Ask HN: What to do when you're denied to every New Grad position? - <AUTHOR> I have been absolutely denied from all new grad positions.
What do I get interviews for? 2+ years of experience and startup positions. What's so bad about that? These companies try to pay you the lowest, while trying to get you to do everything.
One example of a current company I'm interviewing with:
Retail company making at least $1 billion. Associate Developer. I have an interview with the hiring manager, and I have to somehow convince him that I'm the right choice for a $40k position that requires 2 years of experience in Hoboken, NJ (that's about 10 minutes away from NYC, for your information).
What else is aggravating? One day it's ASP.NET interview, next day it's NodeJS interview, next day it's database + C# interview, then back to developing an API in NodeJS, then Ruby, then Python. These aren't even new grad positions. How in the hell am I supposed to know everything? Practically no one asks algorithm or data structure questions.
Finally, sometimes I even pass HackerRanks, but those end up being rejections, and sometimes companies don't even pay for airplane + hotel, so I don't go because I can't afford. <comment><USER2> You may want to specialize. Not many companies hire "Programmers". They mostly hire "$LANG Programmers" but that's fine because you can learn many values of $LANG.

So if you want an ASP.NET, NodeJS, or C# job then learn ASP.NET, NodeJS, or C#.

The trick is to specialize in something you're actually excited about, so that you can become proficient.

1\. Learn ASP.NET (build projects, do free work, whatever).

2\. Change your resume to say "ASP.NET Programmer".

3\. Apply for ASP.NET jobs.

4\. Ace ASP.NET interviews.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no idea what I like besides being a competent developer. All I know is I want to work on interesting stuff, with competent and great people, and for a company who cares about their employees and understands that developers are not worth $19/hr (less than my barber).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Hoboken

> $1 billion

Definitely jet.com

I'd suggest removing that information in case your interviewer becomes aware of this thread

Also 40k is really low even for a new grad. Look elsewhere. Also don't apply to new grad jobs (nor should you present yourself as a new grad even if you are).

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, it's not Jet. The company was The Children's Place (I should've said right by Hoboken, but was trying not to out them). Jet is actually a much greater company, and I have previously interviewed with them.

<comment><USER3> Ah ok. Guess there are other big hoboken companies. Haha

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Focus on Old School networking, actually go out and meet people.

Here's a Hoboken Tech Meetup, good place to start > [https://www.meetup.com/njtech/](https://www.meetup.com/njtech/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been a part of that meetup. I actually volunteered at Propeller, and know Aaron Price well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> New York has TONS of options for you. Don't despair! Take a look at [http://www.builtinnyc.com/](http://www.builtinnyc.com/). You might also consider working with a recruiter.

</comment><comment><USER6> When you're going through hell, keep going.

</comment><comment><USER5> Also: DO NOT WORK FOR A RETAIL COMPANY. I'm a front end dev and worked for half a miserable year as an "Associate Developer". The pay was horrible and I quit as soon as possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the $40k/year company I mentioned is a retail company. They did seem terrible based on how the interview went.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You may want to use a recruiter (or several); they will get a commission from the company where they place you and can work on finding you a job at the same time you are looking on your own. However, they will not always be looking out for your best interest overall though, so make sure to hold fast on anything that is non-negotiable for you.

Also, consider applying to positions that aren't looking for software developers specifically to get your foot in the door. There are many technical positions that can involve software engineering, like QA, application support, IT, devops, helpdesk etc. A lot of these positions that need "bodies", but are good stepping stones for entry level positions.

+1 to networking, though user groups for a given technology (e.g. .Net user groups) might be better than "networking" events which can be a lot of false leads.

And on your resume (saw it looking at your comment history): * Include an introductory objective sentence or two at the beginning (I'm so-and-so interested in...seeking such kind of work). * You may want to have a skills section with bullets of your skills, a lot easier for recruiters and hiring managers to quickly read * Create multiple version of your resumes for different positions you apply for. E.g. Something that's more tailored for frontend and another tailored for backend. You may even just want a few versions that are organized differently to do some A/B testing. * Are you writing cover letters? I'm not sure how much weight they carry these days (I can't say I've seen any from candidates in a long time) but really anything that sets you apart won't hurt. * You may also want to create a public Github repo with representative samples of your work. * The mygoldanimals.com URL in your resume doesn't work, you may want to indicate that it's no longer maintained.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Recruiters say I lack experience. I have interviewed with Robert Half Technology, Addison Group, and Talener.

I have been rejected from QA. The interviewer was not convinced that I would be interested enough, since most people don't go dev -> QA (I had a 2 month developer contract at a startup).

I have multiple versions of my resume. I actually paid a service called ResumeRaiders, where they wrote an objective. I've received lots of negative feedback from that.

I have a Github full of small projects (ASP.NET site, API, AngularJS, various JS programs, etc.), but I felt it did more harm leaving it on my resume.

mygoldanimals.com hosting is paid by the client. It was working last month. If you do a Google search, you should see it's an actual business. I'm not sure what's going on with that, especially since the shared host provider has been bad over the year. It's unfortunate that it's currently not working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Keep your head up!

Desperation reeks....so you want to get far away from this.

For one moment put aside the technical aspects and focus on your confidence, communication and the message you send when in an interview.

Watch Amy Cuddy's TED talk on Power posing. Do that before all your interviews! It works for me.

Focus on building a relationship with your interviewers. So that means small talk and asking how are you? How do you find working for this company? etc.

<comment><USER8> To add to that... people hire people. Someone they can see themselves hanging out with

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I understand where you are coming from.

Even though it sucks to get rejected, try to see these experiences in a positive light: at least you got some practice interviewing, got some more insight regarding what companies are looking for, etc.

I'm _relatively_ newly grad too (graduated on Jan/2016) and I obviously don't have all that experience we see in job postings. So I try to learn some stuff on the side.

The NodeJS hype train is pretty big right now, so this is an example of a technology you could learn on the side.

> sometimes companies don't even pay for airplane + hotel

Yeah, this sucks. Been there. I'd say borrow some money from people close to you if you have a good feeling about the interview.

Also, have you considered applying for one of the big 4? If you know somebody who works there, ask them to give you a recommendation. This is a good way to increase your chances of getting an interview. These companies generally pay for your trip. And since you are fresh out of college your algorithms + data structures knowledge should be pretty fresh, this might give you a hand.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had a 2 month NodeJS contract. I'd say I'm one of the most overconfident yet realistic people you'll meet. I will do my best to do whatever you need.

I'm actually not "fresh" out of college. I graduated in May 2015. I did take an assessment for Amazon back then and failed it. I did get referrals recently to retry at Amazon, but I no longer get accepted. I also spoke to a Google recruiter and they won't let me interview unless I have at least 6 months of experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> $40K is low for entry level programming jobs in the tri-state area (NY/NJ/CT). If you have 2+ years of experience, you should definitely ask for more but I of course don't know your current situation.

If you are having trouble getting hired, look at your experience so far and focus on being a "specialist" of some sort. For example, don't apply to any random programming job. Pick a couple of areas which could either include specific languages/frameworks (node etc) OR a domain (finance, retail etc). You need to be good at one of those areas.

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely do not have even 1 year of experience. God, it's so hard being a specialist when you don't even know what you want as someone with barely any experience. I did NodeJS for two months for a contract.

<comment><USER11> Just keep doing nodejs. It pays well to be a competent javascript dev

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Get on Angellist and just keep applying. You can make much more than 40k a year in NYC as a junior dev.

</comment><comment><USER13> Move to the Great Lakes Region. Work at a hospital or something.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have been looking for a developer position since 2013. I am still looking. I currently work as a test Engineer and have a steady income, but life is genuinely getting worse and worse as time goes by.

Contrast that with blog posts of 20 somethings telling you how to be happy and be productive on medium as they enjoy their Facebook job is quite frustrating and can make things worse.

I am starting to build a brand in the hopes that I can make something out of it and never have to worry about finding a development job.

Besides not listening to people on the interwebs, I don't really have any advice. Just wanted to let you know that you are not alone.

</comment><comment><USER15> Start a startup.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have been looking for a developer position since 2013. I am still looking. I currently work as a test Engineer and have a steady income, but life is genuinely getting worse and worse as time goes by.

Contrast that with blog posts of 20 somethings telling you how to be happy and be productive on medium as they enjoy their Facebook job is quite frustrating and can make things worse. On top of that, I get banned here for trying to get real questions while other hide behind logic so I don't ever really get advice and guidance from people.

I am starting to build a brand in the hopes that I can make something out of it and never have to worry about finding a development job.

Besides not listening to people on the interwebs, I don't really have any advice. Just wanted to let you know that you are not alone.

<comment><USER17> What kind of brand are you trying to build with that username?

<comment><USER16> I'm not. Two separate things.

edit: downvotes are cool. I expect it from this community. Don't let people get you down OP. Probably go somewhere more supportive</comment></comment></comment>


Removing IME: Upgrading System76 firmware on Arch - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jeaye.com/2018/04/11/system76-firmware/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also on r/system76: [https://www.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/8bkdxq/removing_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/8bkdxq/removing_ime_upgrading_system76_firmware_on_arch/)</comment>


Show HN: Minima Sculptor – Simple 3D modeling app for iPad, Blender alternative - <AUTHOR> http://www.magmhj.com/#minimasculptor <comment><USER2> Cool! How are you creating the various export files (stl and the like)?</comment>


Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/2-billion-startup-github-could-be-for-sale-microsoft-2018-5 <comment><USER2> Really hope these talks fall through and nothing comes of it. Too many bad experiences with Microsoft buying something out, mismanaging it, and it goes down the drain. As much as I love GitHub, I won't be using a Microsoft-owned GitHub for any of my company's work.

<comment><USER3> To be fair they haven't screwed up LinkedIn. I think they will let GitHub grow with their resources.

<comment><USER4> How about Skype, though?

People loved Skype so much, it was really a feat to make people hate it.

<comment><USER5> They undoubtedly did a bad job, but I think that Skype has a lot going against it from external factors anyway.

Everyone I know is using FaceTime or Facebook Messenger. The only time I hear Skype anymore is people using it for podcasts. Obvious anecdata but it seems reasonable that services with better device integration (FaceTime) or social graph access (Facebook) would do better in the long run.

<comment><USER6> Or google hangouts. It's skype but in the web and with an interface that actually works.

<comment><USER7> Hangouts is a great example of another horrible UI. The whole tie in to Chrome made it unusable for anyone non technical (where did it go? What did you want me to click? I am in the call, but you're not there... oh you're in another call? How do you hangup? I don't see the window anymore, etc.)

A standalone app would fix this, but there seems to be some strange internal agenda tying it to Chrome... Chromebooks I guess?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Many people mention Microsoft's past history as reasons for worrying about this. However, I disagree. I don't think this would be bad because it's Microsoft.

I think it would be bad because GitHub wouldn't be a generally independent entity, with no business interests besides making a product good enough that people will pay for it anymore. Currently, GitHub doesn't really have any incentive to care what tools and platform you are using, or where you deploy your code. To the contrary, they want to appeal to the widest audience possible.

This would all change if owned by Microsoft. GitHubs role would then instead likely instead be to channel users into other Microsoft products and services, especially Azure. Instead of functionality that benefits everyone independent of platform, it will be in their interest to add features that only benefit users of the Microsoft ecosystem. Azure CI, deploy to Azure, .NET integration, LinkedIn integration. I don't think this is the kind of platform most FOSS projects would want to use, certainly not me.

<comment><USER9> This is what I was thinking also (though you articulated it much better than I would have).

A large company doesn't make an acquisition like this without a business incentive. For them, it's driving people to their products. Maybe making the tooling in github for interacting with microsoft-y products a little bit better. Maybe adding whatever licenses microsoft likes to the front of the default licenses you can pick from when you create a new repo. Things generated by their editors going into your .gitignore by default.

I don't see any reason they'd acquire github and then entirely leave it alone.

<comment><USER10> Maybe MS understands this concern and at least keeps it comfortable for the devs not to leave for alternatives else what's the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Microsoft has embraced Github with it's recent .Net core development, they are one of the largest contributors with some incredible cross platform dev tooling. C# is a pleasure and visual studio code is an excellent, extensible coding tool.

Go forth Microsoft, the standard bashing in these communities is unjust.

<comment><USER12> I lived through the 90s, so I disagree. Anyone who feels perfectly comfortable with Microsoft's _embracing_ of things they like is ignoring history.

Maybe it's different this time, maybe it isn't.

<comment><USER13> I lived through the nineties as well, that doesn't mean I think everything that was amazing back then still is amazing today nor that everything that sucked back then still sucks today...

I think the Microsoft of today is _very_ different from the Microsoft of the nineties.

Personally I'm not so much worried about Microsoft going back to Microsoft'95 but more about the fact that they, like most (all?) other big tech companies, collect more and more data and integrate more and more tightly into our lives. Still I feel that currently Facebook, Google and Amazon are all scarier in that respect.

<comment><USER14> > I think the Microsoft of today is very different from the Microsoft of the > nineties.

If they've managed to change that much, then nothing prevents them to make the opposite turn and return to the monopolistic Microsoft as soon as a new CEO steps in.

That's why I prefer Microsoft to stay away from the products and projects everybody loves. Furthermore, I don't think Microsoft has anything to contribute to GitHub.

<comment><USER15> > I don't think Microsoft has anything to contribute to GitHub.

Microsoft has experience handling online code repositories and team services. Azure integration has the potential to improve deployment pipelines for many users. Microsoft has lots of experience doing things at scale, and can potentially find cost reduction maneuvers for Github. Visual Studio integration can bring more users to Github. Cooperate users are more likely to upgrade their existing agreement with Microsoft than they are to enter a finical relationship with a new company. Microsoft has just as much or more to offer Github as any other top 5 tech company.

<comment><USER13> Let's not forget that they developed GVFS to support large monorepos.

<comment><USER14> Let's also not forget this only runs on Windows.

<comment><USER16> They've stated that they want to bring this to other platforms as well.

[https://github.com/Microsoft/GVFS/issues/4](https://github.com/Microsoft/GVFS/issues/4)

<comment><USER14> Yes they want... yet it has been Windows only for a year and a half, so far. That's the problem with Microsoft buying big things like Github. It turns people not using their flagship OS into second class citizens.

<comment><USER17> Re: Skype

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The one thing that I like about Github is that everything is public by default and you have to pay to keep your code private. I feel like a positive consequence of that business choice was the opening up of way more software. Gitlab, while being very awesome doesn't have that same rule and neither does Bitbucket. It's my assumption that this is the biggest reason there's so much open source code flowing right now.

It makes me wonder whether I'll be able to find as many random interesting projects just by searching for things anymore.

I'm a bit sad about this.

<comment><USER19> Not having to pay for private is the reason we chose Bitbucket back in the days.

<comment><USER18> Same here, but for each one of us there was another who probably said 'screw it' and just put their stuff on github anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looking forward to the big rebranding to Microsoft GitHub Team Cloud Services for Enterprise 365 2019®.

<comment><USER21> *subscription required

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems like the view here is pretty negative. I feel like most people here haven't worked with Microsoft dev products recently. They're getting better. I guess the crowd here isn't typically in the .NET world.

<comment><USER23> I think that's the point. I'm personally worried Microsoft may have a very narrow view of what GitHub is. A lot of tech hosted there doesn't even run on Windows, or isn't even related to software. (legal, political, docs, guides, etc.)

<comment><USER24> what makes you think that? they killed off their own code hosting site in codeplex and moved everything to github. they are one of the largest if not the largest open source contributors in the world. and .net core is setting itself up to be a major player in cross-platform application development. it has a chance, if microsoft brings over uwp, wpf, and windows forms to .net core, to take over cross-platform gui development. with the windows subsystem for linux, windows 10 can run most linux-based software. they've developed the hottest ide at the moment on top of github developed technology.

i have a feeling they get it just fine.

<comment><USER23> You mention a lot of stuff that's in the same '.NET world' skellera mentioned, but the currently dominant GUI platform is the web, and neither is going to do take over. There's also still embedded software, hardware description, databases, emulators/simulators, competing virtual machines and GUI frameworks, a whole bunch of non-tech stuff, etc.

They do get a lot of this stuff, but I feel like whatever they want to do with Github is more geared towards average Joe .NET developer. Possibly making the platform less attractive for everything else through neglect.

<comment><USER22> The new Microsoft has made it clear that they want to support as many areas as they can. Azure does not have any lock-in of a specific platform (other than Azure itself in some ways) and Microsoft is constantly trying to get their tools to work in Linux and Mac. While they obviously would prefer you to be on .Net, they realize that lock-in ultimately hurts them.

Just give it a little more time. They are turning around years of company culture and they're doing a great job at it. If VS Code is a sign of future products, I'm excited to see what they come out with down the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The ghost of the skype acquisition would make me panic.

<comment><USER26> Why? I've been using Skype as my main video/text chat app since ~2002. It hasn't changed much after the acquisition.

<comment><USER27> Really? It's become nearly unusable for me. I used to have it open all the time and talk to lots of people. Now it feels closer to an infection on my computer that I only pull up when I have to talk to someone on it and then promptly struggle to logout and make sure it's truly closed.

<comment><USER28> Comparison of Skype to (Say) Discord is like a different universe (Sometimes [Electron!])

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I haven't bashed Microsoft for a long time, and I won't any time soon. However, this development has me worried.

There's a big difference between _engaging_ the developer community with great products and _purchasing_ important services that the developer community relies on.

Microsoft has succeeded many times with products and services they've built themselves, and with products they've purchased, but how often have they succeeded with services they've purchased?

<comment><USER30> Powerpoint was a purchase. Hotmail was another one. Frontpage, Visio, Navision, Skype, Linkedin. They've had quite a few which were pretty successful.

<comment><USER29> Most of those are products. Of the services you mentioned, I would only call Hotmail a success in the sense that there wasn't a net detriment to users because of the purchase.

<comment><USER30> Linkedin is the same. Skype kind of sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Github shouldn't sell. It has an opportunity to be a once-in-a-generation tech company. I can't believe they even held the talks.

<comment><USER25> Maybe the founders are fed up with running it. I can understand you want out, and it's very hard to find people to replace you, and much easier to sell it to a big entity that is already used to do something like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can't help but be insanely sceptical. Microsoft has a massive legacy of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and I don't want the GitHub ecosystem to suffer from the same reoccurring pattern. Call me jaded by Microsoft's past behaviour, but I just cannot forget the numerous times Microsoft has absolutely ruined thriving ecosystems by using the same tricks.

<comment><USER33> Microsoft wouldn't benefit from killing GitHub.

Heck Microsoft killed their own competitor TFS and pushed people to migrate to Git, and uses GitHub themselves for hosting several products. Microsoft also has full Git support in Visual Studio Online (their enterprise competitor to GitHub), Visual Studio, and VS Code.

Microsoft would likely use GitHub to advertise their development products, tools, and services like Azure. I doubt they'd want to "extinguish" GitHub because it just means less eyes on their adverts.

<comment><USER34> They extinguished Skype. They will manage to do the same with Github eventually. They are the biggest user already and would therefore be forced to cater to their own needs first over those of the rest if the community. This would drive the service squarely into the ground by doing everything right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why does GitHub need to be acquired at all?

Do the costs of running the servers and hosting the free services not cover the revenue from Enterprise users?

I believe that any Enterprise users won't notice even a doubling of the subscription fee, if GitHub really needs it.

I don't know why there needs to be more than a handful of employees working at github, just don't break what's already there!

<comment><USER36> >Why does GitHub need to be acquired at all?

So VCs can cash in.

<comment><USER37> IPO?

<comment><USER36> Because that turned out so well for Etsy.

<comment><USER38> What happened with Etsy? Their stock price has recovered to their IPO price. It did seem bad from an internal sense with layoffs etc.

<comment><USER36> Exactly. The spirit of what they were trying to do got killed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is negative value. The only reason the big companies host their source code on GitHub is because it's independent. They will stop doing that tomorrow if GitHub is acquired and it will lose all its value.

<comment><USER40> As someone who has always despised git for its complexity and being a movement more than a new technology I have been waiting years for this. Let git fracture and die. Maybe then we can get tools that work for us instead of the other way around.

<comment><USER41> I enjoy Mercurial as much as the next person. But git is an engineering feat simply because it works well enough for so many use cases. Also, if git is the worst part of your tooling, that's some great tooling and a good problem to have.

<comment><USER40> lol an engineering feat.

It's just software. My experience with git was about a month long phase where I devoted a few hours a week to learning it. Now I can use it but I still have to google commands for anything other than the basics. That's the problem with git. Git without google would be unusable. That's why I consider it to be extraordinarily poorly designed. You've seen git commands, I'm not going to go look up some esoteric command just to prove a point to you. The point is a good program would not force you to google everything, it would just work.

I consider git to be more of an advertising feat. It fascinates me how many people drank the kool-aid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> So, Which Microsoft login will I need to use for Microsoft GitHub?

My Microsoft Personal Account? Microsoft Work Account? Azure AD Account? Microsoft GitHub account?

p.s. All of the accounts have the same username, you just try different password and 2FA combinations til it works.

<comment><USER43> Does that not depend on you? Personal account - well that's your personal account ending in maybe @outlook.com

Microsoft Work Account - Defined by your workplace. Ending in @workplace.com

Azure AD Account - Same as your work account, unless your workplace uses a different tenant account for Azure.

Github Account - Well they still need to support the older accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> For the comparisons of this acquisition to Skype, yes Microsoft bungled the Skype acquisition.

But they have been killing it with Typescript and Visual Studio. I feel like that at such a large company, the Typescript recent history matters more than the Skype history. Two very different areas with different people in charge, etc.

<comment><USER25> As much as I love VSCode, you live in a buble. A communication app affects way more people than a programming language or a text editor. Even my mother uses the former, while only a fraction of all the programmers I met in my life use the laters.

And MS did messed up on other major products or companies

\- Rare video games. They did freaking golden eyes and conkers bad day and they manage to kill it.

\- they messed up Wn10, which is still not as good as Win7 after all those years but spies more on you and forces update at the worse moment on you

\- the latest outlook is barely usable. Sometime mails can't be sent. Sometime it freezes or crashes. It's very slow, the search sucks and I never find the buttons I'm looking for.

\- they killed Nokia and the windows phone despite all the investments the community did in it. And it was considered a good product.

\- they are milking minecraft like disney is milking SW, so that all the creative community has moved to private servers.

I mean, we are talking about a company that had a monopoly on the media player and the web browser on the most used OS in the world. The player and browser, the most used software ever by the non tech saavy users.

And to this day, none of their versions is remotely as good as the competition.

<comment><USER45> Win10 could be better than win7, but too much time adding in ads and not enough refactoring the old UX all the way.

<comment><USER25> It really could. And they did try, at least the system PATH UI is better :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could be worse. It could be Oracle.

<comment><USER46> Or IBM.

<comment><USER47> Or Google. At least Oracle would keep its dead corpse alive while it was still producing revenue.

<comment><USER48> Until Oracle starts opening up lawsuits against people/companies that have high traffic open source projects

<comment><USER49> Oracle will declare it their code and start sueing :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Aaand this is the weakness of centralizing everything in Github. Inevitable that it gets acquired by something with other motives (or is forced to exploit its central position in some way because business). The fact it may be Microsoft that seals the deal is just a cherry on top.

We need proper decentralization.

There could still be aggregators for browsing projects and bookmarking but the structural weakness of keeping all the eggs in one basket will never go away. No matter how much wishful thinking you throw at it.

<comment><USER51> > We need proper decentralization.

> There could still be aggregators for browsing projects and bookmarking but > the structural weakness of keeping all the eggs in one basket will never go > away. No matter how much wishful thinking you throw at it.

The Web is decentralized, and so everybody's using Google to discover it. The problem with decentralization is you still need global entry points, i.e. some sort of centralization.

<comment><USER50> These entry points could be run by networked organizations like Sensorica (except more developed) and run on free software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> As a long time GitHub user I really do hope these talks do not result in an acquisition. I would really like GitHub to be independent from OS vendors, or vendors of platforms, ecosystems, compilers, IDEs etc.

I want GitHub's goal to be a good GitHub. Not a good part of the Microsoft ecosystem. Those may initially be the same, but it takes very little for them to not be the same.

</comment><comment><USER53> Something makes me feel like Microsoft acquiring Github will do away with Github's current, open nature.

If the extreme advertising in Windows 10 is any sign...

<comment><USER54> At first they will just inject random commits that don't change any files but inform you about the latest price offerings on One Drive and Azure hosting. Later on if you're still on the "free" plan some of the commits will modify your hosted software to show their ads at runtime. Have fun!

<comment><USER55> This comment made me giggle at first, but then the truth hidden in the outlandish idea hit home and I cried a little bit.

<comment><USER49> They are not that foolish. The only company that stupid was the one behind sourceforge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This seems, to me, to illustrate perfectly how Microsoft still doesn't understand open source as an idea nor as a culture. The whole movement exists as a reaction against central, corporate control.

Large companies think that, by acquiring important hosted open source infrastructure, they'll somehow acquire the users or act as gatekeepers. But open source tooling is so decentralized these days that is not easy to be a captive user. The cost of switching is so low -- plenty of other comparable services supply collaborative utilities for git -- that, for most projects, a weekend spent altering URLs and configs should suffice.

If such a deal goes through, Microsoft will spend millions on the acquisition and, simultaneously, alternative providers who appear more independent (Gitlab, BitBucket, etc) will see a surge in new accounts.

And I, for one, think it'd be a good thing for open source. Every time an OSS sugar daddy turns on its users -- SourceForge, BitKeeper, Oracle, SCO, etc -- the community has grown more robust, more decentralized, and more resilient.

</comment><comment><USER57> Does anyone have insight into what they're been working on recently at Github? I feel like the user experience hasn't changed/improved in the last couple of years at all. It feels to me like there is a lot of low hanging fruit to make a ton of money. For one they could integrate or replicate the functionality of Bountysource and let people donate to users. There is also tons of room for improvement in licensing like making copywriter-assignment frictionless and letting people dual license their software (so I could at a click of a button buy a proprietary license for someone's GPL'd library)

</comment><comment><USER58> People are being overly pessimistic. This would be a potentially great deal. GitHub is very successful at what they do and I don't think MS would change that. More likely they would use GH as lead-in to selling cloud services the same way Google uses GitLab.

<comment><USER59> If you've watched the last couple Build Conferences (Microsoft's annual developer conference) they frequently demonstrate their CI/CD pipeline based on Github checkins, not VSTS checkins (just takes a webhook invocation and all the source-hosting sites support sending those out on check-in or merge).

<comment><USER60> A zillion companies use Github. This does not qualify them to operate Github.

<comment><USER59> Hasn't GitHub been running on Microsoft Azure for a few years now?

<comment><USER61> What does GitHub's choice of cloud have to do with Microsoft's aptitude to take over an existing, huge, critical piece of the open source world? From a business perspective, or an operational one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> these talks are actually not new. the same rumor appeared back in 2016 [https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/07/github-is-raising-a- second...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/07/github-is-raising-a-secondary- round/)

imho, github feels a bit too slow innovating, which is kinda surprising since they are still "a startup"

<comment><USER63> I have the opposite opinion. I think every few months I see an interesting feature being added that are slowly making github a better platform. Just for the last few months we've seen a lot of improvements for Enterprise, improvement to gitHub pages, saved replies, team discussions, security alerts. I love the pace they have to release meaningful improvements.

<comment><USER64> i'm also a big fan of the atom editor

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's so snappy...

<comment><USER65> Indeed; why pay the overhead of shared libraries or timely security updates: [https://www.noobslab.com/2017/07/atom-text-editor-can-now- be...](https://www.noobslab.com/2017/07/atom-text-editor-can-now-be- installed.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> It's getting depressing to see that mid tier companies are all now reliably getting swallowed up by larger ones. It is starting to feel like the golden age of technology - where brand new small companies emerge and become giant ones - is waning. Were Google, Amazon and Facebook actually the last of the tech giants to emerge and from now on, it's just a procession of watching every other company merge into the existing 5 or 6 big companies? I guess it is inevitable but it still makes me sad if we are transitioning to a more mature, but fundamentally more boring phase.

<comment><USER67> I think it is a cycle. When the middle tier companies vanish, the small ones start to rise again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I really hope this doesn't happen. Microsoft design and services are all over the board, not in a good way. I'm sure they would add more features, or make it more enterprise-y, which could have benefits, but I would definitely move to a self hosted setup if this went through. It's nice to have diversity of brand/company personalities in the tech ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER69> Oh shit.

I run Windows. I have respect for Microsoft. A lot of people do not, however, and the sense that Microsoft is ritually unclean will drive many of them away from github. It's the best thing that's happened to BitBucket and Altassian ever. If I have a choice between MS tools and Altassian tools I will usually take MS. (Visual Source Safe really did suck, but Visual Studio is not that bad...)

Also, Microsoft acquisitions do not seem to go well. Look at Skype, LinkedIn, etc.

<comment><USER58> Source Safe is ancient. TFS is their new jam and it's pretty solid. Especially if you're in the Visual Studio and Azure world.

<comment><USER70> TFS (or more accurately TFVC) is old news. Git is their new jam and it's pretty solid. ;)

(Not entirely a joke. The Windows team has moved to git, which is a fascinating sign of the times.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Guess they could always relaunch VSS as "GitHub for Business" at the same time then! :)

</comment><comment><USER72> An acquisition would mean the inevitable split of support between the MS toolchain and the OS toolchain, which would eventually be left to die. Today's MS is no different than yesterday's MS.

<comment><USER73> > Today's MS is no different than yesterday's MS

I'm not sure that's true, but it is true that MS would have motivation to leverage Github to promote other (licensed) MS software.

At a conference years ago, a Microsoft rep told me over beers that almost everything his division did had the ultimate objective of selling more SQL Server licenses. That's why SQL Server is a required component of almost all MS enterprise software.

So you might for instance see a SQL Server backend option, and then "Github Enterprise" sold with that configuration.

<comment><USER74> > leverage Github to promote other (licensed) MS software.

This is pretty much business 101. You have loss leaders, that are solely designed to drive traffic to different products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> If anyone has used VSTS or TFS knows this is a bad bad idea. They tend to make unnecessarily complicated user interfaces with poor usability.

<comment><USER76> I happen to like TFS, specially the triggers to prevent commits on broken unit tests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I'm happy that Microsoft has gotten so on board with git recently and made contributions to the project, but this kind of consolidation still makes me nervous, for multiple reasons.

<comment><USER78> What contributions has MS made to git?

<comment><USER79> They made a post listing some of their performance improvements last year: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2018/01/11/microsoft...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2018/01/11/microsofts- performance-contributions-to-git-in-2017/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Are people here really reasoning like "C# / .Net and VSCode are really great SO Microsoft acquiring GitHub would surely end well".

What is the connection between SOME of their newer dev tools being good (oh, just try the mess that is Visual Studio) and... well, anything else.

<comment><USER81> You believe that these well-liked tools/initiatives were random anomalies, born independently from and untouched by Microsoft's leadership?

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> GitLab here we come...

<comment><USER60> More like "gah, we're going to have to self-host git, aren't we"?

<comment><USER83> Or you know... just use gitlab.com...

<comment><USER60> I don't trust them to be compent at operating a large scale service after their insane meltdown february last year.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/01/gitlab_data_loss/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/01/gitlab_data_loss/)

<comment><USER84> Unrelated to that incident, but I feel their web UI to be extremely slow lately. Working with PRs (or "merge requests" as GitLab calls them) and CI pipeline is a pain, you're looking at 1 second response times.

<comment><USER85> We're not happy with the merge request speed either. We're close to converting the merge request view to Vue, this should speed it up considerably.

<comment><USER84> To me it doesn't look like it's a front-end issue. I am mainly complaining about the HTTP response time. It seems extremely slow on both pipelines and merge requests, and Vue ain't gonna fix that I'm afraid.

I don't know if it's an optimisation issue with the software itself, or if it's just GitLab.com being overloaded..

<comment><USER85> Because we're loading everything in one go the database query time and rails rendering time adds up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> I hope that a tragedy like MS acquiring GitHub does not happen, ever...

</comment><comment><USER87> I can't understand why Github hasn't built out a clear path from repository hosting, to continuous integration, ending in low-friction renting of cloud instances.

I don't want Google or Amazon to buy them, and that almost leaves Azure.

It seems like something they could have done themselves a few years ago, though. Puzzling.

</comment><comment><USER88> Considering that software powers most of the modern economy, it's pretty sad how small the market is for quality software development tools. Programmers get paid high six figures, but balk at paying for quality debugging tools. Visual Studio, despite being a strong debugger and exceptional piece of technology in its own right, is not a real revenue driver for MS, it's just an exceptionally sophisticated way to nudge programmers to Microsoft's libraries and platforms.

Github has generally been platform agnostic (except for git itself), and it would sadden me to see Github start to compromise those values and start favoring one platform or another. (One could easily see Github / Visual Studio plugins, enabled by default, with built-in subtle nudges towards the MS Cloud platform).

</comment><comment><USER89> If github had to be sold, which tech company would be a better buyer than microsoft and able to afford a $2 billion acquisition?

<comment><USER90> Apple. I know it's not Apple's style but imagine if Apple started expanding outside of it's bubble like Microsoft has. If they really went all in it would be amazing.

<comment><USER91> I would prefer if Apple would continue to focus on making my phone better. They really slipped up with their QA on recent iOS releases.

<comment><USER90> Yea but I don't think it's continued focus that will help here. Apple has continued it's modus operandi and quality has decreased like you mentioned. Granted, acquiring GitHub is most likely not the right fix, but I think something about Apple's particular way of operating is holding it back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> GitLab must be psyched for the potential influx of defectors.

<comment><USER79> or fearing for the stability of their servers...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Not too keen on GitHub being acquired. If Microsoft wants to do something good here, they should give GitHub enough money to form a Foundation similar to Mozilla. That would be the best way GitHub could pursue its mission.

<comment><USER49> That also crossed my mind. But they have shareholders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> This is our chance to gain a GitHub+LinkedIn integration. Just imagine... your LinkedIn profile and endorsements will auto-populate based on commit & PR activity.

<comment><USER94> That sounds horrifying.

<comment><USER37> That pretty much already exists if it's easily identifiable that you are the same user on both services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Don't really agree with most comments trashing this hypothetical deal, bringing up the Skype precedent.

Its been what, 2 years since the Linked-in and Xamarin acquisitions? Nothing seems to have changed. Microsoft just seems to know that the desktop is no longer the cash cow that it used to be, office still is but may not last long, so its a good idea to diversify its portfolio.

Satya is not Ballmer.

</comment><comment><USER96> Only one mention of CodePlex[0] in the comments?

Microsoft had a "github" it could not compete and github took the mindshare.

Now it seems Microsoft want to buy that mindshare.

I wonder how many FOSS and other projects will jump ship once/if Microsoft takes over.

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

</comment><comment><USER97> I foresee a great future... for Gogs [1], Gitea [2], Gitlab [3] and other Github-alternatives. I was a late and somewhat reluctant adopter of Github as I don't like the idea of centralising so much of the free software infrastructure and putting it in the hands of one company, even a supposedly 'friendly' company like Github. I mirror everything I do on Github to a local Gitea-instance as a backup and exit strategy for when Github becomes a liability. If these talks go through and Microsoft does take over the latter will become true and I'll remove my accounts there.

[1] [https://gogs.io/](https://gogs.io/)

[2] [https://gitea.io/](https://gitea.io/)

[3] [https://gitlab.com/](https://gitlab.com/)

</comment><comment><USER98> I wonder how projects like Electron are figuring into the interest that Microsoft has in GitHub. How would Microsoft move forward with such a project if they bought GitHub? Would its continue to be based on Chromium? Would future versions of Office follow VSCode and be build as Electron apps?

<comment><USER99> I was in DevDiv at the time of the launch of VS Code (but on a different team): The pressure was on to ship a cross-platform editor ASAP to support the new cross-platform .NET infrastructure. This was very much an "IBM PC"-project with the Directors tasking a small team to get something done and to disregard the NIH culture. Atom was chosen as the platform because it was already close to what they needed with the right license. Heck, the rush to ship was so intense that they screwed up the name (I forget the story exactly, but "VS Code" was not the name the MSFT naming department came up with, but the name they initially chose turned out to be used elsewhere and they didn't have the time to come up with something trademarkable so they just sighed and shipped as "Visual Studio Code").

Anyway - I think the VS Code experience helped with Microsoft's institutional "fear" of pushing ahead with a JavaScript ecosystem elsewhere - I think the knock-on effects contributed towards the Office org's recent announcement to add JS as a first-class macro language in Excel, I just wish it was TypeScript instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> This has me wondering, what Microsoft wants GitHub for? It's not like they can't use it without owning it, and I doubt they want to improve it as it is. Probably they want control before integrating it with their products.

<comment><USER101> Microsoft has been investing in developer services for a number of years - they acquired hockeyapp (mac/ios crash analytics), and have a whole bunch of other tools under the azure brand [https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/services/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/)

It's almost worth re-asking the question as...what does Azure want Github for, to try and strip away thinking about MS's windows/office products. There could be some crossover between github's Atom efforts and VS Code, and MS already worked on projects like Git virtual filesystem (GVFS) for their own needs ( [https://github.com/Microsoft/gvfs](https://github.com/Microsoft/gvfs) )

<comment><USER102> Don't they already support a bunch of scenarios like deploying from GitHub? It'd make sense in that way.

<comment><USER91> Visual Studio Team Services, although very capable, is nowhere near as popular as GitHub.

I imagine this move will lead to more integrations there... Kind of like what Microsoft did with Deis and their Kubernetes offerings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> If SendGrid and Twilio could IPO, then surely GitHub can. Keep incentives aligned and do that instead, please. If Microsoft acquired GH it would a non- neutral platform, and I would be off to Gitlab immediately.

</comment><comment><USER104> .NET is great and the openness is great, I don't really see why so many people are up in arms about this. Microsoft is a large user of github. Maybe this will push you all to use gitlab ;)

</comment><comment><USER105> I don't understand why all the bashing, there is no better time to cash in. Gitlab in few years time will make Github worth less.

Gitlab.com and self host GitLab offer the best of both worlds. Gitlab right now still isn't as good as Github, but it is good enough for many things. And we see improvement coming in every few months. Not to mention Microsoft will likely move the whole Github infrastructure to Azure.

</comment><comment><USER106> HOT TAKE: The things that drove Skype to change from the Golden Age Of Skype were largely market-driven things like the rise of the smartphone that killed pretty much every other popular communications platform at the time (AIM is dead now, too) and there is no evidence that an independent Skype would have weathered the market shift any better than a Microsoft-owned Skype did.

<comment><USER84> Disagreed.

Skype worked perfectly for me on smartphone, and the few quirks could've been patched without screwing it up completely.

I feel like Skype was ahead of its time, it was essentially a cross-platform iMessage & FaceTime that was mainstream.

Had Microsoft not fucked it up we'd still be happily using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> I'm mostly indifferent, but would like point out that MS has managed their dev products decently well. (At least the ones I use)

</comment><comment><USER108> I don't care if Microsoft is the new Apple, or anything like that. I just don't want to see more consolidation.

</comment><comment><USER109> It's ironic how Microsoft has embraced Git considering it was made for Linux's development.

<comment><USER59> Microsoft has been the largest contributor to Git for a while. Getting to a point where all of Windows is building out of Git repos has caused them to solve problems that Git has never faced previously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> For all the silly unicorn IPOs of companies which don't necessarily have a clear product or revenue, GH seems like the type of company that could successfully go public and actually succeed. It would fend off potential suitors for a while too.

</comment><comment><USER111> As much as I love GitHub, if Microsoft acquires it I might start looking for alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER112> Sign the petition: [https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-stop-microsoft-from- buyin...](https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-stop-microsoft-from-buying- github)

</comment><comment><USER113> I don't think anyone really understands what Github is. It's more like a spirit then a thing. I bet Microsoft is prepared to pay a lot for the goodwill, they don't care about the product/tech.

<comment><USER36> GitHub being bought buy Microsoft is like the opposite of what it represents. If Microsoft wants to pay for goodwill they should drop a big chunk of cash on forming a GitHub Foundation similar to Mozilla.

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> I understand most of the concern about Microsofty way.

However, basically I see two different era for MS. Before Satya and After Satya. So, I don't have any concern/worries in this acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER115> If this goes through, it's going to impact users of Atom and VS Code - one of the two has no reason to survive. I wouldn't be surprised if the former is discontinued then.

</comment><comment><USER116> That would be kind of awesome, but I don't know how the github culture would meld with a big corporation. It would be an interesting case study for other similar start ups.

<comment><USER117> Didn't github already deliberately kill their own culture a few years back with policy changes and a layer of middle management?

edit: This isn't snark. Didn't they legit cut a bunch of perks, refocus everyone's priorities, and hire some people to start cracking whips? Or was I reading the public accounts of that situation wrong? Got bad scuttlebutt?

<comment><USER116> I hadn't heard that. That stands to reason. Business people actually detest that "flat organization" model. They really get off on hierarchy and power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER118> Aren't dev tools are going cloud. MS might have just bought a bunch of servers with nasty dependencies on Jenkins in the hopes it results in more deployments to Azure.

</comment><comment><USER119> E3 -- Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Stems from at least the 1990's. The MS behavior as opposed to the term can be argued to pre-date that decade.

I'll just remind people who may think I'm being old, crotchety, and living in the past, that this has been a repeated pattern of theirs that has resurfaced so often and reliably as to become considered by many to be a core component of MS culture. Repeated including in the face of DoJ prosecution and monitoring.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish)

<comment><USER120> Almost nobody who even worked at Microsoft in 1996 still actually works at Microsoft. You are bringing up something said in one meeting from when floppy disks were still pretty important to the computing world.

I can't fathom a single statement from 1996 about a computer company that is still accurate today, and EEE falls into that category as well.

<comment><USER121> "email@example.com" is probably still true.

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

<comment><USER122> Non-mobile link:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER123> This could be the best thing ever for GitLab. (see: Skype)

</comment><comment><USER124> Not unless they bought red hat first and shipped Linux laptops unseating Lenovo. Money is now in the mega data cloud center not the desktop market.

</comment><comment><USER68> LinkedIn won't let you cancel your account if you've paid a year subscription. The option simply doesn't exist and their support is oblivious

</comment><comment><USER125> This feels a bit like MS wanting to buy Yahoo, Nokia, and aQuantive. It feels like Github is now resting on its laurels and has peaked.

</comment><comment><USER126> If Microsoft buys github I will be pulling all my repositories, deleting my account, and finding any software that I use on github and quickly cloning it and importing it to some competing server(Probably gitlab)...and I would encourage everyone else to do the same.

 _edit_ In the meanwhile I would recommend filing an issue on _every single project_ as you would normally file issues on, asking what their migration plan in the event of a Microsoft takeover is, before, not after this happens.

</comment><comment><USER127> Time to spin up that Gitlab instance, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER128> Can't we do something like a customer-buy-out and put Github into a foundation of some sort?

</comment><comment><USER129> Microsoft should actually buy Slack.

<comment><USER130> Already tried to clone it with Microsoft Teams.

<comment><USER129> I've used Teams. Microsoft should really buy Slack :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER131> Leave it alone! Github pricing is perfect for all incomes. They'll slap on a few features, create a tiered payment system and charge $20 for the first tier.

100% will take my code somewhere else if this acquisition goes through. Go acquire Atlassian if you want to "diversify" your portfolio. Go stick it up your Azure MS.

</comment><comment><USER132> Trying to understand the cloud strategy here; does Github run on Azure, GCP or AWS?

</comment><comment><USER133> I'd seriously consider migrating to bitbucket if this happens.

</comment><comment><USER134> NO! GOD! PLEASE NO! [GIF]

</comment><comment><USER135> Is there a truly decentralized peer to peer alternative to github or gitlab? And please no lectures about how git is inherently decentralized. Obviously there is something missing that causes us to rely on github etc.

</comment><comment><USER136> So this is why they have closed Codeplex!

</comment><comment><USER137> The price as stated seems lowball to me.

</comment><comment><USER138> GitHub: the ale requires you to keep us open.

Microsoft:..

</comment><comment><USER139> A better fit would be Docker. Totally unrelated but I can see that as a better fit with Azure rather than invest on the dev community around Github.

</comment><comment><USER140> I'm bailing if Github gets Windowized.

</comment><comment><USER141> Oh, oh. That doesn't sound good.

</comment><comment><USER142> They're literally ruining my life. First Minecraft, now GitHub? Congratz MS. Now I hate you more.

</comment><comment><USER143> God yes! Please oust the GH execs too, thatd be such a blessing for the product.

</comment><comment><USER144> Nonononononono

</comment><comment><USER138> GitHub: the sale requires you to keep us open.

Microsoft:..

</comment><comment><USER145> Paywall bypass: [https://archive.is/V7Oyy](https://archive.is/V7Oyy)

</comment><comment><USER146> well I'm canceling my sub, thanks for ruining Github MS. Gitlab here I come!

</comment><comment><USER147> please no! :-(

</comment><comment><USER60> Up next:

\- Github user account migration/integration with outlook.com

\- A much-internally-championed Github/Office/LinkedIn integration effort created by some sharp but inexperieced program manager fresh just out of Washington State, that happens to require Github project descriptions to be authored in .docx format, launched as an improvement from that primitive format made by a certain mac fanboy.

\- An effort to migrate the Github infrastructure to Azure cloud on Win 10 that ties up 85% of all development resources for the next five years and ultimately fails.

<comment><USER30> For the last one: [https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/bb736149.aspx](https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/bb736149.aspx)

And that's from when they weren't allowed to use BSD or Linux internally and Windows Server was rudimentary. Microsoft would have no problem migrating Github to Azure quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Well, that's a scary thought.

</comment><comment><USER60> Hopefully it's just a negotiation tactic to get Google to buy them for more than their first offer.

<comment><USER148> Google is notorious for killing products too, though.

For me, much of the same rationale would apply

<comment><USER81> Has Google ever killed an acquisition or product of Github's scale? Most products that come to mind were niche things like iGoogle, or things that got deprecated/integrated into other products, e.g. Buzz, Wave, Picasa

Google Reader is the product that seems to leave the most bitterness, but that too seems to have been relatively niche.

Google killed Google Code in 2016 and moved much of their code base to Github. Maybe they'll rebrand Github back to "Code", but outright killing it seems unlikely.

<comment><USER149> Github is a niche product. Average people do not use it at all, its utility value is entirely niche. The average person will never know what Github is or what it does. It's useful to less than 2% of the US population, and less than 0.5% of the global population.

They've killed / destroyed / butchered large acquisitions before, yes.

Metaweb / Freebase cost them a reported $200-$300 million.

Feedburner cost them $100 million.

Slide.com cost them $228 million.

Motorola was a $12 billion disaster. They might as well have killed it.

DailyDeal cost them $114 million.

Wildfire Interactive cost them $450 million.

There are a couple dozen more in the $30m to $100m range.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Call for Cooperation Against Fake News - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/whither-news/a-call-for-cooperation-against-fake-news-d7d94bb6e0d4#.nvg8vsobq <comment><USER2> How can you possibly trust organizations engaged in partisan politics such as FB or Goog or WashPost or NYTimes or ... to not produce or disseminate fake news?

When we have to rely on Wikileaks hacks to reveal the collusion between so called news organizations and political parties, talking about fake news doesn't even scratch the surface.

The best corrective action is just to understand that these organizations are not trustworthy and seek alternative sources.

<comment><USER3> >The best corrective action is just to understand that these organizations are not trustworthy and seek alternative sources.

How do you know those alternative sources are more trustworthy than the mainstream?

<comment><USER2> The "how do you know what the truth is" question is an old one.

However, given the preponderance of evidence, the mainstream media is very untrustworthy. Instead of just admitting that they're acting as a propaganda agent for their favorite politicians, they hypocritically claim to be providing unbiased reporting of facts. Consider the revolving door of partisans taking up residence in newsrooms. Consider the restrictions that so called reporters agree to in order to interview politicos that would have cost them their jobs back when we had real news organizations. Consider the wikileaks showing mainstream media vetting stories with their favorite politicians before release.

There's still a very few real journalists out there, such as Sharyl Attkisson:

[https://sharylattkisson.com/campaign-2016-the-big- miss/](https://sharylattkisson.com/campaign-2016-the-big-miss/)

[https://sharylattkisson.com/google-chief-eric-schmidts- plan-...](https://sharylattkisson.com/google-chief-eric-schmidts-plan-for- getting-hillary-elected/)

Real reporters report what they see instead of just getting quotes from sources they're comfortable with. Real reporters talk with people outside of their social circles.</comment></comment></comment>


The billionaire's typewriter - <AUTHOR> http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-typewriter.html <comment><USER2> "As a writer, the biggest potential waste of your time is not typography chores, but Medium itself. Because in return for that snazzy design, Medium needs you to relinquish control of how your work gets to readers."

Amen. Finally, someone has put this simply. The issue here has nothing to do with type. The author does a pretty good job of pointing out why Medium's pandering to design is clearly B.S. — but most importantly it's a complete ruse. It's a distraction from the fact that they own you.

Edit: If you'd like to downvote my viewpoint, I'd appreciate that you offer some kind of insight into why.

<comment><USER3> _It 's a distraction from the fact that they own you._

No they don't.

They don't own the work you choose to publish through their platform in any way whatsoever. By publishing it there you give them permission to use it[1], but no ownership of it. They have absolutely no claim on you, your future work, your past work, or any benefit you might receive from publishing with them. You can delete a story after you've published it, and you can publish it unlisted so it won't appear in any listings or publications on their site.

If you believe that's the same as owning you then you have a very strange definition of "owning you".

[1] [https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of- service-9db0094a1e...](https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of- service-9db0094a1e0f)

<comment><USER4> I suspect he was thinking of the older version [1] - I know that's the only one I'd even seen until you posted this link. The wording of the original is much more draconian, though [to my non-lawyer mind] it appears to say the same thing now, just much more politely.

[1] [https://github.com/Medium/Policy/commit/198049bacef485f21cbb...](https://github.com/Medium/Policy/commit/198049bacef485f21cbbc1193bcaebbfb1945f62#diff-c83dc264f3904adf6796203c1c650195L51)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favorite writing tool of all time is, without a question in my mind, LyX.

It manages to find the perfect balance of minimal barriers to productivity, absolute power when I need it, and seriously professional grade results. It's like writing with iAWriter or similar tools, except I still have some basic structural options in the interface, and the end result generated is downright professional grade.

I think the "WYSIWYM" approach that LyX takes on, combined with the power of LaTeX underneath and the powerful customization possibilities that brings, kinda makes it a silver bullet for a writer in my book.

<comment><USER6> Have you written any long documents or a book with LyX? Any recommendations on resources for learning LyX or LaTeX? There are a lot of Markdown-based publishing tools being promoted these days.

<comment><USER5> Honestly, if you can use Word or LibreOffice, you can already use LyX. It's that easy. I have one short free work published, and a couple of unpublished works still in production, and I've also used it to generate documentation for some of my other works (though sadly, HTML output is pretty basic, nothing up to par with Matthew's Pollen or Racket Scribble). I think the aforementioned short work is probably a good enough sample of what you can get up to with the most minimal of effort or know-how in LyX: [https://github.com/jarcane/bedroom-wall- press/blob/master/RO...](https://github.com/jarcane/bedroom-wall- press/blob/master/ROULADEvanilla1.2.pdf)

As for the LaTeX underneath, well, I've seldom needed to muck with it. LyX abstracts out a lot of the undercarriage and lets me get on with things in a more GUI-friendly way, though the fallback is always there if I need it (usually just a few extra tags here and there). If I were doing more custom template work though, I probably would need to dig more into LaTeX proper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The original computing vision, the Mother of All Demos, was philosophically against designing text in the ways of the obsolete print medium. The focus was on inventing a new way of writing information altogether. Instead of having paragraphs go one after another as required by print, have maps [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map) of the argument, wikis etc. If we focused on this more, we might have reached a new level of communication efficiency by now.

Here we are arguing if we should let authors stylize text. Does this restyling of text help communicate more efficiently? Typically no, a long wall of text just needs to be set in a readable style.

Even this choice of presentation was supposed to be the reader's, not the author's. I do not care one bit about links appearing in a ♢ weird new way. Links should appear the same way, everywhere on the web. [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com) just needed some padding, nice font rendering, line spacing and you'd get Medium.

To the reader, Medium promises consistency of presentation that the rest of the web does not. That problem should really have been solved on the browser's end, by a style that applied to all articles, chosen by the user from existing templates.

The style should serve a functional purpose to the reader, be slower or faster to read, reduce eyestrain, etc.

The web was supposed to be more extreme than frozen pizza, more like astronaut's food paste. Skeuomorphic pizza in any form distracts users from the real purpose.

As far as Medium controlling your content, if the web was smarter you could put it somewhere else and the links would magically work. Centralization is a technically simple way to exploit a dumb network and the network should be fixed.

<comment><USER8> Surely this is a matter of personal taste / opinion -- I actually prefer when different sites have different designs. For example, I don't like RSS readers that put all content into the same format, and prefer ones that just link to the articles so I can read things in the context of the site's design (as the author wants it, not me).

And I think the diamonds next to the hyperlinks on this article is a neat design flourish (because it is still intuitive and usable... although admittedly most other designs that do away with the standard underlined text are a usability loss).

<comment><USER7> It's a matter of philosophical taste. I like to look at fancy typography myself. But there is a time and place for that, which is a separate time from reading something for content.

Unique designs serve a functional purpose, helping you remember where you read something, who authored it. That purpose can be served a different way.

And philosophically, I'm not sure I should care about who wrote it. One author having a prettier template than another adds bias. A set of various authors using the same template can make the mediocre ones appear more trustworthy than mediocre authors using an ugly template.

If I chose the template for everyone, I'd judge them by content faster, since I'd be used to the look and new pretty typography wouldn't distract me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is the point of inserting a "◊" before each link? It looks ridiculous and distracts from reading the article.

<comment><USER10> Because it's a web-based book? I've browsed about and haven't seen a clear explanation. (It took a while to figure out what the hell is going on at that site.)

Apparently he considers underlining a sin against typography [[http://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html](http://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html)] as one of the "bad typewriter habits" [[http://practicaltypography.com/typewriter- habits.html](http://practicaltypography.com/typewriter-habits.html)]. That might be why.

Which is funny, because one of his other rules is against abusing ALL CAPS [[http://practicaltypography.com/all- caps.html]--which](http://practicaltypography.com/all-caps.html\]--which) he does for internal links.

The site is also full of other absurd usability choices, like using the blank edges of the page for navigation [[http://practicaltypography.com/how-to- use.html](http://practicaltypography.com/how-to-use.html)].

The author might know good typography for books, but has gone way overboard applying it to his website.

<comment><USER11> Not to mention the 24px body type that fits less than two paragraphs per page

<comment><USER12> It was the aggressive hyphenation of words that really did it for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Medium's typography is simple and readable. I like reading things on Medium more than reading things on most blogs because nobody can mess it up. The focus is on the content. That's exactly what I want; I want to read and not be distracted.

The way this article is displayed, however, is not only distracting, but a perfect example of how dogma-like design choices can take away from the functionality and usability. I understand why the author doesn't believe underlines should be used to represent links, but the diamonds are the most distracting and confusing design I've seen online in a long time.

<comment><USER14> Medium could offer simple and readable blogs via an open source app and concurrently offer freemium hosting (e.g., the ghost.io and WordPress model).

I agree with the author's fundamental concerns about freedom.

I imagine some years in the future the same people heralding Medium will become its harshest critics. How many times does it take for people to be burned by proprietary apps/services before they stop using them? In the case of Medium, there are ample alternatives.The author is right that marketing Medium really is what Medium does best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _What is_ writing? Is it getting all the words down before you forget your point? Or is it polishing and formatting your content to appeal to the readers? It's easy to throw the term around, brand your _software for writers_ , the _best writing tool_ , etc.

I can't say I agree 100% with either author. On the one hand, Wichary shows some 'gorgeous' LaserDisc snippet and lauds it as some return to the good old pre-typewriter days. I don't think that automatic drop caps, mandatory line widths, 'smart' quoting, etc help any authors express anything at all. Sure, the typewriter example is bad, but was the fake image grain necessary? Did it show how striking the keys harder slightly bolds the text? The LaserDisc example is not at all like writing with an italic pen, where you can express stylistic _choice_. Cramming everyone's text into some StandardPrettyPrintNFormatter [1] so your website looks pleasing to readers is pretty much the complete opposite of fostering creativity. It's a website for _readers_ , not _writers_. Can I upload a scan of calligraphy? Maybe draw a title in bubbly block letters? Use a red pen? Of course not. Everything looks the same, and Butterick points out why

        The goal is to create the illusion that everything on Medium belongs
        to one editorial ecosystem, as if it's the New York Times.

On the other hand, I don't really know what it is Butterick aspires to. Good tools? Empowerment? He makes great fonts but the ◊ link markers need to go. Does some rule say that's a good idea? It interrupts the flow.

[1] Much like gofmt. That kind of conformity is great for coding style (can't read your crazy indentation), but it's just like how the constraints of the typewriter lead to a style of writing that eliminates stylistic differences (can't read your handwriting) so you can focus on content. Medium just adds another layer of conformity.

<comment><USER16> It's amusing that--speaking of typography on the web--disabling the download of fonts fails so gracelessly that I'm seeing this in your post:

        The goal is to cre the il that every on Medium be-long
        to one ed ecosys, as if it's the New York Times.

Apprently I need some "DejaVu Sans Mono".

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you happen to use Chrome?

I saw something like that (dropped characters) on another site, as well.

Only with Chrome, neither with IE nor Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In most cases, I disagree with the point the author is trying to make. The author is arguing against the heavy restrictions Medium places on typesetting and layout. As a reader and author, I don't want the author to worry about these types of details. I want them to worry about ideas and storytelling.

The only exception I can think of to this rule is for highly visual medium like graphic novels. In this case, typesetting and layout are inseparable from the medium. That being said, I don't think Medium is designed for that type of use case

There may be other cases where creative choices in typesetting and layout may enhance the writing, but this usually isn't the case. Normally, when an author tries to "spice up" their writing this way it ends up looking like a crappy MySpace or GeoCities page.

As an aside, George RR Martin apparently uses WordStar 4.0 to write his books. I don't know if this proves or disproves the argument. Maybe if he had more control over the typesetting and layout, he would be done with Winds of Winter by now.

<comment><USER18> As an author who cares about typography, I don't think these things are mutually exclusive. Butterick's point here is that Medium takes away your choice _on the web,_ where there's very frequently no separation between author and publisher. That separation doesn't exist if you host your own WordPress or Ghost installation, or on Tumblr or WordPress.com -- but it doesn't really exist if you publish on Medium or Svbtle or the like, either. The difference is that with Medium and similar services, you are acting as your own publisher but letting them act as graphic designer.

I understand that a lot of authors don't have the background for this sort of thing, and that LaTeX's basic philosophy here is a good one (i.e., don't screw with the defaults and your paper will look good, and even if you _do_ screw with them you have to put a bit of effort in to start making things look crappy). And Medium will look better than slapping up unstyled HTML.*

But that means neither that you necessarily want everything to look like Medium's default -- which, unlike LaTeX, cannot be changed even a whit by authors -- nor that that your choices are only "write with Medium" and "learn professional typography." It's not difficult to slap up a WordPress or Ghost installation and choose from hundreds of themes, many of which have at least _reasonable,_ if not amazing, typesetting standards.

Lastly, Butterick's point about Medium's business model is certainly worth paying attention to.

<comment><USER18> While it's gauche to reply to yourself, I just realized I left that asterisk unconnected. Oops.

*Whenever I talk about how typography matters, I usually get comments (not necessarily on HN) about "content is king" and HTML 2.0 was good enough and how can typesetting possibly matter? Well, sure, content is the most important, but think about an audiobook. It could be read by a professional voice actor, it could be read by the author, and it could be read by your computer's text-to-speech software. Same content each time, barring mispronunciations, but the chances are you'd rather hear the one read by Stephen Fry than the one read by Siri. Typography and graphic design is the visual equivalent. In theory, every print novel could have been reproduced by printing in 12-point Courier and slapping them in three-ring binders, but isn't it nicer that they weren't?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I remember that some time ago many people were wondering what's the point of Medium, how they're gonna monetize on it, etc. and I think the answer is perfectly clear nowadays - they want to be a youtube of written content.

Just as many people treat youtube as a get-go place for their video/music content needs (many people start to treat it as their TV, especially kids), Medium hopes people will, in time, treat Medium as the only magazine/newspaper/blog-place they need - and that should also push traditional media to utilize it (same as happens for TV channels and youtube). This is a long-term plan, but given how Internet tends to favour natural monopolies (see Google, Facebook, YouTube) it might actually work. Even if they will fail at this someone else will probably succeed.

</comment><comment><USER20> Assume for a moment that the value proposition of Medium to the writers boils down to convenient and beautiful design, and Medium writers simply make the choice that this value is worth their giving their content away for free.

What about the risk of association between their writing and the Medium brand detracting from the writers' impact?

Even if it's just a small percentage of potential visitors for whom Medium is an anti-signal, why risk it?

I guess the Medium network may bring in more readers than the Medium brand bounces. Does anyone have information about what quantity and quality of readership the Medium network offers to an individual article or author?

</comment><comment><USER21> during my time as a freelance designer/dev I had a particularly demanding client. I came up with several layouts and iterated for weeks on a single page with little progress. One day in frustration I filled the entire page with a tinyMCE textbox and said, "here, now you can make it exactly how you like it" \- and he did, and it was terrible, but he was happy.

The large majority of people have terrible taste in design. I think design constraints on platforms like medium just serve to prevent people from actively ruining their content with bad design.

</comment><comment><USER22> "If they sometimes act as if they discovered typography like it was the Higgs boson, we can forgive their excess of enthusiasm."

<comment><USER23> You left out the diamond - it made reading this article very strange, since I haven't trained myself not to vocalize it.

"If they ♢ sometimes act as if they discovered typography like it was the Higgs boson, we can forgive their excess of enthusiasm."

<comment><USER24> I just figured my browser wasn't configured properly...weird.

<comment><USER25> The diamond indicates a link. It's a great convention once you understand it, but it's not at all obvious.

<comment><USER26> How is it a great convention? I'm not trying to be contentious, however I am not sure how that is superior to underlining a link, which is a fairly ubiquitous convention. It seems overly cumbersome. It made me think though that perhaps a superscript would serve the same purpose and be less intrusive.

<comment><USER27> I liked it, if only because it made the text look much more uniform. I imagine it was done out of objection to the "make the link bold and blue and underlined and _very different_ " ethos that even Google was into until recently. With this, I can just read, and if I see a diamond, I know a mouseover will reveal the anchor text and point me toward whether I want to click on the thing or not.

<comment><USER28> except that mouse over isn't really a thing in all browsers since the advent of mobile browsing.. so it seems his own style choices constrain users freedoms (ironic, isn't that more or less the underlying theme of the rant? enforcing a style choices reduces freedom without providing value? oops)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Isn't a few now of the major websites, just formatting our random output into templates? I'm convinced we're as a race still just as sold on having nice templates in our wordprocessors, only just now for the web, and here's the funny thing, how meanwhile everyone and his dog seems to want to write a new basic, oh so very basic, word processor, for each new website they drum up, the irony of it all is that to me it harkens so much more evocatively of the days of VBA ruling the small biz game, and VBA developer magazines selling code and tool bundles, and boy there was indeed a lot to be made, in that sort of thing... just nowadays we're suppose to all follow this or that ethos or ethic or way of fiddling our formats and pay someone else to curated our invaluable output online, preferably for a fee that does not exclude the possibility to better advertise to us...

</comment><comment><USER30> Great article. To me, it explains why Medium is such a perfect fit for a certain kind of marketing material, and not much else beyond that.

After initial novelty wore off, I now decidedly tend to _not_ read articles on Medium. It has become one of the countless sites I wouldn't miss at all.

</comment><comment><USER31> There are some things I miss about a typewriter, like the visceral satisfaction of pounding on the keys and watching the text emerge.

I also miss typewriter fonts. Yes, I know I can get typewriter fonts, including the typewriter font that HD uses for its text entry boxes. I mean the unevenness of it due to mechanical variations, variations in the ribbon, etc., leading to every impression being slightly different.

Computer fonts are too perfect.

<comment><USER32> While they're typically considered gauche, there _are_ typefaces which emulate a broken typewriter. I somewhat like those as well.

<comment><USER31> Even printed books are uneven. That gives printed books a bit of charm that is lacking in the endlessly perfect digital books. It's like a drum synthesizer, too perfect.

If I was designing ebook software, I'd support a rendering that would ever-so- slightly mis-position each letter, and in fact have a dozen incarnations of each letter, all slightly different, and pick one at random each time.

I'd also make the background not quite perfect white. It'd be tan with a bit of variation in it, and maybe adding tiny specs of dirt.

So it looks like a real book!

It wouldn't be hard, either.

<comment><USER32> Printed books can be _uneven_ but they're also fairly limited in what they can present.

Your basic concept is a page full of type. I actually care a lot about footnotes or endnotes (I read a lot of nonfiction), indices, and bibliographies. Books lacking in any or all of these get strong demerits.

It's virtually impossible (and very expensive) for books to present distractions. Static black-and-white or color images are about the limit, pop- ups or fold-outs are possible, and as a novelty, perhaps an electronic gizmo pasted to a page or cover, though I cannot think of a single published book I've got which has such. Some technical books that came with CDROMs, but that's almost a completely passed phase now.

There are aspects which speak to age and printing technology -- the slightly blurred type of most pre-1950s 20th century books, and increasing sharpness of type and copy since (starting up-market). Typeface, though modern and sans- serif faces pretty much always annoy me. Large-print books for seniors. Different styles -- picture, comic, and children's books with lots of illustrations. College and high-school textbooks, increasingly almost useless with their call-outs, images, and other visual gimicks. Flashy, yes, but not all that informative.

Or look at Harry Potter and the animated magic newspapers. If I were to run into that I'd scream -- looks fun for a second on a movie screen. Rage- inducing in real life.

Your eBook suggestion is possible. It's _really_ easy to overdo, and a little bit goes a long way. You're also limited by technology, and would likely find that you're getting noise at two levels -- the pseudo-analog noise (see LaTeX's coffee stain macro: [http://hanno-rein.de/archives/349](http://hanno- rein.de/archives/349) [http://texblog.org/tag/coffee- stain/](http://texblog.org/tag/coffee-stain/)), plus accumulated _digital_ noise -- bad pixels or damaged e-ink.

Websites which use background images under text virtually _always_ get it removed by me locally using a personal stylesheet manager.

<comment><USER31> I read both ebooks and scanned pdf files on my Kindle. Interestingly, I've grown to prefer the scanned pdf files, because of the imperfections, not in spite of them.

Note that most people scan at 300 dpi, that doesn't look good, and is uncomfortable to read. 400dpi is much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is it just my MacBook Air + OS X, or is the Font (ironically) on that site painful to read?

Compare: [https://medium.com/@willgossin/the-uncanny-valley-race- merit...](https://medium.com/@willgossin/the-uncanny-valley-race-meritocracy- in-tech-4500a2b302b1)

To:

[http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires- typewriter.html](http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-typewriter.html)

[Edit: Also - no HTTPS? And No Favicon?]

<comment><USER34> Not sure which you mean. I have a 3200x1800 13" display + Firefox and the practicaltypography font looks amazing. I basically had to read the whole article just because of the joy of the typography. Medium looks washed out in comparison.

<comment><USER33> That answers my question then - on the 1440x900 13" MBAir, the black lettering from Practical Typography is jarring, and unpleasant to read for long periods of time for me, but Medium flows very well - and I read tons of material on their site.

PT is just very unwelcoming for me to read - both the diamonds all over the place (which reminds me of the PCL printout when you didn't have the correct font installed), and the assault on my eyes. Perhaps on a higher-resolution retina display it works out better (and perhaps Medium suffers somewhat in comparison)

<comment><USER35> I'm on a few-years-old Lenovo laptop with an ordinary 1366x768 display, and it looks fine to me. What browser are you using? Can you take a screenshot?

<comment><USER36> I'm on MacBook Air too and it does look weird. I'm browsing on Google Chrome. Here's the screenshot: [http://imgur.com/jI4bqd9](http://imgur.com/jI4bqd9)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What I don't understand about all this talk of layout and typography is why it is suddenly a good idea to have a website that consists of nearly 2/3 empty white space with a narrow band of text. Sorry but it isn't good typography if I have to zoom in to read your site.

<comment><USER38> It sounds like the site is not rendering correctly for you. The font size itself is (supposed to be) very large, so if you are zooming in, then it sounds like something's wrong. (Mobile device, maybe?) If anything, some folks might prefer to zoom _out_ , not _in_.

As for the 2/3 empty white space, that is an attempt to have a measure (line length) [1] that is readable. A general rule of thumb is somewhere around 70 characters per line is comfortable to read for single-column text. Now, I tend to think that 70 characters per line feels pretty short on the web... in my personal experience, around 100 characters feels a lot better.

Anyway, if you're interested in typography, take a look at Bringhurst's _The Elements of Typographic Style_.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_%28typography%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_%28typography%29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I had written an article almost on the same note, "Medium never as a blog" on Jan 5, 2014 - [https://medium.com/@fnkey/medium-com-never-as-a- blog-f1126d7...](https://medium.com/@fnkey/medium-com-never-as-a- blog-f1126d74cd1e)

</comment><comment><USER40> Ha. I had a debate a couple years back with 3 of my coworkers about the value of constraints in our new hire developer test. The argument was akin to, "We want to see how creative the developers can be.". My rebuttal was, "If you want to see how creative somebody is, give them only one tool and see what they can accomplish.".

Alas, constraint wins - [https://siteanalytics.compete.com/medium.com/](https://siteanalytics.compete.com/medium.com/)

</comment><comment><USER41> This post kinda collapses if you take out the assumption of Ev's moustache- twirling malice at its center.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is disingenuous as shit. How does anyone who has a passing familiarity with minimalism have the nerve to write 'how is it possible to be "the best" while offering less?' Especially with the admission later in the article that yes, he designs tools with deliberate constraints.

I could certainly get behind an article arguing that Medium is bad for writers because of the centralization, loss of control of audience, etc. But this one isn't it, because it doesn't appear to acknowledge that some writers don't want to automate their own Wordpress themes (except with the dismissive 'if you really believe that' aside which I'm not counting).

<comment><USER43> > How does anyone who has a passing familiarity with minimalism have the nerve > to write 'how is it possible to be "the best" while offering less?'

Minimalism is not about offering less. Minimalism is about offering more, and presenting less — "more" here meaning depth of experience, in the broad sense. I think that is what he is suggesting, especially easy to discern in the context of his main thesis (that Medium isn't minimalist, it is homogeneity).</comment></comment>


Download Your Amazon Order History - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/b2b/reports <comment><USER2> The report doesn't include Kindle ebooks. Not very useful, considering ebooks are all I ever buy these days.</comment>


Ask HN: Help My Survey - <AUTHOR>

Hey all,
This is one of my most active communities (or largest) so I wanted to aks for help with a small survey I have put together. The results will be relevant / of interest :)
Feel free to take the survey yourself (please avoid the temptation of gaming it :)). Having HN take the sruvey might bias it slightly but I will take that risk if it gets lots of response :D
The real help I would like is with getting the word out. Spread it amongst your friends, post it on message boards (if you feel like it is ok to do so) and so forth. The more of a cross section I get the better.
If I could also ask you not to speculate too much on the purpose of the survey - results will be posted soon. But it features aspects that could be influenced by speculation :D
Survey is here:
http://www.errant.me.uk/survey
btw all results are anonymous and wont be handed out to ANYONE, ever, at all, nada. Same applies to email addresses and IP's (which are stored to provent gaming and then dropped when the survey period is over) <comment><AUTHOR> clicky link

<http://www.errant.me.uk/survey></comment>


Ask HN: Why don't we solve the micro payments problem? - <AUTHOR>

There have been countless times where I've thought up some little idea that would involve paying thousands of people a dime for a second of their time, the problem though is that it isn't worth it because there is a fixed cost associated with transferring money. So I got to thinking that if 1000 people could know, for certain, that they each had a 1/1000 chance of getting $100 bucks (minus, say 50 cents in paypal fees) they would be willing to do "dime work".
Right now I'm thinking of a one way function that could take in 1000 different concatenated seeds supplied by the workers themselves and, even in theory (not just in "there isn't enough computing power on the planet"), would map to a 1 in a 1000 chance to awarding someone $100 that nobody could game. Not even me, the employer.
Ideas? <comment><USER2> <http://www.centipaid.com/> comes to mind. At one point, they had an apache module to allow paid access to individual photos/resources. It becomes difficult as you need to load the card, sit on the cash, make sure it is available, send it out, etc.

MTurk does microtasking/crowdsourcing like that, and the income earned stacks on your affiliate income.

<comment><USER3> the stacking of income , is why I don't see op's idea working. If doing a dime worth of work is really worth a dime's worth of time. Why wouldn't I just do it on my own time, till I work up enough money to cash out.. rather than taking a risk of possibly never seeing any money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nobody would do just a dime's worth of work and quit. Why not just pay out after a certain amount is reached, such as Adsense does?

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason is that even though a bunch of people would do 10 cents times ten, many, many people wouldn't do 10 cents times a thousand.

Adsense is a poor model because the website owner doesn't actually need to continually do stuff, he can just hope that the traffic comes in over the next 2 years.</comment></comment>