Show HN: Front-end framework optimized for internal apps - <AUTHOR> http://getflakes.com/index.html <comment><USER2> Nicely done, but if you are really trying to be a framework for internal apps (vs a design framework like bootstrap) - I would focus on adding a couple of more admin-like components (such as grids vs tables with the options associated with grids).

An opinionated admin framework would be a huge win. For what its worth - semantic-ui.com has a couple of neat compenents that are also worth having (cards, steps/wizards).

Watching this project now!

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like gridforms for dense data-entry forms ([http://kumailht.com/gridforms/](http://kumailht.com/gridforms/)).

<comment><USER4> I don't like them at all. Yes, they look pretty, but it's an emulation of the worst aspects of paper forms. The grid-style form is my least-favourite paper form and I frequently find it confusing and difficult to fill out such forms correctly. Perhaps this is because the linear flow of the form is awkwardly two-dimensional, or perhaps because for anything beyond a trivial example, the layout becomes unnatural as the size of the fields don't usually lend themselves to a logical and human-friendly structured layout.

Perhaps it's because the grid style form ignores the importance of whitespace in clear and understandable design. Here's a good test: hold the form upside down and see if you can still tell it's structure at a glance, or hold it at the other side of the room and try the same thing.

<comment><USER5> Be that as it may, this is exactly the type of form I routinely see people filling out on 80s-era WYSE terminals at airports, rental car agencies, the DMV, hardware stores, and so on. It seems like a lot non-tech people find them fairly easy to get the hang of.

<comment><USER4> What evidence do you have that people find it easy? My experience with such forms is that people make mistakes constantly. Just because awful forms are common doesn't make them easy. I'd argue that there are many easier styles of form.

Old terminals were fairly space-constrained so I can understand why this choice was made, but modern computers with their high-res screens do not have this restriction, e.g the iPhone has a full keyboard instead of a number pad with letters on, like feature phones had, because they had the space to do so.

<comment><USER6> Speaking of the iPhone, input forms in iPhone apps are more or less grid style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel internal business applications can be visually appealing too. People have to look at these things all day, so why are we so quick to assert that these people are practically robots who can't appreciate comfortable interfaces when we design and build boring apps?

Life can look good all over. Don't succumb to this "business is serious and should therefore be dull and boring" stuff.

<comment><USER8> I think they're going for a different kind of boring than what you're implying. It doesn't have fancy animations and flashy colors like Bootstrap and Foundation. It's simple, clean, fast and straight to the point, which is something valuable in an internal tool.

<comment><USER9> Bootstrap doesn't have animations, not that I know of, and I think its colors (though kind of cliché by now) convey information pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish more things looked like this at work. There's apps that look like native apps, there's bootstrap apps, there's all the custom CSS floating around, there's whatever's new, there's the stock CSS sheet that comes with the plugins...

Keeping to principles like this at work or for work environments would make it so much easier to have unity. I'm not saying everything should look like this, but that not everything needs to stand out for the sake of standing out. Using the same app every day undoes the need for over the top "visual cues" and complex overlays and material concepts. We need fast, interchangeable stuff, that works with large amounts of data/fields/etc when the content doesn't fit looking like apple.com. :)

I wish you guys luck, and I'll give it a shot the first chance I get.

<comment><USER11> I work at a very large company and it's the same way. We have a team dedicated to keeping internal apps within certain stylistic and functional guidelines but the overall landscape is still an absolute clusterfuck. Some apps are built with bootstrap, some with pure, some with no styling whatsoever, different hexes for our company's primary color... you name it. Fragmented as all hell.

<comment><USER10> It's amazing in an "Agile" world, we still feel like we need to "configure" basic design concepts.

For internal apps: Structure could be one theme on one CSS framework. So much time is wasted on "design" (picking colors, lining things up) by people who don't know anything about design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really cool and a nice start. One big thing we are dealing with in our internal app are responsive tables. We display some data in tables, but it almost always looks like crap on a small screen. There are a few different ways to solve this. Sometimes it makes sense to hide or abbreviate columns other times the table should neatly convert to a list. This is tougher.

I also like your search & filters design. I did something like this just last week, but I like yours better. ;-)

In some places you use semantic class names, like for messages, but for buttons you use colors. Probably better to just stick with a single convention for consistency.

<comment><USER13> I think colours for names of buttons are OK. I hate having to jump between CSS frameworks and trying to remember what the correct class is - danger? Warning? Error? I know what I want is red, and any time I want to change the class of a button or message/alert your core intent is to change the colour - so you might as well skip that abstraction IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "It goes away with custom fonts" should be "It does away..."

Other than that, pretty cool! There may be a space for this...

Reminds me a bit of [http://platform.qbix.com](http://platform.qbix.com) which we built to power _social_ apps (on all devices).

One tip: if you're going to make it for business, have the demo document the keyboard shortcuts to get around quickly, like in gmail. Ideally your "front end framework" could have a controller that would accept a keymap object like {"a": "actionName", "r": "someOtherAction"} etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch, should be fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd like to understand more about the rationale that led you down the path of creating this.

In my years in enterprise, user and market research has driven the push to create UIs that are more compelling, that make users feel more at home and comfortable (as they would be with mobile and consumer products), while maintaining a more narrow focus on tasks instead of providing a generic one- size fits all paradigm.

This framework stands in contrast to that, making things dull and boring. What caused you to go down this path?

<comment><USER16> I'd like to work in that progressive sector of the enterprise, mine is still full of Swing, extjs and even Tk.

<comment><USER17> extjs isn't so bad.. My only complaints would be all the themes look a bit dated (and squashed on a large display), and I don't like OO paradigms in JS so much and ext is really heavy OO.

<comment><USER16> I'm generally putting extjs in the swing/MFC/Qt corner, no the angular/dojo/react/etc one, and yes, compared to that in a client/server setup it's not that bad -- at least it suggest a more sane communication setup and is only godawful when it comes to deploying, not outright hostile.

But quite often, some corporations would've fared better keeping their old mainframe terminal apps. With mobile apps, both setups don't really fare too well, although with the recent influx of Windows tablets and styluses, I fear that we could be regressing to shoddy Visual Basic-ish apps with homegrown comm/sync protocols again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really like this which was linked from there: [http://kumailht.com/gridforms/](http://kumailht.com/gridforms/)

</comment><comment><USER19> This is great - I'm working on internal webapps full time and I often notice how data-heavy apps with high density of information come with their very own challenges that make Bootstrap, Foundation and Co. less of an ideal choice. What looked great in a simple demo, suddenly feels cluttered in boring data grids. Often it turns out that adapting these frameworks to our own requirements, visually and in terms of functionality, is more of a hassle than simply starting from scratch. Which is what I started to do lately.

This, however, seems like a great starting point that I will definitely keep in mind for future projects. I'll need to check how easy it will be to customize and extend it, but it's a great first impression.

</comment><comment><USER20> Great start!

One thing that I noticed immediately was the UX associated with the hamburger menu.

When the page content gets sufficiently long, you have the potential of scrolling beyond the hamburger menu. To jump to another page, you have to scroll to the top.

Potential solutions could be making the hamburger menu fixed to the upper-left corner, or provide UI widget to return to top of page.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm really glad I checked out this posting because it led me to the author's other work, which is really impressive. [http://kumailht.com/](http://kumailht.com/) Way to go, great looking stuff.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is there any compelling reason to try this if I'm already comfortable with using Bootstrap for internal apps?

<comment><USER23> I guess it'd be good if the website mentions a bit more what are the differences with and advantages over Bootstrap. I've never used Bootstrap for public facing app because I find its look too bland, but I love it for internal apps. IMHO it doesn't exaggerate at all on the level of 'glitz' (one of the arguments of the OP against contemporary frameworks).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very nice work. Given the prevalence of Bootstrap and Foundation, it would probably help adoption if there were options with those as the base styling lib.

I know there is a lot of work in the custom sass here and this is currently a one-man project. May be a good candidate for a "Roadmap" and "How you can help" section in the repo's Readme.

</comment><comment><USER25> License? Scanned both the github and docs for any mention of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added an MIT license to the Github repo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Everytime I see a new CSS framework with a grid layout (which they all do) I get sad that decent cross-browser support for the CSS Grid module seems so far away...

<comment><USER27> It doesn't matter if all the company PCs are running the same software.

<comment><USER26> I'm thinking about it from the perspective of an ISV that wants to deliver a app with a web interface that is run on in-house servers. Although we could probably just target the capabilities of IE (which does support an early version of the CSS Grid spec) and be done with it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Lots of nice work put into this, but I think some of the fundamental architectural assumptions are a little regressive. For instance, it looks like the boilerplate expects a lot of server-side template rendering, or minimal dynamic rendering on the front-end. Also, using jQuery and event-oriented JS in general is nice and stable and easy to grok, but in my opinion not forward- looking.

I think the front-end world is going more in the direction of single-page apps that primarily use the server side for data-driven APIs. The server-side APIs become way more portable, and the user experience becomes far more responsive. Just because something is internal doesn't mean you don't want data portability, high responsiveness, and low latency.

I respect the fact that the approach is opinionated from a front-end perspective. But to counter an opinion with another opinion, data portability and reduced latency from the server justifies all the fuckery associated with many of the SPA frameworks (looking at Angular when I say fuckery). This framework encourages people to stick to the skills they were comfortable with five years ago, and untempered complacency is never a good thing.

<comment><USER29> One man's "forward looking" is another man's "swept up in the latest trends." This framework seems to be pushing back against trends on the design front, so unsurprising it's pushing back on trends in the architecture front as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> khet, you may not be aware but you're violating an HN rule by asking others to upvote your submission [1, 2].

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

2: [https://twitter.com/kumailht/status/540503967977852928](https://twitter.com/kumailht/status/540503967977852928)

</comment><comment><USER31> Some feedback about the preview section:

/preview/typography: I was hoping to find out what font(s) I was looking at, but this page contains a history of typography. Looks like it's Helvetica? But I don't see the word Helvetica anywhere on the page. Maybe it's expected that the user will know why Helvetica is the right choice.

from /preview/grid : "A collection of classes to build grid based layouts with absolute ease. This is the simplest grid system you'll love to use." This feels weirdly sales-y for documentation.

</comment><comment><USER32> Well done. I work in a large enterprise and have no design ability. Tired of banging bootstrap together and not quite getting the look you achieved with Flakes. Looking forward to trying this.

</comment><comment><USER33> Not sure why Bootstrap bloat is a problem if it's just going to be an internal app. I'd rather go with a more familiar, and well known framework, and not have the overhead of learning yet another framework (not to mention others who would maintain or contribute to the internal app would have to pick up this new framework)

That being said, I do like the look and feel of Flakes. Also, given that graphs and charts are key to internal business apps, would be awesome if there was some easy charting integration / capability.

<comment> vertex-four Bootstrap bloat has little to do with it, looking at the docs. This gives you a bunch of components for specific data views; Bootstrap is far more general, requiring you to create your own components out of Bootstrap's lower-level CSS. It's a specifically geared framework vs a general one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'd called that "lean and clean" instead of "boring". And I wish that more user facing apps would look like that, not just internal ones. Maybe it's just me, but all these flashy things, unnecessary effects, animations only clutters the screen and makes app harder and annoying to use. Functionality and ergonomics is all that usually matters. Well done, I'll give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER35> The 'consumerisation of the enterprise' is here to stay. Having a USP that is a negation of something beneficial and pleasant in UI pleasantness and that drives adoption is likely only to work against the success of this framework, let alone the narrower only 'internal' market reducing the role of the open source community in its continued development and their passion for it.

</comment><comment><USER36> What about OpenUI5 for business apps: [https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#content/Controls/index.ht...](https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#content/Controls/index.html)

From my initial tests, it's very clean MVC (a bit verbose). Also the deploy story is not too good... (frontend code ships as a .war). Does anyone have experience with this, good or bad?

<comment><USER17> It's relatively clean, but a bit more klunky feeling. It also seems _REALLY_ sluggish... Not sure if this is typical, but it really doesn't feel nice.

I'm also not a huge fan of enterprisey software development.. SAP and most Java projects make me pull my hair out just getting an environment for development setup.

<comment><USER36> Yeah the other day was my first day with Java and Eclipse and I was close to pulling my hair out (coming from python and vim). Ultimately it's just a different set of batteries but the depth/weight of the stack seems insane--- the expression 'house of cards' comes to mind...

Still OpenUI5 is just js files in the end, so hopefully entreprisey people can't mess it up too bad ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I prefer something more feature-rich, using a known framework like Bootstrap. There's a lot more features and examples built in to inexpensive templates for Admin interfaces like SmartAdmin - [https://bootstraphunter.com/smartadmin- product.php](https://bootstraphunter.com/smartadmin-product.php)

<comment><USER38> Great point. From perspective of someone deciding between using bootstrap themes vs flakes the decision would be based on whether you want bootstrap or not. What I don't get is why would you NOT use bootstrap or material design and pick something like getflakes? The justification that it's for internal apps - apps which don't have proper budget allocations, need to be done quickly with usability short cuts? I guess that does happen a lot for internal apps. But why would you not build getflakes using bootstrap or foundation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is a pleasant change. My goto framework for internal apps is Bootstrap (no surprise there) although I actually end up using only a handful of elements. Flakes looks like a good enough collection of elements to cover 95% of my use cases. Definitely going to use this in my next app.

Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER40> If you use Bootstrap Sass, you could look into only including the components that you actually use – can help reduce Bootstrap bloat big time.

<comment><USER13> Why single out the SASS version? If you compile LESS files you have the same option. I also think Bootstrap has a form on its website which compiles the CSS with the components you want, without having to install/run a preprocessor.

<comment><USER17> I've always used the Less version myself as a base for customization... lately, I'll npm it in as a requirement... copy out the bootstrap.less and variables.less into my project, update the references and work from there. It's relatively straight forward to do so... from there, I can comment out the parts I don't use. variables.less is mainly copied as a reference point... In my app.less, I include the bootstrap variables, then my own variables, then the rest of bootstrap, then my application less files.

At this point sass doesn't really offer much over less (other than a slightly stronger presence in the design community). I'm using node mostly, which fits in better for me, and makes less a better/tighter fit.

For better or worse, being able to bring in less, react and the like combined with SPDY/HTTP2 will bring some interesting development as things progress. Right now transpiling ES6/7 stuff to ES5 is probably the biggest bottleneck in terms of serving applications closer to as-is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think it looks sharp. But the monotonality, or lack of contrast within the layouts blends elements together, so I would find it difficult to read and interact with for an extended period of time. It is very cool, I especially like the Grid Forms -- those are so sweet.

</comment><comment><USER42> Went to this page: [http://getflakes.com/preview/browsing- data.html](http://getflakes.com/preview/browsing-data.html)

The 'Next' button on the grid seems to be broken. No javascript error in console. Current stable Chrome, Windows.

<comment><USER43> I suspect it's not meant to be completely functional.

<comment><USER44> Yep. Looks like the only thing with any functionality attached is the search. Which is funny because with the search at the top of the page I could see how it would lead one to believe that the rest of the buttons might have functionality attached to them as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> There's some nice visuals here but it's hard to see why I should choose to invest my time into learning this rather than something more standard like Bootstrap. And I don't really see how any of this is specifically oriented to internal applications.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think it's strange that they use Morris.js[1] for their graphs on the main pages, but don't mention it anywhere.

[1][https://morrisjs.github.io/morris.js/](https://morrisjs.github.io/morris.js/)

<comment><USER47> The graphs don't appear to be part of the framework, just example content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Am i missing something, or is there no explanation anywhere on their site of what this actually does at a detailed enough level targeted towards a developer?

Update: never mind, found the docs hiding inside the live demo page.

</comment><comment><USER49> The 'select all' checkbox on [http://getflakes.com/preview/tables.html](http://getflakes.com/preview/tables.html) has no effect my Chrome.

<comment><USER50> Nor in any other browser; AFAICT there's nothing actually bound to that. It's just to demonstrate styling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Looks very nice. I've been busy trying to make a dashboard for work with overview of various systems, I will definitely give this one a try.

</comment><comment><USER52> Bootstrap started out as framework for internal apps.

</comment><comment><USER53> Am I missing something here? I don't get what's so special about this as opposed to all the other web app frameworks?

<comment><USER54> It makes sense if you've ever had to work on internal facing apps, like an admin panel. You wouldn't want the overhead and clutter of something like bootstrap which'd be overkill (albeit you can customize it to be minimal).

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I quite like it. Simple, bare, no excessive styling as opposed to current trend.

Buttons kind of look out of place, though.

</comment><comment><USER56> Just wanted to mention that I work on NimbusFoundry(nimbus foundry.com) which has similar ideas except we focus on auth, storage of data, and permissioning instead of front end. This is so that users can create apps within enterprise environments like Google apps for business easily.

<comment><USER57> Very cool - I like your idea to store all of the data using a Google Drive realtime document. But I'm not sure how you are able to handle authentication and permissions, e.g. limiting a field/model to only be visible to certain users. AFAIK read access to a document in Drive is all-or-nothing, and there doesn't seem to be a way to let a user only view a portion of the document. Are you only enforcing the access control in the client-side logic? If so, that's not even remotely secure....

<comment><USER56> By permission, we mean that each team's data is hosted on a single document, and when you add a member, they can see both the data in the app and also binary files associated with that data. We don't try to do differing levels of permissions not supported by google

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> This looks great. I'd like to know: 1) how does this differ from bootstrap? 2) why a whole new framework, instead of extending bootstrap?

</comment><comment><USER59> Can't wait to get a good taste of this flavor of the month.</comment>


Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/minimum-wage-job-loss-predictions-not-true-dcda5eac-996d-4539-a07e-12933eef4bca.html <comment><USER3> The inverted funnel plot of Doucouliagos and Stanley is especially useful once discussions about elasticity at the low end of the labor market reach the "you're biased -- no you're biased!" stage:

[https://www.ctdol.state.ct.us/lweab/Doucougliagos%20&%20Stan...](https://www.ctdol.state.ct.us/lweab/Doucougliagos%20&%20Stanley%20Publication%20Selection%20Bias%20in%20Min%20Wage%20Research-A%20Metaregression%20Analysis.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Would you mind quickly summarizing what that plot is telling us? I looked at it but it looks like I've got to read more of the paper before I understand it.

<comment><USER5> The plot is showing that there is a negative selection bias in the reporting of stories about minimum wage. That is, that stories suggesting that increasing minimum wage has negative effects (increases unemployment, etc) are overreported relative to stories showing a positive effect from an increase in minimum wage.

I am only repeating what the paper says; I don't claim to have validated their methodology or sources.

<comment><USER6> That is an incomplete summary. Their conclusion is that despite this larger than normal selection bias, the minimum wage appears to have no impact on unemployment. The paper's abstract, discussion, and summary all mention this as part of the central thesis - why leave it out?

<comment><USER7> It is an incomplete summary of the paper, however it seems to be a pretty solid summary of what the plot is telling us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How many of the people arguing for keeping the minimum wage unchanged were arguing that in good faith?

In general, increasing pay into people at the bottom of the ladder has a much bigger economic effect than the opposite. Reasonable increases in the minimum wage, particularly ones that track inflation and cost of living are not going to harm the economy.

As many have pointed out, the minimum wage in many places has been eroded for years by inflation, so increasing it is really just making up for a lack of indexing on it.

The best solution appears to be to raise the minimum wage to a level that can support a person without government assistance and index it for inflation.

The reality for us every-day workers is that either the minimum wage is increased or we'll have to make up for it in taxes that support programs to compensate for the lack of a liveable wage.

We are much more likely to get a better deal via the minimum age than we are via the tax system; the latter of which is heavily skewed in favor of the wealthy and corporations. It's not big corporations paying non-liveable wages who will be paying to cover food stamps.

<comment><USER9> > _In general, increasing pay into people at the bottom of the ladder_

The bottom of the ladder is the unemployed, who make $0/h.

The good faith argument for no minimum wage is that those people would have a much bigger chance to find jobs and build job skills.

<comment><USER10> > The bottom of the ladder is the unemployed, who make $0/h.

If government programs are included, the unemployed definitely don't "make" $0/hour. As is often pointed out, taxpayers are effectively funding the underpayment of workers Walmart, McDonalds, etc because of government subsidies.

I don't have a dog in this hunt but the issue is much too complicated by government action to say unequivocally that the unemployed "make" $0. I'm not sure if it's good or bad but I definitely lean toward "we've made it too complicated".

[Now I'll go back to sorting through baffling health insurance complexity...]

<comment><USER11> I made $0/hour when I was unemployed at the start of my career. Never had a job before, and nobody was willing to give me a chance, so I got nothing.

I'm thankful that I will never be in that situation again. It was awful.

<comment><USER10> In the US? You should have been able to get heavily subsidized health insurance (which is a hassle), unemployment, etc. Still crappy but it's not $0.

But that's exactly my point: it's very difficult to discuss this when policy is such a swirl.

<comment><USER11> Canada, but it's the same in the States. Unemployment is for people who have lost a job. I would not have qualified.

What stuck with me was that everything required that I already had a job. Maybe it was the economy at the time, but nobody wanted to hire someone without work experience. When I discovered that even unemployment required I have work experience, it felt like I was living in Catch-22.

For that reason, I support the government acting as an employer of last resort. Everyone should be guaranteed a job if they're willing to work.

<comment><USER12> > For that reason, I support the government acting as an employer of last > resort.

I like that concept as well. But there are problems. Quality of work is one. Another is the complication of getting something useful out of that manpower. Would probably be done by lending that workforce to companies... subsidized if necessary, but with significant bargaining power. Still this could end up becoming a nightmare with incompetent / corrupt governments. It would be a great natural minimum wage, though, since you'd be stupid to work for less than you could get at you gov job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Minimum wage isn't just flat for a decade, it's not being adjusted for inflation. This means minimum wage workers have been getting a pay cut over time.

The debate isn't just whether we should raise minimum wage, it's whether we should be cutting it. By allowing it to remain stagnant we're making the default decision to cut.

<comment><USER14> Not sure your area, but unskilled labor goes for 15$/hr in metro Detroit.

You cannot get people to show up for less than that.

Source, wife owns a business and that's going rate to answer phones.

<comment><USER15> is it difficult for your wifes business to make money, and pay your employees at $15 (or more)? Serious question.

<comment><USER16> If it is difficult, then it's not a very good business.

Serious question: Why would you want to run a business that can only survive by paying people poverty wages?

<comment><USER17> This is a very naive view of economics. Ideally everyone's income should be derived from the value they generate. So ideally wages continue to rise because productivity continues to rise.

But there are many cases where it make more sense to pay 4 low skilled workers to do a job instead of paying the costs of automation plus the cost of the higher skilled worker to use the automated solution. It's why so many jobs in India are still entirely manual labor -- it is simply more cost effective than a more technical, automated solution.

My wife works in international developmental economics, and providing jobs to the wide swaths of unskilled labor of the world to incrementally lift them out of poverty is an essential part of economic development. Sure, it would be nice if those people could just leapfrog in their education and consequently their levels of development, but that just isn't realistic.

Your comment indicates you are only looking at a very small subsector of the labor market and economy. Not everyone can be software engineers and highly skilled labor in the present.

<comment><USER18> > Ideally everyone's income should be derived from the value they generate.

Define "value". Or more specifically, how do you measure "value" for jobs that don't directly generate revenue?

How much value does the janitorial staff create?

How much value does your IT team create?

What's the dollar value of your cybersecurity team?

What about HR?

None of these teams directly create revenue for the company, but certainly they created value. Meanwhile, Amazon has workers that pack boxes. They are directly contributing to revenue by doing the actual work that is core to the business. If cybersecurity, HR, the janitors, or IT were to disappear for a week, theoretically packages would still get sent to customers and Amazon still makes money.

And yet they're having to fight for fair wages? They're the most valuable labor in the company!

The idea that income should be derived from value is incredibly naive. As I mentioned in another comment, that mentality is what leads to managers laying off the entire IT team because they're seen as a money sink.

<comment><USER19> >How much value does the janitorial staff create?

When the company hires them, the company has decided that the company obtains enough value for the transaction. So does the janitorial staff.

>And yet they're having to fight for fair wages? They're the most valuable labor in the company!

Not if someone else is willing to do the job for the same pay - this is market clearing. They're paid what it takes to fill the position, and they show up for that wage. Both sides benefit, otherwise the side without getting benefit would not show up.

<comment><USER18> So then we are in agreement that wages are _not_ a function of value created by the worker. They pay only what it takes to get the position filled, which is a completely unrelated number to value.

<comment><USER19> >So then we are in agreement that wages are not a function of value created by the worker.

Wages are a function of value created. As a trivial example, wages are capped by total cost to employ, which is driven by wages and legal requirements. There is no way around this on a large scale without a business losing money, i.e., dying.

>which is a completely unrelated number to value

No, this is untrue. Marx had the same thought, but didn't understand that employers also compete for workers, which is why the poorest workers are vastly richer than Marx could have understood.

A simple way you can check it empirically is to take a dataset of companies, compute mean revenue per employee, and correlate to mean wage by company. You'll certainly find that these numbers are completely related.

You can do the same thing using work sectors using BLS data on pay by job type, then revenue generated in those jobs. Again, you'll find a strong correlation between revenue generated per employee and per employee wages.

These empirical tests you can do yourself should convince you wages are tied to value added.

If you then do proper factor analysis to account for other costs varying between companies, such as cost for materials or equipment, the correlation between wages and value becomes stronger.

Edit: here's a dataset to get you started [1]. 1000 companies with # of employees and median wage. Find revenue per company and you're all set to do an initial analysis.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/graphics/how-does-your-pay-stack- up/](https://www.wsj.com/graphics/how-does-your-pay-stack-up/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You might not lose your job, but you may see your hours reduced or you might not get the opportunity in the first place. Technically the employment numbers don't change, but you shouldn't think of of minimum wage employees like salaried employees. Minimum wage earners can lose fractional percentages of their jobs unlike salaried employees.

Most proponents of raising the minimum wage cite the Card & Krueger paper which has aged quite poorly. It turns out that chain fast food restaurants are a poor proxy for the minimum wage labor market. If you want to know the most up to date data backed perspective on the minimum wage, look to the Seattle minimum wage study.[0][1] In short, the benefits of raising the minimum wage go to experienced workers at the expense of inexperienced workers.

We know that price controls don't work. Having a minimum wage limits the freedom to negotiate the value of your labor at a rate that you'd be willing to take. Instead of a wage that they are willing to accept you force them to have a wage of zero. I don't believe there are any situations where people are better off when a third party eliminates economic opportunities for them.

The national minimum wage should be zero, as is the case in countries like Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Singapore. You could also argue that the minimum wage is unconstitutional considering the history of supreme court decisions on the issue.[2]

[0]: [https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/files/webform/w25812_summ...](https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/files/webform/w25812_summary_final.pdf)

[1]: [https://www.econtalk.org/jacob-vigdor-on-the-seattle- minimum...](https://www.econtalk.org/jacob-vigdor-on-the-seattle-minimum- wage/)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_switch_in_time_that_saved_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_switch_in_time_that_saved_nine)

<comment><USER21> The countries you cite are able to have a minimum wage of zero because it's coupled with a robust social safety net (sometimes along with other backstops --Norway, for instance, is heavily unionized). This pairing is important, and is absent in the US.

<comment><USER22> They are unrelated; countries need a social safety net regardless of what the minimum wage is.

You might even argue that the higher you make min wage, the more important social services are, because you have taken away the ability of low-skilled workers to support themselves.

<comment><USER23> On the contrary, places with a robust social service net don't need as strong labor protections, as they're able to decline to sell their labor.

<comment><USER22> You're right - in that direction they are related. Since a safety net is always needed, there is just no good reason to have minimum wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Axios cherry picked the Bureau of Labor Statistics data for the 12 states that confirm the writer's bias. They should have analyzed all states with low minimum wages vs high minimum wages for the overall picture. Reports are out there showing while many of the minimum wage earners who have not lost jobs from the hourly increase are reporting weekly scheduled hours being cut back across the board.

<comment><USER25> I've read reports of Target, and similar companies, cutting back hours of many employees. I take such reports as anecdotal, but I didn't catch them talking about this in the article at all.

<comment><USER26> I think the unethical part we get into with Target/Walmart/et al is the staffing of multiple shifts of part time work when it's obvious by the numbers that they're avoiding paying benefits for the hiring of fewer full time workers. The systemic question here is if we should allow it to be a financial advantage for companies to do that - especially large profitable ones with a footprint all over our nation.

<comment><USER27> Ironically, consolidating the same amount of hours in fewer employees suffers the same effects people say raising minimum wage does -- reducing the total number of people involved. Some people get more hours and benefits, others get fired.

<comment><USER26> Yes that's a poor and hopefully temporary side effect - but it would get more people covered with medical benefits. It may also not be that bad en effect because unfair scheduling practices for the part time hires. The part-time scheduling is reported to take up essentially full time commitments to be on "standby" with poor stability in the scheduled times on/off. So if one wasn't instantly available to come off standby, one would get penalized - to avoid that, you couldn't take other part time work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Cities like New York, Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco have raised local > minimum wages

> Laws in New York, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, > Massachusetts, and New Jersey will eventually increase minimum wages to $15 > per hour.

I don't find this reasoning very convincing. The places that have raised minimum wages are some of the most expensive places in the country already. It may well be that the market wage floor is already pretty close to the raised minimum wage. The minimum wage here in Maryland is $10.10, and you can't get teenagers to work at that rate here.

But what about Des Moines? That's the basic problem with a _federal_ minimum wage. The average rent in Des Moines is about a third of what it is in New York City. What would be the impact of a $15 minimum wage there?

Why should the "living wage" in expensive coastal cities dictate the minimum wage everywhere?

<comment><USER29> > "> Cities like New York, Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco have raised > local minimum wages"

> "> Laws in New York, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, > Massachusetts, and New Jersey will eventually increase minimum wages to $15 > per hour."

> "I don't find this reasoning very convincing."

those are fact statements--what's to argue?

> "That's the basic problem with a federal minimum wage."

whether a federal minimun wage is good policy or not is certainly debatable. on one hand, states are the canonical unit of government and the fed should generally defer to states (other than for national defense and interstate/international relations). wages and cost of living does vary across states and even within states.

but trade (including labor, as a distinct market) is a federal concern because of interstate commerce and the interlinking of economies brought about by globalization. so it's not unreasonable to argue that the federal government has a stake here. you might argue that the fed should have differing minimum wages for different states, but that's fraught with political land mines too.

<comment><USER30> He's not arguing with Axios facts. He's saying the fact that Illinois is gradually ramping to a $15 statewide minimum is not evidence that a $15 minimum is nationally appropriate, because the economy of Illinois is not the same as the economy of Kansas or Wyoming.

It also obviously factual that the prevailing lowest livable wage in NYC is higher than that of Des Moines; NYC's statutory minimum should be higher than Des Moines, not the same. It actually doesn't make all that much sense to push the ball forward on a living wage at a _federal_ level.

<comment><USER31> >He's saying the fact that Illinois is gradually ramping to a $15 statewide minimum is not evidence that a $15 minimum is nationally appropriate, because the economy of Illinois is not the same as the economy of Kansas or Wyoming.

Plus, its not even $15 dollars yet. It's $8.25 right now. You can't even get illegal immigrants to work for that under the table in rural Illinois.

But I have doubts whether the entire state economy can handle $15 dollars. A lot of Illinois is poorer than Des Moines.

<comment><USER32> > _A lot of Illinois is poorer than Des Moines._

I think they hope _the poors_ and _the rurals_ will move out to seek employment, at least, that's the impression I get from some Illinoisans.

<comment><USER30> I don't know what this even means and have never heard anyone in Illinois refer to "the poors" or "the rurals".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> One reason could be because almost nobody makes minimum wage.

In 2017 just over 2% of workers made the minimum wage. When you only look at full time employees, it's less than 1%. When you include only people over 25 it's even less.

[https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum- wage/2017/home.htm](https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum- wage/2017/home.htm)

It's interesting how few people know this. When you ask people to guess what percent of people make the minimum wage, you'll likely hear estimates that are 10x or 20x higher than they really are.

<comment><USER34> I think the confusion you're talking about when you guess that people will over-estimate the number of "minimum wage workers" is due to slippage between the term "minimum wage" and "federal minimum wage". There are 29 states that have a state minimum wage that is higher than the federal minimum wage [1], so if we defined "minimum wage worker" as someone worker working at their state's minimum wage, then we'd be including far more (probably >100% more) people in the category.

[1] [https://www.epi.org/minimum-wage-tracker/](https://www.epi.org/minimum- wage-tracker/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I feel like this is a perfect example of people trying to apply a "one size fits all" band-aid to a complex issue because it sounds nice on the surface. Obviously, Johnny French-Fry would be better off making $15/hour, but there's more to it than that.

I don't believe the salient impact here is "job loss", but rather "wage erosion" at other levels within the organization. There is a zero-sum game at play here, and I think both sides of the argument can probably agree that the trickle-up financial impacts won't make it anywhere close to the executive level. I also don't believe that noticeable impacts will make it back to the consumer in the form of higher prices, or that companies would even consider letting it impact their profit margins. The easy-win here is for execs to restrain or chip away at the wages and benefits of employees currently making ~$30-$65 an hour (these employees are typically paid via "yearly salary", but want to keep everything in context). This issue will likely be compounded by employees currently making ~$16-$30 an hour demanding raises since they feel like they "just missed out" on a pay raise (especially since these individuals are typically in closer physical proximity to minimum-wage earners -- imagine how the fast-food manager will feel when Johnny French-Fry is now only making $1 an hour less). Then the same people arguing for a minimum-wage hike turn around and complain about the wage-gap. I agree that wages should be higher, but simply increasing the MINIMUM wage isn't a viable solution. Need to consider the 2nd, 3rd,...(n)th order effects.

<comment><USER36> People (including researchers) _always_ use data from mega corp retail shops to measure the effectiveness of minimum wage while ignoring the thousands of other industries and lower end of the market of small companies who are not hiring at all and can't be easily recorded.

I've seen a number of studies justifying minimum wage that only looked at major chain restaurants then used that to justify the hammer being justified on every company size, industry, full time/part time/temporary workers.

These are easy things to lie with statistics and cherry picked data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It seems that a lot of economics as it's used for political decisions is way oversimplified to the point of being useless or just plain wrong. The minimum wage issue is an example where reality is much more subtle and complex than what a lot of economists in the news say. Same for tax cuts for upper incomes that were supposed to spur investments in new technologies but seem to have done more to drive up asset prices. Or the argument that lower health care prices will drive up utilization.

I am sure there are a lot of economists that do great work but economics as it's used in public discourse is just abysmal.

<comment><USER38> > what a lot of economists _in the news_ say

TV economists are definitely a different breed. Most real labor economists acknowledge that the issue is tricky.

I (not an economist) don't like the minimum wage since it's really a poor tool for the job. Society agrees that people should have a minimum standard of living, but then place the burden of providing that standard on a very narrow range of businesses. That burden should just be spread across all of society by way of a negative income tax.

<comment><USER39> There are plenty of ways to view the role of businesses in society.

One particular way is "the triple bottom line": part of running a business is a responsibility for taking care of your employees, your community and the environment.

And minimum wage laws are a part of that.

<comment><USER38> Ok. I'm not a corporatists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This has been a long standing argument from a certain "trickle down" group in politics. And like the groups that promote austerity as a cure for economic woes, they have been proven wrong.

The economy grows when people can afford to spend. (If this spending is based on credit as was largely the case during the Bill Clinton years, then there is a later cost to pay - no doubt.) But the fact remains that when people can afford to buy things, the economy grows.

Better paid workers spend more money. People who cannot afford basic necessities actually do not blow their money on luxuries as is commonly promoted. Instead, they spend their money on housing, car gas and insurance (since there's been a perpetual movement against public transportation), and food. They're not out gambling and buying drugs in general.

What is not in doubt is that better paid workers means not quite as well paid executives. If you look at the US history, executive pay is at or near the highest multiple relative to workers compared to any time.

And while this is my speculation as I have not experienced living on 1 million dollars vs 100 million dollars (per year), I am inclined to believe that the difference in quality of life is not really terrible. Therefore, executive pay levels are not really a valid reason to suppress worker pay.

We have not even ventured into the tax avoidance that has occurred in the last 40 years. Somehow corporations and executives (and workers!) managed to survive quite ok in the 1950s and 60s, even while corporate taxes were effectively much higher.

<comment><USER41> _What is not in doubt is that better paid workers means not quite as well paid executives._

Something to back this, other than personal experience/opinion, would be nice.

A = better paid workers

B = better paid executives

Your point seems to be that A => ¬B. Which, even if statistically accurate, seems a bit weird as a causation.

<comment><USER42> What possible reason could you have for writing it this way and not just saying "Your point seems to be that better paid workers leads to worse paid executives..."

<comment><USER41> Not being a native speaker, probably not being as fluent as you in English, and not wanting to misunderstand that the OP made more complicated than needed, IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What is the time frame for these claims? The last few years when the new minimum wages are coming in are also times of dropping unemployment. The area I live in has not been raising minimum wages any, and the local "minimum wage" has nevertheless become a _de facto_ 11-12$/hour for zero-skill jobs just due to a tight labor market.

If you happen to time your raising of the minimum wage to when the market was tightening anyhow and the market floor was going above your minimum wage anyhow, you won't see any negative effect, but not because you can just raise minimum wage with no effect, but because the market beat you to your raises. It's useful information, but not _politically_ useful information, in the way that people are looking for. The question we really want answered is whether we can raise the minimum wage significantly above what the market would have done anyhow.

<comment><USER44> The point I think is that the anti-increase people would have predicted that raising the minimum wage would be such a dire threat to business that it would decrease employment regardless of the wider economy.

<comment><USER45> Not exactly. If the market-clearing price for low-skill labor is already above the minimum wage, it will have no effect. If the market price is far below the minimum wage, it will have a large effect - positive for the workers with jobs, negative for the ones who are priced out or have their hours cut.

<comment><USER46> But there is an effect. We're telling people "you both want to enter into this contract, and there's nothing illegal or fraudulent about it, but if you do it, at least one of you is going to jail." That's morally indefensible.

Grand schemes to fix society by making an income distribution curve on a spreadsheet look pretty don't mean squat compared to your neighbors' rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I haven't read the article. Every discussion about minimum wage seems so murky and confusing I think it is overwhelmingly likely this article won't increase my knowledge of the topic in a meaningful way.

But chiming in here that the increase in NYC has not had anywhere near enough time for the effects to propagate.

Business owners aren't perfectly rational AI constructs that respond in real- time to every input. People tend to gradually and iteratively change their employment practices while keeping an eye on their margins and profits.

It's going to take a long time, if ever, for us to figure out the effects of minimum wage, but it certainly has affected my hiring practices so I'm sure it's having some effect.

</comment><comment><USER48> Even in the best markets for job-seekers such policies are not without downsides. In every city in America small long-running mom & pop and ethnic restaurants and shops are closing down in favor of two types of places that can afford to swallow the regulation-imposed economic deadweight loss: 1) Luxury hipster establishments that charge $20 for entrees and $10 for beers; 2) Fast food/fast casual chains dependent on leveraged buyout money.

In the end there's only enough room in town for a handful of Katz's Delis to survive (and become expensive echoes of what they once were in the process).

</comment><comment><USER49> _" The bottom line: Opposition to higher minimum wage laws is increasingly based in ideology and orthodoxy rather than real-world evidence, economists say."_

We can't be treating all changes in minimum wages equally. Those quoted in the sources were very minor changes that may simply reflect what the market price for low-end labor already is.

It is common sense that raises in wages must result in either reduced profits or increased prices. Of course profits can be reduced, but not below zero, at least not indefinitely. Naturally, profit margins in industries employing lots of low-end labor are already low. Of course prices can be raised, but that erodes purchasing power and competitiveness.

Unprofitable companies signal wasteful allocation of resources, and higher prices tend to hit those at the bottom the most.

There is a sweet spot where surplus profits can be transferred to the workers through an optimum fixed wage, but that number would be different for every region and every industry.

Absent a safety net for those workers that may be priced out of the market, I concur with the following assessment[1]:

 _" One can find plenty of economists on the left and right who think that while $15 an hour may make sense for some companies, a one-size-fits-all approach for businesses big and small around the country is a "risk not worth taking," as former Obama White House economist Alan Krueger has put it."_

[1] [https://www.aei.org/articles/a-15-minimum-wage-is-great- for-...](https://www.aei.org/articles/a-15-minimum-wage-is-great-for-amazon- it-is-not-great-for-america/)

</comment><comment><USER50> This article is self disproving.

1\. Federal minimum wage hasn't been increased. In a handful of liberal, urban locations it has been. How do we know the claim is true if it hasn't been tested in the majority of situations? Perhaps localities should be able to decide minimum wage for themselves! $15/hr might be the bare minimum in NY but in small town USA it is beyond what the market can bare for entry level.

2\. The article mentions companies like Amazon are taking matters into their own hands and raising their minimum range. This is evidence the labor market does not need wage regulation when companies are making the decision to raise wages themselves.

3\. The article mentions only hospitality related industries were studied. All service industries in the US are growing. What about entry level jobs in other parts of the economy?

4\. I am not sure why they are comparing minimum wage to economic growth. Seems like apples and oranges to me, not useful. Of course if one economy is growing it can bare higher minimum wage than one that isn't.

</comment><comment><USER10> I consider myself a fairly educated fence-squatter on this topic but I think it's too early to tell and any assessment is highly confounded by our central bank's actions. That said, I have talked with SF restaurateurs and they're very concerned (but this, too, is confounded by the "SF Employee Mandate" and by the effect of the tradewar on China's funding of US trade tourism (group reservations at SF restaurants are trending way down))...

</comment><comment><USER51> Perhaps if they made the minimum wage a function of inflation, these shock changes wouldn't even be a blip on any company's collective minds? Set and forget.

<comment><USER52> That kinda defeats the purpose of inflation though. Part of why Keynes was in favor of some inflation was to diffuse the effect of sticky wages, if that's the case you don't want to ensure wages stay sticky via law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> To the degree that low value work activity cannot be outsourced to areas where the wage is more closely aligned with value, the "gig economy," the "shadow economy ," or firms small enough to be exempt from min wage then it will be supported by systems of cross subsidies best implemented by large corporations. The work will get done at a cost not too different from the value created. Outlawing low wage work is like outlawing drugs—it feels like the right intervention to folks who like interventions and like any barrier is only effective insofar as human ingenuity has limits.

</comment><comment><USER54> It is a bit fast to claim that rich and full employment cities raising their minimum wage have no adverse effect, while it might have just compensated cost of living raising too.

The article only focuses on the fact that proponents of the status quo are proved wrong so far, but only scratches the other side of the coin that clearly says these results don't mean raising to absurd levels would have no adverse effect.

</comment><comment><USER55> Real minimum wage was already $12-$14 pretty much anywhere. It basically just removed the 7.25 training wage for the first 3 months.

<comment><USER56> [http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/state- mini...](http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wage- chart.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> One reason to have minimum wage as a lagging value is during deflationary periods.

During a deflationary period people need to have the legal right to work for less when it's in their best interest.

Additionally, if companies are find paying a higher minimum wage, this article implies that workers should just negotiate higher wages.

</comment><comment><USER58> We should peg minimum wage to some multiple of the 5 year rolling average of per-capita GDP.

<comment><USER59> Peg it so full time hours is 3x the local 1br apartment rent, then it would make a difference for so many people currently working 60-80 weeks to live paycheck to paycheck, unable to save enough to even afford the proportionally massive upfront cost of moving to a cheaper area.

<comment><USER60> Ha. 3x the local 1br apartment rent would put minimum wage higher than my current salary as a software engineer in the bay area (granted, I'm a government software engineer, not a FAANG software engineer). I don't know how many localities this would work for, but given the comically high wage (~$55/hr) you would get in many bay area cities, I'm guessing it's not many.

<comment><USER59> Yikes. LA area those numbers look more like $24 an hour on average. Perhaps in exceptional places like the SF bay area it would make more sense to invest in large scale public housing projects, with rents capped to 1/3 full time at minimum wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I am not educated enough about the topic to pick a side about if higher wages will lead to less jobs, but from my perspective I would imagine the evidence to reveal itself in a recession, not the current economy.

</comment><comment><USER62> I think part of this is linked to not being at market equilibrium in low skill jobs. For example there are over 6 million jobs not filled in America most of which are low skill, some of which are due to structural unemployment like server staff turnover after the busy season.

The minimum wage right now is lower than it needs to be, which artificially create more businesses on the low end of the spectrum. If the minimum wage went up I think you'd see fewer small businesses with fewer openings, but the remaining workers would get a pay raise and the market could handle it.

For example perhaps instead of 6.5mm open jobs and $10 min wage on average and 3% unemployment you'd see 2mm open jobs and $15 min wage with marginal change in unemployment.

Just an illustration to explain my thought

</comment><comment><USER32> The jurisdictions selected for study already had market labour rates near or above the new minimums, so the expected effect should be something approximating zero.

</comment><comment><USER63> That doesn't prove the wage rises were needed, though.

<comment><USER64> All it seems to prove is that the hikes haven't caused problems yet. And we'd better all hope that they don't, because it actually is impossible to lower the minimum wage, no matter what.

<comment><USER59> I really wonder if this narrative existed the last probably 30 times minimum wage was raised with (presumably) no adverse effects that I or anyone else can parse out. Yet the 31st time minumum wage is raised comes around, and an ominous cloudy fear falls over neoliberal news outlets. Funny how that works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> hmm this was the case Ontario, Canada. I am curious if they are counting people exiting job market or simply looking at unemployment rates. Personally I can certainly see how a small business can become unprofitable when forced to raise wages with it's employees simply disappearing off the market and stats due to skills/opportunities mismatch.

</comment><comment><USER66> Of course not. Workers generate profit for companies. When a company needs more profit, they hire more workers, not less.

</comment><comment> the-dude But are workers better off?

</comment><comment><USER67> I think there's another explanation than the one given in the source article. And that's assuming the base claim is true (that the expected unemployment hasn't taken place). And that's a big assumption because I don't know much about this site but I see that its founders come from Politico so they might very well have a bias and want to agree with this result.

That being said, let's assume the claim is true. I think there's a bit more to the outcome. A quick thought experiment should illustrate closely enough. If it didn't result in unemployment increasing overall, then why not just raise it more? $25, hell, $50 an hour? You intuitively know the answer - <USER2> businesses can't afford that, especially when you consider that everyone above those levels currently will also have to be scaled up as well.

So if we know there is a limit to where the minimum can be raised, what does this mean then? It means the underlying claim being made is really "government is smart enough to determine the acceptable mandatory raise in minimum wages that will not harm the economy."

Taking it a bit further, let's take a rational business person who is looking at hiring someone. What's the mental math they do, roughly? They look at how much monetary value the person could generate for the company and then they look at what they will need to pay that person (including benefits, payroll taxes, and all other fringe costs). If the costs are greater than the value, it's a hard no. If they are roughly equal, then it's a maybe since you still have more paperwork and general nuisance stuff to worry about when managing someone so it's a "is the juice worth the squeeze" scenario". And anything solidly in the green is a go.

So, for example, if you own a janitorial service where corporations hire you to come clean at night and you pay your cleaning staff $12 an hour, benefits are $3 an hour and you bill the companies that hire you $18 an hour, you have about $3 per person per hour to account for any fixed overhead for the business and profit. If your state suddenly says you have to pay them $15 an hour, you have to raise your prices. There's no other option unless you let people go and force the remaining to work harder, faster, or do a worse job and rush through.

If, however, your profit margins were much higher and you were charging $20-$25 an hour to the companies, you could simply absorb that difference and you will just be eating the added cost in the form of lower profits if you have a competitive business.

And I think that is where we're really at with this currently. Many of the big companies paying low wages have revenue per employee numbers that far exceed the cost of the employee and as such the increase can be absorbed for those companies. Or, their business is so large and the volume per employee is so much that the increase is negligible. Think Walmart - how much per item would the prices have to be to meet such raises? 3% maybe? I saw a study done in the farming industry that said they could _double_ the low wages of field workers by increasing the cost only 7% because the labor cost of food is about 7%.

</comment><comment><USER68> This is leftist propaganda. Increasing minimum wage pushes more people into poverty. The majority of people in poverty vote left.

Why does increasing minimum wage push more people in poverty?

Because an increase in expenses does not guarantee an increase in revenue. If your expenses increase while your revenues remain stagnant, you have to decrease your expenses in order to stay cash flow positive. To compensate, you decrease the number of hours employees receive. Less hours translate into less employees required. When the people who are earning minimum wage can't find a job because of the lack of hours available or can't receive enough hours from their employer, they are falling into poverty.</comment>


Dont use Google tag manager for schema markup - <AUTHOR> https://www.weboptimizers.com.au/dont-use-google-tag-manager-for-schema-markup/ <comment><AUTHOR> Manual penalty when using schema markup using Google tag manager. Google can't detect code as it doesn't run all the times.</comment>


Content Policy update. AMA Thursday, July 16th, 1pm pst.: announcements - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/content_policy_update_ama_thursday_july_16th_1pm/ <comment><USER2> The main quote from the announcement:

" _Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech_ , but rather as a place where open and honest discussion can happen: These are very complicated issues, and we are putting a lot of thought into it. It's something we've been thinking about for quite some time. We haven't had the tools to enforce policy, but now we're building those tools and reevaluating our policy."

Quickly refuted by one of the redditors [1] with a quote from Alexis Ohanian himself, answering on Forbes [2] what would the Founding Fathers think of Reddit, echoing verbatim what is being now denied:

" _A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web?_ I bet they would like it," he replies. It's the digital form of political pamplets.

P.S. I suggest that the title is changed to: Reddit content policy to be updated, CEO says reddit is not "a bastion of free speech"

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/conte...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/content_policy_update_ama_thursday_july_16th_1pm/ct3eflt)

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/02/reddit- co...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/02/reddit-co-founder- alexis-ohanians-rosy-outlook-on-the-future-of-politics/3/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A priceless comment: "In 18 months from now, this place will end up as relevant as MySpace."

I think it will be more like 18 days.</comment>


Asus Takes on Raspberry Pi with 4K-capable Tinker Board - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/asus-tinker-board-price-specs-release-date/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13456357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13456357)

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem I have with these boards that pop up is that they get announced, they aren't quite compatible with the popular alternative (the Raspberry Pi), so you buy one and it ends up sitting in a shelf somewhere. I still remember the whole Intel Edison disaster.

These days, the primary decider of which board I'll use is how big the ecosystem is. The Raspberry Pi ecosystem (as well as the Arduino ecosystem) is huge, so that's definitely a big plus. Other alternatives, for example the ESP8266, that are compatible with the "big player" (in this case the Arduino), get this advantage for free.

<comment><USER4> Exactly.

Also, this new board is a bit too expensive IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There isn't a lack of RPi-like SBCs, so Asus needs to do serious amount of PR and have persistence for long-term presence to stand out.

Here is a random recent list of 90 different competitors: [http://linuxgizmos.com/table-compares-90-hacker-friendly- sin...](http://linuxgizmos.com/table-compares-90-hacker-friendly-single-board- computers/)

</comment><comment><USER6> What's the mainline kernel support situation for this SoC? If not mainline support, what's the kernel security update story?

</comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't look like there's a real time clock and accompanying battery, like most other boards like this. I wonder why that's left out? It can't cost that much to add and seems pretty important.

<comment><USER8> The raspberry pi and beaglebone black don't have one either. This one does have on board wifi and gigabit Ethernet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This, minus HDMI, plus POE, and I'd be in swoon city.

</comment><comment><USER10> I see online many negative comments about Rockchip, anyone have numbers or know how Rockchip would affect development, compared to a RPi?

</comment><comment><USER11> Since I've moved to an all-Kodi household, this is definitely interesting to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> So ARMv7-A is still, like, a thing?

<comment><USER13> It's hard to beat at that gate count.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of my app? - <AUTHOR>

https://web.jungl.com there is a web and android app at the moment. It's a tool for sharing and discovering new mobile apps. The difference is that we only show new apps from our friends or people who have a lot of apps in common with us. Let me know what you think! Thanks in advance from a long time lurker! <comment><USER2> My question would be what this really does that isn't already happening. App discovery is definitely an open problem, but if what you're doing is facilitating sharing apps with people who know you (already easy directly between individuals) or seeing what people at large like (already done via the top charts), I'm not sure what the point is.

Also, and I know from sites like Flickr that I'm not exactly making a bulletproof point, I really dislike the whole "leave off a letter" approach to naming a product. Telling someone "jungle dot com, but without the e" moves you from a two syllable TLD to one that requires an extra five and perhaps a follow up just to make sure they're searching for the right thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> With this app we really want to work on social connections and the connections with people from apps we have in common. If we ever do a 'Top' chart, you will only see the top of your community and not the top from the entire Jungl crowd.

For example, at the moment we have 300 account created, each accounts have listed their favorite apps. I'm personally connected to 15 users with the most apps in common with me. My 'Top' chart would be different than yours as long as our favorite apps selections are different.

We are working to make a very personalized and living catalog of the latest cool apps.

I see your point with the naming choice.

<comment><USER3> Instead of "apps from people you hassled with social network bullshit" i'd rather see "apps from people who have a similar set of apps you do".

<comment><AUTHOR> I like that. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An iOS app like that would run into trouble

"Applications that include filtering, bookmarking, searching or sharing recommendations are not considered significantly different from the App Store, therefore they cannot be approved by Apple."

"Appidemia has managed to acquire more than 200,000 users"

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/11/appidemia-shutting-down- aft...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/11/appidemia-shutting-down-after- changes-in-apples-policy/)

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment the web version is handling iOS. We are working on the iOS app. We'll see in two weeks how it goes...

<comment><USER5> A really popular iOS developer just had one of his app updates rejected because it linked to other iOS apps: [https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/554119074893275137](https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/554119074893275137)

He was only linking to 5 or so apps, and it was hidden away in a Settings menu.

I really wouldn't invest too much in having this work for iOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know this is a risk, but we have done our best not to make it a store. We'll know soon if that works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm getting an exception when I attempt to signup with Google Plus [http://chrissalch.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/ExceptionOn...](http://chrissalch.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/ExceptionOnLogin.png)

* Note, I don't keep my system logged into Google most of the time.

<comment><USER6> That's better, now I'm seeing a 400 error in the login pop up ...

<comment><AUTHOR> I can see that now, we are working on it. It should be resolved very soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is fixed now. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You have received a few very good pieces of critical advice in this Ask HN. I encourage you to heed their points, but I will not reiterate them. Instead, I just want to say that I like your website - your design is great and the content is also quite good.

Good job and good luck with your app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the great feedback, I appreciate it! Still work in progress, we'll make it better.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the feedback and trying out the app. Sorry for the delay of response, I'm in France and had to take a train. 3G here is not what it used to be since 4G took off...

</comment><comment><USER8> You should add some padding to the apps' icons, just like you did for the user's profile image.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I add that to things to do on the next UI session :)</comment></comment>


Why is my internal/private IP address visible from the Internet? - <AUTHOR> http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/94783/why-is-my-internal-ip-address-private-visible-from-the-internet

<comment><USER2> Because of this, Mozilla is considering an addon to restrict WebRTC: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960504)</comment>


Fractal cells – FreeBSD-based All-In-One solution for software startups - <AUTHOR> https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/55561/ <comment><USER2> Great work.

Would be great to have a different flavor for deployment nodes as well - Web/Mail/App Server + Monitoring

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I was considering that for a while, but then - the startups I worked with used Google Apps.

For setting up mail servers on FreeBSD it would probably be easier to have someone port Zimbra.</comment></comment>


Search-Script-Scrape: Web scraping exercises in Python 3 for data journalists - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/compjour/search-script-scrape/

<comment><USER2> If you are a young journalist being told "data journalism" is the must have resume bullet point for the future, here's some unsolicited advice from someone in techland who has worked with journalists.

1\. Don't waste your time on this stuff if you have no interest/aptitude for it. I see people being pressured into it when it's not the right fit. The kind of people who will have success with this, are the Nate Silver's of the world who are really domain experts dabbling in journalism.

2\. Being a journalist gives you access to data and access to experts. Bring the two together whenever you can. It takes time and skill to develop that access. And in most cases, it's time better spent than learning python. Matt Taibbi is a good example of this. He was able to make sense of something complex (2008 meltdown) by bring the data and the experts together. No Python necessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here: I don't necessarily disagree with what you've said here. The "Computational Journalism" class is an elective at Stanford, and while some of the students are from the journalism program, others come from more technical fields such as CS or MSE. The programming part for them is not a huge challenge...but besides the exposure to civic issues and data policy, for some of them, this is the first time they've worked with things like webscraping and public-facing APIs (as was the case for me in my computer engineering degree program, though that was years ago).

So there's a decent sized group of technically-apt students at Stanford who are interested in journalism. And my advice to them would be to at least intern as traditional reporters, as there's no better way to learn the work of developing access and sources (as well as interviewing and writing on deadline!).

That said, there are opportunities to quickly explore a domain if you're skilled at data collection and analysis. One of the best examples I can think of is this writeup by a couple of data reporters about their investigation into Florida cops:

[http://ire.org/blog/on-the-road/2011/12/20/behind-story- trac...](http://ire.org/blog/on-the-road/2011/12/20/behind-story-tracking- police/)

> _This was a case where the government had this wonderful, informative > dataset and they weren't using it at all except to compile the information. > I remember talking to one person at an office and saying: "How could you > guys not know some of this? In five minutes of (SQL) queries you know > everything about these officers?" They basically said it wasn 't their job. > That left a huge opportunity for us._

This scenario -- in which the data is freely available but no one thinks to simply collect it into a spreadsheet -- is just the tip of the iceberg of data work that needs to be done...but I'd be lying if I said that this kind of low- hanging fruit was rare...There's plenty of information out there that's just begging for efficient examination...to paraphrase a classic adage, the problem today is not that we lack information, but we lack ways of filtering and understanding it.

I'll leave aside the debate of how worthwhile it is to try to teach programming to traditional journalists -- it's definitely not easy work...but there's a great deal of potential in teaching comsci students about civic and journalistic issues and how specifically to apply their skills. I turned out OK after first spending a few years as a newspaper reporter, but I think I missed some opportunities to hit bigger...but back then, I had no concept of mixing my programming background with my journalism.

<comment><USER2> Appreciate your answer and what the course is trying to do.

All I'll add is, it's good to be aware of the contradiction all that data presents. The contradiction shows up in your post and I have a feeling you are aware of it.

"Quickly exploring a domain" and "efficiently examining the data" are inherently contradictory. To resolve that contradiction (going back to my previous post) is to (a)get an expert involved as quickly as possible or (b)become the expert.

And its healthy for someone starting out (be it a journo dabbling in compsci or a programmer dabbling in journalism) to keep asking themselves (based on their aptitude\motivational levels) which road they are taking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Unless I'm missing something, the README doesn't mention that all the examples rely on "requests" (which is not in the standard lib or Python 3 specific, thus title is a tad misleading): [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/requests](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/requests)

<comment><USER4> I don't get it. What part of the title would imply that it has no dependencies outside of the standard library?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe I am being picky, but is traversing JSON files truely "web scraping"?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, you're correct...these exercises were deliberately kept programmatically simple -- e.g. single loops and conditional statements -- ...not everyone student had much CS experience, nevermind web scraping. In cases where JSON is being parsed, it's usually because that's the easiest way to access the data...but the "skill" in the exercise is recognizing when a website feeds from such an API...and then go direct to that source.

For example, usajobs.gov is a consumer-friendly jobs search site. You _could_ find the number of librarian jobs by manipulating the web form...or you could do a little looking around and see that there's an API:

[https://data.usajobs.gov/Rest](https://data.usajobs.gov/Rest)

And just as importantly, there's an official taxonomy for federal jobs: [https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification- qua...](https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification- qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/#url=List-by- Occupational-Series)

So being able to look at a website and deduce what might be behind it is good enough...and is actually what I would do in a real-world situation rather than just trying to reverse engineer a site.

And there's the increasingly common situation in which the website loads data client-side, such as analytics.usa.gov...and so inspecting the network traffic and working with the JSON files is the only way to collect the data displayed on the website.

<comment><USER6> One of the most important skills a web scraper can have is being able to take the easier path and use an API where it's available. APIs, after all, are just really really nicely-formatted webpages that follow an additional set of generally agreed on standards. If you were interviewing a web scraper for your company, and they didn't know how to parse JSON, you'd probably think twice about giving them an offer. I think it's entirely appropriate -- and necessary -- to include JSON parsing in the list of exercises. (Also, I recently wrote "Web Scraping with Python" (O'Reilly), and had a whole CHAPTER on APIs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Many of those scripts will most likely fail within a few weeks, as their data extraction logic is way too simplistic and based on unstable and non-semantic HTML structures (i.e. doc.cssselect('small a')[0] ).

<comment><USER8> That's just the nature of web scraping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> for aspiring journalists, i should think a class like this is a godsend--which for those who put the work in, will have at the end of the semester, a potent set of tools for specific data gathering (e.g., which California city mgr earned the most last year?). Each student forks this repo and builds their own web crawling toolbox. Kudos to the professor who conceived this course and for teaching it.

</comment><comment><USER10> The others might failed to understand that these are the tools not the talents to pursue their career.</comment>


Programmers Aren't Confrontational. F**k You! - <AUTHOR> http://mikecavaliere.com/fk-you-programmers-arent-confrontational/ <comment><USER2> _" I've worked at places where it's prominent, and worked at places where it's completely absent."_

You need to look no further than your manager and other senior leaders. Everyone will take their cues for behavior from those people. If they are confrontational, the people who work for them will be, if they aren't that way (and they call out as bad behavior such things) then the behavior won't be present.

<comment><USER3> How the manager and senior leaders are could also be linked to a hiring bias tending to make everyone else that way.

<comment><USER2> I think that is a big part of it, but I have also witnessed organizations change 'tone' when a new leader was installed. Perhaps the most diverse were the transitions of "VP of Engineering" at NetApp between 2001 and 2006. Different styles of leader, and different behaviors in the organization as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's an article I read a few years ago that I thought was spot on on why programmers tend to be seen as such:

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/2527153/it- management/o...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2527153/it- management/opinion--the-unspoken-truth-about-managing-geeks.html)

Personally, I don't believe we are confrontational in general, but we respond badly to because-I-say-so situations.</comment>


Comparing Confusing Terms in GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2016/01/27/comparing-terms-gitlab-github-bitbucket/ <comment><USER2> For what it's worth, GitHub came up with the awkwardly-sounding "Pull Request" nomenclature because the initial cut of Pull Requests was based on `git- request-pull(1)` ([https://git-scm.com/docs/git-request-pull](https://git- scm.com/docs/git-request-pull)). After a few years, the pull request evolved into what you see today.

We always kind of hated the term "pull request". It's pretty confusing for a beginner, and for a number of years led to the idea that GitHub didn't have code review at all in the product. (For that reason, I always thought we should just call them "Code Reviews", or just "Reviews".) There were a number of attempts to change it, but they all died.

It wasn't until last year when I got a beer with an ex-Atlassian employee when we chatted about this and realized we both had hated the term and had a number of attempts to change the nomenclature, but they fizzled out. Funny how things work out.

<comment><USER3> Cool to hear what your thoughts on it are. I only learned about git-request- pull until after we named it merge requests, only then did I understand why it was named like that.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, despite the awkwardness of the _pull request_ terminology, Gitlab's _merge request_ terminology was one of the major reasons why we ended up choosing GHE over Gitlab. Pull Request, among developers, has become like Kleenex, Xerox or any of the host of brand names that are linked with the generic concept they implement. In most conversations, developers here have stopped even saying the words...it's just PR without any thought to why it's named that. Trying to force a switch to MR would have been a difficult transition. In the end, it was easier to just pony up for GHE.

It may seem superficial, but if there's some way that you could give users the option to surface the _pull request_ terminology rather than _merge request_ , even if it's just a configuration option, you may find people more receptive to your product.

<comment><USER5> I tend to agree with you that "pull request" is the term everyone uses, and that the ship has sailed. Even when using GitLab, most people I know still use that term anyway... just like how in the southern U.S., every soda is called "Coke" even if it's a Pepsi.

That being said, you can't POSSIBLY be serious that this one piece of nomenclature drove the decision between GitLab Enterprise and GitHub Enterprise. The latter costs roughly ___5 times more_ __than the former! Either this is unbridled hyperbole... or else money is no object at your company, and it 's weird that you were evaluating GitLab in the first place.

<comment><USER4> > The latter costs roughly _5 times_ more than the former!

And developers cost several orders of magnitude more than the software license.

The decision wasn't a matter of looking at features and making a logical decision. The decision was made by taking a sampling of developers and allowing them to test both systems and relying on their preference. They were unanimous that they preferred GHE. In drilling into their preference, the merge request nomenclature was the only issue that everyone mentioned they disliked.

And yes, the company wastes money like no other...it's part of the culture here and the result of having cash cow products that have very little competition. The only reason there was an evaluation was because one group inside the company was using Gitlab and another GH.com and the company decided to standardize on a single in-house solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cute! I was wondering why Gitlab uses MR and whether Gitlab has a better term just the other day, because I figured it was such an illogical phrase. As it happens, I am in the middle of installing Gitlab again on a newly reconfigured server and this popped up!

Then I thought "Hey, why not use the docker image?" (reeling from deep pain from the last time I tried to upgrade an LXC-based Gitlab instance across major versions), then I wondered if I needed _aufs_ , then I wound up reading presentations about storage drivers ( _zfs_ FTW, but shame on docker for wanting an entire zpool to itself!), then decided _overlay_ was better (and in-kernel), then I wanted to switch to a PaX kernel, now I've got a day of recompilation and installations ahead of me. But I will be glad to know MRs lie at the end ;) +1 docker bug: [https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/20303](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/20303)

<comment><USER7> Quick answer - given by a docker developer here.

Use native devicemapper (using an lvm mounted volume). Best, fastest and least buggy.

Overlay was flagged as massively buggy.

<comment><USER6> _Overlay was flagged as massively buggy._

Source?

I was not planning to use LVM because it's documented[0] as slow and resource hungry... full copy each time, massive memory use, etc.

 _CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS_ is mainline kernel code (unlike _aufs_ ) and not marked as experimental so if docker's implementation is buggy it is more likely to be docker's fault. It is documented by docker as being generally fast.[1]

Regardless, I don't see performance as a great concern for my workloads... I'm more interested in the workflow enhancements.

[0] [https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/storagedriver/devic...](https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/storagedriver/device- mapper-driver/#other-device-mapper-performance-considerations) [1] [https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/storagedriver/overl...](https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/storagedriver/overlayfs- driver/#overlayfs-and-docker-performance)

<comment><USER7> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11040097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11040097)

I shifted from overlay to devicemapper after this conversation. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The terms GitLab uses in the first chart make a _lot_ more sense from user experience point of view. They match how a person might describe what they're doing in English before having seen any of these tools. Good work to whoever on their team was responsible for that.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Even though few of the early developers were native English speakers we do care a lot about naming. For me it became something very important after learning about Domain driven design [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain- driven_design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design)

<comment><USER8> Even more interesting that it was a second language. Also, I didn't know about DDD. Thanks for the reference!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The "Gist" comparison isn't really apples-to-apples. GitHub Gists are actually git repositories themselves, and can be cloned/pulled/merged/pushed/etc. Gitlab Snippets are assets connected to the project. I remember a feature request a while back to make Gitlab Snippets more like GitHub Gists, but can't seem to find it on the actual Gitlab project's issues section now.

Huge fan of Gitlab, though. We're about to migrate from BitBucket Server née Stash to Gitlab CE.

<comment><USER3> I would love to see git backed snippets as well, I made a feature proposal for it [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/13426](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/13426)

<comment><USER10> I used Gists quite a lot for a while, then things like the TIL post ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11068902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11068902)) and [http://samba.org/ftp/tridge/talks/junkcode.pdf](http://samba.org/ftp/tridge/talks/junkcode.pdf) made me realise that a lot of things are better off in full Git repos.

Maybe that says more about the Gist UI than anything else. I still think there's a chance for a Git-backed OneNote clone to really take off - if you hid Git away for normal users it would be really powerful.

I think some concept of scratch/temporary repositories might be better than a Gist-style thing, but Gist with a better UI might work too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Merge is so much clearer (as a non-coder). I've always wondered why its called Pull Request - When as a contributor, you are _pushing_ your code into someone else's codebase and merging it going forward.

<comment><USER12> Actually, that's not what's happening. What's happening is that the project maintainer is pulling in your changes, from your repository. It's a decentralized vs centralized thing.

<comment><USER13> I think you're missing the forest for the trees for here. It may _technically_ be a pull, but the thought process involved is most typically "I want to send my code over to _____".

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately git is to powerful to handle its UX like that. Users have to understand the model behind it. If you have ever tried to work with teammates, who did not fully get yet how git works, you know what world of pain that is. They have to think like git works, you cannot abstract this away into their understanding of SCM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From a process standpoint, merge-request is probably more accurate, but I've always thought pull-request captured the hearts and minds of developers because it better represents how the requester feels about the request.

"Pull request" communicates "I just did a bunch of work, please recognize it and me." "Merge request" communicates "I just did something that is going to make your life hard, please do a bunch of work on my behalf." The later may be more accurate but the former is more emotionally satisfying to the dev making the request.

Edit: reducing verbosity

</comment><comment><USER16> I might be in the minority here but i hate the term "merge request" because it implies an actual merge. Most pull requests I get against my repos are bugfixes which I typically cherry-pick or rebase against a bugfix branch but very rarely do I actually merge anything.

<comment><USER17> Every tool I know of merges pull requests.

<comment><USER16> Like git pull --rebase and rebase --onto?

<comment><USER17> I don't know of any code review tool that uses those.

But I'd love to know. I asked [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/256789/108980](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/256789/108980) a while ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Merge request sounds better to me than pull request. I always found the later an awkward term to describe the merge into the master branch.</comment>


Play framework 2.4.0 "Damiya" is released - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/play-framework/gXYhA-BiSqk/WSlRkIiwXUUJ

<comment><USER2> Excellent news, particularly removing global state and improving Dependency Injection support.</comment>


Investors urge food companies to shift from meat to plants - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN11W0KH <comment><USER2> Question: Why is plant protein being pushed over insect protein? To grow plan it takes lots of land and water. Seems to me that insect protein would be a more direct and nutritious way to get food once we get past the ick factor which would go away in few human generations of farming insects. Thoughts anyone?</comment>


The Last Word on Bitcoin's Energy Consumption - <AUTHOR> https://www.coindesk.com/the-last-word-on-bitcoins-energy-consumption <comment><USER2> The problem for any proof of work system is there are really only three possibilities-

1\. No set of coordinated attackers with significant (state-level) resources- think, say, Manhattan Project- exists. If this is the case, the network is not a serious threat to existing power structures. And, at that point, why not just use a system with a diverse set of trusted coordinators?

2\. The total resources used on PoW are less than any such set of attackers can collectively use. In this case, the network is insecure.

3\. The total resources used on PoW are more than any such set of attackers can use. In this case, the network may be secure, but the resource usage is also incredibly high- again, we're talking about trillions of dollars a year- what a set of coordinating states and big banks could plausibly spend to stop something that actually threatened them. And it's worse than that, actually- the network must spend that much _all the time_ , but the attackers only need to spend that much _when they want to attack._

And this isn't even considering that an attacker may be able to appropriate, or even nationalize, large mining farms.

So any PoW network, as far as I can tell, must either be no more than a relatively minor annoyance to world governments and those in power, be insecure, or consume resources on an almost unimaginable level- and have all the users of the network pay for those resources.

That clean, unused, overprovisioned hydro power? Yeah, it's also _cheap_. That means, to maintain a given security level, you need to use more of it- an attacker has access to the same cheap power legitimate users do, and may well be able to shut legitimate users out!

Please let me know if I'm wrong, but the choice seems to be "boring, insecure, crime-against-humanity- pick one."</comment>