Ask HN: How common is a counteroffer for developers who give notice? - <AUTHOR> Seems like it was common practice a couple of decades ago. Does anyone try to retain developer talent these days? <comment><USER2> _> Does anyone try to retain developer talent these days?_

There's a line of thought which assumes that an employee that's given notice has already mentally "checked out". Therefore, it's unwise to present counteroffers. Even if the manager persuades the employee to accept the counteroffer, it's inadvertently detrimental to the team because you have retained a disengaged mind that was eager to leave. To avoid all that, you wish them well with a smile and just let them leave.

Many companies follow that principle. It's important for a developer to know ahead of time if the company doesn't do counteroffers because if you're just fishing around for job offers with no intention of changing jobs, the company may call your bluff and let you leave.

<comment><USER3> I would _never_ _ever_ counteroffer. To do so would crack Pandora's box wide open.

First of all, it is simply not a game that I am willing to play.

Secondly, the other team members will know about it (eventually) and will (eventually) try to do the same thing.

Overall, it would be detrimental to team cohesion and would undermine the culture that I want to build:- One that is focused entirely on solving the problem in front of us.

If a member of my team needed a pay rise (i.e. if they were expecting a child) then I would work energetically to represent them within the organisation to make sure that they get what they need -- but for their part I would expect them to interact with me honestly and not play silly games.

<comment><USER4> _If a member of my team needed a pay rise (i.e. if they were expecting a child)_

Wow, isn't that massively discriminatory? Raises and contributions should be merit- or contribution-based, no more and no less.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I'm trying to read it as "if a member of my team came to me with a new ambition to do what it takes to up their comp (for whatever reason) I'd work with them to expand their role in the org" but... it should not be a manager's job to view me taking care of my parents differently from Coworker X buying anime figurines if Coworker X and I are in the same role having the same success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It depends on why you were considering leaving.

If the reason is something that money could solve, then I always encourage the company to offer more.

An example of this might be "I wasn't looking, still don't feel like I am. But company X asked me to look at a role, and I felt I shouldn't just ignore and it turns out they're offering $ and whilst I don't really want that role I would be a fool to decline it out of hand as that difference helps achieve <insert life goal>.".

In that case... if the company can do it, do it.

But if it's more "I went looking for something else and I hate this job, and this other stuff winds me up, but if you gave me all this extra money I'd suffer it a while longer"... then the company should wish you well and if they understand fully how toxic you now are to the team would let you leave that same day.

It depends. It always depends.

<comment><USER7> I really agree with this. Your exact example -- every detail -- happened to me a few years ago. I was offered a ~50% raise without really seeking it out. I went to my boss (with whom I had an excellent relationship) and explained the situation. I got the raise that day, and over two years later I've continued to get great raises/promotions, and it has become the best job I've ever had.

It is important to note that I was doing really important work at the company. I was probably not considered a "normal" employee.

</comment></comment><comment> le-mark I've found you are counter offered only if you are perceived to be "good" ie a key team member. I've also found it's normal in two situations. For small/medium sized companies there can be counter offers if no one has left in a while (ie year or two), and you are the first 1 or 2 "good" developers try to quit. After that they kind of give up.

The second situation is they're hemorrhaging staff, and will counter everyone, or proactively give raises to stem the tide.

I once took a counter offer that was nearly 50% of my salary. That was too much money to turn down.

<comment><USER8> > The second situation is they're hemorrhaging staff, and will counter > everyone

That's probably how it happened to me. I gave my notice, and people looked worried and had hushed conversations. A couple of hours later, managers from other teams were offering me better roles, but I turned them down, because the reason I was leaving was that I didn't like the way the company had treated me up to that point.

The problem with companies that act like that is that if they believed I deserved a better position, the time to act was when I had made it known I was unhappy, not when I'd already made the decision to leave. I'd already applied for internal promotion a couple of months before, and they could have acted then instead of just never getting back to me.

<comment><USER9> How clear had you been in 1:1s that you were unhappy and would consider looking elsewhere?

<comment><USER10> Being clear about that kind of thing would be a serious career limiting move in all of the companies I worked at. No one likes a whiner, even if whining is justified. Simply put, in a 1:1 you're not in a position of power and therefore your leverage in this negotiation is very weak. If you are vital to the team/project, when seriously threatening to leave, you _are_ in a position of power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Several months ago I gave notice to my startup employer that I had accepted an offer at another company. I was asked if there was anything they could do to keep me. I said unless they doubled my (low) salary I wouldn't have much of an interest in staying.

I liked the people I worked with, I liked the work culture, and even liked what the company was building, but at the end of the day it was worth it for me to switch to working on "non-sexy" legacy tech at a large corporation and all the BS that comes with that for financial gain, stability, and benefits.

<comment><USER12> Do legacy tech at large corporation jobs actually provide stability? It seems you face a higher risk of outsourcing there than the risk of collapse at a Silicon Valley company with traction.

<comment><USER13> It depends. If your role is "generic, replaceable developer" then you could risk outsourcing. If you're in a specific kind of project, or in a specialist position, it's less likely.

Then again I lost a position in a corp when the whole project was cancelled. The redundancy pay was sweet though.

<comment><USER14> > Then again I lost a position in a corp when the whole project was cancelled.

Sorry to hear that. As long as it wasn't canceled because they had trouble paying the bills or the teams were dysfunctional, that's usually pretty short- sighted of the corp.

Here's a bunch of people that we've already taken the cost of recruiting/training/onboarding who are familiar with our technology and processes. The right answer is to reassign them to other work in the organization.

<comment><USER13> It's an interesting situation from the other side as well. I got some resources to try to relocate to another team, but wasn't keen on it. One day you hear your team is important another that the whole project is finished - made me reluctant to try again. OTOH, in a big corpo the recruiting/onboarding costs are probably just ongoing / don't matter that much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In my experience, factors include whether there are planned hiring freezes or organization structure changes, the critical experience of the developer for critical projects, and the level of understanding of the manager.

In many cases, if the business is advancing toward a downsizing, they might choose not to make a counteroffer and instead use the departure to fill a planned staffing reduction. This can pose serious issues for the manager when a business chooses such a course when their manpower was not originally slated for downsizing.

I've seen lower appetite for counteroffers in the "middle range" of maturity. When a team has begun to reject cowboy culture and tribal knowledge, embracing high levels of testing, documentation and automation there may be reduced interest in keeping someone for skill and knowledge. I've seen this behavior diminish when organizations reach a higher maturity level and are making a more sizable investment in long-term growth of their employees through things like training.

When serving as a manager, there are many cases where one might step in to ask the business not to make a counteroffer, such as: if the employee is relocating due to their spouse, if the employee determines remote work is not a good fit for themselves, or if the employee is seen to be making positive career steps forward which could not be matched in their current work environment. Many managers are big enough people not to try to hold their employees back.

There are of course many places I've not worked, and many possible cases I've not seen, but the above is my experience.

</comment><comment><USER16> In addition to 'jasode's line of thought about employers not countering because giving notice means you've checked out, you should also understand the corollary, which is that even if you're retained through a counter, you might still be "damaged goods" and excluded from promotion, incentive compensation, and the most important projects.

There was, a dozen or so years ago, a notion that you should never accept a counteroffer for exactly this reason. Your employer would be buying optionality on retaining you. What they want isn't you, but the right to decide when to replace you and a longer grace period to do that in.

This definitely does happen; it happened explicitly to me in a previous job (I was told a few years after I left, a year or so after accepting a counter and then being marginalized).

</comment><comment><USER17> In my experience there was always a counter offer, unless you are terrible :).

But I would strongly discourage you from taking it. Basically, the reason you are not at that salary/position yet, is because you are not recognized at that level by management. getting a bump via a counter offer will mean that you will be last in line for raises/bonus/promotions since you will be viewed as getting paid above your grade. This was what I observed as a manager at a big company during calibrations.

If you want a bump, ask your manager - where do you need the most help, what can i do to have a larger impact this cycle etc... - and do those things. If that is not enough, run :)

<comment><USER18> > _In my experience there was always a counter offer, unless you are terrible > :)._

I wouldn't give a counter-offer to an employee if I know that I can't really offer a better salary or work environment, and it would be even undesirable for me to have him accept it as he would probably always have the thought of leaving haunting him afterwards.

Sometimes not receiving a counter offer is the opposite of being _terrible_. Yours is a _terrible_ advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very common.

Two times, I accepted the counteroffer and stayed (for a while.) It didn't have any adverse impact. I'm still at the company of the second counteroffer.

My experience is that big companies are typically quite rational about the whole thing. No hard feelings or anything, just business.

<comment><USER20> Haha, managers are like girlfriends/boyfriends. They take the first breakups personally. Then after a few more, they mature and wish you good luck on your next one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you give notice, you're saying "I'm at the end of my rope, I'm leaving".

If you go to management and say "I've been struggling with X, Y and Z can you help me?" then you're signaling that you trust the company to help you, wether that's workload, salary, etc.

Management that counter offer after giving notice is 9/10 trying to keep you around long enough to find a better replacement knowing that you'll leave again in the near future, or they'll boot you when the replacement is up to speed.

<comment><USER22> Most of the time they're trying to keep you around long enough not to have to deal with hiring someone else anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Varies widely depending on the individual situation of the developer, the company, the manager, and the relationship of the developer to everyone else, relative skill and experience, and countless other factors.

I haven't personally gotten any yet after 3 resignations in my professional career, but that may be because in all of them, I was leaving because I was already very sure, based on factors other than the salary, that I no longer wanted to work there.

Well, the first one, I might have been able to get a counter-offer or other change in working conditions if I had been fishing for it, but I had long been coming to the conclusion that I just didn't see myself there long-term.

There is a lot of discussion out there about getting and giving counter offers and whether or not you should accept one. One thing I would say to the companies/managers that I haven't seen much - if you have the budget and desire to keep the employee to make a counter-offer, why didn't you just give them that raise in the first place? Seems easier than letting them run around interviewing at other places and negotiating offers with other companies, just to save 10% or whatever of their salary for a year or two.

</comment><comment><USER24> Very common.

However, if you want to stay and it's just about money or title I would suggest talking to your director of recruiting or engineering manager. In my experience, chatting with them and being honest saying like "I love the company, but I've gotten some verbal offers/interest from company X, Y, X and the package they're offering + the challenges they want me to solve are very intriguing. I'm loyal, so I haven't taken any interviews as I really want to solve challenges here but this looks like a great opportunity. What can we do to make my current role as competitive that these ones?"

You have to be willing to leave though, as they might just say nope and that's the end of it.

I used that same tactic, along with a proposal of what I wanted to do/be paid, and got a hefty increase.

It costs a lot to find developers, then to hire good ones. It can be $5-20k + the domain knowledge you have so it's not cheap to replace a good developer.

<comment><USER25> > It costs a lot to find developers, then to hire good ones. It can be $5-20k > + the domain knowledge you have so it's not cheap to replace a good > developer.

My experience is different. Avalanche the expensive and experienced devs with more and more work until they signalize that the team requires upsizing, make them resign. Fish for students, contractors. Hire contractors exclusively through a chain of intermediaries, so their salary and employee rights will be minuscule and they will have no leverage to say "no" to the most ridiculous bullshit.

Please tell me there exist companies which appreciate their specialists, which offer a significant payrise to make them stay. I have yet to encounter and work for one.

<comment><USER26> What industry is this? Haven't seen this in finance.

<comment><USER25> IT in post-Communist EU countries. There are global banks employing here as well, but that's the absolute bottom of outsourcing food chain. Met the practices I described above as well in Germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's common but it's a lose-lose situation; the employee will resent that she hasn't been paid what she was worth and will be afraid to be replaced at any moment and the employer will feel like the developer stays just for the money and will leave at any time if somebody else matches it.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd take a counter under the following scenarios:

1) Company knows they are going to eliminate a team within XX months. I'd take a huge counter (3x salary) to stay on to help shutdown a project or sell the company. 2-3x salary in these cases are fairly normal when a company gets sold and they just need help transitioning to the new parent company.

2) Company offers a severance package along with it. E.g., we'll give you a salary bump and a 12-month severance if we let you go without cause, within one year.

However, I've been on both sides, and I've offered a counteroffer to anyone who is leaving and I wanted to keep. Any company who doesn't do that probably doesn't have good developers who are constantly getting recruited on LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's a difference between "this offer shows that I'm underpaid in my current position" and "I decided to move on for a variety of reasons."

An employee who gives me solid market data, and is a good performer who likes the current position, does me a favor if they let me know I missed the memo on current market.

In most companies, it's 2-4% pretty year into infinity, and if the overall market grows faster than that, independent research may be warranted.

Meanwhile, of someone gives notice, rather than starts a conversation, I'd be much more wary. If we don't have a good, open relationship already, a quick raise won't fix that.

</comment><comment><USER29> Demand Media counter offered me a few times and I took it since the pay bump was substantial. The last one I told them they had to bring the rest of the people on my team up to my level. Once they did I quit for good. Take that DM.

<comment><USER30> Why would you do something so mean?

<comment><USER31> Mean? Organizations don't have feelings. People do. It sounds like they did a beautiful thing: looking out for the rest of their team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Very very common. One could be asking for a raise, promotion, project change etc for months. Then when a resignation is tendered, counteroffers start to trickle in. Upon enquiring why so, they grin like the Grinch.

I also believe that developer availability is going to soon outspeed demand. Revel while we get the importance.

<comment><USER33> Its a shame it has to come down to those games. Generally when asked what I was offered I quote something stupid to not get a counteroffer or pull off the biggest hustle of my life.

I don't think you should ever take counter offers if you previously asked for a raise and got no where.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've offered a counter to everyone I wanted to keep on the team. Am not batting 1000.

I think if you don't get the counter, the reason is clear.

</comment><comment><USER35> One shouldn't give notice then negotiate. One should say 'I am considering giving notice', then negotiate.

</comment><comment><USER36> To me a counter offer is basically saying "we got away paying you less than what you're worth to us and you finally called our bluff". That's why I'll never accept a counter offer.

<comment><USER37> Lol. They didn't get away with anything. Unless you were sold as a slave you negotiated some terms mutually. Why the fuck would any party in a business transaction voluntarily pay more if they have no reason to believe that is necessary. Do you tell amazon that Walmart is selling the same item for $10 more so they can raise their price so you don't "get away" paying a lower price than most likely what some people are paying?

There's no bluff being called. This is simply the normal way for transaction participants to act rationally and in their best interests.

<comment><USER36> > you negotiated some terms mutually

Most people are not skilled negotiators. That aside, the balance in that negotiation is in favour of the employer at the start. At that point you are worth nothing to them. They can just go to the next candidate. You on the other had have a mortgage, debts to deal with, bills to pay, family to feed, etc. It takes time before that balance tips towards the employee. That's when the company needs to reassess what they're paying you.

> There's no bluff being called.

They know you're worth more but at your yearly performance review they'll do their damnedest to only give you cost of living if even that. Then they put the burden on you to prove you're worth more than that. "What did you accomplish this past year?" They know what you did for them. They're hoping you were too busy to document it yourself. "We can give you more but you have to take on more responsibilities." They were paying you less than you were worth for your current workload before this! This extra work will mean even more unpaid overtime which will nullify the raise and even turn it into an effective pay cut. Even if you do manage to document your past work and/or agree to more work you'll just hit the arbitrary raise cap they put in place. "This is the best that we can do."

They are bluffing. They're gambling that you can't find a better offer. Or that it's too much hassle to switch. But once you call their bluff that's when you get to finally see what they really could have been paying you.

> act rationally and in their best interests

Companies very rarely do this for long term goals. Short term gains is top priority. Saving money on payroll now is better to them than mitigating the big financial loss that loosing a key employee would cause in the future.

That is the reason why we see this counter offer behaviour each and every time. You've change the "he's going to quit sometime in the future" to "he's quitting NOW". You've now made it a short term issue and that's what finally got them to react.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If the outside offer is for a similar role, just more money, then a counter offer is common. That's because if employees leave for the same job somewhere else, then you are not paying enough. If the outside offer has a different role, or a different level of responsibility, then, it is difficult to make a counter offer. I've had more than a few developers leave for less money, sometimes allot less, because they wanted to do something different.

</comment><comment><USER39> If you like your employer...

One option you have is to prepare to ask for a raise, and then pitch them on why you're worth more before you accept the other offer. They might agree with you, and simply give you the raise you're asking for. Using this approach, you're making it about the company before you make it about yourself. If you don't get the raise, accept the other offer. If a counter offer comes your way, you can decide whether you wanna deal with it.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've hired a lot of engineers and I've seen this a number of times. In my experience once someone gets to the point of interviewing and considering another job, well, they're on the way out. I've done the counter offer and tried to get them to stay a number of times and it just never tends to work out -- they take the offer and then within six months they are out anyway.

What I always do though is try and keep a good relationship with all departing staff so if there's a critical need for knowledge that only they have, they can be brought back on a consulting basis for specific problems. That way people can leave and organizationally you're not stuck in a bind.

</comment><comment><USER41> On the flip side I've had a manager tell me to never accept a counter-offer. It's basically a dead-end path for you, especially at smaller companies. If you take it then management resents you, and you're likely to be passed over for promotion/raises in the future. And that's just if they're not vindictive. If they are they'll just get a brain dump, wait for your offers to expire then lay you off.

He wasn't very happy when I gave notice and rejected his counter-offer.

</comment><comment><USER42> I had one in 2009/2010\. They made it too good to refuse. I accepted.

</comment><comment><USER43> If you don't think that your company would counter because they think you will have "already checked out" or "can't be saved" there is one option you can try. Go out and get some job offers for higher salaries and then decline them all. Come back to your manager after some time has passed and mention that you had recently validated your value in the market and know what you are worth and that though this time you weren't interested you can't know what the future will hold. They may see that you can still be retained and make an effort to keep you.

<comment><USER44> I can't do full on job seeking if I know I'll not take the job. The amount of people's time you waste is significant.

If there's even a slimmer of chance I could accept it, yeah, I could go for it.

<comment><USER45> There is also the risk that your manager might not believe that you did not intend to leave. The whole plan sounds fishy. I don't know if I would believe someone who told me they were only interviewing to find out their market-rate salary. So, the whole thing could end up being tantamount to giving notice anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Anecdotally, i've always been counter offered - and i've left 4 jobs as a developer. Usually around 10% more, assuming you say your primary reason for leaving is monetary and 'advancement' of course. If you say you're unhappy because of behaviour x and y they'll probably think they can retain you just by changing those. You have to be up front.

Edit: 2 of these were 'big companies', 2 were small (small business and a startup)

</comment><comment><USER47> Purely anecdotal, but I've actually been given two counter offers before even looking for other employment.

I call them counter offers and not simple raises because of the tone and demeanor of those involved. These were not just "you're doing well" conversations, they were "here's some extra compensation, please please tell us if you even think of looking elsewhere so we can plan ahead" conversations.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have left 3 jobs and for all have asked/told not to bother with a counter offer because my decisions were not based on $. Looking back on my career thus far im sure i could have made more money but not sure i would have been better off.

</comment><comment><USER49> When I said I want to leave my manager offered me his place...

But the directors said only people who come to work before 11 are allowed to be managers

</comment><comment><USER50> It is common, and you will probably get 2 or 3 counteroffers, but (unless you bluffed) none will make you stay.

</comment><comment><USER51> i've only left 2 jobs in the last 12 years but both gave me counters.

</comment><comment><USER52> With few exceptions, don't take a counter-offer.

<comment><USER33> the exception being only if the money is stupid good?

<comment><USER53> If you have been working at a place for a number of years you take the increase knowing that will fired as soon as a replacement can be found.

This increases the amount they have to pay via notice pay.

Only would work in a large corporate situation where you know your team is being laid off in a year anyways.</comment></comment></comment>


Python's Innards: Introduction (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://tech.blog.aknin.name/2010/04/02/pythons-innards-introduction/ <comment><USER2> I highly recommend this talk by Armin Ronacher as an accompaniment (or prologue, or epilogue) to the article: "How Python was shaped by leaky internals", [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGofLIzX6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGofLIzX6g)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's also this wonderful book [1] covering similar ground for Ruby. An extract from a review gives a flavour:

"Ruby Under a Microscope" does something fairly ambitious. It attempts to write a system internals book in a language that non computer scientists can readily understand. While there are numerous code snippets and examples to try and examine, the ability to look at the various Ruby internals and systems and see how they fit together can be accomplished by someone with general skills and basic familiarity with programming at the script level (which for many of us is as far as we typically get). An old saying says you can't tell where yo hare going if you don't know where you've been. Similarly, we can't expect to get the most out of languages like ruby without having a more clear idea what's happening under the hood. It's entirely possible to work with Ruby and never learn some of this stuff, but having a guide like "Ruby Under a Microscope" opens up a variety of avenues, and does so in a way that will make the journey interesting and, dare I say it, even a little fun.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Under-Microscope-Illustrated- Int...](https://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Under-Microscope-Illustrated- Internals/dp/1593275277)

<comment><USER4> I own this. Great book. Someone should write the Python equivalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those interested, take a look at this series.

[https://eli.thegreenplace.net/tag/python- internals](https://eli.thegreenplace.net/tag/python-internals)

</comment><comment><USER6> I heavily recommend this series from personal experience, since it was one of my primary references when working on [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/visualstudio/python/debuggi...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/visualstudio/python/debugging-mixed-mode-c-cpp-python-in-visual-studio). Jumping straight into the CPython source code for the bytecode interpreter loop without a higher-level overview like this can be overwhelming.

</comment><comment><USER7> I gather that BINARY_SUBTRACT in this context means type-independent subtraction of two operands. Not subtraction of two binary integers. So we aren't yet seeing the dispatching which decides what type of subtraction to do. Integers? Floats? Strings? Some object that defines subtraction?

An important thing to realize about CPython's implementation is that almost everything is really a key/value map underneath. Which is why number-crunching has to be done in C.

<comment><USER8> More importantly, even small integers are heap-allocated. Some are pre- allocated and reused (0 to 100, IIRC), but outside of that, every numeric result requires a malloc and object initialization.

<comment><USER9> Not exactly. Small objects are allocated using an internal arena allocator called pymalloc: [https://docs.python.org/3/c-api/memory.html#the-pymalloc- all...](https://docs.python.org/3/c-api/memory.html#the-pymalloc-allocator)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The main takeaway I got from this is how many ads managed to get through my adblocker. Impressive. Refused to read the article as a result though.

<comment><USER11> Try ublock origin, I saw no ads on this site.

<comment><USER10> Odd, a recent Firefox update must have removed it because I've had it installed for ages and it was gone.</comment></comment></comment>


Chrome 79 rollout halted due to storage bug - <AUTHOR> https://9to5google.com/2019/12/14/android-apps-data-loss/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=103365...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1033655)

</comment><comment><USER2> Since Chrom 78 my fan has been blowing constantly whenever i opened Chrome. Others are reporting this, too. What the hell is going on at Google?</comment>


Google: Sort of Evil - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118472062291969753.html?mod=djemITP <comment><AUTHOR> "Google has apparently convinced FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to go along with at least some restrictions on buyers at a forthcoming federal spectrum auction. Meanwhile, its ally Skype, eBay's voice calling affiliate, has petitioned for revival of the 1968 "Carterfone" policy, which stopped the old Ma Bell monopoly from deciding which phones and other devices subscribers could use on its network.

Why bother -- except to tilt the playing field at a crucial moment in wireless's development to please one very deep-pocketed company?"

I agree to a certain extent, Google has interests to protect and pursue here, but at the same time, from a consumer perspective (and the cell phones are a consumer-oriented business, after all) it's absolutely ridiculous that wireless Carterfone hasn't been implemented yet.

To use Google as an analogy, the wireless world is now what the Internet (or more specifically, search) was before Google. How could anyone (other than those with vested interests) not want to see more innovation?</comment>


Apple's Tim Cook: If You Work Only for Money, You Will Never Be Happy – Fortune - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/02/10/apple-ceo-tim-cook-career-advice-job-money/?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE&utm_campaign=fortunemagazine&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social <comment><USER2> It shows a deep lack of understanding or empathy when one the wealthiest people of the world says something like that.

Especially when a large portion of americans don't even have enough money to be healthy ...

<comment><USER3> I might be violating the rules of discourse here but I feel like your comment really didn't contribute to the discussion. Tim Cook is a skilled leader who is quite down-to-earth and, IMO, understand the struggles that normal Americans go through. His point was simply that if your utility function optimizes only for income, you're making a mistake. He believes (partially as a result of his time at Apple) that working _only for money_ is a mistake. He's not saying "you shouldn't worry about money ever".

<comment><USER4> By what basis are you making these claims?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maslow's Hierarchy in action - Tim Cook is at a higher section of the pyramid than most Americans. He's probably at a stage where he's looking to achieve things he cannot achieve purely with money. Hence the "money isn't everything" argument.

<comment><USER6> Yeah... I was once in the middle of an argument between two people I know: the first person has in a way managed to make money "meaningless" but only by moving to the middle of nowhere and living on the moral equivalent of peanuts that he has been able to make with a business he has scraped together, but has recently gotten involved in a new company (as an "employee" of the second person) where he was being paid less than all the other people (who had come in to the company earlier, FWIW) and his opportunity cost is "I might be stuck not making much money forever on a product I don't even have much control over", and a second person (a "co-founder" in this new company) for whom money is also "meaningless" as he has so many millions of dollars that he got from trading cryptocurrencies that his opportunity cost from working on projects instead of actively managing investments is supposedly itself millions of dollars... money he is happy to go without because he believes so much in the team and the vision for the product. The person who lived on peanuts wanted to be making as much money as everyone else, and the person whom I will claim literally couldn't understand why anyone would ever care about money was extremely upset that the first person wasn't sufficiently devoted to the vision of the product (which again, the first person only even had limited control over from his position... this is despite having designed a good amount of the technology). It was a brutal argument. The first person quit. A couple weeks later, in the aftermath of what happened and after some time to process what was going on there, I quit (as one of the "co-founders").

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I expect to see many negative comments here, but I'll add that one of the most profound books I've read is _Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience_ by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ([https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience- Perennial-...](https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial- Classics/dp/0061339202?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957)). In it, he observes that it's also possible to create positive flow-like states even in tedious jobs; it's also helpful to try and re-conceptualize even mundane jobs as being part of and important to a greater whole.

I don't think he'd argue that doing such things is always possible, all the time, but I think he might argue that we should try to move in those directions, even when our lives and feelings sometimes feel like something out of Dilbert or Houellebecq's _Whatever_.

<comment><USER8> What does he work for then?

IF he really gave a damn about people he should e.g. make sure working conditions improve at their plants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If there is nothing about you and the current iteration of the economy that is mutually attractive, then you will have to work for money, and you will be unhappy, possibly worse so from lack of sufficient money.

It's good to be Tim Cook.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one interesting point about universal basic income: when the lack of sufficient money is no longer a possibility, what will you work for?</comment></comment>


Is the lopsided Universe telling us we need new theories - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/03/is-the-universe-lopsided/ <comment><USER2> This is a fascinating anomaly, and totally worth studying. But my perspective as a physicist in a different but somewhat related field has always been to tentatively assume it's just a statistical fluctuation.

If you look at the graph at the bottom of the first page of this article, have a look at the error bars on those data points: every one of them is at least borderline consistent with the smooth theoretical curve. (Or, alternately, look at the light green region around the curve: that shows the unavoidable uncertainties that we expect based on our finite view of the universe. The points they're interested in almost all lie within that range.)

So yeah: it's a neat possibility, and it's great that people are looking into models to explain this (and to search for related predictions they can test). But it's _not_ significant at a level that should get non-cosmologists tremendously excited at this point.

<comment><USER3> Okay, when I was in physics as a ugrad, it was a long time until the LHC! So, my understanding of the now hot topics is from little more than just layman reading!

Or, as I can guess at Guth's inflation, there was a quark; space expanded explosively so that maybe any two 'sides' of the quark were pulled apart faster than the speed of light; so, the quark was split into two quarks, that is, some energy was converted into quark mass. But two quarks have an axis. Could that be the origin of the 'axis of evil'? Or, how the heck else to have Guth's inflation starting with the first split of something without having an axis, that is, in 3 space, a line for the axis and perpendicular to a plane? Or, from that first split that generated mass, how can we avoid an axis, sure, in some 'random' direction but, still, an axis?

<comment><USER2> The issue you're running into here is that you're focusing on the description of this physics in terms of particles. That's usually a very convenient perspective, but it tends to have issues when gravity/spacetime is doing weird things (or even in an accelerated reference frame, which is sort of the same thing).

What you really want to focus on is the question, "What are the (quantum) fields doing during inflation?" Those fields will typically be in a state with a whole lot of symmetry, and only small, random fluctuations away from that state will lead to perturbations in the CMB.

I might be able to frame this in the particle picture, too. The issue is that there wasn't just one quark! There's a whole intense thermal mass of quarks and other particles, and the energies are high enough (and times short enough) that more of them are being pulled from the vacuum and annihilating back into it all the time (this is largely a field-theory statement, I'm afraid). _That_ mass of quarks is what's being pulled apart by inflation. So there's no single special original quark particle that triggers the whole thing. [Disclaimer: I'm not actually a cosmologist, so I welcome corrections on anything I've misstated there!]

<comment><USER3> Particle - field, okay. To me, a 'particle' is just a temporary entity that happens when a field has an 'interaction' and decides to have its wave function 'collapse' \-- then it has a new wave function.

I was trying to go back before there was a 'soup' of wave functions with lots of quarks or whatever the first 'particle' was. So, as I read Guth, there was a 'something', small enough to be essentially just a 'point', but with very high energy and energy density, and that density caused high space-time curvature, and the region with that high curvature expanded, explosively, on the way to something much flatter but much larger, in the first second so large as to be nearly as large as now and with density and curvature nearly as low as now. So, back to the 'beginning': There was just one particle/wave of very high energy in a very small region of very high curvature that got pulled by the expanding space-time and, presto, soon there was two particles or wave functions. That first separation is the one I am thinking about, and it had to have an axis.

And nearly all I have is just layman's descriptions of the curvature, wave functions, Guth's expansion, etc. so am typing stuff I really don't know about! In some of the math, my real field, I'm solid enough, but for the physics -- no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I ran across this before the Planck probe data had confirmed what WMAP had found.

There is a good write up on the alignment anomaly by theoretical cosmologist Dragan Huterer about it: [http://www- personal.umich.edu/~huterer/PRESS/CMB_Huterer.pdf](http://www- personal.umich.edu/~huterer/PRESS/CMB_Huterer.pdf)

Fascinating to see it still causing a ruckus all these years and a whole other probe later.

<comment><USER5> This is a really excellent link. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Physics is a strange and wonderful science. The more we learn the more we realize we don't understand. I've always believed that there are features of the the structure of the universe(s) that we have no idea even exist yet. It's like bringing Newton from the past, dropping him in an open field, and telling him he is surrounded by wireless communications. He'd have no clue what that meant. Likewise we are likely surrounded by things we don't have the background yet to recognize.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's unclear for me how observers can be sure that the differences they see are actually originated far far away, and not result of local interference: cloud or dark matter or whatever else. As far as I know, we have only 1 point of perspective, our Earth. Of course I have no idea how exactly they observe stuff, but that's the question I immediately have.

<comment><USER8> Very roughly speaking there are at least three ways to measure distances.

For "near by "objects on can use parallax: look at the object on a given date then again 6 months later and see how much it shifts against the back ground stars. Simply triangulate using the known distance from earth to sun as half the side of a triangle.

For "moderate" distances one can rely on certain variable stars that always have a known brightness. Then when you locate such a star, note how dim it is and calculate how far away it would have to be to have that brightness level.

For "far" distances one can measure the red shift. That is to say, on the large scale everything in the universe appears to be moving away from us. Further away object move faster than nearby objects. Thus if you can measure how fast something is receding from us you can tell how far it is. The technique for measuring speed like this is to measure the Doppler red shift.

<comment><USER2> But none of those techniques is applicable to variations in the CMB (the subject of this article), which is a more or less uniform glow at constant (and in some sense, maximal) redshift (and by definition, _behind_ the "background" stars).

I suppose that if this "axis of evil" were due to a pattern in nearby dust clouds we might be able to see some hints of paralax, but paralax would probably be difficult to measure for something as diffuse and broad as the pattern visible in this data.

It's my impression, for the record, that cosmologists are pretty confident that these variations _aren 't_ due to intervening dust. My sense is that the spectrum of the CMB in any given direction is very clearly a blackbody spectrum (the most precise blackbody spectrum in nature, in fact), so any absorption due to foreground matter should be pretty recognizable (and possibly even something they could correct for).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)</comment>


Microsoft forced users to install a password manager with a critical flaw - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/12/microsoft-is-forcing-users-to-install-a-critically-flawed-password-manager/ <comment><USER2> Guess it's good I remove it in my deployments. Microsoft seems to be throwing good sense out the window in Windows 10. A number of items I remove get reinstalled during updates. Options I turn off get turned on as well.

They're obviously playing on the majority of users' ignorance. This is despicable.

<comment><USER3> I love how everyone tells you "Windows 10 is just fine" every day EXCEPT when a new, huge, leak or mistake comes out. Then they go silent for a day.

... then they go back to telling you "I've never had a problem with it."

I use Windows 10. I support it professionally. The underlying system is good. And then someone at Microsoft decided to completely fill all of those kernel upgrades, with a gigantic pile of spyware, adware, and useless crap. (4 GB+ of Windows Store videogames?!)

One of my laptops is a "windows 10 ready" work laptop with a 5400 RPM hard drive. Between defender, indexing, telemetry, and app compatibility scans, it takes over 60 seconds to get to desktop. If you load the task manager, the disk usage is 100% for hours. And any time Windows decides to install or compile something (without warning or even a notification, like rebuilding .NET) the entire computer becomes a useless brick. I _used_ to be able to make the machine functional by turning off unnecessary, bloated services like Defender and Telemetry. Except every Windows Creators update they not only reset my settings, its disable Classic Shell, UNINSTALLS Core Temp and a WindowsGadgets re-enabling tool because they're "not compatible" (even though they work fine), and... they change the menus so that it's harder to find the button to disable Defender, and they make it harder (if not impossible) through Group Policy changes to disable those very same, taxing, services.

Try this: Install Windows 10, upgraded from 7/8/old-10. See Windows.old on your C:\? That's your old windows copy. Try to delete it. After all, it's useless right?--and takes over 20GB. Nope. Sorry. _You don 't have permission to delete it._ That's right. Your own hard drive you don't have permission to touch. And, laughably, Windows will tell me "You're running out of HDD space, want to delete the old folder?", I say "Yes." Then nothing happens and the message appears again.

I tried taking "ownership", used admin account, I tried changing permissions. Nothing. A professional windows IT support employee should not have to look up countless articles TO DELETE A FREAKING DIRECTORY. Even after I took "complete" ownership of all that, many files still didn't set, and I couldn't delete the whole thing.

I'm half tempted to boot into a Linux Live USB and delete it by force. But then I realize, "I'm going to download an ISO for another OS, burn it to a USB, then shut down my machine and reboot it... JUST TO DELETE A FOLDER?!"

Oh, and this is Enterprise edition. So I'm running the edition that everyone says "if you care about tuning Windows, you should have already bought Enterprise." Thanks for that lie.

<comment><USER4> > If you load the task manager, the disk usage is 100% for hours.

Load the performance monitor (button on the Performance tab in task manager), go to Disk and see what process is doing it. You may have something like full disk indexing going.

Regarding Windows.old,isn't that supposed to auto - clear after ~30 days? Also, the first two articles on a search for "remove windows.old" appear to confirm my expectation that the disk cleanup tool will remove it, possibly without even running it as administrator. Frankly this sounds like it's getting into "respect mah authoritah" territory.

For the games, are those preinstalled? I haven't seen such, but most of the Win10 systems in dealing with so far are either upgrades or business class machines. If you're getting Enterprise systems preinstalled with 4gb of games someone needs to talk to your supplier.

<comment><USER3> I said what was using disk usage.

App telemetry, defender, compatibilty, etc.

>Frankly this sounds like it's getting into "respect mah authoritah" territory.

Yeah, it must really suck to have the burden of being able to delete files that aren't in use on your machine that you own, run, and paid Enterprise edition for.

What possible use could a professional system administrator need for changing files on a machine... except the exact use I just mentioned.

If you can't understand why having admin file access is important, then I suggest you never try Linux (or... Windows 7... or any IT job) because you will be horrified by the potential control you have over your system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >If an outsider can find a bug similar to the 16-month-old vulnerability so quickly and easily, it stands to reason people inside the software company should have found it long ago

While true, it should be noted that Tavis Ormandy is not just any "outsider" and is something of a god when it comes to finding vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER6> I find this line of thinking pervasive among criticisms of all kinds of developers. Especially in video game forums!

"If they did it, then our game dev can too!" Like large programs are just some kind of widget you can just move from place to place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's the general direction of the software industry to neglect non-functional requirements.

I make functional requirement emphasizers starting by product managers directly responsible for this.

Their fantasy is to be the next Steve Jobs' era Apple but usually they first become the next Equifax.

</comment><comment><USER8> Windows 10 LTSB (long term servicing branch) should have been the original win10 release, with "add-ons" of the extra junk... instead they give you the most junk filled os and make you pay a premium (and very limited availability) for LTSB to strip it out and slow down the patches so they aren't forced down whenever ms wants.

Good like buying it easily if you not a premier partner or msdn subscriber.

We just qualified for our new client machine builds and will be providing that to customers only going forward for win10 requests.

Have not checked if this password keeper still gets deployed, will have to check monday. If it's distributed part of Windows store, then it won't be cause that's stripped out itself

</comment><comment><USER9> What password managers do HN readers recommend?

<comment><USER10> I use KeePassX, because of this: [https://mobile.twitter.com/taviso/status/817065731703468032?...](https://mobile.twitter.com/taviso/status/817065731703468032?lang=en)

<comment><USER11> Do you know what he thinks of 1Password? e.g. I've seen this comment [1] on 1Password, but do you know what his actual thoughts are? He's not fond of it, but does he have anything concrete to say about it as to why? I have friends using 1Password and I would like to be able to tell them and give them concrete reasons to switch to KeePass if there are security issues with it.

[1] [https://twitter.com/taviso/status/760231214812844032](https://twitter.com/taviso/status/760231214812844032)

<comment><USER12> There aren't security issues with 1Password really, but there are other issues, mostly around the company AgileBits. From my other comment on this thread:

These days AgileBits(the 1password people) are doing everything they can to get everyone onto a subscription plan, and are breaking local vaults slowly. Most people don't seem to recommend it anymore.

The only security issue really is the online vault(which isn't a security issue per-say, but is a security weakness since your passwords are no longer under your direct control). This may or may not be an issue for you, depending on your security posture.

<comment><USER11> Thanks! So would you know what he meant with that tweet? Was he just annoyed at the subscription plan...? It seems out of place given that he's a security researcher from what I gather?

<comment><USER12> No, and that tweet was from Aug. 2016 with nothing further from him about 1password, unless I missed it, so clearly he didn't feel compelled to either continue his research or he didn't find anything worth disclosing. Your guess as to which is meant.

But other researchers have played with 1password and most have historically had good things to say about it, except recently when they started pushing everyone to the online vaults like I mentioned.

And yes, he is a security researcher for Google.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Firefox 3 On Track To Be Speediest Browser - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/391547/firefox-3-on-track-to-be-speediest-browser <comment><USER2> Speediest browser with Adblock+, anyways</comment>


The Case Against Summer - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904583204576544753319094690.html?mod=lifestyle_newsreel

<comment><USER2> I think one point in the submitted article is spot-on, that summer is not the best season to take off in many parts of North America. What technological or social trends would families enjoy vacations when the weather is actually best where they would be vacationing? It seems to me that a more flexible school year would help many parents of school-age children plan vacations on a more rational basis than just when schools announce vacation periods. If education becomes decoupled from seat time in schools, and matched more to self- motivated activity by learners, a relaxing family vacation could count as part of K-12 schooling, and allow families to take vacations at whatever time of year fits each family best.

Of course I don't like at all (even though I appreciate that it is an exaggeration for humorous effect) the article author's comment on "Math Camp," which he considers a form of torture. The actual program with the name Canada/USA Mathcamp

<http://mathcamp.org/>

is a delight to most young people who attend, and a fine way to develop an interest in mathematics not taught in most school systems. Too bad that program is scheduled for the summer (but usually in places where the summer is a season of good weather).

</comment><comment><USER3> P. J. O'Rourke can turn a phrase:

       Our summer weather in 2011 consisted of tornados, heat waves, an earthquake
       and a hurricane. For everyone this side of Nome, summer vacation in the
       summer is like having a coffee break at 2 a.m.

       At the very least, our elected officials should be back on the job.
       They left some unfinished business—such as the survival of America into
       the second quarter of the 21st century, etc.

       Eating Whoppers and fries for breakfast together was a bonding experience.
       Every boy treasures that moment when his father first says to him,
       "I don't think Mom needs to know about this."</comment>


A home microhydro plant (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html <comment><USER2> There's a very cool hydro system built over a few years by a YouTuber called 'Mr HydroHead' over a bunch of videos spanning several years - the first here: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=edEhvmNlYqk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=edEhvmNlYqk)

Pretty impressive how much power these things can produce!

<comment><USER3> Came here to post same series!

If you don't want to watch 19 episodes spanning a few years, he put up three summary videos of the project starting at episode 20: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61lZn1sUkzE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61lZn1sUkzE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember when this was originally posted, and I am still super impressed with him making his own transformers.

<comment><USER5> _The varnish I used is intended for oven-drying at 140 to 150 degrees Celsius. I don 't have an oven large enough to fit this coil, so I heated it by applying roughly 20A of direct current to the high voltage winding. I monitored the temperature by measuring the resistance change of the wire._

I can't even...

<comment><USER6> If you know the temperature coefficient of the wire, this isn't particularly hard to do! You can do it easily by applying a constant voltage roughly of the wanted amperage and then calculating the resistance via voltage and resulting amperage, then feedback to adjust voltage.

It's fairly popular in a wide range of applications, mostly either machines with too much current or too large areas to reasonably measure temperature or parts that are too small (vape coils for example can be used in a temperature coefficient mode).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is quite an interesting read, although my eyebrows shot up after reading their plan to run 1kV on each of two wires + ground, that are only insulated for 600V...even if the pvc adds some insulation (i couldn't find the actual numbers off hand), anywhere the wire comes out of the conduit, it will risk breaching the insulation, no?

<comment><USER8> There's a lot of safety margin built into standard wire insulation. I've exceeded the ratings pretty severely with no ill effects. My concern, were this my project, would be long-term wear on the insulation. 1,000 volts is gonna HURT. 480 hurts bad enough.

<comment><USER9> line-line potential is 2kV so the wear is worse between conductors. The only saving grace is the current is so low that the wire will see almost no heating which almost eliminates thermal stress.

<comment><USER10> You are misunderstanding. He runs each wire in a separate, sealed insulating cable pipe. These would most likely be 1-1.5 mm wall thickness PVC.

<comment><USER11> Am I right then in assuming each wire's insulator provides 600V isolation so two side-by-side would provide 1200V isolation, and the PVC is additional on top of that?

<comment><USER12> 1mm PVC alone is probably good for 2000v as long as it has no voids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That turned out to be a far larger operation than the "Micro" would imply!

<comment><USER14> I know that micro applied more to how much power it generated compared to a real hydro plant. But it cracked me up thinking it was going to be a small project.

Tools Needed: ... 1 Pack Horse ...

<comment><USER15> Horse is optional - I think the critical item is "A Gabriel"

<comment><USER9> He is a very interesting part of this whole article along with his son. The amount of physical labor involved is staggering. I've dug some trenches by hand, the longest being two feet deep for conduit, maybe 5 meters at most. Really hard work. Took me half a day. Reading through this article and seeing the amount of physical labor involved actually makes me anxious. But this guy and his son did it all. Most likely without complaint.

Though the really impressive part is the shirtless picture of Gabriel. Dude is shredded from what I assume is solely from manual labor. If true, incredibly impressive.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, at first I assumed Gabriel had a digger. Then it slowly dawned that he probably didnt.

<comment><USER17> I don't think I've ever seen someone so well shreaded from labour before. Usually it's the sort of in-shape-out-of-shape guy, or thin and wiry. Gabriel looks like he's off the set of 300 or something.

<comment><USER18> That South American manual labor workout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I actually think of this article often, because I find it so depressing. Hydro power seems like a simple thing (who hasn't played with water wheels as a kid), and yet it turns out it is incredibly complicated and a lot of hard work.

There is also a book in German called "Leben auf dem Lande" (How to live in the countryside) describing how to do all sorts of things in agriculture. It cured me of any desire to live on a farm and really makes me hope badly that there won't be some sort of incident that makes me have to become a farmer or do other basic things, like building my own power plant.

Edit: of course I am also impressed by the people who built this thing in the article. It is just that it makes me realize I would be unlikely to be able to copy their feat.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been to this website a number of times over the last decade or so, and I love it. It reminds me of the old internet.

> Be patient, this story is several dozen photos long, plus the text, so if > you have a slow connection it will take some time to fully load. I hope it > will be worth it.

I miss this. I actually miss the joy of the page downloading. I miss the unqiueness of the websites and the content. What we have now for a global internet is great and the tech and the content is beyond amazing but, we have also lost something too.

<comment><USER21> I don't get it, what have we lost? Having to wait for pictures to load? Surely this is just nostalgia?

<comment><USER22> We've (mostly) lost the idea of a content creator just creating content for the joy of sharing it, and transmitting it on their own through their own website using their own rules. So much content is now mediated through "platforms" that are beholden to a complex network of surveillance capitalism and its economic pressures.

It's actually refreshing to see someone doing their own thing, like, truly their own thing.

That said, the dude could use some CSS-skills.

Although I can totally imagine the reaction of someone like that to modern web frameworks. He might be inspired to roll-his-own... he did with EDA CAD as the creator of KISSCAD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The sitemap here is quite impressive: [https://ludens.cl/sitemap.htm](https://ludens.cl/sitemap.htm)

<comment><USER24> Indeed, and I would note that it appears to be written in plain HTML which means it will probably be both searchable (in an archive somewhere) and readable on a browser 100 years from now.

<comment><USER25> You're assuming Google won't deprecate HTML in favour of dynamic JS in the next few years.

<comment><USER26> You're assuming I care about what Google does ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Of historical interest, it's the sort of thing you might do if you were a Victorian industrial magnate, for some value of "home": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cragside](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cragside)

<comment><USER28> Incredible. Basically a "smart house" powered by water, well over a century ago. Gives inspiration that, despite the current cesspool that is the Internet of S$$$, over long enough timespans some of the better inventions (dishwashers, lighting, vacuum cleaners) will stop being "home automation" and just become "home".

<comment><USER27> Powered by "renewables" I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow I am absolutely sucked into this website, I want to scroll it forever. God I'm so jealous, albeit I'm only 24, but I really want to learn how to do all this stuff and move out to somewhere far away.

<comment><USER30> The website might be packed with information, but still I find it disappointing that the author starts by describing a controller while leaving the reader totally in the dark about what its function is. Also, but this may be forgivable given the target audience, I'd prefer to read a little introduction about what a microhydro plant really is, and its principle of operation.

<comment><USER31> The controller has its own complete page, and the link is at the bottom of this page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I cannot even imagine the legal sh!tstorm that would ensue from attempting this here in the PNW, the environmental impact looks quite significant.

<comment><USER33> It looks like a good way to ruin an entire ecosystem.

<comment><USER17> Running water through pipes is going to destroy the surrounding forests how exactly?

It might modify where the wetter parts of the area are, but I don't think that equates to destroying it.

<comment><USER34> As the article says, it diverts most of the flow during low-flow periods (i.e. summer) which means there would not be much left for fish passage. Might be fine, might not, I don't know enough about the ecosystem to say.

Additionally, there are some definite issues with sedimentation during construction. They excavated the channel to the intake and put all the dirt from the excavation into the stream for it to "carry away"[1]. This would not be allowed in most areas I know of - essentially, fish can't breathe if there's too much dirt in the water. Then several times it overflowed and eroded the channel - more sedimentation. The author even admitted using concrete liner would be the better choice, but opted not to because it was expensive - essentially, this externalized the cost of sedimentation to the ecosystem.

[1] [https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/intake.html](https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/intake.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Love everything about this blog.

The only disappointing thing about his projects was the house he built. You go out to live in paradise... and decide to make your home in a _cave_ SMH.

Need way more windows: [https://ludens.cl/paradise/house/814.jpg](https://ludens.cl/paradise/house/814.jpg)

<comment><USER36> That direct link to the image doesn't seem to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Austrian version of the same theme: [https://www.victronenergy.com/blog/2019/01/03/diy- ingenuity-...](https://www.victronenergy.com/blog/2019/01/03/diy-ingenuity- hydro-power-mkii-part-i/)

<comment><USER38> They used an excavator instead of a Gabriel

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm quite certain that any US state's department of natural resources would take great exception to diversion of streams.

<comment><USER40> What are the relevant US regulations on doing something like this? I know some streams are crucial ecologically. But is it mostly regulated on a national, state or local level?

<comment><USER41> Playing with any water system requires permission from the water management district in your local area, or the health department, or both. Plans would need to be drawn and stamped by a civil engineer, inspected and approved and then final inspected after construction in order to be put to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Discussed in 2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6895582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6895582)

Related to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20071836](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20071836) from yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER43> Gabriel the true hero

</comment><comment><USER44> The associated article on creating an electronic load controller for his microhydro system is also very interesting: [https://ludens.cl/Electron/picelc/picelc.html](https://ludens.cl/Electron/picelc/picelc.html)

<comment><USER45> jeez, the breadth of knowledge on this guy is just staggering. and then you explore the rest of his site and learn he's in to half a dozen other highly technical and time consuming hobbies.

quite an inspiration!

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> So I wonder what caused the choice of the turbine blades?

Is it an impulse turbine (which I believe is the most efficient?)

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

</comment><comment><USER47> How much would all this cost in 2019? I'm wondering because I see many more people turn towards solar panels, or alternatively windmills. First time I see a hydro plant of this size.

<comment><USER48> The author mentions solar in a later post:

> Another restriction is that there is no power at this place. Bringing power > here would require a 350 meter long transmission line through dense forest, > or else installing a solar panel, battery and regulator. Due to the low head > available between the intake dam and the forebay, a picohydro system to > provide some power is hardly feasible. Solar power is quite restricted too, > because the place is in a deep valley and gets only about 3 hours of sun a > day. Furthermore, in winter there is often no sunny day for a full month! So > panels would have to be dimensioned to run on diffuse light from the clouds, > and that needs big panels to produce only a little bit of power.

<comment><USER49> I remember hearing this is a (common) misconception, and that solar panels will still be at somewhere around 50% efficiency even under heavy clouds. Maybe they weren't as efficient yet back in 2009.

<comment><USER12> My panels disagree.

On a direct-sun day, they generate 4 kilowatts, but under heavy cloud I'm lucky to get 500w

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is probably from 2012

<comment><USER51> Most of the images are from 2008 and the html file itself from 2009 [https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/](https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/).

There is also an update from 2014 [https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/intake.html](https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/intake.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I thought it was about some kind of farming.</comment>


Show HN: FluidDATA API – Create your own audio search engine with FluidDATA - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BitPlatter/fluiddata_flask_example <comment><USER2> Oh hi!

Despite the green user, I've actually worked with these guys and seen this project up close and in person, and the amount of data they're harvesting here is pretty overwhelming.

There are a few other places doing transcription nowadays, but they're _just_ doing that, and this is a bit richer an API for getting more tailoring done against your source data.

Either way, if you're looking for a way to add audio transcription to your podcast or vlog, this is a cool service. If you're looking to make that audio searchable with the fewest number of steps, this is probably the coolest service around.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is actually really cool! I'm guessing it is English only though? I don't see examples of any other languages and due to the complexity of word->audio matching I imagine other languages aren't supported.

I think a better title would be "Audio search engine for Podcasts using FluidDATA". It had briefly gotten my hopes up that I'd be able to make a search engine for my music, based just on the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Its English only for now. We could support other languages if there is a large enough demand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool project, and a mammoth undertaking in terms of scraping and data processing. Would you be able to share any details on what your ingestion infrastructure looks like?

<comment><AUTHOR> We were planning on writing up a blog post to go over what our backend looks like. But essentially we have written a crawler to discover audio on the internet and a distributed processing framework to download, extract metadata, and transcribe the audio.

We've iterated through a few storage solutions and have settled on using GlusterFS+zfs running on Storinators. So far we have about 350TB of data indexed in our collection.

<comment><USER5> That's pretty neat. After you download the audio and process it, do you delete the data, or store it for safe keeping? 350TB is a healthy chunk of data.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have enough storage to hold on to the data. We keep the data around so we can retranscribe files as we update our language models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Btw, what is the best way to search trought the audio files? For example if I know for what sound am I searching for

<comment><USER5> Are you looking for a specific sound, or is it a word in the English language? These cats can help if it's a word in the English language: I'm not sure if they can search for specific sounds, although I'm sure it's possible down the road.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the ability to skip though the audio stream to your search term locations within it, pretty cool. Nice work!

<comment><USER5> Yeah! This looks like a promising way to quickly search many podcasts/audio streams at once. I wish I had this tool for my college research

<comment><USER8> If you haven't stumbled across it yet, you can check out the FluidDATA web search that let's you search millions of podcasts by phrase or mention here [https://fluiddata.com/](https://fluiddata.com/)

You can register here [https://accounts.bitplatter.com/?next=https://fluiddata.com/](https://accounts.bitplatter.com/?next=https://fluiddata.com/) to get 100 free searches per month.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I just messed around with it a bit and enjoyed the discovery. You all seem to have a ton of content across the web processed, it's very interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Hydrogen Hoax (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax

<comment><USER2> "A kilogram of hydrogen has about the same energy content as a gallon of gasoline, so the owner of a filling station could only expect to obtain the same net income from a kilogram of hydrogen as from a gallon of gas."

In a planned economy with fixed prices - probably. In the free market economy however, the price is dictated by the market itself. Add on top of it some government regulations that would put a burden upon gas use and you'll may get well beyond the current market price for gas. The reasoning about electricity price (that followed after the piece I quoted) has the same kind of fallacy in it, assuming too much. It would be economically viable to just capture the cheap daytime energy peaks in some sort of stable and effective energy carrier for later use, and if you could easily transport and sell it - even better! I am not saying that the it should be hydrogen, mind you. Other than that, I mostly agree with the ideas debated.

Edit: As I read further, I see author's solution - ethanol and methanol. On price, only methanol is considered (the ethanol is obviously more expensive), and here I am not sure (considering the prospect of fuel handling by civilians) if the author is aware that methanol is highly poisonous.</comment>


Idiots think they know more than expert WebDevs. Claim immunity to SQL Injection - <AUTHOR> http://www.3comets.com

<comment><AUTHOR> A transcript of the presentation has been posted under video.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is terrible, and linkbait.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> i posted this link and i am one of the idiots.

<comment><USER3> When you say you're "one of the idiots", do you mean you work for Envelope? Are you posting this as a "we learned our lesson and thought we were experts when we aren't"?

I'm all for beginners finding new and novel ways to solve problems, but if you are involved with the envelope team, it would be interesting to hear your experiences of what happened after the video was made.

<comment><USER4> We are very serious, we know we have solved the problem. Things have been going well. We are hoping to get feedback.

<comment><USER3> I missed that in the post, and the title of "Idiots ... claim immunity to SQL injection attacks" doesn't suggest you've been successful.

Maybe I'm the idiot. You've got a nice query building interface, and I'm not SQL injection expert, but if you're are transferfing SQL statements directly from a browser through to your API, then somebody can just write a damaging SQL statement to the API. If you're sending to your API a paramaterized list Eg. in a restful example Get/id,name/Where/last_accessed/Greater/24000 then you've really built an API which is doing the same thing middle where is doing. Translating an API into SQL at some point.

As a developer, you haven't hit a solution for me. So little time is spent reading and writing to databases because middleware has abstracted so much of that and in languages like Rails, you're spending 90% of your time working with the data outside the db and then just stuffing it into the db. The frameworks take care of the SQL injection issues due to the middleware, which is open sourced and being used by millions of sites safely.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The enigma of bronze age tin - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-09-enigma-bronze-age-tin.html <comment><USER2> This is significant because one of the hypotheses for the spectacular Late Bronze Age Collapse is the loss of ability to source tin.

<comment><USER3> The Catastrophe, defined as the simultaneous destruction of almost all the Mediterranean cities around 1190 BCE, is taken as the end of the Bronze Age. It appears to have been the result of a military innovation. Widespread collapse of civilization seems sufficient to cause trading networks to lapse.

If trade was falling off before that, it could be that the new iron swords coming out of northern Italy were driving down demand, and metal from the now useless bronze swords entering the market.

Hardly anything written for a few centuries after the Catastrophe survives, so the prospect of resolving the question seems dim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This[0] episode of the Fall of Civilizations Podcast talks about this incident in more detail.

[0] [https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/01/21/episode-2-...](https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/01/21/episode-2-is- now-live/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The astonishing nature of this revelation cannot be overstated. How did people in Turkey and Palestine, at the time the Great Pyramid was being built in Egypt 4500 years ago, know there was tin ore in England? How did people in England know anybody wanted it, a thousand miles away? There were no cities in between, no open-ocean sailing vessels. How did it even get across the Channel?

There was clearly a hell of a lot going on all over Europe and Asia that didn't need cities or books.

I don't know if finding cloves from the Moluccas in a middle-class house in Syria in 2000 BCE is more, or less astonishing.</comment>


"Lack of diversity in tech is no accident" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1185634274529009664 <comment><USER2> >Keep this story in mind when someone tells you that tech is a meritocracy.

I will. But there is nothing new here if you're paying attention. There is also fair competition, an open market and equal opportunities for all. That sentence strikes me as false when your competitors can literally bleed millions for years all the while killing any form of competition. Examples abound, from WeWork to Tesla and all these Uber-like startups [1].

What is a poor, hard-working, honest guy to do in this extremely out of balance scenarios if he's not on the "have-tons-of-money-to-burn-through" side of the equation?!

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/are-we- cus...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/are-we-cusp-next- dot-com-bubble/600232/)

</comment><comment><USER3> How about sticking to merits? A startup needs speed? Sure,but that does not mean unjust discrimination is the way but it also does not mean hiring should be driven by diversity. And screw the whole "culture fit" b.s.,this is why EEOC is needed badly,you offer services to the public so your "culture" is the public culture,you don't get to define a "culture" and gatekeep who works there or who you provide services to based on that criteria. Use merits for hiring and be fair to employees and customers alike. A public business and a private club are two different types of organizations.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm the founder of a startup, and I hire people I trust and people I have worked with in the past. It just so happens that most of these people have made it to the CS/ECE/Math departments at my university (otherwise I wouldn't have had the opportunity to work with them). If I measure merit by how qualified I think they are, then I'm more inclined to hire people I already know, and this is just knock on effects of gender/race composition by major[1] and university enrollment in general. Any hiring/enrolling system that puts diversity above merit has to bare the opportunity cost of not having more qualified people, and for most companies/organizations this isn't a reasonable compromise.

[1]: [http://waf.cs.illinois.edu/discovery/Gender-Diversity-at- UIU...](http://waf.cs.illinois.edu/discovery/Gender-Diversity-at-UIUC/)</comment>


Benefits of Selling Outside the Mac App Store - <AUTHOR> http://dancounsell.com/articles/the-benefits-of-selling-software-outside-the-mac-app-store <comment><USER2> Another point to add is that applications sold outside the App Store can avoid the sandboxing restrictions of the Store, and consequently contain functionality that would be not permitted by Apple on the Store (file access, deeper system access, etc.).

That said, for my side project ( [http://artfulmac.com](http://artfulmac.com) ) it is absolutely worth it _to me_ as a solo developer to pay Apple their 30% to have them handle fulfillment (including system-integrated update notifications), payment processing (with currency conversion), tax form creation, and refunds. It's a trade of financial overhead for time. The App Store also conveys a sense of trust to consumers.

<comment><AUTHOR> _it is absolutely worth it to me as a solo developer to pay Apple their 30% to have them handle fulfillment_

I think one aspect that gets easily lost in the debate is the long-term impact of having your app on the MAS (exclusively or not). You need to consider the value of being able to provide trials (i.e., do not force potential customers to spend money upfront on software that might not fulfil their requirements), discounts for your long term repeat customers, the ability to communicate directly with them and resolve their problems.

If you want to run a sustainable business, whether the MAS is a net positive becomes a question mark. I have not seen much supporting data to suggest that the MAS is a net positive if we compare exclusive direct vs exclusive MAS over a long period of time.

Anecdotally, from the data I have on hand (conversations with customers and friends), almost no one discovered their Mac apps from the MAS (there's some bias in my sample, of course). If they needed the software, they would have bought it - whether it's outside or not doesn't matter. If you need a tool for your job (the type of software I'm interesting in making), you're not going pass on it just cause you have to enter your credit card. For other types of software, the more disposable ones, convenience plays a much bigger role.

And most importantly of all, it will all depend on the particular type of software that you're selling. In my experience, the MAS works great for type of software that's mostly consumable - cheap, disposable, no long term plan to keep it updated. For other types, where you plan to run a sustainable business over many years - I'm not convinced.

While you'll probably do less units selling directly, you'll be getting a significantly higher proportion of the sale price. It's important to consider all aspects, not just raw revenue over a short period of time and make a decision from there - for some apps, the MAS would be the right way, for others - not so much. Now, deciding which way to go is a much, much harder question and I'm afraid there's no easy way to come up with a definitive answer.

<comment><USER3> This is a critical flaw in Apple's handling of both app stores, IMO. The rules of the app store incentivize simple, one-off apps with minimal functionality. As a distribution mechanism it offers a lot of benefits for users but unless they take some relatively easy steps to make it a better place for serious developers those benefits will be moot.

Their handling of iOS and Mac apps seems indifferent at best and downright incompetent at best. In any case I've left their proprietary ghetto and gone back to coding for the web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Mac App Store is a ghetto. It's completely neglected by Apple. I'm not sure who they imagine to be the target audience -- maybe it works for mobile- style game experiences, I wouldn't know, but it's certainly no good for professional apps.

Important issues with sandboxing were never resolved. Meanwhile existing APIs keep being moved to the restricted list, so as a developer you can't even count on your product being able to stay on the Mac App Store.

<comment><AUTHOR> Speaking of sandboxing, Reeder 2 for Mac (one of the best RSS readers) was forced to remove the option to be set as the default RSS reader from within the app. This is because a function on Yosemite is longer allowed in sandboxed apps but still works fine on 10.9 [1]

While it's not the end of the world, it's just plain annoying having to remove such a common sense feature. The consequence of this means that if you were to distribute a web browser via the MAS, you will not be able to ask the user to set it as the default web browser. That's just a subpar experience.

My hypothesis for the added restriction is that it might be considered a security hole for an app to just set itself as a handler, for say, http links.

The correct way to have handled this particular situation was to introduce a new entitlement and define what content types an app might want to handle, which will get reviewed by the MAS review team. Unfortunately, the solution [2] is: "There is no solution; it can't be done anymore in the sandbox."

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26241689/lssetdefaultrole...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26241689/lssetdefaultrolehandlerforcontenttype- in-yosemite)

[2] [https://devforums.apple.com/message/1059008#1059008](https://devforums.apple.com/message/1059008#1059008)

<comment><USER4> I would add that something as complex as a web browser would be impossible on the Mac App Store anyway -- a sandboxed browser wouldn't even be able to open file:// URLs.

Berners-Lee's original web browser was developed on the NeXT (direct ancestor of OS X)... But if he wanted to take that 1991 browser and distribute it on the Mac App Store today, he would have to remove important functionality.

<comment><USER5> Impossible on the Mac App Store, but perfectly possible on the Mac. Which is the appropriate comparison. Tim's web browser wasn't released on the NeXT App Store, after all.

<comment><USER4> Well, yes, web browsers are possible on the Mac. They are probably the most commonly downloaded type of Mac app.

Which begs my original question: what good is a "Mac app store" that can't accommodate Mac apps?

Apple isn't alone in this, of course. The Windows 8 app store (Marketplace, or whatever it's called these days) is just as limited... But really, if the most apt comparison for the MAS is the Windows 8 store, that further illustrates just how badly Apple has blown it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it is misleading to have a big picture of an iPhone at the top, and talk extensively about selling outside the app store, when that isn't a realistic option for iOS smartphone developers. You are forced to use the App Store for iPhone since the number of jail broken devices that can install other apps is too low. The author must be talking about Mac laptop/desktop apps.

</comment><comment><USER7> I tend to think of selling to an app store as basically selling through Wal- Mart or Best Buy vs selling direct. Yes, selling direct is higher margin, but it's also got a different set of challenges. For example, you have to acquire customers on your own.

Probably the best way to look at it would be to treat the Mac App Store as a secondary channel. If it was a secondary sales channel, then it's additional revenue and new customers which is a nice to have.

You are probably best off creating your own customer list and selling directly to customers over time away from the Mac App store. Or, you avoid it alltogether and figure out how to sell direct. The only downside there is you have to do your own advertising and use something like Gumroad or FastSpring or some homegrown Stripe solution for delivery and such.

Nothing is perfect and there are tradeoffs to both approaches.

<comment><USER8> The comparison to Wal-Mart seems apt. They'll sell your product, but they'll abuse the hell out of you and force you to compromise the quality of the product, possibly beyond what you're willing to accept: [http://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal- mart](http://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really solid article. I love that it includes actual numbers.

"Apple has taken $600,000 (USD) of that in fees. Ouch!" is much more concrete than just "30% of revenue."

<comment><USER10> > taken

Well, there are providing a service in return for those fees as well as high- visibility amongst potential customers. Striking out on your own means a lot of work in getting people to your website.

<comment><USER11> 30% is an _insane_ commission. Absolutely mind-boggingly brutal. The kind of commission that should guarantee that your product is featured on Apple's home page in large bold, possibly flashing, letters well above their own products. If it's not, then it's not "high-visibility" and 30% is just a blatant rip- off.

# A message from your local software retailer who's doing really well by selling directly.

<comment><USER12> It's not too bad considering the alternatives. Not all of my customers are able to download software so I still sell through catalogs. They get a 35-40% discount—which is more than Apple charges. Plus I need to press discs and print manuals.

It would be nice if Apple would fix the search features on the Mac and iOS Apps stores so people can actually find my software.

<comment><USER13> Can you link is to what you sell?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For developers who sell the same app on both the Mac App Store and outside of it, do you keep the same price for both or do you encourage users to buy directly from you with variable pricing? Thirty percent is a significant chunk and I'm wondering if anyone's tried to pass some of the savings (so to speak) when selling directly.

<comment><USER15> I'm not familiar with the rule number offhand, but I'm reasonably certain they require you to have the same list price in both places.

<comment><USER5> Actually there is no such rule.

<comment><USER15> You are correct. I was thinking of this rule that has since been removed:

11.13 Apps can read or play approved content (magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video) that is sold outside of the app, for which Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues, provided that the same content is also offered in the app using IAP at the same price or less than it is offered outside the app. This applies to both purchased content and subscriptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a Mac user, I only download applications from the wild-wild-web if the developer is a big player, like Google, Mozilla or Adobe (except I refuse to install Flash).

I think it is just too big risk to download from a small business which I don't know and run their application outside the sandbox.

So, I'd recommend that you have some version in MAS, otherwise you may lose customers.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not only are software developers starting to realize that middleman Apple only grabs huge chunk of revenue without providing much value.

I talked with local audio gear seller and he told me that we will start to see less audio products compatible with Apple as they just want to grab 20% of revenue.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Selling outside of AppStore" is not necessarily meaning that you should not release the app on App Store. It's still a good channel and even the only channel. The challenge is to find a way to get paid outside App Store.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wouldn't dream of selling a Mac App in the App Store. The only reason I would sell an iOS App in the App Store is that users would otherwise need to jailbreak their phones.

If someone recommends an app store product, they'll link to apple's website.

If I sell products from my own site, and someone recommends it then they'll link to my site.

In general, inbound links are worth a lot more than individual product sales.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hi, I am creating an appstore for indie developers, it will go live before the end of January. URL's immortalin.com , email me at <my username> at hotmail.com if you are interested.</comment>


Google does not offer SSL search to users in China - <AUTHOR>

Being based in China I was eager to try out Google over SSL to find that no matter which Google site I go to (.co.uk, .ie, .com, and even .com.kh) I am redirected to Googles Hong Kong site without SSL.
So no SSL(and therefore no privacy for searches anyway).
So DuckDuckGo it is then. <comment><USER2> They don't offer it to UK-based people either.</comment>