Diablo III coming May 15 - <AUTHOR> http://us.battle.net/en/int?r=d3 <comment><USER2> While I'm very (very) excited for this game.. I'm very nervous about my productivity this summer. There are few things that can pull me away from coding. This is one of them.

Maybe D3 will open some new startup opportunities? Yes.. yes that's what I'll tell myself. It's all research.

<comment><USER3> You could sell a game guide for D3, however Blizzard legal hates those. They've done stuff like file takedown notices with ebay, over and over. Then when the guy filed a counter notice, they refused to go to court, waited for the time period to expire, then started filing more takedowns for his new game guide auctions. This disgusting behavior got his ebay account suspended! And they refused to ever explain specifically how the game guide violates their copyright or trademark (hint: it doesn't.).

I personally wanted to make a game guide for Infinity Blade 2 but epic legal threatened me out of it (and we had a friendly pre-existing relationship, which counted for exactly nothing. they'd interviewed me for their website and sent me free stuff, and i had a free guide on their forum with 200k views that they had made sticky). Dealing with their legal crap wasn't worth the hassle. I was even willing to give them undeserved money to be left alone, but they wanted a large cash payment upfront and were unwilling to discuss any other payment approach.

Anyway the point is game guides should be a pretty good small business opportunity -- there is a very real market for help playing games better and being more successful in them -- but there are (baseless but real) legal problems so be wary.

You might expect game companies to be thrilled to have services sold around their games, which their customers find provides game-related value to them. Just like Apple is happy to see other people selling iPhone cases. But a lot of game companies are not happy and will harass you.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't making a game guide be fair-use, similar to an unauthorized encyclopedia of a fictional universe (like Middle-Earth)?

Even so, I suppose you'd have to defend the fair-use in court.

<comment><USER3> Yeah of course it's fair use. A guide is a commentary work and it's not even close to substituting for someone buying the game. The point of copyright law is for the copyright owners to be able to make a profit -- copyright is to help encourage people to make and sell stuff. You aren't competing for sales with their game, so there's basically no way you're violating the game copyright. Just don't include video walkthroughs of the whole game (which could actually be a substitute good for buying the game).

If they've published their own game guide, just don't take any material from it and you won't be violating any copyrights on that either.

For trademark, the point is to prevent consumers from being confused about who is responsible for products, so people can build up a brand name and have a reputation they are responsible for and have control over. Guide titles like, "Ubergeek's Ultimate Unofficial Guide to Diablo 3" do not violate trademark because they do not cause any confusion about whose product this is. It's well established that you _can_ use someone else's trademark as a substring in your product title when it's important to explaining what your product is and won't cause consumer confusion. (Similarly, "Pegasus Case for iPhone" or "Ubergeek's iPod Battery Replacement Kit" would not violate trademark.)

But, yes, as you say: being completely right doesn't prevent you having to defend yourself and spending time and money on that. (Could you recoup lawyers fees after you win? I have no idea about that.)

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer. (But I have read some legal sources about this.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh, they're fiendish indeed. They're offering the game for free if you sign up for a year of WoW. That's just mean.

I managed to abstain from that, but I did pre-buy and pre-load the game. I was just so excited they had Mac support (which, last I'd heard, was sort of up in the air I thought).

<comment><USER6> The Mac support has always been great for Blizzard games and D3 is no exception. I've been playing the beta in a 2009 MBP for a couple of weeks now and everything looks pretty smooth.

Unlike companies like EA, Blizzard spends real time making sure their Mac offerings are as good as the Windows ones and that is enough for myself to be a supporter.

<comment><USER7> _I've been playing the beta in a 2009 MBP for a couple of weeks now and everything looks pretty smooth._

Question about heat: My wife's MBP (2011) runs what seems to be dangerously hot doing even basic web video and she's worried that D3 will melt it entirely.

<comment><USER8> It can't. All modern chips have thermal protection. It'll just throttle down if it gets too hot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't like Blizzard much anymore. I liked WarCraft 2 and 3, and Diablo 1 and 2 (liked is a bit of a strong word for Diablo 1 and 2, though... 'twas more addicting than fun). Nice gameplay, good for LAN parties, and a decent hacker culture on all of them. In fact, the excellent map editors in StarCraft and WarCraft 3 were inspired by some hacker-made Warcraft 2 map editors.

Now? Blizzard's doing all they can to control the whole experience. No LAN capabilities, shameful treatment of the bnetd folks, and others that have been mentioned here. Contrast to id games who open source their engines and invite folks to build on them.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Online Only" sucks. No LAN and no mods make me a sad boy.

<comment><USER10> This. I will not be buying this game, because I don't want to support this model.

<comment><USER11> Yes, I think you're right. It's better not to support it and it will be good for our productivity, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> After my roommates pre-ordering it for my Christmas gift back in _2010_, glad to see this thing is finally launching.

</comment><comment><USER13> Judging by many of the posts of /. and reddit, the level of distaste with the 'Battle.net 2.0' scheme for Diablo III is much higher than what it was for Starcraft 2, probably owing to SC2's inherently multiplayer nature and the huge deviation in gameplay from Diablo II to Diablo III.

I has been common knowledge for a while that Diablo III will likely see a console port. Looking back, it's hard to imagine that that didn't severely impact the design of the game.

<comment><USER14> SC2 players _hate_ Battle.net 2.0. I don't think Blizzard cares too much, since they are focusing on the larger casual market. They originally stated that there would be no chat channels ("why would you even what them?"). That makes sense for a casual player who is already on Facebook and uses that to communicate with their friends.

<comment><USER13> I think the core idea is that Battle.net 2.0 represents a step back from SC:BW Battle.net in most regards, and the only steps forward don't make Battle.net 2.0 nearly as functional as WC3 Battle.net.

Only time will tell if their IP has the traction to overcome the limitations of their system, and how that impacts future iterations of their games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why is this relevant to hacker news? This piece of news is something I'd expect if I went to reddit, but this shouldn't be anywhere on Hacker News at all.

</comment><comment><USER16> RIGHT DURING FINALS WEEK, GREAT. Now there's going to be a lot more college seniors that won't be graduating.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am super excited for this, but a little disappointed that Blizzard apparently doesn't understand exchange rates.

The Australian dollar is currently worth (marginally) more than the US Dollar, and yet the game costs an extra $20 here. I don't understand how this is justifiable.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure if you're having a rhetorical meow or just want to know what's going on here, so I'll offer an explanation.

It's not about exchange rates and never ever will be. It's about purchasing power. It's just normal market segmentation, like how textbooks are cheaper in India/China than in the U.S.

Whats the average purchasing power of an Australain versus an American?

The Australian dollar is worth more than the US Dollar, and what's Australia's minimum wage? What's America's? They're about $15 and $7 respectively. If anything, Blizzard could probably stand to charge Australians _even more._

But I'm sure they've done the math on this, and there might be other factors, but I'd gander that in terms of purchasing power the costs of the game to an American and Australian are probably pretty similar.

Now if you were making money in the U.S. and had to spend it in Australia, _then_ you'd be very right to meow about exchange rates, since they don't take into account purchasing power, but very very few people who buy the Australian game are going to be in that position.

<comment><USER19> In Europe there are huge discrepancies in purchasing power between countries even inside the Euro zone but, at least when buying online directly from Blizzard, the price is the same wether you live in Greece/Portugal or France/Germany.

Having the same price for every country inside the UE and not using the actual conversion rate hurts even more the people in countries where average wage is bellow US wages.

It wouldn't hurt them that much having different prices for different countries inside the UE, just make it so you need a credit card from the country to pay the price corresponding to that country.

(at least there is amazon.co.uk and I am a little happier)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Expectations for D3 have gone from out of this world to all over the place lately. On top of the release pushbacks and feature cuts a few weeks ago one of Blizzard's PR people said essentially "don't get your hopes up for D3" (Google _Bashiok Diablo 3_ ). That furor was a bit overblown but still expectations are down for many people.

I think D3 will be more of what we got in SC2: essentially the same game but prettier. Which is sad because Diablo, WC2, SC and WoW were blockbusters (edit)in large part(/edit) because of their innovations.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm interested to hear about expectations for Diablo III. I'm long ATVI because of their dividend, financials, and value fundamentals. Gaming also seems like a growth industry and Blizzard/Activision have some strong gaming franchises. I figured the upcoming Diablo III launch would only help the situation.

<comment><USER22> I love Blizzard's timing... by setting a date we can surmise that WoW's Free- to-Play model is failing and that May 15 is the latest date that a release- date-averse publisher like Blizzard feels it can still preempt the Guild Wars 2 release. It makes one wonder if these large publishers have game theoreticians working on optimum release dates.

<comment><USER23> There definitely have to be some solid reasons behind this specific release date given the fact that they've been cutting features in the last couple of months to be ready to ship in May (such as PVP). When were their other games launched? I seem to remember StarCraft 2 launching around May/June.

(Hopefully unnecessary disclaimer: I work on Guild Wars 2.)

<comment><USER22> SC2 was released early July 2010. D2 was released in late June 2000. WoW and its expansions in successive Christmas seasons. So, yes, I'd say that May 15 is atypically early for Blizzard. Given the online auction house component, they may feel that it's necessary to hook the summer crowd early to maximize returns from _that_ casino.

I wouldn't be surprised if this move forced Arena Net to push back to a Thanksgiving release, since people generally don't play two online "collect- em-all" games at once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Disappointing graphics so far. This is what i think Diablo3 _should_ look like these days, [http://uiu.bravehost.com/THIS-is-what-Diablo3-should-look- li...](http://uiu.bravehost.com/THIS-is-what-Diablo3-should-look-like.jpg)

Anything less and i´m not interested.

<comment><USER25> Diablo as an FPS could never be the same.

<comment><USER26> Borderlands did it pretty well. I wouldn't mind playing a fantasy-themed Borderlands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Okay, so that means I have about 60 days left of productivity/having a life

<comment><USER2> Start the count down!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I love Diablo but this was getting to be like Duke Nukem.

<comment><USER28> Interestingly enough, Duke Nukem Forever was announced just four months after Diablo 1 was released - April, 1997.

So D3 has been in the making longer than your average PC title, but it's not quite as bad!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Unless they have some new control scheme, I don't think my hands will stand up to the intense mouse clicking this game needs.

<comment><USER7> I found that with Diablo II, you could click a lot less than was intuitive. Click-and-hold would be as effective as click mashing, and a lot easier on the hands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have the beta. It's pretty awesome to behold, but the gameplay isn't significantly different than d1/d2.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is it bad that I'm already scheming ways to make money off of the real-money auction house?

</comment><comment><USER32> right about time! let's find out what's 10 years worth of developing this game looks like!

<comment><USER33> I think I remember reading that they basically scrapped everything and started over around 2007.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> does pre-purchasing it now makes any difference than buying it on launch date?

<comment><USER34> You might want to check all your different retailer's sites (Amazon, Gamestop, etc.) to see if they offer pre-order bundle bonuses as they do with other games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> sign of beta?

<comment><USER36> Betas (open, and closed too, to a degree) these days seem more like, "let's subtly have people try our product for free, get hooked and generate buzz while at it". It's the same as a free trial (although calling it like this has less positive response, it seems). Just another marketing stunt, long gone are the days where beta was used strictly for testing.

On the Web 2.0 environment, who started this? Was it Google with Gmail, or was there something else before?

Also, lately, at least in the MMO scene, going gold doesn't mean that the game is polished and ready for release, it just means that you're ready to charge customers.

<comment><USER37> You're right and you're wrong.

Blizzard DOES use the beta for hype. With SC2 they gave beta keys to preorders to help generate revenue and interest prior to launch. Not a lot of participants actually know the reason for a beta and actually use it as an excuse to play the game early but Blizzard already knows this.

Blizzard's job of releasing a public/invite beta is to test:

A) How the game functions on the boat-load of machine configurations available. When you sign up for beta invite on battle.net you need to create a "profile" of yourself by uploading your PC specs. Blizzard has always provided games that can run on a low end machine with features and graphical tweaks that still allow it to look good on a new machine. For me SC2 had to run on low/medium on my 2 year old laptop but with my new PC it runs on Ultra with great effects!

B) Network stability. B.net2.0 is rather new and they need to test the matching functionality as well as load test the servers for every reason under the sun. Having willing participants allows them to hit all these goals while still generating the hype.

<comment><USER36> Again, it's not just Blizzard I'm talking about. Every single MMO company since a few years ago is going this way.

Network stability is mostly tested on specific moments like stress test weekends or at the end of a beta, when they let everyone in to see how far they can push their hardware.

Of couse this and general behaviour in various hardware configurations need to be tested. But it's not the ultimate point of a beta anymore, at least not in the later stages.

I can see it all the time, players just want to get into a beta to see if they like a game before they pay for it, rather than to help make it better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think I can hear the distant sound of marriage counselors rubbing their hands. It's THAT big.

</comment><comment><USER39> Are there any news on bringing it to consoles? Wikipedia[0] just says they are probably still working on it but there are no confirmations one way or the other...

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_3#Console_development>

<comment><USER37> I don't have a source on me (Work blocks sites that I could link to) but they have confirmed that there is a console port coming. I believe they have a small dedicated team to the port.

<comment><USER40> Probably towards the end of the year...</comment></comment></comment>


Ruby's first-class functions make printf-debugging obsolete - <AUTHOR> http://slightlynew.blogspot.com/2010/03/first-class-functions-make-printf.html

<comment><USER3> Please don't do this. There are proper debuggers for Ruby that you can use to accomplish everything described here and more, and all without opening gaping security holes or beating the metaprogramming facilities in Ruby to a bloody pulp.

Also, I vote for Ruby's new motto to be: "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

<comment><USER4> "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

In particular, this Applies to Eval.

<comment><USER5> For some small applications, it can be handy to eval a configuration file that is simply a language data structure. It's like having a built-in config file parser. It also gives to lots of flexibility with your hacks :)

<comment><USER3> That's why I said "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" and not "Don't even think about it". 'eval' exists for a reason, and there are certainly good reasons to use it. This is not one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quite a hack. Over in the Perl world, we just say "perl -MCarp::REPL your_app.pl" and we can have a REPL in the correct lexical context when an exception is thrown. Without adding methods to random classes. (And it all goes away when you run without -MCarp::REPL, of course.)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty cool, I'll have to check that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really evil... But the title is right - if you were debugging with printf in the first place, then this is better. It doesn't mean it's good in any way. The better way to make printf-debugging obsolete is:

\- catch exceptions where they might occur and log as much information as possible

\- use tests before publishing the code

\- use something like log4X so you can actually log what's happening at the level you need

\- do not ever think "Assuming that /usr/share/dict/words is sufficient" - <USER2> were wrong at "Assuming"

</comment><comment><USER8> Good example for two of the biggest wrongs with ruby.

First wrong would be that it doesn't emit a useful error message in first place. Not sure why that is the case, but e.g. python would always include the value it failed on in a DivByZero Exception.

Second wrong would be that these kind of hacks seem to be widely accepted in the ruby community. Only because you can doesn't mean you should. DRY and conciseness are worthy goals, but not at the expense of sanity please.

<comment><USER6> _Not sure why that is the case, but e.g. python would always include the value it failed on in a DivByZero Exception._

I bet it is usually 0.

The big innovation is including the _variable name_ that is problematic.

<comment><USER8> Ha, good call. Looks like I missed the point by a good margin.

Yet I still have to wonder where the desire for this functionality is even coming from. The "cure" looks by far more problematic than the disease in any case.</comment></comment></comment>


Trump's Proposals Won't Help the White Working Class or the Urban Poor - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trumps-proposals-wont-help-the-white-working-class-or-the-urban-poor/ <comment><USER2> Grain of salt: this was the same organization that predicted a 71% chance of a Clinton victory the morning of the election.

<comment><AUTHOR> As did the New York Times. Most statistical models were biased because the data was biased. That doesn't change my perception of the entire organization (though I understand if others do change theirs.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "The larger problem for Trump and his supporters is that there is very little reason to think that any set of policies could meaningfully reverse the long- term decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. That decline has been driven by a combination of globalization and automation"

Those jobs are gone forever. We are now a global economy and trying to bring those jobs back will be a race to the bottom.

Trump has proposed a lower tax burden on small business owners. This will make it easier to start a company and give many businesses a way to hire more employees.

We should be concentrating on ways to bring more businesses into the US and less restrictions/lower taxes is a great start.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure that's the right way to look it. After all, someone has to construct the factories for building future devices. And those buildings need concrete, steel, electricity, infrastructure, etc.

THOSE jobs are decent jobs. Even if the factories are robotic, we'd still be able to recover those jobs.

So the future will be different, but I'd still rather be making things in our country for the reason above.</comment></comment>


Elixir Stream and large HTTP responses: processing text (Part 2) - <AUTHOR> https://www.poeticoding.com/elixir-stream-and-large-http-responses-processing-text/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a second part of the article of last week: [https://www.poeticoding.com/elixir-streams-to-process- large-...](https://www.poeticoding.com/elixir-streams-to-process-large-http- responses-on-the-fly/)

This time we are going to process on the fly a 30 million lines remote file, summing the numbers of each line. We will see how to implement the functions we need to convert a stream of chunks (the one built in the part 1) to a stream of lines. We'll then run a benchmark of two different implementations.

We will then see how easy and quick is to process just the first 30 lines of the same 125mb remote file.</comment>


Gmail to No Longer Auto Add Contacts - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/07/gmail-to-no-longer-auto-add-contacts.html <comment><USER2> Their chat system is by far the most retarded. If you have multiple aliases tied into one gmail account then gmail chat will readily leak out all of your identities to everyone.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I always found this aspect quite amusing, but I always liked the auto- add

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's really not gone. They're just moving Auto Add to Suggested Contacts.

</comment><comment><USER5> thank god -- now if they'll only fix their retarded way of friending/following people in Google Reader, i can start eating again.</comment>


Front Page of Hacker News in 5 Easy Steps (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.alexkras.com/front-page-of-hacker-news-in-5-easy-steps/FrontPageofHackerNewsin5EasySteps <comment><USER2> Bad URL. Link to the post [https://www.alexkras.com/front-page-of-hacker-news- in-5-easy...](https://www.alexkras.com/front-page-of-hacker-news-in-5-easy- steps/)

It's not bad advice, but most steps are not so easy. Perhaps I'd recommend not to repost too much. In some cases it goes out of control and the mods ban the user and site.

</comment><comment><USER3> lol</comment>


List of talks for PyCon 2012 - <AUTHOR> https://us.pycon.org/2012/schedule/lists/talks/ <comment><USER2> I'm really happy with the talks. This will be the first year I'm attending PyCon and I'm very excited.

I like that most talks are either Intermediate or Experienced. Here are the number of talks by level:

Experienced: 20 Intermediate: 52 Novice: 23</comment>


Japan to criminalize DVD ripping and breaking DRM even for personal use - <AUTHOR> http://www.asahi.com/national/update/1203/TKY201012030697.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't been able to find any English language reporting of the proposed update to their copyright law yet but Google translate has done a terrific job at it!

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ja&tl=en&u=...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ja&tl=en&u=http://www.asahi.com/national/update/1203/TKY201012030697.html)

<comment><USER2> > Japan on March 3, sources said.

That is some terrific reporting, right there.

<comment><USER3> The Japanese actually reads "The Agency for Cultural Affairs announced the change in policy on [December] 3rd."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "複製行為については罰則は設けない。"

Translation: [The proposed modification to the law] does not establish criminal penalties for unauthorized copying.

<comment><USER4> I never really get laws that have no penalties. The lack of penalties merely reduces to a disagreement, and a disagreement as such doesn't equal any substance in a society. With criminal penalties a law would raise the stakes for everyone, including the law makers.

(Of course, the DVD/DRM case is probably about making it illegal _first_ , much easier that way, and adding the penalties later, also much easier that way, in that "hey, this is already illegal!")

<comment><USER3> Japan, like many other countries including the United States, makes a distinction between _criminal_ and civil infractions. If you suspect someone is violating your reproduction rights, Japan will allow you the use of the court system to enforce those rights, but will not use physical force on your behalf to compel compliance from the other party.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interestingly enough, apparently ignorance of the law has been a big enough argument that this amendment is adding a section basically saying "if you know that it's illegal then you have no excuse", to which Japanese game developers are now adding of FBI warning-esque messages like those seen in American videorecordings: [http://kotaku.com/5705055/this-new-warning-screen-means- hand...](http://kotaku.com/5705055/this-new-warning-screen-means-handcuffs)

<comment><USER6> Won't the warez community just get rid of that warning?

Also, I think it's funny that they are aiming the message at a demographic that can't read kanji but _can_ decipher complex legalese.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tsutaya is not going to be happy. Considering how their shops always have piles of writable DVDs next to the cashiers, they obviously thrive on ripping.

</comment><comment><USER8> First you make a law but don't enforce it. Nobody fights it off. Then when it is established, it starts getting enforced. If you want to steal away human rights (right to make copies of data that you own), you can't just do it all at once, you have to move slowly.</comment>


Ask HN: Website Idea, Online resumes done right - <AUTHOR> tl;dr: Your online resume.
Backstory: August of last year, after a year and a half from my last startup closing down, I decided it was time to get back to work.  The time had been spent with my family, and watching my son in his first year.  It was a good time.  But getting back to work would mean getting a job, and at the time, I was more concerned about a solid pay check.  Obviously, in this economic climate, it was a bit scary, but I had ample experience and was confident I could land a job.  I went to work.  I had to create a resume, and then get it up online.  I bought the domain name, and put it up there.  Spent quite a bit of time getting it right.  In the end, this is what allow my current employer to find me.  A search on Google came up with my resume as the first result, provided the proper contact information, and made it easy for them to get in contact with me.  After interviews and negotiations, I got the job.
My brother is in a situation like this as well.  He's part of the inspiration for this project.  The idea is that I had to spend time putting together the website, the design, even as simple as it was, and making sure it got up on the search engines.  None of this was difficult for me to do, but for someone like my brother, he doesn't even realize it's something he should do.  A resume on Monster.com isn't geared toward the masses and SEO.  It's geared toward Monster.com searching.
Since leaving school, I've gotten all my jobs because someone knew me somehow and recommended me in some capacity.  Of those, 3 of them also included what I did online.  One, in fact, included me walking into the interview with a stack an inch thick of what the interviewer had found online about me.
The reality is, most people get jobs through word of mouth.  Someone knows someone, or their is some common ground.  At least the good jobs.
So, the idea for the site is bred from some simple ideas:
1. It's good to have a website dedicated to your resume.  To promoting yourself.  You want a search result with your name to return your resume, your own personal advertisement, rather than some random Facebook page.
2. You want to always be promoting yourself.  The job market has changed, and you want to be out there.  If someone is interested in searching for you, you don't want them to have to go searching for more information.  You want that information to be easily found.
3. Most people don't have the time or energy to invest in creating an highly optimized online resume.  Couple this with the cost of having to buy hosting, and the price can get a bit high just for a place to put an online resume.
4. People need jobs.  In the current market, job hunting has become even more important.  People are becoming aware that it's important to always be prepared to find a job.  If you aren't actively pursuing a better job, you're hurting yourself.
5. For far too long, job hunting has been employer-centric.  Advertise a job, receive resumes.  People are coming to accept that advertising their own skills is becoming important.  Social networks are, in a way, teaching people to put their lives online in an orderly fashion; a personal resume.
6. Employers focus too much on accepting resumes instead of getting what they want.  It's difficult for employers to find people with the skills they need on their own, without going through an agency.  Even then, it's still focused on hiring unemployed people or people that are actively looking.
These are pretty broad ideas, but rather simple.  They describe the problems, the issues at hand.  The service seeks to solve these problems in various ways, to service not only the potential employees, but the employers as well.
1. Simple to use.  The site is focused on providing an efficient, professional resume.  You fill in the blanks.  The goal is to be fast, painless, and get up something good, quick.
2. The service is meant to be long term.  Year-long terms here.  The idea goal is for the resume to be a "living resume."  It updates itself, or you update it, with the current status.  It's smart.  A year goes by, and 5 years of experience becomes 6, for example.  You are encouraged to update.
3. Everything is optimized.  The page itself is optimized for search engines.  The design will be optimized for easy viewing.  Easy printing.  Easy sharing.  SEO will not just be on the resume itself, but also for searching.  Need a Rails Developers in Atlanta Georgia? We'll make that easy to find.
4. You're always promoting yourself.  The goal is to make a search for your name appear at or near the top of the search result.  This is, after all, your page with your professional information.
5. No ads.  I mean, the entire site is basically an advertisement, each page for a particular person, if you want to get technical, but no flashing banner ads, text ads, etc.
6. Low cost.  Pay a yearly fee, something reasonable.
There is a lot of potential for expanding the services offered.  Being able to put up a portfolio would be important.  Pictures of yourself if you wanted.  Customization through CSS.
Standards would be important.  Exporting contact information as well as the resume itself.  All the data would be used and indexed on.  Searching and pages could be made on anything.
Anyway's, that's a brief overview of the idea.  There are tons of other specifics, and other ideas, as well as ways to go about marketing it and getting users.  My questions are simple:
1. Would you pay for a service like this? 2. Do you know others that would pay for a service like this? 3. Have you ever built an online resume/portfolio? 4. Would this service benefit professionals in industries outside web developers? 5. Would businesses outside web-based/focused companies use such a means to find employers?
I'm sure there are other questions, I'll have, and frankly, you don't need to answer these questions point by point.  Just wanted to give you an idea of some of the initial questions I might have.  Any input at all is encouraged.
As a final point, I've searched online for a service like this, and while I've found a few that promote the same basic thing, I haven't found anything that really capture what I would want in a service.  In tech-terms: a Web 2.0 Online Resume site.
I've put a lot of thought into this, played around with some initial designs, hacked up some code, but at this stage, I'm more eager to gain some initial feedback before investing heavily into this idea.  So, have at it.
And thanks for reading. <comment><USER2> Two thoughts ...

First, I think you'd need to differentiate it from LinkedIn, as all of the benefits I'm reading here seem to be covered, except for some of the more cosmetic aspects (CSS).

Second, I'm not sure if this is the kind of thing people would pay a yearly fee for. I think people are willing to pay when they're in a time of need, but most of the time, it's hard to see the value of paying for a service that's there as a "someday I'll need this, maybe" service. Note that job boards (the flipside of this app) charge for specific job listings ... companies don't generally pay for a "retainer" service that they can then post to when they have a need ... they pay a per-job fee. Maybe an annual subscription would work, but, again, communicating the value would be important.

Keep in mind, of course, that HN might not be the best place to do market research on this, as few people here are interested in keeping a resume and applying to work for someone else. Most here (me, for example) want to be captain of their own ship. So feedback here could be skewy.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. LinkedIn tries to do to much, and the resume page makes it difficult to actually see anything the user has done, as well as makes it impossible to contact the user without signing up. While LinkedIn's focus is on professional contacts more than online resumes.

2\. I agree. The idea behind this is changing the perception. You are always in need of a better job. This is also my biggest concern: is this too far out of people's way of thinking? After all, even I didn't create an online resume until I needed it.

Thanks for the input though. =) This isn't the only idea I putting around. Just wanted to get some other thoughts on it.</comment></comment>


A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power - <AUTHOR> https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.21/nuclear-energy-a-new-generation-of-environmentalists-is-learning-to-stop-worrying-and-love-nuclear-power <comment><USER2> With a new projected cost of 25 billion USD the cost overruns of the Vogtle Plant are worse than I thought. There is a reason why nuclear is losing to natural gas and coal. It's too damn expensive and takes too long. If this money was instead spent on building more storage capacity we'd have solved our energy problems a long time ago and even if we started today we'd be done long before the nuclear plant is online.

The nuclear plant consists of two units each with 1200MW production capacity. Let's be pessimistic and assume that we need 24 hours of storage or roughly 57600MWh. A modern redox flow or lithium ion battery can cost as little as $100 per kWh but Tesla's grid battery with 129MWh cost 66 million which is around $500 per kWh so we will use that.

Well it turns out 57600MWh * 500$/kWH is exactly 28.8 billion USD. No power grid on earth needs a 24 hour battery but even with this crazy assumption grid storage isn't significantly more expensive than nuclear power.

<comment><USER3> Your cost analysis neglects replacement, disposal costs for batteries, long term costs of carbon emission, and coal flyash disposal. The only reason nuclear is losing to gas and coal is because the externalities of the mess they make are dumped on the public, whereas nuclear pollution and waste processing is heavily regulated.

<comment><USER4> Batteries can be recycled, nuclear waste is stockpiled with no permanent disposal or recycling plan in sight.

Solar and wind, unsubsidized, with storage, are already cheaper than nuclear. Those costs will continue to plummet, especially as EV battery demand ramps (rapidly expanding battery manufacturing capacity).

Nuclear lost because it's too expensive, and has its own externalities to ignore (decommissioning, waste disposal, liability insurance).

<comment><USER5> this might sound silly (and it probably is), but I don't understand why we don't build a hulking great cannon and shoot our nuclear waste into space.

<comment> ben-schaaf I know others have addressed the dangers of this, but I had a little fun looking at the logistics. The UK alone produces 2Mt of radioactive waste[0] per year, ~9% is of "intermediate" level. Just sending those 18Mt into LEO would take 129,000 Saturn V launches per year. That's about one launch every 4 minutes. And LEO is _not_ where we want to send anything. Lets assume a Trans- Lunar Injection is enough, bringing that number up to 370,000, almost one launch per minute.

Just the RP-1 & LH2 fuel cost would be around $600,000 per launch[1], so about 222 billion USD per year (The fuel is the cheapest part of the launch). Each launch releases around 440,000 kg of CO2[2] into the atmosphere. That's 163Mt, an increase of 44% of the UK's current CO2 pollution from the launches alone.

Just for fun, if we wanted to send all nuclear waste all the way to pluto using only Falcon Heavies we'd have to launch around 1.8 per second. Going off the 80 million USD price tag for these launches, that's 4.5 quadrillion USD. That's about 60 times the Gross World Product to cover the UK alone.

[0] [https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2017/04/03/how-much-radioactive- wast...](https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2017/04/03/how-much-radioactive-waste-is- there/) [1] [https://www.quora.com/How-much-fuel-does-it-take-to- travel-t...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-fuel-does-it-take-to-travel-to- the-moon?redirected_qid=38695501) [2] [https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13082/calculate- fa...](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13082/calculate- falcon-9-co2-emissions)

<comment><USER6> Launching waste into space with a rocket is a silly idea. We don't really care if the waste gets damaged as long as it doesn't break up and make a mess. Why not build a giant railgun to launch it?

<comment> ben-schaaf I'd consider them equally as silly, considering we're actually capable of launching rockets into space yet the closest we've gotten with a space gun is a measly 180km apogee @ 3.6km/s[0]. The original question was why we don't send our nuclear waste into space. We can't send our nuclear waste into space using a rail gun because we can't currently send anything into space with a rail gun.

Otherwise here's a good discussion on the viability of space guns: [https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2370/what- technolo...](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2370/what- technological-hurdles-prevent-the-development-of-a-space-gun).

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP)

<comment><USER7> Cause someone murdered the leading scientist in the field. Also there's concerns that it'd be too easy to turn it essentially into a very long range, highly effective weapon that could lob nuclear or conventional projectiles at countries on the other side of the planet with little to no warning.

<comment> ben-schaaf We already have highly effective weapons that can lob nuclear or conventional projectiles at countries on the other side of the planet with little to no warning: ballistic missile subs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I see so many people against nuclear but I wonder if they read books such as Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air. As I understand it, either we kill ourselves fast, or we use this as a stop-gap until we can figure it out for real. With newer reactors being much better, maybe another generation (helped by more implementations) will even be good enough not to have to be a stop-gap solution.

<comment><USER9> Three questions that I have never had satisfactorily answered by nuclear advocates:

* If nuclear is that safe, why don't we eliminate or at least, _significantly_ raise the nuclear liability cap? The nuclear industry keeps trying to sell us (this article included) on the idea that disasters are now close to impossible. It'd be an easier sell if they voluntarily increased their liability, to, say $150-400 billion and found private insurers willing to take a risk on their safety, no?

* Did you personally consider Japan's nuclear plants unsafe before Fukushima? (as far as I can tell it took most of us by surprise)

* If the strike price for Hinkley point electricity is 1.5x-2x renewable strike price _today_ (never mind in 10 years when renewable prices have plunged again), what exactly _was_ so great about building a "next gen" nuclear plant?

<comment><USER10> Give me a billion and I'll write you a policy for $400b. No problemo!

<comment><USER11> Is this you [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_R._Greenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_R._Greenberg) :) ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm writing this from Japan. I do not have the numbers, but as I cross the country in the Shinkansen I see a sea of solar panels.

Fukushima has been a lesson here. Strategically, Japan has to import it's energy, except for solar energy. With a float of trains electricity is already at the core of their transportation system.

Here, at least, nuclear doesn't look like it's the future.

<comment><USER13> I was interested in your statement, and a brief search on wikipedia says that Japan has slowly been restarting their nuclear power plants and is planning on growing nuclear power as a total percentage of power over the next several decades.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan)

I don't think the sentiment on nuclear power, even after Fukushima, is as clear cut as you're presenting.

<comment><USER14> Can you pick out a particular section?

I'm about as pro-nuclear as they get, but the Wikipedia articles seem to support a story of the Japanese government shutting down nuclear and being very tentative restarting the existing reactors [0].

It is difficult to guess what is going on in a country that doesn't report in English, but the info in Wikipedia (mostly a little dated) seems to support a rollback of nuclear. Reduced generation, limited new developments. Either they are using less energy or something else is filling the void left by nuclear plant shutdowns.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Nuclear...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Nuclear_power_plants)

<comment><USER13> "In June 2015, the Japanese government released an energy proposal that includes the revival of nuclear power to account for Japan's energy needs. The proposal calls for an increase of about 20% in nuclear energy by 2030.[2] This reverses a decision by the previous Democratic Party, the government will re- open nuclear plants, aiming for "a realistic and balanced energy structure"."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just a nitpick, neutrons aren't _blasted_ into the nuclei of fissile isotopes. The faster a neutron is going, the less likely it is to cause fission. You want slow neutrons.

<comment><USER16> Depends what you're going for. If you have the fissile concentration to support it a fast-neutron chain reaction has lots of benefits: more neutrons per absorption in fuel leads to the ability to breed fuel for millennia or alternatively get lots more energy out of nuclear waste. Fission product poisons don't affect fast neutrons that much so you can get way more energy out of the fuel in fast reactors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The thesis, _A new generation of environmentalists is learning to stop worrying and love atomic power_ is unsupported by the text if the article.

My readthrough of the article failed to reveal supporting evidence that there is widespread change in opinion about nuclear in younger generations, much less that a pro-nuclear movement is growing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Another factor to consider with nuclear is how it perpetuates complete dependence upon the grid, a single point of failure model. Perspective articulated here by Sunnova CEO John Berger.

[https://youtu.be/6Dx0U2y-YgU?t=2922](https://youtu.be/6Dx0U2y-YgU?t=2922)

<comment><USER19> Nuclear doesn't perpetuate complete dependence, because it has never been intended to be the sole provider of energy to its customers. Even the most ardent nuclear cheerleaders pose it as a single component in an energy mix.

<comment><USER18> "...a single component in an energy mix". And that mix relies on the grid? With nuclear or other centralized power source, yes.

<comment><USER19> From your link, solar doesn't rely on the grid, and in fact it acts independently of it on some islands.

<comment><USER20> For the network effects and efficencies, solar absolutly needs a grid. If not a grid, you need local storage, another inefficiency.

<comment><USER21> IIRC there was some article linked to on hn some time ago where it was explained that most rooftop solar installations actually don't work at all without a grid. If the grid goes down, so does the solar. It's of course technically possible to fix, but costs more.

<comment><USER22> The article you're thinking of was probably this one: [https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-typical-home- solar-s...](https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-typical-home-solar-setup- does-not-work-off-grid.html)

<comment><USER21> Yes, exactly! I briefly tried to search for it, but failed. Thanks for digging it up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Now there'a title that Ed Bernays would be proud of. 'A new generation approves.' So, where's this new generation? What demonstrates their love? Show me pictures of a dozen, or it didn't happen. Then, show how that scales with full knowledge of history, not just free jelly babies.

Fantasy fiction isn't going to solve our dilemma. Advanced, less toxic technology will. Nuclear has had its chance.

<comment><USER24> Nuclear is the safest, most scaleable, greenest most reliable power source we know of bar none and blows every other alternative energy out of the water at 1000w per m2.

Far less people have because of nuclear power in all its time than gets killed by nature in a year.

The environmentalist not rationality kille nuclear.

<comment><USER23> No! Even the 'new' ones are killing it? Too slow, too expensive, too toxic.

Hmmm, let's see: how many years before the residents of the San Onofre region finish paying for its recent failed upgrade ? Then how much more will they pay for decommissioning it?

That 'clean, safe, too cheap to meter' line is from the 1950s. Before longer we'll have a decentralized, more secure power source that actually lives up to those lies. And best of all? The fuel supply will never be exhausted ... never need to be decommmissioned ... and lives a nice safe 90M miles away.

<comment><USER24> Thats not because of the technology but legislation around it. Most of the pricing will go down once more gets put up so yes and its a hell more effective than wind snd solar which arent even supporting 1% of the worlds supply and not even close to a realistic solution to them beeing unreliable and frankly inferior even with a 300% improvement which isnt possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Question, why do people talk so pessimistically about the potential for solar? I see lots of comments like, "there is not enough land for solar panels". People seem to have a fixed view about how much power can be drawn. Sure right now the payoff might be underwhelming in relation to the size requirements, but with more development wouldn't the technology improve?

I imagine a future where the technology improves to the point where people who live in cloudy areas can still generate plenty of power. Is that unrealistic?

<comment><USER26> The point is that climat change is real and it's coming fast. So from a purely pragmatic standpoint it seems more reasonable to deploy solutions as soon as possible with available technologies than to wait for a plausible technology improvements.

Otherwise you risk being almost as inactive in the required efforts than an average climat change denier.

<comment><USER27> Hum... Do you have any actual solution? One that does solve carbon emissions, can be deployed in reasonable time, and does not involve people getting poorer?

The most pragmatic thing to do is to improve solar generation and all kinds of storage. Those can actually solve the problem. Nuclear can't be here on time (nor on budget), and everything else just won't happen.

We could have avoided a lot of problems on the last few decades if the nuclear countries decided to push for safer reactors with no proliferation problems. They didn't. They all kept going for more weapons. Now we have to live with those problems, and the nuclear economical window passed away, it does not make sense anymore.

<comment><USER26> >and the nuclear economical window passed away, it does not make sense anymore.

Say's who?

Because laws of physics say it's the more efficient solution yet (not the cleanest thought) to tackle climat change problem. You have to put serious study out to counter that, not hearsay's by coal lobby or anti-nuclear activists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I recommend Whole Earth Disciple by Stewart Brand. One of the founders of the environmental movement explains why he was wrong about nuclear power and other issues.

"We are as gods, and have to get good at it."

<comment><USER29> I am idly curious whether the environmentalist movement was deliberately seeded with anti-nuclear sentiment by the fossil fuel industry.

Could be coincidence, but it seems awfully convenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The Russians have been building floating nuclear power plants to deploy to remote areas that need power.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station)

</comment><comment><USER31> The recent piece by HCN on our nuclear past stands in sharp contrast. [1] Anyone reading that, environmentalists or not, will have reason for extreme concern and skepticism about a single generations ability to manage consequences that can last thousands of years.

[1] [https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.21/nuclear-energy-theres-no- ea...](https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.21/nuclear-energy-theres-no-easy-fix-for- our-nuclear-past)

<comment><USER29> The consequences of not using nuclear alternatives will last 1000s of years too. There's no way out of consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> No. Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind and we have no way of mitigating or eliminating it. Nuclear isn't cost effective on an ongoing operating basis (compared with natural gas). When you add the costs of closing and "cleaning up" a plant site, which run into the billions of dollars for each plant, nuclear just doesn't make sense. Nuclear is far from "carbon neutral." The process of extracting uranium from the earth uses tremendous amounts of heavy equipment, but the carbon outputs from mining (and cleanup) are never mentioned anywhere in order to sustain the "clean power" myth.

<comment><USER33> _Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind_

From what I've been reading, seems CO2 tops that list. One can bury nuclear waste in the Nevada desert, keep everyone a few hundred miles away, and it'll be fine. From what I learned in high school chemistry class, a gas wants to expand to fill its container, so the CO2 produced by Chinese coal-fired plants eventually makes its way to me.

 _The process of extracting uranium from the earth uses tremendous amounts of heavy equipment_

How much compared to, say, coal mining? Mining rare earth metals for solar panels and wind turbines?

Yeah, nuclear power has some downsides. But I'm not hearing the "versus" part in your argument.

<comment><USER34> We can build one CO2 capture factory in Nevada desert to capture excessive CO2 and bury it there. I see no difference.

<comment><USER35> The amount of CO2 is orders of magnitude more than the amount of radioactive waste; you cannot just build "one factory in Nevada" and sequester all the carbon dioxide produced.

<comment><USER34> We need to capture about 1 trillion of tons of CO2 to return to sane levels, and then capture about 25 billion tons of CO2 annually. It looks doable.

See [http://www.climatecentral.org/news/first-commercial- co2-capt...](http://www.climatecentral.org/news/first-commercial-co2-capture- plant-live-21494) .

<comment><USER36> That process absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere at low concentrations (400 ppm) onto stones coated with X-material. Later the stones are heated (using more fuel) to release CO2 at much higher concentrations (more than 75%). Then what? It is a gas. You need to bury the carbon. They suggest feeding it to greenhouses, to grow food, which re-releases it later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> These are hard problems that I am not sure about: decommissioning, spent fuel storage.

</comment><comment><USER36> We have the opportunity now, to decide to not kill everything bigger than bacteria. We could shutdown nukes, and store the waste. Or we could go for broke - if we go extinct - everything goes extinct.

<comment><USER29> Seems like an exaggeration. I like your point but I don't understand why you draw a line at bacteria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It helps to be born after 1986.

<comment><USER39> I lived in Germany in 1986. For over half a year we were told to avoid fresh milk and produce and avoid walking barefoot on grass.

But now I know that Chernobyl was a ridiculously poor design that lacked a containment dome. If you want to build another Chernobyl I'll fight you, but if you want to build a modern plant or research MSRs I'm all for it, because climate change is set to do way worse than anything nuclear has ever done, Chernobyl included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Yet another article about the complex subject of power generation that wilfully conflates fusion with fission. (Usually it's 'nuclear power' \- here it's 'atomic power'.

That's assuming we're happy to think we have a power problem, not an an energy problem. Anti-solar types (who similarly conflate PVC with solar thermal) like to mix or muddle those. Fission apologists who think that because Lithium is mined, then mining Uranium should be just fine, also seem keen to blunt some semantic nuances.

Nuclear fission's time has been and gone - it's great for bombs, and was an interesting experiment, but the costs are way higher than anyone should reasonably expect to pass onto future generations.

(Plus they snuck in that nasty 'metric ton' construct. 1000kg is a tonne.)

</comment><comment><USER41> This is a ridiculous and fundamentally flawed proposition. The obvious omissions and lack of consideration of other factors threatening the planet belies this author's bias/naivete/stupidity/other motivations.

First, the demand for energy is only a small fraction of numerous ways the planet is being compromised - irrevocably. Satisfying all energy demands worldwide cleanly will not "save the planet".

Second, carbon-free is completely different than being clean energy. The byproducts (generally leaking radioactive waste) are significant, highly toxic, and long-lasting. While the emissions of fossil fuels is considered, other cleaner alternatives are not.

Third, the demand for energy is, for the most part, contrived. We are sold on the ideas of the need for one car for each person, the need for cars to travel in the first place, whole house heating and cooling, electrical solutions to simple manual tasks, etc ad infinitum. We could massively reduce energy needs by using low-power and no-power solutions.

<comment><USER42> > The byproducts (generally leaking radioactive waste)

The idea that nuclear waste 'leaks' anything is absurd and defiantly not generally true.

While of course the output is toxic, its also highly controlled and does not come into contact with anything.

Its long lasting but it also contains lots of useful stuff that, if we continue to use nuclear power and other nuclear byproducts will turn very valuable.

> Third, the demand for energy is, for the most part, contrived. We are sold > on the ideas of the need for one car for each person, the need for cars to > travel in the first place, whole house heating and cooling, electrical > solutions to simple manual tasks, etc ad infinitum. We could massively > reduce energy needs by using low-power and no-power solutions.

Sure if you forced everybody how you would like to live then we could do a lot. The idea that we should artificially restrict peoples energy needs as a way to save the plant just so we can avoid the very minor issue of nuclear waste is absurd.

<comment><USER35> > The idea that nuclear waste 'leaks' anything is absurd and defiantly not > generally true. While of course the output is toxic, its also highly > controlled and does not come into contact with anything. Its long lasting > but it also contains lots of useful stuff that, if we continue to use > nuclear power and other nuclear byproducts will turn very valuable.

While I view nuclear power relatively favorably, this is an extremely rose- tinted view of the situation. Nuclear waste can and does leak.

<comment><USER16> Hanford waste is radionuclides dissolved in acid to get pure plutonium out. It leaks. It's from the Cold War nuclear weapons program. [1]

Commercial nuclear waste is solid ceramic Uranium/fission product-oxide. It does not leak.

[1] [https://whatisnuclear.com/hanford.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/hanford.html)

<comment><USER42> That's a weapons production cite. In most post I tried to separate civilian power waste from that.

If we look at civilian power production in the last 40 years its basically a non issue.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Non-disparagement agreement that never expires - <AUTHOR> I have worked at a company for many years that is going through a merger. I have been asked to sign a new Employment Agreement that includes a strong Non-Disparagement clause.
The language states that the clause applies "During the Employment Period and thereafter", which seems to read as "for the rest of your life" to me.
When I brought my concerns to management, I was told this was common for the industry, and that they didn't understand why I was "asking for the right to disparage the company within a certain time frame"
Is this normal, am I overreacting to this? <comment><USER2> I've never been asked to sign a non-disparagement clause, in a couple large companies and a few startups. I've seen a few, which were time-limited.

In a merger situation (or any other where you're already employed), passive chicken is sometimes effective. Like, say that:

1\. You love the company and can't imagine ever "disparaging" it, in the common English sense of the word;

2\. but you're not sure what their clause actually means legally, since you're not a lawyer, and you are always very careful to abide by the contracts you sign;

3\. so it really would be simpler to remove that language.

Then just keep delaying, and see what happens. They'll either revise the contract, or forget about it entirely, or start talking about a termination date.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much, I think this is the most sound approach forward.

Based on conversations today, they seemed unwilling to revise the contract, so either forgetfulness or possible termination seems close in my future!

<comment><USER3> Revise it yourself. Odds are the HR drones will never check it. Problem solved.

Example: [http://www.adamsdrafting.com/making-sneaky-changes-to-a- cont...](http://www.adamsdrafting.com/making-sneaky-changes-to-a-contract- before-signing-it/)

Worse case, they notice it, you have some lulz, and you're back to where you are now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Contract includes a clause that any modifications are invalid unless initialed by an manager

<comment><USER2> Then just take that clause out too, no (additional) problem.

<comment><USER3> Even better, he just needs to change "invalid" to "valid". ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am not a lawyer but I went to law school and know a few things. Talk to a lawyer and take my comments with a grain of salt. Also this only applied within the United States.

The legal definition of disparagement is closely related to a freedom of speech. In order to disparage, legally, you must make a statement that is false, injurious, and derogatory. That's actually illegal in perpetuity with or without signing that statement. You can't make a false, injurious, derogatory statement about an organization.

On the other hand some companies have attempted to change the definition of disparagement to mean something else. For example "you can't say anything bad about your experience at the company." Nope, sorry, that doesn't fit the legal definition of disparagement. If you say something bad about your time at the company, which is true, it's not disparagement. It's a right according to your freedom of speech. And you can't sign away that right. However, even this gets misunderstood.

A corporation does not have to allow you to say anything you want without repercussions. They just can only hand down repercussions that they have access too. For example, if you were to say bad things about the company you work for that are true, they do not have to continue to employ you. Or ever employ you again. That is their right. But they can't say that you can't say those things. They also have the right to attempt a civil action against you for disparagement. They may win or lose.

So anyway, are you over reacting? Maybe. I doubt that any paper about disparagement would actually change any of your rights in any way at all.

<comment><USER5> I think you are confusing disparagement with defamation: disparagement is basically saying anything negative about the company whether or not it meets the standard for defamation.

[http://www.jaburgwilk.com/news-publications/what-is-a-non- di...](http://www.jaburgwilk.com/news-publications/what-is-a-non- disparagement-clause-and-why-you-may-not-want-to-sign-one)

<comment><USER4> This was an absolutely fabulous read! I was looking for a case like this to try to counter my argument. The issue I have seen with quite a few cases was that they were individuals versus individuals or individual being disparaged by a larger corporate entity. This one spins it on its head. Very nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Common or not, it is ridiculous to allow a company to insulate themselves against disparagement for unknown future conduct. It would be one thing to rule out disparaging them if it were backward-looking. You could think about what they had done and say "yep, they haven't done anything all that bad." However, they could do literally _anything_ in the future so it really shouldn't be acceptable at all to give them carte blanche for arbitrary behavior. Of course, at the end of the day it's your choice if you want to sell some of your basic rights for this job, of course (in my opinion, though, it shouldn't be: this should be very illegal).

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's insane. In my opinion, every state should void these clauses as being against the public policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _I was told this was common for the industry_

That is not at all common, at least not for ordinary employees.

<comment><AUTHOR> To clarify, do you find that a non-disparagement clause is uncommon, or just the unlimited time frame?

<comment><USER9> I had to sign a non-disparagement agreement (also with unlimited time frame) when I left my latest company. I was lead developer there, not sure if the position matters.

I signed because I really don't have anything negative to say about that company. Your situation maybe is different.

<comment><USER2> I hope this was in exchange for severance pay, or some other benefit? If not, then the best option is usually to take the contract, promise to review it carefully, and do nothing.

<comment><USER9> Yes, it was in exchange for severance pay. Thank you so much for your advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Careful, your public implication that this is unreasonable may constitute disparagement and be grounds for termination!

What happens if you don't sign? Termination? That probably makes the contract signed under duress and invalid.

In practical terms, what are they gonna do if you "disparage" them after you've left? Sue? Do they have to prove damages, or is there an enforced liquidated damages clause (set amount you agree to pay)?

I would fight it gently using the method tripletao describes, but if push comes to shove it's probably not worth taking too seriously.

IANAL

<comment><USER2> > What happens if you don't sign? Termination? That probably makes the > contract signed under duress and invalid.

It's complicated and varies by state; but if you're an employee at will, then your continued employment is often sufficient consideration to make the new contract enforceable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Having been in a few large tech companies that have merged or split over the course of time, creating the need to sign new employment agreements, I haven't seen this at all. I have no idea how common this is and in what kinds of companies.

But one thing I'd advice anyone is never to disparage a past employer in public (exceptions are harassment, which is illegal in most places anyway, and other illegal practices that one could fight in a court of law). The tech world is quite small because of people moving around and because of networking among people. So it's ill advised to burn bridges while or after leaving a company, however bad they may have treated one on assigning work or on career growth or anything else.

If you don't have serious issues with how you see the company may be going, sign the agreement. If you have serious issues, find another job right away. In either case, not disparaging the company is always a good idea. There are certain things in life that one ought to just let go of and not bother about. This is one of them, according to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no intention to disparage any past employer in public for the exact reasons that you mentioned. The whole putting it in the contract forever though is what rubs me the wrong way

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would not sign, period. The clauses are likely unenforceable (in California at least), but -- in my opinion -- any company willing to put such rubbish in their contracts is likely to abuse their power.

That being said, if you can't afford the consequences, then I guess I'd sign it, and start looking.

IANAL

</comment><comment><USER12> Don't sign any non-disparagement agreement that is not mutual!

</comment><comment><USER13> You can try editing it and adding a year after the employment period ends. Lawyers always ask for everything, a 1 year period usually is enough.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you don't have much leverage this might quickly turn in to not having a job any more. Them stating "it's a common/normal/standard term" or feigning surprise/ignorance to me seems the signal for that. I don't personally believe Hanlon's razor applies in these circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER15> I haven't heard of such a provision for a tech company.

I'd suggest that if you request a change to their contract, ask that it be limited to false or misleading statements, and cite some worry like concern over a personal blog or similar. It's usually best to come across as having a specific and practical concern.

</comment><comment><USER16> I believe it's typical for such clauses to last forever. Whether or not you're willing to sign it is an entirely personal choice. Consider whether it would ever be genuinely advantageous for you to speak negatively about the company in public. And also whether you can tolerate the existential oppression.

</comment><comment><USER17> >> am I overreacting to this?

Yes. Who cares really? Do you feel you need the right to do this - no? Then spend your time thinking about something else.

</comment><comment><USER18> Personally, I won't sign _anything_ that doesn't have a termination date. There are very few reasons to do so, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER19> First things first, this is not remotely common from anything I've seen and I've reviewed a lot of employment agreements in M&A contexts.

Second, I'd be curious what they are referring to as "disparagement." Is that defined in the agreement?

Third, I'm not sure what state you are in, but that might matter. I haven't researched the issue and there may be case law already. But my guy instinct is that this would violate public policy in a state like California, perhaps depending on what "disparagement" is meant to mean.

I'll give you one reason why. California, as you might know, is very hostile to restraints on ability to pursue a profession (most notable example - non- compete agreements). If you cannot disparage your employer post-employment, that may make it impossible to compete with them.

Of course, this depends on what disparagement means. Absent contract, the main restrictions on commercial speech that "disparage" a competitor are in the world of defamation and trade libel law (on a state level) and the Lanham Act/unfair competition law (largely on a federal level). This is gross oversimplification, but good enough for the moment.

Those laws generally require proof of falsity or misleading nature of the underlying speech.

A non-disparagement clause, on the other hand, is a contractual obligation that goes further than that. It CAN, depending on the wording, extend to truthful speech. And it often does.

Competitors need to be able to distinguish their products and services from each other - most notably in ways that promote their own services as "better" than the other or by noting flaws in their competitors products and services. This is part of healthy competition. Defamation, trade libel, and unfair competition laws all permit this.

But it's not necessarily possible with a non-disparagement clause. And, therefore, the ability to compete fairly is materially diminished.

I would note that even in California, there are exceptions to the public policy ban on non-competes in the M&A context. And that might be read to extend the public policy concerns around a non-disparagement clause. But the contractual terms need to be narrowly tailored. It has to terminate at some point. Perpetual restrictions are not enforceable.

TL;DR: This isn't normal. You're not overreacting.

</comment><comment><USER20> Probably not enforceable..

</comment><comment><USER21> How badly do they need you?</comment>


Got something to say? We want to publish it - <AUTHOR> http://seersuckermag.com/opinion/read/welcome-to-seersucker

<comment><USER2> Darn, am I _that_ old at the age of 32? I start to find myself disqualified because of my age from a lot of new things that I do like a lot. Even worse that so many of my friends are on the other hand are in their middle-late twenties, and I feel much more like that as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am not really getting this. How is this different from a random College newspaper?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because we're not tied to one location or school and we represent millennials, not just college students. The point is that there wasn't a national publication dedicated to publishing the best writing from 18-29 year olds before. Now there is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wrote a post for Seersucker and got a ton of awesome support and feedback from the readers. Definitely recommend it.</comment>


Twitter Still Can't Keep Up with Its Flood of Junk Accounts, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-abusive-apps-machine-learning <comment><USER2> This is humiliating to Twitter. The fact that someone can create a better spam filter without having access to corporate private information (such as user interaction signals, which are normally incredibly powerful) points to that they simply don't want to kill the spam:

> _In fact, the paper 's two researchers write that with a machine learning > approach they developed themselves, they could identify abusive accounts in > far greater volumes and faster than Twitter does—often flagging the accounts > months before Twitter spotted and banned them._

<comment><USER3> Of course they don't want to kill the spam! Then they'd have to admit a huge fraction of their user accounts are fake.

For all the attention it gets, Twitter is a niche product with many fewer real human users than Instagram or even Snapchat.

<comment><USER4> Bingo. Fake accounts and bots Make Number Go Up And To The Right, so why on earth would they want to stop them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Geoff Goldberg (@geoffgolberg) [1] who is very vocal about this on twitter and has done bunch of analysis about foreign bots, got his account suspended by foreign trolls flagging him.

Presidential Candidate, Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) account was inflated by millions of fake followers. There is an analysis of it here [2]

Which is if paid by the campaign, by law it should be reflected on their campaign spending (however, it would violated twitter's rules and her account could be suspended). Or paid by some PAC. Either way, if it's so easy to detect, it's obvious twitter knows about these and are just not reacting to them and only removing some accounts for PR purposes.

[1] [https://twitter.com/geoffgolberg](https://twitter.com/geoffgolberg)

[2] [https://twitter.com/likingonline/status/1092643779402620928](https://twitter.com/likingonline/status/1092643779402620928)

<comment><USER6> Don't discount the alternative possibility of an _opponent_ buying followers. Someone pulled that on Roy Moore:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy- jon...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jones- russia.html)

> It involved a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian > accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter, > a development that drew national media attention.

> "We orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea > that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet," > the report says.

It's fairly common with Google AdSense, too - generate obvious click fraud on a competitor's ads, watch them get suspended.

<comment><USER7> This seems really difficult a problem to tackle for Google, Twitter etc.

Other than a victim trying to make a strong case that they are not responsible, are there any elegant solutions to this problem?

<comment><USER8> why not tie twitter accounts to some strong real world identification? One cent payment to twitter, national id or something of that sort?

Just push the bar up for people. The flipside is that people who want to stay anonymous or people with privacy concerns will stay off the platform, but I think fundamentally there is a price to be paid if you want an authentic community.

<comment><USER9> Because Twitter would be exposed as 95% throwaway/inactive/bot accounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "One drawback to the Iowa researchers' method was its rate of false positives: They admit that about six percent of the apps their detection method flags as malicious are in fact benign. But they argue that false positive rate is low enough that Twitter could assign human staffers to review their algorithm's results and catch mistakes. "

If I understand right, out of 460k apps 170k were malicious. That should lead to quite many manual reviews, if you don't trust the algorithm. Also I'm not sure if this would a task where humans are any better.

At these numbers 6% is quite much in absolute terms. That would mean quite many legitimate apps getting blocked (unless I'm missing something here).

<comment><USER11> It's simply not worth the time and money to pay someone to review every app created everywhere. Even with a 6% false positive rate, those app developers will appeal if it's worthwhile (which will probably be less than the full 6%), and then they can be manually reviewed, and the false positive rate brought down after some more iterations.

6% is 6%. The absolute number is meaningless. It's just a crappy twitter integration that no one really cares about. It's not a human life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What is Twitter other than a way for celebrities and consumer brands to advertise to their customers? I suppose with paid-for follows and retweets from click farms, you can position yourself as an 'influencer' and get a gig pitching slim tea, or testosterone gel or something out of a late night TV infomercial.

The whole thing feels highly commercialized and yet, at the same time, very gauche, like stepping into a neighbourhood where the only stores sell payday loans, bail bonds and liquor. I follow ~12-15 people in my industry who are knowledgeable about stuff, but honestly, that makes Twitter extremely boring.

I'm starting to realize that the drama and beefs (often manufactured) is what keeps ordinary people coming to a medium where they aren't even the intended customer.

<comment><USER13> I use twitter to follow people (usually scientists or public intellectuals) that tweet solid ideas or share essays with solid ideas. I only follow accounts with high signal to noise ratio. Noise is empty tweets that have no substance or buzzfeed like articles.

Here is a prime example of an account and tweet that has lots of substance [https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/10618244705564672...](https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/1061824470556467200)

He also has lists of accounts on his profile that have high signal to noise ratio. [https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/10810700446483988...](https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/1081070044648398848)

Personally I would love to have the feature of following accounts for their self-written tweets but not retweets. Definitely will help with signal to noise. But that goes against Twitter's business model, so I doubt it will happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The authors conveniently forget to mention the false positive rate with their approach.

</comment><comment><USER15> Time for everyone to move to the Fediverse! Preferably small instances for your irl social circle. I know it probably won't happen that easily, but a man can dream.

<comment><USER16> Hot take: the Fediverse won't catch on unless it gets a killer app of its own. Every federated project I've seen is a clone of something else.

<comment><USER17> The killer app will be when journalists, public institutions, and community orgs are contributing content to the fediverse on instances run by their employers.

<comment><USER18> Those are the last sections of society that usually adopt new tech though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The only spam in my Twitter feed is "people you follow also follow." I've been doing a lot of blocking.

</comment><comment><USER20> Twitter should charge ~$1 for every new account. Since Twitter is no longer a growing product, they are way past the stage where a nominal charge for _new_ accounts would hurt their KPIs.

<comment><USER21> I just moved and in order to file a change of address via the USPS website I was able to give them a credit card and was charged a buck or two as some sort of identity verification process. To your point, certainly reasonable must be available to Twitter, __if__ they were truly interested in cleaning up their act.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems like most spammers / scammers are finding out passwords of old accounts instead of creating new ones (which are a pain to create due to the phone number verification and the disposable phone numbers ban).

Twitter should probably scan their user passwords for obvious / most-used ones and require their users to change their passwords.

<comment><USER23> Assuming they aren't using plain text, or simple hashes, how would Twitter do that? Even a standard salted password against that many accounts is tens of millions of cpu hours. Using something like bcrypt would be 10,000x slower than that!

<comment><USER22> I mean, the account stealers can do it, and not Twitter itself? Which one has the most ressources?

<comment><USER23> Account stealers aren't brute forcing passwords. They are trying common passwords that dum dums often use, or circumventing by other means like email.

<comment><USER22> And then why couldn't Twitter itself do it?

<comment><USER23> Read my responses above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Here's an honest question: Why not just let Twitter users pay to get more followers?

The effect is two-fold. You're removing the grey market of fake bots for padding follower numbers, and also make a paper trail for accounts

</comment><comment><USER21> Can't keep up? Or doesn't really want to keep up? Not a month goes by where there's not a HN post on this subject (or very similar). If they're making a profit then there is - at least at this point in time - not enough incentive for them to change.

The KPI we need to know is: As bot accounts increase what is the churn of real accounts? Unless real accounts are falling, and it's because of bots / spam, then Twitter is unlikely to do much about the problem; because to them it's not really a problem.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe they don't want to fix the problem? Keeps numbers inflated for quarterly reporting. Same reason why facebook hasn't closed a few of their holes, black hat ad dollars keep the investors happy.

</comment><comment><USER26> There's a bit of "can't" and a bit of "don't want to"... they just make more money this way.

</comment><comment><USER27> That's Justin sun in action.

</comment><comment> gjsman-1000 Disable the API.

<comment><USER28> That wouldn't stop them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Twitter has a perverse incentive to allow them because it is directly related to their stock price

<comment><USER11> Yes, but only up to a point. DAU and MAU is a reflection of advertising audience size, and thus potential revenue. If company A has. 1M DAU, and The grows it in 2M in a year, that's good growth, revenue should double even with everything staying the same. It's stock price should _at least_ double, probably more than that to price in future growth.

Compare that to Company B that has 500k DAU and flat. Not so good.

Now what happens if it turns out that Company A's DAUs we're actually bots? Suddenly, the audience isn't worth anything, because bots aren't an advertiser friendly audience. So now the stock should at least drop in accordance to the real-DAU, and maybe even less to price in lack of confidence in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think that Twitter could but they care more about growth and err on the side of caution and less aggressive account validation, otherwise the new account sign ups would flatline and investors would be pissed. Capitalism.</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't Linux distros provide systemd opt-out? - <AUTHOR> It would have been great if the Major Linux distros, Red Hat in particular, would have provided users with an option to either user Sys-V init or systemd.  The argument being that Sys-V init is more suitable for Server/Enterprise environments and systemd for Desktop environments (IMHO). <comment><USER2> Maintaining 2 or 3 different init systems is non-trivial and companies do not want to support 3 different init systems for the next 10 years. It costs time and money, so they would rather have people work on things that actually matter instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree, however I think it would have been worth the effort, even if it where only to appear in Fedora. Definitely non-trivial, but could have been done when first integrating systemd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Gentoo and Calculate Linux (which is based on Gentoo). But I think the package manager in Gentoo is awful.

There's also Alpine Linux. And in Debian you can switch to sysvinit or upstart.

If you're really anti-systemd maybe consider FreeBSD, PC-BSD, or OpenBSD.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome that Debian gives you an option. This may be my excuse to finally switch from RHEL/CentOS.

<comment><USER3> For how-to: [http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=37871](http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=37871)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well RH seems very keen on pushing systemd as a basis for containers etc, so you will not get much luck there.

The major thing though is that systemd is not just a init.

At present is it init, login, logging, xinetd, cron, firewall, networking, and the list keeps growing virtually daily.

Meaning that providing an option means providing effectively two distros.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's a theory that systemd is a way to make certain flavors of Linux more proprietary/locked-in by exercising absolute control over vital system services though non-standards bodies.

</comment><comment><USER6> Each of these projects accept patches from the community (read: me and you). If there is no money attached to it and the community doesn't have time to do it, it ain't getting done.

</comment><comment><USER7> You spend more time caring and hating on systemd than it takes to learn it and overcome your issues.

Most everyone who hates on systemd has this problem; you could blame systemd. Or you could realize you have a problem

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's a legitimate question. Systemd seems more targeted towards desktop environments where things like D-BUS are needed. I'm thinking of bastion server configurations using a distributions like CentOS where less is more. It may be worthwhile to use Sys-V which has less moving parts, fewer configuration options and thus fewer vulnerability points. Not to say that systemd cannot be hardened as well, but having a choice would have been better.

<comment><USER4> Or you could adopt any number of other inits that have much the same benefits as systemd-as-init, but without all the baggage.

Frankly the reason systemd even gets attention is because the likes of Gnome needs a part of it, logind, to handle logins/sessions, and that it basically absorbed udev (after udev had existed as a independent project for a decade).</comment></comment></comment>


What to do about shared passwords? - <AUTHOR>

how do you handle usernames/passwords/api keys across a department/company?
I'm talking about passwords that many people need access to, such as vendors/partners that give you only one u/p for entire company. or server login infos.
do you put in a text file on a network?  intranet?who's in charge of them? custom database? some program that I'm not aware of? <comment><USER2> One thing I've done before is create a truecrypt volume that a privileged few folks have the passphrase to unlock. Inside the truecrypt volume, we had a text file with username/passwords and other notes. Additionally, we had folders within the volume that kept our company's SSL certificates and other critical security secrets.

That only works in when the secrets need to be shared among a very few people. When more people are involved it gets very very difficult to segment out who has access to what.</comment>


One in 10 children has 'Aids defence' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37438837 <comment><USER2> If keeping the immune system from activating helps, what's the effect of wiping out the immune system completely? e.g., radiation and bone marrow transplant

Edit: This article explains: [http://www.livescience.com/48015-berlin-patient- hiv-treatmen...](http://www.livescience.com/48015-berlin-patient-hiv- treatment.html)

 _virus returned after a couple of months_

<comment><USER3> Related: A man with HIV and cancer was cured of HIV infection when he received a bone-marrow transplant from a donor who was HIV-immune: [http://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center- news/2015/02/timothy...](http://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center- news/2015/02/timothy-ray-brown-doctor-who-cured-him.html)

This was in 2007.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Adult humans' immune systems tend to go all-out to finish off the virus in a campaign that nearly always ends in failure.

Children have a relatively tolerant immune system, which becomes more aggressive in adulthood - chickenpox, for example, is far more severe in adults due to the way the immune system reacts. "

This is fascinating. It looks like a kid's immune system is in "learning mode" for a while. Which makes sense, gives it time to get exposure to pathogens and compounds.

</comment><comment><USER5> The HIV rates in South Africa are among the highest, so does that mean that it's evolution following its course? The ones that react to the Virus would die and the ones that ignore it survive, giving those people a (much?) higher chance of survival and reproduction. Similar to how the _superbacterias_ that are popular now were created in the same place.

<comment><USER6> There hasn't been enough time for evolution to act in this case. HIV has only been endemic for a generation or so. Bacteria can run through dozens of generations a day, so the process goes much faster there.

Assuming HIV isn't cured, then this defense would probably form the basis of eventual widespread resistance to HIV in humans, perhaps centuries from now. But it didn't arise as a response to HIV.

<comment><USER5> But with just one generation it should be enough, right? Some individuals are resistant and some others not; the non-resistant ones die and the next generation is of mostly resistant; the next one would be mainly individuals more resistant; etc

<comment><USER6> Only if exposure is total and death before reproduction highly likely. Even in South Africa, the vast majority of the population isn't infected. Those who are infected still often pass on their genes before they die. Unchecked HIV will certainly increase the concentration of these genes over time, but with the current situation it'll take many generations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The researchers analysed the blood of 170 children from South Africa who had HIV, had never had antiretroviral therapy and yet had not developed Aids.

Tests showed they had tens of thousands of human immunodeficiency viruses in every millilitre of their blood.

...

Prof Philip Goulder, one of the researchers from the University of Oxford, told the BBC: 'Essentially, their immune system is ignoring the virus as far as possible.'

'Waging war against the virus is in most cases the wrong thing to do.'"

<comment><USER8> Is aids still inevitable for these children?

<comment><USER9> Biology is very rarely binary. Chances are some will and some will not before they die. The interesting question is what percentage can make it to say 50 without problems.

It's possible similar crossovers to SID > AIDS may have happened many times in the past and due to slow travel and worse healthcare the outbreaks just died out. So, some percentage of the population might have relative immunity to similar diseases.

It's also possible for some new mutation to show up that deals with AIDS over time.

Or, they could be all dead before 30 without treatment it's hard to say.

<comment><USER8> I have to say biology and other subjects are really strange coming from a CS background.

A lot of stuff doesn't have a "single right answer" it seems.

<comment><USER10> This is a wise observation and I didn't really appreciate it until I was about 40. I came from the hybrid route (hacker who started learning biology early) and I think most people who come to bio from physics or CS have a lot of learning to do about how biology is "different" from those fields. The underlying systems tend to be complex- far more complex than people who work on distributed systems or HEP are comfortable working with. They are ambiguous, highly multidimensional, there are complex feedback mechanisms and redundancies, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is it Aids not AIDS in this article?

<comment><USER12> Looks like it's BBC News style:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/news-style- guide/art...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/news-style- guide/article/art20130702112133530)

> However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms, > where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids, > Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec).

<comment><USER13> > acronyms ... where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word

If you wouldn't pronounce it, it's not an acronym

<comment><USER14> Are FBI and CIA not acronyms?

<comment><USER15> Pedantically speaking, no. They're initialisms. Unless you call them the fibbies and the cya.

In everyday conversation, yeah, they're acronyms.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>