Ask HN: Is a Recession Coming? - <AUTHOR> I know, hindsight is 20/20 and nobody can look into the future but the media seems to be doubling down on this "a recession is coming". Is it going too well with the economy? Or what is going on? There seem to be so many little signals and things being framed (remember when Deutsche Bank's status was being covered 24/7 a few weeks ago and now you barely hear a thing about it?) a certain way I don't know what to believe anymore.<p>What's your take? <comment><USER2> My take is The American Media is in bed with the Democratic Party, and will say what they are told to, in an attempt to gain control and wrest our freedoms away from us.

The whole recession spiel (which "amazingly" is reported by an array of different companies, often using the same verbage--just like script which was given to them) is obviously yet another make believe story.

<comment><USER3> >which "amazingly" is reported by an array of different companies, often using the same verbage

If the sun was turning purple, wouldn't an array of different companies use the same verbiage to describe what was happening?

To me, this quote reads like you are assuming consensus means conspiracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The media are the same ones who brought us the Kardashians. Find and read some books.

<comment><USER5> Not helpful when you're trying to grow/protect your savings to put your kids through college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes. There will be recessions and periods of growth. The economy is a chaotic non deterministic system. It is never stable and is not predictable. It's not homogenous either. Some sectors grow while others contract.

When the next recession comes nobody knows. I think the worry is that when the next haircut on stocks happens the Fed can't stimulate the economy with interest rates because they're already zero bound. That could mean a long recession and slow recovery, and possibly catastrophic considering that most Americans choose to put all their retirement savings in the stock market.

Historically, there have been huge stock crashes periodically. You could wake up tomorrow and see a 10-20% drop in stocks for multiple days. It's happened before.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, a recession will happen. So will the post-recession recovery period. It's going to hurt. 98 out of 100 stocks during the 2008 Great Recession lost people money. At the same time recessions don't last long [1], and it's a great opportunity to buy, whether it's stocks or homes.

I was just looking into the last recession, and I found that the market was wrong, and overreacted about a lot of stocks during that time [2]. Even AIG, the villain that caused the crash and was bailed out by the government, was one of the top performers during the recovery.

Try to have a balanced approach - cash + defensive assets (like gold and household staple stocks) + not selling all your stock.

[1] 2008 Great Recession: 1.5 years; 2000 dot com bubble: 8 months; early 1990s recession: 8 months

[2] [https://shan.io/writing/learnings-from-the-2008-great- recess...](https://shan.io/writing/learnings-from-the-2008-great- recession/#the-market-is-often-wrong-about-companies-during-a-recession)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is a recession coming? Yes.

Will it be in the next 6 monthes, no. A recession is usually quantified by 2 quarters of negative growth.

Will it be in the next year? Maybe. Global economies have been slowing down and so its possible.

Will there be one in the next 100 years. Yes. Here is a list of recessions that have happened since the inception of the US [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States). People are humans and make mistakes. Sometimes the things we thought would help to make the economy grow actually make it shrink.

Unless you are interested in being involved in public policy, there isn't much to be concerned with here. All you can do is find something you enjoy doing that makes people better off. Keep doing it until you master it. If you do these things it won't matter if the pundits on TV are saying that the world is ending, you will be alright.

</comment><comment><USER8> The economy has a track record of being cyclical, so if you ask a question whether a recession is coming on any day the answer would be - 'Yes, eventually'. But recessions correct themselves and after every recession we've seen growth cycle which takes the economy to new heights.

The only recourse humans have is to continue with their lives without paying heed to what's in vogue in the news cycle.

</comment><comment><USER9> Calculated Risk has a good record on these calls... really. He says not this year. [https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2019/09/update- predicting...](https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2019/09/update-predicting- next-recession.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Well in terms of the tech industry, there is a on going trend that many unprofitable tech companies are rushing their IPOs everywhere on the stock market and this is perhaps due to many possible actions such as tech regulation or many investors won't fund startups because of the established competition, profitability concerns, etc.

The uncertainty of the US-China trade war is making many investors concerned about the economy and the UK is still playing Deal or No Deal with leaving the EU after 3 years of 'negotiations'. If the UK leaves without a deal, I won't be surprised if this causes a recession, at least in the UK. But the trade war, the IPO rush and possible regulation is perhaps an indicator of a global one in the tech industry.

</comment><comment><USER11> Recessions come and go but it's good to remember that historically not all recessions are like great recessions in 2007/2008.

Normal recessions can happen and if there is no systemic risk such as with mortgages in 2008 then the impact is not so catastrophic.

Unemployment will go up, GDP will probably slip into negative number for 2-3 quarters, companies stop hiring / fire some people, government probably reacts with some fiscal stimulus.

But it might be that a normal recession like that won't affect most people here working in Silicon Valley at all as those jobs probably won't disappear and companies like Google/Facebook will not be affected by recession too much.

<comment><USER12> Not everybody on HN is in Silicon Valley, just FYI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If a recession is not coming (ever?) then the economically impossible has been achieved. Never a bad idea to sock away a little money before it rains.

</comment><comment><USER14> No. We are in a negative interest rate regime (never happened before), and in the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution (never happened before).

The best indicator for a recession is the stock market, all the rest are clickbait news for eyeballs.

I firmly believe that tech would actually not enter a recession at all, since it is the only part of the economy that is growing.

<comment><USER15> All these things have happened before: Negative interest rates, 'the next' industrial revolution, quantitative easing - both in fiat and metal backed regimes.

Nothing new, not a single thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What exactly is going well? 3 years ago the economy was growing - jobs where increasing rapidly - farmers where selling soybeans - the military was building new housing and schools for troop's families which translates into local jobs. The debt was large from fighting a major recession but flattening. Now - our debt is accelerating (tax cuts), yields keep inverting (10yr at a higher percentage than 30 yr). The stock market has been a roller coaster since 2018 as changes in gov't policy started to take hold. Job creation flat and will most likely turn negative. Don't listen to the media - learn to read the numbers yourself.

<comment><USER15> So soybeans aside... the same thing as 3 years ago?</comment></comment>


Read your snail mail on the Web: RemoteControlMail - <AUTHOR> http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9699928-2.html?tag=blog <comment><USER2> Those poor veterans. They're going to have to open 1239812398 credit card and home loan applications.</comment>


ReactOS 0.4.11 Released - <AUTHOR> https://reactos.org/project-news/reactos-0411-released <comment><USER2> Despite being somewhat of a Unix/Linux junky, I _really_ want ReactOS to be a thing. I would love to get older family members who refuse to upgrade from Windows Vista to something that is still being updated and will work on their older hardware.

That said, the last three times I've tried dogfooding ReactOS, I had trouble keeping it stable for more than 20 minutes, which is a complete non-starter for getting non-technical people using it.

It seems like the people working on the project are very smart and motivated, so I have to wonder why this is still a huge issue? I know almost nothing of OS/Kernel dev, so is it basically impossible to salvage all the stability work from the Linux kernel?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > is it basically impossible to salvage all the stability work from the Linux > kernel?

Short answer: Yes.

Medium answer: That would be a near-complete rewrite of the project, since the ReactOS kernel and Linux have nothing in common. Different architectures, code styles, conventions, APIs, ABIs (which is super important for drivers). Probably the best option would be to port all of the ReactOS userland to run on WINE (which would actually be cool, and might be easy), and possibly write a Linux kernel module that provided a NT-compatible driver ABI (which would probably be hell to write, but if it's even possible then it would be a huge boon to Linux hardware compatibility... probably).

<comment><USER3> > APIs, ABIs (which is super important for drivers)

Yes, only userspace code would be reusable with a linux based kernel. Might as well start from scratch.

One more option that's being tried is to split the difference by integrating more of Wine's code. This approach is being testing in the Arwinss branch[1]

[1] [https://reactos.org/wiki/Arwinss](https://reactos.org/wiki/Arwinss)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried that yesterday because the ISOs were already up and unfortunately, unless Qemu is an unsupported platform, it's a mess.

First, I tried the LiveCD and found that the default qemu's network driver is unsupported. Found the docs, changed the driver and found that I have networking... but explorer.exe can't really visit any page, so all I could think of is to telnet somewhere. Then I tried to install some apps, but found that the "add or remove applications", while being a nice concept, unfortunately doesn't work on the live CD. So I switched to the main iso.

Two reboots later I tried to install Firefox... and found that it freezes the machine. A while later I found that this is the way ReactOS handles lack of RAM, so I added some. The scary part is that the freeze actually rendered the system unbootable after restart, which is super weird. Then I was wondering if I could install some old Visual Studio there and while trying to install .NET, first I found that 4.6 is "unsupported on this system" (which is fair, since it's fairly new) and the older .NET crashed the system again, this time because I ran out of disk space. So, if the system runs out of resources, its default response is to bluescreen.

At this point I just gave up. I'll probably come back to try it out at the next release, but for now... either I'm doing something wrong, or it's unusable.

<comment><USER5> > unless Qemu is an unsupported platform

Have you read this?

[https://reactos.org/wiki/QEMU](https://reactos.org/wiki/QEMU)

[https://reactos.org/wiki/Installing_ReactOS](https://reactos.org/wiki/Installing_ReactOS)

>.NET, first I found that 4.6

ReactOS supports only 2.0 and 4.0 versions

<comment><USER4> > Have you read this?

Flicked through this. Seems like it does say QEMU is supported. Unless you meant something else by pointing me there?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h That page discusses particular qemu options that present supported "hardware" to the VM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been keeping an eye on this for over 10 years, I still hope for the day I can use it instead of installing a bloated Windows VM that takes up gigs of RAM just to be idle. But also licensing is the other drawback to Windows VMs constantly needing to relicense.

<comment><USER7> Why cant you use it yet?

I only tried a few XP-era programs, but so far they work fine out of the box. Including a Win32 application i've developed myself.

<comment><USER8> If you managed to get it to boot to a usable state you got farther than ~80% of people here will get. That's before factoring in any apps.

<comment><USER9> Really? I've been able to do this for pretty much every version I've ever downloaded, at least in a VM but also on my old K7. It's unstable but not that unstable.

<comment><USER10> He beats me, but only every other day...

<comment><USER9> I have no idea what this means in context.

<comment><USER10> "it's unstable, but not that unstable"

<comment><USER9> And that has something to do with justifying domestic abuse?

<comment><USER10> I'm not saying that instability or domestic abuse is okay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If someone wants to try this version quickly, I made a Docker image with QEMU and noVNC [1][2]. I don't use it for anything important, just fun.

[1]: [https://github.com/hectorm/docker-qemu- reactos](https://github.com/hectorm/docker-qemu-reactos)

[2]: [https://hub.docker.com/r/hectormolinero/qemu- reactos](https://hub.docker.com/r/hectormolinero/qemu-reactos)

<comment><USER5> You are awesome

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> On Virtualbox 5.2.12 with 3 gigs ram and 30 gigs virtual disk, FAT file system, the installer boots up ReactOS, but then on the reboot, it hangs on the ReactOS logo. :-/

Update: rebooted, pressed F12 and selected Debug. Now it works...

rebooted in normal (default) boot, works now too. Except that the new hardware wizard fails installing any drivers for audio and ethernet.

Could install Virtualbox additions. Though weirdly, the mouse stopped working, so I had to use the keyboard for that.

After that, the mouse worked again.

<comment><USER5> Virtualbox 5.2.12 is quite old and really buggy version

Use VirtualBox 5.2.26 instead [https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog-5.2#v26](https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog-5.2#v26)

Disable USB in VM settings, use PS/2 mode

<comment><USER12> I would if I could. :)

<comment><USER13> If you can't update your virtualization software at work, you are probably running a huge security risk. Do you not have a patching process?

If this isn't about work, then curious as to why you can't upgrade?

<comment><USER14> 5.2.12 was released in May 2018. That's hardly that old. None of the fixes since then sound like security fixes (all of the releases say 'maintenance release').

<comment><USER15> random 0day that was released after may 2018: [https://github.com/MorteNoir1/virtualbox_e1000_0day](https://github.com/MorteNoir1/virtualbox_e1000_0day)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I eagerly await the day when I can run this for more than 10 minutes without anything going wrong. Tried out a recent build last week in vmware and... it didn't even boot.

</comment><comment><USER17> Beautiful project. This and Wine are two of the best projects IMO that people can learn and reuse a lot from;

</comment><comment><USER18> I think ReactOS is super useful to run old software. Some day new hardware will not work under Windows XP, but ReactOS will work.

</comment><comment><USER19> When is the new "kinder and gentler" Microsoft going to support and sponsor this project?

</comment><comment><USER20> Still can't install from USB?

<comment><USER5> There are experimental builds [http://vgal.ru.com](http://vgal.ru.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does msys2 run on ReactOS?

</comment><comment><USER22> nice!!!!!!</comment>


Ask HN: Company asks to BYOD. Is it a red flag? - <AUTHOR> I recently got hired at an early stage YC startup. I was told to  bring my own device for development. I haven't been able to find good information for this on Reddit/HN so wanted to make a post about it.<p>I was wondering if asking employees to bring their own devices was considered a red flag? It seems strange because they are already paying such a high salary that it doesn't make sense that they can't afford a machine for their developers. <comment><USER2> To me, if the salary is good, no. Mechanics, carpenters, etc. often purchase their own hand tools.

In a software shop, it makes even more sense by avoiding:

1\. Issues around code written on company equipment.

2\. Administrative effort and time procuring equipment; tracking company assets; treating remote employees equitably; etc.

3\. Staff complaining about having to use equipment.

4\. Staff are probably going to own a computer they like anyway.

Perhaps most importantly, it clarifies that computers are cattle not pets. Strategically, it means that practices which depend on a particular developer's laptop are _clearly_ undesirable.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've decided not to apply for several jobs because the equipment they offered to buy me was equipment I had no interest in using. I have zero interest in a Mac, and not much interest in developing on a Windows computer directly (although I do a LOT of development for Windows, I do it in a virtual machine).

I'd rather they just give me two thousand dollars and let me buy what I want.</comment>


Preparing CS students for programming interviews from day one - <AUTHOR> http://etilevich.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/preparing-cs-students-for-programming-interviews-from-day-one <comment><AUTHOR> I'm convinced this is actually a good idea ...

      > I stopped using PowerPoint slides.

There's a great start.

      > immediately pose a programming puzzle using this concept to the class

Instant reinforcement of the ideas

      > ask students to work on the problem for 5-10 minutes

Enough time to get into the issues concerned, not enough time to get stuck and frustrated

      > volunteers to present their solution by writing it on the whiteboard.

Present your work to others for everyone to learn.

      > discuss and correct the presented solutions from
      > the perspective of a potential interviewer

Immediate feedback for everyone, further analysis of the problem and the ideas involved.

It won't suit everyone, but ...

      > Will I teach all the remaining technical material
      > in the course using this method? Of course not.

I wonder which method will prove more effective.

<comment><USER2> I have had some classes that employed a similar method, it works in some cases (small class size, professor and students are very familiar/good rapport) but in general this is how it would go in my experience:

\- Students group up for 5-10min to work together, everyone sits there and waits for the one person who knows the solution to solve it

\- Prof asks for a group to come up, no groups volunteer so he starts picking at random

\- Students that don't know the answers will stop showing up for lecture or will cling to the people that do, so they don't learn the material

Like I said, there are cases when it can work -- and when it does it makes for a really good lecture. But I find it is increasing rare that students are willing to go up to the professor and in front of their classmates and work through their mistakes; you are very exposed and I think the fear of public failure can be overwhelming.

<comment><USER3> PBL can be very powerful in the right setting, but as you point out, it really boils down to student/professor rapport. In the best case, PBL is a fantastic learning tool, but in the worst case, as you say, it can be incredibly divisive.

<comment><USER4> What is PBL? I'm guessing "problem-based learning"?

<comment><USER3> yes, sorry - i spent the better part of a year studying that in depth and got rather used to using the acronym :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If there were surgeons applying for jobs who didn't know what a scalpel was, I sure hope they'd be asking that at an interview.

Anyone can write on their CV that they've got five years programming experience, unless you can demonstrate the skills you've learnt over those five years, then you might as well have spent those five years watching paint dry.

If you've spent the last five years teaching undergrads data structures, then I certainly expect you to be able to answer questions on data structures.

Medicine is a regulated profession so you don't need to ask these questions as someones already asked them and certified the individual.

What's often missed is the fact that software development interviews are an order of magnitude better than those in other non-certified professions. In many industries interviews often come down to the gut instinct of the interviewer, a practice which is known to be highly unreliable.

Programmers are lucky that we're in a profession where it is possible to separate the wheat from the chaff using objective questions.

</comment><comment><USER6> I disagree with the assertion that solving a coding question on a whiteboard is equivalent to asking a surgeon what a scalpel is. The equivalent for an engineer would be asking what an if statement is. Both are simple tools that are used for your job, and interviews should assume you know what they are.

The real equivalent for a surgeon would be to give him a theoretical case of a patient and then ask him to explain how he would solve it. I'm not a surgeon so I have no clue what their interviews are really like, but asking a question like this would seem like a very reasonable thing to do.

As for the guy in the article who whines about employers stubbornly wanting someone who has written code sometime recently, I'm not quite sure why he'd think otherwise. When you hire someone at a PhD's salary you generally don't expect to have to hold their hand for a few months as they get back into learning how to write code. Not to mention anyone I know who is good at writing code writes code for fun in their free time. Would you hire an artist who has a Fine Art degree but hasn't actually drawn anything for years? I think not.

</comment><comment><USER7> Goal of CS should be to make students who build next Google. What if Google changes its interview game and asks people to actually show what they actually built?.

CS goal could be greater than a factory producing employees for big corporations.

The new Gospel is lot better. "Build something useful" Start it on day one.

<comment><USER8> _What if Google changes its interview game and asks people to actually show what they actually built?_

This is not likely to ever happen in a big way. Way too easy to show stuff that you built that you either didn't really understand or didn't really contribute to.

I've interviewed people with significant open source contributions who seemed almost incompetent in the interview. I almost suspect that they hired someone to do the checkins as I'd ask why they did X vs Y and it was like they didn't really know what X was, much less Y.

<comment><USER7> Knowing something and doing something with what you know are two different skill sets. Small companies realize this soon.

Google is driven by numbers, If they see enough people who are very informed and smart but actually they gamed the system just to get in Google but really do not do much, then companies will be forced to make major changes.

Every idea/process has an expiry time before everyone realizes and try to game the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"If we are to use a medical analogy, imagine interviewing an experienced surgeon...'What is a scalpel?...show how you'd cut in that case'...such a situation is unimaginable."_

I don't think this analogy tells us anything (other than that's not how the medical field works). Why is this situation unimaginable? What exactly would be wrong with this approach?

I do a couple tech interviews a week and I regularly see people with very impressive resumes that can't code fizzbuzz. The job largely consists of writing software; I see no problem with requiring candidates to demonstrate that they can, in fact, write software. I don't want to work with people that think they're too good to demonstrate their skills.

<comment><USER10> I just interviewed someone and literally asked fizzbuzz, and their answer took the better part of an hour. Any tips on cutting an interview short without insulting the interviewee?

<comment><USER8> Give them X minutes (you don't have to tell them X) and then at X minutes simply say, "OK... that's fine. We don't need to solve it here, but I just wanted to get an idea of your coding process. Before we wrap this up, do you have any questions for me?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This stupid insistence on ignoring the background and experience of interviewees and instead rank them based on how fast they can write code on a whiteboard is the reason why 1) google can't polish a product to save their lives and 2) every time I look at the code they produce, especially small projects, I cringe with the lack of mantainability, header standardization or design coherence. Keep thinking the best people to hire are the ones that can spout basic cs theory at a moments notice on a whiteboard and nothing will change.

</comment><comment><USER12> _Can you imagine asking the surgeon: "What is a scalpel? What kind of scalpels are there? Now, cut this cadaver as if you were to perform an appendectomy. Good. Now imagine that there were some complications–show how you'd cut in that case." I hope you are having a good laugh, because such a situation is unimaginable._

Not unimaginable at all. In a world where surgery was run like software "engineering" [1], we would interview surgeons this way.

Why don't we interview surgeons this way?

(a) Because surgical training is via apprenticeship. For any given surgeon, you can ask "which group of other surgeons taught you everything you know? Which ones signed sworn statements that you are minimally competent?" Then you can find those senior surgeons and ask them candid questions about the candidate. This is _always_ possible. If a surgeon turns up without such references they don't get as far as an interview. ("I taught myself surgery from blog posts, and I practiced on my cats?" Eeeek. NO HIRE.)

(b) Thanks to the long history of medicine and its very serious life-and-death implications, surgery is a very thoroughly attested event with a very definite chain of responsibility. Look at a hospital's records for a given surgery, and you will get a complete list of everyone in the room. If the surgeon was the only surgeon in the room, you can be fairly confident that they handled the operation themselves. And though I'm not sure there's an actual _law_ that forbids a surgeon from handing the scalpel to a nurse, or an intern, and having them do everything, that would (a) not be something they could do in secret; everyone in the room would know and (b) the surgeon-of-record would still be the responsible party: If something went wrong in surgery guess who would be sued?

What I'm saying is: It is hard to bluff being a surgeon. Which is not to say it doesn't happen: For various all-too-human reasons, doctors and nurses do cover for each other, and scandals occur. But it's not like software, where the level of bluff is really, really large. Software "engineers" are often self-taught by necessity, especially in the tasks they actually do all day; their work has no legally defined standards or practices; there are so many ways to solve a given problem that two engineers with the same job title and official responsibility may have _completely different_ skillsets; they work largely inside their own heads where nobody can see what is going on; they can very easily copy others' work, or sit in the corner while the rest of the team does the heavy lifting and then claim full credit.

\---

[1] For this post, I'm going to use these scare quotes to distinguish "software engineers" like myself from actual Professional Engineers, who _are_ like surgeons and are not, in fact, asked to build little bridges out of Lego bricks during their job interviews.

<comment><USER13> Here (in Quebec) the title of "software engineer" or "computer engineer" is regulated like any other professional engineer, ie. you need a bachelor's degree in computer or software engineering, which is a year longer than CS and includes stuff like engineering economics or analytical and numerical solving of differential equations, and two to three years of experience working under a professional engineer's supervision. Microsoft actually had some trouble with us: [http://www.microsoft.com/canada/learning/quebecmcse/default....](http://www.microsoft.com/canada/learning/quebecmcse/default.mspx)

I think it's a good thing. We still have regular programmers, and the word "engineer" actually means something.

Still, the level of competence is far from that of surgeons. It's possible to do a bachelor's with fairly little programming: at least where I studied, most courses include a large portion of teamwork, and I'm sure quite a few teammates passed their course thanks to me (or other people) doing all the work. When they graduate or enter internships, they just do the less technical work, like evaluating software packages, testing, or reading bids. I don't think you could find surgeons who can't operate like you can find engineers who have trouble with fizzbuzz.

<comment><USER14> Computer Engineering & software engineering degrees are a lot different than CS than just another year. CE degrees in Canada are pretty much a dressed up versions of Electrical Engineering degrees with a few programming courses thrown in they go pretty deep on the hardware side of things but the programming stuff is covered in somewhat handwavy way. Software engineering degrees on the other hand are something that I just don't get. They require you to take too many useless courses like Chemistry and business-esque courses. I think CS degree is the sweet spot for programmers, I had had enough of computer hardware after take taking computer organization courses, building circuits is not of any interest to me, something that CE majors spend a lot of their time on.

<comment><USER15> Here in Melbourne, SE is a 4-year version of CS which requires you to take 2 years of math, 1 year of physics, some EE subjects, and two projects with industry clients. Most of the time little distinction was made between the degrees; they were referred to collectively as "the CSSE department". Computer Engineering, on the other hand, was very close to EE.

<comment><USER14> So when do they actually do CS?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The idea behind an interview is to understand how proficient you are in articulating your thoughts, and how well you can handle difficult problems. No good interview asks only simple questions. The hard ones are there for the interviewer to understand how experienced one is in handling newer situations, and how he/she performs in a "virtual" stressful situation. Its not a litmus test, but probably the best an interviewer can do in 60 mins. These skills only come by practice, and if school can help accelerate it -- that's great!

My only concern is that for introductory courses, programming must be a "fun- only" affair -- let students explore, crash and burn the computer rather than worry about small details.

</comment><comment><USER17> Enjoyed the article a lot, I'm currently 3rd year CS. Although I understand that its not always practical to follow lessons with immediate or else set practicals, I find these are the lectures in which I excel.

We also had a lecture this year involving role playing of a RISC-1 processor pipeline, felt stupid at the time, but don't think I'll ever forget the purpose of an out 1 internal register.

I call for a new structure to sit down and listen lectures.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm all for it but please replace 'programming interview' with 'a job as a programmer'.

Edit for clarity: I'm not sure interviews are the ideal test-case for programming performance and thus I'm not sure it makes sense to prepare students for that.

Along the same lines I wouldn't agree with professors preparing their students for the GRE because that has little real-world relevance.

<comment><USER19> The method isn't about preparing students for a programming job, but about preparing them for real-world interviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is exactly what we'd do in tutorial classes for most of the CS subjects I took during my degree. I can see it being harder to do in lectures, especially in early years, where large class sizes make it more difficult to keep everyone engaged.

</comment><comment><USER20> Current software engineers are roughly equivalent, in terms of field maturity, with the 'doctors' who put leeches on people in order draw out bad humors. This isn't an insult, rather it's just amazing to have been around during this phase. Also, interviewing reflects this maturity.

<comment> barry-cotter _Current software engineers are roughly equivalent, in terms of field maturity, with the 'doctors' who put leeches on people in order draw out bad humors_

Balls. The medical profession killed more people than it cured until some time between the 1930s and 1950s with the discovery of antibiotics. Walmart's supply chain management software alone has bdone more good than the entirety of the medical profession up to 19##.

<comment><USER21> _Walmart's supply chain management software_

This is what we call cherry-picking an example. Someone who wanted to argue with you might select Windows autorun and its role in the world of illicit botnets and keyboard logging.

<comment> barry-cotter Autorun bad and all, but Windows was pretty obviously a huge win as a productivity multiplier. I'd be kind of surprised if Windows hasn't done more for GDP[1] than Walmart.

Practically any commercial software package ever sold probably had a greater positive effect on the world than pre 19## medicine. This will hold more strongly for shrinkwrap software that stays around long enough for the company producing it to build a rep.

[1]Or total world utility/happiness, if we could measure that</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How are FB and GOOG growing if hardly anyone intentionally clicks on ads - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Hmm, first of all: A big proportion of people don't recognize Ads are ads[0]. It gets even worse when you ask people to distinguish between "paid content marketing" and "journalism" – I've seen a study about it, but I cannot find it at the moment.

Second, I believe that there is no such user who does never intentionally click on ads. If I need to find a supplier or something I want to spend money on, I sometimes really find ads useful.

On the other hand, some big spenders seem to realize that online marketing is not as effective as Google and Facebook claim it is: Procter & Gamble cancelled their 100 million dollar budget[1].

[0]: [https://econsultancy.com/blog/64808-36-of-people-still- don-t...](https://econsultancy.com/blog/64808-36-of-people-still-don-t- realise-that-google-adwords-are-ads)

[1]: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/p-g-cuts-more- than-100-million-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/p-g-cuts-more- than-100-million-in-largely-ineffective-digital-ads-1501191104)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not saying there isn't an ad market. But, where is the growth coming from. Broadband is pretty close to saturated. Do people really search more than they used to? Are people spending that much more time online? is Cost per click going up that fast? is view to click ration going up?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Because people intentionally click on ads. What data have you seen to say people don't click intentionally on ads?

</comment><comment><USER4> The advertisers with deep pockets are fairly less interested in clicks (your conversion rate on an F150 banner ad isn't important to Ford). They are interested in higher order impacts like brand awareness/preference. They have other ways to measure those things that they've developed over many/many years of not being able to track as well as now.

</comment><comment><USER5> That simply isn't true. Billions of people are intentionally clicking on Facebook and Google ads. Why do you think they aren't?

<comment><USER6> I guess he thinks everyone can identify ads, plus he probably doesn't click on ads on purpouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's just a hunch and I can't prove it, but I suspect that a very sizable percentage of the ad market is fraudulent, or otherwise "scammy and opaque." More so than people realize. Anyone who has ever run ad campaigns knows how fishy they can be: false reporting of stats, clicks that never seem to materialize, etc. And my experience is with the "non-shady" one--Google!

<comment><USER8> Advertisers don't care how many clicks they get. They care about how many purchases. FB/Goog both allow them to track ad efficiency down to sales.

If I spend $3000 on marketing, I don't care so much on how many scam clicks it gets but rather that I make at least $3030 profit at the end of the campaign.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think you're underestimating some of the ad products. Video ads are very lucrative. Facebook auto play's ads and their measurement is usually how long it actually plays. Facebook's native advertising, is very effective when targeted properly. Most people don't realize its an ad.

For google Impression based advertising is still huge, and growing especially on mobile apps/games. Youtube's and mobile video ads again, like facebook is very lucrative. Most of the time these video ads can't even be skipped. Also context based search is still huge. Most people will click on the first link of a search regardless if its an ad or not.

So its really less to do with click and more about views.

<comment><USER10> To add to this, as an advertiser you generally get charged after the user views 3 seconds of the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does it actually matter if someone clicks on them? As long as the advertisers keep pouring money into getting those ads in front of your eyes, FB and Google make money. Whether you click or not is irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm a fairly tech-savvy person, and even I click on ads when I see something I want to buy. These days those ads are all on Facebook (in my ad-clicking experience).

<comment><USER13> If you have a Facebook account, then...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I click on ad once a week. Sometime Ad is a closest (less mouse to move) link to where i want to go anyway.</comment>


Zimbabwe deteriorated under Robert Mugabe - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2019/10/15/emmanuel-banda-discusses-how-zimbabwe-deteriorated-under-robert-mugabe/ <comment><USER2> The memoirs of Ian Smith worth a read if you have a spare time [https://www.amazon.com/Great-Betrayal-Memoirs-Douglas- Smith/...](https://www.amazon.com/Great-Betrayal-Memoirs-Douglas- Smith/dp/1857821769)

It wasn't just a personal betrayal but Rhodesia was left on its own too. Even though the UK was right with the NIBMAR policy maybe it could have been played out differently.

Also didn't help that the UK media was biased, but hey that's nothing new under the sun just seeing the same in 2020. The old Thames TV reports are all on Youtube

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8qyYFNOBhQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8qyYFNOBhQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3u5CxS3j5M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3u5CxS3j5M)

Good luck to Zimbabwe, but wish you were not in a bed with China [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Zimbabwe_relatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Zimbabwe_relations)

<comment><USER3> Why is that book $295.43?

<comment><USER4> Many people want to buy it, very few people are selling it.

<comment><USER3> I have a different theory for why obscure books are advertised at absurd prices these days - few people want to buy them, but anyone who does, wants _that specific book_ and there is no substitute, so booksellers have figured out that anything that has any value to _anyone_ is optimally priced at hundreds of dollars.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, you're probably correct about the opportunistic pricing of not-so-rare and also not-so-in-demand books.

It still seems like supply and demand though, in that supply is close to or less than demand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was once a comment I read on HN. Paraphrasing, most movements over stay or overreach at some point in time. African liberation movements continued to fight yet they were in power. Instead of getting on with the business of leading. The one lesson I hope we learn as Africans is to put in place systems that work and not place too much faith in people. People tend to be fickle.

<comment><USER6> This goes for social movements within a country as well, including your pet causes and ones that are obviously (even unironically) right. Balance is hard. Don't assume the rightness of your cause makes you immune.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe worth to note this was posted in late (2019)</comment>


Arrington: The FCC Needs To Listen To Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/22/the-fcc-needs-to-listen-to-google/

<comment><USER2> It's amazing that everyone I've talked to that knows about this is very excited about the possibilities. And yet, the effort to make things more open might fail. Astounding.

<comment><USER3> Efforts might fail if Google doesnt participate in the auction and the carriers buy the spectrum. Traditionally Google has had almost no lobbying power. Recently they've been trying but still do not have the political influence that the major carriers do, who will likely lobby the FCC away from accepting the rules that Google proposed. If this is the case and Google does not bid, it will be a big blow to the US wireless industry. The existing stronghold that the carriers have is choking competition and therefore innovation. Its really frustrating.

On the flip side though, if the FCC accepts the proposed rules and Google does bid and win, it could usher in a new era of opportunities for startups. I think the prospect of this is very exciting..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How much better would our society be if most of the frequencies were unowned and available for public use?

<comment><USER5> It depends--there's no good answer since it didn't happen, but regulation can be a good thing. It created incentives to build out the types of networks that require massive cap-ex (cellular, TV broadcast).

If no one built these in the first place, we wouldn't have anything to build "open access" on.

Regulation turns out to be a bad thing when it turns into a function of political favors vs. public interest.

As with most things in life, regulation is good in moderation.</comment></comment>


iPhone 8 Leak Reveals Apple's Expensive Secrets - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2017/02/09/iphone-8-iphone-7s-wireless-charging-price <comment><USER2> Apple's warming up to do a full Fonzie shark jump on the iPhone 8 series. If throwing out nearly every peripheral standard weren't enough, they gotta roll out an M.C. Hammer phone, to you know, justify raising prices of everything else to make newly obscene prices seem normal.</comment>


Show HN: Randomly generated JavaScript exploration game - <AUTHOR> https://redland.io <comment><AUTHOR> This is just a game I made with a friend in the HTML canvas at the start of the year, the goal is to dig up the treasure after finding all the pieces to the map.

I thought I'd give random map generation a chance, since it's something that I hadn't worked on before - same with mobile controls. It uses simplex noise to generate the map.</comment>


You can't stop the NSA from tracking you, but you can make it harder - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Tell us how :)

<comment><USER3> Get off the internet. Become a feral nomad.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Alternatives to RequireJS for client side - <AUTHOR> I am looking for an alternative to RequireJS that makes it easy to fall back to a local version if CDN version fails.  I am also looking for something that plays nicely with jquery so I can use global $ without getting errors.  Can someone suggest a loader framework or other option? <comment><USER2> I am using jspm.io with babel and am pretty happy about it. it's not only a loader but also a bundler.</comment>


You Won't Believe What Facebook Is Giving Away for Free Now - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/08/wont-believe-facebook-giving-away-free-now/ <comment><USER2> I don't like the way wired treats people with adblock enabled, so no traffic from me. Its hard to respect a click-bait title like that anyway. Downvote away, I know its not a helpful comment about whatever the article is about, I just wanted to share that I finding no compelling reason to care about anything wired has to say.

</comment><comment><USER3> Previous discussion on fasttext: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12226988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12226988)

Not sure why it's popping up now when it was released 2 weeks ago. (although the blog post discussing it was posted today)

</comment><comment><USER4> Click bait title much?

<comment><USER3> The clickbait is done ironically.

<comment><USER5> Still click bait. You have to click to understand what the article is about and that the title is ironic.

<comment><USER3> Not disagreeing with that, but providing an answer as to why.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pmarca: The three kinds of platform you meet on the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/09/the-three-kinds.html

<comment><USER2> I thought this was absolutely brilliant.

There's a great discussion of it brewing at <http://avc.blogs.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> _"On the other hand, if you kill a Level 3 platform, you destroy the whole reason people use your system to begin with -- to develop and run custom code."_

That's only true for Ning and Amazon's web services, not the other examples he gave. The whole point of Ning is to have custom social networks, so if you took the "custom" part away, then yeah, people would stop using it. Amazon's web services are just platforms, so if you took them away... they wouldn't have a product anymore.

For products that aren't solely platforms, you can take away the platform and still have something people want to use, even if it's a Level 3 platform. All it would take for Facebook's platform to qualify is for them to run third party code on their servers. Even with that, they could decide that the whole platform thing was a bad idea, and you'd still have a useful site. I haven't used Salesforce, but I'm assuming they had plenty of core functionality before they opened up their platform, and that would still be usable. Second Life could just hire a lot of people to build neat stuff for their world and close off the platform to outsiders. As long as your entire product isn't a platform, you don't have to support the platform forever. People might hate you for getting rid of it, but it's still doable.

 _"I believe that in the long run, all credible large-scale Internet companies will provide Level 3 platforms. Those that don't won't be competitive with those that do, because those that do will give their users the ability to so easily customize and program as to unleash supernovas of creativity."_

If by that he means that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and what remains of AOL will have products that offer a Level 3 platform, then sure, that sounds reasonable. But there are plenty of things on the internet that don't benefit from letting people add random new functionality within the product itself.

Take Flickr, for instance. Lots of people use their Level 1 platform to make nifty things. Most Flickr hacks integrate Flickr with some other product or show nifty visualizations with Flickr photos. How would letting people do that on Flickr itself benefit anyone? The data is all that matters in this case. No one who makes Flickr hacks thinks to themself, "Man, I wish my hack could run on Flickr's site itself."

It seems to me that Level 2 and 3 platforms are only really useful in games, where they're nifty but not really a new thing, and two other places: portal pages and social networks. In terms of what makes a Level 2 or 3 platform, social networks are basically glorified portal pages to begin with. They give you a box, and you stick your content in it while perhaps using the site's Level 1 platform to make your content more useful and interesting. If you're not a social network or a portal, you don't have boxes for third party developers to stick things in.

I may be setting myself up for a "640k should be enough for anyone" moment, but I really don't see it.

<comment><AUTHOR> >No one who makes Flickr hacks thinks to themself, "Man, I wish my hack could run on Flickr's site itself."

Well, it could be argued that someone who makes Flickr hacks will, from the beginning, only consider external hacks, because only those are possible... it's a different class of functionality to start with.

I think a rebuttal is in Marc's definition of a platform:

A "platform" is a system that can be programmed and therefore customized by outside developers -- users -- and in that way, adapted to countless needs and niches that the platform's original developers could not have possibly contemplated, much less had time to accommodate.

In other words, just because we can't see the benefits, doesn't mean there aren't any (that's pretty scary reasoning to base a business decision on, though).

This discussion of platforms reminded me of Steve Yegge's rant on software that's alive: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/01/pinocchio- problem.ht...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.html) He only specifically mentions platforms in passing, but he's mostly talking about the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> By his definition, it sounds like Viaweb was a level 3 platform.</comment>


Qwiki Epitomizes the Current Startup Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://epicfumble.com/post/qwiki-epitomizes-the-current-startup-bubble <comment><USER3> Is this that moment in time where because popular opinion says we're in a bubble, we're actually NOT in a bubble?

Just food for thought - check out <http://www.qwiki.com/for-publishers>.

Let's say that they pick up a reasonable number of tier-1 publishers into this format.

Heck maybe they already have commitments and that was part of their pitch in raising the additional $8m.

How would that change your perception of their valuation?

Beyond that, look at the "team" page.

Content monetization is a HUGE area of opportunity online and that's one heck of a team they've compiled - would you rather give those guys $8m and bet on a huge one or throw your money into the stack at AOL's public offering?

<comment><USER4> I think the OP is forgetting that what the product does now is largely irrelevant to a good investor. It's what the product can or will do that makes it worth investing in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know about Qwiki, but these sort of seemingly unlikely capital rounds are often something that happens to well connected startups with business management savvy people behind it (either in the company's executive team or among its early stage investors). These people simply know how to raise money and spin businesses around, and they have access to sources of capital that the average hacker doesn't.

To a hacker trying to get a complex project off the ground on pocket money, $8 million sounds like a fantastic sums, but there are many circles in which investing this amount of money in people you're connected to is trivial, regardless of market mood. It's not even necessarily the case that this is bad investment. If the investors believe, for whatever reason, in the company's executive team, it's probably because they are counting on them to somehow grow the company into a viable business. Many such companies, for example, will be spun into consulting, services or b2b companies you'll never read about on techcrunch, but which at the very least make a modest return on their investment. The fact that Qwiki is very unlikely to become the next huge internet phenomenon doesn't mean that it's a bad investment - it only has to not die and grow into a business worth more than its current valuation.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, there's only so much that a great team can do with a really lousy idea. One of the things pets.com was supposed to have going for it was a CEO (Julie Wainwright) who had been successful at multiple previous ventures, who'd been specifically picked out for the post by one of the VCs (Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad). That wasn't enough to keep the business going.

<comment><USER5> pets.com is an amusing piece of Internet history, but it is also a rounding error. For every pets.com there are thousands of companies that lost a (relatively) small sum of money and hundreds that made a small return.

<comment><USER7> actually I think pets.com might have been Hummer Winblad's first losing investment. in any case they admitted afterwards that it was a mistake on their part -- they were worried they were getting to the opportunity late and overcompensated. so it really was a classic bubble situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If the author is correct and all Qwiki is doing is reading wikipedia and maybe some of the related sources then yes it is unbelievable that they have gotten funding.

It also makes me realize that most of my business ideas are way too complex in an effort to provide real value. I throw away ideas like Qwiki because I wouldn't feel like I'm providing much value. I need to shift my focus to creating dead simple, but very pretty websites and see what sticks. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> The thing that bothers me about Qwiki is their "technology" is just a smoke and mirrors reproduction of things we see in the movies when a robot or A.I. talks to the characters. It's made to look and sound like A.I. except what they're doing doesn't involve machine learning or anything A.I-related. It's a simple mashup with a well-oiled marketing campaign (Techcrunch) behind them.

<comment><USER10> I agree to some extent, but wikipedia and similar sites are what A.I. will use to "learn" in the future.

If this were 1990 or I didn't know about wikipedia, then I would be _very impressed_ and think this was true artificial intelligence.

<comment><USER11> Nothing is being 'learned' here, the only thing being produced is a rote repetition of an article after it's been passed through a mediocre TTS engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand the need for bench entrepreneurs to ridicule start ups from the side lines. All this effort to point fingers and make fun of start ups which are actually trying to build businesses might be better spent actually trying to build your own business.

All the posts about Qwiki and others recently (Facebook, Zynga, Groupon) all calling for the downfall of all these start ups really make me question the value of this community at times - and it's not like these posts have 10-12 points either, they have some of the highest point totals of any articles on HN.

<comment><USER13> I don't understand the need to dismiss criticism as some mean-spirited activity that only useless "haters" do.

<comment><USER12> There is constructive criticism, and then there is a blog post listing a bunch of reasons why this particular individual doesn't think this company should be given any money to give their idea a shot.

Constructive criticism is great, it's just there has been a notable lack of worthwhile criticism lately. In my opinion of course - but honestly, did you read the linked article? Does it contain any valuable insights into Qwiki? Yet it has over 100 points - this is the start up 'criticism' echo chamber at work.

<comment><USER13> _There is constructive criticism_

And there are _other_ forms of criticism that are still valid and useful. Not all criticism needs to be reassuring and/or useful to the subject of the criticism. It can be quite valuable to others to point out how and why something just isn't very good or when something unreasonable is being done - like throwing millions of dollars at something that isn't very good.

Now, what exactly is the value of complaining about an "echo chamber" or saying that people would be better off just shrugging, going back to work, and hoping they're lucky enough to get $8 million showered on them regardless of merit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Qwiki seems like something that's easy to prototype but hard to do _well_. And it seems like a product that you have to do well to monetize.

Take the Qwiki entry on polyamory, for example: <http://www.qwiki.com/q/#!/Polyamory>

Qwiki pronounces it wrong, which means it actually decreases the value of the information it is regurgitating from Wikipedia.

<comment><USER15> That's a fairly good example of a failure, really:

> _The most common symbol is the red and white heart combined with the blue > infinity sign[.] Therefore, [the California SSM ruling] legitimizes polygamy > and polyamory._

The first sentence, which is missing a period but it pauses on like it exists (correctly so), goes with their picture of a purple, upside-down, half-twist- on-each-side triangle. Whups.

The second sentence makes no sense in context.

I wonder if they pull phonetic information from Wikipedia. If they do, then polyamory wouldn't benefit from it, as it has no phonetic pronunciation there. If they don't, they probably get a _lot_ of foreign-origin words more incorrect than we're seeing right away.

edit: Another odd pronunciation: <http://www.qwiki.com/q/#!/.sch>

> _www...sch.uk_

is a) incorrectly written, and b) pronounced "w-w-w [long pause....] s-c-h- uck". (letters, followed by "yuck" minus the y). And the "contents" tab is failing to load for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You know, I didn't "get" twitter either when it launched. Heck it still might be suspect.

I have a feeling that Qwiki's value may be more under the covers with respect to its processing of data then the consumer facing product we currently see. Or it could just be overhyped.

With respect to a current bubble. This is a round with 7 investors (mostly individuals) dipping their toes. I think if you're looking for signs of a bubble this is a bunch of people with money to spend and an interesting product. It doesn't really show much irrational exuberance.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if any Qwiki people read HN would like to respond to this outpouring of negativity directed at them around here. Not saying I disagree with the criticism, just would like to get their point of view.

</comment><comment><USER18> I share skepticism about what Qwiki has shown so far. But, it's unfair to assume that's all investors have seen.

The pitch was more likely of the form: "On a shoestring, we've launched this public functionality, and can show you this even more impressive private functionality, which needs $8 million to be further improved and scaled up."

</comment><comment><USER19> I simply don't agree with Eric on this one. His main argument seems to be that this startup isn't adding anything of any value to the space.

The way I see it is this: Wikipedia is not very consumer friendly. It's dull looking and the entries are usually filled with a lot of text. The modern internet consumer is constantly facing more and more attention disorders and a lot of people don't simply like to read.

The search result in qwiki is auditory and visual and you can consume it completely without reading anything. I looked up a few countries I want to visit, a few programming languages and everything worked incredibly well.

One of his arguments is that the technology is something that could easily be duplicated. I think it's true up to a point, but honestly, what hacker couldn't duplicate the base functionality of a twitter of 4sq in an afternoon? I think the inherent value isn't actually with the technology itself but with the implementation, the data, the UI and, ultimately (so it seems), the company's dedication to packaging information in a more-easy-to-consume fashion.

This will work incredibly well on a internet connected TV screen. Who can picture themselves reading wikipedia articles with their spouse in the living room off the TV? Not me. But if I'm going to, say.. Oslo <http://www.qwiki.com/q/#!/Oslo> I could picture myself looking that up and listening/watching with my SO. Even if only to get the basic info.

Another usecase is with mobile operation. Since I got my HTC desire I constantly google stuff by doing a voice search. I have to use my best american accent, but none the less it's very useful. If my search result could be a visual/auditory search result like that, it would suite some cases much better.

I think this might actually mark a new era in the startup space. I'm coining the term:

      Content 2.0

Somebody grab that domain name if it's not already taken?

<comment><USER20> Isn't the whole point of an encyclopedia to be text laden?

That Wikipedia is already so successful seems to suggest to me that it is very consumer friendly.

<comment><USER19> I'm not saying this will replace Wikipedia and I'm not saying there's a problem with Wikipedia as it is - I'm just saying that there are use cases where everything is not a nail.

I'll bet you that 90% of the time you hit up Wikipedia you'll only read the top paragraph. At least that's what I do and I've seen more people use Wikipedia like that.

In fact, I love duckduckgo's 0-click result because of exactly that.

<comment><USER20> I wasn't suggesting you were saying that, I was only making a point related to your two criticisms:

 _Wikipedia is not very consumer friendly. It's dull looking and the entries are usually filled with a lot of text._

That you read the abstract at the top of the article suggests to me that the article structure is very efficient (and arguably consumer friendly) in that they provide the TLDR summary above the fold, which nullifies the problem that the full article may have too much text.

By the way, my use case for Wikipedia tends to have me reading the complete article more than just the abstract, because I'm usually in research mode when I use Wikipedia. Of course, everyone has a different use case, and I suspect your use case is more common than mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Agreed. It's unbelievable that they raised such an amount of money for something that doesn't really seem very exceptional. Frothy times are here again.

</comment><comment><USER22> There has been increasing commentary lately about a "current startup bubble." Aside from Qwiki, people have pointed to the valuation of Facebook, Zynga, Groupon, and others. An important question is, do recent valuations indicate a second industry-wide Internet bubble, much like the bubble and subsequent crash in 2000? Or is something else more fundamental going on?

A look at the progression of other infrastructural technologies is useful. Consider the history of electricity. Paul David, an economic historian at Stanford, noted that it took many decades for business and society to reap tangible benefits from electricity. While important technologies were introduced throughout the 1800s (e.g., electric motors, light bulbs, generation stations), David suggests that an observer in 1900 would have found scant evidence that electricity was having an impact on business efficiency. To take advantage of electricity required not only the introduction of new technologies, but also a deepening of our understanding and in turn a transformation of business and social processes. For instance, manufacturing facilities, which were originally designed for steam power, needed to be significantly reconfigured.

Although David's discussion was focused on the lag in productivity improvements resulting from electricity, it provides some useful insights about the state of the Internet and its commercialization. While the first computers emerged in the 1940s, and the Internet was born in the 1960s, it wasn't until much later that computing and the Internet were widely adopted by business and consumers. For instance, it wasn't until the early 1990s that the Internet transitioned from a government/ academic project to a commercially available system, and the Internet wasn't broadly available to consumers until the mid-1990s.

In a mere five years from the commercial emergence of the Internet, we faced the first Internet bubble and bust in 2000. Looking back at history, it's no surprise that the first wave of applications generally performed disappointingly, both technically and commercially. Broadband connectivity, the Internet backbone, and critical software and hardware standards were still in the early stages of development. Along with an emerging infrastructure, there was a limited understanding of the potential of the Internet among entrepreneurs, established companies, and broader society.

Now that we've had 10 more years to develop core infrastructure and to deepen our understanding of the Internet (and computing) from a technical and commercial standpoint, we are witnessing the emergence of a new crop of high- growth companies. Distinct from many of the Internet companies that arose in the late 1990s, a greater percentage of today's companies receiving venture funding are both technically and commercially viable. Many deliver real customer value and have a tenable revenue model. In addition, to companies such as Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga, there are a myriad of smaller successful ventures, such as Pandora, Dropbox, and Airbnb.

To conclude, the 2000 bubble arose just a few years after the commercialization of the Internet. There was excitement about the potential of the Internet, but the supporting infrastructure and our knowledge was in its relative infancy. A decade later, we have made significant progress on both fronts. The latest new ventures incorporate technologies and business models that reflect significant infrastructure improvements and our maturing knowledge-base. Are select companies overvalued? It's possible. Does this overvaluation reflect an industry-wide bubble? I don't think so. In fact, I think we are at the early stages of a multi-decade transformation, catalyzed by computing and the Internet, and we will continue to see significant opportunity and new venture growth in this space. We are moving toward ubiquitous computing and connectivity, where technology pervades our business and personal lives. Personally, I look forward to participating in this exciting and dynamic future!

<comment><USER23> Your post, while insightful, doesn't really provide much reason as to why there seems to be a huge influx currently of high funding rounds for seemingly basic or non-profitible companies, the likes that I have not seen since the 90s. The companies you mentioned, Pandora, Dropbox, and Facebook are probably the exceptions, and don't release financials to my knowledge. It will be interesting to see what Facebook actually makes when they publish numbers next year. Last I heard Groupon started with huge profitability and now is burning way more money then it makes (I also doubt it to be a sustainable biz model).

There is definitely a bubble right now, I've seen average 8-15mil rounds for companies that offer something tangental to a popular service (it's LIKE FourSquare, or it's LIKE Pandora) despite the fact that original services themselves are not necessarily making huge exits. Perhaps it's just that the horizons on the dotcom VC funds are expiring and there are lots of new funds?

<comment><USER24> I think the answer is a bit more simple than that. Where else should people put their money if not in high tech?

Industrials correlate to GDP, and GDP is projected to be flat. Same goes with consumer products and volatility is too high in media. If you have capital to put to work, Tech appears to have the highest risk/return profile.

Phrased differently: if you had $10mil, where would you put it?

<comment><USER25> _Phrased differently: if you had $10mil, where would you put it?_

25% stocks, 25% bonds, 25% gold, 25% cash?

(That's literally what the "Fail-Safe Investing" book boils down to. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-Safe_Investing>)

<comment><USER26> fail-safe meaning you're ready to lose up to 50% of your investments? cause quite a few things on that list are mutually exclusive...

<comment><USER25> The author argues that these four types of investments are very unlikely to go down at the same time - if one loses a lot, the other types grow.

        "	It might seem that a Permanent Portfolio
        containing these four contradictory investments would
        be neutralized: As one element rose, another would fall
        and nothing would be gained.
            	On a day-to-day basis, that can be true.
        But over broad periods of time, the winning investments
        add more value to the portfolio than the losing
        investments take away."

He gives some numbers in the book, from 1970 till 2002 the portfolio lost money only in four years: 6.2% in 1981, 0.7% in 1990, 2.4% in 1994, and 1.0% in 2001. Three of these four years were followed by double-digit gains. The average gain was 9.5% per year.

<comment><USER26> 70-02 period is pretty irrelevant in today's world though. how did such portfolio perform during Great Depression, which is more like what we face today?

<comment><USER25> I think the author wrote from personal experience, so he could be either too young or not even born yet during Greate Depression.

<comment><USER26> unfortunately investment advice written from personal experience is pretty useless if not harmful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you asked me, "Why is Wikipedia Better than the Encyclopedia Brittanica?" my answer would be, "Because it lets people make things like Qwiki."

No, Qwiki isn't the be-all and end-all in this space, but it's an example of the kind of thing that's possible when people re-mix wikipedia content and respin it for different purposes and audiences.

That said, $7M gives them a lot of rope to hang themselves, in particular, a lot of time to hire people and make commitments without the need to focus on something that's profitable.

My guess is that there are quite a few people working on things in their garages without an early round of funding who are going to produce things that are more interesting and make more money in the end.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think Qwiki raised $8 million becasue they have excellent team (Louis Monier, Christian Le Cocq, etc.). However, I'm bothered with the fact that such a excellent team is working on something which is not really groundbreaking nor disruptive. Not something it will change the world (as search engine changed it).

However, it could be also that they have vision of the world which is hard for me to comprehend or imagine. The question is: what is their vision?

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know the story behind the two "Co-Founder Emeritus" titles on their team page?

<http://www.qwiki.com/team>

<comment><USER30> Gregory Smith is not involved in the day-to-day of Qwiki because he's actually a television actor, and I assume he's too busy to be there all the time - <USER2> was the lead role on the WB series Everwood, Doug (Qwiki's CEO) knows him from when he worked at the WB. IIRC Gregory played a big part in coming up with the idea for Qwiki, and provided a lot (maybe all?) of the initial funding.

Jay Oh was the tech lead at Doug's previous startup, The U (<http://www.theu.com>), which shot and sold video tours of colleges (Gregory Smith and several other actors from the WB appeared in and helped promote many of these videos, so it's all very connected); I'm pretty sure they achieved a very nice exit from that when they sold and started to work on Qwiki. I don't know why Jay left Qwiki, specifically, but he's now one of the leads at <http://howmutch.com/>.

FWIW, I'm not part of Qwiki, but I was good friends with Doug when we were younger - on that note, just based on what I know about Doug, if I had to bet, I'd say that Qwiki has a _very_ good shot here, regardless of what it looks like now. He has an impeccable business sense and will pivot without hesitation if it looks like he needs to, not to mention that he's one of the most driven people I've ever met in my life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> In Qwiki's defense, perhaps what they have been demonstrating is only one manifestation of the technology behind the scenes. The stated mission is to improve the way people experience information, with an emphasis on valuable information -- that is, information that, when consumed, could result in a transaction like "planning a vacation on the web" and "evaluating restaurants on your phone".

Currently they are mining wikipedia because (I'm guessing) it's a convenient source for a massive amount of data to feed into an automated system. No one really cares about turning wikipedia entries into slideshows, but I know from experience that car dealers and real estate agents pay real money to have their pictures and data converted into videos.

</comment><comment><USER32> I wonder about the timing of this backlash. Where was the outrage when Qwiki won TC Disrupt back in September?

Is it just because $8m > $50k, or has something changed in the last four months?

<comment><USER33> I think the complaint is that nothing (visible) has changed. Based on what I've seen, I really doubt the value of this company has anything to do with reading Wikipedia, but rather in making vast amounts of content and relationships between content more accessible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I find the article to be slightly contradictory. There's certainly a lot of potential in Qwiki. Visual presentation of data is a hard problem to solve and I think Qwiki's current slew of examples many can agree are quite nice. In that case, wouldn't that answer the question of why they need $8M in funding? To solve the problem of meaningful data and produce results more in-tune to their provided sample searches?

</comment><comment><USER35> where's the bubble? i don't feel it. can't see a queue of investors at my door! )))

</comment><comment><USER36> It's possible that they raised the money to pursue some significant tech behind a portion of their product; it could be possible that they are on the cusp of making vast advances in text-to-speech synthesis, and they needed more funds to see it through. (Possible, but not probable.)

</comment><comment><USER37> Yeah, but you have to admit it's fun to use. I have high hopes for Qwiki just out of how well they've defined the experience with their product.

Whether or not it's useful is something I doubt we've really come close to answering yet.

</comment><comment><USER38> I really like qwiki. If my second monitor isn't in use, I'll toss qwiki up and watch the promoted videos. I think what they are getting at is some type of TPRS(Rosette Stone), but online.

</comment><comment><USER39> while I agree that like many I don't see the point in having wikipedia read to me, in their favor they do have pretty design. This looks more like a visual communications senior year project than a company, but maybe they have something else up their sleeve.

Then again I thought the same about dropbox, its just rsync, some server managed storage and a webapp on top. But they seem to be well liked. It's hard to predict what will stick and what won't.

</comment><comment><USER40> Surely this is worht at least $16 million...

NSFW - <http://www.qwiki.com/q/#!/Fuck>

</comment><comment><USER41> Not exactly a bubble; just because a few people give a startup money, doesn't mean every or any startup is getting money.

</comment><comment><USER42> _[Qwiki's] $8 Million round was led by primary investor Eduardo Saverin, a co- Founder of Facebook._

Through my extensive knowledge of The Social Network (watched it twice!), I'm pretty sure Saverin was that guy whose girlfriend lit his bed on fire. This may shed some light on why the author thinks Qwiki seems poised for failure. I think.

</comment><comment><USER43> "Qwiki is little more than a toy." upvote

(and compare to AirBnB, which has a function in the real economy outside the web)

The author does not explain, though, how this is emblematic of a general trend.

</comment><comment><USER44> Qwiki might be good for the blind...

<comment><USER45> No. They have much more advanced technology at their disposal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Ahh Qwiki on CNN right now.

</comment><comment><USER47> Seems you fancy yourself an iceberg hunter. You see just the tip and you seem to know everything underneath? How about you stop knocking other's hustle and focus on yours? You have to learn to let go of this immature angst; it will eat you alive and taint everything you do.

</comment><comment><USER48> you guys are idiots. banksy the lucky stuff is actually a qwiki team member stirring up controversy to propel his startup. any publicity is good publicity.

</comment><comment><USER49> The author needs to get a grip, a lot of technology bootstraps on top wikipedia with a capacity to scale from there. Powerset unveiled their natural language search on the wikipedia corpus and were acquired by Microsoft for $100M a few months later. I'm sure MS wasn't just acquiring an index of wikipedia.

<comment><USER50> So, what's Qwiki's technology that's so powerful here then? I think the sentiment is that their technology isn't anything special, and they don't have any other particularly distinguishing feature, so why such investment?

With Powerset, the value was supposed to be in the technology, even if the demo was on Wikipedia. With other companies, say, Twitter, the power is in the size of their network and potential for _something_ , even if the technology isn't groundbreaking.

<comment><USER49> Sure, just don't judge a book by it's...

I don't know what, if any, magic Qwiki has cooking but I think the OP is excessively harsh. My point was that a lot of startups have needed a big round to go to the next level from a limited proof of concept where there's nothing special on their public facing service. So what? Hopefully the vision and potential is evident under the hood and that's what the investment was predicated on.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Stormcloud bare metal experience? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to move from a cloud based virtual server to physical hardware to get better disk IO. Rackspace obvious jumps to mind as the safe choice but Stormcloud has an nice bare metal 4 SAS disk RAID 10 option at a good price. Anyone have any experience, good or bad, with the stormcloud bare metal servers? Thanks! <comment><USER2> Yeah, good question. I was wondering this myself. I'm not a guru in this area, but I believe the Stormondemand servers are still virtualized (Xen) but you get the entire server / disk to yourself rather than sharing. They do this to make the server more like a VPS to manage.

I'm not sure where the poor IO comes from with VPS. Certainly part of it is from sharing, but I'm sure some of it is from the overhead of virtalization as well. So, does the Stormondemand servers still take a hit on IO as compared to a "normal" dedicated?

I could be wrong and totally talking out of my a __here though. Someone please correct me. ;)</comment>


Meteorite recovered in Australia with the help of stargazers and science app - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-22/meteorite-recovered-with-the-help-of-dedicated-star-gazers/8046880 <comment><USER2> More details on the Desert Fireball Network - [http://fireballsinthesky.com.au/about/](http://fireballsinthesky.com.au/about/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Australia is a big, big, big place. I am astounded that they managed to triangulate the landing point for something that small and moving that fast to within 200 metres! That is an immensely superb effort.</comment>