Serendipity: Success in business increasingly depends on chance encounters - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/16638391?story_id=16638391

<comment><USER2> This article struck a chord for me. Most of the people who form an integral part of my life were met by pure chance. My angel investor was coming back home one night, after a party, and the street dog I take care of started jumping up on him. So, I pulled him off and chatted with him for a while. He told me to come back next day and that was that.

I do the same thing with everyone I meet from security guards to random strangers. Everyone has something you can learn from. Everyone has a story it's just that most people never listen.

On the other hand, I've noticed that if you go out with a fixed agenda in mind; I want to meet angels, or something. There is a higher probability that it won't work. Most people have this ability to sense other people's agendas and that puts them off. No one wants to be used, but everyone likes an intelligent/decent conversation...

[edit: I forgot to add one of the most interesting ones. Recently, I met this woman in the park, who was there with her dogs. I started playing with them and I picked up a conversation with her. It turned out that she was an artist (mainly a dancer) and I spent half an hour with her talking about the beauty of things around us. We analyzed the shades of the trees how beautiful they were dancing in the wind, while the light played with their leaves. We talked about her dogs and her work.

It had to be one of the most interesting conversations I've had in years, and the best part is that she liked it. :) ]

<comment><USER3> Nearly everything good that has happened to me that was caused or assisted by other people (most things) has happened in a manner that is difficult to see as anything but the accident of thousands of favourably coincidental factors.

It seems obvious that one can increase the probability of this occurring by interacting with more people and creating more opportunities, from a purely statistical perspective, for something useful to emerge. The best way is to do so in a goal-oriented but not overly-specific or insincere way, as you say.

Why does this merit an article or a book?

<comment><USER4> "Why does this merit an article or a book?"

Most popular nonfiction books written nowadays can be summed up in a few sentences. So this example isn't really that unusual.

Blogs > books

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think it even depends on specific techniques as those mentioned. If you're lacking direction, it's possible to succeed merely by constantly throwing things out there and seeing what sticks.

I kept a personal blog for years (something I've only just got back into after a few years out) and people asked why I bothered. I had little better to do with my spare time. Worked out, though, I got a book deal from it and for 2 years made $3000+ per month on Adsense from a few posts where I reviewed different route finder services. Totally randomly, totally beneficial. Some people criticized my tweeting years ago - now it's really paying off.

The worst thing you can do, IMHO, is nothing. Unless you have something you _should_ be focusing on, keep throwing things out there, keep trying things out, and something should, eventually, stick and give some pay back.

<comment><USER4> Doing nothing is a greater sin that doing something suboptimal. But if you're doing something suboptimal, then you're likely to bring it up in a conversation since what you do is on your mind. This creates an unfavorable incentive system where you get punished for doing suboptimal things even though you aren't punished for doing nothing.

Suggested solutions:

1\. have designated work hours. Become upset with yourself if you don't work during those hours. (If your school/job sucks, don't be afraid to snooze or cut corners during that, if you can get away with it, so you'll have more energy for your self-designated work hours.)

2\. when someone criticizes you, suck it up. It's pretty clear to me that criticism is more valuable than praise. Ask the person who's criticizing you what you should be working on instead. If they're getting to you, ask what they've been working on themselves. (Don't ask this unless you have to, because if you do they'll probably stop criticizing you, and you want all the criticism you can stand.)

<comment><USER5> _when someone criticizes you, suck it up. It's pretty clear to me that criticism is more valuable than praise. Ask the person who's criticizing you what you should be working on instead. If they're getting to you, ask what they've been working on themselves. (Don't ask this unless you have to, because if you do they'll probably stop criticizing you, and you want all the criticism you can stand.)_

I agree, but it's also key to be able to judge criticism or advice after accepting it. Criticism that offends your sense of pride equally could easily be useful _or_ plain idiotic and it's essential to come up with some metrics or even just a gut instinct to tell the difference.

<comment><USER4> Definitely. Direct probabilistic reasoning is better than using metrics or gut instincts though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Increasingly?"

While new technology has certainly magnified the effects of this dynamic and enhanced its global character, as well as lowered its cost, and granted new conventions, mannerisms and particulars to our experience of it, this does not strike me as a particularly novel thesis, in the grand scheme of things.

Businesspeople - invariably, of the "people person" variety (a seeming requirement for the transaction of commerce) - have always known personal connections and seemingly random events to be the fabric of marketing and selling, and have been doing it for as long as labour specialisation has been around, it seems to me. Who doesn't know that meeting people and swapping information increases the statistical incidence of striking some kind of deal with someone, somewhere?

Sure, it's been explicitly codified in management lore in recent times with given buzzwords like "networking" and "mixers," to be sure. This is part of the ongoing tendency by bureaucratic management thought to take the timeless commonsensical narratives of the small proprietor/artisan/craftsman/merchant and extract from them some abstract unifying thread, some principle, some Powerpoint-worthy pithy platitudes to which the audience instinctively relates and shells out for at $300/hr because of the psychological positive psychological feedback it provides, that sense of empathic affirmation. It's that warm feeling that what one has always known to be true is now also Officially Certified as true by an awe-inspiring, credibly gigantic intra- industrial actor, and perhaps has even had a proper noun-phrase bestowed upon it, or, assured a permanent place in some kind of canon through elevation to the status of a bona fide _methodology_!

This is how the management consulting arms of the Big 4 make their money, among others -- by packaging up this kind of vapid crapola. Has anyone yet been invited to the new webinar, "Focus on Dextrous Fingers: The Central Touchstone to Success in 21st Century Piano-Playing?"

It seems self-evident that one maximises visibility and draws on a sense of personal partisanship as well as accumulates valuable information in the course of hanging out with members of one's target market as well as one's peers/partners/complements. I would say this is a truism almost worthy of anthropological generalisation in connection with the history of trade.

</comment><comment><USER6> "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have" \- Thomas Jefferson

<comment><USER7> Jefferson didn't say that. It's one of those bromides that get misattributed to a famous dude and then spread faster. According to Wikiquote (<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson>), the actual source is Stephen Leacock's _Literary Lapses_. (Side note: Leacock is the Canadian Mark Twain, though not nearly as sharp, which is about what you'd expect from a Canadian Mark Twain.) But _Literary Lapses_ is in the public domain (<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6340/6340.txt>) and it's easy to verify that the quote isn't there either. So we have a misattribution squared.

I find this little domain of fake quotes fascinating. It's one area where web search is totally broken. Search any of these quotes (like the famous fake Gandhi one about "First they ignore you") and Google will happily serve you ream after ream of crappy web pages all repeating the same mistake. Or perhaps you'll get some pages saying a quote was Benjamin Franklin and others saying it was Einstein (they're both wrong). This is a weakness of web search: stuff that gets repeated often enough (as catchy misquotes certainly do - that's what they're optimized for) becomes the answer, drowning out the truth.

Presumably the antidote to social-proof-driven search is some kind of trust- based system. As far as quotes go, Wikiquote seems to be emerging as an authoritative place you can use to check up on things. But it's a bad sign that the above citation turned out wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Our first reseller agreement was started at a stop light. Guy had medical imaging stickers on his car, so I struck up a brief conversation and followed up.

This is an often-overlooked component of traction. 80% of our early successes have been from chance encounters, either via web, or physical. Just making oneself available for chance encounters (e.g. coding at a cafe) can greatly increase your chances of traction, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER9> I totally agree.

We all read the same blogs. We read the same books, take more or less the same classes at schools, watch the same videos, read the same articles. We all have at our disposal cheap, powerful technology.

What is our advantage?

This point can be spun two ways: because our resources are so uniformly distributed, we can attribute more and more to randon luck. On the other hand, you can also say that because all else is equal, success depends solely on your creativity and and hard work.

Interesting topic for sure. And btw, personally Im a firm believe that we have a hand in making our own luck.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is one of the ideas put forward in Taleb's "Black Swan": by increasing your exposure to positive "Black Swan" events, you can improve your chances of being successful (with _something_ ).

One way to increase your exposure to positive Black Swans is to get out and mingle in a diverse environment; that fosters serendipitous encounters, which can lead to positive outcomes.

One of the things I really enjoyed about Taleb's book is his point about the role of luck in the general result of being successful.

</comment><comment><USER11> 'Chance favors the prepared mind.'

</comment><comment><USER12> This article featured perhaps one of the greatest lines I've ever read in the Economist: "Schumpeter was tempted to visit some creative destruction on the book with a blowtorch."

</comment><comment><USER13> While the article makes a point that I'm inclined to agree with after two years of running my own business, I stopped reading when they mentioned that World of Warcraft is a game of "swords and hobgoblins." World of Warcraft does not have hobgoblins. Ok, well actually, they're being added in Cataclysm, but I doubt the author knew that.

Then again, maybe my downfall was too much World of Warcraft.</comment>


Buy a house, clean your floor, move your butt: Ars reviews Kinect - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2010/11/buy-a-house-clean-your-floor-move-your-butt-ars-reviews-kinect.ars <comment><USER2> > the Wii sensor goes into a slot under the screen but above the base

No need to fear the Wii sensor bar, it's not a sensor. It's just two leds, the sensor is in the wiimote.

<comment><USER3> Yep. The Wiimote simply tracks points of infrared light.

In a pinch you can use two small candles as a "wireless sensor bar".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ben's review sounds accurate of Kinect's pros and cons, but what really stuck out to me was his pessimism of the device's possibilities.

It reminded me of my own skepticism towards iPhone gaming. Remember that? First person shooters will suck because there are no buttons. Racing games will suck because most of them only let you brake and steer. Third person platformers will suck because you can't control the camera and the character at the same time.

And yet iPhone gaming is flourishing because developers discovered what the device is fantastic for: tower defense, puzzle games, Scrabble, 2D platforming, on and on. Games and genres that would be throwaways on a burly console like the PS3 are perfect on the iPhone.

So I expect it to go with Kinect. It'll be a big deal when we discover new games and genres designed for a person rather than a controller.

<comment><USER5> _And yet iPhone gaming is flourishing because developers discovered what the device is fantastic for: tower defense, puzzle games, Scrabble, 2D platforming, on and on. Games and genres that would be throwaways on a burly console like the PS3 are perfect on the iPhone._

Those games would be popular on any mobile platform. The iPhone is flourishing because it's the easiest way for developers to make money, not because the accelerometer is making gaming any fancier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like most gaming hardware success or failure will depend on the software. I heard Dance Central described as a killer app, but it's hard to see that selling a $150 device.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anybody else wish that Microsoft will open Kinect to PCs?</comment>


Waymo's Big Ambitions Slowed by Tech Trouble - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/articles/waymos-big-ambitions-slowed-by-tech-trouble <comment><USER2> "Tech company hindered by difficulties in tech"</comment>


Sorry, Venezuela haters: this economy is not the Greece of Latin America - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/07/venezuela-not-greece-latin-america-oil-poverty <comment><USER2> This article was written in 2013.</comment>


Behavioral betrayal: Fungal parasites enlist living insects to do their bidding - <AUTHOR> https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1008598 <comment><AUTHOR> >Mind-controlling fungus makes zombie cicadas lure other cicadas to a zombie fate

[https://www.livescience.com/zombie-cicadas-lure- victims.html](https://www.livescience.com/zombie-cicadas-lure-victims.html)</comment>


Was Jack the Ripper a woman? - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/was-jack-the-ripper-a-woman-478597.html <comment><USER2> based on this analysis, he said, "it's possible the Ripper could be female".

Based on this quote I've concluded that the Ripper was either male or female. Startling information indeed.

<comment><USER3> My prior would be p=0.167 (cite: Wikipedia, "one out of every six serial killers is a woman").

<comment><USER4> That's still way too high (after conditioning on the nature of the murders). Most all female serial killers are angels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is why they should give names like Chris to unknown serial killers.

Serial-killer-namers, hope this helps: <http://www.yeahbaby.com/article.php?page=79>

</comment><comment><USER6> No. Using undiscovered evidence, I've pieced together the facts to uncover that Jack the Ripper was, in fact, the Loch Ness Monster.

<comment><USER7> does not compute, Loch Ness Monster lives in Scotland and Jack the Ripper lives in London.

\+ the loch ness monster is huge..there is no way he could have sneaked up on someone to stab them.

Don't really see what this has to do with startups or technology

<comment><USER8> What I learn for my startup : say something shocking about an unsolved mystery and gain attention for free.</comment></comment></comment>


Today is the last chance to comment on the proposal to kill net neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/30/today-is-your-last-chance-to-comment-on-the-proposal-to-kill-net-neutrality <comment><USER2> I'm all for everyone commenting so at least it's well known how far this FCC is going against public opinion, and encourage everyone to make their voices heard.

But, and I hate to be the cynic here, does anyone really believe that even if all 323 million Americans commented in opposition to killing net neutrality, that Ajit Pai would relent?

It's all but guaranteed he's going to do this. The only question is when, not if :(

<comment><USER3> This is just a microcosm of the greater political climate created in the US over the past 40 or so years. Business interests completely control every single legislative decision made. We're all just along for the ride now.

<comment><USER4> There's an interesting essay about democracy in America (well, there are hundreds if not thousands probably) but what's unique is that it's a criticism levelled against the idea of democratic pluralism, and from where it emerges - the 'tolerance' of the democracy, the idea that rather than the individual action expounded by the classical liberals (for all their faults) there is now a system in which representative voices are heard - whether those are religious or ethno-groups or worker groups or business groups. The key part, though, is that the group is recognised as _legitimate_ by the others and only then will it be tolerated.

The idea of this tolerance is a kind of peaceful existence, which, the author argues, is inadequate for democracy but makes us feel good.

The essay is "Beyond Tolerance" by Robert Wolff, and it's part of a three essay book called _Critique of Pure Tolerance_ , which as the name may not suggest to the reader is written from a strongly left-wing point of view (it even contains an essay by Frankfurt School critical theorist Herbert Marcuse!). You can read the PDF of it here, I hope others are as enlightened by it as I was: [https://monoskop.org/images/5/55/Wolff_Moore_Marcuse_A_Criti...](https://monoskop.org/images/5/55/Wolff_Moore_Marcuse_A_Critique_of_Pure_Tolerance.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Do you maybe care for a tl;dr?

I see, that it's not long (124 small form pages), but I'm very interested in what do you [or others] think of the essence of the essays, what are the insights that it gives to the reader. What was unexpected? What was expected?

I also see that it's from 1968. How has it aged?

<comment><USER6> 1968 was a particularly seminal year for political thought and action. There's such a wealth of writings and histories to draw upon— Kurlansky's _1968_ provides an easily digested history, and the writings of The Situationist International, particularly Debord's _Society and the Spectacle_ , provide a great look at thought currents that drove some of the more tumultuous scenes of that year (and decade). Marcuse's _One-Dimensional Man_ (1964) fits squarely within the current of cultural critique that fueled the decade. I'd say a great many of the writings age eerily well—they're often still poignant and relevant to issues we deal with today.

<comment><USER4> The unfortunate part about many works of political thought, particularly I think from German philosophy is that you need to have a significant amount of prerequisite knowledge, and this has been my case with the Frankfurt School in particular. I simply haven't had the time to do the background reading, so the texts are a little mystifying to me. Take for example _The Dialectic of Enlightenment_ which is so very packed and dense that it reads like poetry to me, and what was accomplished in the first 20 pages therein could have been accomplished in a whole book by any authors other than Adorno and Horkheimer.

I have similar trouble with _Society of the Spectacle_ , though I managed to find help getting through it. Some are more approachable though, like Marcuse's shorter essays, Marx's non-Capital economic works and Erich Fromm's _Escape from Freedom_. Edit: and of course Slavoj Zizek, though he is known to simplify and reduce concepts until the reader only gets a "kinda yeah" idea of what's being talked about.

Sometimes I really do wonder if the wealth of distracting information presented to me, so easy to grab in a capitalist economy has dulled my brain, or if I even had that brain to use in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's amazing that a government would so blatantly go against the public interest.

Your politicians might as well just admit they work for corporations instead of citizens. At least they're not implying they think people are stupid.

<comment><USER8> The problem is more that the public isn't interested. Only a small percentage of people know what NN even is.

<comment><USER7> Well, the public shouldn't have to worry about getting interested.

Isn't that why one has a government, so that we don't have to worry about taking care of everything and can live our lives?

Governments should do what's best for the people who have elected them, and I don't see how anyone can think that being the only country in the world where you don't have net neutrality is something good for anyone (but a handful of corporations).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's unfair to ISPs (some of it is their own doing like introducing "unlimited data" purely based on the assumption that most users wouldn't use their data at the same time, which companies like Google and Netflix capitalized on by building high bandwidth services on top of it) but since Google and Netflix are capable of manipulating consent of internet users and will not let FCC rollback "net neutrality", ISPs will have to stop innovating, keep giving terrible service and pass their costs to consumers.

<comment><USER10> Why not give good service and pass costs to customers?

<comment><USER11> Why?

1\. They don't have to give good service. Most are monopolies.

2\. They already do pass all costs, and all profit margins created, to customers.

3\. They want higher profit margins than currently being squeezed.

4\. They want more entities to pay them. New classes of customers.

5\. Deeper the pockets and fewer the paying entities, easier it would be for ISPs. HBO charges the Cable providers, for long long time HBO didn't allow individuals to buy directly from them, subscribing through a Cable provider was the only option. It allowed HBO to have a simple money supply from big entities with deep pockets which were easy to control. HBO could simply terminate one cable provider. Comcast can simply terminate preferential treatment to Vimeo if they didn't pay. Much easier than sending 4th reminder and collection notice to 65 year old Mrs. Smith.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think on the plus side, if net neutrality is killed, and ISPs start gouging the major providers (e.g. netflix, amazon, google/youtube) then it'll give huge financial incentive for those content providers to break the ISP monopoly.

Google started to do so before (fiber), but the political follow-through wasn't cost effective. There is a tipping point where it is.

<comment><USER13> how does that help anything if i have to choose a service-specific last mile?

maybe i guess in the short term we pay off google by agreeing to let them monitor all the traffic and hope that keeps them sufficiently well fed they don't feel like offering preferential handling to google services and partners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I soured up on Net Neutrality after seeking what YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit did to silence voices that they don't like on their platforms.

How does net neutrality matter if what travels on a perfectly neutral net is controlled anyway, actually controlled much more effectively, by a very few with agenda that goes far beyond just greed for money?

"Don't open and judge my TCP/IP packets. But, I will open and judge your video uploads all day, every day." \- YouTube

How is that fair?

No, thank you. I refuse to be fodder for something, only to be surrendered at a later point in the fight for fairness.

"Bernie" taught me that lesson. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

<comment><USER14> Youtube won't be able to open and judge your video uploads if you can't afford to upload a video with your ISP.

<comment><USER15> You'll be able to afford it, just be prepared to have a throttled, asymmetric upload speed to YouTube.

<comment><USER8> And when ISPs eventually resort to requiring you insert a root certificate to use the internet at all, your ISP will judge you.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but it's hypocritical for Google/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit to complain about someone else judging it in future, while they are judging it today with impunity.

We, as people, have same influence on current Google/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit censorship as we do on future Comcast/Verizon/AT&T/Charter censorship... none what so ever.

<comment><USER14> So the solution is to give up entirely?

<comment><USER11> No, but there is bigger fish to fry.

Censorship of speech is much much bigger issue for me than Net Neutrality.

I can't stand with multi-billion corporations claiming victimhood on subject of Net Neutrality, while at the same time playing God with people being able to speak their mind.

<comment><USER16> You can be an activist for more than one cause at a time. Additionally, those corporations (who I detest probably more than most people here) can still be legitimate victims, even if they are terrible. I don't like siding with them either, but if they are right, then their evil-ness is irrelevant.

<comment><USER11> >You can be an activist for more than one cause at a time.

I agree. But scale does matter. You are not going to be worried about if the person giving you CPR has cooties or not, if you are suffering through an heart attack.

>their evil-ness is irrelevant

It is relevant, because I think free speech is more important than speed of packets. I have to use this opportunity to point out the hypocrisy of these corporations.

<comment><USER14> You're just being stubborn now.

Speed of packets is part of free speech, as it affects how it's sent and received.

It's obviously in Google/FB/etc's interest to advocate Net Neutrality, but they'll still be using their algorithms to filter what their users see whether or not net neutrality is a thing.

If Net Neutrality wasn't a thing, FB/Google might have a blow to their wallet. But they can afford it. The hobbyist can't.

And if you can choose between a person with cooties versus a person without cooties to save your life, you'd go with the one without cooties. You have nothing to lose to make the more sensible choice.

<comment><USER11> >You're just being stubborn now.

I hear you. :)

Do I want Net Neutrality? Yes

Is Free Speech more important to me? Yes

Is pointing out hypocrisy of YouTube at this point important for me? Yes

Will I vouch for a guy who gave me finger at the last intersection, if he gets into an accident no fault of his own at the next intersection? Yes, without hesitation.

Would I have some choice words for him for giving me finger? You bet.

<comment><USER14> And with this response, it sounds like you agree with everyone in this comment thread.

<comment><USER11> I don't want Comcast looking inside my packets. I don't want Google looking inside my videos.

Deal?

<comment><USER14> Ideally, yes. But you can just host your videos yourself instead of with Google, which may be difficult to do without Net Neutrality. Most people don't have the luxury of choosing their ISP.

It sounds like you have a beef with how the US is currently handling corporate personhood, not necessarily free speech.

<comment><USER11> > But you can just host your videos yourself instead of with Google, which may > be difficult to do without Net Neutrality.

The problem is not hosting, the problem is not slow speed, the problem is your audience being pulled from you without any legal due process. From listener's perspective, you are denied audience of the person you want to hear, because YouTube decided they didn't like what is being said and heard.

I find that more suffocating than an ISP slowing down my packets.

Google services were taken away, including youtube, gmail, google docs from paying accounts that Google didn't like. That's like Mead coming into your house and taking away the paper notebook they sold to you a week ago, because they don't like what you write in it.

<comment><USER14> Without net neutrality, you might not have an audience in the first place. I'm telling you, it's as big of an issue as Google/Facebook's algorithms and their account/video takedowns. It would become even more impossibly difficult to compete with their services. The problem is their monopolization, and a lack of net neutrality would kill their competition.

This is a bit of a tangent, but it sounds like you're wanting a social media platform that has:

1) Popularity (essential for any social platform)

2) Unbiased search functionality (Probably needs to be open source, and will frustrate users with how it underperforms at finding relevant results in comparison to search engines that are closed source and rely on user tracking)

3) Incapability to take down user files and accounts (Tons of legal issues here. Probably needs to be decentralized somehow, or hosted somewhere with lax information laws, otherwise the platform itself would be taken down by the server's location's government)

Edit: And as for your analogy, no. It's like renting a paper notebook, which the seller then takes back because you violated their terms of use by drawing lolicon in it.

<comment><USER11> >Without net neutrality, you might not have an audience in the first place.

DNS can be, and was, taken away without any due legal process. That was my wake up call. Google cloud is registering domains and has that control over it.

When it comes to dire situations, if my ISP does funny business, I can choose another ISP e.g. a mobile connection.

No different than taking another road to go to the bank. My account and money in there is still safe.

If the bank take away my account without due legal process, does it matter if the roads to get to the bank were traffic/pothole/toll free?

For a YouTube content creator, who spent years building brand and audience, one fine day to wake up and have videos demonetized and/or account suspended is like bank terminating your account without giving you a dime from your account. With bank, you can get government/FDIC engaged, with YouTube, they are the Gods of that universe.

>And as for your analogy, no. It's like renting a paper notebook,

Paying account holders of g-suite apps from google, faced account termination with no cause, no access to videos/files/emails. This is digital violence and much bigger threat that has materialized, and is far greater than NN.

If terms of service are enough to allow Google doing what it does, why can't Comcast do the same with their terms of service?

I didn't know it was that easy to do. Don't tell Comcast, please. They would be delighted to hear that terms of service is all it took to convince you to override NN.

You are renting their cable and ability to send traffic over their infrastructure, aren't you? How is cable infrastructure renting different than DNS/Video-site/email renting?

<comment><USER14> Finally, some good points.

> When it comes to dire situations, if my ISP does funny business, I can > choose another ISP e.g. a mobile connection.

No, a mobile connection is hardly a replacement for a traditional internet connection. You can't host a site or connect to it with most devices, for example. And no, most people can't choose another ISP. Comcast will have run out all other competitors, or receive funding from the government to build their infrastructure and outlaw any other ISP's from providing service there (which happened in the outskirts of my hometown, despite us already having a much superior self-sufficient ISP with lower cost.)

> I didn't know it was that easy to do. Don't tell Comcast, please. They would > be delighted to hear that terms of service is all it took to convince you to > override NN.

Yes, their terms of service is all Comcast needs should there not be net neutrality. You are indeed renting it all from them. Net neutrality will stop them from doing what Google can already do.

I hardly doubt Google's account terminations has anywhere near the level of impact that the lack of net neutrality will have. Once again, you can host your site/media/email and manage your DNS elsewhere. The key to taking down Google's kingdom is to set up competition. Net neutrality will help with that.

And a sidepoint: You should always back up your videos/files/etc. Then if Youtube/etc is taken down somehow, or your account is terminated, you'll still be able to put it up elsewhere.

<comment><USER11> >And a sidepoint: You should always back up your videos/files/etc. Then if Youtube/etc is taken down somehow, or your account is terminated, you'll still be able to put it up elsewhere.

How do I backup my audience?

>The key to taking down Google's kingdom is to set up competition.

Tread one overlord for another, or be an overlord yourself.

I think anti-competitive behavior laws will play a role in taking down Google.

I can't believe I typed that. I loved, loved, loved Google two months ago. Few with political agenda have co-opted years of work of thousands of imaginative, hard working, caring engineers. Now, I want Google broken up by the government using anti-trust.

<comment><USER14> Just two months ago? I've been red-pilled for the past decade.

<comment><USER11> Red-pilled a year and half ago. I still liked Google, the technical parts. The political advocacy was uncomfortable, but OK, political agenda implementation is downright scary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why does it matter when domain registrars can simply yank domains for posting speech they don't like?

<comment><USER18> Individual domain registrars do not have a monopoly, nor is it apparent that they collude against free speech. ISPs do have local monopolies, and do act against net neutrality.</comment></comment>


In 2000, Blockbuster with 7700 stores declined to buy Netflix for $50M - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/JonErlichman/status/1231670174593486851 <comment><USER2> This is a common headline but Blockbuster would only have delayed the inevitable by buying Netflix. Netflix was a money loser and Blockbuster could not have carried it for too long before it closed it. And eventually, another company would have succeeded with streaming. Profitable companies can't carry dead weight for too long. Either the board will replace the CEO or the shareholders will start to make noise and have the company change course. A common strategy of takeover raiders is to close all unprofitable units and goose the earning so the stock will rise. They never look at whether a unit is a good future investment.

Blockbuster even started its own Netflix competitor but they could not spend the money and time to make a go of it.

The only reason that Netflix is still alive is that investors believed that eventually, it would be profitable. It took many years. Blockbuster did not have the luxury of waiting until Netflix succeeded.

So no, the idea that Blockbuster missed an opportunity is not correct. It never had a chance.

<comment><USER3> > Blockbuster even started its own Netflix competitor but they could not spend > the money and time to make a go of it.

From John Antioco's telling it would have but he lost control of the company to activist shareholders, who as you said:

> ...never look at whether a unit is a good future investment.

[https://hbr.org/2011/04/how-i-did-it-blockbusters-former- ceo...](https://hbr.org/2011/04/how-i-did-it-blockbusters-former-ceo-on- sparring-with-an-activist-shareholder)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I find most interesting about this story is that we talk about "subscribers" for Netflix, but the service those subscribers have subscribed to has changed (mailed DVDs, then streaming, then own content and maybe some other steps along the way that I'm not aware of). Blockbuster expanded what you could rent (movies then video games), they reduced restrictions on how you could rent (removing fees iirc), they let you buy adjacent items (card packs? candy? popcorn?), but for the most part, they still stayed within the traditional one-time-purchase, physical-good model.

Perhaps some of this is just that Netflix survived long enough and into the right eras to make these transitions, but I conjecture that your most successful business model molds your management and therefore the space in which the management can imagine new pivots.

The other direction is that the management has a certain mental flexibility and therefore the business has a certain flexibility... which is probably bidirectional and self-reinforcing when the ideas work. I don't see anything that could have stopped Blockbuster from becoming the Netflix we know today other than their management believing in the new business model(s). Perhaps only Blockbuster management would know. Have any of them told their story?

Edit: Seems I'm just uninformed :) Blockbuster apparently had an online service that I didn't know about. Why did it fail? Too late?

<comment><USER5> I always assumed it was due to the franchise model. Any solution they came up with had to be fair to the franchisees, and in alignment with their franchise agreements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Netflix would have not become Netflix if Blockbuster had purchased them. This notion of a missed opportunity is flawed

<comment><USER7> I fully agree. Netflix is valuable now because they made some smart pivots and executed them well. I doubt Blockbuster's executives could have pulled it off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Remember the "rewinding" fee Blockbuster used to charge?

</comment><comment><USER9> If they'd bought it they'd probably have led it to failure.

There's a lot more to success than buying a company.

The politics of blockbuster /the "old tech" being the owner would have been disastrous.

</comment><comment><USER10> The answer is never bet against the Internet.

<comment><USER11> > The answer is never bet against the Internet.

I normally tend to agree with this sentiment, but if that were always the case, please explain the prevalence--and quite honestly the very existence--of services like Redbox (2002-Present).

With the advent of torrents/newsbin/High speed broad band etc... any and all media is available in the comfort of your home, with no worries of region blocks or another BS and yet there they are.

I grew up on the Internet and quite honestly half the fun of DLing and such was being able to say I had already watched something to someone who had to rely on traditional outlets: the last season of Sopranos comes to mind.

Some try to rationalize the non-tech savvyness of its target demographics (Boomers) and that could be a part of it, but I have seen young people(looked like young millennials or gen Z) waiting in lines at these things.

For a while I rationalized it must have been an elaborate DNM drop-scheme, but then I met someone who said they use it regularly and was akin to a 24 hour Blockbuster. Which seems to have left a hole in some people who never even experienced it when it was alive and well (80-90s).

If I'm honest, a part of me still has some longing nostalgia for running into those things wanting/waiting for a new SNES/PS game all day at school only to be elated that I got the last one and it felt like I won the lottery.

The mom and pop ones were even funnier evoking the sounds of the chiming doors and the rush of adrenaline you got trying to peek into the beaded curtain area for the porn in the back as a kid. Also fumbling and wondering where you left with the plastic cases with a 'be kind and rewind' smiley on them.

But we live in an era of convenience, and comfort creatures where none of that is a part of the equation anymore.

<comment><USER10> Torrents are hard to find and use and require a PC. Not to mention illegal . Ask those red boxers if they also have Netflix.</comment></comment></comment>


Lax oversight, dubious testing in water tanks pose health risks - <AUTHOR> https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/policy/energy-environment/new-york-city-water-tank-hazards.html <comment><USER3> Reading this gives me the creeps and a whole lot of 'no shit, sherlock'. This is third-world kind of stuff. How can this not be solved over there by now? Privately hosted rooftop water tanks? Really? Does health and personal excellence mean so little?

At this point, in my area it's required by law to have a hydrofoor when your building is 13 meters tall (or taller). No water tower allowed, and skipping the entire thing isn't allowed either. In the USA that would probably be regarded as 'nanny state', but this is a typical case where you cannot trust a company or installer or building owner to do this right by default, hurting basically everyone else. I'm not sure what hydrofoor translates to, but it's basically a pressuriser, pump, buffer tank in one, that you have in the technical room of your building, that is inspected by the water company which is inspected by the 'watershap' (not sure what that translates to), which is inspected by the government. It takes a whole lot of people doing it wrong on purpose before that chain fails and you get bad water.

<comment><USER4> > In the USA that would probably be regarded as 'nanny state'

Maybe, but... building codes and regulations != nanny state in my opinion. Nanny state is more like banning soda, supersize meals at restaurants, etc. to protect people from themselves.

"Sorry, but you can't be trusted to make good choices about what you put in your body, so we will make laws that force you to make better choices"

<comment><USER5> > "Sorry, but you can't be trusted to make good choices about what you put in > your body, so we will make laws that force you to make better choices"

How about extending this to ending the war on drugs?

<comment><USER4> I am in favor of legalizing drugs. I should be able to buy chemically pure substances, for example I might want to study the chemical properties of the drug.

I'm in favor of (what I consider to be) non-nanny regulation around drugs though - ban advertising (I actually think alcohol ads should be banned as well) and certain drugs should only have generic labels listing chemical information, should be age-restricted, and behind-the-counter (by request only).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The tank with the missing roof means people in that building are drinking what amounts to surface water.

Why on earth are they still using wood? By now I would have expected them to have steel tanks with a steel roof on them, you know something a rodent can't just gnaw its way into.

I'm glad I read this. Now whenever I go to NY, I won't drink any water without having boiled it for three minutes first.

<comment><USER7> Wood is a better insulator than steel or the other materials that you might use. This is important to keep the water from freezing in the winter or becoming a microbial breeding ground in the summer. Historically, wooden water tanks have also been a lot cheaper than those made of steel or other materials.

<comment><USER6> Of course, the question answers itself: It's cheaper.[1]

I guess there's no price you can put on health! (It certainly doesn't seem to count for much in this case.)

[1] The Hitch-Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work [...] it is slightly cheaper

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Around 2004 I was exposed to an opportunity to become an EPA Lobbyist for a company in the fuel and water storage tank construction and maintenance portion of the construction industry. The ease of the job, meaning the complete corporate capture of that portion of the EPA, was so comprehensive the Lobbyist position was eliminated during my exposure to the opportunity. Industry dictates any regulation, and don't really bother with any enforcement. This was during a portion of my career when I considered leaving tech, and the intentional disregard of any ethics or public safety is one of the factors behind my return to tech. Needless to say, I get all household water from a private source, and I do not trust the crops in any areas with underground fuel storage sharing the water table with nearby farms.

<comment><USER9> Fortunately, the free market will correct those problems. Consumers who find water quality important will not consume it, possibly by moving elsewhere, and force the company to fix it or go out of business.

Also fortunately, the tech industry is supremely concerned with ethics and public safety.

<comment><USER8> As far as I can tell, it has become exponentially worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The New York Times did a great video about this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_9RLbRZJr0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_9RLbRZJr0)

It's crazy that this is allowed to continue.

<comment><USER11> Get it in front of the right people and it won't be allowed to continue. Don't let a crisis go to waste.

<comment><USER12> I don't foresee much happening. Local politics in New York has very little to do with helping your constituents and appears to be some jumping off point for greater things. De Blasio wants to be President. Cuomo wants to be President. You don't become President by being tough on water towers. Therefore, I predict nothing will happen.

(Cuomo might do something if he can figure out how to name it after his dad, though.)

<comment><USER13> I'd be pretty surprised if this issue isn't present in any older city with tall buildings. I see rooftop water tanks in many cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That is absolutely disgusting, but given the horrible state the system is in, why have we not heard of larger, more widespread disease outbreaks? You would think it would be happening all the time with the system in such horrible shape.

<comment><USER15> Turns out the human immune system works pretty well.

<comment><USER16> Ya know, I never understood why so many people today overlook the conditions that the human body had to endure before the last 100 years or so. I have a family member that washes avocados before eating them and doesn't want to sleep at a KOA campground for fear of being eaten by bears. Baffling.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I wouldn't overestimate how good our immune systems is at protecting us from contaminated water.[1]

Where I grew up, at the start of the 20th century many children died in infancy from contaminated water and milk.

Also the gut is an 'immune privileged' part of the body, meaning that the immune system does not attempt to keep it sterile like the rest of the body.[2]

We need a healthy micro-biome for digestion and to synthesize vitamins etc, but this means that it's also relatively easy to get sick from contaminated water and food.

[1] The World Health Organization says that every year more than 3.4 million people die as a result of water related diseases, making it the leading cause of disease and death around the world.

[2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16972898](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16972898)

<comment><AUTHOR> New York had a big scandal related to "swill milk" in the late 19th - <USER2> 20th centuries. Distillery waste was fed to sick and dying cows kept in overcrowded, filthy lots. The milk and whatever dirty, contaminated water that got mixed in was adulterated with various substances to help mask the low quality. Many children died from consuming it. A very dark chapter of human history.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> New York City officials are lazy, corrupt, or just don't care, and are happily committing perjury so they don't have to do their job.

This is not a new story.

<comment><USER18> > Another city agency, which is responsible for the tank, has certified year > after year that the entire structure, including the roof, is sound and that > the tank has no sanitary defects, dismissing its own 2015 report of E. coli > in the water as a "clerical error."

Would this be considered a criminal offence? Even if so, unlikely that they would be charged I'm guessing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The city publishes the inspection results on their data portal:

[https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Health/Rooftop-Drinking- Water-...](https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Health/Rooftop-Drinking-Water-Tank- Inspection-Results/gjm4-k24g)

I found this article and data set on Data is Plural:

[https://tinyletter.com/data-is-plural](https://tinyletter.com/data-is-plural)

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone here from New York and could comment on the local reaction to this?

They say it's something in the water that makes the bagels better, maybe it's the water tanks.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder why they still use wood.

<comment><USER21> What do you mean, "still"? The wooden tanks are decades old.

<comment><USER22> Mike Row built a new one from wood relatively recently on Dirty Jobs. IIRC, only the bands holding it together were metal.

<comment><USER21> I'm not up on NYC code, since I don't live in the city, but I wonder if it was a rebuild of an existing wooden tank under a "repair in kind" exemption. I have seen shit like that before, such as codes that allow knocking down all but one wall of a building and still calling it a "remodel" (and thus preserving grandfathered code exemptions).

<comment><USER23> My favorite one is keeping one wall, building three, knocking down the last wall and huraah... still a 'remodel'

<comment><USER21> Code hacking like that is almost a sport in South Florida.

<comment><USER23> Literally where I saw it... Wynwood in Miami.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Would filtering and/or boiling the water be enough against that kind of contamination?

(We learn from childhood that you should only drink filtered or boiled water; I wouldn't feel comfortable drinking water directly from the plumbing, precisely because you never know how clean the water tank and the pipes are.)

<comment><USER9> Where are you from?

<comment><USER24> I'm from the southeast of Brazil. Nearly every place has a water filter, separate from the normal faucet, for the drinking water. The water tank on buildings and houses is normally made of plastic, not wood (though in some buildings, it's made of concrete and part of the building's structure), but you never know if it has been left uncovered, or how recently it has been cleaned (and the plumbing, as far as I know, is never directly cleaned).

<comment><USER25> Plumbing in general is never cleaned and it isn't a problem as the water is moving.

The main issue with water tanks is the water is stagnant and in warm/hot climates ideal for life.

Nowadays it's very easy to add a UV light to the interior of your water tanks to keep the interior sterile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm pretty sure that in the game "Prototype", the water tanks were breeding grounds for the weirdy alien looking creatures. It was fun to fly around in a helicopter spotting them (by heat signature) and blowing them up.

I had no idea they were real features in New York.

<comment><USER27> Oh, they're real features all right, I live right underneath one... but I had no idea they were functional! I thought they were just odd holdovers from a hundred years ago that landlords were too cheap or lazy to tear down...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Can someone explain why water towers on each building are required in a first- world city? I genuinely don't understand. Is the public water supply so unreliable that you need to have a buffer?

</comment><comment><USER29> Well, this is terrifying! #gettingawaterfilter

</comment><comment><USER30> New York City is expensive, insolvent, and corrupt; it boggles the mind to hear that people still bother to live and do business there.

If you have the income to live in a New York City high rise, you should have the pride not to pay some scumbag to live in one with an unmitigated biohazard on the roof.

And of course, you and I both know that you'll be the first and only person in New York City who cared whether you were drinking clean water or not.

<comment><USER31> > it boggles the mind to hear that people still bother to live and do business > there

It's actually the largest city in the country, so clearly there's a demand for it. Which might have to do with it being the most important and vibrant city in the history of global civilization.

When reality is inconsistent with logic, it's time to check your assumptions.

<comment><USER32> I've been all over the US, NYC is a dump of colossal proportions, a train wreck happening in (maybe not so) slow motion. I live in Europe and parts of Manhattan reminded me of the third world. Hype / reality distortion have a lot to do with NYC being perceived as "vibrant" or "most important".

<comment><USER33> I've vacationed in new york city and I agree. Even the "nice parts" are crowded and shabby.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Every time I hit a severe bump on the road that is supposed to be a repaired pothole, I think of the workers who were assigned to that particular pothole. I think of all the times I've heard workers say "That's good enough, I'm ready to go to lunch early." Because of a few people's low standard of perfection, now tens and thousands of people must experience a slight turmoil in that spot over the next decade, slightly increasing wear/tear on their car.

Apply this attitude to storage of a fundamental resource: safe drinking water. There is negligence because people are in a hurry, or because things become so routine that the sanitation workers don't even pay attention anymore.

Personally, I drink all my water exclusively from a well. Untouched by human "sanitation" efforts. A few weeks ago I forgot to drive out to the country to refill my container with this well water, and had to drink from a city tap for about a week. I started getting ulcers all over my mouth. Perhaps this was coincidental, but it is the only time in the past few years that I have consistently drank city water over a sustained period. Chlorine, fluoride, who knows what else.

I will say that NYC is supposed to have some of the best water in the nation because their reservoir is fresh snow melt. But any water kept in one place too long will be contaminated.

"The idea is that flowing water never goes stale, so just keep on flowing." -Bruce Lee

<comment><USER35> > Because of a few people's low standard of perfection

I'm sure they'd love to pursue perfection if they were paid decent wage and not pressured to be as fast / cheap as possible.

It's easy to talk about perfection while sitting in a air conditioned office and slightly pressing on buttons while looking at a screen and getting paid 4-10 times the minimum wage these guys are getting while busting their asses outside no matter the weather.

> Personally, I drink all my water exclusively from a well. Untouched by human > "sanitation" efforts.

Many things can be off with water coming from a well. Pollution, bacterias, &c. I hope you test / treat it often, otherwise it's not much safer than drinking tap water.

<comment><USER34> I used to work for road construction, albeit not pothole repair (interstate paving). Because of my lifestyle, money is not an object (grow food, buy bulk, only drink free water, no insurance of any kind). There is this thing in my mind where I want to make sure the world is better for people when I'm dead, in whatever small way I can.

That means bending over to pick trash even if no one is watching. Doing a good job and not waste any employers time, regardless of "wage". Technically I make more than the people that hire me because I know how to spend it more efficiently than them.

We're talking about reputation here: Do we want to be remembered as someone who wants to be paid more? Or who was productive at all times without any complaints?

<comment><USER36> You're probably getting flack for saying "low standards of perfection" instead of just "low standards"... To me having higher standards and wanting to do (and actually doing) a good job, not just a good enough job, is primarily an attitude problem, not a wage/job pressure problem. Indeed there's a whole cottage industry of grumpy programmers to complain about other highly paid programmers not even suffering under crunch mode who aren't doing good work. Yes, you get what you incentivize on the large scale, but at the individual level you still have choices and opportunities to leave things better than you found them. Activity in scouting or similar when young probably correlates with the attitude.

<comment><USER34> I see now, "low standards of perfection" is almost an ironic statement since "standard" describes a minimum requirement and perfection can never be achieved, only pursued.

I agree that only wanting to do "good-enough" is an attitude problem. My own motivation comes from the assumption that someone is always watching. The idea is to never put a memory into someones mind of you wasting time and resources. Regardless of your own reputation, it is far more risky for someone to see this attitude and find it acceptable to replicate it. Then the attitude can spread like wildfire (until it hits a group of people with solid principles).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Recommendation for design firms with strong interaction design expertise - <AUTHOR>

Looking for a professional design firm that has a core competency in interaction design and who can help with large scale work in a limited time frame. <comment><USER2> You could try <http://turbomilk.com/> and <http://www.softfacade.com/></comment>


X Could Learn a Lot from Vista, Windows 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/21999/Editorial_X_Could_Learn_a_Lot_from_Vista_Windows_7 <comment><USER3> You don't know that the majority of the X drivers for high-performance hardware are closed source and proprietary, and are developed independently of X, at times going in conflicting directions with it (take the NVIDIA proprietary driver), you completely disregard the huge amount of work that's been going into modernizing X and the free software video drivers in the last five years, and demonstrate a disinterest in where the problems actually are and just demand that they be fixed, and top it all with nonsense weasel words such as "Microsoft has shown us how it's done, now all the X world needs to do is follow" (Shown what? Where is the code?) and expect to be taken seriously? Sorry, the standards for what passes as good criticism have surely gone down, but not that much.

This is unmistakable web forum pseudo-technicalism: rant about your pet bug, dress it up with some technical jargon as if you had an idea about what's actually going on under the hood, flat out refuse to get educated on it, "support" it with some other unrelated issue (here, Evolution), add a comparison to $OTHER_OS, and there you have it.

<comment><USER4> No offense to you personally, but your thoughts here are exactly why Linux won't take over the consumer pc market.

People don't want ot learn what's going on under the hood. I cringe at the thought, but they may not have the aptitude to comprehend it even if the _did_ want to learn it.

Microsoft treats their consumers like their consumers don't know anything about computers. Most of them don't. Linux users are geniuses compared to most computer users and they are very curious. They also know enough about the technology by going through the ranks that they are apologetic about problems that occur. "Oh it's just a bug, here let me restart."

Microsoft on the other hand writes an OS for _any_ PC and _any_ user. Any hardware combination and an almost infinite set of software installed and perhaps running simultaneously.

I don't think people really give them enough credit for this enormous accomplishment. _nix is written for the experts who know how to use the tool correctly. Try building a tool for people who know nothing about the tool or what it can do, the power it has, or how to not make mistakes with it. It's_ really* hard.

*nix expects its users to know how to use it.

<comment><USER5> Apple has made an easy to use Unix, in part by making the important decision _not to use X_.

<comment><USER6> Apple also overhauled most of the *NIX kernel and made proprietary graphical tools and closed off the supported hardware. All of which contribute to the ease of use and keep the solidity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a bit hard to comment on this article, because much of it is, in fact, true. I do have two problems with it, though:

1\. Windows 7, which is indeed a great product - very polished and with a very advanced graphics stack, nevertheless has problems. I've been running it as a secondary OS for some things for a while, and it definitely exhibited problems, in particular with video playback. Media Player crashed, requiring me to reboot before I can play video again, the desktop manager crashed many times, making it impossible to do simple file operations without restarting and driver management was often very difficult and problematic. Idealizing W7 (or Vista, or OS X) does nothing to advance the state of Linux or computing in general.

2\. Sure, it's absolutely fine for users to complain about low quality software, but if you want to make a difference and improve things (and presumably, if you bother to write an article about this, you do) the more effective way to do that is not to vent your anger and start a flame war, but actually deal with the real problems. Are Evolution, Totem, VLC or X.org buggy? Help identify the bugs and report them to the projects, so that they have a chance to fix them. When the fix is out, help testing it. You don't need to be a nerd or a geek or a dork or anything to do that - just a good citizen. It takes relatively little of your time, and you'll know you've actually done something to improve things, which will benefit you and the rest of the world in the future. That's not something you can do with W7 ot Vista, and that's where the power of the free software community lies.

Complaining is so easy, and can sometimes feel fun (in a very immature and destructive way), but if you're not prepared to do anything to improve the situation, don't expect it to improve itself.

</comment><comment><USER8> He clearly has no idea what he's talking about, but he does have two points.

1) Resizing a window shouldn't cause a crash - this is true, but very specific to his setup; most users will not experience the behavior he saw here.

2) If X crashes (which it inevitably does from time to time), it should not also kill every app you have going. This one is a huge huge problem.

<comment><USER9> I've been using X for about 5 years straight now, before that other versions of it (mostly SGI stuff).

I've had exactly _one_ crash. In all that time. This machine is on 24x7 and on average has 10-15 (large) windows open on two screens (soon to be 4).

X is absolutely rock solid in my experience, but as with all anecdotal evidence that doesn't mean much.

When you start playing around with custom window managers and all kinds of other esoterics I don't doubt that it is possible to crash X (the time I did it it was when I tried to set up an X server across 4 displays on 4 different computers, [http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/projects/screen/dscf1072.jpg.ht...](http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/projects/screen/dscf1072.jpg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1) ).

I was pissed off but I was really asking for it.

<comment><USER10> Try turning on Compiz. You'll see some crashing.

<comment><USER11> I use Compiz all the time, and I have no problems with crashes. I like the effects, but there is one that is very helpful: alt+mousescroll allows me to change the transparency of the selected window. As I don't have multiple monitors, I find this very convenient when coding (or any other task where I have to refer to information in another window).

I also like "rolling the windows up" like a window shade (available on some themes. I dunno...I just do!

<comment><USER12> That's the first time I've ever run across something Compiz does that would actually be useful to me over a non-compositing window manager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of those articles where the author has a preference and justifies it because something on the other platform doesn't work well. Then does the dramatic the-whole-stack-is-wrong routine making the other system look next to godly. Then the comments turn into a battle of who's opinion matters more and why.

No real content apart from perhaps a few bug reports.

</comment><comment><USER14> An article complaining about a single failure mode, which I personally have never experienced, and how that makes all of Linux completely unusable. I have to wonder, if the author is happy with Windows and its gold plated video stack why does he feel the need to try Ubuntu?

<comment><USER8> But it's not a single failure mode. Indeed, any time the X server crashes, every open X app is lost.

<comment><USER9> Right, and every time Microsoft Windows crashes you lose all your applications as well.

Sorry, but Vista does not solve that problem, I don't have any experience with windows 7 so I can't comment on that.

All I know is that even if I do something simple on a windows box it requires a reboot. Which pretty much happens every couple of days when you really work a lot with windows, which will reset the counter but will not count as a 'crash'.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but I didn't say when Linux crashes, I said when the X server crashes. When the equivalent happens in Windows, well, if you read the article, you know what happens.

<comment><USER9> For those rare cases when a windows display driver crash will not take the whole machine with it (usually by freezing or bluescreening) you might get out of it that way.

But for the majority of those cases you'll have very little choice but to reach for the power button and keep it pressed for 10 very long seconds.

Again, this is anecdotal, but I have _never_ seen windows recover from any kind of crash in a graceful way.

There are several layers to this stuff, hardware, driver, display server, window manager + applications.

If any layer 'below' your application crashes you're lucky to keep your data (whatever the operating system). Now, I don't do the things the author refers to (switching screen modes to full screen and back and stuff like that), which might easily be why I never see these issues and for him they are common.

But to suggest that in windows (where the lines between the layers are much more blurry than they should be) is 'crash proof' in any way shape or measure has me chuckling a bit.

My linux machines (servers & desktops) go down when:

\- the power fails

\- I have to move

\- I upgrade kernels

\- hardware failures (mostly disks, occasionally a power supply or a memory bank)

Other than that they're on, up & running 24x7 year after year.

<comment><USER10> My graphics driver crashed on Vista just yesterday. The screen flashed and I got a nice pop-up in the bottom right corner telling me that the display driver just had to be restarted.

How many machines are you running Vista on, anyway?

Now, I have lots of Linux crash stories. But I run a lot more Linux servers than you do, so of course I would.

<comment><USER9> I'm happy to hear you run lots more linux servers than I do, as I said before, it is all anecdotal evidence, and so should be taken with a lump of salt.

We have exactly _one_ machine running vista here, it's fairly new and it has crashed more than all our linux machines combined.

So, just out of curiosity, how many linux machines do you have ?

<comment><USER10> A few dozen.

I won't tell you guys how to troubleshoot your crashing Vista machine, but the OS isn't at all the first place I'd look to find the problem.

Most Vista boxes don't ever crash. Mine certainly don't. On the server side of things (Windows Server versus RHEL, say) my impression is that Microsoft outcompetes Redhat on stability. Just not on cost.

<comment><USER9> You should have checked my profile I guess before you made your claim ;)

Anyway, a few dozen is pretty good, more than most people have.

I figured you were owner of a large outfit that runs thousands of machines.

That's when you start to get interesting statistics.

<comment><USER10> Hmm. I just have a lot of trouble believing that you run lots and lots of machines and yet have never seen a kernel crash.

<comment><USER9> Well, maybe we're just lucky but I don't think that is it.

We strip the kernels down to the minimum we need on machine installation and we always try to find out what caused a problem.

On top of that a buddy of mine wrote a piece of software he calls 'flame', which is used to manage 300 machines.

Sure, occasionally one of those will go down. But post-mortem analysis will invariably point to some piece of hardware that broke. Either a cpu, a memory chip or a drive hanging on by a hair. I think the trick to managing large numbers of servers and not being in reboot hell all the time is to find a recipe and to stick to it, and good quality monitoring tools to give you an early warning.

And if you are running on cheap non-ecc motherboards for servers that really is asking for it.

I like to sleep well :)

The last crash that I remember was in February this year, a faulty memory chip that had been registering complaints for a while in the mcelog (but due to a human error we missed it). We had just upgraded a machine that was already in production and we did not burn in the machine out of service. Stupid mistake...

We burn in our new machines religiously and we only use top quality hardware. Still, during the burn-in phase we have a good 10% hardware failures.

But once the machines pass burn in - and we really give them hell - <USER2> perform pretty good.

Since we're in anecdotal territory anyway, once during the burn in testing of an ethernet switch over the weekend we came back to the office on monday morning to find the test frozen.

The switch was no longer passing data in or out. A reboot would not revive it.

We opened it up to find a crack running straight down the middle of one of the chips... so much for that particular brand of router :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ok I'll reply in a USERs point of view.

I installed ubuntu 9.04 on my HP mini-note 2133 (not a quad-core 4GB powerhouse). I don't use evolution but everything else run perfect for me. I too installed VLC and it plays videos well enough (some minor problems when jumping forward while watching HD).

It never crashed on me. Oh wait.. it crashed 3 times after I installed conky. First time it just happened. I made it happen the second time to check, third time to cofirm.

Yeah X.org some times pisses me off but gimme a reason why I should complain? It gave me all these things for free & there should be lot's of people working to improve it.

I honor the effort of everyone who made this free OS (all the tools together) possible. I don't blame at little problems, I just point them out. I contribute when I can.

</comment><comment><USER16> I run Ubuntu almost exclusively now because it is the most usable operating system for me. From years of running XP I can tell you that it did not handle driver crashes well and I lost all my files when it crashed. I have used Vista and I know that I have to restart it very frequently because of driver issues. I really hope that Microsoft has made a significant technical investment in Windows 7 and I hope that they have made the kernel more robust when dealing with crashes, but I assume that was a lot of work and really expensive to develop. It is kind of ridiculous to say that Linux is crap because it doesn't have a very advanced feature from an OS that isn't even available to the general public yet. As a Linux user, I can tell you that Microsoft has a few things to learn from others as well. It is called competition and it is what makes things get better, and there is plenty of room for improvement all around.

</comment><comment><USER17> And the winner is ... OS X.

I use Ubuntu on a laptop when I'm at home (rarely) couch surfing. It's miserable. Slow redraws, down syndrom-ish user interfaces, the whole thing feels and acts cheap.

While the X protocol has certain awesome advantages, it's a miserable choice for desktop. I get and appreciate the network transparency of it all, but shit, VNC is often faster for me than forwarding X over SSH.

Are there alternatives? I dunno, but graphics drivers, displays and plumbing are distinct advantages for both Windows and OS X when it comes to desktop interaction.

<comment><USER12> > I use Ubuntu on a laptop when I'm at home (rarely) couch surfing. It's > miserable. Slow redraws, down syndrom-ish user interfaces, the whole thing > feels and acts cheap.

Why are you using Ubuntu, then? I suspect it's more your choice of distribution and GUI environment that's at fault for your unsatisfying user experience than anything inherent to Linux or X. On FreeBSD with AHWM (instead of Ubuntu with GNOME), I don't have such issues at all. The only stuff that's slow is waiting for Firefox, OO.o, and the GIMP to open the first time I open each of them after starting the computer. On the rare occasion that I use MS Windows, by contrast, I tend to spend a _lot_ of time waiting.

I can't stand GNOME and KDE (especially KDE 4). The sitting around and waiting for stuff to happen is far too reminiscent of MS Windows for my taste.

> I get and appreciate the network transparency of it all, but shit, VNC is > often faster for me than forwarding X over SSH.

Are you using SSH compression? I mean, sure, X over SSH is slow across the Internet, even with compression, but then MS Windows Remote Desktop is no blazing-fast, realtime operation under those circumstances, either.

> displays and plumbing

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

<comment><USER17> No I'm talking about using X on our Gigabit internal ethernet network (mostly using Virt-Manager to manage our farm of Xen slices). Shit is slow.

I've tried both Gnome and KDE, I've also tried some alternates. They all suck in comparison to Windows and OS X.

<comment><USER12> Holy crap. If X forwarding over SSH is that slow on an internal Gb network, either network congestion is crazy-high, or you're doing something wrong. At least, that's my guess, based on my experience with X over SSH, since "shit is _not_ slow" on my 10/100 network.

> I've tried both Gnome and KDE, I've also tried some alternates. They all > suck in comparison to Windows and OS X.

In my experience, KDE (pre-4.0) and GNOME are marginally better than MS Windows, and slightly worse than MacOS X -- but most of the rest of window managers are significantly better than both MacOS X and MS Windows. Then again, if you're specifically speaking of some kind of interaction between your window manager and X forwarding, I really don't know, since I've never actually tried using KDE or GNOME in concert with X forwarding over SSH.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure... I've never had a windows display driver crash and simply restart ('showing aero basic for a few seconds'). Seems to me that this usually results in a blue screen.

While I'm obviously not OK with X crashing and taking running apps with it (doesn't happen to me running arch+xmonad), it's still better than a bluescreen. Anything I was running in screen is fine, firefox will re-open my tabs, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> Users do not run X. They run Applications. Hence it is rational to compare Usability, Performance and Functionality of GNOME/KDE/FOSS Applications with Microsoft Applications.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone here know how OSX's Quartz handles stuff? Apple say it's "based on PDF technology". Does that mean my entire screen is a big PDF file?

<comment><USER21> PDF was developed as the best small API rendering system from the decades of Postscript experience that preceded it.

The API and the way you think about drawing in OS X match the concepts of PDF. There is a "display PDF" ability, but down at the nuts and bolts level it is just similar concepts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I played DVDs fine in Xine under SUSE. I think in this case, that he's not doing it right by using VLC.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a centralized list of angel/superangel investors? - <AUTHOR>

I know there are things like the open angel forum but is there a list or website we can use to get info about angel investors looking for companies to invest in? <comment><USER2> By far the best list available: <http://venturehacks.com/angellist>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks... I can't believe I hadn't stumbled across venturehacks yet. What an awesome website!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You might want to check out TheFunded.com for VC info - not sure if they have angel info. You have to sign-up and be approved though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this link as well</comment></comment>


Online random forest in C++, uses the GPU with OpenCL. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/albertvucinovic/memrest My little machine learning project.. Serializable, online random forest algorithm implemented in C++, uses the GPU over OpenCL. <comment><USER2> This is awesome. Using the GPU with OpenCL means they will be decent performance. Any test case with data would be nice to read though.

Also, how comparable this is to something that does handle random forests well like BigML would be interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> The implementation uses shared pointers to replicate as little data as possible. The memory management is there to maximize the amount of data you can process on a single computer with limited memory. There is a simple zmq wrapper that can be used to link bunch of these in parallel(or any other structure) on multiple computers. The same zmq wrapper can be used for other online learning algorithms. I just didn't implement the others yet. If there will be more people interested, I could whip up a few test runs and examples.</comment></comment>


Earth's heavy metals result of supernova explosion, research reveals - <AUTHOR> https://news.uoguelph.ca/2019/06/earths-heavy-metals-result-of-supernova-explosion-u-of-g-researcher-discovers <comment><USER2> This is all old knowledge. I'm mystified why it's suddenly 'breaking news'.

Carl Sagan: 'We are all made of star stuff.' \- "Cosmos, 1980"

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/144310-the-nitrogen-in- our-...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/144310-the-nitrogen-in-our-dna-the- calcium-in-our-teeth)</comment>


Why we use OpenBSD at VidiGuard - <AUTHOR> https://blog.vidiguard.com/why-we-use-openbsd-at-vidiguard-4521f217b2b7#.d1q9kgvba <comment><USER2> For those expecting a little more content, here's a better "why":

[https://deftly.net/posts/2016-05-31-why-i-run- openbsd.html](https://deftly.net/posts/2016-05-31-why-i-run-openbsd.html)

(I agree and have gone 100% OpenBSD on all servers and even all my laptops now. Love love love.)

<comment><USER3> If you don't mind: which laptop models do you run it on and how is the performance compared to other OSes?

I found openbsd ran horridly hot and sluggish on my thinkpad so I've been trying to find a laptop that will work well with it.

<comment><USER2> Lenovo ThinkPad W520 = my main

Lenovo ThinkPad T440s = a clone of my main

Both work great. I had some issues before OpenBSD 5.9 but since 5.9 everything is wonderful, which is why I finally switched over 100%.

Doesn't run hot. Only a miniscule slower than my souped-up super-fast Arch Linux was on the same laptop, but that's a fair trade.

Happy to answer any questions and offer any advice. Click my username here and get my email address from my HN profile.

<comment><USER4> Does it run on those old SPARCs?

<comment><USER2> Ha! Hi Jeremy. Can't believe you remember that.

Sold those big Sun machines with the company, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is --- let's put it this way: --- not uniformly the opinion of software security pros that OpenBSD is your obvious-choice best bet for secure operating systems. It may depend on what you're doing with the system, too.

<comment><USER6> Why isn't an obvious choice? What other system has enabled by default the following security mitigations:

* Enforced W^X in the kernel on i386/amd64/sparc64.

* Enforced W^X userland as of 6.0 (..exceptions must have a special ELF PT_* flag and be on a filesystem mounted wxallowed).

* arc4random(3), which backs rand(3), random(3), and drand48(3), with an audited base/ports tree. Software must opt-in to deterministic broken POSIX behavior.

* Stack protector (..which OpenBSD pushed into wide adoption).

* bcrypt password hashes only, with an automatically selected rounds value based on system performance.

* PIE by default for base and ports.

* Static-PIE for self-relocating static binaries.

* SROP (sigreturn(2) oriented programming) mitigation by default.

* C shared library re-ordering at boot time, i.e: libc.so is re-linked at boot time so objects are randomly ordered.

* System-wide sandboxing (pledge(2)) of a large percentage of the userland, incl. privileged part of the X server, most networking facing daemons included (..with increasingly reduced pledges, thanks to the next part..).

* Privilege dropping and separation for most of the base system as a matter of policy, new stuff doesn't get enabled without it.

Plenty of other innovations in programming interfaces, widely adopted outside of OpenBSD.. which leads me to disbelieve your claims of non-uniformity in opinion of any reputable 'security pro'.

[http://www.openbsd.org/innovations.html](http://www.openbsd.org/innovations.html)

<comment><USER5> Here's something I wrote a few years back here. What's changed in the 6 years following is that I think we're down to just two approaches, unless you feel OpenBSD is assimilating the MAC approach.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1997385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1997385)

<comment><USER7> I read through your 2010 post three or four times - but it doesn't really seem to be as relevant to 2016 OpenBSD. 2016 OpenBSD assumes that there will be errors in the code, and furthermore, there will be errors that have downstream security effects that the authors can't envision today. A lot of the thinking around pledge (2) is that behavior that an SElinux MAC audit would record, and therefore allow moving forward, should _not_ be allowed. The entire operating systems seems to be designed in the belief that there is no way to write bug- free applications, so at every level, the operating system, and kernel, should be designed with the expectation that an attacker has broken applications in a manner _not envisioned_ by the application writers of the time.

As such, a number of attack/bugs found in other operating systems, don't impact OpenBSD because they were forward looking.

I'm wondering if you've had a chance to review the change in thinking that the OpenBSD organization has had in the last 6 years, and how it might impact your original 2010 post?

<comment><USER8> _A lot of the thinking around pledge (2) is that behavior that an SElinux MAC audit would record, and therefore allow moving forward, should not be allowed._

There are important differences. _pledge_ requires you to modify an application. SELinux can sandbox any application, including untrusted applications (see the use of SELinux in Android).

Since SELinux is external to the application, a system administrator can specify/refine a policy, while pledge calls are compiled in.

 _As such, a number of attack /bugs found in other operating systems, don't impact OpenBSD because they were forward looking._

This vision is not exclusive to OpenBSD. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has included many of the same mitigation techniques for a long time (starting at RHEL 3 in 2003). Moreover, they have shipped SELinux, which is arguably more powerful than pledge since RHEL 4 in 2005.

(I don't want to discredit the work of the OpenBSD developers, which is great. I just want to point out that there are Linux distributions with similar features, wider hardware support, and wider vendor support. Many OpenBSD supporters just seem to ignore work by others in order to push their favorite system.)

<comment><USER7> Yes - it's a good point that pledge(2) requires that you modify the application, and, that's too some degree a downside of the model. On the flipside, you can't turn off pledge(2) - which has been the default behavior of every (admittedly junior) sysadmin I know who ran into a problem with SELinux that I've seen. The point I was also trying to make (and I'm not sure if I was successful) was that the use of pledge sometimes results in the application being modified to prevent overly permissive behavior ([http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/going-full- pledge](http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/going-full-pledge)) - whereas in the SELinux "audit" mode, that permissive behavior would be noted, and permitted.

I"m just wondering whether tptacek has rethought his comment from 2010 about OpenBSD _" its model depends on shipping bug-free distributions "_ given a lot of success OpenBSD has had in the past several years dodging exploits that resulted from bug-present distribution issues, that its OS compartmentalization approach has successfully avoided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm guessing if you're going to blog about security, it would make sense that vidiguard.com (the main site) should be, _at the very least_ , HTTPS-enabled.

<comment><USER10> Why does their marketing website need to be HTTPS-enabled? I mean, they will need to do it to appease Chrome in a few months, but really it has no effect on just about anything. They don't administrate the drones through their marketing front page.

The website has other problems though, mainly the excess of effects and reliance on hover states for presenting useful information. Nothing that HTTPS is going to fix.

<comment><USER11> Marketing sites often provide contact information for your organization. A MITM on your marketing site means Mallory can alter your contact details and potentially intercept your communications.

This is one reason to enable HTTPS on your marketing site. There are many many others. What reason do you have for _not_ enabling HTTPS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wish he went more into how exactly OpenBSD is keeping their customer data safe, are they running a database on OpenBSD? Storing data on the file system?

</comment><comment><USER13> SSL seems to be broken.

[https://vidiguard.com/](https://vidiguard.com/) Failed to load resource: net::ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH

</comment><comment><USER14> Well, I was expecting a little hit of more information out of it.</comment>


Classic computer science problems solved in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/nzakas/computer-science-in-javascript

<comment><USER2> The more I work with js the more I like it. This project is a great idea, if it can be maintained. I'm fairly interested in figuring something to contribute myself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Look, JS is a language like any other. If I can do something in assembly, I can do it in JS. Give me IF statements (preferably with nesting support) and variables, and there's _nothing_ that cannot be done.

What remains is how easy, how nice, how flexible, how enjoyable, how compatible, how reliable, how practical.

For me, the answer is C++, but don't let that influence you ;-)

<comment><USER4> _Give me IF statements (preferably with nesting support) and variables, and there's nothing that cannot be done._

I know you were exaggerating here, but simple conditional statements aren't actually sufficient. You need some construct that allows repetition, if only implicitly. "while" loops would be easy, but even simple function calls suffice if you have function pointers (in fact, allowing function pointers alone ought to be enough, without conditionals or even variables).

At any rate, it's the lack vs. presence of repetition constructs that makes SQL not a full general-purpose language, where XSLT actually is.

<comment><USER3> Add GoTo's to the list, and you're set :)

At the assembly level, everything is boiled down to (basically) bne, mov, and jmp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> i think the real value in doing js implementations is hooking them up to js visualization libraries so that you can do online demos within the webpage; could be great for education. otherwise i don't see the benefit of coding this up in js vs. other similar dynamic languages.

<comment><USER6> The benefit being that JavaScript is the most popular language in history?

<comment><USER7> A billion flies can't be wrong.

Just because it's used on almost every webpage, doesn't mean it's popular in the sense of being liked.

<comment><USER8> Yea, I wish I could <script language='ruby'></script>

<comment><USER9> Seriously asking here: what would you like more about Ruby as opposed to Javascript if they were in the same boat (i.e. if Ruby had client ubiquity, no systems frameworks, no major non-browser platform, etc)?

<comment><USER4> Lack of curly braces?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What did you use to teach yourself Ruby? - <AUTHOR>

I have a few paper books (Learn to Program and Ruby On Rails 2nd Edition) and a lot of ebooks and a few video tutorials, but I am looking for the cream of the crop. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby: <http://poignantguide.net/>

This is good for your first steps. Then check out The Ruby Way to dig in deeper:

[http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Way-Second-Addison-Wesley- Profess...](http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Way-Second-Addison-Wesley- Professional/dp/0672328844)

</comment><comment><USER3> With great difficulty, to be honest. A lot of the modules I looked at did not have great documentation. Even the docs for built-in/standard libraries was not very accessible to me, as a newcomer.

I think there's a bit of an over-reliance on in-code documentation. It's not a substitute for good overviews, tutorials, and examples.

</comment><comment><USER4> A good idea to implement.

</comment><comment><USER5> This was pretty invaluable for me early on, <http://tryruby.hobix.com/>

<comment><USER3> Also from Why_.

It's a bit of a shame that all his work is so spread out, I think; though I suppose <http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/> helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Beginning Ruby From Novice To Professional by Peter Cooper</comment>


Computer Software Engineer in list of least stressful careers... WTF? - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/109521/5-high-paying-low-stress-jobs?mod=career-worklife_balance

<comment><USER2> I think so. I like programming, and I work for smaller companies which tend to have reasonable hours. Since the move from waterfall development to agile with releases ever week or two, death marches are a thing of the past. Or have I just had it lucky?

<comment><USER3> I can think of a lot of careers that are far more stressful, careers where real people are dependent on you doing your job fast and well. All we have to do is write code that does its job fast and well. That seems like a lot less stress to me.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention ergonomic chairs, air conditioning, coffee and messing around on the net all day.

Reddit downtime is the most stressful part of my work really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Programmers and engineers always think they have the most stressful jobs. Nothing new there. Most don't have experience outside of the industry to realize these are fundamental _plight of the working man_ sort of complaints that apply equally to their jobs as they might to a teenager working at a fast food restaurant.

</comment><comment><USER6> Think you might have read it wrong. This is an article about High-Paying, Low- Stress Jobs which is what is says a CSE is.

<comment><USER7> It mentions game development. Game development has extremely low pay for the amount of stress it causes.

I mean, everybody wants to be a game developer. Any prospective developer is screwed by supply and demand and a broken development model that allows for insane crunch time.

Or have things changed?

<comment><USER4> In some senses it has ... it's a lot more viable to be an indie game developer and work from home now - flash, facebook, iphone, android etc ... all have readily achievable barriers for entry.

<comment><USER8> Does that not exacerbate the supply-demand problem?

<comment><USER4> There's pretty much infinite demand - those markets are enormous and diverse, iphones the smallest I mentioned with a mere 50m potential customers.

However it's very easy to make a game that doesn't stand out and doesn't make money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That article was predictably bad, but what really clinched it was the claim that civil engineering jobs are less stressful because projects have long deadlines without giving any consideration to how much time the job actually requires.

Somehow I don't think a five-year project with a deadline three years from now is the most stress-free job around.

<comment><USER10> Not to mention, the civil engineer's work can't be patched post-release, and tends to have more severe consequences if it's buggy.

<comment><USER9> Funny you should say, a couple of days after I read <http://www.duke.edu/~hpgavin/ce131/citicorp1.htm> via hn: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1325393>

I agree, though -- being responsible for people's lives has a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to stress levels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't necessarily disagree with the article, but it does a very poor job of explaining why programming is low stress, aside from saying that some programmers work from home.</comment>


Drawings Reveal Germans' World War Two Boobytrap Bombs - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34396939 <comment><USER2> Why would the Germans annotate their illustrations in English?

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article it sounds like these drawings were commissioned by MI5 (the British Intelligence service) to document and raise awareness of the booby- trapped devices.

"The drawings were made by a young artist called Laurence Fish for MI5's counter-sabotage unit."

<comment><USER2> It's a bit confusing: below the first image it says

"Laurence Fish was recruited by MI5 to design hidden booby trap bombs during the war"

So Fish designed them but they are "Germans' World War Two boobytrap bombs"?

<comment><USER3> It's very confusing. I guess the image captions are not written by the article author, but by some unrelated staff that only read the article superficially.

Anyway, the chocolate example is very strange. Did they find one? Did they have some info about it? Did they just made up it?

<comment><USER4> More detail here (2012): [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9405919/Death-by- chocolat...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9405919/Death-by-chocolate- plot-to-kill-Sir-Winston-Churchill.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Internet Archive Wayback Machine Blocked by Vodafone, Three, O2, and EE - <AUTHOR> https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/02/internet-archive-wayback-machine-blocked-vodafone-three-o2-ee-can-change-that/ <comment><USER2> I experienced this block on Three. I had to turn off the adult filter by clicking on a button or two, and then turn data off and on (via airplane mode, although Three's web page said I'd need to restart my phone).</comment>


Bitcoin tops $9000 - <AUTHOR> https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/coinbase/btcusd <comment><USER2> Should i invest in Bitcoion as i don't have enough knowledge reagarding this it would be better if you suggest me. thanks

<comment><USER3> I think you just answered your own question.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Automatic memoization, is there a language that does this? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
Is there to any of your knowledge a language that automatically memoizes the results of functions, for instance by storing a hash of the functions name and parameters to the function in order to speed up the execution of programs?
I mean this not as in a bolt-on or a hack but native to the language itself. <comment><USER2> I suppose it depends on your definition of " _native_ ".

Scheme and Lisp are designed to be extensible, so adding memoization is as simple as including a few lines of macro definitions.

 _e.g._ , see the block of text commented as " _The Memoization facility_ " in this file: <http://norvig.com/paip/auxfns.lisp></comment>


Show HN: AppsCanvas, a drag and drop app builder with integrated back end - <AUTHOR> https://appscanvas.com <comment><USER2> Super cool!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I've been working on this for about ~6 months now and it's been exciting to see how I can enable non-developers to make some apps!</comment></comment>


The Journalism Drought - <AUTHOR> http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-journalism-drought.html

<comment><USER2> In terms of aesthetics, I think hard data is too bothersome for the unwashed masses to cope with anymore.

In terms of logistics, I blame the dismantling of The Fairness Doctrine: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine)

Thanks in equal measures to both Reagan and Obama, truth was defined as wholly subjective and the floodgates were quietly opened for money to dictate the fairness and balance of commercial media. Investigative journalists still exist (Abby Martin, for starters), but they are no longer welcome in platforms concerned entirely with revenue.</comment>