Prime Down: Amazon's sale day turns into fail day - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/16/prime-down-amazons-sale-day-turns-into-fail-day/ <comment><USER2> Kinda wish I still worked there and could see the post-outage writeup.

My bet's on some unforeseen bottleneck that affects search and static pages. Almost everything within Amazon is crazy scaleable, but there are some bits where you scale them up and their behaviour changes radically. For instance, a service's cache misses might skyrocket as customers get distributed over a wider set of servers, causing service response times to increase just a little bit on average, tipping a dependent service over into more frequent timeouts, causing its downstream service to blow a timeout-percentage 'software fuse' and stop using that service... etc etc.

Given that each of those services (and many more possibly-related ones) will have an on-call engineer paged into a conference call when the manure hit the rotating ventilation apparatus, there are going to be a lot of unhappy people cancelling their weekend plans right now. I definitely don't miss that aspect of the job!

<comment><USER3> smile.amazon.com was working fine during the outage, if that helps narrow it down...

<comment><USER4> It wasn't though. I saw an item being listed as a Prime Day deal on the normal Amazon site, then I searched for it through smile.amazon.com and it wasn't there. Went back to non-smile and it was there (but throwing errors so I couldn't click it anyway...)

<comment><USER5> I'm seeing this also. Same item is $169 on smile.amazon.com, versus $79 on www. Neither is working properly though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something no one has mentioned yet, could it be that the engineering force at Amazon is no longer what it used to be?

I can personally point to two friends who I consider top notch engineers and designers that have left Amazon because of its toxic culture. I'm sure I'm not the only with these anecdotal examples, we've all heard the stories. At the end of the day years of unbalanced work/life balance, overly aggressive management and frugal approach to everything makes for a weak argument for A players to stick around.

Could this be an example of crumbling engineering standard at Amazon?

<comment><USER7> AWS employee and bar raiser here.

>Something no one has mentioned yet, could it be that the engineering force at Amazon is no longer what it used to be?

In many regards, yes. The bar had to be lowered to meet the demands of growth. We've also taken in a lot of hires from companies that have brought their culture and friends with them. The culture at Amazon is not what is was even 2 years ago. It is in many places day 2.

No one also seems to notice that Amazon retail often suffers widespread issues like this. We can count on SEV1's happening during peak as things blow up badly. This has happened several years in a row, and sadly the themes are pretty much the same across all: forgot to scale (yes...really) or some stupid system bottleneck. It doesn't help that Amazon retail has a good amount of its workforce based in India and seemingly disconnected from the Seattle based leadership.

<comment><USER8> what is a bar raiser?

and when has amazon ever been an engineering force? i have always felt the website and service experience is a relic of the 2000s. more often than not, i get the answer "our system can't do that" from customer service.

<comment><USER7> >[https://www.socialtalent.com/blog/recruitment/raising-the- ba...](https://www.socialtalent.com/blog/recruitment/raising-the-bar- unconventional-interview-method-really-works)

I think Amazon has taken on an outsized image to many people that just isn't true. We have good engineers in many organizations, but we don't pay enough, have the right strategy, or take care of individuals well enough to lure the kind of great folks you find at other big tech companies. In many ways, Amazon is a retailer that does technology because it found a way to make money from it. The DNA is still MBAs/finance and retail.

<comment><USER9> How much do you think the on-call contributes to engineers leaving? You would think support tools and support personnel could help to retain engineers.

<comment><USER10> No, bad design and refusal to manage technical debt is the issue. Oncall only matters in some orgs and even then only matters where the tech debt is totally out of control.

Bottom line is Amazon is a product culture not an engineering culture and that makes it really easy to leave for Google or unicorns that really appreciate tech debt tradeoffs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If only they had access to some kind of scalable cloud hosting service, they could've completely avoided this sort of outage. :)

Jokes aside, I admire the work of the team(s) responsible for Amazon's web site. I use it so often and encounter glitches so rarely that it really stands out when something _does_ go wrong.

<comment><USER12> Serious question: I've heard that Bezos's approach with building out commercial units is to break down each part of the vertical into separate commercially-viable components. Idea being if AWS doesn't make sense for 3rd parties to use then it may not be economical to use it internally.

Now the question part: would Amazon ever secretly run Amazon.com in a multi- cloud setup, balancing between AWS, GCE, Azure, etc?

<comment><USER13> As someone that worked at Amazon a long time ago—back when AWS was just getting started—can confirm (historically). Publicly there were a myriad of AWS services; internally all we could use was S3 (for many years), if we were lucky. AWS being born of Amazon's "spare capacity" is an urban legend.

Nowadays, I hear it's quite different, and much of AWS is more rapidly dogfooded.

<comment><USER14> Some services (before I left) just did not have the sheer capacity to have Amazon.com as a customer at peak. The service teams just said "nope, sorry, you're going to kill us".

The requirements for prime day/black friday/cyber monday were mind-boggling.

<comment><USER15> That was quickly adjusted. I think like 3 years ago, Amazon publicly was saying that every day to AWS they were _adding_ the same amount of computing power that was used to run Amazon.com when it was a $10 billion business. AWS is massively greater in scale than Amazon.com at this point.

<comment><USER16> Scaling services for many independent businesses is somewhat of a different challenge than "vertically" scaling for one large one like amazon.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Funny how this comes on the heels of aggressively expanding their workforce and trying to leverage themselves in a hundred different directions...

Maybe it's just me and my confirmation bias at work, but it seems that the core value proposition that Amazon provided -- high value, low margins on _products_ \-- has been eroding before our eyes.

Seems so much like the transition Microsoft made... too much focus on "synergies" and leveraging... not enough on keeping the bilges dry and the engine running.

It's funny... Fred Brooks wrote about this in 1975... and we're still making the same mistakes _forty years later_. There are real limitations to how quickly any organization can grow. Even awesome companies who are excellent at building organizations -- places like like Amazon and Microsoft -- can't organize this law of software development away.

<comment><USER18> > Seems so much like the transition Microsoft made... too much focus on > "synergies" and leveraging... not enough on keeping the bilges dry and the > engine running.

The companies that just keep the bilges dry and the engine running are the ones that we love, but they're gone because they got made irrelevant. Or they got absorbed into something larger. Microsoft has a bunch of failed initiatives (Windows Phone, Zune) plus a bunch of successful ones (Azure, Xbox, Office 365).

If you're up for classic books like Brooks check out _The Innovator 's Dilemma._ You have to try to expand in a hundred different directions because you don't know which one of those hundred directions will be relevant next decade, and you have to be unafraid of cannibalizing your core business because if you don't eat yourself then someone else will eat you instead.

<comment><USER19> The Innovator's Dilemma is certainly not about synergies between products. By its conclusion, it's worthless to try to diversify within the same structure, you'd better create a new company and turn the old one into a holding.

<comment><USER18> Why would you think it's about synergies? I'm not sure why you would think it's about synergies. Or why it would be "worthless to try to diversify within the same structure."

Summarizing the book here would be a bit of a disservice—but one of the points of the book is that there are economic reasons why companies focus on their most profitable core products, and there are economic reasons why that kind of focus can result in the company collapsing when the market moves forward. This isn't some kind of imperative—the book isn't saying, "therefore, you should create a new company." It's more descriptive, "this is how big, successful tech companies can suddenly fail."

<comment><USER19> > Or why it would be "worthless to try to diversify within the same > structure."

?

The book has 2 chapters on that single point. And repeats it everywhere else.

On synergies, the OP post was about it, not about disruption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how Alibaba Cloud handles similar events [1], where there are bursts of 256k/s transactions and ~1bil packages being shipped out.

Do they just do brute-force massive scale out?

Amazon's US market is big, but my understanding is that number of online users in China (> 400mil) exceeds the population of the US (~325mil), which makes me wonder if the folks there think about data architecture a little differently than we do.

[1] [https://qz.com/1127087/singles-day-crazy-stats-from- alibabas...](https://qz.com/1127087/singles-day-crazy-stats-from-alibabas- online-shopping-extravaganza/)

<comment><USER21> Probably every day at Alibaba is a prime day in terms of transactions...

<comment><USER22> True but they still have Singles Day, so it's not like they have constant load.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I actually managed to add an item on sale to my cart, but my cart is now empty after refreshing. Oh well, maybe next year.

<comment><USER24> This made me laugh more than it should have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't help but feel terrible for the team of people there that ultimately gets blamed for this, I hope they can get some sleep tonight.

<comment><USER26> A night of missed sleep didn't hurt anybody.

<comment><USER12> It's not so much the missed sleep, as it is the 48 hours of intense heart- rending stress.

<comment><USER26> I'm blown away by the sudden and swift down votes to my original comment.

These engineers work at a world class company and are paid vast sums of money to not fuck things up. They live way better off than the majority of the country and their mere presence makes life more expensive and stressful for communities around them.

To suggest they cannot go a mere 48 hours or less without sleep on one of their company's most hyped days is out of touch.

<comment><USER27> Amazon is not world class. The pay is not comparatively great. There is no retail job (including Amazon) where undue stress and sleepless nights are warranted.

You're not saving lives, you're selling books and cat litter on the internet.

<comment><USER28> Is their pay not comparatively great? Usually when I see this statement, folks are comparing seattle to silicon valley 1:1 which isn't a fair comparison. Seattle is expensive but not _that_ expensive. My friends who work at amzn seem to be compensated in line with everyone else I know, but maybe I'm wrong?

<comment><USER27> The vesting schedule and the sweatshop-esq environment arguably don't make the pay worth it (compared to what you can make elsewhere).

Disclaimer: My knowledge is based solely off of public reporting and first hand experiences of SWEs and TAMs no longer at Amazon/AWS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I can't login to my root aws account right now. It's pretty annoying that the root account login for aws is tied to amazon.com retail accounts.

<comment><USER30> Using the root account is a poor practice anyway...

<comment><USER29> Is it really so difficult to imagine that I needed to perform an action that can only be done from the root account?

For example, the pen test authorization request form can only be filled out from the root account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I work in a non-retail part of Amazon _and_ I'm on vacation. Hasn't stopped friends and family from texting me about this though. As if I personally can go in and reboot a server or something. Hope we get it sorted soon!

If you're affected by this, please accept my unofficial thanks for your patience and understanding. (If you're a coworker in retail, good luck getting things up and running!) :-)

</comment><comment><USER32> Help strikers in Europe by NOT purchasing from Amazon today. Thank you.

<comment><USER33> "Europe" strikes as often as the wind changes.

<comment><USER34> Which only raises the question, why doesn't the US? Working conditions must be so fantastic here that no-one feels the need to strike.

It can't be that companies have crippled unions so that they can treat wage and working conditions as a one-sided negotiation. Surely not...

<comment><USER35> How come it doesn't raise the question of "why doesn't Canada?"

<comment><USER36> 1) They do, 2) they have more worker-friendly laws

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's also impossible to log into the AWS console. Surely something of such importance should be separate to the ecommerce site.

<comment><USER38> Down for me also and it's being reported on [https://status.aws.amazon.com/](https://status.aws.amazon.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I know TFA is about technical failures, but the deals themselves are also incredibly lacklustre. I was expecting _at least_ the Warehouse Deals part of Prime Day to come through, typically 15 to 20% off all used offerings. This year however, Amazon restricted it to only select listings which translated to a few hundred items total. Very sad.

<comment><USER40> I didn't see anything that appealed to me either. One other person told me the same.

Maybe Amazon's overloaded system was caused by shoppers checking back more frequently than in past years because they can't find really good deals this year either _but keep looking harder and harder anyway?_

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> What about the advertising money already spent?

I read somewhere (sorry, forgot where) that Amazon had been pushing sellers to spend like mad on ads within Amazon.com for Prime Day, apparently it gave you a big edge over whatever the algorithms suggest.

Those sellers will have missed their sales targets, and will consider the ad spend to have been wasted. Will they get it back?

<comment><USER42> And vendors who boosted supply based on anticipated sales (both discounts and purchases driven by discounts). Are vendors going to find themselves with thousands of extra widgets on-hand but without the anticipated purchasing frenzy they were counting on to sell them?

<comment><USER43> Yup, and if you have too much inventory, you can either remove it or sell it at a discount, both are expensive options.

Otherwise you'll get Amazon telling you, "Hey buddy! You sure are using up a bunch space and not selling much. Why don't you not do that? We're limiting the amount of storage space you can use for Q3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> rc-1140 ... Is there anything even good for Prime Day this year? Or the year before? Two years ago I remember seeing at least some Dell Workstations that could be repurposed into cheapo home servers. Most of the stuff seems to be odds, ends, and stuff that the various Chinese product-clone companies couldn't get rid of.

<comment><USER44> I got a baby car seat for half off, which saved a lot of money, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is there enough historical, public data available to estimate the amount of money Amazon is losing per second?

<comment><USER43> Last year they sold $2.4B, and this year I've seen estimates around $3.4B - $4B.

Prime day is 36 hours long, but I bet sales are weighted heavily in the first few hours.

So 3.7B / 36 / 60 / 60 = $28.6K per second, and then maybe double or triple that for the first hour or two after 3PM and that'll give you an idea of the scale.

There's also knock on effects, like reduced trust in Amazon/less orders for the rest of prime week, but also positive effects, like people who will just defer their shopping.

For what it's worth -- my sales are below my 30 day average. Glad I didn't go all out this year in terms of advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The web site is a bit of a mess. And it seems that, just since this morning, my entire Wish List has vanished. Foolish me for not having a backup...

<comment><USER34> Check again, mine was missing but it's back now. It's doubtful they'll actually lose data, issues are probably just due to services that are offline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm seeing automatic reloading the page every second or so. Maybe some bad javascript, though it isn't adding entries to the history. Looks like they have a script that is DDoS themselves.

<comment><USER24> Same, the search results page keeps refreshing, void of any items.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> What happens to people responsible for the crash today (infra, culprit services)? Does Amazon take some kind of "action" since Prime Day is a huge, once-a-year event for Amazon?

<comment><USER14> They will have to write a detailed post-mortem (with many people with titles starting from director watching it every week). Based on what comes out from the post-mortem automation/testing will be implemented to remove/mitigate the failure from the equation in the future.

Unless this is something egregious (ex: a manager not allowing the team to "scale up" in preparation for the event) no one will get fired. Tempers may flare a bit if it is something stupid (it's usually not).

Nothing different from what happened with the (very public) DynamoDB and S3 failures of yesteryear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Well, everything I wanted to buy is simply not on sale. If Prime Day isn't supported by those things that I want or need then why would I participate?

<comment><USER50> I've participated before only to be disappointed. I didn't even Beyer looking at their 'deals' this year. I consider this their garage sale to get rid of junk...unless you want to buy Amazon products like Ring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> changing the url to smile.amazon.com works

<comment><USER52> People should be using Amazon Smile all the time, outage or no outage :)

I use this Chrome extension that rewrites all amazon pages to use it: [http://www.smilealways.io/](http://www.smilealways.io/)

FF equivalent: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto- smile/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-smile/)

<comment> 52-6F-62 It doesn't appear to be available for Canada, unfortunately. I didn't even know it existed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> How about some love for their marketing guy who made it all happen?

Jeff probably said "make it rain, let's see if your hordes can take down Amazon.com," and this guy basically accepted, and succeeded at, the challenge.

</comment><comment><USER54> Huh? Amazon seems OK now.

Edit: But hmmm, Quora just went down.

> 504\. Gateway Timeout.

> Quora is temporarily unavailable.

> Please wait a few minutes and try again.

And they use AWS, right?

Edit: I just got as far as search, order, cart. But no account as Mirimir, so ...

Edit: Re Quora - [http://downdetector.com/status/quora](http://downdetector.com/status/quora)

I wonder what other AWS stuff is down. If that's it, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER55> Industrial action is cool and good [https://twitter.com/kadybat/status/1018926864767676416](https://twitter.com/kadybat/status/1018926864767676416)

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm curious what the reprocusions are, if any, once a post mortem is completed and teams or individuals that contributed to the outage are identified. Is "causing" this a fireable offense?

<comment><USER57> Not unless there was malicious intent or willful negligence. Amazon is a data driven company. The data shows that a "blame" culture results in more incidents. (Airline industry taught us this: [https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/maintenance_hf/library...](https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/maintenance_hf/library/documents/media/human_factors_maintenance/understanding_the_safety_culture.a_communicational_approach_to_%60blame%60_options_in_asrs_incident_report_narratives.pdf))

<comment><USER36> Do you know this from experience? Or are you just guessing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> FWIW, it worked fine in Western Europe since 1 GMT, 8 hours ago.

</comment><comment><USER59> This is the page everyone seems to be getting

[https://i.imgur.com/vpIHDpA.jpg?1](https://i.imgur.com/vpIHDpA.jpg?1)

<comment><USER60> Same on mobile. Perhaps Amazon retail is transition to a dog photos as a service business model?

<comment><USER61> did Dapps stand for Dog apps the whole time?

alternatively, Amazon rebrands their entire cloud lineup to PAWS

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> It's up, aaaaannnnddddd now it's back down...

</comment><comment><USER63> It probably doesn't help that the mobile app appears to load a random picture of a cute dog every time I press the "retry" button. So you can guess what I'm doing, trying to get it to load a new "Dogs of Amazon" pic.

Probably should have gone with goatse, reduce the load.

EDIT: do _NOT_ search for "goatse" on your work connection. That alone, even if you've never heard the word, should tell you why I suggested it as an alternative.

<comment><USER64> Interestingly, despite not being a dog person, I found the first instance of a dog to be a cute, human-relatable inclusion. On later pages I found it frustrating and annoying.

I'm sure there's a fundamental UX principle or two at work there, but I won't pretend to truly know what they are.

<comment><USER65> It's called the Duck Hunt principle.

<comment><USER64> Any sources for me to read up on? Googling just gave me the BattleChess duck story, some unrelated UX examples using ducks, and info about how the duck hunt "gun" worked.

<comment><USER66> I've never heard the term before, but I do recall plenty of people playing duck hunt shooting at the dog when the game said they failed. Although, he kinda earned a laser zapping by laughing at your failures, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> It's interesting that you can have hired the best talents in the world, but still have major outages. I wonder if there a way to ensure more people = more stability. Sounds a bit stupid, but maybe if each datacenter has its own software team working on the same issue, it will be very redundant work, but maybe it will be more organic in its failure?

<comment> gm-conspiracy Or a team of 9 pregnant women making a baby in only one month?

<comment><USER67> Should work because 9 months / 9 = 1 month.

You probably want a distributed team though, with maybe fetus being thrown around by pneumatic mail.

<comment><USER68> You're joking, but I do wonder if you can speed up fetal development in some way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Consumerism at its best... Probably for the better than Amazon Prime is down (at least for me - I'll speak for myself).

Honestly, my life got better when I stopped getting packages to my door. Only buy the most essential things you need - sell the stuff you don't. Better to live an uncluttered life without "things"...

</comment><comment><USER70> I am unable to buy/bid on my Amazon AMS ads still as of 2:12PM.

</comment><comment><USER71> Yikes AWS console down

</comment><comment><USER72> I mean, I see it fail from the fact that there aren't any deals I want. Maybe if their fire tablets ran full android, but there isn't really anything on sale.

</comment><comment><USER73> Just tried to do a search, got no results. Google search found me the product page, (which worked).

If you can't even search for products, there's a problem!

</comment><comment><USER74> TFA is a super buggy webpage.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hasn't this happened previously? It may become part of the celebration each year.

</comment><comment> oh-kumudo Amazon is worse than Alibaba even, what a failure today.

</comment><comment><USER75> I just realized the influence of Hacker News. I read techcrunch every day and it is rare for an article, any article, to get more than 2 or 3 comments (although, to be fair, they just added commenting in the last few months)...this one got 35 already!

Anyways, I think that this is NOT a fail for Amazon at all, but a major win. They obviously created all kinds of attention! I'm sure they will get it right next time, and maybe, if they think fast, can reverse this situation by offering those who were disappointed a 2nd chance at an even-greater discount...at least that's what I would do.

</comment><comment><USER76> It's hush-hush in the industry that CAT5 and it's predecessor the CAT5+1, both are shielded with peanut butter. It's also a little-known fact that most datacenters or PCs as we in the NOC tend to call them. Are also built around tropical rainforests, which provide both security from the common man, as well as naturally cool down the millions of heatsinks needed for the cloud. But an even lesser known fact is that monkeys, yes monkies love peanut butter. --I'll leave the rest to your imagination. But one of those fat guys, drinking beer, with a hoodie, and in need of a bath left one of the windows open. The rest... well, the rest was prime.

</comment><comment><USER77> After reading Ryan Holiday's "Trust Me I'm Lying" and knowing how well AWS usually handles surges of traffic, I am not so sure that this isn't a marketing stunt that gets them an amazing amount of press. Cynical?

<comment><USER78> Could also be an A/B test of some new infrastructure design to see if it's ready to deploy in November. I have no idea if they still hold everything together with Perl (via this templating system: [http://www.masonhq.com/](http://www.masonhq.com/)) but it wouldn't surprise me, and it also wouldn't surprise me that there'd be occasional pushes to replace it with something "modern" (or at least friendlier to the revolving door of new grads).

<comment><USER79> This would go down as one of the worst A/B tests in history if that is the case, which I highly doubt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> My guess is this is an intentional marketing ploy. Think of how much press this is generating. Frontpage of HN. No way we are talking about this otherwise.

<comment><USER81> Amazon is the front page nearly every day for some reason or other (:

<comment><USER82> If you are big enough it's hard to miss you.</comment></comment></comment>


Mnmlist: "Zen Habits" Writer's Blog - <AUTHOR> http://mnmlist.com/

<comment><USER2> Nothing really concrete here, so I'm not sure it's very useful. No call to action, either.</comment>


Simply Scheme (now a free ebook from UC Berkeley) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/simply-toc.html

<comment><USER2> Am I missing something, or are the only "free" parts the sectional introductions? I can't seem to get to the actual chapters...or I'm being really slow.

<comment><USER3> You're not missing anything. It's just a TOC and chapter introductions.</comment></comment>


Dont Pay A Cent - Free Marketing Tools - <AUTHOR> http://whatworkswithme.info/dont-pay-a-cent find the best and newest freebie Internet Marketing tools and systems for free from Don,t Pay A Cent online <comment><USER2> Spam link</comment>


Interesting Tech Markets for 2019 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2019/01/interesting-markets-2019-edition.html <comment><USER2> Biopharma: neuroinflammation, next-gen genetically engineered microbe / cell / gene therapies, gene therapy and cell therapy for neuro and autoimmune disease, small molecules targeting genetically defined neuro, cardiovascular and autoimmune disease, chemogenetics, programming languages for specific parts of the bio stack

$17B invested in bio startups in 2018, very little of it by traditional tech VCs

One $11B exit < 5 years from series a (Juno), one $9B exit ~4 years from series a (avexis), one $8b mkt cap ipo, one $8b exit from ~5 year old company to start 2019 (loxo), multiple smaller billion+ exits, ~50 vc backed IPOs

Several innovative companies launching their first drugs soon, potential to become standalone commercial companies: sage, agios, alnylam, Ionis / akcea, bluebird, ultragenyx, gw pharma

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point in terms of mentioning biopharma. I stayed tech focused in this blog post but lots going on in bio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The one trend I'm sensing is that difficult human/technology problems that were once thought of as 'solved' are now becoming hard again. Think of microprocessors as a model, for years Moore's law was running smoothly and you could set you watch on upgrading your PC at least once every 3 years.

The rate of improvement is slowing down as it becomes more capital intensive to advance chips, all the while the demand for performant chips is increasing. We will need another transistor level breakthrough to fuel the next 25 years of microprocessor based improvement.

You can see this trend also with energy on a longer timescale: oil and coal is the fuel that propelled the industrial revolution and human advancement for the past 150 years. Climate change demands that new forms of energy take the forefront: innovations in nuclear power and electricity transportation and storage are needed.

If I were in an investor with a ton of cash I would look to past and explore innovations and ideas around the industrial revolution and try to apply those models to the next 50 years. I really do think we are approaching a similar point in human history where there will need to be a large set of fundamentally new discoveries to continue pushing us forward.

As an aside, I think "devsumer" is also a great area. Maybe I'm in a bubble, but I can't think of a labor force that is producing as much global value (in agreed upon terms) as software developers, creating tools for this labor force is going to continue to be big business.

<comment><USER4> Technological progress has always been a series of overlapping S-curves. We all think it's new when we notice the pattern, but it's been going on forever.

The pace of aviation tech progress in the early half of the 20th century had most believing everyone would be flying hypersonic by now, but then the tech flattened out as it approved its asymptote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Much of this seems to be outdated, like someone at the end of 2016 looking towards 2017 trends. Devsumer makes sense still. Devops more generally is probably a better market to highlight especially as organizations try and tackle security concerns with cloud deployment models.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree there may be some hindsight bias. At the beginning of this blog post I call it out as well:

"Sometimes this creates a very backwards looking view, as the most obvious signals are in companies that have been working well for a few years and the trend is really over."

I do think DevOps is an exciting market with a lot going on. (I am an investor in GitLab, PagerDuty, and other related companies)...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating read. I never thought of Devsumer as a category until now. It explains the recent spike in interest in this space:

* Slack acquired Missions

* Trello acquired Butler

* GitHub launched Actions

* Zapier's success ($35m ARR)

* The ridiculous numbers of Zapier clones out there

<comment><USER7> Not to mention Apple's Shortcuts -- haven't used it but it seems to be in the same vein

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to hear more about perceived opportunities in legal tech. For some reason, the legal industry seems very averse to change, but I'm sure that's not always going to be the case. (Lawyer here).

<comment><USER9> First job of legal tech: convince the Judicial Conference to make PACER free and not terrible.

<comment><USER10> Hopefully this pending legislation will pass:

H.R.6714 - Electronic Court Records Reform Act of 2018

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house- bill/6714](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6714)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "I am still quite bullish that a basked of cryptocurrencies will be worth in the trillions within the next 10 years. The primary short term driver for crypto value with be the generational replacement of gold as a store-of-value for a specific subset of the population. The longer term drivers of crypto value will be new forms of programable money and on-chain securities."

What subset of the population is going to replace gold with crypto? Because it won't be the entire generation burned by ICO scams and bullish investment into whitepapers they don't understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment - My hypothesis is that people growing up today in their 20s and 30s who would have normally bought gold in their 40s and 50s will buy crypto instead. So it will be a generational shift versus a replacement for existing older gold holders. (Could be wrong of course).

<comment><USER12> I don't buy it - gold has a natural floor, for one thing. I can sell it to make pretty earrings or fancy computer cables. The risk of it losing all its value is basically the risk that we will move to a post-scarcity Star Trek style society with matter replicators. Crypto.. not so much.

<comment><USER13> Why does this floor influence your choice to purchase it over some other commodity to store value (crypto or otherwise?) What do you think that floor even is? (My working assumption right now is gold could lose 99.9% of its value if it was priced based upon it's utility as a metal and not as a culturally agreed upon store of capital.)

<comment><USER14> I would think that most people buy gold as a safe-haven investment, so in this case its floor and/or non-correlation would be very important.

<comment><USER15> So your logic is that "people buy gold because other people believe it's a safe investment"? That same logic applies to crypto - if people stop believing that gold is a good investment and start believing that crypto is a good investment, gold will cease to be a good investment and crypto will become a good investment.

I think gfodor is asking something more along the lines with "What can you do with gold that you cannot do with anything else you can buy?" There _are_ valid answers to that - gold is a catalyst in several chemical reactions that won't work with any other metal, it's corrosion resistant, it's shiny, it's a very good conductor that's quite malleable. But I'm with him in surmising that if people only used gold for its metallurgical properties, absent any historical sentimental attachment, the price would drop 99.9%. Gold is actually quite abundant; 190kt have been mined so far [1], most of which is either locked up in jewelry or being hoarded as an investment, so if people ceased to believe it was valuable there'd be a very large oversupply for the few real industrial uses.

[1] [https://www.gold.org/about-gold/gold-supply/gold- mining/how-...](https://www.gold.org/about-gold/gold-supply/gold-mining/how- much-gold)

<comment><USER12> That's still far more uses than if people think a particular coin has lost its value. When thinking about a store of value for loss-averse people, the intrinsically useful, always-been-valuable mineral I can hold in my hand seems like a psychological winner over numbers in a blockchain that require an industrial society with the blockchain to keep churning. My take was that people were speculating in bitcoin to get rich, not to weather government collapse.

<comment><USER16> Iron is much more useful. It also requires more energy to extract.

<comment><USER17> iron is far more abundant though.

<comment><USER15> The price of a commodity depends more on the energy, labor, and technology required to extract it and consequent market power of the main producers than on its abundance in the earth's crust. Otherwise strontium ($1000/kg, 360 ppm in crust) would be a lot cheaper than tin ($16/kg, 2.2 ppm).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ah defense. It's just common sense that we should pour money into the military. We're just out to make money, there's definitely not an entire political viewpoint entangled in this "market opportunity". Those crazy radicals that are against killing pointlessly for imperial gains don't understand the real world. In the real world, we need the military to make the world safe for capital. WW1 was a smashing success, as were Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and all extremely clearly benefited the working class and made zero money for industrialists. If anything, these wars were entirely unselfish in nature. Wouldn't Saddam still have WND if not for the pride and strength of our armed services and the weapons manufacturers, energy industry, and other geopolitical factors?

Fwiw, they're probably right. Maybe we will see more startups enter into this ripe "opportunity" to open the gates of hell and unleash the forces of greed and meyham.

<comment><USER19> Use of force is a separate problem from the development of weapons. I don't really have a problem with startups doing weapons development - someone is going to do it, and I have a hard time seeing how the world would be better if China or Russia took the lead on this.

<comment><USER20> > someone is going to do it

You could use that excuse for almost anything morally repugnant.

<comment><USER21> Sure, but when it comes to power, you can't wish away its existence.

Someone will have it.

So how do you best mitigate the bad effects it can have? Do you let an entity which does not align with your interests have it? Or do you maintain it and work to iteratively improve your exercise of it?

The effect of wishing away power instead of grappling with it and bending it to justice is one of the central reason why many revolutions and movements have failed.

<comment><USER22> Non US Citizen here (haven't even visited yet), and pretty anti-military. But out of available options, I would definitely prefer the USA have the military upper hand.

I suppose that means, I could do my part to keep it that way, by investing in US defense contractors. (Have been looking for investment opportunities.) Something to think about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "5 core markets (Devsumer, Real Estate, AI hardware, Transportation and Logistics, Crypto) and 2 emerging ones (Legal, Defense)"

Devsumer? For sure. Simplifying dev work seems like an area with pretty much eternal growth potential. But I find it hard to get excited about many of the others.

Interacting with the government (defense) still seems to take buckets of money, and there are already large companies that do software in that space, even if their names don't come up much.

It will be a while before people look a crypto as anything other than a sick joke I suspect.

I kinda thought that the software+real-estate process had a whole lot of established players, but I could easily just be ignorant of some of the growth areas.

<comment><USER24> >I kinda thought that the software+real-estate process had a whole lot of established players, but I could easily just be ignorant of some of the growth areas.

In my city in Spain letting agents still charge 10% of the annual rent as a fee when they do little more than print out a pre-written contract and hand you the keys.

Apparently it is common in Italy too.

This seems like an area ripe for disruption.

<comment><USER25> In the US real estate agents do similar. You pay them many thousands of dollars to parade people through the home and pressure you to compromise on your listing price so they can close easier. In my experience, the agents usually can't answer any basic questions about the home anyway.

I've believed this industry has some tech coming it's way for a while now. Would have loved to jumped on it early but it's also one of those industries where you'd need an established "in" to make headway (i assume).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "taking a SQL database or excel spreadsheet and turning it into an app platform"

A key insight here is that SQL is too complicated for this to ever work, and also the trend towards functional programming (React.js, Scala etc) – see [http://www.hyperfiddle.net/](http://www.hyperfiddle.net/) for what you get when you replace SQL with a simpler database! (We're seeking investment)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm not sure about that "Devsumer" section. IFTTT / Zapier and those are not replacing Accenture as far as I can tell.

The thing that makes Accenture a viable business is they can sell large projects to large entities. Things that people generally do not reckon they can fix on their own, like government health websites. There's no way to knit that together with just some common APIs. Yes, ironically Accenture can't either, but the point is they make money on convincing people they can.

The thing about people getting more dev-savvy I don't buy either. Yes, people can glue a few bits together now, but most people still suck at anything beyond simple automation. If you want evidence of this, look at Excel based jobs. Pretty much all of them can be automated in Excel itself, and every time someone tries it, they create an awful mess.

So yeah we'll now have a world of little Rube Goldberg machines of everyone's making, but I don't see them replacing any kind of large scale project. They can't really do it technically, and they don't seem like they will replace the incumbent salespeople either.

<comment><USER28> It seems to me that tools for creating large scale projects is a big opportunity. Not everyone who creates a "little Rube Goldberg machine" is a hopeless idiot who is pleased with their creation. Some of them will aspire to create bigger, better machines, and will prefer to spend their time trying to build them instead of setting up a meeting with an incumbent salesperson.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> AI + Defense technology companies will EXPLODE in the coming years. In the next 10 years I'm sure we'll be seeing police and military application of un- man-controlled, (like toy style) drones that simply, find out who is around where and what time. These things don't really even need any actionable targets, just general surveillance. They will get around the law by stating they are just capturing metadata - name, location, time, etc..

Drone tech will improve drastically too, bolstering the consumer space with standardized batteries and self-battery replacement towers.

Not saying this is a good thing, but saying it will happen.

</comment><comment><USER30> lol. every generation will redo "forms as software". airtable is a $1bi bet that people will finally be pleased with Clipper'86 auto-form desiger (or whatever that thing was called). Hint: nope.

</comment><comment><USER31> Ctrl + F "Healthcare" .. Hmm.

Looks like your 2015 "top markets" post the top one was "Genomics", what happened? Did it sizzle? Is it no longer a top contender prospect?

<comment><AUTHOR> For 2015 I listed out: "Gold markets" -Big data (with emphasis on things like Cloudera (~$3B co), Mesosphere) -SaaS with an emphasis on APIs and Dev Tools -Genomics

And then a set of markets I thought would be smaller or binary. Full post here: [http://blog.eladgil.com/2015/01/hot-markets- for-2015.html](http://blog.eladgil.com/2015/01/hot-markets-for-2015.html)

For genomics in particular, Illumina is now a $40 billion company while Exact Sciences ($9B), Invitae ($1 billion), 23andMe (a few billion) and Ancestry (a few billion) are all in the market too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> ...on the real estate side take a look at CoStar. Little known, commercial real estate company, 12B+ and has a monopoly. Very smart people and they don't get much turn over. They will make smart acquisitions.

<comment><USER33> Used to work here, and yea they definitely know they are a monopoly. Acquiring apartments.com with all their commercial real estate data was really smart. Their tech department was too corporate for me though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Agreed on some of it. Crypto though is the glaring aspect I disagree with completely (cue people likening it to the internet and the dot com boom instead of tulips with a serial number).

</comment><comment><USER35> IMHO, Missing from the list is software defined networking and telco "digital transformation" in general. ISPs etc are gradually moving to an automated self-serve world.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is ridiculously full of unfounded statements, naivety and unsound reasoning</comment>


Ask HN: How long before a company gets their ROI from new hires / co-ops? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> In my experience with early-mid career hires: 3 months to get ramped up, after which you should be productive-but-slow. At 6 months you're productive, and know enough to be dangerous. At 12 months you're really cranking and delivering excellent value.

So, that averages ~6 months to break-even on an average employee, 9-12 months if you include "duds" in the average.

</comment><comment><USER3> How long is a piece of string? I've had ROI from ten minutes after they started working (knew how/wanted to fix something that was affecting immediate revenue), or never, for years (worthless coders who just talk and move todo items around).. how could there just be one single answer?

<comment><USER4> But I think he's asking for a baseline, a rough estimate, after which you might want to start asking questions if the worker hasn't reached productivity.

IMO your latter example is something very wrong - either on the employee's side (they are lazy and not doing anything) or management who hired too many employees and as a result those new people have nothing to do - either way, heads should be rolling somewhere.

<comment><USER3> agreed, if the person is in a where-are-your-daily-commits kinda role, years of non-progress is an obvious firing situation. Sometimes it's less black and white.

let's say you hired two researchers to do some machine learning experiments to develop a new product category. It could easily be years before you see any ROI from that. Especially if their work has to be integrated with the rest of the (functioning) system.

or say you hired someone for their proficiency in one part of the system -- say, they've run a top level domain before, know DNSSEC/IANA/ICANN in and out, etc. If they never get to work on that, or their code never goes to production because of other complications, it doesn't ding ROI. And yet, they are technically doing what they were hired to do..

i guess my point is that ROI is the final output of many, many different factors that determine an employees usefulness and relevance to an organization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A manager of a large consulting firm in my city told me that they used to hire 8 month co-ops and would consider themselves lucky if they broke even.</comment>


5 Reasons to Boost Your Career with Side Projects – Brian Gilham - <AUTHOR> http://briangilham.com/blog/2017/4/4/5-reasons-to-boost-your-career-with-side-projects <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing my article, I really appreciate it!

</comment><comment><USER3> very interesting. thanks</comment>


A new CPU (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.fpgarelated.com/showarticle/44.php

<comment><USER2> TL;DR Instead of _call [32-bit-start-address-of-function]_ use _call [8-bit- index-into-table-of-start-addresses-of-functions]_ plus a mechanism to build such a table and make the look-up depended on the current value of the program counter because otherwise you could only ever call 256 different methods.

IMHO needlessly complex just to make call instructions smaller. And on its own it provides not any more security - messing with a call instruction will no longer let you jump into the middle of nowhere but only to the beginning of a basic block, but you can still just mess with the table of addresses unless protected by other measures.

<comment><USER2> On a second thought it is actually hard to save any memory at all. The proposed look-up is _table[PC >> 4 + index]_ so the table will have _code-size /16 + 255_ entries of 32 bit each, making it _code-size /4 + 1020_ byte large.

Given the normal code size _s_ with _n_ call instructions you can reduce the code size to _s - 3n_ because you save three byte per call but you have an additional table of size _s /4 + 1020_. This yields _n = s /12 + 340_ and that means there has to be more than one call instruction every 12 byte on average to save any memory at all.

<comment><USER3> That sounds like a pretty reasonable density to see savings in threaded forth code like the second post talks about (it also mentions adjusting the shift for other densities). Second, you don't need to reserve excess state at the end like that if the linker/compiler takes a little care allocating offsets so the last instructions use small indices. It definitely seems like a bit of a specialized trick, but the articles do a decent job describing conditions where it might make sense.

<comment><USER2> Assuming 32 bit instructions at least every third instruction would have to be a call or jump - this seams no reasonable assumption. And if you have code with such a high density of jumps you will run into a lot of other problems, too, for example branch mispredictions and cache inefficiency due to non- locality. Maybe there is really a niche where this design has advantages but I don't think it is good for general purpose code.

<comment><USER4> > Assuming 32 bit instructions

You don't have to assume, the article itself says the author is contemplating 9-bit instructions.

<comment><USER2> I did not read it like that. 9 bit is not really enough for an interesting instruction set for a register machine. It is however enough for a stack machine or something similar with implicit operands, but then again you need more instructions for the same task than with a register machine.

<comment><USER4> If you search for the phrase "To add more 'regular' instructions" in part 1, you'll see where he references 8 or 9 bit instructions. The author goes on, in subsequent sections, to expand the idea of tokenized jump references to tokenized instructions.

Each instruction token may only be 8 or 9 bits, but the secondary memory which contains jump targets is expanded to also contain full-width instructions.

The operating hypothesis is that just it's desirable to be able to "reach" any 32-bit destination address despite any given code segment not needing that flexibility, it's likewise desirable to be able to execute any, say, 36-bit instruction even though any given code segment only needs a subset of them.

It's really worth a read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Although it's fine to be critical (and I don't think people here are particularly vicious in their criticism, just sceptical about the utility of this technique), I'd like to remind everyone that the only way that we can say with certainty that there's nothing valuable in pursuing a particular direction is by actually taking a close look at it.

I think it's great that there are people who take a concept and work it out until the end in precise detail, even when it is not directly clear what the benefits would be, if any. It's also wonderful that this person decided to share the result of all of this work so that others might be inspired by it or find a useful trick or technique in it.

</comment><comment><USER6> It seems to me to be basically a rehash of the 80x86 segmented architecture, but maybe I am missing something?

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems like a lot of work to just get a slow indirect addressing system which we have plenty of already...

<comment><USER8> Parts 2, 3, and 4 explain the practical ramifications of his sliding-window design (which differs from indirect addressing) much more thoroughly. In Part 3, he actually mentions that HackADay accidentally credited him with PC- relative jump due to a similar misunderstanding.</comment></comment>


The Best Things in Life -- Frogs, iPhones, XKCD, and more - <AUTHOR> http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2007/07/the-best-things.html <comment><USER3> Your 'review' of the iphone made me cringe. Your use of superlatives is seriously uncool. You seem like a person easily awed - the type of person who sees perfection in something that is merely better.

A frog is just a frog. Nothing else, nothing more. Don't project the feelings you have about frogs unto others.

How can great writing make you see _everything_ different. This is physically impossible. I've been reading since I was small, and each book you read exposes you to more possibilities, and moves you a bit in one direction. But books don't change _everything_ about you. That's just silly.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think people might buy the iPhone rather because they WANT to believe that it is magic and wonderful than because it really is. Still, it is an achievement if you manage to bank on that desire.

I for one look forward to Harry Potter VII for my dose of magic - <USER2> cheaper, and probably much better than the iPhone, too.</comment>


Rat poison from pot farms is poisoning owls, study finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Rat-poison-from-pot-farms-poisoning-owls-study-12489063.php <comment><USER2> > on illegal farms on private property

There's been a lot of media hand-wringing recently about ecological damage caused by illegal cannabis grows. I'm not exactly sure why, as it's not relevant to any policy debates.

Marijuana can and should be grown organically and sustainably, there's nothing about the plant which complicates that beyond perhaps the need to prevent pollination.

<comment><USER3> The main environmental impact comes from the plants high water consumption which for a grown up plant is a bit over 20 litres per day. Thats when growing in soil. Hydro weed needs much less water but doesn't taste so good.

<comment><USER4> How much water do almonds need?

How much water in the US is used to grow almonds? How much water would be needed to grow weed for every man, woman, and child in the US?

<comment><USER5> If this is rhetorical, and you know the answers, do share. Because I have no idea. It sounds like you do?

Additionally: why are those numbers relevant? Just for context?

<comment><USER6> Almonds are brought up because they take up 10% of California's water ([https://newrepublic.com/article/125450/heres-real-problem- al...](https://newrepublic.com/article/125450/heres-real-problem-almonds)).

A single almond takes 1.1 gallons of water ([http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres- califo...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-californias- water-going/)) to produce.

Any argument for limiting marijuana growing based on "it takes lots of water!" has to address why we already permit stuff like almonds to be grown in drought-prone areas.

<comment><USER5> Ok I can hardly compare "x litres per plant per day" vs "n gallons per almond". How long does a plant live and how many "portions" does it have? I can guess almonds would be, say, a handful for a "portion"? So that's.. how much in litres?

See this is why I'm not super stoked about that original comment. Instead of making a clear point, I just get thrown some random hints and a "you go figure it out". It's like I'm supposed to make ones argument for them, and it might turn out to be completely irrelevant (maybe almonds are orders of magnitude more [e:less!] thirsty!) and then I can't even reply because the actual argument was never made!

Just give me the numbers. Do your own homework :) (well, not you, but op)

(Edit: as someone else mentioned, this is assuming op was being rhetorical. If it's a genuine q: I completely second it)

<comment><USER4> I know almonds take up a TON of water in an area without a ton of water.

I do not really want to do the math, but if you are worried about the water usage of weed, I do implore you to first look up the water usage of almonds.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not keen to do the homework for your argument.

[e: I'm not saying this to be petty, my point is this is not a strong argument. It's a common occurrence, and a pet peeve of mine. I can imagine it feels right—in fact I also believe you are probably right! But were I of the opposite inclination, this wouldn't convince me.]

<comment><USER7> I had thought that the high water use of California's Central Valley almond trees was something that was relatively widely known. I know I've encountered in in a variety of readings over the last couple of years, and I haven't been specifically trying to research it.

This is something that has already been written about a fair amount; is it really fair to expect him to "do his homework" for the counter to your claim when it's based on what is, to some, common knowledge? Moreover, the poster that you had already replied to above included two links to articles about the cost (in water) of growing various things. If you feel the need to "check the numbers", I think the burden might be on you to go find them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Study: Exposure to rodenticides in Northern Spotted and Barred Owls on remote forest lands in northwestern California: evidence of food web contamination

Citation: Gabriel, M. W., L. V. Diller, J. P. Dumbacher, G. M. Wengert, J. M. Higley, R. H. Poppenga, and S. Mendia. 2018. Avian Conservation and Ecology 13(1):2.

Link: [https://doi.org/10.5751/ACE-01134-130102](https://doi.org/10.5751/ACE-01134-130102)

DOI: 10.5751/ACE-01134-130102

Abstract: The documentation of anticoagulant rodenticides (AR) in nontarget species has centered around wildlife that inhabit urban or agricultural settings. However, recent studies in California have shown that AR use in remote forest settings has escalated and has exposed and killed forest carnivores. Anticoagulant rodenticides have been documented as physiological stressors for avian species. Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) critical and occupied habitat overlaps the areas where these studies occurred, yet no data were previously available to demonstrate whether this species was similarly affected. We investigated whether avian predators are also exposed to these specific pesticides and whether Barred Owls (Strix varia) may be a surrogate to indicate exposure rates in Northern Spotted Owls. We documented that 70% of Northern Spotted Owls and 40% of Barred Owls were exposed to one or more anticoagulant rodenticides. None of the rodent prey species sampled within the study area were positive for ARs. There were no spatial clusters for either low or high rates of exposure, though we detected low temporal trend early on throughout the study area. We hypothesize a recent change in land-use toward marijuana cultivation may have led to the increased use of AR in this area. This study demonstrates environmental contamination within occupied Northern Spotted Owl habitat and that Barred Owls can be used as adequate surrogates for detecting these pollutants in a rare species such as the Northern Spotted Owl. Furthermore, additional studies should focus on whether these pesticides are also affecting prey availability for these forest avian species.

</comment><comment><USER9> As opposed to rat poison anywhere else? I don't see this as a failure of pot farming, but rather farming in general.

<comment><USER10> Based on your defensive response, I take it Californians eat/smoke produce grown with rat poison. Have you guys really thought about what you're doing? That doesn't seem very smart, at all. I've never seen rat poison in use on a farm around these parts. Always farm cats.

I'll be sure to check my labels more carefully at the grocery from now on. No more California produce for me.

<comment><USER11> What a poor sample size to base your judgment on. Also, it's pretty hard to avoid California grown produce.

> the state produces almost half of all the fruits, nuts and vegetables grown > in the country, as well as a whopping share of the livestock and dairy. [1]

[1] [http://beta.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-calcook- califor...](http://beta.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-calcook-california- its-whats-for-dinner-20140312-story.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The study, published Thursday in the journal Avian Conservation and Ecology..." I tried to find the publication but their site only shows December and says that next issue is still in production. On another note, we use plastic tubing to keep rodents from chewing or "girdling" young trees and shrubs up here in Canada, it's the deer that really cause trouble.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's time for robotic scarecrows!

Eventually, all farms will do away with pesticides and either keep out pests or kill them without chemicals. Swat them or catch them, just like the robotic exterminators that will live in the walls and floors of buildings. Maybe they'll even digest them for energy.

<comment><USER14> What about little pest-tracking laser turrets?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good job it's legal then, that means it can be regulated.

<comment><USER16> If growers are willing to break the law to grow an illegal crop, what makes you think they won't break the law to bet better yields?

Plus, in the current political climate, it feels like regulations are being struck more frequently than they are being created. And the regulations that are left have nobody to enforce them.

I don't think the legal status of the crop makes much difference.

<comment><USER17> > If growers are willing to break the law to grow an illegal crop, what makes > you think they won't break the law to bet better yields?

That's like expecting an illegal gambling den to follow OSHA laws on floor mats better than a casino in Vegas with service union employees.

Growing is highly illegal, and using illegal rat poison techniques is a tiny offence in relation to it. Whereas legally growing and illegally using rat poison is a large offence in relation to no offense at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I seem to be missing in this article is an explanation why marijuana farms apparently use so much rat poison in the first place.

<comment><USER19> My understanding is that the rats chew on the plants to get moisture, since the plants are so well irrigated compared to the relatively dry surroundings. Rats nibble on just about anything.

<comment><USER20> That's interesting, cause my impression was that warfarin causes vitamin K deficiency and makes animals very thirsty. Maybe the rat poison is actual making the rat problem worse...

<comment><USER20> okay so i looked into this: from what I can tell, warfarin poisoning doesn't cause dehydration directly, but it does cause severe diarrhea, vomiting and excess bleeding. From what I can tell, all of those things constitute fluid loss and would lead to dehydration.

maybe the pot growers should provide the rats with some water...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My dog loves hunting rats. Why don't they just get some dogs?

<comment><USER22> Or cats. That seems to be the age-old solution to the problem. Barn cats are wildly efficient vermin murder machines.

<comment><USER21> Some of the rats in NYC are quite big, I'm not sure cats would go for them.

<comment><USER23> Oh our old barn cat would come out of the barn door carrying a dead rat so large she couldn't hold it off the ground.

<comment><USER24> I have seen a junivile cat do the same she was hardly out of kittenhood and took a rat bigger than her.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, at the right age, a juvenile cat is a pound and a half of death, and it isn't shy about showing you. I think later on in their lives cats are a bit more secretive, especially about prey they want to eat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This type of story had been reported many times over the years. The only difference is the animal in the food chain in question. Something up the food chain is feeding on something humans want to eradicate. Horrible, yes, but unless they ban such things this will continue. The last time I heard of version of this was Falcon being killed by eating poisoned pigeons in urban areas.

</comment><comment><USER27> _Although some products are being phased out, they are still available despite widespread pressure from federal regulators, wildlife officials and environmentalists to remove them from store shelves._

So isn't this more of a regulatory issue than an issue with pot farms in particular? Don't farmers of other crops do the same, or is marijuana particularly susceptible to rats?

</comment><comment><USER28> Why is rat poison being used as part of growing marijuana? It doesn't strike me as an essential pesticide to defend marijuana with?

I've never heard of rodents being associated with marijuana destruction. Is marijuana one of those odd crops that attracts a different category of pests? Like flower bulbs and deer?

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't get this story... Illegal grows have been going on for decades in these areas. If anything, there should be fewer now because of legalization right?

</comment><comment><USER30> Weed should be totally organic man.</comment>


Microsoft sued over Windows 10 update campaign - <AUTHOR> http://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-sued-over-windows-10-update-campaign/ <comment><USER2> What I find most appalling about Windows 10 is the draconian "default install" options. Seriously, how did having a key logger as the default option get through privacy review? Also desktop ad tracking?

I said no to three solid screens full of what I consider to be highly privacy infringing settings on install, all of which were on by default if you didn't do a "custom install."

<comment><USER3> If the default settings are for user information to be shared, then the defaults are evil (even if the intent behind them is not). I say this because they know most people will accept the defaults.

Maybe there needs to be a law about default settings and privacy.

<comment><USER4> Or we should stop overlesgislating. Users are responsible for their own actions.

<comment><USER5> I agree that it's better when we can do without legislation and rely on individual action instead. For example, individuals should be able to take a copy of Windows 10, reverse engineer it, disable the spyware and offer the result for free download.

Unfortunately, government legislation in the form of copyright law prohibits this. If it were up to me, copyright law would be repealed. But failing that, we can't have a situation where all the laws favor corporations and none favor individuals, at least not unless we want to slide into the kind of dystopia cyberpunk writers have been warning us about for generations.

<comment><USER6> _Unfortunately, government legislation in the form of copyright law prohibits this._

AFAIK what it doesn't prohibit is sharing information on how to disable that spyware, or even software that will do it for you.

Take an original Windows ISO, feed it to an app, and out comes an ISO with your customisations. If you're feeling neighbourly and rebellious, you can share that ISO with others. This is not a new concept --- see projects like nLite, and all the various customised Windows versions that you can find on the torrent sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the ultimate dark pattern. Microsoft provides a bait-and-switch for a subscription product that provides an endless revenue stream (at a future cost TBD), and then forces your upgrade. The best part is that you don't even know what price it's going to cost you in the future, but you can't (easily) go back to the product that you had.

<comment><USER8> > Microsoft provides a bait-and-switch for a subscription product that > provides an endless revenue stream (at a future cost TBD)

Disclaimer: MSFT employee, views expressed are my own, etc.

This is absolutely the last thing that Microsoft wants. I don't know where you came up with this idea. Microsoft wants to ensure that once a user is using Windows 10, to never be on anything but the latest available bits, with the latest security patches. Creating a subscription model would fly directly in the face of that outcome.

<comment><USER9> Here is why the idea is coming up over and over again.

[http://betanews.com/2016/06/30/windows-10-subscriptions- anni...](http://betanews.com/2016/06/30/windows-10-subscriptions-anniversary- update/)

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/mystery-file-in-preview- build-h...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/mystery-file-in-preview-build-hints- at-windows-10-subscriptions/)

They won't, but between their downright dicey ways they have tried to force people to upgrade, along with removing the ability to turn off Cortana / Windows Store, ads being pushed in and the 'pay to remove ads from solitaire' thing. People will not have a hard time believing they would do that as well.

We have seen microsoft go through some pretty dark times (Halloween papers etc), and it looks like they are starting down that path again with a vengeance.

If they only cared about having people apply security patches, they would make sure they ONLY push security patches through their security channel, a practice which they have abandoned.... again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Imagine if they had tried this with their corporate customers.

My advice to home users would be to disconnect their Windows computers from the internet and use some other OS for tasks that require internet. Use Windows offline for the graphical tasks that Microsoft was founded on.

I remember the days before Windows had a TCP/IP stack. Gates did not see the point in the internet or www immediately. UNIX computers were connected over the phone lines. Windows computers were not. Gates eventually woke up and MS copied the TCP/IP code they needed from BSD. The rest is history. Look at them now.

One should not need an internet connection to run Excel and _create_ spreadsheets. If one needs to _send_ a spreadsheet to some remote computer, there are other operating systems that can do that. Such as the one from which Microsoft copied the TCP/IP stack.

<comment><USER11> Or, do exactly this with an offline windows VM on a POSIX host. Even with enabled file sharing it should be reasonably secure in terms of privacy and at the same time convenient. The only usecases where this is not ideal: gaming and graphics heavy applications.

<comment><USER12> If you have multiple monitors and graphics card you can assign one to VM with almost no performance loss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Who woulda thunk, forcibly upgrading users and possibly causing harm to businesses just might be a sure-fire way to get a class-action lawsuit on your hands.

I wonder if anyone on the Windows 10 dev team and/or their managers have ever heard of HIPAA, and how telemetry could... cause issues.

<comment><USER14> _> I wonder if anyone on the Windows 10 dev team and/or their managers have ever heard of HIPAA, and how telemetry could... cause issues._

They've heard about it but they haven't posted anything interesting about it. Try searching for

"windows 10" hipaa site:microsoft.com

I'm not an expert but I'd guess that consumer Windows 10 out of the box doesn't meet HIPAA, simply because it sends searches to Bing. (You could, of course, type identical searches into Google, if you wanted.)

I'd also guess that business versions of Windows 10 with GP control can be configured to meet HIPAA. I did the above search expecting to find a white paper with the details, but, at a quick look, I can't see one.

Microsoft is targeting the health business via partners such as US Medical IT, and it has done a lot of work on HIPAA compliance for Azure. Similar work on Windows 10 may be overdue....

[http://usmedit.azurewebsites.net/](http://usmedit.azurewebsites.net/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The company said updates to Windows 10 are a choice, not a requirement,

I guess tell that to all the non-technical people who saw the options to dismiss dialogs dwindle down to [OK].

<comment><USER16> Not to mention those who fell for the no-means-yes close button (which violated MS's own UI guidelines).

<comment><USER17> It was a notification dialog, not an action dialog:

[http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2016/05/gwx- new-...](http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2016/05/gwx- new-100662456-orig.png)

<comment><USER9> it wasn't a notification, it was DOING something.

<comment><USER17> It's a notification that something will happen later -- like all notifications.

Look, Microsoft pushing Windows 10 upgrades is really annoying but that doesn't mean one has the skew the facts to make it seem worse than it is. It took me many clicks to install Windows 10 despite being nagged about it for 12 months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > The company said updates to Windows 10 are a choice, not a requirement

The other day, I woke up to my computer installing Windows 10 on its own. I was out of commission for hours waiting for it to finish installing, then a few more hours getting back to Windows 8 -- basically blocked an entire day of work.

</comment><comment><USER19> Probably settlement for these lawsuits will cost Microsoft a lot less than people not upgrading. The strategy worked.

<comment><USER20> Then again, these lawsuits probably do more damage by perpetuating the negative publicity around Windows 10 than through any direct financial impact they might have.

Now that the free upgrade period for Windows 10 has run out, and it's clear that large numbers of people didn't want Microsoft's latest product or buy into its everything-cloudy vision even though they were literally giving the OS away and heavily promoting the whole strategy, it will be interesting to see what they try next.

<comment><USER21> >...it will be interesting to see what they try next.

It seems clear to me they've had the meetings and made the decision to ram Win10 down user's throats come hell or high water. They've given no indication that they regret the Win10 hard-sell or that it was any kind of mistake or misstep. On the contrary, they have doubled-down on the strategy and dismissed all objections along the way. The misuse of the red X to mean "OK" instead of "No" or "Cancel", breaking Windows Update so you could not block or hide the GWX are clear signs of their intent.

Win10 is the core of Microsoft's strategy to compete with Apple and Google. They want to become a marketing company and Windows 10 OS [Operating Spyware] is key to their long-term strategy. They want to shutdown support for all the remaining operating systems and push everyone onto Win10 as quickly as possible. The strategy is further revealed by their announcement that Cortana (and its associated collection of personal data and tracking) cannot be turned off in all but the Enterprise or Education versions of Win10, neither of which will be generally available.

My view is that this strategy will backfire. Win10 is not going to be installed in any business that needs high data security either for operations or regulatory requirements like HIPPA or the SEC, etc. The vast number of companies currently using Win7 aren't going to move to Win10 unless Microsoft reveals the scope of the spying and provides tools to shut it off without buying the Enterprise version. Everything will come to a head in 2020 when Win7 support is slated to end. At that point, I am planning on moving to Linux and I don't think I am alone. But what I do is irrelevant to Microsoft (essentially a consumer user of Windows) but what the installed base of business users of Windows choose to do will determine the future of Windows. It will be interesting to see who blinks first.

<comment><USER14> _> They want to shutdown support for all the remaining operating systems and push everyone onto Win10 as quickly as possible._

They want to move everyone to Windows 10. This does not involve shutting down support for anything else. The support periods are published a long time ahead, and as you say yourself, Windows 7 will be supported until 2020.

 _> Win10 is not going to be installed in any business that needs high data security either for operations or regulatory requirements like HIPPA or the SEC, etc._

You appear to have missed the fact that the US Defense Department has already starting moving four million users to Windows 10 precisely because of the advanced security. I know banks and other organizations that are moving, too.

DoD-Wide Windows 10 Rapid Deployment to Boost Cybersecurity By Cheryl Pellerin DoD News, Defense Media Activity [http://www.defense.gov/-News-Article- View/Article/688721/dod...](http://www.defense.gov/-News-Article- View/Article/688721/dod-wide-windows-10-rapid-deployment-to-boost- cybersecurity)

<comment><USER22> Doesn't seem like all is well with that plan.

[http://federalnewsradio.com/defense/2016/03/army-crashes- dod...](http://federalnewsradio.com/defense/2016/03/army-crashes-dods- windows-10-party/)

<comment><USER14> Agreed. I think the standard army acronym is SNAFU ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I took my laptop to get upgraded to Windows 10 in the store. They claimed I would get a free laptop if they couldn't complete the upgrade that day.

They asked if I had a backup I said no. Then I was told it would take 7 days!! So I made my own backup (2h)

I went back in and asked them to upgrade. They plugged in some USB stick and ran some program. A command console window appeared and the process halted. The tech was confused. A manager looked at it. Then I was told it would take 5 days!! I asked for my free laptop. Oh, sorry you don't qualify cause you Win8 system has some unknown issue. WTF!?

WHERE IS MY FREE LAPTOP MICROSOFT! CHEATS AND LIARS!

<comment><USER24> Did you get their refusal in writing, or otherwise record it? If so, you may have a small-claims case for the value of a new laptop, your time and damages.

<comment><USER23> I don't feel like fighting M$ for a crap-top. I've got a business to run. It's a waste of my time.

Also: only reason for upgrade? My customers have Win10. I wanted it for testing only.

And the upgrade blocker from in the store? Cause syslinux was my bootloader and Win update fails if Win is not the active partition.

Did my own upgrade a day after, took about 3h

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Suing over automatic updates could set a bad precedent. Who wants to maintain several old versions of software? I know I don't.

<comment><USER26> Seriously. I understand why people were upset over this, business owners in particular, but as a web developer, I'm (not so secretly) happy they did this.

As far as I can tell, there are two main camps of Windows 10 haters: users who know their systems really well and have it customized to fit their niche needs, and less technical users who are afraid of change. Those technical users should know how to turn off the update suggestions, and the less technical people are in a better place, now.

After using Windows 10 for a year, it is undeniably better than Windows 8.1 in every way, and better than or equal to Windows 7. The fewer less technical people out there using Edge instead of IE 11, the better.

<comment><USER27> > After using Windows 10 for a year, it is undeniably better than Windows 8.1 > in every way, and better than or equal to Windows 7. In my case, it's the > complete opposite. Windows 10 is so sluggish and buggy, WiFi doesn't work > when returning from sleep, battery is draining really fast, programs open > slowly, even with an SSD, the screen has a weird flicker and blue lines on > the top... These problems don't occur on Windows 8.1. TBH, Windows 7 works > worse than 10 on my laptop, but that's because there are no drivers directly > written for 7, so it BSODs a lot.

<comment><USER14> All my Windows 10 upgrades have improved performance, so far (touching wood here, throwing salt etc). You might get an improvement with the new version due on or after August 2, but if not, it's worth trying a clean installation....

 _> Windows 7 works worse than 10 on my laptop, but that's because there are no drivers directly written for 7, so it BSODs a lot_

You can usually run the new OS on the old hardware, but not necessarily the other way round. Today's hardware is being designed for Windows 10 and has probably never been tested with Windows 7 (unless it's a business PC from Dell or HP).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Now that 29 July has passed, the last date of free upgrade, they hopefully won't pester anymore

<comment><USER29> I just read it's actually still possible to upgrade for free: Microsoft keeps the option open for people who use the "assistive technologies", and all you have to do is to say acknowledge that you use them, there is no actual check.

[https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/accessibility/windows10upgra...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/accessibility/windows10upgrade)

        > For the general public, the free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends on July 29.
        > However, if you use assistive technologies, you can still get the free upgrade
        > offer even after the general public deadline expires as Microsoft continues our
        > efforts to improve the Windows 10 experience for people who use these technologies.

<comment><USER6> I'm not surprised that there isn't any check, because what MS considers "assistive technology" is extremely broad:

[https://www.microsoft.com/enable/at/types.aspx](https://www.microsoft.com/enable/at/types.aspx)

Do you use an alternative keyboard layout, a trackball, or even a _touch screen_ (!)? Have you used the on-screen keyboard, or the built-in screen magnifier? Then you've used an "assistive technology", according to Microsoft. Combine that with their desire to push Windows 10 on _everyone_ , and you can see they're probably going to leave this option open for the near future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> With all the privacy setting opted in, i.e. no data to be sent to windows 10, I still have Cortona process running on my machine, which I seem to be not able to kill off( not spending any more time doing it as it is only Windows specific works machine, which I rarely use). Is there a option to uninstall Cortona ?

<comment><USER31> I've read a few guides that say you can use a race condition to kill the process and rename its directory before it automatically restarts itself.

<comment><USER32> Yes, basically you need to rename C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_xxxxxxxxx folder. I prefixed mine with an _ character.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I would kill to see the actual metrics proving the value of these Microsoft policies vs whatever adverse effects they cause (like certain companies delaying installs / purchases etc.).'

Same goes for the original "Always online" policy for the Xbox One (which I believe was rescinded).

My guess is that they were just random ideas that sounded good to various executives and were implemented without actual research to stand on.

</comment><comment><USER34> Actually, it is important to upgrade to Windows 10 or any other updates to Windows because each iteration of Windows has additional cyber security measures over the previous ones, sometimes taking into account new features in the Intel CPU hardware.

I would like a simple single, privacy selected option.

Also, I want to be able to turn Cortana off.

But in my case I run mac with Parallels VM running Windows 10 as a guest so not so much of an issue.

</comment><comment><USER35> I won't use a Microsoft Windows computer as my daily driver due to dark patterns, privacy issues, new business model etc, but I also wouldn't advocate for strict legislation in this area. The only legislation I think I would back is mandatory information disclosure on install. EULAs are important and it is to detriment of the consumer that we agree to terms we aren't aware of. Still, if there's an opt out toggle buried somewhere, then the company is aware someone wants to do so.

How we decide what information is important to consumers is debatable, but consumers can't make informed decisions if they don't have the information available or are not presented a choice. If information isn't provided by primary sources, many of whom would rather not provide it in an easily digestible manner, then it's a guessing game. Things like applying whack-a- mole patches to fix the shortcomings post-install is essentially plugging a sponge boat blindfolded. Even grouped settings toggles in a customer-fronting GUI can be broken out and flipped on individually without your explicit approval tomorrow so your Windows Firewall IP hack is just that, a well- meaning, but messy and temporary hack.

I'm a firm supporter of "vote with your dollar", however I think voting with your voice is also important. If you're unhappy with something a company is doing, shoot an email or call someone if possible and explain why you're not using their product. Hell, even and maybe especially if you are a customer, let them know you're not happy about a policy. Just like in the public sphere, private companies don't know whether you're an ideological abstainer or simply someone they haven't advertised hard enough to yet. Part of this problem is due to companies knowing full well they're acting against the consumers, but consumers often shut up and move along silently after getting their wallets out. I've emailed Microsoft multiple times about their policies on binding arbitration, their dark patterns and privacy policies. I may not be a customer, but they sure as hell know why.

<comment><USER36> The complete failure of IT privacy in the US proves that voting with your dollar and voice doesn't work. The very existance of companies like Google, Facebook and thousands of others whose main purpose if data analytics proves that.

While your opinion sounds balanced at first sight (let's allow customers to choose...), it is in fact completely misguided. Such arguments have been used by many harmful industries such as tobacco and food producers pushing HFCS and other damaging foods or additives.

They know they can let the customer choose, because without regulation they can out-advertise, out-market and outwit all but the most savvy consumers. And even they can't escape due to network effects and lobbying.

No. Privacy should be regulated to the point that companies think 10 times before gathering one additional piece of information and then decide against it because they know they will be fined 50% of their profits when they fuck up.

<comment><USER35> >The complete failure of IT privacy in the US proves that voting with your dollar and voice doesn't work. The very existance of companies like Google, Facebook and thousands of others whose main purpose if data analytics proves that.

I don't think voting with your dollar is a failure, I just think it's currently too niche a hobby to move mountains. From my completely unscientific empiricism, it seems only super hot button issues, regarding religion for example, cause enough Americans to weigh a company's economic policies vs their ideological ones in large enough numbers while also making enough noise about it. Many consumers seem to make one dimensional decisions when choosing a product or service: How much does it cost? This is exacerbated by the amount the public sphere is taking over private decision making, not ameliorated.

For example, citizens concerned with wage disparity aren't buying goods whose executives pay their workers fairly; they're shopping at Walmart. For some reason, economic or ideological issues that stem from the market aren't the market's problem, but become a problem for Washington. Do I think putting the mean and median wage of non-executive employees on the package would help here? Not until we decide these are problems of the market, but honest information disclosure will be important then.

On top of that, a great many consumers are happy with the status quo. "Personal information" is some nebulous magical currency that they can get free stuff for. Just because you or I value this doesn't mean most people do. I've talked with a great many, otherwise intelligent, people that would have it no other way. They can use Facebook _for free_ and to them the value gained far and wide exceeds the costs.

You and I personally think this calculation is short sighted and incorrect, but if you assume the consumer is too stupid to make decisions for themselves regarding their own information then where does that lead us as a society? (not to mention the regulatory overhead)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Microsoft needs not to try and force Windows 10 upgrades onto their users. Their users' machines which the majority of them are not created by Microsoft may or may not have trouble running the latest.

My $300 HP laptop after the forced upgrade is now almost a brick. I have to do a good amount of work that was unnecessary because MS wants to boost Windows 10s numbers no matter how awful it is for their customers.

Your not Apple, Microsoft you do not control both the hardware and software. Please make it a tad more difficult in terms of installing the latest OS .. make the user select if they want to do this via a few windows.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm so happy that damn icon and spam is gone! W7 till I die!

</comment><comment><USER39> If ms would have called it windows 8.1.2 and installed it via the regular automatic windows update, would people have been equally upset?

<comment><USER6> Yes, because it is clearly a _huge_ change from Windows 8.1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's easier to ask for forgiveness (and be subject to lawsuits) than permission (and have a bunch of people opt-out).

Microsoft needs a weapon against Google and Apple, who are both well underway into becoming 'services' companies, and whose devices we walk around with every single day.

Microsoft is trying to leverage installed base it still has in some people's homes to drive some traffic to integrated Microsoft services, the same way Google and Apple have driven traffic to their properties from day one. They can't afford not to be aggressive -- the average person will vacillate over the Windows 10 upgrade but then _install Chrome on every single device without question_.

If you were in Microsoft's shoes, what would you do? (And not mismanaging your product lines for the previous 8 years is a cheeky non-answer)

<comment><USER41> _...the average person will vacillate over the Windows 10 upgrade but then install Chrome on every single device without question._

Holy crap it's almost as if users are happy to install software that they like and trust because they've used it, and hesitant to install software they're suspicious will screw them over because it has in the past.</comment></comment>


Techies: Make bank in government at CFPB - <AUTHOR> https://fcw.com/articles/2016/05/20/cfpb-cio-job.aspx <comment><AUTHOR> Consumer Finance Protection Bureau willing to pay nearly $250K/year for new CIO. VP Biden makes $230,700.</comment>


John McAfee Reveals to FBI, on National TV, How to Crack the iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG0bAaK7p9s <comment><USER2> How exactly that works is beyond my knowledge, can anyone here confirm it's as easy as he says?</comment>


Ask HN: Why is your job hard? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Harvard Business Review and the other ivory tower guys never focus on the true loss of creativity and innovation, political B.S. Just today was talking to two clients in Shanghai about the deleterious effects of horrible, bullying, management in 2 educational companies here. And then senior management can't figure out why their company doesn't grow.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bad management. Ppl promoted to thier incompetence.

<comment><USER4> I would say that about my last company. I was director of engineering and it was torture having to deal with so many meetings, opinions, status meetings, and planning spreadsheets. That I could deal with if we could actually get anything done, but it was made worse by the politics and fighting. The manager meetings were like toddler tantrums and usually ended up with someone (never me) screaming and running out of the room. The best part was when the CEO tried calling me out for lack of leadership for trying to be friends with all the engineers. I reminded him that my team was the only team in the company that had not lost any members in 2 years, and our meetings never ended in tears. He hated me for that, and in the end I quit, wondering if it would get better after I left. It didn't...there were massive layoffs, and the latest news is that they are trying to liquidate the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I program, operate and two cnc machines, a bridge saw and a line polisher alone. I lift large pieces of stone all day alone. I have to complete a certain amount of work in a day no matter how long it takes. Machines fuck up a lot and when they do it puts the whole schedule behind. I have to manually cut things to 1/16" precision. The only person I have to help me has a tendency to make things more difficult. My coworkers speak poor English making communication difficult at times. Setting up new tools is finicky as fuck and I mostly just figure it out as I go and hope for the best. I work with expensive, fragile materials that break when you look at them sometimes. A broken piece can be worth up to $10,000 or more depending on the material. Interior designers are fucking idiots. Customers ask for impossible things and fail to understand they must work within the limits of geology for their products. Miter cutting stone that crumbles at the slightest glance. Writing programs that do things i've never had to do before on expensive material with a day's notice that i'm not even sure is possible at times. My shop's been at least 35°C for the last 3 months now and in the winter it can get down to just above freezing. Digging out trenches full of mud. Carrying hundreds of pounds of sand to load the waterjet. Trying to grap slabs of stone with a crane on a forklift that's tucked in the backcorner of the fucking lot behind god knows how much shit while the forklift is this close to tipping over because the forks are as high as they go and you're on a full forward tilt on a slope.

And I guess the most difficult of all...is spending most of the day alone with my own thoughts and the roar of industrial machinery and constant whine of air polishers working stone.

But I love my job though. Every day is different and I get to make beautiful expensive things every day.</comment>


The second Red Gate million dollar challenge - <AUTHOR> http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2010/08/the-second-red-gate-million-dollar-challenge.html

<comment><USER2> I found the requirement of conversion rate of 10% quite funny. The conversion rate is never an absolute metric to worry about. It depends on so many different variables: product type, intended usage, sales and marketing effort, etc.

In fact, you can artificially push up this number by having a team of sales people profiling potential customers and then persuading users to try out the product. Even though this will result in a large cost of customer acquisition (remember: you have actively persuaded potential customers), conversion rate will be much higher than 10%. On the other hand if you are relying on SEO and get lots of passive and active interest in the product, your conversion rate will be much lower. (But you paid close to nil for each additional potential customer)

Ultimately what matters is if a company can make cost of customer acquisition less than life time value of the customer. Hard to measure as compared to conversion rate, but that's what really matters.

If you want to measure something related to conversion rate, measure how much you can improve it. Not how much it currently is.

<comment><USER3> The way they count the conversion rate is not from people coming over to the page but instead the conversion rate of people buying the software after having downloaded a trial version...

<comment><USER2> That's my original point. If you are sending relevant users to download the trial (albeit with a high acquisition price) your trial -> paid conversion rate will be higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This isn't so much a challenge as a "sell your (successful) software to us".

It is still interesting, but it needs a more accurate title.

<comment><USER5> Definitely. It is actually dishonest of then to call this a challenge: I couldn't for the life of me find out what the actual challenge was when reading the article and when I came to their list of requirements I was scratching my head.

If it was an actual challenge they would accept prototypes or they would have a list of specs to build matching software to.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "@neildavidson Just had the first #redgate million dollar challenge entrant. Wow - that was fast." <http://twitter.com/NeilDavidson/status/20137466241></comment>