Ask HN: High paid job with low accountability? - <AUTHOR> This question is a bit toungue in cheek, but I am wondering if it is possible to shape a career towards the title goal.
I am pretty successful in my current work life - Under 25 with a 100k ish total compensation. I've always pushed myself, but lately I just feel lazy.
I've heard stories of boring positions in big companies where you don't have to do much of anything, you don't learn anything, and you don't advance, but you can collect high salaries if you get the position and there's not a lot of work expectations.
Is there a way to reliably get a job with a decent salary, but one can coast along doing very little from 9-5? <comment><USER2> It's probably a gamble. I'd imagine that these positions are at a company that's doing reasonably well, and hasn't had to make cuts anywhere. From what I've read, Yahoo had lots of these positions pre-Marissa Mayers--the company was just coasting along, not really having to change anything, but when she came in with energy & force, these kinds of people were the first to go.

I'd say this is a terrible thing to aspire to: you'll dread work. It'll be a matter of how many hours a day you're going to play tetris, and you'll end up just trying to pass the time. Passing 40 hours a week is tough to do when you're not really free. And heaven forbid the company blocks your ESPN/Fark/Deadspin/whatever you're reading. The stories you hear about these boring jobs--do the people who have them love them? I've never heard of someone with minimal responsibility actually _enjoying_ their job. Sure, everyone loves an easy week now and again, but after that, a boring job really drags.

Boring jobs will eat your brain. There is no fulfillment, no pride in your work, etc. And ultimately, you'll probably end up weeded out, unless you're "lucky" enough to stay hidden in the folds of the company long enough to retire.

And what happens if/when the company hits a rough patch and realizes they can remove you? Your marketability is at a minimum: you're making a lot of money, have no new skills and are on the same job market as people who have actually worked.

Best thing to do would be to find a way to make money at something you enjoy. You don't have to make a lot of money, but enough to coast with minimal expenses. Do you really want to spend your life doing nothing, accomplishing nothing and with nothing to show for your years? It doesn't have to be anything in particular, but spending 40 hours a week doing nothing for a career is a gigantic waste of time, resources and energy.

<comment><USER3> Regarding Yahoo, post Marissa, these positions still absolutely exist and are mostly in middle management. Most of 'deadwood' elimination has been amongst engineers because guess what, the career bureaucrats are exactly the ones who end up deciding who are the people not 'adding value' to the company. The core of Yahoo is still rotten. Its just that a new layer of paint has been slapped on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> By and large I have concluded that except in extraordinary situations that job doesn't exist. Sure a lot of people will look at job from the outside, not knowing what it entails, and make statements/generalizations about it requiring no work to pull down some big salary, but having been on both sides of that window my experience was that it was an illusion.

That said, at an abundant salary and a young age, you can go the mr money moustache route. Save your way into an early retirement. That is probably the easiest thing to do, then any money you make from working is just 'bonus' and you can take jobs that pay less, don't challenge you much, and are perhaps less stressful. I expect you will get bored though.

The situations where you can get a sinecure (the name for the job type your looking for) is when you are in a relationship with the ownership and simply your presence is valuable enough to justify your salary. Some very large names in a field for example can get by with just having their name on the employee list as their 'value' to the company. You can also find spots in companies which are actually covers for a differently funded activity. An acquaintance of mine worked at a restaurant which was used to launder cash from some criminal group. There wasn't a lot of business so they didn't have to do a lot of work, but they got paid anyway. Granted it was at a much much lower wage but I expect there are larger companies with similar alternate agendas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like step 1 is to become a thought leader in a field respected by all, and then parley that respect into a cushy job at a big company. Sounds ideal once one gets there!

Probably the best way is to look a list of sinecure's (thanks for the word, by the way!) and work backwards from their work history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think if I were you (25, statistically likely to be single), I would live in the cheapest accommodations I could stand and use the mostly-excess portion of that 100k to buy rental homes in cash. Do that for a number of years, and it won't be long before you have passive income and you can make your 100k and work at whatever thing makes you most happy.

If you don't like real estate, then pick something else: save a bit longer and buy a pizza franchise. Save for a few centuries and buy a football franchise. Buy some other kind of small business. Learn an investment strategy that makes you a few percentage points annually.

> Is there a way to get a ...decent salary...doing very little from 9-5?

This is generally called _passive income_ , and you don't get this on someone else's payroll. You have to get there on your own.

<comment><USER6> This is a workable plan, but as a note, I had a friend in this exact situation do this exact thing (except with 4-plex apartments instead of houses). He burned out pretty quick. Dealing with tenants can take a lot out of you, especially if you try to leverage yourself by buying properties in the bad parts of town.

<comment><USER5> My answer to that would be either (a) be more selective with the tenants and (b) consider hiring a management company after the first few properties. They take a bite of of the profit, but it might be worth it in the long run.

<comment><USER7> As a landlord:

A) is rather hard, profiles and credit reports don't tell the full story and lots of odd things happen during a lease.

B) makes sense when you have >2 units to lease (SFR, flats, whatever) and at least one is cash-flow positive. And they will save your mental health.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At many medium-to-large companies, being the CTO or in the office of the CTO fits this bill. I've worked with many such people who were brilliant and/or hardworking, but I've also worked with many who just liked to fiddle with stuff and either throw it over the fence (where it inevitably had to be rewritten) or just never finish it. Generally "staff" (as opposed to "line") positions are a bit like this, because you can basically ride on one person's power/reputation and you only have to please them. A lot of "architects" also have responsibilities so vague that it's hard to say whether or not they're doing their jobs.

Mostly, though, it's less a matter of the position than of strategies you can use in any position. A perennial favorite trick seems to be working on multiple projects reporting in to bosses who never talk to one another. I've seen people perfect the trick of telling each boss that they're working on stuff for the other, until both essentially give up. At a company where reorgs are frequent so that many people nominally report to managers who have no oversight of their actual work, you can even get people who literally appear nowhere on the org chart but still get paid. It sounds like a joke or a movie plot, but it's true. I've seen it. I have to admit I've been tempted to "fall between the cracks" myself, but I'm just not that kind of guy.

<comment><USER2> As a CTO, I imagine you're legally responsible for all sorts of stuff. Having your name on corporate documents and such, there is all sorts of responsibility for things!

<comment><USER8> That's likely to be more true at startups than at mid-to-large companies. There, the CTO is often further from the center of power and responsibility. It's even possible to have a CTO who is not an "officer" of the company in a legal sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Run for Congress...

No accountability, don't really have to do anything, high salary, no real job requirements except age and citizenship, not a lot of work expectations, and if you are an incumbent your re-election rates are 90% for House and 91% for Senators.

Perfect fit.

<comment><USER10> On the contrary congressmen are incredibly busy people. Something like 60-70% of their time is campaigning and raising money for the next election. If you aren't raising money for your election, you're raising money for your party. See: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time- congressi...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time- congressional-fundraising_n_2427291.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Get a job programming at a medium-large .NET or Java shop that moves slow (the more dated their stack, the better!)

</comment><comment><USER12> You have a problem and it's not your job, it's your laziness. you are 25, you can't coast through the rest of your life being lazy. If you try, at some point you will fall, and when you fall, you will fall hard. Your problem should be to find a way to motivate yourself to work even harder and earn even more.

<comment><USER13> I agree that a sinecure is probably not the best long-term strategy, but "work even harder and earn even more" doesn't sound any better.

There's simply no guarantee that working an extra 10 hours per week, for example, will gain you enough extra cash to make up for the activities which might have been more meaningful to your life (such as spending time with a significant other, pursuing a hobby etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Basically any middle management position in a large enough company.

<comment><USER15> That's accountability by definition. Your ass will be on the firing line for every decision that doesn't work out, whether done by those below you or above you doesn't matter.

You're labelled mr. or mrs. Expendable.

<comment><USER16> That has not been the case everywhere I have worked. Also not anywhere I have been as an outside contractor. Perhaps it's the industry.

Anyway, all I've seen is a bunch of "Cover Your Ass" and reluctance to make decisions by middle management. I think OP would love such a position. Very little "work," just a bunch of delegating and meetings to review progress. Be ready to embrace a life of looking at Excel spreadsheets.

Middle Management is high enough that you can blame an underling when things go sour, yet high enough that you can command pay for your "value" of managing people.

<comment><AUTHOR> This does sound the best so far :)

<comment><USER17> Where I work, all the middle management (one exception, he was hired from the outside) was promoted from within due to high quality work and desire to manage.

At a prior job it was half and half. Half were promoted because of stellar prior work and half were promoted to remove their incompetent from harming the organization. I worked for both kinds at that organization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I will tell you about my story. I am not at 100k but at equivalent given the quantity of free benefits I get in the country I am working in.

I am currently on a job I have taken for Visa and quick Money (mostly visa though). Six months later I had milked all the experience I could get out the tech and people I am working with.

Basically I went from a high accountability role in a startup in Europe where as a Junior coder I was entrusted with big services and decisions (technical decisions) that could undo the company if I messed it up. And now I am doing fairly PAR level corporate internal services in JP company, using "good old" stacks of technologies where the most cutting edge aspect is that we use the latest version of PostgreSQL. I am basically doing undergrad DB 101 data modelling within a team that do not care about the technical quality of its product.

Everyday I dread the boredom I feel at work. And If I didn't commute with my wife (she is the high of my days) every morning I would have probably become a statistic during the rainy season.

On a bright note: I have already found the next thing that looks really interesting, new and well compensated. I am currently shaking off that funk the projects I have been working on have put me in.

It was difficult keeping morale up, I must say that I was on the fringe of depression. I felt exhausted even though all the work my managers could put on me was done, tested and pushed to production before most people were in the office (again: used to start-up pace here), and then you guys (HN) enter my day (at 9 flipping 30 AM) ... I have never been so well informed in my whole life.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm in a position like that right now. And it is driving me crazy. Sure the pay is good. And the responsibilities are well-defined and reliable.

But the challenge and enjoyment is not there. I find myself working like crazy after hours to carve out a new career while still maintaining the income of the day job.

The balance between stressed-out and challenged can be hard to strike. But I know that for me I need to be challenged to be enjoying my work life.

<comment><USER15> Not only that, the hours will simply drag by in a job like that. Days will seem endless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Our sales VP once called this - dig yourself a hole and sit there for 10 years.

If by 'low accountability' you mean - don't do much work - it definitely exists and is all over corp IT shops. I would separate out the technical positions from the management positions.

A manager usually doesn't do much real work, they have a team to do the work, but does often bear the responsibility to higher up mgmt, and will get canned when things go bad.

A dev works very hard, but once you become an expert after years of specialization in say a particular language for framework, you can coast because it takes you 30 minutes what a junior person may struggle with all day.

I've met all kinds of devs who are very sharp, they make over 100k and they don't "work hard" at all.

</comment><comment><USER21> Any enterprise company that's all aboard the .NET and Team Foundation Server train. With the daily scrums, sprint planning, and interruptions from the stakeholders, taking a full work week to create one table in Oracle/SQL Server is par for the course.

</comment><comment><USER22> A company that makes use of tech but is not a tech company. The problem is finding one that treats its employees well... basically I found myself in the position you describe. I stuck around for years but ultimately decided it was not good for my career long-term. On the other hand, I was pulling right around $100k, working from home, realistically putting in 2-3 hour days most days. I went entire weeks without doing any actual work beside sending a couple emails, if that. But it didn't feel cool, like I was getting one over. It made me feel like shit.

If you find something like this you absolutely must supplement it with lots of self-directed learning or you'll stagnate and be totally stuck.

</comment><comment><USER23> Join Wells Fargo. We have a lot of people like that. Plus you can work remotely!

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! I know this is said sarcastically but I will keep WF as an example of a Big Corp where it might be possible.

<comment><USER23> I was being 100% serious. It's unfortunate for those of us that work hard and want to get things done, but there is very little accountability once you're in the door.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I believe everyone has their "department they don't like" and where you ask yourself: what do they do all day?

For me, it's Governance. The governance departments of big companies do not produce a product the company sells (maybe it can be argued that they take a role in producing the image of the company, though). If they don't do their job properly and other departments of the company do not comply with whatever they are governing, they can always blame that department. And their jobs are well paid as their role is seen as important from a higher management position.

</comment><comment><USER25> Best answer IMO is JonFish85's. You really don't want to do that. But if you want to trash yourself, who are we to prevent it? It's not the job or the company in particular, it's the circumstances. Some ideas:

Look for a big company. Easier to hide in them.

Find a place with internal fights. Same reasoning.

No external competition is a plus.

A lazy boss is a treasure. A very busy one is a close second.

Never be just under "the line" (between managemente and technical).

Have reports. Make them do everything you should.

</comment><comment><USER26> Advice.

If you are one of 3 trusted advisers who have a 1-in-3 chance of providing critical business advice for a multi-billion-dollar company? You're worth every penny even if your batting average sucks.

The trick is to get into that position. You usually get there by making lots of real-world decisions for yourself for your own multi-billion-dollar company. But -- I'm sure there are other ways.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER27> Line coder at a huge company (such as Oracle). You can't make many major changes without going through bureaucracy, and you don't have the leverage to even begin to navigate the bureaucracy. Do what you're told, and reap the benefits of decent monetary compensation and golden health/retirement benefits (AKA really good 401k matching).

<comment><USER28> Have you worked at Oracle, or just bashing them for fun because they're a large successful company?

<comment><USER27> Yes, I have. And I'm not bashing them with this post, I'm just answering the OP's question. I know of a few people who are taking advantage of these traits right now, and they love it there.

As for the bureaucracy comment - it's real. If you're in dev and need a server, your request will end up going through Larry Page's office. When the CEO's office needs to be involved in cross-departmental requests, that's the very definition of red tape.

<comment><USER28> Cool. I've never worked there, but I appreciate that your comment came from personal experience.

Also, Oracle sounds _super_ bureaucratic if you actually need approvals from the Google CEO! ;-)

<comment><USER27> Whoops. Larry Ellison. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Government/Military contractors are a great place to start looking, particularly where there is a lot of legacy technology.

</comment><comment><USER30> Most people I know who are in this situation are

1) Old

2) Have tons of experience and worked hard earlier in their life

3) Have lots of connections that prevent them from being fired

I'm sure there are employees at large companies who collect 6-7 figure salaries and do little to nothing on a day-to-day basis. However, they can only do this because of their past merit and connections.

</comment><comment><USER31> Probably anything government tech related.

<comment><USER32> government pay is terrible (for us software types)

government contracts are another story...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Reminds me of the "forgotten" employee. A lengthy but a very interested read:

[https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/](https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Off topic, but now have you secured a 100k job at 25?

</comment><comment><USER35> Supporting legacy products in a large company.

<comment><USER36> That sounds like anything but coasting...

<comment><USER35> Its obviously something that varies from job to job, company to company. But in my experience, these are by far the cushiest of jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty dangerous. Another poster mentioned Yahoo pre-Mayers. Generally, positions like what you describe are either politically protected: a manager with a large number of reports has more "importance" than a manager with few, so some managers try to inflate their staff, or, the position has just slipped through the cracks as times change around it.

The problem comes when you've been in that position for 10 years, doing little to no significant work, not building or honing any skills, and suddenly a new management comes in and cleans house, and you're gone. Now what?

I work for the government and we have a lot of folks like what you describe, but with less income. As long as they show up for work and answer a few emails, mostly, they can get by. This works, I guess, if you're just a few years from retiring. But we do sometimes get aggressive politicians in office who promise to "cut the fat", and we have had cuts and layoffs in the past. So imagine yourself, at 25, you take a position and intentionally don't learn, don't advance, and just do the minimum to collect the salary.

10 years later, you're 35 and still working with Java 6 on some legacy system that needs 2 hours a week of maintenance. That's your whole job. Suddenly, some political upheaval happens and a bunch of folks, including you, are laid off.

Can you get back in the game? Of course. Would it be a lot easier to get back in if you took that time to keep your skills at least somewhat up to date?

That said, I'm very sympathetic. I'm a computer programmer because I've always been good at it. When I was a kid, and in high school, and so on. That's the only skill I learned. But I don't like computers. New frameworks don't excite me, they make me feel tired. When I go home, I don't want to play with the newest technology or even gadget. I dream of getting out of computing all together, but, nothing else would bring the salary combined with the light workload. It's a "bronze handcuffs" situation (I say bronze, because, as a government worker, my salary is too low to qualify for anything else). I had a job for a while teaching remedial basic math to adults, which was pretty neat, but it was part-time, no-benefits, low wage. That's the kind of thing that is fulfilling, but doesn't pay the mortgage.

Even so, I read HN. I sometimes do make time to try new ideas, even small ones. I'm not using node.js or angular, but, at least I've heard of them and know what they are. Don't become the guy that hasn't heard of them [where them refers to whatever is fresh] and doesn't know what they are... Or I worry you'll find yourself in a very difficult spot in a few years.

</comment><comment><USER37> Yes it's possible, the guy next to me makes 80K and does next to nothing.

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting, are you employed or self-employed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Employed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Marketing.

<comment><USER40> As a senior marketer who was up last night till after midnight analyzing view- through attribution data for our display efforts, I really resent that.

You may not clearly understand what goes into marketing, but just as there are good and bad people in any field, a good marketer actually does quite a bit of work. In most cases, marketing is one of the most visibly measurable functions in a company and unless the company is growing itself because it is a one-in- a-million hit, marketers have their hands full and rarely have enough resources.

Drop the stigma against marketing already--it's getting pretty old.

<comment><USER39> If you are performing your own data analysis, then you are beyond the typical (common?) role. "Marketing intelligence" / "Market analyst" / someone who works with data is unfortunately atypical in many businesses, where marketing does not utilize a skillset that takes time to develop.

I have the current good fortune to work with some people who I would describe as you have above. But my experience has unfortunately more often been with those who took a "quick path" through education and experience to get a front- line, visible, and reasonably well compensated role.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Government. More specifically, get contracted by the State Department in Wash DC. No lies when I say, very low accountability and lots of pay.

Think 86$ an hour when jobs that are supposed to take you 2 days to do are setup for 2 weeks of work. So lots of doing nothing.

Speaking from experience. Its a lazy persons wet dream.

</comment><comment><USER15> Bankrobber?

You're not just asking for a high paid job with low accountability, you're also asking for a place where you don't have to learn (so a stagnant field) without advancement that's an area of the cube that is totally empty as far as I know.

I suggest you get off your ass for the next 10 years, save like mad and then retire from your savings at as low an expense level that you can get away with.

<comment><USER42> Bankrobber : high risk, high accountability.

Investment Banker, on the other hand...

<comment><USER43> I think he meant 9AM - 5PM for hours, not 9AM - 5AM.</comment></comment></comment>


Tor users are selected and monitored by the NSA as extremists - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2FXKeyscore-Quellcode-Tor-Nutzer-werden-von-der-NSA-als-Extremisten-markiert-und-ueberwacht-2248328.html&edit-text= <comment><USER3> I'm not sure why people seem surprised by this.

Any sufficiently (i.e. correctly) encrypted content/traffic should be indiscernible from any other of the same scale. While there are ways to infer what sort of traffic is being carried from certain packed inspection and statistical techniques (a bulk HTTP transfer will look different to a peer-to- peer one and both will look very different to an interactive SSH session, and so on) you can't do that for the content.

There are five groups using Tor and similar by my understanding (in no particular order): criminals (including terrorists, people trafficers, illegal drug industry people, and so forth), the oppressed and freedom fighters (depending on your point of view a lot of people in this category might belong in the first one instead and vice-versa), the paranoid who think the whole world is out to get them, those wanting to protect all their content+comms whether secret or not out of principal, and those who are simply experimenting with it (out of "random" interest, academic interest, or because they work in a relevant/related field).

The proportion of nefarious types (relative to the total user-base) routinely using Tor is going to be significantly higher then the proportion of such who are not, so the authorities are naturally going to look to Tor for that reason. They are not saying that they think everyone using Tor is a terrorist, they are saying some are but we can't tell who so we are going to check everyone.

The only way this will change is if everything is thusly protected, so there will be no difference between the diversity of Tor users and the diversity of the overall population.

<comment><USER4> _> I'm not sure why people seem surprised by this._

Not to get too meta, but this 'lack of surprise' thing has become a too-common reaction. I mean, objectively, what's more important - that the NSA is labeling Tor users as extremists, or whether or not you found this new information 'surprising'? Apart from being a distasteful brag, I don't think the assumption is correct. I'd imagine most people's response to be 'anger' or 'depression' or 'concern', although of course it's impossible to know for sure.

But what I really object to, and why I hope people stop using this language, is that it asserts that our collective reaction (however it is characterized) is more important than the story itself. In a very subtle way, it refocuses the argument and lets the NSA off the hook, and indeed, blames us for our having silly, outdated ideas like that our government might value and even protect our right to anonymous speech, rather than criminalize it.

As for the rest, it's possibly true that ubiquity is the only way forward.

<comment><USER5> >> our right to anonymous speech

You lost me here. Privacy, yes, anonymity? Where is that in the Constitution (assuming you're a USA-ian).

<comment><USER6> The right to anonymous speech is can be considered (and is by many) an implication of first amendment rights to free speech. One way to look at it is that the requirement that a person be identified before being allowed to speak is itself a limitation on speech.

I'm too lazy to do my own citations, but the courts have repeatedly struck down bans on anonymous speech on these grounds.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Trying to human-translate the first part of the article:

XKeyscore-Sourcecode: Tor-Users are marked and surveilled as extremists

According to an analysis of the XKeyscore sourcecode by German public broadcasters ARD and WDR, people showing an interest in anonymization on the web by, for example, googling for "Tails" or "Tor" will be added as extremists to an NSA database and monitored from thereon.

That's at least the gist of it. I'm pretty sure you'll get more background once the anglosphere awakens.

<comment><USER7> It's difficult to believe that this is all it takes (or if it is, why they aren't just including everyone).

Tails is hardly an uncommon word, with a meaning entire devoid of any terrorist connection.

And so is Tor - it may not be that common elsewhere, but tor means "rock on top of a hill" and various places have it in their name. I've stayed the High Tor hotel in Derbyshire before, and as it was to see a fireworks festival they may have spotted various picture of explosions that I posted - I wonder if that set any triggers off.

<comment><USER8> It's a pretty basic and obvious problem with keyword searching and data reduction that will have been solved a _long_ time ago. A very simplistic model would have words like 'Tor' and 'Tails' increment an 'interestingness' counter, along with other terms like 'Bomb', 'Jihad' and so on. Once the counter passes a threshold, you look at the messages. As I said, this is basic stuff, there are much better and smarter ways to do this. In fact, there are entire large companies that exist to write software that carries out searching of data by keyword; Google springs to mind!

Do all these people writing 'I searched for Glastonbury Tor, now I'm on a terrorist watch-list, stupid NSA, Hah!' really believe that they system works like that?

<comment><USER9> > Do all these people writing 'I searched for Glastonbury Tor, now I'm on a > terrorist watch-list, stupid NSA, Hah!' really believe that they system > works like that?

It gets better, they believe NSA is devilishly competent when it serves their argument that NSA is simply out to oppress the populace, but then simultaneously believe NSA is so foolish as to waste a bunch of time tracking non-threats who happen to trip over enough keywords.

Double-think: It's not just for the Party leadership.

<comment><USER7> Not seen many people on the "NSA are evil" side arguing that they are devilishly competent.

<comment><USER9> You should pay more attention then, since that's the argument used for why NSA in particular is a threat and not allied foreign intelligence agencies like BND. Seriously, I've had someone tell me that BND is no threat because they're derived from an ineffective West German intelligence agency instead of the very good East German equivalent.

If NSA were incompetent they'd be a sideshow and no threat at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> NSA policies are simply insane and/or lazily thought out. I mean we even learned a while ago that _not using Facebook_ makes you "suspicious" \- Seriously? Or maybe watching a certain type of Youtube videos.

My point is I wouldn't single out just Tor here. They probably have dozens of other such idiotic policies that lead to abuses and putting people on "lists" that then they can take revenge on, such as through adding them to no-fly lists and so on, with very little to no recourse for the people affected (if they even ever find out about if or why they're put there, since it all tends to be _secret_ ).

What happened to innocent until proven guilty? The NSA is simply out of control and needs to be reined in, otherwise expect abuses against people that haven't even heard of Tor.

<comment><USER11> > we even learned a while ago that not using Facebook makes you "suspicious"

I tried googling for evidence of this ("nsa not using facebook suspicious"), and this comment (posted 56 minutes ago as of my writing) is the top google hit, with others being irrelevant o_O

Do you have a link to support this? At this point I am wondering if it's safe to assume all conspiracy theories are true by default, and lack of evidence is evidence of conspiracy to cover it up...

<comment><USER12> Remove "nsa" from your query, and you'll find a long list of relevant results. There was quite a bit of coverage around the web a year or two back about this topic, but never in the context of the NSA as far as I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One possible solution to this would be for Firefox to integrate Tor with their private browsing mode. That would give the Tor network a huge spike in traffic. I have no doubt in my mind that the NSA can and probably does monitor every bit of traffic everyone sends, but the more inconvenient and muddled we make it the better.

I think we can all assume we (HN readers/posters) are on the NSA lists. Lots of us mentioned Tor and the NSA online. "He who must not be named" will show up as soon as you say his name and all that. The question is whether this puts you into actual risk. I sincerely hope not, but this shit is really getting out of hand.

<comment><USER4> _> One possible solution to this would be for Firefox to integrate Tor with their private browsing mode._

I really like this idea. The practical downside is that Tor is generally very slow.

BTW I'm not entirely sure how the NSA can justify an anti-Tor stance, when anonymous speech is clearly protected by the First Amendment. Without something like Tor, true anonymous speech on the Internet is impossible; therefore Tor, or something like it, is a necessary tool to maintain that right.

(Anonymous speech has been historically important, when people would print and distribute anonymous pamphlets about political issues. Honestly, I am concerned about criminal use of Tor too, and would be perfectly happy to have a version of Tor limited to political speech and organization.)

<comment><USER13> > BTW I'm not entirely sure how the NSA can justify an anti-Tor stance, when > anonymous speech is clearly protected by the First Amendment.

Welcome to America, where the constitution is up for interpretation by agencies who have no obligation to disclose anything to anyone. The problem with the NSA is not even that it does all these things. It's that they operate as a sort of rogue arm of the government and if anyone tries to question what they do from within the government they can choose not to answer questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Create a "Fight the NSA button" that links to a google search for Tor or Tails then post it on everything.

If they really are doing this (and considering recent events I would lean that way) that would seem like an effective irritant.

EDIT: For clarity, the button should explain what it will do, putting someone on a watch list without their consent is not a moral thing to do.

<comment><USER15> Or embed a google search within an iframe.

<comment><USER14> The button requires user action, the iframe is passive I'm not convinced getting someone put on a watchlist without them taking a specific action is a particularly moral thing to do...

For the sake of clarity I wasn't suggesting the button be put on without a clear explanation of what it did.

<comment><USER16> That's the point. A watchlist with every human, and its friends on it, is kinda useless.

<comment><USER17> > A watchlist with every human, and its friends on it, is kinda useless.

In the right circumstances, it would be very useful. Not for catching terrorists but for putting pressure on the people on the list.

"We are only monitoring her because she is on the terrorist watchlist." "She is only restricted from air travel because she is on the terrorist watchlist." "She is only denied a fair trial because she is on the terrorist watchlist." "Please cooperate with us Miss President, unless you want us to tell the press that you have been on the NSA terrorist watchlist since 2001."

Having everyone on the terrorist watchlist is very useful, when you are able to selectively choose if and when you are disclosing the fact that someone is on the list.

<comment><USER16> I don't get your point. With your use, they might as well have no list at all. It would be exactly the same as having everyone on it.

<comment><USER17> The use of the word 'everyone' isn't literal. It's possible that NSAs list of suspects would not literally include every single human being, but it could still include too many.

The Sheldon character is very funny on TV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "According to the source code will be labeled as extremists in XKeyscore users when they search the internet for anonymizing tools like Tor or Tails, thanks to the global monitoring of search queries."

Holy fuck this is disturbing.

Does someone have access to a human-translated copy or similar article?

<comment><USER19> It's based on a report by the TV station ARD. The video shows source code printouts, here are screencaps:

[http://i.imgur.com/3flJ50Y.png](http://i.imgur.com/3flJ50Y.png)

[http://i.imgur.com/NRMY6Qo.png](http://i.imgur.com/NRMY6Qo.png)

Edit: some say it's not really the XKeyscore code: [http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=ad4bdd72](http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=ad4bdd72)

<comment><USER18> "Edit: some say it's not really the XKeyscore code"

Yeah, looking at the code it definitely _involves_ TOR, but I'm really interested in the "searching for these Tools -> you're now flagged" claim+proof because that is just so wrong.

<comment><USER15> It looks like a selector for 3 known TOR directories IPs, either based on HTTP or HTTPS traffic.

<comment><USER20> They're just screenshots to make the TV show more interesting. They're obviously not showing the entire source on air.

If they claim to have the entire source code of XKeyScore and knowing that Snowden accessed so much, why should we doubt them?

<comment><USER15> True. There's also not much use of showing more source code on screen (or config files as it looks in this case)...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am obviously highly suspicious because I have not only searched for but used TOR. It is handy when you want to price compare flights. I also don't like Facebook, I wonder where I am ranked on the NSA's list of potential terrible people?

<comment><USER22> For a while I taught a security course which included information about how Tor works. I did a lot of googling around Tor and anonymity in general. I must be on a few lists by now.

<comment><USER23> You might have a record in the Hitlerian maincore database.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was talking on the phone to someone in another country (a US friendly country) and the other person mentioned Tor. The second he got to the end of the word the phone call cut out. I haven't had a phone call cut out in years except that one time.

It was most likely a complete coincidence but it would be very interesting if anyone else has ever had a similar experience.

<comment><USER25> It was not a coincidence. I created an account just to respond because I've been waiting years to have my experience... "validated".

The same exact thing has happened during phone conversations I've had except with a different word. And I first noticed it years ago but it was post-9/11\. When it happened I thought the phone call dropped by accident. I called back and picked up where I left off telling the same story. At the same word the call dropped again. I called back again and said "uhh, that was weird. Did you notice it cut off again when I said _______?" And the call dropped once more. At that point there was no plausible way it was a coincidence. The next time I called, I decided not to test it again.

I've been looking out ever since for some mention of this somewhere. Never saw one until now.

<comment><USER26> What was the word?

<comment><USER27> Obviously, it was _______

And if this one is blanked out, too, then you know I'm the newest addition to the Watchlist.

<comment><USER28> It's not blanked out for me. Clearly the NSA is interfering with your web experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is it possible that this, and the release of this information, is part of a NSA strategy for deterring people from using TOR or encryption? Internet users will now be too scared to be put on some list to even look up information about TOR or PGP.

<comment><USER30> Admittedly I'm not well versed in TOR and how secure it actually is but surely it would be more actionable for major intelligence agencies to operate a number nodes in the network and use them to attempt to track and mitm requests?

As for encryption I haven't seen much to indicate a deterrence strategy, but maybe I'm not following the media as much as I should.

<comment><USER31> Read this: [http://cryptome.org/2013/10/nsa-tor- stinks.pdf](http://cryptome.org/2013/10/nsa-tor-stinks.pdf)

"Current: access to very few nodes. Success rate negligible because all three Tor nodes in the circuit have to be in the set of nodes we have access to"

<comment><USER32> Funny how they want to investigate Evercookie persistence and use it to identify Tor users.

For those of you who doesn't know about Evercookie : [http://samy.pl/evercookie/](http://samy.pl/evercookie/) [https://github.com/samyk/evercookie](https://github.com/samyk/evercookie)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If by extremists they mean freedom extremists then that's fine with me, bring it on NSA.

<comment><USER34> Anyways, if they are trying to justify doing that by fighting with terrorists, I'd say the terrorists have already won.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world.

This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/27/-sp- privac...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/27/-sp-privacy- under-attack-nsa-files-revealed-new-threats-democracy)

</comment><comment><USER36> I have to wonder if it'd be possible to DDOS the NSA by having everyone do 'dd if=/dev/random of=supersecretstuff.txt count=1024 bs=1048576' and post large files full of random bits all over the web.

The NSA would be obligated to collect and store every damn one of those huge blobs of random bits on the off chance it'd be used later as a one-time pad, or that it's encrypted secrets that they need to investigate. It costs nothing to generate random bits, but it costs > 0 to store that data. Sooner or later they'd just run out of disk space.

<comment><USER37> No.

But finite state machines take finite amounts of time and memory to run - <USER2> even though it runs 'nearline', XKeyScore is not invulnerable to targeted resource exhaustion attacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I suppose everyone here is already on a list anyway. Everyone who leaves a criticism for the NSA. Everyone who up votes this conversation and other similar ones. Everyone who contributes to OSS Privacy. Everyone who misspells Thor. How useful can this really be when there's so much noise?

</comment><comment><USER39> What if we had a system where there was a constant stream of random bytes coming to/from every IP address out there... and when you wanted to send actual information, you always sent it encrypted ... then everyone would be an extremist and encryptors would no longer stand out.

<comment><USER8> Yes, this would defeat traffic analysis, but it only works if everyone is using the same shared channel, or if each user maintains a channel with every other user they might ever wish to communicate with. Every user must also check each packet to see if it is encrypted with their public key (requiring an extensive PKI) and is a valid message for them, which is expensive. The bandwidth required is also enormous for anything other than a very limited number of participants.

Sure, Tor achieves some of these goals, and if everyone used Tor all of the time then it would make the NSAs job much more difficult, but it isn't ever going to happen, for obvious operational and practical reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Uh — someone has the XKeyscore sourcecode? How'd they get their hands on that? Is this verified?

<comment><USER41> That's what I'm still trying to figure out. How do we know if it's even real?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> So would this XKeyscore thing know what you're searching for if you're not logged into your Google account and you're behind SSL? Would that imply they have private keys to Google SSL certificates?

<comment><USER43> Yes, they probably can. One of the early NSA leaks showed that the NSA had compromised the private networks of many large tech companies. It would be safe to assume this gave them access to tons of unencrypted data about users and behavior. The NSA is using a graph database to store all sorts of data and then joining data across domains to get a fairly complete picture of your digital life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Well, I guess that the FBI is full of extremists. They use Tor to stay anonymous just like everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER45> i'd say monitoring every single communication going in and out of your country and storing it is pretty extreme don't you think? I can't imagine any tor users really give a damn what the nsa think about them. The NSA are clinically insane

</comment><comment><USER46> Lol what about Tor developers?

<comment><USER47> They're already on the list of boat-rockers to harass at airports.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum#Detention_and_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum#Detention_and_investigation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> German is difficult. German run through google translate, even more so.

</comment><comment><USER41> Pure unadulterated sensationalism. The NSA scandal is a moneymaker. No surprise that it's coming out of German media after the leaks about Merkel.

It is in the US government's interest for Tor to thrive, it even uses Tor.

<comment> why-el There are factual statements in the article that you could respond to. That's how a constructive comment should be.

<comment><USER41> What factual statements? It's vague and ambiguous. XKEYSCORE is also not just a computer program. This is not real source code of XKEYSCORE as you wouldn't hard code Tor or any targeting vectors in to the source. It's not how the NSA operates as we've already seen. This is the biggest giveaway that the source code they're showing is fake.

Are we to accept any article about the NSA without question?

<comment><USER49> > This is not real source code of XKEYSCORE as you wouldn't hard code Tor or > any targeting vectors in to the source.

The article mentions both source code and _configuration files_.

<comment><USER41> And how do you know this source code and config files are the real deal? Even so, the NSA creates programs that take user input for targeting vectors. Past leaks have shown this. I believe XKEYSCORE was one of these kinds of programs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


We lost a customer. This is how we found out - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ramen.is/design/we-lost-a-customer-this-is-how-we-found-out/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty common on a lot of recent startup landing pages. Great looking design, nice little touches like animation - but very little detail on how the product actually works. The assumption is that someone curious is going to sign up to find out. Lots of people won't do this and will just bounce. I think every landing page should try to answer these questions:

      What is your product?
      Why would I use your product?
      How does your product work?
      What does your product cost?
        ("Still working on it" is fine, but say so)
      What countries are you available in?

<comment><USER3> Many times I see a link on HN and click on it, and they act like everyone knows exactly what is going on.

It gives me a nagging feeling that I am completely out of touch with HN, too.

The way moderators edit headlines doesn't help this at all.

<comment><USER4> This happens almost 100% of the time with product updates. You are taken to a page that says "We have released version 3.1.5 of Gizmo. Download it here." with not even a hint of what Gizmo is.

<comment><USER5> Updates and bugreports are two communications I specifically had in mind when writing my "Tell me what the fuck it is EVERY GODDAMNED TIME YOU COMMUNICATE ABOUT THE PRODUCT" above. Major peeve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I failed to explain the benefits Ramen can provide."

No, I think those came across quite clearly. He wants to know how it works, i.e. what is required of him, and what will the process of getting funded look like. That's a difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our wording is a little off there. Appreciate the feedback, and you're totally right.

<comment><USER7> Do you have anything that does explain how it works? I'm very interested and would love to learn about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have outline of how Ramen works here (we actually funded Ramen on Ramen): [https://ramen.is/projects/ramen](https://ramen.is/projects/ramen)

We're currently working to boil all that down and bring it right out in front to fix this problem. Basically what happened here was this version of the home page was somewhere between a teaser and functional homepage. We've been working on so many other parts of the business, we let one of the most important pages slip. We're hoping to fix this with our new design coming out soon.

<comment><USER8> Here's a free stab at some copy:

"Get funding for your software project from early adopters who care. Ramen lets you raise money from users who help test and develop your product."

Your homepage lacks clear instructions for either startup projects or investor/users. Have a clear look at the frontpage of ramen.is from the perspective of a user, then look at sites like YouTube, Soundcloud, BBC iPlayer, Kickstater and so on. These are all trying to seduce people in to look at things that are new and fresh.

Then look at it from the perspective of the startup entrepreneur. Business users want to see both clear instructions on how to use the site and what they'll get out of it, as well as seeing activity of existing projects, case studies of companies that have used it before.

You aren't doing that good at providing either.

Just some constructive criticism, I hope. Interesting project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting comment on the bottom of the article:

      This random user is a prick.

      1. Why didn't he scroll to the bottom of the page? I noticed an "about us" link in the footer.

      2. When I'm curious about companies, I look at their blogs. Sometimes they use a blog CMS system. Why didn't this guy check the links in the header, like the link to your blog?

      3. This guy has a baby babbling in the background. Maybe he was distracted?

We do a lot of user testing at work and it has really opened my eyes. This sort of attitude really bums me out though. You can sit around all day and complain about customer incompetence. Meanwhile they are out using a different app/product and you still aren't making any money/conversions.

<comment><USER10> FWIW, I thought for a while about whether or not to approve that comment due to it's flamewar-factor, but I approved it so I could write this response:

"Ehhh I wouldn't go so far as to call him a "prick". Yeah he certainly could have gone through our blog and read up on Ramen. He could have clicked on our project page and watched our video. I think the point of Peek, though, is that you can't tell a visitor that their first impression (and/or their first confusion) is _wrong_. I think he brings up a lot of completely valid points about our homepage. We haven't put enough energy into making our homepage something that succinctly describes what we do. He called us out on it. I give him kudos."

<comment><USER11> Those projects appear to be your clients. Clicking on a project video is absolutely the wrong answer.

Why isn't "Fundraising Platform" in the left column clickable? That should lead to expository text, but it isn't even a link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Everybody seems to be missing the biggest lesson from this. No matter how obvious you think the problems with the OPs site was you should...

DO USABILITY TESTING

Often.

Because if those problems were obvious to the OP - they would have fixed them. By definition. I guarantee that everybody here has there own blind spots with there own application or service.

I've been doing usability tests for nearly twenty years now - and the number of times we've found nothing that can be improved can be counted on approximately no hands.

Use online services like peek (there are many, many others too). Do them yourselves. Do them regularly. If I could pick only one thing to help folk improve their product - usability testing would be it. Even above customer interviewing. Nothing beats watching your customers try and fail to use your product.

Here's three books to get you started:

* Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-it-yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems, Steve Krug - Does exactly what it says on the tin. Short sharp guide to getting you started.

* Handbook of Usability Testing: Howto Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests, Jeffrey Rubin & Dana Chisnell - The last book but in much more depth. The first edition of this was my bible when I started doing usability testing.

* Remote Research, Nate Bolt & Tony Tulathimutte - A great guide to how to approach getting the most out of remote usability testing services like peek. The tools are a few years out of date now. The advice isn't.

Seriously. If you're not already doing usability tests go spend an hour or two reading 'Rocket Surgery Made Easy' and then go test your product with some actual human beings. You'll thank me.

<comment><USER13> I agree with the importance of doing usability testing. I made this usability checklist ([http://userium.com/](http://userium.com/)), which can be used to catch common usability problems before user testing. By fixing obvious usability problems you get more meaningful feedback from users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So much this.

A few bits I've noticed over 25+ years in the industry:

• Tell me what your product is. What it does, where it works, how it does it, what it requires. Is it a physical product (or is it shipped in one), an interactive application, a Web service, a programming language / tool?

• Tell me what the fuck it is EVERY GODDAMNED TIME YOU COMMUNICATE ABOUT THE PRODUCT. It doesn't have to be long or detailed, you can link to your detailed description in the communication. But your press releases, emails, Tweets, blog posts, marketing collateral, etc., are going to get passed around, word- of-mouthed, and/or pulled out of drawers (or browser history / searches) for weeks, months, and years to come. Make them work for you.

• The Economist's practice of briefly introducing _any_ individual, no matter how famous or obscure, is a wonderful practice of microcontent contextualization. "Using the Economist house style offers an elegant alternative, wherein virtually all people and organizations are identified explicitly, no matter how prominent. For example, you might see 'Google, a search giant', 'GE, an American conglomerate', or 'Tim Cook, boss of Apple'." [http://redd.it/1x8yky](http://redd.it/1x8yky)

• Tell me how to try it out. Preferably for 60-90 days (a 30 day cycle can go _far_ too fast. I've been very, very impressed with New Relic's "use it for free, convert upmarket for additional features" model, and it's apparently worked well for them. For small accounts, their cost of sales is effectively nil (and for large accounts, COS is _always_ a PITA). But for those large accounts, you've got a proven track record with the prospect, and they really know what they're getting.

• Put your tech docs front and center. As a technical lead / director, my questions are "how the fuck do I make this thing work", and if you can't tell me

• It's been observed many times that those who have the best appreciation for how a product works are those who use it directly, and secondly, those who either service it or support those using it. John Sealy Brown's _The Social Life of Information_ addresses this with both Xerox copier repairmen and support staff. Use this to your advantage two ways: let these people share and collaborate, even if informally For the repairmen, this was a morning coffee break turned out to be a hugely valuable cross-training and troubleshooting feature. For phone support, after an "expert system" and changes in technology separating phone reps from technicians, researchers noted two reps who consistently provided good advice: one was a veteran from the earlier stage, the other a recent hire who sat across from the other and learned from her. Similarly, user support groups (mailing lists, Web forums, Usenet groups), in which _users interact and share knowledge with one another directly_ (Hacker News would be an instance) are often (though not always) far more useful than direct tech support.

• Provide clear pricing information. This has been noted from Jacob Nielsen on forward as the information people are most interested in.

• Make damned sure that whatever process or workflow you've created online _works_ , and for as many possible end-user environments as possible. Keeping interfaces as simple and legible as possible is a huge bonus.

• Remove distractions from your transactional webpages. Once someone's homed in on a product, focus on that, though you may mention alternatives or (truly useful) related products. Every additional piece of information on the screen is an opportunity to confuse and lose the sale. I've been restyling many websites simply for my own use (1000+), and simply _removing distracting elements_ produces a _far_ more productive environment.

• Ensure your pages are legible. Backgrounds should be light, foregrounds light (and where, with extreme reluctance, you invert these, separation should be clear). DO NOT SCALE FONTS IN PX. On far, far too many devices this renders as unreadable, particularly from older (e.g., more senior w/in the organization) readers. Grey-on-grey is just cause to fire whomever suggested or required it. See ContrastRebellion: [http://www.contrastrebellion.com/](http://www.contrastrebellion.com/)

• Don't organize your website according to internal corporate structures. Your website is an _outward_ facing tool, and should address the needs of _users_ , not of internal departments. Lenovo's laptop site organization would be highly typical of this: I want a Linux-capable, large-display, full-keyboard, trackpoint device. The rest I generally don't give a shit about, and its product line confuses me _every fucking goddamned time_ I try to buy something there (usually every 2-3 years). I'm _not_ a sufficiently frequent customer that I keep up with every last change, but I've spent thousands of dollars on IBM/Lenovo products, as an individual (hundreds of thousands to millions as an enterprise customer).

And of course: test all of this, don't simply take my word for it. But yes, I've walked from far, far, far too many product pages, from free software projects to Fortune 10 companies to edgy app devs.

Life's too fucking short for that shit.

<comment><USER14> > Tell me what your product is.

I'm glad you led with that one, because I'm constantly asking that very question. Note to website designers: DON'T MAKE ME USE WIKIPEDIA TO FIGURE OUT WTF THE COMPANY DOES!

Unfortunately, quite a few companies aren't even in Wikipedia (of course they should get themselves added). That's the point when I simply give up. Life is too short.

<comment><USER15> _Unfortunately, quite a few companies aren 't even in Wikipedia (of course they should get themselves added)._

It's not as simple as that. You have to meet notability requirements or your page is just going to get deleted.

<comment><USER16> The fact that some companies aren't in Wikipedia is irrelevant. The point was you shouldn't have to go to Wikipedia to find out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Jeez. That is like sooooo many modern websites.

What is this site? What is thingumajig.io? Its a webby thingumajig? Sign up? Sign up for what? Oh it's a website for web something.

nice font.

<comment><USER18> Haha, spot on :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you do this, it's best to do it in clusters of 5-10 testers in your target demographic and try to identify _patterns_. It's dangerous to say "UserX is confused, so all of our users must be confused." No matter how perfect your design, it will be confusing/frustrating for someone.

<comment><USER20> Totally agree. You don't need 100's just 5-10 like you said. It will be really obvious of the issues because many people will suffer them same ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had not known about the Peek service, that's pretty awesome.

Does anyone know of anything like that, but that's _not_ random, where I could actually send volunteers from my current users to my sight, and have their clicks and voice recorded and sent to me? Is there such a business that works well at a reasonable price?

<comment><USER22> usertesting.com has this in it's main product (which Peek seems to be just a scaled back, lead-generation version of), but I think supplying your own testers is one of their enterprise features, which is more expensive than the normal service.

</comment></comment><comment> mauricio-OH Great post but it sounds a lot like trying to sell that peek service. Would've been great to see what actions were taken to improve the site rather than wait to the new design launch.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't do web design but that Peek thing just looks brutal to me. It's probably a good tool though, I'd just hate to have it pointed at my work.

<comment><USER24> Ha, funny - as a startup founder ([https://www.mightyspring.com](https://www.mightyspring.com)), I immediately went and signed our site up for a review from Peek. Seemed insanely valuable to me.

<comment><USER25> Post the video link here if you decide to go for publicly accessible feedback.

I _think_ I can understand what your company is about fairly easily just glancing at the first page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey y'all thanks so much for the support!

UserTesting (the folks behind Peek) shot us over a promo code to get the first 100 of you to the front of the line if you want to give it a whirl: ramenreader

<comment><USER26> not sure where I should enter the promocode.

Have submitted my site carrotleads.com for a test though. It free anyway, so what was the promo code for???

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Come on, this guy is not everything. The first link I clicked was at the bottom left: Project which brought me to [https://ramen.is/projects/ramen](https://ramen.is/projects/ramen) which explains everything in detail this guy did not find and searched for. Overall, looks a fancy new kickstarter site. I care about projects not kickstarter per se, so I like the idea how the projects are presented in ramen.

<comment><USER28> Primary information should not be put in a low-contrast footer, the place where you usually put things like the privacy declaration, or which company made the theme, or which CMS is 'powering' the site. The footer is a blind spot which plenty of people mentally block out because it's usually full of meaningless information.

<comment><USER29> Suffice to say, my eyeballs literally do not process the footer unless:

1) I am looking for "Contact Us"

2) I _need_ some piece of information so badly I am willing to dig around the website for 10+ minutes, after which I will start looking at the footer, at the HTML (in case there are collapsed menus), searching Google with "site:www.thesite.com"... This level of dedication is reserved for financial institutions, and government.

<comment><USER28> You've nailed it for me, too. "About Us" and analogues for contact information, or true desperation :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The information may be there, but if the user has to scroll to see it then that's poor UX design. I did wonder why he didn't scroll to the bottom, but still "About Us" doesn't scream "how the service works" to me. And indeed, if you click on the link you get taken to a page of smiling founders.

I got the impression that the designers were trying to be clever by integrating the tutorial into an actual project page - and going to the Ramen project explains a lot about the process. However, that's intuition from using the web a lot, not a logical step. It's the same kind of intuition that gamers have when crawling a dungeon and you know that taking the short route will almost certainly be a Bad Idea.

This backfires in another way: I also wonder if there are only four projects on the site? Can I search for more? It makes me think that the projects there are just dummy pages to demonstrate how the site works.

<comment><USER10> Regarding the last line: Ramen just launched a few weeks ago, so the projects you see are all we have right now. Good feedback on the scarcity giving you the impression that they are dummy pages. They aren't. Ramen, Benefit & Velocity Kick are very real projects. Great feedback though. We need to get more projects into the system asap. Thank you!

PS. If you wanna submit a project: [https://ramen.is/project_submissions/new](https://ramen.is/project_submissions/new) :-D

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Great post, the video is as simple as is enlightening.

What I like the most about it is that the user is genuinely interested in the service. But he acts natural and realizes he doesn't see an easy way to get more info on it.

He could try to read the blog, or search for small print, but that's not what the average user is going to do.

I'm going to try Peek soon!

</comment><comment><USER26> Well their main problem was they had a 2 sided market and catered to both half heartedly.

Dropbox caters to a single market and the message is more simple for them.

A "How it works" with subsection for both target market would help.

multiple sided products always have trouble selling effective messages and would like to see examples if you guys know of any.

I am doing a redesign of my site [http://carrotleads.com](http://carrotleads.com) on this topic. Was targeted at companies earlier and now I will have trouble converting network'rs. I can see the problem, but solutions need more deep thought. Working on it.

Submitted site to Peek. Want to see how it turns out.

<comment><USER32> Did you get back a video from Peek? Was it useful? I'm curious about your experience.

<comment><USER26> I did get the test back and I have already made a few changes to make discovery of companies easier.

See test link below, turnaround of less than 12 hrs. [http://peek.usertesting.com/result/969590386309](http://peek.usertesting.com/result/969590386309)

Still my site will undergo a proper redesign with 2 seperate workflow's. Well that how my thinking is for now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There's this one link at the very bottom of the page, which the Peek user kept missing, and would be the first one I would go to if I couldn't find what I was looking for: Product/Project Page. That appears to be the page that would have answered many of his questions and kept him as a customer. That should totally be at the top of the page.

However, even that's a little confusing because it is itself a project -- so a user might wonder what the heck they are looking at, site info or some other project?

</comment><comment><USER34> It's also odd that there's no "browse all projects" or "find projects to back" option, only a few hand-curated options. No discovery options at all.

<comment><USER10> One of the Ramen founders here. We just launched a few weeks ago, so that's actually all we got right now. Feel free to submit a project if you'd like :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Are user videos from Peek supposed to be public? I would be a little creeped out if I was the random user from this study and suddenly found my video plastered in a blog post.

<comment><USER36> Yes, the testers are paid and understand/agree that the videos can be shared publicly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Another solution to _this_ problem might be to get your site reviewed by a conversion specialist or using some sort of heuristic review. In many cases my experience is that a combination of more qualitative methods such as user testing combined and heuristic evaluations and heatmaps and with Google Analytics solves _most_ of the issues you have with your site.

</comment><comment><USER38> While you're getting all this traffic you should definitely put a couple of calls to action to check out your product.

Even just linking the word "Ramen" in the blog post would be a great start to get more conversions happening.

</comment><comment><USER39> The 5 W's is something taught to all school kids at an early age -- who, what, where, when, why (and sometimes, how). Your tagline should address all of these in one simple sentence.

<comment><USER40> The "where" is often totally forgotten as well. Sometimes it still matters if a company is in US vs Europe, South America or New Zealand!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> There is a website where I can put a website and watch people's reactions?

....well, I have an idea _what kind of websites_ I will try to submit...

</comment><comment><USER42> They've got three well known investors. How'd one of them not catch this problem?

</comment><comment><USER43> sorry for the tangent but I remember seeing a usability site where you could get usability testing for your site by 'pay it forward' by taking other sites for a test drive

anyone know what I'm referring to?

thanks!

<comment><USER22> Were you thinking of usabilityhub.com? They have a couple of different products for 'micro-usability' tests ('look at this page for 5 seconds and list things you remember' and similar). And I remember them using that model. You could pay, or be a tester to earn credit for your own tests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Just got our peek for [https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com](https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com)

It was surprisingly good! No negative feedback, and only positive feedback, though the tester wasn't our target market.

</comment><comment><USER45> Where do the testers for peek come from if it is free?

<comment><USER36> UserTesting pays members of their plan to take the test in the hopes some people find it useful enough to try out their enterprise offerings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> You lost a prospect not a customer. Big difference.

</comment><comment><USER47> I like how a guy records a video in which he talks about how he has no idea what they are about.

Then they write a blog post about it. Submit it to HN, get to the front page, get lots of potential customers...

And there is still no information on their site about who they are and how it works...

<comment><USER48> Yeah, I actually ran into the exact same problem earlier today when I was looking at the Ramen site. It sounded interesting, and I was considering submitting my site to it, but I wasn't (and still am not) clear on how it actually works. Is it for fundraising like Kickstarter, or can I use it to promote an existing site? I went as far as creating an account, but I gave up when it required me to use my Linkedin account (even after I signed up with an email address).

<comment><USER49> > gave up when it required me to use my Linkedin account

Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I __LOVE __this post. I actually did not read it since it contained something which I miss in __every other __blog: a _TL;DR_ section. +1!!!

<comment><USER50> I don't understand the downvotes. Did everybody just had a bad day or completely lost their minds?</comment></comment>


Buying headphones in 2018 is going to be a fragmented mess – The Verge - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/18/16903516/headphones-wireless-analog-jack-future-ces-2018 <comment><USER2> It seems like a pretty simple solution to me, make bluetooth headphones that also have an analog jack on them. It may not work for earbuds, but I gotta say my favorite feature of my Bose QC35's is if my device doesn't support bluetooth I can always use the cable to plug it in. It works when the battery dies too.

Granted the jack on the headphones themselves is 2.5mm so you need a 2.5mm to 3.5mm cable which makes it a little annoying.

Headphone manufacturers should stick to using either 2.5mm or 3.5mm jacks on their headphones. Give the option of bluetooth or no bluetooth. Then separately manufacture wires that have DACs in them. It increases compatibility, potentially increases profits by double dipping, and makes "repairs" simple.

</comment><comment><USER3> Once phones drop 3.5mm connectors is there any advantage left for wired headphones? Do phones other than the Pixel 1 come with a usb-c DAC? It looks like manufacturers could go either direction but it seems like Google and Apple have already picked a side here by removing them.

<comment><USER2> Desktop computers and laptops. They will probably never disappear from desktops, especially when it comes to gaming.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't be so sure. Audio enthusiasts already have external equipment and when headphones start shipping with with built-in DACs and amps to work with phones the case for removing them in favor of USB-* or BT becomes a lot stronger. Especially when it would be cheaper to do so.

But the point is that digital wired probably isn't buying you much in latency or quality compared to wireless.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Chrome Blog: Keeping tabs on your tabs (Chrome 19 released) - <AUTHOR> http://chrome.blogspot.com/2012/05/keeping-tabs-on-your-tabs.html <comment><AUTHOR> Overview of security fixes:

[http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2012/05/stable- chan...](http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2012/05/stable-channel- update.html)</comment>


Touch+ Make any surface multi-touch - <AUTHOR> http://www.ractiv.com

<comment><USER2> Amazing. But I wonder how could it detect the touch event without a sensor in the touch surface. Is it really accurate? Or it need to calibrate before use it? "Touch" is always the hardest problem in those kind of sensing technology.</comment>


Ask HN: Marketing for B2B SaaS product - <AUTHOR>

The initial idea of https://zupp.ly was to get rid of all the Excel sheets that are being used to manage freelancer contacts and the annoying manual steps that are involved when staffing new projects with freelancers.
Currently, we are looking for ideas to market our product internationally, especially in the USA. We have had some success with cold mailing advertising and digital agencies, but we'd like to hear some of your experiences marketing SaaS products.
Ideas and any kind of feedback are highly appreciated! <comment><USER2> What I'd be interested in knowing is if your entire product is basically just a "feature" from other SaaS products?

Eg. Does Freshbooks have the exact same feature running within it's accounting SaaS product?

Recommendations:

\- Place a link on top that says "Demo" so that I can actually see a video/demo of the product

\- Have some type of JS tool that converts prices from US to Euro (instead of saying "this applies to people outside the Eurozone")

________________________________________________

As far as marketing goes, you should try researching some organic techniques. No amount of advice given here will prove successful for your marketing, but if you setup a multi-channel strategy of:

\- Social media engagement

\- Blogging about insights of freelance market/SaaS market

\- Growth through referrals (either having such an awesome product that your current customers become your marketers or giving incentive to people through referral links)

\- [Insert offline marketing strategy/ies here]

Researching and focusing on 2-3 channels should give you a rough idea of how to approach your marketing.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

> Eg. Does Freshbooks have the exact same feature running within it's > accounting SaaS product?

Our product does not really fit into the accounting area. If you like, it is more of a CRM-type product. The closest competitors would be specialized agency tools like Revolver or HR tools. And to some degree it is also possible to keep track of your freelancer relationships via oDesk/elance.

So, no, I don't really think our product is just a feature. Although I have to admit that the feature set is not really that large at the moment, basically because we wanted to keep it deliberately simple and not stuffing in tons of functions.

> Place a link on top that says "Demo" so that I can actually see a video/demo > of the product

Good idea! We are working on some kind of explainer video.

> Have some type of JS tool that converts prices from US to Euro (instead of > saying "this applies to people outside the Eurozone")

Did not think about that, thanks for the tip (-;

> Researching and focusing on 2-3 channels should give you a rough idea of how > to approach your marketing.

Thanks for your tips regarding marketing strategies. I guess we'll look a bit further into content marketing/blogging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cold emails is #1 best way to market a new SaaS product because its free and you get to hear feedback from customers. Aside from that "marketing" is really just building a list of a bunch of different tactics and trying each of them until you find something that works.

I once wrote on how a team I was on drove a bundle of users to a new app. It may give you some inspiration: [http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237922](http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237922)

I happy to brainstorm ideas with you if you ping me on twitter @jsfour

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback and the link, will definitely have a look at it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> unless someone has been in the same space as you they won't have a clue how to market your product as we can only speculate as to whether a market fit exists or not.

lets say this is a great market fit, then you can try content marketing and blogging.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess you are right on that one ... any specific experiences with content marketing and how long this really takes to show some impact?</comment></comment>


This phosphine will get you fired - <AUTHOR> http://orgprepdaily.wordpress.com/2008/08/02/a-phosphine-that-will-get-you-fired/ <comment><USER2> It reminds me of this blog [1] where a chemist is essentially listing many terrifyingly explosive (One notably will "vigorously" react at 100K), corrosive, or smelly things he's read about in the literature. Well written and entertaining :)

[1] pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm just reading Ignition! <http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf> about the development of rocket propellants; a very technical and interesting chemistry book.

At one time the author experimented with mercaptans and got similar reactions from his labmates ;-)

</comment><comment><USER4> _"But I never encountered anything as nauseating or alien like PhePHMe"_

(There are unfortunate coincidences in names ...)

Other branches of science/engineering may feel olfactorily deprived, never getting in their labs past the occasional smell of ozone, overheated oil/metal/plastic, etc.

<comment><USER5> The smell of enamelled wire going bye bye is unmistakable. And bad.

Also is the smell of regular wire coating burning due to an overcurrent. (you also have the unmistakeable fumes to help you identify the problem)

On the other hand, the smell of Ozone is not particularly bad

<comment><USER6> Ever work in a room full of hardware/firmware engineers?

One whiff of that smell and everyone's heads instantly pop up like gophers. "Who's on fire?" It becomes instinct.

<comment><USER7> We used to run a load test on a piece of POTS gear that would blow a reasonably large cap. (Timing in the firmware was applying voltage to something that shouldn't have had a voltage... and the circuit didn't have good enough protection.)

A (very) little bit of flame and lots of smoke. Great way to get the attention of every hw/fw eng in the building... "FIRE IN THE LAB!" thankfully it was never enough to set off the smoke detectors.

We also used to have (small) gear out in the cubicles. Every once in a while I'd get a whiff of "that smell" and would take a walk around cube-ville trying to figure out whose box was overheating.

Good times...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I want to smell that.

Thanks to the OP for bringing back fond memories of my chemistry days. Color shifts and weird smells were _the shit_ back then. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> It was a good read, and reminded me of an old Asimov story (I don't remember its exact name, IIRC it is in his The Golden Age short stories)

</comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of the first time I took a whiff of conc. ammonia, couldn't smell properly for a week.</comment>


Nanomsg: Stepping Down - <AUTHOR> http://garrett.damore.org/2016/01/stepping-down.html <comment><USER2> I think the value of a CoC is merely to signal to people who have experienced abuse or disrespect in communities before (which would describe, I think, most women and people of color who have participated in technical communities for more than a short time) that the community is on their side when sexists or racists show up. That has some value. It doesn't really matter to the majority, and it doesn't actually alter how people behave (generally), nor does it really alter a project leaders ability to excise a toxic person. But, it does say, "We will excise toxic people. We will try to make you feel welcome here, even if you have been made to feel unwelcome elsewhere."

Even if that's all it does (which I think it probably is), it is enough to make it worth doing in most cases. (Which reminds me that I don't have a code of conduct on any of the open source projects or communities I work on, but I'll make it a project for the first quarter of this year.)

<comment><USER3> "I think the value of a CoC is merely to signal to people who have experienced abuse or disrespect in communities before (which would describe, I think, most women and people of color who have participated in technical communities for more than a short time) that the community is on their side when sexists or racists show up. "

If a COC becomes a baseline requirement for people to run projects and attract contributors, ISTM the people who don't care will just add COC's, and never enforce them.

You say "But, it does say, "We will excise toxic people. We will try to make you feel welcome here, even if you have been made to feel unwelcome elsewhere.""

It does not actually do that. It's one level removed from that. It's "we _say_ we will excise toxic people.". It in fact, may be the case that you go to ask them to enforce it, and they say "sorry, don't care", even with a COC.

Then you are back to square 1. You essentially are trying to use the COC as a proxy for "communities that will care enough to put a stop to things" and i'm pretty much 100% it will not achieve this goal.

<comment><USER2> Of course a CoC can't make a community actually do anything. These are Open Source communities we're talking about here, and nobody can make anyone do anything at all.

You're alleging that a CoC is meaningless, but why implement a CoC, as a community, if you don't _actually want more women and people of color_ becoming involved in your projects? The CoC is the signal saying, "We, as a community, want you to feel welcome here."

That's all I'm saying it does, and all I'm suggesting it can do, and I say that's sufficient cause to implement a CoC, _if_ you want more women and people of color in your community.

So, to repeat, a CoC is a signal of desire to be inclusive. It is not a law, it is not a guarantee, it won't make assholes stop being assholes. It is a sign on the door saying, "We're gonna try to be welcoming. Come on in."

<comment><USER3> "You're alleging that a CoC is meaningless, but why implement a CoC, as a community, if you don't actually want more women and people of color becoming involved in your projects? The CoC is the signal saying, "We, as a community, want you to feel welcome here.""

See the part where i directly answer this: "If a COC becomes a baseline requirement for people to run projects and attract contributors,"

IE if people stop going to projects without COC's, people will add COC's.

I'm not sure why you think anything else will happen.

"So, to repeat, a CoC is a signal of desire to be inclusive."

It is _this second_. As I said, if it becomes a thing people look for, it will no longer be that, because everyone will just add them and ignore them. It will no longer be a signal for what you are looking for. It will achieve precisely nothing.

Again, I'm honestly befuddled why you think anything else would happen

Do you really think normal people trying to start projects are going to say "well, i really want to attract contributors of all kinds, and it seems i have to have a COC, that i don't care about, to do that, but i guess it would just be wrong to have a COC if i don't care?"

Or do you think they are just going to say "well, i really want to attract contributors of all kinds, i better add a COC that i don't really care about".

I mean, this is _already happening_. How many projects are like our OP, and basically go and say "well, i should probably add a COC, but i don't really care".

You need look no further than things like yellow/pink ribbons/flag pins senators wear/etc to see what will happen. These things were once signals of people who cared. Now they are just social norms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> He gives off mixed signals here:

[https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a- CoC,11](https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,11)

 _Now, me_ personally _, I couldn't give a crap whether a project has a CoC or not._

 _Frankly, if someone acts irredeemably toxically in this project, I won't feel like I need to have a CoC to justify taking corrective action — I'll just take the action_

 _So, I'm definitely_ _not_ _going to "require" a CoC; if someone acts like an ass then they can expect me to take some kind of action._

But then comes out with:

 _I'm pretty disheartened by the intensely negative response this suggestion has drawn;_

I'm at a loss as to why he didn't just let the discussion roll for a bit without expressing his "disheartened" feelings and if the outcome from active members is "we don't think this is a good idea" then let it go. He's already stated that thus far the project has no known issues regarding conduct and that anyone being an asshat dickhead would be dealt with anyway.

Odd.

</comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with him both about the usefulness and harm of CoCs. There are jackasses, and not having preemptively adopted a CoC, they can leverage the lack of clear rules to divide the community.

On the other-hand, once you have rules, there are some people who for some reason or another go out of their way to argue that a behavior violates/does not violate the rules and completely ignore whether the behavior was benign or malignant, which is what one should really care about.

<comment><USER6> > once you have rules, there are some people who for some reason or another go > out of their way to argue that a behavior violates/does not violate the > rules and completely ignore whether the behavior was benign or malignant

Maybe projects can adopt CoCs that address that too, and cover both sides of the coin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have attempted to ascertain the need of a CoC for this community by reading through the mailing list and issues... The more that I read through it, the less I see the need for one. It simply appears as a power play from this individual user, as such is identified by this lengthy blog post which signals some red flags.

The previous owner says it all himself pretty clearly:

> The current attempts to adopt CoC in various FOSS projects are IMO doomed > for similar reasons. It has zero effect on abusers (no abuser thinks of > himself as an abuser) and the message it sends to decent folks is: "There's > an elite in the community that will decide what's good and what's bad and > enforce it by censoring your emails/posts/contributions." Which in turn > erodes trust within the community and, consequently, its ability to > spontaneously deal with abuse.

</comment><comment><USER8> I found Martin Sustrik's comment[1] very informative. It is a bit of history and also states some of the fears of this CoC additions to projects. His idea about "abuse postmortems" seems a lot more workable.

1) [https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a- CoC,7](https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,7)

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand. The people who are -1, what do they care if it is adopted? Is CoC that controversial? Are personal attacks, doxing, trolling and slurs part of their daily routine they will be seriously inconvenienced by inability to use them?

\---

* The use of sexualized language or imagery

* Personal attacks

* Trolling or insulting/derogatory comments

* Public or private harassment

* Publishing other's private information, such as physical or electronic addresses, without explicit permission

* Other unethical or unprofessional conduct

\---

As a maintainer they should have just said "There is a CoC now. Check it out: <link>. Happy new year everyone".

<comment><USER10> A CoC lets people stretch something to fall under it to get someone else punished if enforced properly and by the letter.

If it isn't enforced by the letter - why does any of this bullshit need to be mentioned? If someone's being a dick, they'll be addressed and dealt with for being a dick. No CoC needed.

What is the difference between the following two statements?

"We've received a complaint that could be construed as violating Section 3 Subsection B of the CoC. So I'm going to have to ask you to quit it or leave."

"You're being an ass. Quit it or leave."

<comment><USER11> People have different definitions of what constitutes acceptable conduct. A CoC acknowledges this and takes some steps to make sure people are on the same page. Even if it isn't enforced to the letter, some people need a reminder. I think there's also a hope (maybe not true in practice) that having a CoC is a positive signal to people who feel marginalized in other communities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I disagree with him regarding the usefulness of CoCs -- spelling out the rules of engagement can be powerful -- but I respect that he put his money where his mouth is, so to speak.

<comment><USER13> I tend to agree with you. I do think that the common sense "don't be a dick" shouldn't need to be explicitly expressed as a rule we all follow. But it should also be common sense not to put your hands near a spinning metal blade, but we have those warnings on lawnmowers. I think where a CoC provides it value is defining the procedures for when the CoC is violated, which it no doubt will be.

<comment><USER6> > we have those warnings on lawnmowers

because of lawsuit-happy culture, not due to lack of common sense.

Rachel Nabor's article is interesting, but not sure how a CoC fixes dealing with a boorish weirdo outside the conference.

<comment><USER14> Do you imply that maiming should be a common occurrence or that warnings prevent no injuries?

<comment><USER6> In this context I'm implying CoC do not "prevent" nor the lack thereof causes bad behavior.

This BTW seems to get to the crux of what half of his decision was about. If he thinks CoC are worthless, that is not the same thing as believe abuse should be a common occurrence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We as a community should be embarrassed that a significant portion of our community believes Codes of Conduct are necessary.

<comment><USER16> We should be embarrassed that they're necessary for some groups to feel safe.

As we see in this thread, whether CoC "mean something" or "are needed" aren't absolutes — clearly they are to some, and aren't to others. The key for me is that they're not important to people who don't need them to feel safe, and vice-versa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> CoCs do layout some rules for engagement but I believe there should be a positivity in the engagement itself. There should not be abuse in any form , either by disrespecting others or pinching others that they are abusing this segment of Coc (which might happen in some cases) . Disrespecting others in any form is not acceptable and hence I think Coc may not be a perfect solution . I can completely see his point .

</comment><comment><USER18> Most people demand CoC when they have not talent and want to be respected per status.

CoC is a proof of failure in leadership, respect is earned.

</comment><comment><USER19> CoCs are worthless. If a community is not able to detect poisonous behaviour by itself, a .txt file won't help.

<comment><USER20> You may think they are "worthless" but clearly some people think they they have value.

Which one do you think is more poisonous? Making a fuss over the maintainer wanting to impose one or just accepting that someone else sees value in something you don't and agreeing to the CoC.

<comment><USER7> Why should someone have to agree simply because someone else does, and accept it?

The other person should have the same approach, accept that others do not see it as a worthwhile and not have it.</comment></comment></comment>


How async/await works in Python 3.5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.snarky.ca/how-the-heck-does-async-await-work-in-python-3-5 <comment><USER2> So it seems it would be able to have goless in python3 with this? The combination of spawning a function and using channels between them is great. Specially the optional numeric argument of chan() where you can specify whether it's blocking or not, having a send buffer etc. Using an event loop with async/await could work nicely. Or also a version using real threads instead.

[https://goless.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](https://goless.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

<comment><USER2> It looks different than in Go, but works the same (when simulating a handshake for synchronous channels).

#!/usr/bin/env python3.5

import asyncio

async def give(start, end, c, k): for i in range(start, end): await c.put(i) await k.get() # sync send await c.put(None) # simulate closing of channel

async def consume(c, k): while True: x = await c.get() await k.put(True) # sync recv if x is None: # channel closed return print(x)

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop() c, k = asyncio.Queue(), asyncio.Queue() tasks = [asyncio.ensure_future(give(3, 7, c, k)), asyncio.ensure_future(consume(c, k))] try: loop.run_until_complete(asyncio.wait(tasks)) finally: loop.close()

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice-- I've found async/await really useful in C#/.NET and didn't realize it was making its way into Python (I'm still mostly writing Python 2.7 code here for availability reasons).

A little disappointed that it doesn't look like there's really support for it in the standard library's networking packages, though... hopefully more will be coming in 3.6 or 3.7?

<comment><USER4> The fun thing is that you could do the same thing in C# before async/await :-). [http://tomasp.net/blog/csharp- async.aspx/](http://tomasp.net/blog/csharp-async.aspx/)

<comment><AUTHOR> C# a actually inspired Python's implementation. Python historically takes ideas from other languages and refines them to Python's style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is such a good blog post. Thank you for writing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Welcome! Glad you liked it.</comment></comment>


Asking the Tough Questions with an 18th-Century Debate Society - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/calliopean-debate-questions-literary-societies <comment><USER2> > The society was "one of the first of a type of masculine literary cabal that > would become common after 1800,"

What happened to them?</comment>