How to fail as a new engineering manager - <AUTHOR> https://blog.usejournal.com/how-to-fail-as-a-new-engineering-manager-30b5fb617a <comment><USER2> I as a manager "kept coding" and it made me a better manager 100% of the time. It allowed me to understand low level issues team had been facing that I couldn't have from 35,000ft. Team members didn't felt need to dumb down complex concepts so I "get it". People didn't had to prep PowerPoints all the time because I could only grasp pretty pictures. I much better understood the complexity of workitems, costs, collaboration opportunities, scheduling and skills required which allowed me to do much better estimates and task assignments. I didn't had to find "deputy" who I delegate everything while I am just busy in meetings and emails. Ancient Greeks like called this type of management as "leading from the front". Chinese called it working shoulder to shoulder with your team mates instead of trying not to get your hands dirty because, you know, you are too "busy" and a level up high. Being able code (not in just imagination, but _really_ code) puts "Engineering" in the "Engineering Manager".

<comment><USER3> I'd be interested to see whether your subordinates agree with that assessment. One of the better programmers I've worked with was promoted to our manager and tried to "keep coding" and it made her one of the worse managers I've had: the team was constantly blocked because her tasks got delayed when she (as is the nature of management) was pulled away for meetings with higher-ups or other unexpected work. In turn that meant there was pressure not to interrupt her when she was at her desk so it was hard to bring problems to her, even though that's a manager's primary responsibility.

<comment><USER4> I realized early in my management career that I should keep coding, but I should a) never let it interfere with my management duties and b) should only be for non-critical path stuff. I focused on quality of life type improvements such as sprucing up a dashboard used by ops personal, refining the CI/CD process, simple utilities to extract/transform data, etc. Another key requirement and benefit is that by letting your team do the "real" work, you're showing your trust and letting them grow.

The place where I continued to actively participate was in architectural and system level planning discussions. In that capacity, it was to mostly ask questions, ensure focus on objectives, and very occasionally offer advice. It's mostly facilitation and mentorship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing I think this misses that is REALLY worth knowing as a new engineering manager: you might not want to be an engineering manager. People often view it as a seniority step or a power step or a salary step, but there are three things that go on- especially at large organisations:

1\. You have no power. You really don't have the freedom to change salaries, you don't have final say on promotions, you often don't have final say on work commitments, often a lot of work needs to be done that simply isn't exciting. It's a killer to have a development plan for someone that's totally un- acheivable because that's simply not what your team does.

2\. You are the shit shield for your team. Especially working in a remote site decisions will be made that totally screw your team and you're responsible to deal with that. Whether it be other teams breaking fundamental dependencies, or senior management forgetting why your team exists and deciding it can be cut, re-assigned, re-prioritized. Often being the person who gets the brunt of that is incredibly difficult to deal with.

3\. Your job is now 100% political. Whether it's the expectations your team puts on you to deliver them pay rises at the end of the year, or your product manager putting expectations on you to deliver releases at certain times a lot of what you're doing is politics. Especially in large organisations there'll be projects that are going to fail, and learning how to protect your team from the fallout is essential. It's a shit part of the job but in large organisations it's essential.

<comment><USER6> > You have no power > You are the shit shield > Your job is now 100% political

By any chance do you work at Amazon? Or is that just common everywhere?

<comment><USER7> This is the standard at pretty much every large company. If you want to escape it you have to go to small/mid-sized companies. While they will still have politics but not near the soul crushing levels it is at large companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every software engineer needs to read this. Managing people is it's own skill all its own. Programming skills don't translate.

Business folks: please create parallel technical and managerial career paths. This can go all the way to the CEO (CTO) level - great devs can be great devs, great people/business folks can be great at managing.

I see it daily:if your manager is programming, he's not managing. Of course there are exceptions, but as a rule, if you're a senior dev, you've probably been focusing your attention on tech and not people for a long time. There's a crazy amount of nuance, self awareness, humility, patience (!!!), empathy, and conscientiousness needed to be great at managing.

Underperforming manager -> underperforming devs

HR management should be taken seriously as an engineering (as much as software is currently) discipline and not just an afterthought for devs to pick up.

<comment><USER9> >>I see it daily:if your manager is programming, he's not managing.

Management does not have to be an "active" job.

Great managers find out what obstacles are standing in the way of their team members, then figure out how to remove those obstacles. How much time this takes greatly depends on the company.

IMO a senior dev is different than a manager. Senior devs mentor junior devs; that is where their team productivity multiplier comes from.

<comment><USER10> > Management does not have to be an "active" job. > Great managers find out > what obstacles are standing in the way of their team members, then figure > out how to remove those obstacles.

Finding out obstacles and removing them is an active job.

But also, the saying about merely "removing obstacles" is not really correct. I am not even sure it is so in the happy flow where every employee is super great and full of initiative and is at exactly the right position. Managers are expected to coordinate, set priorities, negotiate about deadlines and scope of project, plan and re-plan, explain why we are going to be late, handle communication outside of team, clean up tracker, make sure testers are available, collect reports about who worked on what.

If all manager is focusing on is "finding out obstacles and removing them", you all have high chance of ending up in long term crunch and chaos.

<comment><USER3> > Managers are expected to coordinate, set priorities, negotiate about > deadlines and scope of project, plan and re-plan, explain why we are going > to be late, handle communication outside of team, clean up tracker, make > sure testers are available, collect reports about who worked on what.

Much of that can and maybe should be done reactively. Set priorities when your employees need them. Negotiate deadlines and scope when they're needed for a decision. Communicate when it's needed. Etc.

You may not be literally twiddling your thumbs - I'm sure there's always something to be improved even in the quietest periods - but IMO the most important part of the manager role is to be available to resolve issues that do come up, and I'd take a manager who can do that well over one who's great at planning but can't react. As a technical analogy it's more like sysadmin/ops than development.

<comment><USER10> Ideally, deadlines and scope are negotiated continuously as the pressure on typical team is constant and as there is constant flow of incoming requirements. Being unprepared means higher chance of crunch or buggy releases (as team cant cope with what becomes expectation).

Same with priorities. Those are not just for employees, but also for people outside the team. When you are asked about priorities and future, it is best to have reasonable answer at that time - not two weeks later when you finally reactively done reading and thinking.

Employees often dont really ask about priorities. They assume priorities based on their previous experience/opinions, everyone different which leads to misunderstandings and waste of time. You have to sync them before they ask.

If the primary role of manager is to constantly react at suddenly appearing problems, then the company needs more planning and more organization. Those suddenly appearing problems are consequence of chaotic environment. Good manager reorganize so that they don't appear anymore or looks for them before they grow big and sudden.

<comment><USER3> > deadlines and scope are negotiated continuously as the pressure on typical > team is constant and as there is constant flow of incoming requirements.

Incoming requirements aren't actually continuous; indeed in practice they tend to be quite bursty. When you get a new batch of requirements is the best time to evaluate their priorities and schedules.

> When you are asked about priorities and future, it is best to have > reasonable answer at that time - not two weeks later when you finally > reactively done reading and thinking.

Two weeks later the priorities will likely be different. Long-term planning is usually wasted effort.

> Employees often dont really ask about priorities. They assume priorities > based on their previous experience/opinions, everyone different which leads > to misunderstandings and waste of time. You have to sync them before they > ask.

If employees don't know where to look for priority information that's a problem to be fixed.

> If the primary role of manager is to constantly react at suddenly appearing > problems, then the company needs more planning and more organization. Those > suddenly appearing problems are consequence of chaotic environment.

The world is chaotic. Reacting to change is often cheaper and more effective than planning and organisation.

<comment><USER10> 1.) Requirements sometimes come in batch, but even then the following discussion and clarifications take weeks and months - depending on size of project.

2.) If your priorities are changing every two weeks, then you have no priorities. This is literally what management is supposed to avoid.

3.) The point was that employes are not aware they have priorities wrong. They are not asking, because they all assume they know what to do. Again, which is why you are supposed to clarify it proactively.

4.) If you have same sudden problem fifteenth time, then it is not change. If all of your projects end in crunch surprisingly and none of your plans work, you are doing it wrong.

<comment><USER3> > If your priorities are changing every two weeks, then you have no > priorities.

Nonsense. Two weeks is - or should be - plenty of time to make a useful improvement to your product.

> The point was that employes are not aware they have priorities wrong. They > are not asking, because they all assume they know what to do.

So fix that problem. Make sure they know when they should be asking about priorities. Don't just saturate them with priority information, that will annoy the ones who knew when to ask, and the ones who think they know won't pay attention anyway.

> If you have same sudden problem fifteenth time, then it is not change. If > all of your projects end in crunch surprisingly and none of your plans work, > you are doing it wrong.

If most of your plans succeed, you are not taking the risks that you need to make the big wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whenever this topic comes up, especially developers or engineers transitioning to management, I point to this Hacker News thread from years ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3407643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3407643)

There's a lot of overlap with this article but it covers a broader range of experience and also includes some good reading recommendations.

It's been invaluable to my own career.

</comment><comment><USER12> Most of my engineering managers are usually just lieutenants for the next layer up. That person brought over his/her stooge collection from their previous company or collected over the course of their career. When you see a stooge collection forming, you know it's time to go. Not addressed in the article.

<comment><USER13> Could you talk a little more about this? I've never encountered a stooge collection but when I interviewed for a job right out of college the CTO of a company told me that "this lead dev had a few friends follow him here since he's so good." Is that likely a stooge collection?

<comment><USER14> As someone who has seen others do this as well as being a manager who tends to rehire people, again and again, I would say "it depends".

Leaders tend to build connections with people who have personalities, goals, and/or work ethics that are similar or compatible with that leader. So if you like that particular leader/manager it's more then likely those followers will be good. The opposite is also often true.

As people move into more senior management roles there is an expectation that you have built some form of network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One way to avoid 4. Expecting without expressing, is to make sure that you have confidence that anyone on your team can fill in for you in a meeting you can't make, and correctly report your objectives, plan, strategy, and reasoning. If they can, then they know your thinking, and you have expressed. A side benefit is that they may know a lot more about their areas than you do, and they can correct your mistaken ideas -- but only if they know what your ideas are.

</comment><comment><USER16> > 1\. Keep Coding

Hardest pill to swallow, but it's mostly true. The old adage, "If you want something done right, do it yourself" is a subversive kind of fallacy, because it's half correct. Yes, you could probably get it done better and sooner, but every minute you spend doing it yourself could have been invested in empowering your team.

<comment><USER17> Yes it is mostly true if you are going up the career ladder all the way to executive level.

However I've seen a bunch of people hit middle-management then stop and its a really vulnerable place if you're looking for a new job. I think its really important to be able to keep some coding in new technologies as they become popular.

Perhaps the best is to work with your developers code - write integration tests, evaluate checkins, research new tools.

<comment><USER18> +1, I think it's critical to stay technically sharp, but that doesn't have to mean pushing user-facing code to production. I can only recall one time I've actually checked in production code since I transitioned to manager (and I definitely felt like I was shirking my manager duties by sinking a day into it), but I stay close to the code in 2 ways:

(1) I review the majority of the code that the team writes, and I also read other people's reviews to evaluate our code review practices.

(2) I hack around with new tools & technologies to evaluate them. This has resulted in some code bits in wikis documenting "here's how to get started with this thing", but not touching any prod systems. I usually save this kind of thing for our "personal projects"/hackday days at work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm less than one year into my first management role. The job often feels like the early days of my software engineering career when I was pushing code as a junior dev with an extremely high internal bar and little experience (read: had no idea what I was doing).

The experience has been fun and exciting but its a mental and emotional grind more often than not. Knew it would be difficult, but I've found the learning curve to be far steeper than I expected. Its really helpful to read some of the hard earned lessons I've been thinking about recently expressed so clearly (#3 and #4 especially).

Thank you for posting.

<comment><USER20> I recently transitioned to architect from lead engineer and it's been very jarring. My day to day went from leading a few meetings here and there and smashing hard bugs to near constant meetings with people higher and higher up the food chain (just yesterday I was presenting to the president of our parent company). Where as 3 months ago I would say "sure, I can do that" and then fire up vim and go to town. Now I'm fighting with sr. Directors and asking them "What is this in service of?" And I do very little coding outside of producing proof of concept work. I do like it but it's just entirely different work from what I've been doing the past 8 or so years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I agree with the general idea that the most important skill is managing people, not technical, with engineering management. However, my advice is to never go full manager. If you can, jump in from time to time and help dig the ditches.

I like the idea of playing a supporting role on the team. You're there to help the team get done what needs to get done. Most of the time that's going to broader organization meetings, planning, providing growth opportunities etc. However, when there is technical work that needs to be done, I'll gladly jump in and help out as much as my technical skills allow me to. By the same token, if I'm overbooked, out of the office, etc, I'll ask my team to help out with organization meetings, planning and similar activities. I want folks to know that we all play a role and have skills that allow us to participate in some activities more effectively than others, but at the end of the day our greater success comes with our ability to execute as a team, not as individuals.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm a big fan of "Mistaking directing for leading" here. So often I see new leaders mistake their new responsibility for results with a need to be in charge of every decision. There's a big difference between leading and simply being in charge. Don't base your own habits on the poor management styles you've seen in the past.

</comment><comment><USER23> _7) Avoiding hard conversations_ This is the one I failed at hardest. Well.. my teams might say that accepting arbitrary deadlines was worse, but this is what I personally took as the signal I wasn't suited:

 _I just couldn 't give negative feedback during performance review_

<comment><USER24> You probably shouldn't give negative feedback during performance reviews anyway. Feedback should be given as soon as possible.

Not giving feedback at all is a problem though, first get comfortable with giving positive feedback. Don't move to giving negative feedback too quickly as a new engineering manager.

<comment><USER25> I, excuse the language, called my technique "a shit sandwich" for getting comfortable giving negative feedback. I'd establish with both the employee and myself a pattern of giving both negative and positive feedback at the same time, instead of only negative. I'd give something good, something bad, and then something good hence the sandwich. I've found that if you are all negative it's too easy to lose an employee and there motivation. By using the sandwich you so that you notice the good and the bad and that you are pulling for them to fix the bad.

<comment><USER26> That's how you're supposed to do it. My manager had a nack for only giving the negative feedback 3 or 4 times.

<comment><USER27> If you build a good rapport with everyone, this is unnecessary and you can simply provide constructive feedback without sugarcoating it. The best engineers will see right through this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I realize this isn't really the main point of the article, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot recently: Can someone explain to me why I should _want_ to become good at management? I think most people on here (but sadly few company structures) would agree that engineering and engineering management are two nearly orthogonal skillsets, but for some reason we insist on "promoting" people who are good at the former into positions that require the latter.

As someone with about five years of experience as a professional software engineer, I'm really still looking to level up my IC chops, along with a healthy dose of mentorship (mentoring interns or new hires on my team) and what I'd call "tech leadership" (advising on engineering reviews, making technical decisions about how to best build things). I would basically worry about stunting my development as an engineer if I switched to focusing on management, and I'm not even convinced my role models for career development are really in primarily "managerial" roles (I'm thinking of both famously very good backend devs both at my company and at the big SV companies).

Separately, I have relatively little interest in being in a role where my output is judged as the output of a team of people who aren't me. I get that that's the best way to judge managers, and that managers do very valuable intangible things in unblocking their team, but I'm skeptical that I'd be able to feel satisfied by this. If anything, it kind of feels random: at an equivalent level of my unblocking the team and being a good manager, if I have an amazing 10x engineer on my team then the output is just going to be higher than if I have an average engineer. So in less clear-cut cases, how can I tell if I just did a good job at unblocking or if my engineers are really good? (This is not to say that I don't feel satisfied doing mentorship-style things or architectural advising-style things, but that feels separate to me. I think I prefer empowering other engineers by leveraging knowledge and writing good platforms/tools/APIs rather than doing the organizational empowering thing).

I write all these things, because it really seems like a foregone conclusion of both this article and the industry as a whole that an engineer will eventually become a manager. Is that what I most likely have to look forward to in my career if I wind up working at the well-established/mature companies?

EDIT: I'd also just appreciate being told if I'm thinking about everything entirely wrong or something here.

EDIT2: This also isn't to knock people who _do_ enjoy doing these things, but it's not for me and I imagine it's not definitionally for every good engineer.

\-----

Unrelated to the above, point 8 feels a little bit in contradiction to point 1. How does one keep learning their craft without direct experience?

<comment><USER29> What I've seen a lot is lots of companies do not have a meaningful Individual Contributor technical career track. You join as a junior developer, then 5 years later you are a "Senior Software Engineer" and that's it. Your salary flatlines, your project responsibility/impact is capped, with no further opportunities to grow career-wise. Join another company? Fine you get a 5-10% pay bump but you're still at the highest level: The dreaded "Senior Software Engineer". OK, so some places have a "Staff Software Engineer" or "Principal Software Engineer" or whatever they call it. It's still basically the end of the road for a non-manager. So few places offer anywhere to grow after reaching this level, besides management.

These companies then say, "Hey, engineer XYZ, you seem to be smarter than the average bear. We would like to reward you with career growth, but we are not imaginative enough to come up with something beyond Senior Software Engineer. How about instead we make you a manager? Go, here is a team of people, go off and learn this entirely different skill set and manage people! What could go wrong?" That's pretty much how most places make engineering managers, and it's tragic. Here we have some of the smartest, technically competent people. I mean they rock as individual contributors and should be thriving. But they're not because they don't want to be managers, they just want a software development career!

To me the solution is to simply let coders code and hire managers to manage, and provide equal career and salary growth to each group!

<comment><USER30> How can a lone engineer scale their impact after senior? I literally think the career ladder flatlines there because business value flatlines there too. It be nice if companies had work above it but I think it's hard.

<comment><USER31> Here is a hint for you - don't only show your boss what you can do - show the world what you can do.

Then 10% pay raise may suddenly evolve into 100% at way cooler place

<comment><USER30> My point is not about pay. It's that I can only do so much, and the only way I can acheive more is by having a pyramid of engineers underneath me doing the coding.

<comment><USER32> Then you need to be a manager. Organizations where there is a tech lead who does people management, or where it's "flat" (i.e. no managers) tend to develop informal, unspoken, or hidden political structures that fill the role.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> When offered to 'move up' into a Manager's role - the first thing is to understand what has changed in the Team or Company.

If the position has been vacated by someone who just left, you may see what expectations on the role have stayed in the Company. These may be 'projected' on the new Manager (no matter what the job description says). This would impact the ability to meet your own vision of success in that role.

If this is a new position, created just for you - again, there might be some unexpressed reasons based on what has led to that decision. If one knows the history and the decision makers, one could measure degree of freedom to have any impact in that role.

As others here pointed out, it's a move from a Senior Dev to a Junior Mgr. As such you are Junior on someone's Team, with all the baggage that comes with this.

Politics does not begin at Manager's level, but failing to see how the politics works there is what effectively dooms a new Manager.

Article lists many practical points that are team-facing. My personal favortite is #4 (express your expectations). Equally crucial should be the management-facing points.

I find that for someone with a strong technical background one of the hardest management side to adopt may be a _negotiation ability_ and a capacity for compromise, especially with the very little leverage as a Junior Mgr usually has at her disposal.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder where do you get those mentoring managers with one on ones. Coaching and all thut stuff. No one has time to do it.

It is always: here is your job that are requirements. No meaningful one on ones. It is not only in work, I just all life have to figure out taxes, relationships, learning, work. What is even better when I was trying to pay for advice of accountant they did not take my money and no advice. I got advice from attorney but it was useless, I figured out later on my own.

Oh I got some advice from relatives like uncle or grandma but that was like outdated and totally not true anymore. Almost got fined for trying to apply that.

So my point is no one cares about one on ones and mentoring, and someones advice on life or carreer because probably they still have to figure all on their own, and they think they are smarter. so better keep track of tickets and that stuff is rolling, keep obstackles away from team and don't say yes to everything.

</comment><comment><USER35> > Expecting without expressing.

Absolutely this. You have to let people know what you expect and where they stand, and with honesty and compassion.

I'm surprised this article doesn't mention setting boundaries. As a leader (and coder), the best thing I've learned to do is set aside regularly- scheduled time to meet with individual colleagues. People no longer walk into my office or ping me on Slack when they run into technical problems. They take the time to think through things before bugging me and often come up with solutions on their own. It works wonders. Don't be a jerk about it, but don't be as available. If someone interrupts you with a technical problem, tell them that both of you should set aside dedicated time to discuss and explore it.

</comment><comment><USER36> So much solid advice in here. As a new engineering manager myself, thank you for posting this.

<comment><USER37> If you're looking to expand on this I can highly recommend rands[1] as a great source of a wide range of engineering topics. Good stuff not just for managers but anyone involved in the well-running of a team(which is everyone!).

[1] [http://randsinrepose.com/](http://randsinrepose.com/)

<comment><USER38> There's also the Rands Leadership Slack: [http://randsinrepose.com/welcome-to- rands-leadership-slack/](http://randsinrepose.com/welcome-to-rands-leadership- slack/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think a lot of the time we should learn from good/successful OSS projects

\- Have clear rules about code quality, how to get code in, enforce rigorously

\- Have open, written discussions about what is going to happen next (Agile can do this, most of us take the lazy option)

\- discuss ad nauseum

\- try out new things - lots of spikes. The spike to new code ratio for a mature product should be large

\- then and only then worry about the way you fit into politics and people

</comment><comment><USER40> For more of this, I recommend this podcast:

[https://softskills.audio/](https://softskills.audio/)

Called Soft Skills Engineering Podcast. It's hosted by two seasoned developers whom experience becoming managers. It's hilarious.

I listen to it when I commute with earpohones, then and suddenly laugh like a wirdo.

</comment><comment><USER41> Find that much of my IC work as a Tech Lead is spent protecting my team from requests that distract from their goals.

That and keeping the build running smoothly.

</comment><comment><USER42> Excellent summary with one caveat: balance (1) and (8):

      1. (don't) Keep coding
      8. (don't) Stop learning your craft</comment>


"All accredited journalists at the #KimTrumpSummit get a free USB fan." - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/UID_/status/1005795008581169152 <comment><USER2> So at a meeting between the US and North Korea, somebody is handing out a free USB device, but only to people with credentials. Call me crazy, but I would never accept that Trojan horse...uh...I mean gift.

<comment><USER3> You should accept it to avoid attracting attention. You can get rid of it later.

<comment><USER4> Or ask a computer security expert to examine it. If the USB fans have spyware, that would be a big news story!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great opportunity to remind people: never ever plug an unknown USB device in your computer. Even USB-C chargers can infect your machine as outlined here: [https://twitter.com/_MG_/status/949684949614907395](https://twitter.com/_MG_/status/949684949614907395)

<comment><USER6> >Even USB-C chargers can infect your machine

Why would anyone assume otherwise?

<comment><USER7> Not everyone is an opsec expert

<comment><USER6> Ok, but why would you assume that USB-C is somehow more secure than USB-B?

<comment><USER8> My guess would be that many USB-C products are charging cables, dongles, and other items that the average user would not associate with having the capability to store data making them inherently "safe" in their eyes. USB-A, on the other hand, is commonly associated with storing data, and the majority of user awareness and education about the danger of unknown devices is focused on flash drives. For these reasons I can see how someone without technical experience may believe that flash drives specifically are potentially dangerous, while believing that other USB-A/USB-C cables/adapters/chargers are safe. In my experience most users don't even know what USB-B is

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Easily solved with a USB Condom:

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

[http://portablepowersupplies.co.uk/home/portapow-data- blocke...](http://portablepowersupplies.co.uk/home/portapow-data-blocker-usb- adaptor)

Edit - note, this isn't properly secure! Please screen your devices properly and consult your organisation's security team/local tinfoil hat wearer, or educate yourself about side-channel attacks, monitoring, and the history of surveillance devices.

<comment><USER10> I mean not necessarily, although it stops data access to your computer you're still powering a device close to your computer which could have sniffer/camera/microphone

<comment><USER9> Very true! There's also potential side-channel attacks regarding noise in the power supply (example: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.00932.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.00932.pdf)), so it's definitely not a guarantee of safety.

Best to open it up for inspection, then destroy it. There's not a lot of room inside the body, by the looks of it, but there could still be plenty of fun stuff hidden in there anyway.

Thinking logically though: due to the public nature of the release, it might actually just be a fan..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The journalist in question appears genuinely happy with the fan, and reacts incredulously to suggestions it might contain malware...

<comment><USER12> The chances of it containing malware are very slim, and it would be easy to find out if they are malicious, with nothing more than a screwdriver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Additional context: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death)

<comment><USER14> That's more a South Korean thing and this particular summit is between the US and the North. Even in the South that myth is on the wane so I doubt it has much relevance here.

<comment><USER15> I'm guessing that's why it was labeled "additional context" and not "This concept is totally a centrally-important and causal factor here."

<comment><USER16> It's the equivalent of posting a Wiki article on a random Israeli superstition as "additional context" for a summit between the US and the Palestinian Authority.

<comment><USER15> If South & North Koreans were as ethnically, culturally and religiously distinct as Arabs & Jews that example would be more apt.

<comment><USER17> It's not like this is some ancient tradition you'd expect them to share. The fan death urban legend first arose in the last century, just shortly before the countries were divided. They've been separate (and relatively isolated) for most of the time the myth was spreading in South Korea. I don't know what North Koreans think on the subject, but I wouldn't take it for granted that the urban legend is relevant context here.

<comment><USER15> Neither would I; nor would I take it for granted that it's so emphatically _irrelevant_ , as some have done here. I would in fact, simply take it as "additional context."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The malware this USB device installs had better be called "Fan Death."

</comment><comment><USER12> It's probably not malicious.

That's not to say it's definitely not malicious, and I certainly wouldn't be plugging it into my phone. But it is Singapore, where it is hot, so I do understand the rational of giving fans to the journos.

I suspect that the person in charge of the decision didn't consider the fact that USB fans are a possible attack vector.

I think that some readers here have been reading too much Frederick Forsyth or Tom Clancy, with these ideas about baiting and switching and bribing hotel employees.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow. I really want to see someone dig into these in a secure environment.

<comment><USER20> All they need to do is open it up and take a look inside. There _should_ just be a USB port and a pair of wires, _maybe_ a pair of resistors. If there's anything else, this is a Trojan Horse. You can probably open this up with a butter knife, maybe a small pair of pliers to open up the USB connector.

A reasonable security assessment of this device could be done in two minutes. It would take longer to take pictures of the disassembly and post the pics on twitter.

<comment><USER21> I imagine if this really is an attack the attacker would expect these devices to be subject to scrutiny - perhaps the first set of fans released to journalists are safe, but as the summit goes on and the initial reports cleared them then just bribe hotel staffers to surreptitiously replace them with Trojan Horse devices. Or have just a small subset of devices as THs and hope the ones that get opened up are the safe ones.

<comment><USER22> They're might only be one intended target.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Who exactly is handing these out? I could be a trojan horse, but I'd be interested who's trojan it actually is.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sometimes a USB fan is just a USB fan.

<comment><USER24> True. Take the data pins out in this case and it should be ok.

<comment><USER3> Can't it still contain a concealed microphone built into it that would record voice and transfer it over radio?

<comment><USER24> There's a gap between "can" and "should"

As a targeted attack it makes sense. Still you would have to muffle the sound of the fan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Someone should get it, investigate and post results

</comment><comment><USER26> Is there any kind of serial dongle that way to filter out on necessary comm circuits and simply provide power, they say just a pass-through to block the data portion of USB

<comment><USER27> they're called usb condoms

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'd love to get one of these to play with.

<comment><USER12> Yours for only $1: [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2016-Cute-Mini-mobile- phone-...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2016-Cute-Mini-mobile-phone-USB- Fan-Portable-Hand-Fan-for-Power-Bank-Android-OTG-Smartphone/32747151925.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> How generous!

Who handed these out? And what are the odds that any free USB device contains malware or spyware of some sort?

<comment><USER30> Yeah, my first thought as well, I hope no journalist working with sensitive information just plugs the thing in.

<comment><USER31> Do journalist even have sensitive information anymore? It seems like the new thing to do is write an article and find a "source" later.

<comment><USER8> Some relatively recent examples

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/us/politics/times- reporte...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/us/politics/times-reporter- phone-records-seized.html)

[https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/PA-arrests-five-Pal- journa...](https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/PA-arrests-five-Pal-journalists- for-leaking-sensitive-information-501991)

[https://cpj.org/2017/08/palestinian-security-forces- arrest-f...](https://cpj.org/2017/08/palestinian-security-forces-arrest-five- journalist.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Maybe they all have Alexa in listen-only mode.

</comment><comment><USER33> How nice.

</comment><comment><USER34> free usb device? only Trump admin would be dumb enough to fall for this. Imagine one of these back it to AirForce1 or God forbid the White House. Fucking idiots.

</comment><comment><USER35> The USB trojan connects back to the command and control server and waits to be instructed to spray VX nerve gas into the fan. A refreshing cool breeze of remote death.</comment>


Twittervision 3D - <AUTHOR> http://twittervision.com/maps/show_3d <comment><USER2> Is there any way to stop it from reshifting the focus to a random new tweet? If this is going to be used for something, I think this would have to be the first step. Otherwise, it's mostly just eye-candy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool, but why are the tweets from 44 minutes ago? I would expect a live feed (or at least very recent).

And a more gradual night-day transition would look nicer.

</comment><comment><USER4> where does the location information come from? do phone tweets carry these extra bits? or are they extracted for the tweeter's twitter profile location? altitude!?

<comment><USER4> answered here: <http://twittervision.com/api.html>

(latter)</comment></comment>


Vim tab auto-complete - <AUTHOR>

Hey, for the vimmers out there, this is such a great customization that I thought I'd pass it along for anyone who is interested. Add the following to your vimrc and you can use tab to auto-complete words while still preserving it as a tab insert where most appropriate (whenever your cursor is not over a word).
Anyone care to share their favorite vim tips?
function InsertTabWrapper()

    let col = col('.') - 1

    if !col || getline('.')[col - 1] !~ '\k'

        return "\<tab>"

    else

        return "\<c-p>"

    endif
 endfunction
inoremap <tab> <c-r>=InsertTabWrapper()<CR> <comment><USER2> I'm sure the best Vim users on HN could fill pages and pages with "favorite tips". Seems like I learn something new and/or cool about Vim every week.</comment>


Ask HN: Idea for SaaS? - <AUTHOR> I've been wanting to start a new project for a while, but I'm totally out of viable ideas.
I would like to create a SaaS of some sort, that could eventually allow me to make $1000/mo.
Is there someone smarter that me that could suggest something cool? <comment><USER2> Creating a SaaS that makes a couple grand a month is really easy. Extremely easy.

The problem here is that you want a "cool" idea. SaaS is inherently uncool. Its the antithesis to something "cool" like an Oculus. SaaS is soul crushingly boring.

The easiest lifestyle saas businesses go like "scrape this website, present the data, sign up people who think software is magic".

Then understand compounding. Google it right now and ponder on it for a couple hours. Understand that no matter how abysmal your growth may be, it will always end up at a pretty neat number that you can comfortably live on, after a couple months.

1k/month is 10 clients. Its impossible to not find 10 clients if write some software that is not complete ass. You don't need something cool. Just write anything that remotely adds value to someones business and tell them its 100 bucks. Then when they're signed up, ask them how to make it actually useful.

<comment><USER3> While I really like the attitude of it being easy to do, I have personally found that the difficulty lies in finding those actual business problems.

<comment><USER2> Find a dad, or some uncle, or some person that is 50+ and always whines about this one thing at his job that has always been done this one way that is really annoying.

Make that go away.

Business problems are easy. You live in a bubble of software awareness that most people don't have access to. Normal people are not aware of how easy to fix these things are.

The other day I made hundreds of internet marketers drool over displaying a "(1)" in the title like Facebook does when you have new messages. Literally 2 lines of javascript and we all know how to do these things. I could easily sell a $20/month subscription to this and just pretend it was difficult.

A major part of my girlfriends masters thesis right now is sifting through data - manually. We solved that problem by invoking the dark arts:

"

import pandas

data = pandas.read()

data.sort()

"

4 months of work done in a single instant.

What we do might as well be called magic. Normal people very much don't get how easy their problems are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> SaaS Inspiration

@DHH Startup School Talk (2008) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY)

This is the most inspiring SaaS talk, I still listen to it once a month or so for inspiration.

You'll have to find the right idea, one that is interesting to you and still solves a B2B pain point that you'll enjoy solving.

Do you have any experience working with businesses where you can build a SaaS to make something easier for them?

Basically you're looking to build something for a business that provides them value that they would sign up for and willing to pay you money to use.

You can see what others are having success with here: [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses) [https://baremetrics.com/open](https://baremetrics.com/open)

I always recommend listening to StartupsForTheRestOfUs.com.

You don't need to aim for $1k/mo, almost any niche can grow to $10k/mo or even $100k/mo. So don't limit your dream.

There is also [https://nugget.one/](https://nugget.one/) that will send you an idea per day and has a community support/discussion to help you execute on the one you choose to pursue.

Good luck, let us know how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why such small thinking? Why not work on a new project that might make you $100,000 a month? Sure $1000 is more likely (zero the most likely), but why aim small.

<comment><USER6> I'm probably not the only one but aiming for something that is small enough that I ca run on my own and it makes little enough that only pays for me is more attractive to me than to make more money but then have to deal with hiring people and so on.

<comment><USER5> You can run a $100,000 a month business on your own if you choose the right area. Even if you think this is beyond you, then aim for $10,000 a month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What HN users wish for may throw up something you find worth doing.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=I%20wish%20there%20was%20a%20s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=I%20wish%20there%20was%20a%20service&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=all)

</comment><comment><USER8> Github equivalent for non-techies? Too many excels of varying version getting passed around via email still.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's the idea that is hard to come up with, not the implementation. I'd be surprised if anyoune would give you the answer you expect.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just look for things people are complaining about, and build solutions for them.</comment>


Dictionary of Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://www.dictionaryofnumbers.com/

<comment><USER2> This looks awesome, but it's a shame it's only available as an extension.

Do you have any plans to provide a web app?

EDIT: I installed the extension but I can't get it to work. I typed in a number and got no suggestions, then a few minutes later I got an alert that the extension had crashed.</comment>


Distributed systems course at UIUC - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/class/sp06/cs598ig/sched.htm

<comment><USER2> At UIUC, graduate courses often start as special topics courses taught by an individual professor. That's the website linked in this submission. This particular special topics course was taught in '06 by Indranil Gupta (Indy), a very talented guy. These days Advanced Distributed Systems is known as CS 525. You can find the most current website from '11 here: <http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/class/sp11/cs525/sched.htm>. The core readings are the same, but in this most recent version you'll find a selection of interesting, recent publications.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quite an interesting set of reading list. As I browsed through the list, it seems like ideas in the paper "The Case for Co-Operative Networking" might be relevant now, especially in the light of Internet Censorship.

</comment><comment><USER4> This could keep me busy for a while.

</comment><comment><USER5> Spring 06 ?Isn't too old?

<comment><AUTHOR> This stuff never gets old. Those who don't know history are destined to reinvent it.

<comment><USER5> OK, thanks for the link :). Do you have any other good resource to learn P2P?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is a nice course by rtm: <http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/schedule.html>

Also you might want to know about Kademlia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia> and Tonika: <http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~petar/5ttt.org/> (both by petar)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Calling all Electrical Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.eeweb.com/contact-us/invite/ We're excited to announce that EEWeb, our flagship electrical engineering community, is about to go live.
If you're a hardware design engineer or electronics enthusiast, we'd love for you to sign up for our an invite.
Focus areas of our community include:
* Hardware Projects * Analog Design * RF Design * Power Management * Embedded Design * Test & Measure * Components * PCB Design
http://www.eeweb.com/contact-us/invite/ <comment><USER3> The bottom of the page reads:

Copyright 2010, Aspen Labs, LLC

Does this mean that you own any designs, answers, projects etc. that I upload? When I look at the "Request Invite" page, the first thing I see a spelling error ("enthusiests") in the first sentence, and this claim is the last. Not exactly encouraging.

I'd much rather see some sort of open license, like a Creative Commons license of some kind.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there any content available? Why would I want to request an invite? What does eeweb offer that is not offered by a site such as Physics Forums?

These are genuine questions. Before I request an invitation to something, I would like to know more about what it is I'm signing up for.

<comment><USER5> "Let us know about your technical background and interests and why you'd like to join."

You tell me, why would I like to join? This sentence strikes my as having slightly the wrong tone. You should be selling me about how great this site is going to be and why I should keep coming back

<comment><USER6> Exactly. Not to mention 'enthusiests' in the very first sentence, and links to content that aren't actually links.

Why would I want to type not only my contact info, but my life story into a site that looks like a sign-up form for a spam list?

<comment><USER3> I haven't found any clause stating what they're going to do with my email either - Neither the site nor their company (<http://www.aspenlabs.com/>) has much of any information up. At least they give an address and a phone number on their company site where they can be contacted if I start getting spammed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We're excited to announce that we'll be launching our flagship electrical engineering community next week called "EEWeb". The focus of this community is to create a place for hardware design engineers to call home.

Our site includes an online toolbox, daily featured sections, community driven articles and projects, and custom engineer profiles where you can follow other engineers based on your interest tags.

You can see a screenshot of our homepage here. <http://www.eeweb.com/pics/site/eeweb.png>

Example Engineer Profile. <http://www.eeweb.com/pics/site/eeweb2.png>

<comment><USER7> > Our site includes an online toolbox, daily featured sections, community > driven articles and projects, and custom engineer profiles where you can > follow other engineers based on your interest tags.

Do many people in other disciplines do something like this? Serious question - where are some examples?

<comment><USER3> Computer Engineers and Programmers use <http://Stackoverflow.com/> for questions and answers. It's not as comprehensive as this site is, but there are other toolboxes, blogs, and profile sites which are perfectly accessible, even though they're not on one page.

Electronics and Robotics - <http://electronics.stackexchange.com/> \- is a question and answer site for electronic engineers. It already has over a thousand users and questions, and it's all up for viewing right now - <USER2> invites required. It is in beta, but that doesn't mean a lot - It's been running in some form for about a year, and it's due for launch just before New Years Day). It doesn't look as polished as this site, because the content is created in users' spare time for immediate use, not in preparation for screen captures.

If you're reluctant to sign up for EEWeb, enjoy using Stackoverflow, or want another source for getting answers to your electronic engineering questions (or all of the above), you should check it out.

<comment><USER7> I'm aware that there are other community sites for various kinds of techies.

My question is whether those other sites have the kinds of services that you think are valuable.

For example, do any of these other sites have a "follow" feature? (Second question - I can imaging the benefits of following someone, but what is the benefit of being followed?)

Same for "custom engineer profiles"? Heck - why wouldn't I just use a link to my LinkedIn profile? (Maintaining multiple profiles is a pain....)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How is this different than <http://www.eetimes.com>?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our focus is on the engineering community where you can setup your own engineering profile, document and share hardware projects, and follow other engineers.

<comment><USER9> so facebook / basecamp for the EE crowd?

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, I just added a screenshot of my profile page.

<http://www.eeweb.com/pics/site/eeweb2.png>

<comment><USER9> Got it - Would be worth reaching out to the octoparts guys. They could give you some good feedback.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Text is a bad medium for storing source code - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1130517002425122816 <comment><USER2> Sure, it's bad. But it's better than all the rest.

Why?

Universal. Many many tools can access it, and will for the foreseeable future.

Transmittable. Easy to ship to different places.

Versionable. Can be stored in a wide variety of version control systems.</comment>


Why the Google generation isn't as smart as it thinks - <AUTHOR> http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article4362950.ece <comment><USER2> _This may all be a moral panic, a severe case of the older generation wagging its finger at the young. It was ever thus._

Here we have the modern cultural critic at work: He doesn't just wag his finger -- he _deconstructs himself_ at the same time! So, when I point out that this guy just another in a long line of whining moral scolds, he can claim that he understood that all along! He was just being _ironic_! Isn't hipster detachment fun -- even when the guy's wrong, he's right!

So, yeah, he's right: This is a steaming pile of Get Off My Lawn. The big clue is the part where he loses focus on the issue of focus ( _irony_!) and starts teeing off on these kids today, who spend all their time on the internet _gossiping with each other_ instead of reading improving books. Even the _parodies_ of this line of argument are older than dirt: Before the Internet it was video games, reality television, cartoons, gangs, pop music, drugs, punk rock, hard rock, progressive rock, Jimi Hendrix, birth control pills, Elvis Presley, beatniks, Buddy Holly, swing dance, movie theaters, the wrong _kind_ of books, jazz clubs, speakeasies, ragtime, billiard parlors, opium dens, all-night poker games, gangs...

Even the interesting part, the bit about distraction, is old news. Distraction is, indeed, one of the modern world's biggest sources of stress, unhappiness and poor productivity, _but that is nothing new_. This guy accurately notes that concern about information overload dates back to Thoreau's unhappiness with the telegraph and the newspaper -- and I'd bet the Zen Buddhists would be willing to argue it goes back even farther. You're telling me that the Internet is somehow even more pernicious and distracting than leaving the TV on all day, which has been going on for sixty years? That workers in the seventies didn't find wired telephones and intercoms and water coolers and newspapers and muzak distracting? (I guess Demarco and Lister are precogs -- they railed about this stuff in _Peopleware_ before the Web even existed.)

And then, rather than talk about how to _ameliorate_ the information overload problem, the guy throws up his hands and proclaims that we're doomed to a new Dark Age (!). Just as we have been since Thoreau. After all, what important things have happened since 1849?

Being a moral scold is easy work. Each year you write the same essay with a couple of words changed.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure the internet is necessarily any "worse" than TV or whatever in this regard, but its threat is more disguised. When you're wasting time with superficial information on the web, you're still _using a computer!_ And there is so much useful information on the web, _how could using the web be a bad thing?_

On the surface, it appears to be a more productive activity than watching television. It is more interactive, and it does require more skills to get going with it than television does. But once you get past that, it can still all too easily turn into a waste of time.

<comment><USER2> There was a time when television was considered a valuable source of important information about the world. The idea that TV is intrinsically stupid didn't really have popular traction until Newton Minow's "vast wasteland" speech in the 1960s.

I agree that the web is more subtle, especially today, when the chrome has yet to wear off. But no medium is free from time-wasting. History is replete with people whose reading and writing was arguably "a waste of time". It's certainly replete with artists, musicians, and writers whose tendency to focus obsessively on their hobby was bad for their finances and their health. Ramanujan arguably worked himself to death with _mathematics_.

<comment><USER4> I remember back in the 80s there was this trend to outfit schools with a television in every room, as television was going to be some kind of teaching/learning holy grail. Then it was never used for that, and I remember a lot of the televisions going unused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "One American study found that interruptions take up 2.1 hours of the average knowledge worker's day. This, it was estimated, cost the US economy $588 billion a year."

There's this myth in America that it's possible to work non-stop for 8 straight hours a day. Distractions maybe unhealthy and negatively impact productivity, but this statistic certainly does not demonstrate that.

<comment><USER6> I'd get much more done if I could work 4+2+1+1 hours scattered throughout the day (say 9pm-1am, 7am-8am, 12pm-2pm, and 3-4pm). 8 straight is brutal and hardly ever all used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe my brain has been fried by spending too much time on Hacker News, but isn't there an 'it is' missing from the title?

'Tests clearly show that a switched-on television reduces the quality and quantity of interaction between children and their parents. The internet multiplies the effect a thousandfold.'

If you've got scientific evidence to back up your claims, please link to it. I'd like to know what the SI unit for parent/child interaction is.

I don't like the article much, but has anyone read the book he refers to?

<comment><USER8> I, for one, would talk to my parents a lot more if they were on IRC.

<comment><USER9> I thought that as well - that i would talk to my parents more if they spoke via AIM/MSN/IRC. Then they actually got onto AIM and started talking. And I started calling them up (if at college) or going into the other room (if during break).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm sorry but I can't read this article. There are many others that need my attention.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just reed a book nao an agan. Prblm solvd, k thanks!

Seriously though, I've been hearing similar messages for a while. It's a scary prospect, but I really think the solution is as easy as reading books.

An aside: I used to think that computers would increase literacy rates, as a typing/reading were prerequisites to internet use. But, seeing how many people spend their 'surf time' just watching videos on YouTube I'm starting to think otherwise.

<comment><USER12> I suppose that it depends on how low you set the bar for what is considered literacy.

<comment><USER13> I think it's a matter of how HIGH the bar is showing itself right now. I mean, upper literature has never been commonplace entertainment, not any more than it is right now. Back in the 20s people weren't all discussing the finer points of Steinbeck and Faulkner. We only remember those guys now and assume everybody was like them - and that therefore we've dropped - but I'd guess we have more people into upper literature now than they had back then.

The problem is that cultures change so rapidly. We have a hundred new mediums presenting themselves every decade, and each of us finds solitude in a different sort. It's natural for some people to prefer texting over literature, just as it's natural for some of us to shun the Internet entirely. I think the Internet gets this more than the literati do. We get that just because fewer people read books doesn't mean that there's a threat of books vanishing altogether. It means that the market gets smaller and more focused, and you get a much cozier reading community. I'd guess that of the students I was with in high school you could get a good 40% to write a decent essay if you needed one - and that's a high percentage, when you compare that with the percentage of people who need to be able to write decent essays in life.

Shakespeare couldn't spell his own name, from the fragments we have of his writing. He wasn't "literate" by the bar this article would like to set. He just came up with play ideas and figured out how to word things vocally. He created what we'd call great literature without the tools that we assume literature needs to get started.

As I said: the Internet gets it. The sci-fi literate get it, too: and no surprise, since the best science fiction writers today are on the truly cutting edge of literature. It's the conservative literati that still doesn't understand that literature changes with every decade, that what's true today might not be in 2010, and that that's not necessarily a bad thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A few years ago i read an article that computer games brainwash kids, and that red alert 2 promoted fascism. Its a good strategy, if you want attention predict the end of the world, and stupid people start paying attention to you. The most read news papers are the ones with gossip about celebrities, there is no news here, most people are stupid and use the internet accordingly to their abilities, these are the same people that read yellow press and watch reality TV, its not the technology thats the problem, its the people.

</comment><comment><USER15> "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us"</comment>


Best way to punish Plagiarisers? DDoS Things to consider for web security - <AUTHOR> https://blog.praveen.science/best-way-to-punish-plagiarisers-ddos-attack-them/ <comment><USER2> Does something borderline illegal, brags about it on the internet. What could go wrong?</comment>


Coronavirus: Germany puts on crowded concerts to study risks - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53875370 <comment><USER3> Most commenters here didn't read the article properly and completely misunderstood what this is about. To be fair, it's not explained super clearly.

So to clarify: This was not done to study the spread of the virus, but rather to study the behavior of people at this type of event. Only people who tested negative were allowed to the event.

This has a lot more detail (but is in German): [https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/corona- konzert-r...](https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/corona-konzert- restart19-in-leipzig-mit-tim-bendzko-noch-kurz-die-welt- retten-a-5ae630e5-3ea0-4c97-9cf0-158516aca193)

<comment><USER4> My first reaction was: wouldn't people who tested negative -- and knew their results -- behave differently from people who didn't know what their infection status was? Wouldn't that skew the study?

But then again, from observing my friends (who are mostly younger), many of them behave as if they didn't have the virus anyway -- even those who hadn't been tested. So yes, the results might be a little skewed, but the results should still be instructive.

<comment><USER5> There is also always the risc that you contacted it since the last test, so the period in which you can feel to safely not be infectious is rather short.

<comment><USER6> That risk is much lower if it takes 15-minute to get the test results, as opposed to tests that take an unknown amount of days/weeks to get results. The linked article does not discuss in depth what kind of testing took place, only that it did.

<comment><USER5> Yes but not if the short tests work reliably. The best not yet on the market short tests we have do have a lot sensitivity but high specificity, i.e if they say you have it you most likely have it but if they say you don't have it you can't rely on it at all. (As as I know)

This is still somewhat useful as it turns out they still do a reasonable good job wrt. Sensitivity iff you are highly infectious.

So it might be useful to at least "weed out" the most infectious people before grant events or e.g. school, which would probably already be a great improvement I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wasn't there a article about "read the paper and then comment" in the too of hackernews yesterday or so?

It's sad that many didn't learn anything from this and are now discussing how bad such a study is on basis of assumption which ate easily disproven if you read the article :(

(It's a study about human behavior, about how certain distance rules might work and how not, it's also testing the potential thread of smearing based infections by using desinfec which glows under UV light and by simulating the airflow in the hall and similar. All pacipiants are tested to not be infected, all are required to wear FFP2 masks properly all the time, no food is given out, drinking is only allowed in the emergency, hands are desinfected on entry and potentially later one, too...., So no this should not lead to any relevant increased risk of spread. But might lead to potential reopening of concert halls and similar if it's found to be feasible under some conditions).

</comment><comment><USER7> What has happened to us as people that studies like this have become so rare? We can't understand this virus without taking on some level of risk.

<comment><USER8> We developed ethics around clinical research.

One of those principles is that if you're going to actively expose people to something - to create a possible harm where there previously wasn't one - <USER2> have to be honestly uncertain of the potential harm (eg, it's ethical to give you a placebo vs experimental drug because I honestly don't know if the drug will work).

It's unethical to -certainly- cause harm.

In part that's because, social dynamics and power structures being what they are, those "consenting" will skew towards the uneducated and powerless.

In part, consent isn't even relevant - in this example, if they ended up stoking the flames of contagion, they wouldn't just affect the concert goers but, by definition, all those exposed to the concert goers.

Amusingly, the above refers more to interventional studies - those with more than one arm. This doesn't really have a control arm, or randomized assignment of people to exposure. It's effectively an observational study - the sort of thing you don't need to intentionally construct, but for the fact that people seem to not be going to concerts.

So... did they have to construct concerts artificially because not enough were occurring naturally? Did they have to create a harm that didn't exist to begin with? Will it even be insightful? They filtered for the young, which specifically ensures there's less of a chain of transmission available.

Considering Germany inspired so much of modern medical ethics work, it's ironic to see them conduct such a study. I honestly wouldn't have expected it.

I'm sure the relevant experts and authorities beat these questions to death, but even so, I'd be awfully curious to see those deliberations and what justifications were ultimately considered adequate.

<comment><USER9> We're not very consistent with this though. We consider it perfectly acceptable to put people in harms way as part of the armed forces. Even though the exact same demographic effects are in play.

<comment><USER10> The armed forces aren't a randomized trial.

Many people go into harms way because of a necessary duty (firefighters, etc).

The restrictions on medical trials is because of the power imbalance. If I take a job as a firefighter or soldier that's different from me living my life and being enrolled in some study putting me at risk for harm.

<comment><USER9> I don't see how volunteering to enroll in a study (and being compensated for it) is any different to choosing to take a job as a soldier or firefighter.

<comment><USER11> Taking a job as a soldier is not at all comparable to taking a job as a fire fighter.

<comment><USER12> Both are expected to expose themselves to risk, both get paid. The many differences seem irrelevant to the topic at hand. What am I missing?

<comment><USER11> Soldiers tend to kill people, firefighters tend to save people, the difference - to me - would seem to be obvious.

<comment><USER12> That difference still seems to me not relevant to the topic at hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hm, I expected this to be a real concert, with crowd standing and most people not wearing masks. To me it seems they tested how the virus spreads on healthy individuals (i.e. nobody had a virus prior to going there) who hold their distance while sitting still and wearing masks. Under those constraints, I'd expect around 0 new cases.

Edit: much clearer now, thanks to everybody who replied!

<comment><USER14> I think this is a very useful research. Considering the catastrophic effect of the pandemic on performing arts, knowing that concerts organized with due precautions are reasonably safe, it could directly lead to a very significant restart.

This is indeed (based on the article), the target of the research:

      to investigate the conditions under which such events can be
      carried out despite the pandemic

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Note: Contrary to what you may have heard, if you catch the virus, there is a high likelihood that you will not die.

</comment><comment><USER16> Chaos engineering IRL.

</comment><comment><USER17> I assume people had to quarantine for two weeks after the concert?

<comment><USER18> Why? Because they kept their distance and wore masks while around people tested not to be infected?

<comment><USER8> PCR has a 30% false negative rate. You make it sound like they entered a clean room. They did not.

<comment><USER19> This makes it sound more dramatic than it is.

Let's assume the "real" share of infectious people in the population is 10/100k (That's twice as much as the most recent reported 7-day incidence (5.1/100k) of new infections for Leipzig, the area where the study was performed.)

Further let's assume a PCR Test has a 30% FNR, and a 10% FPR (numbers completely made up, I don't have a source).

Then out of 1500 People who have tested negative, we'd expect 0.05 to have the virus.

<comment><USER20> Probably more like 14-20 day window and much greater than 2x incidence as loads of people show little or no symptoms.

Once the expected value starts to creep over 1, then that's enough to infect quite a lot of people. It's not too much past that to expect that one of the infected has 'underlying condition' and risking death.

In British Coloumbia there's been a big outbreak due to a single gathering in the interior, notably (shamefully) attended by Medics and Doctors.

It's a little risky.

It's just not the time to have major gatherings, but at least this one is in the service of the science of 'stopping it' \- which is better than most places are doing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Canadian government introduces ACTA compliance bill - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6796/125/

<comment><USER2> I (naively) hoped that this wouldn't re-surface but now that it has, I'm not surprised. Harper and Co. are steadfast in toadying up to Washington and Co. and seem to not only disregard the numerous times similar legislation has been shot down, but the fact that almost this exact same legislation has been shot down everywhere but the US.

This in particular is politics at it's worst and anyone that actually uses this line should be ashamed of themselves:

"The bill will likely be promoted as protecting public health, however, there is a danger that the provisions could be used to stop the entry of legitimate generic medicines."

Right out of the US playbook.

<comment><USER3> All my Canadian friends are frustrated with Harper. I wonder how did he get elected in the first place? :) From aside, it feels like Canada is being infested with neoliberal policies in disguise under the very leadership of the Prime Minster.

Don't let them spoil "the best part of North America" :) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXtVrDPhHBg>

<comment><USER4> The same way bush got elected twice (despite all the tech people I hear from in the US hating him): a quiet(ish) massive population of conservatives coexisting uneasily with us. In Canada especially in our rather significant rural areas like the prairie provinces.

<comment><USER5> Wait...I don't mean to spread false information, so please, anyone, correct me if I am totally off base, and I will even delete my comment, but...

I thought it was pretty much agreed upon that George Bush Jr. won through voting machines that had been tampered with and because voting ended as soon as Bush had the majority vote in Florida, when in reality it was later found out Al Gore had more votes.

Or did I just pull that out of my ass?

Again, if it is false, I'll gladly remove this comment since I was watching it all (i.e., the American gov't) crumble from Canada.

Edit: Or was all that just conspiracy theory?

<comment><USER6> Bush had more electoral votes.

Gore won the popular vote.

There were issues in Florida which determined the electoral votes and pushed the state to Bush.

Electoral votes are what mater: Bush won.

<comment><USER7> I think that most people are contesting whether or not Bush should have won the Florida electoral votes, which would have changed the election, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, I can't believe they are still going forward with this. Hopefully Canadians continue to speak up on Copyright issues, and make sure unpopular bills remain so for a reason...

<comment><USER9> To be frank, with the current government being a majority it doesn't really matter what Canadians do or say. Our prime minister will see to it that whatever he wants to pass will pass.

What we need to do is make sure that he gets replaced next election, and that a lot of the changes he's implemented are removed.

<comment><USER8> I agree that he has to go, but I disagree that us being active will have little affect. Due directly to complaints, we killed off the first 2 versions of their copyright change bills and their attempt to implement warrant-less wire-tapping.

These things have a bad habit of coming back again (like right now) but voicing your opinion definitely helps to sway the conversation and hopefully send them back to the drawing board...

<comment><USER10> The last 2 copyright reform bills (that I'm aware of - one circa 2008 and one circa 2012?) were both put forth by minority governments.

<comment><USER8> True, but they both got significantly revised before coming back in the final form, that passed last year, due to pressure.

<comment><USER10> That's the point: the pressure was only effective because they were put forth by minority governments. Majority governments have a much freer hand.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The legal stuff you should know about remote work - <AUTHOR> https://www.jitbit.com/news/3308-legal-stuff-they-dont-tell-you-about-remote-work/ <comment><USER2> Almost every part of this is wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know what the law says about remote work in the EU, but for Americans, this is 100% unadulterated bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER4> Terrible legal advice. Remote work does NOT automatically make you a contractor rather than an employee.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, lots of people are normal employees, but not in a central office.

On almost all other points he seemed incorrect for most of the jurisdictions I've worked in. I'm sure some of it is true for some jurisdictions, but way overgeneralised.</comment></comment>


Why do people believe we use only 10% of our brains? - <AUTHOR> http://m.ajc.com/news/news/national/why-do-people-believe-we-only-use-10-percent-our-b/ngkr4/

<comment> dj-wonk Regarding the study: I am not surprised. Once people believe a myth it is probably harder for them to stop believing it, unless: (a) people actively challenge themselves to dismantle out-of-date beliefs; or (b) people are confronted with something that forces cognitive dissonance.

So why do myths seem to persist despite their questionable veracity? I want to throw out a few thoughts about the lifecycle of myths:

1\. Myths are interesting and tell a story that resonates with their audience. This helps get them in our brains in the first place.

2\. Myths are credible, at least at first. Perhaps they are based on scientific argumentation or conventional wisdom or (somewhat limited) experience. This gives a myth a mental foothold.

3\. Some myths are untestable, at least practically speaking from the perspective of people that believe them. So myth-based knowledge tends to linger.

4\. Myths may be repeated (like memes) simply due to associative memory. People's brains work largely by association, so many myths spread because they give a person something interesting to say. This gives myths a way to spread.

5\. To some degree, myths are busted for various reasons. But the overall dynamics of myths (call it myth epidemiology if you want) means that they may have already infected a significant portion of the population.

</comment><comment> dj-wonk Another question for the distributed systems engineers here: what kind of computation would be required for a system of people to rigorously identify and disprove their myths?

In order for Person A to efficiently disprove Myth X in Person B, Person A needs (1) to know that Person B believes Myth X; (2) to know and employ some action (such as a conversation) that will be effective; and (3) not have something better to do (opportunity cost).

</comment><comment> dj-wonk Question for you all. If we frame the myth problem from a Shannon information point of view where a myth is a form of entropy (e.g. let's say a falsehood is disorder), how much energy would be required to reduce the entropy of the system?

Myths may simply be the knowledge "noise floor" of a world given the rate of new information generation and humanity's limited abilities to make sense of it.</comment>


Mac CLI –  OS X command line tools for developers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/guarinogabriel/mac-cli <comment><USER2> Bash script does all the things.</comment>


Show HN: CalmJobs.io – Work with companies who values work-life balance - <AUTHOR> http://calmjobs.io/ <comment><USER2> This domain looks like it was registered today, and most of the companies on the site are ones that are also on [https://peoplefirstjobs.com/](https://peoplefirstjobs.com/) which was announced yesterday by Natalie Nagele of Wildbit: [https://twitter.com/natalienagele/status/1207435518205546497](https://twitter.com/natalienagele/status/1207435518205546497)

<comment><USER3> There was also a big thread about "calm technology" a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21799736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21799736).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like the idea of this, but I have to ask - how do you know what companies value work-life balance? Of course everyone says they do... Many times it seems like one company can have some teams that are balanced, and some that aren't. How does anyone even quantify work-life balance?

<comment><USER5> This would have to be determined from Glassdoor type feedback, which Glassdoor already has.

<comment><USER6> Glassdoor seems ripe for astroturfing. At my last company, HR specifically targeted new hires (they didn't want people that had already been there and been soured by the culture) in a mass email to please leave a positive review on Glassdoor. It's also just painfully obvious from looking at the reviews which ones are fake, and it's _a lot_ of them.

This certainly isn't true for all companies, but Glassdoor isn't exactly immune to shilling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's "Basecamp", not "BaseCamp". I'd also recommend rethinking the phrase "work-life balance" because it creates a dichotomy contrasting work against life, which is silly. Work is merely a part of life, and for some people who hold the same values as you seem to (like me), the phrase "work-life balance" is a dogwhistle for a kind of mere lip service to the idea, rather than a real embrace of it.

<comment><USER8> > ... contrasting work against life, which is silly. Work is merely a part of > life

Work and life are contrasted for good reason: my time does not belong to me when I'm working -- it belongs to my employer. And, for good reason, the employer-employee relationship is asymmetrical. It's as simple as that.

Of course, if you run your own company or own a significant stake in the company you're at, then it's true that "work is part of life." But that's not a reasonable default position.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. If I could maintain my current lifestyle without being paid, "work" is not a part of my life I would participate in, in the sense I do now. There probably are things one would call "work" that I would start or continue to do, but definitely not my current job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm on the market and really like the idea of a jobs marketplace and recruiters that prioritize work-life balance first.

I've been looking at Upwork and things have changed quite a bit since when I was using eLance, oDesk, Guru, etc 5 years ago. My specialty is PHP and iOS/Android development, and back then there might be 3-5 bids on gigs after a client listing was up for a few days. Now it's 10-20 the very first day. My market at least seems to be saturated.

I also look on LinkedIn, Indeed and Glassdoor. From what I can tell, just about everything has moved to enterprise, SEO and cybersecurity. The prerequisites now are AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, and specific job roles or languages experience rather than general programming or problem-solving acumen. The vast majority of jobs are full-time.

I can find a full-time job for $100,000 per year much more easily than a part- time job for $50,000. Has anyone had any luck working part-time or remote sustainably?

I'm concerned that as we head up to the next economic downturn and beyond, that programming will get more and more specialized to the point that it becomes IT. So more about support and maintaining existing infrastructure than breaking new ground or solving new problems. I also feel that most of the new disciplines like SEO and dev ops arguably have little or nothing to do with programming and probably shouldn't be grouped with it. They are representative of the ethical/legal shortcomings of search engines, and conceptual issues with software architecture planning vs agile spinning (chasing profit at all cost rather than paying down technical debt). I guess to me, they represent a shift from the egalitarian future of the 90s and twenty-teens to one where profit trumps quality of life for certain people.

Am I misguided here? Is there any chance of getting programmers back to having somewhat independent lives like they enjoyed in the 80s and 90s? This last year I've been considering walking away from programming because it's not about the money anymore. I just don't know if I can give up my whole psyche in 1 and 2 year blocks of my life toiled away on someone else's problems anymore. I admit that I'm actually kind of in crisis about this. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a good idea but I think calm has the connotations of being slow and without a sense of urgency. Most people want some sort of fast-paced and motivated environment but not one that expects them to work crazy hours or will insane expectations

</comment><comment><USER12> Great concept! Bookmarked for future reference.

Nitpicky copy edits: In the headline, it should be "value" not "values". Also, I'd update the job buttons to just say "Apply". "Apply Job" sounds awkward.

</comment><comment><USER13> Would be interesting to see employers that let you work 2-3 days a week.

</comment><comment><USER14> Good concept. Props for testing your idea so quickly. This is how its done folks.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd recommend GitLab too. 100% remote while maintaining double digit y/y growth. I've been to a few of their events. And always hear "this is the best place I've ever worked" ;)

<comment><USER16> I know they have their reasons, and it may even work for them, but I really loathe their location dependend compensation (as a person living in one).

I think their explanations don't hold water. For eg. they actually compete with other remote companies for people working in what they consider "low-wage regions", but those companies pay the same rates for everyone. So they won't get top engineers from those regions, since those engineers can work in other remote companies which pay more (and don't discriminate people based on location).

<comment><USER17> > I really loathe their location dependend compensation

Quick thought experiment: would you still disagree location-dependent compensation if they opened a physical office in your region, and priced their offers according to the local market?

Companies that have physical offices in multiple regions naturally adjust compensation levels depending on the local talent market. Why should it be any different for remote companies where the only difference is no physical office?

<comment><USER16> They don't compete in the local talent market, they compete in the global talent market while offering local compensation. If they have a physical office, then they actually compete in the local market.

edit: I mean have an office and require to work from there. Companies which have an office and offer remote are naturally at a disadvantage here in the same way, though having an office may help offset the disadvantage (some people don't want to work remotely, having an office to go to from time to time and talk to people, meetings, integration parties, other benefits)

edit2: I've also just checked their rates, and for my region they are at best average even accounting for local market prices. So I don't see how they have an attractive offer in any way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are large tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook considered to have good "work life balance"?

</comment><comment><USER19> The only companies who "value work-life balance" are the ones that let you work part-time. It's, IMO, nuts to spend 40 hours a week at work in this day and age, particularly for software engineers who can demand a relatively high average hourly rate. You can't make all the money in the world.

<comment><USER20> Why work part time your whole life when you can work full time and retire at 40?

<comment><USER10> This is a fallacy. I'm 42 and have been working in tech since I graduated with my computer engineering degree in '99\. I only just paid off my student loans 2 years ago. I have no retirement, and just burned through my savings over some health issues related to burnout.

Things are going to be even worse for millennials. Seriously, anyone reading this should be thinking about what they want out of life and how we could/should organize an economy and culture so that everyone can work sustainably and thrive. If something doesn't change soon, and especially with looming challenges like whole industries being automated, I fear that we are headed towards a future of perfect wealth inequality and 21st century feudalism.

<comment><USER21> Something odd happened there. I also graduated in '99 and, with a BS CS degree, pretty much did computer engineering. In just two years I paid off my loans, paid off my wife's loans (she didn't work), and bought a somewhat fancy new car. Since then, I've paid off a house and had 12 kids.

I guess things go badly if you paid full price for an expensive school, used private loans with high interest, never paid more than the minimum demanded for your loans, missed some payments, and gave most of your money to your landlord. None of that is required.

Somewhere, something went very wrong for you. Your situation isn't typical for a person with that degree.

<comment><USER10> You're telling me. The gist of it is that I have the knack for perfect storms.

Moved back in with my dad after graduating, had a couple of the most memorable years of my life. Went into business with one of my best friends growing up, made a bunch of shareware games but never made more than a few thousand dollars here and there. Worked for hp for a year as a contractor, it was wonderful but was going through a turbulent time in my life after the death of a friend so didn't stick with it. Struggled through the dot bomb and housing bubble. Worked as a Mac repair technician. Flipped a bunch of broken Macs for 6 months when nobody anywhere had any money. Worked a few years as a contractor, scraping by on several failed projects for every one that made it into the app stores. Had $20,000 in the bank when Bitcoin was $10, ended up spending it on making good on fixed price contracts I underestimated. Worked as a backend and mobile developer for 4 years for a major consulting agency in town, had a falling out after we realized I wasn't a good fit for the last project I was on.

I realized too late in life that I do poorly with negative reinforcement. So the things that I work the hardest on, when they fail, I sort of shut down and lose hope. All we have as developers is our mental health. If/when that declines, it's devastating. I look back on my career, at the hundreds (thousands tbh) of unfinished programming projects on my hard drive, and I see that I am the poster child of unrealized potential.

It's reached a point where I can't really write about or discuss my life because people find it too depressing. I have unusually high empathy and creativity (statistical outlier INFP) which tend to sabotage my analytical work in programming. I feel the pain and suffering of these times acutely and find it difficult to focus on the problems before me, which tend to be mundane and symptomatic of a world gone wrong. In other words I (like so many over the hill midlife crisis programmers) have come to see much of my work and most trends in computer science in general as a waste of time.

It might be too late for me. I'm trying to put on a brave face and laugh about the whole thing, but I just don't know if my heart is in programming anymore. Imagine what you're doing right now, what you're most passionate about. Then imagine you wake up one day and it's like you had a stroke - you go to do the thing and feel a knot in your stomach, a realization that you'd rather be doing anything else at all. And the feeling lasts 6 months or more. That's what I'm facing now, even though I have so much inspiration to work on inventions and side projects. It's like the well has run dry, and I spend the entirety of my time now coping with daily life, trying to scrape up some money for living expenses, and letting other people's priorities take priority over my own.

I wish there was an alternative economy, some other way of living more like Star Trek. Maybe I should have stayed in academia. I can't even imagine the life I might have had. It's a strange feeling to be able to solve any problem easily, except how to take care of oneself. But that's all I've known for some time now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Work-life balance: when work is big and near, and life is small and far away. ;)</comment>


Running Yahoo Pipes on Google App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.wordloosed.com/running-yahoo-pipes-on-google-app-engine#readmore <comment><USER2> That's really slick. I've always thought Yahoo Pipes and YQL are exciting steps toward a more programmable web. Nicely done.</comment>


News Flash: A Google Product Came Out of Beta - <AUTHOR> http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080407-113209

<comment><USER2> Does it even make a difference? The whole world is using gmail as if it weren't in beta, with expectations to match.

<comment><USER3> If anything I think its a bad thing, people will start to assume 'beta' means fairly stable and usable.

<comment><USER4> Announcing "Windows Beta"... "As the successor to Windows Vista, we believe 'Windows Beta' (formerly known as Windows 7) will bring unprecendented levels of stability and usability."</comment></comment></comment>


Service I want: "Report websites that suck" - <AUTHOR>

Hey,
I was just going to pay my monthly bill on PG&E. For some reason the "Pay" button doesn't work in Firefox 3. Of all the functions on that websites the "Pay-button" is likely to be the most important one. Sad they had to fuck that up.
So, here is my idea in response. Build a service called "Websites that suck". It could be a firefox plugin or just a website. People can sign in and report sites that constantly suck or break. It can be a very simple tools where thousands of users together figure out which sites that REALLY suck.
Once a month a report is created, very similar to Technorati's "State of the blogsphere" that lists the websites that suck the most and how the top 50 has changed month by month.
What do you guys think? Big opportunity for a startup. Say I work for PG&E and 10,000 people report every month that our website suck but I don't know why. I then buy all the comments from the startup for say $1000/month. It's a cheap way of getting rid of bad PR.
Gustaf <comment><USER2> I think this has legs. Could be positioned and designed something along the lines of <http://www.shoulddothis.com/> or even <http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/> (but this service would be 'doesthissitesuckorisitjustme.com). It's not 'extortion' to companies subscribing. It's valuable and a cheap form of research. Has to be presented 'nicely' of course!

</comment><comment><USER3> Another way to think about this: take the "site x doesn't work with browser y" bugs out of all the different browser bugzillas and give them a more coherent home. This will help mitigate the martian headsets problem (<http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html>)

Heh, browserzilla.com is available.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's a very technical way of looking at it. i'm not only talking about how a site works in a particular browser but if it's actually good or not.

mainly the sites i have in my mind are sites where you don't choose the service based on the web-service and you end up with a really sucky service that you can't leave. for example: \- banks \- utilites companies \- cellphone carriers \- government sites \- ecommerce sites (where you're a customer in the physical store)

etc

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I didn't phrase it right. What I suggested wasn't exactly the same thing, but it seemed more actionable.

What constitutes 'sucky' is often subjective and open to interpretation. You risk ending up as just another review site.

Defining sucks as 'broken', however, means focussing on things like "why the heck doesn't submit work here?" and so on. These websites have all been tested, even at the most monopolistic places. They just haven't been tested on some combination of browser and platform.

So that's how I made the subconscious transition from your idea to mine :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about a website where corporations can submit information on unreasonable- sucky users/customers. They could then share that data and deny you service based on your unreasonable expectations (like compatibility with BETA software used by <1% of the population) and proven history of alarmist posts on elitist websites like Hacker News.

I'd build that.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good luck, but if PG&E et. al ever get caught paying to unransom published comments they'll face a worse PR nightmare than mere reports of bad javascript.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea was that PG&E would pay to even be able to see the comments. The comments would be hidden

<comment><AUTHOR> not that great idea after all. Comments shoul be open

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Stupidest idea I've heard in a long time.

 _Extortion, outwresting, or exaction is a criminal offense, which occurs when a person either unlawfully obtains money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution through coercion or intimidation or threatens a person, entity, or institution with physical or reputational harm unless he is paid money or property._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion>

<comment><USER6> Quit downmodding me, shitheads. I'm trying to keep this numbskull out of bankruptcy court or prison.

EDIT: No, really. I want ONE person to admit having downmodded me. Seriously. You've got some potential criminal posting shit here and he needs corrected.

<comment><USER7> I didn't downmod you but I think that the reason people did wasn't the legal warning (which is certainly valid and relevant,) but the tone. Insulting people just doesn't get them to listen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> SiteAdvisor does something similar \- <http://www.siteadvisor.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> It might be SSL that's broken on the new Firefox. I can't visit any https sites using Firefox 3 beta on the Mac.

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Search_Wikia>

I don't know how it's coming but wikia search should be able to allow users to modify whether search returns are good and valuable.

</comment><comment><USER11> Michael Arrington already does a good enough job with this sort of reporting.

</comment><comment><USER12> delicious tag?

</comment><comment><USER13> bookmarklet

<comment><AUTHOR> even better idea. works in both IE and FF right?</comment></comment>