Why did ProtonMail vanish from Google search results for months? - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/27/why-did-protonmail-vanish-from-google-search-results-for-months/ <comment><USER2> Anecdata: At a conference a couple of years ago I was talking on-stage about my product. It's a direct competitor to Google in an area that they don't do very well (quite often, comically badly), and my customers are people who care about getting really good results in this area. I made a couple of joking quips about the poor quality of the Google product during this presentation and moved on.

Two days later my product completely vanished from the Google rankings. No cause that I could think of; I wasn't doing any questionable SEO or other manipulation at the time. I later found out there were Google people at the conference, though I don't know whether they were at the talk or not.

Correlation != causation so I'm hesitant to definitively call shenanigans on this. But it does make me believe ProtonMail's story a little more.

<comment><USER3> Listen to this TED talk. They are Google's competitor ...

[http://www.ted.com/talks/andy_yen_think_your_email_s_private...](http://www.ted.com/talks/andy_yen_think_your_email_s_private_think_again)

<comment><USER4> Well that was a waste of time. Poor talk, no technical information, nothing innovative.

<comment><USER3> That's not the point. You know why Google removed them from the search results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let's not forget protonmail.com was previously protonmail.ch. Moving domains can make a tremendously negative impact on search engine rankings. The "fixed" comment could have been properly assigning protonmail.com with the ranking data for protonmail.ch. This detail was in the previous HN post, but looks to be left out of this one for some reason...

Disclaimer: This is speculation. Take both this article and my post with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER6> > Moving domains can make a tremendously negative impact on search engine > rankings.

Only if you do it wrong. If you do it write, there should be negligible impact.

<comment><USER7> You will usually see a dampening of rankings when moving domains. Redirects do not transfer 100% of authority.

<comment><USER8> Since August, no.

[https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for- seo](https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo)

<comment><USER7> Thank you for showing me this!

Not sure how I missed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > ProtonMail tracked this situation through Spring 2016, trying to get in > touch with Google to query why it had vanished from search results — and > initially having no luck getting a response. It only eventually got an > acknowledgment of the complaint in August after it had tweeted at Google > staff.

Why is it that large companies like Apple and Google are so hard to reach? Remember the story of the Dash iOS app developer that got kicked out of the store. He also practically was unable to reach anyone.

<comment><USER10> To be fair what that guy originally said and what happened were two different things. Apple contacted him before they shut down his account. At least that's what Apple said...

[http://www.loopinsight.com/2016/10/10/apple-responds-to- dash...](http://www.loopinsight.com/2016/10/10/apple-responds-to-dash- controversy-with-proof/)

<comment><USER9> Whatever the case may be. I think there are plenty examples where situations escalated simply because the company ignored an urgent and justified request. I remember calling AppleCare and the poor guy on the phone admitted that there was a bug in OSX but had no means to escalate my problem further.

Another example is the recent Spotify bug, which did not receive any attention until the story made it to the top of HN. I think companies actually cause damages to themselves by not reacting sooner.

<comment><USER11> As an engineer for a related company, I sometimes go and look at the support forums or tickets for my software.

I find hundreds or thousands of complaints. Many are legitimate bugs, and some are user stupidity ("I need to check my mums email but she won't give me her password, can you let me in anyway").

For those which are legitimate bugs, I know, through user metrics, that they only affect a tiny fraction <0.1% of the users. I, and the rest of the engineering team have to prioritize our team between fixing these bugs for the 0.1%, and making the product better for the 99.9%.

It can be a tough choice, but when you've decided that it's time to move on and develop new features, hearing about individual instances of rare bugs is no longer useful. We just aggregate how many users are impacted by each significant bug, and from time to time quash the top ones.

Manually editing a database entry for a single user is no longer privacy- justifiable, so basically the only fix we can do is to fix the bug for all users at once. And if the bug is only affecting 15 out of 300,000,000 users on a product that makes 1 cent per user per year, I can't afford to spend more than 30 seconds on it really, yet most bugfixes are at least a days work.

<comment><USER12> Thank you for taking the time for writing this and being so open.

However, I think this approach should be criticized. It's a very concrete improvement for the 0.1% of users dropped in favor of a very vague improvement for an unknown subset of the 99%. Also, the bugs have severe consequences for the users (as in the OP or the Dash case) it would be downright irresponsible to be customer of a company that acts like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If this post weren't full of vague legal risks for Google, you would likley get a (private) explanation of the cause. As it is now, no employee would risk such communication for fear of it being used against them in an anti trust case, even if it were well meaning. Anti trust cases are worth billions, and a single email saying "we messed up because your URL contained an apostrophe and that caused a bug in our crawler" might well tip the case against Google to a non technical judge or jury.

<comment><USER13> If they say nothing, it's even more likely to be used against them.

And I personally think that's actually good. Open all the antitrust cases against Google at once, so it can be broken up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Direct link to Protonmail's blog post: [https://protonmail.com/blog/search- risk-google/](https://protonmail.com/blog/search-risk-google/)

</comment><comment><USER15> A little suspicious, but lacking hard evidence of trying to hurt competition, I choose to give Google the benefit of the doubt here.

I have had a ProtonMail account for a few years and the system keeps getting better. The one feature lacking, and keeping me from using it as a primary email service, is not being able to backup my emails locally. I think that is on their TODO list.

<comment><USER16> They also don't have 2-factor authentication yet.

<comment><USER17> 2fa is being tested on the internal development site, now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Google often-times makes severe algorithm changes. There is an SEO company called MOZ that keeps track of these. If you see right around the same time that ProtonMail suffered a disruption of rankings they were in the middle of a huge update ([https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change](https://moz.com/google- algorithm-change)). This was May 10th of this year.

I am referencing the official ProtonMail blog post ([https://protonmail.com/blog/search-risk- google/](https://protonmail.com/blog/search-risk-google/)) linked by another commenter in this thread.

I also want to say I'm not a Google employee and have no vested interest in the authenticity in their algorithm.

It is very fishy that according to PM they contacted a Google rep via twitter and got a "we fixed something" response from them.

As an SEO person, my opinion is this:

As an encrypted email service ProtonMail probably gets a lot of foreign and otherwise "undesirable" (or deplorable ;) ) links in the eyes of Google. Google lately has been doing a lot of algorithmic changes to actively sift these types of links out of consideration when ranking sites or dampening them severely.

My guess is that Google was basically penalizing PM for the links they were getting without notifying them via Webmaster Tools. Whether or not there was a manual penalty involved that they weren't notified about also adds a little bit of shadiness. Maybe Google _thought_ PM was trying to game the algorithm or at the very least many of the links they were getting were of a spammy nature and they ran a penalty on them.

The redirect from them changing a domain in the past can also compound issues with Google. Sometimes they consider redirects spammy depending on what kind of redirect is in place.

Without more info it does seem weird that they would "fix" something not only without warning them in the first place but not explaining it afterwards? Most web admins have to use what's called a "disavow" list to remove the penalized links but apparently their rep seemed to do this for them. Probably due to the anti-trusty viral nature of the complaint?

I don't know what SERP tracker PM is using for these stats. Barring there were no errors in that system, they can trace the lack of rankings to a lack of organic traffic, and they were given no reasoning to the penalty or what was going on...

They may want to hire a lawyer and start an anti-trust suit on Google. This is very fishy without any official information from Google.

<comment><USER18> Thats interesting it would be interesting to look at there link profile - getting out of a link penalty is hard it took me over a year to get on client out of one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Swiss recently passed this pro-surveillance referendum:

[https://protonmail.com/blog/swiss-surveillance-law- referendu...](https://protonmail.com/blog/swiss-surveillance-law-referendum/)

In the blog post, proton says they aren't impacted by the new law. Do any third party analyses agree?

</comment><comment><USER20> In case anyone interested, here are my field test results for "encrypted email", obtained today:

                     Google  DuckDuckGo   Yahoo
        Proton Mail     1       16          -
        Tutanota        7       20          -
        Gmail           -       10          1 (G Suite)

"-" means no appearance up to and including second page. Ranking excludes sponsored links.

</comment><comment><USER21> Google has plausible webmail competitors. "ProtonMail" is not one of them. Can someone provide an explanation of why they think Google would elevate this particular random email provider in the media by penalizing their search results?

<comment><USER22> You are not unaware of ProtonMail [1]. Why are you putting its name in sneer quotes to imply unfamiliarity and insignificance?

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11305228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11305228)

<comment><USER23> ProtonMail focus on security and paid services, free tier is almost useless. Gmail is free service that make money on pushing adds and selling your privacy but provide excellent service. There is no conflict of interest.

SEO it is hard to say. They want to compete on "email" and "secure email" keywords it is not going be easy.

<comment><USER24> > Gmail is free service that make money on pushing adds and selling your > privacy but provide excellent service.

G Suite Email is a paid service that doesn't sell your privacy, doesn't serve ads, and has extremely good service.

<comment><USER25> > G Suite Email is a paid service that doesn't sell your privacy

G Suite is an american service and will give away your privacy without a proper/open court case when receiving a gag order. This is very much in contrary to PM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The article does not provide an answer and simply poses the question. The fact that Google does not disclose any useful information makes it difficult to figure out what really happened.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wouldn't consider ProtonMail a competitor of Google. I would assume they got penalized in search rankings like everyone else.

The fact that they went through Matt Cutts to get this resolved is telling - since he's the public face of Google for anti-web-spam/anti-blackhat-seo.

> @mattcutts We know Google is intentionally hiding ProtonMail from search > results. Interested in talking before our data goes public?

Apparently threats help get you attention.

<comment><USER28> Matt Cutts isn't the public face for the webspam team anymore, for months if not years now. I think since 2014.

He even left google and works for the US Digital Service since this summer.

And on the topic: Nope, no penalty. At least no ordinary / known version of typical penalization.

<comment><USER29> Just found out right now that the "famous" Googleguy user that was posting stuff on Websmasterworld around 2002-2004 has been confirmed as having been Matt Cutts (the article is a little older, from 2011, [https://www.seroundtable.com/cutts-googleguy- intheplex-13291...](https://www.seroundtable.com/cutts-googleguy- intheplex-13291.html)). Those were interesting times, when Google was still playing the "good guy" card trying to get most of the websites' data. I'm pretty sure nothing of that facade has remained in place now.

<comment><USER27> I'm old...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have every sympathy with ProtonMail. Google's behaviour in this certainly looks highly suspect.

However, in general, I am not a fan of regulation. I wonder if this problem could not be better fixed by an open source search engine "assistant" that simply polls several existing (competing) search engines? Perhaps implemented as a browser plugin?

I base this suggestion on the assumption that not all the usual search engine providers will have the same conflicts of interest. More specifically, in this case, they are not all email providers themselves. For the same reason I trust more the search engine providers who have not added to it all kinds of other business interests.

Any thoughts on that? Has anyone tried it?

<comment><USER31> What search engines are not email providers?

<comment><USER30> DuckDuckGo?

<comment><USER32> DDG mostly relies on the APIs of other search vendors, who do have email services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Over the past year or two, I'm becoming convinced Google's "Don't be evil" days are over.

Does anybody have any recommendations for alternatives to Google Drive?

<comment><USER34> I use Sandstorm.io, which you can either self-host or use as a managed service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I can't imaging they would do that intentionally and on their own will. It's too obvious and just provides more arguments for the anti-trust complaint.

<comment><USER36> Google has already been getting away with giving unfair priority and treatment to their own properties for years. Why not take the next step and just start outright hiding competitors?

<comment><USER37> Google is not required to provide you search results. And they should be expected to market their own products.

To expect otherwise is foolish.

<comment><USER13> > Google is not required to provide you search results.

Yes, they are, if they want to access the market at all, they have to provide results to everyone, and can't discriminate.

> And they should be expected to market their own products.

No. They have > 90% of the market, which is used by > 50% of the population, meaning they're automatically a public utility, and can not provide any positive or negative discrimination to their own or other services.

Any treatment has to be completely fair and equal, and if their own services can get integration, so any competitors have to be able to do. (For a fair price, of course).

<comment><USER38> >they're automatically a public utility //

Is that your assertion or is that through legislation where you are (which is where?)? Thanks.

<comment><USER13> The laws do not directly express the definition "public utility", but the very same restrictions and regulations, and their creators specified that this was the intent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is why we need good whistle blower protections. If Google does that intentionally, there must be quite a few people in the know at Google.

Even without, it just takes to open a throw away account here, and say something.

</comment><comment><USER40> It looks like a net win for PM. If you look at the graph, before disappearing they had struggled for position and after the fix they are #1. Plus they get publicity like this TC article.

</comment><comment><USER41> Does Google make money from its relationship with government agencies that perform surveillance?

<comment><USER42> Cultivating government agencies comes in handy especially for global business ops and legal snafus. And I think Google's general 'stalkiness' and getting people used to being stalked ties right in with surveillance culture.

</comment></comment><comment> vladimir-y Has ProtonMail become a really secure? Since when I last time checked web client I noticed that PGP keys are being passed over the internet when you do login (private key), which doesn't look like a true end-to-end encryption since private key should be kept locally and never be passed over the internet. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm note very well versed in the encryption matters.

<comment><USER28> The private key is encrypted using your mailbox password (a 2nd password, not the login password) and that is not stored on their servers. So they only store and pass the private key encrypted.

So it should be secure enough but for sure, the implementation is still not perfect at all, especially if you want to communicate with non-protonmail users.

<comment> vladimir-y > So they only store and pass the private key encrypted.

I remember I was able to get key passed through the network in the not encrypted form, I was looking into the network tab of the browser's dev console. When you do login look at the response of the [https://mail.protonmail.com/api/auth](https://mail.protonmail.com/api/auth) POST query.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Got suspicious about the name Proton, started reading the website, saw that it's based in Switzerland.. and yup, they're Ex-CERNies. :)

</comment><comment><USER44> The domain move which protonmail did looks quite risky: Country TLD to generic domain, new domain parked at Godaddy before and the first owner of this domain run an email server which maybe did unexpectedly closed shop. The domain move happened at the same time when protonmail vanished from the search results.

Instead of publicly looking for a scapegoat for their mistake they should tell readers of their blog the one lesson to be learned from this story: Never use a country TLD for something targeting more then this country!

</comment><comment><USER45> On one hand I'm a major advocate of trustbusting and encouraging government regulation of large, potentially competition-squandering companies. But I'm also an advocate of a free and open Internet, entirely unregulated. To me, this case walks the line between the two and I don't think any more can be done with regards to making the "right" judgement without additional, definitive information.

</comment><comment><USER46> What a coincident; I was just wondering when will Proton popup on HN to share my experience.

I must say I don't think they even have customer support. I emailed them and opened tickets multitude times with serious questions (looking into moving entire enterprise with 100+ email addresses) but I guess I was neither their type of client nor they simply don't have customer support at all!

This issue turned me off and against them entirely; sorry.

<comment><USER47> I have had good support from them. Maybe it's because I'm a paying customer?

What they are doing, both from the backend side and the multiple clients side, is a lot. Chances are they are just really busy with the number of employees they have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Does this have anything to do with what was, retrospectively, a disproportionately pro-Hillary, anti-Trump bias demonstrated in Google News results over the final arc of the election, and the resulting 'out of the blue shock' feeling experienced by so many in America after Trump's election? Or was that simply the result of an effective backlink brigade?

<comment><USER49> Can you square this view with Clinton winning the popular vote? You are looking in the wrong direction. Perhaps inaccurate polling (is polling actually helpful anyway?) and reforming a _slightly_ troubled electoral system are the actual problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Perhaps part of the way to address Google's enormous market power is that they should provide remediation when it causes a problem, including transparency when Google's search results place a site significantly lower than it does in competitors' results.

</comment><comment><USER18> Doesn't seem (from the tone of that post) that they had anyone on staff to handle the SEO Inbound marketing - where is the summary of what investigation they did.

There are ways to reach out to google and get an answer

</comment><comment><USER51> Don't be evil, Google. This one has clear evidence. I doubt that it is a bug. It only affects Protonmail not others.

</comment><comment><USER52> Runbox user here. Can anyone comment on how these two compare? Is it worth switching?

<comment><USER28> Runbox is more like a "normal, ordinary" e-mail service with high security & privacy precautions, but for example no integrated end-to-end, zero-knowledge encryption (option) for mails. You can of course use pgp/gpg like with any other service.

So in Protonmail, for mails inside the service, from protonmail user to protonmail user, they afaik use a pgp implementation and handle the key exchange.

To send secure messages from protonmail to another service, you can encrypt the message / conversation with a password and the recipient gets an email with an url, where he can, given he has the password, decrypt the message and reply securely.

<comment><USER52> Thanks! I guess I'll stick with Runbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Could you in theory sue Google for (intentionally or not) discriminating against you in the search results? Just in theory.

<comment><USER54> In theory, one can sue Google (or any other party) for any reason whatsoever -- no matter how absurd or "out there".

IANAL but I doubt they'd get very far. What would their actual argument even be? Google isn't obligated to include every web site in existence in their index.

<comment><USER55> Seeing how Google have a near monopoly on Search, perhaps they should be required to... or at least be required not to remove search results of already-indexed legitimate websites.

<comment><USER56> How does one create such a list? How do you distinguish domains that have gone rogue (either ones that were legit then went bad. Or if the domain expired or was sold to a nefarious person)?

I believe in this case protonmail was hit by an algorithm based derank (not a manual action). What causes it is anyone's guess. But something series of events hurt their ranking. Its also important to note that PM was NOT delisted. They still were getting traffic from Google, they were just deranked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Google censoring search results and acting more and more like microsoft in 90's.. time to skip google search engine and support another corporations..

</comment><comment><USER58> Not condoning any shoddy move by google, but have you noticed how the ProtonMail UI is a shameless ripoff of gmail?

See these screenshots from ProtonMail:

[https://protonmail.com/images/slider/compose.jpg](https://protonmail.com/images/slider/compose.jpg)

[https://protonmail.com/images/slider/inbox.jpg](https://protonmail.com/images/slider/inbox.jpg)

[https://protonmail.com/images/slider/column- labels.jpg](https://protonmail.com/images/slider/column-labels.jpg)

<comment><USER13> First, there's no copyright on a general style, or theme. Nor can it be patented or trademarked.

So, legally, this is already nothing.

Second, this is not something Google invented – Google started with webmail, but many other companies had designed stuff like the in-frame editor, or other concepts before Google.

So, even if ProtonMail outright copied Google, Google, because they copied together many other people's ideas, wouldn't have reached the Threshold of Originality.

<comment><USER59> They're called Design Patents. They exist. Apple vs Samsung was quite a famous case over them with hundreds of millions in damages on the line. I have no idea if Google is using Design Patents on their products but can if they choose.

[https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/03/swipe-to-patent-design- pat...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/03/swipe-to-patent-design-patents-in- the-age-of-user-interfaces/)

<comment><USER13> ProtonMail is in Switzerland. Neither in Switzerland nor in the EU, Design Patents exist.

<comment><USER59> Your first sentence was broader than that. Far as EU, they're called registered designs. I don't know much about them past that they exist. They're also in Hague Agreement of WIPO which Switzerland is a party to. Apple's attack on Samsung in Germany was about them copying the interface and style. Situation isn't as clear cut to me given the above.

Even if nothing applied in Switzerland, the countries supporting such things might block their local presence there under grounds of violations. This risk actually is why some companies, esp Chinese, won't do business in the U.S.. If this played out, they'd be blocked from serving customers in U.S. or any nation that upholded the claim against them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My Cousin Lenny: Remembering Leonard Bernstein - <AUTHOR> http://thesmartset.com/my-cousin-lenny/ <comment><USER2> Story time! My grandpa was Leonard Bernstein. Not the composer Leonard Bernstein, but another NYC Leonard Bernstein. But occasionally, there would be mixups.

They ran into each other at a restaurant once and shared a chuckle, when the staff paged Leonard Bernstein to come to the desk for a phone call.

The best was when my grandpa was harassed by the mother of a violin prodigy for a few months. She kept calling him on nights and weekends. Finally he shouted at her, "Lady, I live in the suburbs on Long Island, what makes you think I'm the _composer_ Leonard Bernstein!?"

<comment><USER3> Ha! And let's not forget NYC co-resident _Elmer_ Bernstein, composer of this particularly fine Western theme:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuAZ4WhbI8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuAZ4WhbI8o)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So pleased to find Classical Music postings on HN!

For those interested in Bernstein's views, his last interview dubbed [Dinner With Lenny]([http://a.co/j5kOMIM](http://a.co/j5kOMIM)) is recommended.

</comment><comment><USER5> _To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time._

\--Leonard Bernstein

</comment><comment><USER6> I found this segment recently where Bernstein discusses Beethoven with the actor Maximillian Schell while sitting at the piano. Loved the relaxed atmosphere (they're both smoking and looking cool) and the erudite explanations and the little quotations from pieces playing on the piano (while he apologizes for making small mistakes).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuYY1gV8jhU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuYY1gV8jhU)

</comment><comment><USER7> For those of you that find Bernstein's later work hard to parse, I highly recommend his first symphony, written before his own style was fully developed. It's like an extended essay about everything he likes about Mahler. His recordings of Mahler's work are often criticised for not being faithful to the intent of the composer, but that's to completely miss the point: they're deliberately and wonderfully interpretive.

I wouldn't be so sure West Side Story is going to outlast Mahler 5, though. They might tie...

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting to read that Bernstein was a member of the Communist Party. As someone who's studied music and been a fan of Bernstein for years, I've not once heard this, despite having read quite a bit about his music.

His politics has been whitewashed so hard it's not funny, and it's never mentioned when his music is discussed.

<comment><USER9> There was a time in the US where it was more honorable to be in the Communist party, than being a member of Congress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I Heart this!

Bernstein's rendition of Rhapsody in Blue introduced me classical piano.</comment>


Things to Make with a 3D Printer - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackthings.com/ten-practical-things-to-make-with-a-3d-printer/ <comment><USER2> I just don't get it. Not that 3D printing is bad, just that these examples seem mostly silly for being billed as practical. Nearly every post about 3D printers reads like straight up satire.

I'm acquainted with two families that own machine shops, and my father was very into handyman-ism. Another friend's dad works at the dump (or affectionately, "dump mart").

If we wanted something like a bicycle accessory or camera mount we just _made_ one. Out of wood and wire and paracord. We just hammered and sawed stuff together. Welders can't be that uncommon, and they're a few hundred bucks if you can't find a used one.

Fixing things with plastic? That's called a glue gun and they're ten dollars and existed since way back when Saturday Night Live was funny.

To be fair to the article though, we couldn't make our own LEGOs. We could make our own boats and swords and (hairspray-powered) cannons, but not LEGOs.

Is my experience growing up really that uncommon? Or is having a 3D printer just an expensive substitute for having friends that are in to making and fixing stuff?

<comment>

I don't mean to knock the technology itself. 3D printers are _really cool,_ but I think titling an article "Ten Practical Things..." and coming up with the list they did just feels very shoehorned.

<comment><USER3> _Is my experience growing up really that uncommon? Or is having a 3D printer just an expensive substitute for having friends that are in to making and fixing stuff?_

In the same way that C++ is just a verbose substitute for having friends that are in to writing assembly.

<comment><USER4> Yes, 3D printing allows people to get interested in DIY by letting them make these parts without much effort. Most city slickers have no idea how to get into DIY.

For a long time, 3D printing will be useful as a "close-enough" alternative to more expensive models, parts, and replacements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been calling overbuzz on 3D printing from the outset, and this story does nothing to dispel that. These mostly aren't practical things - they're just tat. And guess what? You can make tat a lot more cheaply, quickly and creatively than with some complex device, custom raw ingredients and a load of faffing around.

A 3D printed clock? Fuck off. It's just a clock mechanism attached to a disc of 3D printed plastic - you can attach a clock mechanism to anything and make a clock. Can the mechanism be printed? No, can it bollocks.

I think there are amazing industrial uses for these things, but there are very, very few items which are made from a single colour of a single plastic. I can't remember the last time I needed a replacement part for something and it was just a monoblock plastic piece.

Edit: The submission's title has just been changed from "Ten _Practical_ things to make with a 3D printer"

<comment><USER3> _I can't remember the last time I needed a replacement part for something and it was just a monoblock plastic piece._

As the father of two young boys, I could make a full-time job of printing replacement plastic pieces for broken toys.

<comment><USER5> _...full-time job..._

In a way that's my point - it's probably a 5 hour job to print a replacement plastic peg for some toy. 5 hours is $100 for anyone who can afford a 3D printer. Plus the printer's cost. Financially it makes no sense. As a hobby... brilliant and probably hugely rewarding, but the 3D printing lobby would have you believe we'll all have one and nothing will be landfilled any more.

<comment><USER6> It might take 5 hrs to print it, but do you stand there and watch it the whole time? Plus there are several items I've printed that I could have obtained in no other way.

So 3D printers are great for me, and now I'm on the verge of it being viable to buy rather than outsourcing the printing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am looking forward to being able to print cases for electronics. No, I don't mean phone cases. More like Raspberry Pu cases, but with custom features. It would be very nice to have an RPi, a powered USB hub, a power supply, and a set of disc spots all in one case. That would make a very nice media center box, as opposed to the current mess of wires, or cutting USB sized holes in project boxes from Radio Shack.

Aside from that, 3D printing holds no special interest for me. In fact, if on demand printing was cheap enough, I would probably just do that.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting seeing the negative responses every time a 3D printing post comes up. It seems a common sentiment that 3D printers are somehow just an industrial thing, or otherwise only good for hobbyists. I disagree.

I've used several different models of 3D printers, from the cheapest, to home brewed, to industrial grade, and even the fancy UV cured resin ones. Honestly they really are great for a number of purposes:

1\. Quickly getting a near-full fidelity part to hold in your hand. Whether you're engineering something or doing something around the house, there is no substitute for having the thing in your hand.

2\. Fast "create and forget" replacements. Handle on your workbench broken/missing/shitty? Print one that fits, screw it on and forget about it. No driving to the hardware store, browsing around, paying, "oops the screw holes are too far apart" etc. How many times have you been making something out of wood at home and only gone to the hardware store to get a handle/hinge/pin?

3\. Making 3D parts that would be a huge pain, or impossible, to machine by hand or via cnc. Really, anybody who has spent some time machining parts will tell you that there is more to making a decent part than just designing it and hopping on the mill. Do you have the right tooling? How are you going to hold it? Do I have enough material to hold? What speeds and feeds do I need to use? CNC machining adds an entire extra layer of CAD, and then you still have to worry about most of that stuff.

4\. Making several different versions of something, because you aren't sure which one will fit best, look nicest or suck the least. It's pretty rare to see people machine (or even wood form) 5 parts that are identical except for the position of some groove. It just takes too much time, and it's boring.

Don't get me wrong, there's still tons of room for improvement for additive processes, and sometimes a mill or a table saw is a great tool for the job, but enough with this "overbuzz" business. No, you will not be printing out CPUs any time soon, but that doesn't make 3D printers all "buzz".

EDIT: Formatting.

<comment><USER9> You start off saying 3D printing isn't "just an industrial thing," but then 3 of the 4 items in your list presume an industrial setting.

And I would claim item number 2 doesn't happen often enough to justify the costs of 3D printing for most people. A new handle is less than $2 at Home Depot and takes 20 minutes to go buy. A 3D printer is a several hundred dollar investment, the printing material is another big cost, and the printing time itself is longer than it'd take to drive to the store.

Nobody can deny 3D printing will be great for prototyping and some kinds of custom manufacturing, but I've yet to see a convincing argument for consumer 3D printing.

<comment><USER8> How do 3/4 of my points presume an industrial setting? (1) Specifically says otherwise, and why would quickly getting something in hand have anything to do with your setting? I suppose (2) varies from person to person, but I've definitely done a heck of a lot of hardware browsing where I ended up with some crappy part from china that was the only thing they had that fit what I wanted. And then it broke, and then I went back and returned it, etc., etc., etc. There is something to be said about designing your hardware to fit your job, not the other way around.

(3) Also doesn't presume anything. Yes, most people do not have CNC machines (although I know several who do), but you might surprised how many people have wood/metal shops in their garages or basements. One of the other comments on this very story has someone talking about how having a buddy with a metal shop and a dump is just as good a FDM machine.

Again, (4) has absolutely nothing to do with setting. How does being able to cheaply whip off multiple variations of a model having anything to do with industry? Aside from the fact that such methods are often used in industry, because it's a smarter way to do things. Most home-hacking happens one part at a time for exactly the reason I mention.

<comment><USER9> Well, I agree that 3D printing is going to be a big step forward for the type of people who own CNC machines and own wood or metal shops.

But I think that's a pretty small group, and I don't it's big enough to justify all the overblown talk of 3D printing revolutionizing the world in general.

<comment> loup-vaillant Depends if you talk about the present or about one or two decades ahead. Some day, probably less than 20 years from now, most people _will_ have a practical desktop factory that will make lots of useful things for them.

Current 3D printers are not revolutionizing the world _yet_ , but the next desktop factories will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm almost certain that you cannot 3D print functioning LEGO bricks. Considering they're plastic, those things are manufactured to extremely fine tolerances.

</comment><comment><USER11> Many repairs of the sort mentioned are probably better made with a mold-able epoxy putty such as Sugru (<http://sugru.com>)

A 3d printer is killer for things like: a small, intricate, complicated prototype that is easier to model with software than to sit down and carve, make out of clay or paper.

In fact I don't know why I didn't think of this when my daughter proposed to me a complicated jewelry piece that clearly would need a lot of moving pieces and would be difficult to prototype in metal. 3d printing services FTW!

</comment><comment><USER12> yet another article with a "<number> [best|top]" kind of title :)</comment>


How to Work with Stupid People - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/how-to-work-with-stupid-people/ <comment><USER2> Original article: [http://jasoncrawford.org/2010/04/how-to-work-with-stupid- peo...](http://jasoncrawford.org/2010/04/how-to-work-with-stupid-people/)

<comment><USER3> And the HN submission:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299764>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know about other people, but throughout my career I've routinely assumed that I'm the stupid one, and it hasn't done me any harm so far... I hope ;)

<comment><USER5> I usually assume the same thing and it usually works. But it hurt me once, pretty badly. I spent about a month (!) trying to wrangle good color performance out of a particular scanner for an imaging system. The unit was pre-chosen, I was to make it work. I was assuming the whole time that I was doing something wrong, or that I didn't know something. The real answer was that the scanner manufacturer had fired all of its color scientists and the scanner it question had hardware flaws that were effectively non-correctable.

In this case, it would have been far better to be more aggressive. I could have started screaming as soon as things started to look strange and thus saved myself several weeks. But usually the heuristic is a good one.

<comment><USER6> I find that if I complain and bring up my issues with something right away(or, right after checking all the low-hanging troubleshooting fruit,) I usually get the source of the problem quicker. If I'm at fault, I'll find the real problem quicker, and if others are at fault, I won't spend a month wondering what I did wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A solid framework for understanding and addressing disagreements, but there isn't enough emphasis on the time constraints imposed by reality. I often find that you must be willing to let a disagreement stand, even though, with enough time, it could be worked out.

Advice on two derivatives of this problem would be even more helpful:

1) How can you tell when you have sufficiently refined your communication with the other party?

2) How to reasonably judge the point at which the costs of continuing the discussion out-weight the benefits.

This is usually situation specific, but please share if you have any rules that can be applied.</comment>


Typograph – Scale & Rhythm - <AUTHOR> http://lamb.cc/typograph/

<comment><USER2> Bringhurst's advice about vertical motion doesn't really apply to web pages.

Bringhurst was writing about _bound_ books with text on facing pages. That advice is specifically aimed towards aligning the bottoms of facing pages, aligning lines of text on facing pages, and aligning lines of text on pages printed back-to-back. If you don't have multiple columns of body text (margin text uses different rules), and you aren't having your text printed back-to- back on semi-translucent paper, then the vertical motion rule doesn't apply.

People try so hard to follow this rule in web pages, but they just end up creating web pages that have way too much unnecessary spacing between things. This article is a good example; it has way too much spacing between headings and the paragraphs they introduce. It's easy to find more extreme cases on other sites.

This is section 2.2.2 of "The Elements of Typographic Style" (page 37 in version 3.1 of the book).

<comment><USER3> Well said. While I love "The Elements of Typographic Style", I find there is plenty to argue with, even before dragging the advice to the web where it may not apply.

For instance where Bringhurst gets hung up on a kind of Pythagorean numerology about proportions. He seems to think that, if you can find some rational geometric basis for a proportion, then that provides an explanation for the aesthetics of the proportion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A whole page about typography in a typeface that is completely inapproprate for users reading a screen.

<comment><USER5> Why? Looks quite good with subpixel anti-aliasing.

The nineties are over. Nearly everyone has high resolution screens and every major OS now defaults to subpixel anti aliasing. No reason not to use a quite nice font like Minion Pro.

<comment><USER2> It doesn't look that nice to me. I think that is a font that is designed for Apple/Adobe style subpixel anti-aliasing instead of ClearType anti-aliasing. For someone like me, who greatly prefers ClearType, this font looks very ugly (mostly because it seems semi-bold).

<comment><USER5> Semi-Bold = Ugly? Now I'm confused. (Seemed ok to me on a XP machine.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A data visualization curriculum using Vega-Lite and Altair - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/uwdata/visualization-curriculum <comment><USER2> This is a really comprehensive tutorial, one of better uses of Jupyter Notebooks</comment>


Edward Albee, the Art of Theater No. 4 (1966) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4350/the-art-of-theater-no-4-edward-albee <comment><USER2> Context:

> Edward Franklin Albee III (/ˈɔːlbiː/ awl-bee; March 12, 1928 – September 16, > 2016) was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story > (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) and A > Delicate Balance (1966). Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for > Drama, and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.</comment>


Jeff Bezos' iPhone X Was Hacked - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/technology/jeff-bezos-hack-iphone.html <comment><USER2> Shoulda used a Fire Phone!</comment>


PlentyofFish Hacked: Dating Website's Owner Says It's Blackmail - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/security/love-hate-and-hackers-plentyoffish-boss-stews-after-personal-files-stolen-20110201-1ac22.html <comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like sloppy practise if it's true that passwords were in plain text! Spaghetti code?</comment>


Dropbox Beefs Up Its Pro Feature Set, Now Offering 1TB of Storage for $10/Month - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/27/dropbox-pro-update/

<comment><USER2> I still have 100Go. Do I have to cancel my plan and re-get it?

<comment><USER3> No, it will update automatically within a couple of days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> they should offer 100Gb or 200Gb , I need more than 2 Gb, but defiantly not 1TB !!

<comment><USER5> I think $10/month is still a reasonable price for 200GB of storage. And most of their customers are like you and probably won't use even close to the full amount, so it's a big win for them.</comment></comment>


A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/mahalo-reduces-headcount-google-algo-change <comment><USER2> 1\. We're working with the folks impacted to place them at whatever company they would like to join. I'm personally reaching out to folks who might want these fine people. They will all wind up on their feet and be great additions to the vibrant startup scene in Los Angeles.

2\. Mahalo is doing amazing videos with experts, but our (text) articles were created by passionate writers who are not necessarily experts. Google want's experts, so we're doubling down and getting experts to help build curriculums and lesson plans for our videos. I'm 100% certain that will solve the problem.

3\. You can think of us as a free version of Lynda.com for everything. Or a version of Kahn Academy for everything.

Imagine tens of thousands of these type of pages and videos being made a year: [http://www.mahalo.com/learn-adobe-photoshop-adjustments- pane...](http://www.mahalo.com/learn-adobe-photoshop-adjustments-panel/)

We're going to teach folks every major piece of software, every recipe of note, how to change their oil and how to play any song on guitar or piano. <http://www.youtube.com/howtoplayguitar2>

Video is the future, and we're going to be the largest creator of educational videos this year.

It sucks that we got hit so hard, but we will come back stronger. The 95 members of the team that are still with us are more committed than ever to the mission.

Yes, it really sucked to get off stage after 47 amazing LAUNCH companies had such amazing launches on stage. I got told on my way to the after party. We struggled over these decisions all weekend with the leadership team.

At the end of the day entrepreneurship is about kicking ass and getting your ass kicked. I've been through this many times, but I would be lying if I said it didn't impact me. It does.

This is the first time I had such a big high followed by such a low, low.

OK, time to change a diaper and give a bottle. No rest for the weary.

Back to work.

<comment><USER3>
      > Video is the future, and we're going to be the largest
      > creator of educational videos this year.

Oh no. I cannot wait for the video be the past. It may be the best way to teach some things (mainly involving physical activities or physical manipulation of some sort), but for programming topics it most often just waste of time and bandwidth. Why would I want to spend a minute watching someone to type a line of code with all mistypes and corrections, when I can glance it in a second? Why would I want to fiddle with video controls to get replay of particular section when I can reread it much faster whenever I want?

Seriously, I am starting to see this tendency to do anything in video as some sort of DRM scheme for content sites. I recently unsubscribed from thinkvitamin.com because they started to push everything to video (with annoying intro at the start of each video).

I did check your guitar lessons… Sorry guys, but with "amazing videos" you have you will never ever beat this guy: <http://justinguitar.com/> (check out his beginners course or intermediate method; <http://www.youtube.com/user/JustinSandercoe> ) — take a look if just to see how expert _teaching_ looks like.

I will chose the best over the largest every time.

<comment><USER4> _> Why would I want to spend a minute watching someone to type a line of code with all mistypes and corrections, when I can glance it in a second?_

A lot of people _do_ want this. A good screencast shows not only the code, but the thought process that goes into writing the code.

People have different cognitive styles and learn in very different ways. I thought this was common knowledge by now.

<comment><USER5> It's common knowledge, but its essentially a myth.

[http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/September- Oc...](http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/September- October%202010/the-myth-of-learning-full.html)

<comment><USER4> While the specific claims made by this article are true, they do not change the fact that most educated, especially self educated people have experienced situations where they have repeatedly gained much more knowledge much faster from one particular type of learning experience than they have from others, and that there is widely differing opinion on which type is best.

Now, while this obviously does not vindicate the claims of the people who assert that learning styles _must_ be embodied in the neurology of the learner, it does show that _something is going on,_ and it would be to the benefit of both learners and teachers to find out more about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Free advice for entitled Gen Y trophy kids: if you spend 12 months at a company over and over you look like a flake."

<http://twitter.com/#!/Jason/status/12621363849>

Or maybe it makes you look like someone who thinks they have better opportunities elsewhere.

<comment><USER7> Free Advice for opinionated Entrepreneurs - when you have the right to fire anyone at any time; evaluate the person you are hiring on merit and "fit" for the role. Not based on number of past stints or time spent at each company; but mostly do not come off looking like huge hypocrites.

<comment><USER8> I think this glosses over an important point. Hiring or firing is expensive in opportunity cost (e.g. project delays, disruption to the work environment, morale) and so it makes sense to internalize that cost in a hiring decision. Suppose Person A will provide value Y per year, cost X per year, and turn over in one year costing Z. Person B produces value Y - K, costs X, but will stay for 3. If K < (Z - Z/3) all else equal you'd choose person B. Building a brand that you jump ship for better jobs ought to cost you something, even if that something is much less than the salary you gain not being a gold-watch girl.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Could someone tell me more about this Jason Calacanis fellow. He seems to be a very polarizing figure on this site. Really all I know is that he seemed to have a falling out with Michael Arrington and alot of articles seem to mention him in a slightly negative light.

Is there some reason for this, and no I'm not trying to troll.

<comment><USER10> You should check out some of his shows on <http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin- startups/> \- you can get a sense of who he is from watching a few.

The general consensus on HN is that he doesn't treat people well or is somehow not very "honest".

Personally, I'm a big fan. I watch every episode and I generally agree with most of what he says.

<comment><USER11> I agree. He just seems brutally honest, and that gets him in trouble. But hate him or love him, the guy does a great job with TWIST. I do not use Mahalo, so I cannot speak for it.

<comment><USER10> Same here. I don't even remember ending up on a Mahalo search results page, come to think of it.

<comment><USER12> Like you, I know Mahalo mostly from knowing _about_ it and skipping past their entries in Google results, but I wouldn't doubt that these kinds of sites enjoy a lot of clicks from people who just don't know English or the Internet very well. Understandable words are understandable words.

The problems people have with Mahalo and their ilk are unimportant to 90% of the people on the Internet. Many are perfectly comfortable typing "how to cross street?" into google or their isp homepage and clicking the top link. Boom: business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find this interesting because I have never done a Google search that led me to a Mahalo site. I don't even recall seeing them come up in a search result for anything honestly.

Having heard about Mahalo through Podcasts and such, I have been to the site a few times to find some things, but usually ended up back at Google.

However, now learning of the How-To style videos coming to the site in droves, I'm definitely interested again.

So, this bad press and their bad fortune may lead to new visitors, such as myself. Probably not in the waves that Google brought, but it's "press" none- the-less.

</comment><comment><USER14> I personally have never found any useful content at Mahalo, sure the site looks a bit better now but the previous version was trash. Imagine how many investing in high quality content lost traffic to the older spam filled, next to no content Mahalo.

<comment><USER15> For all the press Mahalo gets I've never seen a Mahalo page show up in the first page or two of Google results. Maybe I'm not looking for the right stuff, but ehow, wikihow etc. all would show up before adding them to Personal Blocklist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I feel for the cut staff and Mahalo has plenty of dough in the bank but reminds me of Jason's article "What to do if your startup is about fail (or "Don't Stop Believing")"

[http://calacanis.com/2009/02/27/what-to-do-if-your- startup-i...](http://calacanis.com/2009/02/27/what-to-do-if-your-startup-is- about-fail-or-dont-stop-believing/)

Applicable lesson I learned the hard way - better to make cuts early in the face of a serious shift vs. burn cash, see morale dip, etc.

<comment><USER17> Any time you go through a round of layoffs the morale is going to dip amongst the survivors for a little while. This is particularly acute when the company is small, and those being let go are perceived to have added value (usually culturally more than direct ROI). It can slowly chip away at the soul of a place.

Crunchbase shows Mahalo at 40 employees pre-cut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The messed up thing about this is, that 10% of the staff have 'slaved' for however long they have been there.

All for naught.

Maybe they can still get a referral from Jason, but given that I don't think that pays the bills...hopefully it can help them land on their feet.

<comment><USER19> "slaved".. were they not compensated?

<comment><USER18> Perhaps, but as far as I understand it...they are compensated at a pittance with the hope that after 3 - 5 years they can leave with a nice payout and move on to 'bigger' and better.

I guess my point is, this is why you should be careful who you commit to slave for (e.g. a boss that expressly says that they expect you to work like a slave) because at the end of the day - if the business ever turns down you are just a number.

It's unfair to ask salaried employees to give the same as the founder, because the founders won't be first in line to be cut when revenues turn down.

<comment><USER14> What do you suggest then? They carry the employees even though it is no longer economically viable?

<comment><USER18> Not in the least. I think Jason did the fiscally prudent thing. He has a fiduciary responsibility to his shareholders to respond in the way he did. Very tough call, but no doubt the necessary call to make, if he wants to turn Mahalo into a going concern.

I suggest that he doesn't go around bragging about how he only wants 'winners' and he expects everybody to give 80 hour weeks and all that non-sense. Giving someone free food, and a 'free chef', doesn't make up for demanding 80-hour weeks no matter what they tell you.

I think he should just shut up, and set an example through deeds - because at the end of the day, 10% of the staff can (and should) get cut when revenue tanks. Acting like it won't happen and they will have a big payday if the company gets bought or goes public is disingenuous at best, and deceitful/fraudulent at worst.

That being said, I don't think he should discourage people from working that long - on the occasion when they have a deadline to hit or something.

But just be more responsible with the rhetoric, is all I am saying. These are people with families that are likely depending on their livelihood.

<comment><USER20> And a lot of them are probably Gen Y people who, had this been a different company, upon applying to Mahalo would be discriminated against. Left their job in a year? Oh they were laid off? Well, in Calacanis' book they were the laziest, most selfish 10% of employees - they deserved it!

Hopefully too many other businesses don't buy into that nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Didn't they recently pivot and switch over from a lot of written articles to videos?

It would make sense to get rid of some writers and get some video folks quick. With their 40 employees, 4 being let go seems hardly a news-worthy event. It seems even more of a stretch positioning this as google algorithm driven.

<comment><USER22> Read the article, which is about that shift. They are going to focus on how-to video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like Jason Calacanis. He's done a wonderful job with TWIST, the This Week In network, the Open Angel Forum and the Launch conference. I find him to be very funny and entertaining, passionate about entrepreneurship, tough-minded and determined to succeed, forthright and honest about his opinions, and someone who isn't afraid to make hard decisions. I do wonder about the future of Mahalo, though. Unlike some of Jason's other ventures, it seems as if Mahalo - now version 4.0 - has struggled to obtain a unique and strong identity, let alone sufficient market traction, so far. If it can be the best how-to video site on the Internet, great, but given Google's recent stance on how-to content sites (i.e. the 'farmer' algorithmic change), not to mention all the other companies vying to be the best how-to video site on the Internet, the company certainly has its work cut out for it. On the other hand, these are precisely the circumstances that sort out the real entrepreneurs from the wannabes and from Jason's comments above... I wouldn't count him or the Mahalo team out.

</comment><comment><USER24> Jason said in the closing remarks of LAUNCH something to the effect of "I am so happy, let's go to the W and get drunk." After arriving at the W, I checked my phone and saw the article on Google's blog - some timing! I feel for him and all of the people that lost their jobs.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've know Jason since the web 1.0 era in silicon alley — he's always give to his larger community (and still does with his podcast) and the one thing that Jason really taught me: If you fail, dust yourself off and startup again. Mark my words that Jason will come back. I think this is a lesson that everyone in business should learn...

</comment><comment><USER26> "What's really interesting to me is that I remember when Mahalo first launched, Jason told me numerous times he didn't care about Google because he was going to build loyal users who would just come directly to Mahalo"

Really?

</comment><comment><USER27> Now, mind you, this is the same Calcanis who publicly bitched about how employees lack loyalty and job-hop. I wonder why?

Mmmmm, savor the delicious irony.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think this only the beginning of the bad news due to this algo change. There are many legitimate businesses that have been seriously impacted by traffic drops and we'll probably see many more layoffs and budget cuts.

<comment><USER29> Out of curiosity, can you name some of the legitimate businesses that were affected? I thought the algo only targeted content farms and sites that regurgitated other peoples content.

<comment><USER30> Mine is one. Google traffic is down 30%, and that significantly affects my revenue.

<http://www.onedayonejob.com/>

<comment><USER31> You need to increase the # of links you have from the homepage - I would suggest getting to the 100 internal link point by finding more ways to tag your jobs you have under "See All 1206 Entry Level Employers", which I imagine is driving most of your search traffic.

Divide that by category types and link from the sidebar - this will pass linkjuice more efficiently and improve your traffic.

<comment><USER30> That's a really good suggestion. I mostly use the tag pages to flow linkjuice throughout the site, and it seems to work pretty well. I'll think more about how I can improve my site architecture. But I was doing pretty well until Thursday.

The really interesting thing is that <http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/> has seen no change in traffic. Its architecture is nearly identical, and much of the content is shared across both sites (because I built the sites for humans, not search engines). There's a decent chance that this is causing the problem, but I can't understand why ODOJ would get hit instead of ODOI. Even content that isn't partially duplicated on ODOI is getting hit, so it's either a domain level filter/penalty based on duplicate content, or it's not the issue.

Right now I'm thinking a lot about how to fix whatever Google doesn't like, but it's really hard when you can't be sure. I can't really afford to do significant testing (and you can't actually run a good experiment with a real site). For now I'm going to keep investigating, and work on building links. That's always a good time investment.

<comment> T-hawk > but I can't understand why ODOJ would get hit instead of ODOI.

Wild guess: "job" is a highly competitive keyword subject to lots of scammy black hats ("work from home for $$$!!!"), while "internship" is much more clear of the scum?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ironically, I was watching this video recently when Calacanis was talking about "How to kill Google".

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTe15DEWp30>

</comment><comment><USER33> Maybe this was the excuse for Mahalo to fire the 10% of its workers that were the least productive. The bottom 10% may have even been hurting the company.

<comment><USER34> Maybe, but I get the sense that the company's problems aren't primarily about productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Someone get this cat a dictionary so he can look up "decimate", a better word for what happened than removing "a handful" of staff.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is "Algorithm Age". Damn! They are powerful!

</comment><comment><USER37> Well you can't fault them for dithering, can you?

</comment><comment><USER38> Am I the only one who doesn't understand this at all?

As far as I can tell, Mahalo.com is a video site. Why on earth would google going after content farms affect a video site in any way?

To me, this headline makes about as much sense as "Microsoft changes Windows 7 pricing, pork belly futures skyrocket." Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER39> After weeks of criticism on Google's results being spam'ed, it was clear that Google would react on this. The algorithm change was foreseeable.

On the other side this shows the monopolistic power of Google and how they can hurt individual companies like they want.

For us as search engine users, it is time to support other search engines, for instance DuckDuckGo.

<comment><USER40> _this shows the monopolistic power of Google and how they can hurt individual companies_

Changes like this hurt most if you depend on spam-like SEO.

For example, Stack Overflow hasn't lost anything from this recent algorithm change - they actually gained from it.</comment></comment>


Richard Branson's Space-Tourism Company Rockets Out of Atmosphere for First Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/richard-bransons-space-tourism-company-rockets-out-of-atmosphere-for-first-time-11544720558 <comment><USER2> Out of atmosphere what the U.S. Military considers atmosphere.</comment>


Advanced Coverage Criteria [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/edu/testingdebugging10/slides/04-AdvancedCoverageCriteria.pdf <comment><USER2> The most important concept I learnt about coverage in school was the subsumption hierarchy. For those interested in more details, the Pezze-Young book does the best job of explaining these in chapters 12 & 13\. [http://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~michal/book/](http://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~michal/book/)

I'm surprised that in-practice i've seen only the use of statement & (sometimes) branch coverage being reported. I'd be curious to see if anyone (outside of aviation) has used any other coverage criteria.

<comment><USER3> I think this presentation is mainly about implementation-related coverage, and there are of course many other kinds (not sure if this is what you were asking about). For instance, in HW design, there is a bigger emphasis on "functional coverage", i.e. coverage derived from a description of what the Device Under Test should do, what the inputs look like etc..

Please see my post about the various kinds of coverage here: [https://blog.foretellix.com/2016/12/23/verification- coverage...](https://blog.foretellix.com/2016/12/23/verification-coverage-and- maximization-the-big-picture/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does a Freelancer Need a Resume? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> How else will the freelancer convey what they have done in the past, what they know and are interested in to a prospective client?

<comment><AUTHOR> Portfolio, perhaps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No, they need a business website for marketing their services and showcasing previous work.

Recruiters tend to insist on a résumé because it allows them anonymise and commoditise the resources they're selling to their clients.

By sending them a résumé you're playing their game and probably selling yourself short.

An actual client might ask for a résumé as well because she's used to receiving one but she'll probably be as happy - if not happier - with a website that not only details what you've been working on and how that benefitted your clients (rather than a cryptic bag of TLAs) but maybe also provides client testimonials underlining your ability to deliver.

</comment><comment><USER4> No. I created one lately, after two decades. Even that is not a proper resume. More like summary on skills, references and a couple of career highlights.

</comment><comment><USER5> No. I haven't used a resume/CV in a decade. Successful freelancers get work through reputation, word of mouth, a portfolio online.

</comment><comment><USER6> yes. I am a freelancer and use a resume and code samples to get jobs.

</comment><comment><USER7> can some freelancers show how they promote their work here?</comment>


Show HN: Pure CSS Batman minion - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/kiraken/pen/PqKgmg

<comment><USER2> Nice work! :) It can also be another creature.. :) hehe; [http://codepen.io/anon/pen/pJWwLB](http://codepen.io/anon/pen/pJWwLB)

<comment><AUTHOR> What kind of ungodly abomination is that? JK pretty good mate

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can I use it on my site?

<comment><AUTHOR> Surething. Can't see why not! Just make sure to credit me.

<comment><USER3> Obviously. Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> Enjoy buddy. And leave a link, i'd love to visit your site :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Have we found the universe that existed before the Big Bang? - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5694701/does-cosmic-background-radiation-reveal-the-universe-before-the-big-bang?skyline=true&s=i <comment><USER2> Our ability to measure cosmological distances (past 100M ly) is very limited. Past 1bn ly we are basically talking about the Hubble law, which has to be infered from other distance measurements. The Hubble law means very little as a distance estimate to individual galaxies, but can work to get an average for a good number of distant objects (within an order-of-magnitude accuracy).

More on this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder>

So for now, our foundations of Cosmology are still too shaky to strap a "what came before" theory on top of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> idea for the next Dan Brown novel: scientist studies the background microwave radiation leftover from the start of the universe, and finds interesting anomalies. He soon realizes he's found a code, a message, buried in the radiation. But as he nears publication of his findings on 'God's signature,' shady forces close in around him. It seems somebody else has already deciphered the code. Coming Fall 2013: _The Penrose Enigma - "I know what you did last universe"_</comment>


Wi-Fi Alliance Introduces Wi-Fi Certified WPA3 Security - <AUTHOR> https://www.wi-fi.org/news-events/newsroom/wi-fi-alliance-introduces-wi-fi-certified-wpa3-security <comment><USER2> I'm not optimistic. I believe that the underlying crypto protocol is this:

[https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4622764/](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4622764/)

It's "secure authentication of equals", which is a protocol that kind of looks like it's trying to be a PAKE (Password Authenticated Key Exchange), but the paper does not mention PAKE anywhere in its abstract, and I'm not at all confident that SAE's design or analysis takes into account the properties that PAKE protocols should have.

I think that the original WPA key exchange was supposed to use the SRP protocol, which is a PAKE, but that was dropped due to patent issues. Since then, as I understand it, quite a few very nice PAKE protocols have had their patents expire, so I don't see what the problem is now.

So color me extremely skeptical.

<comment><USER3> That's a Dan Harkins protocol; Harkins is a little notorious for Dragonfly, a PAKE he tried to get "approved" by IETF CFRG before being slagged by Trevor Perrin†, who wrote up a particularly simple and nasty side channel attack on the elliptic curve point generation technique Dragonfly used. SAE includes what looks like the same "hunt-and-peck" point generator.

† [https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/tls/current/msg10922.h...](https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/tls/current/msg10922.html)

 _Later_ :

All I ever read about the Dragonfly PAKE was trevp taking it apart on CFRG, but from a quick skim of this paper and the IETF draft Harkins wrote for Dragonfly, this looks like it's just an instantiation of Dragonfly.

That would be pretty funny.

What is it about WiFi security that makes it such a backwater?

<comment><USER4> I don't think I've ever heard cryptosecurity disputes being described in such a...visceral manner.

<comment><USER5> Visceral would be 'fetid pile of maggot-ridden pig intestines'. 'Backwater' is practically bucolic.

<comment><USER3> I assumed they were referring to Trevor's IETF posts; the Igoe and Dragonfly comments he posted are about as intemperate as I've ever seen him, in any venue. He is not an angry dude.

<comment><USER5> Oh! I only read the first thing you linked at first so maybe misunderstood. It does heat up a bit after but only seems 'visceral' in the way showing a bit of ankle is 'racy'. Then again, I don't know anything about the civility baseline of the list or people involved.

<comment><USER6> I mean, if you want visceral, there is this shameful email from Dan Harkins:

[https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/tls/current/msg10971.h...](https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/tls/current/msg10971.html)

<comment><USER5> I didn't really follow it very far, I did notice Dan Harkins quickly got assholier-than-thou. But there's no shortage of crypto or general tech talk that is worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Wi-Fi Alliance is also introducing Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Easy Connect™, a new > program that reduces the complexity of onboarding Wi-Fi devices with limited > or no display interface – such as devices coming to market for Internet of > Things (IoT) – while still maintaining high security standards. Wi-Fi Easy > Connect™ enables users to securely add any device to a Wi-Fi network using > another device with a more robust interface, such as a smartphone, by simply > scanning a product quick response (QR) code. Wi-Fi Easy Connect and WPA3 > represent the latest evolution in Wi-Fi Alliance programs to ensure users > receive a positive experience while remaining securely connected as the > security landscape evolves.

This is highly reminiscent of WPS. The language indicates that they've learned their lesson and focused on making the standard secure, at least in theory. Time will tell how well it's implemented, but history says to be skeptical and disable it for the time being.

<comment><USER8> It is allowing any device already on the network to vouch for new devices. What could possibly go wrong? WPS had flaws in its implementation, but was reasonable on a theoretical level. This seems foolhardy at best.

WPA2, when properly implemented, is very secure. I'm not sure of WPA3's real purpose. Is strong encryption of wifi signals of any benefit? The days of banking passwords being send in html gets should be behind us. Anything important will be protected by other encryption layers than wifi. Is WPA3 meant to protect unauthorized network access? WPA2 isn't exactly easy to crack. Do we really need a new scheme, and the inevitable new flaws that come with it? Or is this really about streamlining the user experience, about making wifi that little bit less complicated, so that people can attached their smart toasters to the home network without having to actually remember the password.

To clarify for those who obviously do not understand the difference between protocol and concept implementation: Errors in the protocol would have been inconsequential if WPS was implemented properly. Had it not been left on 24/7, the temporary use of shorter keys would have been a good thing. It would have allowed home networks to adopt much more complex keys without having to type them into every new device (a big deal on things like printers which didn't have keyboards). WPS could have contributed to greater WPA2 security. But instead the concept was improperly _implemented_ , allowing the inevitable errors discovered in the adopted protocol to be leveraged.

<comment><USER9> > WPA2, when properly implemented, is very secure

Not really:

[https://github.com/d33tah/call-for-wpa3/](https://github.com/d33tah/call-for- wpa3/)

<comment><USER10> >Anyone can disconnect you

so can someone with a jammer. I'm not sure how a protocol upgrade would protect against that.

>The password can be cracked offline

true, but the solutions presented don't really address the issue. they're variants of key stretching (using a better kdf, mandating stronger passwords, etc.). at the end he mentions "Contemporary cryptography provides tools that could solve this problem.", but that's hand wavy at best. i'm not quite sure it's even possible to implement such a feature in a PSK setting.

>Once you know the password, you can sniff traffic and spoof anyone

>This problem could be solved by using Diffie–Hellman key exchange (DH).

Doubt it. DHE does not offer protection against MITM attacks, which an active attacker can certainly do with a powerful enough antenna.

>From the user's perspective, unless you really know what you're doing, I advise you not to browse any sensitive websites (especially banking) over wireless

this is fearmongering. most "sensitive" websites already use https, which makes this an non-issue.

>It won't let you secure a passwordless network

>How could this be solved? The new WPA security standard could support the "passwordless" mode that requires no authentication, but keeps an encrypted channel of communication so that the anonymous user can identify himself and make traffic only readable by the access point.

how does this protect against MITM? that is, a rogue router pretending to be an hotspot?

> Silly "terms of service" in your cafe can break your applications and expose > you to risk

valid point, but already solved: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotspot_(Wi- Fi)#Hotspot_2.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotspot_\(Wi-Fi\)#Hotspot_2.0)

<comment><USER11> EDIT: Ignore me I've confused terminology.

> Doubt it. DHE does not offer protection against MITM attacks, which an > active attacker can certainly do with a powerful enough antenna.

Huh? That's precisely what Diffie-Hellman is for. It's a protocol for establishing a shared secret over an insecure channel. Have you got an antenna big enough to read the private key? Sure, you can argue that pure DH is weak compared to ECDH or PKCS, but this is exactly what the system does.

No, DH doesn't stop impersonation or spoofing attacks. It doesn't do authentication. That much I agree with you on. You need something like ECDSA for that. But those types of attacks aren't MITM.

<comment><USER8> DHE protects against eavesdroppers, not middlemen.

<comment><USER11> Oh, fair enough. Dang, I get those confused far too often for my own good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pardon my negative comment, but given their history of absolutely terrible crypto, I can't wait to see how they mess it up this time.

Some thoughts on WPA2: [https://github.com/d33tah/call-for- wpa3/](https://github.com/d33tah/call-for-wpa3/)

<comment><USER12> WPA3 appears to solve these issues. [https://www.mathyvanhoef.com/2018/03/wpa3-technical- details....](https://www.mathyvanhoef.com/2018/03/wpa3-technical-details.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If I understood everything, you have to be a Wi-Fi Alliance member in order to develop/contribute/vote on all things WiFi. The smallest membership that allows you to participate is US$7,500/year for 2018 (next year it'll be $7,725/year). And that's only for small businesses and they won't have all voting rights. The actual membership is a whopping US$15,000/year ($450 more next year).

It disgusts me to see that in order to improve something that a crapton of people use daily to protect them self, that's currently broken, you'd have to pay. I didn't see any mention that individuals can become members on the website of the Wi-Fi Alliance seems to be only businesses can participate.

I'd be alright with some open-source implementation instead.

/rant

<comment><USER14> Seems like it would encounter same problem earlier in Wifi history

"Early 802.11 products suffered from interoperability problems because the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) had no provision for testing equipment for compliance with its standards."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi- Fi_Alliance#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Alliance#History)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wi-Fi enhanced open looks like a nice security enhancement for open networks, but unfortunately (correct me if I'm wrong) it still doesn't look like it protects users from rogue access points; it only stops eavesdropping if users have already connected to the correct network.

I'd love to see a system similar to what Wi-Fi is already doing with Easy Connect, where users can scan a public key embedded in a QR Code or NFC tag to securely connect to a Wi-Fi network. (Or does Easy Connect already allow that? It'd be great if it does.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Why wasn't this designed in the open like TLS 1.3? The process behind isn't very confidence inspiring...

<comment><USER17> Because IETF is NOT an industrial alliance, but Wi-Fi Alliance is. See the differences?

see also: 3GPP.

<comment><USER16> That is the obvious difference, but why don't they develop crypto protocol with a more open model? They have had too many fiascos for me to trust their current model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > WPA3 leverages Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE), a secure key > establishment protocol between devices, to provide stronger protections for > users against password guessing attempts by third parties.

Is that their term for PAKE?

Also I hope they have finally included an actual error message for incorrect passwords, rather than just "connection failed" which is the best that seems to be possible at the moment.

<comment><USER19> I've seen some cases where I actually do get an authentication failed error connecting to wifi, but other cases where it just gives me some generic connection failed (even when the issue turns out to be authentication). It seems quite random.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow, I hadn't realized that WiFi standards were developed like this. Looking down the page, I see a bunch of TM symbols, endorsements from massive companies, and no technical details or even attempt to describe anything related to security. Not very confidence-inspiring to an outsider.

</comment><comment><USER21> Security of Wi-Fi will _always_ be a shit show, because standards are not public.

Want to dig into TLS? RFCs are on internet, ietf.org, in nice courier fonts.

Want to dig into WPA2? IEEE wireless security standards carry a retail cost of hundreds of dollars to access, and costs to review multiple interoperable standards can quickly add up to thousands of dollars [0]

"IEEE working groups are a closed industry process."

[0] www.wired.com/story/krack-wi-fi-meltdown-open-standards/

</comment><comment><USER22> Does this fix the primary problem with WPA presently: the lack of forward secrecy?

<comment><USER23> If you had followed the link in the PR release labeled "For further information, please visit: [https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi- fi/security"](https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/security")

you would have found the following statement: "Forward secrecy: Protects data traffic even if a password is compromised after the data was transmitted" under "WPA3-Personal"

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Given the apparent state of affairs, it seems like the vendor or vendors who care should bake a vpn into their firmware to provide better protection. Of course it is possible to use a pi or perhaps integrate into an open source firmware, but having a simple vendor provided config would be much better for adoption rates.

</comment><comment><USER25> WPA2 isn't that bad as long as you use a password that isn't going to be pwned by a dictionary attack in 2 seconds so does this prevent against that if frames are captured? IDK.

<comment><USER2> It attempts to. Whether or not it succeeds depends on whether the highly questionable SAE protocol actually works — see the other comments here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Revolution is needed. Let IETF take over development of Wi-Fi standards. If it's patents rigged, start from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER26> WPA3 Personal seems to be another name for SAE that was defined in 802.11s</comment>


Israel intervention in US elections 'vastly overwhelms' anything Russia has done - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/israel-us-elections-intervention-russia-noam-chomsky-donald-trump-a8470481.html <comment><USER2> Accusations of Russian interference in American elections always reminds me of this Time magazine cover story from 1996: RESCUING BORIS THE SECRET STORY OF HOW FOUR U.S. ADVISERS USED POLLS, FOCUS GROUPS, NEGATIVE ADS AND ALL THE OTHER TECHNIQUES OF AMERICAN CAMPAIGNING TO HELP BORIS YELTSIN WIN

[https://ccisf.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/12/201612201405.pd...](https://ccisf.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/12/201612201405.pdf)

From gloating about meddling in foreign elections to declaring Facebook ads an act of war, America has sure come a long way.

</comment><comment><USER3> I disagree with Chomsky here.

While the Israeli lobbying in politics seems "huge", it is done _in the open_. Everyone and their dog knows about AIPAC and the military aid that is provided to Israel so that Israel can buy US-made weapons (or, for that matter, the German aid for U-boats). That's not really a problem IMHO - it both provides jobs in the defense industry without supplying weapons to Saudi-Arabia at the same time, and ensures the stability and viability of the one true democracy in the Middle East. In addition, given the rise of antisemitism happening all over the world it is an absolute imperative that Jews do have a "safe place" in this world. That's what the purpose of Israel actually is and why it was founded!

The Russian meddling, however, is different: it is done covertly. Russian agents bribed politicians, financed or directly controlled troll campaigns on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. They directly or through obscure "loans" and "donations" finance far-right parties across Europe and destabilize democracies.

While I'm not a big fan of lobbying at all, I vastly prefer it to what the Russians are doing.

<comment><USER4> The problem with the 'destabilization' argument is that it's largely been caused by the _reaction_ to the random Twitter/Facebook trolls, not the trolls themselves. Seeing people flip out and want to ban free speech because of some social media nonsense is a far more powerful reason to mistrust a group than anything they could have actually posted against them on Twitter or Facebook to begin with.

If you don't believe me, take a look at some of the actual memes they've been posting: [https://imgur.com/a/ZjQ3PLS](https://imgur.com/a/ZjQ3PLS)

Can anyone tell me which of these memes presents an existential threat to democracy and how?

<comment><USER3>
         Seeing people flip out and want to ban free speech because of some social media nonsense

No one wants to "ban free speech". There just need to be limitations. There is no valid reason for anyone (outside of art/education) to fly a Nazi flag, doing the Hitler salute or call for putting people into gas ovens, stoning them, raping them or whatever.

        Can anyone tell me which of these memes presents an existential threat to democracy and how?

Uhhh... there is this thing called "freedom of religion". Calling for "no more mosques" runs directly contrary to this. And yes, people get riled up by these "memes" so hard they'll even burn down mosques or bomb them. It happens in Germany with _increasing_ frequency. What these memes do is create a massive anti-Muslim, anti-refugee movement that sooner or later feels entitled to violence.

Many of those people caught attacking refugee centers etc. are not classic neo-Nazis. They're _ordinary citizens_ ([http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/fluechtlingsheime-...](http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/fluechtlingsheime- bundeskriminalamt-zaehlt-mehr-als-1000-attacken-a-1074448.html)), often radicalized by social media.

<comment><USER4> > No one wants to "ban free speech". There just need to be limitations.

The USA already has a narrow list of exceptions (true threats, defamation, etc.) and several of the examples you cite are utterly reprehensible, yet legally protected speech, so you're providing contradictory evidence here.

Granted, you may be in Germany where the situation is different? Of course, if so, you would seem to be 'influencing US elections' by calling for this speech to be removed, so I'm not sure where that gets us.

> And yes, people get riled up by these "memes" so hard they'll even burn down > mosques or bomb them.

I'm not aware of any country that won't jail people for threatening to do such things, and so they should.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lobbying and interfering with elections by buying ads on Facebook are very different things.

This is purely an anti-Israeli rant from Chomski, published by an antisemitic news website. Nothing new under the sun.

<comment><USER6> Yup, lobbying is far more effective and important than buying Facebook ads.

<comment><USER7> Sheldon Adelson gives $100m to the GOP and Trump signs a bill and gives $38 billion to Israel. Lobbying power has a good ROI whether your a corporation or nation</comment></comment></comment>


The Forgotten Job of a Data Scientist: Editing - <AUTHOR> http://www.john-foreman.com/1/post/2014/05/the-forgotten-job-of-a-data-scientist-editing.html

<comment><USER2> Data Scientist (noun): A statistician who lives in San Francisco.

(only half joking)

<comment><USER3> I feel like "data scientist" is a title that grew out of the Fundamental Theorem of Employment, which states that you're usually hired to do a job that either (1) the boss man can't do for himself, or (2) the boss _doesn 't want_ to do. Type 1 work gets you respect and autonomy. Type 2 work will have you commoditized.

Software companies are satisfied with the job they've done at commoditizing programming talent but, at least for now, having a half-decent grasp of any specialty (e.g. machine learning, information retrieval) requiring mathematical firepower puts one solidly into Type-1 employment, which is where one wants to be.

"Data scientist" seems to be a way of saying, "yes, I code but I also know math, so use me for Type-1 work only".

<comment><USER4> > "Data scientist" seems to be a way of saying, "yes, I code but I also know > math, so use me for Type-1 work only".

You make it sound like a bad thing? Despite the rah-rah I hear from programmers about how they are unique snowflakes, being only a programmer is like being a janitor. A prime way to get discarded at the age of 40. If I can make sure that I am valuable because I bring other things to the table (Math, Product vision, people skills), why on earth wouldn't I rebrand myself to better reflect that?

<comment><USER3> _You make it sound like a bad thing?_

Not at all. That's my attitude as well. I don't want to waste my life on Type-2 work.

"I only want to do interesting work" _sounds_ entitled after being conditioned by corporate mediocrity, but I think it's a reasonable attitude. Companies frown on self-assertion, preferring agreeable mediocrity, and I hate that. I tend to be honest about things.

You can't say, "I leave bosses and companies that assign me crappy work" on a job interview. I wish people _could_ be honest about such things, but it's just not socially acceptable to speak the truth about anything that matters (e.g. politics, religion, sex, money, power, careers). On HN, I try to be as honest as I can be. Sorry if it comes off as obnoxious.

 _Despite the rah-rah I hear from programmers about how they are unique snowflakes, being only a programmer is like being a janitor. A prime way to get discarded at the age of 40._

Agree.

 _If I can make sure that I am valuable because I bring other things to the table (Math, Product vision, people skills), why on earth wouldn 't I rebrand myself to better reflect that?_

That's absolutely what you should be doing. If it's not obvious, I'm on the same side with people who say "I know math, so use me for Type-1 work only". I am one of them.

The reason the job distinction is toxic in many companies, however, is that software engineering should _also_ be respected rather than commoditized. To me, the rush of people like you and me to get "superior" titles on our resumes is a sign that the business world doesn't respect "regular old" software engineering. That sucks, because the skills of a truly good software engineer are also quite important.

<comment><USER4> > software engineering should also be respected rather than commoditized.

I am not so sure anymore. When anyone who has done six weeks in a boot camp can call themselves a software engineer, the semantics of the word are lost.

> That sucks, because the skills of a truly good software engineer are also > quite important.

The best people? They are valued and known to be valuable. For example, there is a guy in my company who works remote from the midwest. He is truly amazing. When he interviewed me, I quickly got the feeling that his machine learning skills were top notch. BUT, when I work with him, I realize that he is truly phenomenal. He can write code up and down the abstraction ladder. Good, solid fucking code. Hell, he can double up as an SRE and fix shit when he wants to. Sure, he is a "machine learning engineer". But he is much much more than just that title.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Data scientist" is a mess of a job title. It seems to be as much of a reaction against the commoditization of software engineering (which leaves the smartest, and by correlation, usually the most mathematically literate, 10% of programmers ill-suited for the average software job) as it is a real distinction.

There are plenty of "data scientists" who use canned tools and play around with parameters because that's all "the business" thinks it needs.

You want to trim complexity for a reason that any data scientist worth his salt (and there are plenty of celebrity engineers in SF making $500k who aren't worth their salt and don't know this) should already know: bias- variance tradeoff (see also: underfitting and overfitting). If your model is too flexible/complex, it will begin absorbing noise. That leads to a model that performs extremely well on training data but fails miserably on unseen data. There are well-studied techniques for preventing this, but I'd guess that fewer than 20% of self-described or titled "data scientists" are familiar with them.

<comment><USER4> > There are plenty of "data scientists" who use canned tools and play around > with parameters because that's all "the business" thinks it needs.

As with a software engineer, it is a role that is different in every place. Every place has its own definition of the role. This is not bad. It is a mere reflection of the market conditions where there are a lot of people are simultaneously bad at Linear Algebra, Probability and Statistics and dangerous enough to write production code fast. (Your standard C.S. grad SWE).</comment></comment>