The U.S. Postal Service Nears Collapse - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_23/b4231060885070.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories <comment><USER2> Every day I go to my mailbox and put 98% of its contents directly into the recycle bin.

I have followed all the recommended steps to remove my address from various mailing lists.

The USPS is a garbage-spamming environmental disaster that solicits money from companies to do direct marketing, offers no opt-out features, and every day drives tens of thousands of polluting vehicles to stuff unwanted paper into mailboxes across the country.

In addition to its monopoly, the post office is one of the most unpleasant retail locations anyone could imagine -- filthy counters, grudging employees, and long lines.

Since "first class" mail takes between 2-12 days, there is no reason to have first class mail delivered every day. Doing so is just a handout to the employees' unions. There may be a case to be made for more frequent delivery of expedited mail, but this would take a fraction of the number of vehicles and personell that the current system does -- and with less reliable guarantees, nearly identical prices and worse service than UPS, I _always_ choose UPS over USPS for parcel shipment.

It's fine to be nostalgic about the pony express, but the USPS needs to either be phased out or drastically scaled down, and laws forbidding other companies to deliver standard mail must be changed.

<comment><USER3> I have pretty much the opposite experience with USPS.

Got almost no spam, maybe 10-20% of my mail, mostly sent by local businesses and free local newspapers.

It's not a monopoly. Forgot about UPS, DHL and FedEx?

Their employees are usually very hard working and have to deal with all kinds of assholes.

Plus, it's much cheaper than their competitors.

<comment><USER2> As someone else pointed out, the USPS has a monopoly on non-urgent mail.

As for spam, you must be fortunate that you have not managed to wind up on spammers' lists. If you donate to charity that's an easy way to get on the lists, and some of the spam is just unnecessary garbage sent by business I use b/c sending it to everyone (via the USPS) is cheaper than implementing an opt- out policy.

<comment><USER4> I forget the URL, but I opted out of junk mail years ago via the Direct Marketers Association web page. I _think_ that's the name. After a couple of months, my dead tree spam fell to a trickle.

It's not perfect. I still get local grocery and retail circulars that I could do without. But at least the daily credit card offers stopped, which cut down the volume dramatically.

If someone would drop a bomb on Geico's direct marketing arm, I'd be a happy camper.

<comment><USER2> I did this too, as well as a couple of extra precautions, and I did not notice any decline in the junk mail at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's the usual story: capture of the USPS by its unions, such that 500k employees are getting raises _simultaneously_ with their reports of "We're dying!!!"

America in 2011 simply doesn't need to set aside half a million lifetime sinecures to deliver two pieces of mail a week which actually matter. The nation receives no value from a civil servant whose full-time job is literally to convince BoA not to go paperless.

It's a cool institution. Let's remember it in a small museum somewhere.

<comment><USER6> _It's the usual story: capture of the USPS by its unions_

Except, you know, not really. You might want to read this: [http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial- page/viewpoints/article...](http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial- page/viewpoints/article476402.ece)

Especially this bit:

 _What about those news reports of multibillion losses? Well, the $20 billion in losses over the last four years has nothing to do with what you've been told about a failing business model or obsolete mail. Here's the real skinny: In 2006, Congress mandated that the Postal Service prefund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so within a decade—something no other public agency or private firm does. The resulting annual payments run $5.5 billion a year, costing the Postal Service $21 billion since 2007. That's the difference between a positive and a negative balance sheet, as it would be for virtually any entity facing a similar burden — if any did.

Remove that unreasonable obligation and the Postal Service would have been profitable._

<comment><USER7> I don't get it. Why is it unreasonable? If I promise to pay somebody $40,000 every year after they retire, but I don't set aside money to do it, you can guarantee that down the road, I'll come crying to the government to get them to pay for it. It's not like they have to set aside the future value of that promise, just the present value - in other words, the amount that they're effectively promising to the employees _today_. It should be considered fraud if they _don't_ do this.

<comment><USER8> That's a reasonable argument for a _general_ change in accounting standards, requiring all pension plans to be pre-funded. Specifically requiring the USPS and nobody else to do that, though, feels more like something political is going on.

<comment><USER7> ...and I strongly support the general accounting change, particularly for government or semi-governmental entities that might be counting on taxpayers footing the bill they run up. Just because USPS suffers by having to do something reasonable because of politics doesn't mean that it's a bad idea.

<comment><USER6> It's unreasonable to impose a much tougher standard on one and only one organization, even if you think that standard would be good if applied to everyone.

<comment><USER7> Even if true that it's only the USPS, and yummyfajitas implies that it's actually a broader requirement, here it's a difference between a mistake and not making a mistake. It's not simply an accounting treatment. It's not a defense of the USPS to suggest they should be allowed to make the same mistake that other companies make.

<comment><USER6> They should be subject to the same standards as other companies. If they aren't, that's unreasonable.

<comment><USER9> As a business owner concerned about cash flow, I can tell you that paying for anything in advance is always a pain. Reasonable or not, setting aside enough cash to fund the retirement needs of all their workers for 75 years and generating that cash from revenue sounds like a huge pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do we ask the highway system to be profitable? If we eliminate the rural routes and only leave the profitable ones, we might as well get rid of the entire thing - the profitable routes could easily be privatized, but as it is, they offset the cost of the rural routes a bit.

I support keeping country folk connected to the rest of the nation as a public good, not a profit center.

<comment><USER2> Have you thought about all the people who are unemployed thanks to gridlock on the US highway system? The massive inefficiency of people (in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, etc.) wasting 2-3 hours per day sitting in their car going 5 miles per hour is astounding.

If the highway system were not held back by government planning, much of this inefficiency and waste could be eliminated, and reallocated into productive pursuits. Imagine if 80% of a city's' commuting professionals had two hours more per day to spend money on things (or to work more).

It's easy to assume that highways are one aspect of central planning that works, but in urban, congested areas they are a disaster that hits the poor the hardest.

Also, by making it seem "feasible" to live in suburbia and commute into the city, they led many middle class workers to flee cities, eroding the tax base, and causing the decay of city governments/services, etc.

Everything has tradeoffs. The highway system got us a way to ship military personnel and tanks across the country, and benefitted home builders and strip mall owners, at the expense of the urban poor.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand your argument. I don't know how gridlock on the highway system causes employment. I was born, raised, and currently reside pretty deep in the city of Chicago, so I'm familiar with commutes, though usually on public transportation, because the interstates are largely for long distance travel. They remain 2-3 hours a day (sometimes) without touching a highway, as they were before cars were even owned by average working class people. I have never owned a car in my life, and have no interest in or ability to drive.

The highway system is a result of government planning. If it hadn't been "held back" by government planning, it would lack existence. This would be a tax on every good imported into the city (which is virtually every good.)

I don't assume that highways are one aspect of central planning that works, I _think_ that highways are one of a multitude of aspects of government (which I suppose you mean by "central planning") that are justified because, while not being profitable in themselves, they reduce friction for the entire system. The government is the only actor who can levy fees for that from the entire system, therefore the only one who can execute it.

If the tax base is eroded in a city, this is a failure of paperwork, not a physical event. If black people and the white people who ran from them were in slightly closer physical proximity, but still entirely homogenously clumped together (assuming a huge decline in public transportation _not caused by the highways_ ) you're saying that there would be some benefit to the urban poor?

<comment><USER10> "I don't know how gridlock on the highway system causes _un_ employment," rather:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A link for the full article, if you don't want to hit "next page" seven times:

[http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/11_23/b42...](http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/11_23/b4231060885070.htm)

</comment><comment><USER12> This quote summarizes what is wrong with the Post Office: "They are supported by junk mailers, greeting card manufacturers, and magazine publishers whose businesses are, in some cases, subsidized by the post office's generously low mailing prices. Never mind that their benefactor _loses money on some of their products, most notably magazines and some junk mail_.

If you are "los[ing] money on some ... products" then just maybe you need to increase the cost of delivery of those products until you are no longer losing money...

<comment><USER13> Assuming they can increase cost of delivery (something that, apparently, congress is against), chances are this is what would happen: they raise prices to cover (marginal) costs, and some customers run away. A commercial company would reply by either cost-cutting, shutting down (parts of) the company, increasing productivity, or finding new revenue streams.

The USPS does not have first or second options, and the third on its own only helps if it brings in extra work, which it does not (remember the 'some customers ran away' part?)

It all boils down to the fact that the USPS is not operating in a free market. They have huge expenditures that they cannot get rid of. If you have an employee, but no work for him, and cannot fire him, it makes economic sense to take on work that pays less than what the employee costs. Sure, it loses you money, but it loses you less money than not taking on that work.

So, that leaves the fourth stream. In e EU, that has seen post offices turned into shops, selling mail-related stuff such as postcards. That may work, but especially in smaller villages, it is easier to outsource the post office tasks to existing shops, rather than trying to compete with them in a market that cannot sustain two shops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I found myself surprised to agree with the USPS position that online-services are a bad idea (for the USPS). I mean generating a postcard from your mobile picture just seems like something that a tech-company will do a better job at.

I can only imagine how much money the USPS would spend on some of these applications, only to have a startup with $250K funding (or, you know, Facebook) steamroll them.

<comment><USER15> I think USPS would have been in a great position to be an online identity depository and payment platform for consumer to business dealings. They should have done it 10 years ago.

Imagine an email like system where you and the companies you do business with can communicate, and you can pay them. Some sort of whitelisted communications channels, whereby when you enter in a service contract with a company, you also add them to this comm channel. No spam. Just valid communications and invoices. Verified identities and verified payments.

The USPS is in a great position for that sort of thing, being they actually come to your house every day. They already know who you are, and where you are. They have a pre-existing business relationship with every entity in the US.

Whereas now I have to tell my parents and grandparents to basically not believe anything they see in their email inbox -- it would be nice if a more secure channel existed. $250K startup -- get on it!

<comment><USER16> The USPS has a shitty track record for not spamming people. Maybe half of my mail is spam. While the USPS might have been in a position to do as you suggest for quite some time, the fact that they haven't indicates something, doesn't it?

<comment><USER15> The USPS (or Fedex or UPS or DHL or anyone else) were not conceived to be whitelisted services - they just deliver stuff. USPS does it cheaply, so bulk mailers use them. I don't know the rules and regs, I'm not actually sure the USPS has it within their control to white list actual mail.

I'm proposing a different service -- my main point being that because of who the USPS is, they'd have an enormous natural advantage to offer that type of whitelisted new service. The fact that its a no brainer and that nobody has done it probably means it is hard, more than anything. But it seems it would be easier for someone with the reach and institutional trust of a quasi govt organization (compared to a startup).

Perhaps the USPS would be more likely to do a better job in curtailing their reliance on bulk mailings if they had an exploding, high margin revenue base around ecommerce payment and being a more trusted, secure form of business communications channels. Mail spam sucks, but that is their revenue base. From their point of view, as an institution, they of course would like to see it replaced, institutions don't themselves like to generally just commit suicide.

Tech is what is going to replace them, at least attempting to transition to tech while leveraging what advantages they do have isn't a terrible idea -- because there quite possibly are some things they are able to uniquely bring to the table.

<comment><USER16> It's a hard problem because email is good enough for communications (the good is the enemy of the perfect) and any improvement in payment systems would require changes to major backend components of the banking system. The USPS brings legitimacy and business relationships to the table, but they're hamstrung by Congress and by the unions.

The best chance is if someone follows the Hulu model and immediately gets BOA, Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and US Bank to buy in from the get go. Even then it may require a regulatory change, but getting the top handful of American banks to buy in should be enough to build the necessary lobbying support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's what I don't understand about the USPS situation. They deliver 200 billion pieces of mail per year. So if they're short 2 billion dollars, then they just need to raise the price of a stamp by 1 cent. Problem solved, no? Can somebody tell me why I'm wrong here? Would volume really fall that substantially if they raised the price of a stamp by a few cents?

<comment><USER18> Much of the mail is bulk (aka junk) mail sent by companies and organizations that have lobbyists. These lobbyists make it very difficult to raise postal rates as you suggest.

Add this to the Mephistophelean bargains that they have made with their unions over the years (because they too are politically powerful) and you can start to see the predicament. They're being squeezed dry.

<comment><USER19> what? are you claiming that the unions would have a problem with raising the price of stamps by a cent?

<comment><USER20> No, what he's saying is on the one side the junk mail senders are blocking rate increases with lobbying and on the other side unions are asking for high amounts of benefits and pay raises. This is what he meant by squeezed (from both sides) dry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The postal service is being forced to make a massive prepayment for decades of pensions all at once. No regular business would even think of doing that on it's own. It's congress behaving stupidly as usual.

Also, it needs to stop the practice of employees purposely retiring early and then being hired back by friends as contractors. So they get both retirement benefits and then a second paycheck. If they leave, make it so they cannot be a contractor, would solve an expensive labor abuse.

I mail and receive small packages weekly that would be unaffordable (and mishandled) by UPS. I'd hate to lose Saturday delivery but it would be a bearable compromise among alternatives.

<comment><USER22> While it _seems_ bad to hire someone who's already receiving a pension, what's the alternative? Hiring someone else, who's unskilled, and _still_ paying the pension? Maybe the problem is the pension itself, not the double-dipping.

<comment><USER21> The problem is the person was offered early retirement to reduce costs.

If you hire someone outside the system you are reducing unemployment in a helpful way. The retired person is already doing just fine with benefits and medical coverage, give the outsider a help up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm willing to bet that if there a private company had to operate under the same stifling rules as the USPS, they would have quit a long time ago.

The USPS could raise the price of delivering mail to match the costs. BUT THEY CAN'T! Even though the Government does NOT provide any funding to the USPS, the Government (specifically, the Congress) keeps thwarting the USPS' efforts to operate like a business.

You want to fix the USPS? Take away the Congress's ability to interfere with it. The USPS' only mandate should be to deliver mail to every physical address. That's it. Just let them fix their rates, their benefits, etc. and I'm willing to bet they'd be just fine.

<comment><USER24> The stifling rules go both ways--USPS has a government granted and enforced monopoly on mail. It may be a shitty business, but at least you can't have competition.

<comment><USER23> The vast majority of the routes that the USPS runs are money losers. Try delivering a 44-cent piece on a mule to the Havasupai at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Don't you think, the way the Congress can be bought, that a private company that thought it could do the USPS' job wouldn't have bought its way in?

<comment><USER24> The vast majority of mail isn't delivered to the money losing routes the USPS always likes to mention (mules, snowmobiles, bush planes, etc). The vast majority of mail is bulk rate and sent from/to urban areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I always thought that they should do home pick up & delivery 3 days per week but adjoining regions would have different days. So region A would get mail M,W,F and region B would get mail on T,Thurs., Sat. The mail carrier would alternate between regions A and B. It seems like you could almost halve the number of mail carriers this way.

<comment><USER26> That assumes that the trucks/carriers in regions A and B are running almost half-empty right now. That's not likely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's hard to feel sorry for an organization that is going bankrupt even as they maintain a government-enforced monopoly. If business is really so bad, why doesn't the Postal Service allow private businesses to compete with it? If there's no money in the business, then there's no need to fear competition. No one wants to enter a business you can't make money in.

<comment><USER23> I don't even know why I'm replying to this, but this sort of reasoning makes my blood boil.

A lot of clueless people throw in the "p" word (privatization, or private competition) without really thinking things through.

The USPS is based on the idea of cross-subsidies. The fact that it's easy to deliver mail to, say, 100 addresses in San Francisco (a carrier can just walk a block and do it), subsidies the fact that in, say, Nebraska they would have to drive 100 miles to deliver to the same number of addresses. No private company would do this; they would just deliver in the cities, and tell the rural folks to fuck off. The private operators would just cherry-pick the profitable routers, and dump the rest. Is that what you want to see happen?

<comment><USER27> I don't want to subsidize mail for people in rural areas. If you do, feel free to donate for that cause.

I can't think of a good reason to subsidize mail. If people live where mail delivery is expensive, they should have to bear the cost. This would cause them to conserve their mail use. Instead of getting mail once a day, perhaps they should receive it once a week, or once a month. Maybe they could pick it up where they buy groceries. Maybe they could just use email or phone. Maybe they would get less junk mail. It's hard to tell how they would adapt if they had to pay market prices. But they would adapt and that's a good thing. It's not a good thing to pretend that delivery costs 40 cents when in reality it costs 40 dollars. And it is unjust to _force_ people who chose to live in areas where it's efficient to deliver mail to subsidize people where it's not efficient.

Also, if subsidized rural mail service is something the taxpayers want to pay for, they could just as well subsidize private carriers.

In short, I don't see any good reason why the USPS should have a monopoly on mail service, any more than it should have a monopoly on email, or fax, or telephone, or TV or any other means of communication.

<comment><USER28> The reason for subsidizing rural mail delivery can be found in the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 (aka, the Postal Clause).

The Founding Fathers considered postal delivery to be important enough to mandate it in the Constitution.

<comment><USER27> From Wikipedia[1]: Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress "To establish Post Offices and post Roads".

Without this clause, Congress would not have the authority to establish Post Offices. But note the clause does not say anything about making postal service an exclusive government function. In fact the clause does not even mandate that Congress establish Post Offices, Congress merely has the power to do so. If Congress shuts down the Post Office, it would be perfectly Constitutional. The clause is definitely not a "reason for subsidizing rural mail delivery" anymore than Congress's power to Declare War is a reason to have a war.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> On a lighter note: This was forewarned long time back - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hox-ni8geIw>

</comment><comment><USER30> After decades of mismanagement and neglect, service broke down completely in Chicago in 1966. "The sorting floors were bursting with more than 5 million letters, parcels, circulars, and magazines that could not be processed," Lawrence O'Brien, the Postmaster General at the time, would recall somewhat poetically. "Outbound mail sacks formed still gray mountain ranges as they waited to be shipped out."

And here I thought Terry Pratchett's Going Postal was fiction.

</comment><comment><USER31> How about organizing a summit to disrupt the USPS?

I got involved in the question of the future of postal, oddly, because of my book, What Would Google Do? [sorry for the plug], when postal execs asked what the USPS would be if Google ran it. Hmmm. You guys could help answer that.

A consultant in the industry organized an event in DC, PostalVision 2020, and we had Vint Cerf come keynote. I'd like the next phase to focus on how to disrupt postal entirely.

First class will die and with it its subsidy for media and other mail. Parcels will take off but the private sector can handle that. (If we need to guarantee universal service, that can be done with subsidies -- a la, phones -- better than by owning the infrastructure). There are entrepreneurial ventures such as Manilla aiming to disrupt physical bill delivery..... It's an area ripe for innovation and investment.

A few of my earlier posts: [http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/05/18/why-do-we- need-a-posta...](http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/05/18/why-do-we-need-a- postal-service/) <http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/03/23/post-postal/>

</comment><comment><USER32> Why should the postal monopoly exempt "urgent package delivery" (aka FedEx and UPS)? If we want an economically healthy postal service, ceding that profitable segment of the postal business to private industry was a strategic error. I personally believe that a healthy postal service is critically important.

</comment><comment><USER33> The USPS needs to come to terms with the shift in communication mechanisms. People don't write letters as a common means of communication anymore. I believe there is some value in maintaining the Postal Service but its role will need to shift dramatically if we expect to see any sustainability from there.

<comment><USER18> I think that people in the USPS definitely realize this, but they are unfortunately prohibited from doing any of the obvious things that one would expect them to do in response. They can't close unprofitable post offices, lay off redundant employees, increase prices, or decrease the level of service being offered.

All they can do is let it blow up and then hope Congress gives them enough leeway to put the pieces back together into something better and more sustainable ... hopefully using profitable semi-privatized Western European services as a model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Businesses still pay many bills with paper checks sent via mail. I wonder when we will no longer need the USPS for that.

<comment><USER16> When the banking and payment systems are fixed. In the year 2011, there is no legitimate technical reason for paper checks and the mail being a legitimate payment system. But the digital alternatives are little better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Do your part to save the post office. Write a letter.

</comment><comment><USER34> Convert USPS into a Bank

</comment><comment><USER35> Poll: Should the USPS be allowed to go out of business? [http://www.wepolls.com/p/1900483/Should-the-USPS-be- allowed-...](http://www.wepolls.com/p/1900483/Should-the-USPS-be-allowed-to- go-out-of-business)

</comment><comment><USER36> I have a solution that is guaranteed to save the post office money: crowdsource the delivery of mail. How does it work? Mail is sorted and placed in bins by USPS. Individuals who work close to or drive by the post office on their way home can stop by and pick up the bin for neighborhood/apt complex/building/center. The person who picks it can either drop the mail or let others come pick it up.

<comment><USER37> That would be a nightmare in terms of reliability and security.</comment></comment>


Can your computer be like your priest? - <AUTHOR> http://ideas.4brad.com/can-your-computer-be-your-priest

<comment><USER2> I hope not - I like computers to give me answers that have been calculated to be correct, rather than just what it has managed to convince itself is true.</comment>


The Four Key Concepts of Computer Programming - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alfredth/archive/2010/12/08/four-key-concepts-of-computer-programming.aspx

<comment><USER2> The list needs recursion and concurrency. These are both recognised as conceptual barriers in the progress of programmers. The order of difficulty I usually see them listed is:

* Assignment

* Testing (ifs / branching)

* Loops

* Functions

* Recursion

* Concurrency

</comment><comment><USER3> Great explanation for noobs.</comment>


Why Google Isn't Growing - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-google-isnt-growing-2014-4 <comment><USER2> I mean it is growing, right? And by a lot?

</comment><comment><USER3> Norvig's Law in action.</comment>


Ask HN:  Do You Want Me to Create an Infographic? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, i'm wondering if there is anything that you guys are looking for someone to create an infographic on?  I've created an infographic recently that can be found at autotax.me.<p>If you want an infographic made let me know the topic and i'll work on it with you. <comment><USER2> An infographic on the number of people startups that offer beta invites, the number of actual users that use the invites, and the retention rate of those users would be pretty cool. It would be an infographic for the startup community as a whole to see. Whether is is doable or not, I'm not sure, but thanks for the offer camz! It is nice of you to help out HN.</comment>


The Golden Age of Internet Marketing? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aweissman.com/2011/11/golden-age-of-internet-marketing.html

<comment><USER3> Long time lurker here, finally got an account to comment on this item.

I agree with Andrew's take on the new advertising paradigms, but I can't agree with his premise that display advertising on the Internet does not work. It works, and not only that, in some cases it works brilliantly. Not to say that it works for every audience (like HNers), or every product for that matter.

His point about low CTR is accurate but not entirely relevant. The user who asked in the comments "What is the CTR of the magazine ads?" hit the nail on the head. It's not always about CTR, but also brand impressions, reach and frequency.

Case in point: I did a campaign for a new brand in another country, which included display advertising. CTR was low, and initial conversions were low too. But over time, many would search for the brand after the visit, returning to the page and they converted! In so many other campaigns I would combine display with social media, email marketing and other stuff and get great results. Yes, I said email marketing. That still works too, and with some audiences, it is literally reeling them in. (No, I'm not talking about spam).

In short, Andrew is writing with an either/or mentality with advertising, when one needs to be thinking of and'ing: of all the tools available, which ones are going to work best together? Take a layered approach. Display advertising may be a hammer, but not every problem is a screw.

<comment><USER4> Andrew's thesis is very interesting, but he's a little too quick to throw out various babies with their bathwater. Take his dismissal of psychological approaches to advertising, for instance. Why? Why are sociology and psychology no longer relevant? Maybe they're irrelevant in the old-school, Don Draperesque sense of their use (i.e., people sitting around in a boardroom and telling narratives about What People Want, and so forth). But then again, no one's done advertising or marketing like that in 50-odd years.

Psychology is as relevant to digital advertising as it ever was in analog advertising, and it'll be _massively_ more important in social advertising. Understanding how the human mind works, why it chooses what it chooses, and how people are influenced and, in turn, influence others -- these things are still the bedrock of advertising. Media types may rise and fall, but the human brain is still the human brain. Group behavior is still group behavior. Psychology and sociology will be increasingly important tools in the marketer's arsenal as we move into the media of the future.

It's not an either/or proposition between psychological theory and real-time data analysis. Savvy marketers should combine the two. Both have their place. (As you've pointed out, the piece tends toward too many "either/or" implications that needn't be).

<comment><USER5> Weissman needs to differentiate more. He seems to be mixing up marketing, advertising and sales. I would argue that "people sitting around in a boardroom and telling narratives about What People Want, and so forth)" are still core to successful advertising.

At the core of advertising is the "idea" - almost similar to a startup. Neither number crunching nor some psychological tricks are able to replace this. In fact their purpose is in my opinion just to evaluate or optimize towards better follow up investments.

Now this might be a different story when talking about (direct)sales where you can try to quantify action-reactions related to a specific product. And for most businesses the role of marketing ("all processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging value") is far more complex than just Tweets, Facebook and Foursquare.

<comment><USER6> I mixed those concepts up purposely in order to make the larger point which is that we may be on the cusp of native monetization schemes - ones that are consistent with how users use web services

<comment><USER4> _"...we may be on the cusp of native monetization schemes - ones that are consistent with how users use web services..."_

Perhaps, but that doesn't negate the strategic fundamentals of either marketing, advertising, or sales. The emergence of breakthrough tactics -- even disruptive tactics -- does not necessarily upend strategy. In some cases, it simply allows the marketer (or advertiser) to pursue his/her strategy more effectively.

"The product sells itself" is, to some extent, a misperception. Even in the coming state of things. No product ever truly sells itself -- even if it _is_ found in search, or recommended by a friend, or stumbled upon. The art and science of building, distributing, pricing, and positioning that product -- so that is _is_ recommended by the right people to the right people, stumbled upon under the right circumstances, or searched for in the right context -- still draws upon all the knowledge built up in the marketing field to date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I agree with the author's conclusion that better integrated "ad" units like StubleUpon's Paid Discovery, and Twitter's Promoted Tweets will become both more prevalent and affective, his premise that contextual ads don't work is just false. He's also also wrong in thinking that these more integrated ads are entirely new concepts, divergent from old media such as television, cinema, magazines, and periodicals.

The truth is that integrated advertising on these new social web services is just catching up to what has long been standard in traditional media. For example, in TV and cinema, product placements by brands have been an effective alternative or supplement to standard commercials. In the same way, magazine and periodicals have long accepted "advertorials" by staff writers that passively mention/promote specific brands/views along with their traditional page layout ads.

While he's correct to think that these more integrated types of ads will be more affective on the web as they're more "consistent with the way their services natively work," it's something that traditional media advertisers have known for a long time.

<comment><USER6> i dont think traditional media advertisers have applied these principles to web ads; thus my conclusion that display doesnt work. New products - <USER2> even some that I mentioned - will work better

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the more obvious and less 'revolutionary' way of stating his point is that ads that focused on awareness (i.e. i wasn't looking for information about this but you are telling me anyways) are dying in the face of ads that focus on conversion (i.e. I was looking for this and your ad helped me find it and buy it).

This isn't a radical change or even the end of advertising, its just more efficient.

<comment><USER6> Agreed - i didnt say this was a revolution, perhaps I shoukd have instead stated this was evolutionary

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There seem to be two points to this article; (1) CTR is a terrible metric for ad effectiveness, and (2) the web is an extremely rich medium for displaying ads, and there's still potential that has yet to be discovered. I'm not sure why the author combined those points in a single thought, but they're both valid, and (I think) very true.

<comment><USER6> I combined them because I thought they were related, e.g., low CTR is evidence that we need better ads</comment></comment>


One Librarian Tried to Squash Goodnight Moon - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/culture/2020/01/goodnight-moon-nypl-10-most-checked-out-books.html <comment> core-questions Goodnight Moon is a great children's book for a few reasons.

\- It goes around introducing a bunch of objects in the room, filling the child's short term memory with them as they're introduced. This helps push other things out of mind and brings some focus.

\- The pictures add depth with their bright, unrealistic colours and small scale detail. The careful eye will notice many little details.

\- The book alternates between color pages and B&W, showing the child two different styles. The B&W pages heavily feature the text, helping the child figure out that those letter squiggles might actually have meaning and bear some relationship to what their parent is saying everytime they look at that page.

\- All of the introduced objects are then dismissed, one by one, putting them back out of mind with some "closure" while not introducing anything new. Everything has been properly bidden (bade?) farewell and has been put away; the child can rest easy knowing it's all accounted for.

\- The book ties into Runaway Bunny, and I think there's a third book too, which gives the child the nice idea that there's a universe inside the book that other books can also peek into.

It's been a staple for all my kids and I'm sure the copy will be kept for the grandkids....

<comment><USER2> The third book you're thinking of is "My World".

You make good points about Goodnight Moon, but I have an emotional reaction against it.

<comment> core-questions Please tell me more, I'm genuinely curious. I've heard of other people that dislike it but never got an answer why.

<comment><USER2> Bearing in mind that I admit up front these items are emotional and not particularly rational, and also all from dimming memory. My kids are 18, 16 and 13. I haven't read Goodnight Moon in at least 10 years.

1\. It's very upper-crust early 1900s. Very prim and proper, everything in its place, and not very many things.

2\. The items that it dwells on aren't very relevant to today's children. There's an open fireplace, fer chrissake! Huge safety hazard, and absolutely unfamiliar.

3\. What's up with the little old lady whispering "hush"? Who is she? What's she doing in that kid's room? Is she Mrs Bates? No explanation or context at all.

4\. Turn the light off. No kid goes to sleep with a light on. Sure, some of them claim they need it, but turning it on is an invitation to stay up til midnight.

5\. The green-and-red color scheme makes it look absurd. Is it Christmas in that room all the time? I think the window is open, too, so maybe it's Christmas in June?

6\. A bowl of mush? Mush what? Granola? Cornflakes? Oatmeal? Grape nuts? Could be any, all are revolting when they've soaked up the milk to become mush. The mush needs to be thrown out.

My World, which appears to be a follow on to Goodnight Moon, seems like the author was high. Extremely disjoint.

Margaret Wise Brown also wrote The Big Red Barn which has a lot of the same sort of problems. Why did the big white hen stand on one leg? Why did the smaller breed of chicken have a clutch of 10 eggs, vs the white chicken's 1 egg? What happened to the story of the children who play in the hay? That was a story for another day, but surely that day has come and gone. Where did the children go?

<comment> core-questions Alright, a response:

> It's very upper-crust early 1900s

It's nice to expose children to a wide range of lifestyles, particularly ones that reflect their own cultural origins. Gives a jumping off point for discussion.

> There's an open fireplace, fer chrissake!

I have an open fireplace in my house. I don't use it often, but it's there, and it's cozy enough. Wood smoke isn't that great for you, so I only light it at Christmas usually.

> What's up with the little old lady whispering "hush"? Who is she?

It doesn't matter. Nanny, grandmother, not important.

> Turn the light off. No kid goes to sleep with a light on

Yes, that would have been a good addition. "Goodnight light".

> The green-and-red color scheme makes it look absurd.

I think this is an artifact of the printing technology available at the time.

> A bowl of mush? Mush what?

It's gruel.

> Margaret Wise Brown also wrote The Big Red Barn which has a lot of the same > sort of problems.

Ahh, I love that one too, though!

> Why did the big white hen stand on one leg? Why did the smaller breed of > chicken have a clutch of 10 eggs, vs the white chicken's 1 egg?

Maybe a farmer would have had answers for that. Maybe it was common knowledge a generation ago.

> Where did the children go?

Now they're grandparents, no doubt, and wonder the same thing

<comment><USER3> "particularly ones that reflect their own cultural origins"

You mean "...ones that _don 't_ reflect..."?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Analyzing Steve Jobs' Language at D8 - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1655523/steve-jobs-d8-language-words-ceo-speak-business-talk-people-apple

<comment><USER2> Yay for meaningless linguistic analysis, like counting the number of times Obama says "I" in a speech. Doesn't tell you anything without, at a bare minimum, comparisons to baseline frequencies for similar speeches.</comment>


The dumbest ad ever. - <AUTHOR> http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/06/01/theDumbestAdEver.html <comment><USER3> It's always nice to see Dave speaking knowledgeably on a topic which he knows nothing about.

You'll never see an interchangeable lens camera with a cell phone in it, simply because high quality lenses have big elements, which gather lots of light. As I am sure you will be surprised to hear, big pieces of glass result in big lenses.

Optics is, more or less, a solved problem. We hit hard physical limits long ago. You'll never see a _compact_ full frame 35mm sensor digital camera. It just can't happen.

Can you imagine talking into a pro DSLR? Using it as a every day carry phone? The D700 masses 995 grams, and that's just the body! Add another 500 grams for the lens; is that something you're just going to slip into a pocket? How are you going to use it, by holding it to your head by the lens barrel, then terminating a call by pressing the shutter release?

It's generally a good idea in consumer electronics design to not make your users look like fools. Nokia forgot this when they made the N-Gage, to their detriment.

(And, of course, he misspells Lumix as Lunix. That's pretty funny, though, I'll give him that.)

<comment><USER4> Certainly I agree pro cameras won't have _actual_ cellphones in them, but I'm pretty sure they _will_ soon all have data modems that connect to the existing cellphone network. I think that was the point the article was trying to make.

<comment><USER5> But what would be the point?

Pro cameras - where you shoot in RAW mode, and do post-processing later at home on your gorgeous widescreen IPS display, curate it, and then upload to your favourite hobbyist sharing site (Flickr, SmugMug, etc). That doesn't really lend itself to requiring a wireless modem.

I can see integration of GPSes into DSLRs - geocoding is a hotly requested feature particularly by hobbyists, but modems?

The absolute top-end Canon cameras have WiFi dongles that can wireless upload photos as they are shot to a storage unit. This is really to facilitate quick review in a studio setting - you aren't tethered by a wire, but can review the photo on a big screen very quickly after a picture without popping the memory card.

But while you're out and about? It seems pointless. The uses of a pro camera do not include "hey guys I'm at a pizza place. Look at the size of this sucker!", which is really where a 3G modem seems useful.

<comment><USER6> A 3G modem for backup would be pretty useful: I'd feel more secure while traveling to know that all my photos were wirelessly synced with my desktop PC or the cloud, so that if I lost or damaged a memory card I wouldn't lose anything. And as you say, avoiding the need for a cable to sync photos would be very useful.

But I agree, this isn't a huge deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I trust my friends to organize an intervention if they ever find me sending them pictures of pizza joints (especially real time) or calling them "peeps".

</comment><comment><USER8> Dave seems to have kneejerked his way into misunderstanding the ad.

Their sale point is "phone cameras are shit and our camera is better". They're not saying that cameras are bad if they're connected to the world. They're saying that cameras are bad if they take shit pictures.

Having held an HTC Hero and an iPhone, I'm here to say that they're not wrong. Those cameras _suck_ as cameras.

<comment><USER9> > Having held an HTC Hero and an iPhone, I'm here to say that they're not > wrong. Those cameras suck as cameras.

I disagree. There are two sayings about photography I've heard a few times. 1) The best camera is the one that you have with you. 2) The novice photographer wishes he/she had a better camera, but the experienced photograph wishes he/she had better lighting.

Re #1, I have a high end point and shoot that's really nice. But I almost never use it now because my iPhone 3GS is always with me. I find that some of the best photograph opportunities come when you least expect it.

Re: #2, most of photography is lighting and and composition. If you have crappy light (that includes using a flash) it doesn't matter if you have some $10,000 camera and lens. If you take photos with good light and have an eye for composition it won't matter to much which camera you use.

Now saying that, some phone cameras really do lack in resolution. My iPhone 3GS has decent resolution, but iPhones before that take washed out looking photos. Of course there's other limitations like no zoom, you can't print out a huge poster version of your photos, and it can't do more "advaced" things like long exposures. But I and many others have taken decent looking photos on iPhones. It's Good Enough.

Edit: One more thing. I like the challenge of taking photos on a simple camera. You don't get distracted by messing with features and have to kinda learn what makes a photo good.

<comment><USER10> I think you made the same points as me, but put it much better.

The purchasing jump for consumers is going to be cameraphone -> dslr, not cameraphone -> point and shoot

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not really sure if the author is correct about what's happening. That all depends on exactly how much of Panasonic's revenue comes from selling professional quality SLR cameras versus its cheaper point-and-shoot models. Anyway, I don't think that sales of the former are in any kind of jeopardy because of cell phone cameras.

<comment><USER5> Even point and shoots aren't really threatened by cell phone cameras - <USER2> cover two completely separate contexts. In fact, there are few use cases where the cell phone has really stolen the show from point and shoots.

Don't get me wrong, imaging capabilities on cell phones are important and useful - but IMHO they've largely carved out _brand new_ use cases for themselves rather than stealing from other camera products.

I think Panasonic's positioning isn't too bad. They're saying "we're not your crappy, blurry cell phone camera. If you want memories that last, buy our stuff" - which seems like a wise enough stance to differentiate themselves. After all, the really cheap point and shoots do resemble cell phone cameras in terms of quality - being above that certainly helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I saw this ad in SF a few days ago, and had similar thoughts.

The ad is specifically showing a point-and-shoot camera, not an SLR.

Point-And-Shoot cameras might be better than most cell phone cameras now, but I'm not convinced they are better enough to justify carrying around an extra device. For most people a cameraphone is _good enough_ , and if you want better quality, the step up to a point-and-shoot isn't really worth it. If you want better quality, go for an SLR.

There's a saying among photographers that "The best camera is the one you have with you." I have an iPhone, a point-and-shoot, and an SLR. I can't remember the last time I took out the point-and-shoot. I use the SLR when I know I'm going to be taking a lot of photos. And I use the iPhone camera constantly.

I think panasonic is mistaken if they think cameraphones are a fad, or that this advertising will make people jump to using their point-and-shoots.

Instead, why don't they embrace the trend, and work with the phone manufacturers? Why not talk to Nokia, or HTC, and say "You guys concentrate on the phone part, leave the camera to us." Put in quality optics, and advertise the phone with "Camera by Panasonic"

</comment><comment><USER12> He could have at least taken a picture of the ad...

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks like an LA billboard version of the campaign...

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GIchwvJ- aNk/S_xoQsYK1kI/AAAAAAAAQ6...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GIchwvJ- aNk/S_xoQsYK1kI/AAAAAAAAQ64/P-VT_UoHpCs/s1600/Lumix+camera+billboard.jpg)

Note to another comment thread on this post that they are advertising a point- and-shoot camera.

Edit: and I noticed the copy along the bottom advertises a touchscreen — that's getting very close to smartphone territory, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> All in one gadgets are convenient but will never replace single-purpose devices for serious use.</comment>


Ask HN: Hackers and Religion - <AUTHOR> Just out of pure curiosity, how many of you are religious or have faith? I think certain types of people make up hackers, and I am curious about relationship between hackers and religion. <comment><USER2> I'm probably an outlier here at hn, but I feel fortunate to have been born into the religion of my parents and grandparents, which is perfectly suited to my "hacker" mindset. It incorporates a system of thinking and lifelong learning along with an understanding that there is still that which is bigger than ourselves.

I won't say any more than that because these kinds of discussions at hn quickly devolve into something other than what was intended. I do answer emails.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253682>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=237517>

</comment><comment><USER4> I sometimes refer to "god". It's shorter than saying "whatever intelligence is behind the workings of the universe". I believe that belief systems attempt to squish the grandness of whatever intelligence is out there into this little box known as the human mind. I am not so arrogant as to think I can comprehend the universe to that degree. I also like to leave room for the universe to surprise me.

FWIW: my ex used to describe me as a "non-denominational christian". Not really accurate but perhaps as close as one is likely to get. (To quote Madonna:) I hate labels. They are too limiting.

</comment><comment><USER5> From my anecdotal experience, hackers tend to have a distaste for organized religion. Atheism and Agnosticism seem to run strong among programmers.

</comment><comment><USER6> Curiousity about systems makes you a hacker, be it religion or a machine or behaviour. If you don't question your beliefs, you are not a hacker.

</comment><comment><USER7> I count a belief in "the singularity" as to some degree religious. Composed of equal parts millennialist eschatological zeal, denial of the lack of compelling evidence for the emergence of the requisite strong AI, and even its own Heaven (see "Rapture of the Nerds"), Singularitarianism is usually where your religiously inclined hacker ends up.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is not a relationship, just because people do or don't believe in a god, many gods or what have you has little to do with their creativity. If there is a relationship it might be that some religions have an emphasis on reading and books. Some people also confuse the want for secularism with the absence of belief in something. Religious belief is culture as much as anything, often parents bring children up to believe or not.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm definitely not religious but I don't completely discount the possibility of a higher power. I believe the search for an answer to the question "is there a god?" is more interesting than any answer could be.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not much of anything, but if you had to pigeon-hole me, I'll take agnostic pantheistic deist. But that's a stretch. Agnostic probably covers me more than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a traditionalist Catholic. This should probably be a poll.</comment>


Introducing Stackdriver APM and Stackdriver Profiler - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/03/introducing-Stackdriver-APM-and-Stackdriver-Profiler-Distributed-tracing-debugging-and-profiling-for-your-performance-sensitive-applications.html <comment><USER2> Debugging in production without impacting users is the type of magic that only Google SRE could do for a long time... nice to see Google brings this to everyone - and free is great price :)</comment>


Show HN: Tableau2Slack – Sharing Data Visualizations to Slack with Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bcrant/Tableau2Slack <comment><AUTHOR> As a data lover in a meme world, it can be challenging to command the attention of peers with things like sales updates, forecasts, and projections. I built Tableau2Slack to make data visualizations more easily accessible to colleagues, by sharing updates directly to Slack.

Tableau2Slack is a Python 3.7 script that utilizes the Tableau Server Client Python library to open a specific view on a Tableau Server (including a Tableau Online server), downloads an image of that view to disk, triggers a Slack Bot to post the image to a specific channel in a Slack workspace, then removes the image from disk.

I break down how and why I built Tableau2Slack and provide instructions for how you can implement it yourself in this Medium article: [https://medium.com/@briancrant/sharing-data- visualizations-t...](https://medium.com/@briancrant/sharing-data- visualizations-to-slack-with-python-b6404eb5a535)</comment>


Ask HN: Why all the hate for ISP? - <AUTHOR> I worked for one.  Contrary to popular belief; not just any "idiot" can run an ISP.
I can understand the frustration with poorly trained CSR, billing error and etc.  After all it's a business to make money; we are not going to hire MIT graduate just to tell the customer to reboot their equipments.
Internet isn't "free"; it's expensive to run an access technology infrastructure.  Running fiber, coax cost is not just a money problem but also political(town permit, pole rights).
All things aside the technology is interesting...
We are doing IOT, devOPS way before it was such a thing.  Running data center, configuration management, automation, DDOS mitigation are our DNA.  Granted not all the department embrace the "HN" culture but there are us who gets it.
I guess ISP is just a something that the tech people love to hate? <comment><USER2> A short list, applicable if you're in the US:

* lobbying & suing to prevent competition from municipal broadband

* lobbying against net neutrality, because apparently the fact that _I_ paid for those bits from Netflix to be delivered isn't enough to keep Netflix from getting shaken down as well. Couldn't possibly have anything to do with most ISPs parent companies also being in the legacy video business...

* less of a problem now, but before DOCSIS got crazy-fast a lot of ISPs intensely oversold the lines (so you and 100 of your neighbors were all paying for "60 Mbps" internet on a line that could carry 60 Mbps TOTAL)

* MiTMing connections to insert ads and tracking

* lobbying for the right to, and then positively SALIVATING at tracking every site you visit and selling it to advertisers

* local monopolies / duopolies in most areas which mean you've got your "choice" of one or possibly two bastards who _both_ do all of the above. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Please see reply below. I guess most dislike ISP as a whole; but few appreciated the technology problem domain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Generally, it is not the technical side of the ISP that gets a lot of hate. Anyone in IT should have a reasonable grasp of just how hard networking really is, so IT people should have a good feeling of how much harder than that it would be to operate at the provider level.

What ends up being the anger issues are the purely commercial/business side:

The business decision to spy on users for advertising profits.

Their actual regional monopolies that skirt the law because there is national level competition.

The inconsistent pricing and massive numbers of fees that are just pure profit. (Not the few actual taxes.)

The close ties to legacy entertainment leads to a naked conflict of interests.

The political fallout from the FCC enforcing basic rules that actually built the majority of the internet culture before it went big business.

The service that ISPs provide are outstandingly expensive with a glacial pace of new technology roll outs. We know it's hard and expensive, but that's not an excuse to do literally nothing but collect profits. FiOS is the perfect example... NYC is suing because they took grant money and tax incentives, then utterly neglected the agreed upon course of action.

Internet service should be a deeply regulated utility like water and electricity. The strict price controls offset the regional monopolies model. The companies that run ISP should be legally required to be independent from non-ISP business interests, like cable TV, Entertainment, or phone services. ISPs being divided at the last mile from the core plumbing of the internet also sets up a deeply adversarial relationship with the backbone providers. Integrating those two realms into regional entities enforcing interconnectivity rules would reduce the Net Neutrality issue considerably.

None of those will ever happen, however. The lobbying against enforcing utility rules that mandate the profit margins would be extreme.

Edit: Typos/Autocorrect

</comment><comment><USER4> I dont hate ISPs in general, I hate ISPs like Comcast that leverage their virtual monopoly in local markets (they are the only high speed provider in my area) to avoid inestment in decent customer service while simultaneously charging exorbitant prices.

In the U.S., we permit some private parties to use eminent domain reserved property in exchange for the distribution of telecom infrastructure. I dont have an issue with that principle like some folks do (1), and I dont care if they make a lot of money, but I do take exception to these 'utilities' ignoring the needs of their custimers. ISPs refuse to run fiber to our area and they it took them 3 weeks to figure out that someone accidentally flipped off the switch to my house on the utility pole MDU. No compensation for lost time.

Personally, I long for the day when scalable mesh networks (2) allow people to take the reigns back, similar to installing solar panels and cutting the power grid chord. Yes, I realize there is still a need for such networks to tap into the internet backbone, but it's a step.

1\. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2011/12/06/telecommu...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2011/12/06/telecommunications- and-the-public-use-principle/)

2\. [http://guifi.net](http://guifi.net)

<comment><USER4> *reins

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hate ISPs because of their strong desire to monitor and track everything that their clients use it for to then sell to other companies to target ads to me and to openly give my information to big gov. It is also bullshit that I have no choice on providers, its either move to a different side of town or dont use the service.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get that.

However if we take the time and think this logically; do you appreciated the challenges/technology to operate one?

ISP are similar to utility. Up front cost is astronomical. The town guarantee "monopoly" in order to attract business looking for steady ROI(similar to government infrastructure project: road, dam, train track and etc). This is the context of USA. There are no "government dark fiber" where anyone can just connected to and run a service provider.

Other things you mentioned are the decision by "business people" not the tech people per se. Part of it is also government mandate.

Not making excuses just trying to show view point from other side.

<comment><USER5> I do appreciate the challenges, but I don't care about it. I pay for the service to use the service not to appreciate the service you should have rephrased your question as "Why dont you appreciate the tech behind an isp". And I love that you said this "ISP are similar to utility." because they should be treated as such but they are not....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Because people like ranting and raving about random things.</comment>


The Embarrassing Naked Photos On Your Stolen Laptop May Not Belong To The Thief - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/08/30/reminder-the-embarrassing-naked-photos-on-your-stolen-laptop-may-not-belong-to-the-thief/

<comment><USER2> Everything about this pisses me off: the woman who likely knew she was buying a stolen laptop, the cops judging the woman calling the photos "disgusting", and the "expert" witness who says "there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in communications via the Internet."

 _Sigh_

<comment><USER3> I'm missing why/how people are coming to the conclusion that she probably knew she was buying a stolen laptop? The price? A quick ebay search shows working laptops in that price range.

I think what's important is that I actually had to check because I have no idea what a working used laptop goes for..and if you told me some go for $60, I wouldn't be surprised.

<comment><USER4> Yes. I'd say at a price of $60, you should definitely double-check to make very sure the laptop isn't stolen, because there is a pretty good chance that it is.

Given that the laptop was "messed up" and needed to be "fixed", even more so. Who "fixed" it btw? Not her, probably.

I've had stuff of mine stolen often enough (bikes, mostly) that I don't really care whether the law would say I should have known or not, but morally, I just think it's disgusting to profit off theft of other people's property and I think it's just the right thing to do, to consider the possibility.

That said, even though I'm of the opinion the women was definitely in the wrong and should have known better, the police also definitely crossed the line the way they handled those photographs.

<comment><USER2> Also, a kid at an "alternative high school" probably isn't the most reputable of sellers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's always reasonable to access data that's on your computer unless you have authorized a third party to use it with the understanding that you will respect their privacy, and to authorize a third-party to access that data on your behalf. It may not be reasonable to make that data public, depending on the content of the data and the probability that its owner is the actual thief.

<comment><USER6> The data was hardly made public. It was shared with law enforcement in order to track down a person who was believed to be a criminal. Until law enforcement discovered that the holder purchased the stolen property rather than stole it herself, she would be assumed to be a criminal.

Additionally, because a user puts their own personal data on their laptop it should be assumed that they are entitled to do things to protect that that personal data just as it is reasonable for you to use lethal force on anyone in your home you believe believe is an intruder. If it turns out after the fact that the masked guy with a crowbar isn't an intruder, they fucked up, not you.

I'm sure this argument could be translated to legalese and win the case.

The plaintiff's lawyers are just trying to get easy settlement money because the cops were rude.

<comment><USER7> You can always use lethal force in the US against intruders? That seems wrong.

<comment><USER8> This is false. Lethal force is legal only under very specific conditions in most of the US, although there are exception where states have enacted a Castle doctrine type of law (Texas is the most obvious example here).

<comment><USER5> It's actually a majority of states (31) now. These laws don't simply mean you can shoot anyone who trespasses in your house; the entry must be forceful and you must believe that the person intended to seriously harm someone in the house or remove someone against their will. The castle doctrine simply creates a presumption that, barring evidence to the contrary, someone who "unlawfully and forcibly" enters a home plans to harm the people inside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _and she's got a strong case…_

Uh, no she doesn't. Buying a working laptop for $60 is going to easily constitute knowing the laptop was being sold for less than true value. Sorry, I don't have the link, but this whole receiving stolen goods knowingly thing was explained fairly well on HN in some comments a couple months back.

<comment><USER10> I didn't know how cheaply a laptop could be purchased for so I just checked on Ebay for Used/Refurbished laptops. Currently there are 47 'Buy It Now', nominally complete and working, laptops/netbooks available for $40-60.

They all looked pretty crappy, is it reasonable to assume they are all stolen property on the basis of their price alone?

<comment><USER4> A good bunch of them, most certainly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm always disgusted when people share those photos with the public or third parties even though doing so is clearly not necessary for recovering the stolen property. It just seems immoral to me, no matter whether you know that the thief or someone else took the photos.

I can't comment on the law but I really don't understand people who are ok with this kind of behavior. Thieves don't suddenly become fair game for any treatment just because they are thieves.

<comment><USER11> >Thieves don't suddenly become fair game for any treatment just because they are thieves.

Any treatment, no. Humiliation? Sure. Mark Bao struck the right note with his video of the "dancing" thief, but I'd be willing to go further than that. When you violate someone's person or property, I'm okay with a disproportionate response. I think it should hurt you more than it hurt them. I make no claim to any moral foundation to this belief, but I don't feel sorry for muggers who get the shit kicked out of them or thieves who get exposed and ridiculed online.

Granted, the OP makes a good point: you have to be damned sure in these cases that the person you're humiliating is, in fact, the thief.

<comment><USER7> I guess I'm weird but I have really no desire to punish people.

<comment><USER11> That's a nice thought in theory, but it leads to antisocial behaviour in practice. Punishment is necessary. The severity of punishment is up to debate, but negative reinforcement works where positive doesn't (and vice versa).

Now, as far as _desire_ to see a shit head get punished, that's pure petty schadenfreude and I make neither excuses nor apologies for it. I don't claim to be a paragon of moral virtue. I get warm fuzzies from seeing people get deserved comeuppance. It's such a deeply ingrained part of our cultural psyche (look at every movie Disney ever made), and so universal across cultures, that I suspect it's just an integral part of human nature. We can aspire to loftier moral heights, but at the end of the day a whole lot of us get satisfaction from seeing the bad guy lose.

<comment><USER7> When I say "punishment" I'm talking about everything that's beyond mere deterrence. I have no problem with deterrence, yet no desire to punish.

<comment><USER12> > _I have no problem with deterrence, yet no desire to punish._ //

Could you explain this, perhaps with a solid example or a crime, it's deterrence that is not punishment. For example if you fine someone for drink driving that is both a deterrent and punishment. I can't readily see how you deter without introducing punishment.

<comment><USER7> I'm using really a weird definition of punishment. That's my fault. Maybe I should stop doing that.

I'm ok with punishment if we know (or if it is at least plausible) that it's a deterrence. I'm not ok with punishment for the sake of punishment. I'm also not ok with drastic increases in punishment for little or questionable gains in deterrence.

To pick an absurd example: If we were to find out that not imprisoning or otherwise punishing murderers would decrease the murder rate I would be all for stopping punishing murderers. If something is an effective way of preventing crimes – even if it's not punishment – I'm all for it.

<comment><USER12> > _If something is an effective way of preventing crimes – even if it's not > punishment – I'm all for it._ //

OK I think I got that from your previous comment. What I can't see is if there is actually an instance that matches your preference at all.

For example in my country minor criminals might be persuaded to meet the people they've offended against. Some may not define this as punishment but it can be a type of humiliation and so I'd class it as a (very minor) punishment.

I'd guess you'd be thinking of something like giving free drugs to addicts that rob people to stop them robbing and at the same time just leave the victims to sort themselves out and pay for the crime (ie no levy, no fine, etc.)?? FWIW this example seems injust to me.

<comment><USER7> Again, I'm opposed to punishment for punishment's sake and civil law doesn't really have anything to do with that. Of course you should be entitled to damages if someone steals something from you. Paying damages isn't really what I would call punishment. (It's just that drug addicts usually won't be able to actually pay you anything. But that's just how it is.)

I do not know whether there are crimes that can actually be prevented by doing something besides punishment. I just wanted to make clear that I'm open to the possibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone who buys a used laptop should immediately dban it and set it up clean from bare metal. But it's not realistic to expect that everyone knows this, and it requires the OS install media which is often not included with used machines.

<comment><USER14> This is irrelevant. LoJack (by Absolute) is in the BIOS. If you reformat, it reinstalls itself.

Numerous sources can attest to this, but here's a generic reference: [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/LoJack#LoJack...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/LoJack#LoJack_for_Laptops)

As you mentioned, not everyone would know, nor have the capability to reformat. This is doubly so for steps I take with administrative passwords, firmware passwords, hard drive passwords, etc. to make it further difficult for the thief to reformat the machine.

Pro-Tip: Leave a guest account, and have everything else encrypted.

(Looking forward to OSX Lion's upcoming support for a browse-only guest account on the unencrypted boot partition when using filevault2)

<comment><USER15> From looking at the description on Wikipedia, installing Linux would also bypass LoJack, as the software that's reinstalled is a Windows service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They lost that professional flair in the article when they called the cops "po-po" and the expert declared it a "fail." Come on, there was enough stubstanence to report on that stuff without the derogatory remarks.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if the thief could claim copyright on the photos, as well as "modeling rights" or the UK equivalent, to prevent the images from being distributed.

</comment><comment><USER18> _They had one expert witness, a criminal law professor, go a step beyond that, attesting that "there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in communications via the Internet." Period. The idea that any electronic communication lacks privacy protection whether on a stolen laptop or not is a scary thought and a ridiculous conclusion._

A scary thought? That's why it's wrong, because it's scary? I've grown to expect slightly more sophisticated arguments from the people I agree with.

<comment><USER17> It's true. When you send a photo to another person, you are knowingly and intentionally sending it unencrypted through multiple third parties, most of whom you don't even know. Does that sound like privacy to you? In the US, courts have ruled that certain kinds of communications (including phone calls and emails) have a "right" to privacy, which means that it's illegal to intercept them. But that doesn't mean it can't happen.

<comment><USER19> Reasonable expectation of privacy is a legal term. It has nothing to do with the ability of the communication to be intercepted by a criminal.

You have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your home, but that doesn't stop a criminal from breaking in and setting up hidden cameras.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's a libertarian principle called minimal force. That is to say, libertarians believe that the initiation of force is immoral, and thus use of force against the initiators is just, but only sufficient to mitigate the crime.

When someone steals your laptop, they are initiating force. In doing so, they give you the right to use methods, such as this software, to recover the laptop. But that right only extends to recovering the laptop, not to unnecessarily violate the privacy of the thief. While the thief does owe the laptop owner compensation for the crime, this is something that is determined via court, not by the victim of the crime.

So, yes, you have the right to hack into your laptop, turn on the webcam, collect evidence necessary to locate and recover the laptop, but you don't have the moral right to exploit the thief beyond that.

I remember the Defcon presentation had some privacy obscuring bits for the thief when he took nude shots of himself in the shower. That's appropriate. Shaming the theif by showing their face is reasonable, but only if you know they aren't an accidental victim. Sharing the thief's nude photos with the police or with any unnecessary third parties, where the they are not necessary for recovery, is a violation of privacy.

At least morally. Who knows whether a government in the US will hold the police accountable for any immoral actions.

<comment><USER21> I apologize if this seems like I'm attacking a strawman, that's not my intent. (If I did hit the strawman, please tell me how I've misunderstood...)

The problem with this sort of ideology is it ignores deterrence as a force for stability. If the only acceptable response to an application of force is an equal, opposite force, then why shouldn't I steal someone's car for a week rather than rent a car? If the only punishment is that I am forced to pay for the "rental", then I'm afraid the logical thing to do is to steal a car from the nearest parking lot rather than go through the rigmarole of taking the shuttle to the rental car parking lot.

You could counter-argue that the equal-opposite force would take that into account, but then, how do you calculate that? Does it cost exactly the same as a rental of an equivalent car would have? (In which case, no deterrence). Is there an additional charge for the theft? The calculation of opposite force starts to take on characteristics of our current civil legal system: calculation of the cost of a wrongdoing.

<comment><USER5> I think the principle includes a certain degree of deterrence as well as inconvenience to the victim. Calculating exactly the right punishment is, of course difficult. That's what courts are for.

<comment><USER22> That seems counter to the basic 'libertarian' idea of minimal government.

<comment><USER23> Well, most libertarian government structures call for precisely that. A police to enforce the law, a court system to provide fair rule and a small military intended for defense.

[edit: Should add that although there are certainly disputes to how to fund said services, to the best of my knowledge it's largely agreed that some court system is required.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > "We're eager to bring this case to the jury," says [an attorney for the > plaintiff]. "It's a fascinating case and I'm eager to see what a jury will > think."

This is pure B.S. right? "I'm eager to see what a jury will think."

A jury is composed of randomly selected individuals. So he's saying "I'm eager to see what a group of random people will think." Clearly doesn't make sense.

Basically what he's saying is, "A group of random people are clearly going to side with us."

<comment><USER25> Yes, a jury _is drawn from_ a pool of randomly selected individuals, yes. But the pool is first filtered, by striking (1) people who appear to the judge to have too much potential for bias; (2) people who convince the judge they have a good excuse for not serving on the jury; and (3) up to X people peremptorily struck by the lawyers, where X typically equals 3 per side.

(In technology-related cases, item 3 often results in the exclusion from the jury of anyone who knows anything about the technology---one or another team of lawyers will want the jurors to know only that which was presented to them for the first time at the trial.)

<comment><USER26> My understanding is that (1) is typically argued by the opposing trial lawyers, who can appeal for "Strike for cause"[1], which doesn't count against their arbitrary $X strikes. I assume this is actually decided upon by the judge, based on those arguments.

[1] [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Strike_for_ca...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Strike_for_cause)</comment></comment></comment>


The Fed's plan to speed up payments despite banks' resistance - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/12/the-feds-plan-to-speed-up-payments-despite-banks-resistance/ <comment><USER2> What possible advantage does a "blockchain" have for a payments system controlled by a single entity?

The Federal Reserve doesn't need to dupe dumb investors with buzzwords.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Federal Reserve isn't a single entity. Its composed of 12 different member Federal Reserve Banks. And The banks that are part of the Federal Reserve system own stock in the member Feds and have significant representation on it. Also blockchains are great if you care about transparency, immutability, and accessibility.

<comment><USER2> A public Merkle tree like the certificate transparency logs can serve the same purpose a million times more efficiently than a PoW blockchain.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. But its not programmable, in the way that Ethereum is for example. And that would be a nice feature to have in a payments system. PoW would never make sense for the Fed anyway - more likely PoS with some combination of Member Feds and participating FIs doing the staking and validating would make more sense.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"50% of firm founders [in Silicon Valley] are foreign born" - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/09/economic_growth <comment><USER2> Not especially surprising, nor damning of american-borns. Those with the motivation, skills, and education to move abroad (to anywhere!) and start a business are going to, on average, outperform the population which was born there. Not because they are naturally better, but because they were self- selected by being there in the first place.

Just like I'd be willing to bet that americans living abroad are overrepresented as entrepreneurs wherever they happen to be living.

<comment><USER3> > Not especially surprising, nor damning of american-borns

I disagree. I wouldn't be sanguine about it. Previous major waves of technical innovation were lead by well established Americans. Something has changed.

A plausible hypothesis (not that I'm convinced) is that high immigration has driven down wages in technical professions. So native born Americans are less inclined to bother.

I think it's important to point out that two American eras of high growth and prosperity had essentially zero immigration. From 1921 to 1965 immigration was practically nothing. This was a period of extreme American innovation.

<comment><USER4> _From 1921 to 1965 immigration was practically nothing._

Uhm, what? Perhaps in raw numbers, but the world wars drove vast numbers of european intellectuals to the US.

<comment><USER5> I was just going to say almost exactly this: it might be worth reading Richard Rhodes' _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ , in which he points out how many of the essential scientists and engineers working in aspects of the Manhattan Project were Europeans. Some of the most essential figures, like Leo Szliard (sp?), were.

<comment><USER3> I dare say a handful of physicists and chemists did not have major bearing on the US economy, after their accomplishment of needlessly incinerating a bunch of japanese.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What gives these foreigners the right to come over here and make American jobs? That leaves fewer jobs for native-born Americans to make!

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's funny and all...but I'm rather embarrassed for HN's analytical skills right now.

Fifty percent of firm founders are foreign-born you say? OK. What percentage of valley residents are foreign-born? Or, hey...what percentage of foreign- born residents _outside the valley_ start businesses. Without answers to these questions, the 50% stat is just a sound-bite.

<comment><USER8> As far as I can tell, the report doesn't say 50% of founders are foreign-born. Rather, it says (middle of page six) that 50% of tech companies have at least one foreign-born founder. That's very different. To use a very simple example, if you had 100 startups, each with three founders, 50 of which had 3 native- born founders and 50 of which had 1 foreign-born and 2 native-born founders, you'd have 50% of companies with a foreign-born founder, but only 17% of the founders would be foreign-born.

The question that needs to be answered is: do immigrant technology workers found technology startups at a higher or lower rate than native-born technology workers? Surprisingly, I've never seen that question addressed. I've seen articles that imply an answer, but once I dig a bit it always seems that the data doesn't actually justify the implied conclusion.

<comment><USER7> Good point. I hadn't noticed that -- it makes the argument even weaker.

Nearly everyone in this thread is taking for granted that foreign workers are more entrepreneurial, and using this piece as some sort of external validation of that view. But the article is just regurgitating a sound-bite. Without context, there's no reason to believe that the cited statistic implies a meaningful conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What percentage of people who live in SV are foreign-born?

According to San Jose Business Journal, in 2003 36.5% were foreign born. [http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2003/09/01/da...](http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2003/09/01/daily41.html)

I guess/estimate if you adjusted for those native-born who are either working at family businesses already (2nd or later generation of a family owned business), or are following their parent's lead on a trade or profession (son of lawyer becoming a lawyer, daughter of ob-gyn becoming a doctor), you would find that the quoted stats are not very important or relevant.

(just adding another data point to the discussion)

<comment><USER10> Good question. In SV there are cities with a foreign born population that is well above 50%. Another question I would ask, what is the percentage of SV founders that are Native Californians?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure this is even an SV-specific phenomenon; small-business founders in the U.S. have long been disproportionately foreign-born. I wonder what the statistics would be for restaurant owners.

</comment><comment><USER12> Immigrants by self-selection are already risk-takers, that fits well as a trait to be an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER13> Immigrants are not only risk-takers, they are mainly avoiding poverty and looking for better conditions.

<comment><USER14> On behalf of my fellow Canadians in the US, I can safely say most of us are simply opportunists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Click through to the David Brooks NYTimes article. The real story here is that there is a mismatch between supply and demand. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/opinion/10brooks.html?_r=1...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/opinion/10brooks.html?_r=1&ref=columnists)

 _One of the perversities of this recession is that as the unemployment rate has risen, the job vacancy rate has risen, too. Manufacturing firms can't find skilled machinists. Narayana Kocherlakota of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank calculates that if we had a normal match between the skills workers possess and the skills employers require, then the unemployment rate would be 6.5 percent, not 9.6 percent._

The Economist article expands upon this thesis for the high-tech industry. Just as there aren't enough skilled machinists, there also are not enough skilled founders in the domestic market.

</comment><comment><USER16> Although I don't think being an immigrant is a defacto stamp of approval of any sorts, the adversity you face as an immigrant kid does change you.

OR being an outcast of any sort.

The analogy I think of is you're brain is like a clay pot being formed in your youth. Hard hands (hard experiences) either create something amazing or destroy you. And then your teenage years cure you into that state.

<comment><USER17> I think it is incorrect to assume an immigrant kid faces adversity. Most of the emigration to SV is from well-off families with well-adjusted kids and they settle in well-off areas.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps SV is unique but vast majority American immigrants certainly do not come from 'well off families' and live in 'well off areas'.

But thats all beside the point I was getting at - i'm saying facing significant adversity creates a unique type of person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is really just a symptom of the magnetism of Silicon Valley.

To put it into context, here in the UK there is no where really quite like it, in terms of supporting tech startups and harbouring a community that has such prestige and heritage from over the years. From our perspective Silicon Valley is always going to be seen as having greener grass than ours.

</comment><comment><USER19> As a tech guy who has repeatedly been hired by companies founded or run by Indian immigrants, I have only this to say about the immigration of foreign entrepreneurs: _more, please_

</comment><comment><USER20> Heck, 50% of this entire industry is foreign born.

<comment><USER21> I hear that 95% of the entire world is foreign-born!

<comment><USER22> Is that really true? I would guess most people live in the country they were born in.

<comment><USER23> I can't tell if you are being sarcastic, but I think the OP is talking from the perspective of an American citizen. America has 4.5% of the world population (according to Google.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd imagine immigrants aren't so laden with debt, so they have more freedom. Many countries don't charge their native students for higher education, those that do, are often subsidised and repayments are linked to their earnings. So if you earn a small salary, you pay nothing.

<comment><USER25> I don't imagine this being that large of problem this is with majors like computer science. By going to a public school and interning during the summer (maybe even part time during the year), you can easily come out debt free (if not positive).

<comment><USER26> Yes but percentage of CS students actually finish with low debt? I would imagine it's lowish.

<comment><USER25> I'd love to see the numbers.

At my alma matter (Berkeley), I imagine it was quite high. Not so much due to the high paying internships (which do help limit the burden), but because CS students on average tended to come from quite affluent households.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is great news. People are drawn from the world over to SV to build a business. Makes me wonder if we relaxed immigration rules for entrepreneurs we could push this even further.

The idea that we could draw in more founders just by letting them come here... seems like an easy win. All those startups and all the high skill workers they'd attract. Imagine the synergy of all that talent in one place. It could be the next renaissance.

</comment><comment><USER28> Maybe it's time to rerun this poll: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=688053>

<comment><USER29> 169 out of 531 total were first-generation, foreign born immigrants (much like myself :-)

That makes it 32% of all HNers who bothered to vote.

If you count those whose parents are immigrants, it jumps up to 52%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> People who are born in the US probably have less incentive to leave 'home'. High probability that they've developed business relationships and a network of people in their hometown or place of schooling, giving them an advantage that is taken away if they move to Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER31> How is that different from anyone else not born in the US? They also have a 'home' and established business relationships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The H1-B thing seems like a bit of a non-sequitur to me. I thought H1-B was for getting hired to a specific position (i.e. not for founders)?

<comment><USER33> The article mentions that the H1-B is a path towards citizenship; citizen or green-card holders can then become founders.

<comment><USER34> you can be founder on h1b/tourist visa, but you can't work for this company and be paid unless company you (co)founded will hire you.

<comment><USER32> So you could make arrangements to be a cofounder and then have your founding company sponsor your visa?

<comment><USER35> This is really really difficult. I know of only 2 people who have ever managed to do this.

<comment><USER36> Where there is a will there is a way.

You need a good lawyer, an investor willing to commit $200,000 (you might be able to get away with less) to the business so your cofounder can file for the visa for you, and the willingness to put your future in the hands of the cofounder, since they'll have ownership of the company on paper until you get your green card (You need a separate business agreement governing the business setup after you become a citizen)

Also do yourself a favor and get a Master's degree so you can file in the EB2 category (speeds up your green card process).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> How did those founders get Visa to come here and build their firm? Did they all start with 1 million dollar?

</comment><comment><USER38> What really surprises me is the other half. Americans? Who could have thought?

</comment><comment><USER39> What % of jobs Americans create outside USA?</comment>


Organizational Blueprints for Success in High-Tech Startups (2002) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cmr.berkeley.edu/documents/sample_articles/2002_44_3_4776.pdf <comment><USER2> Ive used this as a reference and passed it around my manager leaning engineering circles. Its really good as a basis for a conversation. The major takeaways for me are

1\. Culture has to be an explicit decision

2\. Changing culture is incredibly difficult. Emphasis on incredibly.

Chances are you wont be able to build a stars culture, but lots of companies use that as their implied cultural northstar and fail at it.

<comment><USER3> This also relates to organizational fit. The so called "contigency theory" has long said that the optimal organization depends on context.

Sadly, this context was usually defined to be outside of the firm. The area of "internal context" is a current area of research. The SPEC project has been very useful in this regard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing unclear to me from this paper is on what sources of information did they classify the orgs by model -- was it only by founder and executive claims, or were there other sources? (Simple example: when an executive claims the Star model, was the top-salary component of that checked against available industry salary info?)

Why this question came to mind, while I was reading and then skimming: some of these models we see claimed as attractions for recruiting and PR purposes, yet industry chatter often suggests that, say, a company that's been claiming the glamorous Star is maybe more the less-glamorous Bureaucracy or Autocracy.</comment>


Productive stack for a solo developer - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a productive, minimal headache inducing stack for a solo developer. It will involve a web app, and quite possibly a mobile app down the line. It will involve a lot of interactive content (delivering interactive educational material), but minimal technical complexity, and no scaling issues (very niche topic - never going to have a lot of requests per second).<p>Obviously makes sense to stick to a language I'm comfortable in - Ruby, Python, C#, Elixir, PHP, JS. Any thoughts/advice on productive solo development? <comment><USER2> Use Rails & Heroku – just that. That's more than enough. One and only advice is don't follow the hype, just focus on what you wanna deliver. You can thank me later.

</comment><comment><USER3> Completely agree with the other commenter recommending Rails. It seems perfect for what you describe. I know of no other stack that comes close to it in productivity, and I've tried a few. With Turbolinks and Webpacker you get an SPA feel for free and it's easy to sprinkle in JS where needed.

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out servicestack.net . I'm not affiliated in any way but it's a pretty sweet framework that runs fast back end in dotnet core, Typescript API generator, fast microrm, caching, etc etc, all open source , with templates for all the common UI flavours. I use it whenever possible

</comment><comment><USER5> Laravel backend with vuejs components deployed to laravel forge is my choice even though I am an enterprise asp.net core developer. Check out laracasts.com for their new series on the newly released Laravel 5.7</comment>