StackOverflow closed my question, that's why we exist - <AUTHOR> http://codingstyleguide.com/blog <comment><USER4> Stackoverflow is mostly kind to newbie questions; Serverfault however however seems to be moderated by a bunch of stuck up assholes. I had a newbie question when I was setting up some dedicated servers for the first time: my newbie question, about networking/nas etc, got shutdown with bunch of snarky comment on the line of "hire a trained experienced networking guru". I have never gone back since then.

<comment><USER5> I obviously have no clue what your question was but I can understand this attitude to some degree. Let me explain.

I contributed a lot to StackOverflow in the early years. Most of the questions were interesting and not answered before. I almost stopped contributing in recent years because now there are so many trivial questions and questions that have been answered before. I see no value in explaining how to sort a list of peaches when there is already a question answering how to sort apples and one how to sort oranges. And I never understood StackOverflow as having the goal to teach programming but to help solving non-trivial problems. Now there seems to be a ton of question like how do I open a file in Python. More and more people seem to just ask everything on StackOverflow instead of reading a manual, a book, a tutorial or at least look if there is already an answer that can be adapted to their problem.

I can not quantify this, it is only my personal understanding of what questions should be on StackOverflow and what should better be looked up elsewhere, but I can to some extend understand that people get annoyed be some questions.

<comment><USER6> I personally like the "how to open file" questions. Even though I have been developing software for ~15 years, I often forget basic file I/O syntax when I need to switch languages which is rather common lately. I remember how file I/O works, how to make it efficient, etc. But the syntax? Yeah I forget that, and I find StackOverflow to be a great reference manual. Often the official manuals are verbose which isn't what I want in this case. I just want a quick example to remind myself of the syntax.

<comment><USER5> That is where we disagree - I don't think of StackOverflow as a reference manual. Admittedly I am mostly a C# developer and Microsoft does a really good job when it comes to documentation, at least in most cases. If you never saw it before and even if you hate Microsoft, have a look at their documentation. Here is the System.IO namespace [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/system.io.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/system.io.aspx) and the reference manual part is just the tip of the iceberg.

<comment><USER7> This is actually a really great demonstration of your parent's point. I think the link you posted actually leads naturally to the question "ok, so how do I put all that together to actually open and read a file". Sure, you can figure it out by reading API documentation, and the more times you do it, the easier that becomes, but a resource where somebody has demonstrated how to actually use that API to open and read a file is valuable. There are lots of various "cookbook" books for this sort of thing, but the QA format also works really well for it because it publicizes problems that lots of people have had, not just the authors of a given book. Maybe SO isn't or doesn't want to be that kind of resource, but I think it is one valuable use case.

<comment><USER5> Find File.ReadAllLines() [1] or whatever fits your needs and scroll down to the example section. Java has similar documentation, too. jQuery documentation has thousands of examples. It's all there, no need to ask. And if you can not figure out how to put together 3, 5 or 10 library or API calls then get a book about the basics of your technology and read and learn it. Asking stuff that is already out there is just wasting the time of other people, time that is better spend answering questions without an existing answer.

[1] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/s2tte0y1.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/s2tte0y1.aspx)

<comment><USER8> Asking stuff that is already on StackOverflow I agree, otherwise I don't. On SO people vote, and the answers can be edited, so a very good answer among any documentation anywhere is often near the top of the SO question.

<comment><USER5> At least in my opinion it is not and it should not be the goal of StackOverflow to duplicate the documentation of programming languages, libraries or what ever - there is just no value in that. It is of course something different if there is no or only bad documentation but this is just not the case for a lot of questions asked. I have absolutely no sympathy for people that are to lazy to look at the documentation and instead make other people do it for them copying or restating the relevant parts on StackOverflow.

<comment><USER8> I understand your position.

Presumably SO wants to maximize its readership. What I've seen is that they allow any programming question, even of trivial nature, as long as it's objective not subjective. I like that and think it's a good way to maximize readership for objective stuff, because I often google for trivial things. For example, Powershell if/else/elseif syntax, if I haven't used Powershell in a while. I just found the syntax on SO within 10 seconds, with an example I can copy/paste/modify. I bet a lot of other developers use SO like that too, and I bet it's largely the reason people put trivial questions on there. My motivation is efficiency. Being efficient can be construed as lazy I guess!

<comment><USER5> I do the same - if the first search result is on StackOverflow I will of course just look at that. But if the first result is not on StackOverflow I will read whatever is there and not ask a question on StackOverflow unless the answer to my problem is not or hard to find. So in essence I am uncomfortable if people don't try hard enough to find the answer in existing sources. How long hard enough takes obviously depends on the context. For something I am an expert in I can conclude after a few hours that I have to ask. If you for example start learning your first programming language I would expect you to try at least a day, probably even a couple of days to find the solution by reading manuals, tutorials and books before you ask a question.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, I don't ask trivial questions myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> StackOverflow totally missed the boat, and I think your idea isn't much better (because coding standards is only ONE of the many opinion-based areas that we're all interested in).

StackOverflow could totally have had "poll your peers" questions, in addition to the fact-based Q&A that the moderators there prefer.

They could have politely shuffled opinion-based questions to another area, maybe even another StackExchange site.

In improv, you're always supposed to find creative ways to say "YES!"

Instead, the Stack Overflow response to enormously popular opinion surveys was, "You're not welcome here!"

<comment><USER10> > In improv, you're always supposed to find creative ways to say "YES!"

StackOverflow isn't improv theater.

<comment><USER9> Why do you always find a way to say "YES!" in improv?

Because it's engaging. It allows everyone to create new realities, and for other people to explore use-cases that the original creator never thought of.

I believe that kind of thinking belongs on sites like StackOverflow.

<comment><USER10> I believe, on the other hand, that that kind of thinking _defines_ a very different kind of site than StackOverflow.

It might be a different kind of site that you would prefer _to_ StackOverflow, but that's a different question.

<comment><USER9> Right, I'm not saying the guys who run StackOverflow need to allow me and my opinion surveys on StackOverlfow...

But the StackExchange platform allowed them to create Programmers.StackExchange.com, where opinion polls are welcome. EDIT: slightly more welcome, sometimes, maybe.

If they had figured that out sooner, and had migrated questions from StackOverflow, they could have done a much better job at engaging users.

Saying "your question is closed as off-topic" is totally different from "your question has been migrated". I commend them for the second, and I condemn them for the first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can't believe no one mentioned [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/)

This official stackexchange site complements stackoverflow for the exact reasons mentioned by OP - it's concerned with more open-ended questions related to high level programming concepts.

Here's the rationale behind it in Jeff Atwood words (stackoverflow co- creator): [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing- programmer...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers- stackexchange-com/)

<comment><USER12> My experience is that, in practice, open-ended questions on programmers.stackexchange are closed too, e.g. this post of mine [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/133506/when-s...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/133506/when- stuck-how-quickly-should-one-resort-to-stack-overflow)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could you wrap the 'logo-pro' img tag in an anchor instead of using js to redirect? Using js to redirect breaks ctrl clicking to open in a new tab, and keeps me from staying on your cool blog post.

<comment><USER14> You could submit that as a guideline.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "However, I noticed that there is not such a website, with a reasonable > freedom (very different than google-styleguide), where everyone can add own > guidelines, and it's also available for all programming languages out > there... And believe me there are tons of developers asking for guidelines > all the time. XKCD with Donald Knuth explain the task better:"

I guess the author never ran across [http://codereview.stackexchange.com/](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/)

</comment><comment><USER16> You know that really annoying problem where you can't think of a certain term, but doing a web search is fairly useless because you don't know what to look for (chicken and egg ?)...

Googled "binary search find nth node" ... first three results are from SO, third one down [0], go down the page to find the term that I was looking for: "order statistics tree" [1].

[0] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2329171/find-kth- smallest...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2329171/find-kth-smallest- element-in-a-binary-search-tree-in-optimum-way)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_statistic_tree](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_statistic_tree)

</comment><comment><USER17> Great idea, but in order to succeed you need to make the guidelines editable like a wiki, and make the accounts something someone already has.

For example,

\- [https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style- guide](https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide)

\- [https://github.com/php-fig/fig-standards](https://github.com/php-fig/fig- standards)

These are editable by anyone and people already on GitHub so it makes it easy.

I don't want to rain on your parade, I think the site is a great idea, just expressing what I think it would need to succeed. I was trying to go to about or sign up and it timed out, I'll be back later to check it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yes, please! It looks like Amazon is having troubles to handle too many requests.

Thank you very much for your feedback. Just for you to notice, the guidelines are totally editable, but you have to be a member.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, you definitely don't want it wide open. Now that I got to the signup page I see you have github + twitter + facebook for signup options so it appears I was preaching to the choir :)

I'll check it out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not seeing this as an improvement. I'm familiar with PHP coding, and over the past few years the community has come up with a set of standards in the form of the PSR documents ([http://www.php-fig.org/psr/](http://www.php- fig.org/psr/)). This site doesn't many any allowance for pre-existing standards.

It seems that the idea behind this site is "let's make some software to enable the crowd-sourcing of the standardization process". That may be a good idea, but (1) I'm not sure that this is needed, and (2) I'm not sure who the target audience is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi eykanal! The target audience of this site are people just like you. On Coding Style Guide (CSG) you can help other developers (maybe new in PHP) with your expertise. So maybe the next time you have to work on a new project with a new team with members from different backgrounds, you can just go to CSG and take what is useful for your project. That's my vision of CSG. It's just a collection of good quality content. One knows it is good quality, because the best ones have the best rating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hey, I totally failed your user registration captcha about 5 times in a row. I've never had that problem in all the time I've been on the web, but it has prevented me from using your service.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had to use CAPTCHA because I hate signups, where you have to write your email, and then they send you a link and that stuff.

Please try again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If the rules could be exported to some static code checker / linter it would be great.

Also the other way around would be good, ie referring someone's opinion in a standardized way to some rule in an existing style guideline. As someone else pointed out, most of the JavaScript guidelines are just copies from JsLint, their guidelines might contain more justification so an external reference would be nice. Now URLs in the comments aren't even clickable.

</comment><comment><USER21> Isn't that what codereview.stackexchange.com is for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all, Coding Style Guide is not a Q&A site. This is more of opinion. I just focused in guidelines (best/bad practices, conventions, standards, and so on...) The idea is to make the code universally readable for anyone!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's why we need StackOverflowOverflow

<comment><USER23> That what "Not Constructive" is about : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6062876](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6062876).

It seems they finally have a website !

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It just makes me realize how removed I am from the community, I disagree, with almost everything I see.

</comment><comment><USER25> This website is brilliant. I am looking forward to contributing to Coding Style Guide.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I see you there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> You really should be using ++i out of habit :)

<comment><AUTHOR> :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> But you could reduce the JavaScript style guide entries to just "Use JSLint and do what it says".

Perhaps the others are more helpful or perhaps (more likely) other languages do not have Lint.

I am sure there is more to it but does not require lengthier posts - <USER2> essays?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is just an alternative for guidelines! It's like asking the developers what they really use in their daily code.

... I implemented so, that the title and the language are required, the description is not, so you can just have. Use PascalCase for methods. and added the C# tag, for example

<comment><USER27> Ok - but do you think that (continuing the example) the JavaScript entries do add up to something more than just what Lint says to do? Cos I can see it.

I do think there are benefits in more assistance for people with style and structure - I was just wondering if a longer format would suite the need better.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there is no right or wrong in writing code, it's a matter of style, so at CSG you have different alternatives and you can just pick what you think is most convenient for your code!

I dont understand what you mean by "if a longer format would suite the need better"

<comment><USER27> Surely "style" is more than "use === not ==". That's a tip - and perhaps not worth a lot as a tip if there is not a full explanation to back it up. "Why not?" and "What's wrong with that?"

Does not style devolve from structure? Hmn - maybe Structure devolves from Style. Tricky - thus I think that without a "long form" explanation of what you are trying to achieve and thus how each "tip" fits into the objectives then the contribution is lessened.

The original objective was to write "better" programs in a new language - <USER3> very worthy objective but without analyzing what "better" means and how any component contributes to "better" then I am not clear how you have advanced things.

I laud your objectives - and was just wondering about (grin) the style.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The theory that Crows may be one of the smartest animals - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/full-episode/5977/

<comment><USER2> I love the crows that drop nuts in crosswalks & retrieve the yummy treats after they've been run over by cars. That they learned to use crosswalks to get a break in traffic cycles rather than dropping them in the middle of the intersection is just awesome. Clever little critters they are.</comment>


Analytics for startups: What should I track? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mixpanel.com/2009/03/analytics-for-startups-what-should-i-track/

<comment><USER2> At a bare minimum you should have Google Analytics integrated into your site before beta starts. Its simply too powerful to avoid doing. (If you hate the idea of the borg having your data, I suggest getclicky.com , but it is grossly inferior for tracking conversions currently.)

I'd suggest everyone read the Startup Metrics for Pirates presentation, which is a work of awe-inspiring genius. Seriously. Read it, make money. It took me probably 18 months to learn as much doing thing the long way as this presentation will teach you.

[http://www.slideshare.net/Startonomics/startup-metrics- for-p...](http://www.slideshare.net/Startonomics/startup-metrics-for-pirates- presentation)

Anyhow:

Identify your key conversions early. Track the heck out of them. Hint: does money change hands? If yes, its a key conversion.

Then build backwards to things which are necessary prerequisites for your money conversions. In my case, I sell software. The majority of sales happen as a result of free trials. Accordingly, I track the free trials. I also track successful installs of the free trials. Those numbers should be roughly proportional and periodically increasing or I'm doing it wrong.

Incidentally, the problem with data is that there is too much of it. Analytics will _drown you in data_ if you let it. Get in the habit of not looking at anything that doesn't have the prospect of an _actionable decision you can use to increase business value_ from it. For example, I could tell you what percentage of German users use Firefox, but knowing that doesn't help me sell software, so I don't slice data that way.

<comment><USER3> Re: "hating the borg having all your data". If the budget has an extra 4-5K in it, the GA can be replaced with its standalone version - Urchin.

<http://www.google.com/urchin/index.html>

<comment><USER4> I'm a big fan of Mint - no, not the financial app.

<http://haveamint.com>

$30 and tons of plugins... does a great job giving us the type of data we really only have time to care about. I run both GA and Mint, but Mint provides real-time data and better referrer links so we can dig deeper into sites and find comments about our products/us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.carsonified.com/dropsend-sale/things-potential- bu...](http://www.carsonified.com/dropsend-sale/things-potential-buyers-are- asking-about-dropsend)

</comment><comment><USER6> Common sense says to track absolutely _everything_. Flickr (care of Cal Henderson) have written extensively about metrics and analysis.

A framework that lets you track the results of A/B variate (or bucket) testing helps for trying new things, too.

</comment><comment><USER7> as a startup you shouldn't track anything beyond the basics(i.e. # of users)...finish the website first...add the features....then when you have nothing to do, you can focus on doing all that a/b testing. If you spend the time building that prior to launch, you are wasting your time.

<comment><USER8> Two can play at that game!

As a startup you should build the smallest test case for your product, test it, and iterate as the data comes in. That means data collection and analysis from day 1.

<comment><AUTHOR> ++jfarmer, btw you need to write more, I miss it =)</comment></comment></comment>


The big data disaster  - <AUTHOR> http://thejonathanmacdonald.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-big-data-disaster.html

<comment><USER2> "Big Data" has an identity crisis ... everyone you ask has "Big Data" but I've heard it used to describe 200K (yes thousand) rows of data. I've also seen terabytes of data successfully stored in an SQL database. I think "Big Data" needs a divorce.

We've always had data that defied structure, but now (with NoSQL, map-reduce, etc) we have a better idea of how to deal with it. We've still got data processing tasks that can easily be parallelized and others that are inherently linear.

Amazingly, when you actually have "Big Data", you need to analyze how best you could process it and architect your systems and software based on the facets listed above. In a corporate BI environment, you should know what questions you're trying to answer before you start. Unfortunately, in a research environment you don't always know what you're looking for.

We're trying to bring research scientists and computer scientists to optimize how data is analyzed at the Penn State University ... check out @HackingScience on Twitter.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, you're absolutely right. For a lot of people, big data means Hadoop. For others, it means NoSQL. What I really think it means is just having all of your data in one live, accessible and analytics-ready place. That means logs, customer info, geographic info, demographic data, weather patterns, and just about anything you could ever think of.

I like to think that big data is more about aggregating the information available in multiple datasets, and then figuring out how you can read those entrails, as it were.

Honestly, big data today is mostly about a potential replacement for data warehouses. The real revolution around big data is that we now have a place to put it for analysis. That was a big hole that Hadoop filled. Now, the next 10 years will be spent actually figuring out how to analyze these big pools of data effectively. Frankly, that's the harder task, I think.

We now have the ability to ask questions of ALL the data. Too bad we have no clue what the questions should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I do think the big data promise is overblown. Looking at my local grocery store, the american one is always trying to collect my phone number and tie it to my purchases. That will give them an edge more than what they have to pay their multi-million dollar IT budget to satisfy this? The store is barely filled during peak times.

Meanwhile, the asian grocery store down the road has old credit card terminals and no phone tracking or other gimmicky crap. They sell cheap vegetables and are PACKED and are huge and they rent out their space to other vendors, Walmart style. No place to move in peak shopping time. This is because of their greater selection and vastly lower prices.

There are other factors, but I don't think keeping track of what everyone buys will give them some insight to raising prices on a few items.

The IT edge was realized by companies like Walmart and Costco in their supply side and inventory, I don't think big data will give them a similar edge which is what they are aiming for. Like Target gave targeted advertisement to pregnant women, will that edge really vastly offset their number crunching IT costs?

<comment><USER5> Being packed or not has no relation to profit.

If they can increase their revenue by 10%, and it cost them 5% of their revenue to do, then it's worth it.

You're missing what they'd do with that data.

Keeping track of what you buy means they can email/text/whatever to say 'hey, this %reallyinterstingthing% is on offer'. And really interesting thing really is interesting to you.

It's like an article I read a while back about how supermarkets can predict if you're pregnant by the things you're buying before you've even told anyone.

That's valuable to them, although extremely creepy. They can start bombarding you with vitamin supplement adverts or books or whatever and you're more likely to buy as you actually want those things.

<comment><USER6> I get those texts, emails, and mailings. They all go right in the trash. Why should you discount something someone is predisposed to buy anyway? You should raise the price instead.

<comment><USER7> The point of discounts, coupons, etc. isn't to get you to buy, it's to build very comprehensive data on the demand elasticity curves of each good they sell.

If you've taken an introductory microeconomics course, you'll remember that almost all the models of a "rational" firm involve maximizing profit by picking a price point where people still buy yet will pay a maximum price per unit. How firms determine that demand curve is left as an exercise - it's assumed that firms who get it right will survive while firms that don't will go out of business, leaving only firms who get it right. This is cold comfort if you're a business owner and want _your_ firm to get it right.

So what do the big retailers do? They A/B test. They divide customers into two groups (say, those who have a Safeway card and those who don't) and offer a different price to each. Then they measure how much of each good people will buy at each price, and presumably do some statistical corrections for demographics, the "sale" effect (where people buy whatever's on sale regardless of price), folks who won't use coupons no matter how cheap, etc. They end the sale, and then pick a different price next month. Over time, they build up extensive data about just how high they can raise their prices before people stop buying entirely.

So when you ignore the discount, that's Mission Fucking Accomplished for the store. It's telling them that the discount doesn't matter, and you'll buy regardless, and so they should try raising the price instead. They don't care about the _sale_ , they care about the _data_ , so that they can make more money from all their other customers.

<comment><USER8> Honest, you just kind of blew my mind. I find it hard to believe they actually do that though?

<comment><USER7> I've never worked at a brick & mortar retailer, so I can't know for sure. I know _for sure_ that online retailers do this - a few have been caught showing different prices to different customers, or to the same customer in different browsers. I'd be _very_ surprised if Walmart/Target/Safeway/CVS/etc. don't - what else is the point of the "rewards card" if not to gather detailed data? Why do they seemingly have a different "everyday low price" every month?

<comment><USER9> While I think you're right re:data (got my up vote for that!), Safeway club card is a bad example- 1) it's basket-wide and 2) almost everyone uses it. SW CC is good old fashioned price discrimination, which is designed to capture producer surplus from customers whose willingness to pay is greater than the market price. Many other examples incl. airline tickets: the extra charge for first or for a flexible ticket isn't because it costs that much to keep your spot flexible in their model, it's simply to price discriminate and be able to charge as high as the market will pay. Nothing wrong with it, but the key difference is that the sale itself does matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Social was a hot topic. Mobile and tablets are a hot topic and big data will become a hot topic.

Did many dive head first into the social and mobile bandwagon? Sure. But to say there is no bandwagon or profit to be made in these niches is not realistic.

Everyone knows there is a hype, but that hype is based on reality. Big consumer data already has a value per GB.

Some say Big Data is just Business Intelligence over a large amount of data. I don't disagree and I see a solid future for BI.

Managers and consultants should prepare for the big data storm that is to come. Learn about the possibilities and impossibilities of cloud computing and Hadoop. I believe in a few years even tech-savy consumers (who now own an iPad) are able to use Big Data on their own data. Anyone can already rent a few Amazon resources to compute, and work with technology invented at Google a few years ago (MapReduce, BigTable). Or if you don't want to reinvent the wheel, go for Big Data as a Service, like Cloudera or Splunk.

In exchange for discounts, consumers will hand over their data to companies for free. Coordinates or purchasing behaviour: everything gets stored. Companies are busy exporting old data from tapes, so they can run completer aggregate queries.

When more big data analysts emerge, some companies will be ready: They'll have datawarehouses filled with data. If you do not invest in big data, you'll soon lose your competitive edge in regards to BI and consumer data.

The people that are extolling the virtues of big data are usually external consultants. They were the same that told companies to focus on mobile apps, and before that, to create a social presence. You can rail against that, but that is merely an epiphenomenon of every hype: Not what is really about.

All big tech companies are preparing for the future of big data (Amazon, Akamai, IBM, Microsoft). Facebook has the largest known Hadoop cluster in the world (over 100PB). Google might process around 25PB of data each day...

</comment><comment><USER11> "Whether you agree with my thesis or not, please keep my predictions in mind as you read through the papers. Look at the pages of the business news today (whatever day it is you read this). Which company is showing one of the five predictions to be true? I bet you there is one."

For any five predictions that are even remotely possible, any business newspaper from any day in history will contain at least one example of a company that meets one of those predictions.

<comment><USER12> Dunno, I need a Big Data setup to crunch stats over all the newspaper articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Eventually we'll have enough data on big data startups that we'll be able to algorithmically create better big data startups, so the problem really fixes itself.

</comment><comment><USER14> huh?

for me "big data" is the emergence of scalable tools for handling data sets that are much bigger than you can handle with one computer. (ex. Hadoop)

there's definitely a feeding frenzy here because the spend on hardware could get high (say 200 powerful servers), therefore the spend on associated software and services could be high too.

a few issues stalk big data

for any IT project there's the issue of how much value you can create per bit. Imagine Facebook has a $10 ARPU, for instance. They can't afford to use more than $10 a year worth of hardware and electricity to offer you the service.

Thus, if your "big data" project is going to cost $500,000 you ought to have a plan to create more than that in value.

often the best way to deal with "big" data is to make it small. I had my eyes on a 50 TB data set a few months ago but didn't have the budget to work with the whole thing.

I realized I could take a statistical sample of just 50 GB which I could download to my house and process on my cluster here. I can't get an accurate answer to ~every~ possible question with my 50GB sample, but I got answers to the most pressing questions and discovered that a 1 TB sample would be good enough for the toughest questions I wanted to ask.

<comment><USER15> I'm curious what those 50TB were of. I don't know of many datasets of that size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Big data" technologies just help you perform data analysis on larger datasets. It can be anything from calculating some average to building advanced statistical models. If you are claiming it's useless then you're either claiming 1) that larger datasets don't add any value or 2) that data analysis in general is useless. It is not clear to me from the article which one the author claims. Either way, it reads like some unsubstantiated rant about a perceived buzzword.

</comment><comment><USER17> TLDR: Mining big data collected on users won't boost the ability of companies to sell products to the degree big data proponents claim.

This article is garbage since it totally discounts all the other uses of big data. I, for one, work in the risk analytics sector where 'big data' is mined to try and identify which assets have the biggest impact in a risk profile.

<comment><USER4> Risk analytics has always been an area for data crunching. It is not new and will benefit from big data advances. I think the argument is how far do you get until you have financially limiting diminishing returns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Big data means so many things to so many different people, I can't decipher what positive statements are being made here.

<comment><USER19> It can easily be construed as broad-sweeping and baseless collection of user data, specifically in the hopes of somehow monetizing it.

It is baseless because it is passive and without direction.

I'm not bashing it, as a matter of fact it excites me as a programmer.

<comment><USER18> Thanks, the article makes more sense when I read it with that definition of big data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I, for one, completely reject the author's claims. He must be wrong just by the simple fact that he is not citing enough data to back up his predictions. Definitely needs a better forecasting model.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a just discussion of the hype cycle, you can apply the very general rules to almost any technology. No new insight here, it feels like link bait.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is gibberish.

</comment><comment><USER23> Since no-one else has mentioned it, surely the prediction is number 4 (allegations of fraud after the acquisition of a big-data company) and the company in question was purchased by a well-known printer manufacturer with the same name as a popular table sauce?

Edit to add: On re-reading the article I see that I misunderstood a general statement for a rhetorical denouement. Still, the example I gave is a strong one, although not a prediction since it already happened (indeed, it may have prompted this very blog post.)

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's my big data trap motto: "a 1% lift of zero is zero".

What I mean by that is you can optimize one or several values to death, but if the core product is broken, you'll still lose all of your customers. So while you'll get a 1% lift over control for making the button blue over green, what you failed to notice is that the product sucks.

Big data (née "Business Intelligence"?) has its place, but beware of it becoming your entire product strategy.

</comment><comment><USER25> Very, very little actual facts - but maybe I missed something?

</comment><comment><USER26> It says the decision is binary...but after reading the article I have no idea what is the 1 and what is the 0?

Not very clear on what he's talking about.

</comment><comment><USER27> > Abracadabra. Magic isn't it?

This post should be called "The No Data Blog Disaster" for assuming we are mind readers.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's funny how all the business media (e.g. Harvard Business review last month, the latest MIT Sloan issue...) bring the hype with Big Data and Hadoop as some sort of magical software that will solve all their problems, better, faster and cheaper, when instead, in most cases it is an overkill solution.

</comment><comment><USER29> I always define big data as, too big for excel spreadsheets.

<comment><USER30> There is MPI add-on for Excel, which allow to work with huge spreadsheets on HPC clusters, developed originally for some Swiss Investment bank. So Excel does scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Seems to me that the problem you're describing is one of confusing the tool for the task, rather than the tool being over-hyped.

</comment><comment><USER32> luks like its all full of big claims without substantial reasoning :S ... or mebbe i dint read it right :(

</comment><comment> d--b what is big data ?

<comment><USER33> it's when you need at least 2 computers to make a chart</comment></comment>


0 to 20,000 Email Alerts in 2 Months  - <AUTHOR> http://blendah.com/post/36990047138/the-journey-starts-here

<comment><USER2> It looks useful but it doesn't seem to be compatible with my phone. Is there a mobile app? Can you share with us how you implemented this?

<comment><USER3> I'm not the OP, but...

> Can you share with us how you implemented this?

1) Perform Criagslist search

2) Use his provided bookmarklet which sends the current URL to his site -- writing that bookmarklet is just a JavaScript one-liner, probably

3) Every CL search page has a link to an RSS feed, so pull that feed URL out of the search page the bookmarklet sent in

4) Have a cron job periodically fetch the feed and use MagpieRSS, which he linked to, to parse it and get a list of search results

5) Compare the results to what you saw last time the feed was fetched, and if there are new ones, use MailJet to send an alert e-mail to the user. Include LaunchBit's snippet to show ads and earn some money from these mails

<comment><AUTHOR> Bingo Dan!

btw.. checking out <http://www.improvely.com> now :)</comment></comment></comment>


How we got rid of 80% of our support calls - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dinkevich.com/outside-the-ab-testing-box/

<comment><USER2> what about trying A/B testing in addition ? a 80% decrease is great but additional 1-2% can go a long way</comment>


Passbook: Not the Product It Could've Been - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/10/27/why-i-want-to-strangle-everyone-involved-with-passbook/ <comment><USER2> I'd say this would be a fair criticism of a v2 or v3 product, but at v1, I think we can give either starbucks or apple a pass on not having this integration worked out.

I would expect that the user would reload the card with passbook, if that is the method of payment, rather than the stores app, but not being a passbook user (I barely use iOS), maybe I'm missing something.</comment>


Automata by Example – build cellular automata just by clicking around - <AUTHOR> https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by-example/ <comment><USER2> Good idea, but badly needs a "wildcard" pattern and some way to generate rules by rotation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Epilepsy trigger warning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, sorry, some of the patterns can get a bit flashy, especially when they have rules like all black pixels -> white + all white pixels -> black.

If it helps, the slider down the bottom controls the speed. Or here are a few patterns that are certified non-flashy:

Expanding squares: [https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by- example/?1=1a&26=10&...](https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by- example/?1=1a&26=10&c8=10&100=b0&127=10&1c9=10)

Diamond: [https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by- example/?2=10&49=10&...](https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by- example/?2=10&49=10&80=10&cb=10&124=10&1a6=10)

Rule 30: [https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by- example/?1=10&2=10&4...](https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by- example/?1=10&2=10&4=10&6=10)

<comment><USER4> It's very cool, but you should put an actual red-letter epilepsy warning at the top of the page if you want to keep those flashy patterns. Or else don't offer the faster rates.

This could definitely trigger some of the epileptics I've known.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good thought, thanks. I've added an epilepsy warning that triggers when you have both full-white and full-black rules enabled: [https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by- example/?0=10&1ff=10](https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by- example/?0=10&1ff=10)

<comment><USER4> Bravo, well done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just yesterday I came across a similar tool by Loren Schmidt, where you can generate CAs by choosing one to evolve a new generation from.

[http://vacuumflowers.com/cellular_automata/rules.html](http://vacuumflowers.com/cellular_automata/rules.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Writeup here: [https://samgentle.com/posts/2017-01-14-automata-by- example](https://samgentle.com/posts/2017-01-14-automata-by-example)

</comment><comment><USER6> Made a fractal by accident O_O [https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by- example/?10=100&11=9...](https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by- example/?10=100&11=94) [https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by- example/?10=152](https://demos.samgentle.com/automata-by-example/?10=152)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is really cool, however I often have it graying out rules I made for what seems like no reason? Its not when I have a rule for that beginning permutation again.

EDIT: I just noticed its when I pass through a rule I already had while drawing, it doesn't reset the grey after the rule has been changed

</comment><comment><USER8> After spending some time attempting to emulate wireworld, I think you would need at least a 4x4 rule grid, though at most a 9x6 grid (6x3 to encode a 2-bit 3x3 grid, plus padding just in case). Can you get a "nice" turing- complete ruleset out of this?

</comment><comment><USER9> Pretty cool, after some clicking around I ended up with a Sierpinski triangle generator.

<comment><USER10> Me too. Interesting how many ways you can get to Sierpinski-ish geometry.</comment></comment>


Two Dogmas of Empiricism (1951) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html <comment><USER2> I find it a little bit sad that the only thing most people know about Quine is source code outputting programs.

Quine was probably the most influential post war analytical philosopher. 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' is his most famous work but when I read it as an undergraduate I felt it was somewhat rooted in its time (being a reaction against the dominant ideas of early 20th century empiricism). However, when I read a couple of his later works on the deflationary theory of truth (Quine's version was 'disquotationalism') it was like I had suddenly grasped some truth that had always existed just beyond understanding and only needed someone smarter than me to point out. Donald Davidson would then go on to develop these ideas with more clarity.

In a bizarre way Quine is responsible for my current profession (Software engineer) - I got interested in computer languages as a result of studying the Philosophy of Language during my Philosophy undergraduate degree.</comment>


Architect explains why new LA housing is aimed at "luxury" buyers - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_architect_in_la_specializing_in_multifamily/ <comment><USER2> The thing is, as new luxury housing is built, existing housing becomes cheaper. Eventually the older developments become "affordable" because all the wealthy buyers want the trendy new places. There are some exceptions e.g. gentrification but that tends to happen only in areas with good location, and architecturally interesting but run-down structures. Most developments are not that. They just get cheaper as they get older.

<comment><USER3> Actually you're completely wrong. It doesn't make anything cheaper at all. There is absolutely no shortage and there are more than enough people to occupy the older buildings. Its very rare from someone to go from an old building to a new one, it usually costs MUCH more. A 1 bedroom in brentwood is about $2000 a month in an old building, in a new building expect to pay 50%+ more. AT LEAST.</comment></comment>


Coinbase launches its own index for the top 50 coins - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/coinbase-bundles-asset-pages/ <comment><USER2> Let's hope they're also selling put options on said index.</comment>


This is not what Twitter is for - <AUTHOR> http://www.andrewmager.com/2008/06/13/this-is-not-what-twitter-is-for/ <comment><USER2> There is nothing wrong with re-purposing either Twitter or any other service for that matter - as long as it does not involve crazy marketing #$%@#&.</comment>


300 pounds needed for Shen to become BSD licensed - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qilang/fZZvPzCTVyA The objective to convert Shen to BSD is very near, a pledge of 300 pounds is needed:<p>https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qilang/fZZvPzCTVyA <comment><USER2> I've been extremely impressed by Shen, but have been holding off because of the license.

I'll chip in a little and hope this pulls it toward BSD, at which point I'm willing to start investing in the infrastructure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, now I feel I have done something useful posting here. (I have never bought any CS book or chip in any money to any project).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh, wow, functional programming without the oddities of Haskell syntax! I'm definitely intrigued.

What's the current licensing situation? I would prefer a copyleft license, but if it already had a free license, I don't really care if it's similar to a BSD license or not.

Edit: Ah, found it:

[http://www.shenlanguage.org/license.html](http://www.shenlanguage.org/license.html)

Wow, this looks awful. It's a vanity license with language that is very unfamiliar to me. Can a license declare something to be legal or not, isn't that for judges to decide, not licenses? It has a bunch of weird clauses that I don't want to try to understand, and Wikipedia claims this is GPL- incompatible and non-free software.

Yuck.

Yeah, ok, I'm kinda interested in a free license now.

<comment><USER4> The current license is a totally impossible custom one. It tries to say the same things at least 3 times each, resulting in an uninterpretable mess, with ambiguities decided by the author, and after his death a committee. E.g. he's stated that you cannot make public an unfinished implementation. There's also the minor detail that his promises pertaining to money are worthless if they prove to be inconvenient.

The concept of the license is OK, the author wants a "Write Once, Run Anywhere" landscape where you can't break the spec and therefore other people's code, but the implementation is bad enough a lot of people including myself gave up on investing in the language and ecosystem.

<comment><AUTHOR> The author was looking for help to develop a minimal battery of tests that any new implementation should have to pass, but there were no voluntaries. Anyway, I think that becoming BSD can help to gather more souls.

<comment><USER4> Before I checked out of the project he was talking about a test suite, but was firm on not changing the license.

If it goes through, it would indeed make a drastic change, although it could take a long time before the brand damage is repaired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There are versions of Shen in javascript, sbcl, ruby, java, python, scheme, clojure and haskell ([http://www.shenlanguage.org/download_form.html](http://www.shenlanguage.org/download_form.html))

The basic idea is to construct a kernel with 40 functions in such a way that the language is easily portable. With those 40 functions Shen is like a mixture of Lisp, prolog and typep racket.

I should like to see a version of Shen in Nim.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is money needed to achieve this licensing goal?

<comment><USER6> I just looked at older conversations on the mailing list, I think this provides a bit of explanation:

[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/qilang/HBBjtIxegFY/Wmv3Lh1IR...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/qilang/HBBjtIxegFY/Wmv3Lh1IRwsJ)

<comment><USER7> Why does he need a lawyer to do a BSD license?

<comment><USER4> He used an estimate of what it would take to have a lawyer draft a new licence to price simply changing it to BSD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They have a committee with the chairman, vice-chairman and deputy vice- chairman; but does anyone actually use this language?

</comment><comment><USER4> The BSD total has been achieved: [https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/qilang/e4-PcL2...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/qilang/e4-PcL2K2WQ)

tl;dr: in a couple of weeks version 17 will be released with the usual bug fixes etc. and BSD licensed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why does it cost money to get BSD licensed? I am not sure -- who actually gets the money from this drive? For fundraising, there certainly isn't a lot of information. I am very ignorant about this particular domain, so please excuse me!

<comment><AUTHOR> I just copied a post from the Shen group: I've now begun collecting on the pledges. £2583.52 was pledged, but I'll honour my side as soon as I've collected £2500, which should be reached if people keep to their pledges. You can follow the progress on [http://www.shenlanguage.org/total.htm](http://www.shenlanguage.org/total.htm).

All the money is being used to systematically upgrade stlib; instituting a series of monographs in computer science documenting the library. The first is in graph theory.

Mark

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those wondering about Shen, this Strange Loop talk gives a taste of it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMcRBdSdO_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMcRBdSdO_U)

</comment><comment><USER11> What is this?

<comment><USER12> [http://www.shenlanguage.org/](http://www.shenlanguage.org/)

> Shen is a portable functional programming language that offers pattern > matching, lambda calculus consistency, macros, optional lazy evaluation, > static type checking, an integrated fully functional Prolog, and an inbuilt > compiler-compiler.

> Shen has one of the most powerful type systems within functional > programming. Shen runs under a reduced instruction Lisp and is designed for > portability. The word 'Shen' is Chinese for 'spirit' and our motto reflects > our desire to liberate our work to live under many platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.shenlanguage.org/shenbsd.htm](http://www.shenlanguage.org/shenbsd.htm)</comment>


IoT framework appears first on Rasbperry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://linuxgizmos.com/internet-of-things-framework-appears-first-on-a-rasbperry-pi/

<comment><USER2> From the initial description on the article page, I was expecting an ad-hoc connection protocol letting devices interact with each other. It looks to me like they are connecting devices on the local network rather than going to the cloud first (or at all).

This is very similar to a platform I've been building lately. Even the idea of a 'server' and the capabilities of that server are similar (though I only started building the server yesterday).</comment>


How Amazon Web Services Uses Formal Methods - <AUTHOR> http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/4/184701-how-amazon-web-services-uses-formal-methods/fulltext <comment><USER2> Can someone break down these buzz words? What is a "Formal Method" in laymen terms? How do they differ from other method documentation techniques? Why should I change the way I communicate my specifications, what are the benefits?

<comment><USER3> If the specs are written in a language that can be understood by a computer, the computer can be used to prove assertions about the spec (will it function correctly? does it contain any internal inconsistencies?).

More information on formal methods can be found here:

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

The formal specification language referenced in the article, TLA+, is described here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLA%2B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLA%2B)

Here are some interesting comments from an earlier submission of this article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8096185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8096185)

<comment><USER2> So it's doctest [0] from python?

Is the testing framework at amazon open sourced? I really like doctest and wish there were more implementations of this for other languages.

If not, than that is unfortunate. If I can't see the implementation of something, then I don't really consider it "tangible," so that makes a lot of this "academic-enriched" information unusable for me.

[0] [https://docs.python.org/2/library/doctest.html](https://docs.python.org/2/library/doctest.html)

<comment><USER3> From the description, doctest seems more like a kind of unit test: it makes sure that the test cases embedded in the doc string return the correct values when run. But you can't _prove_ that the a function works correctly just by running a few test cases (or even a lot of test cases) - doctest has no representation of the function, so it can't reason about how the function is supposed to work (let alone the system as a whole). For example, it can't tell if the arguments passed to this function by another function will always conform to what this function expects to receive.

<comment><USER2> No, you never can. In any language, no matter the kind of specification, I can write an elaborate method to break any form of non-human verification.

Maybe I'm not getting it. It just sounds like a unit test design with extra steps. I might just need to see an example to understand how it works.

Too bad this is closed source.

<comment><USER3> The TLA+ tool that they're using is actually open source. You can read about it here (and there's a link to the source on CodePlex):

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/tla/tl...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/tla/tla.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I submit HN spam reports? - <AUTHOR>

Not found an entry in the FAQ. E.g. found a user spamming, how do I flag them for blocking/removal?<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443900 <comment><USER2>
         | link | parent | flag

click flag. It flags comment for moderation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - only visible when you view the individual comment, not the whole thread.</comment></comment>


WorldBrain - Full-text search your browsing history, bookmarks and PDFs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/WorldBrain/Research-Engine <comment><USER2> This is about the 3rd or 4th attempt at this idea since I attempted it. My effort was moderately successful:

[http://lifehacker.com/deeper-history-searches-the- contents-o...](http://lifehacker.com/deeper-history-searches-the-contents-of- visited-pages-1502340820)

[http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/chrome-deeper- history/](http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/chrome-deeper-history/)

That being said, there are serious security concerns with kind of project (which is why I stopped development) and likely why full text search was taken out of Chrome by google years ago. It is not insurmountable, by any means, but I didn't like the idea of know that if I was successful and reached a very large audience that I might also be responsible for serious identify theft and other hacks.

I'll also point out that I did collect usage stats for a time, and they were horrific. At my peak I had ~5000 installs and out of those 5k something like 3-5 searches/day was the norm.

I would be happy to share my experience with the dev team. I still have code that may be of use as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey @alistproducer2!

thanks for your comments. Yeah, we are aware that this could become an issue and will work on making it secure in the future.

Thanks for your offer to share your experience. You can write me at firstname.lastname@example.com or we have the discussion here for now. Whatever you are more comfortable with!

Best, Oliver

<comment><USER2> I'm curious about the organizational aspect of your project. that's a nut I've yet to crack. what was your strategy in building a community around your project?

<comment><AUTHOR> First, we want to make this tool really usable to the individual and gather a couple of thousand users with it.

Without the needs of an individual fulfilled, there won't form a "fact- checking" community after all.

We want to spread it by engaging in those groups on the web where fact-based discussions are happening, as well as the general science communication community. Also providing/gathering more tools and useful content that help our users to do their work more efficiently. Basically by building a content brand around collaborative web-research, fact-checking etc.

Then in further development, we make the sharing part possible, from which we think that a community will form quite organically.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Incentivized Covid contact tracing with crypto - <AUTHOR> https://cotrace.org <comment><USER2> That may work as an alternative to AppleGoogle ultimate tracking app that's in the works now, or perhaps in conjunction with the it. Impressive android app work already, given the time frame. Can I contact devs somewhere besides discord?

<comment><USER3> i think discord is where most of the technical discussion is taking place there

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Correct me if I'm wrong: The entire point of Contact Tracing model is that the database of COVID19 positive cases is highly controlled to ensure quality data. I.E. if you test positive, your doctor gives you a one-time code to upload your information.

How / why is a block chain needed for this implementation? 90% of contact tracing is already decentralized and anonymized. If anything block chain will make it easier to finger print individuals by address.

<comment><USER5> >doctor gives you a one-time code Realistically implementing this kind of system in all countries affected by COVID will take more time (arguably) then vaccine development. It's way more effective (arguably) to align financial incentives such that users are interested in providing accurate data via (self) reporting and have no incentives conversely in proving false data.

As for fingerprinting - entirely untrue, eth addresses are completely pseudonymous, in stark comparison to App Store/Play Store apps which are tied to your phone number/CC info et al.

<comment><USER4> What's to prevent anyone from saying they have Covid without a valid test?

You'll need to have verified doctors / tests to generate codes for uploading.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best place to learn about Mobile Development - <AUTHOR>

I'm really interested in learning about development for Windows Mobile.  I have Visual Studio 08 and an HTC Touch running Windows Mobile 6.1.<p>Up until this point I've been purely a web dev guy.. Mostly PHP, a little bit of ruby and python.  What resources would you suggest? <comment><USER2> There are so many ways of doing development for Windows Mobile. My own experience was developing it in Compact Framework. It's basically is a .NET Framework in slim version. It would be helpful if you know at least C# or VB.NET and some ideas on how the framework works. Have a look on this site below for some examples of apps develop using the framework. <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa145791.aspx>

Another route, I have met some people who do mobile development in C++ or wxWidgets. I think it's much steeper learning curve to jump from scripting language to there. Besides, I can't see any real benefit of going through that route UNLESS the apps that you want to develop requires an absolute level of performance. Otherwise, IMHO, the development time is not worth it.

Here are some URLs that might be helpful. <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/bb158619.aspx> <http://www.wxwidgets.org/>

Hope that helps. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Thanks for the links.

I was thinking about going the C# route, I don't think that anything I'd like to build would require the power of C++. Most of my ideas are just for simple apps. Maybe some location based features.. From what I've read C# should be able to handle that.

<comment><USER2> It should. The commercial application (www.speedalert.com.au) that I was working on in C# back then was real-time system..and location based(GPS). The only differences I can find compare to C++ system was, the start-up time and the footprint of the app. Anyway, good luck! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If possible, could you edit your post title to include "Windows" before "Mobile"? People might think to post iPhone related resources here (which is what I was going to do) and you seem to make it clear that's not what you want ;-)</comment>


Ask HN: OO book for old Python hacker? - <AUTHOR> Been using Python since v1.5, but always as a "top down" scripting language. Interested in being able to work with some libraries and would benefit from a good reference in object oriented development in Python (3).<p>Considering Fluent Python [1], but wondering if anyone can offer recommendations based on similar situations?<p>[1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032519.do <comment><USER2> This should help: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3332454/oop-python- orient...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3332454/oop-python-oriented- tutorials)

<comment><AUTHOR> Useful links. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best solution for abstracting billing in a SaaS app? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I'm currently buidling a SaaS app and looking for software to abstract away their API. I hate writing billing code, and small changes like Stripe's new webhooks[1] can end up being a pain in the arse, not to mention the tons of Stripe-specific code.
My main concern is keeping a copy of all transaction data locally, so even if Stripe went down temporarily, I wouldn't be reliant on their API. It's also important for deactivating accounts and other tasks.
It seems like Recurly[2] and Chargify[3] only support Braintree, but if I switched to Braintree from Stripe, I'd be looking at nearly $200/mo extra in overhead. OpenGateway[4] is certainly an option, but I have mixed feelings on uses non-open-source software locally.
Before this turns into a huge stream-of-consciousness post - has anyone had experience with this particular problem (not wanting to write/maintain billing API code), and are there any other well-developed solutions out there?
[1] https://stripe.com/blog/webhooks
[2] http://recurly.com/features/payment-gateway-support
[3] http://chargify.com/payment-gateways/
[4] http://www.opengateway.net/partners <comment><USER2> SaaSy.com, which is all-inclusive, avoids most of the development work and it mostly GUI based as opposed to API, in case that's of interest to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - 5.9% + $0.95 is a little pricey though. Stripe alone is 2.9% + $0.30.</comment></comment>


Should I fight the system head-on or from the inside? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently working on growing a bootstrapped tech startup in western Europe. My co-founder and myself agreed early on that despite being a for-profit on paper, we'd try to do as much "good" as we could in the process and in the event that we'd be successful and that the company would generate a large income for itself, we wanted to reinvest as much of that money as possible in other projects with an ever-increasing emphasis on ethics and positive social or environmental impact. Maybe we'd even use that money to eventually start a non-profit.
I am now second guessing this approach as a whole.
Going into this (ad)venture, my plan was to "learn to do something well first and then put it to good use". But now that I'm trying to "put it to good use" I realize there are two possible paths in front of me : A) Generating an income through our dysfunctional system in order to buy my the freedom and start my own ethical projects or B) Finding an existing non-profit that needs me and give it my all
I've read articles about this, but people always seem to forget some important factors.
Someone mentioned how stupid it would be for a lawyer who makes $1000/h to start spending time picking up trash on a beach. But what if he's paid by a huge corporation that is contributing to dumping trash in the oceans? Or what if he becomes depressed and a worse lawyer because he can't put as much passion into a job that keeps him disconnected from the results he hopes for?
In my case: what guarantee can I possibly have that the way I re-inject my income (assuming I'm not corrupted in the process) will outweigh the damage I'm causing by servicing my clients (such as banks, where a lot of the evil potentially lies)?
At which point do I just throw it all away and start surrounding myself with other ethically minded people instead of insensitive and corrupt ones? Feedback from people with similar experiences appreciated. <comment><USER2> When I started out in IT contracting, I worked for many ethically challenged companies (banks, insurance, tobacco, pharma). Very early I would not take work from clearly criminal operations, e.g. illegal gambling. I have seen that most young people start out with good intentions, but the money and power erodes their ethics. When I realised how insidiously toxic those environments are, I stopped working for any company where I did not believe in their ethical position. This had a big negative impact on my income, but I am happier for not playing a part in helping these organisations.

I have since discovered that many charities and aid organisations actually make very little difference to those that they claim to be helping. The leaders in these organisations often publicly project an ethical image of themselves, but are secretly using the organisation for their private profit. Many ethically minded people are actually vain and power hungry. Success fuels hubris.

You don't mention how much income you need for your chosen lifestyle. In my experience, our needs often limit the available options.

</comment><comment><USER3> Random advice from the internet:

Decide what type of person you want to be and do things consistent with that.

Good luck.</comment>


Weebly Partners with Hosting Provider Endurance International - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/26/weebly-web-host-endurance/

<comment><USER2> I really like what Weebly is doing, and I'm glad to see that they've found an additional revenue stream. Their builder is about as simple as it can get, and yet it will serve the needs of 90% of the people who are looking to build a simple website. More businesses should shoot for the 90% audience instead of chasing after that last 10% that want the bells, whistles, and photon canons. How often do people _think_ they want a bunch of extra features, only to find out that they never really get around to using them anyway?

</comment><comment><USER3> Are the new interstitial ads on TC blocking anyone else? My experience today has consistently been:

1) Click link to TC article, shown interstitial

2) Click 'skip this ad', taken back to same interstitial

3) Click 'skip this ad' again, taken to techcrunch.com

4) Scan headlines for the article I wanted

Its maddening, am I the only one?

<comment><USER4> Happening to me too :/</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Professional Branding and Identity for your Startup for $100 - <AUTHOR>

My friend has extraordinary skill at creating company branding and identities. He created the logo for my startup ( http://www.blabberize ) and it's been really great for our image. He recently is spending some free time between jobs and mentioned that he has been doing some sketches for fictitious companies to expand his portfolio. He finds creative work more fun than most of the high profile companies he works for. I suggested that there may be some people who would love to have the quality of his work in the startup community that may not have the resources to pay for his caliber of work. Here's a link to his portfolio:
http://www.thomas-doyle.com
He's willing to deliver a company logo for $100. All you have to provide is: 1: Name of the Company 2: Imagery that you would like incorporated and/or text 3: Your vision of what you like the logo to look like.
I'm posting this here because when I started my startup four years ago I didn't have any money to spare and I needed a logo. My friend ended up building this stellar iconic graphic that ended up being our defining image. He went on to bigger and greater things, and I felt lucky that I got to tap into his talent back when I didn't have the money and it was worth so much more. I think it anyone starting a startup would think this is a godsend. <comment><USER2> Spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was worried it would come off as spam. _shrug_

The design firm he works for does very high profile work. He expressed he enjoyed making the logo for my startup. According to him smaller companies like progressive and exciting logos. I just thought I'd post it here. Hackernews has been a great community to me and this seemed like a really nice opportunity.</comment></comment>


Show HN: DIY bzero - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ademakov/bzero <comment><USER2> "Either me or the compiler failed to use intrinsics efficiently, the hand- coded assembly produced much better results."

Still seeing this in 2017 :)</comment>


HN News Recommender v0.3 - <AUTHOR> http://normansoven.com/blog/?p=692

<comment><USER2> Would be nice to know how it works? What's it supposed to do?

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have linked to my first post on this. Sorry. <http://normansoven.com/blog/?p=651>

<comment><USER2> Ah, great, thanks! Any chance to have this in the chrome webstore for automatic updates?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I bundled the update url with the manifest, so Chrome will auto- check my website for updates from time to time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The United Nations has a radical, dangerous vision for the future of the Web - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09/24/the-united-nations-has-a-radical-dangerous-vision-for-the-future-of-the-web/ <comment></comment>


Elon Musk tweet wipes $14bn off Tesla's value - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52504187 <comment><USER2> Wait... ... _again?!?!_

After his SEC agreement expressly requires him to have his tweets vetted first, and he didn't?

What is the man thinking. He's not an idiot. Is he self-destructing? Does he have the impulse control of a 5-year-old?

He's going to lose his position on the board, for real.

And he _deserves to_ at this point.

When you run a _publicly traded corporation_ , there are rigorous rules about what you can and cannot say, and when, to _ensure a fair playing field for investors._ The same way there are rigorous rules against insider trading.

If he wants to act irresponsibly, then he should have kept Tesla a private company.

Seriously. The guy is simply not exhibiting the mental self-control to run a _publicly_ traded corporation. It's becoming clear he simply can't do the job as is required, no matter how smart he may otherwise be.

<comment><USER3> At this point, I'm fairly sure he either has a cyclic mental illness causing him to be reckless in waves; is incredibly sleep-deprived to the point of executive function broadly going sideways; or has a serious problem with tweeting (and apparently earnings calls) while on stuff.

It's possibly all three.

Whatever the case, it resembles a lot what my ADHD did when it was completely unmanaged and at peak. But I didn't have a few billion dollars to make people have to put up with me. It definitely smells like impulse control/executive function in some way or the other.

<comment><USER4> It's his life. Why do you want it to be controlled to your ideals?

<comment><USER5> If I was a Tesla investor my answer would be because that's what he signed up for when he took Tesla public.

<comment><USER6> What about the investors that want an unfiltered Elon and believe that's part of the package deal?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "We view these Musk comments as tongue in cheek and it's Elon being Elon. > It's certainly a headache for investors for him to venture into this area as > his tweeting remains a hot button issue and [Wall] Street clearly is > frustrated,"

I'm sorry, whose fault is it that Wall Street react to tweets? I mean really, If I'm long on Tesla (I'm not, I own none of their stock unless it's somehow tied up in my 401K) am I selling all my stock because Elon said he thinks it's too high? No, that would be stupid. Sounds like day traders/HFT's are the ones that choose to react to this stuff and then get burned and I have zero compassion for that. Live by the sword...

<comment><USER2> > _am I selling all my stock because Elon said he thinks it 's too high? No, > that would be stupid._

Literally nobody knows more about what's happening at Tesla than Elon Musk does. If he thinks it's too high, that's _incredibly_ material information.

It's entirely rational to think it's equivalent to "I saw the non-public reports of sales projections and turns out they're plummeting" or something similar.

And therefore that Tesla is overvalued and you ought to sell, and buy back again only when it's at a price that takes that into account.

It's Wall Street's _job_ to react to _all publicly available information_ at the _moment it becomes available_. Statements by a CEO are very much included in that.

What the heck do day traders or swords have to do with it? Stock prices are determined mainly by large funds, like the ones that invest people's pensions.

<comment><USER8> To be fair TSLA is insanely priced, it was overpriced at ~250 and has only grown exuberantly this year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 1, 2020_

Did his fortune cookie say "When you can not _be free to_ do things, _be free from_ things instead" or what? ><

His vision for and achievements with both Tesla and SpaceX are amazing but I am afraid that one day one of these shenanigans will be his undoing which would be pretty sad because I really want to see Mars colonization happening.

<comment> 2019-nCoV Once you reach Musk levels of wealth can you imagine how paralysing possessions are?

Most become enamoured with distractions as their means rise. But instead of choosing colours for the kitchen renovation or which BMW defines them as a person, we're talking about how many sprawling villas to build and which private tropical island to buy to build them on.

An ascetic approach will increase the odds of Musk seeing Mars in his lifetime.

<comment><USER10> > An ascetic approach will increase the odds of Musk seeing Mars in his > lifetime.

I doubt the few millions he would make from selling possessions make a big difference when compared to the billions in Tesla and SpaceX.

<comment><USER9> Your parent comment is saying that reducing cognitive load by parting with things irrelevant to the goal of reaching Mars will improve the odds of success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, I just visited [https://twitter.com/elonmusk](https://twitter.com/elonmusk) and...

"Tesla stock price is too high imo" is one of the tamer tweets.

> I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.

> Now give people back their FREEDOM

> Rage, rage against the dying of the light of consciousness

(OK, the last one is apparently a quote from a poem, still...)

Sound more like tweets of a Hollywood celebrity who had one too many glasses of martini...

<comment><USER12> Clearly he's having a lot of fun and saying wierd things - which is fine.

But the Tesla statement is way crazier than the rest because it's a material statement about the potential future earnings of the company.

Musk is a 'deep insider' who knows 'everything' about the company. When he says 'the stock is overvalued' \- what does that really mean?

Did Tesla just lose a huge market? Was there a big accident we don't know about? Is there some huge hidden liability? Are sales forecasts way down? Did a deal fall through? Are they getting sued?

He's the CEO so those statements really matter.

I think we can give him a lot of leeway and expect that he say some funny things.

But when people give him billions of dollars ... he can't mess around with that, it's irresponsible. Especially since he's already in trouble with the SEC. It eats away at his credibility.

<comment><USER13> > _But the Tesla statement is way crazier than the rest because it 's a > material statement about the potential future earnings of the company._

The tweet does not say anything material about earnings past, present, or future. Your statement is a false one.

<comment><USER12> Valuation is a function of future earnings.

Saying something about the 'stock price' is 100% saying something about the financial situation of the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Deus Ex profile pic is appropriate because I'm increasingly unsure if Elon Musk isn't doing some kind of decade long performance art piece as a real- world Bob Page.

<comment><USER15> Why contain it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It makes more sense if this is viewed as Musk's way of manipulating the mainstream media into paying attention to his reopening stance and in the process change public opinion about the reopening perhaps. Losing some stock valuation with possible SEC fine is a small price to pay if the states do get reopened sooner and people are happily back to work again and the economy at least somewhat goes back to normal.

He can tweet as if he has gone mad or something. In one way or another it's all a facade. I would buy more into this possibility than that he is unaware of the consequences of his tweets or is actually in some sort of mentally unstable state right now. All look very theatrical for me.

The "my girlfriend is mad at me" part actually made me snicker a little. I think that is something many people can relate to. Also, there appears to be more americans joining the reopen camp as the whole debate shifts to freedom vs authoritarian.

Or you can also argue that he is being irrational in a rational way.

<comment><USER17> I don't think acting like a crazy person screaming on the street corner is the best way to persuade people that your ideas are smart and rational. It's not like he needs to draw attention to the cause, there is literally no other issue besides virus occupying the public imagination right now. You seem very desperate to find any excuse, no matter how preposterous, to justify Musk's behavior. Why is that the case?

<comment><USER16> It is to evoke empathy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, everybody here seems to talk about first amendment, stock price and whatnot, completely ignoring the content of his statement. Hes a billionaire who wants his workers to get back to work, irrespective of their health. Dafuq. HN is such a boot licking community sometimes.

Go ahead, downvote me

</comment><comment><USER19> Given the little slap on the wrist from the SEC for his "we're going private at $420, man, yeah, funding secured" outburst, he will face no repercussions for this, and this'll all be forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have to wonder if his tweets are actually pre-screened per the prior SEC violation settlement. Sure seems like not with something like this appearing.

<comment><USER21> The Wall Street Journal says:

> _Asked later if the tweet was vetted or made in jest, the CEO said: "No."_

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-stock-falls-after-ceo- twe...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-stock-falls-after-ceo-tweets-stock- is-too-high-11588348672)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The environment is unimaginably stressful. Close your eyes for a moment, and imagine the voices.

It's possible tomorrow that he wakes up, and gets on with it. It being: well, he's pretty much defined what it is over the past 10+ years. It's humbling and exciting. He is the best of us. I hope that happens.

<comment><USER23> If Elon "Pedo Guy" Musk is the best of us then that's pretty depressing.

<comment><USER22> Sure. But you've got to score folks some way or another; and one way that sounds fair is if your value system results in humans landing on the moon.

If you critique everyone that way, then you've got at least two very opposed value systems to talk about today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> kalium-xyz Is this this what mainstream appeal is now?

</comment><comment><USER24> Maybe Elon is regularly scaring speculators away from Tesla stock so that only strong believers remain. Strong stock holders allow higher P/E ratios.

</comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone still take _anything_ he says seriously?

<comment><USER21> Yes. He has many ardent followers who take what he says to heart.

<comment><USER26> Yes, he's been spouting off about the deaths from COVID being artificially inflated and I see a ton of people starting to agree with him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was hopping this followed his retarded "FREE AMERICA NOW" tweet, but of course, how naive of me.

</comment><comment><USER28> Discussed earlier [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23043771](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23043771)</comment>


11 things I learned abt academia by analysing 14 mil. RateMyProfessor reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.academiaobscura.com/11-things-learned-academia-analysing-14-million-ratemyprofessor-reviews/ <comment><USER2> If I put in "understand", female professors outrank males in Physics! But this is for both positive and negative reviews. What the heck does it all mean? Can female professors be both better and worse at explaining Physics concepts?

[http://benschmidt.org/profGender/#](http://benschmidt.org/profGender/#)</comment>


Aviator: locally launch a service and all its dependent services - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.clever.com/2015/04/08/aviator-locally-launch-a-service-and-all-its-dependent-services/

<comment><USER2> The problem of keeping this kind of configuration up-to-date is an interesting one. I'm curious if anyone has tried encoding the local development configuration in how they run integration tests so that it never falls out of date.

</comment><comment><USER3> > $ npm run-script dev-server

> Starting Website

> [ERROR]

I'd start with crushing the soul of whomever didnt put in quality logging (debug package). Next I'd cry about my lack of debugger knowledge for nodejs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of [https://github.com/ddollar/foreman](https://github.com/ddollar/foreman)

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how Netflix addresses this- looking at their Hystrix page they have tons and tons of microservices...

<comment><USER5> (page is [https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki](https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki)) <\-- this is not the way they handle it, just has a good image showing how crazy the number of microservices they handle is

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems like a useful tool for managing a complex service configuration problem. Nice work.</comment>


Moscow police were sold fake CCTV cameras, streaming recordings. - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/15/moscow_cctv_fake_feed/

<comment><USER2> This fraud needs to be perpetuated on a wider scale, imo. Anything to slow down the slide into a surveillance society.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note: the company claims they were hacked by competitors.

I know Russian police is stupid, and they compensate for their stupidity in brutality and corruption, but I think even they would have noticed a fake feed. You know, it's snowing outside and the camera shows daylight... pretty easy to notice. I would side with the company and would claim one of the competitors hacked them, then bribed someone in the police department to make a stink => Profit.

<comment> ZLOB-o-ZLOB No. Actually that company was trying to hack its competitors in addition to selling fake cameras. Also, feed wasn't under real-time monitoring, it was pulled once in hour or something like that, it hard to find details even in Russian news.

And there is an error in publication: Yury Luzhkov isn't a former Mayor, he is still in charge (and won't retire in next decade, I think).

<comment><USER4> Unrelated: Is your last name Zlob*? Because mine is, and that's weird.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "were sold"

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed, thanks :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Except that the mayor is not "former".</comment>


HAProxy 2.1: Supercharged Performance and a Streamlined Codebase - <AUTHOR> https://www.haproxy.com/blog/haproxy-2-1/ <comment><USER2> FastCGI support looks very promising and could significantly take away market share from Nginx frontending php-fpm and other deployments.

<comment><USER3> Are there many applications that still use FastCGI nowadays? I was under the impression that this was a deprecated technology but maybe that's because I'm too young.</comment></comment>


Covid-19 precautions for Stripe employees and customers - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/covid-19 <comment><USER2> I guess one good thing of this panic is that a lot of companies will realize they can do a lot more remote work than they were doing, which is a great thing for the planet.

<comment><USER3> For us in Hong Kong, the effect of working from home was the fact that revenues and productivity plummeted, and we are now forced to take one day of unpaid leave per week while still putting in 40 hours a week and taking a 20% pay cut for the privilege.

Just sharing as a perspective on why some people may feel that work from home may not be a great idea.

<comment><USER4> Any idea why productivity dropped that much?

<comment><USER5> I suspect that a lot of the "productivity drop" in general is a result of trying to measure productivity for remote workers but not office workers. If someone is in the office, managers commonly assume they're working, even if they're spending most of the day faffing around on the internet. If they're at home, you can't see what they're doing so you try to measure it by results. Which shows that they're only doing a couple hours of real work in a day, which gets called a productivity drop even though it was just the baseline.

I mean think about it. If people were less productive then to do the same work you'd need them to work more hours, not fewer, right?

And it's even worse if your metrics do something silly like measure by lines of code or time spent typing. If someone spends an hour walking in a park figuring out how to implement something and then five minutes when they get home to type it into a computer, it's obviously bad accounting to call that an hour of leisure and five minutes of working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> WFH is great, it's where I'm personally the most productive from, but unless an entire household can stay at home I think it has little effect on avoiding Covid-19.

You can be the most paranoid person, washing your hands 50 times a day, not touching anything, wearing a gas mask and what not, but when your kid comes home after touching everything at school and outside and then rubbing his/her eyes and they happen to contract the virus then everyone in the same household will eventually contract the virus. Same for your partner, flat mates, etc.

If one person gets it, everyone in a household will get it (eventually). They will cough in the house, they will touch food in the kitchen, they will decongest in the bathroom and spread germs everywhere, they will touch the remote control with their hands where they just coughed in, a keyboard, your phone, etc. etc.

I'm sure WFH will slow down the spread, which itself is good, but don't think you're immune all of a sudden because you avoid public transport to work when there's still so many avenues for the virus to enter your home.

<comment><USER7> In that case WFH is much better as it does not spread to other employees

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's Coinbase's in-depth plan that this appears to be partially based on [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SRP4dnVCvKB7A5WXrESe- cL5...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SRP4dnVCvKB7A5WXrESe- cL51i6_cg5nNGLNld6qch0/edit#)

Some of the phrasing is identical:

> are likely to get sick more easily or for whom getting sick would be > particularly problematic

<comment><USER9> Is Coinbase willing to make their guide on how to stay safe when working from home public? It's a link in the doc.

<comment><USER10> There a quite a few links in that doc that would be interesting (and helpful) to read, but are unavailable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really frustrated that my employer isn't doing this. I convinced my immediate manager to give everyone approval to WFH, but I cannot fathom why the whole company isn't. I don't know whether it's an issue of priorities, foresight, or capabilities.

<comment><USER12> I think one reason companies are reluctant to start WFH is that it's unclear when you'd stop. You'd have to have a reason to stop, and it could easily be like six months from now before there's a defensible one.

<comment><USER13> Sounds okay to me. My employer and my wife's employer's stance is presently indefensible.

Our local health authorities (Seattle) appear to have a clear-eyed picture that things are going to get worse, and that social-distancing measures will be required, yet they prefer to wait and play the game on hard-mode.

It is hard to see why waiting to implement school closures and work holidays is going to be a net benefit.

<comment><USER12> If the schools close and you have kids, you're not going to be working either way.

And wait, isn't Seattle hosting a 100k attendee international ComicCon in ten days? How can you argue that's more responsible than your employer is being?

Oh! Maybe your "they" refers to Seattle, not your employer in contrast to Seattle. Confused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how much business travel, in-person meetings, working in offices, etc won't rebound after this?

<comment><USER15> I work remote and I really miss more interactions, even some of the pointless meetings. Obviously thats just the loneliness talking, but I wish remote companies had some hubs you needed to live near so you could go in when you needed it. An 80/20 (remote/office) model would be perfect.

<comment><USER16> > I wish remote companies had some hubs you needed to live near

1\. You can't really move houses easily unless you're young and unmarried. (I wouldn't have done this at any stage in my career)

2\. Many remote companies have employees across cities and smaller towns - building or renting these hubs everywhere will not be economical.

<comment><USER15> I'm thinking 4 or 5 hubs in the country, depending on the size of the company. You live within 2 hours and commute a handful of times a quarter.

<comment><USER17> You must live in Europe. :-)

4 or 5 hubs would cover maybe half of California.

<comment><USER15> No I live between Sacramento and Tahoe. A hub in the Bay Area would be fine if I only went once or twice a month. I don't like 100% distributed remote model. We need to be anchored to something.

A company doesn't need employees in every state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As someone that's taking the train to work in the Bay area I so hope my employer does this soon...

<comment><USER19> Ah, I'm in the same train as you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel for the sales guys who get paid on commission and can't travel.

I wonder if as a company transitions to remote if many employees take advantage and work few hours vs a company that was already remote.

<comment><USER20> _I wonder if as a company transitions to remote if many employees take advantage and work few hours vs a company that was already remote._

Deadlines and other commitments won't change, it's up to managers to make sure employee output stays on track. Though if the disease spreads many employees may be out of commission with the illness or caring for family members.

My company discourages work from home, but has multiple offices and we all rely on Slack and video conferencing so much that it'd be pretty apparent if everyone was WFH and someone went for a hike ride instead of working.

I find that my productivity improves when I WFH, but I have a dedicated office area to retreat to (plus I save 60 - 90 minutes of commute time)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If this helps non remote employees (and managers) develop empathy for remote employees, well, that'll be amazing at pushing remote culture forward.

<comment><USER22> We've actually done remote experiments at Stripe in order to do just that. Where whole teams will get spread across as many places as possible and we attempt to keep everything as it was in order to discover the holes in the daily processes we have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A lot of companies are doing this in the Bay Area, even closing offices and mandating WFH (in addition to suspending travel).

It's an interesting experiment to see what's it's like to work with everyone fully remote.

</comment><comment><USER24> We did the same thing today. Bunch tech companies have been talking to each other about how to handle this. Expect to see more announcements along these lines.

</comment><comment><USER25> Flew to SF for CodeBeam, crossing my fingers I didn't poke the pooch.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Airports and air travel are likely to be higher-risk.

Who says an airport is any more risky than public life in a city? There is no personal interaction between travellers at all.

<comment><USER27> High volumes of travelers siphoning through the same paths, touching the same surfaces, interacting with the same service personnel.

Those travelers being from all-over, thus introducing new region-to-region microbiota mixes. Those travelers often tired or dehydrated from long plane travel across time-zones.

Even a heavily-trafficked park, grocery store, or DMV-like public service outlet might not face the same volume of widely-exposed & weary people as an airport does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> At this point, I think we can assume that the virus is spreading in America, and building steam.

The major metropolitan cities are going to get hit. NYC, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

But fear not, the virus is still controllable, since most of America is suburbia and rural. But we need to begin work-from-home on a massive scale, and begin temperature monitoring of people and ourselves.

<comment><USER29> Suburban and rural areas will get hit too, it'll just take longer. They may not ride the subway or have an elevator they share with neighbors, but they travel, they go to work and school, they buy groceries, they go to church, etc.

All that said, I'd much rather be in a rural area right now instead of Manhattan!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd love it if a tech company had the balls to just say "we're not the cdc, here is their advice, no one will be required to attend if sick or to travel if they don't want to".

Instead every HR person in Silicon Valley is wetting themself to play doctor...

</comment><comment><USER31> A reminder:

The risk of getting COVID-19 in the U.S. is currently low.

[https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/share- facts....](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/share-facts.html)

Also, expect positive cases to explode in number over the next two weeks as testing capacity comes on line and massive number of tests are administered.

<comment><USER32> I want to get it to get it over with. Kind of weird that San Francisco isn't ground zero for this in USA yet.

Hope the news of reinfection complications is wrong.

<comment><USER33> FYI you can't just "get it over with". Some people have been infected multiple times already.

<comment><USER32> Its almost like my post was made for your specific comment.

Anyway, hope the news of reinfection complications is premature and incorrect

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why are we destroying business?

We will hit a mini GFC or I think a GFC+

And now on top of that companies are just going remote. Not done before and all of a sudden with limited planning.

So they will lose more business unless it's an Easter miracle and remote work is so amazing without planning it can still break even.

Whats the plan here? 'Everyone' is going to get it.

Right now you can slow it down. If you are in Winter, then slowing it until Summer will help. If you are in Summer slowing it until Winter probably will screw you.

But I'd like to know what Stripe is trying to do. What model is it trying to achieve. Or is this designed by a committee? Does WHO agree? Is it trying to spread the disease out internally? Or is it just random flailing around?

<comment><USER4> Stripe is being a good and responsible employer.

<comment><USER26> I'm sure of their good intentions, the question is how informed their choice of measures is.</comment></comment></comment>