The Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-24/the-tech-worker-shortage-doesnt-really-exist#r=read <comment><USER2> I'm increasingly agitated by these commentators on the topic, who have absolutely no idea what the ground reality is. Frequently, as in this case, they also seem to conflate two different problems: shortage of IT workers and shortage of software developers.

A software developer cannot be asked to manage a linux database; I mean she can, but that is not what she is good at. Conversely, an IT person cannot be asked to architect the backed of a payment gateway system. Of course there is some overlap (devops is what comes to mind). I'm guessing that most of FB/MS employees are probably developers, so when they mention IT workers in the same breath as shortage at FB/MS, they are exposing their ignorance.

Furthermore, the paper itself seems to be published as a "report" on the page of a dubious organizations. Come on journalists, please do some actual journalism! Ask more people than those who confirm what your story wants to show. Find and determine the truth of the story; that is what you are paid for!

edit: as I suspected, most of the funding for this "institute" comes from labor unions. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Policy_Institute#Fundi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Policy_Institute#Funding)

<comment><USER3> That H1B is a mechanism for importing cheap labor is a fact, regardless of the messenger. Studies have been demonstrating this going back nearly a decade:

[http://www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2005/back130...](http://www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2005/back1305.html)

<comment><USER4> Yes, but the labor imported is skilled and does not stay "cheap" for long.

<comment><USER5> h1b makes switching jobs difficult.

<comment><USER6> In what way?

<comment><USER7> In a sense that your employer needs to file a Labor certification application, determine the prevailing wage and ultimately USCIS granting your petition. It takes a while to get it all done.

<comment><USER8> ... like 2-3 weeks? That's how long mine took, just a short while ago.

H1B presents some friction in switching jobs, but to call it "difficult", especially in current market conditions, is vastly overselling it.

<comment><USER9> What if you wanted to work in a completely different field, go to law school, or quit your job and start a new business?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Running a coding school (Codeup), I get this email all the time from recruiters:

"Dear xyz,

I've been hired to fill this not-so-great job THIS WEEK and we want this crazy exclusive unicorn skillset that about a dozen people in the world have and, you know, we aren't going to pay much anywhere near going rate and we're going to hire as a contractor so we can fire you any time and we're not really interested in training a person who'd actually want this gig at the rate we're wanting to pay. So, do you know anyone?"

<comment><USER11> If there was really a tech shortage -- and had been for years -- wouldn't the labor supply rise to meet demand? Wouldn't there be people willing to work less than the going rate (which is far above a living wage), wouldn't the going rate be dropping?

I don't know the answer, I think what is going on may actually be kind of complicated.

But that's the kind of question raised, you can't explain away the question of whether there's a shortage or not by saying "It's just that people aren't willing to pay the going rate."

<comment><USER12> There are a few things going on here.

I don't think the world has fully realized this yet, but there's huge divergence in skill of developers. I know a few developers who are worth $500k/year, if not more. And I know plenty of others who are not worth that, but are easily worth $100k/year. With all of them under the same label of "developer", it can be hard to distinguish what you're getting.

Car example! Imagine wanting to buy a car, but not knowing anything about cars. So you call Kia, and ask how much a car costs, and they say, $15,000. Then you call Honda, they say $20,000. A few others, similar prices. Then you call Rolls Royce, and they say $500,000 and you think they're trying to pull a fast one on you. And to compound this, if you were to list everything that you want in a car, you'd probably come up with something closer to a Rolls Royce than a Kia. So you're shopping for a Rolls, and you've budgeted for a Kia. Also remember, you don't know anything about cars, so you don't know how to distinguish important features (ie. wheels, a functioning engine), from luxury ones (ie. a fancy sound system, heated seats).

In terms of people not being willing to pay the going rate - plenty are! All of the big west coast tech companies pay handsomely for developers. Outside of big cities though, things are slow to catch up. So I think that a lot of the sentiment comes from people not wanting to move to SF or NYC or Seattle, but also wanting to get a competitive rate. Eventually these companies will have to adapt, but it can take time, especially if there are enough people who don't want to leave the city they're in. There's also the quality divergence taking place - as much as we'd all like to think we're good, Google and co. are very selective.

In terms of working for less than the going rate (which as you said is generous) - for sure that's happening. But there's adverse selection happening there, in that people who are taking jobs below market are either desperate and will quit when they find something better, or are of low quality. Developers aren't paid well out of the goodness of the company's heart, they're paid because they make money for the company. And bad developers can have extremely negative productivity even ignoring their salary.

Finally, labor takes time to catch up, especially skilled labor. From no programming knowledge to junior developer at a top company takes typically five years - ie. an undergraduate degree in computer science and some tinkering on your own (yes there are exceptions). And we are seeing supply increase - enrollment in computer science programs is up across the country. Imagine we had a severe shortage of doctors - you can't just suddenly triple the supply of doctors over a couple of years. Now if you have a huge shortage of brain surgeons, which might take a decade or more to train you're in for a lot of trouble.

<comment><USER13> Kia has what most people want in a car. (Fuel efficiency, resilience to damage, cost-effectiveness, easy maintenance)

Rolls has what people imagine they want in the car. Sort of like those HR hiring managers imagining what they want in a developer.

<comment><USER14> Seriously, they all think they need Linus Torvalds.

<comment><USER15> Nah, he just doesn't have the skillset: not enough {Ruby,Node,my pet JS framework} experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The real shortage is in bankers. Just look at pricing. Engineers are so much cheaper. We should worry about importing more bankers and traders. Those salaries are a sure indicator that there is a far larger shortage in that industry.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, good point. Extreme salaries are oftentimes evidence of a high-leverage industry, where you want a limited number of the absolute best people, rather than one in which you just need more people than you can get. CEOs, movie, and musical stars are other examples.

<comment><USER18> CEOs, movie, and musical stars are not industries. They are job titles/descriptions of the people at the pinnacle of certain career tracks (CEOs) or industries (movie/music stars)

Business generalists, actors, and musicians _generally_ \-- the professions/industries as a whole, rather than just the titles at the top -- get paid a _lot_ less.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, misspoke, but you know what I meant.

Salaries are only absurd near the top of the software industry. It's certainly better distributed than those other industries, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been seeing a version of this every month for past 10 years or so.

H1B in my view is new Ellis Island. Stopping H1B == Stopping all immigration to US. People often say they support legal immigration but don't support H1B. What are the other alternatives to H1B to immigrate to America?(I am not talking about Nobel Laureates or Olympic athletes, I am talking about common folk who showed up at Ellis Island).

Immigration is one of those things where everyone who got in wants to shut the door behind them.( "I(or my ancestors) got a shot at a better life, fuck you the door is now closed.")

<comment><USER20> > What are the other alternatives to H1B to immigrate to America?

You can enter the lottery: [http://www.usagc.org/USA- immigration.aspx](http://www.usagc.org/USA-immigration.aspx)

<comment><USER21> Even your neighbors cannot enter the lottery. Canadians are pretty dang close to Americans, lots of us have family on both sides of the border, we speak the same language, have very similar media, similar education systems etc. etc.

And yet we're not allowed to come to your country for much more than a few months at a time.

Oddly we _are_ allowed to get a TN visa, in some circumstances, build up some wealth over a 3 yrs span and then we're promptly booted _out_ of the country with bags of money instead of being allowed to stay and spend it. strange strategy.

<comment><USER22> Does the TN really expire after 3 years? My (American) boss has been working here in Canada for at least 5, and he is cheerfully uninterested in becoming a permanent resident. I guess he had to renew once or twice, but it doesn't seem like it was much of a hassle for him.

<comment><USER23> You can get TNs good for 1 year or 3, but you can technically renew your TN status as many times as you want. The downside is that TN status is strictly for people with "non-immigrant intent" and if a border agent believes you have immigrant intent when requesting a TN or entering America with one, they can revoke it/deny you entry at their discretion. So a 3-year TN is fine, maybe even a second one, but if you've been in the US on a TN after 8 or 9 years you're probably going to get some trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Information technology is much harder than people think. It's so hard that management techniques evolved over millenia of human economic activity just plain don't work when you apply them to computing. Us tech workers take _The Mythical Man-Month_ as obvious, no shit how could software work any other way, but throwing more resources at a problem has _always_ worked to clear it, until now. It wasn't pretty, some of the bridges built like that are probably aren't going to last forever like they were designed to, but it worked.

The reason BigCorps are looking to indentured laborers is not because technology workers are hard to find, but because technology _management_ at scale is horrendously inefficient, but being managers, they don't really know that. More importantly, they'd have no real answer to it even if they did. The only lever they have in the face of this is cutting costs so that each individual failure doesn't hurt the bottom line so much.

The personal answer to this dynamic is to get out of these labor markets. The products produced by these companies will always be terrible. I don't understand why people still want to work at Google and Microsoft, it's basically factory work now, the glory days are gone. Let the people motivated to escape poverty do it.

The talent market has already started to fracture into a higher-tier professional caste and the lower-tier grunt caste. The professionals will slowly accrete into a Hollywood-style guild system serving anyone that wants to be on the leading edge of technology while the grunt-employing BigCorps will just keep pushing the state of the art of paying nine women to have one baby in one month.

</comment><comment><USER25> Economically speaking, if the market is allowed to set the price, then shortages don't exist - the supply and demand curves cross. For example, if there were only 10 box folders in the world, you could get one if you were willing to pay more than about anyone else, hence no shortage.

But from a pragmatic point of view, if the price is higher than you can reasonably afford to pay, then there's a shortage.

<comment><USER26> The problem is that the supply curve is essentially vertical in the short-to- medium term. So even if companies are willing to pay more (trust me, many are, even if it's not quite as high as I think it should be), they won't necessarily get _more_ workers.

Also, this is compounded by the shortage being of senior/experienced developers. As a hiring manager, I get dozens of resumes from new college & bootcamp grads every day. But we're not hiring fresh grads—we're looking to hire a few excellent senior developers, and they come along once in a blue moon.

It'll probably take at least 10 years for domestic supply to catch up to domestic demand (I estimate it takes at least 10 years of development to become a senior dev). So even as pricing signals push more students to study CS, the supply won't catch up for another 10 years or so.

So in the interim the only solution is to import foreign supply.

<comment><USER27> _So in the interim the only solution is to import foreign supply._

So make some experienced developers. How many of your people are in offsite training right now?

Well?

<comment><USER26> > So make some experienced developers. How many of your people are in offsite > training right now?

It takes 10 years to build an experienced developer. We don't need to hire developers 10 years from now, we need to hire them now.

<comment><USER27> You just want them now. If you needed them, you'd pay what it costs to get them. Meanwhile, plan ahead for your future requirements. If all you need is webcrap, you don't need 10 years of experience.

<comment><USER26> > You just want them now. If you needed them, you'd pay what it costs to get > them.

We do. We've literally never had an offer rejected. The problem is just that there simply isn't a supply of candidates worth making offers to.

As for this nonsense that we should somehow be training developers 10 years from now, that's just ridiculous. 95% of startups won't last 10 years and if we build our whole HR strategy on a 10 year pipeline we'd be dead.

<comment><USER28> Your HR strategy is already dead. Over-biased on the desire for the "senior/experienced developers". Meaning that your organization and the thousand others like yours perpetually create this apparent "shortage," since all "senior/experienced" had to start as "new college & bootcamp grads". Since there are rather few moments where organizations are willing to take the chances on the "college & bootcamp" types, there will of course be fewer moments where future "senior/experienced" ones are sown.

<comment><USER29> Hell, screw "college & bootcamp" types: how about engineers like me, who have 10 years of valuable but unconventional/niche experience? I can't get the time of day from any of these companies bitching and moaning about "shortages"[1] because I don't have the right buzzwords in my background. I'm right here, I'm willing to move almost anywhere for an embedded development position, and I'm being ignored.

[1] I could be wrong on this; the companies I am trying to contact may not be the ones whining. Reading the conversation here and at /r/cscareerquestions though gives one the impression that this is a pervasive problem.

<comment><USER26> > I'm willing to move almost anywhere for an embedded development position

There's the problem. There just aren't that many people looking for embedded software developers. The companies complaining about a shortage are mostly building web & mobile software—if you were willing to consider that field, I'm sure more opportunities would open up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> We add immense value, yet we seen almost none of the profit of that value. Underpaid to say the least-- especially considering the value of money has steadily declined (overall) since 1972.

I saw a number someone quotes in a comment of _$120,000_ but it doesn't go as far as it did in the nineties. Realistically, that wage should be closer to $180k or more now-a-days-- but it's not.

Plus the real moral of the story is: your business is either capital intensive, or labor intensive. Software Tech isn't really capital intensive (per dollar) but is extremely labor intensive.

If tech companies want more talent perhaps they shouldn't build their campuses on some of the most expensive land in the country. That'd probably save a lot right there.

I'd be willing to bet Facebook wants more H1-Bs because it helps their bottom line (decreasing costs), which increases their profit margin, which increases their stock price... A dollar saved, is a dollar earned-- ask an accountant.

<comment><USER31> >If tech companies want more talent perhaps they shouldn't build their campuses on some of the most expensive land in the country. That'd probably save a lot right there.

It's expensive because it's desirable. Much of today's workforce doesn't want to live in the suburbs and drive to an office park. Living in a vibrant urban area is part of compensation for many.

<comment><USER32> He's not really talking about a vibrant urban area. He's talking about a more expensive office park, and a place where a six-figure income isn't getting you ahead because of the cost of living (especially if you have a family).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> _> Asked what evidence existed of a labor shortage, a spokesperson for Facebook e-mailed a one-sentence statement: "We look forward to hearing more specifics about the President's plan and how it will impact the skills gap that threatens the competitiveness of the tech sector."_

For companies like Google and Facebook, which place such strong emphasis on data in making decisions, its very telling how little data they have presented to support their claims.

</comment><comment><USER34> From my standpoint the problem with H-1B and other visas in the US immigration system isn't that we're issuing too many but rather that they tie the workers to a particular company in a way that prevents them from changing jobs easily if they are underpaid. Personally I feel really lucky as a US citizen that incredibly talented people from all over the world are leaving their families to come here and contribute to our workforce. Even if you feel differently I think there is no reason to tie visas to a particular company as it prevents the market from working efficiently. Tech companies have already admitted to price fixing for wages [1] and the H-1B visa can certainly act as a way to prevent other companies from easily hiring your workforce.

[1] [http://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing- lawsui...](http://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsuit/)

</comment><comment><USER35> > Further, he and his co-authors found, only half of STEM (science, > technology, engineering, and mathematics) college graduates each year get > hired into STEM jobs

Maybe those graduates aren't any good.

> "We don't dispute the fact at all that Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT) > would like to have more, cheaper workers," ... "But that doesn't constitute > a shortage."

I'm not really sure how that squares with the fact that only half of STEM graduates were hired. Why didn't facebook and microsoft just offer those graduates cheapo salaries?

Because most of the time, these workers aren't interchangeable cogs. A degree doesn't mean you can do work in the industry effectively. Maybe there are billions of STEM graduates, but if only 100 can do the job, there's still a shortage.

<comment><USER36> > > Further, he and his co-authors found, only half of STEM (science, > technology, engineering, and mathematics) college graduates each year get > hired into STEM jobs

> Maybe those graduates aren't any good.

In my experience, it's because companies don't want to pay to train somebody in all the basics of office work. New grads (especially STEM grads) don't know how to run a meeting, write a status report, or do a thousand other things that a modern company requires. Instead they list job openings for two or three years of experience and hope to profit off of somebody else's investment.

<comment><USER37> But the companies complaining about shortages (microsoft, facebook, etc...) are the same ones who are willing to hire new grads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Well, the reality is that every company is becoming a tech company.

Text Book Publisher -> E-learning Platform Mass Marketing -> Mass Emailing Hotel Booking -> App for Hotel Booking

While there probably is no shortage of tech workers, finding ones that aren't going to mass-code unreliable software then leave the company __is fucking hard __.

</comment><comment><USER39> There are 65000 H1B visa issued a year (and 20000 more for Master & higher degree holders).

H1B visa is 3 years, extendable to 6 years, with a maximum of 10 years. But I'd think most people don't stay on the H1B more than 6 years.

So there's approximately 65000 * 6 = 400000 H1B visa holders in the US. For size comparison, there are about ~240millions adults in working age in the US. And the _possible amnesty_ from the executive order a few days ago would cover some where from ~4-5 millions people.

I'm not actually sure what's the point I should be making here. I guess it just feel to me that in the grand scheme of things, the number of H1B visas is _tiny tiny_. It's just incredibly sad to me to see on HN that someone would be concerned about H1B taking over US's jobs (or repressing the wage - which is the same, just lesser extreme than "taking US's jobs").

<comment><USER40> I'm not concerned about H1B's taking over US jobs. I can understand that labor unions want to push that message in the same breath they decry US immigration laws.

I am concerned that H1B's are indentured servitude. That term has a meaning, and no, it's not slavery, but if you will be deported upon losing your job that's a little more than just "out of a job."

So H1B's are not a fair way to bring in talent from around the world. Not Tech Companies' fault, though, if they hire talented people this way. It _is_ Washington's fault, since they are the ones creating the artificial scarcity in the first place (and turning a blind eye to the actual solutions for such a long time that it can't be ascribed to incompetence).

On the other hand, Tech Companies _are_ guilty of wage fixing. They got caught. Some did the right thing and raised wages. Some didn't. The economy is tough, so the incentives are all there for the company to keep payroll down.

That's not a reason to unionize the software industry. That's just all the more reason to start your own company.

Startups have successfully challenged the incumbents and won, especially in software. It's still open season. Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think several people mentioned this separately: Yes I agree there are no shortage of people with CS degree the question is 1) Can they code their way out of an interview. Turns out many people can't, even though they held a "senior" title in another company. They can't solve a simple linked list problem 2) Living cost of where the company is hiring 100K in Atlanta goes farther than 120K in SF or in Seattle. I can rent a 2 bedroom town house in a good neighborhood in Atlanta for 1200$ Vs. you MAY be able to find a 1 bedroom apartment in Seattle for 1700$ – 2000$. 3) Some companies have very unrealistic expectations, they want a person with all the experience in the world, which is just not gonna happen. Personally if I am looking at a candidate I will look at how he approaches a problem, I will throw him some curve-balls and if he can handle it they he will be fine. We are in a world where the technology changes rapidly, a tech/language/skill-set that is popular today might not worth a dime tomorrow. If you learned how to learn and adapt you will be fine.

</comment><comment><USER42> I get several emails from recruiters each week, almost none of them include a salary range at all.. I won't even respond.

<comment><USER43> That's short sighted.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps, but it can also be a good filter. Experience replying to the messages would tell.

<comment><USER43> I've had some rather amazing opportunities that came without a salary range in the initial email. Using that as the primary factor is surely suboptimal.

<comment><USER14> Curious to know what these emails looked like. Were they random messages from recruiters? Or emails from friends or friends of friends?

<comment><USER43> From recruiters. I can spot the good ones.

<comment><USER14> Care to share your knowledge with us? I've just been ignoring them all as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What's with taxes for offshoring for America? I'm guessing it isn't that bad since a lot of IT/desk-help and what not have been offshored for a while now.

Whenever I read posts of "they want to pay us less" online I try to understand, why wouldn't a company simply offshore it? I live in Mexico, and when I was looking for jobs there were a lot of "nearshoring" (just like offshore but sometimes a business guy will go across either border.) companies, so it's clearly not that rare. Why? Because they can afford the same for less (due to exchange rates and what not) So I wonder why they'd move a lot of "talent" there instead of paying them less (but still considerably more than what an average person gets here) to work for them? Why go through all the trouble of even suggesting reforms and what not? There's got to be more to it, no?

</comment><comment><USER45> > _"It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost labor,"_

It does, but that's not the issue. There is a shortage of _good_ and _qualified_ tech workers. Tech companies simply can't afford to pay whoever $120k/yr if their technology doesn't work.

<comment><USER46> This comes up a lot. The "qualification" clause.

So whose fault is it there isn't a lot of qualification? Workers or Employers? What I've found hiring people into my organization is that there are many, perhaps dozens, of ways in which people develop software, all with a great analogy name from 'waterfall' to 'agile' to 'pair' to 'artisnal' to 'hacking' and back again. They come with different ideas about what is expected of the engineer and what is expected of the manager. Have a standup meeting every week? Great, what are you achieving by that? Getting everyone on the same page? ok, but what about the guy off site? How about folks who work best in quiet offices, or those who work best in a noisy free-for-all, do you playfully criticize each other over bugs or do you have elaborate silent shunning rituals.

The reality is that everyone I hire seems to come from a different school of training about how to be effective at programming, what does that say about qualification? This last job of mine has been my first extended stint at managing engineers and I have learned so much about what folks can and cannot be expected to understand or know before coming to the company. It has given me a lot of appreciation for the intake process that I didn't really have before.

<comment><USER47> I wish I could upvote this twice. Is it possible that the real shortage is in competent technical _managers_?

<comment><USER48> The shortage of competent technical managers is _massive_. If you have the bare essentials of communication and project management skills, plus tech and have a good network to bring developers in - you're getting your email box torn apart with offers at the moment and wages are insane.

The real tech shortage is in project management, VP Engineering, product management, experienced multi-stack or vertical developer roles. It is really far from indicative to compare all of STEM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The article is rendered worthless by making the same flawed assumptions most of these articles make:

\- No one is claiming there is a "STEM shortage". There _is_ a shortage of qualified software engineers. STEM includes an abundance of marine biologists, aerospace engineers, astronomers, and myriad other subfields with poor job prospects that are in no way qualified to fill the shortage that actually exists in other STEM subfields.

\- The category of "IT worker" sweeps up a lot of low-skill jobs that have nothing to do with software engineering. Maybe the low-skill jobs are not making great money but software engineers qualified enough to get a job easily make six-figures where I live, and I do not live in Silicon Valley. The oppression and slavery are palpable.

\- Training to become a qualified software engineer is not like training to operate a backhoe. It is not just about "being good with computers". Tool chains you can learn over weeks or months, but developing domain competence useful to an organization can take years. By analogy, both chemists and chemical engineers deal with designing chemical reactions, but neither can do the job of the other without a couple years of additional training even though they are both just making chemicals. Most companies will not pay to train a chemist to become a chemical engineer when they need a chemical engineer now.

Every article like this that conflates software engineers with "STEM jobs" or "IT workers" isn't really talking about software engineers.

<comment><USER50> There is no shortage of qualified software engineers. As a hiring manager I have been able to find as many as I need, at the market price. Anyone can do the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> > "There's no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there's a shortage in > the conventional sense," says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and > public policy at Rutgers University. "They may not be able to find them at > the price they want. But I'm not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more > than my not being able to find a half-priced TV."

I'm not sure how many developers Hal Salzman has tried to hire, but I find a lot more of them are weeded out at the "seeing if they can code their way out of a wet paper bag" stage than at the "salary negotiation" stage.

<comment><USER52> Given the ridiculous technical and interview "requirements" that have been part of tech for the last several years I'm inclined to have as much sympathy for your statement as I do for companies complaining about tech worker shortage. Companies want ridiculous breadth of expertise (the ubiquitous "alphabet soup" listing of technologies), graduate level understanding of often irrelevant and unrelated algorithms and data structures, and a host of other absurdities for things like putting together a damn online shopping cart or, worse, a to-do list.

<comment><USER51> Do you think hash tables and linked lists are "irrelevant" and "unrelated"? Have you ever tried to hire developers?

<comment><USER52> "Irrelevant and unrelated" _to what_? They can be, in certain circumstances.

I'm not arguing that there are no people trying to get developer jobs who have no business doing it, or that it's always inappropriate to ask algorithms or data structures questions. I'm arguing that there is an overemphasis on trivialities, minutiae, and irrelevant details.

<comment><USER51> And that's irrelevant to my point, which is that before you can even _get_ to trivialities and minutiae, the candidate has to be able to code their way out of a wet paper bag, and a surprising number of them can't.

<comment><USER52> That "a surprising number of them can't [code their way out of a paper bag]" does not imply there is a shortage of tech workers, nor does it reveal anything particularly interesting about what you consider a "wet paper bag" to be. What is interesting is that based on your prior comment you believe certain things are universally useful and pertinent in a programming job, which is contentious and unsubstantiated at best. And that was rather my point.

<comment><USER51> I think the ability to write code is universally useful and pertinent in a programming job. A shocking number of people fail FizzBuzz. That's what I mean by "wet paper bag".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> It is a quality, not a quantity problem.

At a previous company I interviewed hundreds for engineering positions (Ruby & Rails or JS/Backbone.) Our average was 1 offer extended for every 300 phone screens. The problem wasn't that we extended 50 offers and got rejected; money was not a part of the equation. We simply couldn't find the quality we were looking for.

Specifically, coding schools have capitalized on the gluttony of open positions, but don't actually go towards solving the problem. There isn't a shortage of bodies, there is a shortage of experienced developers.

<comment><USER33> Serious question: Why did it never occur that you might need to take in a less experienced developer and train them? Wouldn't it make sense that there are no experienced developers available because they are currently fully employed?

<comment><USER54> I work with less experienced developers. They really put a drag on the project. They need to be watched and you have to give a lot of pointers and refactoring suggestions. And then their tasks just don't end up coming in fast enough either. Personally I think I'd learn a lot more if I was working with more advanced devs where I could learn from them than seeing the mistakes I would have made years ago.

<comment><USER32> Everybody wants to hire a flying purple unicorn that is a master of "full stack." It seems nobody has time for "jack of all trades, master of some." But knowing only one or two domains is a step on the ladder of programmer competence, and there's no shame in it at all. As other commenters say, you have to start somewhere. And it's incredibly hard as a developer to go from intermediate to truly advanced mastery—there's very little training and mentoring coming from the employer direction (because, as Sweet Brown says, ain't nobody got time for that: anybody who is a real "ninja" is swamped), and therefore the only sane strategy is to take complete responsibility for your own career development, continuing education, and improval of skillset. But that's just _another_ reason why developers should be paid more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money." ~ David "Pardo" Keppel

</comment><comment><USER55> Definitely true, but if America can't figure out basic rights like privacy there will soon come a time where it doesn't matter how many H1B visas are issued.

However, in light of recent corporation missteps like the Google and friends wage suppression scheme, I don't think gifting them a bunch of cheap labor is the right choice.

edit: Clarification. I am referring to privacy breaches causing a lack of trust in American tech companies by consumers, not whether they will be able to hire foreign workers.

<comment><USER56> I suspect the many immigrants from Asia, and China in particular don't give a damn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The same combination of separate issues keeps polluting the debate.

1\. There is no STEM shortage, there's a shortage of a particular subset of STEM-related skills, most notably software development (which btw is a skill barely even taught even in CS, and certainly not filtered for, leading to people with CS degrees that can't code their way out of a paper bag). Even within just IT, software development stands out by a mile in all stats when it comes to the imbalance between jobs and candidates.

2\. Wages are being artificially kept down despite the shortage. Migrant visa's are one of the things being abused to depress wages. The fact that this is happening during a shortage is remarkable and confusing, but can be explained by fear (wages will explode sooner or later, and this terrifies many employers) and by the low social standing of software developers (even within IT software developers have for the longest time been known as the code monkeys at the bottom of the hierarchy, just above the support people) which leads to even developers themselves not questioning their salaries. Salaries that tend to be pretty decent, but well below what should be the market value.

</comment><comment><USER58> There isn't a Tech Worker shortage if you're willing to be outside the Bay Area or even outside the country. You're getting great developers in places around the world for reasonable prices.

Those places just aren't San Francisco. Getting a developer in a mega-priced city and then hoping to pay less, that is not going to work well. And frankly that is not what H1Bs should be for.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm still of the mindset that the problem is transportation in the Bay Area. If I had a magic wand and I could wave it and we all woke up tomorrow to a nonstop-bullet-BART train that goes 100mph from San Francisco to Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Ramon, Danville, Cupertino, Daly City, Foster City, Redwood city, San Jose and the Persidio and we had some kind of crazy zipline thing that gets you within 1/2 mile of any location within SF, this perceived shortage wouldn't exist. The problem is salary compared to cost-of-living in desired locations. And those locations are mostly desired, IMHO, because nobody wants to deal with a commute. My LinkedIn clearly states that I won't accept any job outside of walking distance of a BART station regardless of salary.

What I'd like to see is a poll of HN users that look like this:

You want to live in $DESIRED_LOCATION because:

A. I love $DESIRED_LOCATION and want to be surrounded by its vibe 24/7.

B. $DESIRED_LOCATION is a reasonable commute to/from my job.

C. $DESIRED_LOCATION is a reasonable distance between job & loved ones.

</comment><comment><USER54> I was pretty surprised at the level of skill that the hired programmers at my company had. And I imagined it was because it's just hard to find anyone. But I'm not sure if it's just a Montreal Canada problem where the talent left for elsewhere or if the quality is just never good.

</comment><comment><USER60> Hm. I don't know if it's a new shortage or not. But I'm currently hiring and finding good developers/engineers that are also a culture fit is pretty difficult. I guess it has always been this way since I moved to SF (~5 years ago).

[edit]

To clarify on 'culture fit' in my statement:

Interesting, inspiring, nice, humble, pleasant to work with, eager to share knowledge, discover new things, understands our audience, who we are, and genuinely wants to further the vision of the entire startup.

These are people that are going to help elevate the group together. I don't look at engineers as simply a commodity that can be replaced at a whim, but rather part of a symbiotic system that must transcends itself, grow, and evolve together in time.

<comment><USER61> > I guess it has always been this way since I moved to SF (~5 years ago).

Are you accounting for the skyrocketing cost of living of SF? I'm guessing that (as the article suggests as a general case) there are plenty of good developers but they just plain want more money than you're offering.

<comment><USER60> This is the difficult part. How do you accurately price for this market. I've tried salary searches across whatever job boards I have access to, but how can one be certain?

<comment><USER61> If you're not getting enough people saying "yes", you're not offering enough money.

<comment><USER62> Or, there is a bubble about to pop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> The article makes a really common mistake by confusing STEM and coding. A surplus of people graduating with STEM degrees doesn't say anything about whether or not there is a shortage of coders. I only have anecdotal data but I'll bet if you break it down you'd find that there are some STEM majors that have way more people than there are jobs for. This is especially true in majors where you need a grad degree to find real work in your field. I'd also guess that there are more coding jobs than CS degrees due to people coming out of coding schools and other degrees that tend to have a lot of crossover like math.

<comment><USER64> I would bet 80-90% of STEM grads could be trained to code. If there's a true shortage, train some of those unemployed STEM people up. Invest some money in them.

<comment><USER63> If they want to learn to code there are plenty of options. Do you expect companies like Facebook or Google to hire a bunch of biologists so they can send them to a coding bootcamp?

<comment><USER64> If the employers are truly desperate, they should be considering the option.

Or I suppose they can just do without if they want to be stubborn.

<comment><USER63> Let's assume that they do this and check how the numbers work out. Say the program takes six months and they pay candidates $50000 a year while they're taking it. Google is notorious for preferring false negatives in their interview process to making bad hires so maybe 1 in 10 candidates gets offered a job at the end. The program also costs money to run. They need teaching staff, computers, space, etc. You're easily at over $300 000 and six months latency to get one junior programmer. Alternatively, they could offer someone more senior a $200 000 signing bonus, save a bunch of money and hire someone experienced. Which do you think is a better way to invest their recruiting money?

<comment><USER64> Move the 1 in 10 filtering up front, before they're hired in the first place. And don't compare jr devs to sr devs since those aren't the same jobs to fill. Even Google has jr jobs.

<comment><USER63> Writing code is part of the typical interview/application process. The hypothetical people in this process can't write code. How can a company pick which ones will do well before they've been trained?

You're correct that big companies have positions for people at all levels. However, they usually aren't willing to pay more to fill a junior position than they'd need to pay to fill a more senior role.

<comment><USER64> I'm not sure how you come to the idea they pay trainee jrs more than experienced srs, not without some crazy 10:1 hire:retain ratio.

And I'm confident it's possible to develop aptitude interview processes that avoid 10:1 false positives.

The bottom line though, is this- If there's a genuine shortage, on the job training is a solution with centuries of history behind it. If companies aren't willing to train, they can't be that desperate.

<comment><USER63> You seem overly hung up on the 10:1 thing. I'll summarize my argument without any numbers: Currently there are cheaper ways for companies to recruit and retain programming talent than paying for their training.

Here's another example to illustrate the point with more realistic numbers. Using the same training program described above and an improved filter a company can get one qualified graduate for every two people it sends through the program. On the first day of work he company has invested $50 000 in this new jr programmer. Alternatively, the company could offer a generous, $30 000-40 000, signing bonus to new qualified jr programmers and pocket the difference. Hey can also structure the terms of this bonus so that it is spread over one to two years to incentivize retention.

There are lots of real world training programs with qualified, motivated students that have high failure/drop out ratios so I'd say 2:1 is reasonable here.

I'm not saying that paid training is a bad idea. I am saying that it doesn't make sense for most companies currently and they will continue to use cheaper alternatives while they exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> When it comes to economic decisions, supply/demand is only one factor. Price always matters - because businesses that choose to locate in high cost of living areas are hiring human beings who have their own to pay, and regardless of how many engineers exist in the market, those expenses are fixed. So either companies pay up to get employees who can afford 3k/month 1 bedroom apartments near their SF office, or they don't. There are solutions to this problem, but it's not a supply problem.

</comment><comment><USER65> This is very correct. I feel in East Coast and other parts of US besides California companies are underpaying their engineers and expect to get talented people for a low annual salary. From experience this is especially true in New York City where engineers in big banks get underpaid a lot and could earn double the salary if they worked in California.

</comment><comment><USER66> I'm not exactly sure there's a shortage in tech workers. There is however, a shortage in quality tech workers. I have been on the interview loop at my company and we've been having lots of new college grads and junior software engineers (and a handful of senior ones) who come in for interviews, but only ~10% of them are quality.

As for H1Bs taking up American jobs, I'm also not sure that's really an issue. Assuming H1Bs were abolished, and existing H1Bs were told to go back to their countries, would companies be able to fill that void - are there actually that many skilled tech workers out there that aren't H1B? I'm curious....

<comment><USER67> If wages rise there are.

There's a giant pool of highly skilled workers -- including friends of mine who've left the bay area -- living in the south, west, and midwest, because of the insane cost of living in the bay area. Fix that, and I personally know 4 very good senior (10+ years) engineers who would happily move back. But not for $120k, and not even for $200k, as long as a 3 bed condo on the peninsula costs $800k and comes with a 1.5 to 2 hour commute into sf for both parents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> There is no shortage of computer programmers. There is a distinct shortage of _good_ programmers.

</comment><comment><USER69> For what it's worth, thought I'd drop a bit of my story here since April. I interviewed at Dropbox, ebay, Netflix and others after losing my job. American, FWIW, with a California birth certificate and everything if it matters. Did I get a job offer?

Not a single one.

More than a dozen interviews, zero offers but I can find consulting offers (with far, far lower hourly wage than in 2006-2009 last time I did consulting). I have friends who have been unable to find work also, with skills, experience and blue chip, so to speak, resumes. Somehow saying we need more skilled workers when folks in Silicon Valley with a decade of experience who have worked for, and been given awards by, the biggest names in tech only means that employers want it cheaper.

A friend on an H1B who lost their job? Gainfully employed in less than a month after losing theirs, then again, they have to be seriously motivated else they get shipped away. Until the new immigration policy gets passed where we export jobless Californians to Oregon, my only option was to rebuild a consulting business.

Funniest thing is, now that I'm an "Agency," again, I've had a list of people wanting me to hire them. So it certainly feels like there is a lot more unemployment out there than what I read in the media, at least with my experience...of course, YMMV.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, I don't think your not being offered a job has anything to do with your nationality. You might not be what they are looking for, plain and simple. I wondered since you have 10 years of experience and are probably interviewing for a senior position, maybe these were being filled with H1B workers? From anecdotal evidence, that does not seem to be the case. Every company I've worked for has had ~90% senior devs Americans. Management has been even more so.

I might be wrong here, but I thought H1B labor was overwhelmingly being used to fill lower paid, entry level or short-project kinda work and not being used to replace full time employment. Again, from anecdotal evidence, most companies I've worked with have always tried to hire domestically. And many of the jobs I've applied to, the recruiter outright told me that they wouldn't even consider noncitizens/non-gc holders.

<comment><USER69> I could be a full blown (insert explitive here) but I won't mention the name of the company that they got hired at. Ironically, I also interviewed at same company, though six months prior when I had a full time job.

Immigration is a tricky, tricky issue. When living overseas, the ambassador from another country dropped a proverbial bombshell about the human trafficking in the country where I lived. To whit, when living in Costa Rica myself, I only found out on exit from the country my former employer never got me a work permit - eg, I was working there illegally. I'd love to say yes, no fault of my own, but I should have investigated the situation myself. Lesson learned.

So having worked in labor myself a bit (helping people get jobs) and been on multiple sides of various business disputes in various countries...well, the situation in US employment in Silicon Valley is quite puzzling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> > "The real issue, say Salzman and others, is the industry's desire for lower- > wage, more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American > staff. 'It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost > labor'"

That has to be BS. Industry leaders and investors want to expand the labor pool in the name of diversity, not to suppress wages. It's all about justice, not profits. Someone better flag/kill this article, I'm offended.

<comment><USER71> what candy land do you live in?

<comment><USER72> After doing a double-take on it, I'm sure the post is sarcasm.

<comment><USER42> Sarcasm generally doesn't go over too well over here..

<comment><USER3> Too many crazy posters who are dead serious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> This article is ridiculous. As a founder of a small startup in the bay-area, I can tell you it's absolutely impossible to find mid-level engineers experienced with Javascript, Node, Go, RoR, etc.

And if you can, you're paying 30-50% more than just a year ago.

<comment><USER74> I assume you mean JavaScript and one of Node, Go, RoR, etc. as a server-side language. If you mean the subset of engineers who are proficient in all of those, then that's a pretty small set, but I assume you don't.

What is your standard for a mid-level engineer, and what would their salary range be?

If I were to introduce you to some mid-level or upper-level talent, would you pay typical recruiting fees plus provide some employment security to my associates who pass your hiring process? Some startups have high turnover and I wouldn't want to damage their career if you change your mind after hiring them.</comment></comment>


Google Profits Surge on Strong Ad Demand - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-profits-surge-on-strong-ad-demand-1469736762 <comment><USER2> Amazon, Facebook , Google - three stocks to rule the world. They cannot do any wrong, and I don't mean that sarcastically. Buying these stocks is like investing in the companies that are building the matrix, but it's real life.

It's just nuts..even Microsoft and Cisco in the 90's..the growth was finite, but there is no limit to Facebook, Google and Amazon. Every quarter is a crusher..over and over, year after year.

Just when you think their growth is 'stalled out', something new comes along. Now it's mobile.

The small mobile screen is perfect for advertising. Adsense ads are everywhere. Sometimes major brands try adsense alternatives but always go back because adsense pays the most and has the most advertisers.

<comment><USER3> > in the 90's..the growth was finite, but there is no limit to Facebook, > Google and Amazon.

"This time, it's different."

<comment><USER4> Reminds me of the phrase,

 _" When your barber starts giving you stock tips, it's time to sell"_

<comment><USER5> What if the barber is the one who said this?

<comment><USER6> Russell's lesser-known paradox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mobile app ads keep paying more and more. I'm regularly getting $1 per click, and sometimes as high as $5 (finance category). I can't remember ever getting this much for websites. I'm using google admob

<comment><USER8> What? That's seems absurdly high..

<comment><USER9> It's not.

"Insurance", "loans", "mortgage" are all $44+ per click.

Some very specialized one like "mesothelioma suit" are $800+. Even misspellings like "mesotheliama" are $600+.

<comment><USER10> [https://www.adgooroo.com/resources/blog/the-most- expensive-k...](https://www.adgooroo.com/resources/blog/the-most-expensive- keywords-in-paid-search-by-cost-per-click-and-ad-spend/)

[https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/31/the-most- expensive-...](https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/31/the-most- expensive-100-google-adwords-keywords-in-the-us/)

mesothelioma cases must be quite lucrative for them to spend this kind of money.

This is the one of the saddest data table I've seen in awhile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sometimes I click ads just to give money to Google.

<comment><USER12> Sometimes I click ads just to make advertisers pay.

<comment><USER13> Sometimes you both help pay my salary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does internet advertising work, or is it possible that companies are buying more in desperation? If the latter, it will peak just before it crashes.

<comment> angry-hacker Majority of people pay for ads if they earn more doing so. The cost of ads tells us it works for a lot of people and companies.

Maybe big brands pay over, or pay for just to be everywhere, but I wouldn't call it desperation.

Yes, Internet advertising works surprisingly well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Its so bizarre to me. You'd think there would be a finite appetite for advertising, but apparently not.

<comment><USER15> There can be both a finite appetite for advertising and increasing Google revenue as long as Google is either making advertising more effective (expanding the market), taking revenue from other publishers (controlling the market), or making money outside of advertising.

Some random stats I found estimate that advertising is currently a $500B yearly industry, which means Google is only 15% of the industry.

<comment><USER16> Right, I found estimates of $600B yearly ad spend. To put that into context, total annual spending (aka world GDP) is over $70T, meaning that less that 1% of all spending in the world is on advertising.

<comment><USER17> And you can probably slap another one or two dozen trillion dollars onto that surface GDP figure. The underground / black market economy is very, very substantial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> PokemonGo just got a callout in the earnings call.

<comment><USER19> I don't understand your comment. It got a "callout in the earnings call", what does that mean? Does the "earnings call" refer to a part of the article I can't read (paywall) or are you making an assumption about this being because of PokemonGo and Google/Alphabet internally mentioning PokemonGo in a conference call?

<comment><USER20> Alphabet 2016 Q2 Earnings Call: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVpWjo023cE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVpWjo023cE)

<comment><USER19> Another comment linked the Wikipedia, I understand now. Thanks for responding!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ah. Yes. "Thank you" for enriching so much my life.

[http://imgur.com/MpO82Ta](http://imgur.com/MpO82Ta)

<comment><USER22> I don't think those are actually Google ads. I went to techcrunch and clicked on the AdChoices icon and they all popped up non-google info.

<comment><USER23> Yup. Looks like I got linked to adinfo.aol.com on both mobile and desktop. The AdChoices icon is common across many platforms (it's from the Digital Advertising Alliance), their list of members is pretty huge[0].

[0] [http://www.aboutads.info/participating](http://www.aboutads.info/participating)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Serious question: How does Google's ad revenue increase when Google themselves were saying people aren't clicking on adwords as much when searching in mobile? Also when people are using voice search such as Siri or Google Now, they are not even seeing the ad results.

<comment><USER25> AdWords has been making several big pushes over the last few years that contribute to this.

Among them:

\- Pushing advertisers to advertise higher up in the funnel with additional clicks. Things like the push for "ZMOT" (Zero Moment of Truth) and such focus on the branding side of things before people are ready to convert. Google has long had advertisers focus primarily on last click conversions which does not play nicely with tracking for brand efforts.

\- Video ad pushes by reps have been pretty big. Video CPMs are much higher than static display images, and that is also why you see every publisher under the sun having a a video for every article that autoplays even if it is a useless annoying video. And why they are looking into auto-generated videos.

\- Turning previously free resources into paid plays (Google Product Search)

My gut right now in terms of their future monetization is the continued transition of Gmail from a "regular" mail platform into an algorithmic feed where advertisers have to pay a dynamic, auction-based payment model to get into the inbox. The Promotions tab is the first step in that direction. Gmail ads have been the next step. I would expect them to start adding them spread out through your inbox feed in the not too distant future, and then start drastically tapering brand reach unless you pay up like FB has done.

Additionally, their push for bots and voice search is to have people ask questions and just provide the answer and not give a list of choices. They want to know you well enough where they can guess right, but the options they provide are all paid placements, so you get the most relevant paid placement. It won't happen now, but once voice assistants are an integral part of the mobile experience that people can't live without and Google succeeds in owning the space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It is time for them to go for the big kill and aquire Twitter. Twitter can benefit from Google's Machine Learning competency and Google can benefit from Twitter's social network competency. They should do this before Mark Zuckerberg's offer they cant refuse.

<comment><USER27> How? Twitter's data is already publicly available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As a Google shareholder this is great news, but now I'm starting to feel that the market is underestimating the chance that someone simply builds a better search engine.

For example, here are 3 search queries I recently performed where I found Google's results lacking:

1\. What is the best Thai restaurant within 10 kilometres?

2\. What companies have a market cap greater than Microsoft?

3\. Does Android track my location by default?

In each case I don't want to see a list of web pages - I want a single one- sentence answer (like I would get for "what is the height of the Eiffel Tower?"). Something like Wolfram Alpha on steroids.

No doubt Google is working on this problem, but what is the chance someone else beats them to it? And how much damage would it cause Google if they do?

<comment><USER29> Heyo, I tried the "Best Thai Restaurant near me" and got a result with a list, pins on a map, etc. So, it could be a query thing. (screenshot) [https://www.dropbox.com/s/lr01wno3aqskoan/Screen%20Shot%2020...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/lr01wno3aqskoan/Screen%20Shot%202016-07-28%20at%206.13.04%20PM.png?dl=0)

This worked across desktop and mobile. You're right, that it doesn't handle specifically within 10km, but I thought I would mention it if it was an acute need!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> After hours is through the roof. It's currently at $808 as of this time. I wouldn't be surprised if Google is the world's most valuable company tomorrow.

<comment><USER28> Apple still beats them, I think. At $808 Google's market cap would be around $550 billion, while Apple's is currently around $600 billion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> paywall;dr

Could major election year be a significant contributor?

<comment><USER32> Cofounder/owner of large political ad exchange here. Yes, the election is a major contributor. But not in the quarter Google is reporting on now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Facebook, Google, Amazon all surge! Why?

<comment><USER34> They made more money than the markets expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wish I could get a job at Google :(

<comment><USER36> Why can't you?

<comment><USER35> Too anxious to interview.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is all good news for our industry. Soft numbers among the top players trickle down in the form of reduced demand and investor interest for earlier stage companies. Good numbers send a signal that the industry is healthy.

Edit: wow stepped on a mysterious hater button. :P

<comment><USER38> Or it could be a sign that the industry is consolidating and that there's no point in investing in non-FANGAM companies.

<comment><USER39> > FANGAM

Does Netflix fit in that top-6?

<comment><USER40> It's probably on there due to it's disruptive nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> In other words, Google profits surge because it is using TensorFlow to accurately predict how to price ads to maximize revenue.

<comment><USER42> That's not how it works at all. It's a market: there is a limited supply of impressions/clicks, and it is _buyers_ who decide the price. Buyers are rational -- I like to take that charitable view at least -- and are bidding less than the value to their businesses of those clicks. CPCs are actually down on average. If that's true, then it must be simply inventory growth: mobile is providing ever more interaction points with consumers.

<comment><USER41> Market prices are determined by the intersection of supply and demand, so it is not just the buyers who choose. Google has some say over the supply. They may increase or decrease the supply based on behavior they sense more broadly in search.

It's amazing to see on HN that some of the times I am most right, I am also most downvoted. Life lessons...

<comment><USER13> Well Google is the intermediary. They can (and undoubtedly do) directly affect supply, demand, and price. They can purchase ad space from a publisher for $0.45, mark it up x, and sell it. They can slow demand by temporarily (even for seconds at a time) by increasing cpc. They can lower supply by lower bids. They could in theory even pre-sell ads when supply is in excess.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building Codes for Bacterial Cities: Biofilms as Bacterial Fortresses - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/building-codes-for-bacterial-cities-20170725/ <comment><AUTHOR> Key paragraph:

Biofilms are everywhere. Far from being rare alternatives to the lone microbe swimming in a flask or sprawled in a Petri dish, 99.9 percent of the simple cells called prokaryotes default to living in close quarters among millions of their compatriots. These biofilms of clustering bacteria can create impossible-to-eradicate infections on central lines and catheters; they foul everything from sewer lines to our teeth. The billions of bacteria that can live in a single biofilm cover themselves with a sticky combination of sugar and protein called the extracellular matrix, which effectively glues them to their surface of choice. Both the matrix and the physical shape of the biofilm protect those cells living at the center of the structure from attack by predators and antibiotics. The size of the biofilm and the interaction of cells within it give the different cells the opportunity to specialize in a particular task, such as acquiring food, subverting predators or acting as a reservoir of genetic material from which to regrow the entire structure.</comment>


Are employees of YC companies allowed at YC events? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> There's no rule one way or the other. So far there hasn't had to be, because none of them have that many employees. I doubt it will ever be enough of an issue that we have to think about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, at least for most values of "event", and at least for early employees.

What sorts of events are you asking about?

<comment><AUTHOR> The dinners mostly. I'm mainly asking about equality.. My current employment's management has a bad habit of looking down on the implementors. It seems like if employees are segregated in YC companies ( _These_ guys are eligible to attend, but _they_ are not) then it would naturally lead to some problems.

Any startup I work with will get my deepest trust and hardest work. My life will revolve around the company succeeding. So - sorry if I sound a bit.. um.. arrogant - I expect nothing less than complete trust and equality in return.

I'm totally bored with life in the midwest. Where I work there are about ten programmers. We all work on this long row of tables stacked end-to-end, in one room - no walls between us. Everyone's talking and yelling all the time. It's so noisy that I can hardly focus at any given time. One of them has this great habit of yelling "FUCK!" at least once a day when something he's doing doesn't work out. And he yells _really_ loudly.

So I need a change and I'm ready to devote myself to something brilliant, not to churn out mediocre crap day after day, working on a product that crashes every other day. But I couldn't totally devote myself if I wasn't trusted and equal.. could you?

Sorry that this turned into a personal account.. I just needed to vent and hope that maybe somewhere, finally, a company can treat its employees as equals to the management.

<comment><USER3> If you join while the startup is in the YC Founders Program [1], you're pretty much a cofounder, even if you have less equity than other employees. In that case, yes, you get to go to the dinners.

1\. The Founders Program is the 3 month program that YC runs.

<comment><USER4> What about early employees who join after the Founders Program?

<comment><USER3> There are no dinners after the Founders Program. There are some other invitation-only events like the reception on the night before Startup School, but I _assume_ that employees of YC companies will _most of the time_ be allowed to attend these events. As Paul said in another post, "There's no rule one way or the other. So far there hasn't had to be, because none of them have that many employees. I doubt it will ever be enough of an issue that we have to think about it."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


FCC votes unanimously in favor of using whitespace for 'super WiFi' - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/23/fcc-votes-unanimously-in-favor-of-using-whitespace-for-super-wi/

<comment><USER2> From the title I thought that the FCC ruled on 'super WiFi' over 'superWiFi'

<comment><USER3> So what exactly is "Whitespace airwaves"?

<comment><USER4> Area in the spectrum normally reserved for television, but not intentionally actively used by television broadcasters.

Simplified (it _used_ to work this way, now it's slightly more complicated), each television channel frequency required a certain small range (the tuner frequency +/- a certain number of MHz) to carry its signal. Ideally, the affected range of spectrum wouldn't exceed that specced amount, but electronics aren't perfect, and RF is a tricky matter.

In practice, you tend to see splatter near a particular channel, outside its allotted frequency range. Furthermore, receivers have to filter out any signal not within the frequency range for the channel they want to watch, but the filtering circuitry (called a bandpass filter) will tend to cause distortions within the intended frequency range the better they are at filtering frequencies outside that range. There are also other complicating factors, like signal overloading receivers, and mis-tuned transmitters.

This resulted in a margin space between channels, so that adjacent channels would interfere with each other less. As receiver electronics have gotten better, more selective and more error tolerant, these margin spaces became less necessary, and we have space in the spectrum that's no longer required for its original purpose of providing a margin.

That space is your 'whitespace'.

<comment><USER5> _" As receiver electronics have gotten better, more selective and more error tolerant, these margin spaces became less necessary..."_

More to the point, as the technology used to broadcast has completely changed from analog to digital the margin spaces have become completely unnecessary. Additionally, digital television does not use the entire spectrum previously allocated to analog broadcasts.

Edit: additionally, in locations where there aren't local television broadcasts on certain channels those channels can be used for wifi.

<comment><USER4> Digital signal transmission tends to include an increase in error tolerance, which I mentioned. The margin reduces the strain on the error tolerance, which is also needed to cope with signal loss issues.

So, no, the margin spaces aren't completely unnecessary with digital signaling.

Furthermore, I'll pick a couple nits and point out that it's only television broadcasting which has completely switched to digital in the US. AM/FM radio is still analog by definition, and there are large swaths of spectrum which use those and other signaling methods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where does the rest of the world fit into this? Do other countries copy the FCC restrictions? If not, why haven't "super WiFi" devices already been built in countries that already had this spectrum open?

<comment><USER7> There is some degree of international coordination under the International Telecommunication Union (radio waves don't really recognize national borders), but individual countries still have leeway to make their own internal rules. There is also some international cooperation aimed at keeping people from stepping on each others toes (e.g. I cannot use part of the 70cm amateur allocation because I am too close to Canada who makes different use of those frequencies). That said, as far as I can tell, it seems rules adopted by a significant number of countries (or a number of significant countries) are likely to become international.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Opening up the 2.4ghz spectrum to everyone didn't create ubiquitous free internet, nor even ubiquitous free-with-ads internet. Why are some postulating that this will mean the end of cellular carriers and that phones will somehow use this spectrum for free?

In terms of utilizing frequencies that can provide connections over longer range than 2.4GHz, that's exactly what WiMax already is. And WiMax specs aren't leading us towards any kind of free internet, they're the new high priced 4G service you now buy from the same cell companies as always.

<comment><USER5> I wish I had the expertise or the time to give a better rebuttal to this, instead I'll just point out a few things:

First, the 2.4ghz spectrum is not the best for wireless comms, there were many reasons for opening up that spectrum and very few of those reasons were because it was an optimal signal frequency.

Second, bandwidth. The 2.4ghz spectrum is confined within an 82mhz band. The available whitespace spectrum has a significantly larger bandwidth.

Third, technology. 802.11b and g are based on technology that is now stale by more than a decade. Today's wireless broadband tech makes those protocols look like a 56k modem.

The combination of these factors allows for stunning possibilities. More efficient broadband technologies, better broadcast frequencies, more bandwidth. These allow for more users with higher data rates at farther distances from base stations. It also makes things like bridging access points a lot easier. There's little reason to believe that in 10 years whitespace broadband access points won't be utterly ubiquitous.

As for WiMax, that's not open spectrum, consumers can't buy a WiMax AP on newegg. That makes it an entirely different beast.

<comment><USER9> In large cities there is less than 82 MHz of white space available AFAIK. Also, white space channels are 6 MHz wide while 802.11 channels are 20 MHz.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If Google runs Android, and builds out an ad-supported "super wifi" network what value do traditional carriers bring? Infrastructure for relays?</comment>


Mozilla will put ads directly into Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformation-with-users-at-the-center <comment><USER2> On one level, this is No Big Deal -- it's comparable to the default bookmarks that other browsers include for CNN, NYTimes, etc. Though it never occurred to me before to wonder if those bookmarks were paid placement. How naive.

These tiles are even less persistent than default bookmarks. They get replaced as a side effect of user activity, instead of requiring manual removal. They're also visually inoffensive in their current sampled form.

I'm cool with revenue diversification and growth. I'll take it on faith that options-to-Google are not as ready and assured as we often assume them to be. I'm less convinced that Mozilla needs hundreds of million dollars to operate in the first place, but on the assumption that our interests in the expenditure of that money are vaguely aligned, I won't begrudge them their fundraising success.

The part that really bothers me is the tone of delivery. "User enhancing"?? I don't feel enhanced in the least, and I deeply worry about there being someone with any influence at Mozilla who can use that phrase (in this context) without being run out of town on a pike.

The entire messaging is terrible, and terrible in a way that suggests a huge cultural dissonance between the Mozilla we knew and the Mozilla that is presenting itself. The question is, which is more correct? And that's a Problem.

Who is in charge over there these days? Did they really give some dude from the ad business free reign over organizational messaging?

This feels like Mozilla's John Browett moment. Their next steps will say a lot.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      Excited to share the launch of @mozilla @firefox Tiles
      program, the first of our user-enhancing programs

[https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/433320156496789504](https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/433320156496789504)

I don't know what I am concerned more about - the "first of" or the disingenuous and sleazy attempt to masquerade paid content as something that users need or want.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what bothered me so much about it. Of course now the ads are still in a kind of unobtrusive placement. But once they're started... Where will this end?

<comment><USER4> I'll just be positive here and say that it's Mozilla and not Facebook. They'll likely think of a good solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All the post say is Mozilla will sell initial placement on the new tab screen for new users (space now given free of charge to a Google search box)

All browsers already put some sites in the favorites, specially mobile stock browsers. What's so outrageous about that?

<comment><USER6> Usually those sites are related to the browser such as browser extensions page or support resources. Directory Tiles will display "sponsored content." This is clearly different from the browsers that I use.

<comment><USER7> Yes? Reset my Safari gives the following stock tiles:

* Apple homepage

* iCloud homepage

* Facebook (third party, commercial)

* Twitter (third party, commercial)

* Wikipedia (third party, non-profit)

* Yahoo (third party, commercial)

So half of what a reset Safari gives me are pages of obvious commercial interest and probably bought by those companies.

<comment><USER5> comparing freedom from firefox to safari? really?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mozilla doing "ads" is not the same thing as Google doing "ads", yet no one gives a flying fuck about Google's intentions.

Sometimes the tech world acts like a bunch of 4-year old children. I am sick of it.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. I understand why they might want to be less depended on Google. Last year, having Google as their primary search engine, gave Mozilla $311M. If Google backs out, they want to earn money some how else, this is a great non- intrusive way to do so.

<comment><USER10> You missed the point of the backlash. It's not people rejecting the ads per se, more rejecting the manner in which the changes are presented as being 'pro-user'. If the marketing guy had any sense of what the Mozilla fanbase is like he'd understand why he should've just been honest about wanting to ensure Mozilla can get funding from multiple sources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use Firefox because I think it is good enough and second I want to have certain control at the software I am using, being it open source. Now do I expect Mozilla to keep running a company without generating revenue to only to stay up? Remember 90 percent of Mozilla revenues come from Google. They must diversify, and if Firefox is smart enough with ads placement, which considering their stellar record at keeping the customers first is undeniable, I am backing Mozilla up. Yes to competition, yes to open web.

<comment><USER12> but WHY the masquerade, "user first", comeon' \--- are you kidding me!

why the hell didn't Mozilla say - "hey we need to diversify our source of Benjamin's, so we're putting ads"

<comment><USER13> Because more money to spend by Mozilla means more and better products for its users. Minor inconvenience in UI will result in overall larger benefits for the userbase. It is obvious if you put aside the ads-hating generators.

<comment><USER12> you think ADS will have a BETTER experience for a NEW user?

what comes after "ADS", "BETTER ADS" then "TARGETED ADS" then...

so, they should say it to "their" [what's left of em'] users face, don't you think so?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXoNE14U_zM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXoNE14U_zM)

<comment><USER11> Do you have a model for revenue generation other than ads except for asking users to pay some dollars? I will love to know.

<comment><USER12> SURE you need money to do great things - but hey, what i have a problem with is how they/he announced the NEWS

did you ever expected THIS kind of DOGGY release from MOZILLA?

<comment><USER13> >> did you ever expected THIS kind of DOGGY release from MOZILLA?

I have NOT expected that Mozilla will release their canines into the wild internetz. That definitely may contradict generally accepted paradigm that internet is feline-dominated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is only for new users, if you already use firefox the tile boxes won't be empty and you won't probably see ads. If this helps Mozilla bring me a better user experience, faster browser and a continued focus on the user I all down with it.

However, if they should continue to deliver ads in more destructive ways I think it's time for a new browser.

</comment><comment><USER15> As far as I'm understanding this, it seems like these Directory Tiles would be replaced over time with your own most visited websites just like they would normally. They just pad out the new tab page for new installs temporarily. Is this really so bad?

</comment><comment><USER16> As a general rule of thumb, any time a company is "really excited about" something, it is probably a bad thing.

<comment><USER17> Not always. Steve Jobs was an example. You can have a visionary CEO who really cares about a product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Filling whitespace with advertising is not helping the first time user, it is adding clutter and confusion. Minimalism or chrome-lessness is what modern browsers are aiming for. Let's not reverse the trend and fall-back to the days of Internet Explorer with dozens of assorted bookmarks and desktop icons.

</comment><comment><USER18> Title misleading.

It's a landing page like browsers have had for years.

Based on the title I thought they would ad an advertisement somewhere into the firefox chrome.

All the article says is that they're going to have a 'new tab' page that has some default tiles that are sponsored by sponsors.

Wow. Big Deal.

</comment><comment><USER19> Mozilla sell-out to the media and advertising industry has started - why did they get Darren Herman on board? Wasn't it clear that his work only be in favour of the industry and not really the user?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, my hard earned and then donated money being used to pay a fucking VP of marketing under the newspeak title of content services VP is a joke.

Good bye to this year donation. Wikipedia will get double this tax season.

<comment><USER19> The whole article is newspeak and double-speak at its best, I can't believe it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The inability of most HN commenters to consider long term benefits of including unobstrusive sponsored content in Firefox or opportunity cost of not including such sponsored content is suprising to me.

<comment><USER19> The inability to see a slippery slope is suprising to me.

<comment><USER13> Yes, the slippery slope of a non-profit with great track record earning more money to fund its activities that are beneficial to society at large by inconveniencing some portion of its users by unobtrusive ads. The horror!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If displaying sponsored tiles within Firefox is to make any impact beyond sounding scandalous to it's user-base, it has already failed. Firefox is a program for people who actively avoid these things and custom tailor their web browsing experience.

Mozilla would be better off filling those blank tiles with donate links.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a single step, it doesn't bother me really.

But as a part of an overall bad strategy, I definitely dislike it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Doesn't (or didn't) Google pay to be the search engine by default? Is this different?

I've donated to Firefox. I'd pay for an Ad free version but I don't have any problem with them doing this if it funds them in a meaningful way.

<comment><USER23> Around 90% of mozilla's budget comes from the search deal with google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What was wrong with the honest: "We'll show ads to the first-time Firefox users, so we can make extra money with our free product. We'll show ads only once"?

"User-first" bit is the textbook example of PRspeak.

<comment><USER17> The PRspeak bothered me more than the ads. Did the writer really think anyone will buy the "users at the center" bit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Thanks for the translation; some of us are not as fluent in Marketroid. It's obvious that soulless automata like Darren are up to no good, but it's hard to translate what they emit:

> As VP of Content Services, Darren Herman is responsible for diversifying > revenue and sustaining Mozilla's mission through innovation in content and > personalization products and services.

</comment><comment><USER26> Seriously, what happend to the world. Mozilla was always my loved open source Browser of choice. What they are doing now with arguments about Costa is such a step in the wrong direction and cant even find suitable words. I will find a replacement. Rip firefox

<comment><USER12> if Mozilla goes to the "other side" so be it, but guess what

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvaaGhfjrgs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvaaGhfjrgs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Linux distros will not ship ads that kick money to individual components. The only way this will land in e.g. Fedora is if Firefox pulls the ad-laden page from Mozillas servers during startup. And I don't see them being too happy with even that.

</comment><comment><USER28> On the other hand, there's a perfect opportunity here for someone to do the Linux Mint thing and provide a ad-stripped alternate version of Firefox for people.

</comment><comment><USER29> "we think they'd agree that users' interests should come first"

No, they don't. They care about making a buck.

<comment><USER13> Yes, the non-profit cares about making a buck. Nice logic.

<comment><USER29> They are selling advertising. If they didn't care about money, they wouldn't be doing that. Logical enough for you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So, Mozilla now changed from non-profit into ads-profit. Oh, great.

<comment><USER4> Consider they're pretty much the only big non-profit in a market that's being ruled by giant corporations. If they have to act to hold their stand against them, that's still better than vanishing. I don't want a web without Mozilla, to be honest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So how did this story vanish from the front page suddenly?

</comment><comment><USER31> That should be nasty, hope they doesn't make it like the old shareware.

It brings a few other issues too, since it is opensource people will download alternative builds without the ads.

<comment><USER32> I am sure it will be easy to opt-out, either by going to the Preferences panel or by an obscure about:config option.

<comment><USER19> That's the point, it's 'easy' for those who care, but 99% won't be able to change it easily...

<comment><USER33> If the only ones who don't know how to change it are the ones who don't care, what does it matter?

<comment><USER19> Only caring for yourself isn't helping your others in a global society, ever.

<comment><USER34> Our world is full of adverts, most people aren't even going to blink if a couple more appear somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> and this is announced after February 11

"really excited about..." \- it's inevitable :(</comment>


Maybe (the) most menacing massively majestic multicast managing monster  ever - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/troglobit/smcroute/releases/tag/2.1.0 <comment><AUTHOR> First post. Just wanted to let every fan of multicast on UNIX know that the static multicast routing daemon, smcroute, is now available in a very anticipated release - v2.1.0

A few highlights: possible to run on more interfaces (including interfaces w/o address yet), TTL scoping, disable on ALL or selected interfaces. Executing scripts on matching (*,G) routes, and more ... soon in Debian release near you.

<comment><USER2> The title of the main project ("SMCRoute - A static multicast route tool") probably would make a better title for the submission because it contains at least some hint what it is about ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> But it doesn't describe how awesome it is? ;)</comment></comment></comment>


V86 – An x86-compatible CPU and hardware emulator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/copy/v86/blob/master/Readme.md <comment><USER2> Really cool, but perhaps the title should indicate that this is an emulator that works in the browser? Perhaps a short description at the top of the readme before the demos?

<comment><USER3> Also, minimum HD requirements to run this. Otherwise, all my Firefox windows went 'Han Solo' on me ... But I think this is an awesome project, author must have learned quite a bit getting this running!

<comment><USER2> Pardon, I am unfamiliar with what it means to go "Han Solo"? Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER4> Frozen in carbonite? Just a guess.

<comment><USER3> Yup, FF simply froze ...

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I checked out urban dictionary and got the impression that perhaps you had expressed your love to your computer and it didn't return it in kind... same thing I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slightly off-topic, but back in the day "V86" (or "VM86") used to refer to the 80386 CPU's inbult 8086 hardware virtualization mechanism: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_8086_mode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_8086_mode)

<comment><USER6> One of the things that AMD broke in x86-64, and after that, both AMD and Intel decided to develop a new virtualisation mechanism completely incompatible both with V86 and each other (VT-x, AMD-V)... I think V86 mode was definitely far less appreciated than it should've been.

On the other hand, I couldn't get a working command prompt in the Win98 demo, so it seems V86 does not emulate V86 quite right. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really cool, I'm amazed at how smooth it runs Windows 98 in a browser.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly the popup about copy.sh having control of the cursor was somehow overlaid _above_ my Firefox titlebar, tabs, and addressbar. Didn't know that was possible.

GIF: [http://i.imgur.com/giCT1nI.gif](http://i.imgur.com/giCT1nI.gif)

<comment><USER9> It's the pointer lock API:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_Loc...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_Lock_API)

The browser tells you when a page calls requestPointerLock(), and tells you how to exit it, similar to the fullscreen API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Booting Windows 98 in Firefox on a smart phone is a real tangible reminder of how far things have come in my lifetime.

<comment><USER11> Circa 2009, playing 80486-era Master of Orion II on the Nokia N800 using a DOS emulator. 400MHz ARM tablet, actually playable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How much work would be required to allow network access from one of these emulated machines? Could it be done over websockets (via a proxy)?

EDIT: After reading the docs, it seems that this is already implemented (via websockets, too!): [https://github.com/copy/v86/blob/master/docs/networking.md](https://github.com/copy/v86/blob/master/docs/networking.md)

<comment><USER13> > How much work would be required ...

Can't speak to his NIC emulation (unless he borrowed it from jor1k), but otherwise it'd take roughly a flight from PDX to CHS for the NIC, plus another 2-3 hours for a dead simple virtual switch, plus a few days of watching the switch crash in various odd ways while HN, Reddit, and Slashdot beat it up.

Edit: If anyone is keen to experiment around with v86, jor1k, or a similar project and you want plug-n-play network support, I maintain the websocket proxy used by jor1k (and probably used by v86 in some demo or another). As far as I'm concerned, please no commercial use (I've made it stupid easy to host your own for that), but otherwise as long as you're not doing stupid things with it that will cause me to lose my hosting account, go nuts! To use it just start sending/reading ethernet frames to/from wss://relay.widgetry.org/.

Also if you do use it, please flick me a message (e-mail is in my profile) to let me know what you're doing with it and how you're getting on.

<comment><USER14> Bro, How much time does it need to replicate a project like V86? I have close to 6 years in C++. I work for intel/amd but not on emulation, I do HW design. I want to know if this can be completed in 4-6 months doing work on the night only..

TIA.

<comment> s-macke Just take a look at the link to the third talk I gave a few days ago about jor1k.

[https://github.com/s-macke/jor1k/wiki/Technical- details](https://github.com/s-macke/jor1k/wiki/Technical-details)

This talk give a few details about time frames and what someone has to do to emulate such a machine. If it is just about booting Linux you can do it in around 2000 lines (first commit of jor1k) if you take an easy architecture such as OpenRISC. Take a look at slide no. 10 and you might get an idea about the complexity of the other architectures. Slight 15 and 16 give you an idea why OpenRISC can be emulated much faster than any other architecture. A downside of such an non-mainstream CPU is less support. Indeed as Benjamin said, at least 50% of the time went into bugfixing and enhancing the toolchain. In the end the MIPS architecture might be optimal for a fast emulation and a well maintained toolchain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> No big deal... just running windows98 on my phone...

</comment><comment><USER16> Awesome project. I tested it with a 32 bit version of android-x86 and managed to get a mangled booting screen.

It would be so cool if android apps could run in the browser in the future with this tech.

</comment><comment><USER17> Crazy. This one also worked on my iPhone with some kinks on the mouse.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sheep.exe! I missed you!

</comment><comment><USER19> didnt take long to crash it [http://i.imgur.com/X8Qc8TS.png](http://i.imgur.com/X8Qc8TS.png)

</comment><comment><USER20> Amazed how fast this is on my 2011 laptop...

</comment><comment><USER21> Not compatible with Firefox... This error in JS console:

TypeError: a.table[b] is not a function

Works in Chromium though.

</comment><comment><USER22>
        > Author
        >
        > Fabian Hemmer (http://copy.sh/, firstname.lastname@example.com)

That's not Fabrice Bellard[1]...

[1]: [http://bellard.org/](http://bellard.org/)

[edit]: The submission title has now been edited to no longer say this is a project by Fabrice Bellard.

<comment><USER23> Didn't Fabrice do something very similar something like 3 to 4 years back ?

<comment><USER24> Are you thinking about JSLinux? [http://bellard.org/jslinux/](http://bellard.org/jslinux/)

It does sound similar to the underlying PC emulator ([http://bellard.org/jslinux/tech.html](http://bellard.org/jslinux/tech.html)) and Bellard does indeed list v86 in section "Similar Projects (Several other PC or Linux emulators are now available)"

The v86 project's initial release was late 2013 ([https://github.com/copy/v86/commit/8180d49f24833fc6cc05a9025...](https://github.com/copy/v86/commit/8180d49f24833fc6cc05a90253a1f57f9045a4f5)) about 2 years after Bellard's ([http://bellard.org/jslinux/news.html](http://bellard.org/jslinux/news.html))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd personally prefer links to GitHub projects go to their main page rather than the Readme.md since the main page has the Readme.md displayed anyways.

</comment><comment><USER26> > by Fabrice Bellard

huh?

</comment><comment><USER27> The "Why" section in the Readme doesn't quite explain the need for this. Can someone shed light on how and why this is useful

Thanks

<comment><USER3> When you have to ask "Why", you usually are not part of 'target audience' for this type of thing :)

All jokes aside,this is a pretty big achievement for a given programmer to complete and denotes quite a bit of technical chops on many level (hardware, systems, OS, and web dev).

<comment><USER27> Ah ok - "if you're not the target customer, no need to explain the product to you". Great mantra to live life by! You don't happen to work in marketing, do you?

<comment><USER28> Why is everything a "product"? Why does everything have to be marketed? Why does there have to be a need for something, for it to be built and to be noteworthy?

This looks like a cool personal project, built by the author as a learning experience, with a convenient API to manipulate the machine that's being simulated. If that doesn't tell you enough about why it exists, then I don't know what to tell you besides "nothing to see here".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It is an interesting piece of software, but what is the purpose? For someone that wants to emulate a Pentium computer there are many better ways, for having fun there are many better ways, so what is left for this particular one?

<comment><USER30> Why must everything have a purpose?

<comment><USER28> I've got a lot of side projects like this one. The programming I do at work has a solid purpose. It's relaxing to work on something that isn't strictly necessary, as long as it satisfies my curiosity.

I like reading through disassemblies of DOS games and figuring out how things work. It's fun recognizing C programming patterns in the assembly. There's something a little charming about looking up what writing to some VGA control register is supposed to do...and I haven't found anyone else who actually thought any of that sounded like fun.

Someday, I'll put together a series of blog posts about it, and maybe I'll have some code that I actually want to show off, but right now I'm just having fun.

<comment><USER31> I would probably have more side projects if I could get over feeling like every one had to have a "purpose".</comment></comment></comment></comment>