Letter to a startup, from an employee - <AUTHOR> Dear startup employer,
It's a workday, but I'm not at work. I'm pretending to work from home. Company policy says I should file for PTO, but I won't. You'll never know; I'll feel guilty.
But I need this day. You took a lot from me. I didn't hesitate for a second when I dropped all my weekend plans and rushed to fix what was broken. I worked all weekend, late into the night. I was there first thing Monday morning, and again on Tuesday. Then I stayed up all night Tuesday because it was release night.
I didn't do any of this because you pay me to. I did it because I take pride in my work. Things were broken. I'm responsible for them.
Now I'm taking time to eat a meal. I'm having the day I should have had last weekend. I'm breathing. The stress is ebbing away. I'm recharging so I can do great work for you again tomorrow.
Startup employer, I need this day so I can be awesome for you. But you want to take this day from my PTO, and that's just not right. You took my whole weekend. You took dinner with my spouse. You took a whole night of sleep and I came to the office anyway, because my coworkers depend on me. I'll never complain about these things because I'm an internet engineer and this is my job. If it's down, I'm up, no questions asked. In the morning we'll do the post-mortem work to see how to make it better.
Startup employer, we need to talk about our vacation policy. I wish you'd read this article about Netflix: <https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr/ar/1>. Please read it, because when I read it, I want to send them my resume. I love the idea that we can be honest and reasonable with each other about my time. I'm flexible for you. Why can't you be flexible for me?
Startup employer, please stop tracking my PTO. There's a lot of other things in that Netflix doc I'd like to talk to you about but let's take this first baby step together.
We can do this. We'll both be better for it.
-exhausted tech worker <comment><USER2> I see your point, I really do. It seems like there are management problems within this particular startup. These problems happen everywhere, unfortunately, if management and software best practices aren't in place. At a particularly large ($100+ Billion gross revenue) company, we had the same problem. The solution for me was to just break the management rules. If one of my employees worked all night or all weekend, I told them to take the day, or two, off. I broke the rules. I didn't report the time. I didn't fuss over the PTO policy. I took care of my people and they took care of business and we all won. I felt bad about having to break management rules in order to take care of the very really humans that worked on the software, trying to keep their quality of life in balance with the rules an organization keeps, and to keep revenue high. Those bad feelings lead me to the next point I will make.

There are some software best practices that can solve a lot of these issues. Years ago I began to espouse DevOps principles. Those principles keep people from being there all weekend and all night. High levels of testing and high levels of automation really do help and make a huge difference in quality of life for engineers.

I can hear the objections now. "I am already working nights and weekends, how can I add more to get tests and DevOps in place?" or "my company won't support it!" or even "we have some of that..." Well, if you are up all night for a release, if you are there on a weekend fixing something that is broken, if you are constantly on call and exhausted, you don't have enough. Just do it one step at a time and you will find that you will spend a lot less time fixing things, being exhausted, and being frustrated, and a lot more time making new features for your employer. It's a skill that moves to any environment and any company.

Chin up friend, and good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's strange to point to that Netflix article as a better way to do vacation. Unlimited vacation policies open up way more opportunity for employee abuse.

<comment><USER4> I think you mean "abuse _of_ employees" rather than "employee abuse."

<comment><USER3> That is indeed what I meant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Incredibly valuable point of view. Your frustration demonstrates how a PTO policy can hurt an employer more than it protects.

I work on employee leave policies with companies, and we constantly struggle to balance these needs. While companies have different needs, I think that all companies need to listen to their employees.

If I may pick your brain, what would a reasonable policy look like at your company?

I can gladly play the role of the worry wart employer and see if we could flesh out a policy that would work.

<comment><USER6> Excess off hours time needs to be comped at at least 50%.

It's not hard, it's not complex, it's not unfair. If I work 16 hours on the weekend I deserve at least 8 hours of additional PTO.

<comment><USER2> I have to disagree for a moment. I can understand why engineers get into a mindset that this sort of arrangement might be fair, but honestly, how is this fair at all? Most everyone is salary. Let's say, for ease of numbers, you are salaried at $104,000. This breaks down to $50 an hour if you work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 52 weeks in a year. Let's also assume you have 10 PTO days. In reality you work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 50 weeks a year. You take two weeks off for vacation.

Now, let's image you are actually putting in 50 hours a week (not a bad average for a startup) instead of 40. And let's say you are actually getting comped 50% of those hours as PTO. According to this plan and math by week 44.5 of the year you have accumulated enough PTO to take the rest of the year off. To put this into perspective you would be able to take off from the beginning of November all the way to the New Year, and you'd probably still have a bit of PTO roll over. I doubt that any company will go for this.

On the flip side of this equation you have worked approximately 10% more hours than you have been paid for to accumulate that PTO. This reduces your functional hourly rate by 10%. If you actually stopped working at week 44.5 and took all of your PTO that you have accumulated, you would still functionally only make $45 an hour instead of $50.

This is completely unfair.

So what is the solution? Well, my solution has always been to work hourly instead of salary. This changes the equation. If I am making $50 an hour and I work 50 or 60 hours in a week, I don't feel so bad. My employer hardly ever wants to have me work overtime. Isn't that interesting? They would rather the overtime goes to salaried employees. That says something. However, when they do need overtime, I don't feel bad, I am being paid. On the flip side, when I want to take a day off or a vacation, I don't bill hours, and I don't get paid. The employer usually thinks this is a great idea, and I just have to budget for the ebbs and flows. This is fair.

Another option is work smarter (I do this whether I am salary or hourly). Test everything so it doesn't break. Automate everything so it can be deployer, scaled, or fixed as quickly as humanly possible. I work hard to put myself out of work. Yet, I always have more work than I ever need.

<comment><USER6> > I doubt that any company will go for this.

That doesn't mean it's not fair.

On the flip side, no company will ever convert their salaried employees to hourly unless forced to by the government. It's an abusive relationship that they're being allowed to manipulate and it means nothing but good things for them. Companies that have 100+ developers are different than those that have teams of consultants, both in the depth and breadth of work that they're doing.

I guess we both kind of miss the entire point, though. Nothing will change in our industry without better worker organization.

<comment><USER5> The logic is true: whether or not a company will go for it does not necessarily bear on fairness.

And I think that instead of .5 PTO for weekend hours worked, maybe consider 1.5x or 2x pay hourly to cover the premium for working instead of living. It has to stop somewhere...

Part of worker organization is telling both the rational and emotional reasons why it's better to have workers who can put down their work for more important things, like family and life outside of work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem is not PTO in my experience. It is being a Salaried worker expected to have ownership in a project with very little backup (and being expected) to work ridiculous amounts of hours with very little breaks or personal time.

The fact that most companies who put you on a Salary will not give you Comp Time for the overtime you work.

... Eventually you need to learn to respect yourself and your hours and stop giving your startup employer your heart and soul while you live paycheck to paycheck.

</comment><comment><USER8> I used to do this; Putting in 80 hour weeks taking 1 day off every 10 days or so -- worst time of my life. I wasn't going to the gym and I wasn't eating well primarily because I had to eat out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And at the end of the day, the only thing I gained was knowledge. All of my work is gone, our company is gone, the project was lost and the company that bought our company is struggling.

Take your nights and weekends.

</comment><comment><USER9> You people who do such long hours I really don't get you!

The standard 40 is more than enough for me, in-fact too much.

Ideally work 40 hours and then spend those other 20-40 hours on building something for yourself, taking a second job, or just relaxing and enjoyment.

If this is the 'American' way then try emigrating to Europe!

</comment><comment><USER10> Slightly indirectly related to PTO .. Fortunately, I had a great manager with whom I could talk freely on many subjects including this one. I had kind of "rebelled" once about the work-life balance. He did say one which stuck with me. There are cases where one might have to work extra: 1\. Your own screw up (includes productivity) 2\. Screw up by other teams which affects your work 3\. Bad project management which includes unrealistic deadlines

The only thing that you can control is #1 by becoming more productive and more automation.

The #2 is interesting because it is a 2-way street i.e. there will times that someone else might have to work more because you or your team screwed up.

About #3 .. well there is nothing to be done Either endure or leave.

</comment><comment><USER11> Startup or not, this is relevant to all jobs in IT. It's your job to educate your employer that you aren't to be taken for granted. Good luck.

<comment><USER12> At the same time, shouldn't this be self-evident? It's a bit depressing that the vast majority of employers would _need_ to be educated about this.

<comment><USER13> No, I'd say. The most self-evident thing to do is do whatever is best for yourself in the short term. Any other behavior is increasingly harder to gather... evidence for it being best.

It's a two-sided marketplace, each side having a big incentive to take the maximum they can get.

<comment><USER12> In a very short-sighted sense. You treat employees like this and you quickly burn them out (decreasing medium and long term productivity) or create turnover (wasting time recruiting, interviewing, ramping up, and occasionally hiring someone who's wrong for the job).

Edited to add: and why does everyone think it's acceptable and even commendable these days to be only out for yourself?

<comment><USER13> Marketplaces are most ruthless and often immoral in their emergent behavior.

I'll definitely agree that the results are often bad.

I won't agree that anyone should ignore the reality of it though. Realize that it is the most literal definition of a marketplace, and nothing is going to change fundamental fact. Once one accepts that, he'll be much better grasp of how to make it better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why can't you talk to your Manager?

<comment><USER5> That's it. Communication!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> PTO?

</comment><comment><USER16> This is why I started my own company. No matter how great the company, you will always eventually be put in a situation where management or sales makes a promise they can't deliver and you, the developer needs to suffer the consequences.

Now, I will only put in all my nights and weekends if I am at least a 50% owner in the company.

</comment><comment><USER17> Pretty much the same idea here. Startup didn't mind me fixing bug at 3 am, but wanted me at the office by 9 am. I left.

The worst part is probably the fact that I got a raise when I stopped caring about the company altogether, and took 2 month for a 15 days job...</comment>


Uber is tracking my battery status, all the time - <AUTHOR> I looked into the HTTPS-trafic from the Uber-app (with MITMproxy) and it is one of the few apps I have found
that is sending my battery and charging status on a regular basis:

          "battery_status": "unplugged",
          "battery_level": 0.73,
 <comment><USER2> They have a good argument for doing so...

[http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/05/20/uber-riders-will- pa...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/05/20/uber-riders-will- pay-9-9-times-surge-pricing-phone-battery-low/)

A similar article was posted here a few days ago.

<comment><USER3> That is not a good argument. That is an asshole invasion of user privacy.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I meant that in a sarcastic way

<comment><USER3> Ah, my apologies. I'm so used to seeing people actually making these arguments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use m.uber.com - I am almost certain it does not have this permissions ability. Bonus: it works on desktop too.

<comment><USER5> On Android (both Android Browser and Chrome), battery information is accessible. [http://caniuse.com/#feat=battery- status](http://caniuse.com/#feat=battery-status)

I believe there's a similar option for iOS Safari, but I can't find it immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've just read today somewhere that if your battery is runing low, the higher fees you are likely to pay for services like Uber. Do you get why? Think for a moment before reading the answer... ... ... Because how could you order a cheap taxi when your battery is dead. You have an urgency and someone wants to profit from it. Like those who sell food in the airport. Like that locksmith who overcharges you if you lock yourself in, and so on..

<comment><USER7> I'm wondering if the higher rate also reflects a higher no-show risk.

I mean, you send the car there but cannot load it an cannot contact the client.

Does it work like loan classification? Higher risk get higher rates to compensate defaults/no-shows?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Possibly being used to track battery usage by the app, so that they can provide a better experience for users.

<comment><USER9> How in the world could they tease out the amount of battery their app is using?

<comment><USER8> By monitoring proxies for battery usage: CPU time, amount of time location services is on, etc. and building a model. It's not an easy problem, but for an app that is widely used such as Uber, it's not infeasible to attempt.</comment></comment></comment>


The Interesting Number Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox <comment><USER2> The Wikipedia Paradox: what's the most notable subject that's not notable enough for Wikipedia?

Now, one could reasonably argue that merely being the answer to this question would not, by itself, be enough to make a subject notable. However, the act of arguing this point, if seriously engaged in by enough people, would, in fact, make the question (and the answer) notable, and thus the answer to the question would deserve inclusion in Wikipedia.

Inductively, you can use this argument to show every subject is notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia. Take that, deletionists!

(Inspired by a lunchtime conversation with a group of physicists and philosophers.)

<comment><USER3> Were you among the physicists? :) Notability is not an intrinsic property of articles: it's like weight, not like mass. Your argument fails at the "if seriously engaged in by enough people" point, since it's simply false (by definition) that at time T1 the first uninteresting thing is sufficiently popular, at T1. It's also false that people will a) notice and b) care enough to make it sufficiently popular even at time T2.

Same goes for numbers. The fallacy is in confusing intrinsic and extrinsic properties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Persuasive enough, mathematically. Practically, though, people wouldn't allow the definition to recurse like that.

Consider a hypothetical person filling in descriptions for all the interesting numbers. "Smallest prime", "Smallest odd prime", "Smallest square" . . . He would get to the smallest uninteresting number and write, "Smallest uninteresting number." Then when he got to the next one, he'd start to write that, realize he already had one, and ponder for a bit.

The divergence occurs here.

If he was a mathematician, he would shout, "Aha! There are no uninteresting numbers!" If particularly diligent, he would go on to write "Was the smallest uninteresting number until that made it interesting" on all the other numbers.

If he was a normal person, he'd criticize the definition. Yes, he does think the smallest uninteresting number is interesting, but he doesn't think the next one is. So the technical definition shouldn't be recursive, and that keeps the initial annotation from being so self-defeating. He'd then go back and write, "Smallest number which would otherwise be uninteresting" on the first one, and leave the rest alone.

I side with the normal person. A definition which allows so many numbers with the same description to be considered "interesting" doesn't actually correspond with what I think interesting means. I think it is reasonable to require that the definition of interesting be stable regardless of what order you evaluate the integers in, so a definition that allows for this sort of nonsense should be modified until it doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does the same apply to HN submissions? ;)

<comment><USER6> If it did, you would be forced to classify spam and old Valleywag articles as "interesting".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This and the hanging prisoner paradox in the afternoon.

Must be epistemology night on HN :)

</comment><comment><USER8> The theory also applies to trees, ropes and pipes.

<comment><USER9> The set in question needs some ordering (at least for the proof to easily cross over).

Though, I suppose we can use "number of molecules" and almost always get away with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> sounds like a catch 22 kinda situation to me. Or for that matter Heisenberg uncertainty principle.</comment>


Windows Could Use a Rush of Fresh Air - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/technology/29digi.html

<comment><USER2> It seems like this article blames Window's bloat on the fact that it's not a microkernel, which makes no sense. Linux is also a monolithic kernel, and has remained (more or less) monolithic even though Andrew Tanenbaum has argued with Linus for years about it. Linus recently had this to say:

> _"The whole argument that microkernels are somehow "more secure" or "more > stable" is also total crap. The fact that each individual piece is simple > and secure does not make the aggregate either simple or secure. And the > argument that you can "just reload" a failed service and not take the whole > system down is equally flawed."_

Window's bloat is from providing backwards compatibility for 20 years of poorly written third party apps and weird hardware - along with Microsoft's habit of bundling everything possible with their operating system... it has nothing to do with being a micro/monolithic kernel.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> this article reveals that the next version of windows won't be a from-the- ground-up rewrite, as had been rumored. microsoft's research arm built just such an operating system, however.</comment>


Terahertz polarizers will create a number of new opportunities and gizmos - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120130172615.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Not that too many people will notice, but this will be very important in the next 5 - 10 years. Hand held terahertz instruments which are frequency agile can do the kinds of things you heard about on Star Trek, scan for chemicals, identify things that are unknown, see bombs in boxes, show insects in walls, show bedbugs, etc etc.

The reason is because of the interesting place where tHz waves sit in the spectrum, between what we think of as radio and light.</comment>


Show HN: Dynamically resizable Docker Swarm cluster - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rcarmo/azure-docker-swarm-cluster <comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I was playing around with Docker Swarm and wanted to build a reusable template for batch processing jobs that let me just resize a scaleset (a VM "pool" in Azure, if you will) to add more workers, and this is the result.

Should be immediately useful for many people (I have half a mind to set up a Blender render cluster using this)

<comment><USER2> The idea of Swarm is the cluster works like one single virtual host. In that case, checkout hyper.sh. You don't care about the cluster thing at all in it, because their entire cloud works like one host.

<comment><AUTHOR> Erm. I don't get that comment.

Anyway, You can't ordinarily add compute resources to a swarm automatically, which was kind of my point with this.</comment></comment></comment>


Can Reddit interview presidential candidates better than traditional media? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/can-a-random-group-of-people-on-the-internet-interview-a-candidate-better-than-the-pros-9fb90d2f29f3 <comment><USER2> No. Reddit's user base is extremely liberal and hostile to conservative candidates and values as evident by the echo-chamber that is /r/politics, which fails to meaningfully support pro-conservative news. There are literally no pro-conservative and no anti-liberal top posts from the past month[1], only libertarian, liberal and anti-conservative. The paradigm or technology platform dramatically favors a very specific demographic, and is ultimately a disservice to democracy by disproportionately favoring that demographic's POV. If you fall into that demographic, I imagine it would be very difficult to resist the potential power play to further your own views.

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/top/](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/top/)

EDIT #1: Okay, /r/politics is a US-only forum. Supporting facts updated.

EDIT #2: As a final point, being global in nature, Reddit will always encourage an english-speaking non-US-centric world-oriented political-view. This is precisely, as a nation, what we don't want, to provide a global avenue for anti-US political subversion masquerading as populace rhetoric.

<comment><USER3> To address your completely re-written post:

> No. Reddit's user base is extremely liberal and hostile to conservative > candidates and values as evident by the echo-chamber that is /r/politics, > which fails to meaningfully support pro-conservative news. There are > literally no pro-conservative and no anti-liberal top posts from the past > month[1], only libertarian, liberal and anti-conservative. The paradigm or > technology platform dramatically favors a very specific demographic, and is > ultimately a disservice to democracy by disproportionately favoring that > demographic's POV. If you fall into that demographic, I imagine it would be > very difficult to resist the potential power play to further your own views.

I'll address it here as I did in my other post...

1) If you feel libertarians are not "conservatives" it is because you are a social conservative. Yes, Reddit is not friendly to social conservatives but that is really the only bias you've presented. Fiscal conservatism is a libertarian belief, a conservative belief, and is represented by the positive news about Rand Paul.

2) > There are literally no pro-conservative and no anti-liberal top posts from the past month[1]

> [1] > [http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/top/](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/top/)

That doesn't demonstrate the bias you claim as it is based on overall score _including time_ in the ranking algorithm. You can see it by the order its displayed on the page. Result #4? 2794 which is greater than results #2 & #3.

The correct link would be:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/top/?sort=top&t=month](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/top/?sort=top&t=month)

:/

Like, I get you are trying at this point but its really hard to be nice to someone who seems only interested in attempting to misrepresent the facts to fit his world view. I even had to correct the link you offered because the link you presented this time still doesn't match the statement you made.

Do you even understand the problem I have with you is:

1) You make conservatives look bad by being this ignorant.

2) You are painting me as a "hostile liberal" when my problem with you is the fact you have a fact-free opinion of the world and actively misrepresent and completely rewrite your posts to remove those misrepresentations?

> EDIT #2: As a final point, being global in nature, Reddit will always > encourage an english-speaking non-US-centric world-oriented political-view. > This is precisely, as a nation, what we don't want, to provide a global > avenue for anti-US political subversion masquerading as populace rhetoric.

Populist rhetoric isn't inherently "subversive". The fact you are convinced that Reddit is an avenue for "anti-US political rhetoric" means you frankly don't understand the value and purpose of the 1st amendment.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances"

The right to exercise political speech is a fundamental right both for Americans and everyone else in the world under the Constitution. The fact you would go against that makes you:

1) Un-American.

2) Not-A-Conservative. Protecting constitutional rights is a fundamental conservative belief. If you are opposed to people exercising a fundamental constitution right, such as the freedom of speech, you are a horrible American.

3) You are precisely why the Constitution exists. To protect the rest of us from people who think the ability to have an honest, public conservation about political views is a bad thing. You do realize that is a large part of why we revolted against the British in the first place, right? An inability to influence politics legally via speech and parliamentary representation?

EDIT: Sean

I get rate limited in these threads and can't reply. Anyway, I read the "as a nation" bit as policy advocacy. Maybe that wasn't his intent but that seems to have been his way of phrasing that intent previously.

<comment><USER2> > To address your completely re-written post:

Despite your fixation on it, it in no way invalidates my point. It was one sentence that's acknowledged in the edit, and I openly acknowledge it as "ignorance" further down. What would you prefer I replace the text of "Edit #1" with?

> Yes, Reddit is not friendly to social conservatives but that is really the > only bias you've presented.

Thank you for partially agreeing, but you are illustrating your ignorance and seem "only interested in attempting to misrepresent the facts to fit [your] world view." Specifically, you are ignorant to the fact that libertarian monetary policies are not interchangeable or equivalent to conservative monetary policies. Just one example is that libertarians are isolationists, while conservatives tend to be interventionists. You also seem completely ignorant to the fact that libertarians are neither liberal, nor conservative, but in fact libertarian, though from your POV (and those on Reddit I would suspect), libertarians probably are what you consider "conservative."

> > [https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/top/?sort=top&t=month](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/top/?sort=top&t=month)

That's the link I intended ("top posts from the past month"). If you were not so blinded with bias, you would recognize that your link proves my point and illustrates that you are "only interested in attempting to misrepresent the facts to fit [your] world view."

> its really hard to be nice to someone

Really? I have no difficulty politely discussing the issue with you despite your clear ignorance, anti-conservative bigotry, myopathy and that you are wrong and misrepresent all the facts I am presenting. I have said nothing negative about liberalism at any point.

> 1) You make conservatives look bad by being this ignorant.

You make liberals look bad by being this ignorant, and arguably worse through your tone and difficulty with not demonizing me.

> 2) You are painting me as a "hostile liberal" when my problem with you is > the fact you have a fact-free opinion of the world and actively misrepresent > and completely rewrite your posts to remove those misrepresentations?

You are clearly hostile and liberal. You are having difficulty being nice and instead of focusing on the topic, go on to mischaracterize me as "Un- American," "horrible American," "opposed to [the 1st Ammendment]," dishonest and opposed to honest public political discussion, which is self-evidently false as I am presently engaging in one. I did provide a fact, I'm sorry you are ignoring it. The facts in the link as discussed stand.

> and completely rewrite your posts to remove those misrepresentations?

Again, ignoring the facts. See "EDIT #1: Okay, /r/politics is a US-only forum. Supporting facts updated." and above, "What would you prefer I replace the text of "Edit #1" with?" I will however assume this is not due to some reading comprehension on your part and instead fault your myopathy or hostility.

> Populist rhetoric isn't inherently "subversive". The fact you are convinced > that Reddit is an avenue for "anti-US political rhetoric" means you frankly > don't understand the value and purpose of the 1st amendment.

Lol, geez man. Did I say any of that? I sound pretty terrible when you discuss me. I said, within the context of US-elections, a global opinion site could be an avenue for subversive rhetoric masquerading as something else. I love how you rail on me for misrepresenting things in ignorance, yet you have a literal mischaracterizing misquote: "anti-US political rhetoric". You seem to pervasively disregard the facts to support your opinion. I said "anti-US political subversion", and if you don't think that exists, then you don't understand politics or power. I'd be happy to recommend some reading if you need education.

> The fact you would go against that makes you [...] Un-American [,...] > opposed to people exercising a fundamental constitution right [,...] a > horrible American [,...] think the ability to have an honest, public > conservation about political views is a bad thing

Wow. Alright, enough, you've gone off the rails. You're no longer discussing the topic and just flat out doing everything you can to mischaracterize me by attacking my character. Thank you for proving my point in absolutely every way.

While it's possible your intentions are honest, you are clearly misguided and are ignorant of both the facts and from your demeanor, probably malicious.

<comment><USER3> > That's the link I intended ("top posts from the past month"). If you were > not so blinded with bias, you would recognize that your link proves my point > and illustrates that you are "only interested in attempting to misrepresent > the facts to fit [your] world view."

The fact you intentionally linked to the wrong link proves your intention to misrepresent the facts.

I mean you can claim otherwise and shove it all on me I guess?

That is really where you went with this as far as I can tell.

> Thank you for partially agreeing, but you are illustrating your ignorance > and seem "only interested in attempting to misrepresent the facts to fit > [your] world view." Specifically, you are ignorant to the fact that > libertarian monetary policies are not interchangeable or equivalent to > conservative monetary policies. Just one example is that libertarians are > isolationists, while conservatives tend to be interventionists. You also > seem completely ignorant to the fact that libertarians are neither liberal, > nor conservative, but in fact libertarian, though from your POV (and those > on Reddit I would suspect), libertarians probably are what you consider > "conservative."

[http://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary- blog/3448-myth...](http://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary- blog/3448-myth-ayn-rand-was-a-conservative)

> Insofar as the conservative movement has been the home of free-market reform > efforts since the 1960s at least, classical liberals, such as Objectivists, > have taken part in conservative or right-wing political coalitions aimed at > economic policy.

You are attempting to segment politics on a level that doesn't exist in the real world of US politics.

The fact is the Libertarian __fiscal policies __and the Conservative __fiscal policies __are for all purposes equal and equivalent in practical terms as both are aimed at free market reforms and the "libertarian" and "conservative" representatives of the Republican party both vote Yes on the same bills.

You can pretend otherwise (I guess) and argue a purely academic point (since you really seem to want to paint yourself into that corner).

Once again:

> If you feel libertarians are not "conservatives" it is because you are a > social conservative. Yes, Reddit is not friendly to social conservatives but > that is really the only bias you've presented. Fiscal conservatism is a > libertarian belief, a conservative belief, and is represented by the > positive news about Rand Paul.

[http://www.yourdictionary.com/fiscal- conservative](http://www.yourdictionary.com/fiscal-conservative)

> One who favors a balanced budget, prefering spending cuts or tax increases > to borrowing, and wants to decrease government size, and promote a free > market.

[http://www.teapartypatriots.org/news/fiscal-conservatism- bre...](http://www.teapartypatriots.org/news/fiscal-conservatism-breeds- balanced-budgets/)

> On Wednesday, Tea Party Patriots highlighted Texas' success in growing its > economy through the principles of low taxes, low spending, and freer > markets. As Katharine Ham reports, similar success stories are happening > across the country as fiscal conservatives implement sound public policy. > Meanwhile, states that continue to overspend – states like long-suffering > California – continue to sag under the weight of massive debt, and as they > raise taxes their citizens are departing for greener and more economically > safe pastures.

[http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/money_12855.htm](http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/money_12855.htm)

> Monetary policy is a term used to refer to the actions of central banks to > achieve macroeconomic policy objectives such as price stability, full > employment, and stable economic growth. In the United States, the Congress > established maximum employment and price stability as the macroeconomic > objectives for the Federal Reserve; they are sometimes referred to as the > Federal Reserve's dual mandate. Apart from these overarching objectives, the > Congress determined that operational conduct of monetary policy should be > free from political influence. As a result, the Federal Reserve is an > independent agency of the federal government. Fiscal policy is a broad term > used to refer to the tax and spending policies of the federal government. > Fiscal policy decisions are determined by the Congress and the > Administration; the Federal Reserve plays no role in determining fiscal > policy.

> Specifically, you are ignorant to the fact that libertarian monetary > policies are not interchangeable or equivalent to conservative monetary > policies.

> If you feel libertarians are not "conservatives" it is because you are a > social conservative. Yes, Reddit is not friendly to social conservatives but > that is really the only bias you've presented. Fiscal conservatism is a > libertarian belief, a conservative belief, and is represented by the > positive news about Rand Paul.

Or you don't know what a fiscal policy or a fiscal conservative is. :/

EDIT: I give up. Its pointless to argue with someone who doesn't even know WTF I'm saying.

<comment><USER2> > [http://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary- > blog/3448-myth...](http://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary- > blog/3448-myth-ayn-rand-was-a-conservative)

[Original response to the above quote removed]

EDIT: Looks like I missed the original context (in a different comment) for the above quote. Thanks for providing evidence that supports my point that libertarians are not conservatives.

> Objectivists, have taken part in conservative or right-wing political > coalitions aimed at economic policy.

That's a political strategy in a two-party system. You're equivocating. Communists, socialists, anarchists, etc... must also choose a side in a two- party system. It, however, does not make them equivalent. More ignorance on your part.

Regarding fiscal policy, yes, you're right, I unintentionally was discussing foreign policy. Thank you for the correction, but it in no one affects my point. It seems fairly trivial to recognize I was talking about foreign policy, not monetary policy. Either way, my point stands. You would've been better off addressing that instead. Again,

> social conservatives [bias] is really the only bias you've presented.

I presented a general anti-conservative bias, not a specific one. I'm sorry you misunderstood.

> If you feel libertarians are not "conservatives" it is because you are a > social conservative.

Nope. Your views are reductionist and yet again extremely ignorant. From a reductionist point of view, libertarians and conservatives differ in regards to Social, Foreign, Monetary[1] (as opposed Fiscal) and Federalist policies. Getting further into the specific details undermines your myopic view of non- liberals altogether. It's really quite a wonder how much of a disservice your ignorance is to making your own points.

[1] Libertarians are unrelentingly anti-Federal Reserve, while conservatives have historically mostly ignored it and Republicans actually helped create it: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Federal_Reserv...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Federal_Reserve#Creation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The quality of the questions on Bernie Sanders' AMA were pretty good, but it was informative only because he didn't shy away from answering the interesting questions.

One of the Chicago Mayoral candidates did an AMA in the recent election and it was pretty abysmal. The good questions were skipped and the other answers were evasive. In that respect, Reddit lacks something an in-person interview can deliver (with a good interviewer) - the ability to push back on a non-answer and not be ignored. You also can't catch someone off guard on Reddit, really - the answers are going to be very carefully curated.

<comment><USER5> So a really interesting question would be: can a candidate who is unafraid to answer questions honestly compete well against a field of candidates who try to only tell people what they want to hear? Is it possible to change the game such that not alienating anyone is less of a priority?

EDIT: Thinking about this more, it may be important that we play multiple iterations of this game. During primaries, candidates are much less concerned about alienating voters from the other party, and are much more concerned about straying from the positions mandated by their party base. In the general election, they often have the opposite incentive.

If we only had one round of campaigning, it could be much easier for candidates to delineate their true beliefs, though whatever voting system was used would still be vulnerable to some form of strategy.

<comment><USER6> In principle, yes, but not when the means of media distribution (campaign ads, debates, etc.) are controlled by parties with obvious conflicts of interest.

In other words, the debates will always be pathetic so long as they are run by _companies_ like FOX, NPR, and NBC. Companies with plain political interests.

This, more than anything else, needs disrupting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Someone once said that you can fool some of the people all the time and you can fool all the people some of the time. The crowds can be fooled; worse, when they insist on something that isn't true, almost every public figure will give in and tell the people what they want to hear. Generally I'm more interested in questions from people who study these issues full-time, and are skilled at handling the evasiveness (and sometimes plain old deceit) of public figures.

The wisdom of the crowds is a great tool, but like all great tools it's not a universal one. It doesn't replace expertise, for example. I don't want my medical condition treated or my war planned by amateurs. The public figures are professionals at this PR game. That said, the crowd-based interview may complement the professionals.

<comment><USER6> I cannot agree more. The manner in which voting decisions are ostensibly supposed to be made can only be called juvenile.

The questions in play are among the most complex in human history. The stakes are high. All the way high. And still decisions about how to vote are supposed to be determined by bland, simple answers to vague, generalized questions?

No thanks; please just show me the analysis. Show me the graphs. Show me the track record, in writing. I care little for what politicians or their PR wings say to interviewers. I care lots about data.

Aside: it's up to us (techy people), in my opinion, to find a way to jump- start this discourse.

<comment><USER8> "And still decisions about how to vote are supposed to be determined by bland, simple answers to vague, generalized questions?"

Deeper responses are available from most candidates.

It's worth emphasizing that it's YOUR (generic you, not personal) responsibility to absorb these responses when they are available.

The biggest problem is that people just...don't.

<comment><USER6> > Deeper responses are available from most candidates.

Occasionally. Very occasionally.

I would submit that these interviews are really only useful to the extent that they let candidates demonstrate their leadership style or possibly their personality.

<comment><USER8> No, quite often.

Not interviews, but position papers and talks and so on from the candidates. Contrary to folk wisdom, politicians for the most part take their work seriously and have put a lot of thought and effort into issues they care about.

In addition to their published material, you can always reach out to them or their staff to discuss in more detail.

That is, of course, on you to take those steps, but they _are_ available to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's the thing about traditional journalists and their organizations: they have to maintain a relationship with these people.

If they ask hard questions that might make the candidates look bad they don't get invited back or pay other access penalties.

Random people don't suffer from this problem. But they also don't generally have the inside knowledge to ask the real questions. Solution: anonymize the professional journalists and their organizations. No one to blame, no one to retaliate against.

<comment><USER10> One aspect is that with reddit, candidates can completely avoid uncomfortable questions.

<comment><USER11> They could also plant their own people asking the questions they want to answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd be very interested to see a sort of combination of these approaches, wherein questions are submitted in advance and upvoted/downvoted to determine priority, then the top x questions are asked and the answers discussed by a live interviewer. This would eliminate some (not all) of the problems that @pdovy points out while keeping the positive aspects of a crowd-curated set of questions.

</comment><comment><USER13> No surprises here. Reddit can do quite a lot of things better than traditional media. So can bloggers (if you filter out the major part of the blogosphere, which now is another money making machine).

Basically, people genuinely, intrinsically caring about a particular thing will produce better results than people pushing agendas and using that thing as a tool to get money and further careers.

</comment><comment><USER14> The answer is yes. The forum is not trying to channel the conversation through a pre-determined dialog.

Likewise a website is able to do a better job of figuring out who you should vote for than listening to campaign ads. In the last several elections I've used [http://www.selectsmart.com/president/](http://www.selectsmart.com/president/) as a starting point for figuring out who I support.

<comment><USER15> To provide another implementation, I prefer [http://www.isidewith.com/political-quiz](http://www.isidewith.com/political- quiz) as it's more issue-based and you don't need to know the stances of the organizations mentioned in the selectsmart quiz.

<comment><USER14> I like the fact that selectsmart ranks each possible candidate, and not just general parties.

For example in 2008 there were significant policy differences between Obama and Clinton. And I wanted to know who I sided with in the primary.</comment></comment></comment>


Why the Australia Fires Are Like Nothing We've Seen Before - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/world/australia/fires-size-climate.html <comment><USER2> I guess I'll never know because of this paywall

<comment><USER3> If you use Firefox reader view it bypasses the wall.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: are there any concise IT books out there? - <AUTHOR>

I recently decided to make the shift from physics to IT.  In physics we would have very concise (less than 100 page) books that would cover things like Fourier Transforms, Special Relativity etc.  These would usually be published by the Cambridge or Oxford university presses and would be highly theoretical and compressed.<p>In IT I've been amazed by how many 500 page behemoths that exist to describe each particular framework in excruciating detail.  I want to get a tight, in-depth explanation of MVC, design patterns, databases etc, in a short period of time.  Are there any publishers of highly compressed books out there for IT? <comment><USER2> I suspect that you represent a small (significant?) market segment as I have not seen many IT book titles or series that meet your requirements. O'Reilly have a series, "Essentials" that appear to have started off with this intention but later titles are bloated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not exactly IT, but K&R's "The C Programming Language" is beautifully concise and contains the perfect blend of examples, explanations and reference. One of my favorite technical books and was at one point, most used, as shown by its highly-worn cover.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Woops, I meant:

Are there any publishers of highly compressed books for web development?</comment>


Ask HN: Temporary workarounds while GitHub is offline? - <AUTHOR> Assuming you work in an office where tools such as Github are actively used <comment><USER2> github.com is being served to me, but without a css (wow, github is now a motherfu __ing website!)

So i can't reach the cdn...

        znpy@durendall:~$ dig @188.8.131.52 assets-cdn.github.com

        ; <<>> DiG 9.10.3-P4-Ubuntu <<>> @126.96.36.199 assets-cdn.github.com
        ; (1 server found)
        ;; global options: +cmd
        ;; Got answer:
        ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 56702
        ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

        ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
        ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
        ;; QUESTION SECTION:
        ;assets-cdn.github.com.		IN	A

        ;; Query time: 29 msec
        ;; SERVER: 22.214.171.124#53(220.127.116.11)
        ;; WHEN: Fri Oct 21 18:46:54 CEST 2016
        ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 50

So no A record... I guess.

</comment><comment><USER3> Gitlab or Bitbucket. You could install Gitlab locally and use that in case of an outage. In my case I just push to two of them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Gitlab.com, I completely switched over an no longer use github.

<comment><USER2> Same for me. I always mirror my code to gitlab.com and always push to both services.

But today I wanted to get the sources for a software I want to patch for Hacktoberfest but it only resides on github... Sigh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> add the following to your /etc/hosts file:

      18.104.22.168  github.com
      188.8.131.52    status.github.com
      188.8.131.52  *.github.com</comment>