Medicine's Uncomfortable Relationship with Math (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1861033 <comment><USER2> The problem is more deep-rooted in most biology and medicine education. In many fields of biology and medicine people from faculty to undergraduate lack a systematic education in statistics and probability, and this problem keeping reflected in the research and publications. I collaborated with many people in these fields, and surprisingly the statistical analysis is just clicking a few buttons in a software and copy-pasting the alpha value. Another reason why this problem is so rampant in the fields, I think it is because the graduate and postgraduate training in these fields still like apprenticeship. So you learn mostly from what senior members do in the lab, what the classical papers in the field did, and what your paper's reviwers ask.

<comment><USER3> They are required courses for those degrees, so you might have a bad sample of people, or the field is simply bad at it entirely.

<comment><USER2> Since this is something about statistics and probability, I think enough samples for conclusion is required. ;)

You can read an example ([http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1037.2.long](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1037.2.long), [http://www.be-md.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26941311/#comments](http://www.be- md.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26941311/#comments)) I linked in another comment ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11325254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11325254)). There are quite a few blogpost on this also, and if you allow me to shorten the story in one sentence, that is a comment on Science arguing a previous study on Science did the statistical analysis wrong is under the critics that the comment itself did statistical analysis wrong.

And recently life sciences fields are in a "reproducibility" controversy which basically arises from education and application of the topic.

<comment><USER4> I'm a physician, with an undergrad in physics. My research is very applied and very math heavy. When applying to med schools, I asked a couple very senior mathematicians at my college as to whether I should take a stats class. They assured me I would not need a stats class.

The first time I got a biostats lecture in medical school, I genuinely questioned their advice. By the third class, I was convinced I knew nothing about math. Luckily our biochem prof was a physics major and assured me I didn't need to worry about the stats.

Somewhere in residency, I realized I really had been getting all the stats questions right. But not because I did anything like the other residents. They have all these crazy stories and mnemonics to keep track of what kind of problem they're looking at. They seriously try to classify their way out of basic math. They classify. Everything.

I now agree with my profs. I didn't need a stats class. But the stats education in medical school seems designed to convince physicians that they need statisticians. Which is probably a coup for biostatisticians, but it's a damn shame for physicians trying to break into research outside major academic centers.

<comment><USER5> Irrelevant to your main point - I am surprised you didn't have at least an intro to probability and statistics, and later a statistical mechanics course as part of a physics undergrad curriculum.

Relevant to your main point - I have worked with many clinicians. Most of them have had a fairly tenuous grasp of the statistics they were working with, which matches your experience in training I think. A couple had much better understanding, but had driven that education themselves.

<comment><USER4> Yes, we took a statistical mechanics course senior year, deriving Gibbs free energy from buckets of 1s and 0s, etc. Brutal class.

<comment><USER5> Ah, good. Had me worried there for a moment !

It is true that depending on how statistical mechanics is taught, it can be difficult to connect to other statistical reasoning (the distributions are "nice", you have a gazillion measurements, and your population sampling doesn't tend to have bias issues, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As with a lot of "simple" math, the trick is to actually write it down and calculate it, because our intuition (at least for some of us) is often not the best when it comes to this kind of calculation.

In this case we write down the contingency table. Assuming that the test perfectly detects what we are looking for we find

True positives: 1

False positive: 5% of 1000 = 50

True negative: 949

False negative: 0

Chance of disease given positive results = 1/51 = 1.96%

<comment><USER7> It really depends on how you define "False Positive Rate". There are at least 2 different ways of looking at this:

\- Out of 1000 tests 51 will be positive, 50 of which are incorrect.

\- Out of 1000 _positive_ tests, 50 will be wrong, 950 will be correct.

The 2 interpretations give vastly different results.

<comment><USER8> "False positive" has a precise meaning in statistical analysis. The second thing you're talking about is useful to know, but calling it the false positive rate is just wrong.

"Out of 1000 positive tests, 50 were false positives, 950 were true positives" \- valid statement.

"The false positive rate was 50 out of 1000" \- abuses a common technical term in a way that sounds valid on the face of it, but which is potentially VERY misleading.

We can't even calculate a valid false positive rate from the above data, since that requires taking the ratio vs. all tests and not just positive tests.

<comment><USER7> Here is a definition of False Positive from wikipedia: _" In medical testing, and more generally in binary classification, a false positive is an error in data reporting in which a test result improperly indicates presence of a condition, such as a disease (the result is positive), when in reality it is not"_

I don't see anything here that definitively clarifies which of the 2 scenarios above it can exclusively be applied to.

<comment><USER8> There are many ways in which you can incorrectly interpret statements on Wikipedia, which is why specialized textbooks and so forth still have use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Exhibit B: "A Mathematical Model for the Determination of Total Area Under Glucose Tolerance and Other Metabolic Curves." [http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152.abstract](http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152.abstract)

Cited by 272(!!): [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1812909520721081729...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=18129095207210817294)

<comment><USER10> Context: In this 1994 paper, the researcher "invented" the trapezoidal rule for computing integrals[+]. This is a very common method for computing approximate integrals, and can probably be found in your local high school calculus class.

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

<comment><USER11> Oh that is alarmingly sad.

<comment><USER12> At least they got the correct result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For what it's worth, these exact same questions do show up on board exams, so it's not like medical students don't ever learn this information.

What is a bit sad is that data analysis and quantitative skills continue to be de-emphasized in the pre-clinical curriculum for the sake of rote memorization of huge lists and tables, which would seem to be less and less important as instant access to references on smartphones becomes commonplace.

<comment><USER14> I agree, people rarely enter medicine because they are particularly good at maths. All that memorization just happens to draw a different kind of personality. But it's hard to blame medicine for that: in the practical act of applying medical knowledge to heal people, the memorization is much more important than mathematical understanding.

Where it breaks down is medical science, which relies so much more on subtle mathematical interpretation than most other empirical sciences. But that is just what happens when there is so little opportunity for deliberate experimentation and such a large dataset of "naturally occurring" experiments to observe. (and it surely is helped by this millenia old tradition of nonempirical medicine, i guess all that bloodletting based on beautiful but hilariously wrong theories is to this day giving the theory-building part of the scientific method a bad reputation in medicine, making it work completely in "stupid mode empirism" where every part of thinking that is not strictly looking at numbers is heavily frowned upon)

Maybe there is a need for a stronger differentiation between academic paths leading to to applied medicine and those leading medical science. Biotech comes close, but it certainly isn't about teasing more reliable insights from clinical datasets. Other sciences take the easy road and simply train everybody for science, leaving practical application to learning on the job, but we sure would not want to get treated by that kind of MD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The issue of positive predictive value versus specificity comes up almost every day in my work as a pathologist. There is widespread misunderstanding, and in my own anecdotal experience, it very frequently results in unnecessary lab testing and misinterpretation of test results by clinicians.

When I was a pre-med student, for some reason the prerequisites required a year of calculus. That succeeded in weeding out people who can't make an A in freshman calculus, but I'm not sure what else it accomplished. Calculus has little to do with the daily practice of medicine, unless you're a radiation oncologist or doing some hardcore research.

A year of statistics would have served me and my patients much better. That goes double, given the current firehose of data that is part and parcel of the personalized medicine revolution.

<comment><USER4> heh, pathologist here as well. See my other comment in this thread (1). I did physics, so I don't know what the general pre-med curriculum is like, but I'm not so sure a stats class would necessarily help more than two semesters of calculus when you're up against big data. Understanding integration and continuity are more valuable in the big picture.

My experience has been that big data is more about linear algebra, which is usually several classes beyond entry level calc or stats. You have to be able to reason about arbitrarily large collections of partial differential equations (albeit reduced to difference equations).

For example, if you want to talk about genomics, Durbin's _Biologic Sequence Analysis_ is probably the most foundational text available. It introduces Bayes's theorem on page 8, has stuff that looks suspiciously like calculus on page 40, and is into Markov chains by page 48. They hold off on a formal treatment of entropy until about half-way through the book.

And for phylogenetics, the equivalent books is Felsenstein's _Inferring Phylogenies_. He introduces linear algebra _before_ integration.

My favorite quote from Felsenstein, particularly germaine for pathologists (surely the taxonomists of medicine):

"Knowing exactly how many tree topologies ... is not particularly important. The point is that there are very large numbers of them. ... one use for the numbers was "to frighten taxonomists."

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326178)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yet the authors don't offer the data and statistical code.

<comment><USER17> This is a common and large issue in my opinion. Papers built and published without source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me of Gerd Gigerenzer's quizzes of over 1,000 gynaecologists on interpreting mammogram results - only 21% got it right. [1]

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28166019](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28166019)

</comment><comment><USER19> Did anyone else learn how to compute probabilities by drilling through the algebra? Like, if asked how to convert a plain English probabilistic query (e.g. "what is the chance of picking two red candies from a mixed bowl") into a formula, I would focus on the 'and', mentally recite something to the effect of 'conjunctions multiply probabilities', then write p(red)*p(red). There's no intuition or understanding, just rote memorization.

I've been trying to recognize and account for this deficiency by drawing mental decision trees enumerating probabilities instead ... anyone else doing anything similar?

<comment><USER20> Not to be an asshole but, unless you replace the first candy after taking it out, your formula's wrong.

If you start w/ 50 red candies and 50 non-red candies, the chance of the first one red is 1/2 (from 50/100) but the chance the second one is red after first drawing a red candy is now 49/99\. After removing one red candy, there are now 49 red candies and 99 total candies.

So, P(red) * P(red | removed 1 red) = 49/198

<comment><USER19> XD okay, fair enough. I was thinking of the ideal candy bowl, which is self- refilling. Do you grade undergraduate stats quizzes, by the way?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just wanted to point out that I think it is crucial that the authors included the statement "Assuming a perfectly sensitive test,..." Otherwise, if using only the information presented in the question, there would be no way to calculate the true positive rate, or P(test+ | disease), in Bayes' Theorem.

<comment><USER22> True, but any false negative rate below 100% would cause the answer to be _lower_ than 2%. The problem they were focusing on was the subset of people who overestimated.</comment></comment>


Keybase.io Invite - <AUTHOR>

Hi, Does anyone maybe have an extra keybase.io invite code? I'd really like to try it out. <comment><USER2> What's your email address? I need that to send the invite.

<comment><AUTHOR> email@example.com

<comment><USER2> I sent the invite

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Owed Salary, Founder Rebranded - <AUTHOR> The short version of the story:
I was a key engineer in a small startup.  Towards the end of the startups life, the founder was involved in some sketchy business dealings with money.  The other few employees and I worked IOUs for the final months while "promised money" was being wired, but never came.  When I left, I was owed about $15k in salary.  The startup is still in business with the state and re-filed their business information as "active."
Recently, the founder started a new startup in the very same space, with the same mission statement as the old startup.  I suspect he is using much of the same code, as we had basically a completed product before I left the old startup.  It would take years to rewrite from scratch without re-using the old code.
It seems that he is letting the old startup die, while using work that he never paid for power his new venture and raise investments.  Is this a loophole?  Do you have any experience with a situation like this as an employee who was owed money?  I know all situations are unique, but how did your experience pan out? <comment><USER2> 1) If you were a W2 employee, and your concern is only getting paid, then call him in the morning and say, "Have a check for $15,000.00 dated today by 2 pm or I will file a complaint with OLS."

[https://olsconnect.microsoftcrmportals.com/employee- inquiry/](https://olsconnect.microsoftcrmportals.com/employee-inquiry/)

If he doesn't pay you, then you and your co-workers can fill in that form with the "wage theft" option and the state will investigate for free. And they are relentless.

You're also eligible for unemployment, and when you file, the state will also check what forms and payments he made. There are severe penalties for skipping that, and the state doesn't like holding the bag on UI. They will go looking for employers that do that.

2) If you're a contractor, then likely all you can do is to have a lawyer write a demand payment letter, and also state that you retain copyright on anything you wrote and weren't paid for.

Every time there's PR (press, funding rounds, etc.), mail him (and the board, if any) a copy of the letter. But move on with your life otherwise.

Lawyers typically start billing in the range of $20,000 for anything beyond a letter in large cities. If you sign any contract with a lawyer, add a "not to exceed" clause with what you can afford to spend or it will cost more than the wage theft.

IANAL, but I've done my own legal paperwork, filings and representation for two decades. It's a handy skill.

<comment><USER3> > Lawyers typically start billing in the range of $20,000 for anything beyond > a letter in large cities.

Off-topic, but I'm always flabergasted at the rates I'm hearing US lawyers charge. Are these guys totally swimming in money? If so, why no extra competition emerges to bring prices down?

<comment><USER4> Competition isn't a magic wand. Lawyers fees are a market structure problem. A market can work in an efficient competitive way but requires many factors to operate that way. Customers need information, and a market where individual customers only make infrequent, non-standardized, often non-public transactions is pretty terrible for creating information customers can find and act upon. That the transactions are also non-reversible and "sticky", or difficult to change midway trough a case is also not great for a competitive market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most predictable and most important answer: talk to a real lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER6> You should start by talking to an employment practices attorney, and likely send a demand for payment, then a violation for failing to pay minium wage.

If you had no equity, while the new company seems fraudulent, you have little recourse beyond salary owed.

<comment><USER7> The employer doesn't just owe minimum wage; they owe whatever wage the employee was making at the time they did the work. You can't retroactively cut someone's salary. Once they've done the work, you owe them the money you agreed to pay. Not paying it is wage theft (which is a crime in most states).

The moral of the story is: If an employer stops paying you, stop working for them immediately, demand to be paid immediately, and start looking for another job. Once they miss a payroll, it usually doesn't end well. Missing payroll is usually a sign of gross financial mismanagement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As the other commenters mention, talk to a lawyer. There's a lot of specifics that they would know about, that even if we knew about, can't help with. Possibly we can recommend some lawyers if you tell us where you're at.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks: Seattle.

I should have probably been more clear about my goal: while I am interested in recovering what I'm owed, I'm also interested in others experiences with how things like this have played out for them. Hearing similar circumstances and results helps me weigh my actions better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just bucking the "lawyer up" theme of this thread (even though it is probably the wisest course of action): you could also threaten to expose him on social media / the press, unless he cuts you in to the "new" startup. Assuming he cares about business reputation, this could work out better than going down the legal route.

<comment><USER7> > you could also threaten to expose him on social media / the press, unless he > cuts you in to the "new" startup

That could be a criminal act (blackmail/extortion).</comment></comment>


Here Are The 11 Biggest Pivots Of 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-pivots-of-2011-2011-12#color-switched-to-a-video-sharing-application-1 <comment><AUTHOR> Spoiler alert: the #1 most overused word of 2011 is... Pivot! Half of these are not pivots at all, at least not according to the definition Eric Ries originally coined: "A change in strategy without a change in vision."

SkillSlate: looks like a change in vision to me (totally different product) Fondu: not a pivot, its a totally new company Hipmunk: not a pivot, it's a new (complementary) product Turntable.fm: Brand new startup Fab: Brand new startup

All of these look like startups we should be commending for making building good products and making strategic decisions this year, let's just stop calling everything startups do "Pivoting" just because its a buzzword.</comment>


The multiprocessing module in Python - <AUTHOR> http://linuxramb.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-multiprocessing-module-in-python.html <comment><USER2> My only gripe is:

> Since a new instance of Python VM is running the code, there is no GIL and > you get parallelism running on multiple cores.

Has the potential to be misinterpreted by new Python devs. As I understand it, each _process_ gets its own interpreter with its own GIL. So its not that there is no GIL, just that there are now 3 GILs each managing separate execution spaces.

Also, at a higher level of discussion, this is just a rehash of multi- _processing_ vs. multi- _threading_ so perhaps it would be more illuminating to start from there and move down to the library examples.

The casual reference to multi- _threading_ in the quote from the POSIX fork definition also adds to potential reader confusion.

<comment><USER3> The flip side is a lot of people think "oh the GIL, I can't even run Python code in a server with more than 1 CPU"

No you can, just run lots of processes and make lots of GILS. Ends up still using less memory than Java in many cases. Gil will be the least of your worries.

<comment><USER2> That's a fair point: you _can_ take advantage of multiple CPUs with Python, but you have to eat the overhead of multi-processing vs multi-threading.

Multi-processing breaks down when you have to communicate _with high frequency_ between various logical runners.

I think there are vastly more problems that can be solved with multi- processing than those that _require_ multi-threading but they do exist.

There is also another layer of simulated parallelism via coroutines...but I was just trying to point out that there was potential for confusion in this piece.

<comment><USER4> You can of course use multithreading to get parallelism, eg. if the expensive calculations are not done in Python itself but rather some other library, be it cryptography, compression, numpy, serdes'ing stuff and so on. I/O works in parallel as well.

<comment><USER5> It's still 1 core for multithreading (on the python part).

<comment><USER2> Just to add more context for others...

C extensions called from Python _are_ still subject to the GIL of the calling interpreter[1].

In fact, this guaranteed thread safety has led to the creation of many non- thread safe Python C extensions which is now a critical blocker to efforts to removing the GIL[2], although there are also a number of other issues as well.

As noted in the StackOverflow, you _can_ release the GIL but there are some tricks to doing so safely[3].

But threads of a C extensions library are not _necessarily_ pinned to a single core by the GIL like regular Python byte code.

Although many performance oriented libraries like numpy[4] forsake multi- threading by default in many cases and rely on parallelization by the user (programmer)[5].

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/651048/concurrency-are- py...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/651048/concurrency-are-python- extensions-written-in-c-c-affected-by-the-global-inter)

[2] [https://youtu.be/P3AyI_u66Bw](https://youtu.be/P3AyI_u66Bw)

[3] [https://docs.python.org/3/c-api/init.html#thread-state- and-t...](https://docs.python.org/3/c-api/init.html#thread-state-and-the- global-interpreter-lock)

[4] [http://www.numpy.org/](http://www.numpy.org/)

[5] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16617973/why-isnt- numpy-m...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16617973/why-isnt-numpy-mean- multithreaded)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a nice hack for multiprocessing module to use for IO-bound code without having to fork processes:

       from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool as ThreadPool
       pool = ThreadPool(16)
       res = pool.map(one_arg_fun, [arg1, arg2, ...])

A 3 line IO parallelism speedup trick. Used it fetch stuff from multiple servers recently.

<comment><USER7> can you elaborate?

<comment><USER8> It's the equivalent of: (edit: actually an improvement over)

        from threading import Thread

        def blocking_function(arg):
            ....

        pool = []
        for arg in args[:16]:
            f = lambda: blocking_function(arg)
            thread = Thread(target=f)
            thread.start()
            pool.append(thread)

Edit: see below, this doesn't include job queueing but rather, hard limits your input to maximum 16 args. The point is, the code is a nice, easy way to start a number of threads working on a list of arguments.

<comment><USER6> Almost but as quinnftw mentioned it does a bit more, specifically it limits the number of threads it runs to 16. I can pass 1000 url or arguments into it and it won't spawn 1000 threads but keep it at 16 max. Also I think it does a bit a better job with exception propagation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some good alternatives, for when you just want quick and easy parallelization:

Joblib[0]: 'Embarrassingly parallel for loops'. Basically just write a generator and get multicore processing on it. Pretty straightforward.

Multiprocess[1]: This is a fork of the multiprocessing module. The biggest benefit to me (the one time I used it) is that it's easier to create shared data structures for multiprocessing (which I couldn't do with multiprocessing.Pool). Last week I had to do a really long graph calculation that only needed to return a result for a very, very small fraction of the arguments. Joblib stored all of the null results as 'None', which tore through my RAM after billions of relatively fast calculations before crashing. But using a shared dictionary and multiprocess.Pool and imap_unordered, I was able to use mutlicore processing, adding items to the dict only if the right conditions were met, and discarding the 'None's. RAM use was very minimal.

[0]: [https://pythonhosted.org/joblib/index.html](https://pythonhosted.org/joblib/index.html) [1]: [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/multiprocess](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/multiprocess)

<comment><USER10> Also, consider using Celery [0] and distribute the computation across different hosts as well.

[0] [http://www.celeryproject.org/](http://www.celeryproject.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used this module for a fractal rendering program, years ago. The APIS are (were?) a little annoying - last I checked, the relevant code had to be picklable. But it used all my CPUs and scaled just fine.

</comment><comment><USER12> I had a really rough time finding practical/real world examples of this stuff. After digging around and piecing together a bunch of tips/guides/pointers, I managed to get what I wanted working.

If you're looking for some real world examples of using multiprocessing (v3), check here: [https://github.com/dpgailey/asteria/blob/master/asteria-v3/c...](https://github.com/dpgailey/asteria/blob/master/asteria-v3/client.py)

<comment><USER12> Also if anyone has a ton of experience with task management/scheduling/multiprocessing I'd love to buy you a coffee and pick your brain -- reach out! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice job hijacking my browser back button...

<comment><USER14> Works fine for me.

<comment><USER13> Latest Chrome on MacOS. If you hit back after going to that page you have to click through about 4-5 other articles before you ultimately get back to this comment thread.

Even happens if you open in a new tab.

<comment><USER2> Works fine for me as well. Also Chrome on MacOS...although I don't know if I am "latest" version.

<comment><USER13> Happens w/ Chromium and also Firefox on Debian.

In fact, I can't find a single browser/OS combo it doesn't happen on.

<comment><USER2> MacOS Sierra 10.12.3/Chrome 56.0.2924.87 (64-bit)

Don't have my Ubuntu machine to test it there though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you need multi-core for performance, first you should rewrite in a compiled language instead of Python. Java/C/C++/Go/FORTRAN/whatever will run 10 to 20 times faster before even worrying about running multi-core.

<comment><USER16> Python is compiled language.

<comment><USER17> That is technically correct, but not useful for the conversation...

<comment><USER18> No it's not. That's like (and I know this has been said again and again) that "War and Peace" is a hardcover book. It's a non-sequitur.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An open source JMAP proxy, JavaScript library and webmail demo - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fastmail.com/2015/08/11/an-open-source-jmap-proxy-javascript-library-and-webmail-demo/

<comment><USER3> Can the JMAP protocol be made easier with HTTP/2? The protocol has its own sort of multiplexing (multiple calls in one HTTP call, worrying about executing things in a certain sequence, etc)

Wouldn't an HTTP/2 transport mechanism remove the need to do all this and greatly simplify it to feel more RESTy, but get all the benefits of multiple calls with near zero overhead?

<comment><USER4> JMAP itself is transport-agnostic, though of course we've only implemented it over regular HTTP so far.

Some methods have to be batched together and executed in order, as it's possible to arrange for the output of one method to be used for an input to another method within the same batch. It is however entirely feasible to have multiple batches containing a single method in-flight at the same time and indeed, the demo client and the FastMail client do just this.

I'd certainly be interested to see if HTTP/2 could help anywhere but I don't think there's many obvious wins - JMAP itself has very little overhead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really hope that this or something similar sees some uptake... Although I'm not familiar with JMAP I'm relatively familiar with SMTP, POP3 and IMAP and to be honest, they kind of suck and support things not needed, and things that are seem hacky...

A new interface for mail, contacts, calendar has been sorely needed for a while.

<comment><USER6> I, for one, am somewhat leery of people reinventing the wheel - especially for a browser-based environment, where everything has a history of being brittle and short-lived.

IMAP works amazingly well if you're using dovecot as a server (including search and push e-mail), and CalDAV/CardDAV also work well if your server actually implements things properly, and projects like Horde have shown you can run and deploy web-based services for them at scale (even though I still regret they're using PHP).

Sure, anything related to DAV has more than a few warts, but my main point here is that things like JMAP won't cater to an installed base or deliver benefits across the board until they finish filing all the corners on their shiny new... cube? Dodecahedron?

<comment><USER4> > I, for one, am somewhat leery of people reinventing the wheel - <USER2> > for a browser-based environment, where everything has a history of being > brittle and short-lived.

Yeah, so are we (and we even introduce JMAP with the "now you have X standards" XKCD comic). This is our last resort. We've been pushing the limits of what's possible with IMAP for years, and we've come to the conclusion that there's just some things you cannot do efficiently with it.

JMAP is not not just for browsers, though that has been where our focus is so far. I have partial implementations of JMAP for fetchmail and mutt already done (I'm just trying to find time to finish them and get them out there). Yes, JMAP uses JSON for its data encoding and (currently) HTTP for its transport, but it's not inherently browser-based.

> IMAP works amazingly well if you're using dovecot as a server (including > search and push e-mail), and CalDAV/CardDAV also work well if your server > actually implements things properly, and projects like Horde have shown you > can run and deploy web-based services for them at scale (even though I still > regret they're using PHP).

The problem is, if you're not using a server like Dovecot or Cyrus that does implement all the extensions to IMAP that you need to get a modern email experience, then you're screwed. Ditto if your client doesn't support it. So we end up in the situation where we have all this stuff that is technically IMAP-compliant (ie implements RFC 3501) but gives a half-assed experience to the user.

Worse, if you wake up one morning and decide you want to build some amazing new experience on top of standards-compliant email, you'll spend the next few months trying to get your mail client bits working correctly before probably giving up. Even if you do get it working, you'll still have to work out what to do against servers that don't support CONDSTORE and QRESYNC. This is why all these pretty new mail-based apps generally target Gmail exclusively - it's a known environment.

So that's what JMAP is about. Use it and you get a straightforward protocol based on tech you probably already know that supports things you expect in 2015, like push, assistance on flaky networks, battery friendly, etc.

> Sure, anything related to DAV has more than a few warts, but my main point > here is that things like JMAP won't cater to an installed base or deliver > benefits across the board until they finish filing all the corners.

Do you see anything missing from the spec?

We recognise that this doesn't work without everyone supporting it, which is part of why we're releasing the spec and all this code and talking to every company with an email product that will listen. This won't work unless everyone can play and its easy for them to do so. We don't want to own this; that doesn't help anyone.

I don't know if JMAP will win. Something has to change though, that I'm convinced of. The web had its revolution (a couple of times). We think its email's turn.

<comment><USER7> When I read the spec the push support was ungood.

What it should do: Tell the server an XMPP or HTTP endpoint to which the server should push a specificed opaque blob when new mail arrives, and possibly other opaque blobs corresponding to other changes, and a (non- binding) rate limit.

With that, it would be easy to write a low-overhead server to support a particular mobile client. Accepts opaque blobs, decodes a little, sends blob to phone via giantmobilevendor.com (which also uses XMPP/HTTP), needs to store no state.

<comment><USER4> That's pretty much exactly what it does. Client supplies a HTTP endpoint, that gets called with new state strings. That endpoint arranges for that information to be shipped to the client and then the client issues calls to update methods to get its view of the world up to date.

Its easy to extend to a custom (non-URL) method type if you like, and works well with mobile push channels. This is what we do with our mobile apps at FastMail to push through GCM, APNS, ADM and Pushy.

<comment><USER7> Glad to hear you've fixed that, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Got sidetracked reading through the Overture.js documentation and source, which I hadn't seen before. It seems like a really impressive Javascript framework. Live queries ie. data views, lots of great animation support, nice set of stock components... It's a real shame they put all this work into a monolithic framework rather than contributing packages / ideas / insight to something like React or the broader ecosystem. I feel like these kitchen-sink frameworks are more or less on the way out -- this is probably a fantastic body of work that few people (myself included!) will learn well enough to appreciate.

<comment><USER9> Well, Overture was created several years before React came along (it actually predates Angular and Ember as well), so it would have been hard to make it as plugins to this! It's not actually as monolithic as it first appears: a small change to the build tool could easily let you just build the parts you want (e.g. just the view system, or just the datastore). Each folder inside the source/Overture/ directory is really a separate module. The dependency information between the modules is already in the files so that the build tool orders them correctly, so it would be a small extension to make it only include the modules you want + dependencies.

Basically, the library is perfect for us (and we think it's pretty neat; our web app is one of the largest, most complex and fastest out there, and the codebase is very clean). But we totally understand that the lack of more documentation, examples (or even books, tutorials and seminars!) compared to the popular libraries makes it harder for people to get into. We still wanted to put the code out there in case someone found it useful, even if only as inspiration rather than using it directly.

If you want to see an example of idiomatic Overture usage, take a look at the source of the JMAP demo webmail. It's fewer than 2000 lines of non-library code, and yet packs a lot in!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember brong and friends from FM talking about this on blogs and maybe the Email Forum. And it is finally starting to land!

Very cool. Gotta love FM. Thanks from a paying customer!

</comment><comment><USER11> What's the authentication story, is it done at the HTTP level?

<comment><USER4> Yes, via the Authorization: header with a negotiated access token.

The spec includes a discovery and authentication mechanism that a client can use to get an access token and can work fine with passwords, OAuth, etc. We don't actually have a lot of experience with this part of the protocol though. We expect that vendors may want to provide an alternate method to obtain access tokens (maybe using OAuth tokens directly). We're expecting to learn more about these use cases as more implementations appear.

<comment><USER12> I hope it works with 2 factor auth (like TOTP) for applications too. Perhaps it's a bit outside of the protocol scope, but a "best practice" suggestion would be great.

<comment><USER4> I don't believe there's anything in it that would prevent that. If you squint, the auth exchange looks a lot like SASL, and that supports pretty much anything.

This is something we'll gain more experience with at FastMail over the coming year. We'll be sure to share that experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are there any other implementations of JMAP, especially for calendar/contacts? Also, android sync service for the same?

<comment><USER4> There's not much around yet. The only things that are in any kind of usable/complete state are the proxy, the demo client and the JS client library, all mentioned in the original post.

Cyrus has partial support (the basic data model and contacts) and is running in production at FastMail. The aim is for full support this year.

On the client side, Roundcube has committed to adding support in the next version (after their recent successful Indiegogo campaign) and Thunderbird is serious investigating it (there's a GSoC student looking at it).

I'm aware of two companies that will be shipping products (client and server) based on JMAP this year. I'm not going to mention names because that's not cool.

Finally, I'm personally building a JMAP data model library in Rust, a standalone (non-IMAP) server on top of it, and I'm part way through adding support to fetchmail and mutt.

I'm not aware of a sync service but it would be pretty straightforward to build. I'll have a look at it sometime, probably taking code from the FastMail app for Android, which has a partial JMAP client in it already.

I need to pull this info together into a "software" page on jmap.io - I'll try to do that soon. In the meantime, if you're working on something that uses JMAP, let me know :)

<comment><USER4> Done: [http://jmap.io/software.html](http://jmap.io/software.html)</comment></comment></comment>


When Smart People are Bad Employees - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/bruceupbin/2011/01/03/when-smart-people-are-bad-employees/?boxes=Homepagechannels <comment><USER2> All said and done you need your "bad" employee more than they need you. Brilliance usually comes at a cost. If you were really a good leader you would have been able to get Rodger some help with his drug problem. And if it had worked he would have repayed you with some amazing work.

Stop fucking complaining about "bad" employees who make you more money than everyone else on the team. Your job IS to deal with them - so deal with it.

Else be happy with the 9-to-5 lifers on you team and shut the fuck up. You'll find that you aren't going to be able todo jack shit with them.

I hate people who post shit like this.

<comment><USER3> _Your job IS to deal with them_

Your job isn't to deal with them, its to extract from them. Once you can no longer extract value beyond their cost, "poof, be gone".

Once T.O. isn't a great player, who's gonna put up with him? No one. With that said, when you look at most of the greats, think Gretsky, Jordan, Tiger, Magic, Bird, etc... they are the model player. The only major exception I can think of is Bonds, and with him, steroids I think I helped a lot. If not for the roids, I think Griffey and A-Rod look a lot better.

<comment><USER4> Even without his later 'roid years Bonds is statistically by far the best batter of his generation and one of the top 5 of all time (Probably #2, just a sliver behind Williams).

<comment><USER3> Well he is claimed to have started roids in 1998. While he was a great player before '98, he moves into legendary status after '98. With that said, I shouldn't have put A-Rod in the same breath with the Kid since clearly A-Rod also used steroids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've tried very hard not to be one of those people on that list. For a while I was the first, feeling completely helpless to change anything. Then someone within the company helped change some of that for me. Now I've matured to the point where I can objectively look at this company and realize it's a mismatch between my professional goals and the role that they would have me play. Quite simply it's not a software company and that's where I need to work.

Thanks for putting this up. Every time I read something like this is helps keep me in check.

<comment><USER6> I'm in a similar sort of position, but I'm a developer working at a software company:

My goal is to automate deployments, boost efficiency and introduce "force multipliers" to get the highest bang-for-buck ratio: basically getting rid of the roadblocks between the guys and them churning out awesome stuff at a terrific speed.

On the other hand, the company _loses_ money (in the short term) when I automate things; if two-hour deployments are reduced to 15 minutes each, they can no longer charge the client that extra hour or two for every batch of work. Projects are generally quoted and charged by the hour; if the client's reasonably content with the cost and the resulting work then there's not much incentive to get things done more quickly, regardless of how wasteful we're being.

Sometimes I can clear roadblocks. Most of the time I can't. It's taken a year, but I've come to realise the company's and my own goals are orthogonal, that I'm becoming an Example #1, and that it's time to move on.

(Thanks for posting the article; it's nice to see these negative qualities clearly laid out.)

<comment><USER7> <pedant>Your goals and the company's are not orthogonal, they are in opposition. Orthogonal means unrelated, but in this case they _are_ related, just not in the right way.</pedant>

<comment><USER6> Ack. Thanks; you're right.

(I'll leave the post as-is so your follow-up doesn't look silly.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is probably OT and maybe even rude... but that lead-in with the Kanye lyrics is just strange.

My reading of the lyrics snippet (and I'm certainly no expert in these things) suggests that the character is telling a girl to run away from him because he knows he's a dick. Specifically, he's a dick that's especially good at criticism and spreading negativity and of the list of targets, one group happens to be people who work a lot which implies to me that the character's less-than-hardworking nature looks bad by comparison.

So not only is the character a dick, he's a self-professed underachieving one and perhaps even proud of it. He might even be worried that the girl is one of those kinds of people he hates, or maybe he kinda cares for her and knows his personality is toxic on some level, or he just can't have nice things, or there happens to be a hotter girl one table over so this one has to go...

Anyway, it's just odd because it seems like the character that is "speaking" in the song is exactly the sort of guy who might bitch about how troublesome smart people are because he's always got to be the smartest guy in the room but refuses to put in the work required to remain the smartest guy in the room when there's other _actual_ smart guys in the room. So the best solution in that case is to get rid of the others by telling them to "run away as fast as you can."

In summary, it seems to me like the lyrics are actually speaking more as a person who hates over-achievers and/or smart people than as a person who is one of those troublesome smart persons who hates average folk and therefore would appear to, well, not really support the author's actual argument. Or something?

I don't know. I'm probably not one of the smart ones. so... :P

<comment><USER9> It comes across inappropriate and immature. Regardless of the content, a VC in his mid forties shouldn't be quoting rap lyrics at the head of business articles. I can't imagine having a conversation with this guy about business where he casually offers a quote about douchebags and assholes from Kanye West to explain something.

Kanye belongs on your iPod, not in your Forbes opinion piece.

<comment><USER10> What about rap music do you have an objection to?

(I ask, very specifically, because you said "rap lyrics" and not, e.g., "music with immature lyrics".)

<comment><USER11> Seriously? You're turning this into a juvenile 'my music is better than yours' argument? This is no reason to assume the OP has a specific beef with rap, just that it doesn't belong in a business article, which is true. Reading comprehension also means deriving assumptions from the context and looking for interpretations of what is said that fit within that context.

<comment><USER12> What is it about rap music that makes it unsuitable for a business article? How many other areas of society do you wall off as inappropriate to learn from when it comes to business?

<comment><USER11> OK fine, if you're going to push it...

The point is that in order to be credible to a wide audience, as this article was intended, you need to convey the correct 'tone' so to say. This a part of what is called in classical dialectic the 'ethos' of an argument. (to pre- empt, no, just 'logos' is not enough, and neither should it be - but that's a different argument).

So, in order to build up 'ethos', one needs to present oneself as a mature, mainstream person in the context of the subject under discussion. (yes, some people make a career out of breaking out of this, in order to appeal to a niche audience; see e.g. that ruby webserver blogger guy that gets linked here quite a lot, but that's not what the author in the article does or should be try to do, as far as I can tell).

Like it or not, rap and hip hop music are not mainstream to the traditional Forbes crowd. Partly because (most) rap artists build their careers on their anti-mainstream views, violent and promiscuous images, and cater specifically to an audience who finds one of the draws to the music in that anti-mainstream aspect of it.

So that's what makes it inappropriate in this context. For this author, in this context, to convey his message to as large an audience as possible, he should stick to 'accepted' style figures. And rap lyrics aren't part of that. It was a gamble I guess, and he lost, imo.

(Just to pre-empt another 'hey look at this country boy hating black music!', I bought hip hop LP's (yes, LP's) before Cypress Hill had put out 'Black Sunday' and mixed them on my sl 1200's when many of the readers here were still in diapers. I bought The Chronic a few days after it came out and once hitch hiked 400 kilometers to go to a concert of what was at the time the only crew rapping in Dutch. I'm no stranger to hip hop and rap, and yes I realize that people like Jay-Z have build big businesses on it. Still doesn't make the quote in this article appropriate.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _On his third day, we gave him a project that was scheduled to take one month. Roger completed the project in 3 days with nearly flawless quality. More specifically, he completed the project in 72 hours. 72 non-stop hours: No stops, no sleep, no nothing but coding._

I know this is against the Silicon Valley philosophy, but that guy just put in almost two 40-hour weeks of work, not three days. It might have done him well to take the next 11 days off.

Edit: I realize he was on drugs, but I think that's a different discussion altogether.

<comment><USER14> "Roger completed the project in 3 days with nearly flawless quality. More specifically, he completed the project in 72 hours. 72 non-stop hours: No stops, no sleep, no nothing but coding."

Then later on: "He was addicted to cocaine."

So...no comment from anyone on how these two things are almost certainly related?

<comment><USER12> Also he was bipolar, so probably in a manic state when he worked for 72 hours straight. There's a pretty big difference between "flaky" and "has a serious mental disorder that is going untreated".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been in the company of really smart (and likable!) Heretics and they tend to go out not with a bang but with a whimper. It's sad to watch.

They may be even be right but their persistent negativity and challenging of the status quo (even in minor matters) ends up wearing people down. Then eyes start rolling when they talk and their rants are met with sighs rather than attention or acknowledgment. Then they start getting left out of meetings and email conversations as it is easier to get things done without them no matter how smart they are.

All of this feeds the Heretic's perception of being the only sane person in the asylum turning them even more cynical and negative.

<comment><USER16> Maybe I hang out with too many cynical people, but the Heretics I've run into have usually been pretty popular with coworkers, at least if the Heretic is also a reasonably intelligent and sociable person (rather than the muttering- darkly-in-the-corner variety). Even a decent number of people who don't themselves have much interest attacking their boss / stupid corporate policies / etc., sometimes like to watch on the sidelines while someone else does, at least if they can avoid entanglement in the drama. But I guess most people I know are sort of default-cynical about organizations, policies, and management, so there's a default-positivity about someone who's spending their time railing against it, even if you think their energies are misguided/futile.

Though I guess it does get more problematic if they start attacking their coworkers as sheep/sellouts/etc. The popularity is easier to maintain if they stick to attacking management/bosses/policies and treat their coworkers as being on the same side.

<comment><USER17> > Maybe I hang out with too many cynical people, but the Heretics I've run > into have usually been pretty popular with coworkers, at least if the > Heretic is also a reasonably intelligent and sociable person (rather than > the muttering-darkly-in-the-corner variety).

Sadly for the Heretic, that won't help them when the boss fires them. It makes for nice post-"layoff" lunches, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Kinda scary that I see myself in that list - mostly example 1, reason 1 and 2. OTOH, it's a bit heartening to read "sometimes these people actually make better CEOs than employees" - just hard to get most people to take you seriously when you start off at the bottom (not impossible, just typically harder to do than simply getting hired in at the top).

<comment><USER19> I have bipolar disorder and I definitely identify with his "the flake" story. I wouldn't just not show up like the guy in the story but I do have depressive cycles where I'm not sure I'm doing any good by showing up; I come in anyway. After a while the cycle swings the other way and I get heroic coding done at a (excuse the pun) manic pace. I like to think it comes out more productive on balance. For instance most recently I spent two months studying legacy code but didn't have the right frame of mind to make changes to it. Close to the deadline I had an upswing in mood and completed a total rewrite of the software in three days during which everything I touched turned to gold. Two key points: one, this was (embedded system) code a senior engineer struggled on for 2 years. So even averaging the month during which I did nothing with the week I did everything, I was still more productive by a huge margin. The second key point is I used both halves of my cycle to advantage. I knew I couldn't handle the rewrite while depressed, but what I COULD do was use that fugue state to plod through his old code like a zombie. Even though I didn't feel like I was making progress (and my boss was beginning to worry!) what I was doing was priming my brain with knowledge of what the legacy code did. That way, when the upswing did come, I didn't waste a single second of it.

<comment><USER20> Obliquely appropriate username? :)

Just curious, is your boss aware of your cycles, and does he/she plan for them? If not, what effect do you think trying to explain would have?

<comment><USER21> I don't know about bipolar disorder or the grandparent's boss specifically, but I've learned _never_ to discuss mental disorders with bosses or coworkers. There simply is no upside and every imaginable downside. Best case: you get labeled as someone who uses a mental disorder as an excuse for not doing your job. Worst case: you become "that crazy person" that nobody wants to associate with.

<comment><USER22> I'm currently supervising an 37year old _rookie_. He had some absence issues, so I confronted him.

Tuns out he is an ex-addict (that's why he's rookie at 37). I don't have a problem with people trying to straighten themselves out. He doesn't get any preferential treatment from me - because it won't do him any good. As long as he does the expected work of expected quality he is fine with me.

Knowing that he is an ex addict is valuable to me so I can put our relationship in right context.

<comment><USER23> >He doesn't get any preferential treatment from me [...] [knowing about his past] is valuable to me so I can put our relationship in right context.

I don't understand how knowing about his past should matter if you're not going to behave differently towards him?

That's like asking someone's sex on an application form - if you're not going to discriminate why do you need to know.

<comment><USER22> To give you more detail.

Addict is never really cured. Once you're through with addiction, the cravings are there for life. Whenever you need to release your steam the craving for drug kicks back in.

My mentee is coping with that through writing, so sometimes he will not come to work on time - because he's setting his mind straight. So our agreement is that I don't care about his schedule - as long as his work is done according to specified parameters.

I didn't say I don't act differently towards him. I said he doesn't get _preferential treatment_ in a sense that I won't be commiserating him for being an ex-addict. Instead I raised his tempo of learning while gently guiding him through the finer intricacies. But I demand highest quality of him. I also look out that nobody (especially superiors) will pick on him since he is pretty introvert - and I don't want him to slip back due to some extrovert having a bad day.

This guy needs to build character, courage and ultimately self-confidence. And not making it hard for him, plus helping along the way if possible is one of my goals.

<comment><USER23> I'm 100% with you on your goal, it's a noble act to mentor someone with the spirit that you appear to be applying.

However, it sounds like you are giving them preferential treatment. You say it's just different, but then if those differences aren't available to others they might also advantage it is a preferential treatment.

I guess one could argue it's not preferential in that you'd give the same assistance to another ex-addict.

Personally I don't think you have to help everyone just because you're helping someone, ie preferential treatment doesn't seem wrong to me _a priori_.

<comment><USER24> Will you quit arguing over such petty differences?! Jesus Christ! People view the world differently, so of course they'll apply different meanings to the same words, and even to the same concepts.

You said he's not wrong, and you're just arguing over semantics. Why argue? Why?

Sorry for not keeping my post cold and logical and HNish, but that's the problem: you're being robotic here and arguing just to argue.

<comment><USER23> >Will you quit arguing over such petty differences?! Jesus Christ! People view the world differently

Off topic but WRT your response - "people see the world differently" but apparently my fixation on truth isn't allowed?

On topic, why argue? He says that he's not discriminating but he describes discrimination. I simply wanted to point out that apparent contradiction.

Discrimination is some sort of _bete noire_ of corporate society but I find it quite silly to suggest that we should not discriminate for people because of the peculiarities of their personal situations. If you find that robotic I find your response curious but I suspect you won't meet an enquiry about it well so feel free to move on to one of the other 10 million or so comment threads of the day.

>of course they'll apply different meanings to the same words, and even to the same concepts

If you use the same words to mean something else then we need to converse more to establish that which you are trying to communicate.

<comment><USER22> I'd like to apologize, since I am not a native speaker. So when faced with subtleties I might not perceive them properly. That said I'm aware of what I wrote and how it doesn't make sense.

And now for the record to just rehash what I am doing:

1\. The person is obviously being treated differently from others (he is being given a chance),

2\. I will not treat his work differently due to his condition. I want him to get up to speed and I'm helping along,

3\. He doesn't need blanket pats on the back. He needs them when they're due and he also needs a proverbial _kick in the arse_ when due.

Also, discrimination is a term used when we act negatively towards someone. I'd be discriminating against my mentee if I were telling him that he's no good dimwit. Or are you suggesting that I'm discriminating towards others?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Holding the bus". I like the phrase, everybody has their bad days and should get some slack when they need it in exchange for giving their best when it really counts.

However, I have to take issue with manic coders. I've seen the results of "heroic" coding. It sucks. Sure, it does the job, meets the deadline or whatever but the problem is that quick work is typically nothing more than a "rush job" that becomes a maintenance nightmare in the future.

The thing is no one wants to work with someone who is unstable or difficult. If the success of your enterprise depends on sporadic bursts of mania from individual workers, I'm sorry, that just isn't going to be sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER26> This may be a little picky, but this statement just doesn't make sense: :He is fundamentally a rebel—She will not be happy unless"

Where did the she come from?

<comment><USER8> "She" probably came from some attempt at political correctness. There's been a rise in recent decades to use "she" when speaking about an unspecified person. Historically, it was common to use "he" for that task. Unfortunately english doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun and until/if one becomes accepted this will probably continue to be a confusing issue...

edit: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun>

<comment><USER27> _Unfortunately english doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun_

Yes it does: "they".

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they>

<comment><USER28> I believe the grandparent commenter meant:

English does not have a _unique_ [1], singular, gender-neutral pronoun.

[1] unambiguous

<comment><USER27> I've never heard a sentence in actual usage[1] where the usage of the singular "they" was ambiguous.

In terms of being understandable and elegant, the singular "they" is probably the best English can do. Unfortunately, it's not widely accepted because it "sounds" uneducated, despite being the current best solution to the problem. Gender-neutral neologisms, like Spivak pronouns [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun>], are not commonly understood, while constructs like "he/she" or randomly alternating between generic "he" and generic "she" as in the OP is inelegant and confusing (hence this whole thread).

[1] I'm sure you could construct a contrived example.

<comment><USER28> Fragment. Damned good device.

Written language has more legitimate uses than completely formed sentences. Pronouns can be troublesome enough, figuring out the antecedent, without requiring yet more context analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Absolutely useless hyperbolic link-bait.

No one acts that way unless they have severe mental illnesses (such as the cocaine-addicted bipolar genius) or the company already has serious systemic problems. If you see things near the exaggerations in the OP regularly, the company is already diseased and needs major overhaul.

<comment><USER30> It's never management's fault.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sans the cocaine habit, and the staggering productivity levels, the second example is an otherwise uncanny match for how I eventually left my last job.

Started off strong, got ahead of schedule, had a mental breakdown, accomplished exactly nothing for about a month, and then quit (to avoid being fired).

<comment><USER30> Let me guess, you do all overall design work, train staff, stay late. Then someone else gets the credit, because his best friends with the manager?

That was my last mental breakdown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Reading the section entitled, "The Jerk," got me to wondering if OP will be ever write the obvious follow-up post, "Why We Promote So Many Jerks".

I have done work for over 100 companies ranging from SMB to large enterprises. Independently (I'll tell you why in a moment) I just made a list of the 10 biggest assholes I ever met the other day. Eight of them were the #1 person in one of those companies. Seven of them are, not surprisingly, out of business.

(The reason I made the list was because I watched "Undercover Boss" for the fourth time the other night. The first three times were great. This episode, about the CEO of Norwegian Cruise Lines, was horrible. All I kept asking myself was, "Where the hell did they get this jerk?" He had no idea how anything happened in his company and had people and functional problems in all 4 departments he worked in undercover. One employee even remarked that he had a problem dealing with women. That's when I made my list.)

What is it about our processes in business that seems to favor assholes? I realize that my experience may not be the norm, but some of the things I've seen done by the President or CEO:

      - getting drunk and firing the security guard
      - throwing a phone book at his secretary
      - belittling vendors until none wanted the business
      - routinely yelling f words at employees
      - firing other executives on a whim
      - begging these executives to return to work
      - committing crimes with the books to earn a bonus
      - ignoring company saving advice (that would make them look bad)
      - sexually harassing subordinates
      - committing adultery (& other crimes) in full view of subordinates

I even witnessed a CEO of a Fortune 50 company break down and cry at a Tony Robbins event because he couldn't complete a routine task.

If I sound like I think that our leaders should be held to a higher standard, it's because they _should be_. Hell, I'd settle for any standard.

I'd love to hear OP's take on the other side of the story, when smart people decide to stop making sacrifices for the assholes they got stuck working for.

<comment><USER33> Sociopathy and narcissism are overrepresented amongst executives. Smart people (as meant in the post) usually like to discover (scientists) or create (engineers, writers, etc.) things. They don't have to achieve power for power's sake in order to be happy.

Thus, they aren't as well represented amongst executives in established companies because that form of achievement isn't something they valued.

<comment><USER21> Not to mention that these people have the chutzpah to get what they want. They're always successful in the short term, which means that they've already gained influence by the time anyone figures it out. And when they do, that person gets canned as an example to keep the others in line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There is also the vaultingly ambitious employee. Someone who is both clever and also prepared to do _anything_ to get a promotion or pay rise - even if that means causing chaos, using other employees as collateral damage, etc.

<comment><USER35> Eugh - I hate people like that. In my last job, the whole marketing team (8 people) were like a group of wrecking balls smashing through the company trying to meet their own individual goals. It was chaos but the MD was a marketing guy himself and couldn't see that the marketing team were doing a whole heap of damage to the company.

I played the heretic role for a while, but eventually I quit because it was a loosing battle and my moral had gone through the floor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I recognize that this author's proactive use of sex-neutral (or more like sex- diverse?) pronouns comes from a good place. But intermixing he's with she's, him's and her's the way he is is sometimes just confusing.

</comment><comment><USER37> "The two just raised $650 million and what they have to say is worth your attention."

Then, there's that kind of jerk.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is about as original and interesting as a Cosmo sex quiz.

</comment><comment><USER39> As a side note: why is the he/she used this way?

 _He is disempowered - She feels_ etc.

Wouldn't it be correct to use "she" everywhere?

<comment><USER40> Technically, it would be correct to use 'he' everywhere, since in English that is what is considered the neutral gender. Second best is using He/She to satisfy the PC folks.

<comment><USER41> "Is considered". Considered by who exactly? How subtle of you to use the passive voice to plaster over the cracks in your argument :) There is no best, just norms surely.

That being said, there are ways to be gender neutral without dropping the clangers that this author does. Be gender neutral by all means but for the love of the children don't switch back and forth like an eager yo-yo.

 _edit: remove snark :)_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

<comment><USER17> Meh. A lot of evil fuckups also depend on unreasonable men.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Aside from a strange lead-in, there is a larger picture about identifying the dynamic of a team and how to build it. We should prevent these situations by identifying red flags in the hiring process early on. Sometimes that isn't good enough, but to his point, we shouldn't make that same mistake twice. Never heard of this, but it could be a good practice to do a post-mortem in the hiring process after an acidic resource is gone. I'm sure this problem runs rampant in all industries, where they have a much less tolerance.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm supposed to take this guy seriously with a lead-in like that? I can't wait for his article on common misconceptions of social propriety among the technically proficient.

<comment><USER9> So I worded this poorly but I was disapproving of his Kanye quote, not the lead-in from the blog owner.

<comment><USER44> Ben Horowitz's "ben's blog" always leads off with a thematic rap lyric; it works pretty well in some cases, but fails in others. I don't think this was the strongest one.

Overall, I think it's a decent attempt at having a hook for otherwise somewhat dry (maybe, but not really) blog posts. He is obviously going for contrast.

For instance, the KRS-One quote worked well on [http://bhorowitz.com/2010/05/14/why-startups-should-train- th...](http://bhorowitz.com/2010/05/14/why-startups-should-train-their- people/)

The Who for this was obvious (and the theme too): [http://bhorowitz.com/2010/11/15/meet-the-new-enterprise- cust...](http://bhorowitz.com/2010/11/15/meet-the-new-enterprise-customer- he%E2%80%99s-a-lot-like-the-old-enterprise-customer/)

I'd respect him more if he used the obvious Biggie quotes, though.

<comment><USER9> _Ben Horowitz's "ben's blog" always leads off with a thematic rap lyric; it works pretty well in some cases, but fails in others._

Ok. This is something I touched on in another comment: if you're known for breaking a certain type of social convention than you can often times get away with it, without much criticism.

So this was probably normal to his blog readers but confusing to those of us who were exposed to it for the first time.

Thanks for the explanation. It made me reexamine my initial knee-jerk reaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> _"[...] if you're an entrepreneur, generally you don't like working with a lot of people. That's what an entrepreneur is."_ \- Robert Greene on Mixergy

<comment><USER38> An entrepreneur is someone who starts a business and assumes the risk associated with it. That is all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> As for the remarks about the he/she pronoun thing in the article, I think the last sentence would have been much, much stronger if they had used "one" instead of "her" and it simultaneously would have side-stepped some of this issue:

 _That's fine, but remember: you can only hold the bus for one._

</comment><comment><USER47> Next week on HN: "When Dumb People are Bad Writers".</comment>


Glass Doesn't Flow (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cmog.org/article/does-glass-flow <comment><USER2> This is not such a great article. It's true that the meme "glass is a liquid" is tiresome and incorrect, and it is true that glass doesn't flow at usual temperatures, but glass is very special and interesting because it doesn't undergo a state transition from liquid to solid state. So in a very specific technical sense, glass can be considered liquid, but there are many definitions of liquid and solids and this one doesn't align with people's naive definition.

I hoped would article would touch these special properties of glass.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#Formation_from_a_supercoo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#Formation_from_a_supercooled_liquid)

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

<comment><USER3> More generally, materials that don't have definite liquid-solid transitions and don't have long-range crystal structure are called amorphous solids.

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

<comment><USER4> I was about to say something like this in response to the parent comment. Instead of saying "glass panes are actually more like a very thick liquid than it is a solid" perhaps we should be saying "molten glass is more like a very flexible solid than it is a liquid."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a side note, the corning museum of glass is totally worth the trip. Amazing place.

</comment><comment><USER6> My girlfriend and I met another couple to go canoeing one day on town lake. The guy in the other boat was a chemist. He trotted out the old "glass is a liquid" thing, and I explained no, that's not true, and I went into great detail. But he stuck to his guns and insisted, and then played the "professional chemist" card, saying "I _think_ I know a little bit more about chemistry than a guy who makes webpages."

I was furious, but my dogged insistence that I was right was starting to draw glares from both of the women, so reluctantly, in the name of peace, I dropped it. Then the ass had the gall to say "Haha, don't worry, I'm sure there's a lot of things about webpages that you could correct me on!"

The worst part is, if I sent him this article, and any number of others proving the same point, he'd just say "what? why are we talking about glass?" That conversation was nothing to him, and I'm sure he's already forgotten it.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like an episode of Seinfeld.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's kind of funny that even in glassblowing circles this myth gets propagated...where the old methods of making panes are generally well known and understood (see the picture of the crown glass in the article).

<comment><USER9> If glass did flow at room temperature, telescopes would be a mess.

All the error you're allowed when making the mirror of a reflecting telescope for visible light is 0.1 microns, or 100 nm. That's the top limit; a good telescope needs to push that down at least 2x or 3x, if not more. The mirror must remain within that limit for the entire lifetime of the instrument.

Now picture this big hunk of glass, resting on 3, 9, or 27 support points (or much more than that for the large professional scopes). It's not sitting on a flat table; it's sitting only on a few narrow points on the back, with weight distributed equally among all points. It is so thick so as to prevent it from sagging under its own weight and distorting the active surface via elastic deformation.

If glass was a "liquid" to the extent that cathedral windows would thicken noticeably at the bottom over centuries, how long would a telescope mirror remain within 100nm? A few minutes before it got irreversibly warped like icecream in the summer? Yet there are many telescopes still in use after more than 100 years - and the optics are just as good now as they were in the beginning.

\---

Before anyone tries to respond with a counter-argument: first try and realize what 100 nm really is. If you take one strand of human hair and cut it in two, and look with a microscope at the fresh section - if the surface of that fresh cut was the size of the rug in your living room, 100 nm would be the size of a large coin on that rug.

Think about that.

\---

(I make telescope mirrors and I've lost track how many times I've told this argument whenever there's a discussion about "glass is a liquid".)

<comment><USER10> Great way to connect this to other things we know about -- thanks.

 _a few minutes_ : I'd guess more like a few days: 1 mm/100 years = 10 micron/year = .1 micron / 3.65 days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I never thought glass was a liquid until 2-XL told me so and got me believing the myth because why would a toy robot LIE to me!?

</comment><comment><USER12> I think it is better to say that glass DOES flow, but it is a solid! For example, it would take several universe lifetimes to observe any appreciable flow (or more quantifiably, the viscosity is circa 10^19 Pa-s). Similarly, lead flows and to a much lesser degree, steel too.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems like from the definition of viscosity and the estimate of glass viscosity provided we should easily be able to observe some glass flow over the course of 10^12 years or so.

</comment><comment><USER14> Glass doesn't flow, but pitch does:

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

<comment><USER15> Pitch has a viscosity of 3x10^10 P. That's still way less than glass, which (according to this article) is 10^20 P.

<comment><USER16> That's within an order of magnitude of lead!

 _Does_ lead flow?

The article dismisses it but only in a casual way.

<comment><USER17> Well, we could test it. Put lead into a funnel, suspend the funnel above a beaker, and wait for a drop. Assuming the scale is linear, you should only have to wait around 80 to 130 years based on pitch experiments:

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

More seriously, there's possibly a viscosity at which gravity is no longer enough acceleration to overcome whatever mechanisms are holding the atoms together. If we assume that metallic lead does not exhibit any flow on Earth, then we can estimate this as being between 10^10 and 10^11P at _g_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was taught the exact same thing in science, sometime in the sixties or early seventies, and I believed it for years and repeated it to many people.

</comment><comment><USER19> This technical explanation of why glass "can not" flow, does nothing to try and explain the phenomenon where old glass panes are thicker on the bottom than the top.

A lot of things once thought impossible have been proven to be possible. Offering an explanation of why it's impossible adds nothing to the table.

[EDIT] Missed the bit in the middle. That said, I still find the use of jokes and second hand experiences a bit weak in evidentiary terms. Would have been much more convincing argument if there was a count or documentation detailing how many panels were truly installed one way or the other.

<comment><USER14> The article explains this:

"Half of the pieces in a window are thicker at the bottom, he said, but, he added quickly, the other half are thicker at the top. My own experience has been that for earlier windows especially, there is sometimes a pronounced variation in thickness over a distance of an inch or two on individual fragments. That squares with the experience of conservators and curators who have handled hundreds of panels. Although the individual pieces of glass in a window may be uneven in thickness, and noticeably wavy, these effects result simply from the way the glasses were made."

<comment><USER20> Also, if you're a glass installer, you might feel its a best practice to put the heavier end on the bottom. It'll make the pane feel more stable because being top-heavy is like asking for gravity to take your glass and shatter it.

With today's production methods and quality control, we really don't have this issue. Glass panes are pretty consistent, but from the point of view of some 18th century carpenter, you probably had to deal with a lot of inconsistent glass panes.</comment></comment></comment>


Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/us/politics/russia-election-hacking-sanctions.html?_r=0 <comment><USER3> Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but it does bother anyone that the NYT title calls it "election hacking"? To me that sort of slyly suggests that the actual election / voting process was hacked, which as far as I know did not happen. Perhaps "election-related hacking" would be more accurate. I don't mean to say the DNC and other such hacks weren't a big deal, but I worry that people who just read titles are getting the wrong impression.

<comment><USER4> Ever since the election, the media has been trying to confuse people about Russia's "hacking", and keep using the phrase "hacked the election", so frequently and rigorously that it's obviously deliberate.

And it worked: 50% of Democrats believe Russia hacked the election results (that's right, the results themselves, not just the DNC) according to the latest YouGov poll.

The media is no longer proving itself worthy of the respect it has.

<comment><USER5> Here you go[0]... That's not "50% believe." 35% thinking "Probably true" sounds to me like they believe it's possible. A nearly equal percent think it's "Probably not true" (32%)

[0] [http://hotair.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2016/12/rh.jpg](http://hotair.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2016/12/rh.jpg)

<comment><USER6> So around 52% of Democrats bought into the mischaracterization at some level, lovely. Not to mention a big chunk of Republicans.

I'm annoyed the administration again has decided on wait at least 3 more weeks before releasing a new proof before announcing punishment. Not to mention what will amount to about two months of public evidence free speculation happening in the press (aka strictly citing anonymous Intel officers). And I highly doubt they will ever be able to prove Wikileaks source was Russia which was the only primary direct influence on the elections. Even then it

It's just as likely multiple people had access to the servers. Proving Russia hacked it does not disprove others did. Digital forensics on the boxes can reveal a lot but not everything if they were good.

There has been word the RNC was hacked by Russia but the data was older and of less value. Trump famously doesn't use email nor did they hack any of Trumps 3 campaign managers (as fair as we know from anonymous IC leaks). So it may not even have been a comparable leak even if they (or wikileaks activists) chose to release it. Especially considering how Trump was very hostile to RNC, he would have easily dismissed it as Washington elites doing what he said they do. It might have even helped his 'drain the swamp' marketing angle.

Within this greater context the story of run of the mill nation state hacking of government officials is a relatively minor concern, given NSA does the same, but still a real concern. But the idea that this was a partisan hack of 'elections' and that Russians held back damning data on Trump is on very weak ground.

And let's be honest the Podesta Wikileaks dump was totally underwhelming given the clever hype by Assange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an interesting internal play for US politicians as well -- it strikes me it's probably harder to remove sanctions and reinstate booted intelligence personnel than it is to choose not to act. I'm curious how the Trump presidency will approach this.

Also in the news today is more strident messaging from Kerry about Israeli settlers -- I wonder if we'll have other moves from the Obama administration before end of term.

<comment><USER8> It's technically no more difficult since they are executive actions dependent on determinations that the executive is free to make.

It's perhaps politically costly, though, and even if that was equal, only one of the actors has to worry about maintaining political capital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So 35 Russian diplomats have been given 72 hours to leave the country, and 2 of their properties will be closed - one in DC and the other in San Francisco.

Well, if history is any guide, expect Russia to return the favor.

Question is, how long will they wait before announcing that 35 American diplomats have 72 hours to leave Russia?

<comment><USER10> Why would americans bother with such big diplomatic presence in Russia to begin with?

<comment><USER11> They are the 2nd most powerful military in the world by some accounts and have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet, I think that justifies 35 full time employees. Do you have something better for them to do?

[http://www.businessinsider.com/11-most-powerful- militaries-i...](http://www.businessinsider.com/11-most-powerful-militaries- in-the-world-2014-4)

<comment><USER10> Oh please. So far Russian military have proved to be marginally better than Georgia and on par with Ukraine.

Speaking as someone with a lot of friends and acquaintances working in Russian military industry, it's much more talented in building potemkin villages and giving an impression of power than doing anything real. Everything, from tech to mentality of the military is rotten and just painted over.

<comment><USER12> Do you really think that Russia has engaged even 1% of its force projection in Ukraine?

There aren't 2000 Russian tanks parked outside of Kiev if Russia would go to an all out war with Ukraine there won't be much left after 2 days.

There are reportedly less than 5000 Russian troops in the conflict they mostly provide limited logistical support.

Look at how many troops the US needed to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

Don't underestimate Russia's military they have limited force projection but in their immediate vicinity they aren't to be taken lightly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> True or not, the idea that Russia could have hacked the US elections is pretty wild, and the way this is nonchalantly discussed, and met with the mild diplomatic gesture of dismissing some diplomats is a little surprising to me.

Is it because I have grown up during the end of the cold war? But what would Nixon or Reagan have done in this situation?

Messing with a country's political system like that sounds _extremely_ hostile to me and warrants massive investigations, reorganizations and review of the entire voting process to restore trust.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER14> 1) The Obama administration has said that retaliation will be in some part covert, so there's strong reasons to believe the publicized reaction is only the tip of the iceberg

2) If Russia hacked US elections in a material way (i.e. stuffing electronic ballots), we probably wouldn't know anyway. President Trump is much better for the United States than acknowledging that Russia can elect whoever they want.

<comment><USER15> What do you mean by the second point? I am confused about

>President Trump is much better for the United States than acknowledging that Russia can elect whoever they want.

<comment><USER14> Let's say Obama has airtight proof that Putin single-handedly elected Trump. What would be more damaging to the US: publicly admitting that foreign states have control of our elections (which could very reasonably start a large-scale revolt), or allowing it to happen while secrectly taking actions to prevent that from happening again?

<comment><USER13> But now that everyone talks about it, work should be done on the internal aspect on this: Investigation on voting mechanisms, coming up with a way to make this integral part of democracy safe. You could say "No, Russia didn't do anything, but while we're at it we have noticed some potential weaknesses in our infrastructure".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some interesting articles on 1996 Boris Eltsin election, where Americans claimed their role in his win:

1 - [http://articles.latimes.com/1996-07-09/news/mn-22423_1_boris...](http://articles.latimes.com/1996-07-09/news/mn-22423_1_boris- yeltsin)

2- [http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,9848...](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,984833,00.html)

<comment><USER14> American political consultants != American intelligence agencies.

When Trump retained a campaign manager with ties to Russian officials[0], it was a minor scandal, not something requiring over government response.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul- manafort-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort- ukraine-donald-trump.html)

<comment><USER16> American intelligence agencies were definitely involved in Russian election in 1996.

Also the link you posted shows the campaign manager connection to Yanukovich - since when is ex-president of Ukraine considered as "Russian officials"? Do you call ex-president of Canada or France - US Officials too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Russians hacked the election in the same way that the Ashley Madison hackers hacked all those marriages.

</comment><comment><USER18> The closer we come to the end of the Obama Administration, the more disappointed I have become (and this after having voted for him twice).

<comment><USER19> Are you upset that he is accusing Russia of cyberattacks, or that he's doing something about it?

<comment><USER20> A good start would be to provide some evidence.

For now, it's the same 'trust us, the Iraqis have WMDs' again.

<comment><USER21> That report is due in january.

<comment><USER20> So keep the accusations private until you can present the evidence together with the accusations. Otherwise, it is you massaging the public opinion and the report won't matter anyway.

<comment><USER14> There's already public evidence. Circumstantial evidence, but evidence nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Regardless of political views, it has been disheartening to see so many organizations and leaders throw tantrums on the public stage - <USER2> deligitimizes authority and erodes trust.

</comment><comment><USER23> I hope that some day in the future we learn the truth about this year. Some people believe that the leaks were a few rogue CIA members, others blame a dude in eastern Europe, and of course Russia. I have no idea what the truth is, but I think under the covers there's some interesting drama.

</comment><comment><USER24> Guccifer2 is not in the report as an alias?? Hmm...

</comment><comment><USER25> So is this how US politics will be from now on? Every president spends their lame duck period doing everything possible to sabotage the next guy (if they're the other party)? I seem to recall GWB having a bit more decorum than Obama here but maybe I'm wrong. Is the political climate really more poisonous than ever or does it just seem that way?

<comment><USER26> Taking action in response to foreign aggression is "sabotaging the next guy" now?

<comment><USER27> He's starting something he won't be able to finish. Not very wise. At this point, the focus should be on an orderly transition of power instead of making waves and creating problems for the next guy to handle. Whether he likes it or not, Trump is the next guy, and Trump's going to have to handle it one way or the other. Trying to cast the die like this is just counterproductive.

<comment><USER8> > He's starting something he won't be able to finish.

Pretty much every Presidency has some things started late that are known to carry over into the next administration; quite often (especially when there is a change of parties) this something the incoming President would have handled differently.

That's sort of inherent in the nature of having a crisp point-in-time transfer of power.

<comment><USER27> It's the point-in-time transfer of power that makes this unwise. He has less than a month to go and his top priority is what exactly? It should be on the smooth transition of power. Starting a tit-for-tat with Russia should be left to the next guy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Unprecedented churlish behaviour from the Dems. I for one look forward to having them out of power

</comment><comment><USER29> Why does no one cite the original private email server that was poorly secured and ran by the Clintons as part of this?

<comment><USER14> Because it's been covered extensively and is unrelated to the leaked DNC, DCCC, and Podesta emails that arose at the end of the election season?

<comment><USER29> It may have been the origin of all of this. They setup a private email server that was insecure and poorly managed so that they would not be subject to FOIA, etc. It contained top-secret emails. No one disputes that.

Why could that not have been the catalyst to hacking the DNC? You've got all these important DNC folks sending her emails that reside on that server... right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Democrats and Republicans. Republicans and Democrats. It will never work.

</comment><comment><USER31> So, Clinton was corrupted, and somebody noticed it, and it is Russians who are to blame?

Huh.

<comment><USER32> I think that's missing the point.

Russia, a state-actor, coordinated an cyber-attack on an American political party. The results of that attack (which weren't particular interesting) are secondary to the attack itself.

The Russians are "to blame" because they're the ones who committed the action.

<comment><USER33> I think it's also worth noting that this was not a particularly sophisticated attack. Podesta fell for a simple phishing attack. A lot of media attention around this has made it sound like something out of an action movie, but the attack itself was actually quite simple. People who have access to so much important information need more training about this sort of thing so they don't just give their password away. It might've been the Russians this time, but it could've been just about anyone, and unless the underlying problem is resolved, it'll continue to happen.

<comment><USER32> It wasn't even a sophisticated phishing attack. If you believe the reporting, the whole thing would have been avoided were it not for a typo.</comment></comment></comment></comment>