Be More Productive. Take Time Off. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/be-more-productive-shorten-the-workweek.html <comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect>

They tried increasing light. Result: increased productivity. They tried decreasing light. Result: increased productivity. Eventually they worked out that any change increased productivity. (reminds me of teleported Arthur Dent cautiously checking his body for injury, and encountering pain wherever he felt. Eventually he realized it was his finger that hurt)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure if it's a real trend, but I do seem to be hearing more stories of companies worried about employees not taking enough vacation, whereas the traditional concern is the opposite. I'm not 100% sure of the motivation, either. Some could be what this suggests, that employees who take some time off are happier and more productive. Some could be trying to minimize actual burn-out (which is different from just lower productivity). Perhaps other reasons, though. One possibility is that if nobody in a group is taking time off, that may be a proxy for something else, possibly management problems (e.g. a particular group creating a culture of fear), so worth looking into as a kind of institutional debugging. And some could be recruiting, trying to project an image that not only do we give you N weeks of vacation on paper, but we _really_ mean it and expect you to take it.

<comment><USER4> Where I live you generally get 30 paid days off per year (10 national holidays, 20 discretionary).

Most large companies I've worked for require that you take one contiguous break of at least 2 weeks at some point during the year. Long enough that someone else will have to take over your day-to-day duties.

This is good for the employee (to have a proper holiday, and avoid the pressure of being the only one who can do something), and good for the company (it gives time for fraud and cover-ups to surface, and forces the spreading of information within the teams).

<comment><USER5> _it gives time for fraud and cover-ups to surface_

This is very interesting (and clever). Mind telling us more? :)

<comment><USER6> This is a common accounting control practice. Generally speaking, most accounting fraud is still manually performed and has to be done in person, and relies upon frequent tampering of normal accounting controls and procedures, often monthly, sometimes weekly and even in some cases daily. See the stories on PFGBest for an example.

The idea of enforced contiguous vacation time is that this kind of fraud is revealed when at least someone else has to step in and fill in for the time the fraudster is away. Even if someone doesn't backfill the position during the vacation time, surrounding processes and controls are supposed to pick up evidence of the fraud now that the tampering cannot be engaged.

Basically, no one with control over finance and accounting functions is supposed to be so indispensible that they can only take a few days here and there off. In fact, someone in those roles that makes a big deal out of being able to be away for long is usually a red flag for auditors.

<comment><USER7> All the investment banks I have worked in have enforced this to greater or lesser degrees. i.e. always for the front office, and varies whether it applies to Technology or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The concept is really easy to implement with smaller teams. But look at Google.

Their "20% time" policy has become 120% time.

Scaling these highly creative, productivity inducing policies simply doesn't scale when you reach a certain size. The teams are too large, the goals are too vague, and there's a vacuum of consistency/systematization necessary to keep predictable metrics flowing.

I love the idea for smaller, highly profitable per-employee companies, but the big guys, whether through their own ignorance or inability, can't effectively institute something like "take a month off to do whatever project you think is cool."

<comment><USER9> Where have you heard that about Google? I've heard good things about their (current) culture, especially in regards to 20% time. Have I been misinformed?

<comment><USER8> 1st hand from engineers.

I don't think you've been misinformed, I personally think the marketing of the 20% time idea is better than its actual implementation.

Pitching the 20% time ideas to management is kinda killing the concept. Managers aren't particularly inclined to incorporate hours into your schedule, especially if that time could be used boosting their metrics.

<comment><USER10> The implementation of 20% time is incredibly variable across teams, and even across individuals. I've never had to pitch a 20% project to my manager, or even notify them that I'm working on it. For many past ideas I ran it by them just because they might be aware of people that can help me or related projects I might want to look at, but for my current 20% project (an eventually open-sourced library), I didn't even mention it to him until I went up for promotion, when a peer wrote "Oh, by the way, his 20% project will have a big impact both on our team and on the world at large", at which point my manager was like "Maybe we should make this an official OKR and part of your regular job duties." That actually happens a lot - I've had a bunch of 20% projects that I mention to management and they're like "Oh, you should feel free to take some 80% time to finish that."

I also find that the definition of 20% time varies a lot between individuals. For me, it's "All that time when I have nothing better to do, when I get to work on whatever I want" - in some weeks, that can be 80%, in other weeks it's 0%. I have a friend who spends one morning a week working at Google Research, and that's his 20% project. I have another friend that taught Lego Mindstorms to 5th graders one day a week, and that was her 20% project. I have another coworker that started working on a new project (sponsored by a different VP), and that was his 20% time. I have a few coworkers that basically do whatever they want - actually, my job description is pretty much like this now - and so it's _all_ 20% time.

Actually, for a lot of my coworkers, the reality is probably much like it is in many other large organizations with decent management: "As long as you get your work done and are aware of the organization's priorities, you can do whatever you want." I know someone who moved to Uganda without telling his manager and regularly works from Paris, Thailand, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, etc. - his manager doesn't care, because he's responsive to e-mail and gets his work done quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The funny thing is I think this is a great idea for employees and I'd encourage things like this even amongst my own (though it's just contractors for now!) But for _me_? I'd always choose to work longer and I love it. Maybe there are key differences between growth stage, finding-their-feet businesses and those comfortably bringing in 6/7 figures a month though ;-)

<comment><USER12> You have the choice to work longer. An employee must do as told. Such is the importance of giving the person a reasonable period of rest. If not, then the person will feel like a slave and just do the absolute minimum to get by. Ive tried both approaches and the one that treats people like (surprise!) people works better than the one that treats them like robotic slaves.

OT: Love the shows. Regular listener here.

<comment><USER11> _OT: Love the shows. Regular listener here._

Thanks. Sorry we have fallen behind lately. A whole myriad of reasons. I hope we get back on track soon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Insert obligatory "No one will tell me what to do! They're not the boss of me! I love working 15 hour days and why would they want to stop me!" comment, here.

<comment><USER14> Insert snarky euro-centric reply about how some people in the "more enlightened" parts of the world already do this and enjoy seven week vacations every summer.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for getting those out of the way guys, both were getting tiresome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It is good idea but it won't fit all companies. Specially larger companies with more work than the people of 37 Signals. I however think it is important for all companies to celebrate their successes. At SpaceX, Elon gave us a a week off after a successful lunch. This was two years ago. The employees came back refreshed. Celebrating successes is something all companies can do.

<comment><USER17> That must have been one hell of a lunch for everyone to deserve a week off!

<comment><USER18> It's been busy of late and I don't even bother taking in lunch anymore. A complete absence of successful lunches is a bad thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Taking time off kind of by definition increases your productivity per hour. I want to hear a case of time off actually increasing total output.

</comment><comment><USER20> Europe has known this for many many years. A 35 hour work-week and several weeks of vacation time (e.g. in France and The Netherlands) not only creates more jobs, but also results in happier people and additional productivity.

<comment><USER21> I'm having trouble finding support for your assertion.

Some quick googling seems to indicate that France has a higher unemployment rate than the US and lower GDP per capita. Same for Spain. Same for the EU overall.

The Netherlands seems to be in better shape but it's a much smaller economy, so it's not really comparable.

<comment><USER22> The Netherlands doesn't have significantly more vacation days than other EU countries. Looking at this table: <http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922052.html> it seems that we're even on the low side, since the legal minimum is 21 but most people get a few more, so I estimate the average at around 25. Which would put us at the same amount as Japan, of all places.

(The link's methodology isn't explained though, and maybe it includes public holidays, which would boost .nl with something like 10 days into the same magnitude as Germany and France)

<comment><USER23> Would be interesting to see numbers of time actually taken. It is my understanding that in Japan it isn't unusual for an employee to not take so much as a sick day for years - and don't even mention vacation. The corporate culture is so "dedicated" that's it's really unhealthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is essentially the luxury of a successful company. I think they take time off because they are successful. They are not successful because they take time off.

</comment><comment><USER25> A follow-up post on why the article was in the NY Times: "Connecting the dots: How my opinion made it into the New York Times today" [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3234-connecting-the-dots- how-...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3234-connecting-the-dots-how-my- opinion-made-it-into-the-new-york-times-today)

</comment><comment><USER26> Here's a reference to a Mumbai(India)-based startup trying the same approach. <http://erpnext.com/open-source-work-culture.html>

</comment><comment><USER27> I will just note the irony of the NYT posting some 37 Signals propaganda on the same day as they posted "Skilled Work, Without the Worker" [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/business/new-wave-of- adept...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/business/new-wave-of-adept-robots- is-changing-global-industry.html?pagewanted=all)

</comment><comment><USER28> Radical concepts that sound really good. Unfortunately, productivity is very difficult to measure. Isn't it possible that productivity would have been higher if the 37signals team were working 5 days a week instead of 4? How does one measure this?

<comment><USER29> That's precisely why it only makes sense to measure results not individual productivity.</comment></comment>


Real-time data show virus's hit to global economic activity - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/d184fa0a-6904-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3 <comment><USER2> What is the gist of the article?

This page only asks me for money. I cannot read it without paying.</comment>


Ask HN: Let's list hair on fire problems - <AUTHOR>

Don't worry about them being good startup ideas. <comment><AUTHOR> Having to go to the doctor for something little, rather than a quicker and cheaper alternative.

<comment><USER2> I need a "do you think I should see a doctor about this?" Server.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A lack of stimulating discussion. Most people treat discussions/arguments like wars, and don't know how to apply the principles of reductionism.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Having to buy a car when you really just need to get to work and go shopping every once in a while.

<comment><USER3> Actually I think that is part of a general problem, of infrequent large purchases.

Most people buy these things maybe once every ten years, so it is very unusual to have people who actually know what they are looking for when they are buying (a salesman's dream I guess).

I read an interesting article about washing machines, written by a repair man. Apparently there are not many manufacturers, but the cheap ones have loads of different brands. And loads of models, which don't actually differ very much, except for the software on them. So they can have a range of different price points, as it has x many different programs so must cost $100 more. Better to go for a basic one from one of the better quality brands than an expensive one with 100 different programs that you probably won't use anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not knowing what the culture is really like at the companies your considering working for.

<comment><USER4> what ever you see in public, multiplied by terrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Grocery store has ALL the ingredients i need except 1 or 2 ESSENTIAL components.

I'm sure everyone's had the experience of filling their shopping trolley up with all the ingredients to make say wraps except the store is sold out of actual wraps. Like you have all the salads and fillings etc but no actual wraps.

Now I have to find another store nearby that has my missing ingredients. DURRRR RAGE!

There's a start up idea in there somewhere.

like what if I could check off my grocery list and any items not checked off, i automatically get a list of the nearest places relative to my current location where i can get that item.

:)

</comment><comment><USER6> Knowledge management in big institutions. -> Being aware there's a missing piece of the puzzle. -> Being aware of who has pieces of this puzzle. -> Being able to tell this piece belongs with a different puzzle. -> For each puzzle. how many (and which) pieces no longer fit in the whole picture (because puzzles evolve over time). -> For each piece, find out the name of the guy who has it. -> Bob's turned his 2 week notice... which puzzles are likely to suffer one year from now because of the pieces (or meta pieces) he's taking with him.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not having any useful startup related classes to take in college. (Business classes teach how to run big businesses. CS classes are often many levels of abstraction too low. And there aren't any classes that teach design)

<comment><USER7> You might be interested in [https://iovine-young.usc.edu/](https://iovine- young.usc.edu/)

which is trying to solve these exact problems

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not knowing what different careers are really like until you try them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Create a fully automated and objective system to gauge the ability of developers. Then people and companies wouldn't have to waste time performing interviews.

<comment><USER9> [https://codility.com/](https://codility.com/) is that. I have never used it, so I cannot comment on effectiveness. It is pitched as a pre-filter, not a total replacement for the interviewing process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Digital asset management after death. Something all encompassing that is easy to comprehend by non-technical people. (i.e. The people you leave behind.)

Instead of leaving a list of accounts, user names, passwords and instructions for each, I want to be able to say, "When I die, XYZ co will take care of all of this" and feel confident that it will be as stress free as possible for my family.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps with the account data encrypted with a two-part key, one part on the will, one part in the hands of said company.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Cheap and convenient interstate travel. Megabus sucks.

</comment><comment><USER12> I make bad decisions to do things that are not as important as other things. It's as if I'm perpetually missing something at the point in time where I could make a better decision. I'd love to hear how to change that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Trouble meeting cool new people. Most of it just happens by chance encounters.

<comment><USER3> Do some cool stuff, and you will be more likely to meet cool people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> international tax advice. cash flow for young companies. hiring.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not being able to fall asleep at night.

<comment><USER14> ZzzQuil

<comment><USER7> ZzzQuil is just rebranded Benadryl. I believe it stops being effective after a few days of use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Curing physical pain - especially long term (neck, back, shoulder)

Debt

Earning more money

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not being able to easily compare the performance of different mutual funds.

<comment><USER14> Past performance means nothing to the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Surly there is some correlation. Is there data on this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not having a quick, cheap and healthy fast food place to go to.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Having to go grocery shopping when you only need a few things.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Having" to go through K-12.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Remembering all your passwords.

<comment><USER16> This is solved with a variety of methods. I prefer KeePassX stored in Dropbox and available on my phone.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Finding something good on TV.

</comment><comment><USER17> Dicks to chicks ratio at tech conferences is abysmal.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dying.

<comment><USER14> Fear of death is the actual problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, dying itself is definitely bad.

<comment><USER18> Don't knock it 'til you've tried it ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Having to clean.</comment>


Breakthrough DNA Editor Borne of Bacteria - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150206-crispr-dna-editor-bacteria/

<comment><USER2> I just heard Doudna speak at Vanderbilt University a few weeks ago. The crowd was huge. Biologists recognize that discovery of the Cas/Crispr system is a fundamental advance that will impact a lot of life technologies. I'm excited because it will make molecular genetics in non-model species much easier. It is a reminder that major discoveries come from unlikely sources, such as bacterial immune systems, and argues for funding diverse research programs, not just the ones with an obvious and immediate payoff.</comment>


The Best Place to Build a Subway - <AUTHOR> https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3390746 <comment><USER4> I observe that being able to build great infrastructure is when you have the good fortune of having financial, political, and social forces that incentivize it. That doesn't occur a lot these days. It also takes foresight to build up a reserve of these, because projects are so easily cancelled.

One surprising thing I learned about the Japanese (Tokyo) metro system and its complexity, and yet punctuality and adherence to precise schedules:

The Tokyo metro system didn't get as good as it is because of someone's simple desire to have a really nice metro system, or some theoretical love of schedules.

It became so well-timed and complex because _it had to be_. Due to the constraints of land and existing infrastructure, there was no other way to serve as many people as demanded train service than to build stacks and stacks of rail networks, and have them operate (and interoperate between lines efficiently) down to the second -- in order to be able to cram that many trains into one space.

Versus in other places, people would say, those requirements are so ridiculous, there's no way a metro system could ever be built to work!

Sometimes, the constraints produce progress. (Of course, this is subsidized up the wazoo in Japan, but not crazily compared to other major metro areas.)

<comment><USER5> I mean it can get overly ridiculous. Stress over schedule adherence was considered a major factor in a Japanese train crash that killed 100+, and injured 500+: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of this feels "citation needed". Unlike streets, building software that can scale up is not necessarily more costly - often it means a cleaner architecture that yields benefits from day 1. The examples of cut-and-cover BART and freeway widening are in direct opposition to each other - <USER2> we use a cheap construction approach that involves disruption, or an expensive one that reduces it. It's telling that the author doesn't even see anything unusual in the idea that no expense should be spared for the roads, but subways should be built as cheaply as possible.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder what the authors thoughts are on the Moscow Metro. Schematic map: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Moscow_m...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Moscow_metro_ring_railway_map_en_sb_future.svg)

Seems like a bunch of concentric circles with lines going away from the center.

I have never been to Moscow, but it seems like an interesting success story of planning infrastructure projects properly.

<comment><USER8> For the context of this thread, a better representation of the Moscow Metro would probably be this one

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Metro#/media/File:Mosco...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Metro#/media/File:Moscow_metro_lines_geographical.svg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> All these comments are about subways when the article is actually about software engineering.

You all missed the point.

</comment><comment><USER10> > You can't easily build infrastructure where it's crowded, and you can't > afford to build infrastructure where it's not crowded.

Isn't "easily" and affordable" pretty much the same thing? Surely you can build subway pretty much anywhere, it will just cost you where it's crowded. He is basically saying you can't afford to build infrastructure anywhere - <USER3> matter if crowded or not crowded, which is quite dumb.

<comment><USER11> I think by saying "you can't afford to build infrastructure where it's not crowded", he actually means that it's not affordable because the ridership will be too low, so it's not really viable in that sense.

<comment><USER10> I understand what he wanted to say, but it is same in the end - where it's crowded it is expensive to built and cheaper to operate, where it is not crowded it's vice versa, but in the end you end up with both being not affordable by his quote, so there is no difference between them really, they are both not financially efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Many of these massive projects have incurred various costs and challenges. > In the 1950s and 1960s, the Fillmore redevelopment targeted a largely black > part of town. A 36-block area was torn down including housing, a distinct > lifestyle, and a world-famous jazz community. Most of the previous occupants > could not afford to return.

> In many cases, these huge, multi-decade redevelopment projects bring new > life to part of a city, but sometimes we can't foresee what we're going to > lose.

This is disingenuous, and shows how little the author understands about the history of American urban development. In many cases the purpose of redevelopment in US urban environments has been to push out people of color. To say that gentrification was an unforeseen consequence of redevelopment is just wrong. Gentrification is often the entire point of redevelopment by city officials.

They should read The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs or read The Power Broker by Robert Caro.

To be completely serious, this article reads like someone had some ideas about urban development, did absolutely no research, and then talked about those ideas like they were some kind of expert. I don't understand why the ACM would publish something like this.</comment>


Show HN: 10,000 free Beacons plotted around the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.beaconsinspace.com/GETBeacons <comment><AUTHOR> One of the major problems with beacons is fragmentation and inability to scale apps across a real-world network. So my startup developed a beacon infrastructure API/SDK for app developers to hook into existing beacons that are already deployed. We aggregate beacon networks around the world and list them on a marketplace online so devs can use them for their contextual/hyperlocal use cases as scale.

</comment><comment><USER2> I feel this could benefit from some additional context.

<comment><AUTHOR> hey! see reply above^^ :)</comment></comment>


Android app programmed in Tcl/Tk - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.superlinux.cashiertcltk

<comment><USER2> I'd definitely be interested in seeing a blog post about how this was put together.</comment>


The djb way (2007) - vezzy-fnord http://thedjbway.b0llix.net/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> One thing to learn from djb is how to write virtually bug-free code.

Much more people would be able to do that if they:

a. Stopped using buggy dependencies b. Focused on the task being solved instead of on the technology

<comment><USER2> Except, not many people are as smart as djb. But, djb being smart doesn't automatically make his tools good ideas to use (I'm looking at you, Mr. "I made my own register allocator because I don't trust compilers").

djb lives in a quaint fantasy toy land where he gets to write whatever he wants and doesn't have to interface with real world systems at scale. That's great when you're the author. Your software can be clean if you only write for yourself and not for 50 million other programmers trying to build software on top of your tools as well. But, it's painful when you're a user and real world problems get ignored because the author just never experiences your same problems (so they never care to fix them).

Much like how a startup isn't 90% code and 10% "company," public software in 2015 shouldn't be 100% writing code all day then dropping .tar.gz files on a server once every two years while ignoring wider principles of project governance, collaboration, and feedback/growth processes.

<comment> vezzy-fnord In practice, you'd be using one of the many successors to djbware today, not the direct originals. You'd install runit, s6 or daemontools-encore rather than plain daemontools. They all reuse the same libdjb interfaces and follow the same code style, otherwise functionally they're supersets.

<comment><USER3> I use void linux ([http://voidlinux.eu](http://voidlinux.eu)) on my laptop and vps, which uses runit as its init system, and it's beautiful. It's such an elegant system. Writing the run scripts is so easy, and there's so little you need to understand to do it.

Rather than learning how upstart or systemd unit files work and learning their configuration languages, you only need to know how to start a process that runs in the foreground and logs to stdout.

<comment><USER4> Here's a template for doing the same in systemd:

      [Service]
      ExecStart=*path to process*

Learning the language is only necessary because some services are more complex. For example, if you need your process to only start after another, you must now learn the syntax of runit's sv program.

<comment><USER5> Here are some concrete run scripts and service units, side by side: [http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/ru...](http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/run- scripts-and-service-units-side-by-side.html)

<comment><USER3> I was curious if such a thing existed, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So what are they using for their webserver? [edit] [http://thedjbway.b0llix.net/services/mathopd.html](http://thedjbway.b0llix.net/services/mathopd.html)

It seems interesting in the same strange way [http://suckless.org](http://suckless.org) is interesting. A certain pleasure can be found in running a website as a 300 line C program, but it's not very useful besides that.

<comment><USER7> It sometimes feels to me that we're missing some essential component of the software creation toolchain: a configuration-time or link-load-time equivalent to a compiler's "dead-code elimination" or a linker's "whole-program optimization" or a runtime's profiling JIT.

In other words, presuming a given program was shipped to you as a source package, your package management system could contain a pass from a _generic_ program that takes the software "seed"—the generic version that does a lot of things—reads a configuration file specifying _your_ particular use-case—and then hardcodes policy-level choices like protocol flags, strips out every code path that you won't be invoking, removes conditionals altogether where only a single path is left, inlines functions that have then been made trivial, etc.

It would be sort of like a version of autoconf that works at an AST level; but also built on the expectation that you'll be able to run it again to generate a new binary if your business needs change, rather than just serving to enable you to cook up your program with whatever nasty ingredients are left in your OS's fridge.

The result of such a source-transform pass _should_ be something like one of the djb programs: a terse piece of code to achieve your particular goal. Ideally, you would then take that program and _read_ it before using, because, well, if your particular goals are reasonable, then the code should be small enough to fit in your head!

On a tangent, the "unikernel" philosophy, as I understand it, is simply that if you could throw the entire kernel + OS + your application into such a goal- oriented streamlining woodchipper, a unikernel application is what would result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That is some hagiographic religious bafflegab.

<comment><USER9> And with good reason. I don't know where things are with his software and methods today but, last I heard, djb's software and methods are world class ideas that everyone should be using.

<comment><USER10> His software creates new top-level directories off root and this simply hasn't found wide acceptance among sysadmins. I've never seen eg daemontools used in the wild for this reason.

<comment><USER11> Netflix uses daemontools in their BaseAMI[1] for starting up core services such as Apache and Tomcat. I think this choice was originally made to ensure consistency in process startup methods across CentOS and Ubuntu. Support for automatically creating daemontools scripts is baked into nebula-ospackage- plugin[2].

[1] [http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/03/ami-creation-with- aminat...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/03/ami-creation-with- aminator.html)

[2] [https://github.com/nebula-plugins/nebula-ospackage- plugin](https://github.com/nebula-plugins/nebula-ospackage-plugin)

<comment> vezzy-fnord Yelp uses s6. At least, I'm deducing that from employees being regulars on the supervision mailing list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Took me a while to notice that it's not written by djb himself.

<comment><USER5> It should not have. Bernstein writing about his own designs has a markedly different appearance.

* [http://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf](http://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250118)

Even to the writing of Aaron Swartz.

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=890034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=890034)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9155741](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9155741)</comment></comment>


SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Puts Raspberry Pi to Work in Industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/suse-linux-and-enterprise-raspberry-pi/ <comment><USER2> RPi 3B+ models are pretty good.

\- USB boot

\- PoE / PXE boot

\- Low-end aarch64

\- Decent GPU to drive small displays

\- ARM == Serial console available

\- Inexpensive

Can't see why they aren't server class. Easy to headless boot them and get productive.</comment>


Show HN: PCG – A web-based point and click game engine - <AUTHOR> https://www.chrisdeluca.me/article/introducing-pcg/ <comment><AUTHOR> An early stages pet project of mine I'm finally sinking time into now that the outside is a no-no.</comment>


GirlInYourShirt Partners with TapInko - Launches GirlsInYourShirt - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/girlinyourshirt-tapinko-for-branded-sorority-parties

<comment><USER2> This is really exciting stuff. She's got a business model that both smaller startups and larger organizations can take advantage of... and it's scalable. Big time!

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I the only one who found her creepy?

<comment><USER2> WTF? Uh, you definitely are the creepy one if you think that... Weird.</comment></comment>


Dear Mr. President: Time to Deal with Climate Change - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/508841/dear-mr-president-time-to-deal-with-climate-change/ <comment><USER2> If there is one surety about the Obama administration it is that it immediately drops any plans to deal with the initiatives proposed by the most vocal elements of its base the minute they dare open their mouths. Unless the Republicans want it too. Then they'll be sure to create a compromise that neither Republicans nor Democrats like in principle and accomplished nothing on paper.</comment>


Ethereum solidity workshop material - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/androlo/solidity-workshop <comment><AUTHOR> Found this on github and thought that others may like the material too, good low-level solidity information.

I have no connection whatsoever to the author.</comment>


Why every photo storage startup dies or gets acquired - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/7964663/why-every-photo-storage-startup-dies-or-gets-acquired

<comment><USER2> "Jonathan Benassaya, the exuberant French founder of StreamNation, bristled at any suggestion that the 250 million photos stored on Picturelife are at risk. "I'm leading this company with my heart," he says. "And I take it personally when people don't trust us to be able to keep Picturelife alive. It's my mission. I have two kids; my wife and I are using Picturelife every day with our families in Europe and Asia. It's a product we don't want to see go away.""

Hope AWS takes hugs as payments for bandwidth and storage since CEOs are apparently leading expensive businesses with 'all their hearts'</comment>


Amazon changing all passwords on account of Gawker Hack - <AUTHOR>

Hello XXXXXXXXXX,
This is an important message from Amazon.com
At Amazon we take your security and privacy very seriously. As part of our routine monitoring, we discovered a list of email address and password sets posted online. While the list was not Amazon-related, we know that many customers reuse their passwords on several websites. We believe your email address and password set was on that list. So we have taken the precaution of resetting your Amazon.com password. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused but felt that it was necessary to help protect you and your Amazon account.
To regain access to your Amazon customer account:
1.   Go to Amazon.com and click the "Your Account" link at the top of our website.
2.   Click the link that says "Forgot your password?"
3.   Follow the instructions to set a new password for your account.
Please choose a new password and do not use the same password you used with us previously. We also highly recommend that you chose a password that you are not using on any other sites. We look forward to seeing you again soon.
Sincerely,
Amazon.com
Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section of our website. <comment><USER2> I got the same thing from LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER3> _As part of our routine monitoring, we discovered a list of email address and password sets posted online._

I don't understand this. What kind of routine checkup involves scouring the web for password lists.

<comment><USER4> Any large company will routinely have people who monitor the normally security channels (from bugtraq to cert lists) for security alerts that could impact them.</comment></comment>


A great example of innovation by Taylor Guitars - <AUTHOR>

http://youtu.be/anCGvfsBoFY
Not directly technology related, but more inspiration to do something similar in other industries.
This is a great example of innovation can arise simply by ignoring common practices. What we now call 'conventional wisdom' are principles formed so long ago that many of them are now incorrect in their core principals, and with the ways that the planet is changing, it is important to adapt business practices to these changes.
Cutting out waste by ignoring these practices is a great way to be more eco-friendly and make more money (in some cases, both).
If you can't watch the video, a quick synopsis.
Ebony is a wood used widely in building Guitars and some other musical instruments, however due to over-farming in many countries, the only place left with enough Ebony to harvest is Cameroon. Taylor guitars owns the company which has the licence to harvest 75% of Cameroon's (and now the World's) supply of Ebony, effectively giving them a massive amount of control over the market (I believe they are the biggest supplier of Ebony at this point in time).
Bob Taylor (owner of Taylor Guitars) discovered that to find one tree worth of 'A-Grade' wood, 20 trees had to be chopped and left to biodegrade in the forest. He also discovered that the only difference between the A and B grade wood is slight colouration, as opposed to the deep, jet black we're all used to in Ebony, but there are no functional differences.
In response to this he began to pay lumberjacks the same amount for B grade wood as A grade, selling at the same price, effectively ignoring the grading system.
The result is that my next guitar might have a vanilla streak in the fretboard, but it also reduced the amount of wood used to create it 20 fold, and that's something I can live with. <comment><USER2> I'd say the Peavey T60 was far more revolutionary because it introduced CNC machining into guitar manufacturing.

<http://www.rocknrollweekend.com/peavey_t%2060.htm>

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't mean to say it's the most revolutionary idea in guitar manufacturing history, just that it was a massive positive step ecologically, and the RnD budget for it was $0.</comment></comment>


Windows NT grandaddy OpenVMS taken out back, single gunshot heard - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/10/openvms_death_notice/

<comment><USER2> One reason for reading this concisely informative article, in case you're wondering why you should care:

 _The architect of RSX-11M and VMS was Dave Cutler, who planned a portable, object-oriented successor, PRISM. When DEC wasn 't interested, he and some of his team decamped to Microsoft, where they were given the project of reviving the moribund OS/2 3 project after the IBM-Microsoft split. While OS/2 2 was the Intel 386 version, OS/2 3 was to be portable to non-x86 processors. Both PRISM and OS/2 3 fed into the new OS Cutler built for the Intel i860 CPU, a RISC/VLIW chip Intel had hoped might be a successor to the x86 line._

 _There were two versions of the chip – the basic i860XR, codenamed the N10, and the enhanced i86XP, codenamed N11. Microsoft built its own i860 workstations for the development effort, based around the i860XTR and consequently nick-named the "N-Ten". The initials of these – NT – is where the eventual name for Cutler's finished OS: Windows NT._</comment>


Ruby 1.9.2 RC1 is released - <AUTHOR> http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2010/07/02/ruby-1-9-2-rc1-is-released/

<comment><USER2> >Time is reimplemented. There is no longer the year 2038 problem.

Great. Hopefully this time all those problems will be fixed well in advance of the deadline.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> NO WAY! <http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/3140> Is still not closed in 1.9.2 :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Gist confirming that issue <http://gist.github.com/461930>

<comment><USER3> This is a pretty big bummer. Yehuda Katz on Twitter called it an "epic show- stopping bug" and in the linked thread says he says it will prevent him from recommending 1.9.2.

<comment><USER4> For reference, the open bug is <http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/3140>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, Yehuda, i've stated it in my post... any news on that one? I can see from bug-tracker that it seems to be fixed, but are they going to release it?..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The $: change seems bizarre.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. I wonder if it's cosmetic or if you can't actually require files in the same directory as __FILE__ via the load path.

Then again, this will probably only break snippets outside of projects, where lib/ is in the load path.

<comment><USER7> Use require_relative if you want to require files relative to __FILE__, that way you don't have to worry about $LOAD_PATH and keep your sanity :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> for those of you using rails 3, are you going to be using this rc candidate, or the ruby 1.9.1-p429. I've ran into a lot of issues using ruby 1.9.1 and are either fixed using ruby 1.8.7 or ruby 1.9.2 .. so just wondering ?

<comment><USER9> Yes, we absolutely will be. We were running 1.9.1 (can't remember which patch level off hand) in a stable config with Rails beta 1, but as the Rails beta progressed, we were unable to move forward with ruby 1.9.1 underneath. This morning, we moved our staging environment to ruby-1.9.1-rc2 and rails-3.0.0.beta4. All our testing since this morning has gone 100% smoothly (thank god!). Every increment in beta before this point has been a nightmare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been using 1.9.1 with sinatra / datamapper for a few months with no problems.

</comment><comment><USER11> duplicate.

<comment><USER12> Didn't see the original. But even if I had, I imagine I'd be much happier to see a duplicate of this than yet another "original" news story about the iPhone's antenna.</comment></comment>


Satya Nadella: Bold Ambition and Our Core - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2014/07/10/satya-nadella-to-employees-bold-ambition-and-our-core/

<comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link to letter: [http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/ceo/index.html](http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/ceo/index.html)

I couldn't submit this as the URL because it was posted for an older story 150+ days ago.</comment>


The rise of Silicon Dad - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/885e1d28-a7c0-11e2-9fbe-00144feabdc0.html

<comment><USER2> It's tough making the choice to join a startup while having a kid. I make sure I make lots of time for my daughter whenever I can, but I have lots of late work nights. I try to come home for dinner. I wake up at 4 am to get work done so I don't miss out on evenings.

Also they have a really nice kitchen.</comment>


Danish bank launches world's first negative interest rate mortgage - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/aug/13/danish-bank-launches-worlds-first-negative-interest-rate-mortgage <comment><USER2> > In reality, the Jyske mortgage borrower in Denmark is likely to end up > paying back a little more than they borrowed, as there are still fees and > charges to pay to compensate the bank for arranging the deal, even when the > nominal rate is negative.

</comment><comment><USER3> Still just absolutely crazy. How does this not cause a huge housing bubble?

<comment><USER4> It does.

[https://www.thelocal.dk/20190318/danish-house-prices- reach-h...](https://www.thelocal.dk/20190318/danish-house-prices-reach- highest-ever-level-beating-11-year-record)</comment></comment>


Twitter Points Users to Fact Checks of Trump Tweets for the First Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/05/26/862797418/twitter-points-users-to-fact-checks-of-trump-tweets-for-the-first-time <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317286)</comment>