Ask HN: Critique my company - <AUTHOR> I've worked at the same company for the past 14 years, I am one of the founders.  We do mainly C++ work on Windows and Linux.  We're in the financial trading industry.  We have grown to about 20 developers.
Every time we hire a new developer I give them a few weeks to get up to speed with someone else and then I meet with them and we talk.  I always ask "What do you see that we could be doing better?  It could be anything, our process, the tools we use, our structure, anything."  And I get literally nothing.  I just can't believe it.  Am I not asking the right question?  Or I'm not asking it the right way?  I thought maybe people were intimidated by me so I had someone else do it, HR, team leads, but we get the same result.  There are even some pretty obvious flaws that we have like a homegrown, google docs based project tracking system and our lack of using third party libraries but the developers never mention it.  And I'm sure there are many other issues that I have trouble seeing.
Prior to starting the company I worked at six different companies and outside of the first one, my first real programming job, I would always have lots of ideas in the first few weeks about how things could be improved.  Some of my ideas were bad because I just didn't understand what was going on well enough but I like to think that some of them had merit.
Any ideas how we can get feedback from our new developers on how to improve? <comment><USER3> Your developers are smart - they don't want to shake the tree. They know that even though you _say_ you want constructive criticism, there's a good chance you'll resent them for giving it to you, so they take the safe road.

Ask the ones who leave, but wait 5 months until they're comfortably settled into new employment. You can bet they'll give it to you straight, but you might not like that either.

<comment><USER4> Good idea. I personally had given feedback every time I left a company and the reaction was always either no improvement to slight adversity. So naturally I stopped giving feedback.

Maybe instead of simple feedback it would be worth to just task the developer with improving something that they will see as problematic (kind of 20% time but for improvement).

<comment><USER5> Rules #1: Never talk when you leave. Just leave.

Whatever you say, it can only make it worse.

<comment><USER6> I disagree.

Now, let me start by saying I don't intend for this to be a suggestion for everyone in every situation, I just want to suggest that sometimes it can make things better.

I left my job three months ago, but I had actually tried to quit about 6 months earlier, instead I ended up switching positions. None of the problems I was having really ended up getting resolved after the my first attempt to quit, which is why I ended up actually leaving after giving it 6 months. But from what I've heard from friends still there, since I left they've actually been trying to fix things.

For the last month or so, my boss knew I was again debating leaving and we ended up having at least one conversation a week about things that were wrong. For me personally, it was great, I didn't have that stupid voice in the back of my head telling me to downplay everything. I think he appreciated how candid I was too.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone should always do this. I worked for a company with ~150 people and I was the 12th hire, with my boss coming in shortly after me. However, saying you should _never_ do it isn't true either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How much time are you giving them to prepare an answer?

If a senior member of the company scheduled a meeting and then asked me on the spot what I would improve about the company I wouldn't be able to give any good ideas.

If instead they sent me a note saying that in three days they would like to meet with me for twenty minutes, and that during this time they would like to hear my thoughts so far about working for the company and to please think about ways in which you think the company can improve. I would be able to provide many ideas in this scenario.

<comment><USER8> This would definitely help. We all have yearly "performance reviews" with our next highest-up in command. 2 weeks beforehand they email a questionnaire (roughly 12 questions) which we are expected to at least read over, though it's preferred that we fill it out and bring it with us to the meeting so we can have a proper constructive discussion. AFAIK many things that are mentioned by multiple people are implemented in some form or other, or if not, management tells us their justification against implementation. The meeting is confidential and they remind us that any feedback that is passed on will be anonymous (though I'm guessing after mentioning 10 years in a row that we need a ping pong table, they probably know who it is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My suspicion is that the silence reflects the company culture (and perhaps the larger culture depending on where the company operates). Some elements that may be in play (but I am imagining based on very little information):

1\. The formality of the process.

2\. A lack of previous informal conversations. The first time the boss shows up in a new hire's office, a good strategy is often to keep one's mouth shut.

3\. Only asking new hires. A sophisticated new hire may realize that they do not know the big picture. Other new hires may not want to throw their team 'under the bus'.

4\. The homegrown Google docs and in-house libraries are all "somebody's baby". And if they were a priority problem, then the founders would have fixed them. They haven't, so what is the point in mentioning something that obviously will not change.

My random internet advice:

1\. Come up with a real plan to fix the problems everyone knows about.

2\. Ask everyone how to improve the process, not just new hires.

3\. Build a culture of trust.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER10> A previous CEO used to hold breakfasts once a month. It was really informal with a mix of people and a wide variety of work related topics got discussed. We could ask him things and he could ask us things. The setting made it really good for breaking down that communication barrier between juniors and The Boss.

</comment><comment><USER11> How about giving your new hires a few mostly blank pages with a letterhead of "My first two weeks WTF moments...". On day one give it to them and let them know you will take them out to dinner in two weeks to talk about what they write down. Let them know it is really valuable to you to have fresh sets of eyes on company processes and that there will be no negative repercussions. I'd then give them a few examples of what you would like to know.

Given all that I still think you won't get much feedback until you've done this a while and the current employees let the new hires know that there are no issues with them telling you that things are wrong.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am not the founder of my company, but I ask the same thing of new hires (it's probably easier to give ideas to the non-founder). One thing that has worked well for me has been to say "One of my favorite things to hear from a new hire is what we could be doing better. You have the perspective of someone who has been elsewhere and have fresh eyes, and don't just accept things that aren't working. One example of something that isn't working is X. Another is Y. Besides those, can you think of other ways we can make the company better?"

That way you start by being self-critical, which makes people feel more open to complaining.

Btw, remember if you ask this... you have to follow through to _fix_ some of these problems or you can lose trust. Only ask if you really do want to hear feedback and action on some of them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Feedback needs to be anonymous or it will always be worthless. Few people have the courage to point out even blatant truths to their employer. Just set up an email that anyone can submit to anonymously.

<comment><USER14> I think this significantly undervalues the importance of developing a culture where things can be talked about in a frank and open manner. It may be rare, but is extraordinarily valuable, and if people are never given the chance to have uncomfortable conversations, then there's no possibility of it developing.

<comment><USER15> When anonymous feedback comes in and its taken and acted on positively the team may be more likely offer up non-anonymous suggestions, a foot in the door if you will. I may be totally off base though I don't have that type of real world experience.

<comment><USER13> This is basically how I feel about it. If my employer acted positively on some anonymous feedback at a first, I feel like I'd be a lot more likely to feel open and willing to engage knowing there's good faith. Unfortunately this doesn't scale to larger companies, though. What the OP is describing is the classic problem of management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's great that you set time aside to have a 1-to-1 with new hires but I personally think a few weeks is too soon to be asking new hires that particular question. Not to mention it also depends on personaility types; you may have an employee who is fairly comfortable answering that sort of question with complete honesty. But more often that not, you will find that they probably haven't had chance to get up-to-speed with their work environment or gain a thorough understanding of how the dev team operates.

You would probably get more benefit by asking questions that are more related to company culture, such as, how they're settling into the team, how they find the team morale/company culture, who in the team has provided them the most value so far. Those type of questions would hopefully help the new hire understand that you care about the culture at the company and also helps build a more personal relationship, which consequently will build trust between you and your employees to allow them to truthfully answer your initial question a few months later when they are more embedded into the team.

Definitely keep up the regular engagements with new hires though, despite not necessarily receiving the answers you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've worked at a few places where the products were mature and sophisticated enough that it too me _six months_ to get a handle on them and start to become truly productive on implementing improvements. Before that time I felt like a deer in the headlights.

Sounds like what is happening here.

<comment><USER17> _took me_

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I could see that if you were hiring inexperienced developers but it seems pretty strange otherwise.

[1] Are you hiring from a pool of developers who used processes/tools that are the same or inferior to what your company is using? In other words, your company is already excelling compared to their previous experiences.

[2] Could you be hiring from a pool of developers who have been previously conditioned or selected to "keep their heads down"? From the outside looking in, the finance world seems pretty rough and tumble. The geek/nerd response to being with a bunch of jocks is be to stay quite. [I'm a geek/nerd in case that can be taken the wrong way.]

[3] Lastly, honest feedback requires either anonymity or trust. Trust is tough. A single case of a guy getting marched out by security when he told his manager "I'm not happy with my salary." trumps all the other times a manager tells someone, "If you're not happy, come see me." Heck, seeing someone marched out by security for _any_ reason destroys pretty much any trust in management. If your new hire worked a place like that before, it's understandable that he might be reticent to trust his new company.

</comment><comment><USER19> There are different skill trees developers can have:

1\. Implementation skills: can implement a solution, e.g. knows C++.

2\. Problem solving: given a problem, can come up with a solution. "We need an API for X" -> can come up with a design for the API.

3\. Identifying problems: can notice problems exist.

4\. Teamwork.

(Probably other skill trees as well.)

Assuming confidence, trust and culture aren't an issue, it may just be the developers you're hiring lack the relevant skills to identify problems.

These skills are rarely if ever taught explicitly, so many programmers get by with just implementation skills, or just implementation and problem solving skills. As you realize, though, problem solving and even more so identifying problems are key to productivity ([https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/)).

Maybe you should consider teaching these skills, or change hiring process to screen for them, or both.

</comment><comment><USER20> Since you are one of the founders, you are a 900 pound gorilla. You asking them to their face is you putting them on the spot. This is not likely to go good places.

I submitted ideas at BigCo to their Bright Ideas program and basically got rejection letters and felt crapped on. Expecting me to not only see that something could be improved, but also provide a fully formed solution that would pass muster politically was probably just an exercise in how to make new people feel like they don't belong _at all._

Let me suggest you come up with something like a suggestion box or constructive feedback box where you can at least hear "I see a problem with X and my (possibly off the cuff solution would be Y" so you are getting some kind of feedback.

Good communication is incredibly hard, much harder than most people seem to appreciate. Actual good communication tends to be a long, drawn out process. You need to foster the first step here of "I just want to hear what you think is going badly" and that requires trust, assurances that it won't bite them in the butt and willingness to really listen and take it seriously. All of that is extremely, incredibly hard to do. If you, as one of the founders, cringes or winces because someone said something not nice about your baby, you can expect that no one will want to say anything again. You will need to really work at making people feel not only okay but actively good about pointing out problem areas.

This runs against the grain for the vast majority of social experience that the vast majority of people have. "Don't rock the boat" is pretty deeply ingrained in most people. "Don't question authority" is another biggie. It is incredibly hard to convince people you really and truly want to hear how you can improve things.

So, start with finding some method other than one of the founders getting all up in their face to try to give them a safe and welcome path for tossing out ideas. Because this is not it.

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems like one or both things is not true. Your developers think that the tools work well enough and the system is stable enough that they don't think there is a need for arbitrary changes, meaning only you think there are issues.

Or, they don't really feel comfortable giving feedback about how to make it better. Maybe they already make such a good salary that they are afraid to risk it. In this case they are disincentivized from actually giving you the feedback.

Have you tried doing a hackathon week? No normal work except system operations but have everyone work on a new feature or streamlining of an existing process. Have you tried offering bonus for people who offer up new ideas and plans to improve the software and processes?

</comment><comment><USER22> i suspect you're hiring the "wrong" type of developers. since you took the leap and founded a company, i'm assuming that you're fairly aggressive and at least at one point were willing to think outside the box. the developers you're hiring may be technically strong, but they likely don't have that same mentality. my gut is that "c++ work on windows and linux ... financial" is going to filter for this pretty strongly

this may be exactly what you need for development, but it'd probably be healthy to bring in some more precocious elements ... maybe as interns so you're not committed to a culture shift

</comment><comment><USER23> I think if you had a way for all new hires to submit questions they have while learning the system, this would be a better way to go.

Let them know you are building a manual to help other new hires. Maybe even let Senior people add questions or answer it. This would be sort of like an internal StackOverFlow for just your company, but organize it as a manual.

So instead of them trying to identify what you should be doing better, they just inherently point out where they are getting tripped up in your process.

The only other similar thing that comes to mind is how Tim Ferris wrote about this method of maintaining a FAQ to automate the customer service process in the 4 Hour Work Week.

</comment><comment><USER24> Put yourself in their shoes. You're the founder of this company, it's your baby that I'm sure you're very passionate about and proud of, and you just sat down a relatively new employee and asked them to critique your company.

There's an enormous amount of perceived risk on their end as they have nothing really to gain, and everything to lose.

And I say perceived because it sounds like you're a good guy and are genuinely seeking honest feedback, but they don't know that, to them this whole thing might be a shit test and if they say the wrong thing they could get on your, the founders, bad side.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have always felt like I would appreciate candor in people talking to me about my business. But _every time_ I have offered constructive criticism it has _not benefited me_. So I stopped doing it.

Not sure what the solution is, but I feel like building a culture around "best ideas win" and rewarding the process of coming up with improvements and implementing them could be good. You could seed this at first with improvements you were already trying, but when people see "Hey, Joe Schmoe came up with this great idea and now we do it" would be a boon to your improvement culture.

</comment><comment><USER26> Fix one of your known issues. Announce you're fixing one of your known issues because you're hoping to improve the company. Make sure that it actually improves stuff, not just checking a box (ie. don't use a ticket tracking solution that's actually worse than your google docs).

I think employees at that point would be more willing to offer up requests for improvement.

Maybe do your issue tracking first, and set aside some _thing_ (story points if your agile, time per week/month, etc), visibly there for process/structure/tool improvement in the issue tracking.

</comment><comment><USER27> Be glad you hired savvy employees. Anyone who comes into a new company and starts enumerating everything they are doing wrong is a fool who will have poor career longevity. That's how we end up with shitty tech blogs from people who keep insisting they have the answers if just somebody will listen ( _cough_ Michael O'Church _cough_ ).

You need to put something concrete behind your words. One off-the-top-of-my- head suggestion: Have a few current engineers start working on some of your known problems as part of their responsibilities. It doesn't have to be 100% their job, just a "kaizen" approach is ok (improve some small part each time they use it). Let them know it will be part of their evaluations.

Now when you ask new employees point to these examples: "John noticed our tracking system was crummy and important issues were slipping through the cracks, so we offered to let him be in charge of re-vamping it."

Obviously you'll have to manage what you allow them to improve, and who gets to work on it. This idea isn't perfect, of course, but the idea is to show them you are serious about these suggestions.

X% of management is aligning incentives (X is some large number). Think about how to incentivize them to give the information you want, and how to remove disincentives. Money and responsibility / autonomy are the most basic incentives.

<comment><USER28> Great post. The snide remark toward michaelochurch might be the cause of your downvotes, but I upvoted you for the rest of it, because it is smart and right.

>X% of management is aligning incentives (X is some large number). Think about how to incentivize them to give the information you want, and how to remove disincentives. Money and responsibility / autonomy are the most basic incentives.

All of management is systemic. You can rarely change behavior by sitting down and tackling the problem head-on; people have an internal defense mechanism that interprets this as an attack and shuts everything down.

Any change one wants to make without triggering hostility/resentment has to occur as a side effect of gently and gradually manipulating the structure that the employee finds himself in, including the incentives and the environment.

Your example, which normalizes working on an internal processes and will make the employee feel like the odd one out if he _doesn 't_ have a suggestion for fixing the insides, is a pretty good one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's little point in complaining about stuff if it's never going to get fixed. That just labels one a complainer. Try rephrasing the question like this: if you could take 1-3 months away from your regular job to fix something in our infrastructure or codebase, what would it be? Then you can follow up by actually letting people do this. And there is no reason to limit this to new hires. Plenty of frustrations come up over time.

</comment><comment><USER30> How senior are your hires in terms of experience? And, if your hires range from new grads to developers with 10+ years of experience, do you notice any difference between the two cohorts in terms of how much feedback they'll give?

I'm a sample of one, but when I was 25, I would have tons of feedback after my first couple of weeks in a company. Much of it was bad as I hadn't been there long enough to know why things were as they were.

Now that I'm 40, it takes more time before I have any meaningful feedback. I'm more comfortable with what I don't know, so consequently, I'm more comfortable reserving judgement until I know a little more of why things are.

That said, I have a couple of ideas:

1.) Schedule the 'feedback' session more than a few weeks into their job.

2.) Give your new hires some time to prepare. I think it's best to assume that individual contributors feel uncomfortable with spontaneous, candid conversations until they prove otherwise.

3.) Have you considered trying an anonymous feedback system and comparing the results?

</comment><comment><USER31> Just giving them a few weeks at the company before asking seems like a problem. After only a few weeks, they probably don't have enough experience to answer with anything other than their own biases.

For example: you call out your Google Docs tracking system as something that should be obvious. But that's probably not obvious after only a few weeks. Some companies (especially smaller companies) can get by totally fine with that, and if you've only been at a company for a few weeks, you don't know what kind of company you're at. If they tell you that your Google Docs tracking system is bad, they're probably just reacting to it being different than what they had before.

Anyone who responds with a long list of grievances after only a few weeks is probably the type of engineer that you _don't_ want on your team: it probably means that they're unwilling to evaluate problems and solutions within the current context.

</comment><comment><USER32> You're asking the right question, but I suppose not in a right way. From my experience you need to show them that it's the company culture to challenge things in a smart and constructive way. To do that, you do nothing very formal, just sit your best guys with the newcomer, explaining how things works and why. And sometimes, criticizing the current stuff, but not in a authoritarian way - something like we know we can do better, just nothing really worked well or we didn't have time but now we do.

That way it feels much more like -> we have something we could do better, and the guys are trying to improve that, let's do that with them. While 'critique' immediately feels negative and kind of creates a barrier.

</comment><comment><USER33> Its great to hear you asking about such things because normally no one asks and its a huge waste of experience.

I'd say a few weeks in a short time to get up to speed. The biggest problem is that lots of places are "different" and not just "better". Often I'd like to do things the way I did at my previous job but that could just be unnecessary - taking time to change and breaking everyone elses process.

I would ask more specific questions. Like if you want to improve CD - ask the guy what tool they used in their previous job and how well did it work.

Someone else mentioned monthly informal chats I'd agree. Over a beer after work you can talk about old companies and what your employees miss about them.

</comment><comment><USER34> I agree with those suggesting you might want to look at your company culture. If, when you look around, you don't see a multitude of people working on improving every facet of your process, then you may have built a "heads down, don't rock the boat, worry about now screwing up my own job" kind of company. This mindset will pervade the management chain. And it will be a huge impediment to growth.

If in fact that's what you've got, you need a massive change. Promote based on demonstrated positive impact to the entire company. Encourage risk takers, discourage blame. The people you want working for you would never work at the kind of company I describe above.

</comment><comment><USER35> Make sure to really spend a lot of time explaining your setup. It's really easy for interviewees to nod and say sure even if you're going too fast for them.

Remember it's stuff you've seen everyday for 14 years, and these people have seen it for maybe 20 minutes. I'd suggest giving them some flow charts / high- level info either in advance or with 20 minutes of quiet time on-site.

The only people I'd expect to respond in the current setting would:

      1) Have really high natural intelligence to pick everything up super fast,
      2) Be really confident in their skills in the relevant disciplines, and
      3) Be really confident you'd take feedback constructively

</comment><comment><USER36> > Or I'm not asking it the right way?

Did you frame the conversation in advance with the new hire? Tell them - <USER2> want you to make a critical assesment of everything we do. We'll meet again in a month's time. I'll be looking for specific, actionable ideas on how we can do things faster/better/smarter. What would it take to grow 10%?

If new ideas your desired outcome-- formalize the process with a Quarterly Brainstorm/Review pulling together thoughts from the entire team. Then select the top 2-3 to work on. The process helps foster a culture of strategic thinking and innovation.

</comment><comment><USER37> I remember hearing about a CEO that was unable to get any feedback from the board of directors until the phrasing of the question asked shifted from criticism/feedback to advice.

People are worried of giving criticism because you're effectively asking them to rate/evaluate your performance. However, when you ask for advice you're either asking what the other person would do in your shoes or you give them an opportunity to boast about their knowledge. While the end goal is the same, at a psychological level, the perceived reason for the question is different.

</comment><comment><USER38> > Prior to starting the company I worked at six different companies and > outside of the first one, my first real programming job, I would always have > lots of ideas in the first few weeks about how things could be improved. > Some of my ideas were bad because I just didn't understand what was going on > well enough but I like to think that some of them had merit.

Did you go to one of the company founders with problems and solutions?

I would be very wary of such an ask unless I had a pre-existing relationship with the person asking the question. You also may have folks telling your new guys to STFU.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think for many people, especially junior to mid-level hires, a few weeks is not enough time to achieve the familiarity, credibility, and just general sense of belonging to feel comfortable sharing genuine critiques. I would expect only senior-level developers with a lot of experience and confidence, would feel secure in their responses at that stage (and even then, it depends on how receptive your culture feels). If you want genuine feedback at this early stage, have you thought about enabling it anonymously?

</comment><comment><USER40> Work on making people feel safe with the situation before asking for direct feedback.

A few examples of how this could be done:

      Give them more than a few weeks to get comfortable with you and the company culture.
      Give concrete examples of things that have improved due to employee feedback.

It's hard to offer better advice through a HN post but easy to observe in person. Perhaps you can hire an external consultant to help or ask a mentor or advisor to fill this role by spending a few days in your office.

</comment><comment><USER41> Start by critizing yourself. What I do before asking this question is point out our known flaws.

Hey, we have some issues here and here, this is how we are working towards improving it. For example, we could be doing a better job at writing documentation, etc, etc. What I love about having new developer join us is the new ideas they could bring on board, we are open minded to learning and getting better, from what you have seen so far, what can we do to improve? What should we try?

</comment><comment><USER42> Use a very simple tool to give feedback. This is how we collect feedback (internal and external): [https://www.stomt.com/stomt](https://www.stomt.com/stomt)

And it creates a great feedback culture as i can give feedback as a normal user or anonymously and i can even vote anonymously. The simplicity reduces the perceived effort and makes it more likely that someone gives feedback. The optional anonymity takes out the fear.

(Disclosure: I work for STOMT)

</comment><comment><USER43> Use an external agency to give truly anonymous 360 degree feedback for everyone in the organisation.

This can get you get to the roots of problems. Take their advice on administering.

From what you stated, it sounds like the company is in a hierarchy power structure where others don't want to stick their head out too much.

At only 20 people, to have this problem sounds like a problem. Getting an external consultant to do some investigation seems to make sense.

</comment><comment><USER44> Hire me, I'll tell you - short of that, keep asking like a broken record at the end of every week. At some point they might break down and tell you -

Here's how I implemented what you're asking to my company: I would first ask how they are doing and how the project is going. And then I would ask if theres anything we could improve - the first few times, nothing. After that, they would tell me improvements (finally)

</comment><comment><USER45> Managers always seem quick-witted enough to come up with justifications for anything, sometimes even preemptively declaring they don't want to hear about subject X. So why would I point out obvious things? And why not ask the other devs? You have lot more of them. Plus a week is pretty early. You could ask them every month or every other month.

</comment><comment><USER46> When you have that meeting, let them know that there is an anonymous suggestion box in some public location and that you really, genuinely want to know what can be improved. They may not tell you to your face, but maybe if there was some anonymous way to handle suggestions, that might be more effective?

</comment><comment><USER47> "There are even some pretty obvious flaws..."

List those on a piece of paper and have the new developer add one item.

</comment><comment><USER48> The question is pretty big. There are so many things that could be improved on so many levels of your organisation. Where to start? Did you try asking more specific questions?

How about building up a relationship with the people first by having regular one-on-ones?

</comment><comment><USER49> One thing to note why you'd always have all these ideas and others don't is because you're a founder and they are programmers. It takes a certain level of conviction to voice your ideas. Not every programmer has that conviction.

</comment><comment><USER50> "Give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth" I don't usually speak up because i'm too afraid that the other person might not take it constructively. Create an anon survey, that might help. It always does :)

</comment><comment><USER51> Have you tried being self deprecating a bit? I've found that ripping on yourself/the company a bit will show them you're not afraid of the truth and will loosen some inhibitions.

</comment><comment><USER52>
      >> Any ideas how we can get feedback from our new developers on how to improve?

Hire outspoken developers. Dan Luu would be an excellent choice:

        www.danluu.com

</comment><comment><USER53> You probably need an independent critic that do not has nothing to lose in the process.

</comment><comment><USER54> Come up with a way for them to provide anonymous feedback.

</comment><comment><USER55> Some random thoughts from someone who is not in the industry but has read too much HN:

The devs in question may have real issues with confidence. Straightforwardly saying up front that their feedback is hands-down _not_ going to get them fired or affect their position or compensation may help a lot here. Explaining _how_ to give feedback, eg by focusing on objective criticism and avoiding personal attacks (and similar common-sense sentiment) may also help.

It may also be useful to think back to when you'd just started at the six companies you mention, and spend some time remembering the mindset you had - in particular the divide that was present between the ideas you had and the difficulty, if any, that you had with actually sharing these ideas. For these new hires this same exact situation is playing out with your employees.

Maybe the company culture could focus more strongly on feedback from the start, instead of abruptly posing the question a few weeks in. It should be integrated into the onboarding, possibly be part of the hiring, etc etc, so that new hires associate "$company == feedback". That may help with the intimidation factor.

Hopefully an approach like this results in a steady stream of feedback from the start.

You're right that ideas developed when adjusting can sometimes have a kind of 20/20 clear vision, but that they can also be bad because they don't fully grasp all the implementation details or culture or whatnot.

It may be a good idea to wait two months+, or until the person in question is consistently producing output, not much surprises them and they seem almost bored, to start looking at some of the less likely-sounding tidbits that come back. I can tell you that if you waited say six weeks before asking me anything I likely would not spit out any useful metrics due to nerves and the newness of everything.

One idea that could be interesting is to start a feedback page somewhere (perhaps a wiki page - or a Docs document everyone can edit would be a start), and add everything you can think of. The hope here is that since there's a bug list, a) there's now an already-started thing so people don't have to overcome that intertia, and b) people will go "wow, this is fairly scathing" and won't feel so bad adding to it. :P

I was also wondering about making feedback anonymous; this could be a good last-resort, but I wouldn't immediately try this: "oh, that was me" is too likely to come out at the most (needlessly) awkward of moments, it promotes a "you can't be honest" mentality (!!!!!!!!), etc. Like I said, very last resort, not recommended.

This topic reminds me of the "customers don't know what they want" problem - asking customers directly what they want in terms of new features or improvements can sometimes simply not produce actionable results, or result in false leads that can take an extremely long time (and in some unfortunate circumstances a lot of money) to discover aren't the core issues. Figuring out how to find the core issues can be tricky. (I unfortunately don't remember where on here that I read about this, but I do remember there not being any simple solutions; if anyone has any links I wouldn't mind remembering!)

</comment><comment><USER56> Why don't you run anonymous surveys so that employees can give feedback without fear of repercussions?</comment>


Buying stellars from a stranger, online. How not to get ripped off? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Use one of the exchanges like justcoin.com or [https://bx.in.th/BTC/STR/](https://bx.in.th/BTC/STR/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you use them? Are they trustworthy?</comment></comment>


The Science of Insecurity, Meredith L. Patterson and Sergey - <AUTHOR> https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4763-en-the_science_of_insecurity <comment><AUTHOR> [http://langsec.org/](http://langsec.org/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2300836](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2300836)

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1010.5023](https://arxiv.org/abs/1010.5023) Yacc is dead, Matthew Might, David Darais</comment>


DNA Fountain – Capacity-approaching DNA storage - <AUTHOR> http://dnafountain.teamerlich.org/ <comment><USER2> Using Twist Bioscience DNA - interesting data points: 215Pb/Gram ~1,300 copies per unique oligo enough to get a 100% data back Almost unlimited coping of recoverable data using PCR

Now only need to increase the throughput and price of DNA synthesis by 4-6 orders of magnitude

<comment><USER3> What possibilities are opened up when 215Pb/Gram with good I/O and price is reality?

With computing power increasing 1 order of magnitude around every 5 years (Moore's law), this might be reality by 2027.

An antecedental story is computer graphics, it only took 20 years for to go from idea to reality. Learned a lot listening to a talk at work by Alvy Ray Smith a couple years back. The true poineers are building now not for what is possible now but for what will be possible tomorrow. This article gives some context [https://www.forbes.com/asap/2001/0528/052.html](https://www.forbes.com/asap/2001/0528/052.html)

This is another interesting perspective on time scale of orders of magnitude of computing power [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_performance_by_orde...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_performance_by_orders_of_magnitude)

<comment><USER4> > What possibilities are opened up when 215Pb/Gram with good I/O and price is > reality?

The data storage is almost totally irrelevant. When you improve DNA synthesis by 3-4 orders of magnitude, you make it dirt-cheap to synthesize whole custom genomes, hyper-optimized for anything you wish. (Currently, the state of the art is synthesizing an E coli genome takes multiple years and a large international collaboration.) CRISPR only lets you do a few edits at a time at most, in some parts of the genome; imagine being able to do tens of thousands of edits as easily as 1 edit. At that point, you're hardly even 'editing', you're designing organisms as a whole. The Church lab has some astounding proposals for things you can do when you are able to synthesize a whole genome, like cleaning out all the retrovirals, movable elements, recoding the genome for total viral immunity, on top of the obvious stuff like eliminating all mutation load or increasing specific traits by dozens or hundreds of standard deviations. The mind boggles.

<comment><USER5> Craig Venter, Clyde Hutchison and Daniel Gibson produced a minimal genome in a relatively short period of time and even transplanted it. This was a "bottom up" approach in which all of the DNA was synthetic. This is a trivial thing for this team now. As you mentioned, when synthesis costs drop dramatically, things will get interesting!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


After accidental vote, EU copyright bill faces three legitimacy issues - <AUTHOR> http://www.fosspatents.com/2019/03/after-yesterdays-accidental-vote-eu.html <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if the author is in the "denial" stage or the "bargaining" stage of grief. The outcome of the vote is an absolute travesty, and I don't understand the intricacies of EU politics, but everything I've seen gives me the impression that this is a done deal.

<comment><USER3> Just curious why you think upholding copyright is a travesty?

<comment><USER4> Regardless if you think "copyright" increases or decreases quality of life, it is irrefutable that it violates Natural rights. If I memorize an illegal number [1], then I've made an copy that the corporate/state doesn't allow and consequently, I no longer own my body. Enforcement of copyright breaks the NAP.

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

<comment><USER5> The EU isn't big on natural rights, though. They talk a good game, but once you get beyond the vaguest platitudes, the people in power at the moment are the ones who get to define what "rights" mean. As usual it comes down to whoever has the most lawyers, guns, and/or money.

The concept is problematic enough here in the US, where our founding documents assume that rights are granted by a deity who rarely bothers to put in an appearance when said rights are being violated. It's best to find more rational bases than "natural rights" for arguments like copyright reform, if at all possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Others have said the incorrect votes were perhaps not so accidental. Magnus Andersson, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, suggested on Twitter that MEPs may have corrected the record just so they could later say they meant to do the right thing "as a way to get away with how they voted."_

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18283837/europe- copyright...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18283837/europe-copyright- directive-accidental-vote-meps-amendment)

Some votes cast in the plebiscite were incidental rather than being accidental; the upcoming European elections in May, might require some members to contain the backlash or limit any blowback.

</comment><comment><USER7> For me this is not just the EU copyright bill that faces legitimacy issues but the whole European Parliament. The vote only served to highlight systemic issues regarding how votes are conducted.

<comment><USER8> How so? Can you expand on that?

<comment><USER9> Here's MEP Dobromir Sośnierz showing how the two different kind of votes look like: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLh9DMuetm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLh9DMuetm4)

It seemed incredible to me how one could "accidentally vote wrong", but seeing the process and speed at which it goes, I totally buy it now.

<comment><USER10> Keep in mind that this video comes from a very biased source (an unimportant party that literally went to elections with a claim to want to "destroy the EU from inside"). The issue may be real, but beware of how exactly it's being painted in this material.

<comment><USER11> If this issue is real (and it seems plausible to me) then destroying the EU from the inside might very well be an honorable thing to do.

<comment><USER12> It most certainly isn't plausible. Have you ever seen any livestreams or full recordings of parliamentary sessions? Not necessary from EP. They are voting whether to have 10 minute break. They are voting whether to accept the daily schedule. They are voting whether to follow with the next point in the schedule. They are voting whether to start voting. Those are the ones voted by raising your hands. Those are the ones that nobody expects any protests so the people don't even raise their eyes. Copyright act was voted by names, otherwise Julia Reda wouldn't have the lists

<comment><USER11> > Copyright act was voted by names

And yet there are ten EU parliament members on the record saying that they voted in favor of the copyright act "by accident":

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18283837/europe- copyright...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18283837/europe-copyright- directive-accidental-vote-meps-amendment)

So there's clearly _something_ wrong with the procedures.

<comment><USER13> In Westminster the voting system means you have to leave the chamber and go through into another room. Takes about 15 minutes.

You get MPs that vote both yes and no.

People saying they "made a mistake" only say such a thing because they regret it - they've probably never had anyone contact them about which way they voted in the past.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure how a different chamber votes is all that relevant.

> You get MPs that vote both yes and no.

Do you? I've not heard of many issues with the process apart from things typically hundreds of years ago.

> People saying they "made a mistake" only say such a thing because they > regret it

Or because they actually did make a mistake.

<comment><USER15> _> Do you?_

Occasionally, yes.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- politics-21591602](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21591602)

 _> I've not heard of many issues with the process apart from things typically hundreds of years ago._

We've had some serious issues recently with pairing. MPs cannot vote in absentia for any reason. The informal process of pairing allows an ill or otherwise unavoidably absent MP to be paired with an opposition MP, who will agree not to vote and so cancel out the absent MP. Brexit has led to a number of broken pairing agreements, which could have seriously undermined the legitimacy of a close vote.

[https://theconversation.com/pairing-and-why-it-matters-in- th...](https://theconversation.com/pairing-and-why-it-matters-in-the-house-of- commons-100278)

A broader issue is simply the slow pace of voting; a division can take at least 15 minutes, so the vast majority of votes are taken orally in the house without a formal count. There are long-standing concerns about the ability of back-bench MPs to vote with their conscience; MPs physically have to walk past their party whips to enter the lobby, which some argue contributes to a culture of bullying and intimidation.

[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/15/rumours- of-...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/15/rumours-of- government-whipping-operation-abound-in-westminster)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Brexit vote expressed people disagreement with bureaucracy and corruption like this, not with being a part of Europe.

<comment><USER17> You may need some references for that idea. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

<comment><USER18> Nonsense. This type of criticism is unwarranted and I suspect disingenuous.

There are lots of contexts in which we can say we would like to see more data. However, when someone is making a point which is a fairly standard one in the Brexit debates we don't need "references". Nor would referring to an article that said the same thing as OP somehow validate the point. There is a place for asking for references, but on a basic comment like this there is not.

Based on the other comments, it seems people are more upset about the perspective behind this idea rather than its truthfulness. I don't agree with the perspective that leaving the EU is a good thing but it is uncontrovertible that a significant portion of the population in the UK agrees with OP's statement.

<comment><USER19> Leading up to the Brexit vote, there was famously a bus driving around expressing the idea that voting to leave would result in a savings of 350 million pounds per week, which could be reinvested in the NHS.

I don't think there was a bus about bureaucracy.

<comment><USER20> The UKIP bus pictured here one week before the Brexit vote says "British farmers freed from bureaucracy - Stuart Agnew MEP": [https://twitter.com/ukip/status/743369504844091393](https://twitter.com/ukip/status/743369504844091393)

(It also says "Free business from EU red tape - Margot Parker MEP".)

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't say that bus was about bureaucracy. If anything, it bolsters the point that the Brexit vote wasn't about any one issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> accidental my ass

<comment><USER21> they think all of us are stupid...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Well that didn't go as intended. Let's amend it. Oh right, we can't."</comment>


Ask HN: How do you let people know your project exists? - <AUTHOR>

Suppose you create an app or a web application: how do you let people know it exists? I mean, you can setup a twitter account, but nobody follows it initially (nobody knows it exists), you can setup a landing page but nobody knows it exists too and so on...so, what are you really "beginning" strategies? <comment><USER2> Create a great product that perfectly solves someone's problems. There's no substitute for creating a great solution.

Then, personally, there's the tried and true places to show your work:

1) Show HN

2) ProductHunt

3) Your own social media

4) Relevant subreddits

 _Note: This is primarily effective for showing free / open products. Think of it more as a way of getting feedback than closing sales._

Then, I can think of a few ways that could work to let people know your product exists (generic ideas that don't necessarily fit every product):

1) Attend conferences relevant to the problem or where your customers frequent

2) Attend meet ups relevant to the problem

3) Get referrals from friends and your network to potential customers (ask, do you know someone who works in ____?)

4) Cold emails -- and follow up with them even if there's no response. Often it takes 7 touches to get an answer (yes or no) and persistence works. Check out my friends at [http://www.persistiq.com](http://www.persistiq.com).

 _Note: Easier than it sounds. Marketing and selling are hard._

</comment><comment><USER3> Identify the sort of person or company who has the problem your product is seeking to solve. Who are they? Where do they hang out online? What other things are they interested in?

Start writing stuff or creating giveaways that are of interest to those people. You are not writing about your product here, you are writing stuff that appeals to your target customer - hopefully with some sort of link to your product. You can share that content and/or free stuff far more easily than promoting the product as long as it is good quality.

An example:

My product is a CMS, built for web designers and front-end developers. Writing about content management in our product is great for our existing customers but is less likely to bring in new people. However if I write posts on my own sites or on other sites that are genuinely useful content for my target audience then those people are far more likely to go on and look at my product. So I write about CSS, workflows and so on - thinking about the things that our product does really well so I can throw in a quick mention, but not making the article about the product.

You have to be quite targeted about this, and it isn't a "quick fix" but it does work very well. People will share free useful content far more than they will share your landing page.

</comment><comment><USER4> Before creating an app or web application you need to identify which need or problem you are trying to solve and for who, after knowing this, you need to create something that adds value to these people, and not only create something just to create. Remember that the people you target your project, are the one that are going to spend their time and maybe their money using your product, so it is important that you consider their opinions in the different circumstances that appear during the project development. So when your product is ready, it is an awesome product for your users, and this users can communicate (recommend)to their friends to use your app. Remember the most powerful way to let you know as a new app, business, service, etc. It's by recommendations, because as humans we trust more in what our friends and family say to us than what a blog can say. So remember to be recommended you need to add value to your early users.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have found it helpful to approach your first customers from the mindset of a consultant... who happens to have most of the work done already. Take your pre-built software and integrate it to be a solution for your customers. You'll learn along the way what people really want from your product and after a few beta customers, your product will mold to fit what most people want to buy.

</comment><comment><USER6> So when no one is coming to you, what do you have to do? Go to people.

Reach out to your ideal users via cold email, social media, etc. with the thought of benefiting them in mind.

Share it – here on HN, Reddit, tech and startup sites (there are a few HN posts with lists of sites you can reach out to), with people you know, relevant forums, etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Your project was made to solve some problem, you have to figure out who has that problem and how to reach them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Start sending emails and reaching to those who have the hair on fire problem you're trying to solve.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok so i should gather emails...what is the best way? Posting to forums/reddit or something else can help gathering emails or driving people to landing pages?

<comment><USER9> I'd strongly recommend checking out the book "Lean Customer Development". Will hold your hand through the entire process of this aspect of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just bought, thanks for the advice!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple to build $1B Austin campus, add thousands of jobs in US expansion - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-to-build-1b-austin-campus-add-thousands-of-jobs-in-us-expansion/ <comment><USER2> 113 comments and also on the front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18670723](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18670723)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not add but move. And they will whine and get a tax abatement.

</comment><comment><USER4> Warning: Auto-playing video with audio on this site

<comment><USER5> I did not get any auto-playing audio on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the real estate impact? Should one buy real estate in "North Austin"?</comment>


Mattel Is Using 3D Printing to Resurrect an Old Hit - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/02/12/mattel-3d-printing-toys/?xid=soc_socialflow_facebook_FORTUNE <comment><USER2> Tengential but: sometimes I wonder how websites like these survive or even exist.

Reading an article on Fortune is hellish: ads trying to load, flash trying to activate, _huge_ black banner with outsize logo (80% empty space), another banner linking to other sites of the network, big link banner to the left, ad underneath, and _finally_ you get a tiny, cramped square on the screen to read your article.

Who reads this?

(In any case, a 3D printer at that price is pretty damn cool. Kids will grow up in a totally different world when they can 3D print toys at home, on demand.)

<comment><USER3> Indeed.

I basically cannot get either Business Insider or Huffington Post to load on my laptop unless I have an Ad Blocker installed.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like your browser is trying to do you a favor. Does it keep you from loading Slate or Gawker too?

<comment><USER3> Those are sluggish, but at least they load.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most interesting thing about this in my opinion is that their software is only for iOS and Android, at least for now. No Windows/desktop option. Makes total sense IMHO.

<comment><USER6> Cory Doctorow's Makers is becoming a reality.

<comment><USER7> Once again, I get a reminder of why I really need to start reading some Doctorow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A 3D printer at $299 is pretty amazing. If love to see examples of the quality of the items it produces.

</comment><comment><USER9> Kudos for them if they are embracing this wholeheartedly

</comment><comment><USER10> Not sure if kids will have the patience to wait 8 hours for a print out compared to a few minutes with the original version.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hmm, children chew on toys. Is 3D printing safe in that regard?

<comment><USER12> ABS and PLA are already heavily used in making toys, so they'd be no more dangerous than any other toy on the market.

<comment><USER13> The problem is the voids - tiny gaps in the 3d printed layers provide nice reservoirs for bacteria growth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I found a thing maker in my grandmothers attic - it was awesome.</comment>


World according to Nassim Nicholas Taleb - <AUTHOR> http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/the-world-according-to/2008/08/14/Interview-With-Nassim-Nicholas-Taleb

<comment><USER2> Best quote, about wearing ties:

"It correlates rather well with incompetence."</comment>


Open Letter to the Diaspora Dudes - <AUTHOR> http://socknet.net/w/Open_Letter_to_the_Diaspora_Dudes

<comment><USER2> Off topic: if you look at the kickstarter page for Diaspora [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora- the-p...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the- personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr)

Notice how for anyone who donates more than $5 they need to send them a CD with Diaspora on it. $25 gets them a t-shirt etc.

For 6k donors, they're going to spend ~$50-100k of the $200k they raised just meeting their commitments. Not to mention a huge amount of time dealing with the logistics.

Edit: Jesus, if you account for the fact that they promised 1 year hosted service, and 1 year phone support for anyone who donated more than $350, these guys are already underwater.

<comment><USER3> IF their product is such that an end user needs hosted service and phone support in the first place, they are worse than underwater.

<comment><USER4> This is why WordPress will never take off.

<comment><USER5> Why the downvotes? Do we not care for sarcasm on HN?

I think it's a appropriate response too. Wordpress does both hosted and open source, and by all accounts they're doing OK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He's got a branding problem as well. 'Socknet'? And foolishmortal.net looks like pre-beta HN.

Geeks sometimes don't seem to understand the power and value of word choice, or design. Smart word choice and updated design is not sufficient, but in a Web 2.0+ world, it's necessary.

<comment><USER7> These were the 2 things I noticed when reading it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > I looked over the web and I found the same thing that I'm sure you found: > several projects without much steam behind them.

Maybe they found socknet too ?

That wiki was filled on may the 19th, well after the diaspora stuff hit the media, or it hasn't been updated in ages before then.

[http://socknet.net/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChange...](http://socknet.net/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=500)

That money the diaspora guys raised has one definitely negative side effect, there will be quite a few people that may try to get a share of the cake.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://socknet.net/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChange...](http://socknet.net/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&days=30&limit=500)

There's the same page with the limit changed from the default of 7 days (May 19) to 30 (April 26).

And of course Google's been caching stuff there for awhile:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=site:socknet.net>

I know the Socknet guy via some trusted former coworkers and I've watched this project for a year or two. He's earnest and hasn't looked for any attention.

I posted his open letter here because I think he deserves some attention for his hard work, whereas the Diaspora team made a cheeky video and deserve to have their goals questioned (do they really intend to do something progressive or is this about personal reward?)

edit: grammar

<comment><USER8> Two years ? That's precisely what I was getting at.

He's _definitely_ looking for attention here, otherwise why post an open letter ?

If he wasn't looking for attention he could have easily mailed the diaspora people, by making this an open letter he is trying to get a slice of the media attention.

Nothing wrong with that, but I wouldn't interpret it in any other way, even if he's serious.

To me he's not just serious, but also very slow.

The sourceforge project was registered on the 15th of may, this is not a project that has been in mainstream development for two years. It may have been in development for two years but not with the kind of push behind it that you need for a successful launch of a web application.

It looks like someone's pet project that did not gain much traction that they're trying to breathe new life in.

<comment><USER9> > The sourceforge project was registered on the 15th of may, this is not a > project that has been in

> mainstream development for two years. It may have been in development for > two years but not with the

> kind of push behind it that you need for a successful launch of a web > application.

Not sure what it matters how long it's been in development. If he's worked X years and gotten N amount of work done, he's still N amount of work ahead of where he'd be if he just started today, or the same day as the Diaspora guys. If that work amounts to anything, it could be a considerable advantage, if he does get some attention and gets some other people onboard. If not, he's still no worse off than if he hadn't done anything and decided to launch a new decentralized social network project today.

> It looks like someone's pet project that did not gain much traction that > they're trying to breathe

> new life in.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I started a project with similar goals a while back ( <https://openqabal.dev.java.net> ) but got distracted and didn't get very far with it. Now I've changed the focus of my project to something different and am restarting development, but it's kinda moved away from the Diaspora / decentralized social network thing.

That said, I do think that everybody working on a decentralized social network (or any social network, really) should get together (virtually anyway) and collaborate on the underlying protocols and techniques for federation. No reason one shouldn't be able to run a Diaspora server and exchange data with a site running a $WHATEVER server (allowing for privacy restrictions, etc., which kinda kick-started this whole discussion).

<comment><USER8> Fully agreed, no need in duplicating the effort. But an open letter is a pretty bad way to go about that, it screams 'you can't ignore me, I'm addressing you' because you are afraid that you will not be answered.

Open letters are good for joe public to reach the town mayor or Ty Coon when all other avenues of trying to reach them have been exhausted.

They're not exactly the best avenue to contact the people that run a competing open source project about a possible collaboration.

I think it matters how long they've been at it because that is how they describe other projects, as having 'too little steam' behind them. I can't really tell the difference between those other projects with too little steam behind them and this one.

Also he words it as though the Diaspora guys should get 'behind' his project, whereas the best way to ensure that there would be collaboration would be to leave it up to them to 'get behind' his code or to integrate bits & pieces as they see fit.

All this is completely ignoring the merits of what's been produced, I have no idea how good it is, for all I know it could be stellar.

<comment><USER9> > Open letters are good for joe public to reach the town mayor or Ty Coon when > all other avenues of trying to reach them have been exhausted.

> They're not exactly the best avenue to contact the people that run a > competing open source project about a possible collaboration.

Agreed.

> I think it matters how long they've been at it because that is how they > describe other projects, as having 'too little steam' behind them. I can't > really tell the difference between those other projects with too little > steam behind them and this one.

Well, "steam" in this regard can - IMO - come and go. You can start a project, do little or nothing to publicize it, tinker on it for a while, drop it, then restart it and you haven't really _lost_ anything... if you step in two years later and start working on the project, committing code, doing releases, and publicizing it, I don't know that anybody will care about the "lost years." Or maybe I'm wrong, who knows?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a rule that says that if you're going to work on a distributed social network you have to be bad at naming things? socknet, really?

Also, do we really need a solution that is distributed or would a dropdown box on Facebook that says "Visible to:" and lets you select a group (e.g., Friends, Family, Everyone) do?

<comment><USER11> A dropdown box on Facebook would do, but nobody can put it there so some people decided to go with Plan B.

<comment><USER12> _but nobody can put it there_

Except for Facebook. And, err, they did - quite a while ago :)

<comment><USER13> I don't remember the source, but "it's easy to take a reservation, the hard part is filling it." Meaning, of course, that Facebook privacy has continuously eroded, so some (myself included) have no faith that such a dropdown has any persistent effect consistent with what might be inferred by what is written on it.

<comment><USER14> Seinfeld

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why did this need to be an open letter?

<comment><USER16> Same reason he wrote it in the first place: he's drafting off a trending topic to gain exposure and hopefully new developers.

Write one letter to the Diaspora team and, at best, they consider it. Put the letter out there (under the guise of being related to Diaspora to gain extra attention) and maybe a dozen teams consider it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think all this decentralized social networking is unnecessary. All we really need is an easy way to switch social networks. Something like a list of UUIDs as your friends list which can be imported into your social network of choice, and exported when you want to leave.

Even email is centralized.

The only problem would be getting the current industry leader, facebook, to willing adopt such a thing. They probably won't so this would be more of a consideration for the next generation of social networks.

<comment><USER18> "Even email is centralized"?

I can start my own email server (or use one of millions of others) and send/receive to/from users on any other server... clearly decentralized (where is the center?)

<comment><USER17> I meant in practice. You could, but do you? Does anyone? What happens when your computer shuts down for the night?

Email is centralized in that individuals usually register with a provider, rather than use their own machines. I think social networking can adopt a similar model so all we really need is an easy way to pick up our social data and go to a new provider. I mean who I consider to be my friends is my data, so why not have a systematic definition of it that can be carried with me to every site, instead of recreating those connections using whatever interface is on each of the social sites I use.

<comment><USER4> It's still decentralized. Not one company has access to all e-mail, as with Facebook.

<comment><USER17> Of course it is, I'm not saying you're wrong. Although usually one company has access to all _your_ email. As far as the user is concerned it's still centralized. That is, our data is still stored in a centralized place. The protocols for these open social networks however call for decentralizing all the way to the user level, and that's not how email is (though it could be).

<comment><USER19> I think you've picked a poor analogy with regards to email. It's actually the perfect analogy for a distributed social network. With email you can host your own, use your companies, use a free provider (hotmail, gmail, etc) or use your ISP.

It's not possible for one company/person to get across all your email because you can have it somewhere else. It's not possible to store Facebook info outside of facebook.

I imageine a distributed social network being a woven fabric where some people host their own, some use their companies (think bands using their labels server), a lot of people use free ad-based services (think hotmail or yahoo diaspora). However, no one company would ever have all your data, and couldn't hold it to ransom, assuming some type of export facility is built into the design. For I can import all my emails into a different server, but I can't export all my facebook data. Once switching costs are reduced to negligible, then competition for features, usability and, yes, privacy, wins out. Same way as plenty of people decamped hotmail and yahoo for a shiny new gmail account when they had better featurs and an import facility.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, what was my analogy? I'm saying distributed social networking should work like email and you just described it. However what I don't think it should be is decentrAlizing down to the user level. Another problem with standardizing the system is that new or special features will not be cross compatible, however that's another issue for another thread.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Qt 4.7 ported to AmigaOS 4 - <AUTHOR> http://amigax1000.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/qt-47-on-x1000.html

<comment><USER2> Growing up with an lowly Amiga 500 and high-end PCs upgraded yearly, I never understood why it took PCs so long to catch up in terms of graphics. There were literally dozens of video card companies competing in the 2D market, and years after they "beat" it in resolution and color, the performance was abysmal for gaming. None of my top of the line ATI, S3, Matrox cards ever had true sprite support, and would often slow down with any serious movement on the screen. It wasn't until post Voodoo2 era, that I felt the PC had finally caught up, and that was through brute force.

Anyone have any idea, what held the PC back? Patents or lack of VESA-like support for specialized features like the Amiga had?

<comment><USER3> The problem with the PC was a mixture of Attitude and Hardware capability.

The Amiga was developed with the knowledge of how people programmed the C64. That was an entirely different way of doing things to what was going on in the PC space. The programmers who were getting the most out of the C64 were not thinking in terms of bullet point feature lists but rather how the graphics chips worked to construct the screen on a scanline by scanline basis. Because the display was constructed over time by the chips the display was a product of the graphics state at the time of each scanline. That meant triggering interrupts as the beam travelled down the screen allowed for changing of the display state in order to supply as much as possible on each and every scanline. This meant things like instead of 8 sprites onscreen you could have 8 sprites per scanline appearing repeatedly down the screen. Colours and display modes could change for a wide variety of effects.

When the Amiga was being developed, they realised that rather than obscuring the internal features down to a fixed list of modes and capabilities, it would be better to expose what the graphics chips were actually doing. An example of this is the registers to show what video memory to display actually represent the video memory being displayed, not just the top of the frame, the value will increment as the scanline travels down the display. That means you are required to reset it every vertical blanking period to the top, but enables a vast array of possibilities. In addition the value that gets added to the pointer to get to the next scanline is also exposed, so you can change the virtual width of the page as well as set it to a negative value to make the display appear upside down.

To combat the problem that such a dynamic view of the video state had where you have to reset everything to first positions every frame, the Amiga supplied the Copper, which was a extremely simple processor that was designed to move constants into constant addresses. The copper could wait for a video beam position then load registers.

I said at the start that the difference was a mixture of attitude and hardware capability. The Amiga excelled because it embraced that attitude. On the PC Side EGA had some similar features and VGA had an interesting mix by virtue of backwards compatibility blending hardware designed for VGA and EGA together. It seems clear that the intention of EGA was to provide similar sort of abilities to the C64 (sprites notwithstanding). For the most part those abilities were ignored, instead of using capabilities like hardware scrolling programmers tended to just treat the device as a dumb framebuffer. There were a few exceptions, most notably was John Carmack, who used the hardware registers to make the Commander Keen engine.

When the VGA came along the hardware features were still there but the direct use of them was not incorporated into the design the way it was in the Amiga. For quite a while mode 13h was all things did. They drew into an offscreen buffer and copied across once complete. It was exactly the Dumb Frame buffer approach. Over time people did figure out how to do a few tricks with the combination of registers designed for VGA and registers designed for VGA. Wolfenstein 3d used ModeX which was using VGA mode13h display output but with EGA style memory addressing to allow page flipping without the entire framebuffer copy. It also allowed 320x240 (instead of 320x200) and indeed I rather enjoyed playing around with the limits at 400x300 in 256 colours. It was also possible to do hardware scrolling on VGA registers. A lot of scrolling games used these features. These were the first games to really surpass the Amiga in graphical ability. They needed substantially more CPU to achieve the same result, but at that stage PCs were considerably faster in raw horsepower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> out of curiosity I started looking at the x1000, found a page where you can buy one:

[http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php...](http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1071&currency=USD)

$2,800 for pretty low spec hardware. Surely it only appeals to people who have fond memories of their Amiga 500? I knew two people who owned them when I was younger, always jealous! but that seems like an insane amount of money to spend on something that is seriously dated. What am I missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing much, just the logo and name rights basically.

You can essentially get the same experience with AROS on an x86 machine ([http://vmwaros.blogspot.com.au/](http://vmwaros.blogspot.com.au/)) Or if you feel as though you want the PPC Amiga experience, you could get a G4 Mac Mini and install MorphOS (or AmigaOS4 illegally, but I cannot legally condone that). But, if you really want AmigaOS 4, then you can buy a slightly cheaper PPC system from Acube ([https://acube- systemsbiz.serversicuro.it/shop/](https://acube- systemsbiz.serversicuro.it/shop/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Raspberry Pi is today's Amiga. Decent CPU for the money, surprisingly good graphics, hacker-friendly ecosystem.

The Pi just needs a decent GUI optimized for its OpenGL ES environment. X is too slow and has too much indirection, but something built using Qt Quick's direct OpenGL renderer might work great.

<comment><USER6> I don't agree. The Raspberry Pi has nothing to do with the Amiga. The Amiga was cutting edge when it came out, nothing came close to it in terms of performance. Even the super expensive PCs or Apples. The Raspberry Pi is just a cheap and good enough platform to start doing some cool stuff, but it's nowhere similar to how revolutionary was the Amiga.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really wish Amiga somehow would take back its former glory, yet it feels so pointless... I don't see a reason for Amiga to exist :(

<comment><USER6> The OS is still great in many aspects. It's very light and fast, even most Linux distros feel bloated nowadays.

<comment><USER8> Never used it, but I hold a special place in my heart (if not necessarily the more practicality-oriented areas of my mind) for alternative operating systems. I grew up with the Atari 800 & ST and the Amiga was a compatriot.

I'm sure it's just a matter of perspective, but I sure _feel_ as if research into new operating system concepts (such as distributed operating systems) has been flagging since the 90s. So it's heartwarming that there are some rare souls out there still nurturing alternative operating systems.

<comment><USER6> > out there still nurturing alternative operating systems.

Indeed, and among the "alternatives", AmigaOS is certainly one of the most alive of them. RISCOS, BeOS, are way less active than the Amiga scene.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't say it exactly like that, Haiku is still moving steadily (it's package management implementation is close to being released) and RISC OS got a second wind with the Raspberry Pi and Beagleboard ports.

<comment><USER6> For RISCOS, a port is one thing, it does not mean the OS itself is in active development (AFAIK).

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2013/07/24/risc- os-...](https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2013/07/24/risc- os-5-20-stable-is-now-available)

It's development cycle is still quite active, actually more so after the Raspberry Pi release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks nice, but why not Qt 5 ?

<comment><USER6> Most Qt applications are made for Qt4, it will take a while before they are adapted to Qt5, as far as I understand.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, but new development (like my project) is done on Qt5. Qt5 brings some really nice features like a typesafe and C++11 friendly signal/slot syntax.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: If Hacker News were for sale, how much would it be worth? - alex-wallish <comment><AUTHOR> Whatever the highest bid is. The market is the only true valuation mechanism.

<comment><USER2> The highest bid is often someone who overestimates what something is is worth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How would you make money off HN? Ads? Subscriptions?

Would the people in the HN community stick around if HN started showing ads and selling their data? They could easily move to a similar site, such as lobste.rs.

Would people pay money to access HN? Much of the value of HN comes from the users who spend time sifting through a lot of junk articles and comments to upvote the tiny fraction of interesting ones. Are you going to ask users who create the site's content to pay for it?

If you can't monetize the site without driving its users away, then it's worth $0.

<comment><USER2> I think it makes value for Y Combinator in terms of deal flow, and Startup School companies to have increased access to talent, advice, etc.

There is some way to put a number on that, but few organizations could get the value Y Co does.

For a start Wikipedia says the top Y Co companies are worth $155 billion, Y Co gets 7%, so Y Co has made $10B or so, if HN is responsible for 1% of that, that is $100m.

<comment><USER4> YC get's 7% before dilution, so the amount is smaller.

Another method is to use the $1MM/engineer rule. There are 2official mods and 1 official developer (I'm not sure if his work is not shared with another YC projects), and there is an undisclosed amount of semi-mods, and there is some support crew that is probably shared with YC. So I guess $5MM or $10MM.

Monetization is a problem. Reddit was never a monetization success. StackOverflow had better luck with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 1970-01-01 Infinity billion dollars

</comment><comment><USER5> 1 Dollar</comment>


Lloyds Banking Group completes 'immense' Halifax system migration - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3339958/lloyds-banking-group-completes-immense-halifax-system-migration/

<comment><USER2> This kind of project seldom grabs the headlines and is unlikely to raise more than a stifled yawn in most circles - so they just reformatted some data, right?

But imagine all the different bank accounts governed by different legal contracts with different rules (interest rate calculations, overdraft rules, penalties, etc). Imagine the complexities of accurately identifying duplicate customers in different systems. Imagine the logistics of switching over without downtime. Imagine the staff training and customer communication. Imagine the consequences of getting it wrong.

Now try to do all that in the midst of all the politics that comes with a merger and then end up with a system that not only consolidates all 30m accounts but is also flexible enough to serve as a platform for growth.

Startups don't have a monopoly on challenging engineering projects!</comment>


Representational Theories of Consciousness (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-representational/

<comment><USER3> I got to the first logical argument - Bertie experiences a green thing - <USER2> could not continue: _This is a valid deductive argument against materialism_.

Bollocks.

Bertie sees a green thing. Green light impinges on his eyes, which creates electrochemical reactions in his nervous system, and, eventually, his brain. There is never any green thing in Bertie's brain, there are communication patterns. And they are eminently physical and material.

These patterns give rise to others, some of which are patterns of recall of either knowledge or emotion, cascading communications, none of which are green, sad, or have to do with the colour of the jacket in which his father was buried, e.g. (I'm making all of this paragraph up for illustrative purposes.)

Bertie recalls a green thing. Using mechanisms we are only now beginning to understand, Bertie causes those patterns to repeat, triggering many of the same reactions elsewhere in his brain. Again, none of the things in his brain are green, sad, a jacket, a funeral, etc., but all of these things are physical, material, measurable.

We just don't know how to measure them at fine enough detail, but we have reliable hypotheses backed by apparently valid conceptual theories, etc., to make us believe we are on the right track.

I find it very hard to leave this whopper of an error aside and continue with the article.

If someone else is less lazy and more forgiving than me, please tl;dr! Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> The argument does not state that Bertie really sees a green object in the sense that light with green wave lengths enters the eye and triggers biochemical reactions.

The argument talks about the experience of "greenness" as the after-image of a red object:

      Suppose Bertie is experiencing a green after-image
      as a result of seeing a red flash bulb go off;
      the greenness of the after-image is the quale.

Indeed, there is no green object outside or inside of Bertie. The light bulb was red, the memories or patterns in the brain are not green.

      Sensory qualities pose a serious problem for materialist
      theories of the mind. For where, ontologically speaking,
      are they located?

The argument is about _materialist theories of the mind_. After the argument, which seems to me a valid argument against oldschool hardcore materialism (a material location for the greenness is needed), the following paragraph mentions a more modern development, namely _the modern representational theory of sensory qualities_ , sometimes as an attempt to resolve the foregoing dilemma compatibly with materialism.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Somebody has added the year of the first publication of the article (2000) to the title. More interesting is the fact that this article has gone through a substantive revision and has been updated yesterday. For example, it now includes references to literature published after 2000. The year 2000 in the link title suggests that this is a 15 year old article that has not been changed ever since.</comment>


Falcon Heavy? New Glenn? NASA chief says he's not a "big fan" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/nasa-chief-says-hes-not-a-big-fan-of-private-investment-in-large-rockets/ <comment><USER2> Here's the correct quote from Charlie Bolden:

"I'm not a big fan of commercial investment in large launch vehicles just yet."

The article can't even pin the title on click-baiting. The quote is simply wrong.</comment>


New Snowden docs show more detail on how NSA broke into Google/Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04/how-we-know-the-nsa-had-access-to-internal-google-and-yahoo-cloud-data/

<comment><USER2> > "This is not traffic you would encounter outside of Google's internal > network," said one of the experts. The slide shows data in a format that is > "only used on and between Google machines.

So, the NSA had physical access to data on-the-fly (obviously, that would not be how you get data that was authorized by a court order). 2 possibilities:

a) They went ahead and broke in physically, or

b) Google installed a tap for them.

<comment> grey-area The spies physically tapped the cables, that doesn't require cooperation from google as fibre is going between their premises, just cooperation from the telcos, which we know they have. No need for break ins or google cooperation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I remember this[1] from Google's Blog during the first Snowden drops: "Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a "back door" to the information stored in our data centers."

[1] [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html)</comment>


Mike Tyson's Cannabis Company and Ranch - <AUTHOR> https://tysonranch.com/ <comment><USER2> While driving to LA on the 405N, there is a large billboard for Tyson Ranch but it's just some dude in a cowboy hat looking at the mountain landscape. I would have never guessed it was Iron Mike promoting cannabis.

</comment><comment><USER3> He was on the Rogan podcast a few weeks back. Hoping this works well for him.

<comment><USER4> Hopefully Rogan will encourage Tyson to try psychedelics and undo whatever TBI he's dealing with after all of that boxing.

<comment><USER5> psychedelics don't reverse taupathies

<comment><USER4> A citation would be nice. They seem to help repair traumatic brain injuries and other types of brain damage.

<comment><USER5> a citation that they don't? show me a citation that they do. it would be on the front page of nature if psychedelics could reverse the steady progress of malformed tau.

i am a big believer in psychedelics, incidentally. i've seen the evidence for their ability to help people cope with traumatic experiences, to curb addictions, and i personally enjoy them, but they don't stop this disease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would love for them to expand to Colorado, and wonder why they haven't yet.

</comment><comment><USER7> He certainly would know a thing or two about pain relief.

<comment><USER8> well he did break his back.

<comment><USER9> "Spinal"</comment></comment></comment>


Mom macro set for groff - <AUTHOR> http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/momdoc/toc.html <comment><USER2> From [1]:

> "Who is mom meant for?

Mom ("my own macros", "my other macros", "maximum overdrive macros"...) is a macro set for groff, designed to format documents in Portable Document Format (.pdf) and PostScript (.ps). She's aimed at three kinds of users:

Typesetters who suspect groff might be "the right tool for the job" but who are frustrated, intimidated, or puzzled by groff's terse, not-always- typographically-intuitive primitives; Non-technical writers who need to format their work easily, with a minimum of clutter; Newcomers to groff, typesetting, or document processing who need a well-documented macro set to get them started.

Mom is actually two macro packages in one: a very complete set of typesetting macros, and an equally thorough set of document formatting macros. The typesetting macros afford fine-grained control over all visible aspects of page layout and design (margins, fonts, sizes, kerning, etc), while the document formatting macros focus on the logical structure of a document (titles, headings, paragraphs, lists, etc) and call on groff to render logical structure into pleasing type. "

[1]: [http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/momdoc/intro.html](http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/momdoc/intro.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> A quick scan doesn't show any reference to (La)TeX, although Mom appears to address similar needs. Such a notable absence feels deliberate -- I'd be interested to know if there's an underlying philosophical difference, or an article on "why you should let Mom typeset your next paper instead of using LaTeX." (Would Mom be suitable for journal articles?)

<comment><USER4> I have never seen an academic journal or conference that would accept submission of manuscripts typeset in Groff. Even LaTeX seems ever more often to be deprecated in favor of Word documents.

<comment><USER3> I haven't seen it either, although if serious academic publishers are switching to Word that's only going to hasten their slide into ruin. I've seen conferences that don't ask for sources though, just PDFs. So there's no reason in principle you couldn't use groff, except that nobody does it and there's no template. I guess my question is what the experience of trying to write an academic paper with Mom would be like, compared with LaTex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The mission statement doc for groff, in section typesetting backend, says it needs support for modern font families, better unicode and a more modern linebreak algorithm. These are serious drawbacks compared to modern latex. But the pdf looks good and it does seem less complex to get into. Hmm, i guess worth a closer look.

<comment><AUTHOR> Heirloom troff seems to support OpenType, Unicode and Knuth's algorithm.

I haven't found Windows binaries, yet, so I'll have to postpone playing with it until I have got more free time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Been using groff ms for years, switched to mom a couple of years ago. I highly recommend it. I have switched almost completely from pdfLatex to groff mom.

Groff comes with (almost) every *nix, although some you may have to install specifically (Ubuntu?), especially the mom macros although the groff_mom manpage may suggest it is already there.

The only thing that I find a hassle is the setting up of font families. Mom docs don't seem to say much on this.

Groff is much faster than Latex, and doesn't throw weird errors.

And thanks to Schaffter for this very useful macro. Schaffter used to have a donation page somewhere, can't see it now.

</comment><comment><USER7> The only find for "Example" is [http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/momdoc/intro.html#examples](http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/momdoc/intro.html#examples).

Did one of you use this to generate PDFs? If so, how does it look? I'd like to see examples!

<comment><USER8> That's because you're searching just in the documentation. Try going up a few levels in the website, like [http://www.schaffter.ca/mom](http://www.schaffter.ca/mom) .</comment></comment>


Julia webstack - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hackerschool/webstack.jl

<comment><USER2> I've been following Julia for over a year (basically since their first public announcement), and I'm genuinely impressed with the team, their attitude, and their approach to designing a new language. Their performance numbers (on microbenchmarks) are awesome. The use of LLVM shows sensibility and pragmatism, and while I don't yet fully grok the type system, I think they're on the right track. I'm also really excited to see a couple of experienced R guys (John Myles White and Harlan Harris) join the Julia bandwagon. Despite the lack of a convincing story when it comes to distributed computing, it's a really promising project.

But, when I think about pushing a significant project on Julia, it feels really risky. I think it feels like betting on Python in 1995 would have. Sure, sitting here today the decision should have seemed obvious, but how many promising languages rose and died in the same timeframe?

<comment><USER3> I think getting a usable web stack on julia will take it a long way in terms of making it useful for problems at-scale.

My major nitpick with julia so far, if I can be real, is that its package tooling isn't enough like npm. <_< While this gives away my obvious biases, I do think that spending time on making a really good package ecosystem is important, and is something not enough people take seriously.

<comment><USER4> What's so good about npm?

<comment><USER5> It's easy for non-ops people to install packages, but I'm not sure it is easy to do large scale deployments. I'm not hating on npm, but there is still a lot to do with managing all of the dependencies in a way that makes it easy to deploy consistent packages. Pip doesn't solve this problem either, so it isn't unique to npm.

<comment><USER3> There are some tools for using npm for large scale deployments. Packages are scoped locally to an app, you can bundle them if you want, and there's a "shrinkwrap" command for making sure the installed deps are exactly the same every time. Personally, I would either go with, "peg every version to an exact semver" or "bundle ALL the deps".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sad thing with Julia: when I took a look at it as a language for ML/AI, I loved it (beside the 1-indexing, but one can get used to it...), but _all the libs I cared about were in Python!_

...now I take a look at Julia for webdev and, again, _everything I am familiar with or care about for webdev is in ...Python._ And being a high performance language, it actually steps in to the territory of Go here.

Julia is gonna have a _very hard time_ displacing Python (or Go), since they are kinda targeting the same niche, but I _really, really want to see Julia winning more ground!_ Now don't get me wrong, I understand that most normal- minded people (including Julia's creators) never saw it as a competitor for Python or Go, but this is how I want to see it.

 _...a homo-iconic language, with hygienic macros and no crippling anti- features like statements/expressions dichotomy or one-line-only lambdas, and all of this without giving up on syntax and going the parenthesized way (take that Lisp!), what more could one wish for, really!?_

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer: I'm one of the core devs.

You can call Python from Julia now: <https://github.com/stevengj/PyCall.jl>

And there is also an effort underway to get iPython notebook integration (we met with Fernando Perez when he was in Boston to receive his award from the FSF and spent an afternoon hacking to get to this <https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia-ipython> \- it's still in the very early stages of development though)

<comment><USER8> This is insanely cool ! Is it also possible to call Julia from Python ? This would allow me to switch to Julia instead of C for the heavy algorithms.

<comment><USER7> Yes, that is possible as well. I don't think it's all factored out into a nice Python package yet, but the code to do so is part of the julia-ipython repo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Never heard of Julia. So I looked it up:

<http://julialang.org/>

From that page:

"Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language for technical computing, with syntax that is familiar to users of other technical computing environments. It provides a sophisticated compiler, distributed parallel execution, numerical accuracy, and an extensive mathematical function library. The library, largely written in Julia itself, also integrates mature, best-of-breed C and Fortran libraries for linear algebra, random number generation, signal processing, and string processing. In addition, the Julia developer community is contributing a number of external packages through Julia's built-in package manager at a rapid pace. Julia programs are organized around multiple dispatch; by defining functions and overloading them for different combinations of argument types, which can also be user-defined. For a more in-depth discussion of the rationale and advantages of Julia over other systems, see the following highlights or read the introduction in the online manual."

</comment><comment><USER10> HTTP specification API, web-server, Sinatra-like DSL, and client implementations already exist in Julia (and are listed in the package manager): <https://github.com/dirk/HTTP.jl>

The server is also pure-Julia and doesn't require a shared library, unlike this project.</comment>


Tips for Hiring Top-Notched Data Scientists - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tips-hiring-top-notched-data-scientists-ray-lai/ <comment><USER2> Top- _Notched_?</comment>


'Freeze and marry me ' – Russians who propose at gunpoint - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49566090 <comment><USER2> Wow, this is even more questionable than how Otto proposed, "you're my rose, will you let me be your thorn?"

> Polina Soldatova, the psychologist, says the only people who get to enjoy > the experience are those in the position of power. "The would-be fiancées > laugh and smile out of relief that the men aren't real cops," she says.

This is the new winner for largest red flag for marriage I've ever heard. I think if someone told me this is how they proposed, that would be all I would need to know about that person.

</comment><comment><USER3> In Soviet Russia, proposal says yes to you?

<comment><USER4> Da</comment></comment>