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One year living on Airbnb in nyc - misiti3780 http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/realestate/our-year-of-living-airbnb.html ====== chx So this guy had 3000 bucks a month for rent and most of the time was living in illegal rents. Congrats.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
No Clear Exit - ltrain1203 Let me begin by saying that I have been actively reading and sourcing Y Combinator for the last year and am extremely grateful for the community. The articles and information are thought provoking and inspirational. That said, I am not a programmer and thus have never posted.<p>However, I find myself "stuck" and wanted to get some feedback from the group. I have been in the financial services industry for the last twenty years and need to transition out of it and into something that would link my passion to my profession. However, unlike most of you here, I don't necessarily know what that might be. I have taken two non-paid "sabbaticals", if that's what you call getting laid-off and choosing to not continue in your profession but instead take the time to explore other options, however, none of the other options provided a legitimate means of making a stable income that would provide a true transition out of my current field.<p>I have twice before started partnerships, however, most of my newer ideas would require some tech experience of which I have none. I have though of perhaps doing some part-time work for others as a means of starting to move to another field, however, with a regular full-time job it's difficult. Thoughts of possible part-time or remote working with my current employer are for naught as I work in a very old and established industry that does not support remote or part-time hours.<p>So, I find myself here typing away at a Starbucks at 10PM looking for wisdom and inspiration from others who may have found themselves in this same situation and found a way to transition successfully to a new occupation that more aligns their passion to a profession.<p>Thanks again for providing a forum where I can post!<p>Have a good day. ====== noonespecial _I have twice before started partnerships, however, most of my newer ideas would require some tech experience of which I have none._ Get some. Its not as daunting as it seems at first. It will go a huge distance in convincing others that you're serious. Even the poorest half-working demo is far more than most people start with. With no tech at all, it all too often sounds like you're just looking for a partner to do all the work while you "think big thoughts". (Not saying that this is you or anything, its just that most of the tech-inclined types around here have been on that train once or twice.) ~~~ ltrain1203 Thank you very much for your insight. Completely understood and I am more than willing to educate myself. I have looked into learning Ruby on Rails and have also considered taking the CS classes offered by Stanford online. If you could provide some guidance regarding where you would advise starting that would be greatly appreciated. ~~~ nesbot If you are following hacker news you probably have seen the code academy ... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2914854> Depending on your level, might be interesting for you. ~~~ ltrain1203 nesbot, thank you very much for the link and advice I am pursuing already! ------ CyberFonic Becoming technically competent can be a long hard road. So let's look at it another way. You have 20 years experience in finance. Could you elaborate exactly what your expertise is in? Startups need a diversity of skills to succeed. You seem to be saying that you don't know what your passion is. Does that mean that you'd rather be working with great ideas people? Or do you want to be the Big Cheese?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Outrageously Large Neural Nets: Sparsely-Gated Mixture-of-Experts Layer (2017) - msoad https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.06538 ====== merricksb Discussion 2 years ago at time of publication: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13518039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13518039) ------ jcims N00b here. I can’t tell if this is primarily intended to provide effective sharding of a largely homogeneous network, or if it’s intended to allow for incorporation of diverse networks and use the gating to classify and route the inputs to the appropriate networks. ~~~ hadsed Heh. I'm not sure you're wrong to say it either way. ------ sgillen This work uses conditional computation to allow for "Outrageously large" networks which may work better in practice but which will be even harder to understand. I'm very interested in working on using this same sort of conditional computation to make reasonably sized neural networks easier to understand. Has anyone seen papers on this sort of work? ~~~ plutonorm What is it with needing to understand NNs? Its the same thing as not trusting a human to drive a car because you cannot understand every stage Of computation happening in their brain. If a neural network learns a task, test it well enough to know that it performs well enough in target domain before using it. Don't expect to be able to understand how it works and from there claim to know that it will work well and have more confidence in it. This approach barely works in standard software, let alone a neural network. Stop worrying and learn to love the NN, after all it is a mirror of your own ineffable nature. ~~~ varjag _" Those are scary things, those gels. You know one suffocated a bunch of people in London a while back?" Yes, Joel's about to say, but Jarvis is back in spew mode. "No shit. It was running the subway system over there, perfect operational record, and then one day it just forgets to crank up the ventilators when it's supposed to. Train slides into station fifteen meters underground, everybody gets out, no air, boom." "These things teach themselves from experience, right?," Jarvis continues. "So everyone just assumed it had learned to cue the ventilators on something obvious. Body heat, motion, CO2 levels, you know. Turns out instead it was watching a clock on the wall. Train arrival correlated with a predictable subset of patterns on the digital display, so it started the fans whenever it saw one of those patterns." "Yeah. That's right." Joel shakes his head. "And vandals had smashed the clock, or something."_ ~~~ sgt101 To summarise: if a system is not understood there exists the possibility of sudden, unexpected harm. The system is unsafe. This is (probably) ok if the system is putting icing on donuts (you might get a bad batch) but is definitely not ok if the system is deciding on dosing levels for drugs or controlling machines that could suddenly smash into queues of school children. ~~~ varjag Moreover, if (as customary in all technology) you build systems upon these systems, even the low malfunction probabilities will multiply into nearly assured failures. With a system you understand you can find the cause and fix the issue for all: this what allows us to build ever more complex systems over decades of engineering R&D. But for a system you don't understand you are at whim of cascading patterns of errors in underlying behavior. ~~~ p1esk Two counter examples: 1\. A cpu you rely on is a well understood system yet unexpected failures do happen (eg pentium bug, spectre exploits, etc). 2\. A human you rely on might fail unexpectedly (tired, drunk, heart attack, going crazy, embracing terrorism, etc). After testing reasonable number of things, if NNs perform more reliably than those other systems we rely on currently, it will be increasingly harder to justify using the other systems, especially when that means more people accidentally dying every year. ~~~ varjag I believe "With a system you understand you can find the cause and fix the issue for all" covers the first case. The second case is applicable to both NN and traditional control systems. ~~~ p1esk So which system would you personally prefer to rely on in life or death situation, the one that is well understood (accident rate 0.0001%), or poorly understood (accident rate 0.000001%)? ------ p1esk This is from 2017, so probably obsolete by now. ~~~ sanxiyn It is. For example, it uses LSTM, which is obsolete now. ~~~ currymj People keep saying this with extreme confidence; I’m not sure I buy it. Certainly recurrent networks in general are not obsolete, even if attention/convolution works better for some applications. Perhaps one ought to try GRU before LSTM but there’s no reason to suppose that it would dominate in all cases. ~~~ terminalhealth Indeed. Here is a very fresh paper finding that attention is certainly not all you need as sometimes recurrence is necessary. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.01603](https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.01603) This is also obvious: Without recurrence you cannot remember information that is not externally visible, but it may be computationally very convenient and often necessary to maintain information that is hidden. The hard part is learning reps for hidden information as recurrences are plagued by vanishing and shattering gradients.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Inside the FBI's Fight Against Chinese Cyber-Espionage - ghosh http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/27/exclusive_inside_the_fbi_s_fight_against_chinese_cyber_espionage ====== tikums DOJ Plans To Indict State-Sponsored Cyber Attackers [http://www.defensenews.com/article/20121218/C4ISR01/31218000...](http://www.defensenews.com/article/20121218/C4ISR01/312180009/DOJ- Plans-Indict-State-Sponsored-Cyber-Attackers) The above article was published in 2012. They are right on track, all predictions, down to the last detail, have come true in 2014. ------ betterunix I can't help but to be amused by the irony of the NSA systematically weakening computer security and swooping in to help the FBI when American companies become victims of foreign spies that exploit poor security. ~~~ Zigurd What's even worse is creating a market in zero-day exploits. That's like doing biology research by creating a freelance development market in bioterror microbes. ------ atmosx I got it. The NSA keeps us safe, the Chinese spy on us. Sure thing. ~~~ Sae5waip As a German, I feel very much the same. ------ HeroesGrave Not so easy to stop foreign spies when you've been caught doing it to everyone else. (That said, while they are hypocrites, they are still in the right) ------ logicallee Plot twist: the FBI doesn't have a cyber-espionage division (which would fall under NSA or CIA jurisdiction.). The whole department is a Chinese plant. ------ Eye_of_Mordor Let the 'war on Chinese hacking' begin (now that the 'war on drugs' is lost and the 'war on terror' is off the front pages). Was this supposed to distract us from Obama handing over Guantanamo terrorists or that Snowden used all the appropriate channels to report the NSA's illegal activities? At least the US hasn't been gaining unfair competitive advantage in Chinese markets via their own 'deep burrows'.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Storenvy Goes From Getting Kicked Out Of YC To Raising A $5M Round - bjonathan http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/12/storenvy-goes-from-getting-kicked-out-of-yc-to-raising-a-5m-round/ ====== aviswanathan Storenvy has an interesting model, but I'm a bit skeptical about their scalability. I started a fashion brand in HS (backpacks, apparel) and we launched a Storenvy store pretty much off the bat since there was no cost. The issue is that they don't seem to have accountability for their customers. They didn't run any checks to make sure my business is legitimate (obviously it is), that we actually sold product before, that we even had a website. This is polar opposite to Amazon, which runs several screens to make sure sellers are legitimate (getting our products on Amazon took nearly two months). Perhaps even more importantly, the marketplace model for e-commerce does not align with individual sellers. Marketplaces are focused on expanding, adding more sellers, and expanding product portfolios. Sellers, meanwhile, prefer to be one of few on marketplaces so that they have greater visibility. With Storenvy's model (basically no barriers), I don't see much value being provided to sellers. Even if there is 0 cost to the seller, there is little incentive for them to invest time into building out a profile and attracting customers on the platform. ~~~ NewMonarch Hey Hacker News! Thanks for the thoughts. Actually, here's how we're thinking about it: Storenvy is a custom store platform first and a marketplace second. Every merchant gets her own fully customizable storefront. We make it easier than anyone else by getting up and running with your own store in minutes. But after you get online, you immediately have the problem of figuring out how to drive customers to your store. The next generation of merchants relies solely on social media for this. Buying advertising typically isn't even considered. So we created the first online store platform with a social network built on top. When you create your store, you're immediately connected with the rapidly-growing Storenvy marketplace where people are discovering and buying your awesome stuff. In short, we are the only online store platform that actually makes you more sales. And "more sales" is the killer feature of a store platform. Soon we'll start charging a commission on sales _that happen in the marketplace_. You still keep all of the sales through your storefront. We'll get better at things like seller ratings and reviews as we grow. That's why we're hiring so many engineers. <http://www.storenvy.com/jobs> ~~~ jsabo >In short, we are the only online store platform that actually makes you more sales. Do Amazon and Etsy not also do this? By just searching for say 'cufflinks' on Etsy I'm searching all of Etsy's "stores", and the same with Amazon. Although granted, neither put an emphasis on a storefront for each individual seller. ~~~ NewMonarch Neither gives you a store. Every band, designer, boutique I've ever talked to wants their own store at their own URL that looks like their own brand. Storenvy let's you edit all the HTML and CSS to make your store look however you want. Example: <http://cherrysauceclothing.com> The other ones you mention _just_ gives you a marketplace where you're essentially a classified ad without your own brand experience. ------ dcolev Curious -- I see a lot of baked goods for sale that look prepared from a home kitchen. Is this legal? That's assuming many of these for-sale foods are not FDA inspected. I'm not sure I would buy any baked goods from personal storefronts if it was sold out of state. ~~~ deefour It goes by the local government where the kitchen is. Here in Connecticut the home kitchen needs to be inspected/licensed/approved just like any other commercial kitchen. ------ kmfrk So, were they rejected or "kicked out", i.e. accepted only to get thrown out? ~~~ rm999 I just read his 'infamous' post. He explains that he got accepted, then found out he would have to change his cofounders for personal reasons. This concerned ycombinator, which changed its mind and decided not to fund him because of all the sudden changes and the fact that it was affectively a single-founder company. [http://joncrawford.com/post/20378314843/how-i-got-kicked- out...](http://joncrawford.com/post/20378314843/how-i-got-kicked-out-of-y- combinator-and-then-raised) ~~~ colkassad Not sure why it was called 'infamous'. Was inspiring, if anything. Good for him and his wife for doing what needed to be done. ~~~ paulgb Alexia called it 'infamous' in the TC post, I think rm999 is referring to that. ------ KMuncie I just launched a custom store front for Storenvy that I built on Foundation 3. <http://malibusown.com/> It was more difficult than I had hoped to develop for. One of the biggest issues in my opinion right now is the lack of proper mobile support. The stores need to be responsive. With that said, I was able to have a discussion with their community manager and it sounds like they are working to make things better, no doubt this round will help greatly! ~~~ ericcholis Random tip, try to run any PNG you have through a compressor like <http://tinypng.org/>. For example by compressing your main logo, tinypng saved you 68% of the original size. ~~~ KMuncie Ah, indeed! Thanks for the heads up! ------ abuella <http://shoply.com> offers the same aggregated marketplace for small brands and local businesses. ------ edouard1234567 I'm wondering if YC tracks false negatives to tune their filters on the application process?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Master's Voice: What we know of Bach, and may never comprehend - tintinnabula http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-masters-voice/article/2008586 ====== ktRolster The article compares Bach to Handel saying "not a single work of Bach’s is more beloved than Handel’s Messiah—and this is owing to that oratorio’s undeniable, ineffable charm," and apparently Bach doesn't have charm. Handel's _Messiah_ is popular in England because it was written in England, in English, at a time when English municipal choirs were really gaining popularity (choirs competed between towns, and police had to be dispatched to stop brawls, just like footballers today). Bach's work hadn't yet been translated into English yet, and by the time they made it to the islands the age of choirs was dying down (although Britain still has wonderful choirs). As for the lack of charm in Bach, listen to this melody and tell me it doesn't have charm: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5kc5IxtbBk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5kc5IxtbBk) It definitely has 'charm.' ~~~ interfixus This tune is not, as previously believed, Bach. Which is not to say that Bach does not have charm. He has plenty. [Edit: typo] ~~~ levicole Wow! TIL: Minuette in G Major was not written by Bach. I agree there is plenty of charming music written by Bach. [https://youtu.be/TYjqnlc7MRw](https://youtu.be/TYjqnlc7MRw) [https://youtu.be/KyWOIKCtjiw](https://youtu.be/KyWOIKCtjiw) ~~~ jancsika In terms of their overall output, I think Bach tends more toward music that sounds complex, heady, and ornate while Handel's sounds light and lyrical. For example, listen to the unfinished fugue in C minor, BWV 906[1]. Once all the voices have entered you can hear how there is a kind of game where Bach is trying to cram as many cross-relations into each measure. When he starts sequencing that disjoint tail of the melody it's about as dissonant as music from that period can get. If you heard three people singing this a cappela you'd think they were from Mars. That's certainly experimental, but there are many other pieces/moments by Bach that are similarly jarring. I'm going to rankly speculate that there is _nothing_ in Handel's output even close to that (in the hopes that it spurs a contrarian to provide me a link). [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrNDV82DVmc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrNDV82DVmc) (starts about 5:10) ------ gtycomb English Conductor Sir. John Eliot Gardiner, who grew up singing and learning Bach cantatas as a child, he has published a lovely book "Bach: Music in the Castle of heaven". I think these lines from the very opening of his book will also enlighten us -- "Bach the musician is an unfathomable genius; Bach the man is all too obviously flawed, disappointingly ordinary and in many ways still invisible to us. In fact we seem to know less about his private life than about that of any other major composer of the last 400 years. Unlike, say, Monteverdi, Bach left behind no intimate family correspondence, and very little beyond the anecdotal has come down to us that can help in painting a more human portrait or to allow a glimpse of him – as son, lover, husband or father. Perhaps there was a fundamental reluctance in him to pull back the curtain and reveal himself; unlike most of his contemporaries, he turned down the opportunity to submit a written account of his life and career when the opportunity arose. The limited, heavily edited version that we have inherited is one he himself spun and handed down to his children. It is not surprising some have concluded that Bach the man is something of a bore." ~~~ ktRolster If you like that, I recommend _JS Bach_ by Albert Schweitzer. A slightly different perspective, but also good. ------ JoeDaDude This is a good time for a shameless plug for All of Bach [1] (Note: I have no affiliation with the site). [1] [http://allofbach.com/en/](http://allofbach.com/en/) ------ emersonrsantos Interesting thing not cited in the article: Bach's name is a melody, B-A-C-H, where H is B-flat in german music notation. Various composers used that theme to pay homage like Franz Liszt (Prelude and Fugue on BACH) and Max Reger (Variations and Fugue on a Theme of BACH). Also it's not cited that most Bach compositions were brought from obscurity by composer Felix Mendelssohn in the 19th century. ~~~ infimum > where H is B-flat in german music notation in german B is called H and B-flat is called B ~~~ emersonrsantos Sigh. Thanks for the correction. ------ throwaway7645 There's an epic rap battles of history (Bach versus Justin Bieber). When the below comments started talking about Bach's charm I immediately thought of that video. You'll laugh if you have the humor of a teenager.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Adobe's Source Sans Pro updated, moved to Github - georgebashi http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/08/source-sans-pro-revised-and-hosted-on-github.html ====== gknoy The monowidth version of the font is still in development. I look forward to hearing about that in the ("near") future.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
50 Common Misconceptions in the World of Software Development - sirkarthik https://hackernoon.com/50-common-misconceptions-in-the-world-of-software-development-7144566c54f9 ====== sirkarthik This one seem to have caught the attention of a lot of readers in Hackernoon on Medium platform. #InterestingRead #ReadIt	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sorry, No, I’m Not Going to Write a Piece Arguing That Dan Lyons Is a Jackass - chacha102 http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/lyons ====== moultano Great. Trolling in response to trolling. I can't think of a better use for the attention of everyone on hackernews than reading this. I'm sure we'll all be further toward our life goals and happy with how we spent the day. ~~~ tkahn6 I modestly propose that you're right. ------ brianwillis Anyone that says sarcasm is the lowest form of wit really needs to read some Gruber. ~~~ Finster Yeah, just in case there were any lingering doubts. ------ Finster Well, at least Gruber comes right out and admits he's a shill.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Portable sunshine: Earbuds that shine light into your ears - Juha http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/02/start/portable-sunshine ====== jot There's a good discussion about these, including responses from the makers here: "Valkee Scam" <http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2011/09/valkee-scam/> ~~~ sambeau I disagree with what this bit: The brain isn’t designed to get light in to it. If your brain is receiving light; there’s a hole in your head. That’s not healthy! The brain was not designed. There are a number of holes in your skull and your ears are two of them. Whether or not the brain reacts to light is either proven or disproven depending on whether you find a flaw in this research or can conduct research that finds against it. ~~~ Tichy It just seems very unlikely - that reactivity to light would serve no purpose and hence could be optimized away. And I think there is something more than "either proven or disproven". If you claim you have an invisible dragon in your garage, it seems very unlikely that you are telling the truth. No need to run experiments for that. (brain and light might be more likely than invisible dragons, just making a point). ~~~ makmanalp I think it's unlikely too - however I think the point being made is that maybe it's not completely optimized away _yet_. We are not at the pinnacle of evolution such that every part we have serves a clear purpose. ~~~ sambeau Evolution does not optimise away. If a mutation serves no purpose it remains unless it is replaced for a reason (or a gene has more than one function—God reuses constants ;-)). What does 'pinnacle of evolution' mean? Sharks and spiders have been around since before dinosaurs so they must be there, surely? Do we reach it if we hit a suitably low level of child mortality? There is an argument that we are already at the pinnacle of evolution for our environment and we will remain there until something changes and we are tested and our children start dying. That mostly happens in chunks… _everything is fine, everything is fine, everything is fine, bang meteor!_ although it can happen in smaller steps. Whether we are still evolving in the rich, medicalised west is a matter of debate. The third world certainly has many children dying but the cause is often not something that natural selection can fix: politics & war. ------ sambeau The flip-side of this is that headphones may be _causing_ depression in some people by blocking light from entering the brain through the ear canal. Perhaps we should all be taking our earbuds off on sunny days? ------ sangfroid I haven't read all of the comments here, but I come from a pretty good neuroscience background and have some thoughts on why this looks like baloney. It's about the way the brain works. The brain itself is not a sensory organ. It processes signals from sensory organs. Information reaches the eye or the skin or the tongue as mechanical, chemical, and optical data but then get transduced into an electrical impulse. Even if there were light receptors in the brain, it's highly unlikely that they would be so specific that activating them would cause positive feelings. That's how information gets processed at the level of our senses, but not in our brains. Individual neurons do not hold individual memories. Nor do they seem to control specific emotions. If shining light on the brain actually changed the levels of activity, it would have an impact on entire neural circuits, not just on this one process. At least, that's how I see it. ------ Tichy We'll see who has the last laugh, but for now I feel inclined to say "this is the stupidest thing I have ever heard"... ------ pi18n 25 people is not a "clinical study". It is a survey. ~~~ exDM69 I have said this before in HN, but I'll repeat myself: don't trust this study. The Valkee company is financially backed by ex-Nokia execs and other people with money and influence in Finland. They have the means to get a small University in Northern Finland to make a study in their favor. There have been interesting studies about light sensivity in the skin, so why not the brain. However, this study doesn't really prove anything. Also, don't underestimate the value of placebo in the treatment of mental ailments. ~~~ JoeAltmaier Right! So even as a $185 placebo, its good medicine? ~~~ exDM69 The $185 price probably contributes to the placebo effect. It was expensive so it _must_ work. ------ aes Once they add the ability to play music they'll have a killer product in their hands. ------ jpalomaki See for example this: [http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/skins-eye-like- receptors...](http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/skins-eye-like-receptors- see-uv-light/) "Skin is able to detect ultraviolet light by using a receptor previously thought to only exist in the eye." Having light sensitive cells inside your head (in other places than eyes) obviously sounds ridiculous if you believe in intelligent design. However if you think about evolution and how it works, I would say there is pretty good chance all our cells do not have just the functions they absolutely need to have. ~~~ scarmig It's fairly difficult to pinpoint something that humans have that couldn't have been placed there intelligently. Evolution drives organisms, if at all possible, to co-opt anything that develops because of structural constraints. Most of the time it is possible. This class of traits is something that Steven J Gould named as evolutionary spandrels. So in practice, I would expect the ultraviolet receptors in the skin to have at least one meaningful function. The fact that exposing people to ultraviolet light changes their hormonal balance would tend to suggest this as well. They're definitely doing something. As a separate argument, a creationist could also provide some information theoretic arguments for why some cells have pointless features. Unnecessary complexity in a biological organism, like in any other computer program, is a dangerous risk. As risk management, we might want to handle that danger by accepting a harmless redundancy and not building an additional subsystem that chaotically interacts with all our other subsystems. ------ tobylane Commuters have plenty of artificial light around them. Cyclists and walkers would need this more, but it probably blocks out sound. The whole artificial sun-like light thing does make sense, but mostly as a bedroom light. ------ mooism2 Even assuming this works reliably, £160 seems overpriced for what's basically a couple of small torches. ~~~ The_Sponge This sort of thing just screams bullshit. Yes, I get that light therapy or whatever it's called is prescribed but somehow I doubt that two little LEDs shoved in your ears is anything close to a substitute. ~~~ milep These are aimed for people suffering the winter depression <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder> ~~~ The_Sponge That's what I was thinking of. But, like I said, I doubt little ear lights are a substitute for giant light panels. Then again, maybe they are. It's just too suspicious. ------ Achshar Has any study been conducted about any possible side effects any such thing would have? after all if light to skull would have been so useful then evolution should have made it so. If it isn't so then either its of not much use or it has some bad effects too. ~~~ Torn You misunderstand evolution. The idea is to be _good enough_ to reproduce, not to be optimal. Hence why humans have loads of vestigial crap that serves no purpose. ~~~ martinkallstrom But we also have stuff that serves a purpose but without which we would still be good enough to reproduce. Eyebrows for example, are a good shield for your eyes against snow and dust falling from above. I'm happy to have them. But I can't imagine survival ever depending on them. Or is their existence proof that humans at some point in evolution got a real advantage from eyebrows in regards to reproduction? (serious question, I'm not being sarcastic) ~~~ sambeau The eyebrow may have been of use when humans had predators who attacked in the rain, or it may have been advantageous to a distant ancestor who lived through a one-off natural disaster: a meteor strike or a volcano. It may also be an effective way to communicate silently when your hands are busy elsewhere, or a vital addition to those who use fire. The eyebrow might also have never been of any competitive advantage without also being a hindrance in any way. Evolution is all about the death of children. If a mutation leads to the death of its carrier before they can reproduce then it will be naturally selected out of the gene pool. Anything that isn't removed in this way will still remain. In a smaller way if a mutation helps a parent (or other relation) to raise more children to adulthood then more copies of the mutation will appear in the gene pool. All mutations start out without a use. Maybe the advantage that an eyebrow brings has yet to be realised.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Aha.io makes it affordable for startups to plan great products - speek http://blog.aha.io/index.php/startups-wanted-new-aha-startup-pack/ ====== danwilson My company uses Aha! and we're getting a ton out of it. Finally, we have a structured means of clearly communicating product strategy/objectives and demonstrating how it translates into truly necessary engineering effort. It helps demonstrate that product management is not wizardry, it's a deductive process that can be open to everyone. In the case of a small startup, it seems like it could be an almost automated means of reassuring investors that the team is executing on-plan. ------ raperez0 As a team lead, this tool provides me with a way of visually follow multiple parallel backlogs and keep everyone in sync with the project goals. It covers the gap between the daily work and the general strategy.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Intentional memory leaks - throwaway2048 https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=comp.lang.ada/E9bNCvDQ12k/1tezW24ZxdAJ ====== tjalfi The previous discussion is [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14233542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14233542) ------ wyldfire It's certainly a humorous anecdote and arguably a practical solution to the problem. But when the mission of the code expands beyond the original use case, this element might be lost. It's best to encode these limitations/constraints into the design of the program, whenever possible. However for this case I cannot imagine how to do that. When that's impossible, it's ideal to advertise these limitations as a design feature coupled with the intended use cases. Therein lies the only hope of discovering this before it causes problems. These days, the vast, vast majority of our code can and should undergo unit testing and have sanitizer tests enabled for that unit testing. We should be extremely cautious about whitelisting/bypassing those checks (but at least those are more explicit signals). ~~~ beached_whale I thought I remember reading this story in the past but it also talked to the real time requirements and there wasn't enough time to free the memory. Not sure if I am making this up or not though. Either way, it is a factor that cannot be ignored ------ cpeterso I would be very surprised if embedded missile guidance software actually used dynamic memory allocation. It would most likely use static data. ~~~ vardump Embedded dev here. I concur. I've heard this story a number of times, and it smells like a myth. Well, maybe terrain recognition navigation system might need to allocate memory. Or perhaps a data link for processing commands. But probably not. Funny, though. ------ stcredzero I remember this kind of approach being proposed for a game debugging tool, and for writing games in a managed language. Basically, everything you wanted to keep or consider permanent was marked or kept in one part of the heap, and everything that was allocated to execute a frame was implicitly thrown away. (One way to do it would be to compact the heap before starting the frame, then use the top of the heap as a barrier.) I also saw this strategy used in coursework. I was in graduate school, and I had just done the Compiler class the previous semester. My best friends were taking the course, and the professor had concocted a home made leak checker and foisted it on the class, declaring that no program with leaks would be accepted for the final project. It was only a few weeks before the end of the term, and everyone was demoralized. Jokingly, I suggested that everyone just make their own mechanism of the same kind, which would track allocations then release all of the program's allocated memory just before the prof's leak checker ran. As it turns out, the whole class ended up implementing my idea. The test data was small enough, that everyone's compilers could afford to simply leak memory, then release it all at the end. Problem solved. ------ ysleepy true stop-the-world garbage collection. ~~~ saalweachter One of the anecdotes I keep in my back pocket about how _anything_ can be funded by the military was a compilers professor whose research on real-time Java was funded by the military. Apparently some drone control software was written in Java, and having your drone use stop-the-world garbage collection is bad in a number of ways. ------ zwieback That's humorous but sad in so many ways. Regarding the original quote - if I see a malloc for a bunch of memory intended for the lifetime of the app and it's at the beginning of main and then it doesn't get freed before the end of process execution it's not really a memory leak in my book. Still, I wouldn't write code like that. ~~~ zlynx A variant of that I've seen in many small 1990s C apps is create a huge struct with all the program data in it, with fixed size arrays of things big enough so that's all you ever need, and just declare one global struct. It was one struct instead of separate globals because of some coding style guide at the time. "But what if we want to use this in a library?" "Here's all the data in one container, malloc it and use that." I don't think many of those programs ever did end up in libraries. ~~~ tempodox The original yacc(1) was written with fixed-size arrays for the parser tables, statically allocated. If the parser was too complex, the arrays would blow. To fix that, change the DEFINEs and recompile yacc. ------ theandrewbailey Missiles: for when you really want to outsource your garbage collector. ------ nikanj In the good old 90s, we talked about improving reboot speeds by removing destructors from software. I don't think the project ever got anywhere, but back then, your KDE desktop spent a good 15-30 seconds carefully deallocating all objects. ------ amelius If rebooting requires less than a few seconds, then I'd say they could simply do that, even while in flight, to collect the garbage. ~~~ brokenmachine A missile will cover a fairly large distance in a few seconds. In fact, it's entire flight time could be a few seconds. Imagine an air-to-air missile fired by an aircraft at another aircraft. ------ jjdredd So adding memory was cheaper than fixing the leaks? ~~~ matte_black way cheaper ~~~ cbhl I imagine this depends on how many missiles are being made: adding memory: $xxx per missile paying a software engineer to fix a memory leak: $x,xxx,xxx ~~~ nomel > paying a software engineer to fix a memory leak: $x,xxx,xxx Paying the software engineer would be a fraction of the cost to fix the memory leak in software. Recertification of the software would blow it all away. ~~~ amelius > Recertification of the software would blow it all away. This makes me wonder, will self-driving cars need recertification if even one line of code is touched? ~~~ matte_black Let me put it this way, if there is a car that doesn’t get its driving software recertified even after one line of code is changed, you do not want that car. ~~~ amelius Yeah, ok, but what about the cars that drive around me? ------ vernie Embedded, harm-critical applications. ------ anfilt Why I normally would not reccomend such a thing. The punchline is funny. ~~~ tempodox “the ultimate in garbage collection” had me almost fall out of my chair. Memory management in embedded systems truly increases entropy in the universe. ------ JetSpiegel Classic. Missing (1995) on the title, and perhaps a [Usenet] tag? ------ Tommyatomic Kaboom. Garbage collection handled.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I can build an forever-free and anonymous personal finance web app - adrian_pop I've always wanted to control my finance, to know where goes my money and one important thing: forecasting. All sites that I've found over this feature as a paid one. Well, listen my plan:<p>#1. completely free personal finance (home budgeting) web app<p>#2. most web apps offer overcomplicated interfaces; I think I can create a much more simpler version with the exact needed features<p>#3. my app will not connect to your bank account<p>#4. with the possibility to attach documents to your transactions, you have all the control of your files (they will be hosted on your own google drive/dropbox account)<p>#5. ONLY oauth login with your google/dropbox account (login => a connection is made to your dropbox account, logout => connection closed, tokens destroyed).<p>#6. Hack-free web app<p>#7. Provide most useful features for a home budgeting app.<p>I am still thinking how to monetize this, because I don't want to put up any ad network (at least annual costs: 15$ domain + 120$ hosting)<p>What do you think of my plan? Would it worth pursuing? I have no interest in knowing who you are, where you live, your name, address or any other personal info. ====== Delmania Look at YNAB. However, what are you trying to forecast here? In terms of personal finance, the single most important thing to get right is the budget, which is more about planning, and not about forecasting. Everything else is nice, but unless you've got a solid budget module, the app will useless. However: > #3. my app will not connect to your bank account Make sure you can process OFX, QFX, and QIF files so that users can clear transactions and reconcile accounts. > #6. Hack-free web app Big claim. >I am still thinking how to monetize this, because I don't want to put up any ad network (at least annual costs: 15$ domain + 120$ hosting) Why do you think forecasting is a paid feature? Your value proposition to me is not that it's free. It's the level of anonymity you offer. ~~~ adrian_pop 1\. YNAB is over complicated (just mho), but still has stuccess. 2\. Forecasting (more like planning): at this moment I have X in my account. I have a big event in about 90 days from now. I want the app to "learn" from my past months transactions(expenses & income), create a spending pattern and give me some scenarios: the optimist, pessimist and the probable one. Currently I am trying this in excel...but doesn't work as planned. I want the app to be able "think" in advance. Eg. you set a goal: $3,000 cash in next 3 months. Then the app should do: check what you did in the past 3 months, check last year on this time if you have any insurance to cover (car, house...etc, yearly recurring transactions) and the result should be: well, you can't gather $3,000 because you might spend them on: X, Y, Z. If you eliminate one of them, you reach your goal. Some kind of rudimentary artificial intelligence. 3\. thanks for OFX, QFX and QIF. 4\. Honestly, I want to build something that matters. I think I can support these yearly costs, even with a donate button (no ads). 5\. Everywhere the forecasting/planning feature is a paid one. 6\. As I initially said, I am trying to plan it as anonymous as possible: the data will be tied to an oauth userID, nothing more. ~~~ Delmania Taking a step back, who is your target audience? YNAB is probably one of the simplest budgeting applications in the market. It's successful because it only does budgeting, has extensive training, has a strong community, and emphasizes fiscal responsibility as a lifestyle. However, it's aim is for people who realize they need a budget, but don't know how to do it. > 4\. Honestly, I want to build something that matters. I think I can support > these yearly costs, even with a donate button (no ads). I think we all do, but if you set out to build "something that matters", you're setting yourself up for massive disappointment. Either define a market and build for them, or build the tool for yourself, and tell others about it. Before you can make $100, you need to make $1. Your comments about forecasting are interesting. The biggest issue with it is variability. You can develop a plan to make $3000 in 3 months, but then have an unexpected car repair that your car repair fund can't fully cover. However, I don't think that's a strong enough argument to deter you from doing it. I guess my questions would be how strong are you at budgeting and ML? ------ mplewis For me, the key benefit of Mint and BillGuard is that they link to my bank account and categorize my transactions automatically. I have never been disciplined enough to enter transactions by hand. ~~~ adrian_pop I know both of them are 99.99999% safe, but honestly I don't trust any web app to connect to my bank account(I don't own piles of cash/zeros there). ~~~ gohrt The sad thing is that the main risk is that banks use the same token for Read access as ReadWrite access to your accounts. There's no need for that; OAuth solved this problem years ago. ------ onion2k _my app will not connect to your bank account_ Without that feature you're expecting users to manually type all their transactions in to your app. Users, especially people who aren't already good at keeping track of their money, are often too lazy to enter data well, so any forecast you do based on their inputs will be wrong. The pain point with managing your personal finances is maintaining a good record of the data. That's what you need to solve. ~~~ Delmania If people don't want to manually enter in transactions, they're not interested in personal finance, they want a fire and forget solution that tells them if they have enough money to buy something. The reason that people need to manually enter in transactions is to they understand the operating balance, not the physical balance. When I pay my mortgage, there's a delay from when I submit the request to the lender to when the lender draws the money. For the duration of those days, the money may be in the account, but I need to ensure my finances take that into account. Otherwise, I'll submit a transaction, forget about, then buy something, and run into a bounced check or overdraft fee. ~~~ smeyer I disagree. I don't care about a difference of a few days one way or the other, because I keep enough cash in my checking account that I'm never in danger of bouncing a check or not having money for a big purchase. However, I do care about my finances. For example, I often examine my spending over a period of a few months to see how I'm spending my money and decide whether I want to make adjustments to my spending habits or budgeting. I can (and sometimes do) do this by exporting a CSV from my bank's website, but I like the convenience of using tools like Mint and letting them auto-categorize my transactions. ~~~ ryandrake It's almost as if... different people use financial tracking software in different ways! To me, not connecting to bank account(s) is a deal breaker, and I would have no use for such a product. I've used (and suffered with) Quicken for years and years because 1) it connects and downloads from every bank/investment account I have ever had, 2) its interface is bearable, and 3) my data is stored offline. I probably use about 2% of Quicken's features, but I can't do without them. I don't use any of the budgeting features, the bill pay features, the integration with tax software, etc. I just want to get a big picture overview of my accounts, watch for fraudulent transactions, and not worry that my all my data is online and ready to be compromised or lost. If there was an alternative to Quicken that satisfied the above 3 requirements, I'd consider switching, and I would definitely be willing pay for such software. ------ stephengillie This actually sounds like a bunch of features I won't use, and you're excluding the features that I would want. I assume I'm not your target audience. 1\. Nothing is free. Even if you provide it for free, there is still awareness, evaluation, switching costs, and long-term trust (that you will remain motivated in supporting this project across the next few years) 2\. I think I can create a self-driving robot. If you think you can create a simpler interface, create a simpler interface. Put your money where your mouth is. Pics or it didn't happen. 3\. If your service doesn't talk to my bank, how will it know where I'm spending my money? I've got better things to do than data entry. 4\. What documents of my transactions? Do you mean your app will OCR my debit receipts? I'm paperless and try to avoid receipts, so I'd rather just have you talk to my bank. 5\. Oh, I don't have to trust you with my bank info, but I have to trust you to login with my Dropbox/Google info? Those creds are more valuable to me. Why not just do local storage to a local Dropbox? 6\. Accident-proof car! 7\. Features like? I don't mean to completely shoot you down; I merely want to deflate you a little. This granstanding post is quite the brag, but without substance it's meaningless. ~~~ adrian_pop 1\. Free for the user, not for me 2\. pics will come with a landing page 3\. If you have better things to do, than personal finance or planning, you don't need this service 4\. documents = bills. I add an entry: electric bill - 100$, but the interface where I pay it keeps only my last 6 bills, not everything, so I want them stored automatically somewhere/ 5\. I don't need your dropbox/google info. You click a login button, redirect to oauth interface, login on the oauth server then come back to me with a token. It's not shooting down, it's reality, it's the reason I posted this. ------ wumbernang Sounds reasonable but three points: 1\. It's not anonymous. The ledger is enough to identify someone. 2\. It's not 100% better than my current spreadsheet (one tab a month for the coming 6 months). 3\. There's no motivation not to close it after a month I.e. no contract ------ heimatau Any idea that you are this passionate about, is worth endeavoring. Built it, learn some things and relish any measure of success. Happy coding! ~~~ erikbigelow Yeah, what he said. If what you're building is something you'd use then it's probably something others would use. ------ tcfunk I have considered doing this myself. I have used Mint for a long time, but more and more I feel they are trying to push other services on me. Not to mention it doesn't 100% fit my use case. I have also investigated other solutions, like YNAB as someone else mentioned, but never was impressed enough by them to spend money. Ultimately, I decided I wasn't worried about it enough to dump my own time into it, but if it's something you're passionate about I'd say go for it, and I wish you luck! ------ johnsocs I'm actually a YNAB user. My wife and I started using it recently and really enjoy application. The budgeting system works perfect but there are a few features I wish it did have. 1\. Target goals - Take the thinking out of saving for a target, you should be able to tell the system I want to save x in y time and it should tell you exactly what you need and if you adjust your budget when the new target date will be. 2\. I want to be able to enter my bills into the system when the arrive at my house and have it remind me to pay them X days before they are due. I don't want the paper bills sitting on / in my desk until I pay them (QuickBooks can do this). Also checkout: [https://www.everydollar.com/](https://www.everydollar.com/) I believe Dave Ramsey and his people have put this together is free unless you want bank connection BUT still makes the end user think and do some work. I a totally automated system is BAD as people put their fiances on autopilot.. this SHOULD require some work. ------ zuzuleinen I also built a more slighter version for my personal use. You can check it out at [http://www.moneytablet.com/](http://www.moneytablet.com/). I know, UX is poor and options are poor but for me is perfect. I used it for over a year now, and it's useful enough to pay 5$/month on a digital ocean droplet. ~~~ adrian_pop Way to basic for me. Good luck. ------ patcon Step one could be to define an open data format for personal budget data, like todo.txt for finances :) Then you can simply submit PR's to current system open finance tracking apps, and you can sync state between with dropbox or syncthing or seafile or whatever ------ sdipchikov I’ve already built something similar to that 5 years ago. Currently it is only for Bulgarian’s local market, but it is behaving well in terms of popularity given the fact that I haven’t invested a single penny in SEO or marketing. [http://mypocket.bg/](http://mypocket.bg/) You can check it out (use google translate to get the idea) we can partner in going international I’m now looking to raise an investment to rebuild and expand it. stoyan@dipchikov.com ~~~ gii2 You did good job. The web is fine, the mobile interface is limited, there is no mobile app. But my overall impression is quite positive. (I've been using the app for few months now) ------ sandwell Would you support importing transactions or bank statements? How do I access my finances if I'm out and about with no internet connection? Or if I forgot to pay my fiber bill? ~~~ adrian_pop There won't be an "importt feature" from bank statement. As I said in the post, I don't want to operate with personal/sensitive informations. Let's be serious, we all have internet connection most of the time. When there's no connection, there could be a mobile app (long wait till there). And no, I don't want the app to pay your bills. You just add: $50, internet bill (attach the pdf/picture or pick one from drive/dropbox) and submit. and meanwhile the document will be uploaded to your drive/dropbox. ~~~ sandwell > There won't be an "importt feature" from bank statement. YNAB's budgeting philosophy discourages importing data from your bank statement because it disconnects the user from the individual transaction that take place. They ended up adding support for CSV/OFX/QIF because people wanted it. > As I said in the post, I don't want to operate with personal/sensitive > informations. All financial data is personal and sensitive, whether imported or manually entered. > Let's be serious, we all have internet connection most of the time. Most of the time, not all of the time. Especially not in rural areas. I regard my personal finances as pretty important, so not being able to access my budget because I don't have an internet connection is a big problem. > And no, I don't want the app to pay your bills. Apologies I didn't phrase that right. I meant: What if I forget to pay my internet bill, then can't access my personal finance app to see if I can afford to pay my internet bill? ~~~ adrian_pop > Apologies I didn't phrase that right. I meant: What if I forget to pay my > internet bill, then can't access my personal finance app to see if I can > afford to pay my internet bill? You go to a good friend who'll let you use his computer for 3 mins, check your finance: u have money? pay the ne; no money, ask him :P The other solution would be to go to the ATM and check your balance :P ------ boothead If you're going to do this, a lot of the guts are already available in the form of [http://hledger.org/](http://hledger.org/) or [http://ledger- cli.org/](http://ledger-cli.org/). (Can't remember the license offhand, but you might be able to build on them) ------ Grazester So you want people to have to manually enter a transaction each time it occurs? This means keeping receipts that can easily be lost along with actually making the effort to do so. I dont see that happening. Make it. If this is something you want to pursue then do so. You have nothing to lose(I hope you don't at least). ------ ryandrake I would not use this app (due to #3) but best of luck and wishes for your success. There are very few such apps/services out there, and this market is in desperate need of disruption. I would love to see a real alternative to Quicken/Mint emerge. ------ barile Doesnt look like a problem worth pursuing in 2015. Take a look at [http://www.ledger-cli.org/](http://www.ledger-cli.org/) and their libraries on github (there are haskell ports and a web frontend) ~~~ gohrt Ledger is nor a solution to this problem. > Ledger never creates or modifies your data. [...] no automated tool will > ever change that data. Therefore, Ledger is always stale, and only useful for obsessive stamp- collectors. ------ msallin Hey man, I'm building something similar, I'd love to chat about it with you. Used to work at Intuit, came up with this idea, I've been working on this for 5 years, full time for two. ------ amirsonali as someone in the fintech space I suggest you build it and check usage. I'd totally pay for this if it can do exactly what you say and is secure. Don't worry about the monetization. Any successful fintech app will get bought out, or there are creative ways to monetize we can discuss later. Shoot me a message if interested ali@sourced.fm ------ faitswulff Sounds like a candidate for sandstorm.io ~~~ adrian_pop good idea. ------ technicalfault How would this compare to GNUcash, apart from it being on the web? ~~~ adrian_pop Do you use GNUcash? ------ hugocornejo What do you think are those 'exact needed features'? ~~~ adrian_pop I'll make a list and reply here. Do not forget to check. ------ SeanAtkisson I think that's a smacking great idea! Have you considered a freemium concept where you could set a basic free package of features and then an enhanced set of paid features? ~~~ adrian_pop There are many ways to monetize a service, but I will try to keep it free. Maybe a donation button :P ~~~ s73v3r A donation button is a poor way to monetize. If you're actually proud of what you've built, do not be afraid to ask money for it. ------ s73v3r I'm not gonna tell you not to go for it. However, the reason most of the other apps connect to bank accounts is because that way they can actually get the whole picture information that's needed to make them useful. How are you going to get the transactions without connecting to their bank account? Have them enter the transactions? I'm going to forget, and I might have far too many to do by hand. I'll enter 3, mistype one, and then give up. Also, the easiest way to monetize is for it to be paid. You did hard work; why shouldn't you be paid for it?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Goldman Sachs: space-mining for platinum is 'more realistic than perceived' - ptrptr http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-space-mining-asteroid-platinum-2017-4 ====== foxyv "It used to cost $35 million (£28 million) to send one person up on a Soyuz rocket. Today, Virgin Galactic hopes to get space tourists into space for something like $250,000 (£200,000), Goldman says." This made me wince. Suborbital is not anywhere near the cost of orbital vehicles. Although the cost HAS gone down. A SpaceX Dragon 2 costs about $70M with a crew of up to 7 reducing the cost to $10M a head. (When they start manned flights.) But this isn't 3 orders of magnitude =/ ------ boznz I would hope SpaceX and Blue Origin would have think-tanks planning out these things, after all once you have a shit tonne of re-usable rockets waiting for customers you may as well put them to work. Problem I see is robotics, nobody wants to go to the effort to put up a space miner with all the human problems so all the work is focusing on robotics that could do this, however this is something that could ramp up quickly into a race once someone starts making a concerted effort or books some flights as the payoffs are enormous for the winner and Humanity. ~~~ netzone Yup. All it takes is that someone starts the ball rolling making a serious effort, then everyone will follow suit and we might see a new "space age". ------ payne92 The article highlights the problem: one asteroid would tank the entire platinum market. ~~~ Arizhel Yes, but the other factor is, with much cheaper platinum available, new applications are likely to be found which were previously ignored due to cost. Today, for instance, (this is an unrealistically simplistic example) if you could make something out of either copper or platinum, with copper not working quite as well but still fairly close, you're obviously going to choose copper because platinum is so expensive. If platinum is now cheaper than copper, you're going to choose that instead. However, this does make me wonder: are there any applications where platinum would actually make more sense than what we're already using? It doesn't conduct electricity better than copper, for instance. So aside from catalytic converters and jewelry (which we already use platinum for, so it'll just drop the cost rather than expand the market), what is it good for? Secondly, what about other metals? Surely these asteroids have other valuable metals besides platinum, such as iron and nickel. Considering how much we use copper, we could really use a copper-rich asteroid. ~~~ nickjarboe Fuel cells are expensive due mostly to the cost of platinum. ------ placeybordeaux It'll be very interesting to see the cost-benefit calculation of chucking the raw materials down the gravity well vs parking them in orbit and waiting to sell it at a premium as they could easily beat the price of anyone that wants to fly something up. ------ bglazer How does one go about getting a 500 meter wide asteroid back to Earth's surface? It seems like there is a non-zero chance of accidentally creating Chicxulub v2. Or do you just leave it in low earth orbit and build a space factory? ~~~ Arizhel Much of the asteroid is likely not that valuable; it's not like there's pure ingots of metals floating around out there. So you'd want to have some kind of refinery in space which can capture the asteroid and extract the valuable ores. Here's something helpful: [http://www.space.com/15391-asteroid-mining-space- planetary-r...](http://www.space.com/15391-asteroid-mining-space-planetary- resources-infographic.html) ------ Clownshoesms So will it be "first in, first served" on all the roids/matter in the universe? A world where Goldman has first dibs on these resources, or any say in the matter at all actually, is a grim one to me. ~~~ csense The money has to come from somewhere. Why shouldn't private spaceflight use our financial system's existing infrastructure for raising capital? In my mind, spending tax dollars on space is fine for exploration and science. But when it comes to industrial development, letting the free market sort it out is a good thing -- if asteroid mining's profitable, this part of our space presence can become self-funding. As far as who owns what, I imagine the first successful exploitation of extraterrestrial resources will quickly be followed by the governments of countries with this capability hammering out some kind of international agreement on who can mine where.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Enigma: Erlang VM Implementation in Rust - adamnemecek https://github.com/archseer/enigma ====== archseer Thanks for sharing, author here! (AMA?) I had a lot of fun working on this project, having implemented enough of the VM to run both Elixir and IEx before I stopped. Ultimately development stalled since I couldn't get any community interest (I was hoping to give an ElixirConf talk but wasn't accepted either). Was hoping to raise some interest and find some contributors in similar vein to [https://github.com/RustPython/RustPython](https://github.com/RustPython/RustPython) Nowadays I write a lot less Elixir and a lot more Rust. ~~~ hopia A new Erlang VM with just replicated functionality is a fairly hard sell to the Erlang/Elixir community, who brag with the industrial track record of the BEAM. I believe you'd get much more interest if there was some ambitious new promise for this new VM, such as 10x sequential performance etc. ~~~ fortran77 We do a lot of Erlang work here. The BEAM is so reliable that I wouldn't spend 1 minute looking at an experimental alternative. ~~~ spockz Can you share something on this reliability? Is it more reliable than the JVM? Or is it more predictable in terms of performance? I’ve found the jvm itself to be rock solid as well. ~~~ hopia Erlang VM is consistent/predictable in terms of latency, it's engineered that way. For pure computational performance you won't find it optimal. ------ mwcampbell A similar project is Lumen [1], which is targeted primarily at WebAssembly. [1]: [https://github.com/lumen/lumen](https://github.com/lumen/lumen) ~~~ archseer Yep! They appeared shortly after I started and were backed by Dockyard. I think they didn't have much success finding external contributors either though :/ ~~~ bcardarella The project is still under heavy development to get to a point where external contributors make sense. We hope to be there soon! ~~~ archseer Best of luck! ------ lelf Another one from a different author (with slightly different goals): [https://github.com/kvakvs/ErlangRT](https://github.com/kvakvs/ErlangRT) ~~~ archseer Also check out kvakvs' BEAM Wisdoms site: [http://beam- wisdoms.clau.se/en/latest/](http://beam-wisdoms.clau.se/en/latest/) It was a big help initially to grok the bytecode format. ------ chx > sans the distributed bits for now I thought the very point of Erlang was the distributed nature of BEAM? Failure is normal etc? ~~~ archseer I wanted to tackle distribution eventually, but it was also by far the most complex part of the implementation. ------ JimmyRuska I would love an erlang implementation where there can be many versions of the code in memory, where you could re-order the message pattern matching at runtime, where you can specify arguments to functions in terms of a map, specify the args and the types of that map specification, and have it compile into numbered argument, that way you don't have to add update many many functions to add another argument. ~~~ toast0 > many versions of the code in memory, You can model that today if you script compilation/loading. When loading a module, you could first load it as {?MODULE, ?VERSION} or ?MODULE_?VERSION if we can't stuff a tuple there, and then also load it as ?MODULE, to use when you don't specify a version. The hard part is deciding what version to call when, and passing that through to the call sites. And also, to figure out how to signal a process that you want it to update its version. > where you could re-order the message pattern matching at runtime, Pattern matching order is part of your code, and hot loading is the way to make changes to your code. > where you can specify arguments to functions in terms of a map, specify the > args and the types of that map specification, and have it compile into > numbered argument, that way you don't have to add update many many functions > to add another argument You could do this yourself today as well; a function could check if its argument is a Map and demapify the arguments, or you could make a utility call_function(Module, Function, Arity, Map) that demapifies and calls erlang:apply on the function. Or, you could have your rapidly changing functions all just take Maps; I did that in the past with Proplists. ~~~ JimmyRuska Thanks for these suggestions! Shouldn't there be a way for the compiler to know enough to convert the map to positional arguments, so long as the map params could be put into a spec? Something like that would be super nice, because I think tail calls in Erlang cost nothing so long as you keep the same arg positions. Having a map is always a convenient way of starting a function and evolving it, but having it with a few more constraints and with equal performance would be better. If I'm not mistaken I remember dart made a similar optimization. ~~~ toast0 If the functions are exported, the compiler wouldn't be able to optimize calls. Dynamic modules and hotloading means there's no expectation that what you had when compiling is what you're running against in production. If they're in the same compilation unit, the newer SSA based optimizer might do some cool stuff for you; it's always interesting to look at the optimized code that comes out of compiling/loading. In general though, I would tend not to worry about efficiency of passing a map instead of traditional arguments. Most likely there's other, bigger, things to worry about; usually finding the right communications patterns and algorithms makes a bigger difference. ------ battery_cowboy I love it; I don't think everything has to be useful to be worthwhile. ------ amelius What are some good books on the topic of VM implementation? If no books, then papers also welcome. (Not necessarily related to Erlang) ~~~ enitihas Crafting Interpreters is a good book, free to read online. For papers you can read "The implementation of Lua 5" ------ throwaway894345 This is cool, but looks like development has stalled. Last commit was Sept 2019.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training? - the_antipode Hi, all. Long time, first time. Hoping to tap into the collective HN consciousness to help make sense of this question, as I feel it's something I'm seeing/experiencing at present.<p>It seems like twice a week or more I read there is an industry shortage of devs, but I never hear about any companies, of any size, looking for junior devs -- or generally competent devs that might have a specific knowledge gap -- to hire and give on-the-job training to. Not even a contract-to-hire situation that leaves the company with very little risk if the developer isn't what they needed.<p>Is on-the-job training just flat-out dead?<p>I ask this because I'm 4-years-experienced as a front-end UI/interaction dev, nothing but glowing references, looking for another, similar, position (regular, not senior or lead) and have had...way too many interviews and rejections, and can't understand why companies are such sticklers for interested devs to have Every Single Box in their list of requirements checked when it would take days or a couple weeks to learn XYZ framework/library/whatever to the level of competence that is required for the position.<p>To further stack up the frustration, it's not uncommon to see the same position listed and re-listed on LinkedIn and Indeed for months: certainly somebody could have been hired and trained to the level needed in that time. (Maybe even me!) ====== oh-kumudo I think the reason is simple: once the junior dev is trained, they will leave. To be clear, I am not saying that they are obliged to stay in the company that trained them or being ungrateful in any sense, I am simply implying this is a common outcome from such training. In software industry, the first job switch in 2 years seems pretty common and reasonable, and the dev by that time would be able to strike a better job offer not only for money but also better aligned with their self-interests. From the companies' perspective, they might find such high attribution rate stays against their own favor, making providing necessary training uneconomical for them, both in time and money. ~~~ ivan_ah A friend of mine runs a web dev shop and I have seen him train at least six people from zero-to-pro (very smart, fast learners with a math background) and what you described is exactly what happens. Once they become medium/advanced- level proficient they often quit and move on to other, bigger companies. If there was some formal, or informal understanding that candidates "trained on the job" would stay for a few years, I think companies would be more open to building junior devs. Does anyone have ideas about how to make this work? ~~~ stormbrew The other replies touch on this, but I'm gonna get straight to the point: Does your friend give them actual, meaningful raises as they grow? Is he actually paying competitively to begin with? Because I think if you have this pattern that consistently, it's really likely that either you're underpaying to begin with or your raises suck or are not even present. I love working at small companies. It's by far my preference. But none of the small companies I've ever worked at offered anything like the comp and comp growth that the big corp I currently work at does. In fact, almost all of them offered me near zero compensation growth over time. And in real dollars that effectively means negative growth. ~~~ ivan_ah That's the weird thing — they (because there are two cofounders) were actually paying very competitive salaries (for the local market). I was impressed to hear what some of them were making. So it's not the money. I think what's going on is that after a year at any job you start to see the problems with the code base, and it starts to get repetitive. It will be like that both in big-co and small-co, but in a different way. In small-co you can have a much more freedom, but you reach a plateau of the new things you can learn. In big-co there are bigger problems and more challenges, but you're part of a soulless machine that just wants you to do your job and not ask questions. Not having experience the soul-crushing big-co life, the brough-up-to-speed junior hires don't appreciate the deal they have, and want to explore their options. It's a rational decision, and come to think of it I'd probably do the same. The code is always greener on the other side... Who wants to be like "no I'll stay here and do 3 years of the same things that I'm really good at now and delivering value for my employer." From the employers's perspective though was it worth it? Time/energy invested to train them vs. maybe 6mo or 1 year of useful coding contributions. ~~~ stormbrew > That's the weird thing — they (because there are two cofounders) were > actually paying very competitive salaries (for the local market). I was > impressed to hear what some of them were making. So it's not the money. This is only half of what I asked. What about the raises? As someone in another thread chain pointed out, the expected raise from job leaping is maybe 15%. How did the raises your friend gave compare to that? I'm not saying they have to meet it, but if you're sitting there doling out 1-2% raises per year people are gonna leave when they get what they need from you. Also, small companies (frankly, especially 'web' companies) are not even remotely immune to demanding people just "do their job and not ask questions" or forcing their employees to sit in the same box for 3 years doing the same thing. Often the lack of room for career growth in perpetually small companies almost _demands_ this. ~~~ ryanobjc In fact in the good big companies, they crave for employee growth. Time and money for training, meaningful career growth, and pay growth, major tech switches without changing jobs. I find that small companies are often much worse in all these metrics. As a jr employee they’ll never rise to chief architect - your friend, the cofounder, has that job. And is never giving it up. Plus thanks to cash crunch, making shortcuts to deliver is common in small companies. Especially since they don’t have a reputation to protect. So quality? Well, maybe. I recently took 9 weeks off from my bigco FAANG, job to help raise my baby. After the company’s health plan was on the hook for a million in costs (baby born prematurely, spent 3 months in hospital nicu). At no point was I worried about my job or company. I’m happily back on the team in my job cranking away and being productive. Now tell me my experience would be better in a 12 person startup/shop. I dare you. Ps: in terms of impact, well I work on a small thing in a sense so only a few million people directly use my product. Big companies have big impact. Lots of guard rails which is nice to no longer make the same basic mistakes over and over. ~~~ marvin > the company’s health plan was on the hook for a million in costs As usual, this is the craziest part of the comment to my European mind. Your healthcare system spent somewhere around an entire lifetime of effort for something that, while relatively dramatic, should still be quite routine for a sophisticated medical organization! ~~~ adetrest Which begs the question: what happens if the premature baby is born to a US family that can't afford a decent insurance plan? Does the hospital repo the baby? Is the family bankrupt and the baby's life ruined from the get go just for being born premature? I can't wrap my head around it, and it seems to suck either way. ~~~ howard941 The parents are on the hook to the hospital, to the myriad physicians involved in the in-hospital care, and for non-covered post-discharge costs. Their financial lives may be crushed absent bankruptcy, which carries its own problems regarding loss of assets and mortgage availability for ex. The infant is also financially liable but likely uncollectable. The baby's life may or may not be ruined depending on where the US goes w/r/t health insurance coverage for pre existing conditions. ~~~ late2part How is the infant financially liable? ------ marcus_holmes I've built a team from trained-up junior devs, and it was great, I would recommend this route for anyone building a team. BUT... you have to have people who can train and teach as well as code. There are personality traits that don't align with this. The typical "aspy Dave" stereotype of a rockstar programmer is not good at this. So you have to align the entire team from day 1 as being a training environment as well as a software excellence environment. It's not easy to do. We lost a few people because of it. However, the loyalty generated was incredible. We tended not to lose people because they knew they could learn more with us than they could elsewhere. Our retention was fantastic, despite the overwhelming opinion than new trainees leave as soon as they can get better salaries elsewhere. But then, we hired for people who were hungry to learn and create. Less graduate programmers thinking they knew it all, more college dropouts who loved coding but couldn't stand academia. The best coder I trained on this team (in fact, the best coder I trained ever) was a girl who taught herself coding while getting off heroin in a Glasgow slum. I doubt any "normal" dev shop would have even interviewed her, but she was really good. Oh, and we were too small to have an HR department. When we grew big enough, they definitely got in the way. I had to more or less fight them off over every position we hired for, because they didn't understand anything about coding, IT or creativity, and would just look for relevant experience in a similar field. ~~~ ryanmarsh _I had to more or less fight them off over every position we hired for, because they didn 't understand anything about coding, IT or creativity, and would just look for relevant experience in a similar field._ I’m a dev coach, which means I can run circles around my client’s developers (except usually one or two). However if I ever wanted to get hired as an actual employee at any of my clients I couldn’t. I’m a high school drop out with a weird work history. There’s no way I could get through HR. The absurdity of this has not worn off. ~~~ sgift HR is the "no one ever gets fired for buying IBM" of hiring. Not really good, but minimizes risks for all involved. ~~~ ryanmarsh Minimizes the risk of hiring great people. ------ aphextron >I ask this because I'm 4-years-experienced as a front-end UI/interaction dev, nothing but glowing references, looking for another, similar, position (regular, not senior or lead) and have had...way too many interviews and rejections, and can't understand why companies are such sticklers for interested devs to have Every Single Box in their list of requirements checked when it would take days or a couple weeks to learn XYZ framework/library/whatever to the level of competence that is required for the position. I've found myself in the exact same situation lately. It seems companies are not actually _hiring_ for people to do a job, but simply trolling the market for who they can find. The result is wasting weeks of your life being strung along through their "process", only to be given a form letter rejection. I quit my job at the time after months of these nonstop recruiter emails enticing me, and wasted 2 months going through this ruse with a couple companies, only to be left with a feeling of total defeat and a Bay Area rent payment eating me alive. To anyone considering doing the same, think twice. It's pretty maddening not even being able to land an in-person interview with 4 years experience. ~~~ dharmab Don't quit your job without your next source of income secured. ~~~ aphextron >Don't quit your job without your next source of income secured. I guess this is the takeaway from a self preservation standpoint, but the alternative is worse. Spending months of your employer's time completely mentally checked out, taking sick time and vacation for interviews, pretending like you care in meetings, it's all too much. I watched that happen multiple times before I left, and it's really discourteous to the people you work with. It just seems unethical to me to remain somewhere once you've decided to leave. ~~~ tcbawo When you quit, you lose leverage. It's not unethical to use personal and vacation days as you see fit. ~~~ thrower123 They are your days to use, however you feel like. Hell, you really should be entitled to use your lunch hour if you want, but that might be my blue-collar roots in jobs where I actually clocked out for lunch and had mandated 9am and 3pm breaks showing through... ------ buro9 I'm an Engineering Manager at Cloudflare, and we hire juniors. But... this was not a thing we always did. For a long while the company was much smaller and we had a limited number of roles open and so we focused on fewer hands that could get more done as each team might only be a couple of people (for example the engineers behind Cloudflare DNS could be counted on a single hand) meaning we hired mostly senior whilst a few juniors were hired where the skills matched well. As we've grown we've reached the place that to offer progression and growth to our senior engineers into engineering leadership or management means that we acknowledge that you may be a great engineer today but you now need to learn and master communication skills. We are hiring juniors to give our senior engineers growth opportunities as we need engineers who can be mentored, taught, shown how things work, who will ask questions that challenge the seniors to explain why they've done something the way they have and what considerations were applied. What I love about where we are now is that this encourages us to hire the most curious, smart, and kind individuals who will benefit the most from that communication. We are now well-placed to grant potentially career shaping and life changing opportunities and to give juniors access to some of the great senior engineers we've been attracting. It's a total win-win. And having seen this play out, and reflecting on the smaller places I've worked which lacked juniors, and the larger places that had a healthy balance of juniors, and being at Cloudflare long enough to have witnessed this change... I'd say that if you are a junior engineer, consider applying to growing mid-size organisations (250-2,500 employees) as those are the ones that are likely to be under similar needs to fill gaps in a way that helps support the growth and development of their existing engineers as well as their new ones. ~~~ dominicr Glad to hear this from Cloudflare > encourages us to hire the most curious, smart, and kind individuals This is > important. Having hired developers with a range of experiences I've found > that it's often the more junior developers who push new ideas, create > discussion and raise the team morale IF you hire those juniors who are most > enthusiastic and hungry for growth. It's similar for hiring senior roles but > seems even more important when hiring juniors. ------ kristopolous There's either a cost _or_ benefit of everyone on the team. Programmers generally push the code at a constant velocity in one trajectory between the two. They'll be somewhere between fixing things and making it better to breaking things and creating new problems that eventually need to be undone and re- solved, pushing the quality down and deadlines back. People tending towards the second group are a waste of time and money. As a hiring manager, to be completely brutal, unless they can demonstrate they are in or have high potential to be near the first group, I simply do not care. The contribution value of people in the second group is not zero, it's actually negative. Their bad decisions and buggy creations decrease the quality of the product. It's like putting an saboteur on the payroll and then handing them important responsibilities. The team likely becomes friends with them (friendships at work happen about 10 times for every 1 enemy) and this makes reversing the mistake even harder because after all, we are social creatures at heart. What's worse, after the inevitable breakup, I then have to re-allocate my quality assets away from pushing the product forward to cleaning up the mess someone just left and things stop getting done in the meantime. ~~~ freewilly1040 I think this is the right answer, though I think there's a mentoring element that has to be considered. Plenty of people will break things if left unsupervised but will learn quickly to contribute if they get the right feedback. ~~~ kristopolous That's fine if you have the cash to burn and people to squander. Larger firms probably do (after all some have daily banquets and onsite gyms), but it is just burning cash and squandering time. If you're on a tight budget like I usually am, I let someone else do that investment. I simply don't have the resources. Early stage startups are the most enjoyable nightmares I've had. ------ torte This might be an unpopular opinion, but I would expect that each newly hired developer (be it junior, mid-level, senior) can and will take time to do train and improve him/herself. I don't mind this being on job time, as long it is not all day. Most times this is even required when doing a task, because no one knows everything, even with X+ years of experience. If this mindset is not there and a newly hired developer requires actual training (like someone else in the company teaching them), then I think he/she will never make a good developer in the first place, because each new task with some obstacle they have never dealt with, will require them to get training from someone else. I am a big fan of mentoring, but this is related to understanding the existing platform and getting productive working on it, not about teaching technology XYZ. This opinion should actually go both ways and companies need to be willing to hire developers, even they don't have the 100% exact skills they need and then allow them to improve them on the job. If you got rejected by companies because they don't understand this, then be glad that you will not work for them. ~~~ ng12 Absolutely agreed. What's implicit here is the risk that somebody just won't work out. I once invested a huge amount of effort trying to train a junior dev and after 3 months he still didn't "get it". Not only was he unproductive but I was basically operating at half capacity for those three months. It was a huge exercise in frustration and something I will never attempt again. ~~~ mooreds I am sure that was very frustrating! Did you end up letting him go? It sounds loke the job wasn't a fit for his skillsets. I will say that I have hired junior folks and seen them thrive after three months (take on more work with more autonomy) and that leveling up was so great to see. Plus it made them a better developer and more effective foe the company. That's the flip side. And it's not like a senior developer is a sure bet to be effective either (though I grant you they are, all things considered, a better bet). ------ justapassenger One of the reasons that I saw, is that training is very expensive for the company (both in terms of money, opportunity cost, time of other people, etc) which combined with people changing jobs often produces low, or negative ROI. By the time person is trained, they leave, before they start to meaningfully contribute. More experienced folks also change jobs often, but you have higher chance of getting some productive time out of them before they move. ~~~ hvaoc In my opinion everyone company likes to only benefit from experiences earned elsewhere but never like to provide folks a place to earn the same in their company. This is very unfortunate, I also see the same issue when someone is trying to even make lateral movement from one expertise to another. (Like backend to front end.) This whole process is a very lazy and unproductive way to hire. I have been thinking about an alternate approach. Where folks spend their own time to learn and build something in the common forum along in a team. Teammates can rate them, code can be available in open repo. That way folks can prove their skill outside their job and job interviews. Like I proved that I can build mobile app once and anyone can recruit me instead of starting from clean slate job interviews every single time. ~~~ stackzero > In my opinion everyone company likes to only benefit from experiences earned > elsewhere but never like to provide folks a place to earn the same in their > company ^ this, can't agree enough. ------ seniorsassycat I owe my career to on the job training. My first programming job was at a small shop in New Jersey. Their interview had me write a loop, not even fizzbuzz. They asked if I knew JavaScript, Ruby, css, HTML, or SQL, I said no for all of them. They hired me ("at least you haven't learned bad habits") taught me rails, git and about as much about software development as I learned finishing college. I took the job summer after freshman year and worked every summer till after junior year when I interned at Amazon. Showing up at Amazon felt like starting over again, I had so much to learn. I think those experiences formed my attitude, I spend a lot of time learning new things at work, because I've always learned at work. I think I'm good at my job, I just got promoted to senior engineer, and I attribute it all to my first job being willing teaching me. ~~~ gigatexal Me too. I was a know-nothing kid from off the street with a newly minted economics degree. And I learned SQL as a Junior DBA and now I’m a Senior Python developer at a startup in Germany. Tutoring from senior level coworkers and home study is how I got to where I’m at. I try to give back where I can too! ~~~ myrloc Curious - are you in Germany on a visa? ~~~ gigatexal I have a residency permit aka a Bleue Karte - which is tied to my employer. I have to maintain a job and it has to pay above 50k euros but it’s good for 5 years. ~~~ locklock I don't think German Blue Cards are tied to a specific employer. As far as I know you only have to let the authority know if you change jobs less than a year after getting the card, and beyond that you just need to make above the money limit and you can work anywhere. ~~~ gigatexal I had to when I changed jobs change it into the name of my new employer. But that was probably because I changed jobs before a year. ------ amb23 Non-developer here but I might have some insight on general hiring practices: First of all, most companies, startups especially, are really bad at training. Like, really really bad. A majority don’t have any kind of formal training programs until they hit 100+ employees, and even then the training you get is usually created by HR and lacks any kind of technical depth. It’s hard enough to even wrap your head around the basics of how most tech companies are built as an early employee; trying to turn that complexity into a simple training program for new hires is hard and people rarely have the time or resources to do it well. That being said, if a company is preparing for growth they need to plan and document for those trainings ahead of time, and they’re probably better off hiring fast and teaching quickly on the job. Not documenting how your company works is another kind of technical debt if you think about it, and a lot of startups scramble to make up for it when they find they need to hire quickly but those hires aren’t getting up to speed as quickly as they should be. So they overreact and think it’s the quality of the developers that’s the problem when it’s really their own lackluster training resources causing the issue. Also, the company I’m at just constantly maintains listings for front end and back end engineers and data science just to try and keep a constant pipeline coming, but the actual needs and experience levels they’re looking for at any one time on those teams do change. IMO you should never apply to a job post that’s been up for 1+ month; always target newly published listings and you’ll up the chances a recruiter reaches out. The rest is just HR noise. ------ wwweston The weirdest part about this is how many companies fail to properly estimate the degree to which per-project on-the-job-training / on-boarding is inevitable _even if you check every language /datastore/framework/tooling box they could possibly ask for_. Checking those boxes can be helpful, but unless there's no value in your software other than that provided by the l/d/f/t, your software has something like domain specific knowledge. Or at least a somewhat niche linear combination of other pieces of such knowledge. And a person who can fill in those blanks on their own -- as seems to be expected for a fair number of positions -- is probably capable of filling in l/d/f/t gaps too. (OP: email's in the profile if you're interested in making a potential contact; hiring is on the horizon where I'm at.) ~~~ bloomca Onboarding in domain specifics is different. Language and programming fundaments have to be taught, and companies rarely have any decent processes around it, and it eats a lot of time from other developers. Domain knowledge can be gathered from literally anyone in the company, and also unless you are a senior, you don't need that much of understanding. Moreover, you can do some tasks without knowing anything – fixing nasty bugs nobody has time for, automating some stuff. During doing that you can get some ideas what it is about. Another point is that person with experience already immersed into other/same domain in the past projects. ~~~ wwweston The term domain knowledge may not be specific enough to convey what I'm talking about; "domain app logic" might be closer to what I'm getting at. It's the domain specific portion of a given system. It (hopefully) represents domain knowledge or is oriented around a process informed by that knowledge, but it's encoded in the software (and docs, if any). I can see why many companies don't often have a process around teaching programming fundamentals and prefer to hire those who can demonstrate competence in one or more languages. I understand less why companies with a determination to build their team rarely have any kind of methodical approach to introducing developers to their systems and seem to prefer sink-or-swim ad hoc task assignment. There's a consistency to that approach with the approach of a precise list of specific stack/tooling requirements, of course: it says "we want to rent talent, not develop it." And that approach has its merits, even. But there's an inconsistency, too -- if your primary approach to introducing people to your existing systems is learn-by-flailing, why be concerned about avoiding that with frameworks and languages, too? Especially when, as far as you're concerned, the familiarity that matters is with specific languages and frameworks _as used by your system_. ------ jjcm On the job training is very much a thing, but I think the vast majority of companies out there prefer to start doing that while a potential hire is still in college. It's less risky and usually the potentials are more moldable. Internships that move to a full time hire is how we brought in a large percentage of the workforce over at Microsoft, and the same is true where I am now (Atlassian). For those in that position, we supplement their internships with a lot of on the job training. It becomes harder when someone is in the position you're in - 4 years of experience at companies that aren't big name ones. Most companies aren't sure how good your skills will be, and you come with way more risk than someone still in school. If an intern doesn't work out, after six months you just don't extend them an offer. Their internship becomes a long extended interview. In your situation, if you pass the interview but don't end up working out after 6 months, the process of removing you is much harder. It requires a lot more risk on the company's part, so almost all of the big names exclusively look for college hires. ~~~ dwd > It becomes harder when someone is in the position you're in - 4 years of > experience at companies that aren't big name ones. This is very true. Having a few years at well known company on your resume will get you in the door. Also worth considering is highlighting the clients who used the systems you worked on rather than just the little known company. ------ badcede I have an answer to the paradox of how these can both be true: (1) companies complain about a shortage of programmers; (2) angry commenters claim otherwise. If there were few good programmers and many mediocre ones, this is what you'd expect to see. ~~~ gscott I especially like when one job opening is broadcast to tens of thousands of qualified applicants. If you have hundreds of applicants that are similar for one position I guess you can spend a massive amount of time looking for "culture fit", leaving your one qualified applicant who has probably multiple job offers now to accept yours out of several. ------ Misdicorl I think it's totally doable, but you need two important things 1) a good exit process 2) a good promotion process 1 brings serious culture issues/questions with it. See horror stories from people who went to grad school in the 80s and 90s where year two cut rates were 50% or worse. I don't know how you deal with this, but it will certainly deeply affect your work environment. 2 is easy on the face, but requires huge buy in. Realistically you're looking at a 2-10x increase in this person's compensation over a very short time frame or you'll lose your training investment as they jump ship. ~~~ AnthonyMouse > Realistically you're looking at a 2-10x increase in this person's > compensation over a very short time frame or you'll lose your training > investment as they jump ship. This is actually a very helpful risk-mitigation strategy. If you hire someone with less experience at a lower salary expecting to train them and it turns out they're terrible, all you have to do is not promote them. Once they realize they won't be promoted here but on paper have some experience that can get them a higher paying job elsewhere, they'll promptly disappear on their own without you having to fire them and all that goes with that. ~~~ Misdicorl I'd definitely worry if I were relying on this strategy. 1) What about the employees who won't or can't jump ship? These are the ones that are most important to push along in terms of company health. 2) I'm not a huge fan of the implicit 'firing'\- the employee may feel a sense of responsibility to the company and slowly become more and more upset as theyre passed over for promotions. 3) I'd worry about the easy slippery slope towards terrible culture this would allow. A manager thats allowed to keep on sub-par staff because they're cheap might start stringing them along to keep the cheap and mediocre work. "Sure the promotion is coming, we just need to find the money in the budget next quarter...". Its hard to have insight into these issues from a level above the manager, and the manager has huge incentives to do it. So best not to create a structure where it can happen so easily. ~~~ AnthonyMouse All of those are solved by just being candid about their actual chances of promotion, and then actually firing them if they don't take take the hint after a certain period of time (or if their performance gets to the point of justifying being fired for cause). Assuming it's even a problem to just leave them where they are indefinitely. There are a lot of people who make bad managers but fine low level workers. ------ starky Training isn't dead at all, most companies have co-op/internship programs for exactly this purpose. This greatly reduces the need for hiring junior employees since you already know if they are a good employee, and they are already trained enough to dump them right into a project without all the training for the tools/processes/product that goes on for any hire. In my experience this means that the vast majority of hiring through standard postings my companies have done are for mid to senior level positions to keep a good variety of experience in the team. For the hiring I've been involved with, it often comes down less to whether the person ticks off all the boxes, but rather whether they can actually do everything that comes with the job. If you are getting rejections for missing one or two things, I'd recommend evaluating how you are coming off in your resume and interview and make sure you are emphasizing that you are able to learn quickly on the job. ------ jedberg > when it would take days or a couple weeks to learn XYZ > framework/library/whatever to the level of competence that is required for > the position. Here is their thought process: If you believe that is the case, then why not spend a couple weeks learning XYZ, so that the next time you need XYZ you can say you know it? Either it's not actually that simple, which means that it would take a long time for you to ramp up, or it is that simple, and you lack initiative. ~~~ yhoiseth I think you're right that it's not that simple. The really valuable knowledge is not the type you get from introductory tutorials, but the type you get from working on production systems. GitLab concluded that they didn't have the capacity to train developers unfamiliar with their tech: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab- com/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab- com/merge_requests/2695) ~~~ bulditand GitLab is talking about (not) training python people to do ruby work, which indeed needs months of work. OP is talking about not knowing framework xyz, I'm assuming like knowing JavaScript but not knowing Vue or knowing Python but not knowing Django or Pyramid. You can be productive with a framework in days / weeks if you have solid knowledge of the programming language. ------ eximius EDIT: to people emailing me (thanks!), I am currently on PTO overseas so I _will_ respond, but maybe not super timely. Also, we're looking for our first QA and our first DevOps role if non-SEs are reading... If you're willing to work in Texas, send me an email (check my profile). We absolutely do not mind if you have gaps. semi-OT: To all people in this thread who say there is no shortage of developers: if you know any of these developers willing to work in Texas, send them my way! We are struggling to hire for front-end/full-stack developers. It isn't a problem with pay - we offer quite competitively AND Texas has low cost of living! The problem is that we seem to get people who can't pass variations of fizzbuzz (i.e., implement max, min, mean, median on a list) or who we filter out after an intro call due to red flags (claimed to be a web application security specialist but also claimed no experience with web browser APIs, another that claimed to be an expert in databases but didn't know what a schema was!). I am willing to believe the talent is out there, but we are having a hard time tapping into it. ~~~ deepGem I am just curious, why do you need to test somone's ability to find max of a list. Language designers have recognized this as a basic utility and incorporated them into the language. Is the hypothesis that - if someone cannot write a simple algo to find the max of a list then what other difficult tasks he/she can perform ? Even though in reality we all understand no one needs to write a max algorithm. ~~~ tempestn Yeah, I'd say the latter. Finding the max element in a list is an extremely straightforward thing to code; if someone can't do that, it's almost certain they're going to be lacking in a lot of other ways as well. Of course it's not the only thing you would check, but it would make for an easy early filter (which, unfortunately but conveniently, would probably weed out the majority of your resumes). ~~~ LoSboccacc Fizzbuz removed us 90% of potential hires and saved a lot of money in cutting interview short. Granted this is a rural area and ymmv depending on the local average skill level, but still if you want to grade someone from zero to ten you need to start with exercisers close to zero. Otoh if your interview questions are all 9 or 10 in difficulty most of your candidate will fail them and you'll have no data for a decision because all 8s will fail to answer in the same way as 6s and 3s Much better to start with some stupid loop and work up from there. ~~~ tempestn > Otoh if your interview questions are all 9 or 10 in difficulty most of your > candidate will fail them and you'll have no data for a decision because all > 8s will fail to answer in the same way as 6s and 3s Besides, it's a waste of their time and yours to have someone attempt a 9 or 10 before they show they can pass a 1. ------ mooreds I think it is a bit like dating in the modern era: there's always the hope of finding the perfect unicorn. There's also the fact that people sometimes dont hire until it hurts (they have too much work to do) and then there's little or not time to train. There's also a flood of folks from the bootcamps that may or may not have skills but want the salary of a jr dev. These folks (understandably!) flood any jr job posting, making it hard to get through to the hiring manager. There's a bit of the flavor of the year 1999 in my opinion, where everyone wanted to be a programmer (and if you could say "Java" you were hired). Finally, an investment of months of training makes sense if an employee will be around for years. But because of the erosion of the employee/employer social contract, there's no guarantee as to how long a trained employee will stick around. Better to wait and hire someone who can make an impact their second day. That said I think there's an enormous opportunity to do this kind of training, create loyal employees, and improve the world by training more devs. ------ fzeroracer I figured I'd add my two cents since I'm still a juniorish developer (sitting at around 2.5 years of experience) and I definitely noticed during my my more recent job search that there was a dearth of Junior job postings. I'm of the opinion that there are two major issues in play: 1\. There's the myth of the junior developer breaking prod or wiping databases. This is usually the result of teams not having enough process or protections in play. These are only exposed when a newbie developer does something silly because senior developers have learned how to navigate the system. 2\. There's the myth of the junior developer not adding value until they're fully trained. Personally I have never had an issue ramping up, but from what I've seen across my network and search is that there's a fear of developers leaving once they gain enough knowledge. And, well, that usually happens because junior developers can be heavily underpaid without any promotion opportunities which makes job hopping the best way to increase your salary. So I would say right now there's an overabundance of mid-level positions that could be filled by junior developers but due to irrational fears results in them just foisting the work upon smaller teams. I definitely noticed that the moment I hit two years of experience that the search became a lot easier ~~~ FajitaNachos I've never heard of or experienced #1 and have been in the industry for 8 years. We all break shit. That's not a reason to pass on junior devs. In regards to #2, it's not that you won't add value until you are fully trained, but there are X number of people applying for the same position, and as the person doing the hiring you are going to try to get the most experienced developer you can for that role. There are still plenty of good companies that go out of their way to hire junior devs (for budget or other reasons) ------ caseysoftware So far I've seen everyone on the path of "we train them, they're great, and they leave! That's expensive!" Fundamentally, I think that's the best case because good->great people can be useful and a benefit to the team in a variety of ways after they get over that first few months. I think the _bigger_ risk is the people who are unobviously duds. You meet them, they have a ton of potential, and you invest time and effort into them. After that first few months when they should be useful, they're still sucking up time and effort. It's not so much that people complain "get rid of them!" but enough that they never add _anything_ to the team. They suck and suck and suck.. and they still suck. ------ fizx While you might say "I don't know React, but will start learning it as soon as I come into work," someone else is saying "React is so cool! Yeah, I haven't done much with it, but I was playing around with it the other week and I made a little todo app. My code was so much cleaner than doing it the old way." Which person gets hired? Companies are willing to do on-the-job training, as long as the person appears enthusiastic and the gap between your current skills and the target isn't too large. P.S. A cynical person would say that you don't even need to have followed along with some todo app tutorial unless they call your bluff and ask to see code. :) ~~~ mixmastamyk The second will get hired, but may be a much worse employee. Also tech stacks are exploding, so learning everything is not possible any longer. ~~~ jogjayr > The second will get hired, but may be a much worse employee. Why would they be worse than the first candidate in this example, if they've actually tried out React and the first has not? ~~~ mixmastamyk There are many fantastic devs that don’t chase fashion. ~~~ jogjayr Trying out new technologies isn't "chasing fashion". It's an indicator of intellectual curiosity, drive for self-improvement, and openness to new ideas. Blindly adopting everything new and claiming it's the best thing ever is "chasing fashion". ~~~ mixmastamyk It certainly can be and is largely subjective. But, I bet you know that already. ------ rb808 I work for a big corp who has always hired a lot of graduates for a grad program. We rotate people through two teams of 6 months each then place in a final team in one of those areas or a third if necessary. Traditionally it has worked well as we get a good source of smart people. Recently though grads are leaving really quickly, like 18 months, even just a year. Maybe its because the job market is hot people can get mid level jobs with 1 year of experience. I don't think a recent grad with 1 year experience is worth paying mid-level salaries, but I guess that is all they care about. Training grads really sucks, they are negative to productivity, but I personally try to spend a lot of time interviewing, mentoring, training, doing extra code reviews because I've enjoyed it and want to help people. When people leave after 18 months with the company though its really disappointing, almost insulting. I feel like I'm wasting my time. Our team is going to stop asking for grads because we are really getting nothing out of it. ------ websitescenes Our startup is located in El Paso and it's super hard to find senior devs here. I had to start teaching programming classes at our local maker space to find our first hire. After a few months of teaching I cherry picked the most promising candidate and gave him a job. He's still learning but has quickly become an integral part of our engineering team and I see him as a future leader in the organization. I am very happy with our decision. I don't have to break the bad habits or cater to the inflated ego of a more senior dev. As his skills are growing we are adjusting the pay accordingly; He already makes double what he started at. Being in El Paso, this model makes sense and works but may make less sense if you live in an area with a bigger base of techies. If we were located in San Francisco or Austin, we may have pushed for a more senior level hire but we plan on staying in El Paso and continuing to train and build up our employees. ------ EnderMB Could you not argue that the move towards hiring developers from bootcamps is not a step towards on-the-job training? I know of very few examples of knowledge industries where you can go from nothing to "able to pass an interview" within 2-3 months of intense study. The same goes for self-taught developers that learn on the side, and then use those skills to build a portfolio. I've worked at places where they hire heavily from bootcamps, and a small team of senior developers are tasked with mentoring and training these entry-level developers. From my experience (in the UK), the issue is that people "are" hiring juniors, but the market has become flooded with entry-level and junior- level developers. Bootcamp graduates have become the entry-level, on-the-job trained types, whereas university graduates are expected to have an acceptable level of knowledge to be able to hit the ground running in a junior capacity. ------ beilabs Over the past three years we've employed a team of 19 software engineers in Nepal. Bar 3 of them, we've trained up 16 developers from Interns to fantastic engineers working across phoenix, elixir, ruby, kubernetes and javascript projects. We've treated them well, trained them up, brought them on board interesting projects. When it comes to staff so far we've a great retention rate. Nepal has a huge problem retaining the best and brightest, many leave the country straight after high school or college to seek better opportunities. I think we'll keep hiring juniors but I'd love to have more senior (20+ years experience) engineers on board. They don't seem to exist in Nepal. ~~~ mixmastamyk Nepal barely had computers twenty years ago, outside of expensive internet cafes. ------ tokyodude Be careful what you wish for. This is the norm in Japan. Students are hired out of college. They often actually have no real programming experience but based on their major they are hired into an engineering track. Programmers in Japan start at $20k-$25k a year. Many famous Japanese companies have limits set by HR of $60k a year for a programmer regardless of experience. I'm not saying that's the result you'll get but at least in Japanese culture the fact that the company trained you is at least one small part of feeling an obligation to stay on and that fact the so few people switch jobs is yet another reason salaries don't rise here. ~~~ ksec Again, are these total earning? in USD? Because many companies (especially in US ) have performance bonus, stock etc... where their actual "yearly" earning is way higher. And just to make it clear, The difference between a junior Dev and Super Senior Dev is only 3x? ( I am still baffled by how widely different the dev salary are in different region ) ~~~ Matthias247 In most countries and companies of the world programmers are not paid any bonuses, and even less so RSUs. It's mostly just a base salary. And yes, the differences might be normal. In germany it's even less. One might get around 50k€ fresh from university. But there will be far less than 1% of roles which offer a compensation of >= 100k. At least in engineering, management is different. ~~~ ksec Yes in most countries, but most ( English ) article are written from a American perspective. And they have lots of different way calculating their earnings. ------ kraftman They can hire a mid/ senior developer who will get up to speed fairly quickly and be able to work on their ownand then will leave after a year or two, or they can hire a junior Dev who will take longer to get up to speed, and use up the time of other more senior devs, or increase tech debt if they go off on their own, and then they'll leave after a year or two. To put it another way they can either pay a senior developer a lot of money to do work for them, or pay a senior developer a lot of money to teach a junior Dev (who they're also paying),only to lose them both after x amount of time. ------ thisisit My experience has been that many manager want to run or at least pretend to run a tight ship. So, they would rather splurge on finding that awesome- senior-dev than train people from scratch. Though this seems odd, it tends to give hiring managers some sense of security when they report to their superiors. They'd rather say: I have X who has Y years of experience in Z framework than I have X who has zero experience in Z and we are going to train them. It is like Kanehman's certainty effect. They'd rather be certain of competence than bet on the fact that you might be trained to be competent. ------ xenophonf You say that "it would take days or a couple weeks to learn XYZ framework/library/whatever to the level of competence that is required for the position", but in my experience finding people capable of self-learning XYZ framework/library/whatever are exceedingly rare and almost impossible to interview for. Conversely, teaching is really, really hard especially when you have other work to do. There are just so many gaps in a newbie's knowledge that, unless you're prepared for it, add significant friction to support and development operations. I would dearly love to hire someone at whom I can throw work and have them mostly be able to figure it out on their own. Instead, I've had to hire people who don't even know the fundamentals of my various technology stacks. This means I spend a _lot_ of time teaching new hires how to (e.g.) use the Unix command line before I can even think about teaching them how to follow our good current web server deployment practices, use our version controlled configuration management infrastructure, and troubleshoot problems in the front or back ends. Meanwhile, my management expects me to complex offload work items (including service package design!) onto junior staff while not taking into account the effort required to train them. Here on the other side of the hiring line, it's frustrating to say the least. ------ stackzero Most of the time because companies are hiring out of necessity. They either need to deliver more, faster, or are lacking technical leadership / expertise. This means the team is under enough pressure to deliver as is and don't have resources or incentive to onboard a junior. My advice is to keep learning on your own time, push yourself to learn a valuable skillset e.g. React (as you say you do frontend) and make something with it. For a new hire getting familiar with a project is a given, even a senior needs time to do this. However knowing a language, framework, or skill is your responsibility before applying for a job. I've applied for jobs that were above my experience level but ended up getting hired anyway while I didn't have enough "years" under my belt I knew the domain and tech stack required for the job. This often meant when applying for a senior job I'd get signed as an intermediate and same with intermediate roles where I was hired as a junior. Once your foot is in the door, if you work hard it will be apparent that you're adding the value of more experienced member than your current job title and from there its an easy promotion discussion. Just my 2cents. Know your stuff, that's your job and stay humble the promotions and opportunities will come. ------ marcell I don’t mean this the wrong way, but maybe the issue is something with you? If you’re having trouble getting interviews, it’s possible your resume is not great, or you are applying to jobs that have a bad fit. If you’re getting rejected after interviews, it’s possible you need to practice programming interview questions. It’s also possible you haven’t achieved a high level of skill yet. If this is the case, spend time building your skill set and competence. ------ Niksko There are places that (shock! horror!) don't actually mind that much what tech stack you have a background in. These are also likely to be places where to use the right tools for the right job, failure and learning from it is encouraged, and everyone helps to fill in the numerous gaps that everyone has in their knowledge. It might be tricky to find them, but it will be well worth it. ------ RickSanchez2600 On the job training is very hard and takes away time from senior devs to teach and mentor junior debs as far as management and HR see. I used to mentor junior devs in Visual BASIC in the 1990s and got written up for doing so. It helped the junior devs become more productive and experienced. It is usually management that is against it not the developers. ------ maxk42 The gulf between a senior dev and the average junior is akin to the gulf between a senior dev and the average window washer. The gap is too wide between juniors and seniors. Plus the market is flooded with junior devs. At this moment it's tough -- but not too tough -- to hire a senior dev. But juniors are a dime a dozen. ~~~ hnthrwy1 In what ways is the gap this wide? I tend to think the opposite. ------ zaptheimpaler Its basically a sign of the balance of supply and demand shifting I think, and particularly a large influx of new opportunists who jumped into programming for the money but might not have the aptitude or motivation. Companies are very, very risk-averse in hiring and they don't want to get stuck with one of those types. They overestimate the short-term risk of making a bad hire and underestimate the long-term risk of not moving fast enough or hiring enough. Even from a purely cover-your-ass perspective, a manager who makes a bad hire will likely be blamed for not screening candidates well enough, but a manager who fails to hire enough can easily point to the "talent shortage". No one ever got fired for choosing AWS, and no one ever got fired for hiring an ex- Googler :) ~~~ owens99 > Companies are very, very risk-averse in hiring and they don't want to get > stuck with one of those types. They overestimate the short-term risk of > making a bad hire and underestimate the long-term risk of not moving fast > enough or hiring enough. Actually, a bad hire is a long-term risk. It’s hard to fire fast and bad hires add up. B players hire C players, as the saying goes. ------ kraig911 I'm seeing a lot of comments from a HR perspective or that once they get the training they leave. To me it's much deeper than that. This industry of software development only recently has exploded because it's much more mainstream and the demand is growing. I feel if we compare it though to other trades the issue is simply the industry as a whole has top-ended and completely changed itself the last 7 years each time. I've seen Senior Devs take a junior role at their next company simply because the rate of change is so fast. This is not a trade like plumbing or even electrical work where once a way of doing something is set in stone and you'll do things a certain way the rest of your career. If you told me 10 years ago I'd be writing javascript all day everyday... ------ sytelus The problem is that you are identifying yourself as "front-end UI/interaction dev". Once you shoe horn yourself like this, your job offers would depend on what you know in this area. It's not that companies don't want to do on the job training but the fact that failure of you not knowing X while claiming to have specific specialization would be a put off. All of the Big-5s hire massive amount of folks straight out of college or just 1-2 years of experience. They don't even care which programming language you know, let alone knowing specific framework during the interviews. The important part is becoming a generalist, a problem solver who can tackle anything that comes on the way while developing a product. ------ zunzun At the businesses where I worked, developers were hired to be productive in taking on workload. Obviously, new people had to be brought up to speed on the existing systems before they could fix problems or add features. If we first had to give them technical training for months before they could be trained to understand the existing systems, that would have taken too much time. Even the front-end user and B2B interfaces were large and complex, let alone the arcane and hideously complicated domain-specific business logic - that took years to learn and be proficient working on. If in a job interview I heard the equivalent of "I can learn your UI framework or whatever" there would not be a hire. ~~~ xupybd I don't really understand this? It's trivial to learn a new UI framework, why limit yourself to only the devs that know the one you've selected? I guess if you have a lot to choose from why not. ~~~ 9wzYQbTYsAIc Companies are under the crunch to be productive. Generally, unprepared people are not as productive as prepared people. Being prepared to learn to produce value is not the same as being prepared to produce value. ------ therealmarv My brother studied with focus on AI (Germany) and is searching for nearly 1 year for a job... one should think that this is the most requested job on the planet. But nobody wants to have AI experts without 5-8 years experience. If somebody wants to change that message me here ;) ------ TruffleMuffin I am a senior developer in a small company, we almost exclusively hire Junior developers and train them. It's not a tech hub and so while we have had positions open for senior developers at good salary for the area by any stretch, we just cannot hire them. I believe as others have said, we run the risk of training them and then they leave. However, that has not been my experience so far. Perhaps one thing that I do with training that may be different to elsewhere is that I make it clear that they do control the codebase, and the challenges are always getting more complicated, the number of customers we get is growing and the markets we are in are expanding, so they should definitely see personal development opportunities within the company. ------ yyt_x This question resonates with me because I am a junior dev (bootcamp background, 20 months into my career), and am currently on the verge of switching jobs. I am very thankful to my current employer for hiring me and giving me a shot to grow into this career and treating me extremely well in the meantime. The thing is, they pay below the market rate, my wife is pregnant and not very employable because she doesnt speak the local language, and the 40% pay increase would allow me to get the mortgage to buy the apartment we live in. Otherwise we will be priced out of living in the city. I just feel really guilty, but my responsibility to my family exceeds my commitment to my employer... ------ anonytrary Stay away from companies and recruiters who ask you to be familiar with a laundry list of technologies, IMHO it's a red flag. If you kill it on the CS fundamentals and programming practices/patterns, then it shouldn't matter whether or not you are an expert in dime-a-dozen technologies like state management frameworks and view frameworks. Anyone worth their salt as a developer can learn and be somewhat productive with a framework in less than a week on the job. I'd rather pay a math/engineering graduate who knows nothing about React than a bootcamp student who has had a year of experience with React. ------ b3b0p What I have found by working with junior developers are our company is that I end up learning, reflecting, and growing myself, my skills, and am able to better express myself and my ideas as well. I also get good questions that I may or may not know the answer too. So, I feel not only am I teaching someone who has much less experience, but I end up learning things myself and new ideas or thoughts and ideas I never had before. Seems like a win-win to me. Plus, it's super fun having co-workers who are hungry and curious and to work on for-fun side projects with once in a while. ------ neya If you work in an intense environment like an agency, particularly one with high profile clients, then on the job training causes more problems than it solves. We had a guy who wrote a production web application software, completely untested in R lang (which is the worst choice for this situation) with terrible code (Think of mixing camel case and snake case, sometimes with same names (ExVariable and ex_variable and they both refer to different things). This thing kept failing over and over again to the point where the clients terminated their contracts with us. I had the bad luck of having to re-write his R code into Python which was suitable for this specific problem than R was and had to explain to this junior dev. Still, he wouldn't budge and kept writing untested production software in R when in reality most of his peers already knew Python and Ruby, whereas he was the only one with R knowledge and no one else in the company could understand his code, not even people familiar with R. Eventually he costed the company a lot of revenue, in terms of clients, and the company almost hit bankruptcy to the point where almost everyone quit (including me). Learning on the job isn't such a bad idea if the impact you have isn't as much. Like writing in-house applications for experimentation. Other than that, it's a terrible idea. ~~~ gambiting >>I had the bad luck of having to re-write his R code into Python which was suitable for this specific problem than R was and had to explain to this junior dev. Still, he wouldn't budge and kept writing untested production software in R when in reality most of his peers already knew Python and Ruby, whereas he was the only one with R knowledge and no one else in the company could understand his code, not even people familiar with R. Why was he given so much freedom in writing code? Especially as junior? I'm a senior at this point and I couldn't just arbitrarily decide to use R(or any other language that isn't C++ for that matter) for my job - it just wouldn't go through code review. Because I'm sure you had code review at your work, right? And if you did - who was approving his mess of a code? ------ swiftcoder The big 10 tech companies pretty much exclusively hire junior devs. At the scale Amazon, Facebook, etc are hiring, they have no choice but to primarily recruit folks straight out of university. That said, unless you are currently attending a top computer science school, you can be forgiven for not knowing this. Junior positions aren't really advertised outside of college recruiting trips. I'm only aware of a single major tech firm (Netflix) that is philosophically opposed to hiring junior developers. ------ Qworg We certainly hire junior engineers at my startup - we have about 50/50 "people who need some training"/"people are contributing at 100%". That said, at a startup, it is some drag on the build/test in the market cycle, so I feel like we're "weird". We certainly are hiring, just not in front end - looking for backend engineers and applied cryptographers/security folks. I'd be happy to look at your CV though! ------ hvaoc Don’t lose hope, it’s just that you haven’t met the right team yet. I have seen many times senior folks are hired to cover the hiring teams back in case something goes down south. You cannot shift the blame if you hire juniors. Am a senior and I believe passionate people do great work irrespective of their age. Reach me (find my email from my profile) if you just want to talk, will be happy to share whatever that I know. Am a full stack engineer. ------ wink Only anecdata, but if the team (company) is small and you're chronically understaffed, there may not be enough time for "training" \- maybe this is a bit skewed towards "more generalists than specialists" \- but I've had this experience. Let me try to give a only somewhat made-up example. If you have 3 people doing a big web application in one stack, I see no problem having 1 or 2 of those 3 be relatively junior. If you work with 5 different tech stacks that keep different parts of the company running, it might be a bit hard to get someone to learn 2 programming languages in addition to needing a little advice in their main tech stack. Not saying it's a valid reason, but if a lot of your hard decisions are actually important architectural ones and not small "how will this small piece of software be developed", senior people are actually a lot more important than usual, than say, in a team doing feature development. Also about your definition of Junior.. depending on where you work, 4 years often is not really junior anymore - elsewhere you'll not progress to non- junior until a few years more... ------ teekert I have seen people being put on a project not in their field and start with a lot of enthusiasm. FFWD 1 year and they don't particularly have talent for their new job, they feel they took a wrong career turn, they just aren't progressing (I also saw the opposite btw). It is difficult to judge this in advance and thus a risk. Now I feel it can still be done but only with people who are honest to you (project lead) and themselves by being willing to admit they either need more training or really should be doing something else. But this ability to reflect is also something that often comes with age/experience. I think I work at a company where it is certainly appreciated when you try to develop new skills and failing or losing interest is not a big problem but as a project leader it can be frustrating to think: "Hmm, well that was an FTE I'll never get back." Especially when you see the person really not enjoying themselves. Of course, this is a learning curve for the project leader as well and it turns you more into a coach from time to time. Which is fun tbh. ------ nelsonic While this might sound like a good question on the _surface_ , it does not get to the "root" of the problem. Let me explain ... Yes, most companies prefer to hire people who _already_ have the skills & experience rather than train "junior". This is not because companies don't _want_ to develop the skills of their employees; it's simple economics. The biggest bottleneck in any company is experienced people. The senior engineers who already understand all the systems, have been to all the product meetings and solved many critical bugs in production. These people are the "goose that lays the golden egg". Most companies are looking for more of these "golden geese" who can be effective & contribute to the product _immediately_ because the "ROI" on these people is 10x (or more!). Training someone up from scratch in a key tech and all the companies systems usually has a _negative_ "ROI" for the first 1-6 months and distracts senior people so it's a "lose-lose" in the short-run! Add to the fact that most companies have a "LIFO" pattern with hiring (the most recent hires are usually the people who exist first!), and many hiring managers (HR) are put off by the idea of hiring people who do not _already_ have the required skills. Consider the following often repeated quote/saying: CFO: What happens if we train them and they leave? CEO: What happens if we don’t and they stay? A lot of people have the mindset that training people costs too much time, money & effort and it _distracts_ the key people in the company away from their focus (building the product). This is not the fault of the company or the people working there. It's a "systems problem"; most companies simply don't have an effective system for "on-boarding & training" new people. I've worked for several companies over the past 20 years (including starting my own twice) and have been responsible for hiring & training thousands of people. Training people in tech skills, company culture & workflow simultaneously is a "hard problem". If you can get a "head start" on at least one of these areas the chance of successfully integrating someone is much higher. HR people know this so they want to "check" as many of the skills boxes as possible up-front. You as the "junior dev" can use this information to your advantage and invest a few hours up-front to _demonstrate_ the necessary skills and make the HR/hiring manager's job _much_ easier! My advice to any "junior" person reading this: 1\. Focus on your own learning/skills for at least an hour every day (preferably first thing in the morning). 2\. Share your learning somewhere public e.g: GitHub or a Blog. that way the hiring manager reviewing your "CV" has a clear indication that you are "fast learner" and a "team player" who shares what they learn to help _others_ "level up". 3\. Pick the skill/tech/tool that is most valuable in your chosen industry/sector or even target it to a specific company you want to work for. e.g: if you know that AirBnB uses React.js [https://stackshare.io/airbnb/airbnb](https://stackshare.io/airbnb/airbnb) you find and _devour_ all the best tutorials for learning React. 4\. Consolidate your learning into a tutorial of your own to show that you have _understood_ the tech/tool. 5\. Link to it directly from your CV/LinkedIn. Seriously, this will take you 20h at _most_. You could get it done in a week and it will transform your "hireability" from "no thanks" to "when can you start?". I know this because I have used this strategy to get jobs & contract work in the past to excellent effect. Investing in your skills and sharing your knowledge is the _single_ best time-investment you can make. It's a 1000x ROI! Put in 20h of focussed effort and you will get an extra $200K in the next 2-5 years. Guaranteed. My advice to any _company_ wanting to _solve_ the "problem" of hiring "junior" people and making them effective as fast as possible is: 1\. Commit to becoming a "learning organisation" where _everyone_ in the company shares as much of what they learn as possible. 2\. Establish _metrics_ for learning in your company! "What gets measured gets done". If there is no actively tracked & visible metric for each person's learning, people will stagnate and default to using their existing "hammer". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument) what you want is people who are _proactively_ learning new skills/tech/tools and then bring those skills into the company to improve effectiveness or build features that your _current_ tech does not allow! 3\. Systematically share anything that is not "sensitive" or "secret sauce" in _public_. Having private wikis with lots of learning is fine for internal use, but what if people could learn your "stack" _before_ they join your company/team? 4\. Hire the people who _proactively contribute_ to the learning materials without being prompted. This is the mindset you are looking for: people who want to learn and share what they know regardless of getting paid. Anyone looking for a proven example of any of this, see: [https://github.com/dwyl?q=learn](https://github.com/dwyl?q=learn) dwyl is a bootstrapped, profitable Open Source software company that shares _all_ of it's learning in public. [disclaimer: I co-founded it!] ------ sys_64738 > I ask this because I'm 4-years-experienced as a front-end UI/interaction > dev, nothing but glowing references, looking for another, similar, position > (regular, not senior or lead) It depends on what country you're in. This USA has an obsession with calling anybody with more than 2-3 years experience a 'senior' developer. In Europe senior is more like 7-8 years. ~~~ brentonator I don't think seniority has to do with a number of years of experience but the quality of that experience. You could sit at a company for 8 years and not advance your capability, experience, and worthiness. ~~~ bigiain "Some people have 10 years experience. Some people have had 1 years experience 10 times over..." ------ hnruss The company I work for (which is fairly small) used to hire college interns and provide training, but to be honest, it just wasn’t worth it for us. Their turnover rate was too high, their work quality/quantity was too low, and they significantly distracted the more experienced developers. We also spent years cleaning up after them. ~~~ mixmastamyk There’s a difference between junior and intern, which is essentially a neophyte. ------ thrower123 Basically everyone at the small company I work at has come up through the ranks. I've been there the longest at this point, and I started as a true greenhorn, with no experience, and I've learned on the fly for almost eight years now. I like to think I kind of know what I'm doing some of the time now ;-) Our other employees that have stuck around and become productive have all been initially hired as part-time testers and interns. Some of them were students at the time, others were coming in from other trades entirely. But they all trained up incrementally on our products and learned our business over time. Granted, theres definitely been a filtering, as maybe a quarter of all those we put in those testing roles proved capable of moving on to doing development work, but that is much better than the success rate we have had trying to hire for actual development positions, whether junior or senior. ------ noufalibrahim I run a mentoring organisation which I started because of my interest in teaching. I used to help the graduates find jobs that they liked. After a couple of years, I started a small services company of my own and started to hire mostly out of my own student pool. I'm very happy with the decision. I develop rapport with the students (and later employees). A 4 month training program, while beneficial for the students, works as an extended interview for me. I get to teach them skills which I think are relevant and fix what I think are cracks in their learning. All in all, at the end, I get employees who have skills that I want and with whom I share a rapport. The approach has scalability problems since I'm just one person but I see no reason why companies shouldn't formalise something like this and hone good talent rather than fish in the labour pool for it. ~~~ Radim That's what we did, too. As a company, we formalized our open source R&D activities ([https://github.com/RaRe-Technologies](https://github.com/RaRe- Technologies)) and launched a "Student Incubator" programme. Junior people around the world get to benefit from the mentorship, and we get access to talented people early on. Without that much internal risk, since it's open source. The problem is exactly as you describe: scaling. Mentoring is an extremely time-intensive process and when things go rough, such "charity" activities are the first to suffer. ~~~ noufalibrahim Fascinating. I'd love to chat directly and exchange notes. Can you email me? I'm nibrahim on github and that has my contact information. ------ vmware505 Never call yourself "junior", forget those "internship" jobs also. Just jump in and be a dev. Nobody will hire you if you call yourself unexperienced, but they will hire you if you solve problems and you can deliver the homework in good quality. So just be a normal dev. ;) ------ verelo It's a great option, but it's a hell of a lot of work if you want to do it right. At the end of the day, you also need to continue to provide them all the benefits and perks of developers that came to you with more seniority. None of this is bad, unfair or in any way problematic, it's just a lot of work. In return you may get a bit of loyalty, but again that only goes so far. I like to hire a mix. Have 1 senior person (initially that could be yourself, it'd always be me in the start) per 5-10 junior people. The juniors should also be a blend to some degree, you do not want some super senior developer coaching 10 new grads, but if you get the right mix...you can create a super productive team this way. ------ flukus One aspect that no one has mentioned but I've experienced with interns is that some juniors don't want to learn. Some think college taught them everything they'll need, others just have no idea how to learn on their own without hand holding after 14+ years in the education factory. I'm a big believer in education and training people I like teaching and I'll put in a lot of my own time to come up with projects within their skill level and tutor them through various things like debugging, but when that's not reciprocated by them having a desire/ability to learn you really feel burnt out. I'd be much more willing to put time into people that are self taught, but HR will only give me college graduates. ------ jldugger The reasons are twofold: 1\. Managerial sense of urgency. Hiring a junior means training them up, for harder and longer than a more senior hire. And probably tie up your remaining senior staffers for longer training them. 2\. A desire to fix the problem permanently. A senior hire will be with the company a long while. A junior hire you train up is going to leave when they're more senior than they role they filled. Especially if your corporate promotion and salary policies are rigid, you may have difficulty retaining junior employees once trained to the level of a senior. Until managers believe that hiring and training juniors is a long-term strategy that can be planned and budgeted for, the junior glut - senior shortage dynamic will persist. ------ BoysenberryPi I'm currently looking for a junior dev role. The issues I'm finding is A: They expect you to have 4 years of experience or be a college degree. I have neither in software development or B: They are these terrible "apprenticeships" where they also expect you to have 3-4 years experience, train you for 3 months on their technology stack, and make you jump through flaming hula hoops. I see a lot of comments talking about how you train juniors and then they leave but I'm skeptical of that. From my personal perspective, I'm not looking to get trained then jump to SF for a 150k a year job. Pay me a decent wage, give me ongoing feedback, and make sure career progression is laid out and I'm good with that. ------ jcadam > To further stack up the frustration, it's not uncommon to see the same > position listed and re-listed on LinkedIn and Indeed for months: certainly > somebody could have been hired and trained to the level needed in that time. There are a lot of companies that aren't serious about hiring. They post jobs, conduct a few interviews, but never actually hire anyone to fill a position. My guess is that they think it's a good idea to always list an open position just in the case a demigod of computer science happens to apply. You can usually tell right away if a company is serious - they actively shepherd you through a short but intense hiring process, and if they want you, they make an offer quickly. ~~~ ashelmire I think there’s another complication here, which is that companies will list a position once even though they are hiring several people. ------ jarjar12 Not true. I run 110 people team for a large retailer. I built this team nearly from scratch. About 80 percent of my team consist of right of college kids or folks with less than 2-3 years of experience. We they are very smart kids. :). I paired them up with other seniors from different department to train them up. We also pay very well. Entry level pay is 80k plus like with only college degree but with hard interview. I Also work very hard to make them successful example include sitting down and knowledge sharing of how the business works or even sitting down to layout framework or debug etc. i truly enjoy working new generation the old is status quo :(. ~~~ austenallred Where do you work and how can I get in contact? (I run a YC-backed Computer Science academy that aims to be very rigorous and has incredibly hungry students - [https://lambdaschool.com](https://lambdaschool.com)) ------ dostrin2 Maybe the small companies that are happy to employ ‘junior’ developers struggle to find them in the first place. We are hiring @ theurge.com but not sure where to find junior talent. Please email us if you are interested in roles in Sydney Australia. Hi@theurge.com ------ jallardice I'm the co-founder of a web-focused consultancy which works with larger, "enterprise" type businesses to fund work with much smaller companies, usually pre-seed startups. We hire more experienced engineers to work on the ground with the larger clients and we actively hire more junior engineers to work alongside a small number of experienced people on the startup projects. We find this offers solid on-the-job training for the juniors as they rapidly get exposure to a wide range of skills and technologies without necessarily being hampered by legacy codebases, massively complex change management and deployment processes and office politics. ------ VvR-Ox 1\. It's expensive 2\. You don't know the result (he will be the work force you need for the price you want) 3\. There is certain other risks like the junior goes away when he had the training because there is another company that pays more (there is allways that other company where roses are more red) 4\. Why should there be training when all the people in CS are ok doing training for free at home? Hell, there is even Hackathons that are used to get creative ideas and real work done in no time for no money (nope, all the catering, fancy prices and lousy shirts didn't cost the same it would've with some senior dev's) ------ CSMastermind For one, you have to pay a senior developer to train them for a year plus before they'll really be productive. And secondly, there's not really a cost saving. If I hire a senior at $200,000 a year they're likely 10 times more productive than the boot camp grad I can hire at $80k a year or the offshore contractor I can hire at $20k a year. Plus that senior dev will be able to think about good architecture, team dynamics, bring industry experience, etc. Now I do think there is a place for hiring interns and new college graduates once your development org reaches a certain size or the company is at a certain level of stability. ------ torgian I’m kinda curious what a developer with a couple years experience and making his own company would be able to demand back in the states. I think “apprenticeship “ isn’t a thing in tech. Things change quickly and companies don’t want to pay more money for people to develop software. Mostly because developers are viewed as a cost (a well-paid cost) and not money makers. And then the ageism problem. my biggest concern is what I will do if my business fails. Would companies even bother looking at me? Who knows _shrug_ I’m in my late thirties and I’m pretty sure no one would hire me for developing, though I could probably be hired as a manger or team lead. ~~~ C1sc0cat It used to be when I started in the math modelling group of a world leading rnd organisation. I went on the custom mech eng "higher" apprentice course (that had been developed for the local industry) at my local college. 1 day a week plus an extra half day a week for the first year to get my tech drawing O Level (GCSE) of course the Jammy buggers who worked for the civil service at RAE got an extra afternoon to do the home work ------ harlanji In VC land at least I think there is a preference for cumbersome employment agreements to capture intellectual property and head off potential competition, even if unenforcable by law (simple psychological / fear). Legally programmers are universally hired as “exempt” salaried “employee” (vs. worker). Junior devs should be hired on as exempt hourly workers. This would replace the worse than random interview process and do lots of wonderful things. It cuts lawyers and HR out to a large degree so I have a hard time seeing it catch on, but in the longer term smart contracts and other lawyer labor saving packages could bring it in. ------ eldavido Simple: nobody has time. Due to capital availability [1], the SV/SF ecosystem is highly optimized to favor spending money over time. That's why you get much-more-expensive WeWork over private office leases, everyone wanting to pay 2x as much for very senior staff, and few companies able to build a good content marketing brand. Patience is a huge competitive advantage, if you can manage it. [1] [http://www.davidralbrecht.com/notes/2018/11/risk- capital.htm...](http://www.davidralbrecht.com/notes/2018/11/risk-capital.html) ------ jvvw I worked for a company that did this very successfully for a long time - they paid very high salaries and had lots of nice perks so that people weren't tempted to jump ship for financial reasons. However, as tech salaries have increased the last few years, they have hit the problem of people jumping ship after a couple of years, presumably because they can now earn more as developers in the finance sector or with Google, Facebook etc, though I expect something more subtle might also be going on as the company has grown in size. ------ edoo Generally speaking I'd say if the devs have to be there no matter what you want juniors. If you have a goal to complete use experienced devs. Have the experienced devs build a product and the juniors support it. At the end of most 1-2 year projects I usually feel like I could turn around and duplicate it in a matter of months with the knowledge I have. If I do another similar project it just flies. Experienced devs are a better value for your money in general. You can be a 10x developer and barely get paid more than twice the average rate. ------ Spooky23 My employer does... many of our best candidates come in as interns and outperform experienced consultants, but snotty tech companies won’t touch them because they are not from the right schools. ~~~ hvaoc Schools are overrated in tech industry, at this point in time, you would do much better if you just spend your time learning and trying things on your pace and time rather than wasting on spending in a school. ~~~ Spooky23 I agree. One of the best network engineers that I’ve met had an AS in Welding Technology. ------ andy_ppp One thing that our company did right was hire a load of junior graduates; they were extremely lucky to benefit from years of learning and explanations from their very senior mentors and it encouraged people to think through why things were being done and to choose simpler solutions for them. However, I still wonder if any of them are natural programmers or if they were just doing it because it was a good job. By this I mean it would be hard for them to understand and be self sufficient even after a year of intensive training. ------ anovikov The very obvious reason is that a junior dev is by definition replaceable (because he can't work on his own), and thus makes no sense hiring full time locally - better (cheaper) be outsourced to India or Ukraine. Outsourced people are unreliable, but with junior ones, this is OK, some trial and error is quite affordable. Or better yet, you can hire a senior in Ukraine for the price of junior in the U.S.. And junior ones in Ukraine just do ghostcoding for the seniors until they can find clients of their own. ------ nnq HOW the heck CAN you evaluate _potential_ or _learning speed_ in a 30min interview?! I've been a couple times on the interviewing side of an interview (being an engineer), and trust me, _evaluating a senior is 1000% easier than evaluation a junior:_ resume makes sense, the fact that he has experience that may overlap yours makes it easy to come up with relevant and revealing questions during and interview etc. _Evaluating a junior is SCAAARY! You have no idea what to ask him so that you can get relevant answers!_ ...so most people "give up" and throw an algoritmic puzzle or something like that hoping that "raw IQ + ability to manifest it during the stress of the interview" means "she has a reasonable chance of being useful for the company". As a startup the risk of wasting time onboarding a junior that turns up not to be useful it might simply not be worth it. Also, this is the reason why companies like banks still look at _education_ when hiring juniors, more like "heck, maybe the top-tier universities did _some_ filtering themselves so it would make our job a _little bit_ easier". ------ davedx Not here in the Netherlands at least... the last three companies I've worked at have all hired junior developers, though it tends to be done once a team has already been built up from more senior people and the way of working/team cohesion has stabilized a bit. What kind of companies are you applying for? If you want, you could send me your CV and I can have a look over it, I've been involved in hiring said junior devs before and maybe I can offer some feedback. davedx@gmail.com ------ ayayron913 I agree with you that there seems to be an industry bias towards more experienced developers, and I think it’s to everyone’s detriment. Our team recently took an someone with 0 experience, who worked their way into a role with us from a business team we interfaced with. We had a strong team to begin with but we were all pretty senior so none of us were really actively mentoring. By adding someone with little experience it’s really rounded out the skill set of the whole team. ------ maliker I've built a team of 10 junior devs in the Washington DC area. The prime motivation for hiring juniors is that there's ton of good entry-level talent (worked on published research in college, built an app and got some users, etc.), but good mid-level has been hard to find. We give good raises and a lot of coaching, but since our work doesn't change much, people typically get tired of it and leave after a year or two. Ideally we would find a way to retain knowledge and talent. ------ jjuhl A year ago my company hired two young developers straight out of university and we've been training them on-the-job ever since. They are pretty well up- to-speed now, but it did take a full year to get them to a point where they are more gain than drain on the rest of us. I guess that's why not many companies do it, since it has been fairly expensive in salary to the new guys + productivity loss for the rest of the department. It's great now, a year later, though. ------ horatiocain I'm a fairly senior mobile/web dev (12 years full time, part time and hobbyist before) and the best part of my job is mentoring the juniors! I push hard for hiring people who are hungry and fun to work with, and it's paid my company dividends. You can spend a few months training a junior or a twice the time hiring a senior, and the juniors always bring good energy and open minds. It's not for every company but I have enjoyed it immensely. ------ gscott 4 years experience probably makes you more of a mid to senior developer. Why even bother applying to positions below your level. That is probably why you cannot get one. ~~~ jjuhl I don't know where you work, but where I'm at, less than 6years of solid experience would be considered junior, no where near seniour - that's 10-15 years of relevant experience. ------ mixmastamyk The “shortage” isn’t real, or could be described as caused by the industry itself. A cynic would say in order to hire cheaper folks on a visa. They also won’t hire women or forty year olds, or those that can’t code with a gun to their head, and certainly not anyone who needs four hours training. What do you think we’re morons? We’d rather sit on a job req for nine months waiting for a unicorn to walk in, because that’s how Spolsky did it in 2002, haha. ------ WiseExperience Some form of this debate has been going on since the mid-1970's when I was in your situation. The answer I got the most often back then when I asked a similar question was that company ABC does not want to train Company XYZ's future employees. From what you describe, very little has changed in terms of the mind-set of prospective employers vs. employees that are a "good fit" but not necessarily a "perfect fit". ------ okaleniuk We do that. We hire the most algorithmists straight from the university, we even have a special training program for that. The problem is, if we want to extend our expertise, and we do, we want to hire people that can train us. So yes, apart from hiring juniors, we do have senior positions that we close in months, sometimes year(s). It's all about the balance. We want people with their own experience, and we are ok with training juniors at the same time. ------ sysdumb One person that knows what they are doing is better than a hundred who don't. Junior devs out there, keep learning and keep getting better. You will have to get used to that anyways as development is a never ending treadmill of self- learning and improvement. But it's better to have zero devs messing up the code and forcing new opinions on the development process. As they say, cut your teeth somewhere else. ------ garganzol If you are just a junior dev then it may be unnatural for companies to see 4 years of experience in your CV. They probably expect you to be a middle dev given the number of years in the field. And the most important thing: companies generally tend to expect you to bring the value from month 1. Many of them are scared to death by the prospect of an extensive training for someone who may or may not be a good fit in the long run. ------ jarjar12 Oh. The issue I have seen is many of new grads want work for the big name company or tech companies. And they limit their options. Just be true to yourself that if you want work for tech company they need people who already know cutting edge technology and start to produce from day 10. Where as non tech companies need people who can understand business and how to solve biz problems. ------ Maro Here in Budapest (Hungary) we have like 2-3 coding school startups. Their input is somebody who doesn't know what `ls` is, and their output, I think 6-12 months later, is somebody who can set up an AWS/Python/JS/React/etc app. They then "sell" their students to companies. It's a pretty hot space, these companies are getting funding. ------ bensummers Because it's hard to do well, and you have to build everything with it in mind. We've been very successful with a strategy of hiring new graduates and training them. This is what we've done: [https://www.haplo.com/news/working-with-early-stage- develope...](https://www.haplo.com/news/working-with-early-stage-developers) ------ user68858788 I missed the boat here. I unfortunately didn't find a mentor with my first two engineering jobs. Now I'm too experienced to be mentored as a junior, but not good enough to be mid level. I've since been unhappily working support roles, getting even further from writing software. At this point I'm stuck deeply in the support trap. ------ andreapaiola [https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-11-22](https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-11-22) ;) ------ Friedduck To OP: your easiest path is to try to make contact with someone in a chosen company that is NOT HR. HR won’t look beyond your resume if you have a requirement unchecked. Leverage your network. If you don’t have one start building it. I personally think it’s easier to identify companies that you’d like to work for and focus on those vs. a shotgun approach. ------ xwolfi Usually it's not related to checking boxes. Both HR and recruiters closer to the actual work know it's not what makes a good employee (image a guy that check all the boxes but is an insufferable asshole and can't produce any value). What you need to show in a job interview is your ability to produce value, work in a team, work until tasks are done rather than until the clock is up, a salary in line with the company's budget, etc. It is disastrous for any company to hire negative value producers and is usually the biggest focus of any interview. When they ask if you know this or that tech, they mostly look at your ability to be excited, have an opinion, ask a few clever questions rather than say "Yes and I'm a rockstar" or "no and I think you shouldn't ask but provide training". The best interview is when you do the interview, and start understanding all their problems and business in front of them. The simple fact you ask "I'm rejected by job interviews, why is on-the-job training dead?" is a bad sign, I feel. I would ask "How can I reskill to help companies more?" instead. ------ tmaly I trained a guy that was a analyst and now he is a great dev in my team. I am working on getting another non-programmer to train to learn Python. I find its much easier to get devs this way. You just have to have a self motivated person willing to learn. ~~~ pydeveloper22 Hello tmaly, I'm a non programmer who has been going to self-taught route studying to become a developer in Python. I'm willing to learn and I highly motivated to become a better programmer I could enter the tech/finance industry. It would be great to get any advice insight from you. Not sure if your post was for non-programmers at your company or for outsiders who are willing to learn Python and programming from you to add more developers to your team? I'm just trying to find a way to break into the field of professional software development that involves the use of Python programming. Please feel free to contact me at your earliest convenience. If you like, my email is: pydeveloper22@gmail.com Thanks. \--K ~~~ tmaly I just replied to your other thread with information on how to apply. Best regards, Ty ~~~ pydeveloper22 Hello Ty, Thanks for the prompt reply. I appreciate the help you provided in the posting along with info from the other thread. It has been quite helpful. Much thanks, \--Kwaz ------ downrightmike A good quote I stole from r/sysadmin: Any Job should pay you twice. Once in Money, and Once in Expereince. That experience is paving the way to your future. If it stops paying well in Money or Experience, move to a different job. ------ downrightmike Quote I stole from /r/sysadmin: Any Job should pay you twice. Once in Money, and Once in Expereince. That experience is paving the way to your future. If it stops paying well in Money or Experience, move to a different job. ------ King-Aaron I just recently hired two junior front end devs who I'm in the process of training, although I did throw them in the deep end to see if they could swim. Maybe extend your horizons and look further afield for roles in other cities/states? ------ mm8654 This is not a new problem, look at accountants and lawyers and what they have done in their respective industries. The key is for you to walk into the boss' office and ask for what you deserve with a well thought out case. ------ BerislavLopac This is literally today's Dilbert: [https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-11-22](https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-11-22) ------ sheepmullet I think many companies simply don’t know how! Once big companies stopped investing in training because they thought they could push most new work offshore people gradually forgot how to do it! ------ angf Facebook is doing exactly this. It is called the Rotational Engineering Program. Check it out: [https://www.facebook.com/careers/life/facebooks- rotational-e...](https://www.facebook.com/careers/life/facebooks-rotational- engineering-program) I know we aren't the most favorable company these days. The recent press fury gets a lot of stuff wrong which does not help. But it is a really great place to work at as an engineer. I'm proud that Facebook is willing to try unconventional methods like this. Disclaimer: I work for Facebook. These are my own opinions and not those of my employer. ------ paulie_a If you are not training junior devs you have completely and utterly failed. Quite frankly if you are not training junior devs, don't consider yourself a senior. ------ thwy12321 There is no developer shortage. If anything the junior level is saturated. Good companies are afraid to hire bad developers because bad code is a long term cost. ------ rajacombinator Most problems in the programming industry - and there are many - can ultimately be traced back to the poor socialization of its constituents. ------ imron Because after a few years they up and leave for somewhere else, case in point: > I'm 4-years-experienced ... looking for another, similar, position ------ vbezhenar There’s a shortage of cheap developers, not just any developers. Lower your compensation by 50% and you’ll be hired pretty fast. ~~~ PenguinCoder Yeah that's the problem. ------ lolololol1111 See "why you're historically a shitty investment if your credit score is a certain number" ------ bloomca There is a shortage of experienced developers, not just any developers. The irony is that the more developers out there, less percentage of them is experienced. Training is possible, but in our fast-moving industry everybody wants something tangible as soon as possible, and proper training takes too much time without any guarantees. Also, you can get a position being a junior, by showing your good attitude, passion to learn, and, sadly, sometimes, desire to overwork – companies like that, because you can grow fast, and will surpass your salary really soon, so they will get a loyal middle developer for price of a junior. tl;dr: too long to educate a regular person (not a brilliant, a lot of companies will accept these guys) and too big chance they will just leave after some time, without bringing much value. ------ jph I'm a senior developer and I hire a wide range of developers. If you want to contact me, I may be able to answer your question directly and also help you. My contact info is all on my Hacker News user page. ------ matthewowen I don't really get the question? The company I work for (and many others) hire a bunch of new grads who require a lot of training to become productive. In your situation, I think you're making a strategic mistake. Don't say "nope, don't know anything about react". Spend a small amount of time to do a basic hello world, say "oh, I've toyed around with it and I'm interested in property X but I haven't used it professionally" and you will put yourself in a better position. The other possibility, honestly, is that you're doing a bad job at interviews and your lack of experience in the relevant technologies is a convenient/polite excuse. That sucks, but there you go ------ solatic When you get your rejections, are you getting feedback that it's because you don't know X skill that it was on their checklist? The developer shortage, by the numbers, is real, but it's not why companies can't hire. Let's say, in aggregate, there are 1,000 developers looking for work, and there are 5,000 companies trying to fill developer positions. If the hiring market were efficient, then each of those thousand developers would be hired somewhere immediately, and the shortage would be felt more acutely, since open positions wouldn't even be attracting resumes. But the hiring market isn't efficient. Each of those companies has dozens of resumes from that pool of a thousand developers, and for whatever reason, they're passing on them. So why is the hiring market inefficient? Because there was this transformational shift that Silicon Valley started, and slowly went and infected the rest of the job market. Do you remember the days when developers used to have to wear a _suit and tie_ to work? Why was that even a thing? Because formal culture papers over the natural differences that exist between people on an individual level in order to try and help establish a baseline for productivity. When Silicon Valley drove a corporate culture shift, and people started to have an expectation that everybody who they hired needs to be cool enough to grab a beer with, hiring managers slowly started to filter out people who they felt personal friction with during the interview. Is there a cost and risk to training people? Sure. But there's a cost (in management overhead) to hiring people in the first place. And people don't leave bad companies - they leave bad bosses. If it takes a company more than three months to train somebody, then either the person was woefully underqualified or the company is woefully dysfunctional. And if new employees are leaving you that quickly (frequently enough that it's not exceptional), then it's not for a salary bump elsewhere. Recall that those people who would leave that quickly, went through the same recruiter-interview-reject-repeat cycle you're going through now. The sad fact of the matter is, hiring is now a numbers game. If you're looking to move, you need to spam recruiters and job postings, and give the process time. Last time I went through this (within the past year, not Silicon Valley), I spent four months with zilch, probably something like 40-50 rejections (including FAANG companies), and then I had six offers inside of a week, which also gave me leverage when negotiating. Stop focusing on why some company didn't like you (your haircut? your sandals? your sense of humor? who knows, and why should it matter) and start focusing on finding more companies to spam with your resume. Good luck. ------ calinet6 Most people do not know how to teach. ------ pascalxus First of all the shortage of devs is mostly a myth. Companies that know how to hire don't have problems hiring. the problem is most software companies don't know how to hire and thus have a lot of problems. Or they're located in some impossible location like palo alto or San francisco and try to low ball everyone with salaries under 200K in a location where housing costs 3million$ plus. About hiring junior devs. You have to understand, most engineers that interview you don't understand or perhaps simply don't appreciate the concept of ROI. So, they're not thinking, geez we can get a guy with a few years less for 20k less and still come out way ahead. No they're simplying thinking, we want the best possible talent, regardless of cost. Very few people in the hiring process actually know how much that developer will cost, nor do most people care. This leads to a huge bias for more experience developers. Furthermore, the engineers that interview you may be excellent engineers, great at programming and design but probably have very little experience or training in Hiring people. I know when I started interviewing people I made mistakes. It wasn't until I had a good 5-10 people under my belt that I really got good at hiring people. Most companies don't dedicate much resources to training devs to do hiring, partly because leads and managers often don't know how to do it well themselves. this leads to all kinds of mistakes. My advice to you, is try not to take it personally and think any less of yourself. Failing an interview isn't necessarily your failure, it could be the ones who interviewed you that failed. But, it never hurts to learn everything you can and always expand your knowledge. There's nearly an infinite amount of Free tutorials and learning resources online, so learn as much as you can. ~~~ flexie It is far from a myth. If it was a myth, salaries wouldn't be increasing so much, while the number of developers also increase. The demand for developers exceeds the supply so much that this is possible. Do you know any other major industry, where people with little or no formal training can get in and up so fast? Where people in their early or mid twenties routinely make 6 figures? I don't. The median salary is now above 100,000. [https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software- develope...](https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software- developer/salary) That's roughly on par with chemical engineers but whereas (almost) all chemical engineers have at least a bachelor's degree, an increasing amount of software developers have no other training than online courses and still make salaries that would make other professionals with 4-5-10 years of education envious. I love online courses, but try get a job as a chemical engineer (or any other engineering job) with just some online courses. As a software engineer that would only be an issue with some of the most sought after places, like Google. Yes, I am sure there are a few thousand petroleum engineers in Texas and other niches that make more than software engineers, but generally, engineers make less. ~~~ growlist > an increasing amount of software developers have no other training than > online courses and still make salaries that would make other professionals > with 4-5-10 years of education envious When oh when are we going to get these salaries in the UK.. because I'm not seeing them. ------ austincheney The problem with hiring junior developers is risk. They could be junior because of incompetence or wrong attitude opposed to just lacking necessary experience. When hiring a junior you are hedging either competence or experience against expenses and hoping for potential. Potential is the magical ingredient and its hard to recognize before hiring somebody, which is why this is risky. Conversely hiring really good seniors saves the company money even if a good senior is really expensive. A good senior can probably do the work of 4 junior developers while also introducing code that demands less maintenance into the future, which pay dividends over time. What I see from some juniors who spoil it for everybody else is immaturity and unrealistic expectations. A hiring company is there to provide you compensation for work. They aren't there to satisfy some emotional fantasy or other self-serving justification. Because there is greater risk in hiring juniors demand for juniors is lower and there are more juniors competing for those fewer positions. \--- With all of that said above, the goal isn't to get a better junior job, but rather become a senior. Here is how I did it. First of all I didn't want to be a developer. Travelocity couldn't hire competent front-end developers. It's like they didn't exist. The company saw potential in me and involuntarily relocated me into a developer position. If I wanted to stay employed I had to figure it out. I sucked really bad a first and felt like I was struggling in a vacuum. After about a year of this my military job needed me to perform security assessments in Afghanistan. You have a tremendous amount of available time on military deployments. Just before deploying I started a personal project, which I continue to work on today nearly a decade later. This little code beautification project kept me busy and it forced me into deep learning of complex algorithms. When you are deployed in a combat zone you have to be self-sufficient. You don't often have internet. At the time I was writing code on a small netbook with 16gb total storage, because it was durable and portable. I didn't carry around a bunch of unnecessary tooling. You simply learn to do more with less. Once I got back to Travelocity I discovered I had surpassed some of my peers in problem solving and code proficiency. I was coding all the time even when I didn't have to. I had found every little bit of proficiency I had gained in personal practice allowed me to work faster which then allowed me to become that much more proficient like an accelerating force. The primary distinguishing factor between seniors and juniors to me is self- sufficiency, predictability, and simplicity. I find juniors tend to spend most of their time living in frameworks, dependency nonsense, tooling, and configurations. These external things distract from predictability and simplicity. They certainly don't benefit self-sufficiency. ~~~ not_kurt_godel > The problem with hiring junior developers is risk Yep, 100% this. I'm involved in a lot of hiring decisions. In the past few years we decided to take a chance on a couple of junior people who didn't pan out. Huge waste of resources. We're very hesitant to do so again. ------ rubicon33 False premise. There is no shortage of devs. That has been a complete fabrication, made up entirely by big tech companies, in a propaganda push to promote more and more people getting into CS. It's entirely so they can pay developers less. ~~~ city41 Then why do developers get contacted by recruiters constantly? Every developer I know gets contacted. Yet no non-tech colleagues I know experience anything similar in their industry. I'm not saying I disagree with you, I'm genuinely curious. ~~~ rubicon33 As someone else in this thread pointed out - being contacted doesn't mean anything comes from it. It's EXTREMELY easy for recruiters to spam out messages. Since they're payed based on hires, it's a numbers game for them. Get as many people into the interview as possible. How many of those interviews actually result in jobs? That's the important question. As this very post shows, there is a clear disconnect: HIRING is much less common than INTERVIEWING. ~~~ city41 Sure, I agree with all of that. But spamming has to have a certain level of return in order to do it. There must be a tangible level of demand out there. Like I said in my first post, when I talk to people in other industries (medical, journalism, electrical engineering, etc), getting spammed by recruiters is utterly unheard of. I only have anecdotal evidence, but so does every one else in this thread. Personally I have been receiving emails from the same recruiters in some instances for years. I'm not a stand out developer. I also know, again anecdotally, that when we open a developer rec at my current company, it can take a very long time to fill. My gut says there is a shortage. How much of one is very hard to determine and how artificial the shortage is due to generally poor hiring practices, low salaries, or other factors is also hard to determine. But I find it very hard to swallow the idea there is no developer shortage at all, which is what sparked this thread. ------ salmo I'm guessing you're looking for a job in a saturated market (west coast, NY). I'll suggest looking elsewhere at companies that are not primarily tech (but have large IT shops). I mean Fortune 500s, not mom-and-pop. And be willing to shift out of front-end, unless you just love UIs. The pay will be lower, but the cost-of-living will also be muuuuch lower. And you may have the opportunity to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. It worked for me :). Show those folks that you learn outside of work. Your silly Raspberry Pi project or learning a new JS framework for the fun of it shows that it's something you care about. But don't ever expect on-the-job training or mention it. Show that you'll pick up anything they need you too as the industry changes. Nothing pisses me off more than peers complaining about not getting training. This is IT, our job is to keep up. If you're not getting it at work, then you need to work on it outside. It sucks, but it's true. Show that you're the teach yourself person, vs the whine about lack of training person. Unless you're pulling genuine 60 hour weeks. Then you're just getting ripped off. Look at companies where folks put in 10+ years, vs. hot tech companies where 2-3 is the norm. They're more willing to invest in learners vs people who know everything they ask for. Honestly, I wouldn't trust a company that wants you to know everything you need to do the job, because they don't care about you developing. And any hiring manager who expects to hire experts in the position is a fool. You want people to develop, and you don't want them to come in with 1000 preconceptions about how to do X based on prior (possibly irrelevant) experience. As someone shopping a position at one of those big companies where we have 1000's of developers with 10+ year anniversaries in a fly-over state, it's impossible to find folks with 2-5 years of on-the-job experience that have not only done contract programming. We just hired a person with almost no relevant experience because they showed the ability to learn fairly unrelated technology in their previous position in a mom-and-pop setting. Everyone else who applied used "the tech lead/business owner rejected my user story" as the answer to every behavioral question and ended with "I accepted their decision." I hate behavioral interviews, but with a big company our hands are tied in the interview process and an answer like that just shows that you just work tasks. Contract-to-hire is a rip-off that you should avoid unless you're jobless. No one invests education in a contractor because there's no ROI, and you'll never get any experience making decisions in those type of positions. Also consider the fact that maybe you are not interviewing well. Make sure to show your flexibility, problem solving, self-motivation, and positive attitude, even if you think it's not necessarily work-related. If you don't have those traits, work to develop them. A lot of times interviews are more about these than technical skill. Senior vs. Junior is more about leadership than out-nerding your peers. At least if the interviewers know what they're doing. If they didn't then you're probably better off for not landing the gig, ~~~ mixmastamyk There’s no keeping up any more. It worked in the nineties, but stacks have exploded. Try keeping up with 50,000 MS employees or 100k floss devs, or millions of js devs. ------ calinet6 More and more I think it's because it's difficult for companies to identify the capacity to be successful at this type of work early on. Partly because it's actually difficult, and partly because companies are really bad at identifying skills as a rule. Instead they resort to the simplistic. Senior developers have made it through several filters. They've proven they can do the work, they've done it at several companies, and they've survived in the role enough to be promoted a couple times. That's just signal that they're less likely to run into problems, and that there's less risk the hire won't work out. So, companies are lazy. Not intentionally—but because they're literally squeezing every ounce of time and focus on the very complex and wildly difficult task of managing a company and staying solvent and productive and going in the right direction. They shouldn't be—they should have room for training and developing a talent pipeline—but this is the real world, and most companies can't even do basic company things really well, so the prospect of _also_ doing on-the-job training really well to de-risk the hiring of junior engineers seems pretty far out. In addition, many hiring managers have learned the hard way what '5 years of experience' means, because they've had 5 years of experience themselves, and only on the 5th year of that figured out how to do their job in the way they now know it needs to be done. It's not an arbitrary set of skills they know they need, but an experience working in an ecosystem in specific ways that they know are crucial. Experience is not necessarily just skills, but a sequence of realizations, hardships, events, and successes that teach you things you can only learn by going through them. Hiring managers hiring for a Senior role and pointing to a checklist of technical skills are probably not being fully forthcoming—they're likely looking for someone who does not see their own value as a checklist of technical skills. Not saying that's you necessarily, and they could certainly be wrong, but personally I've learned that when the team needs someone with 5 years of experience, it takes 5 years to develop it, and there are no shortcuts to gaining that experience. The one thing I've found that speeds it up is experience in smaller companies or starting your own business—you'll experience a lot more much faster. That said, there are companies that truly invest in on-the-job training, and with a holistic business model centered around that as a core value, it can be successful. It takes a philosophy, though, that most businesses will never mature enough to reach, dare I say, especially tech businesses. The one I know of is the Greyston Bakery in NY, which was started by a Zen monk named Bernie Glassman (who passed away a couple weeks ago, sadly). His book "Instructions to the Cook" is really interesting, and outlines how they made a policy of hiring anyone who wanted a job work very well. They now run the Center for Open Hiring that helps other companies do the same thing. It would be pretty incredible to see a tech company embrace that kind of thing and really invest in hiring and development as a strategy. I'd almost imagine it as a merger of something like General Assembly with an actual product and long-term business. It would be interesting to see if the significantly greater investment would be worth it over the traditional model. ------ hummingurban They don't call it junior devs but "university grads". Allegedly EA has found that the latter is cheaper and just as good as senior devs. Not sure what that implies but it is EA after all. Then you have piece of shit companies in Vancouver, BC that pays about what a Seattle starbucks barista makes, mostly UBC and SFU students. I've given up largely on the industry after spending two decades. What is happening is beyond commoditization of technical laborer, we are probably going to see high school kids among the workforce. It's insane to ask people to commute 4 hours a day, do mundane unimportant tasks that managers who got where they are not out of merit but due to seniority, people stay behind long after 9-5 because they are afraid of getting fired, and then going home only to briefly eat dinner and sleep, to start the nightmare over and over and over again. At least in feudalism days, you grew your own shit and didn't have to pay 1/50 of your earnings on an unhealthy fast food because the foreigners and criminals have laundered their money through the real estate and businesses have to raise their cost. tldr: software is getting complex yet barrier to entry are none, expect shit. /rant ~~~ isostatic > they won't raise salary. Not while they can employ people at the salary they're offering ~~~ hummingurban ^ this. the fact that some people can be pre-IPO yet hire mostly students who work for nothing, get all pissy when people ask for a raise for staying past 5 consistently, and to boot, writing fake glassdoor reviews because you can't hire actual engineers anymore due to the bad rep you built. I don't know what kind of people would entrust their companies HR data to an organization run like a sweat shop. When you walk in and see mostly Asian workforce, head for the exit. I've seen consistently again and again, immigrant hires who are used to working 8am~10pm in their country now bringing the same fucked up neo-confucian work ethics. God I hate Vancouver. What irritates me is that criminals and drug dealers who have successfully laundered their money through the real estate are now venture capitalists, now seeing their net worth explode. Did time for moving drugs? Hey now you are a CEO of a crypto company. Used to be a serial killer for a gang? Now investing in local startups, calls himself VC lol. I hate this corrupt ass backward world sometimes. I've lost faith. No. Fuck this, this isn't why I came to Canada, to be a glorified white collar slave. Sure as shit not going to be blue collar so what does that leave me? When society rewards and protects criminals and punishes those who play by the rules out of humane morals? What does this leave me with? ~~~ isostatic > When society rewards and protects criminals and punishes those who play by > the rules out of humane morals? What does this leave me with? Europe ------ gaius Companies used to do this. You might join working the helpdesk or as a manual tester, then work your way up. But now those junior, entry level jobs have been outsourced and offshored. ------ shanghaiaway Because training is hard. Harder than coding. ------ mk89 Our industry simply thinks that the more experienced you are, the better it is. I can tell you from my recent experience that microservices, kubernetes and the cloud, in general, have made experience with old desktop apps completely useless, for example. Not only useless, but counterproductive actually, because you think you are doing the right thing. So, experience alone doesn't help. Why do people still keep hiring more experienced devs then? Many times because of bad hiring management skills, or because they don't want to officially have to mentor a young dev. In the end mentoring happens nevertheless even with seniors, though! The main idea is that a senior dev will be up to speed much faster than a junior dev. While this is most of the time true (especially if the senior dev has already worked with the same domain and with the same set of technologies used by the company she is applying for), it has some drawbacks. For example, not every senior dev is ready to change, to improve, etc. Not every senior dev has the same speed of learning and "hunger" of a guy who just finished his college. A young dev is typically more malleable than a senior dev that "in my previous company we did it this way, and it always worked, this is crazy what you are doing here", that is crucial to fit culturally. This leads to the second part of my post. From what I see, this trend is actually changing, and while it's sad because senior devs can bring a lot on the table (like, typically they are less hasty than younger devs), it's also good that our industry is starting to understand we are not just a bunch of people pressing keys and moving a mouse randomly - the more keys you have pressed in your lifetime, the better it is. More and more companies are "hiring for attitude", or at least they think they do. There is also a book about it with the same name, which I recommend. Shortage of devs, as someone said, is a myth. Such companies should start wondering why they can't find the right people. Maybe it's them doing the wrong thing? :) ------ Avshalom Basically in 1981 Reagan fired 11000 striking air traffic controllers which broke the backs of American unions, permanently establishing corporations' privilege over humans. Ever since companies have been insisting that workers spend more and more so that they can be slotted into ever more specific niches without the company risking anything. ~~~ closeparen Unions typically protect existing workers by constraining the supply of new ones. At the very least, holding wages high constrains the number of workers a firm can afford. Unions are great as an employee, but I would not be pining for them as a job seeker, particularly a junior job seeker (seniority rules are notorious).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How do you go about meeting cofounders? - BadassFractal Let's say I'm in a situation where I'm looking for a co-founder in the SF area. I'm highly technical myself (MS from top 3 school, years of experience at a software giant, passion for open source and bleeding edge technologies, treat software engineering as a craft), extremely ambitious and want to work on something awesome with other people who have experience and desire to make a great, hopefully innovative, product. I don't care too much about WHAT that specifically is at this point, a great team of people will make anything fun.<p>I unfortunately don't know many folks who have both the experience and the desire to co-found a successful start-up with me, but would love to find out where I could find them. I've been to a couple of HN meetings, very promising, but no luck so far. What other prospects do people in my situation have? It seems like most success stories are entrepreneurs meeting in college and then already pre-selecting each other, but that's not my case.<p>Please advise :) ====== mzbridget We are all facing this problem. I agree with Steve that it is like finding a spouse. I saw a list of co-founder sites on Quora and posted to them but I'm not pleased with the responses. I'd love to talk you! I have an MVP, users, integration partners and the beginnings of convos with investors. Totally looking for a co-founder. Let me know if you'd like to chat. ------ sbisker Chiming in on the "it's a lot like dating" band wagon. If you put too much pressure on yourself to find the right girl, you'll miss the steps you _really_ need to take to find the right girl - living your life confidently, being social and befriending as many people as you can along the way. Having a large social network is by far the best way to find both a girl and a co- founder. Some of those people will know other people, who may introduce you to the guy who just "clicks" with you. That said, you sound pretty cool, and you seem pretty cool for writing this. I'm thinking about moving out there myself, ideally to found something. I'll be in town next week for two weeks. Ping me and we'll try to grab coffee. :) Oh, and where are these "HN Meetings?" Will there any chance be any between Oct 25th and Nov 8th? :P ------ steventruong Its definitely tough. Finding a cofounder is like finding a spouse. If you aren't already good friends with someone you'd like to work with that you've known for awhile, it's difficult to find one you while seeking them out to just start jamming together. Those that do and things work out great for them are rare. I would focus on just hanging out more and more and seeing if there are people you click with. If you're interested, and new to the area, come hang out with my buddies and I. If nothing else, maybe you'll make new friends who can connect you to others. ------ revorad Are you going to <http://startupschool.org> ? ------ hansy Have your tried attending hackathons or startup camps? ~~~ ha470 I second this. Found my cofounder at <http://theleanstartupmachine.com/>, and it's worked out great. Going straight from one of these events to starting a company can be tough, since you don't really go through an extensive 'courting' period to get to know the person, but since you're both there to learn about startups, interests are already aligned. It's sort of like going to speed-dating events.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Apprentice Programmer (2013) - bootload http://tobi.lutke.com/blogs/news/11280301-the-apprentice-programmer ====== jakobegger We also have the apprentice system in Austria. It's not always as nice as this. If you manage to get an apprenticeship at a good company like Siemens, you'll receive great education. They put a lot of effort into educating apprentices, and after three years you'll be able to get a reasonably well paid job quickly, either at the same company or at a different company. But especially lots of smaller businesses don't have the time and resources to take proper care of their apprentices. Especially in the service industry, apprentices are just hired because they provide cheap labor. Apprentices at restaurants or supermarkets will often spend three years performing only the most menial work, and the "Berufschulen" (vocational schools) are extremely low quality. After spending 3 years in an apprenticeship like this, you'll have trouble finding a proper job, since employers would rather just hire a new cheap apprentice. ~~~ unimportant Everybody wants to work for big companies like Siemens, so they filter people out via school grades (people that hate the educational system usually have bad grades) and inane logical thinking tests that go on for hours. If you don't fit in, you're pretty much on your way to permanent welfare or min wage jobs in Germany unless you emigrate like I did. The author just got lucky and fit in a bit better than I did. ~~~ spacecowboy_lon Quite how would some one like Woz be treated. ~~~ unimportant The best and brightest in the US would probably be suicidal welfare candidates in Germany, but enough whining from me for now, as I have been to enough third world countries to know that it can always be worse... ~~~ smcl That seems a little harsh, or sarcasm or I've missed the point. Why would those who would otherwise be the best and brightest in the US be headed for welfare if they were raised in Germany? ~~~ unimportant I'm exaggerating of course, but dropouts don't tend to do well in Germany. You either fit in or get pushed out. I suppose Zuckerberg and the like would mainly end up as some no name devs in some company, if they were to adapt to the system. ~~~ omnibrain " some no name devs in some company" is not the same as "suicidal welfare candidates". And doing an apprenticeship after you dropped out of university is very usual in germany. And then there is also former Telekom CEO Obermann who dropped out of University to found his mobile phone business. ~~~ spacecowboy_lon Single outliers don't make a trend and it looks like he made his mark in a non german company ------ underlines Switzerland has the same concept and we have some of the best professionals coming from apprenticeships, we do 4 years here for some of the more "complicated" fields like chemistry and software developer. I am a Swiss software developer with the apprenticeship title and I tried to find work abroad (mainly asia). Problem: Around the world that dual education system is unknown or not well recognized and not even respected. Despite that most apprenticeship professionals form Germany, Switzerland and Austria are slightly "better" after finishing their education than most MD graduates! In early 2014 the president of South Korea came to visit my vocational school in Bern, Switzerland because they may implement the dual education system according to the state news: [https://www.news.admin.ch/message/index.html?lang=en&msg- id=...](https://www.news.admin.ch/message/index.html?lang=en&msg-id=51711) ~~~ phlo As underlines mentioned, Switzerland has a similar concept of apprenticeships. The aspect I appreciate most (and as far as I am aware somewhat separates the Swiss system from others) is the permeability between the trade and academic spheres. The vocational schooling (as discussed in the article) consists of two parts; technical skills and general education. The latter part is divided into two groups: apprentices are required to either complete the mandatory program or invest some extra effort and earn a high school equivalency diploma (Berufsmaturität) at the same time. Students who fail theirs drop to the standard program and continue their apprenticeship. Upon completion, those who chose to get a Berufsmatur hold the necessary certifications to get into any University of Applied Sciences in their field and pursue a Bachelor's or Master's degree. Access to general Universities is limited to those holding a "proper" Matura, but there even is a one-year program for people with a Berufsmatur to attain a full Matura. Universities again are (to some degree) required to offer part-time programs, so studying and working at the same time is possible. Finally, students who finished an UAS BSc/MSc are generally admitted to standard Universities. Some terms (between half a semester and a full year of extra classes required) may apply, but there actually is a reasonable path from dropping out of "proper" high school to getting an MSc or possibly even a ScD/PhD. Just like Tobi I consider myself a kinesthetic learner. School never really piqued my interest, so my performance was lackluster. I went for an apprenticeship instead, combined it with a Berufsmatur, later on with a BSc in Computer Science and as I am now finishing my MLaw in Cybercrime/Information Security, I am barely a year or two older than most of my peers but hold (including the apprenticeship) around a decade of professional experience. (Usually four instead of five days a week, so feel free to subtract a 20% dicsount.) ------ k__ Funny thing is, getting an apprenticeship is almost harder than getting in university here in Germany. At least of you wanna do it in a good company. Also, I find the talking about how dropping out of school will sound strange to americans funny. I got the impression that dropping out and doing your own thing is more appreciated in the US than in germany where ever job offering requires a degree or two... ------ blisterpeanuts Interesting article; thanks for posting it. I don't know that much about Germany's apprenticeship system except that it's a much more well established and accepted concept than in the U.S. Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, has an internship program where engineering undergrads spend a semester working at a real company. The companies benefit from free labor, and the students benefit from real world experience and resume building. It's amazing to me that this system isn't more widely adopted. Some people claim the students should be paid a "fair salary" or some such arguments. Anyway, the Germans must be doing something right. Germany is still the #3 or #4 industrial producer in the world (China has surpassed them in recent years) and their products are still very high quality. Apart from the obvious example of top notch automobiles, I'm mostly familiar with German stage equipment -- microphone stands, wireless systems, instrument cases, etc.--and I've found them to be just really good quality, designed to last, and very usable. ~~~ spacecowboy_lon That is actulay very common in the UK to do an extended period working for a real company as part of your degree we had some very good university students at BT including one from ENA! ------ xal I'm the OP. Happy to answer questions about this. ~~~ hkarthik You mentioned wanting to create a similar environment at Shopify. How has that been implemented and how is it working out? ~~~ xal Frustrating. We've build the environment ( dealt with the supply side ) but we can't bootstrap the demand. Parents are fundamentally opposed to the idea of their kids starting their career before they have the degree. ~~~ ZeroFries How would you feel about a software dev with 1-3 year professional experience and no computer science degree joining an apprenticeship type program to go from intermediate to advanced level? Shopify has interns, is this what was intended? ~~~ xal Yes, we hide the apprenticeship approach behind internships for cultural compatibility. ~~~ spacecowboy_lon You do know that "intern" is geting a bad rep as a method for employers to get free work - id call it trainee or somthing less loaded. ------ jarcane There is a program like this here in Finland as well, and I have been highly intrigued by it, and I intend to discuss the option with my employment adviser this week. I am 33 years old. I simply do not have the time to pursue a full degree, and I frankly had a mixed experience in college/uni and am not necessarily in a hurry to do it again. At the same time though, I've a strong interest in some potentially academic subjects and I sometimes find myself doubting I can make a go of it purely on self-study, so I'm a little lost for where to go next or if I should even just dive into paid work. ------ bootload an interesting reference mentioned by @visakanv in, _" Peter Thiel's Dropout Club"_ post ~ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9020043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9020043) ------ showsover >It was the perfect environment for me, I learned a lot, and I am eternally thankful to have chosen that path. If only more countries struggling with dropout rates and job creation would give their students a similar choice. How does this help job creation? Does the author mean the overhead of training interns? ~~~ rhia The author probably means that it makes a lot of sense of offer people who don't want to go to uni a better perspective than working tough manual labour or minimum wage service industry jobs for the rest of their life. Not every degree currently taught at university is really necessary to perform well in the jobs that those graduates normally get. America would do well to re- evalute the necessity of degrees when vocational training can produce equally skilled workers at a much lower cost for the economy as a whole. ------ peter303 Programming was usually taught in trade schools in the USA during 1960s and 1970s. That aspect slowed down some schools like MIT declaring computer science as a full-fledged major until 1980. ~~~ hga Nope, at least not in MIT's case, which would hardly be paying attention to trade schools while they were inventing a very large fraction of the field! I can find out more precisely when the 6-3 major was created if you wish, but I'm almost certain it was before 1980 (at the very least I think I would have remembered it was brand new when I declared 6-3 at the end of the 79-80 academic year). Any delay happened because CS departments, at least in those days, came from either Math or EE departments, the latter in MIT's case. So people initially just got majors in the original field before a separate degree was broken out. And in the case of MIT and perhaps other departments starting from EE (I get this impression about UCB going only by required undergraduate courses), there is no "pure" CS degree, since the department believes you can't entirely separate it from EE, and vice versa. So students have to do core courses in both (or now 2 ones that combine both), and the degrees are in both, with an emphasis in one or the other or neither. As of later, the latter course was preferred by most majors. ------ unimportant German companies are totally backwards compared to US companies and usually managed in rather totalitarian ways. This might work for someone who does not mind this or who has a place to stay while earning less than 1k USD a month for years, but it certainly did not work for me and I choose min wage jobs and self learning instead. Self learners are considered unemployable in Germany, but it gets one a fair chance in the UK or Ireland. ~~~ dghf > German companies are totally backwards compared to US companies and usually > managed in rather totalitarian ways. Can you give some specifics? ~~~ unimportant Backwards in terms of largely using outdated technologies, requiring you to send a printed CV with your picture (slowly changing now), very formal hiring process, unwilling to hire anyone without a matching degree rand certifications regardless of skills, largely unrealistic expectations regarding work experience and skills (requirering 5 years of iPhone dev experience when it was just out for a year was common), in larger companies a PhD is needed to get promoted above certain positions etc. etc. Europe truely is the "old world", with London being the only place where startups have a somewhat realistic chance of getting funded on reasonable terms, however entry level developer salaries are still poverty level in London for the first 3 years or so, as there are more candidates than jobs, unlike in the US. ~~~ marrs Last I checked, entry level salaries for a graduate were about £30k. For a non-grad that would drop to around £20k, which is still more than all the debt you have to take on to go to university. ~~~ unimportant 20k is barely liveable in London and if you get laid off before you make significantly more, then you'll have a serious problem if you don't qualify for welfare yet. 30k is already on the high end. In SF, which has similar rents, entry level devs mostly make 70-80k USD, with 60k being rock bottom. ~~~ iolothebard There are no "entry level" devs in SF. Either you're hired at a big firm/company (google/twitter/facebook) and you start off in the 150-200k/year range or you have experience. All the entry jobs are filled by H1b, and most the non entry jobs as well. Worked as a consultant/contractor in the Bay Area for ~3 years and GTFO. I made over 100 but less than 150 with 15 years experience. ------ spacecowboy_lon Unfortunetly this is a well meaning article but totally misses the point that Germany has a unique apprenticeship system - in English speaking countries techies have enough trouble with low social status compared to other professions. Let alone the disastrous effect of that Bloody “apprentice” program the BBC puts out which has done god only knows how much damage to the term Apprentice I started out on what some might call an apprenticeship technically a professional apprentice – ie the one you did after doing a trade apprenticeship and sittng half way between trade and a university degree – but none of us who where all bar one all working for elite organizations (mostly in the defence and rnd sector) would have said we where NOT! apprentices we where Junior members of the Mechanical engineers thank you very much. How ever there are some major downsides to the Ultra rigid German school system you get pigenholed into one track or the other at an early age and its I understand very hard to break out an I believe until the EU put its foot down impossible. The problem with this rigid streaming is you decide very early what kids are going to do in later life and as one German HN commenter said its funny how it is the “brown” skinned Germans who seem to make up most of the vocational schools - and you can see the same in the USA and the UK with Black Kids pigeonholed as vocational track. For example a mate of mine works for one of the big 4 consultancies and he mentions some BME kids and he said its tragic that the schools aren’t prepping the kids to go into those professions. ~~~ xal I totally missed the point because I didn't make it about race? ~~~ spacecowboy_lon No its mainly primarily about damaging the social staus of the technical profesion in Anglo Saxon Contrys - but the fact that school systems like germany that force kids into one track do descriminate against those who dont fit in is very widley known. You where also asuming the the system Germay has evolved would work in other countrys with aparently no undertsanding of how Industrial relations and socity has evolved.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Where does your plastic waste end up? - sambeau https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2018/11/where-does-your-plastic-waste-end ====== nitwit005 Article connects the plastics ending up in the ocean to the exports to recyclers, but it never shows how that would work. Are the recyclers dumping the stuff they don't want into a nearby river? ------ alimw This article did not help me to understand the economics of recycling. ~~~ acdanger If you're truly interested in the economics of the waste industry, the book Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter was a good introduction: [https://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Planet-Travels-Billion- Dolla...](https://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Planet-Travels-Billion- Dollar.../1608197913) ------ dugluak May be not relevant but somewhat related to the title - Some plastic ended up at the bottom of Mariana Trench [https://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-48230157](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48230157) ------ RcouF1uZ4gsC In general, anything that is billed as a low-effort way to accomplish X that anybody can do is probably not very useful. You see this in health scams, financial scams, etc. It is likely the same way with the environment. We are now finding out that encouraging plastic recycling was probably environmentally worse that if people had been allowed to just throw it all away in a landfill. Other well-intentioned efforts that resulted in bad outcomes: Discouraging plastic bags -> Increased CO2 for cloth/paper bags Banning DDT -> likely millions of deaths from malaria over the years Opposition to nuclear -> more dependence on carbon heavy sources of energy (see Germany) ------ blacksoil I live in Indonesia, here people don't even separate compostable, recyclable, and junks. Everything is just mixed and piled together like a man-made mountain at the central garbage dump site. One day there was even a homeless trying to make some money out of picking up recyclables who died from getting avalanched by the trash... It's really disheartening to hear.. Does anybody know any resources on the economics of trash processing? I wanna explore the possibility of doing such a business in a sustainable way ~~~ teknologist I have some contacts in the industry and, as far as I know, sustainable waste processing is expensive and people are always trying to avoid it even if legally mandated. It is down to government regulation to force businesses to process waste in certain ways. I think you'd have to find what your government legally requires in a certain waste management area and work within those parameters ~~~ blacksoil Thanks for the insight! ------ spoiledtechie Makes me rethink my use of plastics.... ------ cfarm I didn't realize that it's cheaper to export used plastic than process it within the country. ~~~ cronix I'd imagine minimum wage has something to do with it. Plastic is cheap, labor is not. Most west coast states are over $11/hr. Of course that is not a lot of money, but it is when you're paying that labor to recycle pennies worth of plastic. It's not economical because the plastic has to be (mostly) clean of contaminants in order to recycle it without lowering quality too much. So there's also a lot of water involved. Diminishing returns. ~~~ seandougall According to the article, there's a huge disparity just in transportation costs, before wages even begin to factor in: > Today, Recology, San Francisco’s employee-owned recycling company, pays > £230-to-£390 to ship a container of recycled plastic across the Pacific–a > fraction of the £2,700-to-£3,100 price tag for transporting that same > container across the United States to plastic processing plants that are > mostly located in the South, according to Robert Reed, a company spokesman. ~~~ dillonmckay Transportation costs most likely include labor costs. I am betting the crew on the container ship do not make US wages. Similarly, why there are no cruise ships that only stop at American ports, so the labor can be foreign. Also, why American river cruises are so expensive. ------ acdanger "To cite one example, American recyclers sold 101 tons of plastic waste in Thailand in the first six months of this year–a 1,985 percent increase over the 4,409 tons sold during the same period in 2017." Hmm. ------ ComputerGuru Complete sidebar here, but that domain made me think that maybe the name needs to be changed to _International Geographic_ ;) ------ wink "Where does _your_ plastic waste end up?" is the title of the piece and while it seemed to be on the UK edition (.co.uk domain and "UK" selected in the top right), it opens with "When President Donald Trump signed legislation", also after a not-too-deep skimming of the article it seems to mostly revolve around the US. And now I'm confused. Is it really about the UK? Is the title just bad for _this_ edition (should be on .com). Was the story planned to be for the US edition and then just moved to the other one? Nitpicking, I know - but this is what I noticed first and even after a little digging I'm none the wiser. ------ wtdata From the article: “I hate seeing my country as the dumpsite for the developed world,” said Yeo Bee Yin, whose full title is Minister for Energy, Technology, Science, Climate Change, and Environment. She declared that “no developing nation should be the dumping site for the developed world.” This hypocrisy is appalling. They just have to stop importing those plastics with the false promise they are going to recycle it or dispose of it properly while they get paid for it. Nobody is forcing Malasya to take anything, in fact Malasya is happily engaging in a bid with other countries to import that garbage for the best price. If these countries weren't lying this all time and only took the plastics they can actually cleanly dispose of or recycle, the West would be (at a greater expense is true) getting rid of them properly during all this time. ~~~ ttlei Did you even read the article? ~~~ Stratoscope From the commenting guidelines: _Please don 't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google’s Shadow Work Force: Temps Who Outnumber Full-Time Employees - dror https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/technology/google-temp-workers.html ====== tssva The article itself acknowledges that the ratio of contractors to employees at Google isn't out of the ordinary for SV companies and my personal experience is that it isn't unusual for large companies outside of SV. Even in the unfortunate case sited in the article of the contract employee that was sexually harassed once a complaint was filed Google fired the FTE responsible for the harassment and negotiated a settlement with the contract employee. So my question is why was the article written? If it were to highlight the use of contract employees vs FTEs, why write it just about Google when it is an issue affecting the workforce across industries? Why throw out the case of the harassed employee but leave the information that Google fired the harasser when a complaint was filed until much further in the article when many readers will have stopped reading? This article strikes me as a Google hit piece. ~~~ nova22033 Ever since the Damore thing blew up, any article that portrays google in a negative light gets a lot of play.. ~~~ acdha It started many years before Damore’s tantrum. I think it mostly goes back to the image Google enjoyed for years as this amazing place with crazy benefits, and then reality caught up that it’s a big company and will do things like most other big companies such as aggressively cost-optimizing its workforce or canceling beloved products (Reader was very popular with journalists). Companies which never had that kind of image don’t get dispelling stories. ~~~ tomcam Can you tell me how Damore’s memo was a tantrum, and quote passages that reflect your opinion? ~~~ acdha This is getting off-topic but it's basically two parts: the first being the he attended an optional “Diversity and Inclusion Summit” and had a strong emotional reaction, which he made an effort to circulate around the company for several months. It's loaded with emotional language (“an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed”) and claims of authoritarian oppression. That inflammatory rhetoric is what cost him his job because it clearly wasn't just a scientific discussion and left quite plausible grounds for anyone working with (or especially, had he been successful in making it into a leadership role, supervised by) to claim a hostile working environment — which is why he dropped the NLRB claim after it was looking like it'd be unfavorable[1]. Even if you think they're wrong, publicly putting your management in a position like that is unlikely to end favorably. The second part is the painful irony of his positioning himself as a Man of Science Protecting The Enlightment Against Dogma!!! but what he wrote was a poorly-edited (and don't forget, what finally leaked was presumably better _after_ the several rounds of editing prior to it being published) rehash of traditional reactionary arguments for biological determinism with only a few references to peer-reviewed literature, with little discussion or signs of familiarity with their fields, and instead relying mostly on links to broad Wikipedia pages and conservative blogs. Note how much work it was simply to summarize his claims clearly enough to evaluate them in [https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its- boot...](https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boots-on- what-the-evidence-says-about-mr-damores-google-memo-bc93c8b2fdb9/#ba47) — that's the most point-by-point examination I've seen and it's considerably longer than the original. On its own failing to perform at the level of a good student essay would be embarrassing but given the topic and how quick he was to cast this as political oppression while taking as little responsibility as possible for his own actions, I think it warrants the use of “tantrum”. 1\. [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/federal-labor- bo...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/federal-labor-board-google- was-justified-in-firing-engineer-behind-gender-memo/) ~~~ VladimirIvanov This may not be totally relevant but it's always bothered me that he lied about being a chess Fide Master (FM) and then doubled down on his lie in a reddit ama ------ funkjunky I was a contractor at Google and I thought they treated me VERY well, with most of the perks that come with the office (food, activities, music room, gym, etc). They even let me work on a 20% project during office hours. Then I got a new manager, new policies were enacted, they canned my project, and they took away my access to Memegen. Memegen was the last straw, so I left. Anyway, Google had good reason to use contractors. Their hiring standards and policies makes it extremely difficult and costly to hire people, and many jobs there typically only have a retention rate of about 9-12 months, or just isn't "involved" enough to demand a FTE position, or needs to be scaled up more quickly than they can hire for. It just isn't worth it to go through the full Google process for jobs like that. ~~~ wutbrodo > they took away my access to Memegen. Memegen was the last straw, so I left. Like many things about the way Google was run, I really didn't appreciate Memegen enough until I left. ~~~ funkjunky Tell me about it. I can see now the rest of my career is going to be "how, in any way, can I make this place just one tiny step closer to what I experienced at Google?" ~~~ wutbrodo I can trace a lot of the mistakes I've made (and continue to make) in my career to the fact that I started at Google, setting my baseline assumption of organizational competence and personal intelligence way, way, way too high. ------ plinkplonk Why is this newsworthy? Genuine question. The article (I did read it!) doesn't seem to articulate why exactly this is a problem. I _think_ (happy to be convinced otherwise) it is ok for a company to have more temps than employees or vice versa. What does it matter? Is there a US cultural/social nuance that I'm missing? ~~~ r3bl Lower paychecks (75-80% of hourly rate of full-time workers), little to no benefits (like healthcare coverage), harder to keep track of for taxation purposes, harder to object to inhumane conditions like exploitative working hours or sexual harassment (since you're seen as a "guest" instead of an employee, complaining to the HR will usually result in you simply being discarded and replaced by someone else who won't complain) etc. Note: I wrote this as a general trend, which does not mean this applies to Google specifically. ~~~ C1sc0cat Is this like for like? your not going to pay a security guard the same as a SRE are you. If I went as a contactor in the UK id expect 2x to 3x when compared to a FTE at a similar grade. ~~~ r3bl Just because we're in a position to say no doesn't mean that we shouldn't feel compassion for the others that are not in an opportunity to do so. A tech office without a janitor will be dysfunctional, same as the one without a senior engineer. But unlike a senior engineering position, a janitor will not be a full-time position. I'd personally even take it one step further: those who are payed the least need benefits the most. By relegating this work to temporary workers you're doing exactly the opposite: cutting away the privileges that the full-time employees have. Not to just one employee, but anyone who's ever going to fill out that position. A trip to the doctor would not make a dent in a senior engineer's pocket (regardless of the insurance), but a janitor could not afford a trip to the doctor in the first place. This could work in a country with good social programs to fall back on, but it has catastrophic consequences in the US. ~~~ CydeWeys I agree in general terms, but the solution would be to pass stricter laws requiring more benefits to full-time workers. These contractors _are_ full- time workers, they're just full-time workers of staffing firms that contract with Google and that themselves don't have benefits that are nearly as good. So either require them to offer better benefits, or preferably, decouple benefits from employment entirely. Everyone should get healthcare, retirement accounts, etc.; it shouldn't be tied to your employer. It's unreasonable to expect one company to make big strides in this area when all it does it put them at a competitive disadvantage to their peers. Google is already mandating a $15/hour minimum wage on all contracted-out workers, plus some minimums for sick days, which is much better than most other companies (which tend not to have requirements on contracted out employees in their contracts with staffing firms at all). ~~~ r3bl This is precisely why I added that note in my first comment. I'm talking about general trends as a response to this: > What does it matter? Is there a US cultural/social nuance that I'm missing? I'm not familiar enough with Google's specific practices to reach a conclusion about that. ~~~ CydeWeys Fair enough. My view is that Google is better than most, in that they have better requirements on their staffing firms: [https://phys.org/news/2019-04-google-require-benefits- minimu...](https://phys.org/news/2019-04-google-require-benefits-minimum- wage.html) ------ m3nu Another anecdote: Local friend works for Google in Asia. She is basically forced to relocate to SF for 1-3 years and work at a rather low salary (for SF standards) there on something unrelated to her current job. I would suspect that part of the reason for such a "program" is to save on wages, which would be much higher for locally-hired staff. Her field is admin/marketing. Should be easy enough to find local talent for that. At a higher price. I'm sure there are upsides to this exchange program, but having no real choice (except quitting) and working at a lower salary don't leave the best impression. ~~~ 9nGQluzmnq3M Is your friend a Googler or a contractor? Can you expand on how she was "forced"? ~~~ m3nu Hired directly by Google and works in their office. Forced means it's compulsory if she wants to keep her job. ------ ThrustVectoring This is a natural and expected consequence of tax law - specifically provisions in ERISA, which sets out the rules for 401(k) plans. Google wants their 401(k) to be as efficient and useful as possible for their employees, which tend toward being highly-paid engineers and other professionals. ERISA has some fairness provisions, which means that all employees must be subject to the same plan rules, and the plan must pass certain tests of "highly-compensated" employee participation limits compared to non-highly-compensated ones. So if you have a bunch of engineers and some janitors, and you offer a large 401(k) match that engineers use and value and janitors don't, you wind up having to unwind some of the engineer contribution and matching in order to keep things "fair". But, crucially, ERISA doesn't have say anything about who has to be an "employee" versus hired on as a contractor. So all the janitors and cafeteria workers become contractors, and now your 401(k) plan counts junior developers as the "non highly-compensated" comparison class, and your 401(k) plan passes muster again. This affects Google a lot because their retirement plan is highly optimized for allowing highly-paid employees to save a ton of money in a tax efficient manner. It'd be difficult to craft a better plan, and from what I've heard they've even automated using a niche tax loophole as well ("mega-backdoor Roth" \- after-tax 401(k) contribution followed by immediate Roth conversion, basically allows an extra $20k/yr or so in Roth contribution room). ------ oldjokes To be fair to Google every company in every industry is doing this more and more. It's one of the first things that happens when a merger or private equity takeover happens- aggressively purge full time and move to temp workers for all non-core services to save some money. Of course the companies that pay more attention to data do this more extensively and aggressively, why wouldn't they? The army of temp workers/janitors/contractors/uber drivers convene and sleep in the same parking lots at night. It's a whole community of a semi-permanent underclass drifting around, saving the spreadsheets a few points here and there. In related news, I'm not sure I want to be an American anymore. This is not the country I grew up in. ~~~ bkor The big company I work for isn't doing what you said. They acquired a big company last year. They also have multiple business units which are being merged. Still not aggressively changing full time employees, nor changing roles into temp ones. They have recently starting to insource some of the IT again (less IBM). ~~~ joshuamorton Google doesn't do this either. As discussed elsewhere in the thread, most of the vendors at Google are in nontech roles like food service, security, and maintenance/facilities. ------ tjpnz What's the induction process like for a temp at Google? I'm curious as I've heard stories of temps becoming subject matter experts on teams and carrying projects across the line. If said individuals couldn't get into Google as a full-time employee what would that then say about the way Google interviews? ~~~ iancmceachern I worked as a contractor on a Google backed company on the Google campus. My interview consisted of a short meeting at the gentleman who ran the agency's house. I found the opportunity through an online consulting marketplace. I then and showed up to the Google site the next week and began working. I also applied directly, but have never heard back from them. My most striking memory was the complete lack of connection to the outdoors. Every single window and skylight was covered with light blocking coverings, you never knew if it was night, day, sunny or stormy outside. Other than that it was fascinating work with great people. ~~~ CydeWeys What does Google-backed company mean? Is that a bet (under Alphabet)? Something outside that even? Did you contract directly with the company or were you working for the agency, who contracted you out? I was a contractor for four years as my first job and I was a full-time employee of that contracting firm for the entire time. They paid a decent salary, gave me healthcare, retirement, and other benefits, etc. It was actually my best offer compared to some other SWE positions. Some company like Google could have been one of my clients at some point (and indeed was at my next job), but instead it was mostly banks and insurance companies. ------ jamesfe It seems really similar to an article from March of 1998 about Microsoft: [https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/30/business/equal-work- less-...](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/30/business/equal-work-less-equal- perks-microsoft-leads-way-filling-jobs-with-permatemps.html) ~~~ Bucephalus355 The issue with that at the time was that Microsoft was using temps to avoid paying payroll taxes. Ironically the IRS wised up to this tactic because of _just how good_ Microsoft was treating their temps, i.e. the same as regular employees. Now the issue is a company is using temps to hold down the market rate for salary. Less about tax avoidance, and more about wage suppression. Of course it’s also a valid argument to say the Supreme Court decision at the time made it more likely for companies to choose this route. ~~~ jamesfe True in that sense. Also true that the two-tier system existed in one of the big tech giants and with it many of the same symptoms. It is interesting to see it again with Google, although I wonder if Amazon/Netflix/Amazon have a similar situation. ~~~ vadym909 Most large tech companies- think FB, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco are similar. Amazon surprisingly has a low ratio of contractors (they say under 10%)- probably because their fulltime benefits are so cheap it doesn't make a difference or maybe they don't count warehouse workers in that ratio. ------ amelius Given the whole problem with platform economies (e.g. Uber drivers), perhaps it's better if the distinction between contractor and employee becomes smaller. E.g. healthcare benefits, separate them from the employer and make them the same for everybody. ------ AJ007 Am I the only one who is shocked that Google has 223,000 people working for them? What are all of these people doing? ------ huffmsa Sounds like they're taking a page from the Federal Governments books. Staffing firms had better wise up and start jacking up prices. ------ MichaelMoser123 Is it possible for a temporary employee to be promoted to full time status, or is that impossible? What is the average length of employment for a temporary employee vs that of a full timer? Just asking. ~~~ drcross I was a contract worker for a similar scale web company and I was offered a full time role after 12 months of working there. I declined it because the day rate that I was on was more than the full time salary. The perks (stock, parental leave and other benefits) were significant but I didn't want them as they didn't apply to me. I preferred to keep my own autonomy and didn't think the future was going to work out well for the team I was in. The team had constant squabbles and moral was low. If you're willing to accept risk like that you can make good money as a senior contracting engineer. Full timers heads exploded when I declined the offer but I hated the self created heirarchy that the contractor/FTE relationship posed. It seemed like there were two set of rules, one for ftes and one for contractors. I think it's a really toxic way to run your company. ~~~ xav0989 From what I've been told, you cannot treat contractors/temps the same way that you treat your employees, otherwise they can claim that they were in fact employees the whole time (which usually comes with an expensive lawsuit and a visit from the IRS). In order to ensure that contractors/temps can't claim to be employees, it's not enough to not offer benefits. You have to effectively create a two tier system with FTEs at the top and contractors/temps at the bottom. Not arguing whether it's good/bad, but it comes with the territory in the current landscape. You gain in flexibility/autonomy but loose in benefits/treatment. ~~~ tylerrobinson I’ve definitely seen the tiered system you’re describing. For example, contractors aren’t given the same training or professional development opportunities as FTEs. But do you know if there are actually legal reasons for this, or is it just pragmatic to give fewer opportunities or privileges to employees you know won’t be around long? ~~~ CydeWeys There is legal precedent for it. The most famous and precedent-setting case in this area occurred with Microsoft in 1996: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsof...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsoft) That set the framework for all contracting that has followed since. ~~~ tylerrobinson Interesting, thanks for the reference. In the Microsoft case it looks like the decision hinged on the definition of a common law employee. Wikipedia notes that benefits eligibility can be formally defined. Employers don’t have to treat their contractors badly just to imply a tiered system, in other words, as the parent comment suggests. ------ kdot I'm going through this process right now, I have a contract for a SWE role at Google through a contracting company. Interestingly enough I was offered no benefits. ------ dfilppi It's remarkable that such a fine institution as the New York Times would publish unsubstantiated allegations that could ruin someones career. ------ Manjuuu It would be interesting to know the ratio of employee/contractors working as FTE (very common somewhere else) among software engineers. ~~~ jsty I guess it would depend quite heavily on location - particularly re. tax and employment regulation. For example, in London, a lot of the good people historically went the contracting route due to much higher rates and lower taxes. Big banks were (and are) staffed with a lot of contractors who were very happy not to be on payroll. ~~~ baud147258 It was the same thing in Fintech in Paris when I was working there a few years ago. ~~~ baud147258 I was working as an intern in a team developing a tool for the traders, there was two FTE, the boss and one senior dev; the rest (5 devs) were all consultants, all independents ------ firemancoder Lots of companies do this (SV and others), if it makes good business sense for them to do so why do we care? ------ matz1 Good. In the future everyone should be a contractor anyway. ------ avefilip I was always wondering about similar thing with interns ~~~ bsimpson What are you wondering? Interns usually work for small periods of time between school cycles. They get interesting projects, because internships are effectively a recruiting tool for new grads. With the amount of prep work and oversight/mentorship that goes into an internship, it's not obvious that they benefit the company outside of recruiting. If the argument is "TVCs tolerate more because they fear retribution/loss of access to a full-time role," that might happen for interns too. (I haven't studied either group, so I'm not qualified to say.) If the argument is that "TVCs are being exploited to minimize the number of full-time roles," that definitely doesn't apply to interns.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How to make a product video for under $150 - dpolaske http://polaske.tumblr.com/post/91289197615/how-i-created-a-professional-product-video-for-146-55?one=one ====== ttty still something is missing to be professional. Anyway is a lot better than other home made (: ~~~ dpolaske Most definitely not quite pro. And thanks!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
You can't see or remove non-amazon devices from your Amazon account - altmind https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/dpbt3t/the_perils_of_security_and_how_i_finally_resolved/ ====== ratsmack This is the stuff that gives me nightmares... Are there any Amazon folks that hang out here in HN that can expand on this?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The UDP Firewall Punching Technique Explored - joshuacc http://spin.atomicobject.com/2011/08/05/the-udp-firewall-punching-technique-explored/ ====== msie This technique won't work on a Symmetric NAT firewall.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
PEP 380 ("yield from") is now Final - motter http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2012-January/115471.html ====== motter Full details: <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0380/> ~~~ sp332 Talk about syntactic sugar :) RESULT = yield from EXPR _is semantically equivalent to_ _i = iter(EXPR) try: _y = next(_i) except StopIteration as _e: _r = _e.value else: while 1: try: _s = yield _y except GeneratorExit as _e: try: _m = _i.close except AttributeError: pass else: _m() raise _e except BaseException as _e: _x = sys.exc_info() try: _m = _i.throw except AttributeError: raise _e else: try: _y = _m(*_x) except StopIteration as _e: _r = _e.value break else: try: if _s is None: _y = next(_i) else: _y = _i.send(_s) except StopIteration as _e: _r = _e.value break RESULT = _r ~~~ motter Kudos for typing that out for the purposes of illustration! ~~~ sp332 Well I just copy&pasted from the article :) But it's impressive! definitely props to whoever came up with it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Python Hunter – a flexible code tracing toolkit - ionelm https://github.com/ionelmc/python-hunter/ ====== ionelm Hunter has now a bit of everything (process attach, variable diffing like in pysnooper, env var activation, breakpoints, thread support and an api to build stuff on top) but without going overboard with overenineering (like serialization, storage or sql). For most intents and purposes it should replace every other tracer tool. There's also a work-in-progress cookbook with unusual stuff: [https://python- hunter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/cookbook.html](https://python- hunter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/cookbook.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
An Error Leads to a New Way to Draw, and Erase, Computing Circuits - signa11 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/science/an-error-leads-to-a-new-way-to-draw-and-erase-computing-circuits.html?_r=0 ====== AlbertoGP TL;DR: they found that low-energy fluorescent's ultraviolet emissions allow "etching" circuits in topological insulators (material that is insulator inside, but conductive on the surface), and also deleting those patterns using another wavelength. The pattern stays for 16 hours at low temperatures, and "by refining the materials they might eventually be able to reproduce it at room temperature".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Testing at Compile-Time - billsix http://billsix.github.io/cac.html ====== billsix Let me know if anyone has questions. I learned quite a bit in making libbug. Being able to do any computation during Compile-Time, such as state and IO, was more powerful then I had initially expected.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Honour for overlooked Poles who were first to crack Enigma code - wglb http://www.smh.com.au/world/honour-for-overlooked-poles-who-were-first-to-crack-enigma-code-20121009-27b9y.html ====== jgrahamc I'm glad that Poland wants to honor these people, but to say that Bletchley Park has been overlooking them is utter nonsense. 1\. Here's what Bletchley Park says on their first history page about their wartime role (<http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/hist/wartime.rhtm>): "The Poles had broken Enigma in 1932, when the encoding machine was undergoing trials with the German Army. They even managed to reconstruct a machine. At that time, the cypher altered only once every few months. With the advent of war, it changed at least once a day, effectively locking the Poles out. But in July 1939, they had passed on their knowledge to the British and the French. This enabled the codebreakers to make critical progress in working out the order in which the keys were attached to the electrical circuits, a task that had been impossible without an Enigma machine in front of them." 2\. There's a memorial for the Poles at Bletchley Park (<http://www.flickr.com/photos/ell-r-brown/5109679597/>) and they have an annual Polish day. 3\. There's a special page on the Polish contribution (in English: [http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/hist/history/polish....](http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/hist/history/polish.rhtm) and in Polish: [http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/hist/history/inpolis...](http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/hist/history/inpolish.rhtm)) I do agree, however, that the 2001 film Enigma was an utter piece of crap that depicted "Turing" as straight and a Pole as a traitor. ~~~ NickPollard I think the issue is less with Bletchley, but more with the mainstream media who spread the information more widely. I would expect most people on HN to be aware of the Polish contribution, but I think that the general population (of Britain, at least) are less aware of it. ~~~ jjtheblunt Agreed. ------ stonekeeper09 I visited Bletchley for the first time less than a week ago and believe me, they waxed lyrical about the 3 polish mathmaticians. I've seen the memorial they have there. I came away feeling that it was a joint effort, but you have to remember that there were thousands of people working at Bletchley and Turing was key in the SPEED at which they were able to break the code by inventing the Bombe. If there's any mis-appropriation, it's not Bletchley's fault. ~~~ hetman The first Bombe was built by the Poles and its design later given to the Brits. It was called the "Bomba Kryptologiczna", i.e. the "Cryptological Bomb" because of the amount of noise it made. Turing didn't invent the Bombe, his contribution was the improvements he made to vastly speed the process up. ~~~ defrost And adding to the notion of teamwork and the critical importance of people in general and not just Turing we have the oft overlooked William Thomas Tutte [1], and Tommy Flowers [2] to remember. People seem to focus entirely on the Enigma decrypts and overlook the Lorenz cipher "Ultra" intelligence. [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._T._Tutte> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer> ------ mtts FWIW all the points mentioned elsewhere in this thread about this having been known for a long time among cognoscenti of Bletchley Park is duly noted but to me it was news. So as far as I'm concerned the Polish government raising a stink about this, however much a symptom of Polish persecution complex it is, is a good thing. I learned something today (among others, after a few diversions on Wikpedia, about Wojzek the Bear - how cool is that?) ------ mturmon These Poles are also recognized by the US National Cryptologic Museum (outside the NSA main building, see [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/a-look...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/a-look- inside-the-nsas-code-breaking-museum/64039/)) in its exhibits of Enigma and the Bombe that broke it. It was actually in those exhibits that I first learned about the role of the Poles in this story. ------ zandor This book is really worth getting if you can find it somewhere for a fair price. It's almost worth it for the appendix alone where Marian Rejewski himself describes how they broke the original Enigma code. [http://www.amazon.com/Enigma-German-Machine-Foreign- intellig...](http://www.amazon.com/Enigma-German-Machine-Foreign- intelligence/dp/0890935475) ~~~ adaszko Thanks for pointing it out. Can one find some mathematics behind Enigma in it?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Why is subscription billing hard? - zdrummond Our company has created a new pricing model which is built around subscriptions. We have been thinking about the best way to bill our customers and report what has happened to accounting.<p>While doing research I came across Zuora (http://www.zuora.com) which is a SaaS based subscription billing system. It turns out that their product "solves" the whole pipeline (sales -> use -> billing -> accounting) but it is very very expensive.<p>So my question is, why? I am not at all trying to pick on Zuora. My guess is they have a fantastic product, but I am having trouble justifying the price. Isn't this just a simple rules engine that produces reports?<p>My guess is that I am falling into the classic blunder that "It's Trivial" (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/code-its-trivial.html). I was hoping someone in the community could enlightenment me on the pitfalls, before I go off and build it myself! ====== dangrossman Think about a company like Comcast -- millions of customers, thousands of phone agents, thousands of contractors in Comcast vans hooking up home service, multiple regional websites, legacy customers from previous product iterations and acquired local cable companies. Add on to that multiple public and private billing plans, service credits, local deals/specials, grandfathered customers on old plans, a combination of fixed and usage-based billing, optional add-ons, and parent/children accounts for business and landlords. Imagine just how complex that "rules engine" has to be to get billing right. The company that can manage that for Comcast is going to be delivering hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in value. If they didn't pay someone for it, they'd have to employ and manage a large development team just to do billing. Lots of salaries. That's what justifies the price. If you're a startup with 3 payment plans and sometimes you have to give someone a credit because you had some downtime, your situation isn't even 1% as complex, and you can get by with a $50/month service or a couple hundred lines of your own code. ------ skrish Depends on how complex your product and pricing model is. Zuora is slightly enterprisey customers and priced accordingly and they charge setup fee, customization fee etc., If you are looking for simpler products focused on small & medium businesses there are plenty of options available as well. Of course if you are in North America you have Stripe as your first bet and for bit more sophisticated billing plus more options to do promotions, automated notifications, HTML emails, customer support portal, more complex metered billing, grandfathering of price plans (happens!), multi-gateway support etc., you should consider using a billing solution. Disclosure: I am one a co-founder of <http://www.ChargeBee.com>, another Subscription Billing solution focused on small businesses. Shameless plug: If you are looking for options to use payment gateway for credit card + bank transfers for recurring to save $$s per transaction you should try our solution (launching the ACH part very soon). ------ subsection1h While doing research I came across Zuora [...] What other solutions did you evaluate? Which of your requirements did the other solutions not meet? After I research solutions to a problem, I end up with a list of requirements and a list of solutions with notes regarding each solution (e.g., pros and cons). If you were to post a complete list of your requirements and notes regarding each solution you evaluated, it would be easier to provide relevant feedback. (If you didn't take any notes, you might want to consider the benefits of note taking in the context of a personal or company wiki.) ------ orangethirty How much is expensive? ~~~ jaylist Ranging from little at the low end. We have customers ranging from startups in a garage to enteprises and everything inbetween. Plenty of customers who started small and scale up. Talk to you friendly Zuora rep. He'll give you a good price. :) ~~~ orangethirty Thanks for answering, but I'm asking the OP how much is expensive to him. I don't sell services like yours, but like to know the options out there in case a client needs it. Though with US clients I just set them up with Stripe and be done with it. ~~~ zdrummond Well, as the Zuroa rep mentions, it's an enterprise level product so they have a very wide range of plans. To be fair to them, it's likely best to just give them a call. To give you a sense of scale, however. For a small company, with decent revenue, it costs a substantial chunk of a dev's salary. ~~~ orangethirty Thanks, that's all I wanted to know. Seems you are better off making something custom. Note: I have no issues with Zuroa. Never heard of them and have no experiences with their products. I was just curious about what the OP meant by expensive.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Announcing Google Cloud Bigtable - suprgeek http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/05/introducing-Google-Cloud-Bigtable.html ====== mataug I've been quite frustrated with the google cloud platform, Just take a look at their APIs for AppEngine, CloudSQL, GCE and the sort, Its pathetic compared to their direct competitor AWS. Lets compare trying to do create an RDS instance on AWS vs Creating one on CloudSQL AWS: 1\. Get AccessToken and AccessSecret from IAM 2\. pip install boto 3\. conn = boto.rds.connect_to_region("us-west-2") 4\. db = conn.create_dbinstance("db-master-1", 10, 'db.m1.small', 'root', 'hunter2') Done ! Google 1\. Get a Client Id and Client Secret 2\. pip install google-api-python-client 3\. Go through the OAuth Flow and run a server locally to capture the access token 4\. Use the discovery api to generate a service object. Good Luck finding this in the documentation 5\. use the uninspectable service object to create a cloudsql instance. The reason I don't have code for steps 3,4 and 5 is because I gave up after wasting time trying to figure this out. My point is that they've gotten into the habit of doing half assed work so I have no hopes that the've improved this time. Practically no way to automate this The only way to use this would be from the horribly slow GUIs that google provides. EDIT: I ended up using google cloud sdk cli and running the automations with subprocess.check_output(['gcloud', 'sql', 'instance' ... ]) ~~~ forgottenacc56 You missed the snakes and ladders game of following googles out of date documentation. "You're doing it wrong, we deprecated that last year, I know we haven't yet updated the 4 separate places in which the same thing is documented all in a different context and different way. We really should fix that but we're busy coding. Did you know we're all PhDs at Google?" What?!?!? You're using the Google console version 3? Why? That feature isn't implemented there. Stupid you. You're MEANT to be using our new Google console version X. Why are you using our old one? Also you missed the 16 hours you'll spend trying work out why something isn't working only to find it's actually been changed or taken out of the Google developer console, without any trace or notice left in the code to say'we moved/removed the feature that you expected to be here.' Really you should ask Google for help on StackOverflow which is now the official Google channel for ignoring support questions, and where your question will within seconds be down voted, derided and deleted by the StackOverflow Community,saving Google the effort of not reading and ignoring your question about how to resolve the catastrophic failure of your software. Seriously though, why not entrust your critical systems to such capable hands? ~~~ jjjjoe (Google Cloud Support here) The across-the-board guidance to go to StackOverflow is not working, and we get that. It's not just that system administration questions get downvoted on StackOverflow (which I think is the parent's point) but that StackExchange isn't good for general discussion. We (support) are trying to be much more clear that free support is not "StackOverflow or nothing." We recently updated our "community" support page at [https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/3466163](https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/3466163) to lay out all of the community support options in one place. Bottom line: everything listed on that page has Googlers actively participating. This includes groups, StackExchange, and issue trackers. There's room for plenty of improvement, the intent is not to ignore you. ~~~ hoodoof Google should have a central support forum and try to focus all the questions into one place. StackOverflow should not be on your support list at all, for the reasons raised. Having said that, Google should still be on SO answering questions that end up there. What Google needs to understand is that its long standing public reputation that it has built is an organisation that actively tries to avoid providing support - ever since Google started it has tried to avoid support. That is now the reputation that Google carries into its efforts to woo the developer community. Google has to be extraordinarily good at developer support to dispel the baseline assumption that developers have that Google really (genuinely) wants to avoid dealing with support questions. There's a level of cluelessness to Google's support strategy that is concerning. Why, for goodness sake, would it EVER look like a good idea to push support to StackOverflow? Who is doing the thinking behind that sort of decision? It is self evident that Google's support interests and StackOverflow are not the same thing. It's the sort of decision made without really considering the detail, and that is the point about Google's support - it's an afterthought. Kind of like washing the dishes after dinner is eaten - has to be done but we're not enthused about it. And in the end, lack of support is a showstopper for using a cloud computing platform. If the support looks sketchy then it just isn't worth risking your business by using that platform. ~~~ jjjjoe You make great points. I'm new and can't really speak to your rhetorical question of "what were they thinking?!?" but I do hope for my own job security that support isn't an afterthought :-) First, I should point out that what we are talking about here is Google's "Bronze Support." This is similar to Amazon's "Basic Support." In both cases it's not what you should be thinking about if you need a case response time SLA, or the ability to wake up engineers at midnight. If your business depends on _any_ platform provider I really hope you buy a support plan which gets you the ability to talk to support and engineering whenever you need. Google definitely offers these. They start at $150 per month. ([https://cloud.google.com/support/](https://cloud.google.com/support/)) End plug. On StackOverflow: let's stop calling it "support." It's a Q&A site with good SEO. If you have a question which "belongs" there it's a fine place to ask. We're moderating our "go to StackOverflow no matter what" messaging, but I can't see tossing it completely. Anyway, when it comes to free support, I partially agree with your point about a single forum, in that can be confusing. Again, keep an eye on [https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/3466163?hl=en&ref_to...](https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/3466163?hl=en&ref_topic=3340599) To your point about a single forum for everything, I respectfully disagree. Free-form discussion is different from bug tracking. Highly structured Q&A has a place too. It seems to me that every product should have \- a discussion forum where users can discuss the product and raise issues \- an issue tracker to collect bug reports and feature requests \- a designated place for Q&A On each of those three, support staff and (preferably) engineers should participate daily. I think the situation with Compute Engine is closest to our ideal right now: it has a lively Google Group, actively triaged issue tracker and a sponsored tag on ServerFault (which I hope we can agree is a better destination than StackOverflow) ~~~ nulltype While StackOverflow has a number of flaws, it is pretty good for finding things that I'm looking for. I've definitely found posts from the BigQuery team on there answering my BigQuery questions. As for Google's support plan thing, it might be a little odd that it costs $150 per month, but if you're spending any significant money GCP, it's well worth it. The support response times even at the lowest level are pretty good and they sometimes fix bugs. Of course, I think if Google employees use GCP internally, it will improve at a much faster rate. ------ justinsb I think using the HBase API is a very clever move. This means that the HBase API is now supported on AWS (EMR), GCE, VMWare (Serengeti), OpenStack (Sahara), and everywhere (Hadoop, if you're willing to run it yourself). In comparing against DynamoDB (for example), you'll have to weigh a proprietary single-vendor API against an API with a good open-source implementation (that will get even better with hydrabase), yet that is also available in managed-form on all major clouds. Edit: although - ouch - the $1500 per month entry price-point does not compare well to DynamoDB's $5 per month minimum. ~~~ turingbook Where is $1500 per month from? I can not find it in the pricing page. ~~~ dudus Cost per node per hour - $0.65; Minimum number of nodes per cluster - 3 0.65 x 3 x 24 x 30 = $1404 / month And that's before any storage costs. ~~~ turingbook Thanks! ------ obulpathi Pretty impressed with the performance metrics: Reads/Writes 6ms@99% compared to Cassandra 300ms for read and 10 ms for write. ------ wiradikusuma How is it different than Datastore? [https://cloud.google.com/datastore/](https://cloud.google.com/datastore/) ~~~ Goranek datastore is a copy of Google Megastore service. It has indexes, sql like queries, transactions.. and you don't need to run servers like with BigTable (you pay for documents and api calls only) ~~~ SjuulJanssen Why would I want to manage instances? ~~~ vgt I don't believe you need to manage anything with BigTable.. "instances" is a concept to describe iterations of scale only ------ bbromhead So their benchmark of Cassandra against BigTable doesn't even match their previous benchmark of Cassandra. [http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/03/cassandra- hi...](http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/03/cassandra-hits-one- million-writes-per-second-on-google-compute-engine.html) How did the latency for Cassandra on their cloud platform increase by 200ms from a year ago? ~~~ ivansmf I wrote last year's benchmark. The clusters are completely different, and so is the workload. Last year's cluster had 300 VMs, which was a much higher price point, and the workload was write only. This benchmark uses YCSB workloads A and B, which we though matches the usage we'll have on BigTable. The cluster is much smaller as well. I shared my scripts from last year, it is pretty easy (although a bit expensive) to repro the numbers. Let me check if we can share this year's benchmark scripts as well. ~~~ bbromhead I'm pretty surprised about the difference in latency though, throughput as you say will be different due to number of nodes. For any given replication factor in Cassandra, overhead remains the pretty much the same irrespective of whether you have 300 or 3 nodes. So should the latency. On top of that both BigTable and Cassandra use SSTables to store the data on disk (with all the compactiony goodness that goes with them), so I'm even more surprised that the difference in latency is so huge. Would love to see the scripts for the benchmarks! I don't want to take away from a great product launch and I'm sure BigTable kicks arse in certain areas that Cassandra doesn't... I'm just surprised at the differences in latency. ------ StevePerkins Any information on pricing? I doubt they'd have specific prices ready to announce yet, but it would be good to at least know the DIMENSIONS by which it will be priced (e.g. per read and write, storage, etc?). Will it be accessible to "classic" App Engine front-end instances, or only meant for Compute Engine VM's and "App Engine 2.0" Managed VM's? The biggest pain point with the current Datastore is how difficult it can be to predict your costs. Also, there are weird quirks in the pricing model (e.g. "writes" used to cost more than "reads", it's more expensive to delete rows than it is to flag them as tombstoned and continue storing them indefinitely, etc). These quirks have left people with a lot of technical debt from having designed around them. If this is another database option (alongside the Datastore and CloudSQL) for "classic" App Engine apps, which aren't likely to be re-written for Managed VM's, then it might be interesting. However, if it's only for Compute Engine or Managed VM contexts, where you're _not_ locked-in and are free to choose any technologies you want, then at this point I would need to hear some pretty amazing information on the pricing model before I could be bothered to even test it out. Google lock-in is _painful_... once you've gone through the trouble of breaking free from the App Engine jail, it's really difficult to even consider adding new lock-in dependencies. EDIT: Doh. You have to click through a couple of links from the original post to find it, but they have indeed posted pricing specifics already. [https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/#pricing](https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/#pricing) Looks like it's priced by the number of VM nodes you want in your cluster, storage, and network I/O if you're using it from outside Google's datacenters. No metered pricing on "read ops" and "write ops". This model IS a significant improvement over classic Datastore pricing. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like you can use it as a Datastore-replacement on classic App Engine front-end instances... and I'm not sure that I wouldn't just use Cassandra in other contexts where I have complete control. ~~~ B-Scan Cost per node per hour - $0.65; Minimum number of nodes per cluster - 3; SSD storage (GB/mo) - $0.17; HDD storage (GB/mo) (coming soon) - $0.026; Source: [https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/](https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/) ------ pdevr "To help get you started quickly, we have assembled a service partner ecosystem to enable a diverse and expanding set of Cloud Bigtable use cases for our customers. " Any idea how the service partners were chosen? ------ eva1984 Is this like a direct competitor to DynamoDB? How about open-source solutions, like Cassandra/HBase? ~~~ Blackthorn Bigtable is the original Cassandra/HBase. ------ sagivo funny they call it "open source" just because it supports other open source API. ------ nivertech Interesting if there will be Cloud Bigtable to BigQuery connector, possible using Cloud Dataflow. ~~~ michaelwsherman Currently you can use the BigQuery Hadoop connector and write a MapReduce job to scan Bigtable and write everything to BigQuery. Works quickly. I'm sure dataflow support is in the works, since Google internally doesn't really use MR and therefore likely has this on the back end already. Source--I wrote one of the whitepapers on the BigTable homepage. ------ rplnt Anyone willing to be dependant on this is honestly stupid when you take into account Google's history in this area: unreliability, changes in offerings, changes in pricing, discontinuations of services, hard lock-in, bad customer service, ... ~~~ jpatokal As the blog post says, Bigtable internally runs virtually all of Google's big services. This means it's rock solid, and it's not about to get discontinued anytime soon. ~~~ BinaryIdiot > Bigtable internally runs virtually all of Google's big services Are you sure? I'm not a Googler but have been told by other Googlers that Bigtable has essentially been replaced internally (though heard it's still similar). So I wasn't sure how much Bigtable is even used anymore inside of Google. ~~~ jpatokal The blog post says "the same database that drives nearly all of Google’s largest applications", and I work at Google, so yes, I'm pretty sure ;) Of course Google has a whole slew of other storage options optimized for various use cases, but some of these are actually built on top of Bigtable. ~~~ BinaryIdiot Haha okay fair enough. Thanks! ------ EugeneOZ All is cool except one thing - it's vendor lock and vendor is known for absence of customers support, often API deprecations and products shutdowns. ------ 3lux does anyone know of a Go client? ~~~ skj [https://github.com/google/google-api-go- client](https://github.com/google/google-api-go-client) is the code-gen Go client for Google APIs. It probably does not (yet) have the generated client for cloud bigtable checked in (but I'm sure it will), but you can always use it to generate a client. You pass it the API to use on the command line, it will go fetch the docs it needs to make your client, and put its source where you tell it to. ~~~ kevinschumacher This uses the HBase API. You just connect to it like you would any other HBase cluster, using an HBase client. It's not like e.g., BigQuery or Datastore where you need the API client. You include a JAR and then connect to HBase like normal. ~~~ saurik The website claims that you must use their customized version of the Java HBase client library: it does not claim it is network compatible, and seems to state it is API compatible with the Java API (but then describes numerous subtle differences). > To access Cloud Bigtable, you use a customized version of the Apache HBase > 1.0.1 Java client. ------ amelius Nice, but you still can't use this for your privacy-aware customers. ~~~ ImJasonH Care to elaborate on why not? ~~~ amelius Storing data in a database that is managed by a third-party is something that some customers explicitly forbid. ~~~ hoddez Wouldn't that mean you can't use any cloud data services with any company? Or even cloud hosting? What kind of customers forbid this? ~~~ amelius > What kind of customers forbid this? Government entities, for instance. ~~~ icebraining [https://www.google.com/work/apps/government/](https://www.google.com/work/apps/government/) Google has a dedicated cloud environment for governmental agencies: [http://googleforwork.blogspot.pt/2009/09/google-apps-and- gov...](http://googleforwork.blogspot.pt/2009/09/google-apps-and- government.html) ~~~ amelius > We look forward to working with governments across the country on these > exciting initiatives in the months ahead. So what about foreign governments? ------ forgottenacc56 No Python 3? Not interested. All that BigTable development, pointless without drivers. Silly Google. ~~~ estefan Do you actually know what hadoop & HDFS are? ~~~ saurik I am going to read your comment as "you should be able to use the off-the- shelf drivers for HBase for Python" (I have elided the "3" as no one uses Python 3: that must have been a typo for "2" ;P). The "APIs" that Google describes as being compatible with are for Java, not the network: "To access Cloud Bigtable, you use a customized version of the Apache HBase 1.0.1 Java client.". So, no: it seems like if you are not using Java you will need to pull apart their customized Java SDK and build your own driver.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What's the logic behind Google rejecting Max Howell, author of Homebrew? - ziodave https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejecting-Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-to-invert-a-binary-tree?share=1 ====== byoung2 Imagine Guns 'N Roses rejecting Les Paul after an audition. The lead guitarist in the band plays Gibson Les Paul guitars, but you're not what we're looking for. Les Paul was an amazing guitarist in his own style but it would be a question of fit, not ability. ~~~ umanwizard Is creating homebrew really even that amazing? Seems like nothing too complex. ~~~ byoung2 Les Paul guitars are actually nothing amazing either, and suffered from poor sales early on. Their success is mainly in the marketing, not in the engineering.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Fat that makes you thin - prat http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327211.200-the-fat-that-makes-you-thin.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=genetics ====== mhotchen This is an interesting discovery, but I have a question about its uses for anyone that knows more about nutrition and/or biology than myself: If Bob has 50 grams of brown fat in his body and John has 0, how does Bob have an advantage over John? My perception is that Bob now has to eat 500 more calories per day than John just to survive. That doesn't seem like an advantage to me. Am I missing something? ~~~ voidpointer If we were still hunting for our food in the woods that wouldn't be an advantage and that may explain why in the cause of evolution, getting rid of brown fat with growing age, was a fitness criteria. In our "developed world" however, there is such a large availability of calories, that some people get more than enough. For those, being able to burn more, would be an advantage. Unless they are planning to go on a polar expedition anytime soon :) I agree with your general sentiment though. Whether you could burn 500 calories more or eat 500 calories less isn't much of a difference. However, a drug that makes you burn 500 more calories and allows you to enjoy more eating is probably something that you can sell to a lot of people. Telling them to get their act together and eat right isn't that easily translated into profit. ~~~ mhotchen I never thought about why people want to lose weight; I just assumed it was so that they can be healthy, but I suppose it could be entirely superficial for a sizeable crowd. Obviously, the health benefits of something like this would be minimal, but it would be great if someone just wanted to eat more junk food and not put on extra weight. ~~~ thasmin The health benefits to losing weight could be incredible. For example, the risk of a heart attack would drop and there would be less stress on the knees and ankles. ------ prat >A mere 50 grams of brown fat - well within the range of what some of us already have - could dissipate around 500 calories a day. Amazing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
SAFE Network: a decentralized data storage and communications network - lwhsiao https://safenetwork.org/ ====== pdx SAFE will certainly store files, and it will do so in such a way that nobody will know who is reading them or who published them, striving to be completely censorship resistant. Think TOR hidden services that your grandma can use. The network strives to be completely autonomous. Sort of like the bitcoin network is, with no human able to distrupt, roll-back, or alter the data on the network. But rather than just storing a blockchain autonomously, it stores files and data. One of the pieces of data it will store will be the SAFEcoin tokens, which will be able to have their owners changed by the network when they are sent from one user to another. Because the consensus group that signs these ownership transfers is relatively small, you end up with a system that scales. The larger the network, the more transfers per second it can do, since it's effectively parallel processing. Only a very small subset of nodes are involved in a transfer from Lisa to Sally, and a completely different set of nodes would handle a transfer from Tom to Fred, and so on. No bottlenecks in the secure transfer of coins or data. SAFEcoin tokens are pretty much plain vanilla data objects, which means you can do the same thing with any other data, such as create other secure tokens for other applications. ------ ph33t Interesting that they mention medical records. I'm pretty sure that US HIPAA law would preclude storing any medical records from being stored on a network whose owner you don't have a BA with. From my readings (see Digital Ocean's various discussions on the topic) this even includes data that is chunked and encrypted before sending off to storage. HIPAA laws are woefully vague and inadequate to deal with many new technologies. I'm not trying to argue for or against storing PHI in this matter, just pointing that they reference it, but I'm not sure it could be implemented in the US and be in compliance with current laws. ~~~ tlrobinson Thought experiment: if I were to take some medical records and XOR it with a one-time pad, then stored the result somewhere not HIPAA compliant, would that be illegal? How about if instead I stored the one-time pad somewhere not HIPAA compliant? It would seem a little strange if one were illegal but not the other. ~~~ dcdanko Both would be illegal* since your keys are info that could deanonymize patient data. However, you would be allowed to store them on your own PC if you follow proper procedures. This is more important than it might seem from a purely tech perspective. HIPAA is partly designed to guard against 1) improper use of encryption 2) downstream contractors who are malicious or careless The one-time pad is probably fine but it's easy to imagine lesser encryption being broken (especially by bugs). This problem gets much worse once PHI is stored on a medium, like a blockchain, where it can never be taken down. After all you probably wouldn't be happy if your health data was on the internet protected only by SHA1. There are probably better solutions to all of these issues but HIPAA is intentionally conservative. In many respects HIPAA is a financial, not a technical, law. * HIPAA doesn't make improper storage illegal in the sense that you go to jail if you do it wrong. It exposes people who handle data improperly to massive fines, usually when actual breaches occur. This is part of why BAAs are so important. ------ sorin-panca Y U NO create a browser addon or something? Also, TOR installs its own browser and I'm pretty sure I saw another privacy project doing this in the last year. Installing a whole new browser is too much. I already have 3 or 4 installed. #browserbloat ~~~ signalsmith AFAIU, Tor has its own browser because it includes various privacy and anti- tracking features that can't be implemented as add-ons. Without these, your connection might be anonymised, but your browser can still be tracked between sites and sessions. They work with the Firefox team to try and push many of these back into FF. ------ rdegges At first glance looks like another competitor for filecoin, storj, etc. Anyone know what the major differences are in the players in this space currently? I'm interested in decentralized storage (low cost), but really have no idea how to judge the different options. ~~~ equalunique SAFE Network has been around for quite some time. I believe the project has been around for longer than both filecoin & storj, but it is still in beta phase. Filecoin AFAIK has not reached beta, while Storj is already online, as is it's competitor Sia. SAFE Network's stack is mostly Rust, which is novel.[0][1] Among other things, SAFE Network has no blockchain. It has an alternative approach to consensus: "To directly compare the language for the security of the bitcoin vs safe network, bitcoin is secured by ‘proof of work’, safe is secured by ‘close group consensus’."[2] SAFE Network adds a cryptocoin (safecoin[3]) component to the Beaker browser[4], which builds on the Dat Protocol[5] for distributed apps. Basically I'm interested in these types of technologies as well. [0] [https://github.com/maidsafe/crust](https://github.com/maidsafe/crust) [1] [https://github.com/maidsafe/routing](https://github.com/maidsafe/routing) [2] [https://safe-network-explained.github.io/safe-for- bitcoiners...](https://safe-network-explained.github.io/safe-for- bitcoiners#blockchain) [3] [https://maidsafe.net/safecoin.html](https://maidsafe.net/safecoin.html) [4] [https://datproject.org/](https://datproject.org/) [5] [https://beakerbrowser.com/](https://beakerbrowser.com/) ~~~ sprucely It has no blockchain, but it does have something called a "datachain"[0] that allows among many things, proof of group membership and recovery from network churn and outages. Here's a more in-depth description.[1] [0] [https://medium.com/@yobanjo/goodbye-blockchain-hello- datacha...](https://medium.com/@yobanjo/goodbye-blockchain-hello- datachain-6225104777b3) [1] [https://metaquestions.me/2016/07/20/data-chains-what-why- how...](https://metaquestions.me/2016/07/20/data-chains-what-why-how/) ------ chiaro Sounds like the killer app for child pornography. ~~~ pdx Like all technology, it can be used for good or evil. Same as it ever was. Instead of going dark, you could have also said "Sounds like the killer app for circumventing national firewalls in authoritarian countries". or "Sounds like the killer app for securing confidential data from hackers". or "Sounds like the killer app for untraceably moving value between people at scale".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What does a data team really do - Michal_Sz https://medium.com/gogovan-technology/what-does-a-data-team-really-do-84b2f669e4b6 ====== Michal_Sz I published this article about work of the data team. Appreciate your feedback and suggestions. Thanks!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Raise Ducks, Not Chickens - tosh https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/bangladesh-climate-change-floods-ducks/593581/ ====== Pick-A-Hill2019 Fav Quote from the article “Ducks,” Akter told me matter-of-factly, “can swim.” (context snippet) " Climate change has made that way of life unpredictable, though—sudden floods caused rice crops and chickens to perish and incomes to plummet. Recently the couple switched and began raising ducks, a business that is now prospering. The reason for their success? “Ducks,” Akter told me matter-of-factly, “can swim.” (Weirdly enough I only came across this post by tosh when I stumbled across the source article and tried to submit it to HN and it hit the duplicate article error screen. Good to see the duplicate submission functioning correctly again!)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New Car Hacking Research: 2017, Remote Attack Tesla Motors Again - kartD http://keenlab.tencent.com/en/2017/07/27/New-Car-Hacking-Research-2017-Remote-Attack-Tesla-Motors-Again/ ====== devy > The video below demonstrates ... Where is the video below in the blog? I can't seem to find it...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What should we do - warewolf We need some advice on our next step. We currently have a product that is in the App Store that we launched for user validation. The problem is, we now have that validation but the product isn't scalable. We outsourced the development so the backend isn't what it should be it crashes and has lots of bugs.<p>The reason we did this is because my cofounder and myself are design and marketing backgrounds. However it served its purpose as a Validation tool. We are now planning on doing a Burbn --> Instagram move. We will be using our feedback to build a better product and hit the market on larger scale.<p>My question is should we find a Technical CoFounder who can fix the issues on the product we have? Which we all know finding a quality CoFounder is hard. Where is the best place to find CoFounders? ====== hartator I am actually looking for a CTO position at an early startup. Hit me up by email: my HN username @gmail.com I'll send you more info. about myself and I would love to hear more about what you are trying to build. ------ brianwawok So question.. what determines "passed" vs "failed" user validation? My question for that is you get so caught up in the excitement of a new product.. it is very easy to say "hey 10 people liked it, good product". How do you know the product is REALLY user validated? ~~~ warewolf 20000 DAU 15% of the users open 100 times a day. This is higher than snapchats early stage data. However we have recently been told by a big name investor he doesn't consider anything under 30k user validation. So I could be wrong. My concern is that the product has bugs and backend isn't ready to support massive growth. ~~~ niftich Load test your backend -- not the 'actual' production backend but a copy with the same characteristics. That is, call your backend functions in an order and manner that's consistent users' actual usage, with as many simultaneous requests as you can. There are many products that can do this, one free one is JMeter [1]. This will help you figure out if you can scale your way out of the problem (i.e. throw more servers at it), or if it's fundamentally broken beyond saving. [1] [http://jmeter.apache.org/](http://jmeter.apache.org/) ~~~ warewolf I'll do some more research on this thanks. ------ omginternets I'd say this all depends on the nature of your product. Having a technical cofounder is always helpful, but not _a priori_ necessary. What are you making? I may be interested in joining as CTO. ~~~ warewolf Mainstream Slack send me an email brayson@letsprattle.com ------ bbcbasic You may consider hiring a contractor too. Less commitment on your part than giving away part of the biz. Especially if you just need some performance tuning. ~~~ warewolf This is something we are discussing as well. We are weighing all of our options but gotta move quickly. We think having a technical cofounder has its advantages for championing ideas, improvements and reassurance. Its hard to find talent that sees beyond the code that doesn't want to work on their own ideas by themselves. We also think finding the right contractor is smart idea too because it will allow us to make the changes without equity like you said. Which than we can scale the product on our own to get the traction/funding we need to hire the right CTO. We've really only had one investor question us on not having a CTO anyway. ------ webtechgal > Where is the best place to find CoFounders? I'd say you're there already!! :-) All the best.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Helvetica: The Blend, Reinvented - tedmiston https://blog.suddencoffee.com/helvetica-the-blend-reinvented-2a4c557821b7 ====== tedmiston Sudden Coffee (YC W17) created a new process for blending coffee. Instead of brewing the blend together, each different bean is brewed and dried separately, then combined after the fact. The main benefit here is being able to customize brewing parameters for each individual coffee. But I'm also excited about what this means for creating custom blends on the fly in smaller batches. Being able to tune the balance very well post brew. Different combinations could be A/B tested with a much faster iteration cycle for instance.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
UK Porn Block Could Be a Ticking ‘Privacy Timebomb’ - Prickly_Pear https://digit.fyi/uk-porn-block-could-be-a-ticking-privacy-timebomb/ ====== astazangasta I'll never understand the British tolerance of ubiquitous surveillance. The CCTV regime is appalling and makes me never want to visit. The Internet censorship by government is absurd, patronizing and infantilizing. (Yes, I'm familiar with the argument that it is "voluntary" since private carriers choose to implement it). Americans at least have a nominal demand for these sorts of civil liberties and raise some kind of objection to these things. Do folks in the UK feel differently? How could such draconian measures have appeared in a free society? ~~~ johnday > The CCTV regime is appalling and makes me never want to visit. You understand that the vast majority of CCTV is privately operated, right? It's not like there's some universal network of cameras being watched extensively for naughty behaviour. ~~~ NikkiA And AFAIR was overtaken by US private CCTV monitoring about 10 years ago. ~~~ NeedMoreTea The UK ones are covered by GDPR and other restrictions on what you can do with the camera footage and how long you can keep it. ------ LinuxBender None of this was ever really required. All that was required was: 1) Make a law requiring all websites that allow user contributed content to enable RTA headers within {n} period of time. 2) Then make a law requiring all browsers and web apps look for that header and enforce parental controls within {y} period of time. That's it. That puts the control in the hands of the parents and lets them decide if their progeny are ready for adult content. No need to give up PII. ------ waldorf58 For a party whose supporters harp on about ‘sovereignty of the individual’ so often, the Conservatives don’t half like to intrude into people’s private lives. Why is it always sex-related?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why tech conferences are the worst place to demo tech products. - technologizer http://technologizer.com/2010/07/13/why-tech-conferences-are-now-the-worst-place-to-demo-tech-products/ ====== pedalpete I think the best advice is to just run a local version. That way you are guaranteed to not have a connectivity issue. Even if you're on mobile, with local storage, you should be able to get a working demo to show-off. Those who are interested can then go and check out your site or app on their own time when they have a reliable connection.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook – You are the Product - rditooait https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product ====== notadoc I stopped using Facebook years ago and I could not recommend it more. I found it to be mental pollution at best and and a total waste of time. If you want to 'keep in touch' with people, call or text them. Make an effort to actually interact with the people who matter to you. ~~~ parthdesai So tell me, how do i replace around 5 different group chats i have on messenger which can have anywhere between 5-10 people in each chat? Music events that i go to are exclusively promoted on facebook. How do you recommend i find out about these events so that i can get a cheaper ticket price? if anyone wants to organize a plan that has more than 8 people, facebook groups make it much much easier. I personally hate facebook's mobile apps and some it's policies ( Internet.org comes 1st to my mind), but it's hard to completely stop using it. ~~~ abyssin I stopped using the harmful part of Facebook, ie the newsfeed, which is designed to create an addictive behaviour, using the following technique. On every single post in my newsfeed, I tell the application I no longer want to see content from the source. It takes some weeks to dry up, but you end up with an empty page. You still get notifications related to your events, group activities, and you can still use the messages. By the way, here's another tip, if you want to read and send messages on mobile without installing the app: use mbasic.fb.com instead of the default m.facebook.com URL. ~~~ rdruxn There are dozens of browser extensions that just hide the newsfeed. No need to go through all that labor. ~~~ ck425 None that work with Chrome Android though. :( ~~~ tripzilch But Chrome Android doesn't let you use extensions, period. Not really sure why you'd want to use it :-) ------ olympus I'm here to fix some ignorance, since the source of the "you are the product" idea is not these books. Metafilter user blue_beetle first put this idea online when he said "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold" in response to the Digg revolt of 2010. The idea apparently existed for a few decades prior regarding TV advertising. I prefer to think blue_beetle was the one who brought it into the zeitgeist. [http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven- discontent](http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent) [http://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/16/product/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/16/product/) Edit: Alex3917 posted a similar idea on HN on 6 May 2010, beating blue_beetle by a couple months. Gotta give credit where it's due: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15030959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15030959) ~~~ cortesoft I really don't like that phrase; you are NOT the product that facebook creates. Facebook creates a product which is a social media network. You PAY for that product with your data and your eyeballs. Facebook takes your payment, turns around, and sells it to advertisers and others interested in the data. That is not the same as saying you are the product. ~~~ jeffdavis Fisherman don't create fish. They lure them in with bait, trap them, and sell them. ~~~ CalChris Most of the fish you eat is farmed fish. ------ akeck I wonder if, in the future, being able not to be on any social media will be an higher class privilege. ~~~ olympus I think it already is. I recently deleted my FB and Twitter accounts. I had to keep my LinkedIn account because a recruiter told me that if I didn't have at least some online persona then I was weird and wouldn't be hired. I guess I'm not rich enough to delete all my social media. ~~~ turc1656 Fascinating that a recruiter actually told you that. I wonder if it's actually true or if the recruiter was saying that because...they are a recruiter and having people on LinkedIn makes their life easier. ~~~ glitcher Do not underestimate the lengths recruiters (or anyone in charge of hiring for that matter) will go to in order to paint a picture of who they think you are solely based on the social media content they are able to find (or not find) on you. I have a common name, and have been passed over for job opportunities because someone else in my city with my same name at one point had a facebook account full of obscenities. ------ phatbyte I dropped all my social networks in the beginning of the year. I did for two main reasons. First, for privacy concerns. FB, specially was getting to creepy for me. I felt, every action I did was being analyzed and filtered, I felt like I was a lab rat. The fact that these companies know so much about us is pretty scary, I felt like I needed to regain my privacy, fight the system somehow. Second reason was because, I wasn't getting anything substantial that could improve my life overall. All I saw was dumb-ass posts, ignorant comments, the passive aggressiveness, the "look at me doing this really mundane thing, but please like my picture so I can feel validated", etc... feels like a mouse-cat race to see which of us has a better life or something. I honestly feel bad for how much time I spent there when I could apply that time to learn new things. After more than 6 months without FB, here's what I've learned: \- I still keep in touch with my closest friends, we chat on slack/iMessage every day. It's actually a good way to know who really misses you, during this time, only about 5% of my FB friends reached out to me through message or phone to ask how were things in life. The other 95%, I really don't even remember most of their names anymore. Just ask yourselves, why do we have to share so much of our lives with so many "friends"? I know we can filter, and create groups, etc.. but damn...do you really want to spend your life "managing" relationships, to see who sees what? I find that tiresome. \- I don't feel left out of anything, because I keep track of local events using other sources, I read news from faithful websites, and if I need to share anything I just use the old email or show face-to-face any pictures I need of my latest vacation from my phone without having to share anything with anyone. \- I gain more time, less stress, I don't feel overwhelmed to keep track of every social media update. I just don't care. If something important happens I will know it sooner or later. \- I no longer have this need to constantly keep posting photos of what I'm doing outdoors or whatever. I don't have the need to feel validated by anyone but myself. \- But most importantly, I regained my privacy, or at least my social footprint is bare none at this point. I'm using uBlock, Firefox, DuckDuckGo and other tools to keep trackers at bay. I may never completely win this war, but at least my habits aren't being recorded and feed to any ML algorithm. ------ grwthckrmstr I'm using Facebook to earn my "fuck you money". The advertising tools are so powerful it is downright scary, the level of targeting one can do using it is just insane. That's partly the reason why I stopped posting updates. After seeing the depth of the advertising tools. I don't use Facebook for posting personal updates anymore but only to fuel my business. I realise that the only way I can "choose" to stay out of all these services that track and sell our identity to advertisers is if I have "fuck you money" (money is the currency you exchange for your limited time in order to survive in this world). ~~~ ionised So you don't like Facebook tracking and advertising to you but you happily make your money using those tools you describe as downright scary on others? Does this not scream hypocrisy to you? ------ adrianlmm I've been using Facebook for years, awesome tool, I'm in contact with friends, relatives and parters, it is awesome. ~~~ adrianlmm Why the mod downs? It makes you angry that I find Facebook useful? ~~~ wepple Perhaps your comment didn't add anything useful to the discussion other than a lightweight opinion? However, HN downvotes do seem to be trending toward "I disagree" recently too, in my experience. ~~~ Karunamon As if these constant digs at Facebook amount to deep nuance? By all means, if you can't use a website without becoming addicted to it, disconnect. But there's no need to damn everyone else with the "that's exactly what an addict would say" kafkatrap rhetoric that seems to be so popular every time the topic comes up. ------ amrrs Cal Newport has been saying things like Facebook and other SM are engineered to be addictive and we've constantly seeing Youths falling for it. Adam Alter made a similar comment that when we've got a proper regulation for substances, why not for something like social media? Fb is not just making us another node in a vast network graph but also ensuring a worst boring grown-ups who can't do anything worthy but post an Fb post condemning something and feeling great about their social responsibility. ------ occultist_throw Indeed. Any service online, where you do not explicitly pay money for goods/services rendered, you can rest assured that you are paying with data or influence (advertisement). HN is no different. They control the news, and how the news is displayed. They run the YCombinator venture capital fund. You do not pay them, but they control influence (advertising). I would expect different if I paid YC for news access... But I dont. ~~~ drewmol That line is increasingly blurred. Premium(payed) services also data mine, and I find it increasingly difficult to tell to what extent. As long as you collect a trove of data, and that data has market value, I generally expect it to be sold/used for profit. Edit: grammar ------ kristianc > Whatever comes next will take us back to those two pillars of the company, > growth and monetisation. Growth can only come from connecting new areas of > the planet. This is a questionable assertion. Giant tech companies like Oracle and IBM don't tend to expand in this way, they make acquisitions of smaller companies, and use them to enhance the platform capabilities of the larger product. I'm sure Zuck will be delighted if the "bottom billion" do all sign up and use Facebook, but they're never going to be massively profitable accounts. Imo the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp show the way that Facebook will go - Instagram adds a new and lucrative ad format, a profitable user segment and a base for adding in ideas from other platforms, such as Snapchat. WhatsApp builds out Facebook's graph and can be mined for intel. ------ justaguy2017 I don't understand the problem, you can use Facebook for adding friends and messaging them and it's free. You can use Facebook Messenger, not use the app and use website for adding people and getting their information. The newsfeed there can be turned off or customised, if you do install the app, all notifications can be turned off. This is a good and free service, but if people don't know hot to use it, maybe there is a point in writing about it. Messages about deleting Facebook account seem counterproductive, because why throw away a good tool if you use it rarely and it's useful? ~~~ hohenheim It seems you didn't read the text. The point the article is making is not about how to use the Facebook and its set of features. I will not try to create a TL;DR in a comment as that would not do justice to the article, but please read it. It might help you understand why it is "free". You be the judge of if that is good or bad. ------ nsnick The real problem with Facebook is that it causes depression. No one posts anything bad about their lives so your life looks terrible in comparison to the image everyone is posting. ------ 0xfaded I log in whenever I need to use messenger, about once every three months. Was greeted with a notification telling me it had been 258 weeks since I last updated my profile. :) ~~~ yoz-y Facebook has been slowly making messenger worse though. They have added the stupid status updates which nobody in my circle uses. Before I knew that when I got to messenger I would only have conversations, now I dread that they will slowly transform it into yet another "platform". It would be a right move for them probably, going mobile first like WeChat did in China, still it is probably the only "messaging only" platform which people around me use. ------ taytus I haven't used FB in the last 6 months or so. I'm mentally healthier. ------ nawgszy There is a certain irony in an article criticizing of Facebook as a data- retailer disguised as a free service being "free with exchange of an email address". ------ booleandilemma I think every adult who uses FB is aware of this and they don't care. FB users self-select for people who don't care that a company productizes them. ------ sametmax I read more and more articles and comments about things we've been saying for years. How come you wake up now and say that like it's a surprise ? ~~~ hk__2 Every time I think something like this, I remember that xkcd [1] about people learning things you already know, especially the mouseover text. [1]: [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/) ~~~ MattSayar On the comics front, I've seen this comic since at least 2013 [http://computerfloss.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/08/facebook...](http://computerfloss.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/08/facebook-and-you.jpg) ------ noncoml It's been years since I deleted my Facebook account, I do use WhatsApp though, and I don't feel like I am missing up on anything. ~~~ bauerd Deleted my Facebook account two months ago, but kept the Messenger for keeping up with a handful of friends. Haven't missed the newsfeed spam a day since! Rest assured you're not missing out ~~~ edison85 Is it actually possible to keep messenger without Facebook? Because Facebook is a complete time wasting, spam filled, mind dulling echo chamber platform that I keep going back to due to habit. If I log out or deactivate I completely don't care after a few days, but messenger is essential to me. ~~~ bauerd Yes, and I didn't know that either until I tried it out. My regular FB account is "deactivated", but Messenger works just fine. They seem to have decoupled both products some time ago. ~~~ chickenfries Wait, that's awesome. I've been using news feed eradicator but now you're telling me that I can delete my Facebook account and still have a messenger account? Does that messenger account work for "sign in with facebook" buttons? For example, the only way to authenticate with Tinder is a Facebook account. ~~~ bauerd No, you can't use the Messenger account for authentication. At least for Tinder I can confirm it doesn't work, maybe there's an OAuth provider for Messenger that no one uses, idk ------ jellicle I hope people are ready for Facebook to be fully integrated into Zuckerberg's political campaign. ------ wentoodeep Messenger bot platform is the only reason I turned back to facebook. ------ tehlike i am not using facebook actively, but still have my account. have been so much happier since i started doing this. ------ lanevorockz Isn't it also true for Google ?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Learn Morse code - daenney https://www.morsecode.io ====== timonoko I totally learned. What do I do with the skill?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Facebook Getting It Wrong Pays More Than Getting It Right - iProject http://observer.com/2012/09/broken-on-purpose/ ====== morgannnn I'm surprised this doesn't bother more people. Especially because facebook, etc. are so open about their policies. Holiday claims this will make Facebook go by the way of Myspace, but I'm not as sure. I think too many people are too invested. ------ billyb2 It's scary that something like this does (and no doubt will) happen. As the saying goes: always follow the money. What other companies do this? ~~~ sddulaney I think you'd be surprised - these types of tactics seem to be the rule and not the exception these days based on the way that these sites are set up.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dmr: Odd Comments and Strange Doings in Unix - robinhouston http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html ====== un1xl0ser In regards to /* You are not expected to understand this */, the most resonating part of the example was the fact that it didn't work at all the way the implementor expected it to. I sometimes come across comments that were written when the code was meant to be consumed by one person where a well needed explanation is missing. This is a mistake that I sometimes make myself; I feel we all do. What I sometimes don't realize early enough, in testing and debugging strange behavior is that the code may not have ever worked the way the person expected. I had a need to implement some fairly trivial case folding in C (I was/am a noob at C). The code was meant to check a policy database to see if something was allowed or denied. Some policy decisions were deemed critical and therefore hard coded, and they happened to be the easiest ones to test with so I changed one character of each case and expected it to fail the static check and move on to the database lookup. After an hour of testing without a debugger and reviewing only my code that changed, I broke out GDB and noticed where the problem was. The code that I assumed working was broken. The code had an \|\| where an && was desired in an optimization to avoid comparing the strings if the length wasn't the same. If I had added a character, I would have never noticed the bug. ------ cstross Some UNIXen had distinctly ... odd ... error messages in the old days. Including kernels dmr had nothing to do with. One day in 1996 I was in the NOC of a certain ISP in London when I noticed folks crowding around a terminal. I shambled over to see what had gotten their attention. This ISP ran a lot of NetBSD boxes (for security reasons). Lo and behold, there was a strange message on the console: Alien abduction overflow: core dumped. (I never did learn just what triggered that one, but I heard it made it back to the kernel developers by way of a bug report.) ~~~ 1amzave Of course there's always the classic "lp0 on fire!", but I think most people know about that one. Also, I've noticed that when GNU screen crashes, it prints "Suddenly the Dungeon collapses!! - You die..." (though I think that may be dependent on nethack-mode). I've yet to decide whether I think that makes the crash more or less infuriating. ------ tmsh This guy seems like a pretty amazing C hacker. ~~~ Stratoscope Yeah, I wonder who this dmr guy was, anyway. He sure seemed to know a lot about C. It sounds like he worked at Bell Labs - maybe he knew the guys who wrote the language!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
CitySourced: Lessons learned from our TC50 experience - aditya http://blog.freedomspeaks.com/index.php/88/drinking-from-the-fire-hose-our-tc50-experience/ ====== dondenald Neat demo. Nitpick: the presenter's nervousness made it uncomfortable to watch. Between his dry-mouth clicks and swallows, long verbal gaps & unproductive chatter (..."that concludes that demo...") - i had a constant "edge-of-my-seat" anticipation of something about to go wrong.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Useful Emacs Hacks - dskhatri http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60367/the-single-most-useful-emacs-feature ====== dskhatri I have been a light Emacs user for a few years now. I was so thrilled about discovering Org-Mode through an HN post [1], I went out looking for other cool Emacs hacks and found this Stackoveflow thread that has a number of them. Generally, I wouldn't link to a Stackoverflow question but this one has a number of great tips. [1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=651459>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sony adopts, then drops, Cocoa-like GNUStep - teamonkey http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/11/27/sony_adopts_then_drops_cocoa_like_gnustep_plans_to_rival_apple_ios.html ====== sudont This is a cold war. God knows who pressured Sony to drop it, it was a fairly novel move and generated a _ton_ of developer interest. Oracle, Microsoft, Google, or was it even Apple, trying to retain language exclusivity? It’s probably more mundane, like some pointy-haired boss who likes how internet-y “.net” sounds. ------ teamonkey <http://snap.sonydeveloper.com/> SNAP development is currently on hold	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Startups Fail (infographic based on Startup Genome data) - danberger http://visual.ly/why-startups-fail ====== mattront "Inconsistent startups write 3.4 times more lines of code in the Discovery stage and 2.25 times more lines of code in the Efficiency stage." This is interesting. Either inconsistent startups (startups that are more likely to fail) over-do development - or - they tackle problems that are more complex and thus require more code. The implication of the later point is that startups working on difficult problems are more likely to make mistakes (like premature scaling) and fail. ~~~ sthlm I always find there to be a very poor correlation between complexity, quality or efficiency and lines of code written. Therefore, I find the conclusion that they over-do development or approach more complex problems highly questionable. It might just be that they are not the most thoughtful programmers. This would go along much better with inconsistency. Instead of developing software, you set your mind on scaling fast, write a bunch of code and fall into the inconsistent startup category. ------ todsul I'm sceptical about the usefulness of the dataset. One of the first things we learn as startup founders (or interns for Dr House) is that if you ask a person to analyse or predict their own behaviour, chances are the answer is way off. Even upon careful reflection and introspection, too many biases are at play. I first learned this doing customer development for our current startup. We surveyed potential customers until almost being arrested at a private conference. We thought "this time is different" because we planned to validate the concept until we went numb. But we relied too much on others' self- assessments. I'm not suggesting self-assessment is pointless (clearly it underpins our personal development), but rather in fleeting engagements with people who lack vested interest (e.g. surveys), it can do more harm than good. Additionally, I found the Startup Genome survey so long-winded that my answers ended up being rubbish. It would have taken all day to get passed my own biasses and really think through that many questions. I understand there's more to the project than the survey, but that's the part I'm particularly sceptical about. ~~~ truthseeker * But we relied too much on others' self-assessments.* Can you explain? Do you mean customer development brings in everyone's biases into the picture and not the truth? What do you think is a better way to do customer development? ~~~ todsul Not _all_ customer development, but the flavour we practiced, which mostly involved just asking people how/what/why they did what they did. Imagine a scale that represents the strength of positive signals you get from data collected during customer development. At one extreme, you have weak signals from potential customers who just _say_ they'll use your product. At the other extreme, you have strong signals from potential customers who _part with cold hard cash_ and sign multi-year contracts (despite not having a product yet). When we first tested our concept, we focussed on the following: * Just doing customer development (it was a big step and an exciting new world) * Building a big sample set ("if we're going to do it, let's do it right") But, in retrospect, * We were oblivious to (the lack of) positive signal strength * We too quickly dismissed negative signals as "people outside our market" So the intention was there, and man we worked hard at it, but the data was useless and our analysis was heavily biased. Sounds harsh to say it was _useless_ , but it really was. We learned very little from talking to hundreds of people. Of course we learned how to better do customer development next time, which was/is invaluable. I think when you ask people about their behaviour and whether they'd use your product, they're likely to err on the side of politeness. That's a serious problem for concept validation. But ask them for cash, and politeness takes a back seat. Also, just asking if someone will _use your product_ introduces bias already. It's a leading question. You could instead ask the following: * "What are your top 5 interests?" * If they mention your industry or niche, continue with... * "What are your top 5 problems relating to X-interest?" * If they mention a problem your concept solves, then record a weak positive signal * Describe your concept/solution/product... * If they're willing to provide an email address, increase signal strength * If they're willing to sign-up for a trial, increase... * Pay deposit, increase... etc Long story short, I think signal strength and honest analysis is the key to validating a concept. It takes some real hustle to get financial commitments for non-existent products, but hey, that's what differentiates founders. ~~~ truthseeker Thank you for the awesome and detailed response. Those are pitfalls I can definitely try to avoid for my venture. Lot of what I am learning from entrepreneurship are things I read over and over again but you don't own the advice until you experience it. ------ projectileboy Great content; fair-to-poor presentation. The designers should re-read Tufte. ------ binarysolo Love the Startup Genome Project report... great idea well executed by some ambitious folks. re: infographic... I guess I'm kinda old-school, but I'm in the camp of data lovers who sees the utility of infographics as one that enriches viewers by easily bringing to light some otherwise difficult-to-intuit metrics and comps. This is a really pretty picture, but don't treat it as a TL;DR version of the actual thing, which I find much more informative: <http://startupgenome.cc/> ------ chintan ouch.. that infographic hurts! pls don't call it an infographic. Thank You. ------ bragen I'm left unsure how they define "premature scale." If they simply mean "started paying more for customers than they're worth, and doing so on a massive scale," then, well, duh. It would be more interesting to know what successful startups do at Stage 3. I doubt it's just wait longer. ~~~ maxmarmer We just wrote up a more detailed post here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2952799> We elaborate on what to do in the efficiency stage both in the report and in the benchmarking tool <https://beta.startupgenome.cc/> ~~~ bragen Wow, impressively thorough. Kudos.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Judge extends ban on 3D printed guns - RobertSmith http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/403811-judge-extends-ban-on-3d-printed-guns ====== akvadrako My favourite quote from the ruling: _> First, it is not clear how available the nine files are: the possibility that a cybernaut with a BitTorrent protocol will be able to find a file in the dark or remote recesses of the internet does not make the posting to Defense Distributed’s site harmless._ [https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4784902/3D-Guns-S...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4784902/3D-Guns- Seattle-20180827.pdf) ~~~ mlindner You can google the files, hardly "dark web".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Health Surveillance Tech for Athletes Could Come to an Office Near You - AdroitLake http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2015/09/14/health-surveillance-tech-athletes-sport/ ====== a3n This would be great data for one team to steal from another.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Droids Will Replace Work? - srid68 http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.sg/2012/09/can-fed-fight-droids-and-win-apples.html ====== jhartmann Maybe this isn't the best article, but this is definitely a conversation worth having. I'm sure this would not come as a surprise to any of us here. Most of the technical people here do things that make these sorts of things possible. I agree with the Author that we have not seen anything yet. There are lots of things behind closed doors that are only going to make this worse. I'm not sure though that this will just cause lower prices. It could potentially completely reshape our economy. I believe that a large swath of people could find their jobs disappear over the next 10-15 years, and this could have crushing implications to our economy. If people do not have money to spend at the bottom of the economy, a large portion of our GDP would disappear virtually overnight on nation timescales. Here is a quick back of the envelope: Given that 44% percent of the GDP went to wages and salaries and that nearly 1/4 of workers make less than $10 dollars an hour. There are roughly 36,685,750 people in low wage jobs. They make 5% of the share of GDP, or 12% of the wage pool. Many of these jobs will be eliminated. There are lots of higher wage jobs that might be automated away as well that I'm not even going to make an attempt to calculate the impact. While this might mean record corporate profits in the short term, eventually 25% of the workforce could be without jobs. People in these low wage jobs tend to always spend their whole paycheck, so there is a lot of economic activity that is going to be eliminated, and we will have to spend record amounts on assistance when it happens. We are really headed into another phase of our society like the industrial revolution, however this time the revolution is on performance enhancing drugs. It will be interesting how it plays out. While it is a bit dystopian, if you haven't read Manna by Marshall Brain I would suggest you google it. While it is fiction, it is definitely gives you some things to think about. ------ super-serial "The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play." - Arthur C Clarke If everyone is unemployed who pays their bills? Well the idea is that necessities become so cheap that people could pay for everything with what unemployed get in food stamps... These unemployed will need low cost robo-housing (housing made by robots), low cost robo-healthcare (fully automated health-care clinics), and low cost robo- food (sheets of meat grown in robot factories). Hopefully those things will accompany the driver-less cars and retail-bots that replace all workers in stores and on the road. People think "who will pay to maintain, or manufacture these robots?" Memristor-powered conscious robots will laugh at these types of questions... because that's primitive humanoid thinking. The robots of the future will explain they can "print" themselves, and because of new advances in materials science, and non-silicon low-cost electronics, hundreds of robots could be made for every person that exists on earth, per day... if needed. Don't want to eat meat grown in a laboratory??? Don't want to trust your health to fully-automated robots??? Don't want to live in a robo-built trailer??? Then get a job programming robots! ------ truebecomefalse flagged as blogspam.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Work Online? My Insight Into Setting An Hourly Rate - MatCarpenter http://www.sofamoolah.com/blogging/work-online-my-insight-into-setting-an-hourly-rate/ ====== Vitaly It's pretty simple actually. Evey time you are overwhelmed with work, rise the rate. If you don't have enough work for a prolonged amount of time, lower it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
LLVM Europe 2012: A Portable C++/CLI Compiler - voodoochilo http://www.atoker.com/blog/2012/04/12/llvm-europe-2012-cli-compiler/ ====== j_s I couldn't tell if the Nuanti C++/CLI compiler was something that was open source, or if it was the secret sauce that Nuanti uses to port native projects (mostly WebKit) to Silverlight / .NET apps. ------ jervisfm Does anyone know if this would be made publicly available ? I couldn't find a download link to the compiler. ------ gtrgrtgtr <http://root.cern.ch/drupal/>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why is the Daily Mail website so successful? - arihelgason http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/15/mailonline-daily-mail-website ====== arihelgason Apart from this, they have also done a phenomenal job at SEO.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Hacker News and Top Comment - growt http://newsx.de/ ====== growt Creator here. A while ago I found a link here to "Silent HN" which was HN without any comments. That experiment got me thinking how I use HN. When I observed how I use this site I realized that most often I would open the link to the discussion to read the top comment. Sometimes to explain what the linked stuff is about and sometimes to get an opinion about it. So I created Hacker News + Top Comment, which displays the Top Comment along with the headline in one big list. I found it to be really useful for the way in which I read HN. Maybe some of you like it too. Of course I'm open for suggestions and discussion.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
VSCode silently opts you in to data collection - alangibson https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/faq#_how-to-disable-telemetry-reporting ====== tapirl I disabled the telemetry feature before, but the latest vsc version reverts it to enabled automatically, holy creepy. And the latest version introduces many other data collection ways. Search them in settings with the keyword "online", you will find them all. Don't know whether or not there are other hidden ways which are not shown in the setting page. ~~~ nathantotten I’d file a bug. This is almost certainly not intentional. ~~~ blibble yeah just like for every large Windows update your default browser accidentally gets reset to MS Edge totally a bug ~~~ KyeRussell Microsoft is a very big company and I have absolutely no doubt that the Windows team and the VSCode team hardly ever—if at all—talk. I also question how 'evil' policies like this could propagate across company divisions to the point where they are actually implemented in code—in today's age where engineers have a lot of agency over what they do and often speak up—without someone leaking said policy. This is just a conspiracy theory. ~~~ bostik Or perhaps a result of tying team bonuses and promotions to "increased coverage", whatever that means for each product. Not necessarily malicious - just myopic. ------ tmkbry [https://imgur.com/a/wii2zVT](https://imgur.com/a/wii2zVT) is what everybody gets when starting VSCode for the first time. ~~~ samuelg123 I’d argue this isn’t enough. They should explicitly ask, especially when you’re using the application to handle sensitive material such as unreleased code. ~~~ rhizome It's user-hostile, business-unfriendly, and completely intentional. ~~~ WalterGR Which information that VSCode sends as part of the telemetry are user- and business-hostile? ~~~ rhizome I was referring to the content of the notification dialog. ------ sam0x17 This is why it is a great idea to use VSCodium. An open source fork of VSCode that removes telemetry and packages itself for all major operating systems. [https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium](https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium) ~~~ smartbit _After installing VSCodium, you must manually disable telemetry in your settings file to stop it from sending tracking data to Microsoft._ [https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#getting-all-the- telemet...](https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#getting-all-the-telemetry- out) ~~~ macns _Even though we do not pass the telemetry build flags (and go out of our way to cripple the baked-in telemetry), Microsoft will still track usage by default. After installing VSCodium, you must manually disable telemetry in your settings file to stop it from sending tracking data to Microsoft. The instructions here and here help with disabling telemetry._ ~~~ kardos Good first issue for a new contributor? ------ nathantotten I know a lot of people don’t like things like this, but also remember not all data collection is malicious. If you look at what they actually collect it’s not pulling a bunch of personal info. They collect usage, perf and errors. As a product manager (not for vsc or MS) I use this type of telemetry all the time to make priorization decisions. It’s a balance, but my hunch is the team at MS uses this info exclusively to make the product better. Of course, you should always be able to disable this sort of collection. ~~~ TheAceOfHearts No, you should ALWAYS explicitly ask for user consent. You should explain exactly what kind of data is being collected and how it's used and ask them if they are fine with that. Anything else is unethical. I'll happily enable certain kinds of data collection when a tool is transparent and it makes its data collection opt-in. ~~~ arghwhat I'm a privacy advocate, but I'm 100% okay with on-by-default error collection, as long as the logging is scrubbed of personal data. Usage analysis is different, and should be opt-in. ~~~ mrob Even if we accept that scrubbing of personal data is possible, which is far from certain, that theoretically non-malicious traffic still provides camouflage for malicious traffic. If we insist on opt-in, then we can apply a very simple and fail-safe heuristic: any traffic the user didn't explicitly request is malicious. There's no need for slow and error-prone analysis. ~~~ arghwhat And how in the world do you intend to distinguish traffic? How do you intend to tell the difference between Atom's and VSCode's Git(hub) integration, app updater, package manager, telemetrics or an exploitation? The difference between a Signal, WhatsApp or Telegrams' messages and their telemetrics? Your proposed heuristic only works for applications that would not otherwise have any network traffic, and even then, only if you do on-machine per-process network monitoring. Once it has any valid traffic what-so-ever (which is the case for basically any modern GUI application), then you quickly descend into needing to disassemble binaries locate the cause. Opt-in vs. opt-out is about privacy and rights, not about security. Malicious companies whose traffic are a security breach and things down those lines are problems that belong in an entirely different discussion, whose root-cause is much deeper than opt-in vs. opt-out. Also, regarding scrubbing: A stack-trace and error message is far from private identifying information. No harm done in sharing it. ~~~ mrob >Git(hub) integration If I select a git command from a GUI, that's an explicit request by the user. >app updater, package manager If something legitimately requires background network activity, and security updates might qualify, it should go in Crontab. The system should have exactly one package manager, and apps should not re-implement their own. >telemetrics If I turn it on, I'll remember I turned it on. ~~~ arghwhat None of this makes any sense unless you're manually authorizing _all_ connect()/write() calls, manually monitor network traffic and correlate it in real-time with user actions, or have some form of surveillance software to automatically do this for you. All of these seem extremely improbable. Otherwise, on the network, git fetch and telemetrics to github will be indistinguishable (except if you start doing opaque data pattern analysis). There's also no automatic correlation on the network. On the machine itself, the closes you could get is something like Little Snitch, which _still_ won't be able to help at all, as permitting Atom to speak to Github on port 443 will permit everything while disallowing will block everything, and it's also designed to be a manually populated whitelist, rather than a constant authorization system. > If something legitimately requires background network activity, and security > updates might qualify, it should go in Crontab. The system should have > exactly one package manager, and apps should not re-implement their own. First of all, eww. Nothing is worse than updates running on a crontab, causing shit to break because it updated automatically. Also, welcome to 2018. Everything outside Linux bundle their own updater, and on Linux, flatpak and other newfangled things bypass most package managers (even with dnf's flatpak integration, it's still not going through any yum repos). ------ krn How is VSCode different from Firefox? Both have telemetry enabled by default, and both allow to opt out of it[1]. [1] [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/privacy/firefox/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/) ~~~ WalterGR _How is VSCode different from Firefox? Both have telemetry enabled by default_ Yep. So does Google Chrome, Apple macOS, Apple iOS, Canonical Ubuntu, and an uncountable number of programs, apps, and websites. But VSCode is a Microsoft product, so it gives us an opportunity to do some serious pearl clutching and collectively lose our shit. ~~~ alangibson The issue isn't that it's MS. The issue is that it is opt-out, not opt-in. Has nothing to do with who's pulling the shenanigans. ~~~ Buge Firefox is also opt-out. ~~~ NeedMoreTea It's not silent though. You get a little banner at the bottom of the start page on first run and a button to go straight to the preferences option. ~~~ WalterGR _It 's not silent though._ Neither is VSCode. How is Firefox morally superior than VSCode in this regard then? ~~~ NeedMoreTea "VSCode silently opts you in to data collection" Sure seems that way. Never had any prompts about it. ~~~ WalterGR The title of this post is FUD. Look for the comment here that says _[https://imgur.com/a/wii2zVT](https://imgur.com/a/wii2zVT) is what everybody gets when starting VSCode for the first time._ (It’s the 2nd highest top level comment at the moment.) ------ userbinator Unless it's otherwise known, I think it's safe to assume that every not-tiny application contains phone-home spyware these days. It's not long ago when that wasn't the case, and many users had application firewalls that would alert (and block by default) such attempts. I'd say Win10 was probably the "breaking point" for such behaviour being normalised. I'm one of those (probably tiny minority) who inspect the binaries of closed- source applications before using them, and will reject those containing networking-related functionality if the application should have no reason to do so. ~~~ mygo why not use something like Little Snitch or even TripMode to add opt-in functionality for all apps trying to make network connections? ~~~ gpm Along these lines for linux. I've got some hacky scripts set up on my computer so that everything runs in a network namespace with only a loopback device (i.e. no internet) unless I start it by typing `net command` (like `sudo command` but for internet). I could post them if people are interested. ------ brett40324 When I first installed vscode, I assumed this was the case and yep, there it was buried in preferences. Disable all of it, including automatic updates. When you want to update, uninstall and install again fresh. Then disable again. Repeat. ------ paglia_s Has everyone already forgotten about GDPR? ~~~ ygra Is this personally identifiable information? If not, then the GDPR has nothing to do with it. ~~~ _trampeltier Having names besides the bell in a apartment building is forbidden. GDPR is fun ... [https://wien.orf.at/news/stories/2941086/](https://wien.orf.at/news/stories/2941086/) ~~~ mschuetz Read the article before spouting nonsense. You're free to attach your name to the bell if you want for whatever reason. Only landlords are now not allowed to attach your name to the doorbell by default in Austria, and apparently they weren't allowed to do so since 1980 but it's only being enforced now. ------ kgwxd At least they changed the code names, it used to be "telemetry.optIn = true", showing how little they understand the term opt-in. ------ type0 Any reason why Microsofts own extensions are not able use the global settings disabling telemetry? [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-docs- authoring/blob/mast...](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-docs- authoring/blob/master/docs-markdown/src/telemetry/telemetry.ts) ~~~ CamperBob2 Because then they don't get to hoover up as much of your data. ------ xte I have Emacs, why bother with other limited editors? Emacs can do what they do + far, far more so... ------ rubiquity When Microsoft bought GitHub I didn’t think about GitHub Enterprise revenue. I thought about all of the language package managers that use GitHub’s APIs for downloading repos. ------ purplezooey _... extensions may be collecting their own usage data and are not controlled by the telemetry.enableTelemetry..._ wtf. So it's like whack-a-mole. ------ algorithm_dk Nothing new here, VSCode had this for a long time. Also I don't find anything wrong with shipping software with data collection on by default. ------ naikrovek If someone wants to try to explain to me why the collection of application telemetry is bad, that'd be great. ~~~ alangibson It's not inherently bad. Collecting telemetry on an opt-out basis, as opposed to opt-in, is. ------ frogperson Is there a plug-in that pops a big red warning when telemetry is turned on? That's woul be very useful. ------ electic I guess this might be a precursor to the type of behavior we can expect to see with the GitHub acquisition. Secondly, is there anyone out there that has a solid emacs step by step guide that might be able to replicate the functionality of vscode? I haven't had time to look at it but I think the time has come where I can't put it off any longer. ------ anonlastname is this at all surprising given that we're talking about the company that made windows? did we forget that for a while it would silently put telemetry in your binaries? ~~~ WalterGR _it would silently put telemetry in your binaries?_ What do you mean? ~~~ anonlastname For a while VS code would do that but they claimed it was an accident. [https://www.geeks3d.com/20160610/vs2015-how-to-remove- window...](https://www.geeks3d.com/20160610/vs2015-how-to-remove-windows- telemetry-function-call-from-your-c-binaries/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Application Bundles for Linux (drag&drop installer) - urlwolf http://www.appbundles.org/ ====== andrewtj I think <http://0install.net> is a better solution as it handles updates and works on multiple platforms. Regardless, unless a couple of major distributions support one of these alternative install systems they're ultimately a futile effort. This is something that's unlikely to change since from a distributions standpoint they don't offer significant advantages over the status quo. As an aside, to anyone considering an alternative install system, please take heed of the PC-BSD folks and bootstrap your package system by generating packages from an existing system. ------ megamark16 This is awesome. I am a big Portable Apps fan (on windows anyway), I've got a folder with most of the apps I use regularly and I just copy it to any new Windows based computer and I'm up and running. It includes: OpenOffice Firefox Opera Putty WinSCP VirtualBox Portable with a WindowsXP development VM (Visual Studio and SQL Server) A ton of other apps that rock But I love Linux and hate that I have to reinstall a ton of stuff every time I setup (or reimage) a workstation.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Microsoft opens cloud services to select Canadian clients with new data centres - ppereira http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/microsoft-opens-cloud-services-to-select-canadian-clients-with-new-data-centres/article29225256/ ====== SteveNuts What a great day for canada, therefore the world ------ drpgq I wonder if it would make sense to have a data centre in Gatineau for the feds to take advantage of the way cheaper electricity in Quebec than Ontario.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
San Francisco’s Dominance Over U.S. Innovation and Technology Patents - jseliger http://www.citylab.com/tech/2016/05/san-franciscos-increasing-dominance-over-us-innovation/484199/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAtlanticCities+%28CityLab%29 ====== PaulHoule People in Peoria pay into pension funds. People in Wall Street invest that money in Silicon Valley startups. Silicon Valley people get rich and look successful because money is being showered on them. People in Peoria lose their jobs because their own money is disinvested from their community and worse, used as a weapon against them. People in Peoria vote for Trump and say "burn baby burn".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
BQ and Canonical Launch the Second Ubuntu Phone - reddotX http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/02/bq-and-canonical-launch-their-second-underwhelming-ubuntu-phone/ ====== thrill I keep thinking it'd have to play well to Canonical's agenda if they'd release Touch on the Note 4. Can they not legally buy the devices, reflash them, and resell them?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is Cold Fusion Finally Being Accepted by Scientists? - andykaufman http://www.cnbc.com/id/48615362 ====== Steuard No. (That was easy.) I'll happily take that back if someone can point to mainstream peer-reviewed publications by at least two independent research groups claiming success with the same approach (or even just closely related approaches). But this article just claims there have been "recent LENR demonstrations at reputable institutions such as MIT, the University of Missouri, and the University of Bologna", without any details and without comment on how those supposed demonstrations were received. What in this article merits any attention at all? ~~~ andreaja As per Betteridge's Law of Headlines[1], "No" is indeed the correct tl;dr for this article. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines> ------ lutusp Who fact checks these articles? A quote: "Back in 1989 two of the greatest electrochemists in the world, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, made a remarkable announcement". Pons and Fleischmann never had that reputation before the cold fusion brouhaha, and certainly not afterward, to some extent because of how they mishandled the issue (failing to publish their methods in detail and other problems). " ... no reputable scientists were willing to risk their reputations by pursuing a science that many considered equal to alchemy." This isn't true -- many qualified people performed experiments sufficient to show that there was no there there. Cold Fusion is a dormant field for an excellent reason, and the tendentious tone of the article -- that it's all a conspiracy against a legitimate field -- contradicts the facts. "However, following recent LENR [low energy nuclear reactions] demonstrations at reputable institutions such as MIT, the University of Missouri, and the University of Bologna, ..." Demonstrations? No. Heat generation? Yes. Measured neutron flux (an essential component of evidence for cold fusion)? Zero. How did this article get out of the tinfoil-hat press and into the mainstream press (assuming CNBC has that reputation)? ------ simonster David Goodstein (physics professor at Caltech) wrote this fascinating article in 1994: <http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/fusion_art.html>. I'm not sure the status of cold fusion research hasn't changed much since then. The major problem of "cold fusion" seems not to be that it the findings aren't reproducible (at this point, they have been reported by several labs), but that they aren't consistently reproducible even with the same apparatus. Without knowing which factors determine whether or not excess heat or neutrons are observed in a cold fusion cell, it's impossible to know whether the observed positive results represent mistakes, methodological errors, or bonafide (albeit intermittent) nuclear fusion. ------ jayfuerstenberg This is such a non-article. The optimist in me would like to see cold fusion demonstrated but this article didn't even elaborate on the work MIT is doing and just cites investments as proof that there is some progress being made on this front. ------ tacoboye Adobe joke goes here. ------ shousper Hmm, interesting that you guys are all about facts and convey that without a shred of optimism. Regardless of the source or accuracy of the article, would it not be awesome if the answer was yes? ~~~ dandrews There was a lot of optimism, 20+ years ago. Read up some. If you have _lots_ of time on your hands, peruse the early sci.physics.fusion archives. ------ mchahn Every time a headline ends with a question mark, the answer is NO. (Sorry, I can't remember the sourcce for this quote). ------ googoobaby No - note the article isn't actually a CNBC story but is syndicated from some 5th rate website.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What is the most confusing thing to you in Python? - r0f1 https://dev.to/r0f1/what-is-the-most-confusing-thing-to-you-in-python ====== tdbgamer () is an empty tuple (1,) is a tuple with one element Most small numbers are Singleton's, hardcoded or single character strings are Singletons as well. ------ LarryMade2 Why they aggressively don't support braces in favor of indenting. ------ boznz Why there are two versions.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What you don't like eating - pacifi30 http://nsingh.posterous.com/what-you-dont-like-eating ====== pacifi30 Not just cereals but everything that has a element of horse shit attached to it	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The algorithm police is coming. Will it have teeth? - n_kb https://algorithmwatch.org/en/story/algorithm-police/ ====== OneGuy123 Why do I have a feeling that the way these laws will work will be to add some "academicaly derived, politcaly approved" bias to certain machine learning models to push the results in the "correct" direction? ~~~ subjectsigma That's an unnecessarily cyncial and contrarian view. It's 2020, regulating software and data is a thing (copyright, HIPAA, GDPR, etc). It's about time we get on to regulating software design. We wouldn't regulate drivers and not regulate car manufacturers. ~~~ kian And yet, we also wouldn’t demand car manufacturers change how they build a car because races, sexes, or genders differentially purchase, say, lexuses vs hondas. ------ perpetualpatzer While there's not much meat to the article, the topic of whether and how to police algorithmic decision-making is an interesting one. On the one hand, biased resource allocation can be insidious and giving a free pass to any discrimination that's implemented within a black box labeled "algorithm" seems foolish. On the other hand, none of the alternatives I see: * banning a predefined list of analytical practices, * outlawing a list of input types that may be used, * second-guessing the quality of not-transparently-unjust logic to assign negligence, or * defining a "fair" outcome that's not to be deviated from seem both administrable and sufficient, especially as the stakes go up and complexity necessary to improve decision outcomes becomes more complex (turn left-right-straight given a LIDAR image, predict likelihood to reject an organ given patient history and donor/patient DNA profiles).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ron Rivest on why MD6 was withdrawn from the SHA-3 contest at NIST - soundsop http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cis/md6/OFFICIAL_COMMENT_MD6_2009-07-01.txt ====== scscsc It seems to be a very classy withdrawal. I wonder how much the other candidates satisfy the two 'suggestions'. ~~~ omail You echo Bruce Schneier's sentiments. <http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/07/md6.html> ------ jacquesm In case anybody is interested, the md6 reference implementation is here: [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cis/md6/code/md6_c_code-2009-04-...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cis/md6/code/md6_c_code-2009-04-15.zip) , this was the one submitted to NIST and has now apparently been withdrawn. ------ neilc Note that this is not identical to withdrawing MD6 from the "SHA-3 contest" -- they are just not entering the next round of the contest, because they haven't figured out how to prove the resistance of MD6 to differential attacks while making it as efficient as NIST require. <http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cis/md6/> ------ ars Why not submit it on a provisional basis? i.e. full rounds, and let it be slow. Would NIST reject it outright?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New Chromecast apps for the holidays - rooster8 http://chrome.blogspot.com/2013/12/new-chromecast-apps-for-holidays.html ====== mrt0mat0 when is the chromecast app going to allow me to just select any video that i view on the internet and click the symbol to stream? I know their big worry is probably pirated movies, but that's not what i want. it's for porn. ~~~ seiji iOS (720p) or OS X (1080p) AirPlay video mirroring is what you're looking for. Mavericks even lets you use an AirPlay display (read: AppleTV) as a fully independent 1080p monitor, not just a mirror. ~~~ cromwellian Mirroring from another device is not the same as streaming from a TV connected device. It requires active participation from the mirroring device. ~~~ seiji Streaming from a TV connected device with arbitrary content restrictions is silly. Freedom and whatnot. ~~~ cromwellian The freedom to leave the house and to preserve your battery life is another issue. I often fling videos to my chrome cast for my kids remotely. AirPlay style mirroring is wasteful of bandwidth, battery, it double compresses streams, and adds latency. It's a fallback of last resort IMHO. ------ Splendor From [http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/10/5196076/chromecast- suppor...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/10/5196076/chromecast-support- comes-to-new-apps-vevo-songza-plex) The full list of apps that have added Chromecast support today includes: Songza, Vevo, Plex, Red Bull.TV, Revision 3, PostTV, Viki, BeyondPod, RealPlayer Cloud, Avia ------ josteink Note: Plex-support is currently only for PlexPass subscribers. [http://elan.plexapp.com/2013/12/06/plex-on-the-chromecast- it...](http://elan.plexapp.com/2013/12/06/plex-on-the-chromecast-its- official/) ------ speedyrev If it had Amazon Prime, it would be a perfect match for me. Until then, Roku. ~~~ Crito If only Roku had Youtube, and if only either could do networked files reasonably at the moment... I currently have a chromecast, a roku, and a raspi plugged into my tv. An absurd setup, I really need to invest some time into figuring out something sane. ~~~ ajtaylor I recently bought a Roku 3 and paired it with a FreeNAS server running the Plex media server. Add the Plex channel on the Roku and you get the network file support + Youtube. Getting Plex + Roku setup been the best thing I've done on my home network in years! ------ callahad The "New" labels on [http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/apps...](http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/apps.html) only have "-webkit-transform: rotate(45deg);" set, breaking the design on non- webkit browsers. :( ~~~ paulirish Not great. I'll make sure this is fixed soon. Thanks for the heads up. ~~~ paulirish Fixed. ~~~ callahad Thanks, Paul! ------ ohashi I just wish I could broadcast from VLC. ~~~ amartya916 I'd love this feature! I might be wrong, but I think the VLC devs have to incorporate this using the Chromecast api's? Anyone with the knowledge care to enlighten us? EDIT: Seems like the API only works for Android, iOS and Chrome [https://developers.google.com/cast/reference/](https://developers.google.com/cast/reference/) ------ 0xdeadbeefbabe Deployed military (any nation) or other people with slow or no internet connection would really like to stream movies locally[1] to several screens. They probably bought the movies too. Sure, chromecast can do this via tab sharing, but an app would be nice. Why the obsession for streaming over the internet? [1] [http://www.theonion.com/articles/pentagon-loses-hard- drive-w...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/pentagon-loses-hard-drive-with- all-the-movies-on-i,6822/) ~~~ syntheticnature Hate to share the link again (mentioned above) and seem spammish, but this seems like Avia's primary use case. ------ trimbo Plex support! That's huge. Though, truth be told, my 3 year old Samsung SmartTV is how I've been streaming Plex already, so... ------ nogridbag Oh cool, I never heard of Viki previously. I watch some Korean TV shows like Running Man, but was previously forced to stream the whole Chrome tab. ~~~ bostonpete > Korean TV shows like Running Man I googled this and was relieved to see it isn't actually a TV show that involves gladiators hunting down and killing prisoners. ------ PankajGhosh To use Plex, you need to have a plexpass subscription (I believe this subscription is not required to use Plex on Roku) ~~~ ajtaylor Only until the PlexPass exclusivity window runs out. It's a (cheap) carrot for you to support Plex development. ------ sciurus If only they'd make it a DLNA Digital Media Renderer. You'd then have many choices for playing local content, instead of just Plex. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance) ~~~ syntheticnature It looks like what Avia offers is some form of DLNA: [http://aviatheapp.com/](http://aviatheapp.com/) (scroll, and it's not clear whether they let you grab and then point the renderer at Chromecast or what) ~~~ JshWright I was playing with this a bit earlier today. It's a $3 in-app purchase to enable casting. It was a little wonky (seems like it took a while for the app and the chromecast talk nicely (I'd select the chromecast in aVia and nothing would happen), it took a reboot of both devices to sort it out). Some media (served by Serviio running on a FreeNAS box) worked flawlessly. Some didn't have audio. Haven't spent any time troubleshooting the audio issue. ~~~ rooster8 If you're seeing video playback without audio, it's likely a ChromeCast codec issue. Your best shot at getting that to work well is to transcode your file to have a different audio stream codec using something like Handbrake. ~~~ JshWright That's my guess as well. Fortunately Serviio can transcode on the fly, so it may just be a matter of sorting out the right templates. ------ k-mcgrady Any word on when it'll be available outside the US? I thought at launch they said a few weeks... (or at least 'soon'). ------ joshbaptiste Nice.. having Plex on Chromecast almost makes my Roku 2 useless, almost because I subscribe to MIT/PBS channels on Roku. ------ ckarmann Chromecast is still not available outside of the US. Come on, why no love for friendly Canada? :) ~~~ wstrange I picked one up on my last visit to the US. It works just fine in Canada (no GEO IP blocking as far as I can tell). ------ joefkelley Songza would be awesome, but it seems to not really actually work. ------ garthdog Hooray, BeyondPod support!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Does anyone else also have a thick black line at the top of the screen? - eindiran ====== mindcrime Yes, it's an HN tradition to acknowledge the passing of notable figures in the community. On this particular occasion, the individual is Larry Tesler. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22361282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22361282) ~~~ ChrisGranger And/or Bert Sutherland. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22370667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22370667) ~~~ dhruvkar And Peter Montgomery. ~~~ csixty4 This has been a tough week losing more than one of our industry pioneers. ------ PaulHoule HN does that when somebody important to tech has died. ------ mr_overalls Yes. Looks like the culprit is: <td bgcolor="#000000"><img src="s.gif" width="0" height="5"></td> ------ thepete2 I was about to ask the same. I assumed it is because of Larry Tesler's death.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
All’s well that spends well - pepys http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/alls-well-that-spends-well/ ====== duncans Are we supposed to comment on the fact that the article is delivered as HTML embedded in JSON, or that the images are 8 megapixels but then displayed at 600 x 400?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The challenges of teaching software engineering - ingve https://www.sicpers.info/2019/07/the-challenges-of-teaching-software-engineering/ ====== dzink You seem to be starting too abstract. Analogs help and so does starting from a point where the students can experiment and get feedback on their mistakes from their own code, not from abstract concepts. These are lessons I learned when we designed and taught a 8 week coding course for Graduate students who had never touched code before. Feedback for us as teachers was instant. (Analogs. Analogs. Analogs.) Imagine learning about structural engineering - would you rather start by prototyping bridges with different materials and seeing how different structural designs hold up better, or would you prefer to be lectured about conflicting philosophies on proper road arrangement, materials and tensile strength first. Analog example I used (explain like they're five): Front end, backend, middleware, databases are like a Macy's animated window display. HTML is choice and order of the mannequins in the window. CSS are the colors and positioning. Javascript is the string that makes visible characters move. Middleware (Python, Go, Java) are the sales clerks grabbing goods from the warehouse (database), serving customers, and updating the window panes. The course did a lecture on HTML/CSS first day, Javascript second, dug in deeper by debugging a snakes game in JS, Git on day 3 (failed for same reasons you mentioned), Ruby on Rails (immediate productivity was key), Wordpress installation, then PHP deeper dive, etc. One student said "I can't believe I paid someone $20k to build me a Wordpress site that I can now set up and customize myself after a few days." Always start with immediate productivity for non CS students - let them sink teeth into the ideal outcome, then modify that ideal, then learn how to break and fix it, then dig deeper into why and how things work before going to best practices. If they don't know why something broke, they can always go back to figure out how it should work first. ~~~ dzink If I was to do it again, I would teach Git with paper - have the class augment a paper tree with paper nodes or something else tangible. You can even have them write a collective story instead of code. The more abstract the topic, the simpler the analogs to get the largest subset of users to grasp it. ~~~ haggy I have to strongly disagree with this approach to teaching git. I've been in software engineering for a decade now and have taught many entry level and experienced devs about git. If you start out with trees and other git internal concepts you're just going to lose them. Have them create a directory, put some files in it, `git init`, add all their files and commit. Have them make some changes, add and commit again. Then ask them how their fellow devs would see their changes. This leads into the distributed nature of git and pushing to remote repos. Continue from there with more practical work and repeat. I've seen it take devs months of working with git daily to start to understand some of the more advanced concepts so it needs to be practical up front. ~~~ newen If you've seen devs take months of working with git daily to start to understand some of the more advanced concepts, then maybe the problem is the current teaching method. They might learn the more advanced concepts a lot faster if they learn the concepts first. ~~~ flukus You're assuming they want to learn. I've seen devs work with svn for years which is conceptually much simpler and they still don't know how branching and merging work, they'll do things like checkout each branch separately and copy files over rather than merge. Edit - also a favourite interview question for anyone that claims to be familiar with svn is "what does the switch command do", a quick and easy filter to seperate those that know from those that claim to know. ~~~ slavik81 I felt their attitude towards SVN was silly, so I decided I would make my change the right way. But when I went to merge, I got a bizzare error about a 'missing revprop' and it knocked the wind out of my sails. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I ended up copying the files just like everyone else on that project for the brief stint I worked on it. :( ------ steven2012 No offense to the OP but the syllabus is ludicrous. This isn't teaching anything. It's so packed with random software technologies, they will leave the course with nothing. Cut down on the syllabus and focus on a few topics. Make it project based so that you're building on the same project over the 4 days and learning more about programming. Split the other stuff like git, databases, OOP, functional programming, machine learning my God, for another course. There is no way anyone taking this course will get anything from this, it will just be a confusing mess of information that is quickly forgotten. ~~~ alexgmcm I read it assuming it was a semester long. Then I saw it was four days. ------ DarkContinent I'm sort of curious how one could "learn" software engineering in a week. Judging from the article, it seems the course assumed very little prior knowledge about SWE (teaching OOP at the beginning). Wouldn't it make more sense to teach a course assuming some basic background knowledge (like OOP and command line utilities) and use the teaching time to discuss architectural patterns, testing practices, etc? ~~~ highwind Biggest thing that needs to be taught as one of the fundamentals for software engineering is approaching problems with scientific method. Design, testing, and debugging (which takes up more resources than writing code) require skill in forming good hypothesis and methodical way to test that hypothesis. These type of courses should be designed more towards those skill sets than just learning to write code. ~~~ sreque I've actually been thinking at work recently that our work is very much in line with making and testing hypothesis. When we add code or edit existing code, we hypothesize that the program behavior will change in specific ways, and then we test those hypothesis via various means of manual and automated testing. I would actually add to the above though that I think it's important people learn to approach problem-solving from a mathematical perspective. Unfortunately, a lot of people that get into software engineering don't like math, and they would generally be averse to learning about software engineering this way, but I think a lot of bad code gets written because the person writing it didn't approach the problem with the right structure or rigor. ~~~ chrisweekly Where you say "mathematical" I'd suggest "logical". Also, formal logic (Aristotelian, sentential, predicate...) is distinct from mathematics per se. Agreed that fundamental problem-solving skills are in too-short supply. ------ invalidOrTaken I don't know exactly what the goal of the course is, or where he's teaching, but... it seems like a really hard problem. Making working computer systems---like a drawing program, or an Amazon deploy ---can be really hard, or really simple. You can teach someone enough Python for fizzbuzz in twenty minutes. Teaching them enough... _everything_...to get a web version of fizzbuzz, that checks a database for the words (it might be "nargle" and "gargle" by user preference, after all), with a Python install that they manage, a postgres install that they manage, that they don't feel at a complete loss about if something goes wrong, and to collaborate with others on this...is another matter entirely. I'm not one of those who believes programming ability is innate, but there are absolutely compounding effects that can certainly have basically the same effect. In retrospect, I thank my lucky stars for my 6th-grade computers class using HyperCard. ------ jkingsbery I taught a 2-hour session to a group of middle schoolers and high schoolers back in December - obviously, not as big a deal as the author, but still something I'm proud of - and ran in to the same issues. These were all students who either had done some programming or were interested in it. I started with "ok, so, first, go to your command line..." and it went sideways from there. One thing that the students taught me that helps overcome some of these things is a site called [https://repl.it/](https://repl.it/) . I stopped my plan, started using it, and taught the rest of the class using repl instead in order to focus on the concept I was trying to teach. Obviously, as a professional software engineer you need to know about git, command line, etc., but those aren't what software engineering is. They _rarely_ excite new comers to the field. Using repl.it helped to get to the core ideas faster for people who don't really know as much. ~~~ rpeden If you enjoy repl.it, you might enjoy StackBlitz as well. I've had fun using StackBlitz to put together some prototypes of React apps. I love repl.it too, of course! It's nice to have several great tools to choose from. ~~~ jkingsbery Interesting, thanks for the reference! ------ coldcode What is software engineering anyway? I've heard this term for almost 40 years, and still wonder what it really means since everyone has a different idea. ~~~ carapace Dr. Margaret Hamilton coined the term while developing the software for Apollo 11. She went on to design a system that permitted bug-free software development ("Higher Order Software" or HOS) and attempted to market it. It was panned by e.g. the Navy and Dijkstra, and languishes in obscurity to this day. The basic details of the system are described in a book called "System design from provably correct constructs: the beginnings of true software engineering" by James Martin (he mentions Hamilton in the references.) In modern terms you work directly with an AST and the UI only permits modifications by operations that preserve the correctness of the AST. It eliminates all sources of bugs, and it was simple enough to teach normal people to use it with just some coaching. Anyhow, _that 's_ "software engineering". The rest of us are just pushing text around in buffers and _hoping_ it isn't broken. There are a few people using math to make software, and it works out really well (E.g. [https://www.categoricaldata.net/](https://www.categoricaldata.net/)), but mostly "software engineering" as it is usually used is an oxymoron. ~~~ Jwarder > you work directly with an AST and the UI only permits modifications by > operations that preserve the correctness of the AST. It eliminates all > sources of bugs With the caveat up front that I know nothing about this beyond what you have written: wouldn't this just catch compilation bugs? The compiler tells me if the blob of text I gave it is incorrect in terms of any syntax errors. Business logic bugs and accounting for bogus data seem more important to me. ~~~ carapace Yes, you and skybrian have got the idea. It wasn't magic, it just prevented entire categories of preventable bugs, syntax and semantics. You could still use it to write correct programs that did the wrong thing. In other words, it couldn't catch bugs that occur "between the keyboard and the chair". FWIW the tech has a bit of a Wikipedia page now: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Systems_Language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Systems_Language) but it doesn't seem very informative to me. YMMV ~~~ Jwarder I can imagine this being useful for people new to programming. I've seen plenty of times where students get overwhelmed with all of the different keywords/syntax they just learned and don't know where to apply it. Being able to give a list of possible actions available from the current node(?) could be a huge help. ~~~ carapace Apparently they sat down, like, accountants in front of this thing and they could derive trees (programs) that automated tasks just fine with a bit of coaching. _shrug_ (But that also worked with Lisp+Emacs! > programming new editing commands was so convenient that even the secretaries > in his office started learning how to use it. They used a manual someone had > written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a > programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, > weren't scared off. They read the manual, discovered they could do useful > things and they learned to program. [https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html) ) ------ jillesvangurp When I was doing my Ph. D., I also ended up teaching some software engineering related courses. One thing that struck me and that I've since fixed by becoming a software engineer was the notion that here I was teaching Software Engineering without any experience whatsoever actually engineering any software professionally. This is the big problem in academic education on this topic: the teachers typically have little or no relevant experience actually engineering software because they have been in university all their life and as such lack experience working for extended periods of time with an actual team on some actual non trivial software. Lets just say that I learned a lot about this stuff after I left the academic world. A good practical introduction to software engineering should cover a lot of ground and most of it is going to be non technical. Learning how to program is mostly out of scope for a software engineering introduction. Assume the students have already learned some programming language and have some experience building small programs and maybe have already had some algorithm courses, etc. It doesn't really matter what language or tools they use. For the purpose of an introduction, pick something simple where the focus is mostly not going to be fighting with the tools. The key thing to learn as a software engineer is working with multiple people and the project dynamics that are associated with that. So: \- project management and different roles in software projects, different ways of structuring teams, etc. \- overview of different process methodologies common in the industry and where they came from: scrum, kanban, watefall (don't do this), etc. \- different types of testing and their importance for continuous integration and deployment \- different strategies for estimating cost, complexity, duration, etc. and their flaws and pitfalls. ------ BeetleB Most of the problems he is having seem orthogonal to software engineering, which he is trying to teach. It's clear he's teaching it as an intro course. In my opinion, SW engineering absolutely should be taught as a later course - after the student has had quite a bit of exposure to programming. I wouldn't expect a SW engineering course to require _teaching_ much command line usage. That's a thing for lower level courses. Same with editors. Don't use git if it is confusing to students. Mercurial is as good and much friendlier. The potential benefits to git are fairly advanced and will not have any impact at an introductory level. Your goal is to teach the concept of revision control, not the internals of git (which every git advocate says one should know if one wants to use git well - just search any HN thread that comes up about git). As for Python vs Python3: Again, I would not expect a SW engineering course to teach any language. The course should let the student pick a language of his/her choice. ------ dnprock I think there's a hype in quickly training software engineers. This article is an example. We poke around with tools to find quick and easy ways to create software. Tools have been improving quickly but creating software remains challenging. The tool race is influenced by market more than software engineering. The discipline of software engineering has not changed much for decades. To teach effective software engineering, we need to start with the principles. Some fundamental questions: \- How do we create functional and scalable software? \- Given an existing (complex) software system, how do we maintain and incrementally improve? One important principle I learned outside of school and training: software is never just code, we always need to think about the user ecosystem around the software. Failure to understand this principle leads to wasteful effort. For example, attempt to rewrite of the code. These principles are very abstract. We cannot teach them easily. People use tools and new technology to cover up their lack of understanding. ------ jedberg > git, in particular, is decidedly unfriendly. What I want to do is commit my > changes. What I have to do is stage my changes, then commit my staged > changes. As a result, teaching git use takes a significant chunk of the > available time, and still leaves confusion. In college, the way my professors got around this and other things like it was by creating an alias file and scaffolding code. We would get a project that was 1/2 done with all they annoying crap, and then only have to implement the algorithms. Then we would save our work with a single simple command with no options, that was just a shell script for all the source control steps (rcs at the time, but the idea is the same). They never actually taught us about source control. We just learned it on our own when we stopped having access to their aliases. But at that point we had enough knowledge that we could figure out it (or we were in our first job and the senior devs taught it to us). ------ fogetti If it's an introduction to software engineering then I think leaving out software craftsmanship or functional programming, etc is not necessarily a sin. And git (the cli not the versioning approach per se) never made sense to begin with. It is extremely user hostile. So no surprises there. ~~~ spraak I have heard often people's view that git is not user friendly, but it's always confused me because that hasn't been my experience compared to any other tool I need to learn. Can anyone explain more this view? Perhaps I'm too accepting and forgiving. ~~~ fogetti `git merge`, `git rebase`, `git rebase -i`, `git revert`, `git checkout`, `git reset`, `git reset --hard`, `git log`, `git reflog`, `git stash`, `git cherry- pick`, `git add`, `git rm`, `git status`, `git commit`, `git push` and squash, reword, fixup, pick and f@ck knows what else. Who wants to really use all this bullshit just to do versioning? Especially if you are a beginner, this doesn't make any sense (and not even later in many cases) In my experience during the last two decades or so in the industry, there is always a special kind of person in the IT field who takes pride knowing all the nitty-gritty details of the latest shiny versioning tool. Should it be IBM Clearcase or SVN or CVS or Git or Mercurial. Even though that most of these softwares only slightly improve the user experience and only claim to solve the users' problems, so they over promise and under deliver. But there is this special kind of person who takes pride in it. To me this seems like someone who takes pride in knowing all the details of his toaster. Might be impressive, but also completely irrelevant for the 90% of the toaster users. ~~~ eitland > Who wants to really use all this bullshit just to do versioning? Nobody. It is a strawman or should be. You can teach _everything a beginner need to know_ about git _as an ordinary team member_ in less than one A4 page and less than half a days work. Of course this means part of what you teach then is when to talk to the git expert on the team but as long as beginners _stay away from_ squash, rebase etc they should be fine. Ok, add another half day about effective diffing and merging too, it is a big topic and useful outside the context of git too (local history etc). ~~~ BeetleB >Of course this means part of what you teach then is when to talk to the git expert on the team but as long as beginners stay away from squash, rebase etc they should be fine. The thing is, if you ask 10 git experts what should be taught to a beginner, you'll get 10 different A4 size pages. As an example, when my team (finally) switched to git, the expert on the team made a tutorial on what commands to use, and what to avoid/ignore. Looking at it now, he taught that rebase is almost mandatory and gives problems you're guaranteed to run into if you don't use rebase. Not saying I agree with him, but that is one problem with git - no clear consensus on beginner friendly features. ------ bsder > git, in particular, is decidedly unfriendly. Why do people _persist_ in pushing one of the most user unfriendly tools to ever exist? ------ hyperpallium It's very difficult to teach software engineering because you need a big project to create and/or modify. Another reason it's difficult to teach is because of a complete lack of a legitimate discipline to teach. ------ colemorrison Having taught software, devops, and the like for years at this point, while this article touches on some difficult parts of teaching, they're all just side effects of bigger difficulties of teaching software. a) Everything is the "tip of the iceberg" \- which makes teaching what you actually want to teach tricky. Which is why so many resources do the whole "we won't go into it, because this is a large topic." For example, Linux. Most projects and resources require this, but barely any actually go in-depth. b) Everything is always changing - and so you have to either support your students in the face of these changes or constantly keep the materials up-to- date. This is one of the largest challenges, if not the largest challenge. c) Everything has to be engaging - it's not enough to know what you're talking about. You have to know how to talk about it in a way that creates engagement and thus learning. This isn't something you learn how to do when slinging code left and right. d) Everything needs to be TAUGHT, not said - the ability to teach is often an after thought for folks looking to educate. If you want to really help your students, you have to learn how to teach so that they can think independently. Not rely on cheatsheets, prep tests, and step-by-steps. e) Every student needs the motivation to learn - usually instructors' will stop at spitting out their knowledge. The best instructors help their students push through their barriers, whether personal or professional, and get the learning done. It's easy to learn in a structured school system. It's hard to learn when you have multiple kids, a full time job, and all the emotional baggage of being an adult. Now, to be clear, I'm talking about teaching modern, practical implementations of software...not CS theory or other things that are far more evergreen and less technical. ------ angarg12 I was a teaching assistant for the Introduction to Programming course on the first year of a CS degree. At the very least I can say it was a humbling experience. One thing I learned while teaching complete novices is that it is really hard for experienced engineers to get into the mindset of students. You need to forget everything you know and start more basic that you think it's necessary. You will need to teach people what are variables, list, functions, and so on. As an example an student got confused when we wrote something like the following: let X = 1; let X = X + 1; How could X be X + 1 at the same time? Maths don't work that way!. It might seem absurd to a programmer, but if you are in the mindset of someone who is only familiar with maths equations, it makes sense. So yeah, I would forget git, command line, tangents and whatnot, and focus on very basic concepts instead. ------ ilaksh This is the course he is talking about: [https://github.com/OxfordRSE/rsd- engineeringcourse](https://github.com/OxfordRSE/rsd-engineeringcourse) So to become a "real software engineer" and not "just a programmer" one needs to know how to create requirements, use source control, do modular, and/or object-oriented and/or functional design, deploy your software, and take advantage of open source? Those are things that all programmers need to know (assuming "programmer" means someone whose primary job is programming). Which is why the distinction between "programmer" or "developer" and "software engineer" is bogus. Its usually just an attempt to justify higher or lower compensation. ------ codingslave The secret of programming, and it's greatest challenge, is that the ability to get "good" at it is largely innate. Just like you can't teach people to prove math theorems (the ones that one encounters in an elementary college proof class), you can't teach great software engineering. Near anyone can learn to build a javascript app, beyond that, to higher levels of abstraction and complexity, things become murky. It's why large tech companies ignore past experience, it proves nothing. They need to see you use abstractions from memory on the spot to ensure you have the capability. It's not perfect, but nothing is. ------ dijit Software engineering at least has a fundamental underlying educational system supporting it (comp sci, EE). I think the harder thing is training sysadmins, there’s no real formal education. I know we’re downplaying a lot of the traditional sysadmin roles and pushing for more development in sysadmin but the sysadmin approach is still required, and the only thing that keeps it going is the corpus of industry knowledge, a myriad of vocational or vendor based certs and a willingness to teach. Or am I wrong? ------ jpnelson I'd love it if there was some sort of "helper terminal" that could teach people things like git, and basic command line stuff as they went. It could catch common errors and provide useful explanations. It could possibly even go as far as attempting to understand plain text commands, eg "delete the file file.txt" and suggest commands to do that. ~~~ eitland Clippy, as orginally designed before they gimped it? ;-) Or just contextual help as it existed in many Windows applications (and certain current iOS apps). ------ gambler Sounds more like "the challenge of using a mish-mash of non-integrated tools with no interface". Developers could definitively solve this by moving away from 70+ year old abstractions (files, terminal) towards things more in line with Smalltalk ideas. But I guess it's better to make thousands of beginners suffer each year, instead of admitting that the current way of doing things is conceptually flawed and outdated. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9LZ6TnSP40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9LZ6TnSP40) [https://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mt/thesis/mt-thesis- Contents.h...](https://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mt/thesis/mt-thesis- Contents.html) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTJRwKOFddc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTJRwKOFddc) [https://github.com/pharo-open-documentation/awesome-pharo- ml](https://github.com/pharo-open-documentation/awesome-pharo-ml) (And no, there is nothing special about copy-pasting commands and Unix pipelines that cannot be easily recreated in UI if the UI is designed to be programmable. ) ------ kouzant I hope they don't add Jupyter notebooks to the syllabus. One day we'll wonder what went bad and whole programs are written in a single module/file :) Jokes aside, Jupyter and relevant projects are great tools but they drive programmers towards wrong paths. ------ cryptonector > \- you need to either tell people how to set their core.editor, or how to > quit vim. You'll pry vim from my cold dead fingers.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Huawei abandoned by Google and major US chipmakers - yashwt07 https://medium.com/@yashwate07/huawei-abandoned-by-google-and-major-us-chipmakers-bf1e085d957a ====== hn45oye Could turn out as a big problem for Huawei	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Space and Human Survival: My Views on the Importance of Colonizing Space [2003] - billswift http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/space/survival.htm ====== billswift She also has a related Listmania! page "Why We Must Colonize Space" [http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Must-Colonize- Space/lm/15QM4CUB...](http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Must-Colonize- Space/lm/15QM4CUBDSMAF/ref=cm_lmt_fvlm_f_2_rlrsrs0)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
C++17 Fold Expressions - ingve http://baptiste-wicht.com/posts/2015/05/cpp17-fold-expressions.html ====== mdup It seems very ironic that C++ adds _more_ rules to the language in order to get _less_ cluttered code. This "..." syntax, which probably won't be used a lot of times, will be nice because you'll understand intuitively what the code does at the first sight. And that's good. However, you'll have to spend the rest of your time dealing with the surrounding code: templates, iterators, move-semantics double- amperstands, std::forward and other subtleties of modern C++. (Note: not being negative here, I actually do enjoy C++; I'm just staring at the giganormous complexity of the language.)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Outreach Program For Women—FOSS internships for cis and trans women, and genderqueer - celebril http://gnome.org/opw/ ====== alxjrvs It's fantastic to see such prolific and powerful organizations be so inclusive. A+. ~~~ JoeAltmaier I approve and support this effort. But the word 'inclusive' is a reach, when their target is actually a fraction of humanity. Yes, a normally-excluded fraction but the word 'inclusive' means something, and it doesn't mean this. \--- Grammar Police ~~~ alxjrvs "containing (a specified element) as part of a whole.". Checks out. ~~~ JoeAltmaier In the vaguest sense. But as an adjective with no modifier, it implies "of everyone". Does that seem appropriate here?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Electricity Shock: Toyota Camry Cheaper to Fuel Than a Tesla Model 3 - jvandonsel https://seekingalpha.com/article/4316505-electricity-shock-toyota-camry-cheaper-to-fuel-tesla-model-3 ====== manmeet Looks like an incredibly poor analysis by someone desperately holding onto their short position. Tesla owners don't use the supercharger daily. The author's assessment that most people do, is simply invalid. Based on my area and electricity costs (CAD $0.101/Kwh off-peak), the Model 3 costs 2.6 cents per mile (and not the 7 cents) Also, the author takes in the upfront cost of the investment, to make the statement that it takes 20yrs to make your money back. However, he doesn't take into account the resale value of the same investemnt. If you take that into account, the model 3 comes out cheaper: [https://cleantechnica.com/2019/09/27/tesla-model-3-vs- toyota...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/09/27/tesla-model-3-vs-toyota- camry-5-year-cost-to-own/) ~~~ jvandonsel I'm envious of your USD$0.077/Kwh rate! I pay USD$0.22/Kwh in Massachusetts, with a renewable energy provider. ------ dublin And this doesn't even begin to address to subsidies that Tesla-owners' neighbor are forced to pay to upgrade the infrastructure for their home chargers. (Solar makes this even worse, actually...)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bug Bounty, two years in - amitku https://blog.twitter.com/2016/bug-bounty-2-years-in ====== paulpauper my experience with bug bounties Me: here is a bug Them: it's a feature, not a bug [fixes feature] ~~~ busterarm Or in my case recently with trying to get HubSpot to support PRURLs: Me: Here is a bug. Your implementation does X when the specification says that it should do Y. Here is the RFC and the relevant sections explaining how it should work [link]. Them: This isn't a bug. Reference to some other popular piece of unrelated software that also has a faulty URL implementation. Half-assed apology for creating an un-resolvable problem for you while implying that you're an idiot at the same time. Side-note: Please, everyone stop writing your javascript URL validation with checks for "http(s)" ~~~ cmdrfred I never knew about PRURLS. I will do ask you suggest. ------ danjc So they've paid out $300k in two years? That sounds appallingly low and surely unappealing for anyone bug hunting professionally. ~~~ JoachimSchipper Bug bounties are basically not designed to lure in security experts who live in a first-world country and who already have established a reputation. ~~~ paxcoder It's crowdsourcing, and for-profit crowdsourcing is pretty much exploitative by definition.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Django CRM: Best open source Software - anuja073 https://github.com/MicroPyramid/Django-CRM ====== anuja073 Django-CRM enables businesses to create customer relationships with an innovative, flexible and affordable CRM solution.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Flaming Wreckage of Clinkle Rebuilds as a Referral Service - coloneltcb http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/29/i-know-you-thought-it-was-dead-but/ ====== powera Is this even a startup at this point, or just a guy good at making mock-ups that get covered by TechCrunch? ~~~ yarou What's the difference? ------ seibelj $30m in funding and all that's left is an SDK that could be done in a month in a lean startup, implemented by contractors. That CEO's career is in tatters ~~~ pjc50 What's the betting on him being in charge of something in a couple of years time? After all, are we not repeatedly told of the importance of failing repeatedly with other people's money as a learning experience? At least he didn't make the mistake of failing with his own money. ------ hijinks Maybe two years ago I interviewed at this train wreck of a company and left laughing. I interviewed for a devops engineer and there was 0 built in production. They were so paranoid about competition reverse engineering their app. At the time I was told they had a lot of dev turn over so no one was really an expert. the best part was I got a call the next day from the manager asking me if I knew anyone hiring cause the CEO fired they whole ops team ------ orf > A former Yahoo exec Chi-Chao Chang quit after just a day on the job I would love to hear the story behind that! ~~~ danso I wonder if this was the inspiration behind the scene in the 2nd season of "Silicon Valley" in which a top engineer speeds out of Hooli after spending a few minutes with the team led by Baghead: [http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-of- clinkle-2014-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-of- clinkle-2014-4) Everything below is directly copied from the Business Insider story linked above: One day prior, Duplan had proudly announced a new hire, Chi-Chao Chang. A former Yahoo and xAd executive, Chang was Clinkle’s new vice president of engineering. It was a position recruiters had been trying to fill for months, and Chang had come highly recommended by former Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz. The soft-spoken engineer had stood up and shared a few words about his background. He said he was excited to be joining Clinkle. Now, just 24 hours later, Chang was nowhere to be seen. Duplan cleared his throat, nervously shifting his weight. “Chi-Chao has left Clinkle,” he announced. “He decided it's too much for him.” There was a long pause. Duplan stumbled over a few more sentences trying to explain. Instead he talked in circles, a trait employees described as typical. Some began to wonder whether even he knew why Chang had left. McCarthy stepped in. “It’s not the kid’s fault,” McCarthy said, defending his flustered boss. McCarthy sometimes took over for Duplan during the weekly all-hands meetings on Fridays, correcting him and referring to him as “kid.” Chang had been well-vetted during the interview process, McCarthy insisted. The news came as a shock to everyone. “It was disheartening,” says one ex-Clinkler. “That was the moment when we were like, ‘Oh, no. Things are not good.’” “It obviously looked bad,” another former employee recalls. “Like the guy saw our product and it scared him away.” ~~~ hitekker Adding the last part of the story \---- Chang left his first day of work feeling uneasy. He called Duplan that evening to share his reservations. The conversation lasted well into the night. The next morning, Chang told Duplan he wouldn’t be coming back to the office. He left a long list of recommendations about how to launch Clinkle, then they parted ways amicably. Of course, the only person who really knows why Chang left is Chang himself. When reached for comment, Chang declined to elaborate, stating simply, “Lucas is one of the most impressive people I have ever met. I believe he will lead Clinkle to a successful outcome and I wish them the best.” \---- The comment at the end interests me. Does McCarthy and Duplan have enough connections to make Chang's life hell? Or is it that if Chang says the truth ( Duplan is duplicitous ) would that alone make prospective employers look down on him? Perhaps both. ~~~ jakejake Most likely it's just that Chang has enough class and good sense to not bad- mouth a former employer publicly. ~~~ hitekker I believe it would be just a matter a class if Chang had said nothing. The Theranos article posted yesterday had oodles of that. He decided to say nice things, however, which to me, means he wishes to reduce his association with failure by reducing Clinkle's failure. Interestingly, when I was going through the history of Clinkle, I saw one person who was ostensibly there for a very long time write:" "without a product" is not at all an accurate reflection of the state of things (as the TechCrunch article and plenty of other sources can corroborate)." This was contradicted by the very same TechCrunch article which asserted that they had no app, let alone product for a very long period of time: "Still, there was no app, and Shontell reported that contributed to internal turmoil." I see a pattern between the words of Chang and this commenter, which is that if a person invests considerable resources in a venture that fails, they'll do everything in their capacity to make it sound right in their head. Even if that entails making it sound right in the public sphere. I would be hard pressed to do differently in the same position. ------ microcolonel This is definitely gambling.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Small company developer pain points - ph33t Just curious if anyone who works writing software as a service for a small company (< 10 developers, sys admins, and dba's combined) have particular pain points.<p>I have a ton of experience in this area, having worked exclusively in this realm for the last 30 years at 4 different companies.<p>Here are thing software features that send out HUGE red flags to me ... unfortunately they are all asked for over and over again and I have conceded to all of them eventually.<p>1. Anything to do with building a calendar in the software. People will always want it to be "like outlook" or to do something their existing calendar program does. While this is a lovely thing to want, it is a major endless development pit for a small company with limited resources - the needs of each individual in a calendar/scheduler are so unique and specific. Syncing is another can of worms ...<p>2. Importing data from Excel spreadsheets. Assuming we can deal with various file versions and read the data, the problems with dates, leading zeroes, commas, formatting and inconsistencies are insane. Excel is great for ad-hoc data manipulation, calculation, and presentation, but for pure data storage and import ... not so much.<p>3. Sending out bulk emails and ensuring A) them email gets received on the other end without getting spam filtered and B) keeping yourself off of a spam list.<p>I'm not necessarily looking for solutions or alternatives to the above, just wondering if others feel the same about certain features or see other features in their saas apps as low gain, high resource consumption. ====== saluki It's always tough balancing features and staying out of the trap of adding features that don't provide a lot of value to your users but takes up a lot of development time. Maybe you can talk to the rest of the team to try to drive new features toward things that take less development time but provide a lot of value to users. Focus on the large value vs. easier development. But value vs. development time/cost should be considered when mapping out features. Your three items you mentioned (I know you're not asking for solutions but here are some thoughts): 1\. some apps need a calendar . . . try to keep things simple where it provides value but doesn't try to clone more robust calendars/features by large teams. 2\. If this is to help clients get in to your app it's probably worth it. At the end though you're talking about storage in xls. If users are manipulating data in xls try to move them over to working with in the app instead and definitely get all the data out of xls and in to the database. 3\. For emails mandrill.com (and similar) have this solved so integrate that in to your app. As long as your work is interesting and you guys are profitable, your job is secure don't get to bogged down in what you're working on. Maybe build the best calendar integration ever = ). But you can use your knowledge/experience to try to improve your app by trying to drive development toward big value/low dev cost items. Good luck. ------ douche Integrations with ticketing/CRM systems. You can hit the high notes, and go for the handful of most common ones, but it's always a temptation to chase a deal and promise another one. Pretty soon, you're spending all your time chasing down things in a half-dozen or more systems, that all have their own idiosyncratic SDKs or APIs, which change at unpredictable rates. Moreover, to do development and testing against those systems, you've got to keep those environments up, and seeded with test data. Some of them are cloud-based, and you can get a free/low cost development instance, but others are big, unwieldy on-premise deployments that require a host of servers to run all their gunk - with costs in server racks, provisioning time, setup time, and non-core expertise in keeping that crap going. ------ CyberFonic I deal a lot with niche business solutions. In my experience, too many managers and staff think that Excel is the Swiss Army Knife of data management. Can't really blame them, it is typically the only app they know. An MS promotes Office as a "universal" solution for SMEs. Whilst I can't eliminate the pain, I found two strategies that work well: 1\. As far as possible, let them develop spreadsheets and treat them as prototypes. Then take control of the critical ones and polish them so that they work correctly (protect fields, audit calculations, write macros, etc). 2\. Instead of importing data from Excel, I export from Excel into a database (designed as a receiver for that data). Then I run a collection of scripts on the database to clean up the data and only then import that cleaned up data into the production database(s). ~~~ hanniabu If you don't mind me asking, what's the going rate for number 1? I've done this for friends for free and would like to freelance in it a bit, but I don't want to be a dick and undercut the industry. Also, how do you go about explaining the value proposition? I know first hand that it's worth it because you're less likely to screw your tables up, it's easier on the eyes, and it takes a less experienced person of you build it a simple interface to interact with. However, management is the one making the call and from experience I know it can be difficult for them to see the value in it especially if they're not the ones using it. ------ hanniabu I can confirm number 2 from an internal developer stand point. I really wanted to move our dataset over to a database when I joined, but all those reasons you started made me just slowly back away. I've never had a problem with 3a, but I was curious how you went about solving it. Is there an API for that?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Spy Dust (Nitrophenyl Pentadienal) - boredgamer2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrophenyl_pentadienal ====== jdietrich A modern equivalent is SmartWater, a clear fluid that a) fluoresces under UV b) is extremely difficult to wash off and c) contains a unique code for forensic identification. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartWater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartWater) ~~~ totalZero I don't see how such a product should verify ownership, and I agree with the objection that a person can buy SmartWater and apply it to valuable items owned by other people. It is the high-tech equivalent of putting your thumb in the biggest piece of pizza when your brother opens the box, to claim it as your own. ------ xfitm3 Glo Germ powder is a consumer equivalent of this: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FE1RQA2](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FE1RQA2) ------ oh_sigh How exactly would it be used? Presumably you're using it to mark someone you don't actually know, but then you need to actually go looking for the trail, but how do you do that if you don't know who the spy is? ~~~ sandworm101 1) Say you have a locked door to which you want the key. You put the dust on the doorknob. Then you check the cars in the parking lot for traces. Now you know which people have gone through the locked door and presumably have keys. Checking their backgrounds also gives you a good idea what is happening behind that door. 2) Before shredders got good. You put the luminol dust on the steering wheel of an inteligence officer's car. Then you steel the shredded paper from the base. The luminol then identifies which shreds of paper come from documents handled by the inteligence officer. 3) You dope the inteligence officer's car again. Then you look at the door punchcode panel to see which buttons he pressed. Now you are 90% of the way to knowing the code. ~~~ htfu One of the sources also mentions tracking dogs, so it seems to have been quite multi-purpose! ~~~ sandworm101 Reminds me of sheep. Ever notice sheep with a colored mark on their back? They hang a bag of colored chalk under the ram. This then leaves a colored mark on the back of the sheep he has _serviced_. ~~~ pacaro Also known as _raddle_ not every Ram or Tup will tolerate a harness, so sometimes powdered raddle is mixed with vegetable oil and smeared over his chest. It gives the farmer quite a lot of information, by changing the color every 17 days (a ewe's cycle), they can detect a infertile tup, predict lambing dates, etc.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ready-To-Use Therapeutic Food - brudgers https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/malnutrition-miracle-what-ready-use-therapeutic-food/30730 ====== blacksmith_tb I thought these had been in use for quite a while - Plumpy'nut [1] being the variety I'd seen mentioned most commonly. I see that there's some patent nastiness[2], which could explain some things. 1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut) 2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut#Patent_issues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut#Patent_issues) ------ 6d6b73 Wouldn't that be a great way to implement a form of UBI all over the world? Just have all these non-profits,government and people advocating UBI sponsor these food packs and distribute it to every child in the world that needs it. Quickly and fairly cheaply get rid of child hunger and malnutrition and move to a next problem. It costs about $0.30 per packet.There are about 1bln children in the world under the age of 15. It would cost 300mln/day to give every child this little life saver. It would cost 109bln to feed all kids in the world. Because of the volume I think it is safe to assume that we could lower the price to half of that. Since not every kid needs it,the real cost would probably be closer to 25bln$/year.. ~~~ sp332 The point of UBI is that it's cash. The providing agency doesn't get to prescribe that it goes to food, clothing, medicine, hobbies, etc. Also everyone gets the same amount so "not every kid needs it" doesn't matter. What you're describing is some other form of welfare, and I'm not really against the idea, but it's not UBI. ~~~ 6d6b73 But it could be a great way to experiment with UBI. Give everyone access to this basic food pack and see what happens. It will be cheaper to do than UBI, less controversial and really help a lot of people. ~~~ brudgers The reasons that people might prefer universal basic income over receiving a food pack are the same reasons that people tend to prefer a paycheck from their employer in lieu of employer provided food and shelter. My mentor, the late David Crane FAIA, described it as "poor people wanting the same things I do." Employer provided food and shelter in lieu of cash wages would also be cheaper. ~~~ 6d6b73 Yes and I agree, but it would be easier to get people behind something like Universal Basic Nutrition. I mean who doesn't want to keep kids healthy and well fed? and if it only costs few cents per kid? But use this program to get some data point on how universal program like that would work, what problems would we need to solve, and what's the ROI. ~~~ brudgers It's probably even easier to get people behind not doing much and acting as if it is significant. The problem that universal basic income is attacking is a larger one than childhood nutrition and produces less feel good public relations. It is also possible to have both universal basic income and provide an independent infrastructure for providing food security...which is also a much less sexy idea problem than feeding malnourished children. Or to put it another way, the ceiling can be set by considering what the people on the receiving end actually want rather than by people on the giving end. ------ sp332 Why was the 10-month-old suffering from severe acute malnutrition if he was getting breastmilk and buffalo milk? ~~~ YCode Possibly the mom* was not in great shape either and thus not able to produce all the nutrients he needed. They mention he had persistent diarrhea, which could also be pretty detrimental without things like electrolyte solutions and antibiotics a child in a first world country would receive. * Maybe the buffalo? Article doesn't really say if it's cattle or carton. ------ benkuykendall > A tasty, energy-packed paste made from _peanuts_ , oil, sugar, milk powder > and vitamin and mineral supplements What do they do about peanut allergies? If they are so common and dangerous (as witnessed by many US schools banning peanut products) why doesn't this food use an alternative protein source? ~~~ colbyh peanut allergies are really only common in the west. weirdly, there doesn't seem to be much of a correlation between parts of the world that eat peanuts regularly and those that don't wrt childhood peanut allergies - peanuts are super common in sub-saharan Africa but the allergy is exceedingly rare. and in Sweden, where they eat peanuts at roughly the same rate as the US/UK, their peanut allergies tend to show up after the second year of life while in the US it tends to show up by 9 months. which isn't to say there isn't a chance of allergic reactions to the RTUs, but given that their typical consumer is in Africa/India it seems like much less of a concern. ~~~ rrauenza One theory is that we're causing peanut allergies by keeping them from our children until too late: https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/01/10/peanut-allergy-early-exposure-is-key-to-prevention/ The other problem is a single exposure and then too long of a delay to a subsequent exposure. ~~~ colbyh yeah I've read a few things about that, certainly seems reasonable. doesn't quite describe the situation where different countries have different allergy timelines though.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: stk8.co, a multiple URL/Text shortener. - kqueue I am sorry to submit this again, but I feel it didn't get its share yesterday on HN. So I am giving it one last try.<p>stk8.co allows you to stack several Links or Text and share them under one shortened url. It embeds a preview of the link for common services like youtube, vimeo, amazon, cnn, scribd, etc... It also has a bookmarklet to easily stack links.<p>Feedback is appreciated.<p>Thanks! ====== kqueue Sample stacks: <http://stk8.co/sample> <http://stk8.co/gkbbbc> ------ ljf really like it, looks simple to use and a nice clean design. not too sure on the url if I was going to be picky, ' stackate ' doesn't roll off the tongue (yet) but sure could get used to it! good luck hope people use it. ~~~ kqueue Thanks for your feedback! That's the closest we found to stack-it. :) ------ chetan51 Brilliant, simple idea. Great work!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Realtime Website Analytics for Free - _ao789 https://statvoo.com/ ====== maz1b What is the difference between this and something like Google Analytics? ~~~ _ao789 All data is _always_ realtime with a very simple integration. Integrating into SPA/Angular/React is so easy that you don't even need to tell it a page or event has changed! Simply adding the Javascript tagging anywhere on your site allows the analytics engine to detect if a SPA page has changed routes and it will then fire relevant events. Other than the standard GA functionalities, you can also assign events to login/join pages to associate anonymous visitors as _people_ and then know which actions particular individuals are doing later. All Javascript errors are logged with a full stacktrace where applicable so that you can immediately see if anyone on a particular platform/useragent is experiencing errors on one of your pages (happens more than you think!). Other than that, there are many additional hidden features that you should find out for yourself ;) You'd like it if you tried it!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
There still aren't enough tech workers, and enterprises are paying the price - JSeymourATL http://www.cio.com/article/2982976/there-still-arent-enough-tech-workers-and-enterprises-are-paying-the-price.html ====== mindcrime As others have pointed out, there isn't really a "shortage" in the general sense. There's a "shortage of people will to do this for the amount I want to pay". If you want to attract more talented people to IT, pay more. And on a related note: more businesses should "play the long game" and hire junior level / inexperienced people, and provide serious mentoring, on-the-job training, and help groom them to advance. The refusal of firms to help their staff grow and develop is, IMO, a big part of the reason why we have the move to the "gig economy". It would also help if companies treated employees as _people_ not some fungible commodity, where developers can be swapped in and out like cogs in a machine. ~~~ bediger4000 _It would also help if companies treated employees as people not some fungible commodity_ Large companies can't do this: they're too wedded to the idea of "human resources", where any job can be filled by any human with the appropriate SAP title, and managing by drug tests, and other non-human-judgement processes.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Darkweb’s New Favorite Drug Market, Profiting from Silk Road 2’s Demise - InternetGiant http://www.wired.com/2014/11/the-evolution-of-evolution-after-silk-road/ ====== jobu _" And in addition to drugs, counterfeits and guns, Evolution also sells stolen credit cards, a kind of crime never allowed on the Silk Road."_ A sort of natural selection that favors more evil apparently. ~~~ granfalloon I recently took a look at Evolution's fraud offerings, as I do anti-fraud work for an online company and was curious to see where the masses of fraudsters I deal with were getting their CC number and bank account info from. It's actually pretty incredible; I was expecting to see simple "dumps" of CC info and bank login credentials, but it was much more sophisticated. Sellers were offering "packages" that would include bank login information (priced according to account balance), lists of IP addresses that were known to be flagged, SSNs and address information to help with security questions, and guides for how to best use this information. Definitely seems like it'd be easy for a criminal with a little tech know-how to make a full time job of buying and exploiting this info. Based on the prices I saw, it would only take one successful fraudulent transaction out of many attempts for it to be profitable. ~~~ joosters I wonder why the prices are low compared to the expected returns? Perhaps there aren't many buyers out there, or there are just too many stolen CCs that the market is swamped by them. OTOH, maybe the payoffs for CC fraud are actually lower than you might expect... could the banks be getting better at blocking cards sooner? ~~~ csommers It's a combination of both. There are far FAR too many CC numbers available out there and when you consider the work needed to find a viable one, not to mention the legal issues resulting from this...it's pretty clear why they are so "cheap". It's pretty comparable to the current stolen iPhone market(assuming iCloud locked), as they are basically a paperweight in that configuration, which makes them a "traders" commodity of sorts. Much like this, I've seen CC "packages" used as a sort of commodity, where the partners aren't as much interested in using the CCs, as they are merely selling them off later. ------ orik "Evolution has also had much faster pageload times than competitors, most of whom run painfully slowly thanks to Tor’s process of routing web traffic among random- ly chosen computers around the world. (Just how Evolution managed those speeds de- spite running on Tor itself isn’t clear.)" I can't really investigate myself currently and I've never visited but is anyone here know if/why Evolution is faster? ~~~ mschuster91 I'd guess multiple domains for hosting stuff like CSS and images to better exploit parallelism, and massive compression where possible. ------ ChuckMcM Presumably they are smart enough to operate in a jurisdiction where the law enforcement agencies are more of a strategic partner rather than an operational risk. Given the guy running it is a former carder, and Krebs seems to think that all carders are Ukrainian or Russian, perhaps Evolution is based out there? If so that would make it pretty hard for the FBI I suspect. ~~~ x0x0 I did wonder why you couldn't set up silk road 3 in eg russia and merely avoid selling drugs into russia. No tor required, and you can stick your middle finger up to the US/EU authorities. Though you probably have to be willing to never leave Russia ever... ------ mike-cardwell What is the .onion for this service? EDIT: Seems to be listed on the hidden wiki. A clearnet mirror of which exists here: [http://hiddenwiki.me/](http://hiddenwiki.me/) ~~~ cakeface Just a reminder that the hidden wiki is, indeed, a wiki. People can go in there and change the onion link to a fraud site such as the ones referenced in the article. Since onion addresses are not nearly as memorable as domain names this is actually a pretty big problem. ------ woah How "immoral" is it really, facilitating the sale of stolen CC info? Clearly, it is a bad thing to do. But it seems to me that the CC companies are at least as much to blame for having such a crappy system. Anti-fraud is one of the few things that they can point at as justifying their exorbitant fees for sending a couple of packets. The fact is, their system allows fraud and they are not doing anything about it. ~~~ pavel_lishin Given that stolen credit cards create a lot of headaches for the people who actually _use_ the credit cards, I'd say it's pretty immoral. (Yes, yes, the CC companies are on the hook for it, and you're not liable for any money charged to a stolen card, etc., etc., but it doesn't make it pleasant. It's stressful.) ~~~ desdiv _the CC companies are on the hook for it_ The CC companies pass it down to the retailers in terms of transaction fees, who in turn pass it down to the consumers. It doesn't matter whether your card gets stolen or not. It doesn't matter whether you even _have_ a credit card or not. Everyone is paying for the cost of credit card fraud in one way or another. Even people who only pay with cash still bear the burden of credit card fraud, since they're still paying the credit-card-fee-inclusive price (unless they only shop at retailers with cash discounts). ~~~ firepacket It's not even in the form of transaction fees. Fraudulent charges are withdrawn from the retailers. Even if it has already posted to the bank account, they will take it back. The CC companies never absorb the cost for fraud. Their greatest trick is convincing everyone they do.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hitler's secret fighter revealed - newacc http://news.rediff.com/slide-show/2009/jun/30/slide-show-1-hitler-stealth-fighter-reincarnated.htm ====== DannoHung Man, that's a beautiful plane. I wonder why flying wing designs haven't been more prevalent. I mean, there've been a few, but not a whole lot. ~~~ russell The original story is here with a lot more detail: [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090625-hitle...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090625-hitlers- stealth-fighter-plane.html) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-49> goes into some of the performance and stability issues of the early flying wings. I suspect that a wooden flying wing at 600 mph would have been uncontrollable or subject to airframe failure. ~~~ electromagnetic I suspect a large wooden flying wing would have been subject to warping unlike most WW2 planes, which would produce unpredictable behaviour. When your entire plane is a wing, you don't want it changing shape in mid-flight. We're not birds, I doubt many human pilots would be able to intuitively control a plane that changes shape and flight profile during turns. ------ teilo Thank goodness that Hitler was driven more by revenge than by cold common sense. He diverted massive resources from projects such as this one, toward building more bombers to get back at the Allies for bombing the hell out of German cities. Consequently, a lot of really cutting edge stuff never made it off the planning table. And that's a good thing. ~~~ lispm reading a bit through the history I have the impression that projects like these were taking resources but achieving little. I doubt a plane like this with the technology of that time would have had any impact in the war, other than losing lots of pilots in an unstable plane. ~~~ cabalamat > reading a bit through the history I have the impression that projects like > these were taking resources but achieving little I also have that impression. There were loads of advanced weapons projects in Nazi Germany, but most never saw the light of day. For example, they had 35 projects to build proximity fuzes for shells and missiles, but didn't field a single proximity fuze during the war. America, on the other hand, had one such project and made millions of proximity fuzes. ------ TallGuyShort They mention it's similarity to the B-2 bomber, almost to say how advanced it is. But if it's been secretly stored at a US government military facility all these years, I bet it was actually the inspiration for the B-2 Bomber. ~~~ smhinsey It's unlikely that this is the case. There were flying wing designs on the drawing board in the US in the WW2 era, and it appears that the stealth characteristics of the plane itself are due primarily to its construction out of wood. The similarity seems to be skin deep, like comparing a V2 to a Saturn V or something along those lines. (I realize that the same people were involved in both the V2 and the Saturn V, but that's not really the point.) [edit] It may also be worth mentioning that NGC apparently overplayed the "stored in a secret government facility" aspect. From what I can tell, it was stored at one of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum warehouses around DC. ~~~ joeyo You picked a really strange counter-example with the V2 / Saturn V comparison. If there were ever a set of rockets that shared a lineage would be those. Von Braun was brought to the US specifically for his rocketry expertise and he designed the Saturn V. It's ludicrous to claim that the similarities were only skin deep. Regarding the flying wing, I note that the replica was built by engineers at Northrop, who as it happens also designed the B-2 bomber. So it seems Northrop was at least aware of the plane, and they probably did not discover it recently. The lag between WW2 and the introduction of the B-2 (wikipedia claims a first flight in 1989) can be explained by the need for advances in control for the flying wing design (thrust vectoring, fly-by-wire, etc). Edit. Compare also the YB-49, designed by Northrop (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-49>) and first flown in 1947 and the YB-35 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-35>). Given Jack Northrop's interest in flying wing designs, I'd be very surprised if he was not aware and perhaps influenced by this plane. ~~~ smhinsey I concede it's not a great example, but the larger point was that the V2 is related in type to the Saturn V in the same way that the Ho-299 is related to the B-2. In other words, I don't think there was much to discover about the 299 aside from historical novelty. For what it's worth, Jack Northrop was interested in flying wings as early the late 30s with the N1-M. ------ antidaily "Hitler's Stealth Fighter" aired Sunday, June 28 on the National Geographic Channel. Runs again on Sunday 7/5 at 1:00 PM. ------ robin_reala Apparently this used carbon dust in the glue of the laminate to act as a radar stealthing material: [http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/the_retro_horten_229_ste...](http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/the_retro_horten_229_stealth_fighter_recreated.php) ------ AndrewO Reminds me of all the time I spent playing Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. Good game. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Weapons_of_the_Luftwaffe> ------ kingkongrevenge "Nazi engineers" Does the writer actually know the engineers were party members? ~~~ rend If you read the actual source article in National Geographic, you'll find that the Horten brothers _were_ in fact Nazis. Still, even if they were not Nazi's, English is sufficiently malleable that Nazi engineer could mean simply _an engineer employed by the Nazi's_. Is every "Google engineer" an actual Google? ~~~ kingkongrevenge It's a bit more akin to now calling all Lockheed Martin engineers "Obama's Engineers". ~~~ donw No, that only applies if they work at GM. ------ tokenadult Duplicate of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680721>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Open source Arduino based USB/MIDI foot controller - rch http://axe.io/post/3412714714/welcome-to-axe-io ====== jamesotron I am shocked and amazed to see one of my projects posted to HN by someone other than myself. Apparently someone else cares enough about what I'm doing to tell their mates about it. Thanks.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Writer's Block, or the Wantrepreneur Blues - fazkan https://www.indiehackers.com/@thwiv/writers-block-or-the-wantrepreneur-blues-76ab4a93b6?utm_source=Indie+Hackers+Newsletter&utm_campaign=indie-hackers-newsletter-057&utm_medium=email ====== pfisch Quit your job. Make it real. Fear is one of the best motivators. Unfortunately this is bad advice for most people, because the truth is most people don't have the full skillset required to own a business. Maybe they could learn it if they apprenticed under an entrepreneur or in an executive role, but I'm honestly not sure. I own a business with studios in New Orleans and Atlanta, but I worked in the real world, went to grad school, and then came out and immediately went out on my own which is easier for a lot of reasons. I also think a series of fortunate and somewhat unreproduceable events led me here, strangely enough involving Gabe Newell, though I'm sure he wouldn't remember. I honestly don't think reading a bunch of books telling you how to be an entrepreneur are helpful or real at all. In fact I would describe them as more of a stalling tactic. ~~~ flachsechs > _most people don 't have the full skillset required to own a business_ i agree with your post but i never miss an opportunity to be pedantic -- reality is nobody has the full skillset to run a business -- in my mind it's really just a bunch of intangibles like vision (goal setting), determination, ability to take staggering amounts of abuse, ability to work insanely hard when it's necessary, and ability to know how to hire an expert in matters you are not skilled or experienced in, which means the ability to clearly communicate and know what to ask for through deductive reasoning. most people have NONE of those skills, because working a normal job doesn't require any of them. zero, zip, nada, zilch. a high functioning professional has like 2 or 3 of those things. i would guess less than 5% of the general US population has those characteristics in the large amounts required to start a business from scratch, and most of the time that talent is channeled into something like e.g. investment banking or corporate law or being a surgeon. on top of all that, the ability to take a financial and social risk is just too much to handle for most people. they just won't do it. period. you might as well ask them to sprout wings and fly. but that's why starting a business has the potential to be so god damn lucrative -- basically, nobody else is doing it relative to the demand the overall economy generates. i also agree that the only way you're really going to get anywhere is if you quit your job, or were fired. the slow drip of a paycheck is the biggest obstacle. ~~~ crush-n-spread financial and social risk is just too much to handle for most people. they just won't do it. nobody else is doing it People tend not to try because they cannot embrace the intermediate feeling of "I f __*ing suck at this. " When you embrace that you are not very good, you become the master. It is a tautology. ~~~ OtterCoder I feel like that's the step I'm on, and I really hope you are right. ------ brian-armstrong There's a really simple gimmick I use to get myself to do work. Set timer on phone for 20 or 30 minutes. Until the timer goes off, I won't intentionally engage in any distractions, just my project. When the time is up, I'm free to go do something else if I want. Sometimes I will stop working. Many times I will have got engaged by whatever I was doing and will keep going for a few more hours. Even if I stop, 20 minutes of undistracted work is actually pretty significant, so it's win/win ~~~ thwiv The pomodoro technique is very useful. Check out the app Forest, it's kind of a cool app for this technique. ------ ThomPete I have done a ton of successful side projects, one of them even turned into a great and growing business for me. As a former musician the concept of jamming seemed like a great way to think about side projects. In other words in my experience the best you can do is not even think about your side projects as projects (as the require process) but rather as jam- sessions. Hopefully you have hundreds of little ideas to explore not just one (if you have that one big idea you should probably turn it into a real business, quick your job and maybe get funding) The worst thing you can do is to worry about process (buy domain name, spend time on logo etc) ~~~ jmiserez Very insightful. Jam session also sounds better, less like work and more like fun. Easier to justify (to yourself and to others) if it doesn’t go anywhere, and less pressure. ~~~ ThomPete Yes Side projects should normally be measured by you don't want to go to bed because you want to do just one more thing rather than you can't go to bed because you need to finish some thing. It should be purely driven by desire. ~~~ moretai Jeez, I wish I could verbalize things like this because they are so insightful. Thanks for that. It makes sense, but I'd never think to phrase it like that, and hence it doesn't seem apparent that's what I want in my side projects. But the abstract gut feeling is essentially that. ------ jonny_eh Step 14: Find out in a couple years that someone else took the same idea to fruition and succeeded. When that happens I'm sad that I didn't fully pursue it, but happy that someone did. ~~~ reificator Back in high school I had an idea for a video game that I really wanted to make, but didn't because I was focusing on learning to program instead. That was probably the right decision, because that time investment I made during those years has really paid off for me. The game was a two-genre mashup between two _very_ different genres, that I thought I could pull off blending together. (I still kind of think it could be done, whether or not I still think _I_ could do it alone is a different story...) A few years ago, someone came up with exactly the same genre mashup, and in fact the main character looked extremely close to what I had in my notes. I was thrilled about it because I didn't just want to make it, I wanted to play it. Someone else did the work and took the risk of making it for me, and I get to fork over a few dollars and play it myself! Sure I wanted to be the one to make it, but if it existed at all that was huge. I'm a millennial, so the first thing I did was go look it up on YouTube. And what I saw was incredibly disappointing, didn't do any of the things I was hoping it would, and frankly I didn't even bother to go buy it and play for myself. It didn't look like it had that fun factor, and it didn't do either genre justice. Still makes me sad, and if I were to go into game development as more than a hobby, doing that game right is top of my list. ~~~ georgeecollins In games ideas are almost never original. I used to work with a designer who said if you think what you are doing is new you probably haven't been paying enough attention. But ideas matter very little and execution is golden. So I wouldn't worry too much if someone tried your idea. ------ aregsarkissian The key is to reduce the friction of getting features out on the open web and getting feedback from real users. have just one generic domain that can be repurposed to any idea. Attach it to a static ip on aws do or up cloud as an example. Use a rad framework like rails django or laravel and launch a permanent hello world by pushing to github. Now find a small group of users that have a problem you can solve. Spend an hour a night adding a page to your site and gather feedback. Rinse and repeat. The key is to have a basic ci/cd pipeline setup at the outset. Then iterating on ideas becomes much more easy. ------ ak39 Forgot to list: "Tell your friends about your brilliant ideas." ~~~ zippergz I'm at the point where I don't do that any more, to avoid the shame of being asked about it later and having to admit I haven't worked on it in months. Some people say they find having others know about it to be a motivator, but that hasn't been true for me. ~~~ ehnto I don't tell others either. Not right away. Telling someone is almost as good as it being finished. You have gotten that sweet social reward and pat on the head for being clever. If I don't show anyone until it's real in some way then I have to make it happen if I want that sweet social head pat. Obviously that's not the reason I do things but I do find telling people can undermine my motiviation a bit. ------ DesiLurker Serious question for those in software development, Have you ever had a debugger/problem solver's block? how do you get over it? ~~~ gricardo99 I've been stumped countless times. It can be demoralizing at times, but I've always found a way through. Some things that help: \- Break the problem down into smaller pieces. Analyze/Attack each piece. \- Try to attack the problem from a different angle. \- Step back, explain the problem to someone. Sometimes just explaining yourself helps highlight your assumptions, and can help you re-arrange your approach. \- Keep at it. Keep trying different things. ~~~ fazkan I totally agree with this, the bug catching block, occurs because we are not sure if catching this bug will solve our problem at all. Also this helped me a lot in making things dirtier, use some form of version control system (must). I cannot emphasize more on this. this is to bring you back to the original problem state, which is most cases is simpler than you think. ------ munificent I like the triad he breaks it down into. Here's the tricks I try to get over missing one leg of the tripod: > Energy and Direction, No Time I have a wife, kids, pets and work full time so this is my default state. Things that help: 1\. Get off my damn phone / reddit / twitter / whatever. Consuming media on the Internet is junk food for the attention span. I have had way too many evenings after I get the kids in bed where I think, "I'll just unwind on my phone for a few minutes and then work on something." The next thing I know, it's three hours later, every animated GIF and cute kitten link on Reddit is purple, and I'm filled with regret. I trying now to break my habit of consuming stuff on the web. It's ultimately not satisfying. A little news-reading is important, but any more than fifteen minutes a day or so is wasted. This frees up an astonishing amount of time. 2\. Get better at working on things in small pieces. I'm writing a book right now that's projected to be about 200,000 words. It builds up two implementations of the same programming language, and each implementation is spread across multiple chapters, so the book is _highly_ intertwined. You might expect that to require a ton of mental state and lot writing sessions to work on. Nope. I usually work on it less than an hour a day (which, granted, means it's going to take forever to finish). I rely on a test suite, Git, a log, and notes to myself to make it easier to pause and resume work on it and break it down into small pieces. 3\. Decide what _not_ to spend time on. Our natural tendency is to want to say yes to things -- new projects, new hobbies, new outings, new toys to play with. But since time is finite, each of those means cutting out something that's already in my life. I try to be more cognizant of that and proactively choose to _not_ invest time in things I don't want to be doing right now even if I would like to. > Direction and Time, No Energy For me, this is usually laziness or analysis paralysis. Some amount of laziness is OK -- nothing wrong with some chilling and self-care. Relaxing feels good, but I find it doesn't feel as good as the satisfaction of accomplishing something, so I try to remember that. Analysis paralysis is my personal demon. I try to remember that anything is generally a more productive path than getting stuck and doing nothing. If I'm stuck because I don't have enough information to pick a path, walking down one path is a great way to get that information, even if it requires some backtracking later. > Energy and Time, No Direction For me, this is usually analysis paralysis at a larger scale. The kids are finally out of the house and I've got four hours of free time. What project should I work on? Oh, God, I can't pick. Again, I try to force myself to pick _something_ because any choice is better than no choice. I don't personally often have the vague "I don't know what I want to do at all" problem I hear a lot from bloggers. I think many of those are coming from people who want to _be_ a certain thing (author, entrepreneur, successful open source project lead, etc.) and don't want to _do_ a certain thing (edit paragraphs, make sales cold calls, reply to bug reports for five hours). They want the reward of the cachet associated with the identity but either don't want to or don't know how to do the work to get that. Personally, I'm generally more motivated by the process than the product, so I don't fall into that trap very often. I don't have enough self-discipline to spend time on things when I don't enjoy the basic mechanical process of it. ~~~ eddy_chan > I have had way too many evenings after I get the kids in bed where I think, > "I'll just unwind on my phone for a few minutes and then work on something." There's a hack for this which I find works, just go to sleep at 8pm or 8:30pm instead right after the kids. Wake up at 4pm-4:30pm (yes I need a full 8 hours every night, not negotiable), you'll have much more willpower to tackle your side project in the morning before your kids wake up. Given the choice between reddit and side project, reddit will win. Given the choice between reddit and sleep...it's much easier to pick sleep even if reddit is more tempting. In the morning you have 2 choices, reddit vs side project but you just invested effort in waking up at 4:30am, side project it is... Edit: I actually see sleep as a precondition of productivity so sleeping is a 'productive activity' for me. ~~~ tisdy > eddy_chan 1 hour ago \| parent \| on: Writer's Block, or the Wantrepreneur > Blues > I have had way too many evenings after I get the kids in bed where I think, > "I'll just unwind on my phone for a few minutes and then work on something." > There's a hack for this which I find works, just go to sleep at 8pm or > 8:30pm instead right after the kids. Wake up at 4pm-4:30pm (yes I need a > full 8 hours every night, not negotiable), you'll have much more willpower > to tackle your side project in the morning before your kids wake up. Given > the choice between reddit and side project, reddit will win. Given the > choice between reddit and sleep...it's much easier to pick sleep even if > reddit is more tempting. That's a great way of thinking about it. p.s I think you mean 4am. ~~~ jansho > Wake up at 4pm-4:30pm (yes I need a full 8 hours every night, not > negotiable), you'll have much more willpower to tackle your side project in > the morning before your kids wake up. This is the exact tactic used by a friend studying PhD with five young kids. She got the PhD in four years. Also if you do a lot of manual labour - gardening, stacking shelves whatever - sleep becomes the obvious choice. ------ sjcsjc "3\. Buy a domain name (this step is crucial)" Fantastic ~~~ moretai This part is easy for me. I have a ton of dead domain names. The rule that if you have skin in the game or money in the game, then you'd be motivated to complete the task. That doesn't work for me. Maybe for a little bit. But essentially stuff like this is a sale technique. ~~~ ryanwaggoner It's easy for everyone. The "this part is crucial" was sarcasm :) ~~~ moretai Ah, I didn't read the article. Probably should have done that. ------ dev1n > _Energy and Time, No Direction_ I tend to just buy one of the books I have on my list and dive into that. Then I don't need direction, I just keep turning pages and take notes. ------ fiokoden I gotta say, I just bulldoze through and get the damn software built at great personal cost in a whole range of ways. I always complete the project. The hardest thing is not writing the code - although that is extremely hard - the hardest thing is building something people want to use.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Samsung CEO says all its products will be connected by 2020 - SharpSightLabs http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533941/ces-2015-the-internet-of-just-about-everything/ ====== johndubya1 Isn't this just hype? I still don't understand why it's going to be helpful to have something like my refrigerator connected. I've heard rumors of having the refrigerator tell you when you're out of certain products, but this is useless for people like me who rarely buy the exact same products! The internet of things is a cool idea for some products, but kind of gives me the feeling of being a gimmick overall. ------ aerialcombat I would've been impressed if he said 2016.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Lemony Snicket's Occupy Wall Street Observations - swilliams http://occupywriters.com/by-lemony-snicket ====== rick888 I wish the same people who supported the occupation of wall street supported the rights of software developers and musicians. More money is demanded from the protesters, yet when developers and musicians have a problem with people downloading their hard work without any compensation, the answer is: "you aren't guaranteed a profit". Well occupiers, now it's my turn to say the same thing when you tell me you have a $50,000 student loan debt and you can't find a job or when you want a government-sanctioned wage increase for not doing anything more. I feel like people that are successful are being attacked here. I've seen it time and time again with the protesters. They try to silence anyone that even has a hint of success. ~~~ redthrowaway >when you want a government-sanctioned wage increase for not doing anything more. Outside of unionized public servants, this really doesn't describe anyone. >I feel like people that are successful are being attacked here. I've seen it time and time again with the protesters. They try to silence anyone that even has a hint of success. Bullshit. Nobody's blaming the rich for being rich, they're blaming the rich for using their influence to secure ever sweeter deals from the government, privatizing the profits and socializing the losses, while everyone else suffers. Nobody's calling out Warren Buffett for being a billionaire, they're calling out the greed of those who use their wealth and influence to gain more wealth and influence without regard for the people they hurt in the process. ~~~ Fliko I know plenty of people, and have seen plenty of comments on the internet lynching many rich people. I don't think this was the original intent of the movement, but it is definitely an unintended side effect ~~~ GiraffeNecktie Wherever there are protesters there will be a fringe of kooks riding the wave who want nothing more than to attract attention, either by breaking shit, hurting someone, or by trying to shock with their extreme opinions. ------ jisaacstone Interesting, glad I read it. I don't like to nit-pick, but I am always a bit uncomfortable when there is an implication that wealth is a "zero-sum game" And that does seem to be implied here. Wealth creation is complex. Be aware of oversimplification.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Merkel allows prosecution of German comedian who mocked Turkish president - doener https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/04/15/merkel-allows-prosecution-of-german-comedian-who-mocked-turkish-president/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-world%3Ahomepage%2Fcard ====== dang Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11503910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11503910). ~~~ frik Why not move the upvotes too?? 308 points!! The other one has only 180 points and therefor will vanish from the frontpage a lot sooner. It's already on 24th instead of 1th (as it would be otherwise), so it seems like... ~~~ dang If you think about how to do this in a fair or precise way you soon realize that it's hopelessly complicated. For example, we can't just move the points because some people will have voted for both. The ranking of a story like that is determined by a lot of different factors, not just points and timestamp, and I'm not sure that it's important for it to stay on the front page for much longer than it has. But I appreciate that you feel differently about it, so we'll roll back the clock on it a bit (easier than adding points but will have a similar effect). ------ joesmo If it wasn't clear before, hopefully it's crystal clear now from this idiotic demand that Turkey is in no position to join the EU in its current state. Erdogan is human scum and he's making sure of that in many ways these days. ------ hendricius The reason - it is not because she agrees with the matter. It is because it is not her job to decide. It is the job of the law to clarify if he is guilty or not. ------ dijit Other discussion; [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11503910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11503910)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The C++ Programming Language (4th Edition) - lispython http://www.stroustrup.com/4th.html ====== sramsay What sort of cover art should we use for the book? How about a snow-capped mountain peak? You know, the kind of mountain peak where people die either for lack of oxygen, or because crevasses open randomly across the landscape. The kind of mountain where you might go blind if you take off your sunglasses. That kind of place. ~~~ n00b101 How about a picture of an F35 fighter jet? Because a fighter jet goes much faster than [insert your preferred hipster language]? Or, you know, the F35 uses C++ code (and not Python/Clojure/LISP/PHP/Ruby/whatever). ~~~ rbehrends The F-35 is about embedded software, i.e. it's about C/C++ vs. Ada, not C/C++ vs. Python. The reason they didn't go with Ada was a lack of programmers, not language design issues, as I recall. In any event, I don't think the F-35 with its numerous software-related problems [1, 2] is a good advertisement for C++. [1] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/aerospace/military/f35-s...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/aerospace/military/f35-software- dod-operation-test-evaluation-director-not-impressed) [2] [http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2013/03/f-35-joint-strike- fig...](http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2013/03/f-35-joint-strike-fighter-not- ready-combat-until-least-2019-gao-says/61832/) ------ cageface I expect to see all the usual writeoffs of C++ here. And, to be sure, it's an easy language to criticize. But, for better or for worse, it's still the only reasonable choice for a lot of very interesting application domains. And a lot of its less elegant features make more sense when you think carefully about the specific design goals for the language. I'd love to be able to write my DSP code in cleaner, simpler language but for now I'm happy that I have a tool that lets me build the software I care about. ~~~ minamea I think that's true, but it's also sad. I've looked at D and it's criticism seems reasonable to me: it actually seems to have _more_ features than C++. I really hope Go catches on more and fixes some of the (imho) bad things about it (like lack of generic programming). And then C++ won't be the _only_ option anymore. ~~~ fauigerzigerk Go is nice but it's a replacement for Java or Python not for C++. I'm working on an in-memory analytics engine, something that has only become affordable in recent years because memory prices have fallen so much. In-memory computing is a very important trend and garbage collected languages just don't work. You can't have the system stall for seconds or even tens of seconds unless it's purely a batch workload. I have to admit that I haven't really researched what can be done in Go to keep in-memory data off-heap so the garbage collector doesn't see it. I have done that research for Java and it's unworkable. It's either slow or extremely unproductive to work with or both. ~~~ minamea Are garbage collection pauses really a concern? You're still running atop a multitasking operating system with all kinds of pauses. ~~~ fauigerzigerk Garbage collection pauses are a huge concern with larger heap sizes. Depending on the application it may be OK to make a user wait for a second or two, but not for 30 seconds. Multitasking doesn't cause that kind of lag usually. It's even more problematic for some types of trading systems or stream processing of sensor data, etc. All the trends are working against garbage collection right now. Memory sizes are growing and we're moving away from batch processing for many workloads. ------ girvo I've recently started learning C++ again to get into game programming. Initially I was learning Flash/AS3 based engines, as I used to be quite a great AS2 programmer back in the day. I want to learn to create cross-platform games, but want to get in the guts a bit more than, say, Unity lets you. So, C++ is what I decided on. It's a beast of a language, I'll tell you that much, but it's actually really quite enjoyable to program in! It was the first real language I tried to learn when I was 12 years old. I got as far as making a text game with `switch' statements ;) Definitely going to order this one I think. Coming from an ALGOL-derived language background for the most part, having something like this as a reference will be brilliant, and a good addition to go with my `Pro C++' book (handles architecture and idioms more than the language itself per se, but does cover some advanced features). The only thing I wish I could find was a reference on how games are actually _built_: what development patterns, what tools I'll need to write, etc. All I can find are low-level OpenGL based things for writing engines, or fluffy "Design a Game!" crap. *sigh ~~~ mkilling Game Coding Complete: [http://www.amazon.com/Game-Coding-Complete-Fourth- ebook/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Game-Coding-Complete-Fourth- ebook/dp/B00B7RE4GQ/) ~~~ girvo Holy crap, that's perfect. Thanks so much! You don't have a refferal link by any chance, I'd love to make sure you get something for a rec like that: i've been looking for something like this for weeks now! ~~~ mkilling No referral link - just glad I could help ;-) ------ bokglobule If Bjarne had been able to keep C++ his own creation instead of letting the "standards" people come in and take the thing over, C++ might have avoided becoming the over-designed language its become. Anyone recall the differences between [const const {star}], [const {star} const], etc ? Language design has come a long way since the early 80's. His concerns back then were a programming language that would retain the performance of 'C' on most hardware and be straightforward to generate from 'C' code due to re-use of the 'C' syntax (the early C++ systems relied on converters that translated C++ to 'C'). Over time compilers were created to generate machine code straight from C++. When 4k was a lot of RAM, it made sense to focus on this; it still does if you're developing embedded software with very limited hardware. (FWIW, I've written software in C++ since 1990). I'd argue hard that today, in most cases, and in particular in web applications, the issue is developer productivity. Today we're focusing more on expressing solutions in code that are much closer to the way that we think. Whether it's Ruby, F#, Scala, or Javascript, the tools we're using allow for more powerful solutions in far less code and complexity than C++. Let the flames begin.. ~~~ dorolow Some developers need tools that offer better performance than the languages you enumerated. Not that I have anything against those languages or more abstract languages in general. Quite the contrary, if it was up to me we'd all be writing lisp. Outside of serving as a prototyping tool, a role that Python and Matlab admittedly fill pretty well, I don't believe using Javascript or Ruby or any other (interpreted/high level/more abstract) language would bring much to the problem domain I do most of my work in, realtime computer vision. It may be a shock to some on HN, but there are other applications for computing than web development. I doubt Scala is going to be penetrating triple-A game development any time soon, although I do think it's neat that Javascript has become popular for game UI work. I really like that C#/Unity is going strong and I'm really itching to do something cool with WebGL, asm.js, and/or emscripten. But despite all the progress these languages have made, some problems still haven't been overcome and it's disingenuous to imply that they have. I doubt many would make the argument that C++ is suitable for web development, and I would expect most people to realize that native code still has its place, at least for now. The day I can use Python, Ruby, F#, Haskell, Erlang, or something cool, I will officially be the happiest person on the planet. It hasn't happened yet. Maybe Rust (oh yes) or Go will set everyone free. With all that being said, C++11 is a very welcome addition to the language. While adding more bulk to the language, it ends up reducing the complexity of your code. Auto and decltype have been fantastic for eliminating redundant typing info and boilerplate by making code more generic. Smart pointers, unique_ptr particularly, have been great. For Lambda functions combined with STL algorithms like for_each have eliminated a substantial amount of code on their own. Move semantics have had the effect of reducing the amount of line noise by reducing the frequency of seeing things typed const& and the double whammy of bringing performance gains for little or no effort in many cases. I don't think anyone can deny that C++ is a bit heavier than any language ought to be, but it's what we have and I'll welcome any attempt to make my life easier. Software and programming languages are not zero sum. The use and existence of C++ doesn't preclude the existence or use of another language. Don't try to convince yourself and others that all problems are nails just because you really like hammers. edit: for the record, I mostly do Python and Clojure outside of work when I'm not doing something graphics oriented ~~~ n00b101 > I would expect most people to realize that native code still has its place, > at least for now. Native code has always had a place and will always have a place. New applications will be written in C++, 20 years from now, when all the inefficient, fadish languages (and the inconsequential websites that they power) have long been forgotten. ~~~ pjmlp Any language can be native, it is just a matter of providing a native code compiler implementation for it. ------ pfedor I like C++, I think I know it reasonably well, I've been programming in C++ full time for the last 10 years. I never managed to warm up to Stroustrup's book. I've tried reading it a couple of times. It feels like a schlep. There are many great books on C++. Koenig and Moo, Josuttis, "Effective C++", they all convey the technical information and at the same time read like page turners. I only read fragments of "Thinking in C++" but I think it's in the same category, it reads great. Some of them will no doubt have new editions, updated for C++11. So, not that there's anything wrong with Stroustrup's book, but it just can't compete. Much as I'm looking forward to reading a book on C++11 the language--there already exists an excellent one on the standard library, which is the new edition of Josuttis--it will not be "The C++ Programming Language", 4th edition. ~~~ n00b101 I think of Stroustrup's book as a reference manual. It is very comprehensive in covering the standard. Fact is that you don't learn to program by reading books any more than you learn to play a sport by reading books. ~~~ danieldk Actually, I like Brokken's C++ annotations far more as a reference: <http://www.icce.rug.nl/documents/cplusplus/> It's written more lively and opinionated. Also, it's apt-gettable on Debian and Ubuntu :). ------ dionidium I have the first edition of this book here on my desk. It's 328 pages (including the index). Amazon says the 4th edition will be 1368 pages. I don't really have a point, I guess. I haven't tracked C++ in many years and was just surprised at such a large difference. ------ Svip Still can't overload the semicolon operator. I asked Stroustrup about this critical feature lack in C++, and he admitted that he simply forgot. Embarrassing! ~~~ demallien Yup. The day I discovered "smart" pointers was the day I vowed to never use C++ again. I mean this is a language that touts being close to the metal as an advantage, and then it allows you to create something that looks like a pointer but doesn't fit into the space for a pointer. Genius... I'll take C any day of the week, and if I need some higher level features, I'll either write a precompiler that can parse my higher level features before generating C code, or I'll write a bindings generator to connect to Javascript/Ruby (I've used both options successfully in the past). ~~~ kamaal What exactly are smart pointers? ~~~ tonyedgecombe Pointers that clean up when they go out of scope or a reference count reaches zero. ------ slackpad Oh sweet - the code examples are no longer in italics. That drove me crazy with the earlier editions. ~~~ rtpg I loved that so much. It made it feel nice. Anyone know how different the book is from the previous edition (minus the obvious C++11 stuff) ~~~ zura Yup, I was even searching what font that was... interesting to see how it will be in my editor. Any hints/links appreciated. ------ laurentoget Considering the expected audience for this book, isn't the $75 sticker price some form of racketeering? ~~~ n00b101 The expected audience for this book are hard-core hackers who work on important systems, are paid accordingly and can probably expense it on their corporate AMEX. So no, I don't think $75 is unreasonable. Maybe you're thinking of "Scala for Social Media Hipsters Trying to Code a Startup on a $10,000 YCombinator budget" ~~~ laurentoget I was more thinking of the indian, malaysian or chinese college student who wants to work on important system and for which $75 is a fortune. ------ digikata This would really benefit from being an ebook - for years I had the 3rd edition with hanging sheets of errata folded into the back (ahh wait, I still have that edition...) . I'd soo much rather get an email with a note that a new correction was available for download... ------ sramsay Wake me up when there's a 3rd edition of _The C Programming Language_. ~~~ akadien I write ANSI C for a living, and I still learn new tricks and insights from the second edition. In fact, many of the neatest ways we use C are things that we learned from references published the 1980s and early 1990s. ------ jason_slack I already pre-ordered my copy via Amazon. I love how Stroustrup writes his books. Concise. ~~~ tekacs Now _if only_ he would take that conciseness across to his programming language design. :P (I kid, I kid... please don't hurt me?) ~~~ twoodfin Hey what do you think "auto" is for? It's true that it's hard to shrink a language, but several of C++'s new features are designed to make modern designs expressible in much more concise, elegant code. ~~~ kostya-kow It doesn't really "shrink" the language. It adds a level of abstraction. But the problem is that it doesn't really implement the abstraction very well. The complexity doesn't go away, you still have all std::vector<std::ostream::operator<<std::iterator<T><2<std::bla_bla>>>> underneath, and if you make a small error in the code, compiler will still spit out an incomprehensible error message. ------ hackerpolicy Is his C+11 FAQ enough if I've read the third edition? ~~~ SupremumLimit Not really. The FAQ only provides a high level overview of the new features, and it isn't complete. ------ pjmlp Looking forward to buy it. ------ pkrumins YES! ------ L0j1k YAY!! I preordered months ago. Can't wait!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
AMD Ryzen Mini-STX: ASRock’s DeskMini A300 - walterbell https://smallformfactor.net/reviews/systems/asrocks-deskmini-a300-finally ====== Dunedan That would be such a great system if it had an internal PSU. I'm so tired of all these ultra small cases which require an additional bulky external PSU. Apple seems to be the only manufacturer who cares about that. ~~~ mojo982 I've been looking for a good SFF home server system but every one I find has an external PSU. It's surprising to me. I'd love an Intel NUC but I don't want a power brick the size of the computer itself. ~~~ hollerith In case you don't already know, the Mac mini has an internal PSU. I'm like you; I want one box / lump, not two (mainly because I move the box around a lot). Consequently, I have a Mac mini. The price cheapest non-used Mac mini however has risen from $500 to $800 in about 3 years. ~~~ com2kid It also overheats if you use it for too long (e.g. keep the Simulator open for most of a work day), causing the machine to slow down to a barely usable speed. I'd prefer an external PSU. ~~~ p1necone This seems to be a common thing with apple devices - supposedly powerful hardware with woefully inadequate cooling. iirc one of the i9 macbook models actually performed _worse_ than the corresponding i7 model because the cooling was so bad. ~~~ p1necone Seeing as I'm being downvoted - look! I found a source: [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook- Pro-15-Core-i9-s...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook- Pro-15-Core-i9-slower-than-Core-i7.396971.0.html) I'm at work so I don't have time to do many more googles. ------ dxxvi A lot of people in my company have their laptop on with lid closed and they use external monitors. I, a Joe programmer, don't need a laptop to work and I guess there are lot of people like me. So, if there's a desktop which is as small as a laptop, but more powerful and more ports (USB, display port, HDMI, DVI, VGA ...), cheaper than a laptop (because of no screen) and not very Linux unfriendly, I think it will sell. ------ clircle Whoa, this computer cost less than the case I bought for my m-ITX pc last year. ~~~ lytedev To be fair, I think this is essentially just a case, motherboard, and power supply and not an entire computer. Still an amazing deal! ------ walterbell The forum thread has more discussion, Newegg has been restocking every couple of weeks and sold out within a day or two, [https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/sffn-asrocks- deskm...](https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/sffn-asrocks- deskmini-a300-finally.10553/) Asrock has an upcoming low-power fanless MB/barebone for embedded, [http://linuxgizmos.com/worlds-first-amd-based-nuc-mini-pc- sh...](http://linuxgizmos.com/worlds-first-amd-based-nuc-mini-pc-showcases- ryzen-r1000/) _> ASRock Linux-ready “iBox-R1000” industrial PC and “NUC-R1000” mainboard provide the new AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 SoC in a 4×4 NUC form-factor with up to 32GB DDR4, 2x GbE, 3x USB 3.1, triple 4K displays, and 2x M.2 slots._ ~~~ dsr_ There we go: 2 gig-e ports means it will be useful as a router/firewall. I hope they don't price it too high. ~~~ tyfon Hopefully there will be some tests for this, there are so many of these computers that have onboard 1 gbit card that share the bus with other devices so that in reality you can't route 1 gbit. For my current router I had to buy separate pcie cards to get proper throughput, the 1gbit cards on the intel motherboard could only sustain 300 mbit/s routing (600 mbit on the bus), but if only one card was used it could accept or send 1 gbit. ------ CharlesW Site has been hugged to death. Alternate review that works: [https://www.techspot.com/review/1816-asrock- deskmini-a300/](https://www.techspot.com/review/1816-asrock-deskmini-a300/) EDIT: smallformfactor.net link appears to work again. ------ baybal2 If it is ASRock (an Intel shop for decades) makes bet on AMD, Intel should begin to scratch their head at least. The bet to prioritise server chips over consumer ones in fab priority may seem like a win from money side, but loss of clients will be much more impactful on them long term. ~~~ klingonopera Ehhh.... Asrock has AFAIK never been an Intel shop, and also hasn't existed for decades (they'll have for two in 2022). Just head over to eBay and you can find a bunch of used Asrocks with Socket A/462 for AMD Athlons from the mid-2000s. ------ coleifer What would you use this for? Gaming? 4k home media? Bitshekel mining? General purpose computer? I had to Google the term apu and I'm still not sure if I understand (whether it's marketing or something distinct). ~~~ bArray From Wikipedia [1]: > The AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), formerly known > as Fusion, is the marketing term for a series of 64-bit > microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), > designed to act as a central processing unit (CPU) and > graphics processing unit (GPU) on a single die. My understanding is that it has always been a CPU and GPU combined, but is some marketing wangle as you suggest. I've owned one in the past and it was generally quite fast in general use, I believe it off-loaded simple GPU related tasks to the GPU part of the APU which ultimately reduced the graphics latency. This seems to be quite similar to the Mali GPU which can be bundled on ARM packages to handle simple graphics [2]. I believe this is how something like the Raspberry Pi can output 4k over HDMI despite not being particularly powerful. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_%28GPU%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_%28GPU%29) ~~~ tomcam Why the down votes? I am trying to learn, just like the grandparent poster. Parent seems to be giving information that I was seeking as well. Is the parent’s post wrong or what? ~~~ bArray No idea, I wish these people would at least reply and correct me if something is wrong. ------ jstsch This looks like a nice box. Powerful, _super_ cheap! Perhaps a bit thermally constrained though. On a similar note, I picked up a Gigabyte GB-BLCE-4105 a couple of months ago. Very small box with a quad core J4105 Celeron CPU. Tiny fan. Added 16 gigs of RAM and a 512GB NVME SSD. Super nice home server, using a small amount of watts. Running a minimal Ubuntu install which uses kvm to host multiple isolated VM's for different applications (Unifi controller, domotica, smb, solar panel/energy control, etc.). ------ wyldfire > The rear IO is modest, including DisplayPort (1.2), HDMI, VGA (honestly?!) Gee, I'm just happy that they reaped the RS232 DB9 ;) ------ seddin Theres clearly a market for mini computers, I wish we had more products like this or the Mac Mini. ~~~ jsilence You might find the Udoo Bolt interesting: [https://www.udoo.org/udoo- bolt/](https://www.udoo.org/udoo-bolt/) ------ julienfr112 Does anyone has a photo side by side with an intel nuc ? it looks maybe twice the nuc size ? ~~~ walterbell It can fit/cool dual 2.5" drives and a 65W TDP desktop CPU with a powerful GPU, not the low-power laptop CPUs used by a NUC. ------ dvdbloc Already out of stock at NewEgg! Anyone know of alternative suppliers that are reputable? ------ JoshuaRLi The recent STX form factors are a wonderful boon to SFF consumer computing, and this is a welcome step towards wider SFF adoption. Looking forward to the gradual miniturization of desktops, love efficiency at lower TDPs. ------ walrus01 The funny thing to me is that the front panel is obviously from an old design which had a mounting point for a slimline 5.25" DVD-RW drive, but re-used for USB ports and other stuff instead. ------ johnchristopher Can you put a decent graphic card in it and play games from three years ago at 1080p? ~~~ walterbell No PCIe slots in a 5"x5" motherboard. The article says "GTA V, 50FPS at 1080P" for Ryzen 5 2400G with integrated Vega 11 GPU. ------ glglwty I would like to buy this if it supports ECC memory ~~~ sneak Out of curiosity, what is your use case/application that requires ECC memory? ~~~ walterbell One use case for ECC is ZFS. ~~~ Gracana ECC is probably less important for ZFS than it is for just about any other filesystem. ~~~ hestefisk That’s simply not true. ECC is key to avoid bit rot. ~~~ sneak ZFS includes strong checksums over stored data. Bit rot is more protected against with ZFS on a non-ecc system than most other filesystems on a system with a theoretical/impossible 0% memory error rate. ~~~ walterbell And ZFS+ECC is better than ZFS without ECC. ~~~ hestefisk Exactly my point. Then why the need to down vote my comment? The statement that ECC is irrelevant for zfs is blatantly incorrect. There can be bit rot in ZFS checksum values without ECC. Ask Allan Jude if need be. ~~~ rhinoceraptor It's not irrelevant, but you should still use ZFS if you care about your data, even if you don't have ECC. ------ Creationer If you want to build your own SFF PC, using more powerful and widely available components, there is a good guide here from the SFFPC subreddit: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bzVdvmb4jCohQz0xPN1_...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bzVdvmb4jCohQz0xPN1_3cLXCPvMkPmIPv28D7Cr7s8/edit?usp=sharing) ~~~ nqzero i love the idea of sff, but my one attempt at mini-ITX resulted in a system with non-standard PSU and mainboard (i think). i have an ATX case from college that I'm still able to throw a new PSU and mainboard in, and i'm good to go. have things stabilized enough in sff that i'd likely to be able to swap mainboards for several generations ? ~~~ badlucklottery >have things stabilized enough in sff that i'd likely to be able to swap mainboards for several generations If you get a case large enough to support a full-size GPU and SFX PSU (so around 7-8L in volume), you're golden. Smaller than that you start having to go with ITX GPUs or external PSUs. I think every big motherboard maker has at least one ITX board for each new generation/chipset so I haven't had any trouble in the last 3-4 years since I switched over to ITX for my builds. The only thing you really have to look out for is some of more recent extra tall + wide GPUs. But even some full-tower ATX cases can't fit these without vertical mounting. ------ ridiculous_fish It's unfortunate that AMD has no chips with weak integrated graphics. Their non-G chips require an external GPU, while the G line has a high powered iGPU, which costs you compute performance. AMD doesn't really have a good offering for small fast home servers that will sit in a closet. ~~~ walterbell They have the $55 2C/4T Athlon 200GE with Vega 3, [https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd- athlon-220ge-240ge-...](https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd- athlon-220ge-240ge-vega-cpu,5988.html) Or 8-core Epyc embedded server motherboard with VGA BMC from Supermicro, [https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-m11sdv-8c-ln4f-revie...](https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-m11sdv-8c-ln4f-review- amd-epyc-3251-mitx-platform/) ~~~ ridiculous_fish What they're missing is something like the i5 8600 or i7 8700. That embedded server looks sweet but is overkill for most homes in terms of connectivity and price.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Government Bailouts: A U.S. Tradition Dating to Hamilton - prakash http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122186662036058787.html?mod=article-outset-box ====== quasimojo we've never done anything on this scale. the debt ceiling will be raised to 11.3 trillion, meaning it will hit 12 trillion by 2011 and 20 trillion by 2020. and that isn't counting the forty or so trillion in unfunded entitlements like ss and medicare for the boomers. adding so much more debt at a time when we need to be taking near-fascistic measures to be reducing it, likely will result in the US repudiating the dollar by 2025. its over. no nation can issue this much debt and survive. expect a global ultra-depression when this implodes, punctuated by a major war. ~~~ dfranke The situation isn't too dire _yet_. As you can see here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_debt>, as a percentage of GDP, US public debt is still comparable to or below many other first-world countries. But you're absolutely right about unfunded entitlements. If nothing is done, we'll be soon be on par with Zimbabwe, and it's uncertain whether anything non-horrific can be done. Those unfunded entitlements are not just an accounting problem -- they're real material wealth that people are counting on for their retirement that doesn't exist. The obvious solution is to raise the retirement age, but you can only raise it so far before people are too old to be physically capable of work. If any tightrope does exist between hyperinflation and octogenarians starving in the streets, I question whether the political will exists to walk it. ~~~ nazgulnarsil willingness to walk it has to come from knowledge that failure will result in BOTH. ~~~ dfranke Agreed, but I don't envy the politician who tries to point that out while fighting for re-election.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Great online forums? - ffggvv Reddit is filled with internal jokes. HN is a big echo-chamber. Lobste.rs is invite-only. Imzy?? (too young maybe?)<p>Any good forum out there? ====== scrapcode I think I can relate to you in that I'd like to find a community to be able to interact more. I've been an active lurker on HN for 4 years now. I learn so much from HN but feel like I'm just eavesdropping on "the smart kids." I love programming & technology as a whole and have been involved since I was a young preteen, but my career path just didn't happen to go that way and I have too much going where I am to change career fields, bittersweet. However, I've never been somewhere that stays "on topic" so well, so to speak, but then again it's hard to socialize as I don't work in the field and don't have much input that I don't think will make me look stupid. ------ larrydag Here's is how I viewed this history of collaborative forum information online in the last 20 years Slashdot - aggregating opinions from "experts". allowed comments. Lacked accountability so then came... Digg - allowed crowd source voting. active interaction. complicated and over- engineered upvote algorithm lead to... Reddit - community inclusion. more open voting (and down voting). subgroups. So that's kind of where I see it. What gets improved on? Is there technology that can be improved? Is there a missing idea or improvement? Is there a next generation that could improve status quo? ~~~ devopsproject Many of the default subs on reddit are pretty terrible. It seems like as the number of users increase, the quality goes down. Reddit also has a problem with "super mods" who are pretty fast an loose with their powers. These seem to be normal problems with trying to appeal to large groups (lame watered down meme low effort crap) and the effects of power on individuals (bans, shadowbans, bias, agenda pushing, etc) ~~~ chickenking I am from outside US. I grew up watching American TV shows and movies and had a really positive impression about US and its people. I actually used to look down on my culture and its ways most of the time. The 4 years I spend on Reddit exposed me to so much racism and hatred that I have only negative feelings left now. I am leaving US next month, a good part of my decision was based on those feelings. ~~~ mahyarm How about the people and community you live in vs. random internet assholes who are a small minority of people and exist in your home country too and curated entertainment? ------ enraged_camel I like Something Awful. Outside of its general-purpose forums, it's very good, with plenty of reliable information and well-researched discussion about a large variety of topics. What I like the most about it is that it costs $10 to join, and if you get banned, you have to pay another $10 to reinstate your account. This keeps the lowest common denominator trolls out and discourages shitposting. ------ drewrv Metafilter is still around and has a great community. [http://www.metafilter.com/](http://www.metafilter.com/) ~~~ bdrool I've been on Metafilter for a long time (since the early 2000s -- _edit_ : longer than that, as I just recalled discussing the 2000 US presidential election on there, so it's been quite a while it seems). It was and still is miles ahead of many places on the internet in terms of civility, intelligence, and general knowledge, however it has one very big downside these days: it has gone more or less off the deep end into identity politics. As someone who believes in equality, individuality, and enlightenment values, it's difficult to stomach at times. I basically don't talk on there any more, as I know my viewpoints would not be welcome. I just read, as I still find it informative and valuable. However if you are looking for anything even approaching balanced discussion on certain topics, it's not really a go-to place. ------ Splendor I think there are still a few good forums out there but they're specific to a hobby or interest. ~~~ peller This is exactly right. For electronics, check out [http://www.eevblog.com/forum/](http://www.eevblog.com/forum/) For computer hardware, check out [https://forums.anandtech.com/](https://forums.anandtech.com/) ~~~ MatthiasP The anandtech forum is terrible. So much half knowledge and toxicity that even your average tech subreddit is a better choice. ~~~ peller That's a shame. Didn't use to be like that. But that site has gone downhill in general since Anand sold it to some big media outlet. (With the exception of a few authors who were around in old times.) ------ Mz What exactly are you looking for? A "good forum" is one that fits your needs and tastes well. Are you specifically looking for a tech forum? A general interest forum? Something else? What do you want out of it? ------ torgoguys As others have said, there are great ones about various niches. People tend to really know each other over time (in a more personal way than your Reddits of the world) and thus find themselves more accountable to each other--but it is still as anonymous as you want. You get too big of groups or absent or poor mods and things tend to fall apart. Tens of thousands of users is no problem because most users are mostly lurkers anyways. Quick plug--low odds here, but if you by some chance happen to know the board game Heroscape, have a look at www.heroscapers.com/community for a well functioning, respectful, fun (not modern looking) niche online community. The game has been cancelled for years, but there's still a good chunk of us active. Lots of site activity takes place in various private sections of the site devoted to various projects so you don't see everything happening but the public stuff is representative of how people treat each other there in private. ------ guiseroom Imzy is young enough to play a pivotal role in the community. Never underestimate that. ~~~ iuguy I tried Imzy, and I wanted to like it, I really did. However, I found it slow, bloated, very unnecessarily political (in a deeply polarising way, which is bad for something that isn't going to be an echo chamber), and the signal to noise was absolutely atrocious. I get what they were trying to achieve (and I hope things have improved since I left), but I think there's as much a risk of overestimating what Imzy can achieve as there is underestimating. ~~~ guiseroom You should take another look. ~~~ iuguy With respect, why? Also, why Imzy over somewhere else? ------ scythe The best online forums are the ones devoted to a topic and run by people who believe in what they're doing. HN, in fact, fits this description to a t. bluelight.org, which I used to moderate, is a great example of how a dedicated community can generate productive discussion even when most of the members are heavy drug users without college degrees. Quora, by contrast, has some of the smartest people from all over the world, but it's hardly a "community" and is susceptible to its own forms of groupthink and political squabbling. If you're specifically looking for discussion on politics, philosophy, and religion, aka the three things that end up on every forum that isn't about them, I suggest reading books and peer-reviewed journals. ------ eberkund What are your interests? These are the top forums I visit Fitness: [http://forum.bodybuilding.com/](http://forum.bodybuilding.com/) Computer hardware: [http://www.overclock.net/](http://www.overclock.net/) Camping and outdoorsy stuff: [https://campingbabble.com/](https://campingbabble.com/) Canadian deals site: [http://forums.redflagdeals.com/](http://forums.redflagdeals.com/) Mostly about internet but has some good sub-forums: [http://www.dslreports.com/](http://www.dslreports.com/) ------ jaykru Not sure if you're open to the idea, but I've found that smaller image boards, particularly those with a specific subject matter, often are home to excellent, substantive discussion. The only issue is that once a critical mass is reached (see 8chan, 4chan, et al) productive discussion goes out the window due to the ridiculous pace of conversation and the level of trolling enabled by anonymity and lax rules of engagement. I won't divulge any specific boards here publicly, but I'd be happy to PM you a nice one. ~~~ ZenoArrow >"I won't divulge any specific boards here publicly, but I'd be happy to PM you a nice one." HN doesn't have PMs. ~~~ jaykru Whoops. Well, I guess there's no harm in posting it on HN: lainchan.org ~~~ gressquel To be frank, I dont take any website with "chan" in it seriously. Think the absolute disgust coming out of 4chan is the reason ~~~ sboselli That's a shame, and also a quite lazy form of prejudice. Yes, 4chan and it's analogues are full of worthless shit and the quality has gone to the drain, but they are also full of different & unique people, some of whom share similar ideas that those of the HN community (privacy, anti- mainstream, anti-corpo, etc; but you can also find the polar opposites in either). It has in the past also acted as one of the few places with freedom of speech (is there anywhere left in the world now? I doubt it. People with that specific "absolute disgust" frame of mind have made them all disappear: "Let's stereotype a whole community based on a vocal negative minority"). It's also a place not only full of internet history, but also responsible for a big part of it. In fact, there is no doubt you have enjoyed content, trends, breaking news, memes, etc. that were originally created/generated at 4chan. All other forums/communities have and will continue to pick up content from 4chan & others. Not only lazy, but also kinda hypocrite. I guess that's the whole point of having these different communities. People quick to judge better stay at the mainstream, where everything is Safe. What you get is something like Reddit, which is now (just like 4chan) completely distorted from its original form and fully bought out, and you have admins (the CEO itself...) changing user's post on a personal grudge. Bravo. ~~~ mark_edward If you want free speech go yell about UFOs and gays on the public square where it's protected. Free speech doesn't mean people have to give you a platform. Your version of free speech would actually coerce other people into using their resources to propagate your speech, which doesn't sound free to me. Arguing 4chan is a positive valuable place because they are good at making memes and organizing raids and harassment campaigns is also pretty funny. ~~~ dang Several of your recent comments to HN have been uncivil. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) [https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html) ------ lainon [https://lainchan.org/](https://lainchan.org/) ------ brightsize I enjoy the City Data[0] forums. It's interesting to read about other cities and locations across the country and across the world, and to read about the thoughts and concerns of the locals. Very often there will be people posting who are thinking about moving to your city and who are asking for help and advice as they contemplate and implement their move. It's rewarding to field these kinds of questions and be able to help out. [0] [http://www.city-data.com/forum/](http://www.city-data.com/forum/) ------ marczellm For programming and IT-related reckless fun and hilarious rants I recommend [https://what.thedailywtf.com](https://what.thedailywtf.com). If you happen to play keyboards: [http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php/forums/18/1/The...](http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php/forums/18/1/The_Keyboard_Corner) ------ sideproject Would love to have you trying HelloBox [disclaimer - I run it]. HelloBox was originally designed as "Create your own HN" and has now become an online tool for creating and managing communities. If you can't find a community that you like, often the best approach is to create one! Would love to help you out along the way. [https://www.hellobox.co](https://www.hellobox.co) ------ Huhty Try our community/voting platform at Snapzu ([http://www.snapzu.com](http://www.snapzu.com)). Would love any feedback or to answer any questions. Cheers! ------ thehoff [http://arstechnica.com/civis/](http://arstechnica.com/civis/) which I've lurked on since its inception and have always liked it. ------ mahyarm I don't use it and it's slashdot era, but maybe metafilter? ------ detaro Many, but mostly special interest, mostly around hobbies. Reddit, Lobste.rs and HN aren't really forums in my view. (reddit comes closest, but still has this focus on short-term threads and voting that is different from what I think of as a good forum. Classic phpbb has its strengths) What fields are you interested in? ------ lowglow We're building forum software and experience over at Baqqer. If you're into building, sharing, and collaborating with other makers, it might be your cup of tea. ------ rvern Usenet. Great newsgroups on every subject. You can get an account on www.eternal-september.org or news.solani.org. ------ mrschwabe Voat.co seems like a promising Reddit alternative. Less censorship for certain, definitely not shill-proof however. Solving the problem of shills/astroturfers is IMO the most difficult and important challenge in accommodating public online discussion moving forward. ~~~ jtsylve Can you define those terms for those of us who are unaware? ~~~ mrschwabe Yes an astroturfer aka shill I would personally define as someone portraying themselves to be a neutral observer/participant when in reality they are paid/sponsored/incentivized by a state, company, or organization pushing a specific agenda. They are intentionally planted to deceive, distort and sway those unsuspecting of such activity. There is an excellent TED talk [0] on the subject. The problem is rampant and while not new, the recent election cycle has highlighted it greatly. Propaganda does not spread just from 'fake news' or a heavily biased corporate media. It is co-ordinated & perpetuated online. The links and comments on Reddit and HN are prime mediums to infiltrate and carry this out. [0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ- ZZtEU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU) ~~~ dang > _The links and comments on Reddit and HN are prime mediums to infiltrate and > carry this out._ I don't know about Reddit but we see comparatively little on HN that appears suspicious once we look at the data (e.g. which users have voted on a post). Anyone who suspects astroturfing on HN is welcome to email us so we can look into the matter—which we always do—but not to accuse other users directly, because both the odds and the cost of an unfair accusation are much higher than people realize when they do that. I listened to that talk you linked to. At the end the speaker mentions four "hallmarks of astroturfing": (1) use of inflammatory language; (2) use of charged language to "debunk myths"; (3) attacking an issue by controversializing the people around it rather than addressing the facts; (4) reserving all public skepticism for those exposing wrongdoing rather than wrongdoers. It seems to me HN is in pretty good shape here: the first three violate the site guidelines, and the fourth seems rather rare and is not received well by the community. Maybe there are astroturfers getting away with it on HN. If they exist, though, they're being clever about it, so we'd be interested in anything the community can figure out. Just please don't accuse each other directly without real evidence. ------ spoiledtechie Swintonreport.com for political discourse. ------ qwertyuiop924 I tried Imzy, but I can't like it. It's not forum-ey enough, draws too strongly from social networks: if your forum looks like a social media site, you won't have good discussion: that interface isn't optimized for it. a.f.p on the usenet (that's alt.fan.pratchett for the uninitiated) used to be good, but it seems to be nearly dead now. :-(. Bits of reddit are good. I love /r/adventofcode this time of year (although that's seasonal and event-specific). If you're looking for proper, real, actual _forums_ , I can reccomend a few. The xkcd forums are still excellent, give or take. If you like dwarf fortress, the bay12forums are good. And onto the chans: much maligned as they are. 4chan's /tg/ is shockingly good if you like tabletop games (WH40K in particular): it's a blue board, so it's not totally flooded with porn constantly, and it's also got a decent community and isn't horrifically acidic, unlike, say, /g/. Also, even if you don't like the chan, the wiki, 1d4chan, has a tvtropes-like stickiness about it, essentially being a best-of reel of the entire community. You should at least read The Tale of Old Man Hnderson, as it is one of the most famous in all of RPing. 7chan ([http://7chan.org](http://7chan.org)) was created as a reaction to 4chan, and it shows. Posting quality is enforced, and the mods are quite punishing. But as a result, quality is reasonable, AFAICT (although I am not a regular) Sushichan ([https://sushigirl.us](https://sushigirl.us)) is a "relaxed" chan. And than there's Lainchan. Lainchan is a cyberpunk chan (sort of). It also has a strong programming and anime focus (with a name like lainchan, would you expect anything else?) It bears a semblance to HN in some ways, but it's a chan, make no mistake, and quite different in others. Just go look if you're interested. Of additional interest is lainzine ([https://lainzine.neocities.org](https://lainzine.neocities.org)), lainchan's official unofficial magazine. The typical immidiate reaction to lainzine, AFAICT, is "what the hell did I just read?" and I speak no hyperbole in saying that it is like nothing else on the internet. ------ chillaxtian 2009 era luelinks ------ ASipos Spacebattles ------ ggregoire neogGAF for video games	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Any tool that can crawl and produce stats like avg/median/p90 pagesize? - dedalus I am looking for a fast tool that can quickly crawl a subset of pages and come up with a number like the average/p90 stats for webpage size, request size etc ====== brianjking [https://github.com/sitespeedio/sitespeed.io](https://github.com/sitespeedio/sitespeed.io) ~~~ dedalus thank you. using it right away	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Does minimum karma downvoting encourage elitism? - rm_-rf_slash When I started on HN a while back I had just assumed the visible lack of downvoting arrows meant that feature simply didn't exist. I preferred it, since to me it meant that quality comments would bubble to the top, while poor arguments would be ignored.<p>Then I hit the 500 karma mark and realized it was a privileged action. From time to time I'll post a comment that gets downvoted without explanation, and I have to wonder what is being accomplished by signaling disagreement without standing up for anything.<p>I would like to hear your opinions, as I believe what happens is that when people are designated as part of a privileged class, they will think themselves to be smarter representatives of the community, such that it acts as a justification to downvote and stifle discussion without having added anything to it.<p>I'm not interested in gaining imaginary internet points, so I have to wonder what the purpose for downvoting is in the first place. If the comment is inflammatory, off topic, abusive, and so on, we have flagging mechanisms for that. So in that case, why bother downvoting?<p>(Yes, I realize a major reason to have minimum karma requirements is to prevent trolls and bots) ====== dudul I haven't been on HN for a long time, and I don't even have enough points to downvote comments, but as far as I can tell there's always been this uncertainty about what downvoting really means. Some think that one should only downvote poor quality comments regardless of if they agree with the point being made or not, others think that downvoting is "anti-endorsement". I don't really agree with the latter to be honest. It tends to generate this echo-chamber environment. And it makes disagreeing very "cheap": as you said, people will just downvote without bothering to explain why. Your idea of only offering upvoting seems pretty good to me. ~~~ joshschreuder It's not exclusive to HN, pretty much any site with a negative voting system gets used purely for disagreement rather than 'this is bad content'. It's especially prevalent on Reddit, where you will quite often see words to the effect of "downvotes are not meant for comments you disagree with" The only-allow-upvoting thing is something that Facebook has been doing forever. Now that they're added a dislike button, they will almost certainly fall into the same traps as other sites like HN and Reddit.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Playwright CLI – Open/inspect/emulate pages, generate screenshots, record users - svacko https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-cli ====== wraptile As soon as python bindings came out I made a `promt-toolkit` based shell[1] for playwright and it has been such a time saver for prototyping! $ ptplaywright > goto('https://news.ycombinator.com') # click on first comments link > click('.subtext>a:last-of-type') # type in text in comment box > type('textarea', 'hello world') I was about to refactor it to a whole package and submit it to pypi if anyone is interesting in this sort of behaviour. [https://github.com/Granitosaurus/bin/blob/master/ptplaywrigh...](https://github.com/Granitosaurus/bin/blob/master/ptplaywright) ------ no_wizard I love playwright, especially since you get three browser engines (Webkit, Chromium and Gecko) under one unified API. I am little disappointed they don’t have a testing library built on top of it, so I’m constantly either trying to re-invent the wheel or I end up using libraries I don’t like. Sam issue I had with puppeteer. I think first party testing integration would be such a huge win with this. I otherwise have nothing but awesome things to say about the playwright project, it really is such a great improvement over selenium and I think it’s now got a more ergonomic API than puppeteer ~~~ arjun27 Thanks for the feedback! I'm on the Playwright team. We are building playwright-runner[1] to solve this problem. We are dogfooding the project internally, and a few weeks away from opening it up to early adopters. [1] [https://github.com/microsoft/playwright- runner](https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-runner) ~~~ twsted It does not support Drag & drop, is it right? I think the support is missing in Playwright. Are there any plans about this? ------ umaar Playwright has been growing on me and it'll feature heavily in a video course I'm making for browser automation. I'm keeping the codebase open on GitHub: [https://github.com/umaar/learn- browser-testing/](https://github.com/umaar/learn-browser-testing/) so anyone who wants to follow along can do so for free. ------ hudixt We're also to building SAAS produt which is very similiar[1]. Things we are supporting \- No-code test creation. Both playwright-cli and QAwolf supports it. \- Much more control over elements. We're using native chrome extension to achieve it. Integrated ChaiJS on top of it. \- Automated screenshot capturing, video + all debug info (console, network, DOM) when test fails. We're looking for early beta users. If you're interested in trying it out + pizza send along your way, please fill this form [https://bit.ly/2FU2Vc4](https://bit.ly/2FU2Vc4). P.S.- We're planning to start beta testing in couple of days. [1] [https://crusher.dev](https://crusher.dev) \- Currently unfinished landing page. ------ defied We are running a SaaS platform [1] that allows you to connect your Playwright/Puppeteer to our grid of browsers. It’s built for parallel testing. [1] [https://headlesstesting.com](https://headlesstesting.com) ------ matlin I'm not sure this improved much on existing solution like Taiko ([https://taiko.dev/](https://taiko.dev/)) which seems better than Playwright in a number of ways ~~~ wdb Because it also supports Webkit? ------ nsonha What does it mean to have a test runner for it? Could you not just use it with jest? ------ frabcus How does Playwright compare to Cypress? ~~~ arjun27 In short: support for WebKit (to test Safari), out-of-process automation (not constrained by scope of in-page JavaScript, for example, to test multiple pages/frames/domains), support for non-JS language bindings. For a more comprehensive list, check out "Why Playwright?"[1]. [1] [https://playwright.dev/#version=v1.4.1&path=docs%2Fwhy- playw...](https://playwright.dev/#version=v1.4.1&path=docs%2Fwhy- playwright.md&q=)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Mozilla CTO: "Maybe we should just adopt, support, and bundle Tor in Firefox..." - andreypopp https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/364265592112414720 ====== stfu This would be in my opinion the single most important development that came so far out of the NSA controversy! If they can somewhat manage to keep the user experience not complete disappointment this will be the biggest steps forward to a broader privacy adoption. All those tools such as PGP, TrueCrypt, VPNs, have completely failed to reach beyond a bunch of paranoid geeks. Mozilla has the key towards achieving a mass scale adoption. Implementing this would most likely at least double the current amount of TOR users, making this a complete nightmare for the NSA and their associates. ~~~ Amadou I agree. What Tor needs is basically the same thing that encrypted email needs - a wide-spread and dead-simple user interface. If Mozilla were to incorporate a "Tor Browsing Mode" analogous to "Private Browsing Mode" that "just worked" and didn't leak data, then Tor use would explode. Even just 0.1% of firefox's userbase would make a huge difference. ~~~ polymatter or just incorporate Tor into the "Private Browsing Mode" so users don't need to choose between them. Need a big notice to explain that "Private Browsing Mode" is now slower, some sites won't work correctly etc. along with the current notice. ------ Achshar The only reason why I am not using tor right now is because of it's barrier of entry. I can probably figure it out, but currently the effort outweighs the return. ~~~ thelukester Maybe I'm missing your sarcasm, you place no value in your digital privacy, or you're just completely computer illiterate. If you're capable of installing any app on your computer, you can run the tor browser. There is nothing more involved to it than downloading the tor browser bundle, running the setup file, and finally click on "Start Tor Browser.exe". My 90 year old grandmother could figure this out. ~~~ Tloewald Wow your grandmother rocks. Aside from all that, if you don't significantly modify your browsing habits, all you've now done is increase your interestingness to the NSA et al. and made your browser run slower and use more RAM. ------ glomph The thing about that is the browser bundle they provide significantly reduces the number of variables they need to consider when making tor work to secure privacy. If everyone used it with the default firefox there would be significant problems for anonymity in terms of browser sniffing. I think a more helpful move in response to the exploit would be working towards having tor base their bundle on more up to date versions of firefox. ~~~ doublec The bundle available at the time included the fix. This post on June 26 says it's based on Firefox 17.0.7esr. [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/new-tor-browser-bundles- and...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/new-tor-browser-bundles-and- tor-02414-alpha-packages) The number of affected users must be due to not upgrading. Does the tor bundle automatically update? ~~~ DuskStar I do not believe it does, though the default homepage will alert you if you are using an outdated version of the browser bundle. ------ betawolf33 A nice idea, but probably not a good one. The problems Tor would bring users in terms of slow connection, risk from malicious exit nodes etc. would outweigh any benefit for most people. Combine this with the fact that to gain anonmyity from Tor you'd need to (at least) disable JS and session cookies, which many ordinary users will consider to break their browsing experience, and you'll find that really all this idea would do is put a lot more load on the Tor network. That's assuming a 'default on' option. Perhaps an 'anonymous mode' version of 'private browsing' which switches the browser to a more secure configuration (like the Tor browser) and proxies through Tor would mitigate some of these problems. ~~~ slacka If Mozilla added a "Tor mode", I'm sure it would be configured like the Tor Browser bundle, ie with both disable JS and session cookies disable along with all the privacy enhancements. The existing "private browsing mode" hurts the browsing experience. That's why it's optional for times when you value privacy over convenience. If you had noticed from the tweets, it appears that Mozilla has been slow to adopt Tor's patches.[1][2] Making Tor a supported feature would greatly alleviate this situation. [1] [https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#firef...](https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#firefox- patches) [2] [https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#firef...](https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#firefox- patches) ------ belorn A great imitative. Adding Tor support for private mode would only improve it, and give people a mode where searching for health issues, job advice, or any other sensitive information can be done private. Maybe not common knowledge, but if you do search queries of those types, your ads in Youtube, Google, and other areas are likely to change. Their business model is to target ads based on previous searches. If you then share the network with other family members, those ads will pop up on their screens to. ------ lazyjones That might sound useful, but it would cause a lot of damage: \- many users would get malware-injected web pages from shady exit nodes (they would become a much more interesting target for phishing/other malware than they are now) \- it would no longer be practical for web sites to block Tor as a defence against excessive scraping, spam posts, fake reviews (currently most Tor traffic to "normal" web sites is of that kind) ~~~ hnha a) would be a great proposition for more ssl and secure dns. b) as someone who does her mindless random browsing through tor that sounds wonderful. ------ znowi I love the idea. Go for it, Mozilla! If this is implemented: 1\. Firefox, with its insane public reach, can substantially heighten the awareness of privacy issues. 2\. Government will have to get creative to subdue a highly popular heavyweight like Mozilla. And as already mentioned, it might be the _best_ response, as of yet, to the NSA fallout. It can potentially seriously alter the power balance between the Big Brother and us, people. ------ untog A broader issue I've thought about before now is that we might need to redefine what "incognito" mode is, now. What we have is still relevant- the always-used "gift shopping" (and the more realistic "porn mode") reasons still apply. But I worry that "incognito" implies more than it offers- after all, no-one monitoring your internet connection is going to be meaningfully affected by it. What I'd also love to see (but am a little uncertain on how to implement) is tab isolation for sessions- I don't want the Facebook like button on <x site> to read my Facebook login on my other tab. Right now I can use incognito windows and Chrome extensions to achieve that, but it's messy. ~~~ shawnjan8 I use the Chrome Users feature to achieve this - one profile for home, one for work, and one for Facebook. Works a lot better then incognito mode! ~~~ kudu I'd love to be able to have profiles/users set at the tab level. ------ AndrewDucker My only question would be whether Tor could cope with that many users all at once. Having it built in, and defaulting to On when you open a private browsing window would be nice though. ~~~ ckozlowski It would be a fantastic edition to "private" mode. Also, by being baked into the browser, it would give Mozilla a degree of control over the protocols passed. A user opting for the browser plugin instead of the standalone client would not be passing Bittorrent traffic over the network. More relays and endpoints would be needed, but I wonder how kind of support could be gathered if Tor was publicized in such a way. ------ ebbv Strikes me as obvious pandering. Obviously for 99% of users Tor is more headache and overhead for no real benefit. Not to mention that most users would say "Why did my internets get so slow?" and not understand what was going on. ~~~ rthomas6 I'd assume one would have to manually enable it? At least for non .onion sites. ~~~ BrendanEich Yes, you assume correctly -- it would be competitive-browser suicide to turn on by default. Thinking either that we would do such a thing, or that I'd pander with such a non-starter (or pander at all, at my age and lack of political ambition) is just dumb. What would be smart, which we are looking at: adopting, _supporting_ , and bundling Tor (opt-in). As I tweeted. ------ recuter There's no technical support necessary mind, Tor is just another proxy you can point your browser to with one click. It is 'support' as in activism in the vain of "Know your rights" first-run messages Firefox runs, 'etc. It frustrates me when the solutions hacker types come up with either exclusively revolve around code or are not well thought out (like this suggestion). ~~~ sp332 It's a lot more complicated. If you send cookies with session information over Tor, you've basically trashed your anonymity. [https://www.torproject.org/download/download- easy.html.en#wa...](https://www.torproject.org/download/download- easy.html.en#warning) ------ asadotzler TOR browsing in Firefox is a horrible experience that's so far from usable that it shouldn't be exposed to any but the most expert of of users who understand how it actually works and what benefits it brings with its great cost -- a mostly broken browser. ------ Chirael I really think Firefox should become the freedom lover's privacy browser; because it is a non-profit org, it can do what Google/Chrome can't. ------ octatone2 They may want to fix that JS heap spray exploit first in their ESR ... ~~~ blueveek Tracking bug: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=901365](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=901365) edit: seems to be already fixed in ESR 17.0.7 ~~~ riquito ESR 17.0.7 dated 25 June 2013. How exploiting an old bug on an old version became a "0 day" is beyond me ~~~ makomk It took about a day before anyone figured out what exactly the exploit was doing; I guess all the normal researchers are off at Black Hat without their usual tools. ------ kishor_gurtu The TOR browsing experience is terrible and unreliable. If you're really so concerned, just pony up for a VPN. ~~~ ckozlowski A VPN is not the same. A VPN will protect from a MITM attack, obscuring the resources you're accessing and the data exchanged to an observer. However, it does not anonymize you from the VPN provider, who can still disclose your information or be compelled to provide it. (you undoubtedly had to pay for that VPN with a legal name and payment information.) Tor not only protects against MITM, but obscures the requester such that if an interested party can either force information from, or controls the endpoint, they cannot discover who the requester is.* (* Provided that the requester is not divulging information in the form of cookies or other personally identifying information. If Mozilla were serious about providing native Tor functionality in Firefox, they'd no doubt provide it as part of the browser "Private" mode.) Edit: This link doesn't cover VPNs, but gives a good idea of how different services provide security at different levels. VPNs obscure the "site.com" along the route, while the location in all locations as shown as the VPN provider, and not the end user. However, because the VPN provider knows the identity of the user, it can potentially disclose this info. A Tor endpoint does not know this. [https://www.eff.org/pages/tor-and- https](https://www.eff.org/pages/tor-and-https) ~~~ Sanddancer Nope. I can walk down to the local (or not local) seven-11/walgreens/etc and get a disposable credit card for use in paying for my vpn provider, and provide them that I am Jake Blues and live at 1060 West Addison St, Chicago, Il. ~~~ clarkm But credit card companies maintain records of time and place sold, so unless you travel to a foreign country to make your purchase, you're still leaking your location. ~~~ Sanddancer They'll learn those cards were purchased from a Walgreens on Market Street in San Francisco three months ago. If the clerk even remembers, the purchaser said something about being dragged to SF for business, and how they really wish they were back in New York with their kids. In other words, less than nothing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Multi-Project or Single Project - robotrout In many areas of my life, I enjoy the efficiency of moving from uncompleted task to uncompleted task, as I get bored or hit a mental or physical stop.<p>I am cursed with rather a multitude of web application ideas, and the sheer number of them would dilute my efforts to such a point that I would never accomplish anything, were I to allow myself to float among them. In self defense, I have implemented a policy of finishing one, to at least a beta level, before I get to start the next one.<p>I feel that this is not optimal though, as the parallel task approach really seems to work well in other areas of my life.<p>Do any of you work on multiple projects of your own simultaneously? (Work doesn't count, as there are deadlines imposed by others at work, where our own projects have deadlines imposed only by ourselves.) How many software projects do you work on at once, and how did you arrive at that number? ====== rw Fail fast, right? Try to finish fast, too.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
T-Mobile CEO to EFF: ‘Who the Fuck Are You?’ - tshtf https://motherboard.vice.com/read/t-mobile-ceo-to-eff-who-the-fuck-are-you?utm_source=mbtwitter ====== Someone1234 We pay the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Consumers, geeks, and the privacy/digital rights inclined. They're doing exactly what donors want them to be doing, including this Binge On thing (which is part of a larger Net Neutrality struggle). I am a T-Mobile customer. And when they first introduced Binge On I was mostly happy (Net Neutrality notwithstanding): seemed like a fair trade, for certain sites you lost video bandwidth but in return received unlimited streaming. However T-Mobile's implementation is bad and worse still they weren't honest about what Binge On does. It is a completely different arrangement between ONLY limiting sites that signed up, and interfering in third parties who did not, and don't even get me started on limiting video file download rates (i.e. not streaming). The CEO is just acting like an idiot. Consumer rights groups, like the EFF, are completely entitled to "stir things up" when large national corporations start acting poorly. If you guys didn't want to be called out, perhaps you could have been more honest to begin with? So as a T-Mobile customer, I am 100% behind EFF on this one. If they started attacking the EFF regularly I'll change networks (e.g. Project Fi), because I value the EFF more than T-Mobile. PS - Amazon's Smile.Amazon.com supports EFF donations, as an aside. ~~~ epistasis I _really_ like the concept of the EFF, and _really_ like most of their work, but when I was reading their blog I quickly started to feel like they go off half-cocked too often. When I first saw summaries of their report my guess was just that there in turning BingeOn on/off on a single account, or that there were temporary configuration problems on T-Mobile's side. Some people like the idea of supporting an out-there extreme to keep the Overton window shifted to an appropriate place. I can see the logic in it, but I value truth first. T-mobile's CEO's schtick is to act like this, and I don't really appreciate that much either, but I do appreciate T-mobile's small movements to make the cell phone market more fluid by getting rid of contracts, and I also still like BingeOn. It gives me more control over my data than Netflix or Amazon or whomever gives me. ~~~ nivla >when I was reading their blog I quickly started to feel like they go off half-cocked too often. While I am a fan of EFF and the work they do, I too have started to notice this recently. The title of articles have become borderline click-bait and sometimes conveniently omits vital information that may help better understand the issue. The most recent one is "Stupid Patent of the Month: Microsoft’s Design Patent on a Slider" [1] [2] which surprisingly is a lawsuit on a whole lot more than just sliders. However on this issue I am kind of split. I agree with both EFF and T-mobile. As for T-mobile, BingeOn is optional and can be disabled anytime with just a click, so it does little to nothing to hurt customers and cannot effectively be called throttling. As for EFF, they have the right to be worried that this may set a precedent for bigger control over your data in the future. [1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/stupid-patent-month- mi...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/stupid-patent-month-microsofts- design-patent-slider) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802413](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802413) ~~~ tracker1 The fact that it's optional (enabled by default) does _not_ change the fact that it is, indeed, throttling. There's also the fact that this throttling (regardless of what they'd like to call it) was actually happening for video services not included. This is precisely the opposite of content neutrality, in that they're making general internet traffic intentionally worse. ~~~ epistasis Call it throttling, call it whatever you want. It makes my general internet better. The service is optional from all sides: both the consumer and the content provider. It gives me, as a user of the general internet, more control over what I do with the internet. Not less. It may be better if there was RFC for devices to register their bandwidth preferences that Netflix and other video services implemented, but there's not. Perhaps BingeOn is a route towards that. ~~~ tunap "Call it throttling, call it whatever you want. It makes my general internet better" Not mine. Sure Bloomberg, Wikipedia & other top-tier payers' windows open fast, but I find most "not popular" sites hang and drag on opening new tabs/windows... long enough for me to open a Bloomberg tab/window to "prime the pump", so to speak. Tethering to a laptop, I can watch local library or .gov window attempting to load with no in/out network traffic for 15-20 seconds. Everytime I open Bloomberg or Google, multiple previously loading tabs/windows recommence instantaneously. ~~~ epistasis How does that relate to the conversation? Who are you using for internet, and what type of weird setup is it where they deliver packets after "priming the pump"? That is not a throttling scheme, nor anything like BingeOn. ~~~ tunap "Priming the pump" is an expreasion[1]. I am matching your favorable experience on T-MOBILE with my differing experience. The discussion is pertaining to Tmobile's throttling traffic, when non-prioritized traffic fails I have found opening a prioritized connection resumes the former, as well. [1] [http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/prime+the+pump](http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/prime+the+pump) ------ etjossem John Legere is the CEO of a multinational telecommunications company. Of course he knows what the EFF is. At first, he was just trying to explain BingeOn to T-Mobile customers in a favorable way - "optimization for mobile devices to stretch the data available on your plan." And that's exactly what an informed consumer should expect him to say. You're not going to hear the words "reduced quality by default" or "sweetheart deals with content providers" come from the mouth of a man with fiduciary duty to T-Mobile. But trying to discredit the EFF will blow up in his face. If auto company execs feigned ignorance about Consumer Reports and Kelley Blue Book, we'd laugh at them. It's a transparent way to avoid answering the questions these consumer watchdog groups raise. ~~~ frik > informed consumer Even in this HN thread there are several persons who either work for T-Mobile or are starry-eyed. ------ lambda I love how he says that it's not throttling, while comparing it to economy mode on a car. Which is, well, literal throttling to give you less performance but better economy. I would not mind them offering the feature if they were honest up front about what it is. It is throttling; it is reducing the bandwidth available for particular downloads, in order to use less or none of your data plan. Now, there are still some net neutrality problems with the fact that certain service providers use none of your data allowance while others do still count against it. But anyhow, why try to sell this as not throttling when that's exactly what it is; throttling, but you get some benefit in that you don't have to pay as much for those throttled streams? ------ mangeletti IMHO, the CEO is being disingenuous. I apologize in advance for this rant: T-Mobile knows exactly what it's doing. If they had announced an open platform with open specs for implementing low-bandwidth video, and then said "if you have this, we'll use it", the end result would be that everyone could benefit from an innovation of theirs. Instead, they partnered up with the largest media providers to save themselves and those media providers money on bandwidth. He's smart enough to know that favoring companies that "have the technology to do this" really means favoring large corporations, which is bad for the little guys. If this wasn't true, there wouldn't be "50 new companies applying" to take part in some application process to be approved... to be on their special little Internet. By even having an application to be involved, they're creating the framework for control and favoritism right from the start. His creepy "we're just trying to help everyone and make the world a better place" stuff is not fooling anyone. T-Mobile is in it for themselves and themselves only. Keep your corruption away from our Internet and name your service something other than "Internet". ~~~ jshevek "His creepy "we're just trying to help everyone and make the world a better place" stuff is not fooling anyone." So do you think that his twitter cheering squad are just sock puppets? I think he is actually fooling people - far too many people. And now, because of this scumbag CEO, there are people who previously didn't know of the EFF who are now tweeting their dislike/opposition to the EFF. ~~~ moistgorilla People are so disenfranchised with their current providers that they will take the "underdogs" word at face value without doing any research to back it up. ------ kin IMO he's upset because he feels like T-Mobile is very much on the side of the customers. As a T-Mobile customer I certainly feel that way. Free unlimited streaming for music and video? Unlimited streaming on all content for the holidays? He talks about how the industry is corrupt and T-Mobile started the Jump! program which is awesome. They are also huge in the contract-free movement. I'm also pretty sure he's unaware of how Binge On works from a technical standpoint. Philosophically he backs it. I'm guessing it's not well implemented, EFF found this, and now Legere is upset because if EFF were on the consumer side, they would not try stir trouble with T-Mobile, because T-Mobile is making gambles taking on the side of the consumer. ~~~ ljk Reminds me of when Mark Zuckerberg was surprised when fb's version of "the internet" was receiving very negative feedback ------ dogma1138 Is this guy an alumni of the John McAfee school of management? Never heard of him before but now I've watched some of his other stuff on YouTube some of it is pure gold.... ------ fastball I'm not sure how I feel about this. I mean, Binge On is obviously targeted at customers who have limited data plans and seem likely to go over their cap if they watch video normally. Many (most?) streaming sites don't provide fine-grained control over what quality is delivered to your device. Seems like a lot still just differentiate between "normal" and "HD". So it seems to me like T-Mobile is trying to help their limited customers out by lowering the bandwidth on videos so that data is used up a slower rate. I personally have an unlimited data plan, so I can't even provide anecdotal evidence, but if I had a limited plan, I think I would appreciate that. Once bitrate management is in place, throttling doesn't seem like a big deal. As long as I am still being delivered data at a rate > the rate at which I am consuming the video (i.e. as long as there is no buffering) then there isn't really a problem, right? If you disagree with T-Mobile's decision to choose what bitrate is good for you, then yeah, I understand, this sucks. If, on the other hand, you are OK with this, then I don't really think there is an issue. What I think would be the best option would be for T-Mobile to have some sort of control panel that customers could use to pick a bitrate cap for all videos that they watch on their mobile plan. Seems like that could please both parties if they started with a fairly restrictive default setting but users could change it. ~~~ shkkmo The problem is that Binge On is not just 'choosing what bitrate is good for you' but is also throttling all video data, including direct downloads. > The EFF post found that T-Mobile isn’t actually “optimizing” any video > traffic for Binge On users, it’s merely throttling it. Not all video players > on all websites have the capability to down-res a video from, for example, > 1080p to 480p. That means some videos on some websites using some players > must be watched at their original resolution (due to T-Mobile’s guidelines, > these will inherently not be Binge On services). Even though this > hypothetical 1080p video would count against both a Binge On customer’s data > cap and a non Binge On customer’s data cap, one without Binge On will stream > the 1080p video at a speed as fast as the network can go; one with Binge On > will stream it at 1.5 Mbps, a speed that makes it arguably un-streamable. [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/t-mobiles-binge-on- indiscri...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/t-mobiles-binge-on- indiscriminately-throttles-all-video-content) I've been a fan of John Legere's antics and efforts to push for innovation in the US carrier industry. However this sort of attack on the EFF and blatant lying/misinformation about throttling is a shyster move. ~~~ fastball Wow. I hadn't read that one. Very interesting. I _was_ giving them the benefit of the doubt, but this does seem very damning. ------ RoboErectus I'm going to guess that the reason he's saying it's not throttling is because that's the explanation he's been given by his engineering team. Or he said "let's optimize video in a way that isn't throttling." He's calling it semantics because of Dunning-Kruger. Because he doesn't really know how any of this works, but his ego is so big Superman couldn't lift it, he inflates his surface understanding to expert level. Tmo should publish a spec that allows any provider to meet their definition of optimized video and therefore qualify for binge on. I'm totally fine with it as long as they don't get to choose who gets unlimited streaming. As it is, and as a current tmo customer, this is eye opening. Tmo had always seemed to be the voice of reason in American wireless. What they did with contracts was a massive step in the right direction. But this makes it look like they don't actually get it. They just happened to accidentally get a few things right. ------ mxxx Gee that video really made me cringe. Hey, maybe if we dress the CEO in a hoodie, put him in front of an electric guitar with his batman figurines and make him say edgy things like "bullshit" a couple of times, the kids will relate to him! Cowabunga dudes! ~~~ cheald This isn't a new tack. It's pretty consistent with Legere's whole schtick. ~~~ ellisv and it even seems to be working: [http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/01/t-mobile-added- anoth...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/01/t-mobile-added- another-8-3-million-customers-in-2015/) ------ DanBC > it includes a proprietary technology and what the technology does is not > only detect the video stream, but select the appropriate bitrate to optimize > to the mobile device, This sounds okay if you don't think about it too much. I've seen what a piss-poor job T-Mobile does of image optimising, and so I feel sorry for the people stuck on the other end of a T-Mobile connection having their videos fiddled with. It's not just image quality that suffers, everything about it is stupid. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4484081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4484081) ~~~ voltagex_ It's only going to be really scary when CPU time becomes cheap enough to re- encode videos on the fly (are we there already?). I can see some nefarious uses of watermarking, or on the extreme end, OpenCV and motion tracking for some enhanced product placement. ~~~ AjithAntony Lots of mobile carriers already do this with Bytemobile (recently acquired by Citrix) [https://www.citrix.com/products/bytemobile-adaptive- traffic-...](https://www.citrix.com/products/bytemobile-adaptive-traffic- management/overview.html) ------ peteretep John Legere is ... interesting. He used to look like this: [http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/if4q5M1spdSM.jpeg](http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/if4q5M1spdSM.jpeg) And now he looks like this: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0Qvjw- CMAAFn8j.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0Qvjw-CMAAFn8j.jpg) Are there many other CEOs who have embraced their corporate branding so seriously? ------ neumino He thought he could pick on EFF like he does on other carriers. That was his worst move so far. ~~~ toomuchtodo I'm more likely to stop contributing to the EFF than paying T-Mobile for cellular service, in the grand scheme of things. ~~~ geofft Is their service that good? As a current T-Mobile US customer, it looks like I can get an equivalent plan from Sprint for approximately the same cost, mostly thanks to T-Mobile's aggressive competition. ~~~ toomuchtodo I've had friends who couldn't get their Sprint service to work on major streets in downtown Chicago, but my T-Mobile service worked on the Playa at Burning Man, not to mention that I get free edge data in 140 countries: "Only from T-Mobile, our Simple Choice Plan makes it simple for you to stay in touch while you explore the world. Now get unlimited data and texting in 95% of the places you travel most—140+ countries and destinations around the globe. Oh, and calls? They’re just 20 cents a minute." There's a reason I've used them for 14 years. ~~~ geofft Hrm, anecdotally I've had _real_ trouble with international data roaming in places I'd have expected to be decently covered with cell service, like cafes in Leith. It's a nice bonus when it works, but since it's not even reliable enough for emergencies, it's not worth any carrier loyalty. I'm curious if it worked for you. Isn't Commnet trying to provide actual cell service at Burning Man? I feel like if you have a company specifically trying to make cell service work in the middle of the desert, with no metal buildings anywhere, it's totally unsurprising that it works. ~~~ faitswulff The international data roaming has been strong enough for me to maintain clear VOIP calls in Canada and Asia. ------ diebir He's not going to be the CEO for much longer. Quite probably, being too smart is detrimental to CEO career, but being obviously dumb in interactions with the media is not tolerated at all. There was once a CEO of Seagate that could not contain himself and said something to the effect that people "buy drives to store porn". He was gone soon there after. ~~~ stonogo I think you're vastly overestimating the repercussions here. John Legere has built his reputation on saying crazy shit; this is a drop in the bucket. ~~~ sremani Along with outspokeness, John Legere has started many things at T-Mobile the rest of the industry adopted. He is not a lose cannon, like people are portraying here. ~~~ CaptSpify Why not both? He seems like a loose cannon, but one that often hits the mark. Sometimes it takes someone who is a little crazy to go against the bigger players. ------ arianvanp Now that I gave it another thought. Isn't the only way to comply with net neutrality to throttle _all_ video instead of certain video? And isn't that exactly what T-mobile is trying to do here? It still sucks because it is misleading, but I sort of get where they're coming from. ~~~ adenadel I'm not a T-mobile customer, but I guess the "BingeOn" feature is supposed to stop the throttling for certain video providers. ~~~ wmf No, I think it throttles all video. OK, maybe it doesn't throttle video providers who voluntarily throttle themselves, but the result is the same. ~~~ adenadel Yeah, I misread. Binge On makes it so that the data from certain providers doesn't count against your data limit, but leads to throttling of all videos. ------ jackmoore Just wanted to remind folks that you can support the EFF through AmazonSmile. ~~~ jkaunisv1 Never heard of AmazonSmile. Is it just regular Amazon but they donate a % to charity? Does it offer only a subset of their products? I'm looking for the catch but I can't see it. ~~~ URSpider94 It's just an overlay on Amazon.com that lets you designate a charity to receive a small percentage of your purchases as a donation. If you can buy it on Amazon, you can buy it on smile.amazon -- because they are the same site. ------ silveira Ok, I'm making a donation to EFF. ------ denova T-Mobile customers, feel free to write to them at: T-Mobile Customer Relations P.O. Box 37380 Albuquerque, NM 87176-7380 I couldn't find an email address. ------ jrcii I'm not sure how Steve Buscemi got to be CEO of T-Mobile but he's making a big mistake picking a fight with the EFF. ------ intrasight Neither T-Mobile nor EFF nor net neutrality come out looking good on this one. As others have pointed out in this discussion, net neutrality is a thing for broadband wired Internet where there is rarely competition, not for wireless internet where there is plenty of competition and one way to compete is to offer compelling services. But the T-Mobile CEO is a jerk and that rarely works out well for anyone. ------ karcass He's the Trump of Telecom ~~~ bradleyankrom I don't think that's the kind of personality I want speaking for a company I'm entrusting with my communications data. Save the schtick for a lifestyle brand. The EFF isn't TMO's competition, there's no reason for a profanity- laced response from the goddamn CEO of a global telecom (particularly a telecom that already attracts attention from antitrust watchdogs). ------ shmerl He picked the wrong target. It was fun when he was poking AT&T and Verizon who deserved it. But EFF? That's going to backfire. And especially since T-Mobile is indeed violating Net Neutrality. ------ placeybordeaux Off topic: Who the hell edited this video? There are an insane amount of cuts. ~~~ ibejoeb T-mobile certainly adopted the youtube-style vlog jump cut scheme. It's not for everyone, but it has certainly been on-trend for a long while now. He's also tweeting selfie video responses; I think it's good that he's participating in the culture to which he caters. More discussion: [https://www.quora.com/Internet-Culture/Why-do-popular- YouTub...](https://www.quora.com/Internet-Culture/Why-do-popular-YouTube- vlogs-purposely-overuse-jump-cuts) ------ devy Disclaimer: I had been an AT&T mobile customer for more than a decade and subscribed with Verizon and Sprint each for a few years before jumped to T-Mobile about 2 years ago and happily ever since. If you read through the entire EFF report on BingeOn [1], you will see that there are only two problems EFF had with T-Mobile's BingeOn program: 1\. "Throttle" or "Downgrade/optimize" (pick a word depending on your viewpoint for either side) of all HTML5 video streams 2\. Opt-in by default Net neutrality debates aside, I love BingeOn since day one and didn't notice much of degradation of video quality when I watch videos with BingOn (I still left it on) All the arguments EFF against BingeOn, T-Mobile can easily tweak their program to easily comply. Regarding #1, I suspect it's more of a technical challenge than an illicit intent [2] (of saving data bandwidth, which of course if the win-win situation T-Mobile wanted). Some like YouTube has proprietary steaming intricacies that T-Mobile have had technical difficulties to selectively "Throttle" or "Downgrade" only content partners so it's easier to just do it for all as hinted by this WSJ article about YouTube's reluctance of signing on BingOn.[3] As far as #2 goes, again, no doubt T-Mobile wanted to save their bandwidth at the same time get credits for it putting a marketing campaign around its practice, but EFF (given the sensitivity about Net neutrality) and YouTube(very opinionated about user experience on video quality) certainly have different viewpoints about it. In the end, as a T-Mobile customer, my heart still sides with John Legere's latest unconventional and controversial un-carrier move because A) I still have a choice to turn BingeOn off (though I won't as I would rather save 2/3 of my data cap to do something else and very gladly and gracefully accept my zero-rated video content allowances on partnered video sites.) B) I am optimistic about T-Mobile to eventually figure out a way to selectively (as opposed to indiscriminately) "optimize" video content on only partnered video sites so that it will be more compliant with net neutrality. There is a technical challenge to overcome after all. C) Despite of profanity and inappropriate wardrobes, I, as an mobile customer, love what John Legere has done for wireless subscribers in the U.S. and the direction he set for the industry. Needless to say, results are self- explanatory. [4] [1]: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t- mobiles...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t-mobiles- bingeon-optimization-just-throttling-applies) [2]: [http://www.androidcentral.com/bingeon-terrible-purpose- and-j...](http://www.androidcentral.com/bingeon-terrible-purpose-and-john- legere-needs-stop) [3]: [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/11/12/t-mobiles-problem- wit...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/11/12/t-mobiles-problem-with-youtube- whats-a-video-and-whats-not/?mod=rss_Technology) [4]: [http://www.fastcompany.com/3046877/who-the-is-this-guy- john-...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3046877/who-the-is-this-guy-john-legeres- strategy-for-taking-new-customers-by-storm) ~~~ OrwellianChild I think you meant it is "Opt-out", meaning "on by default"... ~~~ devy Yes, you are right, my bad :) ------ gcb0 i would have continued to be a customer of they said "it's a technology limitation, but the benefits are great and we plan to work on improving the side effects" (even if i know for sure the last part was a lie). ------ mahouse The EFF? A liberal lobby. ~~~ jshevek Not at all. The EFF cares about free speech. Is that a liberal position? Too many liberals that I know do not care enough about free speech. The EFF cares about privacy. Is that a liberal issue? I know people all across the political spectrum who care about privacy. ~~~ thescriptkiddie Not sure if you're an American or not, but the guy you're replying to probably is. In the US, "liberal" has a different meaning than it does elsewhere. Privacy, freedom of speech, and personal liberties in general are core tenets of American liberalism.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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