Microsoft launches Open Service Mesh – Envoy, SMI, Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/05/microsoft-launches-open-service-mesh/ <comment><USER2> It is an interesting move as it is part of CNCF. Linkerd (which is also documented and recommended by AKS) is part of CNCF.

How does OSM compare with Istio? It is clear that customers will use any one service mesh.</comment>


Bradley Manning pleads guilty to 10 charges but denies 'aiding the enemy' - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/28/bradley-manning-pleads-aiding-enemy-trial

<comment><USER3> _"Through his lawyer, David Coombs, the soldier pleaded guilty to 10 lesser charges that included possessing and wilfully communicating to an unauthorised person all the main elements of the WikiLeaks disclosure. That covered the so- called "collateral murder" video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq; some US diplomatic cables including one of the early WikiLeaks publications the Reykjavik cable; portions of the Iraq and Afghanistan warlogs, some of the files on detainees in Guantanamo; and two intelligence memos."_

How is any one of those not under the protection of whistleblower laws? If they aren't, shouldn't they be? And being guilty of leaking warlogs? Isn't that what happened with the Pentagon Papers? Something tells me that if he would've sent all of that to NYT, things would be a lot different.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to WikiLeaks, he tried to send it to NYT as well as WP, but they "rebuffed" him:

 _Manning on stand says tried to send info to Washington Post and NYT - <USER2> rebuffed him. Then he turned to WikiLeaks._

<https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/307168010483933184></comment></comment>


Samsung Launches Samsung Gear VR - <AUTHOR> http://whatrocksandwhatsucks.com/samsung-launches-samsung-gear-vr/

<comment><USER2> ...so it only works with the Note 4?</comment>


Show HN: Create a beautiful timeline for your product updates and roadmap - <AUTHOR> https://www.openmilestone.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Open Milestone can help you share your product frequent updates, milestones, new features and more with your users. It can help you create your product roadmap and let your customers vote what they want. It is helpful for product managers to decide what features are most desirable and what to build next. Open Milestone offers a built-in email notifications system to get your users more engaged with your product and to keep them up-to-date about requested features. Your customers can opt-in to receive notifications whenever you share a new update.

Your feedback is welcome.</comment>


Messaging app Telegram added 5m new users the day after WhatsApp outage - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/24/telegram-messaging-app-whatsapp-down-facebook <comment><USER2> People is too dependent on these messaging systems so they rather install two apps to prevent outages.

Google should be doing massive Hangouts marketing to try to get some users but they remain silent after being defeated.

HO is subpar and has lots of syncronization problems between devices. They add features nobody wants (sms integration) and ignore requests (appear disconnected, status messages).

<comment><AUTHOR> Privacy is becoming quite an issue lately, so simple apps like this one are very welcome.</comment></comment>


The Hardest Working People on the Planet - <AUTHOR> http://jonbischke.com/2009/12/30/hardest-working-people-on-the-planet/

<comment><USER2> This article is sadly ignoring BB King, who is 84 and still plays 200-300 shows per year. He's been doing this since before most of our parents were born.</comment>


Mealworms can eat and biodegrade styrofoam - <AUTHOR> http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2015/pr-worms-digest-plastics-092915.html <comment><USER2> This was barely a new discovery at all. A Taiwanese high school sophomore discovered it in 2009. [1]

Use Google Translate if you don't read traditional Chinese. [2]

[1]: [http://archive.is/27Jb](http://archive.is/27Jb) [2]: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh- CN&tl=en&js=y&p...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh- CN&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Farchive.is%2F27Jb&edit- text=&act=url)

<comment><USER3> I remember this! Couldn't put my finger on it when I was reading about the Stanford study earlier.

The new study, however, is a controlled one that raises mealworms strictly on styrofoam and compares their health to a control generation. It's more about the fact that they can digest styrofoam continuously and with no ill effects than that they can do it at all. After all, worms that die of plastic toxicity or something after a couple days (perhaps bc the bacteria wear themselves out) aren't a very effective solution.

<comment><USER2> Stanford's press release reads like they discovered this plastic eating mealworm like a new idea but it really wasn't. To me the new study is just a continuation of the previous discovery.

Also, there are so many Intel ISEF awarded research projects each year. But most of them seem to have gone nowhere. Rarely, some of them turned out to be very good ideas many years later. I wonder what the disconnect is.

<comment><USER3> Well, science certainly builds on itself incrementally, and the further exploration of an existing idea is no less valid a direction of study than a "new" idea. As for the ISEF stuff... well, who knows. Hopefully it gives young folks a bit of a push in the right direction, though.

I wish I had access to the full paper, though - it may be that they referenced the 2009 study but Stanford didn't think it necessary to include that in the press release - which is, after all, a press release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the key part:

 _Microorganisms in the worms ' guts biodegrade the plastic in the process_

The question is whether we can harness these bacteria to break down plastics in landfills.

<comment><USER5> I think the real scary question is _what happens if we do_.

One of the main reasons we use plastics is because they are great barriers against bacteria and other grossness. We wrap food in plastic, put dirty diapers and dog poop in plastic, put garbage in plastic, wrap raw meat in plastic, use plastic for medical equipment. All because it reliably keeps out (or in) the bad stuff.

What happens if there are plastic-eating bacteria all over the world? Imagine what it would feel like if everywhere we currently used plastic we were using uncoated paper instead? What kind of sanitization problems would we be experiencing?

<comment><USER6> These bacteria aren't going to be Andromeda-strain like superbugs that can eat through plastic in seconds. Plastic that is dense and strongly crosslinked will take much longer to decompose, fortunately.

Instead of uncoated paper, what about waxed paper? It's impermeable on a reasonably long timescale, and is fully biodegradable too.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't have to happen that fast to be bad. Such bacteria would be like rust to metal. A lot of our things are based on plastics; it would not be good if suddenly everything started to "rust" and break.

<comment><USER8> Then again, some companies might like the fact that it could be another form of forced obolescence...

Personally, the inertness of plastics really suggests recycling and reusing; it's somewhat sad that we've invented materials that can last almost forever, and yet so many people are treating them as disposable and creating waste in the process.

<comment><USER7> I was thinking more along the lines of contagious plastic-eating rust destroying civilization by attrition, but yours is a scary thought as well. As for plastic waste, I just vented out about it yesterday. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10308556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10308556).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Moving forward, can't we tax or ban styrofoam food containers, to encourage vendors to switch to paper and cardboard?

Less nasty crap in our landfills, and less plastics in our food and hot drinks, too.

<comment><USER10> Why do companies choose styrofoam anyway? Is it cheapest? Should be illegal based solely on the sound it makes when it rubs together.

<comment><USER11> Your car probably has it (behind the bumper cover). Helmets have it. Your home may have it. It's light, it insulates, it absorbs the energy of impact (once at least).

I don't know if there are effective, inexpensive substitutes for those uses.

<comment><USER12> For some things, it's the best material. I don't think most reasonable people would say we should ban styrofoam when it's the best material in a safety application.

For others, like food containers, it's almost purely for cost reasons when other solutions exist.

<comment><USER13> Consider that if styrofoam cups were banned worldwide, then the cost of bicycle helmets would go down initially and then up later.

<comment><USER12> That puts us one step closer to eliminating styrofoam in bicycle helmets. It may be that there are other very good or better materials that are currently too expensive, but whose prices could be brought down by widespread adoption.

<comment><USER11> I'd be surprised. It's used in motorcycle helmets as well and there's definitely a market for pretty pricey motorcycle helmets if you could claim they were better in any marginal way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They're also a tasty, environmentally friendly source of protein. [1]

1\. [http://news.discovery.com/earth/mealworms-beat-beef-as- susta...](http://news.discovery.com/earth/mealworms-beat-beef-as-sustainable- protein-20121220.htm)

</comment><comment><USER15> How is this any better than burning + energy recuperation?

<comment><USER16> Plastic is inert in a landfill, but occupies a lot of space. If it's burned, CO2 is released into the atmosphere and toxic ashes are left behind, although way less space is occupied. If all plastic is degraded by these bacteria, apparently no disadvantages seem to be present.

<comment><USER17> Well, not quite.

"The worms converted about half of the Styrofoam into carbon dioxide, as they would with any food source."

So they produce CO2 as well as a byproduct.

<comment><USER18> The byproduct is called poop, and the article says it can be used as fertilizer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't help but think of a Simpsons episode. ... but who will eat all the Darkling Beetles?

Oh, no problem for that we brought in Malaysian bats.

But what about all the bats?

Oh we have a plan: we have Indonesian tree boas that love to eat Malaysian bats.

And the boas?

That is the best part, come winter, they are not used to the cold and will all die off...

</comment><comment><USER20> I can just imagine history classes in 2115, "... then they took those valuable hydrocarbons and turned them into one use disposable cups. Then they fed the cups to mealworms removing them forever from productive use as either fuel or plastic. This insanity was common practice until the planet ran out of accessible oil reserves in 2075."

<comment><USER21> "which, as we all know, is a moot point since we discovered <futuristic super material> in 2043."

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Given that polystyrene is C8H8 [0], how can mealworms live without a source of nitrogen?

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

<comment><USER23> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation#Biological_n...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation#Biological_nitrogen_fixation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> We could try recycling? Dig up dead organisms, turn them into brightly coloured cups, use them once and throw them away to be turned into worm food. What an odd system.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wouldn't it be more efficient to burn it? It's going to convert to carbon dioxide anyway.

<comment><USER18> Burning produces CO2 and toxic fumes.

Worms produce CO2 and fertilizer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Excuse the ignorance, but could this have any effect at all on genetics or mutation?

<comment><USER27> Pretty much every thing and anything had an effect on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you have trypophobia, consider not clicking the link.

<comment><USER29> It's no worse than the picture that comes up if you look up trypophobia.

<comment><USER13> I wish I hadn't googled that. It may be time to license photoshop on a certain kind of ethical requirement to not create certain images. Those images are so disgusting, my teeth hurt.

<comment><USER28> Sorry I put you through that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can they also eat isolation commonly used for housing isolation? Or is it treated against possible pest attack?

<comment><USER31> insulation.

Some housing insulation is also polystyrene, so probably.

<comment><USER30> I know that a fungus that was able to process polystyrene was found from Amazon rain forest.

I do not think that we should regard any of this as good news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Imagine living in a world where one day you wake up to find half your car eaten by pests...

</comment><comment><USER33> Is it really a good idea to convert plastic to CO2?

<comment><USER34> "The worms converted about half of the Styrofoam into carbon dioxide, _as they would with any food source._ "

<comment><USER35> So as long as we only hunt down already existing worms and substitute their other food source with plastic, there should be no impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This could be a great compost experiment.</comment>


Dissecting Message Queues - <AUTHOR> http://www.bravenewgeek.com/dissecting-message-queues/

<comment><USER2> You separate your load generation tools from your system under test to eliminate confounding factors of shared resources like CPU, thread scheduler, memory allocator, disk, etc. This benchmark doesn't do that, which means it's impossible to distinguish between a queue system which is being saturated with work and a queue system which is out-competing the load generators for CPU. Also, it's a laptop running OS X. Do you plan on fielding a queue system in a DC built out with Macbooks? No? Then this benchmark might as well be on a phone for all the inferential value it provides to people running Linux servers.

A single producer and single consumer means zero contention for either for most implementations. How well does this scale to your actual workload? What's the overhead of a producer or a consumer? What's the saturation point or the sustainable throughput according to the Universal Scalability Law? It's impossible to tell, since this is a data point of one, which means it can't distinguish between a system which has a mutex around accepting producer connections and a purely lock-free system. And that's a shame because wow would those two systems have very different behaviors in production environments w/ real workloads.

Finally, measuring the mean of the latency distribution is wrong. Latency is never normally distributed, and if they recorded the standard deviation they'd notice it's several times larger than the mean. What matters with latency are quantiles, ideally corrected for coordinated omission ([http://www.infoq.com/presentations/latency- pitfalls](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/latency-pitfalls)).

This is not a benchmark, this is a diary entry.

<comment><USER3> Not only that, but there is no attempt made to gather metrics based on similar configurations / feature sets. The author specifically mentions that the AMQP systems persist their messages to disk by default, and this was the configuration used for the testing. How, then, are the "benchmarks" even comparable to the ephemeral message queues that don't provide any sort of persistence? Why wasn't persistence turned off to provide more comparable tests?

And why were nanomgs / 0mq even included?

I despise articles like this. They only serve to clutter up useful communication on such technologies.

<comment><USER4> Persistence was disabled. Nano and ZMQ are in their own group and aren't even attempted to be compared to other groups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > What's interesting, however, is the disparity in the sender-to-receiver > ratios. ZeroMQ is capable of sending over 5,000,000 messages per second but > is only able to receive about 600,000/second.

IIRC the sent messages get stuffed in a buffer in the sender process. If the sender process crashes it will take the already-sent-but-not-really messages with it.

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that the "foreground" thread gives the message to a background ZeroMQ thread, which then transmits them as fast as it can; therefore, this number is probably somewhat misleading, but I'm not sure how else you could measure it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I might have missed this in the article, but were the brokered queues tested in or close to their default configuration? ActiveMQ in particular needs to be tweaked to get decent performance out of it in a production environment.

</comment><comment><USER8> A little sad it doesn't cover gearman. Dead simple, easy to use, easy to get going, super flexible.

</comment><comment><USER9> No discussion of MSMQ?

<comment><USER10> Almost no massively distributed applications are written on Windows, so i can see how it would be overlooked.</comment></comment>


Google has sacked dozens over sexual harassment since 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45986510 <comment><USER2> 48 employees over a 2 year span is nothing. How many employees has Google had in that time? It is probably at least 100,000. We are talking about less than 0.05% of the workforce. I don't know what percentage of the general workforce has committed sexual harassment (I have seem the victim rate as high as 20%), but 0.05% is insanely low. Either Google employees commit sexual harassment at an incredibly low rate or they are punished for it at an incredibly low rate. My money is on the latter.

<comment><USER3> You are comparing perp w/ victim stats. You are also comparing female victimization rates w/ Google's population (only 30% female, even less in higher levels where most of these 48 get dismissed from). I also think there are ~90K employees.

One dude can harass lots of women (as is usually the case). These 48 could have very easily been responsible for 20+ incidents each. And there are probably many more perps who have gone unpunished.

That said, male Google employees are probably less likely to sexually harass. They tend to be more nerdy, introverted, and less masculine(lower testosterone, less aggressive).

Edit: I shouldn't have used a word like masculine, whose definition is largely debated. I meant masculine in the hormonal sense.

<comment><USER4> > They tend to be more nerdy, introverted, and less masculine(lower > testosterone, less aggressive).

Not a fan of you making this up based on perceived stereotypes and then using it to justify an argument. I do agree that these numbers are complicated and require analysis on data that we probably don't have access to.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious why you think I am making this up. Testosterone is linked with higher levels of aggression. Anyone who is employed to write code and work with computers works a sedentary job.

I don't think it is a ridiculous notion that your average Googler will be nerdier or smarter than the average man. And I hope that just because "low- testosterone" is used as an insult by alt-right losers, you don't associate me with that group or characterize my comment as troll-y.

<comment><USER5> You are just digging your grave deeper here. Don't assume high testosterone = must be a blue collar worker or sumpin. That's basically classist BS.

Pushing code because it is one of the highest paid professions in the world right now and exercises real power could be construed as aggressive as hell on the face of it. There's a reason people bitch about "brogrammer" culture. Even if you ignore that, desk jockeys aren't all sedentary losers. Plenty are buff and pursue Manly Man (TM) activities in their off hours, like sports, martial arts, etc.

<comment><USER6> OP said

> They tend to be more nerdy, introverted, and less masculine(lower > testosterone, less aggressive).

and

> Testosterone is linked with higher levels of aggression. Anyone who is > employed to write code and work with computers works a sedentary job.

> I don't think it is a ridiculous notion that your average Googler will be > nerdier or smarter than the average man. And I hope that just because "low- > testosterone" is used as an insult by alt-right losers, you don't associate > me with that group or characterize my comment as troll-y.

At no point did OP say:

> Don't assume high testosterone = must be a blue collar worker or sumpin.

Your statement isn't even the inverse of OP's statement. The only one that said that is you.

<comment><USER5> > Testosterone is linked with higher levels of aggression. Anyone who is > employed to write code and work with computers works a sedentary job

How is it unreasonable to infer from this that "Obviously, high testosterone guys must work physical jobs" (often called _blue collar jobs_ )? What jobs should I infer are the opposite of _sedentary_?

<comment><USER6> How is it reasonable TO infer that? If the claim is that sedentary jobs lower testosterone, it does not follow that non-sedentary jobs raise testosterone. If A => B, the statement NOT A => NOT B is not necessarily true. That's just rudimentary logic.

<comment><USER5> My question is "What's the opposite of a sedentary job? Is it or is it not a physical job, AKA a blue collar job?"

I do not see where OP said sedentary jobs lower testosterone. I do not see any statement clarifying the exact nature of the presumed relationship between testosterone levels and job type.

Perhaps I missed that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The letter was in response to a New York Times report that Android creator > Andy Rubin received a $90m exit package despite facing misconduct > allegations.

Woah, holy shit, a $90M exit package? It's like Bighead in the Silicon Valley TV show, except 4.5x more. The writers for that show picked a crazy number and reality comes along and over-quadruples it. Granted, Bighead did not create Android, or anything, in the TV show. But an severance package of that size is still absolutely ridiculous.

<comment><USER8> Marissa Mayer got $260M for basically running Yahoo into the ground. (To be fair, it was already heading there before she joined).

[https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa- may...](https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-mayer- severance-stock-verizon/index.html)

I have a suspicion that corporate executives are Veblen goods [1], which makes their price/wage behavior somewhat economically counterintuitive. When a company's board hires a new CEO, the primary return to the individual director who puts forth the candidate is in social status. They want to be seen as having made a bold, risky move, and having the social connections to pull it off and get their candidate approved. (The idea that the board acts to maximize shareholder value is a legal fiction only; _people_ make decisions, not laws, and unless the shareholders can bring a successful shareholder lawsuit the individual people will make the decision that maximizes their own personal utility.) That means that the more a candidate already makes, and the higher their profile in the business world, the more they can command in compensation. On the way out, all participants are again motivated by status - a lengthy wrongful termination lawsuit damages the reputations of everyone involved, and so all parties have an incentive to spend more shareholder money to avoid it.

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

<comment><USER9> > Marissa Mayer got $260M for basically running Yahoo into the ground. (To be > fair, it was already heading there before she joined).

Uh, so which is it? Did Mayer:

A) Change yahoo's trajectory from positive to negative, thus "running it into the ground"

B) Yahoo was running into the ground when she took over

For the crime of failing to turn around the cluster fuck that was 2012 yahoo, I guess Mayer is forever destined to be HN's punching bag.

<comment> munk-a Why not, even if Marissa Mayer managed to moderately slow the decline of a major company, the fact that it still collapsed certainly isn't the sort of deliverable that justifies 260M$.

I believe Yahoo was in real trouble when Marissa Mayer was hired and there are some decisions she made that were clearly wrong in hindsight. I don't feel qualified to judge her performance in detail but 260M$ is a glowing endorsement which seems entirely disconnected from the reality of what happened during her tenure.

<comment><USER10> There is an article out there that talks about her repeatedly being hours late for meetings with major CEOs. There were lots of other negatives. It made her sound like a first class train wreck.

If the article is factual she was compensated $260M for turning in a performance that could have gotten a minimum wage grocery bagger fired several times each month.

<comment> munk-a This is just a demonstration of the different worlds we live in. There are countless examples of CEOs getting sacked for gross mismanagement and then rehired in a new executive role. Unlike other time periods it's easier (not easy) for people to enter that strata of society but once you're in it seems like you're set for life and the worst that can happen is you get setup with a cushy job with generous paycheck to basically not cause any more trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since 2016. Two years after Rubin was allowed to retire. Still reassuring I think, but not a great headline.

<comment><USER12> Thanks. We've added that bit above.

<comment><USER13> Can you guys add a misleading title flag which prepends the title with something like [Misleading title] so that users know it does not fully summarize the content of the article? Another article [0] got flagged unjustly in my opinion (unflagged a day later due to my edit I think) because the content was still interesting despite the misleading title.

Some type of title vote mechanism with user input sounds even better but I don't know if you guys have the manpower to implement something like that.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18284077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18284077)

<comment><USER12> I don't think we'd write software to do that (how would it recognize misleading titles?), and when intervening manually we can simply edit the title to not be misleading. That's what the site guidelines ask submitters to do, and what moderators do when we become aware of the problem.

When users have flagged an otherwise good article because of a bad title, we often turn off flags once the title has been fixed.

If you notice a misleading title that hasn't been edited, you can always let us know at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER13> Yes, but by the time you turn off flags for the article in cases like this, it is already to late because your time based de-ranking algorithm has delisted it off the front pages. That's why a flag that simple prepends the title without delisting it would be good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Carolina Milanesi tweeted: "In a normal world this would mean Rubin is > done, but tech has not just been forgiving, some tech sees little wrong with > this"_

Actually in a normal world, there's _forgiveness_ and moving on from minor misconduct events.

There's no reason to blacklist someone from ever working again because they had consensual sex with someone they shouldn't have had sex with.

As far as we know, there wasn't an official complaint against Rubin, and everything was consensual. That's not a "you're done" crime by any means. That's just normal life, sex, relationships, etc.

These twitter nobodies who tweet their final judgements about men who do things they don't approve of, it's like they never watched that old TV show Sex in the City.

Life is not perfect. We fumble around with relationships, sex, affairs, and after hours personal and private behavior. If nobody gets hurt, don't bother tweeting your community service mens-morality announcements, it only makes you look out of touch with actual real life.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies in San Francisco, > tweeted: "In a normal world this would mean Rubin is done, but tech has not > just been forgiving, some tech sees little wrong with this.

I work at a pretty large tech company, the number of trainings I have had to go through regarding sexual harassment (especially lately) is impressive. I suspect that such standards may not be as common in small and mid sized companies? I think it is going to take pressure from the VC/funding side to draw clear lines in the sand that even the small guys need to abide by harassment rules.

<comment><USER16> One of the benefits of contracting/consulting is not going to those. Just sign something saying you can be fired for it and you're good to go (well, and don't do that stuff, too).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's interesting how the title of the BBC article (and as a matter of fact, this Hacker News post's own title), "Google sacks dozens over sexual harassment", makes it sound like something that just happened, versus stats over the past 2 years that have just been reported as part of a response to a New York Times article.

</comment><comment><USER18> When is Sergey going to be sacked? Wasn't he in some sort of an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate, leading to a separation from his wife, now YouTube CEO?

<comment><USER19> There's a difference between having an affair and sexually harassing someone.

<comment><USER20> Sure: the difference is the latter is only consent by one. But in order to "have an affair" one side have to make a move. Simplyfying: If you are ugly and you make move the other party can sack you in HR department as sexual harraser. HOWEVER if you hot and they like you, it may endup as an affair. so no harrasment filed ;)

<comment><USER19> I doubt anyone ever got sacked for asking a coworker out on a date and getting rejected, if that is what you mean by "making a move" (and not something more sinister, of course).

<comment><USER21> depends on how you ask of course.

It's possible to harass someone unintentionally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> dang, please fix this misleading headline.

</comment><comment><USER23> This title is so misleading - Google sacked 40 employees over a period of two years.

</comment><comment><USER24> The rich and powerful have always been living the indulging life since the beginning of time. I guess people have just misplaced their faith in seeking the moral compass from Google and its execs.

<comment><USER25> What's wrong with someone indulging in a consensual relationship that happens because someone is attracted to their power?

<comment><USER12> Could you please stop creating accounts that use HN primarily for ideological battle? Regardless of what you're battling for or against, this is poisonous to what HN exists for, so we have to ban accounts that do it. This is in the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER26> As usual, you are merely picking views you do not like. Your participation in ideological battles is far more gratuitous than any commenter on HN because you are the censor. The front page has more politically charged articles this year than ever - and people who reply honestly are punished if they disagree with your openly one-sided argumentation. I have several email records to prove others feel the same way and have tried to reason with HN admins directly about this - to no avail.

<comment><USER12> Banned accounts cover the spectrum, so if what you're saying is true, we must dislike all the views.

Or we could just be moderating according to the guidelines, like we say. I'm confident the bulk of the community agrees with that. If they didn't, we'd never hear the end of it, where in fact the only accounts making these complaints are the few most ideologically strident ones.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Headline's a bit late for thanksgiving day, ain't it?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eAU0EadxEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eAU0EadxEc)

</comment><comment><USER28> The article doesn't say wether the sacking was a new policy as of 2016. The real question is if they sacked just as many (well,... just as often) during the time of Andy Rubin.

<comment><USER29> I was at Google for quite a few years "during the time of Andy Rubin" and know of at least two terminations for harassment and at least two for having sex at work. There are also cases that could and should have been handled better, but it wasn't all bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> CNBC version: [http://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/25/google-ceo-memo- says-48-fired...](http://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/25/google-ceo-memo- says-48-fired-for-sexual-misconduct.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder how the PR pitch process to BBC works.

<comment><USER32> "Hey bud, sent you that pr fluff piece we talked about earlier. Squash sunday? Righto"

</comment></comment><comment> gingerbread-man [deleted]

<comment><USER33> The title of the piece is extremely misleading... this didn't happen today; it's since 2016. Were that not the case, I'd completely agree with you here.

<comment> gingerbread-man Went back and re-read the second line of the article; thank you for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Don't put your meat where you get your bread.

</comment><comment><USER35> From the story on Andy Rubin,

> In Silicon Valley, it is widely known that Mr. Page had dated Marissa Mayer, > one of the company's first engineers who later became chief executive of > Yahoo. (Both were single.) Eric Schmidt, Google's former chief executive, > once retained a mistress to work as a company consultant, according to four > people with knowledge of the relationship. And Mr. Brin, who along with Mr. > Page owns the majority of voting shares in Google's parent, Alphabet, had a > consensual extramarital affair with an employee in 2014, said three > employees with knowledge of the relationship.

> David C. Drummond, who joined as general counsel in 2002, had an > extramarital relationship with Jennifer Blakely, a senior contract manager > in the legal department who reported to one of his deputies, she and other > Google employees said. They began dating in 2004, discussed having children > and had a son in 2007, after which Mr. Drummond disclosed their relationship > to the company, she said.

I was once talking to a retired guy who told me starting companies is hard because "your employees won't stop having sex with each other and your customers are never satisfied." Seems to be true for not only the employees, but also the founders of these companies and, if that weren't enough, it often strays into sexual harassment. It is good that Google is apparently taking a harder line on this, but they should've done more sooner.

<comment><USER36> _> your employees won't stop having sex with each other_

This is normal, legal and by itself it is not harassment.

I hope that never changes.

<comment> munk-a It is very difficult for relationships in a workplace to not involve some sort of power differential. I'm speaking specifically of your working group so if the context is a programmer dating a researcher in a 20k employee company the tie between you might be so distant to basically be irrelevant, but in most other cases a soured relationship can always cause problems to employees and employers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's dangerous to assume that the mere presence of a power differential implies abuse of power. Women are naturally attracted to men in power in part because of their power - moreso than men are attracted to women in power because of their power - and consensual relationships often arise in the context of this differential. I'm sure I'll get downvoted for pointing out this basic aspect of mammalian female reproductive strategy, but the truth is what it is.

Of course companies don't like doing things on an ad hoc basis so I completely understand why they want to institute blanket rules that prohibit all supervisor - employee relationships, however people often forget that just because a rule exists does not mean that all instances of that rule being broken imply genuine wrongdoing.

<comment><USER11> You're being downvoted because your comment is irrelevant. They aren't banning that kind of relationship, and he was forced out after a woman complained about his coercive behavior, not an assumption of abuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is an odd move that doesn't sit very well with me. They waited until the NYT article to actually do anything about it...

</comment><comment><USER38> As it was mentioned in the article this looks to be a direct response to the NYT article. It's easy to pretend to care after everyone has found out. I'd be curious to know the details of the allegations against the 48 to gauge whether they were sacrificial lambs at the altar of public relations.

Edit: Missed that this was since 2016, makes sacrificial lamb theory less likely.

<comment><USER22> re-read the first line of the article</comment></comment>


Tell HN: It's Christmas - <AUTHOR>

Some of you may celebrate Christmas, others may not. However, I want to ask you all to consider that it might be a good time to think about others who may be less fortunate than you. If you already have a favorite charity, please consider donating. If not, here are some that I personally consider decent:
- Doctors Without Borders (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/) does great work in over 60 countries by helping those who are threatened by violence, neglect or catastrophe due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, natural disasters, exclusion from healthcare, etc. They have consistently high ratings from watchdog organizations and at least as of 2006 had over 86% of their donations go directly towards helping those in need [1].
- Donors Choose (http://www.donorschoose.org/) is an American online charity where public school teachers post classroom project requests and donors decide which project to sponsor. 100% of your donation goes directly to the beneficiary (unless you specifically give something to DC) [2]
- Vitanna (http://www.vittana.org/) is my personal favorite: less of a charity and more of a micro-loan marketplace, where you get to choose students to whom you make loans at no interest to help them complete their education. Once the student pays you back, you can either re-lend the money, give it to Vitanna to cover overhead or simply cash out. I see it as investing in global education and therefore global wealth. Once again, 100% of what you give benefits the students directly [3].
If there is another charity you think is worth sharing, please post it in the comments so others may partake.
Lastly, if you cannot afford to donate or simply do not wish to at this time, I'd like to make another request. On this day, please spend a few minutes thinking about some of the problems facing our world: hunger, epidemics, natural disasters, armed conflicts, poverty, etc. Hacker News is an amazing community with some of the world's most innovative and talented entrepreneurs and engineers. Even a few minutes of our collective time and attention could result in solutions to some of these problems. That is why I would like to challenge you to spend just a few minutes of your day on thinking about how we could make our world a better place.
[1] http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/faq/#q2234
[2] http://www.donorschoose.org/help/user_agreement.html
[3] http://www.vittana.org/howitworks
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with any organizations mentioned in this post. <comment><USER2> Thank you for taking your time and writing such a beautiful post.

A lot of people should take a few minutes out of their day and help someone they don't know. Whether it's leaving a few extra bucks at the grocery store and telling the cashier to give it to someone who seems like they can use it, or randomly paying a bill for someone in need.

These small things in life can have a big impact on peoples lives. It doesn't have to be a big gift, we only ask to donate a few dollars or a unopened presents that you don't need.

Please think about others who may be less fortunate than you.

With that said, I hope all of you have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Years.

Thank You.</comment>


Heavily armed drug cops raid retiree's garden, seize okra plants - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/06/heavily-armed-drug-cops-raid-retirees-garden-seize-okra-plants/ <comment><USER2> Ragweed grows rampantly where I live and at certain times of the year looks quite a bit like cannabis. So now I have to worry that the DEA will come smash down my door over weeds? Terrible Times.

<comment><USER3> It'd be pretty nice if they knocked politely and pulled the weeds up for me

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Raid? They visited him, saw the okra, apologized and left.

<comment><USER5> _Raid?_

Yes, Raid.

The article clearly mentioned "a heavily-armed K9 unit." The property owner could have easily been killed, in that situation. Why do you feel the need to describe it as a harmless "visit"?

<comment><USER4> Police are always armed. They are trained in their use. A K9 unit is an officer and a dog, trained to be nice to people. This whole article is puffed- up baloney

<comment><USER5> So the whole thing was more like the neighbor's dog, Spot, crossing your lawn to pick up a frisbee? Interesting viewpoint.

<comment><USER6> Not at all, that wasn't what was posted at all. But, then, you knew that didn't you?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google SEO Starter Guide [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

<comment><USER3> I would love it if Google published an official answer to the perennial client question: "Why can't you get my site to the top of the SERPs for [insert competitive keywords here]?"

My answer is usually along these lines: "Your site is competing for placement with many other professionally-built sites. If I'm doing my job properly, and so are the other web developers, none of us is or should be _entitled_ to top placement. Also, placement depends heavily on factors that are solely in _your_ control as the site owner, such as the quality of the content."

But when web devs say this, clients sometimes think we're just trying to shirk responsibility. So I would be really happy if I could point them to an official statement from Gogole that conveys roughly the same message.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the suggestion. Here's a related video we've done to educate people about why they shouldn't care as much about trying to rank #1 for trophy phrases that might not even convert that well: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21BF_IVU10I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21BF_IVU10I)

But your suggestion is slightly different and a good one.

<comment><USER5> Hey Matt, one question m8! If You/Google are against people building links that aren't earned, why do you/they allow advertisers to use the add words platform to sell "link building" services? These links aren't "earned" or natural, or are they???

Google "link building" to see adds that state "Guaranteed Page One Ranking"!

Im not a smart guy (not at all) but to me, logically if you/google allow this on your addwords platform then "link building" must be okay, but only from these _specific_ addword companies? right? What am I missing?

<comment><USER6> Google organic and paid resutlts are 2 different things even though both showing up together on the same page, probably completely different departments and at least different rules and regulation apply. You can advertise for anything you want as long as it complies to the adwords terms and conditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some worthwhile alternatives:

[http://moz.com/blog/perfecting-onpage-optimization-for- ecomm...](http://moz.com/blog/perfecting-onpage-optimization-for-ecommerce- websites)

[http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo](http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo)

(PDF: [http://static.seomoz.org/files/SEOmoz-The-Beginners-Guide- To...](http://static.seomoz.org/files/SEOmoz-The-Beginners-Guide-To- SEO-2012.pdf))

<comment><USER8> Why was this downvoted? Are these guides not good?

<comment><USER9> I'm biased but I always recommend that anyone interested in SEO start with the Beginner's Guide. It is a fantastic resource that is updated regularly frequently and I find it easier for folks to grasp than many of the alternatives.

It's not "straight from the horse's mouth" as is the case with the Google guide (which frankly what Google wants to drive rankings does not always tie up nicely with what actually seems to drive rankings in practice), but I always have users start there and then look further afield if they're still interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a good start, but the guide is actually really old - the copyright is from 2010.

Some of this stuff is no longer valid.

<comment><USER4> We wrote the guide to be pretty evergreen. If there's anything you see that's out of date, just mention it and we'll look into updating it.

<comment><USER11> In the section about 'alt' tags, "If a user is viewing your site on a browser that doesn't support images" sounds like something coming from a very old text. I wonder if that's still relevant for anyone. The second part of the sentence (screenreaders) taught me something, though!

<comment><USER12> Blind people still use browsers like this, it's a 508 compliant standard if nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I read this awhile back and it's great.

Curious honest question to the SEOs out there - other than present me with a strategy, is there anything specifically an SEO can offer to my site? As far as I can tell, any gimmick or scheme an SEO could do previously is now effectively non-existent since the Penguin and Hummingbird updates to Google. Is there anything outside of the standard stuff that _I_ have to do that can make my site stand out?

<comment><USER14> Google has been using regular people like you and me as scouts for years.

We all have certain patterns and interests and the order of priorities - <USER2> Google know them all. They are the sysadmin of the Internet.

If we save a link, share a link or return to a page more than X times in $period, G. knows we think it's valuable. Multiply by the number of Google users who share $this_interest.

Conversely, any freshly created Twitter account associated with a freshly created Gmail account registered from an Indian IP has little authority in any field.

Any abnormal activity is an eyesore to Google algorithms and jumps out right away.

If your site sucks, you can't make Google think it doesn't. Fancy crap won't make your boring content look attractive. SEO today is customer satisfaction, disruption, uniqueness.

It doesn't matter any more what you say about your site - it's what actions of other people, real people, not your shills, say about your site.

This is, very roughly, how it works.

Source: SEO work since 2003, including a year as Google page quality rater.

<comment><USER15> So you're saying that the old PageRank and hubs/authorities algos are completely irrelevant these days? Its all simply based upon user behavior?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Misread as "Google CEO Starter Guide" and expected a tongue-in-cheek critique of Larry Page.

<comment><USER17> Well, your query is funnier[0]

        > Showing results for "Google SEO Starter Guide"

        > No results found for "Google CEO Starter Guide"

[0] [https://www.google.com/search?q="Google+CEO+Starter+Guide"](https://www.google.com/search?q="Google+CEO+Starter+Guide")

<comment><USER18> Haha, I have this thread now. GJG! Good Job Google! <3

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> SEO has evolved however much of the published SEO advice is stuck in the past. People are proclaiming "SEO is dead"... that will only be true the day people stop using search engines to find information, more like "SEO has changed". There's a new SEO in town. What exactly is the new SEO you ask?

Check out my full answer here: [https://medium.com/on- startups/f15264e5d790](https://medium.com/on-startups/f15264e5d790)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not a webmaster but skimmed the document anyways. Really good read for those of us not very familiar with SEO terms and practices in general. It was easily digestible.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have an online SEO training class, but frequently refer people back to this doc before they get started. This is a great refresher, thanks for sharing.

Edit: SEO checklist is [http://www.clickminded.com/seo- checklist/](http://www.clickminded.com/seo-checklist/)

</comment><comment><USER22> This guide is 3 years old. I think lot many stuffs have changed today.

</comment><comment><USER23> sadly I know people who respond to this with "Yeah but why would you trust what Google say, they don't want to tell you how to game the system".

</comment><comment><USER24> Thanks for sharing

</comment><comment><USER25> Yeah, this is all good and everything. But to get to the top in a competitive market, there is usually very little option but to buy high quality links.

<comment><USER4> That's a really bad long-term strategy.

<comment><USER26> TravelSupermarket have been doing this as a long-term strategy and get away with it.

[http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/webmasters/...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/webmasters/travelsupermarket/webmasters/u56C6Y-Wwkk/3CccKZ6xU4oJ)

I'm hoping someone from Google can explain, or at least commit to investigate why the leading brand in our niche (travel) has escaped a Penguin 2.0 demotion. It may come across as sour grapes as yes, we were demoted following Penguin 2, due to links built by an SEO agency in 2008 that we have tried (pre-pengiun) to have removed for years, despite passing a manual link review and having a manual penalty removed, the algorithm clearly has no discretion and re-penalised us for the same issue, however the fact remains that the largest brand, a household name, in our niche is engaging in far worse and at a much greater scale and continues to do so that has left them top of the pile for a huge number of very lucrative search terms.

Here is just a small sample of paid links, paid blog posts and article submissions clearly designed to manipulate the SERP's that are no doubt paying huge dividends for them. Isn't it about time Google stepped in and stopped these brands being so well protected, whether it be from manual or algorithmic penalties. We've been watching their dominance in the travel market for 2-3 years now and assumed that one day Google would take a look but so far nothing and now we are in a position where we are laying off staff due to factors outside of our control (and accepted by the search quality team), whilst the largest and most active spammy link buyers in our niche go from strength to strength.

[http://www.heatheronhertravels.com/](http://www.heatheronhertravels.com/) paid [http://1000fights.com/how-to-kiss-correctly/](http://1000fights.com/how- to-kiss-correctly/) paid [http://1familyvacation.blogspot.com/2009_04_26_archive.html](http://1familyvacation.blogspot.com/2009_04_26_archive.html) paid post [http://2backpackers.com/8940/usa/fleet-week-san-francisco- tr...](http://2backpackers.com/8940/usa/fleet-week-san-francisco-travel- photos-1) paid post [http://2nomads1narrative.com/2012/07/03/guest-post- signature...](http://2nomads1narrative.com/2012/07/03/guest-post-signature- dishes-of-india/) paid post [http://acrossandabroad.com/2011/08/23/dubai- holidays-diving-...](http://acrossandabroad.com/2011/08/23/dubai-holidays- diving-in-dubai/) paid post [http://activetap.com/554567-Flights-Viva- Prague.html](http://activetap.com/554567-Flights-Viva-Prague.html) paid post [http://alcudiaholidays.org.uk/reasons-to- visitalcudia](http://alcudiaholidays.org.uk/reasons-to-visitalcudia) paid post [http://allfiji.com.au/travel/fiji- beaches/](http://allfiji.com.au/travel/fiji-beaches/) paid post [http://allfrance.com.au/the-best-budget-hotels-in- paris/](http://allfrance.com.au/the-best-budget-hotels-in-paris/) paid post [http://allthailand.com.au/touring-thailand-top-tours-in- thai...](http://allthailand.com.au/touring-thailand-top-tours-in-thailand/) paid post [http://allusa.com.au/americas-greatest- parks/](http://allusa.com.au/americas-greatest-parks/) paid post [http://archive.anfieldroad.com/news- archive/201009063972/fc-...](http://archive.anfieldroad.com/news- archive/201009063972/fc-utrecht-v-liverpool-%E2%80%93-travel- information.html/) paid post [http://archive.anfieldroad.com/news- archive/201103084572/a-g...](http://archive.anfieldroad.com/news- archive/201103084572/a-guide-to-braga.html/) paid post [http://aussietopia.org/2011/03/](http://aussietopia.org/2011/03/) paid post [http://aussietopia.org/category/cities/melbourne/](http://aussietopia.org/category/cities/melbourne/) paid

<comment><USER6> Algorithmic penalties could be already in place for this domain. I would be surprised if google places any weight on these type of links you posted. However due to their overall activity they may be getting a lot genuine stuff their way too, which could be a reason why they still rank above others in this "black-grey-heavy" industry.

<comment><USER26> I hear what you are saying, but if a site can rank position 1 for almost all relevant search terms with an algorithmic penalty then clearly the penalty is not severe enough. They really have our niche by the balls so I can't believe there is a penalty. It's disheartening to know that google simply will not acknowledge this. We've reported on WMF a few times and made various other attempts to make them aware of this blatant 'cheating'. Why can't they (Cutts himself viewed this thread) at least say what you have said. "They have a penalty, but we still rank them higher than everyone else" or as is more likely the case "they are a HUGE adwords customer so we wouldn't want to upset them". It stinks.

<comment><USER27> They also have a shit tonne of high authority links from pretty much every news website going. What's your point?

It's easy to pick holes in pretty much anyone's backlink profile in a competitive market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Warning: This guide is 3-4 years old and may have some outdated techniques.</comment>


Show HN: One Soft Landing – hire people that were recently laid off - <AUTHOR> https://www.onesoftlanding.com/ <comment><USER2> The year 2000 version: [http://fuckedcompany.com/](http://fuckedcompany.com/)

Times have changed, the message right in the URL has a much more positive tone this time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are people here listed with consent? Asking because there's a "remove my data" input. That said, I appreciate the intent behind this.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are people who've been unemployed for longer less deserving of work?

> A comprehensive list

Excuse me?

<comment><USER5> I don't think this site places that sort of value judgement. As for "comprehensive", it's a pet peeve of mine when people mean "aspires to be comprehensive"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> WTF!!!! I'm pretty sure this website did get permission from these people for putting their name in those Google docs.

I'd have been really pissed if my name had been in such a list.

where did they even get this data... it seems like a huge breach of privacy somewhere.

I hope that these companies were not clients of this _Dover_ and that is not how they got this data.

</comment><comment><USER7> vacasa laid off a ton of people as well... trying to think of others.</comment>


jQuery 1.4.1 Released - <AUTHOR> http://jquery14.com/day-12/jquery-141-released

<comment><AUTHOR> Only 0.0.1 away from being production ready. I kid, but jQuery does have a history of quick revs after a major release, which despite my cynicism, I appreciate.

<comment><USER2> I'm always surprised how phenomenally hard it is to get people to test alphas and release candidates - it isn't until the actual major release hits the floor that a ton of input starts to roll in. Every release I think it'll be different but I have yet to be proven right.

That being said, 1.4.1 is effectively "it" for a while (at least a month or so). It's shipping in Visual Studio and Drupal 7 so it doesn't matter what bug fixes come in after this, a lot of people will be using this version of jQuery.

<comment><USER2> I should clarify: We do get a _ton_ of feedback during the alpha/release candidate phases - it's just that there always seems to be a few things that end up slipping through in the end, one way or the other, hence the soon-after .1 release.

<comment><USER3> But the key thing here is that the project responds very quickly to the new feedback and releases an updated version. How many projects do that? Not many.

Serious kudos for creating such a responsive culture in the project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> After playing with the RC1 for a while at work I noticed that the live() methods with mouseenter and mouseleave are incredibly hungry processes and can easily max out a CPU by moving the mouse quickly and erratically. Changing this to a bind() method caused some CPU spike, but not enough to max out the browser like the live() method.

Mind you, this is purely anecdotal and I understand the fundemental differences in the methods (event bubbling versus binding), but it kind of shows that it should be employed cautiously when detecting mouse movement related events.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just how many times in January is jQuery going to be released?

<comment><USER2> If your question is "How many times in January is [there going to be a code release of] jQuery" then the answer is only twice: jQuery 1.4 and 1.4.1. However we've also released the 14 Days of jQuery (jquery14.com), jQuery.org, the new jQuery Forum (forum.jquery.com), and the new jQuery API browser (api.jquery.com). Today we're releasing jQuery Meetups and tomorrow is jQuery UI 1.8. And none of that is counting the oodles of videos that we've uploaded as well.

You can see more of the details about the releases here: <http://jquery14.com/>

We also have a whole bunch slated for post-January, you'll be hearing a lot more for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When will it be available on the googleapis servers?

<comment><USER2> Presumably when the Google team wakes back up on the west coast.

<comment><USER7> The mere thought! They actually sleep!</comment></comment></comment>


8 steps for engineering leaders to keep the peace - <AUTHOR> http://blog.learningbyshipping.com/2013/09/11/8-steps-for-engineering-leaders-to-keep-the-peace/ <comment><USER2> It's really a 1 step process - the engineering lead has to work with whoever is making the requests to reasonably document expectations. It helps immensely to have a paper trail. It also helps to say, "If this goes in, what goes out?" and to push for changes earlier than later. "If you change your mind in a week, it's low cost. If you change your mind in 6 weeks, it will force a slip."

Most people will respect an engineering manager that pushes back if the engineering manager can show quantifiable progress, and can deliver. In the absence of progress metrics or a reputation for delivery, the engineering leader does look like an obstructionist.</comment>


Startup - <AUTHOR>

Im 30 yrs old and Im ready to take control of my life. I need funding to start my bussiness. I want a company that will launch in the top 15 states. That will offer a demand in todays world. <comment> saiko-chriskun ok</comment>


The light and dark of AI-powered smartphones - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/06/the-light-and-dark-of-ai-powered-smartphones/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Humans have enough trouble understanding each other; expecting our machines to be better at this than we are ourselves seems fanciful"</comment>


Ask HN: Voting Do Over? - <AUTHOR>

I confess.  I have a quick trigger finger.  On more than one occasion, somebody on HN has said something that caused me to vote them down, sometimes, even before I finished reading their comment.  On other occasions, I've read the comment, but hadn't parsed it properly.  OK, and a few times, too much coffee has made me actually miss the up arrow, and hit the down arrow instead.
On all these occasions, I have felt a little guilty.  Not enough to lose sleep, but still, if I had the ability to go back in time those two seconds and undo the vote, I would do so.
My thought is that, if I down vote somebody, I should lose my down arrow, but my up-arrow should remain, in case I have a change of heart.  Similarly, I suppose, I may change my mind about an up-vote, so the reverse logic would also apply.
This would save me the trouble of actually carefully digesting what my fellow HN readers have written before voting, while still preserving my guilt free state of mind. <comment><USER4> A few clicks here or there will not stop the world turning...

Master the Zen of HN

Vote up posts or comments for the good of HN rather than as a reflex action to something you have just read.

In my opinion HN would be a better place without a down vote on comments - <USER2> simple choice between an up-vote and no-vote is all that is required - <USER3> moments contemplation - a choice made - then move on.

<comment><AUTHOR> -1 for being incredibly annoying

<comment><USER4> Peace my friend - I hope you find your own path...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No offence intended but perhaps a _better_ way is for you to hack your voting methods.

This is what I did; when I joined I voted liberally and daily. Now I upvote perhaps 3 times a day on comments and only a few times a week on submissions.

</comment><comment><USER6> And you even provide your very own reason not to do this:

"This would save me the trouble of actually carefully digesting what my fellow HN readers have written before voting"

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd actually like to be able to unselect either up or down arrow, returning my vote to its neutral state. I end up clicking on one of them by accident disturbingly often.</comment>


Walt: A JS-Like Syntax for Web Assembly - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ballercat/walt <comment><USER2>
      export function fibonacci(n: i32): i32 {
        if (n == 0)
          return 0;

        if (n == 1)
          return 1;

        return fibonacci(n - 1) + fibonacci(n - 2);
      }

There are better ways to speed this up than Web Assembly. It is "tree recursive". [https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full- text/sicp/book/node16.htm...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full- text/sicp/book/node16.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> What are the differences from AssemblyScript from a developer's viewpoint?</comment>


John McAfee: The Government Wants to Kill Me   - <AUTHOR> http://www.securityweek.com/john-mcafee-government-wants-kill-me

<comment><USER2> John McAfee certainly isn't a boring old man.

I don't know what to make of any of this. There is enough confusion and mis- information that it is totally impossible to know what the truth is any more but regardless of what the truth is I'm pretty sure that John McAfee isn't going to die in some old folks home to be visited on Sundays by his children that hope that granddad will kick the bucket soon so they can stop these visits.

At his age most folks are thinking about which brand rollator will bring the most value for their money. McAfee seems to be a star in his own totally weird movie with sex (illegal?), drugs (some of it definitely illegal) and banana republics thrown into the mix with abandon.

I'm happy I don't have to make the choice between the retirement home and John McAfee's, but I'm fairly sure that a large number of people in retirement homes would happily trade with him.

I'm not quite admiring him (definitely would not admire him if it turns out he killed that guy and taking advantage of all these young girls is definitely not ok) but I'm not saying he doesn't have his weird charm either. If he did it I hope he gets caught and sentenced appropriately, if he didn't I hope he manages to escape to safety somehow. The problem is that it is impossible to know what to believe, and a large factor in that is McAfee himself. He's been on the run in one form or another for years now so for him this is likely business as usual.

<comment><USER3> That's the ridiculous part, the whole story sounds so much like it was taken right out of a movie I have no idea even where to _begin_ to tease out the truth.

<comment><USER4> You start in the only sensible place, Belize. I hear it is nice this time of year :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having followed this since the raid earlier this year, I actually have no idea whose side of the story I believe now. Some people portray him as a Machiavellian psychopath (Jeff Wise), others think he just went paranoid nuts from drug use, yet if I were only to hear John McAfee tell his own story I'm fairly certain I would absolutely believe him.

He's clearly still in full command of his capacities at least as it comes to elucidating his thoughts in words, and everything he says is reasonable enough that I would believe it quite straightforwardly (as I did back when the raid news first came out) if it weren't for the notion planted in my head now from Wise's article that he's a scheming psychopath that's very charming and knows just what to say to make people believe him.

Either way, this guy has a _crazy shit life_. If everything is true in Jeff's article about his past and current life, I'd have to believe that he probably is just a scheming possibly paranoid psychopath, though still a little skeptical that he shot his neighbor to death. Fully plausible either way as I see it however, wouldn't be surprised at either outcome.

Also, I definitely hear the words "kill him" and "that's what he fucking needs" in that recording with all the background noise he sent out. Who knows what it is though.

<comment><USER6> I'm honestly sort of confused why we care what he's doing at all. There are other accused murderers and other fugitives in the world. Why is McAfee a big deal outside the fact that there's a well-known company with his name on it?

<comment><USER2> > the fact there's a well-known company with his name on it?

That's a good part of it, the guy has name recognition on par with most household cleaning products.

Then there is the little detail that he actually is - or was - half decent programmer and even in illegality he shows his entrepreneurial drive. It's the same kind of fascination that got the tech press running around Hans Reiser the way they did when Nina disappeared.

This is what drives tabloid sales, people love a good story and McAfee is giving them just that.

I'm not even sure if the facts of the matter will be a decision point from here on, the eyeballs industry probably hopes he will on the lam for a long time so they can milk this for what it is worth. The worst that could happen from their point of view is that he gets arrested or worse, that he really does get killed (they may try to go for the conspiracy angle if that happens to extend the time they can spin this).

It's a sad affair in many ways. McAfee used to be named right along Bill Gates at some point and now you're just as likely to find him associated with Hans Reiser (like in this comment for instance).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I had a penny for every security guy who thought a government was out to kill him, I'd be a rich man. Paranoid drives that industry. :) It's rare but threats happen given the data and relationships a security officer of a public firm will be exposed too.

More realistically, it sounds like John's eclectic lifestyle is rubbing people wrong like it did in the States. It doesn't take a genius to do a google search on your loud new immigrant and find a plethora of bad press, justice or injustice. In a developing country like Belize (which shares a border with Mexico), the corruption around you becomes very real when a community (or powers that be) start to feel your presence is threatening. And Americans REALLY don't go over smoothly when they think they are above the local law of the land. Travel security 101.

 _A former business partner sold his company to Symantec. We more recently built mobile security software and worked closely with local & federal govts in US, and UK House of Lords. I also worked in international finance, security of our Brazil and Mexico teams were something we thought about often._

</comment><comment><USER8> "Numerous press reports point to an epic thread on Bluelight (the world's largest drug forum) posted by a user named Stuffmonger. [...] At one point Stuffmonger mentions that he lives in Belize, in the jungle, beside a river. Connections were made, and people began to believe that Stuffmonger was actually myself, and that I was indeed doing the drugs that I was encouraging others to create.

I am indeed that same Stuffmonger. I, however, do not do drugs [...]. I am, however, a practical joker who does not mind investing months in a given joking enterprise."

Repeat with me: He is a practical joker who does not mind investing months in a given joking enterprise.

<comment><USER9> I appreciate that the following link is to material which some people here may object to, but it's all legal as far as the law is concerned so grab some popcorn and start reading:

[http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/652661-John-McAfee-aka- St...](http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/652661-John-McAfee-aka-Stuffmonger- wanted-for-Murder)

<comment><USER10> Thank you, that is a _great_ link. It makes this story much more interesting-- fascinating, even, assuming stuffmonger really is McAfee (as seems to be the case).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This story just gets crazier by the minute.

</comment><comment><USER12> >The media has portrayed me as paranoid

>I planted tiny POV video cameras and sound recorders on myself, some of my dogs, all around my property, in my cars, on my boats, at the Studio 54 bar in Orange Walk, on trees, in bushes, – everywhere I could...

Is it only me who thinks he's a teeny-tiny bit paranoid?

<comment><USER10> Well, what would _you_ do if the police executed a commando raid on your property looking for a meth lab that wasn't there, and your pets were slaughtered, but you really hadn't done anything to precipitate such events?

Given that context, it doesn't seem unreasonable.

Around the turn of the millennium, on my little software company's farm-like compound in rural California, we had a couple incidents where we would find one of our angora goats lying dead in front of the converted-barn office, with its throat slashed open from ear to ear. I happened across the first one when me and a buddy were out for a moonlight walk--after smoking a joint, no less-- and it was some creepy fucking shit. I invested in a whole bunch of wireless night vision cameras after the second time that happened, and put them in trees, on the roof, and in the bushes.

It turned out it wasn't any kind of weird cult ritual or insane meth-heads living in the woods, as we had first thought; it was the German shepherd owned by the Nazi skinheads up the road, slipping its chain at night and going out on missions, apparently well-fed but still with the killing urge.

We didn't find out through the cameras; it was one morning when I ran outside at 5:30 after being awakened by the plaintive cries of our biggest billy goat, only to find him on his back with his neck clamped between the jaws of the dog (named Psycho (of course)). Luckily for me, those skinheads had apparently beaten a healthy fear of humans into the dog, so I was able to save Billy Whiskers by throwing some rocks and shouting.

Still, given the circumstances, it doesn't seem too paranoid to have planted all those cameras. If McAfee's story is true (which is admittedly pretty hard to believe) then going on the run, carrying guns, and deploying all the cameras and whatever else he can seems reasonable to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> They need to do a Breaking Bad format show with John McAfee.

</comment><comment><USER14> I haven't followed this, but if he really fears they want to kill him, can't he flee the country? Or does he not want to do that?

<comment><USER15> In one or the other interview since this started, the interviewer asked him that very question and he responded rather incongruously that he loves Belize and has no intention of leaving. That was the moment I started to lean towards he's a little loopy.

There was also a rumor going around that he couldn't return to the US for tax reasons, which is plausible but I think unsubstantiated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I feel bad for him. Even the rich have mental issues.

<comment><USER17> How do you feel about the guy with the hole in the back of his head?

<comment><USER16> When insane people commit a crime they should be incarcerated. The victim should have justice. But, it seems that McAfee started going downhill years ago. Look how far he's gone. That could happen to anyone. He's just in the news because he was rich and has a recognizable name. If even the rich can have this happen to them, there is little hope that we can be truly effective at stopping others from having the same happen to them.

<comment><USER18> I do not believe the purpose of incarceration should ever be justice for the victim, it should be safety for other potential victims (either from the criminal, or from those who would see the crime go unpunished and decide they can do the same). That's the reason why we should put mentally insane criminals in mental institutions and not in jail, too; if everything works well, that should shield the lowest chance of more people being hurt.

If you want justice for the victim, punishing the perpetrator is not the best way to go about that. Making the criminal make reparations is a solution in some cases (notably not in murder).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Who cares? Kill him; don't kill him.. just shut him up already.</comment>


Keeping Billy Mays Alive With Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/YoungBillyMays/status/2414263813 <comment><AUTHOR> A few notes: I spent the last few minutes reading the updates from Billy Mays's son. Very emotional, brings me down to earth. Real and genuine and something traditional media can never convey. The account of recent days is incredibly sad but his account on twitter and his father's account on twitter serve as a very interesting tale on our times.</comment>


Redis Cuckoo Filter Library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kristoff-it/redis-cuckoofilter <comment><USER2> Hi, author here, let me know if t here are any questions. The core logic of this library is implemented in [https://github.com/kristoff-it/zig- cuckoofilter](https://github.com/kristoff-it/zig-cuckoofilter) so that it can be used also outside of Redis.</comment>


Released OrientDB Enterprise 2.0.3, Now FREE for Development - <AUTHOR> http://www.orientechnologies.com/released-orientdb-enterprise-2-0-3-now-free-development/

<comment><USER2> OrientDB started disrupting the Graph Database market since the beginning by forcing existent products to improve their offer to reduce the gap with OrientDB. Some vendor already cut prices, other vendor announce to be "Multi- Model". Yes, because OrientDB is not only a Graph Database, but also a Multi- Model at the engine level.

Today OrientDB releases the Enterprise Edition FREE for development. For production users are free to going with Enterprise (commercial) or Community (always FREE - Apache2 licensed).

It's a big momentum for the whole DBMS market!</comment>


Ask HN: Should we kill our site? - <AUTHOR>

Back in April, we asked the HN community for feedback. We received great advice and have since enhanced/modified our site per the feedback. However, we're now at the cross roads of Continue or Kill it.
So here's our situation:
Initially, we wanted a way to quickly and anonymously voice our (infamous bank) frustrations. There's alway the fake twitter account, but we enjoy coding so we spent a few hours one night, and the next morning we launched MyBankSux.com.
It received a few complaints, so we added banks in other countries to see whether anyone else would use it.
We received 80 + complaints in the past month, so no traction, and now that the 1 month mark has passed - we need to choose whether to invest additional time or simply leave it as is.
If we choose to invest additional time, we want to create the easiest way to submit a bank complaint. We want the user to simply pull up the application (mobile), click submit, and have the banks' customer service contact them; no more hold, nor need to find the customer service number. In addition, we want to keep track of resolution so consumers can quickly identify banks that provide stellar customer service.
Much like Gri.pe pulls up a list of local entities, we want MyBankSux to pull up a list of local banks or allow you to enter by name. Unlike Gri.pe, we don't want everyone to see our names when we have a complaint; like showing your friends who bitches the most. Although Twitter is great for bitching, not all banks are on twitter, and identifying the handle of those that are on twitter is difficult; for most banks.
So, I ask... what are your thoughts? Should we kill it, or should we continue. If continue, what should we tackle first?
Thanks in advance for your feedback. <comment><USER2> Kudos to you for trying to either fail fast or succeed.

I would argue that you should kill in no small part b/c the domain name is so childish. What adult would visit a site called "My Bank Sux"? None that I know of.

I'm not trying to be rude or disrespectful - you asked for feedback so here it is - so please take this in the spirit you asked for it. That was a huge decision (the name of your company) and you got it incredibly wrong IMO. And you got it so wrong that it makes me wonder what other decisions you got wrong as well. I'm not trying to be a dream killer but you will look back on this 10 years from now and think, "What were we thinking? That was an awful name!"

Lastly the whole concept of a complaint-based site is so... strange to me. Why would anyone ever visit your site except to make a complaint? Are you expecting people to just drop by and read the complaints/comments? I can't imagine that anyone would want to just read complaints and resolutions.

Lastly, even if you got traction from submitters, how do you make money? You want to "create the easiest way to submit a bank complaint" which means you'll need to minimize page time and page views to do so. It also means you can't serve ads on those pages, right? That would totally break the UI and possibly your trust with your user. The only time you can serve ads is on the post- submission pages or through email. Seems a hard way to make money IMO considering that those people will not be back to your site again until the bank responds (and that's iffy). Also, any response from a bank will be to take this off of the forum/site and will end with, "Please call us at ..." which totally takes any future revenue away from you.

Kill it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Scott:

THANK YOU! Great feedback. Here's some background information:

1\. I agree, MyBankSux is soo childish and I'd NEVER seek investment for something called MyBankSux. We created the domain for testing, and didn't want to tarnish SpotCred.com while we were building the concept. We'll move it to MyBankComplaint.com

2\. Complaint based site: Have you seen <http://Gri.pe>? or <http://Amplicate.com>? or <http://twitter.com/#!/Bofa_Help> ?

3\. The website is a front for the Mobile app we've envisioned. The concept is to simplify customer service, rather than complaints only. The concept is one whereby you open the app, you select the store, and you submit (no message is needed) a request for company to contact you. Have you heard of the "UnHappy" initiative in India? <http://bit.ly/e7LYmg>

4\. How do we make money? Advertisements are not needed. We can monetize by: 4.a. Charging companies to integrate with their existing CRM or Social_CRM systems. We have a one user, very rough portal for free access. 4.b. Providing "Voice of Customer" analytics <http://bit.ly/iFN7Le> 4.c. White-label and license - Your companies customer service app

I agree, we need to kill MyBankSux. 100%

Given the information above, should we kill the concept?

Thanks, Scott!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Additional (Business) Details on Flippa: <http://bit.ly/mSx5WT>

BTW -- We don't expect anyone to bid. We use Flippa to market our business concepts, and get feedback.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any critiques are welcomed :) <https://www.MyBankSux.com>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <https://www.MyBankSux.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> Kill it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We agree - the domain SUX!!! Please see the follow-up here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2553050>, and if you have a moment, please let us know your thoughts.

Many Thanks!</comment></comment>


English study companion that captures the word pointed to by the reader - <AUTHOR> https://lightenai.cn/ <comment><AUTHOR> video of apparatus in action [0]

[0] [https://streamable.com/7j95b](https://streamable.com/7j95b)</comment>


Picamatic - Upload images in one click - <AUTHOR> http://www.picamatic.com/

<comment><USER2> Dunno if you made this, but if so, cool. One thing, though: JPEG's with EXIF data specifying that they need rotation shouldn't be displayed as they come out in the file. Lots of sideways pictures...</comment>


Final releases of Kohana / Beginning of Ohanzee - <AUTHOR> http://forum.kohanaframework.org/discussion/12509/final-releases-of-kohana-beginning-of-ohanzee

<comment><USER2> Gah! This was my go to PHP MVC framework (ie. I used it for 3 projects). Sad to see it end.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have used Kohana a few years ago, but now I moved on to Laravel.

it's true that it has fallen behind, we'll see if Ohanzee will do something interesting. But there are so many PHP frameworks, and so few that are successful.</comment>


Blue Bottle Coffee Gets Caffeinated With $25.75 Million in Funding - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/01/29/blue-bottle-coffee-gets-caffeinated-with-25-75-million-in-funding-from-internet-stars-and-morgan-stanley/ <comment><USER2> I can't stand this kind of thing. Why? Because artisanal at scale is no longer artisanal.

Not in food and beverages, anyway. Sure fancy electronics are made at scale and we consider some of them to be best of breed.

But in food and beverages, best of breed is never, can never, should never be at scale.

Thus this just means another chain of coffee. Great. Even if it's an improvement on existing chains: it's bad for independent artisanals (just like Blue Bottle was) everywhere it goes. Which is bad for all of us.

I guess I just don't like "selling" the uniquely artisanal concept when it's no longer uniquely artisanal. It feels hollow and deceptive.

<comment><USER3> I guess I just don't understand this mindset. I prefer food that tastes good, and don't really care whether 10 or 1,000,000 other people are able to enjoy it as well. Doesn't hurt me if they can reproduce it on a mass scale.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, this "not wanting to share" mindset of hipsters is probably the most repulsive thing about them to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Blue Bottle's secret to success is great PR and a lighter roast than most of their competitors which results in a milder, sweeter cup of coffee. Otherwise they buy their green coffee from the same sources and use the same equipment and techniques (however they were an early cold brew adopter). And I think their service is subpar - slow and not particularly friendly - but people put up with it.

$26 million seems like a lot but perhaps this is enough to build a brand/business around. Both Starbucks and Peets had similar origins and are now worth $55 billion and $1 billion, respectively. And it always helps when your product is addictive.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm trying to figure out why a VC, who has a very high cost of equity, invests in this type of business rather than the more "traditional" PE growth fund... or if revenue/cash flow growth is so high... why not go the debt financing route.

Anybody has any insight?

<comment><USER7> from TFA:

(For more, here is a blog post on the whole shebang by True Venture's Tony Conrad — who is, IMHO, the coffee hipster poster boy — in which he notes loftily: "What we saw and why we got involved is that James and his team are part of a handful of people who are founding a movement around coffee … We believe Blue Bottle Coffee is at the forefront of a 'consumer movement' or mega-trend in which consumers are moving to higher quality, artisanal micro- roasters of coffee, where quality, attention to detail, beauty and a distinctive experience are being sought over more mainstream alternatives." Viva la siphon, apparently!)

<comment><USER8> _" We believe Blue Bottle Coffee is at the forefront of a 'consumer movement' or mega-trend in which consumers are moving to higher quality, artisanal micro-roasters of coffee, where quality, attention to detail, beauty and a distinctive experience are being sought over more mainstream alternatives."_

Yeah, maybe on Market Street, Tony. The majority of the country (and the world) isn't going to pay $6 for a cup of coffee. That's reality.

Seems like a purely hype driven VC play to invest in BB. They make a great product, yes, but the SF micro-niche coffee clientele will have a very tough time scaling to profit in a country where Dunkin Donuts is considered great coffee - and Starbucks.

Also, not sure why BB would raise this cash from VC vs. debt financing. Whole thing is hilarious.

<comment><USER7> Because Blue Bottle Coffee is going to try to get acquired by a Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks that wants to operate these higher margin stores in affluent areas. They aren't trying to scale up to "the majority of the country". The VCs will make their money back when the acquisition happens.

<comment><USER9> This is the first thing I've read in this thread that explains the VC involvement in a way that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Blue Bottle does seem to be a great company. I have (and have had) may friends who have worked there over the years. It isn't quite clear to me how they're going to bring in VC-needed returns on this kind of investment.

Anyone else care to comment? It just doesn't intuitively make sense to me.

<comment><USER11> My gut reaction is that if you could get in early enough on the next Starbucks it could return a large enough payoff to be worth the risk.

<comment><USER12> With a bunch of big investors they certainly have enough hype to give it a shot.

<comment><USER11> Also what % return are mutual fund and mutual fund-like investors looking for over the next decade? If 5-year average is (5-25)% loosely then you're either looking at an investment that blows that return out of the water, or doesn't really impact your overall fund at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember reading something a while ago that there aren't actually enough coffee beans produced of a high enough quality to produce Starbucks-level quantity at current Blue Bottle-level quality. I'm curious whether this is the problem Blue Bottle intends to solve, or if they plan to be "Yet Another Starbucks".

<comment><USER14> I don't know too much about raw coffee quality, but what I do know is that roasted coffee goes stale very quickly. If you freeze it you can preserve some flavor for a time, but generally the best thing is to grind directly before brewing and finish the beans within a week or two of roasting.

The reason starbucks is bad is because they let their coffee sit around for months in the supply chain, and they over-roast in order to compensate for the lost flavor as well as the tremendous amount of cream and sugar they put in every drink.

Again, I don't know how much good quality beans there are out there or even how you grade raw beans, but I suspect that average quality beans if roasted locally and brewed quickly (which was sort of the hallmark of Blue Bottle if I recall) will be an order of magnitude better than Starbucks right off the bat. If they organize their logistics around that I think they can scale a much better quality coffee than Starbucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "... part of a handful of people who are founding a movement around coffee … We believe Blue Bottle Coffee is at the forefront of a 'consumer movement' or mega-trend in which consumers are moving to higher quality, artisanal micro- roasters of coffee"

Mega-Trend? I'm assuming their exit is via Starbucks

<comment><USER6> I think an offline retail business like this one is a perfect LBO candidate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm very interested in seeing how they can scale their training when opening new cafes. It's some of the best coffee I've had in SF/NYC.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well, good for them, but I hope it doesn't ruin the product the same way Hershey's ruined Scharffen Berger chocolate.

</comment><comment><USER18> It'll never play in the UK. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calliphoridae](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calliphoridae)

<comment> k-mcgrady It won't play anywhere but small pockets of a few cities where people have a lot of money and want to pay crazy amounts of money for a cup of coffee. I really don't understand why people are investing so much money in this and why it needs that much investment. I see very nice coffee shops open all the time, sell perfectly fine coffee for a quarter the price and they don't need millions in investment.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I'm still learning - <AUTHOR> https://made2591.github.io/posts/doing-vs-learning <comment><USER2> Show HN is not for blog posts.</comment>


Samsung all but guarantees no one will update to Android 4.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/samsung-all-but-guarantees-no-one-will-update-to-android-4-0-20120711/ <comment><USER2> The conclusion seems like a bit of a leap, considering how many people were willing to upgrade using iTunes for previous iOS releases. People can handle downloading software to get an OS upgrade. Also, once you get the update process started, it's not like the random screens you've never seen before are going to deter you.

My main issue is I have yet to get the OSX version of Kies to work on my MBP running Snow Leopard (not sure the OS matters, but maybe it does). When I open Kies, it tells me there's an update to the software (and I agree with the article here - wtf Samsung? Put the new version on the site). Now this update will download, then ask me for my password, but after that it just hangs. It takes up 100% of the CPU and does nothing. Canceling causes Kies to restart, but no indication that the update actually took place. Then plugging my phone in it says my phone cannot be upgraded. Now I'm stuck waiting until I have access to a Windows machine to try my luck there.

If AT&T doesn't want to give mobile bandwidth away for OS updates, they should have Samsung change AT&T branded devices to only allow OTA on WiFi.

<comment><USER3> I second this. I noticed my MBA running hot and I figured it was because I was photo editing. I stopped but then it continued to run with fans full speed ahead. I looked at Activity Monitor and saw KiesOverWifiAgent running at 100% CPU. Uninstalled...

Hardware manufacturers are the WORST software makers.

<comment><USER4> _Hardware manufacturers are the WORST software makers._

Except for Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Overly dramatic title. AT&T sent me a text message when my 2.2 phone had a 2.3 update available. The instructions were clear with screenshots of every step, so the only thing needed is about 30 minutes of one's time.

<comment><USER6> 30 minutes too many for most cell phone owners

<comment><USER5> Meaning they wouldn't update even if it were OTA?

<comment><USER6> If it's a single button press, people like me would start it before going to sleep or something. I'm not sure how many people are like me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We need to do this differently: we need a _very visible_ way to show the user of a particular phone how many unpatched _security_ holes there are.

This should (hopefully) lead to demand for newer versions of Android to be released everywhere (or at least backported patches).

</comment><comment><USER8> That title is really confusing. Samsung is not guaranteeing no one will update to Android 4.0?

<comment><USER9> I think he means most people won't know how to update from Kies or something, and that OTA updates would've been preferred.

<comment><USER10> I guess I can understand the bit about not wanting to pay for data overages when downloading over 3G/4G. But why not offer a wifi option instead of forcing the use of bloatware?

<comment><USER11> There's an even easier solution: AT&T serves the updates from within their network (during off-peak hours), and doesn't charge the user for it. The occasional extra 100MB per user seems like a small price to pay to keep the phones updated, especially if said updates come with better network handling (easing AT&T's burden) or patching up security holes.

<comment><USER10> I assume AT&T sees even a small price being too much. Better to inconvenience the users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article seems to be a bit of a moan. Is it really so bad that some people will have to download and install some software to update their Android phone? Won't someone think of the WP7 users?

I appreciate that the software may suck, but here's the thing: If you install it, update the droid and uninstall it cleanly you should be fine.

Protip: Do it from a VM if you can, then roll back/blat the VM.

</comment><comment><USER13> Are major version iOS updates done Over The Air, or do they require connecting to iTunes? Does AT&T give the bandwidth for free?

I suspect the real reason is that it is harder to reflash an OS from inside, and a higher risk of getting stuck in some bad state. Not impossible of course, just not as simple as reflashing from outside.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure if you can do it over the telco network (you probably can), but you can certainly upgrade over Wifi since iOS 5.

The procedure used on at least some products was to download the new version alongside the existing software, verify it, configure it all and then set it to be the boot version only when the install is done - then it can reboot. Until that point it will still boot the original version. You could even have a 'boot this next time only' mode and then at the conclusion of a successful boot it would set it to be the default and in the event of failure would go back to the previous version.

There probably are bad cases if the power is lost at the very end but the window is quite small and you are probably safer with the phone having its own battery (don't start installing unless there is enough charge) than you are with products like TVs. I know at least one TV manufacturer used such an approach and it seems a reasonable approach for reduced risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't it possible to deliver a notification OTA but require WiFi to download it?</comment>


Ask HN: What are the top ten hundred words used on HN and SO? - <AUTHOR> I'm editing some developer docs for an international audience and, as an exercise, want to try translating them into the top ten hundred words in the style of xkcd. However, translating concepts such as API or POST actually obfuscates them for a technical audience that is less familiar with English. What I want is to translate into the top ten hundred words of Dev-English.<p>Aside from running a web-scraper, is there a way to get the dataset of words used here and on StackOverflow? <comment><USER2> start here:

[https://blog.stackoverflow.com/tags/cc-wiki- dump/](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/tags/cc-wiki-dump/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10440502](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10440502)</comment>


Show HN: Catch'Em All – frameworkless app from JSON to PWA - <AUTHOR> https://ac-catchemall.com <comment><USER2> What does the button with the picture of the classical building do? I didn't notice any effect when I trapped it.

<comment><USER3> It seems to hide / reveal the being(s) you clicked on. Otherwise, I have no idea what this is doing or is for.

Edited to add: Maybe it means "library"? as in you can see the library of all the creatures?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How would you define 'frameworkless'? Not using React or Vue or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, thats it, it has been built generating an html from the scrapped data and then giving it interactivity with good old vanilla js</comment></comment>


How I Built a Working Online Poker Bot, Part 6 - <AUTHOR> http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-online-poker-bot-6

<comment><USER2> Writing strace for Windows.

This series is more interesting for the information and method on subverting what you might thing is a secure system than for the poker part of it. Using poker as the backdrop is a good way to drum up interest though.</comment>


Pac-Man in Google Maps - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.4183997,18z/data=!1e3

<comment><USER2> Does the 'before noon' rule not apply worldwide?</comment>