of a sci-fi trope for years. I guess there was some kernel of truth to that premise.

Example from the sci-fi game Deus Ex:

> Informed Guard: _Executive Order 10990. It lets us take over all modes of > transportation._

> New Guard: _FEMA can do that?_

> Informed Guard: _If the President declares an emergency. Executive Order > 10995. We can take over the media._

> New Guard: _All of it?_

> Informed Guard: _Any at all. Executive Order 10997. We can take command of > natural resources._

> New Guard: _So it 's all legal. _

> Informed Guard: _The National Security Act also falls under our umbrella. > And the Defense Production Act. If he plays his cards right, Walton Simons > can pull off a bloodless coup._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone actually know what Alameda re-opening criteria the Tesla plan doesn't satisfy?

[https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/T...](https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/Tesla- Return-to-Work-Playbook.pdf)

<comment><USER8> I can't find it right now but I read it also had to do with the fact that they violated safety laws multiple times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When the China plant reopened, how many new cases a day were being reported in that plant's city? I was under the impression that China didn't reopen until the detected new infection rate was zero.

</comment><comment><USER10> Given the good Tesla does environment-wise, I'd favor letting them re-open.

Musk sure knows how to get people's attention. Maybe he's got a future in politics.

<comment><USER11> >Maybe he's got a future in politics.

Hopefully as the first King of Mars.

<comment><USER12> Apparently many Terrans would be happy to see him gone.</comment></comment></comment>


Derivatives of Regular Expressions - <AUTHOR> http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2293/ <comment><USER2> All of the links to the paper in the comments are bitrotted; here's one that works <http://lcs.ios.ac.cn/~chm/papers/derivative-tr200910.pdf> .

Screw the ACM for paywalling this and many, many other papers.

<comment><USER3> This is a different paper. Did you even glance at the author name? It is from 2010 whereas the paper the article is talking about is from 1964.

<comment><USER4> Google to the rescue!

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=A0F...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=A0F003DF0DE36FA47DB90ABFB9C8E13E?doi=10.1.1.98.4378&rep=rep1&type=pdf)</comment></comment></comment>


Scholarships for the Consensys Blockchain Developer Bootcamp - <AUTHOR> We've got 10 Blockchain Development Bootcamp scholarships (program cost is $985 USD per student) from ConsenSys to give to coders via Brainia!
The Bootcamp provides learning through multi-modal content, assignments, and hands-on projects, access to mentors and course creators, and networking opportunities.
You'll have extra support from Brainia and Blockchain Acceleration Foundation (BAF) for mentorship, extra curriculum, hands-on projects, and opportunities!
If you are interested in the scholarship you can apply from the link here:
Apply: https://forms.gle/aUamfffksGGrcrvFA
More details can be founded here: https://consensys.net/academy/bootcamp/ https://courses.consensys.net/courses/blockchain-developer-bootcamp-registration-2020 <comment><USER2> Blockchain "skills" effectively have almost zero value in the current climate.

I used to consult directly with Consensys and the like of Protocol Labs etc, been involved in Eth for a long time. Blockchain dev in 2020 is effectively useless...

Please use your time and money to learn something useful, don't give your money / time to these scammers ;) .

<comment><USER3> [https://defipulse.com](https://defipulse.com) would like a word with you</comment></comment>


What is the best way to network with YC Alum? - <AUTHOR>

So summer applications are being accepted, awesome! I am really excited to put mine in the mix but I am even more excited to start taking to YC Alumni, getting advice, and possibly meeting with them. Where do you think I should start besides scraping their personal emails from old documents they posted online? <comment><USER2> If you've only applied I'd say the wrong way is to cold-call them. The best way is to reach out through your network -- you really should get an intro through someone who knows you.

If you do get accepted and want advice for the interview then YC alums become pretty responsive. But before that you're one of thousands and if they don't know you it's not worth the time. There are tons of great blog posts on how to write a good application, the most important of which is be concise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I was considering cold emailing haha. I did get one response that which was great but I was hoping there was another method to reach out to them. I realize that they are incredibly busy but I also heard that they are also really cool. Many people have said that they (for the most part) into helping others.</comment></comment>


Gproc - Erlang Global Process Registry - <AUTHOR> http://rklophaus.com/blog/2009/9/16/gproc-erlang-global-process-registry.html

<comment><USER2> Make sure to read the blog comments! Ulf Wiger has posted some new updated code that isn't reflected in the blog post.

</comment><comment><USER3> just a quick bug to point out, the code under "Start a shell with GProc" isnt html escaped, so we see the html entities for ></comment>


What are the Best hg/Mercurial Extensions? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1869040/what-are-the-best-and-must-have-hg-mercurial-extensions

<comment><USER2> I've written about Hg & Git before here on HN. Primarily, my argument was that Hg was easy and Git was simple (in the way Rich Hickey defined those terms). I started with Hg, but moved to Git, and I'll never look back. The top answer here is like a cheat sheet to why: Git has nearly all of those plugins baked in. This guy has moved from Mercurial to Mercurial in Git mode... He might as well just switch to git proper!

\--

Standard git distribution, all enabled by default:

color: standard config

pager: on by default

fetch: pull/fetch/merge/rebase distinction in git

graphlog: log --oneline --graph --decorate

hgk: gitk

bookmarks: standard branches

record: normal use of the index

extdiff: difftool

share: standard clone behavior on a local file system

mq: standard usage of branches and rebase

transplant: cherry-pick and rebase

rebase: built in

inotify: status is already fast... not sure why I'd need this

shelve: stash

attic: stash

acl: use multiple repositories & submodules

histedit: rebase -i

forrest: submodules

\--

Some assembly required:

notify: .git/hooks + sendmail

bigfiles: git-annex

<comment><USER3> I feel like I have to respond to some of these, as the response is kind of a lot of out of date information. Here goes:

forest is actually obsoleted by the built-in subrepo feature.

bookmarks are always on now - the extension is now a no-op.

transplant is (mostly? it was for my needs) obsoleted by graft - a core command that's smarter.

mq I don't personally use anymore, because of bookmarks, rebase, and histedit

hsitedit - ships in the distro now, off by default (see below)

inotify - hg status /is/ fast. This makes it _stupid_ fast even on absurdly large working copies (extension is subject to some race conditions though. I don't recommend it. bos is doing some work to make this faster w/o the extension).

acl: I think you're missing the point? It lets you have certain users allowed to push mods to a subset of files /without/ having to resort to multiple repositories (which are a hassle, even with submodules or subrepos).

Also, there's a reason some of these features are off by default - most users shouldn't be touching them. Having a barrier to using them has been (in my experience) a real benefit when trying to train newbies.

Also, some of us think pager is a misfeature - it drives me bonkers anytime git "helps" me in that way.

<comment><USER2> I didn't notice the date on the answer. Someone with StackOverflow edit powers really ought to go back and update the response. It's nice to see that Mercurial is integrating these things into the core. My experience with Hg was over 3 years ago, before this answer was written.

RE: acl -- I understand it. I just don't really see a need for it because I prefer pull-requests and decentralized decision making. I truly dislike the "commit bit" culture that accompanies centralized repositories and acls seems to import some of that culture. I'm a big believer in better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission, and therefore I'd much rather say "Hey, I changed these files, you should pull from me" and if I fucked up, you can call me an idiot and I'll have learned something. Maybe put a README in the special directories! Then again, I feel similarly about method access control in C++ & Java vs Python. Python's underscore prefix for private bits is enough to stop me from screwing up, even though I can dig in and fiddle with private stuff if I actually know what I'm doing and no compiler is going to stop me.

> most users shouldn't be touching them

Mercurial is clearly designed for easy of learning. That's a worthwhile goal, and I think that it's great at that. As I mentioned, I started with Mercurial. It's a great offramp from SVN and onramp to DVCS.

However, my version control system gets more use than any software on my system, minus my text editor! It's worth learning. It's worth investing in. And it's worth having a sub-par beginner experience to optimize for the experts.... for me. I'd recommend Hg to any team looking to get started with DVCS where there is a mix of stronger and weaker devs and you're sure to have people who are going to have difficulty understanding Git. Hg is easy enough for beginners and flexible enough for experts. Git, however, is tuned for experts. I know quite a few people who have worked with both, and they all prefer Git... in time.

<comment><USER4> I'm the author of the original SO answer. I've updated the entry to reflect info posted here and on SO. Let me know if there's anything missed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Plug for my own hg-github extension: <https://github.com/stephenmcd/hg-github>

It's a thin wrapper over the hg-git extension that lets me push my Bitbucket repos to GitHub for all my open source projects. I can then accept pull requests on both Bitbucket and GitHub, and merge and push back to both. As a Mercurial/GitHub fan managing projects with a decent amount of activity, it's fairly seamless.

<comment><USER3> Shiny! Have you considered writing some tests for that? Mercurial's testrunner and .t files makes it pretty easy.

<comment><USER5> I haven't, shame on me. I guess I thought it was such a small piece of code that it wasn't worth it.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does Windows Mobile have a future? - <AUTHOR>

I am planning to buy a smartphone which I will have to use for next 3 years. I was wondering if WinMo is a good OS of choice.<p>I have to open a lot of word documents and ppts and mails. What can be other alternative ? <comment><USER2> The newer Blackberrys have 'Documents to go' that allow you to read .doc when they are incoming and edit and send .doc from your phone.

The same is true for .ppt and .xls

Email is standard on all smart phones.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say it's pretty good if you're really tied into Windows, and even better if you're a Windows developer.

If not, I'd go with a Nokia N900, Blackberry, iPhone, then Android, in that order; the N900 just has a ridiculous number of features, Blackberry has built their business on enterprise support, the iPhone has good hardware and is relatively easy to develop for (if you want to), and Android is just a bit "meh" for me at this point.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd avoid Windows Mobile. It's stagnating and is not as beautiful as iPhone or as open, hackable and nice as Android. BlackBerry might be worth checking out too.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. The only situation in which I'd choose Windows Mobile in is if I were getting a HD2. The sense ui that HTC built on top of windows mobile is quite nice and the device is amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have an HD2, replacing an iPhone. The HD2 is the only winmobile phone I would recomend as it meets the windows 7 hardware requirements. It's vastly better at some things than the iPhone but doesn't have the App Store :(. You can still find most applications that you need but games are not as good.

</comment><comment><USER7> No.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does windows mobile system has future? Didn't know jokes were allowed on HN :P</comment>


OSCON 2010: Rob Pike, "Public Static Void" - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kj5ApnhPAE&

<comment><USER2> "Why do languages look like this[Ugly]?"

Because they have generics and Go doesn't. That is a good thing?

<comment><USER3> the main complaint was about having to say the same thing multiple times, Generics does imply at least some additional syntax but the degree to which java or C++ requires it is excessive.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does having a family makes you less of a startup material? - <AUTHOR> There have been a lot of advices that you should do startups while you are young and single. I've been single for quite some time. Now that I have a year old kid, I noticed a strange thing - it feels like I'm getting done more than before.<p>Not quite sure why, maybe it's because having a family makes your life more organized? <comment><USER2> I recently had a daughter and I've found that there's 2 things going on:

1) I'm generally more focused and efficient when I work since time is more scarce.

2) I'm more motivated now since I've got the little one depending on me. The instinct to provide for another is a powerful one.

<comment><USER3> My first baby is on the way...it scary to think that another life depends on me now but it also drives me to optimize my work so that I will have more time to spend on things/persons/events that really matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> With a family, freelancing and consulting is your friend. It allows you the flexibility in schedule to pursue ideas and to work with other individuals that are in the start-up arena. You meet a lot of young companies in that line of work and you see a variety of problems. If you find a group who has an idea that you like but they cant provide a paying gig yet, you can scale your freelancing to provide the necessities while allowing you the free time to commit to a project. I freelance and consult for 3-4 days of my week, take weeks off at a time and still do well over 150k a year this gives me time to peruse the back log of ideas that me and two of my close friends have. I have 4 kids, a wife and grandparents that I take care of and I can say without a doubt that I have never felt more secure in my life than when I started freelancing. Well technically that is not true, I had a moderately sizable exit from the sale of a travel company that it gave me a nest egg, but even if that was not there, I would feel more secure than someone else making decisions about my future.

Point being, get out of your day job and into freelancing first. Get to where you are working your 40hr week and another 40hr steady freelancing, this will allow you to build a nest egg while you are making the transition, then when you are getting 40hr a week freelancing and it is steady dump the day job, then start scaling your hours back freelancing until you meet an equilibrium of money to free-time to pursue projects.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it is a risk factor. I was almost not hired at a startup specifically because the owner was worried about the level of risk I was taking with wife/kids/house etc. That's a good boss to have, one looking out for me. Things turned out fine.

Personally, it does alter the level of risk I'm willing to take. Pre kids, I'd be willing to risk a lot more. Having kids makes me value my time which does force me to be focused. I'm willing to work long hours, but I split the time up. I work until 4-5 and spend time with the family. If there is work to be done, I'm back on after the kids are in bed. This could present a problem at some startups.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'll point you to some articles written by people more experienced than I at this:

anti-family: - Jason Friedman [http://www.humbledmba.com/the-drag-coefficient- scoring-syste...](http://www.humbledmba.com/the-drag-coefficient-scoring- system-how-to-de)

Pro-family: - Vivek Wadhwa <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1431263> [http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to- founding-s...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to-founding- successful-startups-old-guys-rule/)

Hope you find these helpful. Good luck!

<comment><USER4> _1 point: For every 5 years after the age of 20 - Jason Friedman_

The mortgage, loans, and kids I agree with. But there are many wives who not only support their husbands ambition but actively encourage it. If a wife is willing to endure the Ramen years then it is of no concern.

As for the quote that I referenced from Jason Friedman above, well he just entered ass clown status in my book.

Not only is that blatant age discrimination, but there are a lot of 30 somethings and 40 somethings that have a wealth of experience that a younger person has not experienced. I have had three successful exits through my 20's now 30's and I would say without a doubt my current me is 10:1 a better individual to have on a start-up team over the 23yr old me that had his first exit (that guy was scared shitless the whole time) or the 28hr old who had his second (that guy was too cocky). The 32yr old me played it just right and the X yr old me assumes he will have it down to a blueprint after the next one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It doesn't make you any less of startup material at all, it just puts you in a different environment.

The original advice comes because when you're young and single, you are without obligations, nothing to lose, able to take more risks, being naive (which can be good and bad), and being agile both location wise and time wise.

Said that, if you do have a family, I think that has a set of it's own advantages such forcing you to manage time better, likely to go after ventures that are more likely to succeed, and having a family behind you for support.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe it's because you're older and is able to manage your time more maturely.

Maybe having people that depends on you makes you more responsible.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your traumas? - <AUTHOR> What helps you most? <comment><USER2> No matter any other considerations, I have determined on a course of Love. Thus my past traumas are irrelevant, for it is the present trauma that some other suffers which it is my goal to succor. No matter what happens, the job remains the same - to love and care for those around me (not excluding myself).

</comment><comment><USER3> I know a trauma therapist. This is what she says:

If you're talking real trauma, I'd seek out a therapist licensed in EMD or EMDR. Data shows it's faster and more transformative that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It seems to work well for critical past events (rape, driving accident, etc). Sub-clinical trauma (like that often experienced by police officers) seems to respond if the event can be crystallized.

If you're talking about the trauma of something that isn't to that scale, say the trauma of being dissatisfied with how life is turning out, consider meditation.

</comment><comment><USER4> From the book "The Deepest Well"[1], she lists mindfulness, relationships, exercise, nutrition, mental health (ie therapy/medication)...

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33413909-the-deepest- wel...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33413909-the-deepest-well)

</comment><comment><USER5> I try to avoid things that could trigger them. If I do get triggered, I go for a run or do something active to get my mind at ease.

</comment><comment><USER6> By trying to systematise things because it is the only thing that gives me any sense of stability.

</comment><comment><USER7> I take the next step, and the one after that.</comment>


Levaquin Toxicity – Personal Story - <AUTHOR> https://floxiehope.com/garys-story-levaquin-toxicity/ <comment><USER2> As someone who suffers from (what I feel to be) undiagnosed and non-mainstream medical problems, I can only say this:

Whatever happened in the past has happened. Seeking to understand what happened to you might be futile. These writings are of a person who is clearly severely stressed and offended by what has happened to them.

Just control your anxiety about continuing to live with the symptoms, because some damage is permanent.

I personally am considering anxiety medicine and accepting whatever might happen because of it, because at this point I can barely function with the anxiety of past events.</comment>


Sprint, SoftBank Said in Informal Deal Talks With T-Mobile - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-12/sprint-softbank-said-to-start-informal-deal-talks-with-t-mobile <comment><USER2> This goes to show how disastrous a single bad business decision can be. When the 4G standards were still in flux, Sprint committed to WiMax and spent billions building a new network around it. Then the rest of the industry went with LTE, WiMax died, and Sprint had little money left to redo their network again. They've been basically on life support since.

<comment><USER3> The only way this merger would work is if the entirety of Sprint's leadership gets canned and replaced with T-Mobile's.

While Sprint has huge spectrum holdings to build out all sorts of network technologies, quite a bit of it is practically worthless. The really high band stuff is stopped by wet leaves.

They finally have some great new equipment coming online and things are improving, but their IP network is a mess and they rely on terribad CDMA 1X fallback for calls.

EDIT: I guess what I'm trying to say is this would only go through if DT receives a deal valuing TMUS more than it is. T-Mobile doesn't need Sprint and DT will continue to make money off TMUS. DT can wait to pick Sprint off when they inevitably go bankrupt. Sprint, however... they seriously had to advertise 'We're not that much worse than everyone else!'

<comment><USER4> The industry is moving to high-band and small cells for 5G, so Sprint will be well-positioned there. But building that is going to be insanely capital- intensive, and the question is whether Sprint has the money.

<comment><USER3> >The industry is moving to high-band and small cells for 5G, so Sprint will be well-positioned there. But building that is going to be insanely capital- intensive, and the question is whether Sprint has the money.

They don't, but Softbank could pony it up. T-Mobile is also well densified with Verizon also being comparable in this area.

AT&T is the one that sucks with densification right now and would most benefit the most by a Sprint acquisition. Nobody wants the trash fire though, so it comes down to what Sprint/Softbank might be able to afford. US Cellular would be an awesome target as well but anyone in the industry knows that that would have to be pried from the Carlson family's dead fingers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When the Nextel merger was allowed a few years ago, mobile phone plan prices per minute in the US increased by about 50% within six months. Suddenly the aggressively priced plans came with 600 minutes. What a joke.

There is absolutely no way that the DOJ antitrust division should allow more consolidation in this space.

It's far better to have reasonable, meaningful antitrust enforcement than all the perverse scenarios we end up with when we allow a small number of firms to be overly entrenched.

<comment><USER6> I'd love to see a citation for this, because it doesnt jive with my own memory.

Nextel was not really competing on price.. at all. They were priced as a high tier carrier (like Verizon), they also had the smallest network footprint out of the national carriers at the time.

<comment><USER7> Nextel was very much competing on price though.

Nextel's selling point was that it allowed Nextel subscribers to call other Nextel subscribers(via "push to talk") without incurring per minute charges(this was in the days before unlimited plans.)

It was the phone of construction and maintenance crews since it was basically a "walkie talkie." It wasn't a premium brand at all.

>"I'd love to see a citation for this, because it doesnt jive with my own memory."

I think you mean "jibe with your memory":

[http://the-penultimate-word.com/2012/06/23/jibe-or-jive-comm...](http://the- penultimate-word.com/2012/06/23/jibe-or-jive-common-error/)

<comment><USER6> Yes, I did use it incorrectly.

But they were priced like a high-tier carrier, I was their customer at the time (and worked in the telecom industry), and while you got unlimited Direct Connect (and they also had plans for free incoming) you paid significantly more for it - but you also got better customer service too (something which Sprint badly munged in the merger). Also, pretty much every carrier in 2004-7 had free mobile to mobile minutes, so I don't think the free calling thing as big as you might make it out to be - the selling point of direct connect was that it was push to talk, and not a phone call.

The other thing I'll note, having been in over 1000 cell sites for each of the carriers, the Nextel sites were 'gold plated' build outs, they were very clearly not built on a budget (almost all indoor sites (mostly in andrews shelters), most sites had a generator on site, much more extensive grounding, higher performance power systems, over provisioned power and backhaul for future expansion) - the only other carrier that comes close to this is Verizon.

[https://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2007/10/09/sprint-nextel- anatomy...](https://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2007/10/09/sprint-nextel-anatomy-of-a- failed-merger/) [https://www.scribd.com/doc/2621922/Sprint-Nextel-Merger- Anal...](https://www.scribd.com/doc/2621922/Sprint-Nextel-Merger-Analyzed)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> After reading Tim Wu's "The Master Switch" a few years ago, this can only be bad for consumers leading to less choices in the marketplace. Just one step closer to returning to the monopoly days of Ma Bell.

More competition leads to better innovation and better pricing for consumers.

<comment><USER9> It depends, sometimes the product involves so much infrastructure that new competition is basically impossible. Water, sewage, electric, gas, internet, wireless internet all require very heavy investments in infrastructure that make it impossible for newcomers to come in and compete.

These are the things that should be classified as utilities and just operated by taxpayers, since everyone needs it and everyone benefits from it.

<comment><USER4> How did four separate companies come into the market in the first place if "new competition is basically impossible?"

Many businesses are extremely infrastructure and capital intensive. Should the government also run shipping carriers like FedEx? What about retailers like Amazon?

<comment><USER10> 4 companies come into existence because historically the first US cell phone band was given in two parts, one to the local land line monopoly, one to someone else. All these were in small blocks of geographic area. The winners of this frequency started building cell towers and selling phones and quickly discovered their customers didn't like roaming changes. As a result they started consolidating: lots of little merges and buy outs. The land lines mostly became Verizon over the years as land line companies realized that running a cell phone network and land line are different enough that they couldn't do each effectively and so they spun the business off. In the mean time another block of frequencies was opened up and the result was 4 more companies got spectrum in each area (not the same areas of the first), and they too started merging. The big 4 are big because they have merged and/or bought enough spectrum to be essentially nationwide. There are some smaller regional companies left that are not nationwide.

<comment><USER11> well telekom/t-mobile bought itself in (more or less)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Its a tough call on 1 hand you have two carriers that have almost double the subscribers of the 3th and 4th carriers. So combining 3 and 4 would make it 3 big telcos competing for subscribers. On the other hand the users will loose a realistic choice from 4 to 3. Personally I wouldn't allow 1 or 2 to buy 3 or 4. But 3 or 4 combining I feel something people could live with.

<comment><USER13> I agree that this is a tough call. One additional wrinkle is Comcast's impending entrance, as a Verizon reseller that will also be leveraging their own wifi network. Comcast will start out as a small player in cellular, but because they're a big company and will be leveraging a large existing wifi network they may be able to grow relatively quickly.

I am generally not a huge fan of Comcast [1], but in this case I welcome their entrance to the cellular market and look forward to seeing how this shakes things up.

1: [https://medium.com/@nicklum/how-my-hatred-of-comcast- drove-m...](https://medium.com/@nicklum/how-my-hatred-of-comcast-drove-me-to- buy-their-stock-a17ca03a832f)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This could be interesting for Google Fi, since they currently contract with both carriers to provide the majority of their coverage in the US.

<comment><USER15> If by interesting you mean 'well, I guess rates are going up.'

<comment><USER16> Would that be legal? I don't know the terminology or the regulations, but the only reason Fi exists is because the carriers are required to share their infrastructure.

<comment><USER15> And these regulations stipulate a price?

<comment><USER16> I don't know, but you'd think so. Otherwise the carriers would set their price at $100/MB or something ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Should the fact that T-Mobile is GSM while Sprint is CDMA (as far as I recall) matter? Is 5G going to make that distinction go away (ignoring frequency issues, which I thought I read was still a concern)?

<comment><USER18> LTE has made the distinction go away. LTE is the next generation for both the 3GPP camp (GSM, UMTS/HSPA) and the 3GPP2 camp (CDMA, EVDO). From LTE onward, it's 3GPP only.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, except no. Sprint does all their calls over the CDMA network because they sucked too hard to launch voLTE (see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Multimedia_Subsystem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Multimedia_Subsystem) )

If you don't have IMS in place, it's going to be much harder to make the transition into a modern LTE network since you can't do calls over it.

<comment><USER18> Yes, I know. I was only replying to the second question of the parent really, pointing that there is no need to wait for 5G to see a 3GPP/3GPP2 merge.

The fact that Sprint has decided to keep their voice on CDMA for a while will not stop a merger like that IMHO. It will just mean more work for the merge (if it goes on).

Moving away from CDMA and supporting VoLTE is bound to happen even if Sprint stays solo. Other operators have plans to sunset CDMA (e.g. end 2019 for Verizon), and at some point it doesn't make sense to stay with a now legacy standard with no traction.

<comment><USER3> >Moving away from CDMA and supporting VoLTE is bound to happen even if Sprint stays solo. Other operators have plans to sunset CDMA (e.g. end 2019 for Verizon), and at some point it doesn't make sense to stay with a now legacy standard with no traction.

They backed themselves into a corner because they use unusual spectrum and don't have the funds to upgrade all their towers to modern technologies. It makes sense when you can't afford to upgrade.

T-Mobile has no plans to sunset GSM yet because it costs them very little to maintain, uses little spectrum, and allows legacy equipment to stay on the network. Some even predict they'll sunset WCDMA before GSM.

<comment><USER6> Sprint spent 5 years on the network vision project, it rolled LTE out to their entire footprint, and was an all but forklift upgrade to their field infrastructure. The only components left from the original site usually was the power cabinet, and the tower structure itself, everything else was new.

CDMA costs no more for sprint to keep on the air then GSM does for T-Mobile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love my $3/month T-Mobile no-data "senior" plan with 30 minutes/texts a month + 10 cents for minute or text after that, which fits my needs exactly. As long as I can keep a similar plan, I'm happy. I think T-Mobile should be rewarded for being an innovator.

</comment><comment><USER20> Ugh.

Say goodbye to the wonderful world of free international roaming :( Why do good american businesses always end up merging? Feels like you can never win as a consumer even if you stick with businesses you support.

</comment><comment><USER21> I somewhere read that you need at least 4 big mobile operators to have real competition. Less that that and they behave like oligopoly/cartel

Hiw much is US left with?

<comment><USER22> Canada has 3 big mobile operators, and there is zero competition.

In provinces that have local operators, they _do_ compete.

The difference between markets is so large that people pretend to live in Manitoba or Saskatchewan just so they can have cheaper plans.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/wireless-black-market- offe...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/wireless-black-market-offers-cheap- plans-outside-manitoba-saskatchewan-1.3166491)

<comment><USER3> Yeah that situation is probably going away since MTS got oligobbled up by Bell. I guess Sasktel is still around...

I remember trying to pull off the Koodoo (Telus) trick some years ago claiming I was from Winnipeg and traveling (when I am actually American). :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why was the title I used changed on this post? It was originally "Sprint Corp. has started preliminary talks to merge with T-Mobile US Inc.," which is literally the first sentence of the article....

<comment><USER23> When a title is misleading, the first sentence is often an excellent choice. But in this case it (i.e. the shortened version of it you used) was more misleading: it states a rumor as if it were a fact, where the original title includes "said".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I appreciate the response.</comment></comment></comment>


Javascript and CSS best practices for better performance - <AUTHOR> http://www.webuiarchitect.com/30-best-practices-to-boost-your-web-applicati

<comment><USER2> _Always fall back to core JavaScript whenever possible. Limit framework usage._

Why, frameworks exist for a reason and keeps us from reinventing the wheel. Many times a contributor to a framework has labored to make his routine as efficient as possible on the broadest array of platforms. Many times we can forgo a lot of optimization work by using the framework rather than rolling our own.

<comment><USER3> In other words: Do you really think that you can write this piece of javascript better than John Resig? (substitute authors as necessary)

In some cases, yes, but I'd argue that in most cases probably not.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, you made my point better than I did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hate articles that just make a bunch of assertions without any explanation as to _why_ or performance tests.

If I'm earning a savings of < 1ms by making one choice over the other, it is probably more time efficient for me to simply not worry about it.

> 8 But if you have multiple string concatenation, prefer pushing to an Array > and then calling the join() method on it. This is particularly helpful while > building HTML snippets.

Depends on too many factors (browser, number of segments, segment length etc) to a be rule. Most of the time, the performance between this and += is going to be more or less the same.

> 26 With AJAX, GET works faster than POST. So prefer GET unless request > length is more than 2K; yes, you guessed it right - IE.

Use GET or POST when you're supposed to not based on how much information you think you'll be sending.

> 27\. Go easy on scripted animations.

What's easy? What's hard?

> 30\. Always fall back to core JavaScript whenever possible. Limit framework > usage.

It would be more prudent to _know_ your framework, and know when to not use it. IE (even in 9!) still doesn't implement indexOf - I can roll my own solution or use jQuery's inArray.

Here's a better article <http://www.slideshare.net/nzakas/speed-up-your- javascript>

<comment><USER5> Nickolas Zakas' Slideshare presentation mainly covers the four areas of performance and goes deep into it, while my aim was to cover as many aspects as possible (not restricting it only to JavaScript) and add brief description wherever I could. Also, when we talk about performance, we usually talk about milliseconds - so if doing something shows even slightest improvement on at least one of the browser (e.g. accessing object properties by dot notation works faster on Safari and doesn't make difference on other browsers), it helps in keeping a watch on that practice. Even JSLint does the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> #29 No Tables. How does that help performance? Sure on very large pages that might help, since the table usually won't render until the
 has been sent, but maybe the better tip would be "avoid very large pages" (i.e. 100KB or more of HTML). DIV based layout also degrade if text in a single cell is very large, whereas Table based layout is robust against that. Also, I don't understand why
 is bad, but this is okay!?!?!

1

2

3

a

b

c

Which is what DIV/FLOAT layout usually ends up becoming. If your DIV/FLOAT layout doesn't map to a structure like that, you're probably doing something wrong!

Finally, has IE fixed the "we double the padding on floats" issue? Because float-driven layout with that bug is pretty hard, since IE will double your paddings while the other browsers don't.

I do know that proudly espousing TABLE in a job interview can cost you the job. But aside from that TABLE is very effective for most layouts. I do avoid TABLE inside TABLE of course, that's a code smell, but top level TABLE is the right tool most of the time. Do anti-TABLE people also avoid Excel?

<comment><USER5> Updated the blog with some explanation on why TABLEs for layout is not a good idea. Please recheck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem with this list is some are micro-optimizations while others are rather important and dramatic, but they are all listed together in no particular order or weight.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it is a random list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This author doesn't inspire much confidence when he says "A fellow reader just forwarded this link to me" when referring to Google Closure. Did he even try it out?

Also, some things are pretty pointless (e.g. "#6 - no globals" doesn't do anything to improve performance), and other are poorly explained (e.g. "#13 - store local refs to out-of-scope vars" - what does that even mean?)

He even has syntax errors (e.g. "#7 - var fullName +=", really?) and other oddities ("#28 - element.bind" What in the world is that?)

The good points are largely regurgitation of stuff that is much better covered by Steve Souders, the Opera blog and other resources.

</comment><comment><USER9> Some of the advice is just plain wrong depending on your target platform. For example, on my iPad, iPhone 3G (not 3GS), and Safari 5.0 (6533.16)/Mac, using createElement/appendChild is consistently faster than using innerHTML. In Chrome 5.0.375.70/Mac, they are the same speed. In Firefox 3.6.3/Mac, naive createElement is slower, but using a DocumentFragment makes it as fast as innerHTML.

My test case: <http://dqd.com/~mayoff/timeDom.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for all the valuable feedback. I have updated the post by adding little explanation to most of the points there to justify each concern. And have revised a couple of points. Please feel free to comment further. Please revisit [http://www.webuiarchitect.com/30-best-practices-to-boost- you...](http://www.webuiarchitect.com/30-best-practices-to-boost-your-web- applicati) to see the changes.

</comment><comment><USER10> > #13 In any code block, store local references to out-of-scope variables.

That doesn't even make sense. The for-loop block doesn't create a new scope, so it's perfectly valid to refer to the variable `a`. Plus, even if you create a new scope, you can still refer to `a` due to closure.

<comment><USER5> We are talking about performance optimization here; which means 'what will work faster' over conventional approaches. Every time the scripting engine doesn't find a variable in the local scope, it starts searching for it upwards until it reaches global namespace. And this, my friend, costs CPU cycles. Now consider this out-of-scope variable being used in a loop. Closure is a power JavaScript has given us to use it wisely; and not to misuse.

<comment><USER10> In the case of closure, yes you will take a small performance hit. But the example given is still invalid because the only scope present is the function- scope (for-loop doesn't create new scope).

For example, if you ran the code below in FireBug you'll get the same results (minor variance aside).

function foo() { var a = 0; for (var i=0, j=a; i<10000000; i++) { var x = j+i; } }

function bar() { var a = 0; for (var i=0; i<10000000; i++) { var x = a+i; } }

(function() { var start = new Date().getTime(), end; foo(); end = new Date().getTime(); console.log(end-start); })();

(function() { var start = new Date().getTime(), end; bar(); end = new Date().getTime(); console.log(end-start); })();

<comment><USER5> for-loop does create a scope. In fact, every statement block is a scope in itself.

In your examples, just change the value of variable 'a' to 100 or 1000 and you will see the difference.

<comment><USER10> Blocks in JavaScript do not create scopes. This is different from many other languages (like Java or C).

In fact, Crockford has mentioned this as well: <http://javascript.crockford.com/code.html>

"JavaScript does not have block scope, so defining variables in blocks can confuse programmers who are experienced with other C family languages."

Which is why this code works:

(function() {

        for (var i=0; i<100; i++);

        alert(i);

})();

Notice the variable `i` is accessible from outside the for-loop.

<comment><USER5> That's correct. Thanks a lot. Updated the blog with the correct example (using function). I was testing on Chrome and even your examples showed better results with value of variable 'a' to 1000, although slightly. Firefox shows no difference.

Another thing, JavaScript 1.7 has introduced block level scopes.. you can achieve that by using the 'let' keyword instead of 'var' to declare a variable. Although most browsers don't support it yet.

<comment><USER10> No problem. It's one of those things developers don't realize when coming from C-style languages. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think he is referring to asset hosts in #20. Rails does it pretty easily. ActionController::Base.asset_host = "assets.example.com"

<comment><USER5> You are right, Subbu. Rails is nothing but common sense; it leaves developers only to do development and nothing else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Poor freshmen taking all of this for real. Ever heard of premature optimization?

</comment><comment><USER12> #1 is completely wrong. Use of document fragments is much faster than innerHTML. This way your dom operations occur in memory and the results are pushed to the dom in one operation. Most of the rest of the tips are valid.

<comment><USER5> No Geuis. Setting innerHTML works faster than DOM methods. Please test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> To state the obvious: the JS performance advices this person gives won't necessarily apply the same to ALL JS engines. I wonder which specific browser and version he/she bases the advice on.

(Why the heck do the kindergarten people of HN downvote this? It's a perfectly sensible question.)

<comment><USER14> You are correct. I work with JS engine implementations most people have never heard of. Performance is different between engine implementations, and so is availability of different ways of solving a task. Using the common browsers' best practice for performance doesn't always work for me.

My favorite JS engine is the one implemented in the Evo browser. Among other things, it lacks support for arrays and for loops which makes development a tad interesting. And then we have the iPanel browser built for the Sunniwell set-top-box, in which you have no try/catch. Also, if you use more than five chained if/else, the browser will crash. However, this could be viewed as enforcing general programming best practices :)

<comment><USER15> Quote:

      it lacks support for arrays and for loops

Wow. They still call it Javascript?

Could you please point at the docs, to see what kind of language they offer? Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Can we talk about client-side certificates? - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/tls/security/oauth/2020/06/12/Can-we-talk-about-client-side-certs.html <comment><USER2> I've been learning oauth at work and started implementing openid using keycloak.

Now I'm in the process of setting in a private CA with vault from hascicorp.

What ddevault is proposing is basically oauth implemented in terms of TLS and certificate autorities.

It's not bad as an idea, per se.

The problem is, as far as I see, that x509 and TLS pull into the discourse a lot of hard topics. You pull in x509 and you also pull in the whole ITU/X.500 thing. Have fun with that.

Just these days I was thinking that I'm having a hard time finding certificate authorities explained in terms of actors and interactions, instead of cryptography.

Oauth/oidc instead is just that: authorization delegation. It starts and ends with those RFC/specs.

It helps a lot to know that all you need to know is contained in that finite number of documents.

</comment><comment><USER3> Agree 100%. I've thought this is the right way to do web SSO for as long as there has been a web.

OpenId connect & Oauth are privacy disasters. Before the advent of the internet customer lists (aka goodwill) was considerd ultra proprietary information that a company had.

Now this data is essentially given away to the big four or five internet companies. Meanwhile, government is as useless as ever, content to fight their culture battles as if nothing else mattered. Bad juju.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Debian experience with this is that browsers have terrible client cert UX and are actively making that worse.

[https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/public- inbox/%3Cf7599ba5de4864...](https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/public- inbox/%3Cf7599ba5de4864a28293a53a1b9e4305e7c568d0.camel%40bonedaddy.net%3E)

</comment><comment><USER5> We implemented a CA/client-cert based authentication, and decided to not do it again.

\- Users are used to just getting public/private API keys, and it's often common knowledge how to store the private key securely.

\- Tooling is surprisingly scarce. Not all API testing tools support client certificates, and users didnt want to do the openssl dance.

\- Users kept forgetting the certification expiration date. We had to remind them to do the openssl dance again every 3 months.

\- for the server side, unit testing was a bit complicated because the TLS implementation was supposed to be a separate later from the actual application.</comment>


The fired Google engineer wrote his memo after he went to a 'shaming' programme - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/james-damore-wrote-his-memo-after-attending-a-google-diversity-programme-2017-8?r=US&IR=T <comment><USER2> Naive and privileged person starts flamewar based on their calmly reasoned explanation of why their privileged group are inherently better suited to do their job than other less privileged group; after attempts to show them that they are indeed privileged and that others may also be as competent.

Due to intense backlash said naive and privileged person joins angry privileged people on a road to genuine hatred. All the while claiming that they are the underprivileged group.

 _sigh_

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like a lot of people are getting indignant for basically nothing. It doesn't matter what the memo says.

I am reading Corporate Confidential by Cynthia Shapiro. It's highly relevant to this situation. Also, for those who have read it, this particular situation becomes an extremely interesting case study on exactly what not to do when you are working at any company.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't think of a better place to legitimize your argument than alt-right YouTube.

<comment><USER5> And ironically an argument with google...

<comment><USER6> And after the CEO of YouTube called you out, no less

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This tweet was unsurprisingly prescient: [https://twitter.com/campster/status/894749657091284992](https://twitter.com/campster/status/894749657091284992)

<comment><USER7> Wingnut Welfare is a real thing:

Wingnut welfare is an important, underrated feature of the modern U.S. political scene. I don't know who came up with the term, but anyone who follows right-wing careers knows whereof I speak: the lavishly-funded ecosystem of billionaire-financed think tanks, media outlets, and so on provides a comfortable cushion for politicians and pundits who tell such people what they want to hear. Lose an election, make economic forecasts that turn out laughably wrong, whatever — no matter, there's always a fallback job available.

[https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/wingnut- welfare...](https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/wingnut-welfare-and- work-incentives/)

<comment><USER8> It's definitely not just right-wing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At first I just thought he was oblivious to some degree—regardless of his document's veracity, it was clearly a case of "wrong time, wrong place." Furthermore, it's one thing to "stand on principle, even if you stand alone", but there's also something to be said for "choosing which hill to die on"...

Frankly, as additional details and background have come out—and the more he speaks—it seems increasingly evident his motivations were less than virtuous.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like Google wasn't a good fit for this guy.

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://gizmodo.com/fired-google-memo-writer-took-part-in- con...](http://gizmodo.com/fired-google-memo-writer-took-part-in- controversial-s-1797658885)

> Fired Google Memo Writer Took Part in Controversial, 'Sexist' Skit While at > Harvard for Which Administration Issued Formal Apology

<comment><USER12> The salient excerpt:

> while they described the skits as typically a "roast," they emphasized that > "the goal is not to offend."

Really just seems like some more character assassination by Gizmodo.

<comment><USER13> If the administration of Harvard felt they needed to formally apologize it seems unlikely Gizmodo just gined this up out of nothing.

<comment><USER12> No one has looked to school administrators for moral guidance in many, many years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article is scant on details about what happened in the workshop.

<comment><USER15> I have a feeling the details are scant because they are banal. He probably got some bland, generic HR talk and felt extremely uncomfortable discussing gender and race, so much so that he wrote this diatribe. He would still have a job if he just wrote it as a first person perspective of what made him uncomfortable at the diversity training, instead of making it this indictment of Google and their efforts at diversity as a whole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> FTA:

> _Damore said: "I went to a diversity programme at Google, it was ... not > recorded, totally secretive. I heard things that I definitely disagreed with > in some of our programmes. I had some discussions there, there was lots of > just shaming, and 'No you can't say that, that's sexist' and 'You can't do > this.'_

That is, he took a bland corporate diversity training class and tried starting fights. The tell here is "you can't say that" with no antecedent for "that". Yeah: if you tell your diversity class that women aren't cut out for work at Google, you're going to cause a fight.

<comment><USER17> This whole thing has been a wonderful example of trolling, in the old-school sense where you say something superficially calm and reasoned but which will inflame passions and start a big argument.

We are so prone to evaluating messages based on their form. If someone is ranting and cursing and shouting, we fundamentally assume that they're irrational. If someone speaks calmly and clearly and uses objective wording we assume that they're rational.

We read this statement, see "there was lots of just shaming," and our immediate natural reaction is to think, "Well that sucks, Google shouldn't shame people, this guy is being persecuted."

But that's not the information actually presented here. All this statement tells us is that _this guy felt shamed_. Was that because the people were actually shaming him? Or was it because they stated facts that this guy feels shamed by? Or something else? We have no idea.

<comment><USER18> _> this guy felt shamed. Was that because the people were actually shaming him? Or was it because they stated facts that this guy feels shamed by?_

I don't think it matters. As far as I am aware, no part of the business, or any part of this industry, is trying to help people understand _why_ they should change their behavior and thinking towards women. The only thing I see is a sort of 'behavioral training' that tells you how to think and act, without helping you gain the empathy and compassion, or even rational arguments, needed for this to be a willing act. Do what we tell you to do or you're fired, we don't care if you believe it.

This sets back the whole cause because it makes silent angry people who stew until they get shamed at a retreat and then churn out ignorant manifestos they are subsequently fired for writing. If the company gave a shit, they would do more to help change minds, not just silence them.

Maybe their retreat was supposed to do that. But it sounds more like people there were hostile rather than compassionate, and didn't do their job to help these people understand. And now the alt-right has a new poster boy to push their propaganda.

<comment><USER16> Your preferred solution to the problem of gender inequality is a magic ray gun that imparts empathy and compassion?

I mean, OK. I agree, that would work. But you honestly don't think that's what we're trying to do here? It's hard. People are jerks. All we simpering SJW's are saying is _while_ people are still jerks, would it really hurt so much if they were forced not to act like it in ways that actively hurt things?

You're saying that people's opinions are the problem and that doing this thought police stuff isn't changing them, so it's not a solution.

Isn't the actual problem, though, that women (c.f. this very thread) don't feel comfortable or welcome in tech careers? How is the inner mental landscape of a bunch of dudes going to fix _that_? Isn't the "real" solution to, y'know, actually make things better for women in this industry?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fun Twitter thread on how Godel's theorem predicted the final outcome of this whole situation:

[https://twitter.com/PhilSandifer/status/894940236672794624](https://twitter.com/PhilSandifer/status/894940236672794624)

<comment><USER19> I studied mathematical logic quite extensively, and I'm pretty sure this person doesn't know what he's talking about. Godel's incompleteness theorem is about facts which are unprovable in a certain logical framework. Any sufficiently complex consistent system A has a statement G which cannot be either proven or disproven in that system. That by itself is not a paradox, there are plenty of unsolved mathematical problems that might not be solvable using the axioms we have. For example "A is/is not consistent" is such a statement.

On the contrary, any statement that _can_ be derived within the framework A cannot contradict A because that would prove that A is inconsistent! Of course with a real sufficiently complex logical system we cannot know whether it is consistent or not, but that doesn't mean it is possible to prove a paradox in it.</comment></comment>