Bjarne Stroustrup – Managing Director, Technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.morganstanley.com/profiles/bjarne-stroustrup-managing-director-technology/ <comment><USER3> I met some ambassadors from Morgan Stanley who were wearing a shirt which had a list of check boxes that went something like this:

[ ] Had a holiday recently

[ ] ???

[x] Met inventor of C++

</comment><comment><USER4> He still teaches a grad-level (I think?) course here at Columbia. How I envy the students in that class.

<comment><USER5> It's an incredible class - I luckily got into it. It's pretty much like watching a John Carmack keynote where he just unloads all the crazy ideas buzzing around his head. He's a great guy - if there are any questions you want me to ask him - I'd be happy to for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> He is also a visiting professor at Columbia's computer science department and mentioned that a big reason for coming to New York was really to be close to his grand kids. I am currently in a course on C++ language library design at Columbia with him - and I can comfortably say that he's one of the most humble and down-to-earth professors in the department (IMHO).

His class is awesome for not only hearing his stories like why it's called C++ instead of ++C, but learning about all the little details in C++ today and what's to come for C++17 and on. If anyone has any questions they want me to ask him, I'd be happy to do so.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ok, is it just me that thought it telling that all the folks in the carousel at the bottom of the page are wearing suits (and ties for the men) but Bjarne has a open necked shirt on?

That said, I really resonate with this statement of his: _" I wanted to get back to solving real-world problems."_

I tend to be most motivated when I've got a problem to solve which can be expressed in terms of real world gains (usually in efficiency). Interesting to hear that he didn't think he could do that in academia.

<comment><USER7> I work in IT for an investment bank. No-one really wears ties any more, except for interviews. A few people don't even wear suits. Some people even wear brown shoes and pockets on the fronts of their shirts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nicolae Tesla died a poor man. Who are we to judge others' career choices?

</comment><comment><USER9> Funny to see some of HN hating on Morgan Stanley and Wall Street. You're biting the hand that feeds you...

<comment><USER10> Some resourceful people have co-opted the term "hacker" to refer to people who are very good at chasing money.

Not all the hackers have gotten that memo though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Come on, now. How about Google? NASA? Tesla? Plenty of real world problems > to solve there tackling difficult problems.

Well, as a professor, he did get some code into some JPL projects ( [http://stroustrup.com/mbd09.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/mbd09.pdf) , [http://stroustrup.com/sec09.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/sec09.pdf) , [http://stroustrup.com/autonomics09.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/autonomics09.pdf) , [http://stroustrup.com/fdc_jcse.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/fdc_jcse.pdf) , [http://stroustrup.com/autonomics2008.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/autonomics2008.pdf) and [http://stroustrup.com/isorc2008.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/isorc2008.pdf) ). ( _Some_ information about MDS and goal oriented software can be found on JPL's website, [http://mds.jpl.nasa.gov/public/](http://mds.jpl.nasa.gov/public/) ).

</comment><comment><USER12> Hasn't he been there for some time now?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, since 2014. But this wasn't widely known

<comment><USER12> ah ok. i think that i learned it within the last year from his site ([http://www.stroustrup.com/](http://www.stroustrup.com/)) which has a very 90's vibe to it so i categorized it as old news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > What motivated you to leave academia to join Morgan Stanley?

$$$

Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with that, he's earned it. But the whole spiel about wanting to get back to solving real world problems... Come on, now. How about Google? NASA? Tesla? Plenty of real world problems to solve there tackling difficult problems.

But Morgan Stanley? Decade old technology spending most of your time interfacing twenty year old languages to mainframes. Nothing that will make your heart pound there.

But the money... oh yeah, the money. No argument there.

<comment><USER14> I think you greatly underestimate the programming challenges available in large investment banks, from "We ingest literally thousands of separate sources, many of them time-series, at the rate of gigabytes per second." to "How does one manage a programming team of _ten thousand people_ split between six countries?" to "Where do we strike the balance between the-most-fault- tolerant-computer-is-one-that-is-powered-off and a-bug-in-our-application-can- bring-down-the-firm?" to "We have an open-ended research brief which is attempting to answer the question 'Are any 2+ parts of the world's most complicated black-box system correlated with each other in a way that nobody knows yet?' to which any answer in the affirmative is instantly verifiable by the presence of the river of money falling into our bank account that it implies."

Plus some of Wall Street's hijinks are positively Googlesque. It's a place where "I wonder if we can do image recognition on spy satellite photos to count cars in parking lots to get an estimate of traffic to a retailer before they publish their quarterlies" was met with "OH HECK YES WE CAN DO THAT."

<comment><USER15> > the programming challenges available in large investment banks

Agreed - they have some interesting technical challenges.

> "I wonder if we can do image recognition on spy satellite photos to count > cars in parking lots to get an estimate of traffic to a retailer before they > publish their quarterlies"

That, however, feels, at first glance, a bit zero-sum. Is that investment making the world better in some way?

Not that I think anything should get in the way of them doing stuff like that, but it feels a bit hollow in the grand scheme of things.

<comment><USER16> Better evaluation and pricing of equity leads to better allocation of capital, which leads to value creation, which is not zero sum.

Now, if the the better-pricers manage to capture all the value they create, that is another question. But even then, they'll have to spend it sometime. A yacht builder is paid, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thought it would be cool to check out what some of the other language inventors were/are doing:

Guido van Rossum (Python) - Google, Dropbox

Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP) - WePay, Etsy, Jelastic

Yukihiro Matsumoto (Ruby) - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER18> What would he _do_ there in that capacity? I think of him as a technically brilliant engineer -- a "Managing Director, Morgan Stanley" and Bjarne Stroustrup just don't sound compatible (to me) on the surface... at least he's getting paid, though.

<comment><USER19> Managing Director isn't exactly as high up in the chain at MS as it sounds and he could definitely still be getting his hands dirty directly with technical decisions at that level. When I worked there I worked with one MD who was 3rd in line on the pager list and was more than comfortable logging into the servers to resolve problems if there was an issue that for some reason 1st and 2nd level weren't in a position to respond to.

Edit: I got MD/ED backwards. Ignore the above.

<comment><USER20> Managing Director is the highest up in chain and it covers highest levels of management. In fact, CEO of Morgan Stanley is a Managing Director.

But of course an MD can decide to 'get his hands dirty'. It is a personal decision.

<comment><USER19> ED was higher than MD when I was there unless I'm remembering it backwards it was over a decade ago.

We had an ED who ran a few large projects and had 2 MD's under him(and above me).

Edit: Just did a bit of googling and it looks like I did have them backwards. Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is surprising to me. I can't exactly point to why...

<comment><USER21> I would guess it's very important to MS to hire top technical talent. Having a big name on staff (doesn't get that much bigger than the C++ designer) helps do that - it's a competitive advantage for MS over traditional tech companies and over other banks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here. My original title was "The Inventor of C++, Bjarne Stroustrup Works at Morgan Stanley", and after 20 minutes, it somehow changed "Bjarne Stroustrup – Managing Director, Technology". WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

<comment><USER22> Titles of submissions should match the title of the article. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER10> In this case though the edited title gives less information than the original one.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Fool Face Recognition Systems With Make Up  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/22/face_detection_hacking/

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it just me, or do all the example faces that avoid detection in the picture with make-up look like David Bowie?</comment>


Google Glass: A Joke and a Legal Nightmare - <AUTHOR> http://anewdomain.net/2013/04/30/john-c-dvorak-on-google-glasses-a-joke-and-a-legal-nightmare/

<comment><USER2> Now if only the device was unlocked and you could put or remove or control software on it ... oh wait it is.

You could shut out google completely from it if you like.</comment>


How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2016/06/how-facebook-tries-to-prevent-office-politics <comment><USER2> "At Facebook, moving into management is not a promotion. It's a lateral move, a parallel track. "

This is nice in theory. But when your "peers" with Manager in their title have access to more information and more decision-making power, it is not in fact a parallel track. Just saying people are equal doesn't make it so, and it doesn't change the underlying organizational structures.

<comment><USER3> If you set up the culture right, this isn't as big of a problem as you might think. On our team, it doesn't matter if you're the manager or not, the decisions for the product are made by consensus of the team. Sure management will still do approvals for time off and deal with the skinned knees and runny noses. But for day to day operations, it's peers working for a common cause.

<comment><USER4> I've found consensus decision making to be frustrating in the environments I've encountered it.

A lot of flip flopping and lack of follow through.

Who made that decision? We did. Can we give up on that and try something else? Of course.

I kinda like to have _at least_ a shepherd for the day to day decisions, if not a commander.

In practice in my current environment it's been the occasional PM that takes some ownership that fills that role, but in many groups I see the floundering without leadership.

Internally I think they think they're making progress because everyone on the team is always happy with their decisions, I may just be the old curmudgeon that's frustrated with what I see as wasted effort.

<comment><USER5> While it can work, "consensus" usually means ad hoc, no accountability, no followthru.

This essay was illuminating:

Tyranny of Structurelessness

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

<comment><USER4> Yes, <3 that.

"Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group."

The same essay was linked to me a previous time I made a similar public complaint :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't speak about FB personally, but I learned the hard way my first few years out of college that at most companies managers are simply given more respect, power, and money than engineers in general. It takes an extraordinarily talented high-impact developer who revolutionizes the company's technology in order to match a run-of-the-mill Director or VP who just shows up to work and "manages" teams of developers -- and even then the match will only be in salary, not in overall power in the organization and probably not in bonus structure either. You'll still be left out of countless meetings and kept in the dark on many decisions you could contribute to effectively.

I say that I learned the hard way because I focused on being that high-impact developer. At my first job, I rewrote the company's core software to make it (really) an order of magnitude faster, providing the basis for the company's sustainability for the next decade. My salary skyrocketed. My title did not. I was forever stuck in a limbo of being just a "developer" while being paid as much as an executive but being excluded from every executive meeting and not even being involved in hiring for the team that would maintain the software I wrote on which the entire company depended. I was still stuck in a cubicle while the managers were sure to get _very_ nice, spacious offices with ludicrous window views.

<comment> k-mcgrady I really don't understand this view. They're different jobs. If you want to have the power an exec has become an exec. More than likely you cannot do both effectively at the same time. Yes, there are shitty managers but there are also a lot of them doing stuff an engineer doesn't have the skills to do. In all industries people think they could do a better job than their boss - usually it's not true and if it is learn new skills to take their job from them or start your own company.

<comment><USER6> I didn't say they were the same job. I said they were accorded different levels of respect and prestige, which is what this post is about. I didn't want to be a pure executive or manager.

At that company, it was, frankly, impossible for a developer to get the same perks as a manager. I'm sure there are companies out there that handle this a lot better and don't make management the _only_ path to promotion. These have just been the minority in my personal experience.

\---

I also agree with you for what it's worth that management is a skill in and of itself that most developers wouldn't be good at. The point I was making in my previous post was a little more nuanced. Think of it like this. At a large company, there might be 100 VPs who are pure managers, and there might be 5 very distinguished engineers who are at the same VP level. This creates the impression that developers can rise up just as high in the company, when in reality it's more of an illusion. The technical skill level necessary to reach VP level as a developer is astronomically high. The management skill level necessary to reach VP level as a pure manager is certainly not low by any means, but it's comparatively much lower than it is for VP engineers.

<comment><USER7> One thing that helps is to get to personally know the people up the management chain better. Respect comes easier when they know you as a person instead of just a name on a document.

I learned this the easy way at a company when our manager left and it took a long time to find a replacement so all the directors and VPs would come directly to us for questions, advice, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a bunch of friends at Facebook - and from what I hear, this article is not very far off from what is happening. And it's all about many of the seniors leading with example.

Take Philip Su, who was the site lead for Facebook London. In most organizations, that would translate to "manager of everything happening at Facebook". After 3 years he decided to take another lateral move - to move back to software development (no lead, just a software engineer) [https://www.facebook.com/the.philip.su/timeline/story?ut=32&...](https://www.facebook.com/the.philip.su/timeline/story?ut=32&wstart=-2051193600&wend=2147483647&hash=10153933142446458&pagefilter=3&ustart=1)

When you work at a company where managers demonstrate that it _is_ a lateral move - moving from management to individual contribution - well, then this stuff starts to work.

Another thing that this article does not touch on, is the transparency that people at Facebook share what's going on with them professionally. My buddy said a senior person shared on Facebook @work how he had gotten a bad performance review, and how this made him feel... for all other employees to see, and comment on. My buddy was saying that "when I joined, I thought that people were just drinking kool aid about how our culture is different. But now that I'm in - I seriously have not expected it to be this different to anywhere I've worked before"

I _do_ think that Facebook is doing something incredible with keeping a very startup like and transparent culture going at this large scale. No other company of this size even comes close.

<comment><USER9> With many close friends who work at $FB, I promise you politics are alive and well :)

<comment><USER10> Is "$FB" the new "Micro$oft"?

<comment><USER11> It's just a reference to their stock ticker symbol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12>
        "Take the incentive out of "climbing the ladder."

Some of the organization structure setup is not unique to Facebook. My former boss was a long time Microsoft employee, from what I heard from her anecdotally, Microsoft has long been setup with dual tracks for technical employees. The management track and the engineer track. One moves from engineer track to management track is a true lateral move in that salary don't necessarily get raised even though responsibilities will vary and may expand.

Also, the rank on engineer track may also be converted to a lower rank in management track. On top of that, long tenured Distinguished Engineers might also get a much higher compensation than a mid-level manager.

Once the incentives are leveled up, personal interests and motivation really becomes the driver for employees to do their most appropriate job.

Obviously these were all anecdotal stories I heard. Microsoft now may also be different from the Microsoft then. I welcome someone who has first hand experience with similar organizational structure setup to clarify and elaborate on this.

<comment><USER13> IBM is set up the same way, to a degree. They have "IBM fellows" who are essentially executive-level engineers. I don't think it extends all the way down though.

<comment><USER14> 3M is another company with similar dual track system for engineers/scientists.

<comment><USER15> All large tech companies (Apple, MS, LinkedIn, Oracle, Google at least) have the same official ranks for engineers that go Senior, Staff, Distinguished, Fellow. But that doesn't mean anyone ever gets promoted up there. I think there's at most three Fellows in any of those companies at a time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's interesting to compare what Facebook does with how Galois organizes itself. They just published a blog post about how many traditional management functions are handled on a rotating basis—instead of having people who always manage, they have individual researchers and engineers step up to lead efforts on specific projects. This general approach even extends to firm-wide management (via a "Jedi council") and finding new clients.

[https://galois.com/blog/2016/06/undirector-of- engineering/](https://galois.com/blog/2016/06/undirector-of-engineering/)

Galois is a private research lab/consulting firm that specializes in high- assurance computing relying heavily in programming language techniques and Haskell. I mostly know about them because they publish a whole ton of cool tools for security, low-level programming and verification. They also seem like a wonderful place to work partly because they're tackling fascinating, research-level problems and partly because the internal culture seems like something fundamentally special.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Take the incentive out of "climbing the ladder."

In other words, pay everyone the same? Of course the author didn't mean that; and pay and power are the primary drivers of upward mobility. If I get paid as much as Zuck's SVPs, sure, I won't feel the urge to climb the ladder; but until that happens, I will.

<comment><USER18> There are definitely Individual Contributors who are on the same compensation level as directors. These are the engineers who revolutionize how the company operates, such as inventing HHVM and saving tons of resources.

<comment><USER17> There's a huge chasm between Directors and SVPs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > "Managers focus on ..., creating a vision for how that team will execute its > goals"

Confusing management with leadership is one of the main reasons for politics and empire building. Once managers think they're in charge of figuring out the vision, instead of that being the whole team's responsibility, you're lost in top-down management land.

<comment><USER20> In more traditional structures, managers are often in charge of figuring out that vision because they argue the buck stops with them, so they need the authority to make decisions to arrive at the outcome that meets their goals.

Unfortunately, what often happens is managers think they are more knowledgeable than the ICs on the team. This in turn leads to ICs not being invested in the outcomes as much as if it were their ideas, and can lead to resentment because they do not feel their input is valued.

A good leader is not "The Decider." A good leader is the one who asks their team "given X, Y and Z goals, how would you solve for this knowing these are the constraints?"

<comment><USER21> Funny, I had one of those meetings at work just yesterday.

"Given X, Y and Z goals, how would you solve for this knowing A) these are the constraints and B) that me and the other cofounder have already decided what we want to do, and really just want your buy in."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's always a hierarchy. We're pack animals, establishing social hierarchy is at the core of our being.

Office politics are more rampant in places without externally defined hierarchies because people have to figure out the hierarchy on their own.

</comment><comment><USER23> > Managers focus on building a great team, creating a vision for how that team > will execute its goals, and helping the people on that team develop in their > careers. They are put in those positions because of their strong people > skills. They aren't there to tell teams what to do.

That almost brings a tear to my eye. This is such a huge contrast to what my current experience is at BigCorp. And that's just a few miles away from Facebook.

The question then becomes, how much power does a manager have at Facebook? Can they block you from transferring to another team? Can they block your vacation/time off requests? Are they the only ones responsible for doing the performance reviews? Is said performance review audited so as to contain verifiable facts?

> We make escalation "legal" by making sure people know they won't be blamed > or punished for speaking up or asking hard questions.

I really wish that was expanded on. Theoretically, I could escalate. In practice, that would backfire horribly. After all, if there's no accountability, what's preventing your manager from simply retaliating by giving you a hard time, possibly a while after the escalation happened? There are lots of subjective ways your work can be criticized/sabotaged which are not obviously connected to the escalation.

> Obviously, these strategies are at their most effective when the whole > company adopts them.

Actually, it is way, way worse when the whole company doesn't support that. You can move from a great project to your own personal purgatory.

<comment><USER24> No, manager can't prevent you from switching to any other team or even start a team on your own. The idea behind this is that it ensures that talent naturally gravitates towards teams with most impact. Managers have no say!

Reviews are written by your peers (that usually includes your manager).

Reviews need to quote actual success metrics to prove the impact you had...just writting "bob is dope" won't take you far :)

<comment><USER25> What about situations when your performance review score is low? Sure, manager may not prevent you from moving the team, but company policy may do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Throwaway for obvious reasons. I have first hand experience with both FB and Google. When it comes to office politics, Google is currently turning into shit pretty rapidly, comparatively speaking. It's still miles better than most other companies, but the deterioration is now beyond the point of no return. There are _tons_ of layers of management, and 90% of the time, you'd be hard pressed to see what they actually do besides playing power games and fucking up the products as a result (as if Google needed any help with that). Managers here are mostly ex-engineers, and most of them suck at managing. The reason why they are managers in the first place is that it's virtually impossible for an engineer to attain a level beyond T6 (and massive increase in comp that comes with that), whereas the requirement to do so if you're a manager is that you have a pulse, and you're able to take credit for your reports' work. You won't believe what kind of people get L7 and above at Google once they switch to management. At Google you don't have to be good at managing to actually manage. TL;DR: as an engineer your career at Google will end at T6 if you're lucky, and at T5 if you're not; this is where things _begin_ for managers. So Google values managers more.

FB is actually more mindful of the quality of their management talent. They put a bonfire under their feet in the form of charging managers with direct responsibility to hire for their teams, and _encouraging_ team members to leave for other teams every now and then to overcome human inertia. If you suck or if your project sucks, you will have trouble hiring and retaining talent, so pretty quickly you won't be a manager anymore.

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure that Google is turning into shit. It seems to me it's always been like that. I've been at Google for 4 years and noticed very quickly that turning software engineers into managers could not possibly work. I've switched teams recently and am happier for the time being, but my previous manager sucked ass.

My new project is actually quite interesting. There's very little politics involved too, which is a plus, and I'm glad I'm not writing yet another chat app that we will deprecate in 2 years time.

The worst part about Google for me is the level of incivility. This is what, the 4th time a senior exec has to call people out and tell them to behave on memegen? And it's only getting worse.

Also, considering how mediocre many Google engineers are, I never understood where all that arrogance comes from.

Edit: fix typos.

<comment><USER28> > The worst part about Google for me is the level of incivility. This is what, > the 4th time a senior exec has to call people out and tell them to behave on > memegen? And it's only getting worse.

What does this mean?

<comment><USER26> Memegen is actually the best part about Google. It's an internal meme site where people poke fun at the various failings (perceived or real) of Google, each other, and upper management. You can even poke fun at the founders and the CEO, and people often do. Though of course neither the founders nor the CEO actually read it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> >Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order. This makes it more likely that they'll put the company's mission above their individual interests and that they'll set the proper example for others.

Ah. I understand. So there are people that will set a company/team above their own interest and are reasonably intelligent at the same time?

They're just looking for good liars, nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think this concept works well until you consider "lateral movement" between companies. ie. it works as long as a developer leaving / laid-off-from the company will be compensated at their new job just as well as the manager will.

Don't get me wrong. Some people will embrace this. Namely those who aren't interested in managing others. But it seems a bit disingenuous to say you can "level the playing field" by having a value structure that doesn't map well to how most other companies' value structure is set up.

</comment><comment><USER31> Whiners in the interview process seems like a good one. I'm conscious about complaining about a tech stack, or even a build system. It doesn't matter if you don't like it.

</comment><comment><USER32> * "Influencer" \- you can say that well respected technical people have as much influence as management - but if you spend most of your day coding you don't have the same information about the organisation so you just won't know there are decisions being made that you can influence. Management is like politics - it is a full time job.

* at some point companies need to become more democratic. Yes "influencers" should be involved in these discussions, and management should almost be the press - letting people know these decisions are underway.

* I personally think if we spend more time writing good discussion documents around our projects we will be able to write good discussion documents about our organisations

</comment><comment><USER33> Some time ago at my workplace new top management proclaimed that "there was too much politics". In retrospect, what they really meant is they were uncomfortable with middle management holding too much decision-making power. So they took steps to ensure a more top-down structure and middle management was basically left with a task of overseeing their reports so they don't slack off.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think the root of office politics comes when positions and influence within the company become a zero sum game. It wasn't until relatively late in Microsoft's career that you started hearing about all the reindeer games in Redmond. I'll be interested in seeing how this culture develops as Facebook reaches a growth fixpoint.

</comment><comment><USER35> Kudos to FB. It's a hard problem as you scale. I have a few friends who suggest the article matches their experiences there.

Being a 40-something engineer, you hear the same things over and again. I used to work at MSFT and my first manager there used to espouse company, team, self every day as the HBR article does. He'd regular re-evaluate his priorities based on what is the most beneficial task I can work on for the company today. Makes me wonder if it appears in management books or people just get wired that way.

It definitely a reasonable way to proceed most of the time. Firsthand, I have no doubt that most of the unpleasantness I've witnessed in tech companies is due to team or self over everything.

</comment><comment><USER36> Leaving the interesting article aside for a moment, the page has an insane weight of fixed tool/menu/other bars. On my small laptop screen they account for __24% __of the whole viewport height. Who thought that 's a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER37> Probably a good idea, but I can say that when I worked there in 2011 it was EASILY the most political place I've ever worked, including the US Government.

</comment><comment><USER38> Lost job recently to office politics at a fortune XXX. It sounds good in theory but I doubt Facebook or any Corp will ever manage to get people put self secondary (tertiary according to article). Or may be they have.. They are awfully successful and it has to come with great team spirit

</comment><comment><USER39> Have only heard negative things about FB office politics from the folks I know who work there.

<comment><USER40> FB is big enough I'm sure different teams vary pretty widely. Even at the ~300 person company I was at previously the difference between project team culture and manager interference was pretty huge.

<comment><USER39> I agree. And these same folks also like their jobs at FB despite the politics ... they see it as one of the cons but are still happy with all of the pros.

I only commented because it's frustrating to see any company painted as if it's the one magical place in the universe that has solved office politics. Facebook is not that company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> You can't take politics out of people... no matter how hard you try.

<comment><USER42> Also there are just too many mediocre people to go around. I'm not optimistic, I suspect this will end with the very best people leaving the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> > 360-degree reviews

What like this?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y93rSKRE38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y93rSKRE38)

</comment><comment><USER44> Another hagiographic facebook article with the classic royal-we style we all love :)

<comment><USER45> Don't you know? They're doing gods work over there. Connecting the world and serving ads?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> "Man is by nature a political animal." \--Aristotle

</comment><comment><USER47> "Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order"...right there you are creating a selection bias for exactly the kind of people you claim not to want. No- fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way. You are filtering for liars who know which lies to tell.

I consider myself very not into office politics and I'm confident a would fail massively to answer most of the proposed interview questions

<comment><USER48> > No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way

Except, for example, the ACM Software Engineer's code of ethics where this is the explicitly stated order.

[1] [http://www.acm.org/about/se-code](http://www.acm.org/about/se-code)

<comment><USER49> I see "team" three times and "company" zero times. Can you point to the specific portion?

<comment><USER50> "employer" is in there 20 times. Did you even glance at the document?

CLIENT AND EMPLOYER is #2 in the list, and SELF is #8. COLLEAGUES is #7.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> > _Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are > company, team, and self — in that order_

I would politely ask Facebook to go fuck themselves if they asked me to put the company before myself. I don't exist to serve a company.

<comment><USER52> Of course not. You get paid to serve the company, and they aren't interested in people who aren't going to make them more than what they pay.

You should always remember that a company will fire you the moment they think they can make a penny more that way, plan and act accordingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I generally like HBR articles, but it's very annoying to end up deleting HTML nodes because of their stupid menu bars and x articles left notice.

Poor web design.

anyway...

> Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are > company, team, and self — in that order.

This just sounds so obnoxious to me.

> At Facebook, moving into management is not a promotion. It's a lateral move, > a parallel track. Managers are there to support people and to remove > barriers to getting things done. Managers focus on building a great team, > creating a vision for how that team will execute its goals, and helping the > people on that team develop in their careers

All of those things sound like they add up to much more influence and responsibility than you get as an IC.

> "Then who is in charge?" Lest anyone think it's a Lord of the Flies > scenario, our managers still moderate, facilitate, and tie-break.

So the manager is in charge. But you know, feel free to suggest stuff plebs.

> We provide different opportunities for growth by empowering employees to > work on new projects or in new groups when interested. This keeps ICs > engaged by allowing them to broaden their areas of expertise and expand or > focus their scope by moving to projects at different levels of development

So does this mean you don't make me jump through hoops to switch to another team? Large part of why I quit my last job was because I find the idea that I have to do an interview, to get the same job I'm already doing, ridiculous.

The idea of the hackamonth sounds like it could help with this acutally. You are already employed by the company, just go talk to the manager and ask to switch for a month. At the end talk again and decide if it is a good fit.

Way better than getting stuck on a lousy team, with a poor manager, who is able to trap you with bad reviews and threats.

<comment><USER54> > I generally like HBR articles, but it's very annoying to end up deleting > HTML nodes because of their stupid menu bars and x articles left notice.

Safari reader or Readability is your friend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It's really unclear whether whatever they are doing actually does anything. And the author doesn't sound like he has any idea on what matters for productivity, given that productivity is what they were after.

But at least it's clear that anyone can get far in management as long as they don't screw up too much.

</comment><comment><USER56> Overall I see a lot of merit in their approach although for me it would be a culture shock.

The problem with those interview questions however is they are more a test of "gift of the gab" or preparation and memorization than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER57> I wonder how useful an ELO system would be for evaluating performance. If one were in place, I don't think we'd really need managers at all.

The system would supersede and replace managers. Your rating would be hidden as well.

<comment><USER13> Managers don't only evaluate performance.

<comment><USER57> You're right, they also steal credit for work they didn't perform. Management is another parasitic job that needs to be removed and automated away.

<comment><USER58> Here's another perspective – "management" is a job that can be poorly executed by some, but is important as a method for effectively disseminating and collecting knowledge and goals from different parts of a larger community.

The reason my current manager is there is to communicate the business's priorities to me, and effectively deal with any grievances I have. This is astonishingly effective, in that I no longer have to spend time researching the reasons why I am performing certain tasks – I have a manager who can prioritise, but who is willing to take my views on board if I have them. Everybody wins, and I don't really want her replaced with an automated system.

<comment><USER57> Everybody wins insofar as you don't challenge the status quo. If you do, they will isolate you (i.e. not promote you) and/or terminate you. This stifles innovation and creativity. There are no places left anymore like Bell Labs - where pure research was carried out and management got out of your way.

I find it hilarious that the vast majority of people on here will agree to automating away everything, except management (we really need them!). What I also find hilarious is the amount of downvotes I'm getting. If anything, that proves my point.

Monkeys in business suits are a cancer and plague upon Silicon Valley, and the sooner we get rid of them, the sooner we can focus on solving real problems.

What I see in most SV companies is massive bloatware - managers upon managers upon managers that don't really do anything. They create no value. Yet the incentive structure is skewed in their favor. This inefficiency will be addressed eventually, either exogenously (tech bubble bursting) or endogenously (engineers finally get sick of this corrupt and infected system).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> All lives matter.</comment>


A Reimplementation of Winamp 2.9 in HTML5 and JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/captbaritone/winamp2-js <comment><USER2> Wow, it even has skin support! I spent way too many hours developing skins for WinAmp and Trillian back in the late 90s as a teenager. I get why skins fell out of style, but I also kinda wish they didn't. Choosing a skin lets you personalize an app, creating a skin does so even more while also letting you express your creativity, and having skins creates a community. If I ever make an app where skinning would make sense, I would 100% go for it. Skinning should make a come-back.

<comment><USER3> I always used skins in Winamp/XMMS, but I'm immediately filled with nostalgia upon seeing the default skin. I wonder if people who came to use computers in the last decade will experience the sort of enjoyment I got out of customizing the look and feel of applications. All of the walled gardens have intertwined design with functionality to the point where skinning doesn't really exist in the same way. I haven't used Windows 10, but I wonder if it's possible to replace the Windows shell like I used to in college.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, skinning is probably easier today than it ever has been. With custom client-side stylesheets, there's no reason someone couldn't roll out custom skins for sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, even proficient developers are having trouble due to some misguided technical choices those websites are making: [https://twitter.com/sindresorhus/status/900005504931438593](https://twitter.com/sindresorhus/status/900005504931438593)

<comment><USER6> If those websites don't wish to support skinning, I don't see how the technical choices are misguided.

<comment><USER7> Originally stylesheets were meant to be recommendations. It was envisioned that user agents, users, and web pages would have their own, separate stylesheets, and the user agent would negotiate between the different stylesheets to determine the final style. I would argue that Twitter is going against the original spirit and best practices of the web with their technical decision to use css-in-js.

<comment><USER8> Meanwhile most people who have to use the web as a platform to build things view it as an incredibly painful mash of half implemented ideas and couldn't care less what the founders intended.

Let's stop using divs for presentation whilst we're at it and spend man-years on picking the right semantically named elements with no benefit to anyone anywhere ever.

No ajax or js either, I'm pretty sure they didn't envisage that.

<comment><USER7> To be honest, yes. The web was designed for hyperlinked documents. 90% of what I use the web for is still following links to pages with text and images. It is an unfortunate historical accident that people are trying to build thick client interactive applications using a technology envisioned and designed for sharing documents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Author here. I wrote a Twitter thread demonstrating many of its features. You can find it here: [https://mobile.twitter.com/captbaritone/status/9612747140133...](https://mobile.twitter.com/captbaritone/status/961274714013319168)

<comment><USER10> This is great and brings back a lot of old memories. Something that would help this spread (perhaps if it was hosted somewhere dedicated to it), is allowing a URL of an MP3 or a list of other audio files to be included in the link so people can share a song "the way it was meant to be played."

Thanks for your hard work and for making sure it wasn't broken in Edge. It was really satisfying to pull it up on my Windows 10 Mobile without issue.

<comment><USER9> Alas, this is more complicated than just including a link. The mp3 needs to be served with permissive "CORs" headers, and most are not. I made the call, that it would be too confusing for users to try to support loading from URL.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, that makes sense. You would have to download the remote resource in the link and re-host it which can get expensive quickly. There are probably a few scenarios where DNS tricks would save the day, but not reliably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amazing.

Wishful thinking: If this included something akin to Shoutcast (perhaps via WebRTC), it would give us back the peer-to-peer listening joy we had for small groups and teams back in the day. I miss the era when things were more commonly/naturally peer-to-peer and decentralized.

<comment><USER12> Shoutcast and the real-time visualisations are two killer features Winamp had that I don't think any media player since has even come close to competing with.

I'm not saying there aren't still decent media players out there, but honestly I think Winamp is still the best there's ever been.

<comment><USER13> I completely agree, nothing came close to the awesomeness of Milkdrop 2 in Winamp. That's one of the reasons I got into programming, by being curious about how it "knew" how to move to the music. Still have it installed on an ancient PC, will never delete it!

<comment><USER9> Have you seen [https://butterchurnviz.com](https://butterchurnviz.com) ?

<comment><USER14> Cool, but it depends on Soundcloud (dying platform AFAIK given the recent exodus). How's that gonna help me if I use Spotify? Spotify can stream to my TV using Chromecast, showing lyrics via Genius. Why can't it also do some VJing? projectM is open source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Winamp + dialup connection. How many hours have we lost downloading a bunch of mp3 files...

<comment><USER16> 23 minutes to download Usher - Yeah and Outkast - Hey Ya!.mp3 - those were the days.

<comment><USER17> For a brief moment of my life, I got up as soon as my alarm went off. It was always exciting to see what MP3s were downloaded overnight from the queue.

<comment><USER18> Somehow it was more fun and you felt like you had accomplished something when you had a complete album. Things are too easy today :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yes, but does it really whips the Llama's ass?

<comment><USER20> Did you visit the app ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/)) and press play?

<comment><USER21> OMG, end of the day here and I really needed that one! Thank you. Oh, the old days of internet right in front of me.

<comment><USER22> Same here! I mostly tried the link to see if it also ported the lama, and it sure did deliver on that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Finally, a semantic use for the marquee tag.

<comment><USER9> Alas, I needed finer grain control over the marquee behavior (scroll character by character, pause the scrolling, etc), so I had to implement it in JS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very cool! The sad thing is that I figured out that I didn't have a single mp3-file on my computer. Things have changed.

</comment><comment><USER25> Oh wow. If I could get this as an Electron app I'd be a happy (nostalgic) user.

<comment><USER26> Why don't you just download the real Winamp 2.9 and save yourself the potential GB of RAM usage?

<comment><USER27> Probably because he is on macOS or Linux.

<comment><USER28> winamp 2 almost certainly runs fine under wine.

<comment><USER29> Or if you don't need a genuine Winamp, Audacious Media Player has an optional Winamp-style interface that supports Winamp skins and looks and feels almost identical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Man, that's a blast from the past. I don't know when YouTube took over as my primary music player, but this makes me miss the good old mp3 days.

Remember when 192kbps sounded so much better than the typical 128kbps tracks? Now 320kbps is just assumed. Yay! for 4G.

</comment><comment><USER31> I still use Winamp 2.95 to this day. It's one of the most reliable and practically useful pieces of software I run often.

</comment><comment><USER32> I hope the random function is still as "random" as the original :)

<comment><USER33> Please elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Native WinAmp has two dropin extension systems. The one everybody seemed to use was MilkDrop, but they also had AVS (Advanced Visualization Studio), for which I wrote a bunch of extensions about a decade ago. These included several composition dlls (multi-lane video pipes, MIDI control, joystick control, 30 sec rolling video recorder/playback) and also a number of effects (image animations, placers, blenders, oscillators). This made for a very engaging interactive experience, especially flying through using the joystick to control pretty much any set of parameters. Turns out the visualizers have hidden strange attractors that never appear when just using passive mode. That was in XP, I have waiting a Windows 7 build TODO.

I'm semi-guessing the browser re-implementation does not support these. Pity.

</comment><comment><USER35> "Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript."

Atwood's law

<comment><USER36> Can Winamp send email?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've installed Wine on my Debian juste to use Winamp.

That's so many memories ! Thanks captbaritone !

<comment><USER38> xmms (formerly x11amp) used to fill that niche, but it's not available in Debian anymore apparently. xmms2 apparently went with something different, but it does look like promoe is a xmms2 frontend that takes on this legacy.

<comment><USER39> I use QMMP and it's awesome. [http://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/](http://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Has Justin Frankel ever commented on this project?

<comment><USER9> Once or twice: [https://twitter.com/JustinFrankel/status/961392277376692224](https://twitter.com/JustinFrankel/status/961392277376692224)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Awesome! Brings back memories.

A few things I noticed: I am trying a long live set and times over 100 minutes are not shown properly. I shows modulo of 100.

Left and right arrows shortcuts should be jump 5 seconds not 5 minutes.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the reports. I've filed a ticket for the first one:

[https://github.com/captbaritone/winamp2-js/issues/485](https://github.com/captbaritone/winamp2-js/issues/485)

I haven't been able to verify the second one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Try it out here: [https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Does it support milkdrop?

<comment><USER43> My first question!

Anyway, if you want AVS, at some point they pubished sources, perhaps someone could reimplement AVS and AVS2?

[https://github.com/majek/avs](https://github.com/majek/avs)

<comment><USER9> We're working on integrating something similar: [https://github.com/azeem/webvs/](https://github.com/azeem/webvs/)

You can follow along here: [https://gitter.im/visbot/AVS](https://gitter.im/visbot/AVS)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Previous Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15314629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15314629)

<comment><USER9> Winamp2-js author here. Just a note, that since that discussion, the playlist window, and thus support for multiple tracks at a time, has been added. As such, the project is only just now "complete".

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I remember when I only had enough spare space on my Centris 610's HD (it was 80MB) for two or three MP3 files. I just had my two favorite songs on my computer that I would listen to with some MP3 player. It may have been a version of Winamp for System 7 if there was such a thing but I can't remember. I think the songs were Chemical Brothers and Crystal Method.

</comment><comment><USER46> Amazing work. Moving the main application window around in the open blue workspace is so "native". It's like I just got a new OS right there in my browser.

I wonder if I can get other things to run in the same isolated space??? To begin with how about something symbolic like XEyes or good old, in fact anything good old.

<comment><USER9> Check out [http://www.windows93.net](http://www.windows93.net) for a bonkers take on that vision.

<comment><USER46> I know about it. It's cool for sure.

With this we have a clean implementation tho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Amazing work. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER48> Brings back the good old days :) But I don't have any mp3s anymore. Spotify.

<comment><USER49> Implementing this looks like it would be a fun project: [https://github.com/JMPerez/spotify-web-api- js](https://github.com/JMPerez/spotify-web-api-js)

You'd still need the Spotify desktop client open (Winamp2-js would function as a remote), but you could do things like populating the playlist window with a user playlist.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately, you can never fully work. DRM means we can't get raw access to the audio stream so EQ, visualization, balance, (for example) won't work.

<comment><USER50> You can use a virtual audio cable. Spotify -> virtual cable -> winamp -> real audio out

<comment><USER51> Can you recommend a "virtual cable" javascript library that is compatible with DRM output? I can't seem to find anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Loved the lama and the auto fade with winamp. When streamripper plugged into it and worked - those were the best days.

Now if yahoo would give musicmatch jukebox 7.5 back to the world I could DJ like it's 1999 and be happy again.

</comment><comment><USER53> This is going to be the basis of my next startup: Winamp as a Service.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm overly excited about this. Winamp was a huge part of my early computer experience, even went so far as to (poorly) design my own. Can't wait to start using this!

<comment><USER9> If you have any js experience, or want to develop some, feel free to reach out. I can find you an issue that aligns with your interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This is amazing! Brings up fond memories of my attempts at building a winamp clone in assembly.

You really learn to love higher level abstractions when you write that much assembly by hand...

</comment><comment><USER56> What about running it without the browser chrome?

<comment><USER57> you can run it on Firefox

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Not sure if should be impressed or appalled.

These days i think i'll just use Foobar2k on Windows, and Deadbeef (or a terminal player) on Linux.

<comment><USER39> I like QMMP. It's a lot like Winamp

<comment><USER58> Interesting. And the dependencies seems reasonable as well. I'll gice it a look later.

<comment><USER58> God damn it, this was smooth to get working. Only got some odd error regarding the tag writer on vorbis, but not a major loss. Had it been a GTK based project i fear the number of "esoteric" sub-sub-sub-dependencies i would have had to track down...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I love reimplementations (or emulators) of retro software. Is there a site that catalogues projects like this?

</comment><comment><USER60> Weird. I need to set my chrome zoom to 75% to get crisp graphics with this? 100% looks blurred.

</comment><comment><USER61> Very cool. I saw this and imagined the future - maybe compiled as a webassembly binary.

</comment><comment><USER62> The quad amp skin was my favourite (proud owner of a quad 22 valve stack gathering dust)

</comment><comment><USER63> Will the implementation also include a memory leak? Part of the experience...

<comment><USER9> Probably :( [https://github.com/captbaritone/winamp2-js/blob/0cf2d7292fc9...](https://github.com/captbaritone/winamp2-js/blob/0cf2d7292fc9d034a1e790651c42b9f5a5971d73/js/fileUtils.js#L33)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The wiki says Winamp was created in 1997. I feel like I used it in 94 or 95.

<comment><USER65> It was released in late April 1997. MacAmp actually came out a little earlier on April 13, 1997

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Just says "Loading ..." for me when using SlimJet? Chrome works.

<comment><USER67> Here is the same thing, the errors are:

TypeError: Object.entries is not a function(…)e.(anonymous function) @ console.js:32

Skin.js:127 Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Object.entries is not a function(…)

<comment><USER9> Could you paste a full stack trace?

<comment><USER67> I'm using Chrome by the way.

#1 - TypeError: Object.entries is not a function(…) e.(anonymous function) @ winamp.js:38

#2 - winamp.js:49 Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Object.entries is not a function at _ ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:49:15179)) at Ct.beginWork ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:19:31711)) at i ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:19:44327)) at a ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:19:44648)) at s ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:19:44886)) at E ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:19:48429)) at b ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:19:48166)) at h ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:19:47294)) at p ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:19:46684)) at Object.Nt.updateContainer ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:19:50943)) at [https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:19:62380) at Object.Rt.unbatchedUpdates ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:19:49691)) at gn ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:19:62349)) at uo.render ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:27:29068)) at e.<anonymous> ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:38:169332)) at r ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:11:38490)) at a._invoke ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:11:39610)) at a.e.(anonymous function) [as next] ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:11:38669)) at r ([https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:38:167472)) at [https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp....](https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/winamp2-js/built/winamp.js:38:167566)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> My holy, how did you port that!

<comment><USER9> I wrote a lot of JavaScript :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> It Kicks the Llamas Ass!

</comment><comment><USER70> >Winamp 2.9 in HTML5 and JavaScript

[https://i.imgur.com/Br00TCn.gif](https://i.imgur.com/Br00TCn.gif)</comment>


Belgium has highest mortality rate per capita from COVID-19 in the world [video] - open-source-ux https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21e0AJCmrHs <comment><AUTHOR> They should mention it sooner how Belgium counts their casualties though. Instead of making it more like a mystery, so people have to check a lot of the video :)</comment>


You're doing DevOps wrong - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/04/youre-doing-devops-wrong/ <comment><USER2> Great article. Known but very often not implemented wisdom.

Especially liked this analogy: People don't test from the start for the same reason they don't floss their teeth: It's unpleasant.</comment>


Whole Foods admits trying to sell asparagus water for $6 was a mistake (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/whole-foods-pulls-6-dollar-asparagus-water-after-internet-backlash-1.3180697 <comment><USER2> I don't get the controversy. Now, I would never buy asparagus water, but I also don't shop at Whole Foods. It's long been known that Whole Foods is historically a place that sells a lot of merchandise that is not necessary but is trendy, and they charge a premium for it.

You could just as easily say that sparkling water is a mistake when you can get tap water and seltzer tablets for cheaper, or that Coca Cola is a mistake when you can get sugar and caramel and water and mix them yourself.

Asparagus water sounds awful to me. But so does a lot of stuff that normal people buy, things that are not strictly necessary for survival but people like for some reason. This article is just "hey Whole Foods is expensive and trendy, has anyone noticed this?"

<comment><USER3> > You could just as easily say that sparkling water is a mistake when you can > get tap water and seltzer tablets for cheaper, or that Coca Cola is a > mistake when you can get sugar and caramel and water and mix them yourself.

Not sure how you will get the coca / kola[0] taste in there though.

Edit: fixed cocoa to coca/kola.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca- Cola#Coca_%E2%80%93_cocai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca- Cola#Coca_%E2%80%93_cocaine)

<comment><USER4> Clearly the example given is just meant to make the larger point and not to serve as an exact recipe to make your own Coke knock-off.

Also, since we're being pedantic, cocoa? That's chocolate. Coca Cola is made with kola nut and other flavors, not chocolate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not impossible to imagine an established brand being successful with better packaging and marketing. But it's clearly just Joe from the produce department filling bottles with water and asparagus, haphazardly slapping a generic sticker on it, and calling it a day. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the lone initiative of a creative store manager who wasn't thinking too much or hard about it. I've seen equally egregious products at Starbucks.

<comment><USER6> > clearly just Joe from the produce department filling bottles with water and > asparagus

Oh this is even better! You're telling me the asparagus water is hand-made? And Made in America? Bump that price to $10, this shit is gold! And fire Joe and replace him with Jane and then we can charge $15.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> To be fair, other stores sell just ... tap water (no asparagus!)

It may be good social media outrage fodder, but asparagus water is low on the list of insanely dumb things we buy.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's only a mistake because it didn't catch on.

<comment><USER9> I actually came here to say the same thing (only I was going to be much more verbose).

The fact of the matter is that people buy even sillier things for much more than $6. If you're happy with your $6 asparagus water, then I don't see what the problem is. In fact, the only time I would suggest that something bad is going on is, I think, when you try to convince me I'm the one in the wrong for not enjoying your weird and expensive food.

Their statement indicating it was a mistake is actually much worse:

"It was made incorrectly and has since been removed."

So, you sold people a product that was made incorrectly. So incorrectly that you have permanently discontinued the product. Selling something stupid that doesn't take off isn't a crime, but selling something that was made "incorrectly" to such an extent that it has to be banished _forever_ actually does sound like it should be a crime. Like, if I sold uranium water and realized it was actually horrible and not as I previously thought good so I removed it forever, then there should probably be some sort of a fine involved at the very least.

Culturally this whole thing stinks. People enjoy silly things that cost too much money. Ideally, this wouldn't happen, but technically I don't see the harm. We all have to do something and if your something seems silly and expensive to me that shouldn't be a reason for me to try to stop you from having your fun.

But when people try to join in and start a new silly and expensive trend, the cost of failure shouldn't be absolute ostracization. We need people to try new things or else no progress is made. If we're going to accept some silly things, then we should accept people trying to start any silly thing. And at any rate, asparagus water isn't where I would draw the line. Is expensive water really where we want our moral outrage to be focused on?

And the worst of it is that the excuse they have is horrifying. If they just said, "sorry we messed up," then we could all move on with our lives. But instead they said that they, a high end food distribution service, provided their high end customers with a defective product. So defective in fact that they had to treat it like radioactive waste and banish it to Yucca mountain until the end of time. And it worked.

Try something stupid that's basically the same as all the other stupid things that have already been normalized. Your company deserves to be destroyed. Excuse yourself by saying you were only trying to commit war crimes. Oh never mind, that's fine then.

<comment><USER8> I assume it's to reduce the cognitive dissonance - you can't say "I tried to sell a stupid product" if you have a belief in your rightness. The product was RIGHT, but the implementation was bad is a lot easier to deal with if you're trying to justifying selling 2.2 oz of beef jerky for $8.00.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I honestly did not understand the outrage with the asparagus water.

Company makes a product, if someone is willing to buy it the company will continue to make it. If nobody buys it, company stops making it. Yes it was a weird decision, but people buy 'diamond' water (btw it dropped in price if you are interested, probably due to low demand)

</comment><comment><USER11> Quirky products don't bother me. What bothers me more is fraudulent labeling of weights of store-packaged foods sold by weight (meats, etc). [https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/06/whole- foods...](https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/06/whole-foods-under- fire-for-overcharging-customers/index.htm)

Unfortunately this isn't uncommon in the grocery industry. Stores most often get tripped up when they sell something by the pound, package up nominal pounds of the stuff, then label each of those packages as _precisely_ one pound when such precision is unlikely. Next time you're in the store take a look at the packages of ground beef; they'll say "$x per pound" and they should then also list a precise weight of that particular package with a price calculated for that particular package. Sometimes, not too infrequently, stores will cut corners and simply label each package as precisely one pound, with the error systematically in their favor.

If you believe you've discovered a store doing this, you may be able to report that store for investigation by your local weights and measures: [https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/dms/index.html](https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/dms/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> In other news (2018): [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42639479](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42639479)

<comment><USER2> How are individually wrapped whole pickles still a real thing though?

<comment><USER11> Those are bizarre, I bought one as a gag gift once. Maybe I'm part of the problem and those products survive off their novelty factor?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I cannot imagine when the product group was sitting around kicking out product ideas that this didn't make at least a few of them chuckle. I can imagine that at least a couple of them went home that night and, laughing, told their SO, "... and we're going to put asparagus in it and sell it for $6!!!"

I mean, how could any normal person NOT laugh at this?

<comment><USER8> I can't wait for their cross promotion with GOOP, featuring homeopathic Gwyneth Paltrow pee.

<comment><USER14> If it's mixed in with Kombucha I'd probably buy it.

<comment><USER8> I've only tried Kombucha once, but I'll admit I probably couldn't tell the difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Asparagus water badly needed a new branded name... something like VitalitE Water.

Its way to easy to change this headline to read "Whole Foods admits trying to sell AsparGROSS water for $6 was a mistake".

</comment><comment><USER15> If you think that's bad, there are people that don't vaccinate their kids on the intended schedule and others that demand antibiotics for viral infections. There are others that take new, $30k+ cars and use them to Uber not taking depreciation on their vehicle into account.

This is may be easy to laugh at, but there are plenty of things that are much more stupid that people regularly do.

edit: fine, downvote me. But if you actually read the article and look at the the reaction of people, you'd think that was in the top 100 stupid things that you could name off the top of your head. The fact that I'm even being downvoted as controversial for mentioning vaccines/antiobitic overprescription/unprofitable gig economy participation is much closer to a "fall of Rome" type behavior than a stupid item on the shelf at a grocery store.

edit 2: here's a free example of much stupider behavior we take for granted: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-trucks- texas/hu...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-trucks-texas/huge- pricey-trucks-haul-jobs-and-profits-for-the-detroit-three-idUSKCN1PU1E4) (grossly oversized, inefficient trucks that causing poor strategic moves at US automakers as a result of trade protections for a specific class of vehicles... and I have nothing against pickup trucks, but these $70k luxury cars are the truck equivalent of $1k air jordans)</comment>


Will Congress Repeal the 1099 Expansion? - <AUTHOR> http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/will-congress-repeal-the-1099-expansion/?src=twr

<comment><USER2> What's the over-under on PPACA's contribution to the deficit? Anybody still think it will be negative?</comment>


Wasabi fire alarm a lifesaver for the deaf (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-wasabi-idUST29421020080318 <comment><USER2> It looks like they won a IG Nobel in 2011: [https://www.improbable.com/ig- about/winners/#ig2011](https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/winners/#ig2011)

And it's in the National Museum of Scotland: [https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore- our-collections/stories/scienc...](https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our- collections/stories/science-and-technology/elements-of-esf/elements/fire/)

Unfortunately I can't seem to find any evidence that they turned it into a real product.

<comment><USER3> This old page makes it look like it was a real product, unclear how it was sold though. Also no product name, oddly...

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160304171428/http://www.pixen-...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160304171428/http://www.pixen-e.jp/product/wasabi.html)

<comment><USER4> "臭気発生装置 WA-1型(Odor generation device Type WA-1)" seems to be the name. Listed on Rakuten for about $516 but not sure if it's in stock or merely listed there.

Looks like it works as a wireless slave device for compatible smoke detectors, with one included in the kit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I dated a girl once with a hearing impairment -- she was deaf in one ear, impaired (mostly high frequency) in the other. She had a strobe light smoke detector in her room.

One night I stayed over and woke up to the fire alarm (roommate had burnt some popcorn). She slept right through the alarm and I had to wake her.

She said she'd upgrade to a "bed shaker" alarm. Not sure how well that worked out, we stopped dating shortly after (end of semester).

The Wasabi alarm sounds interesting, but if it's defeated by a blocked nose, maybe the bed shaker type is better.

<comment><USER6> Wasabi is also a great way to relieve congestion.

<comment><USER7> Is it like the nasal sprays where it gets less and less effective? If not, I might buy a jar :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Beware with the elderly, as smell can also be a sense which diminishes with age, or as a comorbidity of conditions such as Parkinson's disease.

<comment><USER9> The power of wasabi isn't really the smell so much as it is a chemical interaction between allyl isothiocyanate and TRPA1. So in that sense it is more similar to the heat from a chili pepper than it is the aroma of something. I'm not positive, but I don't believe there is age related reduction in feelings of heat from capsaicin.

<comment><USER10> Long shot, but maybe you know the answer.

There is some chemical in certain shampoos that affects me more than most. The sensation is less like smelling and more like something is penetrating into my nose. It doesn't feel quite like burning or heat, but it's intense in a sort of similar way.

Sorry that's vague, but maybe this is a well-known thing.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps it's Tea Tree Oil:

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

Trader Joe's in the U.S. sells a line of shampoo/conditioner that has that extract in it, and if it gets into my eyes it's game over.

[https://www.traderjoes.com/digin/post/tea-tree-tingle- bath-p...](https://www.traderjoes.com/digin/post/tea-tree-tingle-bath- products)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Except for one person with a blocked nose, all woke up within two minutes of > the smell reaching them.

Seems like a pretty bad failure mode, if it doesn't work when people have a bad cold.

Also, the time delay is an issue. An audible alarm can wake people up much faster.

One thing they might be to use an sound based alarm, but that has enough low frequencies that it makes your skull resonate. A lot of dead people, may have conduction issues, and the sound can be transmitted through bone. For the people that have a neurological basis for deafness, even sounds that you cannot perceive if they resonate the right structures can make you feel uncomfortable.

<comment><USER13> I've seen fire alarms that use very bright, flashing lights. Those might very well wake someone up from a dead sleep, but I'm not sure what the research says on them.

<comment><USER14> As someone who slept under one that would start flashing just before the sound started, oh yes, the light alone can wake you up. It's like a flash of lightning, or at least a really bright camera flash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you want your own wasabi spray, maybe for a weekend iot doorbell project.. here you are. [https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B003XPHDXG/](https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B003XPHDXG/)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is the most clever thing I've seen posted on this site in a while. This was in 2008 and they said it would be sold within two years, so I assume that it wasn't a successful product? Or at least never made it to the West?

<comment><USER17> One problem I don't know how to solve for this, is that wasabia japonica is fairly expensive, hard to grow or find, and not shelf stable.

The vast majority of "wasabi" is horseradish and food coloring.

<comment><USER18> They mention in the article that the smell is produced synthetically (presumably for this exact reason).

<comment><USER17> If the natural compound is not shelf stable I wonder what the difference with the synthetic is.

<comment><USER19> The synthetic could be more powerful, something like the difference between THC and synthetic THC.

<comment><USER20> Perhaps you're confusing THC with synthetic cannabinoids. The molecule doesn't care whether it's made by plants or at a lab.

Plants yield a mixture of cannabinoids at some concentration, which constitute ~10% of the dried plant matter. These can be extracted and separated with various techniques. The effects of pure THC are different than that of the mixture.

Upcoming schemes use engineered micro-organisms to produce specific cannabinoids, efficiency of the systems is ramping up. My understanding is that the synthesis of cannabinoids is is quite an inefficient way of manufacture.

None the less, it's all the same - covalently bound atoms :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A few months ago I took a safety training course. In the course the instructor showed us a video of a voice fire alarm, which talked along with emitting a shrill sound. The reason was that some people, especially children, could not be awakened by the alarm sound, but will wake upon hearing a human voice. I have a mix of old and new fire alarms, and my new fire alarm does indeed talk in addition to emitting the alarm sound.

</comment><comment><USER22> Information seems to be scant about how this has fared since the article was written. But it looks like it launched in 2009 and also won an Ig Nobel prize: [https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a7253/our- favori...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a7253/our-favorite-ig- nobel-the-wasabi-fire-alarm/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of a story someone told me, about her grandparents who were both deaf. They had an alarm clock that had a string attached to their wrist, and would tug when they needed to wake up.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think I have seen alarm clock systems marketed for the fully deaf which are a vibrating thing you ziptie underneath your mattress/box spring.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's well known you can't smell while you sleep so why is this a good idea?

(Other than the many many other reasons it's a bad idea)

<comment><USER5> Given how ammonia smelling salts can be used to revive people that are unconscious, I can see how wasabi vapor could have the same effect

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelling_salts#Usage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelling_salts#Usage)

<comment><USER25> "Smelling salts are used to arouse consciousness because the release of ammonia (NH3) gas that accompanies their use irritates the membranes of the nose and lungs, and thereby triggers an inhalation reflex. This reflex alters the pattern of breathing, resulting in improved respiratory flow rates and possibly alertness."

The article on Wasabi says smell, smelling salts are not actually olfactory.

<comment><USER5> So like what happens if you inhale wasabi?

 _The article on Wasabi says smell, smelling salts are not actually olfactory._

The article was a few paragraph press release meant for mainstream news, not a technical description.

Elsewhere you can find more details:

 _Wasabi has a pungent odor that irritates the nose, and it was this property of the plant that was used for the fire alarm_

...

 _When wasabi has been grated, the allyl isothiocyanate contained in it is broken down by an enzyme and becomes a bitter gas that stimulates the nervous system. Surprisingly, it can wake people up, both hearing-impaired and non- hearing-impaired alike, within a period of 10 seconds to two minutes, according to the experiments_

[https://web-japan.org/trends/11_sci-tech/sci120315.html](https://web- japan.org/trends/11_sci-tech/sci120315.html)

<comment><USER25> So you'd be lightly macing them.

I think it would be hard to get the dosage correct in a room with fans and airconditioning and windows that may or may not be on.

And fun to test every 6 months.

But it is interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>