The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution (2002) [pdf] - lainon
http://msl1.mit.edu/ESD10/docs/darknet5.pdf
======
sillysaurus3
The scariest project I've ever seen is OpenBazaar. It's a decentralized
marketplace. It does for physical things what Napster did for music. Not the
best analogy, since you have to pay for the things, but it's not far off.

Right now they only sell trinkets, like sunglasses. But both the founders are
former spooks. They live in fairfax, 20min from Langley. And they're adding
Tor and Tails support in the next release.

The implications are massive and disturbing. 13yos will be able to buy heroin.
It's not just breathless speculation. I probably would've done something
similar, not to use it, but just to see if I could. You do that kind of stuff
all the time as a faux-edgy kid. And it's easy for kids to get bitcoin from
ATMs. I don't even want to think about what will happen in groups.

I'm trying to keep quiet and see what happens with the project. But all the
darknet markets are apparently dead right now. It will either be one of the
most empowering or damaging pieces of technology. Tor and Amazon had a baby
and named it OpenBazaar.

But I know how hard it is to predict anything like that, so it's like a 90%
chance I'm just posting a silly comment. It's not too hard to imagine though
-- bitcoin and tor serve as examples of what's possible at the intersection of
society and technology. All the elements are there for the project to have a
huge impact.

~~~
pasbesoin
This isn't a perfect solution, but ultimately, I think, we are going to have
to move in the direction where 13 year olds _don 't want_ to buy heroin. And
that's going to be based not on punishment, but on better alternatives and
honest information. And a better community of stronger social connection.

I think of the whole "sex ed" debate. Studies and statistics show that
providing information -- and practical alternatives, such as birth and disease
control -- works. "Abstinence only" does not.

Hell, even our "War on Drugs". Turns out that maybe my friend who grew magic
mushrooms -- of which I never partook -- was doing better for himself than
those turning to the nascent Prozac revolution. We're seeing reporting now
that, under some conditions, those hallucinogenic experiences may be more
effective at combating depression.

As for myself, I've come to think that the ever increasing "IP rights" are
becoming an increasing burden on society and technology's development.
Creative people are running up against walls hindering their creativity, walls
that seem to be increasingly sold to "rent-seeking" holding companies.

To some extent, maybe those companies are useful and productive -- arbitraging
initial creativity into a more reliable source of cash and/or cash flow.

But when they turn around and push for laws that continue to increase the
tenure of their holdings and monopolies... They are using their position to
further entrench their position, rather than foster free-flowing development.

For a long time, I tried -- more than many around me -- to "play by the
rules". Belatedly, it seems, I've been becoming more aware of just how rigged
"the rules" are and are becoming.

Free-flowing heroin's a scary thing. But, so's the law and order crowd -- or
some of its more extreme aspects.

I realize my musings here are probably controversial. And I guess I'll add,
for the sake of balance as well as whoever might be monitoring threads like
these, that I continue to live a rather "squeaky clean" life.

But I can't buy in to the law and order rhetoric, any more.

~~~
yters
Afghanistan has free flowing drugs and most other things we outlaw in our
society such as pedophilia and laissez faire murder. In theory it is a
libertarians paradise.

~~~
tylersmith
Not even remotely. Libertarianism is not just wanting drugs, pedophilia, and
murder. Murder is certainly off the table for any libertarian, and I suspect
most would agree with me that any sort of sexual conduct with children
constitutes violence.

~~~
yters
Why would libertarianism consider sex with children violence if it was not
coerced? Many things we consider heinous become lawful if non coercion is the
primary criterion.

~~~
cgmg
You can't have it both ways just to disparage libertarianism. Do you believe
children are mature enough to make that decision, or not?

------
miko1293949
There isn't such thing as darknet as there isn't really a dark side of the
moon.


Is This Journalist Guilty of Low-Level Vandalism, or High-Damage Hacking? - danso
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/low-level-vandalism-or-high-damage-hacking-day-two-of-the-matthew-keys-trial
======
facetube
> "If you bill a thousand dollars an hour, that will help us get it
> prosecuted"

The person who said this (Brandon Mercer) needs to see a courtroom,
conviction, and jail cell. Conspiring to misrepresent damages in a criminal
proceeding is a crime.

------
on_
> For example, Leiderman specifically pointed out the word “fag,” saying that
> an “IRC expert” would explain its use to the jury. (In chan culture, “fag”
> is frequently used as a suffix for anyone or anything).

While it was baseline insane to give a bunch of known hackers login
credentials, I can't help but wonder how Kafka-esque this trial is going to
get.

~~~
ryanlol
Having just been to trial in relation to the very group involved in the
Chippy1337, I'd say it'll be a complete mess.

We ended up with the prosecutor reading out hundreds of lines of IRC logs
consisting almost entirely of in-jokes that nobody in the room but me could
understand.

~~~
mistersquid
> We ended up with the prosecutor reading out hundreds of lines of IRC logs
> consisting almost entirely of in-jokes that nobody in the room but me could
> understand.

Out of curiosity, and if you're at liberty and in the mood to answer, how did
you pass voire dire? Were attorneys on both sides comfortable with your
familiarity with a computing subculture?

Did your familiarity with computing even come up?

~~~
ryanlol
Well, as the defendant I didn't really have to pass voire dire.

~~~
mistersquid
Thanks for your reply. I misread "Having just been to trial" as "Having just
been in a trial".

------
austenallred
I'm obviously biased, but the loaded question in this title drives me insane.

------
Bouncingsoul1
Could someone tell me why Brisbane Airport blocks this as adult material?

~~~
on_
"Hacking" or "4chan" most likely.


Shopify and the Power of Platforms - jonbaer
https://stratechery.com/2019/shopify-and-the-power-of-platforms/
======
Townley
> Shopify is giving merchants an opportunity to differentiate themselves while
> bearing no risk if they fail.

In addition to this being a great position for Shopify, this is an amazing
thing for merchants compared to Amazon's offering; it's the critical
difference between "We'll sell your stuff" and "We'll empower you to easily
sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual
companies.

Semi-related: For a really insightful conversation about Shopify, personal
interactions, and running a good company, I highly recommended The Knowledge
Project's interview with the company's CEO, Tobi Lütke: [https://fs.blog/tobi-
lutke/](https://fs.blog/tobi-lutke/)

~~~
DenisM
What about traffic though? Amazon gives you traffic, user reviews, used
confidence.

~~~
imjk
Sure, you have to work to target your own audience and build the trust with
them yourself, but it's a tradeoff that benefits you in the long run. Your not
beholden to the whims "the platform" as many media companies learned the hard
way by putting so much of their focus on Facebooks platform in the past
decade.

------
omouse
Shopify is just the next closed-source iteration of WordPress and Magento.
WordPress has one of the largest platforms and they've taken over (and open-
sourced) blogging, content management, learning management systems, and
ecommerce. They and Magento are better examples of a platform than Shopify.

In the long-term, "platforms" like Shopify lose because they don't have nearly
enough developers. They have ~3000 "apps" listed in their app store:
[https://apps.shopify.com/browse/all?pricing=all&requirements...](https://apps.shopify.com/browse/all?pricing=all&requirements=off&sort_by=popular)

WooCommerce has 285 plugins, and WordPress has 54,000+ plugins. Magento has
~5000 plugins.

It would be cool if Stratechery took a look at free/open source on the
platform/aggregator spectrum.

~~~
pxue
Here's my hot take (with 2 years of running a #1 trending shopify app +
multiple attempt in starting a store)

Shopify DOES NOT help you sell. Period.

Amazon will win in the long run because at the end of the day it's all about
if the "platform" can move merchandize or not. Amazon captures top of the
funnel all the way down to personalized targeting.

Shopify will never do that. they are just the tool to help you figure out all
that yourself. Outsiders / beginners looking in would say Shopify is amazing
because the ecosystem and how many "tools" there are to help you sell. but
it's all load of horsesh*t. The merchant ultimately is the one responsible to
run the ad campaigns, find the customers, run promotional pricing on BFCM.

~~~
sushilewis
That's a great take that others miss. Marketing is 100X harder than setting up
a platform.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
Devil's advocate: go make a listing on Amazon for a product that already has
other competitors selling. How are you going to "market" yours to the top?

~~~
rchaud
The answer is to pay even more money to Amazon to place yourself as a
"sponsored" listing that goes right to the top of search results. Partly why
Amazon is rapidly becoming a dumpster fire of an e-shop. It looks more like
the search results page on Google these days.

------
asdfokd8
It seems to me like Aggregators vs Platforms is related to Products as
Commodities vs Products as Brands.

Aggregators win when products are anonymous commodities. Brands win when
products are beloved.

It seems like the trend (for many reasons: over-marketing, dis-satisfaction,
dis-trust, a race toward the barely-legal) is toward products as brands:
brands which are authentic and relational and participants themselves in the
experience (that "get it").

I think this trend will prove to be great for platforms, and bad for
aggregators. [https://medium.com/@thecraigmartin/the-greatest-threat-to-
re...](https://medium.com/@thecraigmartin/the-greatest-threat-to-retailers-
acab2a5f864)

------
rladd
Here are some excerpts from my recent conversation with Shopify support:

Q: noticed that sockfancy.com is using shopify? is there a way to set things
up like they do: user checks off the options they want and then they go
directly to a single-page checkout for their subscription?

A: A subscription is a recurring order. For recurring orders they are using
Recurring Orders & Subscription Box App by Bold, and Recurring Orders
Enterprise, which is only available to Shopify Plus merchants.

Q: how about the single page checkout?

A: The single page checkout is also a feature of Shopify Plus plan, which
starts at $2000 per month. They are also using cashier by Bold.

Q: It looks like those Bold plugins add commission costs of about 3% or more
per sale?

A: I don't know the details of that, but again they are available only for
Shopify Plus.

Yes it's true that you can set up a generic site cheaply, but for a site that
actually works well and has single page checkout, etc. you get into some very
big bucks, and also some very large sales commissions.

~~~
rladd
Another point about hosted platforms: if they run slowly, there's not that
much you can do to fix it. Here's a GTMetrix report for the aforementioned
site:
[https://gtmetrix.com/reports/sockfancy.com/gSNvns6s](https://gtmetrix.com/reports/sockfancy.com/gSNvns6s)

Fully Loaded Time - 7.8s

Not sure anyone would think this is an acceptable amount of time to wait for a
page to load.

~~~
gcbw2
It's not like you could also do anything about slow page loads if selling via
amazon or wallmart.

~~~
rladd
Yes, but Amazon brings traffic and a customer base to the picture. Shopify
doesn't.

Shopify is competing with any other shopping cart software, and for companies
concerned with performance there may be a case for hosting your own.

~~~
rhizome
> _Shopify is competing with any other shopping cart software_

How many of them have better performance? Might just be a "all of you have to
do is be faster than the slowest."

------
bhouston
I predict that Shopify will eventually create an Amazon-like system where
products from its merchants can be listed in a unified e-commerce frontend
site all together.

Not sure if I will be correct about this but I might as well try for a third
correct prediction about Shopify:

* Fulfilled by Shopify ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18524131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18524131))

* Shopify POS ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6289827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6289827)).

~~~
ky0ung
I don't think this makes sense to do. Shopify is great at developing software
to help merchants sell online. They have successfully built a relationship
with the merchant side of the market...but what is there advantage on the
creating a business on the retail customer side? At the moment, Shopify only
services the merchants. This being said, it is still possible to build a
business on customer side, but the question is...would it make sense?

I'd say it wouldn't make sense to do this. Shopify has no relationship with
the retail customer. To build it, they'd have to build traffic from scratch.
They'd have to not only build a unique customer brand, but also have to figure
out a way to drive traffic, which would likely be through aggressive marketing
(Facebook / Google ads), which wouldn't be economical. Secondly, what would
Shopify build a brand around for customers?

Amazon's brand is built on the promise of not only providing the cheapest
prices, but also the convenience of 2 day shipping (achievable only through
scale), amazing customer service (and lenient refunds, again achievable only
through scale). This being said, what would Shopify's "brand" promise be?

Curation of their favorite products? Who says that Shopify is qualified to
curate?

All of these factors make it hard for me to believe that they'd enter and
create a serious business from a unified e-commerce site that'd compete with
Amazon.

~~~
bhouston
The issue is that Shopify will run out of growth in their current sector. Thus
they need to seek out some way to grow their market by redefining it to be
bigger than it currently.

One large issue that I see is that Amazon wins 40%+ of ecommerce because
shoppers searches start on Amazon. Shopify stores lose by default 40% of the
time because of that.

Shopify with its huge number of merchants and pre-populated product listings
and its centralized cloud-hosted platform is uniquely positioned to compete
here in a way that Magento and WooCommerce can't with their distributed
install base.

Shopify has to have an angle that is unique to them for sure. I am not sure
what that is in terms of marketing. But they have generally done well in
marketing, so I trust they will find an angle.

I think the centralized store will be an adjunct to the main offering, thus it
will be an option, but because it leads to more sales opportunities, because
it helps to solve the search issue, most will opt-in.

I think that they can also somehow tie in the existing stores, of which there
are 700,000 into solving the need to introduce people to the centralized
search. Maybe if these stores act as a funnel to Shopify's central storefront,
they will get click through advertising revenue. Thus the centralization is in
effect another revenue stream for stores that refer traffic to the central
store. E.g. "If you do not get a sale yourself, at least get the referral
revenue on the eventual sale."

I wouldn't be surprised as well (another prediction) that Shopify wants to
further own the customer relationship between their merchants and their
merchant's customers so that Shopify can market on Shopify's behalf to these
customers. I see suggestions of this from the breakdown of the Shopify-
Mailchimp relationship. Shopify is working to maintain control of its
relationships with merchant's customers.

------
benologist
If anyone is interested in a 'Shopify for SaaS' I am in private beta with one,
my platform is an open source app store for web applications with developer
registration and payouts through Stripe Connect. Developers can code single
page apps on the website or import their servers by URL. Users can install the
creations for personal or organization use, imported or freely subscribed or
paid subscriptions.

My email is in my profile if anyone is interested in participating in my beta.

Example of a web app on my platform -

[https://github.com/userappstore/integration-
examples/blob/ma...](https://github.com/userappstore/integration-
examples/blob/master/hastebin/hastebin-app-store-
subscription/src/www/public/14-second-user-creates-shared-post.png?raw=true)

Case study for how that app, hastebin, was ported -

[https://github.com/userappstore/integration-
examples/blob/ma...](https://github.com/userappstore/integration-
examples/blob/master/hastebin/hastebin-app-store-subscription.md)

------
parentheses
It's easy to think platforms are difficult to build. With some of the
"platform infrastructure" mentioned, it's very possible to assemble a large
majority of a new platform out of large chunks rather than building from
scratch. One of the infrastructure components of Shopify missed in the article
is Stripe. Stripe makes it possible for them to scale to serve clients in many
countries and offer an e-commerce capability. Then there is AWS. I think the
article misses some of the depth of platform building capabilities that are
out there and available for use.

------
dkrich
The main differentiator between Amazon and everyone else continues to be
Prime. Having people paying $120/year to come back and shop on their site is
an advantage that nobody can compete with. Shopify could try and compete by
creating a similar membership service, and perhaps they will, but at this
point I'm skeptical it would gain much traction. The main reason people use
Prime is to buy commodity goods with fast free shipping. In this case I'm
defining commodity goods as those where the supplier isn't that important and
the alternative is driving to a local store and buying the same thing.

Shopify is almost at the other extreme: the sites that sell goods on its
platform must differentiate themselves with niche offerings and consequently,
I'd bet that the average Shopify customer makes purchases a lot less
frequently than the average Amazon customer. People shop on those sites
because the local stores don't have what they are looking for.

Another reason I'm a bit skeptical about the "Shopify is a threat to Amazon"
narrative is that at a certain scale it seems that stores would leave Shopify
and just manage their own websites and inventory. So Shopify is sort of a
business incubator that is extremely valuable when a business' scale is
limited. But the few that become huge hits would likely leave to save
transaction costs, so Shopify would lose that business.

Totally agree with the Wal-Mart analysis though. They seem to be all over the
place. I sometimes wonder why Wal-Mart doesn't at least try to start a
subscription service. They would definitely have to undercut Amazon on price
and eat losses for a while, but I don't understand the idea of advertising a
no-subscription required model when that model clearly works so well for so
many other businesses. The most obvious issue is that they are at a huge
disadvantage in distribution center build-out, but why couldn't they start
regionally in a couple of densely-populated areas and expand from there? Price
the service aggressively and maybe give members discounts on groceries or
other in-store products, an area where Wal-Mart has a massive advantage over
Amazon.

------
j4_hnews
As Amazon gobbles up more product categories, there may be less viable
categories that potential e-commerce startups might venture into on their own.

This could mean over time, more Shopify merchants would be selling overlapping
product categories (the ones Amazon has not yet gobbled up yet).

Which would mean that as a Shopify merchant, you would competing with other
Shopify merchants (not Amazon).

How do you differentiate, when the Shopify platform makes the same set of
selling advantages available to everyone?

You leave Shopify ...

~~~
AznHisoka
"when the Shopify platform makes the same set of selling advantages available
to everyone?"

Shopify doesn't make advantages like branding, brand awareness, marketing,
market research, etc available. It simply makes setting up an online store
more convenient for people do. Convenience != competitive advantage. You can
extend this argument to cloud platforms. AWS, and Azure make setting up and
scaling a SaaS easier, but it doesn't give you any secret sauce that you need
to succeed, like the ability to know what your customer want.

~~~
jasonsync
Isn't the point of the article that the Shopify Fulfillment Network will be
available to all merchants (that pay for it)?

Most of the Shopify plugins exist to give a store owner an advantage in sales,
conversion or marketing. Sure execution counts, external branding counts, but
Shopify is a closed platform. You use their plugins and approved apps. And
most store owners rely on these plugins to some degree, to help them build
brand awareness etc.

Eg: [https://apps.shopify.com/browse/sales-and-conversion-
optimiz...](https://apps.shopify.com/browse/sales-and-conversion-optimization)

Shopify levels the playing field which is great. But if everyone selling
Bananas is on the same field, using the same plugins, switching fields could
be a great way to differentiate and possibly optimize beyond what Shopify can
help you with.

~~~
lprubin
I’d just like to point out that Shopify isn’t a closed platform. Shopify has
the concept of a private app that is not in the app store and not approved by
Shopify. So a store can either build/hire an agency to build their own
unapproved app using a wide variety and growing set of shopify apis. I’ve made
a lot of money doing exactly that.

There also are a number of apps who choose not to be in the app store and not
give up 20% of their revenue and instead market on their own.

------
idlewords
I just want to plug the Stratechery newsletter, which whether you agree with
the author's conclusions or not is consistently excellent, and a spur to
thinking about our industry,

~~~
akulkarni7
I just took a look at it thanks to this comment and wow, that is some terrific
content. Thanks for sharing!

------
wenbin
Tobi is like a younger Jeff Bezos :) I binge listened quite a few his podcast
interviews [https://lnns.co/aECRtZ2fNn9](https://lnns.co/aECRtZ2fNn9)

~~~
jonny_eh
He's also much generous, and technically adept (he created a bunch of popular
early Ruby gems).

------
CriticalCathed
It's an interesting article, but the most interesting part to me was the Bill
Gates Line article the author also wrote. [0] The distinction between a
platform and an aggregator was not one that I ever considered. I'm convinced
by this article that it's a useful one.

Does anyone know why it is that Shopify's stock has risen by 100% over the
last year? I looked it over and couldn't figure out why -- is it the 3PL
Fulfillment Network this article mentions?

[0] [https://stratechery.com/2018/the-bill-gates-
line/](https://stratechery.com/2018/the-bill-gates-line/)

~~~
hackermailman
Shopify reported 50% yearly revenue growth which helped the stock price, and
gov of Canada/provinces used shopify exclusively for their online marijuana
ordering starting last year too. That said their lack of net income is a
problem [https://www.fool.ca/2019/05/07/where-will-shopify-tsxshop-
st...](https://www.fool.ca/2019/05/07/where-will-shopify-tsxshop-stock-be-
in-5-years/) and their hiring process is ridiculous even by modern meme hiring
standards meaning it's going to get harder to hire people when they can just
work for FAANG which are all opening offices, or already have offices in
Canada and don't have the same very long process starting with telling a
recruiter 'your life story' for over an hour.

~~~
sushilewis
On the How I Built This podcast, they mentioned AllBirds uses Shopify as their
platform.

I just checked their site, and it looks like it's still the case.

~~~
paultannenbaum
They do, but I think they are considering moving off of Shopify. The reality
is that shopify has a ridiculous amount of down time, and any high traffic
store will actually be losing real revenue as a result. Just scroll their
status page, they consistently have several outages a month.

[https://status.shopify.com/](https://status.shopify.com/)

~~~
paultannenbaum
Sorry was typing on my phone and didn't clarify. I have a friend who works at
Allbirds and told me they are strongly looking at migrating because of the
down time issues.

------
dvduval
The main reason I don't use Shopify is the merchant fees. I can do better
paying a developer to WooCommerce. and we have a pretty good system for doing
all the patches and everything and haven't had any security problems or
anything like that. and if I'm not happy with my hosting or with some feature
I can just change myself. I don't depend on this other company which has
already done a few things that were kind of heavy-handed in my view.

------
melenaos
I am Shopify app developer and I earn my living from 3 published apps in the
Shopify marketplace.

I can answer any question you may have.

~~~
kumarm
Thank You.

1\. Do you see the Market for shopify apps growing? Any indications would be
helpful from your experience.

2\. Best way to get started on Shopify apps for developers?

~~~
melenaos
New stores open every minute but at the same time some others close, if you
have a good placement in the marketplace listings then new people use the app
and if you can keep them, you will grow a decent monthly revenue.

Shopify is missing many things and the apps are there to fill those gaps,
Shopify doesn't replicate the apps functionality to drag them out of the game
so yea, there is much space left for new apps.

Shopify has a great resource of information on how to get started here:
[https://developers.shopify.com/app-
development](https://developers.shopify.com/app-development)

You may find an API library for your preferred language in this list:
[https://help.shopify.com/en/api/tools/supported-
libraries](https://help.shopify.com/en/api/tools/supported-libraries)

------
chiefalchemist
> "To that end, I would argue that for Shopify a high churn rate is just as
> much a positive signal as it is a negative one: the easier it is to start an
> e-commerce business on the platform, the more failures there will be. And,
> at the same time, the greater likelihood there will be of capturing and
> supporting successes."

Yes and no. The excessive lowering of the barrier to entry is self defeating.
That is, more stores === more noise. Throwing still more at the wall isn't
going to increase success. That friction will increase Failure.

~~~
naringas
but Shoppify's model doesn't involve marketing, they leave all that up to the
merchants. so shoppify itself isn't directly affected by this.

~~~
chiefalchemist
The supply of customers is not endless. It's in Shopify's best interest to
optimize the churn to success ratio - not simply have more success stories. We
all know the metric. Happy customer tell three people. Unhappy customer tell
10 or more.

That is, as the number of failed store owners grows so does the fiction and
reputation debt for the Shopify brand.

~~~
scribu
But is the Shopify brand featured prominently during the shopping experience?

I would assume no, given the article's assertion that Shopify is just a
facilitator, which lets the shop's owner shine instead.

------
baybal2
On my first job ever, when I was an exchange student in Singapore in between
2007-2009, I did API integration for a trade company with Alibaba's APIs or
whatever you can call them back then.

You was making a CVS file with product description, putting it on a web
server, and directed Alibaba's product feed downloader on it.

Alibaba also had "hosted frontpage" back then. The same thing you get now with
a store in *.alibaba.com subdomain. It was actually much more feature rich
back then. They were allowing upload of more or less fully featured HTML
pages, but around 2010 they discontinued both.

If Alibaba guys ever knew what a gold mine they were sitting on all that
time...

------
saadalem
I love this tweet from Tobi :

"I'd rather buy @amazon in 2029"

[https://mobile.twitter.com/tobi/status/1068282069397123072](https://mobile.twitter.com/tobi/status/1068282069397123072)

------
tedmcory77
Amazon is a good cash business, but hard to build a brand on.

Shopify is easier to build a brand on, but harder to make actual money on
initially.

If Shopify turned us off tomorrow (they can), we’d be able to continue. If
Amazon did, it’s game over on that platform.

------
stcredzero
_This is ultimately the most important distinction between platforms and
Aggregators: platforms are powerful because they facilitate a relationship
between 3rd-party suppliers and end users; Aggregators, on the other hand,
intermediate and control it._

Would YouTube count as an Aggregator? Are they becoming less about the task to
"facilitate a relationship between 3rd-party suppliers and end users" and more
about seeking to "intermediate and control?"

------
valueprop
Hi,

Considering about working on an open source with turnkey SaaS hosting modern
alternative. Drawback: MVP is quite big. Would you see such a need, or is
everyone happy with Shopify?

Some questions, if you can spare a few minutes:

What are top 3-5 issues with the platform that you're currently using?

What do you like most about the current platform?

What would be the must-haves of another store platform in order for you to
switch to it?

Appreciate your insights!

~~~
hombre_fatal
I don't really understand who an "open source turnkey ecommerce solution"
serves.

The last thing you need when trying to sell product is to now deal with
running software and a server. Kinda reminds me of when I thought I could
build a webshop for my father with Rails and Stripe. Thank god I realized
sooner than later that there's basically zero upside to running this software
and I switched my father to Shopify where he's happily been since.

I think this kind of solution only seems good to HN nerds who don't realize
what Shopify brings to the table, or that technology is somehow the hardest
part of running a webshop. It seems naive.

Since you're asking these questions, it sounds like you don't have much domain
experience. I encourage you to create a simple Shopify shop and try selling
something, if only to see what it gives you out of the box that your turnkey
solution can't. That would be essential experience to have before you even
make your initial commit.

------
omouse
_" We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency
in the hands of individual companies._

WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to
$20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce,
buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment
system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races.

And it's better than that, there's people with years and years of experience
in modifying and creating plugins and themes so once you have enough $$$ from
the basic setup, re-invest into the business and get better developer support
for all the GPL'd plugins and themes you're using.

~~~
delecti
"Just combine these _6_ things and it's just as easy as a single tool that
does it all for you."

Is this satire?

~~~
simonh
No, it's the standard response from some open source people for any
proprietary end-to-end solution. The most famous example was this response to
the launch of Dropbox:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)

~~~
omouse
_some open source people_

Hey now, stop with the name-calling :P I work on and use proprietary end to
end solutions for ecommerce (but not Shopify).

Woocommerce wins for me because it lowers development costs and costs are
lower overall. My perspective is definitely someone who has developed
ecommerce sites, not solely as a non-technical user, and for me it's very
advantageous to lower costs by using and modifying GPL'd plugins and themes.

I guess Shopify has 4000 employees and enough cash and enough direction to
come out of box with a good UX and good defaults and that's good enough for
nontechnical users.

~~~
organsnyder
I'm a technical user, and good UX and good defaults are something I often
spend money on.

~~~
larrywright
I’m a technical user, and if I needed to sell goods online I’d use Shopify.
It’s precisely _because_ I’m a technical user: I know all the things you you
have to worry about, and I’d rather not. There surely a scale where it makes
sense to roll your own e-commerce platform, but it’s substantially higher than
people seem to think.

~~~
organsnyder
Yup. I've taken some MBA classes, and one (in retrospect obvious) thing I
latched onto is the idea of opportunity cost: you can never do everything you
are capable of doing, and each thing you do comes at the expense of something
else. So, focus on doing the things that (depending on your goal) are most
fulfilling and/or most profitable.

Amusingly, grasping that concept was a big factor in my decision to put my MBA
degree on hold...

~~~
bluGill
There is one other reason to do things: you cannot trust anyone else to do it.
Fullfilling and/or profitable are hopefully the only ones that apply, but
sometimes you have to do something because the risk is too high...

~~~
larrywright
I’m not sure that applies to the Shopify argument here, but maybe you didn’t
intend it to.

~~~
bluGill
Hopefully - for Shopifys sake - it doesn't apply.

An example of how it could apply is if shopify were to "go down" often thus
driving your customers to your competitors that roll their own solution that
has good uptime.


Ask HN: What companies have private offices for programmers? - ken
I've read and heard from lots of programmers who want them, but I've only ever heard of about two software companies that offer them.
careers.stackoverflow.com has "Joel Test" scores for some entries, but companies seem pretty loose with the "quiet working conditions" criterion.  One of them claims a point for that, but then brags about their "open layout" office.
I'm not looking for yet another debate over the pros/cons of offices/cubes/open layout, nor a list of earplug/headphone/desk indicators as mitigation.
======
pbiggar
CircleCI - I signed the lease on Monday :)

[https://circleci.com/jobs](https://circleci.com/jobs) \- see also
[http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-
weak/](http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-weak/)

~~~
an___
Looking at the job site [https://circleci.com/jobs](https://circleci.com/jobs)
click on "For back-end/full stack developers"

        Some of the characteristics we're looking for:
          ...
          - young, raw, talented devs who can crank out code,

Are they really looking to hire young developers only or am I misunderstanding
the job description?

~~~
pbiggar
No absolutely not. Some other context from the page:

"we've noticed that the following correlate with the type of people that we
want to work with. This is not an exhaustive list, nor a list of requirements
(in fact, some of them are contradictory), but more of a rough guideline."

"senior, experienced developers, who have worked on a decent number of
products, have a propensity for shipping often, probably with 8-10 years of
experience and amazing coding chops (those having left coding behind them—this
isn't the company for you, unfortunately)"

So those are two profiles that have worked well for us in the past, but they
aren't requirements by any stretch.

We're aware that this is kinda confusing, and also that it's not very friendly
to a lot of people we're trying to hire, so we'll be updating pretty soon.

------
nilkn
Fog Creek goes out of their way to ensure that full-time developers have
private offices (but not interns).

~~~
dpweb
I read this as a programmer getting an intern (assistant). Like that idea, hey
someone making 120-150k or more - that's not that crazy. Someone to research
for you etc..

~~~
patio11
While in principle I understand the economics for that, Fog Creek doesn't use
interns as gophers. They actually mentor them and, even rarer, expect them to
ship meaningful software before their term is up. In addition to compensating
them like they're doing meaningful work, Fog Creek does a large portion of new
hires from previous interns. (Incidentally: it's all-around a great place to
work.)

~~~
dsr_
"expect them to ship meaningful software before their term is up"

is that rare? We expect any [programming] intern will be learning some part of
the code base and making their first tiny improvements in the first week. Most
of the interns have been quite productive by the end of their term... and I'm
happy to say that our first intern-to-full-time-employee will be starting in a
month or so.

~~~
patio11
There exist many, many internships where you're either Chief Coffee Delivery
Technician or you spend all of your productive time on scutwork that no one
could convince a FTE to do. Examples elided to protect the guilty.

~~~
dpweb
I was an intern 20 years ago, then or now if someone told me to get coffee I'd
probably throw it in their face. I've (thankfully) never seen that. Have seen
em do data entry, but at our company they write production code. I've seen
guys condescend to them. They should shut up. These kids are smart and would
gladly do their job for half the salary starting tomorrow.

My point is, anyone making over 80k/$40 an hour making their own flight
arrangements, filling out their own expense reports, is a waste of valuable
time. If I have a guy billing out $200/hr - he's in the office 8 or 9 hours a
day max - (most people start and end work the same time everyday) - I don't
want him wasting time on that crap. Needs an AA to do it. (Note our expense
system sucks and our requirements are exact - you can easily spend an hour on
an expense report)..

------
sp_
I shared an office with one other person at Microsoft and have the same at
Google. That doesn't mean that everybody has that at either company.

~~~
sbilstein
Yep depends on the building. I had a single office at Microsoft, so did many
others. Some shared in pods of 4-8 engineers. I don't recall any spaces with
an open plan (except in the UK), but I also didn't visit every single building
Microsoft had.

------
cm_rb
At Campaign Monitor -
[http://www.campaignmonitor.com/careers](http://www.campaignmonitor.com/careers)
most employees have their own office, including programmers. There are also a
few small team rooms and it's generally an awesome place to be a developer.

------
wbond
The company I work at (Veracross) has them for everyone - engineers and
account managers. Myself and a few other engineers opted out for social
reasons and instead work in a nice corner office with big windows. This works
especially well while on-boarding people and working with interns.

~~~
EC1
I just quit my job today because we have 12 developers in a TINY room, worst
atmosphere. I can't work to my full potential unless I work in near absolute
silence. Private offices would be a god send.

~~~
pdq
I highly recommend investing in a decent pair of earphones or headphones.
These will knock out a very high percentage of the ambient noise and let you
concentrate almost as well as a quiet office.

~~~
brianwawok
It's not the same.

------
ufmace
I had a private office pretty much the entire time I did coding for
Schlumberger, though this can vary widely based on location. At the new
company, it's mostly cubes.

I think the nature of office space is one of the problems with this. Most
commercial office space seems to be set up in the open office/cube farm setup.
If you wanted private offices, you'd have to pay to construct them yourself,
and then wonder if it will cause trouble if you ever leave the space when
whoever takes it next doesn't want it. It's much tougher to get private
offices until you're big enough to be actually constructing your own
buildings, or at least willing to spend money on a pricey build-out of
existing office space.

~~~
nilkn
Out of curiosity, which location was this for Schlumberger?

~~~
ufmace
I've worked at several offices for them around Houston, including Sugar Land,
Katy, and San Felipe, which appears to mostly not have private offices. A
facilities guy there once told me that they actually have a total of 78
offices just in Houston.

------
loumf
The much more common alternative is ~3 person offices. I'm going to go out on
a limb and say most big software-engineer focused companies have them for a
lot of people. E.g. Microsoft. I have been to MS and seen them (but it's a big
place -- don't know if everyone does)

You are right to not want open-layout. Peopleware presents a study that music
can interfere with creativity.

One other thing I'm seeing is Huddle rooms. They are smaller, ad-hoc offices.
Teams can request them to work together on something. My sense is that they
are for a short period of time, measured in days to weeks.

------
buro9
As a tangent on this, we're in a coworking space in London that has a
dedicated "quiet floor" and actively furnished the place to reduce noise
levels. The floor has fewer desks, padded dividers, sound baffles around the
room, and is laid out well.

It's in London, and it's here:
[http://www.huckletree.com/](http://www.huckletree.com/)

We chose this after finding that in our existing coworking space, that the
company that moved in to the other side of our desk cluster spent the majority
of their time on the phone and were loud about it.

------
andymoe
Apple has them. Microsoft too I think. I prefer them.

EDIT: By the way, I like them, but I write this from a plastic folding table
in a warehouse in Brisbane CA (AKA Drone Valley)

~~~
hga
Microsoft used this in recruiting advertising, back when there were glossy
magazines developers read. The one I remember just showed an closed door, with
the text explaining how you could go in your office, close your door, and get
work that needs concentration done.

~~~
jmspring
Parts of Microsoft are moving towards open offices. For instance -

[http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-
division/](http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-division/)

~~~
latkin
Yep. Most product groups still have individual offices with doors, though new
hires are usually doubled with someone else until they have a couple years'
tenure. There has been a recent migration toward team rooms in a few high-
profile groups. Meaning ~12 people together in a bigger room, as opposed to
"open plan" with dozens or hundreds in one huge space.

------
jeffcoat
I was in a 1 or 2-person office while I was at IBM. Their policy (at that
branch) was a private office for senior developers and up, two to an office
otherwise.

I'm at Motive right now; the large majority of developers here have their own
office. (And we're hiring: developers and testers, no telecom experience
necessary, mostly in Austin, TX.)

~~~
zedpm
Are the developer positions in-office only, or is full-time remote (in the US)
an option?

------
jarin
I might be weird, but I actually prefer working in an open layout. It might
just be because I'm one of two programmers at my office and it's really
helpful to be able to eavesdrop and talk to people as they walk by in order to
figure out what's missing/working/not working.

~~~
ericcholis
I'm half and half on this. I've got an office just outside the open workspace
where the users are. I can catch most everything that comes up, but close my
door if I need a bit of privacy.

------
frankwiles
We recently moved RevSys into new offices where everyone has their own office.
We were in a much too small office that was one big open room. I won't speak
for everyone, but I know my personal productivity has shot through the roof.

------
jeffrwells
All remote companies have this, in a sense.

------
piokuc
I work for an inter-governmental organisation in the environmental services
sector; ~300 people, ~40 programmers (but many others - scientists - do some
coding, too). Most people have private offices, there are also 2 or 3 persons
offices. I enjoy my single office. I like to put my feet on the desk when I
read a paper or a book or when I fancy a quick game on my mobile :)

------
vailripper
My company (Surge Forward) is 100% telecommute, so an office can be whatever
you want it to be! Some days I work from home, or if I'm having trouble
concentrating I might go work out of a coffee shop. It works perfectly for me.

------
waterfowl
Booz Allen runs the gamut(and I no longer work there, I hear things have
changed) but straight out of college I had a 2 person office and it was
great(also like 50-100% WFH for most folks who aren't working at a client
place)

------
bebop
ESRI: [http://www.esri.com/](http://www.esri.com/) the GIS company had private
offices for employees. At least last time I interviewed with them.

------
cema
Intersystems (Cambridge, MA) has a large number of private offices as well as
cubicles, which are less often used.

------
techwizrd
When I worked at SAIC and Leidos, I had my own office. It was nice to be able
to close my door and focus.

------
mronge
Apple has them

------
krambs
Every engineer at Disco gets their own office. But you'd have to move to
Houston. :)

csdisco.com/jobs

------
mgangav
SAS (As in the analytics company) tries its best to give offices to everyone
(not just devs).

------
stonemetal
Corepoint Health(Dallas, Tx Frisco area) has them for everyone in the company.

------
camara
CS Disco Inc. (www.csdisco.com) for all engineers and most other employees.

------
lightblade
Interviewed at PARC a while back. They have it.

------
sachinag
Oracle. Not everyone, but most.

~~~
ewoodh2o
I worked at Oracle up until last year. At Oracle HQ in Redwood City, yes, many
developers have private offices. But our office and the other offices I
visited elsewhere that had been built-out more recently were open-plan
environments.

------
Serow225
The MathWorks, I believe.

~~~
evilskull
Generally correct, though as they expand their offices and their headcount
sometimes people have to double/triple up until new space opens up. Sometimes
they also get stuck in temporary cubicles but the general goal is an office
for every full time salaried (non-hourly) employee.

------
beachstartup
adobe used to give every employee an office. don't think that's still true
today though.

~~~
donjuanica
No longer true. The new campus in Utah is very much an open design with low-
walled cubicles and large open spaces.


Why ancient Roman graffiti is so important to archaeologists - akakievich
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113411831/why-ancient-roman-graffiti-is-so-important-to-archaeologists-010516/
======
existencebox
At the risk of nitpicking: "Meanwhile, every female Roman voice has been lost
to time."

I bring this up less to bang on some diversity card, and more that it seems
very far from true? (Yes, they were a vast minority, but 'lost to time' seems
quite overwrought) In terms of poetry we have Sulpicia (both of them) and then
lots of miscellaneous daily writings e.g. the diary of Vibia Perpetua; and of
course Lucretia and Fulvia if we're talking public figures...

And the additional quote of female homosexuality being universally abhorred
also seems to be misaligned with what I was taught, but my memories of this
are both fuzzier and from my days in university, so I'd be more than willing
to be proven wrong. (The obvious argument in my favor is the amount the of
attention garnered by the supposed lesbian (both in location and sexual
practice) Sappho) My take on it was that there was as much of a distribution
in terms of outlook on sexual practices as there is today, albeit very
differently weighted.

That all being said, roman graffiti is _amazing_ as a view into "normal
people", the article leaving out the fact that gives me a good (but immature)
chuckle, that a large amount of graffiti included simply crude drawings of
penises.

~~~
ktRolster

      > that a large amount of graffiti included simply crude drawings of penises.

While reading your comment, I literally could not stop myself from thinking of
this. teehee

------
mwfunk
The advertising on redorbit.com (desktop site) is utterly preposterous- in
terms of the quantity, quality, and repetition, and the relentless popups. I
usually get annoyed when HN comments devolve into people discussing the page
or the site rather than the contents of the story, but this is just absurd.

I would normally assume that a site that looks like this has to be a domain
squatter's autogenerated site, or some sort of honeypot for distributing
malware.

Or maybe I'm not getting the same experience everyone else is? If this is what
it looks like to everyone, that's grounds for HN blacklisting redorbit.com
links. I hope this is a screwup and not what the site owners are going for.

~~~
mwfunk
What I'm seeing in this link: every image and every paragraph is followed by
the same Teleflora banner ad that scrolls open when you scroll past that image
or paragraph. At some point an animated Revlon ad also appears which expands
to fill the entire page. The sidebar and bottom of just about every page is
consumed by ginormous BS "Trending now!" links to "25 celebrities you didn't
know posed topless!" and "The weight loss trick that they don't want you to
know!" articles on other equally disreputable sites. The page for this article
looks like satire, it's so ridiculous and seedy and invasive. I wanted to read
the article, I really did.

~~~
b_emery
Here, try this instead. Some hilarious stuff. No adds, i'm pretty sure it's
circa 1995:

[http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%2...](http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%20Pompeii.htm)

~~~
GnarfGnarf
_" Gaius Pumidius Dipilus was here on October 3rd 78 BC"_

That's apocryphal, right? How did he know it was "BC"?

~~~
lostlogin
It gets weirder when you consider that Christ was most likely born between 7
and 2 BC.

------
arethuza
Another great bit of ancient graffiti are runes carved by some Vikings
sheltering inside the ~4800 year old tomb of Maeshowe on Orkney:

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

 _" He is a viking...come here under the barrow"_

[http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm](http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm)

~~~
ktRolster
Along the coast of Norway, outside Tromsø, I found these ancient stone
drawings:

[http://i.imgur.com/2ago5A9.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/2ago5A9.jpg)

[http://i.imgur.com/YaIIXdP.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/YaIIXdP.jpg)

Including the one of a six-legged cow (with three horns). I have no idea why
the Norwegians wanted to draw a six-legged cow, but I assume it must have some
significance. If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them.

~~~
riffraff
I would have interpreted the third horn as ears.

Two hypothesis on the six legs:

* an oddity, this things sometimes happen and might have been interpreted as good or bad omens, worth recording. The positioning (mid-flank rather than at the bottom, like the others) seems consistent with similar cases I have seen. Random internet result: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/6-legged-lamb_n_123...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/6-legged-lamb_n_1232176.html#gallery/22942/0)

* maybe those are not extra legs of the top animal, but horns of the bottom animal (who also has 4 short legs), maybe recording when some ram or species of deer charged into a much larger cow? Though the horns would be out of proportion, and I'd expect them to be curved.

------
matco11
>"These places weren’t necessarily vast repositories of lost literature, but
the eruption froze them nearly perfectly in time, preserving them for nearly
2,000 years—and preserving thousands of pieces of graffiti along with them."

Actually, Pompeii and Herculaneum are precisely one of the largest and most
precious repositories of lost ancient literature.

[http://ancphil.lsa.umich.edu/-/downloads/papyri/JankoRecentD...](http://ancphil.lsa.umich.edu/-/downloads/papyri/JankoRecentDevelopments.pdf)

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-
invisible-l...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-invisible-
library)

------
chrstphrhrt
Umm what? "[Pompeii and Herculaneum] weren’t necessarily vast repositories of
lost literature"

Not sure about Pompeii, but Herculaneum had the villa of Piso with tons of
scrolls from Philodemus, who totally fleshed out the ideas of Epicurus, upon
whose atomism all of modern science is based.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Epicurus, upon whose atomism all of modern science is based.

It is difficult to comprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could
provoke such a statement.

Modern science makes no reference to Epicurean atomism, other than in the
historical choice of the _word_ "atom" to refer to something that Epicurus
wasn't talking about.

~~~
chrstphrhrt
Okay. Then I'd be interested to know about atomism after Lucretius and before
the renaissance. Who was the first modern "inventor" of it?

My comment was meant to express alarm that anyone could say there was no lost
library buried by Vesuvius.

Here it is:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri#Epicureani...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri#Epicureanism_and_the_library)

------
rjbrock
I love this type of stuff, because it is an insight into the way that normal
people (ie. not royalty) lived.

------
colanderman
Absolutely unreadable on mobile; the site just keeps scrolling itself back to
the top.

~~~
lostlogin
What OS? iOS and Crystal make it just fine. It's a pity add block isn't a
default position for everyone.

~~~
colanderman
Android.


Node.js Web Server Guide - asp_net
https://github.com/aspnetde/nodejs-webserver-guide

======
asp_net
After working in the Microsoft universe for a decade I decided to broaden my
horizon, so I digged into Node.js. I am quite impressed with what I found and
what I could accomplish in a few weeks with that tooling, but one thing was
left - I had no idea how and where to host my stuff. As I did not find a
typical all-in-one-solution, I just made the decision to also dig into Linux.
That's the (preliminary) result of my journey, which may be helpful to others
too.

(And if I got something horrible wrong, just tell me and I will fix it ...).


Ask HN: Early in career – is it a bad idea to change jobs after six months? - mountainApe22
For some context: I am in my mid-twenties, have a computer science degree from a top ten American university and moderate experience developing software applications. After graduation I did a bit of research and worked as a bartender/waiter while going through the whole post-grad thing.
I eventually decided on taking a white collar job in technology. I was hired into a subsidiary of a well known CPG company as an Information Systems Specialist. When I was brought on board, I was told that I would be assisting the head of the IS department in documenting ERP customizations, developing/optimizing SQL, and working closely with other departments in order to build customizations and automations. It sounded great.However, my boss wasn't located in the same office as me and only spent 6 days on location "training" me. My "training" was consistently interrupted as my boss had to go put out fires multiple times per day.
Four weeks later I was brought in to HR and told that my boss resigned without notice and that I was to fly to the HQs the next week to do a knowledge transfer.
The parent company, of course, stepped in and said they would "allocate resources". So far I have had little assistance from them. What little assistance I have from them, ironically, ends up being more work.
Now I'm drowning in work, with no one to give me priority or direction. I have politely let my new boss in the parent company know that there is too much work and that I don't have priorities to work within and I am told that I should just say no whenever someone asks me to do something. The work I am asked to do is important and I don't feel comfortable telling individuals high up in the subsidiary no.
I was given a decent raise in light of my situation. But I'm finding it increasingly difficult to deal with the stress of managing all of this. I am very seriously considering finding a new job, but am concerned that my short tenure in this position will look bad. Thoughts?
======
dragonwriter
> The work I am asked to do is important and I don't feel comfortable telling
> individuals high up in the subsidiary no.

Your boss told you to say no. You tell people “no”, and refer them to your
boss, and keep your boss informed of what your current workload is.

You are drowning in work because _even after being directed to do so_ you
refuse to stop accepting new requests when you are overloaded.

Saying “no” is an important skill.

~~~
heelix
It is funny... this is such an important trait we screen for it in the
interview process. The requests/scenarios become more and more absurd until
they should say no.

~~~
sethammons
Sounds like an adversarial game and a great way to start breaking trust with
the candidate.

------
davismwfl
Welcome to software engineering.

I am only partially joking. These types of situations are not uncommon and can
actually work out to your benefit if you can take advantage of it. Your new
boss told you to say no more often, he/she is giving you a lifeline and you
are saying you're scared to take it? Instead of a direct no try saying it as,
"I really would like to work on your issue and you have expressed its
importance but I am limited in how much I can accomplish and right now my
schedule is full. I may be able to get to it in X time period, but I can't
make any promises today. However, if you'd like to have this prioritized then
you can feel free to speak with Mr X who is my boss." And then you document
the details either just to yourself, or you can send a heads up email to your
boss.

This happens a lot in companies of all sizes, people make requests of
engineers (generally young/new ones) and see just how much they can sneak
around the system. One of the most important skills as you mature in your
career is to say no. Saying "no" but getting your work done will not get your
fired, saying "yes" and failing to keep up on your work will. Think of it this
way, if these are higher level people then you that are making requests and
their compliant about you is you said no because your schedule is full, it
really won't go too far. If instead their compliant is you told them yes and
then you never did it, their complaint will be valid.

~~~
commandlinefan
Yep, exactly. I’ve been doing this now going on 30 years, and I felt like OP
at my first job back in ’92, so I bailed on it. I found another quickly and
immediately felt the same way. I bailed on that one, too, thinking I was just
picking the wrong jobs. After four job changes in four years I realized this
is just how professional software development feels - and that’s part of the
reason it’s such a high-paying profession.

------
JohnFen
I don't think you need to worry. What would make short stints a red flag is if
they're common -- having a single short stint early in your career is unlikely
cause you difficulties.

Remember, the people considering your application are well aware of the
realities of the workplace, and one of those realities is that every so often
a job is just a bad fit. In those cases, leaving it sooner rather than later
is a good thing for everybody concerned. When I'm looking over resumes, if I
see someone who has generally worked for years at each position, but has a
couple that only lasted a few months, I see that as perfectly normal.

------
gwbas1c
I just had something happen that reminded me of this thread. Hopefully this
helps:

Often, in our ticketing system, some random person assigns me a ticket. In
these situations, I just assign the ticket back. In general, my rule is that:
_I only take assignments from my direct manager or someone I 'm working
closely with._ All tickets (tasks) that come from outside my small working
group must be triaged with my direct manager's involvement.

(I created an email rule for Jira just so I can see these situations.)

There's many reasons why random people try to rope me into their tickets.
Sometimes it's laziness. Other times it's entitlement. (You're such-and-such a
role so obviously you'll solve my problem for me.) Sometimes it's just passing
the buck. Rarely, it's a genuine ask for help; but in those cases I hold firm
that whoever is asking for help must retain ownership of the ticket.
(Basically, I'll look at someone else's ticket as a favor, but not as my
deliverable.)

In the worst case, there are managers who try to rope people into their work
as a means of playing power or political games. I don't understand why people
do this, but that's when I rope my manager in if some bozo tries to get me to
do their work for them.

------
gwbas1c
1-2 short stints early in your career don't mean much.

 _What 's important_ is that you leave for a better job. Focus on where you're
going, not where you're leaving. (I once took a job with a few too many
warning signs, and in hindsight I should have stayed put.)

Honestly, every person filtering resumes has different things they look for.
For every person who filters you out because you had a short stint, there will
be someone who filters you in because your new job looks so much better.

Oh, and good jobs have ups and downs. If you generally like the work, believe
in the company, and like the people you're working with, you can figure it
out.

------
blackrock
Don’t list that you worked for that company. It’s not your fault that the
company is full of idiots.

Every company is full of self serving idiots that will throw you under the bus
for their own personal gain. The trick is to avoid these useless idiots, and
to defend yourself when you have to deal with them.

Also, the only way to climb the ladder and make more money is to jump ship.
You will never earn a decent amount of money by sticking around, and accepting
the company’s pathetic 2% COLA raise, if you even get that. Meanwhile, they
just paid their executives $100+ millions in performance bonuses. And they
claim there isn’t any money left over for you.

~~~
el_dev_hell
> Also, the only way to climb the ladder and make more money is to jump ship.
> You will never earn a decent amount of money by sticking around, and
> accepting the company’s pathetic 2% COLA raise, if you even get that.

It sucks so much how true this is.

I've been in the same job for 3 years. I've received a nice 5% bump every
year. The work I do today compared to 2 years ago is easily 30% more
beneficial to the company, but it's insane to ask for a 30% payrise in the
same role.

I'm in the final stages with a new company. They're offering me a 30% higher
salary bump and a direct channel into a more interesting sub-niche.

I'm leaving a company where I've passed the barrier of "figure out our
internal sludge" and the culture fit challenge, but I have to jump ship to get
more money. How did this become the norm?

------
jiveturkey
It won't look bad, but you do have other things to consider. You got a quick
raise -- that's good. The company sounds understaffed in IT and perhaps is
less than competent. Crisis can become opportunity.

~~~
kls
Was thinking the same thing, I don't know what the original posters career
goals are but this is a perfect opportunity to launch into management. If one
where so inclined they could explain to the management at the subsidiary as
well as their boss that they need funds to hire and build a team to manage the
workflow. Prioritize said workflow by getting agreement by all parties and
then managing that workflow out to the team.

------
ManlyBread
Stop wondering and go find out if these six months will be a problem for a new
employer. The worst thing that could happen is that you'll be rejected. I've
switched jobs after 2 months and the next one after 9 months and so far I had
no issues looking for an another job. Sometimes I got questions about the
company I was 2 months in so I just removed it from my resume because it was
annoying.

------
jbotz
For getting interviews, your resume will only look better with more variety of
experience. Most people scanning resumes to pick candidates for interviews are
just looking for relevant experience and bullet points... the more the better,
they aren't going to think a lot about why you were at a specific job only for
6 months.

Once you have an Interview (or a phone screen) they may ask about it, but then
you can explain and it's unlikely to be held against you.

------
shepptech
Generally, you want to secure around a year if you are intentionally working
the career ladder. It can be difficult to convince an employer that you will
stick around long enough to make them money if you jump job to job.

That said, you need to consider your long term goals. If you are job hopping
for experience, you might want to consider contract work, or independent work
first. As an employer though, I don't consider a 6 month stint to be a bad
thing. You need to be prepared to tell me why you're jumping ship, and what
you are looking to achieve at my place of business.

Nobody can tell you a "right" answer though. It is entirely dependent on your
own goals and ethics. You don't owe anybody anything in your journey to the
top, so do what feels right and keep moving forward.

------
saradhi
> Now I'm drowning in work, with no one to give me priority or direction.

When you feel that "drowning", probably you are not enjoying the work load,
which is quite important for the happy-you. I understand you are in the early
days, did you try to make your decisions on the priority? Sometimes, you may
be better, who knows. Give it a try.

> The work I am asked to do is important and I don't feel comfortable telling
> individuals high up in the subsidiary no.

This is the situation you've to face in your life, every day. Saying "no" is
perfectly "yes", be bold enough to say "no". But just give a thought on the
after-effects, if those do not put you in trouble, it is perfectly alright.

Good luck.

------
brailsafe
I've been through 7 or 8ish companies in 7 or 8ish years, have burnt out
horribly, have at times sacrifices my mental health for that of my employer,
amd have been fire or otherwise let go from 6 companies. I think the gaps in
employment _may_ be an issue, but otherwise I think it's less that my record
is bad and more that finding good work is grueling in tech. So if you quit and
find a new job or if you stay for longer and find a new job, it is probably
going to be difficult. Also, never sacrifice yourself for your company beyond
reason.

------
jklein11
If the comp and work are good and there is just too much of it I wouldn’t look
for another job. It’s hard to find interesting work. It’s even harder to find
interesting work that pays well.

This sounds like a process problem that your current manager has inherited
from your previous manager. This problem also probably caused your previous
manager to get so burnt out they quit.

It sounds like there is no process to intake new work and prioritize it. Talk
to your manager about this. If you want brownie points propose how you can
implement this process.

------
superdeeda
I’d say look for a new job. Sounds like the IT department at your company is
poorly run. Especially at the start of your career I think it is important to
work at a well-run company so that you can learn from the best and not start
to resent your career choice.

Most decent companies and interviewers will give you a chance to explain your
reasons for leaving after only six months. It’s quite normal for devs,
especially for recent graduates, to move around before finding their niche.

------
Aperocky
It really depend on what you're doing. From what I'm seeing, documenting ERP
customizations, developing/optimizing SQL is not a place you want to be.

Move out if you can, granted, a lot of places on these kind of things tend to
be easier on the task load, but it's not true in your case. Have you tried to
automate? Are you drawning in powerpoint presentation and word documents? All
of these are important to know.

------
CodeWriter23
Put yourself in an interviewer’s position hiring you. “So you were given more
responsibilities and a decent raise. And you bailed before you really spent
any time seeing what that was like?”

My suggestion, try to find opportunity here. Successful technology
implementations are much more about building relationships and understanding
people’s roles, responsibilities and workloads and a lot less about SQL, code,
gear, etc.

~~~
ManlyBread
It is easy to dodge that question, all that you need to do is to imply that
the workload was impacting your work/life balance or that the new set of
responsibilties does not match the market rate even after the "decent" raise.
I remember saying something similar during interviews after a company that
gave me a 10% raise expected me to handle twice the amount of work and
responsibility.

------
yashvanth
I switched to a new job after 6 months into it because the management wasn't
good. I knew why I was doing it. Firstly, justify it to yourself and it'll be
easier to answer when the question of "why" arises!

------
jasonblurb
Engineering manager here.

As other commenters have said, this situation is common. That's not to say
it's okay - it isn't. The question I'd ask you is, "before you bail, what can
you learn from this experience?"

One of the primary duties of a manager is to act as a diffuser of potential
stressors. Given your experience level, all the inputs you are receiving
should be landing on your managers desk first. Those inputs should then be
filtered, grouped, prioritized, contextualized (to whatever extent is
necessary for you to understand what you're being asked to do) and _then_
handed to you at a rate that enables you to complete work and learn the
systems you're interacting with.

It's okay to push back on requests. It's also a good idea to develop a system
for doing so.

One of the things I repeat often with my direct reports is, "everything has a
place." Every request, every escalation, every task we're asked to work on -
it all goes into a ticket system. Everyone on my team knows to accept the
input and inform the source of the input (often another engineering manager)
that their requests will go into our work queue and will be prioritized
against our other objectives at the appropriate time.

You seem to be operating without those systems in place. What I'd suggest is
that you develop a queuing and prioritization system for yourself. The next
time someone asks you to do something, maybe try saying:

"I'll be happy to dig in. Let me get a few pieces of information from you and
I'll put this in my queue. Mind if I follow up with you next week?"

A couple things could happen in response. They could escalate and use their
coercive power (they outrank you) to force you to do the work immediately.
This is when you can invoke your manager. You could respond with,

"Understood. I will inform my manager and we will prioritize accordingly."

Usually these situations won't escalate. If you appear to have your act
together, others will recognize that. If you have a system of note cards or an
issue tracker you're using to capture their requests, they may be more
inclined to leave you to manage your own work queue. If you're also equipped
with a prioritization rubric (it can be arbitrary, just start with org chart
hierarchy of the requestor if you don't have anything else to go on), even
better.

As the saying goes, "manage your time or others will do it for you." No matter
how stressful this may seem now, this may be an opportunity to learn some time
and work queue management skills. The earlier in your career you begin
cultivating these skills, the better.

I'm happy to elaborate on any of the above.

~~~
kwiromeo
I agree with this. Definitely learn to push back. I've been in a similar
situation albeit in aviation systems engineering. The way I dealt with a lot
of incoming request was to always point out that I had things that were
already on the back burner. I would phrase it along the lines of: "I am
currently doing Y, and was planning to do X and Z next. Is A you're asking me
to do urgent? If yes, I can do it after Y of you're okay with X and Z being
delayed." This usually got me a response that indicated want the priority was.
I would also really try not to let the current work I was doing being stopped.
Stopping something midtask would always make the same item I was working on
take longer, so I would push back if they tried to stop current work
midstream. I would say: "I'm X hours away from accomplish this task. Can item
A your asking wait until then?" That usually got me some good relief.

One item to note that this is also an opportunity to request some training,
either formal or informal. Find the skill that if improved would easily
increase your task output, find formal training for it in the area or nearby.
If you can put a cost benefit analysis on a 1 page word doc, you might be able
to take this opportunity to improve your skills as well.

------
JSeymourATL
> But I'm finding it increasingly difficult to deal with the stress of
> managing all of this.

What's the REAL challenge here for you?

Any Bozo can quit and find a new job. It takes BRAINS to learn how to Manage
Yourself.

On this subject, Drucker is brilliant. >
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2477223.Managing_Oneself](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2477223.Managing_Oneself)

------
jiveturkey
> while going through the whole post-grad thing.

OT, but what is the whole "post-grad thing"? You earned a PhD?

------
7532yahoogmail
Dear OP: here's some career advice: you're not thinking right or doing right
if you can't figure this out for yourself. Just like I've said on reddit's lpt
form reality is you gotta figure it out for yourself and stop shopping your
life around on the internet

~~~
tashi
"Don't ask for help and just figure it out yourself."

Seems like terrible career advice and terrible life advice to me, but I'm no
expert on either.


Tell HN: Personalized streaming video workouts (my second start-up) - podman

I very recently soft-launched http://www.physicalfix.com, my second start-up. While it is still very much a work in progress, I thought I'd share it here since health and fitness seems to be something HN cares about and also because I value the feedback this community can offer.
The basic premise is this: We provide you with highly personalized and customized streaming video workouts with a 'virtual training partner'. The partner will do the complete workout along with you and provide tips on proper form as well as provide some motivation.
We also have a food log, activity log, and weight chart. We tried to tie these all together so that when you do a workout it shows up in your activity log and when you enter some food it'll calculate your caloric balance and forecast your weight in the future.
We've got a ton of features planned like mobile apps, augmented reality workouts, an educational series to help people learn about health, fitness and nutrition as well integrations with things like the withings scale.
What do you guys think?
======
terryjsmith
Looking briefly at your pricing plans, and having just done some in person
personal training, I would like to have access to a personal training but
don't necessarily need that access 24/7. If I could send an e-mail with a 24
hour response time or something with your basic plan that would be perfect.

Other than that it definitely looks good and I think could be a great
alternative to spending $75 a session with a personal trainer at the gym.

~~~
podman
We have considered, and are still considering, single serve workouts. If there
is a big demand for something like that, we'll probably implement it.

------
SHOwnsYou
So I'm supposed to bring my laptop into the gym with me?

I love the idea, but man would it feel awkward looking at a computer or my
phone screen in the gym to make sure my benchpress technique is right.

If this is geared more towards body-weight exercises, what is your advantage
over something like P90X or Insanity?

~~~
podman
Well, the original goal was for it to be workouts you do at home. The value
proposition is that you can get a gym quality workout with a personal trainer
in the comfort of your home without having to pay gym membership fees or for
an expensive personal trainer.

That said, we do plan on writing apps for both iOS and Andriod so you can take
it with you to the gym if you would like to. It's not JUST body weight
exercises though and we have exercises for dumbbells and exercise bands
(things people are likely to have at home). And we do plan on adding exercises
that incorporate gym or home gym equipment as well.

The advantage over something like p90X or Insanity is that these workouts are
customized for you based on your current fitness levels and your fitness goals
by an actual personal trainer. Every workout is unique and different so you're
not doing the same thing week in and week out. It's not just some generic
program that is the same for everyone who is doing it.

~~~
SHOwnsYou
Initially I am getting a strange feeling about the idea. It is likely just
because I am not your target market. I work out 4-5 days a week and would
rather pay the $40/month for a gym membership with top of the line equipment
instead of the convenience of working out at home. The gym is where I let off
steam by myself without the fiance right next to me.

I don't want to shoot down your idea, but I do see a few problems with it...

1) At my gym, I can bring my fiance as my plus 1 every time. Your web app
doesn't scale the same way.

2) Anyone that already works out has a major outlay of cash to spend to get up
and running. Dumbbells, exercise bands, maybe a few kettle balls... PLUS the
membership fee.

3) Solitude. I can't get away from my family when I am at home. At the gym I
am in my own little world.

For people that just exercise (ie no complex weight training) and are willing
to watch it on their computer, I think the idea is great. But I also think
you'll see more success if you target a specific class of gym-goers.

------
podman
I put together a quick video for those wondering what the actual video
workouts look like for the basic tier:
<http://sproutvideo.com/videos/e898d2ba1d1de2cc60?type=hd>

(hosted on my other start-up)

------
andrewtbham
so it's sorta like buying a workout tape, except the exercises are
personalized for you? that seems pretty clever and useful. i don't know much
about this space... is anyone else doing this?

~~~
byoung2
I don't know who else is applying this to workouts specifically, but the same
technique would be worth trying for all kinds of applications: tutoring,
dance, music lessons, foreign language.

~~~
hugh3
What's the advantage over in-person tutoring, dance, music lessons et cetera?

If it's cost, it'd better be significantly cheaper.

~~~
byoung2
_What's the advantage over in-person tutoring, dance, music lessons et
cetera?_

You can break the geographical boundaries. If the best math tutor in the
country lives in New York, and I live in Arizona, I'm out of luck. I worked
for Kaplan, College Network, Sylvan Learning Center, and Veritas Prep...this
was always the problem. If you live in Manhattan, you're in a great place to
find GMAT tutors. If you live in Wyoming, your choices are more limited
(noting against Wyoming, but people with high GMAT scores and MBA's tend to be
on Wall Street). A system like this would allow equal access to great tutors,
regardless of location. I know someone who flew a tutor from New York to Miami
for tutoring. So it's not always about price. If I can get a better tutor
online than I can get within driving distance, I'll pay the same or more.

------
podman
clickable link: <http://www.physicalfix.com>


Hillary Clinton is already using Pokémon Go to register voters - jflowers45
http://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12192666/pokemon-go-hillary-clinton-campaign
======
blackflame7000
She's even hosting a private server to help alleviate traffic :)


The aliens are silent because they're dead - bemmu
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-aliens-silent-theyre-dead.html
======
oliwarner
How is this news? I'm serious. This is essentially how evolution was taught to
me some 17 years ago so I'm genuinely surprised to see an article stating this
"bottleneck" as a new theory.

We exist because of a sequence of scenarios. The probability of that sequence
happening elsewhere is rare but given the size and complexity of space, is
likely to happen in a similar way elsewhere, at some point in time.

But it's far more likely that early-stage micro-organisms don't manage to
evolve. Or other natural extinction-level events occur.

The headline, that "aliens are silent" is very silly. They're only silent in
the same way that our native bacteria are silent. Most have no concept of —or
capability for— local communication, let alone interplanetary communication.
Then they die.

~~~
bemmu
I think the new bit was that it is also necessary for life to quickly evolve
in such a way that it starts to regulate the climate.

------
arc0re
Haha I don't think humans would be the only species to survive. Its literally
impossible, we are so messy and still we managed to survive for a while.


Lessons Learned: The power of small batches - TristanKromer
http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2011/09/power-of-small-batches.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+startup%2Flessons%2Flearned+%28Lessons+Learned%29
======
mrgoldenbrown
I like the fact that an experiment was done. I don't like the conclusion that
batching is always bad. Yes, for this arbitrary subset of tasks, batching was
slower. But if we had included walking to the nearest mailbox to the flow,
batching would have won. Or if we had included printing the flyers at the
beginning, batching would have won again. The steps done in the video are what
I would consider one step in a larger batch process: Step 1: print X flyers.
Step 2: stuff X flyers. Step 3: mail X flyers. The take home shouldn't be that
batching is always bad, but that we have to experiment to find what the best
mix of batching/OPF is.

~~~
kanamekun
The battle over batching and batch size has been going on for decades in the
world of lean manufacturing. An example quote:

"American manufacturing managers traditionally considered setup costs as a
necessary evil and made little or no effort to reduce them."

"The lean/JIT philosophy suggests that a firm should eliminate any reliance
upon the [Economic Order Quantity] formula and seek the ideal production
quantity of one. Of course, a lot size of one is not always feasible, but it
is a goal used to focus attention on the concept of rapid adjustments and
flexibility. Naturally, a reduction in inventory levels means an increase in
setups or orders, so the responsibility rests with production to make every
effort to reduce setup time and setup costs."

[http://www.enotes.com/management-encyclopedia/lean-
manufactu...](http://www.enotes.com/management-encyclopedia/lean-
manufacturing-just-time-production)

The key Lean insight here is to lower setup costs for tasks to as close to
zero as possible. An example of that might be working to lower the costs of
doing making a build from your source code. If you can get that cost close to
zero, then you are much more likely to see regular code check ins.

This lean principle is tremendously useful in pushing you towards more agile
development. If you can lower the batch size of your feature releases to a
much smaller batch size (or even one, i.e. continuous deployment), that can
have huge benefits.

------
huherto
As far as I understand, there is an optimum batch size that depends on the
particular process. Lean manufacturing looks for smaller batch sizes, but it
may not be one for a particular process.

~~~
eries
Yes, that's true. For a lot more detail, and how this applies to product
development, see [http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/07/principles-
of-p...](http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/07/principles-of-product-
development-flow.html)

~~~
huherto
This is a great post. You should submit it to HN so more people can read it.
Thanks.

------
wccrawford
I think this is great advice for actually producing things, but the analogy to
startups is too strained for me to get anything from it.

~~~
jleader
I think the analogy to startups is this:

You can plan 100 features, implement 100 features, launch 100 features, get
feedback on 100 features

OR

You can plan, implement, and launch 1 feature, get feedback on it, then move
on to the next feature, and repeat 100 times.

Obviously, the feedback in the 2nd case is much more immediately useful; the
point of the post was that even in a relatively simple case where you wouldn't
expect nearly as much value from the feedback (stuffing envelopes), the small-
batch approach _still_ wins.

~~~
wccrawford
Again, I think that's too strained. In stuffing the envelopes, you can learn
everything you need to know about the next 99 iterations from the first one.

In implementing features, the lessons will be different almost every time.

Timescale is also completely different. You can do 1 envelope at a time
because there's no waiting involved.

It takes time to evaluate the result of implementing a feature. Not because
it's so much work, but because you don't control the factor that really
matters: The customer.

~~~
pilom
You have obviously never stuffed 100 envelopes if you think you learn
everything you need to learn from the first one. If you attempt to be mildly
efficient about it your process has continuous improvement. "If I spin this
pile 90 degrees I can start the folding easier." There are things you don't
realize until you've done 5 envelopes, done 10 envelopes and done 100
envelopes.

~~~
wccrawford
I said 'can learn', not 'will learn'. You -can- learn all those things from
the first one.

My point is that the lessons are different for each function, but the same for
each envelope.

------
trewq
Great post, creating positive feedback loops is the way to go.


Netflix’s US Catalog Has Shrunk by More Than 2,500 Titles in Less Than 2.5 Years - chewymouse
https://www.allflicks.net/netflixs-us-catalog-has-shrunk-by-more-than-2500-titles-in-less-than-2-5-years/
======
jawbone3
Actually a line chart would probaby been better at making the change look
dramatic, thinner bars would have helped too...

------
angersock
Huh. Nice to see numbers back up something that I seemed to be seeing over the
last few years but was unable to prove.


How To Send Email When You're Dead - edw519
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/5975597/Emails-sent-by-dead.html

======
yannis
... and when you are done with the emails, here is a sure method to freak
everyone at your funeral. Ask to be buried with your mobile and have your best
friend ring you, just about when you down. For a bit of extra buzz he can
pretend you have answered! If you really lucky - assuming a dead person can be
lucky - your dead blog can get slashdot!

PS. Will not work with cremation.


First Extraterrestrial Hydrothermal System Found on Saturn's Moon Enceladus - mryall
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-active-hydrothermal-system-found-beyond-earth/?ref=hn

======
mryall
It's amazing how much we still have to learn about our own solar system, and
staggering how long the research takes.

> Cassini is scheduled for three more encounters with Enceladus, including one
> final plunge through a plume, before it is sent to a fiery death in Saturn’s
> atmosphere to avoid crashing into and contaminating the ringed planet's icy
> moons.

Great that they're thinking in advance about this stuff. Would be a shame to
contaminate our best chance of discovering microbial ET with spores from
earth.


Big ideas from "Inspired" that helped me feel more confident as an entrepreneur - zackattack
http://www.zacharyburt.com/2011/01/big-ideas-from-marty-cagans-inspired-that-helped-me-feel-more-confident-on-how-to-proceed-with-my-business/
======
keeptrying
The best part of the book is that each chapter is o Ly like 4 pages. So it
doesn't spend 40 pages on one simple concept if it can be explained in 2
pages.

The bad side is that it only has a minimum number of examples. More examples
would have been nice.

------
vrish88
In your post you present a lot of new information that could help your
business but you don't have a lot of experience in those matters. Don't let
this stop you from trying them. Instead learn as you go. Keep them under
constant surveillance. Figure out what you want a strategy to accomplish. As
you utilize it, if it isn't leading you to your goal, cut it off. If it is
then foster and encourage it.

------
gaiusparx
Any idea where can I purchase an epub version? I try not to buy printed book
and I have no access to Kindle.


WebODM – A free, extendable application and API for drone image processing - pierotofy
https://www.webodm.org
======
pierotofy
Maintainer here, happy to answer questions!


Mechanical webpage hitcounter - bemmu
http://spritesmods.com/?art=mechctr
======
comboy

         every time a person requests a page from my site,
         the counter would give a satisfying 'Click!'

This is going to be a pretty loud night for the author ;)

I guess most people here know this site well, but if not it's definitely worth
exploring. Lots of cool projects and much to learn.

~~~
clemlais
I wonder what will happen if the frequency of requests is faster than the
counter refresh rate. Does the counter stay consistent ?

~~~
comboy
It reacts to a pulse, so you could solve that with a queue in software,
without that, my guess is that it would be missing clicks (pulses would
overlap, since I'm assuming there is some minimum required width of it)

------
jacquesm
Suggested improvement: put a webcam in front of it for full-circle :)

------
dapra
Another nice electromechanical hit counter:
[https://vimeo.com/119746422](https://vimeo.com/119746422)

------
xigency
Hm, this seems like a pretty risky way to connect this device to your PC -
using a serial port.

Edit: And THAT connection:
[http://meuk.spritesserver.nl/foto/foto/misc5/img_1999.jpg](http://meuk.spritesserver.nl/foto/foto/misc5/img_1999.jpg)

~~~
sokoloff
He has discussion about that hack here:
[http://spritesmods.com/?art=mechctr&page=2](http://spritesmods.com/?art=mechctr&page=2)

Seems reasonable enough to me.

~~~
xigency
Sure, depending on your computer. If you have a $500 graphics card plugged
into a 600W power supply, connecting wires into ports that might short circuit
could be seen as a 'bad idea'.


Ask HN: What are the best books for learning software architecture? - liamcurry
======
playing_colours
The Architecture of Open Source applications [0]. I suggest also to check, but
they are more specific, Enterprise Integration Patterns [1]. Building Big Data
systems, Data Intensive applications [2], [3]. The best way to learn is
practice - open source project or lending an appropriate job.

[0] [http://aosabook.org/en/index.html](http://aosabook.org/en/index.html)

[1]
[http://martinfowler.com/books/eip.html](http://martinfowler.com/books/eip.html)

[2] [http://www.manning.com/marz/](http://www.manning.com/marz/)

[3]
[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032175.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032175.do)

~~~
thorin
I really like the look of the patterns of enterprise application architecture
book also by Martin fowler but is there really nothing more recent covering
the same subject. Surely a new edition is overdue?

~~~
thorin
There doesn't appear to be much architecture stuff which is more recent, but I
had a look through this book today and it seems to hold up pretty well. It
would be great to see a bang up to date version though.

------
bzalasky
You might be interested in _Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer
Programming_ by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi
([http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-
Pr...](http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-
Programming/dp/0262220695)). It presents an overview of different programming
models, and expounds on the right way to approach problems with these
different models. I found the chapters on concurrency useful myself.

While not a book, an alternative strategy that might be helpful would be to
explore some projects like TorqueBox (Ruby) or Immutant (Clojure) that pull
together a lot of different solutions (web server, application server,
messaging, caching, transactions and scheduling) into a suite.

------
solomatov
One of the best books on architecture: [http://www.amazon.com/Domain-Driven-
Design-Tackling-Complexi...](http://www.amazon.com/Domain-Driven-Design-
Tackling-Complexity-Software/dp/0321125215)


An SQL in Shell, written by Bruce Momjian of PostgreSQL core. - andrewvc
http://blog.andrewvc.com/before-postgresql-bruce-momjian-wrote-an-sql

======
abecedarius
<http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/awkbook/> has a 1-page relational query program
called qawk. Awk-based syntax, not SQL.

------
davidmathers
There are actually several shell script relational databases. If I remember
correctly one of them was even a successful commercial venture.


Gmail Android App Bug Lets You Send Emails Pretending to Be Someone Else - TravelTechGuy
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/gmail-android-app-bug-lets-you-send-emails-pretending-to-be-someone-else
======
dfc
As soon as you think Vice is starting to get their tech content in order they
polish a turd like this..