Ask HN: Do recruiters lose out by requiring a degree? - <AUTHOR> I started learning to code web apps before there were even courses teaching it, and even when courses began to be offered they were behind the tech curve.
I'll admit I don't know where those courses stand now, but it would seem recruiters might be ignoring a lot of talent by placing that hurdle in front of applicants.
Of course, most of them might be old guys like me so my view may be skewed on this issue, but still, there seems to be a wall there that could be costing them more than they realize.
I'm interested in hearing what others might think about this. <comment><USER2> I think what you're missing is the shear number of candidates. Does requiring (or even weighting at all) academics result in false negatives, absolutely. However candidates with a CS degree tend to, on average, perform better and there's a lot less of them when compared to "total population looking for a job". This makes filtering on a degree a cheap and effective signal when you aren't dedicated to having technology people do nothing but interview all day and everyday to find talent without hefty prepruning.

<comment><AUTHOR> That make sense. I have no real life perspective on that because I've mostly worked on my own stuff, alone, but I can see where one might get overwhelmed by applicants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't know about the coding section of the IT world, but I know when it comes to IT security, job posts requiring degrees are usually just there as a formality. It's more of a recommendation than it is a requirement. The key factor is to never not apply because you don't have the degree they want. If they are a company with any sense, they will take your experience much more seriously than they do any formal education. Granted almost all modern coding jobs require you to take a real time coding test through something like a Skype call, so you have to be able to back up the skills you put down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, thank you for that.

One of the reasons I got to thinking about this is I read a piece on doing well in an interview and it mentioned a "Fizz/Buzz" test, which I'd never heard of, and it gave an example of one. I looked at it and thought it seemed pretty simple and I'd never even heard of a "Fibonacci sequence" (I had to play with that some more though because it's just fun).

But a solution was as easy to code as I expected so that left me a little baffled. I can see how it demonstrates one's ability to implement logic, but it left me wondering if the bar is that low to get hired or if there are that many applicants that could not solve it needing to be weeded out?

If the latter is the case, how did they get a degree?

(Or maybe the example was very simple, I really do not know because I've not been anywhere near a "tech center" and don't get to hang out much with those who work in the industry)

<comment><USER4> You would be SHOCKED at how many promising-sounding candidates show up in an interview completely unable to write Fizz/Buzz, or Fibonacci, or strrev(). Or they can write it, but it takes 10 minutes. I've seen this so many times and I still have trouble believing it (though the rate has improved somewhat with better up-front screening techniques).

<comment><USER5> A lot of them are just nervous or have performance anxiety.

It's a real thing. I've seen brilliant coders completely bomb interviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not if they have a big enough pool to draw candidates from. They're playing a numbers game, and would rather spend their time on better prospects. If having a degree makes a candidate more likely to get hired (arguably true), they would use that filter to improve their odds.

Now, if they can't find enough people, loosening criteria to allow for candidates without degrees would be a wise strategy.

</comment><comment><USER7> They do.

Recently applied for a position I am somewhat qualified for (all the right resume keywords and x years of experience). Recruiter calls me in for an interview only to tell me the 'client' wants someone with a degree.

Degrees are nice to have for getting past bureaucracy. However,I still maintain for IT an programming jobs,the time and financial investment is largely a waste.

</comment><comment><USER8> Several forward thinking firms (including bozo recruiters) figured this out long ago. You don't need a college degree to be talented.

 _"When you look at people who don't go to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people," Bock said. Many businesses "require" a college degree; at Google, the word "college" isn't even its official guide to hiring._ > [https://venturebeat.com/2014/04/25/why-google-doesnt-care- ab...](https://venturebeat.com/2014/04/25/why-google-doesnt-care-about- college-degrees-in-5-quotes/)

<comment><USER9> Google is forward thinking? This is the same company that requested not only college, but highschool GPA and SAT scores from applicants and whose interview process is entirely textbook algorithm questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a degree and then some. But if what you are thinking about is a regular "build a website in this dynamic language using this new-fangled framework that is the best thing since sliced break" job, then yes, they are losing out. What you need for that is experience coding, coding, coding, coding. But things like linear algebra, master thesises, relational algebra, complexity analysis, compiler construction, finite automata theory and all that amazing and fun stuff that you dabble with in universities is, more or less, completely useless.

<comment><USER11> I dunno. I am self teaching and I am finding things like compilers, os stuff, grammars, fsm, automata stuff, etc quite helpful. Like trying to write a parser helps understand the code I am writing a bit better, as well as understanding how abstractions like futures and promises could be working below the hood. While I understand that I may not be always right in the way I am understanding these stuff, I won't say they are completely useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are plenty of people out there with valuable skills that get overlooked. And yes it's unfortunate, but think about it from the recruiters perspective. They try to maximize their ROI on candidates. Filtering by ones with a degree increases the probability of hiring a candidate, so it's just an easy way to make hiring more efficient. Just need to set yourself apart in some way, maybe by having some github projects or a portfolio to share, and lack of degree should be less of a hurdle.

</comment><comment><USER13> How do they lose out if they find someone that meets the job requirements? Really they only lose out if they settle for somebody who can't do X and has a degree when there was someone who could do X and doesn't have a degree, assuming X is more important than a potentially well rounded education (quality obviously varies and I agree it is not a HUGE boon for most jobs).

<comment><USER14> I agree with your sentiment. However I think a well rounded education is important, having a group of well rounded individuals in a team will be more productive. As a hiring manager I think about the team also and not only the individual I am hiring.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure your right about one needing to be able to work with a team, and having a well rounded education may well be an indicator of that, but I can't say having a degree has been something I've been able to connect to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Different Perspective,

they don't loose out, they minimize their risk by not hiring someone who on the surface seems to know how to code but deep down below does not add a whole lot of value to the team because they lack in depth knowledge on subjects that go beyond coding.

I have 15 years of experience and went back to get a degree in CS. Why, because I realized there is a huge gap in my theoretical knowledge. Everyone nowadays seems so convinced that you can equate watching a couple of youtube videos to getting a 4 year education in a field.

This is a fallacious oversimplification of reality, no one in their right mind would say the same about engineering or medicine or law.

My 2c

<comment><USER15> It's funny that you equate not going to college with "watching a couple of youtube videos". Don't you think there are some non-college educated developers who read algorithm books, take online courses, etc? A motivated person can absolutely self-learn the CS that's taught in universities.

<comment><USER9> We are extremely fortunate today to have resources that enable one to independently study the entire contents of a CS degree in the fraction of time on their own schedule. Pursuing a CS degree while actively employed in the field is a foolish waste of money.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I'm thinking too. I have spent so much time over the years studying and working with computers and languages and digging into specifics to accomplish a task that a degree would really mostly be a widow dressing that would be counter productive to obtain by distracting me from learning things more important in a real work environment.

I don't mean to imply I'm an wizard. I'm far from that. I've learned on a need to know basis and focused on building web apps and platforms to run them on. I do have a clue about what I don't know though, and that too is important.

But, as you've pointed out, most everything needed to learn how to do this stuff right is freely available and easily accessible and constantly evolving so at best you're learning with a snapshot of somewhat outdated material in a classroom. That's not a bad way to learn, but it's not how I've learned. I dove in headfirst and started making stuff, learning as I went.

Still, as to the original comment, I admire the hard work it takes to get a degree when one really applies themselves. It's no small accomplishment and I'm sure I'd learn a lot if I went through the process, and that I'd enjoy it too. I would love to be able to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a huge crowd that has a degree plus whatever experience you have. They don't consider it losing out, because no one would when you would see the sheer number of applicants along with their experience/degree.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, but therein lies a rub because some of the "help wanted" ads I see have been running for months and they've still not hired anyone, or at least the ads continue to run.

This one, for example, has been up since June and has been included in the CouchDB "Weekly News" since then. Seems odd they've not filled the position and that's part of what got me wondering about this:

[https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/142140/code-monkey-web- applic...](https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/142140/code-monkey-web-application- developer-ascendtms?sec=False&pg=1&offset=0&q=couchdb)

<comment><USER16> If someone with a degree isn't able to cross their interview, what would make then think that someone without a degree would be able to do it ? Why would they risk spending on the interview where _they think_ the candidate has even lesser chance ?

<comment><AUTHOR> The answer to the 1st question is nothing.

Nothing would make them think that and that's obvious so the real question is "why do they think that?" because the fact is there are a lot of great programmers that never got a degree.

The answer to the 2nd questions is to find someone who can actually do it. If you need a real world example look at Apple Computer.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Telnet Song (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2004/01/telnet-song-guy-l-steele-jr.html <comment><USER2> And of course there's also The Great Quux's Double Bucky Song:

        Double Bucky

        (C) 1978 by Guy L. Steele, Jr.

        (Sung to the tune of "Rubber Duckie")

        Double bucky, you're the one!
        You make my keyboard lots of fun
          Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
        (Vo-vo-de-o!)
        Control and Meta side by side,
        Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
          Double bucky, a half a thousand glyphs,
                       plus a few!
            Oh,
            I sure wish that I
            Had a couple of
    	bits more!
            Perhaps a
            Set of pedals to
            Make the number of
    	    Bits four:
            Double double bucky!
        Double bucky, left and right
        OR'd together, outta sight!
            Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
            Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
            Double bucky, I'd like a whole
                word of you!

(For those of you who are interested, the term "bucky bits" comes from Niklaus Wirth, known as "bucky" to friends, who suggested that an extra bit be added to terminal codes on 36 bit machines for use by screen editors.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Need one about the multiplying backslashes in shell quoting levels.

<comment> vive-la-liberte I don't have a tune for this so it might be more of a poem than a song.

        SEVEN RINGS OF SHELL

        Let your level of shell
        be denoted by L,
        with a range greater than
        or equal to the number of zero.

        You put a backslash
        at the command-line of bash.
        Escaped. We are safe. Say "yay!"
        This is glory, oh glory.

        Cry loudly my friend --
        then error amend;
        defenses eaten, look into man.
        Trembling are all but the hero.

        It's a power of two,
        here's what to do:
        Exponent L is the way.
        No worry, no worry.

                --- vive-la-liberte, 2015

Any English teachers or similar in the audience may have a glass of wine on the house provided they keep quiet...

Just kidding. Feedback is welcome -- that's how we improve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.ding.net/lists/geeks/96/dec/msg00005.html](http://www.ding.net/lists/geeks/96/dec/msg00005.html)

</comment><comment><USER2>
        $FF bottles of beer on the wall.
        $FF bottles of beer.
        Take one down, pass it around
        $FE bottles of beer on the wall.
        [...]

</comment><comment><USER5> I hate technology because of this site.</comment>


Slct.js - Developer-friendly native Javascript Selectors - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/albertorestifo/slct.js

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to share a very basic utility I just published on GitHub. It's very straight-forward but maybe some of you can find it useful.

</comment><comment><USER2> it is interesting - I wonder how it compares with other DOM manipulation libraries

<comment><AUTHOR> I tested the speed of the selectors, it's the same as using the standard ones. My intention when creating it (or at least, my use of it) is to allow easier writing of pure js, without the need of using jQuery or similars. In my projects, I normally also use Classie ([https://github.com/desandro/classie](https://github.com/desandro/classie))

<comment><USER2> interesting, would be nice to try these kinds of libs as commonjs module with backbone or ampersand</comment></comment></comment>


Programming Books You Wish You Read Earlier - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/programming-books-you-wish-you-read-earlier-1066ce29cd9d <comment><USER2> For those who are interested (and clearly there are quite a few of you who are) here are two previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19271766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19271766) (39 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19225964](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19225964) (also 39 comments)

The reason I know there are people interested is because there are several earlier submissions without discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19254020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19254020)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19243967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19243967)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19225658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19225658)

<comment><USER3> Given that there are five submissions by the same user, I think your finding that people are interested because there are several submissions is unwarranted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pet peeve of mine: people who recommend textbooks they haven't _fully_ went through.

Going through Aho's Compilers and Norvig's AI takes at least one year (assuming you have a day job).

And since the author of the blog post obviously didn't read the books, he doesn't provide any pros and cons to spending that amount of time into any of them.

</comment><comment><USER5> This feels terribly generic - a bunch of top-sellers, with helpful blurbs that could come off the back of the books (nothing about any of the descriptions gives the impression that the person has, say, _read_ any of the books) and equally helpful Amazon affiliate links.

The only surprise was AI for Games, which I own, but do have some trouble believing is very current a full decade after it was published.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ah look! Another generic Medium post of a list of programming books that come up first on Amazon's search list. Why do these people get attention?

</comment><comment><USER7> "inside Windows File Formats" (ISBN 0-672-30338-8)

It's from 1993, I read it in 1998, but I wish I had read it in 1995.

I guarantee, if you read it now, you will wish you had read it at least 20 years ago.

Also, any Adobe Flash related books that you may have read in the last few years.

</comment><comment><USER8> How many times does this need to get reposted?

<comment><USER9> I think this is the 3rd time I am seeing this on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess these posts generate a decent amount of revenue through the referral links.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is basically the course texts of the first year of any BSc in CompSci</comment>


Chrome Dev: we'd rather you use another browser than an old version of Chrome - rlv-dan https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/a3xj2q/is_there_still_a_way_to_bring_back_the_old_design/ebch4xm/ <comment><AUTHOR> Meanwhile, Google saw fit to break[1] countless games, basically erasing pieces of culture / shared history.

I don't necessarily have an issue with dropping legacy compatibility, but you can't both drop legacy compatibility _and_ disallow downgrades. There needs to be a way to access old experiences.

[1] [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=840866...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=840866#c104)

<comment><USER2> Old experiences were served using dangerous and harmful mechanisms that, in 2019 and beyond, can be exploited remotely to takeover your computer.

Technical experts have demonstrated that they're able to locate and run older releases of browsers, endangering themselves and others by running them unprotected, directly on their primary devices, without protection. Chrome speaks out against that practice here, and I would expect Firefox did the same during the old-to-new extensions transition.

The only safe way to access old experiences will likely end up being: install and use old browsers in sandboxed virtual machines that discard all changes at shutdown.

While infinite resources would permit browsers to implement virtual machine support for their own older selves, no browser has infinite resources to work with. Happily, since those who desire this most are often technically skilled, my described "set up a safe virtual machine" is easy and realistic.

TLDR: Please don't run old versions of any browser on your primary computers. Use sandboxed virtual machines if you must so at all. The web is far too dangerous and those reading this comment are far too likely to have exploitable commit access to the world somehow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretty sure the dev learned the lesson of why you don't bother to speak up.

<comment><USER4> That was terribly frustrating to read. The dev gave reasoned, metered answers, and the others responded with Cathy-Newman-esque "So what you're really saying is..." questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not really much of a statement. Anyone with any sense knows that the browser is the attack vector of most threats and security is probably the single most important feature of a browser today. The conversation in the thread demonstrates why devs shouldn't talk publicly. He clearly didn't convince the people he was addressing, and by engaging he opened himself up to the risk of Misspeaking and causing a shitstorm. We'll see far fewer of these interactions as more repurcussions happen.

</comment><comment><USER6> And here I was thinking the chrome UI refresh was a breath of fresh air.

The car analogy was apt. If Ford updated the design of one their cars, most people would find it absurd to, in a conversation with an assembly line worker from one of the factories, demand they keep producing the older design with all of the latest safety features. I find this similarly absurd.

<comment><USER7> But if Ford found a major safty defect in the airbags of old models, people would expect a fix. Even under normal conditions, people expect Ford to continue supporting the old models, which don't become significantly less safe then they were originally.

What is going on with browsers (and other software) is weird. There is no support window on the product beyond "until we get you the next versions. Upgrades are free, and you normally don't even notice when we upgrade. Also the old version is significantly less secure then it was a month ago, even though it hasn't changed at all."

Nothing about this situation is intuitive to a non expert.

Even as a proffesional, I find it supprising that we do not see any LTS browsers given that they are essentially self contained operating systems.

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that Firefox offers LTS (the ESR versions). I don't think the chrome team offers anything similar. In my mind the evergreen nature of browsers for the average person is a great thing, but I understand the desire of businesses in particular to have things be consistent.

In this case my understanding though is that nothing has functionally changed in the UI. The browser UI got a paint job, not a redesign. To the average person chrome upgrades don't actually change much visually.

To keep up the car analogy, the security race is like if the Ford was aware of safety defects so in the middle of the night every month the came and silently fixed them. Occasionally they'd also replace the bumper or the speedometer. It's still a speedometer and still behaves like one, but it appears slightly different.

<comment><USER8> And once in a while they'll replace the whole body of your car with the new version that you hate.

The more apt car analogy might be that you lease it, and the dealer sneaks in and replaces your 2016 with a 2017, then your 2017 with a 2018, and you don't mind, that's the terms of your lease agreement with them.

And then one day they replace the 2018 with a 2019 and you're not happy anymore because the 2019 looks like ass.

But there's no option corresponding to "buy a car instead of leasing it" so this is what we're all stuck with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like good advice. There are lots of reasons not to use an old version.

Imagine if you were still using IE 6 even though your computer was perfectly capable of running a modern browser.

</comment><comment><USER10> And? Threats and standards are constantly evolving. You should use a current browser. If you don't want to use Chrome, use another current browser.

Flagged as the only reason this seems to be submitted to HN is to start an unnecessary flamewar.</comment>


How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy - The Atlantic - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/8873/#.TzZGhbu_80I.hackernews <comment><USER2> Yesterday's submission (not the only previous submission) with 74 comments as of when I type this:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3573694>

Submitting the canonical URL helps avoid duplicate submissions.</comment>


Icongram – easily use icons from popular icon sets on the fly - <AUTHOR> https://icongram.jgog.in <comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to get some feedback! :)</comment>


Scaling Wix to 60M Users – From Monolith to Microservices - <AUTHOR> http://stackshare.io/wix/scaling-wix-to-60m-users---from-monolith-to-microservices

<comment><USER2> > When Wix started, we had a Flash-based product—both the Editor and the > created sites were Flash applications—which turned into a second monolith > (especially the Editor application).

These flash sites were ugly, even for the time. I'm amazed the company has done so well.

In the beginning I'd expect it'd be easy to scale. User would create a flash based site with the tool and server would host that file.

<comment><USER3> The company has done so well because they essentially hijack your content. With their flash site shit, once your content was uploaded into their "site creator" you cannot get it back under any circumstances. People gave Wix a try and a year later, when they wanted to switch providers because Wix is so awful and slow, they found that none of their content could be retrieved, and would be deleted unless they paid for another year, and another, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would be interesting to see how their German-speaking user-base compares to the rest of the world. ("Wix" = to fap)

</comment><comment><USER5> Not sure this is really an engineering success to be shared. 400 people, of which 350 are handling Spring configuration probably. Over bloated, massive effort, with 0 innovation and 10 steps backwards, and still a very slow product. Happy you are profitable, but tech talks should be left to people who truly know what they were doing. Read Twitter's scalability story for reference.

<comment><USER6> Sure, there are players that are way ahead of them, but for me the article was interesting nonetheless, there is always something new to learn. For me, the most interesting thing was a non-technical issue - how they organize people into "companies" and "guilds". Not sure if this is the most efficient way, but I think that this helps with "knowledge distributions" (not sure how to call this) across the company - this way more people know what is going on in different teams.

Re Twitter: I've found this article: [http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture- tw...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture-twitter-uses- to-deal-with-150m-active-users.html) but this is from 2013, not sure if there's something new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds of that passage in William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive where Mona meets this guy whose job is to check if company's name or brand or product name or whatever isn't an insult in Japanese or something.

<comment><USER8> Yes, if only Honda had done that with their Fitta model here in Sweden

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You should look into the open source Kong for managing your microservices [http://getkong.org](http://getkong.org) \- Github repo [https://github.com/mashape/kong](https://github.com/mashape/kong)

<comment><USER10> Can you explain what Kong does and why you would use it? I'm having a tough time finding anything of substance on the website which talks about why Kong exists

<comment><USER11> Kong is meant to replace nginx or HAproxy but with additional functionality added as plugins. For example you could proxy any APIs or microservices and add authentication, rate-limiting and logging as plugins.

<comment><USER12> Nginx can also be extended with modules and Lua scripts, which can add authentication, rate-limiting and logging.

EDIT: It seems Kong doesn't really replace Nginx, it's actually a set of Lua scripts _for_ Nginx.

<comment><USER11> Even though Kong uses Nginx under the hood as a user you interface with Kong through the CLI or REST API and don't deal directly with Nginx or it's config files. While Kong is a mix of Nginx + Lua + Cassandra it's meant to take the place Nginx in your software stack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Apologies, they actually have also their own Data Centers, and what I wrote earlier (below) is wrong.

Assuming that this is what they mean, "3 data centers + 2 clouds (Google, AWS)" -> The "+" should be substituted with "across" -> 3 data centers across 2 clouds (Google, AWS)

</comment><comment><USER14> Lots of dead comments here..

[http://i.imgur.com/3xomH6n.png](http://i.imgur.com/3xomH6n.png)

<comment><USER15> It's interesting that someone would remove that comment.

<comment><USER16> Since they were [dead] pretty immediately I'd guess something automatic hit them.

That said, I think they overdramatise the issue. Yes, the naming is unfortunate, but it's not that much of an issue.

<comment><USER17> The naming is unfortunate, period. I'd be surprised if any German business uses them at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


52-year-old grandmother makes something people want - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/school-life/this-grandmother-turned-a-common-school-annoyance-into-a-18m-app/news-story/004281cbef48835230da32df7297fe69 <comment><USER2> Very similar in concept to remind.com, except they don't monetize with advertising.</comment>


Tableau-like visual data exploration tool in JavaScript - would love feedback - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
This is Pallav from Charts.com team. Some time ago, we had released an open source (MIT) Tableau-like data visualization library Muze @ https://muzejs.org (original post @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18193264)
We have now built a FREE visual data exploration tool - Explore @ https://explore.charts.com on top of Muze library - doesn't need any signup/login  to start using.
This tool takes in your spreadsheet data (CSV, Google Sheets, Excel etc.) and helps you create charts, visually explore data, create dashboards, sync them with live data, and export PDFs. On the data side, it allows you to create segments, conditional and calculated fields and more.
Currently, the entire app is built in JavaScript and runs in your browser (locally) - we do not store any data on our server. We are working on building persistent storage and connecting to multiple databases.
Going forward, we intend to take one of these 3 paths (and we are figuring that out, and we would love to hear your thoughts on this):
- Provide visualizations (Muze) and UI layer (current Explore UI), along with data connectors as embeddable components for any SaaS/internal app; for use by development teams to aid them build their dashboard/analytical interfaces faster.
- Self-hosted app (like Metabase) for asking questions from different databases (but with more visual exploration capabilities), with added layers for internal sharing/collaboration.
- Standalone desktop/cloud tool for exploratory data analysis; for use by business users and analysts. (like Tableau)
We've just launched this week, so I'd love some feedback if you can spare the time. Also, what more would like us to build in Explore?
Thanks for taking a look!
Link: https://explore.charts.com <comment><USER2> As a ex-tableau user, the app looks good. Quite clean.

I missed a Big Query integration since I have no data on Google sheets to give it a try.

Probably AWS Redshift would be a great addition ;-)

Great job, btw!</comment>


Don't worry about Qt, The KDE Free Qt Foundation is here since 1998 - <AUTHOR> http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

<comment><USER2> So if Nokia decides to abandon Qt, the KDE foundation may release Qt under BSD license instead of LGPL? Does that comfort anyone?</comment>


Show HN: My weekend hack. Malleable, CSS3 styled QR Codes Generator - <AUTHOR> http://crimesagainstcode.com

<comment><USER2> This is a good idea overall; there's tons of potential to brand QR codes and otherwise play with them.

See here (or google 'artistic qr codes') for more: <http://mashable.com/2011/04/18/qr-code-design-tips/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I ran across that article before starting. To me it looks like all of their examples (and most custom QR codes in general) are the result of photoshop effort and I haven't yet found a QR Code generator that offers customization or branding besides overlaying a small image on the the code. This was just a learning exercise / excuse to play with CoffeeScript, but I thought it turned out well enough to share.</comment></comment>


A Brief History of Spreadsheets [2004] - <AUTHOR> http://dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html

<comment><USER2> Here's a neat bit of spreadsheet history – the story of Lotus Improv (up to 1991, it seems) and Steve Jobs' role in its development:

<http://simson.net/clips/91.NW.Improv.html>

<comment><USER3> There a little space between relational data modeling, live update, user friendliness (ala webos spirit friendly). Something akin to what Improv accomplished in his era.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No mention of Quattro Pro.. :) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quattro_Pro>

<comment><USER2> Wow, from this link I learned that Adam Bosworth was one of the original programmers of Quattro Pro. Bosworth's talk on simplicity and sloppiness (<http://adambosworth.wordpress.com/2004/11/18/iscoc04-talk/>) is one of my favorite things in the field:

 _It is an ironic truth that those who seek to create systems which most assume the perfectibility of humans end up building the systems which are most soul destroying and most rigid, systems that rot from within until like great creaking rotten oak trees they collapse on top of themselves leaving a sour smell and decay. [...] Conversely, those systems which best take into account the complex, frail, brilliance of human nature and build in flexibility, checks and balances, and tolerance tend to survive beyond all hopes.

So it goes with software. That software which is flexible, simple, sloppy, tolerant, and altogether forgiving of human foibles and weaknesses turns out to be actually the most steel cored, able to survive and grow while that software which is demanding, abstract, rich but systematized, turns out to collapse in on itself in a slow and grim implosion._

He features spreadsheets as an example:

 _Consider the spreadsheet. It is a protean, sloppy, plastic, flexible medium that is, ironically, the despair of all accountants and auditors because it is virtually impossible to reliably understand a truly complex and rich spreadsheet._

...but I had no idea he'd worked on one. He worked on MS Access too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can download the original VisiCalc executable here: <http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm>

It runs nicely under dosemu - here in a terminal on my Ubuntu 12.04 pc: <http://i.imgur.com/CjcYt.png>

</comment><comment><USER5> No mention of sc <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699>

</comment><comment><USER6> No screen shots?</comment>


Why an expert in counterterrorism became a beat cop - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/07/the-spy-who-came-home <comment><USER2> > "We write these strategic white papers, saying things like 'Get the local > Sunni population on our side,' " Skinner said. "Cool. Got it. But, then, if > I say, 'Get the people who live at Thirty-eighth and Bulloch on our side,' > you realize, man, that's fucking hard—and it's just a city block. It sounds > so stupid when you apply the rhetoric over here. Who's the leader of the > white community in Live Oak neighborhood? Or the poor community?" Skinner > shook his head. " 'Leader of the Iraqi community.' What the fuck does that > mean?"

This quote really exemplifies the failures of "nation building" from 2000-2010. It was always a hopeless quest with misguided and unmeasurable goals.

How much money was wasted, how many lives lost, in a hopelessly misguided pursuit to "stabilize" a country the US destabilized in the first place?

<comment><USER3> It's just the BS you sell when your cronies first get rich by supplying the military and then get rich again by supplying the rebuild. The destruction and lives lost are externalized costs of doing business. And terrorism is big business for those guys.

<comment><USER4> From the horse's mouth: [https://youtu.be/omnskeu- puE](https://youtu.be/omnskeu-puE)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Skinner always drives with the windows down: he tries to maximize the number of encounters people have with the police in which they feel neither scrutinized nor under suspicion. "You sometimes hear cops talk about people in the community as 'civilians,' but that's bullshit," he said. "We're not the military. The people we're policing are our neighbors. This is not semantics—if you say it enough, it becomes a mind-set."_

ain't that the truth.

Every time I see police in riot gear surrounding or walling off peaceful protesters, I wonder how much less likely it would be for the protest to turn violent if the officers were in dress blues instead.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. It's possibly also why attitudes towards the police seem a bit better in the UK (and much of Europe) compared to the US, because the police in these areas aren't dressed like they're going into a war zone or carrying weapons.

<comment><USER7> Well, in France, since the 2015 attacks, there are cops with military weapons when they are a lot of people in the same place (not necessarly during protests). Also whatever the protest, here in France you'll always have a group of cops in full riot gear nearby.

<comment><USER8> I was quite impressed by this when I was in Paris ~2 years ago. A drunken mob of about 50 people had massed outside my hotel to celebrate a soccer victory, and they were blocking the street, being loud and a little aggressive, and doing some petty vandalism. In the US I feel like this would have induced an aggressive police response.

Instead what happened is the Paris police closed the street a few blocks up, massed a response force nearby out of sight, and waited to see what happened. Eventually the mob dissipated, and two street sweepers and a team of cleaners came through and cleaned the entire area up. The following morning it was if the event had never happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I followed the guy on twitter for half a year. Shallow, rumbling and full of shit. It's kinda sad picture, with all the big words. Counterterrorism, CIA, Police, and now mass media via new Yorker.

<comment><USER10> Just my opinion, but virtually every person I've ever met working in "State Department" operations is some breed of unlikable. "Shallow ... and full of shit" (with an enormous ego) could be a one-liner describing a lot of those folks. That's not to say they're all seedy spies. They just share aspects of a certain profile that isn't what you'd consider to be a paragon of wholesome goodness. And this is going to sound weird, but usually also a kind of ironic naivete about the world that reminds of you of the goody-two-shoes from school. The kind of person that tattles as an adult.

<comment> gm-conspiracy Agreed, and anecdotally, I had a college roommate obsessed with wanting to become a CIA operative.

I had to call the police on him after he stole my TV when moving out.

<comment><USER11> did he make it to the CIA?

<comment><USER12> If by CIA you mean Criminal Internment Area, I'd wager yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As soon as a writer mentions the CIA in conjunction with fighting the "terrorists", you know they're clueless or a shill. Standard Operating Mockingbird fare.

<comment><USER14> Im just skipping all American articles about terrorism and how terrorists hate America because of the freedoms, and now America has to go bomb someone to make the world a better place. My iq drops 50 points from that garbage. We live in a world where people are so dumbed down or busy all the time that nobody even seem to reflect on the madness of this thinking.

<comment><USER15> IQ tests are based on pattern recognition and abstraction. So your comment being as meta as it is probably means your iq hasn't dropped. I do understand that it's a figure of speech in this case but to go more meta it is a lazy argument... perhaps indicative of low iq! Fun right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "the agency was using National Geographic maps from the nineteen-sixties, with names for landmarks and villages that didn't correspond to those used by the locals."

I call disinformation on this one, since agency has been involved in counter- USSR operations in that area in the eighties their maps should have at least been from that time period, not the sixties.

"the Kalashnikov, a Soviet-developed assault rifle that can penetrate a person's torso from more than half a mile away."

I have yet to meet a person who can throw a Kalashnikov with a bayonet attached for half a mile. Such poor writing.

"designed for use in war zones", "high-powered weapons"

For some reason one can always tell when a piece writer got their hands on a Common Sense Gun Control Thesaurus.

<comment><USER17> I do not doubt some people were using unclassified public domains maps. CIA should use Openstreetmap so they can all share the same info, just add a "NOT_FOR_TERRIES" the the entries that should be kept secret.

Getting names of landmarks right is really hard unless you have people on the ground that are specifically looking for that, and who are supposed to update maps. I don't know how the military/intelligence community works, but have they really invested manpower into this? This is from experience with mapping around lake Victoria and Haiti, the map might look ok but when you put your boots on the ground things are different. Especially since official vs. local names can differ so much.

<comment><USER16> "Getting names of landmarks right is really hard unless you have people on the ground that are specifically looking for that, and who are supposed to update maps"

Isn't the purpose of intelligence agencies to collect intelligence, such as landmark names and maps?

<comment><USER17> Yes of course, and I have no insight into how they worked with maps (except remote imaging), I just know that the amount of hours you need to invest per village with 300+ pop is quite large. There are also several organizational issue with maps, how do you keep them secret, what do you map, where do you map, if caught with a map are you a spy. Basically why would you give a beat cop a top secret map, my comment about Openstreetmap was a joke but it highlights the bigger problem that maps are a social good and that is not always the goal of the intelligence community in hostile environment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I improve my Accelerator Pitch? - <AUTHOR>

A couple of weeks ago we went online with our flight search, that is different from standard flight searches. We often find better and cheaper results.
However, when pitching our product to people we often get the message asking how we are different from Kayak and Skyscanner. I usually attach an example showing the price differences and the savings we conduct (https://tripdelta.com/results/SFO/LON/10-12-15/ vs. https://www.kayak.de/flights/SFO-LON/2015-12-10).
It seems hard to properly communicate the message.
But do you see any general advice on how to improve an Accelerator Pitch?
I would love to hear your thoughts... <comment><USER2> How does being cheaper make your investors the 100x returns they are looking for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, this is a good help when pitching to investors. I should have been more specific. I am looking for both, advices on how communicate my message properly to the public and to investors.

But asking your questions is certainly a good help. Thanks !!

<comment><USER2> Not that I am the best person to advise you on how to pitch to investors (I run what is disparagingly called a lifestyle business by the VCs), but my experience in pitching in general is to try and look at the pitch from the perspective of the investor. They worry about two things: 1. How are you going to make them money (the 100x return). 2. How are you going to minimise their risk. Your actual technology is almost of no importance.

You need to structure your pitch around these two questions. Go through your deck and make sure every slide and every bullet point is answering the two critical questions. Anything that doesn't answer these questions needs to removed or changed.</comment></comment></comment>


Scoreboards Where You Can't See Your Score - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/technology/the-scoreboards-where-you-cant-see-your-score.html

<comment><USER2> Reputation economies are pretty interesting. There's a trade-off inherent in them related to the number of potential sources of trusted information. If that number is small and the credits are hard to fake, you get corruption as the in-crowd uses the power it already has to increase its share. Over time, the reputation economy becomes "prestigious" but ineffective and harmful to society. That's Silicon Valley. On the other hand, if that number of credible sources is large, you don't have good-ol'-boy corruption in the reputation economy, but it's open to "flooding the channel" attacks.

Something that I've learned is that it's impossible to erase negative information (even, or I should say, _especially_ if it's untrue) about anyone or anything. This is the "Streisand Effect". On the other hand, you have to flood the channel. I know someone who signed up for a bunch of social media profiles just to knock negative publicity off of his top 10 Google searches, who hired an Indian firm to astroturf-endorse him on LinkedIn, and who created a bunch of identical-looking articles (to the one describing his indiscretion) that popped the date of the damaging event back 8 years, making it appear to have happened when he was a teenager.

Flooding the channel is the absolute best defense against a reputation problem. Unfortunately, there's a fine line between that and _spamming_ , which I think we all agree is bad for the world.

If you want to take the dystopia concept further-- and, for the record, I don't actually think that this will happen, but it could-- we may get to a point where it's impossible to get a "real" job without a ridiculous amount of public endorsement and credibility, so the bottom-90% who don't have that end up working in body shops where their jobs are to pump up the reputations of their clients. Instead of having Third World body-shops creating level-60 paladins or clerics in virtual worlds and selling them (and their equipment) for a few thousand bucks, they could be building up level-60 _resumes_ and selling them to aspiring executives for much more.</comment>


Ask HN: How to learn to give clear, descriptive names to class, methods etc - <AUTHOR>

Its one thing I wish I did better when writing code. The names are either obscure or turn into sentences before I can fully express what they try to do.<p>There probably isn't a surefire way to get better at this and something that must be worked on and cultivated. But any advise pointing the way is appreciated. <comment><USER2> Much of the problem of naming things is that the name you give them now, is unlikely to be the most appropriate name in the future. For example, your code may change, you may make other similar classes that would be more appropriate with that name, etc.

The strategy I use is to iterate naming, just as I would any other aspect of code. You are unlikely to want to do this as often, but if you find your current names are no longer working for you, it might be time for a change.

<comment><USER3> For me names evolve over time, when I come up with a better name, I just do a global replace (sed is your friend). Other than that, I follow the nouns for things (objects) and verbs for actions (methods). If the name starts looking like a sentence, then I stop and rethink the design. Like to keep things as simple as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." Tim Bray

My personal approach is to copy shamelessly. Whenever I come accross a very readable piece of code, I add it to my bookmarks. When I am stuck with naming something I go through my bookmarks and somethin inspiring always comes up.

</comment><comment><USER5> Read "Code Complete".</comment>


Steam is not healthy for gaming - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive <comment><USER3> > _Valve themselves eagerly trumpeted that they had paid more than $57 million > to Steam Workshop creators over four years — an enormously impressive figure > until you realize that it 's only 25 percent of the sale price, which means > Valve just made $171 million profit from ... setting up an online form where > you can submit finished 3D models._

Yeah, come on, you guys! They barely did any of the work! They just set up a form! How dare they expect to be compensated for that? It's not like there's a huge infrastructure powering all of that, that not only required an initial investment of money, time and brainpower, but also requires ongoing maintenance!

The article does raise some good points, but the overall raise-the-pitchforks tone makes it seem less credible - especially when most of the complaints seem to be that _Valve is running a profitable business while delivering value to customers_. The author forgot what installing and playing games was like before Steam - better write down those CD keys somewhere safe, or never lose the cases - or the CDs themselves. (Or, god forbid, keep the manual around forever so you can refer to line 5 on page 17, and type in the third, seventh and eight word.)

And one of the reasons people hated EA was because EA abused its employees and developers, not because they had a shitty game client; if you want to compare someone to Uber/Lyft/AirBNB, they are a much closer candidate.

<comment><USER4> Hey, I'm hosting a server with a shitty PHP app, but you can put your addons on it. I'm just asking for 75% of your income. Not profit, no, income. I'm running the infrastructure after all. Not to mention that this 25% figure is largely exaggerated, and it's closer to 7-8% in reality.

Steam is not all bad. But the last thing Valve needs is people defending them, because they have been doing fuck all work for the past years. Delegating everything to the community is not work. Steamworks API is still a joke. Greeenlight is a joke. 99% the cosmetics they are putting out are done by the community. CSGO skins? Done by the community. DotA2 skins? done by the community. Team Fortress 2 items? I can't even remember the last time the game was updated with some thing they made themselves. They outsourced an update to the community, ffs. The last time Steam itself had a meaningful update was years ago. Still waiting on an actually good Big Picture mode.

I am not saying they do not deserve payment for their work. Just that the ratios are heavily skewed in their favour and as the only serious players in the market, this is bad for everyone but them. Until the day Origin, Uplay, Galaxy, etc. get better (spoiler: never), we are bound to their whims and whishes. You can be the most benevolent dictator of all time, you're still a dictator, and I'm still going to protest.

>better write down those CD keys somewhere safe, or never lose the cases - <USER2> the CDs themselves.

Joke's on you, I enjoy having cases. I actually miss having physical boxes and manuals and all the goodies that came with games.

<comment><USER5> Oooh, a hat! Who wrote the game it shows up in, runs the servers that do the matchmaking, and distributes the hat to the customers? Right, you did all the work. I'll remember that next time I play my favorite pikzen game distributed by the pikzen network and run on pikzen servers.

<comment><USER4> Coming Soon™ in your stores.

>runs the servers that do the matchmaking

For reference, once cosmetics were introduced (and it was already getting old by the time), TF2 ran a good... two years? without matchmaking servers, only with a master server to list all the public servers. While it's not something you're running on a $5 DigitalOcean instance, it's not exactly super expensive either (especially considering they were down regularly). All the servers were hosted by the community. Microtransactions are the only reason the game got matchmaking.

But I don't know, call me a bleeding heart idealist, but if I'm asking people to come build things for me, I'm not asking for a 75% claim on it because the terrain belongs to me. People didn't ask Valve to make content for them. Valve asked them to.

<comment><USER5> Actually if I recall correctly, modders were largely making skins and other things for free and distributing them to other players. Then Valve developed a section of their online store and distribution network to allow those mods to be sold for at least some money. Now the split may not be what you consider entirely fair, but 8%, 25%, 75%, or 100% of zero is all the same.

A game without mods is a game. A mod without a game is just digital art. It's their engine, their game rules, their store, their distribution network, and their audience that they've reached with their marketing. Maybe they deserve a bit smaller share than they ask, but who are you going to sell these items to without a game engine, game rules, a store, a distribution network, and an audience to sell them to?

If you gave 30% to an app store, and 20% for marketing, and 25% for someone to vet your items don't break the game, what would that cut be overall? 75%.

<comment><USER4> >If you gave 30% to an app store

Valve's cut.

>20% for marketing

No marketing is being done for items aside from announcing them in patch notes.

>25% for someone to vet your items don't break the game

That is not something Valve does, considering the amount of items that clip through models after release. Notwithstanding the fact that items they select are either from modelers that they're already in contact with, or items that were voted up by the community and therefore, tried.

This is exactly where the Polygon article is right. Steam is in a situation of almost monopoly on the market, and you have absolutely zero chances of ever being able to negotiate those rates. Even the mafia takes less as a protection fee, and they do more work than Valve when it comes to their customers.

<comment><USER5> > No marketing is being done for items aside from announcing them in patch > notes.

None perhaps for the individual add-on items, but there's been marketing to get people involved in the games for which the extra content is made. The audience is there initially because of the game, not initially because of the extra content.

> That is not something Valve does, considering the amount of items that clip > through models after release.

That's a shame. I would expect that for the amount they keep they'd do some quality control.

If you want more control and a bigger share, make assets for a non-Valve game. Find an engine, some programmers, a musician, a level designer, and a couple of testers. Publish your own game. Of course, then you'd be splitting the game development share across all of those team members. So depending on the size of the team, 5% to 50% of the game team's share from your 70% from the sale of the game through the store would be that alternative, unless you're prepared to do it as a solo project. That, though, is for the sale price of the whole game rather than a single downloadable item. Then you can do the same with DLC packs. Indie games do tend to sell at lower prices than AAA titles, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Valve isn't my friend, no corporation is. They are largely benevolent despite some missteps. I can forgive that, mistakes are made. Steam has been a great boon to my hobby and I would dearly miss it if it were gone.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't call any major corporation benevolent or malevolent, they're effectively amoral entities. They're your "friend" so long as they stand to profit from you.

<comment><USER8> I don't agree with this. NGOs are primarily meant to do (morally) good things to the society where we live (usually help helpless people), where corporations pursue profit, which is usually not a bad thing unless they break the law (with a misleading behavior with the customers, antitrust, tax evading, and I'd like to say also lobbying).

Anyway, Steam users are also paying to consume the game, even if they don't own it. And I really doubt the 2% of their users read even the first paragraph of the EULA contract (where they do specify the above, yep I read it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My main beef with steam is that the client is a piece of crap. With the big bucks they have they should have a much better UX/UI and overall engineering.

They enjoy a massive network effect plus the key handling helped increasing the switch costs, but they should go down. Platforms like itch.io are much better, and GOG.com at least keeps improving.

<comment><USER10> Steam definitely takes the Google approach - throw out a minimum viable product, automate as much as possible, and provide little-to-no support.

That also means the experience is similar. When it works, it works well and you don't have to think about it. When it doesn't work, be prepared to lose hours-to-days of your life to a system that seems to be as kafkaesque as possible.

<comment><USER11> Except its not minumum and not viable. Its bloated with lots of features added over the years on top of each other, and its terrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Vox is not your friend, and Polygon is not healthy for gaming.

<comment><USER13> Why is that?

<comment><USER14> There only purpose is to make money. If you not spending anything on the product you are the product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Steam fills a need and does it well. I have zero issues with it.

<comment><USER16> Totally. Steam single handily got me back into gaming on a (semi) regular basis.

<comment><USER17> Conversely, Steam turns me away from gaming. I want to own my games, not rent them with hopes Valve won't take them away from me.

<comment><USER18> Use Google. Their content is mostly DRM free and you can download games to local disk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is outrage clickbait, pure and simple. The comparison of Steam Workshop to _" an online form where you can submit finished 3D models"_ is so dishonest it crosses over into willful deception.

This is the same Polygon (a video game site) that put out an article complaining about how unfairly they were treated when they released a video showing that they don't even understand the basics of video games. The whole site is problematic.

<comment><USER19> the steering wheel

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3pQ0oO_cDE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3pQ0oO_cDE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Their lack of refund policy kicked me off the platform in 2010. I bought Civ V, then discovered that Mac port was a piece of crap. It didn't matter how fast your computer was, or how new your video card was, it rendered like stop- motion animation once you had more than a few units.

It probably took 10-15 emails, being bounced between steam, the publisher, and the port developer to finally get steam credit "as a courtesy".

<comment><USER21> This is a lot easier now. If you have played the game for less than 2 hours and purchased it within 14 days Steam will refund you pretty much no questions asked.

<comment><USER22> I tried this once for a game that crashed on startup. My game "suddenly" had 11 hours played (according to steam).

The game crashed, but it turns out that steam kept the counter going after it did, so not only did it not work: it also meant no refund.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is such a screed. I love PC games and was a very successful PC game developer in the nineties. Piracy was killing the business, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Steam is extremely successful but it is not a monopoly. All the smart developers I know use Steam but also maintain alternate points of distribution for all kinds of business reasons. If you don't like Steam, don't use it. There are many alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER24> While I'm emphatically _not_ a fan of the Platform as a way of extracting rent, Steam is one of the more acceptable cases, since it isn't preinstallled and integrated with (or gasp given exclusive access by) the OS.

<comment><USER25> Ironically I think the ideal is an OS with open infrastructure for 'stores' and all the good features they bring. (Ease of discovery, auto updates, etc.)

This is how Linux repositories got it right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14352762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14352762)

</comment><comment><USER27> The main negative I see with Steam is that it seems to make gamers expect even lower prices on games, which is especially bad for indie studios...

<comment><USER28> I don't have links right now but Valve has published some numbers that seem to suggest the opposite- that their low price sales sell so many more copies of games that they bring in more revenue than when the game is at full price.

Also you can see how effective the model is for indie games. Take Stardew Valley for instance. A hugely successful indie game that's made the author a ton of money. And it still sells for less than Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons.

<comment><USER29> Isn't this the parents point? There super low sales drive prices down because they work. Personally I see this as 'the market' working in a helpful way for consumers and don't see the problem with low price expectations. Not like the rate people are making games to sell is low.

<comment><USER30> The thing to keep in mind is that this is the Wal-Mart model: drive prices as low as possible (and maybe sell in bulk). It squeezes/kills the little suppliers (such as indie developers), drives down the notional market value of goods, but feels like a good deal for consumers.

At least in current society there isn't anything overtly wrong with "the Wal- Mart model" as it stands, but recognizing a Wal-Mart model is the first steps towards trying to figure out if it is long term healthy for the community. (Which brings us back to the article at hand, questioning the long term health of the community in the face of a Wal-Mart like Steam.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The story and so much of the discussion about it seem to exclude the boring possibility: Valve is not run by benevolent entertainment angel-saints, but neither is it run by mustache-twirling villains. The things they do have both upsides and downsides.

I'm surprised by the concerns over refunds. In my experience, brick-and-mortar stores that sold computer games were generally not too friendly about refunds. GameStop's website says downloadable PC purchases are not eligible for refunds at all.

I was going to say that Steam's monopoly status is overstated, since there are a few (much smaller) competitors. But in fact it looks like the games I bought on Impulse years ago have vanished; GameStop bought Impulse, rebranded it, and later shut it down. As far as I can tell, my licenses have disappeared into the ether. Motivating just about any former customers to avoid GameStop in future, I would think. Boggling.

</comment><comment><USER32> Steam got me back into gaming after a long period not having free time to fuck with activations, custom installs etc. If I get a new box, I just log-in and my shit gets installed. I don't have enough time to game and they're getting a cut for the service they provide, is this unacceptable?

<comment><USER30> It's acceptable, it's fine, the issue at hand is that we've reached the point that Steam is the Wal-Mart of PC videogames and a lot of people act like they still think Steam is some sort of Mom & Pop shop. It doesn't hurt to examine our Wal-Marts and want them to do better (even if many of us will still shop at them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If any entity isn't healthy for the gaming community it's Polygon. This and other click bait articles they release regularly try to stir up controversy where there isn't any.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm confused... I've gotten refunds from Steam on multiple occasions, with no trouble at all?

Steam has both pros and cons. For me, the benefits greatly outweigh the cons.

</comment><comment><USER35> | If you were to ask the average PC gamer, they'd swear up and down that there's no way they'd ever give their money to such a corporation.

Stopped reading here, what retarded nonsense.

<comment><USER36> He's implying that an average PC gamer would never use Uber, Lyft, or Airbnb.

The whole article seems like the author just woke up from a 15-year coma and is having trouble coming to terms with modern commerce.

<comment><USER37> _> The whole article seems like the author just woke up from a 15-year coma and is having trouble coming to terms with modern commerce._

Seems more like a Games Journalism article written by someone who isn't "a gamer". Which is par for the course nowadays.

I'd be hard pressed to find any PC gamer who doesn't think Steam improved upon the way things used to be done. I do know one person who is an exception but their issue isn't the _gaming_ side of things but the fact they liked to collect boxes for the box art. Fewer games being released as a box = fewer box arts for their collection.

<comment><USER30> We could play the "no true Scotsman" game for a while, but I've yet to meet a games journalist that is less of "a gamer" than I am.

The article admits Steam improved the way things had been done before. It simply asks us to question our relationship with Steam _today_ , if it's continuing to do real good. It wonders why so many people are still adamant Steam is a Mom & Pop shop when it's the PC gaming Wal-Mart today.

<comment><USER37> _> We could play the "no true Scotsman" game for a while, but I've yet to meet a games journalist that is less of "a gamer" than I am._

I predicted this would be a response (or, similarly, "gatekeeping").

"Gamers" in the _literal_ sense? Sure. But most people mean "gamer" as in "gaming enthusiast". There's a certain level of skill or knowledge expected of anyone calling themselves an "enthusiast". If you lack both of those things you'll find it hard for anyone to take you seriously. Just like an "artist" who is both untalented and ignorant (eg. no knowledge of common terminology, history, or popular figures) wouldn't be taken seriously as an "artist", regardless of how much time they spend on it.

Polygon infamously released 30 minutes of gameplay footage of Doom that was mocked for the player being _so bad_ it's like they've no experience with an FPS game [0]. Polygon in general has a long track record of being ignorant of entire facets of gaming culture, to an extent that many enthusiasts say "Bullshit. You don't know what you're talking about." Their reputation for being ignorant and clickbaity wasn't earned because they're _good_ at what they do, quite the contrary.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3pQ0oO_cDE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3pQ0oO_cDE)

<comment><USER30> "Enthusiast" has no implied meaning, that I am aware of, with regards to skill or encyclopedic knowledge of/within a culture. Enthusiasm is not a profession and plenty of people are enthusiastic of things without high skill or deep knowledge, and there are so many different facets of gaming that I distrust anyone that thinks they can define a canon of skills, experiences, or knowledge that makes "a gamer". Primarily RPG gamers might have no FPS skills. FPS players might lack the deep lore and cultural touchstones of RPG culture. Neither is more nor less "a gamer", which is exactly why this is a "no true Scotsman" argument. That's just two genres of games within the hobby; we could go all night diving through the variety and depth of gaming.

Gaming is a giant spirograph of a venn diagram of interests, skills, knowledge, cultural touchstones, etc. You may be comfortable picking some very specific section of that Venn diagram for what criteria you think counts as "a gamer", but I hesitate to. I'd rather celebrate how wide and interesting the hobby can be than lock myself in an ivory tower or boy's club treehouse.

<comment><USER37> You're right that enthusiast doesn't have any dictionary definition with the implication I mentioned. So for lack of a dictionary term, allow me an analogy that also explains why it isn't a "no true scotsman" argument.

Compare game genres to musical instruments. Guitarist == FPS gamer and Pianist == RPG gamer

Both guitarists and pianists are musicians, just like RPG players and FPS players are gamers. Feel free to expand this analogy into as many genres and musical instruments as you like.

Now take someone who isn't able to play the correct notes, cannot read sheet music/tablature/any form of music notation, has no knowledge of music theory, hasn't heard of The Beatles (or whatever cultural/genre relevant artist would be the equivalent to The Beatles), but still practices for hours every day on their 8-note plastic recorder they got in 4th grade [0]. They call themselves a musician, after all they spend so much time with their hobby!

Nobody but that person and maybe their mother - being nice - would call them a musician. Is there a hard, defined line for when they'll "become a musician"? No. There is a grey line of necessary skill/knowledge that one needs to have for others to consider them a musician. Every amateur hobby has that grey line that needs to be crossed before you'll be taken seriously.

ps. The dictionary definition of "musician" only mentions "plays an instrument" and doesn't indicate any level of skill. This is the difference between "dictionary definition" and "actual usage of a word". By the dictionary's definition our untalented individual is a musician, even if nobody else would consider them one.

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/UXHmy6c.png](http://i.imgur.com/UXHmy6c.png)

<comment><USER30> That analogy doesn't work for me either. History is littered with amazingly beloved musicians that played entirely by ear, with little to no literacy in the larger world of music, that basically reinvented everything they knew of music from first principles with never studying the previous culture or proper music literacy or music theory.

I think the dictionary definition is accurate/adequate enough and you may have an implicit "good" or maybe "professional" somewhere in your usage of musician, that I don't. One is a value judgment (history is also littered with "terrible" musicians that were still musicians, or contributed to the craft) and the other an economic judgment, neither of which I see as necessary to describing who is or is not a musician.

<comment><USER37> We'll have to agree to disagree here, because I don't find dictionary definitions all that useful for communication and most people don't operate under strict dictionary definitions.

By definition a pilot doesn't need to successfully fly - only operate the controls. So a drone pilot could crash every drone and still be a "pilot" by definition. Nobody would recognize them as a drone pilot because there is an implied "successfully" that isn't found in the definition.

Yes - there is an implicit "at least to some level of success" in my definition. "Professionals" meet that criteria by _being good enough to be paid for what they do_. Amateurs come at many different levels but I don't call myself a photographer just because I've taken a few (hundred) photos. This is where we disagree - because you would consider me a photographer for having taken _any_ photos.

<comment><USER30> Here's where your analogy particularly breaks down: "a gamer" is neither a professional nor an amateur mark. Fandom does not, and perhaps cannot, have any sort of success bar. There is a notion of a "professional gamer" in the eSports world, and it's possible to extrapolate thereby to a notion of an "amateur gamer" that competes in eSports. But that belies a confusion between "[sports] gamer" and "[fandom/enthusiast] gamer". Within the context of fandom/enthusiasm, what would "professional" mean? "Amateur"?

Fandom/enthusiasm don't really have success bars. It's something you are either enthusiastic about or you aren't. You can be a fan of something and never be successful at it, however you define success. A baseball fan doesn't have to be good at actually playing baseball nor devoted to a deep knowledge of the sport to be a fan of their favorite team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> self-diversity I've never understood the drive toward some notion of commercial-free purity the gaming world seems to embody. Is it due to the heavy teenage boy presence that underlies so many other unsavory aspects?</comment>


YC s11 Rejected Applicants: This is the real test. - <AUTHOR>

I almost didn't get my Eagle Scout rank when I was in Boy Scouts. It wasn't a matter of it being too hard, I just thought it was easier to walk away from all of the years of work I had put into it and do other things. What was the point? It's just a stupid badge, right? Then I ran across an article from Mike Rowe, the creator of the show "Dirty Jobs", new face of Ford, etc. He's an Eagle Scout. When asked what he would say to Scouts about becoming Eagle, he said this:
http://meritbadge.org/wiki/images/3/30/Mike_Rowe-Dirty_Jobs_Eagle_Letter.pdf
tl;dr Becoming an Eagle Scout is proof that you aren't a quitter. You get shit done and are a relentless pioneer.
If this bump in the road rattles you enough to close shop, you shouldn't be an entrepreneur. The most successful entrepreneurs have failed more times than they can count. Each "failure" teaches you something...how to build an unbelievably great company.
Want to be a great entrepreneur? Get shit done and be a relentless pioneer. That is the real test of entrepreneurship.
PS - I got my Eagle Scout rank. <comment><USER2> > If this bump in the road rattles you enough to close shop, you shouldn't be > an entrepreneur.

I question the value of telling someone they "shouldn't" be an entrepreneur. Even that they "aren't" an entrepreneur.

Closing shop doesn't have to be a permanent thing.

Didn't get accepted for this round of YC? Decide what that means for you, then continue to live your life.

<comment><AUTHOR> If rejection makes you stop building the company that you envision, love, and put all of your effort behind, then you will never succeed running a startup. This may be a bold statement, but I'd love to hear what Jobs, Gates, Zuck, or anyone else with expertise in the area have to say.

<comment><USER3> I definitely agree with this. If you applied to YC to have your project validated by @pg and associates. Then you should think twice about your real motivations. Only close shop when you're sure your idea is not a good one or that you KNOW that you're not able to achieve it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I got to the badge below Eagle (Life) basically as fast as it was mechanically possible to. I'm not sure when exactly, but by 8th grade at the latest. Then all of my friends dropped out of scouts when we got to high school. I ended up being Senior Patrol Leader and running the troop for a couple of years, and I avoided working on an Eagle project for a while... I had time.

Then at some point I decided I'd rather do something that other kids my age were also doing, so after much hand-wringing I quit Boy Scouts and joined the theater. I ended up being the lead in the school musical senior year, and I sung in choirs all through college. I did light opera. I joined a gospel choir and performed in baptist churches all across the state.

I also developed a deep belief that I could try totally new things that were outside my comfort zone, and excel at them.

I sometimes wonder whether I should've stayed and gotten the Eagle. Finishing things is certainly a weakness of mine. Maybe if I had spent those last two two years of high school hanging around with 13 year olds and building a bridge in the woods I'd be a better finisher. But I'd be a worse artist. And I'd be a more cautious person.

This is the second time I got rejected from YCombinator. And quitting is the furthest thing from my mind. But I'm glad I quit back then.

</comment><comment><USER5> Girl Scout Gold Award recipient here just got rejected. (: I'm looking for a cofounder if anyone knows anyone interested in working on a social startup. I'm more interested in finding passionate people than people with a particular skillset.

<comment><USER2> You might want to look into why the images on pages like <http://yellowrubberball.com/why-yrb/> on your site hang off the side of the page in Chrome 10.0.648.204 on OS X.

I noticed it on the home page too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disappointed.

I've got nothing against YC, but I've seemed to go into "success is the best revenge" mode ha.

To be honest it's a good wake up call, I need to stop treating my start up as a lifestyle business.

Dropping out of university at the end of this term and i'm pushing forward with it.

Decisions been made.

<comment><USER7> Have you considered whether you're following a fantasy? Maybe you should seek advice from someone you trust who doesn't drink the HN/TechCrunch Kool-Aid. Somehow I doubt you were rejected from YC due to lack of effort.

<comment><USER6> I've been working on the idea for a while now, in a nutshell it's a less bureaucratic version of paypal. I've been seeking advice from a lot of different sources. To be honest, i think the main reason is the fact that i'm a sole founder and that I've been doing everything on my own. Which is stupid, but it isn't easy to find technology entrepreneurs my age in the UK, or ones who are as committed.

The prototype has been developed, so I'm going to take it to market within the next few weeks. Then apply to YC again in the winter, with a bit more grounding and social proof.

It's not really the money I was hoping to receive it's the support/advice/mentorship, especially on legal matters. Most of the lawyers i've spoken to don't really have a clue about the SAAS model.

<comment><AUTHOR> Although bconway is trying to look out for your better interests, I'm going to advise you to go with the route you just mapped out.

Maybe your idea isn't the "one". Maybe you can't pull off running a startup. Maybe you aren't in the right place at the time.

But I'm betting that the preceding paragraph is all false. And even if I'm wrong, at least you put your balls on the line and did something you believed in. The story of your startup will beat an infinite number of drunken frat stories any day.

Safety Net: You can always head back to college if things get ugly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes and no. I was in freelance photography before switching to programming (weird, huh?). I thought repeatedly: I can't just give up photography, that'd make me a pussy. I should aspire to do what I love.

Then I dumped professional photography and became a programmer, and I am freer, better paid and happier than I would be otherwise. Quitting one thing let me find another that is better.

I guess, the real difference is that someone (Mike Rowe) tells you want to do: don't quit, it's better. But if you don't know what's better, then you don't know if you are quitting the wrong path to pursue a right path, or what. Decisions you make in absence of a judge are always uncertain. And who has the authority to judge me?

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree regarding trying new things. If something interests you more, then go and do it. But if you walk away from something just because you got your ass kicked, that's just lame. Maybe that might lead to something better, more likely not. I think a hybrid model where you do something that you love while you keep your options open is a good approach :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I got rejected twice. However, I have a different idea for a startup. Non web startup, not based on coding. Based on the fact that I never even got a reason why I was rejected, I thought I'd apply differently this time. Saved my application in a file and then posted it here:

[http://thypope.posterous.com/my-latest-y-combinator- applicat...](http://thypope.posterous.com/my-latest-y-combinator-application)

Tried to make them think. I believe they're in a loop of... self-indulgence, really. Since I think they do their best to stay the $#@! away from taking risks with any "unorthodox" ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> I skimmed the first paragraph of your application...

Listen, I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but I wouldn't have invited you to an interview either (regardless of the BS jargon in the application). Here's why.

1\. You are a single founder.

Doing a startup alone is sooooo hard. The only way they would consider having a solo founder is if you're a programmer. (see #2)

2\. You're are not a programmer.

It's hard to explain. Being a programmer changes the way you think of ideas. You know what is possible, what is plausible and where that intersection between the two is. Your ideas may be fantastic, but I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't plausible. It's not your fault. You just need to learn how to code if you want to understand what I'm talking about. On top of that, a startup CEO typically plays 'engineer' for at least a year or two before moving up to a lofty management position (but YC looks for hackers - the kind of guys who never stop checking in code at their companies).

3\. Your attitude sucks.

You got rejected from YC. Shit happens. It's irresponsible and immature to blame YC because they didn't decide to fund you. Entrepreneurs don't sit and complain when rejection happens - they work harder to ensure it won't happen again.

This is not meant to be a mean post against you. You can continue doing your thing your way, but I will almost guarantee that you will not succeed in running your startup.

<comment><USER9> I sincerely hope that you did get the point - that was a "kamikaze" application not meant to get me in, but meant to get them out of their self righteous loop! You appear to not have read the whole thing. Okay, you didn't have to, of course. But you completely proved my point: that's what they also do. This is why I tried my best to get their attention woken up at least for this one application. Maybe they'll start waking up before reading other applications in the future, as well! I believe they never got the point that this is not a programming-centered idea. Not a software startup at all. I want to make hardware, to put it shortly.

Not meaning to brag, but I applied for another incubator as well, and got to the last stage. I was dumped there, but they did say I came across as technically strong and with relevant and solid experience. Among their tests was a programming test. I sent two e-mails explaining how I'm not a coder but how I'm not supposed to be one. And they passed me to the next stage.

Again, I think you proved the point I was trying to make with Y Combinator flawlessly. Not as an offence to you, though.

And yes, I understand that you weren't trying to bash me but to help me instead. Thanks for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get that it was a "kamikaze" application. The fact of the matter is that YC looks for hackers, which you are not. It doesn't mean you're lesser. It just means that you shouldn't be surprised when you get rejected from YC.

I don't understand why/what you're protesting. If you want them to look beyond software startups, that would be very foolish of them as their area of expertise is software.

<comment><USER9> Well, I don't live in The Valley. Not in the US, actually. I thought it would be reasonable to assume that people calling themselves investors would look at anything. Right now it looks like that guy from Mountain View was right: if the iPhone's popular, everyone's doing something related to the iPhone. Which is fine, as it's their choice. But it seems that if you utter the word Blackberry, you get fined or arrested for disturbing public order. And if you even think of Nokia, Gov. A. Schwarzenegger himself will punch you in the throat.

Okay, I didn't know that. I will remember it next time I have to deal with such people. Good to know.

What I think is obviously missing? Simple, Y Combinator's main page displaying a huge banner that says "we don't care about anything non-software, go away." It would have warned me right from the start. They never explicitly say it, they just heavily hint at it (e.g. they ask for your github ID, which you don't need unless you do some sort of coding) and I'm here to say quit hinting and just admit it out loud. But I believe that's also typical - what we hint at, it's actually an axiom. What we recommend, it's actually required. I believe that's not right. Simple as that. No hard feelings.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're taking what Silicon Valley media reports and slapping it onto the face of YC. YC's most successful startups are not "iPhone Apps". DropBox, Heroku, CloudKick, Justin.TV, etc. These are real guys tackling real problems. Your sarcastic remarks belittle their accomplishments, which is immature at best.

"Though we fund all types of startups, we're especially interested in web/mobile applications. We've been thinking about that problem longer than anyone else, and by now can visualize much of the space of possibilities."

This means that they are more comfortable investing in an area where they're the experts. If you're going to blindly apply to a VC without reading their "About" page, that is you being irresponsible, not a problem with the VC.

<comment><USER9> My point exactly - again! "They are more comfortable in that area" means "they don't actually invest outside that area." I feel I could have saved some time if I knew this before I applied for the first time.

But yeah, I get it, you can't conceive them ever being wrong, for some reason. I have nothing against that, it's an opinion and it's as personal as a haircut.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it doesn't mean "they don't actually invest outside that area", it means that you have to have a kick ass team and product for them to even consider taking you. You don't have a team, which is what probably killed your application from the start.

Again, this is all posted on their website. Digging around on the internet would reveal even more information. You should have done this in the first place before applying to a VC.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, but that whole single founder thing is so messed up. They don't really send you the message that they rarely take single founders on board. You have to find horror stories on the net. One of them is about a guy who had two other co-founders or so, but those couldn't just move for three months. They had families and lives. So the guy moves to SF and they tell him "we really hate single founders." So, if the other co-founders are not there, it's like they don't exist at all. I do have a guy, an engineer who would do a lot of the required work, but moving him to the US is an idea from another planet. He is part of the team. There's no doubt about that. He just doesn't want to be a legal co-owner. He doesn't want that responsibility. He's also much older than me and has a different perspective. But Y Combinator, suffering from ADHD, won't have the patience to consider all that. That was kinda my whole point. I'm still not sure you got it.

<comment><USER9> Wow, we reached the limit of the sausage string. I have to reply to my own comment :)

I still believe I can do it "alone," i.e. with just that other guy. I'm just gonna go get the needed money elsewhere and forget about Y Combinator. That blog post or whatever you want to call it, is my opinion on them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would consider it slanderous but to each their own. I think there are more respectable (and polite) ways of protesting though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For some reason the rejection has bumped my productivity. I've produced so much today than I haven't done since months now. I guess the rejection made me feel like I don't need help, Start-up is about business and if for some reasons* YC feel like our idea don't worth investing in (I doubt it) or maybe we are not good enough to execute then it's up to us to prove the contrary.

</comment><comment><USER10> I turned 18 before I could complete my Eagle. But Boy Scouts had a lasting impact on the way I live my life.

There are many things I have tackled in my life because I have the courage to stand up and do something others might not.

A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. I'll never forget this one, though...

"Always be prepared."

Best advice to live your life by (especially when running a startup).

<comment><USER10> Agreed...sometimes being prepared means knowing what to do when the unknown arises

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yes and No. A good entrepreneur needs to be able to execute and part of that is spending time on the right ideas and features for that idea. I'd say the ability to assess sensibly the question 'Am I working on the best thing I can be at the moment' is more important than dogged pursuit of a single goal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you ever bootstrapped a startup? I've never bootstrapped a startup where we weren't hell bent on getting our shit done until our vision was complete..

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am also an Eagle Scout! I have been hired at previous "jobs" because I obtained the rank. Just remember the sky starts where the ground ends! Just get it off the ground, and your in the sky... :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Just got rejected as well. Amen, brother

<comment><AUTHOR> Best of luck to you, sir! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm also an Eagle Scout and earning it is one of proudest accomplishments.

</comment><comment><USER15> There's always something to look forward :)</comment>