Finland Has an App Showing Shopping's Carbon Footprint - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-21/finland-has-an-app-that-reveals-shopping-s-true-carbon-footprint <comment><USER2> While I think change has to come from both consumers and producers, this kind of gimmick (an interesting gimmick, but a gimmick nonetheless) puts too much of the burden on consumers and feels like tinkering around the edges of the real issues. It feeds into a model where the emitters don't take direct responsibility for their emissions, where it's easier to calculate, and pass the costs on down through the supply chain, as other commenters have noted.

It's rather like the successful campaign of companies to push the burden of disposable rubbish onto consumers instead of changing the system: [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/more- recyc...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/more-recycling- wont-solve-plastic-pollution/)

<comment><USER3> But without consumers these goods wouldn't be produced in the first place. Companies themselves rarely consume resources, people do. Regulating producers is easier, but ultimately all of it still depends on the consumers.

<comment><USER4> The sentiment is that goods should be produced sustainably instead of unsustainably or not at all. Obviously consumers gonna consume whatever is available to them (that's why they are called consumers).

<comment><USER3> But consumers are _not_ consuming whatever is available to them. You don't create a product without knowing that somebody would want to buy it. Consumers do make choices. Perhaps some kind of labeling for how environmentally friendly a product and its packaging are? Kind of like calorie content labeling. Eg some estimate of X amount of carbon to produce, package, transport the goods based on country of origin, transport method, raw materials and packaging.

If you try to force producers to take all the burden and blame (like many people are) then you'll just get lied to. People are generally unwilling to accept responsibility for these kinds of things without there being overwhelming evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am interested in this but a little skeptical we can pin down the carbon economics. I think about this a lot in my own life. I'm in a major US metro. I buy most of my non-food stuff online on Amazon. I could drive my hybrid to a Target (~5 mile round trip) instead. My sense is my hybrid is slightly more efficient in raw carbon emissions than an Amazon delivery truck, but I live an apartment building, so the average Amazon delivery driver drops off 20 or 30 packages as part of a route that probably has hundreds of packages, so probably marginally Amazon has a lot less carbon load for the last leg than me going to Target? Since Amazon has a staging warehouse in my city, I assume the carbon profile up until the last leg is similar (although maybe Amazon populates that warehouse with air shipping instead of ground shipping, who knows for sure).

But then Amazon also uses a bunch of packaging. The cardboard packaging is putatively recyclable, except for the collapse of paper/cardboard recycling in the US last year. I still recycle it, but it's probably being landfilled. The plastic packaging is just landfill waste. And even if the cardboard was being recycled, there's a huge water burden involved in the production of recycled paper products as I imagine it, so trading off carbon emissions versus local water consumption / drought risk seems like a problem.

If someone made a website or app that allowed me to visualize all this for each purchase I make, I think that would be mondo cool -- and as dsalzman's comment to this thread mentions, this could be an opportunity to tie into a carbon offset service or something else to automatically compensate, at least partially, for the efficiency gap.

Come to think of it, that leads to another cost I hadn't considered before: at least theoretically, the money I save on Amazon frees up money for offsets or environmentally friendly donations versus paying more elsewhere. (Although in practice my total donations per year come nowhere close to what I save).

I'd also be curious today whether picking slower shipping on Amazon reduces or increases the carbon burden of the transaction versus prime shipping versus faster shipping.

<comment><USER6> This is actually the beauty of a carbon tax. Instead of trying to figure out all the costs, you tax pumping the carbon out of the ground and then let the prices flow through the economy.

That way you don't have to try to figure it out as an individual you just end up comparing Amazon's delivery prices to a tank of gas, which you're doing anyway because you already have to manage your own budget.

<comment><USER7> A carbon tax is only effective for climate/carbon mitigation if the tax revenue is reserved for those kinds of efforts - which historically has been difficult to achieve.

<comment><USER8> That doesn't make sense. A carbon tax works because it makes more carbon- intensive activities/goods relatively more expensive compared with less carbon-intensive activities/goods, so you're giving people a financial incentive to use less of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been wanting something like this! A browser plugin that would add a Co2 tax to products. The aim being to nudge shoppers to realize the hidden costs of cheap goods that are shipped at great distances. Buy local. Buy for life.

<comment><USER10> This is something that always puzzled me. If something is cheaper, doesn't it mean it took less resources to make it and therefore is the greener option?

<comment><USER11> Software consultants are one counterexample, because they are very expensive but also environmentally friendly. Human labor has the biggest difference between price and resource consumption that I can think of.

<comment><USER12> > Human labor is very environmentally friendly

No it is not. For example a meat eating human produces more CO2 per mile than a regular car. (Although most people could use the exercise so don't use that info in isolation.)

<comment><USER13> That only matters if you plan to kill people who aren't working.

<comment><USER12> No, I don't mean baseline, I mean extra CO2 emitted by a human riding a bicycle.

Again, many people need exercise so this might just replace that. But if you exert extra, then you need extra food. Food costs CO2, and humans are not very efficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Title is slightly misleading. The app is incoming in spring 2020 [1]. Also it requires merchants to opt-in on it, probably for a fee. So adoption is not exactly slam dunk.

Also, I live in Finland and work in ecommerce, never heard of this before.

[1] [https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/34819/finnish- fintech-e...](https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/34819/finnish-fintech- enfuce-to-track-co2e-emissions-of-purchases)

</comment><comment><USER15> I think this is a neat idea and I hope it makes local and renewable powered goods more attractive to consumers (and ultimately, businesses).

Though I often wonder why climate tech is so obsessed with super-accurate and granular carbon calculations. You see this as a value proposition in all kinds of apps and startups for everything from travel to food.

It's pretty clear by now that simply telling someone they emitted 1,333.33 kilograms of co2 is not enough to influence behavior. You can much more quickly estimate your average emissions and spend the rest of your energy finding a good way to offset it.

At least this sort of thinking inspired the work I've done so far on [https://offsetra.com](https://offsetra.com) \- whether we manage to make a splash or not, I hope it's the start of a long career building software for sustainability.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't think carbon footprint should be seen in isolation.

The agriculture export economy has large carbon footprints—for your favorite fruits such as avocados, apples and citrus—and an important factor is how these sales impact local economies.

Some countries and regions that would otherwise be stagnant rely on this.

</comment><comment><USER17> How are they going to do this through integration with credit cards if most payments are just charging an amount and not telling you the contents of the purchase?

<comment><USER18> The shop knows what items it sold in the transaction and the card issuer knows who the buyer was: "it combines data from credit cards and banks with purchase data from retailers"

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 'True carbon footprint'? It's just another estimate.

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://outline.com/98X43P](https://outline.com/98X43P)

</comment><comment><USER21> It's great to see new services that help consumers make choices about the products they buy. However, without details of the methodology being used to determine the carbon footprint, there is no way to gauge the accuracy of the service. These types of analysis are often quite inaccurate.

The Bloomberg article is paywalled. Their press release at [https://enfuce.com/enfuce-launched-new-sustainability- servic...](https://enfuce.com/enfuce-launched-new-sustainability-service/) says:

> My Carbon Action is based on a validated calculation method called Life > Cycle Assessment (LCA), which has been developed together with D-mat, a > Finnish consultancy experienced in lifestyle carbon and material footprint > calculations. The calculation takes into account the environmental impacts > of a product's entire lifecycle from raw-material extraction, manufacturing > and transport to use and disposal.

This is good but it doesn't actually say what the "validated" LCA is.

Consumer supply chains are notoriously complex. You need details of every element of the supply chain for every product to be able to properly calculate the LCA. This is why we get things like the assumption that local produce always has lower carbon emissions, which isn't always true[1], or switching from plastic bags to organic cotton totes, which are worse on many environmental measures[2].

This is a very complex area[3] and Enfuce need to release their methodology to demonstrate that their data is accurate. Lack of transparency of data is a major problem with sustainability claims of all kinds, something I wrote about this week at [https://davidmytton.blog/sustainability-doesnt-work- without-...](https://davidmytton.blog/sustainability-doesnt-work-without- transparency/)

[1] [https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7679.2009.00445.x](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7679.2009.00445.x)

[2] [https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...](https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf)

[3] [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10806-015-9591-6](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10806-015-9591-6)

<comment><USER22> Do you have any recommendations for good sources of data on energy embodied in consumer goods? I've been making a little calculator but have foubd it almost impossible to find trustworthy sources of evidence on this [https://robinl.github.io/robinlinacre/energy- usage](https://robinl.github.io/robinlinacre/energy-usage)

<comment><USER21> You need to get it from the vendor so it's really up to them if they publish LCAs for their products. Apple and Microsoft do for their hardware but I've not seen many other companies do so.

E.g. [https://www.apple.com/euro/environment/pdf/a/generic/product...](https://www.apple.com/euro/environment/pdf/a/generic/products/notebooks/13-inch_MacBookAir_w_Retina_PER_June2019.pdf) and [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=559...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=55974)

<comment><USER22> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This feature if functional and accurate would immediately get both sides of my payment business. You listening, Stripe and Square?</comment>


Liblfds: portable lock-free data structures in C. - <AUTHOR> http://www.liblfds.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> It'd be interesting to see these compared to locking versions. The benchmarks, particularly on windows, show that the library is young and still needs some algorithmic tweaks, but in any case it's great that there's an open source implementation of algorithms that have a reputation of being difficult to get correct.

<comment> liblfds-admin Presumably the benchmarks would indicate immaturity by being slow; but it's not obvious what the benchmarks can be compared with. Are there other implementations of the same algorithm, with identical benchmarks?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> See "Wikipedia" for documentation? I think they mean "the wiki".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, and I find the way they load the documentation and blog in a frame quite annoying.

<comment> liblfds-admin I wanted it to be a seamless page, but the forum and wiki emit full-page XHTML/HTML - not something you can emit into a placeholder element.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> According to the paper for their queue:

[http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/scott/papers/1996_PODC_queues....](http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/scott/papers/1996_PODC_queues.pdf)

It uses either compare_and_swap or load_linked/store_conditional. I thought compare_and_swap had a horrible (i.e. very slow) implementation on x86. Any idea whether load_linked/store_conditional is any better?

<comment><USER4> CAS is slow because it acts as a serializing instruction. If you depend on success or fail the instructions after it have to wait until it has been resolved. Also, the update has to be pushed out to the cache at least.

So yes, slow but otherwise it would be of no use.

load_linked and store_conditional are not much better. Depending on implementation they can spuriously fail because something poked the cache, there was memory traffic etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> How can one implement a lock on x86 without cas/ll-sc? Lamport's Bakery?

<comment><USER5> so zen: cas slow, locks slower.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SoftBank said to be trying to buy a big stake in Uber at a discount - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-28/softbank-is-said-to-seek-uber-shares-at-48-billion-valuation <comment><USER2> "...at a price that would value the ride-hailing company at 30 percent less than its most recent $69 billion valuation".

This is not true, it has no effect on the current valuation at all. Softbank are looking to buy shares at this lower valuation since they are a different class of share to what they would get otherwise; these are common stock (employees will be a major source of stock for the sale) and therefore don't have the same benefits of preferred stock, of course they expect a better price. Where they are receiving preferred shares (the $1B investment) they are using the $69B valuation from Uber's last round (presumably this $1B is being added as a late-comer to that round).

I can't believe that a Bloomberg reporter would get this wrong, so this sounds a lot like jumping on the media band wagon. Suggesting Uber has lost 30% of its value is blatantly false.

Edit: It's fair to say there might be some impact on the notional valuation between rounds, which is hazy at the best of times. However it's not a 30% cut.

<comment><USER3> If they are buying a combination of preferred at a $69B valuation and common at a 30% lower valuation, it is certainly possible that the overall valuation is a discount to the $69B. Hard to know without seeing detailed terms

I'm sure the liquidation preference (presumably 1x?) is worth something, but is it worth a 5-10-20-30% discount? At Uber's current valuation, the preferred would convert anyway so the liquidation preference would not be relevant

Edit: saw that the total investment is slated to be $10B, with $1B invested at the $69B valuation and the rest presumably in common shares at a 30% discount. It could be true that this does not represent a decrease in valuation, but there is reason to believe that the overall valuation is a step down. Devil in the details

<comment><USER2> I may be falling for a nice perception play from Uber, but I took this more- or-less at face value: Softbank is buying up a lot of valuable property at the moment, and even though Uber wouldn't be raising again for another 6-12 months, they wanted a piece. This is the mechanism they managed to negotiate.

Early shareholders gain liquidity, Softbank gets cheap stock, and the market gets some bullish signals on Uber in the form of Softbank's backing. From the outside it looks like a pretty good deal. Of course there might be internal panic and I've got it all wrong, but I see some big wins for both parties.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious about whether a sale like this included full due diligence or if the extra-ordinary nature meant some other standard of accounting was used.

If SoftBank went in with eyes open, this seems business as usual. If they're rushing after the cool kid on the block, then this starts to sound like Theranos 2.0.

<comment><USER5> SoftBank has been equivocating for months over this deal. It has been in the works long before the current Uber CEO arrived.

They are structuring a deal that is advantageous to themselves, exploiting Benchmark's desire for an exit so they can pay its investors their returns.

SoftBank is getting extremely cheap debt at the moment, so it makes sense to take advantage of shareholder turmoil to get valuable companies at a discount. With this purchase, SoftBank will have a hand in every significant ride sharing other than Lyft.

<comment><USER2> _> exploiting Benchmark's desire for an exit_

Does that imply that they'll be buying Benchmark's stock, rather than employees'?

 _> SoftBank is getting extremely cheap debt at the moment_

That sounds like some interesting background to the deal, please expand if you have more detail!

<comment><USER5> SoftBank raised $93B in equity from investors. It also issued about $5B in bonds in July, as well as a large amount of loans from Japanese and East Asian banks (over $25B). The rates are extremely favorable despite the high risk associated with SoftBank's investments.

I'm bullish on SoftBank, but it's indisputable that it's gotten a hell of a deal. The upside for the banks is they get their principal + interest back. The downside for the banks is that they lent the cash at low-risk rates for high-risk assets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Softbank has large stakes in Didi, they led a $2,000,000,000 round in Southeast asian rideshare Grab, and a $1,1,000,000 in Indian rideshare company Ola. That's all the big global rideshare companies, Masayoshi Son is in all of them.

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/softbank/investments...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/softbank/investments/investments_list)

In the developing world, you've got cities like Karachi, Pakistan, whose population grew 80% between 2000 and 2010, and now sits at 21 million people. There are dozens of other cities experiencing ridiculous growth rates like that.

Very few people own motor vehicles, Regional Governments have no chance of being able provide adequate transportation infrastructure. In Indonesia I once counted 21 people in a pick-up truck (16 in the back, 5 in the cab). There's a hodge-podge of small private transportation providers that move people around in these kinds of places, but the Big rideshare companies will sweep them aside as handily as traditional taxis were in the west.

Big Rideshare provides both sophisticated logistical oversight, and secure, accountable brokerage that little guys can't match. Rideshare's penetration into developing world is just getting started, and Softbank has it's fingers in every pie.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just so we are clear:

\- Softbank will invest $1B in Uber at a $69B valuation - this is the same as their old valuation. This sale will create new shares and therefore dilution.

\- However, the offer is contingent on Softbank being able to buy a significant number of pre-existing shares at a $48B valuation from early investors - no dilution here.

\- If they don't get enough investors to agree to sell at $49B then the whole deal is off the table.

<comment><USER8> What is the justification for saying that new shares are worth more than existing ones?

<comment><USER9> I don't want to spam this article all over, but Matt Levine, also at Bloomberg, I felt had a much better overview of that question almost verbatim, plus imo he's an excellent writer.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-16/softbank-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-16/softbank- thinks-some-uber-shares-are-worth-more-than-others)

<comment><USER8> This was a great read. Thanks for sharing it. Levine is a super talented writer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "It happened in China, it happened in Russia. In India and Southeast Asia, > rationalizing the competitive environment makes sense," says Boodry. "Going > forward ride sharing in an environment without a lot of competitive pressure > looks to be a pretty good business."

This is one of those quotes that really make me wonder how markets are ever able to push prices down. I get that people are all trying to make money but almost everyone in the decision making process except for the end consumer seems to be in the "competition is bad" camp.

I wonder when the anti-trust cases against Uber (especially for dumping) will start rolling in.

<comment><USER11> > This is one of those quotes that really make me wonder how markets are ever > able to push prices down. I get that people are all trying to make money but > almost everyone in the decision making process except for the end consumer > seems to be in the "competition is bad" camp.

Free markets are fragile things and it takes a lot of work to keep them competitive. But in fairness this is a relatively new product category.

> I wonder when the anti-trust cases against Uber (especially for dumping) > will start rolling in.

Sometimes I wonder whether all VC-funded startups are basically dumping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> good riddance to these companies.

Uber and Lyft have caused NYC traffic to slow by 12% since 2015 [0]. These _private_ companies have flooded the public roadways and overwhelmed the infrastructure without any obligation to meter themselves or pay for their fair share of access. I finally understand what the NYC Taxi Commission existed for.

[0] [https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/traffic-is- moving-12-pe...](https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/traffic-is- moving-12-percent-slower-through-manhattan-thanks-to-ride-sharing-apps-030717)

<comment><USER13> First of all, you're missing the point of the article. Softbank is increasing its stake in Uber, which can only be a good thing, even if it's a markdown from its last preferred round.

Second of all, you bandy around _private_ like it's a bad thing. The reason why these companies are successful is because they pioneered a much more better solution than the alternatives. Take, for example the _public_ service Access-a-Ride [1]. This is the kind of "quality" you get without competition and innovation.

[1]: [https://longreads.com/2017/09/01/on-nycs-paratransit- fightin...](https://longreads.com/2017/09/01/on-nycs-paratransit-fighting-for- safety-respect-and-human-dignity/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting! As an aside Softbank are also the company that recently bought Boston Dynamics and the less well known Schaft. They also recently acquired ARM Holdings - a major semiconductor company. After a meeting with the president-elect late last year, they announced a plan to invest $50 billion in the US aimed at creating 50,000 new jobs.

It's interesting to see people betting on such a very precise future that is seeming increasingly likely.

</comment><comment><USER15> Buying common stock and a different price from preferred is not a discount. Come on, this is just annoying at this point.

</comment><comment><USER16> Bigger news is that $1b investment is at previous valuation. No growth in valuation since last round.

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting that a Japanese company is trying to buy Uber, when Uber doesn't even work in Japan (well, you can call Uber Black in Tokyo, but it seems that the usual ridesharing can't work under Japanese laws). The licensed taxis are numerous and easily recognizable, unfortunately the fares are appalingly high.

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't this valuation...way lower than their like, "real" valuation? I don't get it.

<comment><USER19> This should let early employees and any investors who want to get out to get liquid. Otherwise they might have trouble unloading their equity without some other mechanism being made available by Uber's board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Do private companies provide enough info to know how many millionaires this would create?

<comment><USER21> No, but maybe we can guess?

Uber had 170 employees in Jan 2013 and were valued at $3.5 billion in Aug 2013. Their goal was to 4x the number of employees by end of 2013. They then had 1500 employees in Oct 2014 at a valuation of around $17 billion.

Let's say equity grants ranged in value from $50,000 to $200,000 (these are probably good 25th and 75th percentiles) in stock options.

The secondary is at $48 billion, which is an increase of 14x over the 2013 valuation and 3x over the 2014 valuation. Assume Uber had 600 employees at the time of the $3.5bn valuation.

The 2013 equity grants are now worth $700,000 to $2,800,000 (conservatively).

So I'd say 600-700 millionaires from that alone. Probably a whole bunch more if you count later larger grants times the smaller multiples.

So maybe 1000 millionaires?

Also, employees are only able to sell 50% of vested I believe in this round and will have to pay tax up to 40%. So that reduces the number a bit.

<comment> eric-hu 40%?

Is that tax amount typical?

<comment><USER21> If you're doing short term cap gains then you have to report as regular income. If you have over $526,443 in taxable income in California then your total income tax rate is actually 51.9% (39.6% federal, 12.3% state).

<comment><USER22> Is there additional time pressure based on the possible tax reform being pushed through Congress? As in does this deal become much worse/better for employees with the new code?

<comment><USER21> Hard to tell. The new tax plan is supposed to get rid of AMT which could be good for exercising options, but it also might get rid of the SALT deduction which would be pretty bad for CA taxpayers. Hard to say for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So $1bn of newly issued shares and presumably liquidation preference at $69bn valuation and some amount of existing shares at a 30% discount presumably due to lower preference?

</comment><comment><USER24> Softbank's acquisition at this rate would own most valuable startups making it a valuable company than a bank in the coming 10 years or so.

</comment><comment><USER25> ELI5 the followin when talking about a company such as Uber:

So 'UBER' i valued at 48B

Why? Whats the breakdown?

How many drivers d they have - and how valuable is the tech which enables said drivers to work, pay the drivers, track their trips, etc...

What % of value is from the extracted data/ vs / the inputs?

Whats the avg ride fare/per region/city/etc

How can anyone invest in a company where the above and thousand of other, inputs are opaque to the investor?

Given that, with the wildly public controversies happening around the company, how could this be considered a safe bet?

They have tech and legal and other issues etc...

so who is really looking at them as solid and why? And if you tell me who, then I shall auto-assume that those looking at them as solid are shady.

CMV.

<comment><USER14> I think a major part of the value in Uber is going to be in future self driving tech. They already have the infrastructure, brand name, and so on in place to migrate rapidly to self driving taxis on an international level. Self driving taxis will, almost certainly, end up a monopolized industry due to the fact that the quality of service will increase in proportion to scale, and prices will inversely scale there. The biggest player is going to be able to offer the highest quality rides for the lowest costs.

Softbank's recent acquisitions also hint towards a possibility of vertical integration which would take the above issues and magnify them that much more.</comment></comment>


Alexa and Amazon Echo Now Available in the UK and Germany - <AUTHOR> https://developer.amazon.com/public/community/post/Tx347QDN551BBTM/Alexa-and-Amazon-Echo-Now-Available-in-the-UK-and-Germany <comment><USER2> > Alexa has infinite abilities. We call these, skills.

[https://youtu.be/UOEIH2l9z7c?t=28](https://youtu.be/UOEIH2l9z7c?t=28)

Yeah, right. Infinite.</comment>


Start a side project, says GitHub founder - <AUTHOR> http://gist.github.com/6443 <comment><USER2> Awesome and very inspiring. And this is priceless:

      But it wasn't an overnight eureka, and it wasn't intentional. I didn't just walk out of high school, pick up a Ruby book,
      meet Tom and PJ, then launch the site GitHub.
      Before GitHub came, in chronological order, Spyc, Ozimodo, my ozmm.org tumblelog, ftpd.rb,
      Choice, Err the Blog, acts_as_textiled, Cheat!, acts_as_cached, Mofo, Subtlety,
      cache_fu, Sexy Migrations, Gibberish, ginx_config_generator, fixture scenarios builder, Sake, Ambition, and Facebox.

<comment><USER3> BTW, 'cheat' is pretty sweet. Console hackers should try it.

<http://cheat.errtheblog.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm in college, I run an entrepreneurship organization on campus, work full- time at a startup, and I'm doing a side project for fun.

Here's my only complaint, to fellow people who work a regular job or startup AND a side project: don't chunk all of your work into the weekend. Try to at least see your code every day, otherwise it's like coming back from a week- long vacation and not remembering your code very well. Ever stare into the sun and try to get around in a dark room? It's like that.

This past week has been particularly bad because we're doing a push on the product and I've had to do some hiring, but usually I'll try and at the very least look over my code every night so I can keep it fresh in my mind (which keeps my productivity just as high).

And wow, I can relate to this:

"All the engineers kept notebooks, of course. Blogs. They'd write frustrated entries, only to have massive elated breakthroughs the following day."

As for the recommendation to learn native JS: I suggest you instead take the route of learning jQuery. Say goodbye to cross-domain, cross-browser, xmlhttprequest issues. Selectors, manipulation, AJAX, traversing, CSS, effects, it's all there and it works really well.

<comment><USER5> > As for the recommendation to learn native JS: I suggest you instead take the > route of learning jQuery. Say goodbye to cross-domain, cross-browser, > xmlhttprequest issues. Selectors, manipulation, AJAX, traversing, CSS, > effects, it's all there and it works really well.

This is a good example of how javascript is misunderstood and the reason he suggests doing server side js. If you really dive into javascript, you'll see its true beauty and it has nothing to do with xhr, ajax, css or DOM.

<comment><USER4> Spend some time in jQuery and you'll see how much faster you can move on the DOM, and with half the code.

I don't mean to say it replaces JS, because you will always have native JS. But I would recommend not doing stuff like DOM and CSS manipulation and AJAX in pure native JS. jQuery extends JS and acts as a compliment, not a substitute.

But, I think we both agree that JS doesn't get anywhere near the credit it deserves.

<comment><USER5> Oh don't get me wrong, jQuery is my js library of choice when doing client side development (and server side in my own little side project), but the javascript he refers to is much deeper than manipulating DOM. Like he says "Learn JavaScript. Like, for real."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a linked link to the video: [http://rubyhoedown2008.confreaks.com/08-chris-wanstrath- keyn...](http://rubyhoedown2008.confreaks.com/08-chris-wanstrath-keynote.html)

(The preview image is not my default facial expression, I swear.)

</comment><comment><USER7> A to-do list.

Without reading books, in a few Sundays:

      * Play with Sinatra (learn Ruby)
      * Play with server-side JS
      * Master JS
      * Master an editor and learn the others
      * Write a web service
      * Learn Objective-C and Cocoa by writing a Useful Small Mac App
      * Write Rake in Lisp (learn Lisp)
      * Write an RSS parser in Erlang (learn Erlang)
      * Rewrite the Ruby Standard Library
      * Write a Ruby->Objective C bridge
      * Learn another web framework
      * Add concurrent task execution to the Lisp Rake
      * Write a blog in Haskell (learn Haskell)
      * Write Scrabble in Io and learn OpenGL (learn Io)

I'd want to work with someone who lived like this.

<comment><USER8> I'd like to take this opportunity to pimp my own personal blog at <http://www.gittr.com>. I have written a ton of documentation about Sinatra, while learning it. It feels like PHP, but minus the nasty parts. Whereas Rails feels like Java minus the nasty parts.

That was my side project, and sure enough, I start an awesome new job in a week and a half. I basically have been doing exactly what this talks about, and it works!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The takeaway:

You are not actually that different from other people. Build something _for yourself_ and you'll find that if you love it, others will love it, too.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, but the problem is that this leads to a bunch of good software for software developers. :)

There's a _huge_ population out there with wants and needs that aren't captured by the tastes of a typical geek. That's where the money is, which is why you get so many dumb (dumb in hindsight, that is) startup ideas. The risk is higher doing something outside your own "internal market", but the payoff is higher too.

<comment><USER9> What we need is a more diverse population of developers.

<comment><USER11> Girls?

<comment><USER12> Anyone who makes a programming environment that's actually liked by most girls will revolutionize programming and make a billion dollars. (Because that person will solve some fundamental contradiction in programming.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Don't be discouraged by the haters saying: we don't need another X. If building another X interests you, than do it.

<comment><USER14> Exactly! I am working on a small Asterisk framework, although Adhearsion does an excellent job, and my own little hack will never be useful; BUT IT IS INTERESTING!

And way better than writing yet another blog in Rails or Sinatra or something. Skip bulding on top of frameworks and get to the ground level.

Next up is a curses-based music player. It's cool to get dirty now and then.

<comment><USER11> Isn't curses something like a framework?

(Not meant seriously. Go ahead coding!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I listened to the video, and I have to say I was inspired. The startup I'm working with helps communities and students, and that's a hugely motivating factor - but I love exploring my python co-dependent species evolution sandbox.

I lost the code to it, so perhaps as a side project I'll learn ruby and rebuild it - then post it on github. Why not?

And....I'll give the no RSS thing a try.

</comment><comment><USER5> Had me at:

"Learn JavaScript. Like, for real..."

"... It's a really beautiful and misunderstood language."

<comment><USER16> Just like Scheme is a beautiful and misunderstood language. Learn both! Do it, it's fun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ha, I love this line: "I know this may sound kind of crazy, but you have to trust me. I'm keynoting." :)

</comment><comment><USER18> I would like to emphasize that the side project doesn't necessarily have to be technology related. You might learn more by learning outside your comfort zone. Computers are computers - they take our input - GIGO. I learn more when I have to interact with real people. Like with computers - If you work with cars all day, is working on vintage cars truly a hobby?

</comment><comment><USER19> I have too many side projects, and not enough projects that make money:-/

Still though, I really identify with his style, and liked the talk.

</comment><comment><USER20> I had the pleasure of meeting Chris at eRubyCon last weekend in Columbus, OH. He is a great speaker, and very smart.

I loved this keynote. I guess just do what makes you tick, scratch your own itch, and most importantly, find the time sinks in your life and let go of them.

Thank you Chris...

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow, remarkably inspiring. That is the attitude of a true hacker. Keep building!

</comment><comment><USER20> In case anyone is interested... [http://rubyhoedown2008.confreaks.com/08-chris-wanstrath- keyn...](http://rubyhoedown2008.confreaks.com/08-chris-wanstrath-keynote.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Every now and then an article or keynote like this comes around and makes our day. Very good keynote by Chris, totally must read for everyone who wants to create something.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a must read. Great advice from an awesome Ruby hacker behind one of the coolest startups around!

</comment><comment><USER23> This article has a great timing. I just announced my side project on my blog - <http://bit.ly/U3AsK>. It's called siliconverge.com - Digg for Semiconductor industries.

BTW, article was a great read, though was very lengthy! Very inspiring!

</comment><comment><USER24> DILEMMA!!! <http://twitpic.com/8hfj>

</comment><comment><USER25> _"... and I'm pretty sure PHP came with a library (aka a shotgun blast of functions in the global namespace) that could understand ini files ..."_

LoL

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow. Color me inspired.

</comment><comment><USER27> What Chris describes is how to stay ahead of fashion: by creating it, in response to one's need that is not covered.

And how to profit from it just by being a gentleman.</comment>


AWS VP James Hamilton on AWS scale, network, security (video) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyOAjFNPAbA <comment><AUTHOR> You can genuinely tell that James finds all this technology fascinating. He talks about fiber, networking, power, redundancy, scale all with utter enthusiasm.</comment>


Where has salimvirani.com gone? - <AUTHOR> I wanted to share his amazing piece on Facebook yesterday, but his whole domain seems to be unavailable!? His Twitter account has nothing untoward on it.<p>Note: I found the Facebook article on web.archive.org[0], but I'm still nonplussed by the sudden unavailability of his whole domain.<p>[0]https://web.archive.org/web/20170703103226/http://www.salimvirani.com/facebook/ <comment><USER2> whois for salimvirani.com shows: Name Server: verify-contact- details.namecheap.com Name Server: failed-whois-verification.namecheap.com

So it looks like he forgot to verify ownership of his domain name.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I emailed him, and got the following response:

"Sorry - had some trouble with the domain. All good now! Thanks for pointing it out"</comment>


Browser market: Search engine market - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/03/browser-market-search-engine-market.html

<comment><USER2> _> Is this an apt analogy for the future of the search engine market?_

No, I don't think so.

There are tremendous learning effects, economies of scale, and network effects in search that do not exist to the same extent (or at all) in the browser market.

I. The learning effects arise from the number of searchers and advertisers using a particular platform over a given period of time. This enables Google (with the largest market share) to improve its algorithm at a faster rate in response to the behavioral data that it collects. The sheer amount of data that Google collects permits much deeper (and faster) multivariate analysis relative to competitors.

II. The economies of scale exist because Google can spread its huge fixed costs of developing, refining, and operating its search engine over a much greater number of users. For instance, if Google employs 2x the number of engineers as Microsoft in search, but fulfills 4x the number of search requests, its per search engineering costs are 2/4 = 50% of Microsoft's. The same holds for other significant fixed costs, such as data center costs.

III. The network effects arise from a feedback loop between searchers and advertisers. As the number of searchers increase on Google search, it attracts more advertisers because advertisers can reach a broader and more targeted audience. The reverse is true to some extent as well. For instance, as the number of advertisers using Google AdWords increases, it attracts more searchers, assuming that searchers find some value in the sponsored search results.

Note that the learning effects and economies of scale exist in browsers, but not to the same extent as in search. There are no obvious network effects in the browser market, while the network effects in search are quite strong.

Google's dominance in search will persist into the future, until:

1\. A competitor develops a protectable technology (e.g., new algorithm) or user experience that delivers significant value to the average searcher and/or advertiser.

2\. A substitute for search emerges, which provides a much more effective method for obtaining information that you would otherwise obtain using Google search.

3\. Google is unable or unwilling to respond to the competitive threat in #1 or the substitution threat in #2 in a reasonable period of time.

Given Google's quick response to customer feedback (e.g., content farms) and technology change (e.g., real-time search), I don't have a sense that the company is resting on its laurels.

Note there is still room for niche search engines, such as DuckDuckGo, that emphasize particular features of significant importance to a segment of users. For instance, DuckDuckGo does not collect or store a user's IP address, yielding greater privacy.

<comment><USER3> I think this line of thinking greatly underestimates the value of UI and the integration of APIs. Take Yahoo. They're moving to Bing for deep results but concentrating on UI and weaving in other structured content for a lot of the head searches. That approach may well be good enough to start gaining share again over the medium term.

<comment><USER4> I think that's covered by point #1.

<comment><USER3> Right, but then it becomes an apt analogy again :).

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's an apt analogy because:

1\. There are significant barriers to entry in search that do not exist in the browser market, including learning effects, economies of scale, and network effects. Any enhancements to the technology (e.g., algo) or user experience (e.g., UI) by a competitor must provide substantially more value to searchers and/or advertisers to overcome the significant network value (effects) in this market.

2\. Despite Google's size it's still quickly responding to market and technology changes making it difficult for a competitor to chip away at its market share. For instance, despite significant investments by Microsoft (and some creative and smart decision-making), Bing has only been able to gain incremental market share, primarily at the expense of Yahoo. Google, thus far, has been able to sustain its dominance, commanding about 90% of the global search market.

"While Bing hit 4.37 percent and Yahoo dropped to 3.93 percent, Google still dominates worldwide with 89.94 percent of the search engine market share, the web analytics company reported."(March 1, 2011; <http://blog.searchenginewatch.com>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The more people use webkit based browsers and less of the others the better the world will be. I feel for the guys at Mozilla but I can not recommend Firefox to anyone, at least not on Macs. It is the slowest application I run. Application switching to or from Firefox is amazingly slow, as in I can count the finger of my hands as I am simply alt+tabbing to Firefox. In addition it eats memory and if you leave it open long enough it just starts bugging out in weird ways.

<comment><AUTHOR> Firefox has been getting progressively more memory hungry, indeed. At the moment my Firefox is at 314 MB with very few addons and 4 tabs open (none of the tabs have flash or dynamic stuff going on). I've seen it reach half a gig of memory easily, too.

I've heard that Firefox 4.0 is better though; will half to give it a shot soon.

<comment><USER5> Mozilla often says 'wait until the next version, the next version will fix all this.' A few versions later and the problems are still many and I doubt that this legacy will change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >I'm hesitant to quote any search engine share market #s currently because I frankly just don't believe them, or at least they don't seem to line up with anecdotal evidence at all. Google seems currently way more dominant than they sometimes get credit for.

Huh what is that supposed to mean? That made the article completely useless. Atleast offer something of substance, even it's an anecdote. Does it mean that Google is 100% according to anecdotal evidence?

But the very next line says: >Yet at the same time alternatives are arising. And more importantly wrt to the analogy, there are alternatives that in my opinion offer a different enough overall search experience to be preferable to some people, much like Web browsers.

Like which ones? Bing? Duckduckgo? Blekko? Coolio? Anything else?

<comment><USER3> I just think Google has a much higher than 70% share. Here are the latest #s: [http://searchengineland.com/research-bing-powered-engines- gr...](http://searchengineland.com/research-bing-powered-engines-grew-6-5-in- january-63998)

Yes, Bing, Blekko, Yandex, Searchme/Wikia (before they sadly went away), and I know of others not yet released.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much should I charge for a WordPress site? - <AUTHOR> I've had someone approach on my college campus, another student, that wants a website built from WordPress, basically wants to clone an existing website. My skills are excellent, and I don't want to undersell myself. I'm thinking around 50 an hour? for a total of 40 hours? <comment><USER2> When we did some Wordpress work it would vary anywhere from $2500 on up. Custom themes are always more time (e.g. more expensive). I'd say there is almost no website you will reproduce within 40 hours unless it is the most basic site containing only a small amount of pages.

Remember that clients will say, oh I want it to be just like X site, then as you work it they will start saying well no here I want it to do Y not X. And then they will cause content delays etc. And the smaller the client the more changes and indecision, in general, so don't flat rate it. Instead make sure to do it by the hour and tell them there is a minimum cost.

</comment><comment><USER3> It really depends on how many pages it is and how much you have to help them afterwards. $50 an hour isn't a bad number to start with but the hours are something that you think more on.</comment>


Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110725190044.htm

<comment><USER2> Extreme scepticism expressed when this story was submitted three weeks ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813705>

Similarly here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2805125></comment>


Cisco's CCIE Voice "Evolves" to CCIE Collaboration - <AUTHOR> http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/certifications/expert/announcement.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Mark Snow, CCIE #14073, offers a number of clarifications and analysis here:

[http://blog.ine.com/2013/05/28/ccie-collaboration-is-not- jus...](http://blog.ine.com/2013/05/28/ccie-collaboration-is-not-just-a-new- ccie-voice/)</comment>


Rails, Development, and More with David Heinemeier Hansson [audio] - <AUTHOR> https://player.fm/series/all-ruby-podcasts-by-devchattv/rr-342-rails-development-and-more-with-david-heinemeier-hansson <comment><USER2> As a Turbolinks fan, I couldn't be more excited about Stimulus. Sounds like it completes the front-end development story with Rails-like simplicity minus requiring that you know Ruby and Rails.

I started off as a FE dev working on mostly Rails projects. Not knowing Ruby or Rails, I depended on others for updating controllers, debugging Rails errors, etc. I was also commonly frustrated when my teams treated the client as a second-class citizen for no apparent reason besides an aversion to JavaScript. JS' takeoff in the market was actually quite satisfying at first, but the more I worked with Angular, React & company, the more I missed the productivity of server-rendered JS responses, jQuery, and Turbolinks. I doubt Turbolinks + Stimulus wins prom king at JavaScript High next year, and I couldn't care less.

Also, Redux as "self-congratulatory" had me dead. XD

<comment><USER3> What does stimulus do?

<comment><USER4> Its something they've been developing internally at Basecamp. DHH sees Turbolinks handling "90%" of front end work related to full page changes. Stimulus (which I think he said they're releasing in another month) will handle on page interaction or as he calls it "Javascript sprinkles". Things like modifying existing elements, adding a new node to the DOM, filtering, etc.

<comment><USER5> A bit like what Drab does for Elixir/Phoenix perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting to see Rails simultaneously embracing React with the Webpacker gem while also trying to offer a better solution in Turbolinks + Stimulus.

DHH's complaints here about React (and Redux especially) resonate with me, but I have a hard time believing a React-less approach is the best solution. I'd rather Rails roll its own enhancement of Redux - and perhaps CSS management - alongside a handful of component generators that make everything from "Javascript sprinkles" to SPAs easier to manage in Rails.

<comment><USER7> Webpacker is not about React, but about using a modern asset bundler (Webpack) and ease modern JS development for Rails users (Babel, …). There is a generator to easily setup React, Vue and some major JS frameworks, but those are very basic and optional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Love that he's bringing attention to CO2 build up & air quality in offices. I can't stand those modern "energy efficient" buildings with no open windows.

<comment><USER9> I was really surprised to see how expensive co2 monitors are (about $110 USD).

It seems wrong at a moral level. Especially since smoke detectors and carbon monoxide monitors can be bought for $10-25.

I know nothing about making a co2 monitor but other than marketing hype, the willingness to function at optimum efficiency and not die of oxygen deprivation, is there anything about it at the hardware level that warrants it being 10x the price of other sensors?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I feel like there should be an affordable air quality monitor (with an accompanying app) that you can just slap on walls...

<comment><USER10> There is. The Laser Egg 2.

[http://originstech.com/laseregg2/](http://originstech.com/laseregg2/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Convert your website to Android or iOS app - <AUTHOR> https://convertify.app <comment><AUTHOR> Convertify is a tool to convert any website into a native app using just an url.</comment>


Developer Happiness: a Five-Part Series - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2011/01/11/developer-happiness-a-five-part-series <comment><USER2> I definitely agree - access to production data would be a huge help in most development jobs. It has never been clear to me why database anonymization isn't more frequently used to give developers ready access to "pseudo- production" data in order to troubleshoot. So many companies will maintain separate production and test databases but let the test databases get so out of sync with production that it's very difficult to ensure that a fix in a test environment will work in production. The way I see it, the test database should simply be an anonymized mirror of production, and then everybody wins.</comment>


I don't want a handout... - <AUTHOR>

...but I need to make some money quickly, or things will get really bad for my family for stupid decisions I've made over the last couple months.
I have a great job, make good money, but took some risks; all calculated but one was especially risky. None of them hit, which still blows my mind, but if if was the fifth we'd all be drunk.
I have some domains to sell (not all of them are interesting), can provide UI/UX/product services, have a pipeline to very good/cheap Angular/Ruby dev that I have on retainer from a side project that is ongoing.
I'm not looking for anyone to give me anything, but I don't know what else do to. The amount is actually a joke, ~$9k, but half of that would solve my immediate problem, and buy me time/space to work out the rest.
Thanks for listening.
Happy Friday, folks. <comment><USER2> Still put your Bitcoin # on some page if not here. Someone might make an investment if you talk about your errors, changes, and goals.

Especially if you're comfortable talking to technical people who already use cryptocurrency, it makes some sense it helps to show your hand, and maybe ask if to share a hand is normal.

Sometimes people have been there and it is easy to read your needs make sense.

I find how much effort it takes to say "money comes and goes" very difficult but realizable as needing basic speechcome, as much a power to share speech we need to validate sharing many things, from problems to solutions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Write a blog post on the mistakes you make, and I'm sure this will appear much higher in HN. Then stick some ads and make some money.

</comment><comment><USER4> If that Angular guy could be an instructor for a class on it in NYC, I can give you a $200 referral fee! zach (at) nycda (dot) com.

</comment><comment><USER5> What are the domain names you are looking to sell?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can email you a list? Drop me a note at firstname.lastname@example.com and we can go from there.

<comment><USER6> Sent you a note and my suggestions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sent you a note.</comment>


Sister of Python Hacker arrested for protest - His essay on protest and change - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ianbicking.org/2008/09/02/on-the-rnc-monica-bicking-eryn-trimmer-and-protest/ <comment><USER2> If the government is going to file charges against the protesters for "conspiracy to riot", shouldn't the people that were maced for holding a flower file charges against the government for assault? I would. The way you "beat the system" is not by standing around holding a flower -- you beat it by ruining the pepper-spraying guy's life. Once people's lives start getting ruined for hurting people exercising their right to free expression, they're going to stop doing it. (As an aside, I have some savings that I call "fuck you" money. It's so that if I'm ever arrested, I can pay a good lawyer to get the charges dropped quickly. Generally a good idea, I think.)

BTW, at the '68 DNC, the government lost its case against the protesters: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Seven>

Unfortunately, the charges against the cops didn't stick either, which is probably why things like this keep happening.

<comment><USER3> It's hard to win a case against a cop in this country. Radley Balko has chronicled the plight of many citizens who were victims of paramilitary SWAT raids for the suspicion of committing non-violent offenses. In most cases no action is taken against the cops, even if an innocent person or a non-violent offender is killed in the raid.

This can get you started: <http://www.cato.org/raidmap/>

Even more disturbing have been cases of people being severely beat by police officers in jails. Rather than helping bring the culprits to justice, police departments rally around their own and it is rare that any charges are filed against officers. Here's one case:

<http://www.theagitator.com/2006/08/02/jesse-lee-williams-jr/>

(NSFW, a picture of the victim in the hospital after the beating)

If police can get away with murder in this country, then I doubt that a little pepper spray will be noticed. Government is a monopoly of power. They have it, you don't. There is no justice if your assailant has a badge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Finally, a post on anarchism on HN that doesn't imply anarchism means "being greedy."

<comment><USER5> However, speaking as an anarchist, not all anarchists are against institutions in general. That is, all anarchists (I believe) would say they're against the State, but some anarchists include more than some of us would in that term.

<comment><USER4> I am implying that on HN "anarchist" often refers to a particular niche, anarcho-capitalism, which is mostly unconcerned with notions of cooperation, voluntaryism and humanism.

<comment><USER6> Huh? Anarcho-capitalism relies on cooperation, voluntarism, and humanism as much as any other anarchism. It just posits that respect for property, including giant consensual property constructs like capital/corporations, is the best basis for creative cooperation.

<comment><USER4> Demand curves are not democracy.

<comment><USER6> Both democracy and demand curves are means, not ends.

<comment><USER7> Hallelujah! Markets are great because they are a decentralized method for regulating resources that can adjust for changing conditions. One wants them in situations where there are too many factors and actors to be regulated by something as large and slow moving as a government. Markets aren't to be worshiped. They are a _tool_.

Governments and laws are good for certain things too. I would like murder and violence to be illegal. I want human rights to be a given. Democracies aren't perfect, but they do embody a mechanism for ensuring the above. Unfortunately, they also allow their constituents to turn them into non-democracies. Democracies require constant maintenance.

<comment><USER8> Who has committed more murders and violence in the past century? Random individuals/groups, or Governments? If you support nonviolence, why support an organization that threatens violence if you do not follow rules have no moral basis (ie, not "don't murder" and "don't steal") that you never agreed to follow?

<comment><USER9> Do you honestly believe that random individuals organized in some other fashion than government - say a corporation - are not just as able to murder and pillage on the same level as governments past?

If you think that governments are some sort of special organization, and that the same problems would not occur with any other power, you sir are a fool.

<comment><USER10> Voted up, but almost didn't with the reference to corporations being as evil as governments.

Haven't seen that yet, mostly due to free market influences. (There is a good reason why your neighborhood store owner is not also a flagrant lawbreaker -- it's bad for business)

But substitute "armed gangs", "the mob", "terrorist organizations", etc -- works great.

<comment><USER9> Give corporations power and an absence of government and it does happen. Look at the industrial revolution prior to workers' rights, or even look at telecom and communications monopolies today.

That law that the store owner doesn't dare break is what holds him back!

<comment><USER10> Corporations are government-defined entities. You can't have them without governments.

Not trying to argue, but it's a non-sequitur.

The industrial revolution had corporations over-taxing the body politic. It was the natural result of taking rural agricultural ethics and putting them in a mechanistic world. It led to labor reforms. trust-busting, and labor unions. Sucked a lot, and lots of folks probably died early, but it was hardly the stuff of the holocaust. You have to remember that everybody was just figuring all this stuff out as it was happening. Once it became clear where we were headed (and that we didn't want to go there) then the government, which defines corporations, defined what they could and couldn't do in a different way. Badda bing, badda boom, your democratic republic at work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That seems sad. I wish someone had a solution as to a viable method to effect change in government.

<comment><USER12> I think that's called an "election".

<comment><USER13> Hmm. No. That's called a "revolution".

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I'd call that "viable", either. The vast majority of revolutions do not accomplish their goals, even if you only count the revolutions that succeeded in overthrowing an existing regime. The US War for Independence is remarkable in large part because it actually worked and the result was more freedom (for a while), rather than less.

<comment><USER14> So what is to be done? Tolerate a degenerate system of government? How can you elect officials to represent the people, when the very men and women that run for office have absolutely nothing in common with the average citizen? According to your position, maybe our founding fathers should have been more cautious.

<comment><USER15> The founding fathers didn't have anything in common with the average citizen either - if anything, they were relatively more wealthy than politicians today.

<comment><USER16> Which demonstrates that wealth isn't the problem per se.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So now the sister of a programmer being arrested at a political rally qualifies as Hacker News? The signal to noise ratio here decreases every day. _sigh_

</comment><comment><USER12> No politics, please (especially not of the whiny-extremist variety).

The fact that the guy has occasionally whacked together a few lines of python doesn't make it relevant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why no politics?

<comment><USER6> (1) It's considered off-topic by the site guidelines:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

 _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon._

(2) It's political silly season -- a presidential election year -- here in the US and every other forum without strong topical guidelines is already full-up with politicized crap. Having it here, too, is redundant and dilutes the unique value proposition of this site.

(3) If "happened to a sibling of a hacker" is enough to rate a story here, everything is again on-topic.

<comment><AUTHOR> All good points.

I wouldn't normally post something that just presents a political opinion, but in this case I felt that the story was more interesting than that. Here's a guy that wrote some software that I and hundreds of others use every day, and that's why I respect him. However, this is a reminder that there are much bigger things than software happening to real people every day, people who are just like us. These are issues we all have to deal with.

I apologize if it's not appropriate.

<comment><USER18> I used to use a lot of Ian's earlier work on webware back in the day. I found this much more interesting than the article about the guy who scrubbed a Lamborghini for 2 days straight.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dropbox 'syncs' all your files on the same partition - <AUTHOR> https://infected.io/164/dropbox-syncs-all-your-files-on-the-same-partition

<comment><USER2> This guy really has no idea how shell extensions work on Windows. Other apps that overlay icons over files work the same way, including Tortoise Git/Hg/Svn.

Every time Windows Explorer displays a directory, it must check if it should draw an icon over files in that directory. It doesn't know if the directory is "special" (aka, Dropbox, git repo, etc) so it makes the check every time for all files in all directories.

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb7...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb761267\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

</comment><comment><USER3> Original article rather than the above repaste: [http://www.e-siber.com/guvenlik/dropbox-accesses-all-the- fil...](http://www.e-siber.com/guvenlik/dropbox-accesses-all-the-files-in- your-pc-not-just-sync-folder-and-steals-everything/)

And the Reddit discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2xrpgx/dropbox_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2xrpgx/dropbox_accesses_all_the_files_in_your_pc_not/)</comment>


20 CEOs in one company - <AUTHOR> https://softwaremill.com/20-ceos-in-one-company/

<comment><USER2> I think you should read the tyranny of F/OSS -- There are some interesting opinions in there -- having no structure does not always work out like you would think, secret social structures still get created.

[http://satifice.com/post/the-tyranny-of-open-1](http://satifice.com/post/the- tyranny-of-open-1)

<comment><USER3> Yeh no managers 20 CEO's but I bet there aren't 20 owners :-)

Even worker coops have a CEO and management its just that all the employes are the share holders which is a bit more manageable at scale.

<comment><USER2> Yeah I'm kind of worried that in reality, though there isn't a 'structure' it will devolve into something worse than high school girls trying to get dates for prom

And the scale they're doing it on is also alarming, but I'm relatively new to the startup scene, so maybe I'm wrong

 __ALSO __\- They should look at the problems that Valve has had in the past with a "flat" structure

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Will this scale past 150 employees? (I know, that's a high class problem, but it will come if they are successful.)

<comment><USER5> Valve Software has a similar flat organization structure. You can view their employee handbook on their website[0], which outlines it pretty well(from the inside).

From what I've read[1], scaling of the small development/production groups is the pitfall.

[0][http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/Valve_Handbook_LowR...](http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf)

[1][http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/09/valve- managem...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/09/valve-management- jeri-ellsworth)

<comment><USER4> Valve is the one I had in mind. I've read of some challenges they've had scaling. 50 and 150 seem to be magic #s in terms of organization size, and adding formality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comments. So just to make it clear, we've introduced this model, as we want to stay relatively small and to avoid second line of management. Valve's example shows the cons of the model in a really big organization, while we are 20 ppl, friends and family and we know each other really well. Plus being devoted to agile makes us solve problems really efficiently. I'm not trying to say that the model is perfect and we won't make any mistakes, but for sure we will avoid the biggest problems with scaling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's great to see more and more people adapting flat structure, financial transparency and so on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. We will keep you posted on how the situation evolves.</comment></comment>


This Meme Does Not Exist - Ai Generated Memes - <AUTHOR> https://imgflip.com/ai-meme <comment><USER2> [https://thisxdoesnotexist.com/](https://thisxdoesnotexist.com/)

All we need now is a "this 'does not exist site' does not exist" site.

</comment><comment><USER3> I do like when it breaks the 4th wall [https://imgflip.com/i/3yxzau](https://imgflip.com/i/3yxzau)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a bit of a sucker for memes, but clicking around a bit I feel it often misses the boat, I think because what makes a good meme is very subtle, it deviates from the meme's normal use, in an unexpected way... But not to much as there is always a right and wrong use of a meme... Still fun though. I liked this one: One does not simply stop making memes... it's surprising because it is so meta, on that very site. It's rare among those ai memes though.

<comment><USER5> Fun indeed. Some of them may even come in handy: [https://imgflip.com/i/3yuikf](https://imgflip.com/i/3yuikf), [https://imgflip.com/i/3yumf1](https://imgflip.com/i/3yumf1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This twitter thread has lots of gems people have found: [https://twitter.com/kthorjensen/status/1255238788311367683?s...](https://twitter.com/kthorjensen/status/1255238788311367683?s=20)

<comment><USER7> I wonder if some of these are just complete images picked from the training set. For instance, this seems too good to have been generated: [https://twitter.com/GoodKingSolomon/status/12552790818196848...](https://twitter.com/GoodKingSolomon/status/1255279081819684866)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> On the one hand the memes aren't very funny, but on the other this is about what you'd expect from a science fiction depiction of "teaching a computer how to be funny".

<comment><USER9> This one was fantastic tho

[https://i.imgflip.com/3z3opl.jpg](https://i.imgflip.com/3z3opl.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was genuinely funny:

[https://imgflip.com/i/3z00lt](https://imgflip.com/i/3z00lt)

</comment><comment><USER11> A few of them were funny. I wonder how many were essentially re-created from the training set.

</comment><comment><USER12> This sounds like a scam to me.

</comment><comment><USER13> Weed eater</comment>