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Ask HN: Have you experienced a company scale without losing its culture?

"The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free"† was posted almost ten years ago. I've now seen that in action now more than once (including a case of literally starting to charge for the sodas). A company brings in a new executive (often referred to as an "adult"). Sometimes it's to prepare for sale/IPO, other times to help with a painful pivot. The pressure often comes from outside...

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Re:Endless Sky: GPL Licensed Escape Velocity Successor on Saturday June 08, 2019 @03:39AM (#20131153)
Timely, the first new beta in years just came out. There's a lot more content to go before it's a complete game, but there's lot of fun to be had. Contributions welcome!
Time to advise your friends to be extra cautious against phishing attempts.
Re:New Scooter Removal Service Appears on Monday January 21, 2019 @04:53PM (#18963950)
This is like the circle of life for startups, I swear. Next up will be "legal services for someone interfering with your disruptive business model as a service".
Re:New Scooter Removal Service Appears on Monday January 21, 2019 @04:50PM (#18963937)
Tow trucks work that way too.
Re:RHEL is deprecating KDE on Friday November 02, 2018 @03:42PM (#18366085)
I was more interested to see that it dropped btrfs. I wonder what pushed them away from it, in the end.
Unfortunately, the First Amendment does not protect against private action, only government restraints on speech. Other mechanisms like anti-SLAPP laws might help with that, but either way that's a lot of legal effort to publish some benchmarks. Intel also operates all over the world, so they could eg. sue a Britain-based branch of some media outlet that also publishes the numbers if the laws there are more in their favor.
The license can't restrict third parties from sharing benchmarks, which is why it puts the onus on the user not to allow third parties to share them. If some news site was to publish benchmarks without disclosing the source, Intel would first have to take them to court to force them to disclose who provided said benchmarks. That's as far as I can see it directly impacting sites that don't run their own benchmarks. That said, the sites that do run their own benchmarks would be on the hook. Sadly, even if this is unenforceable, the potential legal battle to have it declared so would be scary enough to quash some criticism.

This really makes me doubt if I should buy Intel products in the future (to the extent that I have a choice). If I can't get performance information because Intel has something to hide, I'll have to look elsewhere. Really, this is sufficiently distasteful behavior to make me avoid Intel even if the products work just fine.

Re:Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian on Thursday July 26, 2018 @04:44PM (#17620899)
I see it as a step towards integrating more (or in this case better IMO) things into their ecosystem. Consolidating Hipchat with Slack is a step toward that.
Re:Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian on Thursday July 26, 2018 @04:35PM (#17620770)
Woah, this is huge. Atlassian is really going for the "everything a tech shop needs" gold.
Re:Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule (2009) on Thursday April 26, 2018 @01:54AM (#16929157)
I regularly send this to people where ever I work. Never stops being relevant.
Re:Ask HN: Best scifi of 2017? (Vernor Vinge/Larry Niven style) on Saturday January 13, 2018 @02:19PM (#16140839)
True. REAMDE (same author) is more on the nose, but I also didn't enjoy it as much as a book. Really, Neal Stephenson just doesn't do books with only one major focus.
Re:Ask HN: Best scifi of 2017? (Vernor Vinge/Larry Niven style) on Saturday January 13, 2018 @02:44AM (#16138666)
Cryptonomicon is probably what you're looking for.
Re:Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js on Sunday September 24, 2017 @04:10PM (#15326289)
Correction: I'm not sure Apache 2 and GPL work that way. IANAL and please read the licenses yourself (and consult counsel if needed).
Re:Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js on Friday September 22, 2017 @07:26PM (#15316855)
Explicit probably saves a lot of time in court, and helps with global consistency. More importantly, Apache 2 and GPL 3 include reciprocal patent grants. They work similarly to the React patent grant, but unlike that one they go both ways. In the React one, only you lose access to the patents if you sue Facebook, but Facebook can sue you fine even if you contributed to React. Under Apache 2 and GPL 3, no one contributing to the software can sue anyone for patents infringed as a result without having their license revoked in its entirety (copyright AND patent).
Re:Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js on Friday September 22, 2017 @06:57PM (#15316670)
GPL 3 adds an anti-patent-treachery clause not unlike the Apache 2 clause.

React Patent Grant Version 2: https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/b8ba8c83f318b84e42933...

The license granted hereunder will terminate, automatically and without notice, if you (or any of your subsidiaries, corporate affiliates or agents) initiate directly or indirectly, or take a direct financial interest in, any Patent Assertion: (i) against Facebook or any of its subsidiaries or corporate affiliates, (ii) against any party if such Patent Assertion arises in whole or in part from any software, technology, product or service of Facebook or any of its subsidiaries or corporate affiliates, or (iii) against any party relating to the Software.

Apache 2 Section 3: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

GPL 3 Section 10 (See also Section 11): https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it.

Edited for spacing

Re:Ubuntu now available from the Windows store on Tuesday July 11, 2017 @02:41AM (#14742060)
Today in "headlines that would have been April Fools jokes ten years ago"
Re:Hire a former SoundClouder on Friday July 07, 2017 @02:22PM (#14720744)
That's a fair guess. It was more a "maybe some of them want time off without getting above average interview offer spam". Overall I think it's a good thing too.
Re:Hire a former SoundClouder on Friday July 07, 2017 @01:55PM (#14720488)
Yes. If it was set up from outside it has the feel of imposing a job hunting strategy on people without their involvement.
Re:Hire a former SoundClouder on Friday July 07, 2017 @01:27PM (#14720231)
Interesting, was this set up by someone from soundcloud or independently?
I've never heard of such a thing for engineers, but I have heard of it for production line workers. (eg. assembling servers and PCs)
That's definitely one of the possibilities. 100,000 years is an order of magnitude longer than all of human civilization thus far, and we're trying to spook people all the way that far in the future. Who knows if even the "humans dislike asymmetry" assumption will hold up that long?

One of the afterthoughts in that document even suggests that the most likely reason people would leave the place alone would be when people die of radiation sickness after breaking into it anyway. It just takes one group of really determined people with a decent amount of time on their hands to destroy the markers and everything else. If asked me how long I would guess until that happens, I'd say less than 100 years. If not then, how about if it's so scary that a religion arises that considers the area to be the home of an Adversary of some kind and destroys it in a holy war?

Also posted above: http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%...

Yes. They're considering everything from pictographs up to the level of hostile architecture. The proposed message includes instructions to update the message in the language spoken at the time, in the hope of helping the message endure for generations more.

Obligatory: This is where the second image in the article ("this is not a place of honor") comes from. It's also briefly summarized in the last few paragraphs. Worth a read on its own.

http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%...

Re:International Travel Guide for Basecamp employees on Wednesday May 03, 2017 @12:38PM (#14257414)
I stand deceived and now corrected. I'll do better next time.
Re:International Travel Guide for Basecamp employees on Wednesday May 03, 2017 @05:34AM (#14254190)
Nothing, he was just selected (based on who knows what criteria, they don't need warrants) to be scanned. Whether or not they actually cared about the sensitive data on the device, he still lost control of it long enough for it to be copied or compromised.

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