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Ask HN: Developers with small AWS clusters, what are your monthly costs? - lhuser123 Aws costs are hard to understand for the non experienced. Perhaps a few real life examples could help. ====== malux85 AWS Cost Calculator has been pretty accurate for me: [https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html](https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html) ------ wolfgang42 Not sure if it's possible to edit this, but a better title might be "Ask HN: Developers with small AWS clusters, what are your monthly costs?" I read the title and thought it might be a proposal for some sort of scheme to partition individual EC2 instances between multiple projects by different people. ~~~ lhuser123 Done :) ------ busterarm We switched several projects to Lightsail and saved a ton of money immediately, so i don't have old figures, but it's roughly around $600/mo today. A couple of other projects we have on hosted services could be moved to AWS that would probably add about $400 on to our bill. Lightsail has saved us a ridiculous amount of money, honestly, at the cost of having to do slightly more complex sysops. The biggest thing that would eat up cost if we put it on AWS would be our ELK stack. We have on-metal infrastructure with tons of spare capacity that would probably run us about $2.5k/mo on AWS and just under double that on Elastic (but then we'd get X-Pack for free). Yeah. Logging and monitoring are totally the most expensive part of our infrastructure. ~~~ lhuser123 > but it's roughly around $600/mo today Do you have an estimate of how many Lightsail servers and other components are running ? ~~~ busterarm We keep upping our cap with AMZN and then hitting it. I think right now we're pushing 40? We're doing some things with autoscaling w/ Terraform and it changes. EBS, EC2 and CloudSearch are the biggest part of our AMZN bill. I can't estimate components there atm. ------ technion I'm running [https://ctadvisor.lolware.net](https://ctadvisor.lolware.net) for about $22 per month. It's one EC2 instance, an S3 bucket, EC2 snapshots and cold archives in Glacier. ------ byoung2 At my last company, about $30k per month when I took over as director of engineering in 2014, but I was able to reduce it to about $20k while increasing the number of instances using no upfront cost reserved instances. We ran a crawling infrastructure of about 150 instances and we increased to 200 while reducing the cost. We also had 3 of the largest instance types they had for our database, and 8 large instances serving the app, reporting, api, and alert services. ------ jonathanbull At [https://emailoctopus.com](https://emailoctopus.com) we're running around the $2.5k/month mark. Previously $3.5k, but we saved a bunch of money with reserved instances: [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved- instances/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-instances/) ------ kingofspain For a client of mine: couple of large DB instances + some smaller, several EC2, several TB in S3, Elasticsearch and elasticache + some misc bits. Was coming in around $2000/mo before we snagged some free credits. A good 50%+ was RDS costs though. ------ adamwi We run a collaboration service [1] on AWS, nothing fancy in terms of infrastructure needs (DB, some EC2 instances and S3). We spend around 500 USD per month, but our largest customers run run our service on prem on their own servers. [1] www.qlutter.io ------ OtterCoder I run a private git repo and anywhere between 0-6 additional instances and lambdas for development and testing. I haven't gone over $50 in a month. ~~~ lhuser123 Would you share more details about it ? ------ twobyfour How small is small? ~~~ lhuser123 Any information would be appreciated	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Puncture-proof tires are the future - bookofjoe https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/design/a30653824/puncture-proof-tire/ ====== stevehawk I feel like I've been reading about this tire design for as long as I've been reading about 20xx is the year of the linux desktop". I expect neither to happen. ~~~ wmeredith You’re not wrong. These are called twheels and have been around for a couple decades. They were invented by Michelin in 2005 and started being sold commercially in '12\. They have uses in controlled low speed environments like warehouses employing forklifts or lawn mowers. But they're Achilles heel in the wild is objects/matter (rocks, dirt, ice, snow) getting stuck in the spines and then they're out of balance and useless at speed. They're also loud at speed. Popular mechanics has been talking about these being "the future" forever. They probably have a twheels article template by now. They aren't the future, they're the present and have limited applications. They do look very cool, which I suspect is why they keep getting write ups. ------ js2 Maybe I'm just a very lucky person, but my wife and I combined have driven probably close to a million miles and I can't recall having ever changed a tire road side. I can only recall maybe a few punctures ever, fortunately only causing a slow enough leak that it was discovered at home or the destination. Still, with full-size spares having gone the way of the dodo and space-savers better than nothing but not that great, this is a welcome change as long as tire prices don't become exorbitant. I put a solid rubber tire on my wheelbarrow years ago. It'll outlast the wheelbarrow. Greatest home garden purchase ever. ~~~ dzhiurgis I’ve never had one and then got three within 6 months (two of which within one week). Also you better replace them ASAP unless 30mins of tedious work is not worth $200 or so. ------ catalogia The article mentions ride comfort which is well and good, but what about efficiency? I don't see mention of rolling resistance / efficiency, which I understand to be a problem with existing puncture-proof/run-flat tire systems. ------ isoskeles Apologies for a tangential comment, but I laughed at the fact that all of the ads I am shown when viewing this article are for tires. ------ hprotagonist tubeless sealants in a tire make sense. non-pneumatic tires are one of those Things that keep coming up and keep being a very stupid idea. ~~~ BoorishBears > tubeless sealants in a tire make sense. Does it? They pay constant NVH penalties for the life of the tire, cost more and sacrifice performance, all to soften the impact of an exceptional event. And it's not like you can't insert sealant into non-run flat tires in the event of an accident. The overlap between type of damage that won't destroy a run-flat, but precludes you from using canned sealant after a puncture, is tiny to the point of practically being non-existant. It's pretty much just marketing when they mention being able to run on their sidewalls if the sealant fails, because most impact that does that much damage will also damage your wheels, and even if it doesn't you'll put extreme stresses on your suspension if you take advantage of it. And there's also the fact once you get to the tire shop, they're much harder to find, and can easily lead to a situation where you need to replace multiple tires if you want to get back on the road in a reasonable amount of time. That's a sacrifice some other tires make as well, but usually in the name of performance, making that sacrifice in the name of convenience is a little bit of a paradox ~~~ hprotagonist I suppose i should say that they make more sense than solid tires -- at least in some circumstances. Different world, but tubeless-with-sealant has more or less taken over mid- to high-end mountain bikes. Lower pressures help prevent rim blowouts as well as allow you to fully exploit grip on unstable terrain, and then you don't need to care about sharp rocks or thorns or goatheads or whatever as much. The idea doesn't translate as well to road bikes, which have (even now) very high pressures -- usually 75 -- 120 psi. The "sealant spooges you in the face" problem is certainly a real one. I don't have sealant in my car or motorcycle tires, but if i did i would warn the mechanics beforehand! ------ chrisseaton > Surely you've seen the light No? I don't think I've ever had or see a flat tyre. Seems like the kind of thing that only happens in movies. Doesn't seem like a problem in practice. ~~~ divbzero It absolutely happens. For me it happened on a rental car as well. The likelihood of occurrence probably correlates with level of tire wear, so perhaps it is indeed rare if you stay ahead with your car maintenance. ~~~ adventured > The likelihood of occurrence probably correlates with level of tire wear Or sometimes infrastructure degradation. I had a friend blow out an otherwise healthy, relatively new low profile tire on an unseen Los Angeles pothole.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How would you get the word out about a new dating site? - irrationaljared I'm having a lot of success with advertising for my new dating site, The Matching Game - http://www.thematchinggame.com - but am having a hard time figuring out other ways to get the word out. All of the articles I google just look like link bait.<p>So does anyone have any ideas about how to get the word out about a new, fun, free dating site? Mostly looking for press suggestions, but any ideas are welcome.<p>Thanks in advance. ====== karlclement Hello there, Posting on Hacker News is a good start. But I would consider leveraging social networks to help spread the word. Here are a few options: -You can integrate Facebook Connect or Twitter Signin to get users to link their accounts to their thematchinggame.com profile. -Once connected, you can post tweets or status updates about their activity. -You could also ask them to tweet or to like your website whenever they signup. -You could also create a simple contest for an iPad 2, and users would need to invite the most friends possible to be eligible. Or you could ask them to like or tweet the contest. Good luck! ------ michaelpinto Advertise on Facebook — that's the one place where folks identify themselves as single in addition to indicating their interests. If you're looking for press find every romance and sex columnist you can find and pitch away... ~~~ ig1 Indeed Facebook advertising rules prohibit you from advertising a dating site to someone who has a non-single status. ~~~ irrationaljared I've experimented with Facebook a bit and it just seemed excessively expensive. I didn't try the CPC options, though, so may try those out. ~~~ ig1 Did you experiment with different ad copy/targetting ? - it can make a huge difference. I'll see if I can get the OK from Facebook to publish the CPM/CTR rates from one of my ad campaigns so I can show exactly how important tuning is. ~~~ irrationaljared that would definitely be helpful. my efforts resulted in little success, so I didn't put any additional effort in. ------ ig1 This is the best article I've read about getting press coverage: <http://mediastandardstrust.org/blog/fuel-to-the-fire/> But it's a pretty competitive market place out there, have you considered buying ads? ~~~ irrationaljared Nice, fun story. Might have to try some of those strategies :) ------ triviatise how much money do you have to spend? How many users are you trying to get? What is the right demographic (age range, interest etc)? If it is fun, you might want to try to get hooked into universities. Pick one and just try to get some penetration. University students are single, have time and are more willing to experiment. Your best bet is going through referrals. But if you can make a funny video on youtube you might be able to get traffic. My sisters friend created a music video for the nohate campaign and they got 30,000 views in a day because they had all the dancers, production people etc to tweet, facebook and share it. ~~~ irrationaljared Yea, I'm thinking about the university route. I don't have a ton of money to spend (without making money through the site), so need to be pretty particular with advertising dollars. Trying be creative about other ways of getting the word out there. ------ irrationaljared Here's a link to the site: <http://www.thematchinggame.com> ------ triviatise I just looked at it and I think it is a very cool idea! ~~~ irrationaljared Thanks :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Open source may be the future, but few are writing it - CrankyBear https://www.techrepublic.com/article/open-source-may-be-the-future-but-very-few-are-writing-it/ ====== simonblack _80.2% of developers surveyed said that they code as a hobby._ As do I. My projects are generally one-off emulators of various 1970s-1980s 'home computers' and of interest only to myself and, very likely, no more than one or two other people in the world. I venture to say that most of us 'hobbyists' are also working on singular niche projects.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I turned my interview task for Google into a startup - mmoez https://uxdesign.cc/i-turned-my-interview-task-for-google-into-a-startup-877943fb3b34 ====== sethammons The rule of thumb I subscribed to: have the interviewer(s) do the interview. Give the candidate 3x time to do it that the in-house people took. Or, framed in reverse, if you want the assignment to take and n minutes or hours, give yourself n/3 to complete it, and however far you get is the bar for the assignment. Interviewees are stressed, maybe outside their domain, and other things. Make something that they can show you their value. The harder and correct thing to do is to find how they can help your org. It is easy to find what they don't know or to play stump the idiot. ~~~ dnaismith We did this at my company. A developer at the level that that developer was applying for would do a task that took them 2-4 hours. We then gave the interviewee four days to complete the task with a recommended time of 2 days. We also always made sure to include the weekend in the time they had to complete the task as we know during the week time is precious. ~~~ Zenbit_UX I'm interviewing with 6 companies simultaneously and like you they all think they're deserving of free labor. I'd wager your company must have the worst devs, those who have little self respect and zero other prospects. Do you not understand that you're requesting free labor from an applicant? Did you forget the purpose isn't to have the sickest challenge ever but to evaluate someone's code/ingenuity? ~~~ zdragnar Many people prefer this to an in-person whiteboard challenge. It's lower stress, and doesn't require taking additional time off from your current employer. A 2-4 hour challenge is less time than I've spent in interviews at some companies, and would gladly have done it prior to an in-person interview given the option. That way, the actual interview time could have been spent talking about things of value, rather than having them stare at me while I white-board out problems around graph data structures and recursion and whatever other trite trivia they can come up with. ~~~ michaelt To be useful for discriminating between competent candidates, a challenge has to either be hard to complete (pass based on completion) or hard to complete to a high standard of quality (pass based on completion+quality). In other words, it has to be at the limits of what's possible for people you expect to apply for the job. If you give me a 2 hour challenge with a timer so I can't possibly take more than 2 hours, I'm fine with that - but you won't accomplish the "lower stress" goal. But if you give me a 2 hour challenge without timing? I know for sure other people will have spent 8 hours making super-polished, gold-plated solutions. Can I afford to fall behind the competition? If not, I should spend 8 hours too. ~~~ zdragnar > To be useful for discriminating between competent candidates, I helped redesign the code challenge at one of the companies I worked for. We (the people across the different technical disciplines we hired for) put a lot of effort into ensuring that: * the challenge could be completed in 4 hours * the challenge resembled the sort of work people would do on the job * the goal of the challenge was to inform a follow up interview, not punish people * candidates were explicitly told that they were not being timed, but that we expected the challenge should take them up to 4 hours to give an idea of the upper-bound level of effort expected The single biggest challenge was balancing "what do we need to know" versus "what would we like to know" versus the amount of time we were asking of our candidates. We didn't hard-fail anyone unless they were blatantly not a good fit from their submission, and I habitually wrote multiple pages of feedback for them so they at least got something for their time if they didn't get a follow up interview. Again, the purpose of the challenge was not a screen, so much as it was to help guide the in-person interview and so we had something concrete that we could discuss. Follow up edit: Designing code challenges is _hard_. You have to avoid something so objective it can be copy-pasted from stack overflow, but objective enough that it can be graded free from personal bias (as much as possible anyway). On top of that, you can't test for MVC+CQRS+FP+SOLID+every- other-possible-thing under the sun, because you have to be respectful of candidate's times. The previous code challenge (the one I replaced) would frequently take people 8-20 hours to complete, and it was actually pretty simple. As you rightly pointed out though, candidates often read far more into the requirements than were actually there, and would often over-achieve in an effort to stand out. Not only would those submissions waste their time, it wasted ours as well as they took longer to develop feedback from. ~~~ kbknapp I think you're missing the point from the previous poster about (perceived) competition. Unless your challenge literally stops at, "make X appear onscreen" with no regard for quality, testing, etc. Giving unchecked/unverified time restraints isn't fair. It doesn't matter you're giving more time than it should take to complete. If the task can be done in 2 hours, but you give "6" and Candidate A does it in 3, but Candidate B does it in 32 (but tells you 6) you're ranking two totally different submissions. Candidate B might have a super polished submission, while Candidate A has a baseline submission. The poster you replied to was suggesting that tests should be either 1) not based on quality of submission and simply rely on difficulty so that only a few candidates can complete them or 2) based on quality and difficulty, but with a checked and verified time to keep the playing field level. However those options are both at odds with "low stress." ~~~ zdragnar Again, in our case, we didn't use it as a screen unless the code was an unmitigated disaster or didn't complete the basic requirements. So, if someone submitted something that could have been done better, see might ask what could be done to improve it in the follow up interview. A good answer would include the technical bits, and a better answer would describe the time recommendation and why a more polished version would take longer or be considered over-architecting. This purpose- to inform a conversation with a concrete, familiar code base- is better than both take-home screen assignments as well as the in-person whiteboard exercises, which encourage route memorization and don't reflect the nature of the job we were hiring for. ------ jboggan During a recent interview process I was given a take home assignment for data engineering. Well, I had to wait two weeks for the team to come up with a take home since they didn't have a data engineering assignment at the time. Eventually they sent it to me with a 2 hour time limit. I read the multi-page problem description which had bulleted requirements at three different places in the document, somewhat at odds with one another. There was a request to code a certain NLP technique from scratch and create a recommendation engine based on similar user history. I read through the sample data which had no notion of individual users or any table like that. The whole thing seemed like something copied and pasted together by committee, with a strong smell of "PhD CTO" trying to test for intelligence by quizzing on an esoteric corner of their own grad school experience. After about an hour of trying to figure out conceptually how I could begin to implement the things asked, let alone the 6+ hours I thought it would take in practice, I emailed the recruiter back and said "Thanks but no thanks!" My other recruiter friends later confirmed that they had burned through almost every firm in town with their ridiculous take home exams that no candidate could pass within the allotted timeframe. I think bailing was a good choice. ------ amelius > You have ‘4–6 hours’ to design a slick product, with a memorable brand and > cohesive working method. No one acknowledges the fact that in reality, > you’re about to dedicate up to 5 working days on this task, with the > potential for them to ghost you straight afterwards. To make this more fair, why not let the designer work at the company's office, so the interviewer can actually see how much time it took, and the interviewee doesn't waste more time than necessary? ~~~ itronitron >> advised that we should spend no more that 3–5 hours on the task I have to wonder if they didn't get the position because they spent more than the advised time for the task. ~~~ bryanrasmussen As a general rule when I'm given a programming task that takes 4 hours to do then - IF everything I will need for the task is already installed on my computer and all dependencies bugs and so forth have already been taken care of in these things - it will take 4 hours. Maybe the same situation applies in Design somehow? I mean yeah it takes 4 hours to make the product if you happen to have all the graphical elements you will be using already downloaded and organized. on edit: although I have noticed a disappointment in some places that I have not done a lot of time cleaning up the code after writing it and making everything beautiful and writing a good readme to tell them everything to do and so on and so forth and normally I don't do those things because I spent more than 4 hours because there was stuff that needed fixing and anyway if they wanted all that 4 hours would not be enough. ~~~ Zenbit_UX Unfortunately not. Coding is like math homework. When your doing the math homework you know when your done, it's very obvious and anyone can check your work and clearly see it's either right or wrong. Design is like a book report for English class, it's bottomless and can always be improved given more time, albeit with diminishing returns. Design challenges are evil and bullshit, you can poor hundreds of hours into a design challenge and still iterate further. ~~~ seanmcdirmid > Coding is like math homework Agreed, unless they want a good polished solutions, meaning it has been refactored, has decent comments, is well tested, etc.... then it becomes a lot like design where the sky is the limit. My wife got her first job in the states because of a take home design challenge. Other companies were wary of her because of her foreign degree and no US experience, and she was able to show off in the design challenge they gave her (she spent more time than estimated, but not incredibly much more than that). In this case, it really worked out for her. ------ davidbanham > You have ‘4–6 hours’... No one acknowledges the fact that in reality, you’re > about to dedicate up to 5 working days on this task I fixed that problem for my candidates then turned it into a startup: [https://takehome.io](https://takehome.io) ~~~ pbhjpbhj Meta: I assume you're doing a website update at the moment. I prefer the blue! Though I might still use a white version on the homepage to remove emphasis from the header. Also, on you signup page it would IMO look nicer if you pinned the page footer (eg [https://matthewjamestaylor.com/bottom- footer](https://matthewjamestaylor.com/bottom-footer)). ~~~ davidbanham Thanks for taking a look! I actually have always had a different style on the landing page from the rest of the app. One was designed to be eye catching and the other functional. The landing page is probably due for a fresh coat of paint, though. I'll give some thought to pinning the footer. ~~~ pbhjpbhj That's fine, and probably works, but the other pages look better finished and the menus jump around, etc., which gives a "in progress" feel to the site IMO. ------ llamataboot I love take-home assignments. Especially reasonably scoped ones. They allow me to show off my skills. However, my opinion is that it should be paid labor. Give me a day of work and pay me to do it. This values my time, it actually doesn't add all the much more to the hiring expense (all that engineer interview time, resume review time, etc is expensive!), and it makes sure you are screening out early and often and not wasting 20 people's time doing a bunch of take home work for one dev position. ~~~ dmoy I don't like takehome assignments because my current employer's moonlighting policies mean I can't do them. Ideally that wouldn't be a legal policy for my company to enforce, but that's the reality for me right now. ~~~ llamataboot interesting, didn't think about that. From a practical perspective, I'm not sure that spending 20 hours+ working on something for free is any more/less likely to make you less productive at work than doing it for pay, but I see where the letter of the law comes in. ------ josh2600 Someone on my team once asked an iOS engineer to add a button to a codebase during an onsite interview. That is actually a horrible test to complete in 45 minutes if the codebase is large (and particularly hard if it’s not super well maintained because even just familiarizing yourself with the codebase can take a great deal of time). It’s one of those things that sounds easy but really, really isn’t possible to do in the time allotted. I learned a lot about interviewing people that day. ~~~ ScottFree I can't tell if this is brilliant or sadistic. On the one hand, it really tells you who's smart enough to realize the task can't be done in the allotted time. On the other hand, not being able to do something as simple as adding a button in 45 minutes has to screw with the candidate's mind. That sort of thing would shatter what little confidence I have. I'd probably tank the rest of the interview. > I learned a lot about interviewing people that day. Could you share what you learned? ~~~ josh2600 Yeah, adding a button to a codebase is an awful test. If someone made it to an onsite and you don’t know whether they can add a button in swift, something failed in your screening process. If you’re testing how someone navigates a codebase, you can just look at it with them, and let them drive the chat. If you’re testing an engineer for a serious job, do an algorithms test. If you’re testing an engineer for a specific thing, test that specific thing. Both of those should be handled in the screen, not the onsite. IMHO, the onsite is about seeing how people think. Whether you can jam a button into a repo doesn’t tell me whether you can think or not. I guess it tells me whether you get flustered, but it’s pretty unfair to design things that are impossible just to see if people break. That candidate turned out to be awesome but I remember the interviewer telling me after they interviewed them “well, they couldn’t add the button, but as they were doing it, I realized I wouldn’t be able to add the button either so my interview was inconclusive”, and I replied “well it sounds like you need to design a better interview question”. The worst part was, the interviewer spent the first 20 minutes of the interview talking with the candidate before giving them 25 minutes to add the button!! There’s a question we gave candidates really early on which we no longer do because it biases towards math nerds that I absolutely loved. It’s based on a movie called 13 Tzameti. I’m probably screwing it up because it isn’t my question but it’s basically like this: You’re in a dark room after being abducted by a gang. The lights come on and there’s 12 other people in the room in a circle and everyone has a revolver with 1 bullet in it (6 slots in the chamber). Your instructions are to spin the chamber on the revolver and, when the lights go out, shoot the person to your right in order. What are the odds you make it to the next round? It’s a crazy question and, what’s even crazier is that for some reason, as you increase the number of people in the circle, the odds of making it to the next round converge on 1/e. No one has figured that out in the interview. Also no one has figured out why it converges on 1/e so if you have any ideas, let me know. I like this question because it shows you how free thinking people are. I dislike this question because it biases towards smartasses and probability nerds. ~~~ eschneider Your odds go way up if you repeatedly fire at the guy to your left. Being a senior engineer is knowing the difference between doing what your told and figuring out what needs to be done to achieve project success. In this case, getting to the next round. Next question? ~~~ michaelt He never said you had to spin the chamber by an _unknown amount_ , aren't your odds even better if you make sure the bullet is in the next chamber before you shoot left? Of course, many game theory calculations assume all players know the payoff matrix and equilibrium strategies of the others; making sure the bullet _isn 't_ in the next chamber is the rational universal strategy if the game has a fixed number of rounds. Presumably the actual question has a bunch of provisos making sure you can't intentionally miss, or accidentally miss, or dodge, or shoot early, or fail to pull the trigger, or shoot the gang..... ~~~ eschneider There are many 'optimizations' once the lights go out. ------ jordansmithnz This reminds me of a take home software engineering interview I was once given via email. Same deal, I was told about 5 hours. I’m an iOS developer, so I was expecting a pretty simple app. I opened the PDF to find not one, but three separate tasks. Completion of all three was expected, with an estimate of about two hours each. One of the tasks was to replicate Apple’s ‘Reminders’ app in its entirety, backend sync functionality included. Another, a task requesting Visual Studio (iOS devs have no need for any experience with this). I promptly replied declining to continue the interview process. If you’re ever in a similar situation, interviews can sometimes tell you more about the company than they can learn about you. Good chance I dodged a bullet, and could have been working for someone setting highly unrealistic client deadlines, with the expectation that I can build something in any technology proficiently. ~~~ irrational We've joked about giving potential hires a challenge to fix a problem we are currently experiencing, but we wouldn't really do it. That takes some balls to ask interviewees to write or fix production code. ~~~ klyrs Back in 2000, I had an in-person interview at a very small b2b website. They'd been using overseas contractors (zero local technical people) and the founder/interviewer barely knew a thing about computers. He didn't know how to run a technical interview, so he sat me down at a computer, logged in as root on prod (lol the only server), and pointed me at a couple of bugs. I knocked them out lickety-split and was hired on the spot. The world sure has changed ~~~ harlanji I'm making it like that again. I'm back down with the blue collar proles in Mountain View, landscaping and moving and waiting tables and the like. That's how things work outside of speculation... employer has a business where they get paid, and they outsource their own functions. I'll never run an engineering org like Silicon Valley again, it's so broken in delivering results as a result of the speculative nature. I have a project website up serving two cities. We use Clojure and static generation, and operate and maintain IT like an old tractor. I train my replacements to keep myself available and customers getting a good price (minimum wage). It lets people start their career with hands-on work. It's in BigTech's interest to make us think tech is hard, but I'm using most of the same stuff as I did when I was 14 and self-taught 20 years ago, and it's gotten far far simpler and better. ~~~ klyrs I'm in high tech and dying. This is making me feel nostalgic and thinking... maybe taking 3 steps back would be 10 steps forward in terms of my mental health. ------ threwawasy1228 When people are turning their interview questions into successful companies, maybe it is time to start asking some easier interview questions. This is a visceral demonstration of how absolutely ridiculous interviews have gotten. ~~~ bufferoverflow Google can afford to do that. They have so many applicants willing to jump through the hoops, they can pick the top 1-2%. ~~~ onlydeadheroes I hope they find the 1% top developers that can fix gmail interface. ~~~ y-c-o-m-b Or increase the performance of Gmail (or Google Maps!!) back to what it was. Funny how the two apps ran perfectly smooth on devices 10 years ago, but they struggle with the horsepower on devices today. ------ VBprogrammer Urgh. I recently had a similar situation. I started interviewing with a company who have a take-home assignment which I could have completed in the required time without taking any care over the quality of code I was submitting, but to do it properly I spent a bit of time thinking about it and building a reasonably extensive test-suite along the way. I was asked to come in for a face to face interview, for which I made clear I was having to take a day off of work, which was cancelled a few working hours before (so I wasn't able to cancel the holiday) without an apology. I was then interviewed again by phone and told that there was 'a bug' in my code and that I should try to find it and resubmit it without any other details. The spec was a puzzle with lots of weird edge cases and horrible inconsistencies. I decided at that point that I didn't want to work with them. ~~~ kemiller2002 I had one a little while ago where I spent a fair amount of time on the request, and I thought was pretty well done. It completed all their tasks, showed how to use their api, and it showed I know how to integrate several different technologies, from front things like React to building an API to interact with theirs and setting up and configuring cloud technologies. They came back, and said, "We don't want to continue, we expected more from him." I sat there baffled and so did the recruiter, as it clearly did everything and more than they asked for in the assignment. I am so glad they didn't want to go further as I am sure they are a nightmare to work for. ~~~ LameRubberDucky There have been anecdotes on HN about companies using this type of process to get free work out of people. If your code solved the problem they needed solved, they may have taken your code/ideas and used it and left you by the wayside. I hope that's not the case but it's possible. ~~~ lawlessone If it was an android app you'd honestly want to download their app and put it in the apk analyzer .. just check. ------ nwatson A few things ... the word 'Crunchr' is real hard to make out when overlayed on the image of the person mid-pushup ... in that same-but-too-small font is your company name 'Tona' or 'Tonu'? ... the busy graphics on almost every screen looks great at first but would wear me out and get between me and my info, and looks too much like a cult-of-body-and-youth or like Men's Fitness, definitely not relatable ... the need to select a fancy background for every class listing would be tedious and would require extra info on whatever back end manages schedules, nobody will go through all that work and will be left with weird unrelated defaults ... that your original interview submission contains no rough work would make me worry you'd commit to a suboptimal path without opportunity to reset the course after a preliminary critique. I don't like all aspects of its design but after getting through its initial quirks the Android Simple-Workout-Log app is dead simple and bare-bones and works quite well without the busy graphics. EDIT: additional point. ------ rdez6173 I am a software engineer and I was once asked during an interview at a large hedge fund to pick a side and debate why war is justified. When I pressed them about the relevance, they indicated that they often have heated debates on all manner of topics, so they wanted to see my thought process. I enjoy solving complex problems, but socio-ethical problems are way outside of my wheelhouse. I politely indicated that I didn't think the company was a good fit for me. ~~~ agrippanux When interviewing execs who would be building new departments a few years ago, I would pose the question of "In the wake of Arab spring in Libya, the people decide that you are their next leader. What happens in your first 100 days?". The answers ran the gamut from lazy to fantastic to terrifying. A lot of answers where generic "coalition building" variety. The better answers identified key areas to focus on like infrastructure, basic services, etc. The best answers had clear goals and possible government structures supporting accountability. Bad answers had the exec consolidating power and crushing opposition. The worst answers had the exec killing people to achieve their goals. Not joking, I had several answers that where "I would find my rivals and kill them". Overall I thought it was a good question as those who performed well on it and where hired built great sustainable orgs and those who did poorly where usually shown the door within a year. Those who did well where able to take a crazy situation, break it down into smaller problems, and then solve for them while those who did poorly where usually relying either escaping the problem via committees or flat out crushing opposition. ~~~ corndoge >Bad answers had... Asking a politically charged question on statecraft and judging the answer based on your own personal ideas about how to run a state strikes me as a bizarre way to conduct an interview, even for an exec. >The worst answers had the exec killing people Play stupid games, win stupid prizes? ~~~ pembrook This is why we need less humans and more AI/ML in the candidate selection process. The guy posing Arab Spring interview questions sounds just like those 65 year old talent scouts in MoneyBall skipping over a talented 3rd baseman because the kid “doesn’t have good legs.” Humans are immensely stupid and irrational when it comes to judging other humans. ~~~ rimliu I wonder what makes you think AI/ML is better. ~~~ Loughla My same question. If we make terribly biased decisions, why would something with those biases baked in make any better decisions? Maybe because they're faster? ~~~ MichaelDickens You train the AI based on outcomes, not based on humans' judgments of what they expect outcomes to be. ~~~ johnhenry But if your training data is based on previous decisions made using human bias, you're in trouble. ------ ravenstine None of the places I've worked at had me do a coding challenge. Either they already knew who I was through networking or they asked me to show them a personal project and explain how it worked. Each job was a great opportunity. When I start looking for a new opportunity in a year or two, I may consider coding challenges to be a soft red flag in that I don't think they're worth wasting time over. I spent so many hours in the last 6 months doing various code challenges, some of which were borderline unreasonable, none of which landed me a position. I ended up getting hired by one of the top 3 places I wanted to work, and it was mainly because I had already networked with my interviewers. Maybe they looked at my GitHub, but I never asked. Regardless, coding challenges of any kind have consistently been a waste of time for me. Unless I really _really_ want to work for a particular company, from now on I will immediately end my interview process if they ask me to do the following: \- On-site coding challenges \- Take home coding challenges \- Whiteboarding \- Brain teasers I don't have time to waste on that shit anymore. If having years of experience and a GitHub don't demonstrate to you that I can write code, then I really can't help you with whatever it is you're looking to achieve. Developers have to shotgun apply to many places in order to play the numbers game of getting hired, and life is too short to work an extra hour or more every night to code something no one will ever use that won't get me hired anyway. People are generally biased towards feelings rather than facts, and any of the above bullet points mostly serve as a Rorschach test for interviewers who have already decided whether they like me or not. Someone just breaking into the industry _might_ want to go through the hazing process of hammering out coding challenges, but I refuse to have my personal time wasted. To anyone reading this, networking _is_ a biggie. My dad used to tell me that and I never took him seriously because I hated the idea that schmoozing outperforms merit, but it's absolutely true. In reality, networking _should_ be better because, at the end of the day, most people can tell whether you're competent and if they want to work with you based on how you naturally interact with them. Formal interviews barely work because everyone rehearses for them and they only prove that you were able to tackle one problem(which recruiters often alert candidates to anyway). ~~~ brianpgordon Refusing take-homes is a reasonable stance but refusing to whiteboard strikes me as overly critical. It's a pretty standard thing to do in an interview... while whiteboarding may be a little silly, walking out of an interview after someone's already blocked time for you because you think whiteboarding is silly is even more silly than whiteboarding is. If I were the interviewer I'd be concerned that you can't be even a little bit flexible with things that you personally don't like. ~~~ ravenstine > It's a pretty standard thing to do in an interview... I'm not interested at working for _standard_ companies. :) But everyone is different. If whiteboarding is someone's thing, the more power to them. > walking out of an interview after someone's already blocked time for you > because you think whiteboarding is silly is even more silly than > whiteboarding is If there was a misunderstanding where they blocked out time in an interview for whiteboarding, I wouldn't be rude and refuse in person. What I do is ask in the phone screening or the first engineering interview about whether the technical interview would involve whiteboarding or brain teasers. If the answer is yes, I politely end the interview process. That way their time is wasted minimally. However, I have no qualms about walking out of an interview that involves brain teasers. > If I were the interviewer I'd be concerned that you can't be even a little > bit flexible with things that you personally don't like. Interviewing is a two-way street. How about _you_ be a little bit flexible and _not_ make me do something that you personally like? No? Yeah, I didn't think so. I'll just work for companies that don't do whiteboarding in interviews, which are a dime a dozen. Yes, that was a bit crass, but it amazes me how people in the position of interviewing believe that interviewers should care about whether they're concerned over something. ~~~ binarytox1n As a hiring manager I would take a refusal to whiteboard or participate in an in-person coding problem as a sign that the candidate knew they were not qualified to write code and therefore declined so as not to waste anyone's time. I'm sure that doesn't matter to you as you don't want to work at standard companies anyway, but I have seen plenty of people fail to solve fizz buzz who had the nerve to show up for a Senior Dev role and therefore I will always ask my candidates to write code in front of me. Anyone can copy and paste their way into an active looking github profile, much fewer can talk me through their thought process as they solve a real problem that I have given them to solve. ~~~ ravenstine If all I had to do was a problem like fizz buzz, I'd probably go ahead and do it. In my experience, most coding challenges that are in-person or take-home are more involved than that Fizz buzz, taking an hour or more. I can't think of a single coding challenge I did in the last 6 months that didn't involve either building a full application or something with complicated or game-like logic. The closest thing to fizz buzz level of simplicity might have been the custom file/directory system I had to work on, but even that was more involved and nuanced than writing fizz buzz. ------ thoreauway I interviewed at Uber before they launched. Their "take home" was to create... Uber. Here's the exact challenge: UberCab Coder Challenge 1) Write a program that determines the wait time, trip time, rating, and fare for a black car trip in San Francisco, given that the customer's pickup location and destination is randomly placed anywhere in San Francisco proper, and given that there are X number of cars all placed randomly across the city. Use GoogleMaps API for trip duration time. Run simulation 100 times for 1, 5, 10, 20, and 50 cars. Output average wait times and trip times for each # of cars the simulation was run on. 2) Take #1 and do the same pickup and trip time calculation given that there are Y customer requests per hour (extra credit if this is done with a Poisson distribution ;)). Take into account each car's availability (given that they may have been selected to carry a customer and are in transit on pickup or on actual trip, and thus unavailable). Run simulation given the number of cars in #1, but for each simulation in #1, run once for Y=1x, 2x, 5x, the number of requests per hour (X being the number of cars in the city, as defined in #1) 3) Take #2 and then make a GoogleMaps mashup that then shows the various trips that were taken for each simulation. Provide mashup interface showing all trips but also provide ability to only show trips for each driver. 4) Write a "Hello World" app on the iPhone that for a certain driver logging in shows all of his trips taken in the last simulation, the average rating that he got, and the total fares he collected during those trips. ~~~ distances Having never worked in SV, are these home assignments common there? I know several engineers who would refuse to do any homework at all as a matter of principle, so a task of this magnitude without compensation sounds laughable on the face of it. ~~~ ummonk It's not the norm but it's not uncommon at startups. Also, it seems to be standard practice for data science interviews. I personally don't put up with it, but then there are always lots of commenters in HN who bemoan whiteboard interviews and prefer take-homes. To each their own. ~~~ meddlepal I prefer take homes if they are reasonably scoped and turn around expectations are around 1 week. I would rather whiteboard about the design of the app/tool than some random question another engineer pulled out of their ass twenty minutes before the interview and has unreasonably strong opinions about the design and implementation based on whatever source they stole the problem from because they don't actually understand the problem either. ~~~ mattkrause The scope is important. Some of the data science take homes I've seen could be looking for a decent/good-enough solution that takes an an hour to a full- fledged research program that would keep a few FTEs busy for a year. ------ JansjoFromIkea Is there a reason there's no naming and shaming going on here? One company asked me to do an implementation of the Bay Area MUNI network which fetched live updates of the locations of all buses every 10 seconds; there was more to it but I can't remember it now. This was to be done in React with D3 and no additional libraries were to be used to help with integrating D3 maps in React. The role was junior level, the job listing did not specify D3 as a requirement (which pretty much guarantees a lot of people would start into it without realising maps are one of the more complicated things to do in D3 as a newbie or how poorly D3 played with React), the role was in Europe. If someone can confirm I'm not breaking any rules I'll happily share their name. The best interview experiences I've had are with groups who just went through my (not very impressive) Github. A small coding challenge can be good as a thing to talk through during the final interview but anything longer than that and I'll tend to pitch sending them something I wanted to make in my own time regardless. ~~~ zymhan > Is there a reason there's no naming and shaming going on here? No, there is no rule, unless you signed a contract stating you will never disclose any interview information, and even then, they'd have to find your post, find out who you are, and then take you to court over an extremely shaky premise. Just name the damn company people! You're giving companies far more credit than they deserve in these situations. I'd argue you owe it to other people who may follow in your steps to know when a company is exploitative, deceptive, or just plain corrosive. edit: now with less snark ~~~ JansjoFromIkea > "Is there a rule I don't know about" > Goes on to not violate the rule that seems to exist Anyways, it was ThousandEyes ~~~ zymhan I appreciate you having the courage to call them out :) ~~~ JansjoFromIkea No courage in that! The true courage is in admitting I was stupid enough to take a stab at their challenge. The interview itself was a whole other tale of awfulness but I'll limit my overview of it here to saying that they didn't bring up the coding challenge once despite being repeatedly asked for feedback before, during and after the interview. Maybe they felt awkward about saying how crap they thought it was? Be pretty weird to bring me in for an interview in that case though... ------ hising Awesome to read about you turning this into your own startup. One thing I came to think about regarding the "4-5 hours" and throwing 5 working days on it, is that, maybe as an interviewer it is quite obvious that you put more than 4-5 hours into it and what they were "really" after were the trade-offs you would have made if you put 4-5 hours into it. Just a thought. ~~~ dannyw Not Google, but similar company and can confirm. If you spend 5x the amount of time we suggest, it’s obvious and the expectations scale a lot, lot higher than if you just spent 5 hours. ~~~ gowld So I should spend a few more hours going back to add flaws to make it look like I spent less time? ------ zrail I recently completed an interview junket. One of the companies I really wanted to get into gave me a take home. I completed it in the time they said it would take, submitted it, and then got bounced out. My inside source said that the submissions are run through an acceptance test suite (not exposed to the interviewee, of course) that can automatically bounce people out of the process with no or little human intervention. PROTIP: don’t do that. ~~~ yingw787 That doesn't sound fair unless the acceptance test suite is available to the candidate before final submission. In which case, depending on how the infrastructure is set up, could be expensive or slow. Seems to be a lose-lose situation. ------ ahoka Actual Google app: [https://www.wareable.com/media/images/2017/03/google-fit- app...](https://www.wareable.com/media/images/2017/03/google-fit- app-1490141873-TZ46-column-width-inline.jpg) WTF Google? ~~~ saagarjha Are you complaining about the design of this app? ~~~ infradig I hope so. Google Fit is atrocious. ~~~ ahoka Yes, the app described in the article looks much better. ------ swish_bob I once completed the task sent to me by a prospective employer, and then thanked them and said I wouldn't be submitting it, as it told me enough about the way they worked to know I wouldn't enjoy it. Never forget that the interview process is two way ... ~~~ comboy Those few big companies probably have more than enough candidates. If you have too many candidates you need to adjust interview difficulty to still hire only as much as you need. I don't think these companies care that the task is too difficult for 99% of people, or that there are smart people who are not motivated enough to complete it as long as they can get as many smart and motivated people as they want. That said, finding a job in IT if you are good at what you're doing is a dreamland currently, so declining if you think you won't enjoy working for a given company seems only natural. Given dynamics above I think you're likely better off not working for one of those top few companies if you don't care about prestige and long term job stability. ~~~ hobs Simply put, no. If you have "too many people" you dont make the quality of your hiring "better" by making the process worse. Being more selective about who you hire is not related to making a stupid test. ~~~ mceachen You're assuming that most recruiting pipelines are reasonable. ------ nerdjon Some companies do technical interview great, but there are a couple things that I have noticed that always make me question if I actually want to work somewhere: \- Being sent to a website to do a take home coding exercise, with a checkbox basically saying "I won't use the internet, stack overflow, or similar". I get that you need to test my knowledge, but shouldn't you care more that I know how to search for my problem and understand a fix instead of flailing around? \- (this one I have noticed in person) Being handed a thing to build, being told I have a limited amount of time. That all they want is a proof of concept, but the tooling they are asking me to use go completely against the idea that it is a "proof of concept" since they make certain assumptions about the end goal. EX: deploy something with terraform but we don't want you to build an AMI or anything like that so just manually go into each system once you create it ~~~ jacurtis I hate companies that act like it is a sin to use Google or Stack Overflow when coding. When I hear this BS, then I know it is clear that they have never coded themselves. I would love to meet a software engineer who truly can sit in a padded room and write code with no internet access to use for help or reference. Especially those of us that juggle multiple languages (full stack). Sometimes I know I need to run a method but I can't remember the actual method name or how it is formatted in this language. I know it exists, I have used many times before, but I might not remember the exact way it is worded. So I have to look it up. It adds <60 seconds for me to find. Or I might know a method exists but not sure which parameters it accepts. I might usually use the first 2 params and leave the rest, but this specific use case requires changing something i don't normally need. So guess what, I have to look it up! Sometimes I might get an error message that I don't recognize, so a quick look at StackOverflow reveals that a configuration item is off, or something was formatted incorrectly. I often can understand my problem with only just reading the first few lines of the selected answer on SO. I might be able to solve a bug in 60 seconds by using Stack Overflow, that might otherwise take hours to do without them. Especially as software developers keep getting asked to know more and more stuff, we have to rely on documentation and helpful sites in order to do our jobs. It is crazy to expect that you don't use those resources. Oh and ObjectiveC/Swift developers have it really bad. Some of the method names are entire structured sentences. ~~~ allenu You're right about ObjC/Swift. Even though that's my line of work, I use C++ to answer questions in interviews. There's no way I'm going to remember method names for those. I did have a Google phone screen where they asked me to live code something in Objective-C, but they gave me an existing class whose code I had to fill in and they were lenient with remembering common method names. ------ albertgoeswoof This is a really great marketing example! The creator has combined a top page HN post with a PH launch at the same time with really polished looking apps & landing pages. Essentially this will give them a huge traction boost on the app stores and a bunch of new users. Super impressive. ~~~ allenu It's definitely good marketing, so kudos to the creator. I will say though that so many Medium articles I read now are essentially marketing pieces. They'll cover some topic very, very lightly and have a call to action at the end to view the author's product or company. ------ cecilpl2 I recently was given a toy problem in an interview - read data in some format, process it, and write the output. Expectation was 4 hours of work, which is pretty close to what it took me to get all the edge cases, test suite, requisite documentation, and VS project/solution files. The feedback I got afterwards was "We're passing on you as your code doesn't compile/run on Linux", a requirement that wasn't specified. ~~~ 0xffff2 >The feedback I got afterwards was "We're passing on you as your code doesn't compile/run on Linux", a requirement that wasn't specified. I have to ask, was there something that implied that it should specifically run on Windows? If I got a software spec that didn't spell out exactly which platforms needed to be supported, one of the very first things I would do would be to ask for clarification. ~~~ max76 Applying for a dotnet position and assuming dotnet framework instead of dotnet core would have been very responsible two years ago. ~~~ 0xffff2 I guess I have a fundamentally different view of software requirements. Even before dotnet core even existed I would have explicitly confirmed that the company wasn't using Mono if they didn't spell it out for me. ~~~ max76 Mono's use was very limited because it was an out of date and slower implementation of .NET. It's used in such niche contexts (Xamarin and Unity) that it was easy to determine if the team you are applying is using MONO or Framework. .NET core changed the ability to make the Windows assumption. Almost everyone has received the memo by now, but there was a period of time between .NET core 1.0 (June 2016) and the release of .NET core 2.0 (August 2017) where the platform was changing so much and the performance wasn't as good as framework that anyone without a simultaneous interest in Linux rightly ignored it. After the release of .NET core 2.0 the entire community began accepting it as a faster platform that runs comfortably on cheaper servers. A larger and larger portion of new projects have been running .net core. Now, with the planned release for .NET 5 next year .NET Framework is dead. However, if you were interviewing with a .NET team before June 2016 even asking the question "What operating system will this run on?" would have been a sign of incompetence. Of course you'll be building .exe and .dll files. Of course the webserver is going to be IIS. Those were the only things .NET was good at building. ~~~ 0xffff2 > However, if you were interviewing with a .NET team before June 2016 even > asking the question "What operating system will this run on?" would have > been a sign of incompetence. It really depends on how you're asking the question. "What OS will this run on?" is going to be perceived differently from "Are you expecting anything unusual like Mono support?". The OP didn't actually say that this was a .NET application, but if it was the answer to either question would have been important. If the answer had been that the company expected a standard Windows environment, I don't think it's likely that the second question would be perceived negatively. ------ kbknapp > They presented three design challenge options to pick from, with a weeks > notice and advised that we should spend no more that 3–5 hours on the task > (wink, wink) I know this self-selects for people willing to do extra work for no extra compensation. However, let me play devil's advocate for a minute as a thought experiment. I would actually worry that this issue is also a self fulfilling prophesy. If I'm told to do X in Y hours, but it takes me 10 x Y hours perhaps the employer _really does_ expect it to take only Y hours. Maybe the typical workload at that employer is for someone who really can do X in Y. As long as that is properly compensated, I see no problem with that. If the employer is asking for an extremely high caliber developer, and will also compensate as such then it's no issue. However, an average developer applies and thus has to lie about what they can achieve in that time-frame. Let's say they get the job and then when the workload is dumped on them it obviously takes longer than the 40 hour work week and they cry about "self selecting for people willing to work extra for no compensation." When in actuality, the employer expected, based on a false presentation, that it was within the average developer's abilities. Of course, I'm being somewhat satirical and without knowing the exact position and compensation being offered (as compared to average) no one can say if this is the case. ------ amingilani What a great launch story! I don't mean to reduce your experience to a marketing gimmick but I know that you intentionally crafted the story to be impactful and to coincide with your launch. Most importantly, though, you pulled it off really well! I can't help but admire the way this was done :) I hope my launch story is this good. ------ btbuildem People can tell whether you spent 5 hours or 5 days on a task. I wonder whether that's the reason for him not getting the job. Likely, the interviewers wanted to see what this person is capable of doing in a short timeframe, how they'll prioritize and deliver under such constraints. This guy failed to do what they asked for. ------ djhaskin987 Is HN truly this bad of a bubble that everyone thinks interview tests are normal? The last time I had to do a test it was on site and I was just out of college. Most interviews just talk about the challenges of the team, my past work on similar problems, and how I solved them. I've been on the other side of the table too. It's usually easy to tell if the applicant is a quack or if they are skilled by how they talk about different technology: commiserating about familiar pain points, how they solved common problems. I almost feel at this point that it's unprofessional to hand out tests to people. ~~~ thomascgalvin > It's usually easy to tell if the applicant is a quack or if they are skilled > by how they talk about different technology: commiserating about familiar > pain points, how they solved common problems. I almost feel at this point > that it's unprofessional to hand out tests to people. The problem with what you're describing is that it's using a proxy (discussion) to vet a particular skill (ability to program). It's very easy to vet someone's programming skill by having them program, and it doesn't take much longer than a wide ranging discussion, so why not skip the proxy and test what we're actually hiring for? Should a programming test be several hours (or several days) long? No. But an hour or two, I can't see how that's a terrible imposition. ~~~ simongr3dal Maybe just ask applicants to spend an hour or two onsite without internet making them to solve project euler-type problems and discuss their solutions afterwards. I’m sure you can somehow include technologies relevant to the position and keep the problems to the same scope. Or these companies could begin creating actual value instead of just draining it from the world. Why don’t they expand their pipeline that converts intern/junior positions into more senior positions? And make it a big enough so they don’t need to hire as many ready-made 10x engineers from outside. ~~~ thomascgalvin > Maybe just ask applicants to spend an hour or two onsite without internet > making them to solve project euler-type problems and discuss their solutions > afterwards. I 1,000% do not care about someone's ability to solve a random programming puzzle without the internet. Again, this is a (bad) proxy for the skill I'm actually trying to hire for. If I'm hiring a backend engineer, why would I ask someone to implement QuickSort? Wouldn't it be better to give them a realish application and have them add a feature or fix a bug? > Why don’t they expand their pipeline that converts intern/junior positions > into more senior positions? My company has a very healthy pipeline of interns and junior developers. In a year or two, they'll be very good. In five to ten years, they'll be amazing. But I also have shit that I need to get done by the end of the month, and I need people with years of experience to complete them. And regardless of which level I'm hiring at, I want to see them code, and I want it to be in an environment as close to how they will be working as possible. Google, Stack Overflow, an IDE, a build system, unit tests ... I want to see how they will perform as _Software Engineers_ , not Euler- grinders. ------ beyondcompute Why is Googleʼs design _so_ bad then if they have such a tough interview process? Corporate structure/culture kills even best-of-the best talentʼs initiative? I think, what they need is non-conformism. But they donʼt select presumably for non-conformism during interview. They select for obedience. (Just thinking out loud) When Google (having so much resources) will release a product whose UI would make people say, “wow?” Not just the (superior) data- processing capabilities or pretty good hardware. ~~~ killerdhmo Clearly this is subjective, but I'm regularly impressed with Photos and Maps. Thoughtful, subtle, and yet informative. With some delightful interactions. ------ tombert I really despise these take-home projects. In NYC it's not uncommon for a developer to make ~$60 an hour, and these take-home projects can take anywhere between 2-6 hours, meaning that these companies are expecting you to spend up to $240 on a task where there's not even a guarantee of getting the job. Whenever I've done these, I usually end up doing them in JavaScript in a hyper-functional style (as is my nature since usually they won't allow me to do them in Scheme or Haskell), which ends up with the reviewer asking me to write it in a more "modular" way (which really means "please write Java in JavaScript"). I have a line in the sand now that I'm done doing take-home projects; I really don't need to donate my after-work time just to have someone who doesn't understand functional programming explain to me how it's not as modular as some Java OOP crap, especially when I could spend that time building a project that will, you know, _actually_ make me money. EDIT: I realize that this came off as overly-hostile to Java. I'm not a fan of the language, but my point wasn't really the bash it, as much as complaining about people acting like my functional code isn't good because all they know how to write is OOP Java. ------ siscia I believe Google have brainwashed us all. Are we sure that it is worth all this effort? Are they so much better than any other company or startup? Is our own self so much more valuable if a random intervier liked our works an epsilon more than the other candidate? People inside FAANG are unhappy as well, they leave their company as well. I believe we should be less impacted by the ads that Google is running to sponsor itself as the best workplace ever. ~~~ allenu I agree with you. I was immediately struck by the tone of the article that the author was "fortunate" enough to be interviewed by Google. Maybe it's because I've been working for nearly 20 years now and am becoming an "old man", but the feeling that Google is this promised land of opportunity rubs me the wrong way. Every company has pros and cons and I suppose Google may have a lot of pros (free food, good perks, and good pay) but at the end of the day, it's just a big company where you work on large projects and will likely have little say in the final product's look and feel. ~~~ jd_nlp Recently interviewed at Amazon and I got that vibe as well. Didn't really "sell" the job to me at all, just assumed I would automatically be in love with them. Obviously they're there to evaluate my skills, but in my opinion an interview should be something of a two-way street. ------ bitL Are you sure you didn't sign any NDA, preventing you from working on ideas you might get during interview? Google used to have pretty water-tight policy on outflow of ideas (but inflow was encouraged) during interviews. ~~~ saagarjha Does Google make you sign an NDA _before_ you interview?! ~~~ joshvm Implicitly, when you print your visitor badge you consent to the NDA. Though that may be a generic site NDA, not an interview one. I never had to provide an actual signature, aside from a verbal agreement with the recruiter to not share interview questions. ------ jacurtis Getting hired at Google is as much of a Lottery as anything else. You really can't look at interview questions and beat yourself up. There are Google employees who got hired doing much less, and other employees that had to work even harder to get hired. At that level, anyone who gets called to interview for Google is already qualified for the job. It really is a lottery at that point if you get the job. ------ marapuru Interesting read. Its good to realize that a interview process and the work involved can turn into your own business. Shows again that good efforts pay off anyhow. ~~~ jmkd Equally revealing on how submitted interview tasks can have exploitable business value. ------ TallGuyShort My last company did interviews like this - I was always disgusted at the way most of the team would sit around and just find things to pick on in the person's code. Dumb stuff too. It became an excuse for a lot of the engineers to just make fun of someone who had successfully completed the program, but didn't take the time to JavaDoc everything and follow the same code style best practices we did. Things you can easily address with a bit of training and code review, and that maybe they already do when they're not trying to interview for a lot of jobs while still in school. Sad, really. ~~~ rickyc091 Not saying this approach was correct, but given a choice, what type of interview would you prefer? Hackerrank? In person, programming challenges, smaller take-home assignment, other? ~~~ TallGuyShort As both an interviewer and interviewee I prefer in-person. Where you simply meet 1:1 with a few people - some talk to you about fit / experiences and some sit and work with you on a problem. Ideally, you would do the second in a work environment you're used to on a real computer instead of a whiteboard, and I haven't had a chance to do that before. I've seen a few poor performers slip through this before, but I do feel it gives a lot more room for people who just misinterpret what you're going for initially because there's more room for immediate feedback [1]. I've also had some disastrous experiences working with people who were amazing coders but were terrible and sitting down and talking through a problem with someone - I'd rather have a mediocre coder I can talk to. It gives the interviewee a finite time bound, and the company is spending equal manpower resources of their own (instead of giving you a 5-hour problem that you might secretly spend more on, when maybe they already are leaning towards a no but wanted to give you a final chance before ghosting). The downside here is it depends a lot on the consistency and skill of the interviewers, but I believe with good culture and training you can make most people good at this. [1] edit: Also, I think you can tell a lot about how qualified someone is by how they clarify the problem and how they communicate their thinking - not just the code they arrive at. ------ stevenwoo One California company that used cheap labor in third world countries to interact with customers asked me to create a scheduler so that available workers would make the system have 24 hour up time, log all employee actions, and determine employee status (fire or not) based on employee action history, they were doing it mostly manually at that point so the completed task probably would probably have fit into their production system (got access to old production data for making system), also 24 hours for a first pass, and 48 hours for a fully functioning system, for zero pay - also, they wanted someone open to writing software to replace the third world labor after this task was complete. ------ ronilan _“My mind instantly went to an app I love, Strava. I use it almost daily ...”_ So do I. And the other day, 200m into the run, I took a first glance at Strava and noticed it was way off (gps error). Ususally I would reset and start over. But, that one time I just turned it off. 30 minutes later I was back. I don’t know how far I ran (5 point something), I don’t know how fast (also 5 pint something) and obviously have no idea how my performance on sections compares to others. But it was a great run. A bliss. So, I’m not saying fitness activity tracking is no good or that google interviews are. I’m just saying, that, yah, every once in a while, in both, ignorance, is, well, you know... ------ krm01 Great job. One should always do the best work possible. If this means someone else rejects your efforts, it'll still be a tangible satisfactory memory that, like this specific example, could turn into something more. ------ awwstn Some companies use a process where the candidate doesn't see the challenge until pressing "start", and then they have x hours to complete it. This seems to be far superior for obvious reasons: 1) It normalizes the submissions, making the review process more accurate/fair 2) It removes any ambiguity or implication around the amount of time that should be spent 3) The amount of time a candidate has/is willing to devote to an unpaid homework assignment is likely not meaningfully correlated to their ultimate success in the role, but the process described by OP likely over- indexes for that. ------ _JasonE Correct me if I am wrong, but couldn't Google claim this is their IP since they provided the options? ------ qihqi When I was in college I preferred take-home coding challenges and whiteboard coding questions than talking through experiences. ...Because I had no experience, and school projects didn't count. I had time that no one is paying for, I had skills (at least i believed), but no interviews because of experience. So coding challenge is the one thing that I can compete fairly with people with experiences, and I even had an edge because I value my time less. Of course, now I don't. But I was thankful that it is a thing so I can land my first job. ------ jcadam Maybe I should try to get an interview with Google so they can feed me startup ideas. "Wow, great interview task! Oh, I'm no longer interested in pursuing a job with you, but thanks." ------ mv4 Just a crazy thought, from seeing all these posts referencing their interview materials: 1\. could a company go after you for violating the NDA 2\. could a company, in theory, also make claim to your IP Would love to hear your opinions. ------ maitredusoi This how interview task should be made : generate something joyful and useful ; instead we usually have boring throw away to do task. By the way I had the same @ [https://www.captaincontrat.com/](https://www.captaincontrat.com/) the task was to create a pokemon game, and from that task, I am building my current startup ;) (more on that later) ------ bumby >No one acknowledges the fact that in reality, you’re about to dedicate up to 5 working days on this task, with the potential for them to ghost you straight afterwards. Is this as common as the author makes it sound? This seems like shady practice. I've heard of marketing firms doing this as a way to get 'free' ideas/work ------ JacKTrocinskI Someone I once worked with asked me a question that I think is relevant here and I will never forget it (roughly translated to English): Do you work to live, or live to work? It's beautiful, simple, and for me it put into perspective what really matters. I value and enjoy my job but I refuse to dedicate my life to it. ~~~ jacurtis That is a great interview question. I would happily answer "I work to live, and any company that doesn't want to hire me because of that answer is a company that I don't want to work for" ------ flashgordon It is interesting to see this outrage from a lot of candidates. Back in "my" day (ie 10-15 years ago), it used to be that treatment of employed engineers was shoddy enough (without the benefit of decent compensation or environment) that it was relatively less risky to start a startup (aka ISV). But back then interviewing was specific, experience based and not standardized. Ofcourse as companies caught on and started selling the "we are Agile(tm) but also pay really well and pamper you", the incentives to start your own decreased. This resulted in an increased supply of candidates (at least for the "branded" companies). I wonder if the next catalyst to start startups is the shoddy treatment of candidates who are now pretty much moved through the cattle class of interviewing pipelines? ------ xrd Wouldn't it be interesting if everyone participating in these types of interview challenges refused to do them unless the work could be turned into a reference piece like this guy did? I doubt many companies would like that, but if a majority of people refused to participate without that clause, who knows? Clearly several people in this thread felt like they were being asked to do work which would be put into production and this would prevent that (though I personally am REALLY skeptical of those stories). It seems crazy that people are being asked to do work for even a few hours for "free" much less several days of work. If you are doing that, it seems totally fair to indicate that this work will be made public afterwards and made into a portfolio piece. ------ mtnGoat This sentences stuck with me and clearly illustrates how screwed, unhuman, and selfish hiring is in this business "No one acknowledges the fact that in reality, you’re about to dedicate up to 5 working days on this task, with the potential for them to ghost you straight afterwards." I was ghosted by AirBNB once, and I'm fine with not being good enough, but no feedback and never a response was pretty freaking rude. You ask me to do a task, i put part of myself into do it, and then no response, ever. I'm glad they never responded, i don't want to work for a soulless company such as that. ------ milesdyson_phd The last take home thing I did, I put it up on GitHub with an MIT license (didn’t sign any NDAs/etc). I figured if there was a chance they would actually use it, might as well open source it for everyone. ------ SonOfLilit Don't found your startup based on the first idea you fall in love with. Don't found your startup based on the first idea you fall in love with. Don't found your startup based on the first idea you fall in love with. Make a list of attractive markets to play in, talk to a lot of insiders in those markets, choose three ideas out of at least 30 that you generated, put some serious work into validating their business models, _then_ let yourself fall in love with one and spend 10 years sweating to make it a reality. ------ maaaats I like the concept. I use Strava a lot for cycling, but it's not very good for non-cardio activities. Lots of people I follow also track their strength workouts on Strava, but I haven't done it myself as I find it hard to track progress when the system is not made for it. Before I have used Fitocracy, I'd say this may be the biggest competitor to this, as it is (at least 5 years ago when I used it) more tailored for strength, where one can log specific exercises and track them over time. ~~~ evanspa You should check out my strength tracking app, Riker: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/riker/id1196920730?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/riker/id1196920730?mt=8) [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rikerapp.r...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rikerapp.riker) ------ tqwhite One assumes that, now that you have told the world you got the idea there, that they will show up soon to claim your startup as their intellectual property. ------ wpietri Is this common? > I was told it was extremely close and that I should reapply in 12 months, It seems really weird to me to put this burden on the applicant. If someone is above the hiring bar but just got edged out, shouldn't they go into the bucket of people to contact as soon as there's an opening? And for designers at a place the size of Google, wouldn't that be much sooner than 12 months? ~~~ allenu I interviewed at Google and was told something similar. However, in their case they did reach out to me about 12 months later asking if I wanted to reapply. This was for a dev role though. ------ paulcole Biggest takeaway to me is that the candidate didn't do as asked because they thought they knew better. When someone asks you to do 3-5 hours of work, do that. If it's obvious you spent DAYS on this, what does that tell me as the interviewer/recruiter? I have no idea if this person can follow instructions and I have no idea what this person can do in 3-5 hours. ------ phendrenad2 A lot of people are saying they declined to continue interviewing after receiving a take-home programming assignment that was too difficult to do in the expected timeframe. I wonder if the better tactic would be to simply tell the recruiter that it's too difficult, and see what the company says. ------ adamredwoods In regards to a lot of talk about unfair pre-interview "projects", I highly recommend everyone ASK for an interview before working on the assignment, or if the assignment is short enough, work on-site, and request a code review in person. ------ neilv > _with a weeks notice and advised that we should spend no more that 3–5 hours > on the task (wink, wink)_ Was Google wink-winking, or is there a well-known practice of ignoring a real time limit, or is the writer imagining a wink-wink? ------ ppcdeveloper Product looks good. I have been working on an app like this but haven't had the time to complete (only time for wire frames, research and other peoples stuff). It's good to see what should be. ------ brailsafe Looks like the visual style of the most brand materials were _heavily_ inspired by [https://css-tricks.com/](https://css-tricks.com/) ------ neilv This isn't typical startup origin story IP OPSEC. Aren't you supposed to say the idea came to you in the shower, the day after you and a couple coworkers quit your jobs? ------ cyberfart I love metrics that are essentially irrelevant but sound very cool like "our BETA users have burned two million calories collectively and lifted 500,000 tonnes". ------ ppcdeveloper This is nice. I've been working on something like this for a while but never finished(only time to build mocks and gather research). Good to see what could be. ------ john_borkowski How did you get your first 5000 users? Was it word of mouth, or did you do any specific marketing? I am currency confounded by how people get users to sign up to products pre- launch. ------ fendy3002 Seems like, if somehow your startu is a successful one, google can just buy your company. Win win ------ nojvek Hahaha. TLDR: Google asked a designer take home question. Candidate did a phenomenal job. Google still rejected candidate. Candidate turned the take home assignment into a real startup. Just goes to say how much the industry sucks at evaluating candidates in general. This would have been a phenomenal candidate. ------ judge2020 I guess grudges aren't held, but I do find it humorous that even after being rejected, the product's website "tona.fit" uses GSuite. ------ eruci That's awesome! Working for yourself is also more rewarding in the long run. Keep your eyes open for more interview question ideas. ------ djohnston i love this. so many companies try to get free work out of interviewees, nice to see tables turned ------ baskint Great story - well done! ------ ignoramous A lot of people don't realise it but a lot of the tasks you do for you employer could very well have been a startup. There's a reason your employer has you working on those problems: They know what their clients want. Cisco is famous for funding startups by its fromer employees that satisfy their client wants. Google might be trying something similar with Area120? Being successful at startups is although an entirely different matter, and I guess that's why most people don't take up the opportunity. The paychecks are golden handcuffs, for some. I think, these pg essays are relevant: [http://paulgraham.com/before.html](http://paulgraham.com/before.html) > _The component of entrepreneurship that really matters is domain expertise. > The way to become Larry Page was to become an expert on search. And the way > to become an expert on search was to be driven by genuine curiosity, not > some ulterior motive._ ... > _At its best, starting a startup is merely an ulterior motive for > curiosity._ ... [http://paulgraham.com/start.html](http://paulgraham.com/start.html) > _...you don 't need a brilliant idea to start a startup around. The way a > startup makes money is to offer people better technology than they have now. > But what people have now is often so bad that it doesn't take brilliance to > do better._ ... > _The best odds are in niche markets. Since startups make money by offering > people something better than they had before, the best opportunities are > where things suck most. And it would be hard to find a place where things > suck more than in corporate IT departments. You would not believe the amount > of money companies spend on software, and the crap they get in return. This > imbalance equals opportunity._ > _If you want ideas for startups, one of the most valuable things you could > do is find a middle-sized non-technology company and spend a couple weeks > just watching what they do with computers. Most good hackers have no more > idea of the horrors perpetrated in these places than rich Americans do of > what goes on in Brazilian slums._ > _Start by writing software for smaller companies, because it 's easier to > sell to them. It's worth so much to sell stuff to big companies that the > people selling them the crap they currently use spend a lot of time and > money to do it. And while you can outhack Oracle with one frontal lobe tied > behind your back, you can't outsell an Oracle salesman. So if you want to > win through better technology, aim at smaller customers._ ~~~ naveen99 sorry for being offtopic: i see you list people you follow in your profile. Are you using a 3rd party service to follow them, or using the hn api yourself ? ------ Zenbit_UX I recently went through an interview with a company posting on HN and was shocked by their challenge. They provided their current UI (barebones dashboard) as well as instructions to launch the backend server locally and requested I upgrade their UI to include a side panel for filtering a data table. The task itself wasn't difficult, but the realization that these scum bags wanted me to upgrade their current product under the guise of a challenge. I instantly knew this wouldn't be a company I'd want to work for even if they did provide an offer. ~~~ hdfbdtbcdg Are you sure it was the latest version of their product? Asking someone to do a task that you have recently done could be a really good code test. ~~~ Zenbit_UX They had given me a live demo of their product on a call beforehand, so I know they didn't have this. They wanted me to design a feature they didn't have yet on their current product. ~~~ grogenaut If they had paid you for your time would it have been ok? ~~~ entropicdrifter Depends on if you're happy just being a hired gun instead of an employee. The real problem is that they've broken the social contract implicit in the interviewing process, which is that the work you're doing is only to prove yourself and that they won't benefit by it except to be able to gauge your skills. If instead they had been honest up-front that they wanted to hire you short term as a trial period type thing with the possibility of hiring you as a full employee down the line, that would be fair. ~~~ DoofusOfDeath Not worthwhile, but it would have been interesting if you'd completed the project and included some telltale sign that you'd authored the code. Then, if you found they'd deployed it without you having granted them a right to use your copyrighted work, you'd have an interesting basis for a lawsuit. ~~~ WrtCdEvrydy I would have sent it from a public Github repo. That's what I usually do with code challenges! ------ sonnyblarney Looks great! ------ p0nce Easier to create a software company than work for one. ~~~ leesec Nope. ~~~ p0nce Try it and see for yourself.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Waving goodbye to Google - on the exodus of Wave engineers - michaelneale http://rethrick.com/#waving-goodbye ====== plinkplonk Some interesting observations there e.g: "Here is something you've may have heard but never quite believed before: Google's vaunted scalable software infrastructure is obsolete. Don't get me wrong, their hardware and datacenters are the best in the world, and as far as I know, nobody is close to matching it. But the software stack on top of it is 10 years old, aging and designed for building search engines and crawlers. And it is well and truly obsolete. Protocol Buffers, BigTable and MapReduce are ancient, creaking dinosaurs compared to MessagePack, JSON, and Hadoop. And new projects like GWT, Closure and MegaStore are sluggish, overengineered Leviathans compared to fast, elegant tools like jQuery and mongoDB. Designed by engineers in a vacuum, rather than by developers who have need of tools." _if_ true, this is a strong indicator that Google is well and truly a BigCo now. Everyone expects a company of Google's size to have its share of politics and crappy middle managers and so on, but this is the first time that I've heard a Google engineer (ok an ex Google engineer) say that its _software_ is bloated and ugly (and more importantly, not getting fixed - see the bits on the rewards structure encouraging territoriality leading to rejection of patches.) Mind blowing. ~~~ chuhnk Yea so the infrastructure comments really shocked me but it makes complete sense. They had to do massive scaling early on and a lot of what they use now is from that era. I can imagine even at google they have some sort of "if its not broken dont fix it" mentality. There is a reason why megastore is sluggish right? Its tries to uphold CAP theorem across datacenters and because of that write performance suffers.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Groundbreaking Study Shows Shielding EMF Improves Autoimmune Disease in 90% - mhkool https://www.greenmedinfo.health/blog/groundbreaking-study-shows-shielding-emf-improves-autoimmune-disease ====== felixyz Very mixed bag of the sources, several that look less than scientifically viable at a first glance (not judging whether they may have value along other dimensions). Others look more thorough/mainstream, like the very first one [0]. It would be interesting if someone who knows something about the field could evaluate how much this is worth paying attention to. [0] [https://mpkb.org/home/publications/heil_immunologic_2016](https://mpkb.org/home/publications/heil_immunologic_2016) EDIT: Wait, is this a trolling/hoax paper? 'A case series of 64 patient- reported outcomes subsequent to use of a silver-threaded cap designed to protect the brain and brain stem from microwave Electrosmog resulted in 90 % reporting "definite" or "strong" changes in their disease symptoms.' I should have checked first, this is posted on the author's own page. Here's someone assessing his ideas: [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-marshal- protocol/](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-marshal-protocol/) ------ karlh This article looks like nonsense. The idea that the silver-threaded garments seemed so credible that use of a control group was deemed unethical, for example, is silly. This appears to be pseudoscientific blather.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Four communication hacks that help me survive as an introverted CEO - jorymackay http://blog.rescuetime.com/four-communication-hacks-that-help-me-survive-as-an-introverted-ceo/ ====== Top19 Man calling everything a “hack” really has to stop. What’s next, “six hacks that help a recovering alcoholic not also develop an opioid addiction”? The word has lost all meaning,	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord - timjahn http://www.fastcompany.com/1839465/how-airbnb-earned-me-20000-and-legal-action-from-my-landlord ====== hack_edu Again and again, people who use Airbnb to 'hack' the rental market get little sympathy from me when the chickens come to roost. If your landlord was interested in running a tenement home/boarding house/hotel, they wouldn't sign you into a year-long lease. Also, and I know this has been hashed out before on these comment threads but he's grossing $30k a year on the back of his landlord. The landlord has every right to be upset and take action. The author of the post seems shocked that he's in violation of anything. Perhaps he'd like to share excerpts of his lease before he feigns such shock. Come on, the guy lives alone in a 3+ bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. We all know he signed that lease specifically to run a pseudo-hotel business under the guise of an Airbnb profile. He whines that he can't afford to live in the New York rental market without roommates; so get roommates or move somewhere cheaper. BTW, the author is a professional writer who (gasp!) has a brand new startup to plug. edit: It sounds like this guy has a sincere love for the experiences and newfound social life he's found when acting as an ambassador for his city. His heart is in the right place. He would make a great Couchsurfing host and probably make even greater, long-lasting relationships. ~~~ zefi "Come on, the guy lives alone in a 3+ bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. We all know he signed that lease specifically to run a pseudo-hotel business under the guise of an Airbnb profile." Categorically not true. Chris is a good friend, and he had a long term roommate until recently. He took on the lease because he knew they could cover rent whether or not the third room got let out. It is an amazing apartment in an awesome building, and his involvement in airbnb is not cynical or presumptuous. His listing was great value and he is an excellent host. I met him through airbnb and am incredibly grateful for it. So, try not to presume. ~~~ yequalsx The only part of your comment that is germane to the GP is that before his roommate left they could cover the rent without renting the third room. "Chris being a good friend" and "His listing was great value" are irrelevant. ~~~ calibraxis Lends credibility and helpfully lets us know bias. ------ subpixel Crazy: I had the same landlord. I drove by his management office on Box Street last week and saw it was turned into a hotel, and now I see the luxury lofts listed on Airbnb. He's not a normal landlord, he's a shark. He owns several dozen buildings, prefers paying fines to getting permission, and once had our whole building manned with thugs to prevent a city agency from entering the building and confirming that he was constructing a unit on the roof without a permit. He even connected several of his buildings' toilets and sinks directly to storm drainage pipes, dumping raw sewage straight into the creek (<http://bit.ly/L3f8Ey>). ~~~ roguecoder Those sorts of actions are what regulation was supposed to prevent. The current option, of crowd-sourcing information about possible lodging, wasn't previously possible. While we still need regulation to prevent the dumping of raw sewage, we could get so much more out of the space we have with decentralized, information-rich decision making. Plus, it's not like regulation has actually kept people like him from doing illegal things. As long as the punishment is "a fine" breaking the law is just another cost of doing business. If instead the government could evict him from his properties he might possible decide its worth following the law. ------ uptown So he's: 1\. Violated his lease. 2\. Documented exactly how much income he received during that violation. 3\. Probably thew up some red flags to ensure the IRS double-checks that he declares that income on his tax returns. And all of this before he finds out what the courts have to say about his actions. ~~~ drpgq I do wonder just how much Airbnb income isn't declared for tax purposes. ~~~ rprasad Hopefully none, since Airbnb reports the income it pays out on Form 1099. ~~~ rprasad Of all the comments I made today, this was the one I least expected to be downvoted... ------ debacle Title should read "How using AirBnB without first consulting my lease earned me $20,000 and a restraining order from my landlord." ~~~ msrpotus But people violate leases in little ways all the time. As long as the renters didn't cause any additional problems, I don't see what the big deal is. ~~~ maratd It's not up to you to determine what is a "little" thing and what's a "big" thing. It's up to the people who signed the contract. Apparently, the landlord thinks it's a big thing. In fact, I never met a landlord who didn't. They always verbally specified that I am not to run a boarding house, on top of it being in the lease. Probably because I was a college kid and well, rent to a college kid and you get a boarding house ... ~~~ deelowe Actually, it's because the landlord could get sued or even end up going to jail due to stuff you did if his contract doesn't protect him from issues resulting from the sublease. The #1 concern with being a landlord is liability. ------ heliodor In general, I'd have to agree this is a clear violation of his lease and doesn't deserve sympathy, but have you guys seen the piles and piles of legalese in these New York City leases? The lease _itself_ doesn't deserve sympathy! For example, my lease last year from a private landlord even stipulated I'm not allowed to go to court and must use arbitration instead. I didn't think through it well, but next time I'll know better. It didn't become an issue though. ~~~ fleitz See a clause like that would be handy in a case like this, no restraining order because the landlord can't use the court. ~~~ heliodor New York is considered much friendlier towards renters than most other places. It's generally agreed(?) arbitration favors the repeat customer (the business) because why would you bite the hand that feeds you? So, I'd say arbitration is not as good as it sounds from a first glance. Does anyone have any insight to cast on this whole arbitration system? ------ nsxwolf The more I think about this and how it impacts me as a landlord, I am starting to see Airbnb as (warning: the following analogy is not perfect) the Napster of lodging. I think they'd better step up and become the iTunes of lodging in this regard, before more news stories like this start creating a rift between landlords and Airbnb. ~~~ cube13 I don't think it's that much of an issue, really. The problem isn't on Airbnb's end. It's on the renters that are giving up their rental property without examining the contracts that they signed. Airbnb could probably be treated the same as subletting or renting out the property, so any clauses in the lease/association contracts that covers that should cover Airbnb. The important thing for you, as a landlord, should be to make this clear on the contract. Whether it's increasing the deposit or rent if the renter wants to open up the property to Airbnb-like usage or just not allowing it period, it should be clear in the contract. EDIT: Airbnb actually does state this in their terms of service: >Accordingly, you represent and warrant that any Listing you post and the booking of, or Guest stay at, an Accommodation in a Listing you post (i) will not breach any agreements you have entered into with any third parties and (ii) will (a) be in compliance with all applicable laws, Tax requirements, and rules and regulations that may apply to any Accommodation included in a Listing you post, including, but not limited to, zoning laws and laws governing rentals of residential and other properties and (b) not conflict with the rights of third parties ~~~ nsxwolf Sure, but why not actively reach out to landlords (and city governments, etc)? Wouldn't it be better for Airbnb and everyone else if both (a) and (b) became less likely to be impediments? I am in a fairly rare position where I'm feeling that I would actually be receptive to advocacy (and I'm a very stubborn person), but nobody's advocating anything to me yet. I feel like a music publisher in the year 2000 saying "Great idea! What would you like to see in a downloadable music service?" ~~~ cube13 What can Airbnb do? They're not a party to any agreement that a landlord has with their tenants, and I don't think they want that. You're a landlord. You mentioned in another thread here that you have a strict "no subletting" clause in your contracts with your renters. What could Airbnb do to change your mind? Nothing, I would wager. They don't offer insurance to their client hosts, so they're definitely not going to assist with your insurance. ~~~ nsxwolf They could advocate for making a "no subletting" clause less restrictive, and show some data, or at least give a rationale for why I'd want to do that. I'm totally willing to change my mind. In fact, I'll probably take that step on my own when I rewrite my lease. I would just like to know other people's opinions on best practices instead of taking a shot in the dark, and Airbnb seems uniquely positioned to come up with something. What would be bad is for stories like this to create a backlash from landlords against Airbnb and reduce the usefulness of the concept. ------ nostromo If they're throwing the book at you -- throw it right back. Tell your landlord that you're going to find the hotel closest to your apartment and show up with printouts of their newest illegal competitor: your landlord. It sucks to get the government involved with these disputes, but he opened the door. ~~~ njharman Why do you imagine landlord would be illegal competitor? Also, petty retaliation against someone exercising their legal right to enforce contract is morally suspect. Bordering on sociopathic. ~~~ nostromo New York hotels are highly regulated. I'm making the assumption that the landlord doesn't have the right permits (and isn't paying the taxes) to run a hotel. The point is there are no clean actors here. A landlord running an illegal hotel and a renter that broke their lease. But thanks for calling me a sociopath. ;) ------ webjprgm Almost every rental agreement I've ever signed disallows sub-letting. They also have rules about having people come to stay (as roommates, rather than as sublessee.) no sympathy whatsoever. Now why did the landlord decide to list rooms him/herself? That's interesting. Could Airbnb become a way for small-business hotels to book rooms? Generally landlords don't want short-term tenants for various reasons. I wonder if the Airbnb idea, which plays on the social aspect of borrowing an individual's house vs. dealing with an dispassionate corporate entity, enables leasing of smaller properties to work. If that's the case, then a landlord seeking to run Airbnb listings to turn a few rooms in an apartment complex into a hotel might eventually run into trouble if this kind of arrangement becomes common on Airbnb, since then you lose the social aspect that was making the tenants well-behaved. With tenants who might abuse the property a small apartment landlord probably would not want to deal with them. Maybe an enterprising landlord could put in a clause claiming 50% (or more) of the revenues from Airbnb if any tenant chooses to use it. In fact, maybe the OP should offer such an arrangement to the landlord as a settlement and thus be able to remove the restraining order and continue making some profit. ------ jack-r-abbit It isn't exactly clear but it seems this person has violated terms of his lease. So I'm not sure what is the issue here. Is he looking for sympathy? Or just warning others to look at their lease agreement before starting down this path? ~~~ planetguy Nope, it's just a story. And a taste of things to come vis a vis the future of airbnb and similar services. I have no sympathy for this guy, and I have the greatest sympathy for his landlord. I'd be annoyed if anyone started using my rental property as a hotel due to the greater wear and tear; in fact, this is semi-common in the area where I own rental property so I keep an eye out for the possibility when selecting tenants. ~~~ Karunamon >wear and tear You charge $1200 to rent a dwelling out. It's $1200 flat. Whether 1 person @ 1200 or 3 people at @ 400 each. How do you somehow accrue more nebulous "wear and tear" from a temporary visitor than you would from a second lessee? It's still no more than two people at once. ~~~ blafro This is not necessarily true. Some people rent out the living room couch as well as the spare bedroom. Besides in the second lessee case, the landlord at least gets to vet the second person. ~~~ Karunamon Vetting only lessens the chance of catastrophic damage from an idiot tenant, though. It does nothing to mitigate wear and tear. That was what my now- masisvely-downvoted point was. The "wear and tear" argument is on pretty shaky ground. ~~~ jack-r-abbit The wear and tear argument was not made along with a vetting argument. Vetting is one issue. Wear and tear is another issue. There is some ground between the perfect tenant and the idiot who burns a place down. There are all those people in the middle that go about their lives and little things happen. But have you ever heard the saying "drive it like its a rental"? People will naturally be slightly more careful with things they own or have a direct responsibility to take care of. The more people you have using a space that are not directly responsible for its care, the more likely those little things will happen. We're not talking about the catastrophic damage. We're talking about things like the extra nicks in the banister caused by someone dragging their suitcase up the stairs. When you have a new person dragging their suitcase up (and then back down) the stairs once a week, the chances for additional nicks goes up. Eventually all those little things start to build up. And it is pretty easy for a one of those rotating guests that caused a little more damage to just move along since its not their apartment building. People who live there and have a responsibility for the place (and coincidentally have been vetted) are more likely to notify the landlord to get it corrected. ------ darylteo Huh... I thought there are usually clauses regarding "subletting" when signing a rental lease? At least where I am anyway, "subletting" is generally frowned on. ~~~ nsxwolf I'm a landlord. The language in the lease I use clearly stipulates no subletting. There are very good reasons for this. I did a background check on my tenant, not every possible person my tenant may randomly hand the keys over to, unsupervised. It's really not the same thing as having guests over. That said, I'm not opposed to including some kind of pro-Airbnb language in my next lease. This is new territory so I don't know what it should be. A larger security deposit? A cut of the proceeds? ~~~ fleitz The room is free, but the breakfast costs $150 :) ~~~ khuey Coincidentally, exchanging food for money is also highly regulated in most developed countries. ------ hangnail_lobby Last time I used AirBNB, I rented an apartment, and 1 hr after I arrived the landlord showed up banging on the apartment door, furious, threatening to call the police. Thankfully, my social skills calmed her down, but now the apartment leasee (lessee?) is knee deep in legal matters. Clearly the lessee broke the lease, however I'm sure she didn't really understand so at the time. AirBNB needs to be much clearer in the listing process of the possibility and legal ramifications of violating one's lease. Especially since it ends up hurting not just the people listing apartments, and apartment owners, but also AirBNB customers who trust the listings on the service to be legitimate and lawful. ------ yardie Oh boy, I wonder if this guys knows what he's up against tomorrow (7th, June). If he's lucky the landlord will just tell him not to do it again. If not they'll be allowed to rip up the lease; now he's got 2 problems. ------ engtech I wonder if the IRS will ever start targetingthe more popular AirBnd profiles. I imagine most people do not declare the income, and $20k a year is significant revenue. ~~~ ari_ Why would you imagine that? It's all there.. AirBNB issues a 1099 <http://www.airbnb.com/help/question/122>. ------ user49598 _"which in the pricey New York rental market is tantamount to eviction"_ Running a hostel in your apt for extra cash doesn't help that situation. You're just contributing to driving rent up even further. ------ yuhong Photo of restraining order: [https://twitter.com/chrisdannen/status/209798659473285121/ph...](https://twitter.com/chrisdannen/status/209798659473285121/photo/1/large) ------ subpixel Crazy: I had the same landlord. I drove by his management office on Box Street last week and saw it was turned into a hotel, and now I see the luxury lofts listed on Airbnb. ------ Fizzadar On the plus side of it all; $20,000 still earned! Not surprising landlords have caught on either, a good warning to anyone else selling their spare rooms. ~~~ khuey After taxes, legal costs, and the slight risk of getting evicted, $20,000 is not that much money.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Finally,an Alternative to QR Code - ruchir_21hj http://mashable.com/2014/01/09/qr-code-clickable-paper/?utm_campaign=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss&utm_reader=feedly ====== trebor Alternative? There's no visible way that the data is embedded in the ad which is being scanned, none that I can see, so the only way is to have the ad recognized via image comparison. Oh boy. Better, perhaps, but alternative? Nope.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook adds translate button on the news feed to users updates - ArabGeek http://arabcrunch.com/2011/08/exclusive-facebook-adds-translate-button-on-the-news-feed-to-users-updates.html ====== ArabGeek Facebook copied Google Translate for Google+ that translate updates on google+. facebook translate button seems to be using bing as an engine.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What happened to OCaml? - modulow I seem to hear so much on HN about most of the other "popular" FP languages, but haven't heard much about OCaml lately. Haskell, Clojure, Scala, CL, Scheme, etc. all get their due, but OCaml has always been my choice. ====== gjvc Here's one place you might be surprised to see it in action: <http://www.janestcapital.com/technology/ocaml.php>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
.Net Core Is the Most Loved Framework on StackOverflow Dev Survey - bishala https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-other-frameworks-libraries-and-tools ====== willio58 Wow, I only hear bad things about .Net. Goes to show the bubble of engineers I find myself in. ~~~ aliswe .NET is very different today from what is was 10+ years ago. Although not without its warts, a very nice field.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
95% of ATMs use COBOL, but where are the new COBOL programmers? - benballjr https://thenewstack.io/cobol-everywhere-will-maintain/ ====== daly My first programming job was in COBOL. I don't even list it on my resume. I taught a class in COBOL at UConn a long time ago. The IBM mainframe instruction set is a practically perfect target for compiled COBOL. As I recall, the 'translate and test' instruction has a COBOL counterpart. And the PIC format is very clever. All in all, a nice language for business-related record processing. COBOL is one of the easier languages to learn but I have yet to see a job ad for a COBOL programmer.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Austrian plane search for leaker Snowden enrages Bolivia - ignostic http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/03/us-usa-security-snowden-idUSBRE9610C520130703 ====== venomsnake That is a frakking act of war ... wtf. Seems like US is writing blank checks to all other countries in the pursuit of Snowden. How low can this administration go? ------ laumars I'm a little confused why the Presidents life was put at risk. Is there tensions between Austrian and Bolivia? Or was that bit of the article added for sensationalist reasons? edit: it looks like the comments about the the Bolivian presidents life being at risk has now been taken off, and in it's place comments about Austrian and Bolivia having good relations. So I guess that answers my question.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The UK "Porn" Filter Blocks Kids' Access To Tech, Civil Liberties Websites - gts http://bsdly.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-uk-porn-filter-blocks-kids-access.html ====== citricsquid There are many ISPs in England. One of these ISPs is called O2. A service that O2 offers is a whitelist only internet service designed for parents to enable if they wish to give their young children access to a mobile device without concern for the content that the child can access. This whitelist has existed for many many years. This has __nothing__ to do with the UK "Porn filter". Absolutely, categorically... nothing. Here is a screenshot of one of the actual filters recently implemented (by an ISP called BT) with new accounts defaulting to the "Light" pre-set, which customers must opt out of: [http://i.imgur.com/dWxORfJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/dWxORfJ.png) ~~~ gts Although it is not The 'porn' filter itself as promoted by the goverment, it is the exact same thing, under the exact same logic, as implemented by the ISP instead of having been forced by the goverment. So when the legislation comes into effect the particular ISPs will already be compliant with it and the ones currently not having any such filters will have to set them up. Does changing the settings in BT require any passport details, sex details or UK driving licence number? Also is blocked access to filtered content limited to the content providers the ISP has a commercial relationship with? Reason for asking is the above applies for the Giff Gaff network(running on top of O2) if you want to have the filter lifted. [http://i.imgur.com/Y3BEKEU.png](http://i.imgur.com/Y3BEKEU.png) What is sad is that Giff Gaff is supposed to be run by it's own users(i.e. like a cooperative) yet checking at the forums this change was unannounced. Furthermore people that do not have a UK passport or driving licence but live in the UK simply can't lift the filter... [http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Submit-Great-giffgaff- Ideas...](http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Submit-Great-giffgaff-Ideas/Adult- content-unlocking-I-am-not-a-UK-passport-holder-and-I-don/idi-p/7375928) Curiously the URL I was blocked on was a link in the WayBackMachine for a biography of Alfred Bester(sci-fi writer) [http://web.archive.org/web/20120722084039/http://www.empmuse...](http://web.archive.org/web/20120722084039/http://www.empmuseum.org/exhibitions/index.asp?articleID=922) ~~~ citricsquid > it is the exact same thing, under the exact same logic, as implemented by > the ISP instead of having been forced by the goverment No it isn't. That is an optional opt in feature available to customers of O2. A customer has to explicitly opt for the Under 12 filter to be applied to their account. O2 do have an adult content filter that is enabled by default (which requires identity verification to disable) but that does not block access to tech and civil liberty websites, it blocks access to pornography, it is not what this article talks about. There are 2 filters, adult content (default on O2 accounts), U12 (opt in). This article uses the filter status of websites on the U12 list (a whitelist) that has existed for many years and has nothing to do with the government as evidence that the government filter is oppressing children. They have no connection. I get it, this country wide opt-out filter requirement is bad and it shouldn't be happening, I agree, but whining about something that has nothing to do with it makes absolutely no sense. The O2 U12 filter is fundamentally different, it's an __optional extra __customers can __opt in __to. This article has nothing to do with the "porn filter". Nothing! ~~~ gts First of all, it is about blocking by default and opting out(as you mention yourself at least for O2 before editing it to 'opt in', furthemore different providers provide either in or out by default). Then if you look at the img you posted yourself at [http://i.imgur.com/dWxORfJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/dWxORfJ.png) you will see that it is not only about pornography but a dozen other things including areas such as 'Obscene and Tasteless'(?). The government's job making a law of(and therefore enforcing) the above is easy to justify under the rationale that this thing existed for years(with a few specific ISPs). Now everyone will have to do it, and on top of that it will be the government that will be defining what is 'Obscene and Tasteless' as opposed to a mere ISP. I understand what you mean too, but my disagreement genuinely has to do with me seeing that both filtering schemes are identical to each other and have the same purpose and effect. Both are opt-out and both do not have to do with pornography only. I sincerely do not see how these can be different. ~~~ citricsquid > Both are opt-out and both do not have to do with pornography only. I > sincerely do not see how these can be different. No they are not. The filtering scheme covered in the submission is the Under 12 O2 filter, that is a filter designed for parents to enable (it's opt in, not opt out) when they wish to give their children access to a mobile device. That filter scheme uses a whitelist, every single website is blocked by default until a person at O2 adds it to the whitelist. This service has existed for many many years and has absolutely nothing to do with the government, it's a feature that O2 added for their customers. O2 do also operate a porn filter, but it is not what this article talks about, it does not block tech articles and civil liberty websites. The article that you have submitted is FUD. Read this: [http://news.o2.co.uk/2013/12/24/parental-control- questions-a...](http://news.o2.co.uk/2013/12/24/parental-control-questions- answered/) ~~~ gts Sorry but in your original post you specified opt-in. In any event, different providers are either opt-in or opt-out, O2 is not the only ISP in UK and the link you share is just the boilerplate text on O2's parental controls policy, so what? I feel I explained my rationale and there can be no more constructive conversation in the particular thread. As for the article being FUD, sorry darling I guess we'll have to disagree on this one. ------ guelo Looking from afar, this type of debate is becoming more interesting to me as a recent parent and as a strong anti-censorship type. As of now I'm thinking that I'll never block my kid from looking at any kind of content. If she happens to come across some nudity or sex and she has questions about it I'll be open and honest and explain it. Life is sex, sex is why we exist, sex is beautiful and sacred. I hope my daughter will have great sex someday, why hide it from her now? The impulse that so many parents have to hide sex from their kids seems like their brain damage that they want to pass on to their kids. And impose it on mine. Their line of thinking is what I wish I could hide from my daughter. But I won't. She'll be exposed to it along with all the other ugly and beautiful things in the real world. ~~~ RiderOfGiraffes > As of now I'm thinking that I'll never block my kid from > looking at any kind of content. If she happens to come across > some nudity or sex and she has questions about it I'll be open > and honest and explain it. There's some really, _really_ nasty stuff out there. _Really_ nasty stuff. Not just people having sex, but some brutal stuff that a medic friend of mine says gave him significant nightmares for some days. It's not just about nudity and sex. If it were I'd be less ambivalent. As it is I feel that you're being a bit naive. ~~~ Gracana > It's not just about nudity and sex. Agreed. Even the "just sex" vanilla porn is pretty unhealthy for children to see. That way leads to a skewed and unrealistic expectations and understanding of relationships, sex, and bodies. ~~~ randomdata Media in general gives you skewed and unrealistic expectations about all facets of life. What is special about porn? ~~~ andrewflnr It's more so. Anyway that's an argument for restricting other media until the kid is ready, not letting them see porn. ------ jamesbrownuhh Ridiculous article. Firstly there is no single "UK Porn Filter". Each ISP does their own thing in their own way. Secondly, the writer of this article is apparently surprised that none of the sites they're checking are on a WHITELIST of websites for children under 12, and concluding from this that "The UK Porn Filter Blocks Kids' Access To Tech ... Websites", etc. That's such a complete misunderstanding of the true situation that it's impossible to believe it has been made in error. Drawing the conclusion from this, as some of the article's commenters have, that "the UK Government must really hate open source" is a level of stupidity that has no place on HN. Make no mistake about what the (non-existent) "UK Porn Filter" is - it's a political stunt from the right-wingers currently in power. As yet it has no legal basis or enforcement and is just a "strong suggestion" from politicians to private businesses. There are ISPs who don't engage in this filtering, and even for those that do, it is not mandatory. (The "on by default" is something that even the compliant ISPs said they would not do, and the politicians announced it anyway. Even where it is implemented and on by default that is only for NEW customers, and the "do you want this filter" question is part of the initial setup.) I'm strongly opposed to filtering and censorship too, and as I've said before, publicity-seeking politicians wanting to display their "family values" by getting big businesses to "voluntarily" introduce such filtering IS the thin end of the wedge. But, at least now, it's still optional and voluntary, and you absolutely have the freedom to sign up with an ISP who offers no such filter, if you wish to take that stand. (The UK broadband market is pretty open compared to other countries - you're not restricted to one or two ISPs based on your location or phone company, in most cases you can pick any ISP you want to provide you with a service.) ------ topbanana This is nothing to do with what he dubs the 'Nanny Tory' initiative. O2's parental controls is an opt-in whitelist. Only sites like Disney.com etc are allowed. It is presumably intended for when children are left alone with devices like tablets. Seems like a useful service to me. ~~~ hdevalence I don't really see what's so useful about giving parents tools to block their children from accessing sites like Childline. ~~~ cases You should bookmark this so you can come back and laugh at yourself when you have kids of your own. ~~~ M2Ys4U You do know what Childline is, right? It's a counselling service run by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that deals with child abuse, teenage pregnancy, bullying etc. As a parent, why would you want to block that?! I know I wouldn't. ------ dcc1 UK has turned into an Orwellian surveillance state (I live in Ireland) Hell I am watching news now and they are about to setup a centralised database of every woman who got breast implants, you couldn't make this shit up! ------ Theodores Here is the truth - watch too much porn and you get erectile dysfunction: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU) Why did it take me decades to find someone able to present that reasonably plausible reason as to why I should definitely not want to watch porn under any circumstances whatsoever? The argument (with science) in the above TED talk is that if you do watch a lot of porn then you are not going to aroused by real women as much as you should, leading to unsatisfactory bedroom performances. Yep, porn is actually that dangerous. I might not care for the traditional 'don't watch porn because it is porn'/'think of the children'/'porn exploits women' arguments, however, I do have enlightened self interest and loss of libido is so not what I want to have. If I was in the UK government I would want to get this message out to kids in schools, not to scare them away from porn for the sake of it, but because they deserve to have 'normal', happy sexual health. By censoring porn they are not going to get this message, in fact they will be further away from it than they are now, doing what they can to get the 'forbidden fruit' instead of knowing why they just should not bother. Instead of censoring they could have demanded that there be a banner on the pages of porn sites warning that use of porn leads to erectile dysfunction. This would be a proactive move, no harder to get into law than that stupid 'this site uses cookies' directive. They could get the ISPs to do it so porn from outer Mongolia would be suitably warned of too. We have had a block on mobiles in the UK for some time now. There were no riots in the streets because of this, people are fine with it. The ISPs can take the block off for people and the system just works. This new move is an extension of what we already have, not some Orwell-nightmare-slippery slope thing. The politicians will get their votes, some people will grumble but that will be it. ~~~ SquareWheel Two things. 1\. This is a TEDx talk, not a TED talk. Very different. TED talks are given by experts, TEDx can be anybody who has something to say. 2\. The science in this talk felt shaky at best. And frankly, from spending even a short period looking into Gary Wilson and his website yourbrainonporn.com, he comes off as an anti-porn conspiracy nut. I think you need to apply more skepticism to the argument. ~~~ Theodores Points taken. However his talk was the first time that dots were connected for me in a way that made sense to me. I am far from against banning porn, however, in certain situations some people can get addicted to porn. They may not be physically addicted as per heroin addiction, however, some addiction to porn has crept up on a couple of friends, to have a negative effect on their relationships. At the time I lacked anything helpful to say, a warning that 'erectile dysfunction' is the result of porn addiction might have made things easier. There are lots of people on the lecture circuit that go on and on and on about one thing. Dawkins is a bit like that, he irritates the hell out of me. Yet, despite his presentation, he is correct. There are others that have the opinion that porn has a negative effect on male libido, Gary Wilson does actually quote some science in his talk. ------ gts Original poster here, in my opinion the best article I've found online so far showcasing clearly the effects of the so called 'porn' filter, and that it is not at all about safety but control. The list of websites blocked and the nature of the websites is just shocking. ------ tombrossman This was submitted at least twice last week, does anyone have the link to the original that was on the front page 6 days ago? There were some useful comments. My search skills are failing me righ tnow and all I've found is this one from 5 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6954463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6954463) ------ Istof The great firewall of UK. ------ hipsters_unite Even if it's not actually the 'porn law' itself that's causing this (rather O2's blocklist it seems) - the fact is that it's the same attitudes and discourse underlying both. Both are censorship and both are maintained and supported by the government's position and policies. ~~~ DanBC Customers ask their ISP to supply a blocklist. The ISP supplies a blocklist. This is what companies should be doing, no? ~~~ dijit yes, the article is confused about opt-in censorship as a service (for parents, demo tablets at supermarkets etc;) vs opt-out censorship. I gave a scathing comment last time about the ramifications of opt-out censorship, but in my examples of it working properly opt-in was singled out as being ideal. FYI, this opt-in filter has been around a few years, I dislike that it also filters explicitly pornographic sites unless you call in (yes, I had o2, yes, I tried) but that seems to have been the norm with a few cellular phone providers (such as T-Mobile). the thinking is probably along the lines of: "We give sim cards away for free, we don't know who will use them, internet costs very little, we should probably stop the worst stuff just in case of complaints"; contracts are instantly unblocked and the same goes for broadband (because getting a contract means you must be over 18 anyway), at that point it's the responsibility of the contract holder to filter internet for any under-age people on the line. well, that's how it was, the way it's going is... slightly different. ~~~ scholia Yes, "this opt-in filter has been around a few years" \-- since 2008 -- and it's not even specifically British. It was announced by TELEFÓNICA and covers "O2 businesses in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and the Czech Republic". [http://pressoffice.telefonica.com/documentos/nprensa/PR0808_...](http://pressoffice.telefonica.com/documentos/nprensa/PR0808_Child_Protection_Press_Pack.pdf) ------ CraigJPerry Opt in or opt out filter. It makes no difference. Blocking of these sites should be opposed, loudly. ~~~ alan_cx Absolute complete ignorant arrogant rubbish. First, an opt out is a declaration of perversion or subversion. And opt in is a genuine choice, which IMHO, should be available. IMHO, every router in a home should have in its config a tick box which concerned parents can tick if they want to. Along side that should be an "advanced" button or link for more knowledgeable parents to tailor the the filter as they see fit. In a home parents should have an _easy_ way to chose. And dont give me nonsense about installing firewalls and what not. That is way out of most normal people's scope. Even I can't be arsed with that, so I dont see why some single mum who works in a supermarket should either. I also think there should be a simple system for parents to control mobile devices for their kids too. Not hard to work out something reasonable. While I despise national and ISP level blanket filters and censorship, I fully respect the choices parents might want to take. I have 6 kids, aged 2 - 20, but personally dont and wont filter or censor. However, I am not arrogant enough to tell other parents what to do. I might be very wrong. Look, on one level I do not want censorship. If I, as an adult, want to watch porn I dont see why I should be humiliated to do so. However, I also see that parents are left in the shit and are expected to be responsible, but have no help to be so. And no, its not good enough for hackers to offer hacker solutions that are not practical for anyone other than hackers. There has to be a reasonable balance here. And I say it comes in the form of a simple tick box in the router. Either that, of we agree to free parents of parental responsibility in both law and society. ~~~ CraigJPerry So Alan, I resent ignorant but i'm definitely arrogant enough to tell you when you're misguided. "opt in is a genuine choice"; it all boils down to this, opt in to what exactly? We _have no idea_ and noone is accountable for the list. Given this, it makes no difference whether it's an opt in or an opt out. It should be opposed, loudly. Whether you think these sites are unsuitable for consumption by your kids, it really doesn't matter. Whether you think a tick box on a router is not hard to work out. Whether you think that'd be a reasonable balance (maybe it would). Whether you think the only 2 options are "give me my tick box" or "absolve parental responsibility", it's all by-the-bye; in today's situation. Because there's no accountability for this hidden list. There's no checks or balances. My opinions on list content, like yours, don't mean much in this context. There's a bigger problem to deal with first and it's nothing to do with what sites are on the list. FWIW my personal view, I'm less convinced these days that there even "has to be a balance". The internet is fundamentally a pull medium, not push (despite advertisers best efforts, i can still just drain the battery). So my current thinking leans heavily towards "you can always just choose not to use it". [1] "these sites": bsdly.net nuug.no usenix.org ukuug.org flossuk.org eff.org amnesty.org.uk slashdot.org linuxtoday.com nostarch.com blogspot.com arstechnica.com openbsd.org undeadly.org freebsd.org geekculture.com linux.com ------ xacaxulu Get ready for more and more of this sort of thing. Parents are too busy to raise their own children. Better let the government take care of that. Soma anyone? ------ PythonicAlpha It seams, that porn, crimes and terrorism are the honeypots of choice for the voters, to lead them into any form of surveillance and mind-control. ------ Allower Seems legit.. ------ acd Slippery slope of censorship. Censorship placed there by Bilderberg group kissing politicians. What is their real agenda? Map the politicians real group affiliations on nndb.org Hint the wierd ones almost always: Bilderbergroup, Altalfa, Council on foreign relations, Skull and Bones ~~~ markdown Seriously? On HN too?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Lavabit Update - njrc http://lavabit.com/? ====== ColinWright [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7784913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7784913)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Some Tesla workers still concerned at partially-reopened plant - MilnerRoute https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/05/16/0340222/some-tesla-workers-still-concerned-at-partially-reopened-plant ====== SpicyLemonZest Some people will be concerned for a long time. There's nothing wrong with that, the coronavirus is a concerning situation! But this article seems like a dishonest framing of the concern; it's trying its hardest to imply that something's wrong with Tesla in particular, even though the author doesn't seem to know of any flaws in their safety procedures. ------ new_realist Tesla has blatantly misrepresented the status of the factory to the county. It is actively making cars for export abroad, as seen on Pier 80. [https://tslaq.org/letter-from-the-saf-to-alameda-county- offi...](https://tslaq.org/letter-from-the-saf-to-alameda-county-officials/) ~~~ sjwright Given the fact that Elon has been completely open about the factory status on Twitter, it’s far more plausible than the County is blatantly misrepresenting their interactions with Tesla.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Gawker Media shuts Valleywag, offers Consumerist for sale - erickhill http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/11/12/briefly-gawker-media-shuts-valleywag-offers-consumerist-sale ====== ardit33 Nooo..... I actually like valleywag :( Sure it was nasty, and it was gossipy, and not journalism at all, but it was a lot more frank and honest than a bunch of other tech. blogs out there. ~~~ ojbyrne I loved valleywag and will miss it. My few appearances there have nothing to do with it. I just love the tabloid mentality, and my experiences living in Norcal screamed at me that it was ripe for that kind of approach. Oh well. ------ unalone Valleywag I was never fond of: it, along with Gawker, always seemed too deliberately nasty, without ever really being interesting. It's a shame about the Consumerist, though. It had some excellent articles. Still does, on occasion. ~~~ greyman >> too deliberately nasty Well said. I have nothing against tabloids per se, but I always felt that they just didn't know how to do it properly, or that the tabloid practice applied to tech scene didn't work that well. I don't miss them... ------ dnaquin But. But. But. Where am I going to hear about what Justin's up to? ~~~ aston Come back once in a while? You know when the poker games are... ------ cstejerean Not surprised given the quality of content on Valleywag, after all it was banned from HN. ------ tlrobinson Valleywag occasionally had some interesting stuff... key word: "occasionally". Most of the time they were just picking really petty things to complain about, trying to turn it into a controversy. Maybe now that it's just a column on Gawker the signal-noise ratio will increase (hopefully they'll offer a Valleywag-only RSS feed... I don't care much for the rest of Gawker) ------ jmtame I think startups are the wrong place for a gossip rag to be hanging out. Keep that garbage in Hollywood please. ~~~ ojbyrne You've obviously not spent much time hanging around with the "Web 2.0" crowd in SF. Ripe for ridicule. ~~~ jmtame I've seen my share of gossip-worthy stories, but I'd rather hear about them in the dead pool. ~~~ ojbyrne Except "buzz" is part of what produces growth. And it's almost guaranteed that "buzz" is generally empty, shallow people interacting with other empty, shallow people (because that's 90% of the world's population). That produces gossip, and buzz, and more buzz, and tabloid journalism, and billions of dollars. "Hollywood" is the perfect paradigm for that. ~~~ gojomo The kind of "buzz" that creates growth for tech companies is "gee whiz, check out this young/new/innovative/life-changing/giant-killing company/technology." Not cynical mockery. And the culture of vapid celebrity that sells magazines/TV/movies doesn't sell tech. Even the Facebook/MySpace masses could hardly care less about gossip of those companies' founders and executives. At best, such gossip is industry 'inside baseball'... and so it should be judged for accuracy and relevance, not snark and salaciousness. ------ biohacker42 What happened here is that a few blogs like The Consumerist were profitable enough to support a few people, Gawker bought them to try to make something much bigger out of them. Now that the economy is turning sour they will try to sell them. But if you're efficient enough you might still be able to eek out a living from a blog like the consumerist. It's not a business with a capitol B, but it's a living. ------ alaskamiller Meh. ~~~ aston Are you being transferred? ~~~ alaskamiller Maybe Giz, but it eats up a lot of time though. I should just finish out my web apps. Already hearing some sites that need writers to establish themselves as the next VW. ~~~ unalone Wait, meaning other sites are _trying,_ or other sites are writing you asking for you on their staff? ~~~ alaskamiller Both. ------ tectonic Seems like an opportunity for some budding writer to take its place. ~~~ petercooper A writer with a backer / publisher, maybe. It'd be hard for an independent writer to do it for fear of crossing the lines and getting sued ;-) ------ beamso Crap! I liked Valleywag. :( ------ virtualdarwin Valleywag was good entertainment. Tabloids for geeks. Gonna miss it. ------ mattmaroon Damn, now how am I going to find out what Kevin Rose is up to? ~~~ apgwoz I believe he'll keep you covered. Afterall, he does have @kevinscold (found via valleywag). ~~~ unalone Not to mention a blog, and formerly a tumblelog as well. The guy's connected. ~~~ mattmaroon I guess the sarcasm wasn't evident. ------ thomasswift the first post on the new consumerist will write itself if they ripoff someone on the sale ------ hooande ding dong the witch is dead! ------ sahaj the startup party is over. i really doubt HN will take off. but then again, most people here don't want that anyway. ~~~ skmurphy I don't think the startup party is over: I think the tourists have gone home. HN has taken off as an extremely useful community for serious entrepreneurs. And based on the vast majority of submissions and comments that I read, "most people here" want serious conversation. ~~~ sahaj i don't think the tourists have gone home: i think they ran out of money. you say tomato, i say potato. did i say the community was not useful or that it didn't want serious conversation? ~~~ skmurphy When tourists run of out money they go home. That's why they are called tourists and not homeless.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Conflict Over How Open ‘Do Not Track’ Talks Will Be - daegloe http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/technology/debating-the-path-to-do-not-track.html ====== magicalist Nothing like a little techcrunch in your HN. You should really re-title your submission. You do the community a disservice when you turn to intellectual dishonesty to fan the flames (which don't even need any help here anyways). ~~~ daeken At this point, I'm just flagging articles with sensationalized titles, no matter the content. We as a community need to enforce a standard of conduct for submissions, or it'll continue to get worse. ------ killwhitey >The advertising group, however, defines it as forbidding the serving of targeted ads to individuals but not prohibiting the collection of data. Astounding. ------ voidr If I'd had a site that lived off ads, and someone would come with a Do Not Track option, I would display a "Then get the hell out of my site" message. Collecting data is fine, as long as it's handled reasonably. What Washington should be focused on is what happens to the data after it's been collected? what control do I have over my own data? These are far more important than what they are currently focusing on, of coure the advertising group is deliberately misleading the debate. ------ jerrya Submitted for your perusal: "As Internet privacy has become a bigger issue in Washington, technology companies have been increasing their lobbying. Google and Facebook recently bolstered their lobbying teams. _Google hired Susan Molinari, a former New York congresswoman. Facebook hired Greg Maurer, a former aide to House Speaker John Boehner._ "	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Take heart! There's life without YC! Our Plan B. What's yours? - juwo http://juwo-works.blogspot.com/2007/04/our-plan-b.html ====== juwo read my post (in the url). what do you think? can you come up with a plan B to bootstrap if you are rejected? if you are rejected, dont get dejected! :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: CRUD Spreadsheets - dustingetz http://www.hyperfiddle.net/:dustingetz!crud-spreadsheets/ ====== ryeguy_24 Having a bit of trouble understanding what the potential solution is and what problem it solves. I may very well have missed it in There but figured I’d mention because others may have similar thoughts. So, what problem is this trying to solve? ~~~ ldb Same for me. From what I understood you want to say that "people love spreadsheets" but "spreadsheets have limitations" (e.g. they have weak/no data schemas). If this understanding is correct then it would be helpful to see a practical example where said spreadsheet limitations become a problem and how your solution overcomes this problem. ------ sansnomme Any plans to add support for datahike or Crux? Datomic is not exactly cheap.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dabeaz: PyCon 2012 Followup - ot http://dabeaz.blogspot.com/2012/03/pycon-2012-followup.html ====== vgnet Great video linked in the article (the author's PyCon keynote about PyPy).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing to Fight a War for Their Country - georgecmu http://brilliantmaps.com/europe-fight-war/ ====== allengeorge This is the actual reddit thread in which the map was posted: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/5q433o/percentage_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/5q433o/percentage_of_europeans_who_are_willing_to_fight/) There were some questions about the exact question, and the choice of color to represent the answers.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Whatsapp got acquired by an insane amount. Still safe to use whatsapp for work? - jeilerman http://blog.qisc.us/post/77263136322/whatsapp-got-acquired-by-an-insane-amount-wait-is-it ====== critique was that safe?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Mitro is Shutting Down on August 31st - boristhespider https://www.mitro.co/shutdown.html ====== alexggordon I've used Mitro ever since I heard about it. It's been really fantastic to use, and the team did an incredible job creating it. It has everything I look for in a password manager, even without any updates or changes since it's been open sourced. On a different note, even though I'd pay to use it, after following the Google Group pretty closely, it seems like Mitro has been unable to foster any sort of development community in the short time the project has been open source. I would have loved to help, but mitro-core is written in Java[0], a language I have little experience with (I don't count my Data Structures class in college). I'm curious if the demise of Mitro could be a useful case study of how not to open source a big codebase. It seems that they're shutting it down primarily because of lack of development interest, including lack of interest from the original creators. It could be naturally assumed that they were "expecting" a community to form around Mitro, and embrace the open sourceness of it, but that obviously didn't happen. I wonder if the founders would have done something different with the way they open sourced Mitro, given what has transpired. [0] [https://github.com/mitro-co/mitro/tree/master/mitro- core](https://github.com/mitro-co/mitro/tree/master/mitro-core) ~~~ hga Open source Firefox took a _long_ time to get anywhere, from Jan 1998 to Sept 2002 for initial release; as Jamie Zawinski when he checked out in March 1999 ([http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html](http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html)): _Open source does work, but it is most definitely not a panacea. If there 's a cautionary tale here, it is that you can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of ``open source,'' and have everything magically work out._ ------ coherentpony I'm pretty stunned by the number of projects or services I discover exist by people posting their "X is shutting down" announcements on HN. ~~~ aytekin That might explain why they are shutting down. ~~~ evanj Pretty much. It turns out that marketing is hard. :) ------ minimaxir They were apparently acquihired by Twitter a year ago: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/31/twitter- mitro/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/31/twitter-mitro/) So not unusual. ~~~ biturd Even @twittereng replied saying "welcome to the flock" so indeed they were acquired/aquihired by twitters. ------ gingerlime Such a shame to see it go. A fantastic password manager to use. Amazingly slick interface, cross-platform support, intuitive UI. We would have happily paid for it (we can't afford $200/month, but maybe $20 or $40 - we're a small team of 5 people using it). Big thanks to the Mitro team for keeping it alive until now. I'm still hopeful that this imminent closure will prompt someone to pick up the open-source project and keep it alive for longer (but understand that it's not an easy task). ~~~ mistermann Honestly, you'd pay $4 to $8 per month per user for a password manager? ~~~ josegonzalez At SeatGeek, we use Lastpass. I don't personally know what it costs - yes, I'm a lazy operations person - but it seems like it might be $24 per person at our size[1]. I personally use 1Password and if it had group password sharing, I would be lobbying to switch every day of the fucking week. The lastpass interface is confusing, slow, and ugly (I've beens spoiled by the spit and polish we've built). $8 per person compared to what we may be paying now seems very small, so it's probably not unreasonable (to be fair, enterprise pricing is hella weird). \- [1] [https://lastpass.com/enterprise/pricing- roi/](https://lastpass.com/enterprise/pricing-roi/) ~~~ kirushik Isn't it $24 for a year of subscription? ~~~ josegonzalez Thats what I get for not reading :( Is/was Mitro $8 per person per year? ------ klapinat0r I've also used Mitro ever since I first saw it, and I'm really sad to see it go (had plans to implement the server in python, but at the risk of overseing a security flaw I opted not to) Lately I've been looking at pass[0], do any of you have experience running this (with git)? [0] [http://www.passwordstore.org/](http://www.passwordstore.org/) ------ misterdata I only had a brief look at the source code (it's over at Github) but it seems one could easily run their own server? ~~~ weitzj yes. you can do this failry easy. There are ansible playbooks and some readmes. There is some mailservice baked in, which you might have to change. The only 'harder' part is (the last time I tried): You have to build the browser extensions you want to use, and override the path to the mitro server to point to your server. The config file is all centralized. So you change it once and can build all extensions at once. I did not find an options to customize the mitro server via the extension itself. (this is probably a good thing). To get your customized extensions to your users, you might have to create an extra download site or fix the links in the mitro webpage. ~~~ sethammons that makes me wonder if it would not be an interesting idea to have a plugin that points to a known proxy and you register your host with it. then the operations cost is low, a single plugin can be released, and you control the server and data. just a random thought (typing on mobile with no spelling check, please excuse typos). ~~~ vijayp A password manager really needs to be a high-availability service -- it should work even (especially) when AWS is down. Since our service (intentionally) does not cache secret data on the client, running a proxy is not substantially easier than running our service. Plus we'd have to write this proxy :) ------ nstart They've put out the indication as early as March this year. Just found this: @MitroCo's Tweet: [https://twitter.com/MitroCo/status/577435506524336128?s=09](https://twitter.com/MitroCo/status/577435506524336128?s=09) ------ shmenwan This was a fantastic program and it saddens me greatly to see it go. I hope that someone will pick it up again, or perhaps find a way for the rest of us to run our own servers, since switching to another password manager that doesn't do as good of a job (at least not for free) is going to be quite the inconvenience. ~~~ vijayp The code is open sourced as GPL3, you should be able to run your own server pretty easily. Please let us know if you have issues. [https://github.com/mitro-co/mitro](https://github.com/mitro-co/mitro) ------ someear I assume at $200/month it somehow becomes worth it to keep going as someone's side project? I can't imagine twitter would keep it around for that little revenue (unless the acquihire from last year was simply just a hire, without buying the legal mitro entity) ~~~ gingerlime it seems to be the case. According to [0] Twitter just hired the devs without the legal entity behind Mitro, and seems like with no intention of supporting the project going forward. [0][https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mitro- dev/cgFhvuPyUiE/o-sFkE...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mitro- dev/cgFhvuPyUiE/o-sFkEQ5VBoJ) ( _Legally speaking: Mitro is run by Lectorius Inc, which has no legal relationship to Twitter Inc. It is a wholly owned independent company._ ) ------ Immortalin I am interested in taking over. I have a business idea for it, maybe it might just save the project. ~~~ vanmount Can you provide a bit more info? I'd be interested in maintaining the project as it is right now in my spare time... ~~~ Immortalin Email? ------ imrehg Oh, no, too bad! Mitro is a real life-saver, using it since the very beginning... This will be quite a step back for my web-usage-happiness-level. I was wondering how will they make money, and looks like I need not to wonder any longer :( ------ hyperpape It's not long, but why leave a week where you can create new accounts for a dying service? ~~~ evanj There are some companies using it. It is possible that on-boarding a new person RIGHT NOW while they figure out their long-term solution is helpful. Small possibility, but I want to make this transition as easy as possible. ------ philippnagel $200/month for the whole technical infrastructure? ~~~ vijayp Yeah, our largest costs are: \- a primary server running on AWS \- a read-only replica running on google compute engine. Other smaller costs include networking, DNS, and various tax/administrative/regulatory fees ~~~ shawnb576 How much of this is the $$$ and how much is the effort? IOW, if this thing was to generate $500/month, would you keep bothering to operate it? I happily pay $24/year for NewsBlur. I would happily pay/donate at that rate for Mitro. And it sounds like _just_ the people in this thread would get you pretty close to $200/month given a model like that. I know more that would. As other commenters said, the platform integration and password sharing are really, really great. ~~~ evanj Sorry for the delay. The monthly costs (which are actually closer ~$800-1000/month), are a small part. A bigger worry is if we take money from people, we really have some obligation to provide "reasonable" service. We've had relatively few system-administration incidents so far, but I'm concerned about something happening when we are on vacation or busy with other things. Worst case scenario is Chrome changing how extensions work, which requires us to actually write code, or someone finding a serious security vulnerability. As a conclusion: It really would take more like a total of $3000/month in fees to make it worth someone's time to deal with the paperwork, the administration, and to be willing to be on call. It seems unlikely we'll get there, but I'm investigating the possibility.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dunning–Kruger Effect - based2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect ====== based2 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=164&v=f89WVeqWe-...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=164&v=f89WVeqWe-M&feature=emb_logo) L'ultracrépidarianisme, l'art de parler de ce qu'on ne connaît pas	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Test post please ignore... - Kittynana I'm making sure self posts work in my Hacker News client for Android. ====== crystalmace Here's a comment on a self post to test if those work too.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Demystifying container runtimes - Tomte https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/741897/5ba9c60a4f6747a3/ ====== dsies I think this is a great article that can be used as a way to shed some light on the container movement over the past couple of years to someone who is not intimately familiar with containerization. Bookmarked and thank you to the author! ~~~ dominotw I watched this talk couple of years ago that made docker/containers finally click for me. Cgroups, namespaces, and beyond: what are containers made from? - Jérôme Petazzoni, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK5i-N34im8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK5i-N34im8) ------ cmroanirgo I'm sorry, but it doesn't demystify things for me. I'm still stuck at the 'I don't get it' phase, despite looking at Docker, and more recently Kubernetes, several times over the years, mainly because everyone around me evangelizes it so much. Unfortunately, I don't even understand how to describe where I'm at with it. For instance, if I look at a WordPress[1], I'm lost. What's the platform? What user does it run on, I see that it is mostly only supported by Apache, but what if I wanted nginx? What if I don't want it to run on Alpine, but Ubuntu 17? etc, etc? Even comments like this: "This image does not provide any additional PHP extensions or other libraries, even if they are required by popular plugins. There are an infinite number of possible plugins, and they potentially require any extension PHP supports. Including every PHP extension that exists would dramatically increase the image size." Everywhere I look I always see the answer: "Well, just build your own".... but it's at that point I always give up, because I consistently fail to see the benefit of this rabbit-hole. This is especially an issue when security updates on WordPress, the webserver, or OS can change so quickly that it seems pointless to even want to make an image. Clearly, there's something I'm missing. Can _anyone_ explain it to me like a 5 year old, who knows how to set up and maintain his own server? (I typically run through a cheat sheet of things to do). I also fail to see the benefits of spinning up an image for development purposes, when I already use VirtualBox and Snapshots for said purpose. (I'm sorry If I seem dense, and seem trollish...but I just don't see it, and the article didn't do a thing for me) [https://hub.docker.com/_/wordpress/](https://hub.docker.com/_/wordpress/) ~~~ 1_player > I'm still stuck at the 'I don't get it' phase, despite looking at Docker, > and more recently Kubernetes, several times over the years, mainly because > everyone around me evangelizes it so much. This is me until a few weeks ago. After all the hype, I think some bulb turned on in my head and I'm finally starting to understand the point of all these container shenanigans. > For instance, if I look at a WordPress[1], I'm lost. [...] what if I wanted > nginx? What if I don't want it to run on Alpine, but Ubuntu 17? It might help not to think like a sysadmin for a second. You'd pull the wordpress container because you want to run Wordpress. Who cares what's underneath? It should feel to you as a blackbox that might as well be running on hamsters for all you care. And that's great for 99% of the cases, because wordpress is just a puzzle piece in a bigger picture and we developers shouldn't have to spend too much time thinking "ah, what were the required rewrite rules for wordpress again?" when there's more important stuff you should be spending your energy on. If you really need to tweak the internals of the blackbox, yeah, write your own Dockerfile, but you'll find there's often no need. I've been a sysadmin for years, and then a lone wolf developer, and never understood the point of Docker to manage my projects, now I find myself at the engineering helm of a company and need to juggle all the legacy pieces of software we have, and all the new stuff in the pipeline: MySQL, PHP 5 applications, PHP 7 sites, Elixir app, Node for SSR, Redis, Prometheus, Grafana, etc. I jumped into the Ansible bandwagon immediately because configuring servers by hand is an irresponsible idea, but now I have to manage all these small blocks that have completely different runtime needs, and let me tell you, my goal for the first half of 2018 is to containerise everything and retain my sanity. I don't know Kubernetes very much, seems to be the next hyped thing but still feels very complicated unless you're in the loving embrace of Google Cloud/AWS. I still believe in bare, cheap VPSes and in-house infrastructure. I'm still investigating Docker Swarm to orchestrate multiple containers across servers but it's hard to tell the real world performance for the hype. Hope this helps! ------ AlexB138 I don't have a comment on the content of the article itself, though it will be interesting to see how the competing standards shake out in the longterm. I did want to say that while I read through the article I was struck by how high quality the writing was. I'm so used to technical writing being relatively low-effort blog posts. This level of detail was a real breath of fresh air. ~~~ jlgaddis > _... I was struck by how high quality the writing was._ That's pretty par for the course, IMO, WRT LWN's articles. It's why I'm happy to continue throwing a few dollars their way every month. ------ tyingq They seem pretty easy to understand to me. Mostly namespacing to hide things so that a container appears to be a separate instance of an OS. Hide the parent filesystem, process list, network interfaces, etc, so it "feels" like a separate instance of an operating system. There's value in this, of course, but it isn't really complicated. ~~~ nqzero OFF-TOPIC - replying to an old thread the original thread is locked because it's old so i can't reply there, but recently saw your comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15425678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15425678) > me: i need to generate avatars as a jpeg > you: The jpeg requirement seems odd. Even if it has "jpg" in the url, you > can serve up a standalone SVG (with a jpg extension in the url) as long as > you send the right MIME type i tried your suggestion and it worked - thanks a lot ! ~~~ tyingq Great! Thanks for the thanks...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
My Journey from Zero to $10k MRR – SaaS Growth Case Study - SaaS_Growth https://www.whalepages.com/saas-growth-case-study-my-journey-from-0-to-10000-mrr/ ====== tallerzalan Thanks for some great advice Karsten! :-) ~~~ Karsteel Thanks for thanking ;D	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hello Kafka World the Complete Guide to Kafka with Docker and Python - dvainrub https://medium.com/big-data-engineering/hello-kafka-world-the-complete-guide-to-kafka-with-docker-and-python-f788e2588cfc ====== jscheel We've been using this docker container for a few years now, and it's been really great for us. Every once in a while we get some wonkiness with committing offsets, but we haven't tracked down the issue, and I'm guessing it's our code, not the container.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Digging Across Panama (2011) - mrkgnao https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/januaryfebruary/feature/digging-across-panama ====== skh I grew up in the Canal Zone. I'm an American and was one of the colonists. This quote from the article brought back memories: _Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend at the British Foreign Office that just as British rule in Egypt and India benefited those countries and the world, so American hegemony would be good for the Panamanians._ On October 1, 1979 my hometown was given to Panama. I was young but it was a sad day for us. The Canal Zone police force would be disbanded a year later. We thought that Panama would never be able to run the Canal. We thought once we left that Panama would be doomed. That they couldn't do it on their own. There were valid reasons for thinking this at the time. Panama did a very bad job of running the railroad and, I believe, tried to give it back to the U.S. to run. But the Panama Canal Treaty did some things right. Slowly Panamanians were hired to key position on the Panama Canal Company. By the time they fully took control of the Canal Zone and the Canal on December 31, 1999 they possessed enough institutional knowledge to keep the canal running. I went back in 2008 and met an elderly man who went to school in the Zone but was Panamanian. Rich Panamanians could pay tuition to come to the American run schools. He said, "When you Americans left we had to grow up." Panama has done very well as far as I can tell. I'm impressed and glad for them. I'm on the fence about whether or not we were a net positive for Panama but one thing seems clear to me, giving them the Canal Zone set them on a good path. I was sad to lose the Zone and not be able to live where I grew up but it was good for Panama.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A digital solution to Brexit - squiggy22 http://howtostayin.eu/ ====== TheOtherHobbes "E-Residency does not confer any citizenship, domicile or right of entry to Estonia or to the European Union. E-Residency does not automatically establish tax residency. To learn about taxation and to avoid double taxation please consult a tax professional.... E-Residency does not confer automatic market access to the European Union. Additional approvals, contract modifications and corporate re-organisation may be required. Independent professional advice is recommended." So what's the advantage? ~~~ kaspa130 web site states the advantages - incl continuity of operations – stabizes situation; passporting fintech services – not to worry about regulation changes; receiving funds, payments in euros – managing currency fluctations; digital single EU market – digital signing reduces admin costs; etc ------ SeanDav In the small print: > _" E-Residency does not confer automatic market access to the European > Union."_ Kind of defeats the purpose of using the system I would think. ------ kazinator Digital identities for online businesses aren't a solution for immigration barriers, though. This won't "help you do business in the EU while living in the UK" if your undesirable self hasn't been let into the UK.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Why don't we pay our rent online? - ramoq After juggling through serveral statup ideas, one that often made me stop and think was the current state of rental payments(for apartments etc).<p>There are plenty of companies in this space(facilitating online rental payments), but not a single one of them has made a splash.<p>I've come across several 'hurdles' when looking at solutions for this. The biggest being high transactions costs on large payments being sent (via paypal or even merchant accounts with banks). When paying 800$ a month there is quite a bit to fork over in trans fees.<p>any ideas? ====== tempuname I am currently one of the people responsible for the finances of a student housing cooperative. There is precious little property management software and services directed at small to medium sized landlords (most of the market). With a couple hundred members/residents we're a fairly large organization, bigger than almost all of the other landlords in our market, but we're still too small to afford what's out there.1 Address the following problems and you will have a hundred billion dollar market to yourself: 1) Margins are pitiful and you want to take 3%? 2)Retailers have to take credit cards because consumers can just go elsewhere. Tenants don't really choose a place to live based on payment options. 3) Staff is untrained and cheap. Typing checks into Excel or Quickbooks is dead simple. We calculated that for the cost of automating this process with a Tenant Pro2 module and ach, we could hire another full time staff member. 4) We have no IT staff. Existing services all talk about integration with accounting software and marketing web sites. The vast majority of landlords use Quickbooks/Excel and have no web site. Don't integrate, we can import/export monthly. 5) We don't have accountants on staff.3 Even those that can afford Tenant Pro, don't really know how to use it. Less is more. Tenant, apartment number, payments, payments owed. Anything more and you'll just confuse us. 6) Problems 3+4+5: Less than 25 units, the landlord is the accountant, general counsel, marketer, agent, IT, general contractor, and often subcontractor. Going to the bank once a month they can do, but you want them to wrap their head around ach? \----------------------------------------- 1.Take a look at propertysolutions.com. The clients they list have thousands or tens of thousands of units. That, and the fact they don't post prices or fees anywhere tells me there is no way they can help me. 2\. Tenant Pro, the dominant property management software, is crap. Please kill it. 3\. Actually, we have one, but we're a feel good nonprofit so we pay peanuts and our funky ownership structure makes it a requirement. sorry this is a mess, been a long week ------ cperciva _Why don't we pay our rent online?_ Probably because the US banking system is about 30 years behind the rest of the world. Outside of the USA, people pay their rent via bank transfer all the time. ~~~ daleharvey I was slightly confused by the question, Ive been paying rent online for 4/5 years now (UK) and I honestly thought our banking system was pretty archaic ~~~ ramoq Yes it would be prudent to mention this question pertains to us North Americans :) ~~~ fburnaby Just Americans. I'm in Canada paying my rent online. ------ pg We've tried three times to fund startups solving this problem. There's one in this cycle that may be the answer. ~~~ ramoq Exactly, I think there are over at least 10+ companies in this space. But for some reason they all suck (and their domain names are far worse). "We've tried three times to fund startups solving this problem" <\- They never surfaced? Did they change gears along the way? p.s. Debit payments online are usually not subject to high trans fees, but that could change soon (I'm from Canada) ~~~ pg One fell apart due to founder disputes, and another changed their idea to something else. ------ IsaacSchlueter I've been thinking about this a lot ever since I moved out of my parent's house as a kid. In fact, it's probably my most promising startup idea at the moment, and I've done a little bit of research into it. (Of course, everything changes once you start in earnest.) The whole apartment renter experience is abysmal, and the existing solutions on the internet provide little if any help in most metropolitan areas. Of course, the experience for the owners is usually not a cakewalk either; they face a very competitive market, often with thin margins, high risk, and abusive tenants. One reason why they often don't accept CC payments for rent is that they simply can't afford to! It's a very regional kind of market, involving a lot of hand-holding and shit- shoveling. Perfectly suited to a small rag-tag group of hackers, imo, but definitely not a quick turnaround "next facebook" kind of startup. Google is unlikely to buy you out ever. A lot of money changes hands between renters and property owners. My gut says you could make a good living if you could figure out how to tackle this problem in a way that makes the experience suck less for everyone involved. At lest, that's one sketch on my whiteboard. I'm looking forward to having some competition. ^_^ In the short term, if you're like me and simply cannot accept the PITA of remembering to walk downstairs with a check every month, you can probably have your bank mail out a certified check every month for a pretty reasonable fee, or perhaps even for free. ------ Tangurena Some apartment companies already do take rent payments online. But those are the more modern companies who tend to cater to younger folks. In general, folks who run the majority of apartments aren't too interested in fancy new stuff, as much of the fancy new stuff that gets pitched to them are thinly disguised plots to swindle them out of something. Management companies, depending on the size of the apartment complex already suck between 5-10% of the gross receipts off the top. Adding the transaction costs for online payment (usually close to the costs of a credit card, so they'll be in the 1-3% range), and a marginally profitable apartment complex can quickly go into the red with cash flow problems. The apartment complex I live in tends to have a bimodal age distribution. We're close to a private university, so there are a bunch of younger folks, but there are also a lot of older tenants. I've been here 5 years (some bad credit stuff rolls off my credit report late this year, so I can start looking for a house about the beginning of 2010), and among the longer term tenants, I'm one of the few who are "into" computers enough that I'd consider EFT. ------ rbarooah I've paid my rent online in the US for the past 7 years - with 4 different landlords using PayTrust, which simply prints and mails checks automatically. It also scans paper bills, and gives a lot of control and feedback to stop things going wrong, so it's better than most bank-based bill pay services. Like most of the other UK people, I was very surprised about the lack of a direct debit equivalent over here. A major issue is that in the UK, consumers using Direct Debit are strongly protected by law which compels merchants to return the money in the event of a dispute. In the US, no such protections exist, so if the merchant (or landlord) overchaged, you'd be at the mercy of their dispute resolution procedures and the courts. ------ yalurker I already pay my rent online, as well as have an interface to request maintenance or ask questions to the management company. This is in the US. I can pay by direct bank withdrawal for free, or pay a fee to use a credit card. My apartment complex uses this system: <http://www.propertysolutions.com/> As an end-user of the system, I am completely satisfied. ~~~ ramoq There has been some mention of some companies trying to solve problems in this space. But I return to the fact that this problem is still largely unsolved. My evidence is the fact that almost NO ONE I know pays rent online. If a solution exists it's complete lack of adoption hints at the fact that there are serious flaws in it's execution. ------ Aevin1387 The complex I live in allows payments online both through bank tranfer, and credit card payment, and have done so since I first moved in two years ago. The system they use is through <http://realpage.com/onesite/> and until this month, they charged a $10 processing fee for all online payments.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tesla: The greatest hacker of all time - iamelgringo http://www.totse.com/en/fringe/tesla/tesla5.html ====== Hexstream "Tesla generates a powerful pulse of electricity, and drains it into the ground. Because the ground is conductive, it doesn't stop. Rather, it spreads out like a radio wave, traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second." And all this time I thought only light travelled at the speed of light :/ While I read that article, I was thinking, what if we found a way to 1. direct the current through the earth to a specific location reliably and 2. managed to represent bits accurately within that current? Free international communication, without networks of cables ;P ~~~ kirubakaran Radio wave is electromagnetic wave (aka 'light' in a range of frequency). But "speed of light" in non-vacuum is lower. "direct the current through the earth to a specific location reliably" Earth is not homogenous. I wonder if pointing a low frequency laser into the ground will accomplish anything. It most likely will be refracted in an unpredictable inconsistent way. ~~~ Hexstream Well, what if we transmit known data in a strong signal from one end to the other and then compare what was received to what was sent... (insert big hand waving) if we replicate those steps x times, we might be able to map the "interference structure" of the Earth and compensate for that somehow... This is admittedly almost impossibly complicated. ~~~ kirubakaran Sure but the insides of the earth keep changing right... ~~~ Hexstream We could recalculate the "interference infrastructure" every couple seconds... Remember that we don't need 100% accuracy also; TCP/IP layers reliability on top of unreliability. ------ mhartl Check out the movie "The Prestige" (<http://imdb.com/title/tt0482571/>), which (among other things) features David Bowie as Tesla during his time in Colorado Springs. ~~~ msteigerwalt I was a little worried about Bowie's performance of Tesla before I saw the movie. In the end, however, I was very pleased. ------ dmoney This gives new meaning to "hack the planet". ------ dhimes If we're going this way on hackers, I'd go for Galileo as #1 (although a great case could be made for Archimedes).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tsrc – managing multiple Git repositories - based2 https://tankerapp.github.io/tsrc/ ====== based2 [https://asciinema.org/a/131625](https://asciinema.org/a/131625) src: [http://linuxfr.org/news/tsrc-un-gestionnaire-de-depots- git](http://linuxfr.org/news/tsrc-un-gestionnaire-de-depots-git)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Beautiful pictures of Endeavour docked at ISS taken from departing Soyuz - rkuester http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/e27depart.html ====== mmaunder Funny how ISS looks nothing like the space stations in sci-fi. <http://portfolio.shaunsgallery.co.uk/con-eo3.jpg> [http://images.elfwood.com/art/c/a/callumdagrouch/space_stati...](http://images.elfwood.com/art/c/a/callumdagrouch/space_station.jpg) [http://www.fallingpixel.com/products/2326/mains/spacestation...](http://www.fallingpixel.com/products/2326/mains/spacestation10.jpg) [http://www.coronacomingattractions.com/sites/default/files/s...](http://www.coronacomingattractions.com/sites/default/files/star_trek_space_station.jpg) <http://www.marlinstudios.com/products/scifi/station.jpg> [http://www.nicedvder.com/syssite/home/shop/1/pictures/newsim...](http://www.nicedvder.com/syssite/home/shop/1/pictures/newsimg/1253491406.jpg) [http://theatomizer.com/ArtAwards/Images/SpaceStationGoodHope...](http://theatomizer.com/ArtAwards/Images/SpaceStationGoodHope.jpg) [http://www.freewebs.com/jasonboone1969/high_poly_page/space_...](http://www.freewebs.com/jasonboone1969/high_poly_page/space_station.jpg) [http://img1.eyefetch.com/p/vx/202714-6ebdff8f-ffeb-448f-8688...](http://img1.eyefetch.com/p/vx/202714-6ebdff8f-ffeb-448f-8688-118035df02fel.jpg) ~~~ cema ISS looks nothing like the space stations in sci-fi I think it's because it does not have artificial gravity. ~~~ robryan And has to have every component module fit in the shuttle. ~~~ cema I think technically it can be an independent module, launched as the last stage of a rocket. Which, of course, also forces constrains. ------ markkat Argh. I think NASA needs a better image viewer. IMO, there should be an option to just scroll down through them all like Boston.com's 'The Big Picture'. Amazing photos otherwise.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Our Alien DNA - evo_9 http://www.dailygrail.com/Essays/2014/7/Our-Alien-DNA ====== daveslash Interesting read from a historical perspective, but the idea of a message hidden in DNA is far fetched to me - DNA is subject to the effects of evolution and mutation which seem to me would make any message unrecognizable after a billion years. ~~~ dekhn Presumably, a sufficiently evil entity could Reed-Solomon or otherwise erasure-code a message that could survive a long time. But yeah, the analyses listed in the article are laughably naive.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
UniversalCoin is a cryptocurrency that will be distributed for free on Jan 15th - svdree https://universalcoin.io ====== tobltobs This is cool. It is the essence of the current coinmania reduced to the minimum, the MVP of a shitcoin. It will be interesting to see if they really shell out the money (GAS) to distribute the coins.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Private and External Costs of Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out - sampo https://www.nber.org/papers/w26598 ====== spyckie2 I would be really grateful if someone can summarize the details of how people project $12b in costs and explain the modeling. I know that a lot of work has been done into economic impacts of climate change / air quality, and I've been interested in knowing how people make, project and test these models for some time. ------ oska This story has been run for a long time now. The best refutation I know of appeared in 2015 in an essay called _The myth of the dark side of the Energiewende_ [1]. I'd recommend reading it for critical balance. [1] [https://energypost.eu/energiewende-dark- side/](https://energypost.eu/energiewende-dark-side/) ~~~ sampo I don't think an essay from 2015 can refute a research paper published in 2019. ~~~ yokaze I could refute a 2030 study from the flat earth society with an essay from natural philosophers from ancient Greece, if the first doesn't address the established facts of the second. A more detailed rebuttal: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/ehsekb/comment/f...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/ehsekb/comment/fcldewm) ~~~ Danieru Those rebuttals assume a causal relation between shutting down nuclear and an increase in renewables. Aka: shutting nuclear does not mean one gets to credit renewables as the replacement. Instead as the research paper properly accounts for, if nuclear remained in use then Germany would have reduced coal much further. Instead germany is treading water, shutting one carbon free source as it brings online another carbon free source. The net effect is no actual improvement, only a theoretical reduction in risk. Realized outcomes are the same. Meanwhile japan which is restarting nuclear along with expanding renewables gets blocked at the climate change summits because they are not making meaningless promises. For as much as Japan is said to be a society of "saving face" they instead often focus on results over pr. The world would be better off if Germany followed suit. ~~~ danans > Meanwhile japan which is restarting nuclear along with expanding renewables > gets blocked at the climate change summits because they are not making > meaningless promises Japan's energy mix went from 81% fossil fuel in 2011 to 89% in 2016, with most of that coal and LNG [1]. Germany is at 40% of energy from renewables [2]. I'm not saying it's an easy problem for them to solve, but they are far from an example of renewable energy deployment. 1\. [https://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/en/category/brochures/pdf/japa...](https://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/en/category/brochures/pdf/japan_energy_2017.pdf) 2\. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/renewable...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/renewables- beats-coal-in-germany-power-mix-for-first-time) ~~~ lispm 40% of electricity. not energy in general. Germany has more problems (like most countries) with heating, transport, ... which currently are not well under way on a transition to renewable energy... ~~~ danans Yes, electricity is what I meant. While the Japan report I linked was energy overall, Japan's electric sector is nonetheless 83% fossil fuel based [1], which is much worse in absolute terms than Germany, regardless of their respective recent trends. I agree that Germany, like most nations, has a major problem with road transport dependency on oil. Germany is currently playing catch-up with car electrification, but it is, with Japan, a leader in electrified rail transport. In terms of home heating though, Germany, for its climate is far ahead of the US, with much higher home building standards for energy efficiency and comfort, and smaller homes in general. Japanese homes, as I'm told, are often very cold in the winter due to lack of central heating and very poor insulation, so they don't use much energy, but are also uncomfortable. 1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Japan#Mo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Japan#Mode_of_production) ~~~ lispm > a leader in electrified rail transport and expanding on electricity from renewable energy for rail transport There are also the first hydrogen powered trains going into service. In the future more Hydrogen will be produced with renewable energy (for example with surplus electricity from wind). ------ jupp0r > You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for > electronic delivery. That's actually a pretty reasonable price compared to the usual publisher rent seeking (NBER is a fully private organization, so no tax payer money spent here afaik). ------ Zenst [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys- energy-c...](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy- consumption-and-power-mix-charts) May help with debate. ------ simlan > Over 70% of this cost comes from the increased mortality risk associated > with exposure to the local air pollution emitted when burning fossil fuels. Sure thing... This disqualified itself really quickly. ~~~ acidburnNSA This really is the key point. The German people chose to shut down clear-air nuclear plants and leave their brown coal plants on. The coal plants kills lots of people per year via air pollution. Thus, this choice likely net killed lots of people. They have 45 GWe of coal capacity still, and they use it when the wind isn't blowing. Of course, the German people were concerned that a nuclear accident would potentially kill more. This is easy to understand emotionally, but not scientifically. Nuclear power plants have killed up to ~4000 total including latent cancers from Chernobyl. Fossil kills 4-8 million people every single year. When you divide by TWh produced, nuclear comes out crazy safe among our energy options. And it's low-carbon to boot (12 gCO2-eq/kWh). ~~~ BurningFrog It's the same mental mistake as when people are more afraid of flying than driving. The shock value of a few high profile accidents overpowers the dull constant killing of a few random people all the time. The total numbers play no part in this equation. ~~~ topmonk But this depends on the person driving. If the person who is worried about this is a much better driver and would be less likely to get in a fatal accident than average then why wouldn't this be a valid concern? ~~~ nradov No it isn't a valid concern. For an equivalent distance, commercial flights are still safer than even the safest drivers. At 30000 feet you don't have to worry about some other drunk driver running a red light. ~~~ topmonk Nope. From [https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2017/07/20/are- airp...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2017/07/20/are-airplanes- safer-than-cars/amp/) For vehicles, “1.13 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled” and “Airline accidents per one million miles flown came in at a rate of 0.0035.” So with an equal denominator, 0.35 vs 1.13. So if you're in the top 20% of safest drivers, which is not hard to reach considering all the idiots out there, you are safer driving. ~~~ nradov Nope. Your calculations are totally invalid.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I am James Bamford, one of the journalists investigating the NSA. AMA. - bcn http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1g9gz0/i_am_james_bamford_one_of_the_journalists/ ====== jdp23 _The Puzzle Palace_ and Bamford's other books are among the best about the NSA. His Wired article on Connecting the dots on PRISM, Phone Surveillance, and the NSA's Massive Data Center has his most recent thoughts -- [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/nsa-prism- verizon-s...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/nsa-prism-verizon- surveillance/) ~~~ mindcrime I just ordered _The Puzzle Palace_ , _Body of Secrets_ , and _The Shadow Factory_ by Bamford. The first two arrived at my office earlier this week and are waiting for me when I get home from this road trip. I can't wait to dig into them this weekend. I also ordered copies of _The CIA and American Democracy: Third Edition_ by Professor Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and _Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA 's Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda_ by Robert Wallace. I think this pile of stuff is going to keep me busy for the next couple of weeks at least.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tesla Model 3 Production Lower, Price Higher (A Lot): Morgan Stanley Analyst - jbredeche https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2017/03/28/tesla-model-3-production-lower-price-higher-a-lot-morgan-stanley-analyst/ ====== greglindahl This is a great example of terrible writing. The analyst is predicting that the average selling price for Model 3, including options, is going to be much higher than the base price. That's great news for Tesla, but the writer makes it look like it's a disagreement (it isn't) and doesn't explain the context (great news for Tesla.)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Interview with Founder of Minds.com - jmsflknr https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/19/03/08/1817245/we-will-never-sell-out-or-compromise-our-principles-that-would-be-like-murder-the-slashdot-interview-with-ceo-and-founder-of-mindscom-social-network ====== rudedogg Since users get tokens for interactions with their content, I wonder if the content on sites like this will be worse. You have that incentive everywhere else (the positive feeling of likes, +1s, etc.), but here it's a kind of direct financial reward. It almost seems like "gamifying" content causes it's quality to go down. HN hides upvote/downvote counts for comments, which seems to help. ------ O1111OOO This is an interesting _experiment_ on the future of user engagement and the effects of monetization. I suspect that this will improve commenting (compared to other larger, non-HN, sites), as users interested in the reward system will put their best foot forward. It would help commenting immensely if "downvotes" caused a reduction of accumulated rewards but could also lead to a kind of bland (play it safe) mentality. From both a sociological and business model perspective... I find this fascinating. There's a $haring (is caring) aspect to this initial push and a hint of group ownership (like stock holders).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
End of the road for RC4 - rdl https://blog.cloudflare.com/end-of-the-road-for-rc4/ ====== rdl I wish we'd done this earlier -- I'm pretty sure nothing bad has resulted from supporting RC4 a few months longer than we would have liked, but as we've seen from Google's "aggressive" push to end SHA1, it's the only way to move things forward. Friends don't let friends use RC4 in 2015. ------ theandrewbailey Meanwhile, Youtube still supports RC4. And SSL3! (WTF, guys!) I'm still waiting for them to jump on the bandwagon. [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=r3---sn- jjpux...](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=r3---sn- jjpuxm5n-2pue.googlevideo.com) ~~~ rdl The problem is RC4 is super efficient, especially for devices like Android phones which don't have AES-NI and run on battery (both for the CPU and the radio...). Deprecating RC4 in that environment has real cost for end users, as well as for the server operator.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Jessica Livingston: Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing (2013) - salmonet http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2014/06/03/jessica-livingston-why-startups-need-to-focus-on-sales-not-marketing/ ====== Outdoorsman Build a quality product...sell it...back it with outstanding customer service...rely on user experience (satisfaction) to scale it... Time-tested advice...no argument from me... Over-reliance on marketing, a cheap way to achieve quick (reportable) gains that end up being hollow is not the optimal ethical approach... Again, no argument...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What A Mission Statement Is - paulsb http://www.markpeterdavis.com/getventure/2008/06/understand-your.html ====== paulsb Mine, at the minute, is: To organise science in order to accelerate research. What's yours?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
CAcert – A community-driven Certificate Authority - zerognowl http://www.cacert.org/ ====== tshtf CAcert isn't accepted in the trust store for devices that most humans use. Today we have Let's Encrypt. ------ tf2manu994 I saw this earlier, iirc the certs don't get acknowledged anywhere.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Live streaming a new SaaS product - ryanckulp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LNj3cKWzMg ====== ryanckulp going live in 48 mins... should be fun! am also the founder of Fomo: [https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/fomo-05b996966c](https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/fomo-05b996966c)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Students Should Learn Bleeding-Control Methods to Prepare for School Shootings - okket https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/us/dhs-training-students-mass-casualties.html ====== blackdogie While I can see the benefits, it’s hard to fathom why they are not looking at the cause more seriously and just accepting as a fait accompli and say it’s going to happen, here’s what you need to know.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Language Hacking in a Live Programming Environment - iamwil https://ohmlang.github.io/pubs/live2016/ ====== haldean This looks amazing! I would love to have access to a tool like this for working on my current programming language project; is the tool available for download somewhere? I don't see anything about the editor in the Ohm repo[0]. Another cool thing would be to make an Ohm-to-Bison compiler; I'm not about to reimplement my whole language in Javascript, but I would love to prototype the grammar in the Ohm editor and then compile it down to Bison. [0]: [https://github.com/cdglabs/ohm](https://github.com/cdglabs/ohm) ~~~ david-given The grammar language looks unexciting, which is exactly what I want from a grammar language. Some kind of conversion is probably possible. But it looks like one of the really cool bits is being able to add actions to rules so easily, and that won't be as fluid in anything but Javascript. I'd love to play with the editor too. ------ thebelal Looks like you can play with the interactive editor as discussed in the paper at [https://ohmlang.github.io/editor](https://ohmlang.github.io/editor) ~~~ cellularmitosis Awesome! The syntax reference is a must: [https://github.com/cdglabs/ohm/blob/master/doc/syntax- refere...](https://github.com/cdglabs/ohm/blob/master/doc/syntax-reference.md) ------ philippeback Interesting to see that there is some VPRI / Smalltalk / Squeak influence with HARC/YC Research [http://vpri.org/html/team_bios/yoshiki.htm](http://vpri.org/html/team_bios/yoshiki.htm) aboard There is also Moose that can create grammars quite easily. [http://www.moosetechnology.org/](http://www.moosetechnology.org/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_(analysis)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_$analysis$) Using PetitParser, GTInspector, and other such tooling, visual construction, debugging, and evaluation of grammars and parsers is a breeze. ------ EuAndreh As far as I can see, they are bringing feature 9 from pg's article "What Made Lisp Different" [0]. [0]: [http://www.paulgraham.com/diff.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/diff.html) ------ derek_frome This was a good write-up about Ohm. Really cool stuff. [https://www.pubnub.com/blog/2016-08-30-javascript-parser- ohm...](https://www.pubnub.com/blog/2016-08-30-javascript-parser-ohm-makes- creating-a-programming-language-easy/) ------ continuational Looks quite interesting. I have a few questions that I couldn't find answers for in the documentation. Does Ohm help with type checking in any way? Does Ohm support indentation based syntax? Does Ohm handle language composition (eg. JavaScript or CSS inside HTML)? ~~~ pdubroy Hi, I'm one of the authors of Ohm. > Does Ohm help with type checking in any way? Not sure what you mean here...are you asking if Ohm has any support for type checking a language that you create using Ohm? If so, the answer is no -- not yet. But I could definitely imagine implementing a pluggable Semantics that could make this really easy to do for most languages. We are happy to accept pull requests :-) > Does Ohm support indentation based syntax? No, it's not (yet) possible to do this directly. Though it can be done with a simple preprocessing step that expands the source code to include explicit indent/dedent tokens. It's definitely something we'd like to support, we just haven't settled on how. > Does Ohm handle language composition (eg. JavaScript or CSS inside HTML)? Yes and no. Right now, the only means of composition Ohm supports is grammar inheritance. This makes sense for things like ES5 and ES6, but not so much for the use case you describe. The problem is that inheritance won't work if you have any name clashes in the grammars. We've considered something traits-like ([http://scg.unibe.ch/archive/phd/schaerli- phd.pdf](http://scg.unibe.ch/archive/phd/schaerli-phd.pdf)), but we're not sure whether it's worth the additional language complexity. A simple workaround for the use case you describe is to just parse in two phases: first match the HTML, allowing `any*` inside a script tag, then match the JavaScript inside a semantic action. If you're interested in more details, you might want to read the paper that we'll be presenting at DLS in Nov: [https://ohmlang.github.io/pubs/dls2016/modular-semantic- acti...](https://ohmlang.github.io/pubs/dls2016/modular-semantic-actions.pdf) ~~~ continuational Fair enough, and thank you for the info :) It looks like a very interesting project.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why I'm Skeptical of the FCC's Call for User Broadband Testing - wglb http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000688.html ====== loupgarou21 I'm somewhat skeptical of it because it isn't doing any sort of sustained testing. I have commercial internet access to my house (it's faster, I get static IP addresses, I can setup PTR records, I get 24/7 support with same day repair for the same price as residential, I just don't get discounts for bundling services) with 12mbps/2mbps sustained speeds. This test showed me getting 30mbps/5mbps, but it only ran for a few seconds, so it was only measuring my burst speeds.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Instapaper is now a free app, with extra Premium upgrade that costs $30/year - kanamekun https://www.instapaper.com/premium ====== bdcravens Those who purchased app get a month free. From the email announcement: "Since most Instapaper users purchased the iOS and/or Android app, we’d like to thank you for that past support by giving you a free month of Instapaper Premium."	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Equifax's IT team knew it hadn't patched web app vulnerability - rbanffy https://www.grahamcluley.com/equifax-vulnerability-heads-roll/ ====== slitaz Then it is even more damning to the head of security if they knew about the vulnerability. The ultimate person to decide whether a vulnerability is not to be patched, is the head of security. ~~~ Arnt There are two unstated assumptions here: 1) She had the organizational power to order patching and rollout (which is more than the power to prevent a rollout). 2) She didn't try. You may be right. But.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
France to force web giants to delete some content within the hour - aspenmayer https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-tech-regulation/france-to-force-web-giants-to-delete-some-content-within-the-hour-idUSKBN22P2JU ====== aspenmayer 'Social networks and other online content providers will have to remove paedophile and terrorism-related content from their platforms within the hour or face a fine of up to 4% of their global revenue under a French law voted in on Wednesday.'	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Motorola Xoom a huge disappointment - zdw http://www.xmlaficionado.com/2011/03/motorola-xoom-huge-disappointment.html ====== nlogn Rather short and lacking in details for a "review" isn't this? Anandtech and Engadget have already reviewed the Xoom in more detail and I have to say, this reads very much like someone wanting to validate their own opinion instead of offering a fair critique. I have observed the iPhone 3gs/3g (I have little experience with the 4) lagging significantly when many apps are installed (not just running, but merely installed) so UI lag is not something unique to Android. The power button placement and heavy weight seem to be, admittedly, poor decisions. As far as battery life goes, this review is very inconsistent with Anandtech's review which states that the Xoom's battery life is comparable with the iPad[1]. Not sure what exactly he is complaining about wrt widgets; I have several widgets working well on my phone and I'm sure they're fully compatible with Honeycomb. It is a shame that neither Flash or the micro-sd card slot are functional at release. I can only hope Motorola is working to remedy both of those issues. [1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/4191/motorola-xoom-review- firs...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/4191/motorola-xoom-review-first- honeycomb-tablet-arrives/14) ~~~ kylec I agree 100% on the power button placement. I stopped by the Verizon store today to try it out and it literally took me several minutes to figure out how to turn it on. Of course, once you know where it is isn't not an issue, but it's not the best first impression. I imagine most people will fumble around the sides for a few seconds before they just give up and move on to the iPad. ------ ekidd Scoble keeps making the "only 16 apps" claim, but it's absolutely false. To be fair, there are currently 16 _featured_ tablet apps in the Market. But if you search for "HD", "THD" or "Tablet", you'll find a great many more, including a Hacker News reader that I'm currently working on. :-) What's my take on the Xoom, as an owner and developer? \- The weight and size don't bother me at all, but I've got big hands. I can hold it for hours when reading. The power button, however, is definitely weird. \- Honeycomb and the Google apps are just amazing. I love the application switcher, the notification system, the tabbed browser, the Google Calendar client, the large, interactive widgets, etc. \- There _is_ a shortage of good tablet apps. To be fair, this will be true of any two-week-old tablet platform that tries to compete with the iPad. If we want a two-player tablet market, _somebody's_ got to go through the "no apps" stage. \- The lack of Flash and Netflix is _painful_ , because it means there's very little video content to consume on the Xoom. And the Xoom would be a killer device for watching video. Flash will be fixed Real Soon Now, and Netflix is making very vague noises. All in all, I love my Xoom, and I enjoy writing software for it. I think that once Flash arrives, and more apps become available, that the inevitable 87 Android tablets launched in 2011 will stand a decent chance at making up some ground against the iPad. And this would be a good thing; even for iPad owners—Apple needs credible competition. And the Xoom is definitely a more credible device than the Android 1.5 phones ever were. ~~~ swilliams How are you supposed to know to search for "HD", etc? What makes the iOS store easy is that there are completely separate tabs for iPhone and iPad apps. And when you do search, it displays results for both in separate boxes on the results screen. These things make it incredibly easy to find iPad specific apps. If the android market does these things, that's awesome, I legitimately don't know. ~~~ sp332 The Motorola Droid has slightly more pixels than other Android phones. This led to a bunch of apps coming out in a "Droid" edition which put those extra pixels to good use. The new tablets have 1280 x 800, 1024 x 768, 1024 x 600 etc. resolutions, so should each one have its own tab? ~~~ swilliams That's an interesting problem then. If tablets are going to be a big part of the Android ecosystem, then I would still argue that they would need some kind of special section in the market. Would the market app be able to read your devices resolution and then denote which apps are optimized for that? I have an older Android phone (Sprint HTC Hero) with a smaller resolution, can I see/install tablet apps from the market? If yes, that's a bad experience, if no, then it would seem that they can do some sort of detection. I'm just spitballing here, so this might not even be half baked. ~~~ nuclear_eclipse > _Would the market app be able to read your devices resolution and then > denote which apps are optimized for that? I have an older Android phone > (Sprint HTC Hero) with a smaller resolution, can I see/install tablet apps > from the market? If yes, that's a bad experience, if no, then it would seem > that they can do some sort of detection._ The Android Market already has the ability to hide or filter apps based on the capabilities of your device (eg, features, OS version, etc), and the feature requirements defined by the applications' manifests. If your device doesn't have an accelerometer, you aren't shown any applications that require use of the accelerometers. [1] For your specific example, you won't see any apps made for Honeycomb on your phone's market just for the simple reason that you aren't running Honeycomb. As for resolution, any application can (and should) be designed with multiple screen resolutions in mind, and the Android API's give developers ample help with this task. [2] So in all honesty, you shouldn't even have to distinguish between a "tablet app" versus a "phone app"; developers should be making apps that have both segments in mind. [1]: [http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/market- filters.h...](http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/market-filters.html) [2]: [http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support...](http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html) ------ btipling Ultimately everyone who wants a tablet will have to make a private decision of what they want for themselves. I have both an iPad (well I got it for my three year old daughter) and a Galaxy Tab and I have to say I love them both and they both have been life changing. If you get a Xoom, I doubt you'll be disappointed, because going from not having a tablet to getting one is going to be an amazing experience. I don't imagine the Xoom is being marketed to people who already have an iPad so there you go. Get an iPad for the many (wonderful) apps and media or get an android tablet because despite the many flaws in Android, it is a kick ass operating system and because you can actually purchase kindle, nook and epub titles directly from the e-reader apps. Listen to all the pundits and reviews, and then make a thoughtful decision and be happy with the one you made. Steve Jobs and John Gruber might not see it this way, but despite that there is some truth in the 'copy cat' nature of Android, it is a good thing that iOS has competition. It's not just lackluster competition either, Android is awesome. Nuff' said. ~~~ tuhin I seriously think that Android is the best thing to happen to iOS. Despite the design flaws, fragmentation, issues and every other bug, Android is the nearest thing to a competitor that iOS has. Yes, I am aware there is something called Windows Mobile 7. The very fragmentation and ubiquity of Android is its strength. While for US, I do not know how the economics work, but for a country like India, not everyone can or would afford to buy a phone for Rs. 30,000 (~USD 666.7). What Android is great at is tapping THAT market who are looking for a better than average experience with mobile. I mean if every one was going for the premium buyer who would make good experiences for the not so affluent. I have an iPhone, an MBP and will now be spending on the iPad 2. But then I look around and feel so happy that my friends, my juniors from college can afford a decent enough phone without sacrificing on the joys of modern technology and design in mobile OS. ~~~ maguay What does the average unlocked Android device cost there? In Thailand, most Android phones are still USD $400+. Oddly enough, last-gen Blackberry devices are the most popular smartphones (semi-smartphone) here since they're often USD $150-$200 unlocked. The HTC tattoo is cheaper, as are a couple others, but for the most part, Android is nearly as premium as iOS here. ~~~ sankara Starts at about $150; decent ones are about $300. ([http://www.flipkart.com/android-all- mobiles?query=android...](http://www.flipkart.com/android-all- mobiles?query=android&sort=price_asc)). ~~~ maguay Neat; I'll have to check and see if prices are down here or not. Haven't checked in several months. ------ TomOfTTB More than the iPad 2 I think the price cut on the iPad 1 Hurts the xoom. Because while the specs might be better on the Xoom you can't deny that the cheapest iPad is now half the price of the cheapest xoom. I think we're now to the point where other hardware manufactures have to decide whether they want to cede this market to Apple. If they don't they're going to have to take some short-term losses to keep up. That means cutting the hardware price to the point where you're not making a profit but where your prices are at least competitive with Apple. If they aren't willing to do that their only strategy is to wait and hope Apple slips up. ~~~ InclinedPlane You might have said the same thing about the Altair or, ironically, the Apple II a few decades ago. This is still early days in the market, nobody has a lock on it. How old was the mobile MP3 player industry when Apple introduced the iPod? the iPad is a good device, for now. But it's not the end-all-be-all of tablets, it's just generation 1.5. In 5 years the iPad2 will look as limited and outdated as a flip-phone does today. Apple will need to continue innovating in order to maintain the advantage they have right now. They may very well do so, but it's silly to imagine that this horse race is won, it's only just started. ~~~ ekanes Your second sentence disputes your first. > This is still early days in the market, nobody has a lock on it. How old was > the mobile MP3 player industry when Apple introduced the iPod? And now that there is an iPod, how many credible challengers have we seen? None, really. So Apple _is_ able to lock down a market. The question is whether or not the competition is catching up or falling farther behind. Android is a great platform in principle, but the high price of hardware may be a barrier to entry for _mainstream_ buyers. ~~~ InclinedPlane You make the mistake of thinking that the iPad is the iPod of tablet computers. While MP3 players require only a minimal featureset this is not the case for tablet computers, there is still a lot of room left and a lot of market left. Apple could lock down this market, but the market has not even fully developed yet so it's silly to imagine that they have done so yet. See also: the mobile smart phone market. ------ vladok I genuinely wonder why companies can't get this right. I know Apple is good at what they do, but if you can't play in this game, why bother? I understand, on one hand, if you're making a budget knock off at 2/3rd the price. Then the lack of polish is forgivable from a business standpoint - the price is your biggest mover. But if you're competing with the iPad for top of the line why even bother? Why bother overpromising on battery, when the first reviews will prove that false. How does a corporation even assume they will have any success in the market with this type of strategy? ~~~ johnthedebs I think they know that a lot of people will buy something based on specs alone. Many people will look at the numbers and believe they're getting something great, without realizing that the experience will be pretty lousy. I'm certain the Android tablets will get better quickly, as the phones seem to be, but it obviously just isn't there yet. At this point it seems like Motorola wanted to capitalize on all the uninformed consumers, and those who don't want to buy an Apple product. ~~~ r00fus > I think they know that a lot of people will buy something based on specs > alone. Really? I don't know anyone besides geeks and neo-philiacs (ie, folks like me) that behave that way. Most folks (ie, the mass-market) treat tech like they'd treat appliances or cars or other stuff they don't fully understand. They ask folks who do know, visit review sites, and play with what's on the showroom floors. When there is a _large_ contingent of these that infer that the iPad is the best, the mass market buys it (as sales numbers show). ~~~ rimantas Well, there is a funny and sad at the same time case: cameras. My impression is that for a large portion of population the only thing that matters is megapixels. ~~~ danudey That's because for most of the population, they don't understand photography. They have to make some kind of comparison, and megapixels are the easiest - a linear number that presumably indicates more of whatever the camera is doing. ------ joe_the_user I lamely predicted the iPad's failure when it first came out. But now the same factors make me imagine the iPad might stay the top selling longer than the iPhone. Tablets are an awkward, difficult form. They have lots of ergonomic and UI problems. But if Apple has somewhat solved these problems, duplicating its solutions could turn out to be harder than throwing features and hardware at the problem. A too-heavy tablet is a much worse problem than a too-heavy laptop or even a too-heavy phone. And similarly for all the other trade-offs. UI problems ------ jrockway I'm surprised that a self-proclaimed "XML Aficionado" would complain about something being too heavy. ------ mikesaraf The argument about 16 available apps is shoddy at best. The release SDK for Honeycomb has only been out for about a week; It's being compared to a platform that has been around for over a year now. The only iPad apps that were available when it launched were by the few lucky companies that got pre- release access to its SDK. In 3 months the number of available honeycomb apps will be a different story and in 6 months it will be a non-issue. ~~~ ryannielsen Shoddy at best? iPad 2 ships on the 11th, with an enormous portfolio of apps. Do you think that's worth nothing? I'm betting the average consumer cares about four things: \- How the product feels in the store. (Is it solid and how responsive is it?) \- What they can do with it. (What apps can I run?) \- Who's recommending the product. (What does the NYT say? What do my friends say?) \- Price. (Can I afford this?) On which of those things does Xoom beat iPad or iPad 2? Who will walk into a store and see the Xoom next to an iPad or iPad 2 and say: I'm gonna buy the Xoom, even though it costs more, doesn't run the apps my friends are talking about, and isn't recommended by anyone I know! Hell, I'll go out on a limb and just guess, since I've held neither a Xoom or iPad 2, that the iPad 2 feels better in my hands. Past performance being a future predictor, I bet Apple nailed that experience. So, given that, is the argument that there's only 16 apps shoddy? By your post, it's an argument that there's no unique content for Honeycomb for the next 6 months – that there's no unique content vs. iPad _or_ iPad 2 for the next 6 months. And don't forget that those 6 months are not a vacuum of development for either Apple or 3rd party devs. Apple's likely to announce a new iOS release, and there will be tens of thousands of new, unique apps posted to the iOS App Store. I think that's a pretty solid argument against Xoom, especially since Xoom loses on every other factor (I think consumers care about) right off the bat. ~~~ mhw I agree with your list, but I think the 'What can I do with it?' question is more like 'What's the potential for me being able to do new things with this in the future?' - apps, and the likelihood of more of them being available in the future, translate into people valuing the device for more than just what it will do when they first get it out of the box. With iOS there's a reasonable expectation that the consumer will be able to choose from a growing selection of applications in the future, based on the past performance of the App Store and Apple's marketing around it. This translates into extra value, in that the device has the potential to increase in capability over time. I think you could argue the case that the Android platform could also be perceived this way by consumers, although I suspect the mainstream consumer is maybe less certain of the future availability of applications on Android. (That's based on the limited marketing of Android, and specifically of it as a platform for apps, that I've seen in the UK, so may be different in other markets.) But I do think it places the other platforms (HP's WebOS, RIM's QNX) at a distinct disadvantage. I think many consumers will consider them to be worse value purely because they don't expect they'll be able to choose from a growing selection of applications in the future. ------ briancooley I don't understand why anyone would call the XOOM heavy in comparison to the iPad. The comparisons I have seen list them both at 730g. I have them both, and I would say that the XOOM is more comfortable to hold. The two big factors are the texture of the back and the fact that I so often hold them in portrait mode. The widescreen form factor of the XOOM makes it easier to handle in portrait mode. ------ SeanDav To argue about the price/features of the Xoom vs iPad is to miss the point (in my opinion). The point is: Do you want to drink the Apple Kool-Aid or have similar functionality but much more freedom with Andriod. Personally I just won't buy Apple, no matter how much I recognize how good Apple are. I just do not want to be locked into 1 company. ~~~ flyosity I imagine your feelings run deep enough re: vendor lock-in that you certainly don't own a PS3, Xbox 360 or Wii, right? If you really don't want to be tied to one vendor and you're not also thinking about the biggest "locked-in" platforms on the planet then you're being hypocritical. ~~~ dagw The difference, at least for me is that games and gaming isn't really that important, it's a fun indulgence and not much more. If I can't play a certain game or use a certain controller on my PS3, then, so what. If on the other hand my productivity is hampered by the fact that I can't open a specific document, do a particular task or connect a particular peripheral to something I hope to use as a general purpose computing then that is a real problem. So it's not so much vendor lock-in as such, as vendor lock in that adversely affects me and gets in my way.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask PG: Why Not Host an Arc Conference at YC? - Kinnard Why not host an Arc conference at YC?<p>Could reinvigorate the community.<p>You could call it Arc-Con . . . ====== cylinder714 Yes, please!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Recruiters: why I’m kind of rude to them, why they deserve it, and how to fix it - Flopsy http://omgbloglol.com/post/18791070151/recruiters-why-im-kind-of-rude-to-them-why-they ====== exodust His associations with the so-called "good recruiters" is enough reason not to slam all recruiters with a "how crap are recruiters" article. Also, there's millions of more interesting things to write about. He's complaining about receiving emails. Emails about jobs, from recruiters who have his information because he gave it to them. What's the problem again? He should set up a filter, send all recruiter mail to a folder in his email, then search through it from time to time. You never know, that 27k Rails job in NYC he never wanted to hear about, might have some killer flexible hours or ocean views, or a chance to work on that xyz project. oh crap, now I want that 5 min back. ------ brudgers Keyboard, browser, internet connection: sum total of the barriers to entry for the recruiting industry. I'm an architect. The sort with NCARB certification. Last I checked, data warehouses don't require building permits. It takes a certain level of cluelessness to hit my resume with a keyword search...or maybe just ignoring the relevance ratings at the bottom of a mediocre search since I regularly get recruiting emails completely at odds with my resume. I could run through the list of war stories about recruiters with relevant positions in my industry, but one will serve my purposes. I was looking, because, like tech, switching jobs during the boom is the best way to boost salary in AEC. We were on our third phone conversation. The position sounded interesting. An interview was dangling. He was about to reveal the name of the company. Even in big cities, architecture firms are all interbred. There just aren't that many. "It's Harvard Jolly," he said. "Have you heard of them?" "They're listed on my resume. One of my references is an Executive VP." "Oh." Most recruiters have no ongoing relationship with the potential employer. They are hoping to insert themselves between the candidate and the job and extract a fee. In many cases this reduces the candidate's odds of landing the position. If the firm was advertising the position, they weren't planning for the fee. The candidate is tainted with sleazy association. And if the company doesn't want to pay up, the recruiter cuts the candidate off. However, I landed two career advancing jobs via cold calls from professional recruiters. On two other occasions, recruiters have introduced me to interesting positions which at the end of the interview process didn't fit. It is easy to sift the good from the bad. "Do you have a contract?" is all you need to know.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Indian School Girl Creates Washing Machine That Runs Without Electricity - miaowmix http://trak.in/innovation/indian-school-girl-invents-washing-machine-without-electricity-302013/ ====== kokey I have conflicted feelings about this. On the one hand it's nice to see the creativity and spirit, on the other hand it's sad to have to invent solutions for problems we should have stopped having a century ago, where the solution does not free up time for other things. [http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html) ~~~ r0h1n Agree. Also, it's a bit misleading to suggest she's created a washing machine that "runs without electricity". By the same logic, Fred Flintstone (or someone in his era) should be credited for designing a car that "ran without electricity". At this stage of mankind's industrialization, it's disingenuous to look at a human powered machine as an improvement over an electricity powered one. ~~~ acqq It's a huge improvement over holding the stuff full of skin-attacking chemicals in the hands for extended periods of time. Women in India and not only there have to do that daily. ~~~ FooBarWidget Because gloves are too expensive? Never mind that though. Pedalling is a lot easier than washing clothes by hand. It's better for your back too. ~~~ DanBC Safety equipment is valuable. Thus, it is stolen or sold to get money to buy food. ~~~ vinceguidry It's not so much that they're valuable, it's that it's too easy for assholes to insist that the poor girls doing the washing don't need / deserve them. ~~~ DanBC Well, yes, that would be a problem. There is a problem with risk assessment in general. BBC had a few useful programmes. One was about young peoe visiting developing nations to see how luxuries are produced. They visited the Accra toxic electronic equipment dump. People take wiring and burn the insulation off to get the copper. These cable bonfires release huge clouds of toxic smoke. Now one has any kind of mask. The programme showed a boy smashing capacitors off a PCB with a rock to sell them. I think, but do not know, that if je'd had a pair of snips (for the compnent leads) and some way to get the copper / gold off the PCB that he'd have had a more valuable resource to sell. It was a profoundly depressing, distressing, view. There was another programme called Welcome To India. This showed poor people reclaiming gold. They visited the jewelery district and swept the roads. They used acids and mercury and heat to turn this dust and grit into tiny gold grains. Part of the process was taking aciding grit in the palm of their hand and stirring it with their fingers. Again, no glasses or masks or gloves. Indian bloggers - are there any good blogs showing everyday life in India? Not just the poverty, but the life of a broad cross section of the population? ------ kamaal Though this must be appreciated, but this isn't new. Even in India. This thing has be done many times and failed to gather much support, basically at some point you begin get frustrated to be putting so much mechanical effort while an automated solution exists and can't be put to use because of power shortage. Most people don't have hours to be cycling to wash clothes, because if they wanted to- They might as well wash them manually with their hands(Note, this is super common in India). Its a bit like programmers doing manual work, what could be automated. And it looks cheap and is frustrating. Either way, India is in desperate need for energy related hacks. Solar energy offers a lot of hope. Even things like LED lights, better battery technology, bicycle pedal assists et al can do great help in India markets. ~~~ thewarrior For an example of real original thinking from India see this [http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-01-30/news...](http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-01-30/news/46828430_1_power- supply-power-cuts-dc-power) I tried posting it here but didnt get too many upvotes. ~~~ kamaal Great Idea, but the initial capital expenditure will be very high and at some time prohibitive enough. I think the government can help in waiving off taxes for sale of LED lights(This can cause great savings in power consumption), pedal assist bicycles and for things alike. Either way I don't think big changes will happen until we see great deal of innovation in the energy sector. ------ jff Everything old is new again: [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Washing_m...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Washing_machine.jpg) ~~~ spullara One could argue that it was a pretty severe oversight in the original design that you had to use your arms instead of your legs to turn that one. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v1rSA4FqlM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v1rSA4FqlM) ~~~ taktiktook Not quite. Back in those days it was considered unladylike to use your legs to operate a machine. First sewing machines used hand operated wheel to run, which were very hard to use. It was only later people started to use the foot operated ones. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jonescs.jpg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jonescs.jpg) ~~~ marquis Legs in themselves were considered risqué. These sewing machines would also have been covered with large skirts, much like the Victorian dinner table. ------ Brajeshwar Nice. This will also work well in places that has frequent power cuts. It is kinda funny when I went back to my home-town. Most household have Washing Machines lying around, unused because they don't have the power required to complete a wash cycle. ~~~ kamaal Forget home town, there are frequent power cuts in Bangalore itself. Most of the time 12-16 hours during weekends. I used to get frustrated, as weekends used to be my time when I wash clothes. Now I have a clever work around, I just put everything in the washing machine in the night at dinner. Then I just wake for a moment at around 3 AM and turn on the washing machine and geyser, by the time I'm awake in the morning the washing machine is done with washing and water is ready hot. I put the clothes for drying and take a bath. By then the power is gone. But then after the major chores are done. Who cares? ~~~ gohrt Have people tried using capacitors or batteries to accumulate electricity when the power lines are working? Is it too expensive/dangerous to help cover the outages? ~~~ dredmorbius On an energy storage density basis, liquid fuels and a generator beat batteries by a long shot. So if you want a dependable electrical system, you'll have a generator. You might still include batteries and some form of power regulation to get you through spikes and/or brownouts, but that's just a few miliseconds to minutes, not hours. A generator and large diesel tank can run you for days. ------ marquis It's not so much that this exists: it's that she built something. Kudos to that. Of course this idea isn't new. I use one of these when camping: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYq34Bxkp5w&t=3m55s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYq34Bxkp5w&t=3m55s) ~~~ masukomi you bring that massive thing with you when camping?! ... I think we have different definitions of "camping". ~~~ marquis You've never been camping with 30 members of your family before huh. ~~~ joyeuse6701 really shouldn't be called camping so much as pioneering, or oregon trailing ;) ------ gsk This is great. Years ago I used to help out at Honey Bee Network [http://www.sristi.org/hbnew/](http://www.sristi.org/hbnew/) and saw hundreds and hundreds of innovative solutions by people from all over India. If you can navigate the rather clunky interface at the website, there's a lot of great solutions for problems that millions of people in low-income population face. Here are some: Motorcycle cultivator [http://www.sristi.org/hbnew/hb_inno_detail.php?ID=DTP0010000...](http://www.sristi.org/hbnew/hb_inno_detail.php?ID=DTP0010000004191&lang_name=en&page=1&search_case=cycle) Bamboo bicycle [http://www.sristi.org/hbnew/hb_inno_detail.php?ID=KNW0020000...](http://www.sristi.org/hbnew/hb_inno_detail.php?ID=KNW0020000000054&lang_name=en&page=3&search_case=cycle) ------ ChuckMcM Nice, my wife got a HandyWash [1] for camping and it works pretty well. With the right sort of assists manual washing is pretty straight forward. [1] [http://www.hometone.com/pressure-handwasher-a-handy- washing-...](http://www.hometone.com/pressure-handwasher-a-handy-washing- machine.html) ~~~ danielharan Neat. How long does it take to do a wash with that? ~~~ ChuckMcM Since we generally have nylon clothes while camping not long at all. I don't think I've tried to wash denim in it. Basically it takes longer to dry generally than it does to wash it. (and nylon dries pretty quickly) ------ known "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." \--George Bernard Shaw ------ sdfjkl The first thing this made me think of was the countless old/broken washing machines ending up on the dump, with perfectly intact, shiny stainless steel drums that could've been used in this. ------ chenster Hey, loooky here, an electricity-free, zero-emission, exercise, "green" boat made from bicycle! [http://cubeme.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2009/06/diy_amphib...](http://cubeme.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2009/06/diy_amphibious_bicycle_made_recycled_water_gallons_1.jpg) ------ enscr Instead of running washing machines on electricity and then running on electric powered machines in gym, how about manually cycling a washing machine like this. You hit 2 birds with one stone. Granted it's not practical in every household, but it's not a bad alternative for some. ~~~ agumonkey We need generic magnetic resistance (instead of weighted) machines charging batteries. ~~~ enscr I've wondered, but too lazy to calculate that how much electricity could be generated by machines in gym. Probably not a lot, but the whole idea of a green gym could encourage people to work out more. Edit : Google search shows some in practice : [http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2032281...](http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2032281,00.html) ~~~ VLM It works for greenwashing as a marketing technique as you suspect, but the energy cost of lighting alone exceeds the energy you can produce by leg power, to say nothing of HVAC for the facility and water heater for the showers. This is why we burn coal and uranium instead of forced prison labor to generate electricity on exercise bikes. I'm glad of that. ------ jk Please note that this is something Remya created around 2003; more than 10 years ago. I am not sure how it was posted in 2013. ------ virtualsue My daughter has a small pedal powered washing machine that she uses in her house in Leicester (UK). I liked the article and the girl's mechanical ingenuity but the idea itself is very old! ------ agumonkey Next : use a set of rocking chairs connected to a flywheel distributing kinetic energy to whatever appliance needs it, bring your family and enjoy. ------ rlongstaff The GiraDora manually powered washing machine was announced a couple of years ago - I don't know what happened to it, e.g. did it never get funding? [http://inhabitat.com/human-powered-giradora-washer-needs- no-...](http://inhabitat.com/human-powered-giradora-washer-needs-no- electricity-and-costs-only-40/) ------ smoyer Here's another example of a bicycle powered washing machine - in this case, using the tub and impeller from one commercial machine: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYmK9Rsh4Pg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYmK9Rsh4Pg) ------ eklavya I think it can be improved so that you don't have to put the whole machine between your legs by using more of the cycle (chained pedal rotation). Good to see people trying to make lives better for themselves and their community. ------ Hilyin Looks awkward as hell, why not just connect a bike connected by bike chain to the washer so your legs aren't all spread wide trying to pedal. [http://goo.gl/K6W6gS](http://goo.gl/K6W6gS) ~~~ netchaos There you go, the same girl. [http://azstarnet.com/news/world/perpetual- paintbrush-bike-li...](http://azstarnet.com/news/world/perpetual-paintbrush- bike-like-washing-machine-among- finds/article_ae28ec90-2bb1-5680-ab80-55571f450908.html) ------ enscr Cool but lots of similar stuff around [https://www.google.com/search?q=bicycle+washing+machine&sour...](https://www.google.com/search?q=bicycle+washing+machine&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X) ------ userbinator You see odd but surprisingly practical inventions like these in China as well - as they say, "necessity is the mother of invention". ------ aditsgupta Necessity is the mother of all inventions! I'm from India and I know how much impact this might have on the rural community here. ------ dotemacs Anybody else notice that the water from the washing machine is being discharged, untreated, into the stream near by? ~~~ kbutler I expect that where only 14% of the rural population of India has access to a latrine ([http://water.org/country/india/](http://water.org/country/india/)), washing machine effluent is not a significant concern. ~~~ curiouscats And how do you think it was without the machine? Often it is doing the cleaning in the stream, beating the cloths on rocks. ------ jqm These things really work (I used one in an apartment). [http://breathingwasher.com/](http://breathingwasher.com/) And, they cost a lost less than that bicycle contraption. Takes about 5 minutes to wash a few pairs of pants and some shirts. Gets them amazingly clean. ------ cubancigar11 We had a project in our mechanical class to create 'stuff' using lathe machine and what not. All 35 in our class were divided into groups of 3 and were supposed to come up with 'novel' ideas. 5 groups (including mine) came up with washing machine :) ------ mrmondo I'm unsure as to why it's important to state that she is Indian in the title? ~~~ bliss Nationality is a pretty common way, if not the most common way to describe someone. What's wrong with it's inclusion? ~~~ heroh he's likely mad that the new CEO of Microsoft is Indian no more tech support jokes ------ ragsagar Couple of years before i saw a school kid with a grinder that works by pedalling in Kerala state level science exhibition. It was very similar to this. These sort of machines are common among these competitions. ------ disputin Not sure about invented. I guess it could be invented on a local scale, but I saw something similar in South Africa in the early 90's. ------ seshakiran ok now. a satirical comment. :) very good. now take this and create a company that improves your health while washing your clothes. Affluent people will buy. In my earlier days, we used to use something called as "hands" to wash clothes. ------ Eye_of_Mordor Does she plan on inventing one for ironing? ~~~ test1235 Yeah - you throw an iron and your clothes into a drum which you can spin by pedalling. The idea is only a prototype, however, and might need some fine-tuning. ------ dalacv didnt they have this on gilligan's island like 50 years ago?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I can get your kid into an Ivy - imgabe http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/103709/I-Can-Get-Your-Kid-Into-an-Ivy ====== whacked_new Great, someone has figured out the recipe for high-performing, cookie-cutter drones. They might as well submit their super-early-action resumes to Wall Street alongside their college applications. I have so many more snide remarks to make about this, but I can't say there aren't upsides... at least it tells you there is always a way, if you're willing to find it. ~~~ rontr I actually think she's creating something very different from drones. It sounds like she's pushing kids to do extraordinary things that they wouldn't think of doing by themselves, but as long as those are the things about which the kids are passionate (music, science, photography, etc). Even if the end goal is to get into a good college, I don't think it diminishes from those kids' achievements under her guidance. In the end, it sounds like if the parents and the kids were a bit creative they wouldn't need that woman's services. But she helps the would-be uncreative drones be less drone-like, and that's what helps them get admitted. ~~~ paulgb Ok, but how many of her clients would still be clients if the tag line was "I push your kids to do extraordinary things". I could be wrong, but I think the target audience wants to trade their money for a college acceptance, regardless of the means. ------ icky She's hacked the system. This can only be a good thing if it forces the schools to patch it. ------ steveplace 1) This is wrong. 2) Why didn't I think of it first. ------ aswanson I can't knock her hustle but she genuinely annoys me. ------ utnick it would be cool if people did things they wanted to do instead of things that look good on applications if colleges didn't care about them, I think membership in student council, natl honor society, habitat for humanity, chess club, band, etc, etc would fall by 99% people should just be real ------ Alex3917 Article is incorrect. The Academic Index is an agreement between the Ivies about the minimum GPA/SAT necessary for recruited athletes. The cutoff is different for each school, based on the average of the overall student body. However the AI has nothing to do with the general admissions process. ~~~ imgabe I don't doubt that you're right in the stated purpose of the AI, but that doesn't necessarily mean the admissions officers don't use it for anything else. ------ streblo I know a lot of people who were able to get into ivies or ivy league caliber schools without paying 40k. They did it on their own, for free. If you have to pay 40k to get your kid into an ivy, they probably don't belong there in the first place. ------ edw519 As I read this article, part of me was disgusted, but another part kept saying, "Brilliant!" What a business model... Find prospects with essentially unlimited resources and find out what they CAN'T buy. Then provide a service to dramatically increase their probability of getting it. Do that service excellently. And, most of all, find a way to guarantee (if even only semantically) your success. I know tons of people with lots of money who constantly surprise me with how they spend it chasing something they CAN'T BUY. They chauffer their kids back and forth to every imaginable activity (to improve their chances later on). They take vitamins, eat weird foods, and go to "holistic" retreats to "insure" their health and longevity. They even donate tons of money to religious and spiritual institutions to insure their place in the "world to come". They can't buy any of it. But they sure can pay to improve their odds. I say this woman is really onto something. Now if only I could find my angle... For only $49,995, I will guarantee your ycombinator application gets accepted in the next round. This includes personal start-up business counseling and 2 weeks at my exclusive retreat at a world class resort. (This guarantee doesn't apply to lame ideas or applicants. "Lame" to be defined by me at a later date.) ~~~ reitzensteinm Or just offer a money back guarantee and honour it. Make 50k off of the 20% who make it through, and Robert's yer mother's brother. ~~~ sethg Alan Dershowitz once told the story of a court clerk who would approach the plaintiffs in every trial and say "For $5,000 I'll try to convince the judge to rule in your favor. If you still lose the case I'll give you your money back." Then he would make the same offer to the defendants. ~~~ aston His mistake was not keeping the vigorish. ~~~ edw519 OTOH, with the speed of our court system, he probably could've made a nice little income on the interest. ------ mynameishere Hey, if she was a publishing agent, she would take 15 percent of all the kids' future salaries. ------ jey depressing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bathroom usability. - yookd http://davidkyoo.posterous.com/bathroom-usability ====== MPSimmons How a bathroom usability post got written without a reference to three seashells, I'll never know. ------ logn Bathrooms are rarely designed with OCD sufferers in mind.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Only a few vendor-paid developers do almost all open-source work - tomxor https://www.infoworld.com/article/3268001/open-source-tools/open-source-isnt-the-community-you-think-it-is.html ====== mhsabbagh This is hilarious: >> It is fair to say that for almost all of the projects in the CNCF, specific vendors account for most of the development work being done. > Not just “many” open source projects—all of them. The author moves from an analysis written about CNCF projects to generalize a conclusion about all open source software. What a misleading title and content, it remains hanged without any evidence on those claims. ~~~ sonnyblarney Definitive statements are easy to pick apart, but I think he's basically correct. Pretty much all the open source we use are made by a tiny handful of people. It makes sense because most software works this way anyhow, and when there are large groups involved it takes intense coordination. The more existential question is: are those 'peripheral' additions critical? Because maybe that 'last mile' is superfluos, i.e. minor bugs and 'nice to have' features, but it's possible they are key contributions. It's possible that the 'key contributors' are like 'managers' or 'curators' of the project, bringing in the work of others, making decisions about it, possibly borrowing ideas from the community and 'implementing it themselves'. ~~~ trumped > It makes sense because most software works this way anyhow What does that mean? ~~~ prepend It means most software projects are actually written by small teams of under 10. When you don’t count all the project staff, testing, operations, user support, etc. Softwareis typically just lots of small components linked together. Especially super generalizable stuff like popular open source. ------ peterwwillis Open source contributions are actually mostly not from the project in question. You'll almost always depend on a mountain of other code, in the form of the kernel, software libraries, user utilities, and so on. A lot of these are specialized projects and have their own core developers. Your project may be possible without them, on another platform for example, but in Linux there's still thousands of random devs contributing to a whole. Cloud software has suffered from NIH for a good long time now, and required proprietary APIs to function. You have to "integrate" your app with another app, it never just has implicit compatibility. Sad really. ~~~ kanox That claim that "vendor-paid developers do almost all work" also fits the Linux kernel. The kernel is very large and has many contributors but work done by random volunteers is dwarfed by that done by large companies. This is visible in contributor statistics: [https://lwn.net/Articles/750054/](https://lwn.net/Articles/750054/) For the kernel the "community" is to a very large extent a community of companies. ~~~ mr_toad I get the impression that many of the kernel developers in these companies would be active in the community no matter where they worked. For example see this interview with one of the names on the list: ‘I can't imagine doing anything else for a living after having looked into most kernel subsystems at some point over the last 15 years.’ [https://www.linux.com/news/30-linux-kernel- developers-30-wee...](https://www.linux.com/news/30-linux-kernel- developers-30-weeks-arnd-bergmann) ------ tspiteri The article uses "commercial" when it should really use "proprietary". The open source projects mentioned are all very much commercial software. ~~~ ghaff I'd rephrase that slightly. In many cases, there is commercial software that makes use of many of those open source projects. ------ josmala Infoworld: "We care about your privacy" That is the headline, in an interface which allows me to scroll 32 times so that I can disable sharing my personal information to all the ~300+ different parties they share it by default. ------ kerng >>The irony is that what makes open source work—and differ from commercial software—is that only a few developers do the major work on any project. Comparing Open Source vs. Commercial software - that's the fail of the article right at the beginning... Apple vs Oranges... What has one to do with the other? Maybe they meant proprietary? ~~~ vram22 Yes, good point. I've seen a few well-known/famous tech writers make that mistake, either unknowingly or carelessly. Open source or free software (as in speech) vs. closed source (proprietary) and commercial or paid / non-commercial or free software (as in beer) are 2 X 2 (orthogonal) variations, giving 4 possibilities in total. Odd that not many people see this. Maybe sloppy as ghaff said. Correct me if I got it wrong, anyone, that's my understanding of "free as in speech" vs. "free as in beer". ~~~ franciscop I prefer libre (as in speech) and gratis (as in no cost) but it might be because I'm Spanish. The thing is, they are conceptually orthogonal, but in practice there's strong correlation. It might be for many reasons, but I'd guesstimate 90+% of open source is also non-commercial. ~~~ vram22 >but in practice there's strong correlation. It might be for many reasons, but I'd guesstimate 90+% of open source is also non-commercial. Your guesstimate may be right or wrong (also see sibling heavenlyblue comment), but my point was more that those writers I mentioned, do not seem to realize that open source or free software can be sold as well. They seem to confuse FOSS as being *synonymous" with "free as in beer". And even if "90+% of open source is also non-commercial", that can be just because many people do not charge for their open source software. There's no rule that they cannot, though. ~~~ franciscop I agree, I'd be the first one who would like to get some money for my open source :) I am just saying that if there's such a strong correlation it's normal for some people to mix them up. ------ RangerScience Really good insights on how this is tots fine and works well, but I think it also misses something key: As company, you can make money by giving something away for free. ~~~ maxxxxx It may also be a tool to to push out competition. Keep your own money making stuff proprietary but make everything else open source so others can't survive. this seems to be the Google and Facebook strategy. ~~~ detuur If you make the stuff that powers your way of doing business free, you'll push out everyone who tries anything different. If your way is rule, you're king. ------ anfilt Well, it kinda takes more people working part time to do the same amount as someone working on it full time. Throw in the fact they also probably get paid. Yes, the will code more the most volunteers. Sadly, volunteers who would contribute more have to eat too. Although, I find the statement "all" is a bit misleading. I know of quite a few projects done by people on the side. ------ AkshatM While each individual project may have a core group of committers, are they the same people each time? This conclusion was not clear to me from the article, though the Hacker News title implies it. If that is the case, it goes against my experience with open-source. True, individual projects have core committers who drive the project forward - but the ecosystem that springs up around a project doesn't typically derive entirely from this core subset. NPM is likely the best example with 350,000 packages existing on the platform alone with the distribution of developers to packages being fairly uniform (reference: [https://github.com/substack/npmtop/blob/master/README.markdo...](https://github.com/substack/npmtop/blob/master/README.markdown) \- mind that the numbers are from 2011, but even back then it was highly uniform). ------ maxander As others have noted, the article is based on a study that only looked at a small subject of OSS projects, so it's not very solid. But the results fit with many commenters' perceptions. It's surprising that so little is known about the dynamics of how OSS gets written, given how crucially important it is to the global economy these days. (Even) more broadly; I wonder if a similar system will wind up dominating in some fields of science. There's been a bunch of cases where prominent research papers in AI or biomedicine have been published by entirely for-profit companies; one supposes they benefit in the same fashion that more traditional software companies benefit from publishing open source work, namely by building a reputation and cultivating a larger ecosystem around their expertise. ~~~ dnomad Not much is known about the reality of open source because people do not want to know. This is the biggest story of the last decade: a few major technology corporations have banded together to give away billions of dollars of software completely for free. It is, I suspect, the greatest act of charity our planet has ever known. It's not difficult to see how virtually all of the major trends from the rise of China to the ever expanding proliferation of smartphones and IoT are being driven by this. The disconnect between the narrative around technology companies and and the reality is due to a severe cultural blindspot. It would simply never occur to most people that private companies would compete to give way most of their products. Even people who should know better don't want to admit that much of the software they consume (for absolutely zero dollars!) is provided by the same companies they love to whine about. We seem to be missing a whole new phase of capitalism happening right under our noses and there's really not enough research into it. ------ donbright you know what would be interesting... is if there was some kind of equivalent for dtrace or strace or gdb.. but instead of collecting statistics on performance or call trees of functions, it could instead tell you statistics on who wrote the code that your machine is running, line by line. ~~~ dankohn1 This is by project instead of by machine, but CNCF develops DevStats to show a number of statistics on each of our projects, including the companies behind the development. [https://k8s.devstats.cncf.io/d/9/companies- table?orgId=1](https://k8s.devstats.cncf.io/d/9/companies-table?orgId=1) Disclosure: I am executive director of CNCF. ------ starefossen Keep in mind that many of these corporate employed developers would likely contribute to the same OSS projects as a part of their job regardless of what company they happen to be employed at. ~~~ pests I don't think this is true. First of all some workplaces won't allow it. Some companies don't even run on OSS. Some companies will work on it but not contribute back. Some companies won't have a budget to fund random / semi-related OSS project development. ~~~ rossdavidh There are examples. For instance, both Linux (Linus Torvalds) and Python (Guido Rossum) have been steered by original contributors who changed employers several times, always still retaining their role as primary developer/coordinator for that open source project. Not saying it's the majority, but Linux and Python are two pretty important examples. ~~~ yayana Those aren't relevant examples for drawing a conclusion about the relationship between the average contributor to Linux or python and their employer.. Or for the lead of an average project and their employer. ~~~ pests You made this point better than I could. If anything GP mentioning _important projects_ is by definition the exception.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Amazon's Silk Browser To Be A Data Mining Jackpot - there http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110929/23172216142/amazons-silk-browser-to-be-data-mining-jackpot.shtml ====== mitultiwari With Silk, Amazon will be able to see what webpages Kindle Fire readers are reading, and they can mine that data to figure out which web pages are read together. Based on the pages that are read together, Amazon can build interesting web page recommendation system using collaborative filtering techniques. ------ dascripter Why would you use Silk over other browsers? It seems like the real benefit of precaching content does not really apply in the desktop case. You don't have near the restrictions on bandwidth, or computing power that you have on a tablet. Also wasn't there some speculation that there might be serious issues with performance of Javascript throught the Silk system. While agree that it is a large amount of data being aggregated I would be suprised to see this anywhere other than the mobile space. ------ clistctrl I pre-ordered a fire. Honestly if i'm reading about some random topic (i was just reading a page about econometrics) if Amazon all of the sudden started recommending me books about econometrics, i'd be okay with it. As long as the recommendations are good. ------ barista The "split browser" is not something new though. Microsoft had deepfish, Opera does that for its mobile browser I think. How do they address these concerns?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Maki, an online generator of promotional videos - ikliuger http://makivideo.com ====== ikliuger Examples of videos made in Maki: [http://bit.ly/1MV43I6](http://bit.ly/1MV43I6)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Why big email providers don't sign the email? - ddalex I completely understand the resistance of Gmail and the likes to full end-to-end email encryption.<p>What I don't understand is the resistance of cryptographically sign the outbound email and discard incoming spoofed emails that don't have proper signatures. This simple move would create a high barrier for phishing emails since they don't have valid signatures for the organization that supposedly sent them.<p>Do you have any insight in this scheme ? ====== Piskvorrr Signing without encryption is worse than useless by providing a false sense of security (see e.g. [http://th.informatik.uni- mannheim.de/people/lucks/HashCollis...](http://th.informatik.uni- mannheim.de/people/lucks/HashCollisions/) , MD5 used as an example); and costs to start signing are virtually identical to encrypt-and-sign (not just financial costs to providers: most of all time-and-effort for everyone, including users).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Writing web applications in Python and Pyramid Web Framework - ergo14 http://pyramid-blogr.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ ====== RossM I built one of my final university projects on Pyramid (I wanted to use Python but at the time didn't like Django) and ended up regretting it. There weren't a lot of resources out there to work from - be it projects on github, blogs and I found the docs themselves were lacking sometimes. My own fault given that I'd only built a couple of small apps on it before, but it does show that it's quite difficult to get into without knowing Pylons/zope/repoze or one of it's other forerunners. ~~~ ergo14 Agreed, thats why i've made this small tutorial to illustrate the basics. Since i did a flask tutorial, pyramid doesnt feel harder to work with at any point. ~~~ rbanffy I'm glad buildout isn't mentioned. ------ ripperdoc Why Pyramid instead of Flask or Bottle? ~~~ ccarpenterg Framework vs Github followers Tornado 4,551 Flask 4,019 Bottle 1,381 Pyramid 876 EDIT: Just adding some figures to the debate. ~~~ mdellavo This is meaningless. Pyramid is a newer framework (newest of those listed?) ~~~ mercurial Yes and no. Yes, because popularity of a given technology is usually related to the size of its ecosystem/number of tutorials. No, because we are talking about micro-framework, which architecturally use a bunch of loosely-coupled Python components, so having "plugins" is less important than for other frameworks for many use cases. ------ TheSmoke lets clear up some myths here. 1) pyramid does not have a bad documentation. you just don't know where to start. the pyramid documentation is at <http://docs.pylonsproject.org/en/latest/docs/pyramid.html> and pyramid tutorial is at [http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/1.4-branch...](http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/1.4-branch/tutorials/wiki2/index.html). as a beginner, you will want to start with the tutorial. the documentation will give you the full knowledge about pyramid and every single thing in it. 2) pyramid does not have anything to do with zope other than its transaction extension. uhm and some core developers being ex zope devs. repoze.bfg had. after the merge between pylons and repoze.bfg pyramid was born. it merged the code base of repoze.bfg and the philosophy of pylons. 3) pyramid is not just a framework. it is a framework with which you can build your own framework as well or enjoy it like the way it is. ------ Ixiaus Pyramid is amazing - I use it in production for my startup and it's solid, flexible, and very modern (I love Traversal over route mapping).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Laravel 3.1 PHP Framework. Includes awesome ORM. - 2two2 http://laravel.com/docs/routing#the-basics ====== there The link should probably have gone to <http://laravel.com/docs> instead of the Routing page. The ORM looks better than PHP ActiveRecord, though it's kind of weird that validations live outside of the database models. ~~~ mgkimsal Agreed that validations outside the models is a bit weird. There are times when you have 'business logic' validation rules that aren't 'data validation' rules, but we almost always have data validation rules that match up with a particular model/table. Forcing those to be developed and documented apart from each other is odd. I'm assuming you could put a static $validationRules on a model and grab it in a controller for validation, but that it's not described/recommended/defaulting to that behaviour is a bit disappointing. ~~~ ShawnMcCool Laravel isn't the kind of framework to lock you into a specific way of doing things. It's different than what you may expect if you're coming from Symfony, Kohana, CodeIgniter, or Fuel. There's no reason to tie a validation system into a model. That's enough justification for it not to be done. You have the flexibility to implement it easily in whatever way you see fit. ~~~ mgkimsal You can get reductionist and say there's no reason to do anything. The fact is, most of the time when people have models that represent things, there are going to be basic validation rules to represent standard constraints ("email has to be valid", "fields x/y/z can't be null", etc). Those constraints are specific to the concept of the model itself, outside of any relations it may have, or uses it may have in the rest of the app. To me, that's reason enough to provide for a validation system in a model in framework. Hell - why have models? There's no reason to tie a model in to a framework - just be flexible and do it however you want, right? ------ manuletroll This framework looks nice and very well documented. I'll probably try it out next time I need to write something in PHP. The code bits I've seen in the docs look nearly elegant. At last, PHP's ecosystem starts to look a bit more enjoyable. ------ debacle I've looked at Laravel before, and I'm confused as to why Laravel is so tightly coupled internally. Unlike something like Silex, which uses dependency injection, I can't override the Route class in your application without rewriting a large chunk of the stack or replacing the file. In addition, the idiom of static calls for everything seems strange. Why was that pattern (or anti-pattern) chosen above other, more OO options? ------ lukeholder This is an excellent example of good documentation. And for some reason it is refreshing to not see a twitter bootstrap site as well. This looks to be a very nice php framework. I used to be all over codeigniter or fuelphp, but since moving to ruby (rails & sinatra) I am happy to see php frameworks like this springing up. great work. ~~~ ericbarnes Actually it is using bootstrap. Just heavily modified ;) ------ pavel_lishin Odd choice of link - the basics of routing?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
5000 Artists Line Up For a Pirate Bay Promotion - joeyespo http://torrentfreak.com/5000-artists-line-up-for-a-pirate-bay-promotion-120405/ ====== Retric This get's to the real reason the RIAA hates the piracy. Once someone is internet famous they don't need promoters to start making good money. When someones is actually good they can keep making good money just from word of mouth. Because when you get down to it Advertising is the only thing recording labels bring to the equation now days. That's not to say people won't sign on. Just that once your making good money your less interested in signing a deal that gives 90% of the profits to a record company. And that power imbalance is why record company's can be so profitable in the first place. ~~~ pyre > Advertising is the only thing recording labels > bring to the equation now days Also: * Payola... errr.. I mean radio air time * Connections to top-notch producers / audio engineers / directors (music videos) / etc. ~~~ brico Exactly! Good record labels book venues, organize travel, handle the legal stuff like insurance etc, they are well connected and know people at the radio stations and know the bloggers, they can introduce them to other bands/producers/video editors, ... in short: they make sure that the band can concentrate on their music and that the target audience knows about them So record labels won't go away, they should maybe rename themselves because of the automatic negative response you get when you hear the word "record label" ~~~ Retric "Exactly! Good record labels book venues, organize travel, handle the legal stuff like insurance etc, they are well connected _advertising_ and know people at the radio stations _advertising_ and know the bloggers, _advertising_ they can introduce them to other bands/producers/video editors, _advertising_ ... in short: they make sure that the band can concentrate on their music and that the target audience knows about them _advertising_ " Edit: If your promoters don't consider such things _advertising_ find someone better that understands the industry. PS: 'book venues' is easy, it's filling them that's hard and that take _advertising_. Don't forget bands also have an agent often handles a lot of this stuff a well. ------ rmc It's amazing when you think that pirates give aware their bandwidth and storage to distribute your files for free. 30 years ago, the manufactor, storage, and physical distribution of media (music/films) was expensive and the idea that customers would do it for you for free would have sounded absurd. And yet here we are now. ~~~ MiguelHudnandez If bandwidth were metered and people paid per byte, I think the amount of sharing would drop. People share their bandwidth because they are paying for downstream and they also happen to get a chunk of upstream bandwidth with that. Regarding storage, they need to store the item locally to consume it. There are probably very few individuals that store all the torrents they've ever downloaded in perpetuity and remain as seeders of those. But yes, I agree that regardless of the causing circumstances, the fact that people are all making copies of things and sharing them is remarkable. I think it is analogue to what a lot of people want to see with 3D printing. Replace "bandwidth and storage" with "the transportation of raw materials," and torrent software with 3D printing, and you've got yourself an interesting sea change in the manufacturing industry. I wonder if they will lobby with the same intensity that the RIAA and MPAA have. ~~~ rmc _Replace "bandwidth and storage" with "the transportation of raw materials," and torrent software with 3D printing, and you've got yourself an interesting sea change in the manufacturing industry. I wonder if they will lobby with the same intensity that the RIAA and MPAA have._ Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's speech "The coming war on general-purpose computing", which is basically, yes, there will be a massive, more powerful lobby. <http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html> ------ ImprovedSilence I like the idea. Here's hoping for the rise of the independent artist, and for better channels for the consuming of more diverse content. There is soooo much music out there, and sooo much good music that we will never know about. There just HAS to be a better way for me to get my muisc fix, than for a few labels and some hipster blogs here and there cramming the same crap down my throat. (and this maps to all areas of art as well) ------ njs12345 Perhaps worth a listen? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuMCEhZ4eIw> ------ benologist I hope they're giving it away because judging by the dude featured in TF's rhetoric that space is worthless - nobody using TPB cares about him: 457 seeding, 3 leeching, and just 85,000 views on his video from a site with millions of daily visitors. ~~~ pessimizer "[...]just 85,000 views[...]" _???_ He's not Britney Spears, he's a guy that's looking for enough name recognition to fill clubs on the road. That's all you need if you don't think you're above working for a living. ~~~ bri3d It's the conversion that's worrying - Pirate Bay sees millions of impressions a _day_. To only convert that into 85,000 low-friction video views is pretty bad. Given these numbers, I don't think TPB advertising is very attractive when weighed against other media - I think the main draw is that it's free. ~~~ MengYuanLong The conversion is low but you inadvertently stated the reason. They see millions of impressions for people wanting a large assortment of different content. Honestly, most probably go there for TV/Movies/Porn. It isn't going to see the sort of conversion rates you might see on a site like The Hype Machine where users are there primarily for music discovery. ------ earbitscom We're doing it to give back. That is classic. ------ hcarvalhoalves Is that why Pirate Bay seems down? ~~~ vibrunazo Seems fine to me: <http://thepiratebay.se/>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is it possible to detect a visitor's ISP, could websites educate Comcast users? - iOSGuy As I understand it, there are limitations, it will not be 100% accurate ie: a user could be using a proxy, or VPN, etc.<p>Still, if Comcast is going to throttle specific websites, or charge specific websites for faster connections, can't we use the knowledge that a website visitor is a Comcast subscriber to our advantage?<p>More than that, could Reddit use a protest day to demonstrate what may happen to Comcast customers?<p>For example, instead of a blackout day, Reddit loads slow for Comcast subscribers and only Comcast subscribers.<p>For programmers, here's a possible solution using PHP: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/855967/how-do-i-retrieve-the-visitors-isp-through-php ====== kogir It's super easy with this: [https://www.maxmind.com/en/isp](https://www.maxmind.com/en/isp) If you're unwilling to pay, then you can get pretty far with their free ASN database: [http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/geolite/](http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/geolite/) ------ feld I'd imagine a varnish vmod could be created to do a lookup in a maxmind database and then serve slowly with some new page elements. ------ jesusmichael nslookup? you get the hostname of the IP and you can resolve for that.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Schneier on Detaining David Miranda - qubitsam https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/detaining_david.html ====== tokenadult Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6283241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6283241)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I've got the next great idea for a social networking site... But now what? - drewbert So I've got a million dollar idea for a simple social networking site. The dilemma.. I'm not a developer and I don't know any, or know how to find one thats capable of bringing my idea to fruition. So whats a guy like me to do? I've got the money, time and motivation but where do I go from here? ====== dolphenstein I've got a gazillion dollar idea! Eye implants that shoot laser beams! Just need someone to build the prototype for me.... ------ zipdog Draw each screen of your system, describing the function of every element on the screen. Deascribe what data you want to store and how it relates to any other data. Then go shopping for a developer (odesk or a local web business) to make a prototype of what you've just specified. If you've really got the money you'll want quality people, so pick some websites that are quality, find out who made them, and get in touch. If it's a tech co-founder you're after, look out for start-up gatherings or similar in your town. ~~~ drewbert Thanks. I've never heard of start-up gatherings so I'll definitely have to look into it further. ------ jefflinwood I'm going to disagree with a lot of these other comments. What does your simple social networking site do? Is it a close clone of another site? For instance, Digg for cat lovers? Twitter for Amiga holdouts? Groupon for Waco, Texas? There are commercial and open source clones of most of these sites out there of all kinds of quality. That doesn't actually matter so much - what matters is that you can quickly get a prototype of what you want to build in front of your potential users/customers. Swap out some colors and images and make your clone script look close to what you want to build. If your idea takes off, then you can start looking at building from scratch. Hope this helps! ~~~ drewbert How I see the site is probably more like a dating site that connects service providers with customers based on a geographic location but with a unique twist. Where might I be able to research these open source clones a bit further and do you think there is something that may fit in this realm? ~~~ jefflinwood Hmm, I didn't see a lot of good open source dating scripts. That's probably because there's a lot of money in the space, and you can charge good money if you have a clone script. I saw two commercial options that were a couple of hundred dollars. Search for "match dating clone" or "match dating script" Can't vouch for them though. Drupal's usually another non-techie option to build a web site, but dating support is lacking. You'll need to get a developer involved if those commercial options don't let you do what you want. Here's some inspiration from the author of Mingle2. He spent 66.5 hours to build his dating site: <http://mingle2.com/blog/view/how-i-built-mingle2> ------ JonathanWCurd Hire a developer or two and build a MVP to test the idea in the wild. That way you can see if what you think is a great idea really is. If not rinse and repeat. If so add to your team to make it better and keep adding to the product. ~~~ JonathanWCurd And if you are looking for a co-founder zipdog's advice above is a great starting point. ------ 3ds I see this kind of mail/post all the time. Some business guy thinks all that's necessary for a successful web-startup is a good idea. He then can find a lowly developer who takes care of those pesky details while he ponders whether the header should be more blueish or not... I don't mean to be rude, but these ideas are usually crap and without a technical (co)founder, it's not gonna happen. Also: Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything. <http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_value_of_ideas/> ~~~ us I agreed up until you said ideas are worthless. My stance is similar to this post which showed up here earlier this year: [http://blog.assetmap.com/2011/01/social-web/lets-end-the- ide...](http://blog.assetmap.com/2011/01/social-web/lets-end-the-ideas-are- worthless-myth/) ------ nolite If you've got the money, you can pay for developers ~~~ drewbert Exactly, but how do I find someone thats qualified in social networking development? Is there credentials or skill sets that I should be specifically looking for? ------ maxdemarzi >>I've got the money <http://www.odesk.com> ~~~ tgrass If you've got the money, honey, I've got the time... ------ noig3 Where are you located? People need to know! ~~~ drewbert Chicago	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why I’m Still Using APL (2012) [pdf] - nyc111 https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/Talks/APL50-talk2.pdf ====== nyc111 I really liked APL. I'm learning it from here [https://aplwiki.com/LearnApl/AplTables](https://aplwiki.com/LearnApl/AplTables) It's fun. Not sure what I can do with it but it's so different than other languages.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Progressive web apps running as native OS X apps - amk_ https://dev.opera.com/articles/pwa-desktop/ ====== stephenr Running a website (whether hosted locally or remotely and cached) in a chrome- less browser runtime does not make your app "native". Please stop this ridiculous mis-use of the term.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Fair Bosses Fall Behind - jkuria http://hbr.org/2011/07/why-fair-bosses-fall-behind/ar/1 ====== axiom I've had 3 kinds of bosses: 1\. Hardass who pushes everyone to the limit, tends to micro-manage, frequently overrules consensus with his own views. 2\. Total pushover who agrees with everything. Constantly seeks consensus and rule by democracy, never pushes anyone and just tries to be everyone's friend. 3\. Somewhere in between the two above. Seeks consensus and lets people make mistakes in order to help them learn. Sometimes overrules people in order to make sure things don't get too far off track. Doesn't try to be people's friend, but is sensitive to people's needs and gives a reasonable amount of leeway. The somewhat counter-intuitive thing is that #2 is by far and away the worst kind of boss to have. It's fun for about a month, and then everything falls apart. The teams never seems to get anything done. All the best people eventually leave because there is never any consequence to incompetence and so tons of people just default to being lazy (think: working in government.) Although #1 is tough and often unpleasant, he tends to get things done (albeit with higher turnover and more grumbling) and most often at least ensures that the company succeeds (think guys like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who are notorious for being insanely demanding and insensitive.) Lastly, it's _insanely_ hard to hit the right balance between #1 and #2. Really it's damn near impossible and requires some kind of magic innate talent to be able to inspire and push people to work hard without crushing their spirits. ~~~ j_baker The thing about #1 is that they probably _aren't_ trying to help the company succeed. It's more likely that they're trying to take the company for a ride to meet their own ends. Any success they have is only going to be in the short term and only in the interests of posturing. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates can get away with this because their companies by and large _are_ theirs. While #2 isn't a very effective leader, their heart is usually at least in the right place. Plus, given the right people, it's amazing what you can get accomplished by simply leaving them alone and letting them do their job. But then again, I'm of the opinion that we focus too much on the leadership and not enough on the people. Maybe I'm just naive. Great leaders are like surfers riding a big wave. It's easy to get distracted by the surfer and forget that the wave is really the important part. ~~~ jerf "Great leaders are like surfers riding a big wave. It's easy to get distracted by the surfer and forget that the wave is really the important part." I used to think that. I've recanted. I'm still not 100% sure why leaders are so important, but the evidence I've personally seen over the years is pretty clear. My best guesses are some combination of: 1\. It is true that the performance of a team is given an upper bound by both the quality of the team and the quality of the leadership, but people tend to badly underestimate how much quality and talent there is in the world. The average person is above average in some significant way. I would agree world- class results require a world-class team, but I think in general, for a given "random" [1] selection of team and task, it's a rare time when the core problem is a true lack of talent. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it happens, but I've never personally witnessed it in 15 years. Whereas, I've personally witnessed many teams failing to live up to their obvious potential because of bad leadership. So, in a sort of mathematical sense it is true that neither leadership nor team talent is more important, in practice, leadership is the thing for which demand is much higher than supply, not team talent. 2\. It is true the team is who provides the day-to-day progress on a problem, but it's generally the leadership making a lot of little decisions that add up over time; little words that affect morale, small key decisions that affect efficiency by a few percent, that little bit of vision-from-experience that avoids blowing a few days on a bad path, the careful selection of problems to personally take on. It adds up to a lot, and especially when the leadership is blowing these little calls consistently, no team is good enough to undo the damage... especially when the leadership actively prevents it! I do agree that it's important not to fetishize leadership and never to forget the team gets much credit too, but over the years my estimation of the importance of true leadership has been going consistently up, not down. [1]: By "random" I don't literally mean five people uniformly randomly chosen from everybody on planet Earth, but something more like, go out to a random company and get a random team working on some problem, and it is unlikely that the most pressing problem the team has is a raw lack of talent to complete the assigned task. Again, totally non-zero of course. ~~~ kenjackson _in practice, leadership is the thing for which demand is much higher than supply, not team talent._ I'm not sure I buy that. I don't have strong evidence against it, but its a gut based on experience. What I've tended to see is that great leaders tend not to be able to replicate their success. But talented people/teams tend to be succesfull, regardless of the leader. To put it another way, a great leader, moved to a new team often is not a success. In fact, when they are, it is usually somewhat unusual. A great talent moved to a new team is rarely not a success. And when they aren't is somewhat unusual. And what I've found is that the great leaders who can replicate success are those with huge personalities that draw in great talent. Or their reputation from their first success gives them considerable leverage to use in new ventures. For example, look at pro basketball coaches. Getting a great head coach almost never drastically changes the record of a team the following year or years, more than chance would. But getting a great player almost always increases a team's record. What a great coach does though is bring in top talent -- but usually slowly, given it has to be done via free agency. Jobs could go anywhere and get top talent. His ability to lead is also his ability to recruit. I'm not saying he doesn't bring other things to the table, but I'd say that a good percentage of it is recruiting. Let me put it another way... given two choices, what would you take: 1) Steve Jobs's mind transplanted to some average mid-level manager at HP. No one know him as Jobs, but he would have Jobs's managerial chops. or 2) Steve Jobs body and name, but his mind replaced with some mid-level manager at Apple (who of course is aware of the fact that he needs to keep up the charade of being Jobs). There's a reason why entreprenuers who are successful, but when they leave their domain (go into a completely new field) are no more successful in future endeavors than anyone else. The second hit borrows greatly from the fact that people recognize you have already hit it out the park once. ~~~ abalashov _Jobs could go anywhere and get top talent. His ability to lead is also his ability to recruit. I'm not saying he doesn't bring other things to the table, but I'd say that a good percentage of it is recruiting._ I'm inclined to agree with you, but the problem with that claim is that it is practically unfalsifiable. Nobody has or is going to try an experiment where they put someone like Jobs elsewhere and deliberately constrain his recruitment access only to average or slightly mediocre people. So, we can assume it's because dynamic, powerful leaders attract good talent, but I don't think there's a solid empirical basis for that without consistently studying what happens when they are specifically denied good talent. ------ SoftwareMaven The first time I managed a team, I learned a critical lesson: a managem _must_ manage upwards and sideways as well as down. I had a great team and I busted my butt for them. They had better hardware than other teams, were better educated (conferences and working with others in the company besides engineering), and had more fun doing their job. Mostly, this was able to happen because _I asked my boss_. but due to my sibling managers not being willing to ask, a lot of hostility grew between other teams and me. Instead of addressing that, i said "F it" and kept focusing on my team. By the time I figured out I shouldn't have done that, it really was too late. Seven years busting my butt to make a project successful under very bad conditions with reasonable success, and I leave with few people who know what I accomplished, how i did it or anything, but instead, they have overall negative feelings towards me. In short, if you are a manager, you're job is much more than just the people on your team. Don't forget it. ~~~ skarayan I've had a similar experience. While I had a good relationship with my team, other managers (that worked for my manager), and the business, I had a very poor relationship with the infrastructure team. If you have worked in an Enterprise, you realize that nearly all deployments have to go through the infrastructure team including DBAs, Unix/Windows teams, and Network. Instead of trying to work with them, I tried to bypass them at every opportunity. I wanted to get things done faster, but in the long term everything became an uphill battle. Now I realize that part of being a good manager is also being a good team player with everyone involved. Instead of trying to bypass them, I should have communicated better to come up with mutually benficial solution. ~~~ SoftwareMaven Ouch! You tried to bypass infrastructure? That isn't going to go well! :) I know the feeling, though. I had a different position that had me strattelling the line between dev and ops. I reported to the dev side, but my team really need to control the servers we were deploying to because ops expected push-button deployments and didn't know much beyond Oracle. That was the most painful position I've ever been in. It was also the position that ultimately pushed me away from development. Of course, now I'm leading a startup, so if code needs to be written, I'm slinging code. :) ~~~ skarayan There were some severe problems with our infrastructure team, I felt like I had no choice but to bypass them. I also felt that they should treat me as their client, much like I treated the business. It didn't go very well. :) Things go way faster in a startup -- really the pinnacle of productivity. ------ frossie I suspect the etiology is quite simple - if somebody is behaving like an ass and getting away with it, it must be because they are powerful, otherwise somebody else would stop them. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. ~~~ mattgreenrocks This is easily shut down by anyone with a modicum of introspection: "or maybe he's just a self-important ass?" Is this asking too much of people? ------ hagyma As a boss you consider many aspects of your action. You can be friendly or aggressive, but every decision in my opinion is based on the individual or the team you are in conversation with. You don't treat everyone equally even if it sounds unfair. Some guys are reliable and do their best, some just act like junkies and have to be "regulated". If you are democratic and friendly you can find yourself in situations where your guys feel they can just overrule your decisions... that is when you turn into a hardass monster. :) As a boss you are the only one with the pressure to deliver something as a complete product. The team just feels portions of it. This will and should make you act as required in any situation. Still, no matter what your style is... you have to be consistent and reliable. This is crucial for earning trust. ------ paganel Machiavelli wrote about this 500 years ago (<http://oll.libertyfund.org/simple.php?id=775#chapter_76114>), and interestingly enough he could not find any definitive answer one way or the other, maybe these guys are smarter than him, I cannot tell: > how manlius torquatus by harshness, and valerius corvinus by gentleness, > acquired equal glory. > I conclude, then, that the character and conduct of Valerius is advantageous > in a prince, but pernicious in a citizen, not only as regards his country, > but also in regard to himself; pernicious for the state, because they > prepare the way for a tyranny; and for himself, because in rendering him > suspect to his fellow-citizens, it constrains them to take precautions > against him that will prove detrimental to him. And, on the other hand, I > affirm that the severity of Manlius is dangerous to the interests of a > prince, but favorable to a citizen, and above all to the country. And it > seldom turns to his prejudice, unless the hatred which it excites should be > embittered by the suspicions which his great reputation and other virtues > may inspire; as we will show when speaking of Camillus in the next chapter. ~~~ iam Interesting link. I took a read of that chapter, and found this paragraph additionally enlightening: > I say that the conduct of Manlius is more praiseworthy and less perilous for > a citizen who lives under the laws of a republic; inasmuch as it operates > entirely for the benefit of the state, and can never favor private ambition. > For by such conduct a man can never create any partisans for himself; severe > towards everybody, and devoted only to the public good, a commander by such > means will never gain any particular friends, such as we have called > partisans. Thus this course of conduct can only be of the greatest benefit > and value in a republic, as it looks only to the public good, and is in no > way open to the suspicion of individual usurpation. But with the system of > Valerius, quite the contrary is the case; for although it produces the same > effects so far as the public service is concerned, yet it is calculated to > inspire doubts and mistrust, on account of the special devotion of the > soldiers to their chief to which it will give rise, and which might be > productive of bad effects against the public liberty, in case of his being > continued in command for any length of time. So Machiavelli is basically saying in the context of a republic, it is better for a commander to rule through terror/harshness (what the article calls power) rather than respect. The reason being is that gaining respect will cause the commander to gain friends (the person commanding via terror will have none/few friends) and make that commander a risk to the state by being a potential tyrant. Given this, it's not surprising that Machiavelli advocates Manlius over Valerius, since the behavior of Valerius is in the end disadvantageous to everybody else. However, does this really apply to a company? Most simply aren't run as a republic, but more of a benevolent dictatorship. So even if a if a manager does rise up to be the new CEO (a "tyrant"), it's probably because whoever appoints the CEO (the board?) thought he would make a better CEO than the last guy, so in the end the company is the one that benefits -- not just the individual. In fact the article later points out (on the second page) that the CEO who ruled through harshness/terror was later kicked out for poor performance. Maybe commanding through respect is better for companies after all? ------ Meai There is a very simply misunderstanding most people have: Fairness != being nice. ~~~ wccrawford I have to agree. While I prefer both in a boss, it's totally possible to have either one without the other. And I'd prefer fair over nice if I had to pick. ------ stayjin Last year I've been working on an unconventional idea of mine: After a project at which I was the project manager, I get into a project managed by someone else, as a team member. This has several advantages: -It gives me perspective: manager is a function, not a position or a personality obsession. -I get to see things from the other side regularly: sometimes I find that in the previous project I was managing I have been unreasonable. -I lead by example: people become very motivated when they see me coding or testing ( as a bonus, I get to keep my coding skills sharp :-) Of course, this is Japan and one can still get the credit for doing work behind the scene but I think it is an interesting idea to hack the "soft boss- hard boss" paradigm ------ uast23 This almost sounds like a comparison between growth of China and India, where China just gets the things done when it needs to while India lags behind trying to gather people's consensus; and I believe that neither of them are correct. Reasons are pretty simple. If you are a bully, things are bound to fall apart sooner or later while if you are a total pushover, you don't even own what you are doing. I have seen both the approaches working and then failing, at work. As a boss, being a bully can only work when you are sure that you have hired the last pieces of talent who did not have any other option. Well, if that is the case then you better be a bully. Otherwise if you have a got an extremely talented programmer whom you want to run on your terms, then it ain't gonna happen. Pushover - this can only work when the boss has got another talented boss in disguise amongst his own workers who actually works and makes the decisions on behalf of him. It happens; but if everyone is unsure and starts making his own decision then failure is inevitable. In fact, contrary to the article, push over boss has a better chance of sharp success in case he finds a brilliant worker who does not hesitate in taking the lead. Of-course that is not going to work for ever, but might work long enough. Edit: In fact, as I think about it more, a pushover/fair boss does not have a better but a far better chances of succeeding. 1\. A pushover boss earns respect because he listens to everyone - Win 2\. The probability of finding an extremely talented worker is equal for both kind of bosses - Win 3\. The chance of retaining a talent is higher just because he does not interfere much in the work - Win 4\. The chance of succeeding the project is higher because he lets other (might be better) people in team make/alter the decision - Win ~~~ sateesh Why put the comparison between two countries in our point about leadership styles. Countries are not people , a leader in a corporate setup has a fairly definitive goals (increase revenue) and can hire/fire people. But countries are to be governed so that every one has a equitable choice. ------ Dylan16807 I don't follow the logic in the examples at all. First, we have a comparison between the assertive McKinnell and the respectful Katen. But there is no mention of 'fairness' to be found. Then we have a study of students that found that ruder people seemed to _be_ more powerful, but I can't figure out how that relates at all to wanting to _give_ more power to less _fair_ people. I'm not going so far as to say the conclusion is wrong, just that this particular article seems to provide no evidence for it. ~~~ kahawe I have the same impression - their conclusions must have already been there and they just plugged in a few studies that might sound relevant and they left quite a few gaping holes there. ------ lsc "At Pfizer, a cohort of promising executives associated with Katen resigned after McKinnell took over. He himself was pushed into retirement by the board in 2006 because of the company’s disappointing performance. Shareholder outrage over his rich retirement package followed." sounds like the real problem here is the board valuing the perception of power over actual managerial competence. I think this problem is endemic; the thing is, business is hard. Most people give up on trying to find the best person for the job and go with the best- looking person, or the person who other people think is the best. The thing is, "the wisdom of the crowd" works fairly well if all members of the crowd make up their own mind independently. But that's not how it works; nearly everyone decides largely based on what they think other people think, which breaks the whole system. I think the rise of mutual funds, index funds, and other vehicles to invest without thinking about the companies you are buying are making this problem worse. People are giving their money to people who make money as long as they don't do anything wildly divergent from the herd. ------ brandall10 Is the question really whether someone is fair or unfair, or is it simply being the type that can cut thru the crap and be blunt... don't try to sugar coat, don't try to let people down softly, just tell it like it is in as few words as possible? To me that's the fairest supervisor you could possibly have. I had a supervisor like that once... he had a reputation for being a hardass, but everyone loved him. ------ frankwiles These types of studies are flawed in that they assume the same technique works with different people in different situations. The best managers, bosses, founders, etc realize you have to treat different people and situations differently, it's constant adaptation to the situation at hand. Doing that is hard and more art than science. ------ nate23342 This does not take into account the company they work for. Bosses at a company that pay 40% more than average have more options that bosses that work at companies that pay 10% less than average. ~~~ fedd to make people work for 10% less than average is a real managerial art. they use irrelevant motivations (like 'are you a man', 'you gave a word'), deceive people, flatter, promote jerks to make tension in the team and so forth. and even make some bullshit (rarely good things, i think) done. at least what i see here in my city/country. it's easy to have power based on money, but sometimes not that efficient, they think. ~~~ Duff You're describing a bully. As long as compensation is enough to afford whatever you need to live, bullying is generally the worst motivator. Employees learn quickly that they can produce just enough to not get fired -- then they do so. ------ known Leading, managing & administering are 3 different aspects. ------ omouse Our society is built upon capitalist competition. Being fair doesn't count unless you can see its impact on the bottom-line and unfortunately it's difficult to quantify something that's qualitative. Also, fair leaders are rarely shown in tv, propaganda, etc. which makes it harder for people to see them as having power. ------ anonymous246 Interesting experiment which suffers from the problem that all psychology experiments have: based upon observations of college students. I've been around the block a few times and I definitely don't now perceive respectful people as weak. ~~~ j_baker _Our research, which included lab studies and responses from hundreds of corporate decision makers and employees..._ That doesn't seem to be the case to me. ~~~ rosser FTA: "The same bias was exhibited by students in a laboratory setting." The GP was talking specifically about the experiment design. Surveys are also notoriously unreliable as sources of meaningful data. Not that either point discounts the value of the research, of course. ------ kahawe The CEO decision at Pfizer is a horrible example, if you ask me. All we know is that one manager was perceived as assertive and occasionally "abrasive" while the other one was "fair" and then when the abrasive guy was picked, they conclude it was because of his "toughness" because some random analyst said so. There could be a million different reasons why he was picked over her. For one, it might simply be discrimination from the owners and/or share holders or one particularly influential share holder. Or he was better connected and/or was playing politics better than she did. Or for many other reasons... And the other study just showed how a first impression will influence how we perceive people. They have absolutely nothing backing up the theory that a "fair" manager will lose to an "unfair, tough" manager in promotions. If you ask me, they are missing quite a few links and connections in their theory and are mixing correlation with causation.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Better without bug software? - cianestro I don't use bug software and I turn off the default error reporting in whatever environment I find myself working. The code either compiles or it doesn't--that's the only given. Initially, this made my work very tedious but eventually I got over it. Working this way has improved my logical reasoning skills well beyond my superiors' and has increased, drastically, the rarity of syntax errors. I thought I would confer with HN on this one for similar phenomenon. ====== mahmud What exactly is 'bug software'? and what error reporting do you turn off? Are we talking disabling/muting syslog, or perhaps masking interrupts or "handling" all exceptions/signals with a no-op type handler? ------ wanderr If your code compiles, that means it's bug free?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Self-Publishers should not be called Real Authors - michaelkoz http://goodereader.com/blog/commentary/self-publishers-should-not-be-called-authors ====== pyalot2 Elitist much? So first you go on like: I think a line needs to be drawn in the sand so that we know who is the real deal. There is a stark contrast between being a writer and being a professional author. Calling everyone authors who puts words on a document and submits them to the public devalues the word so much, it makes it meaningless. And then you mention: In order to join these organizations you have to earn ‘x’ amount of money over a single calendar year, where the specified amount for indie publishers is a multiple of the requirement for traditionally-published authors minimum income, because it is easier to make money by going indie Facepalm. Let me translate that for you. You're proud of your "real authors" tax, basically. It works like this: If you run a marathon that takes say 4 hours usually, you're considered a "real runner" if you make the run with your legs shackled if you make it below 24 hours. But if you don't use shackles, you're only a real runner if you make the marathon below 4 hours. At the end of the marathon the fastest shackled runner gets a gold medal, and those who made it without shackles but slower than 4 hours get nothing. Let me propose that this definition of a "real author" is the most arbitrary and meaningless award achievable. It conveys zero information about the quality of the author and is arbitrary biased to favor those who masochistically forgo better profits just so they can wear your meaningless "real author" badge of honor. Not only is the criteria arbitrary and meaningless, you also reward "real authors" by exhibiting economic stupidity. Are you really sure, that's what you wanted to write? Really? ------ lifeisstillgood Nonsense. An author selected by a publishing house has passed through a set of gates before ink hits paper, this is true. But many many publishing house authors sell far far less, are read far far less than self published authors. Let the market decide who is a "real" author by reading their works. it's not a perfect system, but it is the only real way. ------ greenyoda This article was self-published to the author's own blog[1]. So I guess he's not a "Real Author" then. Also, his HN account apparently only exists for the purpose of self-publishing his own content to HN.[2] Oh, the irony! [1] "Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief for the Good e-Reader News Source." ([http://goodereader.com/blog/staff](http://goodereader.com/blog/staff)) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=michaelkoz](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=michaelkoz) Edit: Regarding footnote [1] above: I guess he can't call himself an "editor" either, if he's only the editor of his own, self-published blog. A Real Editor edits the work of Real Authors, after all. ------ billyjobob I guess Van Gogh wasn't a 'real' artist since he didn't earn any money then. ------ Houshalter "Oh no! Barriers to entry are lower than they used to be!" ------ cwoac Frankly, I think it is more interesting that the various official writer's guilds have a higher bar for entry for self-published "because it is easier to make money by going indie." ------ NateDad Man, what a dick. ~~~ NateDad To expound: Why not be inclusive rather than exclusive? Isn't awesome so many more people can write now that the traditional barriers to entry have been lowered?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Helium kills iPhones: MEMs oscillator sensitivity to helium [video] - juancampa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvzWaVvB908 ====== teilo This is the inevitable follow up to this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9mk2o7/mri_disabl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9mk2o7/mri_disabled_every_ios_device_in_facility/) ------ juancampa This makes me wonder if someone could somehow silently inject helium in a room to kill all phones (iPhone only?) for malicious purposes ~~~ jwalton I'd just like to point out, for folks who are thinking of trying this at home, that in addition to killing iPhones, helium has been known to kill people: [https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/inhaling-gas- from-h...](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/inhaling-gas-from-helium- balloons-no-laughing-matter-it-can-kill/news- story/4126938014edcc1cac02ae8c7ca2de83) ~~~ CyberDildonics Helium doesn't kill people, lack of oxygen kills people. Helium also doesn't stay in the same place for long - it is too lightweight to even stay in the atmosphere. Any helium released in a room will immediately float upwards and rapidly be gone forever. For someone to die using helium, they would literally have to first find pure helium (which isn't sold at party stores any more - helium is mixed with oxygen) and pump it into a plastic bag over their head with the bag sealed (because it will come off when you pass out, you will breath in oxygen, then wake up). ~~~ skissane > Helium doesn't kill people, lack of oxygen kills people. Helium embolism can kill people. Due to helium's permeability, it can travel through tissues and into the blood stream. Helium gas bubbles form in the bloodstream, preventing the flow of blood. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S134462231...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1344622317302717) ~~~ nradov Divers routinely breathe >90% helium mixes with no ill effects provided they ascend and descend at the proper rates. I very much doubt that helium embolism is a real phenomenon at normal atmospheric pressures. More likely that article is just completely wrong based on misinterpreting postmortem changes. ~~~ skissane If one is breathing helium directly from a pressurised tank, one can be inhaling it at higher than normal atmospheric pressure. Divers control the pressure at which the diving gas is being delivered. A person who is breathing helium directly from a tank, either for misguided recreational reasons or with suicidal intent, is unlikely to be doing that. The original suggestion – of adding helium to a room in order to damage iPhones – unless the room is pressurised, it is going to be at normal atmospheric pressure, so asphyxiation is a far greater risk than embolism. But, the point remains, inhaling helium is actually a lot more risky than many people think, sometimes it kills. [https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest- news/index.ssf/...](https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest- news/index.ssf/2012/02/parents_of_eagle_point_girl_wh.html) ------ nradov Previously discussed: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18340693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18340693) ------ Communitivity This would make a great plot device for a murder mystery story.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Rails development on the iPad - jlam3279 Hi all,<p>I'm wondering what the state of developing RoR apps from an iPad is? I picked up a copy of Textastic, but would like to know what other tools are recommended.<p>Cheers. ====== aggarwalachal I think this will help you move to the right track. How a Macbook was replaced by an iPad+Linode combo [http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my- macbook-...](http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook-for- an-ipad) ------ kaolinite I keep seeing posts like this, especially "how to use your tablet like a PC" or "how to run Windows on your tablet". Just buy a computer! It's not as sexy but you'll be more productive :-) ~~~ jlam3279 Already have a MacBook and an iMac which I use everyday. My question was not about productivity, more about curiosity. ~~~ kaolinite Ah, apologies for jumping to conclusions :-) ------ netmute Sorry to say that, but use the right tool for the job. Some kind of PC with Linux or OSX on it. ~~~ jlam3279 Yep I'm a rails dev so I understand what are the right tools, but that doesn't answer my question.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Iron law of prohibition - luu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition ====== seibelj Similarly, anti-prostitution activists cheer that Backpage removed adult classifieds.[0] If you really want to prevent abuse of sex workers, you need to legalize the trade and bring it into the open. By driving it further underground, you just cause more harm to the people you want to save. I can't understand how people make the same mistake over, and over, and over. [0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/us/backpage-ads-sex- traff...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/us/backpage-ads-sex- trafficking.html) ~~~ praptak This assumes anti-prostitution is about sex workers and not moral outrage at sex being easily available outside marriage. ~~~ _greim_ Why can't it be about both? As far as I can tell, large-scale movements comprise a mix of underlying motives. ------ M_Grey The underlying issue seems to be that we confuse the empathy we should have with victims and their families, for reverence. We spend so much time listening to their advice, which is pro tanto going to be the most emotionally charged advice you can get. When policy is formed through pathos, nothing good can come of it except purely by chance. It's not just drugs. At all levels of our justice system and society, we confuse the need to listen to victims and respect them, with a need to let them control policy. _Of course_ the mother of the girl who is raped and murdered wants nothing more or less than such behavior to end. _Of course_ the person who takes drugs and spends years in hell because of them has a very particular view of them. We should listen to those views, incorporate them into policy, but they should not be the oracles of policy. ~~~ titanomachy > Of course the person who takes drugs and spends years in hell because of > them has a very particular view of them. Have you talked to many recovered drug addicts? Everyone I know who has been either addicted or seen friends go through addiction advocates for compassion and harm reduction, not stronger prohibition. ~~~ M_Grey I have, and I know mostly those kinds of people too. Unfortunately I also know plenty of the other kind, the "Drugs are literally the devil" types. Having an addiction doesn't confer wisdom, and some people get out of active addiction however they can. For some people it's a journey back to who they always were, but some... are very different. When I was younger, I thought I had a real problem with marijuana (truthfully I had a problem with being a putz), and I went to some Narcotics Anonymous meetings. I met some great people there, some I still stay in touch with, but I met some broken, broken people too. One guy in particular had a rough life before addiction, and an even rougher one with it. He made it out alive, but that's about it. I used to call him, "The bag of Jesus man", because he always carried around a bag _stuffed_ with religious pamphlets, papers, books, iconography, etc. This is how he stayed off drugs, and alive, and you have to respect what he did. You don't however, have to form policy based on his recommendations, which were frankly alarming. ------ bjourne It's not true in Europe at least. Amsterdam (where weed is legal) has the strongest strains available on the continent. They are supposed to knock the socks off even very experienced users. Many studies like these only focus on US data and forgets about the rest of the world so they get flawed results. The strongest alcohol you can find is from Northern Europe and Russia, where it never has been illegal. In Islamic countries, where it is illegal, black market alcohol isn't stronger than anywhere else. ~~~ 1_2__3 You don't offer any citations or evidence or proof for any of your claims. How do you know what kind of alcohol is available in Islamic countries? How do you know the pot in the Netherlands is as strong as you say (given you say "they are supposed to..." without any evidence)? ~~~ jpatokal Anecdata: In the Perhentian islands off the coast of Kelantan, a strictly Muslim state in otherwise generally tolerant Malaysia, the only form of alcohol available at most bars/restaurants is bottom-barrel Ukrainian vodka sold under the counter. (Although I gather a few places have finally managed to obtain actual liquor licenses since my last visit.) ------ tomohawk The effects of prohibition are not always easy to predict, or even know in hindsight. Many of the things people think they know about prohibition are incorrect. [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually- prohibiti...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibition- was-a-success.html) ~~~ virmundi The analysis in that article showed little to no thought about side effects. Sure, the mobs existed before hand, both Irish and Italian. However, they were initial police forces for the ghettos. What prohibition did is give them a cash infusion, which in turned allowed them to expand. The same is true in modern times with various cartels. As to the benefits, look at cigarettes. We haven't banded them. Instead we've pushed the idea that they are terrible for you. We've put up graphic ads of organs. We've had olympians with mouth cancer talk through machine. As a result the consumption of that product is down. Do we want to have the hamfisted power of the state come down by law on people or do we want people to self-select and improve? Prohibition gets you the former; indoctrination and propaganda get you the later. ------ Alex3917 Consumer Reports said basically the same thing in 1972: [http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/CU11....](http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/CU11.html) And that was supposedly just paraphrasing something from 1967, although I haven't read the original. ------ maxmcd Given this logic, it's interesting that the War On Drugs in the United States didn't lead to earlier large-scale production of marijuana concentrates. ~~~ dredmorbius In _Botany of Desire_ , Michael Pollan notes that the potency of marijuana _did_ in fact increase tremendously from the 1960s through the 1990s (when the book was written). As did the growth rate and yield, and as the time-to- harvest fell. Selective pressures, biological or otherwise, are ... a hell of a drug. ------ backtoyoujim Black market drug manufacturing creates adulterated, weakened, or counterfeit drugs that usually are transported as contraband surrounded by foreign substances like gasoline. During Prohibition alcohol was manufactured to include methyl in the final product just to maim, blind or kill anyone desperate enough to drink it. Prohibition does not make drugs hard. It makes them dirty. ~~~ armenarmen You are halfway there. Before prohibition in America the go to drinks were beer, cider, and wine. When prohibition came into play people were charged NOT on how much alcohol they had on them but on the volume of the alcoholic beverage they had. Punishment for a pint of whiskey == punishment for a pint of beer. So in other drug markets where it was a naive measurement (weight volume) that ignored the active ingredient drug importers and venders are incentivized to create stronger and stronger products as a hedge against getting busted. Anecdotally a friend in Saudi told me that beer from the informal markets costs more than Johnny Black. So while you are correct that quality does fall often in illegal markets arguing that they have no effect on the potency of drugs would be wrong ~~~ mc32 I'm going to guess that even if the punishment had been considered per qty volume of alcohol, all but the seller to consumer would have preferred the most efficient carrier of alcohol due to space for transport --of course, now that they have powdered alcohol[1], my guess is they'd have chosen that. [1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_powder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_powder) ------ scythe One scheme I like for the decriminalization of party drugs is to invert the ILoD: limit the concentration and dosage forms (I was thinking a beverage) and possibly add bitterants. People are able to dose alcohol quite well, despite a relatively low therapeutic index (~20). ~~~ titanomachy > possibly add bitterants No need, most party drugs already taste disgusting. ------ Obi_Juan_Kenobi The rise of Fentanyl, and it's more-terrifying relative Carfentanil, certainly speaks to the increase in potency that prohibition can bring. This, combined with the over-prescription of opioids, is a tragic injustice. ------ JshWright This principle is why we are seeing a massive spike in Fentanyl use. It's many times more potent than Heroin (and therefore many times more profitable). Unfortunately, it's killing a lot of people in the process... ~~~ campers Even scarier we're starting to see Carfentanil, which is many times stronger again than Fentanyl, and is only used for sedation of large animals like elephants. ------ rukuu001 A corollary to the law is that when black markets don't exist, substitution takes place, e.g. prohibited alcohol is replaced by gasoline, glue, paint etc. ------ skybrian I wonder what the effect would be of a mixed strategy where only the relatively safer and lower-concentration forms of a drug are legal? ~~~ AnthonyMouse > I wonder what the effect would be of a mixed strategy where only the > relatively safer and lower-concentration forms of a drug are legal? The interesting solution is very high taxes, with the tax based on the amount of the substance. Then higher concentrations have higher taxes. The optimal tax amount is just below the amount that would cause the tax- evading black market to be larger than the legal market. And then prosecuting for tax evasion doesn't cost the other taxpayers anything because every prosecution pays for itself through the back taxes and penalties, without having to put anybody in prison. ~~~ M_Grey We already put people into feedback loops of administrative fines, and jail. You really think this would play out differently? Without incarceration, how exactly do you propose to collect your money? Once you figure that out, be sure to tell all of the parents looking to collect from deadbeats your secret, they need it! ~~~ AnthonyMouse The government doesn't need your cooperation to collect a tax debt. If you owe them and you have any money or assets they just seize them, and if you don't have any money they have your employer garnish your wages until you've paid it off. The IRS does not screw around. And the point is to deter people from evading taxes. If they're permanently bankrupt you can't collect anything from them, but they also end up on probation which means the government can search their place and finances without a warrant. If they're stupid enough to violate their probation by committing tax evasion _again_ , even though it's now much easier for the government to catch them, now they can go to jail. ~~~ M_Grey _The government doesn 't need your cooperation to collect a tax debt._ It does if they want to actually make a profit on collecting taxes. Those "bleed the beast" pricks, extreme LDS sects, etc... all seem to have little trouble withholding taxes. Could the government step up enforcement? Sure... but it costs money. ~~~ AnthonyMouse > Those "bleed the beast" pricks, extreme LDS sects, etc... all seem to have > little trouble withholding taxes. Those people live in isolation without corporate employment, use of financial institutions or the ability to hold title to a vehicle. Hardly "little trouble". ~~~ M_Grey They do that for reasons that have nothing to do with not paying their taxes... still, if you need an even ore obvious example... [http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/tax-evasion- cost/](http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/tax-evasion-cost/) ~~~ AnthonyMouse > They do that for reasons that have nothing to do with not paying their > taxes... If that's the cost of getting away with it, most people are not going to be willing to pay it. > still, if you need an even ore obvious example... > [http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/tax-evasion- > cost/](http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/tax-evasion-cost/) That's not the enforcement cost, that's the potential revenue gain from increased enforcement. ~~~ M_Grey _That 's not the enforcement cost, that's the potential revenue gain from increased enforcement._ ...And more enforcement to increase revenue... costs... money. Which was my entire point. The government requires cooperation in your taxes, and already loses hundreds of billions to those who don't. ~~~ AnthonyMouse You haven't made any argument to indicate that the cost of tax enforcement would be larger than the revenue the enforcement would generate. ------ squozzer Illegal markets also have a counterforce -- diluting quality ("cutting") makes more product available at the same price. ------ Kinnard Seems to apply to strong encryption.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hosting Providers: Kill Malware and Fix Vulnerable Websites - wwdevries http://patchman.co/ ====== wwdevries Founder here, let me know if you have any questions! Upvotes would naturally be greatly appreciated to get the word out in the US :-) Right now we mostly have large (and small) hosting providers in the EU as customers. ------ Kephael Does patchman run scheduled scans to look for uploaded malware or does it hook ModSecurity like ConfigServer eXploit Scanner? ~~~ wwdevries We run scheduled scans and very soon we'll be hooking into Apache, FTP, etc. But Patchman is actually preventing malware from being uploaded in the first place by fixing vulnerabilities before they get exploited. Also, most malware is not executed right after uploading. They usually wait for the weekends.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Surveillance Is Suspected as Spacecraft’s Main Role - wglb http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/science/space/23secret.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=all ====== wglb This appears to be the team that has done the discovery: <http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Researchers use Google algorithms to find cancer biomarkers - Irene http://esciencenews.com/articles/2012/05/18/google.goes.cancer.researchers.use.search.engine.algorithm.find.cancer.biomarkers?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eScienceNews%2Fpopular+%28e%21+Science+News+-+Popular%29 ====== epistasis This is not the first time that this has been attempted, the SPIA [1] algorithm from 2008 is similarly inspired. It appears these authors were not aware of that paper though, as they don't cite or compare to it. [1] <http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/25/1/75> ------ lwhi In which case, what does this say about the web's most popular desitinations ...? ;) ------ J3L2404 PLOS article [http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal...](http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002511) I hate when sites don't link to the original article for credit but just dump you at the homepage. :( Also PLOS's search is fairly broken - had to do a google site: search. EDIT: From the author summary on PLOS "Recently, powerful methods have become available to systematically read genomic information of patient samples. The major remaining challenge is how to spot, among the thousands of changes, those few that are relevant for tumor aggressiveness and thereby affecting patient survival. Here, we make use of the fact that genes and proteins in a cell never act alone, but form a network of interactions. Finding the relevant information in big networks of web documents and hyperlinks has been mastered by Google with their PageRank algorithm. Similar to PageRank, we have developed an algorithm that can identify genes that are better indicators for survival than genes found by traditional algorithms."	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Politico’s Founder Is Launching a Tech Site–Into a Very Crowded Market - smacktoward https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/politico-founder-is-launching-a-tech-site ====== PaulHoule If this web site targets the "C-Suite", just how many people is it targeting? 10,000? 100,000?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
SSE2 instructions in msexcl40 in a Server 2008 update - yuhong https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/931653918450257920 ====== yuhong To this day I have not received a response from MS. ~~~ moonbug22 Cool story, bro.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
'Snoopers' charter' revival on hold as redraft demanded - callum85 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31001575 ====== AlyssaRowan Good, but I hesitate to call this a victory, with the government's "private draft" yet sight unseen. Let's see it - and see what the Lib Dems make of it - but in the current climate, and with the current timing, I'm rather worried that it's essentially the exact same thing with minor changes, but not going to get the same careful scrutiny and opposition it got the last time. I'm committed to do everything I reasonably can to throw a wrench in surveillance and censorship, and that it's probably a step in the wrong direction, even after Snowden, is chilling (in every sense).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Coding and drawing - danso https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/08/08/coding-and-drawing/ ====== dopu One way in which I've found the two to be incredibly similar: they're both very good at throwing me into the flow zone. And I love being there, which is why my full time job is basically programming all day long. They're different because you're solving pretty different problems when you're doing them. Drawing well requires honing the particular set of fine motor skills which allow you to set down lines smoothly. It also requires you to be able to visualize shapes well, and to develop a good aesthetic sense. These things are for the most part nonverbal, and require a long time to master. When I'm drawing, I'm not really thinking as explicitly about what I'm trying to do as when I'm programming. It's more seat of the pants, because you can't put a line down 100% in the way you'd like to. And you're not really trying to anyway. You adjust here and there, but ultimately "right" is just a subjective feeling. Programming isn't fuzzy like that -- there are particular bounds to what the the compiler is going to let you do, and there is often a well defined "correct" behavior. The problems you're solving in programming are much more easily verbalized. ~~~ kasool I agree with the difference you describe. A lot of people who are "naturally gifted" at drawing just have an intuitive sense of what is right, and just are able to draw without thinking too hard. When master artists are sketching the layout of their scene, they're not necessarily explicitly thinking about vanishing points and perspective. With practice, this stuff becomes completely intuitive. Unfortunately this often means that the best drawers are not necessarily the best teachers : ) For the record though, I think pretty much anyone can learn to draw "well". ------ tmountain The author says he finds drawing to be very difficult, and I hear a lot of folks say this. Someone who sits down at the piano occasionally would likely say that they find the instrument difficult, or that they're "no good at piano". The difference from my perspective is that culturally we tend to accept that most people can become reasonably proficient at the piano with practice (even without innate musical ability). Playing the piano is a mechanical process. You hit the right notes at the right times, and it works. The same people that accept the piano as something learnable often think drawing is something you have to be innately good at, and I don't think this is true at all. Almost everyone has the necessary muscle control (if you're using the right parts of your hand/arm). If that weren't the case, people would not be good at tracing over images and rendering them true to the original. Once you accept that fact, the other primary requirement is building up objects from primitives. You can render a human standing in almost any posture just using ovals, rectangles, trapezoids, etc. The point I'm trying to make is that drawing is a learned skill, and almost anyone can draw whatever they want if they practice properly and consistently (focus on drawing ONE thing well before you move on to the next). It's not magical, and it doesn't require some innate talent to reach an acceptable level of competency. That said, there is a huge divide between "masters" and mere mortals, but the same could be said about programming, music, or any other discipline. ~~~ eigenhombre > Once you accept that fact, the other primary requirement is building up > objects from primitives. You can render a human standing in almost any > posture just using ovals, rectangles, trapezoids, etc. There are neat examples[1] of this in art history, and the highly regarded drawing instructor Robert Beverly Hale wrote books[2] emphasizing simple volumes as the basis for understanding and communicating the forms of the human figure. There are a few other basic systems that are involved in "classical" drawing; perspective is one of these; organizing values is another. Basic artistic anatomy goes a long way if you're going to draw faces and figures. But the bottom line is, yes, drawing _is_ a teachable skill. And, like programming, it takes years to learn well (I have been programming and drawing most days for the last thirty years and am definitely still learning). [1] Cambiaso, is a classic example, e.g. [http://www.blockprojekt.de/cubic- drawing-by-luca-cambiaso](http://www.blockprojekt.de/cubic-drawing-by-luca- cambiaso) [2] See, for example, his "Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters" ------ powersnail > I have an idea in my mind of what I want the drawing to look like, but my > pencil does not follow my orders. From my very short learning of sketching, I had a feeling that there's a precursor step before the pencil touches the paper: a mental rasterization process. Our brain wants to see things in a symbolic form, a dog, a yard, a tree. To draw, however, we must force our brain to see the imagery data: the highlights, the shadows, the gradients. My drawing education was only a few months long, so I could be drawing a far- fetched conclusion here. I'd love to hear what experienced artists think of their own mental process before actually putting down the image. ~~~ ljp_206 This is the thought behind Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain[0], which I've always meant to get more in to after purchasing the book in college. One simpler way of saying what you said is that when asked to draw a person, many draw a stick figure, and yet, that is not what people /look/ like, or rather, are /seen like/. The five components listed on [0] reinforce what you've suggested ("imagery data") are required for true sight-to-paper 'drawing.' 0: [https://www.drawright.com/theory](https://www.drawright.com/theory) ~~~ cyberdrunk This book has rather mixed reputation among the art professionals. It's attractive to beginners because it allows you to fairly quickly become a human camera/xerox machine - you will be able to exactly copy what you see. However, it does nothing for your drawing from imagination skills, incl. making even minor modifications in the copied image. So, it's a great book if you want to just copy. However, if you want to create, you need much richer skills. ~~~ ljp_206 Indeed - something I appreciate about the book is that it suggests that learning to draw is impossible to unlearn once you learn it, like riding a bike. It definitely tracks with the idea that there's more to learn after you get up and figure out the basics. ------ codingdave I have a degree in Fine Arts and spent a couple decades as a coder. They are more similar than people might think, but you need to abstract the process out a bit to see it: If you are starting a new coding project, you don't typically just start writing the final details for one feature, and then finish it and go to the next feature. You set yourself up for features by choosing a tech stack, setting up an IDE, databases, maybe some boilerplate starter code. You get a UI started, at least a blank page rendering that you'll code a feature onto. And then you start writing a feature. You code out the broad strokes of what it will do, and then work down to the details. Drawing is the same. You choose your media, the surface on which it will go. You think out where it will fit on the page, where each piece of the drawing will land. You literally draw out the broad strokes, and then fill in more detail as you go. If you approach drawing as a process, just like you code, it becomes much more manageable. ~~~ mattmanser Isn't that true of virtually any endeavour? ~~~ codingdave True, good point. Perhaps people just don't have an awareness of the process when they are new to drawing because we see people put pencil to paper and a drawing comes out - the process is completely internal to the artist, not visible to an audience. ------ idlewords If you want a quick and kind of neat insight into your visual brain, find a photo of a face and try to draw it by eye (without tracing or measuring). Then turn it upside down and try again. There's a whole bunch of image processing steps your brain turns off when you aren't recognizably looking at an object you know (especially a human face), and most untrained people will find they can draw a human face much better upside down. ------ Pamar One thing (that worked well for me) is to practice some sort of artistic endeavour that is not meant to be "figurative". Specifically, I started practicing ShoDo (Japanese calligraphy) ~12 years ago - here is a sample of my best works from 2019: [http://pa- mar.net/Study/ShoDo/2019inShoDo.html](http://pa- mar.net/Study/ShoDo/2019inShoDo.html) In reality I always liked drawing, I do sketch stuff during meetings and really like visual tools to reason about stuff. But for some reason I never really found the time to improve my drawing abilities. More recently I did start drawing in the traditional sense, and this is something I do enjoy a lot (and yes, I experience something close to being "in the zone", too). Assuming you can find a bit of time in your day I think that any kind of drawing practice, even just doodles, can be fun, relaxing and possibly provide other benefits too (like going for a walk helps you work on problems in the back of your mind). ------ egfx I was harping about how else to describe simple programming constructs yesterday and came to the idea that you can essentially think of types in the same way you can think about primitives in 3D design. In 3D design primitives like cubes and cylinders are the basis of all kinds of more complex objects. And in programming you have simple types like strings and numbers. This is the opposite of the authors problem. But it would help an artist who wants to understand how to code. ;) ------ pcmaffey The key difference for me in the process of making code vs making art is error handling. When drawing, knowing you made a mistake is entirely up to you, which adds extra cognitive load. I wrote about this a bit: [https://www.pcmaffey.com/debugging-your- art](https://www.pcmaffey.com/debugging-your-art) ------ 082349872349872 The distinction between hard, soft, and lost edges[1] from drawing also works for coding. In code, a _hard edge_ is a crisp representation change between two layers of code ("object-relational mapper"), a _soft edge_ is a gradual representation change over multiple layers or libraries ("ravioli code"), and a _lost edge_ is when one manages to interpret the same data differently without even bothering to explicitly change its representation (0x5F3759DF). [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23437889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23437889) ------ Daub Unlike most of you fellows, my coding skills are akin to those of a dog. However, I can draw like an angel. From this experience, I can say that they both manifest as complex syntax, and this syntax can be elegant or clunky, succinct or elaborate, effective or ineffective. The key difference seems to be the different ways that they can fail. Code can break in ways that are beyond argument. Certainly a drawing can break, but it is always possible to claim that it has not (e.g. 'I drew one foot larger than the other on purpose'). ~~~ suprfnk > (e.g. 'I drew one foot larger than the other on purpose'). "It's a feature, not a bug"? ;-) ------ imgabe I like coding and I've always been terrible at drawing. Granted, I never worked very hard at, but I was pretty abysmal to start with. What I do like is _drafting_ as in with AutoCAD or similar software. It's one thing to try to hand draw a line that accurately represents the outline of a human face. It's quite another to just say "Ok, this should be 16 cm long in the horizontal direction then turn 45 degrees with curve that has a radius of 1cm..." and so on. The latter makes a lot more sense to me a produces much better results. ------ f0rfun There is nothing here imho. It's just mastery of crafts, how often/much you practice (not just rote learning) and I guess to a smaller extent, natural proclivity/talent. ------ hairofadog I'm a self-taught programmer, but my degree is in visual art. I'm not sure this is true for everyone, but I very much think about programming visually: how everything ties together, how things are scoped, which objects are subclasses or instances of other objects, etcetera. I can't really grok anything until I have a visual metaphor for it. While it can sometimes be helpful, I also worry it holds me back in areas that may not translate well to visual metaphors. ~~~ NateEag As an aphantasiac who programs for a living, I know that I do not think about code in visual metaphors. ~~~ hairofadog I hope this doesn’t sound insensitive, but I find that condition fascinating (if “condition” is even the right word - seems more like just a different mode of thinking) because I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like. ~~~ NateEag Not insensitive at all. I only realised mental images exist for anyone a few years ago, so I don't think of it as a disability, really (though obviously some things are way easier if you can visualize, like mental math). I am not purely aphantasiac - I do on rare occasions get very blurry, ephemeral flashes of imagery. It's like seeing an impressionist watercolor on a ragged piece of flash paper that ignites the instant I look at it. Pluses of the condition: \- disturbing images are gone the instant I look away. \- I cannot get lost in a daydream. This roots me in reality and the moment in a way I think few people are. \- probably contributes to my native ability to speedread (if you can't visualize you do not spend any time doing it, and I think that makes me faster) \- I'm not limited to visual modes of thought. Someone has speculated in the past that maybe aphantasiacs are better at abstract concepts and thoughts since we are not tied to the idea of visualizing as part of understanding. Minuses: \- probably contributes to my poor memory \- makes it hard to understand most peoples' experience of life \- makes certain thinking and reasoning tasks massively harder than they are for neurotypicals \- makes empathy harder, IMO. I cannot "put myself in your shoes" the way many people can. ------ justanothersys I've been doing a lot of scored drawing pieces, where I draw the same marks in a certain order within a certain timeframe: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6n4FpHbqZs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6n4FpHbqZs) This is a sentiment close to my heart. ~~~ lsinger Wrong link? That’s a Japanese music album. Lovely but probably not what you meant? ------ mike_n perhaps OP has aphantasia? Seems fairly common among engineers (and even some artists) -- [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/apr/...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/apr/10/aphantasia- why-a-disney-animator-draws-a-blank-on-his-own-creations) ------ sporkologist I think of coding as being more commonly associated with playing an instrument, but there may be something here too. ------ MikeTaylor Who else saw the title of this and immediately thought _Hackers and Painters_? ------ mauritzio A prerequisite of drawing is knowing the thing you draw p.e. the human anatomy and knowing the perception tricks your brain does with the visual input and being able to master the physical use of a drawing tool in its variety. Then you compose with a goal in mind and observe very open, patiently and detailed while you make suggestive visual marks such that some details will work together to form a whole unity, and the whole supports the natural detailed variety. Playfully arranging paths for the eye of the viewer, such that while it travels over the drawing the perception meeting the viewers inner mental model of the world triggers an emotional response. Each of these things can be trained, and even non gifted can achieve reasonable results. You can use simplest tools and as long as human brains do no change too much they can relate to drawings which are 2000 years old. For coding you must know how a program statement works, how hardware and virtual resources are working and ideally have a systematic analytical approach to construct and to define, identify and resolve misbehaviors. Have a mental goal how all peaces should work together, how they form a rigid stable architecture of unity, while also allowing a variety in further desirable transformations. Envision all possible desirable state and machine changes during runtime and later system extension and avoiding unwanted ones. At this point it leaves the right/wrong world view. Cutting an architecture out of the solution space of all possibilities, growing from bare bones, little peaces to a complete system. Each of these things can be trained, and even non gifted can achieve reasonable results. While we can learn from good drawings it is not so easy to learn from good programming examples. The problem with code is that while we are often working with same principles like imperative functions and stack machines since 50 years, the technical application environment is still constantly scaling up and while it is conceptually never new it keeps working only during short periods, so no long term solution are envisioned. Further more the result is not open to an easy perception or naive judgement (besides app rating maybe) and the result is often unlinked to the creator. An envisioned whole system is no longer needed as we have monopolized systems, wich updates we all follow frightened to 'reduce' risk. Resources like memory are scaled up without limits, the number of programmers rises and we are told to work in teams achieving very well paid very mediocre short living results. So the art of coding is on decline and while the 'management' of churning out buttons on 'app' screens, pasting stuff and fiddling in frameworks called consulting is on the rise. In absolute numbers maybe good programming examples where never as easy accessible as today, but is often buried below all the noise and not very rewarded. Probably the result of the economical success of the applied art of coding. So for an coding artist fiddling with a pencil and paper to make something out of nothing can be again very rewarding... or maybe fiddling with vi and compilers etc. :-D	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Use your twitter profile as a Chrome (or chromium) theme - ChrisRicca http://sexychrome.com ====== ssalzberg so sexy	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook’s new chatbots still need work - bitsai http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/13/facebooks-new-chatbots-still-need-work/ ====== mkagenius My messenger doesn't show any bots, is it GA?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is the iPad too cold? - profgubler I received an iPad as research project at my school. I have it to use it as my own and I love it. It is a neat device that overall (despite noted downfalls) has a great web experience when you are sitting at home. However, I recently got really sick and the iPad was great, because laying down and being sick is much better with an iPad to pass the time. But, I noticed something as I used it in this colder part of the world, as the temperature got colder the iPad did too and when you are sick you notice it. Cold makes the device less enjoyable to use and has even made me think of the device as almost a soulless device. The temperature the iPad keeps is a testament to Apple engineering as in the past they were known for their laptops getting too hot. They really manage the temperature on this puppy. But, when it is cold out it makes me less willing to use it, and I can see it being a problem in places where it gets cold. It mostly has do with touching cold glass that really just isn't comfortable.<p>Should Apple find a way to heat up the iPad so that is more inviting and should tech in general be less cold (figuratively and literally) to help people connect with their devices better. I haven't seen any complaints on this yet, but the iPad has only really been available in warm months, as we turn to winter will we see more complaints?<p>Thoughts? ====== devmonk Get a gel case. They are super cheap: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_i_0?rh=k%3Aipad+ge...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_i_0?rh=k%3Aipad+gel+case%2Ci%3Aelectronics&keywords=ipad+gel+case&ie=UTF8) ~~~ profgubler Thank you for your suggestion, I am referring to the front glass not the case, because I have a case. Unless you think some sort of invisible shield might make the glass feel less cold. ~~~ devmonk Try a screen guard then. Some are sold with the cases in the link I provided. You could even get one to reduce the glare. ------ dholowiski Great, now all I think when I use my iPad is How cold the screen is. I'm going to have to jailbreak it and run distributed.net in the background.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Finishing - unstoppableted http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/05/finishing.html ====== gabrielrotbart Finishing is also important for deciding not to finish. When you believe that you can finish, and you have difficult past experiences to prove it (to yourself most of all) you can more easily walk away from anything that is not worth finishing, without doubting your motivations for doing so. ~~~ thebear Good point. I think the same is true for a lot of things that you do in college. For example, in college, they force you to keep deadlines. If you can do that, consistently, for four years, then later in life, you can occasionally miss a deadline and know that it was for a good reason, and not because you're a slacker and procrastinator. ------ dsirijus I've went for 2 years to math uni, then for another two to physics uni, then to music academy for, again, 2 years. So, technically, I haven't _finished_ any of those, but what I got from each - a solid advanced introduction to the field - is what I really wanted, all in goal of making me a good game maker and a well-rounded person. So, I consider them finished. With pretty good GPA to boot. Only reason I didn't go to art academy too for 2 years is that I already considered myself proficient in the field. Point is, you cannot finish if you don't know what your goal is. ------ smoyer Finishing is great and there's definitely a sense of accomplishment. Starting is usually fun ... it has a sense of adventure and a certain newness. So if starting and finishing represent 5% each, that leaves 90% in the middle that's nothing more than discipline and an overwhelming sense of vision. Discipline is what I have to cultivate in myself - fortunately I recognize both what that is and what it means. And it's discipline in the middle that allows you to finish. In any case, congrats to Jessica and the rest of this spring's graduating class. ------ cmbaus If you decide to make the financial investment to start college, it makes sense to finish. That does not mean it necessarily makes sense to start in the first place. ~~~ Encosia That investment is a sunk cost. It definitely may make sense to finish, but throwing more money after your initial sunk cost shouldn't be why. ------ 6d0debc071 I finished university, I felt ashamed of having stayed so long. There was no sense of pride, no sense of accomplishment. The predominant - positive - feeling was relief. University was a hoop-jumping exercise, and beyond that it meant nothing to me. An hour after my last exam, I stuck my laptop and the few things I wanted to keep in the back of my car, chucked the rest of my stuff into the bin outside the flat, and drove the 15 hours back home. In the end I got my degree mailed to me rather than bothering to go to graduation. There's a masters degree sitting in a plastic folder in the back of my cupboard somewhere, it's been out of the envelope twice since I got it. Maybe it's different for others, but for me I only ever get a sense of accomplishment if I honestly value the thing I'm doing. If you're doing something that you want, or that gives you a sense of satisfaction that's going to be sufficient to justify suffering through it, then rock on. It sounds like the blogger's daughter had a good time, all power to her. But one of the big things that life's taught me is to recognise that people are different (no, really!) and that other people telling you that doing something hard will give you a sense of accomplishment? It's not necessarily _true._ I stayed at uni because that's the story my parents sold me as a girl, that when you start something you carry it through. But that's not always good advice. When you're doing something that's just going to suck the soul out of you often the best advice is to see if there's a way to stop doing it before it costs you something that's going to take a long time to recover from - if you do at all. One sense of finishing something, and not necessarily any less valid than the first, is to recognise a bad gamble and say 'It's finished here because I'm finishing it. My life, not yours.' I just wish I'd known that when I was 16 and was making my decisions in this regard. So, if you are at that age and making your decisions in this sort of regard, it might be worth taking an honest look at whether this is actually something that will make you happy or just something that people are saying will make you happy because it's hard. And, if it is the latter, seeing whether doing other things that people tell you are hard that you don't necessarily want to do makes you happy - and whether it makes you four years and thousands of hours of work worth of happy. ~~~ Chanel_Bunnell I recognise myself in your story. I took off with a backpack before the ink had dried on my last exam paper. I look back on those years now, 15 years later, and wish I'd had the courage to walk off earlier. In retrospect, it's obvious to me that everything I learned at university I learned in year 1. The remaining years were simply "finishing what I started" because a "degree is good to have." We're all different, and we all get different things from formal education. If it's not for you, do your future self a favour and don't waste the time. ------ Aqueous I graduated from the same school a year ago. It took 10 years, because I got very sick in the middle. I did so because I wanted to finish what I started.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Two major Antarctic glaciers are tearing loose from their restraints - cs702 https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/09/14/glaciers-breaking-antarctica-pine-island-thwaites/ ====== bootyfarm No comments. Everything must be fine then, carry on lads!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
On Interviewing as a Junior Dev - mlrtime http://lizmrush.com/on-interviewing/ ====== _RPM > I did a code challenge that involved ranking soccer teams, and while going > over the code a developer at the company asked me if I needed the rules of > the game explained to me. While it's a good thing to make sure the candidate > understands what the problem is, companies need to be aware that these > things carry extra cultural baggage and asking a female candidate if they > understand a basic sports rule (or any other male dominated theme) comes > across as belittling and sexist. As a male, I don't even know the rules of soccer, so I would have gladly wanted to hear the rules of the game so I could implement the solution correctly. ~~~ tomlock Unfortunately, our culture generally views sport as a male domain. While you and I are probably aware that there's nothing intrinsically "male" about sport, it can feel a little weird for someone to treat you as if your understanding is aligned with the gendered assumption. Anyone, if they don't understand the rules of the game, could still ask what they are. Would you feel weird if someone assumed you knew the rules because you were a man? How could you tell if they assumed that because you were a man, or because of some other reason? I think the point the developer is trying to make is that all this could be avoided by using another context in the challenge. Not using a different challenge is at least somewhat displaying that they didn't think how this situation might make someone feel. ~~~ Perdition >Not using a different challenge Like what? Even something like maths can be claimed to be "viewed generally as a male domain". And once you start accounting for ethnicity and social background I think you would find it incredibly difficult to come up with something that had no possibly offensive cultural baggage. Actually, maybe the challenge could be to design a challenge that was neutral. P.S. Considering soccer's limited popularity in the US I doubt most candidates would know the rules. ~~~ tomlock We may very well find it very difficult to come up with something that has no possibly offensive cultural baggage. Do you think soccer was one where someone made even an attempt to mitigate that baggage? ~~~ Perdition Possibly, as soccer isn't exactly a premier sport in the US. If it was American football, baseball, or basketball (with which the average American male is more familiar) I think the authors point would be stronger. I could make an argument that using a sport which has massive popularity outside Western European culture is a sign that the interviewer was thinking about diversity. Sports are good candidates for these challenges as they have reasonably complex rule, so it isn't necessarily that the interviewer was just selecting something they liked. ------ peteretep That's a pretty impressive starting salary range for a junior. a) You must have interviewed exceptionally well, and be in practice "not really" a junior (which would imply Ada are doing an incredible job, and is freakin' awesome), or be bringing to bear some other skills and/or b) Salary range where you are is broken You said the range you got offered was $75-$95, which in Great British Pounds is £47-£60,000, and I've absolutely no reason to doubt you. BUT: you can get a reasonable senior developer in the most expensive city in the world (London) for £60,000. ~~~ xixixao This is purely UK vs US difference: From my experience, companies in the US can pay over $100k to fresh graduates. The same companies pay 30% less in the UK. So the $95k translates to $40k, which is what you'd expect. ~~~ nandemo I'd say it's US vs rest-of-the-world difference. I recently applied to a senior dev position at the Tokyo branch of a certain American company, which shall remain nameless. They pay 120~160k in the US. They offered me 60k. ~~~ deciplex I don't think you can lump Tokyo in with the rest of "not-the-US", really, because it's particularly bad here IMO, moreso than mostly anywhere else in the developed world. The market is shallow and the hiring managers are generally clueless. If you're a software developer, living in Japan is bad for your career and probably your health. ~~~ nandemo It could be so, but I doubt it. From talking to Europeans here, and reading about it on the net, after-tax salaries in most of Northern Europe and France are roughly on par with Japan, taking into account the differences in cost of living. Southern Europe is somewhat worse. Note that tax rates in Europe are considerably higher than in Japan. And rent in places like Paris and London is probably more expensive than Tokyo. Developer salaries in Canada and Australia seem to be better, though they still aren't on par with the US. ------ pkaye On rescheduling, the candidate should also be considerate of the interviewer. Too many times, candidates have scheduled a interview for early morning (because they don't want to take time off from their current job) then while I'm driving to work early, call 20 minutes before to say they are "sick" and cancel. If you feel you are getting sick, try to cancel much earlier so as not to inconvenience others. ------ pookieinc This article was interesting to read from my standpoint. I'm currently unemployed and am currently looking for a jr. dev position as well. Background: Received CS degree, have worked for 3 years as a full-stack developer internationally with lots of code written, and am now looking in the Bay Area for front-end developer position. > Red Flag 1: Asking me to dedicate over ten hours to a code challenge before > meeting anyone on the team. Relatedly, the code challenge not having > anything to do with the role for which I am applying or the skills I would > be using on the job. Along the same lines, I've now worked on around 6 coding challenges (2 of which I would say had nothing to do with front-end development) and after spending somewhere between 4-10+ of my time, I've gone from the mentality of "coding challenges are good because I can learn from them" to "... another one? I need money, not more work." While coding challenges are a good way of gauging one's skill level, asking for a coding challenge that will take longer than a 2-3 hours should not be required, mainly with regard to the respect of the developer looking for the job, as well as to the company and their time to check it. I've received (and completed) challenges that took over a day to complete. Worst of all is when you submit it and you receive a "Sorry, we have decided to pursue other candidates response" without working with you to understand where your code could be strengthened. > Green Flag 3: Tailoring the interview process to the candidate. When I feel > that there is an attempt to ensure that there is a good mutual fit for a > role in a company, I have a much more positive view on the company and their > hiring practices. I just wanted to emphasize this Green Flag. The other important item I found surprisingly relatable was this: > And of course, as they always say, it's really about who you know and using > those connections. Start-ups aside, I've found it incredible difficult to get on the radar of bigger companies, when it comes to applying from their site. I can understand hundreds or more are applying and they may not be able to get back to everyone and that's understandable, I just didn't realize how emphasized connections were. The only interviews I've had with bigger companies (i.e. Facebook/Google, etc.) have been through connections. Other companies w/o connections... well I didn't get past the coding challenge to have that interview. ~~~ trentmb I don't know how to get on the radar of any companies. I'd love to be given a coding challenge. Background: Received Math degree this past summer, 0 years as a full-stack developer. I had supporting coursework in CS, so I'm not completely unfamiliar with programming. All I want is an entry level job... ~~~ gedrap You should change your attitude a bit. it sounds like you are desperate for a job, while you should be thinking that you need a job which would be mutually beneficial for both sides. The attitude helps a lot in various stages. You can start by writing some toy application. Simple blog platform is a classic example. Push it to github. Bonus points if you have multiple applications using different languages/frameworks, that shows that you are not one of the devs that learn one thing and use it for the rest of the life. Good luck. ------ Yizahi Some thoughts about red flags in the article: "Red Flag 3" is actually a simple fail of the recruiter (uncommon situation, need to thinks that +1 day is not enough etc.). This doesn't convey any information at all whether company is good or bad. "Red Flag 4" is actually a Green Flag. F __* open spaces! You are a developer, not a manager. "Red Flag 5" also doesn't convey any useful information except that company has typical, average in the industry hiring process. This won't matter at all after I'll get hired. ------ forrestthewoods $95,000 for someone with 6 months school + 6 month internship is fucking insane. Holy shit! ~~~ e12e If you subscribe to the idea that colleges/universities teaches how to think - and how to study, and not a (set of) subject, she has a BS+1 year of programming specialization. ~~~ sqrt17 If you look at Nordstrom's interviewing site (linked in the article), you see that they require people to have some technical background but also general communication skills. All the talk about "t-shaped" people boils down to the fact that in their line of work, understanding requirements (including non- technical descriptions given by a customer) is a non-negotiable requirement of the job, whereas purely technical excellence isn't as useful to them. In that sense, having good communication skills and some programming experience, on top of being good at "getting stuff done" is better than what they'd get out of an average CS graduate. Put in other terms, current CS curricula don't serve these companies well, because they yield people who are deeply technical, but bring neither good communication skills nor necessarily familiarity with the tools used by them. ------ throwaway9121 You'd have to be crazy to hire this person. Let's check the boxes. ✓ Post dripping with entitlement ✓ Arrogantly rejects companies for reasons such as being located an an unhip suburb ✓ Finds offense in almost anything that happens in an interview ✓ Degree in Ethnography ✓ 6 month feminist coding bootcamp ✓ 6 month failed internship ✓ Fluffed up github with virtually no actual code The lines of code to sexual harassment lawsuits/internet shitstorms isn't going to be good with this one. ~~~ tomlock If you remove the "6 month feminist coding bootcamp" line, this post could be mistaken for a summary of the career of a young Steve Jobs. Hopefully this developer has found a company where she isn't harassed by sneering bros, and then actually has the time to write some code. ~~~ shamney would you really want to hire a young steve jobs for a junior software developer position?! ~~~ tomlock He was widely considered a genius so I think he could do at least alright in the role :) ------ mikecmpbll I had to stop halfway through because the pretentiousness was overbearing. ~~~ neelborooah Although she did end up with good results, I too felt that her attitude was a tad too pretentious. But hey, whatever floats your boat. ~~~ TheOtherHobbes It didn't seem pretentious so much as unfairly entitled and demanding, and potentially insensitive to the needs and interests of possible co-workers. But it's interesting to watch someone coming at it from that angle, instead of the usual 'give employers anything they want' view. ------ RestlessMind >... when someone at a very early stage startup approached me.... > When the developer mentioned her pregnancy as a negative to her potential > employment, I immediately froze up and didn’t know how to handle the > situation. It felt like I was supposed to agree that she might not be as > dedicated or invested in the role because of her status as a mother. I have a genuine question about this - "very early stage startups" seem to be the kind of places where every single employee can make or break the company. Are pregnant women a really right fit for such setting? I am a father myself and after watching my wife over the last few years of her pregnancy + motherhood, I can see the following reasons where pregnant women and an early stage startup can be a bad mismatch: 1\. Women are allowed to take 15-17 weeks of leave in CA by law (2-4 weeks before delivery, 13 weeks after). If one of your employee is unavailable for ~4 months, won't that affect an early stage startup? 2\. Early stage companies seem to be a high stress environment (my first hand experience, maybe anecdotal), where as pregnant women / new moms are advised rest (or at least avoid stress). I might have my own startup one day, when I can come across candidates who are pregnant. So it would be good to know if there is any flaw in my thinking, or if I have missed anything. ------ gedrap What I sometimes don't understand, is the emphasis on being a female / ethnic minority like in this post. Sure, some people are intolerant, but if you go with 'maybe: being the only female / minority' it gives me a feeling that you expect some special treatment because of your gender or ethnicity. It gives me a feeling that it is an employee who is a potential liability (e.g. the paragraph about sports 'asking a female candidate if they understand a basic sports rule (or any other male dominated theme) comes across as belittling and sexist'). Do I want a potential law suit or bad press because maybe some one didn't invite her to watch a football game after work or anything like that? Emmm that's a bit of risk. I understand that sometimes it's tough to be in a minority but it doesn't mean you need to put so much emphasis on it. Just calm down and down assume people are racist by default. Because they are not. ~~~ Ntrails People basically are racist by default. We fear the different, the other, we seem to be wired that way. Society is training us to be tolerant, it is training us to be better. Secondly, if your happiness in the place you spend half your waking hours is contingent on the people there not making you feel marginalised/belittled/stupid/irrelevant/worthless, and you have had bad experiences previously, I think it's reasonable for a key decision parameter to be "do I think the employees here are better than that" ------ xiaoma >Because Hsing-Hui and I gave our first conference talk in August, we mentioned during our talk that we'd be looking for jobs in October. Wat? How the heck did she give tech conference talks before landing even a junior dev job? It sounds to me like she had some significant advantage most people trying to break into the industry don't. ~~~ jacalata She attended a year long coding boot camp. Many of the boot camps are very proactive about getting their students involved in meet up groups, and getting them to present - I've seen quite a few from Code Fellows at various Seattle meetups, for instance.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What books have you read in the first half of 2016? - adamnemecek Also what skills have you acquired? ====== balnaphone "The Art of Profitability" by Adrian Slywotzky "The Myth of the Rational Voter" by Bryan Caplan "Fanatical Prospecting" by Jeb Blount "Fooling Some of the People All of the Time" by David Einhorn "Confidence Game" by Christine Richard "Mouth Matters; How Your Mouth Ages Your Body and What YOU Can Do About It" by Carol Vander Stoep "Adventures in Stochastic Processes" by Sidney & Resnick "The Great Deformation" by David Stockman "Efficient Electrical Systems Design Handbook" by Thumann & Franz "The Goal" by Eliyahu Goldratt "Notes on Discrete Mathematics" by Miguel Lerma "Stochastic Calculus with Inﬁnitesimals" by Frederik S. Herzberg "Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms" by David Mackay "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray "The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph Tainter "In Other Words: The Science And Psychology Of Second-language Acquisition" by Ellen Bialystok and Kenji Hakuta ~~~ Lordarminius Unless you get paid to read for a living how could you possibly have completed all those? :) ! ~~~ dharmon I can't answer for parent, but I've read 50 books so far this year. I'd say I spend at least 2-3 hours a day reading, mostly at night before bed and also in the morning. On the weekends this is higher as I spend almost the whole morning reading. When my first child arrives soon I imagine this will change significantly. :) ------ jbms Eat That Frog! (Brian Tracy)- Lots of useful productivity tips. Motivating and practical. Bleachers (John Grisham) - I learned a lot about the culture behind American Football and school/college sports. The Wide Lens (Ron Adner) - I learned a systematic approach towards evaluating ideas and the environment around them so that I could determine what needs to change (outside of my innovations) that must be encouraged for my ideas to succeed. The Martian (Andy Weir) - I got a "feel" for living on Mars being a reality potentially sooner than I appreciated. Brownlow North (K Moody Stuart) - A book about a Scottish Evangelist. It was superb to see where he started from in his preaching, how he differed from everyone else, and how that was probably the key to his startling effectiveness. Songs of the Spirit: The Place of Psalms in the Worship of God (Ed: Kenneth Stewart) - I learned an appreciation for the book of Psalms, though written long before it, it is clearly (by how it's written, what it discusses in the past tense, and what's only understood now) FOR the New Testament church. In my Father's House (Corrie ten Boom) - a beautiful insight into what a Christian household can look like. ~~~ yegborscht If you like Corrie ten Boom you'll love The Hiding Place, but I suspect you've already read it, it's a classic :-) ~~~ jbms I intend to, but I don't have a copy yet :-). ------ cryoshon I'm not going to list all 42, but here are the highlights: How to Read a Book (Adler) World Order (Kissinger) Der Grundrisse (Marx) The Grand Chessboard (Brzezinski) Manufacturing Consent (Chomsky) Gulag Archipelago (Solhenitzyn) On War (Clausewitz) The Hidden Persuaders (Packard) Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (Dennett) The Strategy of Desire (Dichter) Skills acquired: intentional syntopical reading, prediction of geopolitical hinge points, and identification of absent context in media... I'm always looking for another book to read. ~~~ kevindeasis Do you often read blog posts? I think the only way I would manage to read 42 books in 6 months is if I stopped reading blog posts and programming resources. I'd like to know how you've manage to read 42 books ~~~ redrummr I'm wondering the same. Of you look at the books being listed in this thread, though, it's apparent there is little fiction or other material to truly savour: everything is skim-friendly. You could probably get through one of these a week while on the elliptical or during your commute. I wish people would qualify their posts with relationship status and employment type. If you have a partner whom you value, and are in the formative months (pre-alpha) of a start-up as a main developer (or hybrid, or one-man operation), is it really beneficial for so much new information to be making its way into your head? ~~~ cryoshon gotta disagree here... there's really no skim-friendly material. everything requires involved thought and active, critical reading. edit: also this is the first time i've ever heard marx or chomsky described as "skim friendly" ------ escapologybb I have just finished the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov, I can't believe it took me so long to get round to reading such classic sci-fi. Definitely recommended. ~~~ sohkamyung By "Foundation Trilogy" you mean the original 'Foundation' stories as gathered in the first three books ("Foundation", "Foundation and Empire" and "Second Foundation")? ~~~ escapologybb Yes, that's exactly what I meant, is there some of the trilogy I should be reading as well? :-) ~~~ teh_klev No, most (non-pedantic) Asimov fans refer to the first three books (F, F&E, SF - which yes are technically collections of short stories glued together as one) as "the Foundation Trilogy". I do recommend reading the Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth, they're worthy sequels to the "trilogy". The Robot novels are also a top read and tie in with the later Foundation books in a satisfying way: \- The Caves of Steel \- The Naked Sun \- The Robots of Dawn \- Robots and Empire ------ josefdlange I've read, at the behest of my spouse, The Hobbit and the trilogy of the Lord of the Rings. As someone who was never really "into" the whole world Tolkien had created, I must say I was won over by the end. Who wouldn't want to be a hobbit? At least, a hobbit who is not Frodo. Every year or two I give a light reading to Andy Hertzfeld's compilation "Revolution in the Valley", which is a print edition of many (and probably some extras) of the stories available on www.folklore.org I am also midway through "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (Robert M. Pirsig) and I must recommend it. It's got a lot of philosophy in it that I think is both accessible and transcendent all at once. It's actively changing my world view. In terms of skills acquired, I don't typically read for that purpose. I learn skills primarily by active work, not passive ingestion of information. ------ Nomentatus Agincourt by Juliet Barker The story of a nerd, who loved forensic accounting and was thought unwarlike; but was knew an innovation when it was shot through his face (during an earlier battle in Wales) and used it to end the Age of Chivalry - i.e. Henry V. What I learned was "always take enough arrows": even if your (relatively few) knights have to walk 'cause the horses are laden with literally millions of arrows. I'll write up a review one of these days, fine book. He was fighting piracy (it wasn't a needless war) so I don't he'd have liked Tor. Skills - need to exercise the ones I have, not pile on more, just now. ------ motxilo Blindsight (Watts) Between the World and Me (Coates) Economics in One Lesson (Hazlitt) Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn't Want You to Know---and What to Do About Them (Shapiro) Los últimos españoles de Mauthausen (Hernández de Miguel) Distributed Systems for Fun and Profit (Takada) The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm (Dartnell) Historia mínima de España (Fusi) Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders (Marquet) What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars (Moynihan) Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems (Google) Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum (Francis) Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces (Arpaci-Dusseau) ------ cafard _Solo: An American Dreamer in Europe_ by Wright Morris, a memoir of spending part of 1932 and 1933 in Austria, Italy, and France. Not on the whole as rewarding as his other memoirs _Will 's Boy_ and _A Cloak of Light_ , but interesting enough. _Adolphe_ and _Le Cahier Rouge_ by Benjamin Constant. The former a devastating short novel, the latter a memoir, a portrait of the artist as a young twerp. (The things we boomers would say if something comparable had been published by a millenial!) _Fates and Furies_ by Lauren Groff, a novel read for a book club. The less said, the better. _Autobiography_ by Henry James. Very slow going, but rewarding, a mind at work. _My Promised Land_ by Avi Shalets. A history of Israel and the Zionist project by an Israeli journalist. It covers a lot of ground that most Americans (I infer from my book club) don't know. It seemed to me that it could have been maybe 15% shorter, and that David Remnick should have impounded Shalets's thesaurus. _Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder_ by Isaiah Berlin. Well worth reading, but requiring more time than just its own reading, for now I have to read some Herder. I have already fought my way through some Hamann; the translation is heavily footnoted, as necessary for those of us who aren't handy with Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and don't have the Bible memorized. _Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit_ (vol. ii) by Egon Friedell. Clive James's recommendation in _Cultural Amnesia_ put me onto this one. Most interesting, but slow going because my German is rusty. [Edit: got rid of most of the "most interesting"s.] ------ contingencies Books: _Manshu_ (Classical Chinese history book), _Instrument Engineer 's Handbook_, lots of embedded books, some young child development books, _Forgotten Masters of Thai Photography_ and a few other photography tomes, an airport trash novel. Skills: Lots of hardware stuff (component sourcing/plumbing/pneumatics/etc.), additional detail in financial forecasting, video pitches, woodcut printing. ------ yyyuuu A lot of interesting titles floating around in this thread! How do you guys choose your next book or Where do you find out those books which peak in the 'interestingness' factor? Especially, those which are non-technical,fiction, pseudo-fiction etc.. ~~~ mroll I spend a couple hours once or twice a month in a used book store. I browse the history, fiction, classics, science/math sections and look for titles that align with what I've been thinking about lately. I also have a mental list of authors that I will buy on sight. ~~~ motxilo Same here but s/used book store/amazon/. ~~~ mroll I like the browsing atmosphere of the small bookstore. Also I find it hard to get past all the titles that are currently being hyped if I go to amazon. I read more old books than I do new ones. But if I have a title in mind that I want to buy right away, amazon is my first stop ------ acabrahams 1\. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu 2\. One L by Scott Turow 3\. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu 4\. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells 5\. Believer: My Forty Years in Politics by David Axelrod 6\. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells 7\. Augustus: First Emperor of Rome by Adrian Goldsworthy 8\. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (re-read) 9\. I, Claudius by Robert Graves 10\. Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks 11\. The Fear Index by Robert Harris 12\. Red Dragon by Thomas Harris (re-read) 13\. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (re-read) 14\. Hannibal by Thomas Harris (re-read) 15\. Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (re-read) 16\. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (re-read) 17\. Claudius the God by Robert Graves Re-reads take hardly any time at all, so I'm not sure whether to count them. If you're not, then 11 books read so far. ~~~ cplanas Just finished with the first two volumes of Cixin Liu's trilogy. Really good stuff. :) ------ klez Not in order 1 - Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson) 2 - The Trial (Franz Kafka) 3 - Beyond the door (Philip K Dick - short story) 4 - The eyes have it (Philip K Dick - short story) 5 - Seven brief lessons on Physics (Carlo Rovelli) 6 - I have no mouth, and I must scream (Herlan Ellison - short story) 7 - The art of simplicity (Dominique Loreau) 8 - On anarchism (Noam Chomsky) 9 - The difference engine (William Gibson, Bruce Sterling) 10 - Utopia (Thomas More) 11 - Sophie's world (Jostein Gaarder) 12 - Rete padrona (Federico Rampini - essays about the 'dark side' of the corporate web) 13 - The art of discarding (Nagisa Tatsumi) 14 - Symposium (Plato) And a couple of very short philosophy booklets by Zizek (about the Matrix) and Baudrillard (about 'cyberphilosophy') ~~~ Lordarminius > Sophie's world (Jostein Gaarder) A mindbender. I have fond memories of that book. ------ mjklin Where I'm Reading From, by Tim Parks The Inevitable, by Kevin Kelly Ideas that Changed the World, by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto A Reader's Manifesto, by B.R. Myers Framed!, by Hari Singh Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman Why Education is Useless, by Daniel Cottom The New Diary, by Tristine Rainer Raising a Happy, Unspoiled Child, by Burton White Do way, way more in WorkFlowy, by Frank Degenaar Unlearning the Basics, by R. Sativihari The Devil's Pleasure Palace, by Michael Walsh The Truth about Everything, by Matthew Stewart The Big Questions, by Steven Landsburg The Seven Mysteries of Life, by Guy Murchie The Optimistic Child, by Martin Seligman Systemantics, by John Gall The Scientists A Family Romance, by Marco Roth The Logic Of Failure, by Dietrich Dorner Organizing Creativity, by Daniel Wessel A Curious Mind, by Brian Grazer Appointment In Samarra, by John O'Hara ------ veddox "Mr Penumbra's 24 hour bookstore" \- Robin Sloan (a brilliant mix of history, mystery, humour and technology) "The Cuckoo's Egg" \- Clifford Stoll (it really is as good as they always say ;-) ) "Winnie the Pooh" \- A.A. Milne (delightful, not only for children) "Sofie's World" \- Jostein Gaarder (a novel about the history of philosophy) several Discworld novels - Terry Pratchett (a series that manages to satirize fantasy and real life at the same time) ... as well as a few others, but those were the best. ~~~ tonyedgecombe I re-read The Cuckoo's Egg every couple of years, it is a fantastic book. ------ jdmoreira "Present Shock" by Douglas Rushkoff "Super Forecasting" by Philip Tetlock, Dan Gardner "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins "The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control" by Walter Mischel "Precision: Statistical and Mathematical Methods in Horse Racing" by C X Wong "Functional Swift" by Chris Eidhof, Florian Kugler, and Wouter Swierstra __ DIDN'T FINISH __ "Thinking in Forth" by Leo Brodie "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" by Philip K. Dick __ QUEUED FOR READING __ "Porcelain" by Moby "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari ------ rayalez So far, the best book about startups I have read is Traction, it's extremely useful overview of all the ways to get traffic/customers. I also making my way through GEB, it's relly interesting, though hard to read. And I am reading "Rationality: From AI to Zombies", it is a collection of rationality essays by Eliezer Yudkowsky, and it's amazing. ~~~ avindroth Eliezer's book is long, but his writing is great. Definitely worth a read. ------ sohkamyung I've been mainly reading SF Magazines for the first half of 2016. Books read: \- Animal Weapons: The Evolution of Battle by Douglas J. Emlen \- Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien Magazines read: \- Interzone: Issues 262 - 264 \- Asimov's SF: July 2015 - March 2016 \- New York Review of Science Fiction: Issue 330 (Special issue with tributes to the late David Hartwell). ------ mroll Long After Midnight, Ray Bradbury Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams Thieves' World, Robert Asprin Tales From the Vulgar Unicorn, Robert Asprin Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams Quantum Computing Since Democritus, Scott Aaronson Reamde, Neal Stephenson Fool's Assassin, Robin Hobb Big Planet, Jack Vance ------ as17237 * In Defense of Liberal Edication By Farred Zakaria * Confidence Men By Ros Suskind * Dark Money by Jane Meyer * Better by Atul Gawande * The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande * Essentialism by Greg Mckeown * Contagious by Jonah Berger * Sapiens by Yuval Harari * The Pentagons Brain by Annie Jacobson * Shoe Dog by Phil Knight * The Only Game in town by Mohamed El-Erian * The Industries of Future By Alec Ross ------ HugoDaniel Mostly portuguese poetry. I've read the "How to make friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie (pt edition). Highly recomend it to anyone who wants to improve people skills. ------ tartuffe78 1\. Alas Babylon, Pat Frank 2\. A Talent For War, Jack McDevitt 3\. Endymion, Dan Simmons 4\. Programming iOS 9 ( 50% ), Matt Neuburg 5\. Yes Please, Amy Poehler 6\. The Nature of the Beast, Louise Penny ------ akbarnama _I am Malala_ by Christina Lamb and Malala Yousafzai _The Children of Men_ by P D James ------ Atwood Global Brain -Bloom Captive Mind -Milosz Machines of Loving Grace -Markoff Station 11 -Mandell (fiction) Sapiens -Harari Revenant (do not remember author/fiction) Argonauts -Nelson ------ bbcbasic None ~~~ mroll Why don't you read? Or is it just this year that you are taking off? ~~~ bbcbasic Mainly habit I guess. I don't imagine enjoying it. That said I wouldn't mind reading hitchhikers guide to the galaxy again. Or thing explainer. Ah I just remembered though... I've read dozens of kids books this year at bedtime :) for my daughter of course	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google Music: The Best Service That Nobody’s Using - bigmetalman http://www.thepowerbase.com/2012/02/google-music-the-best-service-that-nobodys-using/2/ ====== johnnyg I installed Google Music to my MacBook Pro a few months ago. It kept prompting me with the install screen, long after I'd dragged it into my apps folder. I didn't use it and uninstalled it by dragging the app icon into the trash. Didn't work. I tried the AppDelete path. No go. I googled around and found I was not the only one. Uninstall is broken and you are basically stuck with a prompt twice a day to install the Google Music app until you reinstall your OS or go slogging through the guts of your box, throwing switches you don't understand by mixing internal uninstall tutorials (ok, to be fair, this is how you do just about everything...). In conclusion, that app is a daily annoyance and I'd caution people against installing it. ~~~ psychotik You should try <http://www.audiogalaxy.com>. I think you'll like it. Don't take my word for it though - I've built it. Look up user reviews on iTunes/Android. ~~~ onli Do you use html5 for playing the music, or do you need flash? That's kind of my only big negative for google music, apart from the upload instead of indexing, it relies on flash for playing the music even though it is a html5-site. ~~~ psychotik HTML5 when available, Flash otherwise. It depends on the source audio format, and the browser you're using. <http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/> drives our playback on the website for most cases. ------ chrischen > no known digital music distributor has gone through the trouble of weaving > personally identifying information into each track they sell, and if they > did, it would be a much bigger deal than a few bootlegs getting uploaded > into Google Music. Err... Actually iTunes weaves your ID into files you buy and nobody seemed to notice evidently (so it wasn't a big deal). ~~~ psychotik Amazon does too. It's a music industry thing. See <http://uits.umusic.com/faq.htm> ~~~ RexRollman Amazon doesn't do that to all tracks, and they tell you when they do. ------ Arelius I'd like to mention that iTunes Match is a similar service for Apple customers, the integration with Apple products has been better than Google's integration with droid IMO. It's not free, but at just over $2 a month, it seems to give Apple a lot more flexibility with bargaining with the publishers, which makes me feel a bit more secure about the future of the service and my personal music collection. Also, it's surprisingly nice to have it match against songs that are already uploaded to their service, It took over a month to get my entire library into the Google Music cloud, yet all my music was available in iTunes match within the hour. ~~~ oflannabhra The fact that iTunes Match does not stream content puts it in a separate class of service than Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player, in my opinion. ~~~ culturestate Apple says at <http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/> that iTM is a streaming service, though I've not used it so can't personally confirm. "Does iTunes Match stream or download songs? On a computer, any songs stored in iCloud will stream over the air when played, though you can download them at any time by clicking the iCloud download button. iOS devices will start playing tracks from iCloud as they download and will store them so that you can listen to them later even if you don’t have a network connection. Apple TV only streams songs." ~~~ Arelius Yes, the only real difference is that, given sufficient local storage, the song will also get copied to your local device. This seems like an advantage IMO. ------ ajross I want to like it, but it's not doing what I want. I have a ton of music on my Android phone, but app won't sync from a phone, only from a desktop computer. The corroloary to this is that music I get from outside the Android market (e.g. friends, random downloads, Amazon MP3) is invisible to the cloud unless I copy it manually. And the Linux app sucks rocks. My memory is that it's an enormous pain to get installed on F16/x86-64. It doesn't understand the standard proxy environment variables or gconf settings, and in fact when used behind a proxy, THE UI LOCKS UP SOLID a few seconds after starting. So I can't use it at work. (Because who wants to listen to music at work?) I wouldn't even care, except that I _have_ to use the desktop app. Even things that I'd think would work as web apps aren't there. You can't upload from a web app. You can't manage play lists from a web app. That said, the Android player app is actually not bad at all, and I do use it. But the cloud side of the equation is a total fail from my perspective. ~~~ lepht Same experience here, and the situation on the iPhone is even worse: there's not even a native first-party app. ------ ackmm7 I've played with Google Music for quite some time and while its a really great service I have one major gripe... Data Usage! For some reason Google Music will use almost 2.5x the amount of data that Pandora or Spotify use on my phone. (Keep in mind this is with Background data and High quality streaming turned OFF!) In this mobile data cap / throttle world that we live in I can't afford to have my music app use more than 2gb of a data a month! ------ valgaze I would pay $$ for Google Music. I have loaded up a bunch of old radio shows & lectures for which I would not have the space on my phone but w/ Google Music I'm all set. If the team can figure out easy streaming podcasts (like Android Double Twist but without so much spammy/crap content) they will have themselves a nice little business ------ RobertKohr He talks about some issues of if you have pirated music, google wouldn't likely be able to target you, but that is nonsense. A ripped copy of a song put up online can be as unique as a fingerprint (and if put up by a record company, could have a fingerprint). This could be detected by google, and they could report you. But, it isn't illegal to own pirated music. It is just illegal to distribute them. So perhaps this isn't a problem? ~~~ pyre > A ripped copy of a song put up online can be > as unique as a fingerprint If they are just MD5'ing the file, then changes to the metadata could cause this fingerprint to change. > But, it isn't illegal to own pirated music. It is > just illegal to distribute them. So perhaps this > isn't a problem? Record companies (IIRC) have successfully argued that streaming your own music to yourself is a 'broadcast/performance' to a single person. There are many ways that they could attempt to go after this. ~~~ Arelius It's trivial to just skip the header and metadata sectors, and just MD5/SHA the actual bitstream. With a bit more compute resources you can do the same for the decompressed audio stream, but that'd likely prove less advantageous. ~~~ RexRollman That's interesting, as I use Exact Audio Copy with Accurate Rip, which actually compares my rips to other user's rips to ensure it was done properly. This means that I have FLAC files that would compare to other user's; sans the differences in Metadata. ~~~ pyre Well, when the BSA^wRIAA auditors come to your door, you'll just have to show them your CD collection! If you don't have any pirated material, then you have nothing to hide! ~~~ RexRollman I actually no longer keep CDs. Since no one sells lossless music, aside from mostly indie artists, I purchase used CDs, which I then rip and throw away (Amazon is a great source for used CDs, by the way). I like having lots of music, and paying for it, but I am not a fan of owning a physical CDs. ------ 51Cards Bring it to Canada and I'll add one more to the user count gladly. (yes, I know I can jump through hoops to do it now in a limited fashion) ~~~ rodion_89 Pro tip for fellow Canadian residents: 1\. Login to Google Music once from an American IP address. 2\. Use it forever from any IP address. ------ msg Also on a Mac. I had noticed the DMG for the Google Music Manager opening repeatedly, but I chalked it up to a Finder window being open during a shutdown or reboot. Interesting that you can't stop it. My workflow is the following: 1\. Wait for Amazon MP3 special for album I want 2\. Buy album 3\. Download to Mac with MP3 downloader 4\. Sync Google Music with iTunes library. 5\. Stream Google Music to phone and browser at work. This way I have a physical master to use how I see fit. Prices are usually better on Amazon than iTunes store, $4 per album unless I'm buying from a personal favorite on release day. Selection is basically universal. I've been liking this scrobbler/lyrics looker-upper for the web client: [http://www.danielslaughter.com/projects/google-music-with- la...](http://www.danielslaughter.com/projects/google-music-with-lastfm/) ------ lucb1e @Title: Wonder why that is... _We're sorry. Google Music is currently only available in the United States._ ------ potater My overall experience with Google Music has been kinda meh. I like their sharing functionality, but my first purchase was a pain in the butt…. I finally decided to buy a few albums during the big music sale G Music promoted during the holiday season. Unfortunately every time I'd check out it would prompt me to log in again. During this I noticed that at least some element of the process was using a different subdomain than the album page I was checking out from. Not sure if the login cookie just wasn't persisting across differing subdomains domains or my browser was set to block cookies set by third parties, but I vaguely remember having to manually whitelist the domain in Chrome's cookie exception manager to complete my purchase. It took a moment to figure out because there was no particular useful error - just the prompt to log in again. I have no idea if I previously changed a setting in Chrome that resulted in this annoyance or if it was a default setting in Chrome, but that nearly prevented me from buying from Google's music service. There's no way someone like my Mom or sister would've figured that out. I hope they resolved that component assuming the problem wasn't limited to just my set up because at the time I thought it was rather silly that I wasn't able to easily purchase from a Google browser without modifying settings. ~~~ thewordis It's caused by the checkbox to deny third-party cookies, and it's on their known issues page. [http://support.google.com/androidmarket/bin/static.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/androidmarket/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=known_issues.cs&ki_topic=1335215) ~~~ potater Ahh, thanks for the heads up, thewordis. It's nice to know that they're aware of the problem. ------ ek One of the issues with Google Music, and this is something that I have seen increasingly over the past year or so, is that it seems that I can often roll my own, better solution to problems that these services claim to solve. In this specific case, running MPD into an Icecast stream means that I have remote access to my music library from anywhere, and using flacsync to make lossy copies of my FLAC files means that it's easy for me to manually manage the library on my MP3 player. All this without the pain of having to deal with the issues that this article talks about. Obviously this setup is rather technical, and requires a nontrivial bit of setup work, but the fact that it is often easy to have ideas for substantial life improvements and then implement them well, with free software, has left me a bit disenchanted with the offerings from large, generally innovative companies like Google and Apple (a similar hack for streaming music to an AirPort Express from MPD can be had with the raop-play module for PulseAudio, for example). ------ odiroot Well this headline is really unfair. I love Google Music, though not in a browser. It's a really great service once you run it in Nuvola Player (multimedia keys support, switching to Grooveshark and other services). Too bad you have to "cheat" to register from Europe. ~~~ rplnt When they opened (hune/july last year) and it was invite-only (but everyone got like five of them right after registration) it worked fine. It was probably a mistake on their side but they didn't revoke the accounts. ------ snampall I use it and it's the most used app of my smart phone. ------ snampall I love google music and I use it everyday. It's the most used app of my smart phone. I wish they had a download option for all the music not just the music that I bought on google. That would help me to get rid of all the music on my computer. ~~~ olegious They do. Just shift select all the songs that you want to download, click that little menu button and select "download all songs" ------ jsz0 It's just too buggy for me. I've had issues with the music manager not uploading new music, the Android app screwing up album sorting/track numbers, to long (5 minute+) delays in starting the streaming, tons of problems with artwork, etc. Nice idea but it just didn't seem to actually work very well for me. I've had much better results with Subsonic. It's not the same type of service as Google Music (you host the server on your own computer / connection) but it offers a lot of advantages. Pretty easy to install too. As long as you have a machine available 24x7 and a halfway decent Internet connection it works fantastically well. ------ moeffju I can't tell if this article is serious or satire. Of course Google could hash your tracks locally before "reencoding" them (do they really re-encode tracks? I thought they only transcoded FLAC to MP3, but didn't touch MP3s). Of course, iTunes and Amazon tag/watermark your purchased tracks, even if there's no DRM. Lastly, of course people use Google Music. In fact, I use it so much and it's so well integrated into Android that I didn't even realize I didn't transfer any files to my new phone until I travelled to Brazil and was without data connection for half a day. ------ sheckel If you signed up early enough and bought an album (or something like that), Amazon gave out free unlimited storage for music. With that, there's no good reason to move to Google (20k song limit) - they have a perfectly good Android app, a decent web player, and they make it a snap to upload/download from your computer. I've tried Google music out and I agree - the software is really annoying. It doesn't help that I already spent a month uploading my music to Amazon. I'm not going through that again anytime soon. ~~~ moeffju I signed up very early, but Amazon wouldn't let me buy an album from Amazon.com and wouldn't count albums from Amazon.de. Internet without borders, please..? ------ eli _The fact of the matter is, there is absolutely no way Google could determine if your tracks were illegally downloaded or simply ripped from your own physical discs._ Well that's simply false. If I ripped a CD myself, it wouldn't be byte-for- byte identical as the copy on Pirate Bay. In fact, if I rip it myself and don't share that rip with anyone it should probably be unique within the system. And how hard would it be to figure out who has illegal copies of an unreleased album? ~~~ brokenthorn Encoding software for most lossy formats rely on some form of prediction and realtime analysis. That can't be the same for every repeated encode. Some randomness has to appear so that bit for bit, separate encodes are not alike. ~~~ jerf Why speculate when you can test? $ ls -l KDE_Startup_new.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 jerf jerf 970882 Feb 27 21:42 KDE_Startup_new.wav $ lame KDE_Startup_new.wav 1.mp3 $ lame KDE_Startup_new.wav 2.mp3 $ md5sum mp3 0bc5fee9b5d67ca2d6f1bf61a186067a 1.mp3 0bc5fee9b5d67ca2d6f1bf61a186067a 2.mp3 ~~~ tcas Interesting. I know in x264 there's a non-deterministic option when using multithreading that can speed up encoding and quality sometimes, otherwise it always produces the same output. ------ thewordis It works pretty well for me. My feature wishlist: iOS native app * nested playlists * smart playlists * playlist pictures * playlist export * gapless playback * built-in scrobbling to last.fm * volume control in android store * music manager instant recognition ------ thomasknowles If I had it in the UK and they didn't convert flac and I would gladly pay. However, the don't and do. ------ autarch Another link to page 2 of an article. ------ baconhigh No. Because it's not available in my fucking country yet. ------ drivebyacct2 Why? I have a Subsonic server. It supports more formats, transcoding, (effectively) infinite storage. Open API for making mobile apps, etc. (heh, my reply made more sense with the original title)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What is setup for your static blog generator? - chauhankiran I have tried Jekyll, Hexo and few other static blog generator but not happy with theme. I want to build something in which I have total control. Like I have few scss/css files, few markup files and some other templates for design and based on them I can create a complete html files so that I can publish them on GitHub.<p>Many of you might have some scripts that generate your blog posts from some setup. If it is possible then can you share your setup configuration?<p>I am looking for following things with setup:<p>* I should have backup of my all posts if I want to move other other configuration. * I can easily tweak css or html. * I can generate a complete html blog that can be publish over GitHub or any other places. ====== nathan_f77 I use Hugo, GitLab, and Netlify for blogs and landing pages. I highly recommend this combination. Hugo is blazingly fast and very customizable. It's written in Go, so it compiles hundreds of blog posts in less than a second. My old Jekyll and Octopress blogs used to take a few minutes. Netlify is like Heroku for static sites. You can connect Netlify to GitLab (free private repos), and Netlify will build and deploy your site when you git push. I also use the Netlify nameservers for many of my domains, and it's really easy to set up SSL with Let's Encrypt. I can buy a domain on Namecheap, and have a new blog or landing page deployed in less than 5 minutes. * [https://gohugo.io/](https://gohugo.io/) * [https://gitlab.com/](https://gitlab.com/) * [https://www.netlify.com/](https://www.netlify.com/) ~~~ seanwilson How do you find the template syntax with Hugo? I love the speed of it over Jekyll but I find the Hugo syntax really unintuitive sometimes. For example why {{ if or (isset .Params "alt") (isset .Params "caption") }} and not {{ if (isset .Params "alt") or (isset .Params "caption") }}? ~~~ joncalhoun A lot of the syntax is a byproduct of the template packages shipped in Go. I assume the ordering of or, if, etc is a byproduct of them being function calls, but I'd have to double check to verify. Regardless it's a little weird at first but you get used to it after a bit. I used a fair bit of customization on the www.calhoun.io theme and I didn't have to think twice about the order of terms after a short while. ~~~ dhruvkar [https://gohugohq.com/howto/compare-date-strings-in- hugo/](https://gohugohq.com/howto/compare-date-strings-in-hugo/) This was a useful site for deeper exploration into the syntax. Sometimes, it's just trial and error. ------ scrollaway I use Jekyll for most of my blogs. For my company's, we needed multiple authors including non-technical people, so we couldn't use git for that. I recently discovered Ghost which I highly recommend: * [https://ghost.org/](https://ghost.org/) * Kickstarted in 2013 * Markdown-based * Open source, self-hostable * Hosted solution ([https://ghost.org/pricing/](https://ghost.org/pricing/)) with support for your own domain name * Beautiful themes out of the box with custom css/js on an article, site-wide or theme level * Third party static site generation tools ([https://github.com/axitkhurana/buster/](https://github.com/axitkhurana/buster/), [https://github.com/lexoyo/static-ghost](https://github.com/lexoyo/static-ghost)) Example blog (default theme): [https://blog.ghost.org/](https://blog.ghost.org/) ~~~ bluehatbrit I've been using Ghost for a few years now, mostly because it interested me and looked nice to use. I've gone through a bunch of static blog generators and while they were cool (and cheap) I just really like the ability to login to my site, start drafting, have it auto-save and come back to it later. I'm not super fussed about having it version controlled, though I can export all my data (minus images) into a JSON format and version control that if I want. I self host on the lowest Digital Ocean droplet which is now $5/mo and is plenty for my small time blog and I'm happy to pay $5/mo for the delight of using Ghost. Also with a cron job I can auto-update every few days and get the latest features without touching the box. Ghost will auto-roll back if an update fails which is nice and I don't have that many viewers so if it goes down I don't mind so much right now. A final bonus is that it uses handlebars for it's theme creation and rendering. I'm a node dev who uses handlebars for my own projects so editing my theme is a breeze. ------ gmueckl I use Hugo ([https://gohugo.io](https://gohugo.io)) on my local machine to create the website and upload the resulting static site to the server via rsync. The website templates and CSS sheets are all custom, so I get total control over the result. ~~~ lucaspiller For anyone interested I created a privacy focussed theme for Hugo, with no third party scripts or assets: [https://github.com/lucaspiller/hugo-privacy-cactus- theme](https://github.com/lucaspiller/hugo-privacy-cactus-theme) I wanted a minimalist theme that's fast to load, but a lot of commonly cited examples are too extreme or look too dated for my liking. I wanted the same results, but something a bit more up to date and with code highlighting. You can see the end result on my blog (total network transfer 78kB): [http://www.stackednotion.com/blog/2016/07/09/setting-up-a- ne...](http://www.stackednotion.com/blog/2016/07/09/setting-up-a-new-drive-on- your-linux-nas/) ------ sago A static site generator is just a build tool. You need some way to say what your output files are, and what source files are needed to create them. This is usually hardcoded (with some parameters and ad-hoc hooks) in something like Jekyll, but could be specified with Make. I wrote a very simple timestamp checker in a couple of dozen lines of Python. Then your scss/less->css is probably best done with the command line compiler, driven from your build tool. And for HTML, take a template language you enjoy and write a simple driver script. If you want multiple templates, add metadata to your source files. In my case I want Markdown->HTML, using various templates, so I use YAML for the metadata, then Python's markdown compiler, and finally Jinja2 for templating. Again you can write the driver in a few dozen lines for your own purpose. My build tools then calls The AWS API to send it to its S3 bucket, in most cases. But in one it commits to a github pages branch and pushes. It is exceptionally simple to code your own static site generator, if you can do basic command line scripting. And doing it that way allows you to be very flexible and add things like uploading, version control, etc. I think it's better off seen as a command line tool, than a special 'static blog generator' task. In general I think we are erring too far on the 'build a niche vertical app' rather than 'automate powerful general-purpose tools'. ------ zeroping Not a direct answer, but I just wanted to point out how handy it is that you can publish to your public keybase directory, and have it hosted at keybase.pub, something like this: [https://abhi.keybase.pub/2016/02/15/git-and- keybasefs.html](https://abhi.keybase.pub/2016/02/15/git-and-keybasefs.html) The general gist is that keybase.io is promising that it will only serve data at abhi.keybase.pub that has been signed for by that user. ~~~ dcreemer This is brilliant information. Thanks for sharing it. ------ jakelazaroff This will probably forever be too half-baked to "release", but I wrote my own: [https://github.com/jakelazaroff/adjective](https://github.com/jakelazaroff/adjective) It's written in Node and features multithreading and incremental builds for fast development. I host on Netlify, which has continuous integration built in, so it builds and deploys the site every time I push to GitLab. ~~~ dcreemer I'm also using Netlify (with Hugo). Their service is simple to use, and send to work quite well. ------ stevenicr I use wordpress. add a plugin from the repo "simply static" \- generate the html files. download, then ftp. It's not elegant and lean like the others - but it's saved me a ton of time for the use cases I've used it for. There is another decent static generator in the repo, but it failed on a recent site I was trying yesterday, so it's not on my currently using list. I know it's possible to put wp dynamic files on a server and use a domain mapping plugin to generate files for a bunch of domains on the same server easily - could probably find someone smarter than me to add in this simply static plugin and mod it to shoot the files to the sub domains... then just install a bunch of themes and other plugins to the main install - and might be kind of heavenly for a lot of situations. Some of my wp sites need contact forms - so I'm leaving those live / dynamic. If it was easier to make and upload something like the coffee cup form builder files I'd convert a few more sites to static files this week. If someone found a way to use the wordpress themes with these other generators it would be awesome. Then it would just be the few sites that need the extra plugins power that really need the wordpress php files and such. One can dream. ------ viraptor I don't know about others, but at least Jekyll has themes which you can modify in whatever way you want. See a random theme at [https://github.com/chrisbobbe/jekyll-theme- prologue?files=1](https://github.com/chrisbobbe/jekyll-theme-prologue?files=1) ~~~ beisner I use Jekyll, super easy and aesthetic ------ ethomson Jekyll for my podcast's web site ([https://allthingsgit.com/](https://allthingsgit.com/)). I became a fan of Jekyll when I worked at GitHub, but I don't use GitHub Pages, I needed to scale it larger. (edit: in particular, I needed something that can host audio and video.) So my workflow is GitHub for hosting, and Visual Studio Team Services for CI builds. It monitors the GitHub repository and on commits to master, it runs Jekyll in a docker container. It then deploys to Azure, where I host the static web site. (I use Azure CDN for hosting the audio episodes.) I would use VSTS for the whole pipeline, including the Git repository hosting, but I wanted to have a public repository, in case listeners wanted to submit pull requests. So far that hasn't happened, so I'm missing out on some of the VSTS features, but maybe it still will. I also have a weekly newsletter ([https://developertoolsweekly.com/](https://developertoolsweekly.com/)) that uses a static site generator that I build myself. It's very Jekyll-inspired and uses Liquid templates, but instead of generally processing markdown, it takes a simple list of links and descriptions and emits a website as well as the HTML and plain text for the emails. This workflow is similar, the generator is run in a Docker container, but this workflow is entirely VSTS and Azure. ------ rayalez I'm very happy with using pelican for my blog: [https://startuplab.io/blog](https://startuplab.io/blog) It's very flexible, written in python, easy to customize, has plugins for any purpose. I've made a custom theme, configured pelican a bit, and served with nginx on digital ocean(but it could as well have been served for free on github pages). You can see the code and my custom theme here: [https://github.com/raymestalez/startuplab](https://github.com/raymestalez/startuplab) ~~~ CogDisco I moved to Pelican from WordPress last year and it's been great. I wish there were more resources around for it, though. ------ gshrikant Github pages + Bash + Python script. I have a very simple page layout for posts. A drafts directory maintains ASCIIDoc files for posts I'm writing. After writing I run `post.sh` with the file as the argument. It invokes a Python script which generates the HTML and puts it in a directory for published posts sorted by date/month/year (e.g. published/2018/01/29). The Bash script generates a directory/link listing and an index page for the blog roll, followed by a "git push". ------ 1wheel Jekyll was slow and hard to customize. A tiny script can convert a template + a directory of markdown files to a blog pretty easily. Less code and configuration makes it easy to add custom features; I stuck incremental rebuilds and hot reloading into my blog while keeping it below 70 LOC: [https://github.com/1wheel/roadtolarissa/blob/master/index.js](https://github.com/1wheel/roadtolarissa/blob/master/index.js) ------ rwieruch I use Hugo [0] as a static website generator. They have plenty of themes [1] to choose from. You can still adjust it with basic knowledge in HTML/CSS. Afterward you can chose where to host it. You can use Github Pages [2] for free or pay for a service like DigitalOcean (starting with 5€ a month which scales well) [3]. I wrote a technical cheatsheet [4] on how to setup your own website with these ingredients. You can find a more elaborate way on how to host multiple static websites on Digital Ocean over here [5]. \- [0] [https://gohugo.io/](https://gohugo.io/) \- [1] [http://themes.gohugo.io/](http://themes.gohugo.io/) \- [2] [https://pages.github.com/](https://pages.github.com/) \- [3] [https://www.digitalocean.com/](https://www.digitalocean.com/) \- [4] [https://www.robinwieruch.de/own-website-in-five- days/](https://www.robinwieruch.de/own-website-in-five-days/) \- [5] [https://www.robinwieruch.de/deploy-applications-digital- ocea...](https://www.robinwieruch.de/deploy-applications-digital-ocean/) ------ cperciva I wrote my own for [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/) . Basically it's a few template files, a /posts/ directory where I write the content of blog posts (one per file), and a shell script which generates all the html output. Happy to share with anyone who wants it. Some day I'll get around to putting it up on github. ------ deadcoder0904 I started with Jekyll which had tons of freely available themes (no link) then went on to Hexo but it was slow ( [https://100dayz.js.org](https://100dayz.js.org) ) compared to my next one Hugo (no link again) but Hugo was the fastest to generate since its made in Go. Then I used different documentation generator like Docute ( [https://datastructures.js.org](https://datastructures.js.org) ) & Docsify, etc... Then now. Personal opinion but I love Gatsby ( [https://www.gatsbyjs.org](https://www.gatsbyjs.org) ). For me, it is the best static site generator out there. Yes more than static site generator as it is a PWA by default. It is infinitely scalable. It prefetches content before its loaded (think about this as you get the data of Previous Blog Post & Next Blog Post when you are on the Current Blog Post). Its so fast that you will actually feel the speed. Also, with little efforts you can make it work offline too. ------ TDettmering We've built a whole UX toolkit (shameless plug: [https://uxls.org](https://uxls.org)) with Hugo and Bootstrap on GitLab. It was absolutely fantastic to work with this setup. Here's the source: [https://gitlab.com/uxls/build](https://gitlab.com/uxls/build) ------ nfrmatk I use Gutenberg ([https://www.getgutenberg.io/](https://www.getgutenberg.io/)) which provides built-in Sass compilation and live-reloading in a single binary. I just write Markdown and generate posts with Tera ([https://github.com/Keats/tera](https://github.com/Keats/tera) ) templates for my HTML, so if I ever wanted to migrate to something else it would be trivial, but I'm a happy camper now. When I'm ready to publish I just copy the public directory right to my webserver, but I could just as easily publish to GitHub or the like if I didn't enjoy maintaining my own domain. ------ Keats I wrote my own as I wanted sass + syntax highlighting + a good template engine without having to install Node or similar ([https://www.getgutenberg.io/](https://www.getgutenberg.io/)). Not a lot of themes yet so it's better for peopl In short, I just write my content in markdown, style in Sass and HTML in Tera ([https://github.com/Keats/tera/](https://github.com/Keats/tera/)) which is very similar to Jinja2. I then automatically build & deploy from [https://www.netlify.com/](https://www.netlify.com/) on commits. Netlify will also get built-in support the next time they deploy their build image (ie all you need for your site to be deployed will be a file like [https://github.com/Keats/gutenberg/blob/a2b55a927981727ce00a...](https://github.com/Keats/gutenberg/blob/a2b55a927981727ce00a200a01ce1bd8aceb1390/netlify.toml)) like Hugo does. My own site is a bit difference as I have a DO instance for it but the script is simply copying the public folder to the server and have Caddy serve it. ------ kettlecorn I had similar problems to yours: I wanted total control but I also wanted it to be quick and easy when I’m writing a new post or page. So I made my own tool. With this tool (which I dubbed ‘Wabi’) you put a bunch of files in a folder and the files are processed and copied to a corresponding location in an output folder. Files with metadata at the top are processed specially and can be used as templates or to write markdown files that are turned into pages. Wabi helps you setup Git integration so that when you run the “publish” command all local changes are immediately published to your website. I didn’t want to mess around with git stuff most of the time so I implemented that command so I could publish iteratively and quickly. Wabi is sort of my answer to wanting control over how I build my website, while also wanting a tool that does not get in the way of the creative parts of making and running a website. That said, it’s of no use to you because it’s completely undocumented and not polished, but probably over the next few months I’ll fix it up as I use it to create my own personal website. For those interested you can check out the source (it’s written in Go): [https://github.com/kettle11/wabi](https://github.com/kettle11/wabi) ------ Jeaye I run [https://blog.jeaye.com/](https://blog.jeaye.com/) on Github Pages, but I manually build with Jekyll locally, with a publish script, and then force push the built site + assets to the gh-pages branch. This allows me to use all sorts of Jekyll plugins which Github won't whitelist. I'm currently writing a post detailing how all of this works, for anyone interested. ~~~ city41 git subtree push --prefix build origin gh-pages is a nice simple way to push your build directory to the gh-pages branch. ------ kqr I have tried various solutions including Jekyll, some Haskell scripts, and a home made POSIX shell tool built on make, m4, awk etc. What has worked best so far is Org publishing. The reasons I prefer it are primarily that 1\. The Org file format is olain text, easily edited on the phone and generally great. 2\. I can embed source code in many different languages and have it execute during publishing and embed its results in the document. This can be used both for a "Python notebook" style document, and to programmatically generate things like markup! 3\. I can write a single coherent document and then slice it different ways to publish one technical manual as PDF, one summary blog post, and some slides with key points -- all from the same source material. 4\. The publishing process is very hackable, so customizations are easy. (Of course, you don't have to use Emacs as your editor, you can just create a git hook or alias to run Org publish in shell script mode.) ------ tiefenb We use [https://processwire.com](https://processwire.com) for our blog and future more content sections. It's kind of a static generator which creates JSON-Files with meta-information and the rendered HTML-maincontent. The static processing is made with ProCache module and a python script which loads an sitemap and requests all sites each 1-2 hours. we choosed this setting because we wanted the content-heavy parts in an easy to handle CMS (from a editor perspective). We wanted to integrate the content in our main webshop and not with a subdomain and between our main header and footer coming from our main webshop system (sap hybris). show hn: [https://www.blue-tomato.com/blue-world/](https://www.blue- tomato.com/blue-world/) ------ kccqzy I use Hakyll, which is a Haskell clone of Jekyll. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are already proficient in Haskell and Haskell is your favorite language, but it does give you total control: write a few markdown files, your own HTML templates, your own CSS, etc. ------ djsumdog I have Jekyll setup (not recommended, see below) to generate my sites in a Docker container. The builder container outputs my websites into a volume that's shared with nginx. I have shared assets for multiple websites and had to create a custom plugin to support this setup in Jekyll: [https://github.com/sumdog/jekyll-multisite](https://github.com/sumdog/jekyll- multisite) There are open issues and pull requests for the plugin. I started building a test suite so I could start doing tests against multiple Jekyll versions and make it more universal, but it currently fails tests even with the same Gemfile/lockfiles. Currently I have to keep my site pegged to Jekyll 3.0.1 because of all the custom plugins I've written, and think Jekyll-multisite might be tied directly to my build. :( I've put little effort into it lately since Jekyll themes are suppose to address the multi-site capabilities. I just keep it building a a docker container so I can use the older version without trouble. I have that nginx container running behind the official HAProxy container and have Certbot running in its official container as well. I have a guide on how to set this up including all the Dockerfiles on github that you can use and modify: [http://penguindreams.org/blog/bee2-automating-haproxy-and- le...](http://penguindreams.org/blog/bee2-automating-haproxy-and-letsencrypt- with-docker/) As you can see, my blog isn't on the new setup yet (no https/letsencrypt). I'm working on that though, and hope to have it all migrated over this week. I would __NOT __recommend Jekyll if I was starting again. I had to do a lot of hacking and custom ruby coding to get really basic things I wanted working. Under the shell of Jekyll is a huge mess. It likes to iterate over things .. a lot .. all the time, for everything. Lots of the path resolution stuff is broken and lots of Jekyll is built around github pages, making some things impossible without violating the security model. ~~~ busterarm I wouldn't recommend trying to fit a square peg into a round hole either. ------ ht_th I am using pandocomatic¹ to generate my website. It uses pandoc² to convert all kinds of input files to HTML output and pandocomatic is controlling that conversion. Applying it to a directory it converts, copies, or skip everything recursively given a flexible templating system. In the end, it gives me total control over the output and I have started using it for all my websites. ¹ Manual: [https://heerdebeer.org/Software/markdown/pandocomatic/](https://heerdebeer.org/Software/markdown/pandocomatic/) ² [https://pandoc.org/](https://pandoc.org/) ~~~ freosam The thing I've never figured out with my Pandoc-generated static sites is how to generate RSS feeds from Markdown frontmatter metadata. ~~~ ht_th For these type of task, pandocomatic supports preprocessors, postprocessors, filters, setup scripts, and cleanup scripts in its templates. For your specific issue, and this is a general pandoc solution, filters with side effects could work. For example, you can write a filter that would extract and inspect the metadata and writes it to to an RSS XML file. In Paru¹, the Ruby wrapper and interface to pandoc, a very naive solution could look like: #!/usr/bin/env ruby require "paru/filter" require "rss" RSS_FILE = "my-rss-file.rss" title = "No title" date = Time.now.to_s # Collect metadata information while filtering a document with pandoc Paru::Filter.run do title = metadata["title"] if metadata.has_key? "title" date = metadata["date"] if metadata.has_key? "date" end # Create new Atom item new = RSS::Maker.make("atom") do \|maker\| maker.channel.author = maker.channel.about = maker.channel.title = "" maker.channel.updated = Time.now.to_s maker.items.new_item do \|item\| item.title = title item.updated = date item.link = "Some link" end end # Add new item to existing Atom RSS feed rss = RSS::Parser.parse(File.read(RSS_FILE), false) rss.items.concat new.items File.write(RSS_FILE, rss) (My apologies for the bad code, this is my first attempt at working with RSS/Atom) ¹ [https://heerdebeer.org/Software/markdown/paru/#writing- and-u...](https://heerdebeer.org/Software/markdown/paru/#writing-and-using- pandoc-filters-with-paru) ------ ig0r0 Using Hugo ([https://gohugo.io/](https://gohugo.io/)) as static generator, hosting everything on Github (take a look: [https://github.com/igorkulman/coding- journal](https://github.com/igorkulman/coding-journal)), deploying to Netlify (free tier). There are many good themes for Hugo ([https://themes.gohugo.io/](https://themes.gohugo.io/)), I use Beautiful Hugo. When writing a new post I: * create a new MD file with the post * commit + push * Netlify takes care of the rest (fetch from Github, deploy) ------ busterarm You mention trying Jekyll, etc, but not what doesn't work about them for you. Jekyll really does give you full control. It also powers some pretty large websites. Breitbart.com and Forthepeople.com (shameless plug) spring to mind. ------ anonytrary Just write some markdown files in a flat directory, have a React-SSR app that reads the files and passes the content as props to the app, through a markdown-html component, then just render the it to a raw string. You can do this in tens of lines of code. You can save your script and pass it any markdown files as input, generating any blog you want. Add in a pics/ folder that gets uploaded, and then just locally reference those in your html. I would do this over Wordpress any day. Wordpress is too complicated for me. ------ BrandoElFollito After having used Jekyll and Hugo I discovered Metalsmith. Les of freedom, everything is a plugin. I am going to restart my blog with this. Plus Vue.js Plus Bulma for CSS (actually Bueify to make it work with Vue) ------ rapphil I use pelican. It is quite similar to jekyll, but it is python based. [https://blog.getpelican.com](https://blog.getpelican.com) ------ jamietanna I build [https://jvt.me](https://jvt.me) with Jekyll, then perform some optimisation like minification through Gulp. I've got some custom Jekyll page generation through Jekyll plugins, so I can list out my tags / categories into their own pages. It's pushed to GitLab.com which runs CI to build the site in docker containers, then deploys to my VPS, but could just as easily be sent to Netlify or S3 or wherever, I just like having it on a VPS. ------ dxwc I put together one a week or two ago, it runs pandoc on directories with markdown files in them to generate html, and then generates an atom feed of the md files if any content has been created/updated. html/css can be set in pandoc template, atom feed information from yaml. It barely works but so far it hasn't broken in my normal usages [https://github.com/dxwc/post](https://github.com/dxwc/post) ------ davnn Heavily customised Jekyll to get the following features working: * Code snippets with syntax highlighting * Embed the results of computations like plots * Mathematical figures * Bibliographic citations * Footnotes Wrote about it ([https://curious.observer/articles/a-modern- blog/](https://curious.observer/articles/a-modern-blog/)), but didn't get to "blogging" until now :) ------ nice_byte I generate html from templates which are html interspersed with js. JS is used to generate the dynamic parts. A simple js program prepopulates some data structures and hands it over to the template. Once html files are generated I put them up on S3. I write the posts in HTML because I've generally had bad luck with getting markdown to get things to look exactly as i want them. ------ jozip I wrote an absolutely tiny, no-frills, blog generator in Bash. It's self- contained in that it contain everything it needs to run, including templates. Whether or not this is a good idea, I can't say, but it works for me. You can check it out at [https://github.com/jozip/pot](https://github.com/jozip/pot) ------ matclab I use Nikola and host it on GAE. Works well. * [https://getnikola.com/](https://getnikola.com/) * [http://ontoblogie.clabaut.net/en/posts/201801/use-nikola-gae...](http://ontoblogie.clabaut.net/en/posts/201801/use-nikola-gae-on-android-device.html) ------ gunnihinn I have a single asciidoc file, ~20 lines of CSS, and a Makefile that generates a single HTML file with my blog and publishes a new post with: $ make post It works just fine. ------ mmczaplinski I'm very surprised no one has mentioned GatsbyJS yet [https://gatsbyjs.org](https://gatsbyjs.org). You write your site in react, which is compiled into HTML at build time. After the user fetches the HTML, gatsby prefetches all the resources that might be needed later, so the site feels incredibly fast when navigating. ------ jimnotgym > I want to build something in which I have total control It is really trivial to build your own for a simple blog site. I like this approach as the toolchain develops alongside the site! Jinja2 templates, simple Python build script. That way you can write your content in whatever format you like! To deploy just use a bash script. On Github pages you can just git push of course. ------ meehow There is a documentation how to host on github: [http://gohugo.io/hosting-and- deployment/hosting-on-github/](http://gohugo.io/hosting-and- deployment/hosting-on-github/) I use hugo and deploy to cheap shared hosting with 3 lines long Makefile: deploy: hugo rsync --progress --archive -zLcb ./public/ webhost:~/example.com/ ------ feistypharit Hugo plus forestry.io for anything that needs to be edited by non developers. Publii for a quick and simple blog only. ~~~ sgallant Happy to hear that! We (forestry.io) would love any feedback you might have. ~~~ pchal hello -- forestry.io looks great, but I had a big problem with it -- there is no support for MathJax within my markdown posts. I had math equations within double-dollar signs and the forestry.io editor removed them, making my math- based post render badly. Looks like there is no support for MathJax. I find it hard to see why forestry.io should mess with the MathJax in my markdown file -- why not leave it as raw text that I can edit? ------ Syncbo I had th same problem , so I built one myself which is very easy to set up , configure and modify. Take a look , it's still early in development but works. [Flake]([https://GitHub.com/padamsethia/flake](https://GitHub.com/padamsethia/flake)) ------ derekperkins We use [https://github.com/nozzle/react- static](https://github.com/nozzle/react-static) with Netlify. If you're a react user, this will feel just like Create React App, where other react static site generators are much more opinionated. ------ john_mack I rolled my own because I had _unreasonable_ expectations: * Cost almost nothing even if massive traffic (I wish) * Infinate scaling * No markdown, just html * Post from browser, no publishing utils * No web server * No database * Important plugins - comments, social media, email list * Templates (eventually) Built with jquery, S3, Cloudfront Finished but not tested, demo at [https://jamackinnon.com](https://jamackinnon.com) ------ mahesh288 I am using Jekyll, Heroku and Git and here are instructions: [http://www.reluctantwriter.in/dev/how-to-start-jekyll- powere...](http://www.reluctantwriter.in/dev/how-to-start-jekyll-powered- blog/) Please let me know if you need help. ------ drakonka I use Hugo for mine; I submit posts to a gitlab repo, then the CI deploys them to Amazon S3. The setup is sort of clunky, specifically the upload step - it usually fails and for some reason it insists on trying to re-upload unchanged files, but I never get around to debugging it. ------ kentor I wrote one for node: [https://github.com/kentor/tiny- ssg](https://github.com/kentor/tiny-ssg) No "configuration". All code. You have to assemble the libraries from npm to make anything useful out of it though. Good luck. ------ drumvc Self-promotion warning. I wrote a blog on converting my static site from Jekyll to Gatsby: [http://unlikenesses.com/2017-11-06-migrating-blog-to- gatsby](http://unlikenesses.com/2017-11-06-migrating-blog-to-gatsby) ------ arkadiyt For building the site I use Jekyll with a free theme I found online + some minor CSS modifications. I wanted to have js/css bundling/minification and html minification, but after spending an entire day trying to get webpack to work I gave up (what a joke). Instead I use a Rakefile that runs `jekyll build`, then does some bundling/minification - it works great. For hosting I use cloudfront -> lambda -> s3. There is a lambda for incoming requests that handles some routing, and a lambda for responses from s3 that applies various security headers (HSTS, CSP, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type- Options, Referrer-Policy, Expect-CT, X-XSS-Protection). I also have certbot (an ACME/LetsEncrypt client) running in a lambda once a day - if my TLS certificate has < 30 days remaining it will provision a new one and import it to be served by Cloudfront automatically. The whole thing is serverless, can handle arbitrary amounts of traffic & is very fast, and no maintenance at all. It costs me about $1.50 per month. ~~~ alexbilbie You can use AWS Certificate Manager to generate a free auto-renewing certificate and associate that with your CloudFront distribution. Will simplify your stack a little by removing the LE step ~~~ arkadiyt At the time that I built it ACM only supported email verification. Also I'm quite fond of LetsEncrypt :) ------ segf4ult I tried Jekyll and hated it. I didn’t find a static site generator I liked until I found Ivy. [http://mulholland.xyz/docs/ivy/](http://mulholland.xyz/docs/ivy/) I use it for all my sites now. ------ ggurgone Feel free to clone mine [http://giuseppegurgone.com/the-blog-about- nothing](http://giuseppegurgone.com/the-blog-about-nothing) (instructions are in the blog post) ------ snehesht I wrote one a while back. It uses git, webhook to auto publish blog posts. Here's the git repo [https://github.com/snehesht/blog](https://github.com/snehesht/blog) ~~~ _eht Nice. I'd be interested in opening a PR for the 'Social Buttons ( HN, Twitter )' in your todo-- Do you still maintain? ------ kthejoker2 1) the number of people who write their own is amazing(ly ridiculous.) 2) what about for non developers? I can't get my sister to start using SCSS, much less Docker or GitHub. The 2018 version of Frontpage or Dreamweaver ... ------ y4mi Urm, you've basically described Jekyll with your requirements. You do realize that Jekyll themes are basically just finished projects people use because they can't believe bothered to create their own site, right? ------ ck3g I've started blogging not that long ago. I'm using jekyll and GitHub pages. Works fine so far for me. [http://whatdidilearn.info](http://whatdidilearn.info) ------ theknarf I'm using Webpack, and a Travis CI script to build everytime I push to the main branch. Works fine, no need for a fancy "static website generator", Webpack got you covered. ------ xrd Blog.TeddyHyde.com. Do it all from your Android phone, create and write blogs right into GitHub and add cryptocurrency micro donations. ------ argonauto Ghost seems rather simple and configurable: [https://ghost.org](https://ghost.org) ~~~ jarofgreen I thought Ghost was dynamic. Does it have a static mode? ------ EngineerBetter Hugo plus Cloud Foundry (Pivotal Web Services) ------ leksak Tup, pandoc and rsync ------ lostmsu I just fork Jekyll Now on GitHub and go from there. ------ Hoasi Jekyll + Tachyons CSS running on GitHub Pages + Netlify ------ moltar Gatsby + Netlify ------ RobGav Use Publii ([https://getpublii.com](https://getpublii.com)) With GUI and themes, supports GitHub Pages, Google Cloud, S3, Netlify, SFTp. WP migratator available too. ------ RobGav Use Publii (getpublii.com) It comes with GUI and themes, supports GitHub Pages, Google Cloud, Netlify, S3, SFTP.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Announcing Keyless SSL - jgrahamc http://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-keyless-ssl-all-the-benefits-of-cloudflare-without-having-to-turn-over-your-private-ssl-keys/ ====== lucb1e For those who want to understand how it works (it took me a minute, so I'll try to explain it simpler): In simplified terms, the server usually stores a public and private key, and sends the public key to the client. The client generates a random password, encrypts it with the server's public key, and sends it to the server. Only anyone with the private key can decrypt the message, and that should only be the server. Now you don't want to hand over this private key to Cloudflare if you don't need to, because then they can read all traffic. Up until now, you needed to. What they did was take the private key and move it to a keyserver, owned by your bank or whomever. Every time the Cloudflare server receives a random password (which is encrypted with the public key) it just asks the keyserver "what does this encrypted message say?" After that it has the password to the connection and can read what the client (the browser) is sending, and write data back over the same encrypted connection. Without ever knowing what the private key was. The connection from Cloudflare to your bank's webserver and keyserver can be encrypted in whatever way. It could be a fixed key for AES, it could be another long-lasting TLS connection (the overhead is mostly in the connection setup)... this isn't the interesting part and can be solved in a hundred fine ways. Edit: Removed my opinion from this post. Any downvotes for my opinion would also push the explanation down (which I hope is useful to some). I mostly agree with the other comments anyway. ~~~ personZ _Now you don 't want to hand over this private key to Cloudflare if you don't need to, because then they can read all traffic._ Generally the key you would give them is for, and limited to, the resources that they cache/reverse proxy, so the same "read all traffic" concern exists. What Cloudflare did is essentially, as others have mentioned, PKCS11 over the internet. PKCS11 is an existing, very well proven technique of sequestering the key in a hardware device, that hardware device doing what Cloudflare is moving to the client location here. It's neat enough, but they seem to kind of exaggerating the innovation a bit. ~~~ willvarfar It is very obvious... In hindsight? ~~~ powertower Not sure why all the negative reactions here... Was anyone else doing or providing this type of "Keyless SSL" setup? You'd think if this was a known technique, the mentioned banks would already have been asking for it, implementing it, or doing it. Personally, I think CloudFlare is one of the few companies on here doing innovating stuff, and solving real issues. And if not - if they've pulled the wool over my eyes - then at least I can respect their marketing. ~~~ mentat PKCS11 and Hardware Security Modules (HSM) have been around for a long time. There's in wide use in companies like NetFlix and Square including "over the network". This is not new. ------ indutny And my patch for OpenSSL that does the same thing: [https://gist.github.com/indutny/1bda1561254f2d133b18](https://gist.github.com/indutny/1bda1561254f2d133b18) , ping me on email if you want to find out how to use it in your setup. ~~~ haberman No disrespect meant, but from a security perspective the idea of patching security-critical software with a patch from a stranger on the Internet is kind of crazy, isn't it? ~~~ peterwwillis All open source software is made up of patches from strangers on the internet. ~~~ haberman Not really. Gatekeepers of important open-source software are usually people who are known in the community and often employed by companies who work in the area. ------ delinka Instead of keeping the key in a potentially vulnerable place, they're putting it in an oracle: pass ciphertext to the oracle, get plaintext back. I'm interested in the authentication between CloudFlare and the oracle. Cryptographic examples involving an oracle tend to refer to the oracle as a black box that just blindly accepts data, transforms it, and replies. Of course, then the oracle's content (a key, an algorithm) risks exposure through deduction if an attacker can submit limitless requests. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chosen- plaintext_attack](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chosen-plaintext_attack) I'm not at all suggesting that CF hasn't thought of this; rather I want to see their mitigation of the risk. ~~~ davis_m Would it be enough to simply only allow connections from Cloudflare IP addresses? ~~~ jonknee As Google and Yahoo will tell you after they found out the US government broke into their dedicated lines between data centers... No. It must be encrypted at every transfer without exception. ~~~ flyt There's a huge difference between passively tapping a fiber optic cable and infiltrating a network to inject malicious traffic. All we've ever seen evidence of is NSA's passive tapping of Google & others. ~~~ staunch We know the NSA targets routers. They have rootkits and remote exploits for them. They can do packet injection or anything else with the traffic passing through routers they take over. ------ mhandley This seems to only slightly reduce the threat to the banks. Currently, if someone compromises the Cloudfare servers, they gain the bank's private key and can impersonate the bank until the bank revokes their keys. With this solution, if someone compromises the Cloudfare servers, they can impersonate the bank by relaying the decryption of the premaster secret through Cloudfare's compromised servers back to the bank. They can do this until Cloudfare notices and closes the security hole. It's not clear that the difference is all that great in reality, as most of the damage will be done in the first 24 hours of either compromise. ~~~ tokenizerrr > Currently, if someone compromises the Cloudfare servers, they gain the > bank's private key This is not strictly true, is it? My interpretation is that at best they get temporary access to a server that will sign for them using the key, but the bank can terminate their signing servers at any time and then safely resume using their key without having to revoke it, since it never left their server. This does somewhat increase the attack surface, but it lets the bank keep control over their keys and is better than having their keys get compromised and thus having to revoke them. ~~~ sp332 Here, "currently" is the status quo, which is contrasted to "this solution". So "currently" means "without this solution". ------ teddyh So the communication between Cloudflare and the actual SSL key holder is secured by… what? Another key? In that case, any compromise of Cloudflare’s key is the same as a compromise of the original SSL key (at least in the short term). ~~~ roc A notable difference is that a compromise of Cloudflare's key wouldn't [edit: might not] require the bank to notify the Federal Reserve. It may be pretty cynical to call that situation a "feature". But I'm sure it came up. And I'm sure they noticed. It certainly wouldn't be the first time "trivial functional difference" translated to "massive legal difference." ~~~ bkh You should probably say "might not", because although we know a key compromise would require notification, you'd have to have an actual lawyer tell you if a compromise of CloudFlare would not. Unless the lawyers are on board with this as a solution to the notification problem, the whole solution doesn't do anything (legally). ~~~ roc It gets a little cumbersome to hedge casual conversation the way attorneys do, but sure, it would have been more accurate to have said: "might not, under the current rules, which are always subject to change" ------ otterley Keyless SSL is basically an analogue of ssh-agent(1) for OpenSSL. It's a nice feature that you no longer have to trust CloudFlare with your private key, but there's a huge tradeoff: if your keyserver is unavailable (ironically, due to any of the things CloudFlare is supposed to protect you from or buffer you against -- DDoS, network/server issues, etc.), they can no longer authenticate requests served on your behalf and properly serve traffic. ~~~ motoboi Please remember that CloudFlare is a sort of reverse proxy with some network protections and enhancements. If your infrastructure is unavailable, users won't get content anyway, SSL or not. ~~~ otterley CloudFlare can serve cached responses in the event that your origin server is unavailable. This is particularly useful for static websites, but that's not the most common use case. ~~~ peterwwillis If your origin server can be found on the internet, it can be DDoS'd/attacked, and your (dynamic) site will go down. This is true of all CDNs. The way to avoid this is to either have the CDN host your app servers or provide a private connection from your origin to the CDN. I guess technically the TLS-secured _static_ content would now be at more risk than it was before, when the cached content would have been served. But existing session tickets would probably be honored, so only new clients would get rejected. Still, it's a tradeoff some people would probably be fine with. ------ windexh8er All other technicalities aside it's rather interesting. From an HSM perspective it either makes that hardware now very useful or very useless. Think of a large organization - you've been there (or not), there are 30 internal applications with self-signed certificates. Fail. The organization had purchased an HSM, but never really got it deployed because - well, that was too complex and it didn't integrate well with 3rd party network hardware and failed miserably in your *nix web stack. This could be interesting - and I'm not commenting with regard to the efficacy or security concerns around this, but mainly the workflow simplicity it provides to large organizations who end up in self-signed-cert-hell because HSMs don't interoperate easily in a lot of use cases. But to my original statement - this is a very good thing or a very bad thing for Thales and the like. The only requirement for an actually certified HSM, really, is certification against some hardware and software standard you have a checkbox to fulfill. Beyond that this would be a killer in the middleground for those who want an HSM like functionality but don't have any requirements to meet other than housing a secure segment where key management can be done in a more controlled manner. ~~~ reconbot That's Hardware Security Module. ~~~ windexh8er HSM = Hardware Security Module, yes, that was implied and my point. ------ vader1 While this is a cool feature, I wouldn't say the improvement is more than marginal: all potentially sensitive customer data is still available to Cloudflare in plain text. And after all, with a Business plan you can already use your own ("custom") SSL certificate which you can then revoke at any time. Why not offer a "pass through" mode where the proxying is done on the network layer rather than the application layer? Of course in such a modus all CDN- like functionality could no longer be offered, but it could still do a fair amount of DDOS protection, no? ~~~ cbhl Well, for the use case given, with "Keyless SSL", if Cloudflare is compromised, then the bank doesn't need to report the incident to the Federal Reserve. But yes, users' plaintexts would still be compromised. "Security theatre" indeed. ~~~ dfc I am not sure that a Cloudflare compromise would not rise to the level of a reportable event. In my experience/opinion "users' plaintext compromise" is certainly an instance of unauthorized access to customer information. I understand the whole framework here is risk-based so it is a matter of interpretation; but I do not want to be the person who has to explain to the nice folks from the OCC the intricacies of Cloudflare's implementation and why I deemed the compromise low risk. > An institution should notify its primary Federal regulator as soon > as it becomes aware of the unauthorized access to or misuse of > sensitive customer information or customer information systems. FDIC: Supervisory Insights [https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/examinations/supervisory/in...](https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/examinations/supervisory/insights/siwin06/article01_incident.html) ------ mback2k So, this is not actually keyless SSL but SSL using something like a Hardware Security Module over networked PKCS#11. Did I miss something? ------ praseodym So CloudFlare won't get your private key, but will still get to see unencrypted plaintext for all traffic? Sounds like a huge improvement... ~~~ jgrahamc What threat are you concerned about? ~~~ praseodym I don't really see the security improvement. Actually the key server would be an new attack vector, although one that could be firewalled pretty well. ~~~ sarciszewski Using CloudFlare implicitly requires trusting CloudFlare. With this, CloudFlare cannot impersonate you without your endpoint's active consent. As soon as you terminate the service that solves this puzzle for CF, they cannot impersonate you any longer. So, yes, it is better. Maybe not "great" if your threat model includes CF getting 0wned, but definitely better than giving over your RSA key. ;) ~~~ marcosdumay And that's why regulations make it almost impossible for banks to use CloudFare. But CloudFare sees that as a problem, and makes some effort to create a loophole. You can't claim that this improves the bank clients' security. It's clearly worse than doing nothing. ~~~ sarciszewski Think of it as a compromise: You can leverage CloudFlare's CDN to mitigate DDoS and other sorts of nasty attacks AND assure TLS is used with every connection, without giving up your RSA key. "It's clearly worse than doing nothing." It's not very clear to me. Please explain. ~~~ km3k I think "It's clearly worse than doing nothing" is from a purely security perspective. This opens up a larger attack surface, so it's worse in terms of security. But it's better than doing nothing from a business perspective, since it allows for better performance and better handling of DDOS attacks. It's a comprimise. Potentially it is slightly worse in security, but it is much better for performance and uptime. ------ zaroth See: Secure session capability using public-key cryptography without access to the private key. [https://www.google.com/patents/US8782774](https://www.google.com/patents/US8782774) ~~~ ivanr And here's a similar patent from Akamai (via @cloudpundit) [http://www.google.com/patents/US20130156189](http://www.google.com/patents/US20130156189) ~~~ zaroth Looks like the Akamai patent for basically the exact same process, filed 2012-12-14, priority date 2011-12-16 is still being examined... yet the CloudFlare patent filed 2013-03-07 was granted 2014-07-14. That's a really fast turnaround for CloudFlare, and not sure how the Akamai filing isn't prior art. Actually, the Akamai filing is _referenced_ in the CloudFlare patent. ~~~ makomk From what I can tell, the main difference is that the claims in CloudFlare's patent describe more of the SSL handshaking process and the subsequent handling of requests (all of which is exactly the same as in standard HTTPS proxying). They both claim exactly the same technique for a web proxy to handle SSL connections without having the private key, but I guess the USPTO decided the fact that CloudFlare described more of that process in their patent claims constituted a improvement on Akamai's invention for some weird reason. ------ xorcist The article is somewhat light on content. There are standard protocols for HSM use. What is the reason you didn't use these? There are clear risks involved with inventing your own security related protocols. ~~~ jgrahamc We have a really long technical blog post coming tomorrow. Agree that inventing protocols is dangerous so we got iSEC Partners/Matasano to evaluate. ------ _pmf_ Are we reinventing Kerberos again? ------ blibble isn't this completely missing the point, i.e. banks being able to say 'no third parties can see our clients identifying information/balances/etc?' yes, the SSL key doesn't leave the bank, but everything it is protecting is.. ~~~ indutny It only protects one thing - server identity. The best ciphers do you use DHE for negotiating the key, so the conversation between bank and the client is secure anyway. ~~~ jtgeibel Under this scheme, the DHE is between the client and CloudFlare, not the client and the true end-point. CloudFlare still sees the full plaintext of the HTTPS session (as it must in order to do it's magic). The encryption is not end-to-end. ------ bjornsing > World-renowned security experts Jon Callas and Phil Zimmermann support > CloudFlare's latest announcement sharing, “One of the core principles of > computer security is to limit access to cryptographic keys to as few parties > as possible, ideally only the endpoints. Application such as PGP, Silent > Circle, and now Keyless SSL implement this principle and are correspondingly > more secure.” Ehh... I'd say Keyless SSL implements the _opposite_ of that principle: encryption terminates with CloudFlare but authentication terminates in some bank. ------ yk So the problem is, how to get a cloud in the middle while keeping the green lock in the browser? Just yesterday I read Douglas Adam's phrase "technologies biggest success over itself." ------ kcbanner Interesting, but what about the latency issues of having to always contact the key server? ~~~ jgrahamc There's a very technical blog post coming on this tomorrow, but that problem is addressed by session tickets and by the fact that most of the TLS handshake is occurring with a CloudFlare server typically nearer the web browser than before. ~~~ Rapzid Do you guys have a "global" session ticket cache shared amongst endpoints? Or do you ensure the same user gets routed back to the same termination node? I'm quite curious about this. ~~~ eastdakota Session Tickets are shared globally. Session IDs are shared intra-data center (so regionally). The former works with Chrome/Firefox. The latter with all other browsers. ~~~ Rapzid That's really cool, thanks for responding. I imagined that possibility but never heard of anyone actually doing it(not to say they don't). Maybe I'll need to experiment around with Golang's TLS package :) ------ sarciszewski That is amazing. I can't wait to play with this code :D ------ yusyusyus How does this architecture address PFS? I'm guessing a future version would require the exchange of DH private key to make it work... ~~~ agwa Nothing that complicated is required. When the server needs to sign the DH handshake, it sends the value to be signed over to the key server, and the key server replies with the signature. Although the diagrams in the blog post show the non-PFS RSA handshake, I'm sure the architecture already supports the PFS DH handshake too. ------ ambrop7 I don't like to sound hateful, but this is an obvious solution that any competent person knowing how TLS works would find. If someone tried to patent it, I suppose every smart card would be considered prior art. The only "novelty" is that the connection to the "smart card" is the network. Not to say that it's not useful, but the article describes it as some grand invention. ~~~ pilsetnieks Then again, do you know of anyone else who has actually implemented and are using this commercially, at scale? They say it themselves in the article, a prototype is one thing but actually making it into a commercially viable product is something else. ------ general_failure Well, cloudfare can still read all the traffic. I thought that problem had been solved somehow. ------ diafygi Is this the free SSL announcement that CloudFlare said it was going to announce in October? ~~~ jgrahamc No. ~~~ sarciszewski Is it related? ;) ~~~ xxdesmus not really -- only in that they are both SSL-related. Free SSL is still in the works. More info soon-ish. ~~~ sarciszewski My question was more to the point of: will Keyless SSL work with Free SSL? :) ~~~ eastdakota Not how you're likely thinking. That said, we will use the Keyless technology to expand our data center footprint into locations that we wouldn't feel comfortable storing customers' keys. That will end up benefiting even Free customers who will be faster around the world. ------ EGreg Wow, what a great read! ------ liricooli It seems that the correct title should have been "all your keys are belong to us". ------ personZ After reading the beginning of the piece, I was expected something more...profound. Some deep mathematical breakthrough or something. Instead they separate the actual key signing, delegating it to the customer's device. That's nice and useful, but isn't quite what I was expecting. ~~~ Mawaai "Tomorrow, we'll publish a full post on the nitty, gritty techical details of how, what has come to be called Keyless SSL™, works." ~~~ jldugger But it's already fairly obvious how it works. They essentially MITM with the keyserver to receive the SSL nonce. Of course, it's pretty silly to expect cloudflare to have some special mathematical revolution to solve the stated problem. In fact I figure if you could terminate SSL without an online private key, the encryption scheme is simply broken. ~~~ personZ _But it 's already fairly obvious how it works._ It is obvious, and they effectively implemented a custom approach for PKCS11/ssh-agent. Yet the narrative implies some brilliant period of insight and innovation, when really it kind of isn't. Which is where the "silly" notion that they must have did something novel came from -- their narrative claims it. ~~~ giovannibajo1 Innovation means different things to different people. To you, it seems to mean a mathematical or algorithmic breakthrough. To me, it also means getting an existing idea or technology, and deploying it in a new, real-world context, solving the UX / scalability / security / policy issues that arise in the new context, and make it commercially viable. The fact that Cloudflare is the first global-level CDN to implement this kind of keyless SSL termination to me _is_ innovation, even though it's based on pulling PKCS11 at the IP level. It's solving a real-world problem in their context, which nobody has solved before, and customers pay for it. ------ zameericle Sounds like Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman is used between client/server to establish a private key. Not sure how this is new. ~~~ sarciszewski At a glance, it appears that the non-ephemeral RSA signature is handled in the network, but the key exchange occurs at the endpoint. What's new is the whole "edge calls home with a signing request" piece. ------ ilaksh This is a discussion about cyberwarfare in a literal sense. The technical discussion shouldn't really be separated from the economic, political, social and human health concerns because all of those parts of the system interact deeply and directly. A goal of total political cooperation or submission leads to economic sanctions leading to serious human health effects leading to defensive denial of service attacks. This accelerates the need to decentralize the financial network systems to make them more robust. How can we imagine though that even after a complete transition to next generation systems that are ground-up distributed designs (not just stop-gap tweaks like this) that we won't have new types of attacks to deal with. The starting point is the belief system that provides such fertile ground for conflict. We have to promote the idea that human lives have value and that lethal force is not an acceptable way to resolve conflict. As long as decision makers are living in a sort of 1960s James Bond fantasy world we will all be subject to the insecurity of that type of world. Its largely built upon a type of primitive Social Darwinism that is still much more prevalent than most will acknowledge. Its much easier to accept a compartmentalization of these problems and focus on a narrow technical aspect, but that does not integrate nearly enough information. ~~~ ilaksh Would be interested to hear from people who are burying my comment if they have any kind of explanation for why they are doing it, such as counterpoints to my statements. In case there is some insight that I might gain from them, since apparently there is a strong disagreement. ~~~ jessaustin GP comment is too generalized to be constructive. That is especially so in this discussion of a specific network security platform, which presumably has specific faults that may be discussed instead of generalities like "belief systems" and "human lives". ~~~ ilaksh You're right, I'm sure none of my general concerns about completely false belief systems and human lives are worth being viewed by any readers in this thread. My comment also may be a little bit difficult to contextualize or disconcerting for readers. Best to keep downvoting it so that it disappears. ~~~ Gigablah Passive-aggressiveness is not an effective persuasion technique.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tao3D, a new open-source language for real-time 3D animations - c3d http://sourceforge.net/projects/tao3d/ ====== cordite I would have suggested changing the link to the project site [1] instead of the download page since it has some sort of presentation that sort of details what it is about better, though it seems to be laggy or somewhat unresponsive --even though its transitions are very smooth. [1]: [http://tao3d.sourceforge.net/#/1](http://tao3d.sourceforge.net/#/1) ~~~ c3d The main page has shaders in background. This works well if your machine is beefy enough. But it's apparently an issue with systems such as iPads. I've temporarily removed the shader backgrounds. ~~~ cordite It is totally broken now on chrome (desktop) ------ green7ea The 3D engine behind this looks very flexible while being easy to use which is pretty hard to do. The programming language looks very interesting, especially the if declaration. It seems like a macro/runtime hybrid. Is it based on another language? ~~~ c3d It's based on XL ([http://xlr.sf.net](http://xlr.sf.net)).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A startup CEO drives for Uber - elmyraduff http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/25/a-startup-ceo-drives-for-uber/ ====== austenallred Before your startup is in an accelerator or has raised your seed round driving Uber to remain afloat is downright scrappy. After you've raised your seed round, it raises huge red flags for me. Your seed round should enable you to not have to worry about money. That's pretty much the point. Uber _should_ just be a distraction at that point, and one that should be squashed quickly. The fact that the "CEO" is putting all of his money into getting coffee and flying around says to me that this person is "playing house." But then again, I don't know the exact circumstances, maybe he's figured out a way to turn every dollar spent on Adwords into two. I doubt it, but who knows. ~~~ applecore Driving three to five hours a night a few nights a week isn't so bad as a relaxing hobby, nor does it need to be "squashed quickly." ------ peterjancelis > "the myriad expenses that we startup founders incur (from coffee shop tabs > to gas costs to cross-country flights for meetings with investors)" I fundamentally disagree that these are non-avoidable expenses. ~~~ obviouslygreen It's not about avoidability. This is what happens when someone is more concerned with looking like a startup founder than founding a startup. ------ andrea_s I'm always torn when I hear about the "CEO" of such a small company (or, in more extreme cases, the CEO of a one man band) - from one side, I see that it gives a clear impression of how the tasks are distributed within the company, but it still sounds a bit weird. What do you think? ~~~ patio11 Is social status policing a high priority for you? If so, that complaint makes a lot of sense. If not, it is a silly thing to worry about. Note that if social status policing is a high priority, you should probably start working on rules for who is and is not allowed to call themselves a Founder, because as of late that title is receiving attention. (No lie: I once got told in the Valley that having Founder on my business cards was "A bit disingenuous, no?" because I wasn't as founder-y as Founders who founded foundable things.) ~~~ pdpi I'm not sure it's about policing social status. To me, calling yourself "CEO" of a tiny startup reeks of self-aggrandizement, which is the sort of attitude that rubs me the wrong way. ~~~ tptacek You might not be connecting the dots here. The concern or even attention to "self-aggrandizement" is itself a form of social status policing. That's literally what the term means. ~~~ pdpi Maybe we have read "social status policing" to mean completely different things. To me, that suggests caring a lot about status, and worrying a lot about people laying claim to more status than what they're due. My issue here is with people turning status, either deserved or otherwise, into a bigger thing than it is. Social status is only very rarely material to any given conversation, so I do care when people feel the need to bring it up, and when they feel the need to give themselves pompous titles, because they're signalling to me that they do care about status, and they're going to make it an issue in our dealings. ~~~ nostrademons Aren't you also signalling that you care a lot about status by complaining about it? Usually when people _actually_ don't care about something, they just make note of the fact that somebody else does and slightly alter their dealings with that person to get a more favorable outcome. An argument isn't a favorable outcome; negotiating more of something you do care about (like equity, or influence, or effort on their part) in exchange for something they care about (like titles) is. ------ nebula <i>Whatever the reason, I’m beholden to no shift schedule. There is no conflict between the demanding schedule of my startup career and my moonlighting as an Uber driver. It is truly a symbiotic relationsh</i> Is it just me or does it really sound like a PR exercise of Uber + his startup? ~~~ tonyjstark I was thinking the same thing. Hey, you meet investors when driving for Uber and driving around for 4 hours after a 10+ working shift is perfect for distraction. You don't need sleep and rest. And you make good money ($800 in 12 hours), athought I think I read somewhere that the average Uber driver in New York makes around 700$ a month (sorry, don't find the source but correct me if I'm wrong). ~~~ ripb >(sorry, don't find the source but correct me if I'm wrong). I had a quick look myself, as I found the figure interesting. According to Uber[1] an UberX driver in NYC averages almost $91k per year based on driving a 40 hour week. However, in a follow up by BI[2], this figure seems to be widely refuted by Uber drivers across a number of states. For example, one in NYC says he drives 40 hours a week and doesn't expect to take in $50k this year, but that you can clear $4k a month after Uber expenses, gas, etc. doing 40 hours without too much hassle. 1\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-drivers- salary-90000-201...](http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-drivers- salary-90000-2014-5) 2\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-uber- drivers-r...](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-uber-drivers- really-make-2014-7) ~~~ tonyjstark Thanks for your findings! So the earnings are not that bad, seems like I mixed something up badly and his claims are realistic. ~~~ ripb Yeah the earnings certainly aren't too bad, although realistically how far will $4k per month pre-tax go in somewhere like NYC? It does offer more benefits than just pay though. I mean you get to choose your own hours, can work as much overtime as you like, comparatively low responsibility, etc. If one could get $90k-$100k out of it with 40-50 hours a week, it would certainly be attractive. ~~~ alistairSH I'm dubious that you can actually choose your own hours AND make a decent living. With surge pricing and higher demand in the post-work hours, I would assume you have to work those hours to maximize income, no? ------ CHY872 Over the summer I got an UberX from Sunnyvale where the guy who showed up was in a VW Toureg, a fairly snazzy car with a glass roof etc etc. Apparently he was a fairly successful electrical engineer with someone or other who was wondering with his buddy whether Uber or Lyft were better, so to settle the bet one drove for Uber in his free time and one for Lyft. Seemed like a pretty cool bet from a pretty cool guy. ------ minikomi Rent a flat above a shop, cut your hair and get a job. Smoke some fags and play some pool, pretend you never went to school..... ------ barrkel I don't think it's such a bad choice of an extra job because of all the different people you'll get to meet. ------ korzun > Like many in my MBA class, I had the choice to accept one of a handful of > six-figure opportunities offered by top tech and consulting companies. Yeah, no. > So I signed up, and in the first weekend of sharing my car with strangers — > roughly three to five hours a night over three nights — I earned $800 net. That's not a net, car repairs and maintenance add up. This sums up most of his logic. > I pick when I drive based on personal whims. Sometimes I am driving from > north Austin to downtown and I just provide a quick ride to an Uber > passenger on my way. You have a limit of how many rides you can cancel. This does not add up. Nor do all the passengers give you destination prior to acceptance. How many 'MBA' instances can you fit in an article? This is a basically a PR story on some kid who is burning thought small unverified rounds every other month. ~~~ theundead You're spot on. I know of the author of the article (Austin is a small scene), and he is basically an MBA type who has been stuck playing startup the last 4 years. He has effectively made 0 progress in that time and it took over 3 years just to launch the MVP. Think about that...3+ years to launch anything working at all (before that they just had a splash page for years littered with hyperbole). In fact they "launched" quite recently and the product is pretty bad. They're burning through money and time like it's nothing. Several classmates that were involved somewhat early on realized what a joke it was and cut all ties to the thing. ~~~ 650REDHAIR (Disclaimer, the author is a personal friend and investor of mine) Well, that's completely wrong. He's launched, hit revenue quickly, has taken sizeable outside funding, and is one of the hardest working guys I know. There's only so much work you can do in a day before you start hitting walls. Some people read, some people jog, and some people drive. At least this way his expenses are covered and it let's him clear his head for awhile. Also, you seem a bit bitter- like you dropped out of your MBA to work on a failed startup and now you're regretting it... ------ negamax I am surprised by the negativity in this thread. Since when did founding a startup start having a fixed set of rules? Further, if he gets a break in terms of bigger investor who happens to be a passenger. This is what everyone will start doing! ~~~ chulk90 I agree. Starting a company isn't a glamorous lifestyle that mass media portray it to be. During startup, you spend a lot of time figuring out how to cut down food and housing costs, how we're gonna pay for salaries and office expenses 6 months later, etc. You have to try EVERYTHING you can, and that's what makes / breaks a startup. P.S. A lot of people on HN or even many people at Startup School seem to be interested in startups for the "lifestyle" that doesn't exist in real life. In the real world, your company is not Pied Piper. ------ realdlee The author says they raised a "small seed" round, so the funding might be much smaller than the typical seed rounds we hear about these days. ------ butwhy Guess you found some upsides. For most people, I think someone with such education and such a role at a company is making a stupid decision by doing this. There is such thing as an "opportunity cost" that is wasted when you perform unskilled labor in favour of time that could be put towards the company you are responsible for (and the people you are responsible for). ~~~ 650REDHAIR Can you operate at 100% on a single idea for 100% of the time? I can't. I usually pick up a book or drive to unwind and then come back to a problem. If I could get paid to do that- why wouldn't I try it? ------ pavanred I recently met a Uber driver who had retired from a successful career in the semi conductor industry and was trying out driving for Uber as he gets to meet new and interesting people. ------ Cacti lol. "CEO". ------ dansky Uber is the new "McJob" ------ eclipxe What bubble? ~~~ kunaalarya How does this say anything about a bubble? if this were 1999, he wouldn't need to drive Uber cause his startup would be able to raise a couple million	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
It's Gotten Too Hard to Strike It Rich in America - pseudolus https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-14/it-s-gotten-too-hard-to-strike-it-rich-in-america ====== codingslave I would argue that wealth in the last thirty years was driven by two primary methods: 1.) Automating basic and well known tasks using computers. 2.) Outsourcing not easily automatable tasks to foreign counties and importing cheap labor. Manufacturing, software engineering etc. Things like getting wealthy in real estate and investments were off shoots of the above. I would argue that the two above have reached their capacity to be of benefit to average Americans. Further development of the two will continue to destroy the middle class and the cultural fabric of America. People are increasingly aware of this, hence the tense political climate in this country ~~~ bduerst The difference is that the wealth from cost-cutting (automation/outsourcing) isn't shared with the middle class, but instead goes to the capital holders. If you look at the rise of the middle class in America it was from new service businesses flourishing, where skilled laborers could gain wealth. As the wealth gap grows, debt encumbers more young families, and the middle class shrinks, there is less disposable income to spend on services. ~~~ malandrew > The difference is that the wealth from cost-cutting (automation/outsourcing) > isn't shared with the middle class As an engineer with equity in the company I work for, I benefit and I'm middle class. I think there is also a misconception about how much the capital holders actually gain. A lot of automation is deflationary in the sense that it reduces the cost of production, which in turn allows a reduction in the price a product is sold at to capture market share. This allows the firm that is automating to capture a large piece of that market, but at the cost of making that market a lot smaller unless demand is pretty much unbounded. You have to both automate and grow the market for what you've automated to truly make it big. ~~~ AstralStorm And hope the market has no natural bound or is at risk of getting obsolete. Even where automation is not involved, you can get choked by lack of qualified manpower. This is already happening in the USA, stopping the brain drain from elsewhere. (Especially with the immigration policies.) Outsourcing is essentially growing external competition by your own hand. ------ Sargos Ray Dalio talks about this phenomenon in his free book Big Debt Crises. He shows data that debt bubbles are cyclical and exhibit the same characteristics each time. The debt bubble that played out from 1927-1940 also exhibited increasing wealth inequality which led to massive social and political volatility. In relation to that cycle we are around 1936. Income inequality and political crisis will likely be very high in the coming years (even as it's already high as you can probably tell by recent events) and we might see some pretty stark changes in our economy and policies. Perhaps more social programs to lessen the damage of the gap such as free healthcare or universal basic income. The recurring bubbles do hurt but eventually they give way to the next cycle of debt inflation and exuberance. ~~~ on_and_off As somebody having moved from a country with a good health care system (ie even if you are poor, going to the doctor is not a big issue), the us health care system is definitely one of the most shocking aspects of this country. It is extremely weird how the USA feel like a mix of first and third world countries. ~~~ codingslave The thing is, the USA has subsidized everyone elses health care systems. All major health care innovations were invented here. So when your drug prices are cheap, its because your country has access to free USA drug innovation. What created modern health care (free market privatized drug companies and equipment manufacturers), also causes health care to be a broken system. Theres two sides to this coin ~~~ chipotle_coyote Since people were asking for citations, here's a couple, but they seem to contradict your assertion: "US Pharmaceutical Innovation in an International Context," the American Journal of Public Health. "We explored whether the United States is responsible for the development of a disproportionate share of the New Molecular Entities (NMEs) produced worldwide. [...] The United States was responsible for the development of 43.7% of the NMEs. The United Kingdom, Switzerland, and a few other countries innovated proportionally more than their contribution to GDP or prescription drug spending, whereas Japan, South Korea, and a few other countries innovated less. Conclusion: Higher prescription drug spending in the United States does not disproportionately privilege domestic innovation, and many countries with drug price regulation were significant contributors to pharmaceutical innovation." [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866602/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866602/) "Global Drug Discovery: Europe is Ahead," Health Affairs Vol. 28 Supplement 1. "It is widely believed that the United States has eclipsed Europe in pharmaceutical research productivity. Some leading analysts claim that although fewer drugs have been discovered worldwide over the past decade, most are therapeutically important. Yet a comprehensive data set of all new chemical entities approved between 1982 and 2003 shows that the United States never overtook Europe in research productivity, and that Europe in fact is pulling ahead of U.S. productivity. Other large studies show that most new drugs add few if any clinical benefits over previously discovered drugs." [https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.28.5....](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.28.5.w969) The argument that the US "subsidizes" the rest of the world's health care is something that US pharmaceutical companies would very much like us to believe, but the evidence for it appears to be pretty shaky. ~~~ istjohn It seems to me the question is whether the US market fuels investment in research in other countries. ~~~ AstralStorm How do you propose to measure this? If it's by revenue to the much maligned Big Pharma, then I think not. R&D is a big cost, but not nearly as big in percentage as shown by the pharma companies, so were they all to contract due to sudden existence failure of the USA, they'd still make big profits if they kept the costs the same. The smaller companies would evaporate. I'm basing this on comparing Teva USA vs Teva Global R&D spending data. That is 10% everywhere, 15% in the US (dropping faster) and falling regardless of the USA or not, which is pumping in more money into this company every day. I picked Teva because they're representative and one of global market leaders. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/272544/expenditure-on- re...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/272544/expenditure-on-research-and- development-by-teva-since-2006/) Solid: [https://articles2.marketrealist.com/2018/01/whats-teva- pharm...](https://articles2.marketrealist.com/2018/01/whats-teva- pharmaceuticals-research-development-strategy/) (Yes, you can also read their quarterlies for USA branch and other ones. I checked a few.) Decent write-up, if a bit old: [https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20170307.05903...](https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20170307.059036/full/) ------ mjevans The housing bubble part of this as yet another way that the economy is failing... well for everyone that isn't wealthy is probably a far larger and more nuanced part of the problem than the article realizes. It was at least true when I was a kid that the 'American Dream' included owning your own home and trying to build up wealth that way. However, as an American 'teen' I found getting a job in the suburbs pretty much impossible: I didn't have a car and I had no reliable / safe way to get outside of the small local malls which already had hundreds of other students competing for work. It might have also been that most of the less complex, safe to hand off to any random teen/adult, jobs had already been outsourced or made obsolete. - Today housing prices in the middle of nowhere, where there aren't jobs, are somewhat reasonable... Trying to get a place that is your own near jobs? There seem to be far too few places relative to the number of jobs; thus competition fails to reward places that are planned and built well and favors sellers that use every loophole and cut every corner they're not legally required to fulfill. ------ perspective1 Another short, controversial news article with plenty of possibly good points but no actual data. For instance, home ownership is down? Okay, tell me how much and in what areas. Is it mostly densely populated areas that are running out of space? Or is it everywhere? Are there other explanations (like older first-age of childbirth? ------ bduerst [https://outline.com/jeXm4x](https://outline.com/jeXm4x) ------ DoreenMichele Research I did while homeless: _The research I have done also suggests that humans have only found about 5 percent of the gold on the planet and that gold is in high demand as a material used in our fancy modern electronics. This demand is likely to go up, not down. Because the environment is a hot topic and sensitive issue, from what I gather, this is a job not likely to be taken over by automation any time soon. It appears that they are cracking down on automated processes for dredging streams for gold because it has too much negative impact on the environment. So, this is likely to remain an opportunity for small time operators for many years to come._ [1] The spot price for gold is currently higher than it was when I did the research. It's around $1500/oz.[2] It was "above $1200" per ounce when I did the research. _Get rich quick_ schemes have always been dicey at best. What we imagine ought to be easy now because we have computers, such as house flipping, was tough back in the day. It's still tough, just for different reasons, like market saturation and fierce competition. That isn't intended to dismiss the idea that we have systemic issues. I'm well aware that we have systemic issues. I'm just saying that if you think getting rich used to be easy, I doubt I would agree with you. As always, you need to find the non-obvious opportunities that are being overlooked by other people and then work hard. Occasionally, people just get lucky. Luck is always a factor. But there is no sure thing formula for wealth creation. There never has been. [1] [https://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/2016/11/h...](https://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/2016/11/half- baked-idea-panning-for-gold.html) [2] [https://goldprice.org/gold-price-charts/1-day-gold-price- per...](https://goldprice.org/gold-price-charts/1-day-gold-price-per-ounce-in- us-dollars) ------ xkcd-sucks Maybe the USA was historically "fertile" because the original inhabitants were exterminated, leaving behind a wealth of material resources available for the taking. One could contend that the notion of "frontier" was the land until the 20th century, it was "the rest of the world" in the 20th century, and now there is none because the system is in temporary equilibrium without any huge wars or natural disasters. ~~~ tlb The Internet has been the frontier for the last 25 years. That's where most new fortunes were made: providing services or access to it. Perhaps the Internet is now full, or perhaps there's lots more territory. Other frontiers include biotech and space. Both seem like we've only explored 1% of the potential. ~~~ jdnenej With the internet some uni student could build something and become rich. To just get started on space or medical stuff takes more money than most whole corporations have. ~~~ tlb Here are 61 companies that got started on biomedical stuff, most with just $150k, in the last few years: [https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/?vertical=Biomedical](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/?vertical=Biomedical) and [https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/?vertical=Biotech](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/?vertical=Biotech) Not all will succeed, but some will. You can absolutely start with nothing but some knowledge and ambition. ------ atemerev Well, it is always hard to strike rich using something that was already exploited for decades. People who got rich trading real estate used to do it back when it was risky. Now people are becoming rich by doing other risky things, e.g. cryptocurrencies. Of course, there are many ways to fail, but there were never a risk-free way of becoming rich on one's own. ------ mitchellst I stopped reading at the date ranges. It’s comparing the decade 1983-93 (start at recovery from long recession, measure across famous economic boom with only short 1990 downturn) versus 2003-2013. (Oldish data anyway and measures across the famously deep 2008 recession which had an unusually slow recovery.) and you want to make a point about economic mobility and inequality in 2019 with this? We may have problems with economic mobility but this is a very bad version of that argument. ------ lacampbell Where is it easier to strike it rich? ~~~ phil248 China. "Although the U.S. will remain a world leader in the number of millionaires, reaching as many as 20.5 million over the next five years, Credit Suisse forecasts that China will mint new seven-figure fortunes at more than three times the rate over the same period." [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-18/u-s-to- re...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-18/u-s-to-remain-hub- of-world-s-richest-even-as-china-closes-gap) ~~~ PHGamer well only if your chinese. chinese tend to not work well with non chinese. ~~~ neom I'd encourage you to read this book, it certainly made me think differently about China: Dealing with China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower by Henry M. Paulson [https://www.amazon.com/Dealing-China-Insider-Economic- Superp...](https://www.amazon.com/Dealing-China-Insider-Economic-Superpower- ebook/dp/B00CO7FMDC) ~~~ mikeyouse I'd rather take economic and business advice from the hobo outside my bus stop screaming at pigeons than take advice from Hank Paulson. ~~~ neom It's not a self help book it's a story ------ RickJWagner Exactly the opposite of what can be found elsewhere. "Number of U.S. Millionaires Grows in 2018, for 10th Straight Year" [https://www.barrons.com/articles/number-of-u-s- millionaires-...](https://www.barrons.com/articles/number-of-u-s-millionaires- grows-in-2018-for-10th-straight-year-01552506244)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How do you deal with getting older? - dreifi As hackers, do you feel like you can hack life and get more years out of it then the average joe?<p>Or do you feel lost in a culture that hails 20 year olds that are dreaming up the next big thing? ====== codingdave Honestly, I feel like I've outgrown the whole "dreaming up the next big thing." I know my dreams. I am already following them. I feel like the younger folk tend to re-invent ideas that have come and gone, and don't do enough research to see what has come before. They spin their wheels figuring out things that us older folk already know. Sure, they do it with newer toolkits than I know, and that is why I keep up on HN - because the newer technologies are where the younger crowd can teach me something. But I don't feel lost in the culture... I feel disinterested in it. I also think that being older, with a family, and a full life outside of work, I'm not interested in pursuing wealth the same way that young people are. I have a nest egg, I have a good salary, I also have a wife, children, a small farm that we run, mountains, deserts and oceans to explore, stars to look at, etc. I am no longer 23 and trying to establish my life. I am 43, have built a life that works for me, and am far more concerned with raising my children than with raising my wealth. To me wealth is binary - you have enough to live your life, or you do not. At the moment, I do. So can I hack life to get more out of it? I think I already have. ~~~ habitue I agree people reinvent the wheel all the time, but instead of seeing it as something naive people do, I see it as fertile earth that genuinely new things can grow from. I feel like "young developers reinvent what we already had 30 years ago" kind of ennui gets espoused here on HN a lot. To me, this is less wisdom gleaned from experience and more a preference based on shifting priorities. There's nothing wrong with not being interested in new shiny stuff, but there's also nothing wrong with being interested in it. ~~~ scott_karana > and that is why I keep up on HN - because the newer technologies are where > the younger crowd can teach me something. ------ modoc I'm 35 and overall am feeling at the top of my game. I don't envy the 20 years olds or feel lost. I've learned so much, not just technically but around user and enterprise needs, inter-personal skills, and about myself since I was 18-20 that I absolutely feel better suited for success. I've started eating right and working out, which has helped both body and mind, and I've developed task and time management techniques that work for me. While I admit my mind might not be 100% as quick as it was when i was 20, I do feel remarkably more productive. Although to be fair, I'm not in the SV ecosystem, and run my startup (although after 8 years maybe not a startup any longer?) from outside of Boston (a location where a strong business model still beats a profitless pitch deck), so perhaps the environment is one reason I feel the way I do. ~~~ robotkilla > my mind might not be 100% as quick as it was when i was 20 care to elaborate? I'm 34 and I keep hearing that my mind is supposed to slow down but it hasn't yet. I drink 2 cups of coffee a day, don't smoke cigs, am not overweight, try to go for a walk for 30 minutes minimum each day, go to sleep by 9ish and am up by 3 or 4am. I also watch very little TV, read regularly and push myself to learn new stuff on a near constant basis (python > node > c# > cg within the space of the last 4 years, along with pixel art, a bit of 3d art, loads of 3d programming + 2d game programming - all in addition to being a web dev contractor). The change I've seen in my brain as I've gotten older is that I seem to be learning at an accelerated rate. However there are days when my depression or stress gets the best of me and I have to just take half a day or so to "detox" (binge watch netflix, play video games etc). I wonder if some of the slow down people feel is artificially induced, or even misperceived (it takes me longer to reply to questions, but that's because I'm considering more answers or sifting through more knowledge that I have). edit: Alzheimers / other brain related issues are absolutely terrifying to me so I'm interested in understanding what people mean by slowing down specifically... also there's a small part of me that worries I've slowed down and just haven't noticed it yet. ~~~ modoc For reference I drink 1-2 cups of tea most days, sometimes none. Have never smoked, drank, or done drugs. For me it's a couple areas I notice: I have a more difficult time remembering names, specific words, etc... I used to be able to do relatively difficult math problems in my head without actually _thinking_ about it. Now I'm likely to use my phone to calculate three digit+ sums. I find it harder to get "in the zone". ~~~ sharmi Maybe it's more to lack of exercising those specific skills? My language and math skills were definitely better during college but then i don't use them as much as I used too? This is something I would genuinely like to get an answer for ------ randcraw Amazing. For most of us, your career begins about 22 and ends about 72. So at 50 years, the midpoint would be 47. Yet most of the comments below start with, "I'm 35 and...". Jeez. At 35 you're still just a kid. I'm 57 and I've _definitely_ seen brain changes. At 20 I could learn 80% of new stuff in one pass. That ended by 35, when I had to take and review notes to learn as well. Now at 57, I simply can't remember minutiae like I once could. Proper nouns are especially tough to recall (famous names especially). I don't retain entire 1000 LOC programs in my head any more. Learning new computer languages still isn't too tough but breaking new ground in math is. My ability to see multiple perspectives of a new concept all at once is not what it once was. I have to work harder at concentrating and distractions are more disruptive. I really _HATE_ working in an open space without earplugs. So yes, the brain ages. At age 50 I'll be much more impressed when you claim, "Oh yeah, my brain hasen't lost a step since 20." ~~~ CuriouslyC I would argue that the issue with math and perspectives isn't so much a decrease in your raw brainpower, more like your brain has become more "specialized" to the things you do very frequently. I'm sure there is a small decrease in raw processing speed, but I expect the largest change is the reduction in flexibility. As for your reduction in memory/recall, one thing that can help is to learn more diverse information. The connectivity of a network is a function of the diversity of its inputs/outputs, and the more connected a network is, the shorter the average path to any given node (in this case a memory). ------ pcmaffey 40 year olds today were the first generation to grow up with computers. 10 years ago, 40 year olds were "old" in computer parlance. The myth of the 20 year old hacker will go away over time, as more and more people grow up immersed in technology (and thus possess the necessary skillset). I would even go so far as to say that our culture's preoccupation with youth presents an opportunity for disruptive ideas/startups, based in "wisdom and experience." ~~~ bsenftner Actually, that would be people in their early 50's. Born in '64, started programming in '77. ~~~ Toenex This reads like the start of a geek update to the classic Four Yorkshiremen sketch ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1by0-nkKOTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1by0-nkKOTs)) "6502?" "Aye" "You were lucky. There were 19 of us all crowded round a single Z80 processor with a hexadecimal display..." ... "Of course when I say keyboard I mean a 8 high voltage bootstrap connectors with rusty razorblades for switches. But it was a keyboard to us..." ------ sago I can't write code nearly as fast as I used to. I am much better at writing less code, though. And though it took a while (too long), I've figured out that it's the code you _don 't_ write that makes you great. So I'm much more skilled and competent as a 40 yo than I was as a precocious 20 year old. The biggest change has been values though. My values and my criteria for success are different now than they were when I founded my first business at 22. Now with a family, assets, residual income and a home, I'm far far more interested in being interested than I am in numerical 'success', and much more motivated by social justice. So I definitely don't have the hunger for startup life. I don't feel lost in that culture. I just feel that I've been there, got the t-shirt, and moved beyond, so I don't feel the need to go back for more than the odd visit. So yeah, maybe I'm getting over the hill in some ways. But that's not a bad thing. I don't feel out-competed, I just feel like experience and perspective have made me change what I value, both in code and in business (and other bits of life: in relationships, in vacations, in hobbies, etc). ~~~ ak39 I am much better at writing less code, though. In other words, your thinking is organised. Organisation is a skill you learn through experience. No other way. You can attempt to teach a newcomer about the virtues of refactoring (basically tidying up the kitchen after you've baked your masterpiece) but I can assure you, the mind at early stages of doing new things is less interested in tidying up the process than it is about seeing the exciting outcome. That's by nature. ------ lavara There's an (spanish) old saying that goes: The devil knows more because he's old than he does because he's the devil. (Or Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.) HTH. ~~~ 0xdeadbeefbabe Old sayings are so much better than young sayings. ~~~ spdionis Agreed. In fact this sounded a lot better than "YOLO". ------ Nursie Generally I wrinkle slightly more each year, moan about my joints seizing up and grow more cynical. On a more serious note I am becoming better at what I do because I understand much more of pretty much everything in far greater depth than I used to. And while I perhaps don't have the stamina or raw LoC output ability of a 21 year old any more, I can usually achieve tasks much faster because I know what I'm doing and I make fewer mistakes. I'm definitely much more cynical about flavour of the week languages and frameworks though. And I find it very funny that things get reinvented every few years as a new generation decides some thing is too cumbersome (often SQL or DMBSs) and needs to be thrown out, only to be slowly reinvented as all the edge cases that lead to the abstraction are discovered... And I'm only 36. Career-wise, no discrimination noticed yet. ~~~ pmelendez This... I have the same observation and coincidentially we have the same age :) ~~~ logfromblammo I'm just a tiny bit older, and I thought I noticed some age discrimination last year. Do you both still have all your scalp hair? ~~~ pmelendez I do still have my scalp hair :) but I have some friends that are bald since early twenties so I don't think it is a major thing. I don't and ever have worked in USA so it might be a cultural thing though. ------ jakejake When I was young I told my friends that if they saw me in 20 years married and not playing music full time to go ahead and punch me in the face. I honestly thought that I would feel exactly the same at 40 that I did at 20. At that age I probably would have looked at my older self and thought that I had lost my passion, had sold out, become uncool, etc. It didn't occur to me that I would still remember everything that I knew at 20, plus have another 20 years to figure out what actually is important to me and become twice as confident and comfortable with myself. I felt way more "lost" when I was 20 than I did at 40. I don't think I've necessarily figured it all out. But, as much fun as I had when I was young, I like my life more now. ------ rm_-rf_slash I am less driven by the prospect of becoming an old expensive programmer, and more concerned about missing out on gaining management experience. I have conversed with many programmers who express concern that they have no management aspirations, and yet the longer they remain pure programmers, they find they have fewer options as they age, instead, as one might imagine, more. Maybe it's because it's harder to convince a 40-year old programmer to work bullshit hours for a few slices of free pizza. ------ ryandrake As someone about to turn 40, it's creepy reading comment after comment here and seeing A LOT to agree with. Less lines of code per hour than when I was young: CHECK More productive than when I was young: CHECK Not reinventing wheels anymore: CHECK Recognizing all the wheels I reinvented when I was young thinking I was so clever: CHECK Keeping up with new languages/tools/frameworks: CHECK Skepticism at the people who think this new language/tool/framework is going to CHANGE EVERYTHING: CHECK Paying more attention to my health: CHECK Hobbies outside of work: CHECK A couple of things I disagree with though. Employment opportunity: I definitely am starting to see evidence of ageism. Job hopping is more difficult, and the quality/appeal of available jobs is no longer what it used to be. It's much harder to get the attention of recruiters now than it was 15 years ago, and I feel I'm at a negotiating disadvantage vs. younger people who have no problem sleeping at their desks and subsisting on noodles and Mountain Dew alone. Quite honestly, 90% of job postings I read are utterly uninteresting to a 40 year old. Sometimes the company or product is boring, uncompelling, or something I've already worked on. Sometimes the culture reeks of bro-grammer. Or it's full of dog-whistle words that tell me I'll be working 80 hour weeks and not be compensated well for it. Financial position: Software engineering has not been very financially rewarding. I guess you can always find someone and say, boy they're doing much better than I. I seem to be permanently behind the people I knew who went into more lucrative careers. I feel like I'm much less well established at 40 than my parents (who made shit as school teachers) were when they were 40. The clock is ticking and I feel it's going to run out before I'm able to retire. Time feels like a predator, stalking me and waiting to devour me as punishment for not making/saving enough. ~~~ logfromblammo I can't find a single thing to disagree with. Though my financial position might be worse, due to ill-timed property purchases. Basically, the majority of my net worth was in real estate in 2007. I have had to move multiple times to find sufficiently remunerative work for a small family. So I'm just treading water now. I have been busting my ass for 16 years now, with literally _nothing_ to show for it. Everything I have ever gained has been taken back, by circumstances beyond my control. So when I see those Baby Boomers, retiring with nice, big nest eggs from working 40 years at the same company, I just start to seethe in rage. They are the ones who started pulling all the ladders up after climbing them. I don't think it's just software. _Everyone_ born after the Baby Boomers is worse off than their parents were at the same age. That generation just isn't giving the same as they got, because they are such a large economic force, they could get whatever they want. All I can say is that they had better fix up the nursing homes while they still have the power to do so. Gen X and Millennial won't have time to take care of them while still looking for new jobs every 2-5 years. ------ jensnockert I'm 25 and feels lost in a culture that hails 20 year olds that are dreaming up the next big thing. I don't think age is the important thing here, I have worked with people of all ages (15-70 or so) that I look up to and learned a lot from. Experience is important, and it is hard to have experienced a lot of things if you are 20. On a semi-related note, all my best bosses have been parents, having kids seem to teach you something about the value of time. ~~~ phkahler >> On a semi-related note, all my best bosses have been parents, having kids seem to teach you something about the value of time. I once talked to an old (60) guy who was writing code down the aisle from me. He said he tried management, but didn't want to mediate disputes between children - he had his own at home. I thought his experience was probably unusual, but I've asked a number of managers since then, and they all agree that's an unfortunately large part of the job. I don't see it because they keep it away from the team - as it should be. But then when I got my first crack at "having a small team" I saw exactly the same thing. So yes, tech skills are important but parenting can also be a relevant background ;-) ------ ffn The same way you deal with getting older in any other profession, you learn to accept that there will always be people better, faster, and younger than you, embrace the fact that you suck, but still persevere in pushing forward at your own best pace. You strip away the pride (i.e. the feeling that you somehow deserve / need to win, to be the next big thing, to change the world, to be loved / respected by everyone, to do better than your old high school classmates, and to do it all in your teens and twenties) that covers the youthfully inexperienced. And you accept that the most you can do is put yourself on the path that you can enjoy and that you hope is right and commit to walking down it clad in nothing more than simple stupid faith that eventually you can get it to work. Non-purple TL;DR: I deal with it by abandoning any sense of pride / shame I might've had. ------ scotch_drinker Your comment seems to bridge two things: hacking life and staying relevant in technology. For the former, I'm 42 and doing just fine. I try to keep up with the latest trends though I don't buy into everything just to keep my sanity. I write as much code as I can. I've learned though that someone who listens with empathy and attempts to understand a business' problems will always be relevant. For the former, I read a lot on diet, nutrition and exercise. I believe in 50 years, we will look back at the time when our diets were largely based on sugary carbohydrates and wonder what the hell we were thinking. I experiment with fasting. I do different kinds of exercises. We don't have total control over our health but so many of us make regular poor decisions that even tiny improvements have to help. Of course, I could walk out in front of a bus tomorrow but attempting to improve each day goes a long way. From a health perspective, I subscribe to Nassim Taleb's idea of reduction instead of addition. High cholesterol? Don't start taking statins, start eliminating things like sugar and processed carbs and wheat. High blood pressure? Don't add blood pressure medicine, try exercising regularly, don't smoke, eat vegetables. Etc, etc. Long story longer, if all you do technology and health wise is exactly what everyone else has always done or always told you to do, you'll get what everyone else has always gotten. True, experimenting and hacking may not help at all but there is plenty of evidence out there that walking a different path can get you different results. ------ bischofs Why do you have to be 20 to be doing something interesting? Also why is it assumed that every new innovation that some 20 year old ivy league drop comes up with is good for our society and our culture? To me most start ups are just superfluous, these apps and such are created just to make our lives slightly more convenient in most cases, they rarely improve the human condition or outlook. Go ahead and glorify the startup culture but I have more respect for the grizzled old devs that have created the foundation we stand on today and the people moving things forward incrementally. ~~~ joesmo You don't. Many successful startups are started by people over 30 ([http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235357](http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235357)). ------ allsystemsgo Friend of mine just got hired at Apple to work on HealthKit and he's over 40. I don't understand why everyone is so preoccupied with their age. ~~~ VLM SV has been funding the Mom 2.0 bubble where 20 yr olds provide Mom services to other wealthy urban 20 yr olds for a generally rather large fee. Look at startups that boil down to "Mom can you drive me to the mall" "Mom can you get me a sandwich" "Mom can you do the laundry" "Mom can you adjust the thermostat" "Mom can I crash in your livingroom overnight when I'm in town" "Mom can you mail me a monthly care package" etc. Not all startups in the current bubble are Mom 2.0 but enough are to make it a cultural thing. Anyway the point of extreme youth focus in the Mom 2.0 bubble is it makes sense when you're 20 and urban and rich and have never lived away from home (aka mom 1.0), but once you're 40 and you have become the Mom (err, Dad, or whatever), then it's kind of a hard sell and you're just not going to fit in with the biz model. There is also a mythology that kids will lock on to branding for their entire life, so the most popular group to sell to is kids. It doesn't work, of course, but its a very popular mythology and highly politically incorrect to question it. If it actually worked of course, I'd spend my lunch hour driving my Segway around to play Pog games in between gaming sessions on the Colecovision or something like that. ------ hipsterrific I'm 35 and I'm not at all complaining. Career wise, I've not only learned more technically but it seems like I'm learning better/faster these days than 10+ years ago. On a personal note, it's nice to know I'm established with a decent amount in my savings and retirement. With friends, most of my friends are younger but it's nice to be able to partner with them and go through life shoulder to shoulder. It's nice to know that I have the means to be able to help people too, that alone gives me much satisfaction and contentment. The nice thing is, 35 seems to be a starting point for me. I've got a long way to go and I'm re-evaluating my options. I used to think that getting older meant that I would regret not having accomplished the goals I had in my youth but now, I see it as refining my goals and I'm walking into things with far more experience and knowledge which means more than just "getting it done" but "getting it done, well." ~~~ joesmo "The nice thing is, 35 seems to be a starting point for me." Nice. I'm 34, almost 35, and I feel the same way. I'm actually seriously thinking about starting a business now whereas in my twenties, I was more interested in leisure activities. Definitely seems like a much better time to start something than when I was younger. ------ dpcan To me, it seems lots of the "big ideas" dreamed up by the 20-year-olds seem to only cater to the 20-year-olds. I'm upper 30's, lots of kids, married a long time. Too much of the new stuff doesn't interest me. Maybe I'm just bored of it all. I felt a little more comfortable doing what I do when I was younger, but mostly because I had tons of energy, no fear, and little to lose. Responsibility has made me move much slower. Plus, I've made mistakes, learned from them, and now fear the thought of new problems. Also, I used to think about business 24/7\. Sleep 4 hours a night. Work because I loved it so much. I couldn't keep up with the new ideas, and I had to implement them ALL or I was a mess! Now... I need 7 hours of sleep, and I have a little fishing boat parked next to the house. I'd rather be out on the lake with my wife, or the kids, and a pole. These are the moments that make my life feel full. If I don't make the "next big thing"... I'm good. ------ paulojreis > As hackers, do you feel like you can hack life and get more years out of it > then the average joe? _Hackers_ we'll die earlier, obese and with mobility problems, and probably sitting, while trying to hack "life". :) I'm not a big fan of the whole "hack life" mentality. We aren't used to deal with complex systems, such as organisms or life. Despite the echo chamber we live in, the systems we deal with are simple; way simpler than life, and deterministic. Every time we think we "hacked life", we're just ignoring the complexity of the problem at hand (just think about the "hack nutrition" ideas around...). ------ alanlit Man, what a weird question. I'm 61; been programming since 1968 (Ferranti Atlas -- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_%28computer%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_%28computer%29) \-- the first machine with a whole bunch of stuff). What have I learned?: * Software isn't eating the world. Software is the world. * Software has very little to do with the next 'disrupting X'. That is just VC twaddle trying to pull one over on the rest of us. Do not mistake floozy business models for solid value add. If you want to 'hack life' then solve really hard problems (or play really hard music - your choice). Do not fixate on 20 year olds and their next big thing. Finding and solving big problems will juice your Amygdala, and said juicing will ensure a happy life hack above and beyond 'the average Joe'. Though quite why that is such an important goal is beyond me (do you really want to be the "last man standing"?). ------ digitalzombie > As hackers, do you feel like you can hack life and get more years out of it > then the average joe? Yeah, sun screen, good diet, meditation and exercise. > Or do you feel lost in a culture that hails 20 year olds that are dreaming > up the next big thing? I feel there's a rift. The market is more competitive and requires people to go to school longer to stay on edge. For me, it seem you trade your social life, kinda, for a secured or better future prospect by chasing the money instead of enjoyment of life. So the rift I'm seeing is that there are younger people that are poor but more genuine in characters and sociable. I find myself stuck being jealous, not envious mind you, but at the same time working on this aspect of myself. I'm also using my money to buy experiences such as trying new things and creating opportunity to experience things. As I am closer to 30, soon to be 30 this year, I find myself less risky and more conservative in actions. In term of I now rather have a secure job with better work balance life than a startup job with lots of overtime. The next big thing for me is not the big thing anymore. It's what is good enough to bring in passive income with minimum amount of upkeep. It's not, oh I want to be the next google, but more of I want to create a service that people want -- at the same that enable me to work little so I can enjoy more. Sometime I feel lost or rather frustrated, the young kid in their 20s adopt bleeding edge technology recklessly and they move on to new job and somebody are stuck with maintaining their mess. Google have Mesos or Kubernetes or Big data, we need it too! If you young people are reading, please adopt boring technology. Or research more throughly, I guess taking a risk in adoption can pay out, RoR senior are making bank. I chose the PHP route... ------ aerovistae "Hack life"...please, just stop with this. Can we coin a new phrase? ~~~ m52go "live to the fullest" or maybe just..."live" so often it seems like we're so preoccupied with 'hacking' our lives that we forget to live them at all... ~~~ phlandis _survive_ ~~~ m52go are you just _surviving_? lighten up... _live_ a little. ------ CuriouslyC How do I handle getting older? I'm dealing with it by becoming a bad-ass. Age doesn't matter in the face of extreme competence. I used to just kind of wing- it and shoot from the hip, that attitude leads to problems. Now, if I am seriously about doing something, I pull out all the stops to be the absolute best. I approach my interests like a scientist; I keep detailed notes, meticulously measure and track progress, and come up with experiments to expand my knowledge. I have an attitude of constant improvement, so I'm always looking for new things to try and new ways to excel. I have absolutely zero worries about a midlife crisis or any sort of malaise associated with growing older. I'm killing it, and I know that as circumstances change I'll be able to change and adapt with them to stay on top of my game. ------ GnarfGnarf I've been writing code since 1965 (yes, fifty years), run my own company, and I can still support my family doing it. Best damn job in the world. ~~~ robotkilla best damn comment too. very encouraging to hear someone has been at it for this long. Only 13 or 14 years for me thus far. ------ api I try to maintain my mental vitality by limiting nostalgia and intentionally seeking out new things. For example, I do this thing periodically with my music collection where I create a playlist of only music made in the past 5 years. If that playlist is too sparse, I go looking for more. A lot of what's bad about aging strikes me as almost an ideology. The cynicism of age is an ideology. It's like a belief system where you adopt a retrograde view of time -- things are getting worse, they were better in the old days, etc. This isn't how time actually works. Things _evolve_ over time. Some things get better, some get worse, but mostly there's just change. ------ japhyr If we don't die from an acute event or illness, we can expect to live somewhere around 75 years. How many of those years do most people take full advantage of? My heroes are people like Fred Beckey [0], who keep living fully through all their years. I've watched most people in my family stop living fully around their 40's and 50's, mostly associated with the focus on raising kids. But it's also an effect of not wanting to face the challenges of the world; I've watched many older family members retreat into their own homes, and venture out into the world less and less often out of fear of a changing world. How do you live fully through all your years? Keep doing the things you love, especially the things that require you to be mentally and physically active. Don't give up everything for your kids. Learn new things, mentally and physically. I started learning to drive a boat on the ocean at 41 last summer, and it was deeply humbling but deeply renewing. I'm planning to pick up a musical instrument sometime in the next few years. It's not about living longer, it's about living fully with the years we have. [0] - [http://www.thecleanestline.com/2013/01/happy-90th- birthday-t...](http://www.thecleanestline.com/2013/01/happy-90th-birthday-to- the-master-fred-beckey.html) ------ scarecrowbob I'm 37. I keep getting new jobs on new technologies, but I don't think that really helps me see the larger problems. I'm a lot better at doing things than the 20 year olds I know are, even if they have some technical skills I haven't yet mastered. What I have had luck with is in hanging out with people both older and younger than me. I am in a band with guys in their mid 60s (except the drummer, who is in his 70s... and his old band got together and was able to open up for the flaming lips this last may... how cool is that!!!). These folks are older than my parents, but you can see how much longer you're going to live when you know that hey, people in their 70s are often still working on the same kinds of things that I work on. It helped me realize that not only do I still (possibly) have another a whole other lifetime ahead of me to do a bunch of things that I wanted to do, but I can actually make progress even slowly if I work on things a bit every day... it is a lot easier to spend a bit of time getting to really know a scale on the piano when you realize you still might have another 40 years to enjoy your fluency with it. If you plan to keep getting better at things throughout your life and know that you may have the time to enjoy using a bunch of skills you acquire slowly, then that last half of a life appears to contain just as many possibilities as the first half. ------ mindcrime > do you feel like you can hack life and get more years out of it then the > average joe? The biggest thing I've learned about all that, is the importance of eating right, staying active, and paying attention to your health. Oh, don't get me wrong... everybody KNOWS that stuff, and at least pays lip service to it. I did, for a long time. Then I had a heart attack at 41. Now I know, on a very visceral level, the importance of this stuff. And I've read and learned a lot about health topics, diet, etc. So I hope I will be able to live longer now that I understand (I think) a lot more about how to eat well, and now that I've renewed my commitment to getting outdoors and being active (which mostly means bicycle riding for me, but also running and hiking occasionally as well). > Or do you feel lost in a culture that hails 20 year olds that are dreaming > up the next big thing? I don't see it that way anyway. There's a bit of a stereotype about the "college kid in his dorm starting a startup" but I think that's a fairly recent invention. And nobody I know thinks that entrepreneurship / startups / hacking / etc. are the exclusive province of 20-somethings. Anyway, I'm just going to do what I do, and I'm not terribly worried about what everybody else is doing. Although I agree with what codingdave says about keeping up with newer technologies. Yeah, I'm 42 and yeah I am most comfortable with "old" tech like Java and C++, but I spend some time on Javascript and Scala and Clojure and the like as well. ------ Encosia Avoid cultures that hail 20 year olds dreaming up the next big thing. Outside of a few (toxic) pockets, those cultures are in the minority in my experience. ------ PeterWhittaker Q1: Exercise, eat well, do cool things. This month, I will consult for several high-profile customers, act in a film, judge a BBQ competition, hang out with my offroading buddies, go offroading, visit friends and family, and possibly tinker with my Jeep. Of course, it ain't all cool: I will also clean up cat shit stains in the basement (older cat having problems), deal with troublesome weeds in the backyard, pay way more than I want to to have the garage slab fixed, and get caught up on my accounting (I've been a bit slack this year). Qs2&3: False dichotomies, poorly phrased questions. I will be 50 in just over a month. I live my life, not anyone else's. I don't look at what others are doing and think "cool", I think about what I like doing, what I think is cool, and, provided that I can afford it financially, emotionally, intellectually, and physically, or that the loss/gain in any of those areas is acceptable, I do it. End of story. You don't _deal_ with getting older. You live. You keep living. You live the life you want to live. The _dealing_ takes care of itself. ------ logfromblammo How do I deal with it? Very badly. When I first started in the software field, I didn't expect that it would come to resemble a brothel. But now it does, and I don't feel all that young and pretty any more. _Everybody_ is dreaming up the next big thing. The 20-year-old dreamers are just the ones that sell their dreams most cheaply. This whole industry seems like a continuation of the cool kid cliques in high school pretending to be the nerds' friends, so that they will continue doing all the homework. We're getting some money out of it, but no respect. So I'm not really very motivated to "get more years out of it". The years I have had haven't been all that great. As Lord Farquad said in Shrek, "It's rude enough being alive when no one wants you, but showing up uninvited [to someone else's party]?" So, yeah, I guess I deal with aging by shriveling up and getting bitter. The world will never lack for exploitable 20-year-olds, and I'll never be the one to get to them early enough, or with enough capital, to profit from one. ~~~ mud_dauber "...I didn't expect that it would come to resemble a brothel." Truer words were never spoken. ------ pcsanwald I'm 38, and have been working as a professional programmer for 18 years, since I was 20. Here's what works for me: \- Fitness: Eat reasonably and stay in good physical condition (I box and run). I enjoy food but eating in moderation is important as you age. \- Other interests: I've worked as a professional musician since I was 18, a parallel career. After 20 years of working as a guitarist, I've recently embarked on learning upright bass. it's wonderful, and mind opening. \- Varied career: I've been very fortunate to have played a lot of different roles, doing all kinds of development, management, etc. It's easy to get stuck in a rut and not challenge yourself with new experiences, don't let this happen. \- Self awareness: I have a natural inclination to work on things I'm not good at, but have also learned over the years to play to my strengths. This is one of the great advantages of getting older. ------ zerocored I personally think age has less to do with this 'culture'. It is mostly your attitude towards new things that surface and whether you're willing to accept the change. Personally, I've lost interest in the past 4-5 years where there have been significant changes. ------ outside1234 I feel like my programming career gets better and better with age - I really have not felt the discrimination that others have (or worry about). I just keep on keeping on and make it a focus to spend 5-10 hours a week improving my skills and staying current. ------ criddell Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said it better than I can: For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. ------ ebbv > As hackers, do you feel like you can hack life and get more years out of it > then the average joe? I dunno what this is supposed to mean. I have known tons of older guys who really know their shit and have been programmers their entire career. I'll be 37 next month and feel like I'm not only more knowledgeable and on top of things than I've ever been, but also far more professional in how I conduct myself than I was when I was younger. And based on the 20-somethings I"ve interviewed, I have zero fear that young people are going to make me obsolete. > Or do you feel lost in a culture that hails 20 year olds that are dreaming > up the next big thing? No because being an entrepreneur has never been my goal in life. My dad had a computer company in the 80s, and our family suffered greatly when it went under. I have always prioritized stable income over a shot at becoming a millionaire/billionaire. The company I work for now was actually started by a friend of mine over 10 years ago, and has made him rich and made me comfortable. If I were going to quit my job to do a start up, yeah I might get passed up in favor of young people by investors, but if they truly only passed me up for another company just because they were younger a) I could sue them and b) they wouldn't be the right partners anyway. I think if you want to stay in this industry in later years, you should set yourself up to be in a comfortable position for you, whatever that means. If that means you do your start up when you're young and make a solid business out of it, or if that means you get yourself the skills needed to be highly in demand and well paid when you're older, you should plan for where you want to be. ------ brianberns I'm 48 and I've been developing software professionally since I was 21 years old. I think I'm every bit as sharp as I used to be, and probably somewhat more productive overall due to my experience. My only fears are degraded eyesight (I have to wear reading glasses now), and age discrimination. Don't believe the hype. ------ psycr That cultural description is only true in so far as you believe it. ~~~ rubbingalcohol Yes. By definition, hackers are not bound by rules others impose on them, and I don't think a person's age _necessarily_ makes any difference to having that mentality. Although age affects people in other ways. As people mature, priorities shift, and this can affect how a person perceives the world or their place in society, and this in turn could affect a person's willingness to push the boundaries. So there's definitely a bias towards people who are younger and have less to lose, but it's not like any hard limits exist. ------ grokys I'm 40 and I think I might be the only person who really just doesn't give a shit? I mean, I feel a bit different, sure - but do I really feel much different to when I was 20? Not really. You do some things, then you do some other things, life continues. Maybe if you stop thinking so much about it you'll feel better. ------ ilaksh I'm 37. I have been dreaming up the next big thing for 30+ years. That includes today and yesterday. Your question implies that 20 year olds have fresher ideas than myself. This is absolutely false. Ageism is a real problem, just like racism and classism. "Get more years out of it.. or .. feel lost..", what does that mean? Your question is ageist. I was never really part of any culture since I generally don't integrate socially. After a certain age, your brain chemistry or neural balance or something changes so that you have a much clearer worldview. Maybe just from thinking over and studying basic things for so long. On the other hand, I do feel that I can incorporate new information into my worldview easier than most people, including kids. As far as 'hacking life', I think there is a limit to what exercise and diet and other 'hacks' can do for aging. Certainly of course some drugs can increase performance for both old and young. Whether there are downsides to those drugs I am not sure. However, I do believe that comprehensive approaches like SENS (as opposed to popular quick-fix ideas) to attacking root causes of aging will probably eventually yield strong results. As far as technology selection, most younger people are actually using an outdated frame of reference that they adopted from either a few years prior when they picked up a particular technology, or from older developers that they copy on the basis of authority. The trick to understanding and embracing the leading edge and inventing the next thing is not being young. It is having good comprehension of technology, being open, not deferring to authority or sunk costs, and being willing and able to rebuild your foundations when premises fall. The other trick to being the next big thing is popularity (which is often quite disconnected from novelty), and for that it helps to be young and pretty, but older people can win the social network popularity contests and are good promoters also. ------ mlfisher There's an old story, the punchline of which is an invoice that reads something like this: Pushing button: $1 Knowing which button to push: $9999 After almost 25 years in IT, the meaning is more clear than ever. Skills are great, but experience is invaluable. For better or worse, experience comes with age. I've been pretty lucky in my career so far. I've not gotten rich by any means, but I've been steadily employed and, with a couple of exceptions, have enjoyed the work I do. I've also had the opportunity to work with some very smart people in various fields, both young and old, and have taken every opportunity to learn from them. Hack life? No. Just live it and learn from it. The only thing the average 20-something has over me is more time to learn. ------ adregan Granted, I'm only 30, so take my anecdotal experience as an older person with a grain of salt, but I've found that getting older isn't so hard as everyone seems to get nicer in their 30s. Life's easier when people are nicer. ------ brak2718 My body decays faster than the rate at which I change my unhealthy habits. I have too much experience now to know that many ideas & projects will be expensive or impossible ... kids don't have that limitation. ------ Sakes Just make sure you get better as you get older and make sure to cultivate relationships based upon mutual respect. Work should be guaranteed provided our economy is strong enough to sustain it. ------ payne92 Each year: bigger fonts, more Advil. :) ------ sjg007 Your network matters more than you think it does. You can hire smart kids to work for you for relatively cheap (this is how it always has worked). Ignore the celebrification of the industry. ------ jwillis84 The older get the more original the ideas I seem to have. Strangely the older I get the more unoriginal and older the ideas the younger people seem to think up.. maybe its their inexperience.. but they always seem to be wasting more and more time until its a zero sum game or they give up and just have kids.. then stop doing anything. It might explain the 10 percent phenom, only a very few people get more original with age.. the rest just degenerate and give up. ------ issa I don't think of getting older as something to "deal with". Maybe if you were a pro athlete, that would be an OK way to look at it. But as a programmer/thinker/business person, I get better everyday. And so do my peers based on my observations. Granted, I don't recognize pop culture references much but, aside from that, and needing to sit for a minute before getting out of bed in the morning, not much has changed. ------ DrNuke Aging well in terms of skills, experience and exposure to the best practices and the flow of technologies may be rewarding when teams decide strategies: been there, done that is a way to spot and hopefully avoid common mistakes. That said, reinventing the wheel is a learning process itself and success is more often singular than the result of a plan. ------ paparush Running. I logged 1600+ miles in 2014. I'll be closer to 2000 in 2015. I'm 48. Started running again (I ran some in high school and a little after college) when I turned 40. I weigh less than I did in high school. It keeps me motivated. Keeps me sharp. ------ arisAlexis Although IQ is a debated subject there are many researches claiming that the ability to solve complex problems peaks at about 30 and remains like that until 64. Speed declines. I am good with that because I am not taking part at hackathons. ------ gorbachev It's inevitable. Why worry about it? There's nothing about age that prevents you from understanding or coming up with the next big thing. Keep your mind open and eyes open for stuff that's happening in whatever field you're interested. ------ 0xdeadbeefbabe Do 20 year olds feel lost when their next big thing is a derivative work from the 70s[0]? [0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv- zdhzMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY) ~~~ rbl Just picking a nit here... The 'Mother of all Demos' is from the end of 1968, so the '60s. I've been about 2 months old when that happened. :) ------ paulsutter Old age is the single most surprising thing that happens to a person. But I don't think getting hailed is the driver for success. What you accomplish is a lot more important. And age definitely does not prevent that. ------ evo_9 I'm 48 and I do feel that I can get more years out of life because I'm more aware and focused on making it happen. I've been fortune that I grew up playing hockey and developed an almost religious belief in the power of working out. It's the best way to stay sharp mentally, feel better physically, and stave of the effects of aging as best we can right now. We are also supremely lucky because our knowledge in this space has increased hugely; my parents had no clue about eating right, or working out, or any of that. My father at 48 looked like you would expect a 48 year old to look like; living in colorado, which is a hyper healthy state full of cross-fitters, runners and olympians trainers, it's striking how young older folks look. I often get mistaken for late 30's, and growing up it would be unthinkable that someone my age could play against 20-something Division 1 college players and be affect. I do this regularly, and I'm grateful I'm able to do it still. I'm also a big believer in vitamins and supplements, but I know that's a major point of contention (I regularly get razzed by my surgeon buddy at hockey about spending money to color my piss). I disagree though, and I'll spare the lecture on why I believe so because ultimately it comes down to whether or not it helps you personally. I've posted in the past about the positive effects of fish-oil, ubiquinol w/ PQQ and Resveratrol in particular. Bottom line, it depends on your goals. Mine is to live a 1000 years or so. I started telling my friends this about 20 years back, I think I'd just read K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation and probably one of Kaku's physics books and the written to me was clearly on the wall - progress would work in my favor, if I worked hard to keep myself in great shape, I just might make it far enough in life to see these cascading breakthrough's that will eventually propel man's lifespan into the hundreds and beyond. I do realize this is a long shot, but at the same time have nothing to lose by using this to drive my workout and health. Regarding the 20 something culture... be careful on that... it's natural it seems as one gets older to lament how things have changed, how the 'young folks' are different and the world is changing. In reality we've changed, they are mostly the same, just as angst driven, excited for the future and full of hope and promise and probably a bit too optimistic. This is great, really, don't let it get you down and try to remember/embrace that way of thinking. I just started a blog on all this stuff, only a bit of content so far but I plan to write a few pieces a week: [https://existentialquandary.wordpress.com](https://existentialquandary.wordpress.com) ~~~ cryodesign Live long enough to live forever(ish)... my goal as well - I missed soaking up knowledge when I was younger and trying to catch up now. In terms of diet, you might also be interested in Thrive Foods by Brendan Brazier - [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738215112/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738215112/) ~~~ evo_9 Thanks I had not seen that before. ------ GFischer I'm 34 and I believe I'm dreaming up the next big thing. Many entrepreneurs become succesful at an older age... the famous Coronel Sanders became succesful in his 60s !! In the tech field, Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his 30s. ------ aj__ I'm working on a time machine. This is how I'm dealing with it. ------ viach Isn't any such a question really asks "how do you deal with the fact you'll die quite soon"? ------ lawman508 I just turned 50. Get off my lawn. ------ mrbig4545 one day at a time ;) but seriously, that's how i do it. i never worry about the future, it'll be right. and if it's not it's not, no point worrying about what might be ------ magic_beans I wonder how many people on this thread actively workout? ------ rfergie I take it one day at a time ------ mud_dauber Being 55 in Austin can be a real downer if you let it. I missed the last two bubbles thanks to being in the semiconductor business. The good news: I avoided most of the insanity. A nest egg, a paid-off house (no mortgage for 6 years), my wife & dogs, my health, and the ability to occasionally travel for pleasure. We put away ~25% of our earnings every month. I go to the gym 4-5 times per week and sweat my ass off. I've seen more than my share of layoffs so I spend _every_ _bleeping_ _moment_ learning other technologies. I won't be able to call myself a full-stack dev or a data scientist, but I know enough to get the simple stuff done. It will keep me in coffee and banh mi sandwiches when I tell my employer to stuff it. As for "work fast and break things" culture: I know that 90% of this is fueled by the media. Don't buy the hype. Just be a good human being and ensure that your salary > costs. I'm rapidly approaching the day that I won't have to wake up and read YC's bullshit. I'll be on a mountainside with my dogs and my wife. Good effing riddance. ~~~ fokinsean I'm jealous of you having a paid off house in Austin right now as I'm sure your property value has risen significantly in the last few years. I just graduated UT with a CS and got a nice job, but now is the time to buy a house and unfortunately that probably isn't going to happen for a little while. ~~~ mud_dauber It'll happen. It took me 10 years of not-so-glamourous jobs before I felt ready to buy. Don't sweat it. (Pun not intended.) ------ it_luddite Get off my lawn! ------ kentf Acceptance. ------ notNow Come on man, let me give you a hug. You seem to need it. Do you feel better now?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Localmint - Quickly find local store opening hours - oisin http://www.localmint.com/ ====== DontBeADick Gave it a try on a chain of sporting goods store with several locations in my area. Google: Correct hours Yelp: Correct hours Localmint: No stores found Looks like you've got a long road ahead if you want any chance of making this work. I personally don't see any need for such a website since Yelp and Google have pretty much got it covered. ~~~ bhouston Competing with Google's built-in search results with a separate application is highly challenging and I wouldn't recommend it unless you can add tremendous value and even then I think it is a tough sell for the large majority of users. ~~~ mbesto Also, Yelp has this pretty much cornered. (4sq as well maybe?) ------ dubcanada That is a very targeted market. And I'm not sure what you are using, but nothing is turning up for me. For example... [http://www.localmint.com/ie/search?q=tim+hortons&l=toronto%2...](http://www.localmint.com/ie/search?q=tim+hortons&l=toronto%2C+on) [http://www.localmint.com/ie/search?q=starbucks&l=toronto%2C+...](http://www.localmint.com/ie/search?q=starbucks&l=toronto%2C+on) [http://www.localmint.com/ie/search?q=starbucks&l=new+york+ci...](http://www.localmint.com/ie/search?q=starbucks&l=new+york+city) [http://www.localmint.com/ie/search?q=winners&l=new+york+city](http://www.localmint.com/ie/search?q=winners&l=new+york+city) Now there is def Tim Hortons and Star Bucks in Toronto. There is at least 4000 of them. ~~~ irishbabu I can found starbucks, [http://www.localmint.com/us/search?q=starbucks&l=new+york](http://www.localmint.com/us/search?q=starbucks&l=new+york) ~~~ dubcanada Hrm it seems to be working for me now. It wasn't before. Must just be slow or something. ~~~ cpayne624 They've just gotta do better at normalizing the location. 'new york' vs 'new york city' ------ oisin We have built Localmint to help consumers avoid the tedious task of browsing store locators, which typically offer terrible user experience, especially on smartphones. Would love to hear any feedback you have. Oisin Ryan - Co-Founder ~~~ buckbova Tedious? Open google maps, search on phrase, and note closest search results. ------ thecodemonkey This is awesome! I built something similar as a side project a few years ago [1]. Our approach is a little bit different since we're focusing on crawling updated opening hours weekly (when available), so our data will never be stale. It's currently very popular in Denmark, but we have a US version as well. We have been looking into opening up our dataset for anyone to use, shoot me an email if this is something you would be interested in: me@codemonkey.io [1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whats-open-nearby-find- hours...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whats-open-nearby-find- hours/id492301344?mt=8) ------ chuinard I would go to Yelp for this info (usually the store hours). The site looks good but just throwing that out there, I don't think you have any info that Yelp doesn't. ~~~ oisin Hi Chuinard, we have made the Localmint website and apps as simple and clean as possible. We see having less info than Yelp as a positive. Thanks for commenting! ~~~ Lambdanaut Less information doesn't necessarily correlate with simplicity. Now that you've got a clean product, figure out a way to segment the market so that there's more reason to use localmint. Maybe adding more information (in a clean way) is the answer. As I see it, to use your site there's still the extra steps of 1. Having to remember the "localmint.com" name and 2. Having to type it in the browser every time I need to look up store hours. When I open a new tab I'm already at a Google search engine. Why not just use it instead? You'll need to build a compelling enough reason to visit localmint, because right now it's not the easiest solution. ------ LarryMade2 Looks and works great! Here are a couple things: Have some sort of indication of what's currently open or not. Many folks would look for whats "available now" if they are on mobile... . When you select a category it doesn't give you an option to search an area - especially when you are already looking in an area. I've been developing something similar for a small area doplaces.com ~~~ oisin Hi Larry, we have considered the "open now" feature and it is in the pipeline. Really keeping it simple to start with. Search by area option should always be available? Doplaces looks great. Best of luck! ~~~ LarryMade2 Say you are looking at grcery stores in SF and pop open categories and select bookstores, instead of seeing bookstores in SF you see a list of all the bookstores... Categories in area view I think would work better as a filter. or at least have a way to pop back to your last map view with that category from the businesses page. ------ philipod Comment on the app. nice interface, works well in Dublin, nice quick reference if you are unsure of the name of chemist or shop. Good for emergencies when you need the nearest open chemist. Could do with more suburban shops. Probably useful for students or visitors to a new city, is it multi lingual? ------ Meltdown Unlikely to visit very often if it's just opening times...what I want is to be able to give feedback! Two things that annoy me about SuperValu, Deansgrange...over-charging (I only bought one punnet of blueberries Mr SuperValu, not TWO!)...and constant out- of-stocks of products I want to buy. There... I feel better after that. ~~~ deejaybog Meltdown, you should get on our early adopters list, you'll be able to give feedback to any local business. See www.tipnik.com ------ rangav Hello, I am one of the co-founder of Localmint. Localmint site helps users to find local store opening hours fast and convenient way from any device. We love to take feedback from the community on how we can improve our service. Thanks Ranga Vadhineni ~~~ bhousel Are you trying to build a business off this service, or will it just be an open dataset that anybody can use for whatever they want (along the same idea as openstreetmap)? I'm just asking because I've toyed with the idea of building the latter, and I strongly believe it's something that will exist eventually, whether I build it or someone else does. ~~~ rangav We are trying to build business on this idea, So we have no plans to open data for others. ------ bhouston If I ask Google it usually works. They seem to have added some support for this, probably via their Google Maps for Businesses or something like that. So it is a challenging market to enter. ~~~ bithive123 Siri also answers these kinds of questions. ------ whymsicalburito I've found google maps to be very reliable for store hours around southern California. Google maps has become my go-to app for business location, phone number, and hours ------ beachstartup i live in santa monica / los angeles. these searches failed to produce any results: 'burgers', 'ramen', 'sushi', 'citibank', 'chicken', 'bar' so like... if i can't find a burger at a weird hour when i'm craving one, or the hours of my local bank, i'm not really sure what i would use this for. japanese restaurants always have infuriatingly weird hours and they don't show up here either. ------ kolencherry Interesting application. Is there a way to recommend merchants/stores to add? (e.g. there are no entries for HEB, a grocery store, in Austin) ~~~ oisin HEB is on our list kolencherry. You can use the [http://www.localmint.com/home/addbusiness](http://www.localmint.com/home/addbusiness) link to add individual stores, or just contact us on info@localmint.com and we will add the chain. ------ grimtrigger Pretty cool. How are you getting the data? ~~~ oisin Hi grimtrigger, some retailers submit and manage their own data, but mostly we get it from their websites.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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