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Ask HN: How long should money the 1st investment last? - MateuszMucha It's a bit weird situation. I got accepted into an accelerator, will go with them unless there's something I like more and there's just ~10 days left before I have to sign the papers.<p>I just finished an initial Skype call with two guys from a really nice VC fund (made of people who have created successful startups themselves). They like my startup and are willing to work under this unusual time pressure. My gut tells me that when it comes to non-financial aspects of the relationship, it could be better to go with them.<p>They asked me to send them a list of expected expenses. I know pretty well how much I'm gonna need, but I don't know how much it should last for. While I have some income and it's likely it will increase over the next 6 months, it's not guaranteed and I think I should assume it won't go up, just to be safe.<p>So how long do I need to be able to run on this 1st investment? 6 months? 12? 18? ====== toddkazakov The most important question before raising money is what do you want to achieve with it. Raising a round just for the sake of raising a round might not be the best thing for your business. Set a goal and the resources you need, multiply by 2. This is the rule of thumb I go with, because the work you'll do will take more time than expected and you need to have a buffer on top of this. Keep in mind that raising a bigger round takes time. Make sure you have long enough runway after you've completed your goals, so you can start raising a second round if needed. ~~~ MateuszMucha Thank you. So I think that I can build what I want in 3-4 months, but most likely will not be able to support that operation just yet. And I will not want to scale down just because my MVP is done.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN:Should google include tweets and retweets as part of pagerank? - ThomPete Don't know if this has already been asked or discussed to death or whether it's a stupid question.<p>Anyone have any opinions on whether Google should or have plans to include tweets and re-tweets of url's as part of their page-rank calculation? ====== justanotherbody If this happened google bombing would become that much easier. I shudder to think of what 4chan would do with such power ------ jacquesm The spam on twitter is bad enough as it is, as soon as this happens you can expect it to go right through the roof. ~~~ ThomPete I don't know enough about spam on twitter, but can't most spam be recognized by how many people are being followed and how many followers they have? But as I said I don't know enough about it ------ bombs Do you mean basing a PageRank not based on Twitter's PageRank, but on the users' popularity or influence?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Launch HN: Vitamin P for Positivity - wbnns https://vitaminp.net/ ====== wbnns Hi HN! My name is Will. I'm currently enrolled in Startup School and have been talking to my wife/partner a lot lately about how all of this negative and depressing news that keeps coming out day after day, really sticks to me and makes me feel down and sad. That said, I definitely don't want to ignore it. We're on this planet together and we are all affected by so many of the negative things going on, one way or another. We have to help each other where we can, and we're going to get through all of this somehow. But it's important (at least for me), that I try to make some space for some of the positive things that are happening, and also generate some positive thoughts -- otherwise I get really depressed and feel despair about where we or a lot of us might be headed. So I made Vitamin P. It's a once-a-week email with a few links to positive stories in the news! Some other sites already do this, but I wasn't seeing exactly what I was looking for, so I've made this first and foremost for myself. I figure even if I'm the only one that ever looks at it, hopefully it will help me at least to feel just a little bit more positive amidst everything going on. If you'd like to get a preview of the kind of content, you can see it on your social network of choice [1][2][3][4]. Everything is syndicated, so no need to check all of them. Anyhow, so that's it - Vitamin P for Positivity - if you have any feedback, please let me know! Cheers and hope you all have a great weekend. ️ \---------- Footnotes: [1] - Facebook: [https://facebook.com/vitaminpsupply](https://facebook.com/vitaminpsupply) [2] - Instagram: [https://instagram.com/vitaminpsupply](https://instagram.com/vitaminpsupply) [3] - reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/vitaminpsupply](https://www.reddit.com/r/vitaminpsupply) [4] - Twitter: [https://twitter.com/vitaminpsupply](https://twitter.com/vitaminpsupply)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Can You Recommend an Online Mentoring Service? - thegrif Can anyone recommend an online service that pairs students or otherwise new users of technology with verified or otherwise screened experts that field? I have seen many sites that attempt to do this - but interested in user feedback as to which ones have seemed to have the most reputable community of experts.<p>Thanks! ====== mixedmedia airpair.io	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Optical Mouse Teardown: a look at the sensor - Jerry2 https://electronupdate.blogspot.com/2016/10/optical-mouse-teardown-look-at-sensor.html ====== p1mrx I count the optical mouse among the more significant developments in computer history. People today will never know the pain of using a mouse with accumulated gunk on the rollers. At my high school, they started supergluing the compartments shut to prevent tampering, so I had to carry a Phillips screwdriver and remove the whole bottom to get a usable mouse. ~~~ wolfgke I know that until optical mice matured and high-precision optical mice appeared, there were many gamers who still preferred mechanical mice (with a ball) since they felt they were more precise and less error-prone (i.e. cursor suddenly moving when it should not or the other way round), though mechanical mouses were a lot more high-maintenance. I personally have a decent optical mouse on my desk, but also another (rather recently bought) optical mouse that sometimes "stutters" \- this may be related to the material of my desk pad (in other words: If I were to buy a good mouse pad the problem would disappear). But this should deliver further evidence for the previous paragraph. ~~~ mrob The first camera based optical mouse was the Microsoft Intellimouse. They released various types all with the same sensor. These were superb mice for the time, and still good by modern standards. Unlike a lot of competitors (even today) the sensor had pure linear response, no smoothing, no angle snapping, no forced acceleration. It was ideal for gaming. It couldn't cope with very fast movement but it was possible to poll the USB port at a higher frequency which increased the maximum speed before error. 500Hz polling was popular (supported in Linux with the usbhid module's mousepoll option, available with hacked drivers in Windows). The sensor resolution was a somewhat low 400DPI but with the display resolutions people played at back then it wasn't a major issue. Any problems with erratic movement were caused by excessively shiny surfaces. Preferring ball mice was pure superstition. All the competitive players switched once they realized how much better the optical mice were. I still use an Intellimouse today (with replaced microswitches after the originals wore out). ~~~ kqr 400 DPI isn't low. There are only so many dots per inch a human hand can distinguish between. ~~~ mrob If you play with low sensitivity it's plenty, but the Intellimouse family wasn't well suited to low sensitivity because it loses linearity if you move it too fast. With high sensitivity you can notice the imprecision. There's a middle ground where there's no problem, but sensitivity is a personal preference and you might not like that sensitivity. ------ kefka Yeah. Those chips usually talk via SPI. There's interestingly a lot of options, including ways to boost quality. One sucky thing, is they use "dots per inch" which is just completely stupid and boneheaded - seriously... Inches?! But the ones I'm using are the ADNS-5030 for an interesting project with 3d printing. Its max poll rate is 1MHz, which is damned quick for a Atmel328p chip- it leaves only 16 instructions per SPI poll. The chip's default is 500 DPI (grr again inches), but can be changed simply by popping a "1" in a register.I'm sure different chips have much better qualities. Also, you can pull out the dX and dY registers for relative travel since last sample. But you can also pull 256 times to get a 7bit grayscale picture of the mouse sensor! ADNS-5030 is a 16x16 7bit grayscale. And even the 'duino can pull that with relative ease and display in Processing. You can also display the fiduciary markers in which the optical analysis system determines as travel (how it gets the dX and dY). But yeah, this article is kind worthless. Sorry. Anyways, videos can be a really bad way to pack little content in a lot of time and bandwidth. :/ ~~~ highd You're not trying to get absolute position from those sensors, are you? I spent far too long on that project. At least at the precision we needed, my conclusion was that you would want to acquire and process the images yourself - both to get a higher resolution/field-of-view, and to estimate the error associated with each position update (Kalman filtering or similar). You can also then "re-register" your position if your path travels over the same spot twice. Hopefully your application is less demanding! ------ sllabres These "mouse" sensors not only allow motion detection of small mice, motion detection of larger object and faster movement are possible too, which I think is a interesting application: [https://www.mrt.kit.edu/res2_2650.php](https://www.mrt.kit.edu/res2_2650.php) ~~~ rasz_pl there is also a cheap drone kit based on mouse sensor ~~~ kqr2 Do you mean: [http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/adns3080-optical-flow- se...](http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/adns3080-optical-flow-sensor-now- available-in-the-diydrones-store) [http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/quad-position-hold- with-...](http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/quad-position-hold-with-mouse) ~~~ rasz_pl yes thats what I meant, I checked ebay and it seems I have outdated information, there _was_ a kit based on mouse sensor, but its no longer available. There are camera kits now providing same function, probably thanks to jump in cheap processing power (16mhz avr VS 180mhz arm f4). ------ fallo Another nice read on how optical mice calculate direction: [http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/15481/how- doe...](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/15481/how-does-a-ball- mouse-know-the-direction) ~~~ duskwuff That answer is talking about the sensors used in mechanical mice, not optical mice. (Most mechanical mice did use optoelectronic sensors, but nobody would call the mice "optical" just for that.) ------ MichailP Is it possible to make like a cheap electric pen using parts from optical mouse? Currently there is Nebo app [1] available for free from Microsoft Store, but it requires touch/pen device. Doesn't work with mouse :( [1] MyScript Nebo [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNx- Nir0VQI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNx-Nir0VQI) ------ antoineMoPa I wonder how the "pixel matrix + laser diode + image processing part" & similar products are designed. Is it done using a specialized graphical CAD software or with a language such as VHDL? Or a combination of both? ~~~ Cyph0n It depends on the specific application and of course your requirements. In general, there two ways to design a ASIC. The more common approach is called semi-custom design. The idea is to write your gate-level design in VHDL, and simulate it extensively to make sure it works. Once you want your circuit to be realized, you pipe that code to a synthesis tool that does a place-and-route. In a nutshell, the synthesis tool takes each gate, converts it to its transistor layout level design using a standard cell library, and finally routes the gates (or cells) together to realize the connections between them. The tool would then perform a LVS check which makes sure that the layout performs the same function as the HDL code you wrote. Finally, the synthesizer outputs a GDS file which describes the exact layout specifications, including transistor dimensions, spacing, and placement on the silicon die. You send this GDS file to a fab and voila you get a circuit! The other approach is much less common nowadays in digital circuit design, and is limited to applications where performance is key. It is known as full- custom design. You basically design the circuit at the transistor level by hand, and then simulate it to make sure it works. After that you manually design the layout of that circuit, and as before perform a LVS check. Your EDA tool will package your layout into a GDS file which you again send to the fab for manufacturing. For example, in a modern CPU, key circuit components such as adders, multipliers, dividers, multiplexers, encoders, flip-flops, and cache memory are usually designed using a full-custom approach for maximum efficiency and performance. Other general circuitry may be designed using semi-custom. It also varies by company. I believe that ARM processors are completely designed using standard cells, not sure about Intel/AMD though. ~~~ Gibbon1 I know ten years ago you could get standard cells for various peripherals and processors that were known good for the process you were going to use. Advantage is known good working part with documentation, probably test vectors as well. Might be hard to say about the chips used for optical mice. First article I read on them was about 20 years ago in maybe Electronic Design News or some such. Deal with these is because of the image sensor and analog driver circuitry need a certain amount of real-estate, and the requirements don't change much, they might just occasionally tweak the design to make it work with whatever fab process is cheapest. AKA they could be using really old layouts/designs. ------ gravypod Could a mouse's optical sensor be used for a fairly accurate way to track how far a motor has turned? I've seen hall effect sensor used for this, but for slower things I wonder if a mouse could work. ~~~ JDDunn9 Not likely. Mice have accuracy of 400-1200 dots per inch (DPI). A motor's shaft is a small fraction of an inch, and mice can lose track on occasion. ------ djsumdog How are modern mice different than those old 1980s Sun mice with the ground mouse pads? What allowed us to ditch the physical tracking surface? ~~~ bluedino The old optical mice used IR to detect the grid lines on the old mouse pads. Today's mice take an image of the surface, and compare it to another image taken quickly after. Faster chips/better optics enabled this. ~~~ L_Rahman Does this mean a modern optical mouse wouldn't work on a (hypothetical) plane that is flawless at a resolution higher than the mouse's image sensor? ~~~ fla Ever tried on a glass table ? ~~~ rasz_pl grass table is full of dust and greasy smears, there are mice that work pretty great on glass. ------ steaminghacker Are there any DIY mouse projects, specifically the methods to detect movement in software? than ~~~ blacksmith_tb Not sure if you mean on the hardware side or on the computer, the Teensy is a family of small dev boards which are easy to work with in the Arduino IDE, and can emulate USB HID devices (including mouse and/or keyboard) [1] 1: [https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_mouse.html](https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_mouse.html) ~~~ steaminghacker thanks for the link. I'm actually looking for any open source software that would turn, say a webcam, into a mouse. ------ agumonkey Deceptively simple device.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Email that keeps parents in the loop - joshuamckenty http://www.hastwoparents.com ====== joshuamckenty I put this together to solve my own problems, using Flask and Mailgun. The tricky part was rewriting the Reply-To header and storing the MessageId, so I can make sure that folks don't get dropped. (Piano teachers are notoriously poor at using Reply-All). Yes, I know it's a default bootstrap theme. (I apologize). ------ MrKurtHaeusler We just set up a third gmail. Use it for all family rather than individual stuff. Typically my email clients just check it alongside all my other accounts, and my wife gets an auto-forwarded copy. But this is just as good.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Trying to make a pretty book lamp - zecken http://sam.town/book-lamp/ ====== altano You are placing a burden on people you gift things to that diminishes the value of receiving gifts from you. It's like giving a friend a painting and then holding the friendship hostage unless they hang it up as their living room centerpiece. I find it rewarding to give people things. I find joy in the act of giving and how the other person might feel by receiving the item. If they use the thing for a week and then and throw it away, it doesn't diminish the act of having given it to them. If anything it makes me briefly reflect on how I can give a more useful gift next time. So you've now given your dad a gift, he lost it and feels terrible about it, and you're chastising him in iMessage and on the internet, ensuring that he feels even more awful. The next time you give him something it'll be accompanied by a sense of anxiety and dread. Unless you think he was intentionally careless with the gift out of malice, why don't you stop being an asshole for a second and console him instead. ~~~ bignell The author shares one snapshot of one brief interaction with someone, for the purpose of humor, and you think that entitles you to judge the entire relationship? I feel like your reaction reflects more on you than the author. ~~~ altano How do you think his dad would feel if he saw this article? ------ noonespecial A quick observation: The reed switch might have been "sticky" not because of the strength of the magnet, but because of the current all those lights required. For any given reed switch, there's a current that will keep it from disengaging once it engages. Reed switches are generally considered signal devices, not current switches for this reason. ------ zoidb "electrical engineers seem to be in the biz basically only to make lights turn on or blink." or for writing about the build process :) ~~~ yitchelle > or writing about the build process Those are for EE engineers turn SW engineers... ------ wiradikusuma I'm a software engineer trying to learn hardware. I noticed in the article, the author drew some schematics. These days, I don't use UML to write apps (everything in my head as I do everything myself anyway, and sometimes I write comments and unit tests), but I remember it being useful during my early days of programming. I'm thinking, since this is my early days of hardware, I should use write schematics (just like I did with UML). Is that a good idea? Where to get started? ~~~ jakecopp I find sketching schematics for hardware is a lot more natural than sketching UML, and they're super helpful for making sense of a rat's nest of wires. I can't recommend them enough! I'm a big fan of using paper, it's quite efficient and easy to edit. I only use a design app to present the schematic. Most electronics books will teach you the basics, but this StackExchange answer is a good summary too: [https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/28251/rules-...](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/28251/rules- and-guidelines-for-drawing-good-schematics) ------ jakecopp Travelling to SFMOMA (from Sydney) I came across the Lumio books and I found them absolutely gorgeous. As a poor college student the price was very steep though. That article definitely inspired me to have a crack at making my own! An open-source PCB/laser cut paper book light project like the Lumio sounds like a great idea - if anyone knows of other builds I'd love to see. ------ pmorici I don't understand why he went though all the trouble of designing and printing that 3d box but didn't make a professional PCB. If it were me I would have done a PCB before even considering that box and just mounted the PCB directly in the book. ~~~ mdorazio Making a custom PCB is _much_ more difficult than printing up an enclosure. And more costly if you don't have all the tooling already. For a small one-off DIY project like this, it completely makes sense. ~~~ pmorici Not really. A board for the book spine would have been like 4 square inches. You can get three copies of a board for $5 per square inch from OSHpark so $20 total. I doubt 3d printing something of that size is any cheaper. ~~~ mdorazio I think you misunderstand 3d printing costs and time. $20 gets you an entire kilo of standard plastic for printing. I highly doubt his enclosure setup took more than 50 grams to print, or about $1 total. Total printing time was likely under 5 hours. PCBs are over an order of magnitude more expensive and generally have a two week lead time unless you fab them yourself on a cnc or laser setup. Also, what do you do if you realize you messed up something in your PCB setup? You have to wait for a whole new batch or else toss it and wire manually anyway. With 3D printing, you just modify the model and print a new version in a couple hours. For one-off prototypes like this a custom PCB is a really iffy proposition. ~~~ pmorici Only if you already invested several grand in a 3D printer. A service like shapeways is similar cost and time to getting a pcb made. A pcb milling game machine is the same cost as a 3D printer. ~~~ mdorazio You're again overestimating costs. A perfectly capable 3D printer can easily be had for under $500 and serves many more purposes than just fabbing PCBs. Many, many places (including libraries now) have 3D printers available for use at low cost. A mini mill capable of milling a PCB is harder to come by and also not useful for much more than basic engraving. ~~~ pmorici Check out the OtherMill Pro. You can do a million things with it besides basic engraving and PCB manufacturing. ------ franciscop It looks like in the original the top-bottom of the pages js glued together and the inside of the pages is cut-off. That'd probably make it better at difussing the light. ------ Broken_Hippo Nice work, and nice end product. This is exactly the sort of thing I'd not only have in my house, but would be happy to give to others. ------ IgorPartola Wasn't there a thing like this on Shark Tank? ~~~ pmorici Yes, the product being cloned in this blog post, Lumio, was pitched on Shark Tank. ------ eps Nice idea, interesting project, but repeated dad bashing is a bit off-putting. ~~~ MrQuincle I don't know if eps is your dad, but I thought it was not too bad. :-) You probably have a good relationship with him from my interpretation of the situation. As a "standing lamp" to have a wireless charging option would be cool. Or the USB cable should be used to make it hang from the ceiling. Nice work! ------ tibyat give your dad a break!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Staging Servers, Source Control & Deploy Workflows, And Other Stuff - revorad http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/12/12/staging-servers-source-control-deploy-workflows-and-other-stuff-nobody-teaches-you/ ====== SkyMarshal _> Git is very popular in the Rails community, but there are probably no two companies using git the same way._ For anyone not already aware of it, I recommend checking out Git Flow. It's a set of git extensions that standardize the git workflow: <https://github.com/nvie/gitflow> Some articles: <http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1617425> ------ mixmax _"...until that day when I accidentally created an infinite loop and rang every number in the database a hundred times."_ A developer that worked for me did exactly this a few years ago, only instead of ringing numbers he sent them overcharged SMS messages. I had to call up every single affected customer and explain to them why they had just received 50 SMS messages that cost them $5 a pop. After that I of course refunded the money - only problem was that the SMS gateway charges 40% on each transaction, which I couldn't get back. Very expensive mistake. ------ enlil I also recommend to have a demo server, to which you can push your latest changes without thinking twice. This way, demoing new features to the customer or testing your deployment script does not change the staging box. This way you can have your staging deploy be a much more realistic test run of your production deploy. You only push to staging, when you are about to push to production. Otherwise you might get state differences between the two like outstanding migrations that need to be run on one server but not on the other one. Typically things like that beak you neck during deployment to prod, so you want to test that. But you still want to have a faster way of getting features vetted by your customer. So you should have demo and staging. ~~~ patio11 One of the nice things about being on the cloooooooooooud is that, if you've got your infrastructure managed right, a developer who wants a sandbox -- for any reason -- should be able to get one with about as much difficulty as getting office paper, and be able to bin it with about as much regret. ~~~ hedgehog If you're hosting with Amazon and your application data is on its own EBS (block storage service) volume cloning your environment is easy. You can snapshot the volume, create a new volume from the snapshot, and spin up a new server (you automated provisioning, right?). That way you get a near exact replica of your environment with not too much work. ------ larrywright An excellent article - these are lessons most people learn the hard way. I'll second the recommendation for using Chef or something like it to manage your system configuration. It makes building new servers based on your configuration trivial (say if you wanted to move VPS hosts). Additionally, if you use Chef, you can use Vagrant[1], you can replicate your production or staging environments locally in VirtualBox. Also, not to pimp my own stuff, but I wrote a thing about generating test data with Ruby some time ago. I've used this strategy a number of times and it works really well: [http://larrywright.me/blog/articles/215-generating- realistic...](http://larrywright.me/blog/articles/215-generating-realistic- test-data-with-ruby) [1]: <http://vagrantup.com/> ------ thibaut_barrere Good post! I especially appreciated "staging = production - users", simple and easy to remember. It is so useful to have very similar setups in staging and production. In particular, I really try to avoid having a different architecture (eg: 32bits vs 64bits, or different versions of ubuntu, or passenger just in production etc). It makes it easier to catch issues earlier. ------ pmjordan Sorry for nit-picking on an otherwise great post, but: _It is virtually impossible to understate how much using source control improves software development._ Shouldn't that be "overstate"? ~~~ smanek I agree - an overall great post. But to add another nitpick, do you mean anachronism where you say asynchronism? ~~~ patio11 Thanks guys. This is why I write -- Engrish, you use it or you lose it. ~~~ btvwtvyy Another nitpick: There isn’t a written procedure or automated script for creating it from the bare metal. I would say "from bare metal" rather than "from the bare metal" ~~~ anthonyb I wouldn't. You're not creating your script "from bare metal", since a script isn't made from bare metal. Rather, the bare metal part is the PC or virtual machine. Think of "building from _the_ ground up". ------ lylejohnson Please don't upvote me, I just felt like commenting: It's threads like these that make me want to check Hacker News every day. So much good information, both in the post and the comments. That is all. ~~~ patio11 Thanks, this really put a smile on my face. ------ nostrademons A few other things: One-click rollbacks. It's really, really important that when you deploy a release to the production servers, you can un-deploy it with a single click or command. That means all changes should be logged, and all the old files should be kept around until the next release. You hopefully won't have to use this often, but when you do, it's a lifesaver to be able to say "Okay, we'll rollback and fix the problem at our leisure" rather than frantically trying to get the servers back online. Staging/production configs. If you do need to have differences between staging & production configs, try to limit them to a single overrides file. This should not contain app config that changes frequently, and should be limited to things like debug options and Patrick's "don't e-mail all these people" flag. Check in both the staging and production config overrides, but don't check in the actual filename under which the system looks for them. On the actual machines, cp the appropriate config to the appropriate location, and then leave it there. This way it doesn't get blown away when you redeploy, and you don't need to manual work to update it on deployment. (I suppose you could have your deployment scripts take a staging or production arg and copy it over appropriately, but this is the poor-man's version.) Deployment schedule. I'd really recommend having a set, periodic deployment schedule, maybe even run off a cronjob. The problem with manual deployments is they usually happen only when people get around to it, and by then, dozens of changes have gone in. If something goes wrong, it's hard to isolate the actual problem. Also, deploying infrequently is bad for your users: it means they have to wait longer for updates, and they don't get the feeling that they're visiting a living, dynamic, frequently-updated website. The holy grail for deployment is push-on-green. This is a continuous- integration model where you have a daemon process that continually checks out the latest source code, runs all the unit tests, deploys it to the staging server, runs all the functional & integration tests, and if everything passes, pushes the software straight to the production servers. Obviously, you need very good automatic test coverage for this to work, because the decision on whether to push is completely automatic and is based on whether the tests pass. But it has big benefits for both reliability and morale as team size grows, and big benefits for users as they get the latest features quickly and you can measure the impact of what you're doing immediately. I believe FaceBook uses this system, and I know of one team inside Google that has the technical capability to do this, although in practice they still have some manual oversight. Third-party software. I know Patrick recommended using apt-get, but I'm going to counter-recommend pulling any third-party code you use into your own source tree and building it with your own build tools. (Oftentimes you'll see all third-party software in its own directory, which makes it easier to audit for license compliance.) You should integrate in a new version when you have a big block of spare time, because it'll most likely be a long, painful process. There are two main reasons for this. 1) is versioning. When you apt-get a package, you get the most recent version packaged version. This is not always the most recent version, nor is it always compatible with previous versions. You do not want to be tracking down a subtle version incompatibility when you're setting up a new server or deploying a new version to the production servers - or worse, when you rollback a change. (If you do insist on using apt-get, make sure that you specify the version for the package to avoid this.) 2.) is platforms. If you always use Debian-based systems, apt-get works great. But what if one of your devs wants to use a MacBook? What if you switch hosts and your new host uses a RedHat-based system? The build-from-source installers usually have mechanisms to account for different platforms; open-source software usually wants the widest possible audience of developers. The pre- packaged versions, not so much. And there're often subtle differences between the packaged versions and the source - I recall that PIL had a different import path when it was built & installed from source vs. when it was installed through apt-get. ~~~ technomancy > I know Patrick recommended using apt-get, but I'm going to counter-recommend > pulling any third-party code you use into your own source tree and building > it Counter-counter-recommended. This is needlessly duplicating immense amount of work that distro packagers do. > You do not want to be tracking down a subtle version incompatibility when > you're setting up a new server or deploying a new version to the production > servers - or worse, when you rollback a change. This is why LTS releases exist. If you're locked to Ubuntu 10.04, then you'll be using the packages that come with it until you're ready to make the significant leap to the next LTS version three years later. > If you always use Debian-based systems, apt-get works great. But what if one > of your devs wants to use a MacBook? Then they can suck it up and learn how virtualbox works. Even versions you've hand-chosen are going to exhibit cross-platform differences that will make them fail to reflect the reality of production: case-insensitivity and GNU/BSD differences are two such things that come to mind. (Indeed, both of these have been encountered in the last few months by one of last few the VM-holdouts at work.) ~~~ intranation I absolutely agree on the virtualisation front, and I'm a steadfast Mac user. Dev systems should be close to production/staging to avoid weird bugs. I really really don't want to spend my time dealing with whatever version of Erlang I can get on my Mac when I could just apt-get it. Case insensitivity is also an issue when using Python with the Cookie library, and with the eventlet library (and that's just off the top of my head). Added advantage of using virtualisation is I can easily trash and rebuild my dev environment whenever I need to. ------ PaulHoule I figured out much of this the hard way. You don't hear people talking about it much because most people who know how to do it are too busy to write about. ------ Goladus A third option for the staging database is to do a dump and then scrub the data for security compliance. You may be able to use that database through several development cycles. ~~~ patio11 A company I am familiar with did that. Down that path lies madness. See the 33 bits blog: if data gets out, you are almost certainly screwed. (Trivial example: imagine you're my university and you release the medical records and student registration tables of your students for research purposes. You anonymize names and randomize ID numbers. Want to find my records? Look for the only person in the university who ever took AI, Japanese, and Women's Studies in the same semester. My medical records are pretty boring. They don't include, for example, an abortion. Let your imagination run wild on what happens if your company leaks the identity of someone whose records do. Something similar-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off has happened before.) ~~~ swombat For the purpose of a private staging server, particularly one used by people who have access to production data anyway, you don't need such "hard" anonymisation. The main purpose of anonymisation, in this case, is to make sure you don't send testing emails to clients. So actually, the only kind of scrubbing you really need to do is to make sure every email/phone number/twitter handle/outwardly communicating piece of data is replaced by a test email/etc. The hardcore anonymisation that banks use is only necessary because there is an actual security and reputation risk if the data is leaked by some random developer in India (or some angry developer in London). In the case of swiss banks, they are also legally obliged to scrub that data when using it internally in locations outside of Switzerland. However, for the purpose of a startup with 1-30 ppl, most of whom have access to production anyway, there is no sense in doing that kind of anonymisation. The only risk you're protecting yourself against is sending hundreds of testing emails to your customers. ~~~ tptacek If your access controls to the staging server are ironclad, you're right. But they stop being ironclad the moment you make allowances to allow the staging server to connect to external API's. Most people who think they have ironclad controls on who can attack the staging server _don't_. ~~~ patio11 Or, in a distressingly common failure mode in Japan, when the staging server is initialized by a developer from a SQL dump and the developer does not realize that he has left a copy of if-this-gets-out-oh-god-the-company-is- finished.tar.gz on his hard drive until the day after losing it. ------ koski Other cool stuff that i haven't seen in many places is an environment that is automatically testing that the backups are working. That's something worth of having as well. ------ bryanh "...but I’m not Facebook and having capacity problems means that I am probably already vacationing at my hollowed-out volcano lair." So now we finally know patio11's grand scheme! But seriously, thanks for the writeup. I am using the lazy man's version control (Dropbox... ;-) ), but I definitely need to more to Git ASAP. I guess before now the time spent learning and setting Git up was better spent doing something else (at least in my mind). ~~~ enlil Having a staging server doesn't only help with capacity problems, but more so with deployment problems and differences in the environment. You might be running 32 Bit on your server but 64 Bit on your dev box. Or prod uses Amazon RDS, but locally you just have MySQL on the same box. And oh suprise, now your mysql gem doesn't want to be built. Or you ran each migration on your dev box separately as you build them and when you run them all at once during your prod deploy, things blow up. That's what a good staging environment should protect you from. And for all of that to be a problem, 2 users a minute are more than bad enough. You don't need to be Facebook for that. Even better, if you for example host your app on heroku, you get you staging and demo env for free in less than 30 minutes! ~~~ ericlavigne Patrick's reference to "capacity problems" was in regards to deciding whether to clear memcached. In a large scale deployment, such as Facebook, clearing the caches could overwhelm the servers. Patrick is small-scale enough to not worry about that, and prefers clearing the cache to avoid stale-cache-related bugs. I do agree regarding how nice it is to use Heroku. My only issue with them is that they only support Ruby and Node.js, so I need to take my Clojure applications elsewhere. ------ swah What is a seed script? ~~~ larrywright A script that populates your database with a set of test data. It can be as simple as a bunch of INSERT statements, or something much more elaborate. ------ inovica For a sandbox for AWS we've just started using Zettar (<http://www.zettar.com/zettar/index.php>). I'm not affiliated with the company, but I found them when they purchased one of ours. ------ jluxenberg I'm planning to use this git-based deployment workflow sometime soon: <https://github.com/apinstein/git-deployment/> Seems pretty nifty. ------ cpr Patrick, how do you compress such hard-won wisdom in such a young person's head, and express it so well at the same time? ;-) ------ swah I'm using Git and I have a question: when do you commit? ~~~ stoney I typically commit at least once an hour when I'm coding full steam ahead. My rule is I commit to my local repo whenever I have uncommitted work that I'd care about losing (if I made a blunder and had to revert everything). I also commit locally whenever I switch tasks (so one commit is one coherent block of work). I only push from my local to central repo when I have the code in a reasonable "working" state. If you're working on your own then commiting frequently is fine. If you are working with a team then that's a lot of information for your colleagues to process, so it's a good idea to condense your changes down a bit when you commit to the main branch. I think that's what the article is getting at when it talks about feature branches.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The lost art of sticking to it - micaelwidell http://www.micaelwidell.com/p/15/ ====== schrodingersCat There's a difference between cutting your losses because an idea just isn't worth your time, and putting in the work to get a bring a good idea into fruition. Sometimes its hard to do this, especially when you have proven to yourself that the idea work. The hard (tedious and mind numbing) part becomes scaling up your idea and convincing other people that its worth something. It takes a lot of tenacity to see even a good idea to the end. Great post! ------ lmartel Of course, you will inevitably tell yourself "I'll stick to it next time; this idea just isn't good enough." The worst part is that the thinking behind this is (partially) correct; if you spend years working on a stupid idea, you won't always be able to build something successful through sheer effort.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
UK seizes rnbxclusive.com, owners arrested, website visitors threatened - sehugg http://dajaz1.com/2012/02/14/so-the-uk-government-gets-in-on-seizing-domains-music-websites-seized/ ====== bri3d The source of this news is amusing - as they allude to in one sentence of the linked article, their own domain was siezed by US authorities for over a year, and eventually given back after legal wrangling. [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/08225217010/breaki...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/08225217010/breaking- news-feds-falsely-censor-popular-blog-over-year-deny-all-due-process-hide-all- details.shtml) gives a horribly biased overview of the events behind the dajaz1 seizure. ~~~ ImprovedSilence I guess I'm not too familiar with what happened, are there any "unbiased" overviews of the events? I doubt the feds would give any information period. ~~~ sehugg Well, you can read what the RIAA thinks about it, along with an informationless non-statement from ICE: [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111209/03385017020/ice- ad...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111209/03385017020/ice-admits-to- returning-domain-while-riaa-threatens-dajaz1-with-more-legal-actions.shtml) Or you can read the almost-totally-redacted FOIA document dump: [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/03264917079/freedo...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/03264917079/freedom- information-document-dump-ice-about-domain-seizures-almost-totally- redacted.shtml) The court case is under seal, so I can't point you to any relevant court documents. Heck, even Senator Wyden raised a fuss about it: [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/wyden-domain- seizur...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/wyden-domain-seizure/) I don't have much reason to doubt the accounting of events described in the TechDirt article -- although it does contain a fair amount of editorializing. If the government would remove the seal and speak up instead of remaining mum, we'd have another side to the story, and maybe we could eliminate this perceived "bias". ------ mindstab How did this domain seizure work? I understood it when it happened in the US since they own .com and are the jurisdiction for registrars like godaddy.com, but how does this work from the UK? ~~~ jvoorhis With cooperation from Rackspace. Domain servers in listed order: NS.RACKSPACE.COM NS2.RACKSPACE.COM The domain resolves to 83.138.166.114 which hosts a takedown page within Rackspace's UK datacenter. ------ dchest The placeholder page looks fake to me. Any confirmation from SOCA? ~~~ sehugg This ZDNet blog apparently got confirmation from SOCA: [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/london/uk-authorities-take- down-a-...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/london/uk-authorities-take-down-a-us- domain-could-it-happen-to-you/3039) ------ GigabyteCoin ... back in 2010 (should be the end of the full title) dajaz1.com is very much alive and prospering right now. ~~~ pyre I think there's some confusion here. dajaz1.com was seized back in 2010 by the _US government_ , but the title is about a different site/domain that has recently be seized by the _UK government_. Not only seized, but the admins have been arrested, something that did _not_ happen in the case of dajaz1.com.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
My real name is David Jones - bootload http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/12/my-real-name-is-david-jones.html ====== brudgers A good example of doing things that don't scale?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Zdenek Kalal's object tracking algorithm learns on the fly - hansy http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/31/zdenek-kalals-object-tracking-algorithm-learns-on-the-fly-like/ ====== karl_nerd From this paper [http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/Publications/20...](http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/Publications/2010_icip.pdf) it seems that the system collects images of successful detections, and that way gets more data to base its' coming detections on. In this demo this seem more responsive than Kinect, but on the other hand he's only tracking one object at the time, is he? ~~~ regularfry I think the single-object constraint here is an artifact of the UI rather than a limitation of the algorithm. ------ deltriggah API please.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How To Get Rich -- Mark Cuban - sgoraya http://blogmaverick.com/2011/08/04/how-to-get-rich-2/ ====== YosefLevi This isn't an article on how to get rich. This is an article on how possibly you might not be poor. The rich invest. The poor and the middle-class try to get this thing called careers and earn paychecks. The rich make paychecks and move, create, or destroy careers. Do you want to be a paycheck signer or a paycheck earner? A career seeker or a career maker? If all you can think about is saving money, then you'll never think about how to use money to lobby congress and entertain foreign officials. If you want to save money, why not do as the rich? Hire a top-tier wealth manager, and put some of the best accounting firms on your retainer. ------ toddh Hm, he didn't mention having a company over pay for your startup. ------ donnaware The one thing I have noticed over the year in reading and talking to very successful people is that the one factor they almost alway leave out is luck. The truth is, if they are really really honest, is that random chance played a huge role. They do not like to admit that to themselves because it is much more ego enriching to imagine that it was all due to how great they are, but really, if Bill Gates Mommy had not been on the board of directors of IBM... come on. Almost every example is like that. Sorry to burst anyones bubble but life is largely a game of craps... ------ lclaude01 That is probably the worst advice ever. Wonder how this guy can sleep at night. Here's some good advice:<http://appsumo.com/sivers/> ~~~ antidaily The worst advice EVER came from a cab driver at the Las Vegas airport who told me his winning strategy - play blackjack and every time you lose, double your bet until you're up. ~~~ Hisoka To be fair, this is a good way to make money if you don't plan on gambling often.. like once every 5 years. The probability of losing all your money with such a small number of occurrences is low. ~~~ awj ...except that almost every table in existence has something that messes up the system. Usually it's an upper limit on the amount you can bet (called a "table limit"), which puts an upper bound on the number of successive losses you can win back. The wikipedia article[1] covers this relatively well under "An alternative mathematical analysis." The short of it, though, is that everything at a casino is there to put the odds in the house's favor. They spend enormous amounts of time and money on researching this very problem, and their entire business depends on carefully walking the space between their patrons having a good time and winning a mint. [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system)> ------ watmough Too bad that site takes ages to load up an iPad specific theme which makes the site slower and harder to use. This is getting to be a real irritation when trying to read sites on an iPad. I'm hoping Erica Sadun can be persuaded to extend her sites of shame to include this.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Improve Security by Unit Testing Your Code - captaincrunch http://wontlistentoreason.com/2015/01/19/improve-security-with-unit-testing/ ====== dalke I didn't see security mentioned in that essay. What I saw was using a unit test framework to manage regression tests. Regression tests date back to at least Brooks' "The Mythical Man Month", and aren't necessarily due to a unit which needs testing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Practical Cryptanalysis of the Telegram Messaging Protocol [pdf] - tptacek http://cs.au.dk/~jakjak/master-thesis.pdf ====== tptacek Core flaw: Telegram uses a block cipher mode that requires padding to the cipher's block length, which means messages end in a variable amount of random bytes. Telegram "MACs" plaintext (really: applies a SHA-1 hash to it), but doesn't include the padding in the MAC, which means attackers can extend messages with arbitrary amounts of attacker-controlled padding. From that affordance, this paper comes up with an error oracle that relies on message alignment. There's more not to like than this: * The protocol is MAC-then-encrypt; it has to do a large amount of work and validation before attempting to cryptographically validate the message. * They use a nonstandard padding scheme which requires them to rely on a message_length field to strip padding; conventional CBC-like applications (with respect to padding, IGE is like CBC) would use PKCS#7 padding, where the padding itself describes how to strip itself. That also has problems, but the message length solution requires them to do calculations with respect to plaintext length, padding length, and the body all before the fingerprint of the message is checked. This protocol leaves a lot of room for attackers to invent cute tricks with message lengths, block swapping, and field validation. Modern crypto gets around all these problems by ensuring that messages are cryptographically authenticated before they're encrypted. The author's point, which is correct and pretty much the universal opinion of cryptographers who have looked at Telegram is that MTProto should have just used a conventional AEAD mode rather than inventing their own weird thing. ~~~ kabouseng "Modern crypto gets around all these problems by ensuring that messages are cryptographically authenticated before they're encrypted." Dont you mean "authenticated before they're <decrypted>"?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN : My friends and I have created a corporate intranet network - sidcool Hi HN,<p>My friends and I have created a corporate pooling network Korpool (http://www.korpool.com)<p>This is mostly for Indian companies for now. You can do following things:<p>1. It keeps broker out since it verifies ur mail id by company name<p>2. It connects u to employees of other companies in ur city/other cities<p>3. This helps u find jobs/resale items...sell ur bike..or buy second hand furniture..etc<p>4. It has now added carpooling after receiving multiple requests from companies in hyderabad & mumbai<p>5. Since job postings posted by employees would be of the REFERRAL nature, the chances of u gettin calls for interview/gettin the job would be higher than goin through consultant ====== nodata Why are you writing in sms-speak? ~~~ sidcool Sorry I did not get you. ~~~ pawn He means to say, why are you using things like "u" instead of "you" and "ur" instead of "your". ~~~ sidcool I am extremely sorry, I quickly scribbled it to show HN. ------ sidcool Clickable - <http://www.korpool.com> ------ sidcool Any feedback is greatly appreciated.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What prohibits smartphones use as desktops - quietthrow I am interested in understanding your thoughts on what are the barriers today to turning your smartphone into your main and only computer.<p>The idea of the carrying laptops when you have such powerful smartphones makes me curious about why are they not converged yet. What prohibits this convergence. Microsoft has continuum and Samsung/android has DeX. But they haven’t seem to catch on like the leap that iPhone made over traditional cellphones. Why?<p>Is there just a lot of money to be made by companies by not converging and hence execution of this strategy is subpar or are there other genuine challenges that prohibit the convergence? ====== PaulHoule Historically desktop computing has been about giving people a tool they can use to control the environment, whereas the smart phone is a tool that brands use to control you. The mindset gap between those two things is much larger than the technical gap. As for technical issues the devil is in the details. Often my hackathon kit has been a cheap android device with wireless keyboard and mouse. With an a ssh terminal and something like an RDP or VNC client you can do all kinds of software development. In fact many firms (e.g. the Bridgewater hedge fund) like to centralize people's desktop environment and if you do that a tablet is an option. My understanding is that iOS devices don't support the mouse, which I don't get because mouse support "just works" on Android. People expect a different software environment on the desktop as opposed to mobile. For instance, Windows can run on a tablet environment but it has a hard time being competitive because the Windows operating system is much larger than other mobile OSes. It may be true that "Windows is bloated" but more to the point, Windows has more features than Android or iOS. For instance there is Hyper-V virtualization, Windows Subsystem for Linux, and Microsoft IIS. Most people wouldn't care about those things but some of us do and you wouldn't have "it runs as Windows" as a selling point if they hacked away a lot of functionality. As for Apple, they have very profitable product lines in both the iPhone and the Mac. When you are expected to make money hand-over-fist the way that they are, they are not going to take the chance of raising the average selling price of a phone from $800 to $1200 by merging in "laptop" features and then lose to opportunity to sell you a $800 mac mini and a $1800 macbook. ------ api OS inflexibity and lock-down, lack of ports, and heat dissipation for sustained CPU load are probably the big three. Low RAM and storage are also factors for many desktop use cases. It's really cars vs trucks. A phone is a car. A desktop is a truck. A workstation is a big truck / semi. Convergence between niches tends to result in something that is good for neither, like a car/truck that can neither seat many passengers nor haul big loads. ~~~ ryacko A phone is a bus seat. You don’t really own it. ------ dddddaviddddd If it's just the phone as a portable for use in the go, then lugging a keyboard, monitor, maybe storage, etc would be a hassle vs a nice laptop. If it's the phone used in a docking station, why not use a more powerful desktop plus some cloud syncing for files? ------ ohiovr I want to know what prohibits someone from going to shenzhen and ordering a line of open bootloader android phones. Seems that would be a lot easier than what librem is doing. ------ quietthrow Wishful thinking: It’d be great if Ben from Stratechery did a post on this.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Statisticians Could Help Find That Missing Plane - Thrymr http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-statisticians-could-help-find-flight-370/ ====== dsugarman it sounds like the strength of the bayesian model is completely dependant on the ability of experts to provide accurate statistical guesses ~~~ thearn4 Bayesian inference is definitely only as good as the quality of the chosen prior, if the number of samples is low. ~~~ ajtulloch I don't think this is technically correct - as Bernstein-Von Mises guarantee under certain conditions that the posterior is independent of the prior after sufficient data is observed. [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein%E2%80%93von_Mises_t...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein%E2%80%93von_Mises_theorem) ~~~ XFrequentist It was actually "technically correct" \- he said "if the number of samples is low". You're correct about the general case, of course. ~~~ ajtulloch The previous comment was edited - the comment I replied to said something along the lines of ' _especially_ when the number of samples are low' ------ stirbot By Submarine in the 1960's, he's referring to Dr. John Craven's methodology for finding the USS Scorpion using Bayesian search theory. It was interesting to read the back story in Blind Man's Bluff, although I did get the feeling it was punched up a bit for drama. ~~~ pash James Surowiecki also tells the story of the search for the _Scorpion_ in his book _The Wisdom of Crowds_ , where I first read about it. The Wikipedia article [0] gives a basic account, and the article on Bayesian search theory [1], in addition to describing the procedure quite well, mentions several other searches in which the method proved successful. 0\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_(SSN-589)#Search:_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_$SSN-589$#Search:_1968) 1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory) ------ ropman76 If this is the case, let's see it in action. There is a great deal of information about this event that has been released to the public so I am curious to see if the experts in this field can generate probable locations of the aircraft and when the aircraft is found take a look and see if following the recommendations would have found the aircraft more quickly. ~~~ davidw I think they need actual data - GPS coordinates, search areas, precise search methodology and a whole slew of other hard data that, afaik, is not available to the public. ------ ape4 I would guess that the authorities already have some stats guys working on it. ~~~ oscardelben Last I heard they recruited a witch. ~~~ paulgb From the sounds of it he recruited himself. Malaysia has denied involvement. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2014/03/13...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2014/03/13/with-satellites-unsuccesful-in-plane-search-malaysian- shaman-tries-coconuts/) ~~~ oscardelben Thanks for pointing that out. ------ markbnj I was thinking yesterday that there are not _that_ many jets the size of the 777 in the world, and the location of most of them can probably be detected by U.S. military satellites. If that satellite data were correlated with data from the airlines on the location of their planes, some much smaller set should emerge that consists of planes whose location does not have an official explanation. ~~~ davidw Commercial satellites are ok for seeing planes for that matter. It's knowing where and when to look that's important. I don't think that even the US military constantly monitors _vast_ tracts of empty ocean on the off chance that a plane might crash there. [https://maps.google.com/maps?q=35%C2%B003%E2%80%B234%E2%80%B...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=35%C2%B003%E2%80%B234%E2%80%B3N+118%C2%B009%E2%80%B206%E2%80%B3W&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=35.062179,-118.158946&spn=0.03172,0.066047&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=61.711173,135.263672&t=h&z=15) For instance, these two maps are pretty similar in scale (I couldn't make Maps do the exact same scale though) [https://maps.google.com/?ll=44.527843,13.227539&spn=14.14170...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=44.527843,13.227539&spn=14.141703,33.815918&t=h&z=6) [https://maps.google.com/?ll=-32.509762,80.991211&spn=16.6984...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=-32.509762,80.991211&spn=16.698429,33.815918&t=h&z=6) That's a "whole lot of nothin'". ~~~ Create _I don 't think that even the US military constantly monitors vast tracts of empty ocean on the off chance that a plane might crash there._ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSUS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSUS) ~~~ davidw Lines (chains, as per your article) have a "lot less area" than rectangles do, though. In other words, it's way, way easier to answer "what has crossed this line, at what time?" than "is there a needle in this haystack as large as Europe?", especially when the rectangle in question is basically of zero interest 99.9999% of the time, and you're tying up resources that could be pointed at China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, San Marino or other more 'interesting' places. Furthermore, as your article mentions, they decommissioned some of that because it was too expensive and didn't serve much purpose with the end of the cold war. Even those guys' budgets are not unlimited. ~~~ ataggart Pardon my ignorance, but why is San Marino in that list? ~~~ davidw You never know what the Sammarinesi are plotting up there on that rock! Mostly just to see if anyone was paying attention :-) ------ joshdance Seemed like a pretty clear (if low level) explanation of Bayes theorem. ------ pitnips so, October Sky 2014?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Spamcop retiring webmail service - steanne http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=14271 ====== steanne Subject: Important Announcement about SpamCop Email Service Changes - Action Required Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2014 21:46:21 -0400 (EDT) From: SpamCop Email <questions@spamcop.net> To: undisclosed-recipients:; First of all, thank you for using SpamCop Email! We want to announce some important changes that will affect how you use your SpamCop Email account. For over 12 years, Corporate Email Services has been partnering with SpamCop to provide webmail service with spam filtering via the SpamCop Email System for our users. Back then, spam filtering was rare. We heard story after story about how our service rescued people from unfiltered email. Nowadays, webmail service with spam filtering has become the norm in the general public. As such, the need for the webmail service with SpamCop filtered email has decreased. Due to these reasons, we have decided to retire the SpamCop Email System and its webmail service; while SpamCop will continue to focus on providing the World's best spam reporting platform and blacklist for the community. As of September 30, 2014 (Tuesday) 6pm ET, the current SpamCop Email service will be converted to email forwarding-only with spam filtered by SpamCop for all existing SpamCop Email users. Namely, all email received at a spamcop.net, cesmail.net, or cqmail.net address will be forwarded to your specified email address after spam filtering by SpamCop. You will be able to continue to use your email addresses like before, but you will need to read the email on your designated email account, instead of the SpamCop Email System webmail interface ([https://webmail.spamcop.net](https://webmail.spamcop.net)). If you are already forwarding your email elsewhere, it will continue to work just like before. If your email program is set to download your email from the SpamCop system, after you start forwarding your email elsewhere, you will need to update your email program to download from there. SpamCop will no longer provide IMAP or POP service. Please be informed that you will continue to be able to submit spam to SpamCop via the "Report Spam" feature on spamcop.net, or forward your spam using your dedicated spam submission address shown on your SpamCop reporting account. Indeed, you are highly encouraged to do so as your spam report will not only help improve spam filtering for your email; it also helps SpamCop to fight spam for the World! In the meantime, it is important for you to set up a forwarding address on your SpamCop Email account by September 30, 2014 (Tuesday) 6pm ET. Otherwise, any email sent to your spamcop.net, cesmail.net, or cqmail.net address will be dropped and not be delivered. To register a forwarding address, please login via [https://webmail.spamcop.net;](https://webmail.spamcop.net;) click "Options" > "SpamCop Tools". If you have any further questions or concerns, please send them to questions@spamcop.net	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Amazon OSS – Coral and ION - setheron As an ex-amazonian I was always baffled why Amazon never open sourced Coral and Ion.<p>Considering the popularity of AWS if would seem like the last tick on the list to get people locked in (imagine easy interopt with IAM etc..)<p>Seems like a market that Twitter was able to capitalize with the release of Finagle. ====== manumahajan They just released ION as open source [https://github.com/amznlabs/ion- java](https://github.com/amznlabs/ion-java) [http://amznlabs.github.io/ion- docs/index.html](http://amznlabs.github.io/ion-docs/index.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Confirmed Coronavirus Cases Are Growing Faster in the US Than Any Other Country - doener https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2020/03/20/coronavirus-is-growing-faster-in-the-united-states-than-any-other-country-in-the-world/#4eb806657e72 ====== tannerbrockwell Not really surprising at all. There are most likely a higher percentage of asymptomatic individuals in the US than is expected. From the article: "In the past week, the number of tests conducted in the United States has increased, however, the data for the past couple days has not been compiled yet. This could skew the numbers to look like coronavirus is growing faster, yet we are simply testing more." and since we didn't self quarantine and cancel public events sooner we will see a wider distribution than would have occurred with social distancing. "Health officials in New York, California and other hard-hit parts of the country are restricting coronavirus testing to health care workers and people who are hospitalized, saying the battle to contain the virus is lost[...]" [1] [1]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/21/coronavirus...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/21/coronavirus- testing-strategyshift/) ------ mattnewport The article implies that the percentage increase in cases is highest in the US but that's not actually the case (the list of percentage rates at the bottom includes several other countries with higher rates). The US seems to have added the largest absolute number of cases but that's not a particularly meaningful measure given how widely countries vary in population. ------ Leary This is actually good news because we are finally doing more testing after weeks of delay. If we can continue to ramp testing faster than the virus is spreading, we may actually come out of this okay in a month provided everyone minimizes their physical contacts.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
We'll be stuck in this recession for years, economists say - paulpauper https://www.erienewsnow.com/story/42532778/well-be-stuck-in-this-recession-for-years-economists-say ====== TheCowboy The grandstanding against economists is disappointing. Let's say you were driving at night with someone in the country, and because they either knew the road or could see farther ahead they said, "There's a boulder in a road ahead, we're likely going to hit it if you don't slow down and turn to avoid it." And you do slow down and it allows you to turn to avoid a crash. How do you respond? Mock them for always being wrong about predicting a crash? People mistake warnings about possible recessions, which have a probability attached, with forecasting an inevitable doomsday recession. There's no credit given to economists for the recessions or depressions avoided. Often the warnings are about the risk of a recession with no intervention, and in an overwhelming majority of cases there is some action taken in fiscal and monetary policy to soften the blow or avoid the worst outcomes. ~~~ twblalock > There's no credit given to economists for the recessions or depressions > avoided. I don't think we have avoided any recessions, ever, based on the advice of economists. They just aren't that good at forecasting. They don't even agree on the policy that is appropriate to fight recessions when we know there is one. The "grandstanding" against economists in this thread is entirely justified. ~~~ TheCowboy Public policy, monetary policy, and fiscal policy all have empirical evidence in support of them, demonstrating the usefulness of the field. Your comment does not. ~~~ AngrySkillzz Backing you up here. There is a clearregime change in the data before and after the advent of central banking. Recessions and financial panics are less frequent, and less severe. Just looking at the US, there were ~15 recessions since the adoption of central banking in the 1910's. In the same time period during the 1800s there were >25 recessions, and that's not even comparing for severity. You can see the Wiki[1] for an overview. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States) ~~~ quintushoratius It's also worth mentioning that older folks alive during the Great Depression had a perspective on it vs the panics during the 19th century. Many observed that the Great Depression, which was the worst in a generation, was tough but manageable compared to the Panic of 1983 where people literally could not buy food. ~~~ AngrySkillzz Yup, there is a lot of interesting perspective you get from reading journals and correspondence from the period. Sources from the late 1800s will include bits from the lives of every day people, almost always along the lines of: John opens a store, panic occurs, his business fails and he moves to a different town; becomes a partner in a canal shipping company, panic occurs, his business fails and he moves to a different town; etc. ------ ttul Skip to the actual survey of economists: [https://files.constantcontact.com/668faa28001/65165cb5-5c8f-...](https://files.constantcontact.com/668faa28001/65165cb5-5c8f-468d-8f5a-e80afc952435.pdf) Summary “Nearly two-thirds of the National Association for Business Economics members who participated in the August 2020 NABE Economic Policy Survey believe the U.S. economy continues to be in a recession that began last February,” said NABE President Constance Hunter, CBE, chief economist, KPMG. “Almost half the respondents expects inflation-adjusted gross domestic product to remain below its fourth-quarter 2019 level until the second half of 2022 or later. And 80% of panelists indicate there is at least a one-in-four chance of a ‘double-dip’ recession. “The panel is split in its view on Congress’s fiscal response to the recession, with 40% calling the response insufficient, 37% indicating the response is adequate, and 11% saying it is excessive,” Hunter continued. “Nearly three out of four panelists believe the optimal size for the next fiscal package to be $1 trillion or greater, compared to 17% who favor a smaller package.” “More than three-quarters of panelists believe that the current stance of U.S. monetary policy is appropriate, the largest share holding this view since 2007,” added Survey Chair Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist, Oxford Economics. “The majority of panelists—58%—expects the federal funds rate range to remain unchanged at 0-0.25%, or even drop lower, by the end of 2021. Most participants—84%—expect that the funds rate target will be higher by year-end 2022, but still within 100 basis points of where it is currently. ------ Guzba Economists are as effective as astrologists at predicting the future. For some reason otherwise smart people don't realize this? I think it's something about economists being associated with the university system. I see this assured economic doom repeated so much without being questioned as anything but guaranteed I wonder where this incredible confidence is coming from? We have literally no idea what 2021 holds for us, in the same way we had no idea 2020 would be so uh unique. ~~~ Afforess > _Economists are as effective as astrologists at predicting the future._ [citation needed] > _I see this assured economic doom repeated so much without being questioned > as anything but guaranteed I wonder where this incredible confidence is > coming from?_ All the stock market gains are from big tech. Any other markets are flat or down. ( [https://finviz.com/map.ashx?t=sec&st=ytd](https://finviz.com/map.ashx?t=sec&st=ytd) ) ~~~ Guzba Quick Google search, nearly top result. Committing the sin of just reading the headline but man this is not hard to find evidence: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-28/economist...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-28/economists- are-actually-terrible-at-forecasting-recessions) Or maybe? [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/economists-are-bad- at-p...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/economists-are-bad-at- predicting-recessions/) "All of the gains are from big tech". All of the gains are always from some companies and all of the losses are always from others. This is just how the pie got sliced 2020. I don't think it has any special meaning we can divine from it? ~~~ Fellshard Economics isn't a sliced pie like that. ~~~ Guzba I just used that as an expression, no special meaning intended. ------ JackFr I wish people would stop calling the CARES Act a ‘stimulus package’. It was a relief package. Stimulus refers to creating a secular demand in an economy that is not operating at full employment to prime the virtuous cycle of employment and demand. Relief on the other hand means to replace lost income due to the natural disaster of the pandemic and the necessary public policy response. I think conflating the two could end us down a bad path. ------ freeone3000 If only there was a term for a prolonged economic retraction, like a recession, but longer and worse. ~~~ inetknght A really long and protracted economic contraction is just _depressing_ to think about. ------ jmnicolas A recession that last years is called a depression. It's not like not saying the D word will avoid anything ... ~~~ TheCowboy Within the field of economics, depression is not a well-defined term. When phrasing survey questions it's ^not desirable to have the meaning of the question itself subject to variation if you want the responses to be useful. ------ zackmorris I think we've reached the point where politicians shouldn't pretend that they want to prevent recessions. It's like with day trading: once you realize that volatility is all that matters, it explains why key players are in favor of recessions and even actively work to cause them. Some of the biggest fortunes in history started when someone had a little extra money to buy undervalued revenue streams when the economy was down. So yes, there will be a recession, but it won't be triggered by fundamentals. It will be due to things like politicians politicizing mask wearing. And killing the financial regulations that smooth out economic highs and lows. And removing the social safety nets that help people get back on their feet again by avoiding long-term unemployment. This basically all comes down to spite. The powers that be can't stand that FDR instituted the New Deal, starting with the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933, resulting in almost 70 years of relatively stable economic growth. So they repealed it in 1999 with the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act. That along with telecom deregulation and countless other things put us back on 10 year boom-bust cycles so that the elite could amass fortunes again. We've already had the dot bomb, housing bubble pop and now the looming COVID-19 recession (caused by the Trump administration's hands-off approach to governing) in just the 20 years since I graduated college. This is so not the future I signed up for. My finance friends think it's great. But it's pretty much the worst possible outcome for makers. Which is why I consider the 2000s and 2010s to be lost decades, with another one looming. ------ hbosch Are we actually in a recession right now? ~~~ glouwbug Considering the unemployment rate, yes. Considering the stock market, no. ~~~ ipnon It seems like we have 2 economies now. One that works, and one that doesn't. The one that works seems to be much more exclusive. ~~~ lotsofpulp It's been that way for decades. Top two quintiles and deciles have been far outpacing the rest, who are basically flat or in decline. Last few years were a little bit better for them, but that came to an end of course. ------ rdlecler1 I see so many bear cases and they all play to my expectation. What I would like to see are thoughtful arguments why this won’t be the case. ------ Animats Many businesses will not come back or be replaced because they were marginal - worth keeping open, but not worth starting. Restaurants that weren't all that great, small clothing shops, old hardware stores hanging on - gone and won't be replaced. ------ bmitc It won’t be just a year or two. This is going to have long term repercussions. Basically everyone from the age of 5 to 22 will have a year or two of missing education. We’re losing tons of immigrants and non-immigrant foreign workers, of the latter many of which are doctors or advanced degree holders. Many Chinese are simply leaving the U.S. on their own accord, even if they aren’t caught up in the travel bans or other such issues, because life is better for them in China right now. Many businesses are gone and won’t come back. Nearly everything in the U.S. is happening in slow motion. Everything takes at least twice as long as it did. People act as if even if Trump is voted out and a vaccine suddenly appears, that everything will turn back on. No. Not only have things been delayed during Trump’s presidency and during the pandemic, they have explicitly regressed. The government has basically been shutdown for the past four years, just bleeding money and limping along, and that’s especially true for the past eight months or so. This is not a one or two year thing. We’re talking multi- years if not decades of reverberations. ~~~ tonywastaken If and when Trump gets voted out of office or finishes his second term, we will have another Trump-like candidate. His cult of personality is here to stay for generations to come. ~~~ bmitc I think what Trump's presidency has shown, if only because he is a catalyst for hate and ignorance and little else, is that the sentiments that drove the civil war never actually went away and have probably gotten worse and drifted even further apart. His presidency gave a conduit for these things to bubble up to the surface. And there's a certain political party that partially shares the more hateful sentiments but also just wants to profit from them and manipulate the very people who are a subset of people that their policies hurt. ------ haltingproblem Asking an economist to diagnose is to ask the doctor who operated on you and removed a kidney when you were just there for a root canal to fix the problem. He goes in and performs a lobotomy but you are so taken by their lab coat and academic credentials and best paper awards and citations that you ask them to fix it. They go in and install a stent. A few days later you are dead because your forgot to take your anti-rejection drugs because of your lobotomy. Obligatory Nassim video dunking on Economists: [https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/nassim-n-taleb-and- rob...](https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/nassim-n-taleb-and-robert- shiller) ------ torgian Wait, are you saying we left the 2008 recession already? ------ dboreham We can soothe ourselves with the thought that Economists are usually wrong. ~~~ david927 I'm a bit shocked that that seems to be the take here. You don't need to have a background in Economics to see what has been happening even before the pandemic, and what is certainly to come. What is happening in the bond market? What has the Fed been doing for about a year now? What is the normal rate of zombie firms? What is it now? How many companies simply won't reopen? I could go on for hours. This isn't tea-leaf reading. The signs are 100ft high and in neon. ------ ffggvv always remember: social science isn’t science. no matter how bad they want it to be ------ HenryKissinger . ~~~ UncleOxidant But employers aren't in business to supply jobs, though, right? If the revenue and profits aren't there they can't print up their own money. EDIT: parent comment now empty initially said that companies should hire more people to help keep the economy going. ~~~ xxpor This is essentially the reason behind Keynesian stimulus, isn't it? Something's gotta bootstrap the recovery. ~~~ UncleOxidant Exactly. Like in the 30s the government should step in and hire people. Companies can't do that in a recession/depression. However, the other side of Keynesian economics that's not as often cited is that during the good times the government saves up for the inevitable bad times - we haven't done that for a long time. ~~~ daenz >Like in the 30s the government should step in and hire people What does the government usually hire people to do in this situation? ~~~ mikeyouse In the 1930s, it was the PWA which built tons of long-lasting infrastructure including the Hoover Dam and many substantial other projects; [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works_Administration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works_Administration) That was probably the best use of funds at the time since there was broad based unemployment among a largely unskilled population. This time around, it seems like it's mostly service businesses that are struggling so it's not so clear what the best use of labor would be.. ------ uoflcards22 I trust this about as much as I trust my horoscope. There is a reason economists are scolded left and right, and it's because of ludicrous claims like this. ~~~ mschuster91 > There is a reason economists are scolded left and right, and it's because of > ludicrous claims like this. Ludicrous? Not at all. With evidence of people re-infecting themselves with different strains of coronavirus appearing ([https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-reinfections-confirmed- in-...](https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-reinfections-confirmed-in-the- netherlands-belgium/a-54688064)), we are looking at years of dealing with a deadly pandemic - which means that anything regarding travel and major events is out of the question for a _long_ time, and that assumes that people religiously vaccine themselves (a bold assumption given the rise of conspiracy myths about "vaccines being used to implant mind control chips" and further absurd). That in turn has many effects: economies like Croatia which are dependant on foreign tourism will be straight fucked, they will not survive without massive aid - while the EU may prop up at least their governments, the situation for other primarily tourist economies is even worse. The effect will also hit many industries and their supply chains - most obviously plane makers and car makers, both of which are huge cash cows and mega employers, as demand from industry (airplanes) and private consumers falls to rock bottom (people will hoard all money they can). To make it worse, Chinese demand of its rising middle class has been the thing that propped both their and our economy - in fact, depending on manufacturer, anything from 24-40% of cars sold in 2018 went to China. And that's just cars. With the trade war looming to escalate (which is one of the few things of Trump that were an actually good idea) and that no matter if Biden or Trump wins, China won't prop up the world economy again, Europe is too busy to save its own butts, the US is too much in debt plus its social construct is falling apart left and right... ~~~ nradov Reinfections aren't a serious concern. Symptoms tend to be much less severe the second time due to the actions of immune system memory cells. SARS-CoV-2 is just like every other coronavirus in that regard. For example see the natural history of the OC43 coronavirus. ~~~ mschuster91 > Reinfections aren't a serious concern They are, because reinfected people can infect people that have not had corona before and it makes vaccine success rates lower (similar to the seasonal flu). In the essence it will lead to yet another attempt of "herd immunity" and a shitload of deaths. ~~~ SpicyLemonZest Experts and health officials were already expecting vaccines to be only 50-75% effective, so this isn't new information. That's what's so frustrating to me about the "herd immunity" discourse. Health officials have consistently said there's no way the disease is going to be eradicated, but because of the way it gets discussed, a lot of smart people have become convinced that the goal of a vaccine is to make sure nobody catches it. ------ hkai I'm inclined to believe the upcoming economic doom simply because anecdotally, I hardly know anyone who is against continuous lockdowns for as long as needed. In fact, people even seem to believe that the dead economy brings positive change: no more pollution from aircraft, no more racist tourism to other countries, and so on. ~~~ JackFr > I hardly know anyone who is against continuous lockdowns for as long as > needed. I’m sure that comes up a lot in conversation on line at the food bank. ------ joshuaheard We aren't "stuck" in a recession. It is entirely man-made. In the past, a recession was significant because it was a market indicator. Now, however, this recession is artificial, so it does not indicate any market defects. I believe we will have a V-shaped recovery and we will get back to normal soon. In a market-based recession, the fear is how to get back to normal. In this artificial recession, there is no fear, we just end the lockdowns. The only issue is when. It's like growing your lawn. If your lawn starts dying, and you don't know why, that is like a market-based recession. However, if you turn off the irrigation and the lawn starts dying, all you have to do is turn the irrigation back on. ~~~ tsimionescu If we get rid of all of the lockdowns, and force people to act as if everything is normal (they won't) how will we handle the millions of people dying? ~~~ twblalock Do you honestly think that the lockdowns saved lives, rather than simply delaying deaths for several months? Keep in mind that the lockdowns are merely a rate limit, not a cure. We are already in an uncontrolled situation re: covid. We are not seeing millions of deaths. In most parts of the country literally nothing is being done, yet we are not seeing bodies piled up in the streets. ~~~ freeone3000 Lockdowns prevent disease spread when actually implemented. The US never bothered with an actual lockdown, and instead did arbitrary, self-enforced partial closures. These half-measures predictably slowed the spread, but did not stop it. US is at 181,000 deaths total and 1500 deaths per day (which is increasing). Canada fully locked down for two months, and is at 0.8 deaths per day, and decreasing. Canada will have saved lives. The US did not. As for "no bodies in the streets": This is a long-lasting disease, you're sick for days before you die. People don't die in the streets, they die in hospitals and they die in their homes. The bodies are piled in morgues and refrigerator trucks.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Some Strategies for Fast Lexical Analysis When Parsing Programming Languages - userbinator http://nothings.org/computer/lexing.html ====== choeger I wonder what the audience of such a leader is. JavaScript engines would probably profit here, given the waste amount of code we download every day. Maybe even browsers in general. Maybe shells. But your average compiler or interpreter? The thing is that new languages change so often, do you really want to always generate a lexer table for every new keyword? Or complicate your build system by not using the industry standard tools? And if you have an old language, do you really want to touch that lexer that some bearded hacker has gobbled together decades ago so it works both on a PDP11 and some long forgotten microcomputer? ~~~ archi42 Maybe people who will one day work on compilers? I learned a lot writing a compiler for a subset of C over one semester (in C++), and just recently built a "compiler" that is used in-house for a one- shot conversion task. Without the prior knowledge that would have been a pain (the input language is poorly documented), but that way I just wrote the whole tokenizer/parser/emitter-chain in perl5 (pattern matching is awesome, and performance doesn't matter as long as I can parse in the rang of 10k to 50k lines per minute). ------ dbcurtis I have always been a fan of flex. The thing that impressed me in this table is the speed-up from the -F and -f options -- I didn't realize it could make a 4X difference. Anyway, in this benchmark, the author gets about a 15% speed-up going hand- coded over -f. Given that, my take-away is that flex is almost always the right answer for most lexing applications, because most of the time maintainability is going to win over getting the last 15%. If you absolutely _need_ that last 15%, you know it, and a living a specialized life. ~~~ auggierose fun fact: the guy behind flex is also the guy behind seL4	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ludwig: A DSL for the Cloud of Today and the Future - AndrewWright https://blog.fugue.co/2016-10-11-why-we-built-ludwig.html ====== nikolay Closed-source - thanks but no thanks! We'll stick to Terraform for the time being!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Real mode demo inspired by CMatrix in 187 bytes - delan https://bitbucket.org/delan/matrix86/src/5b48331410e3e5071ebdf424da319887eaf89da6/matrix86.s ====== brudgers CMatrix homepage: [http://www.asty.org/cmatrix/](http://www.asty.org/cmatrix/) ------ supernintendo Cool demo with beautiful and well-commented code. Overall, great job! ------ rijoja how do I assemble this and fire it up in qemu / kvm? ~~~ geofft `git clone [https://bitbucket.org/delan/matrix86.git`](https://bitbucket.org/delan/matrix86.git`), then `make run`. The author has graciously checked in the compiled version at matrix86.img; if you want to recompile it, you'll need nasm installed. If you don't have qemu installed locally (such that it complains about not being able to open a graphical window), you can run `qemu-system-i386 -curses matrix86.img` to make it run in your terminal. Press Esc 2 (Meta-2) and type "quit" when done.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Remote work means anyone can take your job - deegles https://marker.medium.com/remote-workers-just-outsourced-themselves-3f771f9d1529 ====== davedx Seems like this article ignores the gigantic wave of out-sourcing throughout IT that already happened in previous decades and in many cases returned to near-shore / onsite work. What you actually see if you look at remote work job boards is many (if not most) companies in say, the USA, want remote people from the USA (or at least the same timezone as the USA). I think this is what will happen in other countries too. ~~~ vcanales In my totally unscientific assessment of remote job boards, US companies seem to be the only ones requesting US-only applicants, and I have no insight as to why this happens. In my -South American- country the trend is to look outwards if you're hiring remotely; European countries seem to fit this description too. ~~~ dudul European countries are outliers due to EU regulations. Any EU "citizen" can work anywhere in the EU, so pragmatically speaking, why would you only want to hire Spanish people instead of opening the door to French, Italian or German candidates? It comes at literally zero cost to the company. Some industries are heavily regulated in the US and having non-US based employees can become a real headache for US companies. A lot of US companies have background check as part of their hiring process, pretty hard to do for someone not US-based. Also, if you target only the continental US you're already talking about companies that may be spread across 4 major timezones. If you start including Europe you're now dealing with people that are gonna be more than 6 hours removed from your HQ's timezone. ~~~ hocuspocus > European countries are outliers due to EU regulations. Any EU "citizen" can > work anywhere in the EU, so pragmatically speaking, why would you only want > to hire Spanish people instead of opening the door to French, Italian or > German candidates? It comes at literally zero cost to the company. The employer needs to pay social contributions in the employee's residence country. And more often than not, the employee cannot just become a freelancer or incorporate a single-person company and bill only one customer, as this is considered disguised employment. So no, it's not necessarily trivial for an EU company to hire a remote worker somewhere else in the EU, unless they have a local presence already. ~~~ jedberg It’s the same in the US to hire someone in a different state. Every state has their own tax scheme. Every new employee in a new state is a big set up cost and ongoing maintenance. ~~~ betaby Why so? I though all payroll/tax details are outsourced to the accounting firms and very straightforward in fact. ~~~ cosmie The payroll taxes can likely be taken care of easily by your payroll provider/accountancy firm, but there's potentially local business licensing requirements[1] you become subject to as well. If you have an office, you generally do all of that based on the location of the office, and the employee's home address doesn't come into play. But if the employee is officially a work from home employee, some states/municipalities treat that as a presence subject to business licensing or permitting requirements with the local authorities, as well as potentially triggering sales tax collection requirements that have to be accounted for within your sales/invoicing processes. [1] [https://smallbiztrends.com/2018/04/remote-employee- complianc...](https://smallbiztrends.com/2018/04/remote-employee- compliance.html) ------ Communitivity True, but... Anyone can already take your job, as long as they are willing to relocate, or your company opens a new office near them. It is more important than ever to differentiate yourself. To do that you need to find something to do that you love, and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that you become one of the top ten people in within your context. By context I mean you don't need to be the best in the world, you can be the best at X within the Y industry, or within defense consulting, or in the U.S. And you don't need to be the best (though see the quote about being the only), but at least in the top 10. There are two quotes I am fond of that say similar things much better than I can: "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it." \- Steve Jobs "You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who does what you do." \- Jerry Garcia ~~~ booleandilemma _...and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that (sic) you become one of the top ten people in within your context_ Whatever happened to just getting a normal job and putting in an honest day’s labor? Now we’re expected to become “one of the top ten”... what exactly? How is that supposed to work? What about those of us with families for goodness sake. We can’t all be super Linus Torvalds ninja hackers putting out code 12 hours a day. ~~~ ipnon An honest day's labor only existed in the middle of the 20th century. Before the New Deal you had to work hard on a farm or a factory to make ends meet. After the Great Stagnation in the 1970s, the economy cannot sustain widespread growth in prosperity for all classes of American society. The Post-World War II economic expansion was a 1 time miracle enabled by the picking of several low hanging fruits. "These figurative "low-hanging fruit" from the title include the cultivation of much free, previously unused land; the application and spread of technological breakthroughs, particularly during the period 1880–1940, including transport, refrigeration, electricity, mass communications, and sanitation; and the education of large numbers of smart people who previously received none."[0] The party is over. Americans are at the top but they aren't getting any higher, and everyone else in the world is catching up. That means Americans have to compete with the rest of global middle class. [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Stagnation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Stagnation) ~~~ andrekandre that may be true, but i think the parent posters point still stands regardless: > We can’t all be super Linus Torvalds ninja hackers putting out code 12 hours > a day. ~~~ ipnon Yes, Cowen's follow up to "The Great Stagnation" is "Average is Over" that follows the same line of thought. ------ gregkerzhner Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. Asynchronous communication across timezones has not been solved, and I struggle to see how it would be. A lot of collaboration requires a conversation and instant feedback from another party. You can't collaborate like this when there is a delay of 8 hours instead of 8 seconds between responses. So "anywhere" is a bit of a stretch. That being said, absolutely this will happen across the United States. There is nothing that makes developers in San Francisco more talented than their counterparts living in Tennessee, so if those can be gotten cheaper, I can see how the overall price would go down. Presumably though, such an effect would also cause rents and property values to go down in big cities. I can see how the natural evolution of such an idea is that wealth will be more evenly spread out throughout the country, instead of being concentrated in cities. I still think the Facebooks and Googles will pay a lot more - someone has to be the "top dog" attracting the top talent. The question is, how much more? ~~~ crazygringo > _Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and > lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved._ Unfortunately, that's not the case. Remote meetings can be far more frustrating and inefficient because of latency, total lack of turn-taking cues, inability to read emotional expressions of concern or worry on one person or to "read the room", emotional fatigue from lack of cues, and so on. And that's all assuming best-case scenario that your equipment and internet are working well. People pay attention less, speak up less, and so on. Now, this isn't to say that remote communication isn't useful -- it's obviously far better than not having it at all. And even when you're in the office, many teams are distributed anyways across offices. But remote communication and meetings have in no way been "solved". They still present elementary problems like when someone asks "who has thoughts?", there's 10 seconds of excruciating silence followed by four people speaking simultaneously, then another 20 seconds trying to figure out which one person will actually speak, where nobody wants to seem like the aggressive bully OR never get to speak. It's really hard. ~~~ gregkerzhner My hunch though is that virtual meetings don't necessarily add new types of problems to real meetings, they just highlight the problems which already exist. If you have a meeting with 12 people, and most of them are not engaged, the problem isn't necessarily the video call, its more like the majority of those people shouldn't be in the meeting at all, and would just benefit from a written summary. If you have a meeting where 4 people are jumping in to share an opinion on one topic, that sounds like too many cooks in the kitchen, not a video call problem. From my experience with remote meetings, the ones that work the best are those between two or three people where everyone is informed and the subject of discussion is concrete. These kinds of meetings are just as productive as the real thing. The kinds of meetings that tend to not be productive are the ones that have a dozen people in the call, with a few people talking and the rest watching the clock until the hour is over. These kinds of meetings are a drag in the real world as well. ~~~ crazygringo Yes, 1-1 or 1-1-1 remote meetings are not too bad, especially for 1-1-1 if you can view both other participants simultaneously and latency is not too bad (e.g. New York to SF, not New York to Japan.) But my comments are assuming, say, a 12-person meeting that has to happen. For reviews/approvals of a project with 10 stakeholders, it simply has to happen. And I never said anyone wasn't engaged -- participants usually are. And 4 people having an opinion is the norm, absolutely _not_ too many cooks. Just think -- a small feature idea is presented for approval in order to start work, a designer sees a potential problem, the user researcher realizes a use case was left out, the engineer is worried about feature creep, and marketing doesn't know if it'll be easy to explain. All of these have to be addressed. So I'm highlighting that even when everything about the meeting is necessary and otherwise awesome and productive, the limitations of remote participation can add substantial difficulties to running it effectively. And that in this sense remote meetings are in no way "solved" yet. ------ roosterdawn > What globalization did to manufacturing jobs, remote work will do to many > service jobs. This is bait. It's taken as a given rather than a hypothesis to be proven, which invalidates most of this post for me. Issues with the analogy: \- Offshoring existed before remote work was popularized. For the many of "your jobs" up to be "taken" that shift has already occurred. \- Outsourcing is not a magic bullet. Timezone gaps, communication style, expert knowledge, and legal compliance are all issues that previous outsourcers to call centers have already discovered. \- Significant gaps remain between "tier-1" and "tier-2" support. Effective deployment of offshoring requires using the two to complement one another, not trying to use the latter to replace the former. No matter what it is that your company is selling, tricky situations will come up that needed to be escalated to an experienced customer success team, whether that's the founder or a dedicated team. Being able to recruit globally doesn't magically make building that team any easier. ~~~ dominotw > Offshoring existed before remote work was popularized. For the many of "your > jobs" up to be "taken" that shift has already occurred. This is different though, because those companies weren't 'remote' so offshoring is not viable without that prerequiste. But if company goes 'remote' much more work becomes outsourcing worthy. ~~~ roosterdawn > But if company goes 'remote' much more work becomes outsourcing worthy. Again, there's a difference between "outsourcing worthy" and "can reliably outsourced for enough cost savings for the whole thing to not be ROI negative". And, that's my point. Companies going remote doesn't magically jump start geographic labor arbitrage from zero. That geographic labor arbitrage has been ongoing for a long time. ------ bachmeier > Now, you can either hire someone from San Francisco and subsidize their > obscene rent, or you can hire someone from Omaha. You can get the same work > done, but cheaper. What would you choose? This depends on the assumption that there's a big supply of workers in Omaha that are able to step in and do the job. I'm an outsider, but I'd guess that the people worth $600,000 Facebook salaries are already living there and working for Facebook. And then there's the question of whether _those jobs_ are the ones that can be done remote as well as in a specific location. You have to ask why, if there were such big savings on the table, these companies hadn't already moved in this direction. I don't think it's as clear-cut as many are making this out to be. ~~~ jasondigitized Within software at least, there are simply more people that have significant 'clock time' working within well run software companies in San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, etc. It's no different than college football players that spend their four years in well run systems that run pro style offenses. Sure, there may be a kid that has insane athletic ability that is playing at Calhoun Community College, but someone like Jerry Juedy ( wide receiver for Alabama ) is the player that the Denver Broncos will choose if they can get him. There simply aren't as many well run software companies in Omaha as there are in Seattle. And one could argue that the best free agents are going to be the ones coming out of those cities who can command higher market rates because companies believe there is higher ROI. ~~~ fnbr Yes, exactly. I've learned much more in the last two years working at a big tech co than I did at a small software company in the midwest, making me a much stronger engineer. ------ beager The implication from this litter of thinkpieces on HN is that proximity to a tech hub (SV/NY) is your only competitive advantage as a knowledge worker—your butt is close to their chair. This runs counter to the other prevailing wisdom about SV/NY, which is that those areas are hubs—and essential to the tech industry—because the world's top talent is drawn to it. So which is it? ~~~ joelbluminator So you think every node.js / rails developer that happens to live in SV and work in a startup is the next Linus? Of course they're lots of ordinary developers working and living there. And yes, being born American / European is a huge advantage over 80% of the rest of humanity. ~~~ exclusiv Seriously. There are a ton of wannabes up there (entrepreneurial and technical) just like there are wannabe actors in LA. A lot of incredible talent missing at those companies because people simply have zero desire to live there. I can appreciate the Bay Area but it's just not my style (weather, culture, lack of diversity in industry, etc). I'd bounce to wine country or the forests up north if I lived up there now. ------ tluyben2 As someone who basically never worked in an office since I began working as a dev in the early 90s; you have to protect yourself and carve out niches and knowledge that takes actual time and elbow grease to catch up to. Sure many people anywhere in the world can do what I do, but with the deep knowledge I have about some subjects (banking/payments/insurances backends & production firmware), it is not very likely to get a better deal as I speak the same language of all parties involved and I did it many times already. So it is not trial and error. It simply takes actual time to sit down and suffer for years/decades. You can hire entire teams cheaply with great _looking_ resumes and fail because some of these things are not hard/difficult per-se but you have to have done them before to succeed fast. But yes, if you shoot with hail and focus on the latest and greatest, you might be easily replaced. I am surprised how cheap (embarrassingly so) I can find good react/node devs; that tells me it is really bad to specialise in that... ~~~ joelbluminator try to find cheap react/node devs in the U.S, good luck with that. The cost of skills doesn't always translate to how hard it is to acquire it. I mean, some medical nurses study for 5-10 years and specialise and specialise only to earn 1/2 what a react dev earns in the U.S ~~~ tluyben2 I think we were talking about work-from-home/remote people and for me that is ‘earth’; I can find really good people for next to nothing because everyone jumped on the bandwagon. And this is not a stab at the technology; it is saying that it is a not a niche; I have maintained an yoy upward income for over 25 years by picking things that are valuable always. And, in line with this article, if I can have excellent react/node (and Go.. and C# and Java...) people for $1k/mo or less, then that is not for me. It might work well now; I want things to work out longterm. Because, you know, shit happens and they might kick everyone but the bottomline out... ~~~ thewarrior So what kind of skills would you recommend ? What have you picked up over the years ? ~~~ joncrane I don't think it's one skill; it's having your antennae up at all times and sensing what the next big thing might be, as well as actually liking that thing. For me it was AWS. About 7 years ago I was sitting in "Architecting on AWS" and I had an epiphany that this wasn't a game changer, this was a game redefiner. I was jazzed about it and have been pursuing AWS jobs and expertise every since. AWS isn't the end-all and be-all, and it's abused more often than not, but it has provided an extremely lucrative career for me. Also, as much shit as Amazon gets, AWS is a very, very good product, or suite of products. It only gets more complicated every year and my idea of it evolves every year as well. It's still going strong, but I do have my eye on other technologies and am making sure I don't become a dinosaur. ~~~ thewarrior Interesting. What aspects of AWS do you think will grow further ? What other technologies do you have your eye on ? ~~~ joncrane #1 Security: no one knows how to secure AWS. But I also really, really hate how the Cybersecurity organizations operate in every job I've ever had so that would feel like selling my soul to the devil. #2 "Big Data" #3 Containerization (working with it on AWS specifically) ------ danans The article title is intentionally click-baity. The extent to which it's true entirely depends on what "your job" is. Routine, non-creative work that can be performed asynchronously, with limited contact with others - the tech equivalent of craft piecework - sure, that can usually be done from anywhere: things like answering (simple) tech support requests, maintaining a static codebase with no new requirements, or implementing a feature for which the requirements and technical design have already been specified by others. Having myself worked on teams that located such tasks in lower-cost-of-labor regions, I can attest that most of those cost savings have already been realized. But creative work, like proposing the problems to solve in the first place, facilitating the discussion of how to solve them, and designing the technical and human solution - especially for problems at the intersection of technology and culture - those are not easily shifted to remote work. If the outsourced/remote worker is competent enough to work in that kind of capacity remotely, they will cost as much the non-remote worker. ------ popotamonga It also means i can take someone else's job. It balances out. ~~~ ReticentVole You drive a car, I use a bus. You eat meat, I eat potatoes. You fly to Disneyworld, I take the train to the seaside. You live in a big house, I live in a small apartment. You pay American income taxes, I don't. You demand clean air and water, I tolerate pollution. There are some fundamental factors which make labour in other parts of the world much cheaper, and people willing to accept a much lower quality of life and associated lower incomes. Its no wonder that big tech is so in favour of remote working - its going to allow the outsourcing of a huge amount of work (white collar) previously considered untouchable. ~~~ new2628 Funnily, except for the pollution part, most of your items on the right seem more attractive from a quality-of-life point of view than those on the left. Flying to Disneyworld sounds like a nightmare I would never (willingly) do, but a trainride to the seaside is always nice. ~~~ renewiltord Haha I have to admit I wasn't sure of his point at that stage. Taking a train to the seaside sounds sort of romantic. Flying to Disneyland sounds sort of rote. I still get the point but it is amusing. ------ ozim If you ignore trust and need for stable income then maybe. Companies don't hire people remote first and especially junior people. Now it will be even harder for junior people to get a job, any job, companies will stick to who they have and even fire some. Employees don't want to work with company on the other side of globe, because company might just cut them off with no pay and what they are going to do? How do you sue a company from another continent? There is also a lot more in terms of laws and regulations, where even hiring people from another country in EU is not just "hire and forget". Last note, there are people who want to live in high expense areas, want to live in big cities because that is a lifestyle they like. I see on HN that mostly people argue like everyone would like to live in some forgotten small town only to pay less rent. I am not big fan of big cities but somehow I like to have a cinema or selection of pubs bigger that one or two. ~~~ blaser-waffle > Last note, there are people who want to live in high expense areas, want to > live in big cities because that is a lifestyle they like. I see on HN that > mostly people argue like everyone would like to live in some forgotten small > town only to pay less rent. I am not big fan of big cities but somehow I > like to have a cinema or selection of pubs bigger that one or two. +1 for this. I've been 100% remote 5+ years now and I regularly contemplate going rural -- like far, far away rural -- but always hesitate because the lack of amenities and things to do is fairly limited. Fear of losing a job and not being able to get another remote gig is also a concern; being near-ish to a big city gives me some fallback options. ------ toohotatopic It should be "Anyone _Could_ Take Your Job" It's the Jevons_paradox [1]. More available workers will lead to more demand for workers. It's a two edged sword. Unlike unskilled labour, remote workers can switch employers, too. This turns an employer market into a worker market. Actually it is even true for unskilled if there is a local surplus of unskilled work. The world is essentially in an intelligence war for resources. No player can pass on brain soldiers. We see a decline in wages because there are still people not connected to the internet. I would expect that once that transition period is over, remote work becomes a liability to a company. Companies will have to create unique and enticing work environments to bind workers. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox) ------ ryanisnan This article seems to ignore the fact that working with people in vastly differing timezones can be a real nuisance. Yes, it can also be a boon for some positions, like follow-the-sun type SRE or customer support, but for a lot of positions, having people working massively different schedules is a real challenge. It can absolutely work, given the right async workflows, but it can also absolutely fail. I'm inclined to believe failure is the default mode of operation. ~~~ Wowfunhappy Almost my entire (small) company is based in NYC, but we have one programmer in Europe. He just adjusts his schedule to US Eastern Time hours. Might be harder if he was in Australia, but that still leaves a lot of flexibility. Heck, as I'm writing this, it's 11:20 am where I live, and I just overheard my sister get out of bed in the next room. Last night, she was taking an online MCAT prep course until after I went to bed around midnight. She could easily work in a different timezone. ~~~ ghaff In my experience, Eastern Time to Central European Time synchronous communications works pretty well without anyone having to deviate too much from normal working hours. Add Pacific Time to the mix and you're starting to need people willing to take calls at 6am and/or in the evening. But, yes, some people are willing to adjust their personal time zones. I know someone who lives in Hawaii and runs a PR agency with mainland US clients. She just normally gets up very early. ------ Spooky23 1995 wants their article back. The horse is out of the barn there. I remember working with HP, Microsoft and IBM people in 1999 whose management chains were in South Dakota, Phoenix, etc. ------ gexla The bigger issue right now is the total cratering of the world economy. Then there's also the unknown resets which will come with that. Trends which were in slow motion and maybe barely noticeable may have gone into overdrive. Now we don't know where we're at. To say that you're role is at risk because anyone around the world can take that role is as much guesswork as anyone else can give. This is just another prediction in a storm of unknowns. From the article... > If you thought globalization was fun for manufacturing, buckle up. Remote > work is about to globalize a bunch of service jobs as well. This makes sense from what I knew a few months ago. What doesn't sit right with me is that we're also possibly looking at a world in which globalization will be reversing. Supply chains may be rejiggered to operate closer to home. Will remote work go MORE globalized while everything else possibly reverses? > Like any big economic change, there’ll be winners and losers, and it’s not > exactly clear from the outset who will end up benefiting from the change. So, we don't know what's going to happen, this is just his prediction. This is a complex subject. Software doesn't operate like textiles. If the textile company charges twice as much, then the consumer pays more. Facebook engineers charging X more than engineers from SE Asia doesn't make the service more expensive. It's still "free" for the customer. There are other things to optimize on before you get to cost of workers. Another potential bigger issue for US workers is the possible change of the center of gravity for software development. US workers need to stay competitive. This will be challenged not so much by cheaper workers, but by global competition to US companies. Which should US workers worry about more? Workers from around the world taking US jobs? Or ByteDance challenging Facebook? US workers have already been dealing with outsourcing. The big change would be US workers applying for foreign jobs. Right now the US has a load of strong talent these companies could be mopping up. ~~~ ph0rque > Will remote work go MORE globalized while everything else possibly reverses? I think this is the right approach. Global bits, local atoms. ------ st-isidore The article makes broad, sweeping generalizations, but it was enjoyable and engaging to read, so cheers to the author for that. He's right, too, generally speaking: lots of work can and will be done remotely from various locations across the globe. Of course, there will always be natural divides (that's what makes us human). Someone who can't speak the same language as the rest of the team just isn't going to get hired, no matter how well they can code. Government regulations also play a huge role in how "globalized" a job can be. If you're working at a defense contractor, for example, you sure as heck aren't going to be replaced by a foreign national. In many cases, the office culture at those companies won't change hardly at all, due to data governance restrictions. ------ y-c-o-m-b I had this same fear a few years back. I don't have any notable personal projects on GitHub and my skills are pretty standard (Full Stack .NET) these days. I don't even have a degree. Nothing really stands out in my resume that screams "hire this person". I figured I would hardly get a response when applying to remote companies let alone an offer. The competition is surely way more qualified than I am. Furthermore I was applying on StackOverflow where talent pools are endless. I applied anyway. Well, I was wrong. I've had many interviews from that platform and so my last two jobs have been fully remote companies. The compensation has been even better than what I get locally (Portland, OR). It seems there is still a strong desire for experienced professionals and cultural fit; both of which many candidates don't posses. Despite the immense number of applications these companies received, they still complained that good talent and good personalities are hard to come by. What that tells me is even an average Joe like me doesn't need to worry about "anyone taking my job" because there's always a demand for it somewhere that's not being fulfilled. ~~~ josho I appreciate your short term perspective, and agree with you that today remote work doesn't have these fears. However, the author is thinking about a longer time horizon. As an example, with agreements between Canada/US and similar culture it would be very easy for your company to start hiring remote workers in Canada. Suddenly due to currency differences their salaries are 30% cheaper, and with a strong social safety & gov. subsidies likely even cheaper for similar talent. Then some time later after your company has had success with some international workers they branch out farther and hire a few juniors from South America in the same time zone. Repeat this cycle over the next decade and now salaries have been eroded even for high paying information workers. I'm starting to feel globalization is a race to the bottom for everyone but the owners. ~~~ nsporillo Globalization is and always was a race to the bottom for everyone but the owners. In my opinion, the idea has always been outsource work to other countries to bootstrap their economies into the modern era so whatever work we didn't outsource could benefit from additional customers. I think Globalization went a bit too far and left too many American cities in the dust while catapulting strategic competitors into a powerful position. The idea that millions of workers who lost their jobs could just immediately retool and find work higher up the value chain was a disaster. Many argue that Globalization has been a success for lifting millions out of poverty, but to me that just says we ruined some peoples livelihood for the benefit of other countries who seek to simply replace the need for us instead of trade with us. ~~~ josho We were told that globalization made things more efficient. So, if you always saw it as a race to the bottom you are smarter than I and many others because that wasn't what was sold to us. Maybe the real problem is that in the 60s we were told that our future selves would be filled with leisure time due to automation. That leisure team turned out to be a synonym for unemployment. The problem is that the wealth generated from globalization became centralized instead of benefitting everyone. ------ mandeepj Not true at all. Working remotely is a skill and lifestyle - not everyone likes/have it ------ Justsignedup I have a strong opinion on this, but it starts at a lower level... A good developer is a developer that makes themselves obsolete. By making themselves obsolete the developer has made themselves invaluable. How can both of those things be true? This is basically because you find that great developers write code and patterns that make it easy for anyone to jump in an understand. Even if complicated. I strive to do this as much as possible. The more I do this the faster development becomes for myself and my team. However the more I do this, the more my team leads realize that without me, things won't progress in the right direction. But theoretically they can fire me any time and find a cheaper worker to do my job. The point is, I see lots of managers treat engineers as commodities. However if that is their outlook, then they will always look to outsource because they see no value in you. Good managers realize that things are smooth and maintainable because of the people who put effort into doing that, not that because things are smooth and maintainable everyone is expandable. Every time I see the latter being the mindset there's always a HUGE slowdown because the wrong things start being built. ~~~ runawaybottle I think the thing you are describing might be seen as a scalar quantity by management. They may just see speed, and not _why_ something is fast. This is unfortunate because if they are operating with scalar conversions then you might misleadingly believe they see the why and how, but in reality are just seeing the what (price or speed or quantity, but not value, impact). ~~~ Justsignedup well yes, however good management works to check up on that. it is foolish to assume everything is smooth because it is smooth, you want to know why things are going well just like you want to know why they are not. at a high level this is really hard to know. but it is important to know who your talent is, otherwise you replace the talent. many in upper management assume engineering is like factory work, which is how you end up with the most terrible software and no path to fix it :( ------ INTPenis This is a loaded topic. On one hand I do work for a large European enterprise with a branch in India. I know for a fact that it adds a lot of social and cultural overhead to co- operate with a remote branch who barely speak English. They're great for specific tasks, like 24/7 ops and monitoring. As long as there are clear instructions. On the other hand I'm an idealist at heart who believes that borders should go away and we should work together as one world. But it might be a bit too naive to think that utopia is around the corner just because IT techs are working remotely. So I'd have to say that OP is wrong. For more than one reason. We're also contractually obliged to hire citizens for certain private sector clients. And in some cases we have to go even further and security rate them. But regardless of my experiences there will always be people who shine and hopefully get picked up by a remote employer who treats them well. Our branch might be ~60 people, I've worked with only a handfull of them for 3 years and still managed to meet one or two who really went above and beyond to show that they cared about their work. ------ bamboozled As someone who has worked remotely and worked for remote teams for some time now, I can say that you need hire a higher caliber people with excellent communication skills who you can really trust to deliver. I think remote work will just make sure good people are in higher demand, which means that the market may even get hotter for better people. Companies who just complete on price will fail spectacularly. Bring it on. ------ vsareto If you get replaced only because of your salary, they're doing you a long-term favor. They weren't really invested in you. This article implies the cog theory of developers, and I rarely see that supported on this site: >You can get the same work done, but cheaper. What would you choose? It probably won't be the same work. Other variables, such as throughput, also factor in. ------ jandrewrogers A lesson learned in other markets applies here: you can avoid a race to the bottom by effectively competing in one of the many dimensions other than price. If you don't want to be a commodity, you have to be able to answer the question of what is the one thing you do better than almost anyone else, and sell that. Geographical proximity isn't a great answer in a market where everyone is going remote. It doesn't even need to be technical in nature for a developer. Different companies place inordinate value on different things, so it is partly a game of matching your exceptional dimensions to companies that place a lot of value on those dimensions. How many people here are using the cheapest laptop that will technically do the job? The developers that are at risk are those that are "average" in every dimension that an employer might care about. ------ jorblumesea Anyone who has ever worked with off shore teams or international engineering offices knows that it's not technical skill, but things like communication, cultural norms, expectations, requirements, project management. So while it's true that "anyone can take your job" the reality is that it's harder than you think. Companies have already had the ability to outsource talent for decades. It's proven much less beneficial than anticipated. Everyone has had "that email" from an overseas office where it makes little to no sense. Or, that code review that completely misses the feature request. Remote work will not change that significantly. Companies might be more distributed, if they can make the organizational structure work. But moving to a "remote focused" organizational is an incredible amount of work and hard to execute properly. ------ taylodl There's a negative way of looking at things. Another way of looking at it is remote work means _I_ can take anyone's job! ------ code4tee Yes, but with caveats. This is what happened with call centers in the US which broadly went to places like India with big outsourcing firms. That back-fired big time when the quality of service went to crap with companies rushing to bring these services back home. Similar stories with tech outsourcing. There are things that have been successfully outsourced some functions to places like India, but there’s also a reason why high performing companies actually don’t seem to offshore key IP development efforts. The labor might be cheap but the true cost of bad quality is sky high. So this will happen to an extent but cost can’t be the only factor driving decisions if the goal is long term success. ~~~ non-entity > That back-fired big time when the quality of service went to crap with > companies rushing to bring these services back home. Ofc now many of these have gone to crap again now with full automation. ------ m3kw9 And you can take anyone’s. The scale is bigger but is hard to argue if the ratio isn’t similar but just at a larger scale. I think the bigger difference is the option to WFH is not just an after thought, but a real option now. ------ this_na_hipster Assuming a theoretical point of view as pointed by the article, there are multiple pieces still missing in my head. Lets say a traditional software team has these 5 types of people: \- Design / XD \- Software Engineer \- Software Manager \- Product Manager \- Data analyst or Data Scientist If you assume all of these roles can be collaborated on a async basis and from within different timezones - that makes progress extremely slow right? Someone emails, someone has a question, someone has a clarification, etc. Now if we assume same locale, that drastically changes the game since everyone can communicate at the same time even if remote. Therefore, my point#1 is, a global distributed teams that are across time zones really don't make sense. Keeping in line with the article, let's say a company decides to outsource all these different professions. That would mean, you're even outsourcing management, people that need to oversee are needed to the same region. How high does one go? All the way to directors of each respective field or Vice President? Maybe we go as far as till we reach an owner for a service or product for that region. This is what happens basically today (pre-covid). Each region has a focus in a deliverable. India team is working on X, China team is working on Y, etc. So point#2, outsourcing has to happen not only for people that are executing work, but for people that are overseeing the execution as well. That finally gets me to the last point. If we have these vertical's of people localized to specific regions, you cannot have specific outsourcing of jobs. You would need a batch outsourcing of jobs from IC's to managers. However, each region a company is in, requires locale specific folks to solve specific problems. Amazon US is very different than Amazon India pay after you receive package, for example. So my point#3, I don't believe we will see too much of a shift for jobs to other countries. We might see a shift in jobs from California to Texas for example. By now, you might understand where i'm going :-). If you hired enough of a presence in mid-west, suddenly, you now have a pool of candidates that competitors, and other companies can also hire from. You as a company, unless you can spin an entirely new vertical, will back-fill employees from the mid- west again since the remaining team is located in that region. Thereby creating a pocket of talent. Enough pockets of talents will create many companies that want to hire that talent. This is what we effectively have today in major cities. The only difference is, you have a larger area vs a smaller city. ------ rootusrootus This thought isn't new. The company I work for now has been around a while, and they went through an entire phase of remote work. They have walked it back lately. We still have plenty of people working from various corners of the country, but new hires are on site at one of our office locations. I won't be surprised to see a renewed push for remote work, but the tools are still pretty mediocre compared to in person collaboration, so I also won't be surprised to see some pushback as organizational leaders decide getting people in a room is worth paying extra for. ------ LockAndLol That's a nice sentiment. Every country is looking for skilled IT workers. The amount of positions isn't going to magically decrease to create an overflow of ITers. There'll still be a shortage. Having personally seen the quality of outsourced code and the effort needed to clean up the mess in order to make the product stable, companies are going to be in for a nice surprise if they think that short-changing devs and simply going remote will work in their favor. Interesting times are ahead. ------ one2know More like anyone can rip off employers. When you are dealing internationally, you are out of the bounds of US law. There is no guarantee that your code won't simply be stolen. You have no recourse except travel twelve time zones to a place you have no power in. No one need worry about outsourcing. It's been proven that the only work going to outsourcing is low risk service labor like phone support. ~~~ josho As a counter example IP laws in Canada are aligned with US and is the same timezone, yet with currency exchange salaries are discounted by 30%. ~~~ pashamur Canada is only ~10% of the U.S. population. I'm not sure in terms of developer numbers, but if percentages are comparable, that's a pretty small effect on the overall market. ~~~ josho I wouldn't consider increasing the labor pool by 10% a small effect. Regardless, and once a company has figured out hiring remote for Canada, then why not add Mexico which through NAFTA/USMCA has sorted out IP type issues. Then once MX has worked well why stop there and repeat across South America. So, the reality is likely increasing the labor pool size every year for the next decade. Those annual small changes compound and lead to dramatic changes over the long term. Take a look at what happened to manufacturing jobs in the US over the past few decades. Remote work has the potential to transform things just as much. ------ GnarfGnarf _Everyone would have to sit two meters apart, which means two times the square feet_ No... it's __four times __the square feet. ~~~ klmadfejno four pi times the square feet? ~~~ downerending Hmm. Could use hex packing, but still need aisles. And there are probably fire escape regulations. ------ christiansakai Timezones, sanctions, taxes, labor laws. Yeah, there's no way the governments of nations will let their companies outsource their IT more and more that easily. ------ mlthoughts2018 Let’s flip this around. If [anyone] can take [your] job, then it stands to reason that remote work means _I_ can take someone else’s job. But what would this mean for me? First off it would mean doing all the same work to prepare myself as a candidate. Take Machine Learning for example, which is my area. I need to prepare my resume based on my current projects. I need to brush up for nauseating leet-code hazing trivia dumb shit (probably on a virtual whiteboard now). I need to research companies that have roles I’d be interested in. Now I do all that, let’s say I do well in the interview. Am I going to take less money to take the job? No. In fact, I’ll probably want more money than I am earning now if I am going to risk switching jobs. Am I going to accept my salary to be adjusted by geographic region or cost of living data? No. My compensation is about the value I add to your company. It has nothing to do with where I live. If I want to do lifestyle arbitrage on my high salary, that’s purely my business and is a private matter my employer does not get to know about or consider. Given this, how many employers are really likely to want to hire me? I’m going to demand a NYC salary no matter where I live. They won’t get to replace their existing NYC-salary-person with a cheaper competitor, because nobody is cheaper, and a lot of people are more expensive. In essence, supply went up if you can hire from anywhere, but the price for that supply did not go down, it’s just permanently higher. I think if companies are looking to trade employees for a cheaper model, they are going to be surprised that hiring remote doesn’t facilitate this at all. The people from rural Kansas who can do the same job are not idiots happy to take 1/2 the pay because of where they live. It’s stupid to expect they would be. ~~~ colinmhayes Maybe the people in Kansas won't be taking a pay cut, but workers who were previously limited by immigration laws would definitely be happy to. Indians speak english, Mexico and a handful of other central/south american countries are in the same time zone as the us. People in those situations would be incredibly happy to work for half of what you make now. There are definitely problems with hiring those people, but your argument that supply won't expand is incredibly naive. ~~~ mlthoughts2018 No, you are just wrong. People from around the world are not dumb! If they are worth $X they will demand $X. This mythical idea that they won’t research & understand their worth is so foolish. If you’re smart enough to write complex software or do complex math, you’re smart enough to ask basic first-order questions about how you will be compensated according to the value you bring to the table. This dismissive idea that globalizing advanced software jobs leads to vastly cheaper labor is silly. It boils down to literally just assuming foreign people are dumb, don’t value themselves and don’t do basic research. I don’t know about you, but that sure doesn’t describe the huge cohort of software engineers that I know - from _anywhere_. ~~~ colinmhayes If there are suddenly 10 times as many people fighting for the same number of positions salaries will drop. That's just basic supply and demand. ~~~ mlthoughts2018 Basic supply and demand is a very poor economic model. It’s cited all the time by armchair commenters, but rarely reflects reality. ~~~ colinmhayes Source? ~~~ mlthoughts2018 Please don’t write comments like this. It immediately indicates you are not open to considering other points of view and you believe the burden of effort for improving your beliefs rests on other people instead of yourself, and that you think this is a valid rhetorical tactic in conversation. This point is so far beyond indisputable with massive available confirmatory data as well as economic theory that to engage a lazy “citation needed” type of response does more harm than good, worse than a “let me google that for you” situation by a wide margin. ~~~ colinmhayes You made an unsourced claim that flies in the face of established literature. My comment was a joke because you obviously are completely uninformed. The fact that you could call someone else an armchair economist is disgusting and shows how awful social media is for society. Maybe you can start with wealth of nations and work your way up from there. Please don't make any comments like this until you have completed your required readings. ------ drawkbox Remote work also means companies can get the best people for that company anywhere. Remote work means life changes can happen and you can retain the best people for that company. With jobs and life, changes happen, people move, have families, want to be close to family, want to change scenery, get a new significant other, go to school, buy a house, all of these things can mean you might have to quit if you have to physically always be in the office. Even when companies have remote/different city offices, virtual communication is very important anyways. Clients and customers are almost always remote with some sprinkled in meetings but mostly virtual communication and communication through the work. Companies would be wise to switch to remote first thinking and processes with a focus on virtual communication and a nice to have of physical meetups, integration sessions etc. Remote work helps companies focus on their external view not just their internal machinations. For truly unique talents and workers, location has never really mattered. ------ Barrin92 People are arguing a lot about if the claims in the post are true or not but I feel like this misses the point. Assuming they're all true that's still a good thing. I expect competitiveness in every sector of the economy I don't work in, so I have to measure myself by the same standards. If someone can do my work for less money, hire them. We can talk about welfare for displaced workers but employment isn't charity, the best worker who can do the work for the least amount of money should do it, and we're all better off. Removing geography and mobility as a limiting factor is a boon for innovation. It will give an unprecedented amount of people a shot at a great job. Not to mention that increased competiton for existing jobs will create a huge incentive for entrepreneurship. Without all those cozy well paying tech jobs lined up, there's a real incentive to starting your own company. ------ mekoka Side question. I have noticed for a few weeks now that since I don't have a Medium account I'm prevented from reading certain articles (like this one), but I still have access to some other articles on the platform. Does it mean that some authors require that the readership be part of the network too? What are the rules? ------ Hokusai Bold flashy predictions usually fail. The main threat to your job is today the same that it was last year. China is growing its influence and technical capacity. TikTok could have been an American (or European, ...) company with American employees, it is not. It’s easier to create a company in China and produce software there than to hire individual developers. That may work for very small companies with special needs, but it’s very inefficient. If Chinese citizens are allowed to purchase American video games, hire AWS and Azure services, etc. then it is not a big deal. Other wise the draining of jobs will continue like has been happening for the pas two decades. Another option is to be more protective of critical industries. As the pandemic shows how vulnerable is the west in the supply chain. I expect a future similar to what we had one year ago. With some more jobs moving to China and some light increase in protectionism to avoid too much job bleeding. ------ sequoia > If you’re working on Wi-Fi at home, that means your job is literally up in > the air. This statement is hyperbolic and meaningless enough that I'm comfortable calling it "stupid." I've been working remotely for a long time and guess what? I moved to a big city to be closer to jobs. I am a US citizen and well qualified but I can tell you from experience _most employers do not want to hire remotes_. Anyone who thinks you can just replace your colocated North American dev team with lower-cost employees across Asia must not have tried doing this. I've worked with _highly qualified, competent programmers_ in India whom I respect and admire, and communication & timezones were still major issues. How do you establish the rapport you need to resolve disagreements and come to compromises with someone you've never met? How to you collaborate with a team 13.5 hours apart from you in time? Furthermore, having worked in highly cross-cultural and international teams for a good amount of time (even colocated in an office) I can tell you that language/English proficiency is not some non-issue, it can be a _big_ issue. I went into a recent job with the attitude of "language issues are no big deal! We can make it work" but over a couple years of running a team it became clear that having a team comprised of people with varied levels of English abilities and from different countries _is_ a big deal. Think of how difficult it can be to resolve interpersonal conflicts and miscommunications with your coworkers, then imagine the two parties don't share a native tongue and multiply the number of miscommunications by 10, then multiply that by the number of non- native speakers/learners on the team. [content warning: bad metaphor] It's like carrying around a beanbag chair–it doesn't seem hard for a few minutes but do it all day for a week and I promise it will become exhausting. As a side-note, hiring in South America for North American teams is cheaper & can still be same timezone (and easier to fly in!); I think there's a lot of growth potential there. ------ ravenstine Anyone can already take your job. Since there is a growing number of businesses that are accepting remote work, that means that more potential work is available to remote workers. Seems like people are trying to justify their preference for working in an office. Not to diss those people, but remote workers know the kind of position they are in if more people work remotely. Personally, I'd rather live in a world where I'm not so dependent on one particular employer, and where I can change jobs without having to worry about moving away from friends and family. Who cares if someone can "take my job"? Businesses already outsource to other parts of the world where labor is cheap, and they get what they pay for most of the time. ------ A4ET8a8uTh0 Eh, my boss's boss not that long ago suggested that if I really want to quit, they won't have a problem replacing me. His statement is technically true, but then a new person would have to go through the same training and it would take time before they were competent even if they already had experience in the same domain. Remote does mean the pool of candidates expanded, which sucks for me as that usually means my salary has a potential to go down, but the overall skill set did not change. It is not that cannot be replicated, but it does require training, which most businesses avoid like a plague these days. edit: But then I am in banking, which is its own little world. ~~~ koheripbal Most company geographic re-alignments happen through attrition - which averages around 10% per year (+/\- 5% by industry). A company could move a large chunk of its workforce to lower cost locations in only a couple of years without the need for layoffs. ------ troughway You can "solve" the timezone issue by having chain of command changes. Think about all those distributed teams that are all over the place, how do they work? They've been doing this for years now, are successful, and they must have done something right. From what I have seen: reporting structures are different, team sizes tend to be smaller. In some circumstances, particular cities have "hubs" for employees if anything needs to be done on-site. It's not rocket surgery, it's not blindly obvious either, but there is a solution here. I don't like the tone of these articles because they have such a negative, fear-porn driven bait title that it mars whatever good wisdom the author wants to impart. ------ KoftaBob It also means the supply of jobs available to you will greatly increase, as you won't be limited to positions location in the area/areas you can live. For some reason, so many of these articles and blogposts only factor in the increased supply of applicants, and completely ignore the other side of the coin. I think this will lead to a new equilibrium that's beneficial to both parties. Companies based in the bay area won't be forced to keep salaries in line with the astronomical cost of living there, while job seekers outside of the bay area who can't or don't want to move there, will now have access to high paying jobs that they previously didn't. ------ jmspring Despite a market for cheap labor, especially around CRAuD apps, companies doing complex things require a certain level of experience and skill. Outsourcing firms thrive on having one “knowledgeable” person who interfaces with a client, and a bunch of cheap worker bees behind that person. Generally the quality and deliverable are influenced by how much you sit on top of and manage them. As for low caliber remote talent taking jobs, the same applies... there will be certainly a threshold where that can happen. At a certain point, though, experience and competence are necessary. That could be anywhere, but it’s hard to amass such remotely. ------ erosenbe0 Many service workers will still want to live in or around relatively expensive areas. I live just outside of Chicago: 10 minutes to the beach; 20 minutes to downtown; 20 minutes to a hub airport; 15 minutes to top class sports, theatre, and concert options; A+ school district with reasonable diversity; ice rink, gymnastics center, bike trails, parks, music lessons, and art lessons within a mile or two. Sure, my taxes are through the roof and my house is small, but quality of life here, particularly for families, is just unbeatable. If you go more than another 10 miles out to get the massive sq. footage you are giving something up. ------ johnward "Everyone would have to sit two meters apart, which means two times the square feet, which means two times the rent." Ugh. If the office isn't already sitting me 6 feet apart from someone then I don't want to work there. ~~~ BryanBigs Before we left,a former employer was about to force my team (with allin probably average individual compensation of $600000) from 81sq foot cubes to rows of connected desks of 36" width. This in a city with $20sq ft office rental rates. The official name of the model of the desk layout: the harvest table. That was the catalyst to begin looking for a new home... ------ Noos I think you can see this in something like commission art. If you wanted to draw commission artwork for a book cover or what have you, you now compete with almost everyone in the world; there are plenty of russian or south american artists for example who have both stunning quality and lower prices. If the job is something that is task-based and doesn't really require as much real-time communication on demand, yeah I can see this happening. I think HN always tends to focus on being the best, and much less on "it's good enough." ------ wildmanx The basic premise of this post is "the key edge that you have over your worldwide competition is that you are local". That premise is false, or at least heavily overblown. If the only detail barring you from working for a company which otherwise totally really would hire you, then there are often times way around this already. I moved half-way around the world for my current job. My competition was therefore people from all over the world. My job won't be "taken" by "anyone" now more than pre-Covid. ------ licebmi__at__ I've been working remote with an on-site team for a few years, and well, I'm not sure as everyone of that remote will be the default as the pandemic ends. At least on my current team, I could notice a lot of communication gaps that definitely impacted the velocity of the release that management should definitely be aware, and they are expecting going back to normal. As I can see, that remote working might be a novelty, but I expect the inertia to push back after the lockdowns ease up. ------ shanemhansen This topic comes up so much and there's such a variety of misconceptions. Everyone thinks they are an expert despite mixing up basic terms. (remote/outsource/offshore) For the last 12 years or so I've worked extensively in all arrangements and here's what you need to know. Outsource: Generally this conflates 2 actions. One is paying for a cheaper labor market. The second is paying for less skilled people. Most of the projected cost savings come from the latter. Most of those projected cost savings don't appear. I remember folks hiring $10/hr DBAs in India and the result was about what you'd expect. India is full of great DBAs and they ain't charging $10/hr or at least they haven't for a long time. It is the case that you can access a cheaper labor pool. Most people do this and then negate that savings by not creating a remote-first culture and introducing massive language and time zone barriers and friction due to multiple companies interacting. Offshoring: The key difference here is that these are part of your company. In the US it's totally possible to set up an office in central/south america in- timezone and staff it with amazing people and save some money. Well, except for most of those folks who are willing to relocate will eventually accept offers with FANG companies either locally or relocate. So it's a nice scheme while it works. (Hi to all my tico friends now at Google and Amazon) Remote: this is what most people confuse for the above two things. Remote is about doing 2 things. 1) Expanding your hiring pool beyond a 30 minute commute from your office (turns out that the other 99.99% of the world's population also has some great folks). 2) Making your company culture remote-first. But that's synonymous with writing things down and documenting things. Sure interpersonal relationships can be trickier to bootstrap and that's a real cost. But see #1, nobody talks about that cost. The final thing to keep in mind is that for most big companies, there's no way to avoid the remote cost. As soon as you open up an office in another location you're a remote company. Hell, as many people can attest as soon as you ask people to attend meetings on another floor or an adjacent building you find out you're a remote company. ------ globular-toast No they can't. They don't have the experience that I have. They can't possibly have it because they don't already work for the company I work for. I think some people in "the valley" are starting to brick it knowing that they'll be competing with people with far lower salary demands from around the world. But really the only think you'll have to worry about if your job goes remote is having to move somewhere more affordable. ------ royaltheartist Nobody ever "takes" anyone else's job. Management makes the decision to fire some workers and hire others to save costs. And they'll keep doing this to save more and more money. As long as every company is driven by their rapacious desire for profit, they will continue to screw over workers to net more for themselves. Thinking in terms of another worker taking something from you lets the decisions of those above you off the hook. ------ vs2 I am not paying to read someones blog! This is the second day in a row ... if this was reddit the admins would ban it! Oh yeah I am off to reddit! ~~~ agustif Just open an incognito tab then, or if you use firefox checkout this extension [https://addons.mozilla.org/es/firefox/addon/medium- unlimited...](https://addons.mozilla.org/es/firefox/addon/medium-unlimited- read-for-free/) I hate medium too, anyway for my the paywall is like a nice feature, if it's behind it I'm probably better off not reading that shit anyways ~~~ GnarfGnarf Brilliant! Thanks for the tip! ------ kemiller Timezone and cultural compatibility still matter, as we've collectively discovered over the last 30 years. Offshoring was already happening before this and will continue to do so, but there will remain demand for people onshore. Presumably the world will eventually have enough software developers, but it's showing no signs of it in the foreseeable future. ------ kolla Almost all of my work has to be performed by a citizen of my country due to security laws so I feel pretty safe. ------ stakkur Having worked many years with globally distributed teams, especially offshored IT in India, I'd say...LOL. ------ quxpar Pre-remote, I was afraid of a random person walking in off the street and doing my job. I don't think I ever worked for a successful company that wasn't continually hiring people in my role. I don't think the author realizes that large businesses that rely on software see tech as a team sport, in which camaraderie plays a huge role. Subconsciously, they're willing to pay another $40k for a better social/emotional experience. Who is a theoretical startup hotshot going to prefer? Option A, who is also in San Francisco, who talks about concerts and cool events they went to every weekend, who stays up late hacking on fun side projects, etc etc. Option B, ives in Omaha, nice enough person but pretty much always logs off at 5pm. Has 3 kids screaming in the background of every Zoom call. Likes board games. That's not to say B has zero chance of employment. In my experience, B can existed at a company but has to have some seriously strong technical chops, know the higher-ups really well, AND be an integral part of the company in terms of how critical infra is maintained. ~~~ joelbluminator I'd take B over you anytime buddy. You sound like you're 19, not that there's anything wrong with being 19. But your preference isn't everyone's preference. ~~~ sb52191 Option B sounds far more likely to stick around the company for a long period of time, option A sounds more like the type to leave after 1-2 years for something more "attractive". ------ csours Nobody can take my job because they couldn't pay someone enough to do my job. That said, my job could simply go away, and I'm working hard to make that happen. When my job goes away, hopefully the value I demonstrated in doing that will be enough for me to get another job. ------ delphinius81 Article doesn't cover the fact that many companies are not setup to deal with taxation issues related to payroll for foreign employees. There's opportunity for a payroll company to step in there and make this less painful, but tax reporting will always be a barrier. ------ buboard There is only one way out of it: Regulation. So far, entities have been gatekeeping people into SV: at first it was stanford degrees, later it's just relocation to SV. With that gone, there s no other route than regulation, like so many other professions. ------ adwn The economic incentives to out-source development to India have been there for decades. In the 2000s, "everyone" (i.e., the media) was sure that soon there would be no high-paying programming jobs left in the Western world. Well, how did that pan out? ~~~ temporama1 Yes. Please send details on how we surely implement the microservices. ~~~ BubRoss First, start by making a giant empty class heirarchy in java. Once you have created a dozen classes that inherit from each other, but not yet made any variables or functions, send it right over, your work is done my man. ~~~ temporama1 First we make the Spring Boot with the common package yes? Ok. Please reply immediately. ------ toss1 >"Remote work means anyone can take your job" It also means you can take anyone else's job It is up to us to provide better value than competitors It is up to managers to recognize that value is barely related to initial cost/sticker price/hourly rate Time will tell how those trends sort ------ 29athrowaway Anyone can take your job? Not so fast. \- People on the same or adjacent timezones, or people willing to adapt to another vastly different timezone. \- People with language fluency and proficiency. \- People that can pass an interview. Apply those 3 filters and the pool of people to pick from is greatly reduced. ------ deagle50 I moved into sales partly as a hedge against this. It doesn't help much now as nobody is taking in-person meetings but I suspect (and hope) that companies will still prefer to hire account teams in close proximity to their customers. ~~~ justQandA This is an interesting angle. Did you move from software development to sales? Is this technical sales, "Sales engineer", or something different? I'm curious how one transitions without any sales experience. ~~~ deagle50 Yep, sales engineer. I was a infrastructure consultant and SRE before that. It happened through meeting the sales teams of the vendors I worked with. Eventually one of them asked me if I wanted to apply for a sales engineer role. He then referred me and vouched. Always be nice to your vendors and partners. ------ hindsightbias Lets see everyones release schedules so far this year. And this is with your A-team. No doubt hiring out cheaper will bring the synergy and velocity organizations pine for. We should all be writing stuff like this to kneecap our competitors. ------ ArtDev Remote work means you can take anyone's job. Without having to move to a crappy US city where they can't find any talent. I have been a remote contractor for 7+ years so, for me, this is a great thing! ------ dnissley Any reason someone better suited for it shouldn't be able to take my job? ~~~ JacksonGariety The idea is that they will accept significantly lower pay and do the job well enough to get by. Then again, what's wrong with that? Theoretically it just levels the playing field. The real inequality is higher up the food chain anyway... ------ klmadfejno I think the biggest population at risk if useless office jobs that have just had staying power for legacy reasons. Once those go remote and off shore they're never coming back to high cost of living areas. ------ JBiserkov "If you cannot be replaced, you will never be promoted." ~~~ MattGaiser Don't most tech people leave to get their promotions? ------ takizawa11 The article also ignores the legal and tax implications of outsourcing work. At least currently, you can't just hire individuals from other countries indiscriminately. ~~~ dragandj You can’t hire them as employees, but you can absolutely hire them to perform tasks that you pay them for. For some types of tasks it’s even better for both sides becausethere’s less obligations and overhead expenses. ------ atemerev And this is good. Why you should hold yourself invulnerable when there is talent and competition? I lived and worked in 6 different countries; I am all for diversity. ------ bamboozled What if your already remote? It doesn't change anything. ~~~ paucanosa2 interesting ------ technick I don't think much changes for most people in technology. We've always had cross hairs on our back when working at companies without values. ------ mister_hn The biggest change will be that anyone who is cheaper will take your job but low price means usually less quality. Let's fight against lower salaries once for all. ------ runawaybottle I think software developers need to think about this obsessively because we don’t want to get blind sided like cab drivers were with ride sharing. ------ jamil7 I'm a remote freelancer, no one has taken my job(s) yet. I also don't make Bay Area money so maybe this never applied to me. ------ kriro I'm looking down at my half full glass and all I can think is....fantastic news. Remote work means I can take any job I want. ------ tagami 2 meters apart means 4x the square feet, not 2x ------ ilaksh That's one of the reasons I outsourced myself to Mexico and adopted a lifestyle that works with a Mexican salary. Lol. ------ k__ Why? I wasn't running around begging companies to hire me, they came to me and asked if I'd work for them. ------ sabujp remote work should mean that software engineers should get payed exactly the same anywhere on earth. If they had to go through the same interview process to get a job and are literally doing the exact same job then they should be payed the same as a SWE in SV or NYC ~~~ SpicyLemonZest You can try paying software engineers exactly the same anywhere on Earth, but SV and NYC engineers generally won't work at "anywhere on Earth" prices. ------ mbrodersen Remote work means you can quit any time and get a better job. ------ ken And non-remote work means a virus already did. ------ elicash Remote Work Means Anyone Can Give You A Job ------ knorker … and you can take anyone's job. ------ huffmsa Means I can take anyone's job. ------ cameronbrown There's some serious irony that traditionally globalist brogrammer types are now whining about outsourcing (to "poorer" areas, or other countries). You guys didn't care when it was happened to blue collar workers, and then go and rag on Trump voters who didn't see any other way out. Then there's the other faction that doesn't understand basic economics and expects Bay Area pay from Bangladesh so they can live like a king. Your employer will pay the minimum they can. Salaries are only high right now because of the concentration of talent and cost of living. To those people, please, get over yourselves and stop thinking you're somehow better because you went to college or don't do manual labour. Edit: Wow. Downvote in five seconds. Really makes you think how much effort people are putting into processing the words I wrote. ~~~ syndacks Would be curious for you to expand on what you mean by "traditionally globalist brogrammer types." ~~~ cameronbrown It's a generalisation to be sure. But many programmers (from Silicon Valley in particular) or other middle class workers like finance, law, etc.. are in this weird bubble totally isolated from reality. The working class has been complaining about outsourcing for decades and I just find it hypocritical that this bubble is only just starting to complain because now it affects them with remote work. It's elitist attitude and my number one complaint about our industry. ~~~ y-c-o-m-b On the contrary - from my own anecdotal experience - programmers have been complaining about outsourcing forever. There was an especially strong distaste for it at Intel where outsourcing was more common. I've seen countless articles and opinions here on HackerNews outlining the tremendous loss of quality and productivity by outsourcing work over the years. Have you considered if you're the one living in the bubble? ------ blunte Oh the irony. ------ biolurker1 the way it should be right? ------ paucanosa2 good post ------ znpy this article is paywalled. ------ betimsl Very true for parasite employees. But to employees who actually work and have a basic understanding of self fulfillment, it means nothing more than environment change. ~~~ Lio “Parasite employees” is a somewhat unfortunate phrase. I would imagine that any employer who thinks of their staff like that is already outsourcing or planning to outsource anyway.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Forget Slack. Discord is the best messaging app I’ve ever used - lustless https://hackernoon.com/forget-slack-discord-is-the-best-messaging-app-ive-ever-used-9351a035069 ====== helen___keller I use Discord every day, and have for quite a while now. I'm going to be sad the day that years of my conversation history gets sold for several billion dollars when Amazon or Google acquires them. ~~~ lustless I really hope that doesn't happen. They have such a good product, and looks like they are trying to compete with Steam with their games library. I feel like they should consider also making a side product for messaging though. People are ditching Facebook Messenger and even Slack for Discord.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Hacker 4Chan Is at It Again - voynich61 http://boards.4chan.org/g/thread/52680526 ====== Tiksi _> Show HN: webapp that does something desktop programs did in 1996 while turning your laptop fan into a jet engine. Only works in Chrome nightly._ _> We left X framework and rewrote our app on Y and saw a 0.0005% increase in performance and why you should too. (blogspam.com) 324 points \| 120 comments_ _> Why the bubble doesn't exists because my startup delivers sandwiches on aws (medium.com)_ Definitely having a good laugh here. I've always wondered how big the overlap between HN and /g/ is. ------ api Fairly accurate but missing the is it a bubble is it not a bubble merry go round. ------ iKlsR > _The new hip language that solves all concurrent bigdata: RustScript on > Rails._ > _I posted this last week and no one gave a fuck._ > _Why I quit my job, shot my dog, and left my wife for JavaScript._ ------ vatotemking A Photo Lib I Made That Happens to Use Photos of Emma Watson and How Oversensitive is Everyone and Now I'm a Sexist Chauvinistic Pig. ( 200 points \| 404 comments ) ------ zer00eyz hackernews on 4chan on hackernews... navel gazing at its finest ------ subliminalpanda Had a chuckle ------ nullundefined Haha, I love it. They nailed it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019) - maxbaines https://aeon.co/ideas/an-ant-colony-has-memories-that-its-individual-members-dont-have ====== peter_retief We are all colonies of creatures, really interesting book written 100 years ago called the "Soul of the Ant" by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Marais](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Marais) ------ SupplyChainGuy Working in Industrial Automation has given me alot of respect to ants. While I was interning at Tesla a few years back, it amazed me how 'no one person' understood the massive operations of building the model 3, but together (along with our 1000's of suppliers) we were able to make extremely advanced technology. Essentially, humans are just a more advanced version of ants. No one understands the vast amount of knowledge we've gathered, but this knowledge has allowed us to be able to sustain our vastly growing population numbers. Without this 'specialization of knowledge' or given some apocalyptic scenario, our ability to sustain our numbers would drastically decrease. ------ ckastner > _Foraging in a harvester ant colony requires some individual ant memory. The > ants search for scattered seeds and do not use pheromone signals [...]_ This was surprising to me. Until now, I was under the impression that all ants used pheromones, which leads to coordination not with each other but through the environment [1]. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy) ------ linhchi More impressive is the slime molds, since they are not even animated as ants [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brainless- slime-m...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brainless-slime-molds/) ------ phil9987 This reminds me a lot of multi agent systems in computer science. A very exciting concept which is aiming to provide a framework for distributed artificial intelligence: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemical- engineering/mu...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemical- engineering/multi-agent-systems) ------ Vagantem Kurzgesagt has a couple of amazing short videos on ants: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_e0CA_nhaE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_e0CA_nhaE) ------ phyzome « Colonies live for 20-30 years, the lifetime of the single queen who produces all the ants, but individual ants live at most a year. » Individual ants... except for the queen. How likely is it that the _queen_ is acting as the memory of the colony? (I don't think this is actually the answer—I agree that it's more likely that the memories are being held in the collective—but it has to be ruled out somehow.) ------ fermenflo > It searches until it finds a seed, then goes back to the trail, maybe using > the angle of the sunlight as a guide, to return to the nest, following the > stream of outgoing foragers. I remember reading that ants counted steps to find their way home. Perhaps I'm remembering incorrectly or maybe it was false? Either way, cool article. Emergence is a cool property that shows up everywhere! ------ awinter-py see also this 2014 article on consciousness in 'rather dumb group entities' including 'antheads' [https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/USAconscious...](https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/USAconscious-140721.pdf) ------ _0ffh Another nail in the coffin of the Chinese Room. I hope we can finally bury that misconceived argument soon. ------ antsoul Eugène N. Marais - The Soul of the White Ant (1937) [http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/Marais1/whiteantToC...](http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/Marais1/whiteantToC.html) ------ bayesian_horse For a few years now I am wondering if ant colonies do something like portfolio optimizing, as in how many ants to send to which food location, depending on risk and reward. I'd guess they do. But I haven't figured out a way to prove/show that yet. ------ shusson I wonder if individual members ever make decisions against the ant colony. For example if the ant colony as a whole discriminates a certain group of ants, will those ants simply obey? Basically are there rebel ants? ~~~ Pigo An interesting aspect to me is that a collective intelligence can easily create a diffusion of responsibility. It's a lot easier to kill or give into base impulses when the blame is shared by the whole. Bees and ants don't tolerate nonconformity, they'll kill a queen if she's not filling her role. I didn't enjoy To Kill a Mockingbird, but I think it's good for kids to read it. ------ mmrezaie Comparing this to ant colony algorithms and considering ant colony as a network of actors; Can we analytically measure how much more information the network has compared to the aggregation of the individual entities in the network? ------ ThomPete Just like your individual neurons dont understand Chinese :) ------ chaoticmass I feel like this is tangentially related: [https://wiki.c2.com/?TheFiveMonkeys](https://wiki.c2.com/?TheFiveMonkeys) ------ yayr The novel "Children of time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky imho greatly picks up this notion among others, highly recommended read ------ avodonosov probably the same analogies can be drawn for human society ------ superMayo But are ants Turing complete ? ~~~ samcodes A simplified model of ants are Turing complete (the colony, not the ants) [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-59496-5_343](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-59496-5_343) ------ dondawest The title is extremely sensationalistic, Occam’s razor points to undetectable(by humans) scent trails that lead the ants to the same harvesting locations every year. There are no revelations about memory or collective consciousness to be found in this article. Every Occam in the world would infer human-undetectable scent trails from the evidence presented here, not some cosmic revelation about “how memory works” like the title and first paragraphs of the article heavily imply. @pg @dang this title and article in general is outrageously misleading. ~~~ jhedwards This reminds me of some conversations I've been having with a friend of mine who is skeptical of "emergence" (or at least the way it is often described). After going over the problem with him for a while I eventually was convinced that emergence is not "more than" the sum of the parts, emergence is _precisely_ the sum of its parts. Ants produce these higher level patterns not because there's some magical thing that "emerges", but because they are precisely evolved to coordinate with each other to create those patterns. ------ jriddle567 the internet has paths that its individual routers don't understand ;-) ------ asplake For a sci-fi take on this, Children of Time and Children of Ruin, Adrian Tchaikovsky ~~~ fho Just to elaborate (mild spoilers): At some point in the _Children of Time_ book, ant colonies become domesticated and are cultivated into general computation "devices". I definitely recommend the first book, but have yet to finish the second one. ~~~ shostack Second one has a different vibe, but I also enjoyed it. The author has a great way of helping you understand the different senses and intelligence of the different species. ------ gowld wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony_optimization_algorithms ------ arnoooooo I recommend looking up Donald Hoffman's theory of conscious agents. He proposes that all sentient beings are networks of conscious agents, the simplest conscious agent being binary (it has a world, and can only act in two ways). Any composition of conscious agents is itself a conscious agent. Interestingly, "the world" of each conscious agent might be only other conscious agents. ~~~ htwerwe34234 This notion of the 'self' is "standard" in Dharmic traditions, and has been for over two millennia. Then again it remains very fashionable to steal ancient ideas from East and market them as "brand new" genius inventions of Westerners. The amount of uncited plagiarism that occurs in this manner is quite simply astonishing. ~~~ Erlich_Bachman The tone and the emotional message of your post though is not at all in the spirit of Dharmic traditions. What is "stealing" in a world where everything is one and the conscious universe is trying to understand itself in the best way? Why would it assign negative connotation to copying information, if that information is in fact truthful!? ------ ggm Doesn't Hofstadter have a rap about ant colony consciousness? ------ nathias read GEB ------ tobinfricke Reminds me of the "Tradition is smarter than you are" article that was posted here a few days ago. [http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/08/tradition-is- smar...](http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/08/tradition-is-smarter-than- you-are.html) ~~~ wsc981 Both this article and the one you linked reminded me also of what Nassim Nicholas Taleb described in "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority" [0]. _> The main idea behind complex systems is that the ensemble behaves in way not predicted by the components. The interactions matter more than the nature of the units. Studying individual ants will never (one can safely say never for most such situations), never give us an idea on how the ant colony operates. For that, one needs to understand an ant colony as an ant colony, no less, no more, not a collection of ants. This is called an “emergent” property of the whole, by which parts and whole differ because what matters is the interactions between such parts. And interactions can obey very simple rules. The rule we discuss in this chapter is the minority rule._ _> The best example I know that gives insights into the functioning of a complex system is with the following situation. It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority. If it seems absurd, it is because our scientific intuitions aren’t calibrated for that (fughedabout scientific and academic intuitions and snap judgments; they don’t work and your standard intellectualization fails with complex systems, though not your grandmothers’ wisdom)._ Of course in this context the grandmothers' wisdom is tradition in some way, as this is passed down by generations. Same as many practices in religion, some of which that might have been useful at some time (like not eating pig meat, because one would get sick quicker as pigs might eat anything they would find). I live in Thailand and my girlfriend is Buddhist. Often I just go with the flow with regards to Buddhist practices, even as a non-believer, cause there might be some real use for these practices that I don't understand as a non- believer. At the very least it will make the Thai people in our village accept me more whenever they see me doing the same actions as my girlfriend at our local temple (burn incense, "pray" to some statue, etc...). \--- [0]: [https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the- dict...](https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship- of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15) ~~~ Psyladine >The interactions matter more than the nature of the units. Studying individual ants will never (one can safely say never for most such situations), never give us an idea on how the ant colony operates. For that, one needs to understand an ant colony as an ant colony, no less, no more, not a collection of ants. This is called an “emergent” property of the whole, by which parts and whole differ because what matters is the interactions between such parts. And interactions can obey very simple rules. I wish Taleb would give more on identifying & learning on a systems wide approach. For abstractions and "less than obvious" spheres this becomes difficult to separate the forest from the tree, or is the forest the system, or the genera of the plant in question, or its bordering systems, etc... behaviors and patterns which are emergent only at the individual level make '10,000 foot views' harder to perceive, let alone examine and extrapolate from "obey very simple rules" ~~~ K0SM0S I really appreciate Taleb's ideas in general, but this one strikes me as emotionally-driven, vastly more "intuitive" than substantiated. It's a like a world chess master or NBA player telling others "play _better! "_ — what Taleb means here, imho, is that too many scientists fail to propose models that fits his mathematical perception, his world view, but if it were that simple, he'd have a book called "system thinking". He touches a lot on how he views things, so you can infer a lot of his mental framework from reading e.g. the Black Swan or Antifragile — both great in their own respect. But simple rules on this topic, that would/will be groundbreaking. I honestly pride myself as a "transdisciplinary" mind (which comes with a lot of "imposter-of-all-trades" syndrom, but meh, it's also humbling to realize the path to knowledge may not be the most rewarding short-term path). Taleb is one of those relatively "wide" minds, he's able to speak with substance on a lot of domains, but like many abstract thinkers I think he displays a lot of the casualness towards the difficulty of actual implementation. It's great to talk about systems but the reality is often about refactoring horrible codebases and if it works you'd rather spend more money on the actual mission that making things and concepts prettier. Even, especially at the edge. My 2 cts obviously. TL;DR, I wouldn't look much into it. It's one of those things we only hear because who says it is famous, not because there's so much velocity to the idea. ------ zzo38computer I think something similar has been suggested in the book called Godel,Escher,Bach. ~~~ ragebol Was thinking the same thing, that is the character 'Aunt Hillary', which is an ant hill. In the Dutch translation (which I read years ago) she's called 'Myra Hoop'. Funny how those translation still make sense, same as in the Harry Potter universe where the names even have to be anagrams. ~~~ tgvaughan It's not an accident: Hofstadter and the translators put a lot of work into preserving the wordplay across translations. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach#Tra...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach#Translation) ------ hachibu I wonder if this could be used as an argument for Panpsychism? ~~~ uoaei I'm trying to figure out a way to incorporate this notion of hierarchical life into panpsychism and the "global brain" hypothesis. (Disclaimer: I'm already sold on and a proponent of the theory of panpsychism.) It seems more and more to me like this hierarchy goes all the way up (to the single superorganism that is the universe) and all the way down (to the presence or absence of fermions in particular states, inducing a duality and thus a basis of computation via the Pauli exclusion principle). If this hierarchy is consistent across all scales, then we can conclude that if consciousness exists at one level then it exists at all levels. Sentience/awareness is a different question, mind you, and "memories" are associated with awareness of past events. I'm also starting to believe that "consciousness" in terms of directed will doesn't truly exist, and that only "experience" exists. The rest (wants, desires, opinions, will) are electrochemical reactions which respond to local changes in the environment, although we experience them as much more than that for ultimately self- (and macrosystem-)serving reasons. These electrochemical reactions are present because they have over time become more important in the processes necessary for the propagation of whatever they're supporting. This is all very vague and hand-wavy but this article on the thermodynamic theory of life might be clearer [1]. In the discussion yesterday about this topic on HN I brought up the example of ant colonies [2] in an attempt to spur discussion in this direction. [1] [https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics- theory-o...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-of- the-origin-of-life-20140122) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22047653](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22047653) ~~~ hachibu Oh wow, thanks for the great reply. I didn't think anyone would respond. I'm going to dig into the links. Do you have any other suggested reading? ~~~ uoaei I'd suggest, if you're already receptive to these concepts, to delve into Buddhist/Zen Buddhist/Taoist literature in addition to the more cerebral (pun?!) stuff out there. They're basically saying the same thing, albeit with much different language and framing. In particular the notions of interdependence, sunyata (my personal favorite idea/concept ever), and duality(ies). Beyond that, unfortunately most of my exposure to the ideas related to panpsychism come in fits and bursts, and usually pieces which aren't about panpsychism inspire my ponderance more. Subjects include: animal consciousness/experience; the apparent intelligence of complex systems, whether man-made or independently-arising; autonomic, pre-conscious behavior in humans; computational theory, especially in physical systems; emergence and complexity writ large; complex adaptive systems in general. Unfortunately I haven't done a lot of seeking out books on this topic. Nautilus and Aeon magazines (the latter is linked in OP) have thought- provoking stuff which touch on these topics more often than you'd think. ------ lopmotr The safe existence of corporations suggests to me that the popular fear of AGI taking over and destroying humans is unrealistic. Corporations are like giant powerful AGI machines with the single purpose of making money for their shareholders no matter the consequences. They do become a dangerous threat to humans if left unchecked but we've developed systems to keep them under control. ~~~ salawat >Corporations are like giant powerful AGI machines with the single purpose of making money for their shareholders no matter the consequences. That is patently wrong. A corporation exists to distribute risk, and acommplish a task, ideally in a way that creates value for backers, but it is not a given that all profit creating avenues of behavior are desired or worth the egregious cost in negative externalities, or even that a corporation _must_ generate profit. And unfortunately those control mechanisms you mention seem to be failing with alarming regularity due to regulatory capture. ~~~ simiones > it is not a given that [...] a corporation must generate profit I think that you are technically right, in that there can exist not-for-profit corporations. But for-profit corporations, which is what most people think about when they say "corporation" are generally legally required to put profit above any other value, assuming they are operating legally. I completely agree with you that this is not a necessary way of organizing human society, and we are seeing more and more that the current for-profit system is disastrous for the environment and for society in general - especially given the inefficiency of regulation that you also mention. ~~~ notahacker > But for-profit corporations, which is what most people think about when they > say "corporation" are generally legally required to put profit above any > other value, assuming they are operating legally. No they aren't. They do have a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of shareholders, which means not taking actions which are unexpected and obviously harmful to other shareholders like paying all the company's revenues to another company wholly owned by the CEO. But that duty to shareholders actually even _obligates_ them to take into account factors other than profit, whether that's mitigating risks or abiding by a shareholder resolution to follow a 'socially responsible' business practice that costs them a lot of profit, and management absolutely also has enough discretion to choose to design and follow its own 'socially responsible' business practices or decline to enter a profitable sector they don't want to involve themselves in. No executive has ever been penalised for not putting profit above any other value. Companies pursuit of profit is much less driven by legal obligation and much more driven by the fact that greater profitability tends to generate greater returns to the management as well as the shareholders. ------ mFixman Yesterday there was a link in HN regarding artificial intelligence, and a user raised an interesting question: if a ML algorithm can be considered conscious, could a group of people doing the equivalent calculations by hand be the same? I think that ant example answers that question with a strong "yes". ~~~ jbotz Here is an even more interesting question: if an ML algorithm can be considered conscious, do you even need to "run" it (whether on a computer or by a "group of people doing calculations by hand") for that consciousness to exist? An algorithm is fully deterministic... it will always produce the same result, always "think the same thoughts" given the same input. So where is the consciousness, in the execution, or in the algorithm? Think of Conway's Game of Life, which has been shown to be turing-complete. The various "creatures" that exist in its worlds exist even without the program being run. We run the program only to observe them... the execution is for the external observer's benefit, the creatures exist in the "mathematical space" of the cellular automaton, not on the computer where the simulation is run. If an algorithm can be conscious, then so can one of this game's creatures, and its consciousness will be observing and interacting with the Game's mathematical reality, which will seem quite physical to that creature even without ever being simulated on any "physical" (to us) hardware. Maybe all of existence is like that, no? There are people who say that maybe our Universe is a simulation. I say sure, but it doesn't need to be "running" on anything... it just exists because the rules it follows exist mathematically. It does get simulated, to an approximation however... inside our conscious observation of it! The Universe "exists" mathematically, but a subset of it "runs" in the brains of the observers to which it gives rise... it is the ultimate strange loop, forever eating its own tail. ~~~ visarga > An algorithm is fully deterministic... it will always produce the same > result, always "think the same thoughts" given the same input. Well, these are not just algorithms, they are actual agents. So they are embodied and embedded in the environment. Each action or movement can change the information that this algorithm learns from. So different previous experiences mean different agents. Also, the learning process is reliant on noise, and this can cause different outcomes. You would have to reproduce the whole environment in order to get to a situation that an agent will produce the same results given the same input. Also, laws of physics are like a fixed algorithm our brains run on. > So where is the consciousness, in the execution, or in the algorithm? Consciousness is in the triad formed of environment, agent and reward signals. It's a continuous loop of perception, judgement and action, followed by observing the reward signals. The purpose of this loop, for biological agents, is self reproduction - so it is a self reliant ultimate purpose, it needs no external purpose except this one. ------ anonytrary > Ants use the rate at which they meet and smell other ants, or the chemicals > deposited by other ants, to decide what to do next. A neuron uses the rate > at which it is stimulated by other neurons to decide whether to fire. In > both cases, memory arises from changes in how ants or neurons connect and > stimulate each other. Main takeaway, very interesting analogy. Ant colonies are great examples of complex systems with emergent large-scale behavior. Indeed the same could be said about networks of neurons. Interesting to think of an ant colony as the sum of oscillations of signals. > Every morning, the shape of the colony’s foraging area changes, like an > amoeba that expands and contracts. Sounds like an emergent macroscopic "heartbeat" of the colony. > In an older, larger colony, each ant has more ants to meet than in a > younger, smaller one, and the outcome is a more stable dynamic. It makes sense that small perturbations would temporarily morph the heartbeat, but would probably snap back into the default oscillation pretty quickly. It would be interesting to see if a small colony is equally resilient to small perturbations as a large colony is to large perturbations, keeping some adjusted ratio of the perturbationSize/colonySize constant. > individual ants live at most a year. This comes as a surprise to me. ~~~ hansbo > Main takeaway, very interesting analogy. Ant colonies are great examples of > complex systems with emergent large-scale behavior. Indeed the same could be > said about networks of neurons. Interesting to think of an ant colony as the > sum of oscillations of signals. Indeed. I've long thought that an ant colony should be seen as a single individual, rather than a group. One part which can procreate, like the reproductive system. Another which can fight off invaders, like white blood cells, or perhaps muscles. The anthill, in turn, is like a body; constructed by the cells and neurons, and protecting the system as a whole. ~~~ koonsolo I was going to say you can also look at a country like this, with roads as veins, military as white blood cells, scientists/universities for brains, etc. But my theory falls apart with the reproduction system. We don't really reproduce other 'countries'. While with ant colonies, a single entity produces all the "cells", and also all the "embryos" to start their own ant colonies. In that sense an ant colony uses asexual reproduction if looked at as a whole. Thanks for the new insights! :) ~~~ dragonwriter > But my theory falls apart with the reproduction system. We don't really > reproduce other 'countries'. Sure we do. The UK has a whole lot of offspring, for instance. ~~~ yesbabyyes Offspring, perhaps. But kidnapping is not reproduction. ~~~ dibujaron I'd say it's reproduction, it's just not voluntary reproduction. Every time a culture invades another, you can think of it as creating a new culture that has the "genes" of the previous two. Examples include the influence of the moors on Spain, the changes to the English language due to the Norman conquest, and the modern unique Afrikaner culture of South Africa. ~~~ hutzlibu I'd say it is a mix. Partly reproduction, partly conquering. As usual the place is not empty.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Graphtreon – Follow the progress of Patreon campaigns - countdownnet http://graphtreon.com/ ====== mwill I had no idea how much money was getting pushed through Patreon until now, wow.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Gephi 0.9 announced, coming this December - mbastian https://gephi.wordpress.com/2015/11/02/announcing-gephi-0-9-release-date/ ====== mightyhops This is exciting! Fixes to Java and Mac OS X compatibility will probably let me drop Java 6 from my machine. And the new Gephi core comes with timestamp support, new GEXF, multi-graphs, and (eventually) a new Toolkit! It's been a long wait, but December 20th will be an early Christmas.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Polycraft - A WebGL 3D tower defence game - jamesaustin http://ga.me/polycraft ====== orthecreedence This game (like everyone else is saying) is technically and visually impressive. My advice for this game: drop the up-front PAY US LOL bullshit. Don't make people click through 18 menus to play the game. Drop the stupid achievements: "You clicked exactly where we told you to! Here's a diamond!" just isn't doing it for me. Let people start right away by building a town. No weapons, no build restrictions. _THEN_ once people have something to protect, start laying on the "That's a nice little town you've got there. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it." Town under attack? Need a new tower _fast_? One dollar won't kill you. Not that I ever play any F2P games (ever), so take this with a grain of salt, but suck people in and give them a reason to pay you. Everyone likes games where they build stuff. Now make them pay to fight entropy... but you've got to get them building _right away_ , because I lost interest pretty fast. ------ Deestan Technically impressive, but the shoddy F2P kills the game. If the game is tedious and boring without burning premium currency, you've failed at F2P. ------ donpdonp The technology is impressive - it felt responsive and looked decently detailed. I stopped playing almost immediately though once every action had a slot-machine audio/video feedback to it. Its straight out of any Zynga game and it reduces gameplay to 'push button A' 'go to location B' 'repeat'. I was hoping for "Torchlight on the web" but got "Farmville in WebGL". ------ willvarfar Why is this special? What a horrid user-experience trying to actually get to the game though. Everyone wanting to be wowed by webGL can go browse the latest crop of Ludum Dare entries instead. ------ yamalight pretty impressive visuals. it seems like running something like Torchlight in browser will be pretty simple soon enough. the game itself is still just another boring f2p cow clicker though :\ ~~~ 10098 Well, to be fair, it looks more like an N64 game or one of those early 3D games for SNES (Star Fox?). After reading the comments, I was expecting something more like this: [http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/05/Torchlight-2-8.jpg](http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/05/Torchlight-2-8.jpg). I was slightly disappointed. ~~~ yamalight well, it could've looked like this, I don't see why not. I was speking more about poly count, rather than textures and their quality. I think they just didn't cared/had time (or artists) to do pretty textures. ------ Yuioup Technically wonderful but man do we have to have achievements all over the place? What is moving your mouse pointer and clicking an achievement now? ------ TwistedWeasel When will we reach a point where the use of WebGL is no longer a headlining feature? WebGL is cool and all but I have never wanted to play a game based on the current coolness factor of it's underlying technology. Games should be about fun. I'm interested in WebGL but i'd rather be seeing links to posts about how people use it and how they performance tune it than just links to games built with it. I don't learn anything from just playing it. ------ nakovet I have the impression that many games are way more expensive nowadays because of this special currency business model. I usually would buy a game in a range between 20-60$ but those pay-for-my-currency games have packages between 2-100$ and if you are really addicted the 100$ one won't last a month, at the end I don't buy anything, when sometimes the game is awesome, I buy a package to "support" the company. ------ raphar Is there any blog or article by the authors with a behind the scenes description of the game? (team or solo, artist, technologies, infrastructure, ...) The game is nice but I prefer reading about those as I see a lot going on the tech side. ~~~ benvio Yeah, we post a fair amount of high level development stuff on wonderstruckgames.com ------ benvio Gameplay trailer here: youtube.com/watch?v=pSDp5srTgrA ------ gotofritz looks nice - haven't got far enough to see the tower defence side of it though ~~~ jerguismi I was also too lazy to get there, but I got far enough to see their business model... ~~~ hobs Yeah it seems quite nice, but as soon as I started putting down buildings and it was like "Hey this is how you unwait, by paying us!" and I still hadnt gotten to the actual gameplay I knew this top down toucher was gonna be a problem. ------ kunil That is quite awesome! I am not a fan of pay2win though. Also nice domain.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why an American went to Cuba for cancer care - jackgavigan http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-39640165 ====== dmoy Honestly and pleasently surprised that this wasn't an article where the answer was just "they went to [other country] because it was cheaper". ~~~ Neliquat Why? Is to avoid regulations somehow better? Just curious of the basis of that value judgement. ~~~ tim333 She went to Cuba to get a drug developed in Cuba. That's more interesting than just cheaper. ------ yummybits Let me guess, because America's health care system is a fucking disaster? and only the 1 percent can afford it? ~~~ newdayrising That's simply not true. The middle and upper class can largely afford insurance. If you consider how much people (in countries that offer universal healthcare) pay in taxes, the difference diminshes. ------ savvyraccoon [http://www.breitbart.com/national- security/2017/04/06/venezu...](http://www.breitbart.com/national- security/2017/04/06/venezuelan-cancer-patients-protest-painful-side-effects- of-low-quality-cuban-drugs/) ~~~ grzm Providing sources is great. It would be really helpful if you also provide some context as to why you're including it here. ------ fuzzythinker "I'm basically a very honest person, but if I have to, I will lie." Very honest indeed. ~~~ Broken_Hippo I have never met someone that didn't lie occasionally. Most are just basically honest. And that's ok. There is no point in telling a 5 year old that their picture sucks, for example. You might not say it is your favorite, sure, but you won't be telling them it is garish in color or that you can't even tell it is a doggy. In her situation, she's freaking dying. She sees a chance at life, and she has to lie to do it? Yeah, she's still basically a very honest person, much like the person not being mean to the 5 year old.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Interview: Reginald Braithwaite (aka raganwald) on Rewrite - luckystrike http://www.infoq.com/interviews/Rewrite-Reginald-Braithwaite ====== michael_dorfman Well done, Raganwald ~~~ raganwald Thank you.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Introducing F: Secure Distributed Programming with Value-Dependent Types - buro9 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/?id=141708 ====== buro9 Warning for those downloading the PDF on that page, it's 1.6MB. There is also a compiler project here: <http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/projects/fstar/> And you can try out F (by validating code) on the web here: <http://rise4fun.com/FStar> And for anyone who has noticed my submissions in the last couple of days, I'm basically reading my way through the SIGPLAN papers for ICFP 2011 and picking out interesting things that others might like too: <http://www.icfpconference.org/icfp2011/accepted.html> ~~~ wladimir It seems that Microsoft is doing extremely interesting fundamental CS research (especially into automated verification/program correctness/security) these days. I'm enthusiastic about it, though I somehow fear the end result will at most be some expensive proprietary extension to Visual Studio only targeting .NET instead of an open implementation benefiting everyone. ~~~ acangiano > I somehow fear the end result will at most be some expensive proprietary > extension That hasn't been the case with their research, so far. See F#'s download page for an example: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/cambridge/projects/fs...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/cambridge/projects/fsharp/release.aspx) ~~~ wladimir Pretty cool. From that page they even provide instructions for Linux and Mac: <http://functional-variations.net/crossplatform/> . So the F# "source drop" is licensed under the Apache2 license? I guess I should give them the benefit of the doubt, it's just a bit difficult for me given their track record. ------ DanWaterworth Hmmm, they didn't verify the correctness of the translator or CLR? ~~~ hamidpalo If you verify the correctness of the CLR, by the same reasoning don't you have to verify the correctness of Windows as well? ~~~ DanWaterworth Yes, I hadn't thought of that. The point is that proving part of a process correct without proving correct the entire stack, is no guarantee that it does anything like what it's supposed to. ~~~ larsberg But, if you don't even try to prove part of a process correct, it's almost certainly wrong. See the excellent work that John Regehr's group is doing related to compiler and optimization verification/testing (<http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/research/> ), much of which has been talked about here. There are other folks who have successfully done formal verification of operating systems, device drivers, hardware design, etc. It's a big, hard problem, but we'll get to the "whole stack" eventually.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Recovered Mt. Gox Financials - nchuhoai https://docs.google.com/document/d/1miioFP1oFnLa8OQ1MZ91ABUDfLKY8X9KDGwz8Izjaa0/edit ====== eterm Look at the Salary row, this claims they were running an exchange handling hundreds of millions worth of assets with a salary that would be a struggle to hire an accountant, a developer, security consultant, or anyone else you'd need to successfully run an exchange at that size. If you believe this leak, take what you will from that. Edit: Just noticed the subcountractor payment, fair enough but it seems like every person who worked there was a subcontractor then. ~~~ DanBC > Just noticed the subcountractor payment, fair enough but it seems like every > person who worked there was a subcontractor then. Isn't that just a normal tax dodge? ~~~ toomuchtodo It really depends. If you dictate what needs to be done, but not how or when, that's usually legit. But if they're showing up at an office, have to follow your rules, etc, yes, its a tax dodge. ~~~ rjtavares Usually more of a labor law dodge than a tax dodge. ~~~ toomuchtodo Agreed, although you're usually trying to avoid paying your portion of payroll and unemployment taxes. ------ jontas To view the redacted content directly on the Scribd original, just put this in your URL bar and then press enter: javascript:$('.absimg').remove(); Edit: I noticed that when you paste the above text, chrome removes the "javascript:" part, so ensure it is present before hitting enter. ~~~ cmircea You could also paste that into the developer console. ~~~ jontas Yea, that's how I did it personally, but I figured the URL bar required less explanation for non-technical people. But you're right, on HN that was probably unnecessary. ------ mcphilip Previous discussion of this information from 13 hours ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7296183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7296183) ------ mbreese What are they doing with 3.6M in subcontractors and 3.3M in accountants/lawyers/consultants? Did they have just one employee at 105K? (I assume the CEO?). ~~~ efuquen yup, my thoughts exactly. super shady. ------ nchuhoai As shared by Mike Arrington, don't know anything about the validity of the data. ------ adrianwaj The big kahuna with the Mt Gox is whether 745,000 bitcoins have in fact gone missing, because whether that's true or not I suspect will change long-term institutional support for the coin. Having large swathes of currency held by unknown or malicious parties will sway investors. ------ ashray Wow, they just paid 105k in salaries in the last year? Now that explains all the gross incompetence. Subcontracting expenses... Not sure what that means.. ~~~ voxic11 Means everyone they hired they hired as a contractor rather then a employee. ------ pera And here you have the full untrimmed background image extracted directly from the pdf using the enterprise forensic tool _pdfimage_ : [http://i.imgur.com/7vDwvYp.png](http://i.imgur.com/7vDwvYp.png) "Gox styleguide" ? ------ mephi5t0 is there a line that says "Bonus: 400 mln"	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Decay of Twitter - bceskavich http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/conversation-smoosh-twitter-decay/412867/?single_page=true ====== benten10 I _really_ hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I'd rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells. I don't exaggerate when I say this: twitter has made me smarter. If I'm interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter. The conversations and the discussions not only make me feel like an insider, but make me explore the field in a much deeper level. Three of the fields that I have gotten 'into' because of twitter are Urban 'renewal' sort of projects (citylab, atlantic cities, etcetera), the book reviews circle, and a certain subfield of computer science I won't mention, because I'd probably be the only intersection of those fields. : P Sometimes, some people I follow tweet things I'd rather not hear. So I simply mute them. Done. (This is however NOT a apology for all the awful harassment that does happen) I cull my 'following' list to get to 300 people once every couple of months, so it doesn't get out of hand, and it's worked perfectly for me. I can catch up with pretty much everything that appears on my timeline. I Like twitter because it doesn't 'curate' my content for me. The day it decides to get rid of the 'everything' timeline will be the day the 'decay' begins. Perhaps my viewpoint is tainted, but in the past six years (that's how long I've been on it/using it), the number of twitter users has been growing (at least in terms of people I know), and their quality increasing. I realize harassment is still a huge issue, but despite that, Twitter is still a great community : ) ~~~ kafkaesque Why can't you follow the experts in that field via their site or their online communities? The depth of which they would go into their chosen subject would be much more enlightening, surely. It sounds like you just use Twitter to bookmark the links and "soundbites" experts say. How much depth can a conversation that only allows 140 characters per response relay? They are meant to be "soundbites", only telling part of a story. You could have easily gotten into those other areas via Google or following their conversations on their online communities, no? And yes, your viewpoint is tainted, because, as the article says, it hasn't added active US users in 2015. ~~~ benten10 Couple of responses: 0) Your arguments seem to be targeted at social media in general (eg. why I can't follow them on their sites, etc). Don't want to get into a conversation on benefits/disbenefits of social media 1) There was nothing in my comment to imply that my friends were from the U.S (they are not), but as I said, the user growth could be just for me. 2) >Why can't you follow the experts... Twitter IS their online community. As everyone has mentioned, it's like RSS, where everyone is, and they let me know when their 'communities' are updated. Because I wouldn't want to check a hundred sites every day. 3) A tweet is 140 characters. All large tweeters post texts as images to get over the limit. People often engage in multi-tweet conversation. The 140 char limit is useful there because twitter shows how many tweets the user has in the conversation. If you're not interested, you don't encounter a wall of text: you see a tweet, and then bail out. Subtlety is lost in 140 characters, but if both parties are looking for a fair conversation, they usually engage in multiple tweets. 4) I do indeed use twitter to bookmark. I also use twitter as RSS. And to get to know people I don't know and follow them too. As a public social media. You could also have Googled 'arguments for and against twitter' and be done with this entire thing, but you chose not to. : ) Twitter is a community, and that's what people are there for. ~~~ kafkaesque With regard to point 2, isn't this what newsletters are for or email notifications? I get notifications of sites I have subscribed to via email. I find it is still a very reliable and good source because my email lists are curated to suit my needs all in one place. I get payment notifications, site update notifications, and correspondences to varying lengths with people. It's pretty great, actually! As for point 3, text images seem like a poor way to digitise text, because it makes it very unsearchable and is prone to pixelation if you are writing a lot of it. It seems like a silly solution to something that was never a problem. Actually, I sense a hostility in your response that I sense in Twitter users often when I bring up things I don't agree with. I am not at all attacking you, but rather find the way users use Twitter interesting, because it is something I no longer do. I know every single point you have made because I was a Twitter user for about 4 years -- I deleted my account last year. Why would I Google arguments for and against Twitter when what I am interested is in your opinion? I would hate to put words in your mouth. ~~~ benten10 First para: I mention social network elsewhere. Give me group emails, with everyone replying to everyone else, and give me the ability to see only those emails that people I care about are sending, and give me a limit in the size of an individual emails so they don't get unwieldy, and you will have given me Twitter. Yupp, text images are a poor way to digitize text. They're way backwards. And twitter has awful, almost non-existent indexing/search. And the bullying/harassment issue is out of hand. I still get utility from following people I follow. I've been put in this position to defend twitter, and really man, I am not a particularly big twitter fanboy. It's a product that I enjoy using. I don't see a point in converting anyone ( I would, if it were MS vs Gmail argument). If you want to understand, just join in and follow people you aspire to be in conversations with. I follow popular professors, researchers, publications, celebs, etc, and I like it. You might too. That's all I can say. ------ DanBC Recently, within the past month, someone I follow either posted or retweeted a link to a survey about paracetamol use in accident and emergency departments in the Uk, and how it was about as effective as opiate meds for most people. Today there are stories on HN where that link would be relevant. I would have posted a link to the tweet, and a link to the study mentioned in the tweet. But Twitter's search is not good enough for this kind of thing. I have no way of finding this tweet apart from just ploughing through the twitter streams of the four or five people who might have posted / retweeted this link. Filtering trolls and harassers is still too hard. Controlling what's on my feed is a bit tricky. Some people post nonsense but retweet useful to me info. Others do the opposite - the stuff they tweet is useful but the stuff they retweet is nonsense. I have limited options, and I usually just unfollow. I'm ad tolerant, but the ads Twitter show me are always useless. The ads have zero relevance to me, my profile, my twitter stream, the people I follow, etc etc. I have no idea where Twitter gets information about me, but it doesn't seem to come from Twitter. ~~~ pmelendez > I'm ad tolerant, but the ads Twitter show me are always useless. The ads > have zero relevance to me I have actually thinking about this and some ideas come up. If you don't mind me asking... What would be your ideal non-introsive ads mechanism? Maybe a relevant mention to you on a recommended tweet? ~~~ DanBC Ads should allow me to opt out of any alcohol or gambling company's campaign. If the ad network is slurping all my data they should use that info to serve ads that have some relevance to me. I'm happy for stuff to end up in my twitter stream. I'm not happy for anything to sound like it's come from me, or has my endorsement or recommendation. ~~~ duggan I'd actually be ok with explicitly endorsing something if it's something I really like (and not get a revenue cut). The sort of product/services where I'm a "Net Promoter" 9-10. Could have a sort of "tinder for endorsements" built into the platform, refreshed once every week maybe, that lets companies request your endorsement for a particular ad/message. You flip through with an endorse/don't endorse (and some granularity around "I'll never endorse" this) and have that tied to a custom decay function where your endorsement expires and needs to be requested again. Maybe you have a paid sub to opt out of this system entirely. And for those who don't want to pay or endorse, ok, let's see if the other mechanisms are enough to support them too. ------ roymurdock Here's the author's thesis, buried in the last paragraph with "little data to support" it: _In the final paragraphs of this article, let me assert something I have very little data to support: At some point early last year, the standard knock against Twitter—which had long ceased to be “I don’t want to know what someone’s eating for lunch”—became “I don’t want everyone to see what I have to say.” The public knows about conversation smoosh, and that constitutes, I think, a major problem for Twitter the Company._ I don't think I agree with the author's conclusions about "conversation smoosh" causing the decay of Twitter. Would love to hear any rethinkings/clarifications of the author's points, as I found them near inscrutable due to the convoluted structure and logic of the article. ~~~ hissworks Yeah, this was a poorly constructed article. Lost me at: "To talk about Stewart’s theory, you have to first tackle the ideas of the 20th-century philosopher of media, Walter J. Ong." No, you really don't. That said, Twitter's never made it easy to digest its content. Sure there are lists, and now moments, but it's not always easy to find what you're looking for, and if you're not really careful about curating your own feed and follows reading twitter is like some sadist's idea of an exquisite corpse. It could be that people don't feel comfortable with everyone having access to what they have to say. It could also still be as simple as not really caring what other people have to say. ~~~ mikeg8 That was the same spot I lost interest as well. Way too verbose. ~~~ dennisnedry That's the problem I have with many of these articles, the journalists try to make use of their philosophy degrees and make nothing into something. ~~~ forgetsusername > _That 's the problem I have with many of these articles_ Perhaps Buzzfeed type listicles are more your speed then? Every time there's an article like this posted on HN, there's inevitably someone who posts, "Fewer words! More facts!" (Bonus points for you for getting in a dig about them useless Humanities!) A thesis isn't right or wrong; it's presented and supported. It's an idea. This is literary journalism. Some people, myself included, enjoy it. ~~~ alanh I enjoy long-form articles, but I still prefer the concise over the verbose. ------ omginternets Twitter is somewhat of a quantum state for me. It's a complete cesspool on the whole, but the academic community is absolutely outstanding. I follow @Neuro_Skeptic, @StanDehaene, @practiCalfMRI, @sensorimotorlab, @davidpoeppel, among many others, and they certainly seem to squeeze a lot of insight into 160 characters. In any case, everything I've been hearing relates to twitter not growing. I understand the pressure on investors, but as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't need to grow. The niche is saturated, and there's no problem, _per se_. ~~~ samsolomon I love Twitter, but the burden is on the user to make the experience—it's entirely dictated by who you follow. ~~~ drumdance That's a really good point. A friend of mine who wants to be a forensic pathologist follows a coroner who posts autopsy photos and asks people to guess the cause of death. She has something like 500k followers. It's amazing all the micro-celebrity that's possible, but as a user you have to know where to find it. ~~~ draugadrotten > a coroner who posts autopsy photos How is that even legal? __shudder __ ~~~ pjc50 Some jurisdictions may consider them to be "public records". ------ trymas Maybe it will seem as a dumb question, but how Twitter can be in the loss (in order of millions of US dollars) since day one, without (IMHO) clear path to profitability and not be bankrupt? It is growing, but it still has huge losses. Do investors believe it will be hugely profitable 5-10 years from now? Is this new normal in business? ~~~ johnward On top of that, what kind of revenue do the ads bring in? ~~~ simplicio They've done a good job upping revenue over the last few years (somewhere north of a billion dollars/yr in 2014). And, IMHO, done so without the resulting ads being too obtrusive. Their problem isn't that they can't make money. It's that their valuation means investors expect them to make a ridiculous amount of money. So all revenues are plowed back into R&D. ~~~ jessaustin That's a bit of an accounting smell, isn't it? Obviously Twitter should have _some_ costs other than R&D, like labor and servers. Even if we say the _rest_ is going to R&D, that's kind of a black box. It doesn't prove that they aren't simply recording reasonable recurring costs correctly while hiding bizarre business-killing recurring costs in R&D. ~~~ mikeyouse They're a publicly traded company with a "big-4" auditing firm to make sure that doesn't happen. The law is very clear on what counts as CapEx and OpEx. Obviously, companies occasionally outsmart (or team up with) their auditors to defraud the public, but the vast majority follow GAAP and succeed or fail on the merit of their business. ~~~ jessaustin It's OpEx either way, right? Ideally the firm would be able to point at x, y, and z innovative and profitable new services, and say _that 's_ why we spend so much on R&D. It's not clear to me that Twitter can do that. So, an investor would be justified in suspecting that not all R&D expenditures are valid. ------ 6stringmerc Well, I think the recent 'Favorites' to 'Like' change is a bad omen with structural and community reverberations that will be felt over time. It's a gut instinct, but when 'established' brands and formats like Twitter or Reddit jiggle with the cords, there's backlash - deserved or not. It's the danger of making a tool for 'mobs of people' if you're okay with calling a user base that. The "between a rock & hard place" I see happening is that the need to add new people tends to, well, bring out some bitterness from previous devotees. I saw it happen first-hand with Half-Life Deathmatch. Every patch that made significant changes (ex: tweaked splash damage, amount tau cannon could pierce walls, etc) seemed to favor getting more users to play the game, which did kind of breed a hostility from the 'old guard' to pillage, plunder, and destroy all the newcomers with abandon. After all, the changes were to make it easier, the learning curve smaller, and those who had made it to the next level(s) felt sold-out. It was a microcosm, and probably isn't too relevant, but it's about the best example I can think of that I witnessed first-hand. I'm sure a lot of people had the thought or joke in mind, but changing the 'Star' to a 'Heart' might be pretty awkward if the company ever has to tweet out an announcement of a round of layoffs. These are minor edits, sure...but remember when Coca-Cola changed the recipe? That didn't go over so well. ~~~ richard_mcp I disagree with the change being a bad thing. It makes more sense to like a tweet than favorite it. Both imply some sort of agreement with the tweet, but favoriting always seemed to imply something more to me. If your goal is to get more user interaction, "like" seems like the better option. As to user backlash, this happens with every change to a social media site and it almost always blows over. There's nothing out there to threaten Twitter's place and I doubt this has or is causing people to leave the platform. No one's going to drop it because there are now hearts instead of stars. ------ mschuster91 Twitter has fallen victim to the advertising plague hitting a boatload of other websites. Offer your users a cheap way to opt out of ads (1$ a month) and you'll make far more money than you could ever do with ads. ~~~ dspillett I very much doubt that will work. People will just install ad blockers instead. You'd be surprised what lengths many people will go to in order to avoid spending even $1. It isn't poor people either: in my experience the well-off who have time on their hands because they aren't busy living hand-to- mouth are more likely to spend a pile of their time instead of giving you that $. ~~~ pmlnr Adblockers don't work on paid articles or on tweets looking exactly like other tweets. ~~~ dspillett Oh there will be some way of identifying them, surely? If they are from people you have actively chosen to follow then the source isn't twitter anyway and you can just unfollow those users if you don't like what they post. If they are extra items in your display then there will likely be some marker to pick up on. Even if not then someone somewhere will start a service where people can report advertising tweets so subsequent the plugin can remove those from the feeds of subsequent users who use the service... Or perhaps Bayesian filtering as used for email? Not perfect in either case but someone _will_ try and have at least some success. Of course if the paid posts are truly unidentifiable then presumably that look like they were posted/shared by someone they were not posted/shared by, in which case the service is completely untrustworthy and you should just stop using it because nothing it tells you na be relied upon. Caveat: I don't use twitter and aren't particularly likely to in future, so I have no particular axe to grind here but might misunderstand how things work. ~~~ sirkneeland They are identifiable, I believe they say "promoted tweet" in close proximity to said promoted tweet ~~~ mschuster91 Not inside apps though. Mobile adblockers can at least ban iframe'd content, but not promoted tweets. ------ olivermarks I wrote this about Twitter way back in 2010 on ZDNet [http://www.zdnet.com/article/twitter-tragedy-of-the- commons/](http://www.zdnet.com/article/twitter-tragedy-of-the-commons/) "As an information propagation device Twitter is peerless, but the Tragedy of the Commons - and in this case the commons is your time - is happening all over again. When multiple individuals acting independently behave only in their own self- interest they will ultimately deplete a shared but limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen, as happened in the original Tragedy of the Commons over land usage". Twitter never solved this problem and if you want to use it I'd suggest you have to spend a lot of time pruning who you follow and searching for people who are adding value to your life. Very time consuming.... ------ warcher I'm consistently disappointed at the (IMHO) mischaracterization of Twitter's woes by prominent writers. While I realize that they are experiencing some real stress, and yeah, it should get fixed, I think they're blind to Twitter's real problem. Simply put: twitter is, for those without an audience, a strictly one-way medium. There is no social network or medium that is less interactive to the relatively anonymous, save perhaps a standalone blog. You're shouting into the vacuum, which is disheartening and eventually people just stop and eat their tweets. The opposite of love is total indifference. I would argue that twitter is actively encouraging this one-way-ness, which is going to be their downfall, because Twitter as a feed aggregator is high-noise and feature-poor. All of my "suggested friends" on Facebook (who got this right) are people who might reasonably care about anything I have to say. All of my suggested follows on Twitter are people who could not give one single fuck. (It's ok, I forgive you just this once Elon Musk. I'm not tearing your poster off my wall or anything. Although you're missing out on a goldmine here.) It is a shame, because yet another news aggregator is _highly_ unnecessary at this point in time, but number of two-sided social networks of Twitter's scope you could count on the fingers of one hand. ------ luisjgomez Twitter might be having troubles as a public company, but this article has very little to say about it that's insightful. ~~~ avens19 This article was trash. If the author thinks that Twitter's main function is finding out what your friends ate for dinner then he's an idiot and doesn't use Twitter. Twitter's problem is exactly this. The general Internet population thinks it's like Facebook but less useful and with a character limit. They have a branding problem ~~~ themoonbus "If the author thinks that Twitter's main function is finding out what your friends ate for dinner..." ...except for the fact that he says the opposite in the article. ------ korisnik All the Twitter accounts I'd ever want to follow have fairly infrequent status updates so I just add them to my RSS reader and follow them that way instead of having to interact with Twitter's website or application in any way. ~~~ benten10 that's what I used to do, when google reader was still around. Twitter also removed direct RSS support for tweet feeds, and I did't like the hassle of having a third party in between. It'd be _really_ awesome if there was a tweet-ish open standard that anyone could implement, ala email or RSS (but supporting encrypted/password protected feeds). I feel like Google would be the perfect company to do it, but they decided they don't want to pander the nerds, and instead force G+ down our throats. (G+ I like. I just don't like how no one else is there) ~~~ johnward I love RSS but does the average person even know what it is? Sites don't even advertise RSS any more. I usually search the source for the link to it. ------ 13thLetter > We hang over each other’s heads, more and more heavily, self-appointed > swords of Damocles waiting with baited breath to strike. This is the key. Twitter has a serious problem with abuse, and it's not the abuse that's usually talked about. At any point, anything you say -- no matter how anodyne -- can be ripped out of context by someone with malevolent goals and then used to trigger a global outrage storm. This has resulted in death threats or people even losing their jobs. I wouldn't post on Twitter any more than I'd take a shortcut through a dark alley in a bad neighborhood in the middle of the night. Why take the risk? ------ hugh4 The only people who seem to be making money off twitter are journalists, who can now dash off a 1000-word "Thing trends on twitter" article in seven minutes without having to leave the office. ------ sdegutis > In other words, on Twitter, people say things that they think of as > ephemeral and chatty. Their utterances are then treated as unequivocal > political statements by people outside the conversation. This seems to point to the main problem of Twitter: it's not clear who your audience is. Are you talking to your friends? To your family? To people with similar interests? To people you're trying to convince to agree with you on some position? Who? It's too... _vague_ a medium to be useful for most kinds of communication. ~~~ SpaceManNabs You are completely right. In a sense, it is also what draws people to Twitter. There is a low barrier to entry if you want to make an account to just broadcast to your family, fans (if you are celebrity), advertise for companies, collect people for activism (whether political, economic, or social media activism), etc. Then again, there are probably better mediums for this. If you want to talk to your friends, why not use Facebook? If you want to advertise your art, why not go on tumblr or Soundcloud? Nowadays, the only Twitter accounts that seem to get much traffic are celebrities and companies (I am thinking particularly Twitch as I don't go on twitter much) advertising. ------ decisiveness > We hang over each other’s heads, more and more heavily, self-appointed > swords of Damocles waiting with baited breath to strike. Unfamiliar with Damocles [1], I had to look it up. It seems to be quite a vividly pertinent metaphor. The brevity with which statements are made on Twitter delivers shortcuts for others to react, acting as the single thread of the horses tail that holds the sword. [1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damocles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damocles) ------ jmadsen Seriously, a tech company that can't even shut off the stupid "While you were away..." feature when I tell them repeatedly I don't want to see it? That only lets you hide images, mute hashtags, etc on _mobile_ , not from a regular browser? Where every answer to "why doesn't this work normally?" is suggestions to go buy a third-party tool? Twitter is unfortunately "annoyingly useful" but I would love to see a different, open source solution gain decent traction ------ pmontra > At some point early last year, the standard knock against Twitter—which had > long ceased to be “I don’t want to know what someone’s eating for > lunch”—became “I don’t want everyone to see what I have to say.” That's always been the point with Twitter for me. There are very few things that I want to discuss in front of potentially every person in the world. I wonder why it took so long for people to realize it. Writing this here is not the same as writing on Twitter, different size. ------ edandersen Why don't they add a "no ads, no 'curation', no 'suggestions'" just "pure" timeline subscription model? ------ patsplat The original use of my twitter account was to serve as an SMS distribution link for online-gaming invites between a small group of friends. Presently it provides a less spammy equivalent to linked-in groups. Sort of like delicious in it's hey day. Discussing media theory is challenging. Something of the OP's point is demonstrated by personal example. But it's never a simple conversation. ------ JDiculous Twitter would be great without a 140 character limit. Impossible to put much substance in tweets. ~~~ Nadya "This is partially circumvented by 1/2" "chaining together multiple messages. 2/2" The best thing about having to keep things within 140 characters is that _everyone else_ has to keep things within 140 characters. If I wanted to read their blog - I'd go read their blog. If I wanted Twitter to be like Tumblr, I'd have a Tumblr. ------ wehadfun tldr? ~~~ cpeterso Looking for the 140 character summary of the article? ------ timrpeterson Meh, clickbait. ------ J_Darnley Burn baby burn. ~~~ sbierwagen Hey James. You post your PGP key ID and fingerprint in your profile, but a key ID is just the last eight digits of the fingerprint. ~~~ J_Darnley Thanks. I know that but it might help someone who hasn't realised it yet. I'm sure I've also read that some servers require the 0x prefix when searching by ID.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Amazon launches Prime Air, its own dedicated cargo planes to speed delivery - prostoalex https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/04/amazon-to-launch-prime-air-its-own-dedicated-cargo-planes-to-speed-delivery/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 ====== GuiA I can't remember if a friend working at Amazon told me this, or if I read it online. Supposedly, Amazon does tons of backend real world optimization on shipping. Say you, a SF resident, look at a book today on Amazon.com. Based on your past actions, Amazon knows very well how likely you are to purchase right away, or tomorrow, etc. Now imagine the book isn't in a warehouse close enough to you for prime, but Amazon's data tells them you are much more likely to buy it when you come back to Amazon tomorrow if Prime is offered. They'll ship the book to the warehouse in case you come back tomorrow to look at that book. Of course there's tons more modeling behind it to make sure they have very accurate estimates of the cost to pre emptively ship vs the payoff of you buying it, but that's the gist of it. That was a few years ago, and it blew my mind at the time to think of all the optimization you can do in shipping to individuals when you're working at scale. Amazon is more and more essentially running a CDN, but for the real world. ~~~ djhworld I find this hard to believe. But there a again, I don't collect patterns about my behaviour so it could be true. Sometimes I look at Amazon and then buy the product elsewhere, say if I spent 3 occasions over a few days looking at a product, does that breach some threshold somewhere for them to say "we have one on the hook, lets start moving this to a warehouse near him just in case" ~~~ ergothus I have no actual knowledge on the topic, but I presume it's not calculated on a purely individual level. If 100 people live within the range of the local distribution warehouse are interested in this book, and they say "this one is 87% likely to buy, this one is 43% likely to but..." they can work out a model that results in very few over-shippings. But again, I know nothing, other than thinking about it a bit when the patent app became known. ~~~ wojt_eu As a result a book about Computer Science would be pre-emptively shipped to a warehouse near SV and investment book about economy and shipped near NY. ~~~ Roritharr The patterns in this would be very exciting to know for people who are looking for their "tribe". It's actually something very hard to find out before moving somewhere thats not the Valley, what is the main intellectual focus of the region, is there none? I missed a lot in my own childhood and upbringing to have people in my environment that we're or we're in contact with people at the top of their field, having deeper understanding of something instead of just struggling at their level. ------ nostromo > [Amazon] plans to launch its first ever branded cargo plane, the Amazon One, > at Seattle’s SeaFair Air Show on Friday. The plane is a a Boeing 767-300 > operated by Atlas Air, an existing provider of air cargo services for > Amazon.com. Unless I'm missing something, the only new thing here is the paint on the plane. ~~~ dingaling > Unless I'm missing something, the only new thing here is the paint on the > plane. Amazon has committed to buy a 20% stake in Atlas with options to expand to 30% [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/atlas-air-grants-amazon- war...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/atlas-air-grants-amazon-warrants-to- buy-20-share-stake-as-part-of-air-cargo-services-deal-2016-05-05) ~~~ imroot The ownership stake in Atlas with Amazon is interesting to me. Amazon was contracting with Air Transport Services Group (Airborne Express/DHL US, for those keeping track at home) for flights into and out of Wilmington for an air sort program. Amazon must have crunched the numbers on what they were paying to FedEx and UPS and realized that they could lease planes for what they were paying for someone else to do the deliveries... 40 Aircraft pushing packages from one corner of the globe to another? This means that they can cut their logistics costs (or, alternatively, move them in house from an external vendor, giving them more control) and be able to fine- tune delivery. ------ throwanem Only tangentially related, but a useful thing to know about Amazon, and not something it seems a lot of people are aware of: If you have problems with a specific shipper Amazon uses, you can contact their customer support and request they deprioritize that carrier, which has the effect of weighting it to the bottom of the shipper selection algorithm. This does not guarantee they'll never be chosen, but it does make it very unlikely. In my own case, I had a lot of problems with Amazon's in-house fulfillment, which here in Baltimore is kind of a trash fire. (Prime Now is great. Amazon Fulfillment is not.) After an unbroken streak of erroneously failed deliveries, I spent an hour and a half on the phone with Amazon's support department, culminating in the discovery that carrier deprioritization is a thing that exists. Since it's been applied, Amazon Fulfillment has not been selected to deliver me a package, in contrast to its former high likelihood of selection. So this appears to be more than just placebo. Others have reported similar results. As far as I can tell, in order to obtain this benefit, you need to use the specific form of words: "carrier deprioritization", or something very close to it. The specific phrase I've heard them use is "carrier deprioritization", and it'll probably help if you call it that too; I had several representatives tell me there was nothing at all they could do, until I happened upon one who mentioned this phrase. Asking for it by name may save you a lot of time. If you've had persistent difficulty with a specific carrier, you can do worse than to get in touch with Amazon customer support and make this kind of request. Hope this helps! ~~~ kuschku You do realize you can just select the carrier on the order page? That's kinda the point of it. You get a bunch of radio buttons to select if you want to get stuff delivered via Hermes, DHL, DHL Express, Amazon Prime Now, UPS, etc. each with different prices. EDIT: Turns out that feature got removed several years ago. I wonder why. ~~~ germanier I suppose you talk about German Amazon? Because I don't get such a selection and never heard of anyone having one - only people complaining that Hermes lost their orders. On my order page I get to choose between Prime speed (with a "guaranteed" delivery date[1]) and standard delivery. Depending on the item they also offer express, early-morning or same-day delivery but that's about it. Nowhere on the page are specific carriers mentioned and for the same option different carriers are chosen (though I usually only use the Prime one). You can choose to have the package delivered to a drop-off location instead of your home. In that case you get to see the carrier before placing the order because they operate those shops. The only place I have ever seen a carrier selection is the return page where you usually (but not always) can choose between a Hermes and a DHL label. Just to satisfy my curiosity I'd like to see a screenshot of your order page. [1]: Which often was missed until I complained. Now it works magically. ~~~ kuschku The last time I ordered from Amazon was a few years ago, so they might have changed it - but I know pretty sure they had such a selection. ~~~ germanier I haven't seen that for the last 15+ years I use them, just people wishing that feature in online forums. Sometimes there is a reason people don't seem to notice an obvious feature in a software you haven't used for years ;) ------ LAMike Is Prime Air the Google Fiber of the shipping world? A way to put a fire under the ass of UPS and FedEx to get cheaper shipping rates so they can offer lower prices? ~~~ sytse I think it is more of an AWS, they'll replace most of UPS and FedEx with their own infrastructure that they'll open up to others later on. ~~~ gregpilling That would be nice - an alternative to the UPS FedEx duopoly. Maybe they can push the shipping rates lower than the evil twins set it at now. The two are doing about 100 billion in business, so it is a large market to go after. I have been shipping daily with both of them for a decade; it would be nice to have another choice with national coverage. [http://www.diffen.com/difference/FedEx_vs_UPS](http://www.diffen.com/difference/FedEx_vs_UPS) ~~~ widowlark I would hope that Amazon is introducing competition to UPS and FedEx - but its also possible that they are paving the way for a Vertically integrated Monopoly. Time will tell, I suppose. ------ manav My initial reaction was to question their growing levels of vertical integration, but their volume is so huge that they will probably rival UPS/Fedex if you included all of Amazons shipments across carriers. It would cost Amazon 40-50b to buy Fedex, probably twice as much for UPS. If they really plan to run their own fleet they probably have a plan beyond just doing Prime deliveries. ~~~ jonknee The beauty of it for Amazon is they only need to compete in their best markets. Pure shipping companies have to go everywhere, but Amazon has the luxury of doing its own delivery only where it is easy and outsourcing it to legacy shippers where it's not. For example, I could easily see Amazon delivering directly to large condo/apartment buildings in urban areas. ~~~ was_boring Only USPS ships everywhere. If you go to UPS/FedEx/DHL, they will tell you they ship everywhere and take your package, but if they deem your package not profitable enough they will hand it over to USPS. The shipping market is incredibly complex with USPS and FedEx actually being each other's largest customers. ~~~ kuschku DHL ships everywhere except for the US, where you're right, they do outsource shipping to the USPS. DHL used to have its own delivery network everywhere in the US, too, but they found it hard to compete. ~~~ was_boring You're right. I should have prefaced my comment as talking only about shipping in the US. ------ gdulli The more they innovate on shipping the more I commit to a set of values that doesn't include instant gratification or equating consumer possessions with happiness. A rule of thumb I use before buying something is, do I need it or want it so much that it's worth more effort to obtain than a few mouse clicks? If it took a week to ship and I can do without it for that long, can't I do without it altogether? If I need it sooner, can't I just go get it? I used to be a huge online shopper but I've rediscovered that going out into the world is not a chore and it's good to have excuses to do so. Freeing oneself from Amazon is even better than freeing oneself from Facebook. ~~~ k-mcgrady While I get your point here's a counter example. I needed a power adapter for a router urgently. I checked Amazon and they could deliver it by Prime the next day. I decided instead to go out into the real world and check first. I went to 3 different small electronics stores near my home - none of them had it. After an hour of searching/wasting my time I bought it on the Amazon app as I walked home. I think the point is - it depends where you live. These electronics stores were small places that doubled as internet cafés and were run by local people. I would have really had to go out of the way to find a Maplin/Radioshack/Best Buy kind of store. If I drove a car or lived near a mall I probably could have gotten the item easily but I live in a city and small locally run stores are much more common than chains which stock everything. It wasn't even that obscure an item but without wasting several hours and spending £6 on public transport Amazon was the only solution. ~~~ gdulli I still buy online sometimes when it makes the most sense to, as should anyone, but I think of it as an exception. What Amazon is doing and I'm commenting on is clearly aimed at promoting instant gratification and maximizing consumerism. ~~~ dpark > _aimed at promoting instant gratification and maximizing consumerism_ So it's a retail company. I feel like this statement applies to at least 99% of retail companies, likely including the ones you're shopping at instead of Amazon. ------ kev009 Amazon impresses me in solving the problems typical stuffed shirt business people try to run from. AWS is a great example of tech execution, but courier services are probably a more impressive accomplishment objectively speaking. Sustainability in business comes from being good at products and services you claim to provide. You can game your way up for a bit with good sales and marketing, but if you suck at execution of products and services, eventually you will suffer if someone else does marginally better. Charlatans violating this simple principle is one of the most frustrating things I've had to deal with in my career. ------ ChuckMcM _" The plane is a a Boeing 767-300 operated by Atlas Air, an existing provider of air cargo services for Amazon.com."_ So it seems a bit like they are announcing a paint job on a vendor's plane. However, the underlying story reminds me a bit about Sears & Roebuck. That retailer came to dominate the scene by innovating in the logistics of getting material and goods "most of the way" there so that ordering out of the "Sear's Catalog" could be just as good as going to the store. ------ 6stringmerc Interesting. I'd love to see Amazon detail how they plan to fuel hedge. It's a crazy market, to me, but totally fascinating so if they're that bonkers good with algos & tech, they might have statistically significant results! Well, in theory. I get the sense though they're not going to get to that point of direct-employment-purchase and keep things as a sub-contractor / flight supplier relationship (as noted elsewhere). ------ lutorm In the meantime, Prime seems to get less and less available for me here in HI. You go to a product that says "Prime", but then when you attempt to check out it says "actually, this can't be shipped to your destination". This only used to happen with large shipments, but lately it's been happening with small parts as well. It really makes me wonder when it will no longer be worth it to have Prime. ------ harigov Amazon's long-term play in this area seems to get clearer everyday. It will build services to retail what it has done for compute. They are building an operating system for a retail company. They provide the IT, management services, logistic services, marketing and advertising services. Eventually if 3D printing catches on, you can even get your stuff manufactured and sold using Amazon's services. ------ beinstein This article is pretty misleading. Amazon contracts a 3rd party logistics provider (who owns the aircraft). They've already been doing this for years. Only difference now is the plane is painted. A bit click-baity if you ask me. ------ losteverything A retired air mechanic told me this a while ago. We could not figure out why they need their own fleet (40 ish planes when they come off existing carriers) of so many planes ~~~ codeonfire Hubris. Amazon thinks they can do every other industry better than the status quo. Let's see what happens when Amazon tries to assign pilot scores and account for fuel by the liter. Amazon is going to have to deal with real unions now too. ~~~ liquidise Hubris? I can name off a number of industries Amazon has, nearly singlehandedly, disrupted: online retail, shipment subscriptions, low cost electronics, VPS web hosting, scalable database storage, transactional emails apis. And this is just off the cuff. I suspect the actual list is far longer. Amazon is not run by arrogant morons. You don't invest in Boeings with hubris. You invest after having crunched more numbers and built more models than we can realistically imagine. ~~~ codeonfire Yeah, well maybe there is a lot of slack that could be taken up in those other industries. Air transportation does not seem like one that needs disrupted or should be disrupted. The fact that it works at all is amazing. ------ brightball At what point does Amazon get into monopoly territory? ~~~ dmlittle Not a monopoly but Amazon Basics products are copies of Amazon's best selling products at a much cheaper price. This makes third-party vendor competition pretty harsh. I can buy a Rain Design mStand Laptop Stand for $40 or buy the Amazon clone for $20. ~~~ cdr The Amazon Basics items I've seen could be described as "the minimum acceptable". It's better than the typical Chinese junk, but anyone upmarket shouldn't have to worry. ~~~ sotojuan Then it was a genius idea. There's tons of awful, broken stuff for really cheap on Amazon. With basics you get something you can at least know it works and if not can complain to someone. ------ nickhalfasleep Just imagine if packages could drop out the back and be guided by image recognition and GPS to land on your porch. ------ dlmsites This is great for consumers, but has anyone considered the environmental cost of this? ~~~ freehunter Have _you_ considered the environmental cost? If so, what was your result? How much more/less damaging to the environment do you believe this will be? Sorry if I'm coming off a little harsh, but this is a pretty low-effort comment that doesn't actually add anything to the conversation. ~~~ placeybordeaux Yeah it sounded a bit like "Won't anyone think of the children?" ------ JanSt Amazon really is like the amazon river, branching out in so many areas that are still related with it, all the while improving the found methods and technology. ------ astrodust Maybe they could buy old B-52 bombers and convert them to drop laser-guided guided packages to their destinations. ------ elchief Wow, what an abysmal failure by UPS (or whoever does most of Amazon's shipping). You had one job. CEO should step down. He should have kept Bezos happy. Lowered rates. Lowered own costs. ~~~ elchief Just fucking delete me ~~~ astrodust They could do what, exactly? Slash their prices and run themselves into the ground? Who knows how much money Amazon is sinking into this venture and running it at a loss, hoping to make it up in other areas. There's no way "free shipping" isn't costing them a mountain of money, but they can just blend it into other operational costs. Logistics companies make _all_ their money on this stuff, they can't afford to subsidize. For FedEx to do Amazon a "favor" by matching prices is suicidal. It sucks they lost the business but there's nothing they can do.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Trying to Solve the L.E.D. Quandary - ohjeez http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/trying-to-solve-the-l-e-d-quandary?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email ====== pipio21 Quandary? As a market matures, new markets appear. When LEDs become so cheap and you have all the light you need, you could add more light or find new applications. For example, right now using LEDSs for growing food is cost prohibitive, but if prices go down a significant amount of agriculture could be done with it, as solar panels are way more efficient converting light to energy and you could close your plants away from pests without insecticides, or underground, or transport the energy to places in winter without natural light. This application alone could mean hundreds of times more LED light than what is used today in houses. ~~~ incompatible Wouldn't growing food with solar cells and LEDs be less efficient in land usage than simply allowing the sun to shine on the plants? ~~~ Teever You'd think so but not necessarily. Photovoltaic cells can take in a broader range of energy from the sun than plants can through photosynthesis. LEDs can then emit that energy at specific wavelengths such as red or blue that the plants can take in. The whole system can end up being more efficient. Furthermore the prospect of growing plants in a completely controlled environment where you can control all the variables from light intensity, light cycle, temperature, humidity and remove the pest factor and therefore the cost of pesticides can result in a much better final product. ~~~ Swizec Honest question: Would this type of production be considered organic? There's no pesticides and such, but it's also not quite "natural". ~~~ 0xcde4c3db I think it depends on which definition one subscribes to. Broadly speaking, there are two major lenses through which "organic" is viewed: 1) Focuses on holistic management, rejects intensive injection of industrial inputs into the farm/garden, and emphasizes applications of emergent activity of native species rather than aggressive "pest control". 2) Focuses on keeping "unnatural" chemicals or genes out of / off of the food. I think this approach would tend to look organic under lens #2 but not lens #1. Various definitions of "organic" lend different weights to them and introduce other considerations, though. ------ robbrown451 I don't see how this is a "quandary." It's just a product becoming obsolete. The new product, LED bulbs, doesn't fill the same market niche. There should be no expectation that the same companies that once produced incandescent bulbs should transition into making LED bulbs. At least in an economic sense, they are very different things. Thinking they are the same thing is like thinking that hard drives and cloud storage are equivalent to blank videotapes and cassettes, or camera film. They just aren't. If LED makers are failing to make money, that is because there is too much competition. Companies will exit the business until a new equilibrium is reached. The price of LED bulbs may go up, and that's ok. ------ tmm I don't really see the long term problem. When light bulbs truly stop needing to be replaced, they will stop being _replaceable_. The market that will disappear is the light socket market. Consumers will buy a lamp with a permanently wired in LED and when they get tired of the way the lamp looks, they'll replace it along with the LED in it. This is already happening in wall and ceiling fixtures. ~~~ ars I considered buying a few of those, but I realized that if one lamp in the room failed, but the others were good, I'd have to replace them all since I'd be unlikely to be able to find an exact match. So I decided to buy regular fixtures with replaceable bulbs. The non replaceable kind only makes sense in places where you need light, but you don't see the actual fixture (for example edge lighting a room or stairs). ------ bbcbasic I started reading the first paragraph and thought "ha ha I will sarcastically comment about "Light Bulbs as a Service"", because that would just be plain ridiculous, and then... ~~~ taneq And just like almost every other FPAAS (Former Product As A Service) touted in the past ten years, it's got nothing to do with customer benefits and everything to do with milking an ongoing revenue stream from the suckers that use your product. ------ bhauer I had understood color rendering index (CRI) to be independent from color temperature. This article suggests CRI and temperature are—if not the same thing—correlated. Perhaps that is true, but I know that I have gone out of my way in the past to buy high-CRI, high-color temperature bulbs because I prefer "daylight" (~5100K) illumination. I've got some 5100K bulbs that were rated at 90+ CRI in my kitchen and I love it. ~~~ Declanomous I suspect a lot of the R&D in LED manufacturing has been focused on bulbs which functionally replace incandescent. Creating functional replacements of incandescent bulbs is certainly a noble goal, but incandescent lights aren't uniquely suited to every situation. For instance, I live in a row house. The south facing windows have shades over them, which I can't remove because I'm renting. This means the amount of natural light is extremely limited inside. I find that if I don't spend some time in the sun early in the morning, I feel extremely sluggish and lethargic. Replacing the sun is really hard though. Not only does the sun have a "perfect" CRI, but it is extremely bright and provides a very diffuse light. (Not to mention, the sun is really cheap). I've found the easiest way to mimic the diffuse nature of sunlight is to have a number of light sources. Right now, the only "sunlight" (7500k+) bulbs that I can find that are inexpensive enough to cover my living room, render color well, and are efficient enough to keep on during the day are florescent. Halogen uses too much power and generates too much head. I can't seem to find reasonably priced LEDs with a good CRI above 5000k. I've only been able to find 2 kinds of "sunlight" LEDs. One is 75-watt BR40 (or lower wattage BRxx lights), which, as spotlights, are not very versatile. The other are "grow-lights", which I am hesitant to buy, since I have little interest in partaking in a no-knock raid at 2 AM. That might be paranoia, but I've heard stories at the homebrew/hydroponic store where I buy my homebrew supplies, and I don't think it's too unlikely. ------ daveguy >Cree is approaching L.E.D. lights as products, like smartphones, that people will regularly upgrade in order to benefit from new features or improvements. Isn't that cute. ------ Animats What Cree is actually doing is replacing their claimed 10,000 hour bulb with a 5,000 hour bulb. However, their 10,000 hour bulb doesn't achieve its rated life; I now have four failed ones. The power supply, not the LEDs, fail. The coming thing is a power supply that doesn't use electrolytic capacitors.[1][2] This should increase power supply life beyond LED life, to about 40,000 hours. But will we see that in consumer products? [1] [http://www.ledsmagazine.com/ugc/2011/09/dali-power- unveils-l...](http://www.ledsmagazine.com/ugc/2011/09/dali-power-unveils-led- lighting-driver-solution-without-electrolytic-capacitor.html) [2] [http://www.rle.mit.edu/per/wp- content/uploads/2014/10/Chen-E...](http://www.rle.mit.edu/per/wp- content/uploads/2014/10/Chen-Electrolytic-Free.pdf) ------ zipfle For the reference of people commenting here, the definition of quandary is "a state of perplexity or uncertainty over what to do in a difficult situation" I imagine that if you are Sylvania, or if you are thinking about making large investments in LED manufacturing capacity, then yes, this is a quandary. ------ cowsandmilk I think LED opens the possibility for more custom lighting. If the lights are going to last over 20 years (or possibly longer with higher quality), why not do a custom lighting design for your bathroom or kitchen? You don't need to be limited to standard shapes of globes, tubes, circles, and A-lines, you want a wavy design or a varying radius, that's great. It will live until your next remodel when you can have a new custom lighting design. ~~~ zabuni I believe the same. Nobody writes an article called the granite counter top quandary. You won't buy leds, the contractors constructing the house will. ------ Zigurd It isn't a quandary. Innovation does not owe you a future. Electric cars, and self-driving cars, will reduce annual unit volume for cars, and might simplify cars, along with carbon reinforced plastics, so that lightweight, inexpensive cars are possible. Light bulb makers that forestall a cheap, lifetime LED product will fall to Asian competitors who will take whatever market opening exists, and worry about saturation later. ------ carapace What quandary? Let global demand fall off to replacement rates. So what if there's only one light-bulb factory left in the world and they only produce three bulbs a year? Heck, in about fifteen minutes or so nanotech will happen and all this is moot. I've said it before: there's an inflection point after which anyone in manufacturing that _isn 't_ doing nano is just playing with toys. And we may be past that point already. ~~~ majewsky I have the feeling that 99% of IT is "just playing with toys" already. ------ Lagged2Death _UrbanVolt solves the problem by replacing its customers’ lights at no initial cost; each client then pays UrbanVolt a monthly share of the savings on its electrical bill._ This is exactly how the makers of advanced stationary steam engines operated after the start of the industrial revolution. The engine is "free," the customer pays a fraction of the fuel savings. What I don't understand is: how come it's not the established players like GE or ConEd who are pursuing these strategies? If someone's going to eat your lunch, why not make sure it's you? ~~~ buzzybee It's really, really hard to change an old organization to follow a different business model without effectively firing everyone, selling everything off, and starting over. There's inertia in the various forms of personnel specialties, management style, capital expenditures, and financing. A tiny company can change that stuff in the span of a single email because there isn't anything to unwind, but a big company that has gone to great effort to optimize its existing position and has a lot of stakeholders to appease will run into trouble even if it has visionary leadership that can see the problem. For that reason, startups can persistently find opportunities: e.g. IBM had a rental-computing business model, so it gave up a big early advantage in the PC market while scarcely realizing it; Microsoft swooped in to occupy the new monopoly on software. ------ wgj Here is the real problem. Incandescent bulb tech has been capable of being far more long-lasting, and therefore cheaper, since nearly the beginning. [1] The entire industry has been based on a kind of lie. We are very fortunate that the LED industry has not been tainted by this mindset, and really most modern tech hasn't. [1] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great- lightbu...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great-lightbulb- conspiracy) ~~~ ars > has been capable of being far more long-lasting Sorry, but that's not true. In order to make longer lasting bulbs you have to reduce the energy efficiency (i.e. don't run as hot). > and therefore cheaper You'll pay more in electricity than in bulbs with longer lasting type. It's not actually worth it. That cartel had bad intentions but good results - if you run the number you'll see that they actually saved people money. ------ mmagin There's a reason why I've put in commercial-grade LED fixtures in my kitchen and garage. I'm willing to pay a premium for something that'll possibly last the next 20+ years with how few hours a day I use it. Unfortunately most of those products don't really fit the decor of the rest of the house. ------ kefka_p If you consider the matter in the long-term, the sustainable model is the only approach that actually provides returns over time. At the end of the day the argument is everything now or a little now and a little later. ------ M_Grey "Yeah, and when are we going to see subsidies for buggy whips?!" -Confused Author I'm not sure how else to interpret this article; are we supposed to buy shit for the sake of buying shit? ~~~ majewsky Isn't that what capitalism is all about? /s ------ blazespin "can’t make money in the long run from products that rarely need replacing. " What a ludicrous statement. Price = f(supply,demand). Just decrease supply, voila, profit. ~~~ wlesieutre That's like saying "I wish we could charge more for cell phones. I know! We'll decrease the supply and make a ton of money!" It's a cutthroat market and someone will replace you. ~~~ pc2g4d It's not an individual firm that will decrease the supply, but the market as a whole. Largely this will occur as companies go out of business or shut down their LED operations because they're not profitable. Eventually when few enough firms are competing, the remaining firms involved in the market will be able to turn a profit and the market will stabilize. At least that's what I would expect. Other sectors have experienced dramatic drops in demand, and the world doesn't end, even though some companies might. I expect the few companies that keep selling long-lived LEDs will outlast their more gimmicky counterparts. ~~~ wlesieutre I don't expect people to find much money in LED lightbulbs. You buy the LEDs from one of the big LED producers, and then the rest is commodity electronics. If there starts being money in it, new companies will jump in. Which I suppose can get prices down to the point where someone can make a company that stays in business, but it won't get them to a point where there are significant profits to be found. EDIT: The area where this is likely wrong is the locked-in home automation silos where you can get people into an ecosystem and then screw them as much as you like. I'm hoping we can avoid that being the dominant strategy. ------ rdiddly Sounds like I need to stock up now on LED bulbs for life, before the whole market is flooded with planned-obsolescent pieces-o-shit (if it isn't already). ------ jhallenworld They should form a cartel: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel) ------ 1_2__3 > The question remains whether any company has an incentive to make a product > that is not designed to fall apart or become obsolete. What a patently ridiculous question to ask. I can't even fathom how the writer thought it up, but I can only imagine they must have gone into a coma immediately afterwards. It's a question in the way "I wonder if elephants can fly?" is a question.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Actually, Raising Beef Is Good for the Planet - prostoalex http://www.wsj.com/articles/actually-raising-beef-is-good-for-the-planet-1419030738?mod=trending_now_3 ====== SwellJoe So, a rancher says beef is good for the environment. I'm totally convinced. This article makes no mention of how grazing lands come to exist. [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/may/31/cattle- tr...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/may/31/cattle-trade-brazil- greenpeace-amazon-deforestation) Nutrition production per acre is much lower for beef than plant-based foods, and as nations become more developed and populations increase their intake of meat-based foods, more land for grazing, and more land for raising grains to feed to the food animals, must be cleared. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_protein_per_unit_area_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_protein_per_unit_area_of_land) In short: Most of the claims made for beef being "good for the environment" here are about grass lands on which they graze, but no one would reasonably argue that chopping down an old growth forest and replacing it with millions of acres of grass would be good for the environment, but that's effectively what this author is claiming. I'm frankly somewhat disappointed that an article with such clear industry bias has been given the patina of respectability that the WSJ provides. ~~~ ArkyBeagle I don't see any claim on the part of the author that cutting down forest and replacing it with grassland makes any sense. There is the claim that woody shrubs encroaching on grassland reduces the utility of the grassland - whether that's in a natural state or as part of a ranch. The buffalo grass prairie was pretty dern eco-rich and cattle grazing isn't that far off of that if you're careful. It depends on the base ecosystem before you add cattle. If you can graze beef critters in East Texas, Oklahoma or Kansas, I doubt it would have the same effect as doing same where old-growth forest stood in the Amazon basin. These areas _generally_ have adequate rainfall and don't require aquifer depletion. Then again, there's 2011. The Niman Ranch is in California; I am not sure how that works. Agriculture in general in California requires much redirection of water to work. It could be that cattle ranching is better than Central Valley style crop farming. The critical figure of the piece is the disconnect between 2,500 gallons of water per pound of beef vs. the claim of 441 gallons - again, in California, water is key. The 2,500 figure is suspicious; the 441 gallon figure is at least defended by UC Davis scientists, where the provenance for the 2,500 gallon figure is much more shadowy. ------ JDDunn9 A few notes to balance out this half-truth article. \- The U.N. report "Livestock's Long Shadow" estimate's pollution from cattle at 18%, more than all transportation combined. Much higher than the 8% from the EPA. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock%27s_Long_Shadow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock%27s_Long_Shadow) \- I couldn't find the study that gave that incredibly low estimate for water consumption per pound of beef, but I'm guessing it doesn't factor in the water used to grow the food for the cows. Every other estimate I've seen is incredibly high. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production) \- Cows or crops are not the only two options for farming. We also have hydroponics, which could make land unsuitable for farming, 10x more productive than traditional methods. Cows are pretty inefficient at converting food into beef. It's not a solution for global hunger. ------ adamnemecek > ...and we now have a grass-fed beef company—I’ve come to the opposite > view... A biased writer says something biased, news at 11.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Tips for flying ? - hajrice Recently a fellow HN member posted an interesting article regarding hot to sleep on a long haul flight(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1410258).<p>I'm 17, and have a flight(Sarajevo-Munchen-Newyork-Jacksonville) in 3 days. I'd really love to hear your tips/tricks/hacks for flying. ====== grayrest As you fall, be sure to miss the ground.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
App to call attention to Reckless drivers suspended by Twitter - scrose https://twitter.com/howsmydrivingny/status/1293638206353793025 ====== lacker Makes sense, the app is all about exposing peoples’ personal information online to shame them. ~~~ scrose The app doesn’t publish any personal information and complies with every Twitter rule. It was suspended soon after someone used the app to get information on a van that was used to abduct a protester[1] [1] [https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/07/29/twitter- mysteriously-...](https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/07/29/twitter-mysteriously- removes-driving-record-of-the-unmarked-van-used-in-nypd-arrest/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Samwers getting Burned in Germany Of Air BnB Vs Wimdu Fame - missy http://eu.techcrunch.com/2012/01/19/german-clone-king-faces-battle-with-former-staff-and-satirical-dance-track-of-his-memos/ ====== missy Played everywere in Berlin right now. ------ NoraVanessa Not enough focus on shoes.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
COP21: Climate deal final draft 'agreed' in Paris - Jerry2 http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35079532 ====== RcouF1uZ4gsC Looking at this, and also at the New York Times article[0] it appears that 1) The plans that the nations put forward are about 1/2 the reduction in emissions required to prevent a 2 degree C rise in temperature. 2) There are no legally binding targets for emission reduction 3) There is no enforcement How can anyone see this conference as a net positive? We spent a lot of money, and emitted a lot of CO2 flying hundreds if not thousands of people to Paris, to come up with the equivalent of a change.org petition in terms of actual legal value. I think this is a net negative. It seems that after all the pre- conference hype about this being the last chance, the delegates actually couldn't agree to something substantial and just signed a feel good document that actually doesn't require anything concrete of the countries other than good intentions and then are making a big deal how they signed a treaty to save the world. This is grandstanding, inefficiency, and waste with no benefit for anybody (except for the frequent flyer miles of the journalists covering the conference). 0) [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate- chang...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change- accord-paris.html?_r=0) ~~~ eli_gottlieb Goddamnit. Couldn't we have _tried_ , as a species, _not_ to commit suicide? ~~~ malka No. We are too addicted to cheap energy to go back. ------ huuu I was a litle confused, but I asume the article is talking about °C instead of C? Or is C another unit used for a range or something? ~~~ bradfeehan Almost certainly degrees Celsius. Has the "°" symbol in the "too hard basket"? (to be fair I did copy and paste it from your comment, that's the fastest way I could get it done). ~~~ jackweirdy ° is shift+alt+8 on mac	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The App Design Handbook + Time-lapse Design Video - nathanbarry http://nathanbarry.com/book-app-design-handbook/ ====== nathanbarry Here is the direct link to the landing page: <http://nathanbarry.com/app- design-handbook/> ------ kefs I love the idea, the video, and the design.. but I wish it wasn't geared strictly to iOS, since the title doesn't mention that. ~~~ nathanbarry Many of the concepts could apply to Android, but it is iOS focused. I didn't want to make the title too wordy. ~~~ kefs But I'm assuming none of the Android Design Principles will be regarded? <https://developer.android.com/design/index.html> Design decisions on Android generally play by different rules and conventions. [https://developer.android.com/design/patterns/pure- android.h...](https://developer.android.com/design/patterns/pure-android.html) ~~~ nathanbarry You're right that it isn't focused on Android, and so another book may be a better fit. ~~~ kefs Then, to avoid confusion, a clearer title for your book might be a better fit. ------ AmandaP Can't wait to see the finished book! ------ rob41 Any idea when it will be released? I love the time-lapse video. Well done! ~~~ nathanbarry Thanks! I have the book mostly written, but editing and layout will probably take another month. Mid August or early September... ~~~ tstegart Please post on HN again when it's done. It looks great. ~~~ nathanbarry I definitely will. I appreciate the compliments. ------ jsmcallister That bubble texture at 2:48 is sweeeeeet. ~~~ nathanbarry Don't you just love Photoshop defaults?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What technologies one should learn? - grep What are the most recent technologies being used by startups and other companies (e.g: Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc) ?<p>e.g: MongoDB, Cassandra, etc ====== mahmud Going about it all the wrong way. You need fundamentals, not technologies. Get yourself a list of buzzwords; read each one out and ponder for a minute how it might be written, how it might work given the limitations of the platform(s) it runs on (you know your Posix/java/win32, etc internals, right?) If you can't mentally visualize how that thing works internally, or how it might be implemented, do some research until you have a firm understanding of how it functions internally. If you don't still get it, research the underlying _techniques_. As a programmer you're not required to implement every tool you might use, but you sure as hell need to grok its form and function at the lowest level. This frothy trend-hopping is just pure wankery. Don't be one of those suckers. Learn the primitives of _everything_. You also need that tireless spark, the desire to figure things out and learn their innards; so you don't have to poll others for what you should hack on. (btw, am I the only one who finds the question irksome in a very personal carpet-bagging way?) ------ ergo14 You should learn first trusted technologies that are here for long time. Because they despite what people say they wont disappear - there just are no alternatives for them. I would suggest you start with a good RDBMS system - like Postgresql, for programming language Python and Java are good picks - all purpose ones - it pays off to know something that has libs not only for webapps. Ruby is also not bad pick - but python has better more mature libraries for general work. If you insist on nosql - i guess any key-value store would be good, I suggest Redis for memory based + couchdb/mongodb. But seriously real world is not like "lets do something with new shiny tech". If you want a good job you need to know "standard" things well, you need to learn how to scale applications - and no scaling is not about using noSql, it's the architecture of whole thing that scales not like some magic formula that will solve everyones problems. What i'm trying to say there is no such thing as set of "recent technologies used by startups", every person you ask will have a different answer for you - but basics will always be necessary. ------ moby_duck Coming from a hardware designer, I would say just focus on mastery of Python and C. As far as technologies go, only learn what you need to do the job in front of you. You can spend years reading books and online documentation about this or that framework and never turn any of it into useful output. Remember Kipling: "think... but do not make thoughts your aim." As far as fundamental knowledge goes, I would recommend for any software guy to do a rigorous study of computer architecture. Wrapping your head completely around how digital computers actually compute things will serve you well throughout your career. ------ bigohms Tech will change but the core of computing science will not. If you haven't done this already: Immerse yourself (even briefly) in the fundamentals of comp sci with Java, database structures (RDBMS) and healthy amount of maths. No matter the platform, I always seem to revert to what I learned back then. ------ postit Please study computer sciences before stucking yourself into a endless quest for the best technology. I can tell you that every new tech is fully based on existent CS concepts. ------ nl Learn everything, but become a true master of..... Javascript ------ arzvi perl and ruby for dynamic languages, MongoDB and Redis for nosql ------ delano Redis.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Japan’s labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers - SirLJ https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-02/japan-inc-may-finally-have-to-fatten-paychecks ====== patio11 Partly this is a recognition that Japan Inc. has historically awarded a blended compensation package which includes salary, benefits similar to most first-world countries, and a host of non-pecuniary terms which are not broadly enjoyed across all W-2 employees in the US. ("Expectation of lifetime employment" is a biggie; there are substantially more subtle terms, too, like "We're going to _take care of you_ , and we sincerely mean that, and you trust us to sincerely mean that. This will manifest itself in behaviors which American companies would describe as quixotic to irrational to outright disturbing[+].") The non-pecuniary terms have been weakening in recent years but salaries have not been increasing at anything approaching parity. The non-pecuniary terms _are not small_ relative to the total notional compensation package. One reason that Japanese companies are having difficulty hiring folks is that their candidates have marked-to-market the non-pecuniary terms. There is a totally defensible reason to value Toyota's standard offer as of 1975 at being worth an integer multiple of the salary part of the package. It is very, very difficult to make the case that a traditionally managed Japanese company's non-pecuniary terms are presently worth $50~$100k per year given that one will be taking advantage of them in 2017 to 2062 as opposed to 1975 to 2020. [+] One of my first conversations with a boss at a traditionally managed Japanese company involved my expected timeline to get married and what the company's role in that process would be; my boss assumed that it would be sourcing the bride. ~~~ akg_67 I actually know several instances of how company expects employees to sacrifice everything for the wellbeing of company and how company takes care of employees for life. One example, during 2008 crisis, the company my friend was working for 20+ years already, was in trouble and didn't pay employees for almost a year. My friend continued to work for the company despite it being bankrupt and him not getting paid for so long. Once company turnaround completed and came out of bankruptcy, owners not only made unpaid employees whole but has done much more for the employees that stuck around during bad times. The loyalty runs both ways. ~~~ Sholmesy Nice anecdote, and I'm glad your friend was made whole (and then some), but this is crazy. I wonder how many times the same scenario has played out, and the company continued to spiral into bankruptcy. Separating emotion from $$$ is important for this exact reason. He owes the company nothing. Maybe I'm being overly cynical though... ------ dcw303 The problem is Japan has been in a deflationary environment for so long that they've forgotten how to bump up a price and turned into a nation of misers. I've witnessed first hand the collective hysteria when an ice cream company raised their prices by 10 yen[0] and also had to put up with coworkers banging on in excitement whenever 7-11 has an Onigiri sale dropping from 110 to 100 yen. Not to mention the queues stretching around the block when Yoshinoya cuts a buck and a half off their beef bowls. My anecdotal evidence, based on looking in shop windows, is there's plenty of part time (arubaito) jobs on offer; the problem is young people are too smart to take them up on their pitiful 700 yen per hour offers, which in Tokyo barely cover your transport and lunch costs. And yet the businesses will continue to weep and wail and gnash their teeth because they can't find anyone. It's not rocket science. [0] [https://qz.com/656080/a-japanese-ice-cream-maker-deeply- apol...](https://qz.com/656080/a-japanese-ice-cream-maker-deeply-apologizes- for-raising-prices-by-9-cents/) ~~~ delhanty >coworkers banging on in excitement whenever 7-11 has an Onigiri sale dropping from 110 to 100 yen Usually it's an up to 150 yen onigiri for 100 yen, so of course they're going to get excited. Edit: It looks like it is/was an up to 160 yen onigiri for 100 yen! That's a 37.5% discount! [1] [1] [http://seven-eleven-mania-blog.jp/gohankei/5617/](http://seven-eleven- mania-blog.jp/gohankei/5617/) ~~~ timr It's still pretty silly, considering the absolute value of the savings. My personal favorite along these lines is the way that a single building might have 2-3 floors of the same kind of restaurant (say, yakitori), but the one place that is 5 yen cheaper per item will have a line out the door, while the others are half-empty. ~~~ FussyZeus Is this a cultural thing? I've never been to Japan so I'm kind of flying blind here but I'd assign that 5 yen as a convenience cost and happily pay that price to avoid the long line. I have a hard time thinking the Japanese people place no value on their time whatsoever... ~~~ sharemywin walmart(lines to get in line) vs. Kroger(generally pretty fast) vs. giant eagle(empty walk right up and pay). ------ adventured Japan's primary problem on income is that the economic ground they've lost in the last 20 years is vast. In the late 1980s, their GDP per capita was beyond that of the US. Now it needs to climb 50% to catch up. The last 20 years has taken them back to #16 among major economies in terms of GDP per capita. That gives you an idea of how difficult it's going to be for Japan to bring their incomes back in line with high per capita output economies like the US (or Australia, Denmark, Sweden, etc). They need very substantial, sustained economic growth for a decade or more to start regaining lost ground. Their debt problems will continue to put pressure on the Yen, the debasement of which is a big culprit in the sizable drop in their standard of living over the last decade. While their interest costs are eating up such a large portion of their budget, their ability to properly invest into growth is heavily restricted. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place. I've yet to see a plan for how they're going to deal with that. To make matters worse, their savings rate has dropped to low single digits, as their standard of living has dropped they've been forced to reduce savings to try to maintain (which has further pressured the government's ability to properly fund itself, as they can no longer count on tapping into large new pools of savings via debt issuance, leading to abusing the Yen as a last resort). ~~~ nihonde Lots of childless old-timers are sitting on hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in liquid assets that presumably will revert to the state. Household savings in the 60+ demographic are exemplary. Of course, that's part of the reason the economy is stagnant. ~~~ ShabbosGoy Keynes vs. Hayek in a nutshell. ------ ekianjo Running out of people? Most large corporations in Japan have WAY too much staff doing about nothing productive all day long. This is due to the long standing tradition that started in the 70s to keep hiring most university graduates well before they graduate in April every single year, even though there is no such need for hiring (kind of social contract between the Japanese government and the large corporations). If anything less workforce will be a blessing, they will have to finally focus on what REALLY matters. ~~~ 1_2__4 This makes no sense to me. Why wouldn't the companies expand their output if they have idle workers? I feel like you described 1/10th of the issue and it's up to the reader to fill in the rest? ~~~ s73ver You still have to sell that output. And until you do, you have to store that output. And if you can't sell that output, then you have to get rid of it in a fire sale. ------ 0xbear Yeah, I do get contacted by Japanese recruiters, and their comp in my field is pretty laughable by US standards. That said, the same applies to all of Europe as well. People literally seem to be making one third of what they'd be making in the US if they were any good. ~~~ wolfgke The metric that you have to consider is salary - taxes - costs of living [including health insurance] + expected future revenues [in particular pensions] Can you provide me evidence that, say, Germany, is so much worse than the USA with respect to this metric? ~~~ richardknop Germany is much worse in this metric compared to UK. I am specifically talking about London. I get contacted by recruiters from Germany (and other EU countries) quite often and they could never match London contractor pay even remotely. Germany also has higher taxes and health care coverage is comparable in UK and Germany (both have national healthcare). I think that's a microcosm of US vs EU salary situation in software engineering. IT job market in London is very different from any place in Europe, I'm not sure why that is. ~~~ wolfgke > I am specifically talking about London. The living costs in London are enormous. A fellow student has a highly payed analyst job at Goldman Sachs in London, but still does room sharing in a flat somewhere in London. ~~~ richardknop I know living costs are "enormous". But if you make 3 times more money as you'd do in Berlin, it's still a much better deal. The point I was making even in top cities in Germany (Munich for example) where living costs are also enormous, salaries are not very competitive compared to SF/NY or London (this only applies to contracting, permanent salaries are low in London). ~~~ wst_ So be fair and compare to the contractor salary in Tokyo as well. I can assure you that, despite being lower, salaries are quite close to London ones. A 3 time difference is a myth. Unless you are going to compare London engineers to Tokyo combini part time worker. ~~~ richardknop Yes I meant contractor salary is 3x more than permanent salary for a very senior software engineer in Germany for example. The idea behind this comparison is that you don't really have contractor market in Germany being so active as in London. In London contractor market is very active and large so you can go from contract to contract basically without gaps and function basically as if you had a perm job but with much higher salary. In Germany contracts are more sparse and I don't think it's easy to pull off a full time contracting there. The rates are also quite a bit lower (at least from emails I get from time to time about contracts in Netherlands & Germany) so there's that as well. And of course, Tokyo is much much worse in this respect. I know some people who live in Tokyo so I know that being a programmer there is pretty bad. ~~~ wolfgke > In Germany contracts are more sparse and I don't think it's easy to pull off > a full time contracting there. The rates are also quite a bit lower (at > least from emails I get from time to time about contracts in Netherlands & > Germany) so there's that as well. A rule of thumb in Germany: If you earn double the amount as a contractor as you would as an employee this is about the same standard of living. In other words: If you don't really earn _a lot more_ as a contractor than as an employee, it is not worth the hazzle. Another problem for contracting are the laws concerning Scheinselbständigkeit (fictitious self-employment) - cf. [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheinselbst%C3%A4ndigkeit](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheinselbst%C3%A4ndigkeit) \- which make it really difficult for companies to contract someone for a longer time. ~~~ richardknop Yes there have been changes like that in UK as well (IR35) aimed at making it difficult for companies to keep hiring contractors for a longer time. First problem with that was that public sector IT in the UK depends on contractors so they have shot themselves in the foot (already many public agencies started relaxing the rules and working around IR35 to be able to hire anybody). Also most contractors usually change contract every 6-12 months so it's not a problem. You don't work at a single company for longer than that (1 year 11 months is maximum, after that you get in trouble because of IR35). > A rule of thumb in Germany: If you earn double the amount as a contractor as > you would as an employee this is about the same standard of living Well what if it is 3 or 4 or even 5 times more. With top market contracts the rates can be really good. If a company urgently needs to hire somebody skilled to come in and do some firefighting you can negotiate a very high daily rate for 6 months contract. Also keep in mind you pay lower taxes as contractor as most of your income is via dividends. And you can also expense a lot of things you buy if it can be justified as cost of running business. ------ raleighm True that Japanese companies should pay more. For what it's worth, it doesn't appear to have started. Nikkei ran a story today noting that summer bonuses (which are a thing) are down for the time in five years. ------ beep_beep Fun fact, the Phillips curve for Japan sure looks a lot like Japan: [http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/working_papers/papers/qed_wp_1083...](http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/working_papers/papers/qed_wp_1083.pdf) See also the wage inflation/unemployment relationship. [https://www.boj.or.jp/en/research/wps_rev/lab/lab14e02.htm/](https://www.boj.or.jp/en/research/wps_rev/lab/lab14e02.htm/) ------ PhasmaFelis > _At the same time, baby boomers are approaching retirement_ It wouldn't have occurred to me that Japan had a baby boom. I suppose soldiers returning home in despair or in triumph are all looking for comfort and stability. ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel The last century of Japanese history looks a lot like that of the Western developed nations. (Probably because Japan made itself into a Western-style empire, then got involved in WW2 big time with the Western powers, then got a Western-style American occupation, so…) ~~~ PhasmaFelis I guess I'd always assumed that the Baby Boom was the result of a _victorious_ end to war, but the other makes sense too. Was there a baby boom after WWI, or the American Civil War, or other wars that siphoned off a major part of a country's young men? ~~~ emodendroket Japan may have been the loser, but it also had a big postwar economic boom. To me this seems like the more obvious cause. ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel The Allied Powers had seemingly learned the lessons of Versailles and didn't try to punish the losers (well, not as much), instead letting them grow. Thus why them not being victorious didn't matter, I guess. ~~~ yequalsx America did try to punish the Germans. Millions starved as a result of deliberate Allied policy. It wasn't until the schism with the USSR that policies shifted. Eisenhower in particular wanted Germany to be an agrarian society. ~~~ Qub3d Wait, i'm confused. I've always been told America poured tons of money into Germany via the Marshall Plan [0], which resulted in the "Wirtschaftswunder"[+] of the 50s and 60s. Former president Hoover went over and surveyed Germany almost directly after the war, in 1947. [0]:[https://web.archive.org/web/20090419195002/http://www.un.org...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090419195002/http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2008/webarticles/080103_marshallplan.html) [+]: Literally "economic miracle" ~~~ sgift Long story short: This wasn't the original plan. The original plan, which was in effect for a while, was a variant of the "Morgenthau plan" ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#JCS_1067](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#JCS_1067) ). It took two years for them to realize that not only would they be starving Germans (intention), but also the rest of Europe (unintended), and more or less block any economic growth in Europe (+risk Europe falling under the sway of the Soviet Union). So, they reversed their plans and the rest is history (that history includes the Marshall plan). ------ Mikeb85 Who'd have thought limiting the labour pool would drive up wages? ------ SirLJ Just remember in the end of the 80s and the begging of the 90s, Japan was on the verge to become the world most powerful economy and market crash after that... 25+ years later the market is still almost in half - so many retirement money lost and a great example why buy and hold for a long time is actually not a good retirement strategy... ~~~ rpazyaquian What does that mean for things like Vanguard's retirement fund strategy? Isn't that based entirely on long-term improvement in the market? ~~~ SirLJ It means that all those robo fintech companies and the Vanguards of the world are making a lot of money, but "buy and hope" is not a good retirement strategy for the little guy, especially if you are close to retirement and you have some money set aside and count on them to live off... ------ mathattack Japan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world. This is inevitable as demand from the elderly outpaces young people to fulfill it. ~~~ onion2k Presumably though, as tax revenue falls due to citizens retiring, that will lead to more privatization of services as the government won't have the money to buy them, and a consequential push towards automation as service providers try to lower costs. If automation happens quickly enough it's not outside the realms of possibility that Japan's aging population could lead to _fewer_ jobs in some sectors. ~~~ mathattack This is a lot of automation. :-) When you have 1.46 births per Mom [0] you are effectively automating a quarter of the jobs. On the surface this seems achievable, but generally automation winds up creating new needs. (The advent of tractors meant farmers were more productive, and other jobs wound up absorbing hte workers) [0] [https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+birth+rate&rlz=1C5C...](https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+birth+rate&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS568US569&oq=japanese+birth+rate&aqs=chrome.0.0l6.2328j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) ------ mcappleton The fundamental problem is that the Japanese population is shrinking. The only real solution is more babies or at least really good robots.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Open Sourcing a Python Project the Right Way - Perados https://jeffknupp.com/blog/2013/08/16/open-sourcing-a-python-project-the-right-way/ ====== dozzie GitHub is not _the_ right way to publish something. ~~~ viraptor Would you care to elaborate? ~~~ dozzie First, there are other valid options, like BitBucket or GitLab. Second, if GitHub deteriorates for any reason (and it _will_ happen sooner or later; ten years ago nobody would have even think that SourceForge could go awry, and look at it today), you'll need to update all the possible places where it was mentioned as a distribution point. Thus, you should treat it as an auxiliary thing, and host the canonical distribution yourself. ~~~ viraptor Nobody said not to upload to BB or GL. GH is just a more popular option. You still have to choose one canonical distribution point and I would put money on your own hosting failing both earlier and more often than GH. I think your issue here is rather personal against GH. You could say exactly the same things about uploading to BB. And you could say the same about uploading to PyPi rather than own repo, but didn't - why? ~~~ dozzie > Nobody said not to upload to BB or GL. GH is just a more popular option. I don't know if you have noticed, but I put an emphasis on the word _the_ of a phrase "the right way". If it was " _a_ right way", I wouldn't ever speak up. > You still have to choose one canonical distribution point and I would put > money on your own hosting failing both earlier and more often than GH. OK, how would you send me your money? GitHub has experienced three or four outages in my recent memory, while my hosting remained on-line. And you miss the point completely. It's not about nine nines of uptime, it's about having control over communication channels. Primary/canonical/always up- to-date one you should host yourself, because you _won 't migrate from it_ to elsewhere, barring getting a new domain name. Any third party repository hosting, now with us having git (or any DVCS, for that matter), may easily be an _auxiliary_ distribution point. It may even handle most of the traffic, sure, but it's a _mirror_ , not the source of truth. > I think your issue here is rather personal against GH. You could say exactly > the same things about uploading to BB. No, it is nowhere near personal. You really think I would react differently if the article claimed BitBucket be _the_ right way? > And you could say the same about uploading to PyPi rather than own repo, but > didn't - why? No, you couldn't. PyPI as a distribution point is OK-ish, but it rarely is the only one, and PyPI doesn't give you repository hosting, so you still need that one.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Say “experts” instead of “smart people” (2015) - sridca http://composition.al/blog/2015/04/30/say-experts-instead-of-smart-people/ ====== drallison A worthwhile read: [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-death-of- experti...](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-death-of- expertise-9780190469412?cc=us&lang=en&). Available from Amazon: [https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign- Established-...](https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established- Knowledge/dp/0190469412). Of course, there is a difference between "expert" and "expertise". Still, Nichol's book makes an interesting read.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: is having the .com domain for your business important? - alexjeffrey I've been putting off starting a business because I can't find a name that I like with a reasonable unregistered .com domain that I can use. For example, if I wanted to use "perplex" as the name I'm looking for perplex.com, perplexit.com, perplextech.com, perplextechnology.com, etc.<p>Nothing seems to be available, but I have noticed a rise in new startups liberally using boutique extensions like .ly and .io, and am wondering whether this will make any discernible difference to my business? I'm starting a security product business, which I suspect is important. ====== slajax It's getting harder and harder to get brand-able .com domains. I think that it's a nice to have from an seo point of view but from a branding standpoint I prefer the shortest possible variation. If the TLD lends itself to that why not. You just need to be smart about how you market it and do whatever you can to reinforce the domain's unique TLD at every stop. I have AppLa.bz and Zi.lk both of which I would prefer for their shortness over the .com equivalent. Sure it's a bit of a fad, but I foresee noncom domains becoming more and more valuable in. ------ itsprofitbaron First of all it depends on the type of business if the .COM is important. You are starting a "security product business" but who exactly are you targeting? If you are selling to the "general public", or even large organisations etc then the .COM should be your only choice. Consumers have grown to believe that all .COMs are reliable and trustworthy - which is something you want your brand to leverage. Having said that .COMs aren't as important as they once were and if you aren't targeting the "general public" then you can consider an alternative domain such as .ly etc ------ mflindell The main issue people think about is that .com is the best for exposure on Search Engines but what they don't realise is that because of this EXACT reason is that Google puts .com to the top. Because they still believe that the community at large values a .com domain. As time passes, people will adopt more different domain types and I'm sure Google will notice and adjust its search algorithms accordingly. So, why not? Start the .whatever revolution! I have sites like calendarme.in and des.sk and they're working great. ~~~ itsprofitbaron _".com is the best for exposure on Search Engines but what they don't realise is that because of this EXACT reason is that Google puts .com to the top"_ This is wrong. _Domain extensions do not have an effect on how your site ranks_ The .COM extension is considered a "global" domain thus when ranking in search engines (without telling them who your website is targeting via Webmaster Tools) it will naturally rank higher on a general basis. For instance if you have a .ly (or any other country specific) domain extension without setting your global settings, search engines such as Google and Bing will consider that website to be useful to people in Libya (yes they do consider language too). Likewise the .ly will struggle to rank (compared to the global .com) as it is considered to be a Libyan domain unless you tell the search engines otherwise. ------ brudgers > _"I've been putting off starting a business"_ Not having the perfect domain name sounds like an excuse, not the cause. If there was a burning desire, it wouldn't matter. ~~~ alexjeffrey it's far from an excuse, I've been very active in other areas related to the launch of the business - I just want to turn as many odds in my favour as possible pre-launch. ------ dangrossman Check out <http://stylate.com/>. They've done the work for you. ~~~ slajax Very cool. Like 99designs but a step further with the domain. The inventory isn't the most amazing, but I could still see hacking out a MVP on a couple over a weekend. Thanks for the link. ------ shail how about prplx.com its available.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Dangers of the “Google Analytics-Powered Startup” - redredredred http://simontorring.com/google-analytics/ ====== stdbrouw The criticism of sampling in this blogpost is way overblown. (1) there's virtually no difference between the accuracy of a sample size of 10k and one of 100k, and those are the sample sizes you're usually working with (2) in particular, when working with custom reports you get from the API, you can actually specify the accuracy you want (high, normal, low) as part of your API request. To boot, 9 times out of 10 what you're interested in as an analyst is not the absolute numbers anyway, but ratios and trends. So whether or not e.g. every precious little pageview gets counted is irrelevant, as long as the way it is counted is stable over time. This is endemic to so many discussions about big data: "if we don't have every individual data point ever, all hell will break loose and we lose the ability to make any sense of the data." Take an intro to basic probability and statistics, will ya. There's legitimate problems with using Google Analytics for a startup, but they're mostly related to the fact that it doesn't provide good tooling around A/B, customer lifecycle management and custom metrics – they're possible but you're not making it easy on yourself. These things are the bread and butter of SaaS and app analytics (as opposed to ecommerce or media) so it makes sense to invest in something like Mixpanel/Heap/Keen/KISSMetrics. But those are issues with Google Analytics as a product, not with the quality of its data. ~~~ crdb Yes and no. Exporting visit trends over 5 landing pages and a month? Sure. Exporting page views for 100,000 products each of whom got 5-100 views? Then that 5% sample is going to exclude most products. The latter approach is however necessary if you're trying to determine how each product category is really performing. Two alternatives I prefer to Google Analytics Premium (once you get to that size): Webtrekk, a small but competent German company whose product costs around 1/10th as much per year, has a fraction of the bugs, and does reliable unsampled daily dumps (moving to hourly, I believe), although the UI is a little less intuitive; and a self-hosted Piwik instance, so you don't need to worry about data exports. The truth is modern relational databases are incredibly powerful and will easily scale even with information like impressions in onsite search. There are multi-TB instances of Postgres out there. I really suggest installing either in parallel to GA or on their own when you set up tracking. I do agree with you that anybody involved in any kind of job that includes "analytics" in the title, or indeed most people in management, should take an intro stats course. I particularly like Introduction to Statistical Learning because of its brevity, relatively high abstraction level, and lack of maths. ------ jordanthoms Google Analytics is really designed for, and works well for, _websites_. If your startup is a website, as opposed to an app or service which happens to be on the web, then it's a good option. For our web app, we use Mixpanel, along with tracking events into our own database. This allows you to track custom events for the things that matter in your app - think 'someone added something to the cart' or 'someone clicked the reply button', not 'someone visited this page'. Yes, google analytics does let you track custom events, but it's extremely limited compared to mixpanel which lets you attach a properties object with as many custom properties as you like to each event, and then do retroactive analysis on them instantly. ------ mbesto > _It’s a bit like how Gallup can summarise Indonesians’ smartphone habits by > calling 1,500 of them; it works fine if you’re looking for a general > pattern, but it might skew the data if you’re looking for data about a tiny > niche of smartphone users or if Gallup happened to call up relatively too > many Nokia users that day._ This is an incorrect statement and interpretation of how statistics work. Is there a chance that the 1,500 Indonesians that they call that day not representative of the over population? Of course, but the probability of that is very low. This concept specifically is known as statistical significance[0]. The conclusion is: sampling error can lead to incorrect conclusions, but if you can eliminate any biases to your sampling, then it can indeed be representative. Personally, the more important take away is this: before you start deriving conclusions from your metrics, it's necessary to fully grok the concept of statistics. [0] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance) ------ exelius Completely agree. Sampling is fine; but you need to understand that the free version of Google Analytics isn't a replacement for a proper BI tool. GA also doesn't even do sampling until your traffic is over a certain threshold, so at low traffic levels it's actually accurate (though those levels are also low enough that you probably shouldn't try to draw too many insights). This is not to say that GA is bad; in fact I would call you stupid if your web startup went out and bought a tool before you launched. GA is free, it works well, it's super-easy to implement, and people should use it; but once you've reached the point where you can afford something better (usually in addition to GA, not in replacement of) you should look into doing so. ~~~ redredredred I think Google Analytics is much better than nothing, and until you reach a certain scale (I used the estimate of ~1 million monthly sessions) I think it's sufficient. What I am mainly arguing is that relying completely on GA for reports and performance measurements is dangerous and frustrating. \- Simon ------ fiatjaf I have various low traffic websites, and just because I hated having to go through the burden of creating accounts for all of them in Google Analytics, I wrote a very simple web analytics engine called Microanalytics[1]. It is a Couchapp (which means it only takes a CouchDB database to work, no other server or backend) and it allows for emitting of custom events with a simple `ma(event, [optional_value])`. Every event is tied to a session, so later you can analyse and filter events based on session, see exactly who did what on your site, see if the same user came back at some other day, things like this. So, in my small websites I can clearly see when a person enters the site and all that. Also, 1 visitor makes a difference, and when I tested having Google Analytics alongside Microanalytics what I saw was that Google Analytics statistics showed a lot more visitors than Microanalytics. I know Microanalytics can't be wrong, because it literally counts me in real time when I enter the site, so I don't know what to think. The only thing it doesn't count is visitors without Javascript, but are there so much of them? Does Google Analytics count them? I think not. \--- Also good to say: the way Microanalytics does data visualization is through a command line tool that prints to STDIN, so you can do all sorts of things with Unix pipes. For example, for doing an A/B Test experiment once, I just called `ma('version', versionName)` in each tested page, `ma('conversion', 'converted')` when appropriate, and later ran the following: for name in versionA versionB echo $name set v (microanalytics identifier inspect sessions --limit 300 \| grep $name \| wc -l) set c (microanalytics identifier inspect sessions --limit 300 \| grep $name \| grep converted \| wc -l) echo $v $c (echo "$c / $v" \| bc -l) echo end (This example is in the fish shell, but you can do the same in bash, obviously.) [1]: [https://github.com/fiatjaf/microanalytics](https://github.com/fiatjaf/microanalytics) ~~~ j_s Awesome work! You'd have to dig into the details (referer, user agent, etc.) on the Google Analytics side to see the differences... GA probably tracks every random web scraping (search engine) hit by monitoring the loading of the JavaScript file. ~~~ fiatjaf Oh, I forgot they could monitor the loading of the tracking file! So that's it, I can't do that in CouchDB. ------ harryf What drives me nuts about Google Analytics is their foot-dragging on mobile. Despite the mobile version of Google Analytics, trying to do anything meaningful, like analyse app retention, it's a huge pain. All the newer players to mobile analytics, like Flury or Localytics, have this stuff nailed but Google Analytics leaves you with out-dated, web-oriented reports like the "New vs. Returning" and "Loyalty" and generally prefers to push you towards looking at sessions instead of actually understanding what your users are doing. OK time to stop here before I start to rant... ~~~ redredredred I haven't explored the current functionality for mobile apps, but we're currently working multi-funnel analysis and it's a complete nightmare given that most purchases journeys happen across more than one device. And that's with GA Premium.. \- Simon ------ raverbashing So, what happened to collecting traffic information yourself? You know, from Apache logs and similar tools. Yes, I know google analytics gives a lot of bells and whistles and tools and whatnot. But it's still YOUR website, YOUR data, YOUR traffic. YOU can get (most of) the info that GA is sampling down. ~~~ taf2 Collecting data from YOUR website - costs time/money. Google Analytics is FREE and low cost time/money to install. It's true the data is there and we can get to it... but this takes some foresight that having installed analytics does not require. e.g. a few months after the original apache logs have rotated - you realize it would be nice to know how many mobile safari users are coming to your site vs chrome android users... because you're trying to determine the impact of releasing that next feature that requires webrtc. You can add the analysis to future traffic and give it a few extra weeks but wouldn't it be nice to know right now? GA is nice because it lets you avoid the investment in time/money and you can still go back and look at historical data points you might not have imagined being useful before... I think in this way sampling is really not a big deal... if it is you're right - absolute right. collect the data points that require this level of accuracy yourself... but I don't think if you need that level of accuracy early on you're focusing on the right things... ~~~ jlarocco Not sure I agree with that. There are, or used to be, plenty of tools for parsing the web logs, crunching the numbers, and spitting out pretty graphs. Again, maybe not as pretty as GA, and not as many bells and whistles, but good enough. ~~~ taf2 but that can't be as easy as copy pasting a snippet of javascript code into your website? ~~~ raverbashing Oh wow, yeah, reading files in /var/log/httpd/ is soooo hard. I agree that not all people have the capability to work with this (read, front-end developers, Wordpress customizers, etc) still, I mean, even CPanel lets you download it from past months. ~~~ richardbrevig cPanel has multiple log analyzers built in. So the user doesn't have to go through that work. If your site is on a shared host and it uses cPanel, just log into cPanel and you'll find them. ------ nlh A quick spin through Segment.com's list of integrations show a TON of GA-like services. Anyone have any suggestions for an alternative to GA that provides the same type of data without the sampling / bloat / etc of GA? ~~~ gk1 Hey Noah, an unfortunate side effect of GA's power is its steeper learning curve. A new driver sitting in a Ferrari might consider all the paddle shifters and gauges to be "bloat," but in the right hands the car is a beast ... Don't get me wrong, I do wish Google spent more time improving GA, but I think many of the alternatives sacrifice too much just to be beginner-friendly. What we need is a Tesla for web analytics. ~~~ nlh Agreed - I've used GA for many years and it's indeed extremely powerful (especially for a free tool). And the tradeoff is fair, I think -- Google gives us a ton of power to analyze site data in exchange for, well, Google being able to analyze site data :) But it does take a bit of a kitchen-sink approach to things. I guess I should rephrase my question to be less broad -- of the companies that purport to be competitive, do any of them do a particularly good job (even if just at subsets of GA's features)? ------ kumarm tl;dr: Google Analytics is a great tool and informs you exactly what it does very well. You need to read what it does though. I would say its a click bait. ~~~ grey-area Having dealt with lots of customers who take the stats generated by GA as gospel despite multiple problems, I disagree. Some example problems: referrals unreliable, countries unreliable, sampling distorting figures, no warnings when data displayed is based on very little data, sessions often misinterpreted as clicks by users, inexplicable disparities with other methods of tracking because their methods are pretty opaque and because of sampling, in-page analytics looking deceptively like click-tracking when in most cases it uses page load data. Some of that you can attribute to user error, but it is not good for the market that google dominates tracking like this, and GA is sometimes misleading. Just as an example of a problem I ran into recently - the free GA doesn't offer referral stats for https websites, but this isn't made clear to end users. As a result they simply trust that referrals have collapsed if a referring site switches to https. ~~~ gk1 The https referral issue isn't unique to GA, nor is it their fault. The browser doesn't pass a referrer value for HTTPS->HTTP traffic. Best way around this is to use HTTPS yourself, or use custom UTM tags on your link (if you have any say). ~~~ grey-area GA gives prominence to referrals in a world where more and more sites use https. People are making real business decisions based on this flawed stat, and most people have no idea that this is in fact a useless stat without https if any of your referrers are secure pages. Google says website x was your top referrer, and they just take that as truth. I think they should just take it out and recommend using campaign links or landing pages or at the very least make it very clear that this is only a partial and distorted view. Same goes for in-page analytics etc. the presentation of overlays on page items (implying clicks) is misleading. ------ h1fra The real issue if find about that, is StartUp with this kind of thinking tend to put number before people or actual results. And most of the time, you cannot reduce problem or solution with crunching number. Once the breach is opened, it became a nightmare explaining your coworker that a small drop in Session does not probably need a complete restructuration of the website. Currently working in this kind of startup, doing a good job is actually impossible as we changed everything every 3 month or so, because number changed in analytics. ~~~ redredredred Yeah that's exactly the kind of frustrations that I've experienced countless times and hope to get better at combatting by exploring how GA really works and how/where it's limited. Slowly getting there.. \- Simon ------ fndrplayer13 I loved the article. I think it tracks very much in line with the kind of experiences that I have personally had in working with Google Analytics data -- both via their reporting API and in the dashboard itself. I think GA is a great service though, when the caveats are considered and understood. It's great that you took the opportunity to state and consolidate this information in one place. I also just want to shout out that I work for a startup called Narrative Science that offers a free product called Quill Engage ([https://quillengage.narrativescience.com/](https://quillengage.narrativescience.com/)) that can help identify some of the key insights from your GA data in a free weekly and monthly automated report. ------ BradRuderman I agree with most of the points. We use GA for general traffic patterns, definitely not conversion tracking. It is horrible at true conversion tracking. ~~~ gk1 What kind of conversions are you trying to track? Although it takes some configuration, I've had no problems tracking all kinds of conversions for different sites--ecommerce, SaaS, leadgen, etc. ~~~ jordanthoms The worst thing about GA for conversion tracking is it's not retroactive, so you have to go though a slow configure/wait a few days/see if the data looks right/reconfigure cycle. ------ totoroisalive Not free, you're giving your users to google massive tracking machine.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Art of DJing, Louie Vega - kenny87 https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3338 ====== ams6110 Louie Vega and Kenny Dope are two of my favorite DJs. I used to (try to) spin a bit of vinyl back in the 80s but never approached what these guys do. Absolute genius.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What Kids Are Learning About Thanksgiving Is Changing - ohjeez https://time.com/5725168/thanksgiving-history-lesson/ ====== ropiwqefjnpoa Living in New England, you'll see many roads, even schools named after tribes and chiefs like Pequot and Metacom. I always wonder at the reasoning behind that, a rosy view of the past, remembrance of what was lost, just plain ignorance of what happened? The Great Indian War and what led up to it left a mark there that lingers to this day in one form or another. I'll tell you though, the Puritans became the very thing, if not worse, they were escaping in England...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
12 Free Web Apps to Boost Your Drawing Skills - cskakun http://mashable.com/2014/01/01/drawing-apps-online/ ====== zBrain Awesome little app for simple quick drawings	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery - sedev http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2014/03/challenges-of-opening-a-brewery-job-advice-beer-industry-collin-mcdonnell-henhouse.html ====== edj This is so apropos! Three groups of my friends (6 people, total) are attempting to start breweries, brewpubs, or cideries. I have a number of thoughts for these friends. (Advice not totally unsolicited -- I've been homebrewing for about 17 years.) \- Brewing a good batch of beer - better than most of the what's sold in stores - is easy. Almost anyone can do it with their first batch. \- This tricks people into thinking that brewing is easy. But... \- Consistency is hard. That recipe that turned out so well the first time? It might be good the second time, or it might spoil, or it might be too hoppy, or it might be cloudy, or taste of yeast, and so on. At any rate, it's unlikely that it will taste exactly the same as it did the first time. \- Brewing large batches is hard. Even transitioning from 5 gallon to 10 gallon batches requires different equipment. Recipes don't scale in a simple way. And when you get into backwatering high gravity beers everything becomes even more complex. \- Making wine and cider is hard compared to brewing beer. The former two have fewer ingredients, which, being fruit instead of grain, tend to be less consistent. Conditioning takes MUCH longer which means feedback and learning take much longer. \- And yet, I bet actually making a consistent, high-quality beverage is the easy part compared to running a profitable brewing business. \- Brewing is expensive. Startup costs are high. Even an enthusiastic homebrewer can easily spend thousands. Think $10,000 for a bare-minimum commercial brewing setup built around e.g. a SABCO Brew Magic. \- The legal stuff is hard. Licenses, bonds, a legal location -- all that stuff takes time and money. \- The food industry is brutal. Combining a brewery and a restaurant seems like it must tremendously increase the probability of failure. Anyway, brewing is a fun hobby. But one of those that sort of lulls people into making hasty business decisions. ~~~ huherto > Brewing large batches is hard. Even transitioning from 5 gallon to 10 gallon > batches requires different equipment. Recipes don't scale in a simple way. > And when you get into backwatering high gravity beers everything becomes > even more complex. As an ignorant software engineer. I have to ask this. ¿Can you keep the batch size constant and increase the number of batches? ~~~ pielud You could probably do something like that, but it'd be a huge waste of time. The time to brew a batch is pretty much the same no matter the volume. I.E. Brewing a 5 gallon batch takes about the same amount of time as brewing 20 gallons, assuming you have the equipment capable of doing that volume. ~~~ latj I think huherto is suggesting beer concurrency. That is, instead of having a 20 gallon setup, having four 5 gallon setups. It will take longer because you will have to do whatever mixing,testing, etc four times but if the longest part of the process is waiting- you win in that aspect. The question is- would this make it easier to be more consistent? ~~~ huherto Thanks latj, this is what I was thinking. Big batches may be a good model for a large brewery but not necessarily for a small one that is growing organically. I can imagine several advantages. You can replicate without having to extrapolate quantities, pressure, etc. You get to run more experiments, I can envision a supervised machine learning system that learns which parameters make the best beer. You don't throw out big batches, etc. Sure, it may require more labor, but you get other advantages. ~~~ latj How about a coop of home brewers- everyone agrees to brew a certain recipe of beer that month; All the beer gets blended together and redistributed. What does that taste like? I visited a village once that did this with their wine and distilled liquor. ------ silencio I could almost replace "beer" and "brewery" with "food" and "restaurant" and feel like it would be talking about the same thing. My restaurant ends up focusing so much more on keeping up with cleaning, food safety, and local regulations than actual cooking food it feels almost silly. And most people only want to hear about food or money (lol, money) when they ask me about how the restaurant's doing. I hope I don't accidentally convince someone that they should look into running one. ~~~ chrisgd Now I really don't know what to say to my brother in law who is opening a brewery / restaurant... ~~~ smackfu Yeah, I like brewpubs as a customer, but I don't see what the business model is, over just running a brewery or a bar. You get the beer at cost, but the price of a keg of beer is not really a problem most bars feel the need to improve upon. ~~~ cc439 Brewpubs can skirt around the regulatory insanity that some states impose on breweries. I'm not sure how close South Carolina is to the norm but you cannot sell more than 48oz of beer to the public per day and only after a tour (and only 16oz can be over 8% abv). You have to sell to an independent distributor who sells to independent (of both distributor and brewery) stores. If you operate a brewpub you can sell "freely" but only up to 2,000 (IIRC) barrels a year. I know several states have tough regulatory environment but I don't know if they go as far. ~~~ lostlogin I wonder what defines a brew pub. Could you have a couple under the same roof owned by the same person? "This tap belongs to pub A, this to pub B..." ~~~ cc439 That could be a loophole, here's the relevant legislation: SECTION 61-4-1700. Definitions. For purposes of this article: (1) "Brewpub" means a tavern, public house, restaurant, or hotel which produces on the permitted premises a maximum of two thousand barrels a year of beer for sale on the premises. (2) "Permitted premises" means those areas normally used by the permittee or licensee to conduct his business and includes, but is not limited to, the selling areas, brewing areas, storage areas, food preparation areas, and parking areas. (3) "Person" means an individual, partnership, corporation, or other form of business organization. HISTORY: 1996 Act No. 415, Section 1. [http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t61c004.php](http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t61c004.php) ------ subpixel I actually visited Hill Farmstead Brewery last month in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. If you're not aware, they're sort of the Magnolia Cupcakes of breweries - people drive hours to get there, wait in line for hours, and generally get very hyped up about the beer. While I waited over an hour to buy my 2 allowed bottles, I was able to read a little about the guy who started the brewery. I'm paraphrasing, but he basically explained in an interview somewhere that once you realize you're not doing something for fun or for yourself, you come to see other elements about the work that matter, and that those are what ultimately make it worth while. (His motivation has a lot to do with maintaining his family connection to the land he's brewing on, which has been in his family for like 200 years.) I thought those were pretty wise words for anyone considering a new venture. Novelty and fun wear off. If you can figure out what about the work really matters, you'll be less likely to burn out. FWIW I saw the founder of the brewery, and I can tell you he was not showing any signs of having a good time or a good day. ~~~ twoodfin _FWIW I saw the founder of the brewery, and I can tell you he was not showing any signs of having a good time or a good day._ Eh, Shaun's almost always like that, at least on days the retail shop is open. Pictures of him actually brewing or hanging out with other brewers or at his (amazing) festivals confirm that he is definitely doing what he loves. Hill Farmstead is a very interesting case. Shaun has said many times that there is an absolute limit on the amount of beer he can reasonably brew on- site, and that he has no interest in expanding beyond that limit. As a result, given the quality of his product, he will inevitably be swamped by demand unless he raises prices, something he has generally been reluctant to do. Imagine if Napa's highest-rated winery were selling the vast majority of its juice in $20 bottles. ~~~ snogglethorpe Hmm, but at least he can reasonably resist pressure to _lower_ prices... :] [This is not something to be sneezed at... like 75% of the conversation on U.S. beer websites seems to be complaining about beer prices—which seems a bit crazy to me, as from my point of view, U.S. craft beer prices are already extremely low (craft beer prices where I live are probably three times what they typically are in the U.S.)!] ~~~ epaladin Got into craft beer in the US and then lived in Japan for a year. Japan taxes beer based on malt content. There are some really great breweries over there, but $9 pints (at a brewpub even) add up fast. (If you're ever in Tokyo check out Baird Beer, they've got a few taprooms now- the one in Harajuku is amazing for the contrast between the insanity of the street outside and the calm of the pub. Anyway, big fan of their Barleywine.) ~~~ snogglethorpe > _the one in Harajuku is amazing for the contrast between the insanity of the > street outside_ A slight nitpick: the Baird Harajuku Taproom is near Takashita-dori (presumably the insanity to which you were referring), but its actual location is on a quiet backstreet about 50m away -- and that 50m makes an incredible difference... The ambience on the street outside the taproom is amazingly quiet. [I make the point because I'm always struck by how amazingly quiet the location seems, despite the proximity to T.D. It always feels sort of surreal...] ~~~ snogglethorpe Note ― should be "Takeshita-dori"... >< [I guess limited-time editing is better than _no_ editing, but man is it still annoying...] ------ esw Thanks for this. This reminds me a lot of an old Slate piece ([http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitt...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitter_brew.html)) about owning a coffee shop. ------ slg I am glad the author actually does enjoy his work, but this is just another reminder that your dream job might not be as dreamy as you initially imagined. Sometimes the grass is just greener because you haven't looked close enough to notice all the brown patches. ~~~ lukasm [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Cat...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Cattle_eating_grass_through_barbed_wire_fence.jpg/440px- Cattle_eating_grass_through_barbed_wire_fence.jpg) ~~~ eru Does anybody know why the cow's doing that? ~~~ phpnode because the grass is greener on the other side? ~~~ eru Perhaps it is. Or perhaps there's more going on with the cow? ------ JasonCEC For anyone interested in starting a brewery, my startup [1] does Flavor Profiling and Statistical Quality control for small to medium sized artisan beer, coffee, and spirit producers. We use machine learning and data-science to quantify the flavor profile of products, detect flaws, and pinpoint the sources of batch variation. [1] www.Gastrograph.com ~~~ contingencies Looks great but too much subscription money for a startup. I'd suggest per- test pricing with discounts for repeat business or agreement to be listed in an "as used by..." page as an alternative sales strategy. ~~~ JasonCEC Maybe. We've considered lowering prices - but $500 / month is _far_ less than what any company (startup or not) would need to spend on hiring an employee with quality control experience. We do far more than most QA/QC teams ever could... unless they have individuals with an advanced math degree, expansive analytical chemistry knowledge, and production experience - and paying that team won't be $500 / month! ~~~ contingencies That's one way of looking at the market: as an alternative to hiring someone and getting them access to appropriate lab gear. Another would be looking at the probably much larger layman's market... if you can get your flavour profile priced low enough to become normalized as a standard record at some competitions, for instance, then you may have ten times the market in half the time. ~~~ JasonCEC That is very interesting to me... When this first became a business a few years ago, I had hopped that we could get `laypeople` to review products, and then use a mass of consumer data to sell our services. This has not paned-out in practice; doing reviews on our system is not _difficult_ but it is involved - you have to care about flavor and what you're tasting to do it. Also, going Standards/consumer route puts us into direct competition with many of the trade organizations that our clients belong to, like the SCAA and the BA - they try to sell their own sensory systems from 'partner companies' (that then donate money back to the organization...). I think it is better for us to gain the trust of a set of clients who are looking for a better way to taste products for quality control (based on science), and charge them for a service than to gamble on general consumers in the short term. In the long term.... I would love to have 1M+ random people using our app to review beer, coffee, and etc. [Do you still live in Kunming? // I use to live right around KNU!] ~~~ contingencies Sounds fair enough, I hadn't considered trade associations and existing claws in the pot. Still, you could try approaching the infinite number of local wine competitions with freebies for their winners in order to garner discount promotional coverage. I live just south of Kunming on Fuxian lake. Kumming aint what it used to be, but it's still clean and relatively natural down here! ------ azurelogic Replace all of the brewing talk in the description of cleaning, tedium, and notetaking with chemistry, and then you will understand why I became a developer after spending 4 years studying chemistry. ~~~ donretag My father-in-law, who used to be the brewmaster of one of the biggest breweries in the world, has a PhD in Chemical Engineering. I'm glad he did not end up as a developer, although perhaps my wife would understand me more! ------ hessenwolf So, be a chemist. Fairy muff. Interestingly, the t-test, probably one of the most relevant pieces of mathematics in modern science, was invented by Gossett in the Guiness brewery in Dublin in 1908. The problem was that for testing the batches, the sample size was too small for the estimate of the standard deviation to be consistent, so the distribution was wider than would be expected from a Gaussian normal distribution. So, the lad used resampling from a bag of a thousand chicken bones (measuring the lengths) to derive a distribution. Somehow, the mathematical underpinnings were later defined properly by Fischer. ------ drone Brewery incubators are coming... Some of them might work out pretty nicely to help test and get your feet wet with bigger equipment before taking the leap. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kitcheninc/the- brewery-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kitcheninc/the-brewery- incubator-co-working-brewery-collabora) [http://blogs.westword.com/cafesociety/2013/02/innovative_cra...](http://blogs.westword.com/cafesociety/2013/02/innovative_craft_brewery_co- op.php) ~~~ snogglethorpe How does this compare to normal contract brewing? There are some (extremely good) "breweries" around here which I'm told are "recipe only," i.e., the actual physical site/equipment used is that of another, larger, brewer. However I'm not sure exactly what that really means... do they typically really just give the recipe over to the larger brewer and say "make this!" or is the "originating" brewer more involved in the actual brewing process, just using the larger brewer's equipment? ~~~ llimllib I'm not in the industry, but I understand that those are generally called "contract brewers", and the originator of the beer recipe may be more or less involved as the contract brewer begins production, but they definitely don't continue to be unless they find that the product isn't up to snuff. Again, take that with a lump of salt, I hope somebody who knows more will chime in. ~~~ snogglethorpe Right, as far as I understand it, that's a general pattern for breweries expanding production beyond their current capacity, or to geographically remote areas. What I'm talking about seems a little different though: it's very, very, small craft breweries which don't have any of their own equipment (except presumably small-batch/homebrew equipment used in creating their recipes in the first place), and do _all_ their actual production brewing on the premises of another brewery, usually located in the same city. Maybe they work the same way, but I can't help but think that the latter type would be more involved in the process... :] ------ brc I know someone with a brewery - it's a pretty small operation with a small bar. It's not a trendy location or operation but he has been going for years. The biggest problem is governments. Either the local government, which decided to arbitarily start charging commercial premises 90% of the metered incoming water as wastewater, on the assumption that 90% of what comes out the tap goes down the drain. Breweries use a lot of water, so that added costs. Then the federal government decided that young people were drinking too many strong pre-mixed drinks (alcopops), so they added a massive alcopops tax (a 70% increase) to try and stop young people drinking (yeah, _as if that was going to work_ [1]). While the young people switched to spirits, wine and cider, his business got smashed because one of his big product lines was ginger beer, and for whatever reason some politician or bureaucrat decided that ginger beer counted as an alcopop. Most of us in the software industry don't realise how much freedom we have. We can start pretty much any type of software company we like, where we like, when we like. Most of us don't even have to tell a single layer of government what we are doing, save for reporting the income to the taxman. The horror stories of random regulation changes on small businesses like breweries and restaurants is the stuff of nightmares. I mean, imagine if a government somewhere decided to arbitrarily add a 70% tax to mobile-app sales. Lots of small developers would go under. But governments routinely do this sort of thing all the time to lots of other small businesses. [1] [http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/alcopop-tax-fails- to-d...](http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/alcopop-tax-fails-to-deter- teen-binge-drinking-raises-45-billion-in-revenue/story-fneuz92c-1226650824648) ~~~ TheCoelacanth Alcohol has to be one of the most over-regulated things in existence. It seems like every state and municipality has it's own laws saying that you can't sell it at certain times or places, or that you can't drink it in certain places, or that you have to sell a certain amount of food in addition to it. ------ smackfu Another factor I didn't see mentioned is that it is very hard to scale up a brewery. The equipment is a big expensive investment and it makes a certain amount of beer. If you want to make more than that, you need more equipment. ------ sizzle I'll leave the brewing to the professionals. I can get Pliny the Elder pretty easily here in San Diego. Stone Brewery is close by, and always releasing new and innovative brews. ------ midas007 Have to admit, Sierra Nevada Taproom and Restaurant in Chico is a huge cash printing press. Probably mostly for show, but people drop the cash. The place is packed on weekends, year round. [http://www.sierranevada.com/brewery/california/taproom](http://www.sierranevada.com/brewery/california/taproom) ------ fitek If you're interested in building a nanobrewery, we've developed plans and software for a brewery made out of 3x 55 gallon stainless steel drums at the openbrewery.org project. The software uses Processing; the hardware is less prescriptive since a lot of it will depend on what parts you can get your hands on. Our goals are to achieve greater consistency and to automate the process as much as possible, so brewers don't have to sit and watch the beer cooking for an entire day. Our nanobrewery is already running for a year or so and there are at least two more under construction around the world (that I am aware of). So far, the project comprises just the brewery itself-- no tools for downstream analysis of the beer, though that is an important future improvement. Shameless plug, brought to you by one of the project founders :) ------ js2 Beer is so yesterday. The new (old) thing is your own distillery: [http://www.amazon.com/Kings-County-Distillery-Guide- Moonshin...](http://www.amazon.com/Kings-County-Distillery-Guide- Moonshining/dp/1419709909) (Book is written by a guy who grew up in a dry county and whose father is a preacher, natch.) :-) ~~~ pwenzel Not true, cider is the new deal. ;-) After becoming a homeowner, I throttled back on my beer brewing hobby and focused on brewing hard cider from my own fruit. Part of my stockpile: [http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2823/10919772826_8b39ab55de.jp...](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2823/10919772826_8b39ab55de.jpg) Few things are as satisfying as tapping a homebrew cider that chilled in a snow drift on your roof. ~~~ mynameishere Mead will be the next big thing. (It originates from insects. What's not to love?) ~~~ marvin Second this. My roommates go to an annual swordfighting festival and always bring back as much homebrewed mead as they are allowed to buy. It's the nectar of the gods. ------ contingencies Working on the winemaking side (with arbitrary fruits) as a side project here in southwest China. It's an interesting place to work, much different to recipes like _" pay x to buy y at your local brewing supplier"_ like in the west. More experimentation! ------ lawncheer The "lean startup" version of brewing: [http://www.feaststl.com/dine-out/big- idea/article_14e48446-4...](http://www.feaststl.com/dine-out/big- idea/article_14e48446-40b2-11e3-b537-001a4bcf6878.html) ------ mathattack Brewing (and wine making) seems like the rare field(s) that consumers think they can do better. I don't think I can make a better computer than Apple just because I use one. I don't think I can block better than the offensive lineman on the 49ers, even if I think he's incompetent. I can't make a car better than GM, even if I might drive one. Yet why do so many people think opening a brewery is easy? Beer Wars is a great documentary on the fight craft brewers have against the big beer companies. [1] The war is all in distribution. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1326194/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1326194/) ~~~ mcdougle Didn't Ray Kroc say something to the effect of McDonald's product not being hamburgers -- anyone can make a better hamburger than McDonald's in their kitchen. McDonald's burgers aren't the best; they're easy to obtain. Just like Bud Light -- it sucks, but you don't have to spend a whole day cooking it and then a whole month waiting for it to be ready to drink it. ~~~ mathattack Consistency too. McD is about process. ------ coldtea I find such attemps are so shallow. "Hey, this brewery thing is popular, everybody is opening one. And I like beer. I should open one myself". How many people have a genuine passion AND business sense for the stuff, instead of merely going with what other people do and what's considered a hip and trendy thing to do (with some of them even thinking they won't have to do much work to run such a business). It's like when I see tons people attemting a career in designing skateboarding gear or some such non-industry... ~~~ almondsays "Hey, this web app thing is popular, everbody is making one. And I like the web. I should make one myself." Just some perspective. ~~~ Kliment Yeah, except with beer you have 2-3 orders of magnitude more starting expenses. ------ natural219 Fantastic article. I think brewing beer will be the next project on my list. Sidenote: I do think the original title "So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery..." would have fit better here. ~~~ coldpie Homebrewing is lots of fun and not terribly expensive. I highly recommend John Palmer's book "How to Brew" if you're just starting out. It's a long read, but you'll have an understanding of the process before you make your first batch. Then grab a couple of friends and make next Saturday Brew Day. I found scheduling consistent brew days is the best way to improve your craft. Don't let it fall by the wayside and make two beers a year or you'll forget everything and lose interest. ~~~ natural219 Thanks for the advice! ------ percentcer I never thought I wanted to open a brewery, and now I'm sure of it! ------ cylinder I think a winery and vineyard sound much more appealing than brewing. ~~~ poulsbohemian For what it's worth... I live in the heart of Washington's wine country. Every year there are dozens of new wineries, and the same number that go bankrupt. Very few people who move here to be a "gentleman farmer" enjoying the imagery of the harvest find that to be the case - most end up bankrupt. While I am not in the wine business, it's pretty clear there are a lot of shenanigans that go on, like buying wholesale wine and putting a nice label on it - like most businesses, the marketing matters at least as much as product quality. I make cheese, and have spoken to some of you here about that as well. Producing commercial dairy products blows away the health and safety regulations in beer and wine making. Think it is hard putting a fermented grape in a bottle for sale, try something that comes out of the backend of a live animal... ~~~ justincormack "making cheese is farming bacteria" as my (French) book says. Its fun to do, but I don't have a desire to do it commercially. ~~~ eru That saying applies to beer and wine as well. (Only that for cheese, you farm the bacteria on animal products.) ~~~ justincormack And salami and so on. With cheese it is pretty extreme - you don't even bottle it so even the outside of it is made form bacteria too... ~~~ eru Bread's even more extreme: I caught my own wild sourdough a few times. (You can catch your own wild yeasts for beer too, but that's more hit and miss, I believe?) ~~~ julian55 I make cider using wild yeast. It's always worked fine so far. I think this is fairly common with small-scale cider making in the UK. I do add some sulphite to the juice (amount depends on pH) to discourage the undesirable micro- organisms. If you want consistency then it's probably not a good technique, but that's not what I am after. ~~~ justincormack Yes, I think it is common for cider still. Its entirely doable with wine, but only high end places tend to, cheap wine, like cheap cheese, is more industrial...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What if Turntable.fm and Hot Or Not had a child...Presenting SoundOff.fm - JDS950 http://www.soundoff.fm ====== koopajah I really love the idea, and the design is really nice/easy to get. The website seems to slow my firefox down a bit. I tries the battle in HipHop/Rap and almost has always the same songs which is less fun but I guess you'll need to have a lot of uploads and Rap might not be the best genre to try out first. A/B keys might not be the best keys to choose a song anyway, at least on an azerty keyboard they are pretty far of each other and it's harder to chose a song quickly! Edit : The link to change the change for a battle seems really small and I did not find it at first. When coming back to the screen asking for fair shake/snap judgement maybe add a button to change genre if we want? Edit 2: It seems that we must sign up to test the site. Why the change of heart after opening it? It's the kind of site I want to test before, once again, giving my email... ------ JimD12 Interesting. Worth a look, its pretty fun. ------ mpersak2 real good idea... real easy to use too	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What Breaks Our Systems: A Taxonomy of Black Swans - yarapavan https://www.infoq.com/presentations/taxonomy-black-swans/ ====== aszantu If she talks about the slides she shows, the slides should be visible	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook is down. - kashif_hn https://www.facebook.com/ is down. ====== nashe Who cares? ------ matysanchez Nope. ~~~ kashif_hn Opening but unable to login... ~~~ psykovsky Works fine here.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hidden costs of constantly shipping new things - michalbugno https://www.mindtheproduct.com/the-hidden-costs-of-constantly-shipping-new-things/ ====== digitallogic Interesting! I especially enjoyed the insight into the evolution of the company. Though with this insight I have slightly different conclusions than the author: 1\. A bias to ship and a bias to ship _new_ things are not one and the same. A lot of the problems, such as a failure to iterate on existing products/feature, sound very much a product of the later, not the former. If anything, the issue "Insufficient Iteration" is probably not correctable without a bias to shipping. 2\. A bias to ship and a bias to ship things that impact your customers are not one and the same. There is a note about an early shift to micro-services. I can't speak to this organization, but, generally speaking, spending time on internal engineering work to the detriment obvious missing features is a common issue with early stage companies. 3\. A bias to ship and a bias to ship to the right customers. Specifically in regard to the high value, high demand customers. 4\. A bias to ship and... idk what to call this? "The product specs were well thought through, sometimes crafted for months." TBH, the problem with this one feels like a lack of a bias to ship. As described, I think the real culprit was a lack of or poor prioritization. FWIW, I suspect the author and I may actually be in violent agreement as I did find my self nodding with most of his lessons learned. Though I'd be careful about letting too much hindsight bleed in (eg - do situations that'd be improved by more decision documentation justify the effort of documenting all product decisions, especially in the early phase when the product is rapidly evolving)? ~~~ RandoHolmes I think the problem is that the leaders in the company (technical or otherwise) didn't recognize that software systems are like children: They have phases. The ship it constantly is probably ok when you're small, but at some point you need to become more mature than that, both as an organization, and as an approach to the software itself. ------ montagg I work at a company that grew from a few hundred to a few thousand people in a few years' time, and there was an identical mindset and identical problems over that growth period. I started during that growth period, and 10 years later, we're still digging ourselves out of those mistakes. One reason for this was how heavily we prioritized first mover advantage. We pushed extremely hard to get into new markets, and while strategically this worked out extremely well for us, it meant that later development was hamstrung by earlier decisions. Any iteration on old features almost always meant rebuilding it entirely, and we've only just started to get to a place where previous efforts to do this are now paying off in increased velocity. I think there's an argument that this _could_ be good, since you're only improving features when there's some other value you can ship. However, I think it's short-sighted, because it means prioritizing small iterations has an unnecessarily large cost, simply because that cost wasn't paid down slowly over time. While I do think prioritizing new markets early on was a good call, that mindset bit us in the ass in a big way when we tried to ship a very flashy new feature later in our growth cycle that crashed and burned because of tech debt, and it took us over a year to fix everything to release it. If we had taken a mindset of building for the long term five years ago, which was already years after we'd gotten to a comfortable place in revenue and marketshare, we would probably have paid off most of the major tech debt by now. I honestly don't know how a company can get past the addiction to shipping, at least not during its growth period. It can be strategically necessary, and I imagine in only a two-year period at the early stages of a company, like what's in this article, it's impossible to avoid. But leaders must have in the back of their heads the idea that they will need to start tipping the scales toward standardization, building to last, and building infrastructure as well as features sooner than they'd probably like to avoid larger problems in the future. And I suspect the only way leaders will really take that seriously is if they've gone through it before. EDIT: Clarified a few points. ~~~ jamil7 Apart from the one catastrophic failure you mention it sounds like, from a business perspective this worked? You were able to extend your tech debt long enough to start generating money and are now in a position to pay it back. From an engineering perspective I agree it's a grind to pay all this back and lose so much velocity. Are their business strategies that favour slower more careful engineering practises? mission-critical systems come to mind but maybe also nth-movers could be put in there? Where you know what you're building and competing with but want to make the best version of X. ~~~ codemac > Are their business strategies that favour slower more careful engineering > practises? This is a false dichotomy, and there is plenty of research (and experience) that shows shipping higher quality software actually takes less time and money. ~~~ LanguageGamer I want to believe this. Do you have any citations? My experience would suggest shipping higher quality software is a lot cheaper in the long run, but has up-front costs that often times startups can't afford. ~~~ sundbry You can afford them if you don't have project managers or sales guys begging for their demoable results of new shiny thing and promising it to others too early and too often. ------ lbriner This is kind of interesting but it sounds like the perpetual worry of the perfectionist developer. Of course you end up with tech tech, you develop new things when you could improve existing things, you deploy something that could be iterated but you don't. The truth is that the world is a complex place and you don't always know whether you can keep your existing customers by improving what you already have or get new customers to decrease the risk of declining income. It is hard to measure what is acceptable tech debt and what is worth addressing. In one sense, the proof is in the income. If you can help customers with an 80% OK product then you just need to live with the dodgy 20% bit. I agree with the danger of big customers though! If you ever think something is a way to avoid hard decisions, pivots and annoying some of your customers, then it is too good to be true ;-) ~~~ michalbugno I'm far from being a developer perfectionist, I wouldn't spend 10 years in this company if I was one, trust me (btw we fired a lot of them along the way). The point of the article is not to convince anyone to slow down as much as possible and work on bugs/etc. It's just that at some point (3, 4 years in?) there comes a time that you just have to put more effort into the things I described, otherwise it gets complicated _fast_. Obviously there is a tradeoff, my opinion is that this tradeoff wasn't correctly balanced (especially further down). ~~~ sreekotay I think the article starts out sounding that way --- but reading all the way through, it's about how to DO BETTER if you want to ship more often (the key take aways from the article being: document, iterate/revisit, and be intentional) ------ renewiltord Every company suffers under the weight of the debt of being feature focused. That's because everyone who didn't do that isn't alive to tell the tale. ------ trentnix There's a lot of insight packed into this post, and really it transcends way beyond the mindset of _constantly shipping new things_. This particular line resonated with me: _Big customers certainly sounded good on paper, but they came with a cost (complexity and a very hands-on relationship) that we weren’t really prepared for, and that we didn’t manage to put boundaries on fast enough._ This is an issue I've dealt with more than once in my career. It seems to occur especially when an organization values the _sale_ more than it values the _business_. It's virtually impossible to successfully apply boundaries after the customer has been trained that there are none. Irrespective of how carefully you do it or how much you try to reassure your customer, it always feels like you are taking value away. I've encountered this recently in an organization that values customer happiness, which it calculates as an absence of customer complaints, more than customer success. The squeaky wheels get all the grease at the expense of just about everything else. And the software inevitably has become a maze of settings and IF-THEN-ELSE blocks and SWITCH statements, increasing the cognitive load required to make what should be simple changes. When new features are added, the impulse is to code defensively and build inevitable customization into everything up front. And further down the spiral of technical debt and increasing complexity we go... ------ Slartie I always wonder why nobody appears to try a hybrid model between product and project development when it comes to satisfying large customers which need very specific customizations that often don't fit well into a product development roadmap aiming at satisfying a more generic audience. Like: don't just add weird features that make sense for just one customer, but are eventually delivered to all customers, but instead maintain a "core product" which provides a lot of generic, core functionality, but which by itself isn't actually usable and just serves as basic building blocks to construct the actual end products which are then built and packaged individually for each (big) customer. Each of these "end products" is a development project in itself, has its own team, its own codebase, but they all draw from a core set of base functionality developed and maintained by another dedicated team that is not directly in contact with any of the customers (or at least not permanently). This - at least in theory - prevents custom functionality for specific customers from polluting the common core product that aims to please a general audience, while still allowing for the necessary freedom to satisfy big customers demanding custom functionality, but also offering big checks in return. ~~~ pyromine I mean you're describing what most Enterprise Resource Planning deployments look like. There's a lot of enterprise software that follows this model ~~~ Slartie You are right; probably I have to state the question in a more precise way, which would be: why is it such that this model seems only to be used in huge "enterprisey" contexts? The model of course depends on a certain modularity of the software in question, but hasn't that been a core concept not just for the biggest players, but also the smaller shops for a while now? ~~~ rahimnathwani Implementation costs a lot, not just in coding, but in all the extra work that goes into sales, gathering requirements, training etc. Whoever nominally pays for all that work, it translates into a high price tag for the customer. Only large enterprises will get enough value from the customisations for that high price tag to be worthwhile. All else being equal, a smaller company will spend a lower absolute amount to work around imperfections, and get lower value from any product overall. So of course they will not be willing to pay as high a price. Hence, for commodity use cases, use commodity software rather than fully/semi-customised. ------ bleonard When I was running a product team, I often talked about "nuance" being the enemy. Every difference (or arrow in a flowchart) was a new piece of product debt to have to think about later. This article is in that direction. > … the difficulties started piling up fast, and before we knew it we had to deal with a lot. ------ troelsSteegin I think this is a solid critical reflection that at least in enterprise relates well. When it comes to your customers, I believe that you want to understand as much as you can, as early as you can, about what they are actually trying to do and about how they are actually faring with what you have sold them. I'd argue that the success of your initial customers is more important than the features for your next deal, and that feature investments should reflect that. The problem, as the OP said, is in estimating the difference between the incremental feature requirements of your initial customers and what your strategic feature set will be. There may be no difference, and your strategy is to ship features in order satisfy each new customer as you get it. Perhaps you can design for that. Chances are though that your first customers are not wholly repsentative of your strategic, target market. So, in the early stage, you have to make choices about allocating dev for tactical "now" or for strategic "later". In the early stage, if there is not enough "now", there is no "later". The question is when to begin budget for later. I'll argue that you are attempting to build a business, not a suspense movie, and that you budget a fixed amount for "later" from day one. Plan to succeed. I agree with the recommendation of a strong Professional Services function as an buffer for dev, but will note that culturally you have to work hard to not silo. Your Support and ProServe teams become a primary channel of learning for dev. As a business, though, you may have to give away ProServ hours. All in all my biggest takeaway here is that you attempt to "hire" customers strategically. As you journey together, will this customer want to go where you will want to go? What time is it when your "Big Customer" sits on your roadmap? ... "Hire" customers strategically is easier said than done when there's salaries on the line -- accordingly look at how you compensate Sales and budget away from early stage big deals. ------ hn_throwaway_99 Also could be titled "Hidden costs of moving to microservices because the cool kids are." Very glad (most of) the cool kids have re-evaluated their stance on microservices. ~~~ michalbugno I have a plan to write a short article about specifically this topic at Base. I personally fucked up a ton of things with microservices there :) ------ pkteison What an awful article. Expensive conclusions are drawn with no apparent consideration for their cost. The experience of a company which appears to have successfully balanced complicated tradeoffs in choosing features is discounted because there were bugs. And almost no examples or useful stories about any detail, or suggestions on how to do it better other than to go (much) slower and to spend (much) more or to not take rich customers money. I suspect good arguments could be made for these things, but they need to acknowledge and justify their cost. ~~~ michalbugno Author here. Sorry you didn't like it :) It's tough to suggest detailed solutions to a problem which is in general very vague. Btw I hope the article shows my appreciation for what the company achieved. One small insight from Uzi (CEO + founder) when I discussed this with him (after publishing article): Base should've focused on much less features but with greater detail. It somehow confirms my guess that we didn't work on existing features as much as we should, but we "spread too thin". ------ Covzire Oh good, I was afraid this was going to be an intervention for me regarding my steady stream of almost daily deliveries from Amazon/HD/Walmart/Ebay etc. ------ jmull Hm... this article actually seems like a better argument to obsessively focus on constantly shipping new things than the opposite. ~~~ coldcode Being bought out for large money often covers up the nightmare that would have been, and shifts it to someone else. ------ 29athrowaway [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep) ~~~ arbitrage That's not a particularly good way to encourage discussion. What is it specifically about Feature & Scope creep that you would like to say? ~~~ 29athrowaway I think this article is great and it does a good job characterizing what happens to products that fall victim to feature creep.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Introducing Improved Performance Dynos - narfz http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2015/8/20/introducing-improved-performance-dynos ====== habitue It seems like the hype around Heroku has died down somewhat. Does anyone care to comment why they went with Heroku vs. AWS or the like? ~~~ jtokoph I would argue that Heroku is still the fastest way to get a web app deployed for the first time. One command to push and one click to setup a solid database. As your systems get more complex, you can still peel off services to AWS or the like, but until then, Heroku combines the following tasks and AWS services into a dead simple process: configuring instances, Scaling Groups, RDS, Cloudwatch (some metrics, consolidated logging) and ELB.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Write Games with Python in Godot - touilleMan https://github.com/touilleMan/godot-python ====== touilleMan If you don't know Godot game engine ([https://godotengine.org/](https://godotengine.org/)), you should definitly give it a try ;-) Godot use a Python-inspired custom language for scripting called GDScript(it's not a NIH syndrome ^^: [https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/about/faq.html#what-w...](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/about/faq.html#what- were-the-motivations-behind-creating-gdscript)) This approach works great but I felt "Python-inspired" is never enough so I made a plugin embedding the full Python interpreter in all it glory ! Now you can pip install the whole Python ecosystem (including binary packages such as Numpy or Pytorch) and use it into Godot. Another cool thing about this is you can write your game code in Python to iterate fast on it, then use Cython later on to optimize it and get almost native performances !	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Trip.com founder gives advice on fundraising - ALee https://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/82755250.html ====== satyajit Its good, but article is from 2002. A lot of it may still hold true, however, would like an updated one with the funding under current economic weather.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A New Prediction Market for the Masses - amichail http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/a-new-prediction-market-for-the-masses/ ====== MisterMerkin <http://www.owise.com/> Was around way before this. And I think there were others before "Web" was even "2.0". ------ myoung8 What's with designers using these psychadelic spinning voids as background animations lately?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Cloudcraft Pro - narsil https://cloudcraft.co/pricing ====== subie Why are you directing to your pricing page initially? The homepage is great and shows what the product actually is. ~~~ bryanlarsen The last posting of cloudcraft was only 4 months ago. IIRC, hacker news penalizes anything that was popular within the last year. Posting a different page bypasses that. Also, a lot of the feedback on the last post was discussion about possible pricing models, the OP probably posted this page as a response to that. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722942) ~~~ tomc1985 Maybe, but to an outsider who doesn't follow all the countless discussions, this just looks like yet-another-SaaS waving around its codpiece. And what a pricey codpiece it is? $50/mo for the solo plan? To make diagrams? Seriously? ~~~ copperx Hard to justify, I agree. Make it a Mac/iThing app, price it at $50, and then we're talking. ------ nodesocket People seem to be all up and arms over the $49 starting price point, but honestly this is their first attempt at pricing. Pricing is hard. $49 for a company is nothing, and a lot will pay this. However, I somewhat agree that the starting price of $49 for individuals feels a bit high. Perhaps there is a room for an individual vs business plan? By the way, huge supporter of CloudCraft. I use it to send clients architecture overviews when going through security audits. ------ CharlesW Dear Cloudcraft Pro developer: This is the most exciting thing I've seen today. I've been wanting a tool like this since I started using AWS. However, the "Pro Solo" pricing strikes me as being way out of whack. It's as much as the "all apps" Adobe Creative Cloud plan. It's a 6X multiple of licensing all Office apps for a year, and just under the cost of licensing _all_ JetBrains products for a year. Please provide a reasonable (say, $99), yearly "Solo Designer" plan for "infinite grid" planning and illustration, so that I may happily give you my money instead of using a free version with mysterious canvas size limitations. ~~~ Rezo Thank you CharlesW, that's really good feedback. It's entirely possible that the pricing is whack. I like the suggestion of a cheaper yearly plan. The fixed canvas is how the software has been since day one, tons of great diagrams have been created anyway. It wasn't intentional as much as a technical limitation at the time that took significant re-engineering to overcome. It's possible that it's not the correct move to reserve it for the paid plans, we'll see. ------ truetraveller I love the app design. I can see how the price might seem high for individuals. But for companies who really on AWS for ops, the price can vertainly be justified. It's a classic case of "price your product/service based on VALUE it provides". ------ tomc1985 This kind of stuff is supposed to be desktop software. One shouldn't have to pay a monthly fee to make fucking diagrams ~~~ copperx Unless making diagrams is part of your daily tasks ~~~ tomc1985 Still in the realm of desktop software, where you pay ONCE ------ na85 Sick of absurdly-priced applications like this that want to charge you a huge monthly fee for something trivial? Contribute to Dia [0], a reasonably good diagramming program that could use some love. [0] [http://dia-installer.de/](http://dia-installer.de/) ------ ollybee It reminds me of the digram to the Obama campaign some years ago [http://www.williamhertling.com/2013/07/printable-obama- for-a...](http://www.williamhertling.com/2013/07/printable-obama-for-america- aws-architecture/) ------ spriggan3 I don't get the pricing, really. Remove the free plan, offer a 1 month free try for paid users and lower your first paid plan. $50 a month is nuts for individuals. I really don't get cloud plans like these. ------ shill Is there a 2D view option for the people that actually have to discuss and implement the isometric marketecture diagrams created by this tool? ~~~ Rezo Tens of thousands of really cool architecture diagrams have been made with the tool so far, from pitch decks (marketecture, as you call it) to teams just planning their usual deployments. If you've produced any kind of static diagrams in the past, this is functionally (IMHO) so much better because you can connect the nodes to your live AWS environment resources and get richer contextual information (example screenshot [https://cloudcraft.co/graphics/email2.png](https://cloudcraft.co/graphics/email2.png)) right there as you work on it. I hope to build many more AWS specific tools to help devs on top of this canvas. ------ nikolay $49/mo is more than just a bit excessive! ~~~ Rezo It's quite a bit for an individual. It's hopefully not too much for company that employs professional software developers or for someone working as an AWS consultant. ~~~ nikolay It is still expensive even for companies compared to other much more essential services such as GitHub, for example. Honestly, I wouldn't pay more than $4.99/user/mo. Okay, $9.95 the most, but not a penny (literally) more! ------ lowbloodsugar For comparison: [https://creative.adobe.com/plans](https://creative.adobe.com/plans) $49/month for all of Adobe creative cloud including Photoshop and Illustrator, or for one isometric diagram tool. ~~~ Rezo You can use Cloudcraft for free and create exactly the same type of diagrams as with the paid plans, for as long as you like. There's no watermarks, missing components, etc. If it saves you time and money, or you think the additional features add value, you could consider subscribing. But it's fine if you don't. ~~~ lowbloodsugar Free for tiny diagrams. I am a software architect working on AWS, and it was too small for the very first diagram I tried to create. I am their target market. The free version is no use to me. $49/month isn't worth it. Honestly, for $49/year I'd still hesitate because of usability issues. ------ smoyer I want this for my distributed and containerized systems!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Web of trust for scientific peer review - mark_h http://code.google.com/p/gpeerreview/ ====== mmc This is a really interesting idea. A way of signaling quality of publications that is more useful than 'it made it through the committee at some conference/journal/etc' would be a major improvement for researchers. The graph analysis is even more interesting - this is a way around the problem that publication decisions can be made based on reviews written by less-well- read grad students instead of the faculty one might prefer to hear from. One question though - it seems like if this guy really wanted to sell the idea, he'd point us to at least one instance of it being used. All it'd take is asking someone to review an existing paper of his (or something). It'd be great to tinker with the review graph analysis, for example. Why not even share a signed review of the project itself? I tried to generate one for this post, but it doesn't seem to work on OS X, so I filed a bug instead. ~~~ mark_h Exactly; the graph analysis was most interesting to me. The current situation is well beyond overloaded, and open to frequent gaming. One attractive possibility if this took off is that conferences/journals could become less important as publication venues, and blogs etc could have equal weight. A conference provides a forum for meeting people, but I feel that most of the time the value of any venue is perceived solely in terms of its reputation (and hence impact on CV), and as you point out this is no guarantee that your paper has actually been reviewed by someone knowledgeable. ------ hollerith The project is an open-source command-line tool called gpeerreview. Great idea!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple to Spend $1.9B on New European Data Centers - gmays http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-to-invest-1-9-billion-in-european-data-centers-1424685191 ====== ChuckMcM Its interesting in that here is potentially another $2B going into data centers, if you look at Google's results you see they spend 1 - 2B$ per quarter on data centers (so call it 5 - 8B$/year). Facebook, Amazon, and Digital Ocean as well. The co-location business is practically toast though. Back in the early days I felt sure that nobody would put their core business assets on computers that someone else owned and operated. After all if you have physical access you have all the access you need. Why put your business at the risk of one disgruntled AWS admin? But time has proven my thoughts to be incorrect. I find that quite amazing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Three surprises with bc - fogus http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/07/14/bc-math-library/ ====== jimfl One surprise, the Twitter account @bc_l will run 'bc -l' on anything you direct message to it. I wonder how many such Twitter accounts there are.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I wrote a paperback book with code - izzydoesizzy http://www.zachlevy.me/blog/i-wrote-a-paperback-book-with-code/ ====== qubex This is so wrongheaded, so demeaning, so homeopathy-level diluted derivative that I don't even know where to begin critiquing the idea. What makes him think that basically publishing a collection of machine-harvested, human- rewritten (unattributed??) subreddit posts is something somebody would want to buy? ~~~ WheelsAtLarge He's making a point that authoring a book is not as hard as some make it seem. Many books are just rehashes of someone else's work. He's got the right idea but probably needs a bit of refinement. Keep in mind that it's 20 hours worth of work. What he's lacking is marketing to make some cash. I guess this posts counts as a start. Here's a link to a book that's a bit more refined but it's basically the same type of book. [https://www.amazon.com/Life-Hacks-Procedure-Simplifies- Frust...](https://www.amazon.com/Life-Hacks-Procedure-Simplifies- Frustration/dp/1440582858) ~~~ qubex What is missing is the notion of a book being a creative exercise in creating something of worthwhile value.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ten Predictions for 2030 - smsm42 https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2020/01/27/ten-predictions-for-2030/ ====== ktpsns What a pessimist! Here are my ten optimistic positions: 1\. Computing and tech: Manycore systems become standard, even cellphones have hundreds of cores. Many fundamental algorithms have been developed to make use of these cores. Of course this makes these CPUs much faster then their 10yrs old counterparts. Of course, the single core performance remains the same as 20yrs ago. 2\. Autonomous vehicles: It is done already today, and it will be done even more in 10yrs. We won't have the general AI and thus the problem of autonomous driving remains formally unsolved but practically solved for 99.99% of the time (that's not very good for any standards, but people don't care). Of course, this has enormous effects on "drivers" loosing their jobs or doing supervision/operating of a whole fleet from remote instead. 3\. AI apocalypse: There will be a whole industry doing profitable ML and "AI". 4\. Data science: don't underestimate public-money funded science. Universities won't decline at all. And progress is slow, but coming (Google for "big science, little science" if you wonder about these systematic concerns) 5\. Privacy: Well, yes, we all know where this ends. There will be much more totalitarian states in 10yrs. No hope for optimism. 6\. Quantum Computing: Major breakthroughs will happen. We can do 54 Qubits now, we will be able to do 1000 Qubits then, definitely. Don't underestimate the power of exp(t). :-) 7\. Transportation/Energy: electric cars will be common all over the world. Atomic energy will still be a thing, thought. 8\. Engineering: we will see at least one revolution similarly to 3d printing nowadays. 9\. Agriculture: Veganism will much more become a thing and mass culture of animals will decline. I believe in the good things... 10\. Science: Gravitational waves will allow us a much deeper understanding of the universe. Computing power boosts predictions in theoretical life sciences even more. Cancer will probably be cured. Amazing medicine will be developed. Many more people will have a degree, having studied will become as common as being able to read is nowadays.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Critic Markup: Plain-Text Editing Markup for Humans - mattparcher http://criticmarkup.com/ ====== robertskmiles Reminds me very strongly of a simpler (and in my opinion more elegant) notation that I have been using for a long time: [http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/collaboration_made_simple_wi...](http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/collaboration_made_simple_with_bracket_notation/) ~~~ jeremyswank I picked up a similar system a few years ago, I don't remember the source, but it depends on always using 2 sets of brackets (thus, fewer rules to remember): blah blah [][add something] blah blah blah blah [delete this][] blah blah blah blah [error][correction] blah blah Read it as: "replace the first brackets' contents with contents of the second bracket". An optional third set of brackets would be a comment or explanation. In my opinion, this simplified ruleset can be used even to correct texts for people who do not dig being asked to memorize 'a lot of rules' and they often end up really liking its clarity. edit: formatting ------ kghose Unfortunately this will make it very annoying to read. The examples look pleasant because it is a small amount of text with color coding. When you have a lot of text with a lot of corrections displayed in a regular text editor this will get very very crowded. Why not use existing tools like diff? ~~~ themindfulbit You're right, it can definitely get crowded. Diff is a great tool, and it's where we started on this whole thing. Unfortunately it's a little too complicated for most users, and there's no way to comment on individual edits unless you use source control and commit on every spelling change. ------ goldfeld So here's a first stab at a Vim plugin for Critic Markup, forked out of tpope's markdown as to be a superset. For now it's just the basic add/delete/substitute. I'll add comments, highlighting and jumping to each change to accept/reject up next. <https://github.com/goldfeld/criticmarkup-vim> ~~~ koralatov Thanks for this. I won't get the chance to try it out for a couple of days, but it's much appreciated. ------ goldfeld Great idea. I had been thinking about something like this for a few weeks, very timely! Would you guys welcome a third-party Vim plugin to your toolkit? ~~~ koralatov I would definitely welcome a Vim plugin with syntax highlighting. Just to totally overcomplicate it, some method of going through the changes one-by-one and accepting or rejecting them, à la Word's `Track Changes' feature, would be the icing on the plugin's cake. ~~~ goldfeld Also as a feedback, I wouldn't offer the toolkit zip download as the only option to get the plugins--have separate links for them. Both on the announcement page and on Gabe's post I tried to click the Sublime Text plugin to get to a github page or something and see how you went about it. ~~~ themindfulbit That's a great point. I'll figure out a better way to handle downloads on the site. ------ jpollock Isn't version control better? ~~~ loevborg The use case is totally different. Say I'm a professor and I'm writing a grant proposal. I send a draft to a PhD student to proofread. Today the only practical way to do this is to use Word's "track changes" tool. Basically, a proofreader (i) gives you a _lot_ of minuscule changes. A comma here, moving adverbs around there, etc. In a 10-page draft, there could be hundreds of suggestions. (ii) only makes suggestions. I'm the one applying for the grant, so I need to explicitly approve (or reject) every single change individually. This probably won't work elegantly with `patch`. (iii) changes individual words. Word actually records your changes as you make them. This is not the same as simply diff'ing version1 and version2. This helps me see the proofreader's point. (iv) makes textual comments to explain changes. Or you simply need to annotate a paragraph as "I don't understand this." Maybe you need to offer different suggestions, depending on the author's meaning ("Perhaps your mean to say ...") (v) makes different kinds of changes. "Diff" tracks changes on a line-line- basis. If you edit prose, you move around words, or lines, or even paragraphs. Basically, dealing with written language is more complicated and has more structure than source code. (vi) does not typically have a need for a revision history. It is very rarely useful to look up when a certain sentence was introduced in a grant proposal. While it's useful to keep earlier versions as a backup (and Dropbox is enough for that), version control really is a solution looking for a problem when it comes to writing prose. ~~~ chalst Version control is useful, though, if you want to have an proofreader work on an incomplete draft while the author is adding content. ------ davidw "Humans", as in "regular people" use Word for this, if they're at all familiar with the more advanced features. Which a lot of people aren't. Something like this might be useful for LiberWriter, but I'm 100% certain that our users would find it more confusing than helpful. ------ borplk It's interesting although I do wonder how we can get the masses to learn and start using something like this. I know it looks trivial to you and I but don't under estimate how not tech-savvy most people are. ------ simonbarker87 This would be very useful for marking up LaTeX sources - could have done with this for my thesis ~~~ BruceIV Agreed, but it's likely more useful for Markdown sources - when I was writing my thesis my supervisor and I kept the LaTeX source in a shared git repository, and added a couple macros for comments - it wasn't quite this slick, but combined with the git log it worked pretty well. ------ gbog seem like a good idea, do the markup allow nesting, eg commenting on a previous addition? ~~~ themindfulbit Not at this time. The syntax can get unreadable fairly quickly. It works well with version control, and with our Sublime Text plugin you can Accept or Reject edits via keyboard shortcuts before moving to the next round of edititng. ------ deerpig I would love to see syntax high lighting and eventually support for this in org-mode.... ------ chyatt Seems like a nice way to collaboratively contribute to a chunk of text via email! ------ deltasquared Nice idea. It seems pretty easy to understand. Where is the emacs mode? ~~~ deltasquared Well if anyone wants an emacs mode for this: (require 'generic-x) ;; we need this (define-generic-mode 'critic-mode nil nil '(("{--. _\--}" . 'font-lock- warning-face) ("{~~._ ~~}" . 'font-lock-constant-face) ("{{. _}}" . 'font- lock-keyword-face) ("{ >>._<<}" . 'font-lock-function-name-face) ("{\\+\\+.*\\+\\+}" . 'font-lock-type-face) ) nil nil "A mode for foo files" ) ------ RBerenguel I have to add this to my text editor project!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The End of Numeric Error: An interview with John L. Gustafson - ozdave http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2913029 ====== muizelaar Here's a python port of Gustafson's Mathematica unum implementation that I did: [https://github.com/jrmuizel/pyunum](https://github.com/jrmuizel/pyunum) ~~~ jepler Hi, thanks for sharing your implementation. Am I totally misusing (py)unum? Using pyunum, repeatedly rotate the point (1,0) by 45 degrees. Print out the X coordinate every 8 rotations. Mathematically, the value printed each time should be exactly 1. Unfortunately, after just 79 iterations, the unum covers the range (-27352064, 27352064)! This includes the correct result but is useless. A similar program using Python floats (i.e., platform doubles) prints 0.9999999999999937 at step 79 and runs in 1/540 of the time on my oldish core2 notebook. (or 0.9999999999371962 at step 799999 in less than 1/10 of the time of the 79 unum steps) from unum import * a = divideu(x2u(1), sqrtu(x2u(2))) x, y = x2u(1), x2u(0) for i in range(80): x, y = timesu(minusu(x, y), a), timesu(plusu(x, y), a) if i % 8 == 7: print i, view(x) ~~~ AlexCoventry Yes, you're misusing the concept, and pyunum makes it hard to use in this situation (probably because the author had a different purpose in mind.) Try re-running (in a fresh python invocation if you're in a shell) with this at the top of your script: import unum_config unum_config.e = 3 unum_config.f = 9 This gives 2^3=8 bits for the exponent, and 2^9=512 bits for the fraction. The default values for e and f are 3 (8 bits) and 4 (16 bits) respectively. The idea with unums is that your program sees the unacceptable bounds, and recomputes with higher precision. Comparing speeds is very unfair: one implementation is hardware which has received maybe $100B-worth of optimization over decades, the other is one guy's python script. In this implementation, 9 seems to be the maximum value for f: if I set it to 10 unum fails to import because it tries to divide a float by too large an integer. And 4 seems to be the maximum practical value for e. At e=5, initialization of unum takes over two minutes and 250M of memory, probably because it's computing the largest possible value in that floating point scheme. ~~~ muizelaar Yes. My intention with pyunum was to match the Mathematica code as much as was reasonable so that it's possible to follow the code samples in the book without requiring Mathematica. The result is unpythonic and very slow but should be usable for experimenting with the semantics of unums. It would certainly be nice to have more pythonic port. ------ aaibec Did anyone find peer-reviewed papers on the topic (e.g. in an IEEE journal given that it challenges the IEEE floating point standard)? I think the book is nice, but popularizing "unum"s with a book targeting non- experts feels like skipping an important step in due process, given the grand claims that are being made. ~~~ jlgustafson Plenty of experts refereed the book, believe me. William Kahan, David Bailey, Gordon Bell, Horst Simon, Ulrich Kulisch, John Gunnels, and anonymous reviewers as well. It was vetted for months before it was released. If you prefer a more formal treatment, Ulrich Kulisch has written up the unum concepts in a paper more palatable to mathematicians. Incidentally, I submitted a short version to the ARITH23 conference detailing how IEEE 754 could be repaired to give bit-identical results on different systems, and they had it reviewed by three reviewers, one who liked it, and the other two who served on the IEEE 754 committee and trashed it for some pretty silly reasons, like using the word "subnormal" instead of "denormal". There is no easy way to boil the ocean, but I'm trying. ------ ori_b From what I'm understanding, this format uses a variable number of bits, automatically growing and shrinking as needed. How can this be implemented efficiently? If there's a cap on the maximum number of bits (eg, 64), why not just use that maximum number all the time, and not have to worry about shuffling things around (bitwise!) in memory? ~~~ dnautics if it's supported in the hardware, you could turn off those gates altogether and save energy. ------ conistonwater Isn't this yet another implementation of interval arithmetic? What am I missing? Calling his book "The End of Error" seems a bit much. ~~~ Someone No, it is making a distinction between exact and inexact numbers, and uses arbitrary precision. I don't see it gain wide acceptance. If your problem is fixed-num, use a bignum library. If it is not, chances are you will meet a number that isn't representable in this format very, very soon (1/3, 1/5, sqrt(2), PI, etc.) The moment you do, you will have to decide to how many bits of precision you want to compute that inexact number. Problem is that you cannot make that choice, unless you know exactly what you intend to do with the number. I bet most users will choose a format that their hardware handles natively: IEEE. There may be edge cases in numerical computing that benefit from this, especially when problems are ill-conditioned, but even there, I expect people to convert to conventional IEEE on the outside of their API. Also, I'm not sure there is much room in this space below quad-width floats (but I am not an expert) ~~~ barsonme wouldn't most of the issues be solved with use of bcd/dcd? you get the speed (compared to arbitrary-precision), fixed-precision, and exact answers up to the precision limit? ~~~ bsder Unfortunately, no. BCD as "binary coded decimal" is, effectively, useless. Even arbitrary precision libraries tend to be faster than BCD. "decimal floating point", which is what I think you meant, just changes what isn't representable. Instead of 1/5 causing a problem, 1/3 causes a problem. The "classic" problem about this is matrix operations. Specifically, matrix inversion. You can use interval arithmetic on matrix inversion, and you find that the intervals blow up to almost infinity after just a couple of operations even though the center of the interval is actually pretty close to the solution. Of course, the reverse also holds: while most matricies invert relatively cleanly, there are always pathological cases that really do need humungous precision to invert. PS: Don't know why you were getting downvoted as you asked a legitimate question. ~~~ barsonme Thank you the answer! It was very insightful. Also, no big deal about downvotes. Can't please everybody. ------ ris Call me when there's a hardware implementation. ~~~ trsohmers <6 months for FPGA, ~12-18 months for silicon... ~~~ r0fls Is that in the article? Or else, how do you know? I would like to write an implementation for fun in another language, but unum is getting mixed reviews here. Hence, it would be nice to see your source for it being incorporated into hardware. ~~~ trsohmers At the bottom of the article, John mentions REX Computing, which I am the founder/CEO of. John has been a friend and advisor, and we have played around with minimal unum implementations, but haven't been able to commit the resources to a full one until after we tapeout our first chip in a little over a month (which will be using IEEE float). We also funded "dnautics" (a HN user who also commented here) to do a soft implementation of unum 1.0 in Julia. ~~~ oso2k Has REX explored other alternative binary floating point formats? Say, dec64 [0]? [0] [http://www.dec64.com](http://www.dec64.com) ~~~ r0fls How is dec64 different from Floating Point (IEEE 754)? It seems IEEE 754 allows for using base 10. What else do they do differently, do you know? ~~~ oso2k Besides using only base 10 representation, 1) all numbers are exact even if there are multiple representations. 2) because of 1), .1 + .2 = .3, eg, arithmetic follows the same rules you learned in school for 4 function arithmetic. 3) It supports upto 56-bit precise integer math without loss of precision. Look around YouTube for crockford talks about it. Usually they're JavaScript related. Or check dec64.com ------ robinhoodexe Not that relevant, but >Because the Julia language is particularly good at adding new data types without sacrificing speed, several people jumped on making a port to Julia, including the MIT founders of that language. I'm really impressed with the Julia language so far and considering implementing some quantum chemistry models for many-body systems (Hartree-Fock and probably Coupled Cluster if I ever get that far). Mostly because a) Julia looks fun, b) FORTRAN is still king of speed (which I'll need all I can get of) but is a pain to write and c) the alternative to FORTRAN is C(++), where being OO isn't that much of a bonus. And Julie looks fun to write. ~~~ santaclaus > FORTRAN is still king of speed (which I'll need all I can get of) but is a > pain to write I'm surprised that, with the restrict keyword, one would see better code gen from Fortran than C. Isn't the lack of aliasing Fortran's primary advantage? ~~~ neutronicus Leveraging "restrict" is not a trivial thing to do. If you're a researcher first and a software developer second (which I suspect is true of gp), the last thing you want to do is get into the weeds of inspecting gcc assembly to figure out where you didn't put a "restrict" that you should've. ------ dang Url changed from [https://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-new-number-format-for- co...](https://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-new-number-format-for-computers- could-nuke-approximation-errors-for-good), which points to this. ------ ambrop7 Why bother? The precision of double is sufficient for the vast majority of engineering problems. Seldom do you have measurements that are more precice than the calculations you do with them. ~~~ bsder "vast majority"? Maybe. But anything which uses matrices (aka. systems of linear differential equations), always runs into some pathological cases. Quite often, they aren't even uncommon. Systems which have vastly different time constants in the same system are _ALWAYS_ a problem. Simulating RF circuits or phase locked loops is always an issue. Computational fluid dynamics always has boundary conditions that challenge infinity/zero and drive the solver crazy. Something as pedestrian as simulating _basic cotton cloth_ accurately is problematic (the warp/weft redistributes energy on a much faster time scale than gravity pulls the cloth down). A lot of people did a lot of research and put in a lot of programming hours to make solving these problems relatively easy without understanding the gory details. ~~~ zevets But will unums help? No matter how an ill conditioned matrix is represented, it will still be ill conditioned, and we'll still be iterating, unless I've missed something in this article. I'm skeptical that changing how we represent the numbers will help - when the physics are icky, they're icky. ~~~ tjl It won't really help. You'll get the same issues with stiff DEs or ill- conditioned matrices for perfect precision or floating-point. There will be some cases where it will help, but not a lot. I've implemented a few DE solvers and sparse matrix implementations before. I think sparse matrices is one case where it would help.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Coinbase booked $1B in revenue last year, has told hovering VCs to back off - uptown https://www.recode.net/2018/1/22/16911692/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-trading-coinbase-revenue-secondary ====== jcrites If these reports are true, that's really impressive growth in just a few years! Congrats on hitting that milestone, Brian, keep it up! ~~~ ActsJuvenile Wonder why Fred Erhsam quit if CB is crushing it. He doesn't strike me as a "follow the heart" kinda guy... ------ aetherspawn When are they going to let me sell my coins from Australia... can buy but not sell and no date advertised, just ‘soon’. I feel like I got scammed. ~~~ jsloss They only recently put in a disclaimer clearly stating the ability to buy and not sell, here in Canada. Was deceptive as hell before that. Set up a GDAX account, send your coins there (save fees), then transfer them to a better off/on ramp for your location. ------ aardvark291 Does this "$1B in revenue" include the $ that customers have deposited in order to buy cryptocurrency? ~~~ tomhoward It wouldn't, according to accounting principles. It would be accounted for as deposits received, with a balancing liability for when the customer makes a purchase or withdrawal. They would only record revenue when they charge a transaction fee, or any other charge/income that can't be used by/returned to the customer at their discretion. Revenue is only revenue if it doesn't incur a matching liability. ~~~ aardvark291 I agree that that's how it _should_ work, but I wouldn't be surprised if Coinbase wasn't completely orthodox in their accounting. Replies below indicate that they may indeed be counting customer deposits as "revenue". ~~~ sethgecko They have like 20m users, that would mean $50 deposited per users so.. no ------ goodoldboys Looks like they can afford at least one FT customer service person now, awesome! ------ kristianp So is YC sitting on a 5% holding in a $3B+ company? ~~~ HorizonXP More like 7%, and yes, YC will typically "sit" and not do anything. In fact, given that Coinbase has raised recently, YC's share is probably higher than 7% through the YC Continuity fund. Who knows what will happen once an IPO happens, but no YC company has reached that point yet. We'll find out soon with Dropbox. ~~~ kristianp What do you mean 'who knows what will happen'? YC will have a big payday. ~~~ ActsJuvenile I wouldn't bet on it. Coinbase valuation will drop drastically when Tether bubble pops and bear market sets in. ~~~ SwellJoe One can be short-term bearish, long-term bullish, on cryptocurrency. I am. Tether is a disaster looming on the horizon for every cryptocurrency investor and business, but it, too, will pass. Mt. Gox was very bad for crypto for a while...and, then it didn't matter anymore. If I were a betting man, I'd wager we'll see Tether play out similarly: Big spike in price (which we've already seen), massive drop to something reasonable based on actual demand and participation by real people with real money (currently ongoing, though surprisingly drawn out...the Tether trick seems to be working better than I would have believed, if it were pitched as a film plot), and then long slow climb back to a new all-time high (two years, perhaps). Then again, at some point, something that works better is going to replace Bitcoin. Maybe the terrifying Tether crash will be the straw that breaks BTCs back. But, Coinbase/GDAX will be well-placed to profit from whatever that next thing is, as long as they're vigilant for new opportunities and careful as hell about security. Coinbase can only lose by making mistakes at this point. They profit whether BTC is going up or down, as they take (very high) fees regardless. ~~~ AlexCoventry What's the most worrying news you've heard of, regarding Tether? It seems sketchy as hell, but I haven't seen anything which would cause me to call it a looming systemic disaster, yet. ~~~ tehlike 2+ billion dollar in imaginary money, with more coming every week, with no real audit? I don't know, with wash trading and bots, it could be accounting for > 80-90% of current marketcap. ~~~ tzakrajs The market cap of tokens can be deceiving. But is it inherently broken to suggest that there is fiat to backup each USDT? ~~~ tehlike It is inherently broken to claim that there is usd for eqch usdt when there isnt. ------ yorby They should have enough money to scale up their servers to be able to handle peek usage... not sure why they don't do it... maybe they like it that way (they can claim that their servers are down when they want to stop trading?) ------ zerostar07 Why don't they build a competitor? It's not like it will fail. ~~~ bpicolo Regulatory requirements are the hard part. The governments (of many different countries) are by no means required to license you to do what they do - it's not just a storefront, it's tons of financial regulation, they're even fdic insured for cash deposits. It’s a legal challenge ~~~ zerostar07 but not much beyond that. almost guaranteed profit ~~~ bpicolo Not sure that's true. Absolutely massive target for blackhats. Security has to be off the rails good ------ rrggrr If we don't start seeing real world DAP adoption and growth in legit crypto- payments soon - this all comes crashing down. My gut tells me the market will wait 4-8 months at best. ~~~ thefourthchime I think the biggest thing that needs to happen is Lightning Network. If it works like it should it'll be the end of slow transactions / high fees. ~~~ ActsJuvenile Loading and unloading Lightning channels creates separate transactions. Depending on how often an open channel is used, Lightning can increase the transaction load. ~~~ gruez needlessly opening/closing channels also costs transaction fees, so as long as most users are rational, this wouldn't happen (too often). ------ debt Screenshot'd this headline for a year from now, ya know _long_ after the crypto thing has just absolutely imploded. Figure it'd give me a good laugh. ~~~ bfuller Why don't you short bitcoin then? ~~~ lucaspm98 Out of curiosity, is there a feasible way to do this currently? ~~~ bitoneill [https://www.investopedia.com/news/short- bitcoin/](https://www.investopedia.com/news/short-bitcoin/) ------ pfarnsworth What we need is the ability for people to do 1:1 forward or options trades on their existing private shares. So if you have 10,000 RSUs or options in Coinbase, you can instead write an options contract and sell that to investors that will only exercise on IPO. The trick is making these contracts tradeable on a secondary market but I don't see how Coinbase or whoever else could regulate that, as long as there is a solid legal contract underlying it. ~~~ DenisM This sort of activity is routinely prohibited by the share purchase agreement, and exactly for that reason. ------ shepardrtc I wonder if they're going to put that money toward generating 1099's for their clients. ------ conanbatt I like how Coinbase, trading a largely unregulated 'security', has the moral indignity of telling its own investors that they better not be trading the assets they purchased. The fact that people cant buy or sell shares of private companies is ridiculous in general, but particularly in this case. ~~~ gsylvie If you don't like the terms of the shareholders agreement, then you don't have to buy the (private equity) shares. But if you buy the shares and sign the agreement, I don't see why the directors should honour illegitimate share transfers you attempt to make in the future. ~~~ conanbatt So if you signed a terms of service of Apple that said all your assets are actually Apple's, you would happily comply? ~~~ Pyxl101 All contracts have consideration. If the consideration for the agreement that all my assets are Apple's is $1 billion USD, then sure I would happily comply, rather than risk voiding my contract. More seriously: people should comply with the agreements that they sign. Don't sign an agreement that says all of your assets are actually Apple's if you're not happy with it. Read all of the fine print and don't be surprised later. Don't buy stock in a privacy company if you're not happy with the constraints on it. One of the common key differences between private and public companies is that you can't sell or transfer stock in private companies without their approval. You know that when buying it initially, or when agreeing to receive it as compensation. There are legitimate reasons why private companies don't want their stock to be transferred willy-nilly. For one, it makes the cap table larger and more complex, which complicates further funding or purchase agreements. Two, if the cap table grows too large, then the company may become subject to onerous SEC regulations that are more appropriate for public companies (but without receiving the corresponding benefits). Three, since shareholders are entitled to certain information about the company, private companies limit ownership so that they're not obligated to share this information with people they do not trust. There are probably more reasons. ~~~ conanbatt > More seriously: people should comply with the agreements that they sign. > Don't sign an agreement that says all of your assets are actually Apple's if > you're not happy with it. Read all of the fine print and don't be surprised > later. You have read every single word of all the TOS you ever signed? I find that very hard to believe. > Don't buy stock in a privacy company if you're not happy with the > constraints on it. One of the common key differences between private and > public companies is that you can't sell or transfer stock in private > companies without their approval. You know that when buying it initially, or > when agreeing to receive it as compensation. If we talk about the letter of the law, then you don't need to sell the stock, you can sell futures of it at your own compliance. The company can't prevent you from doing that by letter of the law. But the SEC can. The contract is only enforcible in practical terms because as an employee or investor you are disallowed from making any legal claim about the stocks you are entitled to. Also, the argument that it is 'legal' is entirely a different thing. I never mentioned legality, I said ridiculous. Its not a moral, economic or practical argument to say that something is 'legal'. Saying something is legal is one of the lowest forms of defense for an action. Its saying that the only purpose of it is that they cant put you to jail for doing it. > There are legitimate reasons why private companies don't want their stock to > be transferred willy-nilly. For one, it makes the cap table larger and more > complex, which complicates further funding or purchase agreements. Two, if > the cap table grows too large, then the company may become subject to > onerous SEC regulations that are more appropriate for public companies (but > without receiving the corresponding benefits). Three, since shareholders are > entitled to certain information about the company, private companies limit > ownership so that they're not obligated to share this information with > people they do not trust. There are probably more reasons. Very nice, but there is a much more important reason why companies want to not be able to sell off shares: they benefit economically directly because of it. Because the owners get the shares back when people dont buy them, and they have information asymmetry with the employees. AS an employee you have a lot less information. If employees could sell their stocks willy nilly, every employee that leaves a startup and doesnt want to buy stock to keep would sell them in the open market, which would dilute the value of companies big time while making employees richer. Hm. ------ tristanj Tip for people buying on Coinbase: you can avoid their fee entirely by using GDAX. Deposit the money into your USD wallet first (no cost), then transfer the money to GDAX (no cost), and place a limit order (no cost). You may need to babysit your limit order for a couple minutes but this trick saves you $15 for every $1000 you buy. I think there is little reason not to do this unless 1) you value your time very highly or 2) you can't be bothered. I honestly think most of Coinbase's revenue comes from people in the latter group. ~~~ makomk In order for your limit order to actually get filled if you do this, someone has to place a taker order that matches against yours and pay the GDAX fee on that. Coinbase still take their cut no matter what, all you're doing is making sure it comes out of the other side of the trade. If there aren't any less patient people willing to pay the trading fee, your order will just hang around until either someone does or you lose patience and pay it yourself. Also, there's a risk that the price will move away from where you placed your order and it'll never fill, in which case you'd have to cancel it and re- submit the order at a worse price. ~~~ gruez but if you look at coinbase and gdax's fee schedule, coinbase is as expensive, if not more than gdax. (0.25%-1% spread vs 0%-0.25% fee depending on whether you're taker/maker). unless you're in a period of insane volatility, the spreads are small enough that placing a limit order for highest bid + 0.01 or lowest ask - 0.01 would get you a trade within seconds. [https://www.gdax.com/fees/BTC-USD](https://www.gdax.com/fees/BTC-USD) [https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/210...](https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2109597-coinbase- pricing-fees-disclosures) ------ PunchTornado i can't wait for the moment coinbase crashes. they're the worst of the crypto world. ~~~ lozaning Do you have anything i can read that would lead me to think along your same lines? I dont currently think coinbase is any worse and is potentially slightly better than many of the other online exchanges. Wanna make sure I get out of my own bubble though and would be interested in the reasoning behind your dislike. ~~~ PunchTornado Huge fees if you don't use gdax. Takes 1 month for my money to get into my account. Lack of support from their team while I had 50k hanging in the middle of nowhere for 3 weeks. ------ richard___ Since they make around 1% per transaction, $1billion transacted (I assume this means revenue) is 10 million net... what am I missing here because that's not impressive at all. ~~~ peterjlee I don't think $1B is the transaction amount. In the last 24 hours, trade volume on GDAX(Coinbase's exchange) for Bitcoin alone was $247 million.[1] Their trade fees are around 0.25%[2] so in the last 24hr they made over $60M in Bitcoin trading alone. [1] [https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/gdax/](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/gdax/) [2] [https://support.gdax.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2425097...](https://support.gdax.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2425097-what- are-the-fees-on-gdax-) ~~~ cobookman 247 * 365 * 0.0025 = 225,387,500 / year. How is that 1B? ~~~ syntheticcdo $1B in revenue sounds reasonable, seeing as there are higher volume days than just yesterday, and those trading revenues don't include revenue from fees on (non-GDAX) Coinbase buy transactions.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Announcing the new Windows Phone 8 Developer Platform - TazeTSchnitzel http://blogs.windows.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2012/10/30/announcing-the-new-windows-phone-8-developer-platform.aspx ====== sambeau It wasn't totally clear to me what tools you'd get if you joined. After a bunch of clicking I found this: _"The Windows Phone SDK 8.0 is a full-featured development environment to use for building apps and games for Windows Phone 8.0 and Windows Phone 7.5. The Windows Phone SDK provides a stand-alone Visual Studio Express 2012 edition for Windows Phone or works as an add-in to Visual Studio 2012 Professional, Premium or Ultimate editions. With the SDK, you can use your existing programming skills and code to build managed or native code apps. In addition, the SDK includes multiple emulators and additional tools for profiling and testing your Windows Phone app under real-world conditions."_ Obviously you need Windows 8, too. ~~~ icey Unless I've missed something, you don't need Windows 8 at all. Could you point us to that requirement? ~~~ akanster Under "System Requirements" [http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=3547...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=35471) ~~~ icey Thanks! To verify, I downloaded the installer and tried to run it on a Windows 7 machine. I got an error message stating Windows 8 was required to run it. I am definitely surprised that they decided to go this way; there's no way in hell I'm going to upgrade my windev machine to Windows 8 just to develop phone apps. I assume there are many other developers who feel the same way. ~~~ reddiric Windows Phone 8 is based on the Windows 8 kernel and shares plenty of technology with it. The SDK emulator and debugger use client Hyper-V on Windows 8 to run the phone as a guest operating system, which isn't available on Windows 7. ~~~ sliverstorm That's actually pretty cool. ------ brackin Microsoft left it so late for developers to get on the platform. The consumer announcement was yesterday, the developer summit was in June! Yet there's been no SDK until today. Even Apple releases a number of beta's for developers. The first Windows Phone 8 devices will be released in a matter of days. All of the people that bought Windows Phone 7 devices (even if it was last month) won't be able to run any of the apps complied for Windows Phone 8 because it's core is based on Windows 8. How do you expect your dedicated user-base that for years has been complaining about slow hardware and a lack of apps while the iPhone, GS3, etc has been blowing up to react? All of the current Windows Phone users are not going to buy a new phone to make their current phone, that they purchased six months ago work. They're going to pickup and iPhone 5 or a Galaxy Note. They have a core base of users that are passionate about Windows Phone, many of those I know are leaving. Having spoke to startups that have apps on Windows Phone, most of them have been paid by Microsoft to hire a developer to build it and aren't going to be updating it. Unless Windows Phone got a huge lift in traction but the chicken and egg problem is stopping them and all of these old apps have to be rebuilt for Windows Phone 8. ------ pjmlp I followed the links and .NET applications are also compiled AOT before being made available for download. [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2012/10/30/announcing...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2012/10/30/announcing- the-release-of-the-net-framework-for-windows-phone-8.aspx) ~~~ michielvoo Saving phone battery power (JIT was done on the phone every time an app started) and using green energy no less! "With the new code generation approach in Windows Phone 8, apps are compiled in the Windows Phone Store with AC power generated from the Columbia River in Washington. That’s a better battery to use than yours! As you can see, we’ve removed an entire category of battery use on end-user devices." ~~~ randomfool This feature seems like such a no-brainer. Ngen (Native Generation, .NET's precompilation) has been around for years. ~~~ pjmlp This is different, because NGEN can only be used with strong name assemblies that get deployed to the GAC. This feature on the other hand, means that you already get a native compiled executable, compiled with much better optimization algorithms than what NGEN offers. ------ victorantos $8 registration fee for the next 8 days, instead of $99 ~~~ danieldk But oddly enough, you pay $99 first, and get $91 returned in 'the next 30 or 45 days'. Why not charge $8 in the first place? ~~~ numo16 They just mentioned that they're working on updating the page right now on build live, I think. ------ phaet0n I hope this question gets answered, but what is the best place to start if you're a *nix person and are considering developing for Windows (Phone) 8 but want a better understanding of the mechanics of application execution? This is for example if you wanted to develop your own language runtime, or compiler tools. For example on Linux, you'd discuss ELF objects, the _start symbol, dynamic linking, the XCB library, etc. When I think of Windows I feel overwhelmed with all these terms that mean nothing to me, like WinRT, C++/CX, and seemingly infinite ways of accomplishing the same thing in different and incompatible ways. ~~~ dugmartin Learning about the Portable Executable Format is a good place to start: \- <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc301805.aspx> \- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Executable> ------ robomartin I just can't get excited about developing for Windows anything these days. And mind you, I've been using PC's almost exclusively for a very long time. Somehow, somewhere MS lost it's way. Some might argue that it never had a "way". That's fine. I don't care. I've made a lot of money using MS products and the Linux world probably wouldn't exist without the commodity hardware created by the MS ecosystem. Credit where it is due. It's hard to argue with the assertion that MS has failed to be a thought and technology leader for a long --long-- time. And so, when they roll out Windows Vista, 7 and then 8 and then Metro and Windows Phone 8 and they keep, well, fucking it up... I am not in love with Apple. Not by a long-shot. They are user-friendly and developer-hostile. And they make dumbshit moves of monumental proportions too (Maps, anyone?). Still, for a new or even an existing venture, I can't see considering doing mobile development much outside the iOS ecosystem. In other words, in order to gain real traction and find a market it is a no- brainer that you should develop the app/service/product for iOS. Somewhere in the adoption curve it might make sense to deploy to Android and a far, far distant third might be WP8. What would MS have to do to change that sentiment? I don't know. On the tech front I really do like the idea of my phone, tablet and desktop playing nice with each other. Or having mountable file system access to my phone and tablet. But that's a geek thing. Grandma doesn't give a shit. She doesn't even know. So, I'll count myself out as a "typical customer" --whatever the hell that might be. Market penetration might be the key here. Nobody, outside of tech circles --and barely at that-- is talking about WP8 or MS tablets. The Surface commercials I saw are retarded, to say the least. To take a stab at my "what can they do?" question, I'd say: They have to fire their entire marketing department and bring fresh thinking into the organization. The technology is probably good-to-excellent. EDIT: An example of the brain-dead marketing is the commercial that spends tons of time highlighting the desktop stand flap on Surface. Really? You (MS) really think that you are going to get me to buy Surface over iPad because of a frigging plastic flap? Fire them all! They are a bunch of morons. They've enjoyed market supremacy for so long that they've never really had to be good at marketing. It's the old "You don't get fired for buying IBM" saying from the mainframe days. MS has always sucked at marketing. Apple has always owned them on that front. Now Apple makes a dumbshit move (Maps, anyone) or two and neither MS nor Google have any semblance of a fine-tuned marketing drive to take advantage of it. So, when faced with such marketing incompetence I, as a developer, look at the situation and conclude that I have to stay with the company that is better at selling. If you are good at selling you can sell pet rocks. If you suck at it you are selling polished gravel. The quality of the rocks doesn't matter. It's not a chicken-and-egg situation. It is a very clear market dominance and financial-risk situation. I have zero interest in taking the financial risk to participate in an offering that is marketed, sold an supported in a half-assed fashion. So, yeah, great Developer Platform. I'm a business man. Show me the market opportunity and I'll carve code into stone tablets in hex if it is worth my while. Anything else is just bullshit. ~~~ lotso I've heard this argument against the Surface ad, and it really only came from developers. As far as I know, the reception has been pretty positive about the commercial. The purpose of the commercial is to build awareness about Surface, and I think it does a pretty good job at that. Remember, there are commercials specific to Windows 8 that explain the OS and how it works. ~~~ robomartin I understand. As an engineer it is easy to focus on things that are completely irrelevant to end-users. I get it. I've done it and will probably do it again. However... The commercial in question has a bunch of college-age folks dancing around a table while flipping the stand open and closed. I can't, for the life of me, imagine any consumer understanding what they are being sold. If the MS name or logo wasn't in the ad one could very well think that it is a cool iPad case. I happen to think that it is completely ineffective. I've done lots of marketing for my own products, both hardware and software. Rattling off (or showing off) features is a loosing proposition. Techies might get off on that at some level, but Grandma does not. What does Grandma or Uncle Fester want to know? Can I surf the Internet with it? Can I take pictures? Can I look at my pictures? Can I email? Can I watch movies? Can I connect it to my PC? Can I connect it to my TV? Will it break if it falls? How long does the battery last? Does it run standard PC software? How much does it cost? Can I expand it? Can I connect a standard keyboard to it? Can I connect a standard mouse to it? Can I connect my photo or video camera to it? Can I print from it? Can I have multiple user accounts? Can I make it safe for my kids? Can I secure my personal data? How do I back it up? Can I share my apps with other devices/computers I own? Does it become a hot-spot? What built-in apps does it have? How good are the maps? Can my kid use it for school work? Will it blend? and more... I have yet to see a commercial that answers any of these questions. Instead, we see a magnetically attached keyboard and a desktop stand. Really? I wonder how much that creative effort cost. I still hold the position that MS hires morons for marketing. The local butcher could do a better job with a little training. It's almost like the brilliant scene from "My Cousin Vinny": <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBL0q707fAg> ~~~ sliverstorm _What does Grandma or Uncle Fester want to know?_ If you actually pay attention to Apple adverts, and then look at Apple's wild success- well, looking at the two together, I can only surmise Grandma and Uncle Fester want to know how (Apple thinks) the product will make you _feel_. Any nod to features is merely coincidental. Really, I notice time and time again- us geeks seem to be _completely_ out of touch with what makes for the most effective marketing to everybody else. ~~~ robomartin It is about communicating features and benefits but not in bullet form. Apple does this very well. The early ipod silhouette ads communicated tons of stuff with a a silhouette dancing to music while using an ipod. I could make a list of the features that were communicated in thirty seconds but I suspect almost anyone who saw the ads could. I think that the key here is to communicate the RIGHT features and benefits. That's why I am so down on the Surface ad I saw. I truly thought it was moronic. What the hell were they communicating? I asked my non-tech (Doctor) wife if she wanted one and the answer was: "it's just an iPad with that stand thing". Which makes my case. All MS managed to communicate to my wife was that they have an iPad with a built-in stand "thing" that she couldn't care less about. ------ runjake I wrote WP7 apps. I can't justify paying $99 once, let alone each year for the privilege of developing for a fledgling platform. The fee is $8 for the first year right now, but note they still charge you $99 and refund the difference in 30-45 days. ~~~ desigooner At $8, I thought it was worth a punt and decided to sign up. Alas, I cannot complete the process as it gives me an error each time I try to submit the payment information. Only if MSFT got their sh!t together.. ~~~ cbhl So, I ran into this problem -- found out that you have to have the same password on the developer center as you do for your Windows LIVE account. If you have a more secure (or just different) password on the former (e.g. because you have a grandfathered Hotmail account) then you need to change both to be the same to finish the registration process. I suspect that there's some hokeyness in the back-end where the developer center logs in to your Windows LIVE account to mangle something or other. ~~~ desigooner Not sure that'd be accurate for me since I logged into the dev center using the live account I have (non-hotmail). ------ nubela I hate this trend. Why should I develop a native app for _ platform? On my startup, our initial approach of both iOS/Android right at the start proved to be dooming simply because there was way too much to juggle between platforms for us to iterate on features. This is why we chose to focus on iOS for the next iteration, at least till we found market fit. As a developer, or even as a startup, why should I give a shit about Windows Phone 8 platform? More work for a remarkably small market share. Unless all I'm looking for is to be a platform leader, but that's another story by itself. ~~~ trimbo > Why should I develop a native app for _ platform? .... This is why we chose > to focus on iOS for the next iteration You just made the argument for the web. I'm curious, why didn't you refocus there? ~~~ rimantas That's not argument for the web. By choosing web you in fact develop for neither platform. And it shows. ------ w33ble As someone who's never worked in the Microsoft development world, is a "Dev Center" account what one needs to publish apps to the MS Store, or is this something else? I have an interest in playing around with WinPho/Metro apps, and if dropping $8 now means I can push anything I create to the store, then this is pretty appealing. ~~~ farhadabas Yes, Dev Center is where you publish and manage your applications for WP/W8. ------ sergiotapia I tried creating my account because I read that it was possible to pay using PayPal, but on the final checkout screen under payment options I can only see Credit Cards listed. Is it because I am from Bolivia? Can anybody in the US or Europe double check for me? Thanks! ~~~ sondh Same thing happened to me, for registering a Dev Center account and purchasing Windows 8 Pro. I'm from Vietnam. It's similar to other gateways (like Facebook), they only accept PayPal payments from a limited number of countries...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How do you validate B2B startup ideas? - sidjainla Suppose you find an inefficiency with your company's software development process. You think of a product idea to solve this problem. Before starting a company, what is the best process for validating the idea, making sure other companies have the same problem?<p>What stakeholders at other companies do you need to talk to and what's the best approach to gain their cooperation to discuss your ideas?<p>Please respond if you've successfully done this before. Thanks. ====== niko001 During such an early stage, I would do it in an "inofficial capacity" \- do you have friends at other companies who work in a similar role as you? I would reach out to them and gauge their reaction, from "sounds like a neat idea" to "oh my god, I literally spend 1 hour a day on this and I've been looking for a solution to this since forever. I (or my boss) would pay for this in a heartbeat!". I've found "The Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick to be great for guiding you along this process step by step. When asking friends, there's the risk of running into something called "interviewer bias", where they will rate your idea more positively simply because they like you (and would have dismissed it if some random stranger had proposed the same idea), so that's something to watch out for if you go down this route. Good luck! ~~~ sidjainla Thank you. I like your mindset. Email me anytime sidjain at gmail	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Virus Tracker - Gimpei https://virustrack.live/ ====== designnomaddl This is a great tool, and very useful. It has great, easy-to-understand data. As a designer, the UI makes it my favorite source for getting recent data on COVID-19. The comparison tools and the customization of turning countries off/on is awesome. Great job, guys! ------ pr3d4t0rX The VirusTrack/COVIDvu Open Source team needs help - we need reliable data sources because of the disruptions caused by JH CSSE changes without notice. We're looking at engaging bluedot.world, call to action for open source providers or commercial providers who'd like to contribute to the cause. Please comment here or contact Jenni via feedback AT virus track.live Thank you! ------ Sunted This a fantastic tool that I use everyday to keep up with the virus. It’s the only source I trust! ~~~ mato Seconded. Didn't know about this tool, but have been looking for something similar with custom country selection and logarithmic graphs. Thank you for making this, keep it up. ------ jtdavies This is a super cool project started and run by seriously some amazing software veterans. It’s become by goto for the latest data and graphs. ------ theeren Awesome site. Needed. Consolidates all the relevant numbers in one place. Clean and straight forward design. ------ ljanssen Awesome, a simple tracker, no complexity. That's what I needed everyday to check what's up. ------ kinabalu76 So happy to see this up here, I look forward to more folks joining to make this site even better. ------ _ceb These people know what they're doing ------ jnmtwelve This site is fantastic! Thanks! ------ pr3d4t0rX w00t! We made Hacker News! Thank you, kind stranger.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New Bespin Release - Raphael https://mozillalabs.com/bespin/ ====== fierarul I'm having a hard time understanding what the Bespin license and structure is. More to the point, this "release" seems to point towards a "server-only" update, which doesn't seem to have a source code repository. So -- they are releasing an open-source thin client but keeping the server side closed-source ? That doesn't sound encouraging... ~~~ papercrane The server and client are both open source. You can choose from the MPL, GPL, or LGPL. The setup guide for the server is available here: <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Bespin/DeveloperGuide/Setup> ~~~ fierarul Thanks ! I went to <http://mozillalabs.com/bespin/> where you have a "Developer Resources" menu but it only links to the bespin client, not server. ------ ash Direct link to 0.7.1 announcement: [http://mozillalabs.com/bespin/2010/04/07/bespin-0-7-1-bryce-...](http://mozillalabs.com/bespin/2010/04/07/bespin-0-7-1-bryce- released-bespin-rebooted/) Mozilla, please let people test Bespin without login. Or at least provide a way to recover a password, and let us login with an email.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: A 3D recreation of the book cover of 'Gödel, Escher, Bach' in Three.js - aidenbuis https://aidenbuis.com/ ====== guivr Nice!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How much equity is a good advisor worth? - throwaway6 Hi Guys,<p>Long time HN'er here. I'm using a throwaway for this post.<p>Here's the deal: We have a solid advisor looking to join our startup. His connections and involvement will have a strong positive impact on our company and it's a legitimate possibility that he might invest later in the game.<p>He's offering 3-4 hours a week of his time and to help us build an advisory board.<p>How much equity is that worth?<p>In advance, thanks for your time!<p>(I know it's a bit of a broad question, but any help the HN community would be highly appreciated) ====== harnhua I'm in a similar situation, and am struggling with the same question. From some desktop research and talking to investors/other startups, it seems like "0.1% - 2% of post-Series A stock" is a reasonable range depending on the results an advisor might bring about. (<http://venturehacks.com/articles/advisors-part-2>) Are you planning to draft a legal agreement of sorts with this person? If yes, it may be helpful to tie in dollar amounts with milestones to determine equity percentages, I think. Personally I find it hard to quantify how much connections and a couple of hours a week are worth in terms of dollars. If it's possible to put a revenue amount to what s/he is bringing to the table, either in a strategic "$X in the first N years" or "$X from this release within N years" kind of way, that may help to crystallize the equity percentage somewhat. ------ cuchoperl The answer lies in one of my favorite pg's essays: 1/(1 - n) <pg> You should give up n% of your company if what you trade it for improves your average outcome enough that the (100 - n)% you have left is worth more than the whole company was before. </pg> <http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html> ~~~ revorad But isn't "what is the value of n?" just a rephrasing of the OP's question? ~~~ cuchoperl Yes, indeed. But IMO this is the way to see this problem. A "typical" range answer (eg .1% to .5%) is not very useful in this case. Alas! I would give Jobs half of my company to have him in my board of advisors. ------ anthonycerra Check out this video of Travis Kalanick, angel investor and entrepreneur. It's a video of his entire talk at a TechCocktail event so you might have to jump around if you're not interested in the whole thing, but he does address how much a good advisor is worth. [http://techcocktail.com/hustle-is-the-antidote-startup- busin...](http://techcocktail.com/hustle-is-the-antidote-startup- business-2010-11) ~~~ neworbit Travis is an interesting guy but caveat emptor. ------ neworbit Hard to say without more specifics. Generic answer would be maybe a quarter of a percent. Ask him to invest now. Even $10. And to help you raise capital (telling other people "yes, I put money into them" lends credibility if the guy does in fact have credibility to lend). ------ damoncali Not much. I've seen advisor equity in the .1-.25% range. Advisors aren't founders, nor are they taking any risk (as a director would). The important part is to vest it. ------ citizenkeys A good advisor's worth is based on how many valuable connections he has in the industry. If your advisor has some serious silicon valley connections that he can get on the phone whenever he wants, then he's worth a good percent of equity.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
WTFUK - wallflower https://medium.com/@rachelnabors/wtfuk-73009d5623b4 ====== Johnny_Brahms I am banned from entering the US in a turn of events that not only cost me $30k in lost income and another $1k in flight tickets, but that has made flying anywhere a 24h project. I am routinely harassed on just about any international airport for the sole reason of once having a laptop I couldn't decrypt. I was to be sent the key upon arrival. At least the whole experience made the company I worked for change it's routines to: Go over without a laptop, buy one retail and download encrypted work data. I have stopped travelling with any electrical components, since they are routinely taken to a back room and probably copied/bugged.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Torenberg Effect: How ProductHunt Blew Up LinkTexting.com - kumarski https://medium.com/@linktexting/the-torenberg-ph-effect-65403d621685 ====== minimaxir Ok, I am getting genuinely sick of the "We got onto Product Hunt and became a success, and you can too!" submissions that keep popping onto Hacker News. Your time horizon is 18 days; that's not enough to assert causality of Product Hunt exposure on your business. And of _course_ signups would increase when you first get publicity; that's the nature of publicity. Additonally, naming an "effect" after yourself is _very_ egotistical and not cute. > _I asked my friends to take a look and if they liked it, to upvote it._ Asking for upvotes is against HN rules and doesn't work, and I believe you did the same for this article, as 7 votes but no front page presence means that it was hit with a penalty. ~~~ kumarski :/ We didn't become a success, but it did help blow up our traffic. PH got us high fidelity users in the sense that 100% of them were mobile app shops that needed our product. As per a voting ring, who knows. ~~~ minimaxir _We didn 't become a success, but it did help blow up our traffic._ That's the fallacy: "blow up" is a relative term. 1 user is infinity% larger than 0 users. ~~~ kumarski That's actually a good point. I guess I'm mistaken. Well at the very least, PH allowed us to focus on product and customers entering the funnel rather than think about PR etc... ------ gk1 > This was frustrating for the simple fact that we spent more than an hour > writing the blog post. You are way too hopeful if you think that an hour of writing will result in tons of traffic. Take the time to write substantive, polished articles. Most of them will not be hits, but once in a while your work will pay off. One hour is nothing. ~~~ minimaxir I wish I could finish a blog post in only one hour. My last few have taken 8+ hours. :) ~~~ kumarski Some of my hour long blog posts got a ton of traffic. What's your blog? Here's one of my posts that I did in 15 minutes that got a ton of traffic. I'm not even sure why. [http://www.kumar.vc/i-sat-in-a-bank-on-friday-2/](http://www.kumar.vc/i-sat- in-a-bank-on-friday-2/) What's your blog? ~~~ minimaxir Here's an example of such a post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8425385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8425385) ~~~ kumarski Well done. That's a great post. You might find the data from this interesting: [http://linktally.com](http://linktally.com) It was shared a total of 83 times according to [http://linktally.com](http://linktally.com) ~~~ minimaxir Yes, I can sum up the 3 numbers at the top of the blog post. :P ------ justinsb Congratulations on the traction. As an Android user though, I don't really get the problem. From a desktop browser, I expect a link to the Play Store, where I can then have the app installed to any of my devices. Is this really for iOS users? (and is there no equivalent functionality there?) ~~~ kumarski Thank you. Yes. You are correct. The killer functionality that we offer today is for people on iOS. We solve a very explicit problem for them. Today we're integrating with BranchMetrics, which will offer additionaly utility to Android and iOS Developers. There is an equivalent functionality. You can install from the desktop browser to iOS, it's just a bit more friction because it requires a cable. The only other alternative to LinkTexting as an SMS form creator is Gravity forms, but it's a bit awkward unless you plan on using Wordpress for your mobile app landing page. ~~~ justinsb Thanks for explaining - makes a lot of sense. One cool feature (which might be what BranchMetrics does) would be to add a one-time-use token to the URL so I don't have to log in again on the app, if I already have a desktop login. It is annoying to try to type in a complicated login on a small mobile device (first world problems, I know). Not sure if this is actually feasible though!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Best payment solution for a non-profit looking to accept micropayments? - habosa I'm the webmaster for a small, non-profit student group looking to bring fundraising online. The fundraiser involves taking small payments ($1-$2) from students via credit card. I have previously worked with Stripe, but I am hesitant to use it for this situation because it will turn $1 into $0.67 and $2 into $1.64, which is a big drop in charitable donations. I am looking for something extremely easy to set up that I can integrate into a form on a Ruby on Rails or Sinatra based website, but that won't charge the same high fees on such small charitable donations. What are some of the good options here? ====== mchannon Wepay.com is probably worth a look- IIRC, fees come out on the withdrawal side. It was designed and pushed with this exact application in mind. Most payment services tend to be onerous for the one-time micropayor, and Wepay was pretty painless. Dwolla would probably be better if they could streamline the signup process. (It's free for this size of micropayment) Anytime you involve a credit card, you're going to involve fees of one kind or another. Luckily there are now more alternatives than ever before. ------ dangrossman Talk to PayPal. Their micropayments accounts are 5% + $0.05 per transaction, so the fee on $1 would be only $0.10.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Whenn 3D printing meets GPU programming - AlanZucconi http://www.alanzucconi.com/?p=5660 ====== billconan there was a guy on Quora asking me how to render a model as if it's 3d printed [https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-render-a-3D-printed-model- usi...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-render-a-3D-printed-model-using-OpenGL) I noticed that you have a part 2 tutorial talking about 3d printer shader, maybe you can answer his question.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
My first three days with a data plan - akothari http://www.jeanhsu.com/?p=259 ====== hippo33 So, question: do you think that having a data plan makes you more or less efficient? When I used to have a data plan, I found that I could stay up to date with real-time information on the go. So, at first I thought it was a productivity tool. But over time, I found that I spent more time checking email, because I was checking it more frequently. Instead of just going to my inbox once every couple of hours and cleaning everything in one-fell swoop quickly, with a data plan, I would be checking my email all the time, and on a mobile device it's a much slower process to clean up an inbox. I've since gotten rid of my data plan, and honestly, given the inefficiencies of my constant email/twitter/fb-checking, I don't think it's worth my time to go back for the purpose of staying on top of things. That said, what I do miss is the ability to effectively have a GPS on the go. Thoughts? ~~~ jarek It might be worth noting that unless you travel widely, you don't need a data plan for GPS. Cache maps when on wifi then use your device's GPS/A-GPS/tower triangulation functionality. ~~~ dotBen Caching maps is actually incredibly difficult. I just took a weekend trip to Death Valley (no cell coverage) and wanted to do this on my Android Evo. Google Maps doesn't cache more than a few tiles so it's totally useless. There are a number of apps in the Market that will download maps locally - one downloads Google Map tiles illegally (with mixed success) and the rest I couldn't get to work. Do you have any advice or experience you can share? ~~~ skybrian Look under "Cache Settings" in Maps. There's a checkbox for "Prefetch on Mobile". If it's off and you're not using Maps while on Wi-Fi then I wouldn't expect much caching to happen. You can also see how much data Maps has cached. I don't have a data plan and I find caching works well on my Nexus One when I ask for directions before leaving the house. I haven't tried it on a long road trip though. For comparison, the cache size on my phone is 37M now. ~~~ hippo33 Hmm...great idea! I hadn't thought of that to be honest. ------ SkyMarshal In my recent experience with my new Android phone, it's best to get an unlimited plan for the first few weeks or months, when you're playing the most with the App store, downloading and trying lots of apps. But once that inevitably tapers off, and you find the few you use most often and uninstall the rest, then you should check your data usage again to see if your normal email/etc checking habits use less than the lower tier data plans with quotas, and switch back to one of those if so.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Superalgos and the Trading Singularity - ciencias https://hackernoon.com/superalgos-part-one-the-trading-singularity-6f66f419982f ====== westurner Though others didn't, you might find this interesting: "Ask HN: Why would anyone share trading algorithms and compare by performance?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15802785](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15802785) ( [https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#story-15802785](https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#story-15802785) ) ~~~ marketgod I think there is value in a back-testing module, however, sharing an algo doesn't make sense to me, until unless someone wants to buy mine for an absurd amount. ~~~ westurner I think part of the value of sharing knowledge and algorithmic implementations comes from getting feedback from other experts; like peer review and open science and teaching. Case in point: the first algorithm on this list [1] of community contributed algorithms that were migrated to their new platform is "minimum variance w/ constraint" [2]. Said algorithm showed returns of over 200% as compared with 77% returns from the SPY S&P 500 ETF over the same period, ceteris paribus. In the 69 replies, there are modifications by community members and the original author that exceed 300%. Working together on open algorithms has positive returns that may exceed advantages of closed algorithmic development without peer review. [1] [https://www.quantopian.com/posts/community-algorithms- migrat...](https://www.quantopian.com/posts/community-algorithms-migrated-to- quantopian-2) [2] [https://www.quantopian.com/posts/56b6021b3f3b36b519000924](https://www.quantopian.com/posts/56b6021b3f3b36b519000924) ~~~ marketgod How well does it do in production though and what happens when multiple algos execute the same trades? Does it cause the rest of the algos to adapt and change results? It makes sense to back-test together and work on it, but if it's proven to work, someone will create something to monitor volume on those trades and work against it. I'd be curious to see the same algo do 300% in production, and if so, then my bias would be uncalled for. ~~~ westurner > _How well does it do in production though and what happens when multiple > algos execute the same trades?_ Price inflation. > _Does it cause the rest of the algos to adapt and change results?_ Trading index ETFs? IDK > _It makes sense to back-test together and work on it, but if it 's proven to > work, someone will create something to monitor volume on those trades and > work against it._ Why does it need to do lots of trades? Is it possible for anyone other than e.g. SEC to review trades by buyer or seller? > _I 'd be curious to see the same algo do 300% in production, and if so, then > my bias would be uncalled for._ pyfolio does tear sheets with Zipline algos: pyfolio/examples/zipline_algo_example.ipynb [https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/quantopian/pyfolio/blob/...](https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/quantopian/pyfolio/blob/master/pyfolio/examples/zipline_algo_example.ipynb) alphalens does performance analysis of predictive factors: alphalens/examples/pyfolio_integration.ipynb [https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/quantopian/alphalens/blo...](https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/quantopian/alphalens/blob/master/alphalens/examples/pyfolio_integration.ipynb) awesome-quant lists a bunch of other tools for algos and superalgos: [https://github.com/wilsonfreitas/awesome- quant](https://github.com/wilsonfreitas/awesome-quant) What's a good platform for paper trading (with e.g. zipline or moonshot algorithms)? ~~~ marketgod I disagree with price inflation just because everything is hedged, but it may be true. The too many trades is if there are 300 algos, and I look in the order book and see different orders from different exchanges at the same price point, then I would be adapting to see what's happening, not myself, but there are people who watch order flows. I don't paper trade, either it works in production with real money or not. Have to get a feel for spreads, commissions, and so on. Also, in my case, I am hesitant to even use paid services as someone can be watching it, so most my tools are made by me. Good luck with your trading though, if it works out, let me know, I'd pay to use it along side my other trades.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Launch HN: Build your app fast with our free and beautiful UI Kit - johnnyB1235 https://uikits.uifort.com ====== mortin Hey, awesome! You should have linked to your Live Demo page, though. [https://demo.uifort.com/bamburgh-ui-kit- free/](https://demo.uifort.com/bamburgh-ui-kit-free/) That's where the juice actually is :) ~~~ johnnyB1235 Ah, so someone actually viewed the link :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
YC: What No Means - niels http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2007/10/what-no-means.html ====== catfish Years ago when Garage.com was starting up, I applied and was rejected. No big deal as I was expecting it, but it did get me a signed rejection letter from the big "Guy" himself. As a beta tester it was a very nice gesture, to receive that letter with the comment "Prove us wrong!" hand written as a P.S. to the form letter. That letter hangs in a frame and every day I use it to remind myself that the only person that needs to believe in me, is me. Today, many years later, I thank my lucky stars for that rejection. I went it alone, no co-founders, no frigging investor BS, and did not take a dime from anyone. This year the 17 employees of MY privately held company drove our sales to 61 million dollars in online transactions. The satisfaction that comes with proving investors wrong can't be bought, only earned. Those that can, DO. Those that can't, find an investor. ~~~ nanijoe "Those that can, DO. Those that can't, find an investor." ..You mean those that can't such as Google and Youtube? ~~~ nostrademons They DID too. It's just that an investor eventually came around and noticed they were DOING, then gave them money so they could do it better. ------ Alex3917 "OK, you may not have the same structure, advice, networks and extra cash that Y Combinator provides, but maybe that shouldn't stop you." Everyone always talks about the mentoring and the connections from Y Combinator, but no one ever mentions the story. I think YC itself has a compelling story, one that's authentic but also fun to talk about. If you get funded it's the kind of thing that makes for 'sparkling' conversation at cocktail parties, as a way of talking about the program but also indirectly talking about yourself. Which is probably why YC is quickly becoming a household brand. Even my mom read the article in Newsweek. ~~~ alaskamiller I think whatever YCombinator does to help startups is covered under NDA. ~~~ palish Why do you think so? ~~~ alaskamiller For one, Demo Day is definitely NDA-ed. Other stuff, the business and marketing help that JL provides or the technical help that PG provides, those would also be considered under NDA, unless it's generic enough that sharing such information wouldn't hurt the startups. YCombinator's interest is in the exit of the companies it funds. It's from that money that they can continue to do this year after year. Giving away everything in the farm doesn't help them do that. As much as everyone makes sharing and collaborating such a big deal, here in Silicon Valley people are actually pretty mum about their plans. Put it another way: if someone insists on talking to you about startups and whatnots around here, it's cause you're getting pitched. ~~~ pg We don't have any NDAs. We ask people in the audience at Demo Day not to write about the startups that haven't launched yet. I believe that is the only thing we ever ask anyone not to talk about. Some of the startups may have their individual secrets. We try to keep them if they do. But they decide that.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Node Knockout is next weekend; 15 spots left - gerad http://nodeknockout.com ====== proksoup That's 18 spots now. In totally unrelated news, they sent out an e-mail reminder with a big "Delete your team" button earlier today. That was probably a good idea. ------ gerad FWIW, Node Knockout is a 48 hour hackathon to build apps using Node. Similar to Rails Rumble.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What I Did When I Couldn't Find a Job [in the US] - kranner http://chronicle.com/article/What-I-Did-When-I-Couldnt/66281/ For anyone curious about what Sikkim looks like... http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=sikkim ====== patio11 _grumble grumble_ I would never have expected legions of twentysomethings who want to work for noncommercial causes using expensive degrees which impart no skills more advanced than a GED to have so much difficulty finding great jobs right after college. ~~~ mechanical_fish So, if (or, perhaps, when) all the people with liberal arts degrees go back to Javaschool and emerge in a couple of years with M.S. degrees in CS, is your company going to hire them all? Or are you just jerking them around? We've been down this road before. In the 1990s, everyone flocked to "CS" school to get in on all the sweet, sweet jobs of the future. Was the aftermath of that fun for anyone? It is often read, on HN, that it isn't enough to just go through the motions of getting a technical degree. You need other qualities to succeed. The person with all the right qualities is rare. True enough. But does this mean that only those rare people with the right qualities deserve to live outside of poverty, or the imminent risk of poverty? My father has a degree in political science. Fortunately, the economy wasn't broken in the 1960s, so he was able to get a white-collar job, buy a house, and have kids, like most other people with "basic" college degrees in the 1960s. Back then it was even expected that you could have a decent life with a mere high school diploma, or that GED you mention. That doesn't work so well anymore. Is that a good thing? Be careful what you wish for. We are well on our way to building a society in which you can't have a middle-class lifestyle as, say, an insurance underwriter or medical records clerk without a college degree _in a technical or professional field_ , or maybe an M.S. degree. I think that's a bad idea. Many people have more education than they need, and an increasing number of people have more education than they want (considering that they have to go into debt for it, up front). Forcing unwilling people to struggle through advanced degrees tends to produce a lot of stress and pain, water down the advanced degrees, dilute the pool of degree holders, and waste absolutely _enormous_ amounts of time. Oh, and it produces unnecessary barriers to entry. We could require all hotel administrators to hold an advanced degree in hotel administration. How does that sound to the AirBnB folks? And all it does is buy time. In the end, jobs are as much about the demand for labor as the quality of the supply. Ph.D.s can be unemployed too. Highly trained semiconductor engineers can be unemployed. Automotive engineers are probably not doing so well right now. Shadenfreude has an evil reputation for a reason. Please try to resist the temptation. ~~~ yummyfajitas _Fortunately, the economy wasn't broken in the 1960s, so he was able to get a white-collar job, buy a house, and have kids,[...] That doesn't work so well anymore. [...] We are well on our way to building a society in which you can't have a middle-class lifestyle as, say, an insurance underwriter or medical records clerk..._ This statement just reflects a lack of understanding of what "middle class" meant in 1960. The standard of living of the American poor today is quite high, in many regards higher than the standard of living of the middle class in 1960. [http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understandi...](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understanding- poverty-in-america) Fun fact: in 1960, a coffee maker cost $29.95 and the average household income was just under $5000. In 2010, the coffee maker costs $12.95 and the average salary is about $50,000. [http://www.dadsvintageads.com/viewitem.php/dadsvintageads/pd...](http://www.dadsvintageads.com/viewitem.php/dadsvintageads/pd959405/Vintage_Ad_1960_Toastmaster_Toaster_Coffee_Maker_Fry_Pan) ~~~ hga According to the BLS, the $29.95 that coffee maker cost in 1960 would be $221 in 2010 dollars. I know your $5,000 vs. $50,000 figures are very rough, but $5,000 in 1960 would be $36,855 in 2010 dollars (and after taxes is not trivial, e.g. the personal exemptions that sheltered average families from the full and _very_ high tax rates in the '50s were largely nullified by inflation over the next couple of decades before Reagan started a variety of corrections). ~~~ mhb He's saying that the quality of life improvement provided by a coffee maker in 1960 consumed 0.6% of the typical 1960 middle class salary vs. 0.03% of a typical 2010 middle class salary. A 20x reduction in cost for the same quality of life improvement for the middle class, in this example. What additional insight do your numbers provide? ~~~ hga I think it's easier to understand how much cheaper the coffee maker is today, both in terms of absolute price and what people can afford, if you translate it into today's dollars. "It would cost $221" is a lot more visceral than 0.6% of a putative generic annual salary. One thing I added was "doing the math"; yummyfajitas didn't go that far (which is no reflection on his posting) ... plus I think it's useful to point out just how significant inflation has been over the years. ~~~ mhb The value of the percentage metric is that it allows you to compare a certain benefit in terms of the work it took to obtain it at different times. Given 2000 hours/year of work, it would have taken 12 hours of work to buy a coffee maker in 1960 vs. 0.6 hours of work in 2010. To me, this makes the comparison exceedingly easy to understand. ~~~ hga Yes, that metric is also good, although not as visceral as the one I used. It's also timeless whereas someone reading my comment 20, 50, whatever years from now wouldn't be helped as much. ------ sushi I think finding a job is never difficult considering one is ready to sacrifice the luxuries one has gotten accustomed to. Almost every American graduate can find a job in India. I know the outsourcing companies won't even ask you a question and hire you readily. It's just about making adjustments for the time being which I'm afraid many American graduates might have to make in the down economy. I have been to Sikkim and it's one of the most beautiful places I have seen. I'd gladly move to Sikkim if only there was better and stable internet connection there. Correct me if I am wrong. By the way, people can not buy land in Sikkim (only the people from the state can, not even the rest of Indians) so one will have to get do with a rented place which should be quite cheap even for an Indian like me. ~~~ spudlyo There are lots of places in India that are difficult for Westerners to live in. The lack of running water, toilet paper, and unreliable electricity was very challenging for my friend who spent 6 months in Hyderabad. He also picked up a very bad stomach flu that knocked him on his ass for a month. ------ all Desperate times call for desperate measures, and this certainly is extreme. Unfortunately, his path is not easily replicated, and he recognises this. I have heard of others who move to India to take the job that they would have in the US because that is where their company moved it. But finding a job in a downturn is often a matter of being resourceful and thinking outside the box, not of wholesale relocation. I would be surprised if 1% of those who read this article are able to put in practice what this guy did. ------ rflrob It seems to me that the calculations of how he's saving money relative to staying at home is offset a fair bit by the cost of airfare. All the same, I don't think that means one shouldn't do things like this---the experience (both professional and personal) is difficult to measure, but pretty valuable. ------ kranner For anyone curious about what Sikkim looks like... <http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=sikkim> ------ kogir The thing I don't understand is how few people in the US are willing to move to a different state, nevermind another country. There's plenty of work for those willing to seek it and be flexible. ~~~ zephyrfalcon Moving often has a hefty cost, and not just financially. ~~~ loganfrederick So does being unemployed. Sometimes you have to make the tough decisions. ------ amohr There's been a lot of hating on us poor liberal arts graduates that didn't have the foresight to know that our education was going to invariably lead to crushing, static unemployment, so I figure I'd throw in my $.02 I've been building and tinkering with computers since I was 11 and it has always been sort of a foregone conclusion that I would go into CS or compe. But when I started college, for a number of reasons, I decided I wanted to study physics. But a few years in, I realized I wasn't really getting the full-bodied education that I was hoping for. I noticed this in myself as well as my peers in comparable science/engineering programs. It turns out, many of the programs that leave you with marketable skills necessarily sacrifice breadth of understanding. This isn't to say all cs grads know nothing of the world, but it was a noticeable problem. There is, of course, virtue in training people to think only about a single field and think about it deeply and constantly. But I didn't want to be one of those people, so I switched to Political Science. Political Science, at my school, was an interdisciplinary program - it allowed students to design their own concentrations within the framework of the program. Because of this, I was able to take advanced level courses in philosophy, music theory, english, astrophysics, economics, and computer science. No I'm not an expert on any of these, but I have the groundwork to understand any of them that I wish to personally pursue further. And many of them, I have. Of course, after five years of college, I finally realized that I'm most passionate about writing, advertising, and technology, but I'm stuck competing against people with more specifically tailored credentials. This is obviously a problem, and I'm not going to claim I haven't spent nights wishing I had just stuck with something that would land me a job and a life of comfort. But comfort is as dangerous as it is pleasant and a lack of it often spurs the greatest innovation. That last part, however, I'm still working on. But what about my CS friends? Some of them are legitimately well-rounded and interesting people... and some sold their souls at 100 hr/wk at nyc firms making 100k but they'll never see the world with the appreciative eyes of the destitute - they'll always want more because that's all they've ever been taught to value. Many will live lives hopelessly seeking satisfaction through abundance. Save your pity for those guys, thank you. PS: I don't really think all these guys are doomed because they took high- stress, high-paying jobs, I just wanted to represent the other side of the coin. Don't assume all LAS grads are forever useless... also, if you have the means, hire one. (specifically, me) ------ tomjen3 What was really funny was that he moved back home, then when he couldn't find a job there, he moved to India. If you have a political science degree, why not move to Washington? ------ ebun So the author moved to India after being unable to find a job, but at some point, I assume they plan to return. What do you think about his job prospects when he returns (regardless of the work; just taking into account that he opted to spend a year or 2 abroad like this)? ~~~ Dilpil It's a pretty interesting story to put on a resume or cover letter- I'd imagine he will at least be able to get some interviews. ~~~ ebun I don't doubt it, I'm just curious as to why you, or any other HNers, would find it interesting. What skills do you think would be applicable or transferable? __full disclosure: I'm in a somewhat similar situation right now __ ~~~ kolektiv Well, I know that if I were interviewing this chap (and I am interviewing people quite a bit) I would be at least impressed by his having shown some initiative. I would also say that someone who is willing and able to go and live fairly happily in a quite different cultural and lingual context than they may be used to, has shown themselves to be adaptable, inquisitive, and keen to learn. Even in a poor economy, demonstrating those qualities still stands out. Almost certainly the most common reason for failing when interviewing with me is the "I haven't had a chance to..." story. Often this is in the context of software. "I haven't had a chance to try this language or that language" What they mean is that previous jobs haven't used it. They could easily have learnt about it in their own time - it just wasn't a priority for them. Which is fair enough - but you will lose out against those who turn "would like to do" in to "done". ------ maximumwage Comments on every story like this follow the same predictable pattern. On Digg and Reddit, it's basically: "Haha, dumb liberal arts major! Of course you can't find work in the USA! You deserve what you get because we live in a just and fair world and everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them in life and the consequences of all their decisions!" Some of the comments here are similar, but other comments point out the fallacies in that line of thought. As someone who was a high school valedictorian who wanted to get a CS or business degree, but ended up with a Bachelor of General Studies in English, I've given lots of thought to why students get liberal arts degrees. Most students are unprepared for college-level classes, especially in mathematics. Despite having a perfect GPA in high school, I failed calculus - not because of partying (I didn't drink) but because I was totally unprepared for college-level math after bad high-school math classes. Mental illness is also a major reason why lots of people can't handle the rigors of an engineering or even business degree. According to NIMH, 26% of Americans age 18 or older suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder [1]. Also, 40 percent of students have felt too depressed to function at sometime during their college career [2]. Throughout college, I had: never had a girlfriend or even kissed a girl, worried all the time about the end of the world and other potential threats, had never learned how to masturbate, and was concerned over whether God loved or hated me. Now THAT's mental illness! When they have a heavy cognitive load from mental illness, students are less able to deal with challenging classes. Finally, after going through the stress of being being unprepared for college classes and suffering from mental illness, many students end up with humanities degrees because they figure "at least it's a degree in something" and that any degree is better than no degree, because that's the message being broadcast from tons of outlets - guidance counselors, college advertising, college advisors, etc. [1] [http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers- coun...](http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental- disorders-in-america/index.shtml) [2] [http://www.jedfoundation.com/press-room/news- archive/Student...](http://www.jedfoundation.com/press-room/news- archive/Students-with-mental-troubles-on-rise) ~~~ oconnore That's not a mental illness. That's some sort of an existential crisis. I recommend you stop worrying about problems you can't solve, and start living. It's the only way you will find out what God thinks of you, or whether girls like you, or whether the earth will end. And everyone is unprepared for college (as they were for high-school, or elementary, or kindergarten, and especially for their first job). The difference is in how they approach it. Personally, I locked myself in the library until I could do Calculus problems blindfolded, and then went to the bar to celebrate with my friends. Your results may vary. Note that feeling persecuted and defeated after you flunk a Calculus test is not a viable solution. Sorry for being harsh. ~~~ maximumwage I had a lot of other symptoms and was diagnosed with anxiety by a real doctor (not by internet commenters). Plus I had very high scores on inventories that are used to measure anxiety and depression. Also, SPECT and fMRI studies show that people with depression and anxiety have very different brains than people who are mentally healthy, indicating that some people have a baseline level of resilience that's higher than others. And tough love doesn't work. It's just another way to beat up on people who already feel beaten down. I still agree with most of your points, though. ------ known A comprehensive guide to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_living> ~~~ billswift For _real_ simple living [http://www.amazon.com/Possum-living-without-almost- money/pro...](http://www.amazon.com/Possum-living-without-almost- money/product- reviews/0553136259/ref=sr_1_4_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&qid=1280103672&sr=8-4) ------ elblanco I wonder how many weeks he had to save up that $10/wk in order to afford the upcoming round trip back home? ------ acgourley I guess he doesn't have student loans. ------ jab I don't really get the "couldn't find a job" part. I moved to a new city 4 months ago on a whim, and I had several companies bidding on me. I'm good, but I doubt I'm that good. ~~~ jemfinch I doubt you're a polisci major. ------ roschdal This is a very inspirational story!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Robin William's Last Gift - chrisjlee84 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152653641613293&set=a.46231668292.56447.733518292&type=1 ====== chrisjlee84 For those whom don't have facebook: [http://jsbin.com/rerezi/1](http://jsbin.com/rerezi/1)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
James while John had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher - johnny313 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_a_better_effect_on_the_teacher ====== johnny313 Title shortened to meet posting character limit. Full title: James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher ------ ClassyJacket You can make any kind of crazy sentence if it includes quotes. This is cheating.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Russia is strong-arming Apple into getting access to its user data - SirLJ https://www.businessinsider.com/how-russia-is-strong-arming-apple-vladimir-putin-time-cook-2019-2 ====== _bxg1 Disappointing. I can understand having to cave in China, but Russia is a much smaller market and Apple could've afforded to take a stand. ~~~ java-man NSA needs access to the top government officials via their iphones.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Rise and Fall of the Fireman’s Pole - curtis http://gizmodo.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-fireman-s-pole-1618281408 ====== Terr_ Is there a _practical_ reason why slides haven't caught on? They're intrinsically safer, and you can also send gear down them if necessary. ------ cafard " it's one of the last reigning symbols of the antebellum firehouse." Antebellum in a US context used to mean "before the Civil War". There have been a bunch of wars since 1878, so I'm not sure how the word applies. ------ Detrus Trade offs to avoid lawsuits. Poles are dangerous. Stairs are 30 seconds slower and you can also fall on them, but there won't be safety lawsuits. Sleeping on the floor where car maintenance is performed is also dangerous, there are extra fumes and toxins. ------ thesteamboat Why not install a hatch or some such around the base of the pole, so that there is only a large hole in the floor when it's needed? ------ coldtea Is it just me, or does "The Rise and Fall of the Fireman’s Pole" sound like an XXX movie title?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How to communicate basic security protocols to parents, non-techs - cpher I've been writing an email to my family (mostly 65+ parents, retired, etc.) about how to protect themselves from email scams, etc., especially in light of the heartbleed fiasco.<p>There's often no distinction between a systemic bug (e.g. heartbleed) and an actual corporate security breach (e.g. Target). Everything is a "hack" to them. I'm not looking for "general" advice, e.g. make sure you're using https, etc. And I'm afraid this will devolve into "any non-technical user", no matter what the age. If so, that's fine.<p>Here's what I'm asking...How do you communicate this stuff to your non-tech people, whether parents, grand-parents, colleagues, etc.? Without being overcome with technical descriptions. How do we help them stay safe? Everything from social engineering (a la Kevin Mitnick) to clicking on emails from their "bank."<p>Is there a protocol, or set of "rules" you place on your loved-ones? The last thing you want is for them to call you at 2am asking for help because they've been "hacked." What strategies are you using to prevent the "2am call because they've been hacked?" ====== anigbrowl My streategy eventually became refusing to deal with it, and prodding them to develop a relationship with a local computer store - if I can't answer something in a single sentence or two, I say it's too complex to explain and they should have someone look at it. This didn't go down that well at first, until I got them to agree that they wouldn't try to fix their car this way if I was a mechanic, and trying to fix their computer without being able to see it was just as inefficient.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Purge old kernels and headers on Linux using apt-get - jph Hacker News today features an Ubuntu story with sysadmins asking how to purge old kernels and headers by using apt. This is necessary maintenance on some systems because /boot fills up.<p>Here's how we do it:<p><pre><code> apt-get remove --purge 'linux-image-[0-9].' linux-image-$(uname -r)+ apt-get remove --purge 'linux-headers-[0-9].' linux-headers-$(uname -r)+ </code></pre> Complete script with comments here; we welcome feedback and also pull requests.<p>https://github.com/SixArm/sixarm_apt_scripts/blob/master/apt-purge-old-kernels-and-headers ====== vientos apt-get autoremove does the same and it's built into Ubuntu	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Banking APIs, or, how fraudulent are you? - sjwhitworth http://www.stephenwhitworth.com/blog/2015/11/29/how-to-score-your-spending-activity-for-fraud ====== trowawee _> Exposing banking data, with sensible and secure authentication process can only be positive._ There's a pretty huge assumption embedded here. Sure, if there's actually "sensible and secure authentication", banking APIs are great. In the real world, though, nothing is actually very secure, breaches happen constantly, and I think there's a solid case to be made that we would be generally happier, wealthier, and more secure if banks were effectively information silos. ------ Sarki All credit bureaus have an API, depending their age you can find from COBOL CICS Sockets to JSON interfaces. Should we be that much surprised about this? How to you think businesses ensure that you can afford this revolving credit application? ------ valevk Another example of banking API: [http://docs.fidor.de](http://docs.fidor.de)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How to become a great software developer - jfaucett http://codeshite.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/how-to-become-a-great-software-developer/ ====== dglassan #8 - Recognise bullshit when you hear it Sums up most of the points in this article if you ask me.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
America closes the last loophole in its hounding of Huawei - known https://www.economist.com/business/2020/08/18/america-closes-the-last-loophole-in-its-hounding-of-huawei ====== known [https://archive.vn/WldqZ](https://archive.vn/WldqZ)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Developers and Depression [video] - ssprang http://steelcityruby.confbots.com/video/72690223 ====== pedalpete Wow, how many people feel like what Greg is describing is 90% of their lives? Is his description really about ADHD and bipolar? I feel like he was describing me, though I don't feel I would label as depressed. I started watching a BBC documentary about depression a few days ago, and the description of depression made it sound so horrible that I was truly shocked and saddened for anybody living with the condition. What Greg describes is nothing like that. Now, I don't regularly hide under the bed to avoid people, but I've always suffered insomnia, regularly take on projects outside of my abilities (sometimes successfully), have a slew of unfinished projects and ideas, feel like everything is ripe to happen now, have days where I regularly don't want to get out of bed (but rarely stay later than 10), etc. etc. Anybody else out there feel the same? People have always said I'm different, but I've never really understood how. I just assumed everybody else was like me, and would occasionally put on a braver face. At the same time, I'm hesitant to get involved with the professional medical establishment because I abhor the idea of being fed drugs that affect my thought patterns. I'm beginning to work with meditation to try to keep myself better focused, and have been doing Yoga every day for the past 9 months. Keen to hear the feedback and experience from others in the community. ~~~ jared314 > I'm hesitant to get involved with the professional medical establishment The problem with not engaging a medical professional is the possibility that you have something that needs treatment. He mentions this with his statement on trying the ADHD drug for 30 days before making the decision to stick with it. The "medical establishment" gets a bad rap for over-billing and over- medicating, but, when something is broken, at least consult with a medical professional before just walking it off. You can't always tell how bad something is, or how it might affect you in the future, if left untreated. ~~~ pedalpete Though I somewhat agree with you, I'm not convinced anything is wrong with me, and from my experience with the medical profession, 'to a hammer, everything looks like a nail'. ~~~ jared314 > I'm not convinced anything is wrong with me ... I learned how to tell when something was physically wrong from my parents and, as I grew older, a few friends. A scrape on my arm was fine, a low fever was fine, but falling out of a tree was a trip to the hospital for inspection. But, I never learned how to differentiate between mental issues the same way. As long as I was doing the things that other people were doing, and acting like others were acting, I was fine. Problems can linger, slowly degrading your life, until you wake up one day and notice that things are not good and haven't been good for a while. My main point was that you can't always tell, by yourself, if everything is fine. Sometimes you need another informed opinion, and people shouldn't fear medical professionals because of what they can do. > my experience with the medical profession, 'to a hammer, everything looks > like a nail' I also don't blindly accept my auto mechanic's suggestions, or advice from people on the internet, without some additional personal research and a second opinion. You are paying them to find things that they think are wrong, because you think there might be something wrong. And, if you agree with that opinion, to help you fix it using their chosen methodology. If you don't like their hammer, find a different doctor. But, if they all recommend the same thing, reconsider your own opinion. You may not have a problem now, but at least learn how to recognize and deal with it for when you do. Chronic problems, when left unchecked, can slowly destroy your life, and your future.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
US tech firms ask China to postpone 'intrusive' rules - riaface http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31039227 ====== contingencies This is basically backlash. Same with the visa hassles. Right now, if you want to deploy Huawei gear in your western internet infrastructure provider, the government encourages you strongly not to. This is China giving the US the finger, ie. equal treatment. Pot, kettle, black. ~~~ Fuxy In a way however i sincerely doubt any company would just hand their Sorce Code over to the Chinese. They will just pirate the hell out of it if they do so what will happen is companies will start making things specifically for the Chinese market or stop selling to China completely. I don't think Chinese politicians realize how much hidden code there is in modern technology. ~~~ marktangotango I often quip the best thing we could do to defer competition is to hand over our source code. This mess would set anyone back 5 years. ------ sunstone If I recall correctly, when the shoe was on the other foot and Chinese IT companies (Huwawei) wanted to bid on US contracts the US government just flat refused to allow them. Given that history this isn't so surprising. ------ leke I would really like to hear Richard Stallman's take on this. ------ anaolykarpov Can we see this as an advancement in the use of free software? (free as in freedom)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: could you rate my first landing page? - viandante Hi,<p>After reading HN for the last 6 months, I built by first landing page (and website) and it is here: sourcingzen.com. Web development is not my job, I work in finance, but I have been using python for a while for different things now. As this is all new to me, I would like to receive some honest feedback on the techical and non technical side of my landing page.<p>I am considering contacting some linkedin groups* to get the first beta users. If I see enough interest, I will build the application.<p>*if you have other options to market the landing page, please tell. ====== tylerwl Congrats on diving in and creating something! I would remove the Learn More button. You've got useful information on that page, so just take it and put it directly below your signup box. Also, I'm guessing English isn't your first language based on some minor issues like: Or invite new potential suppliers to see what is their best price -> Or invite potential suppliers to submit their best price Make Savings -> Save Time and Money ~~~ viandante Thanks, I really enjoyed creating this. Thanks also for the comment about the text, I was not considering that. Too deep into the technicalities :) ------ clockies Improve the buttons and the email input. You must put a little bigger effort on the design ~~~ viandante Could you be more specific? I don't really know where buttons and email input are to be improved...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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