Ask HN: Have you ever felt trapped? - <AUTHOR> Trapped by your current circumstances? Have you ever wondered if this is as far as you are going to get in life? Professionally? <comment><USER2> Yes. A lot of comments here is about taking a leap to a new role/company/lifestyle. It isn't always easy to do this and often when I leaped to greener pastures, I found that the new role didn't dramatically improve my happiness.

The things that work for me are to: find ways to be independently happy and take small steps towards that goal.

Find ways to be independently happy. I know it sounds fluffy in a industry of highly motivated and technical folks but detaching your happiness from a single job/company will make you happier in the long term. Work towards improving yourself (exercise, read, meet people who you don't normally interact with - best way is to travel). Do things that humble you, that you're an absolute beginner at.

Sam Altman has "compound self" on his list of how to be successful. I think that's very true. I often overestimate what I can do in the short term and underestimate what I can do in the long term. So take small steps to get to where you want to go and keep at it. Not only will you reach your destination before you know it, you will realize that the destination is just a by product of your journey.

I don't know if this is what you were looking for in your question, but this has worked for me so I thought I'd share.

<comment><USER3> Yes, great comment.

Also, it's recommmended just about every hour on here but So Good They Can't Ignore You covers this topic quite a bit.

Here is Derek Sivers' book notes on it: [https://sivers.org/book/SoGood](https://sivers.org/book/SoGood)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to work at a Series A funded biotech startup. I'd consulted for them for free for 2 years, then joined full time after they got the funding, then it all fell to pieces. Investor pressure led to CEO putting huge pressure on team, and (along with many others) I cracked and left.

Fallback option was to help my best friend from school to build a tech startup. We lived on opposite sides of the Atlantic but we'd talked about this during my last few months at the biotech and we figured it'd work. It was being built with Ruby on Rails which I hadn't touched - last time I did any web development was 6 years ago with LAMP - but I was excited to get back into tech and learn.

When I started working on this new startup, it went wrong very quickly. I was working from home and quickly felt isolated and sad. I noticed that my anxiety levels were shooting through the roof. I felt I wasn't learning RoR anywhere near quickly enough to get to grips with our core business problem (which was to build a new search engine for technical staff). And since I was working with my friend, who had literally busted his arse for a year to raise funding for us, I felt utterly trapped. My head was telling me to get the hell out and take a long long break to destress. But that would totally wreck his business opportunity - his funding was contingent on having a tech team (me) ready to go immediately.

Eventually I did quit. I found myself utterly helpless and reliant on my wife's income for the first time. I was now relegated to stay at home dad status, which I'd done everything to avoid as my career had always been important to me. That was rock bottom. In real terms it could have been much worse, but mentally that's about as low and trapped as I've ever been, and I honestly didn't think I'd ever find a way back into any meaningful career.

Long story short - I took a year out to spend with my kid. Wife got a one year transfer to London, which was an amazing blessing in disguise because it was a tonne of fun to explore the city with my kid. Finally inched back into tech, did two boot camps, rediscovered my love of coding, got a job, and gradually got back on track. It's taken 5 years and is in many ways an ongoing process, but I did manage to get out of that trapped situation.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing that :) You harnassed the pressure and created diamonds. All the best to you and your family!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My last job - I ended up resigning after a good job interview. I didn't get the job but the experience made me realize that work life doesn't have to suck, that one's coworkers don't have to be backstabbing morons.

Edit: I still haven't found my next thing, but it's still better than that feeling of being trapped.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, 3 or 4 times. Each time I escaped by making sure I had 12 months of (frugal) expenses saved up, and then taking the boldest calculated risk that presented itself. Each time, it's catapulted my career to a level I'd previously thought unreachable, and opened up a world of new opportunities.

<comment><USER8> Could you elaborate on this?

<comment><USER7> Not a ton without compromising anonymity. What specifically do you want to know more about?

<comment><USER9> Not the guy asking the question, but: was 12 months a good period of time? Would 6 or 9 months have been too short? 18 months too long?

<comment><USER7> Twice (starting new enterprises) if it weren't for a couple lucky breaks I'd have needed at minimum 18 months. As it was, I burned down about 6 months worth the first time before starting to break even. The second time it both took off and crashed quickly and I didn't burn much cash during the enterprise itself but did spend 3 months after unemployed and looking for a 9-5 job.

A third time (joining an early stage startup as a late founder) 6 months would have been a decent contingency if it went under fast, 12 if it withered away slowly. (Also caught a lucky break on that one and had a soft landing.)

Once (walking away from a bad job and looking for one that was a stretch), 6 months would have been plenty because if the gamble didn't work out I knew I could reset my sights lower after a few months of looking and be employed _somewhere_ within 6 weeks.

So the answer is very much "it depends on the circumstances".

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the long answer. Much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Usually, the entrapment isn't purely professional as some of the replies illustrate. It's more that the constraints of (some combination of) marriage, kids, aging parents, health issues, debt, financial pressures, moral concerns (what you are and aren't willing to do), etc combine to create an unsolvable system.

But life is not a math problem, and the things that seem inflexible often turn out to be very much so. Good luck out there, and ignore most of this advice. :) Everyone has to find their own way.

</comment><comment><USER11> While acknowledging the "first world problems" nature of this, post acquisition handcuffs were really difficult for me. I was bored, underleveled, and overpaid. It took me a long time to leave because I feel that taking a pay cut was doing a disservice to my children. I definitely felt trapped.

I ended up leaving a chunk of money on the table for something more fulfilling. Things worked out. I'm poorer than I would be, but not poor by any stretch of the definition (except for maybe house poor. Yay bay area real estate). But I don't feel trapped. I've got engaging work and feel I've grown a lot since I left. And I'm more fun at home with my kids.

<comment><USER12> Do you ever wonder if you should have, instead, pursued something on the side or maybe enjoy other aspects of your life, rather than make your job your primary source of fulfillment? I'm in a similar situation.

<comment><USER11> I got heavily involved in open source at the time (elixir), which was cool. I picked up a few hobbies, helped my wife start something on the side.

I wouldn't say my job is my primary source of fulfillment, but it is an important part of my personal fulfillment. And part of this was the timing. I felt I was too young in my career to settle with beomg bored. That may change the next time this happens.

Reach out to me directly (contact in profile) if you want to talk more specifics. I have great sympathy for anyone in this situation, largely because it feels so foolish to be complaining and that just compounds the issue.

<comment><USER12> Thank you for your answer! I'll get your contact right away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think you're thinking of it wrong. It's the journey not the destination. As long as you're excited to learn things, try things, make things you're okay.

It would be better to be a new writer excited to write a crap book than to be a Stephen King without the energy or will to write a word.

(As far as I know, King still has more energy and enthusiasm than most writers. The example was a counterfactual.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Many years ago when I was no longer happy with my job I began to quietly search for a new one. My current job paid well but I had hit a wall and felt I was not going to make any progress on my career if I stayed there. I ended up getting an excellent offer for a job across the country that even included relocation expenses. I was thrilled and ready to put in my two weeks notice and pack it all up except when I went to tell my wife about it she made it very clear she did not want to relocate _anywhere_ , and any scenario that involves relocation will end in divorce.

<comment><USER15> This also happened to me. My wife didn't support our moving so we didn't move. I'm now 15 years later in the same stage of my career with little possiblity of upward movement and eventually divorced anyway for other reasons. Best to move on and up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been trying to leave my company for the past year but 6 months ago I had a severe concussion at work. I was put on medical leave. It's been 6 months now though since I'm on medical leave I can't apply to anything. I also have been having trouble with my doctor. He doesn't do any test and just asks questions and doesn't even make eye contact with me. I have been trying to see a new doctor but I have to get approval from my works insurance but they keep going around it. I have been thinking about seeing a lawyer but I feel guilty about going because I have been with the company for a while and don't want to feel like a dick. But I'm sick of the pain and not being helped.

<comment><USER17> A person close to me had to deal with a concussion for years. Of course each situation is different. Also, I am not a doctor. We know this for a fact, that had he taken less drastic measures after the injury, he would have had to deal with less consequences. Moving, changing doctors, he remained unhappy for long. From what I know, he had far more trouble than you with his first doctor. I personally learnt something from his experience, that when there's a chance that things can go very very wrong, avoiding or taking actions that would shake the status quo too much is a terrible idea.

The unfortunate fact is the possibility that some part of the cognition takes years to return. He appreciates how he has changed now. It's been years. I think some of his changes are also due to aging and the hardship. In hindsight, alienating the company might seem like a very terrible idea for him. Fact is, if neither of you were injured, there'd be no such conversations. The core of the problem is the concussion and that is tough to deal with. His was very severe and led to a long pause in his career. As for the doctor, and reiterating that I am not a doctor, my understanding is that there's little a new doctor can do beyond recommending practice sessions. Unless the science has changed very recently or medical practice is different where you are. Best of luck. Feel free to leave a way so I can contact in case there's more I can share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yes. Right now. I helped found and run a startup for nearly five years but had to start looking for a job a few months ago because we were running out of money very quickly. I accepted a Lead Engineer position in the U.S. (Pacific Northwest) at a big company but things just haven't worked out for me. There is nothing wrong with the job or the company, per se, it's just that the job is a bit boring and I hate the bureaucracy and the dynamics of such a large company. Even worse, I received a massive signing bonus which I used to pay for my relocation and a bunch of debts from my startup years. If I leave now, I will have to repay it, but a good chunk of that money is already gone.

I'm alone, depressed and the gloomy weather isn't helping either (SAD is very real). I keep wondering if I will never be able to fit in a regular job again. Yes, I feel trapped.

</comment><comment><USER19> Everyone is always "trapped" by their circumstances. Every day you are faced with the choice of using the time you have to invest in something new or capitalize on the investments you've already made. That's just the way it is. Opportunity costs are a bitch.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yes, right now I'm feeling trapped by "option paralysis", and I'm actually looking for some help to untangle a very complicated situation [1]. I'm very fortunate to be a professional software developer with a growing company, and a lot of different opportunities. But I actually have too many choices, and too many different factors to consider. I'm not sure how to organize everything and make a decision.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19659912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19659912)

</comment><comment><USER21> Yes, I feel trapped right now. I work for the federal government and have for the past 13 years, for a specific reason. That reason has been fulfilled and I deeply dislike my position but momentum is a strong pull. Also the situation is complicated, I feel, by my age. I'm 62 but not ready to retire. I love software and development and feel I have more years to work.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've been working on a blog post that is basically my answer to this question: [http://blog.sagemath.com/2019/04/12/should-i-resign-from- my-...](http://blog.sagemath.com/2019/04/12/should-i-resign-from-my-full- professor-job-to-work-fulltime-on-cocalc.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> Only a small handful of times, most times the best way was to change my lifestyle and move on rather than accept the status quo

</comment><comment><USER24> I got a job about a year ago at a big bank writing software. The job is terrible, boring as hell, but it pays really well. I'm getting paid at least 15-20k more than I'd make anywhere else. I definitely feel trapped.

</comment><comment><USER25> My Girlfriend is a good person and loves me. I am not attracted to here. I am not sure how to leave her.

We have a open relationship and sleep with other people and occasionally have threesomes. I don't want to be with anybody really. I optimize my life for minimal commitment. I don't want anybody depending on me in any way. I was open about this from the start.

I think that she sometimes is helpless and generally not the smartest person, and i suspect that this is the reason why there is no symmetrical attraction. I don't know what and how to tell here, how to leave and do minimal damage -- the truth, seems to be no option.

<comment><USER26> She probably already senses what you're feeling and suffers emotional damage from it. Since the current situation is hurting everyone involved I would recommend ending it. She will be totally fine. She might surprise you with what she can do when she has to.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the encouragement to do the right thing asap.

Your reply is quite powerful and understandable. Do you practice "Non- Offensive Language"?

<comment><USER26> You mean in a Marshall Rosenberg kind of way? Not deliberately but I always try to keep judgement at bay and avoid guilt tripping people, by understanding that we are all doing the best we can with the cards we are dealt. Also I had a big break up last year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Guess I'm just another in the mix here, I've been putting out job apps for some time and thought I had a promotion coming that was given to someone else for what appears to be political reasons as I'm more qualified. At least I have more motivation to move somewhere else I suppose because being passed on for someone I have helped grow daily is just the icing on the cake and shows how blind the company is to their ever growing list of internal issues.

<comment><USER28> Curious what were the political reasons.

<comment><USER27> I think I was just venting this morning more than anything, I have to assume my interview went worse than theirs or I'll just end up incredibly bitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> every single day

</comment><comment><USER30> Yes, just now

</comment><comment><USER31> Nope!

</comment><comment><USER32> Yes. Quit your job and read all the things you wanted to read. I know that this might not be possible but I've convinced three friends to do the same and they've never been happier.

</comment><comment><USER33> I find that having a 163 IQ generally helps -- people in this bracket generally don't have such problems because they can easily reason out of their current situation. I can empathize with people who can't, though, but it's definitely a mental state.

<comment><USER34> My iq has been measured at 158 and I have definitely felt trapped before. Sure I "reasoned out" of these situations eventually, but I suspect most do. Do you suppose there are people who really find themselves _trapped_ forever?

<comment><USER33> There is a BIG difference between 158 and 163.

<comment><USER35> It is within what's quoted as the acceptable margin of error of 5 points. It's 5 points either direction, so it's possible GP's IQ exceeds yours.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Blast Shack, Bruce Sterling's (long) essay on Wikileaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.webstock.org.nz/blog/2010/the-blast-shack/

<comment><USER2> Great hacker culture perspective. As a hack, Wikileaks is neatly and intricately constructed, working on multiple mutually-reinforcing levels. When it hits the real world, things get a lot more complex.

<comment><USER3> great hacker culture perspective? I thought it was some of the worst writing I'd read in ages.

Chock full of awful B-grade cliched stereotypes with almost no insight at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Similarities between this essay and an episode of CSI - both rely on cardboard cutout characters, simple binary motivations, cleat cut good/bad guys and almost completely no basis in reality. The more you understand how the things they portray actually work, the more your enjoyment diminishes (I'm more of an NCIS fan :)

Differences between this essay and an episode of CSI - CSI knows full well its entire purpose in life is to be mildly entertaining. It never pretends to be a reflection of what real life CSI is like. It's entertainment, nothing more, and it knows it. Unlike the author of this essay, who for some reason thinks he has a deep understanding of "Hacker culture" and the entire saga, and needs about 3000 patronising words to explain his great insights to us.

oh, and if I ever see/hear the word 'cypherpunk' again I think I shall probably vomit.

</comment><comment><USER4> He seems to think we have only two options, transparency and pain, or discretion and balance. The next step in this sage will be finding a way to have transparency and balance.

</comment><comment><USER5> Do you have a cached version? Main site is unavailable.

<comment><USER6> [http://www.webstock.org.nz.nyud.net/blog/2010/the-blast- shac...](http://www.webstock.org.nz.nyud.net/blog/2010/the-blast-shack/)</comment></comment>


Gmail: Why does "?shva=1" get appended to the URL when loading Gmail? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Gmail/Why-does-shva-1-get-appended-to-the-URL-when-loading-Gmail <comment><USER2> I have always wondered about this.</comment>


Billionaire Brothers Want to Build a Cheaper Rival to Slack - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-30/billionaire-turakhias-fund-own-startup-to-build-rival-to-slack <comment><USER2> The cost of Slack becomes significant only if you see it as "OMG! We're are spending $3000 / month on it". But, if you're already paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in payroll, why would you mind paying a few dollars/employee on a software that enables better collaboration. I have often seen management balking at spending on software and hardware in favor of a near-free and cheaper alternative. The end-result is 10X productivity loss but good luck convincing them to spend more.

On an additional note, how is this company so good at PR? Many companies are working on alternatives to popular applications but I find no reason for them to be covered in Bloomberg with such an exaggerated headline; as if they're revolutionizing the communication industry.

<comment><USER3> Does slack really enable good collaboration? It seems to destroy productivity in every environment I've ever been in. It is the workplace equivalent of Facebook shitposting.

Also, IRC and XMPP servers are cheap.

<comment><USER4> I'm using Slack every day in a major corporation of greater than 5000 users. Slack enables communication and discovery within such a large organization.

Problem with your mac? Go to #osx-troubleshooting

Got an IT problem? Check out #IT

Want to discuss an architecture problem with dozens of the smartest people in the entire company? Hop onto #architecture

Want to share the 5 extra pies of Pizza you had delivered for an undersized audience? Go to #freefood and watch it disappear.

We also use bots to surface data into the chatroom automatically as we're doing something collaborative. It's really quite useful when you setup the correct rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Discord is free. Gitter is free (for up to 25). HipChat is free. WhatsApp is free. There are already plenty of _free_ (forget cheap) alternatives to Slack.

Nothing to see here. I mean, the thing reads like a sponsored piece anyway.

<comment><USER6> Comparing Slack to WhatsApp or Discord seems disingenuous. For an employee, that means adding every other user in your company. And what about integrations? With slack it's easy to send messages to channels with an HTTP request, which (for me) replaces email spam.

Also, Slack has a free plan, so Slack is free.

<comment><USER7> WhatsApp? What company in their right mind would use a Facebook service for their proprietary communications? Have you read their terms and conditions?

Facebook already collects device-level usage information through their Facebook app in order to keep track of emerging competitors.. what's to prevent them from using WhatsApp to further enhance their competitive intelligence?

<comment><USER8> Uhhh - [https://www.facebook.com/workplace/stories](https://www.facebook.com/workplace/stories)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I read "cheaper", I immediately started thinking about power consumption. Slack is easily the most resource-guzzling app I've run, and lowering its resource requirements by 20% would probably save enough on electricity bills to run a small country.

<comment><USER10> I haven't found that to be the case -- my Slack app (which I use frequently) has been running for about 30 hours and has accumulated 30 minutes of CPU time, or using around 1.6% of my CPU and is using around 450MB of memory. Chrome has used about 5 hours of CPU time in that same 30 hours and is consuming around 3GB of memory.

<comment><USER11> Which is why Chrome's memory usage isn't used as a goal or target…

<comment><USER10> Regardless, Slack uses .4% of my machine's CPU (forgot to take the quad CPU into account earlier) and less than 3% of my RAM. Not bad for something I use as often as Slack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article sounds like the billionaire brothers are taking on SpaceX rather than Slack. There are tons of other Slack alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER13> _Entrepreneur has 140 pairs of sweatpants and T-shirts_

This is listed right under the headline - is this really a key takeaway for the article??

<comment><USER14> Yes, haha. For a story like this to be relevant to the general public, it needs unique elements and not just "startup launches slack competitor".

This one is "this guy is the new whiz kid. Watch out for him.". He channels Steve jobs individuality by always wearing the same clothes but has external validation with media.net.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If the only real differentiator is cost, I don't believe this to be scalable. Take, for instance, the fact that Microsoft, Facebook, Google .... own optimized cloud stacks (hardware, firmware, software, etc.). One can never match their cost of ownership and operation. So a battle relying on cost is not one flock can win, in my opinion

<comment><USER16> Excellent point!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> All that money and the best thing he can think to do with his life and fortune is to....recreate Slack?

It makes me sad.

</comment><comment><USER18> Their logo [1] is pretty much a copy + 45 degree rotation of Feedly's logo [2]

[1] [https://www.appsunveiled.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/04/Floc...](https://www.appsunveiled.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/04/Flock-Logo.png)

[2] [https://s3.feedly.com/img/partnerapp-description- feedly.png](https://s3.feedly.com/img/partnerapp-description-feedly.png)

<comment><USER19> Similar yes, but I really liked the way the logo embodies everything the company is about. F for flock. The different sized lines look like message bubbles. All enclosed in a bigger message bubble.

Probably this logo is more appropriate for Flock than Feedly :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> After the Theranos debacle, when I see "x pairs of same clothes to save time and money" as a red flag for upcoming unicorn wannabepreneurs.

This piece of PR may have been more believable if they had skipped mentioning how Mark Zuckerbergesque or Steve Jobsesque these founders are.

In either case, good luck to this startup. If they can come up with native apps for their chat platform and thrive as a company without needing to resort to gimmicky PRs, it's still going to be a win.

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://about.mattermost.com/slack-vs- mattermost/](https://about.mattermost.com/slack-vs-mattermost/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I puked at the countless clothing references. Just another paid for article which didn't even showcase the tiniest detail of Flock or whatever the hell it is.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just buy Flowdock and market it better, they are already having a better client with proper, working "multiple thread in the same room"-support.

</comment><comment><USER23> [https://github.com/mattermost/platform](https://github.com/mattermost/platform)

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't see any advantage on chat, who is using this in a company? it's not serious people don't know how to use it and they don't focus on work but chatting instead. Lost of time, lost of productivity. Don't want do a service request? yeah write me an Skype message instead... it will increase my work rate and put value in the business.

<comment><USER25> Chat allows to broadcast questions which is invaluable in information economy.

And just, you know, talk to coworkers.

<comment><USER24> The system need to be easy and people that have question can search Inside the FAQ. Why asking when you can search for that damn process, guideline. I check slak and the first that I see is a personn asking if he can bring the dog or cat at work. Who is stupid enough to ask these question and ask for something that he should know where it is. But no ask people for that they give shortcut, link. So much value added!

It's almost the same with email, people have never been trained and still send file over and over, don't communicate with the whole team, you need to push and ask the information because it's a nice tool but not correctly used.

<comment><USER25> I don't know, maybe the job you do is so trivial that you can put every question ever into a medium-side FAQ with added benefit of being able to employ dullards.

It's not like that at most Software Engineering places and knowedge transmission via common chat is invaluable.

<comment><USER24> I don't say chat is not valuable. This can help is a quick / fast organization very small compagny but the way the product is show in a big organization all the documentation, procedure etc is a critical key for that employee can work in a good manner. If the information is not well organize it's a mess, people complain, people loss all the day to find a small answer. Yes, they can chat and ask the question but I don't see value for answering question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> GTFO out of HN you paid scums.

</comment><comment><USER26> IRC is free and what Slack is based on. There are plenty of nice clients, and it's easy to write "plugins" you just write for the protocol like a webapp.

<comment><USER27> We also used to use IRC, but then after realising that we wanted some of the features of Slack (a persistent, searchable log of messages for example), so we went and developed such an application that had all the features we needed. It even has some features that Slack still don't have, even though they have hundreds of developers and we were two guys working on the evenings.

We also released it fully open source.

[https://github.com/cicakhq/potato](https://github.com/cicakhq/potato)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> HipChat is a much better and cheaper alternative to Slack.

<comment><USER7> Does it support inline code formatting yet? It has only been years since that feature has been requested. Have they fixed the performance problems? How about notifications across devices?

Obviously "better" is subjective, but other than HipChat being installable in premise, Slack wins in terms f features that actually work.

I know of a really large company not far from San Jose that uses HipChat for the single reason that it's on premise despite a number of teams that are practically begging Slack to create an on premise version.

I don't know a lot of people that actually want HipChat. It usually used because it's an afterthought add-on to all of the other Atlassian stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Usually entrepreneurs enter a market because they find current solutions deficient and they have a novel or exciting way to solve a problem.

Flock isn't solving a problem. It's just a me-too product — almost a copycat built just to cash in. Utterly uninspiring. "But it's better!" They will exclaim. Perhaps. But if it is better, it is only marginally so. I can't imagine any 10x innovation they have developed. Slight business model tweaks aren't innovation. A super sales team isn't an innovation. Nothing in the article even suggests they have done anything special to differentiate their product.

The the nonsense about the same clothes every day is just a Jobs and Zuck affectation. It's completely drole. Even if you did wear a daily uniform, it isn't worth mentioning in a Bloomberg piece. It's like saying your office has a Nepresso machine. Big deal. I wear the same clothes every day but I'm not having my PR person mention it in interviews — it's mundane. Nobody gives a shit unless you are some uneducated villager than somehow things such habits are relevant. It wad a bit interesting when Jobs did it in the late 1990s, but even then, it was a personal thing and not something Apple PR wrote about.

The bit about identical offices down to the last detail; just nonsense, just building an image of "quirky productivity monk" rather than "visionary tech leader." As far as the custom desk built into the car; not even the President of the United States has that in his limos. If you are in the car long enough to actually need a desk, that's a bit absurd or your day is badly organized. An actual desk? How about a fax machine too? They are "billionaires" — one would think their commute wouldn't be that significant.

I don't know these brothers and I am sure they are perfectly nice and smart people, but this emphasis on being hyper productive is just weird.

The photo with the founder in the back of what appears to be a Bentley just reeks of Rich Kids of Instagram but targeted to common people in order to protect an air of respectability and credibility. But to me it seems like the entrepreneurial equivalent of a photo of a solid gold toilet.</comment>


Ask HN: Where to incorporate free of the US? - <AUTHOR>

Its a hypothetical question, but answers could be helpful to others.<p>I'm a US citizen. Suppose that I wanted to form a company providing a service that the US government conceivably might want access to. What would be some advanced countries (internet access, stable government and society, free market) where I could form a company and be free of US government shennanigans? <comment><USER2> There aren't any. Your choices are: 1) Countries where if the US government (particularly, the bits of it concerned with national security) wants access to your system, they can hand you an order to give them access and you will face criminal sanctions if you fail to comply (i.e., the US itself), or 2) Countries where if the US government (particularly, the bits of it concerned with national security) wants access to your system, then either you will be the target of efforts to enlist your local government (if that government is one the US government thinks it can influence on the issue) or you become the target of the most powerful national security apparatus on the planet, without even the theoretical restraints that apply to that apparatus when it is operating domestically (i.e., everywhere that isn't the US.)

Neither of these can be reasonably described as "free of US government shennanigans" in either the theoretical or the practical sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is depressing. Welp, looks like space is the place to be.

<comment><USER3> If you're interested I know a guy who can get you some real estate on the Moon, cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You could build the system so that giving information would be useless. This could be achieved (depending on the system) by having users host their data on their own computers, or by using crypto that would render you unable to provide the data (i.e. they have the private key and you cannot provide anything but the ciphertext). That said it would only be as effective as your implementation, so hire (or be) a good crypto guy!

</comment><comment><USER5> For patent purposes: and perhaps English language I would look at New Zealand. I don't know the NZ view on National Security though. Singapore is a tax haven but looks real bad if your not very wealthy. Other options I ignored because of language issues or other uncertainties associated with countries like Venezuela.</comment>


The brain can get a lot done, and leave you a little smarter, when it sleeps - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-snoozing-makes-you-smarter&print=true

<comment><USER2> Great article, this is the type of interesting stuff that keeps me coming back. The author suggests an interesting hypothesis in the end:

"Memory processing seems to be the only function of sleep that actually requires an organism to truly sleep--that is, to become unaware of its surroundings and stop processing incoming sensory signals. This unconscious cognition appears to demand the same brain resources used for processing incoming signals when awake. The brain, therefore, might have to shut off external inputs to get this job done. In contrast, although other functions such as immune system regulation might be more readily performed when an organism is inactive, there does not seem to be any reason why the organism would need to lose awareness. Thus, it may be these other functions that have been added to take advantage of the sleep that had already evolved for memory."

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this really that surprising to people? Many of the solutions to the problems I think about during the day come to me right as I fall asleep.

It's always just been a given for me.

<comment><USER4> This isn't about the time "right as you fall asleep". If it were, it would fit just fine with various earlier theories of sleep: the ones that concluded that sleep was just an extreme form of rest, a chance to let all those overworked neurons cool down and heal, and that you could get most of the benefits of sleep by, say, meditating.

But the new data is beginning to home in on what _sleep_ accomplishes. And, in fact, your brain is doing a lot of work while you sleep. If I were to indulge in some CS-freshman handwaving, I'd say that the sleeping brain is doing garbage collection, lossy compression, and search indexing and optimization.

Is that surprising? I'd say that the really surprising thing is that we've gone through life up to now without really having any data on what sleep is for. So the new theory that sleep is primarily about memory management is more gratifying than surprising. It's about time we figured this out!

<comment><USER5> I think it's surprising that we still can't figure out the purpose of an observable process that blows a third (or more) of our lives, yet somehow we've come to a definitive theory on how the entire universe came into existence.

I guess the more we know, the more we realize we don't know.

<comment><USER4> I know folks who work on neural imaging. Let me assure you that to call sleep "an observable process" is a _big_ exaggeration. Stars are _much_ easier to observe than the details of your brain at work. Indeed, the reactions which drive stars are easier to see, understand, and simulate than _a single neuron_ is.

It's not the size or the distance -- it's the complexity. I'm not saying that astrophysics is easy, but it's a lot less complex than the brain. Your brain is the most complicated thing in the universe... as far as we know.

<comment><USER6> It is just a matter of what you mean by understanding a thing. There are different standards applied to brains and stars.

A lot of things that count as understanding in stars are just normal to know about brains - for example mass, density, mechanical properties, energy throughput, age.

That "Human brains are the most complex thing in the universe"-meme strikes me as human chauvinism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Piotr Wozniak (inventor of SuperMemory) wrote about this eight years ago: <http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm>

</comment><comment><USER8> _Sometimes when you return to a problem after a rest, you find your unconscious mind has left an answer waiting for you._

<http://www.paulgraham.com/head.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> Powernapping achieves much of the same (atleast for me). So if for some reason you are unable to take sleep, at least be sure to try and fit in a ~20min powernap. The benefits can be surprising.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've experienced this effect numerous times. Sleep is a wonderful thing. One time in high school I was working on an advanced calculus problem for several hours before going to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the restroom and realized that suddenly I had the key insight needed to find the solution. The problem was to find the solution to \int_{0}^{\infty} t^{- \frac{1}{2}} e^{-t} dt.

If only this worked all the time. Perhaps I should read up on the Riemann Hypothesis and see what happens tonight.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sometimes we need years of studies to (re)discover what our elders knew long ago. That's probably from where comes the proverb : Night is the mother of counsel.

</comment><comment><USER12> Finally, I can have that useless lump of pinkish-grey jelly work for _me!_</comment>


Down Argentina Way - <AUTHOR> http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/down-argentina-way/ <comment><USER2> I just got back from a trip to Buenos Aires. It's an amazing city, but this article says absolutely nothing about the growth or stability in that country. From my understanding (and I didn't dive to deeply into it on my visit), the current leadership is making moves which are very threatening to long-term prosperity and stability. As the article mentions, they are nationalizing industries and restricting imports which is going to set-up walls between them and other countries. Combing that with aggressive posturing regarding the Faukland/Malvinas Islands does little to give much confidence in the opportunities in Argentina.

Just my 2 cents from the little I gained while there.</comment>


My real name is David Jones - <AUTHOR> http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/12/my-real-name-is-david-jones.html <comment><USER2> A good example of doing things that don't scale?</comment>


Show HN: Clipt – copy & paste across machines/VMs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nasawa/clipt

<comment><AUTHOR> Clipt is a small and lightweight solution to using your clipboard across multiple computers or VMs. By connecting to a central website or privately hosted server, Clipt allows clients listening on specified IDs to receive text and push it directly into your Operating System's clipboard.

My publicly-hosted server can be found here: [http://clipt.azurewebsites.net/](http://clipt.azurewebsites.net/)</comment>


SIFR 2.0: Rich Accessible Typography for the Masses - a brilliantly practical hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/

<comment><USER2> Current site is at:

<http://wiki.novemberborn.net/sifr/Changelog></comment>


The state of democratic control over surveillance in France - <AUTHOR> http://serendipity.ruwenzori.net/index.php/2013/07/05/ce-nest-pas-illegal-cest-a-legal <comment><USER3> Things will start shifting when people understand that "legitimate" and "illegitimate" labels are irrelevant. Government is just a privileged group of people with a monopoly on violence. It is an institute of violence. All things you don't like are direct products of the first principle: these guys can use violence to get what they need, others cannot. When you stop thinking in terms of laws and start thinking in terms of negotiation, voluntarism and coercion, you will understand where 99% of social problems are coming from.

Ask yourself a question: in practical terms, what power do you as a citizen have? Government can do all sorts of shit to you, but the worse that can happen is that someone somewhere as a scapegoat will be fired, or not re- elected, or not having a bonus in the end of a year. And non-governmental person will have hard time going through labyrinths of bureaucracy where no one is ultimately responsible for anything (ultimately, "voters deserve the gov they elect", the best excuse ever).

You as a person, if you misbehave, you'll get all sorts of troubles from government that no government official will ever get from you. Your bank account can be frozen. Your passport can be revoked. Your business is never fully compliant with myriads of laws and their interpretations and can be shut down any day. Your taxes are not always perfectly declared because the whole process is so complex, you can never do it "right".

You can vote for some dude or gal and blame them on the internet. But that's not power at all. You cannot vote for not having a government. You only vote for someone to control parts of your life.

The truth is: it does not matter what government does good to you. Only thing that matters is how conflicts are resolved. In your private life you resolve conflicts on voluntary basis. You pay for service if you like it and don't pay if you don't. You can go writing about how Facebook is not nice to you, but you can always sign out and they will not run after you. Also, Facebook does not have guns and trained professional sadists.

Government "solves" conflicts by force. Only government has trained sadists with well-oiled guns. Only they can shoot people and get away without imprisonment. Only government bullshits everyone how it is important and how loving government is the same as loving society. If you disagree with the government, you have no power and a gun pointed at you. All the time. You don't (re-)negotiate with government like you do with a waiter in a restaurant, your landlord, employer, employee or a business partner.

If you dislike the war on drugs, the most effective way to protest would be not to support it with your money. But you cannot. You MUST pay your taxes and you MUST use your local currency (with hidden tax called inflation). You, of course, can run away and live under another government with all the same features.

If you think that government is legitimate, then you must have some theory of justice. I don't have any theory of rights or justice, I'm just pointing out the violence that government tries to hide. If you are okay with it, then please don't get upset when government spies on you or kicks you in the ass. It's just how things tend to be when you allow violence to be at the root of your ideology.

<comment><USER4> When you're young, it's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to authority. But go spend any significant time in a developing nation that lacks basic infrastructure, get close to the people living there, learn about their struggles and their dreams, and then come back and tell me that the solution is to abolish government.

<comment><USER5> > When you're young, it's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to authority.

When you're old, it's easy to be an obedient minion.

> But go spend any significant time in a developing nation that lacks basic > infrastructure, get close to the people living there, learn about their > struggles and their dreams, and then come back and tell me that the solution > is to abolish government.

Just because government isn't the answer doesn't mean destroying it is.

> But go spend any significant time in a developing nation

These developing nations seems to have plenty of government and regulation to go around considering their non-existent economy. Shouldn't they be fat and filthy rich by now?

<comment><USER6> _These developing nations seems to have plenty of government and regulation to go around considering their non-existent economy._

Which nations are you referring to, specifically?

<comment><USER5> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country#List_of_deve...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country#List_of_developing_economies)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> TFA won't load here, here's what lemonde has to say about it (in french, obviously): [http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/07/05/matignon- as...](http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/07/05/matignon-assure-que- les-interceptions-de-securite-sont-faites-dans-les-regles_3443078_3224.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Ceci n'est pas un prisme.

</comment><comment><USER9> It may be easier to make a list of countries that don't do mass surveillance. Are there any?

<comment><USER10> Andorra or San Marino maybe? I hear Liechtenstein doesn't have a big intelligence agency. In fact, more people are employed in American intelligence gathering than there are people living in Liechtenstein.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh man, Error Theory comes to legal systems. HLA Hart is spinning in his grave.

I am absolutely not surprised. I've been whistling the Cowboy Bebop Intro since before I could spell "legal nihilism."

This planet is a joke. And it's because probably .3% of You (here in this "hacker community") will know half of what I'm talking about. Snowden playing hop-scotch around Europe is "hacker news."

lulz argue over the flippantness or "integrity" of headlines until you realize you've described your own simulation.

<comment><USER11> SRSLY.

Previous poster said all of that -- all of language, all of that "thinking outloud" \-- ultimately to stick you with the oh-you-shouldn't-be-surprised "I don't have any theory of rights or justice, I'm just pointing out the violence that government tries to hide."

Of what Noam Chomsky has said time and time and time, and time, and time, and time, and time time time time motherfucking time again: "See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence."

It's like you GUYS ACTUALLY do not read, and if you do, we ALL know EXACTLY what it is you've read.

We are not prepared. We "hackers" today will be the anthropologists of this dystopia; nothing more.

It's like you're all hiding the belief that philosophy has not progressed since the time of Plato, and you don't want to admit it. Now I have to watch you all become your own little Socrates, from pg all the way down to the bottom of the barrel -- "hey, get a degree in philosophy sneee! it'll make you more well-rounded! sneee! haha! we're life hacking with the remnants of the failed capitalism cut us some slack -- play ball! sneee!"

Call it rambling, because you CHAPS just overanalyzed a whack-a-mole game (i.e., Snowden) all over my Web. Would MOST of you PLEASE go read a modern legal philosopher?

<comment><USER11> ...

This response is exactly the problem: "Live and let live." In the face of anarchy, this is not a mature or safe philosophy to hold for oneself or to recommend to others.

You have to understand that we are talking about (A) a legal system and (B) a moral system. We generally have moved away from absolutist moral systems, thus becoming more "error prone" there. At the same time, we all fully admit to the _belief_ that morality is "fuzzy" or "vague." So we allow for interpretation. However, no one will say thus vagueness entails a lack of any coherent system all together. So, they deduce that it must come from some supernatural substratum. Whatever. Belief in whatever you want in terms of metaphysics, but we are still in agreement about the phenomenological structuring of morality: it is underpinned by our capacity to agree or disagree. The moral system is available in virtue of our capacity to go one way or the other. Of course, the only "response" to a moral nihilist is to "slap" that person.

That's all within the framework of morality. What happens when we say it is METAPHYSICALLY impossible for there to exist disagreements at the LEGAL level of critical thinking? So ASSUMING that morality is the bedrock of legal systems, we're suggesting supervenience of properties related to the "spooky" properties that belie moral disagreement. Thus, legal systems (assuming the parasitic nature of the legal on top of the moral) become "error prone" and by John Mackie's argument: essentially erroneous.

We admit that law can be an artform. Who wants to allow for Dadaist lawyers ?

"That's a-legal" is just a can of worms, and you hackers are going to fuck it up.

<comment><USER3> How exactly can I "fuck it up" if I simply refuse to participate in someone's schemes and refuse to violently intervene in anyone's affairs (unless I have no choice in self defense, but I don't justify violence in self defense - <USER2> tend to avoid being in such situation in the first place)?

How can peaceful (even ignorant) people fuck things up? Unless they pull the trigger, it's _someone else_ who is to blame. E.g. one who pulls the trigger.

<comment><USER11> No guns or triggers are involved when they draft these laws or play these very critical decisions at an international legislative and economic level.

Guns don't sell guns.

<comment><USER3> You didn't answer my question. How I "fuck things up" exactly?

Laws don't kill, right. People do. I point out that people kill only because they believe that law is "good". I point out that assumption and highlight how dangerous it is.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft will charge new fees to customers using AWS and other clouds - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-licensing-azure-google-cloud-amazon-web-services-fees-2019-8 <comment><USER2> The key quote from the article is:

"Beginning October 1, 2019, on-premises licenses purchased without Software Assurance and mobility rights cannot be deployed with dedicated hosted cloud services offered by the following public cloud providers: Microsoft, Alibaba, Amazon (including VMware Cloud on AWS), and Google. They will be referred to as "Listed Providers.""

It seems like Microsoft is reverting to it's bad-old-ways in terms of licensing tricks and traps.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Non-paywall related article [https://apple.news/ALxmYHTlcM-y1rWm2acnNPw](https://apple.news/ALxmYHTlcM-y1rWm2acnNPw)

</comment><comment><USER3> Paywall.</comment>


Autoworkers of Our Generation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.baugues.com/autoworkers

<comment><USER2> This is a great, concise synthesis of a lot of thoughts that have been rolling around in my head. I don't know if I could compare software development as directly to autoworkers because I do believe it's an art, but I love the post!

</comment><comment><USER3> > No profession stays on top forever… just ask your recently graduated lawyer > friends.

This is really a poor comparison. The issue with the legal industry is that there are too many bad law schools. Students from top 13 law schools simply don't have trouble finding BigLaw positions, sort of like how engineers from Stanford have their pick of top tech shops, or how Wharton undergraduates have a whole host of investment banking and private equity opportunities.

It's the law school candidates from poor schools that have trouble.

If the author's point was to say that anyone can log onto the Internet, learn Ruby for a month, and make a very respectable salary, and that this isn't sustainable...well, duh.

The rockstars — the people that read HN, the people that think about software engineering and computer science constantly, the people that don't stop tinkering and building — they're not going to have trouble keeping their jobs. They are the top 13 law schools, the target school investment bankers.

The difference between the automobile industry and the technology industry is that the tech industry won't be going away for a long, long time. One can easily imagine other forms of transportation, but computer science is here to stay, as far as we can tell. Even as we automate how easy it is to make a web application, we see new engineering challenges in different domains that still require the rockstars to be rockstars.

Yeah, we should obviously still be learning. That's why we're on HN in the first place. But I'm not exactly worried for the long term.

Maybe I'm too bullish.

<comment><USER4> > the tech industry won't be going away for a long, long time

After a century of existence, auto manufacturers are still here too. The issue is how the industry has changed over time, and what their experience can teach others. Auto manufacturers have increased output relentlessly through better tooling, automation, and engineering advancements, while reducing labor requirements to levels that would have been ridiculous even 10 years before. And, they have done that for decades. Software has the same vectors of improvement and shows a similar growth of form factors. Consumer software, as it is now, is only ~40 years old. I think there is a lot of experience, and lessons, that could translate from older industries, especially around the handling of people, knowledge, and industry shifts. And, it might be wise to avoid relearning some of their lessons the hard way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was a good read. I don't have a degree and my wife stays home too. Enjoy and save up while it lasts, most are not so fortunate.

I think some blame for economic decline has to go toward world overcrowding and fewer resources per capita, but I also agree that no profession stays on top forever - although bankers sure give it a good run.

I'm wondering if the social/mobile/videogaming crazes are ever gonna burst. It's hard for me to even visualize all the sectors that utilize programming. Health Care, NSA spying, autonomous drones, genomics, ...

</comment><comment><USER2> Also, I think between the hacker schools and 80k CS degrees, you failed to mention that solution that lies right in between: hackathons.</comment>


Ravelry bans support of Donald Trump and his administration - <AUTHOR> https://www.ravelry.com/content/no-trump <comment><USER2> If they have a problem with political discussion becoming problematic they should ban all politics rather than singling out one side of politics. It comes across as intolerant and partisan.

</comment><comment><USER3> Their tolerance has reached such an impressive level that they have banned slightly less than half the country.

<comment><USER4> Having traveled the country by land for years and discussed this topic frequently, intentionally, and occasionally awkwardly with at least a thousand people, I think that you are not even in the ballpark of correct when you surmise that "slightly less than half the country" supports this administration (or any in my lifetime, with the exception of the brief period following September 11, 2001).

The man received about 62,984,828 votes in 2016 out of 330 million people. As an empirical matter, this perhaps demonstrates that a little more than 18% supported him at that time - much more than "slightly" less than half.

There is every reason to believe that, since that time, his support has further waned.

I'm not giving an opinion one way or another on the wisdom of precluding particular content. But I think that it is wildly out of step with reality to suggest that "slightly less than half the country" support the government at all, much less this particularly unpopular and ineffectual leader.

<comment><USER2> No one counts elections like that. Not when Dems win and not when Repubs win. It's disingenuous but it looks good when making a point. Even Saddam or my Kim never got 75% even when they state they received 99% of the vote.

It would be very unusual for a US pol to get over 50% of the raw population of their district.

<comment><USER5> But this person is talking about language to ballpark American sentiment, not how you think people count electoral power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This story from the knitting community seems to be politically consistent with this one:

[https://quillette.com/2019/02/17/a-witch-hunt-on- instagram/](https://quillette.com/2019/02/17/a-witch-hunt-on-instagram/)

I wonder if there is much overlap of the people involved. And what is it about knitting attracts people with a particular political valence?

<comment><USER7> It's not really about knitting, this crazy politicization has infected _everything_ at least on some parts of the internet. You can think of it as the equivalent of people asking you why you still haven't been "born again" by accepting the Lord God So-And-So as your lord and savior, placing all faith into Him and living your life in accordance with the sacred texts, and telling you how anyone who doesn't do that won't get into their religion's variety of Heaven. The underlying self-assurance and proselytizing mentality is exactly the same.

<comment><USER8> In my experience, in casual forums, most discourse from people that involves explicitly voicing support for Trump in a general sense also follows the attitude you're describing. It's near-universally accompanied by very strong expressions of hatred for one of a few named groups. And of course such behavior naturally provokes the same attitude to be returned. In that sense, it makes sense to ban it outright.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Ravelry is a place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, weavers > and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools, project and pattern > information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration.

Knitters-for-The-Donald website going up in 3, 2, 1...

</comment><comment><USER9> Ravelry user here (I picked up crochet to look busy at the playground and not think about programming more than I should) and though it would have been nice if they had given a few examples for why the policy was necessary, I understand and welcome it.

Ravelry is a place for crochet and knitting, if you want to discuss politics, especially politics as erratic and divisive as Trump's, there are other places more suitable.

</comment><comment><USER10> But Ravelry, why is "[s]upport of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy"? They haven't made that clear at all.

<comment><USER11> That's the thing. I don't believe in, what I am going to call the transitive property of racism/sexism.

I voted for Trump because Hillary Clinton tanked the candidate I wanted to vote for-- Bernie Sanders.

That does not make me racist or sexist. Period. Full stop.

The amount of crappy stuff Hillary Clinton has done is mind-boggling. Most notably, covering up rapes her husband committed. Either way in 2016-- you were voting for a rapist.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand why, in such a ridiculously broken system, people seem to assume voting == supporting. I know plenty of people who thought Trump was a better candidate than Clinton who are not sexist, racist, white supremacist, nor just assholes. I know near-zero people who actively express support for Trump generally who do not grapple with at least one of those traits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Ravelry is a free site for knitters and crocheters.

Seems like it would be pretty good for the quality of a community having problems with politics. Trump support on social media is pretty toxic and I challenge anybody to find something existing which they would argue would be a valuable addition to a knitting community.

</comment><comment><USER13> Honest question. Is Trump genuinely an avatar for white supremacy? I was under the impression that he's a buffoon and white supremacists have subjugated the White House and President by citing his buffoonery.

<comment><USER14> I personally don't think he is, but in the current climate sometimes it's hard to tell. There is circumstantial evidence for his being bigoted, from his public statements and various lawsuits in his past (prior to his campaign) but people disagree about the interpretation of this. He dated a black woman once. Then again, H.P. Lovecraft was an inveterate racist and anti-Semite, and married a Jewish woman.

It is true that the white supremacist movement has aligned itself strongly with Trump and see him as "their man," and that his campaign was presented in the press as something of a revolution amongst the "angry white male" demographic, who were rejecting progressivism, globalism and their own demographic minority. Personally I find it odd how such a revolution just sort of sprang up out of nowhere like that, but whatever.

Maybe someday we'll get past the partisan bullshit and actually be able to look calmly and clearly at the phenomenon that was this last election cycle and find out just why the neo-Nazis came out of the woodwork for some globalist billionaire huckster best known for playing a parody of himself on television. That day will obviously not come until after 2020 at the least, or 2024 at the latest.

But I am coming to suspect that Trump is more the symptom than the disease.

<comment><USER7> I really have to object to your implication that the "angry white male" demographic can or should be conflated with white supremacists. Just because you find it rather problematic when a certain Presidential candidate I won't mention by name labels y'all as "the basket of deplorables", doesn't make you a white supremacist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support > for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably > support for white supremacy."

Big if true.</comment>


Blend2D – 2D Vector Graphics Engine - <AUTHOR> https://blend2d.com/ <comment><USER3> Very interesting and useful, but when I read the title I was hoping it would be something different.

I would love to find some kind of stripped-down vector graphics engine that is fully geared towards real-time rendering of path-based graphics for games. For example to write retro-style games that use 2D vector graphics instead of textured quads. I've been writing a simple game that uses this graphics style, and so far I've been simply using pre-rendered textures for sprites. Being able to directly render these things by composing vector-based layers would allow all kinds of interesting effects and image quality improvements, e.g. seamless scaling morphing, etc. Obviously this would be way, way slower than emulating these things using bitmap textures and/or SDF's for scaling, but for the simple graphics my game is using that should probably be fine, even on mid-range hardware there is plenty of frame time I could dedicate to vector rendering and still hit at least 30fps.

<comment><USER4> I have had great success using the ideas presented here ([http://m1el.github.io/woscope-how/index.html](http://m1el.github.io/woscope- how/index.html)) for simulation of traditional vector graphic screens. It is very fast and easily modified to allow for intensity modulation as well.

<comment><USER5> I really enjoyed your demo. Thank you.

<comment><USER4> Just to clarify. This was not my work. I have just used the ideas presented therein for my own works and found them easy to adapt and improve upon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> c-smile If to speak about UI needs then CPU rasterization is just half of the problem.

320 PPI display (a.k.a. "Retina") has 9 times more pixels than old, classic 96 PPI one.

So just attaching new monitor will require 10 times better CPU in order to render the same UI. That if to use CPU rasterizers only.

Obviously that above is not an option. That's why Direct2D and Skia contain as GPU as CPU rasterizers. That dualism complicates things quite a lot - <USER2> alternative renderers under the same API roof shall produce similar results.

So Blend2D, to be a viable solution for the UI, shall be 10 faster in rasterizing than any current alternatives.

Yet, it was NV_path_rendering OpenGL extension from NVIDIA aimed for 2D path rasterization, but it seems the effort is dimmed now as OpenGL itself. OpenGL architecture, that was created to run H/W accelerated full screen apps, is far from being adequate for windowed UI.

So far Microsoft's Direct2D is the best thing that we have for H/W accelerated UI so far. And WARP mode in Direct2D (CPU rasterizer) is pretty close to the Blend2D - they also use JIT for rasterizing AFAIK.

<comment><USER6> It's true that increasing the size of framebuffer demands more from CPU as well. According to my experience a single core on a modern machine has no problem to render real-time into a FullHD framebuffer at high frame rate (depending on the content of course, but UI is fine). This means that multithreaded renderers using 4 threads should be able to render to 4K framebuffer without any issues. Since AMD will release 16c/32t consumer CPUs this year I see no problem on this front as we will have the computational power to run several multithreaded renderers at the same time.

Blend2D has multithreaded rendering on roadmap - I have experience in this topic and everything in Blend2D was designed with multithreading in mind (banding for example). The implementation I'm planning would scale very well.

NV_path_rendering - I haven't seen any detailed comparison to be honest. Frame-rate is not enough to compare CPU vs GPU technology - both memory consumption and power consumption are important as well to calculate frame- rate per watt.

I cannot comment on Direct2D as it's not open source and it runs only on a single operating system. So I don't consider Direct2D as a competition at the moment.

<comment> c-smile Well, CPU rasterization is always O(N) complex (where N is number of pixels on screen). Multithreading here just adds constant multiplier that according to the math will still lead to O(N).

While GPU rasterization, from application perspective, is near O(1) - does not depend on number of pixels in ideal circumstances.

And having multiple threads to render UI is not desired - there are too many CPU consumers on modern desktop, e.g. online radio that is playing now, etc.

I am not saying that CPU rasterization makes no sense. Quite contrary. As a practical example: in Sciter on Linux/GTK I am using Cairo backend by default as OpenGL inside GTK windows is horrible. So Skia does not help there at all - Cairo and its CPU rasterizer is used.

If we would have something that allows to rasterize paths 5-10 times faster than current Cairo - it will solve all current desktop needs I think.

In principle 192 PPI resolution for desktop monitors of practical sizes (24 inch, 3840x2160 pixels) is OK - human eye will not be able to see separate pixels. Pretty much the same number of pixels is on mobiles ( iPadPro: 2732x2048 ). These are targets that need to be considered.

Practical requirements:

Take HN site in browser. Open it full screen. Decent 2D library should be able to rasterize that amount of text with 60 FPS (e.g. kinetic scrolling).

<comment><USER6> I don't know what rasterizers you refer to with:

      "CPU rasterization is always O(N) complex (where N is number of pixels on screen)"

But this is definitely not the Blend2D case. I think you will not find rasterizers in production with such properties in software-based 2D rendering as that would be really inefficient. Path boundary matters and that is often the worst case scenario, but Blend2D does much better than this, for example.

I see no problem with multithreading, because it doesn't mean that all CPU cores will be busy with rendering, it means that the total time required to render a frame will be much lower while utilizing CPU power in a more distributed way instead of stressing a single core. You can use 2-4 threads on 8 core machine, for example, leaving the rest for other real-time tasks if required. Applications that use GPU for 2D rendering also use the full power of the GPU, if available.

Single core performance is stagnating while the number of CPU cores is increasing, so it's simply practical to design software to take advantage of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is such a well-made landing page. Tells me what it does, what makes it good, isn't full of vague marketing waffle, doesn't put one sentence per screen, and has actual code and output examples!

</comment><comment><USER8> This is very interesting. Especially since other vector engines are either unmaintained (like Antigrain) or extremely hard to build (Skia, Cairo).

I do wonder if these kind of libraries shouldn't be supplanted by hardware accelerated rendering, though.

<comment><USER9> Skia is not so terrible, you just have to use their slightly obscure build tool. And it produces >8GB build artefacts with ~50 or more dependencies... Come to think of it is a bit of a nightmare.

<comment><USER10> I tried to use it a few times, but having to configure a Google build environment, without Google class workstations, meant I always gave up in the process and used Skia.Sharp instead.

<comment><USER11> I explained how to build it here, give it a try: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19586159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19586159)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the heads up, but doing it across Windows/UWP, Android and iOS requires a bit more of effort than what you described, hence Skia.Sharp instead.

<comment><USER11> I'm doing exactly that though. To compile for iOS for example, create a separate output directory with `target_os="ios" target_cpu="arm64"`. You can see a few more examples here [https://skia.org/user/build](https://skia.org/user/build)

Unfortunately, C++ libraries are a bit harder to use than other languages, hopefully the modules proposal will make this a lot easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm eagerly following the project for several years now, very well done Petr and Fabian!

<comment><USER6> Really appreciated, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How does the performance of path filling compare to font-rs?

<comment><USER6> Blend2D uses dense cell-buffer similarly to font-rs, however, it works quite differently and this difference allows Blend2D to be efficient even when rendering large paths:

\- Dense cell buffer, 32-bit integer per one cell (FreeType/Qt use sparse cell buffer and two 32-bit integers per cell, font-rs uses float if I'm not mistaken)

\- Blend2D builds edges before rasterization step, edge builder is optimized and performs clipping and curve flattening

\- Rasterization and composition happens in bands, thus storage required by the cell buffer is quite small (currently band is 32 scanlines, but we will make it adjustable based on width)

\- To complement dense cell buffer Blend2D uses also a shadow bit-buffer to mark cells that were altered by the rasterizer

\- Compositor scans bit-buffer instead of cell-buffer to quickly skip areas that were not touched by the rasterizer

\- Compositor is SIMD optimized and calculates multiple masks at the same time (at the moment it works at 4 pixels at a time, but this can be extended easily to 8 and 16 pixels)

\- Compositor clears both cell-buffer and shadow bit-buffer during composition so when the compositor finishes these buffers are zeroed and ready for another band

\- Blend2D maintains small zeroed memory pool that is used to quickly allocate cell and bit buffers when you create the rendering context and returned to the pool when you destroy it

There are probably more differences, like parametrization of NonZero and EvenOdd fill rules, etc, but these are really implementation details to minimize the number of pipelines generated by common rendering operations.

The advantage of font-rs is rendering small paths, large paths will have increasing overhead as a lot of computations would happen on zero cells. Blend2D rasterizer is universal and was tuned to perform well from small to 4K framebuffers.

When I was designing Blend2D's rasterizer I wrote around 20 rasterizers and benchmarked them against each other in various resolutions. I had similar rasterizers like font-rs (but not using floats) and these were only competing in very small resolutions like 8x8 and 16x16 pixels. When shifting to larger resolutions these rasterizers would always lose as shadow bit-buffer scan is much quicker than going through zero cells, especially if you do pixel compositing.

There are demo samples in bl-samples-qt repository that render animated content and have Blend2D and Qt rendering options. You can check them out to see how the rasterizer competes against Qt.

Let me know if that answers your question.

<comment><USER13> It does, thanks! This does indeed look like good stuff. It is true that font- rs is not fully optimized for large areas, as it depends on memory fill and cumulative sum for each pixel. These are not hugely expensive, but it sounds like a sophisticated approach (as taken by Blend2D) can do better. Happy to see the work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whenever SVG rendering engines come up, sooner or later the question of "which part of the SVG spec does it render incorrectly?" comes up. How does this one fare?

I get the impression that often these rendering bugs are partially caused by old optimizations that break later spec changes or missed some edge cases the first time around, so I hope that means this engine does better than most because it's more recent, built from-the-ground-up and can learn from the mistakes of others.

<comment><USER15> Things like this convince me more and more that SVG is overdesigned and solving the wrong problem:

The world needed a vector version of PNG far more than it needed a vector version of HTML/CSS.

<comment><USER16> W3C is creating a subset of SVG called "SVG Native". It is intended for icons and simple graphics, so it won't have support for text, scripts, links or XSL processing. Also, use of CSS or animations isn't recommended. It will be similar to SVG in OpenType fonts: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/typography/opentype/spec/sv...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/typography/opentype/spec/svg)

<comment><USER15> Neat. Hopefully it gets adopted. And hopefully it uses its own file-extension so I can actually tell them apart - I'd love to have, like ".svgn" for native svg.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Option 9: A Shoot'em Up Miniature Video Game in Common Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~psilord/lisp-public/option-9.html <comment><USER2> Very interesting stuff. I wasn't expecting so much detail here. I'll definitely read over it more later.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to see a canonical Clojure version since it would be very anti-OO, as opposed to this CLOS heavy version. I wonder if it would be natural to use multi-methods in the Clojure version too.

</comment><comment><USER4> Jolly good article.</comment>


Is Twitter Down? - <AUTHOR> http://istwitterdown.com/ <comment><USER2> Witty way to get someone to click that amazon link.

</comment><comment><USER3> And here I thought <http://isitchristmas.com> was pointless.

<comment><USER4> Not just pointless, but also sometimes wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Paging Tufte! This site needs some sparklines!

Though I admit that adding data to the display would detract from its _extremely_ elegant design. Maybe the charts-and-graphs version belongs on its own site, "wastwitterdown.com".

</comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't work. It says "No" but Twiter is always down.</comment>


Microsoft reanimates corpse of "Clippy" to help Teams compete with Slack - <AUTHOR> https://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-reanimates-corpse-of-maligned-office-assistant-clippy-to-help-teams-compete-with-slack/?ref=webdesignernews.com <comment><USER2> Doesn't seem like Teams is having any trouble competing with Slack given that Teams is bundled with enterprise Office.

My former employer (large consultancy) shut down Slack and switched to Teams as a cost measure because they already used Office365. My current employer (medium sized software company) have just moved to Teams from Yammer, with pretty obvious hinting that Slack will go away in the future.

</comment><comment><USER3> Okay so they have not in fact brought back Microsoft Agent as I hoped, but they have added Clippit emojis to MS teams.

I think Chat Bot frameworks could breathe new life into MS Agent-style actors. I know I'd use e.x. Merlin for small workflows on the side.</comment>


German police storing bodycam footage on Amazon cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-storing-bodycam-footage-on-amazon-cloud/a-47751028 <comment><USER2> This is such a frustrating phantom discussion. It's so pointless, yet so typical of German cargo cult privacy considerations.

Bodycam footage can both be a tool of surveillance and opprosion (if the police has sole control over how, when and what is used) as well as a tool for dissolving power asymmetries (when use is controlled not by the police). That's the important discussion to have, not this weird Amazon discussion.

<comment><USER3> The topic of this article is "this weird Amazon discussion". Consider finding a more relevant link about your point (or writing one!) and posting it to HN so your desired topic of discussion can be aired.

<comment><USER4> arrrgs comment is on topic and he makes a valid point about the way privacy- related topics are discussed in Germany.

Your comment on the other hand is (passive) aggressive in tone, unwarranted and out of place in this community.

<comment><USER3> Not passive at all, nor aggressiveness. The comment I replied to raises a very real and important question around whether surveillance is compatible with freedom and democracy, and it absolutely deserves a discussion. However, the importance of that discussion does not automatically nullify 'lesser' discussions within that concern space such as the one raised by German citizens about Amazon being subject to classified orders by the United States. The comment I replied to demands that we refocus the discussion away from the link posted and towards the also-relevant concern of surveillance and society. Had it instead simply talked about that concern rather than decrying our interest in this link's discussion, I would have had no objection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everyone's saying, " _I don 't see the problem, here,_" but it's pointed to (but not expounded upon) in the article:

> _Even though the servers are located in Germany, US security and > intelligence agencies could access the data, Strasser warned, demanding that > the Federal Police expand its capacity "to preserve sovereignty over the > core state function of internal security."_

For more on this concern, see here[0].

[0] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19238119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19238119)

<comment><USER6> I don't think confidentiality is that important for bodycam footage. In the sense that most will be released anyway.

Integrity is critical as you would never want deletion or editing by unauthorized. But this is pretty easy to protect independent of Amazon.

This seems like a non-issue unless, for some reason unknown to me, they have extra reasons for not wanting the NSA to see bodycam footage. Although I suspect that any German data center is the same, if not more vulnerable.

<comment><USER5> > _I don't think confidentiality is that important for bodycam footage. In the > sense that most will be released anyway._

Why would _most_ videos be released, anyway; especially, in Germany? This is _all_ videos, inclusive of "routine stops" or "health and wellness checks".

> _This seems like a non-issue unless, for some reason unknown to me, they > have extra reasons for not wanting the NSA to see bodycam footage._

Why would they need _extra_ reasons for not wanting that? Your supposition seems to infer that they should be o.k. with the NSA wanting to see bodycam footage any time that they want?

That makes no sense... That would be akin to saying that the Americans should be fine with the Chinese seeing bodycam videos any time that they choose. If it's not fine for one, why would it be fine for the other?

>Although I suspect that any German data center is the same, if not more vulnerable.

Possibly but they wouldn't be victim to the Cloud Act, yeah?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So it's certified by the BSI for that use case but people complain about it? If that's a problem they should fix the certification not just complain because there's no suitable "german" vendor.

They even mention it's encrypted (hopefully on the client end) so it wouldn't even matter where you put it.

</comment><comment><USER8> As opposed to some poorly run operation by T-Systems? Yes please!

<comment><USER9> Eh, there is a bunch of European cloud providers. Off the top of my head: hetzner (de), ovh (fr), upcloud (fi).

<comment><USER10> Is Hetzner still sending paper contract over the post even over a single instance of a virtual server?

<comment><USER11> The new hcloud is actually fairly impressive. They are considering their go client and they terraform provider as an integral part of their product and had them out on day 1. And it looks like they are taking a pretty fast incremental approach based on customer feedback, with new features every couple of months.

Sure, we can go on how the big cloud providers have all of this and it's small steps, but it's pretty exciting to see a german hoster go into this direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Plenty of organisations store encrypted personal information in S3 buckets. I'm failing to see an issue here.

<comment><USER13> That maybe, possibly, there is a non 0 percent chance that maybe Amazon are using the data to help their facial recognition system (doesn't the AWS Contract forbid Amazon using customers data this way with out explicit permission? It's been a while since I've read the whole terms for AWS. Just to clear what I mean is Amazon automatically just processing everything ever uploaded to anything on AWS for their own benefit without the permission of the AWS Customer or the permission of the person who is "in the data").

But then again their is an non 0 chance that Amazon are not recording everything we say via their echos so they can simulate our voices and ring up all the local shops and tell the owners to go fuck themselves so we have to use amazon for everything...

Either that or the implication is that because the police are using S3 to store bodycam footage, they MUST be using their facial recognition system too.

Edit: Jesus fucking Christ HN, it's a bloody joke, I thought the part where Amazon are calling owners of local shops would of given that away. Guess I'll have to be more explicit :-P I'm mocking the article because they state that their is privacy implications because they use AWS. Well their are privacy implications if you use any vendor or even if you self host.

<comment><USER3> Being more explicit won't help; being less sarcastic will. "That maybe, possibly, ..." is one example of where your otherwise interesting argument is weakened unnecessarily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ok after a bit digging:

\- German police signed a service agreement (probably with Motorola) as the model of bodycam is Motorola Si500. [0][1]

\- Motorola is one of the service providers working with Amazon. [2]

"Motorola offers a digital evidence management solution that simplifies the way your agency captures, stores, and manages multi-media content. The solution includes the Si Series Video Speaker Microphone that combines voice communications, body-worn video, still images, voice recording and emergency alerting into one compact, easy-to-use device. Integrated with Motorola's secure cloud-based CommandCentral Vault digital evidence management software, this solution is streamlining technology and reducing costs for law enforcement everywhere."

\- They have some short nice video about their security [3]

\- Basically it is totally cloud solution, although it has client side encryption, if you think Amazon can be compromised, rest of security falls apart too.

[0] [https://www.weser-kurier.de/deutschland-welt/deutschland- wel...](https://www.weser-kurier.de/deutschland-welt/deutschland-welt- politik_artikel,-bundespolizei-kann-kuenftig-bodycams-nutzen- _arid,1807856.html)

[1] [https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/products/police- came...](https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/products/police- cameras/si500.html#tabproductinfo)

[2] [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/the-future-of- poli...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/the-future-of-policing- body-cameras-video-storage-and-data-management/)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m9dlR6JCvI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m9dlR6JCvI)

</comment><comment><USER15> > Federal Police are using a cloud service from Amazon to store videos because > the internet company is the only one in Germany with a certificate from the > Federal Office for Information Security.

> "At the moment there is no state infrastructure available that meets the > demand," the Federal Police said.

TL;DR: Government department uses an approved vendor, news at 11.

<comment><USER16> I think what's much more interesting is that the only approved vendor is Amazon.

<comment><USER10> I see nothing strange in it. German businesses consider "cloud" and internet in general as dumb and obsolete cost inducing topic. I can totally imagine no local provider being able to comply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's possible to bring your own encryption to AWS. You can put an HSM you control on your own infrastructure and keep your keys there. As a step further you can encrypt before sending any data there in the first place, though you're then operating more critical systems yourself, of course.

</comment><comment><USER18> Note to mod (if this is an appropriate way to contact them): I would suggest changing the link to the non-mobile version - [https://www.dw.com/en/german- police-storing-bodycam-footage-...](https://www.dw.com/en/german-police- storing-bodycam-footage-on-amazon-cloud/a-47751028)

The mobile version is very difficult to read on my desktop browser.

<comment><USER19> I guess it would just make it difficult for mobile browsers? Unless they automatically switch to mobile mode from the desktop website.

<comment><USER18> They do automatically switch, at least for me (Firefox on Android).</comment></comment></comment>


Stand-alone code for numerical computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/stand_alone_code.html <comment><USER2> In general, using a Taylor series approximation for a function near points where the argument disappears much faster than the function's value is a nice idea. You have to be careful to specify how much precision you're going after, though: using only two terms of the Taylor series isn't particularly precise.

I've gone faaaar the other way (using way too many terms of the Taylor series) to get stupid amounts of precision from such functions in the past. Here's an example in Scheme:

        (define n1toN (fromTo 1 100))
          ; where fromTo returns a list from $< to $>
          ; 100 terms is insanely overkill
        (define invFacts (scanl (lambda (y x) (/ y x)) 1 n1toN))
          ; scanl is foldl that builds a list of intermediate results

          ; use taylor expansion of e^x near 0 to reduce numerical error
          ; empirically, the break-even point for precision is near 0.19
        (define (expm1 x)
          (if (< (magnitude x) 0.19)
              (letrec ((expm1Hlp
                       (lambda (expts iFacts)
                         (if (null? expts) 0
                             (+ (* (expt x (car expts)) (car iFacts))
                                (expm1Hlp (cdr expts) (cdr iFacts)))))))
                      (+ x (expm1Hlp (cdr n1toN) (cdr invFacts))))
              (- (exp x) 1)))

A really fun one is the Taylor expansion of tanh(x)[1], which includes the Bernoulli numbers. Thanks to Akiyama and Tanigawa[2], there's a cool and simple (not computationally---it's O(n^2)) way of generating the first N Bernoulli numbers.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_series#List_of_Maclaurin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_series#List_of_Maclaurin_series_of_some_common_functions)

[2] [http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/journals/JIS/VOL3/KANEKO/AT- kanek...](http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/journals/JIS/VOL3/KANEKO/AT-kaneko.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: What do people of a particular profession search for? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
Perhaps a bit of a dumb question...
If you wanted to know what people who work in a particular industry search for on the internet, how would you guys go about answering that question?
Preferrably you'd want to know what they search for in a professional sense, not their own private browsing but both would be useful.
I ask this because I imagine there are market research companies out there with some data but I wouldn't know where to be begin or whether it's worth it. Also there could potentially be other tricks I'm not aware of :)
Or is it all just a matter of brainstorming keywords and researching their search volume yourself?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Wow, I had this exact question this morning and was about to post something similar. In my case, the question was: say you know the beginning of a search phrase someone may use and you want to target long-tail variations of it, how could you rank the possibilities in order to start targeting from largest "market" to smallest. In your case, if you knew a keyword that the professional is looking for, I believe our problem is the same one.

For example, say you wanted to focus on wordpress templates. The set of possibilities of what type of template someone may want is open ended. ("Wordpress template for doctors", "wordpress templates fishing website", etc). I've tried using Google's Adword tool, but it doesn't quite do what I need, unless I'm missing something.

Anyone have any ideas?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm an iPhone developer and the majority of my searches are:

        1) checking to see if a product idea already exists or is on the way.

        2) market research, would it be viable?

        3) HOW DO I FIX THIS DANG BUG?!

I think that's what most professionals do, just changing the subjects for their respective industries.</comment>


Ask HN: What Professionals Should be Hired to Sell a Startup? - <AUTHOR> I assume that an investment banker, a CPA and an M&A Attorney are basically required.  Are there any other specialists/advisors that would be helpful in maximizing the transaction. <comment><USER2> Depends upon the size of deal. You can do it yourself if it's in low millions

<comment><AUTHOR> the deal would be much higher than the low millions.</comment></comment>


Shell pipes and in-place insanity - <AUTHOR> http://fakedrake.github.io/shell-pipes-and-in-place-insanity.html <comment><USER2> I think this behaviour is supposed to be a feature of shell. Pipelines are executed in parallel.

Also, see `sponge` from `moreutils` ([http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/moreutils/](http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/moreutils/)):

        $ man sponge
        ...
        sponge  reads standard input and writes it out to the specified file.
        Un‐like a shell redirect, sponge soaks up all its input before opening the output file.
        This allows constructing pipelines that read from and write to the same file.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the expected behavior of pipes[0]. A quick look at Lists [1] clears up how you can control this a little better (+Job Control). jamesdutc also linked to sponge, which may suit your usecase as well.

      [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Pipelines
      [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Lists

</comment><comment><USER4> That was a contrived example.

The shell sets up the pipe and file redirections for each process in the pipeline, then lets them go. It has no control over when the child processes read or write. It could be a race condition, but it's written in such a way that it appears that the file will get truncated before it can be read virtually 100% of the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right I should have clarify that. thank you

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if it's actually a race; it probably depends on how bash is implemented. But this prints what is expected:

echo "1\n2\n3\n4\n" > numbers && cat numbers | { sleep 1 && cat > numbers && cat numbers ; }

That's not exactly the same (because the redirection for cat #2 now happens in a subshell), but it shows that this is basically racy. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> NB: If you're going to use CSS styling for code examples, choose foreground and background colors, as well as text sizes, which are actually legible.

Monospace fonts, black on white, at default sizes, are your best bets.

<comment><USER6> Um... I see almost-black Courier New on off-white, at 13px and a slightly increased line-height. That seems fine to me.

<comment><USER5> The body text is approximately legible size, but low contrast.

The code examples are all but unreadable.

[http://i.imgur.com/ogS9yat.png](http://i.imgur.com/ogS9yat.png)

Here's a quick improvement for legibility. I'm not claiming a thing of beauty.

[http://i.imgur.com/mW880fB.png](http://i.imgur.com/mW880fB.png)

My general style guidelines are included here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6996064#up_6998399](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6996064#up_6998399)

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your point about the larger fonts but I have used the sunburn theme for a while in my editor (not anymore thought in favor of slightly customized naquadah[1] ) and I feel quite a bit more comfortable reading code in familiar coloring. I chose this color scheme because sunburn dark is quite popular.

[1] [http://rvfblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/using-naquadah- theme...](http://rvfblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/using-naquadah-theme-in- emacs/)

<comment><USER5> I still find it very difficult to read. Even expanding the font size isn't sufficient.

<comment><USER7> That's a pity.

Perhaps your color vision is now at the point where you should consider loading an accessibility stylesheet into your browser. I don't look forward to the day when I am required to do this, but I do know that it will inevitably arrive.

<comment><USER5> I use Stylebot to modify sites' CSS.

1188 stylesheets and counting.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Peloton's new holiday commercial perplexes the internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/us/peloton-ad-controversy-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> Without even opening the story, I'm guessing that there's a link in the story to either a Gawker or Vice News site and that "the internet"is probably a random sampling of a handful of Twitter users.</comment>


ArXiv Is Down - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/ <comment><USER2> Another great thing about arXiv — it is mirrored in many locations! (With some lag for syncing the latest submissions)

Here's a list of arXiv mirror sites, from the internet archive: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190722162623/http://arxiv.org/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190722162623/http://arxiv.org/help/mirrors)

EDIT: They seem to be considering discontinuing mirrors, going forward :-/

> _2015-11: We are in the process of discontinuing the arXiv mirror network. > Geographic locality of servers is much less useful now than it was when the > mirror network was established, and maintaining support for mirrors impedes > development of new features on arXiv. We will continue to support and extend > APIs and data feeds to enable third parties to develop services over arXiv._

<comment><USER3> The Los Alamos mirror seems to have a certificate problem:

[https://lanl.arxiv.org/](https://lanl.arxiv.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://twitter.com/steinly0/status/1159616447888396290](https://twitter.com/steinly0/status/1159616447888396290)

arXiv scientific director Steinn Sigurdsson:

"arXiv down due to storm induced power outages at Cornell"

[https://twitter.com/arxiv/status/1159611569107537920](https://twitter.com/arxiv/status/1159611569107537920)

"arXiv.org is currently unavailable due to a network outage with our service provider. We will provide updates when they become available."</comment>