Visual walk through of Euclid's proof of the Pythagorean theorem - <AUTHOR> http://setosa.io/pythagorean/

<comment><USER2> If you enjoy visualizations of Euclidean geometry, I highly recommend the work of Byrne:

[http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/Euclid/byrne.html](http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/Euclid/byrne.html)

Example: [http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/Euclid/book1/images/bookI- prop1...](http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/Euclid/book1/images/bookI-prop1.html)

(I found this to be one of the most impressive examples used by Edward Tufte in his books).

<comment><USER3> Byrne's Elements is pretty remarkable. It's an interesting juxtaposition of old 19th century typesetting (complete with initials) and comparatively "modern" graphic design. Some pages look like they could be right out of De Stijl.

Archive.org hosts a nice PDF copy, which I find more convenient than the jpegs: [https://archive.org/details/firstsixbooksofe00byrn](https://archive.org/details/firstsixbooksofe00byrn)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In case it's not obvious, you can drag the points in the diagram to change the size of triangles and the associated squares.

<comment><USER5> Also, if you hover over the geometric objects in the proof (like an AB or ABC), the corresponding object is highlighted in the figure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Or, if you want a proof with fewer words, [http://isomorphismes.tumblr.com/image/790452593](http://isomorphismes.tumblr.com/image/790452593)

<comment><USER7> This is probably the easiest, most intuitive proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. Euclid's proof, by contrast, is a bit of a slog.

<comment><USER8> Euclid has two proofs. The first is the one submitted here. The second one uses the complicated theory of proportion from Book V. However, it's very simple and intuitive when recast in modern terms. Take a right triangle ABC, drop an altitude onto the hypotenuse, note the two smaller right triangles are similar to ABC, calculate the area of ABC in two different ways using this decomposition, and compare the results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very nice visualization.

Reading these old proofs is quite tedious but having this visualization makes it much easier to follow.

Still, trying to understand Euclid makes you thankful for the more than 2000 years of advancements in mathematical notation and theory.

<comment><USER10> > Still, trying to understand Euclid makes you thankful for the more than 2000 > years of advancements in mathematical notation and theory.

The importance of notation is greatly underestimated, IMO. Even when programming, an arguably mathematical activity, many people still resist improvements to notation that allow for clearer expressions. The contortions some of my colleagues have gone through in Fortran or C++ (because they refuse to use libraries that would clean up their code significantly, they roll their own versions) to express their ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Funny, few days ago I wanted to write it from scratch starting through the geometric 'interpretation', just to see if I remembered. I had to use `square of sum` identity though.

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

ps: vector editor is not my website.

</comment><comment><USER12> I feel stupid. This is very difficult to follow.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not very clean. It's not immediately obvious how some statements are derived from initial axioms.

</comment><comment><USER14> A bit OT, but I'm interesting in going through Euclid by drawing it with a compass and ruler.

Is there any good guide to doing this? I have Byrne's copy of Euclid. But I found there were multiple points I got stuck when trying to draw it myself.

</comment><comment><USER15> I tried several times to explain the essence of Euclid's proof to a non- mathematician (my wife). Here is the explanation which clicked.

[http://euclidsmuse.com/app?id=344](http://euclidsmuse.com/app?id=344)

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's another visual proof:

[http://mobius.maplesoft.com/maplenet/mobius/application.jsp?...](http://mobius.maplesoft.com/maplenet/mobius/application.jsp?appId=9468543)

</comment><comment><USER17> Here's a nice (physical) visualization that uses water:

[http://imgur.com/gallery/1ZGJGD6](http://imgur.com/gallery/1ZGJGD6)

</comment><comment><USER18> Well done, but it would have been better if the graphics depicted a right scalene triangle -- the more general case -- rather than a right isosceles triangle.

<comment><USER19> My thoughts exactly - then I found you can drag point C left and right.

Undocumented software!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cool. What made you choose Angular over D3.js for this btw?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's using Angular with D3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting. What is Setosa?</comment>


Log Management is the New Kid on the Block - <AUTHOR> https://www.loggly.com/blog/aws-cloudwatch-log-management/?utm_source=HackerNews&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=Blog-AWS-Cloudwatch

<comment><USER2> Cloudwatch desperately needs a new UI. Of all the AWS control panels, cloudwatch should have the best UI, but somehow, it is one of the worst.

AWS really needs to reorient themselves here if they want to get serious in the space.

</comment><comment><USER3> Glad they bring this to the forefront. Log files provide the best information for diagnostics, but mainly and afterthought after something happens.</comment>


Relentlessly focus on your customers: test usability. - <AUTHOR> http://www.gazehawk.com/blog/relentlessly-focus-on-your-customers-test-usability/

<comment><USER2> I would like to preempt the inevitable "but Apple doesn't do user testing" argument by saying something.

There are two known ways to make good products.

One is to hire a large team of excellent designers and design managers, relentlessly design multiple alternatives for every single option, and have many layers of design review all the way to the executive level. Continuously kill off all ideas that are not perfect, and all features that you don't have time to do perfectly. Have your designers and executives use the products realistically for long periods of time before release to identify problem areas. If you are willing to do this, feel free to not do usability testing.

On the other hand, if you have to get to market quickly, if some of your features are sometimes half thought-through, if your design department is so backlogged you're lucky to get even one thoughtful comp for the current engineering work, you had damn well better do usability testing.

These are the two choices. You should not expect to design everything once, build it once, not do user testing, and then blame your crappy product on the meme that "Apple doesn't do user testing."

<comment><USER3> I definitely agree with what you're saying. However, I'd really like to know the origins of the "Apple doesn't do User Testing"

Has that ever been substantiated? I've heard it once or twice in various incarnations, such as "Apple doesn't do Market Research" or something of the like. I really don't think it's reasonable to say that. Apple may not do end user testing,but I'm sure they do usability testing. It may be a trivial distinction to some, but I think it's sort of important.

<comment><USER4> My understanding is "they don't do usability testing" is in the context of "usability testing" being defined as hiring some usability consultants who have never designed usable software to come in and video tape random people off the street trying to accomplish canned tasks using the software. They then write the results in a report with some generic or impractical suggestions which would not actually improve usability because they are neither designers nor target users. Apple doesn't do that sort of "usability testing". However, Apple does test their products for usability.</comment></comment></comment>


Kepler's Planetary Bonanza [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWJWoQF1PPw

<comment><AUTHOR> This is extra fun for us as in the text description they thank Win-Vector LLC's Nina Zumel for the analysis.</comment>


Anvil - a Mac app for Pow - <AUTHOR> http://anvilformac.com

<comment><USER2> Your "Install Pow" doesn't work with a drive name which has spaces. eg. /bin/sh /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Downloads/Anvil.app/Contents/Resources/InstallPow.sh; exit

needs to escape the space. App itself looks polished, checking it out now!

<comment><AUTHOR> Rats. Thanks for the report - I'll push a new version shortly. I sure hope nobody minds all the updates. (Edit: fixed!)

<comment><USER3> I for one think it's great you're doing updates quickly and often as things come up that warrant pushing updates in the first place. Keep up the good work. This looks like a nifty little tool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note that .dev is one of the new TLD's being handed out[1]. I also used .dev as my local environment and switched them all over to .local a while ago.

.local[2] was specifically set aside just for this task, and is recognized as a local address by the major browsers (instead of .dev, which often results in a search hit).

[1] [http://www.newgtldsite.com/dot-dev-tld-domain-name- extension...](http://www.newgtldsite.com/dot-dev-tld-domain-name-extension/)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local>

Edit: just noticed that the .dev hostnames come from Pow, the underlying server. probably not a good idea.

<comment><USER5> Where did the .dev fad come from? Why is the web being taken over by folks who don't try to begin to understand how the internet works?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks really nice.

I have 67 apps symlinked into ~/.pow, but only the top 29 are shown on my laptop screen, and scrolling sadly doesn't work.

Any chance of adding "Open in $EDITOR" to the context menu? And .xip.io URLs?

<comment><AUTHOR> More than 29 apps is Doing It Wrong.

Just kidding! I'll add this to the to-do list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the app already :D

Little bits of feedback:

* The Anvil icon on the menu bar doesn't show itself as being active when I click it.

* When I click on the + to add a new app, make anvil lose focus to the file dialog.

* The "About Anvil" dialog insists on hiding behind all other windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> The first point is a menu bar app thing. Seems weird to activate it for a popover type window. The other two are fixed in the latest update. Thanks for the feedback! <3

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We need something like this for vagrant.

<comment> dorian-graph That is exactly what I thought as well.

<comment><USER9> wouldn't that be nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm very glad you didn't decide to go the Mac App Store route -- as sad as it sounds, MAS has incredible friction compared to an old fashioned zip

<comment><AUTHOR> Our hands were tied. Installing 3rd party code, using the ~/.pow/ directory, and running on port 80 are all things that are frowned-upon. So it's easier to make it free!

<comment><USER11> I'm curious as to whether you can submit an app to the MAS which integrates with non-MAS apps? Any idea whether Apple allows that?

e.g. so you could offload any frowned-upon functionality into external apps/services, and maybe promote or offer automated download & install functionality within your own app...

<comment><USER12> > 2.16 Apps that download or install additional code or resources to add > functionality or change their primary purpose will be rejected

<comment><USER13> I've wondered how certain programs get around these restrictions. I use Boom[1] on my ridiculously quiet laptop. The program you download from MAS is more or less a shell. It guides you to download and install the actual sound drivers that do all the work.

[1]: <http://www.globaldelight.com/boom/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What does the on/off slider do? Another handy tool for managing Pow is the ruby gem "powder". It's command line only however.

<comment><AUTHOR> The on/off slider turns Pow on and off. We love powder too!

<comment><USER15> Why does the on/off functionality look like a slider when it functions like a button?

<comment><USER16> I don't think it does. It mimics the look of the iOS "switches" which are universally used for on/off commands

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow this is nicely done. I added a homebrew cask for it so it can be installed via `brew cask install anvil`. [https://github.com/phinze/homebrew- cask/commit/aff3777759dfc...](https://github.com/phinze/homebrew- cask/commit/aff3777759dfced2b58d0e14c6f1a071f48c5648)

<comment><AUTHOR> Left you a message there, but just in case you miss it - Very cool! Would you mind linking to <http://anvilformac.com/download> so this automatically downloads the latest version?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Never heard of Pow before, but on inspection it looks very interesting and could save a bunch of time.

Anyone know if there's any way to make it work with python (WSGI or similar) services? It's kinda hard to search 'pow' without ending up at various exponentiation functions :/

<comment><USER19> Looks like it should be possible: <http://pow.cx/manual.html#section_2.1.4>

<comment><USER18> I totally missed that, thanks. Tested and working now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone know why pow uses the .dev tld rather than .test? .test is reserved for local testing. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.test>

<comment><USER21> I was also confused at the choice of default. Fortunately you can update your config to support any TLD:

<http://pow.cx/manual#section_3.1>

<comment><USER5> Really, the whole manual is published in engraved-in-stone visual style? That is enough to convince me not to let this software run on my machine, especially not with admin privileges.

<comment><USER22> Why would does that convince you that this software shouldn't have admin privileges on your machine? It seems awfully arbitrary to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've tried the app for only 5 minutes and I love it already - it's a much more elegant solution than having to use "jekyll --server -auto" and localhost:4000. The thing that bugs me though is that the list of websites doesn't expand beyond three sites- you have to scroll to see the fourth site. Shouldn't the list dialog expand to fit all the sites?

<comment><USER24> How did you get Jekyll working with pow/anvil? Just symlink _site to a public dir? I get a 404 when trying to use pow/anvil on jekyll sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well, it took me 15 minutes to figure out the cause of 404 error.

If you DON'T have index.html in your root folder it will return this error, python's SimpleHTTPServer module does much better job and gives you list of your folders.

</comment><comment><USER26> Something like this with Django (i.e run the runserver command would be tight).

</comment><comment><USER27> Any reason why the Pow installer turns off my Wi-Fi? Also I get the following error from the installer: "!!! Couldn't resolve configured domains (dev)"

Novel idea. Too bad it doesn't work :/

</comment><comment><USER28> I already have Pow installed but its asking me to install again. Will it conflict w/ my existing install and configuration if I reinstall Pow through Anvil?

</comment><comment><USER29> Love it.

It really is a simple, elegant way to handle pow - I would pay for this happily.

Put up a donate link via Stripe and I will :)

<comment><AUTHOR> We're in the UK so it might have to be PayPal for now :( but we might do that at some point once we've fixed all the bugs!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I really like the simple UI to this. Great work! Just curious what the future plans of this project are. Any plans of open sourcing it?

</comment><comment><USER15> Very nice app. It would be nice if you could optionally view the files in a directory when no index file is provided.

</comment><comment><USER31> Pow is great - except when you need to fall back on debugging multiple apps. Even with powder it's flaky at best.

</comment><comment><USER32> Love the website design also. The site design is simple but gives you all the info you need to make a decision.

</comment><comment><USER33> Nice little app. Would be handy to be able to edit the generated .dev URL to be different from the folder.

<comment><USER34> Thats not really how Pow[1] works. It's weird that there isn't any mention of Pow on that page if that's what it's using in the backend. I didn't download it since I'm not on 10.7, maybe it mentions it later.

I wrote something similar (<https://github.com/rktjmp/ker-pow>) a while ago but never considered using it to actually make new ~/.pow/ links, I might add that in. Anvil is probably much more useful!

[1] <http://pow.cx>

<comment><USER35> > Thats not really how Pow[1] works.

I think you will find that is _exactly_ how Pow works. Because you're just creating a symlink (ln -s source_name link_name) you can name it whatever you want. (i.e. ln -s ~/sites/my_full_url.com.au ~/.pow/blog)

<comment><USER34> Whoops, yeah – you're 100% correct. Not sure what I was actually thinking...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Thank you, this is really great. I love simple little things like this that just make life better.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think your webpage should tell the visitor what Pow is, and/or what Anvil is a front end to.

</comment><comment><USER38> You should open source it :) I'd love to modify it to work with PHP by default.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pow is open-source (pow.cx) - feel free to try adding PHP to it. In my experience, PHP is far more complicated due to php.ini configurations and installation. Rack lends itself a bit better to this kind of hosting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Suggestions on getting the favicon to show up?

<comment><AUTHOR> If it's a static site, put the favicon in the root directory. We're planning a fix that finds favicons no matter where they are. Sorry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Oh-e It's just works. Perfect. Thank you

</comment><comment><USER41> pretty cool app - seems to work really well. Thanks Anvil!

</comment><comment><USER42> Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER43> Wait, what? So instead of typing file:///home/username/site/index.html this program lets you type <http://site.dev>? If there was ever undeniable proof that Mac users are clinically retarded...

<comment><AUTHOR> Subdomains. Rails apps. Multiple apps running at the same time together. There are a few reasons this is useful. Please be more constructive with your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is a Rack app?

<comment><USER44> <http://rack.github.com/> \- basically a Rails adapter for a webserver.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why does your company run corporate events? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN, I'm a founder of a startup trying to solve problems for coffee shops and cafes when it comes to catering through corporate channels. If your company has hosted a corporate event involving food or beverages, OR your team is thinking about hosting a company event, I'd love to hear from you.<p>I'm curious what is the occasion that you have to host an event and what type of event is it? Once you've decided to do catering, how do you find and contact a food vendor or catering business? <comment><AUTHOR> When I worked at Amazon, our team decided to have a theme for each sprint consisting of breakfast items.

Product launches & demos were small celebrations at the end of the sprint. So one sprint was Croissant Week, another may be Donut Week, and the scrum master would be responsible for bringing in breakfast at Demo Day.

We'd get breakfast from a local bakery or cafe, and because our team was 10-12 people, there wasn't a need for a large delivery.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Examples that I can think off the top of my head are 1) all-hands and 2) networking events.

These tend to be formulaic from my experience, they consist of a catering plates full of finger foods like sandwiches, cheese, chips, cookies.</comment>


Straytex: Online procedural texture studio - <AUTHOR> http://daeken.com/straytex-online-procedural-texture-studio

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's another neat example I whipped up: <http://tinyurl.com/y92b9o3> (URL shortener used since the actual link is 761 characters long, containing the entire texture source). It renders a Sierpinski triangle by doing x & y != 0, then mirrors it to the bottom-right corner (so as to cover the entire texture). It's a good example of the simple sort of math you can play around with, then immediately apply to a demo. Converting that to C to make it work in my demo consists of nothing more than replacing 'var' with 'int', which makes my life easy.

</comment><comment><USER2> The post says it's likely to only work in Chrome, but I got a look at the default "brushed aluminium" texture using Firefox 3.6, on Win32.

<comment><AUTHOR> Arg, meant to update that. Apparently it works in Safari and Firefox as well, but I'm not sure on which versions will work. Gonna go edit now, thanks.</comment></comment>


Hartford InsurTech Hub announces its 2020 cohort of startups - <AUTHOR> https://nuadox.com/post/189111374787/hartford-insurtech-hub-2020 <comment><USER2> Great class this year! We're excited as we've seen the next stage of cyber as "resilient operations" and adopting more software processes for years now. Thanks for sharing. [https://hartfordinsurtechhub.com/hartford-insurtech-hub- anno...](https://hartfordinsurtechhub.com/hartford-insurtech-hub- announces-2020-cohort/)</comment>


Who is hiring remote workers? - <AUTHOR> I'm a JavaScript, jquery and PHP developer. I currently use and have experience with npm, nwjs, bulma, bootstrap, handlebars, sass, uglify and Jade.
I'm having a difficult time finding remote work and I seem to lose opportunities compared to others based on my resume alone. I'm passionate about learning and growing as the tech industry does. I'm all about automation and I'm currently building a robotic lawnmower :) If you have any recommendations where to apply  or want to critique my resume, I appreciate all and any help.
Thanks! <comment><USER3> The team I'm on at Rackspace is hiring remote developers; application info is here: [https://github.com/CrashenX/rackspace_jobs/blob/d5735092f8f4...](https://github.com/CrashenX/rackspace_jobs/blob/d5735092f8f49c121a7f8a75e53b7fec09e7713f/private_cloud/operational- fabric-developer.md)

</comment><comment><USER4> This outfit does a good job on Twitter:

[https://remote.co/remote-jobs/developer/](https://remote.co/remote- jobs/developer/)

There are a few others.

Angel.co has Remote OK as a job search parameter

</comment><comment><USER5> We are always looking for talented people at Mobile Jazz[1] and Bugfender[2]. Best is to apply via our Jobs API[3]

[1] [https://mobilejazz.com](https://mobilejazz.com)

[2] [http://bugfender.com](http://bugfender.com)

[3] [http://mobilejazz.com/jobs](http://mobilejazz.com/jobs)

<comment><USER6> Applying via API is genius, I love it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://gigworks.blogspot.com/2017/04/moonlight-work-for- soft...](http://gigworks.blogspot.com/2017/04/moonlight-work-for-software- engineers.html)

[http://gigworks.blogspot.com/2017/06/who-is-hiring- mapped.ht...](http://gigworks.blogspot.com/2017/06/who-is-hiring-mapped.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> I got my start remote working with X-Team ([https://x-team.com](https://x-team.com)) and their sister company X-Five (then called XHTMLized) ([https://www.xfive.co](https://www.xfive.co))

I don't know if they have any openings currently but definitely worth checking them out in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER9> We are hiring remote workers. We're not looking for PHP developers, but you can find a list of our openings here (Scroll to the bottom): [https://www.virtru.com/careers/](https://www.virtru.com/careers/)

I'm one of the engineers, and can honestly say it's a great company to work for.

<comment><USER10> > We are a fun group and want to keep it that way, which means you should be > comfortable speaking your mind, drinking a few beers, eating ramen, and > geeking out about side projects.

That's a weird line to have in a job description for a remote position.

<comment><USER9> Fair point. We do have a handful of engineers local to the DC area. Also a couple times per year our remote employees have the option to join us here in DC for festivities on our dime.

One of the members of our team is an award winning grill master, so naturally we bought a smoker for our office parties. Anyway, the point is that we do occasionally get together for delicious food, beer, and geek out time. :)

<comment><USER11> Alcohol is a powerful drug. It's a little weird to put that expectation out there, that your future employees will drink beer with you. I drink alcohol occasionally in the absence of better drugs, but still, I'd probably choose not to apply to a company on the basis of that comment (and also because I don't want to be expected to socialize with coworkers).

<comment><USER10> Well that's probably a good filter, then.

They obviously want to socialize.

<comment><USER11> There are other people that want to socialize and not drink though.

<comment><USER9> You're absolutely right, and those people are more than welcome to apply as well. If our posting implies that drinking beers with your fellow engineers is a hard requirement then that was a mistake on our part.

Your personal preferences, though, are a wonderful example of just how lucky you and I are to work in this industry; Our skills are so sought after, that we have an abundance of options available to us to find that exact right fit. Maybe Virtru isn't the ideal place for you to work, but I'm certain there are an abundance of places where you'd feel right at home.

Anyway, I genuinely appreciate the feedback and I'll pass it on to those responsible for our job postings to see if they'd like to make any changes.

Take care!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> See: [https://weworkremotely.com/](https://weworkremotely.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> If anybody is looking for a freelance or full-time remote UI Designer. I will be happy to help you! Portfolio: [http://ngb.agency/](http://ngb.agency/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Bitnami is hiring [https://jobs.lever.co/bitnami/c54f473a-17ec-4b73-9fb7-d1785f...](https://jobs.lever.co/bitnami/c54f473a-17ec-4b73-9fb7-d1785fe6de7a)

</comment><comment><USER15> Are the links provided in the comments applicable to other countries? I am in Asia and just wondering if you are willing to hire developers on the other side of the globe.

</comment><comment><USER16> Got a link to your resume? Happy to give you some pointers. (3 years working remotely so far and have been on a lot of hiring teams for remote positions).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Here it is: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byx-u2b41nPlMkFvWmxCcDZiYjA...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byx-u2b41nPlMkFvWmxCcDZiYjA/view?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER17> I'm not the one who offered advice, but I've had to review plenty of resumes in the past, and I have a couple of comments.

\- I really like the layout and design of your resume. I find it easier to read and follow than 90%+ of the resumes I've seen over the years.

\- Your objective is pretty vague and non-specific. Don't feel bad about that. Almost every 'Objective' section I've seen on resumes is the same. Consider replacing it with a 'Summary' section instead. In this section, tell me who you are and why I should hire you. Don't be afraid to sell yourself a little!

\- Your experience points are a bit vague. 'Development of web content utilizing HTML 5, CSS 3 and Javascript' doesn't tell me much. What kind of content did you develop? How many people used it? Also, writing 'Assisting in the development of new technologies as they arise' doesn't really add to your resume, because using new technology sort of comes with the territory when you're working as a developer.

Don't take any of this as harsh criticism, because it isn't intended that way! You've got valuable experience, and I love the design of your resume. When I'm reading a resume, each sentence or bullet point is a chance to convince me to interview you. As you read through each point on your resume, ask yourself if, after reading that point, someone would be more inclined to interview you than before. If not, try to add some detail or context that explains the business value of what you did.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much. I really appreciate this advice and I'll revise my resume to your valid points. :)

<comment><USER17> You're welcome. I also just noticed that your resume says you started university in 20011. I'm guessing you're either a time traveller, or you meant to write 2011. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha. Maybe that's what deterred all potential employers. Nonetheless, you gave me solid and really good advice. Much appreciated! Have a great night

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What country / timezone are you located in?

Personal experience is local jobs turn into remote positions easier than trying to apply against 1000s of others.

<comment><AUTHOR> USA - <USER2>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Email me at email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER20> I am, send me a mail.</comment>


Günter Grass: From Enfant Terrible to Grand Old Man - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/gunter-grass-from-enfant-terrible-to-grand-old-man/ <comment><USER2> As a German, I cannot begin to explain how much I despised the guy's work and public persona. A life's work dripping with perpetual delusions of moral high ground contrasted by the very late revelation of having been one of those he so colorfully looked down upon. Apologetic rambling on behalf of the general populace who didn't know anything about what was going on and couldn't have done anything, either.

Grass was a supreme example of everything wrong with this nation and that's not even mentioning his repulsive, monotonous style of writing.

If you're planning to read a modern German novel, avoid this guy at all cost. Read Handke or Jelinek, Glavinic or Kracht, Gernhard or Böll. Or any of a million others. Don't let anyone sell you the Tin Drum, please.

<comment><USER3> Jelinek may write an Austrian novel, but not a German. Handke is Austrian, Glavinic is Austrian, Kracht is Swiss. I would also not list somebody like Jelinek under German literature, but under German language literature. Jelinek writes mostly about Austria and not Germany.

If you want to read modern German literature there are a lot of other authors: Goetz, Tellkamp, Kehlmann, Müller, ...

Actually 'Die Blechtrommel' is great German literature. Highly recommended.

> Grass was a supreme example of everything wrong with this nation

Definitely not. Grass had his problems, but he a lot of good sides, too. It's not black or white.

> As a German, I cannot begin to explain how much I despised the guy's work > and public persona.

Really? How sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I won't pretend to offer literary or historical criticism - all I can tell you is that when The Tin Drum movie arrived stateside, it traumatized a lot of people, myself included.

Movies generally do little justice to the books upon which they are based, and probably in the case of The Tin Drum, that might have been a plus.

Nevertheless, when I have a chance to watch a German language movie - and to be fair, it's stuff you find on Netflix - The Tin Drum sets the standard.</comment>


Global GCE Network Outage - <AUTHOR> https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/compute/16015 <comment><AUTHOR> According to my availability checks - GCE experienced about 1.6 hours of downtime last night in every region except the newest - us-west1 which was only down for 10 minutes:

[https://cloudharmony.com/status-for-google](https://cloudharmony.com/status- for-google)

This is the second global GCE outage this year:

[https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/compute/16007](https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/compute/16007)</comment>


Death the True Motivator of Life - <AUTHOR> http://brilliantairic.com/thoughts/death-the-true-motivator-of-life

<comment><USER2> The gist of this article ("do whatever you wanted to do and accomplish it in the most dedicated way as if you won't be alive by tomorrow") has become my life motto ever since my brush with death in a car accident three years ago.

It will also always remind me of the protagonist in Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952) and his determination to realize the building of a playground for children before his death by cancer.</comment>


Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/outsourcing-is-no-longer-cheap-so-its-being-automated <comment><USER2> > The automators will continue to get very, very rich, while the automated > will have to find something else to do.

Part of me thinks this will lead to make much more apparent the paradox of capitalism: Those with the most money can... make the most money. Over time this means it all gets funneled into just a few families' pockets, until they own everything (which is silly and most likely would not be put up with after a certain extent).

Another part of me thinks that automation has been part of our society for a long time, and that taking it further only changes the kind of jobs everyone has, maybe even promoting equality by eliminating the more menial tasks (and therefore making every worker's skill and experience important, instead of them being just a replaceable cog).

Either way it seems absolutely inevitable in the long term, and I don't see a point in pretending it's not going to happen.

<comment><USER3> A huge part of the problem here is the low, low interest rate environment we're in. Low interest rates make expensive machines cheaper than humans. High interest rates make humans cheaper than machines. (For a range of values of cheaper)

Being able to afford a $300k house on $50k/year is great until you don't make the $50k/year anymore because you've been automated out of a job.

In the past people with a lot of money could invest their money and see a fairly stable, secure return of 5-15% a year depending on the exact risk profile of their investments; savings accounts -> stocks.

Now if you have a lot of money you can buy businesses and replace people with capital equipment. Better returns than investing in the stock market (or bank accounts!) and it's basically off-limits to people who don't have 7+ figure amounts of cash. Which statistically is basically everyone.

Higher interest rates would let the rich enjoy more work-free income but it also keeps normal people in jobs. And it provides some kind of incentive to save; interest in a bank account is basically scale-free.

I think maybe that's another one of the problems we're seeing, opportunities to grow your wealth aren't scale invariant. A little money has very, very few opportunities to earn interest. A lot of money has a many opportunities to be grown.

<comment><USER4> > Being able to afford a $300k house on $50k/year is great until you don't > make the $50k/year anymore because you've been automated out of a job.

It doesn't even work like that. Rent is basically fixed by the average income level. The price of the house is then annual rent / interest rates.

<comment><USER3> I agree completely. But "owning" a $300k house makes people feel a lot richer than "owning" a $120k house, even if they're the exact same house! You're right that payments are the same, because housing prices are driven by monthly payments not the dollar amount that you're signing for.

Which is part of the problem, too. When mortgage interest rates fluctuate between 6-10% say, a person doesn't get terribly underwater that fast. But when they fluctuate between 3% and 7% a person can go from equity->underwater in a hurry, because the price fluctuations are so much larger.

It's basically a y=1/x kind of problem and the closer you get to x=0 the closer you get to y=infinity in a very nonlinear way. Which is great if you bought a house a x=more and sold a house at x=less because you made huge gains. But if you bought at x=less and are trying to sell at x=more you can be very, very underwater.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cites recent layoffs but has no real stats on the decline of outsourcing, near shoring, etc. Weak.

Part of the problem with India is lack of standards. There are people who are good at programming in both the US and India and people who are bad at it.

The problem is in the US most of the bad ones don't end up getting a CS degree where in India they do. This means there are a lot of people in India who have a little bit of skill and can get a job but not do it that great. Their US counterpart might have switched to business or something else as they are less expected to get a tech (viewed a good a job) related job by their family. Obviously there are more complexities but bottom line its not just the cost it is the quality of work.

<comment><USER6> To add to this; a lot of companies in India just gather as many people as they can with a CS degree in a building (often 1000s) and hire them out in 'teams' to western companies. This is a valid (currently) business plan which makes them a lot of money. It also gives outsourcing a really bad name, but that does not seem to deter companies from hiring these kind of, let's call them what they are, sweatshops. The idea is definitely appealing; you hire educated women and men, usually they are monitored (often by camera's!) to make sure they site and work 8 hours / day, 5-6 days / week and they have the skills you need. Not happy? You get another person right away! You can expand or shrink your team(s) at any time.

That they are treated like robots sitting in long rows of far too little space and that they are not allowed to get up besides for lunch and tea at set times is not interesting to most; that this kind of environment (not even looking at if they are good at their jobs or not; some are, some are not like you say) is destroying any chance of getting quality anyway is lost on most people who hire. This market is growing as it does sound incredibly attractive on paper. The prices are also still a lot (for programmers you pay around 20-40% of what you would pay in the west, it used to be 5-10%) lower than the same role (on paper) in 'the west'.

I hear some companies actually get work done this way and are very happy with it, growing continuously without worrying about who does the tech; they have 100s of companies to pick from and 100-1000s of employees in these companies. How they manage that, I have no clue, but I do hear a lot of my Indian friends who try to make something 'west' quality in India complain about these popping up a lot and a lot young guys dream of making these, in essence no-risk at the moment, 'brain work' farms.

<comment><USER7> >> I hear some companies actually get work done this way..

This statement and lack of any citations with statistics makes me suspect this as an opinion, not necessarily factual. I am a engineer from Bangalore, India. I worked for a few years with companies that outsource teams to many countries across the world. I lived in Bangalore for over 20 years and I know a lot of people who are in similar line of work. Most software companies provide competitive salaries (according to wages in India based on Indian cost of living, which is lower compared to the US) along with annual leaves, sick/casual leave, maternity leaves, statutory programs like provident fund (retirement benefits in India), gratuity fund etc. Many companies (all companies I have worked with and I know people working in) provide a lot more benefits than the ones I mentioned. I worked with companies that provided facilities like on-campus full time doctors, financial support programs, gyms, swimming pools, libraries, higher education support, employee rewards programs, sports programs, transport facilities etc. I have never heard of CS engineers hired and monitored by cameras to ensure work. I would like some citation on this, and even if it occurred at some place I doubt it's a problem at such a scale that it should be termed that it usually happens.

And, about quality of work, a large portion of the outsourcing projects involve support and maintenance of an existing software/website. Many of such customers do not have software as their primary business e.g. a internal web based software for a huge construction company. Such L2/L3 support work generally tends to be repetitive and does not require highly skilled software programmers. There are lot of companies that work on the same outsourcing model which cost the customers a lot higher and produce high quality work, such companies generally attract the better skilled engineers and customers that require high quality products.

My point, outsourcing software companies in India are definitely not sweatshops. There are sweatshops in parts of India mainly in the textile industry and they most certainly do not hire CS engineers. And, there are good and bad engineers everywhere, it's not determined by where they are from or who employs them.

<comment><USER6> I didn't say that; I said I see a rise (also in Bangalore) of actual sweatshops (my definition of sweatshops is tainted by the west and especially the EU; I find workplaces where my chair touches my neighbours rather unworkable; I know actual manual labor sweatshops are much much worse than that) with coders; I never said 'Indian outsourcing companies are sweatshops' as I know that's not true at all. I just see a lot of them and it's growing, I believe. And of course it is an opinion; I don't know if anyone does research in this area. I just say what I hear (from friends who own/founded outsourcing companies who live in India, including Bangalore) and see.

<comment><USER8> I don't think they're literal sweatshops as they usually have air conditioning. :P

<comment><USER9> Sounds like only so the computers don't break down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "What does it mean for the economies of these up-and-coming world powers? Well, probably the same thing that it means for everyone else: The automators will continue to get very, very rich, while the automated will have to find something else to do."

Or, you know, basic income. Why is the answer to "there are no jobs anymore" always "well, I guess you can starve, then"?

<comment><USER11> Very possibly, but proponents of a basic income consistently fail to articulate three things: how these monies will be collected, what rationale there is for distributing it (other than the implicit acknowledgement that the alternative is civil unrest) and why it won't be inflationary.

<comment><USER12> > how these monies will be collected

Taxation.

> what rationale there is for distributing it (other than the implicit > acknowledgement that the alternative is civil unrest)

A basic income removes the need for a long list of bureaucratic social programs like social security, food stamps, housing assistance, pell grants, etc. etc. It's the free market solution for social welfare programs. You allow individuals to decide what they need rather than having the government decide from the office of central planning.

It also eliminates means testing much to the benefit of the middle class (and simplicity and economic efficiency).

> why it won't be inflationary

Inflation comes from increasing the money supply faster than the size of the economy increases. Inflation would only occur if the money paid out was newly printed. When it comes from taxation the amount of money in circulation is unchanged, only the parties holding it change.

<comment><USER13> _Inflation comes from increasing the money supply faster than the size of the economy increases._

This is a strange Austrian definition and is not widely accepted.

The normal definition of inflation is increases in the value of a basket of consumption. CPI is a good proxy for this over the short term (in the long term CPI becomes useless for this purpose since the basket changes).

If BI increases demand for consumption (as most of it's proponents claim it will), then the price of consumption will increase - hence, inflation.

<comment><USER12> > If BI increases demand for consumption (as most of it's proponents claim it > will), then the price of consumption will increase - hence, inflation.

This is a very bizarre argument against BI. You can clearly see how silly it is by applying it to reducing the unemployment rate (or for that matter anything that provides income to the poor) -- if more people have income then consumption will increase and cause inflation.

The reason the argument is silly is that it's way more complicated than that. Even the assumption that BI will cause increased consumption is based on other assumptions about what people want at different income levels. It could be that members of the lower middle class are hungry for an opportunity to start a business and will use the money to invest rather than consume. It depends entirely on the contours of the economy at a specific time and place and is constantly in flux. Investment vs. consumption is also a false dichotomy, because investments just turn into the consumption of the entity selling the investment, and businesses obtain capital by selling products as well as by soliciting investors. So it's really the difference between consumption of consumer goods and services like food and entertainment vs. of business goods and services like commercial equipment and marketing services, and even that distinction is as clear as mud.

On top of that, whether an increase in demand causes an increase in price depends on the supply of the goods in question. There are many products for which this relationship is _negative_. Where there is no practical limit on the number of units suppliers can produce, having more demand will give sellers more units over which to amortize fixed costs and can thereby reduce the unit price.

This makes the statement "basic income will cause inflation" completely meaningless. What it will do is cause the price of some goods and services to increase and others to decrease, much as any economic change will do. Whether this change will on net cause prices to increase more than decrease (and to what degree) depends entirely on the contours of the economy and on which specific goods and services you're measuring.

But perhaps most importantly, even assuming it would cause inflation in a particular economy, the amount of inflation is necessarily less than the amount of the basic income because of the existence (and likely preponderance) of products with less than perfectly inelastic supply.

<comment><USER13> _You can clearly see how silly it is by applying it to reducing the unemployment rate..._

Reducing unemployment will increase demand but will also increase supply. So no.

 _It could be that members of the lower middle class are hungry for an opportunity to start a business and will us the money to invest rather than consume...There are many products for which this relationship is negative. Where there is no practical limit on the number of units suppliers can produce..._

So if I'm understanding you right, BI will work because the rich have a higher marginal propensity for consumption, Giffen goods are common and scarcity isn't real? Ok.

 _It depends entirely on the contours of the economy at a specific time and place and is constantly in flux._

If that is the case then the usefulness of a BI will also constantly be in flux. I guess your opinions on the topic are also constantly in flux? If not, why not?

<comment><USER12> > Reducing unemployment will increase demand but will also increase supply. So > no.

That's just the same fallacy. Why can you assume the thing the employee is producing won't have less price elasticity than the thing the employee buys with the income, but I can't?

> the rich have a higher marginal propensity for consumption

Your argument is that the rich have a _much lower_ marginal propensity for consumption, enough to really matter. And that may even be true if you're talking about a matter of $2, which a poor person would almost certainly use to buy lunch or the like but would have no effect on a rich person's level of consumption. But if you give a poor person $20,000, now you have to ask whether they aren't going use it to attend college or start a business. It's an entirely different dynamic.

Also, if the money is raised using a consumption tax then it can inherently never come from someone making an investment regardless of their income level, which kind of destroys your entire argument, since it is based on where the money comes from as much as who gets it.

> Giffen goods are common

Nobody is even talking about Giffen goods, that's the demand side. And goods whose total cost is dominated by fixed costs _are_ extremely common.

> scarcity isn't real

Scarcity is often not relevant. The market price of a computer or pharmaceuticals or recorded music is completely divorced from the cost of the scarce materials necessary to manufacture it. There is no realistic volume of DVDs that could be produced that would materially affect the market price of plastic.

> If that is the case then the usefulness of a BI will also constantly be in > flux.

Whether and to what degree it causes inflation or deflation would constantly be in flux. That it might possibly cause a small amount of inflation is hardly a condemnation, and it is unlikely to cause a large amount of inflation for the reasons I've already mentioned -- its tendency to increase prices in some products is offset by its tendency to reduce prices in other products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting to read all these comments about the "real" problem. What the article actually SAID was:

"Labor in India and China is still cheaper than it is in the United States, but it's not the obvious economic move that it was just a few years ago: Wages in India have increased about 10 percent annually over the last five years"

In other words, it might seem - I say might, because the article is obviously not a real heavy-hitter with data - that the old idea of wages balancing over regions is coming true. I find this interesting because I used to reject this notion, because I feel labor is actually very static (you can't just freely move to China if the jobs move there), but my economics days pre-date the internet and much of what we can do today via technological advances.

So, I'm not really sure about anything based only on this article, but find this to be very interesting.

As far as the Automation part goes, I think in the short- to medium-run it will simply become a case of "Automating things" is the new hot job for a while.

Purely theoretical, long-run thoughts? We are moving closer to that Utopia of machines doing all the labor, while Joe Man-on-the-street gets a guaranteed yearly salary so he doesn't rebel and kill everyone with money. Unless Running Man is your thing.

<comment><USER15> There is another interesting side-effect : companies from developed countries are unwillingly training low-wage workers from 3rd the world.

As an anecdotal evidence, the company I'm working for has partially outsourced their customer services (technical maintenance, etc.) to Northern Africa in order to lessen the wage bill. Their problem is the following one : as soon as they find a competent employee and training him, he expatriate himself into Europe and sell his skills for a much better payroll. Now my firm is stuck with incompetent salary men and old-timers which aren't willing to relocate themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Putting commentary on things like this is always tricky. Reality is complicated and perspectives tend to be more impoverished.

I think part of this is actually a narrowing of gaps between middle classes in large cheap labour markets like China and the working poor in Europe and the US, mostly due to the rising middle class wealth in the former.

A second major cause is progressing technology and culture.

"Automotion" is not always this literal version of machines directly replacing humans. A website where you can renew your insurance, buy plane tickets, make a complaint or order a pizza is automation of a sort. It's not necessarily a self driving scooter deliver that pizza.

This is harder to fetishize as an ideology. We are not replacing hand looms with steam powered looms. It's more like we decided to just be naked instead.

</comment><comment><USER17> I know this is a tough sell but I am going to say it anyway. Automation effects every single person and every single job.

For example, if your job is writing custom software, it becomes progressively harder to find problems that don't already have open source solutions.

Or look at how component marketplaces and open source components or modules increases software reuse. There is not an infinite capacity for software complexity to increase. So that reduces the amount of work to be done simply because solutions are being shared rather reinvented.

<comment><USER18> > For example, if your job is writing custom software, it becomes > progressively harder to find problems that don't already have open source > solutions.

There's a lot of work to be done writing glue code.

<comment><USER19> There is a whole business of 'integrating' the software products that are kind of ready (much more so than OSS) - ERP (Dynamics, SAP etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The actual product (actual content 2 links from the article):

[http://www.blueprism.com/about/bpm.php](http://www.blueprism.com/about/bpm.php)

Basically sounds like Selenium for mainframes/win32 powered by some decision tables?

That's certainly one way to solve the enterprise integration problem...

</comment><comment><USER21> People are not tired of this kind of FUD?

Whatever you do good devs are a limited resource, and all that is made to try to walk around the problem worsen it:

\- outsourcing ? => You have to compensate in supervision and you lose in quality. (Indians are not bad coders, but there is something called the Babel tower effect that creates a lot of signal perturbation/costs)

\- agile? => Trying to cut on correctness and detailed specifications to ship value faster result in insecure useless softwares. Ofc a startup owner does not care of the sustainability of his product because he will cash out a lot of $$ before the problem will happen. But what about the customers and the economy relying on it?

\- Web as an UI because web dev is less expensive than GUI devs/shipping? GUI devs then where making atrocious bugs because they were clueless on asynchronuous coding (reentrant code) and money related data still needs to be transactional (transactional is a property that is exclusive of distributed). Devs that understand this class of problems are still few, and Web dev is causing even more problems.

\- The Cloud? It has non linear costing! If you x2 your customers you cannot predict your pricing unless you make fat margins, and swap KPEX and slowly linear OPEX for strongly growing non linear OPEX is kind of totally mathematically irrational (except for the one doing fat margins).

\- Containers? In 1999 the problem of the GUI was already the dependency Hell. Well, now instead of solving the satisfiability of dependencies (NP complete problem) in one closed system you do it on a set of M containers that still requires internal KSAT solving (yes instead of solving one KSAT, you solve N KSAT coupled to M KSAT). (so we created the DevOps and more security holes!)

When automation can replace people, it means the industry does not requires skilled people. That is not the case.

Can't you see there is a trivial contradiction in the thesis of this article?

Seriously this insanity never ends? IT industry is just bullshiting the rest of the economy to sustain its totally insane model and paying our daily wages.

I would be happy of this waste of money (I am a still a coder) if only people were not starving in the streets and our economies were not suffering and thus creating instabilities all around the world. I long for the internet 2.0 bubble to explode soon so that we can get back to an economy that profits to everyone not only the IT crowd.

<comment><USER19> "...if only people were not starving in the streets..."

You have a bigger problem with IT then investment banking and international politics?

I am personally very happy that once in a while engineers are getting a _kind of_ fair deal. Of course let's not forget that salaries in Silicon Valley were artificially suppressed for a while in an illegal agreement between the likes of Google and Apple. So being underpaid is what we should be really complaining about.

<comment><USER21> We are getting paid peanuts compared to the unfair captation of our values through Intellectual Property.

Let me be clear: we are undervalued by our companies, and overvalued when sold to the customers. Have you looked at apples/googles net (official) margin? 20+% Stuff like Danone are 5%. And They have incentive to underestimate their profit for paying less taxes.

A coder is like 40% ROI once you set your monopole.

The only merit of a boss? Being bornt wealthy, and then all he is doing is walking into the open like Riquet with the tuft. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riquet_with_the_Tuft](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riquet_with_the_Tuft)

He can act as a jerk, be an asshole, but everybody gives him the credit of the employees real value, and of course the real benefits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The title doesn't seem to match the content. Sure there's _speculation_ about automation, but what they cite as actually happening is the outsourced jobs being brought back to have humans here on the proper side of the timezone and language barriers do them.

<comment><USER23> The business geniuses who foisted this idiocy on us (software professionals) are now saying what we said 10+ years ago: it's an obviously dumb idea that doesn't actually save money.

</comment></comment><comment> t-rex1 I keep wondering, say the rise of automation continues at the rate its going right now, eventually eliminating a lot of opportunities, then what happens to the people? how would a good number of the population be able to further earn a living? I think this growth of automation needs to be taken a bit more serious than it is right now. I can envision it causing quite a problem in the society.

<comment><USER24> Basic income is a proposed economic solution that would change welfare such that everyone receives enough money to survive from the government and is therefore encouraged to work to earn money for greater comforts. It's been suggested that this model of welfare allows people to work less hours with other possible benefits.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

I've not studied economics but I would expect there might be other proposals which could also be suitable for a society with far greater population than jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The author of this weak article seems to surf the waves of "robots are taking our jebs" because he brings no proof that the layoff of Yahoo, IBM, Cisco in India are the results of automation or business shrinking or strategic decision about outsourcing. Also this site hacks the scrolling wheel in a bad way, small scrolls seems discarded.

<comment><USER26> It is very interesting that - he uses Yahoo layoffs as an example. Because from what I know, by and large Yahoo hires better engineers than Outsourcing firms. And since I have friends who have worked for Yahoo India, the kind of jobs they did - are not going to be automated away until we invent software capable of writing complex programs. In other words - can a robot write/maintain Yahoo maps? Something tells me - we are not there yet.

Overall the article is load of bull. and I don't think author has expertise required to judge what kinda of IT jobs are going to be automated away and what kind don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I dont't understand why people think that's bad. That means that workers are getting paid more and are not willing to sell their labor for a low price. Machines make the work that nobody want to do for what it's worth.

</comment><comment><USER28> I believe [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income) is the solution to globalization/automation

</comment><comment><USER28> Hope Govt imposes tax on Corporate Income, not Profit.

</comment><comment><USER29> They were at some point?</comment>


Web 3.0 Will Be All About Web Services. Learn How to Create them - <AUTHOR> http://jeez.eu/2009/09/26/web-3-0-will-be-all-about-web-services-learn-the-basics/ <comment><USER2> I wish this article would describe why to use SOAP. I was under the impression that SOAP was a fairly dead technology. Particularly as we move to PUSH services with PubSubHub or the RSS version (I forget what it's called).

<comment><USER3> SOAP is dead for good reason. Its an overcomplicated POS. I will pretty much refuse (unless there is no other alternative) to use a web service that only supports SOAP.

My conspiracy theory regarding SOAP is that major tool vendors support it because you __need __a complicated and expensive tool to design a SOAP service.

<comment><AUTHOR> ..because you need a complicated and expensive tool to design a SOAP service...

huh? Don't think so. Can you please give some more info about your opinion? My SOAP services was always easier to implement than others like XML-RPC for example. Never found anything complicated about SOAP.

<comment><USER3> > Can you please give some more info about your opinion?

Visual Studio web services generates some befuddling code, at least when I last used it about 5 years ago. Maybe things are better now?

Also, it is difficult to implement a good SOAP library. For example, in the Ruby world, there is soap4r, which has difficulties talking to EJB SOAP and .NET SOAP, which have different conventions. I had to interop with a .NET soap service, and it was pretty painful.

> My SOAP services was always easier to implement than others like XML-RPC for > example. Never found anything complicated about SOAP.

Good for you. You must be smart.

I find REST much easier and straightforward. I never bothered learning the SOAP protocol, which doesn't make me very sad for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> SOAP is so 20th century :-)

Seriously, a long time ago I implemented SOAP for a commercial J2EE product, and used SOAP, but I don't use it anymore. Good riddance - REST style is easier to support and use.

I just wrote a book for APress on Web 3.0, and my pitch was that it is more about publishing and reusing data.</comment>


What is good running technique? - <AUTHOR> http://www.runningtechniquebook.com/chapter-4-what-is-good-running-technique/

<comment><USER2> So, the best tip I've heard, and what I tell patients who want to minimize who want to minimize injuries, is to pretend like you're running on ice or glass. Try and focus on absorbing the impact of each step and try to distribute your weight evenly so as not to 'break the glass'. I think I first heard it through a TED talk or something, I'll see if I can't dig it up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent video on natural running form: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zSIDRHUWlVo](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zSIDRHUWlVo)

</comment><comment><USER4> I ran track in College (1976-1978) an my coach back then taught me correct form. I run at least 5 miles almost every day ever since and have never had a running related injury. I attribute this to learning correct running form early on. If you run more than 3 miles and have any pain at all you are probably doing it wrong.

<comment><USER5> what is "correct form"? and where is all the research demonstrating its success at preventing injury?

<comment><USER4> You can Google "proper running form" and get a ton of resources. I do think learning good form at a younger age helps, perhaps in a similar way that learning a second language is easier.

<comment><USER6> My running form improved greatly, and quickly, when I ran barefoot (or wear 5 finger shoes). Doesn't have to be far, could be a few hundred meters as a part of a warmup. If you're overstriding, slamming your forefeet or heels, it'll hurt. When it stops hurting, you're running with good form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> POSE method is pretty good for injury avoidance - [http://birthdayshoes.com/introduction-to-the-pose-method- of-...](http://birthdayshoes.com/introduction-to-the-pose-method-of-running- posetech-an-introduction)

<comment> con-templative Not necessarily. It has been found that radically changing your running technique quickly alters where the majority of the load on your skeleton occurs, which may lead to injury: [http://sportsscientists.com/2007/10/pose- running-reduces-run...](http://sportsscientists.com/2007/10/pose-running- reduces-running-economy/)

The same blog has a whole series of posts on running technique, much of its opinions supported by the scientific studies: [http://sportsscientists.com/running/running- physiology/runni...](http://sportsscientists.com/running/running- physiology/running-technique/)

<comment><USER8> > [http://sportsscientists.com/running/running- > physiology/runni...](http://sportsscientists.com/running/running- > physiology/running-technique/)

Read this. There's a ridiculous amount of pseudo-science, superstition, and hucksterism around running technique. Without becoming a quack myself, all I can say is "be patient and don't make any sudden changes."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For anyone interested in "good form running", what it means for the human body and the benefits that are associated with it, I wholeheartedly suggest reading up on Daniel Lieberman (he has videos on YouTube about it). His studies about foot strike and gait especially are mind-opening and can really help you achieve good result and avoid some of the running-related injuries.

</comment><comment><USER10> The book chapter is about form for running fast, but most of the comments are about form for training. In terms of injury prevention, I'd agree that the latter is important, but the book chapter doesn't have a lot to do with this. All the pictures are of people running better than 5 minutes/mile, with some probably running faster than 4 min/mile. But almost all running injuries are the cumulative effect of lots of slower miles, run at 6, 7, or 8 minutes/mil, or even slower (though the difference between 6 min/mile and 8 min/mile is pretty significant). Good form at those speeds is markedly different.

For fun, try to find footage of Kenny Moore running. Looks absurd, so knock kneed, but terrifically fast in his day.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps more interesting for most is this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVH2qOwZd18#t=373](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVH2qOwZd18#t=373) showing an elite runner running at a reasonable pace (perhaps 7:30 - 8:00 minutes/mile), with some commentary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is an elliptical a good alternative to running?

<comment><USER12> If you can stand doing your exercise exclusively on some indoors machine such as the elliptical, then sure. Get that heartrate up.

But I'm afraid the population of people who can do that is rather small. Don't set yourself up for failure, do something you enjoy and better yet, join a group.

<comment><USER13> If you really want to take your elliptical outdoors there's always the ElliptiGo: [http://www.elliptigo.com/](http://www.elliptigo.com/) I've seen a surprising number of these around Boulder CO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I recently developed 'IT band Syndrome' which made me say goodbye to boring/injury prone running and switch to swimming. Best decision ever. Fuck running.

I don't know of single runner who hasn't suffered some kind of injury. Again fuck running.

<comment><USER15> It's ironic that it is IT band syndrome that caused this reaction, since that's by far the easiest running-related "injury" to solve.

There is literally one magic-bullet stretch that will solve it completely - allowing you to go from excruciating "am I destroying my knee?" pain to pain- free in a few days or a week.

Just a note: even if you don't ever return to running, that tightness in your hips and your IT is not getting better - you will need to address that at some point because it _will_ rear its head again. Foam rollers, big rubber bands that you walk sideways in, and sideways leg raises/circles, if you're curious.

<comment><USER16> I'm in the exact same situation as parent. Except i skipped to biking. It seems to me that Foam rollers ( or in my case just stretching on a tennis ball) are good for relieving the pain a bit after you've stopped running. But what do you suggest to stop having the pain in the first place ?

<comment><USER15> The magic stretch is the one where you lie, on your side, on the edge of a bed.

Then, you drape the affected leg (the leg that is on top, not the leg you're lying on) behind you, such that your foot ends up below the level of the bed.

You're basically stretching your hip farther than you could stretch it normally, since you can drape it backwards into empty space.

Play with it a bit, with different angles, etc. This is the stretch that can have you go from debilitating pain (I couldn't even walk properly) to completely asymptomatic.

This is a good stretch for everyone, since even if you don't have "IT band issues", most people have much tighter hip joints than they think, and it affects the health of your knees and back.

<comment><USER17> I've actually got an alternative magic stretch that can be done standing (so you can do it in the middle of a run). It involves crossing your legs and reaching over to the side.

Image here: [http://www.runnersworld.com/sites/default/files/rt/images/20...](http://www.runnersworld.com/sites/default/files/rt/images/200405/IT%20Band%20stretch%202.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "How should I run" is a question that can only be asked by someone who doesn't run much.

That sounds flip and snarky, so let me frame it in a personal way ...

Years ago, when I started my martial arts training, I naturally asked a teacher about some details / techniques of a certain kick. He said "do that kick 5000 more times and then ask me that". So I did. And I had no questions to ask about it.

That's the beauty of your brain and body interface - you have a built-in mechanism for stripping away extraneous movements and inefficiencies and honing a physical act to the most efficient movement available. It just happens.

So when I hear people talk about fine details of running technique, I say "run 1000 miles and then revisit those questions".

Pro tip: when your body is most tired is when you'll find the movements that are least important. When you are close to exhaustion, you won't have the extra elevation or the extraneous movement or the inefficient motions - you'll find the path of least effort. So in addition to running those 1000 miles, run some of them until you're very tired.

<comment><USER18> This seems like dangerous advice -- the flip side of this auto-correct-by- experience coin is creating entrenched bad habits. As a common example, take posture: "Just stand up and walk around 5000 times and then ask me what correct posture is." Yet the majority of people have problematic posture, both when standing and when sitting, despite a lifetime of practice.

While there probably are examples where your martial arts teacher's advice makes sense, in my personal experience it seems wrong for most physical movements (walking, weight lifting technique, posture, dancing, etc).

<comment><USER19> My personal experience as well. I squatted for years and the secrets of perfect form eluded me. I had anterior pelvic tilt. Certain muscles were tight, others underdeveloped and correcting the issue was very tricky.

The advice may work for people who are generally physically active, as their muscles won't be out of balance from sitting.</comment></comment></comment>


Memo To Ian Fleming's Heirs - <AUTHOR> http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/memo-to-ian-flemings-heirs/

<comment><USER2> This sort of misses the point. Pricing is generally driven by one thing - profit maximisation. That's very different to maximising volume sales.

Even if you can go and buy a paperback for $1, there are evidently enough people buying the $10 version (or they wouldn't sell it at that point).

If they price the eBook based on the competition from used paperbacks, they're going to risk people who would have paid $10 buying the cheap eBook instead. That may increase volume sales but given their age and the likely number you could shift even selling them for a $1 (after all there are plenty sat unsold in the second handbook shops, it's not like they're flying off the shelves even at that price) the total profit would be lower.

So you may not think it's not worth $10 but they know that most people think that and they don't really care. They'd rather sell to 100 people at $10 than 500 at $1 and if you're one of the 400 not buying at the higher price they're not fussed.

The other point is that I think people massively over estimate the cost of the physical medium for books. In the UK you can buy a printed copy of War and Peace (nearly 1000 pages) for £1 and at that price it's profitable. The paper is pretty low quality but it's 1000 pages, printed and shipped and profitable for both the publisher and the retailer. Given that I don't think we should expect massive differences between the cost of physical and eBooks.

<comment><USER3> "Pricing is generally driven by one thing - _short-term_ profit maximisation."

There, fixed that for you. His argument is that they're trading short term gain for long term pain by turning customers into pirates or _shudder_ library patrons.

Of course, it may be argued that they're maximizing long term gain at the expense of short term gain by "convincing" users that $10 is an appropriate price for off-list books.

I agree with the author, but there is merit to the other argument.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, how does that work?

People aren't pirates or not pirates - there's nothing that says that once you become a pirate that's you for life. I'm sure there are people who've pirated stuff on here who also buy stuff. One incident doesn't determine your future behaviour.

The decision point is different for each person for each medium and each specific product. You may be willing to pay $5 for the new William Gibson but I may think it's worth $20. If they price it at $10 I think it's a bargain, you go looking for a torrent. We both read it, you love it, I hate it. Next time our valuations on it may be completely different and our actions completely different.

And with each transaction being an individual thing it all comes back to what you see as short term profit.

<comment><USER3> _Sorry, how does that work?_

Two ways: facility and habit.

There are still a lot of people out there who don't know how to use bittorrent nor how to convert pirate ebooks to display on a Kindle. Given enough incentive, they'll learn.

Second is habit. Nobody exhaustively checks alternatives every time. Once you've learned that ebook prices are usually too expensive, you don't even bother checking the price before you head to your favorite torrent site.

<comment><USER2> In terms of incentive to learn, we're talking about maybe $10 for a book. This is a relatively small amount of money for something which will likely keep the person entertained for several hours over a week or two. In addition most readers are educated, employed and earn above average which puts them in the class of people where time (to learn these things) is proportionally more important to them than money. You talk about giving people enough incentive but I really don't see that many people being strongly incentivised to learn by that sort of saving.

You're also making the assumption that book X has no substitute and that they must read this but this is rarely the case (and in those situations the item will actually almost always have a higher value to the individual increasing the price they're willing to pay).

If I look at the Spy Who Loved Me and I find that it's £5.25 on Amazon and I think that's not a good price, I could easily see that I could get Casino Royale for £4.35. If I think that's too expensive it would take me about 30 seconds to see that I could get The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for £2.68 or the Lost Symbol for £2.76.

Piracy is not just not the only alternative and indeed I'd suggest that in the vast majority of cases it's not the main alternative.

(If you think that £2.68 is too much for a novel then might I ask what the reasonable price is at which you'd buy rather than pirate? My guess would be that it's likely to be in the area where the publisher essentially doesn't see you as a potential customer anyway (at least not a profitable one) and broadly doesn't really care what you do).

Beyond this you assume that initial attempts at piracy will be positive where research shows that this isn't the case. If someone attempts to find a torrent and spends half an hour battering their head against password protected files, dead links and so on, they're just as easy to write the whole thing off. At that point buying behaviour is actually reenforced as they now longer see downloading as a viable option.

As for habits the use of the work "exhaustive" to relate to an Amazon search which might take 30 seconds is misleading. I agree that you're not going to search 50 sites to find the best price but a search on Amazon to get a ballpark figure isn't onerous at all. Where someone has made some sort of investment in a new behaviour pattern it might be true that it was more of a one way trip but in this case the barrier to returning to legitimate purchasing is so low as to not be there.

EDIT: I would accept that there are some instances where book piracy will be (and is) rife. Generally these would be where the price is higher (computer or academic books for example) increasing the incentive, and where the potential customer / pirate is more familiar with the technology and therefore the barriers to moving into piracy are lower but for mass market books I don't see it being an issue in the way you describe.

<comment><USER3> People don't generally care about absolute amounts. People care about "fair" amounts. And if they think $10 is unfair, they won't spend it even if they're going to get way more than $10 of value out of a book.

For myself, if I'm going to read any old book, I'll grab one from the basement or from the library rather than paying $2 for something that will have negative value to me once I'm done with it. (my basement is filled with books, I don't need more). OTOH, I'll readily pay $30 if I have to read it now.

<comment><USER2> I agree with that. My contention is unfair pricing doesn't necessarily make people pirates, indeed it will more commonly just make them customers of something they see being priced more fairly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "There is no way in hell I am paying frontlist pricing for the work of a dead author whose works can be had for about a buck in used paperback."

Well said and good point.

I know that many publishers are justifying that they are charging near dead- tree version pricing because of "costs associated with conversion to eBook formats." That's a sham, because 99% of the eBooks out there do not even have formatting as nice as the printed books, nor do they have the photos or imagery associated with chapters. At least, the Amazon and Apple eBooks. I have seen some PDF eBooks from notable publishers (O'Reilly and Pragmatic) who format their eBooks quite nicely.

If publishers can make their eBooks look nearly as fantastic as their dead- tree versions (if not better), then I think it's fair to charge near dead-tree pricing. Otherwise, who are they fooling? Most of them are doing a "print to PDF" not actually formatting it.

<comment><USER2> The eBooks I've read on the Kindle seem very very low rent conversions - tables of contents aren't usually linked, links to additional notes at the back of the book are missing (as in the superscript isn't there, let alone linked).

<comment><USER5> I've seen obvious OCR errors too.

<comment><USER6> Some errors could be deliberate to detect copyright infringement:

<http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/trap-rooms.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just want to make it clear that nowhere did I ever state people should pirate the books. If I thought they should, I would have provided a very convenient link to the pirate site. I wanted the Fleming company to be aware they weren't sitting on some sort of OPEC-like monopoly -- which is the thinking that apparently drives the current Agency pricing model in publishing.

Pricing is the hot topic in publishing right now. Notice how someone such as Konrath is raking in the dough with his $2.99 eBooks.

It doesn't matter what the publisher thinks the "value" is -- it's the price people are willing to pay that matters. Does Konrath think his stuff is devalued because it's no longer in paper form at a higher price? Or does he see the greater value in having a larger income?

Tell me, does being free devalue the software a lot of you use? I don't think so. But if they tried to price it, what would you be willing to pay?

You're all very smart people here (and I state that without any sarcasm), so I wonder if anyone here has devised any sort of pricing algorithm that could be applied to publishing?

I always hold up the Henry Ford model: he priced his cars cheap because he wanted them above all to be affordable and to sell. I think publishing needs to have the same attitude. When people disagree with that, I'm just puzzled and stumped.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's an odd rant. The same argument could be made for any popular author (King, Rowling, Peterson, etc).

The eBooks are priced that way because the estate is afraid of devaluing the Bond brand. (Publishers know that eBook pricing is a race to the bottom and they don't want to get there too soon.)

Bond is like Batman or Holmes. Three generations going and his adventures are still published and republished in hardback, special editions, omnibuses, and variant cover paperbacks. There's also a lucrative secondary market of neverending sequels and spinoffs.

The estate doesn't want to screw Penguin on pricing by offering an electronic version at $2 when the dead tree version is $15. That undercuts the publisher across the entire line of Bond products.

</comment><comment><USER8> You generally pay what something is worth to you, not some small percentage more than the creator invested to make that something. eBooks are very convenient compared to books. I can get them easier and they don't have the issues of a physical book. I can have literally rooms worth of books on my iPad and if I move I don't have to dread carrying my library around.

If technical books weren't already so expensive I would be willing to pay _more_ for an equivalent eBook than a physical one.

</comment><comment><USER9> Call me crazy but I think that publishers should try to sell their e-books at whichever price they want to... Pirates are going to pirate, people looking for the best bargain they can by hunting around ad used book stores will do just that.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is akin to saying "I can download music for free so record labels should give theirs away on iTunes."

<comment><USER11> The author isn't recommending that they give anything away for free. He is talking about how to determine a fair price. Your analogy does not apply.

<comment><USER12> I don't think it's really the "fair" price.. it's the price that he, the author, would consider buying the books instead of pirating them. Whether that price is really "fair" is debatable.

Now, I love freedom of information, torrents, open source, and all of that, but putting myself in any author's shoes, I think it would be infuriating to hear this kind of argument. "I can pirate your book for free, so a fair price would be $1 dollar. I don't care how much work you put in it." (Yes, I know Ian Fleming is dead, but this applies to any other author as well)

<comment><USER13> There's no such thing as a universal fair price. There's the situation when the price is lower than your personal valuation of the good, then you buy it, and there's case where it isn't, in which case you don't. (And don't forget opportunity costs when factoring in your "personal price", there's a lot of things I might be willing to spend $10 on in isolation but I can't actually buy all of them, and you have to factor that in to your personal price.)

It's not wrong to sell it for $10, it's not wrong for your price to be $1, the latter fact doesn't give you a license to pirate it simply because your personal price is lower.

You can sort of composite up a semi-universal concept of a "fair price" by looking at a suitably chosen large group of people but it's still just an approximation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>